In both the Ahmadinejad thread and the Kansas lawmaker thread the OP begins with a long block of quoted text without attribution.
I'm wondering if people feel article attribution in discussion fora is good or bad for the purposes of the discussion*? I usually feel like it's polite to signal where the thoughts I'm putting out are coming from so they can more easily judge the credibility of the source. On the other hand, attributions to partisan sources might generate Pavlovian responses, resulting in a thread rapidly degenerating into bickering.
Thoughts?
*I generally feel non-attribution is ethically and morally wrong on grounds of lack of recognition for effort. Kind of a little brother to plagiarism. But here I am wondering particularly what people's thoughts were regarding whether attribution helps or hinders open discussion.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The Ahmadinejad OP has attribution.
I like attribution, mostly for practical reasons. Without attribution I'm likely to ignore large blocks.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I usually just attribute by default. I can't really recall times I haven't unless the source was extremely obvious or there's a point to be made in not attributing something.
If I'm reading something without attribution, I'l usually just Google a unique looking phrase which works maybe 90% of the time, so on this side its more of an annoyance than a practical difference.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: The Ahmadinejad OP has attribution.
I like attribution, mostly for practical reasons. Without attribution I'm likely to ignore large blocks.
There are two quotes. The first (unattributed) seems to originate with a blog post at examiner.com (based on my Google searches); the second (attributed) comes from The Guardian.
I think unless it's 100% obvious, all quotes should be accompanied by a source link, it just strikes me as dishonest otherwise.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
Like fugu, I'm likely to skip unattributed quote blocks of any great size.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Ha, sorry — I'm spoiled
I'm used to forum systems that put the attribution in the quote tag. When I crosspost something here, occasionally, I forget that won't transfer here and I have to put a naked link or url tag after the quote.