• This forum is strictly intended to be used by members of the VS Battles wiki. Please only register if you have an autoconfirmed account there, as otherwise your registration will be rejected. If you have already registered once, do not do so again, and contact Antvasima if you encounter any problems.

    For instructions regarding the exact procedure to sign up to this forum, please click here.
  • We need Patreon donations for this forum to have all of its running costs financially secured.

    Community members who help us out will receive badges that give them several different benefits, including the removal of all advertisements in this forum, but donations from non-members are also extremely appreciated.

    Please click here for further information, or here to directly visit our Patreon donations page.
  • Please click here for information about a large petition to help children in need.

OBD copy/paste pages

Colonel_Krukov

Colonel_Krukov

🖖 Live long and prosper
He/Him
VS Battles
FC/OC VS Battles
Bureaucrat
Administrator
Image Helper
8,611
10,799
I've noticed that a few pages have been copied and pasted from OBD to our site here, and since it's not really nice to have someone else's hard work stolen and put onto here, I think they should be re-written.

Some examples I can think of was when I had to re-write a lot of Mass Effect profiles and I've noticed that The Doctor has a lot of similar text to his page on OBD.

Obviously I can't search through 10k+ pages and say all of the ones that are similar, but if you notice anything, I recommend some changes should be made.

This is a staff only thread, if you wish inquire about this topic, please leave me a message.
 
Yes, this has been an issue for a while now. We have to sort through the pages and change those that are copied from the OBD as we find them.
 
This isn't just OBD. A ton of pages have the vast majority of their texts and explanations ripped straight from other Wikis and it's really starting to bother me. This is particularly prevalent with Shonen series like Bleach, Naruto, Nanatsu no Taizai, and Fairy Tail.
 
@Reppuzan Yeah I agree. I was up all night trying to rewrite a bunch of pages cause of that.

I think the best thing to do is rewrite anyones we come across by (but not take up too large of staff's time and resources doing so) then strictly enforce this rule towards new pages being made for now on.
 
Yeah, I've been trying to clean up a few TMNT pages which where plagiarized from the TMNT wiki (with the verse page literally having text ripped from Wikipedia with reference tags and everything). Its a serious problem. I think we should fix pages if we come across it, but no large scale wikia project.
 
If I'm not mistaken. Most animanga related wikis use manga chapters and databooks as their source material. While outright plagiarism is bad, using their reasoning to justify statistics, if it is reasonable and sound enough, should not be a problem. We also should not abuse the term "plagiarism". All content on Fandom, that means any wikia (unless stated otherwise), is under the CC-BY-SA license. That means to grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture, all users editing or otherwise contributing to wikis that use the CC BY-SA license agree to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely for any purpose, including commercial use, in accordance with the CC BY-SA license. Such use is allowed where attribution is given and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute applies to any derivative works of the contributions.

In conclusion, as long as the reasoning is sound and agreed upon, and is in accordance to our tiering system and other policies, I do not see why it is such a bad idea. I'm only referring to using wikis as a secondary or tertiary source, not other vs wikis. We shouldn't copy them for obvious reasons.
 
@Sera

I understand that there's no rule against it on a wiki wide level, but there are a number of reasons why I'm staunchly opposed to the idea of ripping everything off other wikis.

1) Not all wikis constantly check their articles for proper grammar and spelling, particularly when translating directly from other languages like Japanese. Thus it creates more work in the long-run when Staff members are cleaning up these pages.

2) Copy-pasting off other wikis makes our own wiki look bad since we just appear lazy by comparison. Other users have spent numerous hours writing up descriptions for their respective wikis, then we just steal it from them without a care in the world. It makes us look lazy, unprofessional, and downright slovenly.

3) These descriptions may or may not be actually accurate since they're written by users, not by the creators. In addition, these descriptions do not take Verse Equalization into account and thus may plug in information that's ripe with inconsistencies and NLF (i.e. Reiatsu Crush).

4) A great deal of this copy-pasted information is superfluous (i.e. Immense Speed, Immense Strength, Shunpo Master) or would go into the AP Justification or feats section. Ultimately, these copy-pasted descriptions clog up pages, slow down loading times, and make things harder to read.
 
Well, nevertheless, paraphrasing is probably okay, to a degree, as is using the same calculations to validate several of our statistics, but I am also not comfortable with outright plagiarism. However, we probably have to keep the modified Fallacy page in lack of better options, but we do give explicit credit for it to the original author.

Regardless, the problem is that beyond listing that this is not allowed as a rule/encouraging people to rewrite such text segments, I am not sure what we can realistically do about it?
 
In any case, I mostly agree with Reppuzan, but again, starting massive wiki revision projects in which we search through, and cross-reference, 10500 pages, does not at all seem realistic, or worth the effort.
 
@Antvasima

Obviously, but we should still discourage it at every turn. It's just improper conduct to simply copy-paste information in my opinion.
 
@Ant that's why I suggested rewriting any pages we come across (yet not go extremely out of our way or make a massive project out of it) and stictly enforce this rule towards new pages being made for now on.
 
I'm comfortable with re-doing pages that I'm knowledgeable on.
 
It's not worth the effort of searching it out.

It should just be fixed when it is stumbled upon, and not replicated when creating profiles.

That's also why I tend to take so much time when making profiles, as I like to use info from other wikis, cross check with the source material, and put things into my own words, since that way we never get into this sort of problem.
 
@Colonel Krukov I am obviously fine with if you wish to rewrite the text segments of directly copied pages that you know of.
 
@Reppu I couldn't agree more. I am strongly against outright copying from other wikis, especially word for word or copy/pasting. Not to mention, as you said, there can be various errors that are overlooked which makes our content look bad.
 
@Sera

Yup. I have no problems with paraphrasing other wiki statements for evidence, but my main gripe is with those lazy copy-pasters.

I was wondering if we should start requiring citations, but that's probably too much effort now...
 
Requiring citations would probably cause far too much work, yes.
 
Plus we already require justifications through links, so I suppose it all evens out.
 
I was just reading a thread on Central just the other day from a few years ago that touched on this topic. On that thread, they said that they would only accept cope/paste if there is a link to the original page (which gives credit to the original editors in that wiki's history weather they are on this wiki or not).

I would like to add that someone should contact OBD and inquire their opinion on copy/paste, and on the above information.
 
I agree with @Promestein. Copying and pasting is just lazy and doesn't suit our system here. If you're going to copy pretty much everything written on an OBD profile for a vsbattles profile you plan to make, you should at least have the decency to type it out yourself and change things up a bit in order to stay in line with the way we do things here.
 
I also agree with Promestein. It is okay if we use some of the same calculations to justify the statistics, but to copy pages outright without even paraphrasing the text is not acceptable.
 
Another question that should be raised is weather or not the ones doing the copy/paste are also members of the other site. In that case they would be using their authority as a member of that site to distribute the information to our site. But to comply with the copyright established by Wikia/Fandom we would still need a source link or citation.

Although it does not fix the page, would adding a template similar to "stub" that places a phrase like: THIS PAGE HAS BEEN RIPPED FROM (OBD/OTHER SITES) AND DOES NOT COMPLY WITH VS BATTLES ETHICS! You can help the Wiki by fixing it. This would serve as a warning to viewers, and to the person who did it, that copy/paste is frowned upon. If it would work like stub and places the page in its own category (for easy access), would it not be unreasonable to leave the page as is for a month or two? And, having a category for the ripped pages would allow other users to get involved.

However, what if the person who wrote it posts it on both sites? No cite would be required and shouting "Ripped from OBD" would extremely insulting. I know I would be. It would be the biggest slap to the face to have your work, your goodwill, called plagiarism when it is not. By posting, I would also know that I would have no control over who edits and how it is edited thereafter. It would be sloppy on my part not to the calculations for both site (in the event that they are slightly different). At the same time, I would be posting the page with the intent that it would serve as a starter page.

I would like to close my 2.5 hour rant with saying, with two extremely similar communities, where something could be shared without much change, citing is practically unavoidable. The consensuses here looks to be that no one wants to cite. That's OK.

  • note: citing in the edit summary also counts as a cite.
Copying a page should be looked down upon. My qualm lies with attacking the honest goodwill of the rare minority.
 
A quick summary of the Mortal Kombat setting should be sufficient, yes.
 
That Mortal Kombat page should be re-worded, although are there anything else that needs to be fixed aside from the the text?
 
I do not know, sorry, but yes, the page definitely needs to be modified.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Antvasima
  • Locked
Wiki problems that need to be dealt with
Replies
24
Views
3K
Antvasima
Antvasima
DMUA
Removing Power of the Verse from Verse pages
2 3
Replies
118
Views
11K
Vzearr
Vzearr
Mr. Bambu
  • Locked
Addition of Pointless Categories
Replies
4
Views
2K
Mr. Bambu
Mr. Bambu
BestMGQScalerEver
  • Locked
A needed addition to verse pages
Replies
8
Views
1K
Antvasima
Antvasima
AKM sama
Antvasima has reached over 400,000 wiki edits!
2
Replies
69
Views
3K
LordGriffin1000
LordGriffin1000
Back
Top