The Dragon Stone

Are you lost and confused? This page aims to answer the most frequently asked questions (based on questions commonly emailed to the webmaster).

General Questions

1. Where Am I?
2. How do I get around the site?
3. Is this site safe for children?
4. Who can I contact about the site?
5. How big is this website and when did it start?

Dragon Content

6. Where did you get the information?
7. Is the information accurate?
8. Why have you missed this dragon off your list/don't have information about this?
9. Will you send me all the information you have on dragons?
10. Can you send me all the dragon pictures you have?
11. You have made a mistake! Should I tell you?
12. I have a picture of an odd dragon. It has scales and a dragon head, but it also has hooves and is horse shaped. It looks a bit oriental. Can you tell me what this is?

Copyright and Copying

13. Can I copy pages from your site?
14. Does that mean I can copy one of your pages for my website?
15. What is a 'small amount'?
16. Can I copy a picture for my website?
17. Does this copyright thing apply to all sites?

Links, Webrings and Site Fights

18. Can I link to your site?
19. Do you have any link banners for linking to this site?
20. Will you link to my site?
21. Will you do a link exchange?
22. Do you want to join my webring?
23. Do you want to join our site fights / *insert web competition* team?

Accessibility

24. What has been done to make this site accessible?
25. What browsers has the site been tested with?
26. What browser does the site look best in?
27. What standard is the site coded to?

General Questions

1. Where am I?

You're in the Dragon Stone, a website focused on dragon information (the sort from mythology and fantasy). The opening page is here: Home

You can see where you are at any point from the breadcrumbs menu... the little menu at the top that looks like this: Home > Help

2. How do I get around the site?

Each of the options in the main menu leads to a list of pages about that subject. The main menu is found on every page.

Alternatively you could search for what you're looking for. Try to make search words useful. 'Dragon' and 'dragons' appear on nearly every page of the site, so those are not useful things to search for. Try to be a bit more specific.

3. Is this site safe for children?

This site is generally safe for children. There are some references to violence and mature issues in the mythology sections. This is in a historical context of retelling myths. There may also be mild artistic nudity (in the context of historic items of art). The wording and depictions are not graphic. However, parents may wish to glance through these sections before letting their child read them.

Please be aware that outside links from the site and guestbook entries are not controlled by the site author.

4. Who can I contact about the site?

The site is maintained by Polenth Blake. You can send her emails at weyr@polenth.com. Every effort is made to reply to emails, but the email traffic can get a bit high for one person to keep up with.

5. How big is this website and when did it start?

The site has several hundred pages at the moment. A little bit about the site history can be found in the 'About' section: About - Site History

Dragon Content

6. Where did you get the information?

A list of sources is available. The site is mainly researched in books and peer-reviewed journals. Some websites are included, such as translations by university research projects.

7. Is the information accurate?

The site is as accurate as possible. Information has been cross-checked with several sources where they exist. Modern fantasy information is not randomly combined with mythology, or vice versa. The site is a research project in progress and things will change as new sources are found.

8. Why have you missed this dragon off your list/don't have information about this?

There is more to know about dragons than grains of sand. New information is added as regularly as possible. You're welcome to email a reference for a missing dragon, such as the book/author, citation for an academic paper or similar reference.

9. Will you send me all the information you have on dragons?

Please browse through the website for the information you need. If you have a specific question you are welcome to ask, but try to find the answer for yourself first.

10. Can you send me all the dragon pictures you have?

Look at the Dragon Artist List to find sites that are art based.

11. You have made a mistake! Should I tell you?

If you find a mistake, letting the webmaster know is appreciated. If the mistake is factual, providing references that show the mistake is helpful. In the case of minor content errors, please be aware that the site uses British spelling (except when quoting sources). This means for example that the following words are correctly spelt: colour, favourite, organisation, duelling and anything ending in 'ise' instead of 'ize'.

12. I have a picture of an odd dragon. It has scales and a dragon head, but it also has hooves and is horse shaped. It looks a bit oriental. Can you tell me what this is?

Most likely this is a ki-rin or ki-lin, the oriental unicorn. Even if a single horn is not very obvious, try searching the web for unicorn and ki-rin.

Copyright and Copying

13. Can I copy pages from your site?

Text, including non-fiction, is still subject to copyright. Though the facts within the text are not copyrighted, the original writing based around them is. This means it is not legal to copy someone's website without their permission, including the text on their website.

In terms of The Dragon Stone, anything that is fair use is fine. This includes:

• Quoting small amounts of this site on another website, crediting the author and providing a link back.
• Printing some pages (with credit attached) to give to a class of students for their work.
• Quoting parts of the site (with credit) to write a review of the site.

Fair use basically means it is not for profit, it does not copy large amounts of the original and proper credit is given to the source. Educational and non-profit uses will often come under this. Making money from someone else's work or claiming it as your own is not fair use.

There is nothing to stop you using the facts in the site to produce your own original writings based around them. It is good practice to list the site as a reference if you do use the information.

14. Does that mean I can copy one of your pages for my website?

Yes, as long as...

• It is for non-commercial or educational purposes.
• You link back to The Dragon Stone and give proper credit.
• The total amount copied is small.
• It does not include someone else's copyrighted work.

Please remember that some of the images on the site are from elsewhere. You must make sure it is fine with the copyright holder of the images to use them.

15. What is a 'small amount'?

It is not an easy thing to put a quantity to. Generally, if what you quote is no more than a page or two and is properly credited/linked, there won't be any problems.

16. Can I copy a picture for my website?

If the picture copyright is held by Polenth Blake you can on these conditions:

• You provide credit and link back to http://www.polenth.com
• You don't claim it as your own work or try to sell it.
• You don't use the image to promote hate campaigns, adult topics or anything illegal.

These pictures are usually marked with a handwritten signature saying 'Pol' or with the full name.

If a picture is public domain, you are free to take it and do what you want with it. Generally only things that are old historic pictures or found in the public domain clipart are public domain.

If the picture is credited to someone else please check with them if you can use it. Links to sites are normally provided so that you can read the use agreements or contact the artist yourself.

You are welcome to email if you are unsure who owns the copyright to a picture (or if it is copyrighted at all).

17. Does this copyright thing apply to all sites?

Yes it does. A site does not have to mark that it is copyrighted. Nor does it need to have a statement to say things can't be copied. An author/artist's work is automatically their own when they create it. It is a good idea to respect copyright on the internet, as it encourages authors and artists to share their work.

Links, Webrings and Site Fights

18. Can I link to your site?

Yes, feel free to link to the site. Links are always appreciated. You can place the link to whatever page you feel is most appropriate for your link. It doesn't have to be the main page.

19. Do you have any link banners for linking to this site?

Yes. If you'd like to use one they can be found on the Link Banner page.

20. Will you link to my site?

If it is a dragon site, then feel free to send your link here. Try to include the word dragon in the subject so that it isn't mistaken for spam. Alternatively you can submit is using the submission form of the Links Directory. You might also want to join the Dragon Mystery Webring.

21. Will you do a link exchange?

Dragon sites will be linked to, as it says in the question above. You will not get preferential treatment for linking to The Dragon Stone.

22. Do you want to join my webring?

Probably not, as the site joins few webrings. If you feel yours is distinctive in some way, there's no harm in asking.

23. Do you want to join our site fights / *insert web competition* team?

No thank you.

Accessibility

24. What has been done to make this site accessible?

The site has used the guidelines set out by the W3C and by various societies for the disabled. The Dragon Stone aims to display acceptably for as many people as possible, including those with old browsers, requiring assistance software due to a disability, or using an unusual web browser.

The site has been tested, but you may find some issues if you are using an alternative browser setup. Please let the webmaster known if you have problems and she will try to resolve them. As well as stating the problem, please include your browser name and version, any browsing assistance software details (screen magnifiers, screen readers, etc.) and any special settings you need (larger font sizes, etc.).

The webmaster's email address is: weyr@polenth.com

If you are particularly interested in accessibility, exactly what has been done for the site is detailed in the further questions.

25. What browsers has the site been tested with?

The site is tested with recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera. It is also tested in Lynx, a text-only browser. Backward compatibility and systems like webtv have been tested using the tools at Delorie.

26. What browser does the site look best in?

The site will look the best in a modern web browser. Text browsers have their own special formatting on the site, to display menus as bullet lists and 'skip to content' to bypass the menu.

Older browsers will not see the site as intended and some of the interactive parts will not work. You should be able to navigate the site and the content should be clear, but it will not look quite as nifty.

27. What standard is the site coded to?

The site is in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This allows modern XHTML formatting, but allows older tags and attributes to be used so that older browsers still see something reasonable. It has been validated with the W3C validator, and is re-validated sporadically incase errors have crept in during updates.

Most site formatting is done through CSS, with the exception that some has to remain in the XHTML for older browsers. For this reason, tables have been used for positioning over div tags. This is one of those debatable web design topics, but backward compatibility was considered a primary concern for this site due to its text information bias. The tables linearise properly.