Community Central:Copyrights

Except where otherwise specified, the text of all wikis on Wikia.com is freely licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Reusers of the content must retain it under the same licence, ensuring it remains free.

Please read the text of the GNU Free Documentation License for full details of this licence.


 * Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
 * A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
 * Content on Wikia is covered by disclaimers and the Wikia terms of use.

GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The GFDL is a copyleft license, meaning the content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikia page. Wikia content will, therefore, will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom.

Wikipedia, one of the web's most popular reference works uses the GFDL. Using the same license as that site makes it easy for Wikia users to reuse the content from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. You must adhere to the GFDL when using Wikipedia content. An easy way to link back to Wikipedia is to use the shared template.

Image guidelines
GFDL or public domain images are strongly preferred on Wikia. Copyright-violating images are subject to deletion. Copyright information must be added to the image description page of every uploaded image.

Licensing exceptions
Some wikis hosted by Wikia are licensed under a Creative Commons license. The footer of each wiki should make it clear what license is used. Uncyclopedia, Memory-Alpha, and the English Guild Wars wiki are notable exceptions to Wikia's usual licensing scheme. All are under Creative Commons licenses because they started externally and later moved to Wikia.

Other exceptions include images (see the image description page of the image in question for details), and edits by users who have chosen to multi license their edits.

Off-wiki content (for example, mailing lists and discussions on IRC or IM) should not be assumed to be released under the GFDL if this is not explicitly stated. For forums that are part of a Wikia site, please see the copyright notice in the footer of the relevant site.

Attribution templates
It is often recommended that a template such as   be placed on a article copied from a GFDL wiki. This gives attribution to the source of the content. Please note that if you are the sole author of the original content, you do not, and in some cases, should not, place such a template on the work when you place it on a second wiki. Wikipedians may view this as spam if you add such a template that links back to Wikia when it is not legally necessary to do so. See this thread on one of Wikipedia's mailing list in 2006 for an example.