In response to my previous post about plagiarism, The Pakistani Spectator, to their credit reacted swiftly and firmly, not only removing the plagiarised post but also publicly apologising on their blog and banning the said author, namely Maher Nawaz Khan, from their contributing authors’ list. It takes some one brave to acknowledge their mistakes, so I appreciate the responsibility TPS has taken and I hope we all learn something from the precedent they have set. They really ought to be no tolerance for such practices in any sphere of life, blogging or otherwise.
Conversely, I was thinking of how it can be difficult monitor and guard against plagiarism on group blogs, most of which are edited by volunteers. It’s a time consuming enough excersize checking for typographical, style, tone, spelling and grammar errors, let alone also checking for originality. That’s why websites like Copyscape are such a great resource.
But surely industry giant like PTCL have no such excuse. Tariq Mustafa has discovered that the folks at PTCL have copy pasted their entire FAQ section for a newly launched dial up service (including even contact phone numbers) from the corresponding FAQ section of competitor WOL! And not only that, it seems there’s a possibility that the image they’re using in their latest ad campaign may be plagiarised too!
These companies, if I’m not mistaken, have sizable teams devoted to such projects, with specialised tasks assigned to different sections. They have on their disposal some very skilled and qualified human and technological resources. Surely, they have to be competent enough to come up with their own sets of frequently asked questions, or in the least, their own set of contact phone numbers!
But the problem, as we all know too well, is not a lack of resources, but of a prevailing mindset and attitude. As I said earlier, honestly and fair practice are no longer considered important. Instead you have the new axiom of ‘end justifies the means’ even if the means involve lies, deception and cheating.
Disturbing developments these, eye opening in some ways, yet on the other hand, hardly surprising. I wonder if things will ever change; if there will ever be any responsibility or accountability. The odds that PTCL will acknowledge their mistake like The Pakistani Spectator did surely must be non-existent, which is why we must appreciate TPS’s response even more.
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sorry for spelling mistakes in above post.
When PTCL was privatised, and the new Mnagement took over, we had great hopes, that things will finally change for better. But the last two years have been complete disppointment.I am saying this from the perspective of a PTCL employee as well as PTCL customer.(I am PTCL customer first and employee later). We thought that PTCL will finally embrace corporate identity.But what we see is that it has embraced all the negative aspects of corporate identity(.More on it in some other blog)
Though Copyscape can and will help in this situation, anyone that is very serious about this might want to invest in a decent academic-quality plagiarism checking program. It covers more sources than just Google.
MyDropBox is a U.S. one that is only $65 per six months. Just a thought on that issue.