Sporcle plagiarized on Imgur

[RockGolf]

Probably one of the freshest contributors to Sporcle in a long while has been Aprilli. Every quiz she submits is fresh and smart and original. This week her What's That Tricky Image? quiz made it to the front page and got great reviews. Someone in fact liked it so much that they completely copied the photos, the format and the answer options on Imgur. Without crediting Sporcle and strongly implying in their comments that it was their own creation.

The counterfeiter's post has over 350,000 views.

I've called the thief out in the comments, and several others have as well.

But I want more. Is there anyone who knows enough about Imgur to make a post comparing images and text from Aprilli's original quiz to the Imgur rip-off? If so can they post it to Imgur to shame the guy into never doing this again?

Oh, and some links to a couple of Aprilli's other quizzes (or Sporcle in general) would be nice.

Pat (RockGolf)

[needapausebutton]

Thanks for alerting us to this, Pat.

I've responded as best I can, given the character limitations for Imgur comments.  You can only post a brief note.

So, it took four comments, but I've spelled out the facts, provided the links, and it remains to be seen if the poster will now step forward and admit the source.

- pause

[MoMosMoProblems]

I also added my two comments. The problem is that Imgur's comment system sucks. For one, the default mode is to show the popular comments first, not the newest, so as long as our comments don't have as many up votes as the "I loved it, give me more" ones, they won't show up right away. The other is that the replies to a comment don't show up (at least on the tablet) unless you click on it, so that gives the plagiarized the chance to talk out of both sides of his mouth:

[MoMosMoProblems]

Ugh, what's with my stupid tablet today. Sorry about the double post. Also, I didn't intend to post yet. Here's the thief's comment thread, which shows that he's "crediting" Sporcle in replies to some people, but claiming that Imgur issues are the ones preventing the credit to come up, and replying to other people that sure, he will make more of this quiz! http://m.imgur.com/user/ThenIDefyYouStars

[stanford0008]

If there's one thing I've learned from spending way too much time browsing Imgur, it's that you're never gonna stop people from ripping of others' content. Best you can do is try to let everyone viewing it know about the original source.

Aside from that, I don't think there's any reason to try to shame the guy/girl into never doing this again. It's essentially free advertising for Sporcle (provided you can get them to link the source - easier said than done.)

[Bazmerelda]

And Aprilli plagiarised it from this site, who not doubt plagiarised it from another site, and so the cycle continues. Does it honestly matter? The internet is for sharing; for the free distribution of content, information and even entertainment. If more people get some enjoyment out of this fun idea, then great. If it brings more people to Sporcle, even better, but there is no reason to go on a tirade about "stealing" content that was freely created and distributed in the first place.

[needapausebutton]

Great points baz, particularly with regard to the fact that it's something for people to enjoy, and that this sort of thing is going to happen anyways, thanks.

But I don't think it's fair to say Aprilli plagiarized it, though perhaps citation of her own source would have been duly reasonable (I actually can't remember if it was there prior to publication or not).

We all know that every quiz has some sort of source(s) somewhere/somehow.

She did the creative work to turn it into a multiple-choice quiz, and came up with the important decoys without which it would not have worked. There's no doubt that many of the people drawn to the original web site containing those images were "entertained" simply by seeing them and the neat "reveal" of what they were. Aprilli changed the form of entertainment by building on that, simultaneously presenting it to a new audience. The imgur dude copied that, yet also presented it to a new audience.

Clearly seeing it "published" elsewhere, and presented as that intact quiz, with the same decoys, does push some of our buttons.  I don't think our own response came out as a tirade though. From my perspective, my comments (and a few others') simply equally serve to direct players here. And I wanted to give props to Aprilli there. Do I really think (or care) whether the imgur dude more overtly acknowledges anything? Not really. Perhaps they were trying to take credit for another's work, perhaps they truly forgot to reference Sporcle initially, perhaps they were oblivious to doing that, or didn't even care, or just wanted to share something cool with the rest of the world.

So, I've deleted (or tried to delete, as it seems to take time to process) one of my comments directed towards that person suggesting they credit the source, since MMMP has confirmed that an acknowledgement was buried in another thread anyways.

I think our own comments were mostly intended more for the benefit of those comment readers anyways (if they are even noticed, given the default sorting of them), simply to add a bit more awareness of Sporcle... 

And, if/when Aprilli reads all of this, she'll know even more how much we value/admire/respect her and her insights/keen-eye-for-quiz-material, and her creative outcomes. She's one of our own, after all!  :)

[Bazmerelda]

Just for the sake of clarity I was being a little tongue in cheek in calling it plagiarism, referencing rockgolf's original comment. We're not talking about an academic paper or published novel here, just a neat set of pictures brought to a few new audiences. I think branding any of it plagiarism is a bit of an over the top reaction.

[needapausebutton]

^ Sounds clear to me; thanks!  :)

[Sheldon]

As a frequent browser of imgur (but only as a lurker (never posted any images and only made a few comments)), Imgurians are usually against such users who claim to have created the content themselves when they haven't. Sometimes, other users will make posts about the original post outlining (with evidence) how the user copied the content and claimed it as their own.

As said above, the same content is obviously from other places too, but it's when they claim to have made it themselves or have not given the original creator credit that gets those Imgurians going.

Unfortunately, in this case it appears that no one had called the OP out on it before it made it to the front page, by which time the top 20 comments are usually already set in stone. If it is caught in the user submitted section, there are far fewer comments and more people tend to read them, and the ones who browse user sub are generally the crusaders who try to take down the OC-snatchers.

In a way it's similar to the Quiz Lab vs Sporcle front page actually.

[Sheldon]

Also, while we're on the subject of Imgur, I've actually been thinking of creating a post about Sporcle on Imgur to showcase all of its wonders. Anyone wanna help with it?

[Si]

I think a bigger concern should be plagiarism within Sporcle. Not just the published quizzes, but the contributed ones too. Not long ago while browsing the Sporcle site, usually without being logged in, my eyes fell upon a quiz called "Micks in Classic Rock".
http://www.sporcle.com/games/thegtrhero/micks-in-classic-rock
I wondered then and there for half a second, did someone change my quiz title? I had a look at the quiz, and no, it wasn't my quiz, it was a quiz submitted by someone else. The very same identical idea, with pretty much the same people named Mick listed, the only difference was this one was called 'Micks in Classic Rock', while mine from two and a half years earlier was called 'Rock and Roll Micks', http://www.sporcle.com/games/notaratface/rockandrollmicks
What really hurt was having Sporcle's music editor give the copycat quiz a rave review, while mine, the original one from over two years earlier got nothing. I'm not claiming that this quiz of mine,"Rock and Roll Micks", was worthy of any special accolades (EP, CP, or publish) but it certainly wasn't any worse, or less "fun", than the copycat quiz. The Sporcle search engine is a fairly reliable tool to verify if a quiz idea has been submitted before, it's obvious that the creator of 'Micks in Classic Rock' did not bother doing so, unless the idea was deliberately plagiarized with just a minor change or two thrown in. The same thing has happened with several other quizzes of mine, Sam Peckinpah, John Cassavetes, to name just two. If I were a regularly published quizmaker, or a quizmaker whose contributed works get proper attention when they are submitted, it wouldn't bother me at all, enough of the rest of the Sporcle community would have my back, but none of my quizzes are getting any deserved attention anymore, not even a first look. I know it's not because they aren't any good. Thank you.

[SproutCM]

Si/notaratface,

I totally see your point, but it isn't plagiarism on Sporcle, but laziness/self-perfection that is the problem.  For example, Santa's Reindeer was published by Sporcle back in like 2008, yet every year dozens of people remake it.  Half of them make it because they didn't bother to search to see if it was there. The other half make it because they think they are perfect and awesome and any idea they have must be unique, wonderful, never-been-done, and there is no need to search because they are amazing.

I would say at least once a week, someone remakes one of my quizzes, and I'll admit I've accidentally remade someone else's quiz about 10 times in the last 6 years. And that's with searching and checking, but sometimes someone comes up with a creative title that masks your search. We all make honest mistakes and the quizzes go away. I just tested now and searching "Mick" in Sporcle shows your quiz right up near the top of results, and it was really easy to spot among the Mick Jagger and Mick Foley quizzes.

When Sporcle publishes a quiz, they look very hard to make sure that that is the first version of the quiz that was done (because let's face it nearly every good idea has been done multiple times on Sporcle by non-searchers) is the one that gets published. Sporcle does make mistakes and so do Editors and Curators making picks.  They probably didn't search to see if yours was first, and yes they should have.  Of course, a lot of time a duplicate quiz brings the original one to light. When someone copies someone else's quiz, i ALWAYS make a comment on it showing the link to the original quiz, to make sure people know that, and I often report the quiz too.

So part of what makes Sporcle work is that lots of people make quizzes, but that means everyone has to be vigilant about searching when they make quizzes, vigilant about commenting and reporting quizzes that are duplicates or unauthorized sequels, and people should RATE quizzes and NOMINATE quizzes because the only way editors, curators and Sporcle admins will see quizzes if quizzes get plays and nominations, because Sporcle can search quizzes by nominations, ratings etc.  I'll admit, if i find a good quiz, i'll nominate it, give it a good rating, and report all the quizzes that copied it.

Chris/SproutCM

PS For fun, try searching for something like "triple crown" or "mad men characters" and look how many people keep remaking other people's quizzes.  Remember it's not plagiarism: that would have meant they took the time to search and find your quiz and copy the data out of it.  And we already know they didn't do a search :)

[iglew]

I've occasionally seen "copycat" versions of my quizzes.  When I do I always make a comment or send a note to the quizmaker, but I have a lot of sympathy for the copier because I've been on the other side of it, too.

I definitely make it part of my process to search for a previous quiz, but sometimes they slip past.  On one occasion fairly recently, I made a quiz that had what seemed to be such a vague and unusual theme that there was hardly anything to search for.  What a surprise for me when it was pointed out that it was an extremely close match to a quiz LTH had made and I myself had played (and even commented on) two years earlier.  Some scrap of it must have lingered in my subconscious, but I had no conscious memory of the quiz at all.  So I never jump to conclusions of plagiarism because I understand how it can happen.

By the way, a tip someone gave me for searching for duplicate quizzes:  Instead of just doing a search on the Sporcle page for descriptive theme words (which may or may not show up in the previous quiz's tags and headline), do a search in Google that looks for a handful of uncommon and diverse words from among your quiz's correct answers, and add the tag "site:sporcle.com" to restrict the Google search to Sporcle pages.  The search then can find it on a Sporcle results page, regardless of what the title, question text, and tags say.  I've had success in finding figure-out-the-lyrics quizzes with this technique, but it's also very useful for other quizzes with a nebulous theme that isn't easily searched (like the one by LTH that I accidentally copied...).

[Si]

I don't think it's "jumping to conclusions of plagiarism" when you discover that the copycat submitted his/her quiz the very same day that he/she had played your original, and without any acknowledgement or shout-out to yours, which at the very least would be the decent thing to do. I'd be horrified and terribly embarrassed if I found out that a submitted quiz of mine was not original, or original enough, and I would assuredly, after satisfactory verification, remove the quiz, and offer apologies if possible.

[Bazmerelda]

PS For fun, try searching for something like "triple crown" or "mad men characters" and look how many people keep remaking other people's quizzes.  Remember it's not plagiarism: that would have meant they took the time to search and find your quiz and copy the data out of it.  And we already know they didn't do a search :)

Urgh, try Doctor Who actors, the plague of the ex-TV editor. The published quiz is called 'Who Was the Doctor?' which previously didn't show up when searching for 'Doctor Who Actors' (it does now thankfully). Every week someone new would have a bash at creating a publishable version, only to be doomed to the scrapheap. It's actually a decent exercise in how to create a quiz for a newbie without the pressure of creating something that will ever be played.

[Si]

I'm sorry to butt in again, but it is obvious that there is an abundance of  "triple crown", or "mad men characters", or "Jack Nicholson characters" or "Doctor Who actors" quizzes out there, but those are not obscure subjects, unlike the quiz(zes) that I was referring to. I've just today had the pleasant news that my "First Ladies: U.S. or Canada" quiz from 2 years ago was made a curator pick. Like it or not, it is a totally original quiz, and if someone else decided to do their own version asking the same question, was she a U.S. First Lady, or a Canadian PM's spouse, it would be plagiarism, no matter how they dressed it up. That's how I feel.

On Saturday, July 18, 2015 at 1:11:43 PM UTC-4, RockGolf wrote:

[DesertSpartan]

One of my early published quizzes was very similar to a quiz that someone else had made. I searched for a similar quiz, because the topic was something that I thought was likely made previously.  Both my and the Admins searches failed to reveal that quiz and I learned by a comment on my quiz.  A short while later I saw a quiz by a friend of mine that was published, that was very similar to a quiz I created previously.  This quiz was a little more unique.  I sent my friend an e-mail, not angry because I knew this was neither plagiarism or intentional, more flattered that this superior quiz creator would come up with the same idea.   My friend and I talked about having created enough quizzes to come up with ideas and find out that we, ourselves have previously created the quiz we were thinking of.  Once again, as Chris had mentioned, plagiarism requires one to have actually seen your quiz first.   You can hate for me this as well, but A) I consider those two quizzes to be quite different
 as one is clickable and one is classic and B) I consider it very likely that over time, two or more people will come up with Johns, Micks, Smiths or a slew of other names in music, movies or even baseball or football.  It is not like Your Movie Titles With a Little Help From the Beatles or Click that Cab quizzes, which I consider to be so unique that I would have a hard time imagining two people coming up with the same idea.  Just my thoughts on the subject.

[JoeBeta]

I am just going to back my friend DesertSpartan up on this one point. A clickable version of a classic quiz on a similar theme is a different quiz.  Personally I am a big fan of clickable quizzes and usually find them to be more "fun" than classic quizzes because you typically have some chance of deducing a correct answer even if you aren't completely familiar with the subject.

[Sheldon]

Si, as evidenced by this thread, it looks like this kind of thing happens to everyone and the vast majority is unintentional. Yes, it can be annoying and feel unfair sometimes but all you can do is maybe leave a nice comment and then move on.

This happened to me with this quiz which I only found recently: http://www.sporcle.com/games/kagomeshuko/simpsonsliterature. It looks like a complete copy of this: http://www.sporcle.com/games/Sheldon/simpsons_title_references_7 (this specific quiz was made two years after the published one, however, it came from rearranging the titles in the original series I made in 2009. Here's the original (which had literature titles mixed in as well (there were originally 4 or 5 quizzes in the series, I think)): http://www.sporcle.com/games/Sheldon/simpsons_title_references).

Now, it would have been nice if I had been published instead, but that quiz was just that user's second publish out of five, and getting published is a great feeling (which I've been lucky enough to have many more times) so I (and you) can take solace in the fact that an idea you had is firstly good enough to be published, but would also have made that person very happy (assuming they didn't deliberately steal the idea, of course).

But anyway, the best thing you can do is just make more quizzes. The more you make, the more chance you have of getting CPed, EPed, published, played, favourited, followed etc. and the less you will worry about your quiz ideas being copied.

[beforever]

Yup, it's definitely happened to me too. I often find that good work gets rewarded regardless - there are a lot of people dedicated to making sure good content gets featured more prominently. It is certainly not the case that all good quizzes get the attention they deserve, but after doing what you can to put yourself out there (e-mailing people, posting links on this forum, etc.)... then it's really not on you, and you have to get over it at a certain point. At the end of the day, your quiz is just one in who knows how many thousands...