In 2009, the concept of the Star Wars Expanded Universe being de-canonized was so absurd it was an April Fool’s Joke on Wookieepedia. The response was heated from those who didn’t get the joke and realize it was April Fool’s. In 2014, after the Disney buyout, it became a reality, with ‘canon tabs’ and ‘legends tabs’ separating the content. Apparently, they don’t want us to remember that they too, considered the idea absurd. The original article as been expunged from the current Wookiepedia website. Sadly, for them, many of us remember it and the web archive still has it.
Web Archive Version of the April Fool’s Day Joke.
Web Archive of the response at time.
PDF version of the Wookieepedia April Fool’s.
Since the sad day this happened, Wookieepedia is no longer truly a trustworthy website for original Star Wars Expanded Universe fans. Attempts to update or correct the articles relabeled ‘Legends’ are countered, according to those who try to edit. Emphasis is placed on how they contradict (and the things that show they don’t are not allowed, according to those who tried to fix it.)
Worse one now has to wade through a multitude of Disney canon ads, videos on auto play, and to top it off ‘canon’ tabs on characters and events that should only exist in ‘Legends’ as that is where they were created. So much for creative freedom, apparently they have to poach even the less famous older characters for their canon instead of inventing new ones. I’ve even find links in the ‘Legends’ article that instead of connecting to their ‘Legend’ counterpart article, go to a canon one.
It’s a decent enough site to grab photos or occasionally a list of sources. But we can’t trust the information is entirely correct or up to date on Expanded Universe articles. Those running it now have every motivation to make it less interesting and more contradictory (at least by reading their version of events) than in keeping things accurate. (Why? Because either they are working for Lucasfilm, or they fear losing access to those working for Lucasfilm if they don’t toe the company line.)
One thing I’ve noticed about those using the Wookieepedia, especially post Disney, is they dismiss stories as ‘stupid ideas’ based on what is in that wiki. How the article is written has everything to do with this. To truly get the context of characters and events you have to read the story itself, not some mere synopsis on a website. Only when you have that context and see how it was executed can you find out if you like the story, or if it makes sense (whether you like it or not). A synopsis by those trying to dismiss the content is not the story!
Other fans have tried to invent their own wiki’s, but this proved a failure. While it is possible to download a copy of a wiki, Wookieepedia’s already enormous size proved an issue. Attempting to upload and import it to a new wiki on a new server fails due to ‘server timeout’ issues. (Servers do limit such things, especially shared ones. This is partly for security and partly so no one website overwhelms the server.) Also the copy most had was grabbed after the canon tabs appeared. This means that the already huge file was saddled with data no one wanted.
To complicate matters further, the Wookieepedia url format changed. This means you can no longer just go to the web archive, pop in the URL and go back to a pre-2014 and pre-Disney buyout version. The current versions is starwars.fandom.com. The original was http://starwars.wikia.com. So you have to splice together the ‘new’ version of the URL (after .com/wiki/ ) with the old, in order to find it in the archive!
A suggestion here for this is that if you do find what you need, bookmark it, right click and save as PDF (this is under printer options usually) and/or right click and save as web page.
Lets not forget what Star Wars once was. A rich feast of diverse content that had an impressive continuity given that it had decades to maintain. The Wookieepedia once supported this. I can celebrate what it once was and am very grateful to the web.archive for keeping the older content alive.
