Sunday, February 18, 2007

Naughty Students

Naughty, naughty. You've been caught (whoever you are) copying some of my writing.

Apparently there is a program in which student papers can be uploaded and checked to see if there is any kind of plagiarism by checking the internet and comparing content. I knew that there were ways, but hadn't given much thought to how student work could be checked. I guess that this is one option for teachers.

How did I find out that someone had plagiarised my writing? I checked my referral links in my stats and saw one that I hadn't seen before. I clicked the link and it showed me the paper that had been turned in, as well as what parts of the paper were suspicious with links to my site to the pages they "may have" copied. There is no doubt that they did (at least in my opinion). While they were not exact copies of what I wrote, it was so similar that I am guessing that the person thought that changing a few words and changing the wording slightly would make it their own. NOPE! It's still my writing.

Plagiarism is not cool, people. Naughty, naughty.

I'm thinking about adding a Creative Commons license to the site.

5 comments:

Mutableblue said...

that's brilliant! a program for plagiarism.

Bernulf said...

Plagiarism seems to be going around - just this evening, I noticed someone making generous usage of another's work on their own blog, with no link or credit.

Sojourner, what would a CC license do that standard copyright doesn't? I've noticed a number of sites with the CC license on them, but never really thought much about the matter.

Stephanie said...

I just wrote a post about plagiarism. I said that it seems like every day someone is saying that the content has been stolen.

I don't think a little thing like a Creative Commons license will stop a wordthief. Sites like the one you mentioned and sharp teachers/editors will.

S. Nichole said...

Creative Commons lets you decide how your work can be used. For example, Jenavira at Essis has one that allows people to use copies of her work for non-commercial use and it also allows for others to expand on her ideas, all as long as you give her credit.

There was another one that I saw (I can't remember which site) that allows the non-commercial use but does not allow for expansion of the writing.

The thing is, I don't want to have to put up notices and copyright information, but I don't want this to become a problem either, whether it is in student papers or online. It's not like putting a CC up on my site is actually going to stop things like this from happening again, but maybe it will make them think twice before taking my writing and trying to pass it off as their own.

S. Nichole said...

You've seen this mentioned a lot lately?

I agree, Eden. That's why I hesitate to slap a notice up on my site. It's not going to stop it from happening.

"Wordthief" LOL That's a good way to describe it.