Recently, new members are increasingly pasting in stuff, unaccredited, from the web. Sometimes completely irrelevant/unnecessary/unhelpful things.
I’m not asking why people do this (I’ve participated in enough forums to understand that). My question is: why don’t the moderators here remove it, after it’s reported to them with a verifying link to the original included in the “report”? Given the potential for copyright problems, and what these posts tell us about the people doing this, if there isn’t a specific rule here disallowing this, surely such posts should at least be removed as a matter of moderational discretion?
Where is the line drawn on who decides it is unaccredited? As far as the unhelpful part, I am sure that there is possible some that are doing that, but you have to go with the idea of PGI (Presume Good Intentions) as a default.
It’s simply factual, JD: either there’s an accreditation (link, or quoting the source), or there isn’t.
Naturally - but when a recently joined member’s made (say) 15 posts, of which 13 say “Thanks for sharing” (or something very similar) and the other two are paragraphs stolen from the web and pasted in, not even addressing a question that was asked, one would have to be pretty naive not to see what’s going on.
Well, I think some of it is because they are trying to get the number of posts up so they can bypass the moderator review. I would hope that through this that a lot more is being caught than what you are seeing. Also, moderators are not perfect either, I am sure that they are doing the best they can.
That, too. (The main reason I was thinking of - on the basis of my own forum-moderation experience - was actually that of people qualifying on post-count to abuse the forum’s private messaging facility for promotional purposes, and/or just “to look like experts” when they’re not.)
Some of this is “par for the course”, in a forum of this kind, but the issue of potential problems over breaches of others’ copyrights made it worth airing (I thought), as the “reports” system seemed not to be working quite as presumably intended.
I agree … I was curious only because it seemed rather surprising that even after situations like the one I described above were reported, together with evidence, no action was apparently being taken at all.
Since I started this thread, however, at least one of the examples I’d reported a few days before has now been removed.
Like many other members, I’m very grateful to the moderators for all their labours on behalf of this community.
Thanks for the question. The answer to your question, in this case, was that your report was reviewed, but the removal of the copy-and-paste reply was overlooked. I even had to reread the reply in question after my first review, thinking it was just a regular reply. Copyright infringement is definitely something we take seriously. We deal with it on a weekly basis with our own content getting copied, distributed, and often literally sold by someone else passing if off as his work. So we know how it feels to not get credit or have your personal works copied or distributed without your consent.
I’d like to add that moderating a forum is a never-ending duty. In the last two months, our moderation team moderated over 5000 messages. That includes approvals, deletions, edits, and moves. So while it can often seem that your reports go unnoticed, they do in fact help us out tremendously. Because of the sheer volume of posts, we depend on our members to help report misplaced threads or blatant spamming or inappropriate behavior. But even when that happens, we sometimes still get it wrong. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ve taken care of the copy and paste post and contacted that member.
And I also reviewed the 15 or so reports you sent in during the last two months. More than half of those were actionable and edits/deletions took place. There are a few that survived simply for the fact that the posts were signals-based and not promotional in nature. There’s always a wonder why someone gives away free signals, but we like to give those members the benefit of the doubt. In our experience it’s been 50/50 on which direction the thread takes. But we will be actively discussing the future of these types of threads and whether they lend any value to our other members.
Again, we really appreciate the time you take to send in those reports. Our moderation team is grateful for your work, as am I. Keep those reports coming in, and if in the future we miss something, feel free to let us know here or through the Contact Us option.
Every single one of [B]this member’s[/B] posts has been stolen and pasted-in from the web (they’re from Investopedia and various other sites.)
I’ve reported each one individually, a day or two ago, listing their original sources as URL’s in the “reports” in each case, so I’m slightly surprised to see that they haven’t been removed, Pipstradamus? “Just saying”.
Ok - well, in spite of no acknowledgement of or reply to my post immediately above, I’ll still take you at face value and mention that about twice a week I report such posts to the moderators, [I]including in my report the URL of the page/site from which all these stolen articles are taken and pasted in here[/I]. They’re rarely removed from the board.
And here’s the web-page on which the article was originally published. Not the best example, but the one on my clipboard as I’ve just reported it again. It’s a small site, but many of these things come from Investopedia and other very well-known resources who might be rather more concerned? “Duplicate content” aside …
That one’s been on the board, here, for some [I]months[/I] since being reported. Apparently nobody wants to remove it (I just reported it again, today - maybe it will be, this time?).
I could list [B][U]20[/U][/B] of these, but to be honest I’m now becoming disillusioned with doing so.
They concern me, and I’m guessing from your comment above, that “Copyright infringement is definitely something we take seriously”, that they must concern you, too?
Sincere apologies if I come across as unduly critical, but I think you’ll excuse my mentioning that it seems to me that [I]the “system” just isn’t working[/I]?
The problem, as I see it, lies not in identifying these things (they stick out like a sore thumb: usually one only has to glance at them to know that the post is probably an article stolen from the web): it lies in the fact that they remain on the board even [B]after[/B] being reported, sometimes on multiple occasions.
As I mentioned above, every single one of [B]this member’s[/B] posts has been stolen and pasted-in from the web (they’re from Investopedia and various other sites.) On the same days that her posts were made in this forum, they were made with the same or a very similar username in various other trading forums all of which removed the posts, the member, or both. Here, they were reported multiple times, but [I]apparently[/I] it was decided to do nothing?
It’s your forum, not mine, obviously, but naturally your observation above that you take breaches of copyright so seriously prompts me to wonder [I][U]why[/U][/I] there seems to be such a glaring disparity between the stated policy (which I applaud) and what actually happens (often nothing at all)?
Again, I’m sorry to trouble you over this. As a forum administrator myself, I do sympathise! I often very politely ask the moderators, in my reports, to be kind enough to let me know what their policy is about this, or whether they want me to stop reporting them, or what; but I’ve [I][U]never once[/U][/I] had a reply from them, in all the time I’ve been a member, so I don’t know what else to do, here.
(For what it’s worth, I’m not alone among the members here in being really interested to learn your views on all of this, when you have time to reply, please?).
The 5 things article is not subject to copyright, it is made freely available by the author, his only stipulation in using it is that the 5 articles remains unedited.
The html is available in original format for that purpose, hence you will see it again and again.
The linked site is not the original publisher, the original author is a trader/educator
afterthought, he wanted a link kept in so I suppose you could argue that it has been edited.
And it hasn’t “remained unedited”. But as I mentioned, that’s just the example that happened to be on my clipboard at the time: there are others that [I]are[/I] copyright. There are even some from Investopedia, which are [I]certainly[/I] copyright. It’s undeniably an increasing issue, here. Whether it’s an increasing “problem” depends on one’s perspective, of course, but Pipstradmus’s perspective is that he takes breaches of copyright very seriously.
My own suspicions (though I admit I can’t prove them) are (a) that people often paste in others’ material, unaccredited (i.e. [I]pretending to be its author[/I]), just in an attempt to “establish credibility” for whatever purpose they want it, and (b) that they come to this forum to do it because they see and know that they can get away with it here. They do the same in my forum, sometimes, but their memberships there are very brief indeed because long experience has taught us that in the long run, it’s bad for a forum. Like many other members, I’m not [I]criticising[/I] the moderators, and I remain grateful to them for their time and efforts here. At the same time, it would surely be helpful to have more clarity? I’ve specifically been asked (by Pipstradamus, above) to continue to report such matters, and am honestly wondering why, when it seems so often to serve no purpose. That’s confusing, isn’t it?
Lexys, I’d say the mods make a call, I’d also say that it is good to continue to report.
I’m a little longer in the tooth, but unusually for my age I’m fairly internet savvy (a by-product of spending too many hours with msdos), but by chance I am also savvy with how to bring something to market.
Good chance that the mods are equally savvy (well almost equally :)) so they likely have to make a balance, is the new poster an amateur who is helping by adding useful content or is he a pro marketeer.
Couple of years back I recognized a pro, no reporting by me, I just answered one of his early posts using his marketeer name and welcoming him - the thread disappeared faster than the melting snow.
“Useful content” can still be in breach of copyright (e.g. if it’s chunks out of Investopedia, or some similar site), though?
But quite often these paste-ins are either starting off a new thread, or posted apparently randomly in threads in which their content has absolutely nothing to do with the subject-matter of the thread.
The new poster, in one of the cases I mention above, was someone spamming five different forums with the same pasted-in items in each forum.
It could be argued that “what someone does in other forums is of no relevance here”, but my perspective is that it’s a useful way of clarifying their motive for posting.
That’s impressive moderation.
I think such issues are important, from the forum’s perspective, and it’s very clear from posting-volumes and traffic-figures that the forums that act efficiently over such issues are the ones flourishing, attracting new members and retaining old ones, while the exact opposite eventually applies to the less actively moderated ones.
