Deleted Threads by Admin??


I’ve read a lot of threads where folks complain about the Administrators removing entire threads. While I have no reason to disbelieve the Admins might in fact remove threads, I discovered by accident that the OP’s can also delete their thread(s). (I did so last weekend when I discovered my premise of the thread was false.) When I clicked on my self-deleted thread, the “error” prompt I received was that the Admin removed the thread. So there appears a couple paths whereby a thread can be removed from the forum.
128x128celander
When I read the post it sounded familiar which prompted me to look it up it's  not from that long ago. Moorehead was a pastor at one of those mega churches until he was forced out for the usual reasons which those who care can look up. 

Now it makes sense. Sweet, wise-appearing, but really not much if you scrutinize it. (I am talking about original, not celander's placement of the quote in this thread).
@glupson "I am not sure if that would be considered plagiarism"

Getting my bachelors degree in the 90s, the university took plagiarism very seriously, and specifically defined it as using 4 or more consecutive words from another source without giving credit to that source.  As a condition of attendance, students needed to commit to the academic integrity standards.  The penalty for plagiarism was a zero for the assignment, failure for the class, and referral for review for expulsion.  Afterwards I pursued two degrees from other schools, both maintained similar standards.

Although I never gave it much thought in those days as a teenager, I've come to regard plagiarism with the same level of disdain as my alma mater.  If you have the time to put the effort into copying and pasting someone else's work and thought, you have the time to credit them for same.  And you should certainly have the integrity to do so.  Plagiarism is theft.  Those who engage in it attempt to rob a person of something that inherently and rightly belongs to them
trelja,

I agree on all of your points about plagiarism. However, in this particular case I think it may be a little bit softer case. What I have learned since first reading celander’s post is that those words are quite well-known. I had no clue, but it also seems that I may be the only one reading this thread who had never heard/read it. In light of that, it might have been just an innocent quote that celander expected everyone knew and that he used to emphasize whatever he wanted to emphasize with it. Sort of like me writing "I can’t get no satisfaction" in some post without explicitly giving credit to actual writers of the song. I would expect that everyone knows about it, especially in the forum like this, and that nobody would think I was pretending it was mine from the beginning of time.

Of course, I have no idea what celander actually thought while writing, but I would give him benefit of the doubt on this one. He does not come across as a fool who would think he could sell something this widely-known to a spectatorship like this. Around here, everyone is just waiting to jump and tear apart. True, it would have been no arguing had he started with "to paraphrase XYZ...", but hat the heck.

Again, as far as plagiarism goes, I agree with you 100%.

To be in tune with this thread...

And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen

(Not my lyrics, but as true as it gets)
Plagiarism is a creature of academia and journalism, pertaining to usurping another’s work as one’s own without attribution. In only those areas, it serves as a check on intellectual integrity and breaches therefrom. Those in academia and journalism could care less about asking permission to use another’s work. So as noble as these disciplines might be under the plagiarism doctrine, there remains an unspoken intellectual dishonesty at the core of these disciplines.

Copyright is a commercial embodiment related to plagiarism, but differs from plagiarism in a key respect. Copyright concerns usurping another’s work as one’s own without securing permission from the original author. That is, in copyright, the focus is not simply attribution, because it doesn’t matter whether the usurper actually is aware of the original work. Permission is what matters, and damages can flow therefrom when permission is not granted.

The doctrine of Fair Use provides an exception to the iron fist of the copyright laws. Most of academia and journalism uses of copyrighted work typically avoid damages from copyright infringement under this doctrine. Parody is another strain of Fair Use that spares one the ravages of copyright infringement.

Now patents are a different creature apart from plagiarism and copyrights. Patents liberally include the work of others, regardless of attribution or permission. This flows necessarily from the nature of patents—building upon the inventive works of others as embodied in the prior art. So blindly copying and pasting into a patent application information obtained from a number of sources without attribution or permission is tolerated and encouraged, provided such content is within the prior art. Nevertheless, patents can be found to be unenforceable should the patentee not fully disclose to the USPTO Examiner all printed publications, patents or other information material to the patentability of their claimed invention, to the extent of their being aware of such information.