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My partner finds it frustrating that she has to edit out “false positives” even when she knows damn well she hasn’t plagiarised.

• ksaj 6y ago
  Editors have to do that already, so if she doesn't have an editor, it probably is her job. In High School, I did a (very) short co-op copyrighting for a radio station. At the time I thought it was pretty ridiculous that I had to basically reword everything to mean the same thing, but differently. As a grown-up and seeing the same stories in different papers struck me as ultra-lazy, and then I realized why all that copyrighting had to be done.
  • smogcutter 6y ago
    “Copywriting”, just fyi in case it’s one of those “word I hear but rarely see written” things and not autocorrect.
    • ksaj 6y ago
      Thanks. There is some deeper irony in misspelling that particular word. Indeed the job title was copywriting. But the reason for the position in the first place was to avoid plagiarism and copyright issues. According to a cursory search, I probably just invoked the wrath of a lot of righters and writers alike. I'm very picky when it comes to grammar and spelling, so I deserve what comes.
• oasisbob 6y ago
  How obnoxious. I would hate that too, and would be tempted to refuse. Is that a common thing to do these days? With the seriousness of academic dishonesty charges, I don't see why students would put up with this. If someone wants to bring meritless flimsy accusations, I wouldn't want to help them do their homework in running down all the accidental matches found by their commercial provider, let alone rewrite my work in the process.
  • unishark 6y ago
    They aren't accusations just match scores. The scores are pretty meaningless unless there's a really good match. Obviously one shouldn't use that alone to determine guilt. Charges are decided by professors and committees, not turnitin. Yes some students might be concerned about the partial matches to the point of anxiety, but the solution is to simply assuage those fears. Because unfortunately, too many others habitually cheat with a misguided confidence that they can get away with it. Not to mention a completely warped sense of the risk versus reward for what they are doing. Making them go through turnitin is a way to dissuade doing that. Letting them see the scores before they submit the assignment is also a nicer way to push back. As opposed to having to hand out F's to get the point across.
    • Veen 6y ago
      > the solution is to simply assuage those fears The parent commenter's experience suggests that teachers are not doing that; instead, they're encouraging people to rewrite non-plagiarised work so that it doesn't trigger partial matches. That is my experience too: teachers don't want the hassle of figuring out what a false positive really means.