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whiskyinmind
whiskyinmind
23 September 2004 @ 08:50 am
Goddamit!  
ten to nine and I'm finally at work!? That's like an hour later than normal and there's no good reason for me being so late other than the fact that the carbon monoxide levels in the Clyde tunnel were too high so they had to stop traffic to let it clear.

So I was sitting on the south side of the Clyde, in my car, bored out of my skull, for over half an hour.

I also have a cold coming on and generally feel really crappy but am determined to get this boring job I'm doing at work finished by the end of this week which basically means today since tomorrow and Monday are public holidays...

Gah! I had so much planned out for this morning, stuff I was going to get done before I started work and now there's no way I've got time to do more than read through my emails and glance at my flist...



So a group I'm a lurker in got an email from someone claiming that the fic author on that group was a plagiarist and cited two examples of that. It looks bad. That was a couple of days ago now and things have been more or less sorted on that group. Then this morning I got an email from the person pointing the finger basically demanding that I remove the author from INAP becuase he/she is a plagiarist. (I'm not giving names at the moment until I hear back from the writer)

I read his/her stories. I enjoy his/her stories and my initial reaction to the complainer was that there was no way I was taking the stories down. But. Am I only having that reaction because I like the stories? Is that responsible of me? If it were someone else, some pairing I don't read, or stories I don't enjoy would I have stripped them straight away?

Oh the pressures of running a multi-author fic site!

New icon - thanks to [livejournal.com profile] catatonic1242
 
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[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:17 am (UTC)
Have you read the stories that the person is claiming that they're plagiarised from? Are they really plagialistic, or do they just use very similar ideas?

With the amount of fanfic out there, there is gonna be some amount of crossover of ideas and the way those ideas are put over. You've said yourself there have been some stories that you've stopped reading because you've come across a plotline in it similar to one you've been working on and don't want to inadvertantly plagiarise or let yourself be influenced by it.

Maybe that's what's happened with these two authors, the one accused of the plagiarising has been working on a similar storyline when they've read the accusers stories, and, however inadvertantly, done very similar things in their story.

Andy
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:26 am (UTC)
They're from a different fandom so I haven't read them. The complainer copied a paragraph from the original story and a paragraph from the later one. They are almost word for word identical, but without me knowing the history of the whole thing (or having read the original fic) I've no way of knowing how much editing has been done by the complainer.

If it turns out that the later author has lifted parts from the first person's story, it might be that the first person knows about it and is fine with it. Hell, with the number of pen-names some people have, it might turn out that it's the same writer just using a different name for another fandom.

I don't know, might let Denise deal with this one since she's only read a couple of his/her fics adn can be more objective than me.
[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:29 am (UTC)
Reading all fics involved would be the starting point, and seeing which fics were posted first would be a good idea. If the person being accused posted his/her fics first, they couldn't have plagiarised from the person doing the accusing. With things like this it's gotta be a gut call.
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:35 am (UTC)
the other fandom ones (it's X Files) were put online first from what I can tell.
[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:41 am (UTC)
Then the stories need to be read. And I agree with Beck, this could just be a grudge being played out, you (Or Denise) have got to try and read the stories as though you've never read them before. If from that you would think this author plagiarised from the other one, then you've got no choice but to remove the story. If you just think, yeah similar stories, but that happens then the story stays.
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:50 am (UTC)
crap.

So that means I have to read X Files fic?

great.
[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:53 am (UTC)
Denise could always do it. That's what co-hosts of sites are for, they do the things you don't want to. :)
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:56 am (UTC)
she's in charge of the entire computer system (including tills) of the largest student union in Scotland. During Freshers' Week. She's a little frazzled right now...

*g*
[identity profile] rileysaplank.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:58 am (UTC)
Looks like it's down to you then.

Plus, if you do think that the author has beeen plagiarising, personally, I wouldn't remove the author, just the offending stories, and have a word with the plagiaristic author.

Then if it happens again, then you'd have to consider removing the author.
[identity profile] acrazywench.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:23 am (UTC)
Other than the accusation, is there proof that this person has plagiarised? If there is proof/you don't get a reasonable response from the author then I would take the stories down. If you don't think there is sufficient proof though and the author's response seems to back this up I wouldn't do anything in case it's just some internet grudge being played out.

It might also be worth putting up a plagairism/copyright disclaimer, i.e. by submitting their work the authors agree that the work is original and that the responsibility for checking the originality of the work rests with the author rather than the site owner.

Beck.
[identity profile] whiskyinmind.livejournal.com on September 23rd, 2004 01:31 am (UTC)
The person making the complaint did give me a paragraph from the original X Files story and a paragraph from the BtVS one. Aside from character names they were almost identical but they were also only around 150 words if that.

I think I need to go and read the X Files story to actually get a good idea of how deep this runs and if it is in fact plagiarism.

Joy, on top of everything else I have to do, now I have to read X Files smut...