I don’t think they don’t know it’s wrong as much as they can’t understand how to do otherwise. Since they were able to get by copying in the past, there may be severe gaps in their knowledge.
I also wonder if they are taught to show deference to authority, even if they think they are wrong. Quite a few people in western society will apologize profusely, even if they think the other person was in the wrong. I believe it’s a big part of being a kiss up or Yes man.
I think they know it is wrong.
It’s more that it isn’t that big of a deal. It’s kind of like how people download music. They know it’s wrong, but everyone does it and they don’t seriously expect any consequences for it.
Well, what do you know? They lifted my entire essay, then fiddled with the entire web so that when I linked to it, the link went to their entry instead of my site. :mad:
But what can you expect from them? They keep insisting that Uncyclopedia is a parody on them, and those folks have to keep setting the record straight. It’s the other way around! Obviously! 
Also, the dog ate my homework! 
- Og Tans Fat, Global Village Idiot
I just spotted this after my latest post. Wow! Truth is stranger than fiction. Or, at he very least, it keeps up.
***- Og Tans Fat, Global Village Idiot ***
(This sig is copied from my last post, but that one I actually typed in.)
Did anyone actually read the essay? It’s full of :D:D:D:D.
Many of the plagiarized essays I caught came from 123helpme.
Guess it wasn’t so helpful.
I once caught twin sisters purchasing essays at $20 a pop from some other site. I was able to find them because the first paragraph showed up on the site as a preview/ad for the full essay.
’
Maybe he was trying to knock off his competition?
Couldn’t you have just asked him? Like, in person? Or even over e-mail?
You know, it’s been months. I think it was e-lance, but I’m not 100% positive (I signed up with several, and even the ones that didn’t flag me as a plagiarist were more trouble than they were worth).
Ah…I had a journalism class where you needed to get something published and get paid for it in order to claim an A. So I went to the Severe Storms something-or-another, which was a couple of blocks from my house–these are basically tornado chasers. I wrote a great 500-word article about them, and my lead went something like, “When most people are heading for the cellars or trying to outrun the funnel cloud in their cars, these folks are heading out and trying to catch up to the funnel cloud…” And I sold it to the Sunday supplement for something like $5 and got my A.
A couple of years later, somebody wrote an article about the storm chasers and it ended up in Reader’s Digest with exactly, precisely, the same first sentence.
(The whole lead was pretty similar, but the first sentence was word-for word.)
Now, I could have thought: Did they plagiarize my article? But I was pretty sure they hadn’t. It was, in retrospect, the most obvious of leads for the subject.
No, I chose to spend a couple of decades kicking myself for not rewriting it, amplifying a bit, and submitting it to Reader’s Digest myself.
I just caught another one. The student was supposed to write a thesis statement: one lousy sentence. What do I get? A poorly written (yet correctly hyphenated) definition of art, cobbled together and modified slightly from two nicely written websites. I’m a harsh bastard: the single plagiarized sentence gets a 25% grade penalty. Hey, by the time you’re a senior in college, you should be able to come up with your own sentences. (You should also be able to write a paper without someone vetting your thesis beforehand, but that’s another issue.) I’ll report back if there’s drama.
When I TAed a masters-level econometrics course, there were two students—international students from Western Europe—with the same last name, and I presume brothers. Their homework always contained the exact same answers. The professor didn’t seem to mind, reasoning that such copying would only come back to bite them during the exams. But I wondered then (and wonder now) how stupid they believed me to be.
But that’s a lame story, in retrospect. I have absolute nothing to one-up pretty much anybody here. Cheers! Thanks for continuing to erode my desire to teach someday …
Ooh, drama already! (We’re required to notify the student before reporting them.) An email running quickly and efficiently through the usual excuses: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I was going to site [sic] my sources, let me explain, let me do it again, I’m graduating. All that’s missing are the crocodile tears, kind of hard to do over email.
Translation: Damn, Dr. Drake, you really are smart enough to have caught me! I didn’t think you knew how to use tah intarweb.
He needs this.
…I got caught.
…be so clumsy that you’d figure it out.
…I hope!
I’m still embarrassed by the fact that 20-something years ago when I was desperately broke I sold several of my A papers to a small and out in the open shop in Auburn (AL) that bought and sold papers as “study guides”. I got around $30, which was at the time as much money as $1000 would be to me today probably.
I’m guessing that the store traded papers with other such stores so as to make sure the same “study guides” weren’t used at the same college. As late as 2000 when I was in grad school there was such a store in Tuscaloosa (AL) where two universities and several junior colleges are in a short drive. I’ve wondered several times how many times those papers have been turned it over the years.
There was an episode of the show Welcome Back Kotter in which Mr. Kotter received a paper from one of the Sweathogs he’d turned it back when he was in college. He gave them a huge lecture in plagiarism but ultimately didn’t expel them. When pressed for why he told them “I said I turned it in when I was in college… I never said I wrote it.”
Somewhat on-topic: Nick Mamatas’ confessional The Term Paper Artist.
I’m probably not the best person to ask about motivations in general. I’m still rather unclear about my own set of wrong, stupid, or stupidly wrong decisions over the years.
Your particular example is especially puzzling. Apparently he can write on his own, and not just rephrase the work of others. Another thing is that he could have placed the pasted part within quote marks and shown the source. Now, this may have resulted in a chiding about an excessively long quote, but that’s better than getting into trouble over outright plagiarism.
And he seems much too intelligent to try to deny that any part was copied. It’s not as if a five or six word prepositional phrase showed up throughthe software. Take the break kid, admit what you did, do the assignment from scratch legitimately, and never plagiarize again. It’s so clear what the best course after being caught is.
I’ve been tempted to ask what his career goal is. Politics? Just deny any true charges, as well as unfounded ones? :rolleyes:
A repeating theme from teachers throughout this thread is that of feeling that the offenders think that they are stupid. I don’t know whether this helps any, but they probably just think themselves very smart. They are trying to overcome the system, and don’t see it as slapping the teacher in the face. That’s all I have for now.
- Og Trans Fat, Global Village Idiot
I have to admit I don’t much blame people for stealing ideas. Hell, half the brilliant ideas in history were “inspired” considerably from other sources. However, if the idea turns out to be antyhing recognizable as the original, you should always be courteous enough to mention their contribution. It’s just polite. Besides, you may one day benefit from that selfsame attitude.
$100 per page? Man, I’m in the wrong field.
Per that article, the main sales are to students who cannot write or choose not to and have cash, with secondary being students who are in a required class way outside of their comfort zone (he mentioned specifically chemistry majors in poetry courses or English majors in chemistry classes as an example), with a smaller subgroup of ESL students whose intelligence is not lacking but their English skills are.
