Credit Where Credit is Due

With the current popularity of blogging the dissemination of information is mind blowing. There is an enourmous community with very little friction between them having an idea and publishing it to the world. And tools like Google index the universe of information and make it discoverable. It's great, but there is one aspect of blog publishing that I don't like.

When people take other people's work and pretend it is there own.

A recent example that got under my skin was someone writing a blog post that paraphrased Fred Brook's brilliant article, No Silver Bullet. They even used Brook's own 'essence and accidents' terminology. The post did not include a single reference to Brooks or his article. I can only presume that the author hoped no one would notice.

When paraphrasing or quoting someonle else's work, please give credit where credit is due.


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