Admin Forum:Can you use someone else's coding in Wikia

Hello everyone, when I came to Wikia back in 2009 I was directed to several big wikis main pages and I was encouraged to use their coding for my wiki. However I also remember some wars among a couple of users who were upset about some admins copying their coding into their wikis (at Wikia). A staff had to break the fight by saying that the Wikia content was allowed to be used among Wikia admins and that everyone should have agreed to that when they decided to agree with Wikia terms. That was before CC-BY-SA became the new license (if I remember correctly). My memory can play tricks on me sometimes. I myself wish to see some of my coding used around Wikia (that would be swell) he-he :D But I also want to be able to recommend coding used in a big number of large wikis as well (I want to let users choose for themselves what works for them). At the same time I don't want to encourage anyone to "steal" anything, so what is allowed and what's not?

By reading this page here it is unclear to me whether you have to attribute coding to someone, or some wiki? And where/how would you let your users/contributors know this? --Liliana (my talk). 23:29, March 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * A link back to the original source suffices. For example, if you wanted to copy something from MediaWiki:Common.js, you could simply link to http://community.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js, and that would qualify as a source.


 * Thanks for answering. Do you mean link to it in the edit summary? Or is it best to place it inside the page itself with a text input within the document (not visible unless you choose to edit):




 * Maybe the summary is best, right? I appreciate your help! --Liliana (my talk). 00:00, March 8, 2012 (UTC)


 * Attribution in the edit summary should be fine, but comments in addition would be better. If there is an active admin to ask if it's okay to use stuff without attribution, you could do that also. Some admins are not so protective of their stuff.
 * Remember the licenses are mostly applicable between Wikia wikis and external sites or sources. So unless a Wikia wiki explicitly operates under a different license, admins don't "own" any of the content anyway. Attribution between Wikia wikis under the same license scheme is more of a courtesy, since I doubt there would be much legal recourse otherwise.
 * I defer to legal experts, but that's how I understand it. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 7 Mar 2012 7:29 PM Pacific


 * This makes lots of sense. I for example, would not be bothered if I saw my  page designs in someone else's Wikia wiki.  I would not like it if I saw it somewhere in the web, however.


 * About CSS codes, the way I see it, someone can come to my page and copy coding, then add their preferred color/size values. Then I can't say they copied mine to the letter, the CSS values must agree with the values the wiki can understand (they can't be made up), so not much else users can do but follow something the interface will understand. --Liliana (my talk). 07:02, March 8, 2012 (UTC)


 * The other reason for a comment / summary of the source wiki is that months later when it needs updating after Wikia updates their system & breaks the code you or anybody else can still find were it came from originally and got there to look for a fix or for help with the code. -  01:48, March 9, 2012 (UTC)

If you need a whole page and not just parts of it, the best option would be to go to Special:Export/PAGE_Name on that wiki, where PAGE_Name is the namespace and name of the page&mdash;e.g. "MediaWiki:Common.css." An XML document will appear in the browser window, which you should save to your computer. Then, visit your wiki and upload the document with Special:Import&mdash;the function does the work, automatically fulfilling CC-BY-SA requirements. 17:14, March 9, 2012 (UTC)