Mongoose 3.0/3.5 Grand Archive - Any Interest?

Wulf Ratbane said:

So then I can take the entry that includes Copyright Me + Grandwiki, make an edit, and republish it again as Copyright Me + Grandwiki + Copyright Me?

What a can of worms.

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Yes. Isn't the OGL grand?

EDIT: What portion of the work, exactly, is Copyright Grandwiki? Simply the fact that they copied it down?

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The part designated as Open Game Content in the "work" Grandwiki published, i.e. the webpage (or the pdf document if my recommendation somehow, miracolously, fiies through). Even if they just copied it down. You allowed them to copy (USE) it and thereby claim copyright when you put it as OGC under the OGL. Also any part designated as Product Identity on that page, also any part not designated as either PI or OGC and therefore copyrighted under standard copyright law. Isn't the OGL grand?

Wulf Ratbane said:

I'm going to be annoyed if that copyright notice will be stuck on the end of any OGC I contribute.

Ideally the last line in any of my content is my copyright notice.

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Not the intention at all.

In the OGL link I have :

Section 15:
Open Game License v 1.0, Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
System Reference Document Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R. Cordell, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
Dr. Blottenberger's Grand Wiki Copyright 2008, Mark Gedak
<your section 15 additions go here>

We are not claiming copyright on anyone else's material.

lrsach01 said:

I would LOVE to see this sort of thing happen. Makes me sad that I have no skills when comes to programming.

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Yeah, what he said

Yair said:

You allowed them to copy (USE) it and thereby claim copyright when you put it as OGC under the OGL.

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I'm not going to dispute you-- as I said, my brain is really not in OGL mode at the moment; I think reading the GSL fried the circuits-- but what "work," what "copy," exactly, do you think Grandwiki has copyrights to?

As far as I can tell the only "copy" being added by Grandwiki is the Grandwiki copyright notice itself, and that's only being added to the work because it has to be. Ugh.

I think since it's well established that you can present the S15 in any order, it would probably be best to list the Grandwiki copyright as the very 1st entry, so that it is obvious and out of the way of the "actual work."

I should probably go back and read the OGL again. That's probably a good Step One, huh?

If someone does the work (sadly, I am not computer savvy enough to do it myself) I would definitely utilize it. I already own hard copies of a number of the quintessentials and slayers guides and would love access to the ones I never purchased.

Man-thing said:

We are not claiming copyright on anyone else's material.

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I am not sure if that is possible under the OGL.

OGL said:

6.Notice of License Copyright: You must update the COPYRIGHT NOTICE portion of this License to include the exact text of the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any Open Game Content You are copying, modifying or distributing, and You must add the title, the copyright date, and the copyright holder’s name to the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any original Open Game Content you Distribute.

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On the surface, you may simply claim not to be distributing any original OGC. However, you are NOT simply copying someone's OGC. The work involves editing, abridgment, changing words, and so on. It falls under Derivative Material (1b) of the license, and the work is to some extent new. I therefore think it's prudent to add your name to the copyright list, less you be in violation of the bolded part. Better safe than sorry.

I didn't remember the "original" part when answering, though. That does leave a way out to use the license without updating the list, which I didn't remember existed.

Wulf Ratbane said:

I'm not going to dispute you-- as I said, my brain is really not in OGL mode at the moment; I think reading the GSL fried the circuits-- but what "work," what "copy," exactly, do you think Grandwiki has copyrights to?

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"work" is referred to in Section 8, which essentially requires all OGC to be part of a well-defined "work" for its proper designation; in this case the "work" is probably the webstite, IMO, but arguably the entry. What Grandwiki has copyrights to is more questionable, but surely any words that are used to replace or abridge original OGC, changes in its structure, and so on. If I change your PI "Emerald Empire Guard" to "Imperial Guard", who does the "Imperial" there belong to? I'm releasing it as OGC, after all. If I change your sentence from "Add this to any character" to "Affiliated Crazons Option: Under this option, you add to any character the ability to..." for editing reasons (perhaps making a single entry instead of one of a series, for better inclusion in a wiki structure) - anyone copying that without license would be violating someone's copyrights, but whose? To be on the safe side, it's just better for everone concerned to add the wiki's/editor's name to the copyrights list.

As far as I can tell the only "copy" being added by Grandwiki is the Grandwiki copyright notice itself, and that's only being added to the work because it has to be. Ugh.

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You are neglecting the various editing changes involved. Regardless, the addition of the name to the list is IMHO prudent at the least.

I think since it's well established that you can present the S15 in any order, it would probably be best to list the Grandwiki copyright as the very 1st entry, so that it is obvious and out of the way of the "actual work."

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Yeah, that's reasonable.

I should probably go back and read the OGL again. That's probably a good Step One, huh?

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Me too. Forgotten all about the "original" up there.

Wulf Ratbane said:

I use WetPaint myself for some things, and it definitely wins "ease of use" in my book, but it does have some serious limitations that I think would disqualify it from a wiki of this size.

(As for the WetPaint ads-- I use Firefox so I never see them.)

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Can you be more specific about the limitations? I'm working for Wetpaint these days, actually, and this is a project we'd be really happy to get behind. We also have some changes that will be going live soon that might address some of your concerns. You can contact me at michelle@wetpaint.com directly and/or we can loop in one of our biz-dev guys, Steven, to help discuss it. There are things that can be done regarding ads, etc., depending on how this shapes up.

Michelle Lyons said:

Can you be more specific about the limitations? I'm working for Wetpaint these days, actually, and this is a project we'd be really happy to get behind. We also have some changes that will be going live soon that might address some of your concerns. You can contact me at michelle@wetpaint.com directly and/or we can loop in one of our biz-dev guys, Steven, to help discuss it. There are things that can be done regarding ads, etc., depending on how this shapes up.

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It's a bit buggy at times (though I won't lay that on your feet, it could be my browser/Java console), it likes to drop spaces from edited text, it loads slowly, the tables and the formatting can be ornery, and (although I understand the rationale why not) I'd like to be able to edit my posts to threads.

If I sat down for 30 minutes to work on my WetPaint pages I am sure other frustrations would return to me.

All of that being said, don't get me wrong-- I really dig my WetPaint wikis.

Cool that you're working for them. Small world!

kensanata said:

Ah, thanks. Are we doing a Mongoose-only OGC wiki? Better decide such things as early as possible. If we're using Mongoose's fictional narrator, that may discourage other publishers, I'd think. Perhaps we could use him for the page heading the Mongoose section (basically the only section for the moment).

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I concur. If its named after Mongoose's character, then it should be for Mongoose products only.

Wulf Ratbane said:

It's a bit buggy at times (though I won't lay that on your feet, it could be my browser/Java console), it likes to drop spaces from edited text, it loads slowly, the tables and the formatting can be ornery, and (although I understand the rationale why not) I'd like to be able to edit my posts to threads.

If I sat down for 30 minutes to work on my WetPaint pages I am sure other frustrations would return to me.

All of that being said, don't get me wrong-- I really dig my WetPaint wikis.

Cool that you're working for them. Small world!

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Yeah, it really is a small world.

Well, one of the things that might help is that we could boil down some custom templates for the pages, in additional to some special skins for the site as a whole.

In particular, I'm in charge of home page and category page content too, and we'd be happy to help with site visibility and traffic. We've got some very expansive wikis on our network that get a lot of traffic, and I'd be happy to give examples for people to go look at.

Seriously, I talked to my boss and my co-workers, and we're more than willing to do what's we can to make this a great experience. This is a unique project and we want to support it however we can. We're happy to actively engage with this project and make it the best possible, including throwing some resources in to copy and paste material over, build cross-links, and other mundane wiki tasks.