I wasn’t sure whether to put this in ATMB or GQ. How do I (can I?) cite a post on the SDMB in MLA format?
Would this help? An example for citing an online post is a bit of the way down.
Thanks Ice Wolf, that works.
MLA is a great way to go, because it covers most situations. Different publishers use different styles, of course; a populist magazine like Time will differ from an archived scientific publication like Science. Our own in-house style (scientific jouirnal) is as follows:
Of course, since this is a message board and not an individual Web page, this might not work for your exact purpose. I think if someone were to include a reference to a post made on a message board on a scientific paper I was working on, I’d style it as follows:
Or something like that. It doesn’t come up much in my line of work. 
On the other hand, I can’t say that the SDMB would be an acceptable source for academic work. Would you cite “personal communication from some random anonymous stranger on the street”? About the only cite that would carry any weight would be a secondary cite to a reputable source (say, www.nytimes.com), but even then, as with all secondary cites, it’s best to track down the original and cite that. Or, if you know that the poster is an expert in his/her field, contact him/her privately and get a cite using his/her real name and credentials.
Something to consider.
It depends on what you’re citing the SDMB or other message board for though, Scarlett. I cited another message board that’s not too popular around here when I was writing a paper on cultural justifications for genocide and I wanted a verbatim example of a certain line of thinking and proof that it was alive and well today. I wasn’t citing the post as an origin or explanation of a theory, just in support of a theory. And my professor obviously didn’t mind my citing a message board because I wound up getting a 95 on the paper.
Hey dantheman, it’s good to see my twin is back.
Fair enough, Asylum. I just wanted to warn against relying on iffy sources for facts.
A personal communication is acceptable in all scientific/academic journals. It’s been my experience that when an editor (and in scientific circles, he would be the one responsible for accepting or rejecting a paper) examines a paper, he/she rarely - if ever -examines the references. (I wish this weren’t the case, as it opens up the whole subject of academic fraud, but it seems academia has gotten along just fine without an extra layer of management.)
It then becomes the responsibility of the copy editor of the manuscript to determine the worth of a reference. Now, this does not mean he/she goes through each reference and makes sure each is valid; rather, the editor can question a reference that seems out of place or unusual.
The styling of a personal communication - also known as a private communication - is as follows for us:
In fact, it may make more sense to style a message board post in this manner than as an electronic reference, because you’re trying to reference the views of the poster, not the organization on whose board the post was made. However, the downside is that academia rarely accepts non de plumes in references… 
PS: Thanks, Asylum. How nice of you to say. Didn’t realize my absence was noticed.
True. My advisor once published a paper with a reference to “M. Scott, private communication”. As in Montgomery Scott. As in Scotty. Of course, the information from that “reference” was nothing of consequence to the real work in the paper, and it’s quite possible that the referee recognized the reference and left it in because he liked the joke.
I’d put $1000 on the referee’s not even looking at the references, let alone coming to any conclusions on it.
Most of them are very, very good at peer reviewing, but hardly any - if any - look at the references, except perhaps in a glance to see if there are in fact any. Sometimes they’ll look at them to see if the author cited his own earlier work over and over, or if the referee had a specific author’s work in mind and wanted to see if this author cited it. But other than that, they couldn’t possibly spend less time looking at that portion of the paper. Their time is very limited (they’re volunteers, after all).