"Vandalism" concerns

[Aggelakis]

If anyone is approached by someone asking about vandalism done to ParagonWiki, let them know that they were mistaking us for CoH Wikia. CoH Wikia was vandalised earlier today, both the front page and the "Blaster" page (of all things). Someone else fixed the Blaster page, and I undid the front page vandalism (I cannot abide wiki vandalism, even if it's a wiki I no longer am invested in whatsoever), but not before several people came to me asking questions. (I'm fairly known in the Player Questions forum for updating pwiki with new details that come up in PQ threads, so I often get poked about questions/concerns regarding the wiki.)

I sincerely wish Wikia would allows us to put a banner on CoH Wikia to let visitors know that ParagonWiki is not hosted on Wikia. Of course, most of us remember the bitchfit they pitched last time we tried doing that. :p

[eabrace]

The never did "contact" me to tell me to stop redirecting people here. 

It is unfortunate that the state of their CoH wiki has degraded to that point, though.

[Steiner]

Get the red-names involved lol. If they grant exclusive rights to PWiki for the game info or even just tell them to knock it the <bleep> off... they are obligated to listen... I think.

[Sekoia]

They really should just take the CoH Wikia down. At this point, it's little more than an ad farm. It's hopelessly outdated and is a real disservice to the CoH community, especially since Wikia's overall pagerank inappropriately boosts their site to the top of search results.

[Aggelakis]

Get the red-names involved lol. If they grant exclusive rights to PWiki for the game info or even just tell them to knock it the <bleep> off... they are obligated to listen... I think.

Nope. Wikia has rights to the content on their servers, through GFDL. People can even copy content (including whole articles) from ParagonWiki to CoH Wikia becasue of GFDL. Sucks, but we can't do anything about it.

CoH Wikia *should* just be removed, but it never will because it generates ad money for them for all the folks that accidentally visit that wiki instead of the real ParagonWiki. There are also a few people who stubbornly refuse to ever leave CoH Wikia well enough alone, and occasionally go through spurts of (insufficient, spotty, and at times, completely wrong) updates.

[Steiner]

If I owned a privately owned business, and found there was a Wikia about it... I could easily invoke series of laws to have them remove it if I wanted my own site to be the only place for that information to be; or a site I actually endorsed/supported. I fail to see how GNU FDL has any "right" to call what pieces of information as "public".

Not to mention there are obvious loopholes which can be used against them. For instance how their ad revenue is creating money for them from information and intellectual property that is not theirs; which has been stated in NCSoft's EULA as illegal...

If a multi-million dollar corporation started breathing down Wikia's neck about closing it down, I seriously doubt they would even try to counter it; just close it down and be rid of the headache.

All I'm saying is it should brought up through the right channels... and MAYBE it might start enough issues to where Wikia just drops it out of not having to deal with the issue anymore.

[Zombie Man]

I do know of other instances where companies considered fan sites to be invasion of copyright and got them shut down.

Certainly a site *about* CoH is protected speech. But once you start copypasting a signifcant amount of text, or use trademark characters, or repost game images; then the owner of the copyright has a right to say 'no copy for you.'

Whether NCSoft wants to pursue this or not... <shrug>. Maybe if we point out that the site advertises RMT for CoH they'll get involved.

[Sekoia]

Actually, the entirety of the wiki is NOT subject to the GFDL. Much of the content on the wiki is NCsoft's, and they haven't released it under the GFDL. Paragon Wiki's general disclaimer acknowledges this fact and states that we are using it with permission. Wikia's wiki has a similar general disclaimer (though it has a big note stating that it may be outdated or incorrect).

Is Wikia violating the terms of use? I don't know, but it's quite possible. If they are, then NCsoft would be well within their rights to demand they remove NCsoft's content from their site, and Wikia would have no grounds to refuse.