Forum:Copying and pasting articles

so i'm very confused here. lets say there is another page here i want to copy and paste most of the article on my wikia but make a few adjustments. can i do that? or is that wrong?


 * From a copyright point of view it depends on the sources licensing / copyright status. If its from a source such as another wikia or wikipedia etc it is OK to copy the page or part of it as long as you acknowledge (give attribution to) the source (as per the Creative Commons license used by Wikia or the earlier GDFL one) see Licensing & copyright for more info on acceptable methods.


 * Technically there can be problems with the 'hidden code' that are in some document formats and are also used by wikia to create the formated page that is displayed, as you see it in viewer mode as opposed to edit mode. The Wikia WYSIWYG editor hides most of this code. So when you copy a Wikia page you can loose formatting information in some external editors (wordprocessors), and gain other similar mark up info. So to edit text for wikia off line you need to use a basic text editor ( NOT Word or similar complex programs that create .DOC files), and have an understanding of the 'mark up' codes used, or add the formating(page layout codes) in wikia after importing the text. e.g items like ==Heading Title== which creates a Bold level 1 heading title, which you do not see if using the WYSIWYG editor). - BulldozerD11 21:30, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

You have to do more than acknowledge the source. That's only half of attribution. To properly attribute under the CC-BY-SA license, you also need to attribute the work to the authors. To do this, you need to link to the history page from the original article, as that will show all of the authors. You can do that by putting a link to the history in the edit summary when you add the article to your wiki, or you can make a template like this for example. Hope that helps! - Brandon Rhea (talk) 22:20, April 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit} updated my earlier comment for greater clarity, as Brandon's comment indicates it was ambiguous to readers. see link above for wikia Licences and Here for a more detailed version of the CC BY SA license used on wikipedia.


 * I normally add to the edit summary that the page or template is from Wikipedia (or the Wiki i sourced it from) and than add the wikia wikipedia template to the bottom of the article. which as Brandon says provides a back link to the article history. Another aspect of citing the source of text and templates is it helps later editors who want / need to update them to find related material, and or get updated versions of the page or code. With templates updating from a different site may not be compatible with other connected (linked) templates, as there are several ways of doing the same thing.


 * An example is the Std Wikia infobox code is totally different to the wikipedia one Here. - BulldozerD11 00:33, April 13, 2010 (UTC)