Bitcoin Forum

Plagiarism, simply stated is the act of taking somebody else’s work and attempting to portray it as your own.  This can be done orally or in print, music, art, expression, or video.  For the purpose of this article I’ll focus on printed plagiarism.  Obviously that’s the concern here on the forum due it being… uh, well, you know, a forum.

It’s understandable that many bots or lazy spammers take other people’s work and post it willy-nilly to bolster their post count, and spread their spam without significance.  That’s not what I’m aiming to address.  Instead my target audience is those of you who have no such intentions, but are merely here to discuss the pertinent topic, and would like to stay out of trouble while doing so.

I’ve noticed a few cases lately where people have been banned for plagiarism, but after a bit of research it was plainly obvious they made a simple mistake.  Unintentional plagiarism is just as damaging to the reputation of the forum as the spambots’ plagiaristic activities.  So, even a simple mistake is no excuse, and it’s a mistake that is very easily avoided.  Take heed; plagiarism is not taken lightly here.

There’s nothing wrong with citing another’s work to help support your point or argument, or to augment your own words on a particular subject.  So, let’s explore how to do that properly, and avoiding being perma-banned.

The simplest way to properly credit someone for their work is to simply use quotation marks, and add their name or a source after the passage you’re quoting.  Here’s an example:


If you need to attribute the text to a source, make it clear and label it as a source to avoid ambiguity.  Even if you attribute the text to an author, it never hurts to cite a source.  In fact it helps a lot.  Again, make it clear like so:




Another way credit an author for their work is to use the quote function available in the posting window:
Select the text you want to attribute as a quote, then click the “Insert Quote” button https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/bbc/quote.gif on the options panel.

https://i.imgur.com/9cEIyTe.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/fNlMp0T.jpg



You can also attribute the text to an author by adding “author=<name>” within the quote bracket, like my example below:



Example:

Wouldn't this post be better suited be on the Beginners & Help board? I mean the target audience is much better suited there, unless you’re foreseeing a constant mass migration of Newbies to Meta, planning to settle here long term (there’s a temporary one now for obvious reasons)…

Change the title to
[Guide]  Plagiarism and how to avoid it.

 :)

Some are are very intentional they are doing text spinning, paraphrasing , merging more than one sources and using homographs.
All of the above activities again fall in plagiarism and will get the user banned.

Change it to All.

Thanks for the suggestions.

The odds of that happening are very low if you are expressing a unique idea, using your own words, and you have a reasonably good vocabulary.

One of the biggest problems this forum experiences are people who don't read the entire thread before replying.  They reply to the OP without any clue what has already been discussed.  The risk is more when people do that.  But again, although very likely to be a shitpost, it's not likely to be plagiarism. 

You have raised some valid point but truth be told. Where the issus of plagiarism occur is not of just a word or two words but a full sentence. There is no way our thoughts can be the same and even if we want to say the same thing we will say it differently. But that does not give room to paraphrase because that would be so glaring and you begin to wonder that, except these two individuals are the same, they cannot have thoughts that is similar as this.

Also, there are some general statement that one person can lay claim to and the use of it cannot amount to plagiarism. Words such as "health is wealth", "money is life", "there is no dignity in begging", "there are unwritten rules on the forum" etc. Using these words to drive home your point by adding "there is a saying that..." would absolve any form of plagiarism.

You seem to be fishing for how to avoid detection.

It's extremely unlikely for a genuine user to compose a post so similar to another user's post that it can be perceived as plagiarism. Don't copy-paste without quotes or attribution and you'll be fine.

There's a small chance it will happen, but there are still chances like if you post on some megathreads in bitcoin discussion and speculations that has generic questions.
What I saw there is different threads but still have almost the same questions just quite bit different in phrasing. And I saw on report plagiarism thread so many report even a 5-8 words sentence was reported, I just don't know if the user got banned though.

Careful Vod, you're skating on thin ice there.



Oh shit, hoist by my own petard  :(


Double shit.

Thanks for this amazing thread, I didn't know too much about plagiarism and what are the consequences in doing so. But since you include in this thread what is plagiarism and how to avoid it, I think its not necessary to learn what is the consequences in doing plagiarism. I just have to avoid plagiarism by following this thread and learn from it. I've seen many post in this forum that are copied from others thread so its better to read this one.

The only specific way to avoid plagiarism is not to cut corners. For every word copied, someone has written it before. So, focus on creating your own word. Give it a deep thought before posting by understanding what exactly is being said or the topic of discussion before giving a response.

Two, there is no law that says you cannot use content of other people when you fail to acknowledge it, that's when it becomes plagiarism so when you copy other people's work, statement, article, quote reference it and you won't have anything to fear

Small additional to this is putting sources. We can also avoid plagiarism by putting the source below the topics.
Like this:
Source (http://SOURCE HERE)
Sources: LINK (http://LINK) LINK (http://LINK)
Examples
http://i63.tinypic.com/oiajd2.png
http://i67.tinypic.com/2uho20g.png

Specific way? Just create your post by your own words and understanding. There's no way that your original post will be the same by posts of some users by coincidence. Also, don't post on 50+ pages thread having common questions and repeated answers.

LOL, I suspect you were trying to find out if the OP had plagiarized the content he posted?  I'm guilty of the same thing.

But really, why the fuck is a thread like this even needed here?  Is plagiarism that common on this site?

This is indeed educative. Thanks allot because at least I now know how to insert a quote in a text. I have been find it very difficult to do that, but your article just solve my problem. So I am indeed happy to be in this forum, and to learn from insightful experience member like you Sir. Thanks

Plagiarism is actually stealing or taking from someone's else's projects, without full approval of the original owner of the work.....been one's self and discipline his/her self over taking a work that doesn't belongs to you....been creative by reading a vast amount of books from different sources, taking from the author's work and referencing him ain't bad as it shows we had an idea from he's work.
The Consequences cannot be avoided after Plagiarism, definitely those involved in this will definitely be caught and be penalized....so as to avoid been caught we should all venture into making up our own creative works without trying to steal from anyone.

It's more like how to cite someone else's work, regarding 'avoiding' plagiarism, there is simple formula, if you didn't create it, it's not yours.