We need to practice the "hat-tip" method online

 Something that's been bugging me for a while now is how few blogs and websites in New Zealand practice the "Hat-tip" method of crediting or referencing their sources.Hat-tipping is consider proper netiquette, its a quick way to let your readers know where your ideas originated from while also acknowledging your sources. It says to people that sure, these are my thoughts but they were inspired by another article or author, and it gives credit to that source for their effort.Imagine how you'd feel if someone saw your designs or an idea you had and they took it and used it without your consent. Pretty frustrated right? Online content always does the rounds, especially when you consider the long reach of information curation tools like StumbleUpon, Twitter and the almighty Google. Eventually the person whose article you've ripped off is going to stumble over your blog post and discover you're taking credit for their ideas. Here's a story from Chris Pirrilo's blog about online plagiarism.Acknowledging other people's post also adds credibility to your articles. It tells your audience that you've done your homework by researching several sources to give you the best possible content - making you look smart as well as having the warm-fuzzy benefit of giving the ego of your source a bit of a boost. In this way, they're a great way for blog or media websites to further expand their communities online as, often your source will respond and expose their own readership to your blog or publication.I try to practice the "hat-tip" method as much as possible because I'm a firm believer of "what comes around goes around". One of the world's leading international tech blogs, ReadWriteWeb, run by New Zealander Richard MacManus, always includes a hat-tip to acknowledge their sources for mentioning or posting about any topic before they do. 

 The concept of referencing your sources was taught to all of us back in high school and uni. In the online world, linking back to the original article is usually considered good enough. However, I feel like going the extra step and saying "props to xyz media for breaking this story first" is an important way to give credit where credit is due.So in the spirit of practicing what I preach, a hat-tip goes out to ReadWriteWeb for the idea for this post. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, should more websites practice hat-tipping?[Image Credit: RWW and Zorger]