Heather Monahan

I had seen it all over the internet with no author, no attribution, and I thought, okay, I'll post it.

So I posted the image with the quote

without any attribution.

Soon after, a woman commented on my post, that is a Nelson Mandela quote.

Okay, that was news to me, but I was grateful that the woman had let me know so I could correct it.

I thanked her, and in the text portion of the post, I added, the quote in the image below is attributed to Nelson Mandela.

Case closed.

Or so I thought.

The woman then commented back, what you did in this post is not good enough.

You must delete the post now.

I thought that was crazy.

And why would someone whom I don't know, who doesn't work for the social media platform I'm posting on, dictate to me how I attribute someone's quote and what is acceptable or not acceptable to them?

I didn't delete it.

And the post started going viral because the community saw the thread and started jumping in with their own opinions.

In the end, I left the post right where it was.

But I also created a new post with Nelson Mandela attributed in the image and in the text portion of the post.

I also told the story about what had happened.

I hadn't known who the quote was attributed to.

And when I found out, I made the proper attribution.

I went on to explain that someone didn't think that was good enough.