Plagiarism is a thorny topic, but a very important one. The h2g2 House Rules are very clear

about it not being something anybody wants to see; and the BBC's Terms and

Condions of being a part of h2g2 states, in tones more likely to send a chill up your

spine, that it is an extremely naughty thing to do.

Those things need to be said in order for h2g2 and the BBC to protect themselves from

the wrath of lawyers, who are always lurking about waiting for the chance to sue people...

allegedly. Another source puts it this way:

Thou shalt not steal

When you post material which you haven't produced in your own brain or brain-like organ,

without giving due credit to the rightful owner, you are taking something which doesn't

belong to you... stealing. This is something, as h2g2 Researchers, that we simply should not

contemplate doing. h2g2 is a community at least as much as it is a repository of

information. h2g2 is about more than seeming clever; it is about contributing to a new

thing, a knowledge base built by people from all over the place, who share the dreams of

Douglas Adams, the man who dreamt h2g2.

This has important implications when it comes to plagiarism, because, when you pretend

to have written something which, in fact, you didn't, you are really cheating your fellow

Researchers of an honest contribution to the Guide. The essence of what makes up the store

of Entries uniquely valuable isn't that they are brilliant literature or that they redefine

human understanding of this, that, or the other thing... it is simply that they are original

contributions written by a community of people from all over the world who are united by

their common interest in making the late, great DNA's dream come

true.

From the point of view of a Sub-editor, working on material that later proves to have

been assembled dishonestly is a depressing waste of time. We are volunteers who contribute a

good deal of a finite amount of spare time to helping maintain the flow of new Entries. The

time we waste on an Entry which has to be discarded results in needless delays in getting

the work of honest Researchers to the front page. It also means time lost that could

otherwise have been spent playing with the cat or any number of things that are vastly more

rewarding than editing something and then having it thrown away.

Sometimes, it so happens that a Researcher will actually be quoting from his or her own

work, which has been published elsewhere. If you do happen to have written the

Encyclopaedia Britannica, and own the rights to the stuff you have cut and pasted

into a 'new' Entry, please include a reference to the source, even if it is your own; it

helps to prevent confusion. It is still better to write something new for h2g2 than to serve

up leftovers from somewhere else. Don't your fellow Researchers deserve something cooked up

fresh?

John-the-gardener

08.11.01. Front Page

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