World of Warcraft's Trade Chat Has a Problem

This public-facing part of the WoW community is ugly and not something I want people to associate with me when they think "WoW Gamer." When I tell people I'm a level 100 Protection Warrior, who dabbles in Monk Mistweaving, I don't want them to think, "Is he one of the people joking about anally raping children? Because that's what they do in WoW."

Bad Ideas

Sometimes, you should leave well enough alone. This is the conversation I imagine preceding this article:

"It'd be super easy to recreate a highly lethal contagion."

"It would not."

"Would too."

"Prove it." -- The start of a dark, tongue-in-cheek Outbreak parody, or a bunch of real scientists?

Some real quotes: “'These critics fail to appreciate the precautions and safeguards built into our work. ... The risks of conducting this research are not ignored, but they can be effectively managed and mitigated,' Professor Kawaoka said."

Also said by every bad guy in Jurassic Park ever.

Get It Right -- Even If You Don't Get It Fast

This is a lesson we're supposed to learn every time there is a terrible tragedy. We are always told that we should slow down, wait to have all the information before making ill-formed opinions and statements. I've discussed this before here and here. So, we're back to this pressing question: How can we encourage the media to actually do their job and get breaking stories right before accidentally sending out loads of incorrect information? In what other field, besides blogging, politics and journalism, do we allow this level of incompetence to go unchecked?

So, when you decide to report on a mass shooting, it behooves you to get the right suspect, describe the attack correctly, identify your victims correctly and behave like decent human beings while doing so. Not getting things right also causes people to wonder why journalists might accidentally embarrass themselves in other ways. Journalists: These sorts of stories are easy lay-ups if you would be patient and not be suckers.

Verify your work. It's not that hard, and if you were in any other field and routinely turned in such shoddy, poorly checked work, you would be fired. Sometimes, it is OK to be a little slow if you can get it right without having to embarrassingly backtrack and say "Never mind." Ignore the Second Amendment issues for all purposes on commenting and focus on how we can convince the media that accuracy is more important than showmanship.

Last Words on Zakaria Plagiarism

The whole cycle of the plagiarism story is coming to an end. While it was clear from the start what happened, and that it was unacceptable at most institutions, some held on and ignored it. CNN and Time didn't see enough of an issue with the plagiarism, and some at the Daily Beast insist it wasn't plagiarism at all, or in fact, racially motivated jealousy. It seemed that it should have been clear that plagiarism is unacceptable. Maybe the world of news aggregation has blurred the line between journalism and copy/paste. But, for now, at least, even Zakaria acknowledges what I went through pains to point out in my first post on this: academic institutions have clear policies on what counts as plagiarism and his actions fit the bill. Kudos to him for accepting responsibility with more than just saying "I'm sorry."

CNN and Time though? They've got some learning to do.

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P.S.,

Good morning! I know I say I want to try and only have a post a day. But, if I do a quick hit like this in the morning, I might push out something else in the evening. How will you know if I do? Follow me on Twitter @mjs69002!

Unacceptable CNN and Time

Zakaria keeps his job. Unacceptable. Plagiarism is a firing offense. It is not a journalistic lapse; it's plagiarism. I'm glad to see ethics are important to CNN and Time; it was plagiarism, even per Yale's standards.

Unacceptable CNN and Time. This is really disappointing; you're supposed to be journalists, act like it. So, now you know. Nothing wrong with stealing ideas. If you're famous enough.

Plagiarism Is a Firing Offense

There seems to be some extremely slow feet dragging at CNN and Time. Fareed Zakaria seems to have been suspended for a month for plagiarism. Now, the interesting thing with this is this is right on the heels of Jonah Lehrer resigning in disgrace for fabricating some quotes (which I learned about at Ann Althouse's blog.) The New Yorker, apparently, holds its writers to a higher ethical standard than Time and CNN.