Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki is an online encyclopedia for information on the Star Wars

Star Wars

Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

fictional universe

Fictional universe

A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....

—including information on all six films, as well as The Clone Wars

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 TV series)

-Production:At April 2005's Star Wars Celebration III, Lucas stated that "we are working on a 3-D continuation of the pilot series that was on the Cartoon Network; we probably won't start that project for another year." In July 2005, pre-production had begun on the series, according to Steve...

and the Expanded Universe

Star Wars Expanded Universe

The Star Wars Expanded Universe encompasses all of the officially licensed, fictional background of the Star Wars universe, outside of the six feature films produced by George Lucas. The expanded universe includes books, comic books, video games, spin-off films like Star Wars: The Clone Wars,...

. It is a specialized wiki created to be an extensive encyclopedia of the Star Wars universe with some articles reaching up to 60,000 words, and is written almost entirely from an in-universe perspective. The name Wookieepedia is a portmanteau of Wookiee

Wookiee

Wookiees are a species of bipeds in the Star Wars universe. The most notable Wookiee is Chewbacca, a companion to Han Solo.-Inspiration:...

and Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

, being a pun on the name of Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

. The logo, too, is a visual pun

Visual pun

A visual pun is a pun involving an image or images .Visual puns in which the image is at odds with the inscription are common in Dutch gable stones as well as in cartoons such as Lost Consonants or The Far Side...

 showing the incomplete second Death Star

Death Star

The Death Star is a fictional moon-sized space station and superweapon appearing in the Star Wars movies and expanded universe. It is capable of destroying a planet with a single destructive super charged energy beam.-Origin and design:...

 as opposed to Wikipedia's incomplete 'jigsaw logo'.

History

Wookieepedia was conceived by Steven Greenwood and created at the request of hosting site Wikia by Chad Barbry. Barbry also coined the term "Wookiepedia" (sic), which was later corrected to "Wookieepedia". On March 4, 2005, Wookieepedia was launched at Wikia

Wikia

Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...

.

Wookieepedia is the most visited wiki hosted by Wikia . On November 28, 2005, Wookieepedia was selected as the Sci Fi Channel

Syfy

Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...

's "Sci Fi Site of the Week." In January 2006, the site was Wikia's featured Wiki of the month.

As of November 2011, the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of the wiki contains over 87,400 articles, making it the fifth-largest Wikia-hosted wiki in terms of article count, ahead of sites such as Memory Alpha

Memory Alpha

Memory Alpha is a wiki that is an encyclopedic reference for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Wikia, Inc. on the MediaWiki...

 and the Marvel Database Project. Wikia hosts Star Wars wikis in many other languages, and Wookieepedia also coordinates its efforts with the German language wiki called Jedipedia.net and the Polish language Biblioteka Ossus.

External links

• "Wookieepedia: A Staggering Enterprise" – (from Abel G. Peña's blog "Only Sith Deal In Absolutes!")