7. Never include material not your own without attribution to the original source.
I wonder if this rule could do with some clarification or revision. While the intent to remove plagiarism is clear it seems to have caused some confusion such as with Asyncritus posting material which he claims is his own.
What I feel isn't clear is what should someone do when posting material which
is their own but which isn't original when they post it to EvC.
At the moment the only standard for accusing someone of plagiarism seems to be that the same words could be found somewhere on the internet with a google search not associated with the same user name.
In some cases, such as Faith4flipper's recent post, this is clearly sufficient because we can trace his post to the abstract of an article by Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch. Clearly there is very little chance that Scott and Branch lifted text from a pseudonymous internet poster wholesale for their abstract, especially when the 2009 paper predates Faith4flipper's postings by a considerable time.
In Asyncritus case though I don't see any reason to assume plagiarism. And if it
is his own material then why should he have expected rule 7 to apply?
I don't know offhand what
would be a succinct and unambiguous replacement, 'non-original material' perhaps?
TTFN,
WK