Another known plagiarist

bylmwhite

951 followers

7 years ago

I hesitate to post this in case the author of this blog is part of our community. Considering the niche, he could be. Just the same, I feel I have an obligation to report an online plagiarist when I learn about one, especially since there has been a rash of rip-off sites stealing from our members as of late.

I became aware that the How to Retire Before 30 website author is a known plagiarist in a different online community in which I am a member. Another member in my other community posted this Reddit feed in which the website author admitted to plagiarism:

"I used a few sentences from each, big deal. Is this high school and you're going to give me a D- for plagiarizing? You're acting as if the entire thing is copied. The whole point is sharing useful information. As long as one or two people can take something away from what I had posted and it helps change their mindset for the better that is all that matters at the end of the day...."

No, that is not "all that matters at the end of the day." The rules are simple: if you use someone else's content, you give them credit. If you copy even just a few sentences, you can put them in block quotes so that the original author gets the proper credit he or she deserves. Failure to credit an author properly is the high point of laziness and, not to mention, a form of intellectual theft.

For any of you who blog about personal finance, you might want to check the website to ensure he didn't steal your content: https://howtoretirebefore30.com/

If you discover your content has been stolen, you can report it. @Swangirl recently reported content stolen from her website to Bing, and they took swift action to remove the post that was plagairized.

Happy blogging to all of you, and do your best to keep the WA community informed of any online plagiarism. We all work too hard to allow this to happen to ourselves.