Let’s say you saw the coolest thing ever on the internet. So of course you are going to put it on your blog. You found about this thing on another blog called Adventurous Comet. You could just write about the coolest thing ever and link to it and never mention Adventurous Comet. There is no law about that. But you want to give credit where credit is due! So somewhere in your blog post you put:
via Adventurous Comet
You’ll probably link that to their blog post about it, in addition to a direct link to to coolest thing ever. That’s just good practice.
Now tomorrow you see another coolest thing ever on the internet. This time you found out about it on Smockk, but Smockk credits BMX Tips in their article with a “via” link. Do you credit Smockk? Do you credit BMX Tips? Do you credit both? There are easily arguments for all three of those choices.
“Both” feels like the most honest and most credit-where-credit-is-due, but leads to some ridiculous situations when it’s not just two sites, but a whole chain of sites crediting on another back to an original source. I see this kind of thing on Tumblr a lot:
via Shart
via Double Dragster
via One Blonde Nugget
via Hot Girl in the Corner
via Fruitsmoke
via Old Man in the Bathtub
That’s at the ridiculous level. That’s noise. It gets much worse than that, like when it’s not even clear what the original source is.
I think just linking to the place you first read it is also very honest and the cleanest way to go. If people want to follow the chain, they can do it from there.
Wow! What if one of the sources links back to the one above it. Then you’d be stuck in an infinite loop.
If chaining ‘via’ links were followed, then it would be preposterous.
I think linking it to the place you last read or to the original source of the article (after following all those ‘via’ links), would be the best way.
Your thoughts on this, Chris?
BTW: Now-a-days, you’re writing about very relevant topics that web designers (and people from other walks of life) face during their work and when the visit websites. Good job! =)
Well said and someone had to say it. I don’t mind Tumblr’s long (sometimes page-long) strings of attributions, because that way I might find people who are interesting..
Sometimes I tell people how I arrived at their sites.
For example, I followed @Oh_Bruce on Twitter because of something he said, and he was following @brainpicker who looked interesting and who runs http://www.brainpickings.org/ which was inspired by you, apparently.
:-)
Once upon a time there was the M.L.A. and they had rules for citation. But those were back in the days of scholarship. One should, if one sees the article is not really the source, just go find the source and use that and forget the first article. I mean, if you mentioned something about “Hard-boiled Web Design,” and following your advice here, I just sited you, then Andy Clarke might become a bit peeved at us both. (I believe that is what the English do, become peeved.) And rightly so.
:)
I agree with you,
nice wrote chris…
Turns out that nearly all content is derived somewhat, but I dont think we should get too anal about it. As long as there is some effort to give credit thats what matters- people don’t want a lecture in correct atribution everytime they read a post!