Ooh, an Old English grammar and history!

[conuly]

This day's efforts are turning out better than expected. *is all happy and cheery and huggy and all*

Anyway, must go clean. Djusk' a!

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

This site is inaccurate. It has blatently incorrect historical details for a kick off, and it's badly constructed.

There are two basic rules with web research in Linguistics:

1. Never trust an online source when (a) it doesn't use the IPA, and (b) the writer doesn't know the shortcut key for her umlout (not that I know where it is, but then, I haven't written a site on it)

2. Never trust an online source. At all. Ever.

[conuly]

1. Hey, it's fun. It's my journal. If I wanted to learn Old English I'd use the book I've got in my house.
2. That's nonsense. The NYTimes is online, I trust that. Well, reasonably. My Latin professor (must contact him) has an insane amount of information up on the internet about gladiators. He's considered an expert, so I trust that, even though it's online. The better thing to say is "don't trust sources until you yourself have verified what they say". Print media is often wrong as well, as you know, or should, but you don't say "never trust a book". Additionally, judging a book, or a website, by it's design is really a bad idea. You should judge things by their content, and by how well their information matches what you've found elsewhere in your research.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

You'll note that I stated that this was a rule of thumb, and also specific to linguictics. I've found the net to be very useful for sources in a number of other subjects. But in linguitics, beyong the baby-level basics, it's shit.

And I wasn't dissing the construction of the site in terms of design. By contruction I was referring to the point I made later: The author doesn't use the IPA, or uses it inconsistently. Very irresponsible. I would fail an essay that did that.

[conuly]

I didn't know that you were specifically refering to linguistics, and I apologise.

As for the IPA, *shrugs*. I really wasn't taking that site especially seriously. If I had been, it would've merited more than one line. Two lines? Whatever.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I guess I just wondered if I was wasting my time debating with you if you get your information from places like this. I'm gratified to discover that you don't rate it yourself, but I also feel that posting links like this is not very responsible - some poor naive student may cite this site in an essay one day, and you have contributed to his/her bad grade by propogating it...

[conuly]

*laughs*

Are you serious? If some poor naive student is citing my journal, or even trying to get serious information from links posted in my journal (without asking me first, which is really bad because I'd be the first to say I know nothing on that language), that's their own dumb fault. They'd be better served going to Google, which (surprise) is where I got the link from.

Maybe you don't understand the purpose of this journal. It's not to talk to people who are serious about the vast majority of things I talk about - I just don't know enough people like that. And it's not to help poor naive students who never learned what a proper source is, either. It's to share interesting and not so interesting thoughts with my friends, all of whom, I hope, know how to research a paper. If anybody else comes here and is stupid enough to think that my random links are a reliable source, that's not my problem. They'd just make the mistake elsewhere if I weren't here.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I wasn't suggesting that any linguistics student would trust a link from your journal. But from yours it finds its way to two others', to four others', to eight, and so on, and so forth. And eventually, it's highly seen, therefore highly available. I wasn't eferring to this essay specifically (anyone would see this was a bad source). I was more making a general point.

[conuly]

That, what, I should vet every last link before I post it in my journal? No. Don't be stupid. Anybody who gets themselves in trouble for citing a bad source that they picked up on the internet on a paper deserves what they get.