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    Plagiarism

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Game Gab
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    • FloofF
      Floof @mietze
      last edited by

      @mietze said in Plagiarism:

      I know people get cranky about pc reuse sometimes or look down even on people who recycle their name/desc/concept over many games but ripping work that isn’t even yours to begin with I would think this would meet with near universal disdain.

      Gonna recycle my characters even harder now that I know someone might be annoyed by it lmao

      Playlist

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      • ArtemisA
        Artemis
        last edited by

        Have been plagiarized! In this same specific way actually. Once someone wholesale stole my description for a character on a different game, bragged about how much time they spent on it, and then another person copied them and brought it back to the game I play. I ran into them and was like o.O and that was the story they gave me, anyway.
        As flattering as it is cringe!

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        • JennJ
          Jenn @mietze
          last edited by

          @mietze I absolutely plagiarize my OWN old descs for new characters also typed, created, and played by me. Because writing descs is the absolute WORST part of this hobby for me. I hateses it. And I doubt there is any power in the world with the ability to make me NOT recycle one of ONLY MY OWN dozens by now - even if they are probably cut and pasted into various differing versions here and there.

          But I don’t hateses it enough to plagiarize anyone else’s but my own.

          We're all mad here.

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          • M
            mietze @Jenn
            last edited by mietze

            @Jenn i really don’t care if people wholesale port another pc from another game if it was their own creation. There are a few folks that do that even between genres. As far as I’m concerned if someone creates something its theirs and if they want to recycle it who the fuck cares.

            However I do think that almost everyone thinks its lame to rip a desc or bg pretty much word for word on an another active game without seeking permission or touching base with the other person.

            In the grand scheme of things is it the end of the world no. I rarely look at pc descs or even read them on wikis. I find i get more of a picture of pcs in rp and usually people pose appearance stuff anyway.

            But to me that behavior speaks of a certain lack of discretion and respect that makes me kind of leery. When I’ve seen people engage in it usually there’s other behaviors that emerge that are problematic as well.

            JennJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 9
            • JennJ
              Jenn @mietze
              last edited by

              @mietze Agreed. Again. In its entirety. I guess that what I’m suggesting in this thread is that it’s in Game Gab, under the guise of plagiarism in general - how do folks feel about that on games? Are there moments when it is ever ok? Is it ALWAYS blanket bad? In Game Gab, as a broad topic… I think there are a few VERY niche and SUPER thin /maaaaaaaaybeeeeeee/s. But folks will likely be watching even the maybes with side-eye.

              Whereas if this were in Rough and Rowdy, specifically about Roz and Tez and their own intellectual property specifically being ripped off from a game it sounds like maybe neither of them even play… There’s really zero room for nuance in that situation at all. But. That’s a different board and different specific than the offshoot that was moved to here.

              We're all mad here.

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              • PavelP
                Pavel
                last edited by

                When I saw the thread title I was expecting something about copying code or wiki styles or something, but copying descriptions and actual creative text from people? Jesus.

                The idea is that one expresses themselves through writing… if you can’t or won’t do that, then what’s the fucking point?

                He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                BE AN ADULT

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                • N
                  Nilli
                  last edited by

                  Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s writing as your own without permission, so using a desc that a friend wrote for you wouldn’t count.

                  I also think phrases or a particular (brief!) way of describing something usually wouldn’t count. These things tend to go in and out of style among friend groups or games and feels more like the adopted slang than ripping someone off.

                  Blatantly using entire descs, event descs or scene sets or backgrounds or anything else where you’ve just copied what someone else did and not citing where the writing came from? Is plagiarism, and I’d support banning anyone who did it.

                  PavelP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • PavelP
                    Pavel @Nilli
                    last edited by

                    @Nilli said in Plagiarism:

                    Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s writing as your own without permission

                    Oof, let’s not go down this rabbit hole again.

                    He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                    BE AN ADULT

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                    • N
                      Nilli @Pavel
                      last edited by

                      @Pavel I’m not aware of a prior discussion here, I was just thinking of cases like ghostwriters or the above example of Tez writing descs for friends.

                      PavelP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PavelP
                        Pavel @Nilli
                        last edited by

                        @Nilli There was a rather strong discussion about plagiarism previously, along with several different(ish) definitions.

                        I also abhor ghostwriters - the practice of using them, not the writers themselves.

                        He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                        BE AN ADULT

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                        • N
                          Nilli @Pavel
                          last edited by

                          @Pavel Ahh I missed that one. I’m not trying to say I have the one correct definition here, just that if I wrote a description and said you could use it and you then used it, I wouldn’t call that plagiarism.

                          I see enough examples of the more blatant variety anyway that’s honestly shocking. It seems like most of us are thirty-somethings who have been RPing for 47 years and should know better than to be straight up copy/pasting other people’s work.

                          PavelP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • PavelP
                            Pavel @Nilli
                            last edited by

                            @Nilli Oh, for sure, but you know how this group gets. Semantics.

                            I hate writing descs, but I’d rather use ChatGPT to cobble something together rather than wholesale take a desc someone else wrote.

                            He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                            BE AN ADULT

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                            • G
                              GF @Tez
                              last edited by

                              @Tez said in Plagiarism:

                              What would you do?

                              I think the response to any crime should be primarily determined by the injured party, but my instinct without knowing what the affected person thinks? Ban. If that’s the level of instinctual disrespect you have for the other contributors on a game, then I do not have high hopes for the behaviors I don’t yet know about.

                              PavelP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • PavelP
                                Pavel @GF
                                last edited by

                                @GF said in Plagiarism:

                                @Tez said in Plagiarism:

                                What would you do?

                                I think the response to any crime should be primarily determined by the injured party, but my instinct without knowing what the affected person thinks? Ban. If that’s the level of instinctual disrespect you have for the other contributors on a game, then I do not have high hopes for the behaviors I don’t yet know about.

                                Though I normally hate banning as a first-instance reaction, I entirely agree. If you’re going to lie about something as pointless as a desc, what else are you going to lie about?

                                He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                                BE AN ADULT

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                                • TezT
                                  Tez Administrators
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeah. My first impulse was ban as well, but sometimes it is difficult to measure if your response is PROPORTIONATE when you are blinded by the light of FRIEND JUSTICE. I was also just fucking flabbergasted by how bold they were to just copy the whole damn thing. Like – for real? For real for real?

                                  We’ve seen people stealing game code, wiki code, policy files – mine have been stolen twice!, and other general out of character content multiple times across the hobby. The guilty parties always look, you know, guilty, but there is something about the blatant disrespect and lack of creativity in stealing someone’s whole description that just baffles me. It’s just so weird. It’s so weird, guys. I am dying to know why you would do that.

                                  she/they

                                  PavelP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                  • PolkP
                                    Polk
                                    last edited by

                                    ed2-4020335358.png

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                                    • PavelP
                                      Pavel @Tez
                                      last edited by

                                      @Tez said in Plagiarism:

                                      sometimes it is difficult to measure if your response is PROPORTIONATE

                                      There’s no firepower like overwhelming firepower.

                                      He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
                                      BE AN ADULT

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                                      • A
                                        Alveraxus @mietze
                                        last edited by

                                        @mietze said in Plagiarism:

                                        I mean fuck now you can use ai for a base and edit. There’s no excuse. I know I would have a hard time respecting a player who did this. Especially so stupidly on another game in the same genre. Its just gross.

                                        You shouldn’t need a policy to know this is a lame ass thing to do.

                                        We actually wrote up a specific AI policy (tldr: we refuse to use it for anything including images, players are not permitted to use any language machine model but may use it for images if they want) because of its burgeoning use in the MUSH world, but never would have thought we’d need to include a plagiarism policy.

                                        If it were me, I’d just chalk this up to Artificial Non-Intelligence and not even using a language model, and probably ban them outright. Not only is it unethical, but as others said, it betrays a fundamental lack of creativity that makes me doubt whether they would be a contributing member of our storytelling community.

                                        I was thinking about this more and more since last night, and went from it being irksome to feeling like it is a real violation of the heart and soul that I would pour into a character. And there’s just no excuse for it, really.

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                                        • MisterBoringM
                                          MisterBoring
                                          last edited by

                                          Odd question about plagiarism. I know plagiarism of descs and even whole characters has happened before in the hobby, but has anyone ever attempted to plagiarize a plot or PRP before?

                                          Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance

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                                          • A
                                            Alveraxus @MisterBoring
                                            last edited by

                                            @MisterBoring said in Plagiarism:

                                            Odd question about plagiarism. I know plagiarism of descs and even whole characters has happened before in the hobby, but has anyone ever attempted to plagiarize a plot or PRP before?

                                            I’m sure it’s happened, but I think also when you are talking about PLOTS and such, so much is really just boiled down, whether it’s Joseph Campbell or Aristotle, to “the same stories we keep retelling”, that you get into a situation where it’s not necessarily plagiarism per se, it’s just telling a story that has been told before, elsewhere.

                                            I mean, how many tv shows and movies have told the same story as Groundhog Day? Even GROUNDHOG DAY wasn’t the first use of the Groundhog Day story.

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