My Demoralising Fight Against Plagiarism
Image Source - The Consequences of Plagiarism
Having been mostly pleased with the response to my initial post about plagiarism, I've felt mixed emotions in my fight since.
In my follow up post, there was a suggestion that my motivation was financial gain and was immoral - so I took a more subtle approach, highlighting plagiarised posts to admins and moderators to demonstrate where my motivation lies (it's back on my blog because I don't care what she thinks any more). I was also hoping that my (albeit weak) down-vote might help (but I'm just too weak and luckily, I've only encountered 1 user with more power than me who graciously changed their post).
By and large, this has proven rewarding with many replies thanking me for my efforts and one community even labelling me as a "friend". But I can't help but feel that my efforts aren't always appreciated, with one moderator commenting:
"I have to speed read about 100 posts a day. That doesn't pay off for me. My earnings are in my own posts."
Now it's pretty obvious to me that this person shouldn't be a moderator but it's for her to realise that.
However, this comment highlighted the real problem and why plagiarism isn't being effectively fought. As I observed in the 1st episode of my life on Steemit, it's all about the money, money, money. And that's as true for community admins / moderators as it is for the members of those communities. This isn't a regular message board, with forums created by passionate individuals who want to build a community. Of course, for most communities, this is true and I'm hoping this problem only applies to a handful of communities on this platform.
Plagiarism also appears to be poorly understood despite achievement number 3, well articulated by @eosxiomara. A simple rule of thumb that I'm repeatedly sharing with people:
if you write your article using CTRL+C and CTRL+V, you're plagiarising!
I've even had content from my own posts copied word for word!! 😮😮😮
For now, the fight continues but ignorance really is bliss and a very tempting option.
@steemchiller - I didn't want to tag you in the original article but want you to see the article (and I'm not sure you would otherwise) - https://steemit.com/plagiarism/@the-gorilla/steemit-plagiarism-premier-league
Thanks again for your support. Not the "special thanks" you get from random people tagging you but genuine thanks for supporting me in this shitty, poopy job I've decided to take on 👍
Next time you can just tag me in your article. I will always support such great initiatives.
Poopy jobs sometimes bring in the most bucks ;)
The response to my plagiarism posts never ceases to surprise me - when I wrote the 1st one, I half expected a "the community will decide, butt out" type response but I was willing to risk "boom or bust" from it.
Hopefully (as seems to happen with my ideas), it's time for the copy-cats to take over (and leave me to write some real content) 😉
People just can't stop plagiarizing here and it's quite baffling.
I've seen some shockers lately. One person plagiarised part of my post - I'd tagged tomlee in my introduction so they copied my introduction and tagged me!! And another one plagiarised a news story from 2020 instead of 2021!!
I'd love it to stop but I fear that as I stop one person, another one pops up.
Yeah. It's gonna be hard fighting it. It can't be done alone by one person
As I like to say:
Yeah