About 13 years ago (maybe more, maybe less) I came across the same frustration as many: getting the hinges out of a GBA SP shell without marring, breaking, or forcing anything. There were a few disassembly guides then but that was always where they either fell apart with no good advice or they out-right threw their hands up and admitted that they couldn't help with that.

Determined to find a solution, I tried a number of things before finding a trick that worked great: taking the cone out of the tip of a Bic Round Stic ink pen, flipping it around, and pressing the back against the four clips to simultaneously squeeze the four clips and force them through (it's EXACTLY the right size). I shared this at a few places back then including Penny-Arcade, but this was before YouTube and it didn't seem to catch on.

A few years later I also shared it on DealExtreme/VolumeRate. Fast forward several more years and we were back to square one with tutorials on DIY/maker/fix-it sites and YouTube with no good way to remove the hinges. I went through Round 2 of trying to make this common-knowledge but it still seems that no one noticed then either.

A few more years and I mentioned it again in the comments section of a RetroGameTech video. This time I got a response that it worked great and got several thumbs up, so the info was finally doing some good for others. Great! My goal all along has been to make this to common-knowledge for anyone who needs to fully disassemble their GBA SP (typically moving to a new housing).


Yesterday I received a GBA SP AGS-101 backlit LCD that I used to refurb a GBA SP (thanks, NathanOfLight!) so I used the trick again. Curious to know if the trick had caught on yet, I did a Google search and found another GBA SP disassembly video. Sure enough, the video author mentioned it in the comments.


I replied thanking him for helping spread the word, but something was a little too familiar. Sure enough, I soon found a post of mine from Jan 2015 where I said the exact same thing word-for-word.

Now, I know that my stated goal was to make this common knowledge (not to go around demanding credit), so should I be irked by this? If I were successful it would be so common that the original source would be hard or impossible for most to determine. I guess what annoys me about it isn't so much that I'm not getting credit, it's that he copied it word for word without letting on that they weren't his words. If he had reworded it I wouldn't have been bothered by it at all.

At least he was careful not to copy the "I discovered..." part.  
 

Etiquette suggests that he should have cited his source as it's a direct quote. Good work getting the info out there!

If it were me I'd only be annoyed if he was profiting off of it. Otherwise if he's just spreading the word I really wouldn't care.

He can profit off the info all he wants and I obviously wouldn't care or else I would not have put the info out there myself. It's just the "word for word presented as if it was his own" part that's got me a little irked. I'm genuinely glad it's spreading. I'm not even annoyed that people don't even bother to change a single letter. If he said "I found this somewhere and it worked for me:" followed by word-for-word quote with no mention of me I would not have been even slightly bothered, so it's not about whether or not I was mentioned. It's about using my exact words as his own. Indeed, now his video is at the top of Google's search results for those terms ("GBA SP hinge Bic Round Stic"). Guess I should have made a video myself but I had no reason to take apart a GBA SP back then and there is no shortage of videos about it now.

That "Dennis Fleaman" guy has been tossed from here before, as he's a real piece of work.

Thanks. If you see anywhere it may help, feel free to mention it without bothering to look up who said it.   Being word-for-word, he obviously bothered to look it up even though he replied as if they were his own words. Maybe he felt that he couldn't word it better so I'll just take it as a compliment from this point.  

Well, I hope it was something a bit more serious than this minor annoyance. The thought that he could be a member here did cross my mind so I considered approaching this from a different angle.
 

I'd probably give myself a pat on the back and just carry on about my day.

I've seen a couple people pass off information I dug up about a couple Star Fox items as their own and I was just happy the information got out there. Heck, my book is about 20% done and I can guarantee it will be on torrent sites the next day it's sold.

Information has a way of becoming free on the internet. It's best to just let it be.

I sold a new green-jewel "Dakota" prototype/sample XBOX controller around 2002/2003 before there was even a collector's market for the original XBOX and it sold for something like $125. I then sold a second used one with a scratch on the jewel for a little under $100.

I didn't revisit my thread about them on XBOX-Scene for a while after the sale was done but when I finally did I found that someone else had got excited by my results and sold his using the exact same description that had been copy/pasted and only modified it to suit the differences in condition. He even copied my typos, like where I listed the ways it was "dirrerent" from the normal retail controller that had been available since launch! The thing is: He specifically said "I hope you don't mind" before he did it. Also, I was only listing observational differences that anyone could see, even if some of it hadn't been previously documented/discovered, so I didn't feel like he did anything wrong. It's not like either auction description is available to read today.

I guess it's really all about context. Someone using my words to sell something doesn't bother me, but someone using my words as if they were their own to respond to someone else irks me at least a little bit.

FWIW, I still have a few of these.  

Of course I won't argue with those posts being word for word, but you've got to remember there are billions of people in the world all of whom are absorbing the same stimulus and information daily. Ideas are cheap, and sometimes we can't even remember where they come from. I'm just saying don't let this stuff make you bitter or defensive if people don't credit you, and thanks for the smart idea (thumbs up emoticon goes here).

It is a complicated explanation - it IS a lot easier to copy and paste your paragraph than paraphrase it. Given this was in a comment section the lack of source isn't surprising.