welcome to the funcave

did someone steal from the funcave, part 1? & tons of stuff about being a writer

basically this is a post about what constitutes plagiarism, especially in this modern age of the web & open information sharing.

and yes folks…plagiarism is theft. there is no doubt about that.

obviously, anything posted on a publicly accessible website becomes instantly part of the amazingly gigantic & wonderful world wide web. which means it is wide open for the taking.

lately, yours truly has been thinking a whole lot about ecosystems.

i’m not going to go into that right now, as that’s a whole other post. or even a series of posts.

but what i do want to talk about is something that i noticed thanks to the automatic trackback feature of the funcave.

for those who aren’t aware, the automatic trackback feature of wordpress automatically creates comments that link back to sites which have included links to something here at the funcave.

for example…

whenever the diva or lady firewall or whomever puts a link on their site to something here, the funcave sees that people came from there, and sets in place a reciprocal link.

for some sites, like the diva’s, she’s got all kinds of traffic already.

but for lady firewall’s site, it could lead to more folks finding her fantastic place…which is fantastic mainly because she is super-fantastic!

i could turn automatic trackback off…a lot of people do.

but i like it roughly the same way i like to capture site traffic stats, even tho some very good friends vehemently oppose the idea of using stats for their own blogs.

which i still have a hard time understanding. personally i think not having stats is a heartbreaking forfeiture of data that costs nothing to capture, yet could be very very valuable to them at some point down the line.

i also won’t go very deeply into that right now, since i have yet another post in progress about that subject.

suffice to say, the reason i like features & functions like stats & trackback has to do with their ability to tell me something about my audience, which…

given the relative dearth of comments folks leave here on the walls of the funcave…

is literally the only way i can even get a hint of what kinds of things are helpful, or resonate, or just simply matter to folks & keep their interest.

so a trackback link appeared which had as its source a site i had never seen. in our community, we tend to react to new sites like an observational away team on star trek: the next generation. we like to know things like:

• how’d they find us
• what they do or specialize in
• do they know anyone personally in the community
• how much do they know about sbs & smb

you get the idea.

so i was pretty stoked to find someone new & maybe be a reason they were checking out our ecosystem.

what i found was something that took me aback just a bit. basically the post was a summarization of one of the specific posts from what has been, hands-down, the most popular series here at the funcave, the series on device emulator with windows mobile 5 & msfp.

normally that wouldn’t bother me at all. but the post basically started by insulting by the style of writing i’ve chosen to use here at the funcave, saying:

If you can tolerate horrible grammar, and want to read what appears to be more of an instant messaging log, check out the happyfunboy’s super awesome guide to windows mobile 5 device emulation articles

i posted a comment to the blog, which has comments on pretty tight administrator lockdown. i can’t blame him for that, but asked him to send me an e-mail so we could chat, because the way he worded his post caused me to think less than happy & fun thoughts about his blog, & by extension, him.

i didn’t receive an e-mail. the post was edited, but since his blog is set to show modifications by using strikeout, you can still see the original comments. i understand what a helpful feature that can be, but in terms of how close to an apology—even though i didn’t ask for one, nor do i really expect one—that kind of setting makes it seem?

it looks more those non-apologies that start with well, i’m sorry YOU misunderstood me…

i am what most people would consider a real writer, i just haven’t ever been published. but i was fully trained as a writer, taught to think like a writer & given the insight that nothing written should ever be put down on a page by accident, because in the end, it simply won’t work. serious human thought process & planning & reviewing & editing should be what happens over & over & over. great writers never stop revising their works. they should always be looking for a better way to render things, crafting new & better analogies that are unique & fresh & beautiful.

actually, that’s what make someone an artist in my opinion.

granted, would the style i intentionally use here at the funcave probably cause a draconian high-school english teacher with no sense of imagination to start drinking heavily? prolly so. heaven knows i had plenty of those in my lifetime.

but i chose it for a couple of reasons:

• it makes a unique look
• it lets me type very fast without worrying about capitalization & certain other forms, which tends to allow me to get closer to my real thought process
• if read aloud, it truly conveys how i actually talk in real life

and it’s not like i haven’t heard that kind of stuff before. in fact, when you name your blog the funcave, believe when i say that i get a scad of traffic that is obviously very dissapointed when they see the true content of this site.

i hear similar things about my writing style from several very good friends, which usually boils down to the suggestion i should change the title of this blog to:

welcome to the fun-ku: chris rue’s secret poetry & im blog

the difference is, i know these folks, and we laugh about it. they crack on me for my amazingly gluttonous use of the …

which…

by the way…

i refuse to give up!

but that isn’t what twisted me up about mattdbrown’s post. i can shrug off an insult like a duck shaking water off its back, especially when i know the remark doesn’t reflect the reality of who i really am.

heck, i got to be an expert at doing that for nearly every one of the 20 some odd sbs show episodes i appread in, after all.

but as a writing teacher, the most common problem we had was training the students to understand what plagiarism really is. most people think that plagiarism is when you copy, word for word, something from somewhere else.

we as instructors just called that dumbass laziness, because it’s so easy to catch.

but plagiarism can take many forms…including many many subtle forms. forms that can be very hard to find & almost impossible to prove without hard evidence of intent.

plagiarism doesn’t just cover the specific words, altho that can be the easiest way to prove it since unique linguistic style, also known as voice, is something that every writer strives to craft & establish for himself or herself. it’s what makes every writer unique & almost can serve as a ‘fingerprint’ of sorts to identify the difference between works.

think about this:

• take a dark & gloomy passage from a stephen king novel which doesn’t immediately give away the title of the book.
• take a dark & gloomy passage from a j.k. rowling novel which doesn’t give immediately give away the title of the book.
• you can even change certain names in the passages so ensure it really is a blind test.
• now, have someone who’s read both authors before see if they can pick out which is which.

i daresay 99% of people would pass, not because they remember everything about each of those books, but because each of those writers has a very distinct voice. in fact, in some literary circles the belief is that commercial success hinges muchmore on crafting a very very compelling voice, to the detriment of other aspects. of course, that could just be academics mad that they are making kabillions of dollalas every time they scribble something on a piece of paper like the celebrity authors.

but beyond voice, there is also plagiarism of the core ideas…

and that’s what i’m talking about here.

it seemd to me like someone sidling up to me, then slapping me on the back of the neck with a brick…

then grabbing the sign that says device emulator rocks! which i had made all by myself & starting to stomp around shouting ‘use device emulator!’ like they were there first.

now, there’s no money at stake here. trust me when i say, there’s no welcome to the funcavebook deal in the works.

but it’s like this…

the ecosystem of the community works best when people feed off each other in healthy ways. one fanatastic gift of being close friends with & being directly attached to some highly visible & highly successful community initiatives involving very well-known people is that i get more chances to meet & connect with more people.

i have smb nation 2005, last year’s conference, to thank for that. and i will, in yet another post being formulated.

but the best way to connect with people is to join what vlad has previously dubbed the mutual admiration & respect society. it works by one person offering encouragement & support & praise for someone’s efforts when you feel they deserve it. that usually results in gratitude for both those comments & for the investment of time & attention to even use the efforts. that usually opens up a dialog, in which then it is not only ok to offer constructive suggestions & even criticisms. i’d even go so far as to say that such an exchange makes the beginning of whole different level of relationship. one that can be deep & honest & very valuable for both parties.

that’s why i look for things like that. i try to get a name, so that then when i happen to meet a face to go with it, it’s like i already know that person through their words. and i’m usually excited to finally make that connection in real life.

but when the initial contact takes the fom of insults, no matter what the reason, it shortcircuits that wonderful connecting process.

so now, if i met mattdbrown at a conference…

trust me, much stranger things have happened in my life…

rather being able to say:

hey! it’s good to meet you! thanks for reading the funcave. folks telling me it has value makes the efforts of sustaining it worth any cost, monetary or mental.

it will prolly be something along the lines of:

mmmm-hmmmm. let me catch up with these folks over here.

and that’s what’s bugging me about this one.

it’s not the idea that someone failed to credit me for something i did which currently has no monetary value…

but it’s the idea of a lost opportunity to meet yet another person who i might have helped in some way, shape or form.

also, i could suggest ways to fix the severe grammatical error in the title of his blog, which is just bugging me to no end…

|| posted by chris under community, epiphany, nostalgia, thumbs down || || ||