On Plagiarism
Plagiarism, or the presenting of others' work as your own, is forbidden on Mini. It is an issue we take very seriously, and one that has come up with unfortunate frequency in our history.
We care about plagiarism for a number of reasons. We're a creative endeavor ourselves, and as writers we're part of one of the demographics most frequently affected by plagiarism. As a collaborative project, SOTF is also particularly affected as we can't cleanly change or remove one element of a story without it rippling to affect others; a character can't simply be removed from a version without requiring huge adjustments to every thread and interaction they were involved in. Even minor changes of a handful of lines can be labor-intensive in certain situations.
We consider the use of non-original characters and writing to be plagiarism. This can be as major as stealing characters, but it also encompass smaller things, like putting chunks of published novels into posts or stealing dialogue from comic books.
There's often a thin line between inspiration, homage, and plagiarism. We totally understand that these are all different things, and we absolutely allow handlers to take inspiration from other media and include nods and homages in their work. What is or is not okay is all about context.
Generally speaking, any character on SOTF should be easily recognizable as something besides an insert of some non-original character. If the character shares a first name and a hobby with a non-original character, but has other interests unrelated to the source material and a unique, non-copied personality, you're probably in good shape. If you pattern a character's personality off a story you like, but give them a wholly different name, backstory, and set of interests, you should be fine. However, if your character is Herlock Sholmes, master detective, that's not cool. This is true, for the record, even of characters who are, like Sherlock Holmes, in the public domain.
Similarly, you should almost always clearly indicate when you're quoting from or referencing material not created by you in your posts. If you want to interweave song lyrics, poetry, or a quote from Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment into your post, you're free to do so—provided you clearly indicate you are doing so and that the bulk of the post is by you. This can even easily be done in narrative in most cases; if your character is singing a song, they presumably know they didn't make it up and their awareness of this can convey that information to the audience. You don't even have to name the author; "He remembered some lines from a poem he read in English class, but could not for the life of him recall the author," is totally fine. The key thing is to make sure your audience knows you're not the original author of whatever you're putting in your post.
Please do not assume that something will be obvious to your reader to the point where clarifying isn't necessary. Our members come from a wide range of cultures and have a vast span of interests, so while a reference to the works of Robert Frost may indeed be obvious to most of the site, a teenager from France may have never even heard of him.
There's a slight exception to this for thread titles. Generally speaking, titles even of published media are frequently quotes and references. It's no different on SOTF. Thread titles have historically often been taken from song lyrics, lines of dialogue from movies, etc., and generally speaking there is no expectation of originality when it comes to thread titles.
Additionally, we want to be clear that using someone else's work with express permission is fine, though you should communicate that this is what you are doing and be ready to supply proof of permission upon request. This extends to profiles; you are welcome to submit profiles written by other handlers or write profiles for other handlers to submit, so long as this is communicated to staff and is done with permission from all parties involved. You may not refurbish other handlers' profiles (even abandoned ones) without express permission from the handler in question.
On a related note, we expect the majority of your in-character writing to be your own. If you want someone else to temporarily handle your character for a post (or more) for whatever reason, they should do so from their own account. Please note that this does not count as activity for purposes of the activity timer. If you want someone else to permanently handle your character, you should officially hand them off. GMing and co-writing remain acceptable; they just shouldn't be happening all the time. We're drawing this distinction to avoid a potential situation in which a handler entirely writes multiple casts, posted from different accounts—the character cap is in place for a reason, and we expect it to be held to both in letter and in spirit.
If you're ever unsure whether something is sufficiently distanced or marked as to not constitute plagiarism, feel free to contact the staff. The staff will come to an agreement and give you an answer. In general, though, it's always best to err on the side of citing.
