V8 Plagiarism Concerns

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Hey, everyone. I'm unfortunately writing today about a concern I have with the V8 Armory—specifically, that almost half of it is directly plagiarized from various sources.

This would be pretty unfortunate in any circumstances, because the plagiarism in question works against the stated aims of the armory, often providing a questionably-useful definition rather than details important to a character with a given assigned weapon (for example, we're told that a hockey stick is a stick used to play hockey, but not whether the specific hockey stick assigned is made out of metal or plastic). The most important information (weight, size, ammunition, and any special quirks of a given weapon) are in some cases missing or confusingly phrased, in a number of instances because sentences taken from elsewhere were cut off halfway through. It's also pretty disappointing to see literal copy/pastes from Wikipedia when the first thing most handlers do upon getting a weapon is look them up on Wikipedia (this is how I noticed this issue, actually, when Wikipedia's phrasing was exactly the same as the confusing armory entry that sent me there).

Above and beyond this, however, this is particularly disappointing to see from a staff team that has made standing against plagiarism a notable part of its efforts to the point of pursuing edge cases, disallowing even the names of characters pulling from a Reddit post from being resued (despite those names having no connection to the plagiarism) and barring use of other people's profiles (even with permission) as plagiarism-adjacent. It's pretty obvious that there's an awareness that using other people's stuff without permission isn't good, and official material should definitely not fail to clear a standard being that's applied to character submissions.

The plagiarism in this case comes from a number of sources, though Wikipedia is far and away the most common. Wikipedia does allow for its text to be used elsewhere, but requires explicit credit to be given when this is done, among other conditions (including the material also being released under a similar license). In other cases, the plagiarized content comes from blogs, fan wikis, and various product listings (in one case WalMart's website), a number of which do not seem to have these provisions.

While the site has a long history of references, in-jokes, nods, and so on, this isn't any of those things. It's not a copypasta in a profile conclusion or some song lyrics as a thread title. It's just a bunch of information lifted wholesale and presented as original work without credit given to its source.

I went through fairly quickly, especially once it became clear that this was a systemic issue, but following are the plagiarized entries that I caught, with quick comparisons between the armory text and the source text, as well as a link to the source. In some cases, that link is a guess on my end as multiple sources use the same phrasing (sometimes presumably also plagiarizing each other, sometimes using manufacturer descriptions with no clear indication which site it was ripped from for the armory). There may also be other instances I missed; I think there are enough examples here to pretty clearly establish the unfortunate trend.


Plagiarized Entries In Alphabetical Order:


Billhook:

Taken from Jean Chalinder (Unsolved Murder) transcript

Bowie Knife:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Bowie Knife

Chain Whip:

Taken from [Solved] Basic Weapon System (from Gaia Online)

Chiappa Rhino:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Chiappa Rhino

Cobray Terminator:

Taken from Fandom Gun Wiki entry for Cobray Terminator

COP .357 Derringer:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for COP .357 Derringer

Desert Eagle:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Desert Eagle

Flashbang grenades:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Stun Grenade

Funboy inflatable snowmobile sled and air pump:

Taken from Amazon listing for FUNBOY SNOWMOBILE-19-AMZN Luxury Giant Inflatable, Retro Snowmobile Sled

Gas Mask:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Gask Mask

Haladie:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Haladie

Hockey Stick:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Hockey Stick

Ice Axe:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Ice Axe

Ice Pick:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Ice Pick

Iron Fan:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Japanese War Fan

IWI Masada:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for IWI Masada

Kel-Tec RFB:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Kel-Tec RFB

Khanda:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Khanda

Lacrosse Stick:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Lacrosse Stick

Ouija Board:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Ouija

Pickaroon:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Pickaroon

Pop-up two-person tent:

Taken from Milestone 4 Man Super Dome Tent product page (or some related product description—it's reused in a lot of spots)

Potassium cyanide pill:

Taken from Wikipedia entires for Suicide Pill and Potassium Cyanide

Pugio:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Pugio

Roll of duct tape:

Taken from 5 Pro Hacks for Gorilla Tape and Wikipedia entry for duct tape

Satsumata:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Satsumata

Self-heating field rations:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Flameless Ration Heater

Short piece of rope tied in a noose:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Noose

Shuriken:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Shuriken

Smoke grenades x3:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for M18 Smoke Grenade

Spool of barbed wire and wire cutters:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Barbed Wire

Spray can of fast-expanding foam sealant:

Taken from The Dos and Don’ts of Using Expanding Foam Insulation Around the House (Bob Vila article) and Wikipedia entry for Spray Foam

Stopper 37mm (non-lethal baton rounds):

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Rubber Bullet

Stun Gun:

Taken from WhaChaNeeds product description for Mini Stun Gun (or some related product description—it's reused in a lot of spots)

Syringe:

Taken from ScienceEquip.com syringe listing (or some related product description—it's reused in a lot of spots)

Tanegashima:

Taken from GS Pawn listing for 1700s Tanegashima Rifle (or some related product description—it's reused in a lot of spots)

Tear gas grenades:

Taken from Mira Safety Blog: The Ultimate Tear Gas Guide

Trident Dagger:

Taken from TherionArms product page for Trident Main Gauche(or some related product description—it's reused in a lot of spots)

Ulu knife:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Ulu

Urumi:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Urumi

Vintage clacker balls toy:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Clackers, partially as archived on encyclo.co.uk

Voulge:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Voulge

Walther WA 2000 (sniper rifle):

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Walther WA 2000

Weighted net:

Taken from WCS™ Throw Net product page

Wholesale box of Trident gum:

Taken from Walmart product page for Trident Gum

Winchester Model 1895 (lever-action rifle):

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Winchester Model 1895

Zweihander:

Taken from Wikipedia entry for Zweihander


This being the Support and Suggestions forum, I would like to offer the following suggestions for how to remedy this situation:

1. The staffer(s) responsible for the plagiarism seen here be gently and privately reminded by the staff team as a whole that plagiarism is not okay and that using others' work without permission was an error in judgment.

2. A more specific and clear plagiarism policy be written and shared with the community, to hopefully help both handlers and staff better understand what is and is not acceptable when it comes to using others' words.

3. The offending content in the Armory be rewritten to avoid plagiarism and to provide better utility for handlers (and the missing entries for weapons assigned later be completed so those handlers can know what they've got too).

Thanks for your time and attention!

[Courtography]

Is this real life

[Sunnybunny]

Not to be picking at or anything, because plagiarism is serious, but I thought the general practice for weapons was to copy them from a source so everyone was on the same page on how they functioned. If this was something about the meta game story that is supposed to be original it would be one thing, but I don't understand how something like this would be plagiarism, given that it basically functions as a basic primer for weapons. That is like giving the definition of a word is plagiarizing the dictionary.

[RC~]

i think it's less about plagiarism but more about the weird phrasing/information as a result of the copypasting

[Applesintime]

Yeah, a couple of guns are missing magazine capacity and what rounds they fire and most of them are missing weight for one example

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Not to be picking at or anything, because plagiarism is serious, but I thought the general practice for weapons was to copy them from a source so everyone was on the same page on how they functioned. If this was something about the meta game story that is supposed to be original it would be one thing, but I don't understand how something like this would be plagiarism, given that it basically functions as a basic primer for weapons. That is like giving the definition of a word is plagiarizing the dictionary.

This is actually a really good example because copying the dictionary without permission is in fact plagiarism! You can read about some interesting instances of this (and the actions dictionaries and encyclopedias take to prevent it) here.

If staff feel the best way to present weapon information is through quotes from Wikipedia, hey, fair enough! But you've still gotta cite your sources and make clear when you're quoting, or else you're plagiarizing. That's why WIkipedia has a whole section on what you have to do if you wanna use their words.

I know that plagiarism is kind of uninteresting for lots of folks, but having been plagiarized a few times myself and having spent some time working with students and having to watch for this stuff/teach proper citation habits it's important, and having a bunch of copy/pasted text intermingled with original text without any clarification on which is which (or any acknowledgement that any of the text isn't original) is a problem.

[SOTF_Help]

Hello all,

Thank you for expressing your concerns. The primary aim of the armory is to provide information in both picture and text to users so that they can quickly see information about all of the weapons in the game. The information is reference material and is meant to serve as a document of convenience and to allow for continuity between writers. It is not meant to be taken as original work, unlike what we expect of profiles and the in-character roleplay, and we apologize if there was confusion and you believed it to be presented as such. We have added a disclaimer in the first post of the Armory clarifying this fact.

Additionally, in regards to individual, specific sentence phrasing, the highlighted materials are basic facts about the weapons that, per your admission, often appear repeatedly around the internet and lack a clear origin. In a professional academic context (which SOTF is not), these would be considered common knowledge and would not need to be cited. We understand your concern however, and hope that the disclaimer addresses it.

In regards to the incident with the Reddit post, we chose not to allow that because the characters were based on people in that post in more than just name, including personal details, and felt it would be safest to remove the names from use in this case, even with the personal details removed. The rules were updated to clarify that plagiarizing from internet sources is also disallowed under our rules because that was not an area of media that had previously been explicitly covered. If you have any issues or questions with decisions regarding our profile policy, you are free to PM SOTF_Help or a staffer of your choice to express concerns or ask for clarification.

Lastly, regarding missing entries and incomplete information: if any handlers have additional questions related to their weapons we are happy to add or clarify information, which has already been done in the case of some of the entries. As always, life and circumstances sometimes cause us to be busy, and we are working on finishing out the armory with the remaining 14 weapons. It would be most helpful to send us a message via Help or Discord PM with the individual entries which you find confusing or would like additional details on. Accounting for the previous disclaimer about our sometimes limited availability, we will work to address such questions as soon as possible.

Thank you for your time.

- The SOTF Staff Team

[Grand Moff Hissa]

It is not meant to be taken as original work, unlike what we expect of profiles and the in-character roleplay, and we apologize if there was confusion and you believed it to be presented as such. We have added a disclaimer in the first post of the Armory clarifying this fact.

Additionally, in regards to individual, specific sentence phrasing, the highlighted materials are basic facts about the weapons that, per your admission, often appear repeatedly around the internet and lack a clear origin. In a professional academic context (which SOTF is not), these would be considered common knowledge and would not need to be cited. We understand your concern however, and hope that the disclaimer addresses it.

Thanks for clarifying this! As long as it's clear that the work isn't intended to be construed as original, that's my big complaint handled.

That aside, I will note (having worked fairly extensively with this) that the principle of common knowledge applies specifically to facts and not to quotations. In academic writing, you traditionally cite anything that's not original research (so if, say, you're writing about internet roleplays, you might write "Many internet roleplays are conducted using forum and chat software" and then cite where you read that, even though you are not directly quoting the source. However, if that clears the bar of common knowledge for your adenine, a citation for that would be unnecessary.

On the other hand, if you wrote, "Many internet roleplays are conducted using forum and chat software, including phpbb, a free flat-forum bulletin board software solution that can be used to stay in touch with a group of people or can power your entire website." that would be a no-go because the second half of that's a direct quote from the phpbb website. The proper format would be "Many internet roleplays are conducted using forum and chat software, including phpbb, 'a free flat-forum bulletin board software solution that can be used to stay in touch with a group of people or can power your entire website.'¹" Here's a neat little resource from Yale drawing the distinction; note that the principle of common knowledge is a check several rungs down the ladder below "always cite direct quotations of two or more words. So basically, if you're writing something for school, please always cite quotes or you will fail your assignments, even if everyone knows it was Shakespeare who wrote "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

Anyways, with the disclaimer added I believe my concerns are taken care of. Thank you for your time and attention!