Posting guidelines for the forum

These guidelines exist so that a person arriving from a search engine finds a clear question, a clear answer and enough detail to judge whether it fits their own situation. Questions here can be stressful, because a flagged essay or a disputed draft can feel personal. The rules below keep the forum useful and fair to the people who are discussed in it, most of whom are not present to speak for themselves.

Asking a question

Put the real question in the title. "Why would a detector mark a paragraph I wrote myself?" is better than "Help". In the body, give us the details we would otherwise have to ask for.

• The tool and what it said. Name the checker or report, give the score or label, and say whether it was a single number, a band or highlighted passages.
• The setting. Is this a class, a newsroom, a client project or a personal test? Say what kind of decision hangs on the result.
• What you already know. How the text was written, what drafts or notes exist, and what has already been said to you, described in your own words.
• What you want. An explanation, a way to prepare for a meeting, a comparison of tools or a view on a policy.

Search first. Many questions about scores and appeals already have a thread. One question per thread, please.

Writing an answer

Answer the question in the first two sentences, then explain. Staff answers always open this way, with a short plain answer. Say what you know, what you are inferring and what you do not know. Treat a detector score as a probability and not as proof, and do not present one tool's output as settled fact about who wrote a text.

Cite sources for factual claims

If you state a fact, say where it comes from. This applies to claims about how detectors work, to numbers about accuracy, to what a vendor's tool does, and to what an institution requires. Link a methodology page, vendor documentation, a published study or an official policy. If the source is a vendor describing its own product, say so. If you are sharing your own experience, say that it is your experience and what it covered. Personal experience is welcome. It just should not be presented as a measurement. Claims with no source may be edited or removed.

Protect people

• No identifiable student work. Do not post another person's essay, assignment, report or draft in a way that could identify them, and do not post their name, school, class or grades. If you want help with your own work, you may share short excerpts of it, and you are responsible for removing anything that identifies others.
• No accusing named people or institutions. Do not accuse a named teacher, student, editor, writer, school, company or publication of cheating, misconduct or bad faith. Describe the situation without names, and discuss the process and not the person. Criticism of a published policy or a tool's design is welcome when it is supported by a source.
• No harassment. Disagree with the answer, not the person who wrote it.

Not allowed

• No evasion advice. Do not ask for, offer or link to methods, tools or tips for getting text past a detector, hiding machine generated text, or defeating a check. Questions about why honest writing is flagged, and how to show your process, are welcome.
• No ghostwriting. Do not ask for or offer someone to write an assignment, an exam answer or a thesis, and do not share requests for the same.
• No selling. No services, no referral links, no promotion of a product or business, and no posts whose main aim is to advertise. Mentioning a tool you used is fine. Repeating it in every thread is not.

Disclose conflicts

If you work for, are paid by, or own a stake in a tool, a vendor or a service that you are discussing, say so in the post. Staff are part of the aichecker.tech team, which runs a detector and plagiarism checker. Staff answers that mention the checker say that they are from its team. A comparison written by someone with an interest in the outcome should be labelled, and it will be read with that in mind.

How corrections work

Anyone can point out a mistake. Reply in the thread or write through the contact page with the source that shows the right information. When a staff answer is corrected, we add a dated note in the thread saying what changed and why, and we do not quietly overwrite it. Members can edit their own posts, and a large change should be marked as an edit so replies still make sense.

Moderation

Moderators may edit, move, hide or remove posts that break these guidelines. We try to explain removals and to leave a note when we move or edit a post, but we may act first and explain afterwards when a post identifies a private person. Repeated breaches can lead to a suspended account. If you think a decision was wrong, write through the contact page and tell us which post you mean.