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Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy
This policy is approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project. |
Because we believe that you should not have to provide personal information to participate in the free knowledge movement, you may:
- Read, edit, or use any Wikimedia Site without registering an account.
- Register for an account without providing an email address or real name.
Because we want to understand how Wikimedia Sites are used so we can make them better for you, we collect some information when you:
- Make public contributions.
- Register an account or update your user page.
- Use the Wikimedia Sites.
- Send us emails or participate in a survey or give feedback.
We are committed to:
- Describing how your information may be used or shared in this Privacy Policy.
- Using reasonable measures to keep your information secure.
- Never selling your information or sharing it with third parties for marketing purposes.
- Only sharing your information in limited circumstances, such as to improve the Wikimedia Sites, to comply with the law, or to protect you and others.
- Retaining your data for the shortest possible time that is consistent with maintaining, understanding, and improving the Wikimedia Sites, and our obligations under applicable law.
Be aware:
- Any content you add or any change that you make to a Wikimedia Site will be publicly and permanently available.
- If you add content or make a change to a Wikimedia Site without logging in, that content or change will be publicly and permanently attributed to the IP address used at the time rather than a username.
- Our community of volunteer editors and contributors is a self-policing body. Certain administrators of the Wikimedia Sites, who are chosen by the community, use tools that grant them limited access to nonpublic information about recent contributions so they may protect the Wikimedia Sites and enforce policies.
- This Privacy Policy does not apply to all sites and services run by the Wikimedia Foundation, such as sites or services that have their own privacy policy (like the Wikimedia Shop) or sites or services run by third parties (like third-party developer projects on Wikimedia Cloud Services).
- As part of our commitment to education and research around the world, we occasionally release public information and aggregated or non-personal information to the general public through data dumps and data sets.
- For the protection of the Wikimedia Foundation and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Wikimedia Sites.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates collaborative, free knowledge websites, like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wiktionary.
This Policy explains how we collect, use, and share your Personal Information.
- We collect very little Personal Information about you.
- We do not rent or sell your Personal Information to third parties.
By using Wikimedia Sites, you consent to this Policy.
The Wikimedia movement is founded on a simple, but powerful principle: we can do more together than any of us can do alone. We cannot work collectively without gathering, sharing, and analyzing information about our users as we seek new ways to make the Wikimedia Sites more usable, safer, and more beneficial.
We believe that information-gathering and use should go hand-in-hand with transparency. This Privacy Policy explains how the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts the Wikimedia Sites, like Wikipedia, collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of the Wikimedia Sites. It is essential to understand that, by using any of the Wikimedia Sites, you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. That means that reading this Policy carefully is important.
We believe that you should not have to provide nonpublic Personal Information to participate in the free knowledge movement. You do not have to provide things like your real name, address, or date of birth to sign up for a standard account or contribute content to the Wikimedia Sites.
We do not sell or rent your Personal Information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the Wikimedia Sites more engaging and accessible, to see which ideas work, and to make learning and contributing more fun. Put simply: we use this information to make the Wikimedia Sites better for you.
After all, it is people like you, the champions of free knowledge, who make it possible for the Wikimedia Sites to not only exist, but also grow and thrive.
We recognize that only a minority of you are familiar with technical terms like "tracking pixels" and "cookies" used in the Privacy Policy.
Whether you are brand new to privacy terminology or you are an expert who just wants a refresher, you might find our Glossary of Key Terms helpful.
Because everyone (not just lawyers) should be able to easily understand how and why their information is collected and used, we use common language instead of more formal terms throughout this Policy. To help ensure your understanding of some particular key terms, here is a table of translations:
When we say... | ...we mean: |
"the Wikimedia Foundation" / "the Foundation" / "we" / "us" / "our" | The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., the non-profit organization that operates the Wikimedia Sites. |
"Wikimedia Sites" / "our services" | Wikimedia websites and services (regardless of language), including our main projects, such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, as well as mobile applications, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), emails, and notifications; excluding, however, sites and services listed in the "What This Privacy Policy Does Not Cover" section below. |
"you" / "your" / "me" | You, regardless of whether you are an individual, group, or organization, and regardless of whether you are using the Wikimedia Sites or our services on behalf of yourself or someone else. |
"this Policy" / "this Privacy Policy" | This document, entitled the "Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy". |
"contributions" | Content you add or changes you make to any Wikimedia Sites. |
"Personal information" | Information you provide us or information we collect that could be used to personally identify you. To be clear, while we do not necessarily collect all of the following types of information, we consider at least the following to be "personal information" if it is otherwise nonpublic and can be used to identify you:
"third party" / "third parties" | Individuals, entities, websites, services, products, and applications that are not controlled, managed, or operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. This includes other Wikimedia users and independent organizations or groups who help promote the Wikimedia movement such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups as well as volunteers, employees, directors, officers, grant recipients, and contractors of those organizations or groups. |
What This Privacy Policy Does and Does Not Cover
Except as explained below, this Privacy Policy applies to our collection and handling of information about you that we receive as a result of your use of any of the Wikimedia Sites. This Policy also applies to information that we receive from our partners or other third parties. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy covers, please see below.
Examples of What This Privacy Policy Covers
For the sake of clarity, this Privacy Policy covers, regardless of language:
This Privacy Policy, however, does not cover some situations where we may gather or process information. For example, some uses may be covered by separate privacy policies (like those of the Wikimedia Shop) or sites or services run by third parties (such as third-party developer projects on Wikimedia Cloud Services). To understand more about what this Privacy Policy does not cover, please see below.
More on what the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy does not cover
This section is part of the Privacy Policy and is meant to explain in detail which situations are not covered by our Privacy Policy.
Sometimes, volunteers may place a data-collecting tool, such as a script, gadget, tracking pixel, or share button, on a Wikimedia Site without our knowledge. This Policy does not cover how third parties handle the information they receive as a result of such a tool. If you come across such a third-party tool, and you believe it violates this Policy, you can remove the tool yourself, or report it to privacy[at]wikimedia.org so we can investigate. |
Where community policies govern information, such as the CheckUser policy, the relevant community may add to the rules and obligations set out in this Policy. However, they are not permitted to create new exceptions or otherwise reduce the protections offered by this Policy.
Types of Information We Receive From You & How We Get It
Your Public Contributions
Whatever you post on Wikimedia Sites can be seen and used by everyone.
When you make a contribution to any Wikimedia Site, including on user or discussion pages, you are creating a permanent, public record of every piece of content added, removed, or altered by you. The page history will show when your contribution or deletion was made, as well as your username (if you are signed in) or your IP address (if you are not signed in). We may use your public contributions, either aggregated with the public contributions of others or individually, to create new features or data-related products for you or to learn more about how the Wikimedia Sites are used, as further explained below in the "How We Use Information We Receive From You" section of this Privacy Policy.
Publicly Visible Information
Unless this Policy says otherwise, you should assume that information that you actively contribute to the Wikimedia Sites, including Personal Information, is publicly visible and can be found by search engines. Like most things on the Internet, anything you share may be copied and redistributed throughout the Internet by other people. Please do not contribute any information that you are uncomfortable making permanently public, like revealing your real name or location in your contributions. You should be aware that specific data made public by you or aggregated data that is made public by us can be used by anyone for analysis and to infer further information, such as which country a user is from, political affiliation and gender. |
Account Information & Registration
You do not need to create an account to use any Wikimedia Site.
If you do create an account, you do not need to give us your name or email address (although you can if you choose to, such as for the "Email this user" feature for example).
If you do not create an account, your contributions will be publicly attributed to your IP address.
Want to create an account? Great! Do not want to create an account? No problem!
You are not required to create an account to read or contribute to a Wikimedia Site, except under rare circumstances. However, if you contribute without signing in, your contribution will be publicly attributed to the IP address associated with your device.
If you want to create a standard account, in most cases we require only a username and a password. However, if you choose not to provide an email address, we cannot help you recover your password.
More on Usernames
Your username will be publicly visible, so please be careful about revealing your real name or other Personal Information in your username. Your password is only used to verify that the account is yours. Your IP address is also automatically submitted to us, and we record it temporarily. This is to protect Wikimedia users and project content; in the event of abuse, IP addresses may be associated with usernames as part of an investigation. No other Personal Information is required: no name, no email address, no date of birth, and no credit card information. Once created, user accounts cannot be removed entirely (although you can usually hide the information on your user page if you choose to). This is because your public contributions must be associated with their author (you!). In some circumstances, the Wikimedia communities can assist users with removing additional information related to their account from the projects. |
To gain a better understanding of the demographics of our users, to localize our services and to learn how we can improve our services, we may ask you for more demographic information, such as gender or age, about yourself. We will tell you if such information is intended to be public or private, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to provide us with that information. Providing such information is always completely optional. If you do not want to, you do not have to—it is as simple as that.
Location Information
GPS & Other Location Technologies
Some features we offer work better if we know what area you are in.
If you consent, we can use GPS (and other technologies commonly used to determine location) to show you more relevant content. We keep information obtained by these technologies confidential, except as provided in this Policy. You can learn more by checking out the list of examples of how we use these technologies in our FAQ.
Sometimes, we automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you want to upload a photo on the Wikimedia Commons mobile app, we may receive metadata, such as the place and time you took the photo, automatically from your device. Please be aware that, unlike location information collected using GPS signals described above, the default setting on your mobile device typically includes the metadata in your photo or video upload to the Wikimedia Sites. If you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.
IP Addresses
Finally, when you visit any Wikimedia Site, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location.
Information Related to Your Use of the Wikimedia Sites
We use certain technologies to collect information about how you use Wikimedia Sites.
Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the Wikimedia Sites.
We also use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to collect information regarding how you use the Wikimedia Sites, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you.
We want to make the Wikimedia Sites better for you by learning more about how you use them. Examples of this might include how often you visit the Wikimedia Sites, what you like, what you find helpful, how you get to the Wikimedia Sites, and whether you would use a helpful feature more if we explained it differently. We also want this Policy and our practices to reflect our community's values. For this reason, we keep information related to your use of the Wikimedia Sites confidential, except as provided in this Policy.
Information We Receive Automatically
Because of how browsers work, we receive some information automatically when you visit the Wikimedia Sites. This includes when you use an online tool on a third-party site that loads information coming from the Wikimedia Sites. This information includes the type of device you are using (possibly including unique device identification numbers, for some beta versions of our mobile applications), the type and version of your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of your device's operating system, in some cases the name of your internet service provider or mobile carrier, the website that referred you to the Wikimedia Sites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the Wikimedia Sites.
Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with Wikimedia Sites. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize mobile applications, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with the Wikimedia Sites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different Wikimedia Sites, and analyze trends.
Information We Collect
We use a variety of commonly-used technologies, like cookies, to understand how you use the Wikimedia Sites, make our services safer and easier to use, and to help create a better and more customizable experience for you.
We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels, JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage. These types of technologies may also be used in online tools on a third-party site that loads information from the Wikimedia Sites. We realize that some of these technologies do not have the best reputation in town and can be used for less-than-noble purposes. So we want to be as clear as we can about why we use these methods and the type of information we collect with them.
Depending on which technology we use, locally stored data may include text, Personal Information (like your IP address), and information about your use of the Wikimedia Sites (like your username or the time of your visit). See below for more information.
We use this information to make your experience with the Wikimedia Sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Wikimedia Sites, and to generally improve our services. We will never use third-party cookies, unless we get your permission to do so. If you ever come across a third-party data collection tool that has not been authorized by you (such as one that may have been mistakenly placed by another user or administrator), please report it to us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
More on Locally Stored Data
Locally stored data, JavaScript, and tracking pixels help us do things like:
Want to know even more? You can read more about some of the specific cookies we use, when they expire, and what we use them for in our FAQ.
We believe this data collection helps improve your user experience, but you may remove or disable some or all locally stored data through your browser settings, depending on your browser. You can learn more about some options you have in our FAQ. While locally stored data may not be necessary to use our sites, some features will not function properly if you disable locally stored data.
While the examples above concerning information about you collected through the use of data collection tools are kept confidential in accordance with this Policy, please note that some information about the actions taken by your username is made publicly available through public logs alongside actions taken by other users. For example, a public log may include the date your account was created on a Wikimedia Site along with the dates that other accounts were created on a Wikimedia Site.
How We Use Information We Receive From You
We and our service providers use your information for the legitimate purpose of pursuing our charitable mission, including:
Operating the Wikimedia Sites, sharing your contributions and administering our Services.
We engage in these activities to manage our relationship with you, because we have a legitimate interest and/or to comply with our legal obligations. |
Providing customized Services.
We will customize the Services, in some instances, with your consent; or in keeping with our legitimate interest. |
Sending emails with news updates and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you.
We will send these types of emails to you only with your consent except as otherwise permitted by applicable law. We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences and User profile. You can learn more about email and notifications and how to change your preferences in our FAQ. |
Sending optional surveys and requesting feedback.
We will always tell you, at the time we give you an opportunity to share your thoughts, how we plan on using your answers and any Personal Information you provide. Your responses to our surveys and feedback requests are always optional. We will email these types of requests to you only with your consent except as otherwise permitted by applicable law. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences and User profile. You can learn more about email and notifications and how to change your preferences in our FAQ. |
Improving the Wikimedia Sites and making your user experience safer and better.
We engage in these activities to further our legitimate interest and/or to comply with our legal obligations. |
Location information
GPS & Other Location Technologies
As stated above, we can use commonly-used location technologies to show you more relevant content. For example, our mobile apps can identify articles from the Wikimedia sites about points of interest near your location. As a reminder, you can consent to and/or deactivate our access to these location technologies at any time for example through the native OS functionalities on your mobile device, and still use the Wikimedia Sites.
As stated above, we may automatically receive location data from your device. For example, if you upload a photo using the Wikimedia Commons mobile app, please be aware that the default setting on your mobile device typically results in the metadata associated with your photo being included in the upload. As a reminder, if you do not want metadata sent to us and made public at the time of your upload, please change your settings on your device.
IP Addresses
When you visit any Wikimedia Site, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location. We keep IP addresses confidential, except as provided in this Policy. If you are visiting Wikimedia Sites with your mobile device, we may use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.
We use this location information to make your experience with the Wikimedia Sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Wikimedia Sites, and to generally improve our services. For example, we use this information to provide greater security, optimize mobile applications, and learn how to expand and better support Wikimedia communities. We also use Personal Information in the manner described in the sections of this Policy titled "For Legal Reasons" and "To Protect You, Ourselves & Others."
When May We Share Your Information?
We use and share your Personal Information when you give us specific permission to do so, for legal reasons, and in the other circumstances described below.
With Your Permission
We share your Personal Information for a particular purpose, if you agree. For example, if you receive a scholarship and we ask permission to share your Personal Information with a local chapter. You can find more information in the list of examples in our FAQ.
For Legal Reasons
We will disclose your Personal Information to public authorities or other persons in response to an official legal process only if we believe it to be legally valid. See also our Requests for user information procedures and guidelines. We will notify you of such requests when possible. We do so to further our legitimate interest and/or to comply with our legal obligations.
We will access, use, preserve, and/or disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to satisfy a valid and legally enforceable warrant, subpoena, court order, law or regulation, or other judicial or administrative order. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your Personal Information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.
Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal objections or defenses you may have to a third-party's request (whether it be civil, criminal, or governmental) to disclose your Personal Information. We recommend seeking the advice of legal counsel immediately if such a request is made involving you.
For more information, see our Subpoena FAQ.
If the Organization is Transferred (Really Unlikely!)
In the unlikely event that the ownership of the Foundation changes, we will provide you 30 days' notice before any Personal Information is transferred to the new owners or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
In the extremely unlikely event that ownership of all or substantially all of the Foundation changes, or we go through a reorganization (such as a merger, consolidation, or acquisition), consistent with our legitimate interest, we will continue to keep your Personal Information confidential, except as provided in this Policy, and provide notice to you via the Wikimedia Sites and a notification on WikimediaAnnounce-L or similar mailing list at least thirty (30) calendar days before any Personal Information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
To Protect You, Ourselves & Others
We, or users with certain administrative rights, use and disclose Personal Information that is reasonably necessary to:
- enforce or investigate potential violations of the Wikimedia Foundation or community-based policies;
- protect our organization, infrastructure, employees, contractors, or the public; or
- prevent imminent or serious bodily harm or death to a person.
We do so to manage our relationship with you, to further our legitimate interest, and/or to comply with our legal obligations.
We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, need to use and share your Personal Information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or any Wikimedia Foundation or user community-based policies. We may also need to access and share Personal Information to investigate and defend ourselves against legal threats or actions.
Wikimedia Sites are collaborative, with users writing most of the policies and selecting from amongst themselves people to hold certain administrative rights. These rights may include access to limited amounts of otherwise nonpublic information about recent contributions and activity by other users. They use this access to help protect against vandalism and abuse, fight harassment of other users, and generally try to minimize disruptive behavior on the Wikimedia Sites. These various user-selected administrative groups have their own privacy and confidentiality guidelines, but all such groups are supposed to agree to follow our Access to nonpublic personal data policy. These user-selected administrative groups are accountable to other users through checks and balances: users are selected through a community-driven process and overseen by their peers through a logged history of their actions. However, the legal names of these users are not known to the Wikimedia Foundation.
We hope that this never comes up, but we may disclose your Personal Information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm or death to a person, or to protect our organization, employees, contractors, users, or the public. We may also disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise assess and address potential spam, malware, fraud, abuse, unlawful activity, and security or technical concerns. (Check out the list of examples in our FAQ for more information.)
To Our Service Providers
We disclose Personal Information to our third-party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the Wikimedia Sites and provide services in support of our mission.
We use third-party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the Wikimedia Sites for you and other users. We give access to your Personal Information to these providers or contractors as needed to perform their services for us or to use their tools and services. We put requirements, such as confidentiality agreements, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your Personal Information consistently with, and no less protective of your privacy than, the principles of this Policy. For further information, please see our FAQ.
If you are visiting Wikimedia Sites with your mobile device, we use your IP address to provide anonymized or aggregated information to service providers regarding the volume of usage in certain areas.
Some of our service providers ask us to post links to their privacy policies; a list of these service providers and links to their policies can be found on this page.
To Understand & Experiment
- We give volunteer developers and researchers access to systems that contain your Personal Information to allow them to protect, develop, and contribute to the Wikimedia Sites.
- We also share non-Personal Information or aggregated information with third parties interested in studying the Wikimedia Sites.
- When we share Personal Information with third parties for these purposes, we put reasonable technical and contractual protections in place to protect your Personal Information consistent with this Policy and our legitimate interest.
The open-source software that powers the Wikimedia Sites depends on the contributions of volunteer software developers, who spend time writing and testing code to help it improve and evolve with our users' needs. To facilitate their work, we give some developers limited access to systems that contain your Personal Information, but only as reasonably necessary for them to develop and contribute to the Wikimedia Sites.
Similarly, we share non-Personal Information or aggregated information with researchers, scholars, academics, and other interested third parties who wish to study the Wikimedia Sites. Sharing this Personal Information helps them understand usage, viewing, and demographics statistics and patterns. They then can share their findings with us and our users so that we can all better understand and improve the Wikimedia Sites.
When we give access to Personal Information to third-party developers or researchers, we put requirements, such as reasonable technical and contractual protections, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your Personal Information consistently with the principles of this Policy and in accordance with our instructions. If these developers or researchers later publish their work or findings, we ask that they not disclose your Personal Information. Please note that, despite the obligations we impose on developers and researchers, we cannot guarantee that they will abide by our agreement, nor do we guarantee that we will regularly screen or audit their projects. (You can learn more about re-identification in our FAQ.)
Because You Made It Public
Information that you post is public and can be seen and used by everyone.
Any information you post publicly on the Wikimedia Sites is just that – public. For example, if you put your mailing address on your talk page, that is public, and not specifically protected by this Policy. And if you edit without registering or logging into your account, your IP address will be seen publicly. Please think carefully about your desired level of privacy before you disclose Personal Information on your user page or elsewhere.
How Do We Protect Your Personal Information?
We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
We strive to protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures (such as access control procedures, network firewalls, and physical security) designed to protect our systems and your Personal Information. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as completely secure data transmission or storage, so we cannot guarantee that our security will not be breached (by technical measures or through violation of our policies and procedures).
We will never ask for your password by email (but may send you a temporary password via email if you have requested a password reset). If you ever receive an email that requests your password, please let us know by sending it to firstname.lastname@example.com, so we can investigate the source of the email.
How Long Do We Keep Your Data?
Except as otherwise stated in this Policy, we only keep your Personal Information as long as necessary to maintain, understand and improve the Wikimedia Sites or to comply with applicable law.
Once we receive Personal Information from you, we keep it for the shortest possible time that is consistent with the maintenance, understanding, and improvement of the Wikimedia Sites, and our obligations under applicable law. In most instances, Personal Information is deleted, aggregated or de-identified after 90 days. Non-Personal Information may be retained indefinitely as appropriate. (Check out the list of examples in our FAQ.)
Please remember that when you make a contribution to any Wikimedia Site, the page history will show when your contribution was made, your username (if you are signed in), or your IP address (if you edit while not logged in). The transparency of the projects' contribution and revision histories is critical to their efficacy and trustworthiness. To learn more about our data retention practices, see our data retention guidelines.
Your rights
If you would like to request access to or removal of your Personal Information, you may contact us.
For information about how you may request removal of your Personal Information, or other rights you may have with respect to your Personal Information, see our FAQ. If you would like to request to access, update or restrict/object to the processing of Personal Information, or receive a copy of your Personal Information for purposes of transmitting it to another organization, you may Contact Us. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.
Please note also that you may be able to exercise some of these rights without our intervention. For example, if you are a registered user, you can access and update some Personal Information in your Preferences, as well as download your user account data. You may also manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences.
For the protection of the Wikimedia Foundation and other users, if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Wikimedia Sites.
Where is the Foundation & What Does That Mean for Me?
The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California, with servers and data centers located in the U.S. If you decide to use Wikimedia Sites, whether from inside or outside of the U.S., you understand that your Personal Information will be collected, transferred, stored, processed, disclosed and otherwise used in the U.S. as described in this Privacy Policy. You also understand that your information may be transferred by us from the U.S. to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in connection with providing services to you.
Our Response to Do Not Track (DNT) signals
We are strongly committed to protecting users' Personal Information. Under this Policy, we may share your information only under particular situations, which you can learn more about in the "When May We Share Your Information" section of this Privacy Policy. In particular, we do not share your Personal Information for marketing purposes.
Because we protect all users in accordance with this Privacy Policy, we do not change our behavior in response to a web browser's "do not track" signal. For more information regarding Do Not Track signals and how we handle them, please visit our FAQ.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
Substantial changes to this Policy will not be made until after a public comment period of at least 30 days.
Because things naturally change over time and we want to ensure our Privacy Policy accurately reflects our practices and the law, it may be necessary to modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. We reserve the right to do so in the following manner:
- In the event of substantial changes, we will provide the proposed changes to our users in at least three (3) languages (selected at our discretion) for an open comment period lasting at least thirty (30) calendar days. Prior to the start of any comment period, we will provide notice of such changes and the opportunity to comment via the Wikimedia Sites, and via a notification on WikimediaAnnounce-L or a similar mailing list.
- For minor changes, such as grammatical fixes, administrative or legal changes, or corrections of inaccurate statements, we will post the changes and, when possible, provide at least three (3) calendar days' prior notice via WikimediaAnnounce-L or similar mailing list.
We ask that you please review the most up-to-date version of our Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the Wikimedia Sites after any effective date of a subsequent version of this Privacy Policy constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy on your part.
Contact Us
If you have questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, or the information collected under this Privacy Policy, please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com or contact us directly. If you are located in the European Economic Area and have questions about your personal data or would like to request to access, update, or delete it, you may contact our representative via email at email@example.com, or via mail at:
- Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Ireland
- 29 Earlsfort Terrace
- Dublin 2
- Ireland
- Main point of contact: Vincent Rezzouk-Hammachi
If you are an individual located in the United Kingdom, and have questions about your personal data or would like to request to access, update, or delete it, you may contact our representative via email at firstname.lastname@example.com, or via mail at:
- Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Services UK
- 12 New Fetter Lane
- London
- United Kingdom
- Main point of contact: Vincent Rezzouk-Hammachi
Our European Economic Area and United Kingdom Representative can only be contacted for queries in relation to data protection.
Depending on your jurisdiction, you also may have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority competent for your country or region.
Thank You!
Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy. We hope you enjoy using the Wikimedia Sites and appreciate your participation in creating, maintaining, and constantly working to improve the largest repository of free knowledge in the world.
Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this Privacy Policy and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.
This version was approved by Amanda Keton on June 7, 2021, pursuant to the Delegation of policy-making authority by the Board, and went into effect on June 25, 2021. Previous versions can be found below:
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subset: commoncrawl


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(Pass the Corona.)
Wait. What? It's *not* Mexican Independence Day? But it makes so much sense: we have 4th of July, they have 5 of Mayo - it's perfect! And we can drink to that!
So are these:
Lovely little piles of...sombreros.
And this:
We just need to keep drinking until they make sense!
(Pass the Corona.)
[consulting Wikipedia]
A-HA! Here we go. Sorry about the previous confusion, guys.
But wait, there's more!
Thanks to Andrea E., Selana, Danielle H., Mary H., Lauren R., Ashley A., Anony M., Melanie, & Sarah D., who think we should always celebrate cultural diversity with cake head effigies and 2-for-1 happy hours.
Notes from john: Just a couple of things to remember-
1. Mexican Independence Day is September 16th.
2. We didn't make the cakes.
3. Thank you.


text:
Friday, July 16, 2010
Open Friday: The 'Zines
Anyway, what I was wondering is this: is there any place for fanzines in today's hobby or has their role been entirely usurped by blogs, message boards, and websites? If you think there is a place for 'zines, what is that place and what do they offer that can't be obtained through other means?
As always, I'm off till tomorrow.
52 comments:
As a young whippersnapper who was born after most of the zines probably ended, I have to say that I don't see a solid niche for them.
As I understand it, zines were a way for smaller subsets of the hobby community to gather around and communicate with each other. But now, as you note, we have blogs and forums, and I think that those do a much more efficient job in a much more convenient manner.I think there's a definite place for them in the hobby even with current technology: issues (assuming they are digitized) are an efficient collection mechanism - searching blogs and forums tends to yield a bad signal to noise ration, since you often need to wade through a lot of unrelated or fragmentary stuff in order to get to what you need. A properly collated (and edited) zine can be enormously valuable as a resource (compare tracking down and printing off a handful of blog posts with printing off an on-topic short article).
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't really see a need for a mailed hardcopy 'zine in the internet age, but I do think that printable PDFs of the same thing offer things that blog and forum posts don't.
Blog posts and forum entries are great to browse and allow for valuable discussion, but printing one out and keeping it your folder is a pain. Electronically distributed 'zines, on the other hand, are perfect for that sort of thing.
I would think even the "I'll never use a PDF rulebook" types would agree, but then I underestimate them sometimes.I've been writing zines off and on for about ten years. People really seem to like getting mail that isn't a bill. Zines are fun to write and the copying, folding, stapling and mailing is a nice process. For me, it's a nice throwback.
Sadly, it's getting more and more expensive to zine. Postage is going up yet again, paper prices have remained steady and copies still hover at 7 to 9 cents per page. A 20 page digest format zine with cardstock cover can cost about $1.60 to print and mail.
If you are writing a zine to send to 30 of your friends, that could run a person nearly $50. That's kind of an expensive hobby.
Gamers were early adopters of Usenet, BBS and web fora so rpg zines quickly faded. Fortunately, non-rpg zines are alive and thriving. I receive several per month and always look forward to seeing what the postman delivers.I did a huge post about zines a couple weeks ago on my blog. They were one of the things that got me excited about the hobby back in the day, and some of the new ones that have surfaced online in the past few years helped bring me back to it.
I definitely think zines have a place in the hobby, as they allow someone to publish their thoughts without having a lot of other stuff attach to them, drowning them in the noise. Sometimes, having a clean, concrete publishing platform for your ideas is preferable to standing on the soapbox in the marketplace. The zines allow more people access to that kind of format.
With the advent of the electronic age, though, I think it's beneficial to have them in an electronic format, but I also want to see print where possible. Online access and distribution definitely allows for a broader audience and greater market penetration and saturation, but there's nothing like having a print copy in hand.- AnonymousJuly 16, 2010 at 12:50 PM
I think today's blogs fulfill the function of a zine. The zine was better for a time when communication methods were far slower and further between than those of today. Nottomention, they fulfill a particular niche of gaming thta may not have been available in normally published magazines of their day.
Now, everything is far more instantaneous as we could have imagined back then. Blogs can be posted, direct comments given, and responses and updates flashed right back.
Perhaps, if someone wanted to mine through some of the older. archived material from various sites and put them in a pdf? That would allow some 'buried treasures' to come to light.
GW I'd say they have a place.
But also, how are we defining zine? Is Knockspell a zine? Footprints? Fight On!? Or are we talking about campaign specific material, like Christian's Iridia Zine or John Staten's Land of Nod, or Matt Borselli's Switching to Guns? I think there is a thin line between zine and player's aid--is a zine meant for the broader audience of hobbyists as a whole, or for folks only running in or interested in your campaign? However we are defining them, I will say that I like reading them, as they often gather a lot of great ideas in one place.
I'll echo Lord Kilgore here--zines are a great place to collect a variety of cool ideas in one place for easy access. PDF distribution does this well, and there are a lot of free and low-cost zines out there that already do this for a wide variety of systems.
Christian's point about the cost is one that should be taken to heart--he speaks from a lot of experience in creating and making zines, and the printing and mailing costs should be taken into account.
Most online zines distributed as PDFs avoid the printing and mailing costs and have the added benefit of not being shredded or soaked in the mail. And even the zines that are not free are so minimally priced that they are cheaper than subscription or mailing costs--the exceptions being Knockspell and Fight On!, which have high production values right up there with what we would consider "professsional" magazines
I have about fifty or sixty blogs in my RPG blogroll, but I also know of a fair number of fanzines, and reading those fanzines are much easier to browse at one sitting.
Just FYI, off the top of my head, in addition to the one's I mentioned above, there are Trollzine, Starfrontersman, Encounter, ODDITIES, Oubliette, Stellar Reaches. . .I could go on, but I think you get my point. In fact, it would be nice if someone put a post together collecting links to all these great fanzine resources (I just might have to do that myself one of these days, seeing as I have them all bookmarked anyway).
And, I would also hasten to add, that "best of the blog" compendiums should be considered zines, too.- AnonymousJuly 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM
Well, Fight On! is a zine, and it's arguably one of the two primary tentpoles of the OSR (the other being this blog).
ReplyDelete - AnonymousJuly 16, 2010 at 1:31 PM
I'm old so I remember zines, but I can understand why they're less useful today than they once were. Blogs and forums take that role and have improved on it.
The only reason I care about zines today is because of my love of magazine/print publishing. I wish magazines were a smart business these days, but I can see where the internet has effectively replaced print magazines. The blogs are a rich vein of zine-y goodness. But there is something a little isolated about them, since each blog tends to be a single person's stream of thought, with the comments offering the counter perspective. The interesting thing about the 'zines were the mix of articles and commentary that all was appearing in a single stream.
(I have a Classic D&D/OSR filter in my RSS reader that kind of produces that same effect, but without the sense of craft you get from Nod, Fight On or Knockspell)
It would be interesting if someone created a section in one of the magazines, or a PDF new magazine that had a focus the community. The best posts or comments from the blogs. A recap of any of any recent debates or flamewars that happened (you know what I am talking about,) and anything else of note that is going on.
I might be missing something obvious here, but the closest I can think of what I have seen, is the awesome weekly round up on the Underdark Gazette.Zines are awesome. I perhaps have a soft spot for them since running an online Shadowrun 'zine in the mid to late 90s helped me make contacts and get my start in the industry -- not to mention that running a 'zine teaches you a whole bunch of skills that are transplantable to a bunch of different publishing roles (I need to write a full blog post about this ...)
Some of the things that make good blogs good -- like a well-defined "most important posts" section, and revisiting old topics to add new information -- bring blogs closer to being better "long term" archives of their material, more like a zine.
But I would bet money that a slightly-edited compilation of Grognardia articles, massaged and categorized, would be a useful resource for people to "catch up" with the long history of the blog. Not *quite* a zine in the traditional sense, but similar.I've printed a few Footprints here and there, and I enjoyed Chris' Iridia (sp) magazine, that had a cool alternative edge. But as far as collecting and owning, well, I'm trying to minimize the stuff in my game/comic book/pop culture pile in the garage, and getting zine's to keep are not a high priority for me right now by any means.
But back in the day, there was something kind of magical about Alarums and Excurion, especially when a teen like I was could get a regular article printed for a couple bucks. And The Unspeakable Oath in the 90's was just hellacool, as you expect a CoC zine to be.I have a stack of the first 20 issues of Alarums & Excursions, which Lee Gold was kind enough to send to me. It's a fascinating window into early D&D play (the issues run from 1975 to 1977), particularly because it tended toward the coastal scenes - California, of course, but also the Northeast - whereas most of the historians of the game have focused around TSR in Wisconsin and peripherally around Arneson in Minneapolis.
For those who don't know, A&E was one of several APA-zines, magazines distributed as a collection of mimeographed shorter "zines," running from 1 to 12 or so pages each. Contributors got copies and I think paid per page, there were rules in each issue. So one zine would be entirely by one writer, but an issue would have a dozen or more zines.
What's clear is that D&D instantly touched off a storm of creativity that wasn't contained in the realms of either Arnesonian or Gygaxian D&D. But there was still enough of a common language that you could take your character into any DM's dungeon, although I think the Caltech guys may have had more attributes than the standard.
A&E really focused on actual play reports, of which I have been meaning to do a more indepth study and analysis. I'd really love to see some of the early Wild Hunt issues, because the zines there had more of the rules tinkering and such.
The conversation was really slow; it acted as something of a quality filter, but really commenting on other people's zines became a major factor in your own (comments longer than original content). I think that's the main problem with the format.I loved the zines, and eagerly awaited the arrival of the next issue of such APAs as Underworld Oracle and Trollcrusher, not to mention Alarums & Excursions. In pre-Internet days they were the way you generally stayed in touch with others in the hobby. In particular, they often gave you the shape, if not the actual reports, of other people's games.
With the advent of desk-top publishing technology some of them matured into full magazines. Tales of the Reaching Moon, the APAzine that supported Runequest during it's spiritual malaise at Avalon Hill is in this class; at the end of it's run it had full colour covers.
Whilst the advent of the web has eased the issues of production and distribution immensely, it also suffers from the problems due to this ease. First, there are so many sites producing quality work that it becomes impossible to keep track of the existing ones, let alone find new sites. Secondly, they tend to be the sites of individuals. There is less of an interplay between the various authors; they tend to be more single-issue topics. Secondly, they do tend to be lacking in artwork. [I always enjoyed the cartoons in Trollcrusher which emphasised the idea of Old School adventuring.]
And there was always the joy of getting a new zine in the post and opening it and devouring it. Which is much more exciting then browsing the websites, or checking their RSS feeds, to see if someone has posted something new.I remember the days of the Zines, but I think their time has largely passed. Their place has indeed largely been taken by blogs and forums.
What I truly miss are the smaller RPG magazines, somewhere between amateur zines and big mags like Dragon. They rarely lasted long, but they were often interesting reads.For the most part, I think that blogs and forums/message boards have taken the place of fanzines. However, a fanzine could prove quite useful acting as a "content aggregator" of sorts, helping to sort the gold from the dross of what is out there on the internet. Of course, to do this effectively, the 'zine editor would need to be trusted by his/her readers to successfully do that sorting. I'm not sure how one would gain that reputation these days, separated from the aforementioned blogs and forums.
I think that "Footprints," the 'zine published by Dragonfoot to collect what the site admins and other helpers consider to be the best stuff posted on the site, is a good example of how to have a 'zine act as a content aggregator, but of course they are only aggregating from their own site.@bt: It didn't occur to me to consider PDFs as zines, since at that point, it seemed like the document was just making the jump to "online magazine," and that zines in particular gained something from their paper distribution.
@Aaron Thorne: You know, I've seen something like what you're describing over at From the Warp, a Warhammer site - a "Top Ten" list of cool Warhammer links which the authors found that past week. A series of blog posts acting as content aggregators seems like they would do the trick, forming a solid part of a pre-existing blog.
(Hey, that's a neat trick now that I think about it...)Well, as a blogger with oodles and oodles of stuff, much of which people have wanted me to consolidate in .pdf form for them I heartily disagree that blogs are 'zines. Blogs are just easy, instant gratification...the ability to self-publish at the touch of a button. Even when I do edit and proof and re-write a particularly thoughtful blog entry, that's nothing compared to doing the layout and careful compilation of a 'zine...electronic or otherwise.
There is still a place for 'zines...and still a place for hardcopy ones I believe (specifically at book and game shops). They give people ideas, they get people excited, the should be made available for folks who aren't actively combing the internet looking for content.
Power to all those people putting out 'zines...that's grassroots, baby!
: )I loved the old zines. I did not have many of them when I was growing up, but I was fascinated by them when I was able to get them. They are interesting snapshots of gaming history, and the independent voice that was always there. I was especially fascinated by fan conversions and home brewed games.
My personal ties with zines was during the 90s when I was a member of All of the Above, the GURPS APA. That was a fun experience. Here I was, a guy working at a grocery store, writing up a few pages that went to other GURPS fans, including professionals in the game industry. I enjoyed the experience, and the comments and constructive advice has helped my writing ever since.
The recent upsurge in fanzines (both printed and pdf) is a good thing. Even though I love message boards and mailing lists, there is still something about reading a RPG zine, especially if you've written something for that issue.> Allandaros
> As a young whippersnapper who was born after most of the zines probably ended, I have to say that I don't see a solid niche for them.
It depends on what you're looking for: fast flowing, generally poorly organised chain-of-consciousness thoughts/content or a somewhat more coherent snapshot with considerably more fan involvement require to produce an issue.
Unless you were born in the future (not that long, alas), Warpstone, for one current example, has had a very strong, solid niche.
> hüth said...
> Blogs are zines. Zines were floppy blogs.
Not all fanzines are/were chatzines or rambling discursive by a long shot.
> James
> ... despite often catching flak from publishers who felt that mere "amateurs" were in no position to criticize their betters.
Well, EGG for one generally had positive things to say about the 'zine scene - UK side, at least! - and being critical of the prozines didn't preclude a progression to the dark side (the Dragonlords editors being a prime example of that).
> Reverance Pavane
> And there was always the joy of getting a new zine in the post and opening it and devouring it. Which is much more exciting then browsing the websites, or checking their RSS feeds, to see if someone has posted something new.
There is no quietus on the net.
UO wasn't an APA, btw: very much Jaquays-inspired and in turn inspirational to many UK fanzines.
Your example of TotRM is another good "solid niche" example where the fans ended up doing what the mainstream /should/ have been doing to support their product.
> Brunomac
> But back in the day, there was something kind of magical about Alarums and Excurion, especially when a teen like I was could get a regular article printed for a couple bucks.
I still find it highly ironic that the "OSR" as a whole (there are individual exceptions, I know) has left A&E to wilt on the sidelines and instead chosen to go their own ways with regards to print zines.
It would be very easy to state that the proclaimed love of all things old school is as much facade and personal ego-stroking given tricks like that. ;)> RPGObjects_chuck said...
> The commercial magazine is going away period. When Penthouse Magazine (which declared bankruptcy recently) and Playboy Magazine are in trouble, does anyone think RPG magazines are a viable business to be in anymore?
"Business" and "fanzine" in the same sentence? I'm not sure we're on the same page here. :pOh and Chuck, there are still tons of magazines in print.
They seem so to be going away mostly in the US because our literacy rate is rather low for an alleged 1st world country because of our educational system is poor and social inequality is broad.
Many Americans can't read that well (a 4th grad level is quite typical) or afford $5-8 for a magazine either.
of the folks that can read well , many are highly religious and read little but the bible or an occasional piece of religious literature tend to read online
My visits to the local book store show many magazines, however few are appealing enough to a younger audience to drag them away from the computer screen.
As for Playboy and Penthouse.. What niche do they serve in the world of free on demand porn?
Even for this with an aversion to sexually explicit material, there is an unlimited supply of cute girl pics for free.irbyz said:
"Business" and "fanzine" in the same sentence? I'm not sure we're on the same page here. :p
I guess I expressed myself badly. I was saying that fanzines ARE the future.
Magazines as businesses, like Dragon and Dungeon, just don't seem viable to me going forward.
For the person who pointed out there are plenty of magazines in print: I was aware of that, thanks!
However, I think the future of temporary print media (magazines, newspapers, comics etc) is increasingly bleak.>>They seem so to be going away mostly in the US because our literacy rate is rather low for an alleged 1st world country because of our educational system is poor and social inequality is broad.
>>Many Americans can't read that well (a 4th grad level is quite typical) or afford $5-8 for a magazine either.
>>of the folks that can read well , many are highly religious and read little but the bible or an occasional piece of religious literature tend to read online
Can't say that I recognize any of this (except the unwillingness to pay $5-8) from anywhere I go or anyone I know.
As for paying for professional magazines, not a lot of people are interested in paying for information that was free online 6-8 weeks before the magazine hit the stands.
But the health of the professional magazine market doesn't have a lot to do with the 'zine scene.>>As for Playboy and Penthouse.. What niche do they serve in the world of free on demand porn?<<
As for gaming magazines, what use do they serve in a world with a ton of PDF, print on demand and Wizards having a D&D online service?
If I want an adventure, I don't need to subscribe to a magazine and hope it has something I want.
I can find an adventure to meet my specifications, buy it, and print it out.
This is why Wizards has been backing away from Dungeon and Dragon for quite awhile.Chuck, I think the future of non print on demand gaming magazines is bleak and in that I agree with you.
However if the ad/article I just read (as in 30 minutes ago) in popular science is not all hype, magazine sales are actually up. The ad/article also mentions that this numbers are quite excellent for 18-34 year olds, as good as or better than older generations.
Now, subscriptions are mostly handled over the Internet but all in all, the print rags are doing fine. At least if Pop-Sci is to be believed numbers wise. Adds are likely hurting a bit do to online adverts but the economy in general is hurting too .. Nothing new there.
Newspapers, a whole seperate kind of periodical are dying mainly because of Craigslist ...
Now print support in the form of glossy monthlies was cool (I loved Dragon back in the day) but its kind of been superseded by the web . As you so ably mention so has our little corner (RPG's) and of course stuff like news and Playboy and Penthouse have been hit too.
Also even if I wanted to make a print magazine and anyone would buy it, there really is no where to sell it. The hobby is fine (though we've lost players to LARPS and WoW) but the hobby shop is DOA and w/o a hobby shop its hard to sell a general topics magazine.As much as I loved magazines (whether pro or am), I always had several issues with them. It was hard to find something in a shelf full of them. (Indices were obsolete the month after they were published.) They weren't very durable. You had to carry a whole magazine to use a single article from it.
Today, it seems like web sites (of various sorts) have all sorts of advantages over magazines. Yet, I really enjoy OD&Dites, Footprints, and Fight On!. (I mean to check out Knockspell soon.)
Part of me still wants to believe they'd be better as separate articles in a searchable database than collected in a PDF, but...shrug At least the iPad means that I don't have to print them anymore and that I can carry them all to the game with me.
Actually, I liked the web version of Pyramid a lot when I was a subscriber, but they've gone the PDF route now too.
Premier Guitar is kind of interesting. Besides the print copies, you can access it online in a wannabe-PDF format. All the articles are also available on the web site, however, in more of a standard web format complete with user comments.
Word verification: decorys; look-a-likes of the Coreys used to help them escape fans in the '80s."Also even if I wanted to make a print magazine and anyone would buy it, there really is no where to sell it. The hobby is fine (though we've lost players to LARPS and WoW) but the hobby shop is DOA and w/o a hobby shop its hard to sell a general topics magazine."
The hobby shops in my neck of the woods are doing fine.
Also, the local B&N carries an awful lot of special interest magazines. They carried Dragon and Dungeon up until Wizards took 'em online.I write for a couple of PDF zines, so I guess some of them are still alive:
Fighting Fantazine
(for those old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks - FREE!)
and Ordo Draconis
(for Dragon Warriors)
Best Australian zine/magazine back in the day was Australian Realms, with its own homebrew Unae setting for WHFRP. Good fun!@irbyz:
I still find it highly ironic that the "OSR" as a whole
(there are individual exceptions, I know) has left A&E to wilt on the sidelines and instead chosen to go their own ways with regards to print zines.
Maybe this is because A&E has refused to embrace online distribution? How hard could it be to scan all the old issues into PDFs and post them online? Yeah, there are 35 years of back issues, but it wouldn't take that long to at least scan them as images to quickly get the old stuff online and then post new material as OCR'ed PDFs or direct from Word to PDF.
But Lee Gold has insisted on keeping it extremely old school, which in the Internet era instantly limits its appeal. The only way a new gamer or a gamer interested in old school products could learn about A&E is from grognards waxing nostalgic. I remember A&E from back in the day, but I didn't know it was still in existence until a year or so ago.
But Trollcrusher, on the other hand, at least has a web presence:
http://www.trllcrshr.co.uk/index.html> Maybe this is because A&E has refused to embrace online distribution?
Available by email, in print, or both. Electronic version either in collated files (Word, etc.) or as a single .pdf distribution; http://www.conchord.org/xeno/aande.html
Interesting definition of "refused".
> How hard could it be to scan all the old issues into PDFs and post them online? Yeah, there are 35 years of back issues, but it wouldn't take that long to at least scan them as images to quickly get the old stuff online and then post new material as OCR'ed PDFs or direct from Word to PDF.
Copyright issues impact /all/ 'zines in that domain, not just A&E. Lee does, however, go much further than most in trying to assist.
> But Lee Gold has insisted on keeping it extremely old school, which in the Internet era instantly limits its appeal. The only way a new gamer or a gamer interested in old school products could learn about A&E is from grognards waxing nostalgic. I remember A&E from back in the day, but I didn't know it was still in existence until a year or so ago.
Have you read a copy recently, or made any effort to encourage recolonisation and expansion by the current fanbase?
Yes, she doesn't exactly go OTT on publicity but that's hardly a reason to condemn out-of-hand.
> But Trollcrusher, on the other hand, at least has a web presence:
Site has nothing to do with the Trollcrusher 'zine or any of the original editors: they'd also wanted to put up legible scans illegally (some might think that's a "good thing", of course).> RPGObjects_chuck
> I guess I expressed myself badly. I was saying that fanzines ARE the future.
Would be nice, but the trend towards instant gratification is a difficult one to overcome as is expectation of comparison against "fanzines" that contain 100+ pages of glossy, high quality content. ;)
Harking back to Christian's comment about being an "expensive hobby" - to be honest I'd not call $50 particularly expensive relative to the time involved (unless you're a very quick APA collator/editor!) and, of course, it's possible to distribute copies via other channels such as OSR & similar cons, too.
> Magazines as businesses, like Dragon and Dungeon, just don't seem viable to me going forward.
Good timing on such observations for the likes of http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10641398 on the computer gaming side?
Dragon and Dungeon were both culled prematurely: aside from not running at a loss, that decision was a deliberate strategic policy such as that undertaken by GW to focus in on a particular subset of players and stuff the rest, ignoring such matters as "free advertising" by having copies on shelves.
GW's strategy, however, did not involve culling their own prozine (circulation was still 150,000+ not that long ago and even if that's declined the increase in cost would probably more than make up the difference)."Dragon and Dungeon were both culled prematurely: aside from not running at a loss, that decision was a deliberate strategic policy..."
Yes, a deliberate strategic policy made with the knowledge that the magazine business is a terrible business to be in going forward.
Notice I didn't say it was a complete dead end right now, or that every magazine is losing money.
Wizard had been backing away from their magazines for years, ever since they farmed them out.
Eventually they came up with a better idea. From all the 4e fans I've talked to, the digital versions of dragon and dungeon are a huge hit with them.
I think publishing is going to change drastically in the years to come, with POD becoming a lot more common, and PDF really surging with IPad and Kindle, especially for periodicals.
I've been saying this for almost 10 years btw. I joined a rpg house that was primarily in the PDF business in 2002.
People have been calling my "books, magazines and newspapers will become rare outside of electronic format", crazy all this time and maybe I am.
But I still don't think so.Another comment on the subject of Wizards deliberately shafting a large portion of their customer base a la GW.
Everything I have seen shows me that WOTC knows who their *actual* customers are, and that they work hard to please them.
This does not include everyone who still plays D&D.
They weren't going to get someone like me to play 4e, and so chasing me is silly.
On the other hand, every person actually playing 4e that I have talked to, which is a fair amount, has had nothing but good things to say about the digital stuff they're offering.
Those are the folks WOTC should cater to. I'm not their customer.> Everything I have seen shows me that WOTC knows who their *actual* customers are, and that they work hard to please them.
No customers = no $$$, agreed, but the net result was still to put even more eggs in one basket whilst promoting habitat insularisation - deliberately or otherwise - within the overall gaming community. (At least they don't appear to have built-in a relentless customer churn to their business model, yet, like GW).
Anyhow, yet another raison d'être for fanzines and other fan-based/small-press publications as a whole to address the bigger picture beyond those islands of relative commercial stability as /well/ as ensured those are not deliberately alienated, since without such ecological corridors extinction events are far more likely within the overall environment.
A long-term, balanced approach is easier to manufacture (literally) in print than online.How exactly would keeping the magazines in print form have kept anyone from being "alienated" or not resulted in "all eggs being in one basket"?
Are you somehow imagining a world in which Wizards moves to 4e, but the magazines covered OSR and Pathfinder in addition to 4e?
As a company they were moving on.
Dragon belongs to them, it would have moved on too, whether or not Paizo was making it, whether or not it was in print or online.(OT)
> How exactly would keeping the magazines in print form have kept anyone from being "alienated" or not resulted in "all eggs being in one basket"?
History and accessibility.
Regarding "all eggs being in one basket", of course WotC is free to push as many or as few gaming expressions as they wish (it used to be closer to the former); I was meaning with regards to content delivery channels. The transition wasn't exactly a well-executed one, either, and with less goodwill or $$ backing could've easily gone belly-up.- AnonymousJuly 19, 2010 at 9:27 AM
The Wayfinder e-zine for Pathfinder is great. Zines provide a couple things that make them uniquely "better" than blogs and forums.
It's not just about aggregation - it's about editing, quality, and focus.
Any given blog has a lot of posts. Many of them about "what I had for dinner yesterday" that really the larger audience doesn't really care about, and random thoughts, questions (like this post) and other stuff. Forums have even worse signal to noise. Sometimes people do post honest to God content, but it's often pretty small (serialized fiction on blogs and forums tends to be really low word count once you step back and look at it).
A zine can bring "just the content," but it's not just aggregating, it's soliciting. That lets you a) reject crappy submissions, b) have a theme (Hey, this month let's do swords and ray-guns kind if stuff!), and c) motivate authors to longer, more focused efforts. I've worked on zines in the past and they're never just collecting blog posts, people submit articles specifically purpose written, and are 6 pages long, not two paragraphs (looking at you, blog post I'm commenting on!)
Anyway, 50% of the work of zines isn't the "writing stuff" it's in the editing process and that adds a lot of explicit and implicit quality.
Now, sadly, there's not too much in the way of print zines any more (though Wayfinder did so weell that their recent third issue they did a print one...) That was a great enumeration of the value magazines have, mxyzplk.
It seems to me, though, that all those things can be applied to a blog-like delivery. With added bonuses. It can be indexed and searched. Errata and updates can be attached to the original article rather than being an overlooked little bit squeezed into a later issue. Feedback can likewise be attached to the article rather than being spread across the "letters" section of future issues. People can print out single articles for convenient use at the table. (Even when you have a PDF magazine, the needs of a printed layout can make printing a single article less convenient.)
There have been a number of attempts at this, although I don't know that anyone has gotten it "right" yet.
Will, you can keep a blog on your shelf, if you want to. To me a much bigger issue is that the stuff on my shelf gets less and less use compared to the stuff that I can have my computer search.
Seeing your name in "real print" may still have an impact for you, but I don't feel any difference between pixels on a screen and pixels on paper anymore. What I used to get from seeing my name in print was recognition. Print no longer represents that the way it once did. And I'm very thankful for the recognition that I have received via on-screen pixels."Seeing your name in 'real print' may still have an impact for you, but I don't feel any difference between pixels on a screen and pixels on paper anymore."
Me, I'm just in love with books. Real, physical books. That's why I don't own or use any PDF-only products and probably never will.
In fact, I payed to get the Castle of the Mad Archmage PDF made into a book for just this reason.- AnonymousJuly 21, 2010 at 4:36 PM
Traveller is my game...and I can testify that the bulk of innovation and fun was in the zine format. I don't think the web has entirely replaced it. For what the web does poorly is illustration...countless zines (lovingly) appropriated and asked their friends to do some sketches. It also was more experimental than what the "Official" sanctioned magazines and today's forum - yes, there are fan forums...but it takes effort to find them.
I miss also getting something in the mail.
I also took delight in the amateurishness of zines...as I always marveled how people could keep their day jobs, active gaming life and run a fanzine at the same time. Either life has got faster or it is a lost art. - AnonymousJuly 22, 2010 at 9:54 AM
You're a man after my own heart! I love Traveller fanzines; that's where the real action was back in the day
Oh shucks James...now you making me blush...you do know about the efforts of the Traveller community to digitalize many of these fanzines and put them on the web...
Pity we never got around to playing Fading Suns or Traveller together. C'est la vie!


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