@Shog9 I'm here

@Undo thanks for that, I went to the wrong tavern

Undo I tried.. the wikipedia stuff is taken from elsewhere, so it was a mistake to say it was taken from wiki

you know what give me the pips, is people are keen to reject my reviews, but they let in the plagiarised content in the first place! LOL

it's like man, criticise sure, but at least get on your keyboard and do a better job than I am.. you know :D

with the excerpts, I was going to route of rewriting them, but it then takes research, more time to do so, which is ok, if that's the preferred option..

because we are expected to be cleaner, expert and mother to the site?

I was going to suggest we create (with SO approval) a plagiarism taskforce or group if it doesn't already exist.. like the SOCVR team

totally agree

I wanted to ask you and someone like Shog about this today ^^

well neither of us have 20k, so that's a pickle :)

yes

there's need to be a penalty for writing or approving plagiarized content

And I'm not getting enough support to apprvoe edit suggestions.

I have the new few weeks to help intensively.. then I won't have so much free time, but do review daily

I'm happy to do whatever can be done to help

where' shog? bloody hopeless :D

we-wait-for-shog9

@Undo no-q-asked pen thing?

I think creating creating a plagiarism taskforce or group is not such a good idea, no offence - 1) I can't think of anyone who would like to pay for this 2) it would piss a lot of people off 3) it would potentially involve lawsuits and that's just trouble that most of people do not want.

@TelkittytheWebDeveloper hmmm yes you could well be right.. I am not good at ideas, but better at assisting others implement theirs. :D Oh and I was not meaning a paid thing.. just a group of people interested in irradicating plagiarism

well I'm already upsetting people attempting to remove it, people are attached to their plagiarised content

but more importantly is this .... Should I conform with the US spelling of plagiarsed?

hm. can it be run through a plagiarism check? A google search that if it trips up top search results that are not from SO, then it needs a human reviewer? If it's original the top search results are from SO, otherwise, they're from all over the web, with wiki usually at the top and then the places wiki has borrowed from, or others have borrowed from wiki following.

I run the excerpt and each paragraph from the wiki separately through goolge and then follow the links

@Undo ah k. I need coffee too many typos

ok so we're faced with three issues:

My friend just called Stackoverflow a cult, she is of course an accountant ... lemme debunk her a lil ...

@TelkittytheWebDeveloper I have one person who regular emails me to tell me how bad SO is.. LOL

@hichris123 that's why we're discussing it here, to formulate plans

There's policies on plagiarism on Se ^^

It could be argued that not all countries comply with copyright law, which is countered by SE does and it's part of the TOS. Is it our job to educate people on the law, or do we just protect the content of the site? actual question - not rhetorical

yes. It does come under the umbrella of copyright law. that and the fact it's lazy, cheating and does nothing to enhance anyone's brain cells

@hichris123 not arbitrary at all, it's like failing review audits

We need review audits for plagiarised content!

has this been suggested??

@hichris123 it takes time to approve wiki edits- well

We need to make it front and centre then and then 80% of people will know, they will still get mad, but they will know

@MsYvette does this person actually use SO?

@TelkittytheWebDeveloper they've come and gone over the past few years. And I did quit some time back, but that was my problem, not SOs and I think this person thinks I will agree with them about how bad it is. I just keep saying I like it. They know how active I am.. The last email was how excited they were to get SE banned off some educational institutions recommended resources list. I said, well I like it and all my unis have recommended it. Haven't heard back, yet.

@Undo I'm polite. :D This is through email btw, not a SE issue at all

Nah this person and I became "friends/acquaitances" as they live nearbyish LOL and he's ok, just has a bug bear about SE

but thanks for that reminder, yes.. I keep my email guarded

How long does Shog generally take to appear after a ping? Or is that going to be closed as off topic - too broad

@MsYvette mentally scarred, I see ... :p

9am where???????? It's 1.41pm here @Quill

@hichris123 trust me it's a problem. I went through them, go through them..

@Quill hey that's good, how do you know that so quickly? a neighbour :D

Do I edit more wikis @Undo? I did get some rejected.

yes

I like the suggestion of making a list for a 20k repper.. LOL how many do you reckon we could get ready for said user?

UTC

@Undo that was Shog's advice

@hichris123 I went through and removed plagiarised content from tag wikis and excerpts, got a lot of people rejecting them. They took the effort to reject the clean up, so who took the effort to accept them in the first place? If it looks shiny it must be ok.. copy pasted stuff, if it takes from the site it must be bad.. me removing shiny copied stuff

My friend does not use SO, she's calling SO a cult based on the amount of time I am spending here, lol

I have always thought tag wiki edits and approvals should be limited to users with some sort of tag badge and higher rep users

@TelkittytheWebDeveloper it's cos there's some amazing people here and you get interesting discussion and it feels purposeful

@Quill true! higher rep users, or badge in related tag, or badges in x number of tags or an aunty in Arkansaw

@Undo we're waiting-for-shog9

@hichris123 removing stolen content is a good idea

@Quill takes a long time and requires good English skills and, frequently, a good understanding of the actual tag.

So there are two issues

Removing stolen content

Improving content

no content is an improvement on stolen content

which is why we need a support group to either/and/or/both edit out the content and approve edits, which many mean following the links provided in the edit summaries to check if it is indeed plagiarised.

And to prevent people from continually adding and approving plagiarised content, so we don't have to edit 100s of posts

I know

But a larger community consensus would be helpful.

@Shog9 mainly wikis, but there are some excerpts that are pure copy pastes

@hichris123 I was wondering that myself, am happy to do that

@Shog9 is it better to delete stolen content or add an attribution

word for word copy

it's like uni, they run your work through some software and it comes out with % of copied content. In the cases we're editing, the % is very high

@Shog9 that's the excerpts, they can't be left blank

@Quill Oooh that's a totally different route

then, go and downvote the four most recent posts from each reviewer who approved it.

@Shog9 ok so with my recent edits, you would prefer me wikis: to wrap plagiarized content in a quote and add a link exerpts: rewrite them

I'm used to coming online with downvoted SO posts, I upset too many people :)

or write crappy posts ;)

I've got a few weeks of time to really devote to helping out on the site, so am happy to make the effort to make it work. So if you want to give some clear direction @Shog9 I will work with @Undo and whomever else is willing and help clean it up

@Shog9 ok how about this. I just do the wikis, add attribution. and is the excerpt is also plagiarised, star it somehow

hehehe

It's hard to detect plagiarism, because like college, most things people write involve digesting what other people wrote, regurgitate the contents in different words. Catching plagiarism is almost like catching dumb people who copy & paste word to word of original authors articles ... either that or witch hunt ...

@Quill yes can we please have honorary diamonds to remove plagiarised content and annoying users from the site :D

@TelkittytheWebDeveloper in this case, it's mostly copy and paste, so it's pretty simple :D

@Shog9 we don't want to mod, we want to pick and choose what we do :p

@Shog9 you are plain mean, encouraging us to add decent content to the site

@Undo so how are we proceeding. Do we edit wikis and put the edited post on the board and if it needs the excerpt edited check that box?

Or is @Doorknob doing the editing from the board?

It takes effort to write a good answer

I'm taking a break from answering and focusing on moderating... for a few weeks.

true, but I'm not writing the stolen wiki. We're trying to clean them up, it's not fair to them expect us to be cleaner, author, expert in one.

I've written wikis sparingly for just that reason

ok, what exactly are we doing?

haha I mean with the stolen content

@Shog9 you understand you are asking people to write wikis that are better than the plagiarised ones and that's difficult and they are likely to be rejected... shrug

ok I will go forth and write original wikis in place of the plagiarised ones and if they're rejected, I will come back here, ping you and complain. Deal

and I will keep a note of the plagiarised excerpts for Undos star chart

I'm good with words, it's understanding the blinking content

I will update my meta answer accordingly

do we get horses for being cowboys? I'd like a chestnut

@Undo hahahahaha

bloody content then, trying to raise the tone of the place

Undo what have I followed you into? :D

ttytt I need a break from programming, so I don't mind the distraction

but don't tell Shog that

I hear ya. I'm learning to cope with the occassional spiteful downvote.. so I can cope

updated

@Undo feel free to edit/improve my meta answer

@Shog9if the excerpt is totally plagiarised, are you happy for me to put in a totally original excerpt, if I'm going to rewrite the wiki the excerpt is not going to be so difficult

now wait 10 days for reply

so help me if these get rejected I'll be whining in here

ok if anyone is interested

what does it do?

you can write a 100-line perl program to create nightmare.

if you need a million-line to do the same thing, it would indicate inefficiency :p

-_-

poor you, had to read a million-line perl program for calculating taxes :p

no wonder nightmares >_<