Sources of information - citations

[scsambrook]

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A great deal of highly interesting and detailed information is provided in this Collectors & Historica section, material which adds considerably to our shared pool of knowledge. Some contributors have clearly spent a great deal of time both doing original research as well as studying published literature, and one one cannot fail to be impressed by their wealth of data.

 

If those submitting dtails would provide the source of their information then the the utility - and the authority - of contributions would be still further enhanced. Only the briefest of citations would be needed - e.g. "Puts, Compendium, p. 123" or "Leitz brochure M3 x/63 Eng, p.4" for published materials, or "Interview with Mr Smith, January 2011" or - and most importantly - "Author's opinion/deduction/hypothosis (- or whatever...)".

 

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[antoninus]

There is little or no peer review on the interenet and once something erroneous is uploaded, it isn't easy to delete or correct it. Citations, even if its "I read somewhere", or "I made that up", would be a great help without any doubt.

 

David

[Pecole]

A great deal of highly interesting and detailed information is provided in this Collectors & Historica section, material which adds considerably to our shared pool of knowledge. Some contributors have clearly spent a great deal of time both doing original research as well as studying published literature, and one one cannot fail to be impressed by their wealth of data.

 

If those submitting dtails would provide the source of their information then the the utility - and the authority - of contributions would be still further enhanced. Only the briefest of citations would be needed - e.g. "Puts, Compendium, p. 123" or "Leitz brochure M3 x/63 Eng, p.4" for published materials, or "Interview with Mr Smith, January 2011" or - and most importantly - "Author's opinion/deduction/hypothosis (- or whatever...)".

 

Do others also think this would be worthwhile?

 

I fully agree, and personally try to quote a precise reference as often as possible.

[lars_bergquist]

Unfortunately, not only the Net but also Leica literature in general is full of factoids that get repeated as revealed truth because someone else has said so. Providing a source for an erroneous statement does not make that statement any more correct.

 

Writers also seem to be capable of generating factoids all by themselves. The only ones of my Leica books that are not heavily annotated and corrected in pencil, are those by Lager. I raise a Pilsener to him!

 

The old man from the Age of the Encyclopedias

[scsambrook]

Unfortunately, not only the Net but also Leica literature in general is full of factoids that get repeated as revealed truth because someone else has said so.

This is, sadly, true and not confined to writing on the Leica. One of the reasons is that past scholarship was frequently far less rigorous than it should have been - assertions went into print without supporting source references or attribution and in the absence of critical review passed into the realm of 'faction'. Eventually, as standards of of scholarship in this field become more generally rigorous, much of the literature will, hopefully, be re-written. In saying this I take encouragement from the relatively recent great improvements in the standard of writing in another of my fields of interest, the history of firearms.

 

Providing a source for an erroneous statement does not make that statement any more correct. [ , , , ]

 

Absolutely correct, but the reason for providing source references is not to demonstrate 'infallible' truth - rather it is to let readers see where the author obtained his or her data and allow them to review the supporting material and perhaps to track back along the 'audit trail' to an orginal source. The present lack of such audit trails in no excuse for today's scholars to perpetrate the sloppy standards of yesteryear, no matter where their work may be published.