How do you know if a post is original and has not been stolen, plagarised or re-edited?
A recent comment on my last post on Comment Policy Plugin For Wordpress was written in Russian: По-моему, у Вас украли эту статью и поместили на другом сайте. Я её уже видела. Since I do not read Russian, I have to translate it and it actually says, “I think you stole this article and placed on another site. I had already seen.”
I certainly do not need to clarify why I posted the article as this is my homepage. Yet, comments like these bug me because it makes me wonder if readers can ’smell’ if posts have been plagarised, stolen or re-edited? I am feeling quite glad actually that you have made that comment. Otherwise I would not have been able to update this site this week for many reasons; I’ve not been online browsing for a few days. Now I have.
Here is a screenshot from subscribing to Gobala Krishnan’s website since 2008, click to see the bigger picture:
Topics on sales and marketing excite me less than website building tools. You can tell that I have only read two letters that do not have anything to do with sales and purchases.
Here’s the letter I received regarding his comment policy for wordpress:
Wordpress plugins are great to work with as long as you understand their uses and how to set them right. There are enough make money online blogs and sharing another one online just does not cut out for me. This letter however, is more of a teaching tool, no coupons attached. If you have read the post correctly, credit to the creator of this plugin is given at the end of the post.
How do you know if a post has been plagarised, copied and re-edited? In other words, how is this not stolen?
- You give credit (link) to the source of the article.
- You do not give the reader option to download the plugin , software or script from your own website. (very importantly not to try this without prior permission to redistribute from your local domain.)
- You use the explanation given by the source site and then always make reference back the source file in a hyperlink.
It is easy for me to understand this because every now and then, my own original post are linked word for word without any literature whatsoever to mention that it has come from my website, except for two words “read more…..” Naughty naughty. That is pure cut and paste, lazy way of giving credit to the blogger who wrote.
Some people look for the about page to read about the author’s profile. I have not created my about page yet because I simply want to use this blog to focus on my journey online and not on myself. Maria Montessori is the only page I have got so far and that is because of my Montessori training background. You can read “How This Domain Is Inspired?”
Linking back to the source url is very important if you have indeed written something about or from another url. It shows your networking presence online and certainly open doors for readers who are interested in the topic to go right to the source with one click.
If you notice, headline news websites are great culprits for posting news word for word from the source without linking back to the source. Just type in Michael Jackson’s news and you can see for yourself. Read at least 5 news on the latest and you can certainly find the same form of writing and layout.
Yet another trick bloggers used to cut and past original text without linking back to the source url is by writing only the first 160 characters in his own words because in search engine optimisation (SEO) practice, only the first 160 and last few of the post will be crawled or spidered completely when a reader enter his keywords. I have read many myself and their google page rank is so high, you won’t believe it until you study the rest of the post.
Another more concrete way to determine if the blogger is genuine, you can look for this banner on his blog:
You can grab a banner for your website here Copyscape If you decide to use the banner, just make sure you follow some the rules of ‘white hat blogging’ code of conduct.
Having said that, the banner will be posted on this site from now onwards if that makes you happy.
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