It does make more sense to tell them, but it is considered off-topic. If you don't want to get banned, just flag it, and trust that the guardians will take care of it.

Electric Dolphin ⚡️🐬 The same thing happened to me. I've made similar comments on many plagiarized projects before, but I never realised that it wasn't allowed (there was nothing in the guidelines saying that it was off-topic). I thought that making those comments just would let other users know that it wasn't the original and remind the author that they should spin-off projects.

I understand that by silently flagging you avoid conflict, but I just find it frustrating when the plagiarized program is getting so much attention and praise that it doesn't deserve.

Once one of my projects was plagiarized. Both the plagiarizer's copy and my project were on the hotlist, and at one point it even had more votes than mine. Several people flagged the copy, but it took a while for it to be removed (understandable, since the moderation team has a lot to sift through). But then my program got one single flag and was almost immediately hidden. Fortunately, when I made a request it was unhidden. The whole experience was very frustrating.

Because of that, I often try to make sure that programs are original before I vote up, as there's no way to unvote, and I know from experience how frustrating it can be when someone gets undeserved credit for a plagiarized program.

There does seem to be a lot of plagiarized projects on the hotlist at the moment. I feel that some kind of plagiarism detector/filter for programs would be helpful, but it would probably be too complicated because of similarities between programs, especially of those for programming course challenges, or if the program is a spin-off.

Hi friends! Thanks for sharing some of your feedback with us.

We have noticed a recent uptick of users who have tried to "mini-mod" others. As a learning platform, we want to ensure that students receive messages about their behavior privately. Mini-modding generally isn't productive, and we have found it often leads to more off-topic discussions. We want to discourage this trend from continuing, which is why you may have received a message from us.

We appreciate that y'all understand the Guidelines well and ask for you to continue to help by flagging programs as needed. While flagging a program, you can include any links that lead to the original project -- this can help us expedite the process. While we aren't active on the KACP every hour (because we monitor the entire site), we will do our best to continue handling flagged programs within a reasonable turnaround.

Cheers!

I hope this means a change in how Guardians are handling flags; In years past, it was (to the Wogglebug's knowledge) good form to let the plagiarizer know that what they did isn't allowed, and encourage them to make a spin-off instead.

Hello, William Wang.

Is it at all possible that warnings like in the guidelines and/or a notification when a change like this is made is given. My apologies, but me and some of my friends have received / been banned as a result of talking about plagiarism. I fully understand why this is wrong, but a vast majority of us (myself included) had no clue about this rule. Perhaps an edit to the guidelines etc. has already been made and I am just not aware.

Many Thanks,

      ASBackup

While I can't discuss any specific moderation incidents, I want you to know that we generally do not restrict user discussion privileges unless the Community Guidelines are violated frequently after receiving a Guardian message. We typically restrict privileges only if we notice severe off-topic trends. All off-topic posts are taken into account when deciding to suspend a user from the Community.

We value your feedback, and I've sent your thoughts about clarifying the Guidelines to our team for consideration. Thank you for your contributions, and let me know if you have other questions.

Thank you :)