FranceFurs - Forum Furry

At WikiFur we want our content to be available to everyone, not just everyone who can read English.

Since March we have had a version of WikiFur in French. However, it has no leader from the French community, and only a few edits. There are only 11 articles.

We now have a German version, which launched last Sunday . . . and it already has almost 100 articles.

There is even a version in the Czech language with 24 articles, started in August. They do not have automatic translation tools to help, and there are only 11 Czech articles on in the English WikiFur (France has 33), but they still did what they could. Xkun tells me two people have found the Czech furry fandom from WikiFur already.

I know that FurFaq exists, but it is not the same as a site that everyone can update - and indeed, it is out of date now.

Is there anyone here willing to stand up and lead the French WikiFur to glory? Maybe someone who is not already busy running a website, but who the French furry community trust to be fair? Remember, writing wiki articles is cool, and a guaranteed* way of getting girls (or other guys) to like you!

* Not a guarantee.

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Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
GreenReaper Studios - WikiFur

Hello, GreenReaper :)
I was planning to translate / create a few of the articles sometime,

but on subjects I know the best, ie conventions I attended, people, and fursuits, fursuiters. ;)

But yeah you'd need to keep an eye and control what is written on the french wikifur version , otherwise it might end up in a huge mess ;)

That is the thing - it needs people to write content, but more than that, it needs at least one person to be a manager. A person to start the articles that are necessary, even if they do not know much about them, and to organize pages and make sure they look right. It is a big task, but it is also a big opportunity . . .

And I know you are already very busy, so I do not expect you to be that person. But perhaps there are some here who might be interested in the challenge? It would be a nice project to show other people at FranFurence.

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Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
GreenReaper Studios - WikiFur

hehe, yeah busy kat ;)
I can't take another heavy task like that unfortunately, it'd have been interesting for sure, but I wouldn't be able to dedicate it enough time :)

Or I could put in in 92039803rd position in my todo list *g* ;)
I'll just contribute where I can here and there on individual articles.

good luck finding someone for the manager task :)

We have also a much more smaller community than the germans.

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Le plus mignon des louveteaux français

Indeed . . . but do you wish this state of affairs to continue? Surely there are some Ratatouille forums where you could turn fans into furs . . .

It is perhaps not as bad as you think. The Germans are well-organized, but the numbers suggest their community is only around five or six times the size of the French community. Less than half of the people going to Eurofurence are German. The Czech community is probably about your size (ČeSFuR has done quite well, but about 1/3 of its attendees are foreigners).

On that note, perhaps it would be good to try promoting FranFurence in some of the English or German LiveJournals, if places are still open? I know there are some in England who are unable to go to Red Blue & White because they have run out of tickets. But that is off the topic.

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Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
GreenReaper Studios - WikiFur

My English is still awkward, but I think I would be glad to help the translation of articles from English to French, as French is my native language.

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Ive got to admit it sounds a fun task, however i just have so much to do recently ^^'

but what the hell, if the offer still stands, PM or MSN me and we can talk about it

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I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-Albert Einstein-

Hi there Greenreaper.
I must say I don't realize much how big is the task, but I'm somehow interested to participate.
I could be an excellent way for me to learn more on the furries.

How would it work ?
- I would freely translate any article I want or you would give a list ?
- Some web skills required ?
- Is there an objective ?

thx

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http://www.furaffinity.net/user/grumpfbear/

I just saw a LJ post about Wikifur german translation

Loupy> That's the point ! The fact that most of the furry things are in english can stop many people to read and understand what furry is. You can' t blame people (and you didn't, that's not what I mean) not knowing the english language.

Translation is a good way to help furries being more visible here.

I would, but since my French is undeniably awful and worse then my English, translation from English to French would go very awry very quick.

BTW I am working on a short translation of the main wikipedia article on the fandom in Welsh, but only because nobody else has yet. Yah.

ok, ok... I had to start with something
Here is the translation with slight modifications of the english article of Timduru
http://fr.wikifur.com/wiki/Timduru
... Some stuff still seem very obscure... like how do you put an image... where must it be uploaded ?
Why do I have to put <BR> html tag to switch line where other articles dont have this tag and do switch line ?

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http://www.furaffinity.net/user/grumpfbear/

Well, there certainly appears to be some interest, which is good.

Let me explain what I had in mind in more detail. By the way, if people are not able to write English or prefer to write responses in French, that is OK, I can read it in translation. I figure people can understand my English more than they can understand my French.

The idea of WikiFur is to build a furry encyclopedia. Obviously, we could not write everything at once. We started with the topics that everyone could write a little about and then expanded from there, with other people writing about the things they knew about. You do not normally plan what things to write about, though it can be a good idea sometimes.

The first objective of the French WikiFur would be to have information that would be particularly useful to the people reading it. This might include an introduction to furry fandom, the basic concepts (furry art, fursuits, etc.) - and it might also contain information about the people in the French community, or on conventions that people from French-speaking regions of the world go to, or popular French-language websites.

It would not be limited to these things, though - it would grow over time as people found interesting things to write about. On the English version of WikiFur we allow topics that are significantly related to furry fandom. So, articles about games and characters are fine, if they concentrate on the furry part; but it makes little sense to have articles about non-furry topics - you can just link to Wikipedia for those. Exactly where to draw the line would be up to the other French contributors, because they are the ones who have to maintain the pages.

Few web skills are required - just the ability to write well in the language of the wiki - and if you do not know how to use this, then you can always ask others to do it for you. There is a simple syntax - most people just look at existing pages that do what they want and copy it from there until they learn. And as Grumpfbear says, it is an excellent way of learning more about furry fandom. In fact, one of the reasons I started WikiFur is that I wanted to learn more about furries, but didn't want to have to go and ask everyone.

Let me now talk about the leader's job - though remember when I say leader, it could be several people. Most things on a wiki can be done by anyone - and everyone should feel free to do so. On a wiki, decisions are usually made together, in discussions like this on the "talk" pages. The purpose of the leader - or leaders, there can be many - is not to make the decisions, but to lead these discussions, to ensure that people reach agreement (usually the word used on English wikis is "consensus"), and to arrange for things to happen afterwards, either by doing it themselves or finding others to do it. They are only one voice, not the ultimate voice. (I have been overruled sometimes on my own wiki. )

The leader's job is also to go outside the wiki and tell people in the wider community what is happening, point them to the interesting articles that are being written, and suggest how others can help. You may notice me trying to do this now . . . . . . but the task is more than just asking for help. It is responding to concerns from others, and dealing with people who are affected by the wiki even if they are not contributors. For example, perhaps you have an article about someone, and they do not like it - though anyone could do it, it is often the leader who talks to these people. Or maybe someone says something incorrect about the wiki on a forum - the leader might go there and say "no, it is actually like this". I do a lot of talking. (each archive link at the right has another long page . . .)

The leader's task depends on the size of the wiki - if it is small, there is far more writing and organizing wiki pages than there is talking to people about it, because there is nobody else to do these jobs. Someone has to start the first pages, and that is the leader! There may also be people who lead in writing or organizing pages, and others who do the job of talking to others - just like organizing a convention. The most important part is helping other editors, because you cannot write everything by yourself (otherwise why have a wiki? )

Here is an even longer article on the "people" part of starting a wiki that you might find interesting. Several of the things are already done, such as finding a host and making a logo, so it is an smaller task than the article suggests.

And who should be leading the project? Well, at the English WikiFur, we decide by looking at the people who act like leaders. So, if you are active in writing new articles, organizing existing ones, offer advice to others, help solve disagreements, and generally make the wiki a better place - well, you already are a leader, and should be given any extra power you need to do your job (this mostly involves being able to block bad editors or protect very important pages if there is vandalism, as well as edit the pages that control how the wiki looks). You can do most admin things without extra powers, so everyone should try to act like one.

Looking at the replies, it seems like there are a lot of people who want to help with translation, but PanzarDragon wishes to take the lead in organizing things, so perhaps I should talk to him further about it. But everyone should feel free to try editing things on the wiki. It is easy to fix things if they go wrong - just go into the history tab and click the old date, then click edit and save it. Try starting with the User: page about yourself - once you register on the site, you can get to it by clicking your name at the top.

That reminds me - there is a difference we have on the English WikiFur between pages from people and pages about people which you might also find useful. The User: page (like User:GreenReaper) is usually written as if you were talking to someone, in the "first person", while the main one (e.g. GreenReaper) is in the "third person". This means you can have one "personal" page where you say what you like, how you like, and one "public" page which is written like a proper encyclopedia article. The public one is the one that everyone else edits. Timduru could put "Timduru is the master of the universe" on the [[User:Timduru]] page if he wanted, and it would stay there, but it might not stay on [[Timduru]] unless he proved it.

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Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
GreenReaper Studios - WikiFur

You do not have to use BR if you leave a whole blank line between the first and next paragraphs. For lists, you should not leave a line - instead, use * at the start of each line if you want an unnumbered list, and # if you want a numbered list. It looks like you have figured out images - you upload them with the link in the Toolbox, and then you can link to them in the page with the image page name.

See the syntax link I mentioned above for a lot more help in this area.

Also, one thing for everyone translating pages - please put [[en:EnglishArticleName]] at the very bottom of your new translated page, and once it is saved, add [[fr:FrenchArticleName]] at the bottom of the page you were translating from. This will put a link to the other language into the sidebar. You can see a bigger example with several languages in the code for the English WikiFur main page.

(If you are editing a Template: page, do it like this: "<noinclude>[[fr:FrenchTemplateName]]</noinclude>", otherwise every page using the template will point there, which is probably not what you want . . .)

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Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
GreenReaper Studios - WikiFur

Opening a french wikifur is opening a french furry hate.

Do I need to remind peoples that going out in fursuit is forbidden in France ? If we ever start to be known, we may have policemen reminding us of that.

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Le plus mignon des louveteaux français