It has long been my contention that like any paid spanking website, running a spanking blog encounters the same problems in that you can’t please everyone all the time. A comment in the post two below this one got me to thinking, the comment read that blogs need to be more accommodating to curious browsers.
So let me take up this challenge, the etiquette of blogging.
Over on the SPANKING UNIVERSE I have now added 190 different spanking blogs, and I simply LOVE the wide scope and variety that is being offered, whether it be in the written form, or through visual means. There are so many choices out there. One thing that I have thought of doing was selecting a post of the day, however, I’m really not sure whether or not I could keep pace with that. At least for today though I will make a post of the day, and this one goes out to a new blog I discovered, Prayers and Pashmina’s for their post on Bratting. Click on the highlighted part to visit the topic that was posted.
A long time ago when I was setting up my main blogs I searched around for features that I thought would enhance the website overall. Some of these worked and some of them didn’t. The ones that did work though, well, wouldn’t you know that they started showing up on every spanking blog you could imagine. My Feedjit widget that shows where everyone is coming from, the widget that tells the readers how many people are currently on the site, even the chatbox that I once had. After I had spent an age searching for these features, it was simple for other blogs to simply click on the link that my widget provided and then add it for themselves. Was it a bother to me? Of course it wasn’t, they are awesome features and I think they enhance anyone’s blog. In fact some blogs even took the time to tell their readers that they snaffled the idea from my site and kindly provided a link, others just grabbed it without a mention.
So the ideas of spanking bloggers are clearly something that is incorporated by other bloggers, as a few examples I could offer these. My idea for ‘Blog love’ was used by other blogs, though those that did if I remember clearly stated that they borrowed the idea from me.
So am I stating that I am alone in having my ideas taken by others, not in the least? I, myself, have borrowed the ideas of others to enhance my own site. The color scheme of this blog was pretty much inspired by the color scheme that Pixie chose. In fact Pixie is someone who always helps me with my blog, whether it by from formatting to presentation to creating little icons for me to use. While it isn’t something that I am not snaffling from someone, it is still the ideas of others that I am incorporating.
Are there other ideas that I have taken and ran with? Sure there are, and here are the ones that I used. My SPANKING GALLERIES page was not taken from any spanking blog, but the concept of using a TGP website was inspired by the many regular porn websites that do the same thing. Unlike the ideas of mine that were snaffled above, I can’t simply click on a link and magically make the galleries appear, I have to put in serious amounts of time to create somewhere in the region of 300 galleries. The idea of promoting HOT MOVIES I first saw on The Cherry Red Report. Of course I took the idea and went nutso in regards to creating a platform for promoting it. Will the widget that I use for promoting Hot Movies be picked up by other blogs? You can bet your sweet ass that it will be. Now I don’t feel overly bad for using someone else’s idea because by checking my CCBill referred affiliates, I am able to see which blogs directly took websites from my blog, I know this because as a referring website I get 5% of whatever they earn 😉
The biggest etiquette problem that I encounter though, is the one where one blog will take a picture that someone else has posted and not so much as give them the briefest of mentions. There is this blog in Hungary which, at one point, I could have sworn was a mirror site of RichardWindsor.com. Not only that, but I have seen this guy go so far as to post WHOLE posts that other blogs made. Go check it out if you want a laugh…… Hungary Snafflepuss!!
Now clearly there are going to be times where we all post the same pic, especially if we are looking in the same places, but come on now, if you lift a pic from another spanking blog isn’t it just plain courtesy to provide a link? Now of course from a collection you may have another blogs archived pics and you simply don’t remember where they came from, I know this has happened and will continue to happen. One French blog one time stated that he didn’t remember where the pics came from, they just so happened to have all been from the same post that I made a year earlier 😉
Linking is another issue and I don’t think there is an easy answer to this one. Any blog owner should have the right to add, or not add, any blog that they wish, regardless of whether they are being linked to. Now being that I have just linked 190 blogs and only about 15% link back I think I can speak on that topic first hand. Do I wish that more people are taking the time to link back into the SPANKING UNIVERSE, yes, I really do, because the whole idea of the universe is for the community to share their readers with everyone else. I think we will get there in the end, at least up to about 50% anyway. It is my guess that the Universe will just grow and grow, and based on the early reports it has already proved to be a successful idea. I’m not going to force anyone to link in though, I can only ask politely that they do so, and perhaps hope that once they see the increased visitor numbers they will do so on their own volition. The only point that I see that becoming a problem is if someone is reaping the benefits of huge numbers of visitors, but they are not sharing their own visitors, but I will address that as it happens. You also have to remember that I added blogs to that list that are owned by Richard Windsor haters, though they will be the easiest ones to delete should I get a pissy on 😉
I have so much more to write about, but I will have to leave that for a second part as the rest of today is going to be a busy one. Feel free to challenge my thoughts, I encourage it.
ok this is just me as a nonblogger, so I have a different POV especially not having the blog obsession bug 😀 . I really don’t get what the fuss is about. People see something cool on a blog (or profile on a social networking site) and try it out on their own all the time and I rarely see any kind of credit given to someone else who had the same thing or had it before the other person.
Now I’m not talking here about stealing whole posts or lying and presenting someone else’s experiences as their own. I remember one guy (non-english speaking blog) taking pretty much an entire post you wrote about your experiences as a teen in London and posted it on HIS blog as if it were him, including the pics you had on there saying those were ones he had from back then. Of course that is flat out lying and pretty low in my opinion. Same with taking someone’s personal pics and trying to pass them off as yourself. Low and really, a little pathetic.
I mean grabbing some game, widget, video, song, or picture they saw and liked and using it on their blog or page. Unless the “first” blogger has actually created or copyrighted the item in question, it wasn’t theirs to begin with. The first person got it from somewhere too unless they actually took the pic or video themselves. But if you link the same movie clip off of Youtube that someone else had as well, I don’t necessarily see a need for some kind of credit to the first person. Might be nice of them, but that’s about it. Even if a person followed the link from a blog and later used it, doesn’t mean they didn’t also research other ideas as well and then settled on that one as the one they liked best……just like the first person did.
Now as I said, I’m not a blogger so I don’t really know all the work that really goes into all this stuff, so maybe that’s why I don’t really get it.
The Spanking Universe Blog is a good idea. I’ve noticed though that it takes 12 hours or more sometimes for my updates to show up and move me up the list, even when my rss feed is up to date.
Todd — I had completely forgotten about the whole Spankopoly post, lol. Did you enjoy your trip to Eastern Europe? 😉
Munchkin — Likewise, I had forgotten that other blogger who ripped a complete post off of mine, even using the same pictures that I used. Thing is, being that it was in French I would have missed it save for the pictures alerting me.
Now then, in regards to ownership of pictures, you are of course 100% correct, however, there are exceptions to that. The very first spanking picture that I had taken was with Pixie. Within a DAY, A DAY, that picture was posted by Hapgood Baines as being a picture of him and his neighbor, Denise!! He even cut my name out of the pic before he posted it. Likewise, my goal on this blog is to find unique and rare pics for everyone to see and enjoy, so much so in fact that I can spend hours researching our favorite subject, scouring for rare pics and videos. So okay, while I may not be the ‘owner’ of said domain pic, I do spend an absurd amount of time as a hobby looking for spanking pics.
Again it was fairly recently that after about 4 hours of searching, I came across a picture of Natalie Wood being spanked by Nick Adams, and a never before seen pic of Natalie being spanked by Tab Hunter (A different one to the one we all know and love). Yet again, the very next day, the same prick posted them stating that he had just discovered them. Yes, he did, he discovered them on my blog!! Now on the reverse side of that, Chross has pretty much copied all of those pics, and a part of the write up that I did, but this is why I don’t mind at all that he did that.
Alongside the pics he has posted a link stating where he got the pics from, and he credits me as the source. Now the reason I find that important? It is because I put in so much time creating that post, and researching the material, that it meant a lot to me that someone recognized the effort that I had put in.
Also, Chross has compiled a relative resource guide of materials collected from various sources for the benefit of the viewer. Based on that I am more than happy to contribute my finds as the spanking community as a whole benefits 🙂
So overall, I think the finds that I make are to a small degree one of the reasons that make my blog unique in its own way. So it does bother me when someone else is taking credit for the work that I put in 🙂
Spanky — There is a small problem with the cache on the Spanking Universe. There is a general delay of about an hour before a new post is shown, sometimes sooner, but if you keep the same browser open the home page doesn’t seem to change. You can be assured that everyone else can see it though. Here is an idea, make a post and then give it half an hour, then open up another browser (Like firefox) and check to see if you see your new post on the Universe then.
Ricihard: You are right, it’s a cache problem. I’ve discovered that control-F5 in Firefox forces a reload of all page elements, which seems to work for me. Thanks!