Blogger Etiquette. Don't Rob The Blogger Of His Pay (Expanded from the original)
For the vast majority of Bloggers, that pay, the only pay, is knowing that they are being read.
If you take for example, any respectable blog, usually the American ones, for it is they that led the blogger revolution, you will find that the following code of practice is adopted by the majority.
Blogger Etiquette:
If a person/blogger spends a great deal of time and goes to extraordinary lengths researching, and then penning an article; it is neither mannerly nor morally correct for you to copy paste the COMPLETE article on your blog.
Post just enough to attract the interest of your reader and then link back to the authors blog.
The author deserves recognition for his work, and this is only achieved by traffic to the article/site.
It's only fair and it's only polite.
Which of course it is, and more importantly, the blogger who has produced the work gets recognised in his own right and his blog worthy of a visit. (or not)
If the complete article is posted, all the attribution in the world won't compensate for direct traffic. How many times do any of us click through to the original source having once read the complete article? Try putting yourself in the Blogger's shoes for a week; having spent X number of hours/days researching and constructing your article, you post it on your blog and then you sit back for a while with a cuppa and a ciggy, or your drug of choice, and wait. But more often or not you would working on your next little creation, but that's by the by. What isn't by the by however, is when that Blogger (you) takes a look at his site metre after a day or two and sees numbers that might be worthy of being described as abysmal.
How is he/her/you going to feel? pissed I shouldn't wonder, pissed and robbed. And then, in a worse case scenario, might think to themselves, why bother?
There is of course a practical side to doing this, if you are posting a dozen items or more a day, you don't end up with a blog a mile long, as you would do otherwise.
And I do practice what I preach by the way, it would only be under special circumstances or out of necessity that I do otherwise. And believe me please, it's not for my benefit that I write this, it's for the numerous authors who's work I see constantly plastered around the net like cheap wallpaper.
Stop please, I beg of you.
