Ganesh wrote:
> I personally like to directly quote people as much as possible.
> Only problem is, one naturally has to edit and many a times expand on
> what they have had to say about something. What methodology do you use?
Most of the words in the comp.lang.c FAQ list are mine.
There's information from a large variety of sources, but few
direct quotes; I've done all kinds of distilling and paraphrasing
and whittling down and honing of answers to try to make them as
succinct as possible.
Though this can obviously be a lot of work, it does have
advantages: I don't have to do fine-grained acknowledgements;
I don't have to worry about who holds the copyright; I have an
easy defense if (as has happened once or twice) some kook tries
to berate me for making fools of the people whose stupid
questions I've allegedly stolen.
Where I have a direct quote or a unique idea which in my mind I
credit to a specific source (as opposed to the consensus of the
newsgroup), I definitely do attribute those specifically. And I
have a huge acknowledgements list at the end, that everyone who's
ever contributed anything to the list can look at and feel good
about, even if I didn't use their words exactly. (And I do have
internal manuscript notes about who suggested many of the ideas
or rewordings, if there's ever any question.)
Just lately, though, for some material, I'm adopting an almost
diametrically opposite approach. In the HTML version of this
FAQ list, I'm adding "Additional links" sections at the end of
certain questions, and many of these links will point at verbatim
(well, HTMLized, so mostly verbatim), fully attributed copies of
posted articles I've saved which either do an especially good
job of going into depth on a topic for which the main list's
"succinct" answer might occasionally be *too* succinct, or which
provide some new explanation which I haven't yet had (and may
never have) time to do the same kind of distillation on that
the older, main-line answers have received.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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