One way to avoid a plagiarism accusation.

[Jet Cash]

Plagiarism is a problem on many forums these days, and many members here are very active in detecting and reporting instances. It's very easy to avoid misunderstanding if you want to quote from another site. Just use the author parameter in the quote tag. For example -

Talk about merit on the Bitcoin Talk forum

The bbcode to produce this is

Code:

[quote author=TalkMerit.com]Talk about merit on the Bitcoin Talk forum[/quote]

[1714111378]

1714111378

[1714111378]

1714111378

[1714111378]

1714111378

[1714111378]

1714111378

[marlboroza]

It's very easy to avoid misunderstanding

What misunderstanding 

They are doing this for two reasons...

1) to receive merit for "high quality post"
2) to increase post count for signature campaign

...hoping no one will catch them.

[mithrim]

Don't be too negative here

The quote function isn't always the best way to go imo.
Sure, there are many cases in which it's appropriate and it indeed avoids misunderstandings. But there are also scenarios in which I don't like it that much, e.g.:

• Translations into other languages, and
• if it affects the readability of a(n) text/image because it gets too small

As long as people make it clear what they copied I really see no problem. And please don't be too harsh with the word 'plagiarism'. First, we're not all Einsteins here and there is a high probability that someone somewhere already had the same idea. And secondly, there really is no need to reinvent the wheel every time all over again when it comes to simple concepts or facts that can easily be checked with every search engine. As long as it's no blatant copy cut some slack  

[Vod]

- DO NOT copy/paste the entire article, even in quotes.  Doing that is stealing from the author since they cannot earn revenue off your plagiarism.
- DO copy just a portion of the article (less than 50%) and then post a link to the article so interested parties can visit the original site.

[Jet Cash]

- DO NOT copy/paste the entire article, even in quotes.  Doing that is stealing from the author since they cannot earn revenue off your plagiarism.
- DO copy just a portion of the article (less than 50%) and then post a link to the article so interested parties can visit the original site.

Apologies, I probably kept my post too short.

Vod's points are golden rules, and as a content producer, I appreciate people doing this. Newspaper articles can be good starting points for an interesting discussion thread. You only need one good introductory paragraph and a link to the webpage. Don't just stop at copying the paragraph, but add an explanation and opinion about the article, and tell us why you think it is interesting.

[LoyceV]

For example -

Talk about merit on the Bitcoin Talk forum

I like it! I've never used the quote-tag other than just clicking the quote button, but this works nicely.
Allow me to change your example so that the link is clickable by using the full link:

Talk about merit on the Bitcoin Talk forum

Or:

Talk about merit on the Bitcoin Talk forum

Real example:

“Segregated witness (segwit) is a soft fork that, if activated, will allow transaction-producing software to separate (segregate) transaction signatures (witnesses) from the part of the data in a transaction that is covered by the txid.”

Limitation: it doesn't work if the link is about twice as long as the one above.

[Jet Cash]

Images are much more of a problem, and it is often difficult to determine if they have become public domain, have a limited licence, or require a royalty payment. I have a site where I post some of my photographs, and I am happy for other people to use them on their websites as long as they leave the watermark in place. This is the link - Jazz pics - my photo gallery

Others seem to be all over the net, and people modify them , and add comments. Here is one such image.


Take care if you use images that you didn't create yourself, and make sure that you are not breaching any copyright agreements.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

- DO NOT copy/paste the entire article, even in quotes.  Doing that is stealing from the author since they cannot earn revenue off your plagiarism.
- DO copy just a portion of the article (less than 50%) and then post a link to the article so interested parties can visit the original site.

I don't think I've ever posted much content from articles here, or anywhere else, but these guidelines are useful and make sense--I'll definitely keep them in mind if I ever need to reference an article.  

The real problem on bitcointalk with plagiarism as I see it is from people who are engaged in sig campagins and either can't write well or can't speak English well enough to post solid stuff that satisfy all the requirements of campaign managers.  From what I've seen (and reported to mods), they find an answer to a mega spam thread "question" and paste it into their own post here, and they thereby take all credit for it.  Plus they're getting paid for this.  There are certainly people copy/pasting entire articles, but I tend not to visit the press section or other sections where they must do it often.  I hear about it but have never seen it--but either way, it's wrong.

In some areas of the world, this sort of thing is accepted as proper.  These people need to realize that it's not cool to plagiarize on bitcointalk, though.  In the eyes of the forum, it's even worse than scamming (oddly enough).

<snip cute cat pic>

Awwwww.

[Jet Cash]

<snip cute cat pic>

Awwwww.

I'm a bad boy posting that image, as I keep telling people not to do it, but I wasn't sure how to introduce the plagiarism of images without a picture. Thanks for snipping it in the quote. I gave you a merit for doing it, and I hope it encourages others to do the same.

[Welsh]

What misunderstanding  

They are doing this for two reasons...

1) to receive merit for "high quality post"
2) to increase post count for signature campaign

...hoping no one will catch them.

It might be a small percentage of people but, certain members will make this mistake and they get harshly called out because of the widespread abuse by other members. It does happen and it's only ever annoying when they continue to do so. The first time their post will be deleted and hopefully a friendly mod let's them know why it's been deleted.

It's obviously abused by certain members, but we shouldn't assume that everyone that doesn't quote/link to original article is doing so on the attempt to pass it off themselves.