Submitted by Jennifer Maddrell on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 8:46am.
You may want to reconsider calling multiple blog posts on the same topic "a virus", especially when you are launching a project to study online communication and discourse. While I respect George and his work, I was not motivated to dust off my blog and make this post because of him, but rather because of something deep inside me that said, "This is creepy."
Dave is my friend and you claim he is your colleague, too. However, if he and I had discussed a project or article he was working on and then I decided to start a different project under a similar thesis (or similar title, frame of reference, original source) to what he had been using in his work, whether (a) I had studied the concept for 20 years before I met him, (b) it was his original idea, or (c) he had extended the work of others and I was planning on taking a different twist than him, I would say something like, "Hey, Dave, my colleague, I'm starting this project that may or may not end up having overlap with your recent work and I'm going to call it the 'ABC' project which has a similar thesis (title, frame of reference, original source) to your recent paper ... and then I'd make certain to reference his work on the topic (and the work of others that I was aware of) at the outset in my "About" page or somewhere else in the early launch material so others could see the threads of knowledge on the topic that may (or may not) inform the ensuing discourse in the network.
By the way, I'm done defending Dave (he is a big boy) and I'm done defending my conception of how network discourse (and friendships) should function. I just wanted to clarify why Dave's buddies were compelled to make certain his contributions to the knowledge thread were acknowledged. We aren't all lemmings following George's lead. We saw something that didn't sit right with us and voiced our opinions. In my experience, that is how informal network discourse generally works, by the way.
You may want to reconsider calling multiple blog posts on the same topic "a virus", especially when you are launching a project to study online communication and discourse. While I respect George and his work, I was not motivated to dust off my blog and make this post because of him, but rather because of something deep inside me that said, "This is creepy."
Dave is my friend and you claim he is your colleague, too. However, if he and I had discussed a project or article he was working on and then I decided to start a different project under a similar thesis (or similar title, frame of reference, original source) to what he had been using in his work, whether (a) I had studied the concept for 20 years before I met him, (b) it was his original idea, or (c) he had extended the work of others and I was planning on taking a different twist than him, I would say something like, "Hey, Dave, my colleague, I'm starting this project that may or may not end up having overlap with your recent work and I'm going to call it the 'ABC' project which has a similar thesis (title, frame of reference, original source) to your recent paper ... and then I'd make certain to reference his work on the topic (and the work of others that I was aware of) at the outset in my "About" page or somewhere else in the early launch material so others could see the threads of knowledge on the topic that may (or may not) inform the ensuing discourse in the network.
By the way, I'm done defending Dave (he is a big boy) and I'm done defending my conception of how network discourse (and friendships) should function. I just wanted to clarify why Dave's buddies were compelled to make certain his contributions to the knowledge thread were acknowledged. We aren't all lemmings following George's lead. We saw something that didn't sit right with us and voiced our opinions. In my experience, that is how informal network discourse generally works, by the way.