As I said last time I saw this topic, I do think Edwards is to blame but I wouldn’t go so far as saying he should be fired. “People should be responsible for their tool usage” is not the same as “every infraction deserves capital punishment”; sometimes scolding is enough. Plus having to choose between taking sick time off vs. his vacation time shows signs of a systemic problem within Ars Technica.
But hey, easier to offer someone in sacrifice than to solve the issues that prompted him to do that dumb shit in first place, right?
If his account of what happened is true and it was a genuine one-time notes mixup mistake, sure, but that’s basically the least bad possible explanation. If it’s instead what it looks like, I’d say he would deserve to be fired.
Let’s roll for a moment with the worst hypothesis, and say that: his account of the facts is all bullshit, he has been submitting slop for a long time, and he only came up with his “I was sick” because this time he got caught on it.
In that hypothesis, Ars Technica has been covering his arse for a long time. Either due to excessive leniency (they caught him other times, and did nothing about it) or sheer incompetence (lack of some internal review process, either pre- or post-publication). Basically giving him the OK sign to keep doing it. Then the timing of firing him shows AT’s issue wasn’t Edwards submitting slop, but giving in to public outrage.
In either case the primary blame goes to Ars Technica, not to the individual worker. The only situation I can say they would be handling this right is if this was his second time doing this shit, in that time he was privately scolded and warned (“this shit is not tolerable, do it again and you’re out”), and still went for it. I find it unlikely.
And from our (both of us) PoV there’s absolutely no info to know if he did this shit more times. In that situation I don’t think we should assume he did.
When your job is to be truthful and check your facts, or the company may be held liable for slander, you should indeed be fired if you didn’t do your job.
That’s such a simplistic and draconian take that I won’t even waste my time saying why it’s bad.
Good.
