Working titles, shielding and bots
 

I've noticed that some members post with a thread title that differs from their poem thread to hide titles from search engines, since this may affect chances of publication in some magazines.

I've just tried searching for poem thread title of mine on Google and it didn't turn up which was pleasing. Then I searched again on Janice's "working title to confuse bots is Poverty" (since that was what had piqued my interest in the first place) and got two hits. It seems that this forum generally manages to hide to the thread titles from bots, but not when the titles appear on the main forum page(s) that show each board and its most recent post. So if you're unlucky enough to be the most recent thread when the bot comes a-crawlin', then into the Google cache you go - so it's a bit of a lottery. Janice's thread was captured here at 11am on the 19th here and here

This left me wondering, how long does Google keep the cached copy before it replaces it with a more recent version. If it's only kept a few days, that's not really an issue is it? It'd have disappeared by the time you send the poem out. But googling Eratosphere I see the most recent cached copy is dated 3 hours ago, so Google is clearly keeping more than one copy, in fact, searching on poems posted in June, I find cached versions of those titles too.

So, I'm sure this may well be a subject that's been raised before, and my apologies for raising it again, but is it not possible to shield the main forum page(s) that show each board and its most recent post? Or would that a problem, one of these being the "front page". Are working titles the only answer?

best,

Matt

I've been accused of worrying far too much about this issue, and perhaps I could dig up the threads where that worrying occurred. But I don't mind doing it again :)

It would be technically possible to shield the main page. The trouble is that doing so would prevent Eratosphere's main presence from turning up in people's search results. That would mean that people who have heard a little about it and want to look for it wouldn't find it in the normal way. It would also mean that fewer people would stumble on it. That might reduce the number of people who discover Able Muse and Able Muse Press, and I'm pretty sure that's a result Alex doesn't want.

Knowing how few people who join actually stick around to contribute to the conversation, I'd hate to see anything reduce the number of people who find us and look in and perhaps join.

Matt, it doesn't matter if a "working title" shows up in Google, since an editor checking for prior publication will presumably not do a search for the working title. As far as the poem itself is concerned, the original post can always use the no-follow tags to hide it from the bots. It's only because the no-follow tags don't work on titles in the menus that it's necessary to change the title.

What Maryann said and what Roger said.

Personally, I think this "threat" is overblown. I don't believe that too many editors really care about temporary workshop posts and even fewer bother googling. And if it worries you, use a different title. (And keep in mind, that if somebody were that determined to search you out, all they would have to do is join the Sphere.) The fact is, that we've had numerous posts on this topic, but I'm not aware of anywhere - except for one British humor competition, whose name escapes me, and I'm too lazy to check - where it's become a factor.

What Michael said.
It's a tempest in a teapot.

Memo

Crossposted with a bunch of folks.

I don't always, but sometimes, use the "no index" tag and a working title. But I am nonetheless always honest and aboveboard with the editors to whom I submit. I do not want to alienate myself from editors by attempting to deceive them.

What I usually say is this/these poem(s) "are my original work, not published in print or online in any literary journal, and not submitted to any other forum". (I rarely do simultaneous submissions, and when I do, I say so.)

When it seems a fuller disclosure is necessary--for instance I'm submitting to a new journal whose editorial policy I am not familiar with--I will perhaps add "this poem has appeared in a workshop forum in a version differing from the finalized poem now submitted.

It goes without saying that posting a poem that has some good intentions or qualities but fails to make it across the finish line, is good for all of us, for all participants. For the poet with a blind spot in her eye, for the newer learners who come to realize that there are differing opinions about what is lacking, and none or more than one suggestion to fix it may be correct. And for the old hands who relish digging into a failed effort to suggest ways to resuscitate it is a boon.

In short, that is the purpose of a workshop--it's not a vanity publishing site, it's a learning site, a discussion of possibilities.

Most of the poems I submit to editors have never been aired in previous workshopping. But when I get stuck (as with my current thread poem) and come to this excellent po-community to tell me what I suspect but am having a hard time admitting to myself (that I wrote a stinker and don't know how to de-stink it), I try to remember to preface it with a fake name and no-index-tag. Such a poem isn't something I want on my track record; it is not really a child I want to own up to birthing. It is a workshop item that I may or may not eventually succeed in turning into a decent poem.

I started using tags and false titles when some of my unfinished and abandoned poems/translations which were not (in my view) finalized, appeared in various blogs. Sometimes intact, sometimes with good lines reworked into another's poem. Sometimes with my name and sometimes without. I think using the whole poem with my name is meant as a friendly gesture, though it used to make me cross because only I can say when the poem is final or discarded.

Tags and fake titles are probably not of much use, they would not deter anyone determined to disregard etiquette, they don't wrap the poem in a cloak of invisibility, but are at least an indicator that I regard the poem as still in the pipeline.

Matt asks: How long do things remain on the internet? A long, long time. Which is why it is a good idea not to swear and insult and hurl nasty, misspelled, and ungrammatical phrases that will come back to haunt your character in years to come. (Not that I am accusing Matt of this: just making a general statement.)

More specifically, it used to be google's cache lasted about 30 days, but that was a while ago, and I wouldn't bet the farm on any number these days.

This comes up in many workshops, but it's a moot issue. Editors don't care. In fact, the opposite may be true: many here have stories of workshopping a poem and having an editor write them and ask "can I have that one for my next issue?"

Remember the old days, when people would carefully write the letter c with a little circle around it before they photocopied their work and handed it around, because they were worried someone might steal their poem? This issue belongs in the same basket. Yes, it might make it easier to defend authorship in court. But when was the last time one actually had to do that? ;)

Best,

Bill

Thanks Maralynn, that makes sense.

Roger, thanks. I'd understood what the working titles were for, but please thanks for the heads up on using tags. I've searched and found the instructions. Since that took some time, and others may be interested, the suggestion is this: Add this line as the first line of your post.
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE,NOINDEX”>
Then change the font colour to white to make it disappear.

There are several reasons why I'm rather dubious of this. First, the proper place for a meta-tag is in the page header (which we have no access to). A robot has no reason to look in the body of the page for these instructions.

Second, if the web browser were interpreting this as an HTML instruction it wouldn't appear on the page (and we wouldn't need to make it go white to disappear it). So if my browser doesn't see this as HTML, why should a bot.

Third, although has been suggested by those who've tried it that it has some effect E. Shaun Russell's test failed, as you can see if you search on the phrase he tried protecting about six years ago.

Of course, that doesn't mean I won't try it, it's no effort after all, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.

Michael, thanks. What you say makes sense. I'm very new to the whole publishing thing and so have no personal experience in this area.

Memo,
I see you are using an altered name to prevent yourself from being spidered. Good plan, I shall henceforth refer to myself as Natt

Janice thanks, that's interesting and useful too.

Thanks all, I guess I'm just used to posting everything with complete impunity, but now that I've starting thinking about the possibility of publication, I suddenly feel a little exposed ....

Thanks again,

Natt

The tag you googled forth is not the one recommended. Check out Alex's thread
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...ighlight=index

in staff announcements.

The thread title is: Revisiting Google protection for workshop threads

Bill,

Sorry cross-posted with you. I hadn't thought of this a copyright-style issue. More about what would happen if an editor received your poem and stuck it's title into Google and there your poem was. So for me, I guess, it would be how to avoid being found by a cursory search, that's all.

And you are right, there are also benefits to having editors seeing one's poems on forums. It's not all doom and gloom by any means!

best,

Matt

Janice, that's fantastic, thank-you, exactly what I needed to know!

So the big take home for me here is that all the workshop fora (met, TDE, and non-met) are already protected against indexing, and a fake title is all that's needed.

-Matt

I believe you need to include the "no index" tag at the top of the first post.
This is invisible to the casual reader, but I think it will appear in quoted material.

But as others have said, the whole thing is not that important as far as editors are concerned. Read the guidelines and follow them. If in doubt, ask the editor.

There are always new poems waiting to be written, should you lose one along the way. Welcome to the Sphere.

Here's what Alex said:

Matt,

I was just trying to say: this is not a thing to worry about.

It's rather like the infamous 'trolley problem.' Or those questions we got back in high school: "What would you do if you were stuck on a dory with four other people, and there was only enough food for three?"

I actually knew a guy who replied "What kind of god would stick five people on a rowboat with only enough food for three?" Sister was not amused!

But it's the same thing: we don't get stuck on dorys in the middle of an ocean, and when you see a trolley running out of control, there's never a plump gentleman standing handily right next to you. On the bridge. Right above the tracks.

Take a good look at editor's guidelines. Some are actually based on real world experience, and those are usually pretty practical. But many were clearly written in haste just before the journal launched, and have never been revisted. Some things are best honored in the breach. I don't know anyone for whom this has been a serious problem... and I can cite numerous examples of the opposite case.

There are other things to worry about in life. And I, for one, only have a limited amount of intellectual bandwidth. ;)

Best,

Bill

Caution seldom goes unrewarded, if not trumpeted. Oh, look, there's a bony gentleperson adjacent me pointing at a runaway tram. C U tomorrow!

I've always assumed the kind of journal that cares about whether a poem has been workshopped at the Sphere or not isn't the sort I'd be rubbing shoulders with, anyway.

Are there, in fact, journals known to ban poems workshopped at online forums, and if so, which ones are they? My very uneducated guess is that the list is shorter than this thread.

Ed

9/10ths of the ban-prone journals are those I wouldn't get into anyway because they have a stable full of Famous Warhorses and a barn of Milch Cows that they recycle. So, operationally, for low-lifes like me, they might seem out of reach anyway. And so it goes. But. . .

(Incidentally, band-width aside, there are people who regularly practice the kinds of "toss the plump gentleman" thinking dismisssed above, and sometimes they go to school to learn how to be most effective at it. Chess players do it. Famous military directors we think of as heroes have often done it, especially when having to retreat or when they engineer a feint or false front. Nowadays, the study of this psychology has gotten sophisticated.)

Hi Ed,

Here's one:

Sounds like there aren't many others that take such a strong position, but it would be interesting to know though.

best,

-Matt

Let me say this one more time before Allen hijacks the thread.

It is not a problem. What Nemo said, what Bill said, what I said (post #4). Matt, you're too good a poet to waste time worrying about this. I'm aware of Poetry's rules, and I also have the impression (from old discussions) that they're not really enforced. And if they are - change the title. Or dye your hair and change your name. The worst - the very worst thing that can happen - is that they don't accept you. And then you can blame it on the-rule-which-may-or-may-not-mean-anything, instead of simply assuming that you were rejected for one of a thousand other reasons.

It's not enforced at Poetry. At least not all the time. Wendy V. has had at least one poem which appeared on this board later appear in P. (I'm on to you, Wendy.)

I suppose the fear of some journals is that they'll wind up publishing something that has been published elsewhere...and that the holder of the original publication rights will take legal action. I'm guessing that concern is at the very core of it. Either that, or they take the need to be the "first" to have published a particular poem very seriously.

I don't submit much these days, but I can guarantee that it wouldn't deter me from sending something workshopped on Eratosphere to a publication with statements similar to Poetry's above. And the idea of one po-mag taking legal action against another po-mag over publication of one of my poems makes me want to bust out laughing. It's just not a big enough industry to be worth such a hassle.

An ill wind.

Here is an anecdote. I recently requested the estate of a poet to give me permission to seek publication for a poem I had translated.

They referred me to the watchdog organization that guards against misuse of copyrights and supports poets and writers. Basically it is a good thing that some entity oversees use of intellectual property, and I approve of the intent. I suspect the estateholders joined after receiving my request, since it took quite some time for them to reply and when they did they said they had just signed a contract with the watchdogs.

I wrote to the watchdogs and the upshot was that they wanted money to allow me to translate calling it "use". They also wanted a share of the (huge) monies they expected me to get when I published it. I laughed as delicately as I could in their collective faces.

Although a translation is a new work and NOT a "use" of the original work, I like to work closely with the source and know that I'm on safe ground. In this particular case, the estate had no kinship claim, but were grown children of the (childless) poet's second wife and had inherited the rights through their mother.

My attitude is: why take a chance? Whether the disgruntled party has a real case or not is immaterial if they have a strong organization to pursue what they perceive as their best interests. It costs money to defend a lawsuit brought against one.

There are plenty of other fish in the sea and I have neither time nor money to mess with deluded souls who think there might be money in suing. Of course, the legalities in Europe and America may be different but I will translate elsewhere.