Proposed Policy Change - the Modiquette

[Blue Monkey]

Please read the OP. It is why we posted it in every C&C forum with links to here.

That response does not address the issue of why it is here and not in site feedback or some other subforum devoted to sitewide issues. Such as the database. And policies that need to be appended to the forum rules / guidelines.

It would be very helpful if someone from that forum could put something together the details of what those permissions are/were so we can understand that.

Is this a serious proposal? We designate or someone volunteers to search every thread in every subforum for permissions and attributions, download every single thing in the database, read all the read-mes & other text files, open all of the mods with ui elements to see if anything relevant is written there, check for things such as pcx files with authors' names in the unused parts of the image, collate that info & report back to staff?

Wouldn't it be simpler to address the general issue of grandfathering prior permission statements?

Our intentions are not to nullify anything.

Once a policy is in place intentions won't have much impact. Won't even be known to most people affected by the policy. This policy specifically addresses intellectual property rights. In a contentious disagreement between some individual's intention and an explicit governing policy guess which wins.

Perhaps you could expound upon this and provide some info via PM that would help us better understand the point you are trying to make?

Seriously?

What needs to be private about considering the difficulties inherent to links to other other sites, downloadable items from outside the CFC database and issues related to commercialization? These are not pure hypotheticals. Nor are they references to private situations. All have previously occurred at CFC in public view and will certainly occur again.

What needs to be private about pointing out that staf that are required to enforce a policy be familiar with its implications? One elementary example would be that the draft modiquette specifically states that we are meant to abide by any author's use of the creative commons license. So pointing out that staff will need to be familiar enough with the complete text of the many open-source licensing arrangements to enforce the related policies should be done only in private?

If key information is meant to be sent privately then discussion is effectively stifled. Can't comment on what we can't read. The whole idea of fragmenting this discussion to keep major parts of it private is appalling.

If everything on the site is open source, what would there be to infract?

That's a pretty disingenuous response. The issue is not about the specific content of the policy but about how it will be enforced. Violations of any CFC policy are normally subject to actions such as formal warnings, infractions, elision by staff and banning. How will enforcement of this policy be reconciled with past practices?

 

[The_J]

That response does not address the issue of why it is here and not in site feedback or some other subforum devoted to sitewide issues. Such as the database. And policies that need to be appended to the forum rules / guidelines.

More exposure.
SF has probably less traffic from modders than the modding forums have.
Why the Civ2 SL forum? We want to get input from everywhere. In the less active area a thread is more likely to be skipped (due to less people), so we decided to put it here, so that everyone from this forum gets a better chance to see it.

Once a policy is in place intentions won't have much impact. Won't even be known to most people affected by the policy. This policy specifically addresses intellectual property rights. In a contentious disagreement between some individual's intention and an explicit governing policy guess which wins.

Seriously?

Due to the forum rules, and due to the EULAs of the Civ games, you don't really hold any intellectual property on any of the uploaded items, so this problem does not really exist.

The question of usages posted to/from other sites or for commercial gain is complex & needs to be directly addressed.

That's why the formulation says "by one of it's authors". So stuff which was brought by someone else to this forum from some other source is excluded.
I'm not sure what you mean with the commercial aspect....er...I sure know what you mean. But per forum policy we don't allow anything involving money, so this problem should not really appear.

 

[Blue Monkey]

You guys are stonewalling rather than responding to legitimate concerns. Makes it sound a lot like a policy has already been worked out privately before the people who know the most about what actually happens in creative situations at CFC have been invited to discuss it.

Intellectual property exists even if it is held in common. The concept of "commons" a specific response to property issues. It is definitely not an elimination of property - otherwise there would be no litigation involving commons. Therefore issues & concerns related to property exist despite a "commons" type of arrangement. "Free to use within this community" as has informally existed at CFC does not obviate a creator's rights elsewhere.

Do a little reading over the history of problems that have already happened. Work has been taken from here and falsely claimed to be made by someone other than the original creator in order to make money. Work has been posted here incorporating work of others without attribution & in violation of the agreements in place at the time the original work was posted. These are just a couple of the more readily apparent categories of existing problems. There are a lot more subtle situations - such as restrictions on modifications to a public beta. Get it through your heads that these problems have already happened. If you create a policy that ignores them you are only going to exacerbate the situations that already exist.


"We don't allow it so it will never be a problem" just doesn't make sense. It would not be disallowed if it were not already a problem. Hand-waving - especially repeated statements by more than one staff member to the effect that a problem will never occur - only make apparent a relative lack of foresight. Have none of you heard of Murphy's Law. Have none of you seen it in action? Specifically in situations where the social factors predominate?

Discussion threads were started in January in a C4 subforum and August in a C5 subforum. The proposed policy is posted in a C5 subforum - again in August. Yet the first time any of this discussion was brought before the C3 C&C subforum's participants was yesterday. There are people who download things from here & use them in their own mods who don't go to any of the C&C forums unless they have a specific problem. That they frequently post where stickied announcements specifically tell them not to is an indicator that yet another stickied announcement is unlikely to get their attention. There is no announcement on the front page about this discussion. So those who have been active in the past but only drop in once in a while now have lost that opportunity of knowing that there is a discussion concerning their work.

The pat answers you guys have been posting are wholly inadequate responses to the situation.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Hey angry creators:

Don't abandon a forum for your work to be shown and discussed by your established audience. Don't upload or direct link to downloads elsewhere in a way that let's someone else decide what you can do with your own work. Just post a preview image & a link to a thread on another forum site or blog. You can still let people here know about your work, but by hosting it elsewhere you can still set the terms on your work for yourself. It wouldn't be hard at all to steer clear of the one-click rule about policy violations. And there's not much the staff can do about it unless they want to deny everybody the privilege of linking to other civ-related sites. A policy like that would sure crimp their style when it comes to linking to officially sanctioned DLC.

Hey everybody concerned about this issue whether or not you're a creator:

If they want to establish a formal policy about our work it shouldn't be done without our explicit approval. Start lobbying now for a plebiscite.

 

[Quinzy]

I have mixed feelings about this proposed change.

The legality of an EULA is being challenged here in Europe, and in Ireland in particular, and eventually will be deemed a non-enforceable contract; that is, it will not be held above basic human rights etcetera.

For one, I do not mind my work being used in other mods across the Civ commuity, so long as it is not for commercial enterprise.

Now, I appreciate that the Civ community as a whole is much like any other community. Much like we build a society on the backs of work done by others and we give back to that which allowed us, so too do I feel that my contributions to the community somewhat offset that which I have taken. My creative works are my taxes.

But this mandatory open licence should only be encouraged, not enforced. Reserving the right to make material available as is, but not modifiable, is something that should exist one way or another.

Those who wish to make modification for which the author did not give permission may, obviously, do so. But it would be in the interest of the site then to prevent others from posting that content.

If you care about your creators and artists, who work for free and deliver quite a bit, you will pay attention to their requests. You might have the right to do this; we might have the right to leave. But it's in both your and our best interest for neither to happen.

I need to think about this issue a little more, but these are my thoughts so far.

 

[The_J]

It would be good if we could get back to the core problem/question.
EDIT: Posted this before I saw Quinzy's reply. I'll not address this right now, but in the next days.

Discussion threads were started in January in a C4 subforum and August in a C5 subforum. The proposed policy is posted in a C5 subforum - again in August. Yet the first time any of this discussion was brought before the C3 C&C subforum's participants was yesterday.

This is indeed unfortunate.
It was never intended to become a side wide policy, else you would have seen it in the moderators forum before.
Due to recent problems we decided to make it a side wide policy now.
This is not the very best way, but this is now how it is.

There are people who download things from here & use them in their own mods who don't go to any of the C&C forums unless they have a specific problem. That they frequently post where stickied announcements specifically tell them not to is an indicator that yet another stickied announcement is unlikely to get their attention. There is no announcement on the front page about this discussion. So those who have been active in the past but only drop in once in a while now have lost that opportunity of knowing that there is a discussion concerning their work.

Some people just cannot be reached. Some of this people would probably also not participate here (some sure would, I know). But we also don't have to reach everyone, we're not obliged to check everyone's opinion. We want to see what the people who are interested and who are currently here want to say about it. If you don't belong to that group, then you're unlucky. Not the best, again, but this is how we have to work. We cannot send a PM to all our 250.000 members to get feedback.

 

[Gojira54]

If I put it here, anyone can use it for anything nonprofit, I just prefer I get the credit for the work done. The only time I may take issue is if someone uses my work to generate a profit, without properly crediting and compensating me.

I thought that was the spirit of CFC, and in fact thought this was what was already being followed. I certainly take zero issue with it.

 

[tom2050]

Actually, you are not correct in this. This is just a part of what you agreed to when you joined this forum (my emphasis added):

Your agreement with us
You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this forum. In addition, if you post at this site, what you post is considered to be in the public domain. Should you choose to leave the forum (or behave in a manner that results in your account being banned), any deletion of your account, or the posts you have made (including attachments) is at the sole discretion of the administrators.

You have not defined what a Post constitutes... I'll tell you right now a Post does not constitute resources and information outside of CFC.

People do not like being forced to say that all the hours of work they put into something is suddenly public domain. I like the community joining together, and most do, so why get up on some kind of dictator seat and try to force what is already being done for the most part?

I ask companies if I can use their work, and if they say yes, I proceed according to any guidelines they gave me. Is it public domain? Not really. I was given permission by the company to make a derivative work of their work (which might be considered copyrighted work for all I know).

So who are you to say that a derivative work (which permission was given to me) is suddenly public domain? I don't think CFC wants to get into that mess.

Of course there is always a great real-world way to find out that question too. I can be so kind to test it out for you also.

 

[leif erikson]

It would be far more helpful to provide input on what we should say or do.

 

[embryodead]

Frankly, it was fine before - a set of unwritten rules, written guidelines, and if errr.. something hit the fan, it was treated on a case-by-case basis. As I understand, during the recent incident there was a demand for a formal rule on this.

A simple GPL-like rule like that, permits copying, rebranding, takeovers and commercial use, and BlueMonkey is right that it has happened before. It happened to me in the past which is why I brought it up earlier.

So the problem at hand is someone adding to a mod created by other people, and then refusing anyone to re-use his additions, which made people on all sides angry. If there really is a need for a formal rule, maybe it could be more narrow/precise, so as to deal with works derivative of CFC published material, without stepping into a plethora of other issues.

For that matter, it would be helpful if the core of the problem was outlined for everyone, because it wasn't clear from the beginning why and what is happening, and I think people (myself included) were/are jumping to wrong conclussions.

 

[tom2050]

It would be far more helpful to provide input on what we should say or do.

Great answer.


You are also giving everyone in the world outside of CFC the okay to simply come into CFC, join, take and then use any work they wish to and use it as they please for other games without even having to ask anyone.

When people from other forums have come around complaining about their work being used (they called it theft), CFC has forced the CFC user to remove it, but now CFC has opened the door to let peoples work be used from outside entities pretty much without care.

Be creative, don't copy, and respect other people's work
When you upload content, you automatically grant permission for it to be used by all members of this community.
Therefore no permission is required to use content that is uploaded.
However, the modder should give credit for any content used in their mod.
If you identify another modder's content being used in a mod, notify the mod's modder.
If someone notifies you about another modder's non-credited content, you should then add the credit.

 

[Ogedei_the_Mad]

I see absolutely no reason to make a rule change after all this time. And why there's even such a proposal - not to mention one that was hardly well-advertised despite the fact that it concerns the community - is even more baffling.

Even if I have few qualms over people using my work elsewhere (for noncommercial purposes), I would at least have some control over what I produce.

 

[Takhisis]

Why is this not being discussed openly? Why is this buried in a Civ2 thread instead of out in the open, with banners and other noisy features that you put up for stupid stuff?

This is indeed unfortunate.
It was never intended to become a side wide policy, else you would have seen it in the moderators forum before.
Due to recent problems we decided to make it a side wide policy now.
This is not the very best way, but this is now how it is.

After the whole OT charade last April, the 'moderating' staff is trying its best to cause as much chagrin as possible.

Great answer.


You are also giving everyone in the world outside of CFC the okay to simply come into CFC, join, take and then use any work they wish to and use it as they please for other games without even having to ask anyone.

When people from other forums have come around complaining about their work being used (they called it theft), CFC has forced the CFC user to remove it, but now CFC has opened the door to let peoples work be used from outside entities pretty much without care.

I'd like to add that mods point out the rules to which we signed up… does all this -for lack of other postable words- charade apply to stuff uploaded on other sites -let's say, Atomic Gamer, which is a rather popular choice- and linked to in the database? Does it apply retroactively to things people uplaoded under a different policy?

It is YOUR responsibility to read announcements regarding rules and policy changes. Ignorance is no excuse. Announcements are located above the threads list table inside each forum. Specific policies for a specific forum may be posted in sticky threads at the top of each forum. It is your responsibility to read these and be aware of any changes.

So? Where's the big announcement?

 

[Blue Monkey]

It would be good if we could get back to the core problem/question.

Asking us to sign off on a policy we were not allowed to discuss is exactly the core problem.

It was never intended to become a side wide policy, else you would have seen it in the moderators forum before.

Didn't notice it in the C4 subforum, didn't notice it in the C5 forum, but if it was really important it would have been brought up in the staff forum? how would that serve all of us who aren't on the staff?

Due to recent problems we decided to make it a side wide policy now.
This is not the very best way, but this is now how it is.

We want to see what the people who are interested and who are currently here want to say about it. If you don't belong to that group, then you're unlucky. Not the best, again, but this is how we have to work.

Evidently everyone in C3 C&C is unlucky. Because we didn't belong to the group of people that were invited to post about this beginning last August. Let alone those who were invited to help codify it last January. We don't have to work by keeping people in the dark (C3 C&C). We don't have to work by giving people a mere six days to post about a formalization of something that is very complex and nuanced (C5 C&C). We don't have to work by turning something that was presented as an informal guideline for a particular subforum (C4 C&C) into a sitewide policy without changing the content to reflect informal working arrangements in existence outside that subforum and the more general situation regarding intellectual property.

Due to recent problems we decided to make it a side wide policy now.
This is not the very best way, but this is now how it is.

It would be far more helpful to provide input on what we should say or do.

Dictating to us how it is going to be and simultaneously asking us what to do? What's wrong with this picture? One of you sounds like we're being presented with a fait accompli. The other sounds like it's early days in consensus building. It's interesting that the moderator is the hard-liner & the supermoderator seems more open-minded.

Are you people even coordinating what your stance is? 'Cause those two statements in juxtaposition could either be interpreted as "tell 'em what they want to hear" or as "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing". The former is not well suited to trying to get agreement from a lot of sharp creative individualists. and the latter doesn't bode well for a policy on issues as complex as control of intellectual property.

Modders are pretty heavily represented in the upper ranks of the management. Where do the other "old hands" that are both experienced staff members and experienced modders stand on this. I've looked through the other threads & didn't notice anything from them.

Is there some crisis you're trying to keep the lid on? Or is there maybe, possibly time to carefully craft something that would make allowances for the many different working arrangements within the various C&C subforums. Craft it by seeking our advice on more than just a single sentence of a policy we were never informed about. Craft it by creating a consensus of all the active community. Which takes time. And making an effort to involve more people than just the few a particular staff member or three are close to at any given moment.

 

[Kyriakos]

Personally i think that you should in fact have gone (if you should go over the unwritten law anyway) one step towards the other direction and effectively allow creative commons licences on the works. It seems html code is disabled, so in effect one cannot link to such a licence.
In the past i would not care that much, thinking the unwritten law granted me some space, but in reality people go over it and sometimes they modify my work and produce derivatives of it that i did not agree to.

Ideally i would like to share my work under a no-commercial use/no-derivatives allowed licence. At worst i will be forced to either manually link to such a licence for all my work, or just stop producing it here.

PS: it is even worse in the cIV section of the forum, where people actually upload entire models of their works, and it seems everyone can then alter them, often without asking the creator, who at many instances is absent now anyway...

 

[Blue Monkey]

So? Where's the big announcement?

Right on! Glad you pointed out that staff have not followed their own guidelines.

Staff is trying to update the policy on use of Mods at CivFanatics. We ask for your feedback on this proposed update and formalization of the Modiquette: ...

How can you update a policy that was never announced? Or even posted where members would normally think to look for it? Mostly I stick to the C3 C&C subforum. Once in a while I'll take a quick look at the titles at the top of the threads list in site feedback to see if there's anything I need / want to look at. Every couple of weeks I remember to look at the front page and scan down through all the news since the last time I looked.

It would be pretty exceptional for me to look in C5 C&C. A thread there called "The Modiquette" wouldn't even get a second glance. Doesn't sound like anything to do with rules or policies. In C3 C&C we've jokingly discussed some silly scenarios that aren't likely to ever be modded. They can get some goofy titles. Why would I be interested in a C5 mod about Aloo Tikki?

It's one thing to say we're responsible for keeping up with changes in policy. That's fair & pretty standard across the board. It's a whole other thing to expect us to find policies & discussions thereof as well scattered and buried as this has been. And telling us "oh well that's the way it is" is not going to win a lot of support for your proposed changes.

 

[Quintillus]

My preference would be to preface this with "Unless the author states otherwise...". That way it both provides an answer for the many cases where the author has been ambiguous, and allows anyone who does want to specify otherwise to do so. I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to specify that they don't want commercial derivatives, or want to be asked about forks of their gigantic mod, or not see their work used by the three community trolls (now I'll be trying to guess who the other two are...).

But it also isn't clear that the Modiquette is an actual policy. It appears to, rather, be a "compilation of all the unwritten rules" in the Civ5 forum. In this case, I think a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast, unflexible rule is actually more appropriate.

 

[tom2050]

Actually, you are not correct in this. This is just a part of what you agreed to when you joined this forum (my emphasis added):

Your agreement with us
You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this forum. In addition, if you post at this site, what you post is considered to be in the public domain. Should you choose to leave the forum (or behave in a manner that results in your account being banned), any deletion of your account, or the posts you have made (including attachments) is at the sole discretion of the administrators.

So what does a post consist of? A post includes attachments obviously from the bottom sentence. And posts and attached content are considered public domain according to CFC. And yet read a few sentences above that... oh goodness.

So what is the official date that the policy started that makes all mod content, all posts, and all works public domain to the world wide web according to CFC? It seems it already started eh? It's pretty much already written right up there, so why are mods making a big "Blah Blah Blah" about what is already in effect?

Yes or No:
So does CFC officially hold that all posts and content attachments on CFC are considered to be public domain information?

 

[Catfish]

Erm, why has this thread been posted in the Scenario League forum, a hosted site translocated from Apolyton? Wouldn't Site Feedback be more appropriate?

I'm buggered if I'm going to read through 30+ posts. The unwritten rules in the SL, as I've seen them, are based on simple courtesy and have worked fine for over a decade:

• Unless otherwise specified by the original author, work uploaded to the SL forums and wiki are free to use for non-profit projects, without permission, as long as credit is given.
• Unless otherwise specified by the original author, works in progress (from preview or development threads) are off limits until the work (usually a scenario around here) is completed and released publicly.

Actually, you are not correct in this. This is just a part of what you agreed to when you joined this forum (my emphasis added):

In addition, if you post at this site, what you post is considered to be in the public domain. Should you choose to leave the forum (or behave in a manner that results in your account being banned), any deletion of your account, or the posts you have made (including attachments) is at the sole discretion of the administrators.

The use of 'public domain' here does not refer to licensing. Well, if it does, I think you're on shaky ground. There's a difference between deleting material from your servers and allowing free usage (for modification and/or redistribution) without the permission of the authors. CFC has a right to delete material from the site, but I think you'll find that it doesn't own the copyright on uploaded works. CFC is merely the host. It is therefore not in a position to make decisions on how such material can be reused or redistributed by others.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Erm, why has this thread been posted in the Scenario League forum, a hosted site translocated from Apolyton? Wouldn't Site Feedback be more appropriate?

I'm buggered if I'm going to read through 30+ posts.

Depends which staff member you want to listen to. According to the OP it's here because they decided they wanted it here. Period. According to a later post it's here because Scenario League is so much more high profile than Site Feedback.

More exposure.
SF has probably less traffic from modders than the modding forums have.
Why the Civ2 SL forum? We want to get input from everywhere. In the less active area a thread is more likely to be skipped (due to less people), so we decided to put it here, so that everyone from this forum gets a better chance to see it.

Consider yourselves lucky, C2 modders. You get a stickied thread and your input is considered valuable enough to host the discussion. There are still active modders of C1 & Alpha Centauri who not only post at CFC but upload things to share. They didn't even get a stickied notice. Despite statements to the contrary ...

It is why we posted it in every C&C forum with links to here.