Use of article spinner and plagiarism

mdayonliner

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Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

BTW if I have to translate something I would probably translate it directly like word by word so probably it would sound like Google translate, but with a bit more grammatic errors. it's difficult have a real proof that he used Automated translation.

I am taking the original local language text

Quote from: ?? on ??

Before drawing such conclusions, you must understand that English is not my native language and I cannot create completely English texts myself, without auxiliary tools.

nullius

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Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

But he (Ratimov) has links to all the articles he used the information from. Like assemble an article from 5 sources at the end your work was to put the different articles in one text body based on the subject you are talking about, and most of the texts belong to the authors from the links in the sources.

Correction: Ratimov did not assemble an article “from 5 sources”. He copied and pasted the whole post from a single article (with some parts omitted). It is far from the first time that he has done such things.

The list of “sources” at the end is misleading in many ways. Including this. There was only one “source”. You have been misled.

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

Giving sources shows that the article is not completely yours

Say what!? Academic-style footnote sources are provided in papers that are “completely” the authors’. That is what avoiding plagiarism means: The work must be yours. Of course, almost all serious work refers to others work, or builds on prior work.

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

and the reader knows it by seeing those links under the article.

Not even remotely credible.

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

What is the big deal here? Maybe he should put remarks¹ on every phrase where he used it from like people do it in their thesis?

He copied and pasted the whole post from the article. Why are you talking about thesis-style footnotes? You are making no sense whatsoever.

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

BTW if I have to translate something I would probably translate it directly like word by word so probably it would sound like Google translate, but with a bit more grammatic errors.

Then you know nothing about translations. (And I infer that you must know only one language.)

It is impossible to translate any nontrivial text word-for-word from such a language as Russian, with its highly complex and subtle grammar (or, say, German, with its moderately complex grammar, its difficult compounds, and its SOV word order—or...), into English. The result would be comical gibberish.

Google Translate itself does not translate literally, word-for-word, as you imply. If it did, then it would be totally useless. It uses the latest advancements in natural language processing and AI. It still makes many basic mistakes; and it chokes horribly on idioms that a competent human translator would translate in concept, possibly using some awkward circumlocutions if no analogous concept exists in the target language.

So certain is it that different translators will produce different results that in classical antiquity, the Jews used this as a “proof” that the Septuagint was translated under divine authority. They claimed that 72 different rabbis each sat alone in a room, translated the Bible to Greek, and produced word-for-word identical results—therefore, God must have guided the translation! If there were any proof that 72 different translators independently produced word-for-word identical results, or even that 2 translators produced identical results, then this would actually be a scientifically credible argument. (Of course, there is no such proof.)

Do you wish to suggest that Ratimov and Google Translate are both guided by God in their translations? Roll Eyes

Quote from: TheBeardedBaby on December 10, 2020, 07:53:56 PM

it's difficult have a real proof that he used Automated translation.

Really? I spent little effort on identifying the orange-highlighted parts below; I could have pointed out more.

Anyway, your whole argument is patent nonsense to anyone who understands the art of translation, or even anyone who speaks more than one language.

Quote from: nullius on December 08, 2020, 01:00:31 AM

Colour codes:

Text copied by Ratimov verbatim, or almost verbatim.
Text closely paraphrased by Ratimov. Some of this “paraphrasing” may be a straight copy and paste; Google Translate does not give the exact same results every time.
Extraordinarily weird machine translation errors that Ratimov did not even bother to fix. Emphasizes the essential copy-paste nature of this post.
In the original, this text was copied or closely paraphrased/text-spun by Ratimov.

[...]

Quote from: ?? on ??

In this article I would like to touch upon such a theme as online privacy. [...]

[...] an electronic mailing list called "Cypherpunk" was created. In a short time, she gained hundreds of subscribers who tested ciphers, exchanged ideas and discussed new developments.

[...] the creator of Zcash Zuko Wilcox.

In February 1996, the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), John Perry Barlow, published an iconic document called A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which is still considered a classic of Internet libertarianism. The document consisted of harsh and unprincipled statements addressed to world governments and became a response to the Telecommunications Decency Act signed before this US President Bill Clinton, with the help of which the authorities tried to censor the Internet.

[...] Despite the fact that the act signed by Bill Clinton later in the same 1996 by a federal court decision was declared unconstitutional,

Edited to add (of course): Ratimov not only admits to using Google Translate: He claims that his English is so poor, he uses Google Translate to write in English by himself (!).

Internal quotation slightly expanded:

Quote from: nullius on December 09, 2020, 10:11:50 AM

Quote from: ?? on ??

Before drawing such conclusions, you must understand that English is not my native language and I cannot create completely English texts myself, without auxiliary tools. And of course in the original there were no 'I' and there cannot be. I always create any theme in Russian and then convert it to English. Of course, the same Google or I myself can make some mistakes that I can find out about later or notice myself.

MusaMohamed

sr. member

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Quote from: DoubleAweSeven on December 10, 2020, 08:24:35 PM

This is pretty messed up. Anyone can just copy paste and do what Ratimov does, use text spinner, then cite the sources, probably even use a paraphrasing tool. Say that it came from google translate but modified some words and no mods would ever question that since theres no proof lol. The best part, you're getting paid to do it.

In fact anyone can just do these steps to anyone here.

Dude. Link is a key.

Paraphrase only cause you a ban if you don't have a link of sourced document. With paraphrase, original meanings can be lost if the writer did not catch the idea of original author. Paraphrase manually or automated with tool, if you leave a link, no ban will find you.

Who cares about bad paraphrase (link or no link) if a user makes many shitpost and try to make a long post. When I see it, I ignore.

Find good articles like Ratimov found and shared and stop your useless discussion.

DoubleAweSeven

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This is pretty messed up. Anyone can just copy paste and do what Ratimov does, use text spinner, then cite the sources, probably even use a paraphrasing tool. Say that it came from google translate but modified some words and no mods would ever question that since theres no proof lol. The best part, you're getting paid to do it.

In fact anyone can just do these steps to anyone here.

TheBeardedBaby

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But he (Ratimov) has links to all the articles he used the information from. Like assemble an article from 5 sources at the end your work was to put the different articles in one text body based on the subject you are talking about, and most of the texts belong to the authors from the links in the sources.

Giving sources shows that the article is not completely yours and the reader knows it by seeing those links under the article. What is the big deal here? Maybe he should put remarks¹ on every phrase where he used it from like people do it in their thesis? Sure but that's not a formal place where everyone are so literate and following the rules of the correct writing.. it's just a forum for an advanced technology of a madman which will change the entire world in a couple of decades .. and it should be informal...

BTW if I have to translate something I would probably translate it directly like word by word so probably it would sound like Google translate, but with a bit more grammatic errors. it's difficult have a real proof that he used Automated translation.

nullius

copper member

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Quote from: wooI_Ioow on December 08, 2020, 10:24:59 AM

Quote from: nullius on December 08, 2020, 08:47:54 AM

Google Translate of articles written in a different language must be the worst “text-spinner” yet invented.

This is explicitly prohibited by forum rules:

Quote from: mprep on July 21, 2014, 12:27:51 PM

27. Using automated translation tools to post translated content in Local boards is not allowed.

I almost raised this exact rule in the Ratimov thread. However, #27 prohibits posting automated translations “in Local boards”—not in Global.

Given how badly some users (including several untrustworthy DTs) are hairsplitting and rules-lawyering, I decided not to bring it up.

Anyway, I replied hereby to hilarious; and I should think that hilarious does not need more than one rule to cover Ratimov’s case. After all, hilarious is so very strongly opposed to plagiarism that he was the one who suggested the explicit anti-plagiarism rule to mprep.

Quote from: mprep on July 30, 2016, 09:04:21 AM

Added new rule with an explanation (as per hilariousandco's suggestion):

Quote

33. Posting plagiarized content is not allowed.[e]

<...>

33. This includes both copying parts or the entirety of other users' posts or threads and copying content from external sources (e.g. other websites) and passing it as your own.

There is also other staff precedent for banning plagiarists much earlier.

Quote from: malevolent on May 22, 2020, 10:54:43 PM

Quote from: philipma1957 on May 22, 2020, 10:21:50 AM

Also back 2015 no one gave a shit about the issue.

Actually, we did. Other mods and I have banned many a plagiarist even earlier than that (definitely as early as 2013).

Quote from: suchmoon on December 08, 2020, 12:41:30 PM

As for Ratimov, his texts are clearly translations, not spinning. His attributions are questionable. He provides sources but also makes it sound like verbatim-translated words are his own and claims that 90% of content on this forum is copy-pasta. I don't think this is helping his case but that has pretty much nothing to do with what mdayonliner is babbling about.

I don’t think that there is anything even the least bit questionable here. And as you well know, theymos despises plagiarism!

Quote from: suchmoon on May 21, 2020, 09:55:52 PM

Plagiarism is one of very few things that theymos has zero tolerance for (except for account buyers).

Quote from: theymos on September 23, 2018, 03:58:25 PM

If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.

suchmoon

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Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on December 08, 2020, 11:21:30 AM

OP, are you saying (or implying) that Ratimov is guilty of text spinning in that Beginners & Help thread? You'll have to excuse me for asking that; I just woke up and am still drinking my coffee. But we've known for a long time that spinners have been a problem on the forum, though there have been some members who've proved themselves quite adept at sniffing out such plagiarists.

OP is full of shit... he "discovered" text spinning after it's been debated, reported, and users have been banned for it for years.

As for Ratimov, his texts are clearly translations, not spinning. His attributions are questionable. He provides sources but also makes it sound like verbatim-translated words are his own and claims that 90% of content on this forum is copy-pasta. I don't think this is helping his case but that has pretty much nothing to do with what mdayonliner is babbling about.

The Sceptical Chymist

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Quote from: hilariousandco on December 08, 2020, 05:36:07 AM

Quote from: MusaMohamed on December 08, 2020, 05:17:48 AM

The forum does not ban Verbatim plagiarism so why you guys and gales are so serious.

If you're caught plagiarising then you will be permenantly banned and text spinning is even worse because you obviously know you're doing something wrong and are actively trying to hide it.

WTF is that nutcase talking about? Of course you'll get banned if you're caught plagiarizing something verbatim--have you never looked at ban appeal threads in Meta before?

I can't stand SEO, and the use of text spinners is just one reason. The internet hasn't been the same ever since Google took over the search engine space and SEO folks went to work. I much preferred the internet circa 2000, but that's just me.

OP, are you saying (or implying) that Ratimov is guilty of text spinning in that Beginners & Help thread? You'll have to excuse me for asking that; I just woke up and am still drinking my coffee. But we've known for a long time that spinners have been a problem on the forum, though there have been some members who've proved themselves quite adept at sniffing out such plagiarists.

wooI_Ioow

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Quote from: nullius on December 08, 2020, 08:47:54 AM

Google Translate of articles written in a different language must be the worst “text-spinner” yet invented.

This is explicitly prohibited by forum rules:

Quote from: mprep on July 21, 2014, 12:27:51 PM

27. Using automated translation tools to post translated content in Local boards is not allowed.

Quote from: nullius on December 08, 2020, 08:47:54 AM

It must be generally quite difficult to catch. I wonder how much of that is actually happening.

Not quite difficult. Ratimov's copypasta matches nonsense of Google Translate. Purse in lieu of wallet, theme on place of topic, literally hundreds bullshit in his hard copy-paste work.

nullius

copper member

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If you don’t do PGP, you don’t do crypto!

Quote from: hilariousandco on December 08, 2020, 05:36:07 AM

If you're caught plagiarising then you will be permenantly banned and text spinning is even worse because you obviously know you're doing something wrong and are actively trying to hide it.

What about running a foreign-language article through Google Translate to English, prepending it with an explicit claim of your own authorship (“In this article I would like to touch upon...”), burying a link to the foreign-language original in the middle of a list of 7 links in text at the bottom, insisting that all but “maybe 10%” of the forum is copied and pasted from elsewhere, and attacking everybody who accuses you of plagiarism?

Google Translate of articles written in a different language must be the worst “text-spinner” yet invented. It must be generally quite difficult to catch. I wonder how much of that is actually happening.

hilariousandco

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Quote from: MusaMohamed on December 08, 2020, 05:17:48 AM

The forum does not ban Verbatim plagiarism so why you guys and gales are so serious.

If you're caught plagiarising then you will be permenantly banned and text spinning is even worse because you obviously know you're doing something wrong and are actively trying to hide it.

MusaMohamed

sr. member

Activity: 966

Merit: 306

Text spinning means there are many same words and spinners change positions of words and can make a few replacements. You can compare original and spinning versions with
https://copyleaks.com/compare
https://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/

The forum does not ban Verbatim plagiarism so why you guys and gales are so serious.

mdayonliner

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Quote from: witcher_sense on December 08, 2020, 05:02:46 AM

For example, I used Yandex Translate to translate the same text and got a result similar to "spinned" one.

A spinner will give you several versions of the same given text/paragraphs. That is why it is there for. Spinners are widely used in SEO. Those blackhat SEO providers would use spinners and make 100+ versions of the same text and would post them in different websites. They used to do it to cheat google spider but these days it does not work anymore.

Quote from: witcher_sense on December 08, 2020, 05:02:46 AM

No, it is not clear at all. It is just your assumption.

It's not assumption. Please help yourself. Translate the below contents using Google.

Quote

Пpaвитeльcтвa иcпoльзyют пaндeмию кaк пpeдлoг для oгpaничeния дocтyпa к инфopмaции. Oн тaкжe pacшиpяeт пoлнoмoчия пo мoнитopингy и внeдpeнию нoвыx тexнoлoгий, нaпpaвлeнныx нa oцифpoвкy, cбop и aнaлиз личныx дaнныx людeй бeз нaдлeжaщeй зaщиты oт злoyпoтpeблeний. Cтpaны ввoдят нoвыe пpaвилa Интepнeтa, чтoбы oгpaничить пoтoк инфopмaции чepeз нaциoнaльныe гpaницы.

Quote

для мнoгиx пoльзoвaтeлeй пpинципы бecпpeпятcтвeннoгo дocтyпa к инфopмaции и cвoбoднoгo выpaжeния мнeний имeют ocнoвoпoлaгaющee знaчeниe для paзвития гpaждaнcкoгo oбщecтвa и экoнoмичecкoгo пpoцвeтaния. Иcтopия вceмиpнoй пayтины - этo тaкжe иcтopия бopьбы зa ocнoвныe пpaвa чeлoвeкa, вoзмoжнocти для дocтижeния кoтopыx нeизмepимo выpocли c paзвитиeм тexнoлoгий.

Full details are here.

witcher_sense

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Quote from: mdayonliner on December 08, 2020, 04:39:42 AM

It's cleat that an article spinner was used in these contents (if anyone has doubt then feel free to dispute in your comment).
Question is, if plagiarism has a ban punishment then what is the punishment for using article spinners?

No, it is not clear at all. It is just your assumption. Firstly, you assume that the author may have used the Google Translate tool to make this translation. Secondly, you assume that the result of the given translation might have been edited using additional tools like article spinner. Your second assumption is based on the first one, which might be wrong.

For example, I used Yandex Translate to translate the same text and got a result similar to "spinned" one.

mdayonliner

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I wrote a response earlier in the topic Merit Source - Plagiarist but while I was revising after posting it then I had an interesting discovery.

I hope you all know how an article spinner works. An article spinner is a tool which will take your text/paragraph and give you back a fresh new text/paragraph with poorly replaced alternative words.

Like in your text/paragraph if there is a word dog then the spinner's possible output will be one of the below words:
pup
puppy
bitch
cur
doggy
hound
mongrel
mutt
pooch
stray
tyke
bowwow
fido
flea bag
man's best friend
tail-wagger

So if you have a line which is "I have a dog" then the possible results will be:
I have a pup
I have a puppy
I have a bitch
I have a cur
I have a doggy
I have a hound
I have a mongrel
I have a mutt
I have a pooch
I have a stray
I have a tyke
I have a bowwow
I have a flea bag
I have a man's best friend
I have a tail-wagger

It's an automated tool, a software where you give it some input text and it will give you output with alternative words and the meaning will have very similar as the original.

Now that you have very good idea about article spinners. Let's dissects some contents from my last post.

Quote from: mdayonliner on December 08, 2020, 04:02:47 AM

Google translation

Quote from: ?? on ??

Governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to restrict access to information. It also expands the powers to monitor and implement new technologies aimed at digitizing, collecting and analyzing personal data of people without adequate protection from abuse. Countries are introducing new Internet rules to restrict the flow of information across national borders.

Quote from: mdayonliner on December 08, 2020, 04:02:47 AM

Google translation

Quote from: ?? on ??

for many users, the principles of unhindered access to information and free expression are fundamental to the development of civil society and economic prosperity. The history of the world wide web is also the history of the struggle for basic human rights,

It's cleat that an article spinner was used in these contents (if anyone has doubt then feel free to dispute in your comment).
Question is, if plagiarism has a ban punishment then what is the punishment for using article spinners?

Topic: Use of article spinner and plagiarism (Read 587 times)