This is my first time posting here on FanIQ, I thought this topic was a good one to start with since it has reared its head on another site I blog on.  A blogger called out another after finding some particular parts of his writings that had been copy and pasted in his blog. The blogger who blew the whistle insists that if you have material in your blog that is from another source and it's copy and pasted you should be giving credit to the source. Now some on this site have suggested since none of us are paid for our work, we're merely amateurs and it's for fun it shouldn't be held up to the same scrutiny as if we were writing for SI. Well frankly I disagree with this thought entirely.

The other factor in this mess is the offender is 16 years old, and just for background he has a brother and they both post on the same site and the brother doesn't seem to think what his sib did was anything to get all bent out of shape about. This brother by the way is an aspiring sports writer and has no problem with this behavior and has been coming to the defense of his brother for 2 days and now wants to just put it behind them. So we have a teen who for over a year has been writing daily blogs on various sports topics and now members are debating if what he did is plagiarizing and whether what we do as bloggers can really be taken seriously enough that it warrants policing or being called out for that matter.  I for one am not particularly fond of the notion of clicking a link somewhere and reading what I wrote with another person's handle attached to it and I'm betting neither would those naysayers but they won't go there.

So when do we give credit or when is it we turn over sources of our information? When is it plagiarizing, when we copy and paste a sentence or 2 or an entire article? I had thought plagiarizing was when you took the written thoughts of someone else and used them verbatim and took credit for it as it was your own and that's what happened here, but again, we have some who think that isn't the case at all. Why is it that if you're paid for something you write that gives you more creative license than someone who just posts a blog for the enjoyment of it? I have never seen a penny for anything I've written but once again I'd take issue with my thoughts being 'borrowed' by someone else and passing it off as their own, I'd have more than a few choice words actually.

I guess I am looking for another outlet to vent this and see what I get in return, I already know which way the wind blows at my other locale, so I thought I'd give it a try here. Please feel free to say what's on your mind, I'm all ears, have at it!