NGO HQ accuses Anandtech of plagiarism.

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digitalwanderer

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An interesting story I just posted about, I thought I'd share:

digitalwanderer said:
I got an interesting e-mail in the news box today, and as the local colour commentator I figure the intra-web drama stuff is sort of my department....

NGO HQ put up an article yesterday accusing Anandtech of plageriarizing an article of theirs:

Today, I was having my best day of the month, first I met a very fine lady and when I came online and one of our staff members sent me a link. At that moment, the best day of the month became the worst day of the month. I saw that AnandTech, yes, AnandTech, one of the more popular hardware websites on the web, took some material from one of our articles. It took me exactly five milliseconds to identify it.
Now I'm not exactly the world's biggest NGO fan, but then again I ain't exactly on friendlies with AnandandandTech either....but if the accusation is true it really is craptacular of Anand. :?

The details are over at NGO HQ, go check for yourself and let me know what ya think.
 
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it's november 1st isn't it? 'cause i think that's supposed to be an april article.
 
see colon said:
...
it's november 1st isn't it? 'cause i think that's supposed to be an april article.
The AnandTech article in question is dated October 30th, the NGO HQ piece is from yesterday, and NGO's original article about it that they are claiming AT ripped off is from about 10 days ago.

What is up with April? (Aside from me birthday and all. ;) )
 
Nope, and what AT did is scandalous. Now, I don't know whether AT actually did it; they could just have received an e-mail from a "source", with that source doing little more than plagiarism; that AT knows about it, we cannot know.
And if you don't think that kind of stuff happens, I'd like to happily point out The Inq, which is the best example ever that random retards can get internet journalists to copy-paste mostly anything they want to.

That AT refuses to acknowledge the severity of this issue is absolutely shameful imo; I don't know whether they're responsible for it, but considering the situation, they least they should have done is try to cooperate with NGO HQ to try to figure out where the actual problem occured. Come on guys, if you got a frivolous source or information network, you try to debunk it, and not ignore all evidence indirectly pointing in that direction.

Furthermore, AT is a professional website where some - or perhaps all, I don't know - reporters are supposedly paid. Considering their position, they have the responsability to handle such thing responsibly, not deny it randomly with a 3 lines e-mail sent 5 minutes after receiving the inquiry.

Now, feel free to say it doesn't matter if AT didn't know about it when they published; but that's BS, because even then it matters to know how in the world they got that information without getting the original source information. Someone who AT trusts is applying plagiarism and tens of thousands of people have read that article by now, if not much more. Legally, I would assume that if AT denies such things, they would be held responsible for it, instead of their source.

The kind of reactions I'm seeing about this are saddening at best. Sounds like 3 years olds pirating the latest version of Putt-Putt while posting a reply, thinking "pff, they pirated it, and so what? I do that too". I know this is a quite overly ridiculous comparaison, but come on...


Uttar
 
Completely agree Uttar. But it's apparently quite fashionable to be a major hardware site and unapologetically engage in all sorts of stupid and/or reprehensible behavior this fall.
 
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Yeah, it'd be nice if someone would get the big guys attention. It wasn't his article; the reply isn't from him --quite likely he has no clue it has happened.

But, yes, that's unacceptable, especially when called on it and given a chance to apologize, credit, fix it, and move on.
 
I just hate the way AT is blowing it off as no biggy, they should at least be man enough to admit that something went not quite cricket. :???:

Everyone screws up, it's owning up to the screw ups that seperates the boys from the men. :(
 
Uttar you should actually read the articles before you bash either site. Not only are they worded completely different (hence no 'copying'), NGOHQ looked into the 81.85 driver and Anandtech looked into the 81.87 version.

It's a case of two tech news sites covering the same subject matter, but doing their own work and drawing their own conclusions. Just because NGOHQ was "the first" to write about it doesn't mean they a instantly own monopoly on all future discussion.

With that logic, the first site to actually benchmark the real 7800 512MB when it's released can accuse all the other sites of "copying" their review.:rolleyes:
 
Until I got to Hooch's post I thought I was in some bizarre alternate dimension, so that was a relief. Seriously, I don't get what the fuss it about. Both sites have (from the wording concerning "sources" in NGO's case, although there's no problem in assuming they found it themselves) been tipped off that there's interesting info in the control panel dll, both sites have used what is by the sound of it a fairly widely-used dll decompiler to look inside, both have given "standard format" instructions on how to use it, both have discussed the product names found inside. There's no instance I can find of cut and paste, and nothing to suggest that the writer of the Anandtech article had even seen the NGO article. Again, what the hell is the problem here?
 
Charmaka said:
what the hell is the problem here?

The problem here is that they took a part of our article, added some synonyms and few ">" symbols and posted it without asking for a permission or giving any credit.
 
Digitalwanderer you're correct in noticing I joined the NGOHQ in order to express my opinion. However since I've only posted at Anandtech about 75 times since visiting it regularly since approxiately 1999-2000, I'll the the fanboi title to more worthy canididates.

Regeneration, since you do not have admin here I'll take the liberty of posting some of reasonable, logical arguments presented in your forum before you edit & delete them all.

+++++++++++++

Originally Posted by Regeneration
NGOHQ:
To view this information you will need a disassembler. For this task you can download an evaluation copy of PE Explorer. After you have installed PE Explorer, you will need Forceware 81.85 Beta. After you have downloaded them please extract them to a new directory. Once you have extracted the files you have to expand the file nvcpl.dl_. To expand it you have to type “expand nvcpl.dl_ -r†from the Command Prompt in the folder that you have extracted the files to.

Launch PE Explorer and open the file “nvcpl.dllâ€. Click on the “Tools†tab and pick “Disassembler†and then “Start Nowâ€. It will take few seconds but when it’s done press on CTRL+F and type inside “7800_GS†and then Enter. You should now see the GeForce 7800GS entry, if you will scroll up or down you will notice that entire NVIDIA’s product line is being listed there.


AnandTech:
Download the latest ForceWare 81.87 BETA drivers from NVIDIA (a link to the driver is available directly from NVIDIA's website). Regardless of whether or not you have a NVIDIA based card, this will extract the drivers into a folder called "NVIDIA". Finally, you'll want to download and install a program called PE Explorer.

Open a command prompt by clicking on your Start menu > Run > type " cmd" and go to the location of the NvCpl.dl_ file. Once there, type "expand NvCpl.dl_ -r". This will create the actual nvcpl.dll binary library.

Launch PE Explorer and open nvcpl.dll. After it has loaded successfully, click Tools > Disassembler. After a few moments, a new window will open with a long list of strings. Perform a search for 7800_GS and you should see the following:


My reply:

I sincerely appreciate the fact you took the time to quote these paragraphs, but I don't understand why you are still contending that Anandtech plagiarized you. There's not a single sentence that's similar. All this shows is that both parties used a program called PE Explorer to look 'inside' the driver.

Further, it also shows that you were decompiling the 81.85 driver, and Anandtech was working on the 81.87 driver. So it's obvious that both parties were off doing their own sleuthing and found similar results.

I'm also disappointed to see that you banning forum participants because you can't refute their arguments.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Originally Posted by Stratus Fear
I've been following this one all day today, and honestly, I would have considered supporting your effort if you hadn't lowered it to such immaturity as editing and deleting posts simply because those people have differing opinions than yourself. At this point, though, you're doing nothing other than convincing me that Anandtech hasn't done anything wrong, and this whole issue simply is a matter of jealousy that a larger site covered the same topic, as was said by several others in this thread.

As for the plagiarism part, please check dictionary.com. I haven't seen any plagiarism either. The two articles are nowhere near exactly the same, and any objective person can see this as obvious.

+++++++++++++++++++

Originally Posted by Ricey
Im a bystander in all this as i read about 10 sites a day and dont have any favorites, hell i dont even have a anandtech forum account (i actually check nvnews.net first everyday, mostly due to habit for the past 3 years)). Anyway from what I see in these 2 snippets from both articles i dont see any plagiarism. Actually i see that NGO used 81.85 while anand used 81.87 so already there is a dissimilarity right at the beginning. How can you say someone is plagiarizing when the base object is completely different from yours. Back to the astronomer story that was posted earlier, lets say astronomer A sees a star and astronomer B sees a completely different star. They both tell of their findings but astronomer A thinks that astronomer B saw the same exact star as his so creates a ruckus. This is the impression that im getting from the 2 snippets. The only way to solve this would to show evidence that both used two completely different driver sets.
As for PE Explorer, i actually downloaded it to try it out and found it much easier to use than something like Neuron PE Disassembler so maybe thats why they chose to use it as well. The instructions on using a program would basically be the same with any other's instructions.
Im not saying who is right or wrong in all this because frankly, i couldnt care as long as all the sites i read still give useful information. Im just stating the impression im getting through all this as someone who isnt biased or ******'ed to any certain site.

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Originally Posted by agentmv

Regeneration, while i sympathize with what you're saying, here are the reasons why people are disagreeing with you:

plagiarism

n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing;

1. If plagiarism is the act of copying someone else's work and then representing that work as your own, then AnandTech has clearly not done this, by this definition. Nothing was copied. Even you said the method was 90% similar. Similarity is not copying. Copying is the act of duplicating. In journalism, the act of stealing text or quotes without permission would indicate a copy.

In the entire text of the AnandTech article, not a single sentence was copied. This does not constiuate plagiarism. You can proceed to make claims of other ideas but you cannot make claims of plagriarism because nothing was copied/duplicated/plagiarised.

2. You're ignoring what people are saying/asking of you. Some members are asking you if text was copied word for word and your reply posts completely ignore it and continue to say unsubstantiated claims: such as "clever users" being NGOHQ users. You cannot claim such a thing because you are assuming that's what they are implying. You can't make an implication such as that when the definition of plagiarism fails to hold.

3. You need to take a step back and admit something: the two articles are different. They are NOT the same. You and other forums members are calling people "blind" for not seeing that the article are the same but clearly, they are not. Microsoft Word has a document comparison feature -- you can run both articles through it and see how much red text comes up. You cannot base what you say on emotions and being upset.

You can be upset, no one is stopping you and no one has the right to say what you can or can not feel. You can also formulate your own opinions of AnandTech, NGOHQ, its users or anything else.

But what you CAN NOT do is claim AnandTech >> PLAGIARISED << NGOHQ's article, because by default, the claim fails to meet the definition.

4. The article isn't copied.
5. AnandTech didn't claim they were first (stealing another person's work and claiming it as their own; per definition of plagiarism).
6. Instructions very specific to a specific topic tend to always be the same or very similar -- this is true for any industry or subject. Ford may have invited the automobile but doesn't make claims that BMW stole the design of the steering wheel.
7. The way some of the forum members are addressing this issue is far from professional, admit it. If you claim that AnandTech plagiarised NGOHQ's article (which they clearly did not based on the proof-of-definition and obivious evidence I have given) is an unprofessional act and one without "honor" then look at what some of the forum members are saying:

Zandro writes:

Quote:
Still i think that the Schoolyard menthality of the big kids
stealing the smaller kids luchmoney is childish and a
unworthy behaveure of such a big site like Anandtech.


You call that professional support? Correct spelling is not even used.

You (Regeneration) writes:

Quote:
They took parts from our article without permissions = plagiarism.
To be honest, we don’t even need to supply any proof, our old article should be enough.


Can you prove what they took? If you don't need / can't supply proof then again, you CAN NOT make unsubstantiated claims. If you say NGOHQ is as technical as it is, then I am very positive you understand how to be objective about this, as if you were writing a review or a report.

You want to report on AnandTech COPYING/PLAGIARISING your article but have not provided ANY provable facts.

THIS, is why people are disagreeing with you. And the fact that you appear to be purposely avoiding certain points they bring up only lowers your stance on this further.

Regeneration, be objective.

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END
 
Uttar said:
Nope, and what AT did is scandalous. Now, I don't know whether AT actually did it; they could just have received an e-mail from a "source", with that source doing little more than plagiarism; that AT knows about it, we cannot know.
And if you don't think that kind of stuff happens, I'd like to happily point out The Inq, which is the best example ever that random retards can get internet journalists to copy-paste mostly anything they want to.

That AT refuses to acknowledge the severity of this issue is absolutely shameful imo; I don't know whether they're responsible for it, but considering the situation, they least they should have done is try to cooperate with NGO HQ to try to figure out where the actual problem occured. Come on guys, if you got a frivolous source or information network, you try to debunk it, and not ignore all evidence indirectly pointing in that direction.

Furthermore, AT is a professional website where some - or perhaps all, I don't know - reporters are supposedly paid. Considering their position, they have the responsability to handle such thing responsibly, not deny it randomly with a 3 lines e-mail sent 5 minutes after receiving the inquiry.

Now, feel free to say it doesn't matter if AT didn't know about it when they published; but that's BS, because even then it matters to know how in the world they got that information without getting the original source information. Someone who AT trusts is applying plagiarism and tens of thousands of people have read that article by now, if not much more. Legally, I would assume that if AT denies such things, they would be held responsible for it, instead of their source.

The kind of reactions I'm seeing about this are saddening at best. Sounds like 3 years olds pirating the latest version of Putt-Putt while posting a reply, thinking "pff, they pirated it, and so what? I do that too". I know this is a quite overly ridiculous comparaison, but come on...


Uttar


Well i see you jumped on for the full ride. I found this hilarious myself. "Regeneration" is acting like a moron. If someone tried to bring up charges for every time someone did this on the internet, i mean do i have to go any further, can you imagine the anarchy? Regaurdless of IF they posted it first and someone at anandtech read it, re-wrote their own article for their traffic, there is no wrong doing in that. The guy is bitching cause he can, thats it. Wrong doing in this? 0. Out of the amount of articles that get written about these types of things a year, this is a drop in the bucket, very trivial. Its not like they found the cure to bird flu. Saying Nvidia has 2 new cards and explaining how to disect a dll has been done many many times in many variations. Just cause you get to it first, doesnt mean you own it and all relating material anyone else writes about it following.
 
I assume this alright too. I dont know about you, but I'm not stealing stuff and I'm giving credits in my articles. I know this happens alot, but I expect AT to show some level of ethics.
 
I've spent a little more time looking into this, and now I'm forced to agree I was hasty. If AT did in fact get tipped to this by reading the original piece they certainly should have said so and linked to it. Which it appears they are saying they weren't, at least directly, but still tipped the cap to recognize a prior claim (there's a word for this in the academic world, but it is alluding me at the moment).

I'm not seeing "plaigarism" per se, however. At the very least they cared enuf to reword stuff enuf to avoid that, in my opinion. I mean, try explaining this same thing to anyone and there are going to be similarities within the bounds of the AT piece. There just has to be.

Edit: :sigh: I hate correcting a correction, but http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/resources/ref009.html

So, technically this could be plagiarism. But it isn't a slam dunk in my mind, as I thot it was. When I originally looked at the article I thot what was being stated was that all the red text had been lifted more or less verbatim. It clearly was not. But it certainly may have been discovered there first and then massaged --but that would have been entirely legitimate to do so long as the original was cited, which it was not. Having said that, I still think it is not impossible it was "independant discovery" and the need of explaining it produced the similarities. There are only so many ways you can say "2 + 2 = 4", in the crudest of examples. The difference in drivers revs used, however, means nothing so far as I'm concerned one way or the other.
 
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Regeneration said:
I assume this alright too. I dont know about you, but I'm not stealing stuff and I'm giving credits in my articles. I know this happens alot, but I expect AT to show some level of ethics.

hmm, That link did make me think for a second. In it, people discuss an Anandtech article from 2002 that has pictures of HDR effects that are also on another website.

If those pictures were taken without permission than that is probably copyright-infringment. But obviously we can't say that with certainty, because for all we know, Anand asked permission to use them, or even paid for them. Just seeing them in his article doesn't automatically mean they're stolen. You'd have to ask the photographer or whomever owns the images.
 
If you click start->run, type "cmd" and press OK, it will open a command prompt. At the prompt, type "tracert www.yahoo.com". This will begin to run the traceroute command, and the parameter will tell it to trace the route from your host to the www.yahoo.com server. For each "hop" (host along the path between you and the remote host, or destination), it will report the latency between your host and that hop (if the ICMP echo packets aren't being blocked) as well as the qualified host name or IP address of the host at that hop. The main benefit of this program is to determine the metric, or hop count, between your host and the remote host, as well as helping identify any path along the route that has a higher than expected latency associated with it, possibly due to network congestion.

Now, according to most of you, I just plagarized hundreds of web sites, reference books, guides, powerpoint presentations, and term papers. I give you all about a 9.5 out of 10 on the overreaction meter. They're called instructions people, they're factual and difficult to plagarize. As long as the entire article wasn't copied word for word, there's no crime here. NGOHQ did not invent the idea of resource viewing, and they don't own the monopoly on realizing that it can be used with graphics card driver dll's. There is no plagarism here. If you can prove that AnandTech first found out about this by viewing NGOHQ's website, you will be well on your way towards showing that the writer falls short of perfect in the ethics department, but you still will not be any closer to proving plagarism because their article was written in their own words.

Personally, it looks to me like one of AnandTech's thousands of readers read the NGOHQ article and submitted the information to AnandTech without ever giving NGOHQ credit. AnandTech added a link to NGOHQ in their article when contacted about it. Get over it.
 
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