[Air-l] How to cite blogs?

Frank Schaap architext at fragment.nl
Thu Oct 2 07:09:08 PDT 2003


radhika gajjala wrote:
> amazing how hierarchies always emerge...

*grin* thanks, I needed that.

ren reynolds wrote:
>> Roughly following Harvard style, here is an example of what I have used
>> in the past, attempting to analogise between the different parts of the
>> hierarchy had sort of a paper within a journal:
>>
>> Dibble, J. (2003). 'Scammed! (Saturday, July 05, 2003)', Play Money
>> Diary of a Dubious Proposition, [Blog], Available at:
>> www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/, Date accessed: 03/08/03.

Okay, I'm not really familiar with the Harvard style you mention, but why 
would the date be part of the blog post title?
Secondly, why would you have to mention that /Play Money/ is a blog? 
(Secondly and a bit: why not use "weblog," that seems somewhat more official 
than blog. The makers of MovableType recently changed all occurances of 
"blog" in their documentation to "weblog" to reflect this sensibility.)
Thirdly, why not use the full URL for pointing to that individual blog post? 
Now I have to go hunt it down myself from the index page instead of 
cutting/pasting the link.
IMHO, working from the APA style, it would look something like this (slashes 
indicate italics):

Dibbell, J. (2003). Scammed! /Play Money: Diary of Dubious Proposition./ 
Retrieved 3-3-2003 from: 
http://www.juliandibbell.com/playmoney/2003_07_01_playmoney_archive.html#105742751946738538

Right, I can see now why using the full URL could be a bit of a problem, but 
   that can't be helped really, I think.

>> As to ethics of citation, I see blogs just like any other web site, and
>> hence different from listserves which often have stated quotation rules.

Apart from referring to weblogs, I referred to Usenet newsgroup postings and 
not mailinglists. Mailinglists are in principle closed environments, while I 
would argue that newsgroups are fundamentally open forums.


Frank.





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