Yay! References!
No, it isn't a post made entirely out of links and footnotes and references. I still have a modicum of decency and sense left, regardless of what my writing might imply. I've had a couple of goes at writing posts about why I do so much referencing on what is a pretty much unread blog, and I could never really put my finger on it. In some ways, I think it's related to some of my thoughts on analysing situations which I discussed last week. This post is really to fill in between that rather jovial take on the thing, and a related rant that I wrote but a few days later.
The title, however, is more inspired by those lovely people who've seen fit to mention this blog. I'd like to thank them all for their support again, and I hope that my readers have started keeping an eye on the blogs of all the ICSF Editors, past and present
Referencing happens in my news and views posts because they are news and views posts - I combine facts with opinion, and I feel that I owe it to my readers to be able to work out what is fact, what is my opinion, and what might be the opinions of other's which I have read. I opened the post on the fact that people believed what they saw some friend say, so it seems logical that I have to encourage you all to not believe what I say because I say it.
It's actually something that worries me. I've posted a total of six comment on Slashdot (as an Anonymous Coward), all of them well written, and appearing to be balanced and in the tone of someone who actually knows what they were talking about. All six were modded +5 Insightful. All six were completely and utterly wrong. My favourite was my explanation of why goto statements are bad practice in code - that they have side effects on register assignments which could lead to arbitrary behaviour. I also managed to point out in the same post that all low-level stuff is done entirely with goto (branch) statements. Probably, most people walked away from that comment thread with the wrong idea, because the three replies pointing out I was wrong were written as though they were trying to point out that I was an idiot, and lacked comparable decorum; thus, they didn't get modded that high.