This is something that has been bothering me for awhile now, and the more copy and pasted articles I see, the worse it gets.
The Problem:
Since I started regularly browsing the forum on VGChartz, I've noticed a peculiar trend in news reporting. People will find a news piece and will blatantly copy and paste the whole thing, images and all, generally fairly lazily, leaving broken images or otherwise, into a forum post and call it good. On a formatting note, it just tends to look awful. On a more serious note, you are blatantly stealing somebody's writing and depriving their website of traffic when you do this. Maybe it's harder to understand the full impact of this when you haven't actually written for a site, but whether it is news or otherwise, when a piece is written, it is written for that site and that site only. If you want to read that piece, you are supposed to go to that site. Depending on the piece, you may rob a site of hundreds of views because there is no longer reason to visit the page in question when literally the entire content, word for word, is pasted right into the forum post. That also means depriving a site of ad revenue, and overall having some level of impact on the site's overall performance.
Essentially, copying and pasting whole articles is lazy and unethical at the best of times. On one hand, you acknowledge a site when you choose them to report news, but then you immediately gut punch them when you take away their traffic.
The Solution:
Having done my share of news reporting on another forum in the past that experienced this same issue for a time, the solution is a simple one. You write a summary of the news in your own words. No copying and pasting. You just make an effort to relay the general idea and direct people to the source for more information if they want or need it. Writers out there, whether you're praising, debating, or berating their pieces, would not be okay with their work being copied and pasted word for word anywhere, a source URL that nobody actually has any reason to click anymore or not.
As a good lesson, adding a source link isn't a magical pass to copying and pasting absolutely anything you want to. Some discretion always has to be taken.
Honestly, I see this is as a somewhat major issue. The current practice for forum news reporting is simply not okay.
As an example of the solution, though, it's just a Kickstarter update:
Allison Road Kickstarter Cancelled, Partnered with Team17
If you aren't faimilar with it, Allison Road is a horror game project that works to bring back horror elements from games such as Silent Hill. It was looking very interesting and like it could be one of the best horror games ever made, but it was uncertain if the Kickstarter would actually be funded in time. In a fortunate turn of events, Kickstarter became unnecessary as Team17, known for their Worms games, partnered with the independent studio working on Allison Road so that hopefully the development team is able to create the game that matches their vision.
To note, it seems that the team is just under the Team17 label. It does not seem like the regular Team17 development team will actually be involved in the project in a way that would hinder the original vision.
