Blog Plagiarism

thebloodfiend · Apr 23, 2012

Not sure if this belongs here, or in roundtable, but has anyone heard about this?

The follow[ing] posts are from January 2012, and I'm not sure why the book blogging community wasn't aware of it until now.

Kristi Diehm, better known as The Story Siren, was allegedly caught lifting articles about blogging and making minimal changes to them for her site. Bloggers B from Beautifully Invisible and Vahni from Grit and Glamour found the evidence and confronted her about it. Their entire story is like a master tutorial on how to use analytics to identify who is reading a website, and when - and in this case, possibly why.

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/plagiarism-and-the-story-siren

I'm all for calling attention to plagiarism, but I think the hashtags are a bit too much. I don't follow Kristi's blog, but I have used some of her advice on contacting publishers for ARC's in the past. In a way, I feel bad for her, but plagiarism isn't cool. It makes me wonder about other content on her blog now.

Stiger05 · Apr 23, 2012

Wow. I'm all for getting inspiration from other places, but straight up copying? No.

Thanks for linking this. I now know a blog to avoid, and found several good ones in the process.

Becca C. · Apr 23, 2012

Whaaaaat?

I love Kristi

I honestly can't believe she would do this. She's been really outspoken about plagiarism in the past. She's probably the hardest working and most famous book blogger in the entire community. I'm not always in agreement with her (I think her reviews tend to be too short and shallow and she seems to absolutely adore every single book) but I respect the community she's built.

lolchemist · Apr 23, 2012

I usually loooove blog & author drama but this just makes me sad. It's one of those situations where you just want to scream "GURL! Why would you do this? You know better!!"

missesdash · Apr 23, 2012

Man, saying you've never been to a site is really really dumb if you've EVER been to the site.

Mharvey · Apr 23, 2012

While I think 'making slight tweaks and reposting' isn't quite accurate, it does seem like the writer took a sort of toneless how-to memo and rewrote it in her own tone, adding nothing that she didn't learn from the memo.

It's certainly textbook plagiarism.

The sad thing is, for a piece that small and considering she did a complete rewrite of language, all she would have had to do was reference the original article MLA style and thrown in a couple more sources and I doubt people would be slinging the P-word. No one expects a writer to be 100% original, if they do, they're living a dream. Writers get ideas from others... and when you do, give kudos where they are deserved.

What a joke that thief is to the writing community.

missesdash · Apr 23, 2012

This is great: http://www.gritandglamour.com/2012/01/31/bitch-stole-my-content-plagiarism/

I love how they handled it. They skirted around the 'privacy' issue really strategically and knew it'd eventually come back to bite her in the ass.

Who spends that much time re-writing someone else's posts???? Seriously would it not be easier to just write your own? I wonder how much of her blog is plagiarized. What a jerk.

Stiger05 · Apr 23, 2012

missesdash said:
This is great: http://www.gritandglamour.com/2012/01/31/bitch-stole-my-content-plagiarism/

I love how they handled it. They skirted around the 'privacy' issue really strategically and knew it'd eventually come back to bite her in the ass.

Who spends that much time re-writing someone else's posts???? Seriously would it not be easier to just write your own? I wonder how much of her blog is plagiarized. What a jerk.

I wondered this too. By the time you take someone's work and tweak it like she did, you could have just written your own post. I don't see anything wrong with "I found this great post on xyz over on abc blog. You should check it out, oh and here are my thoughts on the subject" and link to the blog. Get ideas from other places, great, but give credit and be up front about it.

maybegenius · Apr 23, 2012

Hoo boy. I know pretty much nothing about The Story Siren... I know her by name/reputation only. I think the other bloggers built fairly compelling cases, but this is definitely feeling pretty witch-hunty. A lot of people are yammering that she hasn't addressed it and this is an admission of guilt, etc., when really... she's probably having a freaked-out cry right now because everything's exploding. I'm sure she'll make a statement at some point.

IDK. I don't feel like I know enough about the situation either way to make a statement on it. It seems obvious that at minimum, she used other blog posts as "inspiration" and closely mirrored the content. Unoriginal and questionable, certainly. Whether it deserves the absolute nuclear-level flaming she's likely to receive in the next few days/weeks, I don't know. Ugh. Bad situation for all involved. I've had people nab my work and pass it off as their own before. Most tuck tail and immediately backpedal when confronted.

thebloodfiend · Apr 23, 2012

Mharvey said:
While I think 'making slight tweaks and reposting' isn't quite accurate, it does seem like the writer took a sort of toneless how-to memo and rewrote it in her own tone, adding nothing that she didn't learn from the memo.

It's certainly textbook plagiarism.

The sad thing is, for a piece that small and considering she did a complete rewrite of language, all she would have had to do was reference the original article MLA style and thrown in a couple more sources and I doubt people would be slinging the P-word. No one expects a writer to be 100% original, if they do, they're living a dream. Writers get ideas from others... and when you do, give kudos where they are deserved.

What a joke that thief is to the writing community.

Pretty much my thoughts. A quick link at the bottom is all she needed to do. I used to do funny little typographic works in style of Wordboner and I'd link to his stuff in the dA comments section. He commented back and said thanks for saying where I was inspired. Sometimes, you can even make friends by trading links. I really don't know what she was thinking when she lied about never visiting the site. The internet knows all.

Undercover · Apr 23, 2012

I just don't understand why any blogger/reviewer would want to take from another site, knowing that a lot of the same people would be looking at sites similar to that. Like no one would ever notice? I can understand summarizing another aritcle and bringing up your own points and referencing to it and all, but actually copy pasting? I don't know much of plagiarism going on with this kind of stuff bogging/reviewing/etc. but I remember when something similar happened with my work. I was googling my name one time and found someone copy/pasting one of my poems to their site, I think it was stumple upon or something. The user never contacted me about using it, she just did it. I contacted the site and they took it down right away. It's just scary that people could do that. In some cases they never get caught.

thebloodfiend · Apr 23, 2012

Undercover said:
I just don't understand why any blogger/reviewer would want to take from another site, knowing that a lot of the same people would be looking at sites similar to that. Like no one would ever notice? I can understand summarizing another aritcle and bringing up your own points and referencing to it and all, but actually copy pasting? I don't know much of plagiarism going on with this kind of stuff bogging/reviewing/etc. but I remember when something similar happened with my work. I was googling my name one time and found someone copy/pasting one of my poems to their site, I think it was stumple upon or something. The user never contacted me about using it, she just did it. I contacted the site and they took it down right away. It's just scary that people could do that. In some cases they never get caught.

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who don't understand what plagiarism is. Kristi, obviously does, but quite a few are rather clueless. I've had my digital art ripped from dA and sold before. It's on various websites without my permission. I don't really care that much (I did send a DMCA take down order to the person selling it, though) but I imagine that it's a nightmare for someone who doesn't know what to do, and who's really concerned.

missesdash · Apr 23, 2012

It's especially new with blogging. When I first started using tumblr, I figured I could take whatever I wanted from anywhere. Then I realized it pissed people off. Then once I started to actually care about what I post, I understood why it pissed people off.

I try to attribute things I post, but so much is just floating around, having been lifted so many times, no one even knows where it came from anymore.

veinglory · Apr 23, 2012

It's not a 'witch hunt' if you're actually a witch.

maybegenius · Apr 23, 2012

*Kanye shrug*

I'm not saying she's not in the wrong. She obviously is. But there's a difference between, "Man, what a jerk" and "I ALWAYS HATED HER! SHE'S THE WORST! LET'S MAKE A HASHTAG AND BADGER HER ON TWITTER! BURN HER!"

ETA: I'm not saying the latter is what people in this thread are doing, it's just what I'm seeing in the blog comments and on Twitter.

veinglory · Apr 23, 2012

And the quickest way to kill the issue would be admit-and-move-on. Excuse, deflect and 'you're a meangrrl' is going to keep this alive much longer.

maybegenius · Apr 23, 2012

I don't know that that's true. Some people like perpetuating drama no matter what you do. I think if she came out this morning and made a statement, people would still be picking at it. I mean, we'll never know because it didn't happen, but I doubt the Internet would have gone, "Oh, she apologized, everybody go home."

Believe me, I have little tolerance for people who whine and play the Mean Girl card, but I've also been around social media enough to know people rarely just walk away.

veinglory · Apr 23, 2012

It does make a difference in terms of how long things drag out.

The internet has a short attention span, without re-engagement hooks (it's not really plagiarism, plagiarism on blogs is okay etc) this will last a week or two. With them it could go on and on and on.

lolchemist · Apr 23, 2012

I think the Twitter meanies are just circling like sharks right now waiting for her to reply so that they can have a feeding frenzy. It's funny because our advice for authors is 'Never reply!' but what is the proper protocol for bloggers? She already apologized to the people she stole from but she needs to apologize to the readers too.

I don't know... Is it better to apologize immediately while everyone's all excited and eager to pounce on you and unleash the internet fury, or is it better to wait a few days when most of the people have already forgotten and moved on the the next big drama?

lolchemist · Apr 23, 2012

veinglory said:
It does make a difference in terms of how long things drag out.

The internet has a short attention span, without re-engagement hooks (it's not really plagiarism, plagiarism on blogs is okay etc) this will last a week or two. With them it could go on and on and on.

OMG! Brain twins!

missesdash · Apr 23, 2012

veinglory said:
It's not a 'witch hunt' if you're actually a witch.

Blind Writer · Apr 23, 2012

I've been watching this situation all day, and I have to say that I'm sad both to learn of the plagiarism and to see how people have immediately ganged up on her.

I had an incident recently with my work being plagiarized on the internet. Yes, it was upsetting. Yes, I did what I could to get it taken down. Yes, I was angry to see something I worked very hard on being placed online without any credit to me.

That said, I would never wish what has happened to Kristi today on that person. Never.

The bloggers have every reason to be angry at Kristi. They had every right to tell their story. However, I"m disappointed by the behavior of others. Spamming her twitterfeed, creating hashtags, etc - that's entering bullying territory. What she did was wrong, but it doesn't justify the way she is being ganged up on now.

StackedBooks did a great post today - very balanced and thoughtful - that really sums up how I feel about the whole thing.

missesdash · Apr 23, 2012

I haven't checked twitter, are people actually spamming her? I saw mention of the hashtag, but most of the people in the thread seemed to be against the idea.

I see a lot of people complaining about how she's being bullied but I haven't seen any examples.

ETA/ I just checked. There are more people complaining about "the ganging up" than there are people actually ganging up. And she posted this vague non-apology: http://www.thestorysiren.com/2012/04/an-explanation-and-an-apology.html

soopykun · Apr 23, 2012

This is very much a gang mentality taking place. The anonymity of the internet strikes again. I don't follow her blog, and while I think she should be called out for plagiarizing, I do feel sorry for how far it's gone. I know how hard it can be to come up with fresh content, but it never once crossed my mind to lift content. It's not hard to add links, or just come up with a crappy post if I really do feel the need to post on a certain date. (Heck, I'll even just talk about food. Writers eating=writerly post.)

Amadan · Apr 23, 2012

Meh, she doesn't deserve to be threatened or have her life ruined, but she certainly deserves to have her blog hounded off the Internet.

She says:

ETA: excerpt snipped, was told it's too much quoting.

Problem with this is that it's not a sincere "I'm sorry I did this," but "I'm sorry I got caught and it's blowing up in my face." I mean, this is a textbook weasel-worded apology in which she admits to vague, unspecified "mistakes" but she totally didn't actually do anything and is not admitting to it.

Blog Plagiarism

Cory

Shooting stars.

You can't sit with us!

Liker Of Happy Things

You can't sit with us!

might be a giant

Cory

I got it covered

Cory

You can't sit with us!

volitare nequeo

might be a giant

volitare nequeo

might be a giant

volitare nequeo

Shooting stars.

Shooting stars.

You can't sit with us!

YA/MG Author

You can't sit with us!