Are you following the Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy leaked music situation? If so, please help improve the article on Fan History about Guns N Roses and fill in the details or link to your own post about the topic. Was the response called for? Are the actions overkill? Are “fans” like this killing the music industry or are actions like this killing the music industry?
Archive for August, 2008
Guns N Roses
August 28th, 2008CSI fandom, canon and me
August 26th, 2008I love CSI and I love the fandom. There are some truly fantastic people involved in the fan community. The show itself rocks hardcore. Because of the quality of the source material, the fans have a lot to work with. It is one of the reasons I love the show and its fandom.
Totally excited about the new season premiere. I’ve watched the trailer about 10 times on YouTube and courtesy of TiVo catching the trailer on an episode of Big Brother. Sara’s back! It might only be for an episode (actually two if the spoilers for the season are right) but Sara has been my reason to watch the show almost from the start. It gives the show some continuity plot wise. It makes the show more believable. And with the potential for some Grissom/Sara moments… YEAH! I’m hoping that my favorite fan fiction writers will be inspired to write and write more and give me post episode wonderfulness.
Because there hasn’t been much wonderfulness. I was chatting with one of my best fandom friends who writes work I absolutely adore. Both of us are big Sara Sidle fans. She’s also a big Gil Grissom fan. The departure of Jorja Fox, the lack of her appearing on the show consistently because of that departure, the lack of Jora Fox being on television on a weekly basis the news that William Petersen is leaving the show, the rumors that Gil Grissom might pick up with another woman, Gary Dourdan leaving, Warrick Brown dying, new characters coming in, Ronie Lake not appearing much after being brought in, other cast change rumors, Catherine/Warrick not having been dealt with much before he died, these all add up together to make it hard to find inspiration to create fanworks based on CSI. Canon is bound to have so many changes and things are so unresolved now in a way that is uncomfortable. … Uncomfortable rather than exciting. Babylon 5′s plot which could involve people dying or disappearing or totally changing was exciting. You wanted to see these changes. CSI is not. It is episodic television to a degree. It isn’t arc driven. It is, at times, character driven. The changes going on thus aren’t pleasurable and something that makes me want to watch. So yeah. Not inspired. I’m likely to watch but not with the same committment. (And thanks to the power of TiVo, if I miss an episode, no big deal. If some one says it is exciting, I can go back and watch it later.) I just… wish it wasn’t this way because I love my Grissom/Sara fan fiction. I love my community. I love my canon. Others seem to be drifting or less interested. If I lose that, if others are less involved, I’ll be adrift with out a fandom and that will add to my fandom sadness.
While on the topic of CSI, I bought the CSI video game for my wii. I figured it would be a nice extension of my love of CSI and help rekindle my interest. The cast was on the cover. It was a wii game and wii seems much more exciting than the PC version. The game sadly makes no use of the niftiness of the wii. For Sara Sidle, the voice isn’t that of Jorja Fox. Woe. 
Not an awesome game and doesn’t look like it will accomplish my goal in having bought it. Wish I had read the reviews before I purchased.
StartUp Alpha pitch session
August 16th, 2008On Tuesday, I did a pitch session at StartUp Alpha’s event in NYC. I figured it was good exposure for Fan History, and a great learn by doing opportunity. I didn’t believe that we’d hook up with a venture capitalist there. (Though if it had happened, I would not have turned it down.) Two nights in New York City to do that, the cost wasn’t bad.
$340.00 for airfare to New York City
$35.50 for train from EWR to NYC
$23.00 for MTA pass
$94.00 for hostel for two nights
$16.20 for book about fandom
$7.64 for breakfast at ORD
$5.41 for breakfast in NYC
$7.14 for lunch in NYC
$3.63 for snack in NYC
$7.04 for breakfast at EWR
$2.00 for CTA to downtown Chicago
$5.65 for train home from Chicago
$3.29 for food in Chicago at Wiki Wednesday, Chicago
$550.50 Total for Startupalpha.com pitch and party expenses
Really affordable if you’re a startup and looking for VC pitching experience, another reason to network and to meet more people who are doing their own start ups. Kept costs down by staying in a hostel which ran about $47 a night, rather than $250 at a hotel. One night, I had a room mate who snored but with a hostel, that’s a risk and I slept through it. The next night, some one came in at 1am. Still, not bad. (This was the Candy Hostel.) I took MTA, flew into Newark, took a train into the city. Those things also helped keep the costs down.
While there, I talked to some one from femalethiink.com and I owe them an e-mail. I also met Roger from klickable.tv which looks to be a very cool project. From how it was described, it reminded me a bit of a video version of like.com and LiveJournal’s celebritystyle community rolled into a collaborative environment where people can comment on and offer additional links. As some one who has SQUEE! moments over clothing on shows I love(d) like CSI and Boston Public, being able to click on clothes that my favorite characters are wearing and to learn more about them… just awesome. It would also be another great way to find a community of like minded fans. (And for shows like Lipstick Jungle and Sex in the City… considering how central clothes are to the show…) I can’t wait to see more of it.
Great trip overall. It was affordable. It was a learning and networking experience.
Personalizing your userpage: Userboxes
August 10th, 2008Fan History has two types of articles about people: People articles and user pages. Each one has a different purpose. People articles are intended to be more serious, to document the history of a particular person’s involvement in fandom. They’re just serious articles. More details on how to write those articles can be found at Help:People.
A number of contributors, especially those editing articles about themselves, don’t know about user pages. User pages are articles created by Fan History contributors that are about the user, their interests or act as their personal website. If you’re a Fan History contributor, they are a great way to promote yourself on Fan History, to let other users learn more about you.
There are a lot of ways to add information to and personalize your userpage. One of the easiest ways to personalize your user page is through userboxes. Userboxes can quickly tell other users about you in a sentence or with a picture. They’re a way of quickly adding preformatted content to your user page. They add some color to your page. Userboxes are also full of shiny goodness. Instructions on creating a userbox on Fan History can be found here. If you’re not up to creating your own on Fan History, check out the Available Userbox page. At the moment, there are over 80 different ways you can tell other users about yourself. This includes information on what country you’re from, your role on Fan History, what type of Rescue Ranger fan you are, what social networking sites you use, your personal troll policy, what you ship, what video games you play, what type of slasher you are and more.
So if you’re looking for a way to quickly personalize your user page, consider using a userbox.
#SocialDevCampChicago
August 10th, 2008Yesterday, I went to SocialDevCampChicago with the goal to learn more about social media, network with people involved in the area and to have a good time. All goals accomplished. I didn’t attend as many presentations as I would have liked. I was just too busy talking to people, eating, volunteering, socializing, networking and preparing my own presentation. I managed to talk to or at least catch a glimpse of one or two people from StartUpWeekend, Ann Arbor. It was interesting to catch up and see where one of those startups was in terms of development. Some of them presentations were supposed to have been fantastic including Lindsey LaVine‘s Legal Considerations for Social Media and Saper Law Offices‘s Legal Considerations Part II. Legal Liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Communications Decency Act.
I did my own presentation with Jean Pickering of The Tektite Group, LLC on wikis. We both showed up early. Jean provided some food. I was volunteering to help man the registration table. I asked her if she was presenting. She said some one was already presenting on her topic. What topic? Wikis. I said that was mine and asked if she wanted to co-present with me. She said yes. That was fantastic for me as I had never done an unconference before and the unconference was PowerPoint presentation heavy. We found some time, put together a basic PowerPoint. I’ve got to give Jean credit for doing an excellent job at dealing with my nervousness in preparing.
Jean’s perspective was really welcome. She comes at wikis from the perspective of non-profits and businesses needing a website or an on-line presence. I come at wikis from a large wiki perspective, from a fandom perspective with the thought of communities being at the forefront. Different perspectives were helpful. Our presentation covered what wikis are, why use wikis, how you use wikis and where you can find wiki software. We tried to build in a lot of interaction with the audience. Overall, I was really happy with how things went. I think we gave a fairly good idea about the benefits of wikis and some resources for wiki people.
At the end, I gave out a handout with wiki resources on it. Putting those here as I think they’re worth sharing again.
Wikis: How to and why to!
Wiki Community
Wiki Conferences and Meetups
- http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19643859842 – WikiWednesday, Chicago – August 13, 2008
Wiki Hosts
Wiki Support
Overall, I really loved SocialDevCampChicago. I hope there are more events like it in Chicago. I think it could be improved in the future by having smaller groups to present to; a lecture hall with seats for two hundred when you have 30 people in the room isn’t ideal. The time for presentations could also be a bit longer; a half hour just didn’t seem to give enough time to cover some topics. Those problems seem small and easily fixable if this event was to be held again. And I really do hope that there is another event like this again happening again soon in the city.
Next time, I’ll also figure out public transport, stay the whole time and not be scared of traffic. 
Vote for Fan History!
August 4th, 2008Are you on IdeaBlob? If so, consider voting for Fan History. There are a number of things we’d really love to do with the wiki but they require a certain level of funding. By voting, you could help us win some money to help us meet those goals. In this case, we’re looking for money to help us with content development and to compensate our system administrators so they can afford to spend more time on the wiki.
If you’re not a member, consider joining in order to vote for us. Thanks for your support!
Fan History policy updates
August 2nd, 2008We have been busy in the past week reviewing and revising our policies. At this time, we’re happy to announce that we have completed a policy review and have updated the following articles to reflect that:
If you have any questions about these policies, please let us know via e-mail at support at fanhistory . com, in the comments of Fan History’s blog or on the talk pages of the specific wiki policy pages. We’re planning to open up the talk pages on the wiki so that people can begin to submit deletion requests in the next day or so and completely reopen the wiki in the next seven days. We would like to thank everyone who helped us revise these policies.
