Well, I didn't think of that
If this is the case, then somehow I was of a better opinion of these mischiefs. Really, if you copy-paste some downright bullshit, you bear the risk of being quickly reported and banned for shitposting. That, in turn, assumes that you should be careful about what to plagiarize (and here comes my idea). Anyway, until there is a comprehensive ordered list of users most often copied by copypasters, we can't arrive at any definitive conclusion yet (though I do agree that it may in fact be mostly a random thing overall)
Here's a post by theymos about the situation with the bans and who it is directed against:
Merely forgetting to quote things is not plagiarism, and if we read it that way, you probably won't be banned at all. 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. Here's the most recent one:
I really like how the project is developed, we hope to get very far and that.Everything goes well and the group of developers keep us posted on everything.
I really like how the project is developed, we hope to get very far and that.Everything goes well and the group of developers keep us posted on everything
All of the recent cases are ~exactly like this, since this is what the bot looks for. (Thank you to the bot designer!)
If at any point you had a mindset where you'd treat the forum like a dumping ground by worthlessly copy/pasting other people's posts in order to make a tiny amount of money, then my default reaction is
GTFO, and you have quite an uphill battle to earn even a 2-year sigban instead. No warnings, no statute of limitations.
I know of
one case where someone was banned for plagiarism in the recent massacre, but a very careful reading of the context showed that the person actually did just forget to quote, and by "quoting" the post they were expressing an actual point even if it constituted their entire post. This person was unbanned without any sigban, since this
isn't plagiarism.