Zelda Wiki:Inter-Wiki Policy

This page defines some important guidelines for interaction between Zelda Wiki and any other wiki. These points may also be applicable to situations involving other non-wiki websites. All users at ZW must adhere to these guidelines (see penalties below), and all visitors are kindly requested to take these points into consideration for the benefit of all.

Transfer of Content
All text at ZW.org is made available under GFDL, therefore anyone wishing to use it elsewhere must do so within the terms of the license (which at a bare minimum requires that the source and author be specified and a link to the GFDL text displayed). The same terms apply to content being added to ZW.org from other sources; license terms must be adhered to. Other copyleft licenses (e.g CC-BY-SA) have different terms, meaning that text text cannot be freely copied in either direction.

All claims will be investigated. Those making a complaint are asked to show specific instances of matching text, rather than links to articles of the same name.

Layout copying
Verbatim copying is not the same as research reading. (Example; A user reads an article at Wikipedia, and like the section layout and basic structure. He/she writes a new article at ZW and (consciously or otherwise) employ a similar basic layout while composing the text. There is no issue here.) Layouts do not constitute original thinking or creative output, so are free to be replicated or adapted.

Also, it's important to take account of the idea of convergent thinking. Take two individuals with knowledge of a subject, tell them to write about a given topic in isolation, using the same encyclopedic tone and style, and it's likely that the resultant texts will have similarities. Presenting a given set of facts in a fixed style will naturally produce similar results.

In the event of a creative twist on article layouts, a Zelda Wiki Admin may choose to look up histories and change the layout. If so, this is done for interwiki respect and not a legal necessity.

Appropriate/Inappropriate Behavior
Acceptable: Cross-over users* may maintain ZW.org accounts with no article editing requirements. Wiki and Zelda specific questions are welcomed. We pride ourselves on our strengths, role in the greater Zelda Community, and rising role in the Wiki community.

Unacceptable:
 * Harassment of contributors.
 * Disrupting the wiki.
 * Making complaints (of vandalism, copying, etc) to regular contributors instead of staff.
 * "Open warfare" on the wiki will no longer be tolerated. Should any mediator from another site be asked to discuss the issue off-wiki, compliance is expected.

Penalties
All violators of these guidelines will be banned starting with week-long bans and increasing with each repeated infraction. Repeat offenders will be permanently banned.

Images
''Zelda Wiki's editors spend a lot of time and effort capturing and cleaning up images, leading to Zelda Wiki being an excellent resource for "Legend of Zelda" related images. Users of other wikis or websites are free to use the images covered by Nintendo's copyright (under similar fair use terms, and at your own risk), but we ask that you give gratitude/credit to the uploader and Zelda Wiki by providing a link to the image's URL and the uploader's user page.''