Conventions Extend Tools Stewart Butterfield makes a good point that Radio's integrated RSS aggregator is almost like an automated plagarism button. Take my previous post, its really easy to include the full text of something I aggregated, and the default citation of square brackets [shellen.com] isnt clearly understood by most readers.
The integrated aggregator was the reason I adopted Radio in the first place and remains its best feature. However, the design of the tool doesn't capture the concerns of use, fair use in this case, leading to the need for social convention. Here's mine:
- New convention: Including a via in square bracket citations, as in [via shellen.com]
- Making the citation or passage distinct from my text, either through indentation or a text box
- Always add value to what I paste by annotating, even if its just an original sentence
Of course, I have been blogging for a little while now and have been picked up because of feedback. Tim once kept me honest on making citations distinct. I have observed others posting entire posts without adding value and seen how their blog is percieved.
The tradeoff is code can institute rules which is dangerous to pre-plan, but at a cost of user flexibility, while social conventions lag in adoption. The opportunity is for the tool makers to listen to feedback and institute social conventions as they mature to eliminate differences between new and established users.
7:23:47 AM 
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