So, anyone read any good threads lately?

[Jessica]

ha!
but the way that brian decided to write with capital letters was a dead giveway...

[[deleted user]]

Mike, are you picking on me or flirting with me? Or both? I can't tell...

[M]

David wrote: "Mike, are you picking on me or flirting with me? Or both? I can't tell..."

What's the difference?

[Jessica]

ha! you're on a roll Mike--

[[deleted user]]

I just wanted to relate my own personal experience on this thread. I have, from the time I joined this site, had serious problems with the avatar that is Ginnie. Every time one of her "reviews" popped up in my feed I had to restrain myself from posting my reactions to them because I felt they were not really beneficial to the conversation. Until, one night I came home inebriated, came across a review that repulsed me, and lambasted her for not contributing any real content through her reviews. I woke up the next day to find all of her friends defending her and calling me out. And truth be told, I did feel bad about, and although I stand by the words I wrote, I erased my post because I felt like it was out of character for me.

Here is the review:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Turns out that review was copied from the Washington Post. Since then, I have commented on a number of her other reviews that have rubbed me the wrong way. Every review I commented on was plagiarized. I have received some good natured ribbing from a couple of GR friends about my relationship to Ginnie. I have felt a little guilty about treating this person poorly, so I have actually waited until a review of hers came across my radar that I enjoyed so I could try and at least show some appreciation. Enter the Niebuhr review that started this whole thing. David PM'd me and directed me to the real article and let me in on the secret that this was pandemic. And it all made sense to me.

I am cynical when it comes to stuff like this. I kind of feel like the avatar that is Ginnie is a complete construct. That is, has no real identity. I have no reason to think otherwise. All we have to represent our identities in this venue is our words. And we all know words are very malleable. Not to mention, in the age of the internet, the truth can be very hard to grasp.

One one of the things that I found the most interesting was the age/generation gap that was evident in that thread. I think people that were raised with the internet have some kind of inherent reticence to trust what they see or read, and know to take these online personas with a grain of salt. I found that the people defending the avatar that is Ginnie were merely projecting what they thought this person was onto this made-up profile. These were mostly people that were not reared with a distrust of words and identity in the age of the internet.

I am not saying this to sound like a cold asshole. It is something that just seems blatantly obvious to me.

As for the issue of plagiarism...I mean. Come on. Ginnie copied entire articles. There is no question about re-appropriation of re-mixing of information in the name of originality. It was blatant theft. Period.

That is all I really have to say about the whole episode.

[Books Ring Mah Bell]

Jon-
I printed the page with your pic of Ginnie and the "Matthew's Mom" next to it.

slayed my ass.

(I'm still holding you responsible for the pants!)

[Jessica]

Jon: I remember that whole exchange, and thinking that your post had merit. I'd begun to be frustrated by GJ's "reviews" as well, but I had no idea as to the extent of her plagiarism at that point...and I didn't join in on that one.
I'm not sure I buy the age-thing however.
I am of "a certain age" and I am not about to defend GJ as a result. I think it has more to do with sympathy for her persona trumping anger over review-theft/plagiarism, in the case of her defenders.

also: matthew's defense of her disproves the age theory

[C.]

So, what are you people going to do about it all? Are you going to "de-friend" her (him?), report her to the powers that be, or just keep attempting to analyse and condemn her actions?

It's kind of funny that all this has sprung from a bit of plagiarism. Possibly Ginnie's just a troll and causing a kerfuffle was the whole point.

[Eddie]

I think many of us male booknerds want Ginnie to be real.

[brian]

ginnie's no troll. she's put too much effort into this site, for too long. every now and then she drops some insightful messages on people's threads and she does have pretty great taste, even if the actual reviews aren't hers.

i'm not going to de-friend her or even treat her any differently, to be honest with you. she did something shitty, but not that bad. and one can only imagine what must be up in her life to have her do this kinda stuff.

aside from feeling bad for what must have driven ginnie to do this (as well as her situation with her husband), i've enjoyed the shit out of all of this. very smart people commenting debating and thinking over book related questions? fantastic.

[Jessica]

I'm not gonna do anything except keep running my mouth, as I have been! I agree with the people here saying that if Ginnie's not real, this is even more interesting, but compulsive plagiarism for no discernible gain is kind of interesting on its own, too. I mean, I imagine that the powers that be'll eventually hear about it and shut her stuff down, since the copyright infringement's against the terms of use (and the law).

In any case, hasn't this whole thing been kind of fun? Nothing like a little hysterical indignation and intrigue to distract me from my own failings.

[Ben]

Jessica #65: In any case, hasn't this whole thing been kind of fun? Nothing like a little hysterical indignation and intrigue to distract me from my own failings.

Jessica, it may be because my life is lame, but damn I've had fun with all of this.

(the whole situation really is fascinating)

[C.]

I agree, this is pretty fascinating. And enjoyable.

But I do think it's interesting that you (those of you who answered my question) find her plagiarism so bad, but also don't want to do anything that might stop it. Please, don't think I'm condemning your attitude at all, I just think it's interesting given the level of indignation.

[[deleted user]]

Off-Topic:

But can ANYONE tell me who Ginnie Jones's avatar is? I've asked her twice, and twice she's ignored the question. I must know. I have been disturbed by it for some reason ever since I joined this booknerd site.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio]

It looks like Corky in drag...that's all I know.

[Jessica]

Choupette: Well, it is bad, but it's not like she actually is beating her children or trying to blow up a building or whatever. I'm not a big vengeance/punishment/discipline type of girl, and I'm not sure what there is to "do" besides what's been done -- confronting her about the behavior, and airing it in a public forum. I imagine if the plagiarism continues, people (possibly even including me) might be irritated at the gall, and could start tagging the reviews and appealing to the authorities. Generally speaking, though, I don't necessarily feel a mandate to intervene when I see someone doing something wrong unless it's actually endangering someone. I guess you could argue that the unattributed book reporters are being injured while their writing's still posted, but they're not in danger of losing any limbs or whatever. I guess if people cared a lot about the site rankings they could argue that she's messing up that system, but that'd be kind of a funny thing to care about so much (as has been noted re motivations here) and anyway, she may be a plagiarist, but Ginnie's unattributed reviews are the only thing keeping the top reviewer spots completely romance-dominated! Pick yr poison....

So anyway, yeah. People do a lot of things that disturb or appall me, and I do rarely feel the need to intervene, unless it's vitally necessary to prevent some future harm. Also, as noted above, I'm kind of over this whole episode. That is, the indignation has faded and at this point I kind of just think it's strange and interesting. It seems like a lot of other people feel similiarly....

Duchamp: I've asked her too, and she's been very coy!! I'd kill to know. Okay, maybe not kill, but torture a little.

[shellyindallas]

You'd think after 139 comments on her review thread and a group dedicated (so far) to talking about the incident (incidences) she'd be inspired to stop doing it, or at least go back and give credit where credit is due. Whatever.

While we're all less excited about this as we were a couple of days ago, I wanted to add that I, too, have enjoyed all this. In a much, and I mean MUCH, tamer and lighter way it reminds me of the Michael Vick thing. Fucking sponsor the mistreatment of dogs in any way and you'll get the whole town, torches in hand, on your ass. Likewise, plagiarize on goodreads and you'll get a lot of picket sign waving, marching booksters on your ass. I like that. What's right is right and we shouldn't just shrug our shoulders, let out a fart and say "Meh-who's it really hurtin'?"

[Jessica]

well it will be interesting to see what Virginia Jones Prickett, that is, Ginnie Jones, decides to do now, if anything... I for one am curious.

[C.]

My guess is that she won't do anything. Thanks for the explanation, Jessica.

[[deleted user]]

It looks as if "the review" has been removed...

[C.]

I am impressed. Good on you, Ginnie.

[[deleted user]]

(Choupette, more likely, Goodreads removed it.)

[Jessica]

Hope someone saved the thread? BRMB?...?

[Eric_W]

David wrote: "(Choupette, more likely, Goodreads removed it.)"

Review is still there, but the comments are all gone. The Irony of American History. I think if the review is there the comments should remain.

[Jessica]

David, what makes you think GR removed it rather than GJ?

[Jessica]

139 comments, gone...

[[deleted user]]

Oh, I thought the review was gone because my comment on the thread was gone from my profile. My mistake.

Obviously Ginnie deleted all of the comments. No one other than GR could do that, and I don't see why they'd delete the comments but not the review.

[Jessica]

that's right.

[[deleted user]]

NO WAIT! The review is gone -- kinda-sorta.

If you click on the link Eric provided in comment #78 above and scroll down to Ginnie's review... and then if you try to click on the comments under it or the "votes," you get a message that the review can't be found.

It looks like a technical glitch wherein the review itself has been deleted as an individual thread, but it still shows up on the book's listing of reviews. Weird. I'm gonna go see if it shows up on Ginnie's shelves...

[Eric_W]

David wrote: "Oh, I thought the review was gone because my comment on the thread was gone from my profile. My mistake.

Obviously Ginnie deleted all of the comments. No one other than GR could do that, and I d..."

I'm confused by your comment. You suggest Ginnie deleted all the comments but then say only GR could do that. I think we need someone from Goodreads to comment.

[[deleted user]]

Okay, if you go to her profile and search, the book is no longer on any of her shelves.

I think it's a technical glitch. GR removed it, but somehow didn't remove it "all the way."

[[deleted user]]

Sorry, Eric, I meant no one other than Ginnie and GR could delete comments from her thread. It's too early for me to be coherent.

[Jessica]

but again, David, how can you know it was GR and not GJ?

[[deleted user]]

Because based on a friends sorting of "last online" she hasn't been online in quite some time...

[Martine]

What I'm wondering about is whether Ginnie felt she didn't have to attribute her reviews because she actually wrote them herself, under a plethora of pseudonyms, and whether she deleted the comments about her plagiarism because she didn't want anyone to find out that a famous reviewer (or several famous reviewers) were having some private fun here.

I know, I'm probably taking far too kind and gullible a stance here. For all I know Ginnie may be a terrible plagiariser and too much of a coward to admit it. But like a few others who have weighed in on the issue over the last couple of days, I'm somewhat confused by the fact that Ginnie did frequently link to other people's reviews, or credit them. So I've been wondering why she didn't always do so, and the only reason I've been able to come up with is that she may actually have been the author of the articles she didn't credit. Think about it. Several of us have questioned the old librarian persona. Some of us have even wondered aloud whether Ginnie is at all female. I personally wouldn't be at all surprised if she were male; her taste in literature seems quite masculine. For all I know, then, the person behind the Ginnie persona may contribute to several major newspapers and post here for his/her private amusement. If he/she didn't want that secret out, that might explain why he/she never answered any questions about the supposed plagiarism, and quietly deleted all comments about it. Stands to reason, nah?

Again, there's a good chance I'm giving her too much credit here. For all I know, she may just be a cheap plagiariser who doesn't like to be called out on her little games. But I'm not ruling out the other possibility.

[shellyindallas]

Her review was flagged, right? I'm sure GR found/read it and realized it violated their terms of use.

[Jessica]

My take is this (re: Martine's comment):
Ginnie is what she says she is. She used to include links to her "reviews," in fact, often she would post a to-read book followed by a review, followed by a link...with info about it (which I found very confusing at first). She is above all, a researcher. I think she got sloppy, very sloppy. and after awhile, it was nice to be given credit for reviews that were not hers.

[Jessica]

p.s. David: you make a good sleuth.

[Eric_W]

Jessica wrote: "My take is this (re: Martine's comment):
Ginnie is what she says she is. She used to include links to her "reviews," in fact, often she would post a to-read book followed by a review, followed by ..."

I agree. Let's not wallow in paranoia. I really don;t think she could be ANDREW J. BACEVICH (the author of the original review in the Washington Monthly) in drag. I'm a great believer in Occam's Razor. I've had conversations with her in private messages regarding several books and I think she's a well-read, nice lady who more often than not attributed and created links to original reviews. I think, for whatever reason, that she made some mistakes and got carried away. This does NOT excuse it. As I said earlier, to receive and accept accolades for something and NOT send those plaudits along to whom they rightly belong is very wrong.

[[deleted user]]

Her real identity, while interesting, is largely irrelevant. Even if she were Andrew J. Bacevich -- a wild speculation -- she can't very well assert her authorial privilege unless she has identified herself as such. She is Ginnie Jones, a retired librarian from Pasadena, as far as her claims to authorship are concerned.

[M]

Martine wrote: "What I'm wondering about is whether Ginnie felt she didn't have to attribute her reviews because she actually wrote them herself, under a plethora of pseudonyms, and whether she deleted the comment..."

I'm reluctant to speculate on this particular person's intentions or motives. But I can say that the Irony review was from a fairly well-known professor of Int'l Relations, and the one I first noticed some time ago was from one of the Post's frequent major reviewers (Michael Dirda). I think it's unlikely that Dirda is a front for the scholar, or vice versa. So I doubt there's one master identity behind a bunch of other pseudoynyms... although it is indubitably true that I am both David and Donald.

...you do, Martine, bring up the point that sticks with me, too. Many times G has given cites; many times not. If we had a persistent failure to attribute reviews lifted completely, I'd call it sloppy but utterly explainable and even acceptable. I.e., cutting and pasting a whole review without a cite is easily fixed, and easily justified. In my correspondence, this person had noted a practice of reading which built a collage of responses, reviews from various sources around the web. I actually really LIKE that kind of reading -- and one of the things I very much appreciated was someone who gave me that sense of a critical context. (In fact, it's one reason I come to GR--I read through a range of reviews, to situate my own thinking on a book.) While many of us have noted our preference for the personal, in some ways a cut/paste collage approach to GR reviews seems fantastic. I'd dig it, any way, as it gets at something about the way I read, too.

The problem is that sometimes--not always, maybe even not often, but often enough to make it an issue--the reviews used the first-person, and G maintained the assumption of her authorship thereafter in threads, rather than fixing the cite. And in a few other instances, as Eddie has noted too, there's a re-working of one or more reviews to fit them together--a conscious shifting of pronouns to make it seem like an authored piece, for instance.

I'm not really into moralizing about her, as much as evaluating these acts. The practice of the former (collage) seems absolutely defensible, if cited, and the practices in the latter are not at all defensible... but neither are they cheap plagiarism. There's something interesting about how--even when we cut and paste from other sources--we are still performing our identity, something about who we are as readers... and that seemed to shade into the stickier, incorrect, and then wrong practices.

[Martine]

Oh well. It was just an idea I had -- a possibility that no one seemed to have looked into. But as I've said before, I'm perfectly willing to accept that Ginnie is what you all say she is -- a nice old lady who got sloppy and liked receiving accolades for things she didn't write. It's a pity, and does disappoint me a great deal, but hey, at least I got to read some good reviews...

[Rebecca]

Could it be pathological? A kind of intellectual kleptomania?

[Eddie]

Towards the end of October in '08 I started checking her reviews and found that most (maybe even 75%) were plagiarized or partly plagiarized. It's obvious to me that she has been engaging in intentional deception. In one case I found that in her plagiarized review she shifted the personal asides of the original reviewer from Minnesota to Southern California. And she doesn't always use reviews by professionals, she also steals Amazon reviews. I sent her a pm in late October about her practices, though in retrospect I think I was far too cordial. She never responded to my pm but the next few reviews of hers offered attributions, but soon enough she went right back to unattributed plagiarizing.

I go back and forth between being mad and being amused. There's also a twisted fascination.

[Jessica]

#97...I think so, yes.

[Martine]

Yeah... I see your point, Eddie. It does sound rather random and intentional. And if she didn't answer your PM to explain that she was in fact the persons whose reviews she was using, I'm afraid I have little reason to assume that that might have been the case.

Very well then. I retract my kind interpretation of Ginnie's practices.

[[deleted user]]

I'm so excited to find out I'm really Mike Reynolds! This explains a lot, as I haven't quite felt like myself lately...

[shellyindallas]

In one case I found that in her plagiarized review she shifted the personal asides of the original reviewer from Minnesota to Southern California.

That's crazy! If that's the case, there can be no doubt that in some cases she's just forgetful, or it's an oversight.

[Eric_W]

This might be a good time to review the Goodreads terms of service at http://www.goodreads.com/about/terms. Several of the terms were clearly violated by the review on The Irony of American History. I guess what I would like to know now, is why the comments were deleted, by whom, and why the review itself still stands unattributed. I don't like speculation so perhaps someone from Goodreads could come on and explain the sequence of events, deletions, etc. and how they relate to the terms of service.

[Jessica]

Eric: would you mind writing Otis about it?