Plagiarism on Steemit. A Look at @jpiper20
View this post on Hive: Plagiarism on Steemit. A Look at @jpiper20
Sun Yuchen is a liar, thief, charlatan, and all around cunt. But I don't need to tell you that. Find me at Hive, where we are glad to be rid of him and all of his fake followers, sockpuppets, and thieves.
Thanks for investigating and writing this up.. knew such things would happen, and at this state, plenty of resources are required to keep an eye out on dishonesty. Definitely something worth thinking about - how do we systematically do this, while keeping posts relatively easy to produce without the hassle of covering all angles? If his posts are fairly without good payouts, this probably would have been overlooked. So I guess when more payout = more DD required (duh).
And how do we conveniently keep track of the truth on accounts. What is universally recognized, and what is not? Will the rep system be effective in indicating dishonesty?
What I think Steemit needs to look into is a karmic vouching/referral system for new accounts. If I vouch for someone, a new account can be registered using my uniquely created ref code, just for one new account.
By vouching quality accounts, one also needs to tend to the lawn by performing checks once in a while to rectify situations, if any. The karmic system is network based. If there's a bad actor in my network, I will be affected in some way, weighted by my rep and such. But of course, I'm only talking about this with my limited experience and understanding of Arcade City's karmic (karma) system. What about those without personal connections? And what are the incentives for vouching when there's a heavy disadvantage for doing so, given the fallibility of human nature that may not stand the test of time? Obviously there are better ways to do this. Worth exploring though.
This is a good idea. It will also help people spread the word that they are on steemit.
The problem arises when someone starts vouching for money, which often happens. "Vouches for sale" etc. So the concept is right, the execution would have to involve vouchers being reviewed and their vouch ability removed if it is found to be abused.
Something has to be done thats for sure. Not just about new accounts being created but also about accounts that already have a reputation and SP but are proven dishonrable.
For example right now, even though he has been caught and proven a liar and deceptive, his rep is still higher than me and he has transferred more Steem$ to BC than me. Despite the fact that I run an organization with multiple web site, feeding 40,000+ free meals a year and operating under world class sustainability standards.
With freedom comes great responsibility. We must be responsible for upholding the standards that are important to us.
I'm kinda divided about this case. I'll try not to criminalise others, but the advantage was taken.. and he was finally proven wrong in his initial claims, and did not buckle when prodded earlier by @pfunk and the others.. Don't really know what to think of this, other than rep points taking a significant hit, at least.. hmm, need to read more about this.
I really like that idea. I work with a system like that and whomever I bring on board I am responsible for.
That site is very specifically invite only, here where it is not... it is still an option. There's talk of an internal platform verification being worked on (I am not 100% on details). I am positive that I also heard it won't be mandatory. So whats wrong with offering a third option... a karmic invite you can grant, but it ties your account in very real ways to theirs? I love it
What site is that?
Oh it's iptorrent lol. So not mine or under my control and is invite only, but my account ultimately is held accountable for an account I invite that breaks the rules
Hang that bitch, I mean ....ugh plagiarism is not cool!
Too true, I really want to highlight this. I really hope that more people will get on board to support the initiative in the future, or we're going to have lots of problems when the userbase expands more.
I have been hesitant about supporting a group like this as I really am not sure about the goal/direction of the initiative.
Using a recent post as a reference, Identity & Content Verification Guide. In there it starts to approach the idea that identity verification is not always appropriate to ask for, and how it should be handled.
I would say for weeks leading up this post the group has fueled the cries for identity verification, Unverified Identity being commonly listed in the weekly reports. In a recent post (Identity & Content Verification Guide) it starts to talk about how it will be using it's reputation and power to flag comments they feel ask for this in a manner not appropriate. Isn't this change a direct result of a member, or at least an affiliate, doggedly pursuing identity verification of someone not wanting revealed?
In the original post from steemcleaners it is said members can remain secret. How are these "secret" members held accountable for their decisions and day to day interactions on the platform? I ran into one member several weeks ago, I assume they are a member as they are apparently active in the abuse channel, and the statement "less you do damage to your own rep" was leveled at me. However it was meant to be said, it could be received as a veiled threat because they were questioned.
I have seen lots of rewards being issues to various platform users from the wallet of @steemcleaners, but no notes as to what they are being rewarded for. I am not in any way crying foul, but I do like the idea of accountability for the funds when asking for support through funding.
Again, I am not opposed to a group that handles these concerns, but I would really like to see something different than the current model for me to support it.
Thanks for the thoughts @clevecross, let me see if I can address some of your concerns.
For reference, combating fraud and plagiarism has been happening for many months, from users doing it out of goodwill and honest intentions, and no rewards. These users also received flags on their own content often, from retaliation. In addtion, them spending their time and voting power of fighting this abuse is an opportunity cost compared to trying to earn a reward on a rewards-based platform.
These posts are actually in response to non members whom have gotten far too carried away with hunting for verification. @steemcleaners has always followed the practices we preach in that post, however other steemians were unaware of our rules for verification-asking. So the post was meant to clarify our asks for verification, in the hopes that these non-members will understand better.
The members are held accountable by a group based reputation and the incentive for rewards. If any one member abuses the steemcleaners account, they abuse the whole group (and forfeit rewards), which will cause support for the group to dissipate (e.g. no more funding from @smooth or @nextgencrypto). So far, we have had absolutely no internal issues - as all our members have been fighting abuse long before being rewarded for it, we have maintained unit cohesion.
There are many non-members active in the SA-C channel, an unfortunately that includes trolls due to the nature of a public channel. I can tell you that none of our members would say that. Unfortunately due to the trolling issues, we have required our private members only channel.
I understand the concern over reward distribution, however I would encourage you to contact one of our financial supporters ( @smooth can probably help with this) if you would like to audit the payout structure. However, if you would like to audit the work associated with the payout, every single action the @steemcleaners account takes is logged and these logs are publicly released on the account. I encourage you to look through all the posts in our logs, and if you see behaviour you do not agree with, you can message me directly in steemit.chat and I will make sure action is taken.
I hope this addresses some of your concerns, and if you do have feedback for how we can better structure the group you're welcome to chat with me in steemit.chat. We're still a new initiative, and growth and change is bound to occur, we just need to make sure it's always in a positive direction.
Thank you @anyx. This actually answers a lot of questions of my own too. I am grateful for what steemcleaners do and applaud everybody working for the initiative. I have however had my own concerns. They are not so great that I would say "I don't support" steemcleaners, but they are just concerns I think with time will become a problem as the platform expands.
I have seen this for myself where users see the abuse channel as something to join and make themselves useful, and then wind up making big mistakes with their take on policing. I have seen some posts about how to address things like plagiarism, sort of like having "policing etiquette" and this is helpful, but it's not a long term solution. I almost feel like there needs to be a sort-of training period for people entering into this activity. I see that currently anybody who reports plagiarism can get payed by steemcleaners and that is a good thing. But are there not rules against users speaking on behalf of steemcleaners unless they have been officially affiliated (by going through a training period or just learning from those more experienced)?
Just my thoughts on an issue I imagine could get a lot worse if it isn't prepared for. Policing is necessary, but we need to be careful of people getting carried away with policing and causing people to feel unwelcome...
Thanks @beanz, talking to @clevercross and reading this has made me realize that we need to be more clear with the fact that "if it's not from the @steemcleaners account, its not from steemcleaners". We don't have "affiliates".
I think we need to make a post about it to clarify some of this stuff.
I apologize for my above "concerns". My understanding of the group was flawed and after speaking to anyx in a chat, I was informed that they are unfounded and based on false assumptions
No need to apologize! I am very glad we talked, and it has made me realize that we need to be more clear that steemitabuse-classic is not a part of steemcleaners, and that we need to perhaps better inform the public of what we do. As I mentioned just now to beanz, I think we'll make a post about it.
I'm flagging this. Not because I support plagiarism. Nor do I have anything against @pfunk reporting on it (in fact I support him finding it and reporting it). However, I think it is unnecessary and harmful for this to be the second ranked and rewarded post on the entire site. I would not flag it if doing so sent it negative or if it were already a modestly-rewarded post in an obscure "meta" section on site-specific issues.
This is not even a summary or status report about rampant plagiarism (which I don't think exists). It is a post about one particular incident out of thousands of users and posts most of whom behave in a reasonable and responsible manner (non-plagiarizing). It was handled by flagging the user, who has even admitted his mistakes and apologized, and ongoing reasonable platform-wide efforts to discourage and limit the effects of plagiarism exist and I support them. So I see this is largely sensationalism and blowing the issue way out of proportion in a manner that is misleading about the current status of the issue.
I am disappointed by this. As you know I dealt with another dishonest plagiarist last weekend, and this second incident in the same week was enough to put me over the edge into drawing attention to the issue. I had a few objectives with this post, and you can see that reflected above as it's written.
Objective 1: Make the issue of plagiarism more known, make it more clear that it's not acceptable here, and make the case that it's defrauding us, the stakeholders in Steem.
2: Shine light on a part-time plagiarist who has managed to get to a high enough profile and reputation that it comes as a big surprise to some people. See the other comments here for examples. I did what I could to not sensationalize it. I actually don't see what you see as sensational. I edited in @jpiper20's response in individual cases where appropriate, and made sure to mention that everything about him wasn't false. I think I was fair.
3: Ask for more community support for fighting back against this kind abuse. Maybe most large stakeholders are completely pessimistic about being able to fight it. I'm not. It's impossible to prevent every bit of fraud but it's very possible to reduce it, even to a minimum. As the platform grows, the amount of people looking for abuse will need to grow with it.
Furthermore the liquid rewards from this post are to be shared with the three people who put their own time into uncovering and looking into this issue. I acknowledge you personally contribute quite a lot to SteemCleaners and I appreciate that on behalf of them. But the people who look into these things are under-rewarded for doing hard work trying to keep Steemit a valuable platform (and thus Steem a valuable network) by addressing stuff like this.
And finally if your issue was with this being on the trending list, voting on it has only put it on the list for longer.
There is a longer term view here. When (some) people vote up these sorts of posts they are betting on curation rewards, which are greatly reduced by subsequent downvotes. My hope is that future posts on these sorts of operational matters can get more modest voting, and not at the extreme upper end of the range. Yes, I like the idea of people being rewarded for write-ups about their work contributing to the well-being of the platform, but in moderation.
I don't see any evidence that the problem isn't sufficiently known nor that the problem is either generally out of control or becoming worse, as I mentioned in my first comment. If that is the claim being made that motivates giving it a lot of attention, then it should be supported by broader statistical data, not one report about one particular incident/individual.
Based on some dismissive reactions from people with large and small stakes to the notion of plagiarism and other abuse bringing the value of their own stake down, it's important to remind anyone reading this of the nature of the Steem network: all accounts are stakeholders. Dishonestly earning posting rewards is fraud against everyone here.
I think your concern about curation rewards is nonsense.
I may have been unclear. I have no concern about the curation rewards themselves. I do want to encourage professional (profit-oriented) voters to consider more carefully in the future what they push to the extreme upper end of reward distribution. Whether that will be successful or not, I can't say for sure, but that won't prevent me from trying.
I still don't see how curation or curation rewards has much to do with anything. Aside from some of the accounts that automatically vote for my posts, I don't think people were voting on this post in the interest of gaining curation rewards.
Maybe abuse reports shouldn't get funded and have a category just for these type of posts? Forgive me if I am being redundant, the comments thread is huge. I am also new to Steemit, for now I only down vote on obvious trolling using ad hominem attacks.
I disagree on the negative effects. From my perspective, it shows the ecosystem is self-policing. I didn't get the sense that there was rampant plagiarism going unchecked in this post.
If there isn't rampant plagiarism (and I agree on that), then this isn't noteworthy, it is just one incident being blown out of proportion. Other sites delete/police abusive posts, but you don't see reports featured on the front page about the fact that some abusive content was removed, you just don't see the abusive content at all. (There might be a mod log or other obscure location that provides transparency for those who seek it out.) We should operate on the same principle.
Thanks for posting this. This is a very important matter especially now in the building of the foundation for the future of this community.
I hope this standard is enforced and that people see that it is, so as to discourage it happening to begin with.
Though, deceptive selfish people probably don't check out other peoples posts to much...All the more reason to have people looking out for this stuff to call it out and stop the criminal theft ASAP.
As long as people are looking out for it and investigation is done the truth will be revealed and accountability can be enforced by the community.
There needs to be a way to actually lower someones reputation by enough down votes so that they don't just loose the value of a recent post but loose the reputation that they got from being false and deceptive.
For example right now he had some posts flagged but is reputation is still at 67 which is supposedly quite relatively speaking "high/reputable"
In fact this and MANY OTHER plagiarizers or false accounts have earned more $ and have MUCH higher rep than someone like me who is running an organization feeding 40,000 free meals a year and operating at the lowest carbon footprint of any organization I am aware of.
Even still after being caught hi rep is still higher...
I appreciate your hard work @pfunk it's one of the reasons why you got my witness vote a week or two ago.
One of the things that I plan to implement for my own blog is running all my content through copyscape, especially any researched articles. I think it's vitally important for the community to trust the platform and its members. I started today with including my copyscape banner. It might be something the community can be encouraged to do.
I appreciate it. Does running through copyscape mean that they store it in case anyone tries to copy it? Or is it to verify that you haven't zonked out and copied an entire sentence?
Hi @pfunk - it's more like a scanning tool. Here is a link to their FAQ page. http://www.copyscape.com/faqs.php
I personally use the premium service for scanning my own material or researching an article that I believe is plagiarized. It does not differentiate between which is original or copied, or whether there are proper citations to the copy. For the individual, it's a great tool to protect one's own material. They also have a copyscape sentry tool, which will scan the entire web weekly or daily for duplicate copies of your material, which could be costly.
I would personally love it if Steemit was able to implement something like an opt-in (for a small fee) where everyone could enter their text and scan it on site before hitting the post button. Perhaps with an automatic banner that states it is plagiarism free or a Trusted contributor.
This is disappointing! But I find his apology sincere, and hope he becomes an example for the community.
Me too.
Yes, so do I. It's refreshing when someone changes their ways for the better. It was very big of him to be public and admit his mistake.
Rewards from this post will go straight to @steemcleaners?
Liquid rewards will be split evenly between me and three other people who looked into the matter and participated in finding their plagiarism.
Thanks for the work you are doing. Transparency and investigation. It is important that where the code fails the community together makes it clear we do not accept behavior like this. I just gave you my two accounts vote as a witness. Keep up the good work, this is what type of witness activity I can definitely get behind.
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Did you pass the plagiarism data to the real author, so that he may chose whether or not claim his rightful share for the benefit this guy got with his work?
(we know that google Inc. is VERY helpful in that situation, and given that the youtube channel exists...)
Honestly, I like this as an option better than I like flagging. I mean.... wouldn't it bring the original creator over when they start to see what some of their material made for someone else?
I've been amazed and saddened by the amount and forms of plagiarism I've seen on steemit, even cooking recipes. One tell seems to be when someone starts out by informing readers of the dramatic amount of time they've invested into the post, that always raises my radar.
That is true. People who write original content don't list how long they spent on it... for the most part.