crediting
I recently thought about the issue of crediting others online for their work or inspiration. I usually do this very liberally; even my āgardenā section features credits of who came up with the concept of a garden link. It costs me nothing to do that and it can lead others to interesting blogs and people.
I thought for a long time that I usually donāt need that myself; I was always one to share my stuff a lot, whether itās art, online resources, study notes, code snippets and more. I usually even offer it upfront without anyone asking. But one incident I am a little embarrassed about made me wonder where I draw the line.
Iāll keep this vague because itās not about the specific situation but my general feelings on the matter of credit.
One time, I worked on creating something digitally and iterated a lot on it. It wasnāt difficult per se, but it did take me quite a while to get it how I want it. I chose to document it publicly to showcase what my goal was, what my preliminary considerations and planning looked like, what issues came up and what I ended up with. More a journey/problem solving post and a little bit of a guide for others to follow. It was mildly popular on the site it was posted on and was highly visible on the front page of it. Only a little while later (hours?), someone else summarized it, basically identical content but cleaned up, no discussing the issues or journey. They had clearly seen it, but didnāt link back to mine. I was a little confused since everyone would have seen what popular post this was taking from, so why wouldnāt you? So I moved on. But after a while, all people linked to was the other post and crediting that person for it. I guess it would be one thing to say it was simply shorter or nicer to follow, but it seemed like my original contribution was entirely forgotten and they were seen as the originator.
And what I was embarrassed about was that it stung me a little despite knowing how meaningless it was; the credit would give me nothing, the lack of credit didnāt harm me, and itās just silly internet stuff. But that also made it hard to talk about it and get it out of my system, because I didnāt want to admit to anyone (especially in real life) that I cared about something so minor and childish.
It made me wonder, why care about it in that case when I usually donāt? I found it came down to effort and difficulty, and somewhat how much I went out of my way to do it.
If itās something I have to do anyway (think: summary study notes) you can freely have it and not care that I wrote that. You can copy it or claim to others that you wrote that and I wonāt care. But if I do something as an extra thing I do for others, or maybe even because of wanting to contribute to a community on purpose with something they could need more than I do, I care more about credit. And if itās something that I do effortlessly and comes to me easily, I donāt care about credit either, but if I had to put a lot of energy or time into it or it was difficult for me, I feel silly when thereās no credit.
I think itās a delicate topic and youāll always feel like a clown or the worlds biggest narcissist when you find yourself wanting to be credited for something; most of the time, it isnāt even online or via hyperlinks - itās in conversation when someone repeats a point you made and gets all the praise for it, or someone falsely remembers who said what. This recently happened to me in a university Zoom session, by the way, and I was a little salty no one corrected it, even though it is - again - meaningless and no harm done. I guess sometimes it is important to me to have others acknowledge that it was specifically me who did the work or got it right, even if it objectively gives me nothing.
Edit: I got a lovely email by someone clearing up some things about the main incident discussed here and I learned it wasn't intentional :) I feel at ease about it all now!
Published 15 Nov, 2024, edited 8Ā months ago