Re-blogging Ethically

June 30, 2008 – 10:01 AM

It’s no shock to anybody that on this blog I’m mainly just re-blogging good and informative articles until I graduate and actually have the time to sit and write my own content. I figured this was a great way to keep my site “active” in the eyes of the search engines while I’m in school full-time and just have no extra time to blog about the various subjects. I always felt that I’m giving credit back to the original article and author by linking to the site at the end of the teaser. I’ve changed this format many times while trying to find the easiest template to use, but I’ve always given the proper credit back. You won’t find one article on this site, that I didn’t write, without that credit and link back to the article.

I believe in spreading the word about security and I think re-blogging overall is a good thing. My question is…what format should blogs be using for giving credit back to the originator?

I’ve tried the following formats and I still had somebody complain that I’m not doing it right. Here’s a few examples of how I do it:

———-

Teaser text

Read the rest of the story… <–this is a link that goes back to the original article

———-

Text (if it’s a small article where I use the whole text)

Source:
http://www.originalsite/originalarticle.html <—-actual visible URL to the site

———-

Teaser text

Source: Name of site <—this is a link to the original article

———-

“Text” (in quotes)

Source:
http://www.originalsite/originalarticle.html <—-actual visible URL to the site

———-

So which way should blogs be doing this? And keep in mind that most of us are just geeks without a journalism degree so please don’t expect everybody to understand “APA style”. 🙂

I’m very curious and I think this will help other bloggers as well.