All posts by Lady Lostris

Hello hello hello, lovelies! As the March comes to an end, here's a recap of the things that happened this month.

Trans Day of Visibility Part One (read blog) and Part Two (read blog)

International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV) is observed this Sunday on March 31st. It is a day of celebration for trans achievements, contributions, and resilience that also aims to foster an environment of inclusivity, respect, and support by highlighting the importance of recognizing and affirming the gender identity of transgender people. To honor this on Fandom, Kurt -- one of Fandom's newest Community Managers (congrats again!) -- spearheaded a project of bringing together and highlighting trans people on and behind the platform.

In two blog posts, Kurt and other trans people shared their perspectives in hopes of enriching others with a deeper understanding of their lives and experiences. Please read the first and second blog of this wonderful series to learn more about some perhaps familiar user faces as well as some Fandom staff people. If you have any questions or wish to talk about this, do not hesitate to reach out to me, any of the people involved in the series, or check out the LGBTQIA Wiki for more information!

March's Community Culture (read blog - listen to the playlist)

Fandom's second monthly post highlighting diverse people, programming, and entertainment aiming to introduce you to new people, communities, and their topics is here!

Since March was Women's History Month, the blog covers women authors throughout history. It also showcases what has by now become a staple on Fandom's DEI blogs: an inspirational playlist curated by Mandy for the occasion to shine a light on established and emerging women, femme-identifying and non-binary artists making strides in a traditionally male-dominated industry. Definitely be sure to give the songs a listen to support these amazing artists!

Technical Updates: March 8 (read blog) and March 22 (read blog)

As always, bug fixes were released and news about experiments was shared. Check out the two tech update blogs to find out exactly what Fandom has been up to.

Several experiments have been announced from a test with a welcome message (read blog) to the new global navigation (read blog) and more!

Quick Answers update

The latest developments with the Quick Answers feature and its Special:QuickAnswers dashboard are:

• The test of the automatic publishing after the end of the vetting period finished successfully.

• Outreach to 5 communities will be done to collaborate on the release of new QAs.

• The default release schedule will be

  • vetting period of 1 week (release at midnight UTC)

  • 10 character pages

  • 3 to 5 QuickAnswers per page

If you have any concerns or questions about any of this, please do not hesitate to reach out so we can talk about it!

That was it for March! As always, don't hesitate to comment with your thoughts or otherwise reach out to me with questions or concerns, I love to hear from you!

Hello hello hello, my lovely people! Lots has happened in this longer than normal February on Fandom, so let me share an overview:

February's Community Culture (read blog)

Fandom's first ever Community Culture blog -- a monthly post highlighting diverse people, programming, and entertainment aiming to introduce you to new people, communities, and their topics.

Since it's February, which is Black History Month in the United States, BHM and its 2024 theme, Art for Change, is a natural focus for this first Community Culture.

Read the blog for:

• Celebrating Art for Change: wiki user and Fandom staff testimonies about some of the Black artists, musicians, authors, and creatives that most inspire them

• Black History Month playlist: a new Spotify playlist with 180 songs showcasing some incredible Black artists who’ve been instrumental in shaping the music industry into what it is today

• Shows to Watch: you can never have enough binge recommendations

• Wiki BHM celebrations: discover how some Fandom wiki communities honored BHM

• Other noteworthy February celebrations

Technical Updates: February 9 (read blog) and February 23 (read blog)

Go check out the latest news in regards to bug fixes, known issues that are being worked on, and experiments that are and/or will be conducted!

An important one to note is the update to the CodeMirror extension for the 2010 editor (responsible for syntax highlighting). The first update was reverted after community feedback, and we're currently fixing the noted issues. Once we're done, the next upgrade will happen in smaller batches as to have a more controlled release in case unforeseen issues arise.

Reorganizing the VisualEditor (read blog)

A minor design update to the VisualEditor, both the Visual Mode and the Source Mode (aka 2017 editor), was released on February 8th with the goal to make your editing experience more accessible and intuitive. Check out the blog to find out the what, why, and how behind this change.

Some Quick Answers on QuickAnswers (read blog)

We continue to improve on the Quick Answers feature and its Special:QuickAnswers dashboard. A quick recap of some of the latest developments:

• There will be a vetting period for QAs, meaning that mod teams will have a select period the time to edit new Quick Answers before they go live on the wiki.

  • We're working on fine-tuning the vetting period even more by creating a "faucet" system: allowing local moderators to -- for now -- ask staff to deviate from the default release schedule to one that accommodates the needs and capabilities of the community better.

• The QA Dashboard filters have a counter that will auto-update as the QAs get processed to give the moderators a better overview.

In case you have any concerns about this feature, hit me up for a conversation!

As always, if you have any questions or remark about this, please let us know by reacting to this message or otherwise reach me, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Hello, hello, hello, my lovely editors! Earlier today, Fandom released a minor design update to the VisualEditor, both the Visual Mode and the Source Mode (aka 2017 editor), with the goal to make your editing experience more accessible and intuitive!

To not miss out on any information, I encourage you to read this blog and/or the updated help page about it.

If you're pressed for time, don't worry, I got you covered! To summarize, we

• Renamed some of the tools (e.g. "paragraph" is now "normal text")

• Shuffled some icons around (e.g. the back and forward arrow buttons are now located on the far left rather than the middle)

• Hid some less-essential tools from view to make the initial editor view less overwhelming in all its glory (the tools are still accessible in dropdown menus)

• For the 2017 source mode: we removed the options available from the menu icon (those three stacked horizontal bars) -- If you want those back, you can customize your toolbar to access them from there)

• For the 2017 source mode: we used the menu icon to replace the gear icon

Are you more of a visual person? Check out the design mocks detailing the new location of options below:

VisualEditor - Visual Mode

VisualEditor - Source Mode (aka 2017 source mode editor)

As always, if you have any questions or remark about this, please sound off in the comments or otherwise reach me, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Happy editing!

Eyo my lovely community members! During this Thanksgiving Weekend for those who celebrate and otherwise just a lovely Friday signaling the beginning of the weekend for those who don't, I want to leave you with some updates on what happened in November on the Fandom platform and some things that are still to happen!

November 16, 2023: Everything You Need to Know About Reported Notifications

Read the blog for all the details

• Launched: site-wide release, Thursday Nov 16, 2023

• Premise: If thread moderators and admins will receive an on-site notification, they'll be placed in a better position to react quicker. A counter will indicate how many unactioned reports there are. If all reports are handled, the message will disappear. Read the help page for more details

• Data: We saw that 34% more reports were actioned within seven days due to notifications, and there was a 32% decrease in the time it took to take action. Before this feature, about 8% of the reported posts got actioned within 7 days.

• Note: thread mods and admins can enable/disable this feature via their Special:Preferences, tab Notifications, section Web notifications for moderators.

November 20, 2023: Thanks extension is now available to all communities

Read the blog for all the details

• Launched: site-wide release, Monday Nov 20, 2023

• Premise: Allowing editors to easily thank others for specific edits on wiki pages rather than writing an appreciation message, new editors can receive thanks for contributions and be enticed to stay around. Read the help page for more details

• Data-based conclusion: It turned out the feature was mostly being used by experienced editors thanking other experienced editors rather than new users. This led to the feature being an optional tool that can be enable via the Special:AdminDashboard rather than it being a default feature as intended.

• Note: since this is an optional feature, this means that communities are free to adjust the appearance of the heart (or even remove it) through css.

UPCOMING: November 29, 2023: Fandom Stars roundtable on a redesign experiment for the global nav bar

This isn't really a big announcement, but more a call for any Fandom Stars on this wiki to attend or for people who are interested in giving product feedback to sign up to become a Fandom Star or otherwise let me know their feedback to relay in their name.

• When: Wednesday, November 29, 2023 1:00 PM EST!

• Where: Fandom Discord for the Fandom Stars

• What: Roundtable to discuss a redesign experiment on the global nav bar. The goals for the experiment are to increase the nav bar utility as well as declutter and create space to possibly home elements currently residing in the right rail.

• Who will be there: The Product team leads from the User Experience Team

Technical Updates:

• November 3: Read the blog for all the details

• November 17: Read the blog for all the details

Quick Answers: Our Traffic and UGC teams continue to work on editing tools for Quick Answers, which we aim to release before the end of the year. The QA Dashboard is currently being tested by 12 communities.

Experiment updates

To increase transparency on upcoming product features, experiments, and other things regarding the platform, Fandom Staff has recently started using the Fandom Stars Wiki to share blogs on upcoming experiments and releases. While the wiki is viewable to all, only Fandom Stars can comment there directly.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, do not hesitate to comment here and/or reach out to me directly! Cheers!

Eyo! As of today, Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) has officially come to an end. Observed from September 15th to October 15th, Fandom focused on Hispanic creators in Entertainment who often go unnoticed, such as those behind the scenes like directors, writers, special effects artists, makeup artists etc. Fandom highlighted these people as well as some content creators from our very own userbase through a Makers Series. The goal? Hear their stories and learn from them.

In case you missed some of these initiatives, you can still check them out below, cause celebrating diversity and striving to be more understanding and inclusive should never be limited to specific time periods!

• September 15th: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Fandom's Community Team Presents the Makers Series

• September 29th: Hispanic Heritage Month Maker Series: Fearless Diva

• October 11th: Editor Stories: A Maker Celebration with JazieCult

• October 12th: Editor Stories: Bridging Borders Through Fandom with Taxcymus

• October 13th: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with the Fandom Community

• October 13th: Editor Story: Exploring The Power of Community with Supeika

And of course, as has become a nice Fandom tradition this year: you can also still give the Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist a listen while you continue to use the platform!

Other than Hispanic Heritage Month, Fandom released two blogs with technical updates, the first on September 22nd and the second on October 6th. Stay tuned for a third one this Friday, October 20th! You'll find several released bug fixes in there, as well as some of the more high profile fixes currently being worked. There's also information on experiments Fandom is running/has tried out, and future Fandom projects, some of which I wanted to highlight:

• Thanks extension - this has been tested for some time on some communities and several styling improvements have been made. Once fully released, it'll be a toggle on the Admin Dashboard. Until then, if you're an admin on a community with a Wiki Rep assigned and you'd like to have this enabled, feel free to reach out to them or otherwise contact staff

• Reported notifications - this feature will send a notification to thread mods and admins about a reported post on Discussions, Message Walls, or comments. This has been rolled out to 25% and is being analyzed further. Thus far, it's proven to be a real gamechanger in terms of mod reaction time!

• Quick Answers - a module that formats information into questions and answers, which is easily recognizable by search engines and can thus help make your wiki more discoverable by fans. The QAs are written by AI and only appear to logged out users, but to balance the scalability of the feature and user control, admins and moderators will soon be able to edit the Quick Answers via a special page dashboard. You can read more about the details in this blog.

Per usual, if you have any questions about any of it, feel free to comment below and/or otherwise reach out!

There are so many things in life that we all take for granted. Something very simple was brought to my attention by Chris (Spongebob456), a dear friend and teammate of mine. He's afraid of spiders. Something so incredibly common to a lot of people. What do you do when you see a spider? You scream, you run, you throw a shoe at it, you vacuum it, you catch it to put it outside, you call for help, etc. All common reactions. Most of which involve some kind of immediate, quick action. Now one thing I hadn't really considered: what if you are afraid of spiders, just like Chris, but you are also limited in your mobility cause you use a wheelchair, just like Chris?

This is just one of the many, every day examples that Chris touched upon in his wonderfully insightful and emotional blog that he shared in light of Disability Pride Month. Be sure to head over to Community Central and give it a read to learn more about what it means to go through life with a wheelchair.

What is Disability Pride Month?

Celebrated in July each year, Disability Pride started in 1990 to commemorate the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to protect the rights of people with disabilities. Since 2015 - the 25th anniversary of the ADA - Disability Pride Month has been a worldwide celebration of the disabled community.

Why is Disability Pride Month?

Most people will experience being disabled at some point in their lives, whether temporarily or permanently, or someone they know. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27% of the US population alone has some kind of disability — that's one in four people. In other words, disability pride and improving accessibility should matter to everyone, and yet, people with disabilities have been marginalized and misunderstood for generations. This month is there to draw more awareness to their every day hurdles and push for more accessibility measures to be taken.

What can I do offline?

Read Chris's blog for more insights! He shares some great advice on how to be a better ally, as well as what works to motive him to keep going and try new things in case you too are living with a disability.

What can I do on Fandom?

Disabilities come in all form and shapes, but while spending time online on Fandom, the easiest things to do are making sure your content is accessible. Here are some tips on how to achieve that:

• Offer high-contrast options to those with limited vision.

Every admin can choose colors via Special:ThemeDesigner to create a proper light and dark theme. Creating high-contrast themes can accommodate people with certain vision disabilities by making text easier to read.

• Design templates with accessible colors

The free Accessible Colors website evaluates your color combinations according to WGAC 2.0 guidelines for contrast accessibility so your text and background color combinations are readable to most.

• Provide alternative text (alt text) to your images to create vivid pictures.

Alt text describes what is depicted by the image. It is the text that will be read aloud by screen readers, displayed in place of an image if it fails to load, and is indexed by search engine bots to better understand the content of the page. It is added by placing |alt=<insert image description> within the image's coding on the article. For more information about alt text, check out the WebAIM site.

• Create quality hyperlinks that your audience can easily navigate.

Links primarily get their accessible name from their text content. Avoid filler words like "Here" or "Read more". Instead, put the most meaningful text into the link itself. For example, “click here to read Chris's accessibility story” helps readers understand where the link will take them as opposed to a simple “click here” instruction.

If you're curious how well your wiki is holding up, you can use Intent Based - Accessibility Checker, which is a (limited) free AD and WGAC compliance checker. Just put in the url, and it'll give you a rundown of all things you could still improve on!

Do you have any other accessibility tips or stories to share? Don't hesitate to react, and definitely take a few minutes to read Chris's story on Community Central!

Hello, hello, hello! It's June, so that means HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!

Whether you’re out and proud, not out yet, or still questioning and exploring your identity, Pride is for YOU! You’re welcome here, you’re valued here, and you belong here - never forget that. And if you're an ally, please never let your queer friends forget it either!

Our theme for Pride this year is Looking Back & Moving Forward. We have certainly come a long way on LGBTQIA+ rights, but there is still a long way left to go to truly build an equal and accepting society. Now more than ever is the time to speak up, get involved, and uplift the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community.

While promoting the message of love and acceptance should never be limited to one month a year, this month is dear to me, so I am especially excited to be sharing that message now through the various Fandom programming initiatives throughout this month! Be sure to give this post a follow and DEFINITELY keep an eye on the "Pride" button in the wiki's toolbar (coming/updating soon if you don't see it already), as that will open a menu containing all the links to Fandom's and the wiki's Pride initiatives, so you don't have to miss anything!

Some of our programming

The focus of the initiatives will be on the fierceness of the Drag community, the protest performance art form that has been a cornerstone of queer culture for over a century. Blurring the lines of what people think they know about gender, drag queens have always been on the forefront of change, fighting for our rights, while always promoting love and acceptance above all.

Read Fandom's Pride Blog for all the details

• Pride Playlist

As has become an established feature of Fandom's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives this year, definitely check out this amazing playlist, curated by queer people and consisting solely of LGBTQIA+ artists! Yes, that means some iconic queer anthems are absent, but that also means there's room for new music and artists to be discovered. Let us know your favorite new bop!

• Fabulous Drag Queen Video

Please take a look at this amazing video made at RuPaul's DragCon from a few weeks back. Six of RuPaul's Drag Race's fiercest queens - Alexis Michelle, Angeria Paris VanMicheals, Honey Davenport, Jiggly Caliente, Laganja Estranja, Lala Ri, and Mistress Isabelle Brooks - are looking back to how they started and what they'd say to their younger self now, and moving forward to what they hope the future holds for drag, themselves, and the entire LGBTQIA+ community. And as always, there is a place for everyone, as they also expand on how allies can get involved to make that future a reality.

I had the absolute pleasure to have been present when these artistic goddesses were speaking, so I cannot encourage you enough to watch this video as it was such a heartwarming, supportive, and inspirational experience. There is so much to learn from these icons, so go watch it here!

• Drag Race Bracket Tournament

Racers, start your engines, and may the best drag queen win! Stay tuned for this anticipated tournament on the fabulous Drag Race Wiki, one of the largest LGBTQIA+ communities on our platform to see how far some of the fiercest queens can go!

• Education

Not really a programming point specifically, but it is always included in any DEI initiative we do and one that is important to me, especially now with so much anti-trans and drag rhetoric and even over 500+ anti-LGBTQIA bills surfacing in the United States alone. I sincerely encourage you all to be open to listening to and learning from the stories and experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and educating yourself about the history of LGBTQIA+ culture and community, because the more we all try to understand each other, the easier it becomes to love and accept the qualities that make us all different and unique.

• Get involved -- both online and offline

This community will be showing their support by sporting a Pride logo, and it is already sporting a Pride-colored toolbar! I still encourage you get involved in any way that you can imagine. Share your efforts with Fandom (by commenting on the blog) and/or me as your Wiki Representative (by commenting on this post, leaving a message on my wall, or reaching out on Discord - Lostris#4280) as the month goes on, so we can all celebrate and share in the love together!

Don't know how? Here are some ideas:

Speak up - when you witness trans- and/or homophobia -- or any other hate for that matter -- let the speaker know it's not okay and show your fellow queer humans that they are not alone. Remember that homophobia isn't just calling someone a slur. It's also subtle. It's hidden in jokes. Small comments. Exclusionary behavior. Here on Fandom that also means that you should never hesitate to report hate when you see it happening. Reach out to an admin, the assigned Wiki Rep, or Fandom Staff by sending in a support ticket. Nothing happens without movement, so staying neutral isn't an option.

Highlight people in your franchise - use blogs or Discussions posts to highlight the LGBTQIA+ characters or creators in your franchises and their contributions. Representation matters! Normalizing love is love matters!

Editing projects - start an editing project to improve articles featuring LGBTQIA+ themes. You don't need to be queer to enjoy and participate in Pride!

Support drag and queer businesses / donate - watch Drag Race online and share love with the communities, show up offline by attending a show of your local drag artist. Support queer media and buy from small queer businesses. Donate to LGBTQIA+ organizations fighting for our rights.

If you're looking for a place to learn (more) about LGBTQIA+ culture and history, or if you know someone struggling with and/or questioning their identity, definitely check out and share the following resources:

• LGBTQIA+ Wiki

• LGBTQIA+ Resources

• LGBTQIA+ Terminology

• Gender Identity Guidelines

If you'd rather just have a talk about it, don't hesitate to reach out! My message wall and Discord DMs (Lostris#4280) are always open!