Wikizilla:Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is the act of directly copying information from a source without giving proper credit, whether deliberately or unintentionally. Like most other wikis, Wikizilla frowns upon this sort of behavior.

Usually, plagiarism is terminated or reverted on sight by administrators. Existing plagiarism on this site is limited to a very small number of articles, so this page serves as mostly a reminder/notice.

Plagiarism

Commonly plagiarized sources

Historically, the most common source of plagiarized content on Wikizilla has been Toho Kingdom. For a large portion of Wikizilla's early history (about 2005-2013) a majority of the site's content was plagiarized from Toho Kingdom, and for this reason any content copy-pasted from that site will be immediately deleted. Other commonly plagiarized sources are IMDb, IMPDb and Wikipedia, though instances of plagiarism from these sources on Wikizilla are considerably rarer since both of those websites delve much less into Godzilla-related content than Wikizilla does (and in many cases, the plagiarism problem is reversed -- editors on those sites plagiarize content from Wikizilla and post it there instead).

How to spot plagiarism

Due to the style in which Toho Kingdom articles are written, which is generally highly descriptive and makes use of numerous figures of speech, it is fairly easy to spot and remove content lifted from the site. Here is a sample of what Toho Kingdom's usual style is, so users may be wary of paragraphs that use a very similar writing scheme.

Boiling the surrounding waters, Godzilla continued to wade through the sea toward the power plant, the energy from which he so yearned to absorb. Suddenly, freezer missiles began to strike Godzilla, and his temperature began to drop considerably. Cadmium missiles were fired to neutralize the beast's radioactive heart, and as it began to weaken, its flesh began to tighten. The freezer beam was fired, and this final assault caused Godzilla to topple into the surf. The monster was frozen at -200 degrees, and he would continue to lie in this state for six hours. The Super X3 returned to base, ready to launch again at a moment's notice.
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— Super X3 page [Toho Kingdom]

Wikizilla's administrators will not tolerate plagiarism under any reason--citing a plagiarized source as a reference does not mean the content is not plagiarized. When a user adds a section to a page or creates an entire article using text plagiarized from another source, the section or article may be deleted on sight. Repeated plagiarism by a user after multiple warnings may result in a block.

It is advised that if you have any doubts about the specific information, you should cross-reference it with the source from which you think the information was plagiarized. This method is also useful if you intend to simply reference and/or cite the information instead of editing it.

I found a page with plagiarism in it. How do I notify other users about this?

In response to large amounts of plagiarism, a template was created to notify other users of the presence of plagiarism, and to urge them to source or edit the information out.

To use this template, simply place {{Plagiarized}} at the top of a page, and an admin shall look into the problem as soon as possible.

A second template, {{Need sources}}, has also been implemented for use on pages that lack sources. While this template isn't exclusively used for notifying other users about the presence of plagiarism, it may be used for this purpose as well.

I found a page plagiarized from Wikizilla on another website. What do I do?

If you find content plagiarized from Wikizilla on another website, there are several things you can do. You can alert an administrator, editor or other person of authority on the site about the plagiarism and ask for it to be removed. You can also directly edit the site to remove or fix the plagiarism. Or, you can simply notify a Wikizilla administrator about the plagiarism and provide a link, and the administrator may take steps to address the problem.

Disclaimer

After a spate of plagiarized articles were created on the wiki in 2015 under the justification that the articles' numerous creators could not write on their own very well, it is now strongly advised that you never resort to plagiarism if you feel your writing is not up to standard; instead, focus on other contributions, such as images, sound files and video links, as well as participating in the site's forums. As noted above, repeated plagiarism following numerous warnings can result in a block.

See Also