What I learnt from reporting stories. - Comments

Oh don't get me wrong I'm not trying to say that I was excited when I got reported I was a little annoyed but only because I didn't realise I was making the mistake. It'd have been nice to have maybe been told in a comment before that but I'm just saying that I don't think it's necessary to go over react in a rude way when you get reported. People seem to spend more time complaining about bein reported than actually trying to look at it from another way and solve the problem so they won't be reported again

Eh, I wouldn't exactly be excited if someone reported me. I wasn't excited when I got banned from the forums for a month that one time.

I think you guys should warn them first. You know, send a message saying that they need to fix their mistakes in this or that amount of time, and if they don't, they'll be reported. Just to spare them th surprise and give them a heads up. You know, how the US told Japan to surrender in WW2 or they'd drop the bomb.

Hope you don't mind that this is just a random comment but I agree with what you've just said up there. I've seen far too many people go over board about being reported. They change the story status to a rant about being reported and I think it's rude.

I don't know about others but I know that I llike to recieve Con Crit in my stories and I believe reporting stories is just another way of giving Con. Crit. My co-written story was reported the other day ...maybe it was you. I don't know but nor do I care who reported me but I will say that I did learn something from being reported. I was making a grammar mistake that I never knew was an error.

Anyway the point of this comment was just to point out that people can learn a lot from being reported and if they would just stop over reacting about it they might find out that it was actually a worthwhile thing.

Oh and if it was you who reported my story I guess I should say thanks XD

v. I'm still wishing they would have given me a link. I've searched storywrite.com for the plagiarized story...and I can't find it. It's BS.

Audrey T. That is fair enough. To me it depends, if it's someone who's posted a poem they haven't written themselves, but is a poem written by someone "unknown" (you know one of those 'has been around forever' poems) - a lot of the time it's a new user who actually isn't aware that you're not allowed to post poems that you haven't written yourself. Like with how they don't know you're not allowed to post pictures that you don't own in your gallery. (Which is funny, because the text is right there when you upload the picture)

For stories, I tend to ignore the report button, and just contact a mod directly. To be honest, I don't know why that feature is even there, for users to chose. Isn't it best, if someone is stealing a story, just to contact a mod and straighten it out that way?

And I do feel that reporting someone for plagiarism without proper facts is sort of... a big deal.

vPlagiarism is one of the biggest no-no's on mibba (And rightly so), but as with everything, a staff member isn't going to see a story reported as plagiarised and think "Oh, better ban the user". They're not going to take action on something they have absolutely no evidence for, and it's always better to just hand it over to them instead of trying to solve it yourself, because that can just exacerbate things. If you're reporting a story for plagiarism (Which I've never done; don't read enough to know when something's been copied) it's always best to leave a link to the other story, so the staff can see the evidence, and the author has the chance to say "That's my account, just on another site" and protest their innocence.

It's like some guy maybe said once; if you're innocent, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. If you know a report is BS, then other people will see that.

v That's kind of exactly the job of Mibba staff, to check things out and see what's a genuine report and what's not. When people report members for fake pictures or plagiarizing, the staff does look into it. It's much simpler with actual text than with pictures, to be honest. Kind of like when we check to see if a article is plagiarized before we post it to the site, there's definitely ways to search and sniff out a stolen story. Anywho, I'd hand over the story info to Mibba staff and not the person I think is plagiarism.

v. I get what you mean.

But isn't this sort of like reporting someone's profile for being fake? I mean, if I just write a comment on their profile, without any proof, and say "fake!" and then report them - nothing's going to happen, as far as I know. The mods aren't going to look at the profile, check the pictures, and then google for three hours to see if perhaps maybe the person actually is fake.

And what if they saw the story on a site ages ago, but it's not there anymore. Then your story has been reported by someone who claims it's plagiarism, but they can't even prove it. Then is it going to be a constant "war" between the two were one person screams one thing and the other tries to defend themselves?

Besides, to me, if I see someone stealing a story/poem (because it's happened), including a link isn't a "nice" thing. It's more like "hey, you've stolen this, and I obviously can prove it with this link right here so maybe delete the story or someone's going to ban you kay?"

v But think about it, why would someone make an effort to be nice to someone who they think is plagiarizing a story? I think we can all agree, being that we're on writing site, that plagiarism is kind of "high-crime" here. So I wouldn't do anything that I think is going to be helpful to someone who I'm sure stealing someone's work and passing it off as theirs (and if someone is reporting your for plagiarism, I'm certain they feel like they know you're plagiarizing). Like, I know I wouldn't be doing them any favors.

v. I agree with you to the most part, but I still feel that when reporting someone for plagiarism, that you should add the link to where else it's supposed to be posted. I mean, this girl who thought I'd plagiarised Freak, really went off at me. She was extremely rude in the beginning, and it took a few posts before she said where she'd read the story before.

If she'd said that from the beginning, there wouldn't have been any need for an argument at all.

In agreement with you, Sheepy. :) The reporting system is simply a way to let author's become aware of their major errors. And the journals blasting those "nasty mean bitchy..." people who report stories are just so tiring and, let's be honest, stupid. Most of the time, I read a journal like that, check out the story, and it turns out that that story deserved to have been reported. And if that's not the case, then there's nothing to get so worked up over. Simply contact someone on Mibba's staff and have them tell you were to go from there.
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To be honest, I would rather people report stories they think are plagiarized, than simply ignore it because their not 100% sure. Because, like brookie said, it very well may be the case of someone else stealing your work, and without having received that report, you wouldn't think to look into someone possibly plagiarizing your work. I can understand a member preferring to do it through the system rather than to deal with confronting the would-be plagiarist personally, especially if it's work that isn't theirs.

I have accounts on a few websites and I've been reported for plagiarism a couple of times, having it been my work. It pretty much just makes me laugh, but I'm thankful that people on Mibba are out there and speaking up if they think someone is stealing my work.

v. EXACTLY.

Some people just don't know how to word it correctly and end up looking like angry Hulks up in here.

I think what is just getting to some of us is that our stories are being falsely reported and it's just a bit annoying especially when we have to wait for who knows how long for editors to check it out.

v. I get that, the plagiarism part is an insult. When that one girl accused me of stealing Freak from somewhere, I really didn't feel good. Until obviously we realized it was me, who was that other girl. It's just not okay, I think, to accuse someone of that without proof.

I don't think it's a bad thing, but the plagiarism part really burns me up. They could at least ask you first if you have another account on another website, and if you don't, then they could GIVE you a link to the story they found that they believe is a copy of yours. It would help a lot and less people would get angry.

Well written journal Sheepy

I've noticed few people complaining about their stories getting reported and acting like it's a major thing. It's not really and people should understand that the person(s) who reported their story is because they want to help them or point out a problem in the story which can be fixed.

I've had a couple of my A7X fics reported but that was for either layout problems or grammar mistakes and I fixed them up.
I don't get why peole see the reporting system as a bad thing.

ilu sheepeh. (:

Haha, I reported someone who had a MASSIVE ammount of errors, and also left a very sweet comment on her page pointing her in the right direction so her story would be easy to edit. Because I could tell she had a passion for writing. Not only did she come and call me all the names in her book, but she had her friends attack me too and call me names and saying there's nothing wrong with her story you fucking bitch so why don't you just fuck off and die you whore who can't write for shit!

Not surprisingly, a few weeks later they were both banned for abusive comments.

I mean, seriously, why? Back ages ago, my stories were reported for incorrect capitalization, and an editor told me what I'd done wrong. I fixed it, and a week or so ago they were reported again for incorrect capitalization. Turns out they were correct the first time around, and an actual editor had given me the wrong information.

I didn't get mad.

I was happy, that I finally found out exactly how you were supposed to capitalize stories, and I checked with several mods and editors to make sure I knew what was right. Now they're correct and they're marked with "waiting for editors" and I could care less.

People need to chillax, seriously.

However at the same time, I'm against people who reports stories without actually knowing themselves what's correct. Like, they guess that you've stolen your story from somwhere or they guess it's the wrong type. Ahum?

My story Freak nearly got reported by a girl who went off at me over how a girl on tbp.net had posted that story ages ago and whatnot. Yeaah.... that girl on tbp.net was actually me.

I don't know if it was you who reported French Girls Do It Better, but if it was...

I'd like you to know I don't support plagiarism, and if someone else has it it's because they took it from me or have a similar plotline. Hopefully it wasn't you reporting The ED Diaries, because that was a load of bull.