A Note About Crediting Finds
This was written by our editor, Laura:
One of the main things we do on this blog is identify royals’ fashion new and old. It is one of the core functions of this site. Lately, we’ve noticed a trend when it comes to fashion identification (both royal and not) that we need to call out….writers, bloggers, sites, etc. not crediting where they got their finds or even worse trying to pass off finds as their own. So, we decided to explain our frustration with this and hopefully convey the importance of proper credit.
Before we get too far in, we should say that there are many great blogs that do credit their finds to the best of their abilities. We always try to highlight those blogs on UFO No More’s social media platforms and on our own personal accounts. It really does mean a lot to us, and we are so appreciative of those sites that do credit.
For those that don’t, sometimes we feel like we’re being plagiarized. Allow us to explain this comparison a bit. When a person or site plagiarizes, they are using the words of another to drive traffic to their site, book sales, etc. This deprives the other party of traffic, ad sales, book sales, followers, etc. Similarly, sites who don’t credit fashion finds or claim them as their own are depriving the person or site of traffic. Since fashion identification is one of the main pillars of our blog, it’s frustrating for us because we feel our site is being deprived of traffic for one of our features and something that we put a lot of work towards.
That’s another important point. This is something we all dedicate a good deal of time on. To give you an idea, here is a time lapse of our founder Sarah hunting for IDs. As you can see, it’s a lot of work. Now, don’t get us wrong, this is something we love to do, and we’re not stopping anytime soon. But this is something we’ve seen happening more and more, so we thought it was important to call your attention to it.
One final point, we realize this isn’t always intentional. We are grateful to sites who edit or add to their articles or Tweets giving credit to the rightful finder and never think less of a site who makes an honest mistake. If you ever believe we haven’t given proper credit for a find, please reach out to us. We genuinely want the right person credited for each find we post about and will happily correct if we make any mistake.
