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Ask HN: What is the difference between TNW plagiarism, and the other blogs

5 points by benologist 15y ago

They all do the same thing - someone writes an interesting article and one of the popular blogs comes along, compresses all the important parts into a summary, tucks the attribution out of the way where it won't leak much traffic, and then hits the social news sites. AOL famously pioneered this model and today most major tech blogs we see on HN have adopted it at least partially. Yesterday TNW got called out for doing it, their CEO mentioned that it was 'normal' and he's pretty much right ... plagiarism is normal for modern blogging, unless somehow it's different when Engadget, TheVerge, Gizmodo, CNet, TorrentFreak, everyone related to Apple rumors etc do it. What is the difference between The Verge rewriting FastCompany's article [1] and the TNW [2] event? [1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/15/3021574/google-plus-study-weak-public-activity-engagement [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972651

Mz 15y ago
Just wondering out loud and not exactly on topic: I wonder if the gist of the problem is that those folks who do real original blog writing spend "too much" time on that and not enough on promoting it, then folks who are focused on making money do what you are complaining about by basically reversing their priorities and investing their time in packaging and promoting. I kind of wonder that because I write original content, fairly regularly in recent months, but that has not resulted in an uptick in traffic nor an uptick in revenue. So I am now also trying to figure out how to promote my work, do SEO...blah blah blah in addition to doing the writing. I'm pretty frustrated at my situation generally and it is all the more frustrating to see you basically promoting TNW yet again by calling them out on something you disapprove of while I can't get any mention anywhere by anyone. Which is to say that like it or not, it works -- even you are driving traffic to their site by bitching about it instead of finding actual original content to submit to HN, which would be a small step in the right direction and the antidote to the problem if more widely adopted.
AznHisoka 15y ago
The same difference between: 1) A well known company violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry, and getting by with a slap in the wrist. and 2) A not as well known webmaster violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry with no response from Google.
chc 15y ago
1. TNW originally did not credit the source blog at all. And it wasn't a summary — the piece was literally just a short intro and then his exact words taken without any acknowledgement. 2. After this was brought to TNW's attention, they silently slipped in a link to the source blog, but still copied his post almost word-for-word without indicating that it was a quote. They also refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and basically told the guy whose copyright they infringed to stop being a drama queen. That is way beyond the standard rewriting that most big blogs and newspapers do. Look at the Verge and Fast Company articles you linked and see how much of the text outside quotes is copied verbatim from one to the other — in TNW's article, aside from the intro paragraph, it was pretty close to 100%.

5 points by benologist 15y ago

Mz 15y ago

Just wondering out loud and not exactly on topic: I wonder if the gist of the problem is that those folks who do real original blog writing spend "too much" time on that and not enough on promoting it, then folks who are focused on making money do what you are complaining about by basically reversing their priorities and investing their time in packaging and promoting. I kind of wonder that because I write original content, fairly regularly in recent months, but that has not resulted in an uptick in traffic nor an uptick in revenue. So I am now also trying to figure out how to promote my work, do SEO...blah blah blah in addition to doing the writing. I'm pretty frustrated at my situation generally and it is all the more frustrating to see you basically promoting TNW yet again by calling them out on something you disapprove of while I can't get any mention anywhere by anyone. Which is to say that like it or not, it works -- even you are driving traffic to their site by bitching about it instead of finding actual original content to submit to HN, which would be a small step in the right direction and the antidote to the problem if more widely adopted.

AznHisoka 15y ago

The same difference between: 1) A well known company violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry, and getting by with a slap in the wrist. and 2) A not as well known webmaster violating Google guidelines, saying I'm sorry with no response from Google.

chc 15y ago

1. TNW originally did not credit the source blog at all. And it wasn't a summary — the piece was literally just a short intro and then his exact words taken without any acknowledgement. 2. After this was brought to TNW's attention, they silently slipped in a link to the source blog, but still copied his post almost word-for-word without indicating that it was a quote. They also refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and basically told the guy whose copyright they infringed to stop being a drama queen. That is way beyond the standard rewriting that most big blogs and newspapers do. Look at the Verge and Fast Company articles you linked and see how much of the text outside quotes is copied verbatim from one to the other — in TNW's article, aside from the intro paragraph, it was pretty close to 100%.