Talk:List of online furry conventions in 2020

Should there be an Online furry convention category? There are a Cancelled and a Proposed convention category. I haven't done it because I'm not entirely sure how to create category (despite having created one for the Coyotl Awards). Tai 1 (talk) 12:40, 4 July 2020 (EDT)

I think we pretty much got it covered under "Ongoing", IMHO, but if it grows to become the norm for a while (a long while), could we then switch/add it to "Online (ongoing)"?. - Spirou (talk) 03:22, 5 July 2020 (EDT)

Article Cleanup

Currently, this article has wikify, context, and unref cleanup tags. It would be nice to improve it enough to get some of these tags removed. As a first step, I am consolidating the initial discussion I had with Spirou here:

Hi Spirou. The Online furry conventions article has been expanded and cleaned up over time. When possible, please review it and see if any of the wikify / context / unref / con-stub tags you added can be removed, or leave comments on the talk page of the article so future editors know what needs attention. Thanks! --TJCoyote (talk) 10:33, 27 September 2020 (EDT)

Hmm, the article needs some editing out, specially the reference material and some of the internal and external links. Putting the Cleanup Tags back up, but not inserting back in the con-stub tag, as it is not really a single con article. - 01:43, 2 October 2020 Spirou

Hallo TJCoyote. Right now it seems that Meeran is the lead editor on the article. I'm still a little behind checking the Recent Pages due to RL work, but I will check over the editor's shoulder to see how the article is coming along and/or if the Cleanup Tags need to be modified or removed. I eventually need to check the article out myself as I need to transfer some data from it to the COVID article. Hope this helps. - Spirou (talk) 01:39, 2 October 2020 (EDT)

Hopefully we can continue the discussion here so we can figure out what needs to be done, as it is not clear to me what should be done next. --TJCoyote (talk) 17:48, 4 October 2020 (EDT)

---

I chatted with GreenReaper about this, and he thought the references were the main reason for the tags, and that his personal article on WikiFur is a good model to follow for references. Additional suggestions from GreenReaper:

"But basically - a reference should be a text link to a page, with a date of authorship or (failing that) the date it was accessed, as well as the author and maybe service it is from."

"For those ones the author is implicit as being the convention's corporate body/organizer group - and I imagine that's true for a lot of the references - but if it's less clear, then providing that separately from the link within the reference is also a good idea."

I fixed the references for Furpoc, FurTheMore/Fur-B-Que, and Hex Furry Fest, and he felt that was on the right track, so I did the rest in a similar way.

GreenReaper also thought the introduction could use improvement: "The lede is also a bit short to be an adequate summary of the topic, and could do with more examples of what happens at an online furry convention (both events adapted from regular conventions, and any new online things), which might help with the 'context' concern."

--TJCoyote (talk) 21:52, 13 October 2020 (EDT)

In the context of "here's an article I know has reasonably-formatted and detailed references at 2am", anyway. 😼 Basically things like the title or content of a reference link, its authorship and date of creation (or at least the version the editor viewed) should be included within the ref tag. Otherwise, you have to visit the link to see what it is; or in some cases guess what version of a page or document was being cited to support a fact asserted in the article. I can't tell if that was part of Spirou's concerns, but it sprung out at me. --GreenReaper^(talk) 03:31, 14 October 2020 (EDT)

---

I'll see if I can get some cleanup done this weekend. To curators, is it possible to add a new icon 🌐 for the flagdiv set for online conventions? In addition, do you think it's possible if we could get icons for various types of conventions? For example, 🎥 for livestreaming, a Discord logo, Telegram logo (perhaps a generalized 💬 icon), a thumbnail for VRChat and Second Life (found on their websites). Is there something we can do to sort strictly online furry conventions, versus furry conventions that have been and/or will continue to be held in person? I have suggested the idea of 'hybrid conventions' where a convention could run in person and online simultaneously and we may have yet to see this in 2021.

I'm also split on whether or not a meatspace convention should have a separate page for its online iterations. For example, Megaplex and Megaplex Online. It might be less work if we have two sections on a yearly convention page going forward - one for the real venue, and one for the online. Take for instance how Virtual Anthrocon currently links to Anthrocon 2020. Organization of these pages is a bit of a mess, but I'm willing to fix what I started. I was only making sure I captured documentation during the zeitgeist of online cons this year. I hope you understand. -- Meeran (talk) 01:20, 16 October 2020 (EDT)

Calling for to edits to the online furry convention's layout to match furry convention

At this pace, the online furry convention's current vertical layout will overcome the article itself. The horizontal furry convention tables allow for more expansion while leaving space to expand the article with further data. Better to be edited now instead of leaving it be and have to handle massive data later on. - Spirou (talk) 23:55, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

I am okay with putting down a horizontal chart in replacement of the current table. Before it's removed, I want to manually make enter the information available in the articles regarding these online conventions. Before I do that, I want to check to ask how they should be organized. Are we going to have a separate page for online iterations of pre-existing conventions (example: Megaplex and Megaplex Online), or are we going to merge them based on the year (example: Anthrocon 2020?) ‐ Meeran (talk) 01:15, 22 October 2020 (EDT)

Quick dash response: I don't think it would be an issue, especially since some talk has gone around social media that online may replace in person. if so, online cons should have their standalone article... for now?. This whole thing still rolling by itself, we are winging it as it goes. Everything is up in the air in most talked forums, so we see how we deal with it, edit wise. - Spirou (talk) 23:39, 22 October 2020 (EDT)

I rather like the way upcoming conventions are currently listed, as it gives me a quick overview of what's coming up and where, much like the front page of WikiFur did before all the cons were put on hold. I wouldn't want to lose that. (that is the reason I became involved in revising this article in the first place)

I'm fine with changing the format for past conventions, but I don't know if the horizontal layout is the best choice:

• The horizontal layout assumes events will be held once a year, which isn't necessarily the case for online cons. Furality Online Xperience will have been held twice in 2020, and Japan Meeting of Furries was held twice as well.
• The horizontal layout features attendance prominently, which emphasizes how attendance changes over time. But online cons may not require registration, so may not have an attendance figure.
• And finally, online cons may come and go more than in-person cons, so the grid could become cluttered quickly.

One possibility might be to create a new page for each year of past online cons. That would emphasize the number and type of online conventions over the years, and most importantly, the 2020-2021 pages would paint a picture of how the furry fandom coped with the COVID-19 pandemic.

If we are going to use the horizontal layout or some variant, perhaps we could trial it for a handful of cons first, before putting in a lot of effort to convert everything over. --TJCoyote (talk) 18:41, 22 October 2020 (EDT)

I would like to thank everyone who is involved in this evolving project. I do not have an opinion on which graphs or styles to use for the page, but to TJCoyote, since you're concerned about conventions that are held more than once a year, perhaps we can separate them in H1 and H2 by year since we have yet to see an online convention run three or more times in a year. Also to correct, the JMoF event earlier this month wasn't an official convention, but I still consider it an event (yet also significant enough to be placed on the online cons page) due to the roster of events and vendors. For your recommendation on creating a yearly page of events, see: https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Category:Events_by_year. I will have to update each online con that took place this year so that it placed in this category. Meeran (talk) 19:42, 22 October 2020 (EDT)

To prevent a "Too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario, Meeran, you and TJCoyote seem to be edit leads right now, not saying take over the article, but you both seem to think about the same how this article should flow. There are other editors patrolling on the recent pages (I see FrostTheFox) and curator head boss GreenReaper and curator Equivamp are aware of what is going on, so I will let myself out, unless help is needed (and frankly, I got a folder full of edits to do, and RL work to finish, sry). - Spirou (talk) 23:39, 22 October 2020 (EDT)