Bike thief gives advice on bike ownership

[smoterh.livejournal.com]

I apologize for cross-posting if you've read this before somewhere else :) but I thought it was worth mentioning it here.

Recently the Somerville Patch interviewed Mathew  Berry (riding his bike in Davis Square) on "further reducing the cost of bike ownership". Two weeks later they ran a story about a bike thief named Mathew Berry who has been arrested for stealing bikes on Beacon Hill. Patch doesn't realize the connection until it's pointed out in the comments.

Comments

[smoterh.livejournal.com]

I meant, I cross-posted it from the Patch. Maybe I'm using the term wrong-I blame reddit.

[ron_newman]

I don't know anything about reddit, but "cross-posting" here usually means that you posted it both to DSLJ and to some other place on the web (perhaps another LJ community).

This is hilarious, and I added a couple more tags for you.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Cross-posting means making the exact same post in multiple places (either within the same site, e.g. one's personal LJ and a community on LJ, or across sites, e.g. on LJ and on Facebook). People sometimes point out they've done this because it can be annoying to start reading a full post only to realize you've already read it three paragraphs in, plus the time wasted with scanning to make sure it's actually the same thing. I suspect the apology format for such declarations developed because people didn't realize this was a problem until after someone complained, for which an apology is the proper response.

The term for posting something someone else posted elseweb is "reposting" (with variants such as "retweeting" (RT)); this is rarely apologized for, since declaring its origin immediately lets people know if they've read it already. If you're not actually quoting that other post outright, but instead provide links to it, that's "linking" or possibly "sharing", which is pretty much never apologized for because that's what the web is for.

Internet etiquette is a fascinating and observable example of unwritten social contracts forming and changing in real time, to me. I'm sorry for the long ramble if it's way less interesting to you ;).

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to say that this is a lovely and civilized explanatory comment, and I particularly liked the concluding bit.

There is a special place in my heart for people who politely explain this shit instead of telling people to Just Fucking Google It, Like Our Cave-Man Ancestors Did Whenever They Encountered Something Unfamiliar.