A push for aggregation standards

Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
Looking for aggregation standards: In response to the dozens of dust-ups over the proper way to aggregate others’ work online over the past few years, a new group has formed to establish some standards guiding the practice of pulling and drawing on others’ writing. The group, called the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation, was announced by Advertising Age’s Simon Dumenco at the South by Southwest Interactive festival and given a shot of publicity in a column by the New York Times’ David Carr.
The group is still in its early stages, but according to Carr, it may end up with some of seal of approval for sites that abide by the standards it comes up with. Its members insisted they weren’t anti-aggregation, but simply want to bring some order to a practice that’s been chaotic and contentious. Dumenco explained his aims in a bit more depth in a Poynter chat as well.
Carr’s column also highlighted a similar effort by Maria Popova, who runs the creatively aggregated site Brain Pickings, to introduce what she calls The Curator’s Code, two new symbols to indicate whether you discovered a piece of content directly or indirectly. As The Atlantic’s Megan Garber explained, behind the code lies the idea that curation — the ability to combine pieces of content together in a creative and compelling way — is a form of intellectual labor and even art, something that should be honored through honest attribution.
The backlash against both ideas didn’t take long to start. Chris Crum of WebProNews said he appreciates the cause, but doesn’t see any real usefulness for Popova’s new symbols. Concern about Dumenco’s council was more significant: FishbowlNY’s Chris O’Shea said the council is made up only of content and blogging bigwigs and that it’ll only be preaching to the choir anyway. Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan made the same points a bit more forcefully, arguing that the group will be unnecessary to those who already care about aggregating properly and ignored anyway by those who don’t. Plus, he said, “This sort of top-down, expert-heavy, credential-credulous media structure is exactly what blogging has so brilliantly been destroying for more than a decade.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/this-week-in-review-a-push-for-aggregation-standards-and-the-end-of-an-era-for-print/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=c1a41e80c0-DAILY_EMAIL