Timeline for Let's stop tag wiki plagiarism
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
64 events
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 15:29 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Nov 14, 2018 at 11:19 | comment | added | Luuklag | meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/376638/… | |
| May 23, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Mar 4, 2016 at 15:15 | history | edited | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 31, 2016 at 1:56 | comment | added | user3956566 | @Shog9 can't find the tavern O.O | |
| Jan 31, 2016 at 1:54 | comment | added | Shog9 | Ping me in the tavern or something, @msyv | |
| Jan 31, 2016 at 1:41 | comment | added | user3956566 | @Shog9 sure, except I only know of one user with over 20k rep willing to assist. When the wiki excerpt is a direct copy and paste from elsewhere, word for word, are you happy to leave it there? | |
| Jan 31, 2016 at 1:38 | comment | added | user3956566 | @Jaco the stuff from wikipedia is usually derived from other sources and wikipedia then attributes that appropriately, if you do a search you can see the content is taken from elsewhere, in a wikipedia copy and paste, it can be difficult to post all the original sources. Yeh and rewriting it, is not easy unless you understand the tag. Mind you, you are most welcome to do this and so are others. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 21:51 | comment | added | Shog9 | If you don't have 20K, you might be better off just creating a list of these for others to work on, @MsYvette. For the actual wikis, it's trivial to add attribution OR replace the contents with something more useful, but for excerpts this is overkill; we're talking about a line of text. Much less overhead for someone with full editing rights to just edit these directly. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 17:31 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Jaco I check for the latter case by going back in the Wikipedia revision history; I've never found a case of that yet. And yes, it's definitely better to rewrite it - but only if one has the expertise to do so without completely butchering the subject. No one here is an expert in everything, but if someone wants to help out by removing plagiarized stuff (or correctly attributing it, if we decide to go that route)... that's a net good for the site. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 17:29 | comment | added | Alex | Isn't better to rewrite the tag wiki documentation rather than deleting it all ? And what if a Wikipedia editor copies text from Stack overflow instead of the other way around? | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 16:13 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @MarkR I agree with you on that one, we can't say for certain it's plagiarism. I probably wouldn't have suggested that edit myself, but I did approve it because it's an overall improvement to the excerpt. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 16:03 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Jaco That could work, but even attributed Wikipedia content is almost never exactly what we wasn't in a good tag wiki. I'm of the opinion (and my opinion doesn't matter much) that it's better to remove it entirely in hopes that someone sees the blank space and writes an original, nicely fitting one. That might be over optimistic, though. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 14:48 | comment | added | Alex | Users have now started removing plagiarized content from wiki tags. I came across an edit where contents copied from Wikepedia was deleted. I am no laywer, however, looking at the Wikipedia page on reusing content, Wikipedia does seem to allow re-use of content provided it is correctly attributed. Rather than deleting the content, wouldn't it be better to correctly attribute it ? This is the Wiki page on content reuse: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 9:55 | comment | added | user3956566 | @Shog9 I'm going to need some community manager support for this as there is an attitude that a zero voted answer does not form a consensus and some people prefer to leave the plagiarised content there, rather than accept a generic wiki tag excerpt. It takes a lot of time to go through these and to have community support and SO management support would make it easier, thanks. | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 8:07 | comment | added | Mark Rotteveel | Some of the suggested edits are absurd. For plagiarism to be plagiarism, there needs to be sufficient content to be sure it is not just a general usage of things. For example stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/11081582 considers "Method belonging to a utility class." to be plagiarized from wikipedia, while it is simply the rephrase of "utility-method" (the tag). | |
| Jan 30, 2016 at 6:40 | vote | accept | UndoMod | ||
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| Jan 30, 2016 at 6:29 | answer | added | user3956566 | timeline score: 10 | |
| Dec 30, 2015 at 16:49 | answer | added | artless noise | timeline score: 5 | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 21:50 | comment | added | chappjc | In a related post on MSO, @TimPost just seemed to think the mods needed to prioritize this, communicating with the offenders as quickly as possible. 2 years later... | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 10:13 | answer | added | dcorking | timeline score: -10 | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 3:17 | history | edited | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 29, 2015 at 1:45 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @MarkAmery Definitely. I generally tend to flag one of the suggester's posts, in hopes that a moderator will just roll it back and send a note to the user. I haven't had great luck rolling them back on my own either. | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 1:39 | comment | added | Mark Amery | It would help if there were any mechanism to remove plagiarised tag wiki content once it's posted, but when I've tried to edit it out I've had my edits rejected. Most reviewers seem to actively prefer plagiarised content to none, sadly. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 22:56 | comment | added | JabberwockyDecompiler | @Deduplicator Agreed, there is a problem. Per plagiarism.org all you need is a citation. Paraphrasing is nice, but with tag revisions say v1 was a paraphrase, v2 was a paraphrase of v1, and so on, it is possible to get the 10M monkeys that type Shakespere and end up with the same text (unintentionally). Correct citation will show users where the text came from, then the SO community can decide to modify if necessary. Note: you should also cite if you paraphrase. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 22:18 | comment | added | Deduplicator | @JabberwockyDecompiler: The fact that the content is plagiarized is often not the worst part about it, even though that alone is already unacceptable. See meta.stackoverflow.com/a/309384 | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 21:36 | answer | added | chris | timeline score: -24 | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 20:51 | answer | added | Zizouz212 | timeline score: 28 | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 20:49 | comment | added | JabberwockyDecompiler | Perhaps the answer is not in making sure that the tag reviewers are responsible for recognizing that a tag has been plagiarized, but a change needs to be made to tag creation/edits to require a citation link. If we are required to come up with our own words for each tag, how many times does that tag then get moderately distorted from the original intent of what the tag represents. As we can see from all the comments above, words have many synonyms and can drastically change the meaning. Tags may need to be restructured so it contains various standard fields (about, standards, FAQ, etc). | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 20:41 | history | edited | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 28, 2015 at 17:43 | comment | added | Shog9 | Yes, plagiarism is plagiarism, @Oleg. This has been discussed many times over the years and the consensus is that folks on SO do not like plagiarism. We even added a policy at the community's request condemning it and laying out guidance for avoiding it. Plagiarists in other areas of the site frequently find their posts deleted and their accounts suspended; there's no reason to expect different treatment in wikis. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 16:40 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Gilles I didn't post on mSE because I see this problem most on SO, and the crux of the proposal is to review ban people approving these - which I don't think needs to be a network-wide thing. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 16:21 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @Undo Re. rep buckets: at <10k, there's a top bar indicator for suggested edits, After 10k the top bar indicator changes its meaning to “there may or may not be something for you in any of the review queues”, so it's pretty natural that >10kers review suggested edits a lot less. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 16:17 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | Not a new problem, and not specific to Stack Overflow (why didn't you post on MSE?. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:42 | comment | added | Oleg V. Volkov | @Undo, I don't want your morals if they're about that copy/pasting short excerpts for community use without any profit to copy/paster himself is immoral. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:38 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @OlegV.Volkov Also, note that plagiarism isn't necessarily the breaking of copyright. Copyright and fair use are legal systems, while plagiarism leans toward the moral side. A wise man once said, "The law isn't moral, but that doesn't mean people don't have to be moral." | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:38 | comment | added | Oleg V. Volkov | @undo, just stop this pathetic word games. I can open that same site too: synonym for infringement is violation and that's rape! OMFG! I can also reach sin and prostitution with just two more open tabs. Plagiarism is neither of those. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:34 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @OlegV.Volkov No, plagiarism is not rape nor genocide. Synonyms for plagiarism: appropriation, infringement, piracy, counterfeiting; theft. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:32 | comment | added | Oleg V. Volkov | @undo, you might as well write "plagiarism is rape" or "plagiarism is genocide". Sorry, but plagiarism is only plagiarism. And short concise execrpt are protected by fair use laws pretty much all around the world. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:23 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @OlegV.Volkov Plagiarism is theft, and nearly everything has a license (express or implied) forbidding theft. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 15:21 | comment | added | Oleg V. Volkov | Why not? Unless there's some license forbidding copy/pasting the source, what EXACTLY do you get from inventing your own way to say the same? I thought only SEO "industry" ever cared about tricks like that. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 14:31 | comment | added | SleuthEye | Just a thought... How practical would presenting results from Google searches for random literal wiki quotes during the review be? I don't expect that determining if it's actual plagiarism could easily be automated (that's why we need reviewers), but putting the google results in the reviewer's face might help trigger an appropriate action. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 4:00 | comment | added | Deduplicator | Take a look at Merry Go Round Situation. There are some suggestions for changing who gets served tag-wiki edits in there, though not about changing the rep-threshold (many in my answer). | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:46 | comment | added | Undo Mod | Relevant: Number of tag-wiki suggested edit reviews done per 1k rep bucket. It looks like <20kers do the majority of the reviews, although we could probably afford to raise the threshold nonetheless. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:38 | comment | added | BoltClock | @Shog9: Ah, I missed that. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:36 | comment | added | Shog9 | I'm saying it because if we're looking at blocking a whole bunch of people from reviewing, we might wanna see how that actually breaks down, @BoltClock. There are a few other places in review where the system lets you recommend an action you don't have the reputation to actually perform yet, but with a 15 thousand reputation difference between approving and doing, tag wiki reviews are a distinct anomaly; I'd be surprised if there wasn't a stark difference in behavior at some threshold in there. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:30 | comment | added | BoltClock | @Shog9: You're only saying that because the only thing that can be implemented as a system are reputation thresholds, and not because you actually think reputation is a reliable measure of a person's ethics, right? | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:27 | comment | added | BoltClock | "But I don't want to check for plagiarism, it's too much work! I completely understand - and you don't have to review tag wikis. If a user isn't willing to put in the work required to do a job correctly, there are plenty of others that are." But it's not fair that they get to earn the Steward badge and I don't! | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:26 | comment | added | BoltClock | "Stack Overflow has a problem with plagiarism" full stop. (I know, this topic is focused on tag wikis, but you can't talk about plagiarism without being unnecessarily pedantic.) | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:24 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Shog9 Raising that could definitely help, but I do think it would need to be combined with enforcing plagiarism checks in some way or another - I've seen 20, 30, 40kers approve these. We've seen that after a certain point, reputation stops becoming a decent measure of trust and starts becoming a measure of how much you know about a subject matter - not how good you are at moderation tasks. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:22 | comment | added | Shog9 | Just gonna throw this out there: the current reputation threshold for reviewing these edits is 5000; there's no reason that can't be changed though. The reputation threshold for editing these wikis without approval is 20000 after all... | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 3:00 | comment | added | bjb568 | @Shog Again, as with regular edit reviewing, the guidance for tag wiki edit reviewing is lacking. People aren't told what to look for to reject an edit, so their process is "do I like it? If not, choose reject reason" instead of "does it match any reject reason or is otherwise harmful? If so, reject with that reason". | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:58 | comment | added | Braiam | @Shog9 well, they won't know because there's nobody that tell them is not ok. They don't read the help center, nor guidance. Sadly, the only way forward is with the mace of rejection and that has to start with reviewers. And those reviewers were the ones that suggested or saw plagiarism being accepted. Kind of a vicious circle we got here. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:56 | comment | added | Braiam | Related meta.stackexchange.com/q/238339/213575 | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:53 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Shog9 I'd agree with that - I'll try to write something up tomorrow | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:51 | comment | added | Shog9 | I feel like #1 is... kinda weak sauce. If the folks editing these are under the impression that plagiarism is acceptable, we have bigger problems; the more likely cause is that they don't realize they're plagiarizing. If you think guidance will help here, suggest something that explains (for instance) that copying a product page or wiki is seen as dishonest. IOW, educate rather than just shouting - if we wanna shout at folks, #2 is a much better bullhorn. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:44 | history | edited | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:42 | comment | added | Deduplicator | The former, though I will celebrate if being surprised on that score. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:41 | comment | added | Undo Mod | @Deduplicator Can you elaborate a little? Will nothing happen because this won't be implemented, or will nothing happen if this is implemented? | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:41 | history | edited | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:41 | comment | added | Deduplicator | You asked for thoughts, so here's mine: Nothing will happen. Sorry for the pessimism. | |
| Dec 28, 2015 at 2:35 | history | asked | UndoMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |