Squidlog.net

This week AJ is taking a short break from musing about Squidoo Etiquette and Netiquette to say a very personal thankyou to the person who keeps Squidlog running for the benefit of so many people.

Last week, following the publication of Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin” and a related Squidoo Co-brand template, Bonnie (Lensmaster bdkz) suggested to RocketMoms on Squidoo that we make a Linchpin lens to acknowledge some very important people in our lives. I can think of many Linchpins on Squidoo – Megan Casey and of course Seth Godin himself are ones who come immediately to mind and I am sure we all have others we could nominate.

For me they include several well known Lensmasters, such as MiMi who was the driving force behind Squidoo Step by Step and Joan Adams who is very good at keeping me sane, with her wonderful “wicked” sense of humour and her down to earth advice. I would love to make a Linchpin lens about my husband, but my need to remain anonymous means that I cannot at this point in time.

However, in the end I chose to make my very first Linchpin lens about the one person without whom Squidlog could not exist: Squidster. The timing is also appropriate coming up to Squidlog’s first anniversary and Squidster’s birthday, which is 1st March.

I am so happy and proud that Squidster is one of my Squidpals. She epitomises everything I love about the Squidoo Family. Squid Giant, former Squidoo Angel and Purple Star winner, Squidster gives so much to help people and make Squidoo and Squidlog the great community that they are.

Squidster and I don’t exchange emails on a frequent basis, but we do stay in touch and although we are very different personalities, we do have a lot in common. Squidster has a great sense of humour and I know we make each other laugh from time to time.

My lens: Linchpin Squidster needs more work on it and I will add to it, but it is just my way of acknowledging the huge (and indispensible) role Squidster plays on Squidlog and I hope you will join with me in saying thank you, either here in the Guestbook below or on the lens.

On a similar note...

• Oh no, not another weight loss lens on Squidoo…. (0)
• Happy Birthday Mimi (GrowWear on Squidoo)! (5)
• Feedback on Squidoo is sooooo important! (10)
• AJ is Musing about the Squidoo Community (4)
• Your Outside Traffic Begins From Inside Their Hearts (2)

Visit the Squidoo Top 100 and you will always see some recipe lenses. Do a search for a specific recipe on Squidoo and I bet you will nearly always find it. Recipes are popular on Squidoo but are they always what they seem?

There seems to be some confusion among Squidoo Lensmasters about what does and not constitute plagiarism and copyright violations as far as recipes are concerned. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I am sure that “someone” told me once that there is no copyright on a list of ingredients but you cannot legally copy a method on to a website or Squidoo lens and it is best to write it all in your own words.

Clearly, not all Lensmasters re-write the methods, as I have seen many a recipe lens where I have copied and pasted content  into a Google search box and the ingredients and method appear all over the internet. This may lead some Lensmasters to believe that because a recipe IS all over the internet, then no one owns the rights to it and they can reproduce it word for word on a lens.

Hmmm….I would be VERY careful if the sites owned by Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver are listing those recipes!

So what DOES the law say?

In an attempt to clarify the situation, I did what I always do when some serious Squidoo research is required and I posted a question at the SquidU forum. I asked what people thought and had some very interesting responses.

Leanne Chesser did some digging around (thanks Leanne) at the US  Copyright Office Website (on recipes), where she found:

“Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds, or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, when a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection.

Protection under the copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code, section 102) extends only to ‘original works of authorship’ that are fixed in a tangible form (a copy). ‘Original’ means merely that the author produced the work by his own intellectual effort, as distinguished from copying an existing work. Copyright protection may extend to a description, explanation, or illustration, assuming that the requirements of the copyright law are met.”

So we are taking that to mean that what I said earlier is the case. Re-write “the substantial literary expression” (the method) in your own words.

BUT…

I think what upsets people more than anything is if no acknowledgment of the source is cited on the Lens. By not acknowledging the source, the impression is given that it is your own original recipe and that is where accusations of deceit and *gasp* even plagiarism could be made.

As far as the Squidoo TOS are concerned, breaches of copyright remain the responsibility of the individual Lensmasters as they retain ownership of the content of their lenses. However, Plagiarism is a clear Squidoo TOS violation, can be reported and can result in your lens being locked. (For a great lens about Plagiarism, visit Susanna Duffy’s lens: What is Plagiarism?)

And what about those recipes that are handed down through the generations?

My Bread Sauce recipe, is a very old traditional recipe, which my Father uses and which my Grandmother taught him. I think the first time it was written down was when I made the lens on which it is featured.

My Dad also taught me the art of making perfect gravy but it was Delia Smith, a well known English TV Chef, who gave me the idea to add red wine to it. (Dad hates red wine, so he would never have thought of that!) So I make sure that Delia is credited on the Lens and of course that provides me with some material for an Amazon module!

Lensmaster Lou16 makes a very interesting contribution to the discussion, when she says:

“Some people who publish recipes don’t even realize that they were originally in printed form……I have a recipe that I was going to publish, but hadn’t got around to. It was written down on a piece of paper by my hubby’s great aunt and she was ‘famous’ in his hometown for it, I had planned to put in a little anecdote about her and include the recipe – lucky I didn’t because earlier this year I was looking through an old recipe book and there it was – word for word! Who knows if someone else took Loma’s recipe or if she copied it off of them?”

I am thinking though that Lou can still make the lens. She should scan the ingredients list from the recipe and use it as an illustration on the lens and tell the story she told us. Lou should link to or credit the original recipe book and make sure she describes the method differently.

For me the best recipe lenses are ones that tell a personal story. They say who taught the cook to make the dish. Was it passed down from Grandmothers and Mothers or Dads like mine was? We really do want to know!

Kate Phizackerly makes a cautionary comment:

“People might wish to reflect on the fact that copyright works both ways. If recipes cannot be copyrighted, then recipes in a lens aren’t copyright either so it’s OK for people to lift those recipes for their own lens. It means the success of recipe lenses comes down very much to the SEO ability of lensmasters.”

Kate has a good point, but I actually think it is not just good SEO that makes Squidoo recipe lenses successful. The difference between the best Squidoo recipe lenses and the ones you find on sites all over the internet, is that many tell a story. There’s also some very active Squidoo Recipe Groups and Blogs, that help promote high standards of recipe lenses on Squidoo. Giant Squid Organiser Robin (Lensmaster rms) runs Cabaret Squidoo, Correen (Lensamster Clouda9) has started up a Squidlog Blog:  Squidoo Chefmasters and of course the most well known Chef of all on Squidoo is Chef Keem who invented the famous Sea Salt Caramel Truffles.

Good recipe lens etiquette

Recipe lenses can contribute to your family history, like many lenses you publish, you are leaving what could turn out to be quite a legacy. So surely it is far better to be honest rather than create the impression that you are coming up with original recipes?

And do remember, just a quick “ctrl + C” (copy) and a quick “ctrl + V” (paste) into a Google search box could return thousands of websites with that very exact same recipe featured and you are rumbled!

If the recipe was handed down, then say so. If you don’t know the original source, then say that as well. It seems to me that in the interests of openness and transparency, it makes sense to cite your sources on all recipe lenses.

Or should that be cite your sauces

Featured image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

On a similar note...

• When being nice in Squidoo Guestbooks doesn’t necessarily help anyone! (4)
• Missing old friends on the Squidoo SquidU Forum and a new AJ (9)
• AJ is Musing about the Squidoo Community (4)
• Thankful for the Volunteers on Squidoo (7)
• Feedback on Squidoo is sooooo important! (10)

All about showing good manners when leaving links on Plexos on Squido Lenses.

OK, I know some people hate plexos because, let’s face it, they can be Spam magnets. But I use Plexos a lot, In fact I use them so much that I have a Plexography that helps me keep track of them.

I also have my own “AJ psychology” that stops me deleting them out of sheer frustration because I get more Spam on some of them, than I do quality and, more importantly, relevant links – particularly my lens about losing weight on a wheat free diet!

To save my sanity I think of it like this

Someone has visited my lens, which is good. I delete their link to Belly Button Fluff R Us. I re-publish the lens. All good for Lensrank!

Yep, those low-lifes have no manners and they are also not very clever, because a lot of Lensmasters have invisible Statcounters on their lenses, as well as email notifications when links are added to their Plexos. This enables us to pinpoint EXACTLTY when the link was left and the IP ADDRESS of the culprit. Cue a Spam Report to HQ and if it is a Lensmaster then they are in trouble, ha ha!

However, although it may be time consuming to keep my Plexos clean, it does not bother me that much. What does bother me however, is the (probably unthinking) behaviour of some Lensmasters who leave relevant links on a Plexo.

Would you believe it? As I am posting this article I have just been spammed on my Weight Loss HQ Lens!

Here’s something else to think about

You set up a Plexo on a Lens. You invite people to leave their links via a Squidcast, perhaps through Twitter or any of the other methods you use to network. It gets traffic to your lens and it helps other Lensmasters with backlinks and hopefully traffic to their lenses. But some of these visitors just stay long enough to leave their link and off they go, without so much as a thank you.

To me that is like inviting people to dinner. You give them a lovely meal, which they consume with relish and then they get up and leave. No “thank you”. Nothing.

Next time you leave a link to your lens on a Plexo, how about dropping by the Guestbook and leaving a nice little note?

Thank You by dndartstudio

Just a short article from me this week. I have been in a show that has taken up most of my time since Christmas. However, I am now back and catching up. Next week, we will talk about recipe lenses.

On a similar note...

• When being nice in Squidoo Guestbooks doesn’t necessarily help anyone! (4)
• Recipe lenses on Squidoo – what are the copyright and potential TOS issues? (11)
• Helping your fellow Squidoo Lensmasters with critiques (0)
• Feedback on Squidoo is sooooo important! (10)
• Email Etiquette on Squidoo and the Net (Part 2) (1)

AJ is Musing about feedback on Squidoo and how important it is to everyone – Lensmasters and Squidoo HQ alike.

Feedback in one form or another has been a major part of my life over the last 10 years. As a former teacher of adults, my students were asked to give feedback at the end of every completed training session. How else could I find out whether I had helped or motivated? How else would I find out if I had delivered expectations? But of course to be able to meet people’s expectations, you had to set them first, just so everyone is clear about what to expect and what is expected.

So I delivered the training. I ran courses that I knew how to deliver well. Then I had to be brave and invite feedback. With luck, plus a lot of effort, I got it all right and everyone was happy.

But sometimes someone made me stop and think, perhaps about how I said something or how I handled a situation.

Maybe in an attempt to be brief or move the proceedings along I came across as curt or dismissive? And in a way, being given THAT feedback was far more valuable to me than all the praise and kudos that I frequently received.

It stopped me from assuming I had always got it right. It stopped me from taking it for granted that I would always get it right. It kept me on my toes.

On Squidoo feedback is crucial

Most of us are hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from our audience. Even those we may work with closely could be a long haul flight away. It is rare to see anyone face to face – unless of course you live in Pendleton, SC. Where EVERYONE is either publishing lenses on Squidoo or reading them!

I often describe myself as sitting in an ivory tower, this side of “the pond”. It can be a lonely place sometimes and when you first start publishing lenses, it can be a nerve wracking experience.

You wonder how your lenses will stack up compared to the lenses you have been visiting, as you try to figure how to go about making that first lens, or two, or three, or …

Then you take the plunge. You create. You publish. Then you worry that you have just published the crappiest of crap lenses that were ever published in the history of Squidoo!

Then you start getting comments in your Squidoo Guestbooks. You get feedback and phew! It’s OK. Your lens was NOT the crappiest of crap lenses that were ever published.

Then you might get an email that tells you about a typo, or gives you a suggestion about how to improve it and all of a sudden you are not scared of getting feedback anymore.

You even start venturing onto the “Critique Me” thread on the SquidU Forum. OK, so sometimes the feedback is not what you would prefer to hear, but you are growing on Squidoo. You are getting more confident, you can handle it!

But then tsomething not so good happens!

The longer you are on Squidoo and the more people tell you how well you are doing and how you always “get it right”, there is a danger that someone will say:

Whoa! Just a minute, but….

The danger is that you will resent any negative feedback. You will think that the problem is with the person giving the feedback and not with you.

So I guess what I am just trying to say is that we all need to watch out for this. Just because we may be a Squidoo Angel, a Giant Squid or a Giant Squid 100 does not guarantee that we will always be right and sometimes others won’t agree with us. And perhaps in these situations, it is best to forget about titles and the number of lenses we have made. We need to stop and remember we are all the same underneath – just Squidoo Lensmasters, who can all learn a lot from feedback from each other.

And what about Squidoo HQ?

Do you ever give them feedback about stuff that is happening on Squidoo? Have you got a story to tell? Something that was so fantastic that you blogged about it? Tweeted it on Twitter? Did you remember to tell HQ?

Did you ever email Seth Godin when something great happened to you on Squidoo? He likes to hear from people AND he replies.

And by the same token, if something is bugging the heck out of you, did you ever contact HQ about that too? How can they help if they don’t know about it? They may be a pretty talented bunch of people but they are not mind-readers.

Think about it

There’s over a million lenses on Squidoo. We are blogging all over the place. We are active on Nings, Squidlog and hundreds of other Squidoo related sites. How can HQ possibly keep up with what is going on out in the “field”? So, do tell them. Let them know what you love and loathe.

It was only this morning that I got thinking about feedback and that was because of this comment on my blog at Crabby’s Beach , from Lensmaster Laniann:

You are a strong person AJ and you will make it. Look back at how much you have accomplished and the long road you have already travelled. You have been a blessing to many people. You will come out on top just keep going.

I was very moved that a Lensmaster, who I don’t really “know”, had taken the time to leave such a kind and personal message. I had posted the blog following a very sad episode in my life and the comment actually brought tears to my eyes that she could reach out to me in that way. She did not have to, but she chose to.

Publishing on Squidoo can be a lonely business

It is not like you are working in an office and when you have something you want to share, good or bad, you can pop your head around someone’s door and have a quick chat. There’s no one on hand to tell you whether you have got it right or wrong. And of course your family think you are totally nuts and don’t have the first idea what you are talking about when it comes to Squidoo!

My daughter Sparky sums it up so well:

But on Squidoo there’s thousands of people you may never meet, who really do understand what you are feeling. People like Laniann, who care enough to reach out to you and make a comment like she did.

Feedback is the basis of many of the decisions that we make on Squidoo

Feedback can make the difference between making decisions based on reality – what is really happening and what people really think, or we can ignore it or even pass up the opportunity to get some feedback, basing decisions on our own assumptions. And of course, as I always used to say in that training room,  assumptions make an ass out of you and me – ass-u-me!

Yep, feedback. Don’t you just love it? And where would Squidoo be without it?

On a similar note...

• When being nice in Squidoo Guestbooks doesn’t necessarily help anyone! (4)
• Spreading my wings outside Squidoo (6)
• Recipe lenses on Squidoo – what are the copyright and potential TOS issues? (11)
• Email Etiquette on Squidoo and the Net (Part 2) (1)
• The Journey is the Most Important Part of the Journey (0)

How far do you make allowances when you are reading a Squidoo Lens? Do you start to get iriiruated aboiuyrt tyoos? Do you rate a Lens down if the grammar is incorrect? Do you star to ameke judgemants about the lenamasster? Do you assume they are illerirate, lasy and just cant be bothered?

What the heck AJ? Did you forget to run the spell-check on that last paragraph? Have you started consuming Christmas spirit already?

That first paragraph is NORMAL for me, when I type at the 80 words a minute I used to be able to type with accuracy. (This is what I call the “two fingered typing method” – I never did learn to touch typoe. Oops I mean type.) I say used to, because over the last two years I have suffered from co-ordination problems due to Otosclerosis and my typing has deteriorated. I frequently hit the keys next to the one I am aiming for and my normally good spelling gets very scrambled, particularly if I am tired.

The word “contact” will sometimes come out as “conyacy”. I often end my emails with “hugs”, but it has now become a running joke with some of my friends as I end my emails with “higs”!

To combat this, I have had to slow down my typing considerably and carefully check everything I write. My word processing software is set to underline misspelled words in red and everything takes a lot longer.

However, despite being careful, I still have near-misses. Like the time I was sending a note to a lady who is extremely well endowed on her “top deck”. I was about to hit send on the email, when I noticed that instead of writing:

I know how busy you are

I had typed:

I know how busty you are

Oops!

I can laugh about thgis, correction: I mean this. But it is not funny for my lovely daughter Lizzie, who has dyslexia, combined with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). APD is a condition that 1 in 10 children have, but many go undiagnosed and as a result many children have learning difficulties, they struggle at school and no one knows why.

We were lucky with Lizzie. She was diagnosed relatively early and her education has not suffered through lack of diagnosis – just lack of help from her elementary school, but that’s a different story. Although Lizzie does struggle with spelling high frequency words and combined with the auditory processing problems (she hears normally, but sometimes the brain does not process what she hears) it can make writing and typing up school work a very frustrating experience.

To give an example: it is very difficult for Lizzie to distinguish between “off” and “of” if she is taking notes or having something dictated to her.

The difference between Lizzie and me is that I can see where I have made a mistake, but Lizzie cannot. Lizzie is a very intelligent child. She is not lazy. But spelling is a problem for her. Spell-checks do not pick up everything and for those people who (for whatever reason) have literacy problems, publishing on Squidoo can be beset with difficutlies – correction: difficulties.

Suffering from Otosclerosis and seeing Lizzie’s problems have made me a lot more aware of the difficulties some people have.

Would you like help with a Lens?

A few months back I wrote an article on Squidlog about making allowances for other Lensmasters on the SquidU Forum, who may have difficulties that we may know nothing about, but now I want to take it a step further and offer some direct help.

It is obvious from the Lenses I see that there’s Lensmasters on Squidoo who struggle with grammar and spelling, either because they have literacy problems or because English is not their first language.

So I am offering to work on ONE lens in the New Year to improve the language, grammar and spelling.

I will copy the text from the Lens, correct language, grammar and spelling and return it to the Lensmaster for them to copy and paste back into the Lens.

There’s conditions:

• I cannot be held liable for anything I may miss
• By copying my work into your lens, you are approving what I have done
• The work will be done by the end of January at a time of my choosing
• It is up to you whether you use all, some or none of my suggestions
• WIP Lenses not considered,  must be published
• You have to be a Lensmaster who is active in the Squidoo Community (I will check your Bio)
• You need to say what the Lens you nominate means to you and why you would like help with it

How do you submit a Lens for review?

Just leave the link to your already published lens and the reasons why you would like help in the comment box at the bottom of this article.

I am also looking for other Lensmasters to make the same offer to review and correct a Lens for another Lensmaster.

How do you offer to help?

Leave the link to your Lensmaster Bio in the comments box here and I will contact you. Of course, contact needs to be enabled on your Bio!

The number of Lenses we can review, will depend solely on the amount of help that is offered, but wouldn’t it be great if we could do say 20 Lenses?

I haven’t got a clue what I will be musing about next week! Perhaps a review of the Squidoo year that has flown by? I’ll just see where the Muse takes me.

On a similar note...

• When being nice in Squidoo Guestbooks doesn’t necessarily help anyone! (4)
• Thankful for the Volunteers on Squidoo (7)
• Recipe lenses on Squidoo – what are the copyright and potential TOS issues? (11)
• Helping your fellow Squidoo Lensmasters with critiques (0)
• Feedback on Squidoo is sooooo important! (10)