Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

DrPizza — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:44:51 -0000

"But a history of this behavior and you bet I'm going to call BS on it."

Put up or shut up.

Be sure to provide specific evidence of plagiarism (or whatever it is that you're bitching about).

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Kyle Mathews — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:42:04 -0000

so it's silly for anyone without hard proof to jump to conclusion that someone else with the same idea MUST of stolen it from you. Two people with similar background, reading the same material, thinking about the same subject, are more likely than not to occasionally have an identical thought.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Kyle Mathews — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:39:25 -0000

I think that it's entirely plausible that both Ars and Siegler could of come up with the same idea at the same time. Comparing Apple's strategy to Risk isn't a huge stretch of the imagination and with 1000s of bloggers writing multiple pieces a day, there will occasionally be people writing about the same idea at roughly the same time. See Marcom Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker "In the Air" about how dozens of scientific breakthroughs were discovered simultaneously by multiple scientist.
http://www.newyorker.com/re...

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

mathewi — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:35:03 -0000

That's a fair point, Tim. I have asked several people for specifics
so that I could check them, but for a variety of reasons I guess they
don't want to go public with their criticisms -- perhaps in part
because it is difficult to pin down when it's a mistake, when it's
just not knowing another source was out there, and when it's
deliberate.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Tim — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:04:11 -0000

The problem is that everyone is referring to vague incidents but no ones showing proof. Here we have exhibit a, parislemon, with the claims & allegations he's made, and exhibit b, a story from two years ago supposedly involving a mistake that was corrected.

Im fine with people wanting to remain anonymous, but it would be nice to know that someone (Matthew?) has checked into things. I say Matthew because you aren't directly involved not because you want to get into all this. It would be good to know that there was consistent evidence--not just some allegations.

I went to ars technica and looked at the stories going back a few weeks. I see a number of links to various sources (not just circular links).

Instead of calling this a vast conspiracy against ars or a concerted attempt by ars to steal content, isn't it possible that ars simply isn't reading your work? until today i had no idea who parislemon was (sorry).

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Jamie — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:17:13 -0000

This is spot on, particularly about links being the life-blood of the web. Links count for much more than traffic from click-throughs - they are one of the best indications of page rank and your resulting search engine rank.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Jay Cuthrell — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:33:36 -0000

s/If now/If not/g

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Jay Cuthrell — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:32:52 -0000

Even comments are getting harder to attribute properly.

Here's to hoping DISQUS and other cloud firms are stable and lasting. I just worry (strong word) that over time, all of this meta commentary will shift and the deep link references will have little or no meaning.

Instead, should an article or post specifically highlight a named source and generalized URI in? Does this pin hopes on identity being so refined that it can discern John Smith from John Smith?

If now, then being born with the unfortunate name of Robert Scoble might be like going through a Lit program with the name Hunter S. Thompson.

I am going to stick to comments for a while. :)

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

MG Siegler — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:43:36 -0000

Thank you Mathew. I tried to put that across in my reply to you, but I know I was long winded and vague at times :) But yes, I think you'll find many sources to back up the claims in some of the circles you and I both frequent on the Internet - and even more outside those circles.

When so many people are saying it, it must be a conspiracy in my mind right?

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

mathewi — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:36:03 -0000

For what it's worth, I have also started hearing from other people
about similar occurrences -- and not just one or two mistakes or
slipups, but a consistent pattern (or what appears to be a pattern) of
such behaviour. I'd just like to say that if Ars is doing that sort
of thing deliberately, it's a pretty crappy thing to do -- what does a
link cost a site like that? Nothing. And yet it can mean so much to
the site that gets linked.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

MG Siegler — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:31:15 -0000

Tooner - I have no problem discussing this, but let's not misconstrue things. Does anyone really think I would write that whole post if I had knowingly done the same thing myself? Please.

The fact of the matter is, as I've repeated, if this were one incident, no biggie, you can chalk it up to a lot of things including coincidence. Two incidents, still perhaps okay in my book. But a history of this behavior and you bet I'm going to call BS on it.

And yes, I really do hate to be vague on who is emailing me on this, but they asked that I do so. I don't have a history of making up sources, but you're free to not believe me if you'd like. And does it really even matter that it's prominent people seeing the same thing? Perhaps I shouldn't have said that to Mathew, I was just a bit surprised myself by some of the support.

Regardless of who else it is that is seeing the same thing, big fish or small fish, the fact is that many other people ARE noticing the same thing. There's simply no denying that.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Tooner — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:14:56 -0000

Siegler is fronting a double-standard. He's holding Ars to a standard he doesn't hold himself, with the lame excuse that Ars just MUST HAVE known what that great MG Siegler wrote. And it's funny Siegler appears to have gotten his inspiration from another blog in the process. Now that readers are calling him out for bitching over nothing. he's turning to convenient anonymous sources who tell him that he is of course right and could never be wrong.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

mathewi — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:47:03 -0000

Thanks, Steve. I appreciate that.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Steve — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:40:32 -0000

I think you're spot on Mathew, and tbh, I've always thought you set the right high standard here. A link costs nothing, and if you look at blog stats as often as I do, a very small percentage click through anyway, so it's like you're sending thousands of people away!

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

mathewi — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:36:18 -0000

Thanks, Adam -- I remember some discussion about Mashable changing its
policies around the time Louis wrote his post, but I never heard what
those changes entailed. Thanks for letting me know -- I'll change the
post.

Re: Blogs and the attribution dilemma

Adam Ostrow — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:30:23 -0000

Hey Mathew - We no longer use "via" links at Mashable. If we aren't the source, we always refer to it in the body of the article, i.e. "According to Mathew Ingram ..."