Talk:Essay mill

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These things are a real pain for academia. Is there a way to add more evidence, examples and sources without inadvertently putting in spam links for them? Leibniz 13:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have tried to edit the page a bit because it was heavily biased but I think it still needs work. For whoever does work on the page, please try and keep what you report factual and neutral - even if you hate what these companies are doing. Baby Jenga


 * That said, there is no reason to patronize an essay mill unless the client is either unwilling or unable to do the work, and the products of an essay mill are used specifically to perpetuate fraud: clients are expected to lie about the provenance of their purchases. That is, quite simply, dishonest. DS 17:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well no, that's unfair - it's like using any other journal, book or paper that just happens to answer your question. It's up to you if you cheat.  You might feel that you couldn't use an essay mill without cheating but that doesn't mean every customer of every essay mill is dishonest.  Jen 27 May 2007


 * The article seems to say that the plagiarist can take the essay mill to court in the UK:
 * ...although unless the company is registered and located in a region where the law covers such sales, such as in the United Kingdom, ...
 * How is that supposed to work? Is the plan to go back to the university and say "You'd better give me a First because that's what I paid for"? Leibniz 13:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the implication is that the plagiarist can get his money back if his grade isn't high enough. Or something similarly ridiculous. DS 03:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I sought to put a link into this report in the (FT) which speaks to some of these points about honesty and notes the links to organised crime. Education nerd (talk) 20:27, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

eBay statement
I removed commercial and "how-to" content from the article, but moved this statement here for discussion and sourcing: "In addition, other forums such as eBay ensure that the company will be held accountable for the quality of their work since they have often built their business on customer satisfaction." Flowanda 19:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Contract cheating
should be merged here to make a better article out of two stubby ones. Leibniz 11:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

We feel that there are key distinctions between interaction between the student and the supplier in "contract cheating" that distinguishes it from the use of "essay mills". Additionally, "contract cheating" is currently dominated by practical projects of a computing nature whereas "essay mills" provide solutions to other types of assignments.. --RaClarke 18:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with RaClarke -- contract cheating is different from using an essay mill. Ja malcolm 19:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

NPOV
I just stumbled upon this page and it very clearly violates NPOV. There's no debating it; the article essentially says "this is bad and here's how to fix it." Regardless of how evil and scummy these sites are, Wiki's not the place for the hate. Neutrality means the article on murder should describe what counts as murder, what punishments are possible for murder, how it can be proven, etc. Everyone here agrees that murder is wrong, but WP isn't the place for it. To put it another way, the page isn't neutral until a reader has no idea if it was written by the teacher, the plagiarist, the disgusted student who can't believe anyone would even use something like this, or (best of all!) a combination of the three. Tagged for fixing.--llamapalooza87 (talk) 04:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I was interested in your comment. I was wondering if you might nominate any specific sentence within the article that you find offensive? Jamessmithpage (talk) 12:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC) [User: jamessmithpage]

On second thought, this really is about as neutral as it's likely to get, so I'll take the tag off. Either I was being too harsh or it's been cleaned up nicely. Sorry it took me so long to respond. --llamapalooza87 (talk) 17:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Some" universities?
The intro to the article reads, in part: "Some universities and colleges consider the practice to be academic dishonesty or academic fraud [...]" "Some"? If there are any that consider handing in another person's work as one's own to be anything other than dishonesty or fraud, they are highly atypical. Any claims that buying papers is permitted at any schools requires a source, to say the least. Doing so is academic dishonesty or fraud. I am going to change this sentence accordingly. Being as NPOV as possible is of course always the goal, but this is part of the very definition of what constitutes academic dishonesty, not a subjective opinion that's considered controversial within academia. --Icarus (Hi!) 05:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Subcontracting section
If someone paid for that bit of the article, I hope it wasn't very much :) Seriously, it reads so badly, I'm not sure what it's trying to say: some essay mills subcontract the work to the lowest bidder? Lovingboth (talk) 19:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Essay mills and essay banks are not synonyms. An essay bank is a company that sells the rights to preexisting essays that the company has on file or in a database. Essay mills write new papers for students based off a description of an assignment provided by the student.Tiddlywinks11 (talk) 15:43, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Legal Status Section
The last senctence is confusing. It needs to be re-written. "In informal settings where students exchange papers without any formal licensing or transfer of copyright, copyright violation may occur, but it is unlikely that the students will press charges, since they would incriminate themselves by doing so." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.78.59.246 (talk) 22:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

As of 2009, essay mills are legal because students are paying for "limited use." If it's common knowledge that these aren't being used for "limited use" but in fact as final drafts, why does this legality hold weight? Additionally, do we know what the recent legal status on Essay Mills is? 2009 is half a decade ago and a lot can change in 5 years. This uncited bit of information may perhaps be outdated. Finally, in regards to student copyright violation it says students are "unlikely" to press charges. That seems a bit subjective as it varies from person to person. ForteSP33 (talk) 15:42, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

This section needs to be upadated. There are laws in place now in over a dozen states that outlaw the sale of term papers. Tiddlywinks11 (talk) 15:38, 28 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree wigh Tiddlywinks11. An article I read discussed how essay mills use fake adresses for their business locations in order to not be found by the authorities.  If the term paper mills are completly legal they would not try to hide.  Ecotta27 (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Which states have outlawed them? ForteSP33 (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Plagiarism and academic dishonesty
I'd like to make this more like an article on murder for hire or drug dealing. Let's provide more emphasis on the clash between students buying term papers and educators insisting that they actually do the work, i.e., so they'll learn something. While we can't condemn essay mills any more than we can condemn Nazis or child molesters, we shouldn't downplay the existence of the moral conflict.

I may as well admit that I adhere to a "side" in that conflict, so I'll thank anyone who helps me to remember WP:Writing for the enemy, so that I don't overbalance the article to favor one side of the conflict. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be great if we could add specific examples of students getting caught in school submitting papers they bought from term paper mills. Instead of saying "some colleges and universities view it as cheating", giving specific examples of prestigious colleges and universities would enhance the article. --Ecotta27(talk) 16:46, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Students Use of essay mills
I feel that it could be useful to include a section that deals with studies that show how widespread the problem of essay mills is. This can provide an idea of how many people are actually using the help of essay mills to get an assisting hand through high school and college. Durantula123 (talk) 15:36, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Question: who would buy such a paper and offer it as his? Most likely, someone struggling to get through the course, or perhaps someone too lazy to do the work himself. Such students are typically on the brink of failure and may be headed that way no matter what they do. Where grad students do much of the grading, detection of academic fraud may be less likely than when a full professor reads the papers. What one gets away with as a college freshman or sophomore might not be so for a junior or senior.

It is unlikely that anyone would confess to this academic fraud. There is simply no reason to do so because such could jeopardize one's continued study at a university. One only knows how often this practice is detected. Those who get away with it have little cause to talk about it. Maybe one buys such a paper and practically re-writes it, and already knows that he had better understand the material.

A struggling student might be wise to get "only a B", as an A-grade paper from someone on academic probation would be highly suspicious. Perfection is rare, and under the usual pressure of time, one can reasonably expect typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, and inapt redundancies or repetitions.Pbrower2a (talk) 10:47, 15 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Mm, no, any such section would be far too easy to push into a defense of essay mills. Already, what you've posted seems - I'm sure entirely by accident - to be a defense and a recommendation. DS (talk) 14:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I was discussing strategy, and just as important is to explain why the strategy fails. The more often that one does something discreditable, the more chances one has of getting investigated... and caught. One invariably slips up. Someone good enough to rewrite a purchased paper to look like a legitimate work may be good enough to do his own work. If one puts enough effort into a paper, then one remembers much of what one did. If not... then one might be tripped up with a trick question.

In any event people who use one purchased paper are likely to repeat this, and the more often that one does this the more likely one is to get caught. The longer that one gets away (or seems to get away), the more likely one is go get caught -- and the more time, money, and effort one ends up wasting in college instead of getting a career that does not depend upon getting a college degree. Indeed if one is just scraping by academically and cannot find a different way of achieving one's ends, then maybe one could do the honorable thing, which is dropping out and leaving the plum careers that people who legitimately graduate from college can do to people who can graduate honestly. There are jobs best done by intellectual mediocrities, jobs at which people who can get a college degree legitimately rarely stick around in.

I can assume that most employers figure that someone who cheats academically will cheat at other things... and that could be anything from embezzlement to falsifying reports. Pbrower2a (talk) 14:31, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Introduction is not relevant
The introduction should be less focused on how the universities and education institutions deal with this problem by utilizing outside plagiarism detection software programs and should focus more so on the history and evolution of essay mills over the past 20 to 30 years. I feel as if talking about plagiarism detection software with this article is not relevant to the topic at hand. It deviates from the main topic, and for readers to better understand Essay mills, all the information should strictly be related to this topic. That being said, I also believe that there should be a History subheading for paper that begins to introduce the topic, and then the end of the page should evolve into the current legal problems that these services stir. Aspiringintellectual (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)


 * A revised and specific introduction might also benefit from being condensed into one short four or five sentence paragraph, avoiding one or two line paragraphs. It should simply provide a definition and a brief description of the topic. As mentioned above the other things discussed in the current introduction could be given a place elsewhere in the article. --Jp.E100.T. (talk) 02:26, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

"Paper mills" is misleading
Referring to essay mills as "paper mills" seem a little misleading since paper mills are its own established business. There are several sources that refer to essay mills as "term paper mills", and I think that it should be noted that this alternative name is used that is very specific to only this business of essay mills. Aspiringintellectual (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It may be helpful to include short definitions for certain terms, i.e. ghostwriter, essay mills, essay banks, academic honesty. This will help to reduce confusion for those who are just beginning to learn about the topic.--Jp.E100.T. (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Source suggestion: Those wishing to contribute to this page may wish to consult the following source: Klein, Deanna. "Why Learners Choose Plagiarism: A Review of Literature." Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects vol. 7 (2011). Available: http://www.ijello.org/Volume7/IJELLOv7p097-110Klein730.pdf. DinzdalePR (talk) 16:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Organization/Article Sections
The section of the article currently titled "History" is very well written. The section titled "Essay Mills Today," however, is currently empty. No doubt, the Internet had a substantial impact on the practice of buying/selling ghostwritten academic work, but that's not really clear as of May 2014. The article might be improved by having subsections on the various incarnations of essay mills (some historical, some still in use today): fraternity files, essay banks, custom essay writing services, etc. DinzdalePR (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

"Essay Mills Today" section
There are several problems with this section, the largest of which is that it seems to contain original research. This section might be improved by citing published articles describing essay mill services, rather than quoting the sites directly (which may run afoul of several Wikipedia guidelines).DinzdalePR (talk) 14:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Overview: There are some formatting issues in the opening (overview) section of the article. It's possible that this overview may not be written in an entirely neutral point of view. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

History: This section is very well written. It needs a paragraph about essay mills in the age of the internet. That was probably the intention for the (now defunct) "Essay mills today" section, although that section didn't really address essay mills in the age of the Internet. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Essay Mills Today: This section (currently blank) was removed by a Wikipedia admin because it linked to at least one actual online essay services. There was useful information in that section about how the services work and research into student attitudes about essay mills. That information should be retrieved and incorporated into other sections of the article. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Types of products: A better title for this section might be "Products and services," in that some sites offer custom essay-writing services, rather than simply a bank of essays for sale (a distinction which this section makes clear). This section begins with a discussion of how the services operate and (importantly) who is actually writing the papers. The question of who is actually writing the papers may be worth discussing in the "Criticism and controversy" section. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Legal status: This section is very well researched and well written. I have inserted a few citation needed tags throughout. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Criticism and controversy: The opening line of this section offers a succinct statement of the controversy in a neutral point of view. This section benefits from references to published studies about the use of essay mills.

Wikipedia's guidelines emphasize breadth of coverage. Experiences of specific students and/or writers for the essay mills probably don’t contribute much to the article, however. While these stories are interesting and might be very effective illustrative examples in a college essay, they're probably too specific for an encyclopedia article. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Strategies for combating academic fraud: This section is well written and makes a meaningful contribution to the article, but it might be better as a sub-topic under "Criticism and controversy." Giving this discussion its own section might, in the eyes of some readers, violate NPOV by implying that essay mills do, in fact, promote academic fraud. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

References: Notes 11-13 are blank. In general, references to sources that are available online should include hyperlinks. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Editing/Proofreading: Throughout the article, titles of journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. should be italicized. DinzdalePR (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Rename?
Since this article seems to be deal with law and practice in the United States alone, I assume the whole subject is a local phenomenon that does not occur in other countries. If so, shouldn't the title be “ Essay Mills in the USA”? Clifford Mill (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That's not a good assumption. Besides, that title would imply that there's a difference between American essay mills and those elsewhere. DS (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Unencyclopediac tone
The tone of this article in general seems too conversational for an encyclopedia. A few examples: "You could walk into a building and look at pricing pamphlets, and speak to someone directly to place your order, or possibly choose from a vault of recycled research papers stored in the basement of these businesses." "On the opposite end of the transaction, the employee searches through requests until he or she finds something that sparks their interest. A writer will take anything that they know they can write something that will be quick and hit the page requirement. It does not matter if the writer has previous knowledge about the subject; if it is easy to research, he or she will get the job done." "GPAs and grades are greatly stressed in schools which causes students to worry and make them feel like they cannot meet their deadlines." It would probably be helpful to go through the article and make changes to the language when necessary to make it more stylistically appropriate. FinalForm (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot- this seems broken so i just wanted to replace it with relevant information Eddapugal (talk) 07:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: What exactly do you want to change? feminist (talk) 13:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And please make such requests on the talk page of the relevant article. - Thanks - Arjayay (talk) 13:36, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the requester is referring to the dead link in this article. feminist (talk) 13:40, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * My bad then - I thought they were talking about Link rot, which is what they seemed to be trying to link to - Arjayay (talk) 13:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Please be specific, Eddapugal. Which link is dead? DS (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 January 2019
Kindly make "essay mill" the anchor text of [spam link redacted] it is an essay mill in USA and I know some students who use it for academic purposes. WayneOuko (talk) 09:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That is not any part of the purpose of a Wikipedia article. It is unfortunate indeed that student fall for such scammers, but linking to one of them would not improve the article or make it more encyclopedic (and might serve the unintended purpose of giving the unethical website more traffic...) For more info, see this. --bonadea contributions talk 09:10, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 November 2019
Here you can learn [|5 Ways to Improve and Expand Your Vocabulary]. Zackjerry75 (talk) 05:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Spammer Zackjerry75 has been blocked. I guess we can mark that as resolved. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:55, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Referencing the section on "Strategies for combating academic fraud"
The section will probably be very useful but it lacks references entirely. Olivier LG (talk) 11:07, 16 July 2021 (UTC)