Plagiarised Reviews on TBF. Holy Cow, it's epidemic.

[novella]

Jeez, I'm getting a 100% hit rate when I check to see whether reviews posted to TBF have been lifted, uncredited, from other sources.

I've posted two others in other threads (reviews of Galapagos and Slaughterhouse 5), and here's a third. And I'm not even trying!

Third Plagiarised Review found on TBF

As an editor, part of my job was to ensure that what we were publishing was original, genuine writing (or fully credited otherwise).

I think this is unconscionable. And I just took a few quick peeks on a hunch, and everything I looked up was written by someone else.

Darren, isn't there a policy against this? Aren't you worried about liability?

 

[Motokid]

Membership Agreement:

"3.3 The inclusion of excerpts from an article on another site is allowed as long as credit is given to the author of the article(s). Copying an entire article(s) from another site and pasting it into your forum post is not allowed, without the express permission of the owner of the copyrighted article. If you want users to read the full article provide a link back to the article instead."

 

[mehastings]

Is it really that shocking?

 

[novella]

Yeah, it really is that shocking. I've taken for granted that people here are posting their own original thoughts and words, unless they link or give credit. It's so easy to link to an article or give credit to a source. It's illegal not to.

Do you think it's okay to steal someone else's work and foist it off as your own? It ruined Doris Kearns Goodwin's career and would've sunk Stephen Ambrose's ship if he hadn't flipped off the twig naturally.

 

[Freya]

Lifting paragraphs is one thing. Not acknowledging them is another thing entirely.

 

[mehastings]

Do you think it's okay to steal someone else's work and foist it off as your own?

No,I think it's wrong. It just doesn't surprise me. I guess I'm just glass half empty.

 

[Darren]

Novella, why don't you say what you really mean instead of trying to over-sensationalise it?

Are you really saying that EVERY review on TBF is 100% plagarised? If so, then it is YOU who should be getting worried about liable.

As far as I could see from a quick skim-read, the review you link to has one sentance in common. Please do correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure you'd love to

On the subject of liable, it's so nice of you to be concerned for me, but no I'm not worried (see clause 3.5).

 

[demetrio]

Yeah just a bit overdone here. Plus, where's your evidence? It isn't that hard to provide evidence and links if it the situation is sooooo bad.

I agree with hastings, it isn't suprising, especially if you've been on the net for any period of time. In fact, unless you have an army of lawyers on your side - there is usually little you can do in the first place.

Do you take into account people posting reviews that they also have posted elsewhere? As someone who runs a book review website, you want to know what the actual number one problem is? Authors submitting either fake or shill written reviews of their own work.

Really...show us the evidence, otherwise shhhhhhhhhhh.

 

[novella]

What I said, Darren, was that I am getting a 100% hit-rate on the reviews that I have looked up, all of which were posted by Martin as his own.

Here's another. more stolen text

In his review of Blindness, the following was stolen from another author:

To avert the escalation of this strange phenomenon, the handful of people who have contracted this white sickness, so-called, are rounded up and quarantined in an empty mental hospital. There are two wings, separated by a kind of no man's land, each wing with a courtyard and three wards. There's a core group, and the book (if you'll excuse the pun) will never let them out of sight for very long. These "seven pilgrims" consist of the first blind man, his wife, the doctor who examined the first blind man, the doctor's wife, and three of the doctor's patients—a young woman with dark glasses, a boy with a squint, and an old man with a black eyepatch. If this seems like an odd way to describe characters instead of simply giving them names, it's because this is how the author describes them to us. No one in the book has a proper name.

Blindness is stitched together with long sentences, the dialogues often separated only by commas, so that even the most attentive reader may stumble and have some doubt as to who is speaking. However, in a book about the loss of sight, or perspective, it not only seems a brilliant use of Saramago's stylistic devices, but implies that things should not be spelled out so clearly. Anyway, a book is always something of a blind movie, isn't? You have to rely on your imagination and your vocabulary, not on pictorial images, to see what's in front of you.

http://www.brazil-brasil.com/pages/p47oct98.htm

I can go do the same with the others if you'd like. Each has paragraphs lifted. Substantial text and unique wording copied verbatim.

Why are you defending this? Do you think it's okay?

 

[novella]

Yeah just a bit overdone here. Plus, where's your evidence? It isn't that hard to provide evidence and links if it the situation is sooooo bad.

I agree with hastings, it isn't suprising, especially if you've been on the net for any period of time. In fact, unless you have an army of lawyers on your side - there is usually little you can do in the first place.

Do you take into account people posting reviews that they also have posted elsewhere? As someone who runs a book review website, you want to know what the actual number one problem is? Authors submitting either fake or shill written reviews of their own work.

Really...show us the evidence, otherwise shhhhhhhhhhh.

The links are the evidence. If you read the reviews on the links and compare them with Martin's reviews you will find that there is substantial text, original wording, lifted verbatim from other authors' works. That's why I provided the links.

I don't need an army of lawyers to know that this is repeat plagiarism.

Again, I ask, why do you think this is okay? People who post their own reviews in more than one place are well within their rights--if they hold the copyright--are are not infringing other people's copyright.

I'm sure bogus reviews written by authors are a problem. I would certainly look out for that if I ran such a site. However, that does not excuse plagiarism. They are unrelated. Besides, one is legal and one is not.

 

[Freya]

Do you take into account people posting reviews that they also have posted elsewhere?

That is outlined in the Membership Agreement, and it's ok apparently.

 

[novella]

Novella, why don't you say what you really mean instead of trying to over-sensationalise it?

Are you really saying that EVERY review on TBF is 100% plagarised? If so, then it is YOU who should be getting worried about liable.

As far as I could see from a quick skim-read, the review you link to has one sentance in common. Please do correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure you'd love to

Darren, I think this post is very hostile to me, and for no reason. Clearly you are reading this as a personal attack rather than what it is: my dismay at finding so much lifted work posted here.

Your interests in having a worthwhile site must certainly sit with having real content and robust discusssions. This problem goes directly to the purpose and integrity as a book forum.

In my post below I show how hefty the lifted material is in just one case. Believe me, it is also true of Martin's reviews of Galapagos, Slaughterhouse 5, and probably many more. I don't know as I have only look up these ones. It is clearly not an isolated incident or an accident, but a systemic problem.

Why are you putting the onus of explanation on me? I would think that you would be more interested in correcting the core issue.

 

[Wabbit]

I want to know why you went searching for that. You speak of personal attacks. This surely is one, isn't it?

 

[Freya]

I'm finding it hard to believe people actually don't care about plagiarism. Just coming to the end of my degree, the evils of plagiarism have been drummed into us repeatedly. I know someone who was thrown off his course as a result of his lifting academic work and passing it off as his own.

Now, whilst there are vast differences between academia and a forum, to me, it's still the same crime. If I found something I had written being passed off as someone elses work, I would be livid. That someone else doesn't view it as a serious crime is inconsequential, as the law does. And rule 3.3!

It is not hard to reference a source.

 

[novella]

I want to know why you went searching for that. You speak of personal attacks. This surely is one, isn't it?

Because this morning on another thread, Martin said something disparaginig to another poster about how many reviews he'd posted. I thought it was a nasty thing to do, and I thinks to myself, wait a sec, Martin never really posts more than 10 or 20 words at a stretch on the forum. This prolific review writing just doesn't feel right to me. So I go look. First review I read, Slaughterhouse 5, didn't sound at all like the Martin I read on the forum, so I googled some phrases. It took about 10 secs altold to find the source review.

I would never do this to a 'normal' friendly poster, but Martin continually comes out with self-righteous needling statements about other people, shows hostility and hubris, constantly justifies his hostility by saying it's all a joke, and generally seems to really be callous in his approach to other posters. And I just had a hunch, based on his daily posting style. I was very surprised at how right it turned out to be.

 

[Darren]

What I said, Darren, was that I am getting a 100% hit-rate on the reviews that I have looked up, all of which were posted by Martin as his own.

That's not what your thread title is saying. It's sensationalist, misleading and liablous to this site. You've found some discrepancies in the review of one member, who is also a moderator you have been openly antagonistic towards.

Darren, I think this post is very hostile to me...

Novella, if I genuinely believed that you had TBF's best interests at heart I wouldn't be as hostile towards you. Why did you not PM me to alert me to this? Why post a sensationalist thread here if not for the purpose of trying to stir up trouble?

Why are you defending this?

I never said I was defending anything. What I'm objecting to is the way you are going about this, turning it into some sort of witch hunt.

 

[novella]

You're welcome to change the thread title to something less direct, of course.

I am not on a witch hunt. I won't say a word about it again. However, I see no reason why this shouldn't be discussed openly, particularly in light of several other threads about forum rules and regs that have come up recently. I really do feel that Martin invited this scrutiny this morning in his posts on another thread. Believe me, it hadn't occurred to me to even look before he brought his reviews up once again as a point of his superior contribution to TBF.

 

[Darren]

I think we should now wait to here what Martin has to say about this matter. Whether he chooses to respond in public is his decision. I stand by my view that this matter should first have been discussed privately so that you could ascertain the full facts before posting this.

I won't be changing the thread title unless you request it to be changed.

 

[lies]

I don't know what I'm getting myself into yet, but I feel I have to say a few things.

First of all, was Novella's thread sensationalist? Perhaps. Still, quite a few threads in the General Chat area have been volatile (to say the very least) lately, so I think this thread isn't so out of the "ordinary". Should it have been handled privately? Perhaps, yes. As it is though, Novella chose to post her findings in the "Website Feedback, Help & Suggestions" forum, which, as it turns out, isn't such an unexpected place for threads like these to pop up.

Now, as far as Novella's findings go... I agree with the view that plagiarism is a serious issue and should be looked into. I'm afraid I'm also a bit "appalled" by the way some people reacted to Novella's posts. She might not have been very diplomatic in pointing out the similarities in some of the Book Forum reviews in public, but I do believe her point was valid and that she didn't deserve some of the replies she got.

I'm not taking sides here (I'm not up to date enough on who loves whom or who has a quarrel with whom here to even know what the sides are), but, even though I'm not as active as other members, I do want this place to continue to exist, preferably without Darren having to interfere too much. However, the fact that Darren has had to put up a "State of Play" thread is proof enough that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (And no, it's not Hay82.)

I'm not a big fan of banning people (which is, I think, what Darren is proposing if things continue like this), even if they're acting like real jerks. I haven't seen anything on here myself that would make me think otherwise about this issue (though I do not read every single thing posted here) and, going from Motokid's "Are you offended thread", not much others have either. Maybe there are other ways of making sure things go smoothly?

(I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong thread. There are just so many to choose from. )

 

[demetrio]

So let me get this straight. This epidemic seems centered around one poster, Martin? Please look up the word epidemic.

No one here is defending plaigarism. I point it out all the time and deal with it on a daily basis.

It seems there is one blatant repeat offender, and I'm sure there are others. This is not an epidemic. It's not that hard to deal with. I'm sure the posts will be removed or moderated into oblivion.

I will be responding to your poor me whining and "no one cares" in your other thread.