Copied Definitions

[Stained Diviner]

This is based on an actual incident from the past, but I would like to keep it theoretical for now, and I would prefer if people with direct knowledge of the incident kept their opinions to themselves for now to give some people for whom this is not a personal matter a chance to weigh in.

Let's say that you were the editor of a set, and a novice writer agreed to write the social science. A few of the bonuses were of the format, "Name these terms from their definitions..." For a couple of the bonuses, you found that significant quotes from all three of the definitions matched an online glossary. One bonus had three definitions that significantly matched one glossary, while another bonus had three definitions that significantly matched another glossary.

[Golran]

I would probably talk with the writer about how the questions were written, and discuss that this may be plagiarism. Quizbowl is such an activity that citations are rarely seen by the participants; only 1-2 out of the 10 or so people in the room actually see the citation when the question is first presented, and reading the citation out loud would disturb the natural pace of the game. Presenting the question without citation seems like academic dishonesty to me, which would make this instance seem inappropriate for quizbowl. Furthermore, since this online glossary is not the definitive and only accepted source that all scholars go to, it may disadvantage students who learned the material out of a different source.

Because this is a novice (and I'm assuming young) writer, it is important to work with them to understand the dos and don'ts of writing quizbowl to avoid plagiarism. If you have the time to sit down with them and re-work the question, showing them how to incorporate multiple sources and what goes on in your editing process, I'd recommend that so that they learn from the experience and are able to write better questions in the future.

[Great Bustard]

This probably wouldn't make for the most interesting questions, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it, as long as the source is cited in the context of the question. That said, this would probably work better for specialized glossaries and reference materials. For example, if one were writing a bonus on mental illnesses, I think it would be ok to go with "FTP each, name these disorders according to their descriptions in the new edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5, which was released in May 2013." The release of DSM-5 is currently timely and is a significant event, and there's all sorts of substantive debate as to what is and isn't included in it. On the other hand "FTP each, name these disorders according to their descriptions in Wikipedia/Encyclopedia Brittanica/some textbook is probably going to be dull and/or inappropriate.

[Stained Diviner]

This incident happened with the IHSA questions this past year. A question at Regionals matched an online APA glossary, and a question at Sectionals matched some definitions on Quizlet (though the latter case was probably a matter of two people copying from the same textbook rather than somebody plagiarizing from Quizlet). There were a few other plagiarized questions that were submitted but not used. Those two were used.

When I brought this to the attention of the Head Editor, she did not agree it was plagiarism because she believed it was OK to reuse definitions. When I brought this to the attention of the IHSA Administrator in charge of Scholastic Bowl, I was fired from moderating this past year and editing this coming year.

After I was fired, a moderator at State found a question that had several quotations taken from Cliffs Notes. He knew what had happened to me, so he did not report the problem to IHSA, and the question was used.

[AKKOLADE]

This incident happened with the IHSA questions this past year. A question at Regionals matched an online APA glossary, and a question at Sectionals matched some definitions on Quizlet (though the latter case was probably a matter of two people copying from the same textbook rather than somebody plagiarizing from Quizlet). There were a few other plagiarized questions that were submitted but not used. Those two were used.

When I brought this to the attention of the Head Editor, she did not agree it was plagiarism because she believed it was OK to reuse definitions. When I brought this to the attention of the IHSA Administrator in charge of Scholastic Bowl, I was fired from moderating this past year and editing this coming year.

These sound like strong policies that will have no negative side effects.

[Cody]

Copying definitions is not plagiarism in the context of quizbowl (actual plagiarism: copying old question). Questions don't generally cite sources and there's nothing wrong with that (and most the exceptions to this rule seem to be humorous citations of Wikipedia).

The real problem with questions like that is that they are going to be too wordy or bulky unless some of the definition is eliminated and (in the case of your example) the structure of the question is pretty dumb. Of course, this doesn't have to be the case; glossaries are very nice for getting accurate clues. I'd make no bones about using the clue, say, "Sediments that accumulate and are deformed at these regions are called accretionary wedges." in a subduction zone tossup. The definition is correct and concise and there's no reason to mess with it unduly.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Copying definitions is not plagiarism in the context of quizbowl (actual plagiarism: copying old question). Questions don't generally cite sources and there's nothing wrong with that (and most the exceptions to this rule seem to be humorous citations of Wikipedia).

People made (admittedly terrible) money by stealing the work of other people and passing it off as their own; that's plagiarism, no matter if it's a quizbowl question or a newspaper article or whatever. If the definitions had been taken from quizbowlpackets.org instead of wikipedia.org, you'd be claiming this was theft; I fail to see how the domain name makes a difference.

It's OK to not cite sources because quizbowl questions have no immediately efficient way of in-text citation, and because questions are already assumed to be works of secondary research. In academics, any material that isn't cited is your work, and any wording that isn't quoted is your wording. In quizbowl, all material is someone else's work, so we don't worry about citations, but any wording that isn't quoted is still assumed to be your wording. If you copy a definition, you're stealing someone else's wording and passing it off as your own. That's plagiarism.

And anyway, definitions are pliable, and quizbowl questions are written in an idiosyncratic style, so there's no excuse to just lazily take someone else's work and assume it makes for a good question; do your own work to phrase the clue better and make the question your own.

[Cody]

The distinction I draw between sources and quizbowl questions is that there is a very strong possibility that the quizbowl question has been read by the audience of your question. This violates the fundamental precept that quizbowl questions should be blind to all competitors.

Often, there is no way to indicate that a phrase is copied from a source--for instance, what would you do to indicate the clue I posted is copied from a source? You can't use quotes, that would be very awkward. If I ask someone to answer a bonus part on the canonical commutation relation, I pretty much have to say that "it states that the commutator of position and momentum is equal to i times h-bar" because that is its definition; if anyone were to state it in a textbook, that would be basically the exact phrasing they'd use (for example, the text below 4.47 here: http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~dommelen/quantu ... mmute.html). Maybe my perspective is a little bit different in science, but there's only so many ways to state, for example, a mathematical formulation and the real meat of it is going to be the same no matter what you do.

Obviously, I think this applies to things other than mathematical formulations. For example, one might say "This structure is stabilized by hydrogen bonds between an NH and CO group." in reference to alpha helices; that wording is "plagiarized", but a quick search will reveal endless tiny variations of this (spelling out what the NH and CO groups are, for instance: "This structure is stabilized by hydrogen bonds between an amine hydrogen and carbonyl oxygen." is also "plagiarized".). There's nothing wrong with this, it's just how things (well, science anyway) work; you can't change things but so much without changing their meaning or potentially confusing people.

[Stained Diviner]

Here are the quotes that were used in the Regional question I referred to above:
“views the person as a constellation of compensatory internal forces in a dynamic balance” (One word was inserted into this quote.)
“higher mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking”
“psychological investigation concerned with understanding the nature of individual pathologies of mind, mood, and behavior” (One word was inserted into this quote.)

Here are the quotes that were used in the Sectional question I referred to above:
“Junction between cells when adjacent plasma membrane proteins join to form an impermeable barrier”
“Junction between cells in which the adjacent plasma membranes do not touch but are held together by intercellular filaments attached to buttonlike thickenings”
“lend[ing] strength and allow[ing] ions, sugars, and small molecules to pass between cells”

Here are the quotes that were used in the State question I referred to above:
“Max Weber noted that modern Western society has necessitated…type of formal organization”
“the most efficient form of organization possible"
“authority rest[ing] in various offices or positions, not in individuals”
“bureaucracies would disappear in a classless society”
“in which supervisors and workers function[ed] as equals”

Keep in mind that the last two quotes in the last example did not involve definitions, since they were in a bonus part asking for Marx.

NOTE: If you are with the IHSA and think that your decisions are justified because a student in Virginia agrees with you, I suggest you PM him to find out exactly how much he agrees with you.

[Stained Diviner]

This incident happened with the IHSA questions this past year. A question at Regionals matched an online APA glossary, and a question at Sectionals matched some definitions on Quizlet (though the latter case was probably a matter of two people copying from the same textbook rather than somebody plagiarizing from Quizlet). There were a few other plagiarized questions that were submitted but not used. Those two were used.

When I brought this to the attention of the Head Editor, she did not agree it was plagiarism because she believed it was OK to reuse definitions. When I brought this to the attention of the IHSA Administrator in charge of Scholastic Bowl, I was fired from moderating this past year and editing this coming year.

These sound like strong policies that will have no negative side effects.

The IHSA would agree with you, but they wouldn't like that sarcastic tone in your voice.

[Stained Diviner]

As an update, the IHSA now admits they used plagiarized questions. They do not regret firing me right after I told them about it, because they now claim I was argumentative and unprofessional.

[CometsCoach]

I serve as a region representative on the IHSA Scholastic Bowl Advisory Committee. We are simply Advisory, not oversight. I have watched this issue unfold from multiple perspectives throughout the spring and summer.

I do not know of the existence of a check and balance in place to address what happens when IHSA breaks its own rules (as a plagiarism clause was in place before the Committee acted "again" in May 2013). Without such a device, we're pretty much stuck with whatever they decide.