Is quoting a copied content plagiarism? Not Plagiarism says G.Mod ( answered)

[Igebotz]

We've had a lot of drama on the forum lately about plagiarism, and I recall having a conversation with LoyceV
here about different ways of incorporating online copied text into your forum post to escape plagiarism charges. I observed a user accused of plagiarism a few minutes ago for quoting copied text from the Internet without citing the source. Now here's my question: Is quoting not enough proof that the Op never intended to pass off someone else's work as his own? Please educate me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.2380



I said something about this a few days ago I may be wrong but I'm speaking from academic standards.

I believe the forum needs to understand the difference between citation and reference; they are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing; in academic publications, both are required, but I do not believe they are required on the forum; if you want to cite a few contents from the internet, you should simply put them in a quote; a link is not required; a reference source is only required when you copy/paste a full article

[bitmover]

I observed a user accused of plagiarism a few minutes ago for quoting copied text from the Internet without citing the source. Now here's my question: Is quoting not enough proof that the Op never intended to pass off someone else's work as his own? Please educate me.

Personally, I think it is plagiarism, because you really need to give credit for what you are quoting. But I understand this might be polemic and not everyone agrees.

Being more practical, I know there is (or at least there was)  a bot that crawled the forum posts looking for plagiarism. I think this bot might catch this kind of user and ban him.

If you want to do things right, quote everything you copied from internet and give the appropriate credit. In my opinion this is very basic etiquete for internet posting.

[Igebotz]

I observed a user accused of plagiarism a few minutes ago for quoting copied text from the Internet without citing the source. Now here's my question: Is quoting not enough proof that the Op never intended to pass off someone else's work as his own? Please educate me.

Personally, I think it is plagiarism, because you really need to give credit for what you are quoting. But I understand this might be polemic and not everyone agrees.

Imagine you spotted a helpful tip on an image and thought, "Oh, I saw a question on the forum, and this material is the ideal response to the topic," and instead of claiming it, you copied it and put it in a quote since you didn't know the original link? I'm not saying this is what the OP did because I'm not in his head but c'mon the copied content was helpful, now how do we classify such a case?

[DaveF]

IMO this is one of those things that is going to have to be looked at on a case by case basis.
And how are do you want to go with it, partly because the quoting feature of this forum is meh at best

If when you selected the text and clicked the quote button a box popped up asking where the quote was from and you had to put in a URL or whatever then it would be different.
For now *I* feel the quoting the text and putting in a line before it that says "A quick google search found this:" should be fine.

You are saying it's not your work, and for most things that is close enough.
I know it can be abused, which is why I started with the case by case basis statement.

-Dave

[lovesmayfamilis]

You raised an interesting question, as I also see several users who think that simply quoting is enough to ensure that the post is not plagiarized.

But it seems to me that quoting without specifying the author can be mistaken for plagiarism, since not every user has a desire to look for the author. At the same time, it is also clear that the author himself does not want to claim authorship.
Of course, a more convenient option would be to simply add a link, and I don't understand what the problem is with such posters. But I do not consider such posts to be just plagiarism.


Likewise, in parallel with your question, I would like to ask if the font in the copied post is changed and the post has no source, is that considered plagiarism?

As of late, Live Bitcoin News detailed that stages like PayPal and Venmo were looking to conceivably offer bitcoin and cryptographic money purchasing, exchanging, and offering choices to clients. New proof seems to show that these organizations are basically keen on crypto benefits because of bitcoin's transient ascent during the spread of the coronavirus. I read this news through livebitcoin, its genuine folks

PayPal is allegedly looking to allow customers to purchase BTC and other forms of crypto directly with the PayPal app. The company is potentially looking to compete with companies like Square, which has offered this feature to individuals for some time.

Ethereum is growing popularity has largely been attributed to the rising interest in DeFi projects, what's going on? Will ethereum finally be able to leave it's 3 figure value?

The number of daily addresses interacting with ETH has surge in the past 24 hours to a Two Years single day high of 486,000 addresses! The last time Ethereum's address activity was this high was on May 5th, 2018

There have been many topics about plagiarism created, and I do not want to add another one in order to resolve a similar issue. Thanks.

Imagine you spotted a helpful tip on an image and thought, "Oh, I saw a question on the forum, and this material is the ideal response to the topic," and instead of claiming it, you copied it and put it in a quote since you didn't know the original link? I'm not saying this is what the OP did because I'm not in his head but c'mon the copied content was helpful, now how do we classify such a case?

Just add the link where you got this "useful advice"

[suchmoon]

Is quoting not enough proof that the Op never intended to pass off someone else's work as his own? Please educate me.

It should be enough to not get the user banned.

Personally, I think it is plagiarism, because you really need to give credit for what you are quoting.

No, all you need to do is to not claim that you created the text. Quote tags do that.

We do not and should not have requirements for how the source should be provided and that's a good thing. We don't want to get into elaborate dramas because someone posted a broken/fake link or something.

[Despairo]

Dear my fellow Bitcointalk friends,

@hornetsnest didn't made any claim of the explanation is created from him, it will be different problem if he write "follow my guide below... "

This can be considered "soft-bad" similar like reported post are unhandled by moderators.

@hornetsnest took someone article without citing the source (bad) but he didn't claim he made it (soft).

[Pmalek]

If you put something in quotes, it's quite clear that you are not pretending that the content is originally yours. However, you are still not giving credit to the person who wrote it. So you put yourself in a grey area where you probably won't have any problems, but if the deciding admin sees it differently, you might have some. To avoid that, just post the link where you got the quote from. Personally, I don't think a member should be banned if the copy-pasted text is in quote brackets.

Being more practical, I know there is (or at least there was)  a bot that crawled the forum posts looking for plagiarism. I think this bot might catch this kind of user and ban him.

Bots can't ban anyone. All they can do is report problematic posts to whoever the bots were programmed to report to. Those reports will be manually checked by the admins before a decision to ban is made.

[Lucius]

Now here's my question: Is quoting not enough proof that the Op never intended to pass off someone else's work as his own? Please educate me.

You are not a beginner to ask a question like this, so if someone put something in the quote it will certainly not be considered plagiarism, as far as I know it never was. I also agree that it would be better to cite the source, but even without that, the intention is seen that the user did not want to present that part of the text as something that is his work.

Here is an example that I reported as plagiarism, and which stood unhandled for as long as 8 days, until I posted it publicly, and the user subsequently edited the post. If it wasn't plagiarism (and obviously global mods/admins think so), then what you have doubts about has nothing to do with plagiarism (by forum standards).

[Frengki_cisco]

You all should see this one.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99.msg856#msg856

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126.msg1053#msg1053

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2905371.msg31743952#msg31743952

Boring drama, if so everyone in this forum should be banned, it makes no sense which is plagiarism and which is not, unsound mind.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, in the picture you provided that shows a post by ETFbitcoin, there's a quote from bitcoin.stackexchange.com and the exact URL the quote came from is linked to below that quote.  Is that what you're talking about?  From what you wrote, it either isn't clear or I'm just not understanding you fully.

The way ETFbitcoin formatted that quote should be sufficient for bitcointalk, because he cited his source.  Members shouldn't have to use something like an academic citation system here, because this isn't academia and we're not citing academic journals for our own publications.  As long as it's clear where the quote was pulled from in someone's post, I don't think mods are going to have a problem with it.

By the way, the plagiarism problem isn't anything new at all, nor has there been excessive or even higher than normal amounts of drama lately.  There may have been a period of quiet, but this has been an issue for years, and the standards have been the same for years as well.  Just make it clear where you copy/pasted from, and you're good.

Personally, I think it is plagiarism, because you really need to give credit for what you are quoting.

No, all you need to do is to not claim that you created the text. Quote tags do that.

Word.  This doesn't need to be made more complicated than it should be.

[Little Mouse]

This should be no way fall under plagiarism as quote by itself represents the content of other people. Quote is generally used for that purpose. Yesterday, on another thread, I have written about using quote at minimum to avoid any copy paste plagiarism issue. Whenever we quote someone, that's on purpose and user quoted anything shouldn’t generally fall under the plagiarism act in my opinion.

[Igebotz]

Answer so far

Plagiarism? Yes (1%)
Plagiarism? No (99%)

Personally, I think it is plagiarism, because you really need to give credit for what you are quoting. But I understand this might be polemic and not everyone agrees.

IMO this is one of those things that is going to have to be looked at on a case by case basis.
And how are do you want to go with it, partly because the quoting feature of this forum is meh at best

You raised an interesting question, as I also see several users who think that simply quoting is enough to ensure that the post is not plagiarized.

It should be enough to not get the user banned.

No, all you need to do is to not claim that you created the text. Quote tags do that.

If you put something in quotes, it's quite clear that you are not pretending that the content is originally yours. However, you are still not giving credit to the person who wrote it. So you put yourself in a grey area where you probably won't have any problems

You are not a beginner to ask a question like this, so if someone put something in the quote it will certainly not be considered plagiarism, as far as I know it never was.

Here is an example that I reported as plagiarism, and which stood unhandled for as long as 8 days, until I posted it publicly, and the user subsequently edited the post. If it wasn't plagiarism (and obviously global mods/admins think so), then what you have doubts about has nothing to do with plagiarism (by forum standards).

I was the one who PMed the user to add a source link after reading the post, it was well quoted and should not get banned for it.

Likewise, in parallel with your question, I would like to ask if the font in the copied post is changed and the post has no source, is that considered plagiarism?
........]

This is plagiarism at best.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Likewise, in parallel with your question, I would like to ask if the font in the copied post is changed and the post has no source, is that considered plagiarism?
........]

This is plagiarism at best.

But according to the reaction of the moderators, this is also not plagiarism. 
I don’t think anyone should risk using such methods, but changing the font also hints that the author does not claim authorship.

[Upgrade00]

This is not a grey area going by the literal definition of plagiarism.
Plagiarism is not the absence of a source but the presence of intent to claim a particular intellectual property. In a research presentation, you could lose a couple of marks for failing to include the source of the information, but it does not fall under plagiarism.

I even consider it to be more ethical than lumping someone else's content and yours together with vague links at the bottom of the page.

[Rizzrack]

The way ETFbitcoin formatted that quote should be sufficient...

OP is talking about the post that ETFbitcoin wrote about in his post  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355698.msg57938346#msg57938346

I even consider it to be more ethical than lumping someone else's content and yours together with vague links at the bottom of the page.

I second that statement !

[DdmrDdmr]

I’d actually prefer it to be mandatory (wishful naïve thinking) to quote text that is originated elsewhere, rather than from the poster’s own mind. At least we’d get a very easy to detect visual cue on what’s original and what’s not, without needing to scroll down to find a source link of some kind, and then having to perform some sort of comparison to discern what’s the poster’s original content, and what is just a copy/[translate][spin]/paste.

Quoted text would seemingly give the impression that the text is not the authors from the get-go, regardless of whether a link has been included. If the link is added, all the better, but if the objective is to be able to discern if the content is or is not the poster’s own content, most of us would assume it is not by means of the quoted cues alone.

[hilariousandco]

If you put something in quotation marks or a quotation box then you're obviously indicating that it's quoted material. People shouldn't be banned for this unless maybe all their posts are just like that, but if you see people doing it just tell them that it should be properly sourced and linked etc. 

[Igebotz]

Okay now the debate is over I'm locking this thread now, you can also cite this thread in the future, I know they've been several victims of this, it was good to have this cleared up by the Global moderator.
Words in quote= Not plagiarism.

If you put something in quotation marks or a quotation box then you're obviously indicating that it's quoted material. People shouldn't be banned for this unless maybe all their posts are just like that, but if you see people doing it just tell them that it should be properly sourced and linked etc.  

If you are comfortable with your external links no problem but quoting is good enough to prove you didn't pass off someone's work as yours.