Editing User Friendly (section)

=== Ideas ===
In a 2001 interview, Frazer estimated that about 40% of strip ideas came from reader submissions, and occasionally he would get submissions that he would use "unmodified".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.salon.com/1999/10/27/user_friendly/|title=Cartoon for coders|website=[[Salon.com]]|first=Janelle|last=Brown|date=1999-10-27|access-date=2024-03-02}}</ref>  He also said that he educated himself on the operating system [[Berkeley Software Distribution|BSD]] in order to make informed jokes about it.<ref name="autogenerated12" />

In 2009, Frazer was found to be copying punchlines found in the [[MetaFilter]] community. After one poster found a comment on MetaFilter that was similar to a ''User Friendly'' comic, users searched and found several other examples.<ref name=":3">{{Citation|title=Social Pressure Can Solve The 'Copying' Problem Even Without Copyright|date=2009-02-23|url=http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090223/1106473864.shtml|publisher=[[Techdirt]]}}.</ref> Initially, Frazer posted on MetaFilter saying "I get a flurry of submissions and one-liners every week, and I haven't checked many of them at all, because I rarely had to in the past" but later admitted that he had taken quotes directly from the site.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Wha Wha Wibble|url=https://metatalk.metafilter.com/17390/Wha-Wha-Wibble|access-date=2020-11-16|website=metatalk.metafilter.com|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3" /> On his website, Frazer said, "I offered no attribution or asked for permission [for these punchlines], over the last couple of years I've infringed on the expression of ideas of some (who I think are) clever people. Plagiarized. My hypocrisy seems to know no bounds, as an infamous gunman was once heard saying. I sincerely apologize to my readers and to the original authors. I offer no excuses and accept full blame and responsibility. As a result, I'll be modifying the cartoons in question. No, it won't happen again. Yes, I've immersed myself in mild acid."<ref>{{Cite web|first=J.D.|last=Frazer|date=2009-02-23|title=[Illiad] BEYOND THE PALE AND AN APOLOGY|url=http://ars.userfriendly.org/news/?id=1235411196|access-date=2020-11-16|website=User Friendly|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190518013109/http://ars.userfriendly.org/news/?id=1235411196|archive-date=2019-05-18}}</ref>

While published books still contain at least one cartoon with a punchline taken from MetaFilter, Frazer has removed these cartoons from the website, or updated them to quote and credit the source of the punchlines, and fans searched through the archives to ensure that none of the other punchlines have been plagiarized.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ars.userfriendly.org/news/?id=1235699201|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190621044213/http://ars.userfriendly.org/news/?id=1235699201|title=[Illiad] FIXED, AND WILL CONTINUE FIXING|date=2009-03-13|access-date=2024-10-04|archive-date=2019-06-21|first=J.D.|last=Frazer|website=User Friendly}}</ref>