There hereby follows a rather lengthy explanation which ends with a simple question: would someone please explain how IP addresses work in a way that a very non-techy person could understand it? Because I have a bit of a problem here which I need your help with.
As some of you might know, some of us have had a bit of trouble with Brit Writers Limited recently. I’m not going to discuss that here–I have another post or seven in the works which will go into all of that–but a problem has arisen in the comments to an earlier post I wrote about them, The Brit Writers Awards Agents Division, which you’ll find here.
[I'll port all discussion of this from the Brit Writers thread to this one just as soon as I can, so don't be surprised if this post appears with its own comment-thread already established.]
On November 10 someone calling themselves P Gharai posted a comment in that thread which was somewhat critical of The Writers’ workshop.
P Gharai wrote:
I have read this several times and just can’t see what the problem is, you can ask these questions of any organisation, and as far as I can see you have not uncovered any real ‘wrongdoing’ so one has to ask, what is your motive for such a long and unfocused blog?
I sent something to The Writers Workshop once and I got back a report that was so general that it was useless, so please don’t quote them as font of all integrity
The Writers’ Workshop is run by Harry Bingham who, along with me and Claire King, received a threat of legal action by Brit Writers Limited (Brit Writers Limted suggested that we’d libelled them, but has since quite rightly withdrawn its threats). Because of the content and context of the comment I assumed that P Gharai was a sockpuppet for Brit Writers Limited, but I did my best to respond to him in a reasonable manner.
Two days later, on 12 November, P Gharai turned up again and left two comments on that same Brit Writers thread:
P Gharai wrote:
@ Jane Smith:
Dear Jane, I work with publishers and agents all the time and many advise my writers. i think you might be out of date on how publishing works and what agent and publishers want. Several London agents with hugely successful lists admit that if the synopsis and first five pages does not grab them, they they move on to the next manuscript. I really don’t see what your problem is with the BWA, they don’t appear to be taking any money and you are just speculating that they might try and act as agents, from a tiny bit of an email. This is what I call bad journalism.
“My writers”?
P Gharai wrote:
@ Jane Smith:
But isn’t that exactly what The Writers’ Workshop does – charge people in the hundreds (not always low) to edit or assess their work? I think you are sending mixed messages here and making your site look less credible.
You’ll note the sly digs at me and this site, the attempt to lead the conversation off on a tangent and away from discussing the problems with the Brit Writers Awards, the suggestion that I was causing trouble over nothing, and yet another snipe at The Writers’ Workshop. It’s all classic sockpuppet behaviour.
Several people addressed these points in their comments to that thread, and when Gharai didn’t reappear I assumed we’d seen the last of him. Nevertheless I added his IP address to my “moderate” list so that if he escalated in his sockpuppetry, his comments would not appear here until I approved them. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer not to provide sneery sockpuppety types who are too cowardly to own their words with free airtime on a blog I pay to maintain.
It seemed that my concerns were unfounded. Gharai didn’t reappear and I settled back into the peculiar complacency that only an unfounded threat of a libel case can induce. I continued to read the unfolding saga of the Brit Writers Awards, and forgot about P Gharai.
On the morning of November 17, a new comment from P Gharai’s IP address popped up in my moderation queue. Only this time the comment hadn’t been left by P Gharai: it came from The Oxford Editors who had been announced as associates of Brit Writers Limited a couple of days after P Gharai left his first comment here. I approved the comment as it was a positive addition to the conversation.
However, I was concerned. Was there a connection between The Oxford Editors and P Gharai? I plugged “The Oxford Editors” and “P Gharai” into Google and found this, which suggests that a Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai is the sole director of The Oxford Editors.
And so I asked The Oxford Editors a few questions in that comment thread:
1) Is the person calling themselves P Gharai who commented here the same person as Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai, who is a director of The Oxford Writers?
2) If they are one and the same, don’t you think it’s a bit below the belt to use my blog to try to discredit your competitors in this way?
3) If they are the same person, did P Gharai really employ the services of The Writers’ Workshop or was it all just pretend?
4) And finally, if they are not the same person, what on earth is this P Gharai doing using your computers?
I look forward to your response.
I also emailed those questions directly to The Oxford Editors, and I was grateful when the aforementioned Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai pretty swiftly arrived in-thread (commenting as The Oxford Editors) to assure me that she had nothing to do with P Gharai.
[I'll admit here to having done a bit of a sneaky thing. It ocurred to me that P Gharai might read my response to The Oxford Editors and respond here using their name, which could be very difficult to unravel. And so I emailed The Oxford Editors using the comment-form on The Oxford Editors' website; and I very slightly changed the wording of the questions I'd asked. The response which was left in-thread quoted my emailed questions, not the questions I'd left in-thread--check the wording of my second question to them--so it had to have come from The Real Oxford Editors, and not Gharai. I hope The Oxford Editors will forgive me this minor deception.]
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
@ Jane Smith:
Dear Jane, as I said in my reply to your email, the P Gharai who posted the remarks is not me. I never use that name and if I wished to attack someone in this rather clumsy way I think it would be unlikely that I would use a name so close to my own.
So let me clarify:
I’d be grateful if you’d clarify whether the P.S Gharai who commented on my blog is your director, Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai.
No it was not me, I never call myself P Gharai and if I was trying to post a negative comment why would I use a shortened version of my own name?
2) If they are the same person, don’t you think it’s rather shabby behaviour for your director to use my blog to try to discredit your competitors in this way?
Again, it certainly was not me, and my Head of Admin, who also uses the computer tells me it was not her.
3) If they are the same person, did P Gharai really employ the services of The Writers’ Workshop and get a below-par report back from them? Or was this a falsehood? And if so, why was this claim made, and would your director like to apologise for it? I’m happy to issue that apology on my blog.
As a director of a company that was started by someone who worked with Harry (no longer with us) and that shares many of the same authors on our list of editors, don’t you think it would be rather silly to post a negative comment that would reflect back on my services and editors? Let me clarify here, that we have never had anyone come to us from The Writers’ Workshop, we have never shared any clients happy or otherwise.
4) And finally, if Ms P Moteshar-Gharai and P Gharai are not the same person, why are you allowing this P Gharai access to your computers?
As I said in my longer email to you, I do not know who this P Gharai might be, it is obviously an attempt to discredit me and my company and Harry’s at the same time. How they had access to my computer I have no idea. I am not sure how these things work, but several present and past staff have access to our email and have the password to get into The Oxford Editors website. These include some work experience people over the years, but they don’t have access to the computer anymore.
Let me say here that when I give talks and workshops I always say to the audience that they don’t have to use out services, but I believe that there are only three other agencies that I would trust and The Writer’s Workshop is always on the list just behind The Literary Consultancy.
I find what is happening very worrying, there appears to be an attempt to discredit us that started after Brit Writers announced there were working with us. I have to take your word for it that the two comments appear to come from the same place – why on earth would we do that?
I hope this has reassured you and Harry. I have been in the same business with Harry for more than four years and have never attacked him or his company. There is plenty of room in this world for all the people who are helping writers.
But there are people out there who are really ripping off writers, who are promising them the world if only they spend £8,000 to self-publish their books – an then of course do nothing to market the book.
Lets use our energy to go after the real bad guys and stop picking away at the few reputable, respectable people out there.
So, that was a very emphatic NO to the suggestion that The Oxford Editors and P Gharai were the same person.
But the question of the identical IP address remains, and I am confused. So, here I my questions. I’d appreciate any help in answering them.
1) The Oxford Editors wrote,
How [Gharai] had access to my computer I have no idea. I am not sure how these things work, but several present and past staff have access to our email and have the password to get into The Oxford Editors website. These include some work experience people over the years, but they don’t have access to the computer anymore.
I don’t think that having access to a website will result in sharing the same IP address, so I don’t think that this is part of this problem: am I right on this point, or am I missing something?
2) As I understand it, IP addresses are the computer world’s equivalent of a postcode. You can have just one computer at an IP address, like you can have a single house with its own unique postcode: or you can have multiple computers working from one IP address if they’re all connected to the internet through the same router, just like you can have a block of flats with all of the flats in that block sharing a single postcode. If I’m right, that means it’s possible that someone using a computer in The Oxford Editors’ network–that is, with access to an internet connection through The Oxford Editors’ router–left the Gharai comments here which is why they showed up with the same IP address. Have I got that straight?
3) I know it’s possible to mask one’s own IP address without too much trouble; but is it possible to not just hide one’s own IP address but to purposely assume someone else’s? At the point at which he commented here The Oxford Editors had never commented here, nor was there any indication that they ever would do so: he’d have to be a technological smartarse and be able to see into the future for this to work.
4) I understand that there are two sorts of IP addresses: dynamic and static. Static ones don’t change: dynamic ones do. It seems to me that the IP address in question is a dynamic one, which means that it would change from time to time; and that those IP addresses are recycled, so that each will eventually be assigned to more than one account (but never more than one account at a time). So in theory it’s possible that Gharai was assigned the IP address; then his IP address changed without him knowing it, and his old one was assigned to The Oxford Editors. But with tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of IP addresses in the rotation what would the chances be that two people sharing the same IP address would comment here, on the same subject, in the same thread, and that they’d share at least part of their names as well?
I’m working with my webhost to check the access logs to my site, which should provide me with a lot more information: but meanwhile, have I got things right about how IP addresses work? Is there anything significant which I’ve missed out? And does anyone have any reasonable explanation for how this happened?
The Oxford Editors has told me via Twitter that they’re keen to move on from this, and that they’ve changed their passwords on all their accounts so are happy it won’t happen again: but I’m not sure that this issue can be resolved by changing a password or two, and I don’t like my blog being used in this way.
If I’ve got anything wrong I’d welcome your corrections; if I’ve missed anything out, do please let me know. And let’s do our best to avoid wild speculation or unwarranted criticism, shall we? While I am determined to do my best to work out what happened, I won’t have this turn into a witch-hunt or a tangle of conspiracy theories. Cold, hard facts, and respect at all times. That’s what I want in the comments. I know you won’t let me down. Thank you.
I look forward to you receiving clarification re who left those comments, Jane. I’d like to believe no one would stoop to dirty tricks in order to discredit their competitors. Let’s hope there’s a simple explanation.
As Alice said: Curiouser and curiouser.
I’d like to add something regarding the comment left by
P Gharai, who wrote,:
I sent something to The Writers Workshop once and I got back a report that was so general that it was useless, so please don’t quote them as font of all integrity.
I find it hard to believe you had such a bad experience. I sent my manuscript to The Writers Workshop and have never regretted choosing them to critique my work. I had a very helpful conversation before I committed myself to their services.
It took me six months to write the first draft of my book. I knew it was far from perfect and realised I needed professional advice. I turned to the Writers’ Workshop and got invaluable feedback about my writing from one of the published authors who critiqued for them.
It was drastic advice. When faced with constructive criticism you either accept your manuscript needs sorting out or you can blindly disregard the advice and think you know better.
I decided to follow the recommendations made and took the next six months removing the whole subplot (which has now become book five) and rewriting the manuscript. I submitted it again for feedback and found I’d written a really good first draft!
Another six months of hard work followed and I eventually had a manuscript I could send out.
The advice and feedback I had was invaluable, not only that, I had two follow up phone calls and was able to discuss the critique in depth (all 19 pages). I would recommend The Writers Workshop to anyone.
Thanks for that Catherine, your wonderful and specific examples are very useful for writers like me who may consider such services at some point in the future.
I suppose – if it is the case that we had a commenter making negative comments not from experience but for ulterior motives – then what Catherine has kindly provided just goes to show that REAL conversation, with all it’s details is much more valuable than ‘spin’ if that’s what we want to call it – as the other commenter only referred to their work as ‘something’…
I happen to work in online marketing myself and know that commenting on blogs (usually in an attempt to get links back to your website) is common practice for marketers or those with marketing intentions – and using an influential blog to promote your services is commonplace, sadly. Although you can usually tell which are the ‘paid for’ comments – as they will usually be short and vague, and not really flow in the ensuing discussion, they do detract from the general sense of free conversation and perhaps remind us that it is difficult to escape the effects of advertising and promotion, even when we think we are having an open discussion with like-minded folk?
As an aside to the original issue I think that these comments in themselves provide a wonderful example of social media marketing… how to and how not to…
Apologies if I have droned on, I think too much…
MothWing
I wouldn’t bet on getting convincing and truthful answers to those questions, as scammers like to hide in packs and never answer direct questions. Rather like politicians, really.
Steven, I don’t think anyone here is a scammer, and you should be careful when you throw that word around: but if there is no reasonable explanation for this issue with The Oxford Editors then I do think they’re rude, sly, and underhand. And I certainly won’t recommend them to anyone.
Catherine, thank you once again for another gracious post. I’m so glad you found benefit in the work of The Writers’ Workshop. I cannot recommend them too highly–especially after the events of the last couple of weeks.
Jane
Fair enough, and I’ll apologise for the word choice.
Thank you, Steven. I’m sorry to single you out like that, but I know how trigger-happy the BWA can be about these little details.
@ Jane Smith:
Dear Jane, as I said in my reply to your email, the P Gharai who posted the remarks is not me. I never use that name and if I wished to attack someone in this rather clumsy way I think it would be unlikely that I would use a name so close to my own.
So let me clarify:
I’d be grateful if you’d clarify whether the P.S Gharai who commented on my blog is your director, Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai.
No it was not me, I never call myself P Gharai and if I was trying to post a negative comment why would I use a shortened version of my own name?
2) If they are the same person, don’t you think it’s rather shabby behaviour for your director to use my blog to try to discredit your competitors in this way?
Again, it certainly was not me, and my Head of Admin, who also uses the computer tells me it was not her.
3) If they are the same person, did P Gharai really employ the services of The Writers’ Workshop and get a below-par report back from them? Or was this a falsehood? And if so, why was this claim made, and would your director like to apologise for it? I’m happy to issue that apology on my blog.
As a director of a company that was started by someone who worked with Harry (no longer with us) and that shares many of the same authors on our list of editors, don’t you think it would be rather silly to post a negative comment that would reflect back on my services and editors? Let me clarify here, that we have never had anyone come to us from The Writers’ Workshop, we have never shared any clients happy or otherwise.
4) And finally, if Ms P Moteshar-Gharai and P Gharai are not the same person, why are you allowing this P Gharai access to your computers?
As I said in my longer email to you, I do not know who this P Gharai might be, it is obviously an attempt to discredit me and my company and Harry’s at the same time. How they had access to my computer I have no idea. I am not sure how these things work, but several present and past staff have access to our email and have the password to get into The Oxford Editors website. These include some work experience people over the years, but they don’t have access to the computer anymore.
Let me say here that when I give talks and workshops I always say to the audience that they don’t have to use out services, but I believe that there are only three other agencies that I would trust and The Writer’s Workshop is always on the list just behind The Literary Consultancy.
I find what is happening very worrying, there appears to be an attempt to discredit us that started after Brit Writers announced there were working with us. I have to take your word for it that the two comments appear to come from the same place – why on earth would we do that?
I hope this has reassured you and Harry. I have been in the same business with Harry for more than four years and have never attacked him or his company. There is plenty of room in this world for all the people who are helping writers.
But there are people out there who are really ripping off writers, who are promising them the world if only they spend £8,000 to self-publish their books – an then of course do nothing to market the book.
Lets use our energy to go after the real bad guys and stop picking away at the few reputable, respectable people out there.
p.s O wrote that reply in haste and so please excuse the bad editing
@ Debi:
Dear Debi,
Please see my lengthy reply. Any attempt by me to discredit Harry would discredit me as we share many of the same author/editors. Why would I say he was giving a bad service when we use the same people. Stupid to discredit my own people using my own name. I suspect it is someone who does not know me, as I am never known as P Gharai, my full name is P Mosteshar-Gharai and I shorten it to C Mosteshar – I never use Gharai unless it is on an official document, such as with Companies House. I suspect someone who did not know how my name works, thought my surname was Gharai and used it to discredit me, Harry and BWA all in one subtle posting. I cannot believe that any of my staff would have seen this blog and tried to discredit anyone on it.
@ Steven Poore:
Dear Steven, what a comment to make when you don’t even know us. I have explained to Jane that the comments on Harry’s company were not from us – well certainly not from me. I share editors with Harry, so any comment against him would also reflect on my business.
@ Catherine Cooper:
Dear Catherine,
Yes I agree with you, Harry is one of the most reputable in the field, and we share many of the same editors. Let me assure you that no one from The Oxford Editors would ever discredit Harry’s services. I am at a loss to explain why there may have been a comment traced back to our computer and I am now changing all passwords in case we have been hacked.
Oxford Editor, thank you for coming here and addressing this problem.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
I’ve not received an email from you: could you please re-send it via the contact form on this website? That might work better.
As for P Gharai who commented here earlier: he or she commented from the same IP address as you have. All of your comments come from one IP address; all of his or her comments come from that same single IP address; no one else’s comments come from that IP address.
I’m asking for advice on this because it is possible to spoof IP addresses, but it also should be possible to discover if that’s what’s happened here–and if so, we could track down who it is who is trying to discredit us all. It’s nasty, whoever it is.
The power of Twitter! I have a few friends checking out the IP issue for me right now. I’ll report back as soon as I hear anything.
@ Jane Smith:
I think it is possible to hack into someone’s IP address, but it maybe that someone who worked with us and had our password just went in and used the email.
In any case I have had a long talk with Harry, who is a rather nice chap and is quite happy that we have in no way tried to dish any dirt his way.
@ Jane Smith:
Jane, here is the email I sent you. I have spoken to harry and he is knows us and assures me that he does not have any problem with me or The Oxford Editors
Dear Jane,
So let me clarify:
I’d be grateful if you’d clarify whether the P.S Gharai who commented on my blog is your director, Ms P. Mosteshar-Gharai.
No it was not me, I never call myself P Gharai and if I was trying to post a negative comment why would I use a shortened version of my own name?
2) If they are the same person, don’t you think it’s rather shabby behaviour for your director to use my blog to try to discredit your competitors in this way?
Again, it certainly was not me, and my Head of Admin, who also uses the computer tells me it was not her.
3) If they are the same person, did P Gharai really employ the services of The Writers’ Workshop and get a below-par report back from them? Or was this a falsehood? And if so, why was this claim made, and would your director like to apologise for it? I’m happy to issue that apology on my blog.
As a director of a company that was started by someone who worked with Harry (no longer with us) and that shares many of the same authors on our list of editors, don’t you think it would be rather silly to post a negative comment that would reflect back on my services and editors? Let me clarify here, that we have never had anyone come to us from The Writers’ Workshop, we have never shared any clients happy or otherwise.
4) And finally, if Ms P Moteshar-Gharai and P Gharai are not the same person, why are you allowing this P Gharai access to your computers?
As I said in my longer email to you, I do not know who this P Gharai might be, it is obviously an attempt to discredit me and my company and Harry’s at the same time. How they had access to my computer I have no idea. I am not sure how these things work, but several present and past staff have access to our email and have the password to get into The Oxford Editors website. These include some work experience people over the years, but they don’t have access to the computer anymore.
Let me say here that when I give talks and workshops I always say to the audience that they don’t have to use out services, but I believe that there are only three other agencies that I would trust and The Writer’s Workshop is always on the list after The Literary Consultancy.
I would be grateful if you could publish my comments on you blog, I will be changing all our passwords and asking the company that does our IT to see if they can track down how this happened.
All the best,
Cherry
Cherry Mosteshar,
The Oxford Editors
The Place for Great Writing
http://Www.theoxfordeditors.co.uk
01865 358737
The Oxford Editors news:
Coming soon: Short Story Prize – winner will have story published as e-book.
Watch out for our new Self Publishing venture
And here is the text of the other email to you this morning:
Dear Jane,
I am confused and worried about this, are you sure they come from the same place?
This is rather confusing to me, as I did leave the friendly comment last night, but I never call myself P Gharai. I do give access to our email and my computer to several of our staff and some reviewers, but I very much doubt that anyone here would try and post in my name, they know they would not be working with us again if they did.
Had I wanted to leave a disguised negative comment I certainly would not have used my own name and I would not have left negative comment about Harry or his company. If you look at our site we share a lot of the same editors, so if I put down the quality of their service it would reflect on ours also.
I am never shy in speaking up if I have something to say about anyone, and I would never try and attack someone in that way. Can you let me know what day and time the P Gharai comments were made and I will see who was on the computer at the time.
I would be grateful if you would add this to your blog, as I would not want anyone to think that the post was from me.
Cherry Mosteshar,
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
Who’s William Alliss?
That’s interesting, Debbie: I see what you mean now. If I hover my cursor over The Oxford Editor’s gravatar it sends me to the Gravatar profile for someone called William Alliss. Curiouser and curiouser (did I spell that right?).
TOE, I’m wading through my website log files now, which should give me some background information on P Gharai. I know you’ve said on Twitter that you’ve spoken about this with Harry Bingham, and both he and you are fine about this, and that you’re going to change passwords and so on but IP addresses aren’t affected by passwords or email accounts: they’re attached to individual computers, internet accounts, routers, that sort of thing. I’ll keep on at it for as long as I can, because I’m really uncomfortable with someone using my blog in this way. I’ll let you know what I discover.
Yep, that’s right.
William Alliss is also apparently called Simon Howard and is edited by Cherry Moshetar at Oxford editors.
http://www.williamalliss.com/index.html
@ Sally:
I am not sure what the problem is with William Alliss? Authors are allowed to test the water under a pen name and then decide to use their own names. What is the point that people are making?
The point, The Oxford Editors, is that you are posting to this blog using an email address that is linked to William Alliss’s gravatar. Almost as if he is you, or you are he. You’ll have to forgive us if we find that odd. Our minds just work that way, I guess.
@ Debbie Moorhouse:
I’m not sure what’s odd about an agent giving their email on a writer’s site and saying contact us if you are interested in this author’s books. We are trying lots of new ways to get authors known. It was quite clear on his website. Perhaps it is better to know that there is something sinister before implying stuff online. We set up, design and maintain the sites and we make sure that the writer does not have to worry about anything but writing those books.
Many agents these days won’t look at anyone new, so we are trying to get them noticed and hopefully published. We are very transparent about who we are and what we do, you can read all about us at http://www.theoxfordeditors.co.uk.
I really would appreciate it if you came to me first rather than speculate online.
If anyone has any professional questions or needs help with their writing, then we would be happy to talk them on our website at http://www.theoxfordeditors.co.uk. If you see read something here that you don’t understand come to us at i...@theoxfordeditors.co.uk.
Good luck and good writing to all of you who meet and discuss here.
@ The Oxford Editors:
I’m quite confused now. Is Simon Howard / William Alliss a client of ‘The Oxford Editors’, an associate, an employee or an owner? Is ‘The Oxford Editors’ an official representation of the company now or an account that is still being hacked? Are we talking to Simon, William, Cherry or someone else? Is Cherry Simon/William? Where do our gravatars come from?
It’s like the plot of a novel.
@ Pete:
I have pursued this directly and am having a (very amicable) twitter conversation with @TheOxfordEditors about this. I have one outstanding question but it is the weekend and people have things to do. I am grateful for their time so far and their full answers.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
I’m sorry to have to disagree with you, but here I have to. All the agents I know–the good ones, anyway, and who’d want a bad one?–are willing to consider unpublished writers. If the books are good enough, agents and publishers will want them.
Have to agree with Jane on that point. This year alone I have worked with half a dozen debut authors who have gone on to be signed by agents. (Details on my blog.) If the book is good enough, and the author persistent enough, they will make it in the end.
@ Pete:
Thanks to @TheOxfordEditors (TOE) for their time today in explaining their position. I think they provided full answers which are perfectly reasonable and they went out of their way to be helpful.
I am still not clear about where gravatars come from. I didn’t set up a gravatar account either (but one got added to my post) and I am happy to accept TOEs lack of knowledge about the link to WilliamAlliss. It is easily possible given TOE set up websites for clients such as Simon / William that it has picked up a gravatar from an associated site. It is also clear they are a victim of impersonation (the second on this blog after Claire King) and one wonders who is behind all this and why they would bother?
It does appear that there is someone trying to mislead us but it is not TOE.
I don’t want to add needless speculation and don’t know enough about IP addresses to be confident in what I say, but perhaps this is clue?
If the IP address depends on the router (as you say, Jane), and if TOE use wifi, is it possible that someone in their immediate vicinity (sitting in a van outside, for instance, or adjoining building) could use their wifi without them knowing?
I remember concerns when wifi first came out, that strangers might use your wifi for illegal sites without your knowledge – which would then be traced back to your own computer.
‘P Gharai’ is an unusual name to pick out of the air, so it suggests that the hoaxer knows TOE – but not well enough to know that Cherry doesn’t use that name.
Just a thought. May be bonkers.
I won’t get involved in the who’s posting what and why argument, but I’ve had some experience checking IPs and stuff on a forum that seems to attract trouble.
Some reasons why people my share IPs:
-They may use the same computer
-They may use computers in the same building, such as a school, library, or office block.
-They may use the same public wireless network.
-They have a mystery IP that a lot of people have. I’ve only seen this a few times, and I’m not sure why it happens, but there are some IPs on my forum that have dozens of members sharing it. These members normally have IPs that are from all over the world, but very rarely they have the same one. It might be a glitch in the forum software, I don’t know, but it has happened.
Of course, since these people have almost identical names, I would guess they are the same person and someone made a mistake … I’ve seen it happen a lot.
Whisks wrote,:
That’s possible, I suppose–if The Oxford Editors haven’t secured their own internet network properly. But TOE said upstream that she had changed all her passwords in case the system had been hacked: and if the system was password-protected, this would not be possible without hacking.
But P Gharai commented here days before The Oxford Editors were linked publically with Brit Writers, and days before The Oxford Editors commented here. Why would someone hack into TOE’s internet connection and use the name P Gharai to comment here about a company which was not linked in any way with the BWA at that point, on the offchance that TOE would eventually comment here? I don’t think that’s the explanation, I’m afraid.
Ell wrote,:
It all depends on who the ISP is: some ISPs have very fluid IP addresses connected to their accounts. However, in this case the ISP is BT, which makes it a lot harder for the scenario you describe to happen.
Even then we have to consider how likely it is that two people who coincidentally share the same IP address would also coincidentally want to comment on the same blog post and share the same name.
How likely do you think it is that all of these coincidences would coincide?
@ Whisks:
Dear Whisks, we do have a router and have multiple computers that can access the wireless network. But I can’t imagine who would go to all that trouble.
Let me say once again for the record, we have NEVER heard anyone say anything negative about The Writer’s Workshop, and we share several editors with them so it would reflect badly on us if we put down the quality of their editors.
If this was done my an employee I cannot apologise enough, but all those who have access to the computers assure me they had no hand in this.
It would be nice to have the time to keep posting stuff here, but I have writers waiting for reports and I have to concentrate on their needs. But as I have already said, if anyone wants to know about us they are welcome to email and we will reply.
Just a thought. If the original poster calling himself P Gharai did actually send a manuscript or part of a manuscript to WW for appraisal and paid by credit card or pay-pal or whatever, WW would surely have a record if it–as well as the name of the editor who wrote the so-called useless report?
Think it needs some real experts looking at the actual systems to crack this otherwise we are still speculating.
Sorry if I posted my comment above in the wrong place. I am only a bear with a very little brain.
Sally Zigmond wrote,:
Sally, your comment is fine here.
Pete wrote,:
Pete, I’ve checked the access logs for the site very thoroughly today, and have shared them with a few good tech people. I’ll be contacting The Oxford Writers with my findings shortly and will comment here as soon as I’m able.
Hi Jane
I have consulted with my tame pet tech guru (i.e. Best Beloved) and he says you are correct about points 2 and 4 but for further investigation would need the IP address in question. He also suggests that the simplest answer is that The Oxford Editors have an unsecured wireless network and someone is logging on to this nearby to create the posts from the IP address. Not knowing the status of The Oxford Editors networks I’m not sure if this is relevant although you did say they had changed their passwords which suggested their network has some level of security.
Maybe I can help to explain some of the IP stuff.
First of all some declarations to give context.
1) I am Claire King’s husband and so cannot claim impartiality.
2) I am a website developer, specialising in dynamic database based stuff: so blogs, content management systems, social media tools… that kind of thing. It is only in relation to this, and with a past in IT management, that I have a passing familiarity with IP networking and server-side software. I am not an expert in network forensics.
3) For a number of reasons, I occasionally choose to post on blogs using pseudonyms (so I am arguably not in a position to take the moral high ground about sockpuppets). When I do that, however, I forewarn the blog’s owner out of courtesy, I do it solely to keep political issues out of my message, and I am aware of the amount of detail that a typical blog can capture about my session with it. I’m aware, in short, that any moderate attempt to do so will find me out.
There.
When you access web page, be it a blog or a picture of a kitten with some amusingly misspelled text on it, the server software will generally record some information about you and your visit in its logs.
Your IP address will generally be stored. This is the address of the machine that communicates between your computer and the internet. If you have a modem (dial up, or adsl) connecting your computer to the internet, then it will be the address of your computer. If you have a ‘router’ or a ‘gateway’ connecting your computer network to the internet, then it will be the address of that router.
A ‘BT Home Hub’ with a PC, an X-Box and an Android Tablet connecting to the internet through it, for example, will have a single IP address. That same address will be recorded in a server log for each of those three machines, if they browse a web page on it.
The IP address may be dynamic (far more common), or static.
A static address is assigned permanently to you, generally as part of a range of addresses. You ‘own’ it in much the same way as you may own a domain name ‘mydomain.org’. The scarcity of remaining IP addresses left in the current system means that static IP addresses are like hens’ teeth – very rare – and generally only allocated to major organisations that can demonstrate a need for a static address (such as hosting a application server on site).
The rest of us get dynamic addresses that are assigned to us by our internet service provider (ISP) when we connect. Each time our computer, or router, reboots it will get a different address from the ISP’s pool. Even if you don’t reboot your device, an address is generally only loaned for a fixed period of time, 5 days is common. ISP’s address pools typically comprise 132,000-odd addresses. You could be given the same one twice, but it’s pretty rare.
So. If several comments on your blog come from the same dynamically allocated IP address, they could well be from different people. For that to happen, however, each time your correspondent comments, they would need to reboot their computer/router, freeing up the borrowed IP address. Someone else would then need to be allocated that address out of a pool of 132,000 addresses, and then coincidentally also be a subscriber to your blog and moved to comment. Feasible if you are the Beyonce Fan Club, I suppose, but rather unlikely if you are the Uppingham International Druids’ Underwear Appreciation Society Disco Club.
Given a suitable court order, an ISP is obliged to release details of exactly who used what IP address and when. And, possibly, other related information that may identify individual machines behind a gateway. I am not a lawyer, but I imagine that – incurring some legal fees – one might obtain such a warrant if there was reason to believe that a crime had been committed such as passing off or libel/slander.
The web server will also, likely, record a User Agent string. This is a whole lot of information strung together about the computer you are using (this time, really the computer you are using, not the gateway). Typically it will include information about the type of computer (e.g. PC, iPad Touch), its operating system (e.g. Windows, Linux, Android, MacOS) and version, the browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox) with its version and, often, details of some plugins (Google Toolbar or somesuch). Individually, these items may all be fairly common – in the specific combination that makes up your User Agent string will often be less common.
While some companies may install their PC’s software using a carefully templated system, and tightly control updates etc., unless all workstations are identical, it would be reasonable to assume that identical IP addresses and identical User Agent strings mean that the visits all came from the same computer.
Whether or not that computer is being operated by the same individual, depends rather on the security imposed by your blog, and their security regime. My computers, for example, are allowed to remember my username, but not my password. Like many website developers, I make any ‘remember me’ cookie expire after a couple of days or so. Where there is lax security, however, there’s nothing to prevent someone sitting down at someone else’s computer and using their stored credentials to impersonate them. Such credentials, however, should be guarded with the same jealousy as one’s credit card PIN.
These days, and more and more, our online identity is precious and valuable.
I hope that is helpful and understandable, and that if you believe that I’ve got any of it wrong, you’ll feel free to correct me
@ Lexx Clarke:
Hello Lexx
The case of ‘hijacking’ an open WiFi connection is a valid explanation for sharing a gateway’s IP address.
However, unless the ‘hijacker’ had an identical computer and software setup to that of a ‘known poster’, their User Agent information would be likely to differ significantly – and that would be apparent in the server logs.
Cheers
Charlie
I now have located the appropriate parts of the access logs, have been given some very good advice on what it means, and will be emailing The Oxford Editors with my findings. I’ll update you on this as soon as I can. Thanks, all, for not succumbing to wild speculation. I hope we’ll be able to resolve this very soon.
Follow up from Best Beloved:
To use the post code analogy, a standard street in the UK would have two post codes, one for either side of the street, so if you receive a letter from post code XXX XXX then you are able to say that it came from one side of a street but not from which house. You would also be able to tell what town the letter had come from. The same is sort of true for an IP address, an internet service provider (ISP) has a fixed range of IP addresses assigned to them which are for their use only.
They can then choose to give each customer their own address or they can select to allocate an address when the customer signs in, as IP addresses are limited and therefore expensive most ISPs choose to allocate the addresses to their customers on a first come first served basis for a period of time, a lease e.g. 8 hours. If the customer is still using the address when the 8 hours expires their network will request a renewal of that address which is almost always granted so the address is retained.
If the address ‘lease’ expires and the client is no longer signed in then the address is returned to the pool of available addresses, it then comes down to chance who is assigned the address next.
If one is more cynical and wishes to assume that the address has been faked a slightly different analogy of a telephone can be applied, so when the commenter presses the post button a bunch of information is sent along with the post, one of these items is the IP address, this is populated by the web server and derived from the physical connection to the server. So if the IP address is faked this is like someone calling you with a fake caller ID however once they have asked you something you need to call them back with the answer, but as you have a fake number you can’t. The same would be true of a web server so if the blog post did the following it should defeat fake IP addresses:
* 1. Post sent
* 2. Web server stores the post and sends back a page with a known randomly generated code
* 3. User inputs the code and sends
* 4. Web server gets the code and therefore the IP is valid
This should work because there is a route in both directions so the correct IP address is know by all parties, the same as with a phone, you can say your number is 123456 to someone but the phone exchange knows that someone else has the number 123456 so when you dial that number you get the real owner and not the faker and of course the real owner knows nothing about it so simply ignores your call.
@ Lexx Clarke:
It’s the techo-best-beloveds club!
Lexx’ main squeeze (forgive me) makes a valid point, in that faking or ‘spoofing’ an IP effectively precludes a dialogue being struck up between two computers.
The act of composing, submitting and having validated a comment on a blog such as this needs a dialogue between the server and the sending computer to work correctly. To set up such a dialogue from a spoofed IP would be EXTREMELY non-trivial.
IP spoofing is generally used to set up storms of “it’s all gone wrong” computer jibber-jabber in what are known as ‘denial of service’ attacks. In the same way that poking a stick through the spokes of a passing bicycle is a great way to its rider fall off, but isn’t a valid technique for making the bicycle go to some other distant destination of your choice.
It would be far easier to stealthily tarnish someone’s reputation, if for example that’s what one were setting out to achieve, by far simpler social engineering means.
@ Charlie King:
Charlie,
I am more confused that I was before. My computer now has a password and my router, that was rather old according to the IT guy who started laughing when he saw it today, has been changed to something with super security. It is all a bit of a nightmare – esp as I got a message from Amazon saying someone had tried to change my password today. The comment made on this post did not come from me, they do not reflect my views on The Writer’s Workshop. I have had a flood of tweets on various ways it can be done, which are all double Dutch to me. I don’t know what else to say to satisfy Jane.
Really there is no more that I can say. Jane has repeated some accusations in an email to me, and I am sure she feels that she has tracked the code. All I can says is that I do not know who this person is and how they appear to have posted from my computer. I have NEVER had any complaints about WW or Harry from clients, and do not need to put his company down for mine to thrive.
I really do feel like I have been engulfed by some sort of campaign to discredit me and my company. All I can do now is to continue to give a great service to my writers, and to support my co-workers who I trust not to have done this.
Jane can make whatever allegations she likes and I really can’t persuade her that her speculations are not true. So again, if anyone wants to know about our services or want to talk about writing, please contact us and we would be delighted to help. Otherwise I really have to end this chapter because it is just going in circles.
All the best to everyone here and I hope we can leave all the finger pointing behind, be it at the Brit Writers Awards or at us. We are in the business of writing not of knocking each other.
And before someone says that WW was knocked, let me say again that from all we have heard and seen The Writer’s Workshop is a very reputable, high-quality business. It should be, we share many of the same editors and I don’t take on bad people.
I spent the weekend checking my access logs, which automatically record information on every visit which is made to the site. I found the logs for the comments left by P Gharai and by The Oxford Editors, and last night I sent copies of them to Cherry in an email via the contact form on her website.
She has responded to that email here so I think it’s appropriate to put my email up here, too.
My theory on this follows Occam’s Razor:
Someone in their office did the deed. Why? Because it’s a lot simpler of an explanation than someone spoofing their office’s IP.
Without going into a lot of details, let’s say it involves some technical stuff that is not so different from a virus. Opening the right ports requires some decent technical knowledge, both in installing said “virus” and controlling the machine remotely. There are services and software that allows you to do that legally, of course, but then it’s still technically from their office.
While it is technically possible that someone “spoofed” their IP address (which is basically masking your own address with theirs), it would still be required that someone who works there tells the hacker what the aforementioned address was. I’m not paranoid enough yet to consider the possibility that someone from their ISP gave away said IP address
It has been mentioned before in these comments (sorry, can’t find your post again) that each ISP controls a block of IP addresses, that is completely true. Your own IP address is either static or dynamic but it will never leave the boundaries of your current service provider. Ex: If your provider controls 1.1.1.1 to 1.1.255.255, your IP address will never look something like 143.146.1.234. That is, unless you change ISP.
That said, there are services (Like OpenDNS.org) who can mask your IP address. Even Google offers this service but they are also bound to a certain range of addresses.
In conclusion (sorry it’s a bit of a long mess, I’m writing that from the top of my head), it’s quite a lot more likely than someone in the office did it.
And also, yeah, it’s been simplified quite a lot, feel free to correct me if I’ve oversimplified to the point of being wrong. It’s been years since I dabbled in that stuff
EMAIL SENT TO THE OXFORD EDITORS 9.45PM SUNDAY NOVEMBER 20TH:
Cherry,
I’ve now double-checked the access logs to my website.
These logs are very useful as they show the time and date that a comment was left, and the post it was left on (in this case, my post about the Brit Writers Agents’ Division). The access logs also give me information about the person who left the comment: not only the IP address of the computer or network that they were using to leave their comment, but also the type of computer, the operating system it was running at the time, the internet browser they were using, and even the version number of the various programs in use.
This information could help us identify which computer on a network was used, for example, because even when very similar computers are used on a network they rarely use identical software: there is usually some disparity in the versions which each computer uses, and in the level of updating which has been carried out.
So, if “P Gharai” had used his own computer and had hacked into your account from sitting in his car out on the road, as you suggested could be the case, I’d expect to see quite a lot of differences between the access logs for his comments and those for yours. Similarly, if you had a rogue member of staff who used one of your office computers to leave the Gharai comments we can be almost completely certain that the access logs which resulted would be different in some way to those which were left when you made your comments from your own computer, even if you have very similar computers at every workstation.
Below you’ll find the access logs for P Gharai’s three comments, and for the first two comments that you left on my site.
As you can see, they are all completely identical. I’ve checked some of your more recent comments at random, and they are all identical too.
I’ve shown the access logs to two separate technical advisors and they’ve each told me that they believe that the comments left on my blog under the names P Gharai and The Oxford Editors were made not just from the same network, but from just one specific computer on that network. It is marginally possible that this is not the case: but that is unlikely in the extreme.
This leaves us with three likely possibilities.
1) You have a rogue member of staff who has been using your personal computer to leave potentially libellous comments about The Writers’ Workshop on various blogs (mine was not the only blog which P Gharai commented on).
2) A member of your household who has access to your computer is responsible for the comments made by “P Gharai”.
3) You made the comments attributed to “P Gharai” yourself.
None of these possibilities describe acceptable behaviour, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
I didn’t want to go public with this information without giving you a day or two to consider it first: you might have some perfectly reasonable explanation that I’ve missed, and a big part of me hopes that you do. But it would be good for Harry Bingham to get a public apology for “P Gharai’s” spiteful and unwarranted attempt to discredit his business, don’t you think?
Many thanks
Jane Smith
Access log from my website for P Gharai’s comment on 10 November
howpublishingreallyworks.com ***.**.232.80 – - [10/Nov/2011:15:38:18 +0000] “POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1″ 302 – “http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=4412″ “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24 GTB7.1″
Access log from my website for P Gharai’s comment on 10 November
howpublishingreallyworks.com ***.**.232.80 – - [12/Nov/2011:02:07:51 +0000] “POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1″ 302 – “http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=4412″ “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24 GTB7.1″
howpublishingreallyworks.com ***.**.232.80 – - [12/Nov/2011:02:12:29 +0000] “POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1″ 302 – “http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=4412″ “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24 GTB7.1″
Access log from my website for The Oxford Editors comment on 17 November
howpublishingreallyworks.com ***.**.232.80 – - [17/Nov/2011:11:54:44 +0000] “POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1″ 302 – “http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=4412″ “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24 GTB7.1″
Access log from my website for The Oxford Editors comment on 18 November
howpublishingreallyworks.com ***.**.232.80 – - [18/Nov/2011:13:14:32 +0000] “POST /wp-comments-post.php HTTP/1.1″ 302 – “http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=4412″ “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24 GTB7.1″
END
[edited to obscure IP addresses]
@ Jane Smith:
It does certainly look like the same machine was used for all these comments. Of course, there is a possibility that everything was spoofed (You can make your browser say Mozilla Santa Claus if you want to), it’s becoming more and more elaborate now.
While it is possible that, in an office like this all computers and browsers are identical, I will once again refer you to Occam’s Razor.
Frederick Cross wrote,:
That makes a lot of sense to me, Frederick. Especially when you consider that P Gharai made his comments here days before The Oxford Editors was linked in public to Brit Writers: he’d have to be a techno wizard AND be able to see into the future if he really did hack into TOE’s account in order to implicate them in evil wrongdoings.
The suggestion that it was someone in TOE’s office what did it is at least plausible. In TOE’s position I’d have waited until today; shown the access logs I sent her to my staff; and asked if anyone had anything to say. I find it interesting that TOE’s response was to immediately insist that she had nothing to do with it without even considering that option.
@ Jane Smith:
I can’t really comment on that, I don’t know who these people are at all. I can only comment and speculate on the technical stuff I’ve seen so far. And, as I said many times, more than one explanation are possible
The only solution I can offer to anyone who might be victim of people using the company computer to do stuff like this is to become paranoid. That means, backup your stuff daily and password protect the important computers.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
Ah, obfuscation.
For the benefit of those reading along at home, let me reiterate what it is I find odd.
On this blog, in these comments, ‘The Oxford Editors’ are posting using an email address linked to a gravatar that belongs to ‘William Alliss’, who is apparently also Simon Howard, a client of The Oxford Editors.
This creates some confusion, at least to my mind, as to whether the comments being made are those of ‘The Oxford Editors’ or actually belong to William Alliss/Simon Howard. Is Alliss/Howard happy to be connected with these comments? Do they know that their email address and gravatar are being used by ‘The Oxford Editors’? Perhaps they could come along in their own identity (and from a different IP address) to let us know. That at least would remove any suspicion that Alliss/Howard does not have a separate existence from ‘The Oxford Editors’.
With regard to the simonhowardbooks/williamalliss.com website, that is an entirely different matter from the use of William Alliss’s gravatar. I am however glad to have ‘The Oxford Editors’ confirm that they set up, maintain, and own the site, and are therefore responsible for everything that appears it.
The comment about difficulties in finding agents I pass over; it’s simply irrelevant here.
On it. ON it! Wretched editing there.
(Ironically, word ver is: corrected)
Considering that non of these comments appear on Alliss/Simon, I am not sure why you are trying to pull it into this. We have spoken to Harry and he is fine, we have an even stronger relationship than before. You are of course free to say whatever you like, but with the two main parties having resolved the problem this begins to look like Much Ado about Nothing.
@ Frederick Cross:
THANK YOU for such sensible comments. This is exactly what we have done. Increased security, changed passwords so the use of the computers is strictly monitored and upgraded a very, very old first generation router.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
I’m glad that Harry is satisfied with your explanations. I’ve sent him the access logs which appear here, and have done my best to explain to him their implications.
Why have I pursued this? Because I don’t like it when people use my blog in an attempt to discredit an ethical, helpful business like the Writers’ Workshop. I’m glad that you have increased the security in your office: but so long as whoever it was who left the P Gharai comments has access to your computers, you run the risk of this happening again.
Now, onto the Alliss/Simon issue.
Each time a comment is left here, you’ll notice that a little image appears next to that comment. Some people have a personalised image (for example, mine is a peacock); others have a computer-generated face. Those images are called gravatars, and you can find out more about them here.
Gravatars are linked to email accounts. So each time I comment on a WordPress-based blog and I provide my email, WordPress’s little magic elves spot my email and display that image of a peacock next to my comment (he’s lovely, isn’t he? I used to have over 200 peafowl, and miss them terribly). That happens on this blog, and on any other blog which uses WordPress as its base.
But wait! There’s more! If you hover your cursor over any avatar you’ll be provided with a little link to the profile of the person whose gravatar it is.
The gravatar which appears next to all of your comments, attributed to The Oxford Editors, links to a profile for someone calle “williamalliss”, which you’ll find here.
That profile gives us very little information but a quick Google search for the name William Alliss takes us back to The Oxford Editors website. Apparently you represent him.
Why is this significant to this conversation? Because it shows that at one time or another someone calling themselves William Alliss has commented on a few blogs and has given your email address as their own. Now, this implies that either you’ve been commenting on blogs as Mr Alliss, or Mr Alliss has been commenting on blogs and using your email address as his own. Bearing in mind that this thread is all about identity in life and online that is significant to the discussion. If you’ve not commented anywhere as Mr Alliss then you have to ask yourself this: does Mr Alliss work in your office? Does he have access to your computer?
In brief, the Allis/Simon issue shows that P Gharai might not be the first or only time that someone using your computer or your email address has posted on blogs using an identity which is not their own.
I hope that’s a help.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
All that’s needed is a simple answer to a simple question: Why are you posting on this blog using an email address that links to William Alliss’s gravatar profile?
@ Debbie Moorhouse:
William Alliss uses our email address because we are the agents, so if someone want to contact him they have to contact him. He travels to all sorts of remote places and concentrates on writing, we deal with his email. What is so difficult to understand about that? Several people have access to the website and they are dotted all over the world and go through Fasthosts.
Very easy, he has his website, he is not available to deal with public so he puts our email on his website as his agents.
I really don’t see the point in all this, look at all this time and energy. The main people effected – me and harry are fine with each other so I really having made the point over and over again on here, why this an issue that you want to spend so much time on. I know my time is precious, so I really have to make this my last comment. Anyone who has questions can email us directly. Or if you enjoy speculation, then have fun.
@ Jane Smith:
So is William Alliss not allowed to comment on a blog? I really don’t see what you are trying to do here. But this has been quite an eye opener into How Blogs Work.
I really don’t see the problem, Harry Bingham is not bothered and William Alliss is grateful to you for increasing the hits on his site this week. Not by many, but every little helps.
Enjoy your speculation. I am sure there are some real issues out there that need to be addressed,
Dear ‘The Oxford Editors/William Alliss/Simon Howard’, I am truly impressed by your willingness to return here and obfuscate in new and exciting ways.
As you must be perfectly well aware by now, my question is not about any contact email address on the website you run for Simon Howard/William Allis. There are some questions I might ask about that website, but I’m not asking them yet. I have however noted you seem strangely defensive about it.
The question is, as has been stated more than once, why, when you post here on Jane Smith’s blog as ‘The Oxford Editors’, is your email linked to a gravatar that resolves to William Alliss’s profile? That’s it, that’s all for now. Just answer that question.
@ Debbie Moorhouse:
The answer is that I have no idea why. That website has nothing to do with any comments made anywhere. I don’t know anything about gravitars, or how they work.
I don’t know why this is so important to you or what you think this means. I am defensive because I am defensive about all the wonderful writers that we work with and William/Simon has been pulled into this when he has nothing to do with it. I looked up Gravitar or whatever, and it appears to be something you have to register – we have not done this, so I really am at a total loss.
If you think there is something illegal or sinister about this I fail to see it.
I really would rather spend time and energy helping our fantastic writers rather tan going over and over this. I am sure the busy members of this blog will understand, and if anyone that is involved wants to talk – such as harry – I am delighted to talk. I have cleared things up with Harry, the P Gharai person has not posted again here or anywhere else as far as my google search shows. So I don’t understand exactly why does this matters so very much to you. Seams there are bigger issues in the world than why a gravitar shows up linked to us.
A Egyptian, female writer, was arrested yesterday and beaten up for 12 hours and sexually attacked. That outrages me, that is what I want to highlight and talk about and fight against. What the appearance of some gravitar seams totally irrelevant in the big picture of what is happening in the world today.
I would like to use this interest in us to appeal to all women writers sitting in a safe place to research what is happening to women like us in the Middle east and to write their stories, to be witness to their torture and oppression. Write about their case here and on all writers’ blogs, don’t let their stories go untold while we argue about gravitars, IP addresses etc.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
Cherry, I think I know why Debbie is so concerned about this: it’s because of the context of this post.
Your gravatar links to William’s name because in the past someone has posted on other blogs using William’s name while providing your email address as their own. Now, I get that you deal with William’s emails for him when he’s travelling (which I find odd, but there you go: people do things that I consider odd all the time); but this link between William and your email address strongly implies that someone from your business has been posing as William when commenting on blogs. Which blogs, I don’t know.
I wrote this blog post because of my concerns regarding the identity of P Gharai, who we’ve subsequently realised is almost definitely either a member of your staff, a member of your household, or you—the possibility of P Gharai being anyone who is not in one of those three classifications is so small that it’s almost negligible. So the likelihood that someone from The Oxford Editors has also been commenting on blogs as William suggests that someone from The Oxford Editors has a habit of commenting on blogs using names which aren’t their own.
As for the rest of your comment, my view is that the abusive treatment that some people—not just women—receive in the world—not just in Egypt or the Middle East—is appalling. It’s inhumane, unjust, and undeserved and is a major issue that we should all do our best to bring an end to. However, this blog is about publishing and to bring such a matter up here in an attempt to deflect attention from the discussion in hand seems to me to trivialise it in a very cynical way. Let’s not use the misfortunes of others in that way, thank you.
And now I think this conversation has run its course. Thanks, all, for your comments.
@ Jane Smith:
Dear Jane this is speculation and accusation. And quite frankly I fail to see why this has dragged on for an entire week. Are you saying that when he is in England and we are working on the website or on the books, William is not allowed to have his say on any subject he likes, on any blog he likes using the terminal he happens to be sitting at? This is preposterous.
It is not enough to accuse people of something because the many other explanation that people have posted are, in your view, unlikely.
There comes a point where one wonders why are people going after us no matter what we say, and repeating allegations that are speculation.
Do you believe that The Writers’Workshop is in such a bad state of affairs that a mild comment – no matter from whom – about not loving a report, would damage it beyond repair? because I assure you it would take more than one posting on your blog to damage Harry’s company.
I am sorry to be brutal, but I have a great deal more important things to do with my life than discuss the origins of a post that few people would have even seen if you had not drawn out the issue for a week.
I keep saying this is my last comment, but in my search to make sure P Gharai has not posted again I notice that you guys are still going on about it.
Goodbye and good luck.@ Jane Smith:
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all and if that really is the message you’re getting from the explanations that I and other people have given you here, then you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Now, where have I heard that before? Let’s see…
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
All you have to do is tick that little box just above the instruction, “Notify me of new posts by email” before you submit your comment and you’ll automatically be sent an email each time anyone makes a new comment in this thread. You’ll find the tick-box below the comment-box.
Good luck to you too.
Dear ‘The Oxford Writers’
You have no idea why your email address is linked to a gravatar belonging to William Alliss? And yet you’re still using that same email address in your posts here. If I were being told that I was apparently posting as someone else, and running the risk of misrepresenting their views, I would take steps to make sure that never happened again.
Yet you seem surprisingly unconcerned about it. Not even concerned enough to use a different email address to post or to attempt to unlink the email address you are using from William Alliss’s profile ( http://gravatar.com/williamalliss )at gravatar.com. Have you even contacted William Alliss/Simon Howard about this problem? Is Alliss/Howard aware that your posts here risk being attributed to him? Do you believe it is acceptable to make comments in his name that don’t in any way relate to promoting him or his work?
We asked, why are you, ie Cherry Mosteshar/The Oxford Editors, posting on this blog using an email address that links to William Alliss’s gravatar account.
You respond “Are you saying that when he is in England and we are working on the website or on the books, William is not allowed to have his say on any subject he likes, on any blog he likes using the terminal he happens to be sitting at? This is preposterous.” (my emphasis)
But William Alliss has not been having his say here; Cherry Mosteshar has. Our questions could only relate to posts made by William Alliss himself, rather than by Cherry Mosteshar somehow mistakenly linked with William Alliss, if Alliss and Cherry Mosteshar are in fact the same person.
Unfortunately, I don’t find that conclusion remotely preposterous.
Completely lost the will to live on this. If Cherry’s not sufficiently bothered about her IT persona, security and reputation, I don’t see why anyone else should be.
Cherry’s had IP addresses and the gravatar address issue explained in Noddy and Big Ears terms and either doesn’t understand it or chooses not to care sufficiently. I find her attitude a bit strange but it’s her business and her reputation at stake.
I am more than happy this and to accept explanations to date but equally I will, in the future, take anything as purporting to be from The Oxford Editors from any source at face value as official comment. If Cherry subsequently says she has been hacked or misrepresented, she can have no real right to expect me to believe her, help her or have any real sympathy. I would, of course, offer her a biscuit out of common courtesy! I think that’s a fair basis on which to move on.
I would like to thank everyone who contributed with the explanations for their time. I learnt a lot.
If I needed any help on the complex art of obfuscation deflection, I would immediately turn to The Oxford Editors.
I’m a simple sort. I like straight answers to straight questions. From what I’ve leaned here I’m never going to get that from TOE.
I don’t know about you but, these days, I find it difficult to walk past a dead horse without giving it a little bit of a flog.
I’m wondering if an analogy would help her understand:
If she were to arrive at work one morning to discover that the exterior of her offices had been covered in posters saying things like ‘The Brit Writers are a bunch of stangmongling chip-wufflers’, and ‘The Brit Writers stuffle yam-gobblers by moonlight, we have proof’ – Cherry Mosteshar would rightly be indignant that her premesis had been used to besmirch the good name of a friend, and his business.
If, on closer examination, the posters turned out to be signed by one ‘J Smith’, and printed on notepaper that had the same, unique, watermark as correspondence that she had previously received from one Jane Smith of ‘How Publishing Really Works’, one might forgive her for feeling that Jane Smith of ‘How Publishing Really Works’ needs to answer some questions.
And if it further transpired that the posters bore the wax seal of one ‘Justin Thyme’, the nom de plume of an author who turned out to be, in real life, ‘Phil McReviss’ author protégé of Jane Smith – please try to keep up with me here – well then she would remain convinced, I am sure, that Jane Smith of ‘How Publishing Really Works’ has some questions to answer.
I’m not convinced, however, that she would be mollified by Jane’s continuing inability to understand what a personalised watermark is, Jane’s assurances that she’d now taken to locking her stationary cupboard, or Jane’s pointing out that the Tescos in Ipswich is on fire, and “shouldn’t all be far more worried about that?”
The mistreatment of authors, female or otherwise, in oppressive regimes is doubtless horrific. Probably all the more reason that they shouldn’t be belittled by being used as a diversionary tactic in a discussion about the Strange Thing About The Oxford Editors.
There. I feel better for that. Sorry to have disturbed you all.
Charlie.
p.s. Is it just me, or is the ‘surely there are more important things in the world to worry about‘ mantra rather popular in the Brit Writers entourage. ?
No, Charlie, it’s not just you.
Oh dear, look. This thread has so many comments on it now that it’s hit my top-five most commented-on blog posts, and so will be linked to on the blog’s front page for evah.
I do hope that somewhere, somehow, P Gharai knows how popular he’s become.
@ Sally Zigmond:
Dear Sally, Simple answer to simple question – no idea who P Gharai is and if it is one of my staff they are not owning up, so short of waterboarding them, I am as puzzled as the rest of you.
The Gravatar puzzle has been unravelled. When you set up a WordPress blog it automatically registers with Gravitar. We set up such a blog for WA, handed it over and forgot about it. It has our email because WA does not want to be bothered dealing with the business stuff and as he is away 9 months of the year uses us to field his inquiries. That is why when you see our email it links to WA. Nothing sinister, no terror plot, no hidden agenda.
@ Charlie King:
Dear Charlie,
First of all we have had the grand total of two conversations with The Brit Writers, and it takes a lot more than that for me to become ‘friends’ with anyone. I certainly have not met anyone from BWA nor have we received even one solitary piece of work from them.
Secondly, if Jane had assured me that she was not behind posters splattered over my office, I would not call her a liar in a public forum. I certainly would not like to draw so much attention to negative comments that might reflect on my friend. And certainly if Jane and my friend had talked, as I have with harry, and if the friend – or Harry – were happy I certainly would not keep stirring the pot.
Now, I don’t know what the BWA lot think about the world and it’s goings on, but I can’t believe there is anyone that thinks that there really are bigger things to worry about than a less than glowing review of a business that was posted here. As for being part of their crowd, we have more links with harry than we do with BWA. Our first director, now not with then firm, was one of Harry’s staff. We share many of the same editors as Harry. Until a few weeks ago Harry and I belonged to the same social writers’ club.
If one of my staff wrote the comment they know never to try that again. But I work with people who have worked round the clock to make my business a success, and I have spoken to them all and they say they didn’t post the comment, and I certainly didn’t. So what do you suggest, sack them all with no proof?
I wasn’t going to comment again, but I find it quite amazing that P Gharai has risen to the top of this chart and is keeping people so amused and occupied, so I though why not let this run and run. I’m sorry that it means that people will keep reading the mean things he, she or it said. But that’s the internet, once it is out there is nothing that can be done.
So measures taken:
Staff asked to own up
Passwords changed so no one can get on computers without being traced.
Router updated
Apology to Harry for any distress and assurance that we rate him very highly, which he has accepted.
We have answered every question despite some rather rude comments, we have engaged in the discussion and we have said again and again that WW is a great organisation.
I have to say we have had some lovely emails of support from people who have seen this blog and two have asked for a quote, so it is an ill wind etc.
But really, I am happy to talk to you if you email me with some ideas of how to find the culprit. And when I do, what then, public humiliations, fire them? Burn them at the stake?
@ Jane Smith:
Jane I am sure whoever did it is loving it and probably did it for the attention, which he.she or it has received in spades. I am expecting it to hit your top three any minute now. maybe No1 for Christmas?!
@ Charlie King:
Charlie, when did this turn into a matter of The Strange Things about The Oxford Editors? Really I am not disputing what Jane is saying, I just don’t see how it could have happened so hope there is another explanation. And on behalf of the company I have made an apology to Harry which he is happy with. What I can’t do is prove who did this and why. I still hope that there is another explanation as I have grown to trust my staff.
I know Harry will agree, that in or business there are always people who might get a negative report on their manuscript, and instead of blaming their writing ability they blame the agency or the editor and want to tell the world about it.
I am happy to talk to anyone via email, and although I have looked in here to make sure PG has not posted again, and am now quite impressed that it has hit Jane’s top 5, I can’t keep checking who has said what. I won’t put on an alert as we get so many emails it would just add to the workload of a very hard working staff. Now working overtime to show their loyalty and to avoid the finger of blame.
I wonder if I can get a lie detector on ebay? Really I would be relieved to get to the bottom of this, but I am not going to sour the atmosphere in a happy and hard working office now that Harry has been so sweet and assures me that the comments didn’t bother him and he has no interest in even talking about it anymore.
Don’t forget that if you are worried about this you can send us an email direct to i...@theoxfordeditors.co.uk and we will be more than happy to go over any specific questions about the company, it’s staff and it’s services.
@ Jane Smith:
I am looking to see if P Gharai posts elsewhere, that is why I am doing a search. To tick Notify me of new posts by email would not solve that problem. And quite frankly, going by the volume in trafic here I am quite clad I turned off the notifications, my email is already to heavy to handle some days.
I really am sorry that all this has distressed you, I can assure you that I have made things right with Harry. But I am also sure you can understand that when you work with people who have been hard working and loyal, you can’t go around accusing them of doing something without anyway of knowing who it was. A lot of our people still work with or have worked with Harry and I can’t believe they would dish him like that. I am sure The Writers’ Workshop get complaints just like any other company. Somone will love your work while another person will think it is rubbish.
I think most people on the internet will appreciate that and look at all comment before making a judgment. Look at then case of the BWA, where on the one side you, Harry and some others warn against them, an then you see just as many saying how wonderful they are. People learn who to trust and who to disregard.
That should have been i...@theoxfordeditors.co.uk
OK it keeps doing something strange with the first part of the email which is info@ Charlie King:
Oh and on the subject of the mistreatment of authors, I have worked with victims of torture for more than 30 years now since my cousin was arrested by a regime in the Middle East because of something she wrote, she was tortured, assaulted and taken out at 4 am to a fake execution time and time again. We use every forum, every audience and every opportunity to make people aware and to make them think about what is happening to women.
If just one person read that and thought, actually I wonder what the story is, who these women are and what is happening to them, then that comment did its job and I will not apologise for mentioning this issue wherever and whenever.
Anyone who would like to know more about the writers in detention, being tortured or being killed is welcome to contact me and I will give them some links.
@ Sally Zigmond:
email me with your question and I will be happy to reply in as straight and as simple a way as possible
@ Pete:
Dear Pete, I thought we had a long conversation and you said that you were happy. I am not sure why you are now angry. You can ask me questions directly, I really don’t understand the whole IP things, but can only say that if it was one of my staff they should be ashamed. None of them will admit to doing it, but I have spoken to Harry and he is quite frankly not that concerned. He has accepted that if it was one of my staff there is little I can do if they do not confess.
You have to look at it from my side. These people have worked with me for years, they have been loyal, taken wages that at times were laughable and worked mad hours. If they look into my eyes and say that it was not them, what am I supposed to do. And if I do discover who it is, what then? Harry has had an apology for any distress. do I fire the single mother if it is her, do I throw out the lovely grandmother who has seen her royalties fade into nothing and wants a few hours work? It is an impossible position for me to be in.
If anyone has a solution beyond telling Harry how sorry we are that someone from our team, or in our offices, might have posted anything that was not truthful about his company and saying here more than once that we consider The Writers’ Workshop to be a very reputable company, then let me know my email.
Let us not forget that whoever made the comments wanted also to implicate me by using and unusual form of part of my name, this is not happy making when you are being told by strangers on a blog that someone who must be close to you is trying to discredit you.
I have to say that there appears to me to be a tendency to attack here, rather than to see things from everyone’s side. And I ask again, what more would you want me to do. I have apologised to harry that someone from my company might have done this; I have questioned everyone and made it clear that this sort of thing is unacceptable and have changed my passwords so that no one can use our computers without being tracked.
Anyone have any other ideas, just let me know.
Don’t think my last comment passed the CAPTCH test, so here it is again
Let us not forget that whoever made the comments wanted also to implicate me by using and unusual form of part of my name, this is not happy making when you are being told by strangers on a blog that someone who must be close to you is trying to discredit you.
I have to say that there appears to me to be a tendency to attack here, rather than to see things from everyone’s side. And I ask again, what more would you want me to do. I have apologised to harry that someone from my company might have done this; I have questioned everyone and made it clear that this sort of thing is unacceptable and have changed my passwords so that no one can use our computers without being tracked.
Anyone have any other ideas, just let me know.
@ Frederick Cross:
If it was someone from our office, how do you suggest I discover who it was? It is am impossible situation.
Dear jane,
Opps sorry I appear to have left a lot for you to go through tomorrow, but I wanted to try and reply to everyone and address their concerns. If you can think of anything else I can do but to issue a general telling off, then do let me know. We work on a very ‘we are all in this together’ model and I don’t play the boss so it is hard to do the shouty thing. Everyone here says it’s terrible, they all say it was not them. Harry says he is cool with the whole thing, and yet this is going into a 2nd week. I have to say that although I understand everyone’s concerns, I have to cover so much death and nasty stuff in my online journalism, that I just think why is this so big? It has brought some clients my way so I shouldn’t complain, but it is not pleasant for anyone and although I don’t want to keep on and on about it, I will answer any questions or suggestions and address any issues, but please email them to me.
Your verification ting keeps telling me that I got it wrong, so not sure if you are getting any of my posts. here is my last one again just in case.
Dear jane,
Opps sorry I appear to have left a lot for you to go through tomorrow, but I wanted to try and reply to everyone and address their concerns. If you can think of anything else I can do but to issue a general telling off, then do let me know. We work on a very ‘we are all in this together’ model and I don’t play the boss so it is hard to do the shouty thing. Everyone here says it’s terrible, they all say it was not them. Harry says he is cool with the whole thing, and yet this is going into a 2nd week. I have to say that although I understand everyone’s concerns, I have to cover so much death and nasty stuff in my online journalism, that I just think why is this so big? It has brought some clients my way so I shouldn’t complain, but it is not pleasant for anyone and although I don’t want to keep on and on about it, I will answer any questions or suggestions and address any issues, but please email them to me.
@ Charlie King:
I understand why Jane was upset, although Harry assures me he was not. What I don’t understand is quite what people want. Squared things with Harry, talked to the staff and looked very angry – well actually I am not that sort of boss – but we had a good discussion and no one owned up but all said it was terrible and should not happen again.
To be fair to The Oxford Editors, I never thought the email / gravatar issue was sinister. As a freelancer I have a number of email addresses that look like mine, but are actually wrappers for a different email address altogether, and they direct mail to my employers rather than me. I don’t know how sophisticated the gravatar software is, but I think it has just put two and two together and made five.
So I think that was perfectly innocent, but LOOKED suspicious in the context of this thread, and fuelled the debate for longer than necessary.
As for the timings of P Gharai’s posts – if it was someone from TOE’s offices, and they were about to partner with BWA, someone may have been googling BWA to see what the buzz was about their new partners, saw all this brouhaha and took the opportunity to create some mischief. Personally I wouldn’t want that person to be working for me, but if TOE can’t find out exactly who it was, what can they do?
Call me naive, but I don’t really believe there is a complex conspiracy going on here. Just coincidence, cock-up and someone with an axe to grind against WW being bored in the office.
@ Rachael Dunlop:
Dear Rachael, Thank you for your very sensible comments. There is little I can do, and I think my engagement her and offer to talk to anyone via email should show that we are not hiding anything.
@ The Oxford Editors:
There is, as far as I know, no way to know after the fact. If the user agent, OS version and such had been different it would be easy but, since all the comments have been made from identical machines (or the same machine), I don’t think there is a way to know.
You could try looking at this blog from each and every computer in your office and type “P [space]” (without the quotes and replace the [space] with an actual space) to see if the name “P Gharai” doesn’t popup (it’s called auto completion, help when you don’t want to type something 500 times
). I don’t remember if the email addresses were identical to someone else but, if they were, you could try the same thing as the aforementioned solution. It’s not a guarantee but it might work.
If that fails, I can’t think of anything else that would give at least a clue.
The Oxford Editors wrote,:
Although, given the article in today’s Times, I wouldn’t partner with BWA for all the tea in China. I see you now have a nice profile page on their website.
@ Rachael Dunlop:
Do you have a link for that article Rachael?
@ Rachael Dunlop:
I haven’t seen the article in the Times, but a friend did tell me she was annoyed that some very good independent publishers were called ‘small’ and therefore could not be a top publisher.
I think people should start taking Independent Publishers more seriously. They are the future for more thoughtful writing.Both Harry and TOE have referred writers to Infinite Ideas. I am not sure what actual wrong doing they are being accused of. I saw something about how high the cost of the Publisher’s Programme is, but I know a lot of editors would charge a great deal more to work with someone for a year, and could never guarantee publication. I certainly never guarantee that I can get a book published, but I wouldn’t consider being published by a small independent as any less valid that being published by the publishers of Katie Price.
Let’s see what happens next, I judge people by how they behave in their dealings with me, and I am yet to have any work dealings with them. If they behave well, then I am only too happy to help any writers they might introduce. In any case, even if they don’t refer anyone to us we always appreciate it when people highlight our services. We are also on the Bridport Prize pages.
Justine wrote,:
Due to the Murdoch firewall, you have to pay to access the website, or go out and buy the paper!
The first winner, Catherine Cooper, speaks in the article about her experiences with BWA and comments further in Martha William’s blog here: http://marthawilliams.org/2011/11/17/whats-the-story-with-bwa/
Should tell you all you need to know.
@ Rachael Dunlop:
Gah! Forgot about the paywall, but thanks for the link. @ Rachael Dunlop:
I haven’t read the article so cannot comment on that. However, I suspect that, as usual, The Oxford Editors are either wilfully or inadvertently missing the point. I am sure the article is not saying that just because a publisher is small, it’s not a good publisher.
I’m pretty sure, even though I haven’t read it, that the article refers to the bad habit of BWA of implying that what they offer is the best thing since sliced bread. To most people, rightly or wrongly, a ‘top’ publisher is a company they’ve head of such as HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin etc, a company that any writer would bite the hand off. The fact that Katie Price is published by such a publisher does not make them rubbish publishers, even though I would agree with you about the literary merits of her books. The same publishers publish Julian Barnes, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie etc etc.
Incidentally, I do not have any questions I wish to ask TOE. All I want is clear information and a straightforward attitude. Same goes for BWA.
@ Sally Zigmond:
Why attack us again, I find this very strange. As I said I did not read the article but was commenting on my friend’s comments about it. As you did not hear what my friend told me about the article, you cannot possibly know if I am ‘missing the point’ or not. She was angry that there was a presumption that only the big publishers could be considered top, and I agreed that in my experience some smaller publishers are among the best.
Now tell me how I could possible have ‘wilfully or inadvertently’ missed the point of an article I said I did not read?
@ Sally Zigmond:
Which part of ‘but I wouldn’t consider being published by a small independent as any less valid that being published by the publishers of Katie Price’, implies that the Price publisher does not also publish good book. The point is that small publishers could be just as good. I think you are reading things into comments that are not there. I am sorry you are so angry at us, I have never met you and cannot imagine where it comes from. We are all free to think as we wish, and say what we think.
@Sally Zigmond
Good morning t’other Sally. I’ve seen the Times article and what you say is absolutely right. The article merely picks up on the fact that the BWA are claiming to be working with ‘top’ publishers, yet the publisher it names is Legend Press, a small press. It makes no further comment about the merit of Legend or any other small presses.
And as you say, if a company says they work with ‘top’ publishers, one might expect them to be working with the likes of Penguin, Harper Collins, Random House etc. The criticism implied is in the expectation that the BWA create in saying ‘top’ publishers, not in the small publishers they are using.
The Oxford Editors wrote:
Sally Zigmond has not attacked you. I do not allow attacks on this blog; and Sally Zigmond does not attack people. She observes, and she questions. You might like to follow her lead on this one.
The Oxford Editors wrote:
No, Sally Zigmond is not at all angry with you, and she has responded very thoughtfully to your earlier comments. I suggested earlier that you might like to work on your reading comprehension: I still think you should.
And stop trying to cloud the issue in hand with your moralistic hand-waving. It didn’t work last time you tried it and it’s not going to work this time, either.
And now, if you’d like to discuss the article about Brit Writers which appeared in yesterday’s Times any further, perhaps the best place to do it would be on my thread about Brit Writers. Thank you!
@ Jane Smith:
This has become rather bad tempered, time to withdraw.
@ Jane Smith:
I am not discussing the article, I DID’T READ IT. I just replied to people who had posted here and mentioned us. I never read The Times or any other Murdoch paper, he put too many of my friends out of a job.
Hope you all come to some good conclusion about all this. Wishing you goo health and good temper.
The Oxford Editors wrote:
You’re having trouble with your reading comprehension again, Cherry. I didn’t suggest that you’d read the article, or that you were discussing it. This is what I wrote:
Jane Smith wrote:
It was a request for anyone interested in discussing the article to do so in the right place. Not every comment that I make on this blog is about you.
Well, you might want to read this one seeing as it discusses your new friends at Brit Writers. It’s useful to know who you’re in bed with. In a business sense, of course.
Dear Jane,
You may not realise but ‘You’re having trouble with your reading comprehension again’ is rude and uncalled for. You want people to engage in debate, but personal comments like that are not the sort of conversation that I like to be part of. I assure you I have a complete grasp of the British language and have spent more than 40 years working on the best British newspapers such as The Financial Times, so I need no lessons on my understanding of the British language.
I really find no purpose in continuing this conversation, it is no longer amusing, but rather nasty.
And Yes I did write the British Language and not the English Language. I am sometimes stumped by American English (no, really I love the way American’s use our language).
The Oxford Editors wrote:
Oh. Oh dear.
The Oxford Editors wrote:
Cherry, please: before you decide you’ve been insulted, take a deep breath and read through the comments to this thread.
You’ve made lots of comments here and several times it’s been obvious from your response that you’ve misunderstood what people have written.
I’m not going to go through all your comments to point out when and how you’ve got things wrong: but I think I’ve asked you three times now to take more care with this. If you check my comments that should give you a lead on a few places where you’ve got things wrong.
I find it very disconcerting that you’re working as an editor and agent when your close reading skills are so lacking: but perhaps the problem is that you’re reacting emotionally and not reading things carefully here, and are letting mistakes creep in. Like that apostrophe error which Rachael highlighted. Whatever the reason for the mistakes that you make, they’re not a good advertisement for your business, I’m afraid.
Can I just add that while I am fairly (okay, very) pedantic about correct English usage, I rarely, if ever, comment on mistakes people make online. We all do it. We type, we hit send, we see the typos and we bang our heads on the keyboard.
The one exception I will make is if someone boasts about their command of the language as a point of professional pride, posting under the name of their business, and that business is being an editor.
Having just caught up with this after a few days away, I would like to say that I was neither angry nor attacking TOE either. I expressed a viewpoint that was consistent with my earlier post (I was happy with the explanation given; I still am) but having read a week of information, advice and exchange between other posters and TOE.
Ironically, after all the huff and puff, TOE outlined specific measures taken in 4 lines in a response to Charlie and the ‘Wiiliam’ gravatar has now gone. Had that been done earlier in the week (with perhaps a gracious ’thanks for the information and advice, everyone’) I wouldn’t have written my post at all!
On a more general point, I take each post in any blog as an individual opinion. I had an interest in internet security hence my involvement in this thread which emerged from the BWA debate but that’s about it. I don’t know most other people on this blog well enough to share a collective opinion and I didn’t agree necessarily with all the comments made. Equally the fact I have an opinion which may differ or disagree with anybody doesn’t make me angry or out to get them. It’s difficult to have any friends on that basis.
I’m sorry Cherry seems to find a level of conspiracy, malevolence and emotion in people’s comments that I don’t see. I can say simply, for my part, it does not exist but I doubt I can persuade her otherwise. However I do wish TOE all the best for the future.
Sorry, Jane, for adding this here but I have no idea where else to write it.
The Oxford Editors wrote:
“And Yes I did write the British Language and not the English Language.”
Sorry to be pedantic. It may be spoken throughout Britain but it is in fact the English Language, derived, with borrowings from and adaptations of, other languages, from Anglo-Saxon.
Britain and British is a political and geographical entity, nothing else.
Like Rachael, I am not in the habit of correction people’s use of and knowledge of language on a public blog because we all make careless mistakes. However, when someone is forever banging on about their knowledge and experience in the use of English, I tend to be more pernickety.
In what capacity did you work at The Financial Times? I have a great deal of time for that newspaper.
Sally, you never have to apologise for being pedantic here. You should know that by now.
And yes. I agree.