The Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors: A Digital (Auto)Ethnography

In this digital (auto)ethnography, the author documents and discusses the information behavior of Wikipedia “fan editors”: i.e., individuals who edit articles related to pop culture topics, such as films, TV shows, comics, etc. Despite fan editors being among Wikipedia’s most active editors, hardly any attention has been paid to them by either library and information science (LIS) or fan studies. This is a surprising omission: For LIS researchers, Wikipedia is of paramount importance, given that it is one of the world's most heavily used reference sources. Likewise, for fan studies scholars, encyclopedic texts such as Wikipedia articles are important archives for many fan communities that enable information to be preserved and passed onto others. This project fills this hole in the literature, combining fieldwork observations, the insight of key informants, and personal reflection into a rich articulation of fan editor information behavior. After exploring the complexities of this behavior, the author then explores its relationship to the "serious leisure perspective" and the Price model of fan information behavior. The work ends by articulating the difference between Wikipedia and other fan wikis and by discussing the reasons fan editors contribute to Wikipedia in the first place.