I've been blog robbed... I feel so violated...
Someone just came to my blog, I’m guessing using Google, to search for how to do something. Posted feedback asking for some assistance and within a 30 minute period posted more feedback saying he figured it out. Even thanked me…
However, following the link on the post back, since I’m a curios kind of guy and interested in finding new blogs to read, and he’s basically cut and pasted my code on his blog with no link love at all. Not to mention, his tip is incomplete, as you can determine by reading the article that I put together. If you minimize and restore the form that you’ve done this on, you need to handle the event accordingly or the button will be re-enabled.
I do my best to give credit to anyone that I can when posting blog content, how to’s, tips and articles. I would expect the same in return. I think that’s only fair.
UPDATE: Greg Robinson has made good on this. It’s unfortunate that he was made the example in this situation and I’m sure that he didn’t intend any ill will; but I do believe that there are people who are taking content from another site and using it on their own site to promote themselves. This, in my mind, is not what blogs are about and what makes them so successful. It’s all about sharing the link love, point to others where you found the information. I think it’s a better proposition for both the blog owner and the readers.
UPDATE: A couple of people have asked if I tried contacting Greg about this before posting it as a blog entry. In this particular case, I didn’t. The reasoning is simple. I don’t think that someone contributing technical information should have to be concerned with how this information is being shared. If it helps someone, then great. That’s reward enough. However, at the same time, I think that it would be a common courtesy to let others know where you got the information from. In many cases, the there are people who blatantly steal the information and call it their own… never giving credit to others. In this case, it was obvious that Greg didn’t intend to hide where the got it since he left a couple of comments on the article… he just omitted it from his entry and thus obfuscating where he got the information from. I understand his logic but from my perspective, no matter where I said I got the information from; he got it from me… I spent time writing an article (which is time consuming) and feel that it’s credit that is deserved. The point of this entry was not to target Greg specifically (more of a single example of a much larger problem); but more to bring this activity to everyones attention. Handling this sort of thing with email is time consuming and, in the end, something that someone should not have to do and doesn’t bring this topic to a public forum. Even more so, most of the time, there’s no sort of trail to follow and things walk without the original authors knowledge.
What do you think? Has this happened to you? Post comments…