Board Thread:Administration/@comment-25393922-20150109021751

I've been thinking on this for a while, and now I've decided to go ahead and write up another policy for discussion and the like.

Plagiarism is the intentional copying or theft of someone else's ideas or works of literature. This includes but is not limited to:


 * Directly copying and pasting stories from elsewhere and claiming them as yours.
 * Directly copying and pasting stories from this site and claiming them as yours.
 * Claiming a story that isn't yours as yours.
 * Blatant copyright violations.
 * Copying exact quotes from a story and changing very little.
 * Blatant, almost identical ripoffs of already existing stories.

As a literature site, we wish to promote the freedom of ideas that is vital for the growth and happiness of a community. Plagiarism defecates on this freedom by limiting the creativity of both the thief and the victim - in essence, it is the literary equivalent of murder, and will be treated as such.

If you believe someone has plagiarised, please contact an Administrator with details and evidence.

Penalty
Thus, depending upon the severity of the plagiarism, it is up to the administrator who is handling the case to decide the punishment, but the minimum block will be no less than 6 months, autoblock enabled. There is no maximum block - that being said, if said administrator chooses, when a story is plagiarised the offender may receive an indefinite block without violating the Blocking Policy.

Possibility of a Network-Wide Penalty
If the deciding admin is also an administrator on a sister site, the block may also extend to those wikis if the deciding administrator decides to do so. This rule will override the the guidelines set in the Blocking Policy. This block may only be appealed through a local bureaucrat on aforementioned wikis.