plagiarism and you

[Dragonrabbit]

Once in 6th grade, for music appreciation, the instructor wanted us to write a 2 page biography on a composer. I copy-pasted an entire article. Got an A too... that's about it as far as that goes.

And, for the record it was a pointless assignment, for a pointless class, in a grade where it doesn't really matter anyways.

Well I copied my friends French homework for many years, each time making one deliberate mistake, each time scoring one less point. Then I got an E U grade on my GCSE O Level. U being Undefined for the Oral/Aural? exam, which I failed spectacularly act as I didn't know more than a clutch of French vocabulary and the examiner got frustrated with me as we were supposed to both speak in conversational French the whole time, so either I was asking him what he meant, forcing him to speak in English, which he didn't want to do, or then he would say that I have to ask him: Que'sce Che por mot "for such-and-such" and then he'd mumble a word I'd never heard of before which he expected me to use

I did the exact same thing in all three years of Spanish, except it was Como se dice "How do you say...

 

[walls of cetepedes]

Sure, in middle and early High School, it was easy to do. Get the stuff, change all the big words, and juggle the order a bit.

Can't do it now, though.

 

[Julianking93]

I did once on accident.

I looked up something and took pretty much all the notes from it, but I ended up just writting that story but with different names.

I did the whole thing over again when I realized I just copied all of it.

 

[Zac_Dai]

Yeah its bad to do.

But you'll probably get a pay rise and a promotion in the media industry if you steal ideas off people on youtube lol.

 

[Beartrucci]

I occasionally plagarise some sentences while writing up some history thing (In year 9 at high school) but if I'm writing a story I won't plagarise.

 

[Kurokami]

I have never and will never commit the act of plagiarism.
which makes writing original stuff more difficult.

I have never and will never commit the act of plagarism.

 

[Antlers]

Pfff ok not TECHNICAL plagarism. I've never copied and pasted an assignment about different types of antenna (electronic engineering is fun) from wiki, but be reasonable. It's probably still plagarism when you keep the essence but switch the words around a bit so it's not a full on copy. Then you credit wiki's sources. It's not blatant, but from my college experience, this is the way to go.

But hey, if you want to build your antenna and develop transmission methods from first principles go ahead.

 

[Zedward]

Nope, cos the uni wud rape you for it and make u get zero for that module. But back at school, im not sure if i ever did, i dont remember doin it. Coursework is the only thing important enough to plagarise at school, and the teachers gave us more than enough help with it. We had to submit our work to submit.ac.uk, which supposedly knows when u plagarise. But do any of you know anyone who has been caught by software like that?

 

[Emeli]

Only once in highschool, for a science project. I was suaully great at science but my mum had just come out from one of her many surgeries, I was so tired I just cut and pasted from encyclopedia britannica. I would feel worse if it had been at uni or if I was passing it off to someone more serious than my creepy year 10 science teacher.

 

[Proteus214]

Never done it myself (seriously, that is one line I do NOT cross), but one time I did catch a guy who copied a rather pretty passage from a book that I had. I didn't want to tell anyone based on how it would reflect on me considering the source and the fact that I picked up on it the moment I saw it...

It was from a Legend of Zelda strategy guide.

 

[tsb247]

I did once when I was VERY young (like second grade). The thing is, I did not know what it was, and I did not know it was wrong. So I suppose I can say that I have, but the concept was not introduced to me until many years later.

During my highschool and college careers however, I have not. I have often found it more fun to actually generate ideas for myself where I can and give proper credit where it is due. I would not like someone out there stealing all of my good ideas and writing and using them as their own.

 

[Micklet]

I know you here stories of people getting away with it, but in this day and age, with the likes of turnitin.com its nigh on impossible to get away with it, all my essays and projects have to go through that site.

 

[thebrainiac1]

There's never any need to plagiarise.

You deserve the grade you get, and if you think you have a serious reason, the teacher will probably be reasonable. In my experience, so long as you talk to them in advance, they're happy to give extra time.

 

[Bigeyez]

Heh whats funny is that I'm betting most of the people in this thread have commited plagiarism without even knowing it.

Sure in HS hell yeah I did. Now in college you can't get away with it nor would I attempt to. Can't really learn much if all you do is copy/paste shit.

 

[hamster mk 4]

Absolutely not - if you're not contributing to the overall knowledge of the human race, you shouldn't be writing in the first place.

I don't believe all the book reports and essays I had to write really contributed to the over all knowledge of humanity. Instead they proved I could parrot back what the instructor told me in different words. Much of what passes as education is just transcribing some one else's ideas in your words. Plagiarism short-circuits the system by transcribing some one else's ideas in some one else's words; that it why it is frowned upon by academic institutions.

Not that I am bitter or anything.

Edit: Oh yeah I have copied large sections of code from open source projects into my own projects. What is "plagiarism" in academia often is intelligent code reuse when you do it for a living.

 

[nettkenneth]

well i won't claim i'm perfect (wich i am) but plagiarism is beneath me, sure i resarch and rip jokes from comedy but no-one is perfect (exept for me)

everything in this is (sarcasm)

and i give credit to the comedian i rip from so i consider myself even

 

[esperandote]

yeah, code, stock images, brushes and stuff like

 

[Trivun]

Indeed, plagiarism...BAD, unless you haven't revised for a meaningless test. You know the kind of thing I mean.

Amen brother. Why should I write in my own words 3 pages about the history of sugar!
Fuck that, much easier and saner to copy it from a website and give a fake source in some obscure book.

However apart from worthless tests I hate plagiarism. People these days are unoriginal bastards.
I gave up reading many different types of books, especially ones with a female lead who has some special power, vampires and werewolves.
They always go down two roads, rarely the Dresden files road, better but still theft. More commonly they take the anita blake road, mindless mary sueing, vamps and weres all love the worthless main character and it just quickly becomes a worthless fanfic quality erotica.

So that's your opinion on vampire fiction then? In which case I'd be genuinely interested to know, as a writer, what you (as an objective outsider viewpoint) would think of this idea for a novel, which I am currently writing:

Spoiler: Warning, slight confusion ahead

Girl gets bitten, becomes a vampire, boyfriend goes slightly mental but overcomes grief to team up with a second female vampire in order to fight the guy who turned the original girl into one. Evil dude vampire wants to bring down an entire clan, he's also the ex-boyfriend of the female protagonist. Romance comes into the story as a plot point but isn't a major part of the story, there's a lot of action and not much romance, basically. However, main protagonist's (now vampiric) girlfriend slowly goes insane over course of novel and is forced to fight the good guys near the end. All this also helps to develop the two protagonists (human guy, vampire girl) for a possible sequel which will have an entirely different and original storyline.

Sorry for that, just want to try and get as many opinions as possible so I can write something original and decent rather than yet another Anita Blake book, or Io forbid, another Twilight-style story...

Anyway, on topic. I did plagiarise occasionally in essays and stuff for A-Level English, however I never plagiarised anything in actual coursework or exams. I always did original writing for official stuff. Now at university I do Maths so I don't have to write essays, so I don't get the chance to plagiarise stuff. I wouldn't anyway though, there's no way I'm getting kicked out of university for cheating.

 

[Florion]

I did the copy-pasting from Wikipedia thing for a timeline in seventh grade. I didn't like it. After that, if I couldn't get an assignment done in time, I just didn't do it. I can't do that this year because I'm in 12th grade and everything counts, but I'm mostly taking arts and languages now, so I don't have to. I love the subjects I'm taking too much to be a thief, and it's the sort of situation where someone would notice the drastic change in writing tone even if I did. I don't see the point in copying anymore. It's just a number; the things you learn are more important.

 

[Gaderael]

No, I've never plagiarized another person's work. I've always given credit where it was due. Anyone who does plagiarize things to get ahead needs a swift kick in the junk.