Forum:Copying text from the English Sims Wiki

I've been told by that there are a number of users on the Brazilian-Portuguese The Sims Wiki were copying text directly from our English articles and pasting them directly into the PT-BR wiki. Normally, doing this was against the rules on the PT-BR wiki. However, with many newer users copy-and-pasting articles from our English wiki into the Portuguese wiki, some users want to lift this rule. To do this, they must "Ask for permission" to copy text from our wiki.

The CC-BY-SA license permits copying and pasting as long as the original author(s) is/are still credited. So as long as the users that copy and paste content from our articles provide a link to the page history in the edit summary, this should be (at least) better otherwise. They can also Special:Export pages from our wiki and Special:Import it to the PT-BR wiki, which will retain the page history and all author credit. This is a better alternative to simply copy and pasting, which does not retain the page history.

Should PT-BR be allowed to copy and paste content from our articles and add it to the PT-BR wiki? (Users from the Brazilian-Portuguese Wiki are welcome to participate in this discussion, as long as they use English) --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  22:32, October 6, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
Is this copy-pasting leaving English in the Portuguese articles, or are they being translated into Brazilian Portuguese? -- Icemandeaf (talk) 22:44, October 6, 2014 (UTC)

Icemandeaf, in the start they were translated with google translate and pasted, and that left several grammar mistakes. But now, even the oldest users are taking content and addapting it to our grammar, always adding interwiki links to the original articles. —Preceding undated comment added 22:53, October 6, 2014‎ (UTC) - Please sign your comments with ~


 * "Should PT-BR be allowed to copy and paste content from our articles and add it to the PT-BR wiki?" I think the answer to this question is 100% yes. All content added to The Sims Wiki is shared through the CC-BY-SA license. By the nature of the license itself, we cannot withhold permission to use the works elsewhere. The license does require that the original authors be credited, so I would strongly recommend that PT-BR wiki users follow this requirement of the license by including a link to the source page's history in the edit summary when they borrow information. As long as PT-BR users make some effort to adhere to the requirements of CC-BY-SA, I have no issue with them using our content, even if they don't explicitly ask for our permission to allow this (since it is by default allowed by CC-BY-SA). -  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 23:03, October 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * I would think that they should be able to as well, although I don't think that using Google Translate is best practice because automated translations are never good. But maybe some users feel that it would be a starting point that would make it possible for them and other users to improve upon. I can see how that can become overloading, however.


 * LiR, does that mean that they should be placing a link to the exact page in history that the information was taken from in the Edit Summary? So would that be like saying "Taken from the English Sims Wiki here" if the information was taken from this page for example? -- Icemandeaf (talk) 23:20, October 6, 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok. Let's say for example that I was on another wiki and I wanted to use a page from The Sims Wiki as a starting point for a new page there. I would go to the source page on The Sims Wiki, copy the text that I want to transfer over, then go to the other wiki, create a new page or add the text to the existing page, and then give the edit summary as something like "adding information from The Sims Wiki - original page history at " with the url being a link to the TSW page history. It's better to list to the page history, rather than to a particular revision of the page, because the page history includes all authors on that page, versus a single revision which only tells you the last person who edited it. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 23:25, October 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * So if it were this page that was to be copied over, this would be the URL? -- Icemandeaf (talk) 23:33, October 6, 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes -  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 23:41, October 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * So I guess my only question is how would one know up to which revision is being copied. -- Icemandeaf (talk) 23:56, October 6, 2014 (UTC)

I, personally, am thinking about adding a template, like "This article was taken from The Sims Wiki (en). You may visit the original content ~here~"

01:19, October 7, 2014 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MorgaineLeFay (talk • contribs) (UTC) - Please sign your comments with ~

@Icemandeaf, it doesn't matter all that much. Consider that the revision on the PT-BR wiki which links back to the page history will also have its own time/date stamp, so obviously nothing on the parent article after that time and date would be part of the PT-BR version of that page. But ultimately, it's more important to make sure that you are including any authors who may have contributed; it's not harmful to attribute to authors that weren't involved in creating that version of the page.

@MorgaineLeFay, You can do that if you'd like but CC-BY-SA doesn't explicitly require that. An attribution in the edit summary meets the requirements of attribution under the license. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 01:30, October 7, 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok. Makes sense to me. -- Icemandeaf (talk) 02:01, October 7, 2014 (UTC)