Topic: Alternatives to Permabans for plagarism - page 2. (Read 22203 times)

Alternative penalty might be a reduction in rank.
Let's assume, Hero Member was caught in plagiarism then s/he will be downgraded to Sr. Member.

Maybe that some of the ban members are bad seeds.
But there are also some, that have faulted but not to the extent you described.

Some where not even wearing a paid sig campaign when they did the plagiarism.
Some where not wearing sig campaign when they got caught.
Some only had a single account that did a mistake once in many years of presence here.

To be fair, the proposed vote is 25% yes stay banned.
75%, let's find another solution.


Question : "Should we have alternatives to permabans for plagarism"

Answer : "Yes - Signature ban indefinitely until they've earned x amount of merit"

This kind of solution (proposed by said banned member, FYI) is not detrimental to other members.
And believe me, only the "good" members that have been banned are going to go through the hassle of earning merit in order to recover their signature.

Like if we take your example, you have earn approx 130 merit in 4 months (mostly hunting plagiarizer)
If we put the threshold at 100 merit earned to recover the signature, it is not that easy to make.
Can you imagine the hard work it would take to make those merit if you that said banned member was a shit poster.
And also, at the next mistake it is permban for life.

I believe that most of the shitposter will just not bother and stay without a signature : no campaign, no money no quota ....

Over the last few months, I've been somewhat involved in tracking and reporting plagiarists and I can confirm the two statements above to be absolutely true. The main reason for plagiarism is earning money from signature campaigns, many of them have and manage multiple accounts (ranging from 5 to 100), therefore, they fail to fulfill their weekly quota writing original content => copy posts.

Another large percentage of plagiarizing users are hacked or sold profiles, tailored to post as bumping bots, with their countless pyramid quote garbage in self-moderated scam ICOs. Jengo's army alone has over 200/300 high-ranked profiles (already banned) who have shilled in over 40 projects starting from August 2017 and Lust ICO and ending in late March.

14 days is not enought.
30 days for 1st timer and 6 months without a signature + need to earn merit (50 / 100 ?)  to have  its signature back (after the 6 months).

(other wise, you just have to "wait" and get all your privileges back)

For Jnr Member above, I suggest temporary or signatures ban for 14days for first time offenders. If a user gets banned from displaying signature he losses his campaign slot for paid Bitcoin signatures and losses 2weeks stakes for bounty campaigns then the reported plagiarism post should be deleted by mod to prevent repeat of report for that same post and a warning message should be sent to user to delete all formal plagiarism he has done (clean up his account) because any further report of plagiarism for that account will result in permanent ban.

For Newbies i suggest temporary ban for 14days for first time offenders, this will also cause user to loss  2weeks stake in altcoin bounty. Any of this two punishment can be a better alternative to permabans for plagarism for first time offenders.

Quite a few "banned" members have put forward the idea of removing their signature.
No signature, no campaign, no more plagiarism, right ?

Or putting back the signature after a quota of Merit has been earn (100 merit ? 200 merit ?) or not putting it ever, who care ?
if they can't live without a signature, then they just have to leave the place.

Like in real life, you rob a bank, you kill someone, you go to jail and then you get out.
On Bitcointalk, you copy a message once (a single time !) and you are banned from the board, no redemption.

Then, off course if someone is found guilty of doing it one more time, it should be a permaban.

My assumption was they plagiarize to earn from their signature. Plagiarism happened long before the introduction of Merit. I started my Report plagiarism thread in May 2017.
Removing unmerited posts (which is not a serious idea to pursue) would lower their post count, and force them to only create good posts.

Not necessarily. For many the intent is to hit a post quota so they are paid for their signature campaigns. For whatever reason, whatever they write themselves isn't acceptable (it isn't good enough to satisfy their campaign manager, they can't write English comprehensibly, their posts keep getting deleted, they just can't be bothered, etc), and so they plagiarise instead.

I'm sure many of the serial plagiarises have already come to terms with the fact they will never rank up with the current merit system.

Their intent in plagairising is to receive merit, no? Removing their ability to earn merit should remove their incentive to plagiarize.

I don’t see how removing unmerited posts effects plagiarism at all.

Why? Even banned users can still earn Merit. Merit is supposed to encourage good posts, that shouldn't change for anyone.

Thinking out of the box and being plain evil: you could tie posts to Merit by removing all unmerited posts after a few weeks, but this too won't really help.

Ban them for a month and remove their ability to earn merit the first time. Maybe a 2 month ban for the second offense and a permanent ban for the third... I imagine users would be leaving negative trust to these abusers also.

This is actually a great idea. My only concern is that we still need a way to penalize someone who has already obtained legendary rank. I'd hate to give a blank check to a legendary account to start employing a copy paste bot to sling their signature all over the place.

Users caught plagiarizing should have their ability to earn merit permanently removed. While I think they should have to pay a fine, that could be viewed negatively and bring with it unique problems. Another approach along with the inability to receive merit would be a month long ban...

I continue to think giving a fine would be the best option, but if this is rejected by the administration.....

For lower ranking members, perhaps for junior members and below, there will be no change, they will be permabanned for the first instance.

For higher ranking members, the ban functionality can be modified so that for someone caught plagiarizing, a three day temp ban will start will start once they acknowledge they should not plagiarize, and that future instances of plagiarism will result in a permaban.

The above would prevent people from claiming they didn't know they aren't allowed to plagiarize, and will prevent the promise they will never do it again because they would have already broken that promise. It would also prevent established people from being excluded from the community for a single mistake.

I think in the majority of cases, the above is giving more chances than necessary.

I also think anyone who is banned for plagiarism should have their ban message explicitly say this. Perhaps any mod who has the authority to ban for plagiarism should have the ability to give this type of ban. The ban message could also say the ban is unlikely to get overturned if you actually plagiarized. This should cut down on the appeal threads in meta of people claiming to have no idea why they were banned.   

I think it should also be noted that if a newbie account created within a few days then it doesn't make sense to ban them for signatures as they wouldn't be allowed to carry signatures in the first place. The probably will be spamming to either rank up or do other shady activities like shilling. The above rules should be only applicable for Full Members & Above since they have taken quite an effort to react there and banning them would be a bit harsh.

I like this idea. Unfortunately 90% of the signature banned account would have been left there hanging, only 10% will care about those accounts. It's not easy to gather 100 merit nowdays, so if someone manages to gather it, that would be really good for the forum itself.

I want to focus attention that forum obtain much more benefits if guilty members wouldn't be banned at once and they will need to make good posts to get their signatures back.

Hey, this is actually a very good proposal.
Members that truly value their accounts will make the effort to gain those 100 merits and won't mind being deprived of signature for the time needed to achieve it.

I continue to be a witness that users with one violation have the same punishment as notorious spammers, and it doesn't seem very fair.
If there has been a plagiarism then ban offenders which have junior ranks and remove signature from senior members (or write that a signature has been disabled because of copy/pasting), and demand from them to earn 100 merit so they can turn on their signature again. If member with a banned signature make one more copy-paste then block him permanently. I think this would be a better option for the development of the forum than is currently the case.

What abot this one "the honeymoon" guy he kinda got the support of suchmoon :



With even the user suggestion some kind of alternative punishment :

and :


But un-banning accounts is like opening pandora's box

People are already referring to the LoneShark situation each time they are not happy with their ban.