Help:Article ownership

<Frequently Asked Questions
This page is part of the Frequently Asked Questions help scheme.

Why don't I own things I write here?

At first sight you'd think you did. After all, you wrote it and it's your copyright. And so it is until you release it here. The moment you release it here you make an irrevocable commitment to release it and rescind any rights of ownership you had until that point.

Above the "Save Page" button is the text:

Please note that all contributions to Trains are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 (see Copyrights for details). If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here.

That paragraph and the GFDL licence (see the bottom left hand corner of every single page here) are the things that say "I fathered this article, but I did not mother it."

You have a perfect right to edit anything, but you have no right to claim ownership. You can claim that you originated something if that pleases you, but nothing more. It's even a bit flaky to say "That is my article." It isn't. It has been released under the GFDL and it is licenced under those terms. It is the GFDL that permits you to edit any article here, even those that you didn't create.

If anything in this help text conflicts with the GFDL, the GFDL always prevails.