Ah, this endlessly interesting, constantly shifting place know as the World-Wide Web. It’s such a vast playing field placed at our fingertips. Ours to explore and mine at will.  The discoveries are continual and the knowledge limitless in growth. It’s truly an amazing and wonderful thing.  Of course, such grandeur cannot be without a downside, a dark side. There are the obvious parts of this – the seedy, illegal and downright, no two ways about it, what is wrong with people?!? Then there is the less obvious and the not really bad because I’m sure no true harm or slights were meant. Simple things like not crediting a source and that’s the real meat of this post. Places like Pinterest, imgfave, tumblr and even blogs like this one are fantastic and I adore all of those places (and have a hard time going a day without pinning something, or drooling over this image or that, hehe), however, I have really begun to dislike the lack of decent and proper sourcing. Sure, we’ve all been a bit guilty of doing the same thing – see something you really like, note that there is no obvious or easily tracked source and still pin or tumble it (I always mean to go looking when I have the time to, but that never seems to happen, sigh). While this isn’t a huge deal on a small scale, it can become a huge problem on the whole since once something gains legs it’s off running and whomever it originated with is left without even so much as a crumb of acknowledgement for their time, effort and original work. I, for one, am doing all that I can to stop it from happening with my own actions. I  may not always be perfect (and I am always open to those who do have the correct info and want to share it) but, by golly, I’m gonna do my best. It’s the worst feeling in the world to know that something you’ve made has been taken and is being shared but without due credit. Yes, it is really, really great to know that what you did was considered neat enough to pass along, but still a teensy, tiny bit of credit would be nice (and, if it’s something you make your bread and butter with it’s kind of a necessity). I’ve recently felt the sting of this since I made this darling Polyvore set (I do like it when Polyvore at least shows what was used to create each set and provides a link – however accurate or not that link may be – doh!) and I noticed as I was testing out the search Google with image Firefox extension that a few Tumblrs had used it without any sort of link back or credit and it was a decently popular tumble at that. While I’m glad that it is liked and being enjoyed and really, I did have the foresight to add my Lawhimsy name to it, a bit of actual, link-able credit would be swell. It also made me think even more about how much it would mean to everyone who’s created something if only they could get a bit of love for it – even if it’s only in a tech-y, link-y sort of way. So please be kind and source your finds!

Namaste ~ Ella

This is the image that has been "tragically" left uncredited