I came across an interesting blog the other day and left a comment on an article about Wikipedia and plagiarism. The rant is here. I quote the applicable parts below:
I came across this post while googling “plagiarizing Wikipedia”, because I was curious to find out how plagiarism changes when you’re not stealing from one author, but instead stealing from a collaborative, open source work like Wikipedia. I haven’t yet found my answer, but this is a great blog post, so I’ll throw in my two cents:
This last year I finished a ridiculous high school ‘health’ class, which had a focus on research. The class itself was a joke, and I feel confident saying that as someone who considers himself an intellectual in training, because the teacher wasn’t able to practice what she preached. She ranted almost daily about how plagiarism would end in severe consequences, but was never able to spot it. Meanwhile, I was able to. For example, the class had to work on different research projects and distribute their findings to the rest of the class. I found it odd when many student’s documents used different fonts throughout, and had underlined hyperlinks. I kid you not, there were hyperlinks _everywhere_, a sure sign of very sloppy copying and pasting.
Furthermore, the teacher’s PowerPoint presentations were taken straight from Wikipedia! How could I tell? She had underlined hyperlinks in her presentations. I even wrote down a sentence and googled it in quote to see where it came from. Low and behold, Wikipedia.
One day, I was sick of it and stayed after class to discuss this with her. I pointed out half a dozen examples of plagiarism from the latest round of research projects and how you can spot it, and all she simply said was, “I didn’t know that.”
Today, none of the plagiarizing students were punished for their crimes. Now, that teacher has since taken a job at a great college, where she’s sure to be making a great sum of money. I can’t figure some things out.
Anyone else have any plagiarism stories?