Editing Reffer madness (section)

== asides ==

<brassratgirl> _sj_: any citation scheme doesn't fix the having access problem


=== on why this is useful ===
<solrize> is this something anyone has cared about in the past N centuries of academic publishing?
<solrize> i mean usually one just explains in words how the ref was used
: <brassratgirl> solrize: sure, but there arent' that many people who are actually interested in citation styles
: <_sj_> solrize, it has generally been considered charming that being a good scribe requires massive amounts of time and unique access to exotic journals


<_sj_> brg, I would say that this style standard shoulde xplicitly push for clarity in the cite for two reasons.
: 1) aggregation : you want to be able to combine a number of cites together, or combine cites through a chain of documents this is less possible if your aggregator has to parse natural language to make outall of the possible meanings your citing sentence may have
: ... 
:  2) for parallelism : if you rely on natural language to define what you mean by a cite it will be more different among citers than if people have to explicitly pick a style. a style that says "I cite this to indicate I think it is wrong" is explicitly different from a "I cite this because it influenced me [negatively]"


=== on irc ===
For discussions like this we really need a tangents/talk channel and a get-shit-done channel.
: every chan should have a get-shit-done channel.  what to name it?  sj
:: ## tends to mean off-topic  -jgay
::: so what means more-on-topic?  sj