It's true that no one wants to go to a site and read someone elses work when they can easily look it up for themselves. If i find an article that i think would be interesting to or benefit others i just post a direct link to the source why bother trying to summarize someone else...lol

i don'r know why some people are getting carried away and copying from other articles anyway, i've even noticed parents who have no experience in some areas giveing advice??? i know myself that i am not interested in stuff the've copyed down from other sights ect only in things that parents have experienced and think may help other parents in similar situations, if we wanna go read some article by a doctor or whatever we'll go read em but otherwise whats the purpose of minti? obviously the parents online have a computer and acess to the internet so why would they want to read copyed stuff on minti????

Hi

I am a little concerned by some recent articles in Minti on medical subjects. The list of symptoms given is not referenced to anywhere but generally contains fewer spelling mistakes than the rest of the article suggesting that it has been taken from somewhere. I feel a bit funny about reporting the articles but a bit concerned by them too.

I agree that what makes Minti great is that people share their own experiences and share what worked and what didn't.

I think that in general if one wants to include information from other sources, an article should be 90% the person's words and experiences and maybe 10% quotes from other sites. Of course there are a lot of articles here on Minti that are 100% experience, which is of course great. But then again, there are a few articles that have been 100% cut & pasted from another site - which is a NO-NO! This is essentially stealing. You're stealing someone's hard work.

If you find a website that has great information on a topic that happens to be in duscussion in Minti, why not just lead all of us to that website by posting about it on your blog? and/or post it in a relevant group? This way, you've pointed us to the website without copyright infrigement.  I think a great example is lindterbean's blog. She has posted a lot of useful websites on her blog.

The way I see it is that the thing that makes Minti great is personal experience. Rather than being told something by someone academic, I can read about what someone from here did and what worked or didn't. I know that we all come across really fascinating articles and info on other sites and I see it that we can either stick a link in our blog, with what we found interesting, or if we have our own experience, we can write an article and link to the thing we read. So, I if I found something great out about what to feed a two year old (as an example), I could write about what works for me and then say that such and such site suggests this for a balanced diet (copy a few lines across) and then put a link directing people where to go and read more if they are interested. This way, the original people get more traffic to their site (so they are happy) and we can make our articles more interesting.

I understand that the purpose of copyright is to protect the person who wrote the original article. They sat down, researched and thought about what they were going to write. If we effectively steal their work and post it here on Minti, then not only will Minti get a bad reputation (and maybe worse) but the person will not be compensated for what they wrote. And anyway, I want to read about what someone can tell me about from the heart. If I find that an "expert" has written it, I might not be so keen. I know that sounds strange, but I can go and buy a book or check an "expert" site if that is what I want.