maybe I’m wrong butttttttttttttttttttttt
Hello Fellow Woodworkers,
First of all let me take the time to thank each and everyone of you in this group, your all so very helpfull and if a person had to pay money for the wealth of information here he would have to probably take out a second or possibly a third mortcage to be able to afford such a gift that you all give for free and dont even give a second thought in doing so. Again thank you all so very much. Now on to somthing that somwhat irritates me to no end, For quite a while now I have noticed peolpe in a few of the other groups that I belong to logging in and out of groups such as this one and asking certain questions about different topics usually pertaining to the craft of Woodworking but then they go back to a group and offer up the information as if it were their own and taking credit for it and usually meaningless praise and letting everyone there think they are some kind of hero and know things about woodworking that in all actuality they havn’t a clue . Now maybe I’m being petty here but to me if somone asks a question that I don’t know the answer to I usually send them here so they can also tap into the vast wealth of information that I have come to count on from all of you.
I oppologise if I have offended anyone here but I am a firm beleiver in giving credit where credit is due and just becouse somone has limitless time infront of a computer screen and knows how to ask questions in my book these things don’t make him a woodworker I say this becouse no matter when I make the time to log on to some of the groups I belong to certain folks are always there again offering up info that by all right belong to others .
Thank you all for allowing me to rant a little and again thank all of you
Sincerely,
Jim Clark (a.k.a DOC)
Replies
You spelled apologized wrong.
Molten,
How did you come up with your nickname?
Joe Phillips
Plastics pay the bills, Woodworking keeps me sane!
Just made it up. I used to be rusty, but Taunton kicked me out because of some of my rants over in the Breaktime political forums. I was just in Jackson visiting my parents yesterday, saw the prisoners enjoying the sunny day. I live in Fowlerville.
I think that people offer information here just to help out not to be "someone who knows "and the gratification comes from knowing that you gave someone hand. If someone wants to pilfer that information and pass it off as their own just to try to be an "expert"well in my opinion they just diminish themselves. They have to live with themselves not us so let them. An honest person is willing and even eager to admit what he doesn't know because it is the best way to learn.
What I know I learned from experience or from others experience and I will pass it along volentarily to whoevcer asks and they can do as they wish with it. Often I like to even tell where I learned something because I like learning from oldtimers.
Philip
p.s. corect spelling is an optional here
I would agree with that. Sometimes I may actually know something that can help someone and I may not know where I got it from. I can tell you this much, hardly anyone can claim to have figured out for themselves all they know about woodworking. We all read books, magazines, and get help from other more experienced woodworkers, we all start out as a novice.
I've been trying to think if there has been an entirely original woodworking idea in the last, oh, say, two hundred years. I've certainly not had one. Have you?
If you have some wisdom to pass on, pass it on. Don't worry about the credit. The people from whom you've learned don't ask you to acknowledge them every time.
Well said Donald. Most, if not all of the "original ideas" we read about can be found in mine (or anyones) 20 to 30+ year old woodworking books.
Enjoy, Roy
...which is another problem. I was recently reading a tutorial on another website given by a professional woodworker who has always been good with giving advice on various forums. He offered the tutorial as his own personal work, but he had plagiarized a number of passages (quoted without attribution) from a well-known book on furniture building which I have and recognized. I've got to admit, it lowered my opinion of him just a bit, because he was taking credit for a tutorial he was not entirely responsible for.
It wouldn't have been at all difficult for him to include an expression like "according to ..." or "as described in the book xxx", but leaving that attribution out is akin to stealing. (Think of the current scandal about Naval Academy professor Brian VanDeMark, author of "Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb", who is "accused of using more than 50 passages from the work of five other authors, without giving proper credit."
". . .and only the stump or fishy part of him remained."
Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Township
doc,
the trouble is how did we learn what we know?
I may learn something here and then forget it's source... I may have learned the same thing 40 years ago and forgotten it's source..
Day in and day out I visit job sites and find out bitsa information and if I pass it on without credit, it's not to take something from someone, rather to share it with others..
Frenchie, it's one thing when someone uses a few of the same words describing a well-known technique. It's another when entire sentences are lifted, word for word, from printed sources. To a professional writer, words are his living; for someone to steal the words and say (or imply) "these are my own; I thought these up by myself" and on that basis gain credit for them, is simply wrong. If it weren't, we wouldn't have ideas about copyright at all.
If someone is going to go out of their way to take on the mantle of writer and publish their words in a public medium, they are responsible for knowing a few basic rules about the courtesies of using resources.
". . .and only the stump or fishy part of him remained."
Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Township
One problem writers face, Norm, is expressing themselves entirely in their own way. Luckily, I probably possess the smallest woodworking library in the world, and almost everything I know about the subject is lodged between my ears, which mostly came from my training in a rough and ready environment and my experience since, and not based on a wide reading background, so you're not likely to find any words I use copied wholesale from other authors texts.
One of my favourite writers on woodworking subjects is Ernest Joyce-- the writer of that definitive text on the subject of furniture making, and then there is that other master of dense and complex furniture making knowledge, George Ellis-- but then I'm British, and therefore biased. Joyce is one of only four or five technical books on woodworking topics that I own-- most other books are lite and brite (sic) re-workings on the topic that spend their time dancing around the subject, and mostly fail to add anything much that hasn't already been said, althought there are exceptions. I must admit that the aimless twitterings of Krenov leave me absolutely cold, but that's just me and my perversities-- and that, with a bit of luck, should raise a few hackles, and some verbal brick-bats, ha, ha.
Apart from his comprehensiveness on the subject, I admire Joyce for such things as his inadvertent sexlessness. Considering the fact that his tome was published in the late 1960's, and he probably trained as an apprenticed cabinetmaker in the 1920's, I find it remarkable that he doesn't talk much about 'craftsmen', et al-- thus failing to antagonise those of a modern politically sensitivie nature. He uses the word 'worker' to describe, well-- workers of wood. I have adopted some of his means of expression in my verbal drivellings--- I use, for example, the word worker too. Slainte.
PS. I'm pretty sure that the author that got up your nose is not me, ha, ha.
PPS. If I was in author mode, rather than 'goofing-about-in-a-forum' mode, I've no doubt that I'd spend the next two hours re-working the 'stream-of-conciousness' nonsense above into something more publisher friendly-- and I might run it past the spellchecker too-- but I certainly wouldn't let the grammar thing go anywhere near it, ha, ha.Website The poster formerly known as Sgian Dubh
No, the writer wasn't you, Sgian--and he's not even on FWW, I think.
I also have Joyce, but I've experienced a rather hard time with his laconic (!) way of referring to various techniques (+illustrations) in what seems a combination of terseness of vocabulary and a complex syntactical structure resembling one of those famous hand-cut Chinese joints, a habit that makes it a bit difficult at times to follow the drift of what it was he was starting out (amongs all the references to 61:1B, et al illustrations, together with interlineary conversions from inch to metric) to say . . . Er, what was I talking about?
Ah yes, here's an example: "Determine first the width of the endgrain pins (B) and, assuming that each pin is to be approximately 1/2 in (12.5mm) in width, gauge a 1/4 in (6mm) from each parallel edge of 154:6A to accommodate half a pin, and divide the space between into as many divisions as there will be whole pins. If these are, say, four then five divisions are required, and 5 in (127mm) (or any number of inches [millimetres] easily divisible by five) is measured off on the rule and measured obliquely across the board as shown . . ."
Zzzzzzzz. . .
". . .and only the stump or fishy part of him remained."
Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Township
Edited 6/5/2003 2:31:40 AM ET by Norm in Fujino
Ah-- you spotted that then Norm!! There is a screw-up in his description of laying out the through dovetail for a start. Follow his suggested technique, and you'll end up with a tail in the middle somewhere that's 'fatter' than the rest. That error is down to poor double checking on the part of the editor, or possibly the author.
There's another fugg-up I can point you to. If you read the section on hoppers--polyhedra-- which brings into play such things as calculating dihedral angles-- but I'll let you find it. Frankly, I've forgotten exactly what the error is, but it's in there somewhere.
One of the irritations of being an author is that you send off your verbal crap to a publisher, and they go ahead and publish their final text (of my original) without sending me a draught to double check for errors.
Recently, for example, I sent a text that included the dimension 'mils' as a specified thickness-- it was an important measurement in spray applied dry film thicknesses of the the nitro-cellulose family, specifically, ML Campbell's pre-catalysed lacquer. In the published article, they messed up, and although they got it correct in the first reference, they then proceeded to change mils into mm (millimetres) in the next sentence or so, which really made me look dumb-- I had it correct in my draught-- I guess their spellchecker took a brain fart, or the editor wasn't being vigilant enough to notice that I was being extremely specific..
But, well, what I can I do about it now? It's published, and it's out there to be ridiculed. Slainte.Website The poster formerly known as Sgian Dubh
There is a screw-up in his description of laying out the through dovetail for a start. Follow his suggested technique, and you'll end up with a tail in the middle somewhere that's 'fatter' than the rest.
All I know is that I tried to understand it and it didn't seem to make much sense! I'm glad to know it wasn't entirely my fault, at least!
I know what you mean about publishers changing your explicit instructions without getting your permission. That's unforgivable IMO. At the same time, having acted as an editor, I also know what it's like when you've got a deadline to make, and you ask an author to proof the galleys, and he sends it back about fifty percent rewritten!
". . .and only the stump or fishy part of him remained."
Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Township
I'm going to change my reply, Norm, and just say that author and editor have a difficult balancing act to perform. I don't do that 50% rewritten thing you mentioned. I am so anal, that I cover my back passage four or five times. I write it, and re-write it, and then re-write it again, make sure it's all laid out and detailed-- too darned much probably-- and then I send it off.
All I've ever asked an editor to do is to send me a draught of the words they plan to publish-- mostly so that I can prevent the worst of the howlers getting into print, but if they won't communicate-- which might seem odd, journalists being in the information business-- they just won't communicate.
Luckily, my main US publisher is also extremely anal, and asks me to run my eye over his proposed variation of my original text. I could quibble with the quality of the photographic reproductions, maybe, but the text is usually pretty good. Slainte.
Website The poster formerly known as Sgian Dubh
Edited 6/5/2003 5:14:26 AM ET by RichardJ
I hope I never cross that line.. I understand the value of writting (evan if I can't do it very well) If I do, it's not intentional or an attempt to steal... maybe that doesn't excuse it .
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