Citations, Bulbapedia Policy, and our position in the fan community

[Transfinite]

I think I'm understand this now. Serebii and WPM are upset that they go through all this trouble to get information about the games, TCG, anime, etc., information that is not reported to the general public or is frankly difficult and time consuming to get, and yet they do not get acknowledged for their hard work. Whereas Bulbanews takes all its information from sources that are available to the general public

I'm sick of repeating myself on this topic. See any of my previous posts in this thread for a response to this.

and yet Transfinite feels we should be cited for our "work."

It was hyperbole. I neither expect nor feel Serebii should cite us just because we get information before him -- and vice versa.

 

[immewnity]

WHERE is the proof that they posted the information FIRST and "we" didn't get it from another source?!?!

There isn't, which is why there is such a big fuss on some sites changing timestamps. (NO, Joe, I'm NOT referring to you this time)

 

[PocketMonsters.net]

Serebii pointed the staff of Pocketmonsters.net to this thread and it appears that Bulbagarden is still refusing to acknowledge the fact that users of Bulbapedia and Bulbanews are in fact copying articles without linking or citing. As previously stated in this thread, this really lowers Bulbagarden's respect in the community.

Pocketmonsters.net staff members have reported plagiarism and the articles were not removed. We will post a few examples below.

http://www.pocketmonsters.net/news.php?action=article&articleid=726
http://tinyurl.com/ybmd7xj (Bulbanews Link)


The lastest news article was obviously copied from Pocketmonsters.net as the paragraph structure is the same, some of the wording is still the same with the exception of a few reworded sentences and the news article even used 'United States and Canada' instead of North America.

Another example is the PokePark news article.
http://www.pocketmonsters.net/news.php?action=article&articleid=688
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/PokéPark_Wii:_Pikachu's_Great_Adventure

Such blatant copying is annoying for those that work hard to create quality content. While fansites cannot copyright the Pokemon material and information as it is trademarked and copyright of the Pokemon Company, fansites can in fact claim copyright infringement on news articles that have been plagiarized as they are considered original content.

Stating its the users fault and not Bulbagarden's is not an excuse as articles should be moderated before posting.

 

[RexRacer]

The Bulbanews situation is currently being resolved in private.

 

[Water Pokémon Master]

I have to agree with Sunain about the article thing too. In the past Bulbanews has even copy and pasted my articles directly. XD But more often it's the same wording and structure.

 

[Transfinite]

Again, "Bulbanews" is not a person... but I would like to state, for the record, YET AGAIN, that I personally disagree with news being presented in a wiki format. No one else from staff has ever seemed to respond when I say so, though

 

[RexRacer]

I have to agree with Sunain about the article thing too. In the past Bulbanews has even copy and pasted my articles directly. XD But more often it's the same wording and structure.

We have an "originally posted by" feature that gives full attribution to the author of an article, should the author not be one and the same with the Bulbanews editor. I don't like it because it seems silly to have a news service where the articles come from somewhere else, but it is there. This may have been what happened with your copy-pasting situations in the past, WPM, but I can't say for sure.

 

[Water Pokémon Master]

No, they just c/p'd it then someone came in later and rewrote it. It's probably just random users who don't know much about the conventions of the Internet, which is okay. You guys should maybe have a set group of people to post news - people you know that will do everything correctly.

 

[Archaic]

The problem isn't that articles don't go through review. They do, a staff member has to move it out of the draft space before it goes live). The problem is perhaps one of education. Users have all the tools they need to properly cite original sources (and even label their submitted article as being a verbatim copy if they've done that), but that we can't really check every single other website out there to see if they should have been using those, if they've put it up without using them.

Most of what our staff do is by necessity reactive moderation. When we get a report, we fix things, and we have established policies in place to handle things. Of course, part of the problem there is people reporting things to the wrong people, and/or expecting resolutions to things too quickly when they do report it to the wrong person (including in at least one case someone who hasn't been on active staff in over a year). The Bulbagarden staff structure is rather compartmentalised, and people being a staff member in one section doesn't necessarily mean they have any power, or the same level of power, in another. There's no point reporting a news issue for instance to most forum moderators if you're expecting a quick resolution. It's not their area, and they'll just have to pass the message on, and if it's got to go through multiple hands you're just increasing the chance of your message not getting through to where it needs to go.