Common Knowledge and Plagiarism: Creative Expression & Using Another’s Thought without Attribution in Our Writing

Nowadays, we are floating in a sea of ​​information. In the flow of which we are losing our identity. We are parroting the words of others, writing exactly what they say, but never thinking for a moment about the truth or originality of it. We do not even pay attention to the fact that we may have our own patterns in writing or speaking, or that we want to create our own world of thought. As a result, sometimes untruth is revealed in writing, and accusations are made of copying and pasting others’ words. We are even losing the power to think for ourselves. My observations on two issues regarding our “own world of thought and copying-pasting others’ words” are presented below:

The main concern is about Common Knowledge and Plagiarism, where Common Knowledge refers to “Universal Truths & Creative Expression” in our writing, and Plagiarism refers to “Using of another’s work, words, or ideas without attribution”. I am trying to demonstrate these in my own way.

Common Knowledge vs. Plagiarism:
It is a vital distinction, especially in technical writing. When we write about System Design, we often walk a fine line between universal truths and creative expression, which is protected by copyright.

How to think about it like a professional engineer and writer to make a sign of a good writer to worry about originality:

Common Knowledge:
In software engineering, “Common Knowledge” refers to industry standards, facts, and broadly accepted logic. We do not need to cite a specific source for these because they are part of the collective technical “library”.

• Algorithms: The Token Bucket or Dijkstra’s Algorithm are foundational concepts. No one owns them.
• Status Codes: The fact that 429 means “Too Many Requests” is a global HTTP standard defined by the IETF.
• Standard Architecture: The idea of putting a Rate Limiter in an API Gateway is a “best practice” used by Google, Amazon, and Netflix alike.
• The Rule: If we can find the same fact in five different textbooks or documentation pages without a specific “author” being credited for the discovery, it is common knowledge.

Plagiarism:
Plagiarism happens when we take the unique expression of those facts from someone else and claim them as our own.

• Copying Prose: Taking a paragraph from a blog post on Medium and pasting it into our article.
• Stealing Analogies: If an author created a very specific, unique metaphor (for ex, “Rate limiting is like a nightclub bouncer named Tom who wears a purple hat”) and we use that same character without credit.
• Image Theft: Using a custom-designed diagram from a “System Design Interview” book without permission.

How to Stay Safe:
To ensure our article is original, we should transform the common knowledge through our own lens.

Plagiarism:

• Copying the exact order of headings from a popular site.
• Using the same sentences found on Wikipedia.
• Using the same “User A and User B” example from a textbook.

Original Synthesis:

• Organizing the topics based on what readers need first.
• Explaining the concept in one’s own voice in a more technical way.
• Creating a new example with a specific way.

We need more and more information to understand a concept in detail and clarify our own knowledge about it. For this reason, we have to search the ocean of information. To do that, we grasp the information we receive easily and quickly, like a blind person. As a result, we are becoming blind/fool day by day. We should stop it by using our brains and making ourselves logical and truthful.