The Internet is a great tool for finding out the news. If I need to find out something I can simply go on Google and type in some words, related to the story, and sure enough it will send me a link to the article. I like the Internet for this reason, however, some Web sites are starting to irritate me.

I have written for many Web sites for free. The problem I find is that most sites simply want a scarce amount of your own work, with a link to the full source you have found. For me, I find this a problem. Being a writer, I like to write about topics. Sure enough at the end of an editorial article, I would like to link to all my sources where I got the information from, however, these sites don’t want long articles. They want a brief summary and a simply a link to the page.

I used to write for a particular site and wrote quite long articles on subjects, such as ‘How to Make Your Own Games’ as well as some information about gadgets that people may find useful. The longer I wrote on this site, the more I started to find I was doing something quite different from everyone else. The majority of other, supposed writers were simply copying and pasting part of an article they had found, and publishing it on this site. I then decided to do it for some stuff I had found, but then I thought to myself, what is the point?

People don’t get paid to post links. In fact, these sites are now becoming dependent on users uploading other writers’ articles for no cost at all. I stopped just copying and pasting because there is honestly no point in doing this. For me, a wannabe writer, there is no skill in simply copying a link and showing it to everyone else. If you have enough time on your hands anyone can find interesting things but it isn’t a skill. This isn’t always the case for all link uploading. When you do find something interesting, feel free to post it, but serially posting different links to a site — probably believing they may give you something back — is something I find harsh and misleading.

When people are literally uploading links over and over again to a site, do they think they are going to get recognised as a writer or a journalist? I have not heard yet of any successful writers being noticed for linking to other people’s work. Looking at many sites now (i.e. Twitter), this is more apparent than ever. There is now a horrendous amount of people sharing ridiculous amounts of links.

I am far from being classed as a successful writer, but I feel that it is actual writing and creativity that people are looking for. Is running a site based on other people’s material not plagiarism or some form of illegal copying? These sites are getting hits because of other people’s Web sites. Do we really need these middlemen sites to tell us what to look at without giving us a real explanation why, or adding anything of their own?

I do understand that in order to get traffic you have to be noticed on one of these sites, but why are people uploading other people’s articles and claiming to be news sites? If a Web site is claiming to be a news site and not just a link-sharing service like StumbleUpon or Digg (which I have no problem with), then they can’t simply upload lots of other people’s work, which they have written for other sites, and claim their site has any worthwhile content.

Then again I might be wrong. Maybe people simply enjoy uploading links and getting noticed, as well as not being particularly interested in becoming a professional. I am, of course, not accounting for people’s good nature. For example, if I upload something I find interesting, then someone else may also upload something I like. However, I highly doubt that people who invest hours of their time, for free, to show other people’s work don’t expect something back for their efforts. Can we not at least force these sites calling themselves news sites to attempt to at least make users comment on an article before uploading it to their site, or — even better — their own editorial response to an article?

My name is Tim Edwards, and I am a self-confessed blogger. I enjoy writing about topics that interest myself and others. I am trying to keep writing longer articles on the Internet alive and introduce it more people, rather than letting people’s attention spans be forced to 140 characters.

Feel free to check out my blog, and possibly follow if you enjoy.