Talk:Essay mill

message: I removed commercial and "how-to" content from the article, but moved this statement here for discussion and sourcing: "In addition, other forums such as eBay ensure that the company will be held accountable for the quality of their work since they have often built their business on customer satisfaction."  Flowanda 19:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  eBay statement 

message: should be merged here to make a better article out of two stubby ones.  Leibniz 11:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Contract cheating]]

message: I just stumbled upon this page and it very clearly violates NPOV. There's no debating it; the article essentially says "this is bad and here's how to fix it." Regardless of how evil and scummy these sites are, Wiki's not the place for the hate. Neutrality means the article on murder should describe what counts as murder, what punishments are possible for murder, how it can be proven, etc. Everyone here agrees that murder is wrong, but WP isn't the place for it. To put it another way, the page isn't neutral until a reader has no idea if it was written by the teacher, the plagiarist, the disgusted student who can't believe anyone would even use something like this, or (best of all!) a combination of the three. Tagged for fixing.--llamapalooza87 (talk) 04:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: The intro to the article reads, in part: "Some universities and colleges consider the practice to be academic dishonesty or academic fraud [...]" "Some"? If there are any that consider handing in another person's work as one's own to be anything other than dishonesty or fraud, they are highly atypical. Any claims that buying papers is permitted at any schools requires a source, to say the least. Doing so is academic dishonesty or fraud. I am going to change this sentence accordingly. Being as NPOV as possible is of course always the goal, but this is part of the very definition of what constitutes academic dishonesty, not a subjective opinion that's considered controversial within academia. --Icarus (Hi!) 05:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Some" universities? 

message: If someone paid for that bit of the article, I hope it wasn't very much :) Seriously, it reads so badly, I'm not sure what it's trying to say: some essay mills subcontract the work to the lowest bidder? Lovingboth (talk) 19:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcontracting section 

message: The last senctence is confusing.  It needs to be re-written.
"In informal settings where students exchange papers without any formal licensing or transfer of copyright, copyright violation may occur, but it is unlikely that the students will press charges, since they would incriminate themselves by doing so."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.78.59.246 (talk) 22:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree wigh Tiddlywinks11.  An article I read discussed how essay mills use fake adresses for their business locations in order to not be found by the authorities.  If the term paper mills are completly legal they would not try to hide.  Ecotta27 (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

text: | Which states have outlawed them? ForteSP33 (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Legal Status Section

message: I'd like to make this more like an article on murder for hire or drug dealing. Let's provide more emphasis on the clash between students buying term papers and educators insisting that they actually do the work, i.e., so they'll learn something. While we can't condemn essay mills any more than we can condemn Nazis or child molesters, we shouldn't downplay the existence of the moral conflict.
I may as well admit that I adhere to a "side" in that conflict, so I'll thank anyone who helps me to remember WP:Writing for the enemy, so that I don't overbalance the article to favor one side of the conflict. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Plagiarism and academic dishonesty

message: I feel that it could be useful to include a section that deals with studies that show how widespread the problem of essay mills is. This can provide an idea of how many people are actually using the help of essay mills to get an assisting hand through high school and college. Durantula123 (talk) 15:36, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Mm, no, any such section would be far too easy to push into a defense of essay mills. Already, what you've posted seems - I'm sure entirely by accident - to be a defense and a recommendation. DS (talk) 14:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Students Use of essay mills

message: I think that all of the facts presented in this article need to be cited.  I also believe that there should be more factual evidence for the information in this article.  There are plenty of recent scholarly essays on the topic, all of which could contribute valuable information on the subject. Mcandrek (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the works listed in "Further Reading" are from 2004 and the one piece listed in references is no longer available using the current link. More current sources will benefit the article. Also a current link for the one referenced work should be added.--Jp.E100.T. (talk) 02:35, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: The introduction should be less focused on how the universities and education institutions deal with this problem by utilizing outside plagiarism detection software programs and should focus more so on the history and evolution of essay mills over the past 20 to 30 years. I feel as if talking about plagiarism detection software with this article is not relevant to the topic at hand. It deviates from the main topic, and for readers to better understand Essay mills, all the information should strictly be related to this topic. That being said, I also believe that there should be a History subheading for paper that begins to introduce the topic, and then the end of the page should evolve into the current legal problems that these services stir. Aspiringintellectual (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: A revised and specific introduction might also benefit from being condensed into one short four or five sentence paragraph, avoiding one or two line paragraphs. It should simply provide a definition and a brief description of the topic. As mentioned above the other things discussed in the current introduction could be given a place elsewhere in the article. --Jp.E100.T. (talk) 02:26, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction is not relevant 

message: Referring to essay mills as "paper mills" seem a little misleading since paper mills are its own established business. There are several sources that refer to essay mills as "term paper mills", and I think that it should be noted that this alternative name is used that is very specific to only this business of essay mills. Aspiringintellectual (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be helpful to include short definitions for certain terms, i.e. ghostwriter, essay mills, essay banks, academic honesty. This will help to reduce confusion for those who are just beginning to learn about the topic.--Jp.E100.T. (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Paper mills" is misleading 

message: The section of the article currently titled "History" is very well written. The section titled "Essay Mills Today," however, is currently empty. No doubt, the Internet had a substantial impact on the practice of buying/selling ghostwritten academic work, but that's not really clear as of May 2014. The article might be improved by having subsections on the various incarnations of essay mills (some historical, some still in use today): fraternity files, essay banks, custom essay writing services, etc. DinzdalePR (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Organization/Article Sections

message: There are several problems with this section, the largest of which is that it seems to contain original research. This section might be improved by citing published articles describing essay mill services, rather than quoting the sites directly (which may run afoul of several Wikipedia guidelines).DinzdalePR (talk) 14:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "Essay Mills Today" section

message: Since this article seems to be deal with law and practice in the United States alone, I assume the whole subject is a local phenomenon that does not occur in other countries. If so, shouldn't the title be “
Essay Mills in the USA”? Clifford Mill (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a good assumption. Besides, that title would imply that there's a difference between American essay mills and those elsewhere. DS (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename? 

message: The tone of this article in general seems too conversational for an encyclopedia. A few examples:
"You could walk into a building and look at pricing pamphlets, and speak to someone directly to place your order, or possibly choose from a vault of recycled research papers stored in the basement of these businesses."
"On the opposite end of the transaction, the employee searches through requests until he or she finds something that sparks their interest. A writer will take anything that they know they can write something that will be quick and hit the page requirement. It does not matter if the writer has previous knowledge about the subject; if it is easy to research, he or she will get the job done."
"GPAs and grades are greatly stressed in schools which causes students to worry and make them feel like they cannot meet their deadlines."
It would probably be helpful to go through the article and make changes to the language when necessary to make it more stylistically appropriate.
FinalForm (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unencyclopediac tone 

message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot- this seems broken so i just wanted to replace it with relevant information Eddapugal (talk) 07:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done for now: What exactly do you want to change? feminist (talk) 13:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: And please make such requests on the talk page of the relevant article. - Thanks - Arjayay (talk) 13:36, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the requester is referring to the dead link in this article. feminist (talk) 13:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: My bad then - I thought they were talking about Wikipedia:Link rot, which is what they seemed to be trying to link to - Arjayay (talk) 13:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Please be specific, Eddapugal. Which link is dead? DS (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2018 

message: Kindly make "essay mill" the anchor text of [spam link redacted] it is an essay mill in USA and I know some students who use it for academic purposes. WayneOuko (talk) 09:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not any part of the purpose of a Wikipedia article. It is unfortunate indeed that student fall for such scammers, but linking to one of them would not improve the article or make it more encyclopedic (and might serve the unintended purpose of giving the unethical website more traffic...) For more info, see this. --bonadea contributions talk 09:10, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 1 January 2019 

message: Here you can learn [Ways to Improve and Expand Your Vocabulary]. Zackjerry75 (talk) 05:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Spammer Zackjerry75 has been blocked. I guess we can mark that as resolved. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:55, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2019 

message: The section will probably be very useful but it lacks references entirely. Olivier LG (talk) 11:07, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referencing the section on "Strategies for combating academic fraud"