Quality RP or plagiarism?

[Maxington]

I've been observing these discussions with great intent and am intrigued by their content. In recognition of my sins, I have wholeheartedly accepted the down-ranking and all that comes with it. I am willing to accept any punishment that would be given to me by moderation and the players at large. I'm willing to be inactivated, banned or whatever may please the community. I should be held as an example of what not to do. It's clear what I did was wrong and I'm willing to suffer the consequences of that, regardless of how hard said punishment may be. Vox Populi, Vox Dei

[jamescfm]

Five days later and none of the players involved in plagiarism have been punished. In fact a couple of them are currently engaging in spamming the Particracy Classic Discord with messages claiming that they did nothing wrong. I will reiterate my previous question: what action will Moderation be taking to deal with the problem?

[Augustus Germanus]

I have kept a weak interest in this topic, simply because of the fact that I don't engage in plagiarism, but I have a few questions after reading James' last comment. First off, is the ban on plagiarism now official? And second, have players who have engaged in plagiarism kept engaging it since this discussion started? Thank you.

[Zanz]

Five days later and none of the players involved in plagiarism have been punished. In fact a couple of them are currently engaging in spamming the Particracy Classic Discord with messages claiming that they did nothing wrong. I will reiterate my previous question: what action will Moderation be taking to deal with the problem?

Well, times have changed - what's the word on this one, now that you're a mod, James?

[jamescfm]

All of the players known to be involved in plagiarism have been notified that their behaviour was unacceptable and each of the countries where plagiarism contributed to role-play have been downgraded in the economic and military rankings. From this point on it should be absolutely clear that Moderation will not tolerate plagiarism. No room for second chances or the benefit of the doubt will be allowed, given the nature of the offence, and there will be particular scrutiny for those players who have been shown to have engaged in plagiarism in the past.

From a personal point of view, I understand the frustration and resentment that players might feel about the fact that plagiarism went unpunished for this long and the impact it has had on role-play in the game. The only thing that I can say to the player base is that this will not be allowed to happen again and that we will attempt to meaningfully engage with players about how they feel the game's structures can be reformed to stop players feeling that plagiarism is acceptable.

[jamescfm]

Based on the feedback raised elsewhere, Moderation has removed all posts from the Forum that we know to be plagiarised. Some of these posts were brought to public attention by other players while in other cases, the plagiarisers revealed the information to Moderation. If you find that there are other posts that appear to be plagiarised then we encourage you to contact us in privately so that it can be dealt with.

At the moment, it appears that at least twenty-one plagiarised posts were published in national news threads. The earliest of these is from the end of January and the most recent from a couple of days before this thread was created and the plagiarism became public knowledge. Not only is this a longer period than we had previously been led to believe, it also indicates that plagiarism more widespread than I was aware.

I appeal once again to players, if you have engaged in plagiarism that you know has not been identified then you absolutely must reveal this information to Moderation, so that we can remove the posts and keep a record of the information.

[Aquinas]

Based on the feedback raised elsewhere, Moderation has removed all posts from the Forum that we know to be plagiarised. Some of these posts were brought to public attention by other players while in other cases, the plagiarisers revealed the information to Moderation. If you find that there are other posts that appear to be plagiarised then we encourage you to contact us in privately so that it can be dealt with.

At the moment, it appears that at least twenty-one plagiarised posts were published in national news threads. The earliest of these is from the end of January and the most recent from a couple of days before this thread was created and the plagiarism became public knowledge. Not only is this a longer period than we had previously been led to believe, it also indicates that plagiarism more widespread than I was aware.

I appeal once again to players, if you have engaged in plagiarism that you know has not been identified then you absolutely must reveal this information to Moderation, so that we can remove the posts and keep a record of the information.

Whilst I am pleased this has been done, one of the questions raised by this is: why did neither Moderation nor the plagiarisers themselves begin removing the plagiarised content until I pointed out yesterday that it had not been removed? This is something I find really, really odd, to put it diplomatically...

Even more odd is that one of the excuses being offered for the plagiarisers not removing their plagiarised content is that despite churning out RP posts like Dame Barbara Cartland used to churn out trashy romance novels....apparently they do not know how to edit a post on this forum (despite having spent so much time here...).

Time for a quick player education exercise then...



Here is my very first RP news post on this forum. Yes, it's ancient, isn't it? Back in the days when real-life references like "Catholic" were not banned.

Now all I need to do is click on the "EDIT" button on the top right hand side of the screen...



And voila! Now I can edit the post to my heart's content (despite the fact it is more than 9 years old), removing anything I might want to remove and adding anything I might want to add. When I've finished, all I need to do is press the "SUBMIT" button at the bottom.

The only posts players cannot edit are those that are locked, and that is something very rare. Editing those will require a Moderator.

So guys, if you've been plagiarising, please fess up to Moderation about what you've done, and remove your plagiarised content from the forum as soon as you can. As I explained on my post on the other thread, having plagiarised content on this forum is not good, and it does expose us to certain risks.

[jamescfm]

Removing the plagiarised posts as soon as they were discovered might have looked suspicious on the part of the players involved, it is understandable that they did not want to do so. For this reason, Moderation chose to keep a record of the plagiarised posts for reference purposes instead of removing them. When it was brought to our attention that the existence of plagiarised content on the Forum might cause wider problems, the posts were removed. Players cannot remove posts once a more recent reply exists in a thread- only Moderators have this permission- and I think this is what the players meant. Thanks again for bringing the issue to our attention.

[Aquinas]

Removing the plagiarised posts as soon as they were discovered might have looked suspicious on the part of the players involved, it is understandable that they did not want to do so. For this reason, Moderation chose to keep a record of the plagiarised posts for reference purposes instead of removing them. When it was brought to our attention that the existence of plagiarised content on the Forum might cause wider problems, the posts were removed.

Did it occur to you that purposely maintaining plagiarised content on a website you are responsible for, even if only for "reference purposes" (whatever that means), might be perceived theoretically or at least potentially as, well... p̶l̶a̶g̶i̶a̶r̶i̶s̶m̶ not 100% desirable?

Out of curiosity, how long were you planning to leave the plagiarised posts up for? Or was there simply no intention of ever actually removing them?

One thing that has become painfully clear both from James' response here, and from the actions of the other two Moderators (who knowingly allowed plagiarism on the forum until we called the plagiarisers out and demanded action), is that the management of this game are more focused about plagiarism within the (in the scale of things) very narrow context of this community and its game-play, than they are with the more basic and fundamental fact that plagiarism is ethically wrong and is against the law. This bubble mentality attitude has also been demonstrated by a number of our community members who have openly flaunted their indifference towards the problem of plagiarism.

Players cannot remove posts once a more recent reply exists in a thread- only Moderators have this permission- and I think this is what the players meant. Thanks again for bringing the issue to our attention.

The fact players cannot always delete posts obviously does not mean they cannot edit them.

[jamescfm]

The plagiarised posts were removed as soon as it was brought to our attention that their existence on the Forum might cause problems.