I keep track of page views on The New Leaf Journal with a WordPress plugin called Koko Analytics. Koko Analytics is an entirely local page counting solution which I reviewed back in 2022 (it has seen some improvements but the essential functionality has not changed). These stats inform the most-visited article rankings in my weekly newsletters (we will touch on those in a bit) and my year-end (see 2024) and month-end (see January 2025) article rankings. In addition to tracking page visits, Koko Analytics also shows referers when it picks them up. I have found fun things through the referer list such as The Browser newsletter and various niche search tools. On February 10, 2025, I saw papersowl.com among the referers.
This seemed curious. What in the world is papersowl? I do like owls. I decided to look for it in a different web browser. For reasons you will soon see, I am going to give you an archived capture of its homepage instead of the live version.
At the very top of the page, I see “Write my essay: custom help for students.” What does this mean? “Get a unique, human-written essay to your instructions in 50+ subjects.” As I read through the page, I get the distinct feeling that PapersOwl wants me to view it as a wholesome service. For example, the real human writers (I will take their word for it since it does not change my final assessment) “meet deadlines” and provide “plagiarism and AI free” work products. For those seeking a “plagiarism and AI free” paper for a class, Papersowl appears to offer a “Grade A guarantee” starting from $10.
I feel warm and fuzzy.
Or not.
I share links from around the web in my weekly newsletter. PapersOwl reminded me of a link that I knew I shared at one point – but I could not remember what it was. where it was from, or when I shared it – only that I had. Fortunately, the platform I use for our newsletters, Buttondown, has a robust internal search engine for my newsletter archive. My searching for the word “contract” – which I remembered having played a key role in the article I was looking for, I found the newsletter I needed: Newsletter Leaf Journal CXXXII 〜 News & taxes, which hit inboxes on April 22, 2023. Funny enough however, I discovered that I had not shared the article I was looking for in my newsletter’s around the web section, but instead on The New Leaf Journal itself. In the end – I searched my external newsletter for something I wrote in The New Leaf Journal – talk about roundabout! On April 21, 2023, I published ChatGPT vs Contract Cheating Writers, which was in turn prompted by an article by Marin K.N. Siele in Rest of World titled AI is taking the jobs of Kenyans who write essays for U.S. college students. The Rest of World report covered the tragic plight of Kenyans who write essays for U.S. college students for money. One “freelance writer” featured in the article had been making $900-$1,200 per month helping lazy American students cheat on their papers, but his take dropped to $500-$800 per month with the advent of ChatGPT, which lazy American students can use without having to spend money or talk to human beings who want to help them cheat on their assignment. I offered my own perspective on the clash of cheating methods, relaying a quote attributed to the now-late Henry Kissinger: “It’s a pity they can’t both lose.”
Now before continuing – I will note in the interest of being fair that PapersOwl purportedly offer some services that are not entirely coextensive with having someone write a school paper in the student’s name. Out of curiosity, I poked around Papersowl a bit more. Clicking “Place an Order” takes us to a new page where we can choose Writing, Editing, and Technical. The Writing option, “[g]et an essay or paper written according to your instructions by a professional writer,” is quite obviously a nice way of saying pay for a school paper given that the home page makes a point of marketing to students. Editing is purportedly for having “your paper edited, proofread, or have AI content revised by a professional editor.” While “editing” and “proofreading” are theoretically borderline cases in the cheating context, I subjectively cannot help but think that having “AI” output “edited” is about as bad (for a school essay) as having the whole thing (allegedly) written from scratch. Technical covers obtaining “an expert’s help with math problems, data analysis, coding, labs, accounting, etc.” Again, in the context of school, this is theoretically acceptable (taking out the fact the site primarily touts paying for school papers), but am I wrong in suggesting that schools often offer support services to help students manage their assignments (not to mention office hours in college)? Many of these services would be plausibly fine for a business, but Papersowl’s home page is targeting students.
Returning to the main point – I do not like school cheating. I witnessed cheating when I was in school. But I did not cheat. I had an English professor in college who warned students that he would not miss plagiarism and if he caught someone engaged in it, he would hound them until they dropped out of school. I respected that. I only begrudgingly respect PapersOwl’s efforts to make its pay-for-paper service look warm and cuddly, complete with an owl mascot – submitting a paper written by anyone/anything other than yourself is cheating all the same.
While I like it when people cite to my articles, I see no need to encourage citations from these sorts of services. Thus, I thought this would be a fun way to show off one of my security plug-ins. I have noted in articles on the Wutsearch search engine launchpad and the humans.txt file that I follow the blog of WordPress developer Jeff Starr. I also use one of Mr. Starr’s premium WordPress plugins on The New Leaf Journal: BBQ Pro (I use the free version of BBQ on The Emu Café Social). BBQ is a firewall plugin. The pro and free versions are similar but the pro version is more configurable. BBQ Pro allows me to add custom firewall rules – here I can add request URIs, Query Strings, User Agents, IP Addresses, and Referrers. From Koko Analytics, I am reasonably sure that I can block traffic originating from papersowl by adding papersowl.com to the referrer block list.
I cannot test it, but I will assume it works. While I frown upon students paying for other people to do their work, I humbly invite students interested in doing their work to cite to my New Leaf Journal research if it is applicable to their papers. I am sure there is a school paper somewhere that could benefit from references to my research on NBA champion stats, Halloween in Japan, Evacuation Day in New York, Thanksgiving in the Philippines, President Herbert Hoover’s pet possum, and the origins of Mother’s Day (not to mention many more research-themed articles).
