Dear Admin Team, I'd like to propose a new "citation" tag similar to existing "quote". How does it work? Very similar to existing quote but the rendering is slightly different (another formatting style) as marker to signify that the embedded text is excerpted from a linked article rather than a post in IL. e.g. Let's say I'm writing about William Hogarth's Satire on False Perspectives. I don't want to reword but want to paste verbatim from wikipedia. I could do something like below [citation, link = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire_on_False_Perspective] The most immediately prominent errors are the first three or four: The man in the foreground's fishing rod's line passes behind that of the man behind him. The sign is moored to two buildings, one in front of the other, with beams that show no difference in depth The sign is overlapped by two distant trees. The man climbing the hill is lighting his pipe with the candle of the woman leaning out of the upper story window. The crow perched on the tree is massive in comparison to it. [/citation] I've seen members prefacing such citations with "wiki says" , "as per wikipedia", "as per this article", double-quotes, highlighted font to distinguish from their own writing. Would a new tag to capture this functionality make sense? Besides, due credit is restored to the original article with less fuss using attributive link. Adding members who have may vested interest in this proposal to chime in. @ashima10 @butterflyice @Gauri03 @jskls @justanothergirl @kaniths @Laks09 @PepperPot @PriyaSrini @Rihana @Shanvy @sokanasanah @Viswamitra @Jey, tagging you as well.
It's a no brainer. We've needed something like this for a long time. The greater challenge will be to create a forum culture where members realize that providing citations isn't something that only nerds and academics do. Providing credible sources to back up claims elevates the discourse and is the cornerstone of a rational debate. Personal anecdotes are not data!
I think it'd be a useful feature. When I quote text from outside, I either indent it, use a slightly different font color or put it in quotes. A concern would be posts where the citation text is the major part of the post. Or, posts where the text is only citations with one original line from the poster.
