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Re: How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?

by halley (Prior)
on Oct 09, 2006 at 14:13 UTC ( [id://577179]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?

The Bible talks about convicted thieves paying back multiples of what they stole.

I think we already have enough moral high-horse-ism going on in this thread. The Bible also talks about selling your daughter into slavery in other countries, and stoning people for heresy, so maybe let's just not bring another confused moralistic argument into it. If you wanted to bring up the idea of treble punitive damages, just go ahead and do so directly.

Personally, I think this whole thread is a lot of hullabaloo over very little. Let's look at the real costs:

  • Some unimaginative twit got some extra XP
    maybe this will help the twit get a local job as a perl guru; the rest of perlmonks keeps saying this mythical number is not important, but apparently it really chaps our collective hides
  • Someone else's question or poem got posted twice
    Man, the roof will cave in if somebody doesn't get their proper attribution, right? And it was a COMPLETE waste of time for everyone to expend some brain energy trying to comprehend the question and think of a solution and post their thoughts in response. Well, except now somebody else with a similar problem has more grist for their google search mill.

Some people just need to release a little steam every now and then, and look at social issues with a bit of detachment and perspective.

In the end, I do commend liverpole for his detective work, it can be a challenge and a bit of extra legwork. I also think it's right that the twits have been exposed and confronted. My all-time highest-ranked node is when I do a bit of searching around for the "evil" perpetrated by Wassercrats. Big whup. I kinda wish it weren't, since I would like to be remembered more for, oh, I dunno, the Perl I have contributed. Let's not lose sight and go back to mob psychology about the episode here.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?
by shmem (Chancellor) on Oct 09, 2006 at 20:49 UTC

    Personally, I think this whole thread is a lot of hullabaloo over very little.

    ...

    I also think it's right that the twits have been exposed and confronted.

    There.

    That's what this hullabaloo is about, nothing else: a strong reaction of the community, er, of the many people who do post to this fabulous site and help each other. It's the way to confront them, and the only way: a root note with many follow-ups, where many expend some brain energy trying to comprehend the question and think of a solution and post their thoughts in response.

    A weak node without many follow-ups, perhaps some words in the chatterbox, /msg'ing them - that would not have them confronted, let alone exposed.

    Let's look at the real costs:
    • Some unimaginative twit got some extra XP
    • Someone else's question or poem got posted twice

    No, these are not the real costs, and you know that. Clicking ++ or -- doesn't cost anything, and an extra node in the database - bleh. No, the real costs are, as liverpole exposed in the OP:

    1. It is disrespectful to this community that I've come to love
      as demerphq expressed in another context: somebody just shits in your bed and doesn't give a damn about you
    2. It lowers the standards by which Perlmonks will, unavoidably, be judged
      huh? they condone posting questions answered elsewhere, stolen stuff, and even reward the poster? (with XP, the "currency" here)
    3. It is demeaning, both those authors whose work has been stolen, and to those authors at Perlmonks who take pride in the commitment to the quality of their questions, answers and Perl code
      Haha! look at those pavlow dogs, I throw them a question and they answer! what fun!
    4. It is frustrating to have Perlmonks forced to be associated with a practice which is both unethical and illegal

    And the biggest cost IMHO - another seed of mistrust and off-topic distraction whilst regarding questions and answers - akin to the suspicion towards posts asking us to do their homework.

    --shmem

    _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                                  /\_¯/(q    /
    ----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
    ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}
Re^2: How should Perlmonks deal with Plagiarism?
by creamygoodness (Curate) on Oct 09, 2006 at 14:54 UTC

    I think the costs are more significant than that. A lot of talented people spent a lot of time thinking hard, finding solutions, crafting answers, testing code, and posting their responses, when there wasn't actually any need for them to do so. The plagiarized posts often seem like good topics, and on some level it's sort of nice to have a local archive of answers. But since those questions were already answered at least once before elsewhere on the web, duplicating that effort is of limited value. (Especially since searching PerlMonks is more difficult than it ought to be.)

    That's a lot of hours frittered away, and for what? A couple fools got inflated PerlMonks XP? It's a real boggle that these two would so cavalierly waste our precious time and expertise for something so trivial.

    --
    Marvin Humphrey
    Rectangular Research ― http://www.rectangular.com

      If it's a waste of people's time to think about Perl and type their thoughts, then why is it here? Just because the twit didn't have a genuine need doesn't mean that the question itself has no value to the community as a whole, nor the outsider who searches.

      Searching perlmonks directly is rarely the avenue a newcomer takes. They've never heard of perlmonks until they google for "perl matching balanced text" and gotten a couple hits here. And as you say, searching is harder than it should be; more ways to phrase a solution is more ways to find it with a global deep search like google, et al. How do you measure the number of people who find their answers and leave satisfied without ever signing up or replying to a node?

      --
      [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

        The main reason I choose to waste (spend) my time answering questions is I want to help someone who legitimately needs help. I'm positive that a good number of monks here feel the same way. If I stop believing that, I have little incentive to answer someone's question. That would hurt the community.

        If you read some of the plagiarized nodes (particularly where one answers the other) you can quite plainly see that they didn't understand the question or the answer they pasted (generally way off topic). Learning was not the purpose of their post. It's a waste of our time.

        As for outsiders who search - Then they should presumably be able to find the original content. Lets say a perl beginner finds a PM node in question here, there's a good chance the earliest reply (remember AM's have replies sorted by post time) is reply from the one of the participants. Which means there's a good chance that the first reply is a completely off-topic and wrong.



        grep
        One dead unjugged rabbit fish later
        They've never heard of perlmonks until they google for "perl matching balanced text" and gotten a couple hits here.

        I'm guessing you didn't actually try that. No hits in the top 100 results for me. It's easy to understand why, when you look at the PerlMonks robots.txt file.

        --
        Marvin Humphrey
        Rectangular Research ― http://www.rectangular.com

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