It isn't nitpicking, its just regular old helpful. Like, I want to see where you are coming from, but I'm actually kind of stuck on this. How is it nitpicking?

It isn't nitpicking, its just regular old helpful. Like, I want to see where you are coming from, but I'm actually kind of stuck on this. How is it nitpicking? Where I'm coming from is the expectation that a citation includes the year of publication.