Why I Hate Paper.li

Posted by:     Tags:  , ,     Posted date:  August 21, 2011  |  9 Comments


August 21, 2011


Is your Twitter timeline becoming bogged down with notices that the XYZ Daily is out? Do you get a notification that you were included in the ABC News every time you publish a blog post? (Helpful tip, if you visit paper.li, there’s a link at the bottom or their home page where you can ask to be removed from mentions.)

Paper.li is for people who are too lazy to blog, don’t know about RSS readers, and basically don’t understand that what they’re doing is plaguerism. Pure and simple. If they want to link to my blog, I’d welcome the link, and the accompanying pingback. But that’s not how they work. If it weren’t for the Twitter mentions, which I have (hopefully) stopped, I wouldn’t be aware of them at all.

When I check my site analytics, not a single refer comes in from paper.li. Now I’m not sure if this means that no one actually reads anyone else’s “Daily” or no one is actually reading my stuff on those aggregations. I do know that I haven’t clicked one of their links in a very long time, because despite my being mentioned, I can never find where my stuff is in their mess. And yes, they are all a mess. Too much stuff on a page to resemble an old fashioned newspaper, and not enough organization to count for much in today’s electronic world.

For instance, I publish an app review. I expect it to be under the “technology” tab of someone’s paper.li. But it could wind up anywhere, with no rhyme or reason. Of course, the fact that someone mentions you as being included in their paper.li doesn’t tell you why either. Was it something you tweeted, was it something you retweeted? Was it a blog post, and if so, which one?

I hate them. I wish all the people using paper.li would get their own blogs and either write some original content, or properly link to things they want to share. Or retweet what they want to share if they feel they have that much influence.

I know people who have two or three paper.li dailies (I don’t even know what to properly call them), for different content emphasis. Why? Do they think none of their Twitter or Facebook followers can find this content on their own?

I just don’t get it. The only people I have ever mentioned it to, also don’t get it. And we don’t like it. But we are bloggers, and the paper.li people are not. I wish they would stop.

Maybe one of them will include this little rant in their paper.li. It would have to be by accident, since I’m convinced it’s all done automatically with no thought as to what gets included. But then they would actually have to read it themselves.

Do you hate Paper.li? Do you get it?



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9 Comments for Why I Hate Paper.li
Heather Wigen

Awesome post. It annoys me. Most of my “mentions” are from retweets.

Adamfdcstudio

I think paper.li has a role in helping people connect with like minded social users, but I do accept that there is aot of dross out there. I just posted about this yesterday, but from a more positive angle http://j.mp/sbq88k

Executive Oasis Intl

“Paper.li is for people who are too lazy to blog…” Really? I blog at least once per day and I also use Paper.li. How does that translate to being lazy.

“don’t know about RSS readers”

Wrong again.

“… and basically don’t understand that what they’re doing is plaguerism. Pure and simple.”

I would love to know how you arrive at that conclusion when the definition of plagiarism (which you have misspelled by the way) is:

“pla·gia·rism/ˈplājəˌrizəm/

Noun: The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.”

Paper.li gives attribution and a link to the original work.

I suggest you try spelling the word correctly and looking up the definition. (By the way, plaguerism is an An epic rock rendition of the song “Sons of Skyrim”:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Plaguerism

Here is the bottom line. Different strokes for different folks. If you don’t like Paper.li, that’s your right and you’ve made it clear. I am not following you and you are not listed in any of Paper.li that I compile and we will keep it that way. That’s your right. To attack those who see things differently and accuse them of being lazy and engaging in plagiarism is out of line.

Ashley

As Alli explained, Paper.li doesn’t attribute properly. It makes it seem that content is created by people who merely shared it and are not authorities on the topic. And Paper Li doesn’t explain how the information was retrieved. This is wrong. False or incomplete attribution does constitute plagiarism. It’s misleading to readers and unfair to the real authors and those who share their work. False and incorrect attribution is lazy.

This “attack” is justified and can’t be an issue of “different strokes” because others’ actions directly impact me when they falsely attribute me. It may be a Paper.li publisher’s stroke, but not the stroke of those whose names they attribute in their Paper.li publications. People have every reason to rant if their name is used in unethical ways.

Executive Oasis Intl

Ali and Heather, Paper.li does indicate the source and does not pass anyone’s work off as someone else content so I am not sure what this bee in your bonnet is all about.

As I said, different strokes for different folks, if you don’t want to be in Paper.li, exercise your right to opt out of all mentions.

Stop mentioning me in tweets promoting another user’s newspaper
http://paper.li/stop-mentions.html

I am sure that Postano, News360 and The Tweeted Times have a similar button.

As I stated in a blog on the subject.

“Content aggregators and Twitter tools with scheduled sharing options are definitely worth exploring but they’re not for everyone. It’s okay to opt out. It’s also important to respect the choices of other tweeps. By all means, express your opinions. Feel free to un-follow people in your network if content is not of value whether it is tweeted manually or with the assistance of a tool. However, it’s not cool to make disparaging comments or resort to name calling (e.g. plagiarizers, lazy) if users opt to use a different suite of tools than you choose.”

10 Tips for Using Paper.li & Other Content Aggregators http://t.co/Nnlo4z3Q

As for me, the more promotion the merrier so rock on with the Paper.li mentions. I love them.

Kelly Hungerford

Hi Ashley, Hi Alli,

Kelly from Paper.li here. One of our foremost priorities at Paper.li is transparency and to ensure that all players in the curation eco-system are credited with proper attribution; sharers are always displayed, hyperlinks lead directly back to original content and it is clear on each paper who the publisher is.

When it comes to credit and attribution, we credit the person who has shared the article in the past 24 hours, not the person who originally tweeted it or wrote the post.

We are continually optimizing and fine-tuning our platform to ensure that content appears where it should. For site owners or Twitter users who don’t want to be mentioned , or don’t want to be mentioned on certain papers, we have solutions for that as well.

I am happy to answer any questions or complaints about Paper.li. Feel free to tweet me @kdhungerford or @smallrivers or drop me a line at info@paper.li and I’ll be sure to come back to you.

Alli Flowers

When it comes to credit and attribution, we credit the person who has shared the article in the past 24 hours, not the person who originally tweeted it or wrote the post.

I think that is the point right there. So that means if I share a post by Walt Mossberg, I get credited and not Walt? I’m sure that will make him thrilled to death.

Alli Flowers

“When it comes to credit and attribution, we credit the person who has shared the article in the past 24 hours, not the person who originally tweeted it or wrote the post.” 

That’s exactly what we’re upset about. So we can go to the WallStreet Journal, copy a post of Walt Mossberg, have it accredited to us cause we shared it – and not have Walt Mossberg bringing us to court? As if!

Kelly Hungerford

Hi Alli, 

We’re not saying that Mentions are equal to the person who authored the post and perhaps we can need to do a better job at communicating that. 

I  RT content on Twitter that often carries the username of the person who tipped me off to the content, not the author him or herself. The person who RT’ed is happy to have the RT and the content creator wins as well because they get more traffic driven to their site or blog. 

Paper.li mentions represent the person who shared the post in the past 24 hours, not the author who created the content. And a sharer can be different depending on the sources chosen.  So you can view two different papers and see two different sharers for the same article in the past 24 hours.

We have very few bloggers, content creators or site owners ask us to blacklist their content from being shared and discovered. But as said above, if a content creator doesn’t want to be discovered via Paper.li, we but a block on their url. 

In fact though, we’ve seen the opposite and in the past 6 months we’ve seen a spike in inquires on how bloggers and site owners can get their content whitelisted or approved to show up on papers of interest.  They’re happy to have the visibility and they’re often curious to know who’s sharing their content and if we provide that information. 

As for Walt, his content shows up often on Paper.lis and we haven’t heard anything from him – both in the form of original tweets from him as well as through others sharing his content.