Question about text in Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:26:47 +1000, Ben Finney wrote:

> "Steve" <steve1791 at REMOVETHISNOWgmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Yes it is [a homework question].
>>
>> Where else to ask for help but here.
> 
> That's between you, your teacher, and your teaching institute's
> plagiarism guidelines.


Plagiarism is a serious example of fraud, which is not only a crime but is
unethical as well. You don't need to be a student or an academic to commit
plagiarism. Anybody can commit plagiarism.

If we applied the plagiarism guidelines that university students labour
under to the rest of us, perhaps we'd be a little less quick to toss
accusations of plagiarism around so easily. If it is plagiarism for a
student to ask how to detect an empty line, then it is plagiarism for
any of us to ask how to do anything.

At the point that students are unable to ask for information because
they're accused of plagiarism, well, that's "a total collapse of critical
reasoning", to quote Professor Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin.

Citation: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/PlagShame.HTM
Accessed 2007-04-03.


If the Original Poster _accidentally_ sees a newsgroup post that answers
his question -- "Oh, so that's how you exit a loop in Python!" -- is that
plagiarism? Or is it only plagiarism if he _asks_ for the information
first? Does he have to spend the rest of his life as a Python coder giving
credit to J. Random Hacker for using "his" technique of "using break to
exit a while loop"?

None of this is to excuse students who try to have their homework done for
them, or well-meaning but foolish people who, in response to a simple
question end up providing an entire working piece of code, essentially
doing the student's homework for them. Plagiarism does exist, and it is
fraud. But I'm sickened and saddened to see how plagiarism has been
bastardised by academia, turning it from serious fraud to trivial re-use
of phrases and ideas, and even _learning things from anyone someone other
than your lecturer_.

That's what it has come to. If you ask "how do I detect the user has
entered an empty line in raw_input?", you're deemed to be committing
fraud. WTF? There's a gulf the size of the Atlantic Ocean between
_learning_ and _committing fraud_, and we're so frightened by the thought
that somebody might fraudulently claim another person's ideas (which begs
the question of whether people can own ideas) that we're prohibiting
learning except through a couple of narrowly approved channels.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I challenge you to read Professor Dutch's
pages on plagiarism:

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/PlagShame.HTM
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/PlagiarNonsense.HTM

I challenge you to try to work as a coder, whether professional or
amateur, under the same restrictions that we've been placing on students.
I can't count the number of times people write to comp.lang.python asking
"How do I transmogrify the frombulator?" And let's not even mention
copying code snippets posted on Usenet.

These things are not fraud. They are learning.

This is not a call to turn a blind eye for plagiarism, or to do students
homework for them. It's a plea for common-sense. We're not bound by
university guidelines, or universities' over-broad definition of
plagiarism, and we don't have to live by them. We are ethically bound not
to do student's homework for them -- but that doesn't mean we're bound to
refuse to answer their reasonable questions, or to treat those who are
looking for help as frauds _just because they are a student_.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano