You probably expected a list, and in fact you’ll get one. Since there have been many misunderstandings going on about Smashing Magazine, we’d like to explain, why we do what we do and why we are doing it this way. Please spread the word if you’d like to support us, or don’t if you don’t want to support us.

Hm, what’s the problem?

Every now and again we get e-mails and comments, in which our readers accuse us of stealing information from Dr. Web Magazin. Some users consider us being a spam machine and bury us on Digg. Some bloggers write about us, trying to prove that we use some unfair methods to generate traffic from Digg. OK, we’ve heard you.

So, what’s going on, guys?

Ok, let’s put it straight. Here are some facts you should know before writing/commenting/complaining about us. You can find more information in the About section.

• All articles on Smashing are created/written/compiled by us, Vitaly Friedman, Sven Lennartz or Christiane Rosenberger. In fact, it takes many hours of hard work to write the articles which are already published. All resources are hand-picked and selected manually. We want to achieve the highest quality content and present it to a broad audience.
• We would never steal information. We respect the work of other people and if we use their information, we’ll definitely refer and link to them. The reason many of our articles are that useful is because we respect the work of web-developers and respect the person who has created it.
• We would never spam. We don’ exploit Digg and thousands of other web-sites, using some spam-techniques in order to achieve the best positions in search engines, get to the front page or get mentioned in popular blogs. What we do is simply offering only useful content. Can we be blamed for thousands of people bookmarking and digging us, just because the information we present is indeed useful and is the quality content?
• We respect you. Whatever you say, write or comment about us - OK, let’s talk. We can make mistakes and we can improve the quality of our posts if you tell us what has gone wrong. We are always looking for conversations with our users. Join in!
• Sven Lennartz is the chief-editor of Dr. Web. Dr. Web is the German-speaking online-magazine for designers and web-developers. Vitaly Friedman writes for Dr. Web. DrWeb.de, the project Sven started 9 years ago, focuses on German-speaking audience (you can find his name at the bottom of every DrWeb page). Smashing Magazine, however, has not only further resources to offer, but it focuses on English-speaking audience. And yes, we have rewritten some of our articles in English and published them on Smashing Magazine to reach a broader audience. Actually, they’ve been published in English, so that you can find the information and use it for your projects.
• Our aim is to help web-developers get the information they are actually looking for. We want to make sure that the valuable information we have, collect, or stumble upon is available for people who might actually use it for their creative works. We put a lot of thinking in before posting every single article. We try to provide what we personally understand to be quality material. We present information which we ourselves would like to bookmark once it appears online. Ironically, if we are looking for something in the Web, we go to Smashing magazine ourselves, because it’s handy to keep all the useful stuff in one place.
• You define what you read on Smashing Magazine. We appreciate your input and select the topics we write about according to the stats we get about your activity, the popularity of our articles and feedbacks we receive. We appreciate every constructive e-mail you send to us and try to answer e-mails immediately. Please let us know what is interesting for you, digging or not digging, bookmarking or not bookmarking us.
• We are looking for co-authors and co-bloggers. If you can offer quality material in English, we are also willing to work with you, pay you and present your articles to a broad audience. Let’s talk!

This is why we are doing this.

And this is why we are doing it this way.

Digg or Bury us as you wish, but please, be objective and appreciate at least the time we invest in collecting information we present. All right?