Plagiarism: Where Do We Draw the Line?

[KevinRosa]

It's all in black and white. If someone knows that they are copy information from someone or somewhere else, then the link to the source of the information is a must, to show that you are not passing the information as your own. There's no in between if you don't want to get your account banned for plagiarism.

There is no mistake in plagiarizing the content. It is the person who made the post that made the mistake, because you should not take other people's articles as your credit. This is a basic respect for the original author. But there is no problem at all for you to form your own point of view through learning. For other people's results, mark the citations, sources, or links.

[Pmalek]

By the way do we have any data that newbie are the ones who do Plagiarism or higher members of the forum also do the same mistake also ?

Members of all ranks have been banned in the past due to plagiarism issues. It's not a problem exclusive to newbies. However, those who have been here long enough are expected to know how things work, so they can't claim they never heard that copy-pasting is bad. New users might not know how serious of an issue it really is and that's why the notifications are supposed to be targeted towards them.

I mean, it really wouldn't hurt to display a small modal with links concerning the rules and plagiarism after a user just created a new account.

I have been on other non-crypto related forums where you were redirected to the rules after registering an account. There was a countdown of 10-20 or more seconds where you had to stay on the page before you could close it and confirm that you read the rules. You cant force anyone to read what is written, but it's still a nice initiative.   

[Welsh]

I have been on other non-crypto related forums where you were redirected to the rules after registering an account. There was a countdown of 10-20 or more seconds where you had to stay on the page before you could close it and confirm that you read the rules. You cant force anyone to read what is written, but it's still a nice initiative.  

I prefer the quiz idea which has been thrown around a few times. If you wanted you could actually get pretty fancy with it, for example during the quiz you could list the rules simialr to the unofficial guidelines that mprep has written up, and then ask them to copy, and paste the rule which talks about plagiarism into a checkbox to advance, upon doing that you could then give them a pop up, and state plagiarism or copy, and pasting for those unfamiliar with the term is disallowed, and will result in a ban. You could probably do this via a pop up on the screen, while it is allowing, and some people will likely block it, this would be a pretty neat interactive quiz which would educate users a little better.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

Nothing wrong with that either as long as you don't overdo it. You always have to keep in mind that some people reject the notion of exams and everything that reminds them of being forced to do something against their will. But a good balance between teaching them the two most essential rules and having them "take exams" to join the forum can certainly be found.

[ccFOUND]

For newbies to "watch" those rules and warnings, can a dedicated board be offered where, once a newbie signs up, must be redirected and forced to read the rules and "agree" through clicking a button that they have read and understood the rules of the forum? This way, it will save lots of newbies from getting banned while keeping that section locked "where no posts from members of the forum will be allowed". There are some newbies who don't do it intentionally but some want to earn merits, while others just need their activity to grow, be it in number.

Come, share wisdom at ccFOUND

[sapnu]

It is very important that plagiarism is avoided as much as possible here in the forum may it be accidental or intentional. It does not only destroy your reputation in the forum hence you are also stealing illegally an intellectual property of someone. Even though you are just rephrasing their idea, you should still give credits or citation on what you are getting. I think it is very much essential too that you know how to gather and combine the knowledge you getting from many so that you can simply connect it and make it a whole thought and you can avoid plagiarism at the same time as you build a new thought from many.

[lovesmayfamilis]

For newbies to "watch" those rules and warnings, can a dedicated board be offered where, once a newbie signs up, must be redirected and forced to read the rules and "agree" through clicking a button that they have read and understood the rules of the forum? This way, it will save lots of newbies from getting banned while keeping that section locked "where no posts from members of the forum will be allowed". There are some newbies who don't do it intentionally but some want to earn merits, while others just need their activity to grow, be it in number.

Come, share wisdom at ccFOUND

So what? Do you need to copy everything from the Internet in order for some to become more active? And even more so, to receive merit for someone else's work? Are you out of your mind? I read another topic of yours where you suggested not to add sources of copying from your allegedly other social accounts.
I know what it is about. In the last month, I have reported a lot of copying from Reddit. I just reported to the moderators without writing a report in the meta. And for your information, many of the copied posts from one account were from different sources. That is, based on your rules, one person can have several Reddit accounts?
Therefore, newcomers who come here must respect the rules of the forum. Why should we babysit those unable to read?
I diligently check and report all newbie posts, so don't assume that you can just copy and paste here for your own incomprehensible purposes

[zanezane]

For me, it becomes plagiarism if they copy it word for word without even a hint of paraphrasing and verbatim to make it look like they're the one's who said and also, if they credit themselves and not the original creator of the article or anything that can be plagiarized, it will be considered plagiarism for me.

[Taskford]

It is very important that plagiarism is avoided as much as possible here in the forum may it be accidental or intentional. It does not only destroy your reputation in the forum hence you are also stealing illegally an intellectual property of someone. Even though you are just rephrasing their idea, you should still give credits or citation on what you are getting. I think it is very much essential too that you know how to gather and combine the knowledge you getting from many so that you can simply connect it and make it a whole thought and you can avoid plagiarism at the same time as you build a new thought from many.

But there are so many person here do that its because they want to make their works more faster although they know the risk that they might get compromised but they didn't care since majority of forum users do that are newbie account user, so maybe to combat this action the campaign managers should put some strict rules about it and always check the content submitted by their participants sometimes there are lazy bounty managers who doesn't check well the submissions of their participants thats why this kind of act still happening here.

[Pmalek]

For newbies to "watch" those rules and warnings, can a dedicated board be offered where, once a newbie signs up, must be redirected and forced to read the rules and "agree" through clicking a button that they have read and understood the rules of the forum?

It again boils down to whether they are going to read that or just click on 'agree' and 'continue' to get rid of the notifications and warnings and access the forum as soon as possible. My previous post with the countdown proposal achieves a similar result for those who want to see what is in front of their eyes. At this point I will support almost anything that involves making the rules about copy-pasting and spamming more visible. 

[Rikafip]

For me, it becomes plagiarism if they copy it word for word without even a hint of paraphrasing and verbatim to make it look like they're the one's who said and also, if they credit themselves and not the original creator of the article or anything that can be plagiarized, it will be considered plagiarism for me.

FYI, paraphrasing is a plagiarism too, if you don't cite the original source so it won't look any better if newbies try do to that in order to avoid getting banned. If anything, it might be even worse as that means they know what they are doing is wrong, yet they are trying to get away with it in order to appear more knowledgeable and get few merits.

As others suggested, I would like it too if upon creation of account there is an explanation of some of the most important rules, and what can breaking of the rules lead to. Ignorance is not a valid excuse of course, but for some  this is the first forum they ever registered on, and probably have no idea/never really though about plagiarizing as an issue, so this could be even educational.

Regarding plagiarism, I think that verbatim copy without proper text formatting should be seen as such, as in it's essence it is plagiarism (not here though). It doesn't have to be bannable offense, but at least something like signature ban for some period of time.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

For me, it becomes plagiarism if they copy it word for word without even a hint of paraphrasing and verbatim to make it look like they're the one's who said and also, if they credit themselves and not the original creator of the article or anything that can be plagiarized, it will be considered plagiarism for me.

FYI, paraphrasing is a plagiarism too, if you don't cite the original source so it won't look any better if newbies try do to that in order to avoid getting banned. If anything, it might be even worse as that means they know what they are doing is wrong, yet they are trying to get away with it in order to appear more knowledgeable and get few merits.<snip>

Spot on. Pretty sure that if it was their work being stolen like that they would be pretty pissed. Folks like that DESERVE a hard slap on the wrist for 1st offense. If they continue to do it then kick their ass to the curb with the rest of the trash.

As they blithely copy/paste their stolen text into a post they have the source right in front of them so:
  A) make it clear that the material came from elsewhere and not from their feeble brain
  B) Include links to it

[Rikafip]

Folks like that DESERVE a hard slap on the wrist for 1st offense. If they continue to do it then kick their ass to the curb with the rest of the trash.

Now that you mentioned hard slap on the wrist, that's one of the things I would like to do see being used more often when it comes to plagiarism offense. So, instead giving insta ban to new members, rather give them let's say one year sig ban, and in case they do the same thing again, then give them permanent ban.

I mean, I am perfectly aware of the fact that vast majority of newbies are doing that on purpose and just for the sake of getting to higher ranks and joining signature campaigns, but every once in a while there might be some genuine user who will make that mistake without having bad intentions.

[Findingnemo]

Folks like that DESERVE a hard slap on the wrist for 1st offense. If they continue to do it then kick their ass to the curb with the rest of the trash.

Now that you mentioned hard slap on the wrist, that's one of the things I would like to do see being used more often when it comes to plagiarism offense. So, instead giving insta ban to new members, rather give them let's say one year sig ban, and in case they do the same thing again, then give them permanent ban.

I mean, I am perfectly aware of the fact that vast majority of newbies are doing that on purpose and just for the sake of getting to higher ranks and joining signature campaigns, but every once in a while there might be some genuine user who will make that mistake without having bad intentions.

I do appreciate if there is any changes in the ban policy for anyone plagiarism because we make mistakes that is the common thing in the humans but how we are going to differentiate the accidental plagiarism and intentional plagiarism since impossible to identify, so everyone will hide under the accidental mistake when they get ban and enjoy the perks.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Perhaps a warning for the first found offence could go a long(ish) way, but one of the drawbacks would be that plagiarism isn’t detected on-the-fly, meaning that a given account could incur in plagiarism over time, but may not be reported until way later down the road when he’s already accumulated multiple such offences. I’d still favour a clear, easy to implement, warning above the text box when creating a post (just below the emojics).

[Yogee]

...but how we are going to differentiate the accidental plagiarism and intentional plagiarism since impossible to identify, so everyone will hide under the accidental mistake when they get ban and enjoy the perks.

It's hard to determine the intent for sure but I don't agree that it's impossible. Maybe we can call it intentional plagiarism if a member does it more often than what would be acceptable as accident? Like it's considered accidental if he forgot to place the link to an article only once or twice?

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

how we are going to differentiate the accidental plagiarism and intentional plagiarism since impossible to identify

How's it an accidental when you intentionally browser out what you copied and didn't add sources which means you're passing that information as yours. That you weren't informed about such actions been punishable on the forum is no excuse as we have rules that guide the forum and everyone is to get familiarize with the rules before even beginning exploring the forum. The rules although aren't official aren't hidden so you have no excuse to plagiarized.

On the other hand, the only time I could think of an accidental plagiarism is when you quote a famous quotes and probably forget to highlight the owner of that quote but you have already made it clear in your reply that you're quoting someone. Most of the punished cases of plagiarism involves the accuses coping an article online without linking the source.

The moderators clearly punished those their intentions were merely to pass the work they copied as theirs probably for the merits or acknowledgement of been quality contributors. I have seen scenario of reported posts just been deleted instead of punishing the offenders, clearly those cases weren't seen as an attempt to pass someone else works as theirs.

[Findingnemo]

how we are going to differentiate the accidental plagiarism and intentional plagiarism since impossible to identify

How's it an accidental when you intentionally browser out what you copied and didn't add sources which means you're passing that information as yours. That you weren't informed about such actions been punishable on the forum is no excuse as we have rules that guide the forum and everyone is to get familiarize with the rules before even beginning exploring the forum. The rules although aren't official aren't hidden so you have no excuse to plagiarized.

On the other hand, the only time I could think of an accidental plagiarism is when you quote a famous quotes and probably forget to highlight the owner of that quote but you have already made it clear in your reply that you're quoting someone. Most of the punished cases of plagiarism involves the accuses coping an article online without linking the source.

The moderators clearly punished those their intentions were merely to pass the work they copied as theirs probably for the merits or acknowledgement of been quality contributors. I have seen scenario of reported posts just been deleted instead of punishing the offenders, clearly those cases weren't seen as an attempt to pass someone else works as theirs.

There are lot of members here who mostly copy an article posted on the internet which is related to cryptocurrency and also add their opinions about the title and article so they are being informative whicb few newbie get inspired but forgot to add the source which can be the only sign of accidental plagiarism but if forum allows such kind of plagiarism by giving execuse to them then every newbie will do that and say that they did it without acknowledging it.

[Rikafip]

Perhaps a warning for the first found offence could go a long(ish) way, but one of the drawbacks would be that plagiarism isn’t detected on-the-fly, meaning that a given account could incur in plagiarism over time, but may not be reported until way later down the road when he’s already accumulated multiple such offences.

True, plagiarism is sometimes discovered months or even years after it was commited, so if multiple cases of plagiarism are discovered, just give perma ban and that's about it. But, there are cases (albeit very rare) where genuine newbies get rekted right from the start due ignorance and maybe in that cases sig ban for some longer period could be implemented, instead of permanent ban.

I’d still favour a clear, easy to implement, warning above the text box when creating a post (just below the emojics).

Yep, that would be a good start. Doesn't even have to be for all ranks, but let's say while you are newbie/Jr Member.

[Kiley33]

Sometimes when newbies publish, they don’t search in advance, or don’t know where to search, don’t pay attention to other software, and don’t know there are similar articles in other places. but! If the entire article is exactly the same, it means plagiarism, or plagiarism from other software articles.

If only one or two sentences in the article are similar, I guess it should not be plagiarism, it should be similar to the author's thinking when thinking. So when we see a similar article, we can check this post to ask if it has been plagiarized or if it was published.

But I think why plagiarize on the forum? These are all thoughts and comments. If you want to give a speech, you can do it. Why copy other people's ideas?