Citing Sources: Best Practices

Citing Code Sources: Best Practices in Sololearn

What?

What are sources anyway? What does that even mean?

Say you have a project you really want to do. It could be anything -- baking a cake, building a birdhouse, or even writing a novel. Chances are, you're going to search for recipes or instructions or knowledge to help you create it. Coding is the same! Some incredible people in Sololearn's community (and the coding community at large) have poured hours of their time and talents into writing code. It's natural to see what they've built and wish to modify it, expand on it, or even just figure out how they did it. It's actually a great way to learn!

When you do that, that becomes your source, and you need to cite it. All that means is making sure you include credit and links back to the sources you used within your creation! That's it really. It's a way to be sure that you are thorough and truthful in your work.

Why?

Why does citing sources matter?

The internet is built upon the work of many, many people! It's important to recognize where our inspiration, motivation, and knowledge come from. Citing someone else's work acknowledges the effort they put in and gives others access to the same useful resource you had. When people can see what you adapted, they can also see your innovation, your creativity, and your approach to code design.

By correctly citing sources, you not only respect the work and efforts of others, but you respect your own work. Acknowledging that you had help (or inspiration, etc) does not diminish what you've done. It proves that you know what to look for, that you can work with others, and it can help you find those resources more easily in the future.

How?

Before we start on how, remember to read through Sololearn's Terms of Use, Content Creation and Community Guidelines, and Privacy Policy. The legal stuff is within those. This code just goes into detail about why it's important and gives you some practical ways to credit your sources.

With that out of the way, let's list some key tactics!

Credit within the code.

The best way to credit a code is as a comment inside your code. As an example, you can use "/* inspired by [Name of person]'s [link to code] */" at the top of your CSS block or "# original code by [Name of person]: [link to code]" in Python. Each language has its own way to add comments and they won't affect the functionality of your code!

Add credit in a comment on your code.

You can also link to the original code in the community comment area on your code! That's be a great place to talk further about how you utilized, changed, or built upon from the original code.

Leave the auto-credits intact!

When you copy another user's code within Sololearn, we auto-populate a "by username" comment to make it easier. Leave those intact, or expand upon them with the outright link and/or specify which components are taken from their original code.

A code that is copied with no changes whatsoever should not be made public.

If you found a particular code inspiring or neat and you want to mess around with it but not actually change anything -- that's fine! However, in those cases it is not your code and therefore should not be published.

For some examples: I like the way Rik Wittkopp credits in the Finding Santa code, and BroFar has some great examples in the Plagiarism Warning code.

Further Resources

As I said earlier, this code is a guideline for some best practices when citing your sources on Sololearn. If you'd like to learn more about the legalese, the various "fair use" or other copyright information, I've listed out some good explainers and links below.

Intellectual Property: or "IP", the short version is that it stands for the things we humans create with our brains! Any and all of those things, in fact. Check out the wiki page for a much better and more complete definition.

Creative Commons license & attribution: if you've seen the term "Creative commons" floating around, this is where to find more info! Essentially it's a way for creators to let other people use their intellectual property while retaining the credit for it. Aspiring game developers? This is good stuff to know.

MIT Licensed: something you'll see a lot, especially on codepen codes. MIT has some cool stuff to allow for copyright fair use, but basically it means you still need to credit the codes you've built off of.

Codepen's Terms of Service: speaking of codepen, be sure to read through their Terms of Service if you use it. They basically have the same rules we do, but it's stated in different ways so it may help further your understanding.

Public Domain: another term you may see around is "public domain." It doesn't come into play as much in coding, since it refers to Intellectual Property that has existed for so long the copyright expired. It's still very cool stuff to know though.

Key Takeaways

So what does this all mean?

It means it's time to get coding, have fun, and learn!

We've made it easy for you to be able to share your codes, peruse other's codes, and even be able to copy them so you can mess around with how it works. Hopefully now you have a better understanding of why and how to do so ethically and in a way that properly respects everyone's contributions. Presenting someone's code as your does nothing to further your learning journey, and is in fact more likely to impede it.

When in doubt, you can always ask for help or clarification! Sololearners come in all levels of experience and knowledge, and there are so many amazing people here able and willing to help as you navigate the seemingly impossible terrain of the coding world.

You made it through all of this? Congrats! Have a pizza.

Eataly Las Vegas by Sarah Stierch

Please feel free to use these guidelines to help you make the best decision on how to credit those codes that inspire you, and know that there are many other ways to credit well. These are just a few of the ways that work best and easiest on Sololearn.

Happy Sololearning!

Citing Sources in Sololearn