Alphax wrote:
I've always held that anything over 5-6 words is plagiarism, unless it is quoted. Quotations are fair use provided they are cited appropriately.
Your unattributed quote "quotations are fair use" is plagiarism, and that is unacceptable. You should give Joseph Carter credit where it is due. He wrote "attributed quotations are fair use" in a post to debian-legal: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/05/msg00001.html , and your post was clearly ripped off from that.
Seriously though, I have seen a case where a Wikipedian slapped a copyvio tag on something because it shared some phrases with a webpage. The author complained that he had spent hours reading multiple sources, and rewriting the information therein in his own words. That is unequivocally acceptable under copyright law, and the tag was soon removed. There's no need to be paranoid. We should be careful not to accuse people of plagiarism who are merely paraphrasing or rewriting.
-- Tim Starling