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A comment on Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious. Parent comment

Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by AnimalMuppet on Monday July 20, 2020 @12:23PM (#23899331)
> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed.

I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what Person 2 asked for.

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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by michaelmior on Monday July 20, 2020 @12:55PM (#23899654)
This is a good point although I would say that citations are still better than no citations as they at least give the basis for a reasonable discussion. Now that "evidence" for X has been cited, person 2 can come back and explain why the URL does not actually support X.
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by dane-pgp on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:10PM (#23899838)
> I've seen that here on HN, too.

Oh yeah? Give us an example then.

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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by agustif on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:11PM (#23899843)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899838
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by dane-pgp on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:31PM (#23900028)
Thank you. ;) That was the response I was hoping for.
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by sixstringtheory on Monday July 20, 2020 @02:33PM (#23900554)
It occurs to me, though, that many people may not even click that link, or its content might disappear* one day, and its mere existence in the conversation might let readers assign more weight to the argument.

* Thanks to the good folks at Internet Archive for working this problem.

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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by agustif on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:34PM (#23900052)
Hahaha no problem, I almost restrain myself from it so dang or other mods wouldn't think it's pointless. But couldn't help myself and is something I see in HN sometimes, like it's own internal meme... hahaha
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by hn_check on Monday July 20, 2020 @12:47PM (#23899565)
Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post.

HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked.

Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally connected nonsense [2] to add gravity to whatever else they were claiming as a credibility multiplier. They were playing the crowd [3], knowing that extraordinarily few will ever bother reading anything, and just want to browse past and give passing judgments.

This plays out on HN daily, and is spectacularly effective.

----CITATIONS-----

[1] - https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html

[2] - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-t...

[3] - https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote...

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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by vkou on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:30PM (#23900017)
Is it really so prevalent? I've followed up HN citations on topics I disagree with, and I've rarely found them to be rubbish.
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by hn_check on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:42PM (#23900119)
I've seen it enough to chuckle when I see it now. In any scientific or medical discussion it is rampant. People will cite things to support claims they are making, but the things they cite don't concur at all. They might be related, but the obligation is on the reader to go through and parse whether that giant research paper supports what they're claiming which is a task that extremely few will undertake.
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Re:Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious by enchiridion on Monday July 20, 2020 @01:17PM (#23899907)
It's an appeal to authority that short circuits the fast nature of HN. Most people are just skimming and some will vote based citations.

@dang what do you think of a rule against citation spam?

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