Only the third guy seems learning a new hability. If we were more rigorous, the path is a study comparing diverse online projects. I expect someone already done this.
Now some people are bothered because a guy who sells a bunch of books, made up quotes. Well, in academy this is the rule, most citations are just skimmed and put in papers just because they sound arcane/profound. If people are buying, shame on editors, who not revised well.
Even worse, why on earth the source is more important than content? Status seeking is what people do when trying to signal intelligence. Maintaining a track of published book/posts like most writers/popscience/ do is not easy. If you are already on the staff, is more efficient to manage to become permanent, then trying to be "moral". And all this time, only now someone accused him. I doubt very seriusly he'll become unemployed for this.
There's no hope, all taxi guys will be unemployed. Not now, but soon. And this trend will continue, everyone, even programmers in the not so far future have to study and become architects.