Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:25:57 -0600 From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> Subject: Re: S100 archive? At 03:06 PM 3/17/2008, M H Stein wrote: My mistake then; "Seems like a case of 'My archive is bigger than your archive.' and "I see stuff in here from a lot of different archives and personal web sites." struck me as critical and dismissive. Sorry if I misunderstood. I'd have thought something like, "Hey folks, I just ran across a site, etc. with lots of stuff, although some of it looks like unattributed copies from other sites; anybody know anything about it?" would express what you say above a little better. FWIW, it's been around for a few years and if this were the kind of bragging that "mine's bigger than yours" implies, I'd have thought it'd be better known by now. I couldn't care less whether he puts my name on the stuff I've scanned or copied and sent to him as long as it's out there and easy to find (and I'm a little PO'd about stuff I've sent to folks who promised to make it publicly available but never did AFAIK), and I don't see the need to put up yet another Web site of my own and fragment the resource even more. It might be different if I had a site and he copied it without my knowledge, but that'd be between him and me. If having their name mentioned is important to someone, let him or her send him an email. I don't see how attribution makes it any more useful or descriptive though; does it matter to you whether he scanned something or I did? The only attribution that matters to me is the "real" attribution, i.e. the name of the original company or publisher. Since some of the sites he copied from probably copied it from another site themselves, tracking down who actually "did the work" could be a lot of fun and extra work. Guess I just don't get why it's so important to *you* where it came from as long as you can find it, unless it's material that you copied or scanned yourself. If pigs ever fly and someone actually wanted to thank the person who did the work after downloading something, they'd probably often have to sift through the various sites with identical copies anyway. Having said all that, although it'd be much extra work for thousands of files attribution would indeed be a courtesy and is the custom in this community; if it keeps you awake at night why not send Marcus an email instead of kvetching about it here, behind his back as it were. And thanks for the reminder; playing Al Y's "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" on my iTunes as I write... m