Achievement#3 TASK: CONTENT CREATION ETHICS
Hi fellow steemians, am now ready to share my experience with content creation. I must however state that I have learnt this the hard way. The experience way 😉 and that's a good lesson learnt.
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I have spent nearly three weeks so far on steemit and just the other week I was excited to share about a particular article about how to manage our time, and I made a huge regrettable mistake! I wrote a whole segment from a particular site I was researching from and pasted the same info onto my clipboard. I thought that I was doing the right thing because;
• I thought the way the words were well put was too good for me to change them and,
•I thought the message would come out more clear and consise.
Well, I must say these were all excuses. Excuses to cheat and complete my article without putting much effort, not withstanding my good intentions to share information. But the biggest excuse of all was the excuse to show off my knowledgeability without acknowledging the right sources from where I got it. And that was PLAGIARISM.
Using other people's words or ideas as your own without giving them proper credit is called PLAGIARISM and it is considered an offence in the western education system and so even on this platform. This includes all works and images that have copyright ©️©️.
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On the surface, it might not seem so serious but these are the rules. It would actually be categorized as stealing and cheating and It's actually called 'intelIectual theft'.
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Let's take a closer look.
John R. Edlund explains in his article " What is Plagiarism and Why do people do it?", that many educators and writers "believe that writing is a visible, concrete demonstration of a writers knowledge, insight, and academic skill. Thus, representing another person's writing as your own is to mis-represent your own accomplishments source
The example I have used above tells us more about what other people have suggested concerning plagiarism. However, keep in mind that I have quoted the above reference from BYU- pathway and referenced it using [source]( and then sharing the link in brackets ).
Usually, the double quotes " " are good to show that they are not your own words. As far as I can tell, the only time you would see triple quotes would be when you are quoting a quote, so your own quotes are going to be enclosing the quotes of the quote you are quoting. (Good heavens 😚😚, that ended up sounding rather complicated! )
In order to avoid plagiarism, you must always cite the source in the correct citation format; otherwise, you are presenting something as your own work, even though it's not. To do this, you could use the 'ICE' method which stands for Introduce, Cite and Explain. This would in turn mean the following: WHO said it, WHERE was it said and WHEN was it published if at all the info is available.
To always be on the safe side, you should either use a direct quotation, paraphrase or a combination of both. I am learning that paraphrasing without crediting the original author is also considered plagiarism and so in order to avoid this, you must always cite the source in the correct citation format.
Some of the common types of plagiarism are Copy and Paste ( horrific 💢😡 uuuh I got caught here!! Most embarrassing situation in my steemit life so far 😆😆😆🥶🥶🥶, we learn from our experiences).
There is also Mosaic meaning patching different pieces from different sources to get a whole 'new piece', ( must have thought I was the only one capable of doing this; turns out, many people do this and it is WRONG!) If it is an image, follow this format to show it's source: [Image Source](link of image), like I have done with all my images attached,( kudos to @yohan2on for putting in the effort to teach me these things 😊)
Self Plagiarism and Global Plagiarism also mean not crediting your own work and using other people's words or articles respectively. To read more about these, go to www.scribbr.com.
In conclusion, plagiarism has got implications and here on Steemit, you can be penalized and down voted by members which affects every sphere of your Steeming life. Like they say "easier said than done", many of us could fall victim to this because we might think 🤔 that you won't get caught. Think ahead, do research, understand what you want to write about and then put it in your own words as best you can. You will be free from the shock of @endingplagiarism following you up 😆😆😆😆😆😂. Hmmm, I promise to do the above, so help me God!
As a teacher and an artist, the problem of plagiarism is important to me. I think sometimes people say they cheat because they are lazy but are really unsure of their own ability. You write very well and it would be a shame just to copy someone else's words when you have something important to say. We all have something important to say. It's many voices that make up the world.
Well said. Thank you@humanzee
You have been upvoted by @yohan2on, a curator and a member of the steemPOD project. We are voting using the steemcurator03 to support newcomers participating in the Newcomers achievement program.
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Grateful!