Stealing Other People’s Work

[Zetterberg 863]

I remember way back in my youth, probably like 2nd or 3rd grade, my teacher assigned us a project. We were to make a children’s book on a topic that interested us. I decided to make a book about betta fish. When introducing the project, the teacher gave us a cute little talk about plagiarism, and some basic dos and don’ts on researching and using sources in your own work. It was a brief discussion, as we were kids and were pretty much just reciting basic factoids and whatnot about our topic, but it was done to introduce us to research itself. This was expanded upon and gone in a bit more depth upon entering middle school. As research projects became more popular and utilized in pretty much every class, teachers began stressing the importance of proper citations and paraphrasing, avoiding plagiarizing, and interpreting sources, as well as grading harsher and harsher based on errors pertaining to those. It’s been basically drilled into all our heads at one point or another of our lives and it’s been made very clear that stealing other people’s work is wrong, and should be punished.

 

Ever since I’ve joined the VHL, I’ve always been a fan of the VHLE. The vast majority of my articles, podcasts, and other TPE related activities has been focused on the E. My giant spreadsheet that breaks down every team started out as purely being for the VHLE, and I only expanded it to the other two leagues out of boredom. I update the E portion practically daily, while the VHL gets looked at maybe once a week and the M maybe a few times a season. I’ve dedicated a lot of time learning about the M and how it works, eventually getting a GM gig in the league and I really have little desire to move on from that, at least for now. I would wager that, out of the active members at least, I put out arguably the most E content. Likewise, I love reading articles about the E, as I really enjoy seeing other people showing the same enjoyment as I have for the league. Because of my passion for the league, I pretty much read every single article that gets put out regarding the league. So, when it comes to making content about the E, it probably is not the smartest idea to plagiarize from me.

 

A few days after posting my Season 91 VHLE Rankings, I was sitting around in class, bored as hell, and decided to take a bit of a gander at some of the media spots that have been put out, and I notice this nice little article by @Spartan also looking at the VHLE for this season . As I started reading, I thought to myself, “huh, this looks really similar to my article”. I shared both his and mine with a handful of people, and they also agreed that these articles were a bit too similar to be a simple coincidence. Later on, I went to his profile and saw that he also made a smaller article, going over the same thing, and I thought, “wow, this looks really similar to my article”. And props to him for pulling out a couple tried-and-true methods, like changing the wording slightly, and swapping the order for a couple of the teams, just to make it look original. It’s one thing to agree on a handful of points, but it’s another to basically repeat every single point I made. The second, shorter article was much more blatant. I’ll point out a couple key indicators of plagiarism for y’all in case you don’t feel like looking for them yourselves:

- In both articles, he finds it important to mention the peculiarity of Oslo’s trading system, something that I brought up and is only supported by my own anecdotal evidence. Is trading actually bad for a team, I don’t really know.
- For Geneva, he mentions how evil the commissioners are and how they never should have taken away my sweet baby boy, a term that I made up in my article and, from my knowledge, has never been used by anyone except for me in this singular instance.
- In his small article, he copies the order in which I ranked the teams. In his larger article, however, he swaps the order for a couple teams. You would think, especially based on how closely both his articles were made, that he would have the same ordering for both. 

- Probably the most damning one. In my article I compared Oslo and Stockholm. In his small article, he attempts to do the same, but he has “similarly” on Oslo, which he ranked below Stockholm. There is nothing similar between Oslo and Cologne bud.

 

Look, I don’t have a monopoly on VHLE rankings. If you want to do them, feel free to do so. I would love to see more E content. The majority of content made is about the VHL, and I feel that the lower leagues need a little more appreciation (although the M can stay barren cuz bad league). If you’re gonna do it, however, make it original. I take a lot of pride in my work and it’s very upsetting to see it be blatantly stolen and pawned off as someone else's. I mean, that short article wasn’t even trying to hide it. If you really really really can’t think of stuff on your own and want to use someone else’s work, at the very least throw in some citations. Every lil tidbit you took from my article and slammed into yours, slap a “(Grape, 2023)” at the end of it. Once you reach the end of your article, be sure to include your sources like so:

              Zetterberg. (2023, November 1). S91 VHLE Team Rankings. Victory Hockey League

 

 

APA format is also acceptable since this is somewhat research oriented, but I feel like MLA fits this the best. Whichever you feel like using is fine by me, so long as you give proper credit. 

[Zetterberg 863]

Claiming doubles week

[Grape 680]

I feel like I've read this before...

[BOOM 8,759]

I'd like to submit this for the end of season media awards. Far better than the original. We need more quality content such as this. 

 

5 Stars. 

[Rin 138]

9 hours ago, Zetterberg said:

Ever since I’ve joined the VHL, I’ve always been a fan of the VHLE.

 

Clear giveaway, nobody has ever muttered this sentence before

[JCarson 730]

Although we all know that this is an obvious copy of Grape's article drawing attention to the plagiarism that was caught and dealt with.  The matter of fact sarcasm of this article in the context of what occurred is very amusing to me.  There is a fine line between having fun and creating amusement for the masses and going offside of the rules.  I very much see this as a fun piece of amusement that will probably ripple down through the VHL for a while.  Hopefully the author didn't actually claim any TPE for this and it will only be a joke for everyone to enjoy.  Thanks for giving me a laugh, making light of a serious situation.  I give this article a 8/10, only reducing your score because I need to save some points for the original author.  However your edits were spectacular.  Keep having fun and enjoying the VHL.