Posted:
Hi everyone. I have an important announcement to make that may be shocking for some of you. I would really appreciate it if all FF writers and readers read this post completely and recognize that gravity of the situation.
There have been many instances of plagiarism in the FF section that I have taken care of over the past year or two. I have made it clear that presenting someone else's work as your own is completely unacceptable and will always be dealt strictly. Almost always, when I come across such a thread, I close it immediately, raise the warning level and PM the user, giving him/her a chance to explain. On the most part, these instances have been discovered very early and I was able to close the post before the user could post many chapters or receive too much undeserved praise. However, for the latest incident, this was unfortunately not the case.
As some of you may know, it was recently brought my attention that all three fan fictions posted by archieeps, were actually written by three different users on FanFiction.net. Based on this information and looking further into the situation, I am forced to conclude that she did not write any of the three stories herself. They have all been plagiarized.
Now, you must be wondering why I am making a public announcement about this incidence of plagiarism when I did not do the same for the others. Well, this case is a little different, because not only did archieeps receive a lot of praise, but she also received two awards (Best Storyline/Concept and Best One Shot) for her "work". Now that it has been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt, that none of the stories she posted were actually written by her, I have no choice but to retract both awards. I apologize to all the members who voted for "Last Thing I Expected" and "The Three Little Things" in the various categories thinking that they were voting for a deserving candidate.
Finally, I would like to request all of you to please help me with my efforts against plagiarism. Sometimes you may notice evidence that a FF may be plagiarized...for example, the story may be written in a very eloquent style whereas the responses to the comments contain bad grammer. If you have any reason to suspect that the story may not be the original work of the user who is posting it, please do a quick google search of some of the text (minus the character names). If you find a match, please report it to me. I will do any further investigation if necessary and take the appropriate action.
Thank you in advance.
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