User talk:JustIgnoreMe
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[edit] Richard Aronson, Minor Gaming Deity
So I made a page called Eric and the Gazebo... it got deleted. Then the man himself got involved and it got restored. He left this for me, which I've kept for posterity. JustIgnoreMe (talk) 17:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
"To whom it may concern: I wrote up Eric and the Gazebo for Lee Gold's Alarums and Excursions, adding several jokes of my own to the story I had heard from Ed Whitchurch (the GM). It was then reprinted in the APA The Spell Book, the official mag of Mensa's Role Playing Gaming SIG in 1987. From there it was reprinted without my knowledge or permission in two other Mensa local magazines (Corpus Christi, and one in South Carolina I've never seen), and from there to the The Mensa Bulletin in 1989, where they asked me before reprinting it. Then John Chu, at the University of Buffalo, asked me if he could reprint it on the internet. In 1989, I had not heard of the internet (few had, and I told him he could as long as he spelled my name correctly. From there it was plagiarized widely, to the point that some people claimed to have been present when it happened, none of whom cite a date as early as the write up, let alone the original incident on which that write up was based (in 1977). I did not learn of any plagiarism until one of the readers of Alarums and Excursions informed me after I had started working in computer games in 1991.
I have since become a professional computer game designer (check out Moby Games) and plagiarism is important to my career. I have had to prove my copyright to Jolly Blackburn, who printed his version of E&tG with proper attribution in the "Knights of the Dinner Table" compendium, and two businesses have used E&tG (dreadgazebo.com, and the Lollagazebo gaming conventions) with my permission and with proper attribution. Others have claimed this story as their own, almost always based upon plagiarists who copied John Chu's original reprint without his attribution and editing out the last names that were in the original story. One of those reprints can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/rowenaknill/jokes/gazebo.html
I am pleased that this anecdote has become so popular, and saddened that because some people refuse to accept proof that they are mistaken in their claims of having written it, it has now been pulled from Wikipedia.
I can arrange contact with Ed Whitchurch (the GM of the anecdote), Eric Sorenson (Eric of the story), Lee Gold (editor of Alarums and Excursions, where it was first printed), and Corey and Lori Cole (the editors of The Spell Book). We still have a copy of The Spell Book with Eric and the Gazebo, and I *believe* I still have a copy of Alarums and Excursions. Corey and Lori Cole are both fairly famous gamers (designers of Sierra Online's "Quest for Glory" series) as is Lee Gold (designer of "Lands of the Rising Sun" and "Lands of Adventure" games); I am not citing obscure people who have no standing.
I have never denied reprint rights to E&tG so long as I was accredited properly. I have sent out hundreds of emails to web sites requesting that my copyright be properly attributed, and not one has failed to accept such proofs as I have offered (worst case, a copy of one of the original stories). It is a continued violation of my rights as the author that plagiarists reprinted it without permission or attribution, and now I am violated in that my story's Wikipedia entry has been pulled. Any internet search will find that the oldest claims for Eric and the Gazebo are John Chu's with proper attribution, and only on Wikipedia are the plagiarists able to still harm me by preventing the Wikipedia entry from giving me proper attribution.
Can anybody please tell me what I will have to provide, and to whom, in order to get this Wikipedia entry restored with proper accredition? My email address remains (as it has been for 15 years) aronson@sierratel.com.
Yours truly, Richard Aronson"
[edit] I am all agog
We were chatting at Zenda. No, I don't know... what does happen if you log in at work? I thought it was more protected than if you edit anonymously from work (as then your bare visible IP can lead to identification of your workplace, no?). What am I missing? BrainyBabe (talk) 06:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Re: Gazebos
I got your note on my talk page about the Eric and the Gazebo issue quite some time ago, but I didn't quite know what to do. I saw your Talk Page here and got all flustered and nervous that I had been an advocate on Wikipedia for an established Game Industry fellow. Long story short, I was once a developer, I was let go from my company and wanted to ingratiate myself to you by tapdancing on the head of a pin and hopefully get a recommendation. We're all just folk though, and I realized that would be an imposition. Regardless, my life's ambitions have changed to science, but I still love the idea of making games.
In any case, I couldn't not reply to your note, so I still check on the Gazebo issue every now and again, and it looks like the dust has been pretty settled for a long time now. Steneub (talk) 00:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
