A couple of articles looking at the ethics of curation. The first article by Lauren Bailey looks at plagiarism, the actual stealing of content and passing it off as yours. The second article by Linda Dessau looks at hijacking content, which is using some snippets to draw a reader to your site, without any context, commentary or other original content on your part. She also has some great tips on how to use twitter to share content without ‘hijacking’ your readers.
I think the key point of both is that attribution is the clear determinant in ethical curation. You should always make sure you link back to the original site. In addition, if you aren’t adding commentary or opinion, why curate the article in the first place? Making sure you are adding value for your readers, and providing attribution to your sources means you are providing a real curation service.
With MyCurator, we will be adding a new feature to curate a post from multiple articles. This post was curated during testing of the feature. You will have access to the full text and images from multiple articles from your training page to easily create a round-up, weekly highlights or comparison curation. And of course, with the attribution link of each article, you can keep your curation ethical.
1. Content Curation, Plagiarism and the Difference Between the Two
Although there are plenty of fine lines when it comes to plagiarism online, the best bet is, when in doubt, cite and link back. Even if you’ve written a completely original piece, there is nothing wrong with shedding light onto where you found the information you’re working with and any other writing that helped form your opinion along the way. That is the most honest way to go about web writing, and it’s also the most respectful way to go about content curation.
2. Are You Curating or Hijacking the Content You Share?
What I don’t enjoy is when I click on a link and find just a teaser – a summary and/or quote of the original content, so now I have to jump through an additional hoop to get to the content promised by the headline.