> Hacker News is not an encyclopedia or doctoral thesis. I think you took my comment about a school paper the opposite way than I intended. I'm not saying we

> Hacker News is not an encyclopedia or doctoral thesis. I think you took my comment about a school paper the opposite way than I intended. I'm not saying we should be professional, I'm saying we should be respectful to those we are communicating with. That means not presenting yourself as absolutely right and others as wrong without evidence. School papers often (depending on type) want you to take a position and argue it assertively and as if absolute. That's not how sane people discuss things. I'm not saying that people have to source what they say, but if they are going to make a broad assertion of fact, they should at least be able to back it up or accept that they don't have a lot to contribute that's useful. That doesn't mean keep your mouth shut if you can't site a source, it means state it as opinion so people feel like they're part of a discussion and not a lecture. If a lecture is what you want to give, have sources, or be authoritative enough by the nature of who you are that your opinion matters. If mthoughts2018 had sprinkled a couple "from what I've seen", "I think", or "to me"'s in their original response, they probably wouldn't have even been asked for a source. But if you present yourself as authoritative, it's only natural for people to ask where you got that authority from if it's not obvious. Edit: As a simple example, if you're presenting yourself in a way that you wouldn't to a new acquaintance at some mixer, maybe that's a sign you're not being a good discussion participant. If I was discussing something with someone in that situation and they asked me how I knew what I was presenting as fact, I would try to point them towards things I had read, even if I couldn't source them exactly. What I wouldn't do is tell then to figure it out themselves, because it's obvious, and I shouldn't have to explain myself because that's just a rhetorical method to keep me from spreading the truth. How rude would that be?