Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/Questions on citations and sources

There is a question here in the chat: "Why is the citation needed?"

The citation is needed because the encyclopedia here is saying that some person said a particular thing and is using quotes. If the encyclopedia -- the encyclopedia! -- says this person said it, we should be able to *show* that it's true. Not that it's true that Pelé is the greatest, but that it's true that this person *said* that Pelé was the greatest. If he said that, we should be able to show *where* he said that: that can be a link to a newspaper interview, it can be a link to a TV interview, wherever, whatever evidence we have that this person said that. It can even be his personal blog for showing that he said this. Now, some of you may be thinking: "What? I thought we couldn't cite blogs! We will talk about this more in module 4, but what you can and cannot cite actually depends a whole lot on what kind of fact you're trying to establish! If you're trying to establish that the capital of Nigeria is Abuja, it is not enough to cite someone's blog, but if you're trying to establish that Alfredo Di Stéfano said something, and you're citing Di Stéfano's own blog where he says it, that is enough to prove that he said it, because it's his own blog. It's a direct source for this quote. I hope that answers the question of why the citation is needed: We want our readers to be able to verify for themselves that what the encyclopedia told them this person said was actually said by this person.

And the next question on the chat: can you elaborate what you meant by "not encyclopedic"? Yes! The encyclopedia deals with facts, with factual information. It is a fact that Abuja is the capital of Nigeria. It is not a fact that Pelé was the greatest. That's a matter of opinion. Some questions are matters of opinion. For example: "what is the best flavor of ice cream?" You might say vanilla. I might say chocolate. Is one of us *definitely* correct. No; it's a question of taste. It's a question of personal preference. It is *not an encyclopedic question*.

There was another question: "Is citing one's blog not a primary source?" Yes, it is! I just said that if we want to establish that Alfredo Di Stéfano said something, and we're citing Alfredo Di Stéfano's own blog, that's good enough proof that he said it. But if you want to cite a fact like, I don't know, "the team Real Madrid won three World Cups", we would certainly not take his blog's word for it. We will want a more formal citation, like the FIFA official site, for example. So again, don't look for a single rule, like "blogs are bad". It's not 100% the case, right? Citation is actually context sensitive. We will have time to talk about it in module 4, so for now, that's all I'm going to say about it.

Another question: "I hope it is the same for bestsellers. For writers." Do you mean for citing the fact that some writer is a best-selling one? Here it would actually not be enough to take the the writer's own word for it, or their own website. Any writer can tell you "I am famous and I'm bestselling". And that's not good enough. You would need a more neutral and independent source for citing something being best-selling.

There's another question here: "If Pelé claims he was sick before a game and the source is his own blog, can we use his blog as a source?" You could use the blog as a source for supporting the statement: "*According to Pelé*, he was sick before the game." That can be supported with Pelé's own blog. But if you want to say, with Wikipedia's Voice, as though it's a fact Pelé was sick before the game, you cannot use his own blog as a source. Do you know for a fact he was sick? Are you his doctor? Have you seen the medical document? No. So you shouldn't state it in the encyclopedia's voice as definite, true fact. What *is* a fact is that Pelé *said* that he was sick. See the nuance here? Okay. Thank you for asking these questions. I'm glad to have covered them.