Purpose of the post:

  1. To know what the community do
  2. Bringing to meta as per this

I answered a question in SO which is an easy solution(if not the simplest). There was already an answer resolving the problem using another way and having a couple of upvotes. So naturally mine got pushed down but the difference remained a single digit number.

However, recently I saw that the difference between the votes has become significant and I realized that the other answer is now edited and it contains the content of my answer and that too without any attribution.

In my knowledge this is something not good with an attribution required license we are following. If it is not good what can we do to take care of such an instance? In this specific case the other person is well aware of my answer which is posted 1.5 years before and both of our answers were competing thoroughly

Just flagging and rolling back the edit provide the editor with the advantage of upvotes gained during this period. What can we do against this?

UPDATE after seeing recent responses:


  1. A's answer is the top voted answer
  2. Then B posts a different answer which is getting upvoted
  3. Seeing #2, A updates answer with that of B's (may be using a different wording)
  4. Nobody is seeing B's post as the gist of B's post has been edited into A's post
  • 2
    I'm not sure I would classify that as plagiarism. Given that various other answers seem to hint at the same solution (note: I have no clue about the tech discussed there), this may be one of those question where everybody will eventually arrive at the same answer, without necessarily stealing the content from others. So as an example ... I'm not sure this is a clear-cut case warranting any action. – Bart Mar 9 '17 at 13:37
  • I say no to flag, and roll back. I would have edit the question to make it a clear citation of your post. With a link to your answer. If and only if yours answer cover the exact same point you are editing. And Your answer go deeper than the one you are editing . If they have the same value. No edit! – Drag and Drop Mar 9 '17 at 13:39
  • 2
    When looking over the answers... isn't yours plagiarized from Pankaj Upadhyay's? – piet.t Mar 9 '17 at 13:40
  • 2
    Having a quick look around the web, I find a similar set of steps resolving an issue like that dating back to 2013 ... I don't think this qualifies for a plagiarism claim. – Bart Mar 9 '17 at 13:48
  • @piet.t That also gives the same result but my steps are different isn't it? In the mentioned case the steps are the same, isn't it? – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 14:30
  • 1
    "Seeing #2, A updates answer with that of B's(may be using another set of words)" ... that is your assumption from your chosen position of "the victim". There is a variety of ways in which the author may have come across a similar set of steps, after which he improved his answer accordingly. – Bart Mar 9 '17 at 14:33
  • I agree with your point but in this case? – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 14:37
  • i mean, clearly it was copied from one of the answers with 2 votes or the one with 8 votes, not yours. /s – Kevin B Mar 9 '17 at 19:17

In my opinion, this isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is the word-for-word copying of someone else's work without proper quotation or attribution. The wording they added is not copied from your answer, and at worst is an interpretation of what you had written.

Authors improve accepted answers all the time by rolling in suggestions provided in other answers. Copying wording is of course frowned upon, but if they interpret a solution in their own words, I don't see a large problem with that.

If they did add a solution inspired by your answer, it would be nice to see them providing attribution for the source ("as XXX suggested [link]:..."), but I wouldn't say that's a requirement in this case. It's possible they didn't even get this from your answer, given how many others provided the same suggestion (in fact, Pankaj Upadhyay seems to have done so before you did).

I don't see that there's anything that needs to be done here.

  • 6
    Plagiarism does not require word for word copying. I don't see this particular example as plagiarism, because I don't see evidence that the user was actually basing their answer on the other user's, but in general taking someone else's work and just making a few trivial alterations is still plagiarism. – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 15:38
  • 1
    if they interpret a solution in their own words, I don't see a large problem with that. If they don't acknowledge it it's plagiarism. Paraphrasing someone else's work, or creating a derived work off of it requires attribution. in addition to being plagiarism, since the other answer is licenced under CC-Wiki, you are violating the licence by doing this without a citation. (Again, I don't see this necessarily applying to the example in question here.) – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 15:41
  • 1
    Is this the next "What is plagiaritsm" disucusion :) – BDL Mar 9 '17 at 15:50
  • 4
    @Servy - Oh, sure, copying most of the words and changing a handful would most likely still be plagiarism (we see people trying to get away with this on a regular basis to fool plagiarism detectors). Restating a solution from someone else in your own words gets to be much more of a gray area. How similar does something need to be? That's a case-by-case judgment. In some cases, there might only be one good way to solve something, so establishing that someone didn't independently arrive at the same thing can be difficult. – Brad Larson Mar 9 '17 at 15:53
  • @BradLarson Sure, it can certainly be difficult to prove plagiarism in such cases. You may be in a position where you can't demonstrate that the person's content is a derived work of someone else's as opposed to something they independantly came up with. Not having enough evidence to prove it is different from it not being plagiarism. If you create an answer based on someone else's answer and don't cite it then it is plagiarism; even if you don't get caught for it. Just because I don't get caught for speeding when driving in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean it's not illegal. – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 15:58
  • @Servy what you told about plagiarism is right but can you please be more specific what evidence do you expect? – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 18:53
  • 1
    @Binod That's going to depend radically on the situation. There is no single sure fire way to judge whether an answer is plagiarized off of another source or if two people independantly came to similar solutions. It'll depend on when the content is provided, how similar it is, how significant the contributions are, what the types of differences there are, and any number of other factors. – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 19:09
  • 2
    @Servy When, how similar, how significant - all these favors my claim it seems to me :( – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 19:11
  • @Servy Quoting a sentence from my question " In this specific case the other person is well aware of my answer which is posted 1.5 years before and both of our answers were competing thoroughly" – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 19:12
  • 1
    @Binod And that's pretty darn compelling evidence against that user having independantly come up with the same solution. One could argue they didn't read the other answer or didn't notice it, but I don't think such an argument would really hold much weight. – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 19:13
  • @Servy I agree to disagree. Let's see if any others think my way. A) We always get upvote notifications and one usually click on that notification to go to that particular question to see how well our post performed among the other posts or how to improve(atleast our best upvoted answer lol). B) It is highly unlikely the same person come up with another solution independently as through A it is likely the other author might have seen my answer posted 1.5 yrs earlier. Even if they manage to do that independently particular edit is constructive to himself only not to the community. – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 19:36
  • @Servy Like this: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/269396/… – Binod Kalathil Mar 9 '17 at 19:37
  • 1
    @Binod I said it doesn't look like it was a solution arrived at independantly to me, so I'm not sure why you're disagreeing with me. – Servy Mar 9 '17 at 19:40
  • 3
    I'm not sure there is a point even in having this discussion. Having plagiarism of ideas as a prosecutable offense works great in Academia, but not on a Q&A site where the ideas behind the vast majority of answers were learned, at some point, from somewhere else. It's entirely possible the accused author copied the idea as a public service, to make sure folks reading the top answer don't miss out on it. I've edited top-voted posts for the exact same reason. Of course giving attribution is the right thing to do, but as said as long as it's not provable copy-pasting, the case is sort of moot. – Pekka Mar 9 '17 at 20:11
  • 1
    @Pekka 웃: Right? We have more pressing problems to worry about, such as plagiarism of exact words (i.e. presentations of said ideas)... – BoltClock Mar 10 '17 at 5:05

On one side I understand your opinion, as you feel that your answer have been stolen ; but in the other I have the sentiment that your problem is not really about plagiarism but more about upvotes you would have, and you have not:


I'm not pretty sure we can say it is plagiarism, as his answer it formatted really differently (it is not copied and pasted).

His answer:

inspect the url field and delete the class 'validate-url' to stop validation from the field and proceed the process.

Your answer:

We need to disable URL validation here.

Quick solution:

* Inspect "Base URL" input in firebug
* Remove "validate-url" from the list of classes
* Click "continue"

Furthermore, we can't say it is an elaborated answer, that cost a lot of time: a lot of people could have answer this with a simple net research. As far as I understand, other users also have answered the same thing.


It's often surprisingly difficult to prove plagiarism. The onus is on you to prove plagiarism beyond reasonable doubt. Except the judges aren't the community, but usually a single moderator reviewing your flag.

When commentary / explanation is word-for-word copied, it's pretty obviously plagiarism.

When one line or command happens to be common to two answers, it's hard or impossible to prove one copied the other. Yes, you can point to the timestamps of edits, but that's hardly evidence. It could just be a coincidence, and we are asked to assume good intentions.

Now what if there are 3 lines of non-trivial code identical except for different variable names? Well, if you can precede it with some different commentary / explanation, that's not plagiarism either.

If you have 5-10 lines of non-trivial code common to a couple of answers, I would hazard this would tip the balance, but I'm not convinced that would necessarily be the case. This is a grey area where I believe it depends pretty much on the moderator reviewing your flag.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .