When writing something on the internet there’s a big chance you came across it elsewhere and used that as reference material. The decent thing to do in such an occasion is of course to give a link for credit, but what do you do in case it’s in a foreign language?
As blogger or even when simply writing entries on forums or online communities you occassionally come across interesting items on the rest of the web which you feel like sharing, dropping a link back to give credit when due is a decent thing to do.
Another reason you could think off when linking back is to give your readers something more to read which you believe might be of interest to them. But what happens when it’s Dutch, German or some other language asides from English? Obviously most of your readers might not be able to read it thus linking back for extra reading material becomes sort of pointless.
Simply skip linking back for crediting them for their original work? Obviously the answer should be no here, but how often do you link back to foreign sources? Especially on forums it’s quite common to see statements like “this is what I could find about it on English”, “the article wasn’t in English but it said something like this”, etc.
Looking at it from the other side it’s quite common to see people complaining about others having ripped off their material, especially amongst English communities on themselves as obviously they can read and check this as well. The response to it usually is quite negative, I’ve even seen some bloggers go as far as publicly discrediting other bloggers or communities for not giving them the credit they deserve.
But what in case it’s a Chinese site or French site not linking back to you? Would you feel the same, they ripped off your work for which you deserve to be given the credit? Or would you just think you’d probably do the same when you found something on a Chinese or French site to write about in an English community?
