Fair Use, Long Quotes, and Quoting without Sources

Forum Feedback
1

Recently I cannot help but notice people are quoting huge blocks of quotes or entire posts from other persons, rather than a snippet and a link, which to my mind is perhaps not best practice in terms of fair use and also may lend to comments being read out of context.

Similarly people are posting quotes, conceivably from outside iNat, as points to be taken as truths, with no sources provided.

Obviously I will not link to examples so I hope this feels clear.

I wonder if some Forum guidelines might be developed about best practice for quotes when one is citing the works/ words of others.

Admittedly I am not aware as to the current thinking for formal papers and/or iNat’s vision / international partners. (I do know when I was in university, these practices would not have been acceptable.)

2

I appreciate the concern for forum etiquette but I think it’s helpful to look at this through a slightly different lens.

An internet forum operates under very different norms than a university or a formal academic paper. Here, quoting and sharing information freely, even without immediate citations is an integral feature of how we communicate. Not necessarily a flaw.

When someone posts an unverified quote or a large block of text, it isn’t always meant to be taken as an absolute unshakeable truth. Instead it often serves as a jumping-off point for the community. It allows everyone to gauge the opinion, dive into the topic, and use our collective resources to verify whether the information is accurate or right.

Holding informal forum posts to more rigid academic like standards might accidentally discourage the kind of casual, open brainstorming and collaborative vetting that makes platforms like this thrive.

3

I expect that most quotes of forum posts within the forum are in replies to those posts. In that situation I don’t see any major issues with fair use or context. (In the context of UseNet or email quoting material that you’re replying to is standard practice.) The purpose of quoting is to retain context - it’s less pressing on web-based fora than in UseNet groups, email, or mailing lists to the degree that a series of messages are presented as a single unit, but it still applies, especially on long topics. There is a presumption in favour of only quoting what you are directly replying to (at the risk of being accused of removing context.

I think you need to elaborate on what you think the problem is. (Is it cross-topic posting?)

On the other hand I do agree that people should cite their sources for external material.

4

I have not been clear, which is something with which I struggle, I apologize. I do not mean to say this should mirror academic settings, only that that is the last time I have been schooled in quotes.

I cannot link to what I mean, so let me put this a different way and hope it is clearer.

This morning, I posted here:

I very intentionally linked to @sedgequeen’s thread because it was about plants, yes? And I knew that if the OP read there, she would find the link to how to use “similar observation set”.

Imagine instead, I just quoted this post, in its entirety.

Doing that would give her the how to, yes, but it would take it out of its discussion context which includes so many tips, thoughts, and other wonderful bits. I don’t think that is especially helpful.

So that is one example. Another is that it smudges who said what. Later, the mind begins to search for the post one remembers, and I do not know if search fields include quoted material on Discourse.

5

I think I’ve seen one of the behaviors you’re talking about with possibly excessive in-forum quoting of other users’ posts in different topics than they were originally made in.

Someone, usually new to the forum, starts a new topic about a situation they have encountered, and people respond by quoting whole blocks of text from a similar topic. Sort of along the lines of:

“In a similar topic, so-and-so wrote: (entire post or long paragraph) and different-so-and-so wrote: (entire post) and third-so-and-so-wrote: (entire post.)”

Which in this case is attributed and sourced, but still seems a little like stealing the original writers words.

I have mixed feelings about the practice.

Pro: If the similar topic the quotes were taken from is long and wanders off on tangents, pulling relevant quotes is more helpful to the OP than just linking to the similar thread.

Pro: If the member being quoted was going to say the exact same thing again, the one doing the quoting just saved them the effort.

Con: Maybe there are subtle differences in the situations being described by the OP of each topic, and the person being quoted would not have given the same response they did over there.

Con: Maybe the writer’s opinion has evolved over time, and they’d prefer something they wrote years ago not be dredged up. Or maybe their opinion is the same, but they’ve found a better way to articulate it.

Con: It gives the one doing the quoting a lot of power to cherry-pick quotes they agree with and make it seem like “the community feels this way” even if those quotes may have had a lot of pushback in the thread where they originally appeared. (Not saying I’ve seen it be abused, just that the potential is there.)

Con: This one is kind of silly, but I know some people care about forum stats. The person posting the quotes receives likes that should have gone to the original authors, if they had been given the chance to see the new topic and post their own response on it.

I’m undecided as to whether the first pro is a big enough benefit to outweigh all of the cons.

I don’t think I’ve seen any unattributed quotes, so can’t comment on that aspect.

6

Sometimes it feels like we’re going in circles revisiting the same subjects over and over again while reiterating the same opinions. I like to wishfully imagine it as going in spirals, building on previous discussions to get closer to a true understanding of the situation. But that only works if we do refer to the previous discussions.

My preference is to quote only the most relevant line from a post from another thread and then hope that readers will go to that thread and read the post and the rest of the thread to understand the context. However my experience is that many people aren’t willing to put that amount of work into understanding a point, and some are annoyed by being directed to years-old threads with many replies, even if they’re about exactly the same subject.

7

Yes, and WE are (politely) annoyed to be expected the greet the same tired point again. I have seen you before. A brief quote is a good response. But I also remember how kindly some people explained how to iNat to me.

8

I think the key here is that users are quoting other users and that largely indicates to me that they are making a good faith effort to give credit and be accurate. I think it’s ok to use links, brief quotes, or large quotes. If Discourse’s quoting feature is used, it’s easy enough for other users to follow a conversation back to its source. Not all users know how to use that feature, so I try to educate those about it that don’t, since it is an effective tool.

Every quote is, by definition, taken out of context to some degree. The general functions of quoting are to highlight key points efficiently (since it isn’t always reasonable to ask someone to read a novel or a 300-post thread) and give credit. Sometimes this can be effectively done with a quote of one line, sometimes it might take a block, sometimes a conversation might be so long that a quote is ineffective and maybe a link to an entire (300-post) thread would be the best approach. Users might reasonably disagree over what the most effective way to quote would be in any given context, and that’s ok.

The only things that wouldn’t be ok would be intentionally misquoting or quoting in bad faith to misrepresent someone’s position. In my experience, this happens very infrequently on the forum. In the cases I have seen where users expressed that they felt quotes didn’t represent their thoughts, these were generally honest mistakes or missed communications (varyingly by the quoter, quotee, or both). Discussion of the specific quotes has often lead to clarification in these situations and clearer communication on the specific point, so I think it is a productive process.

I agree with others that, when a topic comes up frequently on the forum, it is often helpful to direct people to previous conversations, both so that the forum doesn’t run in circles (spirals would be preferable, but even they may feel like too much revisiting sometimes!), but also because those conversations have lots of great insights that are worth checking out.