Terry Teachout, a fellow ArtsJournal.com blogger, wrote an item yesterday — lectured like a
schoolmarm is more like it — about the importance of using links in a Weblog and the good
practice of crediting them. The tone recalls Mr. Rogers:
Repeat after me: Giving credit to blogsources for borrowed links is good
for everybody in the blogosphere.
Not all bloggers feel this way.
Certain of our colleagues are bad — a few
notoriously so — about giving credit to other bloggers. I’ll name no names, but I will say that the
stingy practice of link-poaching has lately come in for quite a bit of backstage
criticism.
Given his broad-brush “name no names” comment, I don’t know whom he means. But since
he mentions “certain of our colleagues,” I have to wonder whether he’s pointing a finger at
bloggers here at ArtsJournal.com. If so, I take exception. I don’t poach links and I give
credit where due. If he means bloggers on the Web-at-large, I wish he would say so.
ArtsJournal.com readers are bound to conclude that he’s looking around his neighborhood
and means his colleagues here, even if he didn’t.
Postscript: Terry cleared the mist from my windshield with
(Monday), for which my thanks. Had I been following Bookslut I suppose I might have deduced whom he
meant. I actually don’t mind link-poaching as much as Terry does, maybe because I’m not part of
their pissing match. But I regret my intemperate “schoolmarm” characterization, especially since
Bookslut
(Thanks for the links, Terry.)
