The Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange is a free website dedicated to answering specific questions pertaining to the science fiction and fantasy genres. Questions range from Star Trek, both from the various serial programmes and the books that followed, to Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons and Harry Potter. However this is just the tip of the iceberg. Popular culture icons like Dune or Conan appear alongside less common or more recent IPs such as the Warcraft franchise.
The question-and-answer style site has a set of rules that state strict guidelines to govern what kinds of questions can be asked. It avoids questions that require over-long responses or answers that are based more on opinion than factual basis. The best rated answers are often accompanied by cited resources.
The site is successfully self-moderated by a system of votes done by the community. When a user asks a question, it will either be posted and responded to by another user, or it will be flagged for editing. The responses to each question can be voted up or down depending upon whether the audience found it useful. The question’s author can also choose to accept one of the responses as the answer that satisfies his/her query. The most highly rated responses are moved to the top of the response queue. Cited responses are far more likely to be highly rated.
As it is a free website, a new user can create a profile and contribute without any cost or membership fee. A guest login is available for those who do not wish to go through the registration process. The primary benefit of creating a profile would be for heavy users, especially those who would respond to questions on a regular basis.
The site is searchable and easy to navigate. It also provides an infographic tutorial to help new users become accustomed to the layout and functionality of the site. There is a small problem encountered when browsing the main page. If a user selects a tag, clicks on a question then uses the browser’s back button to return to the front page, it requires another tag click. There are categories to help focus a user’s interests, which avoids this issue.
Science Fiction and Stack Fantasy is just one of the many exchanges available through the Stack Exchange Network. The exchange provides the same framework through all its sites but focusses on different topics. These can range from the very broad, e.g. Academia, to the very specific, such as an exchange based around a class offered at Harvard.
The citations make this site valuable to scholars who might be trying to locate a particular work or quote and perhaps even a new perspective on their topic. Again, the citations are not a requirement for the responses but they are frequently referenced to support answers. Time and patience are necessary to get full use from this resource. It is also valuable as a teaching aid, providing questions that might be useful in a classroom setting. Demand for this type and format of information will widely vary between libraries but, as it is a free resource, it could prove useful to many of them.
