I’d like to apologize to all of you - because of my failure to be diligent, I made a huge mistake that could have been far worse if a reader hadn’t been cool enough to alert me.
I received what I thought was an original guest post, which my subscribers and visitors saw this morning. Little did I know that it was actually a post from the great Seth Godin’s blog, with a different title and some changes in the wording and formatting.
I’d like to laugh this off as an honest mistake, but I have a hard time believing that someone would go to the trouble of pasting portions of another blog post and changing the title if they simply wanted to share the original article. I am so offended and disgusted, I don’t even know what to say.
I would NEVER condone plagiarism or ripping off another blogger. The offending post has been removed and I will no longer accept guest posts unless they come from a blogger I know and trust.
Again, my apologies to all of you and especially to Seth Godin (not that he would ever know that this happened). Sometimes I forget that integrity is a relative term. But I won’t forget again.
Aww-I'm sorry someone did that to you. How horrible. I wish everyone did have integrity-make life a lot more easy.
need to out the person so they can be blacklisted
or at least a internet mob at their site
I know I've given folks the benefit of the doubt a few times and got burned. Either the content was utter crap or questionable in terms of content, or they were inserting paid links without telling me first and it made for some really unfun conversations. I don't really accept guest posts anymore either.
This kind of crap would get you kicked out of college and yet people think that the internet is the wild west in terms of integrity and intelligence. Ugh.
Agreed. I think I'm going back to my stance of only accepting guest posts from my friends - and even then, I need to toughen up my definition of "friends." Sigh.
GRRRR, wordpress ate my whole comment trying to force me to log in!
Anyway, there are several discussions of yes vs no resolvers (also known as moderators vs abstainers) over at The Happiness Project. It's a pretty common personality delineation. I am generally better with "no" goals than I am with "do more" or "do X every Y" goals.
Oops - that was a previous comment for another blog! WordPress and Intense Debate are not being very nice to me tonight. Feel free to delete!
At any rate, what a jerk move for someone to do that to you. How could you possibly vet every guest post to make sure it's unique? I wouldn't even know where to start doing so. Good on you for being forthright and honest about it…care to publish the email address of the offender????
I was curious, so I trolled through my old guest posts and found one that was either plagiarized or the author thought they were pulling something slick offering the same "original" content all over town. Ugh - jerks! I'm not as nice as you are, apparently, because I'm outing them on my blog.
If the post had come from a blogger, I'd be all over it. But since it was a random guy who doesn't even have a website (as far as I know), I'm not going to bother with it. I doubt he'll be hitting up anyone else. But if I see his name again, I will GO OFF.
Omg!!!!! That’s pretty lame. Who does that? I think you should out that person as well so we can all be cautious. Of course I know it wouldn’t be fair. But maybe you could email me and let me know?
Oh wow, I can't believe that someone did that! I don't know who Seth Godin is, but I'm glad that someone pointed it out before he saw it and thought you posted it on purpose.
He's a famous marketer. I can only imagine the backlash if he'd thought I purposely ripped him off… Or if his people thought that, since he's probably too important to check out little blogs like mine.
I don't get it. I saw the post in my feed reader and there didn't appear to be links to anything except his facebook page. What was the motive? WEIRD!
Lame, dude. And for shame.
I get emails every day about guest posts for my blog from total randos even though I have a page on my blog specifically saying that I don't accept them. My favorite is when they end the email with "I look forward to your positive response." That just makes me feel more negative.
Actually, it's usually "I look forward FOR your positive response." That's your clue that it's a spam email - they're trying to insert commercial links for free. I delete them too, after wasting way too much time arguing with one of them early on!
Wow. What a sleaze move. Quick internet lynch mob.
How rude of that guy. We don't blame you of course.
Lame. I guess you could do a google search of various writing samples, but what a pain to have to do something like that to prevent this!
I use CopyScape when the post comes from a possibly sketchy source, but I didn't think I needed to in this case. Clearly I was mistaken!
Holy crap. I'm apprehensive about asking to make guest posts at all just because I don't feel like I have enough stuff out there for someone to base a decision on…I'm shocked that someone would be crass enough to ask with NOTHING in their portfolio. And then to plagiarize? Godin, of all people?Call me naive. I just can't wrap my head around that. What a stupid, mean-spirited thing to do.
Well, I know YOU aren't a scammer, so feel free to guest post here anytime! It was stupid of me to take a post from someone I didn't know.
Unbelievable.
I did think that post sounded rather Godin-esque, but…yeah. That's just unfathomable. WTF?
Personally, I'm disappointed now that I know Seth wrote it. Because I thought it sucked.
HA!
I'm with ya. I think he's way overrated. Admittedly, sometimes he does have some good insights, but really, someone who posts every single day can't always strike gold.
Unfortunately there are a lot of idiots in this world. Don't worry, no one blames you.
Definitely a slimy thing to do. Sorry you had to go through that.
That's rough. So sorry that happened to you. No one blames you, I'm sure. Honest mistake!
That is disgustin indeed. I am glad someone told you and that someone wasn't Seth Godin himself.
That's no good. Glad you found out though.
You handled this one like a champ and I respect that. You were even kind enough not to go all nuts and post his name or anything. I know how angry you must have been.
I'm sorry it happened to you but at least you have put the rest of us on our guard, and I also learned of a new tool. Copyscape
Oh man, i would have lost my mind if I saw that. I kinda worship Seth Godwin tho.
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