Updates to “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” Series

I’ve noted for some time that the “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” series on the site has fallen into grave disrepair. For example, the instructions for finding the host referenced a service that has not been operation for almost a year and offered complicated instructions when easier tools were available.

So, I’ve started taking some time to rewrite and redraft this portion of the site and I’ve started with the two sections most sorely in need of updating.

New and Improved!

The first section to get an overhaul was the first chapter itself, How to Find Plagiarism. To that chapter, I’ve added two sections, one targeted at bloggers and RSS scraping as well as a section targeted at videographers.

Since spam blogging and video sharing sites were relatively new concepts when the draft was first completed almost three years ago, those sections were not included. However, the article also underwent something of a rewrite in the Non-blogging author section as well as other tweaks to the entire piece.

However, it was the third chapter, Finding the Host, that has undergone the biggest revision. The previous version was practically unusable. Sam Spade, the tool of choice when it was first penned, has been defunct for some time and the tips for determining the host of free Web sites was poorly written and hard to understand.

I’ve updated the page to use Domain Tools instead of Sam Spade and provide a much more detailed set of instructions, including screenshots.

This should bring that page into the modern times and and allow newcomers to the site to effectively use it.

Since editing these files and updating them is a surprisingly time-consuming process. I’m going to be doing this update over a period of a few weeks. If things go according to plan, I should have the entire series, along with other static pages on the site, updated by the end of the year or very early next.

Please let me know if you find any problems with them. I’m going to do my best not to let these pages wait so long before another update and they will be under more constant revision from now on.

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