5 ms·

The issue with articles has been fixed. We specify original source! We only share useful content on HN, not all of the articles. In addition, we don't break Hab

The issue with articles has been fixed. We specify original source! We only share useful content on HN, not all of the articles. In addition, we don't break Habrahabr's agreement. There was one disappointed user, who mentioned that the "original source" was not specified. We fixed that and since then set the source (if we use it) everywhere.

dang 12y ago
Last I checked, you specify "original source" with an exceedingly obscure link at the bottom. Why don't you credit the authors and the original source properly at the top? Also, what about asking authors for permission to translate and republish their work?
- skazka16 12y ago
  Well, first of all habrahabr does not share real names of their users. So specifying something like "TR156" does not make any sense. As for the link, we checked a lot of web sites and it seems most of them specify the source at the bottom of an article. The link we add is not obscured. It has exactly the same font size as the rest of the article's content. We also wrap it with square brackets to make it more noticeable. As for permission, there are two things. 1). We don't break Habrahabr's agreement, so we don't actually have to get permission. 2). There is no way to get in touch with authors - we don't know their emails. We would be happy to. No one can also proof that the HN user who had complaints is a real author. As long as we haven't received any information from official Habrahabr representatives, we are fine. Right now we also working on our own content a lot. We don't want to publish translated content. But we thought that sharing useful and interesting information from other countries would be helpful for community. In anyway, we are open to communication.
  - acqq 12y ago
    > specifying something like "TR156" does not make any sense No, your claims are dangerous and misleading. Even if I decide not to show my real name I want to be present as a person who wrote the article. You take that away. The name of the author and the link to his profile before the start of the article are the minimum you have to do. You have to ask the author for permission before you do the translation and publish the article, using the communication mechanisms of the site from which you take the content. And you must write that it's a translated text. Before you do all that, the way you present your material remain questionable enough to have my vote for banning the articles.
    - skazka16 12y ago
      Habrahabr is a private community. There is no sign up => there is no way to get in touch with authors unless do manual research! We are HAPPY to get in touch with them. What exactly sounds dangerous ? We did research, all the popular websites put a link to the source at the bottom of an article. It seems like a normal practice. But correct me if I'm wrong.
      - acqq 12y ago
        So if you aren't a "friend" of somebody on the Facebook that gives you the right to republish the content of his articles on your own web site? No, it doesn't.
        skazka16 12y ago
        That's different. It doesn't really matter anymore, as we have already implemented "external authoring", but still, if you look on how Habrahabr publishes translations - you will see that they put a small 9px link to an author. 9px ??! it's super small. In addition, I found a lot of translations of those articles into different languages around the web and it seems no one cares. But once again, it doesn't matter anymore, as most of the work is done and we'll add all the links today. Just sayin'.
nkurz 12y ago
One worry is that the copyright of the piece remains with the original author (http://habrahabr.ru/info/agreement/ http://habrahabr.ru/info/agreement/) and that publishing a translation without explicit permission from that author violates international law. Providing a link to the original helps to show that your intent is good, but unfortunately does not change the legal situation. I do agree that you are providing a useful service by spreading high quality technical information. My understanding is that unauthorized translations are more common and more tolerated in Russia than in the US. But HN is a very law-abiding business-oriented site, and justifiably is concerned with following the law. Thanks for signing up here to explain, and please try to work with DanG to come up with a plan.
- skazka16 12y ago
  Here is what agreement says: "Пользователь осознаёт и соглашается с тем, что размещённая им информация может быть использована поисковыми или другими автоматизированными сервисами и иными способами." Here is the translation: "User acknowledges and agrees that the uploading of such information can be used by search engines or other automated services, and in other ways." But anyway, we will get in touch with authors. We'll try to find that out. DanG: let me know if you guys have any other concerns. Do you want us to specify the link to author's habrahabr profile in addition ?
  - sbahra 12y ago
    I still don't see credits going to the original author and / or website for most of your article beyond a very easy to miss [original source] at the bottom. Many articles have no references to the original author at all. It should be very clear at the top of the article that your work is a translation from the original author. The original author's website should have a very prominent link, at the top. It really surprises me that you are knit-picking at site agreements, where is the hacker integrity?
  - dang 12y ago
    I think that when you're publishing translations then, at a minimum, you should make clear at the top of the page that it is a translation, provide a link to the original, and include the author's name or username. You should also make a good faith effort to seek permission from the author. If the article you're translating was itself translated from an original source, then "author" here means author of the original material. The latter would seem like an obscure edge case, except that some of the translations you published actually were that. We want solid content on HN, so I'd like to find a way to have these posts not be a problem. No doubt the community will scrutinize future posts, so we may have this discussion again, but for now we won't ban the site if you do the above. Original articles, of course, are more than fine. One problem with grey-area tactics is that they make your whole site look shady. Readers will think that all your articles must be hijacks, whether they are or not. To pick one example that was posted to HN, who wrote http://kukuruku.co/hub/mobiledev/mobile-typography http://kukuruku.co/hub/mobiledev/mobile-typography? It's not clear whether this content was created for your site or stolen from elsewhere; besides which, readers want to know the names of the authors they're reading. If you attribute everything clearly and prominently, this should go a long way toward clearing things up. Hasty Edit: Googling reveals that you copied the mobile typography content from http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/mobile/9780133888249/chapter-7dot-typography/ch07lev1sec1_html http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/mobile/9780.... That's disgusting, and certainly explains why you omitted any attribution. If you keep doing it, we'll ban your site, despite our fondness for translations of obscure but solid Russian technical articles. It's in your interest to pay attention here. You have first-rate, highly technical HN users like nkurz, acqq, and jacquesm—plus a site moderator—bending over backwards to help you. If the material on your site were merely the usual blogspam, none of us would care. We're putting time into helping you because we want access to the solid material. There's clearly demand for top-notch Russian articles in English translation. On the other hand, none of us has patience for yet another shitty hijack outfit on the internet. You can't be both; not here, anyway. Please turn this into a positive by listening to the community feedback and cleaning up your act.

dang 12y ago

Last I checked, you specify "original source" with an exceedingly obscure link at the bottom. Why don't you credit the authors and the original source properly at the top? Also, what about asking authors for permission to translate and republish their work?

skazka16 12y ago
Well, first of all habrahabr does not share real names of their users. So specifying something like "TR156" does not make any sense. As for the link, we checked a lot of web sites and it seems most of them specify the source at the bottom of an article. The link we add is not obscured. It has exactly the same font size as the rest of the article's content. We also wrap it with square brackets to make it more noticeable. As for permission, there are two things. 1). We don't break Habrahabr's agreement, so we don't actually have to get permission. 2). There is no way to get in touch with authors - we don't know their emails. We would be happy to. No one can also proof that the HN user who had complaints is a real author. As long as we haven't received any information from official Habrahabr representatives, we are fine. Right now we also working on our own content a lot. We don't want to publish translated content. But we thought that sharing useful and interesting information from other countries would be helpful for community. In anyway, we are open to communication.
- acqq 12y ago
  > specifying something like "TR156" does not make any sense No, your claims are dangerous and misleading. Even if I decide not to show my real name I want to be present as a person who wrote the article. You take that away. The name of the author and the link to his profile before the start of the article are the minimum you have to do. You have to ask the author for permission before you do the translation and publish the article, using the communication mechanisms of the site from which you take the content. And you must write that it's a translated text. Before you do all that, the way you present your material remain questionable enough to have my vote for banning the articles.
  - skazka16 12y ago
    Habrahabr is a private community. There is no sign up => there is no way to get in touch with authors unless do manual research! We are HAPPY to get in touch with them. What exactly sounds dangerous ? We did research, all the popular websites put a link to the source at the bottom of an article. It seems like a normal practice. But correct me if I'm wrong.
    - acqq 12y ago
      So if you aren't a "friend" of somebody on the Facebook that gives you the right to republish the content of his articles on your own web site? No, it doesn't.
      - skazka16 12y ago
        That's different. It doesn't really matter anymore, as we have already implemented "external authoring", but still, if you look on how Habrahabr publishes translations - you will see that they put a small 9px link to an author. 9px ??! it's super small. In addition, I found a lot of translations of those articles into different languages around the web and it seems no one cares. But once again, it doesn't matter anymore, as most of the work is done and we'll add all the links today. Just sayin'.

nkurz 12y ago

One worry is that the copyright of the piece remains with the original author (http://habrahabr.ru/info/agreement/ http://habrahabr.ru/info/agreement/) and that publishing a translation without explicit permission from that author violates international law. Providing a link to the original helps to show that your intent is good, but unfortunately does not change the legal situation. I do agree that you are providing a useful service by spreading high quality technical information. My understanding is that unauthorized translations are more common and more tolerated in Russia than in the US. But HN is a very law-abiding business-oriented site, and justifiably is concerned with following the law. Thanks for signing up here to explain, and please try to work with DanG to come up with a plan.

skazka16 12y ago
Here is what agreement says: "Пользователь осознаёт и соглашается с тем, что размещённая им информация может быть использована поисковыми или другими автоматизированными сервисами и иными способами." Here is the translation: "User acknowledges and agrees that the uploading of such information can be used by search engines or other automated services, and in other ways." But anyway, we will get in touch with authors. We'll try to find that out. DanG: let me know if you guys have any other concerns. Do you want us to specify the link to author's habrahabr profile in addition ?
- sbahra 12y ago
  I still don't see credits going to the original author and / or website for most of your article beyond a very easy to miss [original source] at the bottom. Many articles have no references to the original author at all. It should be very clear at the top of the article that your work is a translation from the original author. The original author's website should have a very prominent link, at the top. It really surprises me that you are knit-picking at site agreements, where is the hacker integrity?
- dang 12y ago
  I think that when you're publishing translations then, at a minimum, you should make clear at the top of the page that it is a translation, provide a link to the original, and include the author's name or username. You should also make a good faith effort to seek permission from the author. If the article you're translating was itself translated from an original source, then "author" here means author of the original material. The latter would seem like an obscure edge case, except that some of the translations you published actually were that. We want solid content on HN, so I'd like to find a way to have these posts not be a problem. No doubt the community will scrutinize future posts, so we may have this discussion again, but for now we won't ban the site if you do the above. Original articles, of course, are more than fine. One problem with grey-area tactics is that they make your whole site look shady. Readers will think that all your articles must be hijacks, whether they are or not. To pick one example that was posted to HN, who wrote http://kukuruku.co/hub/mobiledev/mobile-typography http://kukuruku.co/hub/mobiledev/mobile-typography? It's not clear whether this content was created for your site or stolen from elsewhere; besides which, readers want to know the names of the authors they're reading. If you attribute everything clearly and prominently, this should go a long way toward clearing things up. Hasty Edit: Googling reveals that you copied the mobile typography content from http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/mobile/9780133888249/chapter-7dot-typography/ch07lev1sec1_html http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/mobile/9780.... That's disgusting, and certainly explains why you omitted any attribution. If you keep doing it, we'll ban your site, despite our fondness for translations of obscure but solid Russian technical articles. It's in your interest to pay attention here. You have first-rate, highly technical HN users like nkurz, acqq, and jacquesm—plus a site moderator—bending over backwards to help you. If the material on your site were merely the usual blogspam, none of us would care. We're putting time into helping you because we want access to the solid material. There's clearly demand for top-notch Russian articles in English translation. On the other hand, none of us has patience for yet another shitty hijack outfit on the internet. You can't be both; not here, anyway. Please turn this into a positive by listening to the community feedback and cleaning up your act.