Sphere poems showing up on Google
 

I'm just sent out some poems to a magazine that has just announced a stricter policy on poems that can be found on the web. I thought I'd try googling my poems. I was rather surprised to find two of them. They show up on a site called rssing.com. This site takes regular shapshots of Eratosphere and stores them. The snapshots are visible to Google.

It doesn't appear to store the whole poem, just the start of the thread, but enough that it'll show up if you search on the title or the opening lines, which is what I imagine an editor would do. It does also store a link to the poem on the Sphere, so I'll guess I'll be gutting those threads. It's not taking a snapshot of everything, but it does visit several times a day. Click here to get an example of what's been recently added.

I guess this isn't a massive deal since the poems will usually have been culled by the time the editor gets round to reading them, but not always I guess, and even so, it doesn't seem ideal. Who knows if an editor will investigate further once the poem has shown up in Google? (I personally have no idea).

According to rssing.com someone has signed the Sphere up to this service at some point (they have data going back at least three years) and there is a procedure to complain / sign off. Anyone know anything about this? Are there any advantages to this service?

-Matt

Well, even if it's a post on the second page that's captured, one can just click on page 1 and there's the poem. Ooer. Will it still be there when it's trimmed off the actual forum?

This is a variation on screen-scraping, and it happens to just about every site. This particular one may be ethical, but there are many others out there with no ethics at all.

Plug your name into google, and explore the lower depths of the results. Here's a good example: http://stafaband.info/mp3/download/t...ntry_read.html

That poem was published, with a sound file of Kate reading it, in Now Culture. Clearly, stafaband.info scraped it, and put it up on their site (in violation of just about every worldwide copyright law), to increase their hit rating. There are hundreds, thousands, of these sites. It's happened to everyone who's ever put words up on the web, whether they know it or not.

To be perfectly honest, it's no big deal. I've never had an editor deny a poem or a story because it got screen-scraped. They'd have to look through thousands and thousands of links, and who has time for that? No editors I know.

I've just pruned everything on metrical and the deep end to 30 days ago. Will the scrapers still have the data up on their sites? Yes, they will... for a while, until they refresh their databases, or the sites expire. But it's nothing to get worked up about... and even if we did, there'd be nothing to do, because most of these sites would be unresponsive. It would be like writing the Nigerian prince with a cease and desist order... ;)

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks for pruning.

That's not the case here. All I had to do to find my poem was to put the title and and a few words from the first line into Google. It was the top link. It was the only link. It would take an editor a few seconds to find. If I were an editor and I wanted to see if the poem existed online that's what I'd do. I'd stick title and the first line or two into Google.

I can't find any of my other Sphere poems anywhere else on the web except on this site. O.k. granted I haven't searched exhaustively. I searched on a handful. Two came on this site. The rest came up nowhere.

They have data for the past three years. Of course the pruning means that the link to my poem now leads nowhere, which is good news.

Best,

Matt

Yes, but Bill, you have thousands and thousands of poems to offer. Of course no editor has the stamina to check all those.

Well, that is because your senators and congressmen get paid for goofing off. When I self-google, I get this message posted below the page numbers.

Quote:

VIssa resultat kan ha tagits bort i enlighet med dataskyddslagstiftningen i Europa.

Some results have been removed to comply with European legislation on data protection. Read more

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/

I do self-google now and then since the plagiarism of recent memory and this which Matt found has never come up in my list. But when I clicked the link Matt provided, it did. (BTW, thanks Matt.) So apparently that protection law isn't working as it should. I can't find all hits on my name (only about 24,000 and I used to get many, many more), but others can.

I don't mind so much if it is just workshopped stuff, I'm always up front about that anyway and don't workshop every text I write, but I don't like libelous and false things being there for all eternity. And if it is available, that increases the possibility of text theft. (I know, some people don't mind text theft and will probably post to say so again.)

The point of the EU law was to make it possible for citizens to ask for removal. I recently saw a nasty that I thought was gone forever that has now risen from the dead.

It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World

PS. Personal integrity isn't the only fight the EU is waging with the big boys.

http://time.com/3822956/google-eu-an...case-shopping/

You guys need to elect politicians that don't just punch in, then take a long lunch and punch out. Like whatsisname, Philly "Buster" Alnite.

Matt, don't be too sure that a search won't lead anywhere. When something is cached, it is still findable.

One thing to do is to change the title. I always change my titles. Often you can come up with a better one that way.

The people who take my poems don't seem to care if it has been somewhere else. Les Murray reckons that a different continent doesn't count.

What on earth would the EU know about integrity? All they care about is money, their own money.

It must be quite an education to get rejection slips that say why your work hasn't been taken.

I have only once had a poem accepted by a print journal later turned down because it was found on-line (on a site that could only be read with a password). So bear in mind, folks, "First Things" has a demon fact checker.

Check the thread here for more on the issue of search engine indexing and on escaping it.

About the Rssing outfit that you pointed to, that's an unsanctioned archiving (if we're to call it that), or trawling of Eratosphere from some unknown group or company. It comes across to me more as a spam/scam outfit. But if it's Rss as their site name seem to indicate, then it should be essentially a rolling feed from their web bots of the latest material from Eratosphere, and the several other sites they're scraping, through, which it doesn't always appear to be. Anyhow, I've bothered doing anything about this in the past since it seems to be of minimal impact to the Sphere, and taking action might actually produce more grief than reward.

Rssing--and there may others like it--is, for want of a better word, an Internet-leech website that sucks out the contents of other legitimate websites and republishes it on their scam website for the purpose of slapping ads on the content and generating revenue, which the originating websites don't get a sniff of. I've seen multiple reports from some of the websites they've been victimizing expressing their frustration in achieving little to no success in their attempts to get them to cease and desist. And there also seem to be an extensive list of copyright violation reports filed against them with Google. And, alas, Google doesn't seem to be doing enough to deter them!

Cheers,
...Alex

Truer words were never spoken. Alex is exactly right about this.

And Janice, the E.U. and Canada are way ahead of the U.S. as far as data privacy and copyright protection go. American laws in this realm are scandalous. We still refer to the DMCA as the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act.'

Lots of people are trying to change things, but we'll get nowhere with this Congress. Best we can hope for is simply to hold our ground. We're so busy with the net neutrality fight we can't even think of all the other battles... which might be exactly why they're trying to take that away.

Thanks,

Bill

Frankly, I'd rather worry about global warming - which we can do something about by voting for the right people and doing what we can on an individual basis. As far as the web is concerned, I'll go along with what Alex says - and also assume that the chances of anybody picking up my name on a screen-scraping search are (a) minimal, (b) out of my control, and (c) essentially irrelevant. It the editor has nothing better to do than search at that level, and simultaneously is too busy to check to see whether it means anything - screw it. There are a lot more quality magazines than I have poems, and the ones I know don't seem to play those games. I'm not going to lie awake at night worrying about it.

I found two of the first four poems I checked for. As I've said a couple of times, I used a simple Google search. Nothing fancy. The title and a couple of words from the first line. In both cases the poem appeared as the top result of the Google search. So, you can assume the chances are minimal if you like, but my (admittedly small) empirical research puts the odds at around 50%.
I'm not going to lie awake at night either, but I will be thinking about taking more precautions than I previously did, which won't be difficult, as previously I took none, thinking everything was completely hidden from the great god of Google.

best,

Matt

I'll lie awake. Not about this, other things mostly, but awake nonetheless.

Why get involved in deception, editors want poems that havn't been seen before, that's reasonable, don't submit poems that have already had a substantial readership on Erato or any other poetry forum or if you do be completely honest about it and say where it has appeared.

Well, I don't know about seen before, Ross. Unless the poems appear in a general Interest magazine like Quadrant or First Things or The Spectator or even, God save us, The Staggers,then they will scarcely have been seen at all.

When I'm judging a competition, I always Google-search the first few lines of the poems on my shortlist. Chiefly, I'm checking for plagiarism, though. (And protecting myself against the chancer who's tried to slip a Kipling past me.)

Editor-wise, I like what Ross says. "This poem is unpublished but has been presented for critique on a closed forum" sounds like a reasonable pre-emptive measure to me, though I feel that a journal who would object in principle to such a previous "appearance" should say so specifically in its guidelines to contributors.

And as an occasional contributor to the D&A forum, I draw your attention to the fact that measures had to be taken to further protect material from public scrutiny.

Would more frequent culling help?

John, that's the whole point, does 'seen' on Erato where 500-1500 readers will have read the poem constitute 'previously published' it depends on the venue, a small poetry ezine might consider it does, my point is just be honest, it's so much easier and if your poems are any good they will find their audience.

I admire your sagacity, Ross. But I don't really want to wait as long. as Emily or Gerard for a sniff at fame.

And there's the case of Thomas Traherne. It took three hundred years.

All,

In part, for me, this was prompted by Rattle announcing a change of rules to fall more in line with what they consider standard. Here's the Facebook post.

Here are couple of comments from the editor Tim Green in response to questions:

"I Google lines from every poem before publishing, so see if they've been published anywhere else."

"The rule of thumb is that if you can Google some of the lines and nothing comes up, then you're fine"

My concern is that two of the poems I've just sent him violate this rule of thumb as a result of rssing.com, which is frustrating as if it weren't for rssing.com we'd be completely hidden here on the Sphere. Most likely the fact the poems have been / will be pruned / gutted will be enough. I'll email him for clarification. Besides, I imagine he'll have plenty of poetry-related reasons to reject my poems and so never get around to searching for them anyway! :)

Alex,

I appreciate that asking a scraper to cease scraping may be more trouble than it's worth, or ineffective. Searching around I did come across this blogger who did ask them to desist (full text of his email in the comments) and then reported back that he was successful; they removed all stored data and stopped scraping him.

best,

Matt

Matt, I've always found Tim Green to be friendly and responsive to poets' questions and concerns. If you're following his Facebook posts, why not reply to that one and explain the problem? He's aware of Eratosphere and what we do here.

Or, how about this: give me an idea of when that post appeared and whether it was a Rattle post or a Tim Green post, and I'll raise the issue.

Editing back to add: A reasonable precaution is to avoid putting the real title of the poem in the title field. The site's front page is the one that's not protected from Google, and what's in the title field appears on the front page.

Thanks Maryann,

As I said in my post, I'll email him. Just doing that now in fact.

I posted this because I thought others might be interested in the information.

best,

Matt

Thanks Maryann,

The problem being that rssing.com makes the first two lines or so of text of your thread available to Google, which would include the real title if you followed this strategy.

-Matt

I don't see why it's necessary to make such a fuss over this and start contacting everybody. As far as I'm concerned, the Sphere is a workshop, and it's purpose is to discuss works in progress. Poems appear here for a short period of time, and then disappear, and - on my part - if I'm sending one out which is still up here, I take it down myself. And - despite Matt's problem - it works. It works just fine.

I take the stance that this isn't publishing - it's workshopping - and act accordingly. And 99% of the poetry world either takes the same approach, or simply doesn't think about it. Why do you have to bother bringing it up at all? Publishers who don't think it through, or who don't understand the nature of the Sphere, or who decide - if you insist on pinning them to the wall - that it's safest to be utterly holy - may think through something they've never bothered about, and decide that they don't want anything that's appeared on the Sphere. So what do we do then? Change the title and the first two lines? Stop workshopping? Or just let the dammed thing lie, and not go off and raise a fuss because the first lines of two of Matt's poems appeared on a scuzzbag site. It is not a big problem. Please don't turn it into one.

I think you are right in every particular in this instance, Michael.

Michael,

1. Insofar as there's any value in the poems on this site being shielded from search engines, I thought that people might be interested to know that there are currently reasonable sized holes in the shield. I was. I can find some of my poems very easily on Google, and I can find other people's too. I have read previous discussions on this issue, and this seemed to be new information.

2. The situation seems to be one that could possibly be resolved, made to go away, our shields be restored to full power. (Sorry, I seem to slipping into an episode of Star Trek).

These seemed to me to be good reasons for my original post. I see value in the points you make too. I imagine most if not all of the problems are resolved by making sure that the post is deleted/gutted on submission.

Best,

Matt

When I said "bring it up", I meant with the publishers. No problem in alerting Spherians. As a matter of fact, it served as a reminder for more aggressive cleaning of the Boards (and thanks to those who do that), so in that sense it was helpful. My complaint was about waving a red flag at publishers, and creating a problem where one doesn't exist.

Michael, I know my view of this differs from yours, but here goes: I'd like it brought up with publishers because, honestly, I'd like there to be a general understanding among them that workshopping is not publication. That understanding does not exist right now. Unless we talk up that idea, it will never gain currency, and we'll go right on having doubts about whether we can safely submit things posted here.

Right now, there's a post at the top of all the forums that tells us we can't gut out our poem threads, that we have to leave the poems up a certain length of time. It's too long for my comfort, and that's another thing that makes me unhappy about posting poems.

Naturally, you can (and will) do what works for you. It doesn't work for everybody.

The tone of some of the discussions here leads me to believe that some of you didn't take the time to read the link I'd provided here ... or if you did, you didn't quite grasp the facts presented ... or, if you did read it a while back, the facts might have gotten hazy with time. So, here's a brief presentation of the salient facts:

1. The contents of ALL the workshop forums (Metrical, TDE, Non-Met, etc.) are FULLY protected from search engines with the "no-index" tag which I'd programmed way back to be inserted automatically into those threads posted there. That means, if you pick any poem posted in a workshop forum, and google the first line or any other line for that matter, it should not come up in the results.

2. a) The title of a poem posted in a workshop forum may not be hidden from the search engines because, if that post is at the top of the forum, the title will appear in the Eratosphere homepage summary of the top post in the various forums. That means that while a poem thread is at the top of a workshop forum, a search engine might visit and pick up the contents of the Eratosphere homepage which would include the aforementioned titles from the top posts of workshop forums. b) Thus, as has been suggested/advised in quite a few previous posts, the simple way to avoid that problem, if it's of concern to you, is to simply use a fake post-title for the workshop poem thread when you post it: that decoy title may show up in the search engine results, but it can't be associated with the real title of your poem, or the poem itself.

3. That brings us to Rssing and other such web scrapers and bottom feeders. Even with all that scraping, all they actually have is only the thread titles. Thus, taking the action presented in 2 b) above should take care of shielding your poem from any search. And you may even notice that if you go to an Rssing page that lists a thread here, and click on that thread, all it does is actually forward you to Eratosphere, albeit under an Rssing web frame. So, they're not actually storing the contents of the threads they're scraping, just the tiles.

Hopefully, this should cool down all the raucous and panic and allow those who actually wish to workshop to continue doing so without all the fear factor!

Cheers,
...Alex

Hi Alex,

I was aware of your points 1 & 2. But I think that what you say in 3 about rssing is not quite the case. It doesn't just store the thread titles. It stores the first few lines of the thread and hence the first few lines of the poem. I can google the opening lines of poems, and the rssing link shows up in Google (that's how I became aware of rssing). If I follow that link it takes me to the poem on Sphere, assuming that poem is still there (which it was in my case). Where people use a fake title for the thread and the real title above their poem, rsssing will still store the real title by virtue of that being the first line of the thread. This means that some of the poems currently posted on the forums can be found if you use Google to search on first lines (and titles). Without rssing, this wouldn't be the case.

For example, if you Google these opening lines:
"High on a window today: good traction, smooth ,wet with rain"

You'll find rssing have a link which takes you straight to Steve's poem. Actually it appears on a second site too ...

I'm not saying this is a huge problem, and I apologise if my pointing this out is causing people to panic, that's certainly not my intention.

best,

Matt

Hi Matt -- I stand corrected as to the practices of Rssing. In that case, here's my advice to combat their posting of the first few lines of poems: before the poem title and first line in the post, include a few nonsense lines on top, which is what Rssing will end up picking up, thus sparing the real first few lines of your poem. I know it's not an ideal solution, but why not feed some junk to this bottom feeder, which then ends up sparing you grief from their unsanctioned scraping of the Eratosphere.

Cheers,
...Alex

Just an update, and it may come to naught, but I've just officially requested of Rssing that they remove all the archives they've stored from Eratosphere, and cease and desist from their unsanctioned practice. We'll see what comes of it!

Cheers,
...Alex

I am completely with Matt Q and Maryann Corbett.

I want to say something that I hope that Alex Pepple will not take amiss (or the other commentators here who are moderators or deeply involved with the history of Eratosphere like Michael Cantor), but it is in the interest of those just mentioned who are attached to Eratosphere to diminish the fears of Eratosphere users, even when such fears may be justified. Alex takes strenuous efforts to protect us, and perhaps there are others here and there who help him, and I say Bravo! But I also say that it is simply not candid and is disingenuous to (how shall I phrase it?) "airily" dimiss fully legitimate worries about demonic high-status magazines that actually and actively do go out and look for online publication, and will not accept anything found there.

Sorry, but that's where it's at from here.

I just don't see it as a big deal.

1. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been rejected because their stuff showed up on this kind of search.

2. If you are concerned, Alex's suggestion about including a few nonsense lines at the top appears a bit of a nuisance (personally, I won't bother), but would appear to work. Somebody who is concerned about this can check exactly how it works. If the web scraper copies the first three lines, as presented, then simply start your post with three vertical white dots - one over the other. There'd be a bit of a space, but nothing would show. And indicate a false title for the primary listing (but not on the thread, because the three dots would hide it.) As I said, I wouldn't bother, but if you're concerned there do appear to be easy fixes.

3. This would be a bit more of a pain-in-the-neck for the mods, but we could be more aggressive about pruning. Prune down to the 3 week level and do it automatically every two weeks. So nothing up there would be more than five weeks old. That would also help.

Double post. Sorry

Some nonsense for padding
 

Those who want to force scraper readers etc to brush up on their classics can turn to a site that quotes (possibly) incunabular nonsense padding that is (possibly?) from early print shops. The first item is rubbished out from Cicero, which is below it.

http://lipsum.com/

The standard Lorem Ipsum passage, used since the 1500s. [Some would say this statement is bald-faced advertising fluff.]

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Section 1.10.32 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", written by Cicero in 45 BC

"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"

As an example of brand new lorem ipsum text generated today and inserted in a poem thread, I offer this link http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...110#post343110 .

Or, you can insert your best loved phrases from the works of Allen Ginsberg. I suggest "Howl" as a pleasing starter.

Yup, you can either treat the Sphere as a workshop; or as an excuse to call attention to yourself. You do realize, Alan, how confusing it would be if everybody used the nonsense of their choice to start a thread? (I have the vague recollection that you did something like this several years ago when we had a related discussion of problems with hiding threads, and that this isn't your first rodeo on this subject, but I fortunately forget the details.) At any rate, I believe the object should be to maintain confidentiality with as little interruption as possible to the normal flow of a workshop. The object is to look at the poems, not the accoutrements.

Or were you just joking? One never knows.

And of course it would be tricky for those of us who sometimes write nonsense verse. Still, we could always prefix it with a few lines of serious verse.

There's always the possibility of introducing a password-protected subforum, à la the two Deep Drills subforums (one of which is completely invisible to lurkers), for poets with shy bladders.

Personally, I'd like to be able to post some poems about my kooky family, without my kooky family being able to see them. You guys haven't seen the really juicy stuff because if they crack my pseudonym, I'm toast.

Not too long ago, someone suggested password protection as a way to reinvigorate The Deep End. I disagreed with him pretty vociferously at the time, but since then I've come around to his way of thinking.

Editors have refused my poems for all sorts of dull-witted reasons, but nobody has ever refused one because it has appeared elsewhere. I once asked the poetry editor of the TLS this (Alan Jenkins) and he said he couldn't care less, or words to that effect. Mind you, I've had only one poem there (apart from the one that came second in their competition).

What John said. For every publication that makes a major fuss over this, I would guess there are between 25 and 50 who don't. Unless, of course, you call it to their attention and demand a detailed statement of policy.