The Quizbowl Resource Center

1) To start, pick a tossup to plagiarize on something that is categorically too hard for the tournament to which you are submitting questions! Extra points if it has some exciting or memorable phrasing in it.
2) Once you get an email from the head editor telling you that they noticed one tossup was lifted, make sure to come up with a great excuse about "basing your tossup on it."
3) When asked to come clean about any other plagiarized questions, deny that there are any others! That will make your editors very happy.
4) Lose your rights to host the set when the tournament's editor has a different, very experienced editor go through the rest of your submission only to discover that 10 of your questions were plagiarized!

Oh, and for double extra bonus points: while trying to defuse the situation with the editor, if said editor offers you full amnesty if you just come clean, feel free to remark that you think the mirrors fee might be too high anyway and you may purchase an NAQT or HSAPQ set.

Plagiarism is serious guys. It hurts the community, it wastes the editors' time and it's not fair to the teams who will be playing the set. You will be caught. Don't try.

I have to concur with Chris on this. Nothing gets my hackles raised more than someone attempting to pass off the work of some else as their own work. How freaking low do you have to be?

While it does happen that you use the same stock clues as other questions sometimes, when you see a question with EXACTLY THE SAME CLUES with about five words that vary it from another question, it's bad. Very bad. Whomever does this deserves whatever is coming to them. I'd vote amputation of digits.

It's not so much "stealing" as it is "reusing stock clues in the exact manner in which they were previously used". I fail to see an issue.

(Plagiarists are terrible, terrible creatures)

leftsaidfred wrote:It's not so much "stealing" as it is "reusing stock clues in the exact manner in which they were previously used". I fail to see an issue.

(Plagiarists are terrible, terrible creatures)

Well, writing questions out of old questions is a really bad idea, even if you change it enough to not be obvious plagiarism.

If you cite the previously written question and author, then is it okay to reuse clues?

Matt Weiner wrote:Well, writing questions out of old questions is a really bad idea, even if you change it enough to not be obvious plagiarism.

Mere words cannot describe how sarcastic I was being above.

waspman23 wrote:If you cite the previously written question and author, then is it okay to reuse clues?

Only if you use MLA. If you use Chicago, you're out the door.

waspman23 wrote:If you cite the previously written question and author, then is it okay to reuse clues?

If you can't find an exterior source for the clue, then it's probably not legitimately known by any of the players, and you're shifting the balance too much to knowing old packets and away from actually knowing things.

But wasn't that why the question database was created??? </sarcasm>

At the beginning of every school year, every class goes through a syllabus and a short lecture on academic integrity, including plagiarism. I hope such discussions do not fall of deaf ears among the teams and question-writers out there.

Too late.

When forcing my kids to write questions for the first time ever this year, one of them actually said to me "i think i'll just find good ones online and use those."

I literally did a double take.

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:When forcing my kids to write questions for the first time ever this year, one of them actually said to me "i think i'll just find good ones online and use those."

I literally did a double take.

"I think I'll just find a good essay online and use that."

fsb, who would punch someone in the face if she caught them cheating off of her, zero-tolerance policies be damned