Friday, March 16, 2012

Announcement: Vanguard Wiki Plagiarism

Within the past week it came to my attention that this Cardfight!! Vanguard fan wiki has been plagiarizing my work. Articles from my website's character section have in some places been copied wholesale onto their resource, without citations inline or otherwise.

I have already obtained a confession and apology from the user who originally plagiarized my work. This user has issued a statement that it was his account being used by another person. Regardless of whether or not that is true, it is his account that is now associated with the plagiarism.

Game Set is a for profit website. When you copy and/or modify articles from this website without my permission or citations, you are stealing. And no matter how you attempt to rationalize it, you are using my work in a way that is both unethical and illegal. Reposting these articles elsewhere without citation or reference back to the original author means that you are now claiming to own my writing. You don't.

The articles on Game Set are freely available to everyone, but they are not free for redistribution--reposting of these articles in any capacity requires that you provide proper citation leading back to my work. This isn't just for me, this goes for anyone. When you write an academic paper, you cite your sources and make sure that the original author gets credit for the effort they've put into it. Not doing this will can and will get you thrown out of school.

I have already gone through many articles on the offending wiki and replaced their plagiarism with cited, 100-word summaries, and external links leading back to the original articles. You may have my articles this way, or you may have them none at all.