The question is when to Hat Tip

Last Friday,I wrote a piece about Guardian media's take over of Content Next and hat tipped if that is the right verb,Paul Bradshaw.

I'm glad that I did.Over the weekend Simon Owens informed me that he had used by link as part of a study into how many blogs give credit for picking up other people's leads.

He chose three stories over the weekend including the Guardian purchase and found that

In total, there were 78 blogs that linked to these three items. Of those, 20 — or 26% — gave hat tips. The remaining 58 — or 74% — did’t indicate where they found the link.
Broken down by individual items, the news article received a total of 29 links, with 4 — 14% — giving hat tips and 25 — 86% — not giving hat tips. The Youtube clip received 32 links, with 11 — 34% — giving hat tips and 21 — 66% — not giving them. The blog post received 17 links, with 5 — 29% — giving hat tips and 12 — 71% — not.

Of course a small survey but is it representative of blogging habits? Sometimes a link can be from multi sources,other times it may be something that you have read and sticks in the mind but the source is uncertain.

I generally will give a hat tip to a blogger,not always to a news organisation.Perhaps that is just being part of the blogging fraternity with its unwritten code of conduct.