User:Cody Denton

About me
I've been lurking about the fandom since mid-2009, making me a relative newcomer to furry, especially considering I'm much older than the average fur. Other than the fact that I might remember songs that you don't, though, please don't let the difference in age throw you. I'm friendly and enjoy meeting new people, and I tend to be enthusiastic about the projects that I care about. That's what led me to jump in as an editor at WikiFur.

Contacting me
The preferred way to contact me for all matters regarding WikiFur is on my talk page, which is also automatically forwarded to my email for quick attention. You may also reach me via private email. When I'm actively editing, I also monitor #wikifur on irc.freenode.com. You might need to call my name to attract my attention. Please note that I don't monitor IRC unless I'm actively engaged with working on WikiFur at the time, so if you don't see me logged in, please try one of the alternate methods.

My thoughts on WikiFur as "the furry encyclopedia"
The fandom is constantly evolving and changing, and that means that we need a source of information that is accurate, dynamic and stable:
 * Accurate, in that the information in it is encyclopedic in nature: factual, unbiased, and well-referenced.
 * Dynamic, in that it can be updated instantly with new information.
 * Stable, in that it serves as a historical archive to preserve the legacy of the fandom.

WikiFur belongs to the furry community. Consistent with the wiki philosophy, anyone with the relevant knowledge and desire can jump in to write and edit articles. With that freedom comes responsibility, for we must be good stewards of this resource. WikiFur should be fun, certainly, but at its core, it should also be original, relevant, informative, and well-referenced. Those elements are essential to promoting an atmosphere of trust in the community, and establishing us as a reliable source for information on all things furry.

Hey, why did you edit my page?
Well, first of all, it's the community's page, not yours personally (unless it's a User: page). If I edited something that you submitted, it is because I believed those edits were needed to improve the article. That's not meant to disparage you, or what you wrote; it just means that I felt that additional work was needed to improve the article to WikiFur standards. My work gets edited by others too, for this is the spirit of a wiki: each editor works to improve upon the work of those who came before them, and thus over time, the content grows and matures. Likewise, if I reverted some of your edits to a previous state, it's because I felt that the changes you made did not reflect the character and purpose of WikiFur. Examples would be posting spam or vandalism, or taking out factual information that is relevant to the fandom. You are always welcome to use my Talk: page to start a discussion about edits made. You can also use the Talk: (discussion) page for any article to discuss an article and what it needs; this is appropriate when you want to solicit the feedback of the whole community. You should also check out the help area to learn more about editing at WikiFur.

Current projects
My main project right now is to help create guideline documents for many of the topics that editors are accustomed to seeing from Wikipedia, such as: Although I am trying to write the base documents from what I perceive as a consensus view, I welcome and encourage my fellow editors to please jump in and help improve them.
 * Be bold
 * Please do not bite the newcomers
 * Assume good faith
 * Notability, verifiability, and original research
 * Consensus
 * Edit warring
 * Dispute resolution --> Graciously submitted by User:GingerM
 * Neutral point of view

Miscellaneous to-do list
This section is mostly a set of reminders to myself, so if it doesn't make sense to you, please don't sweat it. :-)


 * rework template reference pages -- some templates are missing or not fully documented. (Welcome templates, PE, various userpage templates, etc.)
 * work on orphaned articles and see if they can be interlinked with other articles on the wiki
 * work on media coverage articles/stubs and try to develop a uniform way to make them more easily searchable