Article retraction, November 26, 2008: The article that originally ran in this space has been retracted by the author per the following author’s note. MousePlanet apologizes for this incident.
– Mark Goldhaber, Chief Operating Officer, MousePlanet
I am truly sorry. I made a terrible mistake and need to apologize to everyone: the MousePlanet management, staff and the readers of the MousePlanet Web site. One of the maxims I attempted to instill in my children is the one that states, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” I’ve held that sentiment near and dear for a long time and, very recently, I violated it and need to apologize for doing so. Let me explain…
Over the last couple of months, I’ve had some issues, both business-related and personal, that have placed some extraordinary demands on my free time. I recently found myself facing a deadline for my bi-weekly MousePlanet column and, while I typically have 2 or 3 articles in the works, this time I had nothing. I offer all that as explanation for what happened—not as an excuse. There is no excuse.
I needed something that I could put together quickly and I hit on the idea of an article about Illuminations: Reflections of Earth. Several years ago, I took an Illuminations Cruise and, on that cruise, our captain did a very nice job of explaining some of the storyline behind the show. I remember doing some additional research when I returned home and, as I thought back on that, it occurred to me that an article detailing the show’s history and providing that storyline might be interesting. This was a deviation from the “That’s My Opinion” tone of my columns but I decided to go with it anyway. That was mistake number one.
I visited a number of different Web sites to review their information and settled on four sites that, collectively, held the details I needed. In some cases, these sites offered conflicting information so I did some additional research to narrow down a few facts. Then, in the interest of saving time, I made a huge mistake: mistake number two.
I copied and pasted almost everything from those four sites into a single document. I wrote a beginning and an ending; then set about reorganizing, editing and rewriting to develop two things: a chronology of Epcot’s shows and a description of the back-story behind the current Illuminations show. This was all done within snippets of available time over a 4 or 5-day period. When I finished, I read the finished piece and decided it met my objectives. I inserted a few appropriate photographs I had taken and submitted it for publication. It first appeared on the MousePlanet Web site on Friday, November 14, 2008.
Somewhere over that weekend, I noticed a post, referencing my column, in MousePlanet’s MousePad forum. A reader had posted “that large chunks of the article have just blatantly been copy and pasted from Wikipedia” without attribution to that source. My initial reaction was disbelief but Wikipedia was one of the sites I used so I brought it up, brought up a separate window with my column in it, and compared the two. My next reaction was “Oh, xxxx. What did I do?”
In looking at the description of the show, there was a bit of rearranging and words and comments had been inserted, but a number of items came through almost verbatim from the Wikipedia page. However inadvertent it was, I had copied Wikipedia’s content. Had I realized that earlier, I could have identified Wikipedia as a source for the information and given the proper acknowledgment. That would have been appropriate although not in keeping with the originality that is one of MousePlanet’s goals, as well as my own.
Since this discovery, the article has been removed from the MousePlanet site. My decision to take a shortcut in producing that article was wrong. Submitting that article, without the necessary attribution, was also wrong. I take full responsibility for those transgressions and I sincerely apologize to all. It will, most certainly, never happen again.
-Steve Russo
