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Stack Overflow gets a steady stream of code-only answers that are plagiarized, verbatim, from other answers to the same question. See Can we get some automated filtering of answers that are entirely plagiarized from code of other answers to the same question? for details. Now that the Copy button has been added to code blocks, I am seeing mindlessly copy/pasted answers that include the attribution inserted by the Copy button. How should I flag them?

Currently I am flagging them as plagiarism, e.g.:

  • Answer to How to search and play a video on YouTube using Selenium in Python?. (Screen shot).

    Plagiarism: stackoverflow.com/a/55561751
    The code in this code-only answer was plagiarized from this answer to the same question. The new "Copy" button was used so attribution was included but it's a verbatim copy with no original content, hence plagiarism.
    – dbc 5 hours ago Helpful

    Result: deleted as plagiarism.

  • Answer to iOS Firebase Storage Upload Task Unknown Error.

    Plagiarism: stackoverflow.com/a/79823009
    The code in this code-only answer was copy/pasted verbatim from another answer to the same question. The new "Copy" button was used so an attribution was auto-inserted but it's still a mindless copy despite that, so plagiarized.
    – dbc 15 hours ago Helpful - As it does include full contribution, this can't be counted as plagiarism. but I have mod deleted to stop undeletion.

    Result: deleted as spam or rude or abusive.

  • Answer to Android, Kotlin, Google Maps Markers.

    Plagiarism: stackoverflow.com/a/79155347
    This answer was copy/pasted from another answer to the same question using the new "Copy" button. While this did copy in an attribution automatically, no changes were made so it's still plagiarized.
    – dbc 15 hours ago Helpful

    Result: deleted as spam or rude or abusive

While all three answers did get deleted, there seems to be some disagreement as to how that should be done. Two were deleted as rude/abusive rather than plagiarized, and for one, I received a reply from a moderator that the post was not, technically, plagiarism.

Given that we all agree that such posts should be deleted and only seem to disagree on the workflow, how should I flag them? As plagiarized? As rude/abusive? Something else?

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    Preferably neither NAA nor Rude/Abusive. You could flag it as plagiarism too even if it doesn't fit the description 100%. Treat it like we have always been treating them. Flag for moderator to delete as a mindless copy-pasta. Commented 2 days ago
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    This was closed as a duplicate, but the duplicates don't seem helpful. The answer to What to do with answers that are copy and paste of other answers here predates the implementation of the "Plagiarism" flag, and suggests using a custom flag for all plagiarism. And How to handle code-only answers that are entirely copied, verbatim, from the question itself? deals with answers copied from questions, which get mod flagged as accidental uses of the code snippet copy tool. Commented 2 days ago
  • "accidental uses of the code snippet copy too" Is what you are talking about different? Commented 2 days ago
  • @Dharman - Treat it like we have always been treating them. Flag for moderator to delete as a mindless copy-pasta. -- I've been flagging mindless copy-pasta as Plagiarism rather than mod-flagging it. Commented 2 days ago
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    @Dharman - Is what you are talking about different? -- maybe not technically? But it's definitely true that the currently existing meta guidance for how to handle copy/pasting from the Q differs from the guidance for how to handle copy/pasting from another answer. Commented 2 days ago
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    Either one works. We are not going to decline a plagiarism flag on an answer where someone just clicked a button and submitted their clipboard. Commented 2 days ago
  • 2
    Don't think too hard about what to do with garbage. It needs to be deleted, so choose whichever way you think will be the most obvious and quickest. Commented 2 days ago
  • 5
    OK, "Either one works" it is. I'll stick with "Plagiarism" and, in the flag text, continue to note that the "Copy" button was used. Commented 2 days ago

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