Well, at least someone at STCommunities had the decency to apologise.

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[updated] I feel like I've been robbed

Beware of posting on ST Communities.

For anyone who's ever written an essay or some kind of research paper, you'd know that the hardest part of it was the research. 

And when you submit or share a post with a certain user community, especially one as reputed as ST Communities by virtue of their association with Singapore's one and only official newspaper, you'd think that it would be a simple matter of having the post "accepted" or "rejected". 

Yesterday, I submitted a video and an accompanying blurb at 5.16pm (after it was uploaded on my own site). While I thought it was odd my post was neither published nor rejected when ordinarily it would be approved within 5 minutes of my submission, I didn't think too much of it. At least until they published the video at 9.01pm as their own ST "Share".

There's probably nothing wrong about what ST Communities has done in the legal sense, but there is something to be said about the integrity of a community which boasts that  "readers' posts have just as much weight as posts from our journalists" and as a "budding student...[I'd] be able to post and share [my] latest works." In this case, the subject of my latest work was taken and named as their own work.

The people managing ST Communities are probably paid to do their job. Yet, instead of doing what they were paid for, they've taken the only thing a poor "budding student" had: the credits to her work or at least some form of recognition for contributing to the post.

It was like being betrayed by someone whom I thought had the potential to be a good friend. It was like I had shown this potential good friend a research paper for submission and she had gone ahead to submit the exact same topic as her own. Because a work becomes whoever the audience thinks is theirs, ST Communities now "owns" this news from the audience's perspective.

Anyway, not wanting to jump to conclusions too quickly, I submitted a request for an explanation at 11.35pm last night. Up till now, there has been no reply. The Community has been actively posting news so I  take it that either my request has been ignored or they are pondering over how to reply me. Either way, if this was purely a misunderstanding of some sort, they probably would have replied me by now.

I'm not expecting anything from this post, but I really have been trawling the web for a good amount of time daily looking for subjects of interest to share with readers. And even though I know my readership is definitely not as high as ST Communities which carries the name of Straits Times, I felt the need to share this.

Let this serve as a cautionary tale for all budding writers who contribute to ST Communities in hope of getting some credit for it. 

You never know if your submission would appear - without your name just because the text has been altered. 

ST Communities - you have not lived up to your promises. Shame on you.

*Update January 3, 1.08pm:

ST Communities has just published my post anyway as a "previous story." 

What is publishing the story now, one day late and only after this post, supposed to accomplish though? 

Why even send me publish notifications for this same article 3 times within 20 minutes? 3 frantic, guilty clicks? 

Thanks but no thanks.

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