News talk:Eurofurence 13 bans Softpaw

Not sure what to do here with the large number of spelling mistakes people have made. I don't like pointing the finger at people with [sic] all over the place. At the same time, I'm not sure whether or not we should correct them, as otherwise they are not accurate quotes. Thoughts? --GreenReaper^(talk) 13:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed there were so many when I added the first one, but noticing now it does add up to quite a few. I'd think at least some sort of note is useful so well-meaning people don't "correct" them and render them inaccurate. Perhaps either a note near the beginning stating something like "quotes on this page have been copied verbatim from their source" or commented-out [sic]s that people about to edit will see but won't clutter up the main page? --Riismo 13:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

congrats greenreaper, you just fail to understand completly that whining and writing up shitty articles like this make it all the more difficult to ever get cub art into ef. moron. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.48.236.42 (talk • contribs) .

The purpose of WikiFur News is not advocacy - it is to inform the furry fandom as a whole of the notable events and issues of the day, and explore the potential reasons behind the various positions held by actors in such events. I've tried to explain the position of both sides here - and in particular, the legal concerns involved - for the benefit of our readers. If you have specific suggestions about how to improve our coverage, I'd like to hear them. Calling people names won't achieve that.

Personally I doubt news articles on a single website have much bearing either way, let alone the comments of an overseas fan. This is something that European fans are ultimately going to have to work out themselves. The sources are given, so people are free to read them and make their own minds up about the matter. --GreenReaper^(talk) 21:12, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that this single web site will probably not only read by Furs ... p.e., it is already #3 if you google for "Eurofurence News". Which means that now every real journalist who might hear about EF and googles about news about it will now come to the impression that a reasonable percentage of EF attendants would have bought Cub Pr0n. You might not have gotten that from all the previous posts, but here in Old Europe we have a witch hunt going on towards everything that vaguely looks like pedophilia. If ever, ever, some of the more sensationalist media will make this, based on your text, into a story, however wrong that story may be, there probably won't be a convention in Europe for quite a long time ... So please don't be surprised if the non-Cub-furs will have to distance themselves much more than previously to be on the safe side. (Yse)

Heh. It's #1 here . . . and yes I get your point. I was aware of the situation in Europe, even before I wrote the news story. I am from the UK and keep up with the news there. But like Wikipedia, WikiFur's objective is not particularly to make furry fandom look good to outsiders (or, for that matter, bad) - it is to be true, and informative. The same holds for our news coverage. We have plenty of things on this website that could be used to write a truly terrible news story, if an unscrupulous reporter really wanted to do that. Consider this news story, and the topics it links to, or this one. Conversely, we also record many positive things and good news.

As it happens, the public media news reports that I have seen based on wiki articles (mostly at Wikipedia, but in one case linking to WikiFur) has been fair and balanced, but it is always possible that someone else will write a bad one. Still, as we've seen, they are more than capable of doing so without WikiFur.

Softpaw has appeared to sell well at other furry conventions. I am not sure what you consider to be a significant percentage, but I think 5% of attendees buying any particular item is not insignificant, and that matches with the figures available. We do not know whether or not it would have sold that well at Eurofurence - and really, it is not that important - but what we do know is that Eurofurence cared enough about local laws to ban it. Considering other conventions appear to have accepted it, that seemed sufficient to write about it. Something like "Eurofurence bans public bondage gear" would be less notable because most furry cons do that. It is not news.

It is possible that reporting this news will cause problems for Eurofurence, and for that I am sorry . . . but it would have been wrong to not write it just because of that. I think it unlikely idea that a public story based on it will be the end of the convention, much less of every convention in Europe. Besides, nobody is stopping you from writing another story about Eurofurence which concentrates on less controversial matters, like charity selection or attendance (given the 50% increase predicted for EF13, you might want to think about this). This particular story was brought to my attention, and I though it was newsworthy and happened to know some extra background, so I decided to write about it. --GreenReaper^(talk) 02:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Wait, what?

What's with the financial info at the bottom? What does that have to do with the rest of the page? --IanKeith 09:12, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

In journalism relating to financial matters, it is considered best practices to disclose any significant monetary interest a writer may have in the things he or she writes about, so that readers may take that into consideration when reading the article. This is most commonly seen on sites such as Morningstar and The Motley Fool, which typically add a declaration even if there is no such interest. While WikiFur is not primarily a financial publication, since Softpaw is a commercial organization it seemed suitable to declare my interest, though in this case it is not one that I gain from (if I did - for example, if I was an owner of the company - I might have refrained from writing the story at all). I would not necessarily expect this for an editor writing about a non-profit in which they were involved - say, a member of staff writing about a convention.

Of course, a mere disclosure of interest does not excuse violating NPOV guidelines - stories must remain factual (and be referenced where possible). --GreenReaper^(talk) 14:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)