Notes on Coming Policy Changes

Tiassa

Tiassa

Let us not launch the boat ...
Valued Senior Member
Notes on Coming Policy Changes

In the near future, I will be implementing certain policy changes. The breadth of the changes is, at present, undetermined. New standards will be formulated addressing three primary aspects of posting at Sciforums and, namely, in EM&J:

• Thesis
• Support
• Citation​

An underlying theme to these changes is the idea of good faith. The applicable context of good faith at Sciforums is easily derived from a dictionary definition: honesty of purpose. Good faith will, in the end, be given specific address, but the first part is to consider certain elements of what and how we post.
 
Thesis

I. Thesis

We have at Sciforums long disdained a certain kind of thread-starting post. At heart, Sciforums flourishes on the basis of user-generated content. Thus, we have in our history many occasions of closing topics for a lack of user-generated content in the topic (opening) post.

At least give your neighbors something to work with. It need not be a full-blown thesis paragraph as you might remember from school, but simply posting a quote from a source with no personal contribution is a bit too easy. Often, people will say, "I'll offer my opinion later, but I want to see what others think". This is, in the end, fine. But at least give your neighbors some sense of the relevant context. By simply noting the question, you have not committed yourself to any specific answer.

Similarly, "FYI" topics are just fine, but it is helpful if you offer more than "FYI" or "hehe:)". In the end, ask yourself a simple question: Why should anyone else give the topic any greater effort than I have given?

If it is an important topic, tell us why. If not, fine. Just don't object if the discussion never follows the path you hoped for, or if it eventually becomes so ridiculous that it is relocated to Free Thoughts, the Cesspool, or other subfora.

But if you intend to actually discuss a specific aspect of an issue, some kind of thesis will help form that discussion. Don't just hope the rain falls when and where you need it.
 
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Support

II. Support

There is a need to support your assertions in an argument. While some would find such a statement a useless iteration of the self-evident, the point is not, in truth, so clear to everyone. Even the statement that something is self-evident can be supported, and especially in the case of contentious theses or assertions, it is very important that members support their arguments. That something is, as one member said of a controversial assertion, "common fucking knowledge" is not a proper argument. Be prepared to support your assertions, and it doesn't always do you good to wait until someone asks. If your opinion should be remotely important to your neighbors—why else bother expressing it, then?—it does not seem too much to ask that you act as if it is.

Likewise, be prepared to explain what support you offer. In some cases, the context and implications of what you offer in support of an assertion will be fairly clear. But not always. Do not simply assume that everyone else will look at the same sentence, or three, or ten, and extract the same meaning you do. Sometimes—fairly often, in fact—you will find it more useful to explain to people how you think a given source quotation supports your argument. In theory, it should cut down on the number of questions people ask that you consider stupid or useless.
 
Citation

III. Citation

We have a very loose standard against plagiarism here at Sciforums. The present standard reads,

B. Plagiarism
Plagiarism consists of copying another person's writings and passing them off as your own. If you post something somebody else has written, you must name the author, and preferably also reference the source. Posts which include material from elsewhere that is not properly acknowledged will be deleted.

(italics added)​

I would invite you to compare that against formal standards, such as MLA:

Name Last, First. "Article Title". Volume Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year.​

Or, as an example,

Bradbury, Ray. "Introduction". Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars. New York: Wm. Morrow, 2005.​

Obviously, there is much to work with. MLA citations get even more complicated, including original dates for reprints, editors and translators, access dates for online sources, and, of course, hyperlinks.

Clearly, as some find it too taxing to include even an author or source (e.g., "Associated Press" or "AP"), setting a formal standard would be an exercise in futility. Indeed, the blogosphere—in expecting to be taken seriously—generally considers source citation too burdensome to bother with. But, as we know from reading blogs or even posts here at Sciforums, hyperlinks frequently break. Few websites are designed to be like, say, BBC News Online, where the hyperlinks are structured to remain fixed in perpetuity. Thus, if you simply embed a link in text making your point, or offer a bare link—

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2736149.stm ​

—you may only be making your point for a matter of days or weeks. People reading your posts a year later might find nothing but dead links in support of your argument.

And this is a matter that at least some should find important. After all, why should anyone take your posts any more seriously than you do?

Is it really so time-consuming to tack a list to the end of your post? Well, let's back up a for a moment. Is it really so time consuming to give people a little more than a hyperlink? Obviously, since some cannot be bothered to give author credit. And, because someone will predictably split that hair, yes, outlet agency credit will suffice when no author is listed. Such as the link I provided above. There is no specific author listed. So crediting it to "BBC" or if it's not too much effort, "BBC News" would suffice.

But what more should you include? The standard under consideration would be Author, Title, Link (if available).

We should not view this solely as a plagiarism concern, either. There is an aspect of courtesy about it, as well as one of self-confidence. If one simply names an author, well, what happens then? If I tell you a quote comes from Karen Armstrong, you can do at least some deductive reasoning to cancel out some of the titles attributed to her name, but in the end you're likely still looking at thousands of pages among several titles at least. So it is courteous, at least, to include the title. Indeed, if you do a reasonable in-text citation (Author, page) and tack the more specific information onto the end of the post—Armstrong, Karen. A History of God—the reader now knows exactly where to look. And this is helpful to those readers who might give your opinion some credit and wish to pursue that perspective further. Even more, though, such a simple effort reminds that you're not afraid of having your sources scrutinized. If you've presented a source honestly, and it legitimately supports your point, you should not be worried that someone will be able to show you dishonestly skewing the context.

Citation standards are still under consideration; it is extremely doubtful that members will be obliged to observe a formal style sheet.
 
Member Comments

Member Comments

Members are welcome—and encouraged—to comment. Your questions and advice will have some influence over the outcome of the final policies. However, be advised that the final outcome will result in tighter rules. Populist appeals to anarchy do not reflect the interests of this website, nor the intention of policy revision in the Ethics, Morality & Justice subforum.
 
tiassa on citation

for anyone interested who hasnt delt with university level referencing this is a really good link. I accessed it through my secure login but you guys SHOULD be able to access it directly (i think). If you cant and your interested let me know and i will see if i can find a different copy (or if worst comes to worst i will copy it myself)

http://nursing.flinders.edu.au/students/index.php?id=123

Tiassa what is MLA?
i have used the footnote system of my own design and harvard but i have never even herd of MLA
 
Modern Language Association

MLA stands for Modern Language Association. When I was in high school and college, this was the generally-preferred style sheet I encountered. My brother, at a different university, was taught a blend called Chicago/Turabian. You've noted, as I recall, the Harvard Style Manual, and there are others to be considered—APA (American Psychiatric Association), Oxford, &c.

I did find A Research Guide For Students, but I haven't been through it yet. It appears to include APA, Chicago/Turabian, CGOS (Columbia Guide to Online Style), CBE (Council of Biology Editors), Harvard, and MLA. The greatest differences between these styles is in their presentation. MLA in-text citation, for instance, uses Author-Page, while APA and Harvard use Author-Year. Some use footnotes, others endnotes. But by and large, they generally seek the same information.

The MLA resource I linked in the post above is through The Owl, a writing resource of Purdue University. The actual MLA website is generally slow, for some reason, and today isn't responding at all.

The form I use in my posts is derived from—but does not adhere to—MLA standards.
 
my sisters uni uses APA, she HATES it, she says its WAY over complicated but as i said i haven't used it

To be perfectly honest i still cant even do havard 100% properly off the top of my head, every time im writing an essay i just follow that guide (as far as the reference list is concerned anyway)

and yes that link is for harvard, you wont be able to access the link for end note though because its a site licence which only covers flinders students
 
Tiassa,

Just to clarify...
I assume you are not saying that every opening post will require all three, correct?
What if, for example, someone wanted to simply post an opinion or personal, political philosophy piece? There may be no citation.
In addition, lets say I recall that Ayn Rand said, "To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer." but can't, for the life of me, recall where (which is true)?

How heavy will the iron fist be?
 
The iron fist or velvet glove?

One Raven said:

I assume you are not saying that every opening post will require all three, correct?
Click to expand...

That's correct. I'm not expecting full-blown essays. You can probably remember when we used to delete topic starters that had no user-generated content—just a quote and a link, or maybe a cheap one-liner.

I haven't decided how the iron fist is going to be applied. I suppose FYI topics are a good example: at least tell us why you think it's important for us to know.

What if, for example, someone wanted to simply post an opinion or personal, political philosophy piece? There may be no citation.
Click to expand...

There's no problem with that. To the other, if one's personal philosophy is that man-boy love is a healthy relationship, at some point they'll have to assume the burden of addressing the counterpoints. I think it's generally a cheap way to go about a proposition to simply offer a strange or controversial premise and wait for people to build counter-arguments. However, it's not nearly impossible to build a good discussion that way.

In addition, lets say I recall that Ayn Rand said, "To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer." but can't, for the life of me, recall where (which is true)?
Click to expand...

Well, Google often works if you can remember the exact quote. To the other, Wikiquote lists that one as "unsourced". Fact-Archive.com lists the quote as "attributed". It may be from her private letters, or it may be something someone made up and stuck her name on.

One of my favorite quotes is, "History is a lie agreed upon". It's attributed to Napoleon, but I couldn't tell you how. To the other, I've always liked saying that "Napoleon allegedly said ...." The quote sort of folds in on itself in a nearly metaphysical way.

Aphorisms of this sort are often hard to cite properly, and that's understandable.

Additionally, the section on Good Faith isn't up yet, but that's the thing. If people are making a genuine effort to be communicative, I don't intend to get in their way. Essentially, I'm looking to help build a platform for re-establishing the "Intelligent Community" aspect of Sciforums, long forfeit in favor of a notion of free speech in which "free" is defined as "having no value". People seem to think that simply repeating a contentious assertion, or, "You don't need sources to back up common knowledge", are viable arguments. There is a strange coincidence, too, between the people who adopt such tactics and controversial, denigrating, or insupportable theses. This sort of thing causes problems over time, and that's part of where we're at now—not only in EM&J, but all over the board. We need to get a handle on it.

In the long run, the iron fist should only be heavy for those who operate in bad faith. It's not that I want to stifle all chatter, asides, and jokes, but for too long we've given over to those who can't tell the difference between humor (good or failed) and mean spirit.
 
Tiassa said:
Notes on Coming Policy Changes

In the near future, I will be implementing certain policy changes. The breadth of the changes is, at present, undetermined. New standards will be formulated addressing three primary aspects of posting at Sciforums and, namely, in EM&J:

• Thesis
• Support
• Citation​

An underlying theme to these changes is the idea of good faith. The applicable context of good faith at Sciforums is easily derived from a dictionary definition: honesty of purpose. Good faith will, in the end, be given specific address, but the first part is to consider certain elements of what and how we post.
Click to expand...

Am I missing something here?

Such a formula might be useful for writing a school assignment or something, or might be an occasional framework, but for volunteer fun forum writing, without pay, I just don't see the relevance of such a lofty standard. Aren't people supposed to contribute ideas, not necessarily always "prove" them?

BTW, I would hazard a guess that less than 1% of forum postings, include a citation. Quite many ideas people come up with, are atributable to themselves, or some unknown or forgotten source.
 
Yes, you missed something. Did you fully read all Tiassa's posts up to this point???
Nothing was mentioned or implied of citing references for every idea mentioned.
Sometimes there's a problem reverse of that. People cite a source of an idea or belief or whatever as if to prove it's true. Kant said it so THERE!
An idea shouldn't always necessarily have to be proven true but anything posited as true should be proven. Saying "I think there's no other intelligent life in the universe" is different from saying "There's good reason to think there's no other intelligent life in the universe".
 
I come here to this site to learn and “take in” things, I never finished school or wrote a thesis nor do I know how to always properly put my thoughts into correct words and get them across to others without them being misunderstood. All I want here was a somewhat fun and simple place to go to learn from the others on here but I agree that some posts here need to reference statistics or other related facts by a source (so I can at least check them out to learn the truth or lack thereof of anyone posting such information) just don’t make these changes so sweeping and ridged that general self experience, opinion or basic sourcing isn’t allowed. Maybe a rating system could be implemented such as the movie rating system G, PG-13, R, X etc. but in a different manner when a proper source or link isn’t included, such as IMO, (In my opinion), DRW (don’t remember where), GR, (General Reference) GO, (Google) etc.. However this just my thought!
 
Thoughts on stuff

Oiram said:

... but in a different manner when a proper source or link isn’t included, such as IMO, (In my opinion), DRW (don’t remember where), GR, (General Reference) GO, (Google) etc.
Click to expand...

That's one of the challenges. A phrase I find myself repeating from time to time is, "People can't tell the difference?" In this case, there are frequent occasions in which people don't have the time or the specific knowledge to properly attribute an aphorism, or they honestly can't recall a source.

The problem we face, though, comes in the form of posters who offer dubious assertions of fact while trying to hide or omit their sources. Sometimes they say, "You know how to use Google! Look it up!" And every once in a while, they'll say something amazing like, "I don't need to provide a source for what's common knowledge!" While this is somewhat true, sometimes someone has trouble understanding the difference between what is observable, such as the idea that the sky is blue, and their opinions, such as women being evil or something.

I'm of the opinion that citation information, beyond simple plagiarism concerns, is a courtesy. The actual standard for an online source is author and link. It is also fairly simple for books and other offline sources.. But if I simply say, "Karen Armstrong", I'm leaving you thousands of pages to read in order to find what I'm talking about. If I at least say, "Karen Armstrong, A History of God", that helps an interested reader tremendously. And if I can manage to work a page number in, well, I won't claim sainthood, or anything, but it really does help.

And then there's the flip side: citation information reminds of your confidence in your assertions. I'm of the opinion, personally, that anyone is welcome to tell me I'm reading the source material wrongly. But if they're going to tell me that, they should probably tell me why and how. In order to do that, well, if I've handed them as much information as they need to find the source, I've done what I can.

And the notion of thesis is another issue raised by some of our neighbors, at least insofar as their posts are concerned. Some people like to open a thread with as little direction as possible, but we generally prefer some sort of member-generated content to go with a link or quote. Like I said, I don't want to kill FYI posts, and such, but there are elements in our community that use this method as flame bait, or even propaganda. In the end, we encourage people to speak for themselves with the reinforcement of sources. One should never let the sources speak entirely in their stead; misinterpretation is inevitable.
 
Will EM&J become accredited?

My compliments on a sensible and admirable moderating effort and influence from the Mod Hatter. As much as a spirit of good faith is advanced (that is, by all participants as peers) time spent here will become much more rewarding for all. Even if there's no college credit.

Good faith need not limit us to sterile, strictly-structured, constantly-serious, or unoriginal posts. Good faith here means exploring our viewpoints with sincere interest in the given topic, including sincere interest in opposing opinion. Good faith enjoins us to pick up after ourselves, and to pick ourselves up when silliness, misunderstanding, digression, egoism, or any quirks of normal conversation begin to accumulate to the point of distraction. I know I've littered a few threads, but I hope that on balance I'm not posting crap.

Often I'm disappointed when a promising thread is derailed by an obvious and avoidable breach of good faith. Cheers to Tiassa, for his efforts to help great threads and great thoughts go deeper and farther.
 
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