Forums → WEPR → Proper Citation
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Alright guys, another thing has been recently brought to my attention. I wasn't going to say anything while people were posting uncharacteristic sentences and making little omissions here and there, but this has now gone far beyond the pale:
I'm talking about plagarism. AGAIN. I did this for the ASCII art, but believe it or not this also applies to academic and informational material.
So let's be entirely clear:
* It is inappropriate to post passages or source quotes that is not YOUR OWN original content WITHOUT REFERENCES.
* In some cases, this is illegal, particularly if the document you STOLE does not cite some kind of copyleft or free-to-use clause. Chances are they have this nifty "do not distribute without permission" or a (c)- meaning copyright, meaning don't copy and paste the whole thing elsewhere.
* Worse, you think you're going to get away with that, and then say "no, seriously, I didn't copy and paste it, I wrote it myself." Are you guys even in high school yet? Have you not been taught that this form of plagarism is entirely unacceptable? Do your teachers not even bother to inform you that copying an assignment word for word and passing it off as your own is wrong?
* The reason I'm going off about this is because the clearest sign of a copy-paste job is that the post has limited or no relevance to the thread at hand. You're taking shortcuts without processing, and guess what, as a result, you're spamming.
* It's important to develop the habit where you're able to think for yourself, to evaluate the things that you're reading so you can determine what they have to do with the topic and if it supports/rejects it, and how strongly. If you can do this then we won't have the need to wade through tons of frankly useless crap just to get an idea discussed. This is important in a broader world application.
But I know that currently there is no actual discouragement from people engaging in what is tantamount to criminal activity. Which is why I'm calling upon harsher measures to be taken upon users who a) blatantly copy-paste AND omit the reference, b) when challenged, maintain their innocence despite being proven guilty.
- 62 Replies
Basically: don't copy and paste huge chunks of text from another site because it's annoying and can also be illegal. Rather, just copy and paste the links, because then people can see for themselves.
no..i meant to say "huh" as in I didn't understand a word yoou said.
now don't you think that was a little easier? Instead of that big blob of words that half the people that read it understand.
Har, and what do you call that big "blob of text" that you copied and pasted in the AIDS/Cancer thread just now?
oh well i dont know how to do a link...can you show me?
oh and I knew not hat many people would read it but, I though that it was alot of info.
I was feeling the urge to vent so things I said came off stronger than I would ordinarily want, but anyway...
Well, yes it is a lot of info. One of the other points I was making was that a lot of info is not necessarily a good thing if it isn't organised- and figuring this out is a worthwhile skill!
As for links, you know what a URL is, right? Basically it's the address of a site e.g. http://armorgames.com
In the post box, there's a button that says 'Link', and clicking on this will open a prompt to put in the URL. It has to be the whole thing, though, so highlight whatever's in the address box and copy that, then paste it in the prompt, the click /Link when you're done writing the text.
For examples this will help, so you can put the tags in yourself! Check it out.
That's one way of doing it, though the link you've provided here appears broken.
Nah, relax, not harshing on you for that. Everybody posts broken links sometimes.
Heh heh... I have a strange feeling thats telling me that I inspired this thread .
Or it was annoying Strop for a while, and a certain incident(certain incident).
Hint: *Look for Wittman's post on that page*
I'm sure there were other ]contributing factors)
Hint: *Look for DonkeyKong13's post on that page*
Is naming people even allowed? Oh well, what's the worse that could happen?
Well, to be fair, I jumped on DonkeyKong13 after I spotted only one copy-paste post and from the rest of this thread, it appears that DK13 wasn't actually culpable of willful plagiarism.
However...other people whom {i}I[/i} won't name (heh heh) have been caught out multiple times. I do know that this is a forum where not many people have learnt the importance of proper citation which is why little tidbits and omissions are okay (I'll just remind you), but when it comes to flat out lying about it, that just takes the cake.
Trust me, learning how to think for yourself and apply knowledge is a nice skill to have. Give it a burl!
This should be remade, locked and stickied. Plagiarism is most found [on the AG website] off the forums and on gaming comments. Usually to gain merits for AP. This is not illegal but you will be caught and be reported to the moderators. There will be consequences. Maybe not the banhammer but it will be a warning and a serious one at it. Please, refrain from plagiarism and spend 10 minutes writing a original review in order to earn that merit. Otherwise, once again, there will be consequences if you try to rip it off of other members. Don't let greed of AP (which I have a bare understanding on why you would risk being banned to get pixels on numbers) get the better of you.
Complete agreement with Masquerade here.
Strop, congrats again for an excellent post.
I will second kanethebrain on both points.
(and strop THANK YOU for posting that little link explaining the links, because i couldn't figure out how to make it just a word like "here" or "this one" instead i could only get the full link...so thanks!)
Thread is locked!