imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

[roddy]

Apparently that one 'slipped through the net'. Interestingly, posts from other forums

http://www.bjexpat.com

http://www.alloexpat.com

http://treehouse.ofb.net

also slipped through the net. About ready to give up on this one, if they're determined to keep doing it there isn't really very much I can do.

[liuzhou]

Seems to be down again. Strange.

[roddy]

I'll be charitable and assume they are busy fixing the problem.

HA!

[wtanaka]

Roddy, thanks for pointing this out to me, though I do tend to agree with the sentiment:

if they're determined to keep doing it there isn't really very much I can do.

Many things in China are copied, from the DVDs one can purchase on the street to the furniture in bars. People used to come into our bar and measure our furniture. (sh) It's not the first time that I've noticed a site copying The Treehouse.

Their forums also seem to behind a registration wall at the moment, which (for now) minimizes the effect.

[roddy]

I've been told that the 'Ask China' section is just shut down. If and when it'll reopen I don't know. Meanwhile, what size is your chair?

Roddy

[Quest]

Does anyone have a test account for that site?

[roddy]

This gets funnier and funnier. Linese.com have been ripping off posts from the forum - dropped them a line, no response, not going to worry about it. And now . . . this. List of forums look familiar to anyone? Perhaps if you look around you may find a post or two that looks familiar too . . .

This guy appears to have paid for the VB software - costs about $100 a year, copied the forums' . . . forums. . . and then copied and pasted in a bunch of posts.

Fortunately the administrator has made his skype details public, so I will be able to discuss this misunderstanding with him later.

[djwebb2004]

Roddy, this post http://www.mandarinlearner.com/showthread.php?t=28

seems to be a copy of one about the CTEST from chinese-forums - that heifeng posted it. It is the same!

Heifeng is now called Jesse!

[roddy]

Yeah, most of the content - the good stuff anyway - is 'borrowed' from here. They seem to have given up though, so I'm not going to bother chasing it.

[heifeng]

seems to be a copy of one about the CTEST from chinese-forums - that heifeng posted it. It is the same!

Heifeng is now called Jesse!

What! the nerve of it all! what kind of 黑道 name is Jesse!!! They couldn't even have copied and used a cool web name....at least they didn't rip off my polar bear, that would have meant war!

[roddy]

And one more

Amusingly enough, I found this particular one when they emailed me to ask if they could advertise on the forums. The answer, so far, is no.

[gougou]

Well, at least those guys are honest about it. The forum they posted this in is called: "The Cream - This forum has very good threads moved from other forums by moderator"

All that is missing now is some credit...

[roddy]

Yeah, but the non-cream forums have all done the same.

[imron]

and another one. I love how at the bottom of every page, they have "Copyright © 2006 中文书院.

[roddy]

Not one site that's done this appears to have benefited from it in any way. Have emailed this new one, doubt I'll get a response. There are a couple of others floating about as well, one of which even managed to mess up the Chinese encoding and has therefore pasted reams and reams of garbage into its site. I'd like to have a big name and shame list, but to be honest it would probably just triple their visitor numbers.

Thanks for pointing that one out, how did you find it? Useful to know what they're up to, even if there's a limited amount I can do about it.

Edit: this one might be particularly amusing for you, imron. The pinyin tool you've all been waiting for. And will keep waiting, because the idiots haven't copied the attachment. That particular forum I reported to Vbulletin for piracy and emailed them requesting they remove the borrowed content. They seem to have removed almost all of it and shifted to phpbb, so something worked.

[imron]

I was doing a google search for a post on the forums, but didn't bother to add the site:chinese-forums specifier, and lo-and-behold, there was chineseyard.

Haha that's great about Pinyinput. Doing a search for that also reveals http://www.zlsu.com/ which seems to be a combination of Chinese and computer programming forums - though like mandarinlearner they also didn't bother to include the install file.

[roddy]

Look familiar?

This is particularly disappointing as I know frontiers have got business from the forums and they actually used to advertise here.

[simonlaing]

I took a look at that last post's site, their color scheme on the bulletin board and other things semme very similar.

The posts seem interesting as well since several of them seem like chinese teachers posing as western students asking questions on learning Chinese. Some of the posts don't even go through the pretense, the poor grammar and Chinese word choice are dead give aways.

The post on Eating etiquette is a dead give away on it. It is quite long as well. Are they a big Mandarin school in Beijing?

They seem to have quite a few CHinese people posting. How often do you check if people have copied the forum?

[roddy]

The visual similarities are just because we're running on the same software, which is nothing surprising - there are thousands of sites doing the same.

Frontiers are, I would say, one of the better established schools in Beijing.

I rarely go looking for people copying content, but if someone points something out or they do something daft which makes it obvious I'll do what I can about it. Which is usually nothing.

[roddy]

Been a while, so here's a new one for you -

Net2English.com.

Any of those posts look familiar? Thought they might. And amusingly enough they've even opted to copy and paste the adverts as well . . .

Hellomandarin.com are to blame for that one - if anyone has contact info for them let me know, been in touch via their site, but no response. . .