Talk:Wolfhome

I don't know much about Wolfhome, but some of the most recent additions sounded biased enough to justify the NPOV template. If anyone more familiar with the subject can shed some light on it, it would be appreciated. --mwalimu 17:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. I was there and saw exactly what went on. This, (while a little harsh and has since been toned down) is a fair representation of what has been going on. 17.29, 10 May 2006

This entire "article" is simply ridiculous.

A new draft?
I find that article to be severely lacking. There is no mention the system crash - which was the ACTUAL cause of WH's original long-term pause between Gre7g and Kerfuffle. Not to mention it sounds pretty...sarcastic about the other situation: very biased, definitely, whoever wrote it. It doesn't even contain very much information. This is a short draft, nothing I would call near finished, though please feel free to work with it, but I would re-write it something like this:

"WolfHome is(was) a graphical chat interface that is similar to Furcadia, but is one that focuses purely on the conversation and connection aspect of a "chatroom" and has traditionally strongly discouraged role-playing.

The chat was released on Halloween of 1999. Originally, the programming was done by Gre7g and the artwork was all done by Goldenwolf. For a time it was quite popular, with the expressive wolf poses and scenery and fun interactions. WH's ability to attract artists of fame, such as Kyoht, Yelth, and others, has also traditionally been a huge attraction within the were community, and indeed it has almost "launched" more than one now-famous artists. As its name suggests, it was based on the theme of wolven-therians, with a pack-based ranking system (Alpha, Beta, etc.) though the site eventually also included other wild canines and even large wild felines. As a free site the popularity grew so much that Gre7g was forced to turn WolfHome into a pay-based chat in order for it to support its own costs and the number of users fell drastically.

Tragically, the server suffered a serious blow in the fall of 2004 while Gre7g was away on vacation, and almost all of the information proved irretrievable. Because of many factors, some of which could have been the environment within the admin team becoming increasingly more hostile and disfunctional, coupled with Gre7g's lack of continued interest in the site, not to mention the daunting task of re-creating the entire chat, WolfHome was allowed to remain down and users were refunded their remaining balances.

A user named Kerfuffle appeared several months later in the spring of 2005, approached the administrators of the then-dead site, and proved himself to be a very capable programmer who brought with him the hope of resurrecting WolfHome. Indeed he did, and so took over the rights and recreated the chat, albeit in the form of a downloadable client as opposed to the web-interface it had been in the past. Wolfhome's popularity swiftly returned. Unfortunately, the then team of administrators showed a distinct inability to work together coherently, with different factions forming within the team and different theories being followed through on how the chat should be run and moderated. Because of his disgust with the never-ending conflict, Kerfuffle decided to take leave of WH in the fall of 2005, saying he would "keep an eye" on his project and leaving a warning that if things didn't start to work, he would disconnect WolfHome for good.

In February of 2006, one of the Wolfhome admins, FoxGrin, was demoted by majority vote of the admin team, for various reasons that have remained unclear and suspect even to this point in time. At that time, tensions between the admins themselves were high, and continual fighting over power between the users and admins put the admins and the userbase at odds with eachother. At this point Kerfuffle returned swiftly and immediately closed the site down. Both strongly deny there ever being a serioues relationship more than friends between the two, and Kerfuffle personally refuted rumors that FoxGrin's demotion was the direct cause of his unplugging WH. He said that it was actually "the last straw" in a string of greivances and conflicts. WolfHome has remained shut down since then.

Kerfuffle then disappeared from WH and seemingly the internet entirely, leaving behind only a faint glimmer of hope: that if the remaining patrons of the site could work together to form a plan that would ensure peace on WolfHome and be agreeable to the majority of people, he would turn it back on. A shrinking group of former members have been working hard ever since on this very goal. The fandom is currently watching and waiting to see how events will unfold. This is current up through early August of 2006. Wolfhome is still owned by Kerfluffle.

On a semi-related note, a small group headed by site owner Hadey and programmer LinuxDewd, both former admins of the old WH, have thrown in together and are creating "Wolfhome Classic". Not billed as competition to Kerfuffle's WolfHome, but rather a return to an older method of running the site and a "return to roots". This project is currently in Alpha testing, with a public Beta testing date not yet officially set."

It's rough, yeah. But it has the basics I'll bet.

And a totally favorable point of view towards Kerfuffle and Foxgrin, while leaving out Linuxdewd's contribution to the client. A middle ground is clearly needed.

Client history
Here's a brief history of the client (as well as LinuxDewd's contributions, since there seems to be some confusion regarding it):

A long time ago, back when Gre7g ran WolfHome, I used to chat on it. But the way the scroll window would get out of sync after a while and screw up the scrollback which drove me crazy. So I started working on a client to avoid that. After it reached a point where is was useful for chatting, I started giving it out to other people as an alternative to the web client.

Eventually I drifted away from WolfHome, and since it would be a shame for my work to be lost, I turned over development to a friend of mine - LinuxDewd. He worked on it, and added a number of features, including admin functions that I'd never been able to add in since I was just a normal user. Eventually he ran out of time to work on it.

Some time after Gre7g's WolfHome experienced it catastrophic database failure that resulted in it closing, I started working on a replacement server, and modified the latest version of the stand alone client to work with my new protocol. I demoed it to Gre7g after requesting his permission to take over the WolfHome, and he was satisfied with my progress and agreed.

Linuxdewd wrote a very important part of the server - the code which recolored images based on the templates. I'd consider this to be his most important contribution. His work on the client is also acknowledged in the Help->About dialog within the program.

Hopefully this clears things up. I can't seem to create an account at the moment. -Kerfuffle

Bill Underwood was the original author of Wolfhome
Just thought I should defend my spot on this article. I wrote the original code for Wolfhome back before it had a name. Gre7g Luterman is a friend of mine. We were playing roleplay (probably D&D but I forget) and I gave a demo of the site to the people there. About six months after that, Gre7g asked me if I would help him set up a chat site for his templeofluna.com website. We collaborated on the new software, based substantially on my code but with cross-browser DHTML to work with Internet Explorer. Also, if you check the domain name owner for wolfhome.com, you'll notice that Wolfhome belongs to me (still). :)

The wolfhome.com website grew into A1000words.net, an LLC in Kansas. We (Gre7g and I) used www.a1000words.net (now defunct) to host several other chat sites. Wolfhome code was modified and became that software along the way, allowing multiple chat sites to run off of the single server. Gre7g and I were business partners in that LLC which ran variously out of Framecast Communications where I worked, out of Gre7g's basement, and out of my basement. If someone wants to get a bit more accuracy into this article, contact me and I will fill in some more blanks.

One last comment: I am now in the process of trying to resurrect the original wolfhome, with some new technology to work with the newer browsers. Kerfuffle and others may continue on with a new site: www.wolfhome.ws, but I will continue to own www.wolfhome.com and, for the short run, continue to forward the domain to the new site.

Bill Underwood

Decided to rework this article
I hope I am not offending anyone by rewriting this article. I tried to be fair but if I missed anything or misrepresented anything, my apologies. Since I am the original author of the code, and a part of the two person team that launched the public product, I felt that I had a pretty decent right to rework this article. I was not around when the most recent political firefight led to the site closing. I saw a lot of those when I was actively involved in the original site and expect to see them again if I get this reworked one off the ground...

I probably should have incorporated a lot of what was written here in the Talk page, but I had already finished my rewrite of the page when I realized that I'd forgotten it was over here. Some of it is probably worded more fairly than my version.

Removed the NPOV
I feel that it was appropriate to remove the NPOV.--underdog 04:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I am seeing attacks on here that have no basis in what is really going on with Wolfhome. The IP address matches a disgruntled ex-admin. The things being said about me scanning logs and the claim that these resulted in demotions are flat out wrong. The admin making these claims resigned. The admin that was recently demoted was evidently involved with an underaged member of Wolfhome and was demoted after complaints and a careful investigation over several days if not longer. I am tired of this. What can I do to stop these attacks? underdog 05:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)