Questions/comments for the authors of THE FATE OF THE ROMANOVS...

[Helen_Azar]

Or explainable error, such as when grandduchesses' diary entries about funerals get mistranslated or dates confused?

Stones and glass houses, Helen.

Mistakes happen to us all. The difference is, some people admit and correct them immediately, even if they are just on a discussion forum - not a published book, while some others don't. On the other hand, some errors are explainable, while others are not... Touche.

What are we discussing here again? Oh yes, plagiarism. Wait a minute, no, that's not the topic.

[Tsarfan]

Well, when your 650+ page book covering a complex and, of necessity, somewhat speculative subject comes out, we'll see how the editing and proofreading went.  But based on your track record of trying to edit a few diaries, it doesn't bode particularly well, I'm afraid.

In reading the last Harry Potter book, I found a couple of typos -- and I can hardly imagine a more thoroughly proofread book than that.  Go figure.

Besides, in one place or another, I found satisfactory answers or explanations given to all the questions raised about FOTR . . . and some of those explanations were actually, "it was an error".  Even after the authors departed this forum because of the tarring-and-feathering campaign, the Forum Administator and others stepped in with perfectly reasonable answers to some of the continuing challenges.  And once I undertook to really dissect the challenge about the mtDNA findings and Sykes that so occupied your attention, the challenge itself seemed unsupportable.
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But, if you'd like, I'll be glad to stick with the question of plagiarism.  Since it is now the admitted avocation of your chief co-assailant on FOTR, I really think it's worth exploring the question of how an admitted (and apparently proud) academic cheater attains the moral high ground to claim any other person has played fast and loose with facts.

[Puppylove]

I really don't understand all this parsing of questions regarding plagiarism.  There is a simpler word for one person writing an academic paper for another to claim as his own work:  CHEATING.  And they're BOTH doing it.

Tsarfan, aren't all FOTR threads basically odes to the art of parsing? It's been awhile, but I think I may have even signed a blood oath agreeing to parse down to the last syllable before posting here. (Just kidding!)

[LisaDavidson]

I think we have pretty much exhausted this topic? Time to shut it down?

[Forum Admin]

Unless this thread returns to and STAYS on topic, I will lock it. Period.  This is the one and only warning.

FA

[Tsarfan]

For what it's worth, I think it's probably time to lock it.

It has long been clear that the authors from whom answers or comments are sought are not going to be giving them here.  And the answers that have been given by others beget nothing but a repeat of the questions or snide asides on other threads unless they are the answers that are demanded by a couple of people.

I also think the topic of FOTR, whether raised directly or by insinuation, should be banned everywhere on the forum.  Otherwise, the GREAT FOTR WAR will be a perpetual feature of this board, outlasting even the enmity arising from the Crusades.  (You may argue that it's hard to determine when something is actually an insinuating reference to FOTR.  But I think it's rather like that famous definition of pornography . . . you know it when you see it.)