Tutorial: Track canon changes on a Fandom wiki

Goal

Monitor how a Fandom wiki's canon pages change over time: when lore-critical statements appear, disappear, or are rewritten — and how editorial consensus shifts.

Steps

1. Point Refract at a Fandom wiki

Fandom wikis use the standard MediaWiki API. Pass --api with the wiki's API endpoint:

refract analyze "Darth_Vader" --api https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php --depth detailed

2. Cache for repeated analysis

Fandom API rate limits differ from Wikipedia. Cache revisions to avoid re-fetching:

refract analyze "Darth_Vader" --api https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php --depth detailed -c

3. Export for comparison

refract export "Darth_Vader" --api https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php --format ndjson > canon-events.jsonl

4. Track a specific lore claim

refract claim "Darth_Vader" \
  --text "midichlorian count is over 20,000" \
  --api https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php -c

This produces a timeline of every revision where that claim was added, modified, removed, or reintroduced.

5. Watch for new edits

refract watch "Darth_Vader" --api https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php --interval 60000

Polls the wiki every 60 seconds and prints new events as they appear. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Understanding what you see

Fandom wikis differ from Wikipedia in important ways:

Signal	On Wikipedia	On Fandom wikis
`sentence_first_seen`	New factual claim	New character backstory, power level, or timeline entry
`sentence_removed`	Claim removed (possibly contested)	Retcon — lore being erased or rewritten
`category_added` / `category_removed`	Content tagging change	Canon classification shift (e.g., "Canon characters" → "Legends characters")
`template_added`	Policy template	"Citation needed" on lore claims, "Speculation" tags
`revert_detected`	Editorial dispute	Canon war — competing interpretations of what's official

Retcon detection pattern: Watch for sentence_removed on a long-standing claim followed by sentence_first_seen with different text in the same section. This is the mechanical signature of a retcon — old lore replaced by new canon.

Canon divergence across wikis: Compare the same topic across two Fandom wikis with refract diff. Divergence in categories or template usage between wikis signals different interpretations of what's official.

Example: 2014 Disney acquisition

After Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2014, many characters and ships had their canon status reclassified. Refract captures this as a pattern of:

category_removed: Canon characters
category_added: Legends characters
sentence_modified events as backstories were rewritten to match new canon
template_added: {{Legends|canon}} banners

[2014-04-25] category_removed (rev 123456→123457)
  Section: body
  target: Category:Canon characters

[2014-04-25] category_added (rev 123456→123457)
  Section: body
  target: Category:Legends characters

Cross-wiki comparison

For the same fictional universe across competing wikis, use refract diff:

refract diff "Darth_Vader" \
  --wiki-a https://starwars.fandom.com/api.php \
  --wiki-b https://star-wars.fandom.com/api.php \
  --depth detailed

This produces a side-by-side analysis showing where the two wikis diverge on the same topic — different backstories, different categorizations, different levels of detail.

Troubleshooting

Fandom rate limits: Fandom APIs may throttle more aggressively than Wikipedia. Use -c to cache and add --interval 120000 for watch mode if you hit limits.
Private wikis: Pass auth credentials for private or institutional MediaWiki instances: --api-key <token> or --api-user <user> --api-password <pass>.
Custom domain wikis: Fandom wikis hosted on custom domains still expose the MediaWiki API at https://<domain>/api.php. Find the API endpoint by appending ?action=query&format=json to the wiki's base URL.