This is a post that i was planning to do for some time now, but only today, i was able to arrange some time to think about and write it.
The title says it all. Bloggers steal from each other. Probably it s not the best title i could give to this post but i wanted to catch your attention. Probably a title like ” Giving credit is a beautiful thing to do” would be better. :p
What do they steal? They steal ideas, posts from each other.
Let’s see if i can explain this well.
I have been blogging for about a year now, and during this period of time i have read many blogs, and found many things that shocked me.
What “pisses me off” is the bloggers tendency to write about the same stuff at the same time. This is some what, normal when a new site launches and everybody wants take the opportunity while it is still hot. But what it should not be normal is when a blogger comes out with an interesting and original article, and others “copy” the article and don’t give credit for blogger “joe” for being the author, but are smart enough to change completely the phrases to mask the Plagiarism (i think this is the correct word), and after this genius brainstorming of changing the phrases, they manage to come with one or two phrases that were actually made by them. I can give you an example like a post called “10 tips for successful blogging“, that is copied, changed and then comes out like “11 tips for successful blogging“! wow!
Some bloggers take this into another level and wait weeks, even months before publishing copied post or, they post in a blog where they know that their audience does not read the blogs where they take the blog ideas. But for a blogger that reads some decent amount of blogs, will say: “wait a minute! i have read this before, where was it?”, or simply will say, like i said a lot of times: “ah come on! not another post about…..!”
So, who does copy, change and publish a post like it was their own creation?
Small bloggers? Sure. A considerable % of small bloggers (please don’t understand small as a diminishing word) will use this method to create posts, and due to their lack of experience (i hope) they forget to give credit.
And what about Big Bloggers? Surprisingly or not, i have found some of the considered big bloggers doing this (or worse), and getting away with it. And this is more serious than the small bloggers, because the big bloggers, will be the ones recognized by publishing the unoriginal post. Worse, they will be recognised for being the original authors of the post, and they will be the ones getting all the comments, all the trackbacks and all the exposure from blogs that correctly have the habit from mentioning the blog from where they got the post or idea for the post. This is unfair to who tries to come out with an original post (specially in this phase of blogging where all seems recycled content 
).
The main problem is not directly related on posting content from other blogs, as long they don’t duplicate the content. The problem is not giving credit to the true post author.
If you were to do an academic work, you would fail if you don’t discriminate your sources to accomplish the work.
We all make mistakes, an im no angel here, i remember that i wrote a few posts and i didn’t gave credit to the blog where i took ideas from, some i couldn’t remember from where it was, but that is no excuse.
So, in the next time, you are getting inspiration from another blog please give credit. Who knows if you don’t win a new reader?
Sharing information, improving a post from another blogger is healthy. That’s how things evolve, but just remember to give credit. 
