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Apparently, some people want some of the Gothamist flavor in Germany. The eagle-eyed Stefan at MemeFirst directs our attention to a website from the land of Black Forest Cake: Leipzig Blog. While MemeFirst says "knock-off," Gothamist is flattered. We've been wanting to concentrate on the goings-on of the greater Leipzig area for some time now. But we're also currently drafting our version of a cease-and-desist email in German (using Babelfish so it'll be a suspect translation) telling Michelle Potier to credit our design to Jake and Ravi Singh, because sharing is caring. Gothamist expects to see a Bitten Sie Leipzig Blog and Leipblog Wetter soon, too, as they have Interviews already.
Some (okay, it was MemeFirst...again!...they are Gothamist's secret legal counsel) have said that The Big Smoker has Gothamisty roots.
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Aww Lighten up. Ask them nicely. You really want to go through the Trouble of Getting in a Legal battle All the way in Berlin??
wow, that is strikingly similar.
wow, thats really blatant. they should totally give you some kind of credit for the design. or send you some german goodies, like beer or sausages.
it's both "Bewunderer" and "Nachahmer". i wasn't quite sure how to handle it, in shame of admiration of your work which inspired me, haha, but i'm gonna credit you immediately, and would like to say again as some time before that i think your site is great. maybe you should think about selling your concept, even though Gothamist is sure also not the first place to have started city blogging.
while working on the site i also improved the calendar feature. if you'd like to know how i solved e.g. the display of the calendar feed, i'm also happy to help out.
i hope you do not mind too much about the rip off. if i had thought that you do not earn credit, i would have completely changed the layout, so that you can't recognize your influence anymore.
Right, Gothamist invented the three column layout. Gothamist also invented boxes. There are only so many ways people are doing content and navigation at the moment. Get a grip.
Is this the begnining of the end of Gothamist as a friendly blog written by normal people and the start of a new Denton-style weblog evil empire?
Is this new?
I found it on the Impressum page.
Err, am I the only one who can recognize sarcasm anymore?
I'm sure the cease and desist letter was completely tongue in cheek. Kudos for Gothamist for having such a good attitude about it and kudos for Michelle for owning up to using them as inspiration and offering to improve the calendar page.
youre blowing it out of proportion Fred. Cant you sense the friendlyness? Gothamist didnt invent boxes or a three column layout, but their design (i.e. arrangemt of boxes and typography within three columns) is quite distictive and unique. All websites use boxes but they dont all look the same do they? By comparison these two sites look almost exactly the same, so it isnt unfair of gothamist to point out the origin. I mean come on, its not just the arrangement of boxes, the content types are the same (interviews, text ads, personals, etc). No need to get huffy, even the Leipzig Blogger Michelle happily admits to what artists call "inspiration" :)
Yes, that mention of Gothamist is brand new.
doshin and Simon, thanks for stepping in to try to explain sarcasm for us. We think Leipzig Blog is great! We thought it was fun to see Leipzig Blog because it reminded us of our slightly obsessive need to try to cover some bits of their city's life.
And Gothamist doesn't take any credit for starting city blogging. Maybe we take credit for city blogging with an events feed, interviews, personals, advice, weather, skewed focus on pandas and Law & Order, etc., all under the name "Gothamist," but that's about it.
whatevs. it's friggin Leipzig. Have you been? It's pretty grim. Give em a break. Their banner is nice. With a nice use of ocre and tans.
maybe you can convince someone in moscow, london, istanbul, madrid, havanna, rio de janeiro and paris to take over also, then we can found some Olympic Games 2012 candidates circle. ;)
Hey , Rob from The Big Smoker here.
After we won the Guardian's design award last year some people pointed out the similarities between us and Gothamist and we held out hands up and basically said:
Yep, Gothamist was the inspiration, but mainly for the theme and content. We even chose the name as a kind of 'tribute'. But the design is a (heavily) modified Movable Type template which takes aspects from both Gothamist and The Morning News but is also pretty unique to us.
And now, well now we have people ripping us off:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/s.hayward37/sleepydumpling/
To be honest, I'm just honoured to get a mention on Gothamist - we think you're cracking!
i'm with jen- i don't mind people copying our design, as long as they give us credit where credit is due. i'm not claiming we invented the wheel with the three column layout- but copying a stylesheet from me and slapping a copyright on your site saying you did it from scratch is fucked the fuck up.
notice that gothamist has a creative commons license, and i believe that it covers the design and content. but it's for non-commerical uses. the leipzig blog has textads from google, which clearly crosses that line. but really, it's not about the money, or the fame- it's just about respect.
though your stylesheet is close to the movabletype sheets also, i think it's not the first time that i saw boxes like yours. it's a few tweaks, and i tweaked it again for my purposes, e.g. framing pictures.
also content-wise my site is a bit different. i'm planning on doing surveys in the street, i already put a box for that up. i offer a movie review once per week about a new movie that's starting in germany. i also offer guest articles - people in our city can use my forum to get the word out if they want to announce something or voice an opinion. i'm not planning on weather forecast, forum or ask leipzig blog.
and it's a whole different country, the work on the content is still all based on my own efforts, collecting information, taking pictures, it's a lot more than just a page structure. if the link in the "Impressum"-section is not credit enough, let me know how you'd like it to be.
Gothamist is in good company. Check http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_04_18.php#002864
Seems the CPA in Iraq ripped off its design from, of all places, the Brookings Institution.
Anyway, its a grand old tradition on the web, and while credit should be given to creators, one should take a compliment before one takes offense.
I used Jake's stylesheets to get my own blog started. I knew nothing about movable type, and by studying the code behind my favorite blog (and comparing it to the way that day's entries looked) I could begin to understand how the damn thing worked. Now I'm learning by doing, and as I understand the code better, I'm changing my site's design more and more, and it's getting less and less like Gothamist. Still, similarities exist, and I happily credit Jake on the site, as per Gothamist's Creative Commons deed.
But I do feel a twinge of guilt in that I am, technically, simultaneously violating said deed: The Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0 states that users can't alter, transform, or build upon the work... but that's what i've done by copying and customizing your style sheets. Obviously, copying some hidden MT code isn't the same as copying the text of one of your entries and posting it as my own thoughts, and I (apparently correctly) assumed you wouldn't mind. But it's still an issue.
Perhaps I can encourage Gothamist to change its deed to something that encourages other work, like the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike? You still protect your own intellectual property, but by allowing derivitive works, you encourage other people to create and contribute to the blogosphere. We all benefit from each others work --whether its looking at each other's code, or linking to each other's stories. Why not encourage more of that?
jesus christ dave, what the hell are you talking about?
hmm- i thought we did have the derivatives box checked- at least, that's what i intended to do. i think the right to do derivative works is very important.
"huh?"-
Creative Commons is a project that aims to to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules. The idea is that anyone who makes content --web site editors, musicians, novelists, whatever-- can easily choose a legal licensing scheme for their work, and protect their rights to that creation, while still legally providing ways for other people to adapt, improve, and distribute your work.
If you look at Gothamist's front page, in the "Other Details" box, you can see their license and what it means.
Learn more at http://creativecommons.org/learn/
I think Gothamist should change "Comments & Trackbacks" to "Kommentare & Trackbacks." And how can Gothamist compete with such an invigorating headline as "Wolfgang Unger gestorben"?
I remember when Jake approached my by email to see if he could borrow my template and stylesheets. This was before he became a coding expert himself. I learned this way, so why would I prevent someone else from learning by copying -- rather altering, not just copying. Jake sensibly found my email on my site and just asked, so of course, I obliged, with the suggestion that he modify the style enough to make it his own.
Since that time, we saw several verbatim copies of "our" designs, and have contacted folks in a friendly way, just to say, "hey, we put a lot of work into this, please don't represent your copy as being the original". I've since, modified my design slightly, because in the end, that's really the easiest way to stay unique. Copy, but copy wisely, respectfully, and make it your own.
The net has given us too much power to copy willy-nilly, so for those who give a damn, copy, but modify, make it better, make it your own. And give credit where credit is due.
Of course, I would probably find the bit about creative commons more worrying than Felix and Stefan, were I to understand it, but as I don't, what I find most worrying in all of this is memefirst's obsession with Gothamist. Half the entries there seem to concern this site or Jen. Forget the C&D letter to our German friends, you need to start a virtual-stalking suit against Felix and Stefan.
yes charles whoever you are, stefan and felix are WEIRD. they're like blogging groupies. this site should never have interviewed felix; it's like feeding a pet at the dinner table. but stefan is the most odd. really quite obsessed, like a littel terrier; grrr!
Eek. I was this [] close to stealing your 3rd column ad layout for Daddy Types.
Of course, I was even closer to commissioning a silly caricature of a dad at a typewriter with a cheesy X-files typeface, too, until I realized I'd seen it somewhere recently.
If you're gonna steal, steal from the best, but then make sure they don't find out about it till much later.
Eurof -- unique name, I'm sure I've heard it somewhere before. No matter.
Your point is most valid, Stefan is perhaps somewhat more strange. But Felix is far from normal, let's be honest. His reviews are more learned than Stefan's rather pathetic attempts at criticism, but nonetheless, once you boil down the fleshy jaw, the bone is of an ass.
Do you think papa geens reads this site, too?
Did you see the comment in German that mentions Gothamist?? Who knows German?!