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| I received the following review of my article, "Messages From God to You". What the reviewer wrote was: "So, This was great and all. I myself am a Catholic, and understand the need to evangelize, but I also feel like this is not the place to do it. If you like to write, great! Keep Writing ! If you are here to spread the Good News, then please do it somewhere else. Great grammar, and good passages, just not the place to put it." This was my reply: "I totally disagree with your opinion that this website is just not the place for me to put my religious and spiritual writings, and that I should do it somewhere else. "I have just browsed through writing.com's list of Genres. Religious and Spiritual writings are included on the list. The number of Religious items is listed as 7,222. The number of Spiritual items is listed as 9,769. There are also items listed under many different Genres, which contain spiritual and religious material. "You may want to take a look at some of them, and please don't be politically correct. This website is definitely not a place that. Every member of this website is free to write about anything they want, in any way they want. That's including yourself." I wonder. What do other members of writing.com think of this? |
| I think sometimes reviewers put one label/explanation on their objections when another label/explanation fits better. That doesn't mean they are wrong to object. Specifically -- Writing.Com does not have a genre for "Quotations". Note the message just above the submission buttons in the Static item create page: https://www.writing.com/main/portfolio.php?action=add&status=new&num_type=15000 By submitting this work, you affirm it is legally yours and that posting it will not infringe any copyrights or violate any laws. You understand that you may NOT post a/any work(s) not owned by you or that you do not have express written consent to post on an owner's behalf. All applicable terms as previously agreed to and as are expressed in the User Agreement are to be applied here. From the User Agreement -- https://www.writing.com/main/agreement.php 3. COPYRIGHT; RESTRICTIONS ON USE ... Members agree to not upload, post or transmit any material for which they do not hold legal copyright. Your item "Messages From God to You"  contains a collection of Bible quotes. I assume you are not the translator of this particular version of the Bible or the owner of the organization that published the Bible you copied the quotes from, which you did not cite. The only text you added is the headers of the sections (most of which are snippets from the quotes) and the title/BD. Which would seem to fail the criteria for applying a fair use argument -- What is a fair use of copyright? In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.Apr 4, 2013 What Is Fair Use? - Copyright Overview by Rich Stim - Stanford ... fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/ Writing.Com is a writers peer review site. It's where you can put your writing in just about any kind of genre to get reviews on how well it's written. Including religious and spiritual writing. However, if you didn't write it (etc.), you shouldn't be posting it here because that's a violation of the site user agreement. Hope that helps.  Northernwrites___ "Invalid Item" : ~~Image #6000 Sharing Restricted~~ ~~Image #603504 Sharing Restricted~~ |
| Thank you for informing me about these things. I don't want any difficulties about unintentional violations of this website's rules, or any legal difficulties. I'll delete the article. Thank you again. |
| I have deleted the article, so I don't expect to have any further difficulties about it. Now I have another question concerning something similar. I have posted a fan fiction crossover story, based on the former TV Series "Xena Warrior Princess" and the Bible, titled "See Lord, Here are Two Swords"
in which Xena and Gabrielle meet Jesus. This obviously contains a large number of quotations from the Bible. The introduction contains the statement, "I do not own the characters Xena or Gabrielle. They belong to whoever produced the TV Series “Xena Warrior Princess”. The Biblical Characters are all in Public Domain." I hope this makes my fan fiction story acceptable. Thank you. | ||||
| The Delete operation just moves the item to your Recycle Bin. It continues to exist until you purge it from the Bin. Fan fiction is a grey area. The site offers that as a genre option, but basically fan fiction is tolerated as long as it doesn't cause problems. A fan fiction writer owns no copyright for their fan fiction which is a derivative work of a copyrighted work, because the copyright owner of the original owns all rights to any derivative work. The fan fiction writer is not allowed to profit from the fan fiction, publish it, or negatively impact the value of the original. Therefore, if the copyright owner objects to the fan fiction and files a copyright violation claim, the site will follow the procedure listed in the site copyright policy; repeat infringements will result in account termination. https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/101_copyright_policy In any writing, anything quoted from someone else needs to be indicated as such and properly cited, or it's plagiarism, which is not allowed. To qualify as fair use, besides the transformative aspect I mentioned before, the quotes should be a limited part of what they're taken from. There are rules, which you should look up for yourself -- a copyright reference book for writers is linked at the bottom of the site copyright policy. Your local library is likely to own a copy. The book can answer questions about copyright in general terms. For specific advice, you'd need to consult an attorney. In terms of the membership agreement, if most of the content is your own writing and the quotes are a limited part of the item, it's less likely to questioned. Hope that helps. Northernwrites___"Invalid Item" : ~~Image #6000 Sharing Restricted~~ ~~Image #603504 Sharing Restricted~~ |
| I think the raised concern is if you were posting to proselytize or get reviews on your writing about religion. I could imagine a preacher posting a future sermon, to get feedback on the writing, not to win over converts or something. But in the same vein, there's a kind of people with religion who seem to want to get everybody else to join their club. Only you can really answer that question for yourself. I can't smell your motives and I try to avoid presuming so. |
| ** Message suspended for further review. ** |
| ** Message suspended for further review. ** |
| Yes but only if the intro is rated Non-E in the drop down menu. |
| ** Message suspended for further review. ** |
| The site is a public forum where all ideas are presented for all to see and voice their opinions. I don't see a problem if members want to post spiritual writings. There are moderators who post spiritually minded articles and posts. Members who don't appreciate such topics have the right to voice their opinions or replies, but they need to respect the member's post. |
| I know this post is older, but I'd like to add my two cents. It's an allowable category. It's up to the reader to decide if they want to read it. If a reader doesn't wish to read that material why on earth would they not just "scroll on by"? For example, I do not like gore. You know what I don't read? GORE. And if accidentally end up in a gory story, you know what I do? I go, "whoa, oops, gore" and move on. You'll probably have someone else comment that they don't like it at some point. I've turned a few people off with swearing in some of my work. Too bad, I write what I like, it was appropriate to the concept and to my vision, it was rated appropriately and I provided a warning. Sometimes you just have to let it go and let people do their thing. 2017 Quills nominee image Registered Author Sig! |
| If a reader doesn't wish to read that material why on earth would they not just "scroll on by"? Perhaps if they're doing judging for a contest. I've actually had to grapple with this a few times when one of my contests was more active, because what I considered troublesome was a lot different from what other people considered troublesome. As a result, I had to at least give a cursory read over of not only semi-fluffy spiritual material but also heavily biased essays. These items were all contest entries, so I had to read enough to get an idea of what was going on. In the moments I opted to give a full review, you better believe I focused on tone and structure. Fish Stik 2   ![Merit Badge in Blogging 7
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Yes, that make sense. I wasn't thinking in that context, I was just thinking in terms of the average bear surfing around here, so thanks for pointing that out. 2017 Quills nominee image Registered Author Sig! |
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