Public Service Announcement

[ivyblossom]

In case you didn't already know, the zine Manic Inquisitor publishes plagiarized stories. The short version: 'Sam Smith' likes to post stories under her name that were not written by her, and in spite of tremendous evidence that the stories are not hers to post, the administration refuses to remove the material and post an apology. In fact, Sam Smith is still listed as a 'staff writer'. Sam Smith 'writes' in a variety of fandoms, so you might want to check to see if she's written something of yours.

If anyone has donated to the zine via paypal, I strongly suggest you request the money back.

Comments

[chaos-rose.livejournal.com]

It looks like they've taken down everything of hers other than the 'Manic Inquisitor Asks' and a couple of movie reviews. Everything else is gone.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was fast. I was just looking at a whole long list.

well, great!

[madam-malicia.livejournal.com]

Actually it wasn't very fast at all. I have been watching this unfold with all my wank-loving glee and the it took the editors a long time to to even acknowledge Sam Smith was was stealing other people's work let alone take down said works.

The Manic Inquistor handled this situation very very badly.

Malicia

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

No, you're right, it wasn't fast. I meant, I was looking at a long list of her submissions, I was suprised if that list had suddenly disappeared. Looks like the list is still there, they've just removed the content rather than removing her as a 'staff writer', something I think they need to do.

They've handled this REMARKABLY badly, which is why I wanted to post about it and make sure as many people know about it as I can possibly tell.

As far as I'm concerned they're still handling it badly. Telling people "it's over now, stop talking about it" is NOT a great way to instill trust. It looks to me like they still don't understand how serious this is, and an apology from Sam Smith, while necessary, is not going to be enough. If she does not resign from their publication, they need to oust her.

[madam-malicia.livejournal.com]

"I meant, I was looking at a long list of her submissions, I was suprised if that list had suddenly disappeared. Looks like the list is still there, they've just removed the content rather than removing her as a 'staff writer"

I see.

And yes they are not doing nearly enough. Personally I would not feel the least bit sorry if this totally ruins thier reputation. They did to themselves.

Malicia

[madam-malicia.livejournal.com]

Errr....did it to themselves.

[semisuper.livejournal.com]

Apparently, the magazine did apologize (http://pub10.ezboard.com/fthemanicinquisitorfrm2.showMessage?topicID=146.topic), but the situation is still one of the most poorly handled things I've ever seen. This entire matter disgusts me -- I can't see how they expect to regain any sort of credibility whatsoever.

[sio.livejournal.com]

first point i'm tired and second i'm not in tune to the whole story....but let me play devil's advocate and ask this....how is it that they could find every source of web fic and know whether or not this chick stole these stories before publishing them? after all, there are millions, hundreds not listed on any search engine and known only by word of mouth. or is there more to it than that? do fill me in. i'm a fic writer myself although mine runs in the Trek genre, not HP.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Uh...the point is not that they unwittingly published plagiarized stories. The point is that they accused the original author of hacking their friend's email account and accused all her defenders of lying. They refused to take down the story until a week had passed and they had no more excuses, and then they got pissy when someone pointed out that more than one story was plagiarized. And to date said person is still listed as a 'staff writer' and there has been no retraction or explanation on the website itself.

No one's blaming them for not catching it in the first place. It's their chronic mismanagement and petty snipping that's the problem.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Ivy, I understand what you're saying, but I had the same first-reaction as the person who said she'd play devil's advocate. No archive should feel obligated to research all the onlinee fanfic and all the novels and scripts and poems such that they can know when an entire story comes from somewhere else. I mean, fa's archived plagiarised stories and work by various artists before, and sometimes it has taken a week from the first report to get it down, as we require some proof that a work predates our upload of it. Otherwise that's open to serious abuse. And if it turns out that someone lied to us to get another author's fic pulled, we'd be apoplectically apologetic - it's one reason we don't delete fics or review threads from our system, we just make them unfindable by the public.

But I think it would be incredibly problematic if people who haven't paid attention to the details here walked away thinking that a week is always too long, or asking for some evidence from the author who claims another plagiarized is out of line.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

It's not an archive, it's a zine, a very small zine. And the plagiarized story was written by one of their staff writers. I'd say FA is in a rather different situation; the zine handled all of it's queries, problems and submissions on their public message board, and it took a week of evidence-posting and harranguing to get the editors to even admit there might be a problem. They even accused the person submitting the complaint of hacking her own email account and of plagiarising the story herself before they took the thing down.

Honestly, I think a week IS too long, once the evidence is in hand. They had clear evidence very fast, but accepted their staff writer's claim of 'hand written drafts' over a yahoo group post with the story in it from 2002.

[sio.livejournal.com]

ahh well now that i know that they accused the real author of lying etc, i understand the whole problem. thx fr the clearup. from how i read the apology etc, i didn't realize they accused someone trying to protect their work as a liar and a hacker and refuse to see that someone they hired is a plagarist/copyright thief.

<< And to date said person is still listed as a 'staff writer' and there has been no retraction or explanation on the website itself. >>

didn't they say on the apology that the plagarist was gonna make a public apology? just curious. perhaps they think (tho it's WRONG--she should be fired) that once she does so, she's forgiven.

[1anonymous1.livejournal.com]

Oh, if they were one person Id so kick them in the balls.

[gingernewt.livejournal.com]

I actually went through and read the entire thing, and I still don’t understand why there needed to be an “investigation” at all. Do people normally e-mail small high school publications to pinpoint an arbitrary author for plagiarizing? The way it was handled with a “need for an investigation,” you’d think they get bogus plagiarism claims all the time.

I swear, if companies started printing USE GOOGLE, YOU IDIOT on everyone’s monitors, all of these ridiculous problems could be solved in a heartbeat. (Not that I’m advocating Google as the means and ends of all information, but for something like this? C’mon.)

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

Boyertown High School? Jeez, that's like 45 minutes from me - near Reading, PA. I would never have suspected that such a mundane area of the world would have Sam Smith in it.

[thepastperfect]

dude, me too! i live outside of reading and went to wyomissing. i looked at the school name and wondered, "is that our boyertown, or another one?" sigh. stupid people close to home.

[schuywriter.livejournal.com]

It was very odd how the "editors" attacked people, used horrid grammar and spelling (they're EDITORS!) and even fought with *each other* about this on the board. One "editor" excused their bandwidth theft as well saying that until EZBoard came up with a way for them to upload a signature graphic they would keep direct linking to graphics on the web. How disgusting is that? A thief right there on th eeditorial team. No wonder.