Hello guys and gals. I am an aspiring web developer and a huge fan of the elder scrolls and the fallout series of games. For the past few months, I've been wanting to do a complex web project to put the skill that I learn into practice. I've thought a lot about what that project should be, and the conclusion was a website that every fallout or the elder scrolls fan on earth would find useful. This website's function certainly won't be original but its implementation is, what I am hoping, will put it over the top. Given the size and scope of Bethesda games, I am sure everyone has used wikia(dot)com at some point. Perhaps you need to find a special weapon or get information on something, it is currently the only place where you can get all the information you want about the game world in question. The problem with it, however, is that it is clunky and a hideous wall of text. I often have to resort to a Youtube video to get help with something in game. This is what I want to fix with my proposed project. I want the website to be beautiful, a visual data base of everything you would ever want to know about the elder scrolls or fallout universes respectively.

It is certainly an ambitious project. One of my goals is to make it extremely easy to author and manage content. Once the site is finished, I will back off, so writers who know a lot more about these universes can step in and populate the website with content. It will take a whole team of community members to run and manage it but I am getting a head of my self. For now, I have some questions, answers to which I couldn't find on the internet.

1. What rules or regulations does Bethesda have regarding fan sites?

2. Are fan sites allowed to reference something from Bethesda game universes in their title/name?

3. Any other issue I should be worried about regarding copyright laws?

Note: This will be a non-profit, community run, fan site whose purpose is to provide information, sort of like an encyclopedia, to users.

I'd worry more about your competition. Things like the TESCS Wiki, Nexusmods, and even the former PlanetTES will make it difficult for your site to gain any traction.

These are questions you should ask http://www.gamesas.com/user/365941-gstaff/

Well, I am pursuing this project because I am learning web development and I want it to be a test bed for my skills. Its doesn't really matter to me what happens to the site beyond that--its up to the community. BTW, a wiki is exactly what its designed not to be. When people lookup something, the system won't just throw up text. There will be interactive graphics, maps, graphs, videos etc. The presentation is what I am focusing on mainly.

The only? No. They aren't even necessarily the best wikis for their respective series. TES has UESP for most info and a few other ESO-focused sites. Fallout has the Vault. Both have mod tools wikis. That's not counting all smaller wikis, non-wiki fansites, walkthroughs, YT etc. There are enough options that I can afford to avoid Wikia like the plague.

Generally speaking, a wiki is only as good as its contributors. You can create a beautiful and easy to use structure, but you can't fill it on your own. Given how difficult it will be to gain large-scale support from other fans, this will probably be only an excercise in website building. Which is very valuable in itself, so it's okay, just, well, don't expect too much.

As for your question, I'd advise to use common sense. Practically every site's name references the game universe in some way, nobody minds. Just don't call it bethesdasoftworks.com and steal content from the official site. One problem I remember was when we used pictures from leaked Dawnguard beta footage. The article was published after the NDA was lifted, but the pictures still had to be taken down. When in doubt, follow Pseron's advice and ask Gstaff, he's the guy who knows.

There is already a http://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/mmw/ hosted at http://www.theassimilationlab.com/ (TAL) and the old http://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/tescosi/ site are now hosted on TAL.

You also mention the Fallout series, perhaps it's better if you send AndalayBay a PM about it rather then build a new site. TAL once had a subforum for Fallout, but due to lack of activity the forum was later renamed to http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/forum/450-other-bethesda-games/ forum.

However, if you still want to create a site and think a wiki page can be somewhat tedious to maintain, I suggest that you consider https://www.joomla.org/ than https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki# since Joomla has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system built-in.

Like what Pseron Wyrd said, Gstaff are the one who can answer your question(s).