Question

Mini-Tutorial: Citing Sources on QC

Answer 1

\({\bf{What~is~a~Citation?:}}\) It is an acknowledgement that a piece of information was not created by you, but rather, by somebody else. On QC, it is fine to look up the answer to a question, but it is NOT acceptable to just copy-paste what somebody else wrote without any credit or acknowledgement.

\({\bf{Why~Cite?:}}\) It is a sign of respect for the original content creator. If you write something on QC, under your own username, you are stating that it is your own work unless you explicitly say otherwise.

\({\bf{How~to~Cite:}}\) This can be tricky because we don't like posting links from other HW help websites. A way around this is to paraphrase the original answer so you aren't just copying word-for-word.

I will be using a math problem from brainly as an example of how to paraphrase/re-write the answer.

Answer 2

Notice how he defines the variable x as the base and 2x as the length. So, instead of copy-pasting his words directly, we can just say "x = base and 2x = leg"

he also says that "there are two legs, so we can add x + 2x + 2x = 50"

to paraphrase this we can say

"the perimeter is 50, which is the sum of the base and two legs, so x + 2x + 2x = 50"

he solves the equation, so you can simply write "solve the equation to get

x + 2x + 2x = 50
5x = 50
x = 10"

he says "plug this in for our leg length". another way to say this is "substitute 10 for x"

to get

leg = 2x = 2(10) = 20

Answer 3

See how I have given the same set of calculations without just copy-pasting his hard work.

Answer 4

If you aren't sure how to paraphrase the answer, you have a couple more options

1. take a screenshot, making sure to leave the name of the original author.
2. make sure to specify that this is not your original work. "Disclaimer: this is not my solution. The author is ________ from _________"

Answer 5

I will be using another example, this time from English.

Answer 6

so we know from the response that the answer is B (paradox) and the original author did an ok-ish job of explaining why. Instead of copy-pasting their response, we can try defining paradox another way

"a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true." from the online Oxford English dictionary (see how I'm still citing the source since I didn't write this myself). Then I can talk about how that applies to the question.

Answer 7

the reason it's a paradox is because the speaker seems impatient (if you are not too long, or basically, "if you will return shortly") but also seems ready to wait an entire lifetime.

but if you couldn't come up with an explanation of your own, again, you can screenshot/cite the original author + response, or just say "I looked this up from another HW site and they said paradox because it's a seemingly illogical statement/conclusion"

Answer 8

Anyway, that's the end of my tutorial, I hope it was helpful explaining how to do an informal citation on QC and why it's important. If you ever feeling like copy-pasting somebody else's work without credit, try to imagine how you would feel if you worked hard on something, and then somebody else took credit for what you did.

Not very nice, right? If you take nothing else from this tutorial, try to remember that feeling going forward.