March 11, 2004

Borrowing Other People’s Writing

Happy Friday everybody,

DiaryMistress had the day off from her job yesterday, so we spent the morning at the Temple of Swedish Minimalism. We needed some additional storage space for our office, so we were on a mission.

Of course, we also had to wander through all the GORM shelving, EFFEKTIV furniture, and KASSETT CD storage units. Am I wrong, or is “KASSETT” a weird name for something I’m supposed to put CD’s in? This, however, was not the funniest – there was a workstation called (I’m not kidding here) – “FARTFULL”. I wouldn’t want to be the person in the next cubicle.

We located a cabinet with the requisite drawers in it – I wouldn’t go for cabinets with glass fronts. They looked cool, but I’m not neat enough to have people looking into my storage area. We also located a cartful of other stuff that we needed, as soon as we saw it.

What insanity possessed the person who designed the IKEA shopping cart? Regular carts designed for regular people have fixed wheels on the back, and turny wheels on the front – allowing you to steer the cart in the same way a car does. The IKEA cart has rotating wheels on all four corners – making it impossible to push the cart in a straight line. Just getting the cart to go in the direction you want requires flexing and twisting calf muscles and back muscles that should never be involved in shopping-cart-pushing. It’s like some mad Swedish workout machine.

Anyways, we got our furniture in it’s two suspiciously flat boxes and trudged it home to assemble. I’ll skip the details of the rest of the experience, except to say that it involved a lot of this: [insert graphic of screwdriver turning metalcogthing scanned from furniture instructions] and a little of this: [insert graphic of stick figure with question mark balloon scratching his head with his stick arm, scanned from same instructions].

See, I had these funny graphics all set for this entry, and then I noticed the copyright statement on the instruction booklet.

We seem to have to revisit this subject occasionally (which is fine), since there are always new people joining the site, and they might not understand what it takes to be a polite member of our little diary town.

Open Diary is built of writing – writing of thousands of people, and each person’s writing is precious and valuable to them in their own way. That sounded like I was going all Gollum on you, but the point is important: a person’s writing is a personal possession. The fact that it is published on a public website does not mean that the author necessarily wants their writing to be borrowed and used again.

If you visit somebody’s diary and see something that you would like to recycle in your own writing, ask their permission first. It’s common courtesy, and it’s also part of our Rules (see Section 5). Some authors don’t care, but some do – and the point is that it should be their choice if their writing is going to appear someplace else.

There are obvious exceptions to this. If a diarist posts something and says “feel free to borrow this” (or something in that vein), you don’t have to ask permission – they’ve already given it.

Also, always remember that if you “borrow” something from outside Open Diary, it is safe to assume that all copyright laws apply. Always ask permission before reusing writing or images that have been published by somebody else. People outside our community might not be as polite in their reaction to having copyrighted works used without their permission.

In other news:

I received a note from some of our members who are on a trip to Australia, and are using their diary to post news and pictures and to get notes from their family and friends. Turns out, there was a bug with leaving anonymous notes (the family and friends aren’t members) that are also private. The kind of bug where it didn’t work.

Although I don’t normally recommend accepting anonymous notes (it can lead to nastiness), this is a cool way to use a diary. In any case, the bug has been fixed so it is now possible to leave private unsigned notes.
There was another bug that caused an error if you tried to do a search with a string that contained a single quote (like searching for “my grandma’s diary”). Those of you who are SQLgeeks can probably guess why this was. That’s been fixed too.
Several people have asked how I make the sidebar box on my diary. Here’s the HTML tags, you’re welcome to copy it (this is the sort of statement I’m talking about above). Insert this into your entry, and you’ll have a box.

Note that I am using a hexadecimal code for the BGCOLOR, you can change that to whatever color you want. Also, note the ALIGN=right tag in the TABLE. That’s very important – that’s what tells the browser to position the table to the right and wrap text around it.

<TABLE ALIGN=right WIDTH=250 BORDER=1 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5 BGCOLOR=#B9D3EE>
<TR>
<TD BGCOLOR=#B9D3EE>
<FONT FACE=verdana SIZE=1 COLOR=black>
Put your writing here.
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

You’ll have to fiddle around with how you place it on your own page.

That’s all for now.

The DiaryMaster

*smiles* Have a good day. <3

speaking of being an SQL geek – have you seen this? > SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0; 0 rows returned I saw that on a t-shirt – and LOL!

I really think that you should give us other cool html tricks. I was wondering how you did the table. It looks awesome. I change the look of my diary sometimes weekly, and you have no idea how happy it makes me. On that note, I thought I’d tell you that you have no idea how, without opendiary, I would be dead right now. Yesterday, I took an overdose as an attempt to kill myself…ctd.

Without the support I’m getting from my favorites right now, I know that I wouldn’t have any source to draw strength from right now. Normally, I draw strength from myself and God, but lately, I’ve felt alienated from even God and myself…lonliness is an awful thing. But, because of my favorites and the support that OD provides, I feel strong to live another day. Thank you so much.

You’re a very smart cookie 🙂

Thank you so much.

Turny? Is that a word? I loved your description of the cart. Maybe they should get some of those at the gym and force us to wheel them around the room 6 or 20 times.

Whoa, that’s cool that you shared the code :o) You rock!

You realize by posting that little snippet of HTML, you’re setting yourself up for 5,309,398,461,404,843,963 technical complaints when people who don’t understand HTML try to paste it and leave off a closing tag… or worse…and then complain to you that site is “broken”. You must be a sucker for punishment. 😉

Hrmm… I keep getting logged out no matter what I try to do, the diary circles are out and I was just now logged out when I came to write this note. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to reach the help pages and still be logged in so I thought I’d leave you a note on here. It’s kind of a discouraging problem really… anyway, thanks. ^^ (I just signed in and it worked, weird)

thanks for the sidebar code!!

i have found my writing on somebody elses diary. i managed to get her to take it off…but is there some kind of punishment for people who steal other’s work?

Look how funny you can be! You are like an episode of scrubs, writing an entry about respecting others’ writing and then using your blurb-box-entry to illustrate respecting copyrights. If you didn’t do it on purpose, just smile and nod you head, so that people will think you did. Have a nice weekend — even if you choose to work through it all.

There is an IKEA shelf unit called ‘Smeg’. Which is only funny to people from the UK, or fans of ‘Red Dwarf’.

*lolz* i had stolen that code from u a long time ago. isabel

I keep trying to upgrade my diary and it keeps coming back rejected. I know I am using a valid card. Also, when I sign in, for some reason I am continually getting signed back out.

Also, when I try to go to my diary or my notes, it keeps going to “This page cannot be displayed.”

RE shnooze diary/Hunter Thompson quote: http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/misc/loathing/tequila.html There’s an ARTICLE/REVIEW about the movie “Fear and Loathing…” You can clearly see the second half of the quote alleged by the other diarist to be an HST quote. However, between the words “The narrative is simple” and “Your basic wild Sin City…” it’s clear that the other diarist inserted

a little extra verbage. The extra verbage he inserted is from the description page of shnooze’s diary. Yep. He kyped it. That’s all. Just an FYI.

To me it makes no sence to have the option of putting your diary on favorites only. you should either have it public or private and thats that

Hi. I don’t know what could be causing this, but for some reason my sessions keep getting logged out on their own and a thing pops up that says “Your session has been logged out due to inactivity” but I haven’t been inactive. I could be typing an entry and when I click ‘Save’ it pops up and I have to retype the entry! Can you fix this? Thanx! <3 Luv Alwayz <3 *~*Sara*~* *xoxo* 😀 @–}—

Thank you for the information! I like your page setup and designs.

Hi. I’ve been at OD for almost a year now and have rarely had problems with users. Usually, they work themselves out, however one specific user, 427, has been targeting what s/he calls my mistakes and torturing me because of them. I’m a birthmother and placed my daughter for adoption only four months ago. I’m in the beginning stages of the healing process and abuse from random diary (con’d)

owners is not something that will help me to move forward with my life. A friend of mine, Tinkymamma, informed me that she already reported him/her, but if they have a second opportunity to attack my decisions and upset me, which they have, they obviously have not been removed from the site. They are in clear violation of the rules and while I know that it is possible they will come back (con’d)

under another diary name to harass me further, I’d really appreciate it if his/her diary would be removed from the site as soon as possible. Thank you in advance.

I just had that problem with an Ikea desk I put together.

d0 y0u know how to make a menu on your own. rather than the one that is originally in the diary. like the menu to the left.

i have an OD friend that was recently “accused” of stealing someone’s words…when in fact the person who wrote them had plagiarized them from a published author. the plagiarizer then notified OD Master (you) that my buddy had “stolen” from her. I think it’s a little ridiculous that some people get so uppity about words that aren’t even theirs. it perturbs me when i see accusatory notes like it

i suppose at this point i am just venting…but many people often quote lyrics or poetry or sometimes movies… and mostly you know it…it just seems so petty to run to OD Master to “tattle” because you think someone stole your un-original idea. -yeah I’m venting now. sorry.

ooh thanks for the html. needed it. 🙂 do you reply to the notes you get? jw.

Thanx!

🙂 not to mention some of us acutaly bother to copyright short stories or poems that we create and we do not want others running off taking the credit for them 😉

How did u make a website like this? I’m glad u did it rocks!!!

I know this was like 7 months ago, but I just joined here in August and then had my entire diary erased by the daggone hacker, and rejoined as soon as I found out. Anyways, thanks for posting that code for the box. I finally figured out it’s supposed to go at the beginning of the entry. Later.