Copy-cats, and why I am trying a gate

Last month I searched for a sentence I was sure I had written. There it was: on someone else’s site, in someone else’s layout, with my examples still attached and no link back.

It is a small, sour feeling. Not because the internet copies — it always has — but because a how-to that took an evening of real debugging had been lifted as if it were stock text. The reader on that other page will never know who sat with the error message. I will not name the site. Naming it would only send more traffic there.

I do not think a garden gate stops a determined thief. I do think it is unfair to keep leaving the whole tutorial sitting in the open for the next scraper to hoover up. So I am trying something quieter. Please treat the bumps as bugs, not as a new house rule.

What you will see on a gated post

Some of the later, more technical tutorials now open with a preview: the introduction, enough context to know whether the post is for you, and the headings of what follows. Under that sits a subscribe form.

This is not a paid wall. If you already get the newsletter, you are on the right side of the gate.

How subscribers read the full post

1. Subscribe on the post, or from the subscribe page.
2. Check your inbox for an email asking you to set a password to unlock articles.
3. Log in with that same email. Google sign-in with the same address is fine.
4. Open the tutorial again. The rest of the article should replace the preview.

The form signs you up for the newsletter. It does not log you in by itself. That second step is deliberate, and a bit annoying, and I am sorry about the extra click.

If you subscribed years ago and never set a password here, use Forgot password with the email on the list.

This is still a test

The gate is in testing. A handful of posts are closed; most of the site is not. Series openers, the ethics notes, and the GEO/SEO pieces stay public on purpose. I want people to find the blog. I do not want the TensorFlow and Git deep-dives copied wholesale.

Things may wobble: a preview that is too short, a login that does not unlock, a post that should never have been gated. If that happens to you, tell me.

I am not trying to punish anyone who quotes a paragraph with a link. Quote away. I am trying to stop the silent reprint.

I want the writing free to read. I do not want it free to copy.

Have you had your own writing show up, uncredited, on someone else’s domain? 👋