[vsnet-alert 11302] re provenance of stuff off of me

[redvars at fastmail.co.uk]

I remember and note looking back at old emails that I've often wittered
on about data sets and stars and said folk are free to do what they want
with them without even feeling half a need to acknowledge myself or the
post involved.

Directly due to Nicholson this has changed of late, as I stated recently
in an avson posting.

It's not just the dropping of provenance, it's the insinuation made by
some authors that it was all their own doing instead that's brought
about my change in attitude.  It's a general thing, occuring beyond this
issue and not even in context to me.  VSNET alerts can end up being
source references for CRTS transients already published in ADS and
SIMBAD linked ATELs, for instance.  What the hell's all that about?

Recent instances occur where a professional astronomer sees the need to
distance the source from a discovery and used the excuse that his
spreadsheet column couldn't cope with the width of the name the other
professionals, the discoverers, were using.  It's getting a bit
commonplace is this sort of behaviour.

There're are even mails of mine to vsnet alert that are echoed on .edu
coursework nodes, labelled wrong albeit attributed correctly to me, but
making me look a prat because it's damn obvious the graphs and plots
can't be what the figure caption says, coz I gave no figure caption,
just text and a tinypic url.

I think it's all too damn easy in the computer age.  Proper literature
work and perusal is dying in some areas, despite ADS and SIMBAD and
VizieR utility and availability.  Just bung it in the black box and
publish the stuff that gets spat out.  Or quote summat like kiddies
doing their homework off of wikipedia in the worst cases.

Anyway, getting sidetracked here: Yep, do what the hell you want with
it, if it is of use that's great, hope you enjoy your astro, I'm glad,
if it ain't, well, just ignore it, _however_, let's have some
acknowledgement in there in future, if it has been of use or utility
that is, because at least one bloke likes to partway insinuate he came
up with it himself, and coz of that he's well soured my attitude, thah
noz.

Cheers

John

John Greaves

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