Plagiarism on ActiveCaptain

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boatpoker said:
My website articles and survey formats have been plagiarized often, but I actually have a life and don't care. :)

Never ever, ever believe anything you read. My younger son is somewhat of a sports celebrity and has often been interviewed for various sports magazines and TV shows. In his earlier years I was present at all his interiews. What a load of crap they printed. He never said half of the things they quoted him as saying. Get a life and move on.
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:facepalm: :thumb:
 
tpbrady said:
Jeffrey,

Yes I do live here (Alaska) and the only goats on islands in SE Alaska are on Baranof and Revillagigedo. Those goats were introduced by ADF&G as were the ones on Kodiak Island. Next Kayley's posts are dated in July of 2014 the same year I was in the same places. If her posts are from logs 20 years ago, then they shouldn't be dated as if they were current. I don't have a dog in the plagiarism argument. I do care about accuracy.

Tom
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That date is the date of entry, not the date there. Jeffrey admits that's a site issue. One reason we're hesitant to post as we have thoughts on places we've been to but posting with today's date implies we're there now. We have made sure the few times we or others with us have posted older data to indicate when we were actually there.

So, you can't judge anything by the date of the post except that's when the post was made.

Now, I have a problem with people posting 10 year old data in general. I've seen it here where someone tossed out information on inlets or the hazards but then said in a later post that the last time they were there was 20 years ago.

The old posts are also out of sequence and you can't see a pattern as a result. I'd like to read chronologically by date observed. Sometimes you see rundown marina, rundown marina, new ownership, improved, very nice.

Have you posted on AC to correct the inaccuracy, posted the correct information?
 
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There is an expression about something "getting on my goat",meaning annoyance.
Years ago Monty Python published( no plagiarism involved) a list of 20 famous people with their comments about goats. All but Sir Walter Raleigh had said "nothing". He was attributed with saying "Getting cold, I must put on a goat" which the publication noted was "(Possibly Misheard)".
Which is no sillier than the publisher responses above.
 
tpbrady said:
Yes I do live here (Alaska) and the only goats on islands in SE Alaska are on Baranof and Revillagigedo.
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Perfect. I hereby crown you king of goat knowledge for all of the Alaskan coast. If you'd like, I can change your captain name to KnowsGoats.

So now do your part and update the information if accuracy is so important about the location of goats. That's how it works. The data is the collection from the knowledge of the entire community. It's not one individual's view. The details get combined among all who are interested in making the information better for all.

It's easy to take pot shots about any published information. ActiveCaptain is one of the few boating databases where instead of complaining, you can fix it for everyone.
 
There's a great joke about a Greek guy in a bar.......the punch line is"one goat! just one goat."
 
Thanks Andy, we needed a bit of light relief there.

I've been following this thread mainly because it was reported, and out of a sort of fascinated horror in a way. I must say I am puzzled as to how observations of mere fact, regarding descriptions of places and conditions on waterways, which do change over time anyway, and are hardly products therefore of what one might call, 'creative intellectual inspiration, can actually be plagiarised..? I suppose as a technical interpretation of the term it is possible, but really...
 
BandB said:
Songwriters are getting constantly accused of copying simply because they have eight bars that are very similar to another older song or their basic theme is the same. To think that with all the music published over the years, what I write today won't remind one of a previous song isn't realistic. As an example, how many ways can you express being a jilted lover? One of the most popular topics and they all have similarities.
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If it's in a Country genre, there's probably a hound, maybe a jail cell, a pick-up truck, and a train ride involved somehow.

If it's Western genre, probably a horse (or a mule), a campfire, the moon (and/or the stars), maybe a mountain range...

Blues: sawdust (on the barroom floor), broken pool cues, three part names (physical affliction/weapon of choice/diminutive name: Blind Shotgun Pervis, etc.), and a jail cell.

Pop... well, you get the picture.

:)

-Chris
 
Jeffrey S said:
.......... Being serious, if you're cruising over thousands of miles, you're likely above average in intelligence and skills. Darwin's laws would have eliminated you from cruising otherwise..........
:thumb:
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I wouldn't bet on that. I have met some long time cruisers who were as dumb as a wagon track. Remember, there is usually more than one person on the boat and only one needs to be smart enough to get from point A to point B.


As for this thread, it seems no more than an attack on Active Captain to me. Why would the OP be concerned if some of the AC posts seem to be copied from another publication? They are not his posts. And why, if he has a reason to be concerned, did he decide to make this a public issue instead of notifying Jeffery privately?


One of the problems with the Internet is that it has made it far to easy for someone to bash another person or company for no good reason.
 
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WesK said:
I wouldn't bet on that. I have met some long time cruisers who were as dumb as a wagon track. Remember, there is usually more than one person on the boat and only one needs to be smart enough to get from point A to point B.


As for this thread, it seems no more than an attack on Active Captain to me. Why would the OP be concerned if some of the AC posts seem to be copied from another publication? They are not his posts. And why, if he has a reason to be concerned, did he decide to make this a public issue instead of notifying Jeffery privately?


One of the problems with the Internet is that it has made it far to easy for someone to bash another person or company for no good reason.
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It would have been much easier for the OP and others to have just contacted through AC and to have made posts of their own to either point out attributions or to correct information. But then that wouldn't have gotten all this attention.
 
BandB said:
It would have been much easier for the OP and others to have just contacted through AC and to have made posts of their own to either point out attributions or to correct information. But then that wouldn't have gotten all this attention.
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In fairness the OP stated and Jeff affirmed he was contacted privately before all this.
 
I've taken a couple of seminars given by the folks at Waggoners and AC has been brought up by the students both times, with the presenters downplaying it as a legit info source compared to Waggoners. Yet the students would disagree as many voiced positive experiences and were AC contributors. Nothing wrong with dissing the competition. That's what I think this thread is about too, as Sam recently led a Waggoners flotilla to Alaska. I use both sources, and others too, and will continue to do so.
 
drb1025 said:
I've taken a couple of seminars given by the folks at Waggoners and AC has been brought up by the students both times, with the presenters downplaying it as a legit info source compared to Waggoners. Yet the students would disagree as many voiced positive experiences and were AC contributors. Nothing wrong with dissing the competition. That's what I think this thread is about too, as Sam recently led a Waggoners flotilla to Alaska. I use both sources, and others too, and will continue to do so.
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That's what I see here as well. I like Waggoners. I used it when in it's area. However, it covers a very limited area and is by no means complete for that area. I find dissing the competition very unprofessional, whoever it is. Waggoners and AC are very different. Neither precludes the value of the other.

One thing too is that whether it's Waggoners or Great Lakes Cruising Guides which are more currently on my mind and in my hands, they are the opinion of one person. I don't care who that person is, I like more opinions. Someone tells me a restaurant is great or it gets a great review, I still will check Yelp and Google and Trip Advisor to see what the average person thinks. So if using a guide, I'm also going to check AC. And if reading about a restaurant in the guide, I'll check other places as well. Even if reading about an attraction, I'll do so.

Your success or failure as a business will not be determined by your competition but will be by what you do. Now, that doesn't mean not to look at and follow your competitors and look at things you might do better, but simply to spend more time on your own product and service than worrying about them or trying to criticize them.

A simple statement by a Waggoners presenter along the lines of "most of our users find our guide to be all they need or want, but we do have some who also look on AC, primarily to read the comments of other boaters regarding places we talk of in our guides."
 
BandB said:
Contacted privately through TF, not AC, though. And now the follow up publicly on TF.
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Considering the rancor on this open thread and the insults unfairly tossed one can only imagine how productive it would be to contact via AC.

Complete transparency: I've dealt with all these parties from the other side of the screen in the past, you haven't. So let's stop pretending any of these parties are some innocent victims of unfair attacks. If that's the case I'm the Easter bunny. Make no mistake, this is exactly how all 3 of them conduct business.
 
Let me set the record straight. I am not speaking on behalf of Waggoner. I am not employed by Waggoner and I haven't been for many months. I led a flotilla using the Waggoner name at the beginning of the summer. I have not and will not do any further work for Waggoner, and it's not fair to portray my personal comments as an ex-employee as speaking for the publication.

I use ActiveCaptain every day. I like it. When I lead flotilla trips, I show people ActiveCaptain in Coastal Explorer. I think AC is better than relying on copied information.

I contacted Jeff privately both via email and TF. We had a dialogue and I wasn't satisfied with his response, so I was curious what other people thought. Clearly, this discussion has hit a nerve for many.

Several days ago I messaged Kayley on ActiveCaptain asking a simple question about a location she wrote about in a review but didn't place on the map. I haven't heard back. If she really has been there, she'll be able to point it out on a map. The problem is there are enough instances where Kayley's reviews don't make sense to people who have been to the location that I question whether Kayley is an actual person. Jeff or Kayley, please prove me wrong! If I am wrong, I apologize, and will request this thread be removed.

Crossing Dixon Entrance now...losing cell service.
 
The OP contacted me privately through ActiveCaptain with pretty much the same allegations and examples he made here in post #1. I answered him immediately and then immediately contacted Kayley to get her opinion.

A few days later, Kayley responded to me and we exchanged a few emails about it. I felt that the similarities didn't warrant a change especially since the copyright owner made no attempt to make the claim. To be honest, it seemed on the line to me. If the owner was particularly offended by some of the location text being similar, I would have changed it.

As an aside, it might surprise some people but there are guidebook authors who have put their own text inside ActiveCaptain because they wanted the basic information available to all. They feel that if people go to the places described, they'll have a better chance of selling their product because their guidebook has some other features not provided by ActiveCaptain. Good for them for realizing the advertising potential of this.

I think the OP was possibly offended that I didn't then follow back up with him. Again, he wasn't the copyright owner and I felt the issue had been properly dealt with. And writing to him to say that nothing was going to change would likely inflate the issue to him. I decided there was a 95% chance he'd be unhappy if I responded and a 30% chance he would be unhappy if I didn't respond. I lost that bet although it would have been a little more mature to write me instead of making a public blast (IMO).
 
Retriever said:
...I question whether Kayley is an actual person. Jeff or Kayley, please prove me wrong! If I am wrong, I apologize, and will request this thread be removed.
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Kayley is definitely a real person. We're not in the business of creating fake entities to somehow insert data.
 
CPseudonym said:
So let's stop pretending any of these parties are some innocent victims of unfair attacks. If that's the case I'm the Easter bunny. Make no mistake, this is exactly how all 3 of them conduct business.
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What type of cryptic nonsense is this? We conduct our business professionally. A lot of our competitors attribute behavior to me that's not true. Be serious - if what I said wasn't dead on honest every time, why would Garmin, Furuno, Navico, C-Map, and fifty other companies base a major capability on my company of two people?

If you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise, go back to eating your carrots.
 
CPseudonym said:
Considering the rancor on this open thread and the insults unfairly tossed one can only imagine how productive it would be to contact via AC.

Complete transparency: I've dealt with all these parties from the other side of the screen in the past, you haven't. So let's stop pretending any of these parties are some innocent victims of unfair attacks. If that's the case I'm the Easter bunny. Make no mistake, this is exactly how all 3 of them conduct business.
Click to expand...

Don't assume, I've dealt with some of them as well and made my opinions of some of their comments and posts abundantly clear to them, in private. I pointed out very early in this thread my dislike for Jeffrey's defense of AC. He becomes very defensive and goes too far and only hurts rather than helping himself and AC. If I based my decision to use or not use AC based on his public posts, I would not use it. However, I use it because I like the product.

Had Jeffrey simply answered in his first post more professionally as I put in one paragraph later, it would have done much to diffuse this. He does bring a lot of this on himself.

Regardless, I don't like seeing TF as the right place for them to fight out their business differences or express their antagonism toward each other. Ultimately all involved make themselves look bad.

And, seeing how they conduct business, I would use their products but never do business beyond that with any of them.
 
Jeffrey S said:
What type of cryptic nonsense is this? We conduct our business professionally. A lot of our competitors attribute behavior to me that's not true. Be serious - if what I said wasn't dead on honest every time, why would Garmin, Furuno, Navico, C-Map, and fifty other companies base a major capability on my company of two people?

If you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise, go back to eating your carrots.
Click to expand...

Jeffrey. It's simply him stating that your conduct and way of responding to criticism is very unprofessional. It's nothing I haven't said to you before in private. But you want to bring it public, so be it. Who the heck cares to hear your constant self promotion. Perhaps if occasionally you showed a little humility, you would have fewer conflicts.

You say competitors attribute behavior to you that's not true, but what about your behavior on this forum while attempting to represent AC? We see that.

Then it's time for you to say again you don't know why you even come here. We all do. It's to promote your business.

I defend your product. I defend you when I think you're right. However, I think your way of responding to criticism is unprofessional. Now, you can say I'm unprofessional, but one huge difference, I'm not here representing a business.

Is that less cryptic?
 
OK folks, recess is over. Time to leave the school yard and get back to boating class.
 
Folks we are closing this thread for a time to let the waters calm. Just a reminder that any time you have an intellectual property rights concern about web content AND you are the owner of the original content you can file a legitimate DMCA complaint with either the url owner or with their hosting company. Hosting companies and ISPs have some skin in the game as they are also subject to the same penalties as url owners and often will remove contested content as a matter of course if the site in question doesn't. That said, you must affirm in your complaint that you are the owner of rightful owner of the content and there are penalties for false claims.

You can read more about DMCA here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
and here: https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca
and here: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf


Thanks for understanding. :flowers:
 
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