Plagiarism, the plot thickens | Hacker News Reader

Plagiarism, the plot thickens

jacquesmattheij.com

93 pointsllambda12 comments

I only worked with Harrison very briefly (and merely in the same office—I never worked one-on-one with him personally).

I reached out to Harrison and Zee on Twitter, first. I was irritated that he would do something like that, especially because he knows me. He ninja-edited the post and Zee went on a tirade; that was when I felt wronged. Harrison said nothing to me until much later.

Nothing manufactured, nothing faked, and nothing personal. By and large, I was upset with Zee's reaction.

Ah, but it would be so interesting if it actually had all been manufactured! I think this opinion comes from my love of movies where, in the end, the entire plot turns out to have been elaborately planned by the clever hero all along. I'm thinking of The Thomas Crown Affair (Pierce Brosnan verison) among others.

I think the fact that the two of you knew each other previously makes this whole thing even weirder. After all, it would have been bad enough to do this and the subsequent reaction to a stranger but it to a friend makes even less sense.

I often wonder how much of the controversy we read about here on HN is completely manufactured by some clever individuals. NOTE: I am not saying the Joshua-Gross-Next-Web-situation is obviously manufactured. I have no idea.

I am saying controversy is a great way to drive page views and links. In some cases, those links are valuable to SEO. I like to imagine Michael Arrington, Dan Lyons, and MG Siegler sitting around a room and saying "Ok, what can we come up with as a good excuse to really yell at each other?" ... which is then followed by posts like these (and hey, they're getting another link now):

http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-wh...

I may be way off. Maybe Arrington is always writing his honest opinion. But it surely happens somewhere on the web. Is anyone keeping track? Is there a website that has a list of all the seemingly-manufactured controversies? That would be interesting.

"First off, Joshua Gross was interviewed by The Next Web for an article by the same author, and more suprising, they actually worked at the same company in the past!"

Busted! Who would of thought Hacker News would have been the leading source of investigative journalism.

I cannot verify that they worked at the same company from LinkedIn though?

However interview can be found here (as per submitted blog post): http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/17/stop-cluttering-your-i...

At least, in this article the TNW writer seems to know how to properly use quotes:

The creator of Hopper, Joshua Gross, tells TNW why he built it:

  <blockquote>I found that I emailed myself links and pictures
  constantly—whether I’m at another computer, at work, or
  mobile. I’d always lose these items in my inbox, amongst
  other new mail. Rather than continue to suffer with this
  really poor solution, I wanted a quick place to drop any
  temporary snippet of content quickly, but still be able to
  go back and search for it afterwards.

If only they had done the same in yesterday's article, they would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. They only thing they kept is the semicolon (:), which is not quite enough to indicate a direct quote.

Though it'll be interesting to see where this goes, it ultimately doesn't make me think better of TNW. It can only affect how I view Mr. Gross. Even then, it won't affect me much; the TNW author was a lesser character in the post, where the TNW CEO was the star.

Harrison did tweet that he knew Josh:

"You're seeing one side @scherrymomin. @endtwist is/was a friend of mine. He found cool facts, I wrote about it & credited 2x, then a 3rd"

Also of note, thenextweb pointed out a much less obvious (in the text) case of plagiarism a month ago today:

http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-...

'And finally…

Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from someone else when he was accused of plagiarism.

"Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him?

We’ll let you decide what really happened…'

Who cares. Why is this at the top of Hacker News? Seriously. What the hell?

Because a lot of us are bloggers, have companies with blogs, and/or have a vested interest in how people act on the web (because of our websites and stuff). This is an interesting piece of information about a controversy that surrounds an issue that affects us. The particulars don't but the concepts do, and the repercussions may.

It's drama.

Interesting bit of counter-astroturfing here. If you can't make yourself look better, use pseudonymous sockpuppets to drag them down with you.

I'll keep an eye out for use of this tactic in the future. Bookmarking for future reference.

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