Plagiarized article

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   I found a plagiarized article an absolutely no way of reporting it. Help manual says “click top left grey flag in article” but there is _nothing_ anywhere in the entire article to click.

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      theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Is it your article?

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      NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I just reported one the other day. The flag should be there to the upper left of the article; it's kind of got a faded gray color, I guess to distinguish it from the social media buttons just above it.

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         OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks you! My screen looks like this; there’s nothing?
         
         

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            theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            See the flag on the left?
            
            

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            NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            It appears the option is not available on mobile. I checked on my phone and I couldn't find it either. If you have a desktop/laptop, you can do it from there.

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            Marketing Meritposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Turn your phone around to landscape, not portrait and the flag should be on the left-hand side.
            
            However, do check your facts carefully, as Joanna is an editor for Hubpages.

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               theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               I knew I recognised her name! She's lovely.

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                  Marketing Meritposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes Bev, she is. Joanna edited a few of my articles a while back, and was extremely professional. That’s why I questioned the authenticity of the plagiarism claim.
                  
                  Without wishing to judge, the OP has no featured articles and only joined two months ago. Therefore, I can’t help but question the motives behind this.

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                  lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  She is.

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                     CYong74posted 3 years agoin reply to this

                     This is the second time within the week that a new hubber has posted in the forum about plagiarism. Or should I say, HP having no protection against plagiarism.
                     
                     That other new hubber barely made sense with what she said, on top of abruptly changing the story midway. So yeah. It smells fishy.

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                        lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                        Weird. Too many spammers these days.

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               NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

               I thought that was the case too, but I turned my phone horizontal for landscape and still didn't see the flag.

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                  lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  You need to click on the three dots if on Chrome (maybe others too) and click desktop site. What shows on landscape depends on the screen resolution, etc.

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                     NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

                     Not getting the three dots. What's funny is, if I scroll down far enough, I get the social media buttons and email thing but no report button. If I go to the three bars in the upper left for the menu, I get the social media buttons again, no report button (not that it should be there but I again get the social media buttons). So, for whatever reason, some of us don't get the report button on our phones, it appears

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                        lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                        Yes, because you are not viewing the desktop version on your phone. I guess they programmed the report button to show on screens with a resolution greater than "X". That's why the option from your browser and not the website to view in desktop mode should allow you to get it, at least in principle. It works on my phone when I do this.

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         OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         I’m admittedly new to the site, appreciate you guys trying to explain

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   No it isn’t, it just bothers me that someone simply replaced someone else’s article. It was an article that I followed, and since I had been really active in the comments I frequently viewed it. I even had a link to it in my safari-browser. It was written 2012 by a man. About a week ago I clicked the link to see if someone had responded to my recent comment, and suddenly the article had been replaced! The link led to basically the same article with minor changes in it, but suddenly the author was a a woman, it said that the article was published that same day, and all the comments were gone. So somehow the original article had been replaced. I have no idea how this could have happened, but since I’ve followed that article for about a year I know that that woman did not write it. To be frank, it just pisses me off. No one should take claim of someone else’s work.

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   Oh, and I posted two comments under the new article. First one asking what had happened to the original article, then one saying that this seemed like plagiarism. They quickly got removed.

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      theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      There is a flag on the left side of every article. Click on it and it will give you options. However, it is possible that the article has been sold and passed between two hubbers.
      
      Had it been duplicated on HubPages, it would have tripped the duplicate content filter.

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         OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         That’s interesting - I had no idea articles could be sold between hubbers

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            Miebakagh57posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            OJ, article(s) can be stolen, sold, and plagiarized.                     But my little worry is that you did not respond to the theraggedged quetion "Is it your article?"                           Thanks for post the issue.

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               Sherry Hewinsposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               She said no

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   Wow; this got out of hand.
   
   I am not a scammer and I have no idea what my motive for lying would be. As you can clearly make out from the posts I am _completely new_ to the site, and also was informed that articles could evidently be sold between two hubbers which I had no idea of until the woman in this forum told me that (and you can all read it). This is most likely what must have happened to this article since it isn’t a duplicate but has _replaced_ the old article. The old article is gone. She absolutely did not write that article, which is the entire reason I posted here because I wanted to report it, and then I was informed that evidently articles could be sold between hubbers. I’m wondering; if she bought the article from the original author, wouldn’t she be obligated to disclose that she didn’t actually write it, only modified it? I know a lot about plagiarism because of university and bachelor essays, and we weren’t even allowed to copy _our own_ work in another paper without properly referring to it, because it’s still considered plagiarism, so ownership is not all that matters.
   
   Anyway; I’m no spammer. I have no wired motives. I’ve been commenting on the original article for like a year (since before I had an actual account here) and suddenly it was gone and replaced, and I wanted to know why.

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      Marketing Meritposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Another possibility is that the author did write the original article, under a pen name, and has opted to consolidate her accounts. (Multiple accounts are allowed on Hubpages.)

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         OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         I guess so, but it seems unlikely because the original article was written by a Belgian man and there was a picture and bio of him and everything, and the article had the same headlines, pictures, title, and much of it’s content, but it also included his own experience in a five year long relationship with a woman who didn’t like his children and how he eventually felt he had to end that relationship. Then when this article came up instead she flipped the words boyfriends and girlfriend in the title and in the rest of the text, left much of the content as it was with smaller modifications, but removed all the references to the real relationship. Seems like if it was her all along she would have kept the part of the five year relationship that ended because of the issue the article brings up. Also since there was a picture of the make author, that picture would then be stolen from a real person. Of course it _could_ be the case, but I suppose the theory of her buying the original article seems more likely. Thank you for the input though; obviously I’ve given this a lot of thought so it’s nice to see there may be several explanations beyond pure plagiarism I guess :-)

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   Also thank you to everyone who cleared up that reporting an article requires being on a computer or turning my phone around, I didn’t know.

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      DrMark1961posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Although you posted with the best intentions, this forum is hounded by spammers and trolls. There is a thread on there right now from some guy who comes on about every day to tell us that we are all racists and how much money he makes on other sites. He gets banned, starts a new account, and then starts up again as if he has never been here before.
      I have no idea if you have to mention that you were not the original author. I would certainly think so, as I would never want to post something I had not written, but am not sure if there is a protocol for that.

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         OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Ah ok; I get it. I do. I felt really accused for a moment there but I get how one can get suspicious if the forum is filled with spammers. What a bummer.
         
         Yes it seems weird to me still. I searched through the article to find some sort of reference to the original author or just some disclaimer that she had only modified the article and not actually written it, but I found nothing of the sort. I then, as I’ve mentioned here on the forum, posted two comments under the article asking about it, but they got deleted quickly (instead of her responding to it). That’s when I started to look for a way to report it since it just seemed so wrong. I’m not sure if it’s allowed to pretend to be the original author if you’ve paid the original author to get that right, but to me it still seems wrong. And as you said, I would never _want_ to put my name on anything that I hadn’t written myself, but that obviously isn’t true for everyone.

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      NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      No problem. And yes, I agree that escalated quickly. But it says more about them than you.

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   theraggededgeposted 3 years ago

   It would be unlikely that someone would plagiarise a HubPages' article and republish it on HubPages. Plus the account holder in this case is a trusted and well-liked HubPages' editor.
   
   Accounts do get sold and transferred. Sometimes writers pass away, or they have a new career and prefer to take a lump sum if someone is willing to pay for it, thus giving up all rights to their work.
   
   The date on the article is the date it was last edited, not when it was published.

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      Miebakagh57posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Bev, I do not know the fact that a writer can sell out his/her account on HP. Thanks for this information.

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      OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      The original author in this case had only published this one article, and it didn’t seem like he had been active for a few years. It was originally posted in 2012 so that was a long time ago, and he hadn’t written anything else. I know because I clicked on his profile to specifically look for more articles on the same subject, if maybe he had some new takes on the matter later on or something like that.
      
      I know that the date on there now is referring to when she last updated. It was published Saturday 4/7 this year, or possibly one or two days before that, but no sooner. I know because this subject is somewhat of an obsession with me because one year ago I married a man with two teenage children, and I googled for articles touching on that subject a lot, and found that particular article (the original one) well written and very insightful, but super-provoking. I posted some comments in the comment section and then found myself frequenting that article several times a week because there kept coming new comments, and I kept feeling either really provoked or very much in agreement, and therefor posted many comments. And so I clicked on the article, which I had saved on my bookmarks on safari, a couple of times a week. Saturday the 4 my husband and I were at a dinner party at the house of some of his best friends, who have children and they were involved in the dinner. Attending dinner parties with children is still very new to me, I’d never done that until I met my husband, and I sometimes find myself needing to leave and just breathe because it’s just difficult for me. That’s a whole other issue and I’m spinning away from the matter, but the point is that late on the evening 4 of July I was at this dinner party, I went to the bathroom, sat on the bathroom floor actually just breathing and reminding myself that I love my husband and of life choices I’ve made, and I clicked on this article to read some of the comments of other people that had written about how hard they found it to be with someone who had children, and was chocked to find the whole thing replaced, new author and all the comments gone. That was the 4 of July, and I know I had visited the original article a day or two ago 100%, so it was absolutely published either that day, or the 3 or possibly 2 this month. No sooner than that.
      
      Sorry for tmi. Just pointing out that I am well aware of when it was published :-)
      
      I find the whole deal with selling and buying the writes to articles and accounts quite fascinating and a little disturbing. I wonder how many are doing this, and probably on other sites as well, without disclosing at all that that was the case.

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         NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

         I used to find it disturbing too until I realized that this is what many writers do all the time, for a long time. Freelance writers do it all the time and  don't get credit, they just get a flat payment for a piece. I did it on a low level for Blogmutt (which is called something else now), which paid not much but some freelancers get paid well for what they do. People can sell their Hubpages accounts for a good sum of money, and if you need it I'm sure it comes in handy.

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            OnlyJposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            I guess so. I didn’t even consider freelancing actually, but you’re right, that does occur. I’m going to have to wrap my head around this for sure :-P

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   I am well aware that I’m probably caring about this way more than I should. At first I was just really annoyed because I was sure it was plagiarism, and that is just always wrong, and I feel like people should “do the right thing” and care when something clearly isn’t right, not just when it affects oneself. Now I’m more just intrigued by the concept of content being sold between authors without that being disclosed. To me that’s like if someone makes a cover of a song; you are allowed to do so with the consent of the original song artist, and you can surely pay for that consent, and after the death of a music artist there is a certain amount of time after which the musical content becomes free for everyone to use. But you still have to disclose it I think. Or maybe you don’t but people always know when it’s wide spread enough. It’s just intriguing; it somehow just feels wrong to take credit for someone else’s work, but at the same time if people didn’t, some songs, texts etc. my eventually fade away and people wouldn’t have access to them at all anymore.

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   OnlyJposted 3 years ago

   Thanks to everyone who cleared up for me what has happened here - the article must have been sold between hubbers. Also for helping me with how I might go about reporting an article if needed in the future - there were no grey flag on my screen and I now know why.
   
   I ended up not reporting this particular article. Most likely it has been sold by the original author, since it’s not a duplicate but a replaced article. Why on earth one would want to put their name on something they didn’t actually write is still beyond me, but it’s not plagiarism and therefor not something that should be reported as such.
   
   Thank you everyone who responded!

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   Eric Cauncaposted 3 years ago

   Can I report copyright photos or just the whole plagiarized article? Can I report an article copied  from another website?

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      theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Are you talking about an article of yours that has been copied?
      
      Or have you found one on HubPages?
      
      If it is the first, you will need to submit a DMCA notice to the web host. Failing that, you can request that Google remove it from their search results.
      
      If someone has stolen your photos, you can do the DMCA procedure just for them.
      
      If you have found one on HubPages that you know has been copied from elsewhere, use the flag symbol on the left of the hub to report it. There's an option for ticking the copied box and you can paste in the other url as proof.

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