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How important reference is?
I am human not robot. I forget everything (I am dumb) but, human. It's OK to forget everything.
Usually, a person said in one of my comment that most of the time I don't add reference link. But, I always mention if I take anything from somewhere else. Like, a wise person said ...... I forgot his name, so how can I mention his name. Even, if that wise person not popular than, I can't find him in the Internet easily. That's why I always can't give resource/reference. Like, if you have read a documentation 10 years ago. Can you add that link now while writing something about that documentation? It will become very hard to find. Even, after searching that 1 day or, more than a day you may not find that link again also.
In Codidact Meta I had earlier wrote some questions and answers and, I mentioned that @ArtOfCode (just as sample) said .... If he didn't say that than, he would mention in comment. But, they never did (Note: I had mentioned wrong name once. Later I had edited maybe I forgot it also). But, a person said that I always say something without reference as I mentioned earlier.
I had noticed in SE that, some people added lot of links and saying that,"I took information from here". But, now that website is banned or, domain has expired. So, is the reference important? From my mind, I will say that Yes.
But, what if I lost that link. What if I can't find that anymore? If you think,"it's very important and, if I lost that information than, I shouldn't talk about that". Then, I will move back. I will stop.
1 answer
References give credibility to facts you present in a post. It is up to you as the post author how credible you want to make your facts, versus how much trouble you want to go thru for that credibility.
There are various factors that effect the credibility of a statement in the minds of your readers:
- Your reputation in the specific field.
- How widely know or easily corroborated the statement is.
- How plausible the statement is.
- Whether there is any known controversy in the area.
- Whether you have supplied evidence corroborating the statement, and then how plausible that evidence is.
- Whether you have supplied references corroboarting the statement, and then how plausible those references are.
Again, its up to you how much you want to bother making your statements more credible. If readers think your statements are not credible, then they may disregard anything else you say, ask for additional corroboration like evidence or references, and/or possibly downvote if they think you're making stuff up and essentially committing intellectual fraud.
For example, if your argument hinges on the fact that ducks can float on water, then merely stating "since ducks can float on water ..." is good enough. That fact is widely known and easily corroborated.
If, however, your argument hinges on rocks floating on water, then just "since rocks float on water ..." is going to get you ignored, downvoted, and laughed out of town. A reference showing that certain types of pumice or hollow rocks can float on water would help. The quality of the reference also matters. A peer-reviewed scientific paper classifying types of volcanic rocks is going to be a whole lot better than a web site that talks about how aliens live in volcanoes.
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