Thread:Nixerix/@comment-43487778-20191227043730/@comment-5107414-20191227095807

Good morning,

To clarify, my own scans, which I compared side-by-side for each of the ones hosted on this wiki, I confirmed were my own and decided it would be alright if they stayed. On those scans, a lot of the damage is done as far as proper sourcing goes. They can be found all over a variety of websites with no attribution, so I felt no need to press the matter. Those scans were my content, so I had all the right to decide how it should be used. The images of Brandon, particularly the transparent portraits, were made by hand from screenshots our users had taken of the game using the Switch's screenshot function and the translation of the villager card is wholey provided by Catte right down to the font selection. They are not my content, therefore I will issue no statement on that matter.

As to why I made no reply at the time, I had taken some umbrage at the "I have heard similar complaints for your website and others as well, I'm sure" statement and felt less confident in my time bringing the matters that have been bothering RS's editors to your attention being of any use. The main instigating event was by a user named Mai is Me who had copied word for word our Festival page up until the point that a script protected the page's contents. A break at that point made it exceptionally difficult to hold any doubts about what was happening, nevermind that "Mochi-Pounding Festival" is not actually the in-game name of the first festival, and our wiki's editors were starting to get irate about the issue (among others) so I issued a statement on their behalf. While my message here and now may come off as overly negative, I genuinely appreciated that you began taking more care in making sure information is appropiately cited, sourced, and not blatantly copied after my initial message. In taking effort to take the issue seriously, I am extremely grateful.

However, proper credit is not always provided by simply linking back to the original source, and it is most certainly not walked around by simply taking a thesaurus to someone else's work, as I can plainly see on the translated annotations of Marie's screenshots on your wikia. The appropriate way to do such a thing would be to ask permission before acting, cite/credit your source where requested, and never simply copy someone else's work. A simple rule of thumb is if you feel like it would count as plagiarism on a college or high school writing assignment, just don't do it. This of course does not apply to in-game information, or official promotional material released by Marvelous. For example: When Brandon's portraits are extracted from the game itself then those would be practically expected for any wiki to make use of. The issue is solely with formatting, wording, commentary, original screenshots or video, and other original content that is being built around the content of the series that we share a common love for.

I hope this clears up the concerns of RanchStory's editors. Again, I'm grateful for the work you've done as admin of this wikia in addressing this issue so far.

Thank you.