"Digital Sharecropping"? Hah | Hacker News Reader

"Digital Sharecropping"? Hah

itgoon.blogspot.com

16 pointsitgoon3 comments

Jeff is trying to get across is that before you devote an amount of effort towards something powered by user generated content, you should ask yourself a few questions.

Near the end of the post, he lists a set of questions you may want to ask yourself:

    * What do you get out of the time and effort you've invested in this website? Personally? Professionally? Tangibly? Intangibly?

    * Is your content attributed to you, or is it part of a communal pool?

    * What rights do you have for the content you've contributed?

    * Can your contributions be revoked, deleted, or permanently taken offline without your consent?

    * Can you download or archive your contributions?

    * Are you comfortable with the business model and goals of the website you're contributing to, and thus directly furthering?

That is probably the most important part of Jeffs post, and I think IT Goon missed that part

I didn't miss that part. That's where Jeff posts the criteria _he_ looks at.

His assumption is that those criteria are not just good for _everyone_ who uses a user-generated-content site, but for _all_ user-generated content.

Mr. Atwood thinks that users should receive more for their efforts, and backs it up by giving more at the sites he runs. I respect that.

Try running his criteria past the user of a typical MySpace user. I'd bet the answers run a lot like this:

  * my friends can see it
  * my name is at the top, so it is me
  * I don't care (excepting serious artists, who should know better by now)
  * yes, if I'm a jerk
  * All I care about are my pictures, and I have copies
  * are they killing children in Rwanda, or something?

Grumpy, I would say. Did we overlook the part where Atwood helps run Stackoverflow which is entirely powered by user generated content?

I think Jeff raises a good question, but unfortunately uses a bit of a hysterical headline.

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