TurnitinBot

[rlown]

A very interesting Bot indeed. looks for Plagiarism in submitting papers that copies from other work. It's running a lot.

Was just interested.. Nothing to copy here for a college paper, and the high schools probably don't have the money to harvest the data. Just found it interesting. If it's not hurting performance, ok.

[ERIC]

I find you're loathing of bots quite entertaining.

[rlown]

Just interested in how stuff runs ON THE GROUND and why.. Helo's don't bug me. I know where their engine is.

I am easily amused. The bot just suddenly appeared. Do you control that?

[ERIC]

The bot just suddenly appeared. Do you control that?

Nah, seems new bots pop up weekly. All bots visit on their own terms (we only block the most persistent and harmful ones). The forum system is only equipped to attempt to identify bots when they do visit but there are some bots that you/I don't even know about because the IP range isn't identified in the bot settings (yet). Those just show up as standard guests. This particular bot seems harmless, unless posters on here are posting pirated stuff which I doubt.

[Fly Guy Dave]

Being in the business of education, we do indeed use turnitin.com and I am rather surprised that it would go to HST to look for data. Interesting, though. As a plagiarism checker, the service does work very well and is it is excellent at finding plagiarized material in papers, or sources that aren't properly cited. It saves us a ton of time and is a huge deterrent for those inclined to take academic shortcuts, knowing that they will mostly likely get caught.

[MountainMinstrel]

I've always wondered if there won't come a point at which anything a person writes has been written before. With turnitin now checking forums, it seems that we are getting much closer to that point.