DownstreamCredit

ThoughtStorms Wiki

1) WardCunningham said something like "wiki is how I can write more than I write and know more than I know" (Not exact and Google doesn't help me out. Anyone know the exact quote?)
2) EricRaymond wrote : Interestingly enough, you will quickly find that if you are completely and self-deprecatingly truthful about how much you owe other people, the world at large will treat you like you did every bit of the invention yourself and are just being becomingly modest about your innate genius. (In TheCathedralAndBazaar, of course)
3) SebPaquet wrote (http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2004/06/06.html#a1599) Phil Jones provides a powerful insight, when in fact all the insight is already in TheAttentionEconomy
4) Everyone and his / her mother said talent borrows, genius steals.

OK, if I extract some commonality out of what all those different things are trying to say, I get an idea I'm going to call "downstream credit". Basically if you are a broker of or passer-on of ideas, people downstream will credit you with those ideas. Even though you are doing no more than passing on, or encouraging others, or bisociating, or even just barefacedly repeating.

Contrast : http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/06/01/Web-20-Writable