[zeedotme]

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875

Zee from TNW here.

Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste.

We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

[droithomme]

Well Zee, I'm glad it is creeping up on HN so I and others will know to stay away from you and anything you and your people are involved in in the future since it is clear you are dishonest, a thief, a liar and someone who threatens the people you steal from - assuming that his citation of your tweet mentions were not fabricated, which I assume they were not since you didn't claim that in your response here.

We need more naming and shaming.

Mr. Gross did original research and wrote an article of interest to people. Your person stole his research and content, initially without attribution according to him, and including "nearly word-for-word" citations. This is plagiarism and theft. When you were very politely called out about this by Mr. Gross, you did not apologize, instead you stated you would punish him by "staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future", and then lied by saying that his findings were not all original research, lied that your site was not copying his content, and in general justified your organization's wrong actions.

Now if you had apologized and handled it reasonably that would be one thing. But your insulting and unreasonable response to him shows what sort of person you and the people who work for you are. Liars and thieves. A proven fact as demonstrated by your outrageous, offensive and insulting comments towards Mr. Gross.

[michael_dorfman]

Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

I'll give it a shot. What you should have done, in my opinion, is just provide a link alongside a one-line summary, along the lines of "Here's an article we found fascinating."

If the article you are writing is based on a single source, it's not an article-- it's a paraphrase.

We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

so, which was this? It was more than a link, but it surely doesn't qualify as "original content" by any stretch of the imagination.

[amouat]

> it's not an article-- it's a paraphrase

If they had bothered to paraphrase, it would have been much better. They didn't - they just copied.

[mpclark]

But a one line summary is too short to get picked up by Google News -- that's why all the tech blogs try to write at least 70 words on absolutely anything, no matter how thin it is...

[scott_s]

Simple: don't copy-paste.

I'm looking at this now: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-but...

You reproduced everything he said. If I saw your post only, I would assume that what I was reading were Harrison Weber's words paraphrasing Joshua Gross. Instead, it is what Gross said. And not even in quotations.

So what should you do? After the original text by Weber, post a title and a link to Gross' post. That's it.

[Braasch]

The author should have put quotes around the paragraphs that were blatantly copy and only slightly tweaked to show it came directly from the piece and wasn't written by Harrison.

Oh, and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.

[huggyface]

and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.

That is what put it over the top for me. The astonishingly lazy copying was bad enough, but feeling entitled about it is shocking.

Here's the thing -- people linked from sites like TNW report little to no traffic (which, of course, is wholly the intention of sites like TNW -- they don't want the eyeballs leaving). Quite the opposite, in fact, because this blogspam (is it anything but? Was there anything of value added?) steals traffic and linklove that would have gone to the usurped.

TNW: Drop the laughable notion that you're doing anyone a favour when you steal their content. It sells to no one. Good content will find its way atop the social news sites quickly, and all you're doing is getting in the way and trying to steal off some of the traffic of other people's work.

[zeedotme]

that I can appreciate, but to come out and call it "plagiarism" publicly although we couldn't have done more to reference him...is absurd to me.

Feels like this guy is trolling every single one of us here - myself included - to get a reaction.

[scott_s]

If I say, "This text is from John Doe," and then I proceed to quote John Doe to the point that the majority of my text is, in fact, John Doe's, then I have plagiarized John Doe.

In other words, attribution does not save you from plagiarism.

[Braasch]

But that's the thing: you didn't do more, and that's the problem here.

I don't see him as a troll. I see him as a guy who posted something he put a lot of effort into and ended up having his work reposted without even being justly credited. He has every right to be upset and share his story, and people deserve to know this.

P.S. Just stop with the Tweets, it's embarrassing not only you, but the publication you represent.

[idiot900]

You copied and pasted the article and changed a few words, then made it look like Harrison Weber wrote the text, even though he did not. The attribution is great but in this case not enough.

Either the text should have been created independently, or it should have been made clear that it was a direct quote (fair use) from Gross.

You should have learned why this was wrong in high school.

[praptak]

> we couldn't have done more to reference him

Obviously you could have done more: reference him right from the start, not only after he made a stink about you copy-pasting his material verbatim. Timing matters, earlier is more.

This is unless he's lying that you did it only after the fact. Care to explain this point? Edit: I see you already did elsewhere in this tread.

[rhizome]

I guess they don't teach this in the CEO school you went to, but it's not about crediting him more, it's about stealing from him less. There's a difference.

[shock-value]

You do not understand plagiarism.

[chris_wot]

Way to go with the ad hominem attack! As has by now been pointed out many, many times, your plagiarism, subsequent tweets and then coverup aren't acceptable.

[joering2]

I cannot believe how stupid this guy is!! is he for real?? does anyone know his history at RWW? How did he get there?

[skore]

> Feels like this guy is trolling every single one of us here - myself included - to get a reaction.

Wow, just wow. This just crossed the bullshit horizon.

[citricsquid]

The issue is you did not credit him initially. Are you saying that he was credited in the initial publication of the article and his screenshots that show this is not the case are fabricated?

[praptak]

This. It makes a huge difference whether you credit someone right from the beginning or just after he points it out to you.

[zedadex]

It doesn't just make a huge difference - it's a different thing entirely. Credit where credit is due, initially and up front, is being honest. Changing it after and pretending like it was like that the whole time is trying to cover up your own actions - that's arguably even worse than the initial plagarism. (At best it shows the same underhanded streak as the plagarism itself.)

Completely despicable. Added TNW to my hosts file.

[jack-r-abbit]

The screen shots don't go all the way down to where the current version online has him credited twice. So it is hard to say if they were already there or if all three credits were added at the same time after being called out.

[nikcub]

> Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

Completely frank and sincere feedback:

1. The two paragraphs taken from the source should have been block-quoted

2. The first paragraph of the story should have established source

3. The first link should have been to the source, not your own blog

4. The links used to backup the story should have been part of the blockquote or via'd

5. Misuse of 'via'. You didn't find the story 'via' Joshua, rather Joshua's post was the story

or options 2:

1. You realize that this is an interesting story for your audience, you check the license of the story and if it is permissible you republish it on your blog with Joshua as the author and a link back to the original

Suggestions:

1. Have an editor check every post before it is published for fair attribution. It is common that a single person can miss an attribution in 1 out of 100 cases, but with two people checking that becomes 1 in 10,000.

2. Re-publish stories that you think may be interesting for your audience rather than re-blogging and wrapping them

3. Circulate something internally about standards of attribution and perhaps also publish a page about it on your blog with a contact email address if any problems arise.

4. Respond to criticism better, the customer is always right etc.

It is cases like this that cause the media to constantly deride blogs. I really think you should take a step back and re-evaluate your response to this, and I say that in all honesty, complete sincerity and with absolutely no disrespect (there are writers at TNW whose work I follow and enjoy and I have been a long time reader).

[bigiain]

"4. Respond to criticism better, the customer is always right etc."

Keep in mind we're not paying for TNW - we're not "the customer".

(Having said that, without rewarding this poor behaviour with any more pageviews than necessary, it's not clear to me who _is_ paying TNW - I wonder if that 'cause their advertising roster is empty, or just 'cause they've geo-targeted me as being from the wrong side of the planet for their advertisers?)

[mvkel]

"and we decided to just copy/paste"

You answered your own question.

Also, your reaction to the original author via your public tweets was incredibly unprofessional. If you want to respond with such toxic language, you should so do via a private email. You're the face, the vision, the voice of TNW and I now associate your rude remarks with TNW as a whole.

[evan_]

you should read that again, he was saying that they DIDN'T cut and paste, but the original author reacted as though they had

[mvkel]

I read it correctly. My point was they _did_ cut and paste. The paragraphs are virtually identical. I was quoting him out of context to illustrate a point that he answered his own question.

[fruchtose]

> We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

Zee, let me tell you something. When you lie, do not lie in a way that can be disproven by math. I mean, it was easy, so easy for me to take five minutes to plug in the article text to a difference calculator and find the result. And here's the outcome:

  There is a 58.632778264680105% difference between Unwieldy's article and TheNextWeb's (41.367221735319895.% similar).

  If you remove the intro from TheNextWeb's article, there is a 28.213166144200624% difference between Unwieldy's article and TheNextWeb's (71.78683385579937.% similar).

Do you want to say the words "original content" again? Because I just determined that your article is at least 41% similar to the one you copied. If we remove the cute introduction, the sameness of your article jumps to over 70% . I used the well-known algorithm called Levenshtein distance. It took me a minute to figure out how I would determine how much TNW's article was plagiarized. And because I do not copy, I will even show you how I got it.

First, here are the articles I compared (text only, line breaks removed): http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/23049725899/plagiarism and http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-but...

Here's the code I used: http://ideone.com/BdNk2 (Java)

Here's the code I used to calculate the Levenshtein distance: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algorithm_Implementation/String...

And here's the technique I used to calculate the Levenshtein difference percentage (thanks to Alex Martelli): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3106994/algorithm-to-calc...

Now, what could you have done? You could actually admit there was no way you could produce "original content" from copying the original article unless you did actual research beyond what Joshua Gross found. You could merely post a link to the article and say, "This is cool. Check this out." And third, you could be nice on Twitter to the author you shamelessly ripped off. My god, when I can show 41% of your article to be the same as another, the least you should do is be 41% classy about it.

[jacquesm]

And, to boot is still in damage control mode, now that pretending ignorance does not work we're going for the 'unfortunate timing angle'.

Nice work on the distance calculation, I think you've just figured out a way to create a blogspam detector, if an article is linked from a newer article and there is a > X% (with X somewhere in the neighbourhood of 45%) or so similarity then it is blogspam.

[fruchtose]

Thanks, but the distance calculation is the work of Alex Martelli from Stack Overflow. It's one of the sources I cited: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3106994/algorithm-to-calc... I cited. It's simple enough that I probably could have thought of it on my own if I spent more time on it, but then again it was simple enough to find with a Google search.

[scoot]

I could have sworn it was the work of Vladimir Levenshtein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Levenshtein

[fruchtose]

The code I referenced measures the difference between strings (percentages), using Levenshtein distance--which states the number of changes between two strings. If you can find a source that states this idea of difference can be attributed to Levenshtein, then by all means I will acknowledge him. Until then, I will refer to Alex Martelli's code.

[scoot]

The code I referenced measures the difference between strings

Exactly, and the algorithm used is, as I said, attributed to Levenshtein. Expressing it as a ratio is hardly novel.

As for the implementation, Alex Martelli credit's Stavros Korokithakis[1], although Lev implementations are 2-a-penny, and this isn't a particularly good one (sorry Stavros).

[1]http://www.korokithakis.net/posts/finding-the-levenshtein-di...

[javajosh]

It is nice to put a number on it, and perhaps this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but given Zee's initial reaction to what is clearly plagarism (using just plain-old eyeballing) it's doubtful that putting a number on the sameness will do anything for this camel's back.

This is just another one of those, "A young CEO with too much balls and not enough brains shoots his mouth off, revealing to all that he is not a Good Person." Of course, CEOs not being Good People is nothing new, but the refusal to even try to pretend to be one is something that I think really angers people.

[timjahn]

Why do employees (and apparently CEOs) of online tech publications always seem to have so much trouble with basic English grammar/spelling?

"I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently"

"We work immensely had to product original content"

[ianterrell]

I have a theory on this point, after witnessing this effect in a few other places (emails from prominent writers, CEOs, etc).

Writers write so much that their fear of shipping their writing is diminished through practice, so they write, ship, write, ship, write, ship. They're in creative mode, just putting words on the paper. They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. They know that when it matters, they can copyedit—or have someone else proofread.

On the other hand, there are those of us who will spend an extra 5 minutes on every comment we post looking over it out of perfectionism or OCD or fear of the inevitable, "You sound like a moron" comment later in the thread.

I've taken to really admiring the type-type-type get a million emails/comments/tweets/posts out a day style.

Move fast and break things. Edit later.

[phreanix]

That's the problem though. These 'writers' tend to demand respect and be acknowledged as journalists, yet can't even proof their own words. I don't think I've gone gone through a day where I don't find grammar and spelling errors on high volume news sites like HuffPo and Techcrunch.

I think when you have such a high profile and mass visibility, the bar for quality is raised higher (or should be), even in the context of speed posting and scoops. Your product influences a generation that is sadly forgetting and ignoring the value of proper grammar.

[acuozzo]

> They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. > Move fast and break things. Edit later.

What if time("go quickly... get more done") + time(fixing "[broken] things") > time("spend an extra 5 minutes")?

> I've taken to really admiring the type-type-type get a million emails/comments/tweets/posts out a day style.

I can't tolerate this style. In my experience, the type-type-type individuals often express their ideas in unclear ways.

Measure twice, cut once. I proudly spent 6 minutes writing this reply.

[peetahb]

I might have to steal/quote that last line.

"Move fast and break things. Edit later." Perfect.

[koide]

Release early and often.

The prolbem ocrcus wehn exprsesd tghins are had to undrestnad, or the idaes pooryl tghought out.

[GeneralMaximus]

Interestingly enough, most people will be able to understand exactly what you wrote there. People can easily recognize common words "by shape". They only ever have to look at the first and last letters.

I'm not saying people won't notice there's something wrong with what you wrote. They will. But they'll be able to understand you perfectly despite that.

[koide]

I'm aware people can understand that, but it's certainly not as easy as the properly formed words. I used that technique to make sure my point was carried across.

[zedadex]

> Move fast and break things. Edit later.

Ironically, you can't edit posts on Facebook.

[stuartmemo]

You sound like a moron!

[Czarnian]

Probably the same reason they don't recognize plagiarism when it jumps up and bites them on the ass.

I prescribe a copy of Strunk and White with a healthy dose of proofreading.

[ptmx]

Here's my impression of the sequence of events, based on the blog post:

1) You post an article which includes several facts that are taken directly from Joshua's article. No credit is given to the original author.

2) Joshua publicly calls you out on this.

3) You quickly edit in a credit and a link to the original article.

4) With the awareness that future readers will see this credit and assume that Joshua is making an unfounded complaint, you send a series of aggressive tweets attacking him for bringing this issue up.

Now, it's possible that this isn't an accurate timeline, and now would be a good time for you to clarify what happened. But understand that the issue here isn't (entirely) the fact that you paraphrased another person's article; it's that it looks like you didn't give him credit, acted very deceptively to conceal that fact and save face, and that you did so in a particularly childish way.

[Smudge]

The facts are one thing. What's really damning is the structure in which those facts are presented. If you compare the original appearance of TNW's article with Joshua's article, the paragraphs are almost identical, with a few words changed here and there.

[jacquesm]

> Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

Since you asked:

Ask the original author if it would be ok to include his contribution in your derived work.

> I honestly [] absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste.

Crediting someone does not automatically give you the right to copy their work without their permission. That's a misplaced sense of entitlement, and one I would definitely not accept from a site with the visibility of TNW.

Would it be ok with you if I copied TNW and linked back to your pages to credit you? No? Why not? Where would you draw the line of what is acceptable and what is not?

Oh, and you did just copy/paste.

> We work immensely ha[r]d to product original content

So don't cut-and-paste interesting bits you find on the web.

> I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

The Next Web is featured on HN quite frequently, so it is logical that any criticism of your website would feature here as well. And I wouldn't call it crawling, you've got top billing.

I'm honestly amazed that you did this, and how utterly wrong your stance is. For a person associated with a publication I would expect a much higher level of knowledge of things like 'how to cite' and 'how to attribute' and maybe a dash of copyright 101. How hard is it to ask someone if you can use their stuff? Just ask, worst case they'll say no and then you can always simply link to them to make your point. It's not like he's suing you for $125K per copy, he's just upset that you didn't have the common courtesy to ask.

The fact that people usually are not upset and that people don't care does not change a thing with respect to what's right or not and asking is the normal thing to do.

I've had my content cut-and-pasted so often that I no longer care but it seems to me that if you want to write original content you should simply write rather than try to pick up which bits are trending on certain websites to re-package those for a larger audience. Besides the fact that it does not say much for how you produce your content it also shows that you don't even bother to do your own fact checking. You could easily be set up to parrot incorrect data like this.

Do your own homework, write your own text supported by facts that you have researched yourself and cite your sources. That is original content.

[slantyyz]

> The Next Web is featured on HN quite frequently

I never understood the appeal of the TNW. Of the articles that did make it to the HN front page that I've seen, I've always thought the quality of the TNW's content was quite low. So I guess what's transpired today is not much of a surprise to me.

[joering2]

Jacquesm, I +1 you.

Funny that such basics have to be taught to a CEO of a technology blog.

The board should vote him out _immediately_

[tallanvor]

How can you not understand what you should have done differently here? You may have linked to the author's post, but by not quoting him, you were passing his work off as your own to anyone who didn't click through to the link.

One of your employees fucked up in the first place, and then you made it worse by not admitting what happened was wrong and apologizing. Had you done so, that would have been the end of it. But now here you are.

[sebphfx]

that's a common problem I've been noticing lately. People can't take the blame when they made a mistake. It's whether they blame someone else or they divert the subject. It's so hard to apologize or say "yes, I did it" and then move on.

[jack-r-abbit]

another common problem I've been noticing lately... people do apologize but then we get this same post only this time they point out where the person admitted to it... and the same people bring out their pitchforks anyway.

[jsavimbi]

I've been seeing a lot of that as well. My advice is to stay away from the aggressive response unless the plaintiff is being really nasty.

Being an observant in this web-publishing business for a short while, and speaking only from limited experience, I've witnessed some unfavorable twitter posts in regards to content and how an editorial team treats them. They look into the problem and validate, devise a response through consensus that they deem adequate and one person on the team reaches out and tries to make right.

In Zee's case, it appears that he decided that he "had this one" and went the bully route. That's too bad because since he picked such a great Twitter handle, this clown is going to be hard to forget.

[potatolicious]

Not copying text might help. I don't think anyone here takes issue with using the numbers, but copyin text verbatim (or very close to verbatim) is definitely uncool.

As for credit - one of you is lying. He explicitly claims no link back was provided in te original post, while you explicitly claim there was. So... Which is it?

[swanson]

Personally, if I were the author, I would want the portion that was pasted in to be styled (gray bg/italic text etc) as a quote. To me, it seems like the next two paragraphs are presented as a summary of what Joshua found, not the whole post verbatim. If you really wanted to get on my good side, the first sentence would contain a link to the original.

When I wrote a post that LifeHacker was interested in posting, they asked first about "republishing". When I said they could link with an excerpt but not do a whole-sale repost, they respected my decision.

That being said, I don't think this particular article is that egregious. TNW nearly doubled the word count, so it's not a one-liner + copy/paste job. It's certainly not as bad as other sites I've seen that will masquerade as if the author originally posted the story to their site or not link at all.

[shock-value]

You basically did copy and paste. Probably more accurately, you copy-pasted, then went back in and reworded certain parts. So basically high school level plagiarism.

As others have said, you should have either copied the paragraphs exactly and put them in quotes (with attribution), or you should have written up an entirely original rundown using only the facts to guide you.

What's amazing is that you don't understand why people would find this to be shady, unethical behavior.

[andos]

A case of poor timing, I think. TNW posts a non-attributed version of the article [1]. Author complains on twitter. Meanwhile, TNW notices the error and ninja-edits the post with proper attribution [2]. You check the updated post. Drama ensues on twitter.

Edit. Oi, I'm not saying TNW is in the right, people. Just pointing out something that their CEO seems to have missed.

[1]. http://cl.ly/0q1C3n1j323R3C131X0d/o [2]. http://cl.ly/1a0c2y2p291H1u2T2s3S/o

[Braasch]

This doesn't change the fact that Zee was (pardon my language) a snarky asshole about it on Twitter.

[andos]

Hence the "drama".

[Braasch]

To me, it's not about the Twitter drama; it's about the way The Next Web poorly cited this piece and revised it without fixing the issue people had with it in the first place.

[andos]

Certainly. In my opinion an explicit quote of part of the original article would have been better than paraphrasing. Quoting reinforces the value of the source (“we couldn't write it any better”), paraphrasing does the opposite.

[sdfgbdgfndgh]

More like: TNW posts a non-attributed version of the article. Author complains on twitter. TNW sees this shits their pants and ninja-edits the post with poor attribution. People still complain. TNW ninja-edits the post one more time, now with proper attribution. The CEO (who looks like a total asshole in his pictures btw) posts an obvious PR Google Docs (??) letter to try and talk plagiarism good, which uses this post that tries to insinuate some kind of seconds -later-it-would-have-been-fixed-even-if-the-author-never-would-have-said-anything BS.

[zeedotme]

funnily enough...that is actually exactly what just happened and I literally (only seconds ago) discovered it. Will be putting a piece up about it soon.

[scott_s]

Please pay attention to what else we're saying - that the second piece isn't acceptable, either.

[zeedotme]

yes I appreciate many of you agree a quote should have been included rather than an attempted rewrite.

I agree, that would have been better.

However, calling us out for plagiarism does feel far too extreme when the updated piece clearly states the source of the facts. The original piece only included links without a name and that I agree is 100% wrong. I hadn't seen that original piece before we were called out on twitter and my reactions were clearly based on immediate emotions...never a good time to reply.

Again, will put all this into a single post soon.

[MisterBastahrd]

They are calling you out for plagiarism because your company is a plagiarist. It's just as clear as seeing a person who is burning and telling them that they are on fire, or a person who is dead and calling them deceased. You do not have the right to lift entire articles from other's sites, even if you DO give attribution.

If you as CEO have so little common sense that you don't even know what plagiarism is, then you need to step down quickly before you open your company up to lawsuits against people who actuallY DO have the money and the time to pursue a suit.

[rhizome]

Seems odd that he could become CEO of a publishing company without knowing what plagiarism is.

[scott_s]

Citing sources does not protect you from plagiarism. That is what I mean by the second version is not okay. If the lesson you're learning here is "I just need to make sure we link to the original" then you're learning the wrong lesson.

[peetahb]

It would be sort of funny if you included copy/pasted comments from HN in your PR-cleanup post.

[chris_wot]

Yes, you attributed. But you very deliberately copied the article and posted it as your own work. You can't even say that you forgot to add quote marks as the text was slightly altered - evidently to give you an "out" if anyone accused you of direct copying.

Your threats afterward made things worse - much worse. Not understanding plagiarism (go look up the dictionary, or Wikipedia already!) whilst being an edito of a publication just makes this bad thing horrendous.

Make a full apology. Don't do it again.

[grandpa]

Zee, I think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this. Needless to say, we'll be saying well clear of anything your are involved with in future. http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/23049725899/plagiarism

[shock-value]

Do you honestly not understand why even your "ninja-edited" version of the post is not acceptable?

[andos]

Real life needs some serious mutexing.

[Avenger42]

My answer is, instead of copying his text word-for-word, you post the link and that's it. (See: Gruber.)

In this case, it's not like there was a ton of content in the first place, but by copying all of it (including the picture) you essentially gave the reader no reason to go back to the original source.

[snowwrestler]

Are you an aggregator or a publication?

If you're an aggregator, then the thing to bring to your readers' attentions is the link to the original blog post. That way you drive traffic to the original content. For good examples of what this looks like, see Hacker News or Techmeme, or any of John Gruber's link posts on Daring Fireball.

If you're a publication, and it seems to me that you're positioning yourself that way, then write your own original stuff. You can still play off stories like this, but the way to do it is to extend the story with your own original reporting. Interview cab drivers about it. Dig out the story of how those buttons got into that interface. Who decided to put them there? Who build the software? Who designed the interface? In other words, add value.

[msg]

Did you have a license to create a derivative work from this guy's words? The minimal rewriting didn't elide the substantial structure and organization of the original work. Just linking to the guy did not attribute the paragraph.

For me, it's caught red-handed and trying to stay out of legal hot water. If I thought highly of you, I'd wish you best of luck.

[_dark_matter_]

I'm not trying to be rude here, but as the CEO of an online magazine, why can't you write with correct grammar?

"I honestly absolutely no idea…" "work immensely had to product"

[chc]

They're called typos. Everybody makes them — even professional writers. In writing that's intended to make money, they're usually caught in editing. If you yourself write without ever producing a typo, that's nice, but it's not really all that important to the craft of writing — much less to owning a business that employs writers.

At any rate, I don't see any reason to expect perfect prose in an informal context like a comment thread. As long as you're understandable, what do you gain from spending more time on nit-picky details?

[learc83]

Typos are fine, but there is a limit. I read through some of his comments here, and there are enough typos that it makes it fairly annoying to read.

Slow down just a bit and read it over before you post. You'll still make mistakes, but not in every other post.

[Czarnian]

AKA: Laziness. (Edited to fix spelling pointed out by child comment. Thanks.)

I don't require perfection, just competence. If you don't care enough about your output to make it easily understandable (I don't have to put effort into deciphering your words), why should I care about it?

[chc]

Ironically, if you'd spell-checked your comment, you would have seen the word you were looking for was "laziness". On the other hand, there's no easy mechanical way of noticing that a small word ("have") was omitted, which is one of the typos for which Zee was being criticized. So what you did is actually lazier than what he did. But I don't look down on you for this typo either. Both your comment and Zee's are pretty easy to understand.

Nobody's perfect. I make mistakes like this all the time, and I'm a professional editor. It's not incompetence — I simply don't have the time to carefully reread, spellcheck and grammar-check everything I write to make sure it's all flawless. And I know many intelligent people who make more mistakes than I do. So when I see somebody get called on a typo, but it's perfectly clear what they were saying in spite of the typo, I find it a bit petty.

[Czarnian]

It wasn't a typo. It was just a garden-variety spelling error. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll try to remember the correct spelling in the future.

I guess I hold myself to a higher standard than you do. I have old-fashioned ideas. Writers should be competent enough in the fundamentals that even their informal remarks meet a certain standard of composition. When you are a good writer, you put the same level of care into your work regardless of the purpose. Quite frankly, a writer who thinks, "The editor will catch it," doesn't deserve to be paid for the job. It's bad craft.

[Mz]

Unfortunately, in this case, the typos reinforce the idea this person is fundamentally disrespectful. Given that his comments here are part of a PR campaign, he should be taking more care with them in order to make the right impression.

I go by Michele -- with one L. It is my actual middle name. People routinely misspell it with two L's. Sometimes they realize it and apologize for the error. I have found that how someone reacts to being told it is one L says a lot about their character. Decent people are quick to offer sincere apologies. Assholes are quick to use it as a new excuse to piss all over me and make fun of me.

[chc]

Sure, I agree, there are lots of aspects of his public persona that he could stand to work on. It doesn't make calling out typos less petty or more interesting. The difference between "Person makes harmless typo" and "Person I don't like makes harmless typo" is in your emotions, not in the substance of the comment.

[Mz]

That isn't my point. My point is that when someone is upset with you, attention to such details matter. He appears to not even be trying. It looks very likely that he is either a social nitwit who should appoint someone else to handle his PR or guilty of the degree of disrepect of which he is accused.

[DanBC]

Because you hire editors to do all that stuff?

[russnewcomer]

It looks to me, reading the screenshots of both articles, as though the source piece was used as the basis of the article and reworded. (Note the odd placement of system in the sentence about installing the system.) Copy original article over, paste in, and then do some quick rewording so that it's not a 100% copy-paste job.

What should have been done differently is the original article read, notes taken, and then observations made and the original article linked to. Had someone re-written this from a blank screen, it would not have ended up so structurally similar and looked plagiarized.

[sobering]

Your Twitter response was completely stupid. As people above mentioned, there was no effort put into spelling (although it is Twitter, so I'll give some slack). But blasting the dude with like six hilariously "ridiculous" Tweets just made yourself look worse.

[TomGullen]

If you had used more quotations as supposed to plain copy and paste it would of made a lot of difference.

For example, .NET magazine covered one of our blog posts: http://www.netmagazine.com/news/startup-argues-dont-use-mp3-...

We were very happy they did this, and they did it in a very upfront and honest way. I didn't get that same feeling from your coverage of the OP's original article.

[pygorex]

There's a fine line here I think TNW is missing.

Blogs quote other blogs all the time. But they make it look like a quote. Usually indented, offset, quoted, in italics, etc - with a prominent link to the source article. It's a small formatting detail but it has huge implications - it sends a clear signal that is immune to any plagiarism claims - "this is not our content but, dear reader, we still think it's worth your attention".

Also the twitter response is pitiful. Even if you're convinced that you've done nothing wrong that does nothing to change the fact that the original author feels slighted. Telling him that he's shouldn't feel aggrieved does nothing to fix the situation.

A simple apology along with an edit to the TNW article to clear up any attribution issues would have solved a small problem and prevented it from exploding into a mini-scandal.

[Semaphor]

What? Maybe not copy his paragraph word for word. I don't know, seems a common enough practice though.

But even so, in no case whatsoever behave like you did on twitter. That was not only unprofessional but full-on juvenile. Just look at what you wrote on twitter vs. what he wrote.

[joering2]

> I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently

hey Zee no worries about it! Most psychos don't see anything wrong with what they did; it is the judge who puts them behind bars for a life (or gives electric chair) who is the bad guy!

Hopefully your stupid behavior will get enough publicity that soon you will share CEO Thompson's fate.

[lotharbot]

> "Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here."

Obviously there are things your writer (Harrison Weber) could have done differently:

1) include the attribution and link at the outset

2) either provide true quotes or true rewrites, rather than slight paraphrases of the original text

And you yourself could have behaved differently as well:

3) when challenged, be friendly, even if you are (or appear to be) in the right. Summarize what you're seeing and then ask a question, instead of making accusations or insulting Joshua.

If your first tweet had instead said "we cited you as a source, which is standard procedure. Is there something else that's bothering you?" and then you waited for a response, you'd have given Joshua an opportunity to clarify his stance regarding the ninja edit, and you'd have given yourself an opportunity to apologize on behalf of your writer for the initial mistake.

Even if you had been right and everything had been sourced correctly from the start, a friendly stance and a few kind words would have done wonders. Consider this exchange: "...is there something else that's bothering you?" "Your wording in paragraph X is very similar to mine" "I've turned it into a direct quote. Does that resolve the issue?" With the issue resolved and no insults thrown around, Joshua would have had no reason to escalate, and instead of reading about plagiarism, the HN audience might be reading an article about conflict resolution, with your behavior put forth as a shining positive example.

[grandalf]

It's clear from the screenshots the original author captured that you tried to deny responsibility after you changed the plagiarized content. If he didn't have the screenshots you might have gotten away with it.

Since he had the screenshots, your posts all come off as dishonest (which they obviously are).

Your attempt to bully the original author on Twitter looks bad too.

I think every comment you make is digging a deeper hole for you. Odds are you will be forced to resign over this.

[droithomme]

Speaking of the screenshots, it's not only what you say, but on Zee Kane's twitter feed, he has accused the true author of having misrepresented the before and after screen shots:

http://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202124995923681280

> Zee Kane: "he [Mr. Gross] doesn't have screenshots of the whole article…You don't that's pretty sly?"

It is clear this is highly disingenuous argument and a false implication that Mr. Gross's screenshots misrepresent the situation. This is a carefully constructed and extremely dishonest (because it's false) attempt to attack Mr. Gross's credibility, which is blatantly being done in bad faith.

In addition to this attack, elsewhere on this thread here at HN, Mr. Zane, after all this went down and he knows what really happened, accuses Mr. Gross of being a troll:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972861

> Zee Kane: "Feels like this guy [Mr. Gross] is trolling every single one of us here - myself included - to get a reaction."

This leads one to speculate whether what he then calls an "apology", posted as a bit.ly link at http://bit.ly/JxoWae which then redirects to an obscure Google doc link rather than on his own web site, is sincere.

[grandalf]

Maybe this was staged and Zee never wrote any of those comments. The Google doc link is suspicious.

[droithomme]

That is a very interesting theory. Do you believe his Twitter account was hacked then and he has been out of town and has no idea what the attacker has been posting there about this while impersonating him?

[DanBC]

...and had his HN account hacked, and was unaware of any of the posts being written here?

[droithomme]

Right, that too, apparently it's a big hack!

[chris_wot]

At this point, I'm invoking Hanlon's razor.

[LargeWu]

True or false, Zee - it is acceptable for another site to scrape TNW and repost its content verbatim, as long as it says where it got the content.

[danso]

How about: "xyz user did some calculations on what a few buttons did for NYC taxi drivers. Read his excellent post, the $144 million button here"

See how that gets the users to clickthrough?

[envex]

You could have just taken the entire article, said it was written by the original author and then linked back to the site.

Instead of taking the premise of a popular article to raise pageviews on your site. It should have never said "by HARRISON WEBER"

Rewriting an article on a proven subject doesn't count as producing original content.

[sasha-dv]

>Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

Well, besides writing an original content or asking the original author for permission to republish the article:

1. Don't copy an article word for word. Change the words and the structure.

2. Once caught, don't back-paddle and be defensive. Apologize.

[wvenable]

Isn't republishing someone's work without permission a blatant copyright violation?

[pbreit]

Pretty obvious: 1) if you're going to copy a story, try to re-word it a bit and 2) when you get caught, apologize, make the changes, provide some credit to the original author and don't be a jerk.

[brokentone]

>>I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

This may be an indicator that you're in the wrong. Just a thought.

[jsavimbi]

> I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

C'mon, it's never been pointed out that you're kind of a douche? Seriously, never?