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Asking for references is one thing, but this “citation needed<EOF>” trope is growing old. It’s dismissive , and as lazy as it accuses the poster of being. It’s

Asking for references is one thing, but this “citation needed<EOF>” trope is growing old. It’s dismissive , and as lazy as it accuses the poster of being. It’s flippant and disrespectful. Let me put it this way: if someone then does provide citations, it suddenly sounds harsh, and could do with an apology. But in that case, why not be civil to begin with? Like you were, for example. Or, if you’re actually interested in the pursuit of truth, why not try and truly contribute by spending 30 seconds looking for references yourself, and adding those??

simias 9y ago
I kind of see it the other way, IMO making unsourced comments (especially about complex and widely ignored subjects such as chinese history and invoking the Holocaust) should be frowned upon. It's too easy to cherry-pick facts to fit a narrative in these conditions. Not saying that's what the parent was doing, but he could've been doing it and I definitely lack the necessary knowledge to form my opinion. As such I kind of end up dismissing his comment because I simply can't reasonably trust it at face value. I don't know about you but I'm not exactly super knowledgeable about Maoism, the "Great Leap Forward" and the state of chinese agriculture in the 1950's. Maybe I'm just being ignorant but given that this is a computer hacking forum I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect that most readers will be better versed in the subject than I am. So yeah, Citations Needed as far as I'm concerned.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- IntronExon 9y ago
  Citations are great, but in this case it does sound like a formality of posting a Wikipedia link. This is not an obscure topic, and none of us need to be directed to the appropriate resources. A request to add such a link wouldn’t be out of line, but a curt two-word dismissal certainly is. Worse, it makes more reasonable and understandable requests seem churlish when they arise.
idrios 9y ago
You had a comment here complaining about 'carpet bombing with [citation needed]' and you deleted it, but I agree with you on this. Wikipedia posted a great article called "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat." [1] It describes the various ways special interest groups and fringe fanatics will fight to make their views recognized. One of the ways they called "gaming the system" where they frivolously request [citation needed]. The fact that China underwent a terrible famine shortly following the Communist Revolution is pretty common knowledge. Other than that, he wasn't clear what he was requesting citations for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_earth_is_not_flat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot...
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  Yes, sorry—deleted it because IntronExon said it better and kinder.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    Thanks for the kind words, although I also appreciated your way of putting it.
- colanderman 9y ago
  Presumably sourcing was requested for the claim that Mao-era officials habitually padded agricultural numbers, not that the famine itself occurred.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    At this stage in my life I'm cynical to the point that I'd want a citation that a given government number from any regime in any time period was NOT manipulated for propaganda purposes.
- elipsey 9y ago
  I occasionally post this way when I realize part way through the original article that I have wasted my time reading an unsubstantiated diatribe that starts out sort of stealth-ed as a reasonably objective article (I don’t post this way about comments). My intention in such a case is to warn other readers who are not interested in that sort of thing not to waste their time. The last time I did this, I said: "Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed? The quote was taken from an article on environment problems in India. My problem with this is only that they said it without showing their work. If Marx said this, cite him. If it’s “well-know” prove it. Since they don’t bother to support this anywhere near the text of the claim, I don’t trust them anymore. I’m out, even if I was inclined to agree with them. I agree in general that we shouldn’t be rude or dismissive, but I think we also need to retain the ability to call out unsubstantiated claims that purport to be common knowledge, or are poorly attributed, and to protect our time. In the rare case that I regret reading something pretty long halfway through, I sometimes quickly post this way, get down voted, and hope I saved somebody some time. Anyone who wouldn’t read the article knowing that statement was in it can then choose not too. I guess if this is more annoying than reading a bad article, I could stop doing it or at least rephrase.
tomc1985 9y ago
I have to agree, if I wanted to write Wikipedia I would write for Wikipedia. This is a comment thread.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Hacker News isn't like other places though. There doesn't seem to be an official rule about jokes [1] but they generally get voted down. In a world filled with fake news, a tradition of posting at least one link might be a good thing? (Unless it's personal experience, which is useful in itself.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    Yes it is. Don't kid yourself thinking that we are a class above Reddit or something. This burden of research that some impose upon others is bullshit. If one is intellectually omnivorous they do not keep links of all their findings handy, it is simply not possible. This incessant wailing for citations is an activity fit for gutter-snipes, not productive software engineers.
    - skybrian 9y ago
      Why shouldn't we try to do better than most parts of Reddit? I don't mean Ask Historians [1] level discussion, but posting a relevant link is not hard. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
      - saurik 9y ago
        Nor is doing a quick search on Google to see if you can find citations yourself. The fact that this took me about two minutes to find should frankly make you feel ashamed at your insistence that everyone provide citations for everything you don't know anything about: this is you being intellectually lazy :/. > But rather than admit this truth and risk being accused of failure or, worse still, denounced as ‘counter-revolutionaries’, local party bosses fiddled the figures they sent to the central authorities. > They curried favour by vying with each other to increase their targets of food production to ludicrous and entirely fictional levels. Then they lied that they had not only met but exceeded them. > On paper, China was bursting with food of every type. The people’s bellies were full. Poverty and want had been eradicated. > In reality, as the notional, non-existent surpluses were commandeered to feed the industrial workers in the cities, vast areas of China were left with a fraction of the sustenance needed to survive. > In one province, the grain harvest shrank from 82,000 tonnes in 1957 to 18,000 tonnes three years later. Yet the local party boss still reported a bumper harvest of 130,000 tonnes. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman-starved-60-million-death-Devastating-book-reveals-Maos-megalomania-turned-China-madhouse.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman-starv... "Madman who starved 60million to death: Devastating book reveals how Mao's megalomania turned China into a madhouse" Clearly it would be better to cite the book (which I can't easily, as not all knowledge can be hyperlinked), or a higher-quality secondary source, but this is definitely sufficient enough to put the onus firmly on you to cite why you are so resistant to this thought process. Some tips, if the issue is that you don't know how to do research: You might try searching for the title of the book, which might find you some more reviews, and you might find some which disagree and essentially write a "rebuttal". You might also can try to search for those specific numbers in the final paragraph I quoted from this article.

simias 9y ago

I kind of see it the other way, IMO making unsourced comments (especially about complex and widely ignored subjects such as chinese history and invoking the Holocaust) should be frowned upon. It's too easy to cherry-pick facts to fit a narrative in these conditions. Not saying that's what the parent was doing, but he could've been doing it and I definitely lack the necessary knowledge to form my opinion. As such I kind of end up dismissing his comment because I simply can't reasonably trust it at face value. I don't know about you but I'm not exactly super knowledgeable about Maoism, the "Great Leap Forward" and the state of chinese agriculture in the 1950's. Maybe I'm just being ignorant but given that this is a computer hacking forum I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect that most readers will be better versed in the subject than I am. So yeah, Citations Needed as far as I'm concerned.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
IntronExon 9y ago
Citations are great, but in this case it does sound like a formality of posting a Wikipedia link. This is not an obscure topic, and none of us need to be directed to the appropriate resources. A request to add such a link wouldn’t be out of line, but a curt two-word dismissal certainly is. Worse, it makes more reasonable and understandable requests seem churlish when they arise.

idrios 9y ago

You had a comment here complaining about 'carpet bombing with [citation needed]' and you deleted it, but I agree with you on this. Wikipedia posted a great article called "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat." [1] It describes the various ways special interest groups and fringe fanatics will fight to make their views recognized. One of the ways they called "gaming the system" where they frivolously request [citation needed]. The fact that China underwent a terrible famine shortly following the Communist Revolution is pretty common knowledge. Other than that, he wasn't clear what he was requesting citations for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_earth_is_not_flat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot...

nothrabannosir 9y ago
Yes, sorry—deleted it because IntronExon said it better and kinder.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, although I also appreciated your way of putting it.
colanderman 9y ago
Presumably sourcing was requested for the claim that Mao-era officials habitually padded agricultural numbers, not that the famine itself occurred.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  At this stage in my life I'm cynical to the point that I'd want a citation that a given government number from any regime in any time period was NOT manipulated for propaganda purposes.
elipsey 9y ago
I occasionally post this way when I realize part way through the original article that I have wasted my time reading an unsubstantiated diatribe that starts out sort of stealth-ed as a reasonably objective article (I don’t post this way about comments). My intention in such a case is to warn other readers who are not interested in that sort of thing not to waste their time. The last time I did this, I said: "Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed? The quote was taken from an article on environment problems in India. My problem with this is only that they said it without showing their work. If Marx said this, cite him. If it’s “well-know” prove it. Since they don’t bother to support this anywhere near the text of the claim, I don’t trust them anymore. I’m out, even if I was inclined to agree with them. I agree in general that we shouldn’t be rude or dismissive, but I think we also need to retain the ability to call out unsubstantiated claims that purport to be common knowledge, or are poorly attributed, and to protect our time. In the rare case that I regret reading something pretty long halfway through, I sometimes quickly post this way, get down voted, and hope I saved somebody some time. Anyone who wouldn’t read the article knowing that statement was in it can then choose not too. I guess if this is more annoying than reading a bad article, I could stop doing it or at least rephrase.

tomc1985 9y ago

I have to agree, if I wanted to write Wikipedia I would write for Wikipedia. This is a comment thread.

skybrian 9y ago
Hacker News isn't like other places though. There doesn't seem to be an official rule about jokes [1] but they generally get voted down. In a world filled with fake news, a tradition of posting at least one link might be a good thing? (Unless it's personal experience, which is useful in itself.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tomc1985 9y ago
  Yes it is. Don't kid yourself thinking that we are a class above Reddit or something. This burden of research that some impose upon others is bullshit. If one is intellectually omnivorous they do not keep links of all their findings handy, it is simply not possible. This incessant wailing for citations is an activity fit for gutter-snipes, not productive software engineers.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Why shouldn't we try to do better than most parts of Reddit? I don't mean Ask Historians [1] level discussion, but posting a relevant link is not hard. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
    - saurik 9y ago
      Nor is doing a quick search on Google to see if you can find citations yourself. The fact that this took me about two minutes to find should frankly make you feel ashamed at your insistence that everyone provide citations for everything you don't know anything about: this is you being intellectually lazy :/. > But rather than admit this truth and risk being accused of failure or, worse still, denounced as ‘counter-revolutionaries’, local party bosses fiddled the figures they sent to the central authorities. > They curried favour by vying with each other to increase their targets of food production to ludicrous and entirely fictional levels. Then they lied that they had not only met but exceeded them. > On paper, China was bursting with food of every type. The people’s bellies were full. Poverty and want had been eradicated. > In reality, as the notional, non-existent surpluses were commandeered to feed the industrial workers in the cities, vast areas of China were left with a fraction of the sustenance needed to survive. > In one province, the grain harvest shrank from 82,000 tonnes in 1957 to 18,000 tonnes three years later. Yet the local party boss still reported a bumper harvest of 130,000 tonnes. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman-starved-60-million-death-Devastating-book-reveals-Maos-megalomania-turned-China-madhouse.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman-starv... "Madman who starved 60million to death: Devastating book reveals how Mao's megalomania turned China into a madhouse" Clearly it would be better to cite the book (which I can't easily, as not all knowledge can be hyperlinked), or a higher-quality secondary source, but this is definitely sufficient enough to put the onus firmly on you to cite why you are so resistant to this thought process. Some tips, if the issue is that you don't know how to do research: You might try searching for the title of the book, which might find you some more reviews, and you might find some which disagree and essentially write a "rebuttal". You might also can try to search for those specific numbers in the final paragraph I quoted from this article.