Requested rewrite rejected for plagiarism

[DavidPortwood]

I received a message asking me to rewrite an article. I assumed that this client, or perhaps one of his people, wrote the original article and was not happy with it. Anyway, he said that he would have a considerable volume of such work for me on a monthly basis, and that he would pay for each piece separately. I was very excited to get this gig. However, my first such rewrite was rejected by CC as plagiarism!

I don't understand. I see many requests to rewrite stuff. It must be possible. Or am I wrong?

One thing just now strikes me: the customer had not sent a private request to me. I don't think he realized that he should do so. I was working from a message that contained a link to the article that he wanted rewritten. So I had to submit that first rewritten piece to the public lists. Would it have made a difference if I was responding to a private request?

David Portwood (Mondrogan)

[Ed]

While it is always important for private requests to be submitted so that it is clear what is happening when an author responds to a private request, our guidelines clearly state that

Plagiarism includes:
Using text taken directly from another source and presenting this information as your own.
Rewrites or partial rewrites of articles by other authors.

If the customer is asking you to rewrite an article that was written by someone else, this person is asking you to do something that is against our rules.

Customers who request rewrites are most often asking for rewrites of their own work. The original author's sig line included that he was an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in respected publications, which he listed. It is unlikely he was asking you to rewrite his own content.


Thanks,
Ed

[DavidPortwood]

Ok, I see your point.

Before rewriting the piece, I did not look at the sig line, nor did I stop to consider whether or not a rewrite was appropriate. After reading through the original text, I had no trouble believing that it was written by a bad writer who needed assistance. But I see now, in the sig line, that the author refers to himself as "award winning". Well, pulling directly from the "anything is possible" files, maybe he did win an award of some sort, at some time in the past, but I doubt it had anything to do with grammar, syntax, or composition.

David Portwood (Mondrogan)

[jadedragon]

I wonder if he used a spinner program to create the poorly written article, then went looking for someone to fix it up. Strange indeed.

[Sharion]

What's a spinner program?

[Celeste Stewart]

Spinner programs are horrible programs that take existing articles and automatically replace certain words with synonyms. People use them to create multiple "unique" articles out of one article. While some people use their own articles as the source material, others grab articles from people like us and spin them without our permission. As you know, the English language is so full of inconsistancies which means that spun articles are often littered with errors.

As far as customers asking for rewrites goes, there are a couple of different scenarios. Right now I'm rewriting a few pages of content for a customer because someone stole his content and now he's worried about duplicate content penalties. The stolen content involves the company's "About Us" and similar descriptions. I'm providing him with new descriptions using his existing keyword phrases but rewritten completely from scratch.

Another scenario is when a customer comes across an article online that he wishes he could have on his own Web site. For example, if a customer has a site about dog training and he comes across an article detailing how to train your dog to stay, he might provide you with a link and tell you to rewrite that original article. Does this mean that you should take that original article and rephrase it? No. What the customer means when he tells you to rewrite the "How to Train Your Dog to Stay" article is that he wants an article about training your dog to stay. Sure, look at the original article so that you can see what the customer thinks he wants, but write your own article, using your own research, your own ideas, your own examples, your own experience, etc. If the article points to some interesting facts, do your research. Where did those facts originate? Maybe the AKC did a study and the original article cited some facts from it. Fine, go to the AKC study and get your own facts or look elsewhere for interesting tidbits to include.

[Sharion]

Ugh. More help for thieves.

For awhile I was turning articles into software programs that required a key to unlock and read, just like shareware. Got stuck with one that needed illustrations. I was working on the images but set the whole thing aside and forgot about it. Trying to illustrate it was difficult.

The point being, the goal was to thwart thieves.