TheForce.net

TheForce.Net, also known as TFN, is one of the most popular Star Wars fansites on the Internet.

The site began in late 1996 as Texas A&M University's Star Wars Page, founded by roommates Scott Chitwood and Darin Smith. In Chitwood's own words, the site was "a few pictures and tons of text". The site outgrew its environment, however, and in September 1997, TheForce.Net was born. Soon the staff numbered over a dozen loyal Star Wars fans. Eventually Joshua Griffin came onboard as partial owner, and most recently entrepreneur Philip Wise, owner of both the collecting-specific fansite Rebelscum.com and Official Pix, Lucasfilm's official venue for actor autographs, has become co-administrator of the site alongside Griffin. Also worth noting are Anthony Baratta and Michael Spellacy, the site's main technical staff.

Early in TFN's lifetime, the site was a resource for spoiler information on the upcoming prequel films. However, as its profile grew, and as StarWars.com started meeting much of the demand for advance information itself, the site's focus moved away from spoilers considerably and into more standard news reporting. Eventually the amount of incoming news necessitated the addition of new non-movie-specific sections, such as Books, Comics, Video Games, and Roleplaying.

Features

 * Fan Films - the Fan Films section is for fan created works of art, including many renowned short films such as TROOPS and Star Dudes. There are also tips and tutorials on creating your own fan films and a very large film and actor database.
 * Jedi Council Forums - a testament to the vastness of TFN's readership is its discussion forums, home of the FanForce organization.
 * CUSWE (Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia) - one of the longest-running subsections of TFN, Bob Vitas' Unofficial Encyclopedia is an exhaustive database of the Star Wars universe, and one of the conceptual progenitors of Wookieepedia. As of March 2006, the CUSWE is located at its own website, www.cuswe.org.
 * Fan Fiction - one of the largest public fanfic archives, complete with a comment system allowing readers to give feedback on their favorite stories.
 * Star Wars Technical Commentaries - The Technical Commentaries are written and maintained by professional astrophysicist Curtis Saxton. Attempting to translate the fantastic into the scientific, these articles have been a source of much contention among readers.
 * Expanded Universe Roundtable - a series of uncut 3-5 person chat sessions on a variety of topics.
 * Ultimate Timeline - an in-depth chronological source listing
 * Timetales - a chronicle of Star Wars history containing thorough summations of stories both major and minor, and information on how they all fit together. The majority of the site has been undergoing reconstruction for some time.
 * The Force-Cast - The official podcast of TheForce.net and Rebelscum.com. The Force-Cast features the latest news, interviews, events and opinions from the Star Wars fan community.

Philip Wise
Philip Wise is the majority partner in the site. His other projects include the collecting site Rebelscum.com and Official Pix, Lucasfilm's officially-licensed distributor of cast-autographed photography.

Joshua Griffin
Joshua Griffin is a partner in the site, along with Wise. Griffin was the editor-in-chief of the website for five of his eight years actively contributing to the site. He has written many surprising editorials on the subject of Star Wars and thousands of news articles on the site. Griffin has been featured in many articles and reports, including The Wall St. Journal, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today and Business 2.0. Offline he has been involved in youth ministry since 1992 and is on staff at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.

He blogs daily at morethandodgeball.com.

Public image
Several controversies have popped up over the years concerning the site's policies and content. Noteworthy examples are the opinions presented by Dr. Saxton in his aforementioned Technical Commentaries, the role the all-volunteer site plays in the for-profit businesses run by Mr. Wise, and rules barring the inclusion of controversial elements, primarily homosexuality, in fanfiction; homosexuality and bisexuality are almost completely barred from the site and message boards, regardless of context.

The site is also heavily influenced by Lucasfilm and its marketing and politics, and rarely breaks rank to offer objective criticism or opinions of the Star Wars franchise and its creators. The forums are also censored to a PG-13 level, with moderators cracking down on speech that is not 'family friendly.'