IF anything happens to this forum, which i doubt, then i'll be setting up another and inviting WB to write a daily blog. heck, even EW et al would be invited to join and call me a monkey. it would be like old times. i have a free domain i'm doing nothing with anyway.

julie, your threat of a suit is close enough to blackmail to make it thoroughly distasteful. dancing about and continuing to post while refusing to actually explain the complaint is just childish.

i have no doubt that students in the UK cheat, neither do you. that's all the evidence that you provided said.

you said you'd provide evidence that a significant proportion of students used custom essay services to cheat. i operationally defined significant as 20% to make it easy for you to back up your claims. that's the specific evidence that you need to back up your claims that you have never provided. my empirical research evidence said 1-2% of all the students who cheat do so by using essay writing services. that's significantly less than those who cut and paste off the net and those who copy books and journals.

come on, it's been 2 weeks. you've posted many times on different threads but you've never provided that evidence - despite the murders, your birthday, and now this lawsuit. you've also now completely failed to provide any evidence that a site that claims to hire only American writers will hire foreigners.

every few days it's been a new attack and a new argumentative thread by you that attacks this industry. never evidence to support your old arguments as you just find something new to argue about.

julie, it amazes me that everytime i have pressed you for evidence to back up your arguments, you come up with a bigger excuse as to why you can't provide it.

first, the double murder that made you so busy at work, then your birthday, now this mysterious lawsuit threat that prevents you from posting. what a busy 2 weeks you've had, it's amazing that you've managed to post at all, really.

no, posted from my own personal experience. ie, the three sites i work for all conducted interviews, requested resumes, sent an employment contract and tested me as a writer in the short term. are you telling me that you're going to test what i'm saying by applying as a qualified writer, signing an employment contract and completing work for them in order to study their evaluation process? i find that highly unlikely.


frankly, yes i do. i posted that thread long before you started making your allegations because i wanted to help other writers gain from my experience and i was tired of reading all the "i'm a writer and i got ripped off threads." i have zero reason to lie. i never post or share who i work for so i clearly am not in any way advertising for anyone. if folks want to not believe me, then i suppose that's there call to make, but i am not going to jump through hoops to prove statements that i'd have no other reason to provide.


hmm. you still haven't provided any evidence that any company that claims to only hire Americans will hire foreigners. That was your original claim and none of the three companies that you posted about fit that description. now you want me to tell you which companies i think are OK so you can investigate them? doesn't that seem really backwards to you?

and, well... come on... you promised me 2 weeks ago to provide evidence that a significant portion of individuals use custom writing companies to cheat. remember? i said the stats were like 1-2% and i quoted academic studies... way back at...

https://essayscam.org/forum/es/accessessays-fraud-philippines-305/5/


remember that? that was on Sept. 19th. 2 weeks later, still no evidence. you're clearly not too busy to post. so will you ever be providing that evidence or did you just give up when you understood that it doesn't actually exist?


testing a hypothesis requires an unbiased researcher. i am honestly not convinced that you are. let me ask you a question, what would prevent you from receiving information about the companies that i work for and then posting to defame them publicly?

and if you did so, how would i be able to respond when the board rules clearly tie my hands on public endorsements?

i don't post to this board to defend a particular company but i am certainly not about to make one of the companies that i work for a target for criticism. and frankly i have zero interest in you or anyone else knowing who i work for b/c i want to be able to continue to speak freely without having my opinions associated with my employers. surely you can understand that.


it's posts like this that make me question your objectivity julie. joey went after WB first. lots of derogatory sexual attacks and the whole 'you're fat' stupidity. WB has answered with some nastiness but only after being provoked.

yet you complain about WB and not Joey?

that really does not appear unbiased or fair.

so wait, let me try to catch up. it's tough wading through the profanity though i did laugh out loud a few times.

to sum up:

joey says lying is bad.

for example, joey says Wb lies, therefore no one can trust anything that WB says.

one lie = lying liar = no trust ever ever again. that's the message, right? cool.

so joey,

you work for companies that make it a habit of lying to their customers...

you support them...

so...

we can't trust you or your employers right? once a liar, always a liar?

so then... we can't trust joey.

so maybe joey is lying about liars having no credibility.

does that mean liars CAN have credibility?

so WB and Joey CAN have credibility?

Does that mean liars have no credibility b/c Joey the liar is credible and said that?

did we just go around in a circle?

where does it end?

I have stated that I work for three companies that have clear hiring standards. I have outlined their hiring standards through the post that I linked (a post that I wrote long before you started this line of argument). they all did the following:

request resume, phone interview, check references, sign an employment contract, put me on a writing probation during which they checked all of my work before sending it to the client and limited my access to short, relatively easy jobs. only after i'd demonstrated competency did they then eventually opened up larger jobs to me.

that's three companies. that should prove you wrong.

if your response is that you don't believe me, i think that is just unreasonable and unfair considering your demand that i should believe you to be honest about checking them. either extend to me the same level of trust that you believe i should extend to you or don't trust me and don't expect the readers of this board to simply take you at your word either. you can't have it both ways.

i addressed the issue of what writers can do to prevent themselves from becoming entangled with a fraudulent site a while back at:

https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/signs-fraudulent-legit-service-writer-perspective-297/

at the top of my list is the recommendation of only writing for companies with employment standards. a lack of hiring standards just opens the writer up to being cheated by the company later on.

i don't doubt that there are many companies with low standards of employment. i simply object to the claim that they are ALL that way.

isn't that pretty unethical? posing to be a consumer intending to use a product for one reason and then using it for another?

i don't work for any company that claims to hire only American writers. I work for companies that hire U.S./U.K./Australian writers, ie EFL writers. to my knowledge, you wouldn't be on face rejected from any of them. i don't even know of any companies that only claim to hire American writers.

the companies you describe don't even claim to only hire American writers!
essaycapital.com they only clam to hire writers with Masters and they don't specify nation of origin (unless it's elsewhere, if you can find it, please provide a link). you concede that the other two hire UK and US writers in your post.

if you want to prove that companies who claim to hire only US writers will hire anyone... maybe you should start with testing companies who actually DO claim to only hire US writers. that might be a good first step.

i have nothing to hide. your accusation that i am hiding behind forum rules is both false and rude. i do however try to respect forum rules. not doing so is just bad form. like tracking your muddy shoes in someone's house, it's the sort of thing people just shouldn't do.

i think naming some sites for you to test that i consider legit would be a clear violation of this board's "no endorsements" policy. i am really not interested in naming sites that i work with and getting accused of advertising.

you have the burden of proving your claim. i would suggest that you test companies that have not already been identified as clear frauds through sites like essaysfraud.org. proving that known frauds have poor hiring policies really isn't a surprise.

the point remains that a legit company should not claim to use turnitin.

stop assuming that everyone who uses this service cheats. that's an incredibly rude assertion not backed up by any evidence.

some do, the majority do not. if "bob" really got expelled, great, he has no one to blame but himself.


i'm pretty sure these plagiarism services are only available to academic institutions and persons, not to private companies. maybe i'm wrong but i am pretty certain that essay writing companies claiming to use turnitin are lying (another great sign of fraud).

I'd like some names and evidence to back this up as well. I've posted about my hiring experiences elsewhere. The companies that I continue to maintain working ties with all checked my references, checked my education level, and put me on writing probation so that I could demonstrate that I was reliable before giving me big assignments.

bravo WB.

it is hilarious that EW will derail the threads of others but protests vehemently when dissenting voices threaten to derail his agenda.

i like my scenario better. surely, if i keep posting and reposting eventually someone will answer and then i can manipulate their answers to fit my own agenda.

let's up the stakes a bit more:

to write a philosophy paper, would you prefer to pay 10$ a page for an articulate ESL writer with zero knowledge of logic who defines syllogism as "a logical argument" and works for a company that lies to you about the competency of their writers or a EFL writer with a degree in that field and university-level teaching experience who will charge you 30$ per page?

of course you didn't read it, you've proven yourself incapable of reading anything that doesn't agree exactly with you.

let's up the stakes a bit more:

to write a philosophy paper, would you prefer to pay 10$ a page for an articulate ESL writer with zero knowledge of logic who defines syllogism as "a logical argument" and works for a company that lies to you about the competency of their writers or a EFL writer with a degree in that field and university-level teaching experience who will charge you 30$ per page?

this whole question assumes that the client actually has a choice instead of being lied to by frauds like you.

ew, you can't read English or you simply refuse to do so. Tommy clearly says:


he only wants an ESL writer with a PhD in English Language AND a PhD in the other subject like History. that's not you, that's not the average ESL writer, period.

and this ends the debate. note Tommy is looking for a British company, not a scamming ESL company:

https://essayscam.org/forum/es/standardessays-scammers-327/

but you're doing exactly what i said you'd do, clinging defiantly to the one client who almost sorta but not quite says what you are hoping they will say. this whole question assumes that the client actually has a choice instead of being lied to by frauds like you.

EW, are you claiming to have a PhD in both English Language and the subjects you write in? If you don't, then this isn't your point.

are you kidding? lol.

if julie was offended by anything i wrote she can let me know and we can talk about it. to my knowledge, we disagreed but it didn't get personal. if i offended her, she's demonstrated that she is quite capable of expressing that herself. she and i will commence our debate once she provides evidence for her end.

with you, i remained relatively civil even while pointing out the error of your arguments. i didn't call you pathetically stupid, i called your arguments that. and they were. i think you need to learn to distinguish between criticizing an individual and criticizing an argument.

bottom line: you tried to use fallacies that you clearly do not understand as a means of discrediting my response to Joey and it blew up in your face because I actually know quite a bit about comm. theory and can see that you know very little. pointing out that you don't know much about fallacies isn't a personal attack and shouldn't be construed as such. i don't know much about baking a turkey, i don't pretend to, and i wouldn't be insulted if you or anyone else pointed it out. so stop posing and you can avoid this embarassing unpleasantness.

this has nothing to do with greed unless you mean greed on your end. you picked this fight with me, not the other way around. i criticized joey's sexist rhetoric and you decided to attack me. could it be that you decided to defend joey because you and he have similar views about working for fraudulent companies? hmmm...

i'm not even going to engage your claims about the provision of quality work by fraudulent sites. that's not what our latest exchange was about. you only mention it now because you want to create a smokescreen to cover your retreat. no one is buying it.

ok, this has gotten hilariously stupid. if you seriously think that a syllogism is simply a "logical argument" then that proves you're just posing by throwing out logic-related phrases that you think make you sound smart. i'm sorry you don't understand the nuances of my argument but it's not my responsibility to give you a logic lesson. if that's the same dictionary you use to write papers for your clients... well... /shiver.

um, duh? remember back on page 8...

seriously, did you just pick a debate with me for no reason whatsoever? lol. i thought you only took random pot shots at WB.

we all make moral and ethical decisions regarding the individuals we engage in conversation and debate. I'm not going to waste my time engaging in a thoughtful debate with someone using sexist rhetoric. doing so implies acceptance of that rhetoric. not to mention the fact that, as a woman, i know that he can and will simply disregard my arguments based upon my gender. my refusal to engage clearly sexist rhetoric is a far more important choice.

so... why exactly are you defending joey's rhetoric again?

a fallacy of the fourth term requires a syllogism. no syllogism, no fallacy of the fourth term. seriously, stop with the google searches on fallacies, they aren't doing you any favors.

you didn't get my reference to the scholastics b/c you have no clue what you are talking about. you'd fit right in with them. once again, you bring up a logical fallacy that no one in the academy has written about or cared about for centuries. sound logic is good... specifically targetting one of the 200+ Aristotelian fallacies... good only if wanting to sound pompous while simultaneously having nothing original to contribute. do you really think that academic logic hasn't progressed beyond Aristotle?

let's check the score real quick. you concede that i didn't make an ad hom because you conceded reason #2 again. you further conceded that i didn't make a fallacy of the four terms because the definition was consistent and i didn't make a syllogism (get a better dictionary, yours sucks).

so... why exactly did you post?


of course credibility has a lot to do with the value of the witness' testimony.

let's use a really simple example that gets used in first year comm. theory classes so maybe even you might understand. President Bush gives a speech detailing his plan to fix the U.S. healthcare system. His plan is perfect, it's amazing, it will fix all of the current problems within a very fast time frame and at a minimal cost. however, in describing his proposal he uses the "n" word 6 times.

the next morning, all media coverage will be focused upon his language choice. no one cares about the content of his message because of the language choice and discrimination conveyed. words produce consequences beyond the content.

joey posts to the message board spewing his own personal uninspired batch of sexist rhetoric. that rhetoric stops people from evaluating whatever dubious content he might otherwise be presenting.

ew, when i respond to you i feel like i'm hitting a 6 year old with a stick.

your decision to point out my spelling error doesn't distract from your complete inability to respond to the substance of my post. my error can be fixed with spell check, yours requires a lot more work.

i could concede your entire previous post and it does nothing to disprove my post because you completely concede reason #2. i could even concede that i used an ad hominem and i'd still be ok, since not all ad hominems are bad. my original objection to joey's rhetoric was not that he used an ad hom but that his rhetoric was sexist and vile.

and fallacy of a fourth term? woooooah. now there's a fallacy that no one has cared about for a couple hundred years. and the scholastics did nothing to advance human reasoning for five hundred years except to categorize and name Aristotle's syllogisms. once again, you demonstrate a blatant misunderstanding of the term. i wasn't making a syllogism (you do know what they are right?). and, it's the same definition of irrelevant - whether joey is sexist has much to do with whether joey gets to credibly accuse others of discrimination.

hey, maybe in your next response, you can really get me by pointing out that i don't capitalize the first word at the beginning of a sentence. that'll show me.

you've hit a new low by defending sexist rhetoric.

hello 2much2do,

thank you for the kind words and for understanding why some of us don't offer recommendations. i would suggest starting with a small 1-2 page order when testing out a company - at least that way you can limit your losses.

best of luck.

no, it's not. you don't claim to be qualified to write essays on communication theory or fallacies do you? an ad hominem involves pointing out a characteristic of the speaker that is irrelevent to the argument as a means of discrediting that argument. my objection isn't an ad hominem for two reasons:

1. sexist language isn't irrelevent because it marginalizes a significant percentage of the speaker's audience.

2. I don't ever get to the point of discrediting or even considering the speaker's argument because of his chosen rhetoric.

since you clearly know so much about communication theory, i assume you understand that there is a distinction between the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of speech. and you should understand that my criticism was illocutionary and perlocutionary in nature.

if you want to use an appropriate speech term to fit my objection to joey's comments, try "performative contradiction." joey's speech acts are undermined by his performance. he can't credibly critique WB for being discriminatory while also being discriminatory himself. that should sound familiar, eh EW?

i'm not a censor and i have a pretty high tolerance for vulgarity in general. However, i'm not about to sift through your posts of *****, sexually graphic insults and threats in some attempt to discern the essence of your arguments. if you think audiences are willing to do that for speakers, then i respectfully suggest you take a communications class or 3.


julie, if you read my posts, i'm pretty sure that I've posted at least once that I only write essays for American students.

now, i remember you said you'd post evidence to back up your assertions about a substantial majority of students using essay companies to cheat. so... where is that evidence?

I think that WB's reference to Americans is contextual. If you read the first post in this thread, WB points out that this group specifically targets American consumers. In particular, they have several fake offices in the U.S. that they believe helps them to create the illusion of legitimacy.

in addition, WB was answering the following from joey:


so, WB's response focusing upon Americans was again contextually based.

"Oh my god, I lost 250 pounds for nothing"

my first reaction was "why is there a weightloss thread on this site?"

sigh. need more coffee.

no, i don't need posts to prove my intelligence. i posted for two reasons:

1. to demonstrate that i was marginalized and disgusted by your posts
2. to demonstrate my joy at your implied promise of no more posts

joey, my disdane for you has nothing to do with your socioeconomic position or your decision to work for a company that i view as fraudulent. it has everything to do with your obnoxious, sexist, bullying argumentative tactics.

since you claim to be a writer, you should understand that rhetorical decisions influence the impact of a message as much as, and in some cases, even more than the substance of the message itself. you're a sexist bully who thinks that it's not only ok but a preferred tactic to make up garbage about an individual's weight and personal life to discredit their opinions.

i would have liked to engage in a thoughtful debate about our disagreement over the ethics involved in supporting a corrupt business. i'd enjoy getting a multicultural perspective and i think i could have offered some constructive comments regarding your business position. however, it's clear to me that such a discussion would never happen because you would inevitably default to insults.

so, do what you do best. tell me i'm fat, that my husband doesn't exist, that i'm mentally disabled, whatever you think makes you look smarter. so long as you understand that doing so only proves my point.

so many problems... not enough time...

joey, in this thread you've proven yourself an incompetent thinker, which is worse than being an incompetent writer. well done.

i second pious' most recent post. well done standing up for yourself requiemdem.

cezlec_06 your "loyalty" is misplaced. legit companies don't miss payments.

ok, this reads like a comedy of errors. i admit that i didn't get past reading the first page of the paper. that was some hilarious gibberish. i'm a little confused tho. your post said you paid for 12 pages and the paper you linked was 17 pages long. they gave you 5 pages for free?

i'm not saying that you weren't treated poorly in this case. you were and thank you for bringing this company up to the attention of this forum's readers.

BUT... you have to take some personal responsibility for this mess. you knew this forum existed, so you should have recognized some clear warning signs that should have stopped you from patronizing this site. factors like their inability to find you a writer until after you paid, their poorly written correspondence and website, and their pretty clear advocacy of your use of their product to cheat are all huge *stay away* red flags that you ignored.

no worries julie, i'll watch for your response.

WB - sorry for contributing to the thread diversion. it was a good initial post and i think the fact that it got diverted demonstrates that there was no direct way to refute your claims.

if it's been this long, chances are you are not getting paid.

i would suggest sending 1 more email and making it clear that the client broke their end of the business agreement and is therefore not entitled to use your work. inform them of your intent to post the work publicly, give them a day to respond, and then do so if you don't receive payment. that way, you have it in writing that you clearly attempted to collect payment and that the client is choosing to voluntarily sever the deal.

interesting articles julie, but they prove my point, not yours.

i'm fully willing to concede that about 1-2% of the students who cheat do so using custom online essays. that's what my academic research journals claim and that's exactly in line with your own articles - the first article says that "nearly 500 students tried to trick their lecturers last year, mainly by copying work from the Internet and passing it off as their own coursework." i'll believe you when you say that the four were expelled because of purchasing essays from agencies, that's the 1% i concede. of course, the line that i quoted from your article states that the majority of students cheating were doing so by copying work from the 'net and NOT from buying essays.

the second article you link makes the same point. one student admitted to buying essays... that does not a majority make. most students cheat by cutting and pasting off the internet. well... that's a great argument for banning the internet, isn't it?

and no offense, but i don't consider the BBC the end all be all of statistics. i quoted academic studies (2 conducted in the U.K.) to get my data. i don't think you really want to make the argument that the BBC > controlled, academic studies.

give me one piece of academic evidence that contradicts my 1-2% figures. i'll set my bar low - give me one piece of reasonably recent (within the last three years) academic evidence that empirically demonstrates 20% or more of all cheating is facilitated by online essay sales and i'll be impressed. or, give me one piece of evidence that says banning the essay writing industry will stop students from cheating. that's your claim and you have to provide something to back that up beyond anecdotal experience.

otherwise, look at what you're arguing: 1-2% cheating and you ban an industry? how is that reasonable? if that's your margin, then we have to ban all professional journals, the internet and the publishing industries too b/c there are a heck of a lot more students cheating by plagiarizing them.

and let's not forget, you conceded my point that the existence of essay mills actually makes cheating harder. that was the conclusion of a professor at the university of illinois (my home state /cheer) after studying this. the threat of mass cheating through essay mill use, the very fear that you seem to have, is what is creating academic reform to make the education system stronger and requirements more rigorous. even your own article concedes that the way to stop cheating is by improving the academy:

But Prof Bassnett says universities have to take tougher measures, including "sending down" - expelling people.
"Universities have to be more rigorous in their monitoring.
"Students need to be motivated through quality of teaching resources and coherent monitoring and penalty of expulsion.
"When a student is sent down, the rest take notice," she said.

that is not an endorsement to ban an industry. the industry existing keeps the academy conscious of the threat of plagiarism, something that they've frankly been lax on in the past.

and frankly, more reform needs to happen. my husband and i live in california. my husband is a professor and by state law the WORST that he can give a student that he catches cheating is a zero on the assignment. he can't fail them in the course or get them kicked out of school. that is ridiculous. i'm hoping that california, along with a lot of other places, wake up and start holding students up to higher standards, period. if we take away the perceived threat of essay mills by banning the industry, all that will accomplish is academic complacency while students who want to cheat figure out how to cheat. that's going backwards, not forward.

and my evidence post-dates and assumes yours. Prof. Bassnett, your big academic advocate, is from Warwick University, which is the home of my first cited piece of evidence, which points out that inflamatory rhetoric spouted out by folks like Prof. Bassnett about the horrors of online cheating overstates the problem and does not accurately reflect the statistical reality of the cheating world.

so, good job on catching the 4 students... but again, that proves my point. that schools are catching the cheaters means there is no reason to condemn an industry that actually helps other students. kick out the cheaters, i have no problem with that, and i'm 99.6% certain that even if you do that I will have plenty of legitimate customers. the perception that essay mills are these ultra tools for the throngs of cheaters isn't supported by the facts.

back in college, i got to debate against the UK parliamentary team and i got my butt kicked, but i'm protected from your charming British accent by the wonders of the internet. so, you need to do a little bit better with proving your point.

this is an interesting bit of information that you raise. however, i don't think that it supports your argument.

was it proved that these students used essay services to produce these essays? if they were, then your example demonstrates that the academic community is capable of catching cheaters. if they weren't, then it demonstrates that some students will get others to write their papers without resorting to professional writing services and also that the academic community is capable of catching cheaters. in either case, your example fails to demonstrate how or why removing the essay writing service industry would help stop students from cheating (and that the academic community is capable of catching cheaters). no further industrial action is needed.

it's not that i don't doubt that some students use these services to cheat. however, i am quite confident that for every empirical example of a cheater using an essay service, i can point to a student whose knowledge and performance has been honestly and ethically helped by the same service. you just aren't going to win that every student who uses one of these services is going to cheat with the finished product and you also can't win that ending the industry will stop all future cheating.

ultimately, i think your solution of removing the industry is short-sighted. in fact, i would argue that the increased publicity over the threat of cheating that has been generated as a result of this industry's success is a good thing that has helped improve university standards.

essay writing services have helped to increase the performance bar for academic discipline. university professors are now challenged to create assignments that are unique rather than cookie-cutter. this means requiring particular books, excluding generic topics and generally tailoring assignments to be different and challenging. responsible university professors can no longer allow students to complete a class based upon essays alone. so this increases the use of non-essay forms of testing, including written tests, oral tests and class presentations. this also presses university professors to better get to know their students, instead of treating them like a number at a distance. only by interacting with a student can a professor really get a good idea of cheating. all good things.

this industry didn't start cheating. however, it did bring academic performance under greater public and private scrutiny, resulting in universities adjusting their requirements to make cheating more difficult. just like WB's often aggressive posts, this industry does more good than bad.

a little evidence to support my previous post.

first, despite the fervor of concern over essay mills, they represent only a miniscule amount of actual academic cheating taking place.

The source is George Dunbar, University of Warwick, "The management of academic dishonesty: a survey of practice in UK psychology departments" 2005.

"Of the 23 departments responding to this item, 19 listed copying from published
sources such as textbooks and articles as the most common or second most common form of cheating detected, estimating on average that this accounted for 42% of cases. Copying from the internet was also relatively frequent, with 9 departments listing this as the most common type, at an average 21% of cases. However, only two departments recorded any incidents of students purchasing essays, and this was even rarer than cheating during invigilated examinations, which averaged under 2% of cases. This result for buying essays is in line with

the Freshminds (2004) survey of UK students, which found less than 1% of the sample admitted to buying from an "essay mill". Fabrication of project data was also relatively unusual at 6% of cases. The other relatively common form of cheating was unfair co-operation between students. Around 29% of cases were accounted for by copying another student's work or other forms of illicit collusion"

Polly Curtis, Guardian Unlimited 2004.
education.guardian.co.uk/students/work/story/0,,1250786,00.html

"Of those polled by FreshMinds research consultancy, 75% said they had never cheated in this way, while 9% said they had once. Some 16% said they had cheated more often - indicating that most offenders relied on cheating regularly.

However, very few were found to be employing online essay services, with most opting to copy segments from the internet into their own papers, or relying too heavily on past essay examples. "

Patrick Scanlon, from College Teaching, 2003 further notes that the claim that plagiarism has increased as a result of the internet is not correct:

"Only recently has online plagiarism been studied systematically, with results suggesting that anxiety over Internet-facilitated textual theft by college students may be fueled by misperceptions. In a survey of 698 students on nine campuses, Scanlon and Neumann (2002) found that students who went online to cut and paste text without citation constituted 24.5 percent of the sample, a level of Internet plagiarism similar to the numbers reported by McCabe and Trevino (1996) for "conventional" plagiarism. Only 2.3 percent of students in Scanlon and Neumann's study reported purchasing papers from online term-paper mills "often" or "very frequently," and 6 percent admitted to buying papers "sometimes." Another recent multicampus study revealed even lower numbers. Citing data from a survey of 2,200 college students on twenty-one campuses, McCabe found that 10 percent reported copying "a few sentences from a Web site without footnoting them," and 5 percent admitted to turning in a paper "obtained in large part from a term-paper mill or Web site" (2001, 41).

second, the existence of the industry makes cheating more difficult.

findings of a more recent study at the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana

sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020501073710.htm

"Ironically, paper mills may in the long run make plagiarism more difficult, the professors said. For one thing, paper mills have "created a niche for plagiarism-detection software." Also, what is available online is "of middling quality at best; students may reach the same conclusion." And, with the spread of printed matter now being scanned and put online, plagiarism-detection programs are increasingly capable of catching passages taken from printed sources"

and this is further supported by the proliferation of new university-sponsored websites that discuss plagiarism and means to combat its prevalence. if you wanted to see one, i'd suggest the University of Iowa, which if i remember correctly also has an excellent graduate level creative writing program.

i agree with you that students should not be passing the work of others off as their own. i think that your judgement of individuals who purchase essays is overly harsh, however. not everyone cheats. as has been posted elsewhere, there are companies that will flat out tell their clients not to turn the work in as their own. these companies also do not transfer copyright. i've worked personally with enough students to see that these essay services can provide very beneficial guides to writing, particularly for ESL students who are still learning the language.

do some of the students that i've worked with turn in my work as their own? probably. i know of one case where that happened and i stopped working with that client. there are so many people seeking help that a qualified writer has no trouble picking and choosing clients. the risk of cheating with essays doesn't justify completely ceasing the activity anymore than it would justify ending tutoring or editing services.

but there also has to be a point where we accept that some will misuse the products or services being offered and, instead of stopping the service, look for ways to stop the abuse. i wouldn't stop the publication of textbooks, journal articles or workbooks and supplemental educational texts just b/c someone has the same ability to plagiarize those works as they do an essay. i wouldn't stop knife manufacturers from making knives just b/c someone can use them to stab a neighbor instead of cutting a steak either.


i really hope you don't mean this in the way that it reads. one person determining who is worthy of legal protection and who isn't is a really disturbing suggestion.

and this statement contradicts your previous statement. you don't judge Joey for directly engaging in unethical and fraudulent business practices but you do clearly judge the nameless students you assume are using Joey's work as homework. how exactly do you distinguish between the two groups? your position CAN'T be that poor(er) people are held to lower moral standards than those with a disposable income.


honestly? yah it is. if you don't like your government, you have two options. 1. work to change the system. 2. leave and live elsewhere. don't use your government's poor behavior to justify yours.

look, i didn't go searching for this fight, you did. if you honestly believe that writing essays to make extra money is your best option (and maybe it is, i don't know you or your circumstances) then work for a legitimate company, not one who, as you put it, is


you can make 2-3x more money working for a legit company than you will working for these crooks and you won't be helping them to spread their discriminatory and fraudulent message.


what a disturbing example of blatant sexism. julie will you be correcting this poster for rudeness too?

julie - your last post demonstrates my point. your priorities are way off. you have no problem with unethical behavior, which is particularly disturbing since you claim to be an expert on the law, but you feel duty bound to correct rudeness.

hey joey, i have a problem with you. you knowingly perpetrate a fraud by working for a company that you know lies about your qualifications and background. you should have more self respect for yourself and stop working for those criminals.

julie, your posts are unnecessary, condescending and rude. you're guilty of exactly the same things that you accuse WB of.

this is a messageboard devoted to the discussion of the fraudulent behavior of some essay providers. WB does that in spades. I have yet to see a single positive or constructive post by you on this forum. your latest post clearly identifies you as an apologist as you excuse the dishonest behavior of some writers who are "just trying to make some extra money to make their lives better."

really, that is just poor. WB may be an easy target for the courtesy police, but so what? to act as if individual criminals and unethical persons are entitled to polite behavior effectively undermines civility and class.

criticizing with no alternative is easy. How about this: if WB makes nice, will you devote the time that WB does to identifying fraudulent companies? Will you step up and call criminals out when they attempt to defend their behavior?

waiting for your answer. or will you just ignore this post like you did my last one?