I have the 30th Anniversary books, what can we do with them?

Mister Wu

Mister Wu

King Bowser
Wiki Administrator
MarioWiki
Mister Wu
As you might have noticed from the Wiki, I now have the following books:

Encyclopedia Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Memorial Book

and the soundtrack for the 30th anniversary, with associated booklet.

Even though I'm not really into Japanese, I was still curious to see what the actual Japanese text about some "hot topics" was, so we can have an actual contemporary Japanese reference, not to mention I am very interested in the artwork (and I already had my surprises with the Encyclopedia, with Bowser's eyes in the SMB3 enemies section recolored in red despite artwork a few pages before and after blatantly showing Bowser in SMB3 and JSMB2 with blue eyes).
It goes without saying that I would like to add some important parts (e.g. bios, artworks or stories, but not whole pages) in the Wiki, and so now I have some questions: what can I iinclude in the wiki without violating copyright law? What are the topics I can focus my next efforts on?
At the moment I was requested about the Boom Boom talk page and probably I could also try to see if some more information about Kamek can be found inside these books.
Of course I will try to see what the books tell about the Koopalings as well since they have the funniest "metastory".
 
I have some questions: what can I iinclude in the wiki without violating copyright law?
Click to expand...

Quoting short profiles (like this) and the occassional scan of individual artworks is fine. Full scans and transcripts of the book are not. I don't know how the book is setup, so if it features long-form character bios and articles, it's better to summarize the content rather than quote it directly.
 
Try scanning the artwork if it isn't in the wiki, but yeah, take only samples from the scan; don't reproduce the entire thing. Otherwise, you should be fine.
 
Actually, even in the two pages about the characters the profiles are typically VERY short, like the ones I already posted. My main doubts are about the stories of the games (that don't fill entire pages, just parts of single pages).
 
Generally, we already have the stories of the games summarized, so unless there's new info not present in the manuals/in-game cutscenes/scripts, it's probably not necessary to quote or summarize those sections. On the other hand, the short little character blurbs like on the Boom Boom talk page are the exact sort of thing we like to have for the articles - but generally it's better to just transcribe them. However, if there's problems with clarity, like you mentioned on the Boom Boom talk page, I feel like temporarily uploading the scans is reasonable for quality-control purposes, and then we can just delete them once we're sure we got the proper text. Another option is uploading them to a separate site (like imgur) for the transcribing purposes, since then there isn't any copyright line-toeing at all, and no need to run around deleting things.
 
The point is exactly that, I do not plan to add the transcription of the stories in the pages of the Wiki as it would be pointless, what isn't pointless however is seeing if the stories are changed to reflect what the current bios of the characters are. this can be useful for the Koopalings and Yoshi (since https://microsite.nintendo-europe.com/nintendokidsclub/en_GB/read_and_discover/yoshi_facts is a thing), maybe Kamek if the story isn't just that of the manual (which is highly likely).
 
Sorry, I really don't know when I will be able to create such a page (and to complete the Encyclopedia page) because at the moment I just can't manage decently the current works I want to do for the wiki (I'm still almost stuck regarding the transcription of that NSMB items' pages).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back