Canon

The Wongery does have a canon, of sorts, in that there are versions of worlds, characters, events, and other topics described in the Wongery which are considered "official" by the Grandmaster Wongers, and which any later works by or authorized by the Grandmaster Wongers will build on. All content of the Central Wongery mainspace is considered canonical; other works may or may not be deemed canonical on a case-by-case basis. Although the licensing terms of the Wongery are intended to permit the creation of a wide variety of derivative works, in general material based on the Central Wongery, outside the Wongery itself, is not considered canonical.

Please note, however, that when we say something in the Wongery is canon, all that really means is that we're going to not later contradict it. (Or at least we'll make an effort not to contradict it, but of course we're not infallible.) It certainly does not mean that you can't contradict it in your own material. If you're writing your own story, running your own role-playing game, or doing anything else with a Wongery setting, you are of course free to violate canon all you want. (I mean, really I feel a little silly even writing that, because it should go without saying. Of course you don't have to follow our canon in your own creations. Of course you can take things in your own direction even if that differs from our own intentions, and of course you can change as much as you want in your own works. We couldn't stop you even if we wanted to. But heck, I figured we might as well make it explicit.) Canon only really matters in the sense of internal consistency of material presented on the Wongery itself. The fact that we consider something noncanonical does not necessarily reflect in any way on its quality or entertainment value; it may only mean that it doesn't entirely match our own plans for the topic in question, or simply that we haven't had the time to go over it and make a decision.

Alternate Worlds

Note that the Wongery includes the concept of alternate worlds. A non-canonical work that is contradicted by something in the Wongery could, therefore, simply be considered to be set on some alternate version of the world in question. In that sense, then, virtually anything not hopelessly internally logically inconsistent could be considered "canonical", in the sense that it can be assumed to canonically be set on some alternate world. Sure, your own stories can be canon; why not? They just happened on an alternate world. For the purposes of the present discussion, however, only works guaranteed to be consistent with the worlds as presented in the Central Wongery will be referred to as canonical.

Conditions for canonicity

Anything presented in the Central Wongery mainspace is ipso facto considered canonical. Any derivative material, including entries in the Public Wongery or in other Master Wongeries (when and if they exist), is not automatically considered canonical. However, materials outside the Central Wongery may be declared canonical. Published works that the Grandmaster Wongers consider canonical may be listed at the end of a related article under "Canonical sources". (At the moment, as the Wongery has just started out and nothing has been published based on any Wongery materials, there are no such listings. It is entirely possible, of course, that nothing will ever be published based on any Wongery materials, and there will never be any such listings. But we want to leave the option open.)

If the body text of an article in the Central Wongery links to an article in the Public Wongery or a Private Wongery, that article may be considered canonical, as it was at the time the link was made. (Note that this applies only to inline links in the body text of articles in the Central Wongery mainspace; it does not apply to links in disambiguation pages, talk pages, or See Also sections, et cetera.) Subsequent edits that substantially alter the content of the article are not necessarily considered canonical. (If in doubt, check the page histories to see when the link was created in the Central Wongery article, and what has changed in the other article since then.) This does not necessarily imply that other articles linked to in the canonized article, or other articles by the same author(s), are also considered canonical; it only applies to the specific article linked to.

If the Grandmaster Wongers do decide to consider material from the Public Wongery or a Private Wongery canonical, either tacitly by linking to it or explicitly by direct declaration, this has no effect on the material's copyright, which still resides with the content's creator(s). The same, of course, goes for material published outside the Wongery. In effect, declaring something outside the Central Wongery canonical more or less just amounts to a promise that the Grandmaster Wongers will (try) not (to) contradict it in the future; it does not entail any claim of copyright or ownership.

Private canons

The writers of articles in the Public Wongery may have their own "private canons", their own selection of articles and other materials that they consider canonical. If they consider it important, they can designate their private canon wherever and however they want. (Describing it on their user pages is one option.) The same goes for Master Wongers, when and if Master Wongeries become a thing.

Fanon

It hasn't yet, and may never happen, but it's hypothetically possible that if the Wongery becomes popular and many stories are written that use its worlds and characters, certain "facts" about Wongery content may be decided by consensus, and widely taken as true by multiple writers despite never being explicitly stated in the Central Wongery itself. The fact remains that nothing is technically canon unless it is mentioned in the Central Wongery mainspace, or in a work that the Central Wongery explicitly names as canonical. And therefore, such "fanonical" details may still be contradicted by later Wongery articles. No matter how many works insist that a particular character secretly longs to be a dragon (for example), if the Central Wongery doesn't say so then it's not canon, and it may still be contradicted by later canonical information.