The fandoms are the passionate fans of the very beloved games, like Five Nights at Freddy's, or watchers of all-time favorite shows such as Doctor Who. Some of which have called for a more flexible Wikipedia. Despite being a world-renowned encyclopedia, Wikipedia seems to have fallen short for those with high levels of influence, and even purchasing power. Fandoms have existed as long as Wikipedia. As two parts of the internet, and a very expressive one at that, fandoms on Wikipedia are rather thought to be not so full-fledged. Wikipedia and the fandoms go a long way, and the main point of interest for many editors, including me, is that I started Wikipedia because of my love for Five Nights at Freddy's, my excitement for TwitchCon, along with my interest in politics, which made me first read, then become curious, and eventually edit. Fandoms connect us to our interests and make them more accessible, thus their problems, or knowing what's happening, are important.

The why is complicated here, but fandoms have several ways to infest and reinforce themselves, that is, art, knowledge and interest. Fandom (the website) is a primary media for fandomer discussions. Despite such websites having massive problems, fandomers in gaming, art, and media tend to not use Wikipedia as a primary medium of their discussion. Except when seeking knowledge about something very specific rather than the fandom. For example, one may check Wikipedia for knowledge about an animal in your game, rather than the game itself. "But we do have fandom articles!" I hear you say, and you are absolutely right; Wikipedia does have Five Nights at Freddy's, or Poppy Playtime and all that! However, they are very surface level and not primarily used. WP:WikiProject Video games and many other alike projects are, somewhat helped to bring a larger groups of editors to the Wikipedia's fandoms, by letting them edit as a group. Globally, French Wikipedian friends over at the Projet:Animation et bande dessinée asiatiques are focusing on Anime and Manga-alike fandoms. If you're a fan of Boys' love, or Yaoi, Spanish Wikipedians have already made their article on the fandom convention Yaoi-Con. You can find similar articles by Spanish Wikipedians over at the Categoría:Convenciones de anime y manga. For a broader set, check out Category:Fandom by country. Now, I've seen the flexibility of wikipedia as a primary source of the problem, cause unlike fandom wikis, Wikipedia cannot just put up any information on an article, and with as many restriction on the given information, as per Wikipedia's Notability Guidelines.Wikipedia is probably not gonna be somewhere where you learn about a game in-depth, you'd watch a YouTube video, like MatPat's Game Theory. It's more deep-leveled. (to be said, there are very in-depth fandom articles out here! not to undermine anyone)

Fandom-based wikis such that is were called out for being AI-slop and advertisement filled.^[1] Unfortunately, the Gemini AI that Google introduced slowed the usual traffic pace to Wikipedia, which is already well known.^[2] However, Fandom-based wikis also took damage from it. Yet, fandoms themselves rather opened up their own independent or officially run wikis instead of moving here or to Fandom-based wikis. For a lot of fandoms, having their own Wikipedia is a hard-notch job, so while this is not very popular yet, it may become a new traffic trend away from well-established wikis. A very well known example is the Minecraft Wiki, which is completely run by the Minecraft community, partly-offical, and used to be on an established Fandom wiki instead.

Other great examples is the Spanish language countryball fandom, who moved to their own domain Polandball Hispana, from a previously established Fandom wiki. The recent Grand Theft Auto fandom,^[3] or The Legend of Zelda fandom a few years back. ^[4]

You may not be so surprised to find out that a group of people who use their part-time to write on the internet are also part of large online or real-time communities with a special interest. You can even say I like FNaF.. Well, despite the high numbers of fandom involvement, the shaky yet inactive future between fandoms and Wikipedia looks even shakier. Now the question is whether what those Wikipedians do and think, are Wikipedians even around writing for their fandoms? Really, how many Wikipedians even took a great look at their favourite fandoms, interests, and even unfamiliar territory? Comes another problem; unlike fandom areas, Wikipedia does not have any centralization of what fandoms are, where they are, and how to reach them.

Wikipedians are a very well-fandom-dwelling bunch (well, as far as I'm aware!), and a lot of articles and projects have been raised by the editors in projects such as WikiProject Video games who have raised an mind-blowing 2,600 GA-Class articles, including my all-time favourite Among Us. With that said, many fandom convention medias which you can find under Category:Fan conventions. This Category, the Fan conventions has an example of what we call yearly following; a furry convention, that is anthrocon, has been consecutively archived as a form of Wikimedia in Category:Anthrocon at least since the big-old 2004! That's also subsequently connected to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Furry. Wikipedians are not only going to conventions themselves, they have a long history of doing so and consecutively following that determination. But that's only here; globally, French Wikipedians over at Categoría:Wikiproyecto:Ciencia ficción/Artículos have made some jaw-dropping 1200+ articles on fan conventions.

Conventions of multitude media, such as PAX, Gamescom, Convención anime or Comic Con, are a primary source for our eagle-eyed editors who might like to find images for the Wikimedia Commons, or press notability support for their favourite articles, that is. Especially for indie games, that are looking for more context. A primary example is the Undertale, the article's use of events and cosplays is really nice, and an example, or just simply have a look at the fandom article, and it's counterpart on Wikimedia, the amount of support that conventions and gatherings did for the article is very interesting.

Now, we also have to adress all of this, while unfortunetly theres no one-project covering it completely, the gaming and fandom conventions tend to be under Trade shows; which the ones that's most influential articles that are e.g. Comic Con fall under the Wikipedian Project WP:Popular culture, which have raised or associated with many articles. A big project includes WP:Anime and manga, which has raised a somewhat unbelievable amount that is 43,687 Articles, and covers conventions such as AVCon and Anime Expo. Globally speaking, our friends over at the Chinese Wikipedia are also big fans of conventions, especially some of their very big ones such as the annual Bilibili World^[a] and the 银河科幻大会,^[b] which can also be found under the Chinese project of sci-fi 维基专题:科幻 or the Chinese Comic Convention category Category:中华人民共和国漫画会展. That has also contributed to Wikimedia.

It's time to rip off the band-aid, cause is this even solvable? One may say that Wikipedia is not meant for fandoms, and it'll never be a home, but I'd like to agree to disagree (partly), cause I believe that the main problem is that we are unable to document a much more personal aspect of that fandom, and we cannot grab them from their ankles and run-a-marathon with it! Theories make fandoms another unsuited gentleman, but we have one play-down: Conventions! and your projects. Project that brings us all together such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga, for those who are interested in culture, Wikipedia:WikiProject Popular culture, or for table-toppers Wikipedia:WikiProject Games, if you're a TV fandomer, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Television, or a very specific fandom fan? check out your own native wikipedia! Fandoms are wide, and colourful, they're somewhat everywhere and you should give your interest a try, while Wikipedia is yet to have any centralization on Fandoms, all of these already make-up those fandoms! so, I encourage all editors to check them out today!

While Fandoms and Wikipedia have long and historical ties to hold, the relationship is at a crossroad where the fandoms have to somewhat centralize on Wikipedia, in both reader and editor standpoints, or move away.

By yours, truly, CatPencil