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I just wanted to post a cute picture so this isn’t a super serious post.
Over the weekend the Twilight Lexicon posted something very important on their blog that had been on the minds of many affected bloggers for some time now. We had been discussing it back and forth through e-mails with other fansite owners and we came to the conclusion that there’s many bad habits among the Twilight fansite community that end up affecting other sites negatively. One of them is the darn copy/paste/source at the bottom method which mostly affects this site. Many fansites are becoming lazy and are picking up 100% of their posted content from other sites. What’s worse is, they copy and paste the full posts on their blogs. No personal commentary added, no personal contribution seems to be needed, no original thought is present. Just plain old copy/paste, and sometimes their sources at the bottom aren’t even the original sources. We’ve had that happen to us: we translate something from a Spanish site (news item, interview) and we see our translations word-by-word on other blogs and then surprise! the source at the bottom is their fansite BFF, who took the translation from us (source at the very bottom).
Like the Lex pointed out, this isn’t work. Think about how you do your homework at school, and if you turned in a paper with all the text taken from another source (even if you quote it… at the bottom) you would get a big fat F. It’s lazy blogging. Blogging is not just about reposting the most important news of the day in Twilight world from other sources. It’s also about finding contributions of your own and putting them out there for the fans. It’s about expressing your thoughts, your opinions, or adding your own investigations if you want to keep things neutral and just inform readers.
This is something Twilight Poison tries to do everyday. Original contributions. We hunt down magazine stands in Latin American countries for all the Spanish publications that feature new interviews with the cast, for example. Some of those publications feature new photoshoots not available in other countries. We translate those always great interviews for fans of other countries who wouldn’t find them otherwise. This takes us hours to do. Money. Resources. Scanning, translating takes me at least 2 or 3 hours depending on the length of the article. It helps us become an archive of foreign printed news, articles and interviews. Some magazines don’t allow their scans to be online. Others don’t mind. When we’re asked to take something down we do, and we never post anything from that publication again. But some magazines, especially foreign magazines, don’t mind it at all, in fact, they like it. I’ve gotten thank you notes from reporters and editors of Spanish magazines for translating and sharing their interviews with foreign fans. In return, some of them recommend our site on their magazine, which is why 90% of our magazine mentions are from Spanish magazines.
But when other blogs copy/paste my efforts and personal contributions, their value decreases because it’s not my unique contribution. It’s everywhere now. What takes me 3 hours to do it takes them 5 minutes to repost. Do you think that’s fair? And when my website is open for everybody, not locked and not members only, there truly is no need to be reposted elsewhere if it can be found here just fine.
Now, I’m not here to tell you guys how to run your blogs. If you want to do the copy/paste/source/via/via/via jazz, be my guest. But not with Twilight Poison content anymore. I always bit my tongue in the past because I wanted to get along with other fansite owners and save myself the drama that this community so adores. I didn’t mind sharing stuff with other sites. But then I thought “Is it too hard to just quote an excerpt and link back? Is it too hard to be kind and not use other fansites as a resource center? Is it cool that this took me 3 hours and reposting it takes 5 minutes? Should I keep this blog going anymore?”. Unfair, right? So from now own, these are our rules as of today:
You can’t:
- Take our entire translations and all our scans.
- Repost our entire translated articles.
- Repost our exclusive videos. Neither on youtube nor on Facebook. Getting press credentials as a fansite is not easy! These exclusives are hard to get! Sometimes we score invites, sometimes we don’t, so we cherish our chances at red carpets, press conferences and photocalls.
- Repost our exclusive pictures (meaning, those pictures we take at events, those that are truly ours, that we took with our cameras).
- All of this applies to: sites, blogs, forums, IMDB, livejournal communities and tumblr and twitpic accounts.
- These rules include our English-to-Spanish translations on our Spanish blog!
You can:
- Take a portion, excerpt, quote from our translated articles/interviews and such. I won’t be evil. I will share with you guys. Just not the whole thing.
- Take a couple of scans and link back to the rest.
- Take a couple of pictures and link back to the rest.
- Embed our videos on your site. Make gifs of them if you want. Icons, whatever.
In return we will:
- Link to your own scans/translations/articles. We’ll quote you or post and excerpt. One or two pictures and we’ll link to the rest.
- We’ll recommend your stuff to our readers. You can e-mail me at wolfspirit at twilightpoison.com
- We will not post tagged pictures purchased by fansites for their sites anymore. We have in the past, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. These pictures are beyond expensive. By us posting them, we’re cheating these sites from getting hits which equal ad revenue, which is how these webmasters pay for their pictures in the first place. Personally, I have no issue at all with people tagging the pictures they purchase because I know how expensive they are. In fact, I actually encourage it because many people won’t credit these fansites if the pictures are not tagged. Unfair.
- If you don’t want to post anything from your site, let me know and I won’t ever again.
PLEASE!
- Don’t be rude and credit properly: active links, not just twilightpoison.com as text, or “source is in the tag”. Active, working links!
- Check if the link works. Don’t fake-link (aka, typo in the URL, error in the HTML). That is lame. If you like my content and you post it, I deserve a link, like it or not. I’ve even seen entertainment sites do this, not just fansites.
- Link back to the original source if it’s me, not your fansite BFF to give them hits. I know my translations.
A site survives on hits and links!
“I’m new at blogging, I don’t know how it’s done!”
Honest mistakes, and new webmasters not knowing at first is completely understandable. Here are our little tips for new bloggers:
- You can take news from other places. We all take news from other places. But copying the whole article is not blogging. Common sense should tell you that it’s lazy. How should you do it? Post direct quotes, and then write the article yourself and quote the original source.
- Your own contribution matters. This isn’t about posting everything you see: articles, news, pictures, copy/paste, re-upload. Sure, some pictures are not exclusive and free to post, we post many of them, but in my opinion a line shouldn’t be crossed. If a site buys a picture, it’s best that if your blog is large, you respect their content and link back to them as opposed to taking all of it and benefiting yourself from their exclusives. And sure, sometimes the sites don’t mind, and a lot of the times we see E! posting an exclusive picture by TMZ. But there’s a difference between a couple of pictures, and reposting the whole gallery.
If a fansite has exclusive pictures taken by them at a red carpet, photocall, etc. don’t repost them on your site. Be kind, and link to their gallery. Don’t be selfish and want everything for your blog too. Support them/us. Like I said, getting press credentials as a fansite is not easy. These exclusives are cherished by fansite admins and they/we deserve our exclusives and our moment, our credit, our success.
- Personal touch. Don’t become a clone of other fansites. Contribute with something to the fandom. Your own translations, your own scans, your own exclusives. This is not easy to do, but in the end it will bring you great things.
- Make friends, not enemies! You never know how useful and helpful we can be to you. You never know when you might need something. Not sourcing correctly, copying and detagging pictures show lack of respect towards your peers, immaturity and selfishness.
- Be professional. You never know who you will impress and who will invite you to be part of events, or send you press releases, kits, info. Who will recommend you on their site, magazine, newspaper, etc.
In the end all of us fansite owners and bloggers work for a common goal: the satisfaction of the rest of the fans. The content is for fans, and not for fellow webmasters. We share, but we’re not a resource center. Let’s have common courtesy, let’s be as professional as a fansite can be, let’s be considerate. Let’s make our time and work worth it.
Thanks guys, and I will appreciate people respecting our new policy. This is not optional anymore. People must start somewhere and we’ll follow the same rules and example.
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You know that you actually have no rights over original documents.
Original documents are owned by the copyright holder unless you buy the rights. Magazine scans, pictures from photoshoots and any other documents are the property of the magazine and or journalist / photograher unless you buy the rights or get permission.
Rebranding i.e putting on your own logo etc and or manipulation of any material not owned by you is copyright theft. It is like stealing a car and changing the number plates.
You have certain rights over translations you make but the “no copyright intended” sentence means you know you stole something but didn’t mean it.
I know its a race to get the breaking news first or the first exclusive but be careful with what you post up to begin with.
I love this sitee! And I think you´re totally right I support you in your decision(:
I do have a right over my own translations. What I’m asking for is common courtesy, not copyrights. It’s how we’re raised as children, don’t steal from other places and do your own work. Teachers don’t have copyright over history or math, but that’s not why cheating is forbidden, is it?