

Chris Anderson (Wired Editor) explains plagiarism charges - aj
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/06/corrections-in-the-digital-editions-of-free.html

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gizmo
It's easy to admit guilt when caught red-handed, so I don't give him any
credit for that.

He copy-pasted from wikipedia, utterly indefensible. He didn't copy a quote
from wikipedia, but entire paragraphs. Even WITH attribution that's totally
unacceptable. What he calls "rewriting" is exactly the same thing kids do in
highschool when cheating during exams, and when copying each other's papers.
The teacher isn't fooled by this transparent cheating. And neither am I.

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rjurney
You didn't find his explanation at all plausible, that the sections that were
copied were attributed and fomatted to indicate as much, before a last-minute
reformat? Why?

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edu
This is a good response, accepting his fault and explaining the reason.
Transparency is a good thing, and after making a mistake apologizing too.
Chapeau Chris.

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tptacek
5 exculpatory grafs. 3 grafs that contain actual apologies, each of which is
buried in a mitigating construction (of the "I did this in good faith, but
that's no excuse" variety).

What would Timothy Noah think?

<http://www.slate.com/?id=2061056>

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ktharavaad
I really like his response. He took complete responsibility for the error and
gave a very reasonable explanation for how they got there in the first place.
In doing this, he came across as a very honest and straightforward kind of
guy.

I wasn't interested in this book before but I'm going to buy it now after
reading so much about it. Its almost like a brilliant PR move. Perhaps there
is some truth to "There's no such thing as bad publicity"

~~~
jgrahamc
Perhaps, but I'd like to know how common this 'write-through' technique is.
That's basically taking text directly from some source and rewriting it to
make it your own words. That doesn't feel like the same thing as writing.

If I'd known that was acceptable it would have made writing The Geek Atlas a
lot quicker!

~~~
calambrac
I'm not much of a writer, so I'm curious:

All of the copied passages were concise descriptions of historical events.
Obviously, quoting verbatim (like was done here) is plagiarism, but given that
he wasn't there to witness the events, isn't the only option to take other
accounts and rewrite them in his own words?

~~~
byrneseyeview
Rewriting would be something closer to:

 _The passages he copied were short descriptions of events in history.
Repeating them word-for-word, like he did, would be considered plagiarism, but
since they are a source for events he wasn't there to see, shouldn't he just
reword them?_

There's no point in doing that. It's better to quote verbatim with citations,
and to write when there's something new to say. Historians can compile primary
sources into a new document that adds something to the existing information;
they don't curate documents, they narrate events.

~~~
calambrac
There's no allowance for style? If my source is dry and pedantic, and quoting
would disrupt the flow of what I'm trying to say, it's really that grievous a
sin to rewrite?

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rjurney
Standup response.

