Why the heck not? My only concern would be that the topic of fan history might be a bit specialized by itself.
Why not call it "Wikitribes" and extend the concept to other subcultures and microhistories of small communities? I know of someone working with the oral history of Philadelphia jazz musicians, for example, who would probably be quite interested in contributing to a wiki project such as this. I think for too long we have shunted off some of our more interesting proposals to Wikia, and a commercial environment that may not be appropriately conducive for these projects. Thanks, Pharos On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Laura Hale <la...@fanhistory.com> wrote: > Erik suggested I post this to the list for further discussion. > > Sincerely, > Laura Hale > > > > > > *Introduction* > Fan History Wiki is a project dedicated to documenting the history of fan > communities, and to a lesser extent, documenting the history of online > communities, popular culture and the tools that go to support these. The > purpose of this document is to provide a general overview of Fan History, > and to explain why this project would be a good fit for the Wikimedia > Foundation. > > > *Proposal* > *About Fan History* > Fan History is a wiki that runs on Mediawiki. It currently gets about > 60,000 visitors a month, has over 820,000 articles, and a small but > dedicated contributor base. Laura Hale created it in May 2006 as a means of > centralizing existing information, and getting more people involved in the > process of documenting the history of fandom. > > Current objectives for the project include: > > * Document the history of fan communities. > * Preserve the history of fandom, especially in areas that are deemed at > risk like Geocities. > * Provide academics operating in fandom starting points for additional > research and to provide academics with comprehensive data sets. > * Provide members of fandom a resource to find links to communities in > fandom, and explain parts of the culture in those communities to help them > adapt to them. > * Provide members of fandom a tool to promote their work, their projects, > charity efforts by fans. > * Provide members of fandom a platform to share stories about what happened > in fandom so that important incidents won't be forgotten. > * Provide a comprehensive directory for fandom that anyone can edit. This is > necessary because of increased fragmentation in a web 2.0 world, and as > members of fandom transition away from various services because of downtime, > problems with policy, etc. It is also necessary because a lot of time in > fandom trying to track down authors and artists who disappeared and in > trying to locate fanworks that have disappeared. > * Provide companies that deal with fandom a source to locate fandom > communities, understand how fandom functions, identify current issues in > certain fandoms, give examples of how certain issues were dealt with, etc. > By knowing that information, they can better interact with and cater to > fandom's specific needs. > > * Reasons why Fan History Wiki would be a good fit for WMF:* > > * WMF is trying to be more female friendly in terms of developing its > contributor base. Fan History's primary contributor base and audience is > female. > * A largely female audience is a historical truth for popular > culture fandom based around movies, and television. The audience around > manga and anime is becoming increasingly female. In most areas, the > academics entering the field are female. Major popular culture obsession > items at the moment where there is a large female base include Twilight, > Harry Potter, Star Trek. > * Fan History’s inclusion amongst foundation projects can be a > selling point for outreach in that area. If needing to point to a similar > female dominated group doing similar work, the Organization for > Transformative Works can be cited. > > * Our scope allows for more esoteric information that could not be included > in Wikipedia, Wikiversity or Wikinews that would still help work towards a > greater good. > * The WMF Foundation supports quality resources that anyone can > edit. Fan History is primarily a cultural historical anthropology project > dedicated to documenting the history of fandom. > * People have tried to do such research on Wikipedia in the > past but it frequently gets deleted because of the lack of research, it is > original research or it isn’t notable. In terms of popular culture studies, > Fan History provides a place to do that. > > * Fan History being part of the Foundation would allow closer relationships > with the science fiction community, the academic community and others with a > vested interest in the topic. > * We’re already being used as an academic source in some places > because the research we do on the wiki is not being done by anyone else. > With more attention and increased awareness, this can be increased. That > attention and use should reflect back on other WMF projects to justify those > sources as credible. > * Fan History can be used as leverage to develop relationships > with programs like the Popular Culture studies work done at USC and MIT. > * This would be a big step towards getting professional > historians and cultural anthropologists to using Wikipedia related projects > more. Some would like such a platform to do their own work and are hesitant > to do it on more commercial sites like Wikia. > > > * Fan History’s preservation work would foster good will, improve > credibility of WMF projects, generate additional press and help WMF in > creating good relationships with other organizations. > * We are doing important preservation work related to sites that > are closing like Geocities and have identified other sites at risk like > Tripod and Angelfire where we need to start working. Most of the work being > done preservation wise focuses on just saving the raw content, not > screencapping and putting this work into its historical context. There is > no competition in that context. > > > * Our preservation work would help improve credibility, as we become more of > a primary source resource. It is easier to cite that work in ways that > people cannot cite Wikipedia. > * The Internet Archive and other projects received a lot > positive press because of their preservation efforts. > * Preservation efforts open up opportunities to work with > university programs, and other non-profits that have a vested interest in > saving that information. > > * Fan History’s content lends itself to multi-language support and greater > unity across languages. > * We currently do not have separate multi-languages but we have > enough content about other languages that can be stubbed on their own > language subdomains that we can start at least 20. > * Large community of Russians, Germans, Poles and Spanish > speakers who are interested in the topic who currently lack a quality > resource. > * Language integration across the project would help WMF create a > more unified community concept beyond individual language projects. > > *What Fan History needs from WMF:* > > * Improved back end support. > * Help increasing our base audience of contributors. > * Financial security. > * The continued ability to work towards our objectives. > > *What Fan History offers beyond good fit:* > > * Policies that have been tested to work inside the larger community that > meet different standards. > * Scalable policies that have been tested so there should not be huge > problems coming on board. > * An all female admin staff at the onset. > * Few copyright problems. While we have some copyrighted images, we could > dump almost all and not lose anything substantive. > * A huge scope. We cover over 37,000 fan communities representing > television, movies, music, video games, anime, manga, actors, theater, > radio, science fiction, cartoons, comics and sports. > > *Compromises Fan History is happy to make:* > * Change our copyright from > http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Fanhistory.com:Copyrights to the same policy > used by WMF. > * Remove images with problematic copyright issues. > > *Conclusion* > Fan History would be a good fit for helping the Wikimedia Foundation in > terms of helping the Foundation meet some of its goals towards providing > information, helping establish credibility and gaining a more female > contributor base. > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
