Plagiarism or citation issue?

[Guest I'd Rather Not Say]

I’m loathe to post this because I imagine there will be some negative repercussions to the moderators, whichever way their decision leans, given what fandom this is in.

The issue is a story from seven/eight years ago. There is a very small portion of this piece that is lifted from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The posting user, goldhorse (http://members.adult-fanfiction.org/profile.php?no=1296881395&view=story&zone=hp&page=4), recognizes that this section isn’t theirs and notes it in an AN at the bottom of the offending chapter.

However, they do not cite the original source.

The chapter: http://hp.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600095160&chapter=14

Acknowledgement that the material is not their own in AN at bottom of chapter:

Quote

(You might recognize some of the dialogue too)

No citation.

The offending portions:

Starting at "Hermione, Hermione!" to "He's so tall..." lifted from HBP p 316-317
Starting at "Professor Slughorn, I discovered this boy" to "you may stay, Draco" lifted from HBP p 320-321 (as is "I'd like a word with you, Draco")

Depending on what website you’re on, this small amount, when compared to the entire work (58 chapters) wouldn’t be grounds to remove the entire story. However, AFF’s policies are much stricter than most cites with respect to plagiarism. There is a clear statement in the TOS

Quote

You understand that when posting User Submissions, you are stating that any work submitted under your User Account is your own personal work and has not been in any part copied or plagiarized from any source. Furthermore, you understand that you are not to post anyone else's work without the express permission of the original copyright holder unless said work is part of Public Domain.

And there is also a clear statement in the Guidelines

Quote

You understand that if you include any work not your own in a User Submission, such as lyrics, quotes, etc, require proper citation of the original source material.

With the allowance of citation, and since there’s a half-assed note of “not mine”, I didn’t want to make an accusation of plagiarism if it would not be seen that way by the administration.

(I also wasn’t sure whether this should be posted in the “reports” section or the “general questions” section. Sorry if I got it wrong.)

[BronxWench]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for both your thorough post, and for your thoughtfulness.

We are much stricter about plagiarism than many other sites, I agree. We do try not to be utter jerks, mind you, but we respect the intellectual property of our authors, as well as the legal copyright held by the creators of the various books, movies, television shows, anime, comic, et cetera, which provide the backbone of our archive. It’s a fine line, and that’s why we do review every case individually, instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach.

I am of the opinion this was a forgotten citation, and one which might well have been missed as we moderated. With that in mind, I’ve gone in and added the citations for that chapter myself, rather than reach out to the author to have them make that change.

Thank you again!