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IGN Pulls Ex-Editor's Posts After Dozens More Plagiarism Accusations Surface (kotaku.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The gaming site IGN is working to remove all of the posts written by former editor Filip Miucin, who was fired two weeks ago for plagiarism, after internet sleuths found that dozens of his articles and videos copied or rephrased from other websites without attribution. "We've seen enough now, both from the thread and our own searches, that we're taking down pretty much everything he did," IGN reviews editor Dan Stapleton wrote on Twitter last night, referring to a thread on the gaming forum ResetEra cataloging the allegations. For days, people had pointed out more similarities between Miucin's work and various other articles and message board posts.
The plan, IGN editors said, is to scrutinize all of the work Miucin has published since the site hired him last October, then figure out what can be restored. IGN's editors also said they hope to re-review the games he reviewed, including ports of Doom and Skyrim on Switch, both which have been replaced by the same message: "This article has been removed due to concerns over similarities to work by other authors. The author of this article is no longer employed by IGN." In the recent days, Miucin has been accused of copying a Bayonetta 2 review from Polygon, copying from a video that took word-for-word from a NeoGAF post, and a number of videos in which Miucin read excerpts from Wikipedia about topics like Super Mario Odyssey and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero as if he had written them. The list even includes an Octopath Traveler article that copied from one of his own IGN colleague's reviews, much to that writer's dismay. Even his Linkedin resume is copied from a job template website, Kotaku reported.
The plan, IGN editors said, is to scrutinize all of the work Miucin has published since the site hired him last October, then figure out what can be restored. IGN's editors also said they hope to re-review the games he reviewed, including ports of Doom and Skyrim on Switch, both which have been replaced by the same message: "This article has been removed due to concerns over similarities to work by other authors. The author of this article is no longer employed by IGN." In the recent days, Miucin has been accused of copying a Bayonetta 2 review from Polygon, copying from a video that took word-for-word from a NeoGAF post, and a number of videos in which Miucin read excerpts from Wikipedia about topics like Super Mario Odyssey and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero as if he had written them. The list even includes an Octopath Traveler article that copied from one of his own IGN colleague's reviews, much to that writer's dismay. Even his Linkedin resume is copied from a job template website, Kotaku reported.
Morality issues apart, you've gotta be pretty stupid to copy from easily available articles on the Internet and post the results in another Internet website. It's the context where is the easiest to check you've actually copied your articles.
Also his name is tarnished forever. I don't think he'll easily find another job
Because IGN didn't double down by attacking those who made the accusations of plagiarism, and didn't launch a media campaign attacking gamers.
Pretty cut and dried, IGN dealt with it swiftly and correctly.
Because IGN did something about it and fired him?
If he were a woman, we'd be hearing about how it was the mean gamers ganging up on her and making wild accusations, about how calling out journalistic lapses is really gamers displaying their blatant sexism. But because he's a man, they're taking it seriously and he's facing consequences.
Have you followed the whole Arenanet thing? The fired female writer's sexism and vitriol towards fans was well documented. Yet all the usual suspects still played the discrimination card as hard as they could. Not to mention the New York Times recent hire who is unambiguously and openly racist and they still twisted her as the discriminated victim.