Stargate Wiki:Fanwanking

Fanwanking (or fanwankery) is an attempt by the fans of a show to explain plot holes or errors in a fictional universe like Stargate. It makes use of contrived and convoluted ideas often using numerous references from the history of the fictional universe itself. Often, fanwanking is the result of confronting critics of work of fiction by “explaining” problems. By fanwanking, a contributor is essentially creating content for the show, rather than letting the show's inconsistencies or errors stand on their own until an official source handles the error (or not).

Stargate Wiki and fanwanking

For an encyclopedic project, fanwanking is an insidious form of fan fiction. Fanwanked contributions are often obscured with facts, and has the appearance of the "truth," especially to the casual fan. Since Semantic Stargate Wiki strives to a factual repository for Stargate, fanwanking is frowned upon and generally considered to be contrary to our Citation Jihad.

More responsible fans realize that errors do occur and should be accepted as such. Plot holes are often the result of the limited scope of a television show, such as Stargate and should be expected.

What is not fanwanking

Retroactive continuity

Retroactive continuity (retconning) is a decision by the "official" authors, producers, or owners of a serial work of fiction to make changes to the "history" of the work or established facts. The main difference between retcons and fanwankery is that the source of the change is the creators of the work, not the fans or audience of a work. "The" obvious rectonning regarding the Stargate universe is about all the differences between Stargate, the movie which originated the franchise and Stargate SG-1, to fit the standards of a TV series.

• Example: When Stargate SG-1 has been conceived in 1997, it has been based on the concept initiated by Stargate, the original movie. Yet some differences exist as the creators had to adapt a movie concept to fit a television concept. We find this on the Stargate canon. Retroactive continuities are applied on the series.

Derived content

In the Citation Jihad project, there is extensive information on derived content. Because any work of fiction cannot fully explain the ins and outs of every character, event, or object, contributions to Semantic Stargate Wiki can be made based on plausible speculation and logical deduction. These tools should not be used to "fill in the gaps" where content is missing, but to simply assemble the known parts from what the creators of the show have given with as little "glue" (speculation) as possible.