Don't fucking cut and paste my messages into someone else's journal, Mr. Svinlesha.

The BBQ Pit
21

It doesn’t seem outrageous to me that collounsbury should respond to SDMB postings in his own forum. To Sam Stone, I would point out that he’s gone - just forget about him. (I suppose I should wait and see how I feel when it happens to me.)

As a side note, the “rebuttal” itself was kinda funny. I won’t quote from it, but it was amusing how collounsbury flatly proclaims that sam stone is wrong without any sort of argument or citation.

Ultimately, it seems like a pretty good arrangement. Collounsbury has his own little world where he is the king. And the rest of us can continue to enjoy the SDMB.

22

Okay, let’s stop for a minute and put this into perspective.

To begin with, as I discovered afterwards, the sections of Sam’s post that I submitted to collounsbury’s live journal turned out to be lifted, almost word for word, from a recent speech made by Paul Bremer. (In fact, Sam has thoughtfully provided a link to the text in his OP, entitled “This Cite.”)

Secondly, it was not my intention to send collounsbury on a “public rant” against you, Sam, and I was as surprised as you are that he chose to reply to my question in the manner that he did. Let me specify what I mean by that: I submitted the relevant sections of your post (mostly direct quotes from Bremer) in the “comments section” on coll’s live journal, and asked him what he thought about them. I expected a comment in return. coll chose to respond by posting a rebuttal directly as an entry in his journal. (Of course, I wasn’t surprised that he was so abusive; that’s just his manner. I just didn’t expect the reply to be so public.)

As far as copyright infringement goes, the thought never even occurred to me. I certainly will be more careful about that in the future, Gaudere.

As for why I did it: well, as I pointed out in coll’s journal, I simply lack the expertise or background to respond to Sam’s claims. I therefore thought I would ask someone who, at least in my opinion, does possess that expertise what they thought about it. It was really that innocent, although I do admit to the possession of a large dollop of skepticism with regard to Sam’s arguments.

I was aware of the possible ramifications of “posting by proxy,” and for that reason I have not submitted any of coll’s counter-arguments. I looked through them, of course, and did find one reference that I thought I might use in the future, namely a World Bank estimate concerning Iraq’s negative BNP growth this year, as well as a 50% reduction in average income (approximately), which run counter to Sam’s arguments. But mostly what I discovered going over the material thus far, basically, is that nobody really can say how well things are going in Iraq yet, ‘cause it’s too early.

In hindsight, I believe that you’re right Sam, to the extent that this was a breach of netiquette. I can see how you might have felt blindsided by coll and myself when you surfed into his journal saw the public reference to you. I assure you that that was not my intention to entice coll to “take a big dump” on you.

When I stop to think about it, I also realized that this isn’t the first time I’ve run afoul of this mistake in one form or another. I should have either posted the relevant sections without referring to you, specifically, or contacted you and asked permission first. This is particularly unfortunate since I could have simply referenced Bremer directly and by-passed the middle man. I didn’t think through all of the ramifications in advance, and so far as that goes it was a mistake.

If you like, I’ll contact coll and ask him to change the title of that particular entry, so that it doesn’t refer to you personally – although I cannot guarantee he will do so, of course.

23

So Sam was plagiarizing Paul Bremer, then complained that Svinlesha reposted portions of the plagiarized text on another site?

24

I’m confused.
Sam takes the government at its word that they’re doing a great job in Iraq, even though he normally believes they’d need to assemble a firing squad to shoot themselves in the foot.
Weird.
Then, as minty points out, he uses the government’s words in a post. These words are then repeated by Mr S over on Live Journal. This repetition of what Sam appears to take as the truth is objected to by him, rather than being celebrated as a broadcasting of The Truth According to the Government, that he what? loves? despises? Somebody help me out here. My head hurts.

25

I was “plagairizing” a press release offered for public distribution. How awful. But thanks for the intelligent contribution.

Mr. Svinlesha: Fair enough. I read that last night at about 4 AM, and I was tired and angry. Today, the offense seems pretty minor, although Collounsbury’s useless public rant was, as usual, way over the top and offensive. I’m afraid I took some of my annoyance out on you. On the other hand, I didn’t realize that my posting a cited message on the SDMB constituted a ‘rampage’.

As for the ‘vanity’ searches of Collounsbury’s livejournal… Please. I’ve been there exactly twice. The first time was some weeks ago, when Collounsbury was discussing ways to have his co-workers fired, talking about bashing a female co-worker’s head in with a large object, and discussing how he was going behind his employer’s back and cutting deals or something. It gave off a real American Psycho vibe, and I never went back. Last night I was going through my browser history, saw the link, and went over there on a whim. I would never have thought he’d be talking about me over there.

26

minty:

While it’s true that Sam didn’t explicitly state the source of list, he did link to Bremer’s speech both in the original thread and in this one. Since it’s a simple list of “facts,” with references to the source readily available, it seems a bit of a stretch to label it “plagiarizing,” if you ask me, and for the record, that’s not the word I used. In fact, I’d prefer not to make matters worse with an accusation of plagiarization, if you don’t mind.
pantom:

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

While your point is well taken, I think Sam mostly objects to having his name hung out like that.

Still, all in all, I’m honestly not really sure what I’ve done wrong. I simply took something written by one person to another person – whom I consider an expert – and asked him for his opinion. I intended no malice whatsoever, and – not to be obtuse or argumentative – well, I’m quite sincerely unsure what I’ve done wrong, or why I should be considered “despicable,” other than possibly having been somewhat impolite.

I can understand Sam’s ire, but I’m not entirely sure its directed at the right person. Can you explain to me, specifically, Sam what you think I did wrong by running your list by coll for a second opinion?

27

Mr. Svinlesha:

I think what you did wrong was to take a debate off this board elsewhere without the permission or knowledge of the participants. Call it an abuse of trust. When I post messages here, I expect responses to come here, and not somewhere out in the ether that I don’t know about. You compounded it by literally cutting and pasting my message. The ‘press release’ part was only about half of the message. The rest of it was my words, pasted elsewhere on the web without my, or the Reader’s permission.

But frankly the plagairism aspect of it is pretty trivial to me. It bothers me more that I can’t trust that what I say here will stay here and not be pasted on someone’s web site and picked apart publically where I don’t have the ability to respond.

I post here for relaxation and fun, and let me tell you, this crap isn’t much fun.

28

This is a bit much to swallow. If your objective wasn’t set up a bully’s pulpit, why do it publicly? Do you not have email? If you don’t have the wherewithal to debate someone openly, and in the same forum they posted in, then let it drop.

The facts of the argument aside, you cannot imagine how small and petty this behavior makes you and collounsbury look.

29

While Sam and Coll’s mutual admiration society provides much grist for the journalistic mill, I’d instead like to hit a lighter note here and suggest that:

is a damned fine band name.

30

Sam:

For that I offer my sincerest apology, and give you my word that I won’t let it happen again. It was unintentional, as you I hope you can see, but the thing sort of snowballed off in an unexpected trajectory.

Next time I’ll contact you first.

Sorry.
Waverly:

I don’t know what a “bully’s pulpit” is, but truth to tell, I simply didn’t reflect all that much on consequences. I didn’t “set up” anything with coll, I just asked his opinion about something. Besides, is it really all that much more appropriate to do it by email? If so, why?

Again, I’m really at a loss as to why this would make me look “small” or “petty.”

31

Pantom: Why don’t you post that question back in the original thread and I’ll answer it. No sense confusing this one any more with two separate issues. I shouldn’t have posted my ‘defense’ of Collounsbury’s comments here - I just wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to do so in the original thread, seeing as how I was responding to something on another site.

32

Mr. Svinlesha: A bully’s pulpit (or bully pulpit if this is more correct) allows you to sell your message not so much on its own merits, but by virtue of the fact that your venue grants you an advantage. In other words: rather than debating Sam in the forum he posted in, and where the debate was taking place, you moved it offline onto collounsbury’s home turf where coll could take a pot shot with impunity.

33

Mr. Svinlesha: Fair enough. Although you’d think that the trajectory it went off on was anything BUT unexpected, given that this was Collounsbury. In any event, apology gratefully accepted.

34

Sam:

Groovy.

Like I said, I can understand your reaction. Were I in your shoes, I’d probably feel a bit put off by the whole thing as well. I guess I could have exercised a bit more foresight, although I did ask coll for his “comments” – not for a hatchet job.
Waverly:

I see. Well, thing is, I didn’t have a message. I was just asking for coll’s opinion.

But okay, okay – mea culpa.

35

Sam, Svin, now that the whole thing has been resolved, you two need to kiss and make up.

36

Yeesh!

37

But no need to kiss with makeup. That’ll just get you all messy.

38

My applause goes to Mr. Svinlesha for replying with apologies, respect, and kid gloves to a man with a phantom hair up his ass.

You’ve got class, man. I’m just glad I don’t have to live up to the high standards you’ve set for yourself.

39

May I suggest a little blush to bring out those cheekbones?

40

Weird With Words: Well, since you dropped by just to dump crap on a thread in which the two main participants have already made their peace, I’d say you have a LONG way to go in the class department. I’d get started, if I were you.