The Virginian-Pilot
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NORFOLK
The city unveiled a new website this week, in part to celebrate new City Manager Marcus Jones’ first day on the job.
It featured a slick new look, with convenient links to city departments and colorful revolving photographs of Norfolk on its front page.
Turns out, the website was largely a copy of the city of Seattle’s website.
Seattle officials found out and called Norfolk.
Late Wednesday night, Norfolk’s old site went back online.
Hap Cluff, Norfolk’s director of information technology, said his counterpart in Seattle, Bill Schrier, told him the sites looked too much alike.
“He’s a friend and he had a concern, so I took it down,” Cluff said. “I didn’t want to cause him any angst.”
Cluff said Norfolk did not violate any copyrights and that in addition to borrowing heavily from Seattle, his department used elements from recently redesigned websites in the cities of Denver, and nearby Virginia Beach and Richmond.
“We used our own code and developed it our own way,” he said. “We’ll go back and make sure they’re comfortable in Seattle that it doesn’t look too much like their stuff.”
The similarities were reported Wednesday on www.slog.thestranger.com, a blog on the website of an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle.
According to the site, Norfolk’s website promoted “Seattle Channel Videos” as well as links that led to the Denver website. There was a news release on the Norfolk website entitled “Seattle Symphony to play free concert at City Hall,” the blog reported.
Cluff said he could not find those links on Norfolk’s website.
“We didn’t put it there,” he said. “We can’t explain it.”
It will be several weeks before Norfolk debuts its next new site. When that happens, other cities are welcome to copy the city’s site, Cluff said.
“We would be flattered” if that happens, he said.
Flattery works both ways.
“We are flattered that they like our website design,” wrote Aaron Pickus, a spokesman for the city of Seattle, in an e-mail.
Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com
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you would figure as many people that the City IT department has that they would have one person that could design a website on their own. They copied another cities webpage. Isn't that like cheating? Didn't they violate copyright laws? What the heck. I guess this is just another black eye for Norfolk. And as some other commenters stated no one will be held accountable for this either... unbelievable
No Wonder
No wonder so many of the students in Norfolk resist working in school; if the city leaders making the six figure salaries aren't willing to work hard to earn their money, why should teenagers be willing to work hard to earn grades?
Is ANYBODY surprised?
With as much fraud and corruption in the city of Norfolk is anybody surprised at the plaigerizing of another city's web site? I mean honestly, this is news?
Let me play the rest of the story out for you: no charges will be filed against city employees or leaders, the web designer will get a 100k separation bonus and full bennies after being asked to resign, business taxes will go up, citizens will be asked to tighten their belts and nothing more will be heard of it.
who is designing this website?
I understand seeing another site and gaining ideas from it, but this is ridiculous. How incredibly sad that there wasn't enough talent or imagination between the graphic designers to come up with their own website. What kind of person is running this department and why did they only hire people who were not qualified for the job? If they need a fabulous website designer I can recommend one who could actually come up with her own ideas, logos, designs and the ability to create an outstanding site without ripping anyone else off. Pitiful.
What's the big deal, it's only plagerizing
Joe Biden stole someones intellectual property and now he is the vice president of the united states.
If City officials have a hard time understanding it is wrong to keep two sets of books, they will have a REALLY hard time understanding the concept of intellectual property.
It's good to see though that the new city manager is another cut of the same cloth as the rest of the folks wasting our money.
The hits just keep on coming dont they?
Poor Norfolk.
City government populated by 100k plus per year clueless fools. Good at pushing off blame and burning up credit cards but not good for much else.
Sadly it will never change.
Wow!
This city is just an embarrassment in sooooooo many ways!! Yeah on the whole...It's not as bad as keeping two sets of books on major project that was fraudulently acquired, but it certainly speaks to the poison that is everything about how this city is run, from the top down. PLEASE if there is a god in heaven help keep my discipline true. To pay off my debt and get OUT!
Just Be Norfolk
I'm kind of expecting to see them rename Waterside to Pike Place Market. But of course, they'd probably argue that they thought it up themselves. Wink, wink. A copied website is pretty much where the similarities between these places end. Drop all the delusions of grandeur already, and just be Norfolk.
Seen this before
It’s obvious that whomever designed Norfolk’s website plagiarized others.
This wasn’t an accident or similarity. There’s no way Seattle’s events can appear in Norfolk’s unless the source code was cut & pasted.
Bill Schrier (Seattle) notified Bill Cluff (Norfolk) not of his ‘concern’ as printed…but more like “You stole our material”!
Try this - click on VIEW on the monitor. Scroll down to SOURCE…it’s all there. That’s what happened.
Where have I seen this before? My second to last USS SHIP where as an LCPO I wanted the Master-at Arms to generate a an improved Physical Security Instruction. What did the Chief MAA do? He used USS LASTSHIP yet didn't get all the Teddy Roosevelt (CVN) out of it. Yet claimed h
As someone who was born and
As someone who was born and raised in Norfolk, but now lives in Seattle, I'm understandably shocked. Though I'm unemployed in Washington State, this sorta validates in a humorous way why I've left Virginia to live in the Emerald City.