Links and Summaries

You should actually visit links in articles.

That was an abrupt intro, but brutal is best. Because links are like footnotes, or rather like end notes since unless you look them up, you can't read them. And end notes are a notoriously abused form of information-passing. It's very easy to stick data in an end note, knowing full well that most readers won't bother to look at the note and discover you're being disingenuous at least, or outright taking a quote out of context and lying about it at most.

In books, there are often citations in notes which point you to chapter and verse, but since they don't actually give the chapter and verse, you have to go out of your way to read it. Internet sites aren't like that. If they give a citation to another site, you can click on the link. And you should.

How do you know that what the person is saying about the link is true? Unless they quote it extensively (which I try to do because it keeps the information around to be read, but even then) there's a fair chance you are simply taking the author of a criticism at his or her word. Why should you do that?

Sure, there are times when you can't click the link. Maybe it's a site which is not work safe, and you're just reading a review of it. Maybe the content doesn't matter, and you're just reading a snarky commentary on it. But there's a fair chance that you should at least look at the link. Why trust the commentator? Everyone has a bias.

If you genuinely want to know what a person said, you need to read it for yourself, not some other person's summary of it. It's the first (well, maybe not the first, but an important one) rule of historical research: go to the source. And oftentimes, the person being criticized has some valid points to make, and while you might not agree with them in toto, there's a fair chance you might take something out of it. You shouldn't ever agree with everyone completely. Not even commentators who link to other people.

And especially not me. I'm crazy. Don't agree with me.