Wookieepedia, the most popular Star Wars wiki, appears to have entered an unexpected moment of crisis. It’s impossible to overstate how important Wookieepedia, the fan-run Wiki, is to the Star Wars fandom. It’s one of the largest Fandom sites in existence, with 193,050 pages and counting, and the site has even been frequented by actors and writers as well as general fans.

There’s probably no better online resource when it comes to Star Wars, with Wookieepedia guiding viewers seamlessly through Legends and canon information. Even more impressively, over the last few years, the “Wook” (as it is often called) has become an important part of the online fan community in its own right. Unfortunately, over the last week, the Wook has found itself at the heart of a major controversy.

Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte has proved to be one of Lucasfilm’s most controversial releases to date, with an online backlash and a pretty transparent review-bombing campaign. One of the strangest controversies was over the age of Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, a character who makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in The Acolyte episode 4. This appearance contradicted a 1999 CD-ROM and a 2013 trading card, both of which established that Ki-Adi-Mundi shouldn’t have been born yet. Neither are actually canon, and Lucas himself contradicted the CD-ROM later in the prequel trilogy when he changed Ki-Adi-Mundi’s lightsaber color.

Ki-Adi-Mundi’s age became an unlikely flashpoint, especially when the canon page on Ki-Adi-Mundi was edited on Wookieepedia to reflect his appearance in The Acolyte. This resulted in death threat messages against the editor, and these were publicly shared by Jordan Wilson - then a key member of the Social Media Team and administrator of the Wook. Wilson had not been given permission to make these public, however, and has since acknowledged that doing so was a mistake. This seems to be the inciting incident for a major change at Wookieepedia.

  • drislands@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This is totally unrelated, but –

    Wookieepedia is the only lore site that makes sense to be written in the past tense. The stories take place a long time ago, after all.

    In contrast, I hate the Forgotten Realms wiki. There’s no good reason for entries there to be written in the past tense. Grr.

    • Agrivar@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      ???

      So, would you have them go back through once a year or so, to change now historical data to be in the past tense, and only newly-added “current” content would be in the present tense? Seems a fuckload easier to just write it all in the past tense…

      It’s not like everything happens in the FR at once… decades have passed since I started adventuring there.

      • drislands@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        No, that would be obnoxious. I would just have it all in the present tense. If you’re reading a page that was applicable in 3.5 but not 5e, just have a banner indicating the version it applies to. The Dwarf Fortress wiki does this and it’s clear to anyone reading.

        • Agrivar@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Eh. To each their own I suppose. In my mind, any info that’s made it to the wiki has already happened and thus should be in the past tense. I don’t see it as up-to-the-minute live reporting.