Timeline for Proposed resolution : Quoting cannot be called plagiarism
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50 events
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| Jun 13 at 23:02 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | @Destroy666 That's a great idea. Its already included in the 'referencing' part of the help and an old MSO post that we point people at in a moderator message. however . We don't 'really' have a low quality answers as a stock suspension reason- so its between "Plagiarism" in terms of not meeting referencing requirements, or "other" . It is in the rules. That said - we try to provide the person suspended with details of why, so the people involved have a clear idea what went wrong. | |
| Jun 13 at 19:25 | comment | added | Ramhound | @Destroy666 - It’s not clear there actually wasn’t plagiarism, the answers from this suspension were never provided, only one example was provided and it was a low quality copy and paste answer. They were conveniently not available. However, it doesn’t matter, despite being warned NOT to submit low quality copy and paste answers that pattern clearly was repeated due to their current account status. The length of the suspension this time followed the guidance for suspension length. | |
| Jun 12 at 2:47 | comment | added | Destroy666 | Obviously this is not plagiarism. It's something more like "low quality" in terms of terms used here and definitely shouldn't be encouraged too much, as such answers tend to be underanalyzed and often also inaccurate. If it was up to me, I'd require at least 2-3 original sentences per answer. But you are 100% correct this needs to be in rules, written quite clearly. | |
| Jun 6 at 20:56 | comment | added | Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style | Harry - Clear guidelines and consistent enforcement are vital for maintaining a healthy community. Your suggestion aims to address this issue constructively. I suggest making a secondary post spin off of this one and be concise and to the point for those sort of main points without all the other noise as you see the reaction. You are highest rep SU account thus far and this comes with an implicit expectation that you already know things and are the expert. It is bias to assume your high rep makes you know it all or already know better in these sort of instances—I raised the question long ago. | |
| Jun 6 at 5:59 | answer | added | Franck Dernoncourt | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jun 2 at 15:01 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: I don't see a big conflict. "Often" is not the same as "always", leaving room for some moderator appreciation. It might be taken to relate to the user using quoting too often. SE has exactly the same sentence but its interpretation is evidently different (as in my above link which could be adopted by SU). This interpretation is purely up to the moderators and doesn't need a Meta decision (it was so on SO). | |
| Jun 2 at 13:29 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | @harrymc that would be my personal preference, but even then it should not be "alignment" but proper enforcing of what is already in the help center. Near the end of superuser.com/help/referencing is an important paragraph: "Do not copy the complete text of sources; instead, use their words and ideas to support your own. In particular, answers comprised entirely of a quote (sourced or not) will often be deleted since they do not contain any original content." | |
| Jun 2 at 10:24 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: Constructive idea: Align SU with the SO policy - Are "quote-only" answers allowed? : Occasional quoting is suffered, quoting as principal method is not. This will reduce tensions with users (see above comment by user Vomit IT). Only answer my comment if you're considering this seriously. | |
| May 31 at 22:46 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 1 at 18:25 | |||||
| May 31 at 16:34 | comment | added | Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style | Also, if a potential answer/solution does consist of verbatim cited sources, try to have more than one and write a lot of other verbiage between each I see advice 1 states to do x, y, z in a nutshell that makes sense that it may work but I cannot test it here is cited source for main points, then quote. Try to have more than just one, and write why you think it is a good potentially helpful for the OP. Some strategy like that. I got hit once, and never again so far but I do try to keep content being good quality most of the time in my answer/question posts across all sites. Welcome back! | |
| May 31 at 16:20 | comment | added | Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style | @harrymc.... In case it helps ease your pain, I too was suspended for this a long time ago after seeing DP and others reference and cite source material verbatim appropriately by I believe 'my favorite of all time mod across all SE sites then and still now [the champion] Journeyman Geek'; however, a Community Manager overrode the decision and unsuspended me after I reached out and they agreed that it was overkill. I believe this was my post SU meta follow up on the topic: meta.superuser.com/questions/13351/…... Do not verbatim only | |
| May 31 at 15:12 | comment | added | Ramhound | @harrymc - I have voiced my opinion on nearly 150 of the answers you provided a link to, in my opinion, I would have liked them to be more than a signpost. However, trying to improve hundreds of answers which are signposts, submitted more than 5 years ago isn't a productive use of community time. I expect an answer to be more than a signpost. In this one example I would argue the question shouldn't have been answered by anyone. At a minimum I would have wanted to see the reason you thought the comment that Aiml3ssCalam1ty made was accurate. I certainly don't agree with it. | |
| May 31 at 15:12 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: My position exactly, and exactly what I'm trying to achieve here (while possibly being misunderstood) - the moderator shouldn't decide on plagiarism. No more messages. | |
| May 31 at 15:08 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | @harrymc my position, if you actually try to read my comments, is to look to what we can improve for the future. What I would propose is actually asking the community their opinion on whether we accept these kinds of answers or not. If so we simply move on, if not then we draw a line in the sand and say "from this point onwards..." that is pretty far from "untenable" in my opinion. At no point have I advocated for mods being the final arbiter for justice. It was you who decided we are operating in bad faith as far as I can see, I want the community to decide, not you or I. I'm done here. | |
| May 31 at 15:02 | comment | added | harrymc | @Ramhound: With "fully accredited" I mean that full credit was given to the author. For a book this would be author name, book name, and page number. For an internet post/article this would be at least a link. I can make the wording more specific if you feel it necessary. And I promised you the links to my deleted answers, but I can find only one, the other three have disappeared from my deleted answers list, maybe undeleted. For the moment, it seems that I was suspended for one quote-only answer. | |
| May 31 at 14:32 | comment | added | Ramhound | @harrymc - "Which leaves still open my above proposition" - If "A quote which is fully accredited and formatted as a quote, is not plagiarism.", then I do not agree with the proposition. You can quote something but if you do not properly cite your source then it can still be considered plagiarism. Here is my thought, these answers which were deleted and have not been shared, were likely low quality answers. So I could agree that while those answers were not an example of plagiarized content, they were low quality | |
| May 31 at 14:07 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: Last message. I see the position of the moderators here as untenable. You're saying in effect: There are a hell of a lot of quote-only answers on SU, but we reserve ourselves the right to select a small number of them, declare them as plagiarism and punish the user, according to criteria that we won't share, and we won't accept complaints. Is that reasonable or a position that is possible to defend? | |
| May 31 at 12:40 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | We don't discuss suspensions without the express permission of the user involved. So, no, we're not going to share that. | |
| May 31 at 12:39 | comment | added | harrymc | @JourneymanGeek: Question : How many users have you suspended for plagiarism because of quote-only answers? (I mean, besides me). Some examples would be good. | |
| May 31 at 11:21 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | That's assume we've got axes to grind - or are on some sort of witch-hunt. We deal with these on the basis of flags, or what we come across. We can't suspend other mods anyway - but where a mod's fallen short on something like this we do have conversations on what's expected. What we're not going to do is single out a user's posts specifically to find a reason to suspend them. And what's essentially dealing with criticism with what feels like personal attacks and whataboutism feels off. There's aspects of site/network culture I don't like - I just deal with it. | |
| May 31 at 11:04 | comment | added | Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style | Moderators need to stop the hypocrisy, I pointed this out a long time ago about the bias of them being allowed to do something but suspending others for the same thing they are guilty of. I have no problem going through every one of those questions and voting to delete them. Do unto others as you want done until you without reading all the noise it is really really simple. Mods are going to be bias with other mods on SU in particular. If a mod was fair, they would start deleting those same sort of plagiarized post which other mods on SU write point blank period, otherwise, you are bias. | |
| May 31 at 10:41 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: What do the moderators want? Don't you think that in view of the large number of quote-only answers, calling it plagiarism is de-facto impossible? | |
| May 31 at 10:31 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | @harrymc your proposition is not "ignored", it is just that it is only a small part of your question by volume and there is so much else to unpack. The general idea of downvotes on meta is "we disagree with you" so I would assume that no one wants what you propose. | |
| May 31 at 9:34 | comment | added | harrymc | ... Which leaves still open my above proposition, which seems to be totally ignored in all of this. | |
| May 31 at 9:31 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: You're missing the point, although I can see it's easy to think so. I'm saying constructively that there is nothing wrong with a quote-only answer if it fully answers the question. I'm repeating that I like the answers by DavidPostill and wish him only good. The format of an answer is immaterial, and using it as the main criteria in deleting and suspending is just wrong. Yes, I'm personally angry because it happened to me, but advising me to forgive and forget just leaves the question open. I think you should look at it in a more general manner than just my personal motives. | |
| May 31 at 9:20 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | Moderators should absolutely be open to constructive criticism. Your argument is just "but what about this guy". There is no constructive element to it beyond "I'm right, you are wrong and this other guy posted answers before he was a mod" I get that you are angry about being suspended, but you are entirely focused on the idea that someone wronged you and someone else does what you did instead of asking "Hey, going forwards could we handle this better?" You are so focused on winning the game that you do not see the community around it. | |
| May 31 at 9:09 | comment | added | harrymc | ... With so many quote-only answers on SU, I think that de-facto, the definition of quote-only answers as plagiarism should be avoided. This is the main purpose of my post. | |
| May 31 at 9:07 | comment | added | harrymc | @Mokubai: This is a good advice, but doesn't answer what happened. I can't in all honesty ignore the fact that SU has unclear rules that are being applied in a selective manner. The example of a moderator (a good moderator) that has a hundred times more quote-only answers than me still sticks in my throat. I think that the moderators should be more open to criticism and to admitting to error. Practically, I think that moderator Journeyman Geek should apologize, but I don't think this is ever going to happen. | |
| May 31 at 0:35 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | It would have been far better and more constructive to look to the future and ask questions based on what we can do going forwards rather than justifying previous behaviour based on other peoples actions. "Is this kind of answer acceptable?" Some would say yes, other would say no. But phrasing the question better would include other people in the discussion. "If not then what do we expect from people going forwards?" Could let the community weigh in on what we would like answers to be and what standards are expected from everyone. Build a better future, don't just drag everyone down. | |
| May 31 at 0:35 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | @harrymc those indexes weren't needed to begin with. No one was asking for proof that other people were doing it, the only thing people were asking for was your questions. I can't help but think if you'd have had some honest introspection and come from a point of "Did these questions warrant a suspension?" then there could have been some constructive discussion. Maybe as a community we could do better, maybe we could define a better set of guidelines to say whether or not this does constitute plagiarism. As it stands you're asking "what about that guy?" which feel disingenuous. | |
| May 30 at 23:32 | answer | added | Giacomo1968 | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 30 at 23:20 | history | edited | Giacomo1968 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Improving formatting, copy edits and creating a numbered list of all of the links to make it easier to read and reference.
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| May 30 at 21:03 | comment | added | harrymc | @Ramhound: Yes, as I said there's some problem with the indexes of later years, where I get many wrong pointers to answers that are not by DavidPostill. The URLs should be by ascending date order and the latest is from 2020. I'm sure I have seen as many such answers of his in the last years, but the query doesn't give them. Actually, it's because I have seen these answers by DavidPostill that I dared write my 4 answers. It's late here, so I'll add links to my 4 deleted answers tomorrow. | |
| May 30 at 20:54 | comment | added | Ramhound | So I was actually only intererested in your 4 answers. I have looked at 4 dozen of those answers, and everyone, really should contain more than just "here is some external information" but everyone I have noticed is from 2014. | |
| May 30 at 20:28 | comment | added | harrymc | @Ramhound: No problem, I have added one small list to my answer. | |
| May 30 at 20:27 | history | edited | harrymc | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 30 at 19:07 | comment | added | Ramhound | Your complaint you were not warned before you were suspended, as been pointed out, you had been suspended for plagiarism in the past. So your not going to be warned, before each suspension, if what caused you to be suspended continues to happen. I have been suspended before for rude responses, I corrected that behavior, by copying and pasting close reasons instead of using my own words. I also bail on any conversation that makes me "scream into a pillow". I also carry a travel pillow with me at all times.... | |
| May 30 at 19:01 | comment | added | Ramhound | "You're citing academical standards, which have no bearing on the issue at all." - It absolutely has bearing on the issue. Those academical standards are reasonable. I will repeat what I have said in the past, an answer which just contains information that was copied and pasted from a website, is not helpful to the community. I am still waiting on these examples of answers, which I presume you argue to not be plagiarism, to determine if there is anything I agree with in this question. Your last edit is just more complaints which in my eyes are unjustified. | |
| May 30 at 18:57 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | "Was this justified?" "Are these posts plagiarism?" and posting examples of the questions would have been something that the community could have discussed the various merits of. Instead this isn't any kind of discussion, it's an ultimatum that we should bow to your will instead of the larger community. I haven't downvoted (yet) but at the moment it seems that at least some people have issue either with the tone or content of your question, and honestly I can see why people would downvote it.. | |
| May 30 at 18:56 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | My problem with this question is that it comes across more as trying to break out the pitch-forks and organise a witch hunt instead of having a constructive discussion on whether your posts actually constitute plagiarism. Some (friendly) argument and discussion that people could actually give feedback and work on would be a useful point to have come from. Instead you already know you are right so everyone else is wrong and out to get you, which is patently not the case. I'd have hoped more of a constructive approach from one of the pillars of the community. | |
| May 30 at 9:06 | history | edited | harrymc | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 30 at 8:58 | history | edited | harrymc | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 30 at 1:18 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | @Ramhound turnitin probably has stricter conditions than we do. | |
| May 30 at 1:12 | comment | added | Ramhound | @Mokubai - So in other words they were low quality. Submitting substantial low quality content is suspension worthy in itself but were these examples plagiarism (I can’t say). How you quote and cite material is universally accepted throughout academia. We all have done it at least once, so not doing it properly, isn’t excusable. You can quote and cite as much material as you want in college but if you never summarize anything it’s nothing more than someone else’s words which is plagiarism. Wrote 5,000 reports as a MBA student and 2,500 was quoted from material and rest were my own words. | |
| May 30 at 0:41 | comment | added | Mokubai Mod | @Ramhound i believe the posts that were deleted do indeed provide sources for where the content came from, but the problem is that is all they really are. They give nothing more than a quote and a link, which from an academic perspective is essentially the same as plagiarism, in that it demonstrates no awareness of the subject at hand. There was no original content, no real value to them beyond a cursory Google search and copied content. | |
| May 29 at 22:52 | answer | added | Journeyman GeekMod | timeline score: 6 | |
| May 29 at 22:30 | comment | added | Ramhound | Without context I cannot say if these answers you describe were plagiarism, however, if these answers didn’t quote and cite the reference and provide some sort of original content I would deem them as nothing but a signpost. | |
| May 29 at 21:48 | comment | added | harrymc | @Ramhound: It's not my intention to point fingers at anyone. I'm trying to open a discussion with the moderators which might in the future prevent such unpleasantness as I experienced. | |
| May 29 at 21:18 | comment | added | Ramhound | Do you wish to share links to these answers and/or a screenshot of them for those who can’t see deleted questions. While I recognize this question is specifically about those questions context might be helpful | |
| May 29 at 13:00 | history | asked | harrymc | CC BY-SA 4.0 |