Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Consider the source!

Blessings Darlings!

As all y'all know - my blog isn't scholarly.  It is full of my opinions, UPG, and a lot of rants.  That said - if I cite hard numbers, info on Paleo Pagan stuff, etc - while I often give the references, if I don't I'm still able to cite my sources if asked.  As often as possible (paywalls get in the way) what I have are PRIMARY sources (or translations of them) for all of them.

In other words - the material I comment/rant about/share is from a primary source.  My commentary is a secondary source of information.  And I TOTALLY encourage all y'all to ask me for sources if you want to check things out/look further into the issue/etc.  I don't bogart my sources.

Online, if I share things from sources other than 'me' - like art work, quotes, etc - I will ALWAYS give credit to the person who created them.  If I think that art is good enough that others should enjoy it, too, then it would be a shitty thing to do to NOT give credit to the artist, and not let folks look at more of the artists work, and make it harder for folks to actually BUY things from the artist so the artist can keep creating. 

If I share stuff from a Blog, there will be a link back to the blog. 

Okay - if I use a commonly quoted line from a movie, I don't usually use citations.  "Bye Felicia" doesn't get a (from the movie "Friday", <year of movie> written by <etc>) citation.

Citing sources matters.  Because as all y'all say you know already - not everything posted online is true, or comes from a source other than UPG.  And some folks' UPG is stupid.  By the way - you can quote me on that.  And I can provide examples.  The examples will be Primary Sources.

Knowing the source of any material - whether it is a primary source of ancient lore, a primary source of scientific research (hard to get - often behind pay walls, best accessed at college libraries, and may have the holy grail - the raw data! - included), a secondary source like something written by someone who read the article, a tertiary source like someone who read a press release about the scientific research then wrote a newspaper article about it, etc lets you know how many times the information could have been misinterpreted and how many times there could have been important things left out. 

More on this - the really RANTY part - next blog!

Frondly, Fern

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