Memes of Production

I’m pretty sure the foundations of it are elsewhere than “They stopped making citations.”

My perspective is that it's complicated – not a singular foundation, but a major component in a disastrous feedback loop. Lemmy's news comms, for example, require a (usually quality or quality-enough) source, yet there are constantly comments that aren't just wrong in that they lacked additional outside context, misread part of the article, maybe stopped midway through, think the article is wrong, just have some overriding bias, etc., but that they read the headline, said "fuck it, we ball", and wrote 300 words that are totally disproven by the first 100 words of the article; sources clearly aren't a panacea.

A decade of editing Wikipedia, I think – not remotely some prestigious, exclusive, disciplined experience – has given me a unique perspective on sourcing that's very divorced from the general public's (which at best is usually "yeah, that's a good thing to do because it's a good thing to do") but also somewhat divergent from traditionally citation-heavy fields like academia because of both the target audience and inherently near-zero-trust environment. It's really weird, and the scare quotes around "traumatized" were kind of poking fun at my own experience. Ten years ago, I felt like citations were a tertiary concern that you tacked on at the end out of obligation if someone forced you to; nowadays, for a litany of reasons, sourcing to me is at least coequal with the contents of a work. I don't think I'd be so ardent about it if I hadn't undergone such a huge change.*

It's hard sometimes to keep that passion in, so I try to let it shine through in the form of setting what I think is a positive example (or sometimes taking research way the fuck overboard in a way that's probably an unrealistic example). However, in the case of the OP – for whom I don't think "mainly one comm" holds any water given everything on the threadiverse shows up on 'All' – I don't just hope they do better, but I outright expect them to if they're going to be shoveling dozens of political propaganda leaflets onto the threadiverse's front page every day. Regardless of their beliefs, this isn't some casual "uwu I just want to share my politics" couple posts a day on a toilet break thing; this is a dedicated, months-long, obsessive propaganda effort with hundreds upon hundreds of posts. I wasn't just being smarmy in my earlier comment about them having more time to include a source upon finding out they don't make these. The fact that they're not even creating these themselves makes it simultaneously more imperative they include a source (because I'mma be honest, chief, I don't think they're actually verifying almost any of this shit even for themselves) and even less onerous than it already minimally was.

* I always have to recognize that this is partly because it is much easier for me now to find and cite sources because I'm so much more practiced than I was. I keep that at the front of my mind when I see others' work and think it's undercited.