Yes, you were plagiarized. TheNextWeb was in the wrong, and they made it worse by their reaction.
But I also feel that the main insights of your posts were not your own. They were that of the NY Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum. That is, I feel the main insight of your post were two things: the doubling of tips, and the attribution of this to the buttons on the credit-card machine. Your contribution was to look up a few other stats to get the $144 million figure.
I think you bring up a reasonable point: that the forced tipping system with no values below 20% was previously discussed in other articles such as that of Grynbaum from January 8, 2012:
In fact it's not a secret at all since New Yorkers and those visiting the city are quite acquainted with the system, it's no secret, so I am not sure Mr. Grynbaum is a reasonable original source of information about the system, millions who have taken a
taxi are reasonable sources.
Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross hotlinked his image of the interface, dating back to February 2011:
Their reaction was similar to many others, that a design that forces a minimum tip of 20% is an annoying dodgy system for forcible shakedowns of hapless credit card customers, and sure to enrage many people.
GoodExperience's blog's conclusion was nearly the opposite of Mr. Gross's:
> The lesson: details matter. One change to one button in the interface changes the experience from delightful to annoying, leaving the rider feeling taken advantage of.
The cab customers are the victims here, they are in essence a captive audience who can not seek competition since the system has been dictated system wide by the same government that profits well from the system since it prevents drivers from underreporting tips.
Mr. Gross's original contribution was to point out that by looking at this from the viewpoint not of the customer, but of the business and the government, the system was a success as it has resulted in much profit for them.
Mr. Gross published this yesterday, on May 13, 2012. TheNextWeb published their "article" a few hours after Gross's article reached high on Hacker News. This is likely where Harrison and Zee became aware of it as it seems they are readers of HN. Harrison's article was then published today, May 14th.
None of the previous articles about the system bring up Mr. Gross's main points, that the design of the system has the advantage of increasing profits for the business.
Not stated but worth discussing is that it only works because there is a captive audience with no other choices who do not discover their tipping options are so limited until they go to pay at the end of the ride. These issues would make interesting discussions for even more articles. Perhaps TNW could have even written one. Instead they copied an article, stole it, because I have personally compared the articles word by word and found that it is a LIE to say TNW published original content or that the article was truly written by Harrison.
Under Fair Use I am now citing BOTH for comparison lest there be any doubt.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY JOSHUA GROSS:
> The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year. There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment.
> During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%.
HARRISON WEBER's ALLEGED ORIGINAL CONTENT, DEFENDED AS ORIGINAL BY ZEE KANE:
> The average New York City taxi driver makes $90,747 in gross revenue per year (less some hefty operating expenses). In 2007, NYC required cab drivers to begin accepting cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment in all ~13,267 cars.
> During payment, users are shown three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25% and 30%. Back when cabs were cash-only, the average tip was around a modest 10%. But since this system was introduced system, the average tipping percentage jumped to 22%.
Who here will respond to this post and claim that Harrison Weber is not an unrepentant plagiarist and Zee Kane his belligerent defender? Speak now.
Thanks for the correction there, you're right, he actually provided a link back to GoodExperience and even set the images Title tag to state that the photo was from GoodExperience.
I felt that the NY Times article by Grynbaum clearly covers the idea that cabbies are pulling in more tips because of the default tip buttons on the credit card machines.
Regardless TNW took his article almost entirely word for word! Only two or three words were added/removed in TNW's version. This isn't about facts, it's about copy-pasting someone else's words and then sending 6 incredibly defensive and dickish tweets after othe original author complained (barely).
At the end, Zee says he'll steer clear of the original author's work for fear of ridiculous accusations as if to say "you should be happy that we plagiarized you, now we'll punish you by never flattering you with another plagiarized article again".
He couldn't have made it any clearer that he was the author of the original after a complaint.
You can't even play devils advocate on this one. TNW is so deep into "wrong" territory that nothing short of removing the entire post and replacing it was an admission of plagiarism will redeem them in my eyes.
You are correct, which is why I called what TNW did plagiarism in my parent post, and elsewhere in the thread. Their understanding of the concept is both sad and frustrating. (Check my comment history.)
I'm making a separate point, that the contribution of the article in question is minor. And that, combined with the level of outrage, just makes me a bit uneasy.
My mistake on not seeing the previous comments but even if the original work (not the TNW version) offered little extra value at least it was written from scratch using the authors own words. His outrage was minor, Zee's outrage is seriously overblown and I think our outrage here is justifiable.
"You can't even play devils advocate on this one."
Very insightful comment. I don't think they should delete it at this point though which would be covering up what they did at this point.
As far as what to do about this, word for word plagiarism that is barely altered so that it's technically not an exact word search isn't a mistake or momentary slip up by a paid author/journalist/blogger, it's overt plagiarism and fraud. There is absolutely no other thing to be done when it is found but to openly and publicly FIRE the fake "author" who stole another person's work, and issue a public apology to the true author.
That would have resolved it and enabled this company to save face and appear on the up and up.
The handling by the CEO was so abysmal and so wrong here though that it destroyed the entire reputation of the site. His continuing to trying to spin and lie is just an embarrassment to himself, his reputation is ruined.
As far as whoever owns this company, at this point the only thing they could possibly do to recover at all is to fire both the CEO and the plagiarist and issue a public, heartfelt, sincere apology.
But I also feel that the main insights of your posts were not your own. They were that of the NY Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum. That is, I feel the main insight of your post were two things: the doubling of tips, and the attribution of this to the buttons on the credit-card machine. Your contribution was to look up a few other stats to get the $144 million figure.