Blatant Plagerism?

Question

Am I the only one that gets pissed off when people just rip sections out of wikipedia and say they wrote it? At least say where you got it, or put the info in your own words or something.

Answer 1

I think there's some misunderstanding among students, academics, candidates for advanced degrees, etc. in most countries in the era of competitiveness regarding education and the means to achieve scholarship in any school, college or university. I mean good, great and honest writers for any academic purpose should be aware of this tricky, unethical way in the name of plagiarism, it's not cool or great at all if one keeps doing without any feeling of academic guilt, I mean this should be a warning in our responsible academic conscience. Those who know (and there's no secret in the world) will definitely condemn and not appreciate reading his/her report or thesis and some great professors must know this is from somewhere word by word with no paraphrasing, that is, put the sentence or the paragraph in your own words. I assure you if you know how to paraphrase by your own intellectual pursuit, your lecturer/professor will respect you. From my responsibility as a lecturer and advisor, I have had some masters degree students to supervise their thesis writing as well as bachelor degree students who also are required to search and write their term papers and it's my duty to inform them how to write with references and why we should not plagiarize at all.

I don't understand why some people keep doing so, they might have their own reasons. I always ask my students what's the point of plagiarizing other people's words or sentences without any reference since we need to honor the writer as our learned mentor or source of reference or the rightful owner of the intellectual property. Unless we do so, it's simply an academic theft or fruad. And how about the advancement or any breakthrough of any field of studies with plagiarism everywhere. It's a kind of academic dishonesty; the world of scholarship will not appreciate such selfish, thankless and ignoble work.