Reblogging

  • @Ron: Yes, only part of the post is reproduced. But “part” includes the first image to be found in the post, and it also includes videos and any other shortcode objects (for instance an audio player) if they are at or near the beginning of the post.

    Also note that you get no notification whatsoever when someone reblogs your posts. (“My Account” includes “Posts I Like”: I’d rather see “Blogs that Splog Me” in its place.)

  • I also againts this ‘Reblog’ feature!! Hell I’m furious. I have just found out that someone steal my content and now WordPress ALLOW it to be stolen??

    I always love WP, I made 3blogs as a proof…But really? Come on! Rebloging? I rarely use it on my tumblr let along here in my blog.

    Can WP at least give us choice to ALLOW or REJECT people who want to reblog our post? You know, kinda like comment moderation.

    I love my post and I don’t want it to be rebloged by others.

  • @raincoaster, you said:

    >>since it only includes a thumbnail of the image rather than the full sized image. These are important distinctions to make: a snippet, not the whole thing, and a thumbnail, not the whole sized image. <<

    I think I can agree with you on this point. It is reasonable to assume that a respectable and common sense blogger would only quote part of the text, thumbnail instead of the big sized photo, and direct link back to the original content (even through the thumbnail) if he/she is blogging content off of someone else’ blog or website.

    These are commonly used decent practices, and I do not think it is reasonable to assume that we should seek permission all the time.

    However, what you appear to be missing is the fact that a person engaged in such practice is most likely not going to be copying/quoting content off of other people’s blog all the time. If there is a need, he/she would laboriously go through manually copying the appropriately desired short quote, title the post differently than the original one but still give credit, get the photograph to a thumbnail size, link it back to the original source with proper credit mention everywhere so the trackbacks could be sent informing the original blog. This whole exercise is appropriate but note that it takes manual effort and conscious decision in providing appropriate credit back to the original blogger so he gets most of the traffic and not the referrer. The referrer has to make sure that the secondary blog post he is composing is composed such a way that it is clear that it is not his blog post but he is only referring the original one.

    The WordPress’s PressThis feature attempted to do all that via automatic method, and now this Reblog and Like appears to be doing the same thing, except we do not know at this point what exactly they have planned in the long run because it appears they’re introducing social features (otherwise why not just keeping PressThis?)

    PressThis, Reblog, QuickPress, Post by Email, these are all actually bookmarklets designed to make the blogging experience easy. Well, here is a problem: what made blogging difficult in the first place so they had to introduce all these quick-easy features? Perhaps we realized that majority of people are not blogging in its original sense, i.e, not many people are writing original contents but there are lot more of us who wish to copy, recopy already published content. Or there may be various other reasons.

    My argument is that these quick-easy methods are encouraging more people to be lazy and these methods are isolating original writers. Turning posts private is not a solution.

    I believe Six-Apart (though different in scope compared to WordPress.com) introduced separate product when they went into micro-blogging business. They even had a separate product (Vox) when they wanted to get into social/community-blogging. So why is WordPress.com becoming a playground for all these different trends which are hyped lately? I did not sign up with WordPress because it was social or micro-blog. I signed up because it was a blogging platform. Now, like Facebook, I believe they’re changing their tracks here and that is not fair to those who may be directly affected.

  • Mark said:

    You get the links to your site and you get the satisfaction of knowing that a fellow artist found your work worthy enough of linking. This gives you visibility, it promotes you. It does not take whole images, it does not take whole text. It’s just one person saying that another is worth checking out.

    And I ask:
    What about those of us who are not blogging for recognition? I’m not interested in visibility, being promoted. This may be an eye-opener for many members of WP, but there are some of us who do NOT want extensive traffic. Now, granted, I don’t really blog much of importance anyway, at least not things that are at risk of being stolen, but what makes you think I want to enlarge me reader-ship in directions that are uncontrollable by myself? I would prefer to always know where the majority of my readers are coming from, without having my content splogged across blogs that are just using the reblogging for spam. Yes, I understand my blog is public domain, and I do have a small reader base, but there are many features on WP that I can opt in and out of to ensure at least a little privacy outside of that base, without making the blog or the individual posts “private”. You’re assuming I WANT traffic generated on my blog, and without an opt-out feature, I’ve lost any semblance of control. In all honesty, the ability to maintain a certain level of control (ie: tags and categories even, that will put me in or keep me out of searchbot/spiderbot range) is one of the reasons I registered with WP in the first place. I’ve seen my posts splogged in “tweets”, and that’s hard enough to deal with, nevermind those I’m not notified of. This re-blogging just frees up spam bots in a whole new way.

    I think you’d be a hero if you gave us a chance to opt-out.

  • @Mark

    I think you’d be a hero if you gave us a chance to opt-out.

    I agree with SBC. We all love wordpress.com. In fact, we are among the top fans of wordpress.com. We don’t seek “traffic” in a broad and sweeping sense. We seek targeted readers, who will become regulars and subscribers who comment and contribute to the community we build around our blogs, and backlink to our posts in well developed post of their own. This is our path for validation. Granted, it’s not the social media and social network broadcast range pathway but we are representatiove of a portion of wordpress.com’s customer’s base. All we want is the ability to opt out of this feature just like we can opt out of possibly related posts. Please champion our cause and be our hero Mark.

    Thanks, in advance for listening.

  • Matt writes,

    The admin bar belongs to the user, not the blog. How would opt-out work? Would they be able to favorite a post on every site powered by WP.com except for yours? Would we prevent copy and paste as well?

    The admin bar belongs to the blog. It is coded into the stylesheet of every theme on the site, and as such can also be blocked by any blogger willing to pony up the money for the right to modify CSS. Furthermore, one can block only the like/reblog button without blocking the rest of the admin bar by applying [removed — modifying your admin bar like this is grounds for suspension]. Would it be so difficult to create an opt-out feature that add that line to the blogger’s stylesheet for free?

  • @sonofbruce

    The site linked to your name is:
    http://www.vianegativa.us/
    and it is not a wp.COM blog.

    If you have a wp.COM blog you are talking about, then please give us a link, starting with http://

    Or!!!

    It could be that you don’t understand that you are in the wrong forum:

    WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

  • Pardon me.
    If you are talking about a blog which you are paying to host, using wordpress software, then you must ask here:
    http://wordpress.org/support/

    Our software at .COM is different so our answers would not necessarily apply to you…

  • The blog linked to my name is my main blog, but I have WordPress.com blogs too, and I thought it was clear that’s what I was talking about. WordPress.org blogs are obviously unaffected by this latest effort to turn WordPress.com into a social networking site.

    Here’s an example of a post on a site I manage (my mother’s blog) where I’ve just used the above code to block the like/reblog button:
    http://marciabonta.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/pennsylvania-hiking-week/

  • No, it is not clear to volunteers in this forum unless you provide a link (we are your fellow bloggers and so have no access to back-end things here): lots of folk with wp.ORG blogs come here for answers. It wastes their time, and ours, only to find out the answers don’t apply. Best to provide a link to a wp.COM blog…

    You mom reminds me of my (now-deceased) mother-in-law: treasure her and miss her with only happy memories when the time comes… even so, I still miss her

    So, back to business:
    I hope your suggestion will be adopted.

    Apparently there are some people who do like this “feature” but many (including me) want to be able to opt out of the too obvious “splog-me” button. We are not even notified when someone reposts our posts!

  • @sonofbruce
    Thanks for sharing your solution. CSS upgrade … SIGH

  • @timethief I actually don’t mind paying for the CSS upgrade, and also for a few other essential features — it’s still less than what I pay my very cheap shared hosting provider each year, and when you consider how rock-solid dependable and secure WordPress.com is yet… it’s hard to beat. That’s why the literary magazine I help run, http://qarrtsiluni.com is still here and not self-hosted. (Note the lack of an admin bar.) The only major annoyance for me is the inability to opt out of global tag/category pages, except with the Prologue/P2 theme.

  • @sonofbruce, it seems you have blocked the sucker!. But I wonder if Matt would be happy with that? This reminds me of the hacks people implemented to remove the Blogger bar. I shudder to think that WordPress.com is going to go that route. However, CSS is paid upgrade here and I don’t like the idea of paying myself out of the annoyances WP.com may develop in the future.

  • From:
    sonofbruce
    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/reblogging/page/3?replies=74#post-471973

    “Would it be so difficult to create an opt-out feature that add that line to the blogger’s stylesheet for free?”

    From Matt:
    http://webwanderings.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/is-wordpress-com-now-a-social-networkingmicro-blogging-platform/#comment-607

    Since these are user and not blog features, I’m not sure how or why opt-out would work. The admin bar belongs to the user — could I like a post on every site powered by WP.com except yours? That would be confusing.

    Why would it be confusing if the “like / re-splog” button was not even visible on blogs where folk have “opted ouit”?

  • There IS an opt out. It’s called…delete your blog. “Catch 22” isn’t it.

  • Though initially I had liked the re- blogging idea but after reading the comments here, it seems that someone can really survive and get traffic by reblogging alone..
    I mean this- probably he/she would create links and become a search engine sort of and en-cash upon other bloggers…
    Timethief was so right when said that we wanted some real subscribers or viewers and not be around like a thousands of books lying in the book shop without any title- slip..
    Its like scrapping the original content..
    Actually not done..
    Moreover, the Like button doesn’t sit on my http://readolivia.wordpress.com/ blog anyways.. now what was this again…???

  • @readolivia: The Like button shows up when you view a single post, not when you view your main page, category or other archive pages, or static pages.

  • @Tess: Of course! The phrasing “could I like a post on every site powered by WP.com except yours?” tries to make the argument sound plausible. It no longer sounds so if you rephrase to: “could I reblog a post on any blog powered by WP.com except if the blogger doesn’t want to?”

  • Matt wrote:
    “The original vision of WordPress (and WP.com) wasn’t to freeze blogging at a moment in time and never evolve and listen to our customers“.

    Mark wrote:
    “Fair Use does exist as do many posts and bloggers who deserve a way to get wider exposure.”

    If WP is so concerned about what we deserve, then WP should listen when some of us say we don’t want this kind of exposure.

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