Two things in the last couple of days have made wonder about blogging ettiquette. And today Allan Jenkins at Desirable Roasted Coffee blogs on the same theme.
Yesterday I wrote about Gary Stein of Jupiter Media and how he was predicting that blogs and traditional websites would become one. That's exactly what I had talked about during my presentation at the University of Sunderland Making the News conference. That's why I wrote about it.
A bit later I was reading my feeds and came across a post by Steve Rubel that referenced the same Gary Stein article. So I updated my previous post with a link to Steve's Micropersuasion blog saying he had disagreed with both of us. The trackback that I sent hasn't yet appeared on Steve's blog - perhaps it's stuck in Steve's moderation queue?
Allan's concern was with a new blog by Robert J Ricci, a Weber Shandwick employee. Robert blogged about Google Analytics being illegal in Europe. But the problem was that Fredrik Wackå has said the same thing the day before and Robert hadn't referenced him. I actually posted on the same topic and did reference Fredrik, but it was on the Let's talk business blog, which I help to run for my client Softalk.
You see I'm not so sure it is so big a faux pas anymore. As the number of blogs grows and grows you are not going to be reading every single one. Even if you use tools to monitor keywords and themes you're not always going to know what other people have written.
I don't sit down and read all my feeds before I blog. As a result I'll admit I've written some posts that are mighty similar to ones that other people have already written. And not given them credit, but to any third party looking at the content and the timing of the posts it would appear my inspiration was actually plagiarism.
I guess the lesson is that we've all got to learn both the new rules of the blogging game (as they actually emerge) and to be more tolerant and supportive of those that are still learning.
