An Apology For The Plagiarizing I Have Done.
Image source:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/418553359089456418/
All I can say is I am sorry. When I first started on steemit I was unsure of how legit it was and was posting anything and everything I could think of. I posted a bunch of paintings that I was inspired by for one of my own paintings. I posted my painting along with all of the others and pretended they were mine.
The real artist is Steven Schuman. He is insanely talented and I was wrong to ever share his work without his name. I want to apologize to the community for posting work that wasn't mine. I see how serious it is and will never do such a thing again. I honestly didn't think anything of it at the time, I was wrong for that.
I had other posts that were not mine, on days that I couldn't think of anything. I should have just not listed at all instead of using pictures that were not mine. I was stupid for doing this and I went against everything I have learned as a designer. I was so caught up in being popular on here that I stopped thinking clearly.
Please do not upvote this post. It does not deserve anything. If you will, comment and we can discuss any thoughts you have about all of it. I am sorry steemit community. I promise to be 100% truthful from here on out.
May I suggest you take all your rewards and burn them by boosting your apology.
Would not be inviting the original author to Steemit and sending the rewards to him a better solution?
Firstly despite what @jpiper20 has done I commend him for apologising. This always takes guts and we have all done stupid things.
Further I think it would be better to give the rewards from the original post to the actual creator as @katyakov suggests rather than burning them on promotion.
This would be a win-win.
The most effective use of a bad situation is to turn it into something positive.
I like this idea as well. I'm just blown away by these new revelations because I just started following @jpiper20 like a day ago and was like "Cool, he is into wake surfing and is really going hard at making content." Hopefully we can turn this into a positive.
I second this. Don't just burn the money. Give it back to the plagiarized authors or community in some way. Doing it this way will also have more of a positive effect between all people involved too.
Good suggestion :D
like most theifs by the time it comes to getting the stuff back it has already gone.
No. I will up vote something like this. We all make mistakes. Owning up to it, and learning from it is the decent thing to do.
You should feel free to post things that inspire you, just state who they are and tell us how they inspired you. If you can get those people to come to steemit and share that is even better.
Owning up takes courage. Steem on!
I appreciate that. I lost myself trying to gain followers on here and it got the best of me.
I won't upvote this as per your request, but I did pay to promote it.
While your behavior may be disappointing, I am glad to see that you are owning your actions and appear to value this unique platform enough to begin undoing the damage those actions have caused.
If you can provide an example for others of how to correct wrong behavior, maybe some good can come out of this. Volunteering some time to steemcleaners and offering to compensate the artists you ripped off would make a good start.
This is probably the most appropriate reaction to the incident.
Upvoted and hoping to see original and interesting content in future!
A good start would be to take the time to spell 'plagiarize' correctly.
Dude, come on.Not necessary at all... I upvote you JUST because I want this and my response at the top.
I get it. Because of how important steemit becomes to us, we catch ourselves doing something shitty. Sometimes, you get caught doing the same thing others are doing... but it's still different.
This is a big issue because the site is monetary in nature and as such there are attempts to bleed the money out of the system. @jpiper20 was excited by some success, and chasing growth, even though the results are the same,(he made a few bucks) the motives were not.
You know what the difference is?
He won't vanish
So... for you to post that tells me you either read his entire post and couldn't get past the word, or you saw the word... immediately saw something douchey you could say and said it. I am inclined to think the second.
In another post, he has already agreed to contact the author, offer up the rewards of the post in a manner suitable to the author, and invite him to join us here possibly as well.
I am fine with him. Honestly I never cared for the art stuff he put up too much anyway, so I never did much with it. I like his other posts, where he's talked about his summers or his hidden swimming hole. I don't think anyone will beat himself up more than he is thinking about it tonight. I would much rather he consider it done, have a good night sleep and come back with more of that.
Thank you Cleve. I hope you will still follow me on my future journeys.
I am here. No worries. I get why it's a thing.... but nail a guy to the fucking cross or what?!?!
Seriously, what is a reasonable punishment for this? Offering up the rewards received to content creator and having to work to regain some trust, or public flogging downtown steemitville!!!
Be fine with him, I don't care. Call my reply douchey - also fine, that's your opinion. Just to be clear: you're OK with the plagiarist and not OK with my simple observation that he spelled the key word in his apology wrong. That's how you want to roll, OK with me.
I actually find it hilarious that the uproar comes over my comment and not the person who achieved steemit stardom with unattributed works.
Oh and I wouldn't exactly say I 'nailed him to the cross' - melodrama much?
Did you know what he meant to say? Some people have skills in other places. Spelling is not always one of them. Let's not alienate people on that. Communication is about conveying thoughts. If you didn't know what he was trying to say then that is one thing. If you did then these comments are best left in a classroom where your job is to teach people how to spell. :P I've never met anyone perfect at spelling. Even so... many of us misspell words we know how to spell when we are passionate and typing fast. I call it fat fingering something. :)
He corrected the spelling and his post is better for it. It is interesting to me how seriously people are taking this. I actually didn't say one negative thing about this individual - just pointed out the key word at issue was misspelled.
And you're right - I misspell words all the time when I'm wound up - I guess the difference is someone pointing it out wouldn't bother me in the least.
@geocurt, I'd say that you're still a bit early to the game to be chiming in and slamming someone with a much higher reputation than yourself. A bit of advice from me to you...this comment wasn't a good idea.
Oh gee - I didn't realize I had to be here for awhile before I could comment.
Slamming? Pretty melodramatic characterization.
Higher reputation? In what sense? What was that reputation built on? If you're suggesting that a person who admittedly has passed off other people's work as his own has a higher reputation than someone who hasn't, well then this system is broken anyway. My reputation has nothing to do with a number on this website - has to do with how I conduct myself.
And by the way - I'm entitled to my opinion. Words matter and the misspelling of the key word in the entire post speaks to the level of care taken.
As others have stated, an apology is the right response. Only time will tell if it's sincere.
In spite of this I'm still angry. Angry that I've worked hard for the past two months posting original content, some of which has taken days to produce and yet you have a higher reputation: 67 vs my 63.
What am I supposed to do? Should I downvote you out of spite so your reputation score is lowered? Should I mute you for eternity so you no longer exist in my view of steemit?
I honestly expected your reputation score to be damaged by this. You're lucky that it hasn't. Others have lost reputation for much less.
Way to take that shit on the chin like a man!
This is going to be an interesting test case to see if the community here can be forgiving. I'm estimating we can let bygones be bygones in the face of apparent contriteness. I don't think it's the community's responsibility to determine whether somebody is really sorry or if they're just sorry they got caught. The real test comes in the ongoing behavior. If the plagiarism ceases then I for one welcome you to the fold. Everybody deserves a fresh start.
As this platform proceeds the social norms need to be fleshed out. Forgiveness seems to me to be a given since everybody has the capacity to mess up. We wouldn't want our own feet held to the fire for every dishonest thing big or small.
Where more thought must be taken is the issue of ill-gotten gains. A plagiarist can be rewarded lavishly before reforming their ways. That puts them ahead of others who took a more honest approach to posting. Is it earned?
As a community I would like to see us come to a decision about what ought to be done. Nothing? Do we urge the person to contribute a portion of their plagiarized gains to a charity? How about offering it to @robinhoodwhale or @curie or any number of other worthwhile projects striving to pay it forward?
To be honest man I was super shocked and actually pretty upset to hear about all this. I've been following you for almost the entire time I've been on steemit and saw you go from relatively nothing to where you are now. I was pretty active for a while with the anti plagiarism folks on here and never even assumed to check one of your posts because of the way you presented yourself, which really feels like a deception now. You've got the balls to own up to your mistake though and take it like a man, instead of striking out and making some fight, good on you for that, it's what will keep me as a follower of you. Thanks for owning up and thanks for apologizing, I really hope this doesn't affect your offline life (tbh I don't think it will and I wouldn't worry too much about that) and I am glad to hear your over it now. Keep posting about you man, my favourites of yours are always seeing the cool things you get up to!
Thank you for that. It means a lot that you guys will still continue to follow me. I promise to be 100% truthful from here on out and continue to help our community grow.
It's all about how you are handling this man. You're owning up, and doing the right thing, in the right way too, that takes guts and its respectable :)
This is a great perspective. IMHO The community should listen primarily to the injured parties on this matter. That would be the deceived and the plagiarized. With that I'm going to withhold my opinion to let the direct victims speak their minds as to what course of action is appropriate.
After all the plagiarism drama I think we all have learned and developed community standards since our first posts. I remember I linked a youtube video that I just wanted people to know about to have the information. I didn't intend to trick anyone into thinking it was mine or anything. In the future I know I'll be diligent in being super clear about listing the sources of any content.