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Blogging Etiquette »
August 04, 2007
Blogging Etiquette
This will seem a rebuke to Drew, but it's not. He's new.
First, of course, the necessary hat-tip or link to the blog you're quoting from. Unless it's a total dick who deserves no traffic. (In that case, say who you got it from and say "Google it" but mind fair use. Even if someone's a total dick you can't steal his writing.)
Next, fair use. Fair use for a MSM article is, I dunno, maybe 1/4 of it... at most. Try to keep it less than that; if there's more there to be read, just digest it or say "Read the whole thing." Quotes should be the most crucial stuff only; if a writer has jam-packed an article with crucial stuff, well, he really deserves the hit on his paper.
As far as quoting blogs: Try not to quote all of the meat of a post. Drew did this, alas, in the Con Yank post. CY had two truly newsworthy scoops, and Drew quoted them all in their entirety. That leaves nothing really left behind to make it useful for someone to click on CY's link.
This is a balancing act as you try to put the important information here and yet leave something important behind requiring a click-through to the blog you got it from. It's sometimes hard to do; sometimes the only great thing in a post is a single sentence or picture; then what do you do?
Well, either just provide the link and tease it, Instapundit-like, strongly encouraging the click-through; or post it, but make sure you find something else interesting on his site you can recommend a click-through on.
With the ConYank emails, I would have just quoted one of them and then said, "And there may be administrative hearings in Beauchamp's future, too, as another email explains." So I swiped the most important thing (the denial) but left behind the very tasty, very clickable prospect of adminstrative discipline.
This is often a balancing act and sometimes it's hard to both get the info up on this site while being fair to the site you got it from. Just keep in mind you're trying to do both, and always trying to deliver a click to someone who's brought something newsworthy to the table.