Answers

1. Even when we have instances of multiple authors, a lot of times only one or two authors receive the attention and credit for the entire work. Why do you think this is?

I would have to assume it's because the authors that receive the attention are either more famous, or did more work. It's always about marketing and money.

2. I read a book over break called Letters to a Young Mathematician that talked a bit about who gets to be put on the list of authors for a given paper. Given that some papers involve lots of different specialists and maybe even hundreds of people contributing ideas, it can be very difficult to come up with a list just for practical purposes. Do you think we should list authors based on amount contributed, the importance of their ideas, or even based on who came up with the venture in the first place?

I would say they should be listed for everything you just stated, as all three of those things are important. I mean, I wouldn't want someone to be listed if the only thing they did was say "hey guys!" That just doesn't seem like any work at all.

3. While those citing a work may subconsciously only list the first author or so, they also do so for practical reasons. The goal of citations are to point those look for background and more information in the right direction, and a good way to do that is to describe the work from which the authors used. Might it be better to just list a title and other identifiable information rather than list only a few of the authors? It also might be more appropriate as information becomes much less bodiless in the sense that we don't think about the authors as much or care about them. (i.e. Wikipedia)

You are right --- we generally don't care about the authors unless they are noted in some way or another. I personally don't care who any of the authors are of the texts we've read recently, and in fact, I don't think I could even tell you who half of them are.


I like how most of the intertext is talking about the need to cooperate in order to get things done properly. I personally cannot stand working on projects with other people, and find it to be incredibly tiresome and boring to have to rely on someone else to get the work done. I would prefer to do it on my own, unless I absolutely trust them. Case in point, I recently got Resident Evil 5, a co-op game that can be played solo, but is easier with two players, and had both my roommate and my ex roommate play through about half of it with me. Now, while playing I didn't trust them to do anything and rightfully so, they pretty much failed miserably. I didn't really want to play with them, but since I thought they would be smarter than the AI (mistaken) that it would be easier to play with them. I went home for break, however, and played with my brother, who loves Resident Evil and is pretty damn good at it. I actually looked forward to that because I know I can trust him. Basically, what I'm saying is, unless you can explicitly trust someone you are working with, I would prefer not to work with them. That's why I dislike random pairings up (IE video project...) and all that jazz. I tend to do lesser work when I'm with someone that I am not interested in working with due to my lack of trust or lack of knowing them. I'd rather all the blame fall on me for failing than on someone I have no prior contact with.