With recent conversations occurring between users and staff about the plagiarism policies (Traced Art recap from December 2021 and Plagiarism and Metaphysician Discussion from October 2021), I feel it is time we have a full discussion, with everyone, about what plagiarism is and what we should be doing about it.
Currently, our relevant policy is outlined in the Site Rules as the following:
These actions can result in an immediate permanent ban:
- Plagiarism.
How To Behave
Posting Articles: Do not post a large number of low-quality articles. When staff tell you to slow down or stop posting, listen.
- Plagiarism: You may not copy any portion of someone else's writing to use as your own work without proper attribution. You may not attempt to pass off another user's article as your own work. Doing so will result in summary deletion of the work.
- Borrowing narrative or character content from other works is generally fine, so long as there is not a blatant or malicious attempt to deceive the reader into believing that the work is your own. For example, consider the numerous adaptations of Sherlock Holmes: Elementary, Sherlock, The Great Mouse Detective, etc. Your works should be original in style and technique. Contact staff if you're not certain if something is plagiarism.
- Using images: Images included in your article must follow the rules of our Image Use Policy. You must include the source of your images on the discussion page, and this source must comply with our site policy and license. If you have any questions, contact the Licensing Team.
Other things that can get you in trouble
- Art Plagiarism: Any art you post to the wiki must be compatible with the site's CC BY-SA license (for example: a CC-BY or a Public Domain license). If you trace, recreate, or heavily reference an image, it must also be compatible with this license and you must cite it. Failure to cite your sources in the above cases is grounds for disciplinary action equivalent to literary plagiarism. In addition, artworks which are made by using references non compatible with CC-BY-SA must be modified past recognition from said references.
However, these should not be the limits we have to work from when discussing the future. We have already seen plagiarism cases be reassessed recently and there has been a change towards leniency in plagiarism cases. As a result, I invite any staff and users interested to leave thoughts here.
Edit 1: It looks like there is some confusion of what this discussion is about. The goal here is to discuss what we do once some plagiarism is found and validated rather than what counts as an overall licensing violation or what we can do about things happening beyond the range of staff authority (although I do think it can be open to people discussing this as we have seen with discussing what teams might be handling the investigations and how things are identified as being plagiarism). To this end, I want to remind people that things like art posted under the wrong licence, people tracing non-CC art and posting it as CC to the wiki, people ripping CC art and posting it off-site without attribution, and other such things are different from the discussion of on-site plagiarism, proper-license tracing, and things to do with plagiarism on the wiki that do not otherwise break standard licensing and conduct rules (like posting someone else’s article wholesale as your own or reposting deleted works a second time).
O5 Mirror:http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-14459659/discussion-the-future-of-plagiarism-policy
