The Community Battle Against Plagiarizers, Cheaters and System Abusers!
It makes me really happy to see that decisive action is being taken to clamp down on plagiarism with the recent formation of the @endingplagiarism account, spearheaded by @the-gorilla and supported by long-time community members like @steemchiller @stef1 and others via the new Mosquito Squishers Community.
Plagiarism and other forms of "cheating" have no place in a community that's trying to build itself and thrive around the idea of "Proof of Brain" and original content!
Alas, cheaters and plagiarizers can be very clever. The really ”good” ones have so many ways of slipping below the radar, that it can be hard to keep up.
Sadly, plagiarism and ”cheating” have been an issue on every single user generated content site I have belonged to over the past 20 years! It seems that whenever there is something (financial) to be gained, there will always be those who are ready to use illicit means to get ahead by trying to game or cheat the system.
It doesn't really matter whether a community is large or small. I used to be a very active content creator a now defunct megasite Squidoo (once a top-100 site on Alexa), and plagiarism ran rampant there too.
The only way to effectively combat it — although it’s never an absolute solution — is by having teams of active community members who are always willing to stand up and point to copied content, working in conjunction with community leaders.
What you can not do is "let it slide" and rationalize to yourself that it's "not a big deal." It IS a big deal!
As a veteran content creator, plagiarism has been an important issue to me for a long time. I even remember working as a "field community volunteer" with Matt Cutts at Google during the days when they were going through a massive effort of trying to reduce so called ”search spam” and "link farming." It always felt like as soon as we knocked out one type of transgression, a new way would show up. And, in fact, there was/is an entire industry unaffectionately known ”Black Hat SEO” whose entire purpose is to find ways to circumvent detection by spam filters and plagiarism checkers. It's kind of sickening, if you think about it...
A large part of the battle revolves around not just directly copied content, but also around content that is copied and then run through certain ”spinning” algorithms that can take a body of text, substitute a number of words with synonyms and change the word order to where a cursory search will not show it as a duplicate. Such modified — but still stolen — content can be extremely hard to detect and generally can only be found by skilled editors who read hundreds of articles and are very good at pattern recognition. Mind you, this was 15 years ago, so there's probably AI that can detect such things now!
As I have mentioned in previous posts here, I have had my content stolen repeatedly over the years. I've had articles copied, and I have had my original photographs used in other people’s articles. Most of the time, there was very little I could do. I think the most annoying situation was when someone stole several of my articles and then had them on their web site as a subscription service for a fee!
Finding and clamping down on plagiarized content is particularly important here on Steemit because people are being compensated for their content. There are a few things more annoying and frustrating then spending several hours working on a piece of original content, only to discover that it has been copied and published by somebody else who's actually earning more rewards for your work than you earned in the first place!
I don't know about you, but that's the sort of incident that would give me serious second thoughts about whether I'd want to continue on that venue!
Anyway, I'm just writing this article to encourage everybody to be active participants in looking out for plagiarized content. Go subscribe to the Mosquito Squishers community! Use your downvote power!
How do you recognize copied content?
Well, aside from simply seeing the same article written by two different people, one giveaway is when somebody's language use seems to radically change from one article to the next. Most often, it manifests as a person with only a limited command of the English language suddenly writing fluently at a very high level.
Another approach plagiarizers use, is to write their own introductory first paragraph (which often eludes plagiarism checkers that only look at the first 100 words or so) and then will copy the main body of a post and finally conclude with a paragraph of their own.
The goal is to be mindful, but not overzealous. Keep in mind that sometimes people have their own content websites and will make posts that are based on their own blog posts that were published several years earlier. These are not necessarily the people that need to be found and blacklisted.
However, if you are someone who has a website or blog and occasionally share content from there... do the smart thing and add a statement to the effect that "a version of this content previously appeared on" and then name your website. If you are simply republishing your own content that's not actually cheating, as long as you make it clear what you're doing!
Anyway, to conclude before this gets far too long, battling plagiarism has to be a community effort and we all have to do our part. I hope that you will do yours!
Thanks for reading and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Are you ready to do your part to stamp out plagiarism in our community? Do you agree that plagiarism is actually THEFT? Do you downvote plagiarized content when you see it? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210412 23:45 PDT
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For some reason, I didn't get a mention in my notifications but saw you in my feed so obviously read it 🙂
Thank you for the support.
As the plagiarists are exposed, much like your Google example, their methods adapt. I've seen this in the short time that we've been fighting it already. I'm not aware of any sophisticated tools yet, the online tools are all so basic that they're easily fooled.
It's an incredibly time consuming process to catch users who have stolen thousands of dollars from the platform. It's rather depressing to be honest with you. Once one is caught, you move on to the next one. All the while, knowing that you are not doing the things you joined the platform for - authoring and reading content.
What keeps me motivated is gratitude from the community and the feeling that I'm not doing this alone. In fact, others have stepped up and @sumanthp in particular is sharing a dozen articles every day.
My reply is all over the place.
It makes me sad.
Thanks for doing what you do!
It's a lot of work, yes, and you're only going to catch some of them... but every single one helps. And since so many people are drawn to Steem for financial reasons, the fact their their efforts can be downvoted to ZERO will make a difference.
Sadly, there will always be those who try to game the system. All we can do is our best to keep some sort of lid on how widespread the problem becomes.
I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for anything that seems a bit off.
Plagiarism is a plague on the platform.
@the-gorilla and the @endingplagiarism team are doing an excellent job in fighting it.
Yes, plagiarism is a plague... and it will ebb and flow with the price of Steem, I'm afraid. Legitimate users will be here creating content regardless, but those who try to benefit through dishonest means tend to flock in when the rewards a potentially greatest.
With the current uptrend in prices, we must also be on the lookout for the "last minute self-vote commenters" who leave multiple short comments (often on their own posts) and then go through and upvote their own comments on the 6th day.
It's a constant job... thankfully enough of us care enough to take action!
Edited to add: giving my own comment a small upvote for visibility.
Hey sir, @belenguerra has been a victim of plagiarism by a CR. We believe that this is a really serious issue and that this person was aware that this kind of attitudes are not tolerated in Steemit. Could you please take a look at this if possible?
Here's the post she has done addressing this situation
Thank you!
@steemcurator02 @steemitblog
Thanks a lot @fendit for your support
I was wrong I admit that And I edited my post later. Did I do something wrong by editing my post? @steemcurator01
I believe that you're not even aware that stealing someone else's work is WRONG. Still, asking @belenguerra to edit her post and delete all this is even worse, know why? Cause it has even come to our ears that you had already stolen work from some other communities as well. Please, don't make a fool of yourself. Thanks.
You've been warned before @toufiq777... you know very well what you are doing! Take a look at this @steemcurator01, @endingplagiarism
I apologize to you. Why are you doing this after that? Do you want the steemit team to remove me from Cr? If you have this wish, let me know. I am resigning from Cr on my own.
I don't want that!! I'm just promoting good practices here after being copied by you, and all you did after that! Please let's stop this conversation here.
I'm not the one that did something wrong, so please don't try to make me feel guilty. If you have any doubt of what I want, read again my post.
I'm not gonna keep turning around to this
You are not doing these things in your own mind Someone is asking you to do these things against me I have evidence of who is working against me I can show that steemit team.
If I move away from Cr you may not have the benefit @rex-sumon, @badsha1 and @art-bangladesh will have many benefits And you are doing all these things against me in their minds.
If someone's words hurt others. One day he will have to trap himself. Keep that in mind.
Those who are conspiring against me. You are helping them. Then why should I stop the conversation? I will prove it. You are involved with them. You did not do any of these things on your own.
Really? I took the screenshots out of fear that you would delete your post, as you have done on other occasions. And you did it. No ... the right thing to do is assume your mistake. You spoke to me on Discord and asked me to completely change my post ... is that okay with you?
I did this 2 weeks ago. But you didn't give me any warning 2 weeks ago. And you can't post a complaint directly in my name without warning. It's your fault here too.
He has to give a warning once before complaining in someone's name. You did not give me any kind of warning. So I asked you to edit the post.
There is no fault with @belenguerra . Copying is the fault. She is talking the truth.
If you are lazy to write don't write. It is better than copying from others. Think twice about future consequences before doing.
You are already warned. Isn't it? Do we need to warn you every time you do the same fault?
Thank you very much for your support Randula!!
Do you think is my fault?? Well... you have been warned before @toufiq777, How many warnings do you need to stop copying others' content?
@endingplagiarism I believe you're interested in addressing this kind of issues, right?
Yes, been busy having a baby! Am I correct in thinking it's all been resolved?
All fixed now! Thank you!
Congrats on your new baby!! :)
Amazing. Yeah this was something that turned me off to Steemit for a while, it was too many people trying to game the system to make short term rewards, and it was draining the funds for actual creators!
Thanks for these initiatives!
It's going to be an ongoing problem @dandelion, but it's one many of us keep pounding away at, in hopes of at least keeping the abuse down to a minimum.
A byproduct of people being creative in a different way in order to extract value. :/