Tuesday, November 25, 2008

I'm Cranky

I'm cranky about a discussion on a post from September that seems to be getting nowhere. Can someone help me out? I don't see any room for rational discussion here and I'm tired of the whole thing.

I'm cranky about a website that stole one of my posts, in its entirety, without my permission and without any attribution. You can go search for your blog name and see if they've posted anything of yours without your permission. I've already discovered at least one person on my blogroll, who I doubt gave her permission either.

I'm cranky because one of my daughter's friends was dropped off in our complex by her parents without telling us or asking us to watch her, but we ended up watching her. They just moved out of our complex and their former residence is re-locked. I have no idea why they dropped her off here. She showed up at our door while I was rushing the Dancer out the door to dance class.

I'm cranky because my daughter's dance teacher took five minutes out of the beginning of ballet class to work with *one* girl on a routine she is working on for a talent show at her school. Yes, it was only five minutes, but I do pay for those minutes and I feel this showed poor judgment.

UPDATE: It was an accidental mistake that my post was listed with no attribution nor link and that I also found others I knew (if only online) with the same issue. It was upsetting to me to see my work taken with no acknowledgement of its author, but it appears they are fixing the problem.

10 comments:

Lutheran Lucciola said...

Thank you for alerting me to this, Barb. I can't find an email for them, but left a comment on their page, as someone else did also.

Let's see what happens next. Keep me posted.

Cheryl said...

BTEG,

You are justified in your crankiness! All these things would drive me nuts, too!

BTW, I checked the website you mentioned, and they have linked to about 12 of my posts. But they are properly attributed, so I don't mind. Yours, though, was not attributed at all, but plagiarized. How did you happen to discover this? I have worried about plagiarism of my blog but have not known how I might go about preventing it.

Gino A Melone said...

I happened upon a reference to it on The Other Side of Kim. It looks like they've changed the behavior though. Yesterday when I searched, all I got was links to plagiarized posts like the one Barb linked to. Today, the same searches return links to the original blog entries. Even the the search I did yesterday to find the copied post Barb linked to is different now.

Mr BTEG

Elephantschild said...

I wonder if someone wrote the code for their website aggregator wrong - that they're intending to be a clearing house for blogs, but whatever code they're using to collect the feed isn't written to include link-backs.

Is it just sloppy website-building? I hope so - best construction is that it's a code-writing mistake - but it still needs to be fixed.

Gino, they haven't corrected the page that shows Barb's post as by "Admin." even if they've fixed how the search results display.

Unknown said...

Sorry for any misunderstanding.

There was a flaw with our search engine that has since been fixed. As soon as we noticed we had the engine itself fixed. It appears that that did not remove the posts, however. I personally went into our system and have removed the post.

Please be advised that the point of the website is to direct traffic directly to the blogs and to make it easy to find.

I do apologize for the flaw. A friend of yours pointed us directly to where the post was being republished, and it has been removed.

We readily admit that there are flaws with the system at present. Fortunately, the search engine has been fixed and it should not automatically pull any posts in their entirety. That was not in accordance with our own policy, which is to only post excerpts and to link directly.

Please know that the flaw was not malicious, and we do apologize for any misunderstand. I am very sorry.

Sincerely,

Robert Romano
Editor of ALG News Bureau
www.getliberty.org
www.netrightnation.com

Anonymous said...

Barb,

My apologies for any confusion. As a fellow Lutheran (LCMS)I hope that this issue is resolved. We corrected the problem on our back end and we never intended to steal content. We are trying to promote the stuff you are doing and give you the credit directly.

There are still a few bugs with the website and there are still new things that are coming. Thank you for helping to bring these issues to our attention, this helps us better implement our site.

Again, I apologize for any issue that resulted because of our problem.

Best,
Adam Bitely
Director of New Media
www.netrightnation.com
www.getliberty.org
Adam@getliberty.org

Barb the Evil Genius said...

Thanks for fixing that. I was understandably not happy that an entire piece of my work was used in a post that was not attributed to nor had no link to me.

Gino A Melone said...

The comment here from Robert Romano explains the mishap clearly. It sounds like a legitimate mistake that they are actively repairing. The copied content I saw yesterday is no longer available.

With these clarifications, NRN sounds like it could prove an interesting aggregator. Thanks for the service Robert & Adam.

Lutheran Lucciola said...

Thank you, Adam and Robert! Very courteous and professional to let us all know right away, and with proper credit, the website sounds like a great idea.

Thanks for the fix.

Anonymous said...

It is annoying because it happens so frequently, and normally the people you address never respond.

I've had contact in the past with the organization which put up the site, however, so I had a suspicion it was a mistake rather than an intentional act.

Anyway, thanks for thinking of me when you noticed the problem. I don't check that as often as I should.