I know. I get it. I'm not really complaining. I don't expect anyone on NeoGAF to leave this community to go read news when they're already so comfortable with this, but I'm just saying people get to read my work, and I don't see anything for it.
This thread generated only 130 hits on the original article:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511791
Well, the reality of the situation might be worse, then the idea that it takes away hits. The reality of the situation very well might be that without the link sharing there would be even less hits/people who actually read it. It isn't very uncommon for people to not actually care to read the articles posted, but just like to argue or add their 2 cents on everyone else's opinion about something they have not read themselves.
That said, I do however believe they shouldn't share full articles on this site, but putting in the most interesting talking points, that the article was about and I think this is something healthy, even for the writer. I know it is easy to fall into the idea of "if they just posted the link it would = more hits", but I think that is underestimating peoples apathy in regards to clicking and reading a link for themselves vs just reading what other people have already posted. I would argue, just getting your story and news out their would be more of a boost to notoriety as a whole(which if obtaining enough notoriety would lead to more views). Kotaku doesn't get as many views as it does because its articles are just amazing, but because everyone knows them(chicken or egg question I guess).
With all that, I do believe if you copy a fair amount from an article, that it would be polite(and necessary) to include the persons name of the person who wrote the article. As someone who doesn't write articles for a living, I do understand how it would be frustrating seeing 12k views on a forum based on your article, and only see a few hundred clicks as a result. I'm just having a hard time believing just posting the link would result in more clicks as a effect of not posting the contents of the link(if anything the topic would die much faster and the link would have less notoriety).
And I think my point is proven by the fact that a lot of games journalists find it necessary to copy+paste the whole of what neogaf was talking about, instead of just giving a link to the forum that was discussing it, to get the clicks.