Ghostwriter
I don’t work for Virily. I don’t have any more insight than the next person. There are always a series of speculations and guesses. It’s normal to be curious and to want to know the facts. I had another participant ask me a question that I found to be very interesting. I don’t know what the answer is, but it was an interesting point.
In the help section, he pointed out this question and answer. (If you go there you can see it yourself. “Can I publish the same content twice? No, you can’t. The content needs to be original.”
So that raised another question from the Virily member that posed the question to me. At what point does an edit become duplicate content? Wow. I had not truly considered that. I did a little research and in academic circles, it seems that less than 25% can be the same or similar content. As I said, I don’t know the answer. At the same time, it seems that editing becomes publishing the same content twice. I now understand why many people on Virily have chosen never to use that feature. I had edited a few posts for spelling errors. In retrospect, I think that was not a good idea. So now, I will only edit within the first 10 hours and I will clearly mark the post as edited.
I understand why Virily has chosen to make the most recent changes. They seem well-founded are made to try and keep the site sustainable. That is a tough job and not one I would love to take on. I would assume it’s a lot of hard work.
As I am trying to keep all my posts based on bringing outside views, I would love to feel like when I am inviting them on social media that I am inviting them to view unique content. So in that spirit, I want to address self plagiarizing.
What is it? “Self-plagiarism is commonly described as recycling or reusing one’s own specific words from previously published texts. While it doesn’t cross the line of true theft of others’ ideas, it nonetheless can create issues in the scholarly publishing world. Beyond verbatim sections of text, self-plagiarism can also refer to the publication of identical papers in two places (sometimes called “duplicate publication”). Moreover, it is best practice to cite your previous work thoroughly, even if you are simply revisiting an old idea or a previously published observation.” I think it may be easy to make that mistake, especially if you are writing from a personal perspective. Perhaps there is much more to learn.
-
Question of
Have you learned about self-plagiarism?
-
Yes
-
No
-
-
Question of
Is edited content sometimes duplicate content?
-
Yes
-
No
-
I only edit the content I am about to post if I have made a mistake. I have not even looked at all the posts I have on this site. I never post the same thing on two different sites. I have all of my work saved to my PC so it I am thinking about writing something and it seems to me perhaps I have already done that I go and check my previous work.
I think there are some very valid reasons to edit a post.
If you take something you wrote and published on one site and publish that same thing on a different site–a poem, for example–I do not think that you are plagiarizing as it is your own work. However, you are creating duplicate content. And Google frowns upon that. That is why sites tend to not allow you to publish something that has already been published elsewhere online, even if what you are publishing is your own work.
Editing a post you’ve written should not create duplicate content as you are editing that same post. The number of posts doesn’t change. What if you published a post and now realized you have some typos? In this case, you’d wanna fix that and editing is how it’s done.
Very well said! Maybe edited posts on Virily specifically are seen as duplicate in case people make some unnecessary changes in order for their content to keep popping again and again.
It doesn’t mean it’s because of that, but it could be used this way. I personally add a short note why I edited a certain post.
I think if admins had a bit more active presence, people wouldn’t try to act as the virily police. The rules and the goals of the site are not clear enough, and even if people have good intentions, they are all more or less speculating what’s helpful and what’s harmful for the site based on their own personal values.
I believe there are many ethical and correct reasons to edit posts.
I agree and I already edited a few of mine, but the site is a mess right now.
A lot of my content from a couple years ago has broken hyper links, missing pictures, etc. Hence, I’ve been going back from time to time to “fix” these posts. It doesn’t reflect well on me or Virily if the content has mistakes in it.
I will refrain from sharing my opinion at this time. 🙂
this is a can of worms.
We asked for the right to edit our posts to clean up old mistakes and errors. I think that is a great reason to edit a post.
The issue is the implementation and the resulting issues.
I am shying away from the entire editorial process. There are just so many pitfalls right now and people guessing. I wish the rules and intentions were clear. I am simply sad that this is the narrative.
i am focusing on happy wander project posts!
If we find typos or errors on our posts here, especially in quizzes or polls, which have tech issues when we create them, we should be able to automatically edit the mistakes instead of having to ask for permission to be able to make the changes, or letting admin know of the mistakes and waiting for them to fix it on their end.
I am not anti-editing.
My comments are more the impact of the posts rather than the editing.
In july when we started the push with the admin team to get editing, I was one of the people pushing that.
So I am not sure what you are saying.
I usually think that authors who bother to edit their posts to keep up with current times are those that are responsible for what they WROTE. Sometimes, a post will stay on top in google search for months or more and the author will update his posts so what readers read are up to date.
I’m not sure how would that be duplicate or self-plagiarism.
However, if you do look around carefully, Virily have quite some posts on the edge of self-plagiarism, including some of mine … oops 😐
We all make mistakes. We just don’t want to do it with intention. I am certain you have not done that.
Thank you, Ghost 🙂
I guess we all learn from mistakes
One problem we have is that it is not at all easy to find content that you have written in the past. Without a proper search engine on Virily, I don’t see how you can know whether you have already posted something if it was two or more years ago and you have posted hundreds of pieces in the meantime. I imagine that many members are like me – we have thousands of pieces stored away that were used in the past in various forms and on a whole host of sites, many of which no longer exist, and we want to make further use of them – but have we already done so and forgotten about it?
Also, the rule may be there, but has it been enforced? Can the editors distinguish between an edited version of a very old post and pure self-plagiarism?
Duplicate content is content that appears in more than one place.
An edited content is not a duplicate content because it does not appear twice at the same time. Once it is edited it replaces the previous content.
in fairness, duplicate content can appear in the same place twice.
I saw duplicate content on Virily!
I left a comment on https://virily.com/virily_poll/why-dont-i-consider-edited-content-to-be-duplicate I hope you see it.
I have seen it! Thank you!
we used to (do you remember) have a huge copy-paste comment problem. That was the genesis of the duplicate content statements of Virily, I think. I don’t know that for sure.
It would depend on how much of an article was edited but I wouldn’t personally edit an article and then pass it off as new content.
I think I edited three before I really thought or understood the implications. I did mark them as edited if that matters.
Yes edited content sometimes duplicate the content