Report high-Google-ranking Stack Exchange content copiers here [duplicate]

Question

NB The following is a community-generated list of web pages that display Stack Exchange content and rank higher in search results than the original SE posts they copy. It is no longer being maintained, because the procedure for reporting such sites has changed; see the duplicate for more information.

For the original instructions, see this question's revision history. You may also be looking for the post for reporting sites that use Stack Exchange content illegally (that is, without following attribution guidelines).

Answer 1

http://www.advancesharp.com/Questions/7587/why-does-crash-my-page

is a direct copy of Why does $($) crash my page?. So far, other than in the retained links from the sister sites, I do not see any citations or links to SO or the original question. In other words, they do not follow the the content attribution rules.

Another case: http://www.advancesharp.com/Questions/6463/beating-jquery-addiction-which-jquery-methods-are-easily-translated-into-pure-javascript

is a copy of Beating jQuery addiction: Which jQuery methods are easily translated into pure javascript? which the owner of the site takes credit for... methinks Felix Kling will not be impressed.

Also, they're changing names for obfuscation. The questions/answers remain the same, however.

A trick they're using: the date on their site is two months older than SO's. They're making it look like SO copied them.

Here is their Google ranking when searching for the question I noted above:

Upon further investigation, http://www.advancesharp.com/ appears to copy most if not all of its content from SO. Also, it appears to belong to this SO user. Here is his question about scraping content from Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/q/3448821/561731

To further fuel my rage on all of this: here is a random collection of links (there might be more; I just clicked on a few recent ones) that show the user plugging his ripped site. (The answers at least seem to be unique in these cases, but that is only when searching them against SO and not other sites.)

Need date format in SQL Server
Date format pattern
Update without first selecting data in LINQ 2 SQL?
Update using LINQ to SQL

It really grinds my gears that he is making money for other people's hard work, so I've been researching his other questions. http://advancesharp.com/Questions/16352/how-can-i-group-by-a-datetime-field-only-using-the-date-w is a direct copy of http://forums.asp.net/t/1802521.aspx/1?How+can+i+group+by+a+datetime+field+only+using+the+date+without+the+time+.

I will be contacting asp.net with this information next.

Answer 2

http://www.x2x1.com/faq/

This site is a blatant rip-off. Even their layout is similar. Most (if not all) questions are ripped verbatim from Stack Overflow. I Googled the text from one question, and Stack Overflow was the first result; this site was third and fourth.

Google this: TypeError: unbound method can_move() must be called with O_shape.

Original question: Python: Display Shape from Tetris Game at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8995690/drawing-blocks-tetris

Knockoff URL: http://www.x2x1.com/show/8995690.aspx (even the question ID is the same facepalm)

Answer 3

readmespot.com They seem to abide by the license: they link back to the question and to each post author, they have a footer indicating that the content is aggregated from SO/SU/SF and under CC-wiki.

Found by searching "securing file system for secure sftp server". The copy of the question on readmespot is returned first, then the other results on that site, then results on SF with 1: a question that links to it, 2: a tag page, 3: the question with this title.

Next down is a license violator. Nice to see that at least the legal content scraper did better than the illegal and visually aggressive one.

Answer 4

http://RQGG.net

http://www.rqgg.net/hohohohohohohoh/Scrblnrd3.html

Given, most of these are a few spots behind Stack Overflow, but a few are higher.

Answer 5

http://www.qandasystem.info

http://www.qandasystem.info/gaming/do-i-need-to-grab-every-orb/

is a to-the-letter copy of this question from Arqade, and comes up fifth in a Google search for the name.

The answerer's username is still there, but that's about it in terms of "attribution."

It's kind of strange that it's being touted as a "Q&A system" when they're using a WordPress blog format (thoughts/comments) to post "answers"....

---

In fact, it looks like at least the gaming category on this site is entirely composed of ripped content from Arqade: http://www.qandasystem.info/gaming/.

Edit: Looking at the rest of the site, it appears that all of it is ripped from Stack Exchange. Copy and paste any of the question titles into Google and watch what comes up.

Answer 6

http://codeblow.com/

This site is stealing SO content without attributing.

Example 1:

I searched Google for "Apache Filesmatch" and got http://codeblow.com/questions/apache-filesmatch/, which is a copy of the SO question Apache FilesMatch.

Example 2 (merged in from another answer that was originally posted separately):

http://codeblow.com/questions/get-latitude-and-longitude-from-sqlite-database-to-be-used-in-android/

was found when searching for

Get Latitude and Longitude from SQLite database for use in Android MapOverlay

Answer 7

Search text in Google:

jquery ui accordion copy item shows multiple active Animate Items Added / Removed To Accordion

and

"jquery ui accordion copy item shows multiple active"

Scraper site above Stack Overflow:

http://javascript.bigresource.com/jQuery-Animate-items-added-removed-to-Accordion-JdbyerR80.html

Stack Overflow question:

Animate items added/removed to a jQuery Accordion

Do not see attribution/link to SO question in the scraper site.

Did not see the SO question in the first eight pages of Google results.

I forgot, in my haste, to ignore this other site in the search results — as I most often do — as they have horrid performance and often/most of the time clicking on the "replies" to the questions on their site gives you not found bombs due to their horrid performance... and I really see no value in their site.

Answer 8

Site stealing SE posts without attribution:

http://vniup.com/index.php/linux-unix/unable-to-access-linuxskbuff-h.html

Here is the question (and answers) they stole:

Unable to access linux/skbuff.h

Answer 9

A few days ago, I posted this question on Gaming. Having not received a correct answer, I decided to do some Google searching, and stumbled upon http://b.vniup.com/index.php/gamer/can-i-play-seiklus-in-windowed-mode.html. It would seem they stole my question, as well as the answers. I've looked, but I can't find an attribution anywhere on their page.

Also, in case it's important, it was the fifth result in the Google search.

Answer 10

I wanted to find this question and Googled for "tortoisesvn sharptooth". I got a bunch of other result, and the 8th result was on QuestionHub.com: http://www.questionhub.com/StackOverflow/1847645, which is a scraped version of the question I tried to find, but there wasn't the original question anywhere on the first page of the resultset.

Also I wanted to find this question and Googled for "debug heap" sharptooth attach - there're no results on stackoverflow.com in the output, but there's a link to this thing http://tech-question.com/visual-c-difference-between-start-with-without-debugging-in-release-mode-355427 (that btw looks like violating the license...).

Answer 11

This blog post incorporates one of my Stack Overflow answers, copied in full, with no link, attribution, mention of me or of Stack Overflow:

http://www.dkphp.com/questions-2/pros-and-cons-of-using-a-cursor-in-sql-server.html

If you wait for the annoying "like" dialog to access this "premium" stolen content, you'll find that the portion of the post directly below "The Answer" is a direct copy - links and all - of my answer here:

Pros and cons of using a cursor (in SQL server)

This was not scraped or automated, or pulled via an API - this was very clearly done by hand, incorporated into the user's own blog post as if it were part of his own work.

I did not find this blog post through Google, but it was just posted today (I discovered it via trackback). So it doesn't appear above Stack Overflow for relevant search terms today, but it still seems to violate the terms of use.

(I brought this up as a new question, Answers lifted and published elsewhere.)

Answer 12

No links back or attribution whatsoever:

Main site: http://downloadeeebooks.blogspot.ca/

Specific instance: http://downloadeeebooks.blogspot.ca/2012/05/modify-presentation-of-element-in.html

Original SO question: Modify presentation of element in a TabularInline

Answer 13

gamingqna.blogspot.com is in partial violation of our cc-by-sa license. Most pages do have author links, http://gamingqna.blogspot.it/2011/07/where-does-audiosurf-put-corkscrews.html e.g. doesn't.

Could they possibly be doing this by hand? The mind boggles.

Answer 14

One more site that is stealing Stack Overflow content without attributing: http://www.1771.in/. They are using fake author names with answers and not mentioning Stack Overflow.

I found one of my SO answers on that site.

Answer 15

http://diy101.net/

A full copy of DIY.SE minus the footer. It seems to be read-only.

Answer 16

http://www.blogosfera.co.uk/2013/03/how-dangerous-is-it-to-access-an-array-out-of-bounds/

is an unattributed copy of the Stack Overflow question

How dangerous is it to access an array out of bounds?

I found it via a simple Google search for the title "How dangerous is it to access an array out of bounds?".

There's no mention of Stack Overflow on the page other than two references in the question itself (including "This is my first Stackoverflow question"). The answers, of which there are several, do not appear. The added footer:

This entry was posted in C / C++ and tagged OSX, SET, SO, VALUE, VALUES on March 26, 2013 by bartol.

is mostly incorrect; the questioner is ChrisD, not bartol, and the "tags" do not resemble those on the original question.

I haven't looked at the rest of the site.

Answer 17

hows.info

Ruby openssl dgst -sha1 -sign

was the search term.

While it's not necessarily above the fold, this is an obscure enough search that there are few meaningful result subject lines, and one of them was hows.info copy of the same article on so.

Original image link: http://twitpic.com/cefqjg

Answer 18

http://cookingqna.blogspot.de/

No attribution at all. Also no indication who the responsible person for the site is, which is a violation of German law (and the site gets served to me from a German domain—yes I know that this is just Blogspot changing the domain, but maybe this is a legal way to show teeth to them).

Thank you David Wallace for noticing it.

Answer 19

Searching for something I dimly remembered one one of the StackExchange sites (which one? Math? Security? Crypto? Maybe Google knows ...), I Googled this:

stackexchange encryption "initialization vector" same file different ciphertext

and (near the bottom of) the first page of Google results includes

"Should I use an initialization vector (IV) along with my encryption?"
http://s340.codeinspot.com/q/341449

These people seem to be complying with all the attribution requirements listed at " Is it legal to copy Stack Overflow questions and answers? ", so as far as I can tell they are legal.

(I didn't know there was way to search all StackExchange sites until hours after I did that Google search).

Answer 20

www.yulebiao.com

Copying content from stackoverflow, without date or attribution. Furthermore, they write in the bottom "Copyright (C) 2013 Yulebiao.com - All rights reserved".

Searched for "ggplot connecting line space".

Original content: connecting lines between means of factors in ggplot2

Copied: http://www.yulebiao.com/questions/15097107/connecting-lines-between-means-of-factors-in-ggplot2

Answer 21

http://088062.com/

They pretend to be the site where you can ask the questions, but there's no link for it. They remove user names and machine-translate the content to German. No information about the source, they pretend it's theirs.

A little flower, from http://088062.com/about:

088062 ist Teil der Stapel Exchange-Netzwerk

"Stapel" is the translation of "Stack" into German.