Camp Chase Gazette and the Watchdog

[styler]

Re: Ripped Off

At least Billing's work has passed into public domain. Perhaps his authorship was made perfectly clear in the unprinted citation.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: Ripped Off

In 2006 CCG has also printed several "articles" that are little more than an introductory paragraph and then cutting-and-pasting from the '61 Army Regs or a similar reference, which one can usually find online. I guess on one hand that's providing reliable info for readers, but on the other hand it's A) Not interpreting period source(s), just copying it and printing it, and B) It's certainly not new or fresh material, and C) It's, well, copying and most responsible journalistic endeavors avoid that.

I believe that I'm starting to understand who some of the pseudonyms are. It's easy enough to tell that some of them are pennames, after all it reads like a Civil War participant list, or stuff that's on the bookshelf of many folks. The following guys are writing for CCG these days:

John Billings
Fisk
Custer
Marcus Reno (Custer's Major at Little Big Horn)
..and others.

Right here on this forum at least one person's been owning up to using pseudonyms for CCG. Unfortunately, I reckon that all this post will do is make the folks hiding behind pseudonyms adopt better camouflage, rather than abandon this irresponsible practice. After all, we know via posts on this forum that CCG is paying for articles--at least from certain contributors, so there's an easy-to-understand motive for submitting as many articles as possible.

I hope I'm not being too harsh when I express my view that CCG's content in the past couple years has really been, ahem, substandard. However, there's been some oddly familiar and usually scholarly articles appearing in CCG lately, including the most recent issue. Note that "articles" is plural.

[tjpedersen]

Re: Ripped Off

Kevin, I don't think you are being too harsh. As a subscriber to any magazine, I hope to see that magazine meet a standard that makes me want to continue subscribing to it or recommending it to others. With this trend of what is going on, this standard to me is not being met by CCG and does not warrant extending my subscription.

[MPDoughBoy153]

Re: Ripped Off

Hope it all works out. Sorry that your hardwork got stolen.

[Rebel Yell1863]

Re: Ripped Off

Kevin, I am no longer buying CCG, and I am ordering a subscription to CWH. An act of solidarity, Such blatant plagiarism is inexcusable.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: Ripped Off

Derrick,

Thanks for your support, but aside from the ethics of the recent pieces in CCG, I think you'll find CWH to be a quality magazine with some very good articles.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Ripped Off

Derrick,

Thanks for your support, but aside from the ethics of the recent pieces in CCG, I think you'll find CWH to be a quality magazine with some very good articles.

I'm curious if there has been any resolution on this since November 06.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Re: Ripped Off

Not yet--things seem to be progressing slowly. Having "made a case" out of ti, I'll certainly post when/if there's a resolution of some type. Hopefully it will involve CCG publishing something about it that those of us "injured" will consider to be acceptable.

[paulcalloway]

Our position on plagiarism

I've added the following item to our FAQ and I want to post it here so our userbase is aware of it as well.

The admin staff considers plagiarism to be detrimental to this hobby and to our website. Copying someone elses work and directly quoting it or paraphrasing it without attribution is considered plagiarism. We urge everyone to do their own research or give credit where credit is due. We have banned users for blatant plagiarism of research articles in the past and will continue to act on plagiarism allegations in the future.

We're serious about this issue - the admins and mods were in consensus on this. We feel plagiarism damages our hobby by discouraging authors from continuing to publish and continuing to research. In academia, a plagiarist would be removed from the institution and we take it no less seriously here.

While I don't intend to name names, primarily because the person who has been removed can no longer come here in their own defense, I will say that we've just removed a user based upon evidence of plagiarism and we will do so again if the issue comes up again.

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

First rate!

[BrettKIllinois]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

Kudos to you sir.

[Craig L Barry]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

Absolutely it does damage the hobby. Plagiarism is an act of fraud. There are two crimes here since it involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward. There are five generally acknowledged "types" in various degrees from "cut and paste" to "uncredited paraphrasing". See Barnbaum, C. “Plagiarism: A Student's Guide to Recognizing It and Avoiding It.” Valdosta State University. It is also very easy to avoid if you are not both stupid and lazy.

Most magazine publishers, including The Watchdog, have received bogus articles submitted for publication which are not wholly original in content and/or improperly cited. In academe, the penalty is explusion of the guilty party. While "stealing" is a criminal offense, and plagiarism is "literary stealing" it is not punished as a criminal offense. Go figure. Therefore, even more than discouraging prospective authors from research and writing, plagiarism also negatively affects the prospective author's ability to get something published. Most publishers do not have the resources and time to check every footnote in every new article submission. The responsibility for correctly quoting, footnoting and citing your work completely rests with the writer, but the publisher often gets blamed "for not catching it." If The Watchdog editors had to fully check and research every footnote in something the scope of Columbia Rifles Research Compendium 2nd Ed it would never get published. But John Tobey, Kevin O'Beirne and the other subject matter experts who contributed to the CRRC spent many hours researching, writing, quoting and footnoting their submissions. We depended on their integrity and they did not go through that exercise so the material could be stolen by those who are intellectually lazy and dishonest.

It is greatly encouraging to see that the leaders here are protecting the interests and integrity of those who either use or post material on the Forum.

[toptimlrd]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

Thank you Paul.

I presume this was a blatant example of plaigarism as well and not what I call an unintentional one where it was simply an oversight or something the author knew but didn't recall where he knew it from.

My wife edits a magazine and she recently nailed one company which had lifted a graphic from her magazine and also received a flyer from an ad agency that had photoshopped their staff onto photos of Boy Scouts without the permission of the BSA or the individual scouts. Needless to say the local council here, the council where the company was located, and the national office were not amused. And all this from supposedly professionals.

[Justin Runyon]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

Paul and I both reviewed the two articles in question along side the original articles published by another. Both Paul and I dealt with plagerism and it's detection through our degree programs. None of the skills we were taught were needed...blatent, obvious, and intentional are words that come close.

[TKlas]

Re: Our position on plagiarism

Excellent job gents and thanks for the integrity to do something to correct the issue right away.