[lemontheme]

Should he? Where does that mindset come from? The author has owned up to his mistake. Unless there is a pattern here, why would we not prefer to let him learn and grow from this? We all get to accidentally drop the prod DB once, since that’s what teaches us not to do it again.

[PoorlyNamed]

He's not some junior developer with his first job, he's the senior editor. If a senior editor plagiarized an article, he would rightly be fired because it's a serious violation of journalistic ethics. He knew using AI tools like that was against company policy and he did it anyway. That's well beyond just making a mistake.

[etempleton]

There are degrees of plagiarism and you could argue this is not really plagiarism at all. Paraphrasing instead of directly quoting is probably about as mild as it can get. Most publications wouldn’t even note the mistake.

[starkparker]

This wasn't paraphrasing either. The tool couldn't access the subject's website and instead fabricated quotes, which Benj nor anyone in the editorial process bothered to vet.