Quoting, Proofreading, Attribution
Christian Crumlish
Much of my browsing these days start in my referrer logs. If someone has linked to Radio Free Blogistan then there's a chance they're writing about stuff I'd be interested in.
Today this practice took me to Seb's Open Research, an immediate keeper, with links to good pieces about why certain professions (journalists, educators) have taken to blogging and some thoughts about how to manage bookmarks.
Seb picked up my link to Adam Barr's kuro5hin article (The Legacy of Eve Andersson) and corrected an intentional typo on my part. I deliberately referred to a "hypocracy," a neologism, as far as I know, meaning a hypocritical -ocracy, or ruling class. Seb, reasonably, figured I had made a spelling error and "corrected" it when quoting me to "hypocrisy":
Adam Barr takes to task the insider-y side of the blogosphere's hypocrisy
I often fix typos when quoting and sometimes change or clean up punctuation (if only to insert true em spaces where double-hyphens, which can break badly across lines, had been). It gets trickier when the writer may have made the "mistake" deliberately.
Further down I see that Seb has passed along the memetic experiment, but without my attribution. This may mean that it was picked up upstream from my post, or that I did a poor job of putting my own spin on the meme.