#Ie most of my information about maritime history comes from my job not classes so I only say 'I work at a history museum' | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fantasy-costco · 2 years ago

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I think if a tumblr user says anything about history they should include Chicago style citations in the post. This is also true for other areas of study but I don't really know much about those so I only get filled with a blind rage when history posts are wrong. So that's what we need to fix first. For me.

#This is also true of my own posts and it's literally why #I try to only put history stuff in the tags instead of in proper posts #(so if I am wrong misinformation doesn't spread) and when I do I try to cite where I hot my information from #As best I can without doxing myself #Ie most of my information about maritime history comes from my job not classes so I only say 'I work at a history museum'#Not the specific museum I got that information from because that's not safe imo #Otherwise I'll say 'I got this from class' or 'I got this from a research projim working on' or a documentary or a book or etc etc #And if I say something like that you can always send an ask or a dm and I'll give you my sources!#But I don't include that stuff in actual posts because I'm at a weird point in my education #Where I'm technically trusted as a source of information for some people (working at the museum) but I still don't have my bachelors let #Alone the masters so I really don't feel comfortable positioning myself as an expert because I'm certainly not one #Which is why it makes me so frustrated when people who obviously have way less training than me (which is difficult! Like I said I won't #Even finish undergrad until this spring!) position themselves as experts and then just fucking #Lie about a field I care deeply about #Like on top of everything else I'm going into public history so it's about to be my job to clean up your mess. What the hell dude #This isn't about any specific post or person just the general trend of misinformation on this site #There is worse misinformation I know but I also truly believe that know history is necessary to making informed decisions about the present #And when you're mistaken about history or even worse completely rewriting it... That's bad #General rule of thumb if a history 'fact' 100%#Reflects your world view with no issues it's probably propaganda or at least not the whole story. With very few exceptions.#To quote Oscar Wilde 'the truth is rarely pure and never simple'#I made a lot of typos here don't worry about it. You get it.

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