Overleg:WikiFur

Controversie Nederlandse WikiFur

So here's how it went from my perspective:

• Examining our traffic, I saw potential demand for a Dutch WikiFur, and asked members of Dutchpaw (notably Pegla and o kill) what they thought, and if they knew anyone who wished to start it. Pegla explained that most people who spoke Dutch also spoke English; o kill said he didn't see much benefit in the idea - but did not condemn it, either - and that he would ask around. That was the last I heard about it until later.
• In February, I was approached by Kashidom, who was interested in starting one up. I thought "hey, someone did want it after all. Great." Many other languages have been started in such a manner, some for very small communities.
• Kashidom started by creating a page about hirself, and filled out pages associated with that, including topics of sexual/gender identity and hermaphrodites. The English WikiFur has such topics; however, most of the Dutch content was not furry-specific.
• Kashidom also created several categories, templates and redirects, and protected them, along with the main page, fearing that the project would be vandalized otherwise.
• I explained - at length - that this was not something to be worried about, and hie unprotected many of these (I unprotected the main page).
• Kashidom also started creating articles on general furry topics, and was editing them sporadically between work on other projects, along with RayneVanDunem (an English WikiFur administrator).
• Dutchpaw members came to the two-month old wiki and saw a clearly unfinished site, with an article list half-consisting of sexual/gender-related topics (though many were redirects or stubs; in reality there were only two complete gender articles).
• They came to me, concerned that this would damage their repuation; I told them that the appropriate action if they did not like it was to edit it, and to talk to the current editors and the person in charge (Kashidom) if they could not.
• "So fix it" is standard practice among wikis, but in this case it was seen as forcing the community to contribute to a site which they had not requested (and perhaps had decided they did not want, though I was not aware of this).

The current version of the article presents my actions as a denial of responsibility . . . but this assumes anything with WikiFur on it is "GreenReaper's site". This is like saying that the Dutch Wikipedia is Jimmy Wales' responsibility; at best, it's not the whole story.

On a wiki, editorial authority belongs to the editors. Since I cannot directly write other languages, I cannot be a full member of the editing communities, so I normally leave it to the founders and their editors to run them. From en:WikiFur:

[GreenReaper] acts as the public face of the English project — and, by extension, WikiFur as a whole. However, editorial authority is vested in the entire body of administrators, and his involvement in non-English projects is normally limited to technical or advisory matters.

While agreeing that improvements could be made, I felt the first person to talk to (if anyone) was Kashidom, and that the complainants was trying to "go to the top", undermining the authority of local editors.

I don't think anyone involved had bad intentions. There were a lot of misunderstandings and differences in opinions. Together these produced an unfortunate outcome, which I hope is temporary. GreenReaper 26 apr 2010 00:32 (UTC)