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Plagiarism and the Internet


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I am fully aware that students all over the world rip off my work. However, I rarely get such detailed confessions:

I am a local high school student in northern Virginia. This is my desperate cry for help to you. I used this page http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERunemployment.htm as a major source for my History final essay. As you may know, several school written papers are run through the online site called Turnitin.com. This is a program which scans the entire internet for any sort of plagiarism. I have just found out that my paper will be scanned through turnitin.com. Because of a lack of citation on my part, i will be perceived as cheating and will therefore fail the paper. Being that i need this course to graduate from High school, and being my senior year, i request that you remove this article from the internet temporarily, for about 3 weeks, in order to allow the scan to NOT find any match with my paper and yours. Please, i beg you, this paper you wrote was amazing and a great source for me. However, they will still fail me for improper citation. Take it into your heart to remove your article briefly as to allow me to graduate from my high school.

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I'm usually against this sort of thing, but I say let him off.

I never once plagiarised in school or College, but I have to admire this lad for asking.

John

EDIT: I wonder if the page has been mirrored by another site, perhaps answers.com or some other site. Is it also on freepedia?

Edited by John Geraghty
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I'm usually against this sort of thing, but I say let him off.

I never once plagiarised in school or College, but I have to admire this lad for asking.

John

EDIT: I wonder if the page has been mirrored by another site, perhaps answers.com or some other site. Is it also on freepedia?

Taking it down will not help him. It remains available from Google for sometime after it has been removed. However, by taking it down, I make it unavailable to all those other students who want to make use of the material. They will then send me emails telling me the link does not work.

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IMO he's put you in a no-win situation through no fault of yours John. I sympathise with his predicament if it was a genuine oversight, but for all you know he could have passed off an entire essay as his own, and has been caught with his pants down. As you're already aware, removing it won't help him anyway.

I predict a future flipping burgers for a living.

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I predict a future flipping burgers for a living.

I think the generous state provision in old age pensions in England mean that it will never come to this for John :lol:

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I note that there appears no remorse for copying.

It's not even a confession. He doesn't say he cheated, he says "I will be perceived as cheating." I guess this means the teacher will be at fault for failing him, thinking that he cheated.

He's like the guy who says, "I didn't do it and I promise never to do it again."

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It's nasty, isn't it? Just how much did he use without citation?

People have to learn that they are capable of original thought, to be creative. The alternative is to see nothing but cut & pastes from the internet ad infinitum.

I agree that removing it will not affect the outcome, but John might consider talking more to the person involved. See if he can elicit original thought from the person. They might be very capable, and just lazy. Then, if John considers that the circumstances warrant, he might choose to intercede on this person's behalf.

I think that whatever decision John makes, it will be the "right" one. It's his decision to make. In whatever outcome, just make sure that this person learns that actions have consequences; that to deceive takes a person down a dark path with many unexpected consequences, and that "... if you can't do the time, then don't do the crime..."!

Edited by Evan Burton
Corrected spelling
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