We’ve had a lot of content plagiarized from our website over the years. As a result we created a “name and shame” plagiarism policy, where we publicly call-out the people who do it. And this morning I learned that it had been done by someone I know. Not cool.
Compare our course assessment page with a similar page at the Maine Primitive Skills School. On their page, scroll down to the heading “Assessment For Course Work.” Then check out our page, which is much older. Here are the links.
Their page: http://www.primitiveskills.com/apprenticeship/
Our page: http://jackmtn.com/assessment.html
Several paragraphs are verbatim; a clear cut and paste job.
I debated not publishing this post because I’m a fan of the MPSS and I know they do great work. I’ve known their founder for over 20 years. But plagiarism is one of those things that really bugs me.
I’m flattered that they want to use our student assessment system. But there’s a right way to use someone else’s content; Ask them, get permission, and be clear to your audience where it came from. To copy someone else’s content and pass it off as your own is plagiarism, and is definitely not cool.
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I have to say this is something I’ve seen many times before in”our world” bit it’s never right. We know that the skills we teach are things passed down through years of knowledge from our teachers. I have one of the best teaching me with Mors and Kelly and if I was to use thier stuff and pass it off as my own I’d be ashamed of myself. I like what you’ve done here Tim and I think we need to call out more people that lack the intestinal fortitude to put thier own stuff out. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Brian.
I’m glad you posted this Tim. Sometimes it is needed i think, and this is ceratinly one of those times in my opinion.
I have been both criticized for plagerizing (wrongfully), and plagerized, but not to this degree. I was asked about the name of my courses one time as they resembled anothers, but our content was drastically different, to which i proved. It was hard for me to call a “Survival class” an “underwater basket weaving class”, not a great analogy, but i think you get the point. I have also been plagerized, and it was almost verbatim, such as your circumstance here. I agree that it is never cool to do so, and worse off if you don’t ask or acknowledge the person/place your getting the info from. I can’t say I blame them for using some great information that has been on your site for the past 16-17 years, as it is some of the best around. But as you mentioned, there is a right and wrong way of going about doing it, this being of the latter.
I also know the school mentioned and have wroked with them before. Hopefully this will be cleared up on that end, and made right.
Thanks Derek,
I’ve got a lot of respect for the MPSS, this issue notwithstanding. They’ve been running solid programs for a long time.
Flat out copying and pasting.
Not even ambitious enough to change a little sentence structure, nor are they polite enough to cite a source.
Call ’em out in public. They earned it.
Thanks Mark.