Alternatives to Permabans for plagarism

[morvillz7z]

For many the intent is to hit a post quota

My assumption was they plagiarize to earn from their signature.

Over the last few months, I've been somewhat involved in tracking and reporting plagiarists and I can confirm the two statements above to be absolutely true. The main reason for plagiarism is earning money from signature campaigns, many of them have and manage multiple accounts (ranging from 5 to 100), therefore, they fail to fulfill their weekly quota writing original content => copy posts.

Another large percentage of plagiarizing users are hacked or sold profiles, tailored to post as bumping bots, with their countless pyramid quote garbage in self-moderated scam ICOs. Jengo's army alone has over 200/300 high-ranked profiles (already banned) who have shilled in over 40 projects starting from August 2017 and Lust ICO and ending in late March.

[cestmoi]

Maybe that some of the ban members are bad seeds.
But there are also some, that have faulted but not to the extent you described.

Some where not even wearing a paid sig campaign when they did the plagiarism.
Some where not wearing sig campaign when they got caught.
Some only had a single account that did a mistake once in many years of presence here.

To be fair, the proposed vote is 25% yes stay banned.
75%, let's find another solution.


Question : "Should we have alternatives to permabans for plagarism"

Answer : "Yes - Signature ban indefinitely until they've earned x amount of merit"

This kind of solution (proposed by said banned member, FYI) is not detrimental to other members.
And believe me, only the "good" members that have been banned are going to go through the hassle of earning merit in order to recover their signature.

Like if we take your example, you have earn approx 130 merit in 4 months (mostly hunting plagiarizer)
If we put the threshold at 100 merit earned to recover the signature, it is not that easy to make.
Can you imagine the hard work it would take to make those merit if you that said banned member was a shit poster.
And also, at the next mistake it is permban for life.

I believe that most of the shitposter will just not bother and stay without a signature : no campaign, no money no quota ....

[Veleor]

Alternative penalty might be a reduction in rank.
Let's assume, Hero Member was caught in plagiarism then s/he will be downgraded to Sr. Member.

[OgNasty]

Their intent in plagairising is to receive merit, no? Removing their ability to earn merit should remove their incentive to plagiarize.

I don’t see how removing unmerited posts effects plagiarism at all.

My assumption was they plagiarize to earn from their signature. Plagiarism happened long before the introduction of Merit. I started my Report plagiarism thread in May 2017.
Removing unmerited posts (which is not a serious idea to pursue) would lower their post count, and force them to only create good posts.

Then take away their signature also.

[UserU]

Then take away their signature also.

What about those newbies though? There are some that don't care much about signatures if their posts are more visible.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Then take away their signature also.

What about those newbies though? There are some that don't care much about signatures if their posts are more visible.

The perfect alternative to permaban for newbie who can't wear signature is

Temporary ban for 14days for first time offenders

And for users who can wear signature and avatar, you can visit the quoted reply for an earlier suggestion i gave concerning this issue.

[JSRAW]

Why not introduce new category for plagarism or spammer? if proven guilty, they will get new rank despite their previous rank and all earning rights freeze automatically including smerits.

Why ban? let them hang out here so that they can see what they are missing due to their wrong and illegal behavior.

[ryzaadit]

-snip-

This its was nice, with this badge we can identify the account. Everyone makes some suggestion cant use the signature if that feature has some a duration, I think they will repeat the same fault.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Why not introduce new category for plagarism or spammer? if proven guilty, they will get new rank despite their previous rank and all earning rights freeze automatically including smerits.

Smerits/merits are a reward gotten for quality posting and that shouldn't be take away from any user no matter the crime committed don't forget even red tag account still get merited because merit isn't a privilege but a reward for quality posting.

About tagging them with new ranks as suggested, that will only make accounts useless on forum because forum user will automatic see every post they write as not worth reading even when they got some quality under their sleeves so why not ban them instead as usual.

[JSRAW]

@CryptopreneurBrainboss

IMHO banning someone is very easy punishment, its like capital punishment and new ranks are similar to community service.

It would help in the "silly mistake" case. one can always rank up or recover the previous rank again by earning merit

Or fulfilling any other criteria, just like any other rank. Why give up on revenue visit per user. Every user is essential here.

The new rank badge will remind them that they did something wrong and other users can learn from it, that bad choice or cheating can lead to such kind of embarrassing situation.

Because the majority of users never get to hear or have any knowledge that someone got banned etc. 

I am not advocating about taking someone smerit etc. but Freezing smerit can help in terms of merit abuse.

[Pmalek]

<snip>

JSRAW I really don't think that theymos or the admins will consider putting shitposter tags or images of shit on a users profile and make a freak show of this place.
Something similar was discussed not long ago. It was about marking banned accounts. I am going to quote my reply and o_e_l_e_o's reply on my post because it is related to marking/tagging accounts.

Of course you have the right to decide for yourself but tagging those accounts with a banner/sign/whatever will influence the decision whether or not you should trust the posts and follow the guidelines in it because the user got banned.

Rhetorically, lets say you are searching the forum for topics related to charts, reading charts and trading advice. And you find a great thread that explains everything you need to know about what to look for in charts and how to be safe.
But the OP who wrote it got banned, and under his name there is a red banner that says BANNED! That banner will immediately influence your decision in trusting the information from his thread even though the information could be excellent. The OP can be a trading expert but also a user who plagiarised bounty content and got banned, therefore I think those two should be separated. 

There have been a couple of "high profile" users who have been banned in the past due to plagiarism. There have also been accounts which have made good posts in the past which are hacked and used by bounty spammers, which are then banned for spamming or plagiarism. Pmalek makes a good point, and it's the same logic that means trust is not displayed on every board - your decision and attitude towards that post/user would absolutely be prejudiced by a notification saying they were banned.

Having said that, the main reason I would like to see a banned notification is so I don't waste time investigating posts I suspect of plagiarism if the user is already banned. An easy way, I think, to reconcile these two points is simply to only display the banned notification to users who have >1000/3000/5000/whatever good reports.

[JSRAW]

@Pmalek

Okay point taken, shitposter and the shit icon was a bad choice in terms of appearance. but we all call out the following user by the same inappropriate manner so why hesitating calling,

Spade a spade when taking action against them? We can still create a new rank for the following category with a more appropriate term, instead of a ban.

And I don't think that if any user tagged with a red banner or banned, it's going to influence my decision or other users in any way. I will be careful ( let's say he cheated someone or doing some illegal activity so will keep my distance but only in the following matter, its common sense, I suppose)

If his/her other posts are useful which is entirely different from his/her red tag activity, then red trust doesn't matter to me at all.

[Veleor]

News from the forum administrator

<...> Nobody is banned strictly because of "the rules"; it's always handled case-by-case, but almost always, plagiarists deserve to be permabanned.

If you think that a ban should be ended, make your case in a new topic from a "good for the forum as a whole" perspective.

[Veleor]

I'll bump this thread, because I believe that an alternative to the permanent ban is necessary and will bring much more benefits to the community than the existing system.

The main reason of plagiarism is a posting for signature campaigns typically, so I suggest that users, with ranks more than Jr. Member and which have plagiarized, lose their signatures until they receive, for example, 100 merit - from the moment they were caught. When the penalized users gain required amount of merit, their signature will be available for them. Any Newbies must be banned instantly - to not overload the moderators.

After repeated violation of plagiarism should be a permanent ban, but nonetheless I think that users who will get their signature back will not repeat the same mistake again.

[Vispilio]

After repeated violation of plagiarism should be a permanent ban, but nonetheless I think that users who will get their signature back will not repeat the same mistake again.

Agreed, while plagiarism is a definitely unethical offense, we have seen some examples of it where some local users copy pasted from other sources to better express themselves in english (without giving due reference, not totally aware of the strictness of the forum rules in this regard),

so for minor or innocuous infractions, it would make great sense to give a second chance (I voted for temporary signature ban and / or fine by the way)...

also your direct quote from theymos is a good reminder to some members who are fanatically crying out "please permaban"   for whatever dirt they can dig up on Turkish users for over a week now all over Meta...

<...> Nobody is banned strictly because of "the rules"; it's always handled case-by-case, but almost always, plagiarists deserve to be permabanned.

If you think that a ban should be ended, make your case in a new topic from a "good for the forum as a whole" perspective.

[UserU]

The main reason of plagiarism is a posting for signature campaigns typically, so I suggest that users, with ranks more than Jr. Member and which have plagiarized, lose their signatures until they receive, for example, 100 merit - from the moment they were caught. When the penalized users gain required amount of merit, their signature will be available for them. Any Newbies must be banned instantly - to not overload the moderators.

Won't that encourage posts "begging" for merits?

Perhaps just ban the privilege for 3 to 5 years which is considered good enough to dissuade many from continuing.

[Veleor]

... so for minor or innocuous infractions, it would make great sense to give a second chance ...

I suppose that improving the existing ban policy through the merit system will be more fair and effective because there are cases when senior members were permanently banned for only one copied message without reference, which was posted years ago.

Won't that encourage posts "begging" for merits?

Users that would be begging for merit have a high risk of being tagged by DT members.

[LoyceV]

I suggest that users, with ranks more than Jr. Member and which have plagiarized, lose their signatures until they receive, for example, 100 merit - from the moment they were caught.

So that's like what, 2 weeks?
Seriously though, 100 Merit isn't that much, but as a Merit source I don't want to get control over how long someone's signature ban is going to last. If I know someone needs 30 more Merit to rank up to Legendary, I sometimes look for some good posts to help him rank up. If the same action would lift their ban, I wouldn't be comfortable doing this.

[Bttzed03]

I like the temporary ban plus removing their signature. Reaching that certain number shouldn't automatically lift the signature ban. Once the minimum merits are earned (100 in Veleor's example), the user should be allowed to make an appeal and mods (with the help of the community) will have to review the case again.

[Veleor]

So that's like what, 2 weeks?
Seriously though, 100 Merit isn't that much, but as a Merit source I don't want to get control over how long someone's signature ban is going to last. <...>

Why only two weeks? I think users who are able to honestly receive such amount of merit in such a short period can be counted on one hand.
If the user has plagiarized once but can earn 100 merit, then this is the main point of the alternative to a permanent ban. It proves that such user is a valuable member of the community, which can bring more benefit to the forum, being active.