AssignMine.com is a place for students to post their work product from assignments and to see others’ work product. In other words, need a term paper? AssignMine just might have one for you. However, from AssignMine’s usage Guidelines:
Plagiarism is not condoned at AssignMine.com.
We created AssignMine.com to be a resource like books, reports, past papers or the internet.
Through our website, we want to see better quality work and greater understanding of the issues posed in assessment. *wink* *wink* ;-)
Oh, wait. I added the winks. But they might as well be there.
Reminds me of the lame excuses given by the original Napster, Kazaa, LimeWire, etc. We didn’t create this site so our users could do anything wrong. If they do, it’s their issue and certainly not why we are doing this. Yeah, right…
I feel sorry for college students these days. When I was in college, TV and magazines were the big distraction (music was not, it was my savior). These days, video games, the Interweb, chat, MySpace, downloaded movies, YouTube, and all the rest are the distraction. And sites like AssignMine.com facilitate plagiarism.
I’ll believe AssignMine truly doesn’t want its users to plagiarize when they provide professors with the ability to compare students’ papers with those available on AssignMine.
Actually, that sounds more like a project for Google labs.
Comments
5 responses to “AssignMine.com”
Tod, the difference is that most newspapers, journal articles, and even Internet articles are not likely to be in the form of a term paper, with footnotes and bibliography, ready for minor modification and turning in as “original” work.
When I was in college, the term papers that I would have had access to were ones my profs had already seen. There would have been no chance to plagiarize without getting caught. With AssignMine, college students will have ready access to term papers created for a prof across the country. The chances of getting caught are greatly reduced (that is, until Google comes up with a plagiarism detection tool for profs).
AssignMine as a research tool? Yeah, right…
Update: After a quick online search, I found Plagiarism.org.
Now there’s a research tool. ;-)
Dude, you are so lame – why would people suddenly plagiarize just cos they read an assignment? People’s work is no different to reading an internet article, newspaper article, paper from a journal etc… It is designed as a research tool – are you suddenly going to plagiarize just cos you read another student’s work? of course not
But again, you assume that every student wants to plagiarize? How patronising – heaps of students are more than capable of reading another person’s paper and understanding the main points – the idea that people would automatically plagiarize is extremely short-sighted and frankly insulting to normal students who are quite capable of reading a piece of text and not cutting and pasting (which by the way is the VAST majority of students) When you joined the site did you automatically plagiarize someone’s assignment? I’ll assume you didn’t.
Tod, you appear to have problems with either reading comprehension or logic. You either don’t understand my writing or can’t formulate a rational argument. One last try on my part, then you can have the final word.
I don’t assume that every student wants to plagiarize. In fact, I believe that most don’t. Unfortunately, sites like AssignMine make it all too easy to plagiarize. I don’t see them as a valid resource for research any more than a term paper mill would be.
What level of resources do you like to use when writing a term paper? Do you prefer reading original research, papers that cite original research, or papers that cite papers that cite original research, or … ? If you’re citing someone else’s term paper (as “suggested” by AssignMine), you’re likely in that third category. That’s sure to impress you prof.
When you write a term paper, do you create the outline or do you use someone else’s structure? Is that plagiarism? Probably not. Is it the cheap way out? Depends on what you hope to gain from college. If all you want is to turn in the paper and get a grade, congratulations. If you want to learn how to analyze real source material, create a coherent structure, and write effectively, then I believe you’re shortchanging yourself by reading someone else’s term paper on the same topic.
So jump back up on that high horse of yours and once again accuse me of insulting students. Or take the time to read what I write and realize my real beef is with AssignMine.
Your turn. Last word is yours, if you want it.
I understand exactly what you’re saying, what I’m saying is that it is incredibly naive and simple to think the site will be used poorly by default. Once again, as such as strong proponent of research you should probably do some on this topic by actually registering on the site, take a look and then make a comment – cos at the moment you’re just an ill-informed commentator