Creative Commons from a Student’s Perspective

As a student, I’d have to say that one of the most annoying tasks when writing an assignment, whether a blog, a report or an essay would have to be citing sources. It’s not like I don’t feel that authors deserve credit for their work or that I’m too lazy to cite something. It’s the fact that teachers request that information be cited in a certain way. Sadly however, the “way” continually changes and differs. Within this article, I hope to describe my challenges with citing my sources and also develop my thoughts, as a student and blogger, on not only the new “Creative Commons” style of citing images, but also where I believe citations need improvement.

Image: John Randell [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Whenever I write blog posts, or read them for that matter, citations vary in quality. Sometimes I’ll read a blog where the author of an image goes totally without citation. And on other occasions, I’ll get maybe a link to another website with the image on it, but no real clear cut answer as to who deserves credit. On the internet there seems to be a disparity in citations. There’s no clear and defined method for doing so.

As a blogger, this aggravates me. Not only am I afraid to incorrectly cite someone for the recognition they duly deserve, but I’m also concerned with the practices of others on the web. Think about how unfair it would be if someone easily could take something I developed and profit off of it?
As a student, I believe it’s important to respect an author through citations. For example, if when writing a blog post for a class I need to use an image, wouldn’t it be important to know whose image I’m taking? Especially if the image brings a scientific or historical reference, it would be extremely important to cite in order to be accurate. Understanding citations in their complexity allows further delving into the meaning of the content that I’m producing as a student.

Now, what’s being done about citations as of this moment? Well, there’s been a push for a “Creative Commons” which you might have already read about in a previous Edudemic posting. In this “Commons” different content types go with different licensing. Also, the “commons” straightforwardly defines the process of citing an image. And the authors themselves specify how others can or can’t use their image.

In a world where this “Creative Commons” fully blossoms, bloggers, students and journalists pick from a plethora of images and easily cite. In the long run it would provide a standard and efficient process that could produce dramatically positive results. Imagine if creators actually got paid for their work consistently? Therefore, the quality of blogging would improve as well as the number of blogging professionals.

What I’d like to extend this discussion to relates to other types of sourcing. For example, what if I wanted to cite a web article? I could possibly link to it, or even use MLA or CMS styles of formatting. As a student, this irks me. Why do I have to learn how to format one way if another teacher likes citations in another form. In all honesty, I’d actually used sites that do it for me to reduce confusion. (Easybib.com).

Overall, this seems counterproductive. Wouldn’t it be better for readers, students and teachers to utilize one particular formatting method? Something easy to remember? At this point I’d love to point at what Creative Commons is doing. It reduces confusion and seems pretty simple. And, let’s face it: Using symbols isn’t that hard in the age of computers. In fact, I’d like to say it’s the future.