Policy Talk:Fanon

Discussion

Sarna's BattleTechWiki (BTW) began in September 2006 with the mission to be about all things BattleTech, including articles on canon subjects, maps, links, real persion biographies and fan-created fiction. Over those five years, the community (currently made up of 1,128 registered users and numerous unregistered ones) has provided policies that brings a consistent level of expectations to each and every page created here. However, fan created fiction (or 'fanon') has not exploded in the same numbers as most every other area of interest; policies created to guide fanon posters are generally followed by the registered caretakers (admins, editors and writers), just so that the overall site itself does not sink into cluttered chaos. It is the impression of some users on BTW that the fanon, being rough, unpolished and not generally held up to any conventional standards of fiction, is only visited by the posters themselves and do not enjoy a reader-base. In other words, the various forms of non-canon fanon (stories, 'Mech TROs, unit and industry articles) are not seen or read by anyone other than the original poster.

With that impression in mind, a number of users have suggested that the fanon be split off of BattleTechWiki and moved to the BattleTech Fanon Wiki, a wikia established in September of 2008 by falconsclaw787. While the site has been inactive for a while, it is the impression that it was competition with BTW that created a lack of interest. BTW Admin Frabby has come up with a plan to transition all fanon over to that site over a period of several months. However, there has to be firm support of interested members (and unregistered posters) for such a move to occur.

BTW Founder Nic Jansma has given permission for a discussion to be held, in order to gauge opinions on this matter. In the end, the final decision will either be to support the transition of fanon material to the BattleTech Fanon Wiki, to not support the move or to delay a decision until a stronger consensus one way of the other.

While details as to how the move will be provided later (if the decision supports), a framework has been suggested by Frabby here.

Below this line, please indicate your opinion and any points you may feel are germaine in support of that opinion. Once discussion has ceased for five days, a judgment by the admins as to the prevailing opinions will be announced.

Question: Do you support or not support the movement of fan-produced fiction and non-canon articles to the BattleTech Fanon Wiki?

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• I support the move. The fanon material does require time of interested members of the community to bring the actual pages (tagging, categorization, etc) up to BTW standards, yet policy does not allow the actual fiction to meet the standard expecations of a written BT story. In other words, non-authors are expending their time to make submissions they have no hand in creating meet framework standards, yet the actual submissions themselves are not being appreciated by the readers of BTW (in my opinion). I'd prefer BTW remain a repository of canon material and allow interested fiction writers to build up a similar community to their standards on the fiction wikia. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Wiki treatment of the official BT universe and fan fiction do not mesh well, at least not anymore. The infrastructure (a separate Fanon wiki) is already there, we just need to use it. Frabby 15:10, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• I support to move the fanon content to a separate Fanon wiki.--Doneve 17:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)s

• I am pensive about moving the fanon elsewhere. I guess my biggest thought was about just how much time is spent by non-author editors to clean up the work. So far the fanon stuff I have encoutered here is easy to distinguish from canonical items. I guess part of it is distinguishing between types of fanon items. On one hand there are the lengthy narrative items of... uneven character... that may or may not mesh well with the primary body of work on Sarna. On the other hand there are things like house rules and homemade designs that while not canon, have the potential to actually contribute something to people who play the games. While I have been posting and editing some canon items, my original urge to contribute came from sharing some of the house rules and ideas that my players group hashed out twenty years ago. If not for the provision of a place to post such things I probably would not have started contributing to the canon here.

At the same time, I can understand the urge to reduce clutter and keep the demands on editors time for fanon to a minimum. There is much here that is left undone and it is not like there is a veritable army of people contributing to the project. I guess it comes down to whether or not the inclusion of fanon works is enough of a draw of viewers and / or editors to make it's inclusion worth the hassle. If things WERE moved, I think both communities would be well served by a strong interrelation of the two sites. While thorough cross linking back and forth would be a minimum, features like a second search box that indexes the fanon wiki being placed on Sarna would be useful. I also wonder if the work of moving all the content (assuming it wasn't simply deleted) would be substantially greater than the editor time the presence of the fanon here consumes. So, I am unsure of the value of moving the fanon -- LRichardson 17:21, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• I support the move, though select fan created reference works (Like Objective Raids 3067) are perfectly acceptable to me, on a case-by-case basis. I believe current policies actually encourage some users to post their fanfic here, and that is a bad thing. Most of us have probably made our own 'mechs, units, etc. I know I have. But I don't think the wiki is the place for them. ClanWolverine101 17:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• I support the move, because I'm hesitant to modify someone else's fanon work, even if it's just correcting a typo. Restricting Sarna to canon/apocryphal sources would remove that from my life. I do think we should not make exceptions to this policy: Objective Raids: 3067 is very valuable, but I think it should be referred to as an External Link on the Objective Raids page.--Mbear 17:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)