Love the clickbait title? But it’s true. If I read “it is assumed” and there is not even one footnote? I immediately don’t trust a writer. I don’t. It’s not that difficult to cite a textbook if it’s a foundation textbook.

It was when I was editing my own work and wanted to add my footnotes to cite where it was written/known/assumed and I realised: the writers I was footnoting? Didn’t footnote either.

So. I needed to work through their entire bibliography to try to work out where the when, how, who, how many knew/assumed this.

And even then I know for a fact writers don’t include all their sources. Because I’ve been edited out of my own research. Whoever uploaded all my edited images to commons did cite me, each image is credited. But my understanding of a manuscript is unique. And that was taken without credit.

So whoever reads the wiki entry has no idea why I came to my conclusions. And that’s the important part. So it’s presented as if “it is known” or “it is assumed” then no one landing on that page can criticise that, or add context to that, or say yes that’s right precisely because I’m not cited.

The point of research is to share, to add to our understanding. You can’t do that if you can’t even cite your sources. It erases the shoulders you are standing on.

So yes, that’s why I’ve pulled my essays because I’m standing on a network of shoulders of scholars. Even when I’ve only used their sources I’m including them either in a series of citations in the body of my text, or in further reading. I’m making sure that as I cite chain I don’t misrepresent writers, nor chop out context.

It’s the most time consuming part. Claims of new information either circle back to 19thC transcriptions or other secondary sources that are paywalled and/or geolocked. Which again strips the context and asks us to just trust an interpretation. And that does a massive disservice and is how assumptions hurt “u” and “me.”