Thread: Links to Blogs

Two40 - it takes guts to apologise, and I applaude that. The ability to be able to apologise is a characteristic that I value very highly, and it is too often lacking. Well done. I don't believe that SG left on the strength of your first post in this thread alone, but it may well have been the straw that broke his back. So, whilst you've shown character in apologising, the damage is still done. My mother has often said "littlest said is soonest mended".

Acco - I pulled back because it was your attitude in some other threads (one in particular) that I've found distasteful. Thus I thought it off topic, as it was not to do with this thread. Perhaps you could have been clearer in your OP about the kind of teasers that you were referring to, given that SG was "towards the bottom of your list". One way or another the outcome of this thread is that the forum has lost a valuble member, and that is a very poor result.

Big Shed - there was much "playing the man" in this thread before I posted in here. I'm not sure what you mean by "you, of all people", so perhaps you could explain. Wasn't post #7 and then your post #10 playing the man? Of course moderators can have opinions. It seems to me that things got heated after the somewhat lengthy exchange between yourself and SG.


IMO, the whole ego and blog traffic argument is, in the main, a furphy. Consider this: if someone is a member of say 3 forums then to put up the same post three times, plus the blog entry, would be enormously time consuming, not to mention the logistical problems that I alluded to before. Someone also raised the very valid point of picture size restrictions (at least for this forum). For the sake of saving that time I can't see any problem with having a link to the blog. If that is not done and the posts are put up individually on all the forums then it simply won't happen. That means that those who are (or would be) interested would miss out.

Yes it's true that blog links can be broken, but that happens with all sorts of links, and is just a fact of internet life. Better to have had them for a while than never at all.

I am very concerned that valuable members leave the forum (or never join in the first place) because of the bashing that goes on. I just think that some respect and tolerance should be shown. I have no doubt that some are ego motivated, but that doesn't mean that they don't have some very valuable opinions and advice, so perhaps a bit of tolerance, and looking past the ego side of things, should be in order.

Hey guys -

If you'd like my long, well thought out and highly researched opinion on this, backed by years of experience - complete with pictures n' stuff, you can read it on my blog!!!!

I think having it on my blog is a much better solution than just typing it out here, for some important reasons that I detail in my blog; I'd also like to encourage other posters to set up blogs to share stuff on them too, and we can just think of this place as a sort of "Google for woodwork but a little bit harder to use than Google because you have to do a bit more reading to get to the link that takes you to the right blog".

Doesn't that sound like a neat idea? - I really think that links to hundreds and hundreds of individual blogs is the way of the future and very Web 2.0, and we should all get into it as soon as possible. Hey - maybe my blog should actually link to my Facebook page, where you can find my Twitter stream where I put up my content one sentence at a time, and that'd be like reading it as I think it, and that'd be so cool it'd be like Web 2.0 squared (would that be Web 2.02, or Web 4.0???)

Personally I like the whole story on the forum and not a teaser and link to another site.

The same goes for references to something on Ebay or videos on Utube. Most of the time the teaser posts do not give enough information for me to decide whether to follow the link, so I don't.

In regard to blogs I can understand that the poster wants to retain ownership of his ideas as posting them on this site assigns the copyright to U-Beaut Enterprises (see the bottom of each page) which may stop the poster publishing elsewhere.

So most of the time I do not click on the link, but to get all fired up over this and denigrate those that do post in this manner is not acceptable IMO.

My take on this argument.


Peter.

Sturdee, you raise a good point about copyright. I have always interpreted what you refer to at the bottom of the page as referring to the whole forum as such. I do not believe that the poster assigns copyright over to the forum for individual posts, and as far as I know there is no agreement anywhere that says as much. A search in FAQ for "copyright" brings up no hits.

Taking photography as an example (in the general sense, not just in the forum), unless there is a general agreement (contract) in place, copyright is not automatically assigned simply by virtue of it being used somewhere. It has to be specifically assigned to someone else other than the photographer, and if no agreement is in place then it remains with the photogrspher by default. As a former pro photographer I had this argument a few times where some people thought that they automatically owned the copyright of the images that I shot for them. This is not so, unless I specifically agreed to it. Most of the time it's pretty irrelevant (images of engineering works are not generally popular in image libraries), but there were some occasions where I may have had a future use for the image.

I know that this is off topic, but some clarification (from the forum owner) of copyright within the forum would be useful and welcome.

At the bottom of each page is the following :

Copyright © U-Beaut Enterprises 1999 - 2010. All rights reserved.

This website and its content is copyright of U-Beaut Enterprises.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

♦ you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only
♦ you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge
Woodwork Forums as the source of the material.

You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content.
Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

The highlighting is mine.

To me this seems that you assign all your rights in what you have posted to Ubeaut Enterprises and may only use it as stated above. Because it's on every page we should all be aware of this and we only have limited permission to use what is posted elsewhere.

That is not a problem with me and what I post but it may concern someone like Derek who is active and well known on many other forums.


Peter.

So anything from this year or last is ok then.

That is not an agreement that the copyright has been assigned. My interpretation is that it is directed towards non-posters.

Originally Posted by two40

And so on and so on. Just try and tell me he is not advertising his blog and fishing for hits.

If this is so maybe you should delete the link to your website in your signature. Double standards and alike.

External links are the butter on the bread of a forum post.

Let's not kid ourselves about lifetime relevance.

....

Respect and civility go a long way to cement productive exchanges, as I'm reminded by this lovely graduation address:

Aaron Sorkin’s commencement address at Syracuse University | Go Into The Story

Bravo to two40 for the apology.

As this situation can never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction and most opinions have been expressed I think it is time to close it.

From day one these forums have always displayed the following or similar:
Copyright © U-Beaut Enterprises 1999 - 2012. All rights reserved

The reason for this is to stop the lowlifes who skim hundreds if not thousands of pages of info from here and other sites every day to add to their own sites, claiming them as their own and actually copyrighting these stolen articles in their own name. The reason for this is in most instances purely for moneymaking.

These thieves do not acknowledge the originator of the stolen articles, or where they were stolen from. These skimmed pages can end up almost anywhere and I'm sure the original posters would be horrified to find that their post on screwing wood ended up on some p o r n site or similar.

U-Beaut Enterprises copyrights these forums and everything in them as a safeguard to protect our members from these thieves. U-Beaut Enterprises sees itself as the custodians of the content on these forums, to keep it's content in perpetuity for those who may come after we have all been and gone. Wishful thinking, but who knows. These forums may one day end up being one of the main repositories of knowledge for future generation.

In 2010 I added the larger more detailed copyright that is now seen on all pages. This was instrumental in dramatically decreasing the amount of content being skimmed and used illegally. I have since implemented a program to track and deter skimmers which has seen these people almost completely stop their theft on these forums.

I hope this clears up some of the questions about copyright on these forums.

Footnote:
We do not allow copyrighted material to be used on these pages from other sites unless the person posting it has received written approval from the copyrighter. We have deleted many hundreds of such posts and banned a few members over the years because of continual copyright infringements. We frown on anyone who does this and try to keep on top of it. I have been threatened with a number of law suits over the years because of members posting copyrighted material, trade marks, etc.

Cheers - Neil