Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Can we please drop the nonsense that a URL is "no attribution at all" in an offline context? I've made this point before, but URLs do not suddenly become devoid of meaning just because you're using a medium where you can't follow a hyperlink. I could just as soon say that print media aren't acceptable sources for Wikipedia articles because you can't check them by following a hyperlink, it's the same logic. We allow references that adapt the conventions of other media to our context, we should allow people using other media the same privilege in adapting our conventions to their context.
The issue, from my point of view*, is that they do "suddenly become devoid of meaning" as soon as those links stop working. This can happen for a number of reasons, including article moves, deletions, and (<insert deity> forbid) wikipedia.org going away. There are no guarantees that I'm aware of that the links will continue to work for even a decade, let alone the full length of copyright (and, given the tendency to attribute authors even for PD works, afterwards).
On the other hand, a local copy of the author list (normally) stays accessible as long as the work does. [...]
Is this problem really exclusive to online references? I'd guess there is plenitude of author references to "[...] et al." (or none at all) out there that cannot be resolved without access to a catalog or the source material itself and become "devoid of meaning" at the latest when these re- sources are destroyed or not accessible.
If the shards of a coffee mug with a URL attribution get excavated 100 years in the future, I think a bit of research on the part of the archaeologists can be asked for.
Tim