Cited Plagiarism: Yes, It's A Thing

Mods seem to love it when they can find any excuse to moderate you. If they can't find a reason in the terms, they will make up something new. They will throw everything but the kitchen sink at you and wait for something to stick. Such was the case with the cited plagiarism fad.

A few months ago I made a standard topic on the politics board that involved a few paragraphs from an article critical of Obamacare. I was modded for it. Since I didn't think it was "illegal activities" to oppose a certain bill, I asked about it on Hellhole.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/573081-hellhole/68622288

This is where I learned that after 5 years of doing what I've been doing, I was actually "plagiarizing" by quoting from a news article (a widespread practice that continues on the politics board to this day). I was then told the full story behind why I was moderated. Because I had quoted the "entire" thing. Because I plagiarized. Neither were true of course - I linked to the page and counted 40 percent of the article wasn't quoted in my message, which is far from the "entire" thing. But since this was the full story from moderators it was accepted as fact, even from the mods who could see directly in front of them that I hadn't quoted the entire thing, I had linked to the article, as I showed them the above topic and why it was wrong. The mod didn't read or didn't care because he doubled down on the plagiarism charge.

Looks like the moderators in that topic already explained why you were moderated. Please refrain from committing plagiarism.

Same in appeals up to admin. It didn't matter that I linked to the source and never said the work was my own. Didn't matter that I hadn't quoted the entire thing. All that mattered was some mod thought I quoted a bit too much, and they were seriously arguing this was an illegal activity itself, as in, I was guilty of copyright infringement. That's quite the charge. So in my dispute I asked what standard our legal experts on the mod staff used to come to their conclusion.

Is it really copyright infringement when you link to the article you're talking about?...The implications of an upheld moderation would produce more questions, namely what exact quota would someone be allowed to cite before being accused of plagiarism, even when they cite the source? A preset quota would raise problems with short articles or tweets - would users be allowed to post the entire thing?

These questions were never really answered. Since this isn't in the terms (and rarely enforced), the best rationale we could get came from ex-mod gmo:

 Generally speaking for report writing, one cannot put more than four or five lines directly into a report. I would say the same applies here.

4-5 lines. This really isn't a standard though, nor is it enforced, as we'll see in part 2. Lines vary based on what you're using to view the message. Pretty much no one had been modded for this before, and few have been modded afterward. I pointed out during the dispute that while I had been modded for linking to my source, another moderator didn't include a source in something he quoted from, but cited from that source way longer than I did to the point where it passed message character limits and had to be broken up into two separate posts (WALLY ALERT). It remains up for you to see, despite my marking it AND bringing it up on Hellhole AND bringing it up in disputes. Why do you think that is?

My conclusion's best summed up at the end of my initial dispute:
 
Right now it's the politics board operating as the politics board does: someone marks your message if they disagree with you. I really don't think there's an issue here, other than the desire of the other side to keep embarrassing information off the board, using any argument they can throw at it. Illegal activities this is not.

Stay tuned for part 2: widespread opposition, and my ongoing count of how many accounts have broken the rule since last February.