News talk:Mature cub fanzine readies second issue

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Timing of quotes[edit]

My recent edit re-inserted a quote that is no longer present on the website concerned. I did this because I strongly feel that we should not allow people to just change their words as a result of them being published, and then expect that to change our reporting. I appreciate the wish to have the "correct" view out there, but if people say something, and we report it, then it should stay reported. This is unlike regular wiki pages, which are fully fungible (as they are intended to live in the eternal WikiNow).

News stories have a specific date, which is at the top. If something changes significantly then we might have some kind of an update or addendum, but it should be a specific addition - or a new news article, like all the ones we have on the 2006 Ursa Major Awards. On the other hand, corrections for things which we got wrong and which were actually different at the time, or minor stylistic changes, are acceptable for a longer period.

The above is based mostly on the policies they've worked out over at Wikinews - like Wikipedia, I think it makes sense to make use of their experience where appropriate, and this seems to be one of those situations. But it also seems like common sense, as you wouldn't see any major news outlet posting a retraction if the situation changed - only if they got it wrong to start with. --GreenReaper(talk) 19:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the reason why I edited it was because it's not accurate. Even before the story was made, Softpaw's legal disclaimer had officially been changed. The phrase "characters are over 18" holds no legal standing as any visual depictions would be judged by a jury under the "reasonable man" test should the unlikely event of a trial ever arise; therefore, the news story edit was merely to keep it accurate and show facts. The change in the disclaimer was not due to the WikiFur article. If you still don't believe me, I can show you a screenshot of the InDesign file which was created and modified last prior to the writing of this article. If you could, please remove/alter the statement: "Softpaw changed this statement shortly after publication of this article," because it's misrepresentative, and it insinuates that it was changed due to it; it's definitely not the case. —Crassus 07:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
The legal disclaimer available was the one on the website at the time it was accessed when writing the article, so that one went in the article. For news articles, we assume published sources are correct if there's no reason to doubt them. Indeed, I'd say it's the act of publication that makes it official.
As far as we're concerned, the online website is the authoritative source at any particular moment, except perhaps if talking with someone who we know is in a firm position to say otherwise. And . . . well, to be blunt, the only people mentioned on the site are the editors Jery and Kiffin Softpaw. and the artists - and the latter probably wouldn't even count to that extent. I am aware from the forums that you ran the FC pizza party, but in terms of sources, that's it. With or without a screenshot, if you had brought this up before publication then I probably would have contacted Softpaw asking if there had been a change, on the good-faith belief that you knew what you were talking about - doveriai, no proveriai - but that didn't happen.
I have reworded to avoid the implication that the change to the FAQ on the active website was due to this article. I was tempted to explicitly state your claim that it had not changed it as a result, but I think people might actually be more inclined to think that you had if we did so. Besides, as far as WikiFur is concerned you don't exist, which makes it harder to justify using you as a source. :-) --GreenReaper(talk) 08:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)