[Foundation-l] Proposal: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Sage Ross]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Laura Hale <laura at fanhistory.com> wrote:

> Fan History would be a good fit for helping the Wikimedia Foundation in
> terms of helping the Foundation meet some of its goals towards providing
> information, helping establish credibility and gaining a more female
> contributor base.

I for one think Fan History is a great project, and an example of the
kinds of areas Wikimedia should be branching out towards.

A related issue worth thinking about...

Laura has blogged earlier about why Fan History wouldn't join Wikia:
http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=963

Obviously one of the core reasons ("Fan History is a business") must
have changed between when Laura wrote that (September 20) and now.
And (without knowing anything about how discussions with Wikia went
beyond that blog post) I presume the possibility of joining Wikia is
still open.

So the question is, what difference does it make for a wiki and its
community to be part of a non-profit set of projects versus an
ad-supported for-profit one?  Quite a bit, I would say, in the
long-term strategic sense of spreading a free culture movement based
on sharing and collaboration.  If Fan History became part of
Wikimedia, it would be time to admit that, in some ways, Wikia and WMF
are now competitors.

-Sage