Topic: Do you think some plagiarism can happen "by mistake"? (Read 693 times)

This is a threat? Or are you so asserting yourself to others?

Whatever it is, one thing is clear, empty chatter is your element in every sense of the word and nothing more (from a gentleman's wager to these threats).

Your example is not plagiarism. There is a clear extra "/quote" bracket that has no "open quote" bracket, and there is a quote that is inaccurately attributed to someone who did not make a post, but was quoting someone else in his post. You also copied the entire portion of a post, and clearly responded to the content of the post under the post.

If you had not caught your mistake, your post should have been reported, and a moderator responding to the report should have fixed the broken quote. From a moderation perspective, there shouldn't be any question of plagiarism in the above post.

In my experience, it is more common for mods and admins to look for reasons not to ban users who are breaking the rules, than to look for reasons to ban users who have broken rules.

I'll show an example of my accidental plagiarism:

Okay, that is not something I had substantially noticed before. I have negative opinions regarding copying content (even when citing said content), as I discuss below, however, I don't think this substantiates any kind of long-term ban, nor long-term signature ban.

My opinion is that this kind of content is low value in nature. I wish people would not do this. However, as long as forum rules (and practice) allow this, I cannot in good faith favor a ban for doing this.

I am sure no one gets paid to do that. The only service similar to that is the Bounty Police by Royse777. But maybe there is an unofficial bounty you can get from campaign managers if you contact them in private and propose you find rule-breakers if they pay you a bounty for your work. Who knows.

Maybe when PrimeNumber7 said that there is "financial incentive to look for plagiarism", he meant there is the possibility for someone to take the place of a user who has plagiarized in a well-paying campaign. For example, I am someone who wants to get into a campaign but the campaign is full. I perform some research to see if there are examples of plagiarism with some of its members. I find one fall guy, I report a few of his posts, and he gets banned. The campaign then opens for new participants, so I apply and maybe get accepted. It's a long shot, but still.

Seeing as how the rules of Bitcointalk aren't "official" to begin with, I don't think the mods want to be held down to absolutes and have freedom to weigh certain factors before making a decision (did this person contribute to the forum, are they likely to keep breaking rules, and how severe was the 'crime', among others).

In general, people just shouldn't be copying the words of others and presenting them as their own. Shouldn't be too hard to not do, one would hope...


Are you sure that's a real thing? I've never heard anybody say anything about that.

If his intention was to plagiarize, he wouldn't indicate that he took content from someplace else by writing "smuggled out snippet below" right there in the first sentence of that incriminating post.

 

If not formatted properly that's plagiarism too (not on bitcointalk though) and low value shitpost that should be reported & deleted.
 

I am not sure I agree with your conclusions.

Those that look for plagiarism by people who disagree with the person are not against "any" plagiarism, they are aginst people who think differently, and who criticize them.

I would also point out that in the past, DarkStar_ has offered bounties for people who are able to find substantial rule-breaking that results in a participant being removed from his campaign. So there is a financial incentive for people to look for things such as plagiarism, alt accounts, and other frowned upon behavior by those in the CM campaign.

Extraordinarily unlikely to ever be "unintentional" -- the quote above pretty much sums it up.

The reason has to do something with filling up the universe with monkeys and giving them typewriters... One of them is more likely to bang out a bitcoin private key on accident than a paragraph from Shakespeare... or something.

Also, Occam's Razor dictates that people are just lazy AF.


How hard is it to come up with original thought exactly anyway? Pretty dang hard, apparently.

From what I can tell, there is a lot of gray area here. Some plagiarists get a pass (well, he forgot to add the source, it was his first offense, he contributed so much to the community...), while others get an instant perma-ban and that's it. Where is the line? There must be a line somewhere. There must be defined rules that everyone must follow. I'm not referring to a super-censored version of this community, I just think the same rules should be applied, regardless of who is posting.

That's why I said "so to speak", lol.


My vision is that if it is a minor case, which happened only once, I could accept that person being given a second chance. But if it happened repeatedly, 3, 5, 10 times or more, I prefer to ban him and never come back. There are a majority of us who do not cheat.

But it's not so much my view as Sir Theymos', I understand he doesn't tolerate plagiarism very much, although he lets the odd mild case pass.

My 2 cents ... At first I also thought it was a loophole, but it turned out to be not entirely true. ^{[Editing it after being caught doesn't absolve them (c)]}. I mean that global mods definitely use archives, although preference is given to global archival services and not to those archives that were created by someone from the forum participants, (although I can't talk about the preferences of all global mods).

I would point out that people can (and do) report plagiarism anonymously via the report to moderator button.

I am not sure I agree with your stance, but I think he likely is hoping to get merit from his public reports. 
I can only speculate if what you are saying is true, and it may be true. However, there are some people who look for plagiarism by people that disagree with them, and/or that are critical of them.

Plagiarism had gone unnoticed and unhandled for such a long time that some people have weaponized it.

I didn't know him and I've just recently seen the feedback you left him (neutral btw, was that negative changed to neutral?).


In this I do not agree with you at all. You are basically telling two criminals to hide the evidence of the crime, so to speak. If they have plagiarized repeatedly they don't have to delete the evidence, what they have to be is banned from the forum, which has already happened in at least one case, and never come back, as the rules say.

Another thing is that he might be a troll, but he is a troll who discovers plagiarists.

Hey man. On the one hand I thank you for the work you do against plagiarists, but on the other hand I think you should expose all the evidence you have now. I think it would be the most honest thing to do and would save the forum the most work.

There are a lot of people who basically copy entire articles in a thread and have a citation at the bottom of the post. This is not plagiarism, but IMO is another problem as the post has virtually no original content nor commentary. The above is often not even someone summarizing an article, it is copying entire articles.

I am one of those people who like to shake the nerves of others, so if Mpamaegbu successfully appeals against the ban and is unbanned, I will provide new evidence since I have something in store. I am such an obnoxious brute only on weekends, on other days I enjoy watching such scandals drinking Piña colada.

Possible.
But IMO, it could be a case-to-case basis and if you can see the (accused being plagiarized) post of Mpamaegbu, the intention could be possible is to show a reference or content that come from the online article (or somewhere else) but the big mistake is, Mpamaegbu forgot to include the link or must be quoted it from the original author, which is this is very strong evidence by suspecting of being a plagiarist.  So IMO, that could be a mistake by him by not being accredited to the original author.

There's no problem even if he copied the entire content but there's a link to the original source.

Just my two sats and waiting for the best result of Mpamaegbu.

I once quoted what @theymos said about the plagiarism case, theymos said.


if you understand the content above in terms of words, the words 100 percent lead to one of the media articles, google no bargaining penalties apply and it's on purpose.

The opposite is 100 percent words, but what is found in the article is only 20-30 percent, maybe it's coincidentally the same words, not on purpose, not included in cases of plagiarism.

Add my two satoshi...

Plagiarism is always intentional and simply cannot occur by mistake. However, in my opinion, there are two types of plagiarism namely conscious copypasting and unconscious one. The first definition means a person knows what is going on, he steals someone else's work and never gives credit to the original author. Unconscious plagiarism is also intentional, but the difference is a person takes someone else's work and never gives credit not because of bad intentions but forgetfulness, carelessness, or, in some cases, due to lack of knowledge of how to correctly highlight someone else's message. The problem is it is almost infeasible to figure out whether a person had bad intentions or not, was it conscious plagiarism or temporary stupidity.

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.

---

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

Saying "sort of by mistake" kinda sounds like "just did it a few times and hoped not to get caught". I mean I could be wrong but how do you manage to accidentally plagiarise - especially on a different thread (I could guess on the same thread someone could quote someone and edit the quotes so it looks like their word but would probably be just fixed anyway by them or a mod).

Possibly.

• It's why plagiarism report will be handled case-by-case and very careful by moderators.
• Moderators won't carelessly use their ban hammers immediately after they receive a plagiarism report. They will look at proof of plagiarism and post history.
• It will be handled by moderators and escalate to global moderators or admins. With the complicated escalation process, I don't think reports will be handled inaccurately.

I'm not talking about someone who copy-pasted without quoting the source in a dozen posts or more. Maybe someone who has only one case of plagiarism in all his post history and has written like 5k posts.

The question came to my mind because of the latest reported case of plagiarism. Mpamaegbu and Pokapoka124 were recently accepted into the Best Change sig campaign, which, AFAIK, is the second best-paying campaign on the forum. Then:


Only Mpamaegbu has replied so far, saying that it was kind of "by mistake", but I don't want to discuss those individual cases here, because I think there will be discussed in the plagiarism and/or sig campaign threads.

The question is whether we can believe that any plagiarism happens by accident. I have been searching and have not found any posts that are exactly on this topic, although I have found two interesting but somewhat opposite opinions in posts on plagiarism:



What do you think? Is plagiarism always intentional or can there be some specific cases in which it is not? It is not clear to me.