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In Blogging Ethics

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Gouri
from Hyderabad |

On 2nd May 2010, I had published a post on what to do if your feed is not detected by browsers:

http://www.ezaroorat.com/seo/is-your-feed-detected-by-browsers

Soon after, I also discussed the post on the forum here:

http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=5101

Now the other day, while going through this thread:

http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=8260

I was shocked to find that an indiblogger of 'considerable repute' had copied my post without credit.

I have started this thread basically for 2 things:

1. To request the concerned blogger to delete the copied post.

2. To throw open a couple of questions:

  • Is it okay for IndiBlogger to allow such dubious members to take part in its policy-making discussions?
  • Isn't it an appropriate case for IndiBlogger to exercise its power of banning such members?

What's your take on this? Throw in your candid opinions.

Edited
Reason: minor edit

Replies 1 to 20 of 22

Vinesh Balan
from Bangalore |

That could be harsh, if people begin copying your work here at Indi, then there would be no meaning in  being a part of this community. We come here to get a reputation, and its hard when someone else takes credit for our work.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Yeah, that's really harsh.. It attacks the very foundation of blogging.

Pundit Commentator
from Delhi |

Hi Gouri.

Again, sorry to hear about your post being copied without credit and/or permission. I hope the concerned person will remove the post or the copied portion or take your permission and give you credit - whatever you two agree upon. If I were Inditeam, I would not look kindly on such behaviour and I would be very worried about how my members were reacting to this thread.

Best wishes.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

I too would do the same.. Maintenance of ethics is a must for a profession which is entirely built on it.

Mohonish 'Xeno' Chakraborty
from Kolkata |

This is sad.

Dear Indiblogger if you're reading this please remove the post immediately or get in touch with Gouri. We don't want things like this to happen in Indiblogger at least.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Thanks Xeno for your support, but there doesn't seem to be any official confirmation coming in!

Sujith
from Kerala |

It's really unfortunate, hope he will credit you or remove it.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Apart from copyscape, I started doing additional checks for my posts using plagium, after this episode..

Arti
from Mumbai |

Hope indiblogger takes some kind of steps to prevent these things, it must be really hard on you.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

It's not just the question of being hard on me, you or somebody else. If this trend goes undeterred, the whole blogging profession is at stake!

umesh derebail
from Mumbai |

Gauri it is sad that A known Indiblogger has copied your post without giving due credit or acknowledgement or sought your permission.  I believe such a blogger needs to be censured for plagarism.  Pl inform the Indiblogger regarding the identity of the person who has copied your post and let them act.....kudos for the expose

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Thanks sir, appreciate your support!

Mohan
from Bangalore |

Hi Gouri, 

I think you are referring this thread to me. Let me first say "I Apologize".

Now to details : I registered techiez.net domain and kept it open for collaborative group blogging. Few fellow bloggers did contribute on that site. I got to know about such dubious articles getting on that blog by few contributors for link building a bit late and completely revoked all guest contribution access. For the same reason if you have noticed, this blog had no fresh content for more than 10 months.

I own the responsibility for not checking for originality and simply approving the submission. Please accept my apologies.

Arti
from Mumbai |

Thank you Mohan for clearing the air, it was a mistake... Gouri, I think you should take his word and we must all move on...
But we must be careful to check for plagiarism if we are accepting guest posts on our Blogs...

umesh derebail
from Mumbai |

@ Mohan, this is the reason why i was against collaborative blogging or guest blogging or partnership.  One has to be careful otherwise an innocent lands in the docks.  It is good that you have accepted the mistake and apologised too.  This is a hallmark of an ethical blogger.  I hope Gauri now the chapter is closed.   It is a good lesson for all of us seeking marriage of blogs Lolz

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

@Mohan

Hi Mohan,

First off, I appreciate your putting forward your side in a straightforward way. I went through each of the lines you wrote for hours on end. In the process, many questions came to my mind and to many of them, I found the answers myself. But the following few things are still dodging my intelligence.. whatever I have, can't help on that :):

  1. You read my post and commented on it on May 2nd. On May 16th, hardly within 2 weeks, the same post was submitted on your blog, approved and published. Had you appointed somebody else to perform the admin task or the post escaped your scrunity?
  2. Below the post on your blog, I could see some comments, apparently answered by you. Again, was it somebody else you appointed? or was it you replying even without knowing what the post contained?
  3. If this post was submitted for link building, was it submitted by somebody who was really naive at link building? because the post did not contain any link to the submitter's site. No, author name, no bio, nothing, directly published from admin ID. Or did the contributor get any financial compensation?
  4. Email ID is an essential requirement for creating a contributor/author account in WordPress. So, you must be having the email ID of the culprit. Can you help me nab that ******* by providing his email ID, at least?

Hope you don't take it in the wrong spirit. But I really need to bring the culprit to justice. It's in my interest, your interest, and the interest of the whole blogging fraternity to do so.

Here's the screenshot for your ready reference:

http://ezaroorat.com/copied-post.jpeg

Thanks,

Gouri

Mohan
from Bangalore |

Gouri, 

There are a couple of things. First - When I revoked the access to the guest contributors, their posts were attributed to admin, which was myself. That is the reason why you see my name there. Second - I had provided a specific slot towards the bottom of the article just before comments with 'About Author' which was giving a brief bio of the contributor along a link to their blog. A number of fellow bloggers had requested to share the code to insert such an option in their blogs too. Since I revoked it all long back, I can't deny what you have mentioned is incorrect.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Thanks, Mohan. Really a bad experience for both of us. Am glad you took things in the right spirit. Apologies if I hurt you in any manner.

Deepak
from India |

Okies... Now Please stop this ongoing malicious fight !!

I think the topic is over now..

@Admin: Build some tuff measures for that

@Gouri: hi dude.. hope u will not take this seriously!! (It was just a mistake) Smile

@Mohan: thanx for ur bold n honest acceptance .. Smile (u r a role model for us)

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Deepu bhai, so late? Anyways, thanks for coming all the way from Lucknow :)

Deepak
from India |

Yeah dude.. was little bit bzy somewher!! 

had to come for u dude.. so everything seems perfect?? :)

Sujith
from Kerala |

@Mohan..Yes it happens.Thanks for your clarification. A good lesson for every bloggers who accept guest articles (including me)

Sujith
from Kerala |

By the way why did you drop the domain?

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

No, the domain is not dropped, only registrar is changed - from FastDomain to GoDaddy..

Mohan
from Bangalore |

Sujith - Since I am not sure of which other posts have such copied content, I decided to bring it all down instead of keeping them alive.

Gouri - I registed the domain only with GoDaddy, never with FastDomain. FastDomain stuff must be the past of that domain before coming to me.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

That's the right way to go, Mohan, since most of the sample I picked up from the blog was copied from other sources. As a matter of policy, it's always better to check the submitted content for plagiarism using various tools like the paid version of copyscape or the free version of plagium. Also, when plagiarism is detected with something already published, it's good to remove it right away.

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

@ Mohan

in reply to:

Sujith - Since I am not sure of which other posts have such copied content, I decided to bring it all down instead of keeping them alive.

RioZee
from Out of this yEt in this World |

All is well that ends well.
But lot of lessons learnt.

Deepak
from India |

Smile

Mohini Puranik
from Dhule |

A lil kid like me is also learning...............Innocent!!!

tys
from Sharjah |

i have no idea what just happened.

damn this blogging thing needs IQ, who wud have thunk that?

Mohini Puranik
from Dhule |

I agree with IQ! My mind is still........showering me so many things..........! we can find something like BQ .....Blogging Q!

Arti
from Mumbai |

Nice Mohini BQ:)

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

As i read through this thread, I came across some suggesting that IndiBlogger / Admins do something to protect this kind of palg. However, this is a humane phenomenon and no one can do anything about it. Its ethics.

@Mohan did the right thing by coming clean. This brings in much confidence that a dialouge always helps. Innocent

There was another post where a blog was completely copied, not just a post, by a fellow IndiBlogger. I would like to say that we (IndiPolice or the IndiBlogger team) can certainly coordinate with and engage the accused in a discussion but nothing more.

756137
Mohini Puranik
from Dhule |

what is the meaning of code.......756137?

Arti
from Mumbai |

Probably some mistake...

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Hemal, I didn't get the logic behind plagiarism being a 'humane' phenomenon. A poor guy hungry for days and being compelled to steal something to eat may be considered 'humane', if that's the word, but from what angle do you consider plagiarism as 'humane'?

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

@Gouri its a tendency. i used the word humane here for the very reason why we use it. its the greed to get noticed in the blogging world, publish aritcles laded with advertisments that earn money, and think of anything that you can associate. Its not right, not right from everyone else's prespective, but for the culprit it sure aint.

And other reason why I mentioned is that we cant stop people from stealing our content and publishing, we can only make them remove it or ask them to give you the due credit. My Post on Tata Nano being used as a base for Ferrari and Fiat for their own cars was a April Fool spoof but it made in roads to numerous websites just in a flash, the Images I created were seen just about every where and even on websites like in.com. I contacted each and every website that published my pictures, including a Danish forum and asked them to give me the due credit.

@Mohini sorry it was by mistake as @arti rightly guessed

Pundit Commentator
from Delhi |

@hemal: Incorrect usage of vocabulary. The word you are looking for is "human" not "humane".

Uma Maheswari Anandane
from Karaikal |

Hi,

I own a blog  http://umaspoembook.blogspot.com mainly writing poems .Recently when I googled my name ,I found out a particular site which used most of poetry without noticing me.http://www.bestbookreview.us/tag/exploring/ IT WAS A PAIN FOR ME.(This is only one link...he has nearly 10 of my poems in his site with every content and link just like that ).

I Comment him to remove the post..no reply.I found out him using WHOIS.com and mailed him...again yet no response...now seeing this thread..I am not the only one who is been targeted..Hope I get a good response from him 

Pundit Commentator
from Delhi |

Uma: Plaigirism is a serious matter. Is this person on the Indiblogger community? Is this person using Google's Blogger to host his site? If yes, there are steps you can take with the help of indiblogger and google's blogspot. Gouri can give you more tips.

Uma Maheswari Anandane
from Karaikal |

@pundit ...the facts about the blogger is unknown yet i have his details I collected 

WHOIS information for bestbookreview.us : [Querying whois.nic.us][whois.nic.us]Domain Name:BESTBOOKREVIEW.US

Domain ID:  D25643094-US

Sponsoring Registrar:  GODADDY.COM, INC.

Registrant Email:  [email protected] -> I mailed him here yet the posts are still there and there are no responses from him.

One thing I have learned from this plaigirism is that I inserted some codes that I got from googling and protected my blogs (hope so) by disabling selections and right-clicks 

Let me see what happens from this particular person(bookreviews.us)...and hopefully few issues are getting sorted out too in indiblogger

Pundit Commentator
from Delhi |

Good moves Uma. I've heard it said that readers find it annoying if you disable right click but I can't imagine why?

Arti
from Mumbai |

Suppose you want to read my 5 posts from my archives by opening them in new tabs... By disabling the right click you cant do that... You will have to open a single post, read it, then open the other 4 posts one by one... Or open the blog 5 times and click on the posts seperately and read them!! Gets tedious, no one will undergo such pain, even the genuine readers will shy away...
And anyways one can always print screen if the right click is disabled!!

Gouri
from Hyderabad |

Uma, the site you are referring to looks like an aggregator. It also looks like it's also providing credit to the author. However, if that's not done without your consent, you can complain to the webhost of the site to take it off their servers and/or report it to Google here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905

And don't forget to take proper backup before you initiate any action.

Pundit Commentator
from Delhi |

Yes. Please don't forget to take screenshots before you contact them.