Plagiarism

[mdk]

Yesterday it was brought to our attention that RPGC regular @Tip has submitted multiple plagiarized entries into the official contest. We take this very seriously. Because I was complacent in policing entries, @Tip was able to use a poem by Aleister Crowley to win RPGC #2, as well as receiving unwarranted accolades, praise, and attention. Those awards are being removed, and @Tip is barred from all future participation in the RPG contest subforum.

For my part, I apologize to RPGC contestants who were cheated out of a fair chance at honest competition. I was complacent, and I allowed foul play to spoil the results. We'll be implementing safeguards in the future, but we're only human -- this time, @Impaqt caught the plagiarism first, and next time it might be you! We've all got a good thing going here -- help us keep it that way.

We're a writing site, and we're all writers here. It's safe to assume that we all feel pretty similarly about stealing other people's creative works. In light of that, I consider the matter, as it concerns @Tip, CLOSED. There is no need to beat a dead horse -- that user should be considered 'appropriately warned and penalized.' At this point we're interested in what happens next, not what happened last month. To that end, there will be no further discussion of this instance of plagiarism. That said, we have two outstanding issues on which we'd love to hear your input:

1. RPGC #2 was technically won by Aleister Crowley, who, to my knowledge, had no intentions on entering said competition. Runners-up were our own @RomanAria and @Ellri, and there were a wealth of other fantastic entries as well. We're interested in what the community would like to see done with those results -- currently, the offending entry has been stripped of its awards and all other prizes remain as they were. Would you like us to revisit that contest?

2. In the future, we will need to do more to protect the integrity of these contests. I am loathe to put any obstacles between a writer and their audience, but clearly I have not done enough. We will be checking all current and future entries to the best of our ability; is there anything else you would like us to do in the future to prevent plagiarism?

These areas are open for conversation. @Tip is not. This is not a feeding frenzy -- we will be civil and Fonz-cool. If you have thoughts about that user, keep them. This thread will be moderated as necessary to ensure that we remain focused on moving forwards. Thank you for understanding, and my sincerest apologies once again for not catching this myself. Stay classy, RPG!

[Impaqt]

I was not involved in that particular RPGC, but it would seem only fair to me to see @RomanAria and @Ellri receive credit for first place. Aleister Crowley had a wonderful piece that is definitely worth some props, but he is not a member of Guild. (Or at least that I'm aware of anyways.) And he certainly didn't voluntarily enter into the contest. No, that winning title belong rightfully to the two mentioned. The bonuses, I don't feel are a big deal to take a look at. I suppose if someone really wanted to, taking a re-look at the contest could be a thing, but there is no doubt in my mind that those two deserve the Winning title for RPGC #2.

I'm not sure there is a lot more that can be done to prevent plagiarism than to simply check for it. And not just you guys. It's hard telling where something might have come from, and a Google check might not always bring something up. mdk might google it and nothing come up, but someone else might just recognize it from something else. The Contest Mods are in charge of running the contest, but it's up to all of us as a community to be resilient and make sure to keep each other in check so that we can grow as a prosperous community. Nothing about this really works without a large group of involvement. Whether that be entering the contest, reviewing, or stepping up if you see something fishy going on. That's really all there is to it. I'm sure the person involved in this would have been caught eventually, whether by me or someone else that felt something was off.

I know you and the rest of the crew are beating yourselves up about it, mdk, but it happens. Terminal even sent me a very embarrassed message of thanks for finding it, and they aren't even involved with RPGC, but the other contest. But you guys don't really need to worry about it. You're doing your job to the best of your ability, and yes, this was something that was overlooked, but we know better now. Sadly, not everyone can be trusted. You guys have still been doing a wonderful job in organizing wonderful contest. What are people going to blame you for? Being Human? Like I said, these things happen. Plagiarism is just one way people can cheat. We just need to be watchful and vigilant. All of us. There is no need to beat yourselves up over it. Just continue to be mindful and bringing us awesome contest that we enjoy! :D

[Dedonus]

Just as Impaqt had said, I don't think @mdk and the RPGC crew should beat themselves up too much over this. Who would have thought someone would submit multiple plagiarized works for a contest that would give you, what, a self-esteem boast from praise and a little electronic trophy. Unfortunately, this is one example where the saying "this is the reason why we cannot have nice things" applies. I'm sure we all thought that no one would plagiarize an entry. I don't know about those who live outside of the US, but plagiarism (or rather not plagiarizing) is shoved down our throats from high school and even through college. At least for me, I thought that, since there was no "real" prize in this contest besides the two things I already mentioned, there was no real motivation to "cheat". Apparently, I (and probably many of us) was wrong.

I think one problem was that many of us have stated multiple times that we were uncomfortable giving critiques on the poetry. I did not really read the poetry entries because I knew I would not be able to give any good feedback. I'm sure I was not the only one who did this. Since probably not all of us took a close look at some of the entries, the plagiarized poems were able to slip through the cracks, so to speak. So, again, just as Impaqt has already said, part of the task of finding any plagiarism must be taken up by the community, too, since many of us are the ones reviewing the entries.

I don't know what else can be done. Sure, we could throw the entries through programs that check for plagiarism. However, these will not always catch cases of plagiarism for various reasons (limitations on the framework for Google, etc.).

[Ellri]

Being one of the two runner-ups, we don't really feel it is appropriate for us to give an opinion on what should happen to that particular contest's results (beyond that which has been done).

But we do have a suggestion... Both schools and universities have programs/tools that can be used for identifying plagiarism at their disposal. Maybe such could be acquired to test entries?

[mdk]

Thanks for the support, folks. We're gonna keep on top of this and keep bringing you contests, and your help is much appreciated. One thing I forgot to mention -- if you DO find a case of suspected plagiarism, please bring it directly to the appropriate contest staff via PM so that we can do our thing. @Terminal and I are planning on drawing up comprehensive guidelines on how to handle it, which should be available in the next couple days, and those guidelines will supercede anything I've previously said, but for now -- talk to us directly and we'll handle it just as quick as we can.

[darkwolf687]

Given that Mr Crowley is long since deceased I think the reward should automatically fall to the runners up, though to honour Crowley for indeed it was his entry which won he should certainly receive an honourable mention (Indeed, it's certainly what he would have wanted, having been a bit of an arrogant sod.)

Tip is not the first to cheat in a contest and certainly won't be the last. The team running this event has underestimated the natural human desire for attention and praise regardless of how small and concordantly the human tendency to use underhanded methods to achieve its goals. This is perhaps to their credit, as it displays that unlike myself they are not a bunch of cynics and still have some faith in humanity.

While google searches are not a sure fire way they are still very useful; Placing random excerpts from a text into google will usually bring up that text. Of course, obviously some texts will have similarities to others; I have seen instances where people have replicated nearly an entire sentence innocently (Perhaps subconsciously) so when the results come up quickly scanning through it to ensure it is plagiarism and not just bad luck is a must. There are multiple tools on the internet for checking plagiarism; While they are not the most reliable tools (Indeed, they sometimes pick up original work as being plagiarised), should you run a text through two of these tools and they both return a 'plagiarised' result then at least you know what to look into with some more depth. Naturally, you will not catch people out people 100% of the time but had this been done the offending entries would have been discovered and removed. In fact, just google searching the first two lines of 'Conquer all' brings up 'Power', the original work.

tldr; In my experience, I have found that most stolen work can be found simply by putting the beginning or end of several paragraphs into a search engine individually and checking them. Plagiarism tools can be lying bastards but can lend a hand in knowing what to give more attention to.

[Keyguyperson]

On the subject of who gets the actual recognition, I think the best option is to just give it to the runner-ups. I'd prefer that a second vote be held so people that voted for the plagiarized entry could be given the opportunity to vote for one of the original entries, but I would imagine that such a thing would be a nightmare to organize.

[mdk]

On the subject of who gets the actual recognition, I think the best option is to just give it to the runner-ups. I'd prefer that a second vote be held so people that voted for the plagiarized entry could be given the opportunity to vote for one of the original entries, but I would imagine that such a thing would be a nightmare to organize.

@Keyguyperson

We've been talking to the runners-up and among the staff and we're pretty close to presenting new results. I'll fill everyone in on the whole process tomorrow -- I'm trying to make sure we cover all the bases, so that we can use a similar process again in the future if (god forbid) we have to do something like this again.

[mdk]

Alright, as promised, I'm happy to announce that @Ellri is being awarded a long-overdue WIN for RPGC #2! There's a separate thread for congratulations-- here, I'll focus on our process. This is what we did.

First, when we'd confirmed the plagiarism, I talked to the runners-up privately. In this case we could've stopped there, but I'm sorta stubborn and I wanted to build a precedent, so after getting their thoughts I held a staff vote, where we all conclusively agreed that @Ellri should be awarded the win. We didn't hold a community-wide runoff vote in this case, but in the future, that would be the next option -- if we couldn't agree on a winner administratively (or if we felt like it was otherwise justified) then we'd hold a special head-to-head (-to-head or however many necessary) to decide. And if that was still deadlocked, we'd have to sort out ties.

Though again -- it should never come up, because we're not gonna let something like this happen again. BUT IF IT DOES, we'll follow similar steps to resolve a previous contest. That's our current working model on how to resolve something.