Talk:Blood Policy

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Quotes too heavily from Wikipedia[edit]

I have noticed that on the Blood Wiki Blood, Blood II: The Chosen, and Blood II: The Nightmare Levels articles you placed a warning proclaiming that it "Quotes too heavily from Wikipedia". First, the majority of the Blood II article (Chapter Descriptions) is original Blood Wiki text that was copied to Wikipedia, and all the Nightmare Levels text on this Wiki and Wikipedia is created by User:Gideon or Me. Second, what is exactly wrong with using Wikipedia texts? Both the Blood Wiki and Wikipedia share the same license (GNU Free Documentation License), and as long as the text is of suitable quality I see nothing wrong with sharing texts. I am not saying your point is wrong, just asking for an explanation of your argument. Tchernobog 14:13, 4 August 2008 (EDT)


I don't see any evidence of what you state.  I don't see anyone listed in the Blood II article history with the same user name as anyone on the Blood Wiki.  It may be on an IP address, but that is not clear cut evidence.  If you can prove it, I would be more than happy to see it.  I'm not saying I don't trust you, but I'm thinking of what the audience is going to see and believe.  They're not going to care if the same person wrote the article.  They are going to see that it's the exact same data.  Nothing new.  They would have no reason to stick around.  I have taken it off the nightmare levels article. That was made in error. There is no nightmare levels article on the wikipedia.

Articles on a different wiki should not quote articles from the Wikipedia.  For one thing, the style does not match the rest of the articles, both in tone and form.  The idea of copying articles smacks of a kid who copies a term paper off the internet and passes it off as their own when it clearly does not match the vocabulary or sentence structure of the writer.

Second, the two cannot be maintained.  There's a principle in programming that you should not have the same data defined twice.  The reason for that is if something gets changed on one, you can't guarantee it's going to get changed on the other, and you might end up having old data.  If someone changes something on the Wikipedia article, then that makes this site's article outdated, because not only would it be a copy, it would be an old copy.  It's better to maintain our own version of the data to retain data integrity.  This also has the benefit of being able to change the article to fit the site's own style and diversify the article.  For example, you can expand the article to be sub-articles with the same information, or add more to it.  In essence, the Blood Wiki can "own" the article, rather than the Wikipedia.

Third, this is technically plagiarism.  True, there is no law against it, but it looks unprofessional.  Plagiarism is plagiarism, even if it's not illegal, it's immoral.  Someone is going to go to Wikipedia, then go to the Blood Wiki.  When they see that the content is directly copied from the Wikipedia (the more professional source), they're going to think that everything on the wiki is copied, that it's just some fan site that some 10 year old did.  Someone who copies articles is someone that doesn't want to put any work in, and it makes the site look bad.  The advantage that the Blood Wiki offers is that it gives more insight, more information, more details, than the Wikipedia can.  If the Blood Wiki only copies already written articles, there's no point to have it, the user can just go to the Wikipedia.

I propose a standard guideline to have all original articles and that any article caught copying from Wikipedia should be tagged with Needs Attention.  This will help distinguish the wiki from the Wikipedia, and give it more legitimacy.  I believe this site can be the new PlanetBlood, but that's not going to happen if we just copy content.

TheWallflower 14:51, 4 August 2008 (EDT)


Firstly, I am not User:Gideon on Wikipedia. I am User:Comrade Graham (you will find me quite prominently on the Blood and Blood II articles). Secondly, there is a point of maintaining between the two sites, and it is a service that I check ALMOST every day. The Blood Wiki is not out to "own" any articles, this is a Wiki which is a contributory ideal. We want people to take text from our site and use it and expand it as they wish, thus promoting Blood. Wikipedia follows the exact same philosophy of freedom of information and text and the ability to expand and contribute. The plagiarism point is invalid, Wikipedia and most other Wiki's are literary experimentations based on the Hacker Ethic. The basic of the Hacker Ethic is that all work made by the community is there not for personal ownership but to be available to be modified and advanced and redistributed. This Hacker Ethic is what lead to the free software movement, where software and its component source code and resource files are shared, redistributed, and advanced, freely. This method has lead to such well known software as those of the GNU project, the Linux kernel, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, the OpenOffice.org suite, the Fedora project (a very nice OS that is in basics a merging of all these free components) and even the vast amount of new features in Mozilla Firefox (and it is on the same ideal that Transfusion is being built by). Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and co on this same principle, to put the Hacker Ethic not just on computer source code, but on computer knowledge in text and image form. We took the text on Wikipedia (as encouraged by many users on the Transfusion forums as they wished the Wiki to have the same level of completion) and advanced it and furthered it (mostly on the Blood II articles). Then later as an act of compassion and contributory spirit we uploaded our new text back to the mother source (most notably the complete Blood II plot and the abridged Nightmare Levels plot, as stated earlier I work hard to coordinate both sites though I generally upload less to Wikipedia as they are not a Blood site). You claim that the Blood Wiki uses a different tone than Wikipedia? This was far from intentional on my part, I worked hard to make the tone encyclopedic as is Wikipedia. I would also like to say that it would have been highly illogical to have written the Blood plot by hand on our own, the community had already created it. Instead of wasting our time with that we can instead make ours more thorough as this is a Wiki devoted to that subject. You also show a fear of people down-playing us because we share text with our allies at Wikipedia, well we are not here to make the Wiki look good for them, we are here to make it thorough by including all the texts we can legally use as well as many of our own as possible. This site and Wikipedia follows the Hacker Ethic and as such it is only natural, and extremely practical to share from and help each other. We do wish to thank you for debating policy though, it is the only way to advance from within. Thank you.

BTW: On the subject of plagiarism, it is immoral. Mostly if it is out for personal gain or the ruination of the original author. For example if someone where to take a novel draft and sells it as his own, getting him a fancy mansion and making the original author live on the streets. That is of course extremely immoral. For a community to share and contribute to each other by working with and expanding each other's texts is not. Plagiarism only exists in a competitive form and as such does not typically exist in a communal area such as most Wiki's. Thank you again. Gideon 23:46, 4 August 2008 (EDT)


-A user isn't going to know that you're one user on Wikipedia, and someone different on Blood Wiki.  They're going to think its two different people, and think you copied off someone.  Even if you brand it across the front page that you wrote it, people won't notice that.  It doesn't matter even if the information is the exact same, it has to be presented in a different way.  The point of any website is to gain viewers, just like the point of any fiction is to have someone read it.  Otherwise, you're just shouting into the wind.  There's a lot about the Blood Wiki that doesn't entice viewers, and copying from Wikipedia articles is one of those thigns.   

-I don't understand what you mean by "contributory ideal" or "We want people to take text from our site and use it and expand it as they wish".  You mean you want them to copy from you?  You want them to cite your works as their own?  Would a school teacher allow that?  Do you seriously think, even though all content on Wikipedia is free that a student can just copy the entire article and pass it in?  Would you allow that if you were a teacher?  Would you allow that if you were someone's boss?

-I am a 27 year old software engineer who's been in the computer science industry since 2000.  I work with this junk everyday  I don't need a lecture from you on free source software and Hacker Ethics.

-A different tone is inevitable when you are working with a different set of authors/editors.  This inevitability must be accounted for, and not accounting for it makes the site look like amateur.  The way to account for this inevitability is to change the text so that it can no longer be identified as a copy.  You say you are working hard on making the tone encyclopedic, but you haven't looked at a lot of the articles on things like.  They are full of spelling errors, bad grammar, suppositions, conjectures, and dubious claims.  Christ, there are even still broken links on the front page.

-I don't understand what you mean by "I would also like to say that it would have been highly illogical to have written the Blood plot by hand on our own, the community had already created it. Instead of wasting our time with that we can instead make ours more thorough as this is a Wiki devoted to that subject."  What Blood plot?  Where?  I don't know what community you're talking about, but it sounds like the Blood Wiki didn't write it.  And if the Blood Wiki didn't write it, it's not the Blood Wiki's.  If you want a project to succeed, you can't cut corners, and there's no need to cut corners with this kind of project, where there's no profitability or deadline.

-On plagiarism, you are wrong.  What you're talking about is copyright infringement.  Even though content on the Wikipedia is not copyrighted, it still can be plagiarized.  I could write a public domain story like Shakespeare's Hamlet, and call it my own.  What would you think of me if I did that?  Now imagine the Blood Wiki doing that.  Plagiarism does not only exist in competitve form, and does apply to communal writings.  In this case, what you're doing is called content scraping.  You are presenting someone else's ideas as your own.  Even if you originally wrote the article, which is called self-plagiarism.  And it doesn't matter if you wrote the Wikipedia article - the Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, so it would be seen as an article on the Wikipedia shows up on the Blood Wiki - that means the Blood Wiki stole it.

-None of this counters my original point against copying from the Wikipedia - it looks bad and unprofessional.  Have you ever visited a wiki that had just a handful of teeny articles, then the main one was a big long thing copied from Wikipedia? Didn't that look awful?  Didn't that look amateur?  That's what you have right now, even if you don't realize it.  All of this site's pie-in-the-sky ideals and Hacker Ethics won't matter if people don't read the site.  And they won't read the site if it's not coupled with professionalism and a dedication to quality of content.  Copying from Wikipedia is not quality of content.  Are you going to stop everyone who writes something on either site, so the articles can conform to each other? If you want to use the wikipedia's articles, then you'd be better off with just a blank page and a link.  This policy reeks of the label you're trying to avoid - fan site.  Fan sites are not reliable sources of material, they're cobbled together by 10 year old kids who steal images and text and have no concept of eye-pleasing design.  If people think the Blood Wiki is a fan site, they won't go.

TheWallflower 11:44, 5 August 2008 (EDT)


I can see we are beginning to spin our wheels here. I will not debate that it would be good if the Blood Wiki pages had more content than Wikipedia. Not trying to be rude, but since this is your idea, if you can write Blood Wiki specific text, be my guest. I know that is a little bit harsh, you are trying to improve the Wiki and I do thank you for that. But if you are going to argue over this, you can supply it. If it is better text, I would thank you whole heartedly.

Note: We should never forget that the Blood Wiki is technically a fan site. Yes we are trying to maintain a level of professionalism here, but this is the site for the enjoyment Bloodites. Now I do agree that I have seen some awful fan websites on the Internet. And I can understand wanting that to be avoided. They can be biased (Such as a certain Blood Website on the Internet today), ungrammatical, and poorly implemented. But we will always technically be a Fan Website, that is we are not owned or supported by Monolith Productions. Hopefully a useful and informative fan site, but a fan site nonetheless. I await your reply. Tchernobog 13:59, 5 August 2008 (EDT)


I'm glad that you agree that we have the same goal - to improve the Blood Wiki.  We are debating whether or not it is proper to copy articles from the Wikipedia to the Blood Wiki, and you seem to have put the onus on me to make the changes.  That's fine.  That's what I'm here to do.  But I find it in poor taste to do this to avoid making a policy decision. - User:TheWallflower


I would be a pretty horrible moderator if I did not want to improve my own website ;)

On a more serious note, I have not said anything about not making an official policy. Right now we are still in debate on the matter, something may come out of it. We are still thinking about matters. Tchernobog 16:59, 5 August 2008 (EDT)


May I crave one small indulgence, do not go all hog-wild editing the Story and Chapters section on the Blood II: The Chosen article. I had worked and tailored that all originally and it took months of work to get it that good. You may change the tone and mannerisms, this is a Wiki after all but do not edit it mercilessly please.

Also, I wish to post this as a safety note. Wikipedia is not without copyright as TheWallflower claimed, it is under the GNU Free Documentation License which is legally a copyright license (called copyleft by its creators the Free Software Foundation). The text is copyrighted, though the terms allows you to copy and modify the text into your own texts. Under the condition that the text in turn remains GFDL. The Blood Wiki falls under the same license (in no small part due to our host). Do not confuse copyleft for public domain, just like you should not confuse free software for freeware. I am posting this for user protection. Thank you. Gideon 20:16, 5 August 2008 (EDT)