Say Huh?

Lucas Gonze seems to be one of these folks who is smart, does good work, and with whom I share a lot of interests but for some reason has a complete hard-off for me. For example, in this post where he says:

Harold Gilchrist has a passionate post, with overwhelming supporting evidence, about not getting credit for the invention of audioblogging. I was there, I saw it unfold, and he’s right. Dave Slusher and other folks who came to audioblogging after June 2004 can rationalize all they want, this situation is wrong.

What have I rationalized, and why the fuck am I the poster boy for it? I didn’t know anything about the backstory with Harold. As soon as I became aware of it, I posted about it here within the hour. I want Harold to have all the credit he deserves, which judging by this page is plenty. With this statement I think Lucas is just being a grumpy dickhead.

What might would have been constructive is to have educated us all four or five months ago. I’d have done what I could to have made sure I propagated the correct story (unless I decided in some sort of fit of pique to “rationalize” things like Lucas thinks I do.) Oh well, it is what it is.

Since I first saw Harold’s posts on the subject, I’ve been checking in on the wikipedia podcasting entry, seeing if Harold or Lucas or someone who thinks he’s getting undercredited added his role to the entry. So far, nada. Guys, put your money where your mouth is and add in the official story there, please. Don’t kvetch about history being wrong, correct it. I can’t understand being on fire to get the story out, but not taking the time to update this item which many people are using for the canonical reference. Am I going to have to do it because these guys won’t?

I did a few diffs to see if someone had put in anything about Harold and had it removed, but I didn’t see it. I do see that there existed at one point a reference to Ben Hammersly having used the term “podcasting” in his article 8 months before Dannie Gregoire, but it has since been edited out. I think I might edit that back in, especially since my name is associated with spotting Dannie’s use in my referer logs. I don’t want to catch shit about “rationalizing” someone else out of their due for this aspect, either.

Eric Rice also weighed in on this subject. Eric was, of course, in the audioblogging world long before I was but seems to be less bugged about getting credit, even though I’m sure he deserves a chunk as well. While we are on this topic, I’d like to see Chuck Pahalniuk get some credit. Before I began podcasting last August, the one and only true “audioblog” I had ever listened to regularly was his. In fact, his would be the only one I had ever heard except I had listened to Dave Winer’s post about shutting down weblogs.com. Chuck’s infamous post where he came out of the closet via an audioblog probably did as much to raise awareness of the form as almost anything that happened in the pre-podcasting era.

So, I ask you folks out there for help – Mitch Ratcliffe, Rob Greenlee, Lucas Gonze, Harold Gilchrist, folks who think I’m missing it on the early days of this stuff – provide me with some constructive guidance. Something is demonstrably different in this world since August 2004 than in the time prior. How can I note that without diminishing the prior art and the prior practitioners? I want to get my story straight once and for all, then put the psychodrama to bed and get back to work.