Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Plagiarism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Someone has submitted comments about this blog "plagiarizing" the work of the other blogger by posting "snips" from there. These are being left as comments that remain unapproved by the blogger-in-charge. First, it would do us all good to read about what plagiarism is and what it isn't. Click title for link to the Wikipedia article on the topic. The core definition is the attempt to pass someone else's work off as one's own, which is clearly not the case here. I specifically identify where these are coming from and most people who have been to the other blogger's blog would know the "look" of her blog, as compared to this one. Most of the "snips" have other indications, including the blog author's name, other names (or Anonymous) leaving comments and even tags which indicate that it is not from this blog. The exact reason why I display these here is to show how "off the rails" most of the comments are. Funny how crazy people don't look so crazy when they are in one room together, but you pull one or two out and put them with the sane, and you can see a contrast. I guess that is what the root of the objection is.

Consider this a public service.

Also plagiarism is not illegal, but is an issue of integrity and morals. It is most often held out as a key to intellectual honesty and not making a claim of another's hard work and ideas as their own. It is not illegal.

Now, if you haven't noticed this is the Internet and in our technologically-oriented society, it has become the "new" public square. We are having a discourse here, between ideas and issues related to the community in which we live. Sometimes it is necessary to refer to, or point out, what another person is saying. What better way is there than using their words verbatim so there is no room for obfuscation.

Here are a few examples and we can talk about them specifically in the comments section of this post.

We can start by talking about where this picture originally came from.