I suspect there's a bunch of people that did the exact same thing w/o seeing it elsewhere. This method isn't anything more than common sense and ease of use.
You suspect wrong. This was pretty common on tacomaworld, and the source was also pretty well known. Not many guys ran around claiming they thought of the same idea. "wow, I thought of the exact same thing as you, entirely on my own, how wonderful!" Sounds funny doesn't it?
I'm happy to give attribution but I'm not about to spend time searching to see if what I did has been done before. Just saying.
In fact, that's exactly what you are supposed to do. That's common courtesy. Or the least you can do is preface your suggestion with "I saw this idea elsewhere and it may apply to your case" Anonymous attribution is better than taking credit for someone else's work.
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