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Today I wanted to show a question in "Unix and Linux" to a workmate; more exactly this question: Create self-signed certificate with end-date in the past

He used the "Duck Duck Go" search engine, and instead of landing in the proper question as it appears in Google, the first search gave him this result http://blogs.candoerz.com/question/300567/create-self-signed-certificate-with-end-date-in-the-past.aspx ; the original page was anywhere seen near the top (apparently).

While the previous entry seems to indicate somewhat groups with names similar to stackexchange groups, landing directly in the webpage appears deceptive as it seems to be a forum of their own; furthermore the authors of questions and answers are defaced too.

As far as I can tell for their entry page, they seems to be a competing outlet, that is scraping content from several groups of StackExchange to leverage their (new?) service and attract users.

Is this on line with the terms of copyright of Stack Exchange?

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  • 3
    The web is a morass of perverse incentives and bad actors. So much squandered promise.
    – jasonwryan
    Apr 17, 2017 at 9:14
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    Attribution Required.
    – Michael Homer
    Apr 17, 2017 at 9:16
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    I’m not sure they’re interested in pushing a new service or competing with StackExchange; they seem to just copy content from a variety of sources and add advertising on it...
    – Stephen Kitt
    Apr 17, 2017 at 11:43
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    @StephenKitt As Michael correctly pointed out, they copy content from a variety of sources, without attribution. And actually go out of their way to deface the name of the original authors too.
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Apr 17, 2017 at 12:24
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    @Rui I wasn’t disagreeing with Michael, just pointing out that their main aim seems to be advertising, not building a good service. (So they’re even more despicable than your question would lead one to believe.)
    – Stephen Kitt
    Apr 17, 2017 at 12:38
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    (the 5 minute limit for editing comments for non-native speakers like me is too short...it is annoying seeing there the grammar errors and not being able to fix them)
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Apr 17, 2017 at 13:28
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    @RuiFRibeiro at least you have the excuse of not writing in your native language to fall back on. How do you think we feel? Anyway, since I feel your pain, I fixed the errors :)
    – terdon Mod
    Apr 28, 2017 at 11:24
  • @terdon thanks.
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Apr 28, 2017 at 16:15
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    Ironically, with correct attribution it wouldn't even violate the terms. What baffles me is that this post actually shows up in the top search results.
    – Arminius
    Apr 29, 2017 at 1:12
  • "SEO"? IMO this is way they are scrapping content in the first place.
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Apr 29, 2017 at 7:54
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    See A site (or scraper) is copying content from Stack Exchange. What do I do?
    – Michał Perłakowski
    Apr 29, 2017 at 12:34

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The usual guidance is to report the offending site through the "contact us" link on every page. The contact form has a dropdown of reasons, one of which is unauthorized copying without attribution of the site's contents.

My experience (mainly from Stack Overflow) is that Stack Exchange take care of these sites behind the scenes, quietly, once you report them.

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    Thanks, I had never ever tried "Contact us", and there is indeed an option "Stack content is being reproduced without attribution".
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Apr 17, 2017 at 19:41
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    Cool. Once in a blue moon, I come across such sites while using Duck Duck Go but I just assumed there wasn't much anyone could do about them.
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Apr 23, 2017 at 22:42
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    @AnthonyGeoghegan I regularly come across these sites, although I do tend to search for them. DuckDuckGo tends to find things that other search engines don't - perhaps it's due to their static, unbiased algorithm (that is susceptible to certain types of "SEO").
    – wizzwizz4
    Apr 30, 2017 at 15:41

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