Comments on: Laziness Is Not An Excuse For Plagiarism: WIRED Editor-In-Chief Chris Anderson Fail

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:48:52 +0000

What’s most discouraging to me is that Anderson *still* doesn’t fully comprehend what plagiarism is.

Anderson admits openly that he meant to rewrite the passages from Wikipedia (as he put it, “do a write-through”). Clearly he’s oblivious to the fact that rewording or paraphrasing ideas taken from other sources without citation is, uh, still plagiarism.

Daniel
Quick Writing Tips Blog

By: seth simonds » What Level of Customer Support Do You Expect With a Free Product or Service?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:12:40 +0000

[...] Since we’re talking about “Free” I should note that I didn’t lift any portion of this article’s content from [...]

By: sethsimonds

sethsimonds — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:04:15 +0000

You went above and beyond the call of duty in citing wikipedia as your entry point for source discovery, I think. Kudos to you!

By: sethsimonds

sethsimonds — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:03:01 +0000

I think that should work fine. =)

By: Danny

Danny — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:25:47 +0000

I'm going to write an ebook about “free” stuff and copy a whole bunch of Anderson's book. And not cite it. Until I'm called out on it.

Can I use Anderson's excuse that “oops, I was essentially lazy” and everything will be okay?

By: Quotes for the week ending 4 July, 2009 «

Quotes for the week ending 4 July, 2009 « — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:03:22 +0000

[...] Chris Anderson, on being accused of plagiarism in his new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price [...]

By: SJ’s Longest Now » Relying on non-specific reputation can be deadly

SJ’s Longest Now » Relying on non-specific reputation can be deadly — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:09:57 +0000

[...] Publicly authored works, with public drafts showing the stages of development (appropriate for anything but creative art, where the illusion is part of the package, don’t you think?), would never be able to imply original research and fact-checking the way Chris Anderson can. [...]

By: ESP0704

ESP0704 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:34:17 +0000

When I wrote my self-published book (which I'll be releasing late this year), I used Wikipedia in much the same way that Mr. Simonds suggested -- I started there, then went through the citations to find a more reliable source, either from a book, the legitimate media or someone who was an expert or experienced in the field in question.

But I did do one additional thing. While I didn't cite Wikipedia as a source in any of my footnotes. But because some of my sources were obtained through Wikipedia, I used my bibliography to credit Wikipedia as the access point for some of my sources.

Mr. Simonds is right. You can use Wikipedia. You just can't stop there.

By: sethsimonds

sethsimonds — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:04:32 +0000

You make a brilliant argument for avoiding use of Wikipedia text from the get-go.

Now that Anderson has included sections of wikipedia in the print edition of his book without citing sources, does that mean his entire book stands simply as an edit to those wiki pages and is therefore subject to the same creative commons licensing?

The issue does matter. You're right.

By: James Bach

James Bach — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:03:23 +0000

It may not be so very anonymous, but it is anonymous in the most crucial way, to me: I probably don't know who (what real person with a real name and reputation) I'm dealing with when I edit an article, and there is little in the way of effective community sanctions for bad behavior (because bad people can shed their identities at will). I have no idea what the editors backgrounds are, or their rhetorical/epistemic/ontological perspectives. That's not supposed to matter, because it's all supposed to be “objective”, but of course it does matter– as anyone knows who has been through a dispute over the “truth” can attest.

Because I don't like to collaborate with people who choose to wear masks, and there are others like me, Wikipedia ends up being a project created by people who “aren't like me.” Time will tell, but I suspect that introduces a subtle yet important distortion into things when one sort of personality dominates editorship.

It's well enough to think about encyclopedias in terms of facts disputed by no one. But a lot of things in encyclopedias *are* controversial, so this issue does matter.