One of the things I like to see in fora is users speaking their own opinions, speaking for themselves. That seems fairly obvious, I suppose. At least I hope it is.

But I've seen a number of postings lately where all that is posted in a forum thread is quotes from someone else, copied verbatim from someplace else online. Sometimes this is plagiarism - the person posting it doesn't acknowledge it is from someplace else - and sometimes they do mention who said it, where it was lifted, or at least that it was from "someplace else". But for me, there are two problems with that, regardless of plagiarism:
1: There's a place to add stuff to Fanpop written by someone else online: it's called adding a link. It's described link.
2: A forum is supposed to be dedicated to conversation on a particular thread of a particular topic. Posting something written entirely by someone else is not adding anything from you to a conversation. Further, if you start a forum thread with just material written by someone else, it's not clear how other users are supposed to respond. Are you posting it because you agree with what's said? Are you posting it because you disagree with what's said? Do you just want to get users' reaction to what was written? None of that is clear.

If you want to quote someone else, great! But my recommendation would be to do it with some context, like "I disagree with what you said. I agree with Martin Luther when he said: 'Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.'"

"its called adding a link" lol harold

i actually also prefer soapboxes excuse me articles with original content rather than people copying and pasting chain e-mails...

though i agree with what you say i doubt that we will see much change on the way the features on fanpop are being used because there isnt a lot of technical limitation. i am still expecting someone to post a quiz question "which did you like more?" like people post picks "whats wrong with the updates?"

generally i like the forums to be a place to talk about e.g. a movie, an episode but i think the games are fun, too.

I love the forums! its a place wear you can speak ur mind, chat and have fun.

While I find it irritating in articles, too, the difference is that the articles can be reported as copyrighted/inappropriate, but there's no reporting for forum threads. The cynic in me suspects that's why I've been seeing so much more of this lately - some people, rather than posting their own words, may have switched to posting others' material in forum threads after being reported for doing the same thing in other features.

true..i dont understand why forums cant be reported!? is there some technical reason!? because i also see lots of people posting spam- i report the user then- but still it doesnt make sense that you cant report the post. i understand that the f4 hoped/ thought that it wouldnt be necessary but i think lots of people have suggested this in the suggestions and ideas thread.

I've seen a commercial in a forum but I can't report it. It's so annoying.