User talk:Underscore7

Boraksaghegirak
Hi, welcome to the Forgotten Realms Wiki. Thanks for joining.

Unfortunately, there's a big problem with your page, Boraksaghegirak. It's copied entirely from Exemplars of Evil, and that's plagiarism. We can't accept any plagiarized material on this wiki, not from the sourcebooks or Wikipedia or other webpages, because it's illegal. Your Borak page will need to be deleted, I'm afraid.

But you are free to write up a new version, but entirely in your own words. Summarize the information about Boraksaghegirak with original text, and emphasise the information that places her in Calimshan rather than another setting. Thanks. -- BadCatMan 07:25, June 17, 2012 (UTC)

Hey BadCatMan,

by all means, do as you need to do, with my apologies etc., etc. i fully understand CYA. however, and forgive me my ignorance here, i am confused. the copy was done intentionally with the assumption that a) all things on this site were verbatim information from source books b) that doing so was okay under the idea that the book (and so the authors) were given credit for the work. as i said, i am confused. i have not taken a page from here and compared it to a source book verbatim, but i assumed that each page was a true copy. how is paraphrasing a book any different? the information (especially in the boxes) has to be verbatim or its wrong. and the images? posting a copyrighted image is the same as posting copyrighted words, is it not? give credit where credit is due, but if one is plagiarizing, why is the other not? and could you explain the pic policy too?

no worries BadCatMan i fully intend to restore the deleted page, but in the manner you have so instructed. i have plans to add many pages from the books. i just wish for some clarification if you could.

thanks, Underscore7 (talk) 04:27, January 19, 2013 (UTC)Underscore7


 * Thanks for getting back to discuss this (no matter how long afterwards!).
 * First, this wiki had a problem in the past of unchecked copying of the books, so some pages here are still copied, which we're still steadily finding and cleaning up. That's currently not something we desire or allow.
 * The problem with copying the text is that it's essentially the same as copying the book, which is copyright infringement or piracy (though people tend to say plagiarism because its shorter). WotC have shut down websites for less. Obviously, we don't want to be accused of engaging in piracy and getting the wiki shut down. Hence our policy at Forgotten Realms Wiki:Plagiarism.
 * However, on the plus side, as a fan site, we are allowed to write about the material. That means summarising, rephrasing/paraphrasing, and generally rewriting it in your own words. Then that's original material about the source that does not specifically infringe upon the source. If done well, it doesn't alter the information. This is usually termed "fair use", and is standard practice for all wikis that follow a licensed franchise. The legalese is at Help:Wikia copyrights, which I admit is rather beyond me.
 * On a lesser degree, directly copied material doesn't fit the encyclopaedic wiki article format we're going for here, and it's difficult to adjust or update with new information. Plus, the hobby is based around writing encyclopaedia-style articles for fun, so we kind of expect people to want to do that.
 * Showing an image is a bit trickier, but also comes under "fair use", as it's fair to show an image to illustrate the article. That's also common practice for wikis. Many images usually appear on the WotC website, so they're often freely available. We just try to downgrade the quality where possible. If at some point someone complains, then they'd have to be taken down.
 * Well, I hope that clears things up for you, or least makes it less murky. :) Just ask around if you have any more questions. -- BadCatMan (talk) 07:59, January 20, 2013 (UTC)