SuperHappyFun
20-12-2003, 23:35
In the past few weeks, I have caught two players in General copying passages from web sites and passing them off as their own words. I don't mean merely that they copied an article and forgot to give a link or source (which happens often, especially at the beginning of a thread). I mean that they were copying fragments from web sites and mixing them with their own words in the midst of a debate, to make it appear that they had written everything. It was obvious from they way they carefully interspersed the plagiarized passages with their own that this was not merely an accidental failure to provide a source. In both cases, I exposed the plagiarism, and (as far as I know) the players in question never explained or apologized for their actions.
While I don't know the specifics of the relevant copyright law, I'm pretty sure that this is illegal, and thus it would seem to violate the NationStates rule against posting illegal material. My question is: should the mods punish players with the usual mechanisms of warnings/deletion when players are caught deliberately passing off the words of others as their own?
I think that enforcing this rule when possible would promote higher-quality debate and a greater level of honesty on NationStates. The only problem is detection. Unlike other illegal material, plagiarized material is not immediately obvious unless someone tracks down the source. But this is not hard to do with web browsers, and I'm sure that many players would be willing to investigate when they suspect that their debate opponent is just cutting and pasting. In other words, this would not require mods to detect plagiarism; it would only require them to punish plagiarism when it is exposed.
What do players and mods think?
While I don't know the specifics of the relevant copyright law, I'm pretty sure that this is illegal, and thus it would seem to violate the NationStates rule against posting illegal material. My question is: should the mods punish players with the usual mechanisms of warnings/deletion when players are caught deliberately passing off the words of others as their own?
I think that enforcing this rule when possible would promote higher-quality debate and a greater level of honesty on NationStates. The only problem is detection. Unlike other illegal material, plagiarized material is not immediately obvious unless someone tracks down the source. But this is not hard to do with web browsers, and I'm sure that many players would be willing to investigate when they suspect that their debate opponent is just cutting and pasting. In other words, this would not require mods to detect plagiarism; it would only require them to punish plagiarism when it is exposed.
What do players and mods think?