I often come across blogs that are reusing the content of other blogs without the author's permission. Unfortunately, I've even seen this done by school technology integrators, school administrators, and teachers. Generally, when I ask those people why they have copied and pasted someone else's content, the answer is something along the lines of "well the content is good and I want my teachers to be able to find it all in one place." I understand those peoples' desire to centralize content, but copying and pasting entire blog posts of someone else is not the correct way to do it. It's not correct for at least two reasons. First, it's plagiarism. Second, whether they run ads or not and whether they admit it or not, bloggers love page views. We love to see how many people are coming to our blogs. And by lifting entire posts, you're denying us those page views we crave.
Sue Waters has some great words of wisdom about this issue too. One of the things that Sue points out is that while the web is all about sharing, it's also important to respect the time and effort that a person puts into his or her blog posts. I encourage you to read all of Sue's comments here.
So then if you are trying to collate good information to share with your colleagues what is an appropriate way to do it? One way to do it is to use the title and perhaps a few sentences of the blog post then place a "read more" link to direct readers to the actual source and full content. Another appropriate way to collate and distribute many blog posts is to place an RSS feed widget in the sidebar of your blog. These widgets will automatically update with blog post titles and the beginning of the new articles when your favorite blogs update.
RSS feed widgets will accomplish two things for you. First, once you've set-up and installed the widget you won't have to go to each blog individually to find the latest updates. Second, RSS feed widgets will provide the links to the direct sources of each article so that your visitors can read and comment on the original author's words.
Where can you get one of these RSS feed widgets? If you're using Blogger, there is a built-in capacity for this. To add and display the RSS feeds of other blogs select "design" from your Blogger dashboard, choose "add gadget," then select "blog list." The blog list gadget will prompt you to add the urls of your favorite blogs. If you're using another platform for your blog or you don't like the one offered through Blogger, here are some 3rd party customizable RSS feed widgets; Pheed.me, and WebRSS. Of the two, I've found WebRSS easier for first time users to customize and install. If you're using WordPress.org for your blog here's another widget you can try. Finally, Robin Good has a long list of tools and widgets that you can use to syndicate RSS feeds.
Monday, July 19, 2010
So You Want to Reuse a Blog Post?
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15 comments:
Hi,
I've posted about your postings on a few occasions. But I don't copy anything, I just give a link to the information. You've got a great site!
http://dianedahl.blogspot.com
Thank you for this post. I am a Technology Facilitator in my school building and was thinking of doing this exact same thing. Our school is moving to a new format of a Web page which allows for blogging. I was going to take great posts from all of the different RSS feeds I subscribe to and categorize them for teachers. I am new(er) to blogging and RSS in general as I don't have one myself. I will take your suggestions, as well as Sue Waters's, and use a paragraph with a link to the full text on the respective site. I was always going to give full credit and provide a link to the full text anyway, but I didn't realize it was such a faux pas. This post was great timing for me, good thing I didn't get too far!! Keep up the great work!
Great post and something to periodically remind folk about, too. I'm glad you took the extra time and step to show how people can do what they wanted to do (provide content) via RSS feeds into their own sites. Now, let's hope those folks do it.
I'm sure you must have your share of content taken by others. (It's also sort of a compliment, right?)
I remember a few years ago, a friend and I were running a blog about digital stories, and she kept copying and pasting stuff from Wesley Fryer's blog and before I had a chance to talk to her, he had caught wind and sent a pretty strong email to us. We apologized, he accepted our apologies and gave us some hints on how to appropriately use others' ideas, and we moved on. But that email did work wonders. It certainly caught our attention.
Kevin
Hi Diane,
What you're doing is great. Commenting on other's posts is great. Even copying parts of other posts to comment on them is fine too. The problem lies with people who just copy and paste and add nothing to the discussion.
Richard
Great post, Richard! In this growing age of shared documents, ideas and interaction, it's important to still remember the basic rules of crediting original writing.
I've had this discussion with many members of my PLN (both online and in the 'real' world) -- it's a hot topic these days. Often, I hear people justifying copying an entire post, so long as they're attributing those words to the original author. My response? As a former history teacher, I would never have allowed a student to turn in another student's essay, then 'justify' it by crediting their peer at the end of the paper.
I wholeheartedly agree that a little 'teaser' blurb from the original blog post with a link back to that site is the best option. Thank you for highlighting this growing trend and providing some options that both sides can live with =)
Kevin,
You just reminded me of something I should add to the post. Copying and pasting of posts is generally easy for bloggers to discover through the use of Google Alerts. Almost every time I find my posts reused I've discovered it through Google Alerts.
Richard
Eric,
I'm glad I was able to help. Please feel free to send me an email if you need help setting up a feed widget.
Richard
Well said!
Great Advice! I totally agree. In fact I have an RSS feed to your blog on the sidebar of my website, I believe you have seen it before from a past Twitter comment. Hyperlinks to others content is the only way to go. All we have to do is write a short piece maybe including our views on the topic and then link to the other bloggers post if we want our readers to also see it. That is how the online community continues to grow. You never know what my teachers will find after I have linked to one article but then they start looking around the other blog on their own for even more information.
Everyone heed the advice. It is good stuff!
I'm relatively new to blogging and really found this postinteresting. Through a Google alert, I saw a post of mine on another blog. When I emailed the blogger, he responded that he had bookmarked my post on Delicious, and tagged it 'school'. Posts tagged 'school' automatically appear on his blog (which mostly serves as a searchable notebook for himself). He said Delicious allows a 1000 characters notes field, and he uses it to provide a teaser . It ended up being most of my post.He said he gave me fair credit, so it's clear that he wasn't robbing me of either intellectual property, or due credit.
I would still have been liked to have been asked. Am I wrong?
whatedsaid,
1000 characters seems excessive to me. There are a lot of people that automatically post from Delicious or Diigo to their blogs that post only a few sentences with each link.
That seems like a case where the person just doesn't realize that he's doing something improper. I would write back and ask him to adjust how much of your posts he has posted to his blog. Again, a few sentences, perhaps a paragraph is okay. But your whole post is not unless he's writing a lengthy critique or review of your post.
Thanks for writing about this. I'd expand the advice to include anything you find on the Web. I know schools work hard to teach students not to plagiarize and cut-and-paste from Web sources, but often I find whole articles from my About.com site pasted onto school Web sites as information for parents. I'm honored they thought the information was worth sharing, but ... really, a few lines and a link would have done the job just as well, and allowed me to receive payment for my work via the page view. Even if you're not claiming to have written it yourself, even if you're tacking a credit and a link at the end, even if your intentions are good and your heart is in the right place, if you're using an entire article without permission, it's still stealing.
I think you and I have talked about this before, but just to clarify: I'll often use your site to expand on something for teachers I work with, I'll link back to you, but I always add my own thoughts to the idea. I don't usually quote you though in my post. For example, this was very brief: http://hcpssocialstudies.com/mikehasley/?p=476, and http://hcpssocialstudies.com/mikehasley/?p=460.
One problem I've noticed is that I'll see the same thing you've seen (I follow over 70 blogs in my Google Reader) and already be writing a post about it, then I see you've also done it. Then I'm thinking, "great, do I need to cite him too, now?"
So, in short, are you okay with how I'm referring to you and second, what if we both see the same thing and I also want to write about it?
Mike,
You're all set. What you're doing is fine. In fact, that's a great model of how it should be done.
The 2nd question in is one I struggle with too. Generally, if I see something someone else in the same niche write about something that I planned to write about I try to take extra care to put my own slant on a service. I also will refer people to someone else's comments on the same topic. For example, if Larry Ferlazzo writes about something that I planned to write about, I'll include a reference to Larry in my post.
Richard
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