Moving to Restricted Feed

By 14 commentsBlog, General

Now this is what I would say is putting foot in mouth, as I have always been a supporter of complete feed. The idea was why force the user to visit your site and specially that a lot of times some or the other sites are blocked in the offices the user should be able to read the post.

Now recently an event which made me thinking if I should reconsider my stand in the wake of latest technology and things which it has enabled. A few days back I got a pingback from the website of Pratik Patel. I went over to his website and I could see some of my posts on his site word by word. I was about to blast him and inform people that my blog was being plagiarized. It was then I noticed that my post was under the shared heading and there was small link saying that this was shared on the Google reader and there was a link to my blog.

So I was assured this was definitely not a case of Plagiarism but still the idea that people were reading my blog on some other site, without my permission and knowledge is a bit disturbing, specially given that people might comment on the site the post was shared and the opinion would never reach my ears. The fact that we share the same first name was not helpful either. Here is a link to one of the posts which was shared  on the site in case you want to see.

So I feel that I should move to restricted feeds like a lot of other bloggers do, this is something which I felt was an irritant but sometimes you got to choose your priority. What do you folks feel about this issue. Though for now I am going with a reduced feed (which is a knee-jerk reaction) but if convinced I am open to revert back to the complete feeds.

So come on people help me out here.

14 comments on “Moving to Restricted Feed”

  1. Smita Reply

    I have always preferred full feeds!! but the reason for your moving to restricted feed is justified! What all can happen on internet na?

    • Prats Reply

      @Smita: Yeah. And I don’t blame that guy either he is completely justified and correct in what he has done. But it just feels a bit weird to see your own post in someone else’s site 😐

  2. Ruchira Reply

    err .. i really don’t fully know what a restricted feed is …. but I went to the panipoori wala post through the link you provided and it really does give the impression that the post was written by the other Prateek. So I can understand your reasons. As long as I can continue to read the ur blog I guess it doesn’t matter. But for the idiots like me can u explain what a restricted feed wld do ??

    • Prats Reply

      @Ruchira: Well when you subscribe to the feed in a feed reader like Google reader, the blogger has an option that the reader can show a complete post or it can just show a couple of lines. The later where it shows a couple of lines is called a restricted feed, and to read the complete article one has to visit the blog by clicking on the feed. It becomes a problem if the blog/site is banned on your office network or something hence I always preferred completed feeds to restricted feeds.

      • Ruchira Reply

        hmm well I can open word press at work but BlogSpot is blocked by office (so actually I can’t even open my own blog at work since it’s on blogger!) While at work,I read blogs hosted on blogspot through my google reader. Perhaps this might inconvenience a few of your readers. But still I agree with your reasons. If a reader is really interested he/she will come to your blog and read.

  3. Pratik Patel Reply

    Hey Prats,
    This is Pratik from the site you are referring to in the post. Let me apologize for any confusion that I have created by sharing (or read ‘copying’ if you wish) your post on my site.
    My intention was to share good/important/fun stuff that I come across over the internet. I never thought that it might fall under plagiarism.
    I understand that linking to the original post doesn’t justify copying it in its entirety. I assure you that I would make changes to the “feed in” system that I am using so that it doesn’t publish the entire post on my site.

    But please, I would request you to include complete posts in your feed. I am a regular reader of your posts and admire the work that you are publishing.

    Cheers and keep walking…

  4. Shantanu Reply

    Hey Prats,

    I mostly read your blog in the Google Reader feed(even though it works in office). But I still think moving to a restricted feed is a bad idea.

    I know how badly it hurts when one of the blogs that is regularly updated goes for a partial feed.

    In Mr. Patel’s case, he is republishing your content without your express permission. That way he is increasing the content on his blog using your posts. I don’t doubt his intentions. But I think this will hamper your blog’s traffic. You can actually ask some SEO friend to look into this and then maybe ask Mr. Patel to pull your blog posts down/unsubscribe from your blog. Losing one reader would be better than losing many readers. Mr. Patel can subscribe to your blog via email if he loves it so much.

    I’d suggest you reconsider this decision. Mr. Patel’s actions can be termed as content leeching(even though he may not have intended it) and you can ask him to stop(considering he never asked your permission in the first place).

    Cheers.
    Tantanoo

    (P.S.: The book-reading component of my morale nosedived after adding you on GoodReads. Just FYI.)

    • Pratik Patel Reply

      Shantanu,
      It’s not that I was republishing every single post from this blog. That said, I don’t think I need to unsubscribe from this blog as all I have to do is break the connection between my google reader shared items and my blog which is already done.
      I have already deleted shared posts from this blog and others. I am looking into ways of sharing stuff on my blog without hampering traffic (and hopefully increase) on the source site.
      And as far as permission to republish is concerned, It seems that G&C is under Creative commons. That means anybody can share the posts with proper Attribution and in Noncommercial, non-derivative way. If Prats wants to stop this, he should consider changing the license.

    • Prats Reply

      @Shantanu: I am not sure if Pratik is at fault, but I would give it a benefit of doubt because it seems like doing of Automation. Apart from that knowing the issue he has agreed to address the same which resolves the problem 🙂
      Ps. On the GoodReads bit, follow Poonam or Smita from my friends list because my Moral hits all time low when I read their lists 🙂

      • Shantanu (@tantanoo) Reply

        @Prateek and Prats: That comment sounded more positive in my head than on the blog. And Pratik’s comment wasn’t visible at the time I posted it. So apologies if that sounds accusing.

        What I meant was that this mode of sharing can come under the umbrella of leeching(even though it was intentional) and can hurt the page-rank-other-google-stuff of the blog(s). Agree with you on the creative commons bit too, but *proper* attribution can mean different things to different people. Looking at that post, it was kind of difficult to tell that it’s not been written by you(even though the source link was there). That’s all.

        But then if you use a plug-in or tool to push shared items to a blog, there is little you can do. I’ve faced the same issue on my blog, trying to share my Google Reader shared items without any such hassles.

        Google actually comes down really hard on websites with duplicate content and that’s a cause of concern. I am not very SEO-y but I stopped republishing my Faking News articles on my blog for the same reason.

        Anyway, ignore my accusatory tone. It was a knee-jerk reaction to hearing the news of one of the few regular blogs on my reader list going partial.

        Cheers!
        Shantanu

  5. Ramesh Reply

    He seeems to have deleted your posts. But even if he didn’t, let it go Prats. Consider it a tribute to your writing that somebody wants to lift stuff. I know its not good form to lift content, but for the star blogger and author that you are, you are above all this. This blog is a pleasure for us readers, and you are graciously doing this not for commercial purposes. Let it go. Keep it as the complete feed. Although I come to your site to read your posts, others might be taking advantage of the feed. Let it be.

    • Prats Reply

      @Ramesh: Thanks for the support, I have reverted back with a detailed post n the after story and details 🙂

  6. Reema Reply

    I had my taste of plagiarism when a guy (forgot his name) copied my entire post and posted as his own. As soon as I blasted him, he removed it but didn’t respond to me. But I still keep my feed complete and thats why I get so less comments on my posts I think.

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