Staff Plagiarism & You

[Tefka]

In December, there was a slight change in policy when the "Plagiarism" rules were removed from the Codex/Factory rulesets. It was not nor has ever been removed from our General Rules, however.

It has been discussed among the Administrators, with Staff & I's final stance being the following:

Plagiarism is a general rule break, highest in the land. Its placement in Factory/Codex rulesets was redundant and if anything, devalued the seriousness of the charge. ie, if you break it, under the old rules, the feeling was you would only get banned from Factory or Codex.
It's my stance that if you steal words on a website where words is our highest value commodity
You should face one of the highest punishments.
No matter where the rulebreak occurred.

While we'll still be following the "3 strike rule" implemented this past fall in regards to bans, I wish to reiterate upon the community the seriousness of plagiarism. You can quote, you can draw inspiration from. You can reference and source. But when your material, your written material, is directly copy and pasted with very little if no input nor creativity from you the writer - it is incumbent upon the SWRP Staff Team to throw the book at you.

And I've asked the Admins and RPJs to not go soft on this. So go easy on those CTRL + C, CTRL + V combination platters. In a world where copying is as easy as it is on the internet, you may not find it to be such a serious offense - but we will. To the point that repeat offenders will be escorted out of this community by force. Do not underestimate how serious we will treat plagiarism, and as always, please review our General Rules at your leisure.