NGO HQ accuses Anandtech of plagiarism.

From reading it just a little, I dont get what you're bitching about honestly. I dont see any place where you could find plagiarism. Guess what, its okay to read someone elses work and then post, using a different driver, your findings.

If anything, its you being unprofessional. I see why AT is just blowing you off, if I was them I would to. You dont seem to have a clue what you're even talking about.

If anyeone does any looking into this, you'll rather quickly release that the articles dont share anything beyond subject matter. By Regenerations definition when everyone does a launch article about a new graphics card, whoever posted it first gets the copyright to the whole damn subject. Sigh, whatever.

 

I got you. All I can say at this point is Stay tuned...

 

Actually, it isn't okay if you don't cite the original --at least not if you aspire to professionalism. And this is an official AT article here, not Joe Forum guy. This is a leader in our field, and, yes, they should be aspiring to professionalism. Now, I've already said I haven't concluded that is what happened --but if I accept your posit above, it isn't "okay".

That it happens quite alot doesn't excuse it for a site at the level of AT, if that is what happened. And, no, the "hey they did it too" link isn't real acknowledgment if that article is what tipped them. Tho I wouldn't be surprised if someone else tipped them semi-anonymously, including the details, and when they became aware of the other piece from the gripes they were unsure enuf of whether that might have been the original source of their tip that they felt it just to at least mention the other piece. They might not have had easy or immediate recourse to their original source to check where they got it. If that is what happened, then I'd be inclined more towards "tempest in a teacup", but they ought to make at least a modest effort to find out and clean it up if necessary with a more direct cite. At least if they care about professionalism. No need to pull/rewrite tho, that I can see. And I still haven't seen anything that would lead me to preclude "independant discovery".

 

You better check out this article

 

interesting. anyways, I think you are blowing a lot of hot air over a minor issue. anandtech didn't plagiarize the article, though they may have copied and reworded it. while that is extremely unprofessional, this is the world of online journalism. unfortunately they have the ability to do that. I read the new article, and it is intersting that anandtech quoted the 6150 an unknown product. good luck getting this resolved.

 

Am I missing something here?

 

What an inappropriate and rude comment. That's how you treat a newcomer to B3D?

 

You did read the bit about "standard-format instructions", right? You do realise that there's a fairly well-developed and universally-accepted way of explaining how to do things with computers? Of course you do, because you used it when you wrote your article. Just as they almost certainly did when they wrote theirs. If I knew how to do the proceedure and was told to write out instructions in a way that other geeks would understand but without having seen either article, you know what? It'd be almost identical to both. And yet I'd by your definition be plagiarising both of you despite never having seen either article before in my life.

Go back and have a rethink.

 

If you rewrite something in your own word, it is not plagiarism and thus legal (it might still be imoral). Basically it is legal to "steal" an idea from an article (and write your own similar article even without crediting the one you stole the idea from) but it is not legal steal the article and claim it as your own.

A bit like the The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has stolen ideas left and right but in the end the book is his own work.

 

That still does not show plagiarism in my opinion, you did not mention "mystery" but they did. All that shows is that the author is not up to speed.

It seems to me that it is highly likely that somebody read your piece and then dropped a line to AT without giving you credit. Then Anandtech started looking into it with their own take on the matter. It's certainly not plagiarism so when your site went to them accusing them of it they quite rightly pointed out it was not. It's talking about the same subject matter and you are probably the original source, but it is not the same article.

 

This thread is saddening beyond measure. I'd say something to directly reply to the downright idiocy in it, but the kind of people I'd be directing it to probably wouldn't understand it at all, and would be too lazy to check dictionary.com when in doubt.

Heck, I'll be a nice guy and just copy-paste the definition for "plagiarism" from source WordNet 2.0, Copyright 2003 Princeton University, available from dictionary.com:

Do I even have to go further here? Your own personal value system might feel that it's OK to steal people's ideas without adding any original content and then not giving credit. That's alright, and it's your own personal belief of what is right and wrong. But, like it or not, the english term "plagiarism" still applies to it.

What happened here is clear imo: a relatively new internet journalist at AnandTech got contacted by some of his "industry" friends that basically gave him the information in the article with a couple of copy-pastes, explaining how to look into the necessary DLL. Then, that new hire created an article around it, copying his friend's words with permission - problem is, that "friend" hardly got the permission to copy the article's words. It is also obviously possible that his did such a thing in his subconscious; it is wellknown that if you read a sentence explaining something and then you've got to explain it yourself, you are likely to copy such a sentence yourself, without even ever having typed it before.

The person who did plagiarism would in such a case - that is, should I be right- would not be AT's journalist, but his so-called source. This does not in any way excuse AT from not properly handling this situation, and denying proper idea credit. As Regeneration said, the work involved in finding the proper DLL and the proper location in that DLL is substantial: you cannot just pretend you didn't copy the idea if you're

Problem also is that AT clearly says they didn't find that themselves: "clever users" did. And it is wellknown here that the clever users are in fact from NGO HQ. So, another journalist not involved in the writing of this specific article later denying this is absolutely unacceptable. Everything before that is acceptable if you consider someone might have tricked them; but saying there is hardly any ressemblance between the two is ridiculous. The original source from the idea clearly is NGO HQ, and not accepting you did a professional mistake by trusting a random guy giving you random information is unacceptable, even more so for a site that does NOT classify itself as a rumor archive.


Uttar

 

Uttar, Can you please post it in that thread too?

 

Ya didn't you know that certain people are allowed to post anything they want here at these forums ;-P
Go ahead Dig, another neg rep please, show your power because you never troll do you

 

This is completely and utterly false. Paraphrasing does not make it less of a theft. Just because cut-n-paste has made wholesale copying the plat du jour does not mean that it is not plagiarizing when you lift someone's ideas and present them as your own, even when taking your precious time to use new wording. You must credit your sources.

Dan Brown is an excellent example. He is still in court over that book, right? He completely stole all the pillars of the story without giving any credit. It was a good book and he invented the story that ties it together, but he did a very naughty thing in not crediting "The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail". I hope you see the reason why you cannot do what he did. If THBATHG was aged and generally accepted it would be ok because it would be understood that everyone knew what was being referenced. However, Dan Brown passed off intricate ideas as his own and I think anyone who has read The Holy Blood will know that cannot possibly be the case. In other words, reading the Da Vinci Code does not make the existence of The Holy Blood obvious, but reading The Holy Blood, one can see the logical weaving it together into a book like DVC. There is no question in my mind that the Da Vinci Code should have credited The Holy Blood. In fact, this upset me quite a bit when reading it.

EDIT:

The problem here is, much like in science, that we are talking about discovery. It is not an idea, as such. If Newton had not written the laws of gravity someone else would have and come to the same conclusions. It is discovery of fact. So, looking at drivers you would expect everyone to find the same thing(s). The question is, did someone find it first, publish the fact and, then, did someone, perhaps hoping that that source was not yet known, seek to publish the same fact as first discovery?

Imagine, if you will, someone in China passing off the idea of Star Wars as their new own idea, hoping that the population will not be familiar with the original American version. (perhaps a bad example and I am not suggesting that people in China don't know about Star Wars.)

 

Talking about site-vs-site stuff doesn't seem like an appropriate thread for the 3D Graphics Companies and Industry forum, particularily when neither site is Beyond3D.

 

Interesting that the Author changed - it was definitely Kristopher Kubicki yesterday.

In fact... to go a step further. Regeneration, why did you email Kristopher about the article? Why not Tuan if he was the author? I'm basically 99% sure that Kristopher was the author of the original and it just seems to fit in to place that the author was changed after you emailed AnandTech.

 

It's not site-vs-site. Tomorrow it could be someone else, This is unacceptable.

 

In fact it is it seems as the forum subtitle is:
For views and discussions on 3D IHVs and industry including other websites