General Discussions

In order to be an author at our site, you must WRITE YOUR OWN FAQ and submit it.

Submitting someone else's hard work and slapping your name on it or removing their name from it will not cut it. That's called PLAGIARISM and nothing ****es me off more.

Real authors work extremely hard creating the FAQs and guides that they write and they don't need people coming up and stealing it just so they can have a nifty title on the site.

I HAVE NOW PERMANENTLY BANNED 2 PEOPLE FROM THIS SITE FOR THIS VERY REASON AND I WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO FOR ANYONE VIOLATING THIS RULE.

NO WARNINGS, NO SECOND CHANCES. I hope I'm making myself clear on this issue.

[Edited by moderator Nevermore, 3/13/2008 12:37:58 PM]

What information can I use from other sources without permission?

Without permission, you are still free to use facts and other non-creative information. Of course, you still must provide credit to the source of information in your own guide; if you don't, you are plagiarizing.

For example, you could get the hit points for the enemies in a game from the official strategy guide for that game and post them in your own guide in your own format. These are facts, and not protected by copyright. However, if you were to copy the guide's strategy on how to beat the boss, that would be a copyright infringement, as you are copying their creative work. Copying the format of the table of hit points would also be a violation of their copyright.


What is Plagiarism?

Simply put, plagiarism is the taking of information from a source and claiming it as your own. If you read a boss strategy in another guide and re-create in your own words, if you don't credit the original source of the information, you're plagiarizing.

Copyright infringement is not always plagiarism, and plagiarism is not Copyright infringement. One is a legal matter, the other is an ethical matter. Both should be avoided at all costs when creating your guide.


Thanks to CJayC for the info

[Edited by Neo7, 3/1/2005 3:31:59 PM]

We now have a tutorial up that will help those wanting to become and author and write their own FAQ or guide. It was written by author Neo7.

You can read it on our tutorials page here:

Link

[Edited by moderator darkish_raven, 4/1/2009 6:08:21 PM]