Friday, August 17, 2007

Blogging - Thoughts on copying entire posts

I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to make blogging faster for me. I see so much stuff that I want to share with the eLearning community that its hard to get all my thoughts into blog posts about it all.

I tried the email option from Google Reader which seemed like a great idea at first. I can scan the world and instantly post to my blog all from one spot. PERFECT! That's what I want to do. But then again...not so perfect.

The Google Reader adds a bunch of stuff to the email and that shows up in my post. Not so good. However, I'm all about the information getting to you...even if it looks a little sloppy.

My biggest problem is in my gut telling me that it just isn't cool to put another persons ENTIRE blog post into my blog post. Sure the Reader email feature adds the link back and all that stuff, but still...ya know? Very uncomfortable with it!

So, in a pinch under certain circumstances I will post via the gReader email feature. But I'm going to try and avoid it.

What do you think?

10 comments:

Harold Jarche said...

You may have to consider copyright restrictions. It's not a problem with my blog, because of the CC-By-NC license, but not everyone uses this. The default on blogs is "Copyright", which means that you are limited by Fair Use/Fair Dealing laws.

Lee Kraus said...

I have had issues with creating links to other content. It just takes too long. Flock's blog editor will let you highlight and drag content and automatically create the citation. AWESOME.... but then the HTML code it creates causes a problem in Blogger for me. Not so awesome. I think this is the solution, the html code just needs to be clean.

Maybe I should leave Blogger.

Cammy Bean said...

How about having automatic posts of your deli.cious links for the day? Then tag all the cool things you want other people to read...

Aaron said...

I think if you can get past the transition of being a content creator into being content aggregator, I think it's fine. You're still linking back to the original post. Who wouldn't want the trackbacks?

As long as your selection is as good as it's been, I say share away.

Anonymous said...

If you have nothing to add why blog it? If you really want people to see something and you don't have time to add your thoughts just post a link - or tag it on del.icio.us and have a place on your blog that shows your recent del.icio.us links.

(I've never been a fan of saying nothing new)

Rebecca said...

I see your conundrum. It seems odd to me the idea of reposting someone else's blog post, unless is an old classic type post. If the post is current, I would lean towards pointing your readers towards the blog in question. Re-posting a complete post seems to be to be wasting bandwidth, unless, you are are reposting and adding commentary. But again, a link is better than a repost (IMHO).
Cheers.

Robert Greenwood said...

Similar to Harold I use the CC-By-ND license on my site. I have no problem with someone posting my content as long as there is attribution. I put it up there to share with everyone. If anyone finds something intersting, have at it...

Anonymous said...

As a person who has witness another posting others work and making it appear as if it is their own - the answer is don't do it.

Totally understand your issues relating to time take to blog.

The best option for sharing is to set up a Shared Google Reader Account - when you read a post you like in Google Reader click on share. Then add the Shared Google Reader Gadget to your blog. Encourage all your readers to subscribe to the feed from your Shared reader and presto - your work is done. The original posts are delivered directly to your readers and all you have to do is remember to click on Share (and encourage them to subscribe to the feed).

But getting back to the issue of posting on the topic - definitely worth posting if you can add to the topic. Don't assume just because others have posted that people know about it - I often rely on the level of conversation by a range of bloggers on an issue/topic before I will take the time to check something out.

Sue

bschlenker said...

Many thanks to everyone for helping me think out loud. I'm pretty good about copyright info, so I'm not too concerned about that. And since the Google Reader email feature accurately identifies and links back to the source, I"m not worried about that either.

I think what had feeling funny was the value add part of blogging. Becky and others made this point and it resonnated with me big time. There is no sense in having someone's complete thoughts in 2 places, so let's not waste the bandwidth.
Also, I do use the SHARE feature of Google Reader, but my current blogger theme has it listed low on the page. So, I don't think many people see or subscribe to the feed of my shared items.

Great conversation folks! Thanks for the help!

Tracy Parish said...

I didn't even know I could do this. I think I'm glad that I didn't know. It does look messy, although fixable. As other's pointed out, sharing the link seems to be enough for the blogging world. We have to trust each other that the items we do share are certainly relevant and worthy of taking a look at by others.