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Suggestion Stolen Content - an open discussion.

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Saber said:
While plagiarism is a very serious accusation, staff takes the reports seriously and looks into both user's content to compare the two. After that, there tends to be a discussion on whether it is, or isn't plagiarism. While going over your specific report, as well as the accused member, there was no exact copy/paste of any content; IE: pairings, plots, wording, or the like.

As you stated in your original post, Rule 12 says that Plagiarism (the copying of another member's content, includes writing, art, and Request Threads/plot ideas, and claiming them as your own) is not tolerated. This includes posting ideas from other members that you acknowledge are not your own, but that you do not have permission to use.

Since the accused member stated they took inspiration from your RT, but did not copy/paste any content, Staff didn't find much could be done in terms of discipline. Which, a member of staff would be messaging you about sometime today. While Rule 12 mentions content, and what is included in that content, you'll find that coding and format are excluded. This would be very difficult to police since so many coded formats can see similar. My recommendation to anyone that is having issues with feeling that their RTs are being plagiarized, would be to put a disclaimer in their thread that recommends either asking for permission, or not using their RT likeness at all.

Apologies if you feel this wasn't handled in a timely manner, but plagiarism reports do usually take more than a couple minutes of discussion amongst staff if it's not a straight forward case of someone literally copying someone's RT word for word.
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Could you please say a little more about this...

1. First, you said the rule does not cover coding and format. (Which honestly, would be my preference, to show my cards.)

2. And yet, you're also saying as a recommendation, the poster might wish to make clear if they wish to control dissemination of not only the substantive text content, but perhaps also coding or format.

Are we to take #2 to be strictly between the poster and other users, entirely a matter of personal choice? Or is it something that we should understand staff are going to use to judge users in some way?

Then there's Lady Bloody Ava suggesting that some code "could" be somehow tagged as "exclusively for yours truly." Which I sincerely hope is merely a technical possibility being mentioned. I gathered that #1 was the rule and I would be comfortable leaving it at that. I don't want to be constantly worrying about precisely how many bullet point symbols I can repost without a quotation block before someone's buried invisible proprietary code tags me and a sympathetic admin starts looking down on me for it. Or would there be uniform rules for the location and color, font size of warning messages? I'm not selling my own page design, but I'd rather not have to worry about all this when I see a couple blocks that actually got a picture oriented properly as I never can in this system, somewhere.
 
jennica enslaved said:
Could you please say a little more about this...

1. First, you said the rule does not cover coding and format. (Which honestly, would be my preference, to show my cards.)

2. And yet, you're also saying as a recommendation, the poster might wish to make clear if they wish to control dissemination of not only the substantive text content, but perhaps also coding or format.

Are we to take #2 to be strictly between the poster and other users, entirely a matter of personal choice? Or is it something that we should understand staff are going to use to judge users in some way?

Then there's Lady Bloody Ava suggesting that some code "could" be somehow tagged as "exclusively for yours truly." Which I sincerely hope is merely a technical possibility being mentioned. I gathered that #1 was the rule and I would be comfortable leaving it at that. I don't want to be constantly worrying about precisely how many bullet point symbols I can repost without a quotation block before someone's buried invisible proprietary code tags me and a sympathetic admin starts looking down on me for it. Or would there be uniform rules for the location and color, font size of warning messages? I'm not selling my own page design, but I'd rather not have to worry about all this when I see a couple blocks that actually got a picture oriented properly as I never can in this system, somewhere.
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Number two is what it is, it's a recommendation. Mainly so if someone reports another coding "plagiarism" report and they are contacted saying it's not plagiarism because of A, B, and C; if there is a disclaimer, it could be taken a little more seriously. I'll be transparent, this isn't a large issue on the site because as I stated before, it is hard to police coding and formatting when most request threads can be coded or formatted similarly without realizing or even using code at all.

If you were to copy and paste a code that is the exact same as someone else's and didn't change a thing, including the content, ie; pairings, plots, text color, images, and wording; that could get you in trouble. How many bullet points and header text font isn't going to land you in trouble since that would be very hard to say is "uniquely someone else's".
 
Saber said:
Number two is what it is, it's a recommendation. Mainly so if someone reports another coding "plagiarism" report and they are contacted saying it's not plagiarism because of A, B, and C; if there is a disclaimer, it could be taken a little more seriously. I'll be transparent, this isn't a large issue on the site because as I stated before, it is hard to police coding and formatting when most request threads can be coded or formatted similarly without realizing or even using code at all.

If you were to copy and paste a code that is the exact same as someone else's and didn't change a thing, including the content, ie; pairings, plots, text color, images, and wording; that could get you in trouble. How many bullet points and header text font isn't going to land you in trouble since that would be very hard to say is "uniquely someone else's".
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I write in many different markup and programming languages, and this is exactly how it is; it is literally impossible to write your own stuff in many cases without coding it the same way as someone else's. If someone wants to put a heading under a heading, then a table under that, how is that enforceable? It's not. You can't stop people from using the markup which BBCode and other languages provide, because it is often the only way to write something. I usually focus more on the content than the formatting, because the latter is extremely difficult to police, so I know how this is for staff.
 
I can remember once I ran a forum of my own. I had a very simply BB Code form that was like:

[Name]
[Age]
[Gender]
[Race]

It was as simple as that, a four section bio, and someone actually tried to get me kicked off a board for plagarism over a four section BB code bio. So this code thing, can be a little over the top sometimes. I hope you do not get that anal, frankly. While I understand if something is intricate and a lot of work put into it, someone could get a little peeved, there should be common sense applied.
 
Nera9948 said:
I can remember once I ran a forum of my own. I had a very simply BB Code form that was like:

[Name]
[Age]
[Gender]
[Race]

It was as simple as that, a four section bio, and someone actually tried to get me kicked off a board for plagarism over a four section BB code bio. So this code thing, can be a little over the top sometimes. I hope you do not get that anal, frankly. While I understand if something is intricate and a lot of work put into it, someone could get a little peeved, there should be common sense applied.
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I've already addressed this in my post that tsukasa replied to.
 
For whatever my opinion is worth...

In a forum setting such as this, you can't really put a "copyright" on formatting. We're all using the same BBCode to make our threads, so formatting and layout is going to be tricky to police.

Content is a little easier to track, but even then there are only so many ideas available before you start seeing the same ideas appearing in different threads.

If you are going to copy from another person's thread:
- have a little courtesy and at least check in to make sure it's okay (you'll probably find that, if you ask, you'll get a positive reply 95% of the time);
- consider giving credit to the person you copy from.
 
Sync said:
In a forum setting such as this, you can't really put a "copyright" on formatting. We're all using the same BBCode to make our threads, so formatting and layout is going to be tricky to police.

Content is a little easier to track, but even then there are only so many ideas available before you start seeing the same ideas appearing in different threads.
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I agree. In projects I work with, reverse engineering of programming languages and code (even outside of simple formatting) happens on a daily basis, and while it's going to end up with (hopefully) the same result as the original, what is of utmost importance is that the content is not taken from the original, or the project will be over as soon as the original code copyright owner discovers it; writing something to have the same result, but using different content to achieve that, is how it must be done, and is perfectly legal. BBCode and HTML etc which are simply markup languages and almost exclusively used for formatting is a different story, and it's extremely rare you'll ever find anyone facing legal ramifications for it, because it's just not possible to police that in most cases.

By saying only specific people can have specific layouts, you're effectively saying "only that person can have a heading, and only that person can have tables within spoilers." etc; I don't see logic in that. However, taking your content, such as plots or characters down to the exact specifics is definitely questionable and should be looked into, because that isn't just being inspired and using the same idea in your own way, it is using the same idea in the same way, thus taking credit for that implementation, which is what copyright can enforce.
 
Saber said:
Number two is what it is, it's a recommendation. Mainly so if someone reports another coding "plagiarism" report and they are contacted saying it's not plagiarism because of A, B, and C; if there is a disclaimer, it could be taken a little more seriously. I'll be transparent, this isn't a large issue on the site because as I stated before, it is hard to police coding and formatting when most request threads can be coded or formatted similarly without realizing or even using code at all.

If you were to copy and paste a code that is the exact same as someone else's and didn't change a thing, including the content, ie; pairings, plots, text color, images, and wording; that could get you in trouble. How many bullet points and header text font isn't going to land you in trouble since that would be very hard to say is "uniquely someone else's".
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Thank you! That is much clearer for me. I was just getting a bit nervous, seeing different people with authority having various degrees or types of suggestions that might or might not recognize format also as at least in principle, intended to be proprietary.

I don't want to say you shouldn't make suggestions or judgment calls. And at a more personal ("sake of my sanity") level, I don't like when long passages of content are copied word for word myself. I just wanted to feel very clear about what's official for format. I rarely copy it at great length, but it is an area where I often struggle. I even struggle to remember how I did things I did myself a few months ago without copying my own and then sometimes while I'm thinking about it or trying to jiggle it with spacebar and moving brackets all over to experiment, I notice a block somewhere else that accomplishes a similar goal so much more elegantly. If I'm copying a long page's headings/spacing to start or a lengthy format idea, I usually ask if they won't mind, but I feel a lot more comfortable not having to negotiate every time over format alone.

That helped a lot. Thank you again!
 
At the risk of being yelled at, I would like to offer a dissenting opinion.

For context, I have been writing software for a living for all of my adult life (which is longer than the median on this site, without getting into numbers).
I am more active on other forums than on BMR so you won't find much of my content here, but you can find examples on Elliquiy and Rachel's Haven.

I am a strong believer that ideas do not originate in vacuum, and are almost universally influenced by other ideas by other people. In fact, I am a regular contributor to an Elliquiy thread where people share BBCode tricks (note that the BBCode on E is less advanced so more creative tricks are needed to achieve nice results). I have had a couple of people approach me, mentioning that they copied the format of some of my posts, which I took as a compliment.

I checked the formatting of what I believe to be the request thread in question, and while it is nice, I have seen very similar formatting on other web sites and even in print -- definitely predating the ones posted here. With all due respect to the effort that went into it, I would not call using a similar (or even very similar) formatting stealing, plagiarism, or copyright infringement. As far as the content goes, I see one-line settings, pairings, and canons, none of which is eligible for copyright protection.

I also tried to search for several random phrases from those request posts to see if any other members reused them verbatim, and could not find any, so I don't see any evidence of blatant plagiarism that I can comment on. I would very much like to see an example of the so called "stealing", so if anyone comes across one, please point me that way. Who knows, maybe it will make me change my opinion.
 
Lurker said:
At the risk of being yelled at, I would like to offer a dissenting opinion.

For context, I have been writing software for a living for all of my adult life (which is longer than the median on this site, without getting into numbers).
I am more active on other forums than on BMR so you won't find much of my content here, but you can find examples on Elliquiy and Rachel's Haven.

I am a strong believer that ideas do not originate in vacuum, and are almost universally influenced by other ideas by other people. In fact, I am a regular contributor to an Elliquiy thread where people share BBCode tricks (note that the BBCode on E is less advanced so more creative tricks are needed to achieve nice results). I have had a couple of people approach me, mentioning that they copied the format of some of my posts, which I took as a compliment.

I checked the formatting of what I believe to be the request thread in question, and while it is nice, I have seen very similar formatting on other web sites and even in print -- definitely predating the ones posted here. With all due respect to the effort that went into it, I would not call using a similar (or even very similar) formatting stealing, plagiarism, or copyright infringement. As far as the content goes, I see one-line settings, pairings, and canons, none of which is eligible for copyright protection.

I also tried to search for several random phrases from those request posts to see if any other members reused them verbatim, and could not find any, so I don't see any evidence of blatant plagiarism that I can comment on. I would very much like to see an example of the so called "stealing", so if anyone comes across one, please point me that way. Who knows, maybe it will make me change my opinion.
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Same view, here, also as a software developer (I posted this, above, so this post is mostly a repeat of what I've already said). It's extremely difficult to make anything different to other people's when it comes to BBCode, same as HTML etc, since it is intrinsically how it works, and you can't exactly copyright how something is designed to be used. If you're talking original plots and characters, sure, but certainly not the formatting. I just decided to open-source my formatting, anyway, as protection against people saying others are stealing my code; it's more for protection of users of my code than for myself.
 
Since the discussion on this subject has been dead for over a week until today, the thread is going to be locked.
 
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