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A comment on Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations. Parent comment

Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by throw3e98 on Sunday February 15, 2026 @02:43PM (#47026795)
Reading between the lines, this is corporate-speak for "this is a terminable offense for the employees involved." It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process.
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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by g947o on Sunday February 15, 2026 @02:51PM (#47026868)
They might as well wait till business hours to sort things out before publishing a statement. Nobody needs to see such hollow corpo speak on a Sunday.
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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by maxbond on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:09PM (#47027027)
No, admitting fault as soon as possible makes a big difference. It's essential to restoring credibility.

If they had waited until Monday the thread would be filled with comments criticizing them for waiting that long.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by icegreentea2 on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:23PM (#47027185)
Yeah, but the problem is that by not making it clear that additional actions may be coming, they're barely restoring credibility at all, because the current course of action (pulling the article and saying sorry) is like the bare minimal required to avoid being outright liars - a far cry from being credible journalists. All they've done is leave piles of readers (including Ars subscribers) going "wtf".

If they felt the need to post something in a hurry on the weekend, then the message should acknowledge that, and acknowledge that "investigation continues" or something like that

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by maxbond on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:35PM (#47027280)
You don't announce that you're firing people or putting them on a PIP or something. Not only is it gauche but it makes it seem like you're not taking any accountability and putting it all in the employees involved. I assume their AI policy is fine and that the issue was it wasn't implemented/enforced, and I'm not sure what they can do about that other than discipline the people involved and reiterate the policy to everyone else.

What would you have liked to see them announce?

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by icegreentea2 on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:55PM (#47027447)
They just needed to expand "At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident." into "We are still investigating, however at this time, this appears to be an isolated incident". No additional details required.

And yes, it looks like Ars is still investigating (bluesky post by one of the authors of the retracted article) https://bsky.app/profile/kyleor.land/post/3mewdlloe7s2j

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by g947o on Sunday February 15, 2026 @05:19PM (#47028254)
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/um-what-happened-to-th...

> we probably won't have something to report back until next week.

The forum thread is locked.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by lapcat on Sunday February 15, 2026 @02:49PM (#47026844)
> It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process.

That's not how it works. It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door.

Sometimes they just snail mail the employee's personal possessions from their desk.

Moreover, Ars Technica publishes articles every day. Aside from this editor's note, they published one article today and three articles yesterday. So "holiday weekend" is practically irrelevant in this case.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by danaris on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:37PM (#47027300)
> That's not how it works.

Some places.

> It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door.

Some places.

You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done.

It's standard op nowadays to acknowledge that your experiences are not universal, and that different organizations operate differently.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by lapcat on Sunday February 15, 2026 @03:45PM (#47027356)
> You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done.

Neither. I just meant it's common.

The comment I replied to said, "they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process."

I think the commonality of the practice shows that Ars Technica doesn't need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process, if office staff is even gone in the first place (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people.

Does Ars Technica have a "policy" to only fire people on weekdays? I doubt it. Imagine reading that in the employee handbook.

Besides, President's Day is not a holiday that businesses necessarily close for. Indeed, many retailers are open and have specific President's Day sales.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by trivialities777 on Sunday February 15, 2026 @04:10PM (#47027578)
> (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people.

They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to external firms.

Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by lapcat on Sunday February 15, 2026 @04:24PM (#47027713)
> Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.

Judging from today's editors note, if things need to happen more quickly, then they do.

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by trivialities777 on Sunday February 15, 2026 @04:52PM (#47028001)
That's true of every executive position, but not necessarily for HR or legal. Especially if they use an external firm.
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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by danaris on Sunday February 15, 2026 @05:36PM (#47028429)
You're constructing quite a lot of hypotheticals to justify not waiting 3 more days to condemn Ars Technica for not firing this guy.

Can we not just have a little patience anymore?

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Re:Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricate... by lapcat on Sunday February 15, 2026 @06:16PM (#47028765)
You're putting a lot of words in my mouth. I didn't call for anyone to be fired.

throw3e98 is the one who suggested that Ars Technica was going to fire people, but not for a few days. I merely suggested that if anyone was getting fired, they would likely already be fired.

At this point, however, I don't think anyone is getting fired, not this weekend and not Tuesday either: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p

I don't condemn Ars Technica for not firing the guy, but I do condemn Ars Technica for the terse hand-wave of an editor's note with no explanation, when on the same day we get a fuller story only from someone's personal social media account.

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