Topic: Alternatives to Permabans for plagarism - page 6. (Read 22177 times)

We are not perfect but I guess permbans if given the chance to lift it is to give him/her a fine for the violations being created. This way people will going to learn but still could be able to lift the ban in this forum. This way we could create a good community that instead of kicking them out we should care for them for we should consider them clients for they are also investing in cryptocurrency for sure. This forum has been enable me also to decide on to invest that is why we should care all users here in this forum.

Money doesn't fuel posting here well that's how it should be. I think far too much emphasis is being put on signature campaigns here and the potential earnings. Do you really think banning signature rather than the account will do anything? Perma bans stop them from using their account and they probably just go and make another one. It would be the exact same if you were to ban them from using a signature but instead they get the impression that they can just continue posting their copy and paste bullshit. I think permabans should stay and send the right signals to those that are copy and pasting. If their intentions are to earn from campaigns then a permaban will prevent that from happening.

Paying to get your account back? No. I think as soon as you are permabanned that is it for you. You don't deserve to come back as permabans are only handed out on a few occasions. If you copy and paste then that's you out of the forum. I don't see any reason why theymos would want to allow copy and pastes the opportunity to get their account back when they have directly insulted him by not paying attention to the rules. Ok so we could argue that everyone deserves a second chance but that should be done via a yearly review of bans rather than allowing users to pay for their accounts back. The problem with allowing people to get their accounts back via a fine they might think that its worth copy and pasting just in case they don't get found and they can earn a little merit from it. If they get found out and banned they just pay for the account back but that post might of already got merit.

Banning someone for a post made years ago would probably be quite harsh, especially if they've since changed their ways. In these sorts of cases I would much prefer a sig ban.


Is this cryptohunter?

Seems the votes are pretty much evenly split between all options minus the fee one.

Theymos PMd me and said permabans for plagiarism don't have to be set in stone as there are no hard rules and we can use our own initiative on whether to ban certain users or not but I think there needs to be some consistency across staff so it doesn't look like we're giving certain favours to people as it will just lead to people whinging and bugging staff members that x was unbanned by y and therefore so should they.

Theymos has already implemented facilities to sig ban people and personally I think this is something we should be doing for those cases of users where they deserve a second chance, so hopefully he can roll out that feature to Globals so we can give them in appropriate cases. Maybe the sigs can be 'earned' back automatically after x amount of time/merit/contributions or after manual staff review, but at least those who are here to genuinely contribute something can still do so regardless.

Two cases that would probably be deserving of unbans/signature bans are ChiBitCTy & Roboabhishek.

Appeal threads:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.35819856
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.48408455

I'm not sure I buy either of their excuses (though they are plausible) but I'd be willing to give them a second chance as they were both active and somewhat appreciated members and have vouches from other respected members, but I think some sort of sig ban would be appropriate here given they were both essentially doing it for payment. They both seem to care more about just getting their accounts back and even suggested they're fine with a sig ban so I think this is something we should consider for review:

Maybe it had been suggested upthread but a vouch system would be good. I know one guy in particular who I'd vouch for, but perhaps that is like earning merit too...

I agree that the forum will lose more if administration would handing out bans left and right, without a possibility for good posters being able to correct. I would vote for such option if it was in the poll:

I voted in favor to disable signatures of users that have been busted doing plagiarism.
Doing this alone will prevent to monetize their posts any further, or they need to start from the beginning.
In some occurrences, a non scrupulous, legitimate, user may copy/paste something occasionally from the internet, without having the reflex to source it nor the intent to abuse, but help.

Removing signatures will have the same effect as a permaban on a certain category of users.
Those creating accounts by the 100's just to squeeze a few more satoshis. As long as they cannot display their sig, they won't earn a dime.

This differs from the other ranges of users that have been banned, and whose contributions goes beyond simply this.

They shouldn't be confused for one another, and disabling signatures is sufficient to do the trick.

I get that, I'm just saying (in my clunky sarcastic way) that this is exactly the kind of topic where the words of a 1-post sockpuppet are completely meaningless. If this is a real Legendary user they're doing a disservice to the discussion by turning it into a puppet show but for all we know this could be someone who e.g. bought some accounts of unknown origin and is looking for a way out of the plagiarism crackdown.

It's just an opinion from someone who has a legendary account but just registered a new one to express this opinion (just in case if someone would start to review his/her older posts for copypaste, after...)

Not sure how to break this to you gently but you're not really a Legendary.

A mod could institute a ban that would automatically go into effect in the future and the review could be done if/when they appeal the ban.

their should be a statute of limitations agreed upon for plagiarism
2 or 3 years especially if it is not related to signature spam or shitposting
if you are motivated enough to go through the many years and thousands of posts on my legendary account you can probably find some example of text copied from someplace on the net without a link or something as an excuse to ban me
it was not a major concern back then but now it is a ticking time bomb and major anxiety
all it will take is to cross the wrong person enough for them to put in the time to search it all - they will probably find something - and all of years of effort i put into this forum will be gone and i would not even be able to start again with a new account because it would be ban evasion
this is true for many good users old accounts full of years of banter
a permanent account ban is harsh enough but a complete ban from even being able to start over is ludicrous
what should i do ? spend weeks searching all my old posts in google and delete anything that matches ? what if the post has been quoted ? what about archives or waybacks ?

Normaly i would say " Nothing should change and permabans remain "


For higher ranked Users , alternatives to permabans for plagarism should be to set there Merit count back to " Zero " if they have some and includes a 2 or 4 Week ban.
If they get detected again for plagarism  they should get perma banned !

Thats just an idea.

But personaly i say there should be no second chance for Copy and Paste banned Users , because they have know it from the Rules !

80 % of all that Users that doing plagarism dont care about the Rules !

As previously mentioned I believe that it has to be decided on a case-to-case basis. If someone has been blatantly plagiarizing for a long period of time just to get paid from a signature campaign they should not be able to have the ban lifted. If someone has done it once or twice over the span of thousands of posts while they are actually contributing members to any community at this forum it should be reviewed. A temporary ban and then a disabled Signature until x amount of merit received would be the best solution IMO.

I know of one case where the user got perma banned although a lighter punishment would have been more deserved.

Needless to say, I believe in second chances (Unless people are scamming). So that's what I voted for.

That makes no sense setting up an x good report limit, this has been discussed before.
Imagine your life depends on x good report (escaping permaban). Would it be hard to register 10 or 100 or 500 fake accounts and post that x copypaste post with them, and your original account would report those and voilá, you just managed to get to the required x good reports, and you're free...
And the forum has managed to get another x unnecessary spam posts...

This is exactly why we need to thrash things out to get some completely different opinions and then try to find the optimal course of action. There are quite a few factors to consider

There are some differences here. Based on Hilariousandco's statement

 Motive -  

1. wiki guy -  Doing it to help someone.  There is not essentially any financial reward for his time and effort. We don't know for sure he is trying to claim this work for his own either he could just see nothing wrong with posting some official stats from wiki on populations or gdp figures. He may assume that people realise he did not just take a huge head count of the entire populace of the world or construct a 2000 character table of figures himself in the 2mins since someone requested it or it became relevant to post in the thread or he just may have got a bit lazy.

So he put effort, tried to help , got nothing back financially , may even consider it is quite obvious that this is not his own work.



2. text spinner - doing it to help himself, knowingly doing something wrong, trying to claim it as his own work,


I mean the act is the same but the motives and type of person to do commit both infringements are likely to be very different. 1 type i think will work well as part of a community and become net positive after a slap on the wrist. The other type has already demonstrated a clearly devious and self centered trait that will need to have a much more serious punishment to help him see things in a different light. I mean text spinners to me should not have another chance.

that is just my opinion - nothing is black and white


PM's sent to everyone that there is now zero tolerance after this date. I am sure that would choke most of them off doing it.

Basing anything on merit right now is not going to be feasible. I mean I see some excellent posters that have not even earned more than 30-50ish after all of this time. I mean top tier posters - they post on the discussion boars more than places like meta.  

-

I vote to remove bans and disable signature space

This looks to me similar to approach like if cop sees some rash driving, then instead of giving ticket immediately ,he should watch/follow to observe driving for next 10-15 minutes ?

There should be no leniency if someone copying the post of others or from articles from other website.

Only leniency can be given to those who copied official announcement types post without declaring the site.They can be given temp sig ban.

I am not in favor of any financial penalty.

I like the initiative, I support either permanent signature bans, or permanent bans. You know as well as I do, that there are never cases where someone gets punished just for mis-citing an article or something like that. Its always blatant spam that people are trying to disguise to get their post count up. In that case, a permanent signature ban is just as effective as a permanent ban. If you can't spam for profit anymore, your account is useless, and its the same as if it had been banned.

I hold extreme prejudice against copy and paste spammers. I personally find it to be the worst offense on Bitcointalk that one can commit. Of the handful of rules here, the purpose is to keep the boards clean and usable. There are always extenuating circumstances for offenses that go against the rules, that make it a little more understandable, but copy and paste spamming is the one thing where there should be no tolerance. Its spitting in the face of every member here, and the staff. To make a mistake and go off topic and spam a thread is a human mistake. I see copy and paste spamming as malicious. If you can't spend 2 minutes to even formulate your own ideas to post, you do not belong here. If your intention is to come here to make money from paid signature advertising, thats absolutely fine. If you post in topics that don't interest you because you must keep your post count up, fine. Who cares if you are feigning interest in a topic? As long as you aren't detracting away from other users who are there because they are genuinely interested, no one cares about your intentions. When you join a discussion with no intention of even trying to add to it, its time that you leave.

On a side note, I'm not a fan of the fine idea. Sure it'd dissuade people from getting caught, but there is still the opportunity that its profitable enough for them to continue spamming if they are only caught with a certain frequency.

I haven't submit vote. Because I don't think parmaban should be cancel and I am not fan of fine. But by considering merit system ban duration would be appropriate. In my opinion temp ban just keep same as now. Instated of parmaban extend it for six month. It could be call strike I don't mean that parmaban will cancel, but if someone got 3 strike then he should got parmaban. Since merit earn is very hard thats why consider strike system.

So my vote for implement strike system.

It's probably not possible to determine how many they have in fact copied, but you can usually tell between the serial plagiarisers and the ones who have done it once or twice. Either way, they can still all be treated the same: One copy and paste = one signature ban. Either earn the merit or pay the fee or whatever.


It's not that bad. For anyone who has fallen foul of being banned for a silly one-time mistake I'm sure they'd happily pay the price. It's a small price to pay instead of being banished for life.


Probably staff, just like they do with current bans.


It's going to be very hard to abuse 100+ merit without being spotted. If there's any shenanigans going on they can either be just banned or left negative feedback (which is as good as a sig ban in most cases).


It's still technically plagiarism but it's hardly a capital offence that deserves a death sentence. Sometimes it's just down to naivety more than being malicious. Imagine if you've made years worth of contributions without a single copy and paste, and then someone asks a question and you help them out by getting the answer from Wikipedia or somewhere else but don't properly attributive it. This is a web forum not a test for a degree in English Language and people don't expect to be banned for such a thing. This probably wouldn't get you a ban on any other forum but this board is  obviously unique in that there's a real issue with plagiarism due to signature campaigns and hence why it's treated so harshly, but not all copy and pasters are the same. We really need more awareness of the rules and that's why they should be told about them upon sign up or have reminders. Hoping that new users just randomly stumble upon the long and complicated list of rules in Meta really isn't enough.


I'd say it's more like giving the death sentence to both a murderer and someone who goes 1 mile over the speed limit. Both are crimes but don't deserve the same punishment. However, I have no sympathy for the people who text spin and maybe they shouldn't be given another chance, but then again I wouldn't be against them be able to get their account back if they prove they're here to contribute and earning a ridiculous amount of merit might be a good enough penance for that.


Well that's the problem right there. There really is quite a big difference between a one-time offence and someone who's only here to copy and paste but at the moment everyone is treated the same, but I also want there to be some consistency because we can't be giving special favours to certain people whilst others are banished for life.


Then what does it matter if they're still going to be here? Doesn't make a difference either way.


Newbies might abandon their account but what about Senior or Heroes? It's incredibly difficult to achieve those ranks now so most aren't just going to do a drake and start from the bottom, but if they are then again, it doesn't matter because they're still here just under a different name.