Archive for June 2011
WebCred: Reputation is Important
I received this email today, but before marking it as spam, it occurred to me that I should not only reply, I should also blog the reply. Because, you see, this isn’t the first one of these I’ve received, so there are probably an awful lot of bloggers out there getting the same solicitation. Because that’s what this is: solicitation disguised as sharing, a way to game the system. Like any good con it appears to be a good deal for a blogger. But looking a little more closely the hidden costs far outweigh any apparent benefits.
Dear Rebecca:
You offer me a “link swap” where you’ll give me two links in exchange for one of mine. Wow.
You say:
3-way linking is a very effective link building strategy.
Really. I didn’t know that I needed a “link building strategy.” I thought I just needed good content. If I have good content, people will link to it. Just as I link to other good content. That’s a big part of why I work hard to create good web content.
Our partner sites that link to your site are at least 3 years old with a minimum pagerank of PR3.
I have no idea what PR3 means. I’m assuming it is some kind of marketing lingo, although it could as easily be the kind of “pseudo Authority” Snopes warns against in cases of Internet Fraud. Means nothing to me.
The age of a bottle of wine may impact on a decision of which bottle to buy, but I have difficulty seeing the relevance of the age of a website. I think you intend this as an implied credibility.
How much credibility does the age of a website carry? If that is the only data, my answer to that question is zero credibility.
Any scammer can register a fistful of domain names and leave them cooling on a shelf for three years. Although you’ll never catch me dealing with GoDaddy, as I understand it anyone can register a domain with them for a couple of dollars. It could cost as much as twenty dollars to incubate a couple of three year old websites. I don’t know about you, but to me, my reputation is priceless.
Web age alone has no bearing. If the content is good, I’ll link to a site that goes online today.
Since you’re getting the links from third party websites, they appear totally natural to search engine algorithms. Such inbound links help your website rank higher in Google and other search engines.
This is the real problem, you see. I don’t want the links coming into my site to “appear to be totally natural.”
I want the links coming into my site to be totally natural.
This is an admission that the purpose is to game search engines.
Guess what: I’m not in this to fool search engines into sending me more traffic.
The Internet is valuable for it’s capacity to share information without fear or favor, without needing a huge bankroll, without having to trick people. Isn’t that what TV is for? As far as I can tell, television news is programmed to provide entertainment and maximize car sales.
So when I want real news, I look for it online.
[The Broadcast industry isn't dying because of 'piracy.' it's dying because of diminishing credibility.]
Misleading search engines doesn’t simply trick the search engines, or the searchers, what it ultimately does is reduce the effectiveness of search engines. I’m a little surprised that Google or Bing aren’t out there offering a bounty on companies like yours that seek to deliberately reduce the accuracy of their search algorithms,
The absolute last thing I want is to deliberately trick Internet users into visiting any of my sites. The only visitors I want are those who chose to visit. Those who have a genuine interest in, or need for the content that is available on my blog.
crying wolf
When a wholly irrelevant website links to mine, the visitors it sends mine can cause me damage.
If netizens searching for articles about astronomy, or travel recommendations or even an escort service, are sent here to my website in error, it erodes my credibility.
A year from now that same visitor might seeking to learn about Self Publishing, but having been scammed into visiting my website under and fooled the last time, they are unlikely to trust the perfectly valid content that I work so hard to make available here.
I use a lot of links, all the time. But the links I use are for sites I’ve visited; sites that contain information – “content” – that I believe to be worth sharing. Content related to mine. Sites that fit with what my site is all about. If I find good content, I am more than willing to send my visitors along to the appropriate website.
My websites don’t sell eyeballs to advertisers, they share content with people.
If I have any ‘marketing strategy’ at all, it would have to be the one advocated by the character Kris Kringle, in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street.
Because I’ve worked hard to build an Internet reputation I can live with. I stand behind what I say. But I’m only human, so if I get something wrong, tell me, and I will admit it and do my best to correct it. My Internet credibility reflects my personal reputation. Quite frankly, I am not willing to throw either away. The Internet is brilliant, but using it effectively can be very hard work.
links, like gifts, should be freely given
Although I can’t prevent dubious sites from linking to my content, I do have absolute control over deciding which links that I will forge. I do my level best not link to sites I don’t trust. I don’t sign up for anything that wants to suck in the contents of my email book or Facebook Friends. I try to avoid fraud, malware, scammers, spammers and information harvesters.
Links are more than citations, they are like a personal recommendation. They carry a certain amount of power as Internet’s equivalent of “word-of-mouth”. They shouldn’t be for sale.
Who I link to is an important part of my web footprint. As such, it is an important part of my online reputation.
Like a gift, any links I give are freely given.
So, in conclusion, Rebecca, my answer is, and will always be, “no”.
Dancing Through Life
I am lucky to have an amazing father. But today I’m not writing about Dad, but instead want to say:
Happy Father’s Day
to my godfather, Lincoln Russwurm.
Dad and Lincoln are first cousins, and although they didn’t look at all alike when they were younger, recently it’s been pointed out that nowadays they can be mistaken for each other in photographs.
Lincoln and Hilda had a huge impact on my life. When I was a kid, we would visit them on their farm. Their kids were close enough in age with us that we got along.
I remember the taste of raw milk…
listening to the “My Fair Lady” soundtrack…
the creak of the windmill…
warm summer days…
a really scary movie…
rollerskating and soft ice cream…
barn cats…
the heady smell of the pantry…
long walks on dusty unpaved roads…
fields of wildflowers…
bringing home the cows…
learning where milk came from…
So much of what I love, and much I still value, I learned from them.
The first dog I loved was their dog Rex, pictured here.
I met cows and chickens and got an exposure to nature and life that I would not otherwise have as a city kid.
Being their god daughter, I suspect I may have been somewhat spoiled when we visited.
I do know that my first hands on exposure to media production was at their farm. At home, Dad had a professional quality reel to reel tape recorder, but it was for recording demos for his music. Needless to say, children were never allowed to touch the thing. (I had to take Media Arts in college before I ever got to use a reel to reel tape recorder.) But my cousins had a cassette recorder that was *gasp* a toy… kids could play with it and do whatever they wanted.
Cooool.
For me, that meant spending the time playing with it, when everyone else was out haying (as the youngest, or possibly, the most pampered, I didn’t have to help with that grueling job). I recorded radio plays with that recorder. I couldn’t tell you what about, but I performed all the different voices, and created sound effects. I have a powerful memory of crouching over the device and recording the sound of a rubber ball bouncing down the back stairs. Years later I did the same sort of thing with better equipment at Sheridan college. 
Lincoln was always a talker, and a square dance caller, when he wasn’t dancing with my amazing godmother, Hilda. I suspect that temperamentally Dad and Lincoln are a lot alike in many ways – they both love being onstage still. So when Lincoln neared retirement, he took up auctioneering. At which point the neat stuff at the farm seems to have increased exponentially.
Something else that imprinted on me strongly from them was a love of neat stuff. There was always all sorts of truly cool stuff on their farm. Gadgets. Tools. Historical artifacts.
The thing that seems most illogical, though, is Lincoln’s love of animals. It seems odd, somehow, to a soft hearted tree hugging city dweller like me, that the person who raises livestock to eat can lavish such affection on pets and wildlife. When I was very small I was aghast to witness the entire process of a barnyard chicken ending up on the table for dinner. So these days I am tickled to see Lincoln enjoying his pet rooster. When a couple of orphaned squirrels needed relocation, Lincoln and Hilda welcomed them to their farm. Just as I played host to some baby squirrels.
It’s all real life. And I am thankful that Lincoln and Hilda have been such an important part of mine.
I love them both, and have learned much from their dance.
Lincoln dancing with his beautiful wife Hilda (my wonderful godmother)
on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary earlier this year.
Theft by Copyright: C.T. Talman vs. W.S. Hartshorn
I went searching for a photograph of Edgar Allan Poe. You would think it shouldn’t be difficult to find a photograph that can be legally shared online for a famous writer who has been dead since 1849. Even the most draconian copyright laws of today can’t possibly lock up the image of this historical figure.
Or can they?
Doing a Google search for just such an image that I might legally share online, I found this photograph:
Edgar Allan Poe photographed by W.S. Hartshorn, 1848
The image is marked “copyright 1904 by C.T. Talman.”
Who is C.T. Talman? There is no Wikipedia page for C.T. Talman. A Google search returns barely two pages; the only real results direct the searcher back to this photograph. My best guess is that C.T. Talman was a man, since the preponderance of professional photographers of the day were most certainly male. So the Internet gives us very little information about this photographer whose only claim to immortality seems to be to have provided us with this priceless historical record: an image of the literary giant Edgar Allan Poe.
You have to admit, Edgar is looking pretty good in this portrait for a man who has been dead for fifty five years.
Well, it’s Poe, right? He was the king of supernatural fiction after all.
All kidding aside, how could C.T. Talman have taken this picture?
The easy answer is that he didn’t.
Searching further, this very image was used as the biographical portrait for the Wikipedia article about Edgar Allan Poe, but the image is identified as the “1848 “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype of Poe.” Clearly the photograph was taken 55 years prior to the 1904 date inscribed on it by C.T. Talman.
The Wikipedia page doesn’t tell us anything about C.T.Talman on the File:Edgar Allan Poe 2 retouched and transparent bg.png page, but provides a link to the original upload of the image, which does:
A photograph of a daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe 1848, first published 1880.
Taken by W.S. Hartshorn, Providence, Rhode Island, on November 9th, 1848
The daguerreotype was made by W.S. Hartshorn and then re-photographed (copied) by C.T. Talman in 1904.
When W.S. Hartshorn made this Poe daguerreotype, U.S. copyright law did not extend to photography. Photography didn’t come under copyright until 1882 when photographer Napoleon Sarony sued the company that used one of his photographs of Oscar Wilde in an advertisement.
The Poe daguerreotype image was created and published before copyright extended to photographs, placing it in the public domain. At the time, American Copyright law required an act of registration for work to come under “copyright protection.” Yet when C.T. Talman later photographed the photograph – made a copy of this image, he affixed his own copyright on the image. Did this take it out of the public domain?
C.T. Talman unquestionably did the world of culture a great service by preserving this important historical image. At the same time, anyone looking at the image sees a copyright declaration which makes it appear C.T. Talman was the author of the photograph, when in fact, what he did was the modern day equivalent of making a scan – or a copy. As I understand it, an exact reproduction of an existing art image does not allow a photographer to assert copyright.
If I were to scan someone else’s image, and then affix my own copyright declaration, I would be guilty of copyright infringement. Back then, the only reason C.T. Talman would have made his copy of W.S. Hartshorn’s daguerreotype, was so that he could then sell the copies. This is what we know today as bootlegging, or piracy. By asserting copyright, C.T. Talman prevented others from doing so. Was this fraud? Bootlegging? Or plagiarism?
Because the worst is that by copying and then defacing this photograph with his own spurious copyright claim, C.T. Talman has secured a bit of immortality by garnering credit that should have gone to the actual photographer, W.S. Hartshorn. Most people looking at the image will see C.T. Talman’s name, and think that he was the photographer.
For myself, I am thankful that The Dark Clown shared this photograph online, because it is the only image of Edgar Allen Poe “labeled for reuse” that Google could find.
What is ironic, is that a tiny thumbnail of this image is stored in the University of Minesota’s Digital Content Library marked “Copyright: Distribution of this material is not authorized.” I would expect an educational institution to make an effort to properly attribute works in the public domain.
the worst thing
This strikes me as yet another example of copyright harming creators.
This image of Edgar Allan Poe was photographed by W.S. Hartshorn and is unquestionably in the public domain.
post script
Thanks to the comments, I’ve learned some new things, and will be revisiting this issue with a new blog article in Early September 2012.
One biggie shared by Terry Alphonse W.S.Hartshorn was actually Samuel Welds Hartshorn (1802 – 1885).
Those of us who can’t afford a surviving 1st Edition of Poe’s 1827 poem Tamerlane can read it online here.
Image Credits
W.S. Hartshorn’s original daguerreotype photograph of Edgar Allan Poe
was copied by C.T. Talman in 1904 and later shared by The Dark Clown
