Help talk:Furry Book of Style

Archive (2006 - 2010)

Articles about people
I'd like to start a style guide specifically for articles about people, since there are a number of specific differences and right now that's sprinkled thorugh this guide. Any objections? -- Sine 14:26, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

Pronouns and gender
Highlighting "People should be refered to using their personal pronoun. If you don't know what pronoun the person uses, refer to them by name throughout the article." That's the wording as I adjusted it in July 2012, to reflect what was already practice in articles here. -- Sine 15:43, 1 January 2014 (EST)
 * I'm concerned by the implication that the subject may choose the pronoun to be used. In fact, personal pronouns are used by everyone except their subject, usually as a means to assert a belief about them. We should follow their usage, just as we use the name by which they are commonly known to others. If there is no clear pattern, we should avoid the use of personal pronouns (or fall back to neutral ones) until a pattern of use has been established. --GreenReaper(talk) 19:42, 20 March 2014 (EDT)
 * Am I going to have to go ask everyone you've created an article about what pronouns you prefer to make sure the correct (read: ones the person prefers) pronouns are being used? Equivamp - talk 22:31, 29 March 2014 (EDT)
 * It's because we disagree that I suggested this approach. We should employ the pronoun used by people outside WikiFur who know the subject, not the pronoun that you or I think is correct. If your beliefs reflect those of society, the result will be the same. --GreenReaper(talk) 23:07, 29 March 2014 (EDT)

Categories section of book of style
So Furry Book of Style's section about Categories says "category names should only be capitalized for words that are normally capitalized".

One species is snow leopard (all lower-case with no capitalization) and (back in early April) I was almost finished moving all the articles But all those moves got reverted with edit reason "WikiFur character categories use upper-case letters at the start of each word of the species". But the Furry Book of Style doesn't say one way or the other. How about the categories have correct capitalization of species? (except for the first letter of the category which the system capitalizes by default) --EarthFurst (talk) 16:58, 5 June 2016 (EDT)
 * from "Category:Snow Leopard characters"
 * TO "Category:Snow leopard characters"


 * I think before any changes are made (which would impact almost every species category on here), curator Sine should explain his vision for the category system, as he seems to have created most of it.--Higgs Raccoon (talk) 19:46, 9 June 2016 (EDT)


 * "Title casing" species for one thing, eliminates the considerable confusion around say what is a Gray Fox versus a fox character with grey fur. It's consistent and simpler. (I replied to this more than a week back but that didn't save, so this is my reconstruciton of points.) -- Sine (talk) 15:49, 19 June 2016 (EDT)

Articles about conventions
I was hoping to see a section about articles on conventions and events here, but nope.

What I would do to start writing such a section is to read existing articles on conventions and events, and see what people are already doing. I'd like to do that myself, but I really don't have the time :< --Kakurady (talk) 19:32, 14 November 2016 (EST)

"most commonly used for them"
The current policy for articles about people is to use personal pronouns "most commonly used for them within furry fandom; if this is unclear, refer to them by name throughout the article". How will this be proven or made apparent, should there be a dispute? If there is a dispute, the suggestion to forgo using personal pronouns entirely will result in awkward, clunky articles. Even the policy itself uses singular "they".

Over at Wikipedia, their policy is to be gender-neutral in all cases unless:


 * 1) an individual prefers gendered terms (including cases of women preferring masculine terms such as "chairman" over "chairwoman", "chair", or "chairperson"),
 * 2) gender is relevant to the statement, or
 * 3) avoiding gendered language would be confusing to readers and/or gives undue weight to small minorities (the examples it gives are references to male nuns and pregnant men)

Additionally, when discussing discrepancies between what reliable sources refer to a subject as and how the subject self-identifies, they have this policy:

This is more specific than WikiFur's current policy. While by nature many subjects covered on WikiFur will have a dearth of what Wikipedia would consider "reliable sources", it's important, if we are to have a policy calling for the "most commonly used" pronoun, to establish guidelines for how that will be determined.

I'd also criticize the idea that because a person's preferred use of pronouns may change over time, that is an issue to WikiFur--because I'm not aware of any time that actually has caused an issue. I would prefer establishing a conflict resolution policy for the possibility that it might rather than changing the original policy to be less clear in the anxiety that it may. --Equivamp - talk 12:45, 8 May 2017 (EDT)


 * I may be a tad biased, being someone who has changed their public gender identity in the last few years. With that in mind:


 * I am in favour of self-identity as being the primary source of personal pronouns. They're the most up to date and authoritative source by comparison to others. It would also close some quirks in the existing policy—articles can be amended with new information immediately, not only when a majority of sources say so; or the article's subject may not want to (or be unable to) update some of their sources (e.g. social media profiles that family know about). Under the current policy it would even seem that a person being misgendered by people they don't know—whether maliciously or not—would have sway over what pronouns are used in their article, which seems ridiculous. We actively encourage people to write about themselves, so why would we then place restrictions on their preferred pronouns?


 * My opinion is that it would probably be best to follow Wikipedia's pronoun policy in entirety. It's likely been thought about and considered by many more people there and there's nothing specific to the furry fandom (that I can think of) that necessitates WikiFur's policy on it to be any different. 02:52, 11 May 2017 (EDT)


 * To be fair, I also agree that it's best to just use the pronouns a person prefers to be used, and to cross the bridge of someone changing them "too frequently" as we get there. --Equivamp - talk 13:48, 11 May 2017 (EDT)