Talk:Torenism/Archive 1

Has this actually been founded? -Chénier 23:05, 18 March 2008 (CET)

What is it with you people, do all your RPs need to be pre-determined...? -Chénier 04:33, 19 March 2008 (CET)

How do you know what has or hasn't been roleplayed yet? Just because a wiki page is created doesn't mean that is exactly how things will play out in game. It has no impact in the actual game, nobody has to follow it and it may never happen. -Pbooth

What the hell is it to you? We've had people working on RPs for theology surrounding the god Tor for about two years now, and we're finally putting all of the past RP we've done on the subject together in one spot in preparation for finally founding the religion itself. "You people"? What the f*&% is that supposed to mean? Christ, this game's wiki is seriously devoid of any real, well written content - you'd think when somebody devotes hours upon hours upon hours to trying to write up a comprehensive article, you might say "cool" rather than bark about it, and ask "hey, is this all original RP, or are you just bringing in past RPs into an article" rather tahn sneer at usabout "pre-writing RP" or whatever. The religion will probably be founded in about a week or so - so really, what do you care? Why don't you actually work on the Springdale page (which contains absolutely 100% NOTHING) instead of coming over here and yapping about how we put together content on our realm, our religion, and what have you. Good god... Arylon 07:20, 19 March 2008 (CET)

It is good, well-written stuff. So long as the "...work of fiction ..." tag stays there until the religion is actually founded, I personally don't have a problem with it. Yeah, it's a bit pre-determined, but that's better than completely devoid of all semblance of RP, like a lot of religions. --Indirik 23:04, 19 March 2008 (CET)

Except they don't put the tag until someone asks them to. You read these articles, and god, they look like the most advanced thing on the continent, and the "fiction" tag wasn't there 'till I asked about it. You think something impressive was achieved, but in the end, it doesn't even exist. Writing up a religion is fine, saying it has thousands of followers, tons of temples, and a huge spread when it hasn't even been founded isn't. -Chénier 06:31, 20 March 2008 (CET)

Sure, it's well done, I'll give you that if that's what you want. As with your Everguard page, it's really the infobox which is a pain and holds the false info. -Chénier 06:34, 20 March 2008 (CET)

Even if there are some inaccuracies they will be corrected later. It really doesn't effect anything as it's not a part of the game, just some writing about the realm. In any event, it's much better than the Springsdale page which hasn't been worked on at all. Perhaps you'd be better spending your time working on it than critiquing this? Of course I found "yay a big city!" describing the capital of Springsdale to be quite enlightening.

Urgh, those perfectly represents what Tom doesn't like about region pages... Useless info that becomes out of date very rapidly and which nobody cares about. -Chénier 03:54, 21 March 2008 (CET)

Why Torenism? Torism sound lot better, after all its worship of the god, not the realm. Nice Page. Ceorl 11:29, 28 March 2008 (CET)

We were looking for a better name than Torenism - but Torism is just too clumsy, Torenism has a better flow... I honestly have no desire to insert more than passing mentions of Toren... it just sounded better when it was spoken to me... I don't know... I wish I could come up with something cooler, but in the interest of actually building the religion, I just went with it. Arylon 18:05, 28 March 2008 (CET)

Disrespectful Religious Content Removed

Disrespectful religious images were removed on 05-29-08. The temple image is the well recognized LDS Temple in Salt Lake City Utah (belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints). This building has great historic and religious value to millions of people worldwide. Furthermore, the image is likely copyrighted (and this does not constitute fair use). The book image is assumed to be a Bible, Koran, Talmud, or other real religious work. The parchment image titled “Directives of Toren Mountain” is probably the Dead Sea Scrolls or some other ancient religious text. It should probably be removed on the same grounds.

The images on this page were obviously taken from a variety of web pages. This was clearly an attempt to create a page with content using minimal effort. All of them undoubtedly have copyright of some form or another which are being violated. Usually, copyright owners will never know, but that is no excuse for the illegal copying.

While made-up game religions are not inherently insulting, one must be careful not to involve real religions.
I assume that this mistake was made out of flagrant carelessness, and not out of malice.--Slaadslayer 22:53, 29 May 2008 (CEST) (attempted correction - should be accurate.)

While I can see your point regarding the distinctiveness of the LDS temple, I have to disagree with your assessment of the book. (Even though I may not agree with your temple picture statement, you can't just say "This must be copyrighted so it should be gone." you need to provide proof. For all you know, the user took that picture themselves. After all, it's not like the LDS temple is a hard place to get to. Either point to a source claiming copyright of the image, or your copyright violation with regards to that image is void.) The book, however, appears to be a generic picture of a book. I can't see any identifying markings on the book that would identify it as any particular religious text. There does not appear to be any text on it at all. So, again, provide proof that this exact photo is either copyrighted or is a photo of an RL religious work. I am so confident of this that I am going to revert your change to the book image. Either provide proof of the religious religious nature of the photo, and cite your sources, or drop the issue of the book.

I also find it very odd that you chose to focus on two images where the copyright is questionable, and completely ignore the one image that is almost certainly copyrighted material, and at a minimum demands proper attribution: the Council of Tor. I am almost positive that is a screen capture from an episode of Babylon 5.

I am not an expert on copyright law. (And I'm pretty darn sure you aren't, either.) So I don't think either of us can debate the merits of fair use in this issue. (And it is completely possible that these two images are in the public domain from a source such as the morgueFile or similar.) However, I do think that you should have discussed the issue before you went out and defaced someone else's page. (And I do consider what you did to be defacement. You could have just chose to remove the images, rather than replace them with a vaguely hostile message.) There are a lot of things that are offensive and/or disrespectful to some, and not so to others. I personally don't think using that picture of the LDS temple is disrespectful, and I bet a lot of other people don't, either. So, I would suggest that if you think that an image is disrespectful, you should enter into a discussion about it and see if anyone else agrees with you. If you're the only one that feels it is insulted by it, then you'll just have to live with it, and avoid that page.

And please sign your comments. --Indirik 04:44, 30 May 2008 (CEST)

If it was a simple mater of copyright, I would have removed every image from the page (except the BattleMaster map). That was not my objection. I felt that two religious symbols were being misused in a disrespectful way. I only touched the images that I believe are currently held in religious respect. For the record, I do not believe the images themselves are disrespectful, only how they were used.

I began to argue against most of your points. I can come up with arguments that I consider sound against most of what you have to say, but it's not important. The only thing that would happen is that you would get even more upset at me and this would escalate into a flame fest. That wont help either of us.

Arylon, would you please post where you got these images (including the scrolls).

"And please sign your comments." Sorry. I rarely edit wiki pages. I find it easy to forget. I will try harder, though it is still trivial to figure out who wrote what and when. --Slaadslayer 10:28, 30 May 2008 (CEST)

Pardon me for focusing on the copyright issue. But that was really the only part of your post that bore any weight. It was also a point in the post you made to Meta:User-Editors Talk. With the "disrespectful" argument, you'll need more than one person saying that an image might be disrespectful in order to justify removal. Are you offended by the images? If so, then just say it. If you can get enough people to agree with you, then the images could be removed. If it's just you, then I hate to say it, but too bad. You can post your comments, then avoid the offending material.

If you cannot prove with a reasonable amount of certainty that the images used are copyrighted, then you have no basis to remove them. The fact that a picture is a good picture of a famous place is by no means at all any proof that the image is copyrighted. I myself have taken many pictures of the LDS temple grounds during my vacation in Utah last year. (No, I'm not a Mormon, but the temple grounds they built, and all the buildings on it are beautiful and very impressive.) (ADD Moment: During the trip I got a signed, hand-drawn picture of Kaff Tagon] from Howard Taylor!) There are many places on the 'net where you can find high-quality images that are public domain. It is also not for the person that posted the images to prove they do not violate copyright. As they say: The burden of proof lays with the prosecution. If you think they are a copyright violation, then you prove it. --Indirik 16:26, 30 May 2008 (CEST)