Opinion: On Plagiarism

Aiddon_v1legacy

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"As a display of this, chunks of this have been plagiarized"

I love articles that have a plot twist at the end.

-Goes into analysis-
 

Skee

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Jason Schreier: "Filip Miucin apparently plagiarized not just from other gaming sites, but from Wikipedia, NeoGAF, and even his own colleagues at IGN. Even his Linkedin resume is copy-pasted from someplace else." (https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1029751664566300674)

30 words there.
 

Skee

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Patricia Hernandez@IGN: "Boomstick Gaming compared his existing video review with IGN?s, highlighting a number of similarities between the two. Beyond the repetition of certain buzzwords and phrases, the general framework of both reviews appears to be the same. The focus and wording of the reviews are so aligned that the YouTuber highlights multiple time codes where the two uncannily overlap." (https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17660386/ign-dead-cells-metroidvania-ign-plagiarism-accusation)

58 words (88/350 total)
 

Skee

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Michael Heerema@screenrant "While a single plagiarized article may slip through the editorial process from time to time, it's mind-boggling that Miucin thought he could get away with it for so long." (https://screenrant.com/ign-plagiarism-reviews-content-removed/)

29 words (117/350 total)

This particular paragraph actually caught my attention a bit when reading, as wasn't entirely... a piece of the argument being presented, I guess.

Okay, that's enough for me. An interesting exercise. It really wasn't very hard, but I can imagine nobody thinking of being suspicious like this and/or bothering. This was fun for a bit, but I wouldn't do this for a living and nobody should need to. Shouldn't be hard to make a good program for this, and I imagine schools already have such. With a program you can check everything, always, and not have to bother a human with it.
 

TDA WP

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Skee said:
Jason Schreier: "Filip Miucin apparently plagiarized not just from other gaming sites, but from Wikipedia, NeoGAF, and even his own colleagues at IGN. Even his Linkedin resume is copy-pasted from someplace else." (https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1029751664566300674)

30 words there.
One issue with plagiarism is that you also repeat the mistakes of others. While there was one instance Schreier identified where Wikipedia was plagiarized, it was not in the video he links in his piece. The material about Super Mario Odyssey was taken from the Super Mario Wiki [https://www.mariowiki.com/index.php?title=Super_Mario_Odyssey&oldid=2303208#Design_decisions], which is completely unaffiliated with Wikipedia. Miucin did copy from the Wikipedia article [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shantae:_Half-Genie_Hero&oldid=783800435] about Shantae, but that video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqfG9Sk9bhQ&feature=youtu.be&t=80] was not linked in the Kotaku article. I had informed Schreier of this via DM, but it seems he didn't notice. Not a particularly meaningful error, but anyone seeking to verify his claim might waste a lot of time, as I did, trying to find the plagiarized passage unaware it was on a different site.
 

tanatoes

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My intuition is that the ?plaguirism is the single worst crime a professional weiter can commit? passage is the most ironic and therefore the most logical place to lift from elsewhere, but I have been unable to find this exact quote in any source besides this article.
 

ewhac

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The challenge to Kotaku to "keep looking" for examples of his plagiarism led to the discovery of many more articles which he appeared to plagiarize.
Acto Google, this sentence appears three days earlier on KnowYourMeme.com: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/filip-miucins-ign-plagiarism-controversy
 

cathou

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Apr 6, 2009
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"For the record, most video game websites don't have practices in place to stop plagiarism"

Brian Altano wrote that in a tweet

https://twitter.com/agentbizzle/status/1029605003399331840

edit : well never mind i realised that russ actually gave the source material edition of it's article...
 

NiPah

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I googled "plagiarism checker" and ran the article through and it picked up several but not all of the copied lines.

Also for a bit of plagiarism inception, here's a website that copied the article on plagiarism:
http://www.gamernews.online/pitts-on-plagiarism-escapist-editorials/
 

Schadrach

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It's ironic that a certain topic was banned from discussion and then one of the first articles for the new Escapist is about ethics in video game journalism.
 

ebalosus

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Schadrach said:
It's ironic that a certain topic was banned from discussion and then one of the first articles for the new Escapist is about ethics in video game journalism.
Ah, sweet irony. Also ironic is the insinuations in the article about the lack of editorial oversight here at the Escapist in the past, which would help explain why a certain """expose""" on a certain crowdfunded videogame reads in parts like it was directly lifted from the blog of a man who assaults Coke machines over his failures...
 

Thaluikhain

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"Most reviewers I know don't go anywhere near other writers' opinions while writing a review, and not simply to avoid plagiarism. They do it so as to ensure their opinion is not influenced by anyone else's - that what you're reading when you read their review is as close as possible to their unfiltered impression. That it is, in other words, original."

Dunno, might be useful to look at other reviews to see if people are having the same experience. "I didn't have this problem myslf, but I'm told there is an issue with..." or "Apparently these themes resonated with members of Group X which doesn't include me"
 

Dosbilliam

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Thaluikhain said:
Dunno, might be useful to look at other reviews to see if people are having the same experience. "I didn't have this problem myslf, but I'm told there is an issue with..." or "Apparently these themes resonated with members of Group X which doesn't include me"
That's assuming you can actually get information from other reviewers, since as always, embargoes and NDAs are still a thing. :p
 

TDA WP

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Schadrach said:
It's ironic that a certain topic was banned from discussion and then one of the first articles for the new Escapist is about ethics in video game journalism.
Plagiarism is very much the kind of thing a career journalist would think is the worst ethical breach that can occur in journalism. It is a big offense against the people copied and it is cheating the journalist's employers, but for everyone else there is no real harm. Journalists plagiarizing Wikipedia, for example, is something so familiar to me it just arouses no outrage on its own. Many times I have seen content I contributed to Wikipedia copied without credit by some journalist in a major news outlet. Folks who are mainly consuming the news, rather than reporting it, would probably not jump to plagiarism as the worst crime a journalist could commit. The worst crime for most would almost certainly be pushing bogus stories whether intentionally or through severe negligence. How bad it is perceived depends on the story, of course. When journalists put out bogus stories of the kind that destroy lives, that is definitely worse than putting your name on someone else's work.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Schadrach said:
It's ironic that a certain topic was banned from discussion and then one of the first articles for the new Escapist is about ethics in video game journalism.
Just a friendly reminder that the topic is not Voldemort and not using the name won't work to skirt the rules. If you talk about it without using its name you are still violating the rule not to talk about it and can get an infraction for it.
 

Chimpzy_v1legacy

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NiPah said:
Also for a bit of plagiarism inception, here's a website that copied the article on plagiarism:
http://www.gamernews.online/pitts-on-plagiarism-escapist-editorials/
Not plagiarism tho since the site doesn't pass off the article as their own work. The title makes it clear it's an Escapist editorial by Pitts and there's a source link at the bottom. Worst that can be said is that they rather lazily copied it as is. Could've written a little intro to provide context like explaining who and what Russ Pitts and the Escapist are. Or maybe that they republished it without Pitts' permission (under the assumption they didn't ask, of course)