If you are blogging for so many years, you will experience some funny things. Most often you make blogging friends, and the community at WordPress is one of the best communities I have experienced. There are more shitty places in the web, but even if you found a good community, there is a chance that you will meet a troll some day. But before that happens, you’re starting to think about the Fermi Paradox, because “Statistically there should be other civilizations in the universe, but where are they?” is a very similar question like “Statistically there should be trolls in this community, but where are they?”.
I am honest, and I always mentioned it on my blog, if I am upset about something, I am going to drop my thoughts on my blog. This happened in 2013 when I discovered another blog that contained nothing else that stolen photos and stolen articles. At that time I created a support forum post and the support deleted at least some of the harmful posts on the mentioned blog. Then I wrote about it on my blog but I have long forgotten this post, and it’s also funny that my English was much worse at this time. However, just recently the mentioned post got attention again and someone started to comment on the post.
Yes, over 3 years later someone actually found the mentioned post and started to comment on it and basically defended the content theft, and brought the topic back to life after so much time. If you are bored and up for drama, check the post out, especially the comment section. Let’s be honest, someone who is defending a content theft must be a troll, or maybe even the owner of the said blog. What ever the case may be, this blog here is actually the worst place for a troll to comment on. I like drama, and I am definitely the type of person who likes to feed trolls. I do have a lot of experience with it, and I am not shy to reply.
There are two ways to deal with trolls on your blog. You just don’t have to approve the comment, but that would be boring. The other way is to approve the comments, because as a blogger you never should be shy to comment. The fact is, as soon as you go public with your opinion, there can be both, people who agree with you or people who don’t. That’s just how it is. On my blog, I am not going to censor critical comments, I deal with them, and it’s up to me how I do that.
I censor other comments, I do for example never approve trackback spam or comment spam. The chance is very little that you will find one spam comment on my blog. What I censor too, are bullshit comments with no substance. Let’s say I do write about depression and someone tries to comment with the suggestion to visit a dubious faith healer, that’s the type of nonsense that is worth to get censored. But generally, nope, I won’t censor critical comments, I will reply.
Now what happened next is that the person did not only comment on my post, but the discussion was carried over to the blog where I dropped a comment back then. On that blog I basically commented back then that it should be reconsidered to steal content, or that the author should at least give credits where credits due, for example with links to the original content creator. Also there I got a reply so many years later that I should mind my own business.
Nope, I won’t mind my own business, because in this case the consequence would have been that the person would have stolen more and more content of other people. But it seems that the author instead became inactive after I reported the blog, and that is fine. It’s not only about me, it’s about everyone who is creating content. My photos and passages of articles have been used at many places, it’s just that those people asked me and they always gave credit with a link. Most people actually don’t have a problem if their content is used, it’s just that it shouldn’t appear as if someone else created it. They deserve a mention, point.
Late justice, just after this one person commented on my old post, and carried the discussion over to the blog where the stolen content was hosted, that blog was finally deleted today by the owner. That makes me wonder, was the blog owner actually trolling me under another name on my post? Maybe, maybe not. At the end it doesn’t really matter to me. It was an old story anyway, and it’s funny when these things come up again years later. It’s still funny how this turned out. I don’t like people who gain an advantage by stealing the work of other people without mentioning them at all.
I don’t feel sympathy for a content theft who deleted the own blog. It’s actually rather funny if that was the consequence caused by someone else who did rub salt into the wound so many years later. To me it’s just one egoist less, nothing more. It could have been so much easier, by always mentioning the source, and without a blogging concept that was based only on the work of others and without own original or unique content. How can someone defend this?
Diary of Dennis 
I have been lucky that since being on WordPress I’ve not experienced trolling. My blogs are not very controversial but I’m happy to let others disagree with my views in comments. I would certainly disallow anything rude or insulting but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I daresay some of my photos are out there somewhere too, especially my doll pictures. In a few instances I’ve been asked if pictures could be used and I always say yes. As you say it is not about your content being used elsewhere but rather it not being acknowledged as your work. I do try to do the right thing when I source photos from the net and credit the original creator. I think common courtesy should apply in the blogging world the same as anywhere else. It may not be our livelihood but our articles and photos are still important to us and it is not nice to have them stolen.
I think I had more controversial posts back then, or posts where the majority of people would agree but where there would be a chance that a few will feel like being offended. Copyright is where most bloggers would agree, that you just don’t take others content without asking, but some do it and might feel offended by such a post. Ok, I must admit, my post was a bit medieval black-board kinda like, but that’s me, I have no mercy with people who do something wrong, at least not back then 😀
I do agree with you, comments with insults or rude language would be in most cases deleted by me too. In other cases I do just approve the views even if they are different then my views. I do then either comment friendly on it, or don’t reply if I feel it might be like too much salt in the soup. So, it always depends. But in the mentioned case, like comments from a person who is defending content theft, it seemed so irrational to me that I just went along with it. It’s deconstructing for the person anyway if another blogger reads the comments (laugh). That’s what I meant in my post, in some cases you can play with a troll, making them write more nonsense and stuff (laugh). But that’s maybe how a PC gamer deals with it, I am used to it as I constantly dealt with them in gaming related forums for example, which means I got used to bad behaviour. In other words, at some point I noticed that the best way to make a troll run away, is to jump on the train and troll him back.
I see how your doll photos are very useful for some niche doll websites. I do it the same like you, when someone asked me to use one of my photos of to quote a full text paragraph, I always say “Sure, no problem”. Yep, it’s not about the content being used, it’s about showing it as their own. Anyway, in case someone doesn’t mention you as a source, everything works against them but more about this below….
Even if you skip these posts, you know my gaming articles. They are a great example too. In many cases it is so much work to create the guides, because you have to research, you have to take screenshots for the post, you have to test the solutions and finally write the post. It took me some hours to create certain guides. A few of them get over thousand views per day, and as someone who is active in the major gaming forums, I sometimes spot people who just copy pasted my full article and “sold” them as their own. I usually write there “You know, I have no problem that you are sharing my full article, but you could at least have mentioned my blog as a source”. It’s not about getting even more traffic, because once a post gets already 1000 views or more, it doesn’t matter anymore if there are 100 more from a forum. Also in this case, I just wish that people would be more honest and that someonelse used his time to put the facts or guides together. While creating content is fun, it’s also work, and if it’s appreciated material, it should be appreciated the right way.
Anyway, still there are many sites or forums where they mention you as a source, no matter if your photos are used or text passages. I know a lot about search engine marketing, and the thing is, the Google bot knows where text or photos have been published the first time. I’ve seen blogs that copied everything and had no unique content, Google does punish them. It’s easy, you can’t find them when you search for the keywords, they are punished for the “duplicated content” rule… in most cases it always brings up the original creator. Because of the timestampt, and because the original creator has a head start with backlinks on the article.That brings me to another point, why would someone want to build a blog that can not rank in Google? It can just be cluelessness, or they try to get their readers via social media channels instead.
I haven’t gone into blog traffic to the extent you have Dennis but I can see your point. Creating your gaming guides would be a lot of work as gaming is so much more sophisticated now.