quotes w/o attribution a major no-no!

Oh well my bad, I fixed it.

Because of this, I decided to find a new quote and got lost for hours on quote sites. Look at these:

Car accident insurance claim anonymous quotes:

"A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."

"The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him."

"I saw the slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car."

"The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end."

LOL. from rinkworks.com

 

I see the idea of using other peoples 'quotes' as, well, quite stupid. Seriously what are our brains for? That is why I don't use those, I come up with something of my own creation, even if later I should find out that exactly the same saying has existed for a long while longer. I would never put another persons name behind something that I came up with after finding out that it has already existed for much longer. (I'm not saying it is true in my case, it isn't. Plus I haven't checked that line and never will - I came up with it on my own. The same applies to all possible future creations mine.)
I wouldn't want anyone to use my lines as something as quotes are regarded. You want to use it, go ahead, just don't lie that it is yours if you know beforehand that it is not, and if you do then bad for you.
One is how I see quoting other people, even worse is putting a name behind your own quote while using it.
Naming quotes is like suspecting everyone of being a potential thief. You are afraid of someone stealing your sentence? Then copyright it, that's what I would do in a case like that. But honestly, copyrighting sentences? That's like copyrighting words, or even better, letters. I expect all people to be honest, logical, and reasonable even while I know that reality is very very different.
And so I will never put my own name behind my own sentences, sayings, quotes while using them.

 

I've always liked ghost writers for their attitude to "quotes" and the like, they don't care that they'll never be officially linked to it (unless they come out as that writer), they merely want what they've written to be heard and hopefully appreciated.

 

what those of you who refuse to cite yourselves as the authors of quotes are apparently refusing to deal with is the fact that if you put no name after a quote, no one but you can tell if you wrote it, or if someone else did and you didn't cite the source...

this is not a minor issue on a site that is supposed to be peopled with those who call themselves or want to be writers!

those of you who want to flaunt being amateurs, take note...

 

Citing = Professional.

Take note children.

 

Personally, I can't see why you wouldn't cite. As far as I'm concerned, it's all part of the quote. It's actually more interesting if you give the origins of a quote because people can then go and look up the person and their work if they so wish.

 

This is quite simple:

If there is no attribution after a signature we can infer that the effort is the member's own.

Bingo!

No need, at all, for those good souls who are queasy about these things to append their name to their own efforts.

 

Or that they don't know who said it, or that they were too lazy to look it up, or forgot to include it, or not everyone on this forum is as honest as we would like to think.

The rule of the forum is that quotes have proper attribution. Shouldn't that be enough?

 

I assume others are on the side of the angels. I know not all do.

I have read the rules. I know that not all have.

 

sw's reply, which echoes what i've been saying, should be 'quite simple' and a no-brainer... it's sad to see that it clearly isn't, for you, art... i don't get why you continue to try to justify members breaking the site rule, which only reflects what is accepted as standard professional behavior everywhere... especially as you don't even use a sig quote [yours or anyone's] for your own posts...

 

Please attend to the rules.

I don't use a sig so this is not my concern? I see a puppy being mistreated but don't intervene because I'm neither a puppy nor intend to be one?

When I post here, I do so within a box that contains my name. Everything within the box may be reasonably assumed to be my work unless I state otherwise.

 

it doesn't work that way with sig quotes, art...

if you were to include a sig quote that appeared at the bottom of all of your posts [which is what we're dealing with in this thread], you would have to add the name of its originator after the quote, even if it was one of your own... for all the reasons given above...

 

So I need to put my name against my own sig, as I came up with it, I'll do it now if I have to.

 

A few things: first, if I come up with something that I think is a good quote, I a) don't want to look arrogant because that really is what it is, and b) may not actually want to be attached to it. As others have said, some people might just want to put the words out there. If someone steals it and flaunts it as their own, they're being a dick, and that's where their own conscience may or may not step in and give them the guilt they deserve. Still, putting the words out there is more important.

Second, the "professional" standard is to actually write the person's name, which doesn't really work for signatures such as mine. I'm not going to go and ask minstrel to reveal their name to me for a legality, and if I do come up with something of my own, I don't want to attach "Jon Landers" to it because "cruciFICTION" is technically illegal.

Finally, I, once more, don't see why this is such a big and serious matter, or why it needs to be argued. Yes, it's a "professional standard", but I don't think thinly veiled insults to all those who don't attribute (for whatever reason) is the answer. Hell, this is the internet. If you see someone's signature contains a quote with no attribution, you do actually have the ability to Google it. As I said in my first post, as long as they're not passing it off as their own, I don't see where the crime is (I'm not talking about crime in the judicial sense here). There's no need to start a witch-hunt because you think it should be safe to assume that something without attribution was written by the person.
If assumptions are the problem here, as many posts seem to indicate, I don't think it's anyone's problem but your own.

As a side-note, I understand it's against the site rules: that's pretty much the majority of why I do it. In most conversations in person, I'm not the best at remembering things, so I'll usually stick with, "I heard someone say ..." or "Some user on a forum wrote ..." or something vague like that and I challenge anyone here to sue me for that.
Seriously, though? If it's against the site rules, report it to the moderators, or just PM the person and say, "Hey, I notice your signature has a quote from someone else, but no name attached to it. That's actually against the site rules, which I'm kind enough to link to you. Just looking out for you, so you don't cop any flak for it."
But instead, this has been turned into a public rant about how serious it is, with rude posts like, "sw's reply, which echoes what i've been saying, should be 'quite simple' and a no-brainer... it's sad to see that it clearly isn't, for you, art..." So, while we're on the topic of breaking rules, I'm pretty certain that we're supposed to be civil here (I'm aware that that's a somewhat hypocritical statement considering my two past infractions), but hey, I'm not going to report you for it. I'm just going to kindly let you know that I consider that to be quite rude, and maybe you need to think about editing that post. I'd also like to point out that in art's post directly after that one, he did say, "Please attend to the rules," which I can only assume was directed at your statement - his request, you seem to have ignored.

To end this post (finally), I love reading people's signatures. It's like when you see someone in public wearing a clever shirt (speaking of which, I've seen plenty of shirts with copyrighted material but no obvious attribution). In my time here, though, I've noticed very few quotations that lack an attribution or are obviously by someone other than the poster, so I don't even see why this even had to be turned into a thread, to be honest, when (to repeat myself) you could just PM the member, or report them.

EDIT: @mammamaia: by the way, in that little statement I found so rude, the comma between "isn't" and "for" doesn't belong there. That was kind of getting on my nerves. Thanks.

 

It doesn't work that way here, or so it seems. On many forums it's not an issue at all.

 

I always feel it is awfully rude to pass personal opinions as fact, and then go putting people down if their opinion differs.
I'm all for attributing other people's quotes. I choose not to sign my name under my own quote, as is my right. I am the copyright owner, I have the right to give my intellectual property away any way I choose. In an unlikely situation of me quoting myself in a signature, if anyone is confused as to the origins of the quote, they can ask. I can be as mysterious about my own property as I please.
This is a forum, informal discussions, anonymous group of people chatting about stuff. All this "forceful advice" is just a little bit too "meddling" for my taste.
Live and let live, for crying out loud.

 

I think the point is that forum rules state all signatures must have attributes. Now, regardless of how any of us feel about our own quotes or those of others (or how those views may have been posited), when we joined this forum we agreed to abide by the rules. I've just always used attributes with signature quotes, whether on forums or emails or anywhere else, and I wasn't really aware that it was a rule here. However, now that it has been pointed out for any who didn't realize it, I don't see any reason to refuse to comply. If someone has a major issue with it, then taking it up with the owner/admin would seem the thing to do, rather than getting into a spitting war here.

 

... They state no such thing.

The only rules applicable to this discussion are:

Might I note: 1. A signature and a post are two different things (though I do accept that the signature is adjoined to all posts, and should probably be treated as such).
2. While a quote from a copyrighted, fictional work comes under that second rule, something like the quote in my signature doesn't really come from a copyrighted material. It comes from a forum post on the internet, which isn't exactly known as the most legal place humans have created.
3. Pay attention to the part of that first rule reading, "... and claiming it as your own is considered copyright infringement." That's the illegal part. Although the second rule covers most other situations (just not attributing, or forgetting to, for example), it says nothing about being banned, so I'm going to go right ahead and assume that because of how lightweight that is as far as breaking rules goes, that'd probably be a warning and the user would be given the chance to rectify their mistake of, you know, forgetting to attribute or being too lazy or whatever.

 

If it's already part of the 'rules', then I don't quite see why another thread is necessary. Especially if it leads to incivility.

 

cruciFICTION, nitpicking over the precise wording of the rules will benefit no one. The rules are not intended to be a legal document. They indicate the intent, not the letter of the law. Those who attempt to walk the razor's edge to see how much they can get away with will learn that the line also shifts according to the member's intent.

It's a game that is not played here.

All quotes on this site must be properly attributed. regardless of where they appear, or whether the quote is out of copyright. The only exception is phrases that have passed from being quotations to part of the language.

And that is the end of the discussion. The site policy is not open to debate.