One of our colleagues at Freethoughtblogs, Avicenna, has been on the receiving end of an astonishing flood of hate and patently baseless accusations. An online group of trolls, ironically many of the same people who are quick to accuse us of “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs”, have been baying for his blood for months, questioning his profession, his training, even his ancestry — all nonsense and known to us as completely bogus, pure dishonest attempts to harass him. Almost all of the accusations were lies.
Unfortunately, I had to say “almost”. Buried in the spurious accusations were, as it turned out, some accurate accusations of plagiarism. Avi has been taking shortcuts, cutting and pasting blocks of text without attribution.
This is a network of writers. Plagiarism is not a forgivable sin here. After reviewing the incidents, and getting Avi’s explanation, we’ve had to conclude that these were not a few one-off accidents, but part of a long term pattern of slipshod writing.
For that reason, we have had to regretfully remove Avicenna from our network. Ed Brayton has more.
I must add, however, that the vast majority of the bullshit flowing out of the slymepit about Avi has not been credible, and you should not consider this a validation of the bulk of the phony accusations made against him. It is only on this one narrow, but very serious, issue that they have made a palpable hit. Unfortunately, it is an issue serious enough that we cannot excuse it.
The accurate, non-slymepit rundown:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/01/03/another-atheist-caught-in-case-of-serial-plagiarism/
Aw, Avi. That sucks. Can’t argue with th reasoning, but I’ve appreciated the voice of a doctor, and someone living in India, very much, and I’ll miss him for that.
Avi, I hope you and Hera will be very happy together.
Damn
I hope that Avi keeps blogging, without the cut and paste.
Don’t do that, folks.
It’s OK to quote other people.
Damn. Plagiarism is a serious concern. I wish he’d attributed properly, bc I like Avicenna’s writing. The decision Ed made sounds difficult, but I think it’s the right thing to do.
Damn. I’m really sad to hear this. I hope Avi keeps blogging in his own words somewhere, hopefully without this harassment.
I’m actually pretty angry at Avi. It’s not that hard to just paste a link in your post, and not doing that simple thing has given the slymers credibility they don’t deserve.
Looking at the comment section of the Friendly Atheist (or JT’s blog for that matter), I don’t see much difference between it and the Slymepit.
Thanks to Free Thought for upholding blogging honesty. Plagiarism does need to be shut down where ever possible.
I don’t know that Avicenna can be faulted particularly for the latter part of this sentence, but I understand the feeling, Gen. FWIW, I’m not just angered by the plagiarism, but his inadequate apology as well.
And while I think Avicenna brought it on himself (and am sad/angry that he plagiarized), I am not surprised that it is Hemant Mehta who is the one to publish the news – nor would I if it had been JT. They have both shown a great willingness to listen to the anti-FtB crowd. Not quite a Nugent levels (whose criticism of PZ, JT appears to be a fan of), but still quite willing.
Wishing Avi all the best – and Hera too. I understand the decision, and at the same time I’m sorry we’re losing him.
Folks might consider if they’re actually sorry at what they think we’re losing in Avicenna. We might consider if his behavior is an indication of him not being quite what we thought he was, in regard to character.
It’s shit that this is fodder for slyme pitters. But it is NOT something we can just write off as “sad.” It’s natural, I suppose, but I dislike seeing the self-comfort fantasizing that’s coming out. As if poor Avicenna just made a mistake during a rough spot.
I’m *angry* at this. I’m angry at someone I respected, once again, turning out to be a liar. Turning out to be a liar in a way that makes me question folks I know and respect, and in a way that gives ammunition to anti-SJ monsters who mean and who carry out real harm.
Socially conscious people have enough enemies already. Spare me the “Oh, how sad, I wish him well!”
Shorter: Avicenna certainly didn’t wish FtB or any of *you* the very best, did he? Those are not the actions of someone who approaches his audience and colleagues with respect.
Just sayin’.
Yes. All of this.
I miss ‘Tis Himself*, too. But I never really knew ‘Tis Himself, did I? I knew fragments and snippets of other people, represented as ‘Tim Himself.
*For those who don’t know, ‘Tis Himself was a regular Pharyngula commenter who turned out to be serially plagiarizing.
*headshake*
That’s all I’ve got.
Exactly what I was trying to say.
Josh @ 12/13, yeah, you’re right. After reading through the instances of plagiarism that have been found so far (and, oh, are there a lot of them), I feel less like “man, this is disappointing” and more “fuck this, what the fuck were you thinking?”
These aren’t a handful of paraphrases that cut a little too close or quotes that failed to be marked as such. This was obviously and repeatedly and carefully copy and pasting other people’s words without attribution. This is a lengthy pattern of disregard for honesty and integrity and a shitty apology on top of it.
Here is a better way to apologize:
Instead Avicenna tells us what a good writer he is and that he is a better writer than this and that we should let him continue writing? No. You tell me specifically what you did wrong and why it’s wrong. Tell me the harm you caused. Show you understand what you did wrong here.
And I still don’t have to forgive you.
@Josh #12 & 13
It’s a fair point. There’s a certain bond of trust between the writer and the reader and plagiarism breaks that trust. That’s why is a problem that goes far beyond simply forgetting a link or attribution. It violates the relationship and that kind of thing is very hard to mend.
I am saddened, but I’m also quite disappointed.
Yeah, all I can say is that a lot of us are very unhappy about this, and we’re having a tough time sorting out the anger from the disappointment.
Absolutely. And I do sympathize with you and Ed and the other FTBloggers, and Avicenna’s friends and fans. I’m sorry for you all as well as angry at him.
It’s an unenviable position to be in as decision makers at FtB. You’ve done the best you could, and no one *expects* to find this out about a colleague.
@MM, #12: Yes. Thanks for describing the inadequacies of Avicenna’s apology.
I’ve read the notpology now. Unfortunately, that’s what it is.
In for a penny, in for a pound. It probably seems like twisting the knife, but I don’t mean to. This is something I kept to myself for a long time, but now I wish I’d said it:
Avicenna is a terrible writer. Leave aside the content. His writing was a mess. Not “just typos,” but garbled syntax. Missing words. Obscure or unidentified referents. It wasn’t just sloppiness or not having access to a good keyboard. It was bad writing.
Well, yes, I’m angry, too.
But I will not hold Avicenna responsible for the actions of the Slymepit.
Him fucking up is him fucking up, but that does not become worse because he was a member of a group that is being targeted by a hate group.
Yes. I understand the impulse to do so, but it’s just respectability politics all over again (as I understand respectability politics).
Let me be extremely clear: This is not about respectability politics for me. I don’t care how this makes “us” “look.” I care that it emboldens dangerous people to get more dangerous and lash out at more social justice types.
That’s a legitimate thing to be angry about. I get to. Now you don’t have to worry that I’m nattering on about respectability politics, so that’s sorted.
Actually, yes, I do care. Reputation with regard to accuracy and transparency among writers is a legimate quality to safegard. I’m going to assume that no one actually means to describe that concern as grubby respectability politics.
The comments at Friendly are…less than friendly. I can hardly believe my eyes. Glad I have stayed out of the Sl***p** thing, they seem to be a nasty lot. After having done a bit of investigation, the “harboring rapists at FTB” is a particularly despicable claim.
</delurk
It’s a bitter pill to swallow when you know the only reason your self-declared “enemies” “care” about the situation is because they will use it to damage and impugn people who don’t deserve it. And that’s exactly why, and only why, the slymepitters are interested.
Do not be surprised at what you see at Hemant’s. He’s been giving cuddle hugs to slymepitters and reactionaries for some time now. This *is* normal for him.
Yes, Josh, I DO care about accuracy and credibility. As you might remember, I’m still in college, I train to become a teacher. Accurate attribution is my bread and butter because not doing so might not only cost me my livelyhood but also land me in jail. Basic disregard for these things makes me angry.
But “emboldening dangerous people” is another thing because he does not have to be my fucking model minority. The Slymepit needs no encouraging and they are fucking responsible for their own actions. They are not dogs who get stones thrown at them.
Just for the record, I’m out, it’s night here.
I honestly do not understand the impulse to plagiarize. It’s not a thing that honestly occurs to me.
I’ve written a fair amount, some under my own name, some under various nyms. And my approach to finding something someone else said that was excellent has always been to:
(1) try to figure out a way to say it in my own words (appropriately citing them as the source of the idea, if necessary), or
(2) quote them, with attribution.
I have this approach for the very simple reason that the possible benefits of plagiarizing do not outweigh the risks – and those risks include not being able to look at myself in the mirror.
@24 – you are correct about Avi’s writing, Josh, but unsurprisingly, the Pharyngulite hoard are deciding to have a massive moralising meltdown out of something I’m pretty certain is due to technical inexpertise. As you rightlysay, the issues go beyond plagiarism, and include non-referencing and rambling, which tends to put the plagiarism in perspective. Why would you all be angry with someone for not knowing what he is doing and not even knowing he doesn’t know? (Answer to self: because this is your modus operandi ). If I was the kind of person who let myself go to nastiness and anger, I could blame the network for fielding someone of inadequate writerly professionalism without some support and supervision but I’m not that kind of person. Avi’s blog was interesting and dealt with topics not seen elsewhere. I do think that if the network wants more diversity, it might consider mentoring for people who are lacking relevant skills for one reason or another.
For me, it’s not about “my model minority”, it’s about the fact that because they were right about this one thing, the slymepit lies become harder to just dismiss out of hand, and more effort must now go into debunking each and every lie their twisted minds can come up with, with them repeating the lies, even the ones that were already debunked, until people who are not familiar with the conflict believes them because they happened to luck into being right this once. It gives them credibility they do not deserve, and more people will take their lies seriously without doing the extensive research necessary to find out the truth.
And that because of something so monumentally *stupid* and easily avoided by anyone with diligence.
I don’t think that’s “respectability politics”, I think that’s a legitimate concern.
@24: I only seldom read Avicenna, and I put the bad writing down to English not being his first language. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending or anything, but I do cut non-Anglophones a lot of slack that way. He certainly writes better in my native tongue than I would in anyone else’s (I say to my own embarrassment).
I’m angry because as far as I can tell, there was never any pressing reason for him to do this. The bits he quoted without attribution were usually just straight factual reporting on events not known to him personally. Cutting and pasting long paragraphs from news stories, so long as they have proper attribution, is absolutely fine. Making people believe that you wrote those paragraphs is deceptive and wrong. Yes, he is also a bad writer, but I really didn’t care about that so long as I thought he was sincere in what he was saying. Now I can no longer be confident that he is sincere. I’m sad, but I’m also angry. What a disappointment.
@35 – Eamon, Avi is British and his English is as good as mine. He uses British colloquialisms and spelling, but there is no issue with those. I think the problem is more that his work is unstructured.
Eamon, AFAIK, Avicenna was born and raised in the UK.
That is disappointing.
I should be angry, but I’m not because we are willing to take good evidence from people that we are otherwise fighting with. I’ll think about what everyone else is saying and try so see if there is anywhere I should put some anger.
So are there any ideas about how this slipped past? Or is that premature? If we admit and deal with fraudulent and deceptive behavior here that is a feature that deals with these problems. but is there anything else that can be improved?
Then I stand corrected. As I say, I didn’t read him enough to know his background.
I feel bad about the way this went down. Even Hemant’s blog is full of people grinding their axes against PZ. Plagiarism is not right, but neither is glee in causing pain. Especially to throw someone under a bus to hurt someone else.
My theory is that it is calculated to get maximum attention and Avicenna is of less importance. PZ gets your pet obsession more clicks.
Giliell
Hmm, I see what you’re saying, but for me, that’s at the heart of the trust that was broken. He was not just a blogger, he was a representative of FtB. He was aware of his status as a target of a hate campaign and the use to which the enemies of this network (and by extension this whole side of the rift) could put his dishonesty, and still he made deception and theft a regular habit. That is worse than had he been doing it on his own site without the collateral damage. It was an added responsibility he took on and treated it, insofar as not plagiarizing, with disregard.
On the other hand, @Josh
Perhaps I feel more sad than angry right now because being a plagiarizer is not as nasty a sin as, say, being a misogynist or a rapist or a racist. It’s a sad kind of crime, coming from what? A lack of confidence? A lack of time? An inclination to laziness? Those are traits that incur disappointment–and often enough in myself (though they haven’t led to my plagiarizing anything). And put on balance with the good that Avicenna has done and is doing, ack!, it’s just such a shame. It reminds me a little of Teresa MacBain’s flame out. I just think Why? It was so unnecessary to lie/plagiarize!
You are doing exactly what you say you are not doing.
@41: Yeah, the comments over there are pretty awful. A whole bunch of people making (unintentionally?) clear that it’s really about how much they hate PZ and FTB.
Pen @33:
“Technical inexpertise”? You are making excuses for plagiarism while tarring commenters. I dont know why Avicenna plagiarized, but I do know that that shit isunethical and intolerable. Hell, I just started blogging in July-with no background in journalism and no formal training in writing- yet I knew enough to give proper attribution when quoting others.
Sally Strange
This is what gets to me too. It’s just so stupid and unnecessary. Avi has written well (if sloppily, but surely we don’t require perfect grammar to get benefit from a writer) from an interesting perspective and to have that thrown away on lazy attributing is galling.
I agee with Josh, and Anthony, and PZ, and Ed, and David. I’m sad that FtB is losing Avi, I’m angry that Pitters got one hit in a thousand smears and will gloat about it for months to years, I’m upset that Avi did it. When it comes to writing, attribution is the only real currency that anyone has. Especially in the case of blogging, all you’re getting from doing it is reputation. So if you’re using someone else’s words without attributing them, you’ve stolen the only benefit they had from writing it in the first place. I absolutely understand being too busy to write a lot yourself, but the solution is then to write less, not to write sloppily and take from others. Jeez, I don’t even write tweets without linking it back to the source. If I really want to write something and can’t find where it came from, I’ll at least say that’s what’s going on. It’s not difficult.
@45 – Tony, he posts images and snippets of arguments which he very clearly intends us to know are by someone else, virtually at random and with no sources. I mentioned this to him occasionally, sometimes with frustration if the subject interested me particularly, but was ignored. I get the impression he didn’t think it was important, and of course, he could never have been so prolific if he’d referenced carefully. I once said something to him about a situation I thought breached the confidence of his patients. He doesn’t appear to understand that his village in India isn’t as separate from the rest of the world as he imagines. I was ignored. His posts are organised like a stream of consciousness. They were so long and disjointed it was hard to comment on more than 10% of them at a time. I know this was mentioned to him numerous times and he adressed it by saying he was a medical student/doctor who blogged to relax in his free time. In other words, he wasn’t about to make it about the readers (as pro writers must). I enjoyed his posts anyway, but I read fast and share a lot of cultural background and knowledge with him so I could follow. I rather liked it. I never knew he was plagiarising until now, but I’m afraid it’s part of a pattern of amateurishness. There’s no point saying he should know better, when all the evidence clearly suggests that he doesn’t.
At Ed’s blog, Alverant has suggested a written standard for ftb bloggers be created. If it ever exists, it should include a way for commenters to flag issues based on the standard, hopefully not as a way of attacking writers, but to help get problems fixed fast. I was actually quite upset about the breach of confidence thing, I would have flagged that.
Actually, you’ve just provided evidence that he’s been told numerous times, including by you, that this kind of thing doesn’t fly.
I just found out about all this, and read Avi’s apology first, then backtracked to Ed and Hemant’s postings. Avi’s comment that he had a bit of a “very laissez-faire attitude to attribution and writing” is really a notpology. That’s not a “laissez-faire” attitude, that’s cutting chunks of text from the news.
When Avi says: “Hemant is unaware of the quantity of weird mail I get and how its silly to check them for attribution” he’s throwing a head-feint; The Guardian, Reuters, and The Telegraph are hardly a quantity of weird email that one might just forget they cut and pasted from.
Maybe Avi could steal some excuses from another plagiarist; they all seem to have the same excuses (when Chris Hedges lifted from Hemingway* he later said that he must have unconsciously remembered and regurgitated the lines)
(* lifting from Hemingway, in a book on war, is a really epic set-yourself-up-for-fail)
@50 – Not about the plagiarism, since I never saw that picked up before. Plagiarism is not putting something in block quotes, such that it looks like the writer’s own words. Non-referencing is putting it in blockquotes, so that everyone can see it belongs to someone else, then forgetting to say who said it and where.
@Esteleth & Pen
No, Avicenna was not born in Britain. He was born in Kuwait and was a refugee during the Gulf War.
Angry – partly because plagiarism is my pet fucking hate and partly because any legitimate scrap of red meat thrown to the Pit will be dined on in perpetuity and get inflated into carte-blance justification for abusing this entire network (and its allies, and its goals). Also partly because putting blatant plagiarism down to a “laissez-faire attitude” is a bullshit excuse for bullshit behaviour. There’s lazy and there’s fucking lying.
Disappointed – even though I frequently found Avi’s unedited stream-of-consciousness writing hard to digest and so didn’t often read his posts, there goes a decent ally whose heart was in the right place (but whose head just wasn’t).
Avi’s actions have thrown himself and his now former blogmates under a bus full of arseholes. He’s not my friend, so I don’t have to be as diplomatic as Ed was.
Blugh.
Yep, the comment section over at the ‘friendly’ atheist is a true who-is-who of slymepitters. Also, the same ‘friendly’ atheist insinuating that PZ’s last post in defence of Avicenna was only about the plagiarism, while it was clearly about the entire harassment campaign stage by the same slyme infesting his commentariat. What a dishonest hack Hemant has become.
Sad to see a unique perspective gone from FTB, but indeed the only possible decision, plagiarism is inexcusable.
There are too many institutions that balk at removing their bad apples.
It is always a difficult, painful choice to do so, even if it shouldn’t be.
Thanks @PZ and FtB for keeping yourself clean.
@53 – Ibis. Avi was in Kuwait as a very young child, but was still very young when he came to Britain. He’s British, grew up and educated here. He also quite rightly considers himself British. The reason I’m making a fuss about it is that Britain is still quite a newly multiracial society and asserting these things is still important/necessary for us.
@ 55 zenlike
Farewell, Hemant, you have lost your way.
*delete*
Pen,
How can someone who grew up and was educated in Britain NOT know how to attribute and cite correctly? One doesn’t need to be a professional writer to know that. I’m not and somehow, I know!
Please. He knew. He just didn’t care.
Marcus Ranum #51:
Not so. Avicenna was quite clearly and explicitly addressing three separate topics. The bit you quote is clearly referring back to point #2. The question about the attribution of emails is quite separate from the attribution of quotes. Whatever his faults, I completely agree with him on that point; expecting a blogger to clearly attribute hatemail is a ludicrous waste of time.
In that vein, as zenlike points out in #55, Hemants complaint about PZ’s post was entirely misguided. There’s more than one ball being juggled here and Avicenna only dropped on of them. It was a big one, to be sure, but it was only the one.
He wasn’t clearly doing that, LykeX, but he’s a pretty shitty writer, imo, so you can’t expect him to be very clear. His entire apology was hard to read and parse. It was bad. And was centered *entirely* on him and nothing else — he mentioned like four times he was a “good writer” (lol) but made no mention of *why* his plagiarizing was wrong, and the damage it did, nor any acknowledgment that he understand why people felt so betrayed. I get a distinct “the way I want to do things is say more important than anyone or anything else, shrug” attitude from him. Which is not an attitude someone who is trying to speak for social justice causes should have!
The hatemail stuff doesn’t really matter — it’s irrelevant and I think even bringing it up is just a way for him to distract and claim hew as innocent about something so we don’t pay as much attention to the shit ton of other shit he plagiarized. (See how you’re finding yourself defending his terrible behavior? Yeah.)
Pen, #33
There are several examples Hemant has provided which are not attempts at quoting without citation. They’re entire sentences and paragraphs he’s passing as his own writing. Of course he knew what he was doing.
Why would your reaction after seeing hard evidence of blatant plagiarism be to think the person didn’t know what he was doing?
A pity. Interesting that it was Hermant covering this, all things considered. He’s a bit sloppy in his own way.
Careerists gonna career.
I’m just repeatedly surprised that he, JT, Nuge, and the other professional asskissers think we’re too unintelligent to notice their pathetic attempts to get into Dawkins’ Big Boy Club.
Avi’s quirky language did not bother me. I did not care if he was friends with Strunk & White. His posts were heartbreaking at times and I could tell he really cared about very poor people who do not have access to medical care for one reason or another.
But crikey, what a disappointment to learn about the plagiarism. When I read a blogger, I want that blogger’s words, however imperfect. It is their knowledge, their expertise, their perspective, that made me bookmark them in the first place.
Showing him the door was the only workable outcome.
@59 – marilove
Sorry, but that’s just funny, because it’s such a false assumption. Britain is full to the brim of people who have very definitely not been educated to do this. In fact, I distinctly remember that I was not taught to do it until I got to university on a humanities track. Before that, we were barely expected to quote or reference at all, especially as all our qualifications were exam based, with no books in the room,, and perhaps also due to the lack of internet. Avi is younger than me, but he is so definitely not a humanities track guy. To become a medical student he likely dropped English at 16, that would be both usual and necessary here. It’s an educational trend with issues, isn’t it?
@62 – Saad. I see that he was plagiarising and I know that he knew he was copying and pasting. What I think he doesn’t know is how serious an offense this is considered. Also that it is considered serious in principle, regardless of the nature and importance of what is copied. I’ve read Hemant’s list and as other people have rightly pointed out, there was no point to his plagiarism. It added nothing to his work.
Ibis3 @ 42
No, it’s not as nasty as being a misogynist or a rapist or a racist, but it’s still pretty awful. The existence of misogyny and rape and racism doesn’t mean I can’t get pissed off when someone robs people of their work and proper attribution, does it?
The intent of Avicenna–his sad or lazy motivations–doesn’t make the harm disappear. His actions call his integrity, his ethics, and his judgment into question. It hurts those of us who have trusted him, particularly those whose reputations were linked with his through FtB. Most of all, it hurts those from whom he stole. He’s hurt his fellow bloggers and his readers and those he plagiarized and he shows zero awareness of these facts in his notpology.
In fact, I wasn’t particularly angry until I read his fucking apology. Plagiarism doesn’t have to be the worst thing in the world to be acknowledged as a shitty thing to do.
#62 I still don’t buy it. He has been interacting with professional writers for how long now? Excuses, all of them. He knew. He just didn’t care.
@Mellow Monkey
Um. No. I don’t know where you got the idea that I needed to be asked that. I was just explaining why my reaction is more sad than angry in this instance.
Which you know don’t have to tell me as I went into detail about that in the same comment you’ve quoted, and expressed the same sentiment.
I’m smelling some straw. I never said anything remotely like “plagiarism should not be acknowledged as a shitty thing to do” either.
Pen, #67
You want me to believe he was claiming other people’s writing as his own but didn’t realize that’s a serious offense? Sorry, that’s a very basic minimal standard to hold a blogger and someone who enjoys writing to.
From his latest post:
Calling stealing other people’s sentences and paragraphs verbatim a laissez-faire way of attribution (what attribution?) is so dishonest. He should have just apologized and admitted to plagiarism, which is what it is. Poor attribution and lazy writing would be if he messed up the links or got the authors’ names or credentials wrong.
He’s denying he’s a plagiarist and calling it flawed writing technique. It’s hard to respect someone who doesn’t have the decency to apologize for doing something so wrong (especially when it’s all out in the open).
Ibis3 @ 70, no straw intended. I’m a little testy about the severity of plagiarism getting brushed off, because this is an issue I take really seriously. Rereading your post, I see that you’re not saying it’s no big deal and only expressing why you’re not that angry. I’m sorry for not reading closer and jumping the gun.
And if you’re not that angry, that’s how you feel. You have a right to your feelings. Consider my response to be me explaining why I feel the way I do.
@Mellow Monkey
Fair enough. Thanks for the apology.
Haven’t finished reading the thread, but I need to comment on Pen @ 33, because this is bullshit. Avi graduated from college. He took mandatory writing courses in high school and college. As a college English teacher, I know very well that we teach citation, attribution and how to recognize plagiarism. In the UK, recognizing plagiarism is a big part of 6th form (11th/12th grade), as well as first-year college, education. This isn’t something that a college-educated person just doesn’t know or understand. It’s something that someone who wants to write a lot just let’s slide (at best)…it’s a decision he made.
Thanks Cyranthothe2nd — I figured it was all rationalized bullshit.
Josh, Official SpokesGay @24:
Seconding this. I rarely managed to finish his posts. I wasn’t going to comment until I saw this, but I agree completely. I had assumed, as other people did, that English was his second language; I see now he’s spoken it since childhood. Whether it was or not, I found his work often well-nigh unreadable. I’m also not buying the claims he’d have no idea about quoting or attribution or the rest of it because of having dropped English classes at 16 or thereabouts. One doesn’t have to have any tertiary education to know that sort of thing.
And @30:
Even before all the slympepit business began, I always found that site to be far from friendly. Smug and condescending were more the words I’d use.
Whoop, should have read Cyranothe2nd @74 – that makes part of my comment irrelevant.
Really? For all Britain is held up as the bastion of education, with its Oxford and Cambridge and all, you don’t ever have to write?
Ok, thanks for that, Cyranthothe2nd. It’s more “I ignored this stuff in school” or “I didn’t really care about this stuff in school”, then.
I have often toyed with the idea of giving my students an exam, giving them a full answer sheet (I give mainly short/medium essay questions), and telling them it’s a 100% or 0% binary – they have to answer every question with the correct answer I gave them, but without any plagiarism. One instance gets them the zero.
Every year I come closer and closer to deciding to actually do it. This year might be the year.
Kristjan Wager wrote
HTML fail above.
#56 F.O.
Or even recognising their presence. Would that Pit itself could clean house – but then there’d only be spectators left.
We know this isn’t the first time time FtB has dealt with a bad apple either. Of course, the first such apple was PMS, aka Posterboy for Misogynist Stupidity, aka Phil Mason, aka Thunderwhatever. But (again, of course) he was a brave manly hero, a champion of free speech, a wasp against lions, and was unfairly turfed out via ghastly misandrist hate-crime because of mere dissent from FtB feminazi dogma – nothing at all to do with immediately behaving like an abusive arsehole toward his colleagues at the slightest hint of criticism or disagreement. Although, sarcasm aside, I’d’ve turfed him for his shitty writing eventually, even if he wasn’t a raging git.
Avicenna, on the other hand – according to Pit lore – was more than a plagiarist, he was also an origin-fabricating fraud and impostor and should have been ejected years ago.
I give full credit to this network for removing people from their rolls who behave unethically, even (especially) supporters of their SJ goals like Avicenna. This also includes the banning of repeat-offending trolls and tedious sea-lioning JAQ-offs. Hemant, Nugent & co, for all their accomplishments, could do far more to clean their own houses and probably would if they didn’t seem intent on pleasing everyone, to the detriment of a large chunk of their audience.
If he hadn’t known plagiarizing was wrong, he wouldn’t have tried to deflect the accusation.
It would have been rather surreal, and required Cheney-esque skills of pretended obliviousness, “what? that’s a thing? OMG! I had no idea!! What should I do? I can go back and edit all my posts and put citations in, would that work?”
Fucking Christ. The usual chorus of handwringing regarding the severity of plagiarism is bad enough. And it is always disheartening to have to get rid of someone you trusted because they have proven to be not honest enough to deserve that trust. But add into that the roaring celebration and cry for more blood from the Pit, and you have one thoroughly depressing affair.
Reading Avi’s not-pology kinda sucked, the whole thing is disappointing and that didn’t help. The smug assholes in his comments are far more irritating to me, though.
Fucking Steersman alert.
Pfft. As if there were something of import in the comment worth addressing.
Eat shit slyme scum
I wonder, if in old age when you people look back on your lives, you’ll be satisfied with the amount of time you spent obsessing over a small group of people on one blog network. Will you consider it a life well spent?
You do know that invading a space where you know you’re not welcome is considered harassment, don’t you?
@91, Steers Mann
Ya, we should probably keep Avi around too. I’m sure he has
good pointsvaluable speculation every once and a while.Wait, that isn’t what you were argueing?
On a list of “godsdamn impolite entitled behaviour” coming back to a place you’ve been banned from counts, Steersman
You’ve overstayed your welcome long ago.
+++
You know, if you accuse somebody of speeding, arson and murder and the speeding part is true, you still have to put up evidence for arson and murder. It’s not automatically more credible.
Is it a huge breach of trust? Sure! Hold him responsible for that.
But seriously, I don’t give a fuck about “how this is going to make the Pit more credible”. If anything, it has made FtB credible because they acted on it.
@78 – Carlie
Because we all go to Oxford and Cambridge, right? I’m 45 and in my day, most people didn’t stay in school past 16. I’m also shocked at Cyranothe2nd.
This is quite simply untrue. There are no mandatory writing courses in sixth form and university in the UK. We don’t call them high school and college.
Steers mann,
invading the place of someone else who has made clear you are not welcome is not the fucking same as saying things about other groups of people in your own space and then those other groups demanding you don’t say those things.
It is very fucking telling that you put “harassment” in scare quotes because, like all your other slympit buddies, you clearly don’t know what that word means.
#86
The allegation of plagiarism is true because evidence was provided; have you provided evidence for those other insinuations, or are you relying on speculation? Not that I expect any good-faith response from you, given your deliberately ridiculous comparison to Nazism in #95.
Oh and in #99: “… But maybe “next” time y’all will be a little quicker to at least consider the evidence that’s presented.”
Avicenna was kicked from the network mere hours after the evidence was brought to Brayton’s attention.
Oh Steersman, your concern for Nugent is as touching as it is sincere.
And just for the lolz:
So your justification for your harassment is that because PZ said something you disagree with, you have carte blanche to harass.
Smells of sea lions in here
I don’t at all get what’s wrong with plagiarism unless you’re earning money or glory for someone else’s work. Our words, every single word, our thoughts, our statements are always just recombinations of other people’s words. It’s not like reporting on current events is high literature and you’re stealing someone else’s genius. Citing your sources is a courtesy. I believe in courtesy and also practice it and encourage others to do so when the occasion presents itself but that’s quite different from shunning and banning for copy and paste of news reports!
carlie @79
DO IT! I nearly popped a gasket when I did a Certificate IV this year, asked the instructor if we should put the answers he was reading out into our own words to show we comprehended the information, and he said no, just copy what he was saying.
How to make a virtually useless course even worse …
@chimera
Actually this is not true on multiple levels.
Language is always changing and evolving, and events with it. So there are in fact new ways of saying things.
No one has heard every given combination of every symbol that will produce the same emotional response (regardless of the exact nature of the symbols). So there will likely be a role in society for people that mix our symbols for the benefit of others. Even in a situation where the same combination has been made again it may not have been because they saw the other mix.
As we discover new things there will be opportunities for symbols to be used with respect to those things in a multitude of ways. I may be the first person with Tourette’s Syndrome to know this much about how their minds work, and this shit is in my very language processing. There are no symbols for a lot of the things I wish I could express, and I tend to be very liberal with how I modify our language when I need to. By instinct. That instinct is universal.
I’m sure there are other things too.
@ 101 – chimera
Oh, boy! Well, look at it this way. If you go to your friend’s house and discover they’ve appropriated some insignificantly cheap object you weren’t even using without consulting you, you might be taken aback. Especially if you discover they’ve done it to a lot of your other mutual friends. But objectively, you could argue it does no harm. There have been cultures in which such behaviors were normalized. A lot of this stuff is local to a given culture, and therefore acceptability does need to be taught. People without much experience of various cultures often don’t get that.
@chimera
So would it be okay to steal an object from someone, so long as you don’t earn money from it? The problem here has nothing to do with money or reputation, but with intellectual property. Those words didn’t belong to Avicenna, but he took them and passed them off as his own. It is theft of someone else’s work, plain and simple.
I’ve had problems with (upper-level college) students plagiarizing in the past, so one of the first things I do in class is discuss plagiarism. I give students a simple quiz–I ask them to define plagiarism. Then I give them an original passage followed by a few excerpts, and ask them to identify if the excerpts represent proper quotation, proper paraphrasing (with attribution) or plagiarism. They all pass with flying colors. They know when something is close enough to the original that they should simply put quotation marks around it. They know what attribution looks like, and they know what plagiarism looks like.
Then I discuss strategies for avoiding plagiarism. Number one is time-management. Whenever I’ve questioned a student about why they plagiarized, their answer is invariably that they ran out of time and were simply trying to complete the assignment quickly.
In short: I’m sadly not surprised any time I encounter plagiarism, but I’m always disappointed. It is lazy, and it shows a lack of respect for other writers and their work. But from a teaching perspective, when you make sure you and your students are all aware of plagiarism and what it means, and you give them the tools and confidence to avoid it, it’s much less of a problem.
Steersman?
I wish I was here for that! I only saw his first comment. That guy is a delicious pile of irrational group-think.
Despite the unfortunate situation I’m not all that worried in the long run if the situation in Hement’s comments and interactions at Avicenna’s is any indication. The ‘pitters are fucking pathetic one-on-one, and whatever-on-one it was that I was doing over there. They had no ability whatsoever to actually back up anything with respect to a claim about another. Even their own people making their own claims! I’m not sorry or worried about any occasion where I defended Avicenna because I can defend each and every occasion that I backed him up.
Their whole problem is that they have a”strategy” and that is it. If all one has is a strategy, all one wants is domination. Being consistent with reality (my favorite three words) does not appear to be a part of their behavior at all so what they do looks very different than what should be. The whole “sea lioning” behavior is one I am very familiar with and the critical part is avoiding as much work as possible while piling as much work on the other person as you can. I had to develop a pretty tight set of principles while I was a moderator that is partly based on effectively redirecting the burden back to where it belongs.
Very common behaviors:
Subject changing
>Refusal to support their facts and assertions. Over and over and over and bits of this one are in all the others because this unpacks into specific methods.
>Attempts to get me to defend actions or things that I did not say or do via tribal relations. I came in challenging them about mythologizing PZ’s reasonable “haven for rapists” into “PZ said all slymepitters are rapists!”. They tried to twist that into demands that I answer a challenge about PZ (authority figure), FTB (social affiliation), feminism/feminists* (political/social affiliation, not in that thread but I’ve seen it), ANYTHING to get it off of them and onto me.
I employ a lot of methods to quickly point out the cowardly bullshit and the best ones depend on the social context (blog/board, subject of OP, peaceful/fighting conditions…)
>Attempts to insert irrelevant points, information, or questions to persue for rhetorical purposes. For example that crap steersman brought up about PZ and and his reference to Nugent’s blog as a haven for rapists? I think he’s just sore from the exchange I had with multiple people on that issue. One of them tried to turn that into an exploration into if PZ had proved that anyone in the pit or on Nugents blog was a rapist. I simply wished them luck at their useless exploration because one can describe cultural features that make specific behaviors easier without showing that those people were there. “What do you mean my house is a haven for roaches! Prove there is a rat here!” *Says while standing in a pile of food scraps*
Mythologizing**
>Attempts to present their subjective emotional characterizations of an event or person as “data” I should consider. Fuck that shit. Literally every social conflict I have ever been a part of has involved literal events being twisted into forms constructed of emotional fluff. I don’t do fluff. I want substance. No one over there seemed willing or able to present what PZ said about Nugent’s blog with respect to rapists. They fought every single request and that only means a couple of things. 1) they can’t give me the link, 2) they won’t give me the link. The implications of both of those are really shitty for them as human beings. They either subsist primarily off of gossip (very similar to looking at what 8chaners think of things), are lazy and willing to present assertions based on very dim selective memories, or they are lying. All of that can be prepared for.
Dropping “work bombs”
>Like the Gish gallop, a link dump is attempt to create too much work for the other person. After they brought Nugent’s claims about PZ up I linked to Nugent’s post where he collected all of his examples of PZ saying naughty things and pointed out that it was all emotional characterization and I have no reason to believe that anything bad was said until he (or implicitly one of them) tells me why those things are a problem. The first person to actually give me a link linked me to the same link that I linked! How much more evidence do I need for inability to read for comprehension for that person XD.
The second person gave me ~15 links or so and there I have a couple of rules. If the first link is utterly irrelevant to the subject I reject the whole set with all the rhetorical flair appropriate to that environment. The first link was utterly irrelevant to Nugent explaining why what PZ said was a problem. If the links are relevant I give their sources three chances to avoid bullshit. Once I encounter three lies, misrepresentations, or subjective characterizations with no comparison to the original I rhetorically rub their noses in it.
Selective response
>They almost never respond to everything you say. If I take the time to respond to everything a person says they have an obligation to do the same. After all they implicitly want me to consider all of that so they have to do the same in a fair social exchange. If you approach these things right you can wrap them up in the social contract until it feels like a straight jacket.
This is for your own lists of garbage tactics. I love the idea of an FTB blogger community code of conduct. But like dealing with creationists, people interested in social justice need their codes that simultaneously enforce good argumentative conduct and create excellent skill sets for persuasion and online fist-fights when necessary.
XXX
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*Incidentally this is why I have a hard time using the word feminsim. I have gotten really good at avoiding almost all references to people, groups, ideologies, governments and similar to support my positions and it has become a legitimate strategy for a lot of reasons. That still does not change the fact that I NEED to start using it.
**Note this also partially maps onto rhetorical hyperbolic characterization for persuasive purposes which we use around here all the time. The key is to always be willing and able to replace your sales pitch with the actual product. Non-literal language requires morals and ethics.
Tangentially . . . Study of massive preprint archive hints at the geography of plagiarism
@chimera:
Citing your sources is honest. Therefore, not citing your sources is the opposite of honest.
chimera
What other versions of plagiarism are there?
I mean, sure, notes I take in lectures are probably full with unattributed quotes, missquotes, verbatim of the lecturer…, but nobody is ever going to see them apart from me and they’re destined for recycling anyway.
As soon as you’re putting words out there you either write your own or make sure to tell people who wrote them because writing is work.
Brony, Steersman was last seen on Ed’s blog.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2015/01/03/avicenna-has-been-removed-from-freethought-blogs/#comment-392500
Saying exactly the same thing he tried to make stick here.
Enjoy, if that’s your thing
Isn’t that basically what plagiarism is?! Like, down to its bare bones, that’s what all plagiarism is. You want to get credit (“glory”) for someone else’s work, whatever that credit may be (and in this case, it was page hits and comments from readers). The “glory” doesn’t have to be monetary. It can just be someone assuming *you* were the writer, and therefore you were the creator of the words you stole. That’s it. That’s what plagiarism is, at its bones.
I’m going to step around the “is plagiarism theft?” debate and center my opinion on something else:
Plagiarism is lying.
When you plagiarize, you are saying, “these words are mine” when they are not.
That’s dishonest.
I dislike dishonesty and dishonest people.
@ Gen 110
Thanks!
I hope I did not seem too caviler though. In all honesty I have to watch my emotions and I can’t so that kind of thing as often as I would like.
Dammit.
“…I can’t do that kind of thing as often as I would like.”
I don’t at all get what’s wrong with plagiarism unless you’re earning money or glory for someone else’s work
Writing is an exercise in creativity. And, ultimately, the world around us consists of those things that already existed, or those things that someone – using their creativity – made. That’s why we honor creativity: it’s not just the highest expression of our will, it’s how we leave our mark on the future. It doesn’t matter if it’s a child’s scrawlings that end up on a refrigerator, or Shakespeare’s folios – without the uniqueness of the creative act, it’s just a meaningless copy. We value originality always, it seems – which is why the original Mona Lisa is well-guarded and armored against disaster, and precise copies made by computers are discarded in trash heaps every time they get wrinkled. Originality is glory, and glory can be monetized. So, when someone passes off another’s creative work as their own, they are stealing the only true glory and legacy that other person can hope to have.
Plagiarism, property, you are all such good little capitalists, “propertarians” U. Le Guin would say. It’s MINE, MINE, MINE, HIS, HIS, HIS or HERS.
Chimera, I am not a capitalist. My objection to plagiarism is rooted in the dishonesty of passing off someone else’s work as your own.
I don’t know who U. Le Guin is, but he/she sounds like an idiot.
Ursula Le Guin isn’t an idiot, it’s just chimera making her sound like one.
Actually, 3 minutes Googling tells me Ursula Le Guin is quite the supporter of copyrights, even going so far as resigning membership of the Authors Guild because they supported Google’s digitalisation of books project, which she sees as weakening copyrights.
I guess she must be one of those capitalists she hates so much.
Me* at 109:
It only a problem when it’s about the money and the glory. I can literally think of no other reason that someone would want to honestly represent theirself, and not have others falsely represent themselves as theirself.
At 116, I* wrote
ostensibly to mock others, but as I* just pointed out, it’s me* that only sees in terms of personal profit, either material or social.
I’m* just not that good at thinking, folks.
*I’m chimera as well now. As long as I don’t get any money or glory, the other chimera doesn’t mind. This thread is gonna get fun.
The problem with capitalism in this area (as far as I know) is with copyrights and corporations right? This is a matter of giving credit for sourcing and gets public social censure and other consequences. in this context (unless there are legal aspects to sourcing I am unaware of). I suppose I’m not against some sort of public legal cost to plagiarism and similar in principle but I would have to think about that.
Me* at 121:
* No, I’m
Spartacuschimera!I’m chimera, and so is my wife.
Dear chimera there @121. You had me confused for a while. Not sure I really know myself very well and je est un autre. Or maybe little elves that comment for you while you sleep are true, Lazy Elsa and Hop o’ My Thumb and all that.
You’ve really got me on the colors. I must admit defeat in that department. Sigh.
I maintain that there isn’t nothing to what I’m trying to say.
Dear chimera there @121. You had me confused for a while. Not sure I really know myself very well and je est un autre. Or maybe little elves that comment for you while you sleep are true, Lazy Elsa and Hop o’ My Thumb and all that.
You’ve really got me on the colors. I must admit defeat in that department. Sigh.
I maintain that there isn’t nothing to what I’m trying to say.
Bless your heart, Chigau!
I have been waiting years to say that.
Wikipedia says Most chimeras will go through life without realizing they are chimeras. The difference in phenotypes may be subtle (e.g., having a hitchhiker’s thumb and a straight thumb, eyes of slightly different colors, differential hair growth on opposite sides of the body, etc.) or completely undetectable. Chimeras may also show, under a certain spectrum of UV light, distinctive marks on the back resembling that of arrow points pointing downwards from the shoulders down to the lower back.
Bless your heart, Chigau!
I have been waiting years to say that.
It turns out you put the quote into the cite attribute instead of between the opening <blockquote> and the closing </blockquote> tags. The cite attribute is allowed here, but that just means the software doesn’t delete it before posting your comment; it doesn’t actually do anything. On some sites, <blockquote cite=”Kristjan Wager”> would have automatically generated a blockquote preceded by “Kristjan Wager wrote” or something, but not here.
Here’s the source text of comment 80 as it is posted, complete with the automatically added <div> and <p> tags that we’re not allowed to write ourselves:
<div class="comment-content" itemprop="commentText"><p>Kristjan Wager wrote</p>
<blockquote cite="Looking at the comment section of the Friendly Atheist (or JT’s blog for that matter), I don’t see much difference between it and the Slymepit.">
<p>The vast majority of those posts are not coming from even occasional FA commenters. They just all came over to push their agenda.</p></blockquote>
</div>
Clearly, comment 80 was intended to look like this:
which I wrote by putting
Kristjan Wager wrote<blockquote>Looking at the comment section of the Friendly Atheist (or JT’s blog for that matter), I don’t see much difference between it and the Slymepit.</blockquote>
The vast majority of those posts are not coming from even occasional FA commenters. They just all came over to push their agenda.
between another pair of <blockquote> and </blockquote>.
As Esteleth has already pointed out, it’s a lie.
If you write anything without attributing it to a source, you make a statement that you came up with that material right then and there. When that’s not the case, you’re lying.
You act as if new facts were never discovered. In my field, they’re literally dug up…
I’m not even coming to this from the point of view of literature. I’m a scientist. Pretty soon, I hope, I’ll pay a lot of money to an open-access journal so it’ll publish a manuscript of mine, with no direct financial gain for myself!
When you plagiarize on the Internet, you lie to the whole world.
Fuck courtesy. This isn’t about rituals; it’s about not being a lying asshole!
Funnily enough, it is, as someone said on Facebook in a post that isn’t public as far as I remember, about ethics in journalism.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite, May I share your comment @ #106? I belong to a couple of Facebook groups that could use your troll-handling insights and techniques!
(With attribution of course!)
Lady MondegreenI said:Clearly you have learned nothing from chimera.
chimeraSomeone said:Clearly you have learned nothing from chimera.
chimera #101:
And this is merely a recombination of readily- and commonly-available materials. It would still be dishonest of me to attempt to pass it off as my own work, though.
David Marjanović @ 130
QFFT
(Gosh, not just claiming those words as my own was super easy! And had nothing to do with capitalism.)
I’m having a hard time understanding why [the real] chimera treats deceit and theft of intellectual property as something that’s ‘no big deal’.
Spokes @ 30:
I guess “friendly” means “indiscriminantly friendly.”
Gen @ 34:
It gives them justification to level any accusation they can think of at anyone vaguely in range. Greta Christina embezzled money to buy shoes! PZ stole newspapers! PhysioProf made a right turn on redde! Eventually they’ll hit something, after wasting everyone’s time. And/or they’ll make an accusation that isn’t investigated and, whether or not it has any merit, scream about how they made a charge and those scalliwags at FtB are protecting the person.
Pen #96:
What utter rot. We have secondary school, which is the equivalent of US high school, and English Language—which includes writing classes—is a mandatory course. And we don’t have colleges? Well then, two years of my teens would appear to have been completely imaginary. I s’pect I’m imagining my real name too. I’m actually Walter bleedin’ Mitty.
@ Lady Mondegreen 131
By all means please do. Anything I ever leave around here that someone finds useful should be used.
Chimera, if plagiarism is only a big deal when it comes to money and people only oppose it because they’re “good capitalists”, why do students fail assignments or get ejected from courses or even schools if they plagiarise? Students don’t make money from handing in assignments, so why do lecturers care when a student is caught ripping off someone else’s work? Even when it’s just another student being plagiarised, or slabs of work copied from some assignment archived in some cheater’s database somewhere, why do you think people care on those occasions where money isn’t a factor?
TL;DR: why are you pro-cheating?
General: as for Avicenna’s distracting, run-on writing style and how that reflects on the location and quality of his education – well, it’s not a reliable indicator at all. I finished school in 1993 and all the guys I maintain contact with have individual styles of writing and composition and varying competency in spelling in grammar. I doubt anyone could look at samples of our writing and use them to determine that we went to the same school and shared many of the same teachers – Christ, there are countless people my age and older on my FB feed that don’t know their “they’re” from their “there”. I’ve had managers in previous jobs that spelled basic common words so ham-fistedly that I had to wonder if their parents got their money’s worth out of their expensive private school – since when did a forty-three year-old with an expensive education spell champagne as “champaign”? Since he didn’t pay attention in class or read any books – or labels – I suppose. Hell, he even spelled my name wrong when all he had to do was check my email address.
Frankly, this notion that Avicenna couldn’t have been schooled in England based on his writing style (and therefore, what, exactly? He’s lying about literally everything else? Citations pls) just smacks of a desperate birther conspiracy. You might as well claim Phil Mason is wrong because he writes so bloody poorly he can’t possibly be English, therefore, what, exactly? Play the ball where it lies, you don’t need to dig holes under the bloody thing.
I frankly was disappointed with the direction Mehta took with that article.
it was way too personal, and much too much a not so sly attempt at poking at the entire FTB network.
I’ve grown to dislike him over the last few years, and this post didn’t do him any favors in my book.
another blog I won’t be reading again.
chimera
It’s funny how you are so quick to dismiss somebody who actually created something as being a selfish, capitalist “me, me, me” person but completely unable to see that the person who’s plagiarizing is basically doing just that. Even if it’s just a fucking blockpost, even if it’s on a blog with no adds, the person who just takes content they didn’t create and publishes it as their own writing is standing there on a frigging box shoulting loudly “Loook! Me! I did this!”
You seem to be under the impression that people are calling for an end of using what other people have written. That’s wrong. People are calling for proper attribution of things others have written. Of course, if you write a blogpost that’s titled:
Thoughts on Sycamore Trees and then you just quote 20 different people, your readers might still like it, and may be even grateful that you did the work and put all those quotes in one place, but you won’t get credit for the original thinking and writing.
And that’s ok. Nobody argues against that kind of thing.
Doesn’t Mehta blog from the same network as Bristol Palin? Pissing on a network for the sins of one of it’s contributors seems funny.
@Brony, 106
That one seems to be pretty popular among them, doesn’t it? I remember diving into one that was posted on here once, a while back, in the thunderdome, I think. I got about a fifth of the way through the links before following a link through to another link dump. Funny thing was that all the links in that one could be found in the one that I’d come from. I haven’t seen Inception, but I imagine that’s pretty much the plot of it… my only worry now is what if I’m still in a link dump?
Apparently they actually accept such things as adequate evidence themselves, which surprised me – I thought it was just a tactic to silence or slow their opponents, but they apparently find them to be valid sources, at least sometimes. My ex-token facebook MRA, not long before his transition from token to ex-token, shared a meme claiming something like “the majority of women lie about rape.” I followed it through to the source, where there was, gratifyingly, quite a lot of talk about sources, since the image had none, and, since they criticise feminists for not sharing sources, they didn’t want to be guilty of the same. The OP responded to them that he didn’t have that particular source, but he’d seen this handy collection of sources that related. I checked it out… link dump… totally unrelated, except insofar as there was a thread of claiming that women lie about rape.
I commented on that on ex-token’s post and, while I forget the details, it ended in a comment complaining about the fact that social sci studies about “why women lie about rape” are heresy in mainstream academia these days, which was funny; I’m no social scientist, but I’m pretty sure that would be a useless study – far better, if the study is needed, to ask if x condition influences false rape accusations, rather than go on a fishing trip. Anyway… I seem to be getting off topic here.
@Chimera, 116
Yeah, damn those capitalists!
Funny thing, I’m pretty anti-capitalist, but I still live in a capitalist society. That means that, among other things, if I don’t have some form of income, then I don’t have any form of food or housing… or internet access. I like having some form of food, housing and internet access, and so I need to have some form of income. If my income comes to me through writing, then people taking my words and presenting them as their own harms me. I don’t have to be a capitalist for that to be true; I just have to live in a capitalist society, and I do.
@144, Athywren
That and a pint, please.
Just because someone isn’t a capitalist doesn’t mean they’re not a realist. Render unto the vendor.
Now, @chimera, if that vendor happens to be me, fucked if I’m going to be okay with someone claiming my work is theirs. I wouldn’t stand for some co-worker taking credit for a report – or even a coffee run – double-fucked if I’m going to stand for something I created to be passed off wholesale as someone else’s work or chopped and pasted without even linking to the original. I worked hard to make my posts and songs and drawings and I’m proud of them – but most of the time all someone has to do is ask and they can use something, in part or in whole, and it’s no problem. Don’t ask? Problem.
Again, please tell me why you’re pro-cheating and pro-thievery.
(Then maybe someone else can tell me why people are having to explain to chimera why cheating and stealing from people is wrong. Do we need atheist commandments or something?)
I’m very surprised by how many people took the time to reply to me or play with me at all. I guess I hit a nerve. But I agree with most everything everyone has responded to me but my point is actually elsewhere. I’m not sure it’s worth reading about though. When I consider the time it would take me to actually express it (maybe 6 hours of writing?), the time it would take anyone else to read it (10 minutes?), the probable number of people willing to read such a lengthy post (4 or 5?) and the probable number of people who might profit in some way from it (maybe 1?), I think I would do better to get dressed and go out grocery shopping instead! I am not being cowardly, I am being realistic about what i can produce.
So, I’ll just make a small comment on the last comment addressed to the nebulous of issues I brought up. Yes, yes, we live in a capitalist society and must sing for our supper. True. But we must be wary of swallowing the fictions of that society after we sing. And one of those fictions is the genius fiction, linked ideologically to the self-made man fiction, to the god-damnit-I-did-that-all-by-my-little-old-self-and-deserve-to-keep-all-the-profits-for-myself complaint. Ultimately, authorship is in many respects (but not all) a fiction. Most of us owe most of it most of the time to everyone else and in particular to all of those people and creatures who have gone before.
p.s. I have run out of milk, orange juice and antibiotics.
chimera, #146
Well, dang. I was gonna post it on my blog.
Saad,
post what? what do you mean?
chimera: None of that shit you brought up matters. Ownership is only a portion of the issue. Dishonest misrepresentation of someone else’s EXACT writings as your own is an issue.
In addition, we do live in a capitalist society and Avicenna was getting money from his writings. The fact that he wasn’t actually writing those writings is a serious ethical issue. Maybe it wouldn’t be if we lived in some form of perfect socialist utopia, but we don’t. Just as stealing for no real reason wouldn’t even really be stealing in said utopia, yet that doesn’t make stealing have the same morally neutral status in our actual, real world, ferociously capitalist, “sing for your supper” society.
It was a plagiarism joke.
Transparent trolling by Chimera.
Allow me to translate from the Cowardly Trollese:
I suppose perhaps you did hit a nerve, Chimera. A lot of writers around here, and a lot of people who depend in some way on intellectual property for their income. Yep, they were justifiably upset by your nonsense that you tried to pass off as sensible anti-capitalism. So? Do you regard it as an accomplishment of note, to say something that upsets or disturbs others? Because I have found that it’s relatively simple to elicit negative emotional reactions from others, it just takes a willingness to act like a complete asshole. Are you proud of the ability to act like a complete asshole, or are you under the impression that it’s actually complicated, challenging, and difficult to elicit negative emotional reactions in others?
Well, yes. Over here, a whole list of politicians were recently found out to have plagiarized on a huge scale in their dissertations. They got the title of Doctor, were considered experts, and were made ministers of things they actually had little idea of, not to mention that there’s really already enough lying going on in politics.
anteprepro, #151
I wish I could take credit for it though.
@ Athywren 144
DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE ANECDOTE. It’s not off topic, it’s just that most people don’t realize that they are not proof. They are a means of personalizing a pattern that has been recognized by seeing a collection of them. Some people learn by example and I am certainly one of them. I learned by watching people have internet “bar room brawls” with creationists and similar.That is how people get a functional understanding of behavior. It just has to be clearly understood that the example compliments the evidence.
The funny thing is you joke at the end, but I think that the joke hints at the problem. Endless (or just very lengthy) chains of links or references that need to be followed to get to the bits of reality that is being referred to. I can only think of a couple of possible explanations.
*The people passing links trust the source because of who they are.
*The people passing links trust the source because of social-political affiliation (and associated motives).
**The people passing links are deliberately being deceptive.
The last one can also be with the previous two and is easy to assume, but I find it more effective to pretend they are honest but wrong. If I know precisely what I need to do next as a matter of routine when assuming honesty it gets easier over time. I also works better on the audience because they see you give them a chance and explain the problem.
As for the first two we are firmly in the realms of the social emotions. What I posted in 106 are current strategies that stem from this reality.
Whatever social emotions are they firmly exist and are a force in the human mind with varying intensity based on life experience at the least. The logic and sensation of “I trust this person/group” is one obstacle. The logic and sensation of “I like this argument/position because it benefits me/my group” is another. The fact that they are willing to assert things about reality based on social emotions is their flaw, and in all honesty a flaw that exists in every community including this one too. I see people defend FTB with assertions as well and I am still unsure of how to handle that because I can still have trouble being precise and efficient with criticism in my own group.
Saying “Nugent’s articles are bullshit” and “The pit is full of racists and sexists” may be a rhetorically hyperbolic truth, but one still has to be able offer the product independent of the sales pitch. It is just the reality that we are at the level of community “they said/they said” and those are claims of fact as much as a god claim. In a specific arena of conflict we need to be able to document what we are claiming and that should not be as hard if one has a routine. If one is making a fact claim, chase down the necessary evidence to demonstrate it before it disappears, and save it (screenshots, saving webpages and associated data with an app like pdfcrowd, etc…). I hope they save Avicenna’s blog.
There is a place for taking someone at their word and the community equivalent. But that place is very uncertain beyond first hand connections.
Making them see that I have no reason to trust their social circle is the challenge
…uh, before they were found out. Most of them are politically dead now.
Of course you can take credit for it! Or maybe you can’t, because credit for the written word is propertarian. One or the other.
Also: very fitting that the Pro-Plagiarism troll would say something like “I guess I hit a nerve”. Such a common meme for the unabashed troll. Though I guess it could also be ironic also, because it is such a common meme that it is case where regurgitating without citation is entirely justifiable and NOT a case of plagiarism. One or the other.
And I’m still not happy with that term because hyperbole can imply that an emotional intensity is not warranted. One of the basic disagreements in this schism is over people thinking that other people should not feel as strongly about certain things. As far as I am concerned people who have experienced and want to fight sexism, racism , and abuse have outrage and other emotinal intensity that is totally legitimate and appropriate. I don’t respect the outrage displayed by people like Nugent and the pitters on a wide variety of issues.
Well, this sucks. Another interesting blog gone. Why do people have to do this shit?
I’m not sure it’s worth reading about though. When I consider the time it would take me to actually express it (maybe 6 hours of writing?), the time it would take anyone else to read it (10 minutes?), the probable number of people willing to read such a lengthy post (4 or 5?) and the probable number of people who might profit in some way from it (maybe 1?), I think I would do better to get dressed and go out grocery shopping instead!
How much time did you waste lecturing us on what a waste of time it is to talk about this subject?
And why did you only say it’s a waste of time AFTER you wasted your own time making an ass of yourself? Yes, you ARE being cowardly.
Ultimately, authorship is in many respects (but not all) a fiction.
No, the work one does in researching, compiling, and organizing the works of others to either build something new or make a particular point, is NOT fiction. It’s real work, and deserves to be credited and fairly compensated just like all other forms of real work. If that’s the main point you’re trying to make, then it’s just plain wrong.
I haven’t seen Inception, but I imagine that’s pretty much the plot of it… my only worry now is what if I’m still in a link dump?
If you tell one of the people posting link-dumps to sit and spin, and he does so with no hint that he’ll ever slow down, chances are you’re still not out of the link-dump.
Saying “Nugent’s articles are bullshit” and “The pit is full of racists and sexists” may be a rhetorically hyperbolic truth, but one still has to be able offer the product independent of the sales pitch.
What the fuck does that even mean? FTBers offer pretty damn good product, with or without mentioning the Slymepit. And no, the examples you quote are not just “rhetorically hyperbolic truth,” they’re general statements of well-known fact.
It is just the reality that we are at the level of community “they said/they said” and those are claims of fact as much as a god claim.
Unlike a god-claim, the claims you quoted are easily verified. And if they were wrong, they’d be easily refuted. You know what else is easily verified? The failure of the ‘pittiful to actually disprove any such claims.
@ Raging Bee
Yeah I realize that was a poor way of getting at what I was thinking about. I responded to myself in 158 about that as well.
I absolutely agree that we have a superior group over here. In a lot of ways my text walls up there are thinking about how we might improve things even more. I would not be surprised if some (or a lot) of it needs retooling or dropped based on real-world conditions.
I would also be surprised if this specific issue is one where I am being unfair and should rethink things because a lot of this part is personal preference. To me it’s a matter of the simple emotional characterization that is accurate being something that needs to be be able to be supported. No one has to be able to support it because people give opinions. I also don’t want to put pressure on people already feeling pressure and that is one reason I step up to fight as often as I can. So I’m not really willing to challenge people saying that pitters are racist and sexist as opinion only myself.
The whole reason there is a schism is because we disagree on commonly accepted facts as a group. If I demand that a ‘pitter or Nugent (or whoever) be able to point to PZ’s comment and say precisely why it’s a problem on the spot, I should be able to point to the support for my assertions.
I brought this up because I have seen some claims that were made and challenged that I had problems chasing down and verifying (a claim about a person being a pitter and involved in a situation on Lousy Canuck for example). I could not use what was on the post to verify the facts myself. But it’s possible I could not figure out which trail to follow and it was not a claim that I would have made myself.
I definitely could present this better.
Dammit!
In 162 it should say,
. I think a break is in order.
Shorter chimera:
“Gee, didn’t know people would get like so upset about stealing and lying and cheating. Now, I could justify my position but instead of actually thinking about it further and expanding on it, I’ll just bail out with a half-arsed nonsplanation alluding to the libertarian bootstrap fantasy, which is like totally the exact same thing as wanting credit for things that you’ve created (disregarding whether you also want money for them, because my argument only works when people wanna get paid). I don’t care if you buy it but I happen to think it gets me off the hook. Laters potaters.”
Blah. Next thread.
@ Brony #138
Thanks!
@Chimera, 146
Uh-huh. What does that have to do with the issue at hand? I recognise that I and my writing are influenced by the books I have read, the people I have spoken to. There are teachers and lectures, philosophies and fiction, film and TV, even games we have played in anything we produce. In my writing, I recognise little bits of Dawkins and Nietzsche, hints of Greer and Marx. I see Deus Ex and Shadowrun, Dune and Robin Hood… the urge to include references to Wolfman’s nards is sometimes overpowering… and embarrassing. All of these things are woven in amongst my words. I recognise that, and I see no reason to be ashamed of it. There might even be times when I very closely parallel a storyline or character for a particular purpose* but I wouldn’t copy a chapter of Elf Queen Of Shanarra or one of the Rihannsu novels into my book and call it my own.
Even if I wanted to tell the same story that they told, I would do so in my own words. I mean, take Wicked or Maleficent – they’re both extant stories, but they’re retold and expanded upon in such a way as to make the new work simultaneously recognisable as a retelling of the original, while original and unexpected in their own ways, and making a point about the influence that half-truths and omissions can have over our perceptions of people. The Stars’ Tennis Balls doesn’t even go so far as they do, and is essentially The Count Of Monte Cristo, more or less as is, set in the modern day and different locations. They certainly owe much to their source material, but they are not merely copies, and they are open about what they are. Not one of them simply copies the words from the original and signs their own name to it. In reading them, you gain something that you do not find in the originals. There is more to them; a new and unique view into the world that was opened up originally.
Being influenced by, or rewriting a older work is perfectly acceptable. Copying it out verbatim and putting your own name at the top, not so much.
This really isn’t a deep revelation about the nature of story telling, and it’s more than a little silly to bring it up as if it’s supposed to count against the idea that plagiarism is a bad thing, because plagiarism is something other than influence or homage, it’s blatant copying that is passed off as your own work without reference. Giving you the very best possible spin here, it’s still a rookie mistake to conflate one with the other.
*Hilarious thing… possibly… hilarious to me anyway: I picked up Saints Row 4 over the new year and have been playing it on and off. One of the missions does a total pisstake of The Stealth Mission and stealth games in general with elements that are basically ripped right out of Metal Gear complete with hiding under a cardboard box, “WTF?” coming up over guards’ heads when they’re surprised and “OMG!” when alerted, and mission failure being followed by Asha (your teammate for the mission) shouting “Boss? Boss!! BOOOOOSSSSSS!!!!” I think I broke something in my already hoarse throat from laughing at it. It was brilliant. It also wasn’t plagiarism. If it had been a totally straight mission that was entirely lifted from Metal Gear without so much as a wink, however, it would’ve been.
Hank_says: since when did a forty-three year-old with an expensive education spell champagne as “champaign”?
When he got that expensive education at the University of Illinois?
Sorry — couldn’t resist.
Ben Carson, possible Republican presidential candidate, also plagiarized extensively in a book he wrote. Best part?