User:Rat/Why did you change my article

Even though this article is in my User namespace, other editors are welcome to change this article, copy it, and use it.

Why did you change my article?

WikiFur is a community-edited project, so any editor does have the ability to edit almost any article. A few things naturally come as a result of this:

• Uses of "I", "My", "Me", etc. aren't clear as to whom they refer.
• "We" usually refers to the WikiFur community. Unless you're speaking for the WikiFur community, you would avoid "We"
• Since the community edits it, the quality reflects on the entire community. Therefore the community will try to improve it.

Namespace

The concept of namespace comes into play here. Consider the fictional furry DarkMoonGreyWolf. Any interested furry, including DarkMoonGreyWolf himself could create the article DarkMoonGreyWolf, and DarkMoonGreyWolf would not have to create any account on WikiFur for that to happen. This is referred to as the article namespace, or main namespace. The creation of the article also allows the creation of Talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf, which is accessible from the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Any furry, including DarkMoonGreyWolf himself, may comment on the article. Every user who writes on Talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf signs their name at the end of their comment, so "I", "My", "Me", etc. are clear who they refer to, and readers know that the comment is the personal opinion of the writer. It is considered bad form to modify another's signed comment without an important reason.

When DarkMoonGreyWolf signs up at WikiFur, he doesn't have to use the same name as the article, but if he does use that name, that allows the creation of the User page, User:DarkMoonGreyWolf. This is referred to as a user page in user namespace. In a user page, the user in the name of the article is assumed to be the author of any text or opinions, so the user has much leeway in what to do with their user page.

The last namespace that will be discussed here is User talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf. This pages allows conversation to and from DarkMoonGreyWolf about any article or issue. Like Talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf, every user who writes on User talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf signs their name at the end of their comment so readers know that the comment is the personal opinion of the writer.

Questions

I want to start an article on myself. Is that allowed?

Yes, it is even encouraged. This is different from Wikipedia, where writing an article on yourself is discouraged.

My article has an error. Can I fix it?

We want WikiFur to be as accurate as possible. If you can, please fix the article. Sometimes people disagree about whether something is true or false. Other WikiFur users can't always judge which side is correct. In cases like this, uninvolved WikiFur users might write something like "Fur A says X. Fur B says Y." In Wikipedia this is called Neutral Point Of View. Regardless of how heated the dispute gets, the policy no personal attacks always applies.

I deleted something from my article, but it's back. Why?

Experienced WikiFur users will usually restore a previous version of the article when text is deleted without explanation. This is because people looking to disrupt WikiFur often delete text from articles. If you provide a reasonable explanation for the deletion in the edit summary box, most other editors will accept that. Also see WikiFur:Personal_information.

WikiFur is an archive of historical furry information, so even if some statement is no longer true, storing the historical facts is appropriate for WikiFur. For example if your article says you're a member of a group that you're no longer a member of, you might change it from "DarkMoonGreyWolf is an active member of the group Wolves For A Larger Moon." to "DarkMoonGreyWolf used to be an active member of the group Wolves For A Larger Moon, until he left the group in May 2006." Editors should use judgement to decide whether the fact is of historical importance to the fandom, or could no longer be of any interest.

I wanted to include jokes or shout-outs in my article. Why did you delete them?

The article (eg. DarkMoonGreyWolf) is collaboratively written by the community so personal messages aren't appropriate. However, if personal text is presented as a quotation by the subject of the article, it could be included. This does leave the problem of determining if the quote is accurate; a link to a web site or blog post that allows others to verify the quotation may be insisted on.

The article Talk page (eg. Talk:DarkMoonGreyWolf) allows more freedom, but is intended for discussion about the article, and not random content. The User page (ie. User:DarkMoonGreyWolf) is the place for a personal message to the community. Note that even though there is a lot of leeway on the User page, there are still certain things that WikiFur is not. Also, certain templates and categories have specific uses and are not intended for user pages(in general, if the template starts "This user", then it's intended for User space; if the template starts "This person", or "This article" it's intended for article space). Links without warning from article space to user space are discouraged because it leads users to something that looks like an article but that doesn't have to follow article policies like Neutral Point Of View; also, it dissuades users from creating a real article for the person.

Lots of little changes were made to my article: links were changed, capitalization, things like that. Why?

Unless there's a policy on WikiFur that says otherwise, we use the style guidelines from Wikipedia. The important ones are covered in the Furry Book of Style.

One situation that Wikipedia guidelines do not cover is deciding whether to create a link to another page on WikiFur, or whether to make the link to Wikipedia. If there's a furry-specific angle to be covered, then we create a link to WikiFur, otherwise we link to Wikipedia.

I just created the first version of my article, and other editors started rewriting it or proposing to delete it when I wasn't done. How do I stop them from doing that?

As soon as the article is saved to the article namespace, it is open to other editors to change. If you would like to work on an article, you can do it in the Sandbox, or a subpage of your userpage eg. User:DarkMoonGreyWolf/NewArticle. After you're done working on them there, you would then move the article to its final position in article namespace. Another way is to use the preview button to go through revisions of your article before you save them to the wiki.