October 6, 2007 | Biography

J. James Beaudoin (also known as Joe Beaudoin Jr. or “plain, simple Joe“) is the project leader and researcher for Battlestar Wiki, an online encyclopedia dedicated to all of the Battlestar Galactica television shows and spin-offs, and the CEO FrakMedia! Productions, LLC., the company that oversees it.

As of 2010, Joe is the Propworx’s Technical Director and oversees the development of Propworx.com and its related websites, as well as provides technical assistance. Prior to that, he worked at the company’s Santa Ana headquarters during the 2009 Battlestar Galactica auctions as an advisor, amongst other various job responsibilities.

A majority of his time is spent developing White Eye Productions and its productions in the role of Vice President, alongside his business and creative partner Lawrence White.

ORIGINS

Early on, Joe’s entrepreneurial spirit lead him to become a columnist for the Star Trek Galactic Newsletter in the mid-1990s, work with the William Shatner Connection endorsed “Bring Back Kirk” campaign, and later working for sites such as TrekNation, BattlestarGalactica.com, and the Battlestar Fan Club. It is at the Battlestar Fan Club where he met Lawrence White, who had the dream of starting up his own comic book company where the creators retained ownership of their characters and stories.

Joe’s interest in Battlestar Galactica was born out of his general interest in science fiction, being a fan of The X-Files, Babylon 5, Star Trek, Space: Above and Beyond, and Irwin Allen’s various series. After catching reruns of the show on the Sci-Fi Channel back in the 90s and around 2000, he became a fan with a “love/hate” relationship with Battlestar, helping out in the revival efforts undertaken by Richard Hatch (Apollo / Tom Zarek).

In relation to this, he began the Battlestar Galactica InfoSphere, a large portal-like website that merged fan created endeavors and encyclopedic information. Later, he created the PDF-published electronic magazine called The Galactican, which featured interviews with such personalities as Herb Jefferson, Jr., articles about the revival efforts, and op-ed pieces about the show. In 2003, Joe made the decision to shut down the websites, as he felt the BSG community—in light of Ron Moore’s re-imaginging—was too bitter for him to work along side of.

Initially heavily skeptical about Ron Moore’s re-imagining of the concept, Joe grew to love the series after watching the first season with recordings provided by a friend in the United Kingdom, where the show first aired. This lead to rekindling his interest in the series, and launch of the Battlestar Wiki project.

BATTLESTAR WIKI BACKGROUND

The Battlestar Wiki project, whose roots date back to the inception of the Battlestar Galactica InfoSphere, started in February 2005 after discovering Wikipedia.

Starting off as just a mere hobby and side pet-project, Battlestar Wiki soon experienced large growth spurts that turned running the website into a job in and of itself. Realizing quickly that he needed to learn about the benefits and drawbacks to the wiki model, Joe began editing controversial subjects on Wikipedia to learn more about its community from the inside, entering himself into situations that contributors on the site face on a daily basis, eventually ascending to become a Wikipedia administrator in December 2005. “I deliberately sought to test the waters with the whole wiki-concept. Coming from an “old-school webmaster” background, I had my fears about running a website that people from all over the world can contribute to on a dynamic basis.” Eventually, Joe left the Wikipedia project because “I had learned more about how not to approach a dynamic, so-called ‘Web 2.0′ website than I had ever believed possible. Plus, there is a disturbing lack of general oversight, accountability, and even abuses of power by the administrators. I really began to question Wikipedia’s effectiveness as a tertiary reference source.” Along with the intelligent, hard-working volunteer contributors at Battlestar Wiki, Joe was able to learn from Wikipedia’s mistakes and generate—as a team—a website that AOL called “most comprehensive.”

Visited by hundreds of thousands of people per month, the Wiki is one of the largest and most frequented websites on the Internet, ranking in the top 20 to 30 thousand websites according to both Alexa and Quantcast. It has been repeatedly mentioned in such official venues as USA Today, Wired.com, UGO, and other well-known entertainment websites. Impressed by the Battlestar Wiki’s comprehensiveness, Propworx CEO Alec Peters offered Joe a position helping chronicle the history of the new Battlestar’s numerous props, costumes, and set pieces.