Talk:Furry lifestyler

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Untitled

Removed the following para:

The 3rd case, especially, is often supported by those believing it with anecdotes, strong "hunches" and other "soft" evidence. Since nobody has tried to perform a scientific study, and likely even have concieved of how to conduct one, someone with a furry lifestyle might easily be dismissed as having psychological faults. On the other hand, it's hard for anyone not to admit that the world doesn't exactly correspond with scientific thought, and strange people and strange events seem to pop up all the time. It is up to the reader to decide personally the truth of these claims.

The article was interesting until this bit which didn't really add anything and seemed to wander off on a gentle rant... - darkov

"...some negative images associated with it and particular people who claim to be lifestylers" - perhaps a good idea to explain a little? Loganberry 13:57, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, leading on from the above, if no-one has any objections (or does it themselves), I might have a stab at some sort of explanation there, though keeping it NPOV is going to be tricky, since I'm sure we all have our prejudices. Also, I think it might be an idea to mention the very high gay/bi population within the furry lifestyle, since that is one of its most visible characteristics. Loganberry 13:25, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Instead of doing that, I've simply taken out the first paragraph, which didn't really belong up there, and incorporated its important parts into the article later on. Loganberry 00:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Sj's merge proposal

My immediate instinct is to oppose this, on the grounds that there are people who are lifestylers who are not really fans - eg those for whom the spiritual side of their connection with animals is far more important than looking at pictures, writing stories etc. Some of those people don't use the phrase "furry lifestyle", true - but some do. I would say that furry lifestyler is a subset of furry, but not necessarily a subset of furry fandom. If consensus proves to be against me, though, I won't yell too much. Loganberry (Talk) 12:00, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal for merging. There really is not enough material here to justify lifestylers having their own article. By definition wouldn't furry lifestyle consist of furry fans who make furry a lifestyle? -- Krishva 22:14, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Not necessarily, since as I've said not all lifestylers are also fans. It's also interesting that furry fandom doesn't currently link to this article at all, and in fact doesn't even mention the word "lifestyle(r)" - you could read right through it without being aware that we even exist! I'm putting in a comment on the Talk:Furry fandom page asking people there what they think, since Sj didn't post the merge proposal notice there so many will be unaware of it. Loganberry (Talk) 22:43, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I apologize, but it seems a little absurd to me to say that furry lifestylers are not a part of furry fandom. People outside the furry fandom who believe in totem animals (such as shamanistic tribes in which such beliefs are tradition) are certainly not classified as furry lifestylers. It seems like there has to be some association with furry fandom in order for someone to apply that category to themselves.

The furry fandom page should link to furry lifestyler though, I do agree with that. I have no idea why it didn't already. --Krishva 08:12, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree with Loganberry. I'm pretty sure that the motivation behind this merge is not based on notability or size of article. Also, we need to find a more appropriate image than that one (some fursuiters use fursuits to adopt an inner persona, but that's far from universal). Almafeta 10:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Okay then... off you go and find something that all furs can agree on. I'll phone up the Guinness Book of Records ready for when you get back. =;) Loganberry (Talk) 11:54, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

The "Furry Forever" symbol made popular by the alt.lifestyle.furry crowd might be more appropriate image to use. —Xydexx 01:14, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not aware of that one... but perhaps the Furry Peace symbol, which was the generally pro-lifestyler, pro-"Let's all just get along" movement during that Burned Fur/Frozen Fur brujaja? Almafeta

Might as well throw my $0.02 in here too while I'm at it: I'd be opposed to the merge simply due to the fact that alt.lifestyle.furry was created for discussing things that weren't related to furry fandom. —Xydexx 01:14, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Saying that there is no argument for merging on the talk page and removing the merge tag is wrong. There are people here that represent more that would argue this page must be merged- why? Because nothing on this page is verifiable by outside sources, such as newspapers etcetera. Therefore what we have here is a consensus, which is by the rules what wikipedia is not. We create articles by things that we can verify, not things that we can all agree upon. There's plenty of news coverage for furries and their lifestyles, why then, if furry lifestylers are notable, are there no references on this page? The answer may be simply that everyone editing this page doesn't want references to go by, because they wish to write instead whatever they think without being strained by outside verification, and that this page is simply a POV fork. 66.41.66.213 14:01, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

There are actually fewer outside sources than one might think on the subject of furry lifestylers. Furry is still a relatively underground fandom/subculture. As such, most news coverage of furry lifestylers tends to be sensational and one-sided. It would be irresponsible to reference unreliable sources that give inaccurate information. MTV, Vanity Fair, and CSI, for example, are hardly reliable sources.

I should also note that this article isn't entirely unsourced; there is the link to alt.fan.furry and the "The Sociology of Furry Fandom" essay. -kotra 23:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Please read the verifiability guidelines for wikipedia. Your complaints of lack of verifiable, notable information on this topic promotion of use of forums and personal websites as sources are arguments for the deletion of this page. Lotusduck 13:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with you if it weren't for

1. the article isn't completely unsourced, there are the two links I mentioned, and

2. "In some cases, where an article (1) makes descriptive claims the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable adult without specialist knowledge, and (2) makes no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, or evaluative claims, a Wikipedia article may be based entirely on primary sources (examples would include apple pie or current events), but these are exceptions." (from WP:NOR).

In my mind, the statements that are not sourced are common knowledge easily verified by anyone who takes a good look at the furry fandom. If you doubt the validity of specific statements, please be specific, otherwise we won't know which to source/change/remove. -kotra 03:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I've seen several (more or less serious) newspaper articles about furries, though I can't remember whether any of them specifically dealt with the furry lifestyle. All of them were from the US; it's unfortunate that we don't have more of a worldwide perspective there; but even so if someone (possibly even me) could dig out a couple that are still online and linkable to, we could see whether they would be suitable for references to this article. Loganberry (Talk) 13:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem I see is that even if there are newspaper articles about furry lifestylers, they probably are not very accurate and get some things wrong. Should we include such things here just so we can say "Yay, we have references!"? --Conti|✉ 14:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Nevertheless, there's still a chance they get things right. I'd like to see the articles first, then we can judge if they're suitable or not. If the articles aren't misleading or inaccurate AND they're from reliable sources, they'd be very welcome here, or in other articles like Furry fandom. If you want to hunt down the articles, Loganberry, you'd be awesome. -kotra 06:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I remember an online newspaper article about furries and their lifestyle which I thought was a very good one. But of course I can't remember the name of the newspaper, but I'll search for it a bit, maybe I'm lucky. --Conti|✉ 11:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

There might be more fair articles in non-U.S. publications, just like comic books are less ridiculed in other countries. Coyoty 20:30, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Most of you are talking about info on furries in general, not the non-notable and unverifiable neologism of forumites "furry lifestyler". Verifyable means "verifiable through published, reliable sources" on wikipedia. I question this entire page. I question the distinctions and definitions between a furry and a furry lifestyler. I can see there being defintely tons of extra citable info on furries in general, but some furry neologism that there is little or no consensus as to the actual meaning, I doubt there's articles on the term "furry lifestyler" very much. Kotra, you cited exactly why this page needs sources, it's just that you took "without specialist knowlege" and thought it meant "who takes a good look at the furry community in my opinion." This is not okay. Lotusduck 19:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Sexuality

I think that the numbers quoted for 'very high population of [furs] who are gay or bisexual' in the article are off, and perhaps purposefully meant to mislead. I did my own research on the subject, and though I'm not about to quote my own studies (no personal research), I found that while there are no more homosexual furs (percentage-wise) than in the USA as a whole, there are almost twice as many bisexuals (~10% compared to 5%).

I also see the ED crowd is here now, too... great. Almafeta 10:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Interesting... again this is personal experience so can't be considered Wikipedic, but the numbers you quote seem remarkably low. In the UK furry lifestyler community, I definitely feel as though I'm in a minority as a heterosexual, and your combined total of (inferring) under 20% for gay/bi furs isn't remotely enough to account for that. Combined, I'd say that they were indeed a majority. Perhaps there's a Transatlantic difference? I wish someone would do some more research, since at the moment Rusts' survey seems to be the only one suitable for Wikipedia. Loganberry (Talk) 11:52, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I am inclined to think that survey is not appropriate to this article at all--it is discarded with the line that explains Rust did not restrict his survey to lifestylers. Considering also that Rust primarily interviewed congoing furries (instead of the majority of furry fandom, which does not regularly attend conventions), the whole survey is statistically questionable at best. Statistics should always be approached with caution, especially with nothing to compare them to--they are very easy to manipulate. --Krishva 08:26, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

Uh huh. Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that the majority of furry fandom doesn't regularly attend conventions, or is that just your statistically questionable biased opinion? -:) —Xydexx 00:55, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Uh, I don't have any evidence outside of personal experience, no, but I think the thing that needs to be proven is that a majority of furry fans do attend conventions (in this case, also, American conventions). That's the only way that survey could be included, but even then, it's still questionable. To be scientifically valid, more surveys would have to be performed, probably over a series of years at several different conventions. The sample pool for this survey was very, very small. The fact that the lifestylers themselves are disagreeing with these statistics emphasizes that. --Krishva 21:08, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

According to a survey on Flayrah, 60%—a majority—of furry fans said they were attending a furry convention this year. While you might question its validity, I'd say it is more valid than your personal opinion which has no numbers to back it up. —Xydexx 04:11, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Then again, polls from Flayrah are good for polling Dutch furries... Almafeta 08:37, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

sorry for steping in here but i just thought i should mention that nether I nor any other fur i know has even herd of these conventions other than in passing and definitly have not been polled P.S. i must apolgise for my spelling, im deslexic, im alowed to spell bad:P --reacher--

Animal Masks

As I understand it, a man named Fred Patten wrote a book titled Animal Masks: Anthropomorphics As Modern Totems about this topic. Does anyone have the book, and can list it as a reference in this article (and skim it for ways to expand the article)? Almafeta 08:37, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I've only ever seen it referred to in previews before it was due to be published (such as in this 1997 ConFurence infosheet); Amazon doesn't seem to know about it, and it would seem that if it was published, it didn't make much of an impression.

(And slightly off-topic, but what I did find from Mr Patten (well, edited by him) was Furry! The Best Anthropomorphic Fiction Ever!, which is due to be released on 28 October.) Loganberry (Talk) 03:32, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I checked both the Library of Congress and OCLC, and neither one lists Animal Masks.... Did find the Furry! anthology, and did an interlibrary loan on it. I'm thinking that his Animal Masks book just hasn't been released yet, though I must admit it sound very interesting!! --VikÞor [[User talk:Vik-Thor|Talk]] 19:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit War: Verifying

I've seen editing warring about verifying subjects. I have seen original research in the furry categories--some admitted and some just hanging out there. I also see lots of link reduction, so I ask you all: What can we do? How can we maintain a source listing for everything while satisfying the link reducers because I see no furry site with full information on everything and even then how can we know everything On The Internet is accurate? Maybe, just maybe, the sole link for this article has inaccuracies? Arights 07:26, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it does. It's still a useful source, though, especially when there are no better.

Ultimately Wikipedia is never going to be able to have verified articles that cover all topics in full, simply because it doesn't accept "original research" (a phrase which sounds odd to me, though I understand where it comes from - nowadays it's not "research" in most cases, it's just "saying what you think is true"), or sources that haven't been through some sort of a publication verification process. For some topics that's all you have. Those topics are going to be less well-represented in Wikipedia as a result.

We're trying to make WikiFur be the site with full information on everything furry (or at least links to everything, where appropriate). Our standards for verifiability are, naturally, much lower, though we do try to check things and give appropriate links if they exist. Of course, we're probably never going to be an authoritative source for Wikipedia's purposes, either, but what can you do? Furry fandom is largely an online phenomenon - at the time when it wasn't, it wasn't really big enough to gain much attention, and it's still not gained (as far as I know) detailed studies of it, at least not any that treat it separately from other online phenomenon.

My personal feeling is that this is a failing in Wikipedia. I have hopes that the upcoming rating/validation system will be a far better solution, even though I'm sure people will try to abuse it. Deleting valid information that just doesn't fit your idea of a topic that should be in an encyclopedia or - worse - for reasons of not being able to prove it (for Wikipedia's high standard of proof) always grated on me. I'm sure Brittanica or Encarta doesn't disclose all of its sources, either, but their articles still have value. GreenReaper 09:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I think sticking directly to policy and guidelines is neccessary. There are many different informational wikis. Wikipedia requires information to be based on published reliable sources. There are many, many articles of varying viewpoints from reliable sources on this topic. Creating personally valid statements or a general consensus on what's seems to be true is lazy people abusing wikipedia as their publisher. Many of these people have thought out ideas that they should try to get published- they shouldn't load these onto wikipedia. You can debate policies on the policy guideline discussion page, but in the rest of wikipedia, we should adhere to them. No original research will only strengthen this page if people take the time to find their sources. Lotusduck 15:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

While I understand the reasons behind the original research policy, I find it a bit weird to apply it to topics like these where there simply are almost no "reliable sources" about. I've seen this discussion on a few other articles about other small subcultures as well, and I think we need to find a solution for this problem. If we just write about furries from, lets say, newspapers and other "reliable" media, then our definition would read something like "Furries are people who like to dress up in furry suits, some of them like to have sex while doing so.", because that's pretty much what the so called reliable sources said about furries so far. I know that is completly wrong, but, as I am not a reliable source, how am I able to convince others that this is so, according to our current policies? I'm not saying we should ignore the original research rule, but there simply are not always reliable sources about a certain topic. --Conti|✉ 17:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

The issue here is which do you compromoise first - NPOV or Verifiability? You can of course cite television episodes and then say "but they're not telling the whole story, or an accurate portrayal of the part they do tell, just what will sell episodes", but how do you back that up? And are television episodes particularly good sources of verification, either?

I guess one solution would be to have several reputable sources do studies on the furry fandom. Any ideas as for how to go about that? GreenReaper 21:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

The "original research" declaration is often misused, and applied to information that is not original and is common knowledge among people familiar with a subject. There is often no primary sources but those people testifying personally that the information is true, or correcting the information when it's false. --Coyoty 03:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Common knowledge that is not verifiable by published reliable sources is in violation of the verifiability policy. The policy literally says "verifiability not truth"- probably not the nicest bit of policy I could quote, but we should respect wikipedia policies, anyone who doesn't want to can go on any of the other wiki based encyclopedias. Lotusduck 02:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, let's see the edit box I'm typing into says "Content must not violate any copyright and must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL" even though this is a talk page and I could talk on someone's talk page and say "Hey, guess what crazy thing happened to me IRL?" with no proof. The whole wikipedia verifiable article says basically, if it's not verifiable than after discussion on talk page, it can be removed. I see unsourced articles all over this encyclopedia. I was reading an article to find out something the other day and I stopped to finish it later. When I returned, key points I learned were now proven false. Arights 12:12, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Published reference

Publishing applies to digital information as well as analog. The link in question is therefore a published article by the definition of publications. It also is referenced in this article, and therefore is a reference and not just an external link. -kotra 03:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-conventions require 'published reliabel; to mean not self published. Is visi.com an edited or peer reviewed source, or rather an outlet for self publishing? Lotusduck 03:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Please do not revert a revert without discussing it first (this is why I started a talk section). The reason you gave for changing its status was that it wasn't published. This I disagree with (self-published still is published). If you want to reduce the status of the link from Reference to External Link, please remove the reference marks from the article so it doesn't appear to be a Reference still.

As for the link being not reliable and peer-reviewed, it seems that it is indeed peer-reviewed to some extent (see the comments at the bottom of the page). Reliability aside, it remains a good source of information (as stated above by Greenreaper), and one of very few such sources available on the subject. Did you read the article yourself or did you just skim it? Regardless, this issue should be discussed and made to try to reach an agreement before you or I reverts what was already reverted. -kotra 04:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

You reverted me and gave a reason when I called it external links, I reverted you and gave a reason again. I don't see the dispute.

Now, policy has something to say about self published sources: At the other end of the reliability scale lie personal websites, weblogs (blogs), bulletin boards, and Usenet posts, which are not acceptable as sources. Rare exceptions may be when a well-known professional person or acknowledged expert in a relevant field has set up a personal website using his or her real name. Even then, we should proceed with caution, because the information has been self-published, which means it has not been subject to any independent form of fact-checking.

So if the person who wrote this can be found to be an acknowledged expert in a relevent feild, then it can be a reference. If he has not, then it can not. Simple? Lotusduck 23:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I concede that reverting twice is within the rules, but personally I try to come to an agreement before I revert a second time. (this is why I've left your edit alone for now)

This is just my personal style, though.

As for the rule, I feel that it's difficult to apply to a subject like furry, which has few, if any experts acknowledged outside of the fandom itself. The writer of the link in question is about as close as one can get to an expert in the field, in that he has taken the time to study and analyze the field extensively in an objective and scientific manner. As a plus, he has signed his real name and allowed peer review of his conclusions displayed on the very same page. This is probably as close as one can get to a reliable source on the subject of furry, which is why in my opinion it should be listed as a reference. As you yourself have said, this article needs sources. If objective and reliable sources are in short supply, one must either sacrifice sources or a small amount of percieved reliability. Which should it be? -kotra 07:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I am not in favor of removing the information based off of this website outright. We can have the perspective from it without losing reliability by calling a personal webpage a reference. Although, there are enough verifiable sources on the Furry article- having some amount of unverifiable information on that page is preferable to having this page be wholly unverifiable. After a few cuts of original research, do you think that lifestyler could be merged there? Lotusduck 00:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiousity, what reliable sources do you have on things relating to furries? I don't know if this article should be merged to Furry fandom, I mean, why? I wouldn't really oppose it, but I see no real reason to do it, either. --Conti|✉ 02:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If Furry lifestyler was merged into Furry fandom, it would become way too long. It already is probably too long, certain parts needing their own articles... -kotra 03:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The only information on this page that isn't on the Furry page or the Otherkin page is original research. It's redundant and violating policy all at the same time. There may be one or two true things that need to be said that are said on this page and not elsewhere, so those should be merged into other articles and this should be a redirect. Lotusduck 02:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

What original research are you referring to? If you mean the linked article that we have been discussing, a quick rereading of the article shows that there aren't any concepts or statistics attributed from that article, that it only is referenced as an example of serious research. If you meant something else, please point it out because I see no research, original or otherwise, in this article. It is simply a description of a lifestyle that anyone would encounter if they explored the furry fandom. Also keep in mind that the repeated editing of this article by many people ensures that little, if any inaccurate information is presented. This of course why Wikipedia works so well (and conversely, doesn't). -kotra 08:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Also I'd like to note that furry lifestylers and otherkin are significantly different. Similar, with much overlap, but still different. -kotra 08:17, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Policy states that "we only publish material that is verifiable with reference to reliable, published sources." I have no reason to believe any part of this article is not original research. Lotusduck 23:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Original research means that the person referencing a source is also the source, and not a third party. It this case, the source and the person referencing it are separate people and may not know each other personally. Third party sources cannot be "original research". --Coyoty 00:25, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to dispute the policy here, there are certainly good reasons for it to exist. And yes, you are right, almost none of this article can be verified by reliable and published sources. The problem is: What has been published about this topic is mostly wrong, it is simply not true or interpreted in a very wrong way. Exactly the same applies to many of the articles about furries, and surely hundreds of other kinda minor or very new topics. I honestly don't know what we shoud do here, but strictly doing what policy says can't be the right thing here, we should not spread misinformation because "published sources" do so. --Conti|✉ 00:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

News articles

This edit has news article, which are good, but the site (some furry site which wouldn't count as a site proper for wikipedia sources) is where they come from. The site says the news articles come from other sources of REAL NEWSPAPERS--that's what should be linked to. Either URLs to the newspapers, or pictures of the newspaper articles. Just some place claiming that there's a news article is sketchy as a source. DyslexicEditor 03:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

This has been corrected. The original links were mainly tentative placeholders while I tracked down more direct links. Coyoty 03:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

One is a google cache. I don't know what wikipedia policy is on image captures of articles, but I think that the article need screen captures of scans of the original article (public libraries may have it) once before google clears its cache. Somewhere I saw some scan of a newspaper article on furries, too. It was some different one, though. I wonder if anyone knows if those are good sources by wikipedia policy. DyslexicEditor 03:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Citing sources#What to do when a reference link "goes dead", archives like the Internet Archive and Google's cache may be used for defunct sites, although the Google cache may be temporary. The Internet Archive would be better, but at the moment it's down due to a short circuit in their data center's air conditioning. Coyoty 04:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The articles are great, and show great potential for this page, or some page being written from them. Of course, neither is centrally focused on the idea of "furry lifestylers" as separate from furry fans. Still, with sources as an example, I feel it is less contentious to gut the original research from this article. First of all, someone has to make a coherent opening phrase, preferably of course, based closely on a published source. The current one is weasel wordy: to paraphrase "A furry lifestyler is generally possibly maybe considered by some people to be someone somewhat related (or maybe not) to furry fandom, although many furry lifestylers define themselves as not being furry fans or don't want to be called furry lifestylers" etcetera etcetera. There might be some sense in there, but it's strangling itself.Lotusduck 04:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a distinction, they say, between the people who enjoy the costuming aspects of the culture and lifestylers, who incorporate their animals into their lives in a more spiritual way. Am I misreading that as being a reference to the difference between furries and furry lifestylers? *headshake* I'm going to try and give this a rewrite, using some of the sources that have turned up, and see what happens. Tony Fox 23:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

And done. Tony Fox 00:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking about this and going over the articles and this article seems about furry lifestyler as IRL, and less online. There's a lot of people that just do things of their interests online and not IRL, but still make it their online lifestyle.

For the verifiability, there's been talk of "this media source is biased" and well lots of media sources and veriable work is biased about all sources of things. The thing best for wikipedia in my opinion is to say "X source says this about furries", "Y source says this about furries". It's more of a couresty to the reader to let them make up their own mind. I sometimes read articles I'm interested in that include acadamic concepts that are theories and nobody can agree on which theory is right, so the article keeps changing. For the reader's benefit it should list all no matter how wrong they are: Just this source says this, while this source says that. Maybe even proving things wrong. Like if MTV and Vanity Fair are wrong, then we should list what they say and then give a verifiable source that disputes them. It's really about the reader here. The reader is going to make up their own mind no matter what. I've found in other articles recently, I've had to dig through the history to find all the information because people couldn't agree on which theories to put, when they should have listed them all, and so it's a back and forth article changing every month/year thing. One of the main furry editors said NPOV is listing of all POVs, instead of trying to cut things out. DyslexicEditor 12:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I like this. It would allow sources to be cited, while not necessarily presenting them as fact. For example, instead of this:

Furries are people who have sex in fursuits.

there could be:

According to MTV, Furries are people who have sex in fursuits.

-kotra 23:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

chitchat about merger

On wikifur I saw they have furry lifestyler and they compared it to trekkie lifestyler (maybe something else I read). Also responding to Tony Fox, I mentioned that sex stuff was mentioned here and the sex stuff seemed a lifestyler thing to me rather than simple fandom. I'll draw a neutral comparisson. A fan of a science fiction show vs. a fan that has a fetish for the alien women on the show (provided the alien women look radically different and not are just something trivial like ears or nose.) DyslexicEditor 21:04, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Not merged yet. Let's do a sloppy job (i.e. cut & paste)! DyslexicEditor 00:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I think someone did, but it wasn't deleted . . . GreenReaper 19:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the important bits have been moved. I'll take a look at what's been included in the Furry fandom article, see if anything's missing, then change this to a redirect tonight. Tony Fox (speak) 20:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I checked, and it looks like the important bits have been merged appropriately. I'm going to redirect. If anyone has suggestions for additions, remember that the history remains in place, and you can go to the redirect page by using the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_lifestyler?redirect=no and going from there. (Probably relatively common knowledge, but I figured I'd make it easy.) Tony Fox (speak) 04:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Recreation vs. redirect

The article as it stands after being recreated from the redirect has little to stand alone from the Furry fandom article; what's here could easily be included there, and pretty much is, from what I can see. Is there enough about the lifestyler concept to stand alone in terms of references? Personally I doubt there is, and don't think it would stand another AFD. I'd be interested in further discussion; my view is that this should be redirected as before. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Incorporating previous versions of this article, plus citations from aforementioned books and (possibly, don't know if their license would still allow it) information incorporated from Wikifur, would make this a properly-cited article of about 20k-30k or so. Almafeta (talk) 15:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiFur's licence is under cc-by-sa-3.0 exclusively (ie not GFDL as well). Does that help? Loganberry (Talk) 20:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiFur is also available under the GFDL except for versions that are brought in from a third-party CC-BY-SA-only source. That does not mean you have to use it, of course, but for Wikipedia it would probably be a good idea. The GFDL requires you either to provide a history or to cite the last five substantive authors; CC-BY-SA requires you to link the article. GreenReaper (talk) 23:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the authoritative correction! It's a real shame that (even though largely for unavoidable historical reasons) so many free resources don't simply have one licence for everything, no exceptions. It really would make transfers massively easier if you didn't have to keep looking up whether stuff under licence A could be included in an article under licence B, or vice versa, or both, or neither! Loganberry (Talk) 14:23, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, in most cases people just want CC-BY-SA, so that is what we advertise. The cost of providing GFDL too is relatively low, and mostly paid already (writing WikiFur:Copyrights). But this is getting off-topic. :-) GreenReaper (talk) 13:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI, Wikipedia is CC-BY-SA now. See Wikipedia:Copyrights. Zetawoof_(ζ) 15:15, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I am very much aware of the licensing change. :-) Wikipedia now allows the import of CC-BY-SA-only material; however as the GFDL is still offered where possible it is still preferable to import under both CC-BY-SA and GFDL. GreenReaper (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)