Staffing Plagiarism

[iReadYerMind 2]

Hello everyone!  I'm here hoping for your opinions on how to handle claims of one of your members using plagiarized characters for your site.

 

I've never run into this particular problem before, and I think that's because for the most part, we all consider RP characters to be pretty personal.  We put our time and effort into them, and as such we respect that others have done the same for THEIR characters.  I know that for me, personally, the idea of stealing someone else's character never occurred to me to do, and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people.  Anyway!

 

Last night, a guest popped up into our CBox and made a claim that one of our members had stolen her character from another site.  The guest did not back up or substantiate their claim, and when we inquired about it, the member in question was adamant that the character had always been HERS, and that SHE was the victim, not the other way around.

 

Personally, I know that plagiarism is a serious accusation.  But I have also been accused of art theft on images that I myself drew from scratch (and spent hours on, no less!) and posted.  People would see the image posted in two or more locations, and assumed that one of those was a thief.  Taking that into consideration, I took to Google and searched for traces of this character on other sites.  I tried copy/pasting the app text into the search, including the most commonly used strings of text.  I visited the link the Guest had provided in the CBox to check for a copyright date, a "posted on" date, or similar, but found nothing except that it was last updated in June of this year.  The earliest iteration of this character I could find was December 2015, using the same RL name as the person on my site, even though the OOC tag she's using differs from that.

 

Someone suggested checking IP addresses, but as I personally know, that can change for a number of reasons, including switching from mobile access to PC, from PC to laptop, from home network to work or school, and so on.  It can occur with a change in internet service provider, or sometimes even by moving houses, AND if you have a dynamic IP address, it can change from day to day.  So checking IP isn't the best way to go about that, unfortunately.

 

So, given all that I've listed above, how would you admin handle a situation like this one on your forum?  I'd like to avoid placing blame or pointing fingers.  At this point I have asked the member for evidence that this character is hers, such as logging into existing apps and making a note which contains our site name so that we know they are indeed hers.  I've also made it clear that while we value her as a member, we cannot condone plagiarism and she may need to re-write the app from scratch as opposed to copy/pasting it directly from another site.

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

[Elena 546]

I have seen also plenty of plagiarism allegations which weren't true. Some were in good faith, some were done in revenge. I think you did it well, if the site in cause is still alive/ allows for more posts.

[Morrigan 1,826]

Well my first thing would have been quite plainly, don't accuse your member of the deed as you don't have proof that she did it yet. Being that you already have I won't go back on that but here's the skinny as plagiarism is a big deal but people throw it around so regularly that it's hard to tell when something is actually copied or someone is just claiming it is, it very well could be that they created a character based off a wanted ad and the person believes that since it was originally their wanted ad then it is there property despite the fact that the person both fleshed out the character and made it their own and even possibly made significant changes in re-writes to make it more an individualized character.

 

Irregardless I still think you need to take the side of your member.

 

Who the fuck is this random guest pointing fingers? What are they to you? What solid proof did they provide to you that makes you question your member's validity other then a link to probably copyscape? Why did they pop in your cBox instead of properly reporting through a PM or other more direct medium that wasn't disruptive to your site?

 

For me you always have to take the side of your member, innocent until proven guilty to the fullest. The reason for this is because if you accuse this member it puts them on the defensive and will likely start seeing behavior that may or may not be taking place, like someone is gunning for them to get banned since this incident.

 

Now that being said (sorry for the long blah blah about this stuff but I've had to deal a lot with the sites claiming being plagiarized due to silly things including member introductions that someone claimed to be stolen... I didn't know you could steal your own content but whatever). I would recommend just posting a general notice after the whole thing has been resolved, no matter the outcome, and be understanding to the person that is being accused especially if it ends up not being true.

 

Best advice I have though, is make sure that the site is safe in the end so do what you have to.

[iReadYerMind 2]

2 hours ago, Morrigan said:

Well my first thing would have been quite plainly, don't accuse your member of the deed as you don't have proof that she did it yet. Being that you already have I won't go back on that but here's the skinny as plagiarism is a big deal but people throw it around so regularly that it's hard to tell when something is actually copied or someone is just claiming it is, it very well could be that they created a character based off a wanted ad and the person believes that since it was originally their wanted ad then it is there property despite the fact that the person both fleshed out the character and made it their own and even possibly made significant changes in re-writes to make it more an individualized character.

 

Irregardless I still think you need to take the side of your member.

 

Who the fuck is this random guest pointing fingers? What are they to you? What solid proof did they provide to you that makes you question your member's validity other then a link to probably copyscape? Why did they pop in your cBox instead of properly reporting through a PM or other more direct medium that wasn't disruptive to your site?

 

For me you always have to take the side of your member, innocent until proven guilty to the fullest. The reason for this is because if you accuse this member it puts them on the defensive and will likely start seeing behavior that may or may not be taking place, like someone is gunning for them to get banned since this incident.

 

Now that being said (sorry for the long blah blah about this stuff but I've had to deal a lot with the sites claiming being plagiarized due to silly things including member introductions that someone claimed to be stolen... I didn't know you could steal your own content but whatever). I would recommend just posting a general notice after the whole thing has been resolved, no matter the outcome, and be understanding to the person that is being accused especially if it ends up not being true.

 

Best advice I have though, is make sure that the site is safe in the end so do what you have to.

 

There were no accusations from me. 

 

The person in question happened to be online in the CBox when the guest popped in and made the claim.   The inquiry was more along the lines of, "What on Earth was THAT?" from just about everyone who saw the random Guest comment at the time.   Nobody marched over to the member in question and said, "Thief!" or anything along those lines.  The member offered to show proof that the character belonged to her without my prompting.   

 

I'm sorry if my original post lead you to believe otherwise, but there were no accusations from staff, only from that guest.

 

Anyway, shortly afterward, a third person PMed me saying that a guest had done the same random drive-by on their site, and that they had "proved" that the member was indeed a plagiarizer.   That person, however, did not offer to share this proof.  

 

So now we have two people claiming that this member is stealing characters.  And I don't mean taking the idea of a character and using it, I mean this application is word-for-word the same across several sites.

Edited August 26, 2016 by iReadYerMind

[Morrigan 1,826]

That makes me feel hinky from the administrative sense. It makes my spidey senses tingle like you are not getting the whole story here. It's odd enough that a guest came into the chat box and now not even a little while later a more appropriate channel is reached with still no proof?

 

It almost feels like a vendetta thing. I've actually seen it happen before where a slew of people jump on a "you're guilty" bandwagon (not from your site but from others) and start finding ways to harass people they don't like whether it be like this or similar techniques including finding false information to prove themselves right.

 

I would, at this point, heir to the side of caution with the accusers.

 

An example of a plagiarism thing that went awry we once had a person preemptively come and start accusing a site, that hadn't even posted in our directory, of an issue with plagiarism. When we found out the whole story in ended up that the site in question actually went through the site with the person as they were worried about it and any similarities as it was a rough start between the two with very similar concepts and whatnot and the admin of site 2 (the accused) went to the admin of site 1 (the accuser) and made sure they worked together so they knew their content wasn't copied. The site in question that was doing the accusing actually APPROVED of the fact that they were not plagiarizing and then still went on a crusade about it anyways.

[iReadYerMind 2]

I agree, it's fishy.  If I was going to go out of my way to go to a site and report plagiarism, you can bet I would bring proof of the theft with me.   Documentation that includes a creation date, the player's contact info, something.  Not just "She's stealing!" -vanishes in a puff of smoke-

 

People can be so nasty to one another.

 

As I mentioned in my first post, I've experienced that BS before first hand.  Someone saw my artwork, claimed I stole or traced it without talking to me about it, and went on this rampage around a few of the communities I'm in and started telling everyone I'm stealing art.  This was a perfect stranger, someone I had never met or spoken with  before, who felt it was their job to tell everyone that I was stealing.  I mean, I know the internet's full of Scumbag Steves, but c'mon. xD

 

Anyway. 

 

I guess what I was hoping was that someone had a decent way of getting to the bottom of a plagiarism claim.  But I guess we've done all we can for now.

[Morrigan 1,826]

Legit that's all you can do. Unfortunately without proof from the accuser side (I mean even copyscape is fishy because if I went and posted my profile into copyscape if I've used it before (which is likely as I hate writing profiles) then it would say I was plagiarizing my own work. Really just need your member to pony up the proof and then do away with it.

[Death Kitten 200]

Without any proof to back it up, there's not much you can do. Respond to any further accusations with a boilerplate "this is how you submit evidence, without evidence there is nothing we can do" and then just don't pay attention to the stupid if they don't pony up evidence.

 

There's really nothing more to do than that. If that's the full extent of a response they get, they'll eventually give up and go away if they're not legit. And if they are? They'll figure out how to prove they're legit.

 

[txernest 0]

As someone who recently found a plagiarized character from her site on another site, I shall tell you why the guest's story seems fishy.

 

I was offended when I found this character. I don't talk to the person in question anymore, because she was banned from my site as no one really appreciated the way that she handled a few quite important things. However, I did not accuse the member in the cbox. I created an account with the name of the character as they were originally created and messaged the admins from the privacy of that account with all the information that made it clear that this character was plagiarized.

 

I then waited.

 

I am currently still rather peeved as they have not removed the plagiarized character as I requested, but I literally can't do anything else. But this character is a character that was created using backstory clearly stated on our site to be copyright us and was originally played by the creator of my site before being picked up by this other person (for those of you that don't know, I did not create Mortal Ends, I have simply been running it for most of its life). When this person picked up the character, they did so with what I thought was the understanding that the character had been created by myself and the original creator of my site. Then while advertising I found a Suspiciously Similar Character after our relationship with this person exploded and she was banned. She had taken the backstory and character and utilized them in whole on another site.

 

I sent a detailed message, with links, to the admins (that I will not reproduce here as I do not wish to call this person out in specific in public). If the guest in question is not willing to go to this length to get to the bottom of their own accusation, then it is likely someone angry trying to get back at someone else. Someone who knows they are in the right would not mind making more permanent proof of their accusation happening. Also, when you're plagiarized it feels quite personal, I can tell you. It's not something I felt like airing in the open. It was just something that I wanted quietly removed.

 

It's very easy to get someone else to help you with accusations if you're not utilizing actual proof, either because you have a friend already on that site or because, as Morrigan stated, someone else on the site doesn't like the person in question and is jumping on the bandwagon after seeing the public discussion. Honestly, if they aren't willing to present proof, you can't do anything. If they do eventually cough up proof and it's not clear what's going on, then go with your gut on who's telling the truth. There's not much else you can do. If the accusations are false, they'll never submit proof. They were just stirring up drama.

[Guest Archaic Cyborg]

It sounds like someone has a vendetta against the 'thief'. It's too easy for ANYONE to post as a guest and point fingers, stirring up a shitstorm. Knee-jerk reactions, and so on.

 

if the accusor has disappeared or won't offer evidence, welp, you should move on! For someone to cry THIEEEF, there would have to be proof. You can't just claim theft over nothing. :T for legit cases.

[Lusitano 0]

I agree with Blackjack Bart. If the accuser can't or won't offer up evidence of their claim, I'd just leave it alone. I wouldn't penalize the member if some random guesty fish in the cbox won't back up their claim.

[iReadYerMind 2]

Thanks for your feedback, guys.  I appreciate it!

[Morrigan 1,826]

54 minutes ago, SithLordOfSnark said:

A couple weeks ago, a guest on my panfandom accused my Co-Admin of being a known thief. The proof they handed me only proved said person recycles her apps, because they were ALL the same person.

Either this guest that accused her was a moron or unable to read, and I even said as much.

I have fortunately never been accused of that but the potential is there. The only saving grace that I have is that I haven't changed my OOC name in over 10 years.

[Kaycakes 78]

For the OP, was anything ever resolved? I watched a similar case of this popping up all over a few sites in the past month or so, had to take part in it myself once.

 

[iReadYerMind 2]

16 hours ago, kay said:

For the OP, was anything ever resolved? I watched a similar case of this popping up all over a few sites in the past month or so, had to take part in it myself once.

 

 

Because no one provided verifiable proof that my member was actually stealing anything, and the sites I found this app posted on all used the same email address as my member (if not the same OOC name), we told the user that she is welcome to continue RPing on the site with her app as-is, but that we recommended she revamp the app at her convenience to prevent any further claims or drama from hateful people.

 

She found that decision to be fair and is still a good member of our site, and the BS claims from guests have stopped. She's working on revamping the application as her schedule allows.

 

 I'm pretty sure the original claim was just someone being pissy with a personal vendetta against her.