Don't mind me while I rant

A blogging friend recently asked if it was okay to repost some comments I had left. I was told ahead of time the thoughts would be edited; I had paid my friend a compliment in the comment and she thought it too self-serving to reprint it. In the reprint, I was cited as the source. Asking permission to repost my stuff was a very courteous gesture, while not necessary, I appreciated the thought.

Now let's travel to the far end of this spectrum we shall call blogging integrity. Over a year ago, I read and printed for reference, an article on leadership from a favorite e-zine. I recently read a post from a widely-read emerging missional(whatever you wanna call it) blogger on leadership. As I read, I thought "yeah this makes alot of sense." Then another thought occurred to me, "Hey this stuff sounds kind of familiar." I walked away from my computer. A day later, I dug up the old article I had printed. Wouldn't you know it, almost word for word, the article on leadership from the e-zine got jacked, lifted, pilfered!!!! I realize that there is nothing new under the sun; almost all ideas are old ideas revisited. But this was word for word. That's just poor. I don't care who or what the source or who or what the author you don't do that. There wasn't even a token, "I don't remember the guy's name but..." or "I read this someplace else..."
Maybe I'm just being naive. Maybe if you put something out on this crazy internet thingy, you should do it, knowing that someone, somewhere will probably steal one of your ideas and claim it as original. Call me an idealist but blogging integrity is not something to be taken lightly if you take your blogging at all seriously. One would never publish something in print form that was someone else's work with citing the source. I am not suggesting footnotes according to Strunk & White but the simple "Hat Tip" will do; something to give credit where credit is due.

Here endeth my little rant.


tags blogging integrity blogging integrity leadership