Credit where credit’s due…
The world of blogging is all about reading other peoples opinions and musings, presenting your own information and expecting to see people rehash it and, of course, starting debates (sometimes full scale wars) in comment sections.
We love to see Zoomf data being used in the blogosphere, it promotes the fact that we can get some pretty cool stats out there thanks to our clever indexing and it can provide some lovely little incoming links back to our site. But what’s not nice is when people don’t attribute the source of their information. And what’s even worse is when authors present the information as their own.
In my last post I waxed lyrical about Zillow’s article on the right time and wrong time to buy and sell. But I shouldn’t have. Why? Because the author of the material I was presenting was not a Zillow employee, but Greg Swann of Bloodhoundrealty.com. Now Zillow deserve some credit, if it wasn’t for their wiki I wouldn’t have found Greg’s work, but it’s pretty mean that they didn’t credit the author. And as Greg mentioned in his blog, why would he want to continue contributing to their wiki if he doesn’t get a nice pat on the back?
Zillow have apologised, and the articles are now attributed to the rightful author. So hopefully we can all start being a little bit nicer.
To encourage blogging goodwill I will share with you all my favourite picture of the day. It would be more fitting to be a Bloodhound…but here’s a Newfoundland with his head caught in the catflap. Awwwwww.
Filed under: Property News
If I contribute content to a wiki and someone improves upon it (or corrects it), who is the rightful author to be attributed? If, according to Mr. Swann, it is the originating author, I submit that those who want a “pat on the back’ will not add, correct or improve the original article. Why would I correct Mr. Swann’s submission for his credit? Case in point: His wiki submission on post closing possession had some legal statments which were outright wrong.
Wikis, though they be flawed in many ways, are not built on the promise of a pat on the back.