Cardhuntria:Policy
Policy is a term referring to the processes and rules observed involving the creation, editing, and management of articles on Cardhuntria as well as treatment of other users. Violating a Cardhuntria policy will at the very least lead to a page being edited to conform to policy. Edits or new pages that are created that do not conform to a specific policy are subject to change by another user (assuming that change conforms with policy) without expectation of appeal to an admin, as is all content within the site. However, it may also lead to the page being deleted or — for the worst offenses — it may lead to the poster being declared a vandal and become banned or blocked. Treatment of users who engage in destruction of content, harassment, or misuse of content (spam) is also governed by policy.
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Copyright policy
- For a statement of copyright ownership regarding material in this wiki, see Cardhuntria:Copyrights.
This policy sets out information and rules for respecting Blue Manchu's copyrights in its works. In order to reproduce any of Blue Manchu's content, including images, characters, storylines, or text, we must either have Blue Manchu's clear permission to do so, or meet the criteria required for "fair use".
Terminology
Copyright
Copyright is the legal ownership that automatically attaches to creative works. For example, if you were to write a novel in your spare time, you would own the copyright of that novel, and no one else could use its text without your permission. Copyright protects not only the actual text of a novel or code of a computer game, but the characters, plot points, and other creative expressions within.
Copyright law is enforced internationally, based on a series of treaties.
Fair use
Fair use or fair dealing allows limited reproduction of copyrighted works for specific purposes, such as study or criticism. Fair use considerations of particular relevance to this site include:
- The source of the material must be acknowledged.
- The amount of the original copied. Generally speaking the less, the better. "Quote or closely paraphrase as little as possible to make your point: under 10% is best; above 20% is high risk...although in some cases 1% may not be fair use, and 100% can be fair use, it’s impossible to provide percentage guidelines that always work". A small paragraph or sentence paraphrased or quoted verbatim from a source is likely fine, quoting or paraphrasing an entire article/quest/event from a source is likely not. Use sound judgement.
- The purpose of the copying. If we reproduce some of Blue Manchu's ideas as a guide to their games and books, that is more likely to be considered a valid purpose than if we included content which could serve as alternatives to the games and books.
Trademark
Copyright is often confused with trademark, which is a registered name or logo used to sell goods or services. In the case of Blue Manchu, Blue Manchu™, Card Hunter™, and the Blue Manchu and Card Hunter logos, are all registered trademarks used to sell its games and books. No one else can use those logos in the marketplace. Trademark laws protect Blue Manchus' names and logos, while copyright laws protect its games and books.
Copyleft
The term copyleft is often used in the context of wikis, and is a form of licensing which allows free distribution, with the main limit that the person using the software must also distribute it freely. Naturally, in order to allow our content to be freely distributed, we must first ensure that we have permission to post it.
Policy
This policy covers all articles which describe or discuss the content of Blue Manchu's computer games, novels, RPG books, manga, and other works. While articles containing direct quotes and images are obviously included, all articles which describe Blue Manchu's storylines, characters, and other creative expressions are also covered by Blue Manchu's copyright, despite being written in our own words.
There are only two ways that we can use ideas, text, and images from Blue Manchu's works:
- With Blue Manchu's clear permission.
- According to the fair use exception.
All articles covered by this policy must fall into one or both of these categories.
Blue Manchu's permission
Blue Manchu gives express permission to reproduce certain material on fansites (Blue Manchu copyright attribution). This includes:
- Material downloaded from their website.
- Screenshots of their games.
You should include copyright information as near as possible to the use of the material reproduced (on Image: page or using a citation or reference).
Fair use
In order to be considered fair use of copyrighted material on Cardhuntria, all of the following must be met.
- The specific source of the material must be acknowledged.
- The tone of the article must be that of a guide to the Card Hunter universe, not that of a competing creative work.
- For example, an article describing a novel should objectively describe the main characters and major plot points. It should not be written as a narrative short story which serves to take the place of the novel. Likewise, a description of the events of a game or cinematic should not be in the form of a dramatic short story.
- Where direct quotes are used, special care is required. Note that closely paraphrasing Blue Manchu's text to avoid direct quotation would still be plagiarism. Try to reduce the information down to 10% of the original source to be safe.
- Quotes must be clearly marked as quotes, using quotation marks or the <blockquote> element.
- Quotes must be used sparingly, and be as brief as possible.
- Quotes must be offered in support of a claim. Do not reproduce Blue Manchu's text to fill in the substantive content of an article. The only exception to this is if the only information for a subject is limited to a sentence or small paragraph. Quoting or paraphrasing a small bit of information is ok, as long as it includes quotation marks or the <blockquote> element, as well as the ref.
Enforcement
Because it involves issues which could incur legal liability for the wiki, it is imperative that all editors read, follow, and help enforce this policy. Articles not in compliance with this policy should be brought into compliance with it promptly through the removal or editing of the contravening content.
Using Cardhuntria content on other sites
Using content from Cardhuntria carries with it the expectation that the content will be attributed properly and that the content or any derivations of the content will be shared alike.
To re-distribute a text page in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions) If you make modifications or additions to the page you re-use, you must license them under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 or later. For further information, please refer to the legal code of the CC-BY-SA License.
Screenshots, videos, and other Blue Manchu-copyrighted source material may be used by permission from Blue Manchu. Content from external sources may have additional attribution requirements beyond what is described on this page.
Off-wiki content (for example, e-mails and other forms of communication) is not necessarily released under this license unless otherwise stated.
Do not post policy
DNP stands for Do Not Post. Things on this list should not be posted anywhere on Cardhuntria. Some of them are specifically banned and will get you banned if you persist in posting them.
Copyrighted content
Copyrighted content (from Blue Manchu or another source) which is in blatant violation of fair use is not permitted to be posted. See the copyright policy for more information.
Exploits
Posting of info or links to any kind of exploits (or any other way of breaking Blue Manchu's Terms of Use or EULA) will be deleted and will result in a ban. It is suggested, therefore, that you not do so. However, depending on the use of the term, datamining is prevalent in the Card Hunter community even among reputable official fansites, usually for data about items and similar information. Therefore, for the purposes of this policy, publication of datamined content on Card Hunter is controlled as defined below.
Datamined or unreleased content
For the purposes of this section, datamining is defined as accessing content which is not accessible in normal gameplay in the official unmodified client or any official tools Blue Manchu may provide (such as the console commands). While "model viewer" images of live or PTR content are permissible, "true" in-game screenshots are preferred and will always be given preference over model viewer content. Content arrived at by an exploit is not allowed to be posted on Card Hunter.
Only articles about announced content are permitted. Where topics center around information released in-game or in game data files, only information pertaining to live or public test clients are permitted. Certain pieces of unannounced content may be exempt from this for reasons of extreme notoriety and importance, which will be up to an administrator's judgment. Note that Blue Manchu has final say on what content can be shown. Content from clients which are under a non-disclosure agreement is considered to be unannounced, until the agreement is lifted.
Why do we care about this? We would much prefer to maintain our fansite status with Blue Manchu! Staying a fansite involves not talking about obvious things like exploits or private servers or NDA-covered information, but also includes non-announced content. A small price to pay for links to us all over from the official site!
Speculation
Unsourced speculation (that is, speculation without factual sources) is not permitted in main namespace articles on the wiki, and all speculation should be kept separate from factual content within articles. Inaccuracy or opinions about announced content are best kept off-wiki; unannounced content on external sites is not permitted to be linked. Information which is difficult to maintain, such as item drop rates, should be left to off-wiki item database sites.
Off-topic content
Do not post content that has no connection with the Card Hunter universe whatsoever. This is considered wikisquatting. Off-topic content can be deleted by any Card Hunter contributor, and whole pages that are off-topic are candidates for speedy deletion. Persisting in posting such content may get you labeled as a vandal and/or banned.
Cardhuntria is not Wikipedia. Do not create articles to define real-world things which have little connection to Card Hunter. If it is necessary to provide a definition, you can use an interwiki link to connect to the likely more in-depth article on Wikipedia.
Examples of off-topic content
- The now-deleted articles on various gaming consoles. They may be gaming machines, but they have never run Card Hunter.
- A guild page containing nothing but an encyclopedia entry on the bird family (the animal).
Examples of tangential but on-topic content
- An article on how to spec your PC/Mac to run Card Hunter smoothly is tangential, but on-topic.
Defamatory or false content
Articles and/or talk pages that are nothing but personal defamation violates the vandalism policy, and are also illegal in many countries. Defamatory content can be deleted by any Card Hunter contributor, and whole pages that are nothing but defamation are candidates for speedy deletion.
Note that a modicum of common sense has to be applied to this policy. While isolated cases of "I think you are being a jerk right now, because <well-formulated and objective reasons>..." as a response in a talk page is not exactly good wikiquette, it is not defamation. A whole barrage of why a person has to be an idiot is defamation.
Attempting to mislead others by submitting content which is blatantly false and which is not subject to interpretation is also not acceptable. When in doubt, and if you can, you should cite it.
Persisting in posting either defamatory or false content may end up with you labeled as a vandal and/or banned.
Discrimination
Cardhuntria is a wiki for everyone. We do not tolerate discrimination based upon social status, age, sex, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, faction, server, guild, etc.
Non-English content
Cardhuntria is an English wiki. Its infrastructure does not support content in other languages. Doing so would entail something like what wikipedia has — different sub-domains and monitoring routines to track changes between different language versions of pages and alert translators. Therefore, non-English content is against policy and will be deleted when found.
Nonsense
Pages which don't make any sense or are "non-content" may be candidates for deletion. Non-content includes empty or virtually empty pages (or stubs with absolutely no content), slang terms, and forum memes if they do not reach outside the scope of one small group of people who are using it or are aware of it. Terms and memes which only exist on one server are permissible within the server's page and subpages.
Violations
Content which qualifies as DNP should be edited out, or if the entire page is DNP content, deleted. If you cannot edit out the content, please contact an admin. Users who persist in posting DNP content may have action taken against them per the vandalism policy.
Vandalism policy
This is the definition of vandalism for the purposes of this policy:
- Removing valid content without explanation or an explanation that makes no sense.
- Items listed in the Do not post policy.
- Pretending to remove other vandalism content in order to prevent cleaning. This includes minor edits or minor removals while leaving a bulk of unwanted content ("spam"), but making a comment as if you removed the unwanted content.
Cleaning vandalism
An act of vandalism can be removed or reverted with only a comment in the edit summary identifying the type of vandalism (usually spam, unexplained deletes, etc.). Disagreement with the edit should be posted in the related discussion page.
Blocking vandals
Blocking by an admin will occur after the first known act of vandalism, vandals will be indefinitely blocked with no reprieve whatsoever. This site maintains a no-nonsense policy against all acts of vandalism as the target audience encompasses minors. For reference you can look at the log of users who have been blocked.
Appealing a block
You may appeal a by e-mailing an administrator (or other direct method to contact the admin if it is available)
