Grammarly

[keyplyr]

UA: Grammarly/1.0 (http://www.grammarly.com)
Protocol: HTTP/1.1
Robots.txt: No
Host: AWS
34.192.0.0 - 34.255.255.255
34.192.0.0/10

One of the several edu plagiarism checkers

Mentioned here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[lucy24]

One of the several edu plagiarism checkers

Is that what they're about? Their current front page is so annoying, I didn't stick around and try to figure out how to get to the rest of the site. (Too bad, grammarly. I'll have to continue blocking you by name.)

[keyplyr]

A huge source of traffic for one of my sites is edu. At one time I blocked these citation tools & plagiarism checkers because I felt they were using my content in the function of their tools, which they sell.

Then I changed my thinking. These tools allow my site to be cited as sources for class assignments & research. Since allowing them, I've seen increases in traffic, especially edu.

[lucy24]

I do generally allow plagiarism checkers (Turnitin and VeriCite are two names that come to mind), as I consider it a worthy cause. But Grammarly is so ### annoying. Besides, if they have a plagiarism-checker service, it is exceedingly well hidden.

The irony, or paradox, or Unspecified Sad Thing, is that I primarily see them in /ebooks/ where at least 95% of the content is the actual text of public-domain works. (The other 5% is not long enough, or not insightful enough, to be stealable as-is.) Obviously it's not plagiarism if you quote the book you’re supposed to be reading; I only hope the people who run the tools know this.

Edit: Checking recent logs, I was amused to note that their UA string continues to say http, even though the site is now https.

[keyplyr]

One of the several edu plagiarism checkers

Is that what they're about?

That's what I had it categorized as, but it may just be a grammer checker.

From their home page:

Grammarly scans your text for common grammatical mistakes

[lucy24]

I spent some time yesterday looking it up, and found an appalling number of plagiarism checkers marketed directly to students.
...
...
...
If you wrote the paper yourself, you already know if it's plagiarized or not. Only if you paid someone else--or bought it pre-written--would you not know. Why don't they simply buy mail-order diplomas? It would save everyone a lot of time and aggravation. I get the same thought every time I get a glimpse of a search query--bing is useful for this--that is obviously just copying-and-pasting an assignment. (Fairness compels me to add that when the word-for-word identical assignment is handed out year after year after year, those instructors deserve everything they get.)

But I digress.