Good evening,
Going to discourse on some stuff, getting feedback for official policies and such.
Sourcing[]
I've noticed a lot of material on this Wiki has been copied over from Moon Guard's wiki, like laws and stuff, without any attribution. Wikia has a policy that if you take stuff from other sources you must properly attribute them. Please cite your sources, including a back link to the original. These should include warnings that people aren't required to opt in if they are tagged with such on the MG page.
Please do this even if you created the original document over on the wiki because it seems like a lot of people who copy stuff over, even as originators, do not keep their WRA mirrors up to date. People may want to see what's most recent.
Also, you must properly source artists. Please don't violate copyrights. . The quick and dirty questions to ask yourself before uploading images to the wiki is.
- Is it a screenshot? You can use screenshots of wow.
- Did you make it? If you made something yourself, drew it yourself, you own the copyright and can upload it.
- Did you commission it? A Commission is a piece of art requested by you, of another artist, whether paid or gratis. A good quick and dirty rule is if it wasn't made for you, don't use it.
- Is the artwork offered under a license you can actually use? Creative Commons? GNU? Public Domain? Unless there is information with the image that explicitly states the license, it's not free to use.
In addition, please don't use photos of real people without their permission. People own their image, and, technically photography is a copyrighted form of art.
Ria Sunhammer has kindly offered to let us modify some rules she uses on another site she runs. This is a slightly modified version missing the language for real people stuff.
If you post art, it must be your own work, art specifically commissioned by you, or art for which the artist has given you permission to post. Artists must be listed. If it is your original work, simply state it in the information box.
A Commission is a piece of art requested by you, of another artist, whether paid or gratis. Normally commissioned art is free for the person commissioning the art to post. The artist should be credited and the date of the commission should be listed.
If an artist has given you specific permission to post their work on other forums, please credit them and shoot (an admin) a note with the details of the permission given.
- Ideally this is in the form of an email chain where you ask the artist for permission, and a reply where they are granting that permission.
Some art is in the public domain, and should be noted as such with the source and photographer (an image from wikimedia commons for example) A link to the page where the photo was posted, where it lists that it is public domain, is also acceptable.
If it's a Creative Commons license that enables you to post the work, you must have that information listed.
DO NOT post NSFW art, especially not depicting minors, or art depicting minors in any fashion that can be construed as pornographic. (This is grounds for a ban.)
If you are an artist and your work has been uploaded without consent, please contact an administrator with a link to the original work and other relevant information, preferably someplace with a time/date stamp.
Be aware that in some cases where not enough information can be provided or the image is too widespread for us to discern the originator we may ask you to submit a
DMCA takedown notice, which is a legal statement of ownership along with your real life personal information. In these cases we're going to have you work directly with Wikia as we don't want to handle your personal information at all.
Server Canon[]
It should also be noted that a number of players have expressed concern that this wiki could be used as a tool by folks to force a server canon on people, it's important that we tread lightly when it comes to making hefty impositions on others without some sort of preface reminding people they have the right to not opt in.
For those of you who are new to WRA or otherwise don't know, WRA does not have an official server canon, or official server lore. In fact, with few exceptions, I've seen WRA players reject both direct proposals and indirect proposals on the realm forums for a server canon time and time again ranging from innocent suggestions of making an in game lore book, to people knee-jerking at others declaring themselves leaders of the church or of canon nations as part of public RP and being insistent that everyone accept it.
Consent, the right to opt in or out of anything at any time for any reason, seems pretty important to folks on WRA. For any RP setting that does not have an entry process and people handling quality control, consent is the tool players use to omit things that don't make sense to them, aren't fun, or just aren't to their tastes. Consent is freedom.
Canon, by the way, is canon (fiction). "In fiction, canon is the material accepted as officially part of the story in an individual universe of that story. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction." It's also basically synonymous to the laws things are judged by, such as the canon of proportions in art. Canon is laws, it's a lack of choice, it's rules that must be obeyed.
With regards to server canon, people have asked the following (these are paraphrased and generalized):
- Does everything get accepted or do we pick and choose?
- What about things that contradict with actual canon, such as a group wiping out an in game location?
- What are the criteria to judge with? Should we judge
- If people are not cool with an idea, and it becomes canon, do they get blacklisted for not playing along? Is it ethical to force these things on people?
- Who chooses for everyone? What if people don't like the choice?
- Do we vote? How do we prevent a popularity contest?
- Do we make a council?
- What's to stop big guilds from ruling everything?
- Will this cause drama?
The conclusion is time and time again is, "No, this is a bad idea."
If you don't agree with this stance on server canon you are free to discuss it with the greater WRA community on the official realm forums.
We do not police content on this wiki outside of checking articles to make sure they aren't saying bad things about other players, checking to make sure content actually exists, that articles haven't been vandalized, and making sure that content is properly formatted for a unified look. This is a character directory and information repository for people interested in WRA, finding other users on WRA, etc.
However, this wiki is not a place to try and impose your head-canons or a server canon on other players, it's a character directory and information repository! Everyone is free to choose if they opt into something or not.
Unfortunately not all RPers know they have the right to opt in or out, and players new to RP are especially unlikely to know this, so people need to be reminded.
- For the sake of making sure everyone knows they have freedom of choice, non-profile content that seems to impose itself on the community may receive a "you don't have to opt in" notice on it at the admin and mod team's discretion. Even the MG wiki has notices of this nature on some pages.
- For characters? We prefer to let people classify themselves. It might be prudent to put a note on your own profile if your character is questionably powerful so new players know they have choice. I do this with my own odder characters.
As always, feedback is desired.