Wikis, or Digital Encyclopedias
You may have heard of Wikipedia, the most famous of digital encyclopedia.
It is not the only online "wiki", however, and thousands more exist, with many fan-cultures having their own dedicated wikis written by fans.
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Fandom
Fandom is one of, if not the largest, network of fan-wikis.
Containing over 385,000 sites, individual wikis underneath its banner cover everything from TV shows and movies, to video-games, to books. This includes major franchises such as Star Wars, Disney, and both the DC and Marvel comic books.
Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Fandom, as it feels like they prioritize form-over-substance and quantity-over-quality, but the sheer number of wikis under their banner cannot be understated, and they're the most popular wiki host for a reason.
Here is a link to their "Explore" page. -
Wiki.gg
Wiki.gg is another network of wikis. Smaller than Fandom, it still contains over 800 sites.
I find Wiki.gg to have fewer restrictions on formatting than Fandom, which allows for more creativity from fans.
A significant proportion of these sites are dedicated to video-games. Some major wikis include ones for the highly popular games Terraria, Deep Rock Galactic, and ARK: Survival Evolved.
Wiki.gg also has wikis for all sorts of other entertainment media, such as webcomics.
This is a link to their list of wikis. -
MediaWiki
Not every fan-wiki falls under those two organizations, however. In fact, many fans prefer not to work with them as they enforce certain formatting and content rules.
Both of those services use the MediaWiki software, a creation of the Wikimedia Foundation who also runs Wikipedia, to make their sites, and many wikis not associated with any larger group can be found there. Bulbapedia, the foremost Pokemon wiki, uses the base-software for example.
As MediaWiki has far fewer formatting requirements, quality can vary tremendously between different wikis using this base-software, as some might have incredibly dedicated teams of hundreds, or even thousands, of fans working to make beautiful, detailed pages, whereas others with just a few dozen members may only be able to create a few sparse, low-detail pages with nothing more than a few paragraphs of text each.
This is a link to a list of English-language sites using the software. You can also choose other languages on the right.
MediaWiki is not the only wiki software or hosting service out there, it's just the most popular. Other software includes WikiDot, DokuWiki, and PmWiki, among dozens of others. Some sites like TV Tropes even run on their own, self-created wiki engines.
This is not meant to be a definitive list of every wiki and every wiki-software in existence; this is simply meant to be a basic introduction to some of the most popular ones.
If you are looking for a particular fan-wiki or looking to create your own, I recommend that you do your own research and explore your options.
How To Use a Wiki
While different wiki software will have different ways to organize and format wiki entries, here's a general guide to using wikis. This will be for the most part applicable to the entries above. It may not be applicable to all entries below, in which case different instructions will be given.
A wiki will have various parts, such as:
- A Homepage: Which typically includes a short introduction to the piece of media being discussed and to the wiki itself, as well as a list of major categories (characters, settings, and terminology are some common categories).
- Category Pages: These list all of the pages that fall under a larger category. For example, a "Character" page may list every character in a series. Category pages may also have many subcategories (e.g., Characters → Heroic Characters → Heroic Characters in Season One, etc.).
- A Navigation Bar: Typically to the top or the left of the page. These may have options allowing you to pick category pages, trending pages, and guides and rules for creating your own pages.
- A Forum: These can also typically be found in the navigation bar, and allow users with accounts to discuss wiki entry creation and editing. Many wikis also allow users to create posts about the piece of media as a whole, which can make these a nice place to share your passion for the work and ask questions about it.
- A Search Bar: Unlike professional online encyclopedias, and even larger wikis like Wikipedia, many fan-community wikis will lack advanced search functionality. If your searches are failing to return results, it may be more useful to look through the category pages, or alternatively, make a search using a search engine such as Google by using "site:www.EXAMPLE.com" to specify a search only within a certain website's pages.
Some wikis may use different formats, so you may have to do some experimentation to figure out how to use them.
Notable Wikis
Below, I just want to list some notable wikis that may help you learn more about fan-cultures.
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Fanlore
Fanlore is a wiki dedicated to detailing fan-culture specific topics.
This includes popular media with their own fanbases, fan-creators who are famous within their own fan-cultures, and major fan-events.
This site is relatively easy to use, though it covers such a wide and varied range of topics, many of which are niche, that it can be difficult to discover some smaller ones sometimes. However, if you are looking for a specific topic, the search functionality works well enough.
This uses the MediaWiki framework, so it has a standard setup and use. -
Know Your Meme
Know Your Meme could be considered an online encyclopedia that is focused on documenting memes. Unlike websites like Urban Dictionary, it is not open to editing by the public, as it has it's own dedicated team of writers and researchers.
Each page introduces a meme, its origins or earliest know use, its spread and evolution over time, and some notable examples of it being used online.
Many fan-community specific memes are discussed here, and memes in-and-of themselves can be considered a form of popular media.
The site is quite easy to use and I personally like to look at it every once in a while to stay up to date with internet trends.
The site also has some search functionality, allowing users to sort results by entry format (text entry, videos, images...), entry category (people, culture, sites...), and relevance, age, or views. Otherwise, you'll simply have to enter in a few keywords that describe a meme. If you can't quite find what you're looking for, try using Google and searching for some keywords in addition to "site:https://knowyourmeme.com/". -
TV Tropes
TV Tropes is a highly popular wiki site that describes various "tropes". These may be events, character-types, plot elements, or settings that might occur across different, unrelated pieces of media.
Each trope page will describe a trope and list various pieces of media that it occurs in, organized by media type (such as Comic Books, Live-Action TV, and Music).
This is one of my favorite wikis, and it's easy to get spend hours just clicking between and reading various pages.
They have no advanced search functionality, so you may just have to search for some basic keywords and browse through the results. If TV Trope's search functionality doesn't work for you, try entering in keywords and "site:https://tvtropes.org/" into Google, to only search within this site.
This is a link to their home page. -
ZineWiki
Zines are independent print works, published by independent authors rather than by established major publishers. They can be as large as actual magazines, or they can be as small as index cards.
While zines themselves don't truly count as popular media, as they're often released in small batches, they are an important part of fan-community history, as this was how fan-fiction and fan-art was spread before the mass use of the internet.
This particular wiki is somewhat hard to use, as it has no recommended or trending pages listed, though searching works just fine. Also to note, the search bar is located at the bottom of the left search bar. rather than at the upper right like with most sites.
A Social Media Forum
While I'm sure that you already know about the largest and most popular social media sites (such as Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram), as well as the thriving fan communities that exist on them, here is one more that you might enjoy:
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Reddit could be considered a modern-day forum website, and is the one of the largest still around, as well as one of the most friendly for fan-communities.
It's very easy to use and manages to integrate forums, a traditional means of internet communication, with modern social media elements, making it a terrific place to stay up to date within fan-communities and to discuss and share one's interests.
I will discuss how to use it in detail here, as it's a site with many features, and as it's one that I'm very familiar with.
Making an Account
You will not need a Reddit account to view Reddit posts or comments, but you will need one to create your own posts and to leave your own comments.
Thankfully, Reddit makes this easy, as like many modern social websites, it allows you to directly create an account by logging in through your Gmail.
Afterwards, you will be asked to chose a username and a password, as well as some interests and communities that you'd like to follow, though that is optional and may be skipped.
You may also be emailed a verification link, so make sure that you click on it, as your account may be locked or deleted after a certain time if you don't.
Finding Your Fan-Communities
Reddit is split into several sub-forums, colloquially referred to as "subreddits" by users, but also referred to as "communities" by the developers. These cover thousands of topics and interests. Here's how to find the ones that you may be interested in.
Above is the "Popular" page of Reddit. For now, this will be more useful to you than the "Home" page, as you have not yet followed any communities.
- To the top you can see some current news topics. This is a relatively new feature, and may be ignored if you don't find it useful.
- To the lower-middle, you'll see some trending posts from a number of different communities. If you were logged in and looking at the Home page, you'd see posts taken specifically from the communities you're following, rather than from the entirety of Reddit like here.
- To the right you can see some of the most popular communities listed.
- To the left, you'll see some a list of "Topics". Clicking onto one of those will show you posts from communities related to those topics.
You can also try searching for various communities directly, by using the search bar.
Reddit does not have any advanced search functionality, so try abbreviations and alternative spellings if you can't find what you're looking for.
Reddit communities can be incredibly niche as well, with some examples, in order of increasing specificity, being:
- r/Books with 26.4 million followers.
- r/Fantasy with 3.8 million followers.
- r/LOTR (as in Lord of the Rings) with 1 million followers.
- r/LOTRMemes with 3 million followers.
So definitely browse around, as I'm sure you'll find the perfect community for you.
Within Reddit Communities
Here is an example of a Reddit community. To the upper right you'll see options to create your own post, as well as to join the community, which will ensure that posts from it show up in your Home page.
To the top, you'll see some posts created and pinned by the moderators of the community. These are important, as they may discuss rule changes or upcoming events. More importantly, these may also include periodic general threads, typically updated weekly, where community members may comment and reply with general questions, recommendations, and short discussion topics. If you have a quick question or a basic idea that you'd like to share, try seeing if one of these is appropriate first before creating your own post.
To the right of this particular community, you'll also see a button saying "Community Guide", which shows you:
- Community rules, which you should check before posting, as many communities require specifically formatted titles or minimum post lengths in an effort to combat spam and bot posts.
- An FAQ, which may be useful if you have some general questions about a fan-community.
- A community wiki, which is a sort of miniature wiki created by the users of the community, which may include links to useful guides, essential reading, and other similar Reddit communities. This is especially useful in hobbyist communities and in communities centered around long or complex pieces of media.
Every community will have different features, but these are fairly common across different communities. and are undoubtedly useful to new members.