I’m surprised that you’re surprised. What did you expect to happen? That there’d be a Pit Pileon Thread, full of revisionist SDMB history? “Well, Wally used to be a hero, but now we know that he was just another plagiarist…”
Philo: FTR, Wally died the evening of June 20, 2000.
I think it’s worth noting that in this three-page thread, which starts out as a “My dad is in the hospital” thread" and winds up with the news that he has died, there are over two-and-a-half pages–that’s about 125 posts–of “get well soon, we miss you” posts, before the news arrives that he has actually died. That was a sizeable percentage of the then-active Dopers, and it was a huge number of “get well soon” posts to a “so-and-so is sick” MPSIMS thread, which were lucky if they made it to two pages.
And I’d say that the vast majority of those folks are still active posters, so I guess you can expect them to be along any time now to lambast your ass even more.
Wally did lift the cyber-sex piece. I recall two other pieces of questionable provenance, but I do not know that they were pilfered. (I do not remember the topics.)
However “all his anecdotes” included things surrounding his bypass operation, his classic bike, at least one car crash in which he was tangentially involved, and numerous other brief sketches and one-liners. (I have, for example, never seen a similar hamster story on the internet.) My (unsubstantiable) guess would be that Wally thought that a couple of the pieces he found were in the public domain and he posted them for their humor value. He provided quite a lot of personal stories that truly were original, so an occasional lapse in understanding or judgement does not invalidate all of his participation, here.
I’m surprised at the number of people that say my comments are nothing more than an unabashed and sleezy attacks on a person who can no longer defend themselve.
In a sense, that’s true… but what is there to defend?
You either lifted the stuff, or you didn’t.
It seems to me that’s pretty easy to find out. And if it’s true, and it was lifted, than what argument is there?
You either say you did it, or you didn’t. In the end, the facts rest the case.
And again, this is all based on a comment, or comments, that were made in the thread referenced above. The gist of it was, it wasn’t the first or last time it was done.
If that’s really the case, than what’s the harm in knowing? Hell, maybe the other things were dead on real things, I don’t know. But is it so hard and so tempestuous a thing to ask whether it’s true or not, especially when it’s being questioned?
Chris, define plagiarist (you could also learn how to spell it while you’re on the case).
Og knows there’s enough people out there who don’t understand the concept of copyright and public domain. As Tom said, it’s likely that Wally thought the piece was public domain. In which case he made a genuine mistake. I think it’s beyond unlikely he lifted that piece thinking he’d make $ or gain brownie points by doing so. He was probably looking to amuse. ::shrug::
A plagiarist is someone who lifts material knowingly and who seeks to profit from doing so.
But the main issue for me is that Wally is not here to tell us the truth. So you come off looking like a wanker of the first order.
I am sorry but I am not in the greatest of moods considering some woman used the “I quit smoking so please pardon me for my bad behavior.” This did not sit well with me.
But anyhow, what was the big fucking deal about it anyway? Your life didn’t depend upon knowing whether or not Wally’s complete 3000+ posts where truth or not.
Yeah, my knickers are in a twist, I admit it but I just don’t see what the big fucking deal is after two years. I know of a few “banned” members that had nothing but good intentions and even though they got banned people aren’t drooling over the opportunity to bring up their past.
The guy is dead and gone Chris, it’s just in poor taste, extreme poor taste to bring up such a subject.
Hitler was a really misunderstood guy. I mean yeah, he killed 6 million people, but, can you blame him? The guy had a meth problem. Plus, the cruel medical experiments that Mengele conducted for him on human subjects aided science a great deal!
As you can see, Brewer’s quote cannot apply in all situations. It’s a little too vague. I don’t like it.
But, you know what? I believe that it does apply in this situation. I never corresponded with Wally outside the board, so I guess I can’t really call him a close friend of mine. But I did read many of his posts back then (damn, it seems like just yesterday :() and laughed my ass off.
So a couple were lifted. It’s a forgivable crime. I can honestly say that I’ve never plagarised anything in my life, not even a single sentence. I don’t hold it against Wally, though. The general consensus seems to be that he only did it, at most, two or three times out of 3,000 posts. That makes 99.9% original material, guys, and a lot of it was gold.
Hell, there’s probably hardly any professional entertainers who can make that claim. How many times have you heard the same joke on two different sitcoms? Or take someone like Dennis Leary, who stole quite a bit of material from one of the most underrated stand-up comics of all time - the late Bill Hicks, whose liberally slanted social commentary was so brilliant and hilarious that it almost made George Carlin look like a hack in my eyes.
I was a little miffed at Leary for a while, but now I like him again. A little bit of plagarism, especially when it’s intended to make people laugh, isn’t the worst thing in the world.
First order of someone pissed- attack the spelling. Whatever you do, don’t ever pay attention to the message- that sucks.
Are you serious? This is almost laughable.
I was here when it originally ran, and I don’t remember a thing being mentioned about it being taking from someone else- it was flat-out attributed to him (Why do you think the author got pissed? Because it was credited to him? Don’t think so).
Come on, I’ll give WallyM7 some latitude on things made up, and assume it was harmless and fun, if it were only a few, but I’ll be dammed if I’m going to assume that the story lifted above was done so for reasons not otherwise expressed by Wally himself. And according to him, at that time, it was his experience, not anyone else’s.
*Preview again…
Could I be any more clear?
It was brought up in another thread that 99.9% of his threads were plagiarized. I hadn’t heard that before and was surprised that the number, and that comment, went unchallenged.
C’mon, give chris a break you guys. He said he got what he wanted to know. Granted, it wasn’t very tasteful of him to bring up something like this but I’m certain he meant no ill to us or to Wally’s memory. Some people are just blunt. Better that than hypocrites.
Now if only some mod could close this thread and use some magic to make anyone trying to access the “wally tries cyber-sex” get this instead…It would save us some headaches.
Gozu, only 3 posts and a half and already refers to dopers by “us”
No but I had heard it before… In fact, have heard more than you even asked here but is not my place to discuss nor to push out more rumors.
I find this thread tasteless and rude to his memory. I do assume that others feel the same way.
so Chris, just let it be, SHEESH. It doesn’t matter really? Let him remain in those hearts that loved and cared for him in the memory that he left them with, huh?
That thread is about ONE ( 1 ) post of wally’s and ‘demo’ say this with no back up, cite, reason, explanation or link.
… and you buy it hook, line and sinker? Huh, C Note… mmmmmm … er…
Hey demo, wanna come over with a little bit of proff beside the one that has been already discussed to death? You know, the cyber-sex one? ::::::::: sheesh:::::::: ditto Techchick…
I find this thread to be horrible in Wally’s memory…I only know what I had heard and seen… I will not repeat because I find it rude…so why the fuck is there a “ditto” to me?
Nothing against Wally, but I remember the conversations from the past. Here’s some quick looking around:
Good, Bad, Ugly - Wally starts a humor bit, without attribution. But it seems pretty clear to me that it wouldn’t have been something he thought up himself. A later post in the thread points out that it is the current contest in the Style section of the Washington Post. But still, the ones in his OP could have been original to him, but then, each of them also appears on this page as well as dozens of other online joke collections.
Why Me? - If this is plagiarized, I can’t find it online.
Oh, I’ve learned! - This list of jokes can be found here, here, and here. The first one, at least, is a Henny Youngman joke, so it has probably been around since man ate dinosaurs.
Wally the Cop - If this is plagiarized, I can’t find it online.
Wally the Weirdo - If this is plagiarized, I can’t find it online.
An admittedly small sample, but it looks like he wasn’t the best at letting people know that the jokes weren’t his, but when simply telling a funny story, they were, if not true, then original to him.
OK Chris – the message from your post for me is that you are a tasteless wanker who attacks people who are dead and unable to defend themselves.
If Wally were alive, I’d see some point to this thread. If Wally were here and able to say, OK I’m sorry I stuffed up or whatever Wally wanted to say then yeah, there’s some point to it.
But he’s dead and you’re pissing on his grave and I can’t see the purpose of it. The SDMB admin won’t allow links to the work they know to be plagiarised.
What are you looking to achieve here? I don’t get it.
