In a message dated 8/11/2008 3:31:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
ansell.peter(a)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).>>
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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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