Sorry :(

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Okay - it appears I made a massive faux pas.

I am an author and an editor.

I read through your social rule book some time ago with interest and noted that so many of you said it would be a really good idea to have all these rules organised and categorised somewhere where they could be easily found.

I thought to myself "I could do that" and so took it upon myself to do such organisation. Then it occurred to me that other people might find this useful and I thought I could put it up for download as an ebook, making a SMALL amount of money as remuneration for my time. All contributors from here would naturally have got a free copy and I would have been recompensed for my time. Anything over and above that could be donated to an autism charity.

But I overlooked the fact that I should have asked permission BEFORE doing all of this, rather than doing it, getting all excited, coming here and saying "Look what I did, yay me!" and expecting you all to be as excited as I was.

I well and truly had my chips pissed on, didn't I?

See, it just proves it - we Aspies are really crap at reading people. I did not expect that you would be annoyed - I thought you would be pleased.

Anyway, I have emailed Alex about all this. So far he hasn't got back to me - I expect he's very busy.

But it looks like you won't be getting your rule book published after all - sorry, I did try. *deflated*

You made a mistake. You recognized it. You're fixing it. That's the usual procedure. No hard feelings on my end.

Here's a suggestion: Put the book together, but post it on a web site that anyone can access for free. Reference everything to its origin, so that people can go back to the source. Put yourself down as "editor", and put "WP community" as the author. PM people to make sure you can quote them.

It could be a rather useful compilation; I encourage you not to give up on it.

I honestly don't see why this is even a big deal they are making it out to be.

But I think I do recall reading on here in the rules or TOS that stuff posted here can't be taken to be used elsewhere.

I imagine some people would recognize their quotes in the book and demand payment for it. To be fair - and pay everyone for their quotes - would be such an expensive undertaking that the book would have to be funded by a corporate giant like Scribner's or Little Brown & Co.

For most contributors, a free copy of the book is worth more than they'd get paid if they were receiving the going market rate per word, even at professional writer's rates.

But that's not really the point.

It took me a little while to join WrongPlanet. I related to a lot of the posters; however, before I joined, I wanted to make sure I was really on the spectrum. (I'd hate being a poseur!) So I got some time from a clinical psychologist to diagnose me (it wasn't cheap!). After I was diagnosed I joined WP. Now, I feel at home here. Safe. There are things I've told people here that I haven't told - and will probably never tell - my own family. And I prefer it that way probably because I also have Avoidant Personality Disorder issues. I'd imagine a lot of folks here would rather NOT be quoted (directly or indirectly, anonymously or not) in your book because WP is their own personal space, their own playground, kinda like Las Vegas. And we all know; what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Fair point, although I did edit out the majority of personal anecdotes as I felt more general advice would be better than specific stories.

You may be an author but you are not the author of that book. You did not write it and you want to publish it and placate those who did write it with a copy of it.

That has nothing to do with reading people, that has to do with theft of intellectual property. If you are an author and an editor, I imagine you would know that.

You never asked permission from the people who actually wrote that book.

It was stealing, pure and simple. It was stealing to put it on your facebook page without permission from not only Alex, but from every single person whose posts you decided to take it upon yourself to publish without telling them first.

It's beyond rude, but it's not a matter of rudeness or being polite, or any of that. It's a matter of theft, and actually plagerism. As an author you would also be aware that anything that is published online in its entirety is considered previously published works, and most publishers will not publish previously published works.

You haven't done anything wrong to me, and I see that you have posted an apology, but I have to say that your apology seemed nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to point out to everyone how generous and kind you are and how ungrateful some of us here are, and how we just spoiled it for everybody else. Not gonna fly with me.

You stole the work, you attempted to publish the work, and I suspect that you only notified this forum of that fact so that if someone were to see their own words out there, plagerised by you, that you would have proof that you had notified them to the best of your ability.

I bet you can find a gold mind at some of the forums for aspiring writers.

Last edited by OliveOilMom on 07 May 2012, 4:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think it's great that you're brave enough to apologize and I accept your apology.

Well the internet being what it is, copy and paste each quote you are using into google or a text search engine, and see how many of them bring you to said thread on WP. I a guessing at least some will. which can lead to the OP

Last edited by soutthpaw on 07 May 2012, 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's how I saw it

I don't think the OP realized how serious a thing it would be; probably just had what she thought was a great idea and wanted to go ahead with it. At any rate, she knows now; so let's stop beating her up about it, hmm?

Quoting people's posts on the same forum is allowed; how about you do that?--just post a compilation as a topic on WP? Considering the logistics I don't think you'd be able to track down all the people you were quoting anyway. Many of them are no longer here and you can't very well use their words without their permission.

She has stated that she is an author and an editor, so therefore she would have already known how serious this would be.

This (my emphasis)

is not a request for you to publish that thread and neither is it permission to do so.

I am astonished that as an author and an editor, you seem to be unaware of rules governing site content such as this:
http://wrongplanet.net/tos.txt

As a member of WP you should also have read the Terms Of Service - it's right there at the foot of the front page, as "Terms of Service - You must read this as a user of Wrong Planet".

When I pointed out this clause from the ToS to you on Saturday May 5th, and asked you directly if you'd contacted Alex, you told me that you had - and now it seems you hadn't done that at all.

To protect WP's content the "The Autism Social Rule Book" thread has been temporarily removed pending a decision from Alex.
I would strongly suggest this matter is left to rest until then.