Questions tagged [plagiarism]

For questions about plagiarism, the act of copying someone else's work, thoughts, and ideas, without giving credit to the original author.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
31
votes
1answer
1k views

What should I do with answers that are copied from another answer in a similar question? [duplicate]

I was reviewing questions and found the following answer. In this post, the author clearly states that they copied it from an old answer. I thought the author had used the idea of ​​a previous answer ...
31
votes
1answer
1k views

How should I flag a literal plagiarism of a question?

I was having a look at a user's question since it's something I haven't faced yet, so as usual, I firstly had a search in Google. After a while, an answer appeared, whose content seemed to be pretty ...
31
votes
1answer
590 views

What is the best way to report unusual answering and upvoting?

After answering this question I noticed that another answer had appeared which was a direct clone of my own, word for word, simply adding 'try this'. Within seconds the duplicate answer had 2 upvotes. ...
30
votes
4answers
899 views

How to deal with answers that copy solution from newer answers

Take this answer - the answer is a valid one, however there's a newer answer that provided this solution before the older one did. Basically, looking at the revision history this is what happened: ...
29
votes
4answers
805 views

Should I raise a flag for late answers which are just a copy of the accepted answer?

I found this answer in the review. The user just copied and pasted the accepted answer which was posted on Aug 24 '13. Should I raise a Not an Answer flag?
29
votes
1answer
336 views

Suggestions on how to Combat Plagiarism in Documentation [closed]

I have spent the last 48 hours going over the Documentation (for the SQL topic primarily) and have noticed a large volume of plagiarized code. It seems people are just ripping off the MSDN technical ...
28
votes
4answers
1k views

Improving an accepted but wrong answer

I recently posted an answer to this question, and was dismayed to see that the asker accepted an answer that was (in my opinion) plain wrong. Briefly put, the question was asking whether SQL Server ...
28
votes
3answers
787 views

A better way to handle plagiarised posts

How we handle plagiarism has been on my mind for a while and I feel that the way we do things at the moment seems to be less than optimal. Plagiarised posts seem to get left on the site for too long. ...
28
votes
1answer
1k views

How do I write a good tag wiki? Is it okay to use/copy content published elsewhere?

On Stack Overflow, all tags have a "wiki" associated with them, which can be edited by the community. For example, when you look at questions with the c++ tag: you see the tag wiki excerpt displayed ...
28
votes
1answer
1k views

Is this plagiarism or a simple bad answer?

Let's consider this off-topic question: https://stackoverflow.com/q/56982855/8620333 The user is asking how to create a hover effect similar to a one they saw in a website. They probably don't know ...
28
votes
1answer
482 views

Identify answers that just copy content from the question and say nothing more

I flagged a (now-deleted) answer on this question as NAA, because it was literally nothing more than the code snippet copied from the question, and pasted into the answer box. It was identical, except ...
27
votes
2answers
1k views

User answers a question of another user and asks the same question again already answered by himself; how to handle this post?

The following question was answered by the user makboney: Siri - stop call initiating if contact is not in the application's contact list The same user then posted a new question with the same ...
26
votes
2answers
1k views

Same answer repeated twice in a question. Flag declined. What did I do wrong?

I found this question where the accepted answer was copied and reposted again by another user within the same question. Do note that the duplicate answer was posted after nearly 2 years. (Check the ...
25
votes
2answers
2k views

How common is plagiarism from unaccepted answers in same question?

Early in my FP/LA reviewing, I started checking for plagiarism on otherwise-good late answers to questions that have an accepted answer. But a while ago, it occurred to me that it's at least possible ...
25
votes
1answer
795 views

How to deal with plagiarized content in tag wikis [duplicate]

While lurking in the "suggested edit" review queue (that Steward badge is sooooo shiny), I came across a couple of tag wiki edits that followed a certain pattern. They were adding a relatively ...
24
votes
4answers
1k views

Why was this flag declined for plagiarized answer?

I flagged a question for not an answer (NAA) where a user just copy pasted an already written answer and added thank you to the OP (here the thank you part is the only thing written by the user other ...
24
votes
3answers
781 views

Is there any way to flag a tag, and is there any action taken for a user who repeatedly copies content from external sites to tag wikis? [duplicate]

Running through edit reviews today, I noticed that one user showed up a number of times, adding text to blank tag wikis. Unfortunately, this user was not authoring the wikis, but instead simply ...
23
votes
1answer
595 views

Flagged a duplicate answer as such, flag was declined - define “duplicate”

I flagged the second answer on this question as "duplicate of another answer", because its content is obviously copied from the answer posted 13 days before it. However that flag was declined because "...
23
votes
2answers
2k views

Plagiarism from Wikipedia survived for 3 years in the C# tag excerpt

Current version of the C# tag on Stack Overflow: C# is a multi-paradigm programming language encompassing strong typing, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), ...
23
votes
1answer
833 views

Why were these plagiarism flags declined?

First off, let me preface this by asking all of you to not go mob downvoting this user's content on the main site. I flagged two answers from a user as plagiarizing content from other answers, but ...
23
votes
1answer
592 views

Meta, I have a problem. Should I call for you or is a moderator flag enough?

While cruising the suggested edits queue, I arrived at this answer So what's the problem (let's leave aside that it's answering how to add 1 day and not 1 month as asked in the question (that's a ...
23
votes
0answers
332 views

Bad mass tag wiki updates [duplicate]

A certain user is making a large number of tag wiki edits, many of which are harmful or otherwise improper: Turning a correctly-formed sentence into two fragments with the comment "improved grammar" ...
22
votes
2answers
817 views

Should I fix plagiarism that is caused by missing attribution?

I was reviewing an answer in the LQP queue, and I stumbled upon an answer that was plagiarism. Basically, a new user copy-pasted code from another answer and provided a link to the copied answer's ...
22
votes
0answers
654 views

How to handle plagiarized documentation edit that is still approved [closed]

Reviewing this edit I found that a lot of it is a verbatim copying of the "Setting up Studio" Appcelerator docs page. Compare e.g. the section: To install and run Studio on OS X using the GUI: ...
21
votes
1answer
204 views

Review a declined flag for plagiarism based on additional information

I had flagged this SO answer, posted on December 27, 2012, as "in need of moderator intervention" for plagiarism: This answer is plagiarism. The poster's answer is copied with minor changes and ...
21
votes
1answer
923 views

How to handle (possible) unwanted plagiarism?

Browsing some questions today I found one (it's a relative common problem) with 2 almost identical answers from user A and user B. Usually I ignore the similar answers because I believe it's possible ...
20
votes
3answers
789 views

Should I flag an answer that basically just links to my answer?

I posted an answer to a question. Now I saw that another user post another answer, which basically just links to my answer. The user's answer is: Here is a one-liner (stolen from Jonathan Mee's ...
20
votes
3answers
957 views

Is copy-pasting content from other websites without citation acceptable?

I couldn't find an answer to this question in meta, sorry if it's a dup Doing some research on a java topic I found a question asking exactly what I wanted to know. The accepted answer seemed logical ...
20
votes
2answers
815 views

Plagiarized content in a tag wiki [duplicate]

There are several questions dealing with this issue, but no clear answers. The tag ssh.net contains content plagiarized from the ssh.net home page. My attempt to revert was rejected 3-2. I can only ...
20
votes
1answer
1k views

Is that plagiarism by Community♦?

I found this tag edit from Sep 2, 2010 by Community♦: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/3625313/revisions It is identical to a paragraph from Feb 9, 2010 from blogspot: https://googlesystem.blogspot....
20
votes
0answers
424 views

Stack (Overflow|Answers)

To be clear, I'm aware of the proper procedure for reporting SCRAPERs, but I found it more pertinent to put it here as there was a lot of information I wished to articulate about the site and it didn'...
19
votes
6answers
1k views

Thoughts on plagiarism based on mentioned cases

Suppose I post a question in SO, and someone answers it. I would like to know which of the following outcomes would be considered plagiarism? Case 1: I did not post the exact same problem I'm facing; ...
18
votes
3answers
879 views

Plagiarism policy - how much of an answer can be copied to another answer?

I've recently had a moderator flag declined for what I believe to be a plagiarized answer. Now I'm in doubt of what actually constitutes plagiarism. Please compare these answers: #1 #2 The second ...
18
votes
4answers
470 views

Should I mark my answer as community wiki when I am posting in someone's name who does not have an account?

I shared a question with someone I know who has expertise in that field. They proposed a working solution, but do not want to open a Stack Overflow account. Instead they asked me to just post the ...
18
votes
1answer
1k views

Different screenshots decorated with almost same words!

How to deal with this special kind of plagiarism? 1) Original (most probably): Invalid Pointer Operation - Delphi XE 2) Plagiarism (most likely): EInvalidPointer message with 'Invalid Pointer ...
18
votes
1answer
606 views

Recurring problem with copy pasting

I've recently asked the question about the situation when some guys copy solutions and code from other developer's answers. And the answer was to downvote and to call a moderator. I've tried to do ...
17
votes
2answers
446 views

Is an answer still considered plagiarized from another source if the only thing different is renamed variables?

I recently came across an answer that I debated flagging for moderator attention, because it appeared to be plagiarized from another source without attribution, except that all the variables had been ...
17
votes
2answers
390 views

If we find a plagiarized answer, should we first post a comment saying that this is plagiarized from ____?

I had recently posted this question. After about 2 hours of posting that question, I suddenly received an answer from a new user. That answer was the user's first post. By just glancing through the ...
17
votes
1answer
415 views

How should I handle Exact Duplicate questions?

I saw this question, which asks how to convert a string to an int in java. Someone later flagged it as a duplicate of this. Thing is though, it's an EXACT duplicate. The title is a little different, ...
16
votes
0answers
157 views

When reviewing tag wiki suggested edits, allow reviewers to supply a link to copied source, which the system can compare against, and act on

Sorry that the title's a mouthful; hopefully it will be clearer here. When reviewing tag wiki suggestions, I notice that copied content gets approved over and over again . It sure feels like very ...
15
votes
1answer
969 views

Should I Refrain From Editing My Answer If Someone Plagiarized It

If I post an answer and someone subsequently posts the same answer, after I flag, should I refrain from editing my original answer until the flag is reviewed? I would think keeping my original post ...
14
votes
1answer
806 views

Late answer indicates that the code in the question is plagiarized

I recently went to fix a late answer that was of very low quality, with bad formatting and erratic capitalization all over the place. I was about to recommend deletion until I careful read it, and ...
13
votes
2answers
840 views

User has copied other answer, I've checked if he've done it before, is that stalking? [duplicate]

I've seen a short code-only answer in review queue. I've checked the question to find out that that snippet was insolently copied from accepted answer. I've checked the user profile to find out if he'...
13
votes
2answers
571 views

When is an answer plagiarism and should be flagged for moderator attention? [duplicate]

This question is inspired after a long discussion, where no consensus was achieved but nicely summarized by eis in this chat message According to Wikipedia, "The idea [of plagiarism] remains ...
13
votes
1answer
318 views

Should we flag reviewers who reject removal of plagiarism/copyvio?

Our community believes we should prevent plagiarism/copyvio by flagging laxist reviewers for review-ban: Stopping tag wiki plagiarism, Part II: Taking Action Now, in the cases of the many past ...
12
votes
4answers
663 views

What is considered 'vampirism' of an answer?

I recently answered a question where another user and I had almost identical answers, and they added more to theirs as time went on. I then did a gigantic edit which encompassed all their other edits ...
12
votes
1answer
324 views

Should I do anything about a plagiarism flag I raised 17 days ago that's still pending?

On November 5th, I saw a poor answer to a question that, amongst other things, looked like it was answering a similar question with different details. So I did a quick search and found that the answer ...
12
votes
1answer
163 views

Can we post our own public domain text as documentation? [closed]

I've been working on a Mathematica project for a while that is released public domain (I would link it, but it's so far from usable at this point that it's not worth it). As part of this, I wrote some ...
11
votes
3answers
388 views

Should entire tag wikis be deleted if they are found to be plagiarised?

I was reviewing a few suggested edits recently that seem to delete all the content of a tag wiki because it was found to be plagiarised (e.g. this). Although one certainly shouldn't be adding ...
11
votes
0answers
152 views

Plagiarised tag info of [webdeploy]

The tag info of webdeploy is plagiarised. It is a plain copy from the website that is linked to "check more details"
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/plagiarism?tab=votes&page=2
meta.stackoverflow.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-24
256248
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:SITMMAW2VL66QKXISVXRIRFIKMASL2KA
<urn:uuid:d54ac620-0322-4f50-b5a4-edd8cec1e8c7>
2020-05-29T14:25:21Z
151.101.129.69
text/html
sha1:6XB46V22BQFLUO2CXISPYZT4EBXPAIRN
<urn:uuid:7eec6c0b-38e4-4f78-a2c6-b54cc2233329>
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/plagiarism?tab=votes&page=2
response
<urn:uuid:958ae278-4cef-4957-a0c5-b220177dcca1>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-24
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May/June 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-124.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.16 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/