Bitcoin Forum

Forum has rule against plagiarism.




Recently some plagiarized reports were handled without any punishment, no account ban (permanently or temporarily), no signature ban.

Is this rule still applied?

If it is not applicable, please edit those topics and that rule.

I'm pretty sure they still punish plagiarizers. It's just that mods can make mistakes when judging posts from time to time (which is normal, they're human as well).

If you really think they passed over a good number of plagiarized posts, go create a thread so other people can check.

There is an updated list[1] of banned forum users and upon verifying, I've seen some recently reported accounts on the list, indicating that the forum administrators are still actively banning user accounts. Its just that it isn't real time.

[1]  https://loyce.club/bans/banned.html

Can you give names of users that plagiarized and not banned? What update do you want more than strict rules against plagiarism? I was surprised you did not come up with as many as possible users that plagiarized and not banned which is the only way you can defend what you are talking about. Above all, as there is plagiarism rule, plagiarism will still be solved case by case. I have noticed this forum do not take plagiarism lightly.

I already created a similar topic, and everything was discussed in sufficient detail there.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5388389.msg59430082#msg59430082

A copy will always remain a copy. And this rule still works: moderators block accounts.
But this rule does not work when there is a paraphrase. This is the case for the last case, which is presented on the topic of plagiarism. Here, of course, there are questions. A person writes posts only to fill the quota set by his subscription company, and as we can see, he is completely far from sports. And just such a paraphrase looks very bright and noticeable. This user would probably be helped by the prohibition of signatures for any period so that he would accept and realize his mistakes.

Be that as it may, this topic has already been discussed, and we are powerless to change these rules. The moderators have their own views on this. However, I don't think it's best to ignore plagiarism altogether. Since this will bring the forum back to the side of spam and garbage, which is something everyone here seems to be fighting hard against.

As the rules are unofficial, and there has not been a radical change, i.e. plagiarism is not allowed, but as Charles-Tim says it is handled on a case by case basis, I don't think anything needs to be changed. The only thing is that in some cases someone will not be banned for a case of plagiarism that is considered minor, that was a long time ago and that was only one time.

I don't know whether that's true or not, but since paraphrasing is form of plagiarism it shouldn't be allowed. Thinking of it it may be even worse as that implies person knowing that he is actually cop[y/pasting but is trying to avoid being detected.



Then there is this case (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg60389487#msg60389487) where user plagiarized multiple times, not long time ago and still no punishment whatsoever.

Well, and also suchmoon has repeatedly complained about not handling plagiarism reports in the WO thread:

Remove "Report to moderator" from Wall Observer (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400267.0)

As far as I know, plagiarism is not allowed. If it were, the unofficial rule would have to be changed and it would have to be announced in Meta.

The bad thing is that no one explains why these cases are not handled and leave us all in doubt.

Should prolly be my first time making contribution to stuff's about plagiarism.
 Are reporting plagiarism meant only DT member's ?

 If Yes, I'll back off. If No, then I'mma report. It seems inner the gambling discussion ends there are no much eyes down that ends and both old members with the Legendary ranks also fall for that. ( Seen less from them lower ranks ).

I'm only saying, I've seen some copy pasted post in the gambling ends, maybe all because they're gambling they aren't taken seriously as other board's.  Please DT member's or those assigned to report plagiarism should also look over that ends.

Thanks.

Report those posts. Reporting in general, and reporting plagiarism is not reserved for DT members or anyone else. Report such cases via the button and/or on the Report Plagiarism thread. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0)

I don't think the plagiarism rules have changed on this forum.
I also don't think the rule on plagiarism should be changed or abolish.
I don't know how long you have been on this forum, but due to the many opportunities to earn money through paid signature campaigns on this forum, we have a lot of members who spam the forum with their posts, and some even copy other people's texts or posts to meet the required number of posts in their campaigns.
If we didn't have the option to report such members, this forum would be a much worse place with too much spam.
Admins and moderators probably can't  review all reports by members about plagiarism in a short time, but that doesn't mean that the anti-plagiarism rule no longer applies.
If a member accidentally or unintentionally makes a mistake and forgets to add a source of information, based on his previous merits and contributions to the forum, he can request forgiveness from permaban, but such requests are rarely accepted.

I personally understood the message that the administration is obviously sending in a quiet way - and the message is that most of those who are at least Jr. rank and above deserve a second chance in terms of not being permabanned. However, there are exceptions when several members report someone for plagiarism, and these things are still a little harder to ignore.

The fact is that the forum is not doing very well in the sense that its base of quality members is increasing and that the intention is to try to keep everyone, even if they break the rules. Plagiarism is still a violation of the rules, but apparently we should no longer expect such severe punishments as before.

Of course you don't have to have DT status to report someone for plagiarism.


If you see copy/paste without reference link, feel free to report. Just make sure to provide the evidence for your claim.


I kinda agree with that more lenient and forgiving approach (if that's the case) by not giving perma ban immediately, but we sometimes see no action taken whatsoever, not even a signature ban (which should be minimum imho) and I think that's not the smartest approach, regardless of the fact that amount of active users is constantly decreasing.

There is a paradox as far as moderators or admin are concerned when it comes to plagiarism because if they temporarily or permanently ban a user it will always evoke a reaction from those that think the ban was excessive and will use another plagiarism case as a comparator.

There are several cases where supporters of those permanently banned have come out to make pro-statements but forum admin find themselves in a difficult position because their actions in addressing plagiarism cases have to come across in a particular way where the allegation of favouritism cannot be levelled at them. Legendary and Hero rank members may not take kindly to Jnr rank members may not agree with them being shown a lenient hand.

If copy and pasting 5 or 10 posts, without reference link, is safe, no ban in any kind. Reports are wasting time.

Rule in those topics should be updated too.

I have to agree that given the current situation, reporting plagiarism is the utter waste of time and judging by lack of activity in the Report plagiarism (copy/paste) here. Mods: please give temp or permban as needed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0) topic, members are slowly realizing that. 

Somehow we went from people getting perma banned for copy/pasting one sentence few years ago while Newbie/Jr members (which was definitely overkill)  to allowing copy/paste on the mass scale without any consequences whatsoever. Some middle ground is definitely needed here.

I think that everything is quite clear for everyone who thinks a little better, as well as that nothing will change because some members of the forum are not satisfied with the way some things are going. The forum is completely private and depends on the decision of one person who obviously has no need to comment on the current situation when it comes to plagiarism. If we are honest, there are much more serious things on the forum that are not moderated, and I would not be surprised if plagiarism becomes one of those things.

The campaign signature rule "5 merits in last 120 days" could be supplemented with the rule "no plagiarism in the last 120 days".

Then who will be responsible for checking participants' posts in the last 120 days without plagiarism? I think it will take a while to go through each participant that will be accepted, but the bottom line is still good for the forum.

Plagiarism will still be handled by the moderator on a case by case basis and will continue to be carried out. I don't think that has changed although on several occasions it has started to be questioned due to slightly reduced handling. Even without plagiarism in the last 120 days, campaign participants can still be removed from the campaign if they are banned for committing plagiarism while in the campaign.

I don't that Lucius was serious when he suggested that as a signature campaign requirement. Then again, looking at how situation is developing, maybe we see that in not so distant future.

All the arguments on which the porridge is based are controversial and have not been confirmed, so I do not think that we can judge the conclusions received and therefore we must take into account that the process is done manually and that each case is different from the other.

Personally, I do not see a person who spent more than a year doing plagiarism because it means that all his efforts have become zero, so most of those who do this are beginners.

Rules are enforced based on the judgement of the enforcer(s).

It was discussed here that Theymos themselves thought a perma ban was too strict for plagiarism and efforts might've been made to change this (I couldn't work out if the is was just speculation though).

Most mods don't mod the same way, most boards don't allow it either (some boards have their own set of specific rules and some don't - think of making a duplicate thread on a d&t board because something has changed and it's considered more appropriate to be rediscussed for example).

If the rules are enforced based on the opinion or judgement of the enforcer that makes a lot of sense because it adds the element of issues being resolved in a timely manner. If nuisance posters were banned sooner rather than later it would be a good thing.

I know this does not happen but say for example the reporting involves the moderators picking up the report only to then pass it to other moderators for discussion and evaluation then it probably means swift action was not taken.

Having a moderator (an enforcer) interpret the rules and make his judgement with a huge amount of leeway means allegations of ignorance or favouritism can be levelled at them and that is something that should be avoided for the sake of community cohesion therefore one rule with strict enforcement would eliminate that potential allegation and problem.

The existing rule is so fine there's nothing to be change, the most important thing here is mods need to take action more faster against those people who do plagiarism so that they can clean up this forum and people can read original contents from real people who made extra ordinary efforts on their post.

I think there is a bit more to it than that. Some members receive a temporary ban while others a permanent ban depending not only on what they have plagiarised (or allegedly plagiarised) but also depending on how the moderator receiving the report applies their own discretion. As mentioned before that can lead to accusations including those of favouritism.

See what Theymos said in the quote above, it clearly read and i quote ..
So from the above, theymos didn't make mention of some cases that can be considered minor, and he also didn't state that if they find the plagiarized content late, they will pardon the poster, he said that the poster will be banned even they find the plagiarized content years after it was posted.
So what I personally understand from this is that, the rule against plagiarism is still in full effect, that they are currently not taking actions on plagiarized contents right now does not mean they wont take action on it forever, they probably might be very busy with some other very important stuffs at the moment.
There is this parable in my place which says.....That you did not see flames or smoke in a fireplace does not mean the fire is not burning.

I grew up in this forum with fear of plagiarism because I knew that it's punishment is pamban, and I wouldn't want anything that could make my account banned or red tagged. That is why I have to be very true to myself and the forum.
I first saw this kind of thread when lovesmayfamilis opened it and I read and understood many things from the thread.

What I understand is that moderators are being more lenient in treating plagiarism rules than before. It could be that they understand that the banned accounts still return to the forum.

When they say about handing plagiarism case by case, it means that if a moderator is in bad mood, he can ban you outrightly, while another moderator whose wife put to bed will delete the post and forgive the plagarist. It means there is no rule then.

Now it has being changed. Even you made many plagiarism posts and we detected it, a few days or a several weeks later, you are still fine.

Even if you made it with financial incentives. In the past, forum gives second chance to members who were perma banned because of plagiarism if they made it not because of financial incentives and if they have good net effect.

Now I feel like the first condition is almost moved, just a second condition is in effect according to reports against plagiarism and complaints of some reporters.

No full effect at all if you see complaints from reporters and if you see this thread has no engagement from staffs, moderators, admins.

No temp ban (not allowed to post), no signature ban, nothing.

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No issue if from now, it is a new way to move as we are now in same train, with same rules but it is unfair for people who were banned 6 months, 1 years, 2 years in the past.

I had the same thought when I read OP's post.  A statement like that is meaningless without specific details, and it makes it hard to criticize anyone or anything if you can't verify what's true or not.

But as to the question in the thread's title: Hell no.  The rules, punishment for breaking them, and enforcement by the mods are all pretty strict and consistent.  There's probably no way to make the penalty for plagiarism harsher, and there's no way in hell I'd support any slackening of how things are.  If the rules were relaxed, this forum would quickly turn into cryptotalk.org V2, i.e, a free for all for retarded halfwits who just want to slap down as many posts as possible with no regard for quality or honesty.

To anyone here who isn't aware, that permaban you get if you plagiarize content for a post is absolutely necessary, given that the majority of members here have enormous incentive to take the lazy road and steal a sentence/paragraph/entire article and claim it's their own.  Why?  Because more posts=more $.  That's why those fuckers who've broken the rules need to have their balls broken as fast and hard as possible.  If bitcointalk were lax about it, said fuckers would overrun the place and we'd have a grand royale melee taking place.

Starting from this case (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg60389487#msg60389487). Starting to copy and paste, paraphrase after joining Livecasino.io campaign that is pay per post. I see the user is good enough but at least temp ban for posting is good to show the forum still has rules for plagiarism.

I am shocked when I read comment from reporters that there are more cases like that. I don't know what are other cases but reporters said they got same Good result for their reports, but no ban in any mode.

Hell no. Forum has good reporters and there are legends fight against spam, plagiarism, scam. We are not going to become a Cryptotalk.org v2,v3, hell no.

I wrote above. Now it is excluded from forum rule. Even no temp ban to post, no signature ban, nothing. Moderator only deletes plagiarism then it's done.

I don't know if you noticed, but rules are already more relaxed, or to be more precise mods are more relaxed when enforcing those rules. Just take a look at Mr.right85 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg60389487#msg60389487) case. If that is not worth at least signature ban, then I don't know what is.


I think that some middle ground approach would be much better than just permanently banning anyone who plagiarize. Those who come here only for the sole purpose of leeching off this forum probably won't be stopped with ban as they will create new account and start from scratch, while genuine user (its possible for genuine user to made such mistake) probably won't come ever again. Unfortunately, forum went from perma bans for copying one sentence to allowing signature spammers copy/pasting dozens of posts with no consequences whatsoever.

Actually the rules are official, but the sticky thread and list in Meta is unofficial. It seems really weird saying this. Maybe the Bitcointalk governing body didn't give it's approval for the list to be official :P. The title of the thread says "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules".

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Everyone has noticed that the overall activity is dropping and this couldn't have been missed by the forum admins either. In a situation where people are leaving Bitcointalk, being less active, and losing general interest in the forum culture, the admins have two choices: they can continue to ban people for plagiarizing a few posts (even if it happened many years ago), or they don't do it as much as they did in the past and only ban the worst of the plagiarizers giving many others a free pass. They went for the 2nd option.   

So you mean that they should update the rules that plagiarism is allowed  :o  No way.
Plagiarism is not only the rule of this forum but it is a global condition that no cannot copy paste someone else text anywhere specially in the forums and sites.

Only because few of the cases are not handled or delayed, does not mean that bitcointalk mods have different opinion for plagiarism . Sooner or later, all the accounts involved in plagiarism will be banned.

Pmalek are the rules really official? I do not think they are, since they aren't "hard rules" i wouldn't refer to them as being completely official. On the topic, the reason why the mods might be lenient on plagiarism cases could be because Theymos himself is for leniency and for cases to be handled or considered individually.

Your reply makes me wonder if it would be possible to integrate a reliable method to report plagiarism, run the reported post through one of those plagiarism checkers online and return the result to one of the mods on duty.

A better alternative could be also integrate an algorithm which scanned the posts right after being send, so they could get deleted automatically, or something similar, i am aware this could create some false-positive scenarios though. Assume that such system could be very expensive considering the amount of traffic the forum has, perhaps the admin could whitelist those with legendary rank.

Just an idea.

Do you read my opening post and only 2 pages of this thread so far?

I read that the forum is the first and very few cryptocurrency forums that ban users with plagiarism and is the strictest forum with this rule.

Again, if you read less than 40 posts in this thread, you should not write this one. If you can not read less than 40 posts and follow the discussion, please post and spam somewhere else.

Reports are handled as Good and no punishment, no temp ban to post, no temp signature ban. Only reported posts were deleted.

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I don't call on perma ban against someone but if the rule is reduced and becomes softer, three topics I quoted should be edited like 1st offense, 2nd offense, 3rd offense, 4th (last offense), then you will be perma banned.

As official as they can be. One of the mods said the same thing a while back. That's how I remembered that the rules can be considered official. No idea where to find that post though or who said it. It could have come from hilariousandco or Welsh as they are the most active ones when it comes to posting and answering questions. But each case is still considered individually and the punishments differ from person to person.

The sticky thread Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.msg7955645#msg7955645) are written by mprep so why don't check mprep's opinion on it.

The rules may seem unofficial but they is used officially, even memebers on this forum are taking it officially, referring to it when someone go against the same unofficial rules. Example are 'no referral code (ref link) spam', 'no on-forum altcoin giveaways' and many others. Truly they are unofficial but the punishment are official and people refer to the rules for immediate actions to be taken by the moderator or admin. Even if the rules are not official, they are still official as they can be.

OK, good find. As you can see from the quote you shared, mprep is calling the list unofficial. Not the rules per se. It's an unofficial list. The word "unofficial" is an adjective describing what kind of list it is. So, it's a list of (official) Bitcointalk rules. It's better we consider them official because if we break them, the admins have valid reasons to ban us. Why the rules are not applied equally on everyone or not at all in some cases, is something entirely different.   

I know from bitter experience that you should not joke with any kind of copying. And those who are not banned today may receive a ban at the most unexpected time. Therefore, all of us, since there are exceptions to the rules, who to ban and who not, you should not worry too much.

One day, this merciless plagiarism checker bot that worked in 2019 may come to life again. And then everyone will be caught, those who copied three words and those who copied entire articles.

It's just a matter of time. All that can depend on us now is also to report violations, especially since it does not take much time.