I like reading the short news snippets on the front page of FlyerTalk. With some of them, I just read that snippet, with others, I click through to the original publication and read that one.
Yesterday, I stumbled on this snippet by Ryan Boyd.
http://www.flyertalk.com/articles/he...ce-policy.html
The content was somewhat ambiguous/confusing, and when I went to the source (BBC News), I realized what was the reason (actually more than one) why that snippet seemed awkward. Since that page offers writing comments, I wrote one. (Actually, prior to that, I searched around and couldn't find any specific rules for posting comments there.)
At first, the post was awaiting a moderator (and I understand that it is an anti-spam measure). I am not sure who moderates those comments (the author or some dedicated moderator), but today, the comment disappeared without any trace (or a PM). If the comment violated some rules, I'd be interested to hear what those are, so that I can avoid that in the future.
If
IB does not want any discussion in that area, then why have "comments" mechanism being present there?
Below is the comment in question. I am posting it here for two reasons:
1. To show what I posted (I still do not see anything offensive.)
2. To actually share my feedback in case the site administration is interested in improving the quality of FT news snippets.
Ryan,
You paraphrased portions of the story from BBC.
In that process, you omitted mentioning about the report (by Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration).
However, you kept the quotation marks around the text quoted by BBC from the report. In your case, however, those quotation marks are meaningless. Moreover, it gives an impression of those words and phrases should not be taken literally. I.e. "alienate" is not quite the same as just _alienate_. And "more confrontations" might not mean more confrontations.
There are other, more minor things that got somewhat awkward in your rephrasing. E.g., the original BBC article is talking about _customs_ staff, not just any "airport staff", as you wrote. (And the same applies to the managers.) So, the meaning is somewhat distorted.
I understand that you were making an effort to avoid plagiarizing, but the outcome is not on par.
And, by the way, I suspect it still might not withstand the plagiarism test, as you kept the structures of the sentences very close, practically the same.
I'd suggest working more carefully on your write-ups.