In the academic world you publish a paper to let the world know who you are and what you are working on. Better still, excellent research papers provoke thought and better research elsewhere.
This phenomenon is prevalent in half bakery too.
Academics are thus judged on how many papers they publish, where they publish them and how many others quote their papers in their own research.
The halfbakery croissant/fishbone count allows our peers to judge our current idea - but I propose an additional count of to show the number of other h-b postings that have a link to yours. Maybe pain au chocolats?-- jonthegeologist, Jul 31 2003 Begat http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Begatfrom the desk of thumbwax. [my face your, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] people link for all kinds of reasons. I am one of those who loves the sleek simplicity of the hb.-- po, Jul 31 2003 Great! except... what if the citations come in the form of "this was unoriginal crap the first time around <see link>"?-- lurch, Jul 31 2003 yeah I nearly said that but I was afraid people would point the finger at....-- po, Jul 31 2003 see linky...-- po, Jul 31 2003 "good, good, good, good citations"-- neilp, Jul 31 2003 random, halfbakery