Three days ago, a guide on New World was almost completely copied from ZoS Gaming. For this, the editorial team would like to apologize and discuss the consequences. A statement from MeinMMO’s editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski.
Dear Community,
Today, we received an email from ZoS Gaming, informing us that one of their guides appeared almost identically on our site. It is their trophy guide for New World, which contains tables for various trophy buffs.
Exactly these tables ended up almost identically in a trophy guide on MeinMMO. The source was not mentioned, nor was ZoS Gaming asked for permission to use the table.
We have since taken the trophy guide with the tables from ZoS Gaming offline.
This should not have happened and does not meet our ethical and journalistic standards. We have terminated the collaboration with the author who created the guide for us with immediate effect.
We have already checked to see if there were any more copied contents in recent weeks. However, after our review, we did not find anything unusual.
While we place great importance on correcting and controlling our texts, we trust that authors write their texts themselves. This is usually the case, which makes this incident even more significant. I am very proud of my team and read their content every day with great joy.
I am very sorry about the incident.
There are mistakes that are forgivable. There are probably no authors who have not encountered some honest research errors. This also applies to me. Such things should of course not happen, but no one works completely without mistakes.
When we are pointed out errors, we check the situation, thank the person, and correct the mistakes transparently. We are always grateful for and open to feedback and tips, as we strive for continuous improvement.
However, we have zero tolerance for copying content. If foreign content of any kind – such as citing reddit threads or referencing a video on YouTube – appears on our site, we will indicate that. The transparent handling of sources is extremely important to us.
We know from painful experience how frustrating it is to put a lot of effort and time into our own content, only to find it copied somewhere.
At this point, I would like to personally apologize, as well as on behalf of the editorial team, to ZoS Gaming and to you, dear community.
It is extremely important to us that you can trust us and that we deliver clean, journalistic work here. This includes careful handling of sources.
In the meantime, we have already communicated with ZoS Gaming about this and were able to clarify the matter. Thank you to ZoS Gaming for responding to us so quickly and considerately.
We will now re-examine internally how we can prevent something like this in the future. Because primarily, the article should not have appeared on the site at all, and we take full responsibility for that.
I leave you with warm regards and thank you for your attention.
