I'm mostly addressing this to Broker Bryant, and of course Bob.

BB,

The issue is that it is wise for Active Rain to modify their current rules with regard to reblogging, because as it stands now, reblogging is "plagiarizing with permission"...but still plagiarizing. Without some type of context from the blog author, the post appears to have been written by the person whose blog it is. This is misleading to consumers.

The whole concept of blogging is so that the buying and selling public can choose a good agent based on what they have said on their blog. The writings on someone's blog should give us a good feel for who that person is, the degree of their expertise on the topics at hand, and whether or not to trust them with the job of selling a home or assisting in the purchase of a home. 

THERE IS A STANDARD RULE in for lack of a better term "The Blogosphere" with regard to bouncing off your ideas from someone else's writings. That is to cut and paste a sentence or two from the other person's blog post. Google recognizes a sentence or two and then a link to the full post as not plagiarism. The poster who does the cut and paste of a sentence or two writes an entire new blog post around the subject of the original post either agreeing with it, or posting a counter point. THAT is the standard rule for this practice.

Active Rain went to the opposite extreme of allowing FULL reblogging with no content added by the new poster. I am glad that they are rethinking that position (though I clearly haven't lost any sleep over the issue one way or the other). I am glad because the new policy is more in line with what is generally acceptable, and helps bloggers know what is expected of them with regard to blog writings outside of Active Rain. 

In other words, the new policy helps all Active Rain Bloggers gain the respect of their peers outside of Active Rain, and that is a good thing for all Members of Active Rain.

It isn't the amount of words of course that establishes if you are actually using the reblog feature correctly, and Bob's suggestion of 25 words does not necessarily take it up to the generally recognized standard...but it's a step in the right direction and I think a good first step. 

I say try 25 words and see if people use those 25 words correctly. Sometimes 25 words will be too many (I can think of many examples) and sometimes 25 words will be not enough. But a huge venue like AR has to have a number of words they can put into the system for automated monitoring purposes. So 25 is as good as most any number.

Bob, I think it's a step in the right direction. I would go a step further and require those 25 words to be the introduction to the reblogged piece, so that consumer readers can easily identify that the writing below it is NOT the product of the blog owner. There are several good options.

1) An automated introduction of one or two sentences that AR automatically posts at the top of any reblogged article, noting that the writing below that disclosure is NOT the writing of the blog owner, and is being reprinted with the actual author's permission. This would save people the trouble of having to make up something to say, that may or may not be appropriate, just to use up the 25 words.

2) REQUIRE that the 25 words be written by the blog owner...but allow them to use the SAME 25 words for any and all reblogged posts. This way they can come up with a generic intro that they can simply cut and paste into all of their reblogged posts.

3) Give them the option of either 1) or 2) by giving them a sample 25 words that they are allowed to use OR replace with their own language, by having a button they push when reblogging that says:

   a) Use Active Rain generic reblog intro 

                  OR

   b) Insert your intro of 25 words or more HERE (box for text)

I like the last one and Active Rain can come up with a suitable intro without the 25 word restriction. 

BB - to me the issue is not about 25 words. It is about making it clear to consumer readers that the writings do not reflect the general skill level of the blog owner. Blogs are not like websites. A website can be written by a professional public relations person and do not necessarily reflect the skill and intelligence level of the website owner. Blogs on the other hand should reflect the abilities of the blog owner OR note that the writings were not done by the blog owner. The same can be said of Ghost Writing, and have been said of ghost writing for blogs But that's another topic that has already been beaten to death with no consensus conclusion :)

Kudos Bob!!! A good "New Rule" regardless of how you eventually tweak the detail. I would likely allow reblogging with this new rule and maybe even blog here more. So in that sense it is a GREAT rule. It could bring you more writers AND more writers who allow reblogging. So that would make it a good new rule anyway you slice it.

Roger,

As I said in the comment, it is not "my" definition of "plagiarism"...it is Google's. You can have a different one, but the one I use is Google's, whom I happen to respect as a noted authority as to "web content" and "duplicate" content.

I second that loving the Mark Hitz dude, TLW! Awesome comment and perspective.

TLW,

To me it's kinda like teaching your kids how to copy the answers off of someone else's test paper before sending them to school...and also how to sit next to the right person to copy from! LOL! It might be a "successful strategy"...but there's something not quite "right" about it.