Topic: Do you think some plagiarism can happen "by mistake"? - page 2. (Read 752 times)

Guys, I was told he'll be creating an appeal thread soon.

Let's see how things go. Who knows, perhaps the mods/ staffs could look into his case (again)?

He probably does, but I know that the forum meant a lot to him and I think he's probably devastated about this--and personally I feel bad that he got banned now that I know what the situation is.  I was helping him rank up by doing monthly post history reviews for him (he was one of the few who took me up on my offer), so I know he was trying his best to be productive, and I still have a very hard time believing he committed plagiarism on purpose, hoping he'd get away with it.

That's a bad idea, IMO.  If the first consequence you got for plagiarizing something was a warning, there would be members trying their luck at getting away with it left and right.  Plus the moderators don't have the time, patience, and probably even the resources to track every member through each stage of that proposed system.  They already spend enough time just checking reports and making judgements as to whether to delete posts that to add something like that on top of their workload would make it untenable.

Plus, I think that's been proposed and rejected at least once before.  I'm pretty sure Theymos wouldn't go for it.

You could be right; I don't know.  As I said, I can't read his mind to see what his intentions really were.  I do agree that a temporary ban might be more suitable for a member like him, and I could all but guarantee he'd never repeat his "mistake" again.

I think Mpamaegbu likely intentionally plagiarized his post. The post in question is several years old, and I am not sure if he was participating in a signature campaign at the time. IMO he is sufficiently established of a forum member that a temp ban, rather than a permaban would probably be in order.

Although none of the cases in the OP apply, there are potential situations in which plagiarism could be "unintentional". For example, someone could copy content from multiple sources to make a well-rounded argument, and not properly cite said sources. If someone can quote many sources to make a coherent post that is informative and on-topic, I would be okay with allowing them to receive a warning. The sources would need to be diverse enough to show the person was putting in substantial effort into his post, and the post needs to be something that the average user reading the subject thread would find interesting, and not believe to be nonsense.

Damn, what a pity.

I just concluded a deal with him. He was really understanding and willing to wait when I had some unforeseen delays on returning the funds to him, and him sending the funds first.

Contrary to popular belief, there are indeed cases of genuine mistakes done by even the most senior members; we all did at some point in our lives (not just on this forum). If it was intentional, they wouldn't even bother spending so much effort and time to rank up. Otherwise the signature ban wouldn't even take place.

Sometimes a second chance does help in such cases.

I'd say if it happened only one time, maybe the person that did it forgot to put the quote marks, sometimes it happens.

Also we need to check if the poster tells about his own view on the matter along side with the quoted/plagiarized content.

If he only copy pastes and never put quote marks/tags without telling anything else, then he is a plagiarizing pos 100%.

Any changes that were to be made concerning plagiarized content and account banning would just bring about new discussions and complaints, such as:
Where was this rule when I was banned? I only had one plagiarized post, why did I not get a warning instead of a ban? Etc., etc.

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If someone browses this forum, reads books about Bitcoin, and watches YouTube videos on that subject, that person has probably acquired all kinds of info and knowledge that he will remember. Naturally, it's hard to remember what you heard or read where. But when making a post or replying to someone on Bitcointalk, you can always say something like: "I read", "I remember seeing", "Member X said in one of his posts", "I can't remember the source, but...." 

All that relieves you of the responsibility that you are trying to make it look like what was written are your words. You don't have to cite the source for everything if you don' know it, but make sure to mention that someone else said it. I haven't looked into what Mpamaegbu and Pokapoka124 are blamed for, so this is only a general recommendation.

Don't know if thereis some kind of setting on the mods side of thread unlocking permissions/capabilities. Based on what I've experienced is, iirc the OP can also open their own thread which is locked by the staff (maybe the same even if the lock is done by mods or admins). cmiiw
In @Mpamaegbu's case, that thread was locked which s/he didn't. Just My assumption, (1st mistake) s/he has no idea that s/he can unlock it (if my initial explanation is correct) to add the source link and (2nd mistake) just forget about it without worrying that it will cause the biggest problem someday.

But I agree that @Mpamaegbu should open a ban appeal topic even though s/he has a small chance. Looking at her/his achievements, some of the other members would probably support that s/he deserves a second chance with a lighter penalty instead.

If this is an issue of one post which is involved  with copy and pasting without quoting the source that deserves the benefit of the doubt and could be Mistake. But then again a mistake can only be made if you know the rules and forgot to abide by them   but for someone that's unaware of such a rule they wouldn't see this to be a mistake.

So for someone that's likely to know the rules and has made 2 or more of these kind of posts that's an intentional act and not a mistake, unless the said mistakes have a time gap between them just my 2cents.

Most of plagiarists are serial plagiarists.

• Alternatives to Permabans for plagarism
• I think the second chance is a kind of alternative that was implemented since 2019. Because of this, I don't think there will be multiple strikes before a permanent ban is used. If you get a ban, make a ban appeal and look for a second chance.

I bet he now regrets joining BestChange at all, as he could have continued to live happily in the Roobet campaign and no one would have been any wiser.  

Anyhow, back to the topic. How about introducing three strikes rule? First strike - a warning, second strike - a temporary ban, third strike - a permanent ban.
In essence, this would eliminate serial plagiarists and give those who inadvertently plagiarized a second chance.

Well, Mpamaegbu got banned but I think he should appeal the ban. I know I just recently complained that plagiarists don't get banned after multiple reports but can't we just find a nice cozy middle ground. There is enough reason to believe that he didn't intend to claim the text as his own.

Ah, I understand the situation now--when I read the OP this morning I was barely awake and didn't look into the particulars, but I just did (at least as far as Mpamaegbu is concerned). 

Forgetting to cite a source is something anyone could do, and in Mpamaegbu's case I think it might be the truth.  I just posted my opinion about it in the Report Plagiarism thread where it was uncovered.  If that turns out to be the only instance of Mpamaegbu not citing a source, then I'd probably give him the benefit of the doubt if I were the manager of the BestChange campaign.  As I said in my post, I'm fairly certain Mpamaegbu knows the consequences of plagiarizing and that a good number of members are hard at work sniffing out examples of it. 

In my previous post I said that "mistakes" usually don't happen, and that they're just an excuse members make up when they're busted.  I'm still sticking to that, but this might be one of those times where forgetting to put in the citation actually did happen.  Mpamaegbu's post history is probably being combed through for other instances of plagiarism as we speak, so we'll see what turns up (if anything).

I'm much less familiar with Pokapoka124 as a member, so I have no opinion on his/her posting habits, nor has that member said anything about the accusation that I'm aware of.  I'd say if any other examples of plagiarism show up from either account, then we know what we're dealing with--not mistakes but intentional plagiarism, and the usual consequences will ensue. 

Looking at Mpamaegbu posting history, he has many posts reference before the post found to be plagiarized was created and after that post, he also had other post correctly referenced. Now he also pointed out that the topic has been locked from the very day of creation and that could have been because the thread was locked by moderators and as such can't be edited assuming he realizes he forgot to include the link.

Also if you go through the thread like I have done you'll notice he got a suggestion of similar thread already existing so that could have been why the thread was locked. I'm not trying to justify his actions here but I think his case should be treated with some grace like others have, assuming he was to be punished for this mistakes of his as clearly pointed out.

Plagiarism shouldn't be welcomed/tolerated on the forum, that been said, if the moderators find his actions to be punishable which I would second, it shouldn't be a permanent ban though because cases like this could actually be a mistake and the user in question isn't a spammer nor will you say he hasn't been a productive member of the community.

Imo, plagiarism can be unintentional; A user can quote someone else without any intention of stealing the idea and forget to link the source. They are difficult to prove but is possible.

From the discussions theymos has had on ban cases, rank does not really matter much, what's most important when considering to oardkn a violator of the rules is their contribution to the forum, i.e, if they are net positive to the forum.
Newbies are fairly new and would have spent too little a time to impact the forum much, but they would not be disregarded simply casue they are 'new'.

Mistakes may occur but it must be taken case-by-case and then making the decision. who made a plagiarism from a high quality topic and  making an effort  is not like who copies the first result of Google's search or want to get more merits for paid posts.

Generally as long as plagiarism is prohibited, all members and all the ranks are the same as the same.
Unfortunately,  high-ranking member have a chance to try to justify their position more than newbies.

This should be reasonably obvious on a Bitcoin forum I think. We're trusting immense amounts of wealth to a combination of 24 words. Even allowing for certain common language constructs, the chances of someone accidentally posting the same thing as someone else are... well, very low to say the least.

Having said that, there is a bigger issue here about prevention vs cure. If a simple sentence was added to the "Post reply" / "Start new topic" page next to the "Post" button, e.g. "don't make low value unnecessary posts and make sure to add links/quotes if you copied text written by someone else", I think that would significantly help users who don't really intend to plagiarize, but perhaps don't know (cultural differences and whatnot) that unreferenced copypasta is not cool, or forget to format it properly. It would also invalidate some common excuses that plagiarists use in ban appeals. This has been discussed ad nauseam and is a really minor tweak but unfortunately doesn't seem to be a priority for theymos.

I wouldn’t buy a story who would say that they did it mistakenly. How come a copy paste job would be done mistakenly? Well, someone may forgot to share the source but that still is quite illogical. In my case, I used to cross check a post whether I'm missing something or whether I need to add some more texts. I believe most people do that. If someone don't do that, it's their fault and should be punished by the forum rules. If anyone gets passed, there will be excuse for everyone to say "it was a mistake".
Mistake can only happen if someone writes a ton of copy paste article and share but forget to share the source link.

Maybe if they are new to the forum they would have a defense but if you are a experienced member everyone knows that you need to include a source whenever you copy text from somewhere else on the internet. If they do not do that then that is their own fault because they have neglected the rules and have ignored the weekly topics we have here about being banned for plagiarism.

They claim that it was a mistake or they did not know because it is hard to prove but they should not go unpunished if they have been caught plagiarizing by mistake because this would quickly cause a surge of other people claiming the same to get away with it.

That example by mk4 is plausible, because there are generic types of statements we've read that we might rewrite from memory without realizing it, but those IMO would tend to be very short statements and could be "mistakes".  That's the only scenario in which I can see someone making a good argument that they didn't plagiarize something.

But in general, I think that 99.99% of plagiarism is not done mistakenly.  But what have we learned from all the ban appeal threads when someone gets busted for plagiarism?  They claim it was a "mistake".  So it doesn't surprise me that Mpamaegbu is making that argument (though I don't know the details behind it).  If it only happened once and it was one of those sentences that anybody could write, then maybe it was unintentional--we'll see once all the facts are in.  Most of the time, though, there's no mistake at all.  The member caught copy/pasting really did do that.

By mistake, once or twice, possibly.

But there is a difference between a few lines of text that someone forgot to quote, or possibly since they have known it and used the wording for so long they no longer think of it as needed to be quoted. Much like the hardware wallet quote from mk4 above.

But a blob of text from a well known news story or just well known in general vs
Somewhere in between those 2 quotes there is a line that turns it into plagiarism.

However, the bulk copy pasting of paragraphs of text, there really is no wiggle room with that.

-Dave