A Policy for Referencing
The holy trinity of scientific literature is:
The former is self explanatory and unacceptable. If you show me a picture you scooped on the internet, let me know where it came from! It's wonderful that tumblelogs (like Planet Tampon and Come to Me Bruce Lee, plus many others) offer quick distractions but they offer no commentary of the pictures nor references. I'm quite sure the photographer would love to be acknowledged and maybe the reader would like to find out what it is they're looking at at some point.
The latter is seemingly more prevalent- and more annoying. Even the most professional and widely-read blogs contain some mixture of original material and links to other blogs or other online resources. But in a juvenile I-saw-it-first attitude when referencing a cool article or website, bloggers are always clear to say which other blog they found that out from, avoiding school-yard toe-stepping. Surprisingly, sometimes that blog itself is only linking to yet another blog and you have a serial chain of links to follow before you reach the original article. The thing is, nobody really cares how you found out about something, what's important is the original material, send me there! For instance, while writing my thesis I discovered that the observed rate of double stranded breaks in mitotically dividing cells is approximately 10 events per cell division. I saw that in a review article for a key player in a sub-pathway of homologous recombination. They cited the original source of the information, I followed the citation and I also cited them in my thesis. I needed the original article to I could understand what I was referencing (it's basically taboo to reference something you haven't read and understood). Nobody cares that I originally found that interesting fact via a review article! It's completely inconsequential and is considered part of the literature review process, it's also nothing to be ashamed about. The only time a review article is cited is if they explicitly formulate ideas that are unique or if you just want to point your readers to a nice review of a field which is a bit tangential to your topic but interesting nonetheless.
If you want to acknowledge that you read and find interesting material from other blogs, write about them, or make a blog role on the side of your web site. But the only time they should be linked to is if they have presented some unique statement or concept which you need to acknowledge. Linking to an original source does not merrit citation (as that is basically the online equivalent of a review article) and makes tracking down original material more difficult and tedious than is necessary.
- Be concise
- Be precise
- Be well annotated
The former is self explanatory and unacceptable. If you show me a picture you scooped on the internet, let me know where it came from! It's wonderful that tumblelogs (like Planet Tampon and Come to Me Bruce Lee, plus many others) offer quick distractions but they offer no commentary of the pictures nor references. I'm quite sure the photographer would love to be acknowledged and maybe the reader would like to find out what it is they're looking at at some point.
The latter is seemingly more prevalent- and more annoying. Even the most professional and widely-read blogs contain some mixture of original material and links to other blogs or other online resources. But in a juvenile I-saw-it-first attitude when referencing a cool article or website, bloggers are always clear to say which other blog they found that out from, avoiding school-yard toe-stepping. Surprisingly, sometimes that blog itself is only linking to yet another blog and you have a serial chain of links to follow before you reach the original article. The thing is, nobody really cares how you found out about something, what's important is the original material, send me there! For instance, while writing my thesis I discovered that the observed rate of double stranded breaks in mitotically dividing cells is approximately 10 events per cell division. I saw that in a review article for a key player in a sub-pathway of homologous recombination. They cited the original source of the information, I followed the citation and I also cited them in my thesis. I needed the original article to I could understand what I was referencing (it's basically taboo to reference something you haven't read and understood). Nobody cares that I originally found that interesting fact via a review article! It's completely inconsequential and is considered part of the literature review process, it's also nothing to be ashamed about. The only time a review article is cited is if they explicitly formulate ideas that are unique or if you just want to point your readers to a nice review of a field which is a bit tangential to your topic but interesting nonetheless.
If you want to acknowledge that you read and find interesting material from other blogs, write about them, or make a blog role on the side of your web site. But the only time they should be linked to is if they have presented some unique statement or concept which you need to acknowledge. Linking to an original source does not merrit citation (as that is basically the online equivalent of a review article) and makes tracking down original material more difficult and tedious than is necessary.
2 comments:
I don't agree that the source of the content is more important than the blog where you found it. I see your point, but sometimes great content is a one-off. I've encountered great posts by bloggers who usually write really nichey stuff, but maybe one day they summarize some insights that are hella interesting. But in those cases, most of their content is boring to me and I'll never really need to go to that site again.
A good aggregator, on the other hand, is a fountain that doesn't run dry. Personally I'd much rather be directed to sites like Kottke or Metafilter- where the varitery of links and the site's ability to find things first are actually of more use to me than the granulated internet I perceive when I go directly to the source. And when I do the work of aggregating good links on my own site, Pageslap, well, I deserve repeat traffic because I'm going out finding those links. I don't want bloggers down the chain to bypass me and link every reference I found back to the source. My work as an aggregator is useful, too.
Basically, if an individual reader really cares about the source material, I think the onus is on that person to do the backtrack. Most of us just want sources that steadily flow interesting content, and linking back only one step is the best way to share those sources. I guess it depends on what you're using the internet for. Maybe the fairest way to do it is to link "Original Source, Via aggregator"....?
I"f you show me a picture you scooped on the internet, let me know where it came from! "
I completely agree with you about referencing images. At the very least a link on the image back to the original source is necessary. Too many blogs just throw images up as thought content blows on the wind without any hard work.
(Liking your blog, Rick! Consider this me saying hello again after too long!)
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