Let's see of I can shed more light on this. What follows is longish but there are some lessons and food for thought in it, I believe: As Matt noted from my original posting to Paddlewise. I was given a heads up by someone to a public commercial website in which something I wrote was at issue. I went over to read Tamia Nelson's article. My first reaction was to respond within that commercial site's own forum. But when I looked at it, there were only two responses regarding that article. One by a fellow named Hutch saying any one who commando camps is a scumbag. The other a response by Tamia herself agreeing with his statement but saying she couldn't politely use that term. I looked over other topics and responses and decided I would go into that forum with any message by me; I wrote off the forum as innane and unsophisticated; if you visit it, I believe most of you would too judging by the level of discussion you all engender on PaddleWise. But I did think that the issue of commando camping should get a good airing pro and con and what better way than PaddleWise where discussions are fuller, not one-liners, sophisticated and insightful. I knew a lot of people would disagree with my view on commando camping but I also knew the disagreements would be useful not silly or off-the-wall or insulting. I learned a lot from them as I always do on PaddleWise. I therefore wrote the following to PaddleWise quoted by Matt, which gave the URL where people could see the original article (although not the chapter in my book which goes into a lot of things not covered). And I included what I would term a synopsis of the article not a paraphrase. I did no quoting and I did no paraphrasing of what Tamia Nelson said. Maybe I am being picky but paraphrasing involves what someone has said whereas a synopsis is just a straight forward description of contents, which is what I think I did. By directing people to the URL I was letting them read the original and not rely on any paraphrasing of statements. Matt Broze wrote: > > ralph diaz <rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote (the note that started the commando > camping thread): > > Subject: [Paddlewise] Sea Kayakers Behavior > > I got this heads-up from a fellow PaddleWiser: > > - ------------- > Hey, Ralph -- did you see this? > > http://www.paddling.net/sameboat/ > - ------------- > > >>Basically it is an article made up of two parts. The first part is of > boorish behavior by a bunch of kayakers who pull up on to a dock on a > private island in broad daylight and then proceed to defecate, pee, > crawl all over the place. The second part has to do with the Commando > Camping section of the Camping section of my book in which I go through > the necessity of sometimes having to commando camp (I believe, BTW, that > I coined the phrase...not the practice as I know kayakers and long range > bicyclists have done this for just about forever) and suggesting ways of > doing so that are non-disruptive to the property and privacy of the > location.<< > <SNIP> (The SNIPPED part was: The author of the article takes me to task for what I wrote. While like any good author she does pitch her quotes from my book to prove her point, they are not out of context although parts are left out that have more provisos than I guess she could get into her column.) > So far I don't see anything Ms. Nelson herself has done wrong. My > understanding is she asked the posters that she wanted to quote for their > permission to do so (much like asking a landowner for permission to camp). > The posters were free to give or withhold their permission and Ms. Nelson > appeared willing to abide by that. I was one of the posters asked. I said I could not give permission unless I knew the context in which she planned to use quotes. Although I didn't ask, I also wanted to know from which of my message contents she wished to quote. I wrote a lot on the issue in PaddleWise over the past week and was evolving in my own position as I read the thoughtful messages in PaddleWise, and so it would be important to know which selections of quotes from me. She wrote back saying that she had no intention of submitting future articles to me for my approval (I was not asking for any such approval just for an idea of the context in which she would use my quotes; this is something that anyone being asked for permission to have their stuff quoted has a right to ask) and then added that not quoting would mean she would have to rely on paraphrasing with all the problems and possibilities for error this entails. Basically, I felt I was being told that if I don't give my permission for attributed quotes from my PaddleWise messages, that errors would possibly creep in and they would be my fault for not giving permission! > the posters was not be her first choice but seems a reasonable way to write > the story if permission to quote is not given (even if Ralph had not > paraphrased her article in the first place--starting this whole thread). Did > Ralph ask her permission to do so? Did he need to? I don't think so. I for > one think we should commend Ms. Nelson for asking permission. That seems to > be in line with list policy. Again I did not paraphrase her statements, I just outlined the contents of the article. Besides, it is a public, non-subscription forum _not_ like what PaddleWise is. I wrote just enough to let the PaddleWise reader know its general contents and where they could read the full text. BTW, Matt, I am not arguing with you just clarifying the situation a bit. Tamia Nelson actually had other choices or options in writing her followup article which she did not try. It is to do what I do if I am thinking of writing about something I find on the Net. I treat the message just as a lead. I contact the individual and say I want to write something (giving the publication and context) and want to interview them afresh about what was said rather than work with just the original message. I do this via the phone or email. I ask my questions and get my answers. I take nothing of the original post unless that is what the person wishes to convey to me. If the person says, no, not interested in having anything in an article or even being interviewed afresh with questions, I don't then switch to paraphrase mode. I drop the issue entirely and pursue it no further. This is Responsible Journalism 101 when working from something someone has said. If Tamia Nelson had wanted to interview me for fresh quotes to questions she would have asked, I would have been happy to oblige. In that way I would have seen her direction in the questions and either answered or not answered individual ones; and there would have been some give and take. My wife (who I met when she was in journalism grad school with of all people Pat Buchanan!) suggested that I offer Tamia Nelson that interview possibility but by that time Tamia Nelson emailed me saying that she didn't think we had anything more to discuss. With that kiss-off it didn't seem opportune to pursue the subject further with her. As you can see, lots of food for thought. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 12 2000 - 08:44:03 PDT
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