Leaving a reference to a post on another site is not just a good idea, but in my mind is a requirement – like citing a reference in a book or research paper. I’ve been trying to not only cite the quote with a (CSS) style on my blog, but also lead you to the page if you want to read more. I also use features of most blog systems called trackbacks which allows an auto-comment to get posted on the blog with a reference back to me and often a small piece of my post as well. There seems to be a derivative of the trackback called a pingback, which seems to just send a note back to the author without a post on the other site.
My point in bringing this up is that often times I will use a piece or even the entire post of another person here as my entire post making it as clear as possible that in fact I am not the original author.
Tonight I was browsing through my aggregator and was convinced there was a glitch as a post I know I read previously was showing up on another blog. I checked it out and sure enough there it was in full (and it’s long) with no blockquote styling, just a simple linkback (not even to the actual post, but rather the home page) at the end. Sure it’s judgement on how you do things, but it really seemed in this case that the post was being stolen – or at least used in a more than grey way.
This is not a post taken from my site and in thinking about it I think it gets to me more because I respect the person who wrote it and the information provided in the post itself.
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