Topic: Plagiarism as a result of cultural differences - page 2. (Read 1223 times)

I just think that more emphasise can and should be put on the problem of copy/pasting since that is The Rule and reason why so many members get banned + it creates a lot of work for the moderators of the forum dealing with banned accounts.
Highlighting the problem of copy/pasting the way I suggested or adding a warning next to the "Post" and "Preview" buttons like o_e_l_e_o and some other members did would be a nice feature i think.

I can see that bingo card we used so often in the ban appeals thread getting 10 "it's in my culture" options.

All the text you refer there is not about plagiarizing two lines with eth going up or down but, and let me quote: "ideas that are beneficial to and shared by the community are not individually attributed, but rather recognized as universal knowledge"
None of the two line bs copy paste garbage we have here is even close to that stats.

Besides, I really don't like grouping countries together and saying Asia, just how I don't like people talking about eastern or central Europeans and throwing in all the countries like all are the same. And we all know most of the copy posters here are not Chinese or Japanese and one of the countries with its own fair share is not even in Asia.



Well, since on one hand, we have Confucianism how about we see the roman side of the story, Ignorantia juris non excusat  

Plagiarism is not a crime but it could lead to other things like copyright infringement. Being permanently banned without the person knowing that it’s not allowed is somewhat unacceptable to the person.

But still being a human, we should respect that we shouldn’t just copy other people’s stuff and post it as your own. But people just don’t acknowledge it, that’s where the problem comes. Not recognizing the author or the owner is subject to infringement.

The hardwork of a person no matter what it is, an article, an experiment, a scientific research, etc. You wouldn’t know what they have gone through to make that and not acknowledging it and just plain copying it is disheartening.

It’s not just cultural differences, it’s moral characteristic of a person on how they respect other people.

I'm glad that you brought that up, I was afraid of mentioning this as I might offend a lot of people but I'm from an Asian country and the university I went to has a really big punishment for plagiarism, we even had a seminar on plagiarism and proper citation before we started on doing our research paper. So this Turnitin article has bugged me a lot as it made it look like most Asian countries don't know what plagiarism is. I guess Turnitin doesn't even proofread and fact check their own articles anymore which is pretty hypocritical on their part.

I mean, even if your culture has no such thing as plagiarism, I would still think the old saying "When in Rome" would apply. When you want to get involved in a new community, it is wise to learn their customs before doing so.

However, given the vast number of "Why was I banned" threads that appear in Meta, and that >99% of them are because of plagiarism, I do think a red text warning below the "Post" and "Preview" buttons would be helpful.

Even the 'cultural' description on those students are wrong from my pov. I never remember we've been taught to not respect individual works or feels we should be uncomfortable when we cite someone on our papers. As collective as we are, individuals works are still respected ,even when we engage in online discussion.

One of the largest forum in my country, which is more 'carefree' than Bitcointalk still does not allow plagiarism. Even on Facebook, when some user posts a status that is similar to the status of somebody else, we 'bully' them. There is no cultural differences, we know plagiarism is bad.

A moderator should be able to update those posts.

I really respect the cultural differences each country have but is the 3rd group really the one hanging here in the forum? In all of your examples of cultural differences all of them are about students doing school work in each of their respective country, do you think the same understanding still applies in the forum where they just copy/paste posts just to complete a bounty requirement? I don't think so, I don't even think that the plagiarizers we have are students still studying in school in the first place. The best thing that this forum can do I guess is what you just have suggested which I doubt will really make a change at all to these kind of people.

@DdmrDdmr
I asked long ago about the possibility to have multiple owners of one thread, but I haven't heard since. We don't have a local section, only a thread in the other languages and the OP is a newbie with 2 posts and last active back in march 2012. I thought since this is our official thread, it could be changed an updated a if someone share the ownership with the OP.
It can be a solution in your case too.

That really looks like something that should be fixed.

From what I have seen, Theymos is usually way more receptive to specific viable solutions than unsolvable problems. For example, the way he handled the WO thread "issue" was absolutely perfect for everyone involved. And that was WAY more complex and even involved some considerable effort on his part and some minor changes to the forum.

So maybe if you or some of the other well standing members that are also involved in the Spanish forum would offer to fill the "position" it could be a straightforward process. Of course assuming dserrano is not really interested anymore or welcomes some help in there.


P.S.: dserrano5 - Last Active:   October 17, 2018, 04:46:01 AM - I don't think he is really that much interested anymore from what I see.

P.S.2: My mistake I see that the moderators of the Spanish local subforum are:

VGO - Last Active:   November 09, 2018, 08:22:03 PM
frankcuestein - Last Active:   January 01, 2019, 08:58:23 PM

Still not that much interested I guess, except maybe for frankcuestein.

In the Spanish local set of rules, rule number 33 (33. Posting plagiarized content is not allowed.[e]) is not included ... Rules stop at number 28, an thus lack the last 5 added rules in the translation. This is due to the fact that the post that includes the rules has not been edited since March 2017.
The author of the translation has barely been active during 2018, and thus has not been updating the post. I brought this to the attention of the local moderators, but have not since heard back.

The above non-sync between the rules written in English and those translated into local languages also happens on other local boards (last time I checked), and I posted about it here some time ago.

There are certain important threads whose ownership perhaps should be either be that of “the forum”, or at least transferrable by the moderator for cases such as these (with the pertinent tries to get the OP to sync the post himself as a first instance).

Edit: Created a thread on the matter (see Local Board forum rules asynchronisms), thread that currently lacks any flow of posts. Maybe it is not perceived as much of an issue.

I can say a copy of the translated rules in the local Spanish board does exists. I have not read it, but I can say the translation of "plagiarism" to Spanish would not really cover what I have seen in the bans appeals about plagiarism. I mean, reusing an inconsequential phrase from another post, that constitutes no original work of a certain value (ie, something that could be covered by copyright/intellectual property) would be no plagiarism.

Most (if not all) of the examples of banned users for "plagiarism" I have seen could obviously be considered complete shitposting though. And it is also obvious they don't offer anything of value to the forum (at least in those posts)... but it is not that they are attributing to themselves another person intelectual property just because of paraphrasing a worthless phrase/statement.

Not that I have ever do that (AFAIK) but I really learned what is considered "plagiarism" here by reading about those bans appeals that really surprised me on first instance.

I will now read the Spanish translation and see if it is clear enough or if some additional clarification would be needed to better be safe than sorry.

P.S.: After checking the translation of the rules in the Spanish local forum I see only rules up to 28 have been included:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lista-no-oficial-de-reglas-si-oficiales-del-foro-guias-faq-705523

There's nothing about plagiarism at least in the OP. Please someone correct me if I am wrong as I barely frequent the local forum.

Don't know the situation of other local subforums.

I'd say you're giving this third group too much credit.

Plagiarism is theft in any culture including the Asian one. Plagiarism is appropriation of one's creation, it's just that the creation is a text but it's still taking something someone else made.

What could be done is probably seeing a lighter punishment for anyone copy/pasting while giving the source of the copy paste but no one actually does this. You either give the source then comment what you paste or don't give the source.

Most plagiarists are just lazy. Don't try to find excuses for them like cultural differences. I know no culture where it's seen as a good thing.

Those could still fall into the first category because not only do they do it and don’t care about the consequences but they also make an extra effort to conceal the plagiarised content.

That is a good point although I would not use the word plagiarise if we are trying to address those who dont understand its meaning. Just copy and paste and highlight what it is and that you WILL be banned if you do it. It should get the attention of some new users I think. Those who dont care are a lost cause anyway. It should be highlighted in such a way that they know that there is no chance to get away with it so dont try it.

This is interesting. What if a user is found copy/pasting at the beginning when he just registered his account and then as the time progressed his posting quality became better and better? Those people could be given a 2nd chance if they have contributed to the forum in a significant way.

You are educated and possess enough professionalism and culture to know what goes and what doesn't, unfortunately some people are not. But if they want to better themselves lets give them a push in that direction. Making a warning message about copy/pasting is everything the board needs to do, if they continue to ignore it, the results are their own fault.

Not can. Will. If they understand the difference between 'will' and 'can' they might see that there is a possibility to get away with it. They shouldn't think they can get away with it.

Yes, someone who is here for the first time will not know where and what Meta is and why the rules would be posted there.

Plagiarism also should have another view point.
Plagiarism which can harm, bring money loss and only brings negative consequences.
And plagiarism which can only help, can't bring money loss or harm any other member.
Most of the plagiarism around is in the bounty's as everyone here stating, but some cases people trying to get helpful information from different sources and just badly credit or not credit the original source.
In the last case, the plagiarism itself cannot harm the community or the person reading/using it and also can be helpful.
In those cases people should receive warnings but not red tags, because in many cases people didn't read the rules.
Helpful plagiarism should be treated little bit better than those who have in mind to earn money from it or harm the community.

Even if there are different cultural tolerance levels or society imbricated takes on plagiarism, it does not mean that when one ventures to a different part of the world they should be exempt from penalty (and getting aboard this forum is a bit like that). Take for example Singapore. An everyday commodity for many of us such as chewing gum is banned there. Not flashing the toilet leads you to be breaking the law, and parental caning (or even being caned for vandalism) is no stranger.

By that I mean that cultural differences should turn into needs to be better informed by those approaching a foreign culture, and not necessarily as an excuse or an extenuating factor.

Plagiarism as a result of people not reading the rules of this forum,even if we have rules sticked into META section most of the people unaware of this section at all.So having the rules running on footer or header of each pages will make some difference.

Those kind of users barely copy/paste, at least here in bitcointalk. I have seen only one case here. Possibly he was a Legendary member and participating in sig campaign. He said he did not have enough time to post since his mother was in hospital or something like that.
Other than this, everyone who complain "I am banned, why" come up with a bad English.
Anyway, this is not something which people have to learn from culture. It's all about self awareness. Using other people's resource without credit or permission isn't allowed in any culture and shouldn't be either.

I don’t condone plagiarism as it’s disrespectful to the original creators, especially without giving any credit. One solution is adding a warning on top of the “Post” button that says “Please do not copy other people’s words, you can get permenantly banned” or something similar. People not fluent in English don’t know what the term plagiarism is.

Also, If they have a history of doing bounties then most likely they are copying and posting random content as an advantage and should be permanently banned.

It should be easy for a user to read an online article and be able to write up about it in here without having to use the exact same words that was used there.
It's basic learning,that we do all the time in our schools and other works of life
Copying exactly the same thing word for word in degrading to the forum and should not be tolerated.
You can't try to earn just anyhow without at least a minimal amount of effort.
Plagiarism is one menace that should be treated with scorn both in the forum and otherwise