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I found a user is copying an answer given to them (I mean word for word copy/paste, no changes or anything!) by another user as their own answer on two question less than ten minuets apart and I bet there are more (EDIT: There are more).

To me this is very rude, I would be annoyed if it was my answer and the user who posted the first answer has informed me that they have mentioned this multiple times.

What is the best way to deal with this?

I have dealt with the user before and commenting by me and others did not work, worse still the user is making good rep of this practice.

I decided not to post the user here but I will link it if others want to see it.

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  • 3
    I suggest you flag the posts
    – Panther
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 15:18
  • 8
    Mark and everyone else, if you suspect or otherwise are sure of plagiarism, flag the post with all relevant info you have and trust the mods to do the right thing. Pseudo passive-aggressive wars on meta is not the best course of action.
    – jokerdino Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 18:02

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Downvote and flag their answers away (using a custom flag explaining the situation).

Proper attribution is mandatory per how the user provided content is licensed (and I guess those answers would lack it?).

Leveraging the lack of attribution you should at least get those posts deleted; also a certain number of violations of the rules (in this case in terms of lack of proper attribution) will earn the user a suspension; so if the user persists in misbehaving despite the warnings they'll eventually be suspended.

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  • Thanks, that was my thought too but I was not sure if any rules were actually broken but if they are, then flag is the best solution.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 15:35
  • @markkirby I didn't check those specific answers, you'll be the judge there: there's also fair use, e.g. just copying a command wouldn't be considered lack of attribution. But if as I understand from your question a consistent chunk has been copied word for word without mentioning the original author of the content there are indeed basis to consider that lack of required attribution.
    – kos
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 15:40
  • This is the source askubuntu.com/questions/721633/… and is a copy askubuntu.com/questions/745085/ubuntu-nvidia-drivers-gtx965m/… as you can see, it is most of it.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 15:44
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    @markkirby I see your point. Here's the deal: IANAL. Reading the licensing terms (CC BY-SA) in my very own opinion they should at least link back to the the answer (and not to the question like they're currently doing) and mention the original author (cl-netbox) because per the license a proper attribution is required. So IMO there are basis to say that post lacks proper attribution, but perhaps you should wait for a mod to answer this more exactly.
    – kos
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 16:14
  • Err ... the "copied" answer did link to the source they used for adapting the solution.
    – Takkat
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 16:55
  • @Takkat I see no links in either post..
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 17:07
  • @Seth: "I had a login loop issue as mentioned here. " admittedly a bit hidden.
    – Takkat
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 17:11
  • @Takkat They did (as you said a bit too hiddenly) link back to the question saying they had that problem already, but they don't mention cl-netbox's post as the source of the answer, they mention as the source of their answer another not better defined "answer of theirs". Again, IANAL, perhaps this means nothing as long as they link back to source, though to be honest I wouldn't really define it "proper attribution".
    – kos
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 17:20
  • @kos: yeah it would have been much better to make it clearer where the wisdom came from... but still, purging a driver to re-install another one is a rather generic approach to graphics issues: source of all AU-sources: askubuntu.com/a/61433/3940
    – Takkat
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 17:28

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