Covenant Amendment: Plagiarism Update

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Covenant Amendment: Plagiarism Update

Hello all,

The Electorate convened to discuss a proposed amendment to the Covenant. The proposal is to update the wording of the Plagiarism section of the Covenant to better reflect the growing impact of AI generated content to be explicitly included alongside the work of others.

A vote was called consisting of 17 members of the Electorate, with the Arcona Proconsul sitting in place of the Consul. The vote was a unanimous 17-0 in favor of the amendment. As such, the Covenant has been updated as below. The "Proposed" preview shows a strikethrough for the removed text and bold for added/altered text.

Current Covenant: Section 7.06

(o) Plagiarism – Members must not submit any plagiarized work as his own. Work of others may be used in a member’s work provided that appropriate credit is given to the real author or the sections of the work that are not original are identified and disclosed.

Proposed Covenant: Section 7.06

(o) Plagiarism – Members must not submit any plagiarized work as their own. Work of others, including content generated by software or a website, may be used in a member’s work provided that appropriate credit is given to the real author or the sections of the work that are not wholly original work of the member and the sources thereof are identified and disclosed.

You can find the revised section 7.06(o) on the Covenant page of the wiki.

This change reflects the current approach, just with more clear wording to establish expectations. There should be no perceived change by the membership.

I'm happy to answer any questions about this amendment, if any should exist.

Great change! Thanks to all the voters for the discussion and alignment!

Interesting, and makes total sense, but I am unsure how the use of AI for the creation of fiction entries can be proven. I mean there are some obvious tells, but someone using an AI tool and then proofing it prior to submission would probably be very hard to detect.

Qormus, there are two easy signs to watch for.

  • An individual's submissions dramatically jump in quality - e.g., their submission for Comp A rates on the fiction rubric in the 1-2 range and their submission for Comp B reads like JRR Tolkien (or George RR Martin for the younger crowd).
  • An individual attempts that they utilized one of the programs and it wasn't cited.

As with most of our rules we're striving to ensure a fair competitive field. While encouraging people to grow and develop their talents through the fun participation in a Star Wars themed club of likeminded enthusiasts.

Any way to make things clearer is always good in my book.

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