Hacker News Reader

Comment by brilliantcode | Hacker News Reader

This isn't wikipedia.

If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.

Nobody likes people who complain but won't do anything about it.

If the lack of citation bothers you so much, maybe you should include it yourself. Nobody else gives a shit in case you haven't noticed.

The original comment had no citation yet it received upvotes, contrary to your view of HN. Everyone is intimate with Google and they can follow the instructions in this thread to find the appropriate sources. If you want citation in the format you find in academic papers, that is on you, not the original commentator.

I can't help you any further but there are plenty of comments being posted as we speak that lack citations, you better get on that quick!

View on HN

> This isn't wikipedia.

No, it's a forum where the norm is that if you are going to make factual assertions where you aren't the source, you should include the source.

> If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.

Which is just making everyone else do your work for you. It's fine, if you want to make assertions and not include sources, you'll either be ignored by some number of people, or depending on how different the assertion is to their worldview, possibly downvoted.

If you're interested in having a discussion, sources help. If you're just interested in putting your mark down and saying something because you have the urge, then they don't really matter.

There is no norm or enforcement for citations. That is your personal preference. I don't want to spend time chasing down and writing citations. Fact checking is really up to the reader. There is no rule written that says all comments must have proper citations following APA formatting.

> There is no norm or enforcement for citations.

Obviously there is a community norm. We both just experienced it. You were downvoted (although that could have been for presentation), and I was upvoted for noting that the reason you were downvoted could have been for not supplying sources. For better or worse, that's how it is here at this point in time.

> That is your personal preference.

It is my preference. I'll note that it's not my preference to the point that I'll generally downvote for it though, and I didn't in this case. Other people do though, and there seems to be a general support for requesting that people supply evidence for claims. That's what makes it a community norm.

> I don't want to spend time chasing down and writing citations.

And I don't want to either. And other readers don't want to either. As a trade-off between one person, who presumably already knows that the reference exists and has some idea where to find it and every other person who reads it, it's obvious that the efficient answer is for the person who is using it as evidence to also include a link to the source when they use it.

> There is no rule written that says all comments must have proper citations following APA formatting.

No, there isn't, which is why I asked nicely.

> This isn't wikipedia.

The norm that the person making claim bears the burden of persuasion in supporting that claim with appropriate evidence and/or reasoning (citations being a means of referencing pre-existing examples of the former) existed for centuries before Wikipedia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com