Dear all,
today, we have had to ban someone from 1407GML for having blatantly plagiarized our site - rules which still contain the words '1407GML' in parts, list of available characters, finished bios such as Moira MacTaggart and Annie Ghazikhanian, the blank bio for submission, instructive tutorials like the FAQ section or 'Getting bio pics .. is as easy as that', our 'pip' buttons (the red X for admins, the green X for 'students' - with the audacity to not just copy it over and upload it to their own site, no, they have DIRECT LINK going to our upload section!) .. even our game 'Rules and Regulations' (in-school rules).
We were shocked by this development since we had given that player/admin another chance when he USED to be known in the gaming community as thief and plagiarizer. We let him back in, believing his words that he had changed. Well, he HAD changed, for a while, but this turn coming back into our game, he has resorted to stealing again. Of course he has a million and one 'good' reasons for what he did, none of which hold up in the eyes of the admins of 1407GML.
We found out when he sent in an advertisement for his new game to be approved and posted to our billboard. The first 2 paragraphs of HIS ad were the first 2 paragraphs of OURS copied over - and yes, our first paragraph is a common Xmen quote from the movies, but check out the punctuation we use - who EVER uses semi-colons anymore in their common writing? Anyway .. that alerted us to something being up, and checking out the site, we found about 99% of the material there to be lifted from our site. Even the forum descriptors (those little explanatory lines under each forum header like
| QUOTE |
| The following are the rules and regulations you are expected to adhere to here at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. These rules are set in place to provide our members with a positive experience, as well as to keep the RPG itself flowing nicely. Failure to comply with these rules can result in anything up to and including an IP ban from the site. Make sure you read and understand them in their entirety. |
) were ours, copied over verbatim.
We would like to alert everyone to these practices and ask that you tell any admin you might be confering with on other games of what he has done (again!). The player's name is Chris Nichols, more recently going by 'James' since he is fully aware there is a bad name attached to 'ChrisN' after his first bouts of stealing. He is either khaosxteam (on yahoo and hotmail) or, again, more recently, roguelover63 on yahoo and hotmail.
We wish to alert you all to this, in case he should steal from any of you or any of your RPG games outside of the 1407GML.
Thank you for reading this rant.
Silke
1407 Admin and the complete Admin Team