Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Plagiarism Ends Journalist's Career
An anonymous reader writes "Tim Ryan, a 21 year veteran entertainment columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin, was fired yesterday after an investigation revealed multiple instances of his incorporating unattributed paragraphs from other sources. This case is unique in that it was first revealed by Wikipedia after an attentive Wikipedia editor noted similarities between a Wikipedia article and one of Ryan's columns. However he wasn't fired until after other news outlets started to run the story. Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."
The new WikiStar-Bulletin has been edited to reflect this fact.
This really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis.
My Eyes! The goggles they do nothing!
This really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
More like WIKEDpedia for getting this guy's balls fired off. Very sad. Very sad indeed.
How did they know that his articles weren't being plagurized by Wikipedia?
Wikipedia FORCED him to copy their stuff and pass it off as his own! How rude.
Entertainment columnists are often looked down upon by their peers in the journalism trade. While I have never gotten a single answer for why, the reasons often revolve around them covering issues that don't really matter, or which take very little understanding to cover sufficiently.
It may be similar to the situation in the corporate IT world, where Visual BASIC programmers are often looked down upon by those using Java or COBOL, for instance.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Wikipedia isn't an organization, it's a website. The people who caught the plagiarism weren't employees of Wikipedia, or acting on behalf of the Wikipedia Foundation, why should Wikipedia be given credit? This is just another instance of Wikipedia supporters having a chip on their shoulder against the established media - I loved the righteous tone of indignation, you can almost forget just how commonly Wikipedia articles plagiarize printed sources.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
...to use babelfish to translate the wikipedia article from English to Chinese, back again, and fix the grammer? The guy deserves to be fired. Sure, for plagarism, but more importantly for being stupid enough to get caught, imho.
This article is [[plagiarism]]. You can [[help]] Wikipedia by [[reporting it]].
"Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."
That the story of a journalist plagiarizing wikipedia, that was revealed on wikipedia, was plagiarized by the Star-Bulletin, the paper that employed the plagiarizing writer?
Irony meter broken!!! Alert Alert!!!
Plagiarism is a form of academic malpractice. It refers to the use of another's information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law. Like most terms from the area of intellectual property, plagiarism is a concept of the modern age and not really applicable to medieval or ancient works.
This post would be plagairism had I not included this link, for instance. Perhaps because the journalist wrote for a printed newspaper, and couldn't get hyperlinks to work on paper, he thought it was better to include no hyperlink at all. He thought wrong.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
That is not necessarily plagiarism. Not attributing the discovery to Wikipedia users is completely different from taking the story word for word from a Wikipedia article.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Let's not forget about Wikipedia articles that contain patently false information. That could be a compounding problem - plagiarising false information from Wikipedia.
The ironic part is that this was probably discovered while the Wikipedia editor was looking for sources to improve the article. Wikipedia would have been Ok with it if only the Star had complied with the GFDL rules.
Grab the front page of any newspaper and a black marker. Blot out anything that is an advertisement or reprinted from the AP. What's left? A comic or two, and maybe an opinion piece?
You mean select with mouse
then press ctrl + c
then press ctrl + v
But, but, isnt that feature of Windows ?
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
This is, of course, precisely how open content like Wikipedia is meant to be used. Maybe the newspaper as well as the journalist has a thing or two to learn.
Wikipidia editor actually checked the articles for similarity. Wow, world never seize to wonder...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I wouldn't say that holds true for the Wall Street Journal.
"This really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis."(1)
What makes you think plagiarism is confined to "mass media"?* Any more than "piracy" is confined to guys on ships? You want to ask an insightful question? How about, how widespread in societies is the attitude that plagiarism is alright, as long as you don't get caught...by Wikipedia?
*How about plagiarism in educational institutions? Or on the Internet, were it's easy to "borrow" someone's web site?
(1) I've never been impressed by Slashdot myopia. Oh it's ONLY mass media. Oh it's ONLY big business. Oh it's ONLY government. Oh, it's ONLY the US. How about you all trying to see the trees, instead of the forest? How about the personal attitudes that underly all this behaviour? The victum mentality? The entitlement attitude? Moral relativism (do it as long as it doesn't appear to hurt anyone).
Plagiarism has always been a serious problem for writers caught doing it. What has changed is that the internet makes it a lot easier to get caught. In the good old days, if I thought a student had copied something, the best I could do was hope for a confession. Now I just put some of the text into Google, et voila, the smoking gun.
These days, it is almost guaranteed that you will be caught if you make a habit of copying. In the case of tfa, the detection was accidental. On the other hand, if you've irked someone, and they suspect that you might be copying, it's really easy for them to dig up the dirt.
I find it a little ironic seeing as at most universities concerned with academic research, the two biggest plagues are generally Wikipedia and Plagarism. Perhaps Wiki is doing academia some good after all.
If you include bloggers as journalists (average age about 14) then 21 can be considered a veteran.
also... you fly wwii veterans? cool
Just highlight with the mouse to copy, middle-click to paste.
Fuck ctrl+{whatever}, you've got work to steal, man!
How about plagiarism in educational institutions
All my work I produced for my MSc was tested for plagiarism using software, however my undergrad stuff was not. I think that plagiarism detecting software is used routinely in most universities and colleges now and even at highschool level.
If you notice plagiarism on Wikipedia, you can delete it at once.
If you notice plagiarism in the mainstream media, you are powerless.
Therefore, Wikipedia is superior to the mainedia.
Why is it that you consider getting caught to be the greater sin? Have you been watching too many heist movies and they have given you the impression that crime is ok as long as you dont get caught?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Sadly, though the Star-Bulletin has admitted to the plagiarism, they failed to publicly acknowledge that Wikipedia was responsible for bringing this situation to light."
From one of the stories linked in TFA (pops):
CORRECTION Saturday, December 24, 2005
A portion of a review of the television show "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source.
Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.
tinfoilmedia
Attribution should come FIRST.
"According to wikipedia, plagiarism is blah blah blah..."
Not
"blah blah blah... oh and BTW this comes from wikipedia".
Reminds me of Cyber Monday.
People have to learn to evaluate what they read critically and decide how believable it is. I'm not very optimistic about this happening in the U.S.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Just wondering, if you are writing a paper for some conference and you had used information from Wikipedia and you'd like to reference it; so how would you do it? You don't know who are the author(s). Is the following the proper way?
[1] Wikipedia, "Article Title"
Then again, is information from Wikipedia even considered authoritative to be referenced in papers?
w00t
..between plagiarism and acceptable synthesis. I don't condone plagiarism, but when so many college term papers that merely paraphrase primary sources without attribution are accepted, why are we surprised when similar phenomena crop up in the professional world?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
I don't consider it a "greater sin", I consider it a worse attribute to have in an employee. If I were a newspaper editor, and one of my employees was plagarising work, any number of things could happen if he was caught. If he admitted it, or I was the one who caught him, I would punish him in some way; possibly dock him pay or whatever, possibly fire him. However, whatever the situation I can deal with it "in house" and avoid large-scale scandal. If my employee gets caught by the original author, however, because he wasn't clever enough to disguise his work, then the problem becomes more global in scope, and my newspaper is brought into serious disrepute.
I am not saying that it is right to plagarise, or that plagarism is "better" morally than being caught, but if I was an employer in that situation, this is the last thing I would want my employee to bring to the company.
If you notice plagiarism on Wikipedia, you can delete it at once
Incorrect: you have to wait days before being able to register and then edit articles.
damaged by dogma
It wouldn't surprise me if more instances of plagiarism surfaced for two reasons 1. technology allows for better watchdogs and 2. at the most basic level, plagiarism isn't dealt with harshly enough.
I graduated with a journalism degree a few years ago and my experience truly left me disturbed regarding the issue of plagiarism. The cardinal rule presented in every single class was that plagiarism would not only get you a failing grade, but expulsion from the program and university. Students who catch another plagiarizing are, by the university's honor code, required to turn them in. Unfortunately, few professors followed up with any sort of retribution when a student was caught.
In one instance, a web project by a classmate was blatantly plagiarized. There were several style, spelling and grammatical errors which would have caught the attention of any veteran journalist/editor, let alone a student. Sure enough, when text in the project was Googled, two instances came up: the project and the source it was copied from (errors included). When it was brought to the attention of the professor, it was immediately dismissed and no action was taken.
And that's not the only case... another professor (ironically, the one who taught Journalism Ethics) shared how in previous semesters she caught roughly a quarter of the class plagiarizing their term papers.
If plagiarism isn't taken care of at the most basic level, why should we expect it to cease? What would make any aspiring journalist who got away with plagiarizing an article feel the need to adhere to ethical reporting?
So today slashdot loves wikipedia? I'll be looking forward to the "Wikipedia Kills Baby Seals" article tomorrow.
aoeu
Why did you chose to make your last sentance flamebait?
Why do you think that Google is the perfect fact-checker?
Is it not possible that the author of this AP article was told of the usage of "Like Swift Dead" from a first person account? Or even that they remember calling it this themselves back in the day?
That was insightfully funny!
So when he is going to be named as one of the new Slashdot editors?
There are so many problems with that post that it's insane.
If you notice plagiarism in the mainstream media, you are powerless.
Yeah, I mean the Sun Bulletin just shrugged off all of the reports of plagiarism in this case. I wish they had done something to remedy the situation.
Oh wait, they did.
Therefore, Wikipedia is superior to the mainedia.
How does this follow? There are so many other axes than just how difficult it is to plagarize. Accuracy. Bias. Timeliness.
Second, even in the category of plagarism, I'd say that the traditional media has an edge. What happens AFTER you delete the plagarism from Wikipedia? Who's to say that the person who added it in the first place won't do it again? Even if you were to ban their userID, what happens if they just register again under another email address? By contrast, do you think that the Sun Bulletin reporter is gonna work in journalism again?
How 'bout this alternate conclusion: People who plagarize in the mainstream media are held to account, therefore the "mainedia" is superior to Wikipedia.
Real men don't use the fucking mouse in the first place.
I thought an encyclopedia was full of facts, and that facts held only extremely weak copyright in the first place. The reason (as I understand it) being that it's better to encourage people to restate a fact than to play "telephone", making slight adjustments to the known-to-be true wording each time it is repeating.
I'm not familiar with this case in detail so I may be missing some degree to which this was just gross infringement, but in general the core issue in plagiarism seems to me to be "citation" and not "copying" per se. That is, there may be places where copying is fine with citation and not otherwise.
Wikipedia introduces a new level of subtlety into this, it seems to me: "edit history". An edit history is not a citation. It allows you to lazily recover where a problem was introduced, but it is not a source citation. People are presumably asked not to include copyrighted material, but probably so are paid reporters. When a paid reporter does so, he gets fired, and even then it reflects on the organization that paid him. When the wiki gets bad info, they may try to lock out the contributor (maybe even ineffectually), and yet the wiki does not lose face. It seems to me like it's likely they get off easy here in a way a newspaper doesn't.
Wikipedia (in its default presentation) doesn't tell me which of its data came from which place. People just make changes and I'm not clear that it's always stated where they get those facts. I'm sure a lot of it must be reviewed and checked, but I don't see where the indication is of which is and which is not. And I don't see how "reviewed for truth" proves their document is free of plagiarism.
Also, if there's only one real source of information on a topic, but several people each individually filter in parts of that source, it looks like a kind of "presentational laundering" of the original source. Wikipedia can say it's due to all these people, but can it really say that it hasn't grabbed large amounts of data from other sources?
I'm not really trying to make accusations here. I imagine Wikipedia is very upstanding in their goals and practices. It just seems a bit odd to me to say that an author must cite a source whose entire nature seems to be, paraphrased by me, general knowledge shared among lots of people. When I say 2+2=4, I don't cite a source (even though I probably learned it from some) for pretty much the same reason.
If instead of this article that got in trouble at a newspaper, it had been a wikimedia of some kind, where the parts were individually stripped in from well-meaning people in smaller parts, would it still be in the same degree of trouble? Is the problem "what was done" or just "how it was done"?
Thinking aloud here about the general philosophy as much as this specific incident. I guess I just wonder if the standards people are being held to are at all fair. (And even if the answer will turn out to be that the standards are fair, it doesn't seem to hurt anything to ask the question once in a while.)
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Entirely wrong, sorry.
I'm not registered, and I've made various corrections/alterations to a few articles. All of which stood, I think.
starbulletin.com/2006/01/15/news/corrections.html
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
"All things being equal, the most simple explanation is probably the correct explanation."
Unless there's good reason to think otherwise, it seems much more likely that you'll find only one instance of plagiarism at a time than second order plagiarism (one person that plagiarized a site, that in turn plagiarized another site). Not to mention that if Star Bulletin was being investigated, any other instances of plagiarism probably would have come to light just because there was an investigation going on (e.g. from googling it).
Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised to find a fair number of instances of plagiarism on wikipedia (perhaps both intentional instances and those that happened by accident from people who don't understand correct citation methods), but it's no more likely to have occurred with this passage than with any other.
Before the AP article that mentioned "Like Swift Dead", that phrase (in quotes) returned zero results. That means nobody who ever talked about LSD mentioned "Like Swift Dead" on a web page that got indexed by Google. That's all it means.
There is now a Wikipedia article where the facts can be hashed out and the prior existence of the term can be debated and/or documented. Let's see if the source of that term can come forth and tell us.
You, AC, can't even spell the word "sentence" (nor can I spell "Albert Hofmann")... but I suspect the New York Times got it right [registration-free link].
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
"Numquam ponendo est pluritas sine necessitate" in Latin, meaning roughly "Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler."
From Wikipedia.
erm, taking copy from any source is plagiarism. The fact it comes from a website doesn't change that fact.
And no, I'm not a "wikipedia supporter" in the sense that you're implying here. I think it's a great resource but not perfect, however I would support its existence over any number of random, completely rubbish, alternatives that are on the net as it is now.
As a COBOL and FORTRAN programmer who got paid over $300,000 in two years fixing Y2K issues...I'm glad fools like you don't think the language is worth your time.
To me, the worst examples are MSM places that take every governmental offical "news" release as hard fact, and report it in that vein. Like how many people still think TWA 800 exploded from a spark in the center fuel tank? Most of them to answer that question, because ther MSM just spewed out all the governments first efforts at disinformation, until it got to the point even the government finally admitted they didn't know (still a lie but closer to the truth). That finally made it to a pitiful few papers way in the back section. How about going to war based on lies? The gulf of tonkin attacks? Iraq being in cahoots with bin laden and being responsible for 9-11? WTC building 7? A "sneak attack" on pearl harbor?
MSM is part of the problem, because at the very top levels of ownership and control, it is run by globalist megalomaniacs who have the same agenda as the political controllers in most nations. They are the same people, the controllers. Right now in the US, the bulk of news reporting (print and electronic) is owned by a half dozen companies. The "news" is being used as a means of widespread brainwashing and indoctrination more than as a business for reporting "news". It is used as a vehicle for selling other crap (advertising at its heart is brainwashing), and for pushing the elites political control agenda (more propoganda brainwashing).
The reason why "normal" unaccountable news outlets exist is because brainwashing exists, is *extremely* effective, and most humans are highly susceptible to it, although you would be hard pressed to get anyone to admit to being brainwashed on anything. For every "expose", there still remain a hundred still hidden important things. Political control over the planets serfs is where it is at. Once you can see that, a lot of what can be seen becomes much clearer in the intent and design and execution.
I think that the way plagiarism is handled definitely varies from place to place. I went to school with someone who was involved in a paper that was co-authored by about 3 other people. One of them plagiarized and his co-authors didn't catch it. I don't know what happened to the one that did the deed, but the others were forced to do a lot more work on replacement papers, and they weren't even the ones who were at fault.
There was also during my time there a very high profile instance of plagiarism involving one of the school's professors. His work was plagiarized by another revered author. That author's reputation is now forever tarnished by this act.
It's a shame that other places pay plagiarism only lip service, but at least that's not the case everywhere.
What you mention really makes one wonder how much additional plagiarism is present in the articles and reports presented by the mass media on a daily basis.
Which is nice.
I hover my mouse over the link and the address appears in the status bar, including the file extension. It might be even better if it appeared in a tooltip, but still...
So much for google. I knew I had spelled it wrong originally but google's suggested spelling was way off.
From the article: "[...] a 21 year veteran [...]". Do you see the word "old" in there anywhere? No. His career was twenty one years old, but presumably he himself was significantly older.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
and then it doesn't matter, since someone will rvv revert it back in, call you a sockmonkey, and ban that account.
People who do dirty work often look down on those who don't. The working class looks down on management as not earning an "honest" day's pay. Many older people look down on the young. Somebody had Judge Judy on the other day, and the plaintiff referred to laughing kids as "drunk".
can someone programming COBOL look down on anyone
Perhaps it is because COBOL programmers tend to produce code and many VB programmers p*ss about in a GUI?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
At first I used to copy book reports 1 on 1 from the internet and hand them in.
After 1.5 years the teacher learned about Google and I got cought and he freaked out.
So I got the lowest grade possible.
The thing I learned from this event was to always rewrite everything you copy.
I know for sure he checked everything I handed in from that point on, but he failed to catch me again.
God, I always hated reading fiction books!
The Wikipedia article on this news will go through 5 revert wars today. Five editors will be suspended for doing "original research" and two others for violating the "neutral point of view" policy.
Let's look at the things in perspective. Isn't it perfectly OK in our society (at least in legal terms) to grab someone's idea (ideas are not patented, btw), and use it at your own discretion, for example, create a marketable product? Now, why situation with written word (the idea in its purest form) should be different? Someone expressed the idea somewhere in a blog, in a form of written text. The other guy, who knows how to convert this idea to the product (say, content of the daily column in a major newspaper) goes ahead and does it. What's the difference? If you don't like the implementation of that idea, don't buy it. Wanna use it in its original form? Fine, just browse the blogs daily. The guy (nespaper columnist) created a product for the customers who wanted it. Why shoud he be punished for that?
before long Wikipedia will be responsible for innnocent deaths, just like Everquest. The age of killer software has cometh.
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
This is just another instance of Wikipedia supporters having a chip on their shoulder against the established media - I loved the righteous tone of indignation, you can almost forget just how commonly Wikipedia articles plagiarize printed sources.
"kamapua`a" --> hawaiian name.
Seems like you've got a chip on your shoulder about wikipedia.
Perhaps you are Tim Ryan's friend?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Incorrect: you have to wait days before being able to register and then edit articles.
Incorrect:you can't create articles until you're registered. Editing the article, for all but a handful of high profile contentious articles) is open to anyone. If you see an article that's been plagiarised, putting {{copy-vio|url=http://some.copied.page}} at the top of the page alerts people that its copied.
Or just add a comment at the top with the address of the pagiarised page: enough people with admin rights watch pages edited by those not logged in that the link will be checked and appropriate measures taken within minutes...
It's not like they actually own any of their articles.
Second, your first sentence is one of the most convoluted I have ever encountered. I had to read it three times. Let me suggest an alternative:
Have a nice day.I once had a professor tell the class that our papers weren't graded because of plagarism problems. He continued, "if you're going to plagarize, don't use the internet--it's too easy to check. Go to the library!"
On one hand computers are giving authors temptation to plagarize; same search engines discover plagarism. Its not hard to plug in phrases from on-line Google News to find other news articles as copies.
I have not heard of systematic studies of professional plagarism among journalists. A group reported to the science magazine Nature a study of electronic academic journals. It was not a high amount, but not a zero amount. I recall it was like about a half-percent xeno-plagarism (copying anothers text) and three percent auto-plagarism (copy material from a previous paper by one of the same authors).
Read the linked articles; you find that the Sun did try to brush it off; then gave the reporter a brief suspension, before finally firing him; all only because of the attention competing newspapers were giving.
I might use a Wiki reference for the "background history" section of article, not for the crucial facts.
I'd also accept Wiki sources for an elementary or high school paper if (1) they reassembled them into a new form, (2) add their own interpretation, and (3) wrote down all such web citations (its easy cut and paste a URL, kiddies!). This is basically what many bloggers do. A plagarizing bloggered is going to be ridiculed too.
You're right, "my" paragraph IS plagiarism, hence the joke when someone loads the link. Self referencial humour, and all that... :-) Just kidding, it's fine that you and others pointed that out. I was tempted to leave the link and explanation out entirely, but then when I posted the explanation, no one would beleive me that was I was joking around. The major flaw in my post though was that I was missing quotation marks, thus giving a reader no idea that I was quoting Wikipedia, not that the link to Wikipedia was after the quote which is perfectly acceptable. i.e. foot/endnotes.
But thanks for spoiling it for everyone
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Well, speaking as an administrator, a long-time contributor, and a historian, Wikipedia doesn't plagiarize all that often, because anything identified as a copyright violation gets deleted. If you were familiar with Wikipedia at all you would know that our rules on images are strict enough to cause plenty of grumbling and bitterness. Thanks for spouting off without knowing the facts though.
No statement is true, not even this one.
How do we know he's not the one who wrote the Wikipedia articles in question?
I do not see why any post that is not very insightful and also incorrectly spells the word grammar (which no e has ever been involved with) should be +5.
Perhaps you could make a case for +3. I would certainly mod this kind of tripe down if I were you.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Wikipedia is a community. The people who caught the cheating were acting on behalf of the community and identify strongly with same. Wikipedia Foundation is a non-profit corporation setup to conduct legal business on behalf of the community.
why should Wikipedia be given credit?
The people who did the work are part of the community, drew on the resources of the community, and want the community to get credit. I don't see a problem with this.
This is just another instance of Wikipedia supporters having a chip on their shoulder against the established media.
Agreed... the tone of the story submission did sound unprofessionally indignant.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
And if you were familiar with Wikipedia at all you would know that plagiarism runs rampant. Give me a break, you really think having a rule against plagiarism is a full-proof system? Your post borders on nonsense.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's a Conspiracy!!! C, O, N, Spiracy!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Not only does the parent post make fun of horrible grammar, it does so IN LATIN. I mean, how much more awesome can you get?
Writerati
I thought journalists copied from each other all the time.
Dude, maybe you should book an appearance on Oprah so that you can, like, share your pain.
the future: everyone in the world is able to write whatever they want, and have it available to anyone else in the world, instantly.
we're getting there, not yet, we're limited now by Internet access and by search, both of which are being vigorously corrected.
so in this future world, writing is no longer as interesting or as important as it has been in the past. writing will become EPHEMERAL, like sound on a phone call. it used to be that getting written word out was relatively hard (at first really hard in the 1600s) even until the last 20 years it took a lot of work to put a book article, etc out to the world because of centralized publishing. people put a lot of work to get it right. as a couter example, look at all the writing on this page.
in the future vision above - almost no work is required to distribute. written word is literally available as soon as you're done editing. by everyone, for everyone.
so here's the question: as the value of writing goes down beacuse anyone can do it - who will care so much about plagarism? really, plagarism is back to the idea that if you write it first, you "own" it, and everyone else is supposed to give you credit for it. there are two problems with this: (1) not everyone buys into that system, as it doesn't really make that much sense, and (2) just because someone wrote something *first* is no longer going to be the best way to attribute credit for an idea. typically all ideas come from other people anyway.
I think that as we move away from central publishing, over the next 20-50 years the whole concept of writing and plagarism will change radically and plagarism will potentially go away as an idea
After reading your post, I'm convinced. I'm glad you didn't get weighed down by presenting any evidence or explaining why anyone should take your word as authoritative.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
The alternative to plagerism appears to be journalists who take ideas posted elsewhere and re-write them without any fact checking, losing the nuance of the article and frequently the point. This is what happens with a lot of tech articles, where reporters talk about how, for example, the Xbox 360 has been "recalled" when the source material said "unavailable." At least when they plagiarize the entire article we're one step closer to the actual investigation.
We need to demand that Journalists don't just repeat the news, but investigate it. Taking someone else's ideas or discoveries and reporting them as your own without even running a cursory background check is so common as to be acceptable. It lends credibility to these "facts," even though they might have no basis whatsoever. But if they're not going to spend the time to know what they're talking about, they could at least repeat verbatium from someone who does. That when when the journalist who cribs from the journalist who cribs from the journalist who cribs from you has someone crib from them, the original meaning hasn't been lost in layer upon layer of misinterpretation.
The ______ Agenda
Read that again. Then, read what you posted.
A portion of a review of the television show "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source.
Those two sentences have no connection whatsoever. The article correction has absolutely nothing to do with the paper running a story on the plagiarism that gives Wikipedia credit for finding said plagiarism.
Goo goo g'joob.
Read that again. Then, read what you posted.
A portion of a review of the television show "Secrets of the Black Box: Aloha Flight 243" was taken verbatim from the Web site reference.com. The material was originally published in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com. The article, on Page D6 Thursday, failed to attribute the information to either source.
Those two sentences have no connection whatsoever. The article correction has absolutely nothing to do with the paper running a story on the plagiarism that gives Wikipedia credit for finding said plagiarism.
Goo goo g'joob.
About your sig - I don't know if you're going for the paradoxical effect, but that's a statement with a well defined value, False. I translate it as for every A, not A. Butthe statement A or not A is logically true, so there exists A, not (not A).
Perhaps you can help wiki to get rid of these plagarized articles by letting them know when you come across them. And perhaps you can mention some examples for the rest of us on /. ?
Actually, the two issues are related. The GFDL requires people to source where the material was from, if they don't then it becomes a copyright violation.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Wikipedia is your friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
Having graduated with my degree in journalism about nine months ago, I couldn't agree with you more that plagerism runs rampant in many, many school programs for future newspaper writers. I think half the problem is the hazy, self-centered, mostly situational ethics structure that even mainstream journalists still strongly adhere to. As far as I can tell, there are no absolutes when it comes to ethics in journalism. This seems to encourage thinking like, "If I can get away with it, why not take the easy way out?" With no solid ethical foundation to support them, is it any wonder that journalists, both new and established ones, so often stray into trouble?
At one point in my journalism ethics class, the question came up, "If you were a photographer working for a newspaper, and you witnessed an accident occuring right in front of you, should you stand there taking pictures, or do you run to help the victims?" Frankly, I couldn't believe that *anyone* would choose the former, but a substancial number of my classmates thought otherwise. Our instructor in that class said she believed that there were merits for either action, and she declined to set any kind of moral standard to follow.
With ethics like that, is it any wonder that journalism keeps getting a black-eye among the public?
"...except when I know, what they are writing about."
If you notice plagiarism on Wikipedia, you can delete it at once.
And someone else can add it right back.
Think that'd never happen? I've personally witnessed *Wikipedia admins* who have argued that it's perfectly OK to copy something from another source, change around a few words, and not even bother acknowledging that source. In fact, one of them told me I must not write a lot, because this is how things are supposed to be done.
> Wikipedia doesn't plagiarize all that often, because anything identified as a copyright violation gets deleted.
I call crap on that. I notified Wiki about several sections lifted from authoratative sports sites performing source research. They're still there.
That's a huge load of crap.
Why is it that you consider getting caught to be the greater sin? Have you been watching too many heist movies and they have given you the impression that crime is ok as long as you dont get caught?
Some crimes are worse than others. Failing to cite sources in a newspaper is pretty low on the totem pole.
Per my fellow responder above, not quoting the source when you closely copy another work's working like this is totally unacceptable and is a serious instance of academic dishonesty. Just because blogs like Slashdot and Plastic do it doesn't make it right. Here is another definition of plagairism, including "weakly paraphrasing another's writing style and passing it off as your own prose," even if you include parenthetical references.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Davis
t ml
"Davis, who now lives lives in the rural Fentress County village of Pall Mall, also owns a construction business, Diversified Construction Co., which builds homes, apartments and offices. Davis and his wife Lynda, an elementary school teacher, have three daughters, Larissa, Lynn and Libby, and five grandchildren, Ashton, Alexia, Andrew, Austin and Adam."
http://www.tntech.edu/publicaffairs/rel/alums03.h
"Davis, who lives in Pall Mall, also started a construction business, Diversified Construction Co., which builds homes, apartments and offices. With his business, he has provided jobs and opportunities for decades in the same district he serves.-more-
Davis and his wife, Lynda, an elementary school teacher, have three daughters, Larissa, Lynn and Libby, and five grandchildren, Ashton, Alexia, Andrew, Austin and Adam."
Certainly looks suspicious.
P L A G I A R I S M,
[f. as PLAGIARY + -ISM.]
P L A G I A R Y, n. and a.
[ad. L. plagi{amac}rius one who abducts the child or slave of another, a kidnapper; a seducer; also (Mart. i. 53. 9) a literary thief. Cf. late L. plagium kidnapping, plagi{amac}re to kidnap. So F. plagiaire (16th c.) a plagiarist.]
A. n.
{dag}1. A kidnapper, a man-stealer. Obs.
1613 PURCHAS Pilgrimage III. iii. 199 In the time of his..childhood, he was by some Plagiary stolne away from his friends. 1626 H. KING Serm. Deliverance 46 How many be there..that, like Plagiaries, make it their trade to hunt and catch men? 1697 BP. PATRICK Comm. Exod. xx. 16 No Israelite would buy him, and therefore such Plagiaries sold him to Men of other Nations.
2. = PLAGIARIST.
1601 B. JONSON Poetaster IV. iii, Why? the ditt' is all borrowed; 'tis Horaces: hang him plagiary. 1649 JER. TAYLOR Gt. Exemp. I. Ad Sect. viii. 119 He that is a Plagiary of others titles or offices, and dresses himself with their beauties. 1676 LISTER in Ray's Corr. (1848) 125, I am glad you have discovered those authors to be plagiaries. 1758 JOHNSON Idler No. 85 {page}7 Compilers and plagiaries are encouraged, who give us again what we had before. 1855 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. xix. IV. 354 Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived.
3. = PLAGIARISM 1; literary theft. [Cf. -ARY B. 1.]
1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. 22 Plagiarie had not its nativitie with printing, but began in times when thefts were difficult. 1688 G. LANGBAINE (title) Momus Triumphans: or, the Plagiaries of the English Stage; Expos'd in a catalogue of all the Comedies, Opera's,..&c. 1775 SHERIDAN Rivals Pref., My first wish in attempting a play was to avoid every appearance of plagiary. 1880 SWINBURNE Study Shaks. 52 No parasitic rhymester..ever uttered a more parrot-like note of plagiary.
b. = PLAGIARISM 2.
1677 E. BROWNE Trav. Germ. etc. 108 Hoping to find better Markets for their Plagiaries and Depredations. 1818 HOBHOUSE Hist. Illustr. (ed. 2) 415 The plagiaries, if they may so be called, are inserted with considerable taste and effect. 1865 Athenæum 13 May 658/1 The attitudes..are..not plagiaries.
4. Comb., as plagiary-like adj. or adv.
1662 EVELYN Chalcogr. v. 117 Taken out of the prints of Albert Durer..not for want of invention and plagiary like.
B. adj.
{dag}1. Kidnapping, man-stealing. rare{em}1.
1673 E. BROWNE Trav. (1685) 49 Some [fell into that condition] by Treachery, some by Chance of War; others by Plagiary and Man-stealing Tartars.
{dag}2. That plagiarizes; plagiarizing. Obs.
1597-8 BP. HALL Sat. IV. ii. 84 Alike to thee as lieve As..an hos ego from old Petrarch's spright Unto a plagiary sonnet wright. 1620 {emem} Hon. Mar. Clergy I. 26 The plagiary priest, hauing stolne this whole passage..verbatim out of Bellarmine. 1662 STILLINGFL. Orig. Sacr. II. v. 2 This was the Plagiary Prophet.
3. Obtained by plagiarism; plagiarized. ? Obs.
1681 S. COLVIL Whigs Supplic. (1751) 14 Nought..but plagiary stuff, By which they purchase praise and money. 1796 MORSE Amer. Geog. I. 561 A quadrant, by Mr. Godfrey, called by the plagiary name of Hadley's quadrant. 1820 Hermit in London IV. 162 Second-hand puns and plagiary remarks.
Hence {sm}plagiaryship, the function or action of a plagiarist, plagiarism.
a1661 FULLER Worthies III. Warwick. (1662) 128 Rider after Thomas his death, set forth his Dictionary, the same in effect, under his own Name,..being but little disguised with any Additions. Such Plagiary-ship ill becometh Authors or Printers.
"so in this future world, writing is no longer as interesting or as important as it has been in the past."
We already have this. It's called Open Source Documentation.
wow, he got the right facts using free information. Wait isn't wiki about spreadinfg free correct info?
Is it just me, or is no one else out there outraged by this story. Not at what Tim Ryan did but by the disgusting, low-life behavior of the Wikipedia "community."
/. masses waste their childhood and adult life on, are totally plagerized. The writers/directors lift their key ideas, themes, protagonists and plots from other works and writers (who did a far better job presenting them). Even truly original modern artists like Gaiman, Miller and Moore are strongly indebted and make free use of the art and ideas of others. In fact, that is a Good Thing and they will tell you so themselves. Gaiman's "American Gods" has no footnotes (I wish it did so I could trace back to their original source many of the myths and gods he mentioned). Is he worthy of condemnation as a plagerist? Fuck no.
First, lets put the term "plagiarism" in a bit of perspective. Ever since the first ape began telling stories, humanoids have been copying ideas and stories verbatim one from another. Hell, half of the stories in the Bible, which millions of people around the world believe is "The Word of God" lifted huge chunks verbatim from Mesopatamian and Egyptian legends and myths without any attribution. In a type of reverse plagerism many authors attributed their writing to ancient holy men in order to gain immortality for their words. o false attribution or lack of attribution was certainly not considered immoral or unethical until very recently. It goes hand in hand with our worship of property above all other human values (and that is one idolatrous practice that gets worse with every passing day).
"
And even today, many of the so-called "works of art" the unwashed
I understand to a certain extent in certain situations, why people get their panties in a twist when someone tries to pass someone else' work off as their own. Yes it should be common courtesy in a research environment to cite your sources. And if you lift verbatim the core thesis of your paper without proper attribution, then of course you should not be given any credit for your work. But to be enraged about a few unattributed lines in a paper or book - give me a fucking break! And considering how little truly interesting/original stuff gets written in academia, I would attribute the holy self-righteousness plagerism or alleged plagerism causes, to over-inflated and insecure egos. There are very rare occassions where I would say plagerism is worthy of the uproar it causes.
In the case at hand, I wouldn't even use the word plagerism. We're not talking about "original" work here. Sure a bunch of lil (losers in search of a life TM) people, who have nothing better to do with themselves, wast^H^H^H^Hspend hours of their obviously worthless time gathering other people's original ideas and thoughts and putting them down on a wiki page ("Gee I wrote the page on Princess Leia ORGANA (holy fuck, how utterly loserish can you be that you make the pedantic distinction between TWO Princess Leias). And true I wanked off about a hundred times over the picture of her in the bikini which I lifted from somewhere without permission, BUT that's cool because I have a standard Wikipedia disclaimer that this is PROBABLY fair use). Maybe now I can finally lose my virginity.") I have no doubt that Tim Ryan innocently related to Wikipedia as a public domain commons and so didn't think twice about taking factual material from it. And you know what? He was perfectly right to do so.
But a bunch of $%$$%$&^ with over-inflated egos took it upon themselves to destroy someone's career and life. Hey guys, remember, Tim Ryan is a man with a family and a job who works hard at what he does and has for 21 years. But in these days when people are expendable, his corporate bosses decided its not worth the trouble and bother fighting off the enraged wikipedia hordes, so they ditched the man for the alleged "crime" of not attributing that he got a few FACTS (not original ideas but FACTS) from some site that collects facts and publishes them anonymously. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREA
if you read both articles, the most damning thing is that the 6 or so paragraphs cover the same parts of his life in the same order.
but in it's defense, there are only so many ways you can say "X owns Y" "X was a senator" "X has 5 kids".
This is even more obvious if you look at his official bio:
http://www.house.gov/lincolndavis/biography.htm
There's more fluff, so it reads differently, but the same facts are there. It's not a copy-paste job, but it looks like the wikipedia article writer only read one source getting his facts, and then wrote it in his own words.
I'd vote it wasn't plagarism because you can't plagarise facts, and both the other sites are very to-the-point.
Even Google had no references to it
Just because google doesn't find a reference to it doesn't make it erroneus. Perhaps the article author used a source which is not available for Google's indexing, such as a book?
That hardly matters though, because the pressure did eventually force them to fire the guy.
I don't know why everyone is going crazy over this stuff. I am personally concerned that mass media will get the wrong message. There are a lot of people writing/researching passionately about things they think everybody ought to know. For many people, having their ideas shared is more important than receiving attribution. Ideas should be free. So please, copy our stuff.
Just make sure you CYA & site your sources.
In linux, you can do Plagiarism by:
Select with mouse
Middle-click
Real men don't write sigs
I have two problems with this article...
The first is that the dude is described as a 21 yr old veteran. Since when is a 21 yr old a veteran at anything?
The second problem I have is the idea that you can plagerise a wiki. For all we know the person who has been accused of plagerism might actually be the author of the wiki in the first place.
Yes, there is undoubtedly some plagiarism and copyright violation, the levels of undetected plagiarism are quite low, particularly in the more prominent articles. Sure, the Wikipedia's "possible copyright violations" page is kept busy, but when you consider the hundreds of thousands of articles it makes up a tiny fraction of the content. I believe that undetected plagiarism on Wikipedia will actually become a less serious rather than more serious problem as time goes by. Google Book Search will help track down plagarism from printed sources, as well as online ones.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
As for stability, there's nothing stopping you citing a specific version of an article; however, I can't wait for the efforts for a "stable version" to get off the ground so that articles that are in a good state are more resistant to drifting into mediocrity or worse.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
correct me if I am wrong, but Jimmy wants us to use the wikki. and he did rewrite the words, just not the facts, and what columist has ever cited the sources at the end of a news release. To have Jimmy ask for money under the pretense that we can make a free and unproprietary system, that just maybe Jimmy should face the legal ramifications that he so dearly wants this pour man to face. Jimmy I would venture to say has defruaded the world and should be held liable for his actions. In jimmy own words, "with basic works they can adopt, modify, and share freely without asking permission from anyone."
--Richard Sperry
A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
We are soon entering our 6th year online, and I want to take a moment to ask you for your help in continuing our mission. Wikipedia is facing new challenges and encountering new opportunities, and both are going to require major funds.
Wikipedia is based on a very radical idea, the realization of the dreams most of us have always had for what the Internet can and should become. Thousands of people, all over the world, from all cultures, working together in harmony to freely share clear, factual, unbiased information... a simple and pure desire to make the world a better place.
This is a radical strike at the heart of an increasingly shallow, proprietary and anti-intellectual culture. It is a radical strike at the assumption that the Internet has to be a place of hostile debate and flame wars. It is an appeal to the best within all of us.
The result so far has been wild success. Thanks to the wonderful volunteers who have created and managed this vast resource, we are now one of the top 30 websites in the world... and traffic growth continues. The pressures on us increase daily, pressures of organization, of servers and server management. In order for Wikipedia to move forward, we need the help of ordinary people like you, people who share in our dream of a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet.
In 2005, we achieved 6-fold growth in pageviews with spending of less than $750,000. We will need a lot more this year just to keep the site on the air and performing well. But the wonderful thing about our growth is that it gives us a real opportunity to extend our fundraising beyond just what we need to stay on the air.
Reporters are always asking me why I'm doing this, why Wikipedians do this? I think you know why.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I'm doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him. But for this child, a website on the Internet is not enough; we need to find ways to get our work to people in a form they can actually use.
And I'm doing this for my own daughter, who I hope will grow up in a world where culture is free, not proprietary, where control of knowledge is in the hands of people everywhere, with basic works they can adopt, modify, and share freely without asking permission from anyone.
We're already taking back the Internet. With your help, we can take back the world.
Please consider a generous donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.
It's funny that you'd seemingly misrepresent what the grandparent AC said when they were trying to avoid having words put into their mouth...
I don't know about you, but if I were going to be blamed for something, I'd rather it be something I actually said.
the levels of undetected plagiarism are quite low
Just a quick question - how do you measure levels of "undetected plagiarism"..? Enquiring minds want to know.
Q.
Yup, it's official. Though the timeline has shifted a bit since this was created.
Too bad Wikipedia can't spot their own plagiarism.
Another strong giveaway is breaches of the "neutral point of view" policy - such as a wildly enthusiastic biography of somebody in the arts. 99 times out of 100, these are ripped straight from the artist's own site.
I could be horribly wrong, but my gut feeling is that the vast majority of articles I've examined are original.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)