On Attribution and Credit

A good follow-up by John Gruber regarding this nonsense.

The attribution and linking issues in web publishing have always been fascinating to me. A link costs nothing, yet some sites routinely go out of their way not to give them.

Major publications are the absolute worst at this. They claim editorial guidelines or some nonsense. But it’s clear that they just want their readers to believe their paper (even on the web) is the only place you should go to get information. It’s also the most tangible form of the contempt out there. The lack of links just make them look like huge dickheads to the rest of us.

As for other blogs, often links are left out out of pure laziness. But sometimes it’s a bit of jackassery. If they don’t cite another blog and/or provide a link, it’s them trying to trick their readers into thinking they found the news first. It’s a similar to the newspaper nonsense in that it’s a subtle message that their site is the only one you should visit because they get all the information themselves.

I’d like to think that none of these sites are tricking anyone. But the truth is that they are. I can’t tell you how often I hear about a story that X blog broke as being “reported by Y blog”. That’s why all of this matters.