Elonka wrote:
] It would probably be worth clarifying this point for
] Memestreams, too, especially since we routinely quote other
] people's webpages word for word. Where's the dividing line
] between "fair use" quoting of someone else's page, and
] "plagiarizing" it?

Tom nailed the key point right on the head.. You must attribute sources. MemeStreams give users the tools to do this.. Between linking back to the article, and the use of ]'s or italics to quote, the problem is handled fairly well.. You have a ability to quote verbatim content, it links back to the article, and I think its pretty clear that its a quote.. That nails 90% of this problem. The other 10% is the user, and how they form their post. If you want to be unclear about where something came from, you can of course be shady.. We can't stop people from being shady.. However, the community can spot people who are making bad posts and LART them. Integrity cannot be enforced by a peice of perl code, but it can be enforced by users.. So, hold people accountable for lies and plagiarism when you see it.. Community standards and all that..

I think this situation with Kelley and Stratfor shows that the blogging community is capable of enforcing itself. He appears to have been LART'd quite effectively. (This message is linked to one of his numerous apologies.) He appears to be attributing everything now, this serves as an example to others, an appropriate amount of damage has been done to his reputation, and a critical issue has been brought to light. Good for blogistan.

Back to MemeStreams.. We _do_ have a problem with it being unclear what comments came from what users when things get rerecommended.. Like many problems with MemeStreams, a solution has not been coded yet, but it will. In the meantime, its up to users to properly attribute comments to the people they can from. Yeah, I know its a pain in the ass.. Its likely going to be addressed at the same point when the capability to put links in posts is added.

There are a number of things that can be done to make the quoting system better.. Most of which require better tools on the client side for forming posts. For instance, when recommending the average story written in AP style, I usually quote the lead, and any sections that I feel are particularly relevant. The bookmarklet allows me to get a block of text to quote, but I usually wind up cutting and pasting an additional paragraph or two from articles to single out certain points.. Oped peices are rarely in AP style, hence they don't have a proper lead, and you need to pick a key point or two, a paragraph where the author sums up his peice, or simply paraphrase a description.. If I'm rerecommending something, I may quote different sections or "clean up" what material was quoted by the user I'm getting it from.. Sometimes I only single out a few sentences from a given paragraph and don't quote the whole thing.. No matter how you look at it, its preforming a sort of editorial function.. Which is the key thing MemeStreams does.. We are all editors here, working to filter/describe content for each other.. All while having the ability to slip our personal oped into the mix.. Our tools for doing this are sure to mature as time goes on.. When the XML-RPC stuff appears, we will have the ability to create more mature tools for forming posts. Little things, like being able to cut/copy text from somewhere, and paste it into a recommend window, have it appear in quotes, and a "From" link at the top to where it came from.. (And of course, the all critical inline spelcheck..)

I can think of many ways that quoting can cause problems.. Ie, there is nothing keeping users from quoting _all_ the relevant chunks from a given page, making it pointless to visit the page at all.. I don't see any problem with this if the bulk of the post's content is the user's comments.. If you want to point by point critique an article, thats fine.. But if its just the quotes from the article, and moreover, if the article is content that you would not be able to see otherwize without paying, its a problem.. No code I can write is going to fix that problem..

I expect there to be problems with people quoting "too much" at some point or another.. Luckly, thusfar everyone appears to be doing a pretty good job of getting whats necessary for a good description of a given article, without going overboard.

The dividing line between "fair use" and "plagiarizing" is very grey.. This is an interesting and relevant topic of discussion.. At some point I am sure its going to be a big issue as blogging becomes more and more popular and the news outlets become scared.. We have seen what IT has done to the music and movie industry.. We are just starting to see whats its going to do to news.

This is a good topic to bring up during the MemeStreams talk at Interz0ne.

Agonist & Meme Quoting