Wookieepedia was conceived by Steven Greenwood and created at the request of hosting site Fandom by Chad Barbry in 2005.[2] On 6 February 2005, Greenwood and Barbry discussed details on a Wikipedia talk page which led to the wiki's creation. Barbry also conceived the name Wookieepedia. On March 4, 2005, Wookieepedia was launched at Fandom (then called Wikicities).
In 2015, it drew 3.7 million monthly visitors.[3] On November 28, 2005, Wookieepedia was selected as the Sci-Fi Channel's "Sci-Fi Site of the Week."[4]
As of April 2024[update], the English-language version of the wiki contains over 190,000 articles,[5] making it the seventh-largest[6] Fandom in terms of article count, ahead of other wikis such as Memory Alpha and WoWWiki. Fandom 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.[citation needed]
After the Star Wars Expanded Universe was declared non-canonical to the future works and rebranded as Star Wars Legends in April 2014, Wookieepedia implemented separate "Canon" and "Legends" tabs for subjects that appeared both before and after the continuity reboot. "Legends" tab only includes information from sources released prior to the 2014 reboot, while "Canon" tab contains information from works published from 2015 onwards, including the movies released under The Walt Disney Company. An exception to this rule was made for the content of the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG, which has seen several expansions after 2015 but is still considered "Legends".[7] Both tabs include information from Episodes I-VI and The Clone Wars TV series.
In late March 2021, Wookieepedia held a vote to ban deadnaming, which triggered debate within Star Wars fan circles around the naming of the non-binary artist Robin Pronovost's article on the site.[8][9] In response to the situation, Fandom, the wiki hosting service which hosts Wookieepedia, updated its terms of use policy to prohibit deadnaming across its websites.[10][11][12][13] On behalf of the Wookieepedia administration team, Fandom also permanently banned two administrators, citing a pattern of "bullying and intimidation." In addition, Wookieepedia's administration apologized to Pronovost for the duress that they endured as a result of the website's deadnaming vote.[14]
In 2022 began a conflict between users of the English-language and Russian-language Wookieepedia due to the fact that English-language users tried to force the Russian-language users to begin more active coverage of LGBT topics, using the vague pronouns "оно" (it) and "они" (they), which is not safe because of Russian Federation's laws (according them "LGBT propaganda" is illegal and can lead to blocking of the site) and also distorted the Russian language itself, which is not suitable for such speech constructions and structures.[17] So some English-language users began to vandalize pages in Russian-language Wookieepedia.[18]
Russian-speaking users tried to explain their point of view to their English-speaking colleagues, but they were completely failed due to the absolute reluctance of the latter to accept Russian-speaking users' opinion. In October 2022 one of the LGBT activists and one of those, who vandalized Russian Wookieepedia before, became the administrator of the English-language Wookieepedia,[19] after what the conflict between these projects entered an acute phase. Ultimately, on January 8 2023 all Russian-language interlang links in the English and Turkish Wookieepedia (which administrator is also one of administrators in English-language Wookieepedia) were removed,[20] and Russian-speaking Wookieepedia users who tried to oppose this decision were permanently blocked.[21] This caused a noticeable reaction from the ru-community on social networks.