---- This post is shamelessly ripped from an abonded blurty of mine own device ----

As some of you may know I often write essays (who'd have thought in an arts degree?) and recently did a rather large essay where most of my time was done refencing. So I have come up with a solution to this problem: We adopt the medieval view on scholarship. This means that everyone else should know where your ideas came from, and you shouldn't have to reference. Now for the longer version of this theory.

Many of you know I have a fascination for the middle ages, and I while I harbour no delusions about our time being somehow inferior, I do occassionaly look back to the "good old days" and wonder what we could salvage from their way of life, and during the course of putting together my latest essay I came to the conclusion that one such thing is the way in which medieval scholars wrote their works.

You see back in the middle ages they didn't really bother with footnotes as we know them, instead they just simply assumed that individual reading their work simply *knew* who they paraphrasing, taking ideas off, or quoting. Perhaps this reflects a society with a much smaller pool from which to draw references, but I think it is a rather nice little idea, especially considering that University markers often claim to know where people will have plagiarised from if someone does indeed plagiarise. So why not hold them to their word? If they know the best sources, and many of the worse ones, why even bother referencing? I'm sure if I quote some bull-shit marxist rant in a European Studies essay they could figure out I was using Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto or some other form of marxist rubbish.

Perhaps this is an easy way out, or a defense of lazyness, which I suppose it is, but hey, who really cares? This little rant is about what would happen if we held people to what they say - namely academics. Mind you I'm not too keen on academics (esp one who was in the Philosophy Dept at the University of Sydney - the blood-sucking wretch that he is. May he suck the diseased scrotum of a scrofulous, herpes-infected donkey) so I guess my POV is a little biased. But yes, back to the main rant, which I seem to have finished. I hope you enjoyed it. Spout it at your lecturers, tutors or what have you. I'm sure they won't be impressed that you actually think they should know what they are on about.

A shameless ripper off-erer of his own writings,

Pazuzu.

Interesting concept there Pazazu, but you pretty much countered your "argument" with this line:

There are so many texts on the one subject these days, that it's practically impossible to pick complete plagiarism from what is supposed to be an "original" work, thus footnotes.

And the whole thing about teachers "knowing" if something is plagiarised or not, it's more of a change in your personal writing style that they notice, rather than knowing the exact excerpt you just ripped off from someone else.

I think footnotes have more function than solely to ward off plagiarism. I always took them as a reference to their original material for others, so that if they find the information borrowed useful, they know where it came from and can therefore easily track the entire text for their own reading pleasure.

Manny, that is very true, but I've found that for any one subject it is hard to find more than 10 good books on it. For instance the essay I was ranting about was one on Medieval Persia (known nower days as Iran for those who don't know) and it's effect on the early Islamic empire, and there is just so little writing on it that I am pretty certain that my lecturer would know exactly where I got most - if not all - of my facts from. I suppose what I was railing against in this post was writing a 2000 word essay in 3 hours, and having to take 5 hours to fully reference it.

Pazuzu, A Return to Medieval Academics, Sydney, Evolution Boards, 2004.

I think this is a good idea, we should contact the unis about.

btw. Hi Borg!! Topic 99! :D

Damn you g1ggy you did it to me again!!! *shakes fist* :P

Argh! I didn't even notice until Pazuzu referenced himself with "2004" as the date.