ごめんなさい (Sorry)

by 34 Comments

Hey everyone. I’m pretty certain we screwed up, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much yet until I talk to the right folks. We posted something up this morning about Americans and their food portion sizes in comparison to Japan and their portion sizes / ways they eat. There were problems with this post. So, I just pulled that post, and am putting this up in its place. Here’s what was wrong:

There were a few things. First, it was not a particularly sensitive post. That I can live with, to a certain degree, but this post went too far for some people. Hashi & I will make sure posts more tactful. But, that’s not the main reason we pulled this post. Very awesome commenter ‘observer’ pointed out something else.

Not to point fingers but the first half of this article seems really similar to http://kotaku.com/5850783/amer…from a couple weeks ago. Even down to some of the phrases.

And after reading the Kotaku post just now it was concerningly similar (at least the first half of the article). But yeah, that’s not okay. I have no idea if it was a strange coincidence or not, and won’t know until I talk to people, but I thought it was similar enough to pull the post, so that’s what I just did. The most important thing for me, personally, is the overall originality of Tofugu articles, and obviously this doesn’t really pass the test, whether or not any borrowing occurred. None of us noticed this (despite being readers of Kotaku ourselves…).

So, the post was taken down for a couple reasons, but this was the main one.

Anyways, I just wanted to post up a quick explanation and apology so nobody wonders where this article went off to. Will be talking to the author to figure out what happened, and hopefully prevent anything like this again. I’m so, so, sorry :’( This is really lame of us.

Cheers,
Koichi

  • Matthew

    I actually just e-mailed in regards to the article. You all are fast! 0_0 Anyway, kudos to you and your staff Koichi for doing the right thing. Keep up the good work.

  • David

    the old article still shows up in your RSS feed

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    Yeah, nothing to be done about that

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    thanks! :’(

  • Shannon

    I’m thrilled you deleted the article, regardless of the reason, (though the questioning of the originality of the post is a huge deal). The fact that the primary picture linking to the post was making fun of a couple of 10ish-looking year old boys was horrible. I am so happy it is gone. Thank you for taking responsibility for the posts on your site.

  • Guest

    Hi, I don’t know what you felt went wrong, but, I believe that you don’t need to be so acutely active in corresponding to other people’s expectations.  I didn’t read the old post, but for me it’s ok if it looks similar to another one.  Aren’t you the same person writing those posts?  Thus, it must be some kind of “line of thought” that makes the link among the posts you post.

  • slsm042

    The article is from a totally different website. The author of that article is Brian Ashcroft. Though I can’t imagine it would ever come to this, if Brian felt that his “intellectual property” was being copied or plagiarized, there are legal ramifications. That is why Koichi has to be “acutely active”.

  • Anonymouse

    I didn’t realise the article was incredibly similar to the kotaku article but I have previously felt that this website takes content published by other sites and repackages it as Tofugu’s own content. Although you have removed this article, the cynic in me would ask whether you did so because you genuinely made a mistake, or because you got caught plagiarising.

    You do, however, publish plenty of original content that keeps me coming back to this site, and I’m in two minds as to whether to ignore my suspicions and keep visiting, for instance I’m currently madly in love with the Galileo Galilei songs you linked to recently, who I would never have discovered were it not for Tofugu.

  • mkrause

    I noticed that at least one part of the Kotaku article was copy+pasted. Both articles contain the text “（アメリカンサイズ)”, with a Japanese style parenthesis (“（”) on the left and an ASCII parenthesis (“)”) on the right, which can’t be a coincidence. So yeah, similarity is one thing, blatently copy+pasting is another. You made the right decision pulling that article IMO.

  • Anonymous

    I didn’t read the entire article so I am sure your reasons for pulling it were valid. I did however get far enough into the article where the author referred to a person (where it was obvious that gender lines were blurred) as an “it” … that was not okay with me. I commend you for taking initiative and I have otherwise enjoyed other articles here on Tofugu so keep up the great work!

  • Nanoa9

    Wow, if you are going to accuse someone of plagiarizing, at least have the decency to give examples of what Tofugu articles you feel were plagiarized from who. Otherwise you just sound like a Troll. If nothing else you will be giving useful feedback to the authors. I really doubt that Koichi and Hashi ever intentionally copied anyone else’s work. I do think that it makes sense that there may be topic overlap between sites if they share a topic such as Japan and Japanese language. The article from today was different, some of the wording was almost verbatim from Kotaku, but it was written by their intern. I think Koichi was being a good supervisor in pulling it, not because he supposedly got “caught”.

  • Hailey

    We all know you, Hashi, and the other people at Tofugu/Textfugu work extremely hard to bring us all quality articles and interesting information about Japan, and we all are ever so grateful and love you guys so very much. It says a lot when you will not only pull something down when you just have suspicions, but apologize for it too. Keep up the good work guys!!!! <3<3<3

  • http://abagfullofsweetdelights.blogspot.com/ sweetdelightss

    Geez, thats definitely awkward. Appreciate the truthfulness though and the fact that they were not trying to hide it.  Just another reason I love Tofugu, Koichi, & Hashi!

  • http://profiles.google.com/jonadab.theunsightlyone Jonadab the Unsightly One

    My personal favorite large-sized item is the $0.99 64oz beverage (preferably with free refills, so you can really get your money’s worth).  I’m not such a big fan of french fries or burgers, but I sure do like a tall glass of something to drink, yes indeed.

  • http://www.tofugu.com/ Hashi

    If you ever seen any posts that seem to take content from another website, magazine, book, etc., please do do do let us know. Are there any in particular that you have in mind?

  • Valisian Angel

    Actually that’s a really easy mistake to make. Switch into Japanese mode, type the first parenthesis and the Japanese words (in hiragana), then switch out of Japanese mode to enter the second parenthesis. I’ve made this mistake myself and it’s annoying and entirely possibly coincidental.

  • Anonymouse

    Yes, you’re right, I really should have posted evidence. I was tired and it was late, and I couldn’t immediately see or recall the articles which I’d previously read and thought “What? This is just like what I read over on … the other day!”

    No, I think you’re wrong to say there is topic overlap when, in today’s/yesterday’s example, the article is damn near identical in content and is not about current news events. 

    Intern? Ah, I mistakenly thought that Hashi had written this “fat/supersize” article, but it was John.
    Come to think of it, John also wrote the article entitled “Frosty the Snowman Goes Postal!”, which is another instance of suspected plagiarism, perhaps the first time I felt that Tofugu was taking other’s content without attributing it. The week that appeared on Tofugu, I had already read about it on Japan Probe, herehttp://www.japanprobe.com/2011/09/08/mail-order-snowman-for-japans-prime-minister/The snowman article was probably just coincidentally similar to the one on Japan Probe, and I would have given Tofugu the benefit of the doubt over that one. (I actually had forgotten all about it until Koichi explained why yesterday’s article was pulled)

  • Anonymouse

    Thanks Hashi! Please refer to my reply to Nanoa9 above :)

    Whoops. The comment software screwed up the link to Japan Probe I posted. It’s title is “Mail Order Snowman for Japan’s Prime Minister” if you don’t mind locating it yourself.

  • http://twitter.com/jyuichi jyuichi

    More than being offended by the post, I just found it unfunny, accurate but shallow, and not really related to Tofugu’s usual content. It took the tired headline “American’s are fat because the food is big!” and added “they are ruining other countries too”. Didn’t feel really Japan specific and if I wanted to read about Americans I’d go somewhere else. Maybe a lighthearted post about the Japanese diet would be a better version of this (“secrets to longevity” or something xP)

    I hear all this stuff about Japanese sizes being smaller than American ones…. but I find ramen and donburi servings here in Japan to be pretty frigging huge (lol).

  • http://twitter.com/hj871 hj871

    Well I honestly hadn’t noticed the article being similar. But, I’m not aware of that other site, either. The topic of obesity is a very personal and sensitive subject to me, for various reasons, but I personally did not take offense. I suppose I could have, but instead I saw an opportunity for discussion, and I was glad to see many of the thoughtful comments that came about.

    Anyway, just to comment on the content of this website. Although I am learning Japanese, I feel there are already so many Japanese language learning blogs out there…. they are all kind of doing the same thing. What keeps me reading your site, though, are all of the great cultural and history articles you’ve been doing lately. I feel that is something that is different, and missing from the Japanese learning community in general, so I really hope you guys keep it up. I loved the post about Utsuro Bune, and stuff like that.

    I appreciate the apology.

  • http://twitter.com/hj871 hj871

    Well I honestly hadn’t noticed the article being similar. But, I’m not aware of that other site, either. The topic of obesity is a very personal and sensitive subject to me, for various reasons, but I personally did not take offense. I suppose I could have, but instead I saw an opportunity for discussion, and I was glad to see many of the thoughtful comments that came about.

    Anyway, just to comment on the content of this website. Although I am learning Japanese, I feel there are already so many Japanese language learning blogs out there…. they are all kind of doing the same thing. What keeps me reading your site, though, are all of the great cultural and history articles you’ve been doing lately. I feel that is something that is different, and missing from the Japanese learning community in general, so I really hope you guys keep it up. I loved the post about Utsuro Bune, and stuff like that.

    I appreciate the apology.

  • http://twitter.com/hj871 hj871

    Yeah, to be fair, I do that all the time.

  • http://luckyhill.worpress.com elisabel

    Hm, didn’t see the original article, but it’s nice to know that apparently people were standing up against fat hatred.

    When it comes to this topic though, I hope people realize that they shouldn’t say “America vs. Japan,” rather, “the America of the past 10-20 years vs. modern Japan.” When people compare 2 cultures, they often forget that cultures change. Huge portion sizes are not representative of the majority of American history.

  • ko

    Hey, at least you own up to potential mistakes. Good on you guys.

  • Anonymous

    I found really funny actually. ^^

  • Anonymous

    I found it a little weird, but I didn’t think much about it, nor have I ever read the other website. Actually, I was going to post a comment congratulating John on still being here (since it’s past the summer) any chance we’re gonna hear his side? I really enjoyed his other posts…

  • Julia Rawnsley

    Dude I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

  • Index

    The possible plagiarism or the obesity topic of the removed post? Because the topic of obesity is subjective, I agree, but I think majority rule is that plagiarism is one of those “don’t do” things.

  • J.Paul

    Actually, I thought you already did a much better article about (sort of) the same topic.  Here it is for the new folks: http://www.tofugu.com/2008/11/02/the-japanese-mcdonalds-menu-im-actually-lovin-it/

  • Argos

    Don’t worry about it, a lot of people write things that end up being very similar to other things they’ve read or heard, because the content stayed in there subconsciously, and we don’t always realize that what we’re putting out there is very similar to something else we just digested.  I’ve seen it happen with text, music, lots of things, and have experienced it myself.  So, as long as you didn’t do it on purpose, no reason to feel bad, I think.

    Anyway, I am new to tofugu, and just spent a whole week going back through ALL of the posts, so you guys are definitely doing a good job of being entertaining and posting good content :)

  • Whitetiger

    how kind of you

  • Palinopsic

    …and don’t Japanese people eat a lot? I mean, the menu might be a far sight more healthy here in Japan, but i see some guys puttin down at restaurants!

  • Observer

    I’m glad you took it down. I love tofugu and I would hate to see things like this become a problem. I’m actually using that article for an editorial layout, and when I googled “American size” with Japanese portions, the other article came up and I noticed the almost identical format. Thank you for noticing my comment, and responding appropriately. :)

  • Poztmaan

    what’s done is done :)