Is World Anvil good and are there alternatives/ rivalling platforms?

[CheertheSecond]

I want to know if there would be any problem that would infringe my authorship of my creation and if there is anything that would endanger the availability of my contents if I post on it? Like there are platforms that just straight up deleting my uploads if it is banned without giving me a save or warning so that I can back up the thing.

 

[beast_regards]

No. Not really.

I looked it up upon leaving the Royal Road. They are not really alike.

World Anvil is not the publisher and they don't claim any ownership of the contents they host. No wiki for third party content. They, however, insist that all content must be your creation, or something you are permitted (licensed) to use as their content guidelines. I suspect they would delete the content without prior notice if they receive a take down request, considering how their guidelines are worded. They also have rules against pornography.

What made me decide against it was the poor visibility (after all, if you don't distribute the links, no one has it) and the high price. As far I could tell, though, there aren't any crawler bots, as there is simply no way to extract the content effectively.

A minor curiosity: if you are writing the LitRPG, the World Anvil is the one that supports tables (i.e. blue boxes).

It is slightly more expensive than Campfire, it's a direct competition. The Campfire has more discounts, and better support, but the World Anvil allows purchasing of separate modules in custom subscription. I don't know if the World Anvil have the e-book publishing service, but Campfire actually has.

 

[CheertheSecond]

No. Not really.

I looked it up upon leaving the Royal Road. They are not really alike.

World Anvil is not the publisher and they don't claim any ownership of the contents they host. No wiki for third party content. They, however, insist that all content must be your creation, or something you are permitted (licensed) to use as their content guidelines. I suspect they would delete the content without prior notice if they receive a take down request, considering how their guidelines are worded. They also have rules against pornography.

What made me decide against it was the poor visibility (after all, if you don't distribute the links, no one has it) and the high price. As far I could tell, though, there aren't any crawler bots, as there is simply no way to extract the content effectively.

A minor curiosity: if you are writing the LitRPG, the World Anvil is the one that supports tables (i.e. blue boxes).

It is slightly more expensive than Campfire, it's a direct competition. The Campfire has more discounts, and better support, but the World Anvil allows purchasing of separate modules in custom subscription. I don't know if the World Anvil have the e-book publishing service, but Campfire actually has.

I am looking for something to make a wikia

 

[beast_regards]

I am looking for something to make a wikia

The world-building software is essentially wiki in functionality. Notable characters, events, locations, that sort of thing.

They are just very sensitive to the content copyright wise i.e. you could only use it for the content you own. That's what I meant by "No wiki for third party content".

If you are creating a Wikia for your own story, they are a fair choice, albeit if the paid one.

If you want to create your own world-building database for your personal use, and don't want to pay, Obsidian is the good choice. Obsidian is the free software, but the copy is local, on your own computer. If you want online database, stored on the cloud, you have to pay for hosting.

 

[sbdrag]

World Anvil Grandmaster here!

I really enjoy it as a wiki, but keep in mind the primary audience and user-base is for TTRPGs, so novel wikis generally get less attention than TTRPG-focused ones. They also support manuscript uploads for authors, and while I have some current issues with the implementation, there is a major update for that functionality coming, so I'm going to keep my peace until after the update.

I primarily use it as a story bible for myself, and it's pretty good in that regard. The biggest asset it has, imo, is that it has a very supportive and active community. You'll get more out of it by joining the discord and finding people on-site you gel with than just posting and doing nothing. The frequent events are also helpful in getting you out of your head in regards to world building, and all are free to enter with some including prizes! (Most offer onsite badges, but the big competitions offer material prizes offered by community judges, including: merch from TTRPG and related stores, story writing courses, art by an artists for your work, world building tools, etc.)

It's also a pretty small dev team, which is why I mildly grump but fully understand that they focus mainly on the TTRPG features first, since it's the vast majority of their user base. They do allow nsfw content, I think it's just the legal definition of porn that they don't allow (ie, images depicting real people sensually naked/engaging in acts). I would have to double-check to be sure, but there is a toggle for marking content nsfw and I know non-sexual nudity is allowed. The dev team is also available in the discord and very responsive, the two founders often pop in the check things.

They do offer a free option, by the way - it's not all paid. You'll get all the basic wiki functions with the free version, you just run out of space eventually and don't get all the bells and whistles. So checking what you need is a good idea re: functionality. I paid because I have a lot of content, and I upped my subscription to lifetime because I do see myself continuing to use the service for a long enough time to make the cost worth it for me, but that's all up to you. But you can always start free and see how it goes from there.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

If you want a wiki just use any note app and learn how to link things together. And get nextcloud to sync things up.

 

[Lysander_Works]

I found World Anvil very useful to me, so much that I do consider it worth the subscription as well. But, as it should be obvious by now, it isn't for everyone. It is a nice resource of Index and references to use, as some of my followers know. It will also depend on the content-level situation for each author too.

 

[Iloveshovels]

No. Not really.

I looked it up upon leaving the Royal Road. They are not really alike.

World Anvil is not the publisher and they don't claim any ownership of the contents they host. No wiki for third party content. They, however, insist that all content must be your creation, or something you are permitted (licensed) to use as their content guidelines. I suspect they would delete the content without prior notice if they receive a take down request, considering how their guidelines are worded. They also have rules against pornography.

What made me decide against it was the poor visibility (after all, if you don't distribute the links, no one has it) and the high price. As far I could tell, though, there aren't any crawler bots, as there is simply no way to extract the content effectively.

A minor curiosity: if you are writing the LitRPG, the World Anvil is the one that supports tables (i.e. blue boxes).

It is slightly more expensive than Campfire, it's a direct competition. The Campfire has more discounts, and better support, but the World Anvil allows purchasing of separate modules in custom subscription. I don't know if the World Anvil have the e-book publishing service, but Campfire actually has.

Wait, royal road does what? How would they get a say?

 

[beast_regards]

royal road

They tend to rule lawyer around the whole copyright and often infringe on whole authorship matters i.e. they don't own copyright, but right to copy to other sites. Or you own the copyright to your own work until it is registered with local office.

Hosting sites, like World Anvil, don't use this ambigious wording about the authorship and ownership.

 

[Iloveshovels]

They tend to rule lawyer around the whole copyright and often infringe on whole authorship matters i.e. they don't own copyright, but right to copy to other sites. Or you own the copyright to your own work until it is registered with local office.

Hosting sites, like World Anvil, don't use this ambigious wording about the authorship and ownership.

That seems very rule bending

 

[beast_regards]

That seems very rule bending

World Anvil have very reasonable approach to copyright.

I.e. their site displays the content which is copyrighted to other parties. Nothing more, nothing else.

There are provision against submitting the content that aren't your (the submitter's) property, in other words belong to someone else, in which case they reserve the right to remove the content upon receiving the complaint (DCMA notice) from the rightful owner. This is where it ends.

While Royal Road could ...

... edit your work? License it to someone else? Noticed "third party website"?

 

[CheertheSecond]

World Anvil have very reasonable approach to copyright.

I.e. their site displays the content which is copyrighted to other parties. Nothing more, nothing else.

View attachment 34408

There are provision against submitting the content that aren't your (the submitter's) property, in other words belong to someone else, in which case they reserve the right to remove the content upon receiving the complaint (DCMA notice) from the rightful owner. This is where it ends.

While Royal Road could ...
View attachment 34409
... edit your work? License it to someone else? Noticed "third party website"?

Then RR is worse than pirates.

They violates not just copyrights but authorship rights.

 

[Iloveshovels]

World Anvil have very reasonable approach to copyright.

I.e. their site displays the content which is copyrighted to other parties. Nothing more, nothing else.

View attachment 34408

There are provision against submitting the content that aren't your (the submitter's) property, in other words belong to someone else, in which case they reserve the right to remove the content upon receiving the complaint (DCMA notice) from the rightful owner. This is where it ends.

While Royal Road could ...
View attachment 34409
... edit your work? License it to someone else? Noticed "third party website"?

Holy shit. It was that bad. Just thought moss were dicks. That’s like stealing stealing. Not like they’ve done any of that…

 

[beast_regards]

Holy shit. It was that bad. Just thought moss were dicks. That’s like stealing stealing. Not like they’ve done any of that…

RoRos didn't do any stealing, technically. It's kinda hard to break the copyright law that predates invention of magnetic tapes, let alone the Internet.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

RoRos didn't do any stealing, technically. It's kinda hard to break the copyright law that predates invention of magnetic tapes, let alone the Internet.

The fact that they list their "right to use" as "revokable" I think covers them from theft - you can object to their re-use of your material at any time. You may have to take it off of their site (it is kind of implied but not stated) but you can.

 

[beast_regards]

The fact that they list their "right to use" as "revokable" I think covers them from theft - you can object to their re-use of your material at any time. You may have to take it off of their site (it is kind of implied but not stated) but you can.

I didn't find the instance in which they explicitly say how is the contract revoked.

Logically, you could assume that deleting of the content, or the account, would serve as the termination of the contract with them, except:

Except, deleting explicitly does nothing, and there aren't any provisions I found for revoking the licence itself.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I didn't find the instance in which they explicitly say how is the contract revoked.

Logically, you could assume that deleting of the content, or the account, would serve as the termination of the contract with them, except:

View attachment 34427

Except, deleting explicitly does nothing, and there aren't any provisions I found for revoking the licence itself.

The quoted line in the post above says it is "revocable" (not sure if they spelled it wrong or I did; been a long time since I had to deal with contract stuff like that) - but not how to revoke it. BUT they are "sub licensable" - so you would have to contact anyone they sub-licensed to as well to regain your rights. This is probably how some of the audionovel sites got stuff from them.

 

[beast_regards]

The quoted line in the post above says it is "revocable" (not sure if they spelled it wrong or I did; been a long time since I had to deal with contract stuff like that) - but not how to revoke it. BUT they are "sub licensable" - so you would have to contact anyone they sub-licensed to as well to regain your rights. This is probably how some of the audionovel sites got stuff from them.

...and there was the case of the novels being sold on Amazon without author's knowledge, which happened several times already.

At this stage, the Amazon requires a proof of authorship to remove the story they already have, because they couldn't be sure you are indeed the owner, as there is, or would be, a serious doubt about the ownership / authorship. Proof of authorship is not a copyright, it is an evidence admissible at court which requires witnesses and it's slightly more tricky that registering for copyright.

Strangely enough, if you somehow brought any novel from the Amazon, let's say in electronic format, you could copy paste that to the RoRo's.

RoRos, however, have the software that can verify the text you submitted against the works published on Amazon, and will stop you from posting.

This isn't strange, it is the duty they have as an "Associate". What is strange, however, is that it is weirdly one-directional despite the fact that entire business (RoRo's, not Amazon's) is heavily reliant on the whole "gateway to continue your career with Amazon publishing".