The goal of Fandom is to support large communities who want to work together, and small groups who want to share their passions with the world.
Fandom welcomes communities (known as “wikis”) on almost any topic, large or small, popular or obscure, modern or historical, creative or documentary, funny or serious. However, your community must contain no hate, no libel, no pornographic content, and no copyright infringement.
You must agree:
- to all of our terms of use, including the display of ads
- that the content of the community will be freely licensed
Free content
Text on Fandom communities is available under a free content license, meaning the information you put on the wiki can be copied and reused by anyone. This is very important to our goal of increasing the amount of free content in the world, but isn’t always what creators are looking for when searching for a content host.
Although some fair use material may be included in our communities, Fandom aims to be a repository of free content, so any wiki which would be primarily made up of fair use material rather than freely licensed material is not permitted. Examples include fan translations of copyrighted works, screenshots of television shows or games, or scans of comic book pages.
Public viewing
All Fandom communities are publicly viewable. Fandom does not provide private communities and there is no option in the software to password-protect or otherwise prevent people from reading any of the pages on a community.
Fandom communities are indexed by search engines, and contributions may appear prominently in certain search results.
Public editing
Communities are about working together, and all Fandom communities are open to the public to edit. There is no option to restrict editing to the founder or to a particular group.
Unnecessary page protection is a common mistake that is considered harmful to a wiki’s development. A clear statement of the community’s goals is a better way to promote your vision than technical restrictions.
These are community projects, not personal websites. They are not owned by their founders, nor does the founder’s opinion carry more weight in disagreements than any other user’s opinion. Consensus and cooperation should be the primary means for organizing a community.
Content Guidelines & Requirements
Communities which consist only of offensive material or personal attacks, discriminatory speech, and/or any other behaviors specifically forbidden by our Terms of Use, will be closed.
Wikis will be closed if they are not being used to create legitimate content. For example:
- They have no topic beyond spam, nonsense, vandalism, etc.;
- They are only used for chatting on the wiki or Discussions;
- They are used primarily or exclusively for images;
- They are used only for in-game trading
Additionally, Fandom does not permit the following types of communities or content:
- Wikis whose main purpose is to represent a political party, advocate for or against a political ideology, or generally opine regarding political issues;
- Wikis or contents that are focused on personal ideologies, particularly those that would incite violence or discrimination;
- Wikis whose main purpose is to create, discuss, or disseminate misinformation that threatens the health, safety or mental well-being of either individual users or the public-at-large;
- Wikis about sex, fetishes, and other pornographic subjects are not permitted even if described in a non-explicit way
A user who is banned on other communities or who abuses the wiki creation tool may be blocked from creating new communities.
Users may not create communities with offensive or abusive titles or URLs. We have simple filtering in place to discourage the most obvious undesirable names, but we know it is not possible to block every possible abuse. Users who circumvent the filters in order to create communities in bad faith will simply have their wiki deleted and their user account banned.
Please contact staff to report any abusive community names that we have missed, or if the filter mistakenly prevents you from using an innocent name.
Living people
Please do not create communities or pages (even humorous ones) about living people who aren’t publicly notable, including classmates and teachers, gaming clans, forum communities, YouTube or other social media personalities and more. Even positive articles about people can cause unnecessary drama and may become a tempting target for personal attacks, cyberbullying, unwanted exposure of personal information, and other violations of Fandom, Inc.’s Terms of Use.
Remember that any article that uses a person’s real name, username or pseudonym can show up prominently in internet searches, and may become a target of pranks or malice long after the original authors have moved on. Additionally, consider that real-life individuals, notable or otherwise, may declare a change as to how they identify themselves and that changes to articles to reflect names, pronouns, and other identifiers of gender are to be respected and accommodated.
What is acceptable will vary depending on the type of community, but if problem content is not dealt with in good faith by the project’s community, Fandom staff may remove or alter pages (or entire communities) that are deemed libelous, offensive, discriminatory, or distressing.
Duplicate wikis
If there is already a wiki on a topic you are interested in, please join that community, rather than starting a new one. Where there are multiple communities on the same topic, they compete for editors and readers and create duplicate content, which can lead to tension within the fan base and lower search engine rankings for both wikis. When fans are united and working together, they create the best resources and form the strongest communities.
For this reason, duplicate wikis should not be created. Fandom staff may suggest that already existing duplicates merge into one. In some cases, wikis may not be considered duplicates even though they cover the same topic – for example, if one wiki focuses on fan-created content while the other documents official information, or if one wiki is satirical in nature, while the other is serious.
Closing and merging and altering communities
All communities are subject to closure or alteration if necessary. Fandom staff and helpers may contact the community about making changes to the community, including the site name or url, to meet our Terms of Use or to improve search visibility and ad display.
While a community’s founder may request that their project be closed, if the topic is of general public interest Fandom generally prefers to leave dormant communities available for adoption.
Wikis which have no content, or remain inactive, or have a large overlap with another wiki may be merged with another project or closed completely. In the case of a complete closure of wikis that previously had content, the database of content may be made available for download for up to 60 days.