Wired Editor Plagiarizes Wikipedia in New Book

The Virginia Quarterly Review has found almost a dozen plagiarized passages in Chris Anderson’s upcoming book Free, a book that, ironically, is all about free content. Most of the passages were cribbed verbatim from Wikipedia, while another was from a professor’s personal website, and yet another from another book. In some cases, mistakes from Wikipedia’s entry are reproduced in the book by the editor of Wired.

Asked about the passages, Anderson wrote, “All of those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned.” He says he hadn’t found a good way to cite web sources, and tried to do writethroughs on sections from Wikipedia but missed a few. He, and the publisher, vow to publish the notes online. Wikipedia’s license requires extensive credits for any copied material. (More Chris Anderson stories.)