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Plagiarism

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Re: Plagiarism

#101

Post by acuozzo »

ianterrell wrote: post #72
timjahn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do employees (and apparently CEOs) of online tech publications always seem to have so much trouble with basic English grammar/spelling? "I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently" "We work immensely had to product original content"

I have a theory on this point, after witnessing this effect in a few other places (emails from prominent writers, CEOs, etc). Writers write so much that their fear of shipping their writing is diminished through practice, so they write, ship, write, ship, write, ship. They're in creative mode, just putting words on the paper. They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. They know that when it mat…

> They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. > Move fast and break things. Edit later.

What if time("go quickly... get more done") + time(fixing "[broken] things") > time("spend an extra 5 minutes")?

> I've taken to really admiring the type-type-type get a million emails/comments/tweets/posts out a day style.

I can't tolerate this style. In my experience, the type-type-type individuals often express their ideas in unclear ways.

Measure twice, cut once. I proudly spent 6 minutes writing this reply.

Re: Plagiarism

#102

Post by dpham »

tomasien wrote: post #57

This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him. I know this is an insanely simple comment that will lead people to think I didn't read this conversation or really think about this topic, but I did. And it's not. The internet is ridiculous sometimes.

I think most people are just angry at the CEO's reaction to the author; he definitely comes off as a petty jerk. I also think calling it plagiarism is a bit of a stretch.

Re: Plagiarism

#103

Post by LargeWu »

zeedotme wrote: post #9

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…

True or false, Zee - it is acceptable for another site to scrape TNW and repost its content verbatim, as long as it says where it got the content.

Re: Plagiarism

#104

Post by joering2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #38
zeedotme wrote: post #9

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…

> Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. Since you asked: Ask the original author if it would be ok to include his contribution in your derived work. > I honestly [] absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a scre…

Jacquesm, I +1 you.

Funny that such basics have to be taught to a CEO of a technology blog.

The board should vote him out _immediately_

Re: Plagiarism

#105

Post by [deleted] »

zeedotme wrote: post #70
scott_s wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please pay attention to what else we're saying - that the second piece isn't acceptable, either.

yes I appreciate many of you agree a quote should have been included rather than an attempted rewrite. I agree, that would have been better. However, calling us out for plagiarism does feel far too extreme when the updated piece clearly states the source of the facts. The original piece only included links without a name and that I agree is 100% wrong. I hadn't seen that original piece before we were called out on tw…

[deleted]

Re: Plagiarism

#106

Post by astrodust »

moron wrote: post #83

All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it. The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.

There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. If that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.

Re: Plagiarism

#107

Post by kadabra9 »

jenius wrote: post #21
petercooper wrote: post #3

The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings. However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the structure and the way those facts were originally expressed. The original TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy of the original paragraphs. What bothers me…

Yeah for me the CEO's response is the absolute worst part about this... very aggressive and defensive, he could have just said sorry we should have asked. And they definitely should have - I'm sure the author wouldn't have said no. In fact, he said on twitter: " I don’t have any problem with you sharing my post. By all means! But the last two paragraphs were barely rewritten." ( https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status…

Exactly.

Sadly now, we should expect the classic "Oh crap, this story hit the top of HN, so here's a half-assed reactionary apology to try to save face" tactic that we've all seen before, which is incredibly lame.

Had he not been, for lack of a better term, such a defensive prick initially, and more upfront (or at least professional, you're the CEO for crying out loud) that would have been much better.

Re: Plagiarism

#108

Post by jack-r-abbit »

sebphfx wrote: post #90
tallanvor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you not understand what you should have done differently here? You may have linked to the author's post, but by not quoting him, you were passing his work off as your own to anyone who didn't click through to the link. One of your employees fucked up in the first place, and then you made it worse by not admitting what happened was wrong and apologizing. Had you done so, that would have been the end of it. But…

that's a common problem I've been noticing lately. People can't take the blame when they made a mistake. It's whether they blame someone else or they divert the subject. It's so hard to apologize or say "yes, I did it" and then move on.

another common problem I've been noticing lately... people do apologize but then we get this same post only this time they point out where the person admitted to it... and the same people bring out their pitchforks anyway.

Re: Plagiarism

#109

Post by andos »

Braasch wrote: post #80
andos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the "drama".

To me, it's not about the Twitter drama; it's about the way The Next Web poorly cited this piece and revised it without fixing the issue people had with it in the first place.

Certainly. In my opinion an explicit quote of part of the original article would have been better than paraphrasing. Quoting reinforces the value of the source (“we couldn't write it any better”), paraphrasing does the opposite.

Re: Plagiarism

#110

Post by Czarnian »

chc wrote: post #75
_dark_matter_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be rude here, but as the CEO of an online magazine, why can't you write with correct grammar? "I honestly absolutely no idea…" "work immensely had to product"

They're called typos. Everybody makes them — even professional writers. In writing that's intended to make money, they're usually caught in editing. If you yourself write without ever producing a typo, that's nice, but it's not really all that important to the craft of writing — much less to owning a business that employs writers. At any rate, I don't see any reason to expect perfect prose in an informal context like…

AKA: Laziness. (Edited to fix spelling pointed out by child comment. Thanks.)

I don't require perfection, just competence. If you don't care enough about your output to make it easily understandable (I don't have to put effort into deciphering your words), why should I care about it?

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