Merit Source - Plagiarist

[nullius]

As I myself observed further up the thread, the problem with the merits is not with the senders—to the contrary!  I myself almost sent merit to this post.  I would have felt cheated if I had.  It is one of the reasons why I am focused on this topic—one of many good reasons.

N.b. the merits from reputable users, who would not knowingly merit a copy-paste.  As I noted earlier, I had intended to merit it myself, and to make a thoughtful reply.

Why is this post not showing up?  It seems still to be available; and I have not received any notification of a deleted post.  But it does not show on the thread.  Is there now an actual shadow-ban function on this forum?

I believe that this succinctly illustrates the problem with Ratimov’s copy-paste jobs, which I had deliberately mimicked with a copied-and-pasted post of my own:

Explanations are now added in red for the dullards here:

We don't give a shit what your particular definition of plagiarism is.

That wasn’t my definition of plagiarism, you self-made nutcase.  I copied and pasted that definition of plagiarism from Yale.EDU.  Wasn’t it obvious?  

[Almost all of the snipped text here was copied and pasted from Yale.EDU.]

You must always make clear in your written work where you have borrowed from others.  [← Copying and pasting ends here.]


sources:  [A misleading list of “sources” just like Ratimov’s, with the copied and pasted page linked in as #3 out of 7 links.]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
- https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2020/12/01/a-heartfelt-plagiarism/
- https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/understanding-and-avoiding-plagiarism/what-plagiarism
- https://www.pornhub.com/ [NSFW]
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1184641.msg26140103#msg26140103
- https://archive.org/details/nietzschehislilu00ludouoft
- https://web.archive.org/web/20190926055757/http://www.jir.com/

So, I guess that you “don’t give a shit” what Yale University tells its faculty and students about plagiarism.  That is acceptable:  There is no reason for anyone to give a shit about your opinion.  (Drop the presumptuous “we”.  It is obviously not a royal “we”, for there is nothing royal about you; and it cannot be an editorial “we”, for you are an awful writer.)

[...some parts snipped here...]

Lets all start google translating articles from other languages and opening new topics.

^^^ This.  Sums it up.

[1714471508]

1714471508

[1714471508]

1714471508

[1714471508]

1714471508

[tranthidung]

- Copy-paste, this is when I find interesting material, and there is nothing special to add, it is beautiful and so, so I transfer it almost in its original form.
- This is a statement in your own words of the very essence of several other people's articles,
- This is a completely original topic, where I collect material from scratch. These are usually very large lists.

Some opinion:

• It is not an academic forum.
• I read in the past that the forum is the only one (not include academic forum) has a rule on plagiarism. Not sure about the correctness of this info. If yes, at least the forum is the first forum has such rule (bitcoingarden has a rule for plagiarism after community made proposal but the rule is not strict as in this forum)
• The forum has its rule on plagiarism but it does not have a rule on Verbatim plagiarism. So why not skip the Verbatim plagiarism?
• The willingness to share something is good but don't abuse it. I don't say you are abusing it either. Honestly, you are one of very good members on the forum. Topics you share are selective and have high quality. I admire you because of this. It means you are knowledgeable and have good selective process. I did not read most of them but say thanks by the way.
• If you don't earn merit (in fact you earned a lot), no one cares about it. It means something.
• If the style is not accepted, the forum (list of unofficial rules) needs to be updated and violations after that day will be judged and bans will be applied. For now, skip it and move on
• If the community need a rule for Verbatim plagiarism, raise a proposal, and admin will make his approval decision

I am not a fan of copy, paste, spin and mix original paragraphs and topic creator's opinion, honestly.

For the accusation on text spinning, translation, etc, I don't want to spend time to look at the complicated investigation.  

[nullius]

Unfortunately, many did not realize that they got to the Bitcoin forum, and not to the forum with completely original content. Here, really original content, maybe 10%, the rest is all a copy-paste of finished materials or partial use of someone else's material.

My jaw just dropped:  Is this person a DT1 and a merit source!?  —Ratimov, have you no shame?

Disgusting.

Plagiarism has always been unacceptable here.  theymos has generally expressed that he despises plagiarism, ever since the days when Satoshi was still here:

The article is full of plagiarism from Bitcoin Market and bitcoin.org.

I desire attribution for my contributions.

This latter post confuses plagiarism with copyright, which is one of my pet peeves; but at least theymos’ heart was in the right place there.

The material is submitted with all references to primary sources and whoever knows how to analyze information will immediately understand that this is not an author's creation.

Nonsense.  On the face of your English-language post, it would require magical psychic powers to discern that you had posted a Google translation of Russian-language link #3 of 7 in your so-called “sources” list.

Your “references” to “sources” were only a cover-up to hide the source and dishonestly deny credit to the author.  You had only one source, which you totally ripped off and misrepresented as if it were your own original work.  ‘Kidnapped’, per the Latin etymology of the word “plagiarism”.

I observe that you did not even mention the name of the actual author.  The author’s name is Andrew Asmakov.  I am thus far the only one to have identified the author by name.  The author of the article—the one who deserves the credit for it!

Will I create topics like the one discussed here? I certainly will. And I don't care if someone doesn't like something,

It is a gross violation of forum rules.  One of the two worst plagiarisms that I have yet seen here, as I said.

Clowns-trolls who come here to write from the alts, it's generally not even worth attention to answer something to them.

Your despicable response is the very worst part of this.

You act with full intentions.  You are remorseless.  You blame anybody who accuses you.

What a contrast to this (for much less extensive bad posts that had occurred five years before, had never been repeated, and which I actually believe to have been unintentional):

Username: Lauda
Profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101872

Thank you for reporting these.

[JaneAhonen]

If I said that I am the author of these articles, even if there are links to the original, it would be a different moment. And what you thought there is already another moment.

When you wrote In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme that sounds like you wrote that article.That sentence should be started with In this article  Andrew Asmakov touched  upon such a theme...

Nonsense.  On the face of your English-language post, it would require magical psychic powers to discern that you had posted a Google translation of Russian-language link #3 of 7 in your so-called “sources” list.

Only reason why he inserted 7 sources is to appear like he invested hard work while compiling many different articles and texts.In reality all he did is google translated 1 article and then shared few more sources that were inside that article to look better.

[nullius]

If I said that I am the author of these articles, even if there are links to the original, it would be a different moment. And what you thought there is already another moment.

When you wrote In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme that sounds like you wrote that article.That sentence should be started with In this article  Andrew Asmakov touched  upon such a theme...

Good catch, and a very important point.  I am not sure how I missed that.

• If you republish a text written by another person,^* it is critical to put the author’s byline up top, in a prominent position!
• Ratimov flat-out lied about the authorship of the post.
  

  In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme as online privacy. As we know, now is the period of a pandemic, and it is at this time that rights and freedoms are being infringed, including on the Internet.  [—text fully copied from a Google translation of an article written by Andrew Askamov—]

Now, who will give me credit for my being the first to mention on this thread the most important part, the author’s name, which everybody else has ignored?  Hah.

* Assuming arguendo that this is allowed by forum rules as an OP.  I don’t think it is, generally; though there are some nuances in the rules here, IIUC.

Nonsense.  On the face of your English-language post, it would require magical psychic powers to discern that you had posted a Google translation of Russian-language link #3 of 7 in your so-called “sources” list.

Only reason why he inserted 7 sources is to appear like he invested hard work while compiling many different articles and texts.In reality all he did is google translated 1 article and then shared few more sources that were inside that article to look better.

That, too.  In addition to hiding the actual source.

[DdmrDdmr]

<.> Question to those merit senders (DdmrDdmr (2), OgNasty (1), ETFbitcoin (1), mk4 (1), 20kevin20 (1), GazetaBitcoin (1)),

Did it look like the introduction (2 paragraphs) was entirely the author's (@Ratimov) own words when you sent the merits?

Since I’m quoted here for meriting (albeit this being an irrelevant fact) the thread being deconstructed, I’ll provide my input as to what I saw when reading through the referenced thread.

What I saw was an elaborate thread, that contained interesting information, far from the usual type of content, and that was appealing to read. I’ve already merited @Ratimov multiple times, so there was no need to vet the content like I often do with first-timers. By vet, I mean see if there was a reference to the source, and determine whether the content surpassed the copy/paste that many newly created accounts resort to (without link -> plagiarism; with link -> unsubstantial post in general).

I did enjoy the read, and the structure looked like the typical layout of a posting author’s compiled and worded set of comments, with embedded verbatim quotes. I therefore did assume, as I’d generally do on mentally vetted profiles, that the non-quoted parts of the post were indeed essentially @Ratimov’s wording, not original content, since drafting original content when laying out historical information is not that common.

I do recall seeing the reference to the sources, and clicking on the first two. Having no wish for further readings on the topic at the time, and being thrown back by the (understandable) format of the first two sources (*), I scrolled back to the top, pressed the Merit button, and went for my puffed-up hyper generous procedure of awarding 2 sMerits (as opposed to my mean 1 sMerit usual).

Now is this plagiarism?
It depends on the prism we are using. From the perspective of the forum, the reference/s are there, so it complies with what is ordinarily common law around here, and cannot be deemed as Bitcointalk rule-type interpreted tradition plagiarism, as (unofficial) rules stand. From an academic point of view, any thesis with this degree of non-original wording would be pointed out, and the author would by all means fail his thesis.

When are we going to have a original wording indicator (percentage) for each post?
I would certainly take it into heavy consideration when meriting, but I guess this question surpasses the meriting factor.

(*) The third source is of course the key, but being in Russian, I would probably not have really looked at it upon reflecting on the fact, thus missing the visually similar layout, which, dealing with a vetted profile, I would probably not have looked into.

[nullius]

Internal quotation fixed so as to make mdayonliner’s meaning clear:

<.> Question to those merit senders (DdmrDdmr (2), OgNasty (1), ETFbitcoin (1), mk4 (1), 20kevin20 (1), GazetaBitcoin (1)),

Did it look like the introduction (2 paragraphs) was entirely the author's (@Ratimov) own words when you sent the merits?
I am sure the answer will come Yes

Since I’m quoted here for meriting (albeit this being an irrelevant fact) the thread being deconstructed, I’ll provide my input as to what I saw when reading through the referenced thread.

It is not irrelevant.  As I myself said before mdayonliner raised this issue, in the internal quotation:

As I myself observed further up the thread, the problem with the merits is not with the senders—to the contrary!  I myself almost sent merit to this post.  I would have felt cheated if I had.  It is one of the reasons why I am focused on this topic—one of many good reasons.

Plagiarised Post

N.b. the merits from reputable users, who would not knowingly merit a copy-paste.  As I noted earlier, I had intended to merit it myself, and to make a thoughtful reply.

Merited by DdmrDdmr (2), OgNasty (1), ETFbitcoin (1), mk4 (1), 20kevin20 (1), GazetaBitcoin (1)

I therefore did assume, as I’d generally do on mentally vetted profiles, that the non-quoted parts of the post were indeed essentially @Ratimov’s wording, not original content, since drafting original content when laying out historical information is not that common.

Now, don’t you feel cheated that you sent merit to Ratimov for a rip-off Google Translate copy of another author’s work?

By the way, I know that there are people here, including myself, who do draft original content on this forum—including in “laying out historical information”.  Ratimov’s plagiarism cheapens their (our) work.

Now is this plagiarism?
It depends on the prism we are using.

Definitional plagiarism is plagiarism.

From the perspective of the forum, the reference/s are there, so it complies with what is ordinarily common law around here, and cannot be deemed as Bitcointalk rule-type interpreted tradition plagiarism, as (unofficial) rules stand.

Nonsense.  A buried, unlabelled reference at the bottom of a long post which begins with an explicit claim of this being Ratimov’s article—say what!?

From an academic point of view, any thesis with this degree of non-original wording would be pointed out, and the author would by all means fail his thesis.

Wrong.  With “this degree of non-original wording” in an academic thesis (!), i.e. all but the first two sentences (!!), the plagiarist would be expelled from university and permanently blacklisted from admissions.  Furthermore, any degrees previously awarded may be retroactively stripped, depending on the circumstance.

[NotATether]

The problem is that when you want to share an article you found on a website to interested people on bitcointalk, there doesn't exist a way to do it. The alternatives don't accomplish what you want.

1. If someone wants to share an article and posts this:

Hey everyone, I found an interesting article about <X> you all should read, it's at https://<BLOG-URL>

Most of the people who you want to read it won't, because they are apprehensive of clicking unknown links.

2. There is no "Share" button on bitcointalk where you can send an article you read to a new thread for others to read (such a feature would be heavily abused too).

So I think the best solution is, to include the sentence "I am not the source, this information came from the following articles:" at the end, before the list of links. Even though it is generally accepted that including links to articles you derived information from is a form of attribution (and attribution absolves you from claims of plagiarism), it looks like some people overlook this, and want to see a more prominent form of attribution.

[nutildah]

This is the only definition of plagiarism that matters:

Common rule violations

These are the most common rule violations that newbies make. There are other rules than these.

• Plagiarism: If you copy some text from somewhere, then you should have a good reason for it, and you must link to the source. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. Changing a few words around doesn't matter. If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.

Copied text from somewhere: check.
Has a good reason for it: check.
Link to the source: check.

Ergo, Ratimov did not commit plagiarism as defined by the admin of the forum. Any case to be made that Ratimov should still be punished should be based on evidence that other users have been banned for plagiarism even after including the source, which AFAIK has never happened.

Lauda and cryptohunter, on the other hand, both committed plagiarism according to these standards. It's pretty clear if you are able to set emotional judgment aside.

[nullius]

So I think the best solution is, to include the sentence "I am not the source, this information came from the following articles:" at the end, before the list of links.

Why at the end?  That is inverted thinking, especially because the forum’s format gives a byline for the author of every post:  The poster’s username.  That is up top.

In general (ignoring weird edge cases), the only acceptable way properly to give credit for lengthy copied material is to present the actual author’s name (and, if applicable, the source hyperlink) on a byline prominently displayed at the top of the copied material.  Cf. the forum’s <quote> block format, which attributes a quotation at the top thereof.

Anything else here is either improper attribution, or plagiarism, depending on whether the person doing it has made a good-faith effort to cite the source.  Last month, I quoted an academic writing resource’s explanation of the difference.  Somebody who appears to have tried to cite the source, and made a mistake, deserves guidance (if appropriate, via a polite PM).  Somebody who prefaces the copied material with text unavoidably implying authorship thereof, and buries a source link in a tiny-text list of links at the bottom, has clearly committed plagiarism.

This is the only definition of plagiarism that matters:

Common rule violations

These are the most common rule violations that newbies make. There are other rules than these.

• Plagiarism: If you copy some text from somewhere, then you should have a good reason for it, and you must link to the source. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. Changing a few words around doesn't matter. If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.

Copied text from somewhere: check.
Has a good reason for it: check.
Link to the source: check.

Ergo, Ratimov did not commit plagiarism as defined by the admin of the forum. Any case to be made that Ratimov should still be punished should be based on evidence that other users have been banned for plagiarism even after including the source, which AFAIK has never happened.

nutildah’s illogical hairsplitting and rules-lawyering over a mechanistic parsing of a quote demonstrates empirically that using LSD can permanently compromise one’s powers of judgment and reasoning.  PSA:  It is an irreparably damaging “experience” that young people should avoid!

Pro tip nutildah:  Twisting theymos’ words to cover burying a tiny “source” link in the middle of a misrepresented list of “source” links, at the very bottom of a copied-pasted post that (a) did not name the original author, (b) dishonestly claimed Ratimov’s authorship (“In this article I...”), shows only that you yourself are mentally deranged and/or malicious and dishonest.  All of the above, I think.

Going by your own standards, Lauda should have been banned for plagiarism.

Lauda and cryptohunter, on the other hand, both committed plagiarism according to these standards. It's pretty clear if you are able to set emotional judgment aside.

nutildah, your obsessive, unjustified cryptohunter-style attack on Lauda is also quite revealing.  CH, it is such a nice secret fan club you have here!  Now, watch me pick them apart.

• What Lauda did was orders of magnitude less-bad in scope and in level of dishonesty than Ratimov’s plagiarism.  nutildah perversely inverts the truth in comparing the two.  Lauda never intentionally ripped off whole posts from foreign language articles, laundered them through an automated translator, and then posted them as new topic OPs prefaced by a line dishonestly claiming authorship (“In this article I would like to touch upon...”).
• If Lauda had done that, and/or if Lauda had reacted to the plagiarism accusation the same way as Ratimov has, then I would have eaten kitty-chops, extra rare, with a nice Chianti.
  
  

  I was about ready to dine on feline fillet; and I grilled Lauda about this in private.

  
  A bank’s KYC/AML compliance officer once tried to test me.  I was critical of his discourteous intrusion.

  
  She did not, because she was an honest person.  Nobody is perfect.  At the baseline, honest people who are caught in some past wrongdoing (usually due to sincere mistakes) do not attack the accuser, declare that wrongdoing is right in principle, and remorselessly insist that they will keep doing wrong.
  
  

  Username: Lauda
  Profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101872
  

  Thank you for reporting these.

  
  In the circumstance, Lauda did the best to make right that she could do without a time machine.  In private, that was also the first time that, among other things, I heard her mention the idea of requesting a self-ban—in the manner of kitty seppuku.  I had to talk her out of it.  For obvious reasons, I did not want to disclose that publicly at the time when all of Lauda’s enemies were demanding that she be banned.
  
  
  🌸🌸🌸🀥🌸🌸🌸
  the way of the warrior
  if your friend self-eviscerates
  beheading is friendship
  
  Base image source: The Gist of Japan: The Islands, Their People, And Missions, Rev. R. B. Peery, A.M., Ph.D. (1897), p. 85,
  via Wikimedia Commons.
  
  I don’t think that that had anything to do with what happened in October.  Her activity did drop off a cliff after May; but from my view of the situation, I think that it was probably a coincidence—probably.  Anyway, nutildah and cryptohunter can now both celebrate together that “the banned plagiarist Lauda” is gone!
• If Lauda had done anything like this anytime recently, I would have seen it differently.  Ratimov is committing extreme plagiarism much worse than anything that Lauda ever did, and he is doing it right now.

That is reality.  If you don’t like it, o nutty nutildah, take another hit of acid to make it go away. 

P.S., protip for nutildah and suchmoon:  Pretending to ignore me renders you (even more) impotent as a debate opponent.  It also makes you look silly to the audience, when you reasonably need to respond to something that I said.  Awkward!  Please keep doing it.  Thanks.

[suchmoon]

So I think the best solution is, to include the sentence "I am not the source, this information came from the following articles:" at the end, before the list of links. Even though it is generally accepted that including links to articles you derived information from is a form of attribution (and attribution absolves you from claims of plagiarism), it looks like some people overlook this, and want to see a more prominent form of attribution.

There are many ways to make it clear what the source is:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Some dude said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- some dude

However this:

I think that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.




























































Some of the above text may have been copied from some dude.

... is misleading even though it's not a bannable offence. Why do this when you can do it properly without making anyone guess what is copypasta and what isn't? I can understand newbies fumbling with quotes but more experienced posters should know better.

[nullius]

...even though it's not a bannable offence.

Why not?  It is a clear-cut textbook example of definitional plagiarism.

I think it mostly fits the description of “Source-based Plagiarism” in the Turnitin.com Plagiarism Spectrum 2.0 (infographic PDF), though what Ratimov did is worse insofar as he clearly made himself appear to be the original author of the text.  Really, what Ratimov did is just old-fashioned plagiarism with some duplicitous double-talk about “sources”.

I don’t think that everything on that spectrum is applicable outside academia—in particular, “self-plagiarism”.  If e.g. a forum member were habitually to copy and paste his own articles into the forum from his own website, then it would not be “plagiarism” in any meaningful sense here; but it may be spamming, which is also against the rules.  Anyway, some of the concepts on that infographic are certainly useful in this discussion.

FTFY:

However this:

I think that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

.
.
.
long text
.
.
.

<size=1pt>
sources:
[...lots ’o links...]
- https: // example.com/unidentified-link/to/an-article-written-in-a-different-language
[...moar moar links!...]
</size>

... is misleading, and definitely plagiarism

[ScumBuster]

I have assembled a few quotes from theymos. Bold added by me throughout. Italics present in originals.

For it to plagiarism, you have to have the intention of passing the text off as an original work by you. In all of these recent cases (unless we make a mistake, which is rare), it's extremely obvious in context that the person is copy/pasting to make money. Usually they're copy/pasting someone else's post and not adding anything else, in fact, which makes it very clear.

Plagiarism is what gets people permabanned, not just copying. Plagiarism is copying with the intent of passing the work off as your own.

In this article I would like to touch upon

In this article I would like to touch upon

In this article I would like to touch upon

I cannot think of how one could show the "intent of passing work off as one's own" any more than an opening sentence like this.

From an academic point of view, any thesis with this degree of non-original wording would be pointed out, and the author would by all means fail his thesis.

the plagiarist would be expelled from university and permanently blacklisted from admissions.

The path forward is decided then. Submitting a Google translated article in its entirety, even with a link at the bottom, would get you expelled from a university, no questions asked.

Anything that'd get you expelled from a university for plagiarism (which all of the above-banned examples would) will get you permabanned from this forum, regardless of your rank.

If someone copy/pasted something that was amazingly high-quality and on-topic, I'd understand more (though you'd still get banned)

Here, really original content, maybe 10%, the rest is all a copy-paste of finished materials or partial use of someone else's material.

This is eye opening. Thinking that 90% of content here is plagiarized speaks volumes to his character, is at odds with the purpose of the forum, and is a truly pathetic excuse.

[friends1980]

In this article I would like to touch upon

In this article I would like to touch upon

In this article I would like to touch upon

I cannot think of how one could show the "intent of passing work off as one's own" any more than an opening sentence like this.

I could, though.

For instance, by not posting any sources. His post is more than just the first phrase. The fact that the link is there among other links, or the fact that other people have thought this post was original (therefore Merited it), are not relevant. The link is there completely in the open (maybe surrounded by other links, but it's there), which is probably enough to at least create enough "reasonable" doubt about the good or bad intentions of the poster. At least, that's what I think, but we are not the judges in here, the mods are and it's up to them to decide.

That being said, I do think you're playing with fire, Ratimov. You're a respected, high-Merited member of this forum, but your "I would like to" phrase would probably not have passed the jury, had you been a low-ranked newbie shitposter.

Also, you shouldn't set every advice in this thread aside as if they were only negative comments from "clowntrolls". There's enough signs that enough people have been misled about the way you formulated your opening phrase and the style of your article. If that happens once, it's not your fault. But if you'd continue to post articles in the same way, without taking into account some of these warnings above, it could raise questions about your intentions after all.

My two cents, and just a friendly suggestion to formulate your stuff more carefully.

Peace.

[20kevin20]

Question to those merit senders (DdmrDdmr (2), OgNasty (1), ETFbitcoin (1), mk4 (1), 20kevin20 (1), GazetaBitcoin (1)),

Did it look like the introduction (2 paragraphs) was entirely the author's (@Ratimov) own words when you sent the merits?
I am sure the answer will come Yes

Does it look like that it's just a lazy translation with some tweaks and you are feeling annoyed now?
The possible answer, Yes.

So I'll come out in a neutral position to express my opinion, especially since I've merited the accused topic. I'm a non-native English speaker, so I have to often confront translation issues myself. Thought it would be nice to give an answer to this thread.

To answer your first question, I honestly never contemplated whether it was Ratimov who wrote the introduction or it was taken from one of the sources mentioned below. To be fair, the fact that the thread starts with "In this article I would like to touch upon" does make it seem like Ratimov was the one to write and compile the topic from zero but I, at least personally, do not necessarily feel offended by it.

Now for the second question of yours, I have mixed feelings. If Ratimov wanted to hide the fact that the original article was not written by him, he could've used his own words and do a complete translation and rewrite of the text. And had he done that, we all would've accused him for text spinning and plagiarism. Would you feel less "cheated" on by Ratimov if the translation wasn't a "lazy" one but a complete rewrite of the original article instead?

Having seen a lot of threads throughout my BTCTalk experience, I thought Ratimov's thread deserved a merit especially since it's well organized and the information he's provided is interesting, not that easy to discover and different to what you usually see around here. I often see threads that are either completely uninteresting or have a very bad layout. I often struggle organizing my own threads and find myself not being able to make it pleasant to the eye even after hours of editing, so I always appreciate well-written posts.

I also know what it takes to write a thread well enough to be appreciated by others over here. From what I've seen, most of the CM participants have a long history of high quality posts and so I don't really feel like checking their posts for plagiarism. And while I do kinda feel like he's "cheated" since I spend hours and hours on a post written from zero to earn the same/less merit than Ratimov does for a copied one, I do not consider I have the right to complain in this situation since I have not bothered to check the sources beforehand (and even if I did, the key source is in an unknown language to me anyway).

As far as I've seen, copied posts are allowed on the forum as soon as you mention the sources in the footer. Ratimov's threads do have the sources mentioned, so I think having an issue about Ratimov not mentioning the author's name is a bit far-fetched since I don't think I've seen someone else do that when quoting/copying information from a source.

But on the other hand, I don't agree with Ratimov's POV either ("Chipmixer pays for 50 posts, that is, I write about 20 posts for free"). While the maximum amount of paid posts is 50 and you exceed it by 20 more, you cannot ignore that a part of your recent merit comes from these "free" posts that you copy from other websites when you know that the high amount of appreciation is one of the probable reasons DS accepted you (and is still keeping you) in the campaign he manages.

As I said, I am neutral in this situation though. I do not feel like being necessarily cheated for giving the merit, and if that thread does not deserve it then I'm sure there are many others written by Ratimov which do - so if that's the case, then take it as if I have given him a merit for all his work on the forum so far. I take it as plagiarism when there's no source mentioned - and Ratimov did mention the exact sources, which should go in tandem with the forum rules. The fact that the official definition of plagiarism does not fit the forum's is a different thing.

Hopefully my reply comes in as a helpful one for the accusation - and, hopefully, no hard feelings to whoever reads this.

[nullius]

Regardless of how some “people” defend the indefensible, I doubt that a reputable signature campaign manager will want to waste his client’s money paying a plagiarist to spam the forum with Google translations of articles written by others. 

It's okay, just another idiot-troll

You are wasting your time. Clowns-trolls who come here to write from the alts, it's generally not even worth attention to answer something to them.

Merit summary for airfinex

Merit: 5

Sent in the last 120 days

Received in the last 120 days

• December 08, 2020, 07:49:15 PM: 5 from DarkStar_ for Merit Source - Plagiarist

It’s okay, just another idiot-troll meriting a clown-troll.  You are wasting your time.  It’s generally not even worth attention to answer.

Before drawing such conclusions, you must understand that English is not my native language and I cannot create completely English texts myself, without auxiliary tools.

[...]
Here I can be someone who is familiar with both Russian and English:

Phrase: Xoтeлocь бы в этoй cтaтьe зaтpoнyть and phrase: я xoтeл бы в этoй cтaтьe зaтpoнyть translated by Google is VERY EQUALLY. Even though the original word "I" may not be mentioned:

Ratimov is misdirecting with an attempt to divert an English-speaking audience into a debate over the finer points of Russian grammar, by exploiting a loophole in Google’s low-quality, error-ridden automated translation.

Ironically, he thereby implicitly admits that his Google-translated shitposts are inaccurate, “zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads” that violate Rule #1.  Anyway, let’s cut the nonsense.

Ratimov claims to provide translations.  Only an outright scammer would make a name for himself by providing translations to a target language in which he lacks even the most basic facility.  As an English speaker myself, I think that the English-speaking audience will agree with me that if Ratimov did not notice the meaning and implication of the first-person pronoun “I” in the very first sentence of his post—in one of only two sentences that he himself wrote in the post, then he should not even be engaging regularly in English-language discussions—let alone offering any translations to English!

Whereupon:

• For someone who not only posts regularly in the English forum, but offers translations to English, it is incredible for him to allege that he just didn’t realize that the sentence he prepended to a copy-paste used the word “I” in a way that claims ownership of the article.  It is an excuse tantamount to, “The dog ate my homework.”  By far, the most probable explanation is that he is lying and making up a cover story, now that he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
• The evidence in that initial, added sentence, “In this article I would like to touch upon...” dovetails with the evidence that he (a) he provided no byline naming the author of the article, and (b) he deceitfully buried the link to the original in tiny text, amidst an anonymous, unexplained, misrepresented list of links at the bottom.
  
  If he had honestly represented the authorship of the post by naming the author prominently at the top (or even at all), then it may be arguably just a little bit plausible that he got confused with a contradictory English preface.  Not so, when each and every indicium of authorship is that Ratimov wrote the post.

We need not reach the questions (plural) of whether he really used Google Translate to create that sentence, and if so, what he really typed into it:  The questions are nugatory, whereas anyone who is regularly active in the English forum could damn well see what the output meant.

For the record:  I would not apply the same argument to someone who exclusively, or almost exclusively posted in a Local forum.  But then, such a person would not be spamming the English-language forums with Google translations of articles written by other people; thus, the question would not arise.

The fact that the link is there among other links, or the fact that other people have thought this post was original (therefore Merited it), are not relevant. The link is there completely in the open (maybe surrounded by other links, but it's there), which is probably enough to at least create enough "reasonable" doubt about the good or bad intentions of the poster. At least, that's what I think, ...

That does not only strain credulity:  It shatters it into a thousand pieces, stomps on it, then douses it with petrol and lights it ablaze.

Credulity is well and truly dead here.  (Unless you also seriously believe that confirmed science proves that you should short Bitcoin at high leverage.)

Furthermore, certainty beyond a reasonable doubt is not hereby the proper standard of evidence.  I argue that these forum issues should be judged on the preponderance of the evidence.  (That said, the doubt about the intent of mashing an unlabelled source link into a tiny list of links is unreasonable doubt.)

At this juncture, I should also point out that as I was unaware when I entered this thread, Ratimov has previously had plagiarism accusations for copied-pasted posts with “source” links at the end.  For example:

Re: Report plagiarism (copy/paste) here. Mods: please give temp or permban as needed

yours, verbatim and litteratim, is today's.

Ratimov keeps doing the same thing, copying whole articles and  then sharing reference link at the end. He just did it again.

How do Crypto exchanges stack up based on different metrics?

It is true that he shared link from Medium article he copied the content from, but whats the point of those topics since it is a word for word copy?

The referenced post:

[—looooong wall of 100% pure copy-and-paste—]


Source: https://medium.com/technicity/how-do-crypto-exchanges-stack-up-based-on-different-metrics-189b48f14595

Note:  The “source” link thereby is in normal-sized text.  The post is still at best improperly attributed; and if done not in ignorance of the issue, it is plagiarism.

Overall, the weight of the evidence is that Ratimov hides the foreign-language “source” link to evade the accusations that are brought when people can actually find the “source”.


The following is only Meta issue insofar as it shows that Ratimov is acting in bad faith from start to finish.  If he abuses his current DT1 status in a pitiable attempt to intimidate and retaliate against me, it goes to character; and it tends to demonstrate that he is lying about his intentions with his plagiarized post.

It is otherwise a Reputation issue; but it is too stupid for me to feel like bothering with a Reputation thread over it right now.  Retaliation for negative trust feedback that will be of business/trade-risk interest to signature campaign managers who don’t want to be cheated into paying for Google-translated plagiarism?  LOL.  Srsly?

* Honey Badger yawns.

Trust summary for Ratimov

Trusted feedback

nullius

2020-12-08

Reference

Deceitful, remorseless plagiarist. Used Google Translate to translate an article from Russian to English, prefaced a condensed version thereof with the claim, “In this article *I* would like to touch upon...”, buried a link to the original Russian article in the middle of a small-text list of links at the bottom, and posted that as a topic OP in the English-language forum. Denies that this is plagiarism (!), and attacks *ad hominem* those who accuse him of plagiarism (!!). Dishonest and untrustworthy.

Sent feedback

nullius

2020-12-08

Trust abuse. Stupid lying idiot and whiner. He wrote me some kind of nonsense in the trust, entirely based on his fantasies. From the point of view of the rules of the forum, this text, to which he refers, does not violate anything. He breaks something there only in his sick head. Don't trust this troll.

Well, there I go again, using my “main account” to stand up for right over wrong. 

[wooI_Ioow]

Before drawing such conclusions, you must understand that English is not my native language and I cannot create completely English texts myself, without auxiliary tools. And of course in the original there were no 'I' and there cannot be. I always create any theme in Russian and then convert it to English. Of course, the same Google or I myself can make some mistakes that I can find out about later or notice myself.

And now regarding the phrase that they are trying to inflate here, because there is nothing more to find fault with, let's start to find fault with the little things:

Here I can be someone who is familiar with both Russian and English:

Phrase: Xoтeлocь бы в этoй cтaтьe зaтpoнyть and phrase: я xoтeл бы в этoй cтaтьe зaтpoнyть translated by Google is VERY EQUALLY. Even though the original word "I" may not be mentioned:

Here's an example:



Now let's see my version of the text:

In this article I would like to touch upon such

If I originally wrote an article in the first person, then after the phrase In this article there would be a comma(according to google translate, because we have already figured out that I used it when creating the English version of the text), but I don't have it. Because the storytelling is never in the first person. So it can translate, but in the original there were no such words as "I" and could not be.

Therefore, all these would-be detectives, when they try to find fault with any word, think superficially. They never check everything thoroughly. The first thing that saw, they immediately ran to report. And then it's funny to read it.

Another attempt to ascribe false authorship to me is bursting at the seams again.

Crap, you were posting to English boards. Linguists said both Russian phrases allude they are in the first person. Apart of being plagiary you are DT abuser who deliberately sent  me a neg  for your own advantage  after  I showed up  plagiarism in your posts https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg55189575#msg55189575 ,

If Ratimov plagiarized something, it's the job of mods to ban him for that

however it's the job of DT to ~ him for trust abusing.

[JaneAhonen]

If I originally wrote an article in the first person, then after the phrase In this article there would be a comma(according to google translate, because we have already figured out that I used it when creating the English version of the text), but I don't have it. Because the storytelling is never in the first person. So it can translate, but in the original there were no such words as "I" and could not be.

So you want to say that  you couldnt write sentence In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme as online privacy. by yourself in english and you had to write in russian first and then translate ?
If that is the case you shouldnt even write in english board,if you cant write simple sentence without google translate.Otherwise anyone can use google translate to write in other boards as much as they want.

Bullshit.

[johhnyUA]

I don't want to read the whole thread and this should be left to mods, but it would be better to tell why this happened. At first, all people with registration date after 2017 are very suspicious to me, especially russians (i know at least one big russian forum,  MMPG where bitcointalk bounties were advertised as "easy money", with all related consequences).

This is sad, not because people from post USSR so bad, rather it's hard to think about anything except money if your salary is around 200 dollars (I see such "philosophy" every day around me).

So average noob came here without being interested in crypto as a technology, hence he don't know (and don't want to learn) anything valuable about crypto. What he's able to do?

- "fight scams"
- "translate (mostly) useless shit which in any way belongs to the subject"
Sometimes, not often, write a useless (mostly) guides which very often it's just a rewriting of older guides, or the same guides (in terms of meaning) but from other sources. We in our russian local board already have a lot of guides about sending transaction offline, how much priv keys bitcoin has and so on. Sometimes i find myself with feeling that I'm in fucking "Groundhog Day".

The proof why such things is being doing for some personal "karma" scores (hey hey, look how many fine translations and guides i have in my portfolio) rather than for community, is the fact that nothing forbids people to add new info to already existing guides. But in that case of course you can't use your message as a proof of how you're cool.

The proof is for example the topic where old russian local members (some of them with 2013 reg date) complain about such "translations".


And this is not a problem of Ratimov or someone other, i doubt that they are evil genius, rather they're doing the things which is have a better KPI. For example, Ratimov is not bad trader, but here, after he found that his trading strategies didn't interested anyone, he turned into a "scam fighter, forum cleanser, and translator". Just because you merit useless translations, not trading.
And this is was just a matter of time when someone will finally make an error in translation or something like that just to get more coins from his sig.

[DoubleAweSeven]

How ironic and funny this situation is. A "MODERATOR" is a plagiarist? I can't believe what is happening right now. It's clear that it's not your standard plagiarism due to the fact that he cited the source BUT that doesn't mean it's not plagiarism. It's more a like a more complicated form of plagiarism. Anyone who wasn't aware would be fooled immediately but someone who knows will actually see it.

Quote a fun thread to read. I hope this thread be a catalyst to address this kind of plagiarism.