Attribution and Curation
There was a bit of discussion popping up in my feeds about the act of curation and attributing the discoveries to the original work. Since this is something I tend to do more of here, rather than creating articles on how to do certain tasks, I find it extremely interesting.
Two of my favourites:
The problems with online attribution aren’t due to a lack of syntax: they’re due to the economics and realities of online publishing.
Marco Arment, I’m not a curator
and
But we should not delude ourselves for a moment into bestowing any special significance on this, because when we do this thing that so many of us like to call “curation” we’re not providing any sort of ontology or semantic continuity beyond that of our own whimsy or taste or desire. “Interesting things” or “smart things” are not rubrics that make the collection and dissemination of data that happens on the internet anything closer to a curatorial act;
Matt Langer, Stop Calling it Curation
Both of them refer to the Curators Code, which is aiming to codify the way we attribute our discoveries online to a set standard to make it easily identifiable whether we personally discovered it, or we discovered it through someone else.
Both Marco and Matt make exceptional arguments as to why this is a stupid idea, so I hope you go and read their posts in their entireity. I’m not sure how long the Curators Code has been active, but I find it interesting that the discussion of attributing discoveries has arisen after the rants of MG Siegler a few weeks past about the news outlets quoting the direct source and not giving him credit for breaking the original story.
What’s more important, the original source or the discover of the original source? 1
Mar 13, 2012 @ 11:42:16
here is what I find interesting….
Bloggers are held to a higher standard than journalists and TV pundits.
Everyone is quick to point out how bloggers are unprofessional (lack of citing the source properly is a common “proof”) and yet journalists get away with murder. TV and newspapers are the worse. Dont get me started…..
Mar 14, 2012 @ 01:32:38
I think a part of the problem is that bloggers are writing in a more permanent medium, in a sense. Their work exists online forever, unless they delete the blog or delete that post. Older posts are easily discoverable within that site, as well. TV journalists’ reports disappear almost instantly in most cases, unless that organization is proactive in getting their videos online (CBC News in Canada is excellent about this, for example). Bloggers are easy pickings since they are so accessible to criticism from all sides, whereas criticism of mainstream media mainly goes unheard.
The main question I am wondering about is whether it is more important to cite the original source, the source of where you made that discovery, or to just not bother if people aren’t clicking through anyways?
Mar 14, 2012 @ 15:49:33
My take on that is to be a slave to the reader.
I think notices like “this was originally posted bla bla bla”, or “the rightful owner of this photo is bla bla bla” are a hindrance to the reader.
A reader doesnt care about where the post was published or who took the photo…unless they can get through the content and THEN, and only then, might start to care. At which point I think providing that info somewhere out of the way (on the bottom of the post for example, like an appendix in a book) is fine.
Mar 27, 2012 @ 17:24:49
In addition to arcoders explanation, occasionally you will also see that photos are not to be used at all. In any case with Wikipedia photos, you need to read and understand the terms under which those photos can be used. It can be quite complex sometimes.