Plagiarism Must Stop - But What to Do?

Larry Morris - Loan Officer, Sherwood Oregon

Larry.  You are correct - you need to be careful.  I cut/pasted a Tom Domin article about Tiger Woods investing in himself.  Tom had given me permission (I hung on to THAT email) and later thanked me in a separate email.  But I cited Tom as the author in the beginning of the post and never claimed it as mine.  My goal was to present something of interest AND to promote Tom.

I will say this - in my own opinion it was still a CHEAP post.  I had done nothing and got something. 

I believe I have since read that the best way to cite another's work is to intro it and provide a hyperlink to the original post or article.  That way you've shared, not copied, and the link to the other site helps his search engine rankings.

Thanks for commenting.

Wendy Forsyth

Thanks Wendy.  Glad your company does that for you.  If someone wants to track down 29,000 blogs they can figure out who I've written about, but no names were mentioned here, though the temptation was there for a few reasons.  I've owned websites that were templated and that allowed content reproduction.  I checked with mine (ALAMODE) - it is not one of them.  But that's not the entire point - it's the glory-grabbing that is worse. 

Remember Jessica Lynch from the War in Iraq?  The government and press wanted to paint her portrait as a heroic fighting machine.  Imagine the pressure she was under to just go along for the ride!!  She didn't.  She set the record straight, and the potential rewards sacrificed through her honesty (books, movies, jobs, public speaking, etc) far exceeded a few Active Rain points. 

I know I can do better, especially if I start with the small stuff.

Art

Jeff Turner

Jeff - I do know how you feel about this - and "feel" is the correct word.  It seems as though people want a place where there's fairness and openness somewhere outside the family cocoon, so we do feel strongly when disappointed or betrayed.  It's visceral.

I emailed AR and received a response that there would be changes in the FLAG system "next week."  There might be a longer lag than that, I guess - baby-sitting 29K might be a huge task and maybe the timetable was underestimated.  I think the 5-group post limit is an attempt to restore order and I see a tightening of group posting rules by some Founders.  Maybe more change is forthcoming.  I've been here less than two months and the membership is up over 45% in that period, so there could be a "so many blogs, so little time" situation AR is dealing with.

A few decades ago I knew a few Ham Radio guys.  They told me if they found an unlicensed Ham, they would track him down (triangulate?) and a bunch of them would show up in cars in front of his house and honk the horns until he took down his system.  They said it was quite effective. 

So you're idea of a simple "call out" sounds reasonable.  If it's not malicious, vicious, or slanderous, it might be that "informative" approach that's needed.  Perhaps a group entitled, "I'm Telling Mom!" would be a good source check as "comments" could be deleted.

Thanks.

Art

Jeff Link "The Asheville Real Estate Guy"

Jeff - I checked that out - that was very interesting. 

Maybe they were twins separated at birth?

Sometimes I just spin on my chair 10 or 12 times, grab for the keyboard, close my eyes and type - once I did and found I'd written the entire Declaration of Independence verbatim.  My cat did it too.  Coincidence?