Let us devise a Sensible solution to Copy and Paste situation.

[suchmoon]

The "sensible" solution for plagiarism would be this.

a button on every post labeled with" Click me NOW" , takes you to another page where you need to quote the original text, the two texts along with the timestamp run in simple query that checks the integrity of the report by matching the two texts, if it matches , BINGO ! that account gets INSTANT BAN for a limited period of time which equals to his lifetime.

and yes , the button should be available to everybody including newbies so that they can ban higher rank members who copy and paste.

I can tell you this is going to be a 100% plagiarism free forum, as everybody will be watching over everybody else.

and this to me is the ONLY "Sensible" punishment for somebody who steals the words of others and present them as their own.

We already have that, it's called "Report to moderator". Works quite well.

[1714009912]

1714009912

[1714009912]

1714009912

[JusticeForYou]

1. anyone wants to appeal after copy and paste of serious nature found in their posts (not film quotes for humour, memes, news posted on correct project)
Needs to pay 0.5 BTC fine and have a 6months - 1yr month sig ban automatically..

Personally, I think there would be no use in applying a fine of 0.5 BTC to copy pasters as they are already very low valued peoples with no personal brains functioning.

I mean I expect a lot of copy and pasters will not go for this because there is little point for them ...sig bans, fines and instant bans if they do it again. Most will not appeal.

If you would not get an appeal( I think we would get none) then it is an unfunctional system with no advantages and you should not expect a sensible appeal from a person about his forum ban if he doesn't know the basic rules of Bitcointalk or any forum in the world which is NO COPY/PASTE.

I personally think a better alternative for the current situation of copy paste would be just sending them a warning about the message for which they are banned (parallelized post ). Also, we can see an update by @theymos about the new message for paralyzed account ban and you can see a suggestion thread here. We can just also add the post link for which the account is banned and this could be the best solution to reduce the copy and paste appeals in meta.

Hillarious could take care of it all if he can ban and unban.. seems theymos will not have to review or spend time coding anything.

I think coding is a better solution than just putting all the appeal loads on a single person.

[ABCbits]

How about only seriously consider appeal if :
1. The member have good reputation or known to help others
2. They have high rank or/and received lots of merit (earned in correct way)
3. Many members agree to unban. This is should be easy and good way since so far i only see 2 banned member got support from other member to be un-banned

Additionally, escrow some Bitcoin is unnecessary and limit to those who have lots of Bitcoin. Simply remove signature space 1 year - forever is easier solution. If the user only care about earn money, he will leave while actual member will stay and continue being helpful.

[Upgate]

Copy and pasting is obviously against the rule of the forum there is no better warning than a lay down forewarning many users plagiarise for various reasons
: to increase there post count
: there bounty project requires it
: hunting for merit so they copy a nice article they find in the internet and paste it here.
 Etc

  Just like in the normal frame of law where ignorance is not an excuse no one should say he/she did not know plagiarism is not against the rule it's always important to read up the rules before engaging into a forum.

Plagiarism has been the major reason as to why people get banned well I would also say every one can change if there can be a jail term giving to those found guilty of plagiarism the forum my be losing potential great minds(if they turn a new live) by giving a permanent ban to them.

The reason as to why offender was jailed would be sent to you via email or on offenders account the jail term would prevent offenders from posting but can watch

If after the term has Been served the person is still an unrepentant individual he/she can be completely eradicate from the forum

[cryptohunter]

I guess it is better to see if there are improvements to be made by listing issues as they are now and issues after new system.

The more I think about it the more the other way seems a bit better than my first idea although I still feel the first idea could help and I would have to do a advantages and disadvantages to that later..

So problems the current system has

1. too many appeals  hinging on the fact they are hoping no other serious copy and paste can be found with NO risk to them for us wasting time finding what they hope we will not.
2. Only an appearance of an appeal once infraction substatiated because a/ if there is one case it is perm ban b/ not man power or incentive enough to scan  entire histories for others to validate or deny their claim so we dont know..
3. Is possible for a net positive poster that is telling truth about only doing once or less 1.1000 to be lost ..or person that made a mistake early on but has for years been a good poster
4. some people may (believing perhaps wrongly there is only 1 case or 1.1000) think some of them get rough treatment


New system where we find one copy and past and if they want to have a chance of a real appeal after actual infraction is confirmed then 0.5 btc (or some fee) put with escrow for 1 month (mod) if anyone finds more or more than 1.1000 then (fee) split between original finder, mod for escrow and first person to post information demonstrating exceeding of the 1.1000 or more than 1 if have not made 1000 posts. If they were telling truth (or more not found in 1 month) then money back. Then zero tolerance after that.

1. less or zero appeals from real bad eggs because there is now risk to them ... before they had no risk
2. chance of a real appeal ...1 month for anyone to find more
3. Real net positive will never be lost
4. everyone gets to find out the truth or far more chance of finding the truth about the person and no more guessing should we feel sorry for them or not.

There are still free appeals to those if it is a total mistake because that will be spotted at the outset. I have not seen any of these total mistake ones as yet. I have only seen 90% of real scammers and 10% I am not sure because how to know if they are really have made no other mistake or just lying hoping we can't find more because they have no punishment for lying right now because nothing more gets taken from them if we find out they are lying.

[LoyceV]

How about only seriously consider appeal if :
1. The member have good reputation or known to help others
2. They have high rank or/and received lots of merit (earned in correct way)
3. Many members agree to unban. This is should be easy and good way since so far i only see 2 banned member got support from other member to be un-banned

I would be in favour of this for probably one or two cases in the past year, but theymos disagrees on the most obvious one of those:

I don't believe in a "strict rule of law"; even if it's written somewhere that "copy/paste = permaban", I'm willing to relax that on occasion. If you're going to be a net positive to the forum going forward, then I probably want you here, even if you've made past mistakes. But someone who at any point copy/pastes garbage like this has proven that they have an utterly broken mindset when it comes to the forum, and I have a really hard time believing that such a person will be a net positive going forward.

[DdmrDdmr]

Not that I would favour a change of rule on this matter, but brainstorming on ideas around it is fine, and the outcome will likely be one of those let’s agree to disagree ones.

By principle, any change on the rule should give everyone equal chances, and having to escrow 0,5 BTC (or whatever relatively high value to many) to have a proper appeal, is creating a justice that is segmented by class from the start (no different to real life, buy I don’t think it should be a starter).

Whatever system may be devised cannot be one that takes up bags of time from mods/admins, so a thorough search for the plagiarism ratio of a given user should not be down to a semi-manual search. That could in any case be on the table if there were to be a back-end admin tool to perform such a task, but until there is some high degree of automatism to the process, the required time is better served on moderating tasks.

@ETFbitcoin though seem like a sensible set of criteria to make exceptions for those that are net positive. Ok justice on different levels again, but the underlying principle is that the postulant is a clear net positive, has been so for some time, and that resources to look into the case are spread over, and not concentrated solely on admins/mods.

A couple of things could be added in general terms:

-   Just as in real life crimes prescribe after a certain period of time, there could be a limiting timeframe to allow for personal redemption and change of ways (i.e. plagiarism rule infraction limited to last 2 years).

-   A bit wild, but one could accept being deranked a couple of levels as part of the penalty (for the top ranks only).

[cryptohunter]

Not that I would favour a change of rule on this matter, but brainstorming on ideas around it is fine, and the outcome will likely be one of those let’s agree to disagree ones.

By principle, any change on the rule should give everyone equal chances, and having to escrow 0,5 BTC (or whatever relatively high value to many) to have a proper appeal, is creating a justice that is segmented by class from the start (no different to real life, buy I don’t think it should be a starter).

Whatever system may be devised cannot be one that takes up bags of time from mods/admins, so a thorough search for the plagiarism ratio of a given user should not be down to a semi-manual search. That could in any case be on the table if there were to be a back-end admin tool to perform such a task, but until there is some high degree of automatism to the process, the required time is better served on moderating tasks.

@ETFbitcoin though seem like a sensible set of criteria to make exceptions for those that are net positive. Ok justice on different levels again, but the underlying principle is that the postulant is a clear net positive, has been so for some time, and that resources to look into the case are spread over, and not concentrated solely on admins/mods.

A couple of things could be added in general terms:

-   Just as in real life crimes prescribe after a certain period of time, there could be a limiting timeframe to allow for personal redemption and change of ways (i.e. plagiarism rule infraction limited to last 2 years).

-   A bit wild, but one could accept being deranked a couple of levels as part of the penalty (for the top ranks only).

I agree with a lot of your points

However if we make it too small of an amount then it kind of lowers the risk reward ratio. I mean say if they only had to pay 0.05 then it is not much risk for them to put us through the trouble of scanning the history looking for more so they will still all appeal...and I don't think would inspire many people to try and find additional copy and pastes. I guess we could make legends pay more than noobs because they have larger post histories to scan so it is more time consuming to locate additional infractions? also legend should have more money? not essentially true either i guess so perhaps just cut it back to 0.25 if people think 0.5btc is too much. I mean remember if not guilty of more they get it all back.

Also legends are going to be getting something more the other way with the 1.1000 rule so it is swings and roundabouts.

Also the finding of extra infractions is a rewards structure for anyone or first to find enough for perm ban exceed 1.1000

I think merit reduction as suchmoon said could be good but people know my opinion on merit and noobs have none anyway. I guess it could work since very high merit earners (although may not be the best posters on this board) but they are probably very unlikely to be copy and pasters so perhaps the merit reduction could work because that would reduce rank usually anyway.

I mean if it was possible to disable sigs in the console of the forum this would be great at some point and could easily become part of the punishment then without messing with merit nor rank because they cant join sigs whatever then for 1 year.

@ etf i like those ideas too but I think a list of strict criteria is better than a group who decides without a list of criteria to match against.

Cutting down appeals from the real spammers who know they are spammers is key because that cuts away most of the waste of time.
If you get only 1 or 2 appeals a week or less from REAL good posters who know okay I have messed up or been lazy or done something someone didnt give a toss about years ago but It will easily be evident i am net positive under close scrutiny.... you have almost already solved the issue. Well you still need to detect

[o_e_l_e_o]

This post is simply brain storming - I'm not saying I do or even would support the ideas that follow.

I do not think it should be linked to payment at all. As mentioned, this is creating one rule for the rich and a stricter set of rules for the poor, and gives off the message that you can "buy" your way out of problems (to an extent). Bitcoin, and by extension, this forum, should be equally accessible to all, regardless of financial background.

I do think there are different "levels" of plagiarism, if you will. Compare the newbie bounty campaign spammer with >10% of their posts plagiarized solely for meeting their campaign requirements to the legendary with 1 or 2 posts out of thousands which were plagiarized but were posted to provide info or answer questions asked by others. Having said that, the former massively outnumbers the latter.

I think an argument could be made (not that I'm making it per se) for some leniency for this (very rare) latter group of users, if the user is a clear net positive to the forum. As ETFbitcoin said, this could be quantified by their rank, earned merits, or recognition from other members. Their number of good reports could also be a useful metric in this regard. Whether the user is a net positive could also be a decision for staff (as a collective group) to make on an individual case-by-case basis.

In terms of these users, then a punishment like a 6 or 12 month signature ban, or penalising of ranks and merits, for the first offence only seems appropriate. A second offence would result in permanent ban as it does now.

Having said all that, I think the cases that this would apply to are in the single digits, compared to the thousands and thousands of accounts being perma-banned for plagiarism. It would require a lot of time and energy from the admins/mods to set up this new system for the benefit of a tiny handful of users, and that time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere. The bottom line remains the same - if you don't want to be banned for plagiarism, then don't plagiarize.

[mocacinno]

The "sensible" solution for plagiarism would be this.

a button on every post labeled with" Click me NOW" , takes you to another page where you need to quote the original text, the two texts along with the timestamp run in simple query that checks the integrity of the report by matching the two texts, if it matches , BINGO ! that account gets INSTANT BAN for a limited period of time which equals to his lifetime.

and yes , the button should be available to everybody including newbies so that they can ban higher rank members who copy and paste.

I can tell you this is going to be a 100% plagiarism free forum, as everybody will be watching over everybody else.

and this to me is the ONLY "Sensible" punishment for somebody who steals the words of others and present them as their own.

That's not a good idear at all... For example, if i had some kind of grudge against somebody, I could just copy one of their original posts and paste it on my blog with a backdated timestamp, so it looks my blog article is older than the original post my victim made... Then i could just click the button => BAM autoban.

I could even up my stealth so i wouldn't face any punishment if somebody found out the victim was autobanned due to my scammy methods... I could simply register a free .tk domain, then create an account on a free webhost and create a blog there (all over a VPN or tor)... Then copy somebody else's work and post it on my blog with a backdated timestamp... Then i could create a newbie account on bitcointalk over my VPN or tor, and get a senior member autobanned... Sure, maybe the ban wouldn't stick, but the member would still lose access to his/her account for a while untill the admin has time to look at his ban appeal and unban his account.

I'm not in favor of an automatic ban mechanism...

For the rest of this thread: i'm not a political person... I , personally, wouldn't like to see somebody getting severely punished because he or she copied my work, but i completely understand if other members do have severe problems if their work gets copied... It's against the law to plagiarise in many places around the globe, so i completely understand Theymos has to make a point here, it probably would reflect poorly on him if he let people plagiarise without punishment.
I wouldn't be opposed to the fact of unbanning somebody if the violation happened a long time ago, and if the member has behaved in a suitable manner for a long, long while. In the law of my country, there's something called a "verjaringstermijn". It basically means that if you commit a crime, you can only be punished for this crime the next x years after the crime. The amount of time needed for a crime to become "unpunishable" depends on the type of crime.
I don't know if there's something similar in the US (afaik, that's where the bitcointalk server is hosted), but i can imagine a member who joined in 2010 and commited the crime of plagiarism once in the first year he's a member but never commited the crime again in the next 8 years (while still remaining an active member) could potentially fall into a different category than a shitposter.

[cryptohunter]

This post is simply brain storming - I'm not saying I do or even would support the ideas that follow.

I do not think it should be linked to payment at all. As mentioned, this is creating one rule for the rich and a stricter set of rules for the poor, and gives off the message that you can "buy" your way out of problems (to an extent). Bitcoin, and by extension, this forum, should be equally accessible to all, regardless of financial background.

I do think there are different "levels" of plagiarism, if you will. Compare the newbie bounty campaign spammer with >10% of their posts plagiarized solely for meeting their campaign requirements to the legendary with 1 or 2 posts out of thousands which were plagiarized but were posted to provide info or answer questions asked by others. Having said that, the former massively outnumbers the latter.

I think an argument could be made (not that I'm making it per se) for some leniency for this (very rare) latter group of users, if the user is a clear net positive to the forum. As ETFbitcoin said, this could be quantified by their rank, earned merits, or recognition from other members. Their number of good reports could also be a useful metric in this regard. Whether the user is a net positive could also be a decision for staff (as a collective group) to make on an individual case-by-case basis.

In terms of these users, then a punishment like a 6 or 12 month signature ban, or penalising of ranks and merits, for the first offence only seems appropriate. A second offence would result in permanent ban as it does now.

Having said all that, I think the cases that this would apply to are in the single digits, compared to the thousands and thousands of accounts being perma-banned for plagiarism. It would require a lot of time and energy from the admins/mods to set up this new system for the benefit of a tiny handful of users, and that time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere. The bottom line remains the same - if you don't want to be banned for plagiarism, then don't plagiarize.

These are all good points. However to me the system we are all describing is basically the same to ID the users that are net positive matched to a set of criteria that demonstrates this. My proposal simply takes the load away from a few people and with the reward system decentralises the work load. If innocent you get your money back.

[hilariousetc]

Nobody is going to pay 0.5btc to get their account back. It'd have to be a reasonable fine relative to what their account is worth. Somewhere between $100-$500 maybe. I possibly wouldn't be against some sort of fine but not sure it going to staff or the forum would be a good idea. People will just whine we're banning people for the money. We could tell them to donate it to charity which at least then some good would come of their behaviour and nobody but a good cause benefits. You could maybe give people two options: You can either have a sig ban indefinitely and earn your signature back by getting sufficient merit (say maybe at least 100) or pay a fine (that goes to charity). As I've mentioned before I'm strongly in favour of more donator ranks that give you a bigger signature and maybe they could get their signature back by purchasing one of them. I think we should also give them the option or earning it back via merit so at least they have two options and if they don't want to pay anything then they can earn their signature back by contributing something worthwhile.

Wouldn't the sensible solution be to NOT COPY AND PASTE?

This. I would personally prefer that users just stop doing the plagiarism then we wouldn't have anything to worry about. I think theymos should probably link to the rules somewhere so new users are made aware of them or even better constantly reminded of them somehow. I think some bright red warnings when they go to submit a post like DO NOT COPY AND PASTE/PLAGIARISE CONTENT OR POST REF LINKS would also help.

[khaled0111]

With all my respect to you, I think you don't understand the main reason behind banning copy pasters.

It is not just to punish these membres but to keep the bright image the forum has as the biggest forum dedicated to bitcoin and blockchain and all its content should be unique.

[Kopyleft]

How would you approach multiple offenders?
Plagiarists rarely copy and paste as a mistake. It's a deliberate act, and they are likely to have done it more than once.
Would their offense be counted from when they are caught? Do you think multiple offenders deserve a second chance?
I'm more disposed to have issues handled individually, considering the number od copy and pasted, and situation leading to the offense.

[cryptohunter]

Nobody is going to pay 0.5btc to get their account back. It'd have to be a reasonable fine relative to what their account is worth. Somewhere between $100-$500 maybe. I possibly wouldn't be against some sort of fine but not sure it going to staff or the forum would be a good idea. People will just whine we're banning people for the money. We could tell them to donate it to charity which at least then some good would come of their behaviour and nobody but a good cause benefits. You could maybe give people two options: You can either have a sig ban indefinitely and earn your signature back by getting sufficient merit (say maybe at least 100) or pay a fine (that goes to charity). As I've mentioned before I'm strongly in favour of more donator ranks that give you a bigger signature and maybe they could get their signature back by purchasing one of them. I think we should also give them the option or earning it back via merit so at least they have two options and if they don't want to pay anything then they can earn their signature back by contributing something worthwhile.

Wouldn't the sensible solution be to NOT COPY AND PASTE?

This. I would personally prefer that users just stop doing the plagiarism then we wouldn't have anything to worry about. I think theymos should probably link to the rules somewhere so new users are made aware of them or even better constantly reminded of them somehow. I think some bright red warnings when they go to submit a post like DO NOT COPY AND PASTE/PLAGIARISE CONTENT OR POST REF LINKS would also help.

These are all actually very good ideas. There are many ways to tackle this with out losing net positive members to head shots. Carrot and stick to keep people net positive is best. Perhaps 0.5btc is too much although we need to remember those that are within the ratio will get it all back. Those that actually lose it even after sensible consideration are actually quite worthy of some punishment if not total deletion.

The reward money will just go to any person finding extra copy and pastes open to the entire board to be split with original finder and  escrow fee for mods. So anyone can claim. But your other ideas sound quite fair too as good alternatives.

If we could arrive on this thread at a few different ideas then set them up as polls all over the board.

1. shit posters will freak and start deleting their own spam
2. they will be very aware we dont tolerate financially motivated copy and paste spam.

so that alone is part of curing the issue too.

[suchmoon]

Having said all that, I think the cases that this would apply to are in the single digits, compared to the thousands and thousands of accounts being perma-banned for plagiarism. It would require a lot of time and energy from the admins/mods to set up this new system for the benefit of a tiny handful of users, and that time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere. The bottom line remains the same - if you don't want to be banned for plagiarism, then don't plagiarize.

Moderators could simply apply their discretion in the handful of cases that deserve that. I know there is the concern of setting a precedent (if we let one off the hook then everyone will want the same) but honestly most of these suggested "second chance" schemes wouldn't be any better.

[Steamtyme]

I wasn't trying to stifle any free speech.
I don't see a point though of turning this thread into pages of people who just say " all plagiarist get insta perm ban" because it makes the conversation for others trying to think up another system much harder.

Understood. I just felt it needed saying as that point of view is important to still have present for this discussion to move forward. To effectively overhaul and implement any major change those opinions serve to show what the new system has to overcome in opposition; or at least appease for support.

Can you point me to the ones that got banned you would give another chance to? I didn't think I missed any hero or legends out because originally I was thinking of a max 1.1000 ratio .... but the reviews and closer scrutiny especially for those with 1000's of posts is a lot to review. This system is quick and fast and could introduce tomorrow.

I honestly never tracked them or gave it much more than a passing thought. The one that I thought had been brought back was ChibitCTY, I actually thought they had been unbanned that's how little I followed it. It was only recently I went back to review.

After going over it again that case falls outside of where I stood on drawing the line. I have since adjusted my thoughts on that case, only in terms of the punitive measures. The original story is gone, but the recent explanation states it was done specifically to fulfill requirements for a SIG, does lean towards out of duty to the manager, but that's not the point.

In this case I feel enough members came out to vouch and show that at least in a certain segment of the community they were an absolute net positive. For that I would bring them back, with a permanent paid SIG ban.


I may not have been super clear in my monitoring idea. It essentially would be a board like the ModLog, where the list of unbanned users would be displayed. Anyone and everyone could access this list and if they chose can review posts of these users for further infractions. I don't expect this list to be very long, as there are not many users that would win their appeal. I don't know who we would allow to be the jury so to speak, maybe a pool of members chosen at random, much like a possible idea floated by theymos in regards to the trust system.

All in all I would stray entirely away from a monetizing this appeals process, but would be in favor of long term or permanent signature bans, as well as my previously mentioned advertising or [ANN] creation for monetary gain.

Cutting down on appeals isn't really necessary. It's a tool that works out, generally within a few minutes someone has explained to the fake ignorant exactly what they did wrong and someone follows up with 3 more examples immediately after they say it was the first time. This seems to be the trend of most appeals anyways. Then people just have to stop feeding the thread with replies. Instead we could overhaul the ban message that then states "this was plagiarism these are the posts and the source you stole from" then as part of the appeal process have them put the full message in their appeal.

Moderators could simply apply their discretion in the handful of cases that deserve that. I know there is the concern of setting a precedent

I learned from the ChiBitCTY thread that there was a precedent set in the past, in regards to LoanShark I beleive. I really don't know anything beyond that not everyone agreed, and that they had been unbanned. Since it came up in a plagiarism thread I assumed the ban was related to this.

[jackg]

Having said all that, I think the cases that this would apply to are in the single digits, compared to the thousands and thousands of accounts being perma-banned for plagiarism. It would require a lot of time and energy from the admins/mods to set up this new system for the benefit of a tiny handful of users, and that time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere. The bottom line remains the same - if you don't want to be banned for plagiarism, then don't plagiarize.

Moderators could simply apply their discretion in the handful of cases that deserve that. I know there is the concern of setting a precedent (if we let one off the hook then everyone will want the same) but honestly most of these suggested "second chance" schemes wouldn't be any better.

A 0.01BTC fine seems like a good idea though or something that small to redeem yourself. Although we’ll end up with the same number of people just saying they’re unfairly targeted... members that have been here long enough should be able to afford the fine, those who haven’t won’t unless they put in work to educate themselves.

And as Leo said, there aren’t many that get banned for copy pasting it’s just quite a large amount of the banned ones that’s why we’re noticing them. It’s not like you can unconsciously plagiarise.

[bitart]

...
That's not a good idear at all... For example, if i had some kind of grudge against somebody, I could just copy one of their original posts and paste it on my blog with a backdated timestamp, so it looks my blog article is older than the original post my victim made... Then i could just click the button => BAM autoban.
...
Then copy somebody else's work and post it on my blog with a backdated timestamp... Then i could create a newbie account on bitcointalk over my VPN or tor, and get a senior member autobanned... Sure, maybe the ban wouldn't stick, but the member would still lose access to his/her account for a while untill the admin has time to look at his ban appeal and unban his account.

I'm not in favor of an automatic ban mechanism...
...

Something similar has already happened against OP in the report topic, check this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg48790244#msg48790244
Newbie account with one and only post

[suchmoon]

Something similar has already happened against OP in the report topic, check this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg48790244#msg48790244
Newbie account with one and only post

That steemit thing is bollocks because cryptohunter clearly is replying to the post that has the link. Sloppy posting but probably not a bannable offence.

However the set of dash links that gets copied over and over - I don't see any attribution or anything else that would indicate cryptohunter is not the original author. I'm genuinely interested what the excuse is going to be.