Introducing The Curator’s Code: A Standard for Honoring Attribution of Discovery Across the Web The great Maria Popova, who curates Brain Pickings, has devised a much-needed best practice for attribution on sites that curate content from around the web (like this one). The Curator’s Code seeks to balance the magic of the rabbit-hole of web discovery with fair and honest attribution to the sources and creators. While we have systems in place for literary citation, image attribution, and scientific reference, we don’t yet have a system that codifies the attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy, a system that treats discovery as the creative labor that it is. This is what The Curator’s Code is – a system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, the celebrated norm. It’s an effort to make the rabbit hole open, fair, and ever-alluring. It consists of two unicode characters, one (ᔥ) to replace “via”, and the other (↬) to replace “HT” or “hat-tip”. Are you just re-linking and not adding much context? Use the first. Using material as inspiration for something more? Use the second.  There’s even a bookmarklet to make it super-easy across many platforms, and a how-to video. It’s a few seconds of work that can alter the culture of attribution and sharing on the social web. I’m on board. It’s this easy … ᔥCurator’s Code
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Introducing The Curator’s Code: A Standard for Honoring Attribution of Discovery Across the Web

The great Maria Popova, who curates Brain Pickings, has devised a much-needed best practice for attribution on sites that curate content from around the web (like this one).

The Curator’s Code seeks to balance the magic of the rabbit-hole of web discovery with fair and honest attribution to the sources and creators.

While we have systems in place for literary citation, image attribution, and scientific reference, we don’t yet have a system that codifies the attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy, a system that treats discovery as the creative labor that it is. 

This is what The Curator’s Code is – a system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, the celebrated norm. 

It’s an effort to make the rabbit hole open, fair, and ever-alluring.


It consists of two unicode characters, one (ᔥ) to replace “via”, and the other (↬) to replace “HT” or “hat-tip”. Are you just re-linking and not adding much context? Use the first. Using material as inspiration for something more? Use the second. 

There’s even a bookmarklet to make it super-easy across many platforms, and a how-to video. It’s a few seconds of work that can alter the culture of attribution and sharing on the social web.

I’m on board. It’s this easy …

ᔥCurator’s Code

Source: brainpickings.org

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