Talk:Plagiarism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

↓    Skip to table of contents    ↓

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Plagiarism article.
Article policies
Archives: 1
This article is being improved by WikiProject Rational Skepticism. Wikiproject Rational Skepticism seeks to improve the quality of articles dealing with science, pseudosciences, pseudohistory and skepticism. Please feel free to help us improve this page.

See Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
Socrates
Philosophy Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.
Archive
Archives

2005–2006


Contents

[edit] Translation plagiarism

Shouldn't there be anything on translation plagiarism; when you plagiarize something in another language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.179.82.69 (talk) 13:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] incorrect definition

Article: "Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation..."

Authorization is irrelevant. What defines plagiarism is the lack of accurate and proper attribution, with or without authorization. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.6.95.4 (talk) 20:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Can some definitions of plagiarism be added from respected academic sources? Obviously referencing is vital with a subject like this.

There ia a certain level of domain specific relevance to definitions. How would an incredible simple and unambigious definition, like 'plagiarism is using the ideas of another without acknowledgement' do as a starting point?

From such a clear starting point, you can define written plagiarism 'using the words or ideas of another without acknowledgement', student plagiarism 'using the ideas of another without acknowledgement and for acadamic advantage' etc.

74.220.207.95 21:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The definition can definitely be improved. Part of the reason why it's not as good as it could be is that someone plagiarized the definition that was in use in this article so it had to be hastily replaced. --ElKevbo 21:10, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples.

Each section, each kind of plagiarism should contain direct links to the typical examples of plagiarism. They should coexist with links to lists of authors accused in plagiarism. Some reserve of examples should be at this discussion or even in a special section. Each example should be either self-evident, or refer to a respectable source, which qualify some product as plagiarism. I have some examples of self-plagiarism, but I already have used them at Multiple publication. Should I cite them here too, or it will be self-plagiarism? dima 07:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


The section on politics is largely irrelevant. Is the dust up between Obama and Clinton really important to the meaning of plagiarism? I think not, especially since whether either's conduct qualifies as plagiarism is iffy. At worst, there should be a list of political figures accused of plagiarism, but have the details of such on each of their own pages and just link to them. Having full discussions for each figure on the plagiarism page seems to degrade it. Thoughts?

[edit] Copyedit

This article, or a portion of it, was copyedited by the League of Copyeditors in April 2007. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
  • Copyeditor(s): Otheus 14:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Proofreader: Dvandersluis 14:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal and discussion of external links

I moved the following three external links to this page before deleting them with notes why they don't meet external link guidelines:

  • Article checker, Online script that checks published and unpublished text for plagiarism using online archives, online sources, and major search engine results
Commercial site that shows up mainly in comments on internet marketing blogs.
There are no navigation buttons from this page, but the rest of the website consists of pages (and pages) of free essays.
An 8-page unpublished academic pager that meets the non-publisheds/self-published guidelines and authored by a seemingly non-notable academic.

Here are the remaining external links for reference and any comments/discussion associated with sourcing guidelines. Schneier.com is a blog, which technically doesn't meet the guidelines for a reliable source (and it's not supporting any specific statement anyway), but this one seems to be related to a publication and has a very detailed discussion.

  • The Assessment in Higher Education web site's plagiarism page contains links to a variety of resources (articles, books, cheat sites, etc) on plagiarism.

Flowanda 10:24, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I added copyscape to the external links - this is a very useful tool for detecting plagarism for websites owners —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kthor (talk • contribs) 14:58, July 21, 2007

I reverted your addition. Wikipedia is not a collection or directory of links and this link does not add to one's understanding of plagiarism. --ElKevbo 19:06, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cassandra Clare sources

The Cassandra Clare plagiarism sources do not seem to meet the guidelines for verifiability. The links are to a personal wiki and internet forums/blogs written by an anonymous user (although some of the responders may have identified themselves). I tried to find a news article or other third-party sources that had followed up or reported on these claims and could not, nor could I find any third-party news sources quoting the websites/owners as experts or authorities. Since the author's book is newly published by Simon & Schuster, and there is an unbelievable amount of chatter in the blogs that will direct anyone to those internet sites with or without Wikipedia, I think we either need to find stronger sources that meet the guidelines or remove the information until there is third-party verification.

I want to be clear that I am not questioning the content or authors of these sources, but I am trying to follow this: "Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and biographies of living people." Flowanda 02:31, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The only good link was to the Telegraph and that article had nothing to do with the alleged plagiarism. Therefore I have removed the material. Good call! --ElKevbo 16:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Irony, anyone?

The first sentence of this article plagiarizes dictionary.com. Punctured Bicycle 20:10, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sigh. I've replaced the definition with the one used in this article for quite some time with no contention. For those curious, the definition was replaced by Alton32 a few months ago. This was his or her only edit. We need to be more vigilant of edits made to this article as it is a frequent target of vandalism. --ElKevbo 17:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

lmao you have got that right. wikipedia is full of plagiarism. people dont seem to understand that using synonyms and rearranging words does not make a work not plagiarized. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.20.87 (talk) 02:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split article

There are problems with the organisation of this article.

One of the main ones is that academic plagiarism is a much more specific area than plagiarism in general. Most academic research is related to academic plagiarism, e.g. plagiarism by students for academic credit. Since the wider definiton of academic plagiarism could also include plagiarism by tutors/academics/professors the category of student plagiarism could also be considered.

Some areas that the article would need to consider include: the extent of student plagiarism, methods of plagiarism prevention, methods of plagiarism detection.

Splitting the article would create more focused areas for different types of readers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.16.60 (talk) 2007-05-13T17:19:30

I am not convinced that plagiarism by students is so qualitatively different from other plagiarism that it makes sense to write a separate article about it. If plagiarism is particularly common among students, it is probably because they have a greater incentive to plagiarize than other groups of people; a student has a particularly narrow interest in making somebody else believe that he is able to produce original works, and little or no reason to care for said works after this interest has been served. And non-students who have trouble being original usually have better options for escaping the requirement that they must be original (say, by choosing career paths that depend on other skills than originality, thereby eliminating the need to cheat), than a student has for escaping the school's demands. –Henning Makholm 21:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Novelty

Why is there nothing in this article about how the idea of plagiarism is a historical novelty in the last three or four centuries? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.41 (talk) 2007-07-18T16:38:39

Because nobody wrote it yet. If you have at your disposal a respectable scholarly source on the history of concepts of intellectual ownership and how today's universal expectation of originality in intellectual work came about, then by all means do write a section on these matters. It would improve the article to have one. –Henning Makholm 20:09, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Someone, please, define "unearned increment", in the article.

Thank You,

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 01:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edits concerning the University of Madras etc.

This is a recent edit that I moved from the main page to here for a couple of reasons: "* In 2007 researchers of the University of Madras published a paper in the Journal of Materials Science [1], an exact copy of an article from the University of Linköping published in PNAS [2] [3]" I moved the content (with my added internal links) here because of several back and forth edits, but also because there are several issues with the sources...the first two are links to the papers, and the last source, which I guess (and that's not a good thing) deals with the plagiarism issue, is not in English. Neither the papers nor FL articles are enough to satisfy verifiability in this case...is there a single source that meets WP:RS that can be used instead, or better yet, an internal link to a wiki article? Flowanda | Talk 00:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


  • Please do not vandalize Wikipedia by deleting valid content. I am really disappointed in the level of editing here. You are invoking WP:RS really for no good reason. If you have a concern with the third reference, the talk page is the place to discuss that. A simple google search would have provided you with this article in English: http://www.liu.se/en/news-and-events/News?newsitem=11285 V8rik 17:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The responsibility to provide a source lies editor who adds the material. I further agree with Flowanda that an article that is not in English is probably not a very good source to use in en.wikipedia as it is very difficult or impossible for most editors to verify the source. --ElKevbo 17:33, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Hi ElKevbo, you make it sound as if I did not provide a source with my edit. I did provide a source. I am always willing to discuss the quality of sources (I have already provided an alternative) but once again deletion is not an option. V8rik 18:22, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
We work here by consensus and cooperation, not by issuing or adhering to mandates issued by individual editors. Even information that is fully supported by reliable sources does not necessarily belong in an article. The examples listed in this article should, IMHO, be only those that are high-profile or particularly unique and interesting. This should not be an attempt to exhaustively list all known incidents of plagiarism.
With all of that said, I am rather neutral on this particular example. Now that we have a good English source I can see how it could fit in as an example of blatant (and thus rather unusual) plagiarism in academia. But one could also make a valid argument that it's not high-profile or interesting enough to include here. I'm happy with whatever position the majority of editors take. --ElKevbo 18:55, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I undid my edits on the main page and replaced the original source with the English page...thanks to V8rick for providing it here as part of the discussion. V8rik, I did not delete or vandalize your edits, and I don't consider them invalid; my apologies if my edits conveyed that to you. I moved the content here merely to avoid a potential revert war or misunderstandings that sometimes happen from discussion-by-edit-summary. I mentioned reliable sources only because the first two sources were primary sources and the third source wasn't in English; references help readers from having to do the work themselves to verify content and editors from arguing over sources now or down the road. It just seemed quicker and easier to do it here and get it over with...I hope you agree. Flowanda | Talk 19:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Can you please tell how the example adds value to the article? As ElKevbo said, the list of examples is not meant to be exhaustive. In fact, it is already far too long to be useful in an encyclopedic article. It ought to be trimmed rather than extended. At the very least, it should be extended only when there is a concrete argument that the example improves our encyclopedic coverage about plagiarism as a general concept. Can you provide such an argument? –Henning Makholm 23:24, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe that was the original reason you cited for removing the edits and one of the reasons I moved the edits here, but I thought the sources needed to be dealt with first. I agree that the number and detail of examples are diluting the article...the MLK and Hailey descriptions are overboard, for example, but rather than deleting just one more example, is there another way to include/list all these examples here or in another article? Flowanda | Talk 00:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we need or ought to include/list all of these examples anywhere. I would love to start cutting down the example list severely, but that requires some kind of consensus about which criteria to apply when cutting (removing the current list entirely would suit me fine, but I doubt that is a consensus view). Lacking that, a good start would be to stop adding new examples, except ones that arguably add value to the article. Hopefully, discussion about which new examples to add will give us a better idea about which old ones to keep.
I think that at this point the proper sequence is to worry about whether we want the example at all before we send a contributor out chasing sources. It is wasteful to spend much time in sourcing claims that the article shouldn't make in the first place. (This assumes that most suggested additions would fail a relevance test rather than a verifiability test, but that does seem to be the case here). –Henning Makholm 00:49, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but this article has a case of examples gone amok. I've started a new discussion below. Flowanda | Talk 01:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pruning the examples sections

Based on the comments above, I've started a discussion on pruning the growing list of examples and how and if to edit/remove them. I think the examples are starting to dilute the main article and should be mixed in with the main content only if they help explain certain points or moved to a category listing page (or whatever they're called). I consider separate examples sections to be little better than trivia sections...they're very easy for drive-by editors to just cut-and-paste content into a variety of articles without having to incorporate their edits into existing content or even read the article. (Please note that this is a general observation, not a comment on the edits that spurred this discussion.) At the very least, the section on MLK, Bruce Lee, Alex Hailey and Dutch Shell can be reduced to one or two sentences and the remaining content deleted or moved elsewhere...I'm sure there are other examples. Any comments? Flowanda | Talk 01:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Just one, and I hope it's relevant-- it seems certain examples of plagiarism, e.g. academic and journalistic, are over-represented while others, e.g. in the visual arts, aren't. Pruning should be balanced by adding new examples in under-represented fields...and, as you suggest, incorporating them into the main part of the article. Rhinoracer 09:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] As applied to Wikipedia =

It's topical, but I don't see any mention of it here. Many editors simply paste text from websites without attribution. Here's an example commented on by another editor: User talk:Elpiseos Tedickey 11:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese Classics

It would be interesting to contrast the Western academic definition of plagiarism to the classical oriental practice of liberally quoting from the classics without attribution (because learned persons are supposed to know the origins of the quotation? or because universal knowledge is merely discovered, rather than invented? I am not enough of a Sinologist to know which is the case.... please advise!) 91.105.247.68 (talk) 23:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dershowtitz

The cite should be to a book by Finkelstein, "Beyond Chutzpah". Not a web page. Finkelstein charges Dershowitz with source mining. Dershowitz responds that he looked up the originals himself. Finkelstein's book says that Dershowitz replicated citation errors from Peters, and that if he had looke dup the originals himself, it is highly unlikely that he woud have made exactly the same transcription errors. Dershowitz has not addressed this argument. This debate can be easily documented. What is the rationale for deleting it from Wikipedia?Verklempt (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe I was the most recent person to remove this from the article. I did so because it was sourced to one individual's blog. We need much stronger evidence to accuse a living person of plagiarism. Further, we should have more evidence than a single book (if that's the "real" source of the accusations) before documenting this accusation as it really does seem to give it undue weight. --ElKevbo (talk) 21:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
This article's purpose is not to accuse anyone of plagiarism, nor to sit in judgment on whether such accusations are proved or not. We can, however, catalog accusations against prominent individuals, which is what the Dershowitz example does. It is a proven fact that the accusation has been made. There are numerous journalistic confirmations of the accusation. What is the rationale for deleting this observation of an undefended accusation, beyond complaints about the blog sourcing? Better cites are easily found.Verklempt (talk) 22:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
From WP:UNDUEWEIGHT: "Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject." Groupthink (talk) 13:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
We're all familiar with the policy. If you think a position is not presented, then add it in. Don't delete the other position -- that's not constructive.Verklempt (talk) 21:17, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
No, what's not constructive is violating policy. Groupthink (talk) 22:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Here's some more policy language with which you should be familiar: "The views of critics should be represented if they are relevant to the subject's notability and can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to side with the critics; rather, it needs to be presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone. Be careful not to give a disproportionate amount of space to critics, to avoid the effect of representing a minority view as if it were the majority one." That's from WP:BLP, you know, the "keep Wikipedia from being sued for libel" policy?
Now as much as I'd love to remove the bias-causing material that you are insisting on preserving, I don't want to edit war or violate 3RR. However, I will feel obligated to post this matter to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard if this problem hasn't been fixed by tomorrow. Groupthink (talk) 22:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Given that the example is well-sourced, and given that the Finkelstein/Dershowtiz controversy is a central part of the subject's notability, I don't see any policy violation. You still have yet to offer any sources from a competing perspective. If you think the example is one-sided, then it's up to you to make a case based on evidence. Why don't you try?Verklempt (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
My issue is primarily with the sourcing and I urge you to review our policy regarding living persons. If there are *much* better sources, please provide them (I'm guessing you can just grab some from the article mentioned below).
By the way, we should most certainly not allow this article to become a repository for poorly-sourced or unfounded accusations of plagiarism, particularly against living persons. That's unethical. --ElKevbo (talk) 22:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I completely agree with those principles. However, this particular accusation can be sourced per WP:RS, and Dershowitz has failed to respond to the core of the accusation, thus indicating that it has some merit.Verklempt (talk) 22:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
There appears to be a topic Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair. This topic should be focusing on the types of plagiarism rather than being a catalog of instances. (Several of the entries in this topic are non-notable already). Tedickey (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
From a glance at the Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair, I get the impression that there is controversy over whether there was plagiarism. Therefore, that is not a good example to use in this article; mentioning it here gives it undue weight and would seem to imply taking a stand on the controversy. Per WP:BLP, please don't re-add similar material until there is a consensus on this talk page that it's appropriate for this article and that sufficient reliable sources have been provided. Also, there are too many examples listed already. The list should be pruned. This is not supposed to be a comprehensive list of all cases of plagiarism, but an article about plagiarism. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
The section heading is titled "purported or actual plagiarism." The Dershowitz example is clearly "purported". It is not appropriate for Wikipedia editors to determine whether or not plagiary has been committed. Because the Dershowitz example is one of the most prominent in the US in recent years, it belongs in any list. Whether or not there needs to be a lsit at all is a separate debate.Verklempt (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah. Can you provide sources to support your statement that it's one of the most prominent in the US? Is it one of the most prominent in the world? I just did a Google News search for "plagiarism", looked at the list of the first 50 hits (approx.) and didn't see anything about Dershowitz or Finkelstein. That doesn't necessarily prove anything since Google News tends to give recent results, but if the Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair were extremely prominent, I would think a mention of it would likely have come up. (It could have been mentioned within the stories on other cases; I didn't click on every link.) --Coppertwig (talk) 10:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
You are conflating two separate issues here. One is whether or note there should be a list of notable examples, and if so, how should we define notability. The second issue is whether this specific example is a BLP violation. Given that the example is impeccably sourced, and given that no editor has yet to offer any countervailing citations, I don't see a BLP problem.Verklempt (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
How in the world does "no editor has yet to offer any countervailing citations" mean that this isn't a BLP problem?
And I, too, would appreciate any evidence you can offer supporting your assertion that this "is one of the most prominent in the US in recent years?" --ElKevbo (talk) 20:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
(1) The example is impeccably sourced. The burden of proof is on the deleters to demonstrate that the passage is problematic, by means of reason and evidence. Simply waving your hands and crying "BLP!" does not constitute an argument. (2) Re the notability of this particular example, I would ask you to define your standard of proof first, before I start looking for evidence. Second, I would want to know why you are asking me to justify this example, but not any of the others on the list.Verklempt (talk) 22:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't particularly take issue with the sources except to (once again) note that our standard for controversial issues involving living persons is very high. But in Wikipedia the burden of proof is always with those who advocate including something, not on those who advocate for its removal. With respect to your second question, I think you're dodging the issue. We've asked for any evidence supporting your assertion.
Finally, *I* am not asking about the other examples in this article as you don't appear to be placing yourself in a position to defend them and it wouldn't be fair for me to assume that you are doing so. For the record, a quick glance shows that some of the existing examples aren't very good and I am sure that some of them are shoddy and their inclusion is based on dislike for the figure(s) involved (i.e. they're politically motivated). But, again, this isn't the topic of discussion - this specific example is. --ElKevbo (talk) 23:14, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
(1) I've already met the burden of proof for inclusion per WP:RS. There are numerous additional cites that could be made, but we already have enough. (2) Without a general standard for inclusion in the list, it is pointless to debate the notability of any single example.Verklempt (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
You've once again completely dodged the (second) question. You specifically stated that this "is one of the most prominent in the US in recent years" and we've asked for any evidence you have supporting that assertion. Care to answer that question or will you continue ignoring it? "I don't have any evidence" is an acceptable answer - I promise we won't hate you. :) --ElKevbo (talk) 00:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Please consider my response more carefully. You are asking me to go pull cites to validate this example's inclusion in a list that you've already proposed to kill. You refuse to establish a standard of proof. It's a waste of my time to answer your question at this stage in the discussion, given that the list's survival is up in the air. Let's settle the issues surrounding the list first, and then we can go through and discuss each individual example. In the meantime, you may want to peruse the existing Wikipedia article on the Dershowitz-Finkelstein controversy, which has plenty of cites for you to read through.Verklempt (talk) 00:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I've not asked you to validate anything except for your own statement. You're either unwilling or unable to do so and I'm quite perturbed that you've wasted my time. --ElKevbo (talk) 00:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
You're trolling. I don't play those games.Verklempt (talk) 02:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal and refactoring of "examples"

I propose removing all examples from this article that are not covered in detail by a Wikipedia article, either a free-standing one or as a significant section in a larger article. I propose this as a means to establish some criteria for inclusion as an example in this article since there appears to be no firm criteria.

I would also be happy with removing all of the examples and simply listing the Wikipedia articles in the "See also" section. --ElKevbo (talk) 23:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I would go further. If we really want to have a list of notable examples of plagiarism, it should be in List of examples of plagiarism or List of purported instances of plagiarism or List of plagiarism controversies or something, not in the article on plagiarism. There have been way too many to cover them here in anything but an arbitrary fashion. I'd further suggest each controversy should probably go on that list if and only if it's worthy either of its own article or of a section of its own in the article on the alleged plagiarist. Kalkin (talk) 19:21, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
In fact, I will do this, moving the entire list of examples to a new article, unless anyone objects within the next couple of days. I like the title "List of plagiarism controversies" best, as it makes it clear which examples of plagiarism are sufficiently notable to go on the list - those that caused public controversies - and which are not - anything that may be mentioned in a reliable source but that escaped significant public comment. Kalkin (talk) 21:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, you can try making a new topic which deals with public controversies, but (given that most of the lists on Wikipedia seem to be driven by POV-editors), it would take continual pruning to keep it in bounds. Tedickey (talk) 22:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, we already have a list, only it's on this article, where it's out of place, and it doesn't have any defined standards for inclusion. I can't promise to police the new list, but at the least I think it would be an improvement. Kalkin (talk) 22:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the entire list, as nobody seemed to show any enthusiasm at all for having it in the first place. I read Kalkin's suggestion to split it off to a separate article as an attempt to compromise with those who want to keep the examples, but they are nonexisting, as far as I can see. If Kalkin actually wants to keep the list under at different name, feel free to rescue it out of the article history. –Henning Makholm 03:50, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't want the work put into the list to be lost, and I think it might be useful to have a list of examples to which this article can link. I'll go ahead and create the list, basically just by copying the old section. If you are actively opposed to the idea, though, I don't feel strongly about it - if you put the article I'm about to create up for deletion, I won't necessarily contest it. Kalkin (talk) 19:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
How about just creating a category and placing each of the existing articles and this one into that new category? --ElKevbo (talk) 20:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I like that better. But Category:Plagiarism itself is not exactly overburdened. I'd say we could just add articles to that and then split it later if it becomes a problem finding articles about plagiarism in general among the individual cases.
I'm not so much "actively opposed" to a separate list as concerned that the list may develop WP:BLP problems unless someone's willing to spend time policing some strict inclusion and verifiability criteria there. –Henning Makholm 23:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Fair point. I can't promise to police the list. But by the same token I don't know if or when I'll have time to go through it and convert it to a category. Kalkin (talk) 19:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Adding the articles to a category should be pretty quick and painless and I would be happy to help. --ElKevbo (talk) 19:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok. Let's do this. We can get rid of one section of the list at a time, I suppose. Kalkin (talk) 18:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Protocols of the Elders of Zion

I find the opening of this article (on Plagiarism) quite well written. That being said, I recommend some discussion of the notorious text of which I give above one of its numerous titles. This antisemitic and anti-Masonic text first entered history as an alleged stolen document allegedly recording the plotting of Jews and Freemasons to take over the world. It was presented as having come into being in the last decade of the 19th centuary. However, in 1921, it was discovered that substantial portions of it were plagiarized from a work by Maurice Joly published in 1864, in the French language, under the title, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu). An examination of the Joly text revealed that it was a satire critical of Napoleon III.--Ludvikus (talk) 04:22, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarism and Common Knowledge

I posted a request here asking if any more qualified persons to expand on common knowledge as it relates to plagiarism in academia. No activity on that page so I thought maybe here might be a good place to re-post the request. -- Low Sea (talk) 00:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] command, shift, 4

I'm curious. Is it considered plagiarism if one goes on the internet, and takes pictures of pictures? People can take pictures by holding down command (or apple), along with shift, and 4. Some can even take pictures from videos, by pausing them, and then taking the pictures. I was curious, because these actions make it sound like they are original pictures, of the one who took them. Does anyone know if these acts are considered as plagiarism or not? 71.181.55.104 (talk) 00:31, 27 May 2008 (UTC) fantasyleader