Subject: EDQ #3: Plagiarism
Posted by: LeoDaVinci
Date: Apr 08 13
Plagiarism - The Big P
In this day and age where vast amounts of information are easily accessible at the click of a mouse, it's very easily to lose one's self in the formidable pile of research that you might encounter. Yea, it's easy to be overwhelmed when you don't know much about a certain subject (and sometimes even if you do) and to fall into the trap of plagiarism. While most people understand some forms of plagiarism, it's a much more complicated subject than you might initially think. FunTrivia enforces a strict no-tolerance policy for all forms of plagiarism and it's easy to get dismayed if an editor points out to you that you've done so in a question or in a quiz.
First of all, what is plagiarism? Dictionary.com describes it as "an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own...". Let's look at that definition closely:
When you copy and paste from another website, or copy word-for-word out of a book or other reference material, this is the easiest type of plagiarism that you can commit. You take another person's work and you're using it in the information of your quiz as though you wrote it yourself. I'm sure you can all agree with me how wrong that is. Even if you change a few words while using a thesaurus while keeping the original sentence as is, it's still considered copying someone else's work.
What does FunTrivia require of us? Well, as mentioned before about interesting information, we're required to give at least one sentence, if not more, of original interesting information for each and every answer to our questions in a quiz. This means that you're going to have to do some work, especially if you're not up-to-speed on all of the ins and outs of a particular topic that you're writing about. Using a quote is usually great, but, it doesn't count as part of the original sentences that you're required to write. A quote or sourced work is great to help punctuate your interesting information and to get your point across, similar to what I did above with the quote from dictionary.com, however, again, it doesn't go towards the final sentence count.
Can I plagiarize myself? If you copy your own work from another site, a paper you might have written once, or another quiz on this site, you're still plagiarizing if you don't cite your source.
A technique of mine to avoid plagiarism is as follows. Say I'm writing a quiz about sea birds and I have a question about the Marbled murrelet, something I know literally nothing about, what do I do? The first thing I do is I look up the Marbled murrelet in Google and I open up a few sources, and not necessarily Wikipedia. I'll read through these sources and, though some information might be similar in some of the sources I have, it's important to read through all of the parts I want to draw inspiration from. I'll take a pen and paper (or sometimes I'll open up a text file in Notepad) and I'll write down some dry facts and numerical data, things that I can't be expected to remember unless I was the world's leading expert on these birds (and even then, I'd probably look it up anyway). Finally I'll CLOSE all of my sources that I've read through and I'll write a short paragraph of interesting information about the Marbled murellet for my quiz. By closing all of the sources after I've read through them, it ensures that I will not copy anything, and by reading through more than one source, my mind retains the information that's actually INTERESTING and that's what I will write down. In my own words, naturally. I'll use my notes to insert the numerical information, and I'll have a good paragraph about a sea bird I knew nothing about before I wrote my quiz. The paragraph might look something like this:
"The Marbled murrelet is a small seabird that lives on the North American side of the northern Pacific Ocean, mostly in Alaska. They generally reach a size of up to 25cm in length and their clutch of eggs consists of only one egg. Generally considered to be an endangered species with an, the Marbled murrelet nests in old forests with large trees and the logging industry on the west coast of North America is severely limiting the nesting grounds for these birds. Other than humans, however, the murrelets can fall prey to Steller's jay and to the common raven. They generally feed on small saltwater fish and invertebrates, though some rare sightings have seen these plump birds feeding in freshwater lakes."
This paragraph was done with the help of several websites, none of them wikipedia. I'm not against wikipedia, however, it is generally preferred that if you do use a quote in your interesting information, please quote from a more credible website.
In any case, I've outlined all the ways that you might plagiarize, and one method to avoid it. You're all free to find your own ways to do research, but remember, if you need to give credit, please do it. It is clear to all the editors that there are only so many ways to state certain facts, for instance, "The peak of Mount Everest rises 8848m above sea level." However, if I wrote: "On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing Norgay, an acclaimed Sherpa climber, became the first to reach the roof of the world.", it's clear that the information was lifted off of factmonster.com.
FunTrivia doesn't allow any form of plagiarism. None. If your quiz is found to have material from another source in it that's unattributed, an editor will call you out on it. This doesn't mean that you've been blacklisted forever, and you're given a chance to correct your mistake. However, insistence that you've done no wrong, or repeated attempts to slip copied information past the editors will result in a loss of your authorship privileges for a period. Afterwards, repeated infractions can result in longer losses of writing privileges up to a permanent ban. This only happens in extreme cases.
We're all humans and we all make mistakes. However, this is one mistake we all can avoid if we put a little bit of effort into our research and make sure that everything we write in our quizzes and in our questions is in our own words.
I look forward to seeing all of your quizzes in the queues.
Posted by: LeoDaVinci
Date: Apr 08 13
Plagiarism - The Big P
In this day and age where vast amounts of information are easily accessible at the click of a mouse, it's very easily to lose one's self in the formidable pile of research that you might encounter. Yea, it's easy to be overwhelmed when you don't know much about a certain subject (and sometimes even if you do) and to fall into the trap of plagiarism. While most people understand some forms of plagiarism, it's a much more complicated subject than you might initially think. FunTrivia enforces a strict no-tolerance policy for all forms of plagiarism and it's easy to get dismayed if an editor points out to you that you've done so in a question or in a quiz.
First of all, what is plagiarism? Dictionary.com describes it as "an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own...". Let's look at that definition closely:
When you copy and paste from another website, or copy word-for-word out of a book or other reference material, this is the easiest type of plagiarism that you can commit. You take another person's work and you're using it in the information of your quiz as though you wrote it yourself. I'm sure you can all agree with me how wrong that is. Even if you change a few words while using a thesaurus while keeping the original sentence as is, it's still considered copying someone else's work.
What does FunTrivia require of us? Well, as mentioned before about interesting information, we're required to give at least one sentence, if not more, of original interesting information for each and every answer to our questions in a quiz. This means that you're going to have to do some work, especially if you're not up-to-speed on all of the ins and outs of a particular topic that you're writing about. Using a quote is usually great, but, it doesn't count as part of the original sentences that you're required to write. A quote or sourced work is great to help punctuate your interesting information and to get your point across, similar to what I did above with the quote from dictionary.com, however, again, it doesn't go towards the final sentence count.
Can I plagiarize myself? If you copy your own work from another site, a paper you might have written once, or another quiz on this site, you're still plagiarizing if you don't cite your source.
A technique of mine to avoid plagiarism is as follows. Say I'm writing a quiz about sea birds and I have a question about the Marbled murrelet, something I know literally nothing about, what do I do? The first thing I do is I look up the Marbled murrelet in Google and I open up a few sources, and not necessarily Wikipedia. I'll read through these sources and, though some information might be similar in some of the sources I have, it's important to read through all of the parts I want to draw inspiration from. I'll take a pen and paper (or sometimes I'll open up a text file in Notepad) and I'll write down some dry facts and numerical data, things that I can't be expected to remember unless I was the world's leading expert on these birds (and even then, I'd probably look it up anyway). Finally I'll CLOSE all of my sources that I've read through and I'll write a short paragraph of interesting information about the Marbled murellet for my quiz. By closing all of the sources after I've read through them, it ensures that I will not copy anything, and by reading through more than one source, my mind retains the information that's actually INTERESTING and that's what I will write down. In my own words, naturally. I'll use my notes to insert the numerical information, and I'll have a good paragraph about a sea bird I knew nothing about before I wrote my quiz. The paragraph might look something like this:
"The Marbled murrelet is a small seabird that lives on the North American side of the northern Pacific Ocean, mostly in Alaska. They generally reach a size of up to 25cm in length and their clutch of eggs consists of only one egg. Generally considered to be an endangered species with an, the Marbled murrelet nests in old forests with large trees and the logging industry on the west coast of North America is severely limiting the nesting grounds for these birds. Other than humans, however, the murrelets can fall prey to Steller's jay and to the common raven. They generally feed on small saltwater fish and invertebrates, though some rare sightings have seen these plump birds feeding in freshwater lakes."
This paragraph was done with the help of several websites, none of them wikipedia. I'm not against wikipedia, however, it is generally preferred that if you do use a quote in your interesting information, please quote from a more credible website.
In any case, I've outlined all the ways that you might plagiarize, and one method to avoid it. You're all free to find your own ways to do research, but remember, if you need to give credit, please do it. It is clear to all the editors that there are only so many ways to state certain facts, for instance, "The peak of Mount Everest rises 8848m above sea level." However, if I wrote: "On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing Norgay, an acclaimed Sherpa climber, became the first to reach the roof of the world.", it's clear that the information was lifted off of factmonster.com.
FunTrivia doesn't allow any form of plagiarism. None. If your quiz is found to have material from another source in it that's unattributed, an editor will call you out on it. This doesn't mean that you've been blacklisted forever, and you're given a chance to correct your mistake. However, insistence that you've done no wrong, or repeated attempts to slip copied information past the editors will result in a loss of your authorship privileges for a period. Afterwards, repeated infractions can result in longer losses of writing privileges up to a permanent ban. This only happens in extreme cases.
We're all humans and we all make mistakes. However, this is one mistake we all can avoid if we put a little bit of effort into our research and make sure that everything we write in our quizzes and in our questions is in our own words.
I look forward to seeing all of your quizzes in the queues.
48 replies. On page 3 of 3 pages. 1 2 3
bloomsby
|
In real life plagiarism can have far-reaching consequences. In 2011 the then German minister of defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, was stripped of his doctorate and had to resign his post for having plagiarism on a massive scale in his doctoral dissertation. A detailed analysis revealed that on some pages he had plagiarized twice or more. For further information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg#Doctorate_plagiarism Reply #41. Apr 21 13, 3:37 PM |
mehaul 
|
I ken that this thread is about plagiarism in quizzes. But, isn't the concept also applicable to other areas of the site too? I have seen many "Ask FT" replies without quote marks or attribution in any manner. One recently even left in bracketed reference numbers in the copied article! Is providing a link sufficient as an attribution to avoid being guilty of plagiarism? Reply #42. Apr 21 13, 8:55 PM |
gracious1
|
Suppose you ask a question off the top of your head, like "When was President Jimmy Carter born?" I guarantee if you google that you will find dozens of sites that phrase the question EXACTLY the same way. It seems necessary to temper judgments on plagiarism with common sense. Reply #43. Apr 21 13, 10:11 PM |
MotherGoose
|
I can guarantee that no editor would accuse you of plagiarism for a simple, bald statement of fact or a very simple direct question. It becomes plagiarism, however, when a quizmaker makes a statement such as "James Earl Carter, Jr, was born at the Wise Sanitarium on October 1, 1924, in the tiny southwest Georgia city of Plains, near Americus. The first president born in a hospital, he is the eldest of four children of James Earl Carter and Bessie Lillian Gordy" and the editor can match it up word for word on one or more websites. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_carter) It also becomes plagiarism when a quiz consists of ten very simple questions such as "When was President Jimmy Carter born?" which just happen to match up with another quiz on another website which consists of the same ten questions. Editors are experienced enough to know the difference between true plagiarism and mere coincidence. Reply #44. Apr 22 13, 3:59 AM |
| MotherGoose
|
I would also add the the following: if you see FunTrivia quizzes on another website, please report it to our administration. Today I found one of my own quizzes on another website, word for word. Since it was a very unique quiz and very detailed, there is no way it was a coincidence. It was definitely stolen from FunTrivia. I have contacted the offending website and demanded they remove it. Our webmaster takes the theft of our quizzes very seriously and will take the necessary legal steps if required. We would be very grateful if you would let us know about such breaches. Conversely, if a FunTrivia member has managed to pass off a purloined quiz as their own and got it published on this site, we need to know so that we can remove the offending material and re-educate the offending member. I have not fully read the rest of this thread so I hope I am not repeating what has been said before, but we take plagiarism very seriously. Plagiarism is theft! Reply #45. Apr 22 13, 4:05 AM |
agony
|
To answer mehaul's question - the link is the attribution. It's not sufficient in quizzes, because we want quizzes to be written by our authors, not be somebody else. Gracious, I would think that anyone who has read this thread would get a firm impression that the staff have put some thought into the question. It should be pretty clear that our approach has not been "Hey, let's slap the easiest possible interpretation on this and call it a day". The question you have raised here has been addressed at least three times already in this discussion. Reply #46. Apr 22 13, 8:06 AM |
| mehaul
|
Thank you M-- Agony. Reply #47. Apr 25 13, 2:00 PM |
Oidioid32123
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I know this is old, but, if you want to avoid anything, copy/paste what you've written in Google and make sure what you've written does not match more than a few words of anything Google comes up with. Reply #48. Mar 21 14, 9:38 PM |
48 replies. On page 3 of 3 pages. 1 2 3
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