Template talk:LostWhim

I made this template out of habit, because I saw someone make it manually. But it does bring up the question of when another website deserves a mention like this.

I see it as being both a qualitative and quantitative difference between Lost on a Whim and DragonRealms Future Past. DFP is an old site that has an immense amount of archive information that would have been lost without them. No slur on Rajara's work, but she mostly does how-to guides on Trader subjects. While definitely useful, the information could be gathered by any trader of sufficient level.

My inclination is to delete this. -CARAAMON (talk) 08:07, 2 November 2014 (CST)

If the credit contains content that is completely unique to that website or is copyrightable (e.g. a script, artwork, etc.) then sure, it should be credited. But mechanics of a game are not copyrightable content, so there is no need to credit someone for compiling it in a different place even if they did it first. Now, if someone were to literally cut and paste the content of a website over here then it would be different issue entirely, assuming it is not already simply a cut and paste from the game itself. But that shouldn't be done for obvious reasons unless done by the original author, in which case it wouldn't need crediting since they're voluntarily including it here.--ABSOLON (talk) 03:43, 13 November 2014 (CST)

E.g. the Trader Market Tables page which uses this template has zero information that cannot be obtained within game by anyone with a Trader, quite a bit of it actually being word for word from the game output itself.

The other more general flaw with the template is that is just puts a general 'some stuff on this page is credited to so-and-so' without actually specifying which stuff that is. If we do decide that we want to go the route of crediting information to other sites, then it should at least be done better than just plopping a tag at the bottom that vaguely indicates that some of the content on the page can be found elsewhere. The reference tag already accomplishes this better, so I don't see a need for this template even in the best case scenario.--ABSOLON (talk) 03:49, 13 November 2014 (CST)

I agree with ABSOLON on this one. For instance, I'll be helping Linett migrate all the picked flowers and items that I've been keeping a list of on my site for years (http://www.kythsjournal.com/flowers.htm) to the wiki here. If we were going to keep that page exactly as it is, then yea, we might do some sort of note like I have going at the top of the page (I got permission years ago from Sorenne to take over updating it when she took a break, and she had gotten permission from Tsarenzi when they had taken a break before that). However, the long lists like that aren't making the best use of a wiki, so while that information will be a great starting place, none of it is actually *mine*. On the other side of that, I can't imagine a day when I put my maps over here, because one of the things I do enjoy is being in control of the look of them, the content on them, etc. By putting them here on epedia, I would then need to accept they would have changes made by any user. And we already have a set of maps that work that way...:).

In my opinion, while I think it is a nice head-nod to all that work that Tyrathia had put into the DFP site, none of that was proprietary either. At the end of the day, the work she put into those lists didn't create anything new; it just nicely documented something from the game. --Kythryn 04:01, 13 November 2014 (CST)

Okay, seems everyone who has an interest in commenting has, and we're mostly in agreement. I'll update the MOS to reflect it. -CARAAMON (talk) 00:23, 26 November 2014 (CST)