Fraud Found in Gather Travel Photo Contest
On Tuesday, March 27th the 20 finalists of the Gather Essentials: Travel photo contest “Your Best Shot” were announced. I was among the many that flocked to see who they were and to comment on their images. While I thought the judges had an eclectic approach to their selections, I felt more or less okay with their choices. Then, my stomach dropped. I have a trained designer’s eye for detail and almost perfect photographic recall. My gut told me one of the images was plagiarized. A fraud. What to do? During the recent Gather boycott, I chose not to take sides. In the sometimes juvenile sandbox that is Gather, I play fair. I steer away from controversy. This wasn’t fair. It’s been gnawing at me since Tuesday, whether to write about this. The contest winner will be announced this Monday. In the end, I felt the Gather community needed to know what happened.
The photo in question is titled Old Jail, Annecy, France. Annecyis a popular tourist destination. I’ve traveled there and photographed the picture perfect scene myself. Postcards abound of the “old jail” and this contest finalist's photo looked way too familiar.
First I googled Annecy images and quickly found on the second page at www.welshair.com. It looked like the same photo. I clicked on it compared the detail of the pedestrians with the finalist’s photo. Bingo, they were one and the same. I had no recourse but to notify the Gather travel editor. Gather investigated and removed the finalist’s name, Sue W. from the list. It was the right thing to do but it left me with more questions. The contest rules state that there were to be 10 finalists for local and 10 for international photos. Now there were nine. Gather issued no statement about the removal or whether they would replace the 10th spot with another candidate.
And who was this Sue W.? Curious, I tried to find her. Gather had three Sue W’s listed. All had joined at different times and were inactive members. The only possible Sue W. for this scenario was the one who joined on March 23 but has not signed on since. That was the contest’s deadline for entries. She has posted no articles or images. She has no profile nor has made any comments. It seems to me she joined perhaps as a lark or to play a prank. Who knows but it left me feeling toyed with and annoyed. Annoyed that another “real” contestant missed out on the chance of winning. Annoyed that Gather didn’t let our community know about it. Annoyed that Gather is rife with plagiarism and copyright infringement in general. The plagiarized image by the way, is still posted in <a href=http://gather.com/photoint” 
So there you have it. Don’t kill the messenger.
I’ve been thinking of leaving Gather lately for a number of reasons involving fairness. The more I investigate, the more monkey business I find. I’d like to stay because I enjoy posting images. I love doing photo makeovers for members in my group "Your Favorite Pics". It’s a lot of work but it gives me and the other photographer much pleasure. I don't have a huge fan base but I value the loyal friends I do have.
I work hard to post interesting photos that no matter how good they are never seem to make into anywhere near #1 spot. Hmmm, but that’s another article for another day ;-)
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 98
People never cease to amaze me. I guess this was supposed to be a joke by Sue W but it looks like the joke is on them.
Have a great weekend.
Don H. is correct, there is no way for Gather to police this sort of thing. The only way to stop it is to keep an eye out for it and to report it when it comes up. And people really have to stop demonizing the people that oppose plagiarism.
Thanks Jennifer, who I can always count on :-)
Good luck to Lisa and Nana who are still in the contest!
And yes, Thank You for the legwork,
However I feel that the way in which you expressed yourself coupled with your attitude prohibits your leaving gather. Gather needs mentor types to provide a way for those who are poised to learn everything the hard way.
Seriously, screw the contests and top viewed etc. listings. Your skills will speak for themselves to the rest of us no matter what. Even if an honest artist should win a contest and get recognized and even catapult from there, he or she will always encounter fraudulent peoples and schemes till the day they die.
If the 'bad guys' will keep it up then we need those 'good guys' in the fight also.
SURPRISE SURPRISE, see all those groups I posted this to? I had a feeling. That old intuition again, yup, a lot of the groups do not have this article posted including the obvious one Gather Travel essentials which is hosting the contest. Hmmm,Gather gremlins? I think not.
but it took a lot more work to find that than what you reported above. Intersting how you found it so quickly and were so suspicious. As you said, this is a popular photo spot.
UPDATE Gather refuses to post this article to the Gather travel essentials group, the one that hosts the contest and has over 14,000 members.
I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just asking how we're so sure.
Plagarism should not be allowed to go undetected.
From my standpoint, it is articles like this, that show Gather has wrinkles than the ones that blindly support it, that makes this place still have potential. Overall, those of us who have boycotted (either for a day or days) and have griped are not asking for the sun and moon, we are asking for Gather to do a few things that WE KNOW THEY CAN DO!
Zing!
Pow!
ZZZock!
It's only fair.
Good for you to call our attention to it and for reporting it.
A similar situation happend yesterday when a Gather member named motombo logged on, created an account and published an article consisting of appx 40 to 50 words saying that he had proof of the RNC of having paid advocates on Gather.
By all means I have always believed that someone is paying people to blog on Gather, but I never have been able to prove it. However in the case of motombo and the member mentioned in this article, I just have to wonder if they were Gather employees stirring up crap so that Gather gets more hits, thus earning more money from the companies that advertise here on Gather.
Again, I have no proof of such..just a thought.
There was verbiage in the rules that spoke to photos not having been sold somewhere, Justin, but I'm too disgusted with the whole thing to go in and look to see what was specifically stated.
I'd have thought Gather could have popped in the next runner up for the emptied International spot, but then it wouldn't have been terrifically fair to that person to have a lesser number of days to be voted on. Of course, "fair"... that's laughable. Just about every which way I look at the contest, I shake my head.
I was excited at being named a finalist, but, sadly, that was short lived. I never enter contests and now I pretty much regret having ever entered this one.
A fine example of integrity on your part, and lack thereof on the others.
I stay, as many have, simply for the social interaction. I am fearful of having my own original work stolen, so I just write things strictly for Gather. It limits me greatly, but I like some of the people here enough to stay, for now
I also wonder what would happen if Sue W would have won? No one would have known the difference without your astute observations.
Gather has a long history of shady things in contests. The only one I've ever seen where someone I knew won, was Birdie. I'm familiar with most of the "most read" people here....basically if I don't know you, I know of you and all of that.
It's all sad, and very grade school
I'm not saying you're not right. It probably is a case of plaigarism. But again -- you've accused someone of plaigarism simply because you found the photo in two different places, without making an attempt to verify its ownership.
Whether you were right or wrong, that's bad form. We all deserve better here.
Layla, I think Gather really messed up when…
A-they didn't research to make sure that the finalists were 'honest photos'
And
B-didn't make an announcement to Gather stating that they had caught a fraud.
Now I say this....not really knowing the whole story. Maybe they did research....maybe they did make an announcement… and I missed it. Or maybe they were warned (for some kind of legal reasons) that they should not make an announcement. Who knows?
I often think that Gather needs a spokesperson….someone that works for Gather to speak to the members in an open way when 'heated topics' arise on the board or in private messages. Sometimes 'not knowing' is the hardest thing. If we were kept 'in the loop'...made to feel like Gather really cares about us and our feelings and concerns...I think most of us Gather Addicts would feel much better. Even if we didn't agree with their approach, just having their views, and reasons for their views explained to us, would go a loooooooooooong way towards building a strong community full of trusted and respected members. I know that for me…. Honesty and straight forwardness are two characteristics that I greatly appreciate. There are many members here that are TOTAL opposites of me….I don't agree with much that they do or say but they are honest…and straight forward individuals and their being this way doesn't hurt anyone. Because they are the way they are….I know that if they say it, it is true. I trust them…even if we don't see eye to eye.
This is what I'd like to see Gather evolve to with it's members. Taking on the mind set that you can't please everyone. but you can somewhat please those you can't please…just by explaining why you do the things you do. I think most of us are all able to "agree to disagree" when we need to.
I'd like to end this post with what I've said in other articles…. I love Gather. I've been a member of other online communities…along with owning my own…and so, I know how hard it is to run a site. I've NEVER came across another site ever remotely as wonderful as Gather. I know things aren't perfect here, but I also know that perfect is NOT possible. Gather is a HUGE community. It's growing at such a rapid pace that I can see (very clearly) how hard it would be to keep up with all the technical and member problems/issues. I think there will come a day when Gather is just about EVERYTHING we could ever want out of a site. So, in the mean time, I plan to not get too frustrated with these "issues" that bother me or the "ugly bickering" that REALLY bothers me. I plan on sticking it out. There's just WAY too much awesomeness here to let anything ruin it for me.
Thanks for bringing this into the light Layla. I do think it's something that needed to be discussed…I just wish Gather would have been the one to tell us about it.
I just rambled on and on. I hope it made some sense.
I have no time to sling mud. I have real work to do.
I have not mentioned this until now. I received a private message on March 29th from the CEO's assistant Mary Anne on behalf of Tom Gerace thanking me for my information and informed me that the finalist in question has been disqualified. That was the only message I received thus far from Gather head office on this matter. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976947585
While this sounds like sound advice in a reasonable world, my experience with Gather has been that they reward the bad guys for tormenting those who do their monitoring for them. It makes no sense.
"I took that photo and many more in Annecy...This gather is a bunch of 3rd graders...They had so much to say about the contest...The ones screaming are the ones that didn't make it....They all need to grow up...."
Again -- you accused someone when you knew nothing. You made a baseless accusation without any facts to support it, other than that you found the picture on another Web site.
BTW, how many photos did you enter in the contest?
Good for you, Layla. It's a shame you have to take any of this crap from a couple of people who are valiantly standing up for the rights of a plagiarist.
Kyra--I enjoyed your book and I found it to be typo-free. ;)
I wouldn't think anyone should have hesitated for a moment to point out finding the exact photo on another site. It was up to Gather to decide what to do about it. They could/should have asked the member if there was some explanation. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Back to Kyra's point that it would be nice to be informed.
That being said, I also agree with Robin, DP, Spartan, and truckloads of other Gather members. The facts would support that Lisa completely rigged her own landslide by (repeatedly) emailing a link (specifically to HER photo, not to the contest, as a whole) to her 2500 "friends." Then there were the ringers, one after another after another, as if using her overly-fattened "friends" list hadn't been enough to secure her landslide. I like to look at the bright side: while the number of Gather members who seemingly felt obligated to click on Lisa's supplied link and comment/vote on her photo was triple-digit, it was actually only a small return on her very large effort.
Thanks Layla
why should she? shes already been hung by a judge and jury of her peers.
Perhaps it's because I am so much older than you (much, MUCH older :^s) and have seen so much trouble and so many tribulations in my life, that I just hate to see you spend even one, tiny moment feeling sad or upset about this silly place...
It isn't worth it, sweetie. Family is worth it. Friends are worth it. Pets, dear furry, scaly & feathered friends, are worth it. But not this. This isn't even "real". This is a "virtual" place which means it's "almost real" but, real, it isn't...
I know how you feel... I, too, always strive to put out my best efforts. I have written and created from my heart and soul and attempted always to hold myself to a high standard of quality in what I offer -- just as you have. I have seen this happen so many times in other quarters here on the world wide web and even in "real life":
There are always a few who -- due to the deep-seated feelings of inadequacy that they acquired somewhere along the line -- will resort to trickery, fraud, masking of intent, greed, guilt mongering and just plain downright meanness in order to try to bolster themselves up and compensate for what they feel, deep down inside, that they lack...
And they will always be jealous of people like you -- smart, quick, sincere and pretty (I had my share of jealous would-be detractors back in my heyday, as well...).
In the end, though, it will be them who have to answer for the hurt they have caused to others.
Even if you don't believe there's a "hereafter", when the horrible realization of all the awful things they've done to others over their lifetime comes to them like a lightning bolt in their last dying gasp of air in this world, the even worse realization will hit them that it's too late to do anything about it or make it right...
You and I and others like us will have no such moment and that thought, alone, should give us peace.
Namaste'
Jean F.
Faith, thanks that group is a muse for me.
Eileen, thanks it's been an interesting experience in human behavior.