Despite the well-deserved chastising from Angela, I stand by my assertion that Memory Alpha has a disastrous long-term effect on Wikipedia, and that these... I'm not sure what you want to call them. Other encyclopedias, I suppose. Regardless, I think they have a profoundly negative effect on the long-term success of Wikipedia. -Snowspinner
And why is that? Memory Alpha is a project for creating a Star Trek encyclopedia that just happens to use the MediaWiki software. As seen in the history page, if it hadn't, it would just be another Star Trek database, not editable by everyone - and it allows for a level of details that would be just silly at Wikipedia. Same with other fan-wikis. For example, I wrote this article at The Vault: http://vault.duckandcover.cx/index.php?title=Two-headed_bear and I would definitely vote for the deletion of such article if it were created at Wikipedia.