C&H Ranch
Senior Member
LIKE A BOSS!
Posts: 350
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Post by C&H Ranch on Feb 8, 2011 20:27:15 GMT -5
So as many of you might already be aware of, Horses Forever is on Facebook, and has been for awhile: www.facebook.com/pages/Horses-Forever/69214656155 (don't forget to "like" us, lol). Anyway, today we had a person post on our wall, angry that "our game" had used her horse's bloodlines in a game horse. One of our members had found the mare on All Breed Pedigree, liked the pedigree, and used the mare in her 2010 foal's pedigree information (did NOT use the horse itself). "Our game" was actually our member's mini-barn that came up when the person Googled her horse's name (we assume...that's the only way it could have happened. HF's forums are password protected). The person then created a dummy account on our forums to most likely gain more information, but the forums ARE password protected... Anyway, we have requested that our member change the bloodline information immediately and made apologies to the RL horse's owner. Personally, I would be flattered if a simmer wanted to use my RL horse's pedigree. I suppose there's really no reason for me to post this here for you guys, lol...but I just wanted to let you guys be aware of what happened. I honestly don't know how to AVOID something like this, other than stop using RL horse pedigrees...but that was just a heads up for all simmer.
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Post by Stephanie on Feb 8, 2011 20:40:59 GMT -5
one way to solve this is to enforce all sites to have a no indexing code in the html. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> that would go in the <head></head> tags - I usually put it before the <title></title> tag We're starting to enforce it in ISG to prevent this because we've had a bunch of members get emails and actually had a woman join the forums and post all over the place.
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Post by Angel on Feb 8, 2011 20:56:47 GMT -5
Yeah I saw that Megan.
She was kinda rude about it.
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Post by Ashlee on Feb 8, 2011 22:16:39 GMT -5
She didn't really handle that very professionally, now did she? I use a robots.txt file, although my sites still show up sometimes on Google because of pages collected by Google's robots before I implemented the file. www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449I've never used Stephanie's suggestion and might try it out as well. Tessa had somebody contact her a few weeks back because one of my horses (whom she owns a foal by) happens to be a real horse. I got in contact with them though, and they said they didn't have an issue with his name and/or stats being used and were actually flattered by it. Last year I had the owner of Matt Dillon Dun It contact me because I own a horse sired by him and thought my horse was a real horse. I explained that he was for a game and the issue was resolved. And earlier last year I had somebody contact me because they wanted the name of one of my horse's dams changed because they used to own the mare. No rudeness, just asked that it be changed. Luckily, most people are understanding and will compromise with you - others get very very possessive and defensive.
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C&H Ranch
Senior Member
LIKE A BOSS!
Posts: 350
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Post by C&H Ranch on Feb 8, 2011 22:25:34 GMT -5
Thank you for your support guys. I will be posting to our members tomorrow and will let them know about the options for keeping robots from collecting our sites. Thank you for the information!
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C&H Ranch
Senior Member
LIKE A BOSS!
Posts: 350
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Post by C&H Ranch on Feb 9, 2011 13:22:08 GMT -5
Slight update...turns out the horse was part of a condition free package - our member didn't create the bloodlines. I didn't ask where she purchased the horse as it doesn't matter, but it sucks to realize this could happen to any one of us, anywhere.
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Post by Tessa on Feb 9, 2011 13:47:13 GMT -5
I do apologize Megan. That package was created by me. Im sorry for all of the mess and trouble this has given you. I'll have to be more careful in the future.
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C&H Ranch
Senior Member
LIKE A BOSS!
Posts: 350
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Post by C&H Ranch on Feb 9, 2011 14:45:26 GMT -5
That's okay Tessa, there's no need to apologize. There's no way you could have predicted that would happen...look how many awesome packages you created for people and there's not been a problem. One bad apple shouldn't ruin the whole barrel. No worries! I'm just loathe to think that this happens to any of us, I mean, how harmless are sim games, lol?
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Nicole
Junior Member
Posts: 74
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Post by Nicole on Feb 25, 2011 13:33:49 GMT -5
Don't people read the disclaimers on our sites? The "None of this is real" part.
Plus, last time I checked you couldn't copyright bloodlines.
I'll start adding that code to my websites.
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