Re: spelling of plagiarism

Forwarded message:
> Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 22:10:21 -0500 (CDT)
> From: CNICOPY[_at_]charlie.usd.edu (Mary Brandt Jensen)
> Subject: spelling of plagiarism
>
> 1) I could forward all these messages to the list using my editor.
> Unfortunately, at the current volume of the list, I would quickly lose
> track of what I had cleared and what I hadn't. Craig would step in to
> save me and clear anything I left in the que including the ones with
> the misspelled subject headers, so it wouldn't cure the problem.

Milagros R Rush <M-RUSH[_at_]vm1.spcs.umn.edu> pointed out to Mary and I that the mis-spelling of plagiarism would affect people's ability to retrieve documents on this thread in the future from the list archives.

This is a proverbial problem for databases created from all forms of list traffic. People generally don't have the time to proof read their postings carefully, and few (I've only ever seen one, the Pine system using the Pico editor from the University of Washington) mail systems have a spelling checker built-in to assist in catching mis-spellings.

At any rate, there are a couple of comments I have on this:

   o Firstly, since the word 'plagiarism' is so central to the theme of

      these postings, I have gone into the archives and replaced all 
      occurances of the mis-spelling with the correct spelling.  There is 
      no way I can do this for every thread that arises with mis-spellings 
      in it, but in this case it seemed significant enough to warrant the 
      attention/time.

   o  Secondly, I would like to point out that mis-spellings aren't the only 
      idomatic problem you tend to encounter when one attempts to search 
      textual databases built from lists.  There are alot of other electronic 
      -isms that make effective retrieval difficult.  BTW, this is just 
      MHO FYI.  :*)  -- index that!

   o  Thirdly, as many of you are aware, the CNI-COPYRIGHT list is being
      archived in several ways (Unix-Listprocessor, FTP, Gopher, and 
      the Coalition's BRS/SEARCH full-text retrieval system).  If you have
      access to telnet (and consequently the BRS/SEARCH system), there
      is a search feature that will help you locate documents with 
      mis-spellings in them.

      The 'browse right' feature (BR) will allow you to view the index
      for the database and select words based upon their stem.  For 
      example, issuing the command 'br;plag' would allow you to retrieve
      this index in the CNI-COPYRIGHT database (COPY).

      ---------------------------------------------------------------------
      Your Browse Request: PLAG
      ---------------------------------------------------------------------
        R1     PLAGERISM                                    2 Document(s)
        R2     PLAGIARISM                                   3 Document(s)
        R3     PLAGUED                                      2 Document(s)
        R4     PLAGURISM                                    4 Document(s)
       
      By searching on this stem, and then selecting sets R1, R2, and R4
      you can affectively retrieve all documents containing any variations
      on the word spelling of plagurism.  This is also useful for variations
      on spelling (i.e. U.S. tire vs. British tyre). 

You can access the CNI-COPYRIGHT archives via telnet:

   telnet a.cni.org
   login: brsuser #all lower case, no password required

You must have a telnet program that emulates a VT100, VT220, or and ANSI terminal. Sorry, there is presently no support for IBM 3270 terminals.

-- 

   Craig A. Summerhill, Systems Coordinator and Program Officer
   Coalition for Networked Information
   21 Dupont Circle, N.W., Washington, D.C.   20036
   Internet: craig[_at_]cni.org   AT&Tnet (202) 296-5098