Talk:Guardian Knights

From User talk:CarlFox:

Please remove...

I was sent an email about an entry in Wikifur on my husband, Dean Graf. This entry also mentioned my comic, Guardian Knights.

Please remove the entry on Dean. He is no longer in or of any part of the fur fandom having removed himself as I did when we left the fandom years ago.

Please remove the entry pertaining to Guardian Knights, and any other entries which mention our names. We do not wish to be involved in any way with fur fandom and its projects.

Thank you in advance.

--L.Graf [Added 07:36, May 22, 2006 by 68.6.242.199]

Per your request, I've removed Dean's entry and locked it to further editing.

However, I'm going to leave the Guardian Knights entry up, for now. Per our policy on personal exclusion, the policy is restricted to information about you, and does not prevent other pages mentioning you in passing. I would consider the noting of a comic's writer and artist to fall in the "mentioning" category. Carl Fox 04:00, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Guardian Knights is not a "furry" comic. The project does not meet the requirements of being "furry". They are human shapeshifters, not animal based humanoids. After receiving so much harassment about the project from the fans in fur fandom for the humans and my refusal to change the Kynae into animal based humanoids, I really do not want the mention. I would hope you would understand why I wish the removal. Please...remove the entry.

On this page is stated, in bold letters and caps, that copyrighted work is not to be submitted without permission. I did not give permission for the article to be written. I own the copyright to GK. As the holder of the copyright I am requesting removal. And yes, I do have certification of copyright from the Copyright Office.

I really do not wish to be a part of Wikifur in ANY way at all. I want nothing at all to do with fur fandom.

[-- Added 20:40, May 22, 2006 by 68.6.242.199]

Uh... there seems to be some misunderstanding about the nature of copyright law. Copyright law prevents people from copying the contents of a work without a license from the copyright owner. It does not prevent anyone else from writing about your work. I suggest you read this and learn a little about copyright law.

On the subject of the Guardian Knights article, I know that I personally have seen quite a bit of work in the furry fandom that is related to shapeshifting. Based on that, I think the article is appropriate to have on this wiki. --Giza 13:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I see...so even though I've asked to have no mention on this site, no involvement in anyway, you're going to still keep the entry. Even though I and my husband have left the fandom, want NOTHING to do with it AT ALL, you're still going to keep the entry because YOU WANT TO.

Typical furry fan mentality. Doing what YOU want. Taking what YOU want. Taking ANYTHING that you can slap the "furry" label to and attempt to make it belong in the fandom, even when the creator of the project says 'NO, it's NOT furry!'.

You and the other admin confirm the reasons why we left the fandom years ago.

That is incorrect. We are keeping the entry because it is part of furry fandom's history. You don't want to be involved with furry fandom anymore? That's perfectly fine. But demanding that we erase all traces of past events from here is akin to rewriting history. I think that is dishonest, and I will not be a party to that.

I would also like to point out that your involvement with the comic is well documented. --Giza 17:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Following up on my previous comment, I discovered artwork from the comic in the author's own VCL account: http://us.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/Tygger-L-Graf/index01-by-date.html What was this about "leaving the fandom" again? --Giza 18:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I DID leave. Thank you for pointing those images out to me, I've contacted the admin of VCL to have them removed as well as the directory closed.

I am sorry that this entry has become so acrimonious. Let me try to explain our position and the reasons behind it more fully. Firstly, though, let me thank you for your contributions to the article. You have helped make both it and WikiFur more accurate. I think we can all agree that an accurate article is better than an inaccurate one.

Our policies walk a fine line. Our ultimate duty is to the fandom. The main purpose of WikiFur is to further the interests of furry fandom and the furry community by offering a place for it to store its past, present and future. Naturally, this includes the identities and actions of those who have been involved with it in one way or another. A strict interpretation of this purpose would leave no room for exclusion of any information. It would also be harsh and inconsiderate to the very people that makes the community great - in particular, those people who have done significant things to the benefit of the community but who, for whatever reason, have decided that they no longer wish to be a part of it. Therefore, we look to make allowances and exceptions out of respect for the individuals concerned. Naturally, this extends to those whose works are appreciated by the fandom, but who do not consider themselves members.

On the other hand, we owe it to our contributors to try and preserve the history of the fandom. Imagine if Mozart came back from the dead and demanded that people stopped writing about him and his music, or if Charles M. Schulz tried to get Wikipedia article about him and the one about Peanuts taken down because he no longer wished to be associated with children's comics. It would just be wrong. Public actions have a public record. Granted, Guardian Knights is not dedicated to the fandom in the way that comics like Sabrina Online are, but it's a lot like Inverloch, which is read by many within the fandom (and which is also not considered "furry" by its creator).

So what do we do? We compromise. We agree to remove personal information (of the kind that might be used to contact someone who wished to make a break from the fandom, say) while leaving the record of their past works for those who are interested in them. This leaves nobody perfectly happy - there are those who take the view that nothing and nobody should be excluded, just as there are others in your situation - but it is a solution that we can live with.

This is a privilege, and it is one not automatically given out. In at least one case it has been directly refused because the person concerned had remained both an active member of the furry fandom and a cause of trouble to others within it. In your case, the important actions that you performed in the fandom could be described sufficiently by the mention of your name in other articles - and so they have been, and the page about you was blanked and protected.

As Giza has mentioned, we do not consider the association of an identity with a significant work to be an item of information that should be removed. There was one case in which we removed a reference to a person in another article, but in the end it was because the identity of the person who performed the related action (an art purchase) was irrelevant - what mattered was the magnitude of the action itself, not who performed it. This is not the case for creative works. If you had used a nickname in reference to your work, we would gladly have used that instead of your real name. This is (apparently) not the case, and as the only accurate way to identify the creators of the comic are your real names, we have used and continue to use them.

We are, of course, willing to work with you to ensure that there is no factually incorrect material in the article. If you wish to keep an eye on this article to ensure that no such information is added in the future, you can do so by logging in (you created the account Lgraf for your previous request), setting up email details and notification settings in preferences and watching the article. Your email address will not be directly revealed to WikiFur administrators, and you have the option of turning off the feature that lets us contact you by email through the website.

One last note regarding the source of problems here: The fact that you do not consider your characters anthropomorphic simply does not make it so. They may start out as human, but they shift into anthropomorphic forms - literally, forms that look like those of humans, but which are clearly non-human in various ways. You appear to want to avoid the term because of its association with the furry fandom. Given your dislike of the fandom, this is understandable, but it does not make the term inaccurate, as demonstrated by the large number of people who take one look at the characters and consider them to be anthropomorphic, as well as the people from the fandom who were interested in your work - a fandom that is centered about the appreciation of anthropomorphic works.

(It's also somewhat ironic, as I seem to remember reading a discussion which essentially went "if we call our art anthropomorphic instead of furry, it'll separate us from the porn." Of course, that didn't work, because all art drawn specifically for the furry fandom is by its original definition anthropomorphic - as well as a lot of other work - and it's awfully hard to change a definition of a word). --GreenReaper^(talk) 02:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

As long as the article stands, which has the accurate information, as it is, fine.

As for the comment the last admin made, I DID leave the fandom. I didn't realize that I had anything behind on VCL. I thought I had wiped the directory when I left. I did contact the admin of VCL to remove images and directory.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I appreciate it. Take care and good luck.