Postmortem: plagiarism in one of my posts

# Summary:

I did some thinking on my plagiarism in a previous blog post and my process that resulted in it. I also made a new process designed to make progress.

# Context:

I wrote a blog post that was criticized for plagiarism. I want to study this, including my processes that led to it.

# Goals:

• Figure out how I plagiarized.
• Figure out what I could have done that would have had a better chance at succeeding.

# Action Plan:

• Explain my process of writing the blog post.
• Explain what I could have done instead that would have had a better chance at succeeding.

# Work:

The blog post was a continuation of something I had written on FI email list. In this FI email, I didn't credit anybody as the originator of the ideas I used. Was it plagiarism?

1. Compare and contrast my FI email with my blog post. 
1. Similarities:
1. Both have roughly the same content. 
2. Differences:
1. There are a few things in the blog post that aren't in the FI email.
2. Suppose the new things in the blog post are the problem (stuff I should have credited but didn't). If so, why wouldn't the old things need credited too? I think they would also need credited.
3. The context of the discussion place might matter. My FI email was written on FI email list and my blog post was written on my blog. Maybe writing this content on FI email list means that it's already credited to FI, since it was written on FI email list.
4. Maybe the context of the discussion matters. My FI email was a reply to an email by Elliot Temple. In my blog post, I did not mention Elliot's email. But I did mention my FI email, and if someone clicked that, they would see Elliot's email.

I think 1.2.3 is the deciding factor differentiating between my FI email and my blog post, making one of them plagiarism and the other not.

My process that resulted in plagiarism:

When I wrote the blog post, I was using a guide but without writing out my work (not in public and not in private). I think that's fine in general but that I should not be doing that for particular parts of the work that I know I'm not good enough to self-judge. 

Plagiarism is one of the things that I know I'm not good enough to self-judge (at least not without using an organized method like using a guide as a reference), so that's something I should be writing out my work for. If I had written out my work, I would have had a better chance of doing it right. 

And if I had gotten it wrong anyway, then I could have made my private work public to get criticism on it (and I can't do that now cuz I didn't write out my work and I don't recall my thoughts about it much).

# Session analysis:

I think I did well thinking through (and documenting my thinking) about my plagiarism and my process that resulted in plagiarism. I made some progress.

# Next steps:

Going forward, until I decide otherwise, write out (public or private) my work to avoid plagiarism.

# Footnotes:

none