Topic: Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ - page 5. (Read 929818 times)

1 of the users shared these quotes.

Coming from another perspective, but I also believe that a revision to rule #27; or at least to its interpretation would be benefitial.

Ddmr correctly pointed out that online translators have come a long way since this rule was first created, and it was most likely first created to prevent people from posting some incomprehensible gibberish. We are at a point in which it's getting hard to tell when a person has written the post by themselves or used a tool to do so. I've also explained how I can think of a couple of use cases for this kind of tools, but it'd be good to see that a line is clearly defined between "commercial" and "personal" translated posts.

I know you don't really make the rules, but again, a revision from the upper desks on this matter would benefit local boards, cleansing them from a plague of wannabe translator looking for a quick buck.

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I'm not going to make any comment regarding the rest of the mentioned posts; as I haven't had enough time to follow the corresponding threads and make an opinion out of it

If he provided a source, AFAIK it isn't plagiarism. As I've mentioned in my reply to nullius, it might be deemed low value (specifically low value automated translation spam; that is if it was an automated translation of non-english content).

Added an edit / clarification to my reply to nullius as well.

If someone copied a bunch of English text, prefixed it with "I think ..." and provided a source at the end - is this plagiarism or not? The particular example (Ratimov's case) has very little to do with translations, other than perhaps it's harder to spot translated copypasta. Or if he translated the text without using automated tools it would still be the same issue.

I can't exactly dictate what the forum rules actually are. To quote an older post of mine:


That being said, you do bring up a good point - the supposed loophole within the (unofficial list of) rules. While I could argue that this is covered by rules 1 and 23 (as well as the fact that this topic isn't supposed to be an official and definitive list of rules, but merely an easy to reference source during conversations about rules), it's stretching the definition of rule 1 a bit too much for my liking. However, as you've mentioned, removing the "local" clause doesn't exactly cover all situations where an automated translation might be justified. The amendments would also go against my policy of making the list "simple" (in a relative sense; as compared to the long and complicated history that has lead to all the policies / soft-rules being enforced now) first and foremost and only then focus on covering as much ground as possible.

Since (AFAIK) theymos is the be-all-end-all source of Bitcointalk's rules policy, I'll send him a message and see what he thinks.

EDIT: To clarify, the loophole in the current definition is allowing automated translations of non-English content into English. Obviously, should you try to do this, your thread will be trashed since, as I've mentioned, rule 1 applies nonetheless.

I request that Rule #27 be reviewed, and potentially clarified with a note; but I am ambivalent about asking for it to be changed in substance.


The problem with broadening that rule to prohibit all posting of machine-translated content is that the forum’s main language is English, and its primary administrative language is English.  Translated content from Local boards must oftentimes be posted in Global, for reasons ranging from scam investigations, to the Meta discussion of Local staff and Local merit sources, to—well, I can think of many valid reasons for this; and the reasons are not restricted to any particular board.  And sometimes, it may even be reasonably necessary to post a translation of an entire article or post in Global.  Overall, it would be unreasonable to expect that all such translations be done by a human.

Furthermore, as a practical matter, there are limited staff with the necessary language competency for moderating each Local board.  If the posting of automated translations in Local were allowed, then it is foreseeable that the problems thus created would be uncontrollable.  Whereas Global has much more manpower.

IIUC, the rule must stop Local users from sigspamming and/or inappropriately multiposting by such means, and/or stop inauthentic users, especially spammers, from using automated translation tools to attempt posting in boards where they actually know nothing about the local language.  The potential problems with automated translation in Global are subtly but significantly different.

The question raised in the Ratimov case is already covered by the plagiarism rule.  However, it may be wise to add a note to #27 clarifying that (a) it does not apply in Global, and (b) Rule #33 and its note prohibit using machine translation to plagiarize anywhere, whether in a Local board or not.

It may also be wise to somewhat broaden Rule #27 to restrict certain types of posts made in Global with automated translation.  However, it would be difficult to do this in a way that is (a) concise (= shorter than a typical nullius post), (b) fully fair, without “gotchas”, to people who have a legitimate reason to use automated translation, and (c) resistant to hairsplitting and rules-lawyering by those who don’t.  I invite discussion of how best the objectives of the forum rules could be achieved on this point.

In the spirit of the rules, so as for the letter thereof.

Thanks.

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It is obviously plagiarism.  Not only “copy and paste”, but a definitive example of extreme plagiarism by a remorseless, habituated plagiarist whose response is to deny that he is doing anything whatsoever wrong, to insist that he will continue to do it, and to counterattack ad hominem against anybody who accuses him.


What Ratimov is doing is indefensible.  ← Cover up the name, and you will see that a Newbie account doing the same thing would be instantly permabanned—depending on its post history, perhaps even nuked.  Anybody who defends it is untrustworthy and has untrustworthy judgment.  I have trust-excluded people for much less; and I have I even red-tagged cryptohunter for much less, when it comes to cheap rationalizations of plagiarism.

What if a member just translates one article word for word? And presents the article as if in his own name «In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme as»  and adds many sources to make it look like he used all of them when writing.

I don't understand why others are protecting him. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-source-plagiarist-5297144

Added another exception I've missed to rule 12 and adjusted its wording:


EDIT: Also fixed a few spelling errors.

To the extent that you are trying to be genuine in your proposal, wooI_Ioow, I am not really clear how such proposal would work exactly.

Theymos and moderators are not bots, and it does not even seem to be a great task for a bot to attempt to determine exactly what rises to the level of a violable offense.  There is a certain amount of human discretion involved in terms of whether proper credit was given, or if the plagiarizer was stealing the ideas of someone else without giving proper attributions.

Plagiarizing is likely most frequently caught these days by using bots to see matching text, but human decision making would be necessary to determine if the non-attributed portion rises to the level of plagiarism, and I would imagine that it if the case is somewhat ambiguous, then a lesser punishment will be given than to ban the account.

Anyone in the business of taking the text of someone else and then jumbling up the words or changing some of the words, might be able to meet some kind of minimum threshold in terms of the number of words that were changed, but that still could be considered to be plagiarizing.. discretionary, like I mentioned.

Let's say that you have rule that says that if any string of text is less than 30% matching then that is not plagiarized, so then the copy pasters aim to change 70% of their text in order to be within compliance... ... I must say, this is sounding ridiculous as I am attempting to describe it... because I can see that there might be a whole 100 words, and 70 or them have been changed, but 30 words are still identified as stealing words ideas and not adequately attributing.  Same thing if you have 10 words, but only 3 of them are the original words, and the other 7 were changed, that would still be plagiarizing if those words can be identified as being taken from someone else and not attributed.

Personally, I believe that if someone is a long time member and they are in the habit of contributing to the forum and one or two posts of theirs are found to NOT have proper attributions, they are likely to be given more leeway than someone who is brand new to the forum, so in that sense, it seems to me to attempt to develop a decent reputation as a good poster on the forum in order to lessen the chances that anyone is going to report you for (or accuse you of) plagiarizing. 

Furthermore, just continue to work on your English and your typing so that you do not feel that you need to use the words of someone else (without attribution)... And if you do use the words of someone else, error on the side of giving attributes.... so that it is clear that those are the words of someone else.  The more that you practice giving proper attributions, the easier it will become to do that.

I have had more than 21,000 posts and surely a lot of words that i have posted over the years, and I have never been accused of plagiarism (or failing to give proper attributions), but I bet that if you looked at every one of my posts, there are going to be some examples where I did not give proper attribution.... I am not saying that I am excused, but I am saying that sometimes people can make mistakes in terms of sometimes not giving proper attributions when they should. 

Accordingly, giving proper attribution is something that each of us should always strive to achieve, and some of us have to work harder on making sure that we make such proper attributions as compared with others in order to be able to post our own ideas and sometimes to share the ideas of others by saying that we are getting those ideas from some other poster (or other place on the internet) and some of the ideas are ours and some of the ideas are coming from another source (and attempting to fairly identify that source, too).

If you want to propose changes to the rules or how certain rules are to be interpreted, message theymos about it since he's the only one with the authority to make substantial policy changes. I don't make the rules nor do I decide on how they should be enforced (at least not for all moderators or to such a large degree; there's a reason why rule 23 exists). I've merely documented them as well as some common ways in how they're interpreted.  That lack of authority should be apparent if you take into consideration the topic's name:


This is echoed in both the top and bottom notices:

that might be percentage of total characters. Let's work on this to make it clear.

Personally, I like/support the initial part in your suggestion but AFAIK, there isn't an easy way of measuring "X" ^{[both internally and externally, unless I'm missing something]}.

Following the latest "ratimov's case"  may I propose the extra clause to the rules

"Text copied from Web page/s  must be taken  inside the quote tags linked  to the source/s and
total not more than X* percentages of the whole  post content counted in characters."

*-X is subject to discuss.

Regarding X, I would suggest  30%.

That is unfortunately the cold hard truth by all means. It's definitely a basic courtesy to thank someone for their hardwork and spamming up the forum is definitely not the way to do so. If you'd like, PM them or give them a merit to show them your appreciation.

Bitcointalk is a forum with a spamming problem. If we were to allow this, you'll just see spammers going around saying thanks to everything. I don't think this is a good precedent to set and that is the moderator's stance, like it or not. Also note that we're not banning you from saying thanks; you'll have to show your appreciation and add something to the discussion as well.

Completely disagree ...

Read my reply (if that doesn't get deleted also) to crackfoo. You NEED to show your appreciation of help, progress, work and intent, otherwise it is a moot cause. I am a CEO of a Company that makes sure that my employees, contractors and contributors are all shown the praise and recognition they deserve EVERY TIME.

These threads should be no different, especially when a huge amount of the contributions and progression is FREE of charge and on the contributors time and effort.

#crysx

Agreed ...

I have had multiple deletions of praise to other developers (including you crackfoo) in posts for the work they have done so far in the threads that 'belong' to me (loosely worded - Threads I started) and it looks like that you are simply ignoring the person who you attention these posts to. Rude by normal standards, but it seems to be standard by BitCoinTalk standards now. Rules change, and these changes are not for the better unfortunately.

#crysx

I rarely type one word or even one sentence responses.

It does not seem to be very difficult to type an additional sentence or two in order to explain why you are responding or to say more than just "thank you." 

A poster can type "thank you" for that, and by the way, I noticed x, y and z, and also blah, blah, blah...

In that regard, the post would go from low value to potentially adding a little bit of value and substance to other potential readers.  Has not been very difficult to accomplish such fleshed out ideas or even fleshed out "thank you(s)", in my experience.

The fact is, it really isn't. It doesn't encourage discussion or contribute to the topic by saying your thanks. I would think that giving the post a merit would be more acceptable.

IMO, it's alright to thank someone if they've helped you once in a while but I think most would consider it as a spam if it's done regularly. You'll be surprised as to how spammers could utilise this to their advantage if they were allowed to do so (not implying that you are one).

ok. could have simply said yes.

If just being courteous and thankful of someones work or fixed issues etc is deemed pointless not interesting, we're all doomed.

See rule 1:



You're free to be polite and thank other people in addition to providing something else of substance that would take the post out of the territory of "low value". Not sure why you mentioned the thread being self-moderated since that doesn't change the dynamic here. Self-moderation doesn't override or substitute the rules and standards according to which the forum is moderated by its staff - it's another layer of moderation where the user can also decide which posts can stay and which should be deleted (though he isn't bound by any rules or standards the forum staff are).