Do you have an original thought?

I do not have origianl thoughts, I thought I did but I can never think of any discussions to start (I only have 4) and so no one has the chance to reword my thoughts. I would be agrivated if some one did do that and got more responses than I did. As far as choosing what I respond to I do try and find quality posts, but I have discovered that is not always possible, that is when I try to give quality responses to not so great discussions. Have a great one

you shoud be happy becausr it means that the person ho copyed from you thinks that you have write somting very intresting, if something like this would happen to me il try to help that person that copyed to make it even beter, 1+1=2, 2 minds beat 1 evry day, if u get what i mean :D

I've actually seen people do that...sometimes with their own work and sometimes with someone else's. I know it should be reported but by the time I try to find all the links to provide admin with the info, I've lost interest. Sometimes I just can't find the original discussion. I've also seen where someone will say...I was prompted to write this discussion following one I answered the other day.... and I've seen both discussions. That scenario is generally ok because the new poster has branched off on a totally different path. But taking a discussion and improving it or chopping it up and re-serving it cleverly disguised as your own work is cheating in my book.

Well, If they are actually on each others friends lists then I would say that it sounds like one big competition and to me that is not what My Lot is supposed to be..we are supposed to help out others here by responding and so I always research my topic first to see if there is anything like it here and if there is I generally respond to that discussion and start a different one...the only right thing to do in my opinion! ~Heavens~

There is no such thing as original thought anymore. Just variations on a theme........ That's MY original thought for the day! LOL And if people took my thoughts and switched them up, they better do a good job and make me think along a different path or make me laugh, otherwise I'd be disappointed that my thoughts were actually so limiting to someone elses imagination.

that's as close to plagiarism as anyone can get. i hope i haven't had the mistake of posting something that has been posted yesterday! lol

IMO it is cheating if it is almost identical. However it is inevitable that with the huge number of members on myLot many people will read and wish to discuss an item of recent news and not know it has already been posted or they many wish discuss a different aspect of the news item. If the previous posting and the new one does not have the same tags you will not be able to check and see if the discussion has already been posted.

THEY HAVE!! and i unfriended them for it.. they did it enough to where i couldnt turn them in but they did it 3 times and at first i just thought it was a coincidence but it wasnt.. i try to make mine unusual to where there wont be a million just like it already but i know i have noticed that if there is a documentary on tv then there will be several people that post about that topic at once (one time i was involved lol) and either the search wasnt working or people just assume that it was on for the first time so that it wouldnt already have been talked about.. i know if its a newbie i will let it slide but if i notice some one does it all the time (same silly discussions that have been done a million times) with not ONE interesting and unique one i will unfriend them to make them stop filling up my inbox with crap lol

i will be elated actually to see others doing same discussion written in their own way. it may be that they really liked my idea or topic and think it was a very good one. and so i may feel good that i have finally found a good topic. i do that before. making a topic similar to others. but most of my topics lately are my own topics. sometimes or many times it is really hard to make any topic.

Well. for me its not a big deal if i recognmized other person have almost the same discussion to mine, for thousands of users here in mylot it would'nt be a surprise if some members have almost same interest, opinion ,experiences in some topics.

It's an interesting discussion you've brought up. I've often wondered that very question myself. When asking friends about this myself, the answer was I should feel flattered that another thought so much of my writing to mimic it, copy it, etc. The way that Mylot is set up, it's almost impossible not to have multiple thoughts occuring at once.(There are just too many users to avoid it. Especially if you are familiar with Jung's theory on the collective conciousness). I also find that there have been many threads that are "tangents" of other conversations. It's not that people are maliciously "window dressing", trying to make themselves sound better than another, or even borrowing someone else's work. It is that there was a particular interest that came out of a particular thread so instead of "hi-jacking" the initial thread they began one dealing with the specific issue they wished to address. I don't feel anyone should take this personally if it occurs. I also feel people should not read too much into similar threads. When you post on Mylot you'll see after posting a list appear below your original post of "similiar discussions". Again, with a population of 163,422 you can't avoid it. There may be two people, for example, who both saw the same movie in two different countries who post at the same time. It's going to occur, but perhaps Mylot leaves them up because each person addressed different facets of the movie. I've not been on Mylot very long, but I haven't witnessed anyone yet taking an article and switching it up as their own. I've seen a lot of links to articles, and I personally feel that is a very good way to go for citation purposes. Happy Mylotting-Anora