{"id":882,"date":"2008-10-06T03:55:06","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T07:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=882"},"modified":"2008-10-06T03:55:06","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T07:55:06","slug":"reffer-madness-part-i-in-my-cites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2008\/10\/06\/reffer-madness-part-i-in-my-cites\/","title":{"rendered":"Reffer Madness, part I : In My Cites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8216;reference&#8217; in a written or artistic work can have many different, sometimes conflicting, connotations.\u00a0 A ref can be used<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> to identify general influences on a work<\/li>\n<li>to name sources from which it draws an analysis<\/li>\n<li>to credit original authors when their work is directly reused<\/li>\n<li>to uniquely define a work that was referred to briefly in a text<\/li>\n<li>to identify specific influences or sources of axioms and assumptions for a work which are integral to its argument or presentation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of these connotations are commonly confused with one another in a single volume, sometimes within a single <strong>paragraph<\/strong>.\u00a0 Citations and references have a standard format which does not account for the depth or degree of their <strong>influence<\/strong> on the text.\u00a0 An exact quote will often receive the same <strong>ref<\/strong> as a bibliography entry indicating a general influence.\u00a0 The use of a set of assumptions as &#8220;the standard way of approaching this problem&#8221; will receive the same ref as an amusing tangent.\u00a0 As a result, if one has additional information about cited sources &#8212; for instance, a database that indicates the general reliability or currency of a source &#8212; it is difficult to know at a glance when this extra information invalidates or adds to information referring to a source.<\/p>\n<p>This <strong>loss<\/strong> of information in refs weakens their value, especially their <strong>aggregate<\/strong> value when trying to iterate a process of determining<strong> reliability<\/strong>, or determining when a work should be <strong>revised<\/strong> and updated.<\/p>\n<p><em>We can change all of this.<\/em> You and me, and a handful of others &#8212; starting with how citations are used in major wiki publications and academic works.\u00a0 Two of my friends, Benny Hill and Meta-Montfort, are working with me to devise a brief standard for better citation practice that we can share with you.\u00a0 Stay tuned for tomorrow&#8217;s episode of&#8230;\u00a0 <em><strong>Reffer Madness<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8216;reference&#8217; in a written or artistic work can have many different, sometimes conflicting, connotations.\u00a0 A ref can be used to identify general influences on a work to name sources from which it draws an analysis to credit original authors when their work is directly reused to uniquely define a work that was referred to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-ee","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}