Latarnia wrote:
When the Lianne Spiderbaby commentary was happening, the consensus was that a small amount of borrowing (a sentence/phrase here or there) did matter.  Clearly, something's up when exact phrases (and not just one word) are used in both articles under examination.  I don't think there is any definition of plagiarism that offers a free pass or invalidates the charge of plagiarism due to a borrowing of just several parts from the original source. 

From what I remember, no one was accused outright of plagiarism in this matter, and whatever suspicions arose were lessened considerably by the reputation of one of the writers, so that pains were taken to offer up a simple and not damning explanation: That both writers used a similar PR source.

The genie left that bottle once the topic was raised, so it's out there, despite the removal, a few days later, of the discussion here that named the writers and the articles in question.


Mirek


No. When the Spiderbaby story broke, the blogger included whole passages of material lifted from different sources for different articles. Those examples were fresh so it was also easy to find out from those whose material was taken whether or not there were extenuating possiblities. There were none. That's a big difference than what occurred in this thread recently.

At best, and logically, the only conclusion that one can make in this other matter is that there are fragments and phrases in four sentences out of an entire article that are the same as those found in an older article. That's it. What we do not know is whether they were lifted from the older article or whether both writers used the same source. The accusation festered for five or six days with no additional information. I wish I spiked it sooner on its lack of merit.

Mirek, you can play Grand Inquisitor to your hearts content on Latarnia. I weighed the evidence against a man's reputation and found the evidence presented in this forum to be featherweight and gauzy. I made the call to terminate the tangential thread because it was the right thing to do.



GARY L. PRANGE
I'm not all bad, just mostly.

"Sic gorgiamus allos subjectos nunc." 
  
Last Edited By: GaryP11111 Aug 29 13 10:02 AM. Edited 2 times.