Bloggers cross-posting to OttawaFoodies [General]
2011 Jul 12
It's just a beef I have with someone copying and pasting blog posts. If they want to summarize and provide a link to their blog I'm okay with that. But when someone posts multiple reviews in a short period of time it just looks like they are copying and pasting all the restaurant reviews from their blog to ottawafoodies. And I wonder about their likelihood they will return to contribute more reviews. Just my two cents... Let the thumbs down continue!
2011 Jul 12
Since this hasn't been moved to the forum yet (though, I feel it should be... Fresh Foodie?), I'm inclined to comment here as a both blogger and a user of the site.
I don't see anything wrong with cross-posting because Ottawa Foodies and a personal blog are two different media, usually with different users. In my mind, someone who takes the effort to write a well-written, beautifully photographed and informed piece that is longer and often more detailed than some of the reviews should be praised. There efforts should be rewarded and yes, they should be allowed to republish that in another forum.
I wonder if someone who has written a number of pieces on their blog and has established themselves as a blogger isn't more likely to return and engage in this community than someone who has not already established themselves in another network? Just my two cents...
I don't see anything wrong with cross-posting because Ottawa Foodies and a personal blog are two different media, usually with different users. In my mind, someone who takes the effort to write a well-written, beautifully photographed and informed piece that is longer and often more detailed than some of the reviews should be praised. There efforts should be rewarded and yes, they should be allowed to republish that in another forum.
I wonder if someone who has written a number of pieces on their blog and has established themselves as a blogger isn't more likely to return and engage in this community than someone who has not already established themselves in another network? Just my two cents...
2011 Jul 13
Thanks Fresh Foodie.
Whew I seem to have ruffled a few feathers! I didn't realize I was going to upset so many people. Or anyone for that matter... (Although I hope I have not created any hard feelings between Food Gypsy and I-;)
But, as I mentioned, I have a personal beef with bloggers that surf in and copy and paste reviews one after another then disappear. The only blogger that has done this and comes to mind so far is Bloggin' Foodie. I am already following Food Gypsy on twitter hence familiar (a little) with her blog. I have also been pm'ing her and she is definitely a nice lady with a wicked sense of humour and she seems to be geniunely interested in sticking around. Perhaps I am over-reacting but I hope everyone can just take this as one of my quirks. (Edit: my comments have not been greyed out yet! Maybe this is a good thing?)
Whew I seem to have ruffled a few feathers! I didn't realize I was going to upset so many people. Or anyone for that matter... (Although I hope I have not created any hard feelings between Food Gypsy and I-;)
But, as I mentioned, I have a personal beef with bloggers that surf in and copy and paste reviews one after another then disappear. The only blogger that has done this and comes to mind so far is Bloggin' Foodie. I am already following Food Gypsy on twitter hence familiar (a little) with her blog. I have also been pm'ing her and she is definitely a nice lady with a wicked sense of humour and she seems to be geniunely interested in sticking around. Perhaps I am over-reacting but I hope everyone can just take this as one of my quirks. (Edit: my comments have not been greyed out yet! Maybe this is a good thing?)
2011 Jul 13
@ pasta lover. I think a few bloggers may have abandoned the site because of a smack down a few months back. They don't want to offend so they just left. As a blogger myself I am not very careful about posting here. I tend to post a tidbit and if you want to visit it's your choice. I have no issues with bloggers who post the whole thing. I am rather enjoying Food Gypsy. I don't review restaurants very often in Ottawa so I don't post often but I'm on here everyday.
2011 Jul 13
I am not keen on the cut and paste approach. Being a food blogger, I think my writing style for my personal blog is totally different than what best suits Ottawa Foodies. I feel that this applies to other Ottawa food bloggers too. Maybe even more so, if I can be so blunt. (About 100 food blogs in Ottawa so no one feel singled out by that comment.) Their personal blog style needs to be different for here. Just the 'facts' ma'am. Skip the prose. This is not the place to dream of a James Beard award. Be clear and concise.
For those who were not regular readers back then, this topic came up last Fall and you can read that thread here:
Forum - Blogs and Reviews.
My comments from last October go like this:
I write reviews on Ottawa Foodies and I also have a blog that is food focused. How I write on my blog might be considered 'flowery' and even perhaps 'personal'. Restaurant reviews is just a small part of my content. Ottawa Foodies is just a small part of my traffic.
When I contribute to Ottawa Foodies, my approach has been to 'cut to the chase' with the details of the experience and how I responded to it. I cut out the 'flowery' and the 'personal' and just leave the 'meat'. I do this partly because I expect that this is what the readership of Ottawa Foodies wants. But also because I know this is how I approach Ottawa Foodies when I am looking to use them as a resource.
My experience is that there are many people who are regulars to Ottawa Foodies because they contribute to the community in some way or they choose to be regular readers. However, there appears to be a number of readers that go to Ottawa Foodies for information who are not 'regulars' and are more random because they happen to be in search of specific information - for sure this applies to out of towners hunting for details on Ottawa eateries.
I have chosen to write my Ottawa Foodies reviews as concise and complete as possible and then invite the reader, if they wish, to go to the blog for more pictures and/or content. I put this direct link for the review at the end in such a way that I do not think is too in your face. I think people passing through would not know one way or another whether I am a blog writer if I just had the blog name in my profile. Also using the direct link to the specific blog entry saves readers from wading through the blog, trying to find the specific more detailed review, as I have a lot of other material on my blog. The reader also may not be reading on Ottawa Foodies at the same time that I have just posted to the blog, so a link to the blog's home page may not be terribly helpful (whether put in the Ottawa Foodies write-up or Ottawa Foodies profile). I prefer not to waste their time trying to find content on my blog if all they want to read is that one particular blog entry. I am not looking to lure readers to the blog in general. The blog is either someone's style or not. And if one blog entry gets them interested, great, but I won't subject them to reading more than they want, if it is just one entry they are looking for.
I am a big supporter of blog writers sharing their material on Ottawa Foodies but I do believe the material needs to stand on its own merits and should not 'require' someone to go to the blog for a complete review. I know some bloggers cut and paste their blog entry into Ottawa Foodies. I choose not to do that because I want to cut out the my flowery and my personal and get right to the 'facts'. [BTW, I developed this thinking by trying to be a regular to Ottawa Foodies as a reader and contributor. I made my fair share of 'rookie' mistakes at the beginning because I hadn't thought it through or I just didn't 'get' it.]
As an FYI, I don't get paid to write my blog and I get nothing from increased traffic to my blog. I have seen the general shilling comment thrown around from time to time and for me I gain no advantage when someone pops in to the blog. I am happy to put in the extra effort to share my blog material with Ottawa Foodies and I hope the way I do my reviews here is servicing the Ottawa Foodies readership while I enjoy my little blogging hobby.
After all, Food is Fun!!
For those who were not regular readers back then, this topic came up last Fall and you can read that thread here:
Forum - Blogs and Reviews.
My comments from last October go like this:
I write reviews on Ottawa Foodies and I also have a blog that is food focused. How I write on my blog might be considered 'flowery' and even perhaps 'personal'. Restaurant reviews is just a small part of my content. Ottawa Foodies is just a small part of my traffic.
When I contribute to Ottawa Foodies, my approach has been to 'cut to the chase' with the details of the experience and how I responded to it. I cut out the 'flowery' and the 'personal' and just leave the 'meat'. I do this partly because I expect that this is what the readership of Ottawa Foodies wants. But also because I know this is how I approach Ottawa Foodies when I am looking to use them as a resource.
My experience is that there are many people who are regulars to Ottawa Foodies because they contribute to the community in some way or they choose to be regular readers. However, there appears to be a number of readers that go to Ottawa Foodies for information who are not 'regulars' and are more random because they happen to be in search of specific information - for sure this applies to out of towners hunting for details on Ottawa eateries.
I have chosen to write my Ottawa Foodies reviews as concise and complete as possible and then invite the reader, if they wish, to go to the blog for more pictures and/or content. I put this direct link for the review at the end in such a way that I do not think is too in your face. I think people passing through would not know one way or another whether I am a blog writer if I just had the blog name in my profile. Also using the direct link to the specific blog entry saves readers from wading through the blog, trying to find the specific more detailed review, as I have a lot of other material on my blog. The reader also may not be reading on Ottawa Foodies at the same time that I have just posted to the blog, so a link to the blog's home page may not be terribly helpful (whether put in the Ottawa Foodies write-up or Ottawa Foodies profile). I prefer not to waste their time trying to find content on my blog if all they want to read is that one particular blog entry. I am not looking to lure readers to the blog in general. The blog is either someone's style or not. And if one blog entry gets them interested, great, but I won't subject them to reading more than they want, if it is just one entry they are looking for.
I am a big supporter of blog writers sharing their material on Ottawa Foodies but I do believe the material needs to stand on its own merits and should not 'require' someone to go to the blog for a complete review. I know some bloggers cut and paste their blog entry into Ottawa Foodies. I choose not to do that because I want to cut out the my flowery and my personal and get right to the 'facts'. [BTW, I developed this thinking by trying to be a regular to Ottawa Foodies as a reader and contributor. I made my fair share of 'rookie' mistakes at the beginning because I hadn't thought it through or I just didn't 'get' it.]
As an FYI, I don't get paid to write my blog and I get nothing from increased traffic to my blog. I have seen the general shilling comment thrown around from time to time and for me I gain no advantage when someone pops in to the blog. I am happy to put in the extra effort to share my blog material with Ottawa Foodies and I hope the way I do my reviews here is servicing the Ottawa Foodies readership while I enjoy my little blogging hobby.
After all, Food is Fun!!
2011 Jul 13
Happy Mouth Blog: Did I miss a smackdown a few months back? Please direct me to the thread. Love to get back in the loop.
For the record, I am not one of the bloggers who has abandoned the site.
I am a HUGE fan of Ottawa Foodies and feel I need to be telling Fresh Foodie more often how much I appreciate it.
I digress a bit. But one reason I really love Ottawa Foodies is that the contributors feel very comfortable saying how they feel about things and actually engaging in dialogue. The forums are really forums. People are generally respectful of different points of view. There is the odd dust up but we manage to recognize when we have behaved badly and work to be better.
Overall, actual discussions are way more useful here than anything happening on Twitter.
3 cheers for Ottawa Foodies.
For the record, I am not one of the bloggers who has abandoned the site.
I am a HUGE fan of Ottawa Foodies and feel I need to be telling Fresh Foodie more often how much I appreciate it.
I digress a bit. But one reason I really love Ottawa Foodies is that the contributors feel very comfortable saying how they feel about things and actually engaging in dialogue. The forums are really forums. People are generally respectful of different points of view. There is the odd dust up but we manage to recognize when we have behaved badly and work to be better.
Overall, actual discussions are way more useful here than anything happening on Twitter.
3 cheers for Ottawa Foodies.
2011 Jul 14
@Food is Fun...it was probably more like a year or more ago...lol. I think it is the thread to which you refer in your post. A lot of opinions on bloggers who are trying to get people over to their sites and that offended some. I for one only post a partial post. You can come visit my site if you wish...or not. It is very easy to come over then pop back. Not sure what the big deal is. Bloggers were accused of doing this to make money. Ha! The only payoff is knowing you have been read and maybe getting some feedback. Bloggers have no means to find out if their writing is being read if they post the whole piece here, unless they get a thumbs up or thumbs down which I feel are completely useless. Is the thumbs down because you don't agree with the review or because you don't like that the blogger has posted only a partial or full review. Who knows? But if a blogger wishes to share an entire piece here, I'm not sure why anyone cares. Pasta Lover mentioned that she didn't want them to then abandon the site. I just said I think, like myself, they are still here, they just don't post as often due to this criticism and not wanting to offend. Blogging is just a fun hobby for me as well.
2011 Jul 14
Three cheers indeed!
From my standpoint, shilling for one's own blog is very different from shilling for one's own restaurant. I don't think there's much monetary gain from increasing blog traffic by posting here.
And I'd much rather see a larger number of high-quality reviews on this site that have been copied-and-pasted from people's blogs than see nothing at all. I use Ottawa Foodies as a trusted aggregator so that I don't have to check 25 other sites to see if a place is good or not.
In summary, Ottawa Foodies reviews are like Perl: there's more than one way to do it.
(That's my one Computer Science joke for the year. I hope you enjoyed it.)
From my standpoint, shilling for one's own blog is very different from shilling for one's own restaurant. I don't think there's much monetary gain from increasing blog traffic by posting here.
And I'd much rather see a larger number of high-quality reviews on this site that have been copied-and-pasted from people's blogs than see nothing at all. I use Ottawa Foodies as a trusted aggregator so that I don't have to check 25 other sites to see if a place is good or not.
In summary, Ottawa Foodies reviews are like Perl: there's more than one way to do it.
(That's my one Computer Science joke for the year. I hope you enjoyed it.)
2011 Jul 14
Thanks everyone for the pros and cons to copy and paste reviews. I know there are a few ottawafoodies folks who joined this website then created their own blogs. I do not have a beef against blogs in general and as a matter of fact I have been reading some of your blogs as time permits. But, like FoodisFun I prefer to read a brief restaurant review on this site then follow the link to the blog post when I have a little more time for reading. When I see a very long restaurant review it's a little off-putting IMO. Also it just *looks* like the person is shilling their own blog. (Momomoto your point is well taken.) Next time I will not be so hasty in making comments and I'm sorry if I upset anyone...
2011 Jul 14
The reviews should be recent, but I think that's a given just as I hope no one comes on here and says "I went to Juniper back in 2007, when it was where Petit Bills is now....yadda yadda"
I see Food is Fun's point that the style of writing *may* be different between a blog and an OF review. But, sometimes it isn't, in which case I don't think that the blogger should be penalized for writing a review that fits both this site and their own.
I see Food is Fun's point that the style of writing *may* be different between a blog and an OF review. But, sometimes it isn't, in which case I don't think that the blogger should be penalized for writing a review that fits both this site and their own.
warby