Important - A Reminder About Plagiarism

16 Jun 2017

Hey CTzens!

Over the past couple of months, we have noticed an increase in the number of high-quality, user-generated blog posts in the community. We really enjoy reading them; and we encourage you all to keep up your good, original work!

However, we have also noticed an increase in the number of articles that have been plagiarized from other websites. Plagiarism is the act of taking somebody else’s work without their permission and passing it off as their own.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence on Car Throttle. Over the past couple of weeks, we have received a large number of emails from professionals who claimed (and prove) that their articles had been plagiarized by a small number of particular CTzens. These users weren’t just taking quotes out of articles without permission—these incidents actually involved copying and pasting all of the text without attributing the original author.

Plagiarism is a really big problem because it is no different from stealing someone else’s property. The car community has a vast number of journalists and bloggers (including the staff at Car Throttle) who depend on writing these articles to make a living. Plagiarism really hurts these professionals. And, just like property theft, plagiarism can get you in trouble with the law.

Any posts determined to be plagiarized will be deleted, and you will be given a warning by our moderators. In severe cases, repeat offenders will be banned

Here are a number of steps that you can take to avoid plagiarism:

Don’t copy and paste articles from other websites on the Internet. This is a severe form of plagiarism.
If you want to use images from other articles/sources on the Internet, make sure you give credit to the original owner (unless the image is copyright-free). You can attribute the image source by listing the name of the publisher or the URL that the picture came from (e.g. Source: www.carthrottle.com)
It’s always a good idea to include links to the websites you used to get your information from! Check the Formatting Guide for information on how to insert website links into your text!
If you decide to take a quote from someone else, make sure you give them credit! (e.g. According to Kyle Ashdown, “Mia has much less body rust than Phil.”)

Thanks for taking the time to read this important post! The staff are very proud of user-generated content here at Car Throttle, and we will do our best to support quality, original work made by CTzens!

Comments

I knew people plagiarised memes on carthrottle but not blogs.

I’ve heard about it but didn’t know it was such a big thing

Or we can call it “reposting taken to the next level”

I’ve heard about plagiarized blogposts, but never knew it was such a big thing on CarThrottle.

Should be Editors Pick so it can reach more people

I’ve never thought anything was plagiarised.
From the stuff I’ve read anyway.
And I don’t remember well anyway so I wouldn’t notice plagiarism.

I write mine all from scratch, not an issue for me xD.
I noticed one article a few months back which was plagiarised, never said anything though…

About a certain german car…

Me too lol. I find it better, I can put any jokes if I want to xD

Is linking to websites plagiarism? Cause I’ve never written a blog.
Also pictures from Google Images.
How do we credit them?
Most pictures on Google Images can be found on lots of different websites so it’s hard to find a source.

Linking pictures isn’t really plagiarism, as that’s not written word. However, claiming that you yourself took them is stealing, therefor can be considered plagiarism. Also, linking websites is the exact opposite of plagiarism lol

I’ve never credited pictures, but I make sure I don’t write anything that suggests that they’re my own pictures, because they’re not.

As for linking websites, that’s definitely not plagiarism because you’re acknowledging the source.

said in a very sarcastic voice : Soon we haft to have a link to all the pics we you time and date and location if we take a pic ourself or when textning someone on CT we must use The correct genders to and theres alot i men alot you think it would be two buuut noooo….. LGBTQQIAAP. i here i was thinking on the CT we just here talking and enjoying cars whit simpel rules like dont repost and minimal stuff alot will not do what you asking really..but thats what i think i been wrong before…..

Plagiarism is a serious issue, I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say but it should be prevented as best as possible.

I wouldn’t be able to purposely make typos like you.
I just couldn’t do it.

I’ve never seen plagiarised blogs on CT myself, I understand it would be very annoying for the original writer though.

I write blogs myself as well, even though it has never happened to me (or at least not that I am aware off) I’m sure I would be incredibly angry and annoyed. Because me and all the others who write blogs put so much work and time into it and then it just gets stolen by some random person, the worst thing is that we can’t really do anything about it apart from banning that person

im genuinly angry. thx to those few idiots ct’s got a bad rep now. it’s straight up stealing. and what do they get out of it? nothing but upvotes and some comments good for inflating their ego. using different sources to learn information about a topic is something almost all of us do to make articles but if you copy paste something word for word and then claim it as yours you qualify as an (too sensitive for ct) i just dont understand why? do people really care about how many points they have? i hate people who have too big of an ego. people who constantly cry for attention and do stuff they dont like just to get that one upvote more are sore losers. you know what, f’ em. ban em all.

I completely agree with you. They just steal blogs and upload them to get upvotes. I (and I’m sure most others) write them because we want to learn more about that specific subject.
I don’t really care for upvotes, I prefer comments anyway because I want to talk to people. :)