Duncan Riley at the Inquistr has written a very significant post recently on “Giving Attribution” [11 May 2008] citing the importance of citing your sources and giving credit where credit is due.
The entire piece is worth reading as it outlines an informal, yet long-standing citation convention – much of which I use here. I strongly recommend you visit the site to participate in the discussion or at least avail yourself to the information. Personally, I’m bookmarking it and converting it to PDF as a reference for best practice.
Significantly Duncan argues that certain aspects of the convention are no longer followed, saying:
“The rough rules decided on then (by many) are what I’ve followed since; in part some of these may be overkill and sadly some are not followed today, but I’ve always considered this to be the fair way of doing things.”
To add my 2 cents to this, personally I’d like to see bloggers and amateur journalists return to the academic sensibilities and creative ethic that we learned in school when writing essays. That you can’t just state a fact or quote a statistic without showing where the information came from; or that personal opinions must be expressed as such and thus clearly delineate opinion and theory from cited proven fact.
This is particularly important from the standpoint of legitimacy and supporting our statements or arguments. A fact without a reference just isn’t a fact; and if we as bloggers ever hope to be taken seriously by the general public we must hold ourselves accountable to a code of ethics and conduct – whether formally stated or merely implied by the quality of our actions.
Equally important are the notions of idealism and personal responsibility that are at stake. The web we see today emerged as a means of bringing people together – hence the term social software. It’s about community-based efforts, providing for the common good and building a collective pool of knowledge and experience from which we all benefit. This can only be done if we respect the contributions of others and give credit where credit is due.
References:
- “Giving Attribution“, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 11 May 2008
