The recent plagiarism on bloopdiary.com
Hello everyone.
My name is Brian, and I am an Administrative Assistant over on www.bloopdiary.com. You can find my diary at:
http://www.bloopdiary.com/viewfront.php?id=28459.
First off, I would like to thank you all for what you do here. I am a writer of poetry, prose and every so often a short story, and I have been plagiarized in the past. I know how demeaning it is to a writer and how angry it makes the people who are affected. I would also like to thank you guys for bringing Spikes Fic to our attention. I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that the account with which he posted his plagiarized material has been terminated and the account with which he posted his apology (which, by the way, he did on his own with no pressure from Bloop staff, kudos for that) will be closely watched for the foreseeable future.
That being said, I do have two concerns about this recent situation. Some of the emails we received in our support center were needlessly rude. BloopDiary has never, does not, and will never support plagiarism and will do everything within its power to stop it from occurring on our Website. The site only has about 10 staff members who are capable of deleting entries and/or diaries, and almost all of them are full-time college students, have full time jobs, and in some cases both. Just because we did not know about this situation does not mean we in any way condone what happened. Many of the violations we do catch are brought to our attention by the users of the site, and in this case, there was simply no way to know that plagiarism was taking place until we were notified by this community. I understand that plagiarism is unacceptable, but to threaten the staff that is only learning of it happening when you first contact them doesn't seem to be the best route to take.
The other concern is the number of emails we received and the fact that people included inaccurate information in them. Two emails in particular gave us the wrong diarist ID, and when we tried to investigate the situation, the system told us that no such diary existed. We replied that it appeared that to diary has already been deleted, however since we were given inaccurate information the diary was still up and running, making it appear that our staff was simply incompetent, and bringing against us an accusation of protecting the offender. Should this situation happen again in the future, I would be greatly appreciative if only one person were to contact our staff, and to please, please ensure the information you give us is correct. It helps our with communication and makes things less confusing, not to mention that we can't terminate accounts of those whom we cannot find.
If anyone knows any way that Bloop can better identify and terminate plagiarist accounts, please feel free to inform me. It seems to me that there has to be an easier way to catch people who do this than to be purely reactive and wait for someone to catch it after the fact. Also, if any of you wish to join the site and help us in this effort, you are more than welcome to do so.
I don't use LiveJournal that much, so if anyone wants to contact me for any reason, my diary on Bloop will be accepting unsigned comments for awhile, and you can reach it through the link above. Alternatively, you can email me at bpkozina (AT) gmail (DOT) com.
Thanks again for all your guys help in the recent situation. Hopefully it won't happen again, but if it does, I'd like to be better prepared to handle it than we were this time.
Brian Kozina
Administrative Assistant
BloopDiary.com
My name is Brian, and I am an Administrative Assistant over on www.bloopdiary.com. You can find my diary at:
http://www.bloopdiary.com/viewfront.php?id=28459.
First off, I would like to thank you all for what you do here. I am a writer of poetry, prose and every so often a short story, and I have been plagiarized in the past. I know how demeaning it is to a writer and how angry it makes the people who are affected. I would also like to thank you guys for bringing Spikes Fic to our attention. I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that the account with which he posted his plagiarized material has been terminated and the account with which he posted his apology (which, by the way, he did on his own with no pressure from Bloop staff, kudos for that) will be closely watched for the foreseeable future.
That being said, I do have two concerns about this recent situation. Some of the emails we received in our support center were needlessly rude. BloopDiary has never, does not, and will never support plagiarism and will do everything within its power to stop it from occurring on our Website. The site only has about 10 staff members who are capable of deleting entries and/or diaries, and almost all of them are full-time college students, have full time jobs, and in some cases both. Just because we did not know about this situation does not mean we in any way condone what happened. Many of the violations we do catch are brought to our attention by the users of the site, and in this case, there was simply no way to know that plagiarism was taking place until we were notified by this community. I understand that plagiarism is unacceptable, but to threaten the staff that is only learning of it happening when you first contact them doesn't seem to be the best route to take.
The other concern is the number of emails we received and the fact that people included inaccurate information in them. Two emails in particular gave us the wrong diarist ID, and when we tried to investigate the situation, the system told us that no such diary existed. We replied that it appeared that to diary has already been deleted, however since we were given inaccurate information the diary was still up and running, making it appear that our staff was simply incompetent, and bringing against us an accusation of protecting the offender. Should this situation happen again in the future, I would be greatly appreciative if only one person were to contact our staff, and to please, please ensure the information you give us is correct. It helps our with communication and makes things less confusing, not to mention that we can't terminate accounts of those whom we cannot find.
If anyone knows any way that Bloop can better identify and terminate plagiarist accounts, please feel free to inform me. It seems to me that there has to be an easier way to catch people who do this than to be purely reactive and wait for someone to catch it after the fact. Also, if any of you wish to join the site and help us in this effort, you are more than welcome to do so.
I don't use LiveJournal that much, so if anyone wants to contact me for any reason, my diary on Bloop will be accepting unsigned comments for awhile, and you can reach it through the link above. Alternatively, you can email me at bpkozina (AT) gmail (DOT) com.
Thanks again for all your guys help in the recent situation. Hopefully it won't happen again, but if it does, I'd like to be better prepared to handle it than we were this time.
Brian Kozina
Administrative Assistant
BloopDiary.com