User talk:The Tom

Welcome

Hi, welcome to Grand Theft Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Lure (GTA IV) page.

Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Gta-mysteries (Talk) 23:57, 3 August 2010

Ballas attack CJ

CJ didn't do anything to Ballas gang. And why the Ballas always attack CJ? --Videogamer13 12:03, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

Ghost town figure

I have found the ghost in Las Brujas, Bone County. This is real truth. --Videogamer13 05:45, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Re: Leaving Wikia

There were many reasons leading the community to agree to leave Wikia. Firstly, they have been adding more and more adverts over the years. Whilst I understand needing to pay for it, they have started putting adverts inside the content area (mostly for logged-out users), and it's detracting from the content.

As for the Oasis skin, whilst it looks okay (in my opinion), it's actually very annoying to use (with buttons spread out and not in an easy place) and the very thin content area makes pages longer and unnecessarily destroys our layouts. If you use this wiki, you will find it's a lot easier to navigate and use, with a couple of exceptions. The navigation is very annoying, with the main navigation linking you to wikia.com and other wikis, rather than the home page of the wiki and navigating around it.

They also removed our ability to customise the design, just so that they can guarantee the visibility of their adverts. There are also a number of new features which we disagree with - such as images in articles always showing the name of the uploader, which is pointless as the uploader is never the copyright holder; and they're trying to roll out comments under articles instead of proper discussion pages.

Lastly, there's a strong move by Wikia staff to manage the wikis more closely, taking over many responsibilites from each wiki's administrators, and enforcing their will regardless of the community. With the Oasis skin, many members of the community were on the beta and were giving feedback for months before, which Wikia ignored completely. This has been a huge problem, with many people upset that wikia have ignored all the suggestions. We felt that we could not allow this pattern to continue, because the next thing might be Wikia choosing the admins and managing each wiki themselves. This was proved correct when Wikia banned GTW's staff from the old site, because the wiki's community had chosen to move.

I stress that the community decided to move, this was done by consensus not just staff deciding. That is how we run this wiki, and Wikia could not accept that. Hope that answers your question! Gboyers 00:21, 18 October 2010 (BST)

I agree with you entirely! Wikia are just the hosts, not the owners or leaders of the wikis. If they don't like the wiki, they should be able to stop hosting it, but they should not be able to interfere. I have always held the values that this wiki is community run, and we should always take the community's opinion into account. The decision to move was made by the community, not staff. I wish Wikia would do the same, but they refused, so we were forced to move. As for wiki activity, we have [{Special:RecentChanges|Recent Edits]]? I can try to get MyHome added if you think lots of users need it. Gboyers 00:46, 18 October 2010 (BST)

No, we're not deleting any pages. One admin who has stayed behind was trying to turn it into a modding wiki, so was deleting pages that were completely irrelevant (like the names of all the inactive shop fronts). But Wikia didn't like that idea, so they've stopped that too. Gboyers 01:27, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Re: Hi

In reply to Hi & Af1105

Thanks for getting in touch. I don't think "rival" is the right word. I founded Grand Theft Wiki long before it moved to Wikia. The community and the website later decided to move away from Wikia again, but Wikia decided to keep a copy and pretend nothing happened. I don't have any problem with the users of gta.wikia, but I believe that this is the legitimate site and that all users should work together on ONE site rather than split over two. I'm sure you understand that if Wikia allow users to copy content over from this site to theirs without attribution, that is really disprespecting the work we are doing, and the 5 years' of work we have been putting into this site.

I'm not sure why WikisEditor is saying that we want to "destroy" the wiki and that is needs to be saved from its "doom". I think that is quite a simplistic and immature way of looking at this issue. It is also wrong, as some of the staff members DID decide to help out the community that didn't move straight away.

I hope you understand that this is NOT a competition, it's about making a really awesome website full of awesome GTA information. We decided that the website would be better if we were not at Wikia, so we moved. I think it is pointless to run "rival" sites, and I'm sure we both have the same goals, so why not work together?

With regards to the users you mentioned, we have seen quite a few people pretend to be staff, but these are just kids who think they sound cool, rather than deliberately causing trouble. Of course we won't allow them to pretend, and we will stop them if they do, but we don't ban people just for showing off. Thanks for letting me know - Gboyers 00:29, 19 April 2011 (BST)

Re: GTA Wikia

In reply to GTA Wikia

Hi again. Firstly, I appreciate you getting in touch and making an effort to resolve this dispute amicably. However, I don't appreciate you saying that I should be "punished". I'm not sure how much you know about the history of these two wikis, but I'm sure you know that I founded them and with the community decided to move here.

I'm also not sure how much you know about the licencing of the two wikis. Grand Theft Wiki's content is licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-SA), which permits anyone the privilege of re-using and adapting our content, providing that you attribute the work in the manner specified by the licensor (me). As specified on Grand Theft Wiki's Copyright policy, we specify the requirements for attribution to be "linking back to this site on each page our content has been used on".

As Wikia and its users have failed to provide this correct attribution on multiple occasions, despite several opportunities and promises to cease this activity - and thus breached the licence - the CC-BY-SA agreement is automatically terminated, as per section 7.a of the full licence text:

7. Termination

This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon any breach by You of the terms of this License.

This means that since Wikia has breached the licence, it is terminated, and Wikia is no longer permitted to use Grand Theft Wiki's content under the CC-BY-SA licence. This means that Wikia can not copy any content from GTW, even if they provide attribution, and normal full copyright rules apply.

I hope you realise that I'm only trying to protect the users that have contributed to Grand Theft Wiki over the past 5 years. Wikias disregard of our users, their rights, and their wiki is very disappointing; and this is why we moved. Gboyers 17:54, 29 May 2011 (BST)

I apologise if I misunderstood, and again I appreciate you helping resolve this situation. As I said before, I think it would be much better if we all worked together to make a good wiki, instead of this "us and them" attitude that does seem to exist. If we can make this happen, I'm willing to try. Gboyers 18:57, 29 May 2011 (BST)

Erm, I think you have the wrong impression. These are not "my users", I'm not in charge of them, I don't tell them what to do. They are all independent people who go on whatever site they like. Also, I'm not at all claiming that anyone is copying content anymore.

I believe that the Wikia site is an illegal copy, since the site and the licence attached moved to this domain, and the licence was automatically cancelled as it was breached. Many of the users on this site share that view, and I think it is very unfair of you to suggest that it is somehow my fault that they choose to express that view.

If you or Wikia have a problem with the way people are using your site, then there are many options at your disposal. Wikia seems happy to ban users who they disagree with - I am still banned from the site I founded. If that's the site you want to be a part of, that's up to you, but don't come here to complain when people disagree with it. Gboyers 17:51, 10 July 2011 (BST)