Proposed resolution : Quoting cannot be called plagiarism.
Any dictionary would 100% agree with that. I saw that you got suspended for quoting (since I saw your great answer got deleted right before you got suspended) and I was outraged to see that mods defamed you by falsely accusing you of plagiarism.
It's not even a matter of a "proposed resolution". If someone falsely accused me of plagiarism, that would be an easy day at the court (since in my work, this is a career killer). It's the same as falsely accusing someone of racism by redefining the meaning of racism (for more examples, just replace plagiarism/racism by any other word).
See Why was my answer deleted for plagiarism, despite mentioning the source? for a similar debate on SO where people agreed that quoting is not plagiarism, or just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work [1,2,3].
which is supported by these dictionaries:
From the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary:
use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work
qtd. in Stepchyshyn, Vera; Nelson, Robert S. (2007). Library plagiarism policies. Assoc. of College & Resrch Libraries. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-8389-8416-1.
^ From the Oxford English Dictionary:
The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.
^ The American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed.), defines plagiarize thus: “To reproduce or otherwise use the words, ideas, or other work of another as one’s own, or without attribution.”
Furthermore, quote-only answers can be helpful:
There's no point in paraphrasing if the quote properly addresses the question, which it does in many cases because Internet contains many texts. I've asked a fair amount of questions on SE and from time to time the answer was simply a quote. Reasons to quote:
- Human time is precious.
- Not adding some noise to the original text.
- A quote from a reputable source is more convincing than a paraphrase of it by some random Stack Exchange user.
- As the OP I don't want to read both a paraphrase and the original text. Waste of time, just give me straight the original if appropriate.
- The point of SE is sharing knowledge, and a quote is a piece of knowledge.