dude how did i miss this one?
i just noticed this and man what a thrill ride.
at first i was siding with the journalists. because i can read something, find that upon inspiration to think about the topic at hand, that i come to agree with and share the views expressed. i can then come back and write something of my own, perhaps even hauntingly echoing of the source from which i began to study the issue, but it's still mine. nothing is truly original these days. it's all been done. everyone's ideas come from somewhere.
what i was taught in school is that if your own conscience (or the source author reading your work, or some kind of turing device designed to detect semantic equivalencies between texts) indicates that you copied it, then it's plagiarism. direct copy/paste calls for quotation marks and citation of source article. a paraphrased and directly ported idea (or fact that is not common knowledge) deserves some form of reference. if you are using passages you've read (that aren't sitting open in front of you) to help you come up with content you'll write from scratch, no reference necessary.
then the post where i think bingot showed the edits made to bb28's post makes it seem like a lot of the content was a straight port, thus deserving more of a reference than "a player on a gambling forum" included in the intro and wholly overlooked once the meat of the article is being read.
but in fact, i also felt that bb's position throughout (to force them to take it down or revert to her own original) was not necessary. after all, she posted it for free for all to see, and hopefully to take to heart as well. and indeed as well the cm forum only reaches perhaps 0.0001% of the population, so the chance it was a direct port is decreased (fewer people actually read it than if it was published in, say, time magazine), and as well it stands to reckon that by only posting the passage to this site, that it was not bb's intent to spread this as her own work globally and own all rights to the content therein (especially when posting to the forum explicitly gives ownership to the forum's meister).
then the infopowa link is discovered, and it becomes a question of who brought it to them. then jets comes on and takes responsibility, but declines to offer an admission of fault - let alone an apology - to another esteemed member who was very obviously upset. then an eerie calm... then someone pipes up and calls him out in the thread. member(s) send pm and from what i gather it did not go over well with him. although the events as they transpired may not constitute plagiarism proper, i believe some toes were definitely stepped on and for the sake of the forum's integrity, a lone spoonful even of humble pie ought be taken. a simple "sorry" is probably too plebian for his taste, but "apologies for any inconvenience" would suffice to clear the air yet still not admit fault for any more than a careless oversight.
. . . . . .no wonder he hasn't "friended" me, he's been too busy stealing news lmao *half-joking*. . .
it all boils down to plagiarism being a spectrum with much grey in the middle. and as has been iterated, the vast majority of "news" is cloned from other news, or composed in such a standard way that two copies describing the same scenario could appear very similar, yet neither had any direct or indirect influence on the other. and of course, the adage about what we are ignorant of not harming us: had this thread not broke, it's likely no one would have noticed. sure it's essentially reversing causality, but in practice it works. you're not a plagiarist or a drunk driver until it gets noticed and reported.
anyhow, sorry if this thread is getting old, but it was my first time reading it, and as i read along i gathered things to mention (particularly my views on plagiarism), which i have done so i'll move along now. and barring any nix from cm, feel free to harvest and redistribute any nugget(s) you wish from this post.
except sticking a thumbsup smiley at the tail end of your posts; i own that.