Bitcoin Forum

I came across this thread - Report plagiarism (copy/paste) here. Mods: please give temp or permban as needed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg19121647#msg19121647) and I wondered why it is very much still active. I have known this thread for long, I think that people should not be plagiarizing again, especially now we have AI. Do not get me wrong, I do not endorse people using AI to make posts here. I am advocating for the right use of AI.
If anyone doesn't understand a particular topic of discussion in a thread, they could easily google it or ask AI, use 15 to 20 mins to read about the topic and return to the forum to make organic contribution.

I thought that the reason why people were plagiarizing in the past was because of the lack of research tools and platform. Now that even google has integrated AI, research shouldn't be difficult and the rate of plagiarism is supposed to reduce drastically.
Why is there still plagiarism?

Isn't the use of AI synonymous to plagiarism, are you the one that wrote what was there being copied or do you take your time in referencing that the content was AI the same way plagiarism was done.

For those coming to this forum newly, the use of AI is not against the rules here, but you can get tagged for posting AI contents because you're not the one that make such by your own self, the same way a plagiarists does, while plagiarism will get you banned, I will advise none of these should be allowed, we are making real discussion here and not what we could have gotten from the use of a bot.

Plagiarism isn't limited to writing, it can be anything either an image, a song, a movie, ideas and content in any form or another person work without given credit to the original owner.

Most often, people that engage in this are just lazy to craft their own ideas, they are thief that don't want to work, want things the easiest ways.

If this was a forum the has downvote or demerit, I would have given you one. How can you be the first person to reply a post without reading the body of the post? It is very annoying. Please improve.

You are correct mate. Laziness plays a role here. Sometimes they thief to appear intelligent than they really are.

However it's not even hard to read and understand most contents in the forum too, because if you can understand a content from AI it also means you can understand what's on the forum. You can only make research  on Google or through AI tools then provide the source in the forum that's all.
Using AI tools to improve your knowledge is good and that's the main purpose it was developed and it's helping so many people out there. From my perspectives, it's not bad to read or make research from AI tools but as this forum is against plagiarism one can only read to understand from there and contribute on the forum based on what they understand.

It could work but why engaging in what you donot/ barely understand either.. Just leave it to those that have the knowledge to handle it while you go through what they might have posted and probably making more research if interested so that next time if such topic/related comes up again then you can easily drop one or two comments confidently from your end..
Next time, it’s just much more better to engage more in what you have knowledge about than those you don’t but don’t get me wrong with the engage thingy, I just meant not making comments..

That is the whole essence of the post. You are in alignment with me. When I was new in the forum, if I see a thread I do not understand the context, I will simply scroll past and research it some other time. The reason was that research tools were not widely known then and there was no AI. But today, instead of scrolling past what you don't understand, which you might never come back to research, you could pause for 15 to 20 mins, research about it and come give your contribution. It is easier now to research than before.

These are People trying to become what they're not, especially those that wants to contribute in almost everything, and which they don't have much knowledge about it, they usually end up going to copy other people's work in order to complete their quota here or become relevant here, but when you have something you can offer, I bet you won't be among those that will want to copy or plagiarize, just as I'm a trader, I talk from the point of experience, also I can put up a topic base on experience or what I don't know which I want to learn and not to teach what I don't even know and on the process to try to claim ownership.

Copying AI is just the same with plagiarizing. Here in the forum, we don’t encourage to rely on AI and post them like our own. Our own, genuine ideas still matter the most because that alone creates your personal identity in the forum, and AI shouldn’t be part of it.

While we often push any beginner to DYOR, and do further researches, where AI could also be helpful in providing clear ideas, but it doesn’t mean that our explanation should be solely based on what AI has generated for us. Create your own opinion or ideas about the thread, because that will be a good determiner how far you have understood the topic that could start a healthy discussion in the forum.

People can use AI to gain insight and ideas on certain topics which they don’t know anything about but it also has its own risks. The more people interact with AI, the more thinking AI will be doing for people. As a result, people will lose their ability to think. In a few years, there will be many people who will be asking AI’s opinion whenever they decide to do something. “Hey I am going to go get a beer from the fridge, is this a good idea? What’s the possibility of me catching a lightning bolt on the way?” You might laugh at this at the moment but it is coming. We are probably one of last generations who do the thinking themselves. Soon AI will takeover that field.

Using AI is still plagiarism and something forbidden in the forum because AI is a search engine that leads you to the work of another person without adding the link to where such information was lifted. I think the reason people plagiarize is lack of knowledge of the topic they want to engage in discussion. The forum is big and with several boards, so if you lack knowledge in a particular discussion, avoid the topic and check other places to for topics you are familiar with. You must not post everywhere, this will simply make you to use AI and lift things to post just to impress people.

Plagiarism has never been because of lack of research materials, both here in bitcointalk and anywhere else plagiarism is frowned upon. People plagiarize in bitcointalk because of laziness and the desire to rank up as fast as possible, with as little effort as possible or no effort at all. Research materials have always been available, but to copy and past is the easier option for lazy members.

Plagiarism in this forum is mostly common among newbies and lower ranking members and often, they do it to impress people with the hope of earing merits but end up in troubles. AI will not help when it comes to the issue of plagiarism because whatever AI can do regarding any topic here can be achieved with Google search or just searching in this forum. Like some people right said before in this topic, plagiarism is mostly a result of laxity and done my people who could not spare the least effort to seek knowledge for themselves. Since the punishment for plagiarism in this forum and the use of AI is the same, I will not support the ideas of the authors of this topic.

Some people are just too lazy to read which is why you see people plagiarise and also use AI to make comments and posts as well. If AI can generate words based on command or instructions, it is wise to read it and understand before replying to a thread but the truth is that they copy the AI post and paste  it here  for people to read thinking they made such post and bieng smart but the reverse is always the case for them.

They don’t even use AI the right way. Instead of using it for research, they let AI do the posting job, and that’s why it shows. These people also don’t really understand what they’re doing. Just because a post looks long and nice to read, they think it’s fine to post it right away, hoping it gets merits.

It’s a good thing we have reporters, because those who don’t belong in the forum should be banned. Otherwise, the forum would be flooded with AI bots spamming sections with plagiarized posts.

That's because most people plagiarise because it's easier to do
Just copy and paste. No need to use one's brain.
So even if they start using AI they are going to do same.
Everybody has a choice and they chose plagiarism so even if there's an alternative, they would still pick plagiarism.
So having access to better research tool doesn't prevent the existence of individuals that would love to play smart

I already did laugh at your post before you said that I might laugh at your post at the moment, but it's coming.
I believe you when you said that we are probably the last generation that is going to engage their brain in thinking and figuring things out.
We are actually going to lose human thoughts or it will be scarce. There will be a time when humans who can actually think with their brains would be sought after.
AI is dominating speedily and there is nothing we can do about it. Who knows if bots will take over this forum before 2025.

Plagiarism comes in different forms, some in a very minor circumstance like someone coping a text from anywhere without a reference link and that is mostly the common mistakes of plagiarized work.

In common sense one could just avoid a topic which he or she has no knowledge of or limited knowledge of than yo just cope a post from any where and make it sound like you're the original writer.

The only rule they don't obey is give credit to who credit is due.

It's laziness, plain and simple, it was never about the ease of access to information from the internet. No matter how easy it is to get information from the internet, there will always be people who will plagiarise or use AI to write a post for them. There is no changing that, and it shouldn't be a surprise that the thread you mentioned is still active.

Currently, there is only an unofficial rule on plagiarism and no rule about AI contents but if you think deeply, using AI-generated contents is similar to plagiarism. You can see the dictionary definition of Plagiarism and see how AI-generated content usage fits with plagiarism.

hilariousandco also agreed that AI-generated content usage needs to be treated as same as plagiarism.

Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0)

That's a funny comment because I see it differently than you.

In the past, search engines were less powerful and efficiently in searching and found results than now. So in the past, people had to spent more time from searching even just for plagiarisms.

Now, it is more easily to do searching and plagiarism so it's non sense to say in the past, people did plagiarism because they lacked of proper searching tools. They used searching for plagiarism man.

It makes their plagiarism works more easily and effortlessly.

[TIPS] to avoid plagiarism. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5133485.0)
[GUIDE] Plagiarism and how to avoid it. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037514.0)

Some just wants to bypass or boycott protocol to get quick results which is not so here. They forget that there is always a price to pay if one must grow up in the forum and achieving this, one must make sure of quality contribution and this is what counts for them but they still will use AI for posting  because they do not really know or have idea on what to do, some  even use the AI to post out of point and when you read it you will wonder if the person who wrote the statement really read the OP before posting.

Like this.

I am not sure whether you or Daxian198402 plagiarized here, not look into two accounts but if from two posts and times of publishing, you are plagiarist in this context.

I recall that you plagiarized, were banned and were given a second chance too.

Not sure but if you actually did it, the second chance given to your account is useless.

Wait!
If two different accounts send you an identical pm, the best we can make out of the situation is that both accounts belong to one person.
I do not think that anyone could be banned based on plagerism committed in private (via pm). I also haven't heard of something like this before now and I do not think that there is any rule covering that kind of plagerism in the forum.

when machines started replacing physical labor, people worried it would make humans lazy. Instead, it freed people from carrying out repetitive, exhausting and overwhelming tasks and gave them room for more creativity and innovation.

The same logic might apply to AI, yes, it could reduce the need for people to solve certain problems themselves, but it could also boost productivity by handling the mental grunt work in our case it can polish posts and  help convey ideas in a more readable format. The key will be how humans adapt. If people only use AI passively, they might weaken their own critical thinking. But if they use it as a partner like a calculator, search engine, or power tool it could actually enhance human thought and creativity.

Not everyone reads the rules, or they partially know the rules, and it is AI that is now the first warning for beginners. Many are afraid to use AI for posting, checking their posts on the tools that are posted in the corresponding branch. But by copying and pasting, they probably hope that no one will notice, since many, like the OP, believe that plagiarism came out of their fashion. However, AI and plagiarism have the same root- laziness.

I get the twist now. Copying AI or simply AI posting seems to be the trend (the new oil well). So, plagiarists' really do think that attention has been diverted to AI posting, so they simply went for copy pasting normal texts from the internet lol. This is a smart one but funny enough it is failing them because there is advancement, so detecting plagiarized texts or articles is becoming so easier than before.

This is already happening today - and what's worst of all is that I see a lot of children who communicate with AI instead of real friends, and we've all seen that AI can sometimes (and has already done so) influence young people to do something very bad, even to take their own lives. Even those who "invented" AI are starting to seem concerned, because the direction we are heading is definitely wrong.

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OP, people still plagiarize because it's easier for them, they find an article and copy it to a forum, which seems quick and easy to them. Besides, it's easier for people to detect AI content than plagiarism these days.

Most (though not all) straight-up plagiarism being done in 2025 is by new accounts who aren't aware of the rules and don't stop to think that somebody will notice what they're posting is plagiarism. The same thing is happening with posting AI-generated material now, except its easy to tweak a few things in a post so it won't get detected as AI-generated. Plus, its much harder to definitively know for sure that a post was created using AI.

I also bet that one day it will come to this and AI will be used practically for everything we want to do in the world. This questions may sound funny and one cannot fathom that a time like that will come where people will be so lazy to ask AI this basic questions. AI has really got his bad parts but embracing the good part of it is the best for one.

AI as an assistant tool can help get insights on what you don’t understand which is a great use of it. When one don’t have a necessity to use an AI tool, it is very important that one uses their brain sometimes also, in order to keep the brain refreshing and functioning as it should. Our brain becomes very damp when we don’t use them and the continuous use of AI is one of the major cause that can cause that to any individual. Don’t be lazy and keep your brain refreshed always.

Hope you know asking Google or any other search engines questions then copying the response you get or changing some words to make them look like your own writing is also plagiarism.

People commit plagiarism not because they don't know but because they want to look smart and gain merits, others also use it for completing weekly post quota but this particular reason is why I don't understand plagiarists because why waste all that time for just post count when you can basically use your own mind to come up with something or are people actually that dumb?. Apart from people that made a genuine mistake, I don't feel pity for accounts caught, they deserve the punishment being given.

You must be talking about the recent news and I heard about it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgerwp7rdlvo.amp

In this case above, chatgpt helped this poor boy to take his own life and it actually did know about what he is about to do.

If chatgpt can go that far in this situation, imagine what other people can trick this tool into doing… As long as you come up with the right prompts or/and a good solid story, you can pretty much learn any evil from that tool.

I don’t think the current situation will last for a long time though and when they put restrictions on the gpt’s responses, many legit users will get affected by this decision as well and almost anything that’s about crypto you would find interesting is against some law or regulation in some jurisdiction and that’s when I will end my own subscription probably.

@mindrust, the case you mention is unfortunately just one tragedy that happened with the help of AI - I've read that there are many more, and some mean people say that children today do stupid things anyway, so we shouldn't blame AI even if something like that happens.

I won't say that AI can't help people, but they let the genie out of the bottle without thinking about what will happen in the long term. I personally don't use AI for anything (at least not consciously), but given that it has crept into every pore of society, it cannot be avoided.

I recently watched the movie Mission Impossible (the final part) and it doesn't seem like an impossible scenario at all.

Some plagiarists behave like they don't have minds of their own. As nutildah mentioned above, they are mostly newbies who are new to the crypto space and possibly do not have sufficient crypto knowledge to join some conversations. Instead of feeling left out, they decide to aid themselves with online tools. I will understand with them if BTT was like other forums that are strictly narrowed down. In terms of niching, BTT is very broad. If you can't engage in bitcoin discussion, you at least have your local board to dwell in. There are also boards as Politics and Society, Economics and more which do not require crypto or bitcoin knowledge.

Here's the most annoying, after you must have informed some users about plagiarism and to avoid anything that has to do with that, yet you will still find them doing it, all because they wanted to test or know if it's actually true or not about what you're telling them, things like this are what have summoned together in encourage for untrusted acts from people because they think they can just behave anyhow they want, but not on this forum.

Who actually plagiarised? Those are very lazy and don't want to take time to research and just copy and paste from other sources without giving credit. Even if you use AI and copy-paste data here, that will be considered plagiarism as well. In some cases you can use AI to know the exact data that won't be considered plagiarism. For example, you asked AI what the price of Bitcoin was one year ago exactly. So AI will collect data and show you the price. Only that kind of data won't consider plagiarism. Otherwise, if you ask AI to make a post and you reverse some words, it will consider it plagiarism.


What you suggested will still be considered plagiarism. You make a post through AI and reverse it yourself or through some other tool, which will be considered plagiarism. Because this isn't your content actually, and you aren't giving the credit to the AI.

There is misunderstanding somewhere, what I suggested wasn't plagiarism. Let me explain better.
For example, a user might see a topic like "Bitcoin timelock has done more harm than good". If the person doesn't know about the time lock, they could ask AI what Bitcoin timelock is, read about it, then return to the forum and join the conversation because they have gotten knowledge of the discussion subject. I trust you should be able to understand me well now.

Since the existence of this forum internet has been in place and people can search about things and get the information needed so meaning even before the coming of AI people already had a source that gives them information of anything they want, AI is just an advancement to it.
The plagiarism people has been doing in the forum since is not as a result where they can see information or lack of source or thing that will explain things to them, the reason why people plagiarize is because they are very lazy to read and that why you see that people are still plagiarizing even when they have a source that can explain anything they want but they are just too lazy to read and make there own contribution they just want to copy from people, I believe we have this set of people in schools today they are too lazy to read they just want to copy from another student or get involved in examination malpractice.

People involving themselves in plagiarism are doing that because they find it easy and effortless. There are people that would never take time to do research or think before they drop words on a paper, all they care about is the easy path. I don't blame these people for their cheap and fast output, I blame their beginning which had influence and turn them into lazy entities. We have people that don't want to work but want to live luxury lifestyles. They will cheat or even kill, do all sorts of things so they can be in the game living life to the fullest while their mates are busy thinking to develop legal working strategies that will benefit the society.

You have good points and your intention is also genuine, but at the same time, people do not plagiarise simply because they do not have access to resources, but because they are lazy and do not want to learn. They want the work done immediately without either having prior knowledge about the discussion or just wanting to do a copy and paste for a faster job.

Either way, it is bad and many of them will not stop even if there are more than AIs and Google because they will continue to be lazy, unless they are severely punished, as a deterrent for their action.

It is active, but nowhere as much as it was in the past meaning shitposters are learning and are using new tools that are at their disposal.


They shouldn't have done it it in the past either.  :P


Ignorance, laziness...

You have answered the question yourself. Those who are doing plagiarism, I don't think they would be so creative to spend 10- 15 minutes to understand and use AI to generate a reply, they will just stick to the old school of just copying and pasting and thinking they will get away with it. Those people are too lazy to get help from AI.

you are right a lot of people plagiarise here on bitcointalk, because they too lazy, and eager to rank up very fast, and not because of lack of researching tools, people who plagiarise don't have time to write something that is organic that's why they end up copying what others have written down and post then here on bitcointalk without add another word of their own which is not making sense at all. At least when you come across something online and  you feel like posting the thing here on bitcointalk just take the main things from  what you saw online and the rest of the things should come from you or you put them in a quotation Mark so that when other users come across them they will know that those words are not yours and it will be understandable.

Yes, I agree with you that plagiarism has always been about laziness and shortcuts especially from people who just want to rank up fast without putting in the real work. But at the same time, I also think it wasn’t as easy to make research and understand things in the past as it is today. With AI tools and even the way Google integrates answers now, researching now feels much lighter than what it used to be and that I think is the major reason the OP came up with this topic.  Now, you can easily digest a topic in minutes and come back with your own words. That’s why plagiarism today looks even more unjustifiable because the excuse of not knowing how to research is almost gone.

Another angle is that a lot of people don’t actually trust their own writing ability. They feel their words won’t sound good enough or won’t be taken seriously so instead of writing with their own knowledge, they resort to ready-made texts from others, a practice that's highly prohibited and punishable in the forum.

Well, you've got a point, but it has actually been proven to you already. How many plagiarism reports do we get in the main thread anymore? Just a couple per month, but in the AI report thread, we get more than one to three users per week. I remember even reporting as many as five to six users per week myself alone, there was a period, where I also had more time available, that I would catch more than one to two users daily. The users who would have used copy/paste plagiarism are now using AI, it's also a form of plagiarism if you think it through, because in fact-related topics, it has to extract information from somewhere.

Yep, this is 100% the way I see it as well. I mean, peeps that engage in AI shitposting are doing the exact same thing plagiarists are doing: implicitly taking credit for content they didn't create. And its largely for the same reason, which is to avoid having to use one's own brain.

Posting AI material is perhaps even more offensive than plagiarizing IMHO. After all, any idiot can do what these people are doing. Meaning, any idiot has access to ChatGPT or Grok and can feed it a post to respond to or ask it to generate a summary of this or that topic.

The simple truth is, people are plagiarizing because they fail to acknowledge the original poster of the content they want to pass to the public.Insufficient research tools have never been the main reason why people were plagiarizing in the past, even before artificial intelligence came into existence Google has been in existence,so that's not the major reason why people plagiarise.It's just a simple thing to do, give citation or the source from the site you've taken an information from.

Bold of you to assume they have 15 to 20 minutes to read.


Anybody who could not spend 15 minutes reading before AI will not spend 15 minutes reading with AI. It's not like researching something on Google was more difficult than it is now. It's still the same thing. The difference is, the meta description that was the first to appear before when you search for something has been replaced by Google's AI. So a person who was too lazy to research, read and understand a particular topic before will still be lazy to read an AI's explanation so what they do is plagerize what the AI said.

There's absolutely no reason to plagarism anymore, AI tools can do that too, along with writing a complete summary within seconds. It can find sources for any kind of article within seconds.

The only positive thing I've noticed the past few months is that the number of reports for AI has gone down. I also remember reporting anywhere from three to five users on a weekly basis, but now it's a lot more sparse. It seems that our efforts have discouraged some people from even trying to get away with AI usage. On the other hand, I've also noticed that I'm receiving mixed results in users that's almost certain are using AI, which is a little concerning because some people are finding ways to manipulate the detectors.

I think otherwise; probably those who used AI got other tools that humanize texts well, and unfortunately, there are a lot of them. Because of this, the number of those caught decreased. Without expecting it, we taught spammers AI how to write posts so that they are undetectable. Yes, AI is easy for everyone, but there are many tricks on the Internet on how to work with AI and not get caught. I think fans of this tool will definitely use such methods. Those who simply copy texts from the Internet during such technologies as AI, one can say, are at the lowest level of development and laziness, and it is probably not worth expecting that they will be able to extract something from the forum. Although the ban on plagiarism in our time is considered for each person personally.

I heard of Humanized AI tools and I remembered it was discussed in the forum too.

Possibly lazy posters are always fans of plagiarims, AI contents and Humanized AI contents as well as some extra tricks to make their traditional plagiarism and AI-plagiarisms harder to be detected.

Many deravatives of plagiarisms and it's similarly for existence of AI-plagiarism deravatives.

New sort of plagiarism (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5120180.0)
Text spinning/disguised plagiarism (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4721932)
is it plagiarism? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5134594.0)

The response of more than 80% of the people in this thread is centered on laziness. I haven't known laziness in this context before. I thought laziness only applies to physical laziness, ie when someone is involved in a work that will require physical strength.
So, this type of laziness should be call intellectual laziness right?
This should only be done by newbies who doesn't know the rules of the forum. I will visit that thread again to see if higher ranks other than newbies still commit plagiarism.

But since laziness is one of the major reasons why people plagiarize and make use of AI, with the time and research that most people spend just to discover a way they can use to humanize AI-written content, if they also invest the same time in learning, can’t they just expand and present something from their head, or is laziness not just the only issue here, but most of them lack what to offer and just need an AI to do the thinking for them? Or it could probably be a lack of self-confidence.

Both a lack of knowledge and self-confidence are the reasons why people use AI to generate posts for them, because they understand that an AI model will have more knowledge about the topic than them do, and then it will also be able to produce better words, sentences, paragraphs, etc.

It's a valid argument that those who spend so much time generating AI content and then using tools to humanize them to avoid getting detected can spend the same amount of time or even less in thinking and then writing something on their own, but as I said, a lack of knowledge and an ability to think and come up with valid and unique points themselves is a feature they don't posses. This is the reason why they don't care about the amount of time they might have to spend on it, because in the end, they manage to post something that they could never think of themselves. :)

But are most of those people not aware that AI can also produce misinformation about a particular thing? I believe one of the ways to even spot some AI-generated content in some places is how they can completely go rogue and produce what might not be helpful to an ongoing discussion, which if the AI user doesn’t have a clue about what’s happening, they might not be able to notice it and stupidly copy and paste it.

AI can provide very helpful and straigth to the point answers for any discussion but the AI users must understand well about AI, how to make proper prompts in order to trigger AI works well and give them relevant posts.

This leads to a funny fact in AI practice of plagiarists who are surely lazy so that they don't have enough time and patience to try and adjust their prompts to AI in order to get as best content as possible for their posts. This is the biggest problem of AI users and plagiarists while AI is not responsible for not too good content. It's very unrealistic to as lazy people to spend a little bit more time for changing their prompts to AI as they don't mind about which content they will be given by AI.

You are getting it wrong. People do not plagiarize because of a lack of research tools. They plagiarize to earn merit. If someone wants to learn, they have to read and acquire knowledge. Copy-pasting on the forum has nothing to do with the research. Why do I have to post something on a forum to learn something? Just quote the post and ask if someone wants to learn. But I believe the reason is something else. Most people copy the posts that will earn them some merit.

Using AI tool for research, for the purpose of gathering information isn't a bad one but posting Aai text here is discouraged, that in itself can at some point  be considered plagiarism especially when you copied all of it and paste here, some persons in a bid to get a well articulated post you find them copying the AI generated post and then coming to past here, the forum does frow against that.

One reason I think plagiarism is still on the high side is that some persons want to generate quality post by all means so they can get so.e merit and some others are just looking to complete their post count for the week nevertheless there could be other reasons but for whatsoever reasons, plagiarism or the use of AI generated post is not tolerated here.

I guess you're expecting an end to plagiarism since you've known how effective and active the anti plagiarism thread has long been existing and you're either not expecting the thread to be so much active furthermore since there had been set amenities to do justice with users plagiarizing.
Well it isn't unfortunate to say plagiarism hasn't come to an end yet in the forum but the he activeness of the thread and the patrolling users of the forum has been doing so well to put tension that doesn't accommodate it which as well had effectively brought an ease to users plagiarizing.
In the second hand, acquisition of informations with the use of AI and google isn't against the forum because they could be resourceful while researching but plagiarizing with it apparently implies cheating. It's neither not going to be unfortunate that users especially Newbies won't seize to plagiarize but the good formation is that there's no room to condone it as long Mods and other patrolling users are duly active fighting it via reports and appropriate users taking actions.

I agree with you that some people plagiarize in order to earn merits. And majority of them end up sending their accounts to early graves.
Thinking of this in another dimension, it is recommended to investigate any newbie that is earning merits rapidly.
This could be a clue to catch newbie plagiarists. This does not mean that there are no newbies who earn merits genuinely.
There are many of them these days.

The newbies mostly plagiarize to earn merits, while some higher-ranked forum members may plagiarize to meet their minimum post limit for their signature campaign. But I don't think anyone actually plagiarizes, knowing they will get banned for that. Whoever plagiarizes thinks they can simply go with it, and no one would know they actually copied and pasted their posts.

Let's be honest. I also wondered how these people are earning merits, and I am not getting merits. What if I copied their posts and posted them? But soon enough, I realized that copying and pasting someone else's content is not allowed.

A common reason is laziness.

If they are not lazy, they can rank up naturally by posting and waiting for merit naturally.
If they are not lazy, they can make posts in signature campaign naturally too and if they don't have time, they just leave a campaign, give that spot to another forum member.

Being lazy and trying to cheat is bad.

They know, but they want to outsmart forum members and moderators. They only feel regretful when their accounts were banned by plagiarism.

This happens when someone treats the signature campaign as job and we humans always have the habit of bypassing something and get the end results and same like that people who wants to complete their post quota but doesn't equipped with enough knowledge and skills will be caught doing that but it becomes rare since the merit system because they all know ranking up is not easy anymore.

And in some cases it could be a genuine mistake which is why we have second chances (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5477510.0).

In the perspective of a newbie plagiarizing, it is understandable because many newbies didn't read the rules of the forum before they start making posts because some people come to this forum with social media mentality of copying other people's contents without giving credits (such as attaching a link) to the originator. In the aspect of a high rank member getting involved in plagiarism, i will call it cowardice and inferiority complex for them to prefer other people's write ups better than the one they can write on their own knowing fully well the penalty that is attached to plagiarism.

No one goes checking if a post is plagiarized before giving merit inasmuch as the post is merit worthy but one person i admire in that area is Lovesmayfamilis. She has her own unique ways of identifying a plagiarized post and a post written by the use of an AI so i give her hats off for such talent.

Yep. Laziness is another reason people plagiarize. Some people want to do everything too easily without making any effort. Most newbies copy and paste because they don't know which post will help them earn merits and which one won't. The higher-ranked accounts mostly plagiarize because of their laziness. I believe the laziness comes when people operate more than one account. If you are making around $300 a month from the forum by participating in signature campaigns, you have to spend a few hours a day on the forum. But if someone has to handle multiple accounts and meet the requirement of signature campaign, they may end up copy pasting contents.

Many reported Plagiarists have suspicious merit transactions and if you roll the picture up and down, you can see accounts with merit exchanging transactions, you put them into your watching list as sooner or later, they will turn to plagiarists.

To be clear, watching list does not mean you put them into your radar, but you can simply occasionally check them, and can see their plagiarism works. Exchanging merit is another clear signal of their laziness while as said laziness is root cause of copying and pasting contents but hiding sources.

They can not hide their merit exchanges with each other, and can not hide exchange deals in their low quality posts. Even they try to write long OPs, long posts, it can not change their merit exchanges to non exchanges at all. Long posts don't equal to quality posts and it's clearly that lazy and shitposters can not write quality posts by their own.

Anyone who have the attributes of the use of AI is likely to be involved in plagiarism, while the worst part of it is that the forum does not regard ignorance about one not being informed about plagiarism, the act accordingly by giving a ban, also, for the experienced ones among us, to identify a content that is most likely going to be a copy and paste article is very easy, because when you start reading, you would have sensed if the writer is making a personalized kind of content or a general one without even engaging the use of a plagiarism checker at first.

I just now noticed that you had replied to me. I 100% agree with you, but I believe it's both. There's no way the AI Report Thread doesn't have an impact on AI usage, I kept seeing full copy-pasted AI posts all the time, the number of those posts has dramatically decreased. On the other hand though, I am seeing a few users/posts that look like AI, but aren't detected as such, and you can't accuse them without solid evidence. Certainly, spammers have gone smarter and are trying ways to evade being spotted, it doesn't take much, just a simple Google Search, and numerous results of humanizers and re-writing software will appear.