Forum harversters, is it good or bad?

[Dominion]

Thank you, Forsaken, you raise some good points. We seem to be thinking in the same direction (since you probably started your comment before I edited my post to say that we couldn't object to quoted material accompanied by a substantial viewpoint). And you're right, there may well be ways to boost originality without being restrictive. (Though I had no idea unicorn farts were digitally transferable.)

But I can't help wondering if it wouldn't be better to state the limits from the get-go and help people find ways to express themselves within those limits, than to make a show of being permissive at the start and having to moderate excessively later. The latter approach strikes me as more heavy handed. Of course, the limits I'm describing would not be stated as I expressed them in #14 above. We'd certainly want to state them positively rather than negatively. And please bear in mind that I'm in Japan, where folks are more at peace with the idea that society has rules and limits.

...All this is taking us off the topic of the original post. The point I was initially trying to make with my ponderings vis-a-vis moderation was that the whole problem of content harvesting seems to have come about because many bloggers and forum admins over the years have taken a rather lax attitude toward the reposting of information. We've created a culture in which people see no wrong in harvesting content for the purpose of monetization simply because their activity looks so very much like what everyone else is doing. Perhaps if we all made a point of insisting on editorial quotation as opposed to simple repetition or paraphrasal, then the harvesters would be more easily recognized for the reprehensible bottom-feeders they are.

What I'm getting at is related to the as the (now rather old) debate about whether bloggers are real journalists. I think there are some bloggers who are good journalists indeed, so I'd hate to see the proposition categorically denied. But it seems to me that many bloggers (perhaps a strong majority) simply find a news article or a bit of information and paraphrase it, frequently giving no credit to their sources. Perhaps our tolerance of such lax blogging has paved the way for the harvesters?

 

[Forsaken]

Thank you, Forsaken, you raise some good points. We seem to be thinking in the same direction (since you probably started your comment before I edited my post to say that we couldn't object to quoted material accompanied by a substantial viewpoint). And you're right, there may well be ways to boost originality without being restrictive. (Though I had no idea unicorn farts were digitally transferable.)



But I can't help wondering if it wouldn't be better to state the limits from the get-go and help people find ways to express themselves within those limits, than to make a show of being permissive at the start and having to moderate excessively later. The latter approach strikes me as more heavy handed. Of course, the limits I'm describing would not be stated as I expressed them in #14 above. We'd certainly want to state them positively rather than negatively. And please bear in mind that I'm in Japan, where folks are more at peace with the idea that society has rules and limits.



...All this is taking us off the topic of the original post. The point I was initially trying to make with my ponderings vis-a-vis moderation was that the whole problem of content harvesting seems to have come about because many bloggers and forum admins over the years have taken a rather lax attitude toward the reposting of information. We've created a culture in which people see no wrong in harvesting content for the purpose of monetization simply because their activity looks so very much like what everyone else is doing. Perhaps if we all made a point of insisting on editorial quotation as opposed to simple repetition or paraphrasal, then the harvesters would be more easily recognized for the reprehensible bottom-feeders they are.



What I'm getting at is related to the as the (now rather old) debate about whether bloggers are real journalists. I think there are some bloggers who are good journalists indeed, so I'd hate to see the proposition categorically denied. But it seems to me that many bloggers (perhaps a strong majority) simply find a news article or a bit of information and paraphrase it, frequently giving no credit to their sources. Perhaps our tolerance of such lax blogging has paved the way for the harvesters?

If you were wondering, unicorn farts are transferred through magic .

Stating limits is fine (eg that all information must include a citation, and limits on how much may be reposted) as that still gives users a bit of freedom, which generally means a happier community. I actually do not think enforcing rules to stop people who posts just meme's and pictures as heavy handed, as those posts serve no point and are generally no more than spam and often lead to similar responses. I try to keep moderation to a minimum on any site I own, and allow people to do their own thing within reason but I've never ran a board for a company myself (Though I have helped on some).

--

In response to the on-topic portion of your post; while I cannot speak for others I have generally been insistent on my site that citation is needed (at least a link to the source they are discussing, if not the original source). Forum administrators are probably more to blame than bloggers, as most bloggers tend to think of themselves as working for the press .

Most bloggers are not real journalists, though there are quite a few that are. It is the amateurs (same with administrators) who tend to give a bad name to the group as a whole, though even those tend to quote sections and write original content detailing their opinion (at least for the most part).

 

[mrGTB]

You often find the same content posted across other forums, especially if they cover the same niche as each other. The owners are always looking for ideas to write about to add threads, with it usually coming from other communities covering the same niche there forum does. Just re-written slightly different, but the same topic title covered.

I see it all the time. That's the downside of forums today, there's just too much copying going on between them all that's re-worded to try and make it look original.

That's why when I write Blog entries I prefer to write one about something personal to do with ME, then I know it's utterly useless for being copied onto another site by anyone. Very unlike if I wrote an article about "blogging with wordpress", that a month later could have been scrapped on 1000 other blogs and forums because it's a general topic.

So if you want to try keep your topics original and not scrapped, you have no choice but try and keep them personal entries such as "having a day out with the kids" e.t.c. Making it pretty useless for any other sites to grab and use it.

 

[Dominion]

Forsaken and mrGTB, you make good points. Much food for thought here.

As for our site: at it's core it'll be a fan site for the writers and artists who work for us. A couple of them are already well known in their field, and we're hoping the site will help publicize the others, and ultimately the increased name value will help drum up more work for everyone involved. I'm not too worried about overlap with other forums in our niche, because the niche doesn't exist yet. I'm more worried about the concept becoming diluted, so that we end up with Yet Another Forum.

I think mrGTB has the right approach to blogging: keep it personal, so that it wouldn't make sense anywhere else. That's a good description of what we're planning to do with our WordPress site, which will be staff-only, a sort of showcase for our writers. But the forums, by nature, are harder to steer. I'm hoping that our blogs will set a tone than forum participants will want to groove along with.

... Magic, huh? I'll have to look into that. Magical unicorn farts might fit in with our concept very nicely.

 

[mrGTB]

I've always felt that's the main purpose of using a Blog anyway, that they are more of a personal tool for using unlike forums. But of course a Blog will and does get used for just about anything these days and has proved good at doing so. Like being used for "News or Movie" sites, along with many other niche type Blog's.

It's not hard either to see why other sites are scrapping your content away using RSS Feeds your offering. They have Google Ads plastered all over the place with your content and others displayed to make money. They don't have to do anything later except sit back and keep scrapping in more content from other sites they choose.

What makes matters worse, these sites scrapping content still get indexed well in Google. It's not as though they get penalized for doing it or blacklisted.

That's one reason why I'm not a huge fan of offering RSS Feeds so readily anymore. And if I use software that offers the option of switching it off completely, I do just that!

 

[Dominion]

Hmm, I'll have to give some thought to how (or even if) we'll be using RSS. That's another one of those newfangled web technologies that I haven't really looked into yet. Mostly my brain's still back in the days when even CSS was relatively uncommon.

Thanks for bringing that up, mrGTB.

 

[mrGTB]

You can't turn RSS Feed off by default in WordPress, I can't do the same with the MyBB Forum I run. That was one good thing about using vBulletin 3, that had the option to disable RSS Feeds. But I have no idea what other methods are used for scrapping content, just saying it can be done via your RSS Syndication. But it's only one method and I've read they use software that can filter out certain things from the feed so there's no link-back included anymore leading to your site they scrape.

 

[SilverCircle]

You can't turn RSS Feed off by default in WordPress

Which is not going to help much against harvesting bots.

Granted, RSS makes it easier to harvest content, but having it disabled is not going to protect you from these bots.

Extracting the headline and content from a WordPress blog article isn't exactly difficult when your blog is using XHTML/HTML compliant code and following general SEO rules.

On my blog, I see most of the "unknown" bots accessing the pages directly, even though I do have rss enabled.

 

[mrGTB]

Which is not going to help much against harvesting bots.

Granted, RSS makes it easier to harvest content, but having it disabled is not going to protect you from these bots.

Extracting the headline and content from a WordPress blog article isn't exactly difficult when your blog is using XHTML/HTML compliant code and following general SEO rules.

On my blog, I see most of the "unknown" bots accessing the pages directly, even though I do have rss enabled.

Which I pretty much said the same thing here in red.

But I have no idea what other methods are used for scrapping content, just saying it can be done via your RSS Syndication. But it's only one method and I've read they use software that can filter out certain things from the feed so there's no link-back included anymore leading to your site they scrape.