[uptime]

Count me mystified as to why there needs to be another format for citations.

There are orgs doing super heavy lifting like crossref and orcid to make discovery as data better while google etc make things worse by encouraging discovery as content without offering standard outputs.

At least in this case, Github will output standards in the UI, but it would be much better to encourage storage in those formats too, instead of adding one.

[thangalin]

There are at least six competing formats for citations and cross-references in Markdown documents[0]. At some point, I'd like to update my text editor[1] to use a "standard" syntax, but CommonMark hasn't proposed one and the forums are quite quiet on the subject.

[0]: https://talk.commonmark.org/t/cross-references-and-citations...

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[cycomanic]

I agree on why another format. Reading some of the discussion that someone posted when CFF was introduced I'm even more mystified, one of the arguments is that bibtex treats @software as an alias to @misc, which is weird because this seems to be an implementation detail of the what bibtex the program does not of the file format. In fact I believe using biblatex one can distinguish between the @software and @misc.

[zozbot234]

Search engines, including google, have endorsed discovery of structured data via the schema.org standards. They're not as focused on the issue as CrossRef or Orcid, but they're doing their part.

[benstrumental]

Obligatory related xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/

[avgcorrection]

These comments insisting on citing 927 are looking more and more bot like.

[bee_rider]

Quoting XKCD is mostly tired, but this seems to be an exceptionally fitting instance.

[avgcorrection]

Exceptionally fitting? I don’t even care about other xkcd references–927 is the only number that I remember by heart because it is the poster-child of overused, tired, boring, thought-terminating (again), stock responses to people or posts which are about doing things in a better way than established things which happen to have been around for a while, have a spec, and maybe that have multiple implementations; i.e. things that broadly have a standard! (And of course there are always multiple “standards” because no one anoints a king to implement the-one-true-solution—multiple people do it independently. And then we get to snicker about “multiple implementations”… i.e. multiple people having minds of their own. Humans do not possess some kind of insect-like hivemind.)

A lot of what people present on Hacker News are suggestions on how to do things better than we have collectively done up until now. And some people—apparently enough to populate every such thread—feel that they are adding to the discussion by trying to shoot the whole thing down by posting the “mandatory/obligatory” 927 link (note those words—they even tacitly admit that their point is wholly worn down and tired).

[benstrumental]

I feel similarly to the other commenters that xkcd references tend to get overused on HN, but it seemed too perfect to not reference in this case.

[ComputerGuru]

I think everyone's seen this by now and it's no longer necessary and certainly no longer funny or appreciated to keep plugging it in. Maybe find a less popular XKCD to "obligatorily spam" everywhere.

[simsla]

Not everyone [1].

There's a voting mechanism to decide if comments aren't relevant/contributing.

[1] https://xkcd.com/1053/

[avgcorrection]

I wouldn’t use that to justify deploying thought-terminating cliches.