Wookieepedia:April Fools' Day 2012/Wookieepedia merging with SWfanon

As a user on Wookieepedia, I have witnessed many phases on the wiki. There have been user and visitor spikes during major releases, such as a TCW season's first episode or TOR's release. However, except for these occasional spikes, the editor count has been declining since its peak around 2008. The number of pages viewed per visitor has also been on the decline, indicating that people spend less time on the site than they used to. This could, until very recently, be seen on Quantcast; however, Wikia has decided that visitor counts etc. are business secrets.

In discussing this with the rest of the administration, we came to the conclusion that something needed to be done. Users who sign up need to stay involved and passers-by need to get involved. We need to make Wookieepedia a place where anyone can feel like they make a difference. After several long conversations between my fellow administrators, followed by some collaboration with Lucasfilm VIPs and Wikia Staff, we've decided to make some major changes in how the site is run.

Firstly, we need to make everyone feel like they are welcome, and we will therefore start allowing any fan activity to have a page on the site. Notability of fan projects will no longer be Wookieepedia policy. We've discussed this with the administrators of the SWfans wiki, and they've agreed with the merge.

Secondly, we have also decided to allow fanon on the site. This has been discussed with SWfanon's administrators, and we will be moving their content to Wookieepedia shortly. How exactly the content will be added to the site has not yet been decided; essentially we have two options: (a) Creating pages named "Fanon: " or just incorporating the fanon into existing articles, maybe with "fanon start" and "fanon end" tags (like the minor spoiler tags). We have transferred some articles from SWfanon to Wookieepedia to see how it would look like, as well as featuring fanon on the Main page together with an FA. In accordance with the merge, we will be unblocking all users that are currently blocked for the addition of fanon into articles.

The decision to merge is final and is not up for discussion. However, we are more than glad to listen to your ideas how to exactly incorporate fanon with the rest of the content on the site. We are going to discuss this for a couple of days before the content is going to be merged.

Regards,

1358 (Talk)  00:08, April 1, 2012 (UTC) on the behalf of the administration

A message from Dave Filoni
Dear fans,

A few months ago, we made the transition from the StarWars.com Databank to the new Encyclopedia, and included links to your Wookieepedia, without explaining our reasoning. Leland and I feel the time has come to explain our decision, and share some exciting new developments for the future of the Star Wars canon.

First, we acknowledge that Wookieepedia has done a far better job of chronicling the facts and history of Star Wars than the official site ever did. We should have given up on that a long time ago, and we have finally deferred to the masters in that regard. But in addition to that, I've been looking at the interesting changes I've made to this great universe and thought, "why should I have all the fun?"

So in conjunction with the administration of Wookieepedia, Star Wars Fanon, and Star Wars Fan Wiki, we are creating a process by which you, the fans, will integrate your own creations into the Star Wars canon. Leland will explain this in greater detail, but in a nutshell, Wookieepedia will replace the Holocron as the official chronicle of continuity, and your creations will be taken into account in all new material published by our licensing partners.

I, for one, find this extremely exciting, as my own creations prior to joining Lucasfilm, when I went by the online handle of SuperShadow, will finally get the recognition they always deserved.

So have fun, and know now that your creative efforts will have greater meaning. We regret that we will be unable to compensate any of you directly, but Wikia will receive a percentage of future Lucasfilm publishing revenues, and I'm certain they will be able to work out an amicable arrangement with the userbase.

Dave Filoni