Needs Cleanup: Furry Fandom

Furry Fandom

I can see a lot of problems with the aforementioned page, which I'll mention in bullet form.

• It's set as a Useful Note but is not in the UN subspace and looks more like a Work page, and for some reason, this means the subjective catcher is off. Which means...
• The page at the moment is filled with subjectives, mostly about the hatedom. I'm pretty sure the rules for subjectives extends in the general case to UN, with exceptions if it's needed. A lot of them are not.
• The page suffers a lot because of subjectives, and makes one of the themes of the page "the hatedom are stupid poopy heads". While a quantum of positivity/sympathy is allowed and somewhat encouraged in mainspace, this borders into negativity against that group, which is not allowed. It also makes the page seem apologetic about the Vocal Minority.
• And finally, the article has an insular tone; it uses terms common to the community but doesn't explain them. For example, "fursona". It's simple enough to figure out but still goes unexplained.

We could deal with splitting the page into a Useful Notes page and a Work page. It would allow for an actual explanation worthy of the UN tag and still document actual tropes. Still, a lot of cleanup needs to be done for this article.

edited 9th Apr '11 2:21:01 PM by Sceptre

I know virtually nothing about furries, but I have to ask: why would it be a work page? It's a description of a subculture - makes much more sense to simply make it into Useful Notes and not bother with the work idea. Some useful notes pages do have tropes associated (see: the historical wars listed on the Military and Warfare Tropes page), so creating a separate page to list the tropes seems unnecessary.

Out of curiosity, do we have any pages for other subcultures? If not, why not?

edited 9th Apr '11 3:27:04 PM by nrjxll

Yes, there are. Hipster would be a good example, though not in the UN namespace. I'm in favor of moving this (and all subculture pages) into Useful Notes.

I fixed the tag so that it would show up on the page in question. When entering an article title, you need to use the CamelCase form of the name.

This shouldn't be a work because individual works are created by furries, such as web comics. It's not a work any more than "People who wear goth" is a work. "This goth outfit I built" is a work (albeit not the sort of work T Vtropes deals with) but "People who wear goth" isn't a work and "People who like furries" isn't either.

edited 6th Dec '11 5:00:40 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Like I said above: move it into the Useful Notes namespace. A useful notes page can still have tropes, but the subjective ones would have to go, which would be good. And it needs a rewrite as well, although there's not much I can do about that.

It's not a work. It's just an extended rant about people who don't like furries, and every three tropes there's a line which basically says, 'We don't all shag animals, honest'.

edited 8th Dec '11 3:07:14 AM by abloke

This definitely shouldn't be a work page.

Are we gonna DO anything here?

I know I'm not going to - I don't have enough knowledge of furries to change up the page at all. All I know is that it doesn't work as it is now.

I've stripped a lot of the YMMV and negativity, plus a few things that I didn't think were relevant. Does it look better?

Dead silence. Why am I not surprised?

Welp, seems that no-one else can be bothered to deal with any of this...which is VERY understandable. Given the cultural warfare that still rages on, and the internet politics that often condemn even a marginal association to the furry fandom, putting forth ANY such overview or portrayal of the fandom, even with this wiki's informal and generally level-headed authority, means you'll probably need some stones on the order of glacial erratics.

However, this issue is not going away, and I am of the impression that TV Tropes didn't get to where it is now by being non-committal and playing it safe to a fault. Taking risks and stepping on toes, like it or not, is part of our business. We are very definitely going to do this with this article, but if it survived and people made use of it for so long in its less than ideal state, further revision and coverage will only make it more useful. I think that this article is needed, which fortunately seems to be the popular opinion...and well, look at my name.

It's true that I have some personal investment in this, but I'm not doing this for me. I'm not necessarily doing it for the fandom either. I'm taking a part in this because, in my view, that covering the furry subculture is in clear accordance with the wiki's mission. There are notable works on here that have either been produced by the fandom or have a definite relationship to it, and having insight into the fandom will potentially aid people's understanding...I believe that's suitable raison d'être.

Whoops, hit that send button just a smidge too early.

Anyways, on to what we can actually do about it. Even in its initial "opinionated" incarnation, it was still one of the most balanced and succinct articles on the fandom — and we should definitely not underestimate the value of such an achievement. It had a lot to deal with, and even though it got somewhat politicized (the aforementioned "hatedom are stupid poopy heads" attitude), it was definitely not a soapbox pro-furry case, and not a whitewashing piece either. The squickier sides of the fandom were not avoided in the least and touched upon with as much accuracy and relevancy as I suspect was possible. TL;DR We're probably much closer to a good article on furries than we think. Feel free to disagree with me on this, but simple statements such as "that's wrong" or "this is bad" — like what most in this thread have been doing — is getting us absolutely nowhere. We need to know the why behind any suggested changes, and I know We Are Not Wikipedia, but with this subject I think it's safe to say that some critical thinking and substantial evidence are in order.

So, to the mysterious "doing of things" so long quested for:*

— Definitely supporting the move to Useful Notes, along with all other pages on subcultures. However, such a move will require an unknown degree of restructuring, which is something that all of us are going to have to work out intensely. Usually, UN pages, have a long lead section, perchance some foldered lists for more in-depth explanation, and sometimes a list of associated Tropes, usually short and general. With the way it is now, the page is quite bottom heavy with a large and specific library of tropes/examples. It may be informative, but this structure won't carry over well into the UN format. This will be the hard part: Analyzing all the information in the article now, picking out irrelevant stuff (already mostly done), deciding what needs more explanation or background, and then figuring out which sections would be best for presenting the information.

— Rewriting is an integral part of this process. This seems like it would be obvious, but eh, wanna be thorough. I suggest that we also look to the history of the article to a point, as I recall elements of some versions that were going in the right directions, only to be deleted and never really restored. For example, I disagree with removing some of the things about Something Awful and other sites, and their not-completely-deniable role in making furries Acceptable Targets. Sure it's wrong for an article to take sides and sling negativity, but that doesn't seem like it was the purpose. Singling out the sites - describing their actions and effects on the subculture - is not synonymous with negativity towards them. To some these people are villains, others heroes. We should not cover up controversial facts or theories, but present them without opinion and let them speak for themselves. Not all revisions are good revisions, and likewise, removed or changed doesn't automatically mean "bad". That's what we would like to have happen, but of course, we're all error-making humans. Of course, we will have to find new ways to express some things, as obviously content of the genre caused some conflict back then. The way something is said can make a lot of difference.

I'm sure I had more to say, but my brain is drawing blanks and I'm really really tired, and it;s taking me way too long to write this...

Welp, that's it for the night, Hopefully I can spark some discussion and we can all work this out

. Peace,

Kai

edited 31st Dec '11 1:59:50 AM by FurFighter

...I would find the claim that "it was not a soapbox pro-furry case" much more convincing coming from someone who at least made a pretense to objectivity. Except for not being Useful Notes, the page is probably fine now. We neither need nor want to add back any of the complaining about complaining.

In fact, I almost wonder whether this page should be locked - it seems an obvious trouble magnet for both sides.

I see no need to lock it. As it is, no one's edit warring or anything. Locking should never be pre-emptive. No need to lockout if there are no problems.

I say close the TRS though. I trimmed the page greatly and no one's objecting.

Locking the TRS now that the cleanup is done.