Plagiarism as a result of cultural differences

[DdmrDdmr]

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In the Spanish local set of rules, rule number 33 (33. Posting plagiarized content is not allowed.[e]) is not included ... Rules stop at number 28, an thus lack the last 5 added rules in the translation. This is due to the fact that the post that includes the rules has not been edited since March 2017.
The author of the translation has barely been active during 2018, and thus has not been updating the post. I brought this to the attention of the local moderators, but have not since heard back.

The above non-sync between the rules written in English and those translated into local languages also happens on other local boards (last time I checked), and I posted about it here some time ago.

There are certain important threads whose ownership perhaps should be either be that of “the forum”, or at least transferrable by the moderator for cases such as these (with the pertinent tries to get the OP to sync the post himself as a first instance).

Edit: Created a thread on the matter (see Local Board forum rules asynchronisms), thread that currently lacks any flow of posts. Maybe it is not perceived as much of an issue.

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[bitserve]

<...>

In the Spanish local set of rules, rule number 33 (33. Posting plagiarized content is not allowed.[e]) is not included ... Rules stop at number 28, an thus lack the last 5 added rules in the translation. This is due to the fact that the post that includes the rules has not been edited since March 2017.
The author of the translation has barely been active during 2018, and thus has not been updating the post. I brought this to the attention of the local moderators, but have not since heard back.

The above non-sync between the rules written in English and those translated into local languages also happens on other local boards (last time I checked), and I posted about it here some time ago.

There are certain important threads whose ownership perhaps should be either be that of “the forum”, or at least transferrable by the moderator for cases such as these (with the pertinent tries to get the OP to sync the post himself as a first instance).

That really looks like something that should be fixed.

From what I have seen, Theymos is usually way more receptive to specific viable solutions than unsolvable problems. For example, the way he handled the WO thread "issue" was absolutely perfect for everyone involved. And that was WAY more complex and even involved some considerable effort on his part and some minor changes to the forum.

So maybe if you or some of the other well standing members that are also involved in the Spanish forum would offer to fill the "position" it could be a straightforward process. Of course assuming dserrano is not really interested anymore or welcomes some help in there.


P.S.: dserrano5 - Last Active:   October 17, 2018, 04:46:01 AM - I don't think he is really that much interested anymore from what I see.

P.S.2: My mistake I see that the moderators of the Spanish local subforum are:

VGO - Last Active:   November 09, 2018, 08:22:03 PM
frankcuestein - Last Active:   January 01, 2019, 08:58:23 PM

Still not that much interested I guess, except maybe for frankcuestein.

[TheBeardedBaby]

@DdmrDdmr
I asked long ago about the possibility to have multiple owners of one thread, but I haven't heard since. We don't have a local section, only a thread in the other languages and the OP is a newbie with 2 posts and last active back in march 2012. I thought since this is our official thread, it could be changed an updated a if someone share the ownership with the OP.
It can be a solution in your case too.

[Theb]

I really respect the cultural differences each country have but is the 3rd group really the one hanging here in the forum? In all of your examples of cultural differences all of them are about students doing school work in each of their respective country, do you think the same understanding still applies in the forum where they just copy/paste posts just to complete a bounty requirement? I don't think so, I don't even think that the plagiarizers we have are students still studying in school in the first place. The best thing that this forum can do I guess is what you just have suggested which I doubt will really make a change at all to these kind of people.

[suchmoon]

@DdmrDdmr
I asked long ago about the possibility to have multiple owners of one thread, but I haven't heard since. We don't have a local section, only a thread in the other languages and the OP is a newbie with 2 posts and last active back in march 2012. I thought since this is our official thread, it could be changed an updated a if someone share the ownership with the OP.
It can be a solution in your case too.

A moderator should be able to update those posts.

[elda34b]

In all of your examples of cultural differences all of them are about students doing school work in each of their respective country, do you think the same understanding still applies in the forum where they just copy/paste posts just to complete a bounty requirement?

Even the 'cultural' description on those students are wrong from my pov. I never remember we've been taught to not respect individual works or feels we should be uncomfortable when we cite someone on our papers. As collective as we are, individuals works are still respected ,even when we engage in online discussion.

One of the largest forum in my country, which is more 'carefree' than Bitcointalk still does not allow plagiarism. Even on Facebook, when some user posts a status that is similar to the status of somebody else, we 'bully' them. There is no cultural differences, we know plagiarism is bad.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Even the 'cultural' description on those students are wrong from my pov.

I mean, even if your culture has no such thing as plagiarism, I would still think the old saying "When in Rome" would apply. When you want to get involved in a new community, it is wise to learn their customs before doing so.

However, given the vast number of "Why was I banned" threads that appear in Meta, and that >99% of them are because of plagiarism, I do think a red text warning below the "Post" and "Preview" buttons would be helpful.

[Theb]

~snip~

Even the 'cultural' description on those students are wrong from my pov. I never remember we've been taught to not respect individual works or feels we should be uncomfortable when we cite someone on our papers. As collective as we are, individuals works are still respected ,even when we engage in online discussion.

One of the largest forum in my country, which is more 'carefree' than Bitcointalk still does not allow plagiarism. Even on Facebook, when some user posts a status that is similar to the status of somebody else, we 'bully' them. There is no cultural differences, we know plagiarism is bad.

I'm glad that you brought that up, I was afraid of mentioning this as I might offend a lot of people but I'm from an Asian country and the university I went to has a really big punishment for plagiarism, we even had a seminar on plagiarism and proper citation before we started on doing our research paper. So this Turnitin article has bugged me a lot as it made it look like most Asian countries don't know what plagiarism is. I guess Turnitin doesn't even proofread and fact check their own articles anymore which is pretty hypocritical on their part.

[crwth]

Plagiarism is not a crime but it could lead to other things like copyright infringement. Being permanently banned without the person knowing that it’s not allowed is somewhat unacceptable to the person.

But still being a human, we should respect that we shouldn’t just copy other people’s stuff and post it as your own. But people just don’t acknowledge it, that’s where the problem comes. Not recognizing the author or the owner is subject to infringement.

The hardwork of a person no matter what it is, an article, an experiment, a scientific research, etc. You wouldn’t know what they have gone through to make that and not acknowledging it and just plain copying it is disheartening.

It’s not just cultural differences, it’s moral characteristic of a person on how they respect other people.

[stompix]

I can see that bingo card we used so often in the ban appeals thread getting 10 "it's in my culture" options.

All the text you refer there is not about plagiarizing two lines with eth going up or down but, and let me quote: "ideas that are beneficial to and shared by the community are not individually attributed, but rather recognized as universal knowledge"
None of the two line bs copy paste garbage we have here is even close to that stats.

Besides, I really don't like grouping countries together and saying Asia, just how I don't like people talking about eastern or central Europeans and throwing in all the countries like all are the same. And we all know most of the copy posters here are not Chinese or Japanese and one of the countries with its own fair share is not even in Asia.

Plagiarism is not a crime but it could lead to other things like copyright infringement. Being permanently banned without the person knowing that it’s not allowed is somewhat unacceptable to the person.

Well, since on one hand, we have Confucianism how about we see the roman side of the story, Ignorantia juris non excusat  

[Pmalek]

I just think that more emphasise can and should be put on the problem of copy/pasting since that is The Rule and reason why so many members get banned + it creates a lot of work for the moderators of the forum dealing with banned accounts.
Highlighting the problem of copy/pasting the way I suggested or adding a warning next to the "Post" and "Preview" buttons like o_e_l_e_o and some other members did would be a nice feature i think.

[TheBeardedBaby]

@DdmrDdmr
I asked long ago about the possibility to have multiple owners of one thread, but I haven't heard since. We don't have a local section, only a thread in the other languages and the OP is a newbie with 2 posts and last active back in march 2012. I thought since this is our official thread, it could be changed an updated a if someone share the ownership with the OP.
It can be a solution in your case too.

A moderator should be able to update those posts.

That means that I have to make a new post and ask a Mod to change it and every time we do a change I have bother the with the same request. I would prefer to have the right to change the initial post but the OP to still have control of if shows up one day.
I think the mods have better thins to do.

[pugman]

Regarding point number 3, I have been on both sides of the coin, where my school forced me to literally by-heart word by word, and present stuff. And another, where they asked us not to do so at all, and use referencing, citation when presenting papers.

I have used Turnitin before, I hate it because it fucks up your university life, but I also know that it is good. Turnitin has this feature, where you could view the originality of the paper, excluding the citations and references.

BUT the forum's plagiarism policy doesn't collide with the cultural differences at all.

The forum doesn't even ask for referencing, but rather only citations(links), if you copy something. The forum is so lenient towards plagiarism cause, you have to refer to stuff in real life situations when you use the ideas from others. People should know that plagiarism is an offence, its their mistake if they don't,in 99% of the cases. Cause most of us have gone to universities and referencing and plagiarism is a big deal there.

Referencing won't make sense for a forum, but I THANK GOD we don't have that shit. Referencing one website takes time and is annoying. SO I DO NOT MIND CITING STUFF. OTHERS SHOULDN'T TOO.

[actmyname]

Bump after a long time.

Although I would agree with the addition of some redirect/indicator for new users towards the forum rules, it is the infantilization of users' knowledge that creates the chain of excuses.

Consider:

What does someone have to go through in order to commit plagiarism in the English-speaking boards?
They need to comprehend English at a basic level to find content and they need to be able to match responses to questions or topics. It's probable that they are able to respond to the questions themselves, given appropriate knowledge on a particular topic. Perhaps they may not have encountered prejudice against plagiarism throughout their study of the language. If you are assuming some cultural difference or unawareness of the plagiarism rules, it's curious to wonder what kind of person expects to stay on a forum ban-free having never read the rules: did they expect that ignorance of the rules implied protection from them? And given that notion, could I assume the same position and thus present that as my cultural representation/perspective, thereby steering myself away from responsibility?

[iamsheikhadil]

I agree to it.

I think plagiarism should be divided into subcategories. And the punishment should be given proportional to it.

If a person copy pastes an article without source, let them be given a temporary ban or a stern warning and if they are caught doing that again, then ban. But if it's a deliberate plagiarism where a user plagiarized someone else's topic word by word to increase their post count then a permanent ban.

Also, if it's possible every newbie should be redirected to the rules post in which they click "I agree" before registering in which plagiarism rule be written in bold maybe

[hilariousetc]

People really should be given a warning about plagiarism as obviously not all plagiarism is equal. There's obviously a huge difference between someone who comes here and tries to milk signature campaigns or farm accounts by using someone else's postings either from this forum or elsewhere but if someone just posts an incorrectly quoted/sourced answer from google to a question someone asked then that really shouldn't be the end of their account. A warning or at the very most a short temp ban should be enough.
Obviously most of us know that plagiarism is wrong but sometimes it's just down to naivety more than anything and a lot of time won't be done with malicious intent with or without a signature. We also really need to get that welcome message sorted where users are urged to read the rules or are given a handful of the most important ones upon sign-up. That alone would stop a lot of this from ever happening.

@DdmrDdmr
I asked long ago about the possibility to have multiple owners of one thread, but I haven't heard since. We don't have a local section, only a thread in the other languages and the OP is a newbie with 2 posts and last active back in march 2012. I thought since this is our official thread, it could be changed an updated a if someone share the ownership with the OP.
It can be a solution in your case too.

It probably won't happen on this forum but hopefully it'll be on the new one. It would be a useful feature for sure.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

People really should be given a warning about plagiarism as obviously not all plagiarism is equal. There's obviously a huge difference between someone who comes here and tries to milk signature campaigns or farm accounts by using someone else's postings either from this forum or elsewhere but if someone just posts an incorrectly quoted/sourced answer from google to a question someone asked then that really shouldn't be the end of their account. A warning or at the very most a short temp ban should be enough.

Warning is for newbies who don't read rules, don't know where to read rules or read but don't know the rule of plagiarism. With users are in the forum for a while and are Sr. Members, Hero members or Legendary members I don't agree they need warnings.

Obviously most of us know that plagiarism is wrong but sometimes it's just down to naivety more than anything and a lot of time won't be done with malicious intent with or without a signature. We also really need to get that welcome message sorted where users are urged to read the rules or are given a handful of the most important ones upon sign-up. That alone would stop a lot of this from ever happening.

Roger it, naivety is for newbies not for Hero members 'bitcoinst' abusing signature campaign with alt account & spamming by copy-paste

[hilariousetc]

People really should be given a warning about plagiarism as obviously not all plagiarism is equal. There's obviously a huge difference between someone who comes here and tries to milk signature campaigns or farm accounts by using someone else's postings either from this forum or elsewhere but if someone just posts an incorrectly quoted/sourced answer from google to a question someone asked then that really shouldn't be the end of their account. A warning or at the very most a short temp ban should be enough.

Warning is for newbies who don't read rules, don't know where to read rules or read but don't know the rule of plagiarism. With users are in the forum for a while and are Sr. Members, Hero members or Legendary members I don't agree they need warnings.

Well it depends on the level/type of plagiarism. If someone asks a question like what is the colour teal and someone goes straight to google/wikipedia and posts Teal is a blue-green colour. Its name comes from that of a bird—the common teal (Anas crecca)—which presents a similarly colored stripe on its head. The word is often used colloquially to refer to shades of cyan in general. then I don't think they should be permanently banned for that. A warning would suffice for 99% of people to not do it again.

Obviously most of us know that plagiarism is wrong but sometimes it's just down to naivety more than anything and a lot of time won't be done with malicious intent with or without a signature. We also really need to get that welcome message sorted where users are urged to read the rules or are given a handful of the most important ones upon sign-up. That alone would stop a lot of this from ever happening.

Roger it, naivety is for newbies not for Hero members 'bitcoinst' abusing signature campaign with alt account & spamming by copy-paste

I'm not talking about specific cases but not everyone reads the rules or ventures into Meta. The rules should be made available upon sign-up. For many users they have little no reason to go here in Meta or it's often the last board they do. A welcome message stating a few of the most serious rules would help tremendously.

[jademaxsuy]

Copy and paste post then recognizes the source of the author below is also consider as plagiarism though source may be indicated and being acknowledge but in my own opinion it is not enough to republish without even asking first the author. Just like a book being scan or photcopied, the author has the copyright for this and we should respect the author of his intellectual property by responsible publishing may it be online or other platform like this forum. This is only my opinion.

[friends1980]

A lot of interesting reactions, and a bit of nonsense and bullshit, too, here and there...

Copy-pasting and plagiarism are not synonyms.

I don't see why literally thousands of posts and opinions have been wasted on this subject. This is not something to have an opinion about: either it's plagiarism, or it's not.

That doesn't mean it's easy to prove (because if it's intentional, it's an offence, and if it's not intentional, it's not an offence) - and yes, the discussion about "intent" offers plenty of room for discussion - but the concept/definition of plagiarism is not open for discussion, not even in a cultural context. If you intentionally pretend the works or the text or the photo etc. to be yours - while they're not - there's plagiarism, no matter which country or culture you're in. So there are no different interpretations between cultures and nations, there are only differences between people who understand what (intentional) plagiarism is, and those who don't.

Read this a bit, because I don't know how clear it has to be made, before this discussion finally ends: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism

So yes, posting a text or a photo which is not yours might cause copyright issues (which is using someone else's intellectual property without permission, but has nothing to do with the famous nr. 33 of the forum rules), but as long as you're not pretending it's yours, there's NO plagiarism offence.

And for instance, text spinning CLEARLY is an offence of plagiarism, because you're actively and intentionally working to pretend having written someone else's text, of which you're even trying to hide its traces - doesn't get more intentional than that, right?

Posting a photo without source, might have copyright consequences, but if you're not pretending the photo is yours, it's NOT a plagiarism offence.
Posting a text without source, exactly the same thing: might have copyright consequences, but if you're not pretending the photo is yours, it's NOT a plagiarism offence. There's no logical reason at all why photos and text posts would be treated in a different way?
It's not nice and quite stupid to not mark at least the source (not to mention the copyright discussion), but if there's no intent, it's NO plagiarism offence.

So imho, the only relevant discussion that should be had on "the big plagiarism debate" is reduced to this simple question: is it (proven) intentional or not?

By the way, in the plagiarism thread, I'm not saying there's an intent in every case, but in any case, all cases I've seen passing by on the thread were intentional. However I can imagine there's a probability that people have been banned in the past for copypasting something without pretending it to be their works. Not saying it happened, just saying it's probable. As this offence is punished with forum death penalty, I presume mods take in-depth look at every separate case before deciding to ban, temp or perm.


edit:

Copy and paste post then recognizes the source of the author below is also consider as plagiarism though source may be indicated and being acknowledge but in my own opinion it is not enough to republish without even asking first the author. Just like a book being scan or photcopied, the author has the copyright for this and we should respect the author of his intellectual property by responsible publishing may it be online or other platform like this forum. This is only my opinion.

QED