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Introduction / License

Super User Blog (henceforth called SUB for conciseness) has CC BY-NC-SA logo at the bottom and text saying

podcasts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

It would be good to explicitly state which license is used for posted texts. StackExchange sites use CC BY-SA 3.0, so using it on the blog too seems natural (and possibly even implicitly assumed by others). What do you think?

The "problem"

My real concern though regards reposting own content from or to the SUB. While I don't have any posts there, I was asked to consider writing one. I am happy to contribute to StackExchange ecosystem greatness, but would like to pick Super Users' brains to figure out some good practices that will be useful also for future writers/reposters.

As the author I can obviously do whatever I want with texts I write, publish them wherever I can and using whichever license suits my current mood. That thing alone makes my question theoretically useless. BUT. Some minimal rules could be enforced and written down. Even if they are partially stating obvious things, that's ok - reassuring uncertain writers is a good thing.

You must be aware that some users are concerned about their own content and want to put almost everything they create in one place, like homepage, blog, etc. (Even if my site+blog is almost dead atm, I'm planning to totally rework it, especially for content-oriented features and for instance allow browsing my comments I considered valuable a bit, but which are normally left on various sites and therefore not easily searchable.) It doesn't mean they're overprotective (I lost some texts put somewhere in the past) or overfussy, it's just internet which is getting less and less trustworthy.

Questions

So, here are the main items that should be answered. Mind that it's not about discussing CC BY-SA, but good practices that can, should or will be applied to SUB.

  1. Should reposting from the SUB be discouraged?
    It depends in my opinion on who reposts. If it is the author of the text on SUB I don't see any reason why reposting to her/his own blog/page should be seen as "inappropriate". It's perfectly understandable action. But if reposter is someone else, then it's not that good. Why? Author will fix any spotted mistakes, may improve content in future and so on. While CC BY-SA allows reposting content by someone else as long as attribution exists, it usually won't be updated. Therefore reposting by non-authors usually should not be encouraged.

  2. Should reposting to the SUB be allowed?
    From what I know there is some QA process available before posting anything in SUB. This should assure that high quality will be kept. As long as original post is good enough, I don't see any problem w/ repost. If it should be improved before (like typos, not deep enough coverage of particular subject, etc.), reviewer may ask for fixing this or that and author will (at least should) happily do it (presumably also in her/his original text to avoid unnecessary divergence).

  3. Should mentioning where original post was published be allowed in the SUB?
    It's important question. I don't think it would damage SUB image in any way, but would encourage some writers to post on SUB, because of blog/page promoting behind the scene.

  4. Should author of content reposted to SUB be encouraged to add information in the original post that it was reposted to SUB?
    It's a thing that just came to my mind. I think it would be nice thing to promote-back the SUB.

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  • I reckon the "podcast are..." bit is just there because it was part of the SO blog setup, which the SU blog was created from (I believe), I guess this probably needs fixing. There is a full attribution page as well - on the menu on the right.
    – DMA57361 Mod
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 20:18
  • @DMA57361 Thanks for the information. Somehow I overlooked it. Please, forgive me this time... But it does not cover the whole reposting thing I brought here up (or am I missing something?). So I hope there is no need to close it prematurely.
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 20:31
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    @przemoc My comment barely addresses your question at all - just a minor point in the intro - and that's why it's only a comment and not an answer. The question is perfectly valid, and I see no need to close it at all.
    – DMA57361 Mod
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 20:44
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    FYI, I've now fixed the "podcasts" bit to both correctly reference posts, not podcasts, and to point to the correct CC BY-SA license - thanks for spotting that.
    – DMA57361 Mod
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 20:56
  • @DMA57361 Thanks for quick reaction. BTW I've updated the question by adding one more rhetorical question. :)
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:38
  • Ok, I'll accept KronoS' decent answer, but anyone wanting to add something, like new insightful remark, is free to write new answer. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts, even if they won't cover all aspects of my meta-question!
    – przemoc
    Commented May 6, 2011 at 7:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is a great question, as we're still in the early stages of the development of the blog. Here's what I see:

Should reposting from the SUB be discouraged?

No. In my opinion and understanding, content within SU and blog.SU is community owned by SU. Feel free to blog for us, and to add content to the site. If it's your own post, feel free to repost content, make changes, edit, and even make it better, just be sure to attribute blog.SU and/or SU accordingly. I just ask in return that any changes you make, make the same reflection on the blog. If it's not your content feel free to repost and comment about the content. I ask that you not make any changes to the content, and to fully attribute where you got it.

Should reposting to the SUB be allowed?

If it's content from any of the SE site, then yes. Feel free to post questions, comments and answers to blog.SU. Any changes to those questions should be done SOLELY on the SE sites content themselves, which can now be done by anyone with approved edits.

If the content is from another non-SE affiliated site then DO NO POST UNLESS:

  • You have express consent from the author
  • The site is Creative Commons licensed itself.
  • Is from an online article/journal.

In each of the above cases there NEEDS to be full attribution given to the source of the content reposted.

Should mentioning where original post was published be allowed in the SUB

Yes. I follow this procedure whenever I repost or quote material.

Finally, the purpose of the Blog is to bring attention back to Super User. If by allowing reposting of the content this is achieved then I feel we have succeeded in this endeavor.

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  • excellent answer!
    – studiohack Mod
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 20:52
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    I laid on table discouraging of reposts from SUB by non-authors, because it's existing problem in internet. It's easy to copy-paste anything, it's hard to maintain it further and keep up-to-date. And I am not even mentioning reposters violating attribution part of the license... So while we cannot forbid such reposting, I would discourage it and add additional remark about updating it in case of changes in future, in this repost is "unavoidable".
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:09
  • @prxemoc no matter what you do, there will be people that just copy and paste and do nothing else. However, I believe that if we encourage a sense of attribution of where you got the material this is fine. If there's a link back to us, then updated content will eventually be viewed, and we get more attention which is ultimately the goal.
    – James Mertz
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:16
  • You went further than I thought about reposting to SUB. I meant only reposting authors own content, like suggesting repost on SUB of text someone already have written. Reposting definitely requires author's consent (if repost submission is done by author it's obvious) and CC license (or proclaim of (1) releasing such text on SUB and implicitly agreeing on CC, (2) releasing such text w/ CC license therefore allowing using it on SUB). It's understandable when authors want to publish text on blog first and then submit to for SUB, and not the other way.
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:19
  • @Kronos Just nitpicking, but try to not misspell my nick. It's not the first time I see it changed in exactly that way. It's not English nick, so don't try to read it in mind in English, because you'll fail. :)
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:22
  • I am not sure whether reposting from online article/journals is that easy (but IANAL). In such cases CC BY-SA is usually not used, so it should require special care IMO. I very like underlined NEED to provide full attribution. It's often forgotten in internet (not saying particularly about StackExchange here).
    – przemoc
    Commented May 4, 2011 at 21:25
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    The whole purpose of the blog is to put SU content in the spotlight, so some degree of reposting would be required, else we're just another HuffPo...
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 8:36

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