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by bee_rider 1188 days ago
A bad-faith request for a source is just an attempt to waste the other person’s time. If a source is requested, it should be obvious or explained where the source fits into the over-arching argument, it might require just as much work on the asker’s side, to establish why it is necessary.

There’s also the risk that the request for a source just devolves into an argument about the quality of the source, which basically torpedos the discussion.

1 comments

> A bad-faith request for a source is just an attempt to waste the other person’s time.

Why not add a source to begin with, so others don't have to "waste" their time asking for one/looking one up?

With anything that's citing numbers, or statements by some official person or institution, that's imho a no-brainer.

Particularly as a Google search can yield wildly different results based on location, search history, and wording of the search request. So assuming everybody else can "Just Google it", is often not very useful.

> There’s also the risk that the request for a source just devolves into an argument about the quality of the source, which basically torpedos the discussion.

You call it a risk, I call it an opportunity to fact-check if the original claim is actually true, or just one of the many headlines that take liberties for sensationalism.

It's also an opportunity to establish a "base truth" that people can agree on as a premise, to start a discussion from.

That's not a given when people from often vastly different educational, socio-economic, cultural and language backgrounds interact with each other, as it constantly happens online.

> It's also an opportunity to establish a "base truth" that people can agree on as a premise, to start a discussion from.

Source?

;)