BlackChampagne.com -- No longer new; improvement also in question.

BlackChampagne Home Buy Crap! I get 5%. Direct donations to cover hosting expenses are also accepted. Site Information --What is Black Champagne? --Cast of Characters & Things --Your First Time. --Design Notes --Quote of the Day Archive --Phrase of the Moment Archive --Site Feedback --Contact/Copyright Info Blog Archives --Blogger Archives: June 2005- --Old Monthly Archives: Jan 2002-May 2005 Reviews Section Movie Reviews (153) Ten Most Recent Film Reviews: --Infernal Affairs -- 5.5 --The Protector/Tom Yum Goong -- 6 --The Limey -- 8 --The Descent -- 6 --Oldboy -- 9.5 --Shaolin Deadly Kicks -- 7 --Mission Impossible III -- 7.5 --V for Vendetta -- 8.5 --Ghost in the Shell 2 -- 8 --Night Watch -- 7.5 Book Reviews (76) Five Most Recent Book Reviews: --Cat People -- 4 --Attack Poodles -- 5 --Caught Stealing -- 6 --The Dirt, by Motley Crue -- 7.5 --Harry Potter #6 -- 7 Photos Section --Flux Photos --Pet Photos (7 pages) --Home Decor Photos --Plant Photos --Vacation Photos (12 pages) Articles See all 234 articles here. Fiction Original horror and fantasy short stories. Mail Bags Index Page Features --Links --Slang: Internet --Slang: Dirty --Slang: Wankisms --Slang: Sex Acts --Slang: Fulldeckisms --Hot or Not? --Truths in Advertising Band Name Ratings (350 Rock Bands Listed) FAQ -- Feedback A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z Hellgate: London --The Unofficial HGL Site --The Hellgate Wiki Diablo II --The Unofficial Site --Flux's Decahedron --Middle Earth Mod
	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: More Fansite Fun Tuesday, July 22, 2008 More Fansite Fun The mod of a fledgling Diablo 3 wiki was trying hard to pimp his site in the diii.net forums today, and got banned (not by me, I didn't see his posts until he was long-since clipped by one of the mods) for his trouble. I did use my admin powers to see the deleted posts though, and followed the links out of curiosity. And once there, I got a laugh, since it's as most fansites always seem to be. A direct cut and paste from the official site. It's quite thorough, in this instance. Every single page from Blizzard's Diablo III site is reproduced on that wiki... well, the text, at least. I'd stop well short of calling it a wikification of the D3 site, since there's nothing but the words. No pictures, no pretty backgrounds, no music, no flash animated characters, etc. And naturally, there's no mention of the fact that the entire wiki is a copyright violation. Obviously writing their own would have been too much work, but couldn't they find a disclaimer to copy? They could have used the one from my D3 wiki. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Project:Copyrights for details). DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION! Oh wait, I guess that wouldn't work so well after all. For a bonus chuckle, check out this link from their navigation. Down at the bottom, it says, "Pre-unvieled Diablo III Wiki." Think about that. Imagine that it were spelled correctly, and if the link were updated to the current version of the page, and think about it. What does "pre-unveiled" mean? I want to put that line into a story. I see it being uttered by an unctuous PR spokesman, trying to make something sound more impressive than it is. "Please, Good Sirs, do join us at our pre-unveiling celebration! And since that phrase is tickling my inner Grammar Nazi... I must ponder it aloud. The linked-to page (which I wrote earlier this year) is a compilation of all the D3 rumors and leaks. It's info about D3 from before the game was revealed. And the game's announcement could be termed an unveiled. But does that mean D3 was pre-unveiled before then? Technically, wouldn't "pre-unveiled" mean before the "it" in question was veiled? Like it wasn't yet secret, and then became secret? A bride is unveiled when she reaches the altar. She's veiled before then. She's pre-veiled when she first arrives at the church. When is she pre-unveiled? Damnit, now I'll be thinking about this all day. On the larger issue of that D3 wiki being entirely copied from the official site (Well, not completely. They stole a bunch of images on the monsters page from diablo.wikia.com. Nothing from my wiki yet, though. I feel so unloved.), that doesn't surprise me at all at this point. In the all-too-many years I've been involved with fansites, I've learned to expect that, since there doesn't seem to be any concept of writing your own material, or not treating the official site as a final draft of your own fansite. I'm not sure why that is; they never quote employees of the game and try to pass those words off as their own, but somehow they never seem to see any need or reason to credit the official site when they copy it word for word. I used to joke with my coworkers that if the official HGL site had implemented one of those "no right clicks allowed" scripts, every other HGL fansite webmaster would have had to close up shop, or take up transcription. I think it's partially laziness, partially an inability to write, partially a lack of pride, and largely the youthful solipsism that fuels a "stealing isn't stealing unless it's stolen from me" attitude. That's what enables young men across the globe to fill their hard drives with pirated movies, music, anime, games, and porn, while doing nothing to prevent them from freaking out if their little brother so much as touches a pencil on their bedroom floor. In the HGL days, the competition had a wiki that was about 60 pages, of which maybe 56 were direct cut and paste from the official HGL site. With nothing added. Just the HGL.com page, wikified (minus most of the pretty images and fonts and such). Need you ask if there was any indication given on those pages that the content was taken from the official site? Need you ask if the admins of that site perpetually bitched that some of the citations on my HGL wiki didn't specify which fansite interview they were taken from? These were blockquoted quotes of some Flagship employee answering a question about the game, all of them clearly labeled as quotes, most with a link back to the source. Quotes spotted about my wiki, which was hundreds of pages long and comprised entirely of original content I'd compiled from countless interviews, screenshots, features, previews, gameplay movies, etc. Pot meet kettle? No no no! See... that was their pencil. And just because it was on the floor didn't mean they weren't going to use it later. Labels: diablo iii, fansites, language Posted by: Flux # 6:14 AM Comments: It'd be real interesting to see the traffic reports of these sights. Does the public-at-large buy into their nonsense, or are they sticking with venues such as your own, where you put in a great deal of work? #: 5:58 AM posted by Anonymous Check alexa.com for an approximation of traffic. It's not exact hit counts, but it's a pretty good comparison between similar types of sites (since their visitors will be similar and thus equivalent in their use of the alexa toolbar). diablofans.com shot way up when the game was announced, since they were formerly on diablo3.com until they gave that URL up to Blizzard earlier this year. And as their payment, Blizzard has a prominent link to them on the official d3 site (and no links to any other fansites, still, though we were told that would change shortly after the site went live; Bliz's webteam is pretty janky). But as you can see from the alexa comparison chart, they've been sliding rapidly since. The peril of having only a forum, I think. They probably have more forum users, thanks to the link from bliz, but they don't have the stickiness since they have no other content, don't do much news, etc. Plus Diii.net has a vast quantity of d2 forum users. Plus our wiki is now on a different domain name, so it's not counted in the stats, or the lead would be even larger. As you can see from the pretty colorful lines. #: 9:36 AM posted by Flux Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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