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I'm a big meanie

novella

novella

Active Member
I obviously have overstepped the boundaries this morning. Apparently several others on this site don't share my concerns about original work. Maybe that's just a sign of the times. Who knows.

Anyway, if I have rocked a boat, I apologize. I do think that honesty and integrity are really important, even more important than getting wet once in a while. But that's not how everyone feels, I guess. Go along to get along, right? Generally that's not how I prefer to live, but whatever.
 
I will take brut force, in-your-face honesty and passion over watered down, politically correct inuendo any day. I think Novella has a burning passion for the things she cuts the deepest with, and that is part of what makes Novella special. I love to read her posts. There's a deep intelligence there that makes me think about things I might never think about otherwise.

Novella, I don't think your a meanie. I think you have true passion and a true honesty that I find refreshing in todays politically correct world.

I hope that the ripples in the TBF pond will subside in a hurry, but I hesitate to wish that the openess, honesty, and intensity will disappear. We all love intrique, intensity, conflict and power in the books that we read. Why should the forum that discusses so much lack the same emotions?

Novella adds a lot to TBF. She's one of my favorites.

There's plenty of love to go around. Sometimes it takes a bit of a blowout to remember how much love there really is.

Besides...what always comes after a good arguement?
.....make-up sex....which some people describe as the best sex of all.... :D
 
Welcome to the club!

And you're wrong novella. As someone who writes and has had my writing "borrowed" by others, as someone who believes artists are just as entitled to be recognized and compensated for their work has a house painter or the guy who asks "you want fries with that?" I'm very concerned about plagiarism. I'm sorry I wasn't around early to provide my support, but I'm still working on having internet access surgically implanted in my brain. :)

Because this is a forum intended to celebrate the written word, I would think that there would be special concern about the authenticity of what should be original material. And honestly, this was one problem that I truly thought I'd never see here.

I'm really sorry the red flag you raised was greeted with such hostility when the very people attacking you should be offering their gratitude for discovering this problem and giving them the opportunity to correct it.
 
novella said:
I obviously have overstepped the boundaries this morning. Apparently several others on this site don't share my concerns about original work. Maybe that's just a sign of the times. Who knows.

Anyway, if I have rocked a boat, I apologize. I do think that honesty and integrity are really important, even more important than getting wet once in a while. But that's not how everyone feels, I guess. Go along to get along, right? Generally that's not how I prefer to live, but whatever.
Click to expand...


I wasn't so glad to hear your degrading yourself to meanie, though you might not mean it seriously. I highly praise the quality of honesty and integrity of everything. And I quite understood your being a bit shocked (might not be the proper word) at the things that you mentioned in the other thread. Also, I believed that you have the deep concern about this bookforum (I mean you really care about it), otherwise you could just go flow with whatsoever. As some ancient saying goes,'' the more deeply you love, the more severely you would hate." anyway, something like that.

People would be very likely to overreact/overemphasize some aspects of certain things when they found things weren't what they should be. So, I thought, your thread --- "plagiarised...."--- might be the first thing on your mind, besides, I guessed you might want to make it get some serious attention.

I wasn't sure why I had to say this, since I actually became reluctant to express whatever on my mind about topics that have been talked in many threads. anyway. That's it. :)
 
Wow.

I obviously have overstepped the boundaries this morning. Apparently several others on this site don't share my concerns about original work. Maybe that's just a sign of the times. Who knows.
No one here was condoning plaigarism, don't twist their concern for your misrepentation into "they support plaigarism." You misrepresented the situation. You forgot to include the important fact that 100% of those reviews were by one person and that you were on a fishing expedition. Thats a pretty big thing. Saying all the TBF reviews are 100% plaigarism is a bold statement that is not really true.

Anyway, if I have rocked a boat, I apologize. I do think that honesty and integrity are really important, even more important than getting wet once in a while. But that's not how everyone feels, I guess. Go along to get along, right? Generally that's not how I prefer to live, but whatever.

Either you are very naïve or just reactionary. There are idiots out there who think nothing of cheating, copying, plaigarising. In this digital age, such things are easy - a simple copy and paste. It happens daily across the web. (And dont you dare try to say Im condoning it) I admire your enthusiam for tracking such people, but take a peek around the net and you will see its a big bucket of fish to fry. The problem I and I think others had was that you called out this forum saying that 100% of TBF reviews are stolen. That's an inflammatory and insulting statement that just isn't true. You honestly expected no one, especially the admin/owner to respond to that?

A simple post saying: Martin is copying these reviews from here and there and posting them here, and I'm sure Darren would have deleted posts and disabled Martins account (atleast I would have). Instead you chose to post: Plagiarised Reviews on TBF. Holy Cow, it's epidemic.
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. ......Darren, isn't there a policy against this? Aren't you worried about liability?

And now you are whining about recieving flack? You personally called out the administrator with a post full of half truths. Next time disclose your fishing expedition, next time don't misrepresent the situation.

You may have been an "editor" but you certainly don't know the meaning of the word tact.
 
demetrio,
We have several misunderstandings here. Firstly, I posted directly to Martin in the first instance about his practice, to which he did not respond. I gave him plenty of time to respond either discreetly or publicly and he declined to do so. Only after several hours and another post, also within a relevant discussion, did I post the Plagairising thread.

Also, I never said that 100% of TBR's reviews were lifted. I said my hit rate so far was 100%, which is still true. I chose not to name Martin at the time. I thought he would probably go change them or delete them. Someone else named him. My first post was a "simple post" to quote your phrase.

I was inspired to look for original sources by Martin's post this morning about his own many reviews. He pointed, I followed.

You may consider my post whining. In fact, I'm just saying that if these issues of integrity and fairness are not important to the general membership, so be it.
 
Firstly, I posted directly to Martin in the first instance about his practice, to which he did not respond. I gave him plenty of time to respond either discreetly or publicly and he declined to do so. Only after several hours and another post, also within a relevant discussion, did I post the Plagairising thread.
Irrelevant, you said there was an epidemic. You declined to say with only one reviewer. That's my issue. You blew it out of proportion, hell you weren't even close to proving an epidemic.

Also, I never said that 100% of TBR's reviews were lifted. I said my hit rate so far was 100%, which is still true.
You said: 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.
There is a certain implication there that you are checking TBF as a whole, not one reviewer. If it was one reviewer, it would say: whether reviews posted by martin...

Guess what. I have an epidemic: I'm getting a 100% hit rate when I check to see whether people named Jeffrey in the USA have murdered more than one person and eaten their flesh.


I was inspired to look for original sources by Martin's post this morning about his own many reviews. He pointed, I followed.
Again, you are slow to follow here. This isn't the issue. I clapped for you when I saw you outting a plaigarist. The issue is you were overdoing it and skirted around, pretending it was something it wasn't. Hell, you knowingly withheld pertinent information, and tried to lash out at Darren. Do you not see the difference? You imply that people don't care about plaigarism or stealing people's work, just because they weren't surprised (mehastings) or don't think you were being realistic (me). Get over yourself.

In fact, I'm just saying that if these issues of integrity and fairness are not important to the general membership, so be it.
Do you read at all? This isn't about that, don't pretend that you are some how imbued with more integrity than anyone else here. My complaint is that you pretended there was some big epidemic and there wasn't. You made a post look a certain way, when in reality you knew different and decided not to share the truth. That's ignorant. You found a handful of coopted reviews by a single reviewer out of the giant review bucket that is thebookforum and decided to make an axiom out of it. Just admit your original post wasn't entirely spot on and let it be.
 
Whatever way you look at it, you can be pretty sure anyone who's been around here recently will think twice before plagiarising. Which is only a good thing.
 
Well, all except for Stewart, someone told me that the new material he posted in the writing forum isnt his own!! :eek: I am shocked and abased by his blatant plagiarism :)

Anyway, is there a point to this thread, other than to try and re-open the wound of the plagiarism thread? Honestly? The matter has been discussed openly, apologies have been made and I'm sure that there will be further ramifications, but I see little need to bang away on the same old drum.

Phil
 
Anyway, is there a point to this thread... but I see little need to bang away on the same old drum.

This thread is about Novella overreacting, the other was about Martin plaigarising. Simple concept.

We do need to start a new thread now about moderators abusing their power and silencing the forum when they are outted. That's almost as low as the plaigarism he committed.
 
demetrio said:
We do need to start a new thread now about moderators abusing their power
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That's why he stepped down as a moderator the first time - closing a thread because he felt he owned it, a false notion based upon the fact he started it.
 
I'm with you demetrio.

I think that the issue was handled entirely wrongly. The PM function is (unusually) enabled on this board. On a lot of other boards I frequent, it is disabled, meaning that you have to 'go public' with issues you have over other members. Since it is generously allowed here (I say generously, because there is no way to police it and it does take up bandwidth), I say it should be used.

And, in my view, a neat little PM to Darren would have been far more appropriate in this case.

Instead, it looked like nothing more than a witch hunt.

I hate plagiarism. I have always been careful in my written work (uni and fictional) not to plagiarise. I think it is right to highlight it.

But the method of highlighting it should be to either impartial moderators, or to the board admin. Not via a highly inflammatory message, designed only to make more people view it than would ordinarily do so.

A lot of the people who validly contribute to the book review section have a right to feel aggrieved at the fact that apparently 100% of the reviews posted are plagiarised. Since I wasn't aware of the history and that you were only tracing one person, I genuinely believed there was some sort of epidemic and that many people were simply lifting reviews from elsewhere. So it was most certainly false representation of the facts to make it more sensationalist.

All my (very humble) opinion....

Kind regards,
Amanda
 
Let those who have not sinned, cast the first stone.

i mean this as a blanket statement. i think the issue should be dropped re: martin, stewart, novella etc. everyone has said their peace.
 
jenngorham said:
i mean this as a blanket statement. i think the issue should be dropped re: martin, stewart, novella etc. everyone has said their peace.
Click to expand...

It should. However, I don't think it can just be forgotten. A certain amount of closure needs to brought to it. There are some members who think it should be kept to Private Messaging - why? It's a forum wide concern. And then there are those who are more than just members who are advocating the use of Private Messaging to air your grievances about them. Is this about their public image or the forum? I consider it to be the former.
 
Or the use of PM could be considered wise so that it is not splattered across different areas of the forum. There has been some fall-out over this, so that this forum reads not as 'The Book Forum' but as the 'We Hate XXX' forum. It doesn't come across as a welcoming atmosphere to anyone who decides to join up in the hope of actually discussing books with friendly people.

So, I guess you're right in a way, Stewart - it might be about image, but to me it's the image of the forum that is at risk, and why I am advocating PMs being used.
 
magemanda said:
So, I guess you're right in a way, Stewart - it might be about image, but to me it's the image of the forum that is at risk, and why I am advocating PMs being used.
Click to expand...
Still, people keep opening threads because of the "silence", so maybe there should be one, moderated thread?
 
Yes, of course taking work and using it as if it were yours is wrong. I think that's not the issue here.

The issue is that you went out of your way to hurt somebody. There can be no excuse for that.
 
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