I occasionally post this way when I realize part way through the original article that I have wasted my time reading an unsubstantiated diatribe that starts out sort of stealth-ed as a reasonably objective article (I don’t post this way about comments). My intention in such a case is to warn other readers who are not interested in that sort of thing not to waste their time. The last time I did this, I said:

"Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed?

The quote was taken from an article on environment problems in India. My problem with this is only that they said it without showing their work. If Marx said this, cite him. If it’s “well-know” prove it. Since they don’t bother to support this anywhere near the text of the claim, I don’t trust them anymore. I’m out, even if I was inclined to agree with them.

I agree in general that we shouldn’t be rude or dismissive, but I think we also need to retain the ability to call out unsubstantiated claims that purport to be common knowledge, or are poorly attributed, and to protect our time.

In the rare case that I regret reading something pretty long halfway through, I sometimes quickly post this way, get down voted, and hope I saved somebody some time. Anyone who wouldn’t read the article knowing that statement was in it can then choose not too. I guess if this is more annoying than reading a bad article, I could stop doing it or at least rephrase.

Rather than pedant, I'll just state I'm not buying, or state when someone's rhetoric jumped the rails.

When I'm feeling especially snarky, I'll use lmgtfy.

Yes, sorry—deleted it because IntronExon said it better and kinder.

Thanks for the kind words, although I also appreciated your way of putting it.

Presumably sourcing was requested for the claim that Mao-era officials habitually padded agricultural numbers, not that the famine itself occurred.

At this stage in my life I'm cynical to the point that I'd want a citation that a given government number from any regime in any time period was NOT manipulated for propaganda purposes.