I got an informal, strictly friendly reminder over the weekend that it would be good for all of us to take to heart.
Most everything in a fan-centered blog like this comes from elsewhere. There's no shame in that. I believe this is absolutely the best place to talk about (and sort through) all the Blazer material out there in web-land and I am pretty confident in saying that even though official and media sites actually break more news than we do, if you haven't read this community's reflections you don't have the complete pulse of Blazer fandom nor the fullest picture of what that news means.
That said, even as we talk about material from other sources, we need to give that source credit. And the online definition of credit not only includes a written citation but the opportunity for the reader to pass through to the original source, thus registering a page hit in return for that source's hard work. My general rule is that I will quote no more than 25% of any given article (usually MUCH less) as I will provide a citation and a page link to the original article in my post.
I bring this up because this really needs to happen in comments and diaries that you guys post too. It's perfectly fine to quote other sources as long as there's a citation and link AND as long as you haven't cut and pasted the article wholesale, leaving no incentive for the reader to click through.
Sure, there are some legalities to this. The Oregonian and O-Live pay Jason Quick good money for the stuff he writes and they have a right to expect page hits in return for their investment...page hits that ought not be co-opted by us. Theoretically their fine lawyers could slap a cease and desist order on us or even sue the site (though what they'd hope to get out of it is beyond me). But beyond that, there's a good neighbor thing going on here. At the end of the day this site has a pretty good reputation among official sources, including almost everyone you know at the local papers who writes about the Blazers. Part of that reputation is our honesty and just plain doing things right. I wouldn't want anything to get in the way of that otherwise excellent relationship.
So please help us stay where we are and maintain our good connections by only quoting a couple main points from any given piece and linking to the rest of it, inviting folks to read it themselves. Every click-through that official sources see coming from Blazersedge is another reminder of the mutual respect we share and another incentive for them to keep coming up with great material for fans like us.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)