Introduction
If you visit my blog often, you probably know that I personally set a target of on-boarding 7 new friends each week. With that comes the responsibility of educating them and making sure that they not only succeed, but also avoid costly mistakes - like plagiarism. This week, I have 2 friends already joined and they are getting their introduction posts ready. A big thanks to @roomservice for giving us http://hiveonboard.com/ which makes it easy for new members to get an account instantly.
Friends I on-boarded this week so far
- @angelmichael
- @cassieijay
Note: they are still working on their introduction posts
What is plagiarism?
While researching on this subject, I got this definition of plagiarism from wikipedia:
Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics
So in a simple and short language, when you copy someone's write-up and present it as if you where the original owner, that is plagiarism. Plagiarism comes in many forms and not just text. If you took a picture from anywhere and that picture is not yours, but you published it as if it were your own, then your are a plagiarist. The same goes with videos, audios and every other form of expressing human thoughts.
Its all too easy to search and get already made content and post it as your own. The temptation to do so is always overwhelming. But when you see plagiarism as stealing, you want to avoid it entirely. Content creation is as difficult as any other forms of invention. It is only natural to acknowledge the effort an author has put in creating content. When you simply take a picture, copy text or post a video that is not yours, you are discrediting the author. You are in fact stealing.
There are a thousand and one reasons why you must stick to your own original work. Even in the secular world, piracy and copyrights laws are tough. A simple picture or other forms of content taken and used without the consent of the author could land you in jail. Plagiarism could result in legal action and possibly expensive settlements. Those are some of the things you do not want to spend your time fighting. On Hive here, plagiarism is completely frowned upon and there are reasons you do not want to try them. Consider the following:
4 Reasons to avoid plagiarism on Hive
1. Your image: If you care so much about your public image and how you want people to look at you, then plagisrism on Hive is not for you. How will you feel if someone alleged that you stole content. What if you were guilty, you obviously wont have any grit to fight. If you do plagiarism on Hive, you risk destroying your reputation. People will see you as a lazy copy-and-paste plagiarists and no one will ever have confidence in you.
2. You do not want to mess with abuse-fighting projects here: In the first point above, I talked about destroying your image. Well, apart from users here seeing you as a plagiarist, there are many abuse-fighting projects on hive. @hivewatcher is one of them. It monitors content published on Hive to make sure there is no abuse happening. If you copy other people's work without attribution, @hivewatcher might likely find you out and warn you initially. If you do not stop after repeated warnings and it becomes obvious that you are copying content without attribution, it will start placing comments on your posts that may not be good for your image.
The picture below is the comment that @hivewatcher will place on everyone of your posts if you are a suspected plagiarist:
You do not want to risk that, do you? So avoid plagiarism with all your might.
3. The road to recovery is long and hard: If you want them @hivewatcher to stop calling you a thief or not see you as a plagiraist, it will take effort. It will really take effort to convince them it was a mistake or that you have changed. I visit their discord sever and see the punishment on plagiarists. One was asked to post original content for 3 months without earnings. I saw another one that was given 6 months. Imagine having to dish out original content for that long time without rewards. If that does not discourage you from copying other people's work, I wonder what else will.
4. Downvotes: If you continue to copy other people's work, you will get downvotes from the community police. Since everyone hates having their work stolen, other users here may join in downvoting you. As you probably already know, downvotes removes your earnings. So when you plagirize and get downvoted, it means no rewards for you. That is bad enough, isn't it?
So, my content must be 100% original, right?
From the above discussion, it is clear that plagiarism is not something you want to mess with here on Hive. But, it does not mean that you cannot include other people's work in your content. At least, 80% or more of your work should be original. Up to 20% can be copied work. If you must copy other people's work such as a picture or text, kindly put the source from where you got it Make sure to insert the link to the source so that everyone would know its not yours.
For example, if you are using https://hive.blog/ to compose your post, here is how to put the source of your copied work. Lets say you got it from Pixabay, see how the code will look:
1 This is the text that will be clicked to check the source
2 This is the link to the source
Image Source
To copy text from another source, you may or may not put the link. But you you to show that it was copied from another person. Check the definition of Plagiarism which I copied from Wikipedia. It was written differently to show that I copied it. To achieve that here, just put > at the beginning of the line before you paste the copied text. The system will render it that way to show it was copied and not mine.
Concerning pictures, there are sites where you can get pictures which you may not need to put the source. I have made a post about them. Here is the link:
Avoid plagiarism - 7 sites where you can get and use pictures free!
Conclusion
Plagiarism is something you must run away from to succeed on Hive. I always try to make 100% original content. But if I must copy something from somewhere, I am sure to put the source if its not free content. Doing so will save you time, stress, reputation and money!