Hector Martin

4chan mathematicians solved an interesting problem but nobody knows how to cite them. Amazing.https://twitter.com/robinhouston/status/1054637891085918209 …

I feel like you should be able (forced even!) to cite things that aren't journal articles- even blog posts- if they contributed to your body of work. But citing things that aren't prestigious reduces the perceived prestige of your own, which is a perverse incentive not to cite.

I used to think it was because as a quasiscientific community we highly value peer review but ML people are totally fine with citing papers on arxiv that haven't been accepted anywhere as long as you can replicate the results - I think perceived prestige nails it

Realistically we cite papers to acknowledge authorship and source, the idea that sources have to be from academic journals to lend prestige is entirely cultural. If the source is not that prestigious it's your job to argue they're right and lend weight.

I agree we should be able to cite whatever contributed to our work. But citing papers and journal also ensure that even years after, you can, theoretically, find the paper online or in you library. Blog posts and URL lacks this insurance.

While this is something I hadn’t considered, I don’t think the argument holds water. If online-only pubs like Arxiv preprints are acceptable to cite, then surely wayback machine links to resources should be acceptable as well?

Actually I did just that (giting stackoverflow via waynack machine) for my bachelor thesis. After some arguing with exactly the same short argumentation that popped up here... 1,0. That was 2013. In germany. So... just do it!?