Written products and watercooler discussions.

All right, I've come to some conclusions about the whole sordid affair. Unfortunately, I wrote such a lengthy response, I think I better top-post it.

I’d argue that people, varying in degrees, visit and interact on BOTF for the sometimes unrelated motivations of entertainment/interaction, and stimulation. I think this is an important distinction. The people who are there, at least in large part, for intellectual stimulation probably view writing in a different manner than those primarily for entertainment.

It’s not random that many of the people I consider to be “writers” here (that doesn’t include me, BTW), are the most offended by Topazz’s larcenous post. My take is that these are the people who view their creations here as products, presented, and subsequently appreciated, by an audience. These are the same people who might make a living at writing. It’s striking, to me, that people as diverse as Switters, DawnCoyote, and August are among those who feel offended. This is not an unsympathetic audience.

What I’d like to suggest is that, on the Fray, all people do not necessarily view written products the same way. If I view written products primarily as a vehicle for entertainment, or to engage interaction, then I probably have a very different view of the sanctity of words or ideas than those who make a living (or would like to) by the products of their written work. If Topazz views the primary purpose of her post to be a springboard for discussion/interaction, then it’s entirely possible that she doesn’t view her crime as more than a very minor issue. The best analogy I can come up with, at the moment, is bringing the same issues up in the course of a verbal discussion. She may view her inclusion of the words as representing agreement with them. I guess a written equivalent would be an office newsletter – who provides citations in those? This presumes she was talking about actual experiences she’d had. I haven’t seen anyone challenge that.

This makes Topazz an entirely different creature than Denny, who is presenting products not to facilitate interaction, but in order to impress people with his artistic talents. I also find the comparison with Adam Morgan to be offensively overstated, because what Topazz did, if equivalent to a discussion, is no more sociopathic (intended to impact others with intentional disregard for their welfare) than what millions of people do around water coolers every day. From this perspective, Topazz is only slightly dishonest (a lie by omission), but no more so than most of us, from time to time.

I mean, Topazz didn’t credit her pic of Marilyn the other day, either – did anyone think she was pretending to have taken it? What I’m suggesting is that she views her theft in a similar vein, rather than the egregious infraction viewed by others. Hypothetically, if Topazz had read a post on “The Company Bitch” about a shoplifting incident and said to herself, “Hey – that’s just like what happened to me!” then her subsequent post wouldn’t be plagiarism either, would it? I don’t think it necessarily is (though I also think it’s naïve not to anticipate being challenged for it).

So, the dispute among people on the board may expose differences in assumptions about what happens there. To borrow from Ciinc (borrowing from Vonnegut), perhaps BOTF is a karass, perhaps a granfalloon. Individual perceptions exert a substantial impact on normative expectations, as well as anticipation of sanctions.

Though Topazz is free to use the space as she wishes, however, I also agree that certain stakeholders are entitled to impose their perceptions on other players – Geoff and Ender. Geoff and Ender have created the space in which we’re playing, and have the right to set expectations about the manner in which participants will interact. Geoff is entirely within his rights to pull her star, and Ender is entirely within his rights to pull her blog membership. Geoff isn’t going to flush her, I imagine – I imagine he views the star as reflecting something about the predictable quality of written products.

But the rules haven’t been defined on this space, and Topazz may have reasonably established, though incorrect, perceptions about what constitutes appropriate behavior. Is her character flawed? It seems that most on the Fray who are supporting her are really objecting to the manner in which she seems to be damned. I find myself leaning in this direction. I think submitting your work here takes a post beyond the level of a discussion, however.

Question: Would you feel better if she’d been quietly warned, and she’d withdrawn her posts without comment? Why? If she’d withdrawn them with apology, would you still be wanting her expelled from the blog?

Last thoughts: Switters, I don’t think the comparison to sampled music is disingenuous at all. I wonder if you might feel differently were you a composer, as opposed to a writer [got both in my family, and I know how they feel about it].

I remember working on grant projects in which large sections of other people’s work were lifted and paraphrased. I believe this was seen as acceptable, as the application was seen as a vehicle to an end, not an end itself. I think this is an apt comparison.

Lentenstuffe: Somehow, I have the sense that if someone had lifted a couple of lines from one of your poems, and then posted them as part of their own, you’d have a different sort of reaction. I’m guessing your objection is, in essence, similar to mine above. If not, then I don’t get it. I also disagree with the comparison to kos – it’s not like anyone’s calling for her exclusion because she has bad taste.

Fluffy: if you’re going to make a statement like that, could you at least flesh it out a little? Hard to know how to respond.

Ender, Dawn, John, August: I’m not exactly disagreeing with you – I think you all have excellent points, particularly about out tolerance level for plagiarism – now that we have the expectation established. I just happen to thing there’s an understandable counter-perspective that isn’t getting acknowledged, and this lack of acknowledgement makes Topazz look like a crook, as opposed to someone trying to provide an interesting, entertaining discussion [God forbid we’d have too many of those on BOTF!]. Though I think Ender has every right to insist on his perspective on the blog, I would have pursued the matter and attempted remediation, before a banning.

Of course, I’m not volunteering to be blogmaster, either. Ender, it's your call - I just wanted you to know how I felt about it.