Lexicanum

The Lexicanum is an unofficial wiki based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 product lines, like this wiki; it uses the wikimedia format, distinguishing it from the Warhammer 40k Wiki which uses Wikia. They are both fully dedicated to record every bit of fluff there is, EVERY BIT. They do, however, refuse to record any kind of crunch on Warhammer 40k characters for legal reasons, though many Warhammer players prefer to look up the crunch on units rather than fluff, though there are a large amount of people who don't play the game for various reasons (cost being one of the biggest ones if memory serves, Warhammer 40k is very expensive) but are interested in the fluff. They also have very a stringent policy on everything from articles and images to personal comments on talk pages, so much that you'll rarely see any non-Warhammer related humor in any of their talk pages or articles.

Regardless, the Lexicanum is still a good place to look up fluff on anything Warhammer as they've recorded almost all of it, just don't get confused in basing your army on lore rather than stats when playing table-top wise.

When compared to the Warhammer 40k Wiki, the Lexicanum's articles tend to be shorter due to Inquisitor S's paranoia, but are more numerous, so while the WH40k Wiki's Carnifex article is much longer and more detailed than the Lexicanum's, the Lexicanum has Articles on Hive Tyrants and Heirophants, which the WH40k wiki does not. If you want every bit of information that has been collected about a specific WH40k, the Warhammer 40k Wiki is the better bet; though there is the caveat that the WH40k wiki may not have an article for that particular thing. But if you want to be sure of finding an article for even the most obscure wh40k topic, the Lexicanum is your wiki. One notable difference between the Lexicanum and WH40k wiki is that the Lexicanum has been just barely updated to have Dawn of War 2 Retribution information, while the WH40k wiki has yet to have a single edit that displays any information from Retribution.

The WH40k wiki and the Lexicanum of course, have something of a rivalry, but there is little doubt that the Lexicanum is the better known of the two sources, as the WH40k wiki came into existence in its current incarnation only in May 2010, while the Lexicanum was created in 2005. This differential also explains why the WH40k Wiki has a far smaller number of articles than the Lexicanum.

To simplify it: While WH40k Wiki has generally more information on a given topic, it suffers from the fact that fan-made imagery gets in. Lexicanum, on the other hand, is more reminiscent of official Games Workshop material (often word for word), such as codexes, but lacks as much depth on a given topic.

Inquisitor S.

The Grand High Marshall of Punishment himself, Inquisitor S., is the most notorious admin on the English Lexicanum. He is equally reviled and feared for his zealous crusade against any users who dare to break the law. Years of bitter warfare with marauding bands of spammers, trolls, and those who are too stupid to actually read the guidelines, have turned his heart into stone. His patience is short and he shoots first and does not ask questions later.

A severe imbalance in the quality of the Lexicanums is evident in the fact that the English Lexicanum contains only five thousand articles whereas the German Lexicanum has over 10,500: Few of the users in the English Lexicanum care for providing sources for their edits. This difference in policy is also why the Lexicanum's rival, the WH40k Wiki, has much longer and more detailed pages on average than the Lexicanum.

NOTE: While the Warhammer 40k wiki's pages are of far superior quality, it lacks the sheer number and scope of articles that Lexicanum has and allows fan-art on the site, though this has recently changed and the site's rules indicate that fan art will only be accepted in certain rare cases. Additionally, it reserves the majority of its talent and effort for Imperial and Chaos pages while most of the Xenos pages suffer from neglect, though we encourage you of 1d4chan to help remedy that situation.

NOTE: Recently though, something appears to be happening at the Lexicanum, as it has jumped from 5,000 outdated pages to 7,000 quite modern and up to speed pages (though none of the pages reach the epic levels of the WH40k wiki's pages on Space Marine Chapters.) Clearly some pretty fragging major slag is going down on there.

Comparison

Lexicanum	Warhammer 40k Wiki
More articles on obscure fluff	Less articles on obscure fluff
Shorter articles	Longer articles
Slower to update	More recent information
Only official everything	Fanart used
In-text links to citation footnotes	Citations usually only at the end of the page
Rampant paranoia, serious	More open, mostly noobs
Your edits WILL BE REVERTED and YOU WILL BE BANNED	Your edit will probably be reverted, go away
No ads	You will DROWN in advertisements if you don't register
Does have Fantasy information. The German version is slightly better.	No Fantasy information