A couple of weeks ago, a LinkedIn member by the name of Oleg Vishnepolsky published a post titled 10 Reasons Why Best People are Declining Your Offers. The next day, he posted an update indicating another LinkedIn member had re-posted the 10 Reasons… piece under his own name.
While that post has disappeared by now, the alleged plagiarizer’s name can still be tracked down. (To his credit, he at least had the courage to engage with Vishnepolsky in the comments on that update.)
But the 10 Reasons… piece would continue to miraculously clone itself. At least one more 10 Reasons… re-post showed up. As of this writing, it still is up, and its “author” apparently doesn’t feel he needs to take it down. Rather, he responded to critical comments by claiming what he did was common practice, and done everywhere on the Web, all the time. (Does that sound like a false-news claim? Since it is his name appearing alongside the date the post was published….)
Another day or two later, Vishnepolsky reported that yet another post of his, titled 10 Ways to Lose Your Best Developers, had been appropriated by yet another LinkedIn member, and re-posted under that member’s own name.
If there is any upside to this, that would be how highly re-posters think of the original authors. As of this writing, that re-post, too, is still live. Like the other re-posts, it has spawned a good handful of comments from readers calling out the “author.” Let me just add the following to those comments:
While that post has disappeared by now, the alleged plagiarizer’s name can still be tracked down. (To his credit, he at least had the courage to engage with Vishnepolsky in the comments on that update.)
But the 10 Reasons… piece would continue to miraculously clone itself. At least one more 10 Reasons… re-post showed up. As of this writing, it still is up, and its “author” apparently doesn’t feel he needs to take it down. Rather, he responded to critical comments by claiming what he did was common practice, and done everywhere on the Web, all the time. (Does that sound like a false-news claim? Since it is his name appearing alongside the date the post was published….)
Another day or two later, Vishnepolsky reported that yet another post of his, titled 10 Ways to Lose Your Best Developers, had been appropriated by yet another LinkedIn member, and re-posted under that member’s own name.
If there is any upside to this, that would be how highly re-posters think of the original authors. As of this writing, that re-post, too, is still live. Like the other re-posts, it has spawned a good handful of comments from readers calling out the “author.” Let me just add the following to those comments:
- Dishonest as plagiarizing itself is, I find it an outright brazen move when it is done on the same network (such as LinkedIn).
- What I find especially pathetic is that the 10 Ways… re-poster claimed the original author’s “rallying cry” as his own. It doesn’t even seem industry-appropriate for him.
- Piggybacking on (2), a plagiarizer doesn’t strike me as having a distinct brand of his or her own to begin with.
- Once I see through plagiarizers, I am not going to click on any of their other articles. They may or may not be their original writing. Assuming I didn’t know the individual before, at this point I already will have lost any trust.