

Plagiarism, the plot thickens - llambda
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Plagiarism,+the+plot+thickens

======
endtwist
I only worked with Harrison very briefly (and merely in the same office—I
never worked one-on-one with him personally).

I reached out to Harrison and Zee on Twitter, first. I was irritated that he
would do something like that, especially because he knows me. He ninja-edited
the post and Zee went on a tirade; that was when I felt wronged. Harrison said
nothing to me until much later.

Nothing manufactured, nothing faked, and nothing personal. By and large, I was
upset with Zee's reaction.

~~~
jacquesm
I think the fact that the two of you knew each other previously makes this
whole thing even weirder. After all, it would have been bad enough to do this
and the subsequent reaction to a stranger but it to a friend makes even less
sense.

------
jbenz
I often wonder how much of the controversy we read about here on HN is
completely manufactured by some clever individuals. NOTE: I am not saying the
Joshua-Gross-Next-Web-situation is obviously manufactured. I have no idea.

I am saying controversy is a great way to drive page views and links. In some
cases, those links are valuable to SEO. I like to imagine Michael Arrington,
Dan Lyons, and MG Siegler sitting around a room and saying "Ok, what can we
come up with as a good excuse to really yell at each other?" ... which is then
followed by posts like these (and hey, they're getting another link now):

[http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-
wh...](http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-whores-and-
paid-apologists-welcome-to-the-silicon-cesspool/)

I may be way off. Maybe Arrington is always writing his honest opinion. But it
surely happens somewhere on the web. Is anyone keeping track? Is there a
website that has a list of all the seemingly-manufactured controversies? That
would be interesting.

------
sparknlaunch12
_"First off, Joshua Gross was interviewed by The Next Web for an article by
the same author, and more suprising, they actually worked at the same company
in the past!"_

Busted! Who would of thought Hacker News would have been the leading source of
investigative journalism.

I cannot verify that they worked at the same company from LinkedIn though?

However interview can be found here (as per submitted blog post):
[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/17/stop-cluttering-
your-i...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/17/stop-cluttering-your-inbox-
by-pasting-your-images-text-and-files-into-this-web-app/)

~~~
alain94040
At least, in this article the TNW writer seems to know how to properly use
quotes:

The creator of Hopper, Joshua Gross, tells TNW why he built it:

    
    
      <blockquote>I found that I emailed myself links and pictures
      constantly—whether I’m at another computer, at work, or
      mobile. I’d always lose these items in my inbox, amongst
      other new mail. Rather than continue to suffer with this
      really poor solution, I wanted a quick place to drop any
      temporary snippet of content quickly, but still be able to
      go back and search for it afterwards.
    

If only they had done the same in yesterday's article, they would have saved
everyone a lot of trouble. They only thing they kept is the semicolon (:),
which is not quite enough to indicate a direct quote.

------
mileszs
Though it'll be interesting to see where this goes, it ultimately doesn't make
me think better of TNW. It can only affect how I view Mr. Gross. Even then, it
won't affect me much; the TNW author was a lesser character in the post, where
the TNW CEO was the star.

------
davesims
Harrison did tweet that he knew Josh:

"You're seeing one side @scherrymomin. @endtwist is/was a friend of mine. He
found cool facts, I wrote about it & credited 2x, then a 3rd"

Also of note, thenextweb pointed out a much less obvious (in the text) case of
plagiarism a month ago today:

[http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-
apple-...](http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-its-
this-weeks-media-news-in-review/)

'And finally…

Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter
reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from
someone else when he was accused of plagiarism.

"Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post
by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to
amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-
attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said
a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the
excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him?

We’ll let you decide what really happened…'

------
abcd_f
Who cares. Why is this at the top of Hacker News? Seriously. What the hell?

~~~
sophacles
Because a lot of us are bloggers, have companies with blogs, and/or have a
vested interest in how people act on the web (because of our websites and
stuff). This is an interesting piece of information about a controversy that
surrounds an issue that affects us. The particulars don't but the concepts do,
and the repercussions may.

------
meatpopsicle
Interesting bit of counter-astroturfing here. If you can't make yourself look
better, use pseudonymous sockpuppets to drag them down with you.

I'll keep an eye out for use of this tactic in the future. Bookmarking for
future reference.

