Bailey: It’s the Reddit community’s job to deal with plagiarism on the site
The Reddit community has a history of reacting strongly when it feels it has been lied to or deceived. When that happens, Reddit responds quickly, sometimes in a very knee-jerk way. This from a community that, for the most part, is generally seen as very tolerant and open. …
The downside to this is that community pressure often goes too far and can cross the line into harassment, threats and other illegal behavior. To make matters worse, the community is not always right and is prone to snap judgments, leading to cases where a community accuses the wrong person of plagiarism. …
In the end, if a community considers plagiarism to be against their standards and they have the means to speak out against it, they most likely will. The challenge for community administrators is to try and find a way to channel that energy for good and to prevent it from going too far or being misguided.
