Lessons Learned in eParticipation Blogging
4. September 2009 – 18:28 by Olga Lacigova - 21cEven though eParticipation is a growing field, we can all agree that the topic of social inclusion in decision making does not saturate mass media and social networking websites on daily basis. This is not surprising to us as we would not be here if eParticipation replaced headlines that for example Michael Jackson makes.
For me, as a newcomer to this moving field, it is quite challenging to find news and information that could make a good Pep-Net blog. Trying to avoid writing about events and conferences I looked for ideas on Google News and found several very interesting articles on eDemocracy in the US and Europe. After paraphrasing what I have read online I posted an article on our Pep-Net blog citing the full source of my writing. Unwillingly and due to a lack of my experience in paraphrasing I have committed to plagiarism which I would like to apologize for.
By writing about my experience I aim to stress the importance of authoring the articles we post as the failure to do so can endanger our position on search engines as well as it can harm our relation with the EC.
by Oli Lacigova
3 Responses to “Lessons Learned in eParticipation Blogging”
By Tim on Sep 8, 2009
Which blog post of yours are you referring to?
A good way to discover (some of the) interesting content out there is to subscribe to various keyword searches (e.g. from Google, Twitter etc.) via RSS. That way the good stuff comes to you rather than you having to constantly look for the good stuff.
By Oli on Sep 8, 2009
Hi Tim and All,
Thanks a lot for your advice! So far, I was looking for inspiration on Google News but will try Twitter for sure!
The article I was referring to in my blog has been removed because the content was to similar to the original text.
Best Regards, Oli
By Rolf Lührs on Sep 8, 2009
Dear Olga,
well, there is nothing to say against referring to other articles, paraphrasing and/ or quotations. Another thing is just to duplicate content without making sufficiently clear what comes from you and what has been taken from other authors.
In the respective posting you left the headline of the original posting unchanged and took complete parts of the original text without indication that this text has been quoted. Furthermore you did not add anything to the text such as your own viewpoint. Finally you did not link to the particular blog post nor did you mention the author. The only hint you gave the reader that the text or parts of it have not been written by you was something like: “source: domain”.
For the following reason we unpublished the article:
1) The reader could not decide who wrote what
2) The quoted parts have not been highlighted
3) The original author has not been mentioned
4) There was no link to the original post
However, it is clear that this has not been done on purpose and it might provide a good opportunity to discuss general rules for postings on our blog. Following these rules would at least prevent us to be blamed for duplicating content of others.
This of course does not guarantee for the quality of the posting. It would be interesting to discuss this as well.
Bests,
Rolf