Forums → WEPR → Proper Citation

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.