LOCAL blogger Dawn Yang has come under fire from netizens for alleged plagiarism in her blog.
In the past week, threads on popular local forums have surfaced, each containing what some posters have called evidence of Ms Yang's plagiarism.
Posters took screen shots of the 23-year-old's blog on Straits Times Online Media Portal (Stomp), and their corresponding sources from elsewhere on the Internet.
The alleged sources run the gamut from PM Lee Hsien Loong's National Day Rally speech in 2006 to comments made by Marvel Comics guru Stan Lee.
At the latest count, more than 20 such posts containing the alleged plagiarism have been spotted by sharp-eyed netizens.
The posts are still up. The New Paper last visited the blog on Monday. Netizens are miffed about the alleged deception.
Said one forum poster: "This certainly is pathetic."
The New Paper also received many e-mails from readers.
How did local bloggers and forum denizens notice the alleged plagiarism?
One forum poster thought that the ongoing spat between Ms Yang and another local blogger, Ms Wendy Cheng, prompted fans to dig up dirt on Ms Yang.
In a post on the Stomp forums, he said: "Her (Ms Yang's) biggest mistake was to file that lawsuit in the first place. Now everything bad about her is rising to the surface."
Recently, Ms Cheng, 23, received a letter from Ms Yang's lawyer calling on Ms Cheng to make a public apology for alleged defamatory remarks she made against Ms Yang, and to propose a settlement for damages.
But Ms Cheng, better known online as Xiaxue, said she is not apologising.
Meanwhile, Ms Cheng has weighed in with her thoughts on plagiarism.
In a post on her blog dated 26 Jul, she announced that plagiarism was "the lowest a blogger can hit".
She said: "A blog is meant to be an outlet for your thoughts and opinions - so if you have none, why bother to have a blog at all?"
But she went out of her way to avoid any name-calling, cautioning her readers that comments with names would be deleted.
In an interview with The New Paper on Wednesday, Ms Yang admitted she had made a mistake.
"I apologise to all my readers. I didn't do this intentionally," she said.
She said that at the time she posted the entries, she didn't really think citations were necessary.
"It didn't cross my mind that I was doing something wrong," she said.
She promised she would be more careful about citing her sources in future.
But she felt that many of her detractors were not just focusing on the plagiarism, but were instead digging into her personal life.
She said: "Because it's me, because of this spat, they've gone up in arms. You can talk about it, but please don't cross the lines of civility."
This article was first published in The New Paper on 1 August 2008.
