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Rant: Jorah Speaks Frankly about Originality!
Author:
Posted: November 18th. 1997
Times Viewed: 11,942
Hi. My name is Jorah Moss Lavin , and I'm the web manager for Madstone Press Web Design .
I've been a member of the Pagan community since 1981, and I've been online since spring, 1996.
I've got strong opinions on many subjects, but usually keep them to myself. This time I decided to speak, because I think that people are shortchanging themselves and the community by rushing onto the Web with ill-considered material in an attempt to be popular or because "you have to have a page up, right?" The following rant was written as a letter to the Pagan Webcrafters Association email list as part of a thread on people stealing html, original writings, and images from the Web and using them as their own work.
If you want to comment about this rant, you can send flames or suggestions to me at jorah@visto.com . Well-written and thoughtful replies will be posted to the Web and linked to this page.
<RANT>
I've often suggested that people use nothing borrowed on their sites. Why do it? If you've ever encountered a site which had nothing new on it, and wondered why anyone bothered to do the page, then you are seeing one of the most direct results of copying... boredom. I must have seen 20 sites with a "basics of Paganism {witchcraft, wicca, etc.}" page which in no way added to the sum total of human knowledge. If you can't present something new on that topic, why put the page up? Why not just link to an existing page with the needed info? Then, spend all the time you've freed up by not building a copy-cat site, and think over your own philosophy of Paganism, (or whatnot) and type as much as you can about that. Then... (and here is the kicker) DON'T publish it right away, but edit it, revise it, show it to friends, get feedback, and then decide whether it should go out into the world. Heck, if your writing, art, whatever, can't stand that kind of scrutiny for a week or two, it shouldn't go out to the world anyway. Sound like a lot of work? It is. That's why I don't have a personal site of that type. I know that I don't have the time or passion right now to do it. Now, my photography is something else. But I'm not going to start a photography page and then put someone else's photographs on it, am I? Hah! No way. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that is what you do if you duplicate someone else's work on your page.
Well, if you think of it, you probably haven't ever read all those copy-cat pages of stuff on anyone else's site, and I know that I wouldn't waste my time doing it, either. I'd rather take my ten minutes of "free" web browsing time and read an original three-paragraph rant on your vision of the goddess than look at any number of "basics of witchcraft" pages.
Do you think that I'm ruling out your doing pages if you can't gather a ton of your own material to make a whole site? No way. But what do you think would happen if you cooperated with some friends? One person does a photo or drawing, someone else writes a poem, another one rants, someone else makes an interesting border design... result? One interesting page, instead of five different sites.
Oh, this is supposed to showcase your "uniqueness"?
Well, think about it. Putting the same clip-art doodads on yet another page on the Web doesn't showcase anything... Show me something that you care about, not something you grabbed off another page... </RANT>
Permission to distribute this document via any means is hereby granted so long as it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.
Article Specs
Article ID: 2061
VoxAcct: 66016
Section: fritz
Age Group: Teen
Days Up: 5,664
Times Read: 11,942
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