FYI: boston.com appears to be scraping davis LJ

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

the format of yourtown.boston.com changed recently and i just noticed that it appears to be scraping headlines and linking into davis LJ (http://yourtown.boston.com/somerville).  it's not clear from the website what editorial policies govern the scraping (or maybe i've just got too many content types blocked to find the information - can anyone else clarify ?).  posters who are uncomfortable with that distribution channel might be advised to lock posts to this community.

Comments

[ron_newman]

As a moderator here, I'm happy to see Boston.com or anyone else linking to us. They've been doing so for quite a while.

I'd rather people didn't lock posts here, as it makes the posts invisible to search engines and therefore less useful.

(by the way, your link doesn't work -- you have an extra "). " at the end of the URL)

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

i just included the URL without creating a link at all when i made the initial post; didn't know LJ would auto-format it badly. fixed now, thanks.

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

i don't think i have an opinion about the practice (beyond wondering what value yourtown is adding, if it's just turned into yet-another-news-aggregator), but i'll give it some thought next time i have something i feel like sharing.

[ron_newman]

UniversalHub.com has also linked to us from time to time, when Adam Gaffin finds one of our posts especially newsworthy.

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think what caught my eye about yourtown is that it doesn't appear to be meeting the same threshold of newsworthiness. that's what i was thinking when i referenced their editorial policies in the OP. haven't thought about how much difference it makes, beyond filing it away for the next time i'm considering about posting something.

[ron_newman]

I sent this e-mail to Marcia Dick and David Dahl at the Globe:

Hi Marcia and David,

Some of us at Davis Square LiveJournal are curious how you decide which posts from our community should be featured on the Somerville YourTown page. Can you post a reply here? http://davis-square.livejournal.com/2875979.html Thanks.

(Or, if you prefer, you can e-mail me a reply and I'll post it there.)

Thanks.
Ron Newman (one of four co-moderators of Davis Square LiveJournal)

[misterthorn.livejournal.com]

Judging from the other items appearing on that page, I think they've just set up a script to display the contents of a few different RSS feeds of local interest. I don't think they're "scraping" so much as "subscribing and then republishing".

[ron_newman]

It will be funny if this post shows up on their page.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

It did.

[daviddahl.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone!

We are, indeed, posting items from Davis Square live journal. The top level Live Journal posts appear on our Your Town site at boston.com/somerville. When users click on that link, they are sent to Live Journal itself and can see the other related comments, as you've noted.

Our intent in aggregating this link and links to other blogs and tweets in Somerville is to reflect the voices of the community on boston.com/somerville. The last thing we'd want to do is stifle discussion on your site, though you're doing a fine job of moderating comments already.

We could a number of things from here forward: 1. Leave it as-is. 2. Eliminate the feed to boston.com/somerville entirely. 3. Or adjust the RSS feed so that we'd only pick up items tagged yourtown. That would put the onus back on your posters to tag things yourtown if they wanted them to be seen by the Your Town audience.

You may have other options in mind, too. I'm happy to hear them.

Let me know how you want to proceed.

Thanks.

David Dahl
Boston Globe regional editor

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

thank you kindly for the prompt and thorough response, david !

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of a "yourtown" tag -- but perhaps make it "republishable" or something similar, so new members of the community have a better chance of figuring it out what it means?

[ron_newman]

Thanks for replying. The following is strictly my own opinion; I do not want to speak for the community at large:

My preference is for you to actively select, edit, and curate what you take from Davis Square LiveJournal. Some of what we post here is news -- business openings and closings, exhibits, event announcements, discussions of development, etc. And some of it is not news - for sale notices, "where do I buy a thigamagig" queries, "free for taking on the curb" announcements, etc.

A human should select what you consider important here -- not a robot or an algorithm.

[ron_newman]

I'm not fond of the tag -- if people have to actively use it, most of our content won't be republished. I'd prefer that someone at Boston.com someone actively decide what they consider newsworthy, and republish or link to that only.

[ron_newman]

And this is my comment on the current Boston.com/Somerville page (again, only my opinion, not anyone else's here):

Please go back to the old format of this page. The old page highlighted the content that was specific to Boston.com and the Globe, rather than burying it among items copied from other news sources. Shouldn't you be proud to feature your own content?

[ron_newman]

I believe the previous version of the Boston.com/Somerville page was actively edited and curated. That worked well, so I don't see a reason to abandon it now.

[daviddahl.livejournal.com]

Good points, everyone. As with any new design like this, it is taking some time to get the kinks out. We plan to do a better job of curating it as we perfect the new design. As for the issue of highlighting Live Journal material on the site, I'll continue to listen (or, read...) your feedback here and we can decide over the next day or two whether to leave it as is, abandon links entirely or go with a tagging system. Thanks again, everyone.

[londo.livejournal.com]

If I have a strong opinion on this whole issue, I haven't figured out what it is yet, so I'll keep silent on that.

But you, Mr. Dahl, are seriously classy, and I appreciate that.

[borgin.livejournal.com]

I also noticed this yesterday - I went to the YourTown page to see if there was any Somerville news I had missed, but all I saw were posts from the Davis Square LJ, which I already check fairly regularly. I'd prefer to have the Boston.com articles highlighted, with a few links to other sources.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I'm in favor of our members and our moderators actively tagging content we'd like shared, or active curation on the side of OurTown. Some of our content is newsworthy and some really not at all, so I don't think all of it should be re-published.

[misterthorn.livejournal.com]

These are my views, undiscussed with others in the community and should not be misconstrued as representative of anyone's views but my own.

The DSLJ community forum is a tool, and, as such, I believe that, like any other tool, it's the responsibility of the participants in this community to understand how the tool works before they use it. Just as we expect people to know how to use cut tags to hide long posts off the main page, I think it's also reasonable to expect people to understand that the forum generates an RSS feed that anyone in the world has access to for whatever purpose they want. If someone doesn't want an item to be a part of that feed, they should know to make the post locked. Boston.com's editors should be able to reserve the right for themselves how they want to use the publicly available RSS feed: it should be up to them to decide how to play the trade-off between the full firehose of data (which is less useful to their readers) and an edited stream (which is more resource intensive for them). Requiring people to use a special tag sounds to me more like a way of working around the fact that some people pick up this particular tool (DSLJ) without knowing everything about how it works, when what we really need to be doing is educating each other about how the tool works. Tagging as a method of opting in to syndication adds another layer of work to compensate for the fact that some don't like or don't get how the tool works.

[ron_newman]

I posted to Universal Hub about the YourTown changes, providing examples of 'old' and 'new' pages to compare. You may want to read the comments there in a few days.