Not that I usually care about these things. (Or even really care now.) But I just found a blog entry that completely lifts something I wrote last week on my class blog. It isn't anything particularly interesting or insightful, but they're totally my words, with links intact to blogs I read.
Again, not that I particularly care. I just wasn't expecting it. I mean, what's a blog if it's not your own words? But maybe I'm making incorrect assumptions.
It's just weird. That's all.
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3 comments:
It's not weird. It's wrong. I've called people on this before.
Hello, the semi-pseudonymous semi-blogger formerly known as Dr. Mama here. I actually think it's not so much weird as really fascinating, especially in light of your titular question. Do you know if the material was just lifted randomly or was selected specifically because of your popularity?
Ah, Zil. You flatterer.
Anyway, here's the scoop: the reason I found the problematic entry is because this blogger linked to my class blog page a few weeks ago. And this blogger happens to live in another country, a country with a population likely to have strong opinions about the recent cartoon controversy, so it occurred to me to visit this blog to see if the controversy was mentioned there. I saw that it was (though, oddly, that entry now seems to be erased), and I also saw that a few days ago the topic was "anonymity." How funny, I thought. That was a topic in class last week. I then noticed that some of the language sounded awfully familiar, and then I realized several sentences had been lifted right from an entry I had made on the class blog. So it was really more like "patch writing" than an exact lifting. (My language above might suggest the taking of a whole entry, but "completely" and "totally" are serving as intensifiers rather than as descriptors.) The blogger had included a few sentences that were not mine(though they could have been lifted from another source).
(And I'm not sure how the blogger happened on to my class blog the first time: maybe just accidently through blogger.com)
But the sentences really were pretty devoid of fresh ideas. So that's why it doesn't seem like much of a big deal to me. But they were, truly, my sentences. With a link to Jeff Rice's blog (the entry written by the pseudononymous "Tenured Radical"). And in another place, there's a reference to an article we read in class, but there's no link, so it makes little sense in the new context.
So, still strikes me as odd. I appreciate your sentiments, Nels, but in this case I'm just more curious (or something even milder than that) than upset.
And, hey, it got a lot of comments for this blogger: something like 20 people commented. So, that's something. I guess?
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