User:Andries/Wikipedia:plagiarism

Plagiarism is the practice of (dishonestly) claiming or implying original authorship of material which one has not actually created, such as when a person incorporates material from someone else's work into his own work without attributing it. The United States of America Office of Research Integrity defined plagiarism as “the appropriation of another person’s idea, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit.”

Wikipedia editors should always always avoid plagiarism to
 * 1) Ensure fairness to the original authors
 * 2) Prevent lawsuits against the Wikimedia foundation
 * 3) Ensure intellectual honesty

Plagiarism can in nearly all cases be avoided by citing your sources. Extensively drawing ideas and inspiration from a non-reputable source (including ideas for citations to reputable sources) while not breaking WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:RS is a form of plagiarism. This form of plagiarism cannot be easily resolved because non-reputable sources cannot be cited according to Wikipedia's policies.

Re-wording the original source without citing your source can still be plagiarism, but it generally resolves copyright issues.