June 5, 2016 at 7:49 pm

@support and @admin We have a member who is copying texts from the blog of a poet, and also posts from some of our members here. This person is pasting the text into forum posts, presumably thinking it’s safer than trying to get them past the moderation for the posts.

I’ve reported two of the objectionable postings, as I recognized them to be posts that were published by friends here on LiteracyBase. I wanted the other members to know it’s been reported, though, in case more such posts go up before you have the chance to attend to it.

June 5, 2016 at 8:18 pm

Oh NO!!  Not on this site too?  Good job @ruby3881!!  It’s sad that people can’t think up of things on their own! ;(

June 5, 2016 at 8:37 pm

@ Kyla Matton Osborne (Ruby3881) Thanks Kyla for raising the alarm! I hope the support will look into it asap and take the required action.

June 5, 2016 at 8:38 pm

I really despise people who plagiarise. It is pure theft and I hope @support takes quick action against the person.

June 5, 2016 at 9:08 pm

This is a good move among the members here who are vigilant and keep on monitoring those posters who copy the works of others as if their own. I haven’t noticed them yet. In fact, it was @support who opened this up for us to help this site by reporting those errant members, violators of rules, among others. If we keep on doing this kind of concern, we will be purging this site with undesirables, and plagiarists.

June 5, 2016 at 9:38 pm

Every site eventually gets people who try to break the rules. I’m just glad it hasn’t been an issue until now.

June 5, 2016 at 9:44 pm

Wow that is horrible. I hope something is done and quick. Good job, @ruby3881 for being on top of things so it can be nipped in the bud.

June 6, 2016 at 1:32 am

Good grief! Where is support? I went away for a couple of hours and I come back to discover this user is just pumping out the plagiarized texts one after the other. His name as given on the site is “abiola fayemi” and the usename – minus the @ for linkage – is “fascogold.” This person really needs removing from the site, as he is filling the forum up with stolen content from multiple web sites.

June 6, 2016 at 5:09 am

There are now dozens of plagiarized articles on the site, which have been published because the plagiarist took advantage of the freedom to post in the forums without moderation. Some of these texts are already indexed with Google. All will have to be painstakingly removed from the site and from Google’s index. Where is @support and @admin?

This massive act of plagiarism is a challenge to the current practice of allowing all users to post freely in the forum, while even the posts of experienced and valued writers on this site are moderated. The security measure was obviously taken with the best of intentions. But I don’t think it works.

On the one hand, it delays content from publishing for sometimes 24 or even 48 hours. It creates an artificial gap in the workflow, because every post must be approved and the staff are not able to keep up with demand. It demoralizes many of the most active users on the site, and it prevents any of us from publishing timely content on the hottest of trending topics. So that hurts the search rankings of the site, or at least removes a potential for them to be better.

On the other hand, this plagiarist has proven that it’s possible to publish page upon page upon page of content that hurts the site. These plagiarized Wikipedia articles are indexing! Google will notice the duplicate content and the fact that staff did not respond to the problem promptly. Some of this content has been sitting in the forum for over a day. For some, it might be close to two days. Combined with the dozens and dozens of illegal Shutterstock images on LiteracyBase, it’s getting to be a big problem. And it points to the staff not being able to cope with the job of moderating content. Too much is getting past you guys, so is the current system worth keeping?

My suggestion is this:

Moderate only new users and those for whom appropriate content may be an issue. allow minimal posting in the forum, but apply plagiarism check to forum content and institute a maximum number of posts, forum threads and comments for moderated members in order to limit potential harm to the site.

Remove trusted writers from moderation so their posts can be published upfront without being checked. You can always verify afterwards for the purpose of payment, or to be sure there were no violations. But this way, there will be a more constant flow of fresh content on the site, which both human readers and search engines will appreciate.

Your writers will also be more motivated to write if they know their posts will publish instantly. And this privilege can be used as an incentive to get writers to create more SEO-friendly content. Keep people on moderation if they aren’t producing the kind of content you want. Their posts will still publish, just more slowly. It will encourage people to work on their writing skills. You could even choose a single skill set each week, and ask for improvements in just that area. I think with the calibre of member in this group, you’d see a wonderful result from such a program!

So that’s my two cents on the matter. I don’t say it to be mean, but I think we need to be realistic about what staff can and can’t handle. Right now, the list of things you aren’t handling appropriately is unfortunately growing, and you need a plan to reverse that process. I hope you’ll choose to take a bit of a risk, that could potentially pay off big for the site and all the users too.

June 6, 2016 at 6:22 am

I am seeing three of the people who are new in the site, no picture, you can see them at the forum. One is posting poet and one is obviously getting contents from google. It will give problems to the site for sure if we will allow them to continue. They are obviously do not know what they are doing, they are spreading harm to the site.

June 6, 2016 at 6:37 am

@Ruby3831, I noticed that name and she/ he has a very long post about Physics and I told that writer that I am a Physics and Math professor , so I asked him something about theory if useful even without application, no answer from that person. I do not think that person can write about so lengthy article about Physics and Chemistry of the topic theory.

June 6, 2016 at 6:40 am

@grecy, I also noticed them sis, I sensed they plagiarized.They must be notified by admin.Don’t this site having a plagiarism tool to detect plagiarism?

June 6, 2016 at 6:50 am

They think they are clever.  They know that their accounts will be deleted if they copy and paste and submit as a new blog post.

I sure hope that their accounts will be deleted for good, and hopefully @support blocks their IP address, else they will create new user id.

June 6, 2016 at 9:40 am

@lovern It was smart of you to ask the question! Good for you 🙂

I am unsure about plagiarism scans. Perhaps the admin didn’t think it was needed for the forum?

@scheng1 Yes, it’s a bit of clever trickery. But as soon as the admin see they will be deleted. Perhaps they thought nobody would notice the posts if they hid them away in the forum. Yes, the IP address will need to be blocked too.

@grecy095 I really feel for you, sis. It’s got to be tough waiting to hear the news of their banning. you wrote the posts, and this new member plagiarized. Your content will stand, for sure.

June 6, 2016 at 9:51 am

Good to know that the person got reported. Hope appropriate action would be taken by the admin or support team. After all we want to keep the site clean