Chris Anderson, who many of you techies may know, is the editor of Wired magazine and has published the renown book about internet business models called “The Long Tail.”
Waldo Jaquith was reading a promotional copy of Chris’ new book, Free, in which he found many instances of copied text from, you guessed it, the free *cough*online encyclopedia, wikipedia and several other sources. Waldo emailed Chris and his publisher alerting them to this fact. Chris responded:
All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources…
This all came about once we collapsed the notes into the copy. I had the original sources footnoted, but once we lost the footnotes at the 11th hour, I went through the document and redid all the attributions, in three groups…
Obviously in my rush at the end I missed a few of that last category, which is bad. As you’ll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book’s focus, mostly on historical asides, but that’s no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced.
I think what we’ll do is publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with. That way the links are live and we don’t have to wrestle with how to freeze them in time, which is what threw me in the first place.
Nice find Waldo. Very well done. This is a bit unnerving coming from such a hot shot internet journalist.
P.S. If anyone wants to make funny edits, you can find the original Free cover here.
[via VQR] [spicybear/flickr pic]
Related posts:
- Welcome to the LOCAL Internet
- Halsey Minor Not Running for Governor
- On the Future of Charlottesville (and other Local) Media
you see. this is the difference between a grown-up blog and a shifty one. waldo gave mr. anderson a chance to explain himself. you just gave shifty blog readers ammo to make funny photochops dissing him. shame on you.
it would be nice if there was a phone number i could call to rant about such childish behavior and maybe even call you names. especially if my rant were printed in a newspaper so everyone could read it. but i’m sure no such thing exists. because wouldn’t it be rather childish and immature to do such a thing?
Does Waldo not have a day job? How does he find the time to make all these boring-ass discoveries? I bet he’s no fun at parties.
I really don’t know why you pick on Waldo, who works at the national recognized Virginia Quarterly Review. He is a very good guy who has tried to give people the tools to be better citizen’s. His sunlight project is a national model on how to give an average person the ability to follow a bill in the Virginia House and Senate that interest them. He works on a variety of interest that try and make Charlottesville and the state and better place to live. He seems not about his ego and lets the facts speak for themself. He has work on local food and other issues. He engages his blog posters in a tone that Thor should look to follow. And now he’s asking questions of a national journalist in a civil way and trying to find the truth.
I’ll bet he is fun at parties and if I meet him at one, I will tell him thanks for all he has done.
i follow no one. or is it the collective “we” don’t follow any one?
He needs to give you the tools to know when to use apostrophes correctly.
That’s pretty funny you read my comment and decided the most important thing to comment on was my ongoing english grammar deficient. My apologies for subjecting cvillains to my lack of precision in your native tongue. It is a struggle for me and I beseech your kind indulgence.
I hear there’s not much more important to shenanigans than a good tongue-wagging, so just sit back and enjoy.
Actually all I read was “blah blah blah asskissing blatant grammor error blah blah asskiss”
It’s a good thing that cocktail recipes are so short
Yes it is.
pssst Shen……. you should have said “Just like your dick”
bwahahaha
I could have said, “just like you” but that’s too mean cuz it’s true.
lack of being endowed jokes from Shen- that is funny
That was from Floozy. I made fun of you for speaking bad english and being short. Do try to keep up.
I don’t trust short people.
also on how to format/spell complex modifiers “nationally-recognized” or “nationally recognized” … both are equally acceptable
/yes i am a grammar/spelling nerd
actually no.
Left-hand components of a compound adjective that end in -ly that modify right-hand components that are past participles (ending in -ed):
“a hotly disputed subject”
“a greatly improved scheme”
“a distantly related celebrity”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound#Hyphenated_compound_adjectives
on the web i tend to excessively use the hyphen in compound modifiers, less for the rule and more to emphasize the pairing—it prevents mis-reads when one is glossing, or scanning a post quickly. Tom Wolfe was the most egregious over-hyphenator ever, but it’s effective in his staccato and inventive aggregating descriptors.
terrifically-overrated facile-political pseudo-reportage.
on the web i tend to excessively use the hyphen
Is that what your calling it these days…?
“Is that what your calling it these days…?”
on the web i tend to obliterate the difference between contraction and possesive pronoun…
/smiley face.
“the national[ly] recognized Virginia Quarterly Review”
yes, insofar as Cville Weekly is a national publication, and insofar as the print-version of what Monica did to Bill is ‘recognition’, we could call it that. also, i think in this case ‘works’ is a bit of an overstatement.
waldo is terrific for all he’s done in this town. it takes a lot of nerve and drive and discipline to be a geek and a gadding sticker-in-of-nose, and he should be admired for the empire he built and the attention he’s garnered for himself and causes/stories he drives.
same, he should be mocked personally and professionally without cease on this site and in life. it contributes to his goals and mystique. he is certainly a great and clever self-mocker.
/proink!
Seriously you going to challenge nationally recognized?
Two National Magazine Awards (for General Excellence and Fiction) and six nominations in 2006; one award (Single-Topic Issue) and three nominations in 2008; two nominations each in 2009, 2007, and 2005. Presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors, these awards are the most prestigious in the magazine industry.
Named a finalist in three categories for the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards: General Excellence, International Coverage, and Best Writing. Also named a finalist in the Best Writing category in 2007 and 2006.
Sorry OD but your hatred of all things UVa is showing
“Sorry OD but your hatred of all things UVa is showing”
Dude… so totally offbase (but grammatically flawless and spoken from a GREAT height). I’m essentially a ‘visiting scholar’ at UVA and am constantly swilling cocktails and swapping erudite latin tag-notes and other heavy-thoughts with dozens of profs in our badass-academicy way. YOUVEEYAY can hardly take any more of my goodwishes and happy attentions!
I just feel, gently, that those prizes you mention are awarded by a board of four people each, having chosen the winner from a list of about SEVEN surviving substantial lit-polit journals (each of which has won the award in the past–UTNE, Sewanee, etc.) at the head of organizations consisting entirely of political-lit magazine insiders most of whom are contributors or are angling to contribute, and that the mag’s ACTUAL circulation would be about fifteen, other than that every college/university library in the US has a standing order for all ten such magazines irrespective of content or quality.
also ‘Best Writing’ has very little to do in those circles with writing itself, and more to do with political-emotive content… that is, catch-phrases and hot-topix, not how well or evocatively they are presented in lucid english prose. Have you ever tried to read an issue from cover-to-cover? I defy you to do so without adderall or liberal doses of tussin to dullen your incredulity at the cant and posturing of it.
… your incredulity at the cant and posturing of it.
Spot the spelling mistake. Be more careful otter.
VA QUARTERLY REVIEW, nationally-recognized best and most thoughtful and important Nobel-prizewinning magazine on the planet, nay in the universe, fucking ever and ever for all time and expanding space, read by kings and barons and dead french intellectuals… would have caught that in proofreading.
So you admit they are nationally recognized but just by boring academics who have actually read it from cover to cover but their judgement is suspect. The awards they have won don’t hold the same import as an Oscar or a People’s Choice Award. Which is similar to saying that if something is done in a narrowcasted media outlet it isn’t important and can be dismissed because it isn’t popular or well known. This makes sense because we all know what a man of the people you are.
I haven’t said they are the best, most important, or any other of your reductio ad absurdum points. And if you open up your VQR and look at the masthead you would find that Waldo Jaquith is the Web Developer/Web Editor. That sure looks like work to me.
awwww, dieter, let’s not quarrel. fine, fine. respected and loved by people who are of a like-mind and certain intellect specifically geared to respect and admire it. but it’s a stretch to call it a popular national favorite, for example, when the entire readership of it would fit in a Turkish Bath… even if those rarefied appreciators are dispersed across this nation and others.
Web Dev and Web Editor. I believe that largely consists of, upon publication of each new issue, of performing the Select-All, Copy, and then Paste function from a Word document into a pre-formattted webpage. Cvillain’s web-dev/web-edit worked for a week or two and makes a tweak now and again. i suspect he works abundantly and diligently and 80 hours a week on othjer important (no joke) and useful (no joke) stuff elsewhere, but to suggest he is staff of the review implies involvement in the formation and refinement of the magazine qua magazine…. content. he’s a periodic consultant and updater-in-bulk.
as to all the rest, and not to belabour the point:
1) what gives? why is this bovi so sacri to you?
2) play a game–email me any appropriate but highly outre topic, i’ll write an essay in the next few days for submission to one of the next few issues, i’ll send you the acceptance-letter… and i’ll embed your name periodically throughout the piece in veiled anagrams and sidebar mentions.
hell, we’ll have to wait:
http://www.vqronline.org/submission/
apparently he’s not also their proofreader:
Meta-Writing from our July 1926 Issue
Waldo Jaquith
“Why not write an except for the home page?” the web editor suggested.
It I had called it a popular national favorite you would be right to call me out on such a statement. I consider web design important in the modern day and real work. It had better be since I have to pay to have it done for me. Also it seems silly to argue about the need for good web design on a web blog.
VQR isn’t sacred to me at all but I admire it’s work and think Waldo is a good guy who has done nice things for this area with little reward. If these type of people are not to be defend then who is? We ask people to give back and when they do I don’t make light of it. Even when I don’t agree with them, I always respect the effort.
Like all the work Shenanigans did for the Artini. I came to her defense when people gave her grief. She work hard and with no pay. She can call me a short albino sexist pig but I still respect her efforts and will take exception with anyone who say otherwise. that’s just how I was raised.
Dieter, you are absolutely right. You are doing what I would like done.
Waldo is a fascinating and diverse guy, i’ve known and admired him since he was a snot-nosed mall-rat… then and since he’s done a shit-ton for this town and should be celebrated and praised for it ALL. I think the snark comes from knowing that he cannot be harmed by snark, and that he is adequately celebrated to merit it. He also has a terrific sense of humor and a tidy fearlessness about ticking people off (like the Wired weenie, or the Hook-lawsuit guy). I love that he tweaked Cvillain on his cvillenews, then dropped-in to chat with us about it—shows wit and character (like Halsey when he commented here for a while, even if he did tell me it seemed like it was always raining whereever i stood). If anything, i can be especially mirthful at his expense because all the wonderful things he does are completely over my head (politics? news? new-media? hunh?).
Same largely of VQR. I LOVE that it is OURS, that it is made here and published here and that it brings glory to Cville and UVA. It’s amazing too that they’d let Waldo, with no academic/scholarly/literary credentials-depth-pretensions write half of their website. That’s awesome. But, again, VQR can’t be hurt by snark… nor can it be particularly helped by being praised locally. it already succeeded, so it doesn’t NEED slavering promotion locally (same objection to PCA, that they only love and promote artists everyone already loves). And, as with Waldo, in commenting about VQR I can be especially vigorous because they operate in an arena beyond my reach. One in three pieces is intensely interesting to me. One in three is tiresome and irksome and overdone politico-savetheworld-neo-feelgood-pseudo-new-LitTheory dreck that makes me want to pull my beard out at the roots. the third of every three i just don’t ‘get’.
so, you win. hands-down. don’t make me go all META again, though, which i do here only out of respect for you and curiousity about your anti-snark devotion to Waldo/VQR–which you’ve defended righteously and well.
/me, i just step high wide and handsome with Nemesis at my heels.
I love saying your name OUTLOUD in my best Schprockets voice, but RLY, what are you doing to your adverbs and contractions?!
works at the national recognized Virginia Quarterly Review
Seriously you going to challenge
Dude.
/grammatical errors, including mine own, make me feel like I’m walking the DT Mall in my brain.
That guy Chris needs to learn how to write and apology. Christ.
Waldo is fun at parties until he catches you ogling his girlfriend’s ass.
is she hot?
she is adequately hot.
/he, like sherlock holmes, has a smarter and funnier brother though.
How do you even know he is at the party? It is so hard to find him. He blends in so well wearing his red and white striped shirt and knit cap regardless of the weather.
hahahaha
wife, not girlfriend.
Okay, I just read the guy’s response to Waldo and this jumped out at me:
The guy behind Wired magazine (or his publisher) couldn’t come up with a good format for citing source found online and so he agreed to nix the practice completely? Ha!