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Topic: Plagiarism and Paraphrasing, different sins of equal magnitude? (Read 139 times)

legendary
Activity: 2730
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Farewell, Leo. You will be missed!
The problem here, is that in most cases, only the only person him/herself knows if what he/she said is actually his original idea, or something he/she copied. It really isn't rare for 2(or more) people come up with the same(or at least similar) ideas.
That's right, and that's why admins can't (or better said) shouldn't consider paraphrasing as a bannable offence. Unless, of course, we are talking about a shitposter who does nothing else but post dubious content whose origins and authors can't be proven, and has other posts that are plagiarized.   
mk4
legendary
Activity: 2716
Merit: 3817
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This is deep. What this means is that in everyday life we paraphrase knowingly or unknowingly.
Yeap. I mean, a good chunk of our knowledge came from the ideas/teachings of other people, no? May it be from teachers/professors/books/etc.

If so, there should be a distinction between some statements which are generalize and the ones that are personalized to be cited.
Pmalek summed it up. The problem here, is that in most cases, only the only person him/herself knows if what he/she said is actually his original idea, or something he/she copied. It really isn't rare for 2(or more) people come up with the same(or at least similar) ideas.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1018
Hello Leo! You can still win.
If someone says that Bitcoin uses a public and decentralized ledger, is that plagiarism? is it paraphrasing or can it be considered public knowledge? Do I need to put a source link anytime I use words like decentralized, ledger, distributed, open-source, etc? What about backward compatibility, do you think anyone puts any links when talking about it?

Paraphrasing as an act of plagiarism can sometimes be difficult to prove. How are you going to prove that someone's post about importing a private key into a wallet is plagiarized/paraphrased just because the steps he wrote down are the same as what other people wrote previously?

Whenever someone explains how a bitcoin transaction goes from point A to point B, it's paraphrased from somewhere even though you memorized and you know the process by heart. There was once an original post about it, people read, improved, and memorized the process.       

This is deep. What this means is that in everyday life we paraphrase knowingly or unknowingly. If so, there should be a distinction between some statements which are generalize and the ones that are personalized to be cited.
legendary
Activity: 2730
Merit: 7065
Farewell, Leo. You will be missed!
If someone says that Bitcoin uses a public and decentralized ledger, is that plagiarism? is it paraphrasing or can it be considered public knowledge? Do I need to put a source link anytime I use words like decentralized, ledger, distributed, open-source, etc? What about backward compatibility, do you think anyone puts any links when talking about it?

Paraphrasing as an act of plagiarism can sometimes be difficult to prove. How are you going to prove that someone's post about importing a private key into a wallet is plagiarized/paraphrased just because the steps he wrote down are the same as what other people wrote previously?

Whenever someone explains how a bitcoin transaction goes from point A to point B, it's paraphrased from somewhere even though you memorized and you know the process by heart. There was once an original post about it, people read, improved, and memorized the process.       
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 4795
Are they different sins of same magnitude and same consequences?
Many accounts have been banned all because they paraphrased contents of a site without including the site link. So, do not paraphrase without including the link, it is deemed as plagiarism.
hero member
Activity: 1260
Merit: 723
I have to make this topic after reading many posts by my fellow newbies about Plagiarism without taking into consideration things that are synonymous to Plagiarism.

Plagiarism and Paraphrasing are different sins of equal magnitude.
Plagiarism is stealing works of the others without any single word, link to mention about the author and original work.
Paraphrase is one of plagiarism types and each university, platform will have their limit of how many percent of words that are taken from the original sources to be considered as plagiarism.

Copy & paste
Paraphrase
Text spinning

You have to leave links to original works.

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While the former is the outright lifting of someone's work either in the forum or outside the forum without due reference to the source. The later can be said to be the act of re-writing someone's idea in your own words or understanding in order to enhance clarity.

Paraphrasing might not be called a sin if the source is duly cited.
Many times, the original authors write better because they are at upper class. They have original ideas and have better writing skills. I don't really see demand to paraphrase anything. Quoting the original content is the best.

I don't feel I can clarify it better when I paraphrase, maybe I am a better writer.

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Translation without referencing the source can be seen as Paraphrasing in different languages (while paraphrasing is done in same language in either different or same language code).
Translation without referencing the source should also be seen as an advanced Plagiarism.
Mainly they will use Translation tool, engine and not use their brain to translate anything. Because they want to be as knowledgeable as possible even they don't have knowledge and being lazy.


A conclusion. If you don't have your unique opinion and use opinions, contents of others, leave the source link.
sr. member
Activity: 1750
Merit: 260
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imo, there is no difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing. In both cases you are trying to steal someone else's effort and pass it as yours. It's more about stealing the idea than the words.
Paraphrasing is considered more offending especially when automated tools are being used. It only proves that the offender is already aware that what he is doing is wrong and he is doing it to avoid being caught.

There is a big difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing. If you copied the entire statement/phrase/paragraph if not quoted. A paraphrased statement/phrase/paragraph is still can be considered as plagiarism if it is really close to the original text.
Paraphrasing tools are not good to avoid plagiarism as most of the time the paraphrased text doesn't make sense at all.
legendary
Activity: 3206
Merit: 2904
Block halving is coming.
I think the paraphrasing you talking about is the "spin content" there are many tools out there for free about this spinner tool for paraphrasing any content in a readable format.

The reason why they treat it as Plagiarism it's because they are the same content with different phrases. It's widely used and most of the spinner users are those who spam on the world wide web for promoting their affiliate or website.

Google hates this kind of strategy it's not unique and always the same meaning as the original that is why they treat it as plagiarism.

Try to run a blog for your self let see if you can rank up your site on Google without penalty using that strategy you just manipulating the SERP.

The same as here if you spun those content and post it here Google will hate this forum and it can affect the rankings on Google.
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 2828
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imo, there is no difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing. In both cases you are trying to steal someone else's effort and pass it as yours. It's more about stealing the idea than the words.
Paraphrasing is considered more offending especially when automated tools are being used. It only proves that the offender is already aware that what he is doing is wrong and he is doing it to avoid being caught.
copper member
Activity: 2856
Merit: 3071
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There might need to be clarification here as a lot of society accepts that paraphrasing intelligence and reserving it is something that's generally good as long as you understand it and add your own flare to it.

An example of this might be a case where someone directly corrects something you've said about something, you're not expected to cite them everytime you mention what they corrected for you.

When the whole, or a substantial part of your post is plagiarised though (even in a different format - "paraphrased" as you put it) then those along with direct translation are plagiarism (provided the source isn't cited).
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1018
Hello Leo! You can still win.
I have to make this topic after reading many posts by my fellow newbies about Plagiarism without taking into consideration things that are synonymous to Plagiarism.

Plagiarism and Paraphrasing are different sins of equal magnitude.
While the former is the outright lifting of someone's work either in the forum or outside the forum without due reference to the source. The later can be said to be the act of re-writing someone's idea in your own words or understanding in order to enhance clarity. Paraphrasing might not be called a sin if the source is duly cited. But much often, paraphrasers steal the glory of the source, in this case it becomes a punishable offence.

Now, there is a third brother in this category called "Interpretation and/or Translation "

The position of Translation is not much pronounced, but I think she is the deadliest of them.
Translation without referencing the source can be seen as Paraphrasing in different languages (while paraphrasing is done in same language in either different or same language code).
Translation without referencing the source should also be seen as an advanced Plagiarism.

Having hinted the above, in this forum, is the severity of their consequences same?

Are they different sins of same magnitude and same consequences?
Thank you all.
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