Talk:The Circle (Eggers novel)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Similarity to "Boy Kings"

Section on similarity between this book and The Boy Kings was deleted. The facts in question are easily verified. What was the reason for this deletion? 68.3.130.42 (talk) 02:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)noviceuser

Re: the two flags: on notability, the book has received substantial media attention. See, for example, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323342404579081503189753492.html

In addition, the author himself is critically acclaimed (see his page).

On sources, Amazon is a credible source for the topic in question, the relative contents of two books. The Twitter sources are necessary given that 1. Twitter is the topic being discussed (specifically: discussions on Twitter about the book), and 2. the issue is new and has not yet been written about in mainstream publications. These sources can be improved as additional information and media coverage becomes available which is likely given the high profile of the author, the ongoing media attention to the book, and the fact that The Circle will soon be released. 68.3.130.42 (talk) 03:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)noviceuser

If it's easily verified, it shouldn't be hard to find secondary sources to support it. Ford MF (talk) 06:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, that is a fair point, though it will only be easy to do so if sufficient time has passed for secondary sources to pick up on it which they haven't yet. It was only a matter of hours ago that the alleged victim of plagiarism was made aware of the details of the book in question (The Circle) and therefore able to point out the similarities. In the coming days it is likely to receive more attention. The female author in question has upward of 1,500 Twitter followers and a well-received book on Amazon and the other comments on Twitter corroborating her interpretation also come from prominent Tweeters. While I am a Wikipedia novice, it does not seem that this is an unusually suspect story to report in somewhat-real-time versus other pages that are rapidly updated, and to reiterate, it is very obvious from reading the respective Amazon pages that there are myriad similarities between the books and it is only a matter of time before this is picked up. 68.3.130.42 (talk) 08:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)noviceuser

Update: a secondary source is now available. Updating accordingly. 68.3.130.42 (talk) 18:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)noviceuser

I see your edit was removed by a bot. I don't think it's impossible that there might surface secondary sources to support this part of the article, but these aren't them. Tweets are generally considered unsuitable, which is why bots remove them. And that Medium post isn't a suitable source either. 1) it's written by the person who is theoretically the aggrieved party in this case, 2) Medium is basically a self-publishing platform, like Livejournal, and doesn't really qualify as a secondary source, especially in the case of a potentially contentious allegation like this. Ford MF (talk) 08:46, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Let's not let this plagiarism flap stand in the way of making this a better article. It could use a lot of improvement. My personal opinion is that the plagiarism claim (which amounts to "I wrote a book about a woman hired by a social networking firm, and any similar books are plagiarism") should not be included in the article anyway, in the absence of a lawsuit or settlement. So let's get some interesting stuff about the book in there. For one thing, Margaret Atwood reviewed the book at length. 70.114.146.227 (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Eric