Last March, I posted one blog at SDN entitled Extending Firefox & IE to ease SAP sites search. Then I got comments that everything had been covered by fellow SDNers in their previous posts. I also got an email from the SDN "evangelist" that I should or say must have referenced the work of those who had introduced it previously. In that article I actually DID reference previous posts of Dagfinn Parnas and DJ Adams. These were the only blogs related to the topic that I read prior to writing of my posts. I did not bother of updating my article later after I got those comments as Eddy himself had listed up the related posts in his comments. Would it really matter?
Shame on me!
Yesterday, while searching for good SAP related sites, I stumbled into The GadgetGuy's forum. Craig Cmehil, an SDN evangelist made comment on this post.
"Shame Jo Gel does not give credit where credit is due (to Eddy De Celercq and DJ Adams since they got the ball rolling)I'm not sure whether Craig had read my post or not... I did actually refernced DJ Adams work but not Eddy's. I admit that it might not have been proper etiquette of not referencing Eddy's work. The truth is that I only came to know Eddy's work on the same topic right after he made those comments. Would it matter of putting his works as reference when you did not really refer to them during the creation of the article? There are lot of papers (articles as well) on the same research field but you won't put all them in the references. Rather you will only put those ones you knew and did refer to while doing your work.
Comments to Jo Gel’s weblog on SDN from Eddy are quite interesting."
Blogs: the SDN way
After such incident, it seems that the proper etiquette is that prior to posting a blog in SDN, you should read ALL the blogs related to that topic and make references to them. Also, if the topic has been covered, you should not post it! Gush! I think SDN missed the concept of what a blog is... Honestly, I was not writing SDN blogs for the sake of points! What are those points anyway? I can even use them to buy me a chocolate!
I will share to you why I had chosen SDN blog in the first place.
When MI development was scheduled to move to Bangalore, I was already preparing for my new RIG tasks related to XI. XI is a very big component and there were so many things to put in mind. Having a very limited memory, I decided to put whatever I got on MI into writing before those "knowledge" leave my mind. First I considered writing how-to guides and I actually had written some internally. However, this kind of documents is very hard to maintain. Several copies could be made here and there, and sometimes it's hard to locate the latest one. HTG documents in SDN are even difficult to share. You have to submit it for screening and if approved, they will be available to the public. And you don't even have the interface to update it!
I did not like this kind of sharing medium so what I did was to start a weblog. Blog is the easiest way of sharing things and you can get feedback from your reader as well. Maintenance-wise, you only have one copy available online that you can update thus assuring your readers that it is the latest one...
FYI
Some reader might say that I might had came across Eddy's work and intentionally "steal" the topic. Now ask yourself what for!? Please note that I don't post blogs for the sake of those "useless" SDN points. I have my own reason for this motivation.
Well, I have been using search shortcuts on top of my customized desktop. I actually have an html form on my desktop to fast access to Google, SDN, SAP notes, SAP help and Eijiro query sites. The figure on the right is the screenshot of my desktop object. I also included the shot of the original files of this search object where you could also see when I last modified them.
When Firefox 1 got public, I created my search plugin into it. Using the same icons and info from my desktop search form. The next figure shows you the files of the Firefox search plugins that I got. You should now have an idea when I started using Firefox search plugin for SAP sites.
Btw, I created them incrementally, adding new search plugin and new query fields when need arises. So don't wonder why the files have different dates.
Share it
It was just last March when a RIG colleague saw my SAP notes search plugin as well as my desktop search form and wanted to have a copy of it. So I gave him a copy of it, also to some of my friends in support field who frequently does SAP Notes search. Then I decided to share it with my fellow SDNers. But before writing my post, I tried checking whether the same thing had been available. I read on DJ Adam's and Dagfinn Parnass' blogs; unfortunately did not encounter Eddy's post. Then I decided to post it up... Would it really matter if I missed referencing Eddy's work? Or should I have to update my article and put the credits to Eddy?
Could it be the reason?
As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I started posting here in blogspot since SDN would not allow me to post blogs with my new SDN ID. They did not tell me the reason for the rejection but rather invited me to contribute in different media like technical articles, HTGs and program codes... Mmmm, why not weblog??? Well, perhaps this could be the reason behind it.
Anyway, I'm happy with this spot to write my blogs. And I'm free from reading all blogs that might have already covered the same topic! Blogspot has an editor too and I don't have to bother having another WYSIWYG editor...
Finally...
Lastly, I just hope that the person concern will stop on "trolling" other forums claiming for Eddy's credit! In fact, Eddy had already claimed it thru his commnent. Isn't that enough? Well, you have to power to delete SDN contributions... remove it if you found it necessary. Who cares...
6 comments:
After reading this it really got me thinking, "did I go to far" trying to maintain the credability of SDN and what goes on there, perhaps I did. However, since you've brought up a few points here (this is your blog and you can/may choose to what not delete) this entry but I figure if you are "calling me out" I deserve a right to answer.
You've confused or I should say made a relation between two items where there is no relation. Your blogging on SDN under new ID or old ID has nothing to do with this case and I'll be happy to discuss that with you (you have my email) - believe it or not we want you blogging on SDN and we were a bit disappointed when you slowed down/stopped. In fact I just double checked everything including my last response on the task which was not a rejection. However as an "employee" we require them to blog under their "employee" ID as it's a company related site. I think that's fair and understandable, you? If an employee leaves we move their blogs with them, unless it's a specific company related blog that they wrote as part of their regular duties and responsabilities.
As for "trolling" I think that's rather harsh but I can see how it looked that way and for that I apologize, I came across a post which linked to a website that was not SDN and gave all the info from you and I saw no mention of any of those who had done similiar work, in your SDN blog yes you did refer to DJ and Dagfinn but I was not responding to your SDN blog I was responding to your private website, and as I am a subscriber from Frank's I of course saw his post. The proper thing from the beginning was to share credit on that site as you did your SDN Blog.
As for the proper way on SDN to blog, you've shown that time and again many times over in your blogs as well as in responding to your comments posted by fellow SDNers - but as my response was not to your SDN blog I fail to see how you can relate my response to a blog entry on a outside blog to your private website - but I don't want to fight and I can see that things were taken a bit harshly and I am big enough to say I am sorry for my overzealous approach to protecting what I consider to be one of the best communities around.
As for the SDN points, well they do have value and that's a free ticket to SAP TechEd and the SDN Day, I think that's a pretty good deal don't you? Again off topic and not an issue here.
As for any deleting of your blogs, there's no reason to delete them in fact we still want you to blog more -- your choice however but the option is yours and always has been.
I'd rather see us keep this on the up and up instead of getting too personal about this. Bottom line, you are a good blogger that SDN would like to see blog again with us and perhaps you were just (understandably) angry with me but I can't imagine you really feel the way you do about SDN our blogging policy or how things work there. SDN blogging has never really followed the same path of "blogs" as the rest of the world, that much is obvious in terms of the fact we have an application process that is pretty strict and that we do moderate blogs and bloggers this is not to say that we have missed the "concept" of what a blog is we have simply see it rredefined within the boundries of SDN for the community/by the community, but I can tell you it's gone through multiple changes.
But again, let's put this past us and move on. Drop me an email/IM or give me a ring and we'll get this confusing mess straightened out and get you blogging again work with me and I'll work with you; &$%§ happens, you said your peace this is mine now let's get back to the more important matters of you getting your excellent blogs back up and going again on SDN, what do you say?
Craig Cmehil
SDN "overzealous and sometimes harsh" Community Evangelist
hello craig,
thanks for bringing this up and i think we just had some misunderstanding. some things are clear to me now...
now, regarding the plugin's links from my private site, i just actually provided it as a shortcut to those who don't want to write the code but rather just install them into their browser easily with the javascript installer. i was suppose to upload that into SDN, but uploading files into SDN is a little bit troublesome (or maybe I'm just not used to it), and I can't put the javascript installer as well (or I just don't know how)... that's the reason why i "temporarily" put them into a free page where I can put up the javascript installer; and I noted that as well in my blog that the page is not there to stay... i did not bother of referencing the works of DJ Adams et al in that page, as I only had given that link thru my SDN blog. I never had thought that somebody (Frank's blog) would put the direct link to that temporary page rather than the link to my SDN blog. If I can just put a referrer filter to that page...:)
Well, apologies from my side too.
regards
jo
Again things happen, and your account issues on SDN were not rejected just lost in a shuffle :-(
You'll find everything in order now, it happens sometimes with such a large community and so many applications on a daily basis.
Craig
hello craig,
it seems that i can still login with my i-number account in SDN. however, i cannot update my profiles especially my email address... i can't receive alerts thru email for all the topics that i set to watch since the email set with this ID is the one from SAP. is there a way to change this? or should i better use my new ID for watching forums?
Everything has been moved to the "new ID" although your watches you will have to reset. Your I user will be disabled once we are sure everything is moved over :-)
This is one of the brilliant post.I like your blog suggestions.This is one of the user-friendly post.Great work.
Post a Comment