I think reposting longer articles presents a unique challenge compared to Twitter, where everyone already knows what a retweet looks like. There was a lot of confusion today about this, but I hope the discussion will lead to more best practices for how we can deal with reposts. For example, making it more clear who the author is, and for longer posts, quoting or just linking the title instead.
Sameer Vasta
Reposting on Twitter makes it very clear who the author of the post was, because their *actual tweet* is put into the timeline. If you were to copy and paste their tweet and post it without attributing it to them, you’d be stealing it. By putting something on your website that you call a repost but don’t actually make it clear who the author is, or worse, actually make your design look like *you* wrote the content, that’s theft, not reposting. If your post had said “XYZ posted this and I found it interesting,” and then posted the content (or even better, an excerpt), then that’s different. Attribution is important, and you didn’t care to do that. Maybe it’s worth thinking about the impact your actions have on others, and engage in the discussion on why the impacts means something to people (especially people of color who are so often used to being ignored or erased from their own stories) instead of writing passive-aggressive sub-posts attacking people who just want to be treated fairly.
Sameer I am sorry that you feel upset about this. I reposted your writing only to share it with more people. I thought it was excellent and I appreciate your writing. I removed the repost at your request.
There was definitely a problem with the repost template that I will fix, but I'm also going to work on some better repost checks that I will share with the IndieWeb community to avoid this sort of thing in the future.
There was definitely a problem with the repost template that I will fix, but I'm also going to work on some better repost checks that I will share with the IndieWeb community to avoid this sort of thing in the future.