It seems to me a happy middle ground would be for the full article to be posted along with a link requesting "Click through if you liked this article" or something along those lines. This would avoid the plague of direct blog-pimping and those articles that are worthwhile to people will generate traffic to the blog.
Just my .02
Which is what Jim Robinson has said in the past.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2636843/posts?page=552#552
I have no complaint if a good conservative blogger posts his own material to FR, not as an excerpt to drive hits and discussion back to his blog, but rather to impart useful information to OUR readers and to promote and join in on the discussion and conservative activism HERE on FR.
If a blogger can’t or refuses do that, and if he constantly complains or fights with our participants over it, then I’d just as soon he doesn’t post here. It’s not my job to make his content or his presentation or cooperation acceptable to our readers. That’s his job. And if he cannot do it or refuses to do it and continues posting brief excerpts only and obviously attempting to draw away our participants while loudly complaining about it, then I have no sympathy for his complaints and the more apt I am to ban his account and blog.
552 posted on Tuesday, December 07, 2010 4:06:19 PM by Jim Robinson
It seems to me a happy middle ground would be for the full article to be posted along with a link requesting "Click through if you liked this article" or something along those lines. This would avoid the plague of direct blog-pimping and those articles that are worthwhile to people will generate traffic to the blog.
Just my .02
Yes, I would actually tend to agree. My arguments are more made because I think the underlying premise of thackney's arguments are immoral on their face.
There ARE blatant blog pimps who just want to post one line from some piece of junk article so as to drive hits back. And yes, I can understand JimRob wanting to protect FR from being flooded with drivel.
There are other bloggers, however, who literally spend a whole afternoon crafting an excellent piece of writing and who deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, at least in some small way, and who naturally figure that they'll post up a fair use section for people to go to their blog, read, and then discuss on FR. There's a world of difference between the two, yet they are both treated the same way, and their content is uniformly treated as the property of Free Republic if they want anybody at all to read it.
That's not right.
One idea I had to perhaps remedy would be to develop a way for FReepers and the FR management to work together to actively distinguish between the good stuff and the rubbish (because, let's face it, in the blogosphere, Sturgeon's Law most definitely applies). Bloggers who get a good reputation for producing insightful posts that obviously go beyond the level of angry, barely-literate incoherent rants could be granted greater "posting privileges," while true out and out blog pimps would perhaps not be allowed to post at all. That way, there's no theft involved, and FR is protected from being overwhelmed by garbage, while genuinely good material sees the light of day.
I'm not a blogger. I have a blog, but it's not political, I haven't really done anything with it for a year, and when I did put up posts from it on FR, they went into the Religion section and were posted in full. So my interest here is not in blog pimping.
I am, however, an aspiring writer, so I perhaps do have an exaggerated sense of copy property rights. I sympathise with good bloggers who do find themselves with the choice of either not being noticed at all, or else giving free copy away to FR.
FWIW, if I were a blogger (and I would naturally be producing the sort of good copy that would make the grade here at FR *gronk gronk*), I wouldn't want the discussion to take place on my own blog - I would want it to take place here, since that's where most of the people are. I don't think most bloggers really want discussion to take place on their blogs - if nothing else, that's just a headache to police the comments.