Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Once Upon a Bookcase on Plagiarism

You may or may not be aware of the issues surrounding The Story Siren and plagiarism over the last few weeks. I'm not going to repeat the whole situation - if you're unaware of what I'm talking about, Reading With Martini's post about her own thoughts with links to all the posts that supply the necessary information about the situation.

Having read everything, I have made a decision. As a community, honesty and fairness is hugely important to us, and I am so against plagiarism. Seeing the evidence that the victims have shared, I don't condone what has happened and no longer feel comfortable associating my blog with The Story Siren. So I have decided to boycott.

This means several things. I no longer follow The Story Siren on any social networks. I no longer follow The Story Siren by GFC or any other means. I will no longer be taking part in the Debut Author Challenge. All references to the challenge have been removed from my blog, and I am in the process of having my link removed from the participants list. I will continue to post about the books I receive each week, but I will no longer be taking part in In My Mailbox. And finally, I will no longer be visiting The Story Siren.

This aim of this post to inform you of the changes that are now in effect, and so you are aware of my position on plagiarism. It's unacceptable, and I cannot support anyone who does plagiarise.

6 comments:

  1. I completely respect what you say here Jo, I feel exactly the same as you do and have stopped following TSS on social networks etc. I don't do IMM but if I did I'd have stopped taking part in that too.

    I still can't decide what to do about the Debut Author Challenge. I still want to support debut authors and I like keeping track of how many debuts I've read each year but I think I should really have my name removed from the participants list. I'll probably keep my challenge post up but perhaps remove the link to TSS from it & say that I'm no longer officially taking part because of the plagiarism.

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    1. I can understand wanting to continue to support debut authors. I don't know how you have been doing things on your blog, but whenever I reviewed a debut author, all I would do in addition to that review was add a link to the list of debut books I've read. I'll still read debut novels, of course, that hasn't changed. Nothing about the way I read has changed. I'm just not showing support for the challenge. Instead, in my "Books Read in 2012" page, I now put 2012 YA debut in brackets next to each debut.

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  2. I agree with Sarah. I don't support plagiarism and I've deleted TSS from my Twitter and my Google Reader but I too don't know what to do about the DAC. I do want to keep track and I like lists... but ugh, I don't know what to do about it lol!

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    1. See my above comment to Sarah :) You could, maybe, simply have a list - "2012 YA Debuts Read" or something similar. It's up to you what you do! I'm not going to tell you what to do or how to do them - this is just what I felt was right for me and my blog :)

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  3. I completely agree with your stance and have done the same (though I never participated in IMM or the DAC) -- I no longer link to her blog at all, nor do I visit it. I suppose I should go back through old posts where I linked reviews, but I'm not sure when I'll have time to do that. Aside from the nature of what occurred, the worst thing for me, personally, is that mere days before this all exploded, I had sent an aspiring blogger to her site for tips, ideas, inspiration. At that point, the plagiarized posts were long gone, but it's the principle of the matter. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts and your stance on it all!

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    1. Oh, I know exactly what you mean! I can't count the number of times I have pointed aspiring bloggers to her various posts, and I now kind of feel like I've done them a disservice. And I've even read and used some of those plagiaised posts to help me with my blog. It's just not on. I feel lied to. I just don't understand it, really.

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