Plagiarism
So here's a good question: what's the line between plagiarism and good referencing?
A few articles caught my eyes:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=238
http://irwebreport.blogsome.com/2006/05/09/we-need-a-new-definition-of-plagiarism/
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2006/05/09/no-compassion-for-plagiarists/
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/05/08/online_plagiarism_strikes_blog_world/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Business+News
I'm thinking that the "gray area" mentioned (in "plagiarism today") is one I quite often stray into. I know that I quote extensively, and the ratio of quotation to personally-generated content is often quite high. On the other hand, much of what I comment about is political, and I do tend to quote from multiple sources for various reasons.
Now, that said, I doubt that I'm guilty of plagiarism (plagiarism is passing another's work off as your own), because I always try to attribute (usually with a URL, and sometimes also with a name).
I have a question, though, and it's important to me (and maybe to others): how much of a quotation is enough, and how much is too much? The other day, for example, I quoted extensively an article on the right to petition. On the one hand, I was trying to convey the necessary points to understand his point of view, and on the other, I was trying to neither fill my own blog with blather nor steal his content. Walking that line is hard, because very often, when you're quoting someone, that someone has said something so well that it's hard for you to restate it any better than they did. Putting a URL in and saying "Read that" is next to useless; there's got to be some reason to say "read that" - and a quote, of a paragraph or two, seems the easiest way to convey the nature of the content. But is it right for me to do that? "Fair use" law lets me quote to a small degree, but where is that line drawn? No matter where it's drawn, I suspect I've wandered across it more than perhaps I should have.
Hmmm. Something I need to think about.
A few articles caught my eyes:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=238
http://irwebreport.blogsome.com/2006/05/09/we-need-a-new-definition-of-plagiarism/
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2006/05/09/no-compassion-for-plagiarists/
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/05/08/online_plagiarism_strikes_blog_world/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Business+News
I'm thinking that the "gray area" mentioned (in "plagiarism today") is one I quite often stray into. I know that I quote extensively, and the ratio of quotation to personally-generated content is often quite high. On the other hand, much of what I comment about is political, and I do tend to quote from multiple sources for various reasons.
Now, that said, I doubt that I'm guilty of plagiarism (plagiarism is passing another's work off as your own), because I always try to attribute (usually with a URL, and sometimes also with a name).
I have a question, though, and it's important to me (and maybe to others): how much of a quotation is enough, and how much is too much? The other day, for example, I quoted extensively an article on the right to petition. On the one hand, I was trying to convey the necessary points to understand his point of view, and on the other, I was trying to neither fill my own blog with blather nor steal his content. Walking that line is hard, because very often, when you're quoting someone, that someone has said something so well that it's hard for you to restate it any better than they did. Putting a URL in and saying "Read that" is next to useless; there's got to be some reason to say "read that" - and a quote, of a paragraph or two, seems the easiest way to convey the nature of the content. But is it right for me to do that? "Fair use" law lets me quote to a small degree, but where is that line drawn? No matter where it's drawn, I suspect I've wandered across it more than perhaps I should have.
Hmmm. Something I need to think about.