We've all seen the excuses in the recent mass ban appeals, first they claim to have no idea why they were banned and then they claim it's 'such a hard punishment' for a 'simple' mistake.
Those are the same things they've always said, and it's definitely bullshit.
I'm not sure what the situation is with plagiarism bans right now--are people still getting permabans with some people getting exceptions in the form of signature bans? If Theymos made an official post about it, I must have missed it--but I do know exceptions are being made for members who are otherwise productive members of the forum.
The main issue IMO with the recent mass banning is that the punishment is (I'm assuming) for plagiarism that happened a long time ago, and some of these members might not have repeated that behavior since then. In those cases I do think it's very harsh to permaban them, though I think a signature ban is appropriate.
OP, I agree that plagiarism is despicable and shouldn't be tolerated--but even if not all of the members who recently got caught got permabanned, it's definitely sending a loud and clear message to would-be plagiarists. Hopefully we'll see a lot less of it from here on out.
Completely fair response, I guess it would be acceptable to issue a temporary punishment in cases where plagiarism happened a long time ago and the person has stopped doing this afterwards.
I'm all for letting people learn from their mistakes and giving them a second chance, even though the OP indicates otherwise.
Guess I can't really comprehend why someone would take such a stupid shortcut on purpose. To me it seems such a simple thing to avoid really and I do really hate the practise of stealing someone's words and passing them as one's own. Heck, I'd be able to write much more intelligent responses if I were able to do that :')
How is
plagiarism an acceptable mistake? Do you even know what plagiarism means?
From the Oxford Dictionary:
The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
Source:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/plagiarismIn what world is it ever acceptable to pass someone else's work off as your own? That's what we're talking about, right?
In this world, right here. Read again:
Absolute e-warior bullshit. Nobody in the real world strongly cares about that unless we're talking about published/for-profit work.
Acceptable or not, fact is that it
can, has, and will happen as a mistake. Claiming otherwise is
DISHONEST. This is not even up for debate as it's a factual statement. Hence, end of story.
Well, that is not what I'm saying though, I'm specifically focusing on the deliberate act of passing off someone's work as your own. By definition, something like that cannot happen by accident.
But hey, maybe it's better to just agree to disagree.