How to curb plagiarism on mylot?
@complexvanilla (653)
India
May 30, 2007 10:53am CST
While the five hundred post limit is intended to stop people from blatant copy and paste, people still seem to get away with plagiarism, so should mylot have a different mechanism in place to check plagiarism? Is it feasible for mylot to check a person's post against topics of similar nature and strike it down if the similarity is too much to be a coincidence? I mean, two people can write about the same topic, but it would still be different in style, syntax and execution. What prompted this discussion? There is a user on mylot whose style of writing is very abrupt and is prone to making lots of grammatical and syntactical mistakes. I can easily recognize that style. Yet, this user has posted several articles over the past week that are well written and well thought out. A person's writing skills cannot undergo a transformation overnight. I suspect that this user has plagiarized either another user on mylot itself, or has flicked the content from some other website. Either way, it's not this user's work and the pity is that he will get away with it, unless somebody notices that his/her work has been stolen. Being a computer programmer, I thought that it would be possible for the system to check a post with that of others, but thanks to the incredible number of users and the number of posts they do, it really is not possible to check a post against every other post. Any suggestions on how to curb plagiarism, at least within mylot itself?
1 person likes this
3 responses
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
30 May 07
Wow, kudos for your efforts but it sounds like a fool's errand to me. Think about it when myLot employs you full-time and accord you proper pay. Throw in some medical benefits too. ;-)
1 person likes this
@complexvanilla (653)
• India
31 May 07
Yes, wizzy! I will make mylot a business proposition sometime soon, what will truly be 'An offer they can't refuse!!!!'
Regards,
CV.
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
1 Jun 07
Cool. When you take over this site, maybe you would be nice and extend special earnings rate for adorable people like me. LOL :P
@Willowlady (10658)
• United States
30 May 07
Not sure that would work. I work from email and share things that I find. If it was shared before then it is an honest type of mistake. I would not wish to be penalized when I would use something similar and ask a different question on a different slant that the other presenters. Evil is always abounding and seeks to disrupt. We need a neat way to deal with the plagiarism that does occur. We already are penalized and not notified and to suggest something to give them even more power is something I would be highly reluctant to do. Be careful with this.
1 person likes this
@complexvanilla (653)
• India
31 May 07
You do have a valid point there. For the moment, I think that we just need to watch each others backs and keep an eye out for the plagiarists. THanks for the response.
Regards,
CV.
@4cuteboys (4099)
• United States
31 May 07
Just by reporting it, there isn't much else you can do unfortunatly. There aren't enough of us that report or recognize plagiarism to police all of mylot, but it's a good thing to do when you see something that is indeed plagiarised.
1 person likes this
