Saturday, May 22, 2004



There are days when I wonder what people are really thinking when they do things. I know, in most cases, it is not anything intentionally stupid or rude, but still...

If you belong to Forward Motion, do not copy material out of the chat room and post it to your journal/blog/site without the permission of the people you are quoting. Those people, if they find it in your blog, are likely to be pretty well annoyed.

It's not only a breach of the site rules on copyright, it's also rude. That may not be the intention, but any time you start publicly relaying words of others without their permission, they have a right to be annoyed, especially with fellow writers who should respect the use of words.

There are many reasons why a person may not want their words randomly posted somewhere else. Chat is informal. What and how a person says things there may not be up to their standards for public posting. Spelling? Grammar? Punctuation? Jokes and side remarks?

And what if the person thinks the content has been edited in ways that they don't appreciate? What if the post includes references to a story the person is working on that he doesn't want mentioned in public? Snippets?

What if they just don't like having their conversations repeated in public?

Don't copy chat transcripts to your sites. From now on it will likely result in a permanent ban from Forward Motion.

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