Our Work

The Fanlore committee maintains and promotes Fanlore, a wiki about fan history and activities.

Most of the work on Fanlore is performed by many editors who create, revise, and add content to Fanlore pages! Anyone can join Fanlore as an editor – check out the How to Get Involved section below for more information about how to sign up and how to get started with editing once you’ve made an account. You don’t need to join as a volunteer to help edit the wiki!

The Fanlore committee is responsible for developing and revising policies for wiki editors to follow and enforcing those policies by assisting editors and other users with related queries. Fanlore committee members help with anything from identity protection, like obscuring users’ personal information where they are referenced on Fanlore pages, to hostile editing, to ensure that Fanlore pages are not vandalized and that they represent multiple fannish viewpoints.

The committee also conducts outreach to promote Fanlore, attract new editors to the wiki, and engage Fanlore’s user community. This involves creating posts, graphics, and other content to publish on social media, and engaging with the community on our Discord server. The committee also designs and runs several editing challenges each year that encourage users to register for Fanlore and take part in editing tasks to earn badges designed by members of the committee.

Who We Are

Several groups of volunteers make up the Fanlore committee:

• Social Media & Outreach volunteers promote Fanlore and help it reach new potential users. They are responsible for planning and running Fanlore’s editing challenges, maintaining Fanlore’s social media channels, and thinking of ways to reach out to and engage with new corners of fandom. This also includes moderating and improving the Fanlore Discord.
• Graphic Designers create graphics for outreach initiatives such as social media features, badges for editing challenges, infographics, and visual tutorials.
• Policy & Admin volunteers manage and develop Fanlore’s technical aspects and policies. They are also responsible for communicating policy and providing technical support to Fanlore’s users, including through Policy and Help documentation, responding to messages from users, and on Talk pages on the wiki itself.
• Gardeners monitor and clean up content on Fanlore, ensuring that changes made to the wiki are coherent, appropriate, and organized according to Fanlore’s policies. They also assist other editors, keep an eye out for spam, and liaise with Fanlore Policy & Admin about inappropriate edits or policy issues.

How to Get Involved

The best way to start with Fanlore is to register for an account and start editing! Our New Visitor Portal is a good place to find basic information about how to create or add to pages.

For more information about how Fanlore works, visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Our editing cheatsheet is a quick reference sheet to help editors (both new and experienced!) with common types of wiki formatting. If you’re unsure where to start, try searching Fanlore for your favorite fandoms, fanworks, and fan communities. Search for pages you know about, and add information to them. For more advanced editing, try consulting our Wish List, which are pages that other users have specifically requested; Wanted Pages, which are pages that have been linked to but not yet created; or Orphaned Pages, which are pages that are not linked to from other pages in Fanlore.

If you become a prolific editor, Fanlore volunteers may contact you with an offer to become an Advanced Editor. Advanced Editors are not Fanlore volunteers, but can move and delete pages on Fanlore. Advanced Editors who would like to take a more active role in developing the wiki and Fanlore policy are welcome to apply for a Gardener position.

On the other hand, if you are interested in the work that Policy & Admin volunteers, Social Media & Outreach volunteers, or Graphic Designers do, you can periodically check the Volunteer page on the OTW website for Fanlore recruitment postings, or contact the Fanlore committee.

Contact Us

To get in touch with the Fanlore committee, use the OTW’s contact form, selecting Fanlore as the committee you want to reach. Selecting the subject “Correction,” “Editing help,” or “Feedback” will direct your query to the Gardeners, while “Fanlore Policies,” “Identity Protection,” “Technical Support,” or “Other” will forward your query to Policy & Admin.