Notice a plagiarized post? Tell us about it in the comments

Those fishy folks at Fish Creek House, they're just darn hard to keep up with! Every time I check in to see what plagiarized prose they've posted again, it's almost overwhelming. It would be practically a full time job for any one person just to document the amount of plagiarism coming out of the Fish Creek House blogs.

So, how about this? For anyone who is as annoyed by these yoyos as I am, if you see a post of theirs with evidence of plagiarism in it, just mention it in the comments. Include the URL for the Fish Creek House blog post, and the URL for the website that it most looks like they took the content from. That way we'll just keep a running list, here in the comments.

Just like Pooh? I dunno, does Pooh STEAL?

From FCH - "Fear is Your Friend", posted Monday, May 5, 2008 on the INNside blog:

That’s the secret. We are all scared, just like Pooh. But when we tell people about our fears, those fears seem a lot smaller. You can start right now. Try taking one small fear, doesn’t matter what it is, and write it down. If you want, you can share it by writing about it in the comments after this post. Write down whatever comes to mind when you think of the fear. Give it a try. I will bet that you will notice a difference, even if you only write about a “little” fear.

looks like it was taken from

How Winnie the Pooh Helped Me Find Courage by Scott Davis.

word for word.

Bread in the Woods

Here's a classic Fish Creek post. Take someone else's recipe and their words and pass it off as your own, without even an acknowledgement of where it came from.

Take this article on making bread posted July 29th, 2006:


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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2006/07/bread-in-woods.html

See the paragraph, "steamed breads are so versatile"?

Now look at the article and recipe from Dennis Weaver of the Prepared Pantry, copyright 2004:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Steamed-Bread:-Apricot-Date-Nut-Bread-with-Caramel-Sauce&id=25710

Why. Why can't these Fish Creek people just make up their own stuff? Why do they feel compelled to raid the Internet and take credit for other people's work?

"Brunch. What a fabulously promising word..."

The fabulous Clothilde of Chocolate and Zucchini wrote that. In February 2005. And her accompanying recipe for Muffins Banane Pécan (aka Banana Pecan Muffins) looks lovely, doesn't it?

Lovely enough, apparently, for Fish Creek House to post this in their Fish Creek House Bed and Breakfast sample recipes: "Brunch. What a fabulously promising word..." and several other distinctly Clothilde sentences.

The title of the entry? Morning is for Muffins. Clothilde's Banana Pecan Muffins, to be exact. And her photo.

Click here to enlarge.

Has Fish Creek Plagiarized Your Content? Call them!

Sometimes picking up the phone and making a well placed phone call is much more effective than just complaining online.

If you see your content republished on one of Fish Creek House's blogs without your permission, pick up the phone and call them to complain directly.

Here's their address and phone number:

Fish Creek House
5913 MT Hwy 41
Whitehall, MT 59759

(406) 287-2181

Owners: Cindy and Dan Busarow

Plagiarizing on Three Blogs?

How do these people have the time to actually run a bed and breakfast and do all the things they say they do and also publish three blogs at once, each one of them plagiarizing from others? Fish Creek House, please, STOP THE MADNESS!

First they plagiarize someone's entire post about coffee, already mentioned here at Fish Creek House Watch on their blogger blog. Looks like the same day they decided they just had to keep the same opening paragraph, and rewrite the rest of the post for their Wordpress blog:

With coffee being the #1 drink in much of the world, there has to be an awful lot of coffee grounds out there going into the trash. What do you do with yours? From Badgetts’s Coffee Journal (www.aboutcoffee.net) a web site dedicated to all things coffee, comes some amazing and very handy tips.Most people know that coffee grounds and used filters make for excellent composting. The grounds release nitrogen into the soil which is highly beneficial but there are many, many other options for grounds too in other applications such as beauty products, household use and crafting ideas.

http://horsewoman.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/getting-grounded-and-green/

Although they took down the post from one blog, there it is, still on another, with one paragraph still perfectly intact. And perfectly plagiarizing someone else. Grounds for Good Living. Cate O'Malley and Kate Selner, we hope you are complaining to these people!

Turkey Day Cheat Sheet

Fish Creek House can't come up with their own guidelines of how to prepare for Thanksgiving, so they have to "borrow" from somewhere else. Their turkey tips (posted Nov 17, 2007):



http://horsewoman.wordpress.com/2007/11/17/turkey-day-cheat-sheet/

and they've cross posted here: http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/11/turkey-day-cheat-sheet.html

Which they've taken the turkey tips from: http://www.idealbite.com/tiplibrary/archives/green_gobble_gobble.

When the Pilgrims sat down to dinner that first Thanksgiving, their turkey wasn’t a swollen illustration of agricultural practices gone bad. Purchasing a pasture-raised, organic turkey this Thanksgiving will give you the true natural flavors of the holiday.

Getting Fresh, Naturally

And naturally, Fish Creek House is looking around in the great big world wide web for more content to plagiarize and call their own.

Their Seven Tips for Cleaner and Fresher Food (posted Sept 30, 2007):


http://horsewoman.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/getting-fresh-naturally/

Comes straight from an article by Jack Reider, published 2/12/2007:

How to keep food fresh naturally

Getting Grounded and Green

Hey Fish Creek House, whatcha think? We wouldn't notice when you posted again, finding someone else's content to plagiarize?

Here's the latest, posted October 2nd, 2007: Update, October 3rd, 2007, they took the post down. Thank goodness we keep a record of their misdeeds, eh? Constant vigilance!


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From Fish Creek House INNside Innkeeping in Montana: http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/06/getting-grounded-and-green.html

Hey, they didn't even bother to edit the post, just took it word for word from our favorite coffee blog, A Nice Cuppa, part of the Well Fed Network:

Grounds for Good Living

I bet Cate O'Malley, owner of the Well Fed network, and Kate Selner, author of the ripped-off article, are going to love this one.

Fair Trade?

Treehugger site features an article on coffee and fair trade, entitled: 6 Step Program for the Caffeine Addicted. [This is a guest post by Siel from Green LA Girl. -Ed] "Calm your caffeinated panic attack — We're not talking about quitting coffee. This is a 6-step program for drinking better coffee — for the environment, society, and you and your java addiction."

Guess what? Fish Creek House must have liked it. Liked it so much they copied and pasted the majority of the piece to their blog- as a 4-step program: "Forthwith is a Fish Creek 4-step program for drinking better coffee — for the environment, society, and you and your java addiction."

I found it by copyscaping the Fish Creek article.

Fish Creek Four


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Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Dear Fish Creek House, are you afraid that you'll lose readers if you start writing posts in your own words? Please! Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Here's the latest, dated Sept 16th, 2007: Update Sept 16th, they edited the post, but they are still plagiarizing content. Do these people just not get the concept? Look it up people!


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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/01/feel-fear-and-do-it-anyway.html

In this article, Fish Creek House is inspired by the Susan Jeffer's book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It's actually a relief to find Fish Creek House actually acknowledging anyone else. Too bad they didn't acknowledge where they got the rest of their post.

Years ago Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers and both the motto and insights gleaned have resonated and helped me out. Very apropos to starting a new business. "I'd like to start a small business but..." The "pain in the but question is what's holding you back?

When I 've asked people this question, the response is often that they're afraid of failing - after all is said and done, that's what it boils down to. It was a biggie for me.

Notice the sentence that begins with "I'd like to start a small business but...".

Now notice the article written at About.com by small business expert Susan Ward:

Don't Let the Fear of Failure Stop You from Starting a Small Business.

Pretty much the Fish Creek House post is a direct copy or a paraphrase of Susan Ward's entire article.

Look at these paragraphs on the Fish Creek House blog:

To prepare to succeed is to learn how to do it. You already know how to fail. You can fail by doing nothing or you can fail by doing stupid things. By finding out exactly what you would need to be successful and ensuring that those needs are met.

Failure doesn’t change your genes or your personality. It affects some people’s actions negatively, but it’s not negative in itself. Will you be a “loser” if you fail?

Practically word for word from Susan Ward's article.

Come on, Fish Creek House! Give it up! If you are going to use other people's words, 1) get their permission first, 2) put the words in blockquotes so we can tell the difference between what you wrote and what someone else wrote, and 3) provide attribution with a link. This is not rocket science.

Scouting - A First Essential to Deer Hunting

There are people who write for a living. It must be awfully discouraging for them to see their hard-earned, well-crafted words show up on someone else's site without even a simple acknowledgement. Worse still, the plagiarizer, in this case Fish Creek House, publishes them as if the words were their own.

In this post, dated October 20, 2006, Fish Creek House seems to know something about deer hunting: Update, Sept 15, 2007, the post has been removed.


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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2006/10/scouting-first-essential-to-deer.html

Starting with the sentence "To improve your luck on white-tailed deer, learn the major types of deer sign, what they look like, where to find them, how to interpret them and what they mean in terms of formulating a hunting strategy" they've taken practically an entire article written by Keith Sutton in the Outdoor Site Library:

Scouting: The Essential First Step in Deer Hunting

Bet Keith loves to see that, eh?

Nothing like a steaming scone in the morning

Sigh. Yes, nothing like a steaming scone in the morning, while you are shamelessly lifting someone else's work and passing it off as your own.

Here's a post from Sept 6, 2006: Update Sept 15, 2007 - looks like they took down this post. You can find a record of their plagiarism here at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Useful thing that Wayback Machine.


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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2006/09/schoolin-in-scones.html

And here is where they likely got it:

The Perfect Scone: Keys to Make Your Scone Jut Right, by Dennis Weaver of The Prepared Pantry.

Curiosity in horses

The folks at Fish Creek House write a lot about horses. Perhaps they have some of their own? I imagine they take a lot of pride in their horses. Something akin to the pride that most people take in their writing. Why is it that the folks at Fish Creek House so disrespect the works of others that they copy them willy-nilly without any attribution? A simple set of quotation marks with a link to the source would suffice.

Take this post dated August 26th, 2006: Update Sept 15, 2007: Oh my, they took down the post! Imagine that.


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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-curiosity-in-horses.html

The first paragraph

A secret recipe to horsemanship is to create curiosity. Rather than you approaching the horse, try drawing it towards you. This may take time depending on the horse’s conditioning. Horses that have not been exposed to human interaction or have had negative encounters with humans may let the fear drive them away more than a horse that has been handled humanely by humans.

looks like it was lifted word-for-word from this post from the Horse Bliss blog: Curiosity creates confidence.

Wonder of Wonders

Wonder of wonders, that when the rest of the country is in remembrance of the tragedy of 9-11, Fish Creek House is plagiarizing more content.

Here's the latest: Update: Sept 13, 2007, looks like they took down the whole post.



http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/09/wonder-of-wonders.html

Note the paragraphs starting with "You are living your life..." and "1) We are not listening to what God is telling us".

Now check out: Conversations with God... can you hear God when he speaks? from success-is-in-you.com.

See the paragraph that starts with "I will try to elaborate on this: You are living your life,..."

I Shoulda' been a Cowgirl

Ya know, the more they remove posts because people are complaining, the more other posts float to the surface that have just as many problems.

Take this recent (August 31, 2007) post: Update Sept 6, 2007: They've taken down the offending paragraphs in this one. Bet there are plenty more though, where that one came from.

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http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-shoulda-been-cowgirl.html

In particular note these two paragraphs:

A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.

I was never a cowgirl...

But over the years, ...

A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the gir 'r done work ethic.

Note the similarity to this post from Jack of All Blogs (August 20th, 2006), about half way down the post:

Defining A Cowboy

A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.

I was never a cowgirl. ...

But over the years, ...

A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the work ethic, and growing that fibrous root into a cactus flower, prickly and remarkable. It’s about making the desert within us bloom. And it’s about just existing, being as much a part of the world around you as it is a part of you.

Yeah. Some cowboy. Or cowgirl. Whatever. Gotta love their "moral structure" eh?

Keep Your Eye on the Prize

We spoke too soon!

Fish Creek House continues with what appears to be blatant plagiarism.

Posted today, Sept 5, 2007 is this beauty on showing horses: Update: they have taken down the stolen paragraphs as of 5 pm EST Sept 5th. Let's keep up the vigilance!

Click on image for larger version


Here's the Fish Creek article: http://fishcreekhouse.blogspot.com/2007/06/keep-your-eye-on-prize.html

Notice these two paragraphs near the bottom:

Showmanship is a class where you lead your horse. As you lead the horse around the arena, the judges watch to see how well the horse follows directions while you are on the ground. Riding and leading are two completely different things. Then after a couple times around the arena, you're asked to line up in the center. One at a time, you may be asked to walk you horse from one judge to another. You will turn them when you get to one judge, then trot back to the judge you were at first. All competitors will do this.

Then after everyone is lined up again, the judge will come around to see how well you show off your horse. When the judge comes to one side, you should be on the other so that he/she can see well.

Notice the stark similarity to the words of 11 year old blogger Rebecca Shyly:

You Don't Have to Ride to Win

posted a month before, on Aug 5th, 2007.

So we've gone beyond taking candy from children. Now we are taking their blog posts?

Disgusting.

Plagiarism Software?

This comment from a Fish Creek House Watch reader has alerted us to how plagiarism so extensive could be happening. Rather than have it buried from the front page, here's the comment:

Wish I'd saved the solicitation, FishWatcher.

Sometime in the last year I received an emailed salesletter for some automatic-article-writing software that would do exactly this.

It was being marketed to blackhat Adwords bloggers who were wanting to game Google by putting up thousands of trash blogs tied to specific keywords.

You would type in the keywords or subject you wanted an article written about and the software would search the online article directories and (maybe the web at large, I don't recall) and make supposedly intelligent selections of pertinent material and grab a little here and a little there and piece them together to compose and publish your article for you on your trash blog.

I was disgusted with the idea and the salesletter's claim that this was not plagiarism, but "fair use" and the kind of legitimate research that all writers do. (But I'm especially sensitive about such things, having made my living as a writer forever.)

And I didn't really believe that it would work; that is, that the software would make intelligent and coherent pairings of sentences and paragraphs swiped from a variety of articles.

You have me wondering now if we are seeing that software in action.

If so, unethical and stupid as it do be, it's got some pretty smart cutting and pasting going on.

Best,
kwc
----------------------------------
k e n . w i n s t o n . c a i n e
full of natural goodness since 1952

editor, http://www.mindbodyspiritjournal.com
sharing holistic how-to since 1992

Thanks Ken! I've heard about software like this, but find it hard to believe that someone would be so clueless as to use it. Why would a legitimate business risk turning off so many people? This stuff is not that hard to track. Flash-in-the-pan spammers and content aggregators playing the Adsense game, well I could see them going for it. They're just trying to stay one step ahead of Google, making millions before Google gets wise to them.

We will be watching you

It appears over the weekend that Fish Creek House has been awfully busy deleting several of the offending posts we have written about here so far.

Good. That's the point.

Better go through your entire archives, Fish Creek House, because that's what we're doing. And if we find anything that looks like it was taken from some other site, we'll write about it here.

We'll be watching you from now on.

Every new post you make, we'll be checking.

You can be better or you can be bitter

You know, this is going to be fun. Because practically every post that Fish Creek Makes on their INNside Innkeeping blog is taking content from somewhere else. No matter how much or how often people complain, they still keep taking other people's content.

Yesterday, September 1, 2007, they posted this post: UPDATE, Tuesday Sept 4, 2007: Looks like they took down the article. Score 1 for Fish Creek House Watch!

You can be bitter or you can be better

Note the paragraphs on "First Key: Control" and "Second Key: Alt(ernate)"

Now look at this article, from Ezine Articles:

Ctrl-Alt-Delete Your Life

written by author Soni Pitts, and published on September 24, 2004. I wonder how Soni feels about the Fish Creek House lifting her words and passing them off as their own?

In the very same Fish Creek post, notice these sentences from the second paragraph:

I think the key (pun intended) difference between happy people and unhappy people is in the translation of the events of their lives. It’s also the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people

and now notice the first paragraph by musician Christine Kane:

It seems to me that the difference between happy people and unhappy people is in the translation of the events of their lives. It’s also the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people

Further along, in the section labeled "Second Key" you'll find this text:

Sometimes I think this is the only reason to take risks — so you don’t go through life settling for what you’ve always believed to be true. And you get to have these moments where you look up from your little-mindedness and say, “Ohhhhhh. You mean, I don’t have it quite right here? You mean, there’s a better way of seeing this?” I come from a background of second-guessers. It didn’t matter what the decision was — if the result brought about any level of discomfort or or challenge, my mother would inevitably say, “Oh! We should have � (Fill in the blank” I’m not blaming my mom here, but I am saying that I was programmed at an early age for regret, second-guessing, doubt, and not trusting my own judgment .

Compare that to text in the third and fourth paragraphs of Christine's post:

Sometimes I think this is the only reason to take risks — so you don’t go through life settling for what you’ve always believed to be true. And you get to have these moments where you look up from your little-mindedness and say, “Ohhhhhh. You mean, I don’t have it quite right here? You mean, there’s a better way of seeing this?”
I come from a background of second-guessers. It didn’t matter what the decision was — if the result brought about any level of discomfort or envy or challenge, my mother would inevitably say, “Oh! We should have �Ķ. (Fill in the blank�Ķ ordered the steak instead of the shrimp, stayed at that beach house and not this one, waited til Hecht’s had a sale and gotten this cheaper�Ķ)” I’m not blaming my mom here, but I am saying that I was programmed at an early age for regret, second-guessing, doubt, and not trusting my own judgment and discernment.

Amazing, isn't it?

Fish Creek House has managed to do a mashup of two posts by different people. Throw an original sentence in here and there, and voilá, "insta-entry". Too bad it's almost entirely plagiarized.