Corrections in the digital editions of Free

As some of you may have seen, VQR rightly spotted that I failed to cite Wikipedia in some passages in Free. This is entirely my own screwup, and will be corrected in the ebook and digital forms before publication (and in the notes, which will be posted online at the same time the hardcover is released), but I did want to explain a bit more how it happened and what we’re doing about it.

First, as readers of my writings know, I’m a supporter of using Wikipedia as a source (not the only one, of course, and checking the original source material whenever possible). I disagree with those who say it should never be used. But the question is how to use it.

In my drafts, I had intended to blockquote Wikipedia passages, footnoting their URL. But my publisher, like many others, was uncomfortable with the changing nature of Wikipedia, and wanted me to timestamp each URL (something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Anderson page viewed on July 8th, 2008), which struck me as clumsy and archaic. So at the 11th hour we decided to kill the notes and footnotes entirely and I integrated the attributions into the copy.

In doing so, I went through the document and redid all the attributions, in three groups:

• Long passages of direct quotes (indent, with source)
• Intellectual debts, phrases and other credit due (author credited inline, as with Michael Pollan)
• In the case of source material without an individual author to credit (as in the case of Wikipedia), do a write-through.

Obviously in my rush at the end I missed a few of that last category, which is bad. As you’ll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book’s focus, mostly on historical asides, but that’s no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced.

Also note the VQR is not saying that all the highlighted text is plagiarism; much of is actually properly cited and quoted excerpts of old NY Times articles and other historical sources. And as you’ll see, in most cases I did do a writethrough of the non-quoted Wikipedia text, although clearly I didn’t go nearly far enough and too much of the original Wikipedia authors’ language remained (in a few cases I missed it entirely, such as that short Catholic church usury example, which was a total oversight). This was sloppy and inexcusable, but the part I feel worst about is that in our failure to find a good way to cite Wikipedia as the source we ended up not crediting it at all. That is, among other things, an injustice to the authors of the Wikipedia entry who had done such fine research in the first place, and I’d like to extend a special apology to them.

So now we’ve fixed the digital editions before publication, and we’ll publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with. [UPDATE: A draft version is here. The final version will live in the right column of this blog permanently] That way the links are live and we don’t have to wrestle with how to freeze them in time, which is what threw me in the first place.

Here’s the statement that my publisher, Hyperion, released yesterday:

We are completely satisfied with Chris Anderson’s response. It was an unfortunate mistake, and we are working with the author to correct these errors both in the electronic edition before it posts, and in all future editions of the book.

Comments

[Jamie]

Chris,

I\\\\\\\'ve asked you the question several times and in two different ways. After you dodged it by placing it out of your workplace, I asked you two more times:

If one of your employees made such mistakes as you did in a piece for your publication, would you accept a convoluted explanation and apology? Would they be punished?

It is hard to accept your explanation for your mistakes as sincere when in the very next post you selectively answer questions with no seeming sincerity or commitment to intellectual honesty. If you\\\\\\\'re playing games in one answer...

J

[Ezequiel P.]

The problem with post-filtering is that feedback comes after publication, not before. As a result, errors that would have been caught by editors and other wise eyes can sneak through, and even though the collective post-filter feedback can eventually correct them, they may never disappear entirely.

[Viveka Weiley]

Ricky: take a chill pill. Mark is being astonishingly polite to respond to you at all, given your evident seething dislike of him and the extraordinarily long bows you are drawing.

[Cameron]

isn't this simple and easy to understand as a note on a wikipedia page from a certain time/day? This is just the link to a specific edit from the history page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usury&oldid=298168565

[burtbrumme]

Good job on coming clean. Still, goes towards underlining the central flaws of your argument in my view. For it to be free, a good chunk of your book needed to be liberally 'borrowed'. Quality takes time, authors and editors deserve to be paid for it and paid fairly. The model you present is a pipe-dream at best, an insult to talented and hard-working writers at worst.

[Ezequiel P.]

@Ricky: I think on those three cases you could argue they didn't expect to get caught. What I'm saying is the exact opposite, Chris is not some random hack who didn't realize he would get caught plagiarizing wikipedia.

In fact, Chris writes about the internet culture, and knows he *would* get caught eventually. That's why I'm arguing he didn't do this on purpose.

Let me give you another quote from "The Long Tail": "The big sin in exposure culture is not copying, but instead, failure to properly attribute authorship."

[Sachin Mehta]

One of the best Blogs ever for sure..Will India be Lucky enough to see you, and mainly Bombay for this TED:)

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[dofus kamas]

no offence, but i'm sure you did it

[buy darkfall gold]

Hi Ricky: You are right. I should have mentioned that I was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998. I left several years after Chris took over, but disclosing my past employment with Wired adds context to my comments. Thanks!

[Rune Hansen]

Well you took care of it so everything is fine now!

[cdarin]

Gooooood lord. If these people could crucify you, they would!

Utterly ridiculous. This is the superstition of our age, where we fool ourselves into believing that those who Have are in constant tyranny of those who Have Not.

Thank you for remaining civil despite the slobbering philistines who'd rather you thrown to the dogs. Your explanations have been clear and appropriately apologetic, and I'm happy to hear someone else support Wikipedia, which really gets a lot of needless crap by those who desperately cling to the old status quo.

You clearly recognize the motion of things, where we are going as an increasingly digital culture, and you are doing well to educate the masses on the new rules of the game. Free is a valuable idea, it's good that you're trying to share it.

[Martin]

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[Jamie]

"This has nothing to do with Wired"

A friend pointed out the cover to 16.03 and I just had to laugh.

http://www.wired.com/wired/coverbrowser/2008

[Jamie]

I am laughing so hard right now.

[Chris Anderson]

Jamie,

Your point? There are no issues with anything published in Wired.

[Jamie]

You made that point, Chris. And I pointed out that your work outside the magazine clearly reflects on Wired. And seeing that you used your original story for a cover with the same title makes denying such an argument impossible.

You know what my point is.

[Jamie]

I don\\\'t believe you are ingenuous, but let\\\'s go down the rabbit hole anyway. Let\\\'s pretend you robbed a bank. And all over the world the hedlines read \\\"Editor of Wired Robs Bank.\\\"

You don\\\'t think that would reflect poorly on Wired?

Now here\\\'s a real situation with serious editorial questions and you claim that this has nothing to do with your position at Wired? And refuse to answer how you might handle a similar situation as the editor of the magazine?

Now I have clearly made my point. And as much as I don\\\'t like the way you answer, to continue any further would be unproductive.

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[estetik]

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[Leonard Baumgardt]

@ Dennis G. Jerz:

You say:
(quote)
If "write-through" means "paraphrase to avoid having to cite," that's still a problem, since you're still building on the Wikipedia article without citing it.
(/quote)

But you miss one thing:

Ideas are not proprietary. Ideas are MEANT to be copied, changed and evolved.

What's proprietary and copyrighted is the FORM -- because that's where the individual personality of the writer comes in.

It's perfectly fine to take a book, write down all the ideas from it and write a new book from those ideas without ever citing anything. Sure, that book wouldn't be a book worth reading, because there's nothing new in it in content. But legally, it's perfectly fine. And you might even add value if you do have a talent to explain those ideas BETTER than the original author...

[Roberty Burlow]

Hi Chris, I think your "fix" is just fine. This is a fascinating example of "open publishing." I.e. telling us about Hyperion's wishes, the awkwardness (and datedness) of time-stamping the attributions and your proposal for how to handle it differently. Writing about fluid, Web-based information in a print book is clumsy. Sigh, as you put it. Basketball Backboard Dimensions

[vitamine e]

Hi Stephen....
I am agree with you.they must not remove a valuable piece of information about your process.By the way its great sharing here...

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Thanks chris for providing us the corrections of FREE book. I owned the audio book of FREE but these correction doesn't come to my mind but after going through this post i came to know about the benefits of wikipedia. Thanks

[kevin]

http://www.ebook-converter.com/digital-editions-converter.htm