[tokenadult]

REPLY TO UPDATE SELF: Yes, the correct term was actually "blogspam," and I appreciate (and upvoted) the grandchild reply that pointed that out. I see that now the Hacker News curators have changed the link on the story submission from pointing to Quartz to pointing to the original New York Times article, which fits the Hacker News guidelines.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(I mention this because many comments in this thread will be very confusing to newcomers if it is not made clear that the thread used to point to Quartz but now points to the New York Times.)

[donohoe]

I find that a bit disingenuous on the part of the HN moderators.

I still maintain that the piece was original. It was based on (and expanded on) one of the eight points made within an NYT article.

To me "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal" could not describe the same article as "Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring".

Even the headlines indicate two separate directions.

Please read again and compare this (relevant passage on NYTimes will be Highlighted):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...

to this:

http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteaser...

Serious question - am I completely off the mark?

[gruseom]

Since your question is serious, here's one serious answer. The article is really two (or three, depending how you count them) pieces of blogspam spliced together with a linkbait title on top. So while it's true that it doesn't draw exclusively on the NYT piece, that doesn't make it original, because everything else is cribbed too. Isn't it?

[donohoe]

I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

First, lets be clear on what "blogspam" is:

  blogspam also has another meaning, namely the 
  post of a blogger who creates no-value-added posts
  to submit them to other sites.) It is done by
  posting (usually automatically) random comments
  or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis,
  guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online
  discussion boards. Any web application that
  accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by 
  visitors may be a target.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_in_blogs

So, while that doesn't address you argument lets call a spade a spade. You may not like the post but that doesn't make it "blogspam".

(You could argue that terms evolve and thats fair enough.)

Second, the headline "Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring" doesn't strike me as a typical "linkbait title".

Regardless - I don't think I'm going to be able to convince you - but I did want to understand better.

Maybe its ironic then that the NYTimes links to our post from here...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/todays-scuttlebot-t...

I don't take that as some sort of indication that I'm right etc but definitely gave me pause.

[DanBC]

For what it's worth: There are much worse examples of blogspam posted to HN, so it's kind of frustrating to see this thread derailed.

I'm not making any comment on Quartz, because I haven't seen enough to form an opinion.