Welcome > Rules and News
How to Catch a Plagiarist.
julilly:
Recently there have been new reports of plagiarism on Absolute Chaos.
I will reiterate right now that plagiarism is NOT tolerated, and you WILL be caught. We are pretty good at apprehending the "suspects".
Given that these issues have been brought up I'm going to give you all a little lesson. For anyone who has considered copying someone else's fic (even if it's from 1998) or anyone who is interested in knowing how people are caught in the act, I give you lesson number one from Professor Julilly's Moderating101 manual.
Plagiarists and the internet.
People who want to copying the hard work of other's rely on the anonymity of the internet. They believe that by turning an NSync fic into a BSB fic or a BSB fic into a Busted fic that no one will catch on, because no one can read every fic indexed on the internet... right?
That is true, to a degree though many people read outside of the fandoms that you may read, and occasionally come across familiar works. These people, or "informants", will contact moderators with information regarding similar works. This is the top way that plagiarists are found.
There are many other ways that people like myself, Mare, and Chaos can implement to catch thieves though. There is a fantastic feature on the internet-machine called Copyscape. You put in a website, and it will find every other page on the internet that is either identical or too similar to be coincidence. By the power of Google, we can perform random checks on those who may have been accused of plagiarism.
Another helpful tool to use against plagiarists is Google Alerts. You can put in information (like a website, say) and it will periodically check its own databases in search for plagiarism.
The internet is very well indexed thanks to corporate giants like Yahoo, Google, and MSN.
If you want to have your name on a not that well known, mediocre, fanfic at least put your fingers to better use and write it yourself.
That concludes today's lesson, but tune in next time for the next thrilling instalment: Bouncing messages, and how to properly type your own email address.
mare:
Very well said Julilly. Now if there was a way to track down spammers life would be grand!
You know there is a small grocery store around the block from where I live that posts names of people who write bad checks up on their huge bulletin board right outside by the street. I always get the biggest kick out of that.
We are ready to make our own bulletin board on this site with the people who are plagerizing others works. So if you are looking for a popular story and it suddenly went bye bye bye...no pun intended... this is probably one of the stories we are talking about!
Stay tuned for that as well. We mean it, if you are dumb enough to plagerize than be prepared to be called out for it!
julilly:
If spammers were people they'd be a lot easier to catch, but being that they're robot computer machines of internet destruction... it's a tricky one.
mare:
Unless they are mandroids!!!
Dun dun dun
SugarMagnolia:
I just wanted to say thanks again for being on top of this. :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version