Pokécharms

But that's neither here nor there. Let's see if I can phrase this in a way that you can understand.

1) Creative works - the sort that may be uploaded to the creative corner - are protected. Even those of banned ex-members, provided they were legitimate works and not stolen, in whole or in part, from someone else.

2) RP threads are a different, more complex beast - due to their basic nature as collaborative works involving numerous members, by definition.

3) There is no restriction in our rules prohibiting participants in a thread that has been closed to restart the thread in question, continue where they left off (retconning away the initial rule-breaking incidents that got the thread closed, of course).

4) Given the original thread starter has been banned for numerous violations and the setting is incredibly generic (as the matter of fact, a simple perusal of the RP forums will show that Sylvie was hardly the first nor the last person to start a thread that is virtually identical to the thread in question) - there is no technical prevention for a different member of the thread to have restarted it.

5) Now, if this thread was still ongoing and someone else would have copied it almost exactly WHILE it was still running because they were being salty about not getting accepted, for example, that would have been in very bad taste.

6) However, as is painfully obvious, this was not the case here.

So the overall conclusion here seems to be as you've stated and in short: If someone gets banned and started an RP original or not and it was in the threads and NOT the "creative corner" then it's free game to anyone who participated in it to grandfather said RP so as long as there isn't some (as unlikel a scenario as this would be) legal patent on said intellectual property preventing such a thing from happening?

Essentially, there are no rules preventing them from doing so. There is a bit of a letter-of-the-rules vs. spirit-of-the-rules matter here in which members are expected to exercise good judgment. However, considering this particular situation, there is no harm at all caused by people continuing where they left off. Other situations may be different. It's a case-by-case basis thing, really.

So you're playing by the book on this one. You have no "spirit-of-the-rules" like qualms about letting it continue because of the technicalities, and this judgement is not influenced by your distaste for said former member and your previous quarrels with/concerning them?

I ask you forgive my continuous questions, as I just want to be certain I understand where you're coming from entirely.

If it helps, we’ve dealt with things like this before – both removing RPs that are blatant rip-offs of original ideas, and allowing people to continue RPs they had a stake in, as is the case here. It’s out of a respect for the creators’ work in all cases.

Teapot said it better than I could have, really. Sylvie isn't the first lifeform to be ejected into the sun and leave an orphaned RP that survived her ejection - and something tells me that she wouldn't be the last. So no - particular irritation or "quarrels" with persistent rule violators don't really enter into it.

@StellarWind Elsydeon that doesn't seem to answer my last question to you, but I expect nothing here. I suppose if @Teapot included stands with the "spirit" of this blatantly cracked mirror of a former member's work through the RP thread being justifiable, then who am I as some variable member to feel disinclined to this notion?

Let’s make this a little simpler - what would you prefer we do in this instance? Would you like us to stop other people using the idea from that RP thread? I ask because I think logically, so having a goal in mind will help me understand the issue better.

The original poster did not want this. In fact taking it down seems to me (by opinion of myself) to be of better interest than letting a blatant rip of someone else's work be allowed just because there's a technical loophole. What's being allowed here seems similar to "Stole this person's car and since it's parked on my sidewalk, without any documents inside I'm free to own it."

Alright, so I think I can see where our thinking diverges here, so let me explain my position, and that of the staff, as best as I can.

Role playing is inherently collaborative. I like to describe our approach to it as "collaborative novel writing." This means that to some extent, the RP is collaboratively "owned" by everyone who joins in – Sylvie might own her work, but she doesn't own anyone else's. If they decide to take that work and expand upon it, they're allowed to do so to an extent.

Obviously, I wouldn't allow an RP set in an original universe or unique concept to continue, nor would I allow people to auto other characters without permission. Both would be taking ownership of another writer's ideas.

The kicker in this case is that logically, I can't enforce a "whomever first uses a concept gets exclusive rights to it" rule. If that were the case, whomever first ran a "fight gym; get badges" RP would be the sole owner of the concept and I'd have to ban anyone else using it – which is silly, as it's the most generic plot possible.