It neither shocks me nor surprises me to see this level of rank hypocrisy from the majority of those who are calling for Lauda to be burnt. So many of the persons who regularly defend plagiarism and other wrongdoing, and who falsely accuse Lauda of abusing the rules for personal vendettas, are crawling out of the woodwork to call for the strictest punishment—obviously, based on personal vendettas. As I said: I am not surprised.
What shocked and surprised me was, of course, the evidence. I was about ready to dine on feline fillet; and I grilled Lauda about this in private.
Having thoroughly investigated the matter, I think that this is one of those rare corner cases of the lability of the human brain. I do not think that Lauda realized what she was doing, or intended to rip off other people’s texts. I also don’t think that Lauda could fool me.
I do take into consideration that I have substantially interacted with Lauda, and I have seen her repeat things by rote in the course of ordinary conversation. (Just not from text written by other people—insofar as I am aware—and not so much as here.) I am too amateurish in textual criticism to be sure; but from my reading of the posts side by side with the source texts, I don’t think it’s implausible that she interpolated her own words with memorized talking points, without even thinking about it.
Between that, the manner of her response, and the sincerity with which Lauda despises plagiarism (including what happened here), I do not think that any action is warranted in this matter.
I say that as someone who would sooner forgive murder than plagiarism.
Constructive ResponseI'm on the feeling of: the way those edits were made: were to achieve the objective of providing substance as to make a post; rather than reference people correctly to the information.... passing it on as themselves.
What would you suggest Lauda should have done differently? (I mean now—not in 2014–2015, the answer to which is obvious.)
Lauda’s edits called out her own offence in blood-red highlighting, with backlinks both to the accusation against her,
and to her response.
The latter is important, because Lauda’s response provided better sources. bitcoinchan only got 2/6 (possibly 3/6) sources right. In one case, Post 5, he cited a thread on another forum that itself appears to be a plagiarism (!). In another, Post 4, he cited an article that contained the relevant text inside a properly cited quotation from an article on another site (!!). In the case of Post 3, he improperly cited some other site for text from a Wikipedia article—even though the other site had cited Wikipedia (albeit without proper quoting)
within the portion that bitcoinchan quoted.
I note this after having spent hours examining the evidence and researching the sources myself. (How many people posting on this thread did that?)
Lauda’s response demonstrated a level of actual caring about credit to sources that I have never seen from anybody accused of plagiarism. And it was done in an understated manner, which I find appropriate: There is nothing to brag about in correcting one’s own wrong. She just went and corrected it. She didn’t make a big poor-me show of self-flagellation, or indulge in any other histrionics—she just quietly thanked the party who brought this to her attention, marked up her old posts in a way that makes it bloody obvious what words originated from others, and belatedly gave credit to the appropriate sources.
I agree with this:
Because she handled this incident in a constructive way? Unlike how some other people react when accused of the same.
...although, NotATether, I do not agree with some of your defence of Lauda later in the thread:
I'm going to fix some of the highlighting bitcoinchan made that does not show copy and paste. Because the definition of plagiarism is copying and pasting stuff (without attribution).
Plagiarism does
not equal copying and pasting. It is possible to copy and paste without plagiarizing; and it is possible to plagiarize without copying and pasting.
For about the past three weeks, I have been intending to write a proper post explaining what plagiarism is and isn’t—with reference to discussions by organizations focused on academic integrity, not only with my own opinion on the subject. I intended that for the RegulusHR thread, since I do not think that Regulus committed plagiarism
per se; he did a copy-paste and a shitpost, but not a plagiarism. (I don’t think it’s possible to
plagiarize someone else’s worthless shitpost, because it has negligible or zero original substance; plagiarism is the intellectual theft of credit for original work, which wreathes lazy idiots in a glory that belongs to another.) It is also relevant to the “hacker” thread, because “hacker”
did commit a clear-cut plagiarism.
Some (arguably not all) of the six posts cited by bitcoinchan facially meet the definition of plagiarism, regardless of some changes in wording. The only reasons why I am defending Lauda, rather than calling for her to be banned, are that (0) I really do not think it was intentional, and (1) her response was appropriate—I think it was the best that she could have done in the circumstance, absent a time machine.
A Technical QuestionPlagiarism is one of very few things that theymos has zero tolerance for (except for account buyers).
If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.
When was the forum rule about banning plagiarists made an administrative policy? My question is if any hypothetical punishment of Lauda would be an
ex post facto application of a rule that did not exist when the posts were made.
Although I dislike advancing such a technical argument,
* you just
know the question would be raised if any other user were accused of plagiarism from so many years ago.
I also know that I have had the term “ex post facto” tossed at me in the “hacker” case, where it did not even apply. Thus in fairness, I must raise this point in Lauda’s defence.
(* If it were my forum, I would ban plagiarists regardless of whether or not I had bothered explicitly to place users on notice with an anti-plagiarism rule. Plagiarism, actual plagiarism (see above), is just something that people should know is wrong; and frankly, I would not want any forum members who don’t already know that plagiarism is wrong before they sign up. But then, if this were my forum, things would look a bit different around here. :-)All six posts identified by bitcoinchan far predate the addition of Rule 33 to
mprep’s Unofficial List of Official Rules:
Added new rule with an explanation (as per hilariousandco's suggestion):
33. Posting plagiarized content is not allowed.[e]
<...>
33. This includes both copying parts or the entirety of other users' posts or threads and copying content from external sources (e.g. other websites) and passing it as your own.
The absence of any anti-plagiarism rule from the list in the time period up to 10 May 2015 is confirmed by the
earliest available archive.org snapshot, which, by coincidence, was made several hours after the latest post in question.
It
is an
unofficial list of rules, with a note at the top stating that it “
is meant to serve as a reference/educational/informational thread, NOT a rock solid list of rules” (boldface and underscore in the original). If hilarious was already banning people for plagiarism before mprep listed this rule, I would have no criticism of that.
A forum search for posts by theymos made at least 1392 days before the time of this writing (2020-05-22) and matching any word from
plagiarism plagiarized reveals only the following two posts:
Subject: Re: DGCmagazine Bitcoin IssueThe article is full of plagiarism from Bitcoin Market and bitcoin.org.
Subject: Re: Bitcoin WikiI desire attribution for my contributions. WTFPL, at least, seems to suggest that I would be OK with people plagiarizing, which I am not. Copyright should be abolished, of course, but I don't want to
encourage people to take my work without attribution.
There are probably legal problems with it. Compare it with the similar CC0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcodeOne sentence is not going to cover all of the legal issues. Potentially someone could sue
us for using our own stuff.
WTFPL is less restrictive than CC-A, so legally copying material from the Bitcoin wiki would require you to get permission from
all page authors.
I prefer CC-A -- including a link back to the page is not a huge legal burden, and it clearly indicates that plagiarism is not acceptable. No one's going to sue anyone, anyway. I wouldn't mind CC0 or any of the more restrictive CC licenses.
Thus though it’s clear that theymos always despised plagiarism, a stance for which I give him credit,
* I cannot find any evidence that the forum had an explicit policy on this issue before hilarious suggested the rule to mprep.
(* But alas, theymos conflates plagiarism with copyright issues. Copyright is completely irrelevant to plagiarism! You must not plagiarize the words of Shakespeare, or of Ovid, although all of their works are unquestionably in the public domain in every jurisdiction in the world. It is possible to violate copyright without plagiarizing, and possible to plagiarize without violating copyright; the two issues are completely separate, although, as
I have observed before on this forum, the copyright lobby enjoys the popular conflation thereof.)
As a practical matter, if Lauda were hypothetically to be banned for posts made in 2014–2015, then the archives should be scrutinized; and every user who has ever committed a plagiarism here should be banned, going back to the time when this forum was hosted at
forum.bitcoin.org, or even when it was a Sourceforge forum. Not that I would object to that, in and of itself.
We are not robots here we can spot the real bad eggs
Oh what's this???
Your reference should in fact be pointing to a case of them scamming or trying to scam an individual.
For something to be a scam there does not have to be any direct financial damage (It could be
indirect, collateral, or even non-existent).
A.
Unlike copyright law violations, plagiarism is truly the theft of ideas. It is singularly the most reprehensible wrong that can be committed within the realm of the intellect; and it is inherently fraudulent, an intellectual scam by definition.
The logical argument deriving from the reasoning by OP is very sound without any subjective nonsense. Maybe theymos will give his input on this.
Ignore this dirty old pervert.
Look how he defended the scammer alia?
This desperate old fart will try to defend lauda whatever it does.
Nullius was screaming that plagiarism was the devils work and anyone defending even the reasons people gave should have red tags.
This fucking dirty double standards piece of shit should be banned with lauda.
Whether a plagiarist is banned or not depends on their net benefit to the forum
Quoted from the other post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5249969.0And this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1764757.0And now threatening to red tag any turkish member that applies for and is accepted to chipmixer
Lauda has been banned before several times already
Busted down from mod for extortion
If he is not perm banned every plagiarist will need another
Lol at punishment less than non scamming non extorting previously non banned members.
He must be perm banned or else every plagiarist can come.back.
Imagine this scamming sneaky cunt still on DT and making money from this forum
Double standards is nullius middle name. This poisonous old skunk is observably a dangerous dirt bag.
You were telling hacker his 2yr sig ban was not enough and must be perm banned.
Yoi gave red trust to a member for saying we should not ridicule the excuses of plagiarists such is the evil of plagiarism.
Scumbag
Same for all the greedy scammer supporting shit stains in DT
They were baying for blood demanding perm bans for.far less sneaky and devious plagiarism.
Where is laudas plagiarism bingo gone??
Infinite sig and escrow ban and fully blacklisted from DT
I will be there to say I told you so when lauda pulls a huge scam here
Examine its history always been rotten since I saw him join.
You came back for cryptohunter?
No; check post history.
I think plagiarizers, scammers, and many types of criminals should be shamed too, but you know, it seems that about half the world out there are apologists for criminals and blame it on poverty, just about every time a black guy gets shot by the cops..
Moreover, shame has been turned on its head: If you shame bad people, you will be shamed. I observed that “cryptohunter” did this to The Pharmacist. You yourself should prepare to be shamed for what I just quoted, not despite, but
because of it being a simple, lucid observation about the world in which we live.
The trick only works, because the people who
should have the moral high ground are
ipso facto those who are capable of feeling ashamed. The ones shaming them are
shameless, and highly manipulative. You did not actually say anything wrong; but if you are sneered at and jeered at with unlimited hostility in a way that plays on your emotions, guilts you for being unsympathetic, slaps you with meaningless labels, impugns your motivations in a hundred ways, etc., then it could get to you. Conveniently, the shameless will not feel ashamed of doing this to you.
Compare what “cryptohunter” did in the linked thread: He portrayed a bingo game that ridiculed plagiarists’ flimsy excuses as if it were some sort of cruel injustice against poor, desperate people who are just so... so...
needy. Objectively, it is just the brand of dangerous stupidity that may persuade people who don’t think it through. Subjectively, in my case, this peculiarly outraged me because I have experience with being poor. As in, “imperiled for my short-term physical survival due to a decidedly painful lack of food and shelter” level poor.
Poor enough to be able to attest the maddening effects of chronic hunger (and resulting long-term detriment to the body). I did not scam people, or spew plagiarized posts on the Bitcoin Forum. “cryptohunter” implies that if I had, others should have been somehow sympathetic; and that offends me by degrading my dignity. Surely, in today’s society, in the Year 2020, I am entitled to me-centred outrage based on being personally offended!
I'm glad you distrust these people.. I do too to an extent.. Poor judgement.. But I don't think I'd hand out negative ratings to every user who has ever blamed crime on poverty, or I bet you could go to the P&S section and gather a sizable list..
True enough. But, (a) “cryptohunter” did not merely blame crime on poverty. He went beyond that in ways that showed a high tolerance for dishonesty, even a sympathy for it, per what I stated above. (b) One must start somewhere; otherwise, nothing will ever change.
Tell me, exactly how you delineate the difference between opinions that are inexcusable, and opinions that are simply in opposition?
I expounded on this. Was it TL;DR for you?
By contrast, what I hereby consider is an opinion that directly, unavoidably, substantively demonstrates the untrustworthiness of he who expresses it. Is it untrustworthy behaviour to demand that scammy, dishonest people should not be shamed? I say, yes!
I get the very distinct impression that this is a sock puppet for another well known little girl here...
Stop trying to prove that Lauda is Craig Wright. It is defamatory.
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