From: "Tony Sidaway"
<minorityreport(a)bluebottle.com>
Matt Brown said:
It is definitely the case that we'd rather a bad cite than no cite.
I strongly disagree. The only cites should be good cites. Bad ones are
misleading and wasteful. A good cite is easy enough to make: one that
accurately describes the cited material and relates it to the
subjectmatter. This latest fuss was, at bottom, over attempts by some of
us to
transform a bad cite (a statement that a UN source said something that we
didn't know it said) into a good one (a statement that a secondary source
gave a figure and attributed it to a UN source).
Um, no. The cite said exactly that already. The latest fuss was, at the
bottom, over attempts to exclude the cite altogether because one editor
didn't like it. And even after it was confirmed as factually correct, he
still made several attempts to exclude it on other grounds.
The former would have
misled the reader, the latter would have given the reader more accurate
information. As it turned out the cited UN source did not contain the
information, but another UN source did.
Um, no again. As it turned out the cited UN source did indeed contain the
information, but the author of the original source presented it in a
misleading way, though it made no difference to the article in question,
since it wasn't used that way in the article.
It's hard to follow exactly what is going on in these debates if you don't
read the relevant information carefully.
Jay.