Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5070188-20151226234449

As many of you are probably already aware, there are a good number of fan fiction wikis out there being hosted by/on Wikia. After thinking through the fact that Wikia's copyright policy states that they have the right to use content posted on any wiki for advertising purposes (even though most wikis don't have content that could be used for ads that would earn anyone revenue), it sounds like people who write these fan fiction stories are basically saying "Hey Wikia, take my ideas and use them for ads." While most of these fan fiction stories use characters that are already owned by other companies, it makes sense that you shouldn't be legally allowed to claim copyright to stories you write if they all use pre-existing characters owned by a third party company.

The reason I bring this subject up is because it seems rather interesting that Wikia doesn't tell you much about their copyright policy when it comes to writing fan fiction wikis. Wikia should warn you that when writing fan fiction wikis you are not legally allowed to claim copyright, whether you're using characters already owned by someone else or making up your own.

Years ago I made the horrible mistake of starting a few fan fiction wikis using some characters that I made up myself, and now can't delete them on request because of Wikia's new policy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wikia has the legal right to use any characters I've made up for advertising or anything else for that matter, right? With all the complaining and ranting that I do about most of Wikia's new changes, I sometimes get worried that Wikia might "steal" some of my ideas just to get back at me, but maybe I'm just being paranoid. Other than me complaining about Wikia a lot, what other reason would Wikia have to do this?

What is your opinion on this? Should Wikia put out some type of warning about writing fan fiction wikis and copyright policy? Even if you're here just to defend Wikia, I'm still curious to hear some honest opinions. 