How many words is considered plagiarism?
I write for a small ship, and there's a new author (new to the ship but not to fanfic, they say) who not only takes inspiration from plots and headcanons of mine and other authors (which could be flattering for the writer and 'two cakes' for the reader actually) but plain reuses the exact same sentences. I am well aware that writers don't own words, but we're talking about full 10ish word long strings of text here. As I said, small ship, so all these 'similarities' stick out like a sore thumb. We never even saw this person commenting on our works. So, should WE say something? And how? It's a peaceful community, and I'd hate it if we broke that peace.
Generally speaking, plagiarism is directly copying something like 10% of another person's work and claiming it as your own. This is very much a ballpark figure and not a number that you can apply to all cases by running the word counts and doing the math. For example, with song lyrics, it's something like 2 or 3 lines.
Whatever the percentage might be in the cases you're talking about, they're very much feeling like plagiarism (rather than an homage, for example) and that's a really negative situation to find yourself in, especially when you want to keep the peace.
You have a handful of options for what to do, I think, and I'll leave it to you which one to choose.
Pretend it's not happening. Bite your tongue, grit your teeth, clench your fists and just be silently annoyed/frustrated/pissed. This will basically be your current situation, continued.
Block their works from showing up on your feed and mute their comments. The person may likely continue with what they're doing, but there won't be any fandom drama about it - at least not because of you. This way, you don't have to see them doing it.
Vague (or not-so-vague) post about it. The fandom is small and the author or a reader will likely be able to identify who you're talking about. Once the author is aware that you're calling them out, they might disappear from the fandom or it might start that drama trashfire you want to avoid. Less likely, they might edit their works and stick around.
Reach out to the author and accuse them of plagiarism one-on-one. This will probably have the same results as option 2, with the addition of maybe having screenshots of your conversation floating around your fandom.
Reach out to the author and welcome them to the fandom. Let them know that you're glad to see another writer for your small ship. Ask if they're new to AO3 and/or how long they've been writing fic. If they're new to fic or to AO3, you can let them know that they're creating an unfortunately bad first impression amongst the other authors. You can then help them navigate their new fandom waters. No fandom drama should result, and you'll get to keep an additional author for your small ship without the current frustrations. With this one, you really do want to go in with an empathizing mindset rather than a manipulative one, otherwise you'll end up screenshotted in drama like in option 3.
You can report their fic(s) to the Policy & Abuse team. PAC keeps all reports confidential, so the author would never know your name. If PAC investigates and decides it's not plagiarism after all, they'll let you know and the author will never know you sent in a report. If they decide it is plagiarism, they'll reach out to the author (still keeping your name out of it) and request that they edit their work to remove the plagiarism. The relevant fics would be hidden from view while the author edits them. If the author fails to edit them, PAC will delete them from the Archive. Whether this results in fandom drama will depend entirely on how the author reacts. Some people will make a public show about "false accusations" and others will quietly edit or delete their works. The quiet authors will likely end up leaving the fandom. The loud ones? Harder to say.
For more information on the PAC side of the plagiarism report (and how to write a report with all of the relevant info), I'll link two answers from PAC takeovers of the blog: answer 1 | answer 2
Are there any options anon has that I might have missed? What would you do in a situation like this?
