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I think RiderOfGiraffes comes from an academic background. Those little html only professor sites frequently have more that one interesting paper or essay. I t

by Radix 17y ago

I think RiderOfGiraffes comes from an academic background. Those little html only professor sites frequently have more that one interesting paper or essay. I think you're right about the slurping (because clicking more>document_info in Scribd shows the uploader as Slurp) but they're making a mistake to not give you a link to the original document. Can anyone explain what Scribd is trying to accomplish? pdf is already an open standard. Both require a third party viewer. Until iPaper doesn't use flash there is no reason for Scribd to be the youtube of documents. Although an embeddable document viewer that allows you to force layout, keep the data on your server, supports math notations, and doesn't use flash might be worth having on the internet.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
I was once an academic, but these days I'm both in industry and science/maths popularisation. I try to attract people to my site to get them engaged with the material I write, and then try to keep them engaged and interested. Perhaps they will then ask me to come and speak for them. When I write something and put it on my web site it's because I want people to visit. Their engagement with the site lets me get sponsorship to run the site, and potentially speaking engagements. Speaking engagements lose me money, because I take unpaid leave from my job in industry to do them, but I think enrichment in education is important, and I'm willing to give up money to help make it happen. Think of it effectively as volunteer work. If material is ripped off wholesale and stored somewhere else, or if essays/articles are shown on another site without the visitor coming to my site, I lose my traffic, potentially I lose my sponsorship, and certainly I lose my opportunities to provide enrichment in schools. Doing what scribd does undermines that. Other people have other reasons for people to visit their sites, but mine alone mean that I hate what scribd does. I think it's unethical and parasitical.

by Radix 17y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

I was once an academic, but these days I'm both in industry and science/maths popularisation. I try to attract people to my site to get them engaged with the material I write, and then try to keep them engaged and interested. Perhaps they will then ask me to come and speak for them. When I write something and put it on my web site it's because I want people to visit. Their engagement with the site lets me get sponsorship to run the site, and potentially speaking engagements. Speaking engagements lose me money, because I take unpaid leave from my job in industry to do them, but I think enrichment in education is important, and I'm willing to give up money to help make it happen. Think of it effectively as volunteer work. If material is ripped off wholesale and stored somewhere else, or if essays/articles are shown on another site without the visitor coming to my site, I lose my traffic, potentially I lose my sponsorship, and certainly I lose my opportunities to provide enrichment in schools. Doing what scribd does undermines that. Other people have other reasons for people to visit their sites, but mine alone mean that I hate what scribd does. I think it's unethical and parasitical.