This Month at Fandom - November 2021
Hey gang!
The penultimate month of 2021 has come to a close and it is time to observe the rituals of community. Let’s review the month that was November 2021.
- 1 Celebrating Native American Heritage Month
- 2 Starlight Design-A-Gown winner
- 3 Community Spotlight
- 4 Data is Fun
- 5 Editors of the Month
Like our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in October, we paused to recognize and celebrate Native American Heritage Month in November with a blog post highlighting movies and TV shows that incorporate characters and themes related to the tribes of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. We continued to use our special Heritage Discord server for discussing how wikis can best honor the heritage of the tribes and their people.
Back in September, we invited the…
Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with Fandom
Hello everyone!
I’m here again, with something new to share with all of you! I’m Héctor Donís, one of the Fandom Community Managers, and you probably saw the last blog post I published which celebrated the Hispanic Heritage Month. I was personally delighted about the response we got from you regarding the different activities we planned (the above-mentioned blog post, the discussion around the highlighted wikis and the video roundtable), and moving forward I would like to bring another new observance we start this week: the Native American Heritage Month!
National Native American Heritage Month is an observance period in the United States for recognizing the histories, invaluable contributions and livelihood of American Indian and Alaska Nati…
Starlight Design-A-Gown winner
Hey gang!
In September, we announced our partnership with Starlight Children’s Foundation, a fantastic organization that runs a few programs to help bring comfort to kids going through treatment for serious illnesses at children’s hospitals in the United States.
As part of that partnership, we invited the entire Fandom community - editors, readers, contractors, and staff - to take part in designing the next comfortable, colorful hospital gown for Starlight’s signature program, Starlight Hospital Wear. These side-cinching gowns provide additional comfort for kids braving long and, sometimes, frequent hospital stays. You stepped up. We got 91 fantastic entries into our Design-A-Gown contest, narrowed those down to 3 finalists, and let you choo…
This Month at Fandom - October 2021
Hey gang!
The spookiest month of the year is nearing its Jack-o'-Lantern-studded finale (Halloween) and it’s time to observe our not so spooky rituals with a recap of the month that was October 2021.
- 1 Content Review and Dev Scripts on Historically Gamepedia Wikis
- 2 We have a Bug Bounty program!
- 3 Closing out Hispanic Heritage Month
- 4 Welcoming a new Community Manager!
- 5 The end of Featured Video and the launch of Interactive Video
- 6 Community Spotlight - Forgotten Realms Wiki
- 7 Data Is Fun
- 8 Editors of the Month
Earlier this month, our engineering team finished the work necessary to enable Content Review on wikis which came to Fandom from Gamepedia. Content Review is a security process involving a manual review of changes to wiki-level custom JavaScript, t…
Introducing Interactive Video
Hey gang!
As Brandon promised on Tuesday, I’m here to talk about a new video content type Fandom has been working on for several months now. We’re calling this Interactive Video because the name really says it all, it’s video content that is interactive with the wikis.
- 1 Some Background
- 2 Why Interactive Video is important
- 3 Some early examples
- 4 Next steps
- 5 How can you get Interactive Video on your wiki
In the nearly 2 years since we announced that Featured Video would no longer be the future of video on Fandom, we have been conducting research, doing experiments, and looking at how The Loop compares to Featured Video content in terms of viewership and other user metrics. Through this investigation, it became very apparent to Fandom that videos groun…
We're retiring legacy Featured Video content and replacing it with new videos
This is a very "coming full circle" blog to be writing.
Back in 2017, I published the staff blog that announced that Featured Video was coming to Fandom communities, and then I went on to lead our Featured Video team from summer 2017 to summer 2018. And now today, almost two years after we announced that we were working on new video types to replace Featured Video, I’m publishing this staff blog announcing that we are retiring legacy Featured Video content and replacing it with The Loop, our video series produced by our Emmy-nominated Fandom Productions team.
Yes, you read that right. The videos that we posted from 2017 to 2019 are being taken down and in their place will be The Loop and other, newer video content we’ve been working on (more o…
Starlight Design-A-Gown Voting is now open
Hey gang!
Just over a month ago, Fandom announced a partnership with Starlight Children’s Foundation to design their next hospital gown for kids who need it in the United States. We called upon the entire Fandom community - editors, fans, and staff members alike - to come up with that design which will bring comfort to thousands of children going through a very scary and difficult time with repeated and - often - long hospital stays.
You answered the call in a big way. Starlight received 91 fantastic designs and Fandom has whittled that number down to 3 finalists. It is now your turn again, this time to vote for our winner!
Jory from Los Angeles, California
“I wanted to draw something that would make kids smile and feel brave - something that …
Fandom's Community Platform now has a Bug Bounty program
Hey gang!
Back in July 2019, we announced the first Fandom Bug Bounty program, which focused on responsible disclosure of security flaws on our D&D Beyond platform in exchange for variable bounty amounts. In that announcement, we committed to launching the program on the Fandom community platform, with an opportunity for community members to get involved. We are happy to say that we launched the Bug Bounty program on the community platform last month and we’d love to talk with you about how it’s going so far and how we’re getting community members involved.
A bug bounty program is an arrangement in which a company invites cybersecurity researchers to find security-related flaws in our systems and privately let the company know what they find…
Content Review and Dev Wiki scripts on historically Gamepedia wikis
Hey gang!
As of today, Content Review, a security process we have for wiki-level custom JavaScript edits, has been enabled for communities which were previously on Gamepedia. Now that we are on a unified platform with a unified design, having unified security review and providing equitable access to customization to our wiki admins was an important next step.
Please note that this blog is about historically Gamepedia wikis. If you’re a user on a historically Fandom wiki, feel free to read on, but know that nothing is changing for you with this announcement!
Content Review is a process that starts when a wiki administrator makes a change to their wiki’s custom JavaScript. It triggers a review of the new code by a member of the Community Team t…
This Month at Fandom - September 2021
Hey gang!
Fall has arrived for Fandom offices around the world and we’re diving into the busy season of big gaming releases, new TV seasons, and some major blockbuster movies! Let’s recap the month that was September 2021…
- 1 Social Media as a hot topic
- 2 For the Love of Fans
- 3 The Downstream
- 4 Gender Identity Guidelines
- 5 Starlight Design-A-Gown
- 6 Hispanic Heritage Month
- 7 Theme Designer Support for Discussions
- 8 Data Is Fun
- 9 Editors of the Month
At last month’s Community Connect, a number of editors and admins expressed their desire to learn more about managing social media outreach for their wikis. This month, we’ve had a few new opportunities to engage in that conversation.
At the end of August/beginning of September, we launched a new Social Media channel…