Here's my thing. Sometimes (and I'm not saying that Chip Beall did
this) the apparent plagiarism of a question is not known by an author
when writing a question. More than once I have written a question
about a topic while studying for quizbowl and later on in the
semester (at least once in a subsequent regional tournament) heard a
question with at least the first few clues, if not entire phrases, in
the same order as my earlier-written question (I would usually buzz
in before the giveaway). Thus, if I ever submit my question to a
tournament, some Ghost of Quizbowl Questions Past may get me for
plagiarism when there was, in practice, none.
Technically, I don't think a person can get by with plagiarism by
changing one word or a few words from an earlier text. However,
great minds think alike, and I don't think that a question writer
should have to do a background search, a la one performed by a
doctoral student before picking a thesis topic, before he or she sits
down to write a question on the Battle of Waterloo.
If this practice is started, the Stanford and ACF archives will use
up a lot of bandwidth.
Joshua Hill, P. t. altaica