Comments on: I’m glad Louis Gray called out Mashable

By: StevenHodson

StevenHodson — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:17:24 +0000

Or how about those one line lead ins to nothing more than a quote fom the linked site and then as the bottom all you get is either the Via or even worse IMO the simple [Link]

Boing Boing is notroious for that

By: mathewi

mathewi — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:24:02 +0000

I think part of the problem is that the “via” link is sometimes good enough
and sometimes not. What I think really irritates some people is when the
entire post is basically a reworded version of someone else's post, and the
the little “via” link is the only recognition that it came from somewhere
else. If there's more added to the post, then it doesn't seem so bad.

By: Stan Schroeder

Stan Schroeder — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:47:53 +0000

Well, it's hard to say, but the line should be drawn at linking and not linking. Personally, I like to link in text, but the via link was starting to emerge as a standard; I honestly thought that for some reason people may like it better. Of course, everyone would prefer a big fat bold link at the beginning of the text, but you can't always do that. I think I link fairly (I was not the author of any of those three article Louis mentioned), but some people may have too high expectations when it comes to crediting their work. BTW, I once reacted when my entire story was practically stolen on a high profile site, without any credit, and you know what I got out of it? A nice little via link at the end of the article.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:07:01 +0000

Sorry, Stan -- I should definitely have included you in that list of
writers. I think you do great stuff for Mashable. And don't get me wrong,
I think Mashable has lots of great material -- and I know that everyone
makes mistakes. I'm not trying to beat up on you guys. I just thought
Louis's post was a good opportunity to get some discussion going about some
of these issues.

For example, should a small "via" link at the bottom be enough when the
content of the post is fundamentally the same as the original post? I don't
know. Should linking once to the originating blog be enough credit for
using a quote or some other chunk of information, or should there be more
obvious credit? I don't know. I think a lot of this still has to be
determined -- and it's only through talking and debating it that we're going
to arrive at the answer.

By: Stan Schroeder

Stan Schroeder — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:17:37 +0000

Hey, Mathew. Although I wasn't called as one of the great writers at Mash (j/k, nhf), and although I'm late to the game, cause I've been ill, I'd like to shortly comment.

It is, in my opinion, unfair to call out Mashable for not linking/not attributing the stories to the source. Mashable always links. There are dozens of sites out there, big sites, that don't link (like Ars Technica) and sites that are basically linkblogs, with most of their material being taken off other blogs with a short comment (Lifehacker). The fact that someone in some text (and Mashable produces dozens of pieces daily) didn't attribute a quote (although he did link) doesn't prove much else except the fact that Mashable is a blog. Yup, that's it: it's no NYT (yet (: ), and people writing there are bloggers, and that's why there are no strict rules about things like that.

Personally, I am a professional journalist and I do not consider myself a blogger. I write for several publications in several languages, and if someone finds such an unattributed quote in my text (anywhere), it's an error on my part. But calling out Mashable for being some sort of evil blog that doesn't link or attribute stories is not fair, because, as I've said, Mashable takes great care to link to the source.