OpenGeofiction
Recently we have had several instances where text posted to the wiki has been clearly just cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. This is already clearly against the rules (see About page). Notably, there is also the ongoing problem of people who ignore notices from admin or other users about copyright issues related to images.
Let’s reiterate the rule in question:
“All wiki images — photos and artwork — must be free to use, and must contain a link to source and/or copyright info. All wiki text must be your own writing.”
We have decided to pursue a new, stonger policy, in this respect. Users who are found to have copied text from other sources into the OGF wiki, or who repeatedly disregard concerns expressed about possibly copyrighted uploaded images, may have their wiki privileges suspended, without notice.
Thank you for understanding, and happy mapping.
The OGF Admin Team
Discussion
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 21 February 2017 at 09:45
It is good that there is a strong line taken with copyright issues, I absolutely support this.
With wiki text, I think it is less clear cut. When text is blatantly copied, including references to real world places or people, then no way should it be in the wiki, that’s clear. My main question though would be: is the ‘wiki’ is a mirror of real wikipedia? Wikipedia has its own ‘house style’. It is written by - generally anonymous - contributors in this style (and the contributors to real wikipedia may even be the same people as to OGF wikipedia), Would it be logical that the text be similar? Take the pages ‘English language’ and ‘Ingerish’. They are about the same thing - the english language - but one is about the language in this world. How different should they be?
Comment from zhenkang on 21 February 2017 at 10:20
People copy from wikipedia about their countries because it is like an example on how to write a proper and coherent wiki article about their countries. I wonder is there a wiki page that says how to write proper, coherent countries’ wiki articles so that there is no need to copy from wikipedia.
I thought wikipedia is an open source though.
Comment from Myrcia on 21 February 2017 at 10:20
👍👍👍 Good is all I can say. I don’t claim to be perfect but if someone tells me I’m doing something wrong I change it. I find it hugely irritating that people continue to upload unattributed or copyrighted images after being made aware of the problem.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 21 February 2017 at 10:42
@zhenkang - no, currently there isn’t an article specifically about writing a country article. There is this article about making a good wiki article, and I think a lot of it applies. An article specifically about constructing a wiki about a country is a good idea and given enough time I expect we will have it.
The main point of the block imposed by admin is that it is very frustrating when people ignore messages sent to them. That implies indifference at the very least, or - when they’re still editing the wiki - a wilful lack of response. The rules clearly say that you must incorporate that information, but you haven’t supplied it, and you haven’t removed images which lack it. For example, it is clear that some of the images on your Sinkangia page are not open source. I’m sure that admin would rather have deleted these images rather than blocking you, but since it has happened multiple times, and admin has limited resources, they don’t have much option. I hope you will take immediate action to remove these images once the wiki block is lifted.
Comment from zhenkang on 21 February 2017 at 13:13
Anyway, this suspension helps me to focus more on mapping Singkangia. I actually was thiking on how to rewrite the parts of the article which was copief before this ban was imposed; the problem is how to change to make it original, possibly I will ask people to help in the future.
I think that now maping should always come first before writing, not the other way round! I hope future mappers will not do the same way.
Comment from histor on 21 February 2017 at 14:27
There are a lot of wiki-articles about OGF-countries. So everybody can look and can read some of them to have an idea for the own article. And yes - what you will describe, if nothing or nearly nothing is mapped? So please first map and describe then.
What happens in real Wikipedia? There you can not set in textes somply with copy and paste - your wiki-text should be an original. The difference to a text written in a book is only, that in wikipedia the autor give his text free from some copyright-restrictions. But that means not, that a wiki-text is free unlimited.
The same thing with pictures. Pictures, uploaded to OGF, MUST have a remark to the copyright. If there is no remark the uploader is in the danger, that this picture is deleted without warning by admins.
If a picture is your own graphic or self-made photo, so please set a remark at the upload-process of the file. So we can know, that here the question of copyright is clear.
Comment from Portopolis on 21 February 2017 at 14:51
My article for Hoppon is a copy paste from Wiwaxia, you can use that instead, to organize your country pages headings then you can change the subheadings to however you like it. I am mostly focusing on mapping Marie City rather than the wiki currently. then I am going to work prefecture by prefecture across my country.
Comment from wangi on 21 February 2017 at 15:40
Wondering, is it possible for the wiki to be setup with InstantCommons? This would allow media on the Wikimedia Commons (where most Wikipedia images are hosted) to be used here without a local upload, and more importantly without the credit and attribution getting messed up. Thanks.
Comment from Alessa on 21 February 2017 at 17:27
I believe we are already set up with InstantCommons. I currently do just that for all my pictures on the Mauretia article. I found the file on Commons and then just use that very file name link in the article.
Comment from Ernestpkirby on 21 February 2017 at 17:34
Alessa’s right, it still works like that. It had stopped working for a short period of time a couple years ago but it works again now.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 21 February 2017 at 20:05
Its good to know the InstantCommons works, though I tend to modify images, to show things that I think are representative in the places I’m showing, so include the attribution. Generally, I think its a bit uncreative to just upload pictures of real-world places, the more so when they’re recognisable. I do like the Freedemia ones though, even though they may not be modified!
I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it the rules that apply to using things that are written in the real wikipedia are quite simple: there is no restriction on the use of wikitext. What is written in wikipedia can be used, copied and changed by anyone as long as the same licensing rules are applied to this text as are applied to wikipedia. In this respect, its the same as for the CC images, except that no attribution needs to be given for the text. What is written in the OGF wiki, I think, follows the same licensing terms as wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, as stated at the bottom of every OGF wiki page: it is free and unlimited. It needs to be attributed only if this is requested by the author. In this case, the authorship is probably legally attributable to thilo as stated on the contact page. Whether attribution of authorship of the text is requested or not, I couldn’t say - but I haven’t seen a request to that effect in OGF. As I see it, contributing to OGF, as to wikipedia, is a gift that I have no control over once it is given.
The decision that text shouldn’t be directly copied from wikipedia is a decision of the people who make the rules in OGF, not due to any restrictions imposed by wikipedia itself. I see the point of that rule. Copying pages of text is pointless and uncreative. But for verisimillitude, some things in OGF world must be the same as in real world (or we wouldn’t be following the rule of verisimillitude). How should the text about those things differ? By random word placement, by changing the order things are presented in? I don’t know the answer to that.
Its clearer to me that there are bigger problems with the OGF wiki than a few sentences that are the same in real and OGF wikis. Overwikification is one, the poor quality of articles another. Making links from OGF wiki to the real wikipedia is another lazy uncreative habit that I find really annoying.
Comment from isleño on 21 February 2017 at 22:58
@Udi: To me, “your own writing” means that it should seem original; it should not seem like it was copied from somewhere else. So an article on “Ingerish” will inevitably employ some of the same words as an article on “English,” and will probably present similar ideas in similar ways, using a similar style. But if there are significant phrases or whole sentences that are an exact match with Wikipedia, the copying quickly becomes obvious. I’m sure there’s a gray area where it’s debatable whether something was copied or not, but I don’t think admin would act in such ambiguous circumstances.
The main issue, however, as you pointed out, is not really the details of the copying. It’s the fact that a few people have continued to break wiki rules even after being asked not to break wiki rules.
Comment from Luciano on 21 February 2017 at 23:08
In general, I understand that, because of verisimilitude, there will be times when it rather “makes sense” to copy from wikipedia. Udi’s Ingerish <- English example is a good one. Although the rule in the OP states that the problem is copying from wikipedia, in fact I think the issue is finer than that.
In the recent examples that, in part, provoked the rule change, it wasn’t simply an issue of copying from wikipedia, but rather sloppy copying from wikipedia.
Of course we can “copy” from wikipedia in terms of getting the “voice” and “organizational pattern” correct. I’ve done so, myself, e.g. when I first started making a few biographies for the OGF wiki, I studied and imitated the organization of some of the wikipedia biographies.
The problem is someone who comes along and decides, “Oh, this text in wikipedia looks good!” They do a Ctrl-C Ctrl-V hack job, and call it a day. Then later we find refereces to “American States” or “Jammu and Kashmir” in our wiki. That’s unacceptable. It corrupts the quality of the wiki, and disrespects other authors of the same article, in cases where these edits are done to existing articles.
Comment from Myrcia on 22 February 2017 at 00:12
In addition to Luciano’s point I would just ask “why?”. The only thing that is really required of a user on the wiki is a basic nation page, everything else is optional and at the user’s discretion. Since there’s no requirement to write any article, why bother copying (more or less) verbatim from Wikipedia? The wiki should be somewhere to enjoy writing, experimenting with code and expanding the realistic world in which your country exists.
If a user is copy text from anywhere and only altering it slightly then it’s not just laziness, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the wiki is there for. As is so often said (and should perhaps be made more clear), the wiki is in the service of the map, not vice versa.
Comment from Myrcia on 22 February 2017 at 00:24
Just to illustrate that point. If you won’t enjoy writing the constitution for the Trans-Uletha Trading Alliance then leave it unwritten rather than copying something from Wikipedia.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 22 February 2017 at 01:16
I’m glad you’ve clarified this, Luciano, isleño. I was always a bit unsure about how a wiki page about something real - in this case the english language - might fit into OGF. You’ll notice the last paragraph about ingerish linguistics is almost verbatim wikipedia. That was a bit lazy, I admit, and if I get time when nothing else is pressing, I’ll change it.
I am glad to see the addition of the ‘paper empires’ rule.
Happy mapping Udi
Comment from wangi on 22 February 2017 at 01:27
Ah, good that InstantCommons works. I’d say if you’re using a Wikipedia/Commons image as-is then you should link to it directly, avoid the local copy on this wiki. Plus, if you are adapting / making a derivative then i’d recommend you upload that on Commons too… And then use here.
Comment from isleño on 22 February 2017 at 02:32
@wangi: I could be wrong, but my understanding is that anything uploaded to Commons needs to be potentially usable for educational purposes, so I don’t think most of our images would qualify. (?)
Comment from wangi on 22 February 2017 at 02:43
You’re right, i had forgotten about that… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope
Comment from Luciano on 22 February 2017 at 03:03
@wangi - the Tlönist in me would love if our OGF mods of the real world infected the Commons and became a resource for others, thus blurring the line between realities, but alas, I think beyond isleño’s point, there is merely the matter that it might end up offending someone who prefers a stronger grip on reality-as-it-is than we might, ourselves. Of course, if current political vogues continue, any kind of attachment to reality may become more strictly optional, in which case a healthy Tlönism might become our best refuge.