How do you deal with reference material such as discussions/tweet threads/forum posts/etc.?

myn_user

Hi,

sometimes I found ideas in a tweet thread, a forum (like zettelkasten.de) or in the comments to an article I want to keep, but I don't know how to handle the reference. Especially when there are ideas or insights in more than one answer to the opening post.

How do you handle reference material from tweet threads, forum posts etc. in your reference manager/Zettelkasten?

Do you reference only to the first post of the thread/discussion/etc. or do reference to each tweet/post/etc.?

And how do handle comments to an article/blog post?

Do you reference to the article or do reference to each comment?

Jeremy

For me, the most important part, especially with a post on a website, is to make sure that the material does not disappear. So I save the page to The Internet Archive first and then reference that link rather than the original.

Phil

If it's at all helpful, here's how I do it (this is an excerpt of a note):

learning_ran

I do not blog, so I do not need to worry about web pages which are
not reliable.

All the thoughts that need to be communicated with other people
online have its own life span. I can only make sure reference
material is reliable within my scope. If some links broken, and if
some readers interested in my post, and if I happen to know about the
breakdown, I would like to help.

Most of the time, the posts are just the evidences of my thinking
process. If I find ideas interesting on web pages, I will try to
convert them into my own words.

Sascha

I do it similar like @Phil. I just use the link as reference. Sometimes, I ask people if they want to be referenced with their full names if they use a pseudonym.

myn_user

@Phil: It is very helpful. Thank you.

@Phil and @Sascha: Do you handle these kind of references only in your zettelkasten or do you "store" them also in a reference manager?

ctietze

FWIW, for web links, I don't create entries in my reference manager. So I usually note the link at the bottom of a quote or a note.

# 202011091012 An example note
#zettelkasten

Web sources need citing. 

--- https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1470/how-do-you-deal-with-reference-material-such-as-discussions-tweet-threads-forum-posts-etc

When I would have multiple "throwaway" sources, in the past, I created ad-hoc references in the document with a longer time stamp to make them unique:

# 202011091012 An example note
#zettelkasten

Web sources need citing. [#20201110170100][]

I heard this before.[#20201110170111][]

[#20201110170100]: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1470/how-do-you-deal-with-reference-material-such-as-discussions-tweet-threads-forum-posts-etc
[#20201110170111]: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1337/some-other-post

But Sascha pointed out that this makes partial Zettel ID matches possible and it looks ugly, so he suggested to use a short wort and the date.

# 202011091012 An example note
#zettelkasten

Web sources need citing. [#20201110refmat][]

I heard this before.[#20201110other][]

[#20201110refmat]: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1470/how-do-you-deal-with-reference-material-such-as-discussions-tweet-threads-forum-posts-etc
[#20201110other]: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1337/some-other-post

It's the same with reference manager cite-keys: I like when there's some readable piece that hints at the book title (author & year just don't cut it for me because I don't know which book that is 99% of the time). With time stamps, the numbers are just noise in the text that I cannot easily match with the reference at the bottom. With a "slug" or word portion, it's much easier.

Phil

@myn_user said:
@Phil: It is very helpful. Thank you.

@Phil and @Sascha: Do you handle these kind of references only in your zettelkasten or do you "store" them also in a reference manager?

I handle them in the ZK itself and store the originals, where possible, in Zotero.

Sascha

@myn_user said:
@Phil: It is very helpful. Thank you.

@Phil and @Sascha: Do you handle these kind of references only in your zettelkasten or do you "store" them also in a reference manager?

Depends on the source.

GeoEng51

@Jeremy said:
For me, the most important part, especially with a post on a website, is to make sure that the material does not disappear. So I save the page to The Internet Archive first and then reference that link rather than the original.

Thanks for that, @Jerermy - I had worried on occasion about the longevity of web links. I didn't know about this archive. Appreciate you sharing it.