In a message dated 8/11/2008 3:31:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time, ansell.peter@gmail.com writes:

Good point. I do the "as cited by" thing for published papers, but for wikipedia with its mix of anonymous, and pseudonymous users, and its continual evolution, it just doesn't look right to say "as cited by Wikipedia user 204.23.144.2 at 13:00 UTC on August 12, 2008" (if you even feel like taking the time to figure out which user it was that actually put the citation in given how many revisions are on many articles).>>

---------- I don't think you really have to go that far. But I would say something like "Hippo of Carthage is supposed to have said 'I've had enough' right before he died of food poisoning" (''Annals of Tacitus, Book 12'' as cited by Wikipedia "Hippo of Carthage").

It would be a bit complex if we felt we had to actually cite the individual author of a polygamous work, instead of the work cited. I think a citation of that sort should be sufficient. It would be at least better than presenting a situation where it would *appear* that you yourself read Tacitus directly.

Now IN THOSE CASES where you merely spot that one source cites another one, and then you *actually do* read the underlying source seperately, it's probably more common to simply cite that underlying source. Personally I don't like that, but I'm sure it happens. It detracts from the effort the author(s) went to, merely to collect and extract the sources relevantly, and makes it appears like you yourself made that effort.

For example, I'm today working on a new biography of Henry Fonda, from scratch. I'm sure that bits and pieces of the *new* data I find will worm their way into here-and-there without citing my work, but its fairly discourteous to approach sources in that fashion imho.

Will Johnson

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