
Daring Fireball: On Attribution and Credit - superchink
http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/attribution_and_credit
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kenjackson
Gruber is at his worst in this piece.

First, as he notes, this happens a LOT (link, but not explicity attribution).
And as he even notes, he does it himself -- and he does it regularly. The
difference between him and Ina? Apparently, Ina's readers don't follow links
(how does Gruber know that -- he doesn't). And as he notes, many sites do far
worse -- no link, no attribution. But apparently this isn't about the crime so
much as the criminal (allthingsd).

And of course he conveniently picks an Apple story to become self-righteous. I
could have found hundreds of non-Apple stories over the past five years where
this happened. But clearly none of them are important. Only Apple writers
count?

He then goes on and claims that the correction was even wrong:

 _“Enthusiast site” is pejorative. Enthusiast implies that MacStories is
produced by zealous hobbyists._

This is the oddest read of that term I've ever seen. When people say it is an
"Apple enthusiast site", that means it is a site read by Apple enthusiasts.
And MacStories is that. As is DaringFireball. Engadget is a gadget enthusiast
site. Sports Illustrated is a magazine for sports enthusiasts. There's nothing
pejorative about it. A "fanboi" site, sure that would be pejorative, but not
this.

And Gruber, effectively put his attack dogs on Ina, and for what, for not
explicitly calling out the name of this site. For a while her comments were
filled with hateful attacks against her as a person, and many saying they had
come from Gruber's site. They were removed, but they were the types of
personal attacks you'd expect from a 1960s civil rights protest, but not
because someone didn't add explicit attribution (because clearly running the
story with a web link isn't enough).

One of his last lines is this, "Defensiveness is never flattering." Gruber
should have considered starting with that line.

~~~
candeira
As a journalist who has ben taught to always attribute quotations and sources,
I agree with Gruber. Ina's attribution to "an enthusiast site" is
disingenuous, like those non-apology apologies that say "I am sorry you felt
insulted" instead of "I am sorry I insulted you". His criticism of Fried for
referencing the URL instead of the name of the blog is also spot on.

Gruber also is right to make a distinction between writing that pretty much
"consume(s) the story", and for that reason requires full attribution, as it
will be read by many as a piece of text with no links, and his own teasers
that give nothing away but a link to the real story, so attribution is less
important.

His "order of preference" listing of how to give attribution is an object
lesson in digital journalism. I have forwarded this piece to my friends who
teach in J-schools.

~~~
kenjackson
No the real lesson is don't do stories sourced by Apple fan sites. This was a
great example of a story that wasn't worth covering to begin with, and Apple
zealots will tear into you for not showing proper deference to the Apple gods.

The one thing the tech industry could do without are so many pointless Apple
stories.

~~~
candeira
I can agree with that. They could write less Apple stories.

But if they do write Apple stories, they should recognise the people whose
work they draw from as colleagues in journalism, not dismiss them as
"enthusiasts".

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benologist
Wow this may be the first Gruber article I've actually liked. Professional
blogging has devolved almost exclusively into rewriting someone else's
article, cramming their story onto your site full of your links to your stuff
and usurping as much traffic, SEO and ad impressions as you can get for it.

And it's really nice to see it called out. All of these blogs would be much
more enjoyable to read if they weren't afraid of losing ad impressions by
linking to something useful instead of a tag page or past fluff piece.

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msie
Gruber went overboard in his criticism of the wording of the attribution.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -
Robert J. Hanlon

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veidr
It's always boring when a blogger writes a blog post about his own blog ('Hey
guys, been meaning to blog more, but I've been busy with midterms...'). This
is basically the same kind of thing, writ large, and also boring.

For my part at least, I know I don't read Daring Fireball every workday in
order to read about the minutiae of operating a high-traffic tech blog and the
etiquette of attribution and linking.

(I read it for the high-grade industrial snark, of course!)

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sebkomianos
You can agree or disagree with this piece, like or dislike Gruber but you have
to accept one thing: He has personality and he has things to say.

