Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not Fandom
 | This is an essay on the What Wikipedia is not policy. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia by the Wikimedia Foundation that anyone can edit.
Fandom is a free service for hosting wikis that anyone can create and edit. It uses the same underlying MediaWiki software as Wikipedia does. However, it serves a completely different purpose.
Wikipedia is a place where factual articles of educative value are created and maintained, i.e. like an encyclopedia (hence the name Wikipedia). Fandom's free hosting service can be used for anything from fan wikis for communities to in-depth information on conspiracy theories.
Both were founded by Jimmy Wales, but they are not affiliated. As a result, some things acceptable on Wikipedia are not accepted on Fandom, and vice versa. Some of the differences between Wikipedia and Fandom include:
- Wikipedia is a place where advertisements do not belong. In contrast, Fandom is itself plastered with advertising.
- To qualify for a Wikipedia article, a subject must meet Wikipedia's standards of notability. Articles whose subjects fail to meet this requirement will be merged, redirected, or even deleted. Articles must require citations, and content must be verifiable. Fandom, on the other hand, allows content on just about anything; exceptions can probably be counted on one hand, often lacking reliable sources.
- There is no one site-wide set of rules or standards on Fandom: each community on Fandom has its own rules and standards on what's acceptable and what isn't (some even have their own "notability" guidelines just like Wikipedia does).
There are also many similarities between them (e.g. copyright violations are just as unacceptable on Fandom as they are on Wikipedia, although Wikipedia's rules on non-free content are stricter than Fandom's).
Using material from Fandom
While the CC-BY-SA-3.0 copyright license is used by default at Fandom, individual Fandom wikis can also set their own copyright license which may or may not be a compatible license for inclusion on Wikipedia. If you find sourced information on Fandom that meets Wikipedia's standards for inclusion, please double check the license and follow the steps at WP:COPYPASTE. Per WP:FREECOPYING, attribution is always required (see Template:Fandom content).