[paxys]

I have a big problem with the general theme of this article, which is that plagiarism detection software is infallible and every student who disagrees with its findings is wrong and dishonest.

You claim

> We have virtually eliminated false positives at this point

but offer no explanation for how you verify this.

You later rant about the fact that students have the audacity to challenge these (very serious) charges and the university actually expects you to follow up when they do. The horror!

IMO it's your system of senseless programming exercises and automated grading that is broken. Instructors need to put in the time and effort and assign homework where students have to actually think and be creative, rather than reuse the same assignments for the 10th year running and be shocked when submissions turn out to be similar.

[dpark]

> I have a big problem with the general theme of this article, which is that plagiarism detection software is infallible and every student who disagrees with its findings is wrong and dishonest.

These claims were not made.

> You claim

> > We have virtually eliminated false positives at this point

> but offer no explanation for how you verify this.

Yes, he did. He described the process that arrived at the conclusion including "keeping only the cases that contain indisputable evidence — for example, hundreds of lines copied right down to the last whitespace error". It's clear from the context that this was verified by following up with the alleged plagiarizers. Indeed, he notes one false positive.

I'm not sure what your concern is. The article presents the process they've used for catching plagiarism and rather than point out any actual flaws, you attack the strawman of blindly using anti-plagiarism software and treating it as literally infallible.

[paxys]

It doesn't matter if they think their process is perfect. It is still just an accusation at that point, and students have the right to appeal it.

IMO it isn't acceptable for an instructor to say that they don't have time to provide an explanation when asked by the university.

[dpark]

You're still fighting strawmen. At no point did he say that the students don't have the right to appeal or that instructors shouldn't have to participate in that process. He said it's a big time sink and one of the reasons instructors don't fight plagiarism much.