hat-tip or honour among thieves (10. 922)

Veteran blogger Ernie Smith brings us back to a time a decade ago when individually curated websites were the acknowledged primary sources for leads and a mainstay for uncovering interesting things. As these finds were propagated, attribution and due credit increasingly were elided over for the sake of virality, damaging the revenue and reputation of the original posters. A curators’ code was proposed in attempts to raise the standard of citation to academic and journalistic levels with an ↬ as a back link and a second ᔥ that’s a direct link to the source. The markup language didn’t quite catch on but hopefully the intent and the collegial spirit remains even as the old, weird web is cannibalised.