Talk:Turnitin

message: How lazy are teachers when they can't grade a paper themselves? Check their Turnitin account and if the paper isn't red flagged, and doesn't seem too short or long, give it a passing grade. And of course, isn't keeping a cache of student papers that Turnitin didn't write in itself a form of plagarism? Can I have my tuition fee back?
 
or "Many teachers that use the service will automatically give a failing grade to a paper that is not submitted through Turnitin;"
It is not correct that Turnitin is in any way involved with the punishment meted out by teachers who catch students plagiarising.  If a teacher fails a student, it is done without any involvement of the company Turnitin.  This much should be obvious.  Who would permit an outside party to set guidelines for academic behavior?  Only teachers are responsible for the consequences of catching their students plagiarising.
:Unfortunately, this statement is true. While this is not strictly Turnitin's fault, its use has encouraged such behavior. æle ✆ 20:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turnitin is not responsible for failing students- teachers are 

message: am adding a section to identify academic integrity and student honesty as a major concern for teachers.  
Plagiarism is in fact an issue for all professional writers, and that includes students when they are required to produce original work.  Novelists, journalists, editors, and even some visual artists such as cartoonists all deal with the issue of plagiarism in some form.
Since identifying the source of matching text on the Internet or within a student database is the goal of Turnitin, this method of identifying material after it has been submitted can be effective in alerting teachers to signs of plagiarism.  While this is the source of much controversy by students, it is becoming widely accepted by teachers and school administrators as a necessary way to identify plagiarism.
They are using Turnitin and similar services because of the industry of so-called "custom-writing" or free term paper websites on the Internet, which advertise term papers to students.  These websites, known as "paper mills", can be a nightmare of cheating for any teacher at the secondary or higher education level.  Students online are assuredly aware of these types of websites.
In the American school system, students are expected to produce original written work, usually in the form of essays.  The Internet can be a great source of information but culture demands that works should be cited and credit should be given to the original sources.  This is how professional writing communities also view the attribution of original work.  At the high school and college level it is the case that essays can easily be copied or bought off the Internet and this undermines the purpose of requiring original work from students.  
Every school has their own policy in dealing with plagiarists.  When a school decides to fail a student on an assignment or in a class, that is the decision made by the school and not Turnitin or any other tool that acts similarly.  While the penalties for plagiairism can be strict, they represent the degree of seriousness with which schools and writers in general approach plagiarism.
Cutter20 23:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism in college and high school, Internet plagiarism 

message: I have tried to edit this article to make it factual without diminishing concerns about controversy.  
Cutter20 00:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutral POV

message: I have moved this paragraph to discussion:
"One issue that has been the topic of discussion among faculty is whether or not it is ethical or legal to grant Turnitin license for free use of the works of students (as spelled out in Turnitin's End User License Agreement) without their consent, or with consent that has been given under questionable circumstances (as a condition of enrollment, for instance)."
I think this description may be problematic.  First, it does not specify which specific faculty are discussing the ethical or legal issues with Turnitin.  Second, even faculty debates about legality are irrelevant because Turnitin functions as a lawful company, not one in a perpetual gray zone.  Third, these issues are addressed in the section of the article titled "Student paper database".
If there are real concerns about legality or ethics, instead of just supposition, there should be at least one court case or outside source to reference.  Currently, anecodtes of faculty discussions are not the same as relevant legal proceedings or informed studies on the subject.  Ultimately this paragraph demonstrates a non neutral point of view that Turnitin may not be ethical or legal.
Turnitin's widespread adoption by schools, barring any specifically cited evidence that Turnitin is unethical/illegal, should be sufficient proof that Turnitin is widely used by schools without breaking any laws or violating student's rights.  I would hope this Wikipedia article remains factual and informative, without fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  
Cutter20 19:47, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Students don't have rights, or rather, they have rights, but these rights are consistently ignored. Teachers violate them every day. No one but the students cares, but the students cannot vote, so it doesn't change. At a guess, I'd say that this issue won't be fixed utnil somebody figures out children are people too; but then people n power are rarely capable of that much thought. --67.67.216.182 06:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Legal/Ethical issues

message: I am reverting back some of the changes made by Billso.  Information about types of papers that can be submitted to Turnitin should not replace information about how Turnitin is used by teachers and students, but can be used to supplement it.  Billso also made a change to the article to say that students are able to submit the same paper twice without detection:
This database does not prevent the use of one student's paper by another student. The indexing and analysis services offered by TurnItIn act as a deterrent to plagiarism. 
This statement is incorrect, as two students who submit the same paper will have the matching text identified by Turnitin.  This is the very reason why the company maintains a student paper database.  I have also moved the deterrent link because elsewhere the article says that Turnitin is used as a deterrent.  Beyond its use as a deterrent, the program allows teachers to enforce their policies through text matching between student papers.  
Also, the company spells its name with a capital T and lower case everything else, as shown on the website.  I would welcome changes and additions to the article as long as they are factual and do not replace other relevant information about the program.  Cutter20 21:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Text match and deterrence

message: I have created a proper references section for the article. However, this entailed removing a whole paragraph generally praising Turnitin, because none of the links cited worked anymore. If someone can find those sources, or equivalents (the Duke student paper, the CBC, the Melbourne News Herald etc.) it can go back in. Daniel Case 03:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When there are actual legal challenges, then they can be discussed in a section. We don't deal in hypotheticals here. Daniel Case 22:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: "Students are often required to submit essays directly to the website themselves. This has been a source of one of several criticisms of the software, with some students refusing to do so in the belief that requiring it constitutes a presumption of guilt. "
Two things need to be corrected here.  
1, Students are not always required to submit the papers themselves, sometimes their teachers submit them in bulk format. 
2, The fact that students submit their essays directly themselves is not the source of critcism.  It is that the essays are submitted to Turnitin at all!  
I will make the appropriate edits to clarify these points.
One other thing to note is that it is schools that decide how to use Turnitin, and Turnitin does not require students to submit papers to them. That is to say, teachers and schools make the policy.
Cutter20 05:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms of Turnitin

message: This article is far too focused on IP issues and student comments about the service.
I'd like this article to include a discussion of the GradeMark feature. As an educator, I use GradeMark to mark and return papers within TurnItIn.com. The plagiarism analyis is a nice deterrent, but I've come to see that GradeMark is a valuable feature that I simply can't get in WebCT 6. 
billso 23:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion of GradeMark 

message: I propose a ban on the Pakistani IP string 124.29.*.* because of incessant vandalism. I suggest that everyone look at the edit history of this article, as well as the "Plagiarism" article.  I have traced the origin of this IP string, and it is directly connected to the owners of the following paper mills in Pakistan: 
Allcustompapers.com
Flashpapers.com
GhostPapers.com
Mybookreportspace.com
Mydissertationspace.com
Myessayspace.com
Mythesisspace.com
Papergator.com
Paperscribe.com
Termpaperstop.com
In fact, if you look at the editing history of 124.29.198.150, you will see that this same Pakistani paper mill owner not only vandalizes, but has also posted links to FlashPapers.com:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/124.29.198.150
This person dislikes Wikipedia's "Turnitin" and "Plagiarism" articles for an obvious reason: they hurt his shady business.  He has incessantly vandalized both articles.  For this reason, I propose a ban on the entire IP string 124.29.*.*.  How do I make this an official "issue" for discussion? 
67.188.1.224 22:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's right, and it's a little unusual for an anonymous user to be so certain about what's going on.... Zz414 03:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  Our anonymous friends need to try talking this out instead of continuing their long-running-but-slow-simmering edit war.  Perhaps semi-protection might be enough to "flush them into the open" and get them talking?  --ElKevbo 05:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: ElKevbo and Cutter20, if either of you can point out to me where in Wikipedia's TOS a username is required, I will gladly ablige and create one. For the record, my IP address is LESS anonymous than a random username. 67.188.1.224 23:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism by Pakistani Paper Mill Owner 

message: Hello, I'm just starting out with Turnitin, and I was wondering if Turnitin will flag my assignment if it contains parts copied from a previous assignment that I turned in using the same account. In other words, will Turnitin accuse me of plagiarism if I copy off parts of my own previous assignments? Thanks very much for your reply anyone Benlumberkid 01:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: TurnItIn may flag your work. However, if the work is yours, your teacher/professor should take note of that. Most universities of colleges in my experience encourage students to site themselves. There is a catch to this, however. You should not just lift things from your previous work. Rather, you should quote from and cite your work just like you would anyone else. SkipperClipper 03:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: SkipperClipper is ABSOLUTELY correct.  If you use old previously written work, you MUST cite it.  Or you're plagiarizing yourself.  Elefuntboy (talk) 16:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  question about copying off of yourself 

message: Hello, I am a student taking college courses from the internet division of a college. I am also an avid computer programmer, and I use Unix based operating systems. As some may know, TurnItIn appears to be written with Windows users in mind and is hosted from Windows-based servers. Every time I submit an assignment to TurnItIn, it is marked as "unknown." POSIX-compatible operating systems do not encode files specifically as binary or text (a truly unnecessary feature, in my assessment), as Windows does. I recently received an F on a pivotal assignment and the professor refused to grade the assignment until TurnItIn successfully rated it, giving me an F average in the class. TurnItIn does not appear to support non-binary files. I resubmitted the assignment successfully from a Windows computer (still not graded yet); the same file. This is (hopefully unintentional) antitrust in my book. TurnItIn will not accept files from POSIX-compliant systems.
You might try the cut and paste feature rather than uploading, pasting as text.131.238.30.195 22:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  question regarding treatment of Unix Users 

message: I have added the sentence at the end of the third paragraph. I understand I offer no statistics to back this up, but as an educator in a high school setting, I know that my school division and most of my colleagues do not presume guilt, but are truly interested in educating students. Given the amount of information students may write in any pape and the number of students papers, teachers are hard pressed to highlight examples from an individuals work that should be sited. Often we'd have no way of knowing it the work was original or plagiarized. SkipperClipper 03:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addressing Neutrality in the Opening Section 

message: Does anyone know?  It can be disallowed.
http://www.turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html
Something like:
User-agent: turnitinbot
Dissallow: /
in the robots.txt Leafyplant 11:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: dosent look like we do http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt Leafyplant 11:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a useless gesture anyway.  There's nothing that prevents spiders from ignoring robots.txt.Robertwharvey (talk) 21:34, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does turnitin spider wikipedia? 

message: This article seems to focus way too much on the negatives over the positivies of Turnitin.com, so I will be adding an NPOV tag.
You may have very strong convictions that Turnitin.com is corrupt and unfair, but that doesn't mean that that should be the only POV on here or that you should use this article to alert the world to that.  Wikipedia is not an advocacy site. Beggarsbanquet 03:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV problem 

message: The last sentence in the first criticism response, "using it as intellectual property" is meaningless. I'm deleting that response. Unless there's a cite to some document explaining it more cogently and it can be rephrased accordingly, I don't think it should be in there.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.121.111.50 (talk) 03:12, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to Criticisms Section 

message: Someone should point out the price here. Its pretty expensive, but the price-website is gone. Can someone fill in the numbers? There is also no response to emails (legal@iP*/press@turni*).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.70.21.236 (talk) 13:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Price & Contact 

message: That's removed in support of 66.177.181.101, who deleted two chunks.  This one's still missing.  Googling on "turnitin critics" finds enough material to source the missing section (or something similar).  For example
*
*
*
*
Tedickey (talk) 23:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing "Criticisms" seciotn 

message: The second reference supposed to be written in 2002, is now incorrect.  It points to turnitins current doc on legal issues which was written after A.V. v. iParadigms was decided in 2009.  Mellen22 (talk) 02:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference is wrong 

message: Blogs, whether on Linked-in or other media, are primarily self-promotional items which have not been subjected to scholarly review.  TEDickey (talk) 10:32, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linked-in blogs as a reliable source 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Turnitin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061004205113/http://bedfordstmartins.com:80/technotes/techtiparchive/ttip060501.htm to http://bedfordstmartins.com/technotes/techtiparchive/ttip060501.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 11:04, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Just came across this article which might have good material to include in the article but don't have time to go through and figure out right now so leaving it here in case someone else wants to take a swing.: http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/resisting-edtech/ -Dan Eisenberg (talk) 00:42, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I have read it all. What points do you want to include? --5.170.128.171 (talk) 16:44, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source to consider 

message: Firstly, Turnitin's crawler automatically adds copyrighted content to its database, so it is unclear why Tedickey said my sentence is "not an improvement". As for the robots.txt file, the company claims to observe it, but there is no third-party proof or source, so nobody actually knows if they always observe its directives. Even assuming they do, the company never explained if their bot also removes the old copyrighted material (added before reading robots.txt) or just stops indexing the webpage from that moment on. --Adrin10 (talk) 16:36, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old copyrighted material and robots.txt 

message: The last edit changed an unsourced comment which was tagged into a more assertive statement for which there is no source.  The casual reader might not notice that a factoid was created. TEDickey (talk) 19:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The intellectual property rights of every website, book, journal etc. belong to their authors (with a few exceptions, such as public domain). It goes without saying that Turnitin's bot copies everything, including copyrighted content: it is a fact, not a "factoid". But if you don't like the word "therefore", we can remove it. --Adrin10 (talk) 21:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Therefore (sic) 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on Turnitin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100704174249/http://turnitin.com/static/what_is_new.html to http://turnitin.com/static/what_is_new.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120930185146/http://www.ryerson.ca/senate/documents/students.doc to http://www.ryerson.ca/senate/documents/students.doc
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090320160405/http://www.dontturnitin.com/images/iParadigms_Amended_Complaint.pdf to http://www.dontturnitin.com/images/iParadigms_Amended_Complaint.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090419174448/http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/081424.P.pdf to http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/081424.P.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080617190408/http://ccccip.org/files/CCCC-IPpositionstatementDraft%209%2016%2006.pdf to http://ccccip.org/files/CCCC-IPpositionstatementDraft%209%2016%2006.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:47, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified