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Ethical considerations aside, can anybody here explain why a person would do this? Why would you take a piece of content off the web and re-publish it in its e

Ethical considerations aside, can anybody here explain why a person would do this? Why would you take a piece of content off the web and re-publish it in its entirety on your own blog? I see this happening to my articles, and I initially assumed it was just black hat SEO. But frequently it appears it's an actual human being who seems to think he's adding value to the world by reposting something he found somewhere else. Can anybody explain the motivation behind this?

hackerblues 16y ago
I would agree that there is no benefit to a person who comes from HN to read just that specific article. However, if I was a regular visitor to the guys blog and came across the article that way: - Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click. - Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community. - It provides another copy in case the original goes down. - If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information. It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group. I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.
- user24 16y ago
  they may also be effects of less than perfect implementations of URLs: here on HN every comment has a URL, which is really excellent. There's also a great signal-to-noise ratio on each page - I'm not talking about the quality of the content (which is also excellent) but the fact that there's very little distracting supplemental content on each page, thus reinforcing the idea that the URL is pointing to your comment, rather than some undefined ephemeral 'page' on HN. The web at large however, does not fully embrace this level of detail and focus in URLs. So users do not feel comfortable using URLs to link readers to discrete packets of information, they feel safer just copying the data. This is just a theory.
Fargren 16y ago
I recommend you read "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by J. L. Borges. I think it describes the motivation for this perfectly.

hackerblues 16y ago

I would agree that there is no benefit to a person who comes from HN to read just that specific article. However, if I was a regular visitor to the guys blog and came across the article that way: - Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click. - Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community. - It provides another copy in case the original goes down. - If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information. It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group. I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.

user24 16y ago
they may also be effects of less than perfect implementations of URLs: here on HN every comment has a URL, which is really excellent. There's also a great signal-to-noise ratio on each page - I'm not talking about the quality of the content (which is also excellent) but the fact that there's very little distracting supplemental content on each page, thus reinforcing the idea that the URL is pointing to your comment, rather than some undefined ephemeral 'page' on HN. The web at large however, does not fully embrace this level of detail and focus in URLs. So users do not feel comfortable using URLs to link readers to discrete packets of information, they feel safer just copying the data. This is just a theory.

Fargren 16y ago

I recommend you read "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by J. L. Borges. I think it describes the motivation for this perfectly.