NOTHING TO CITE
The idea was published.
The trail disappeared.
The idea was published. Months later there is a page that has quietly changed, an updated timestamp where a publication date should be, and no version anyone can point at.
How do I make a web page citable?
Give it what a citation needs and then never move it: an author, a first-publication date that does not drift, a version, a canonical URL, and a reference a reader can copy. HAUSE carries that as one record projected onto four surfaces — the provenance line on the page, the reference in the formats people paste, citation tags in the head that reference managers read, and JSON-LD in the graph. A registered identifier can join later; it is infrastructure, not a prerequisite.
01 / EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE
Give the argument a date and an address.
THE ACTUAL CHAPTER RECORD / NOT A FICTIONAL PUBLICATION
The page, its head metadata and these exports use the same record. A revision never replaces the first-publication date.
02 / HOW YOU MEET IT
A claim that cannot be dated is a claim that cannot be defended.
You published first and cannot show it. The commits are real, but nobody cites a commit. The post is real, but its date now reads updated, because the template only had one date and something small was fixed in March. The idea turns up elsewhere, better dressed, and the trail back to yours is a screenshot and a memory.
03 / BENEATH THE SURFACE
Why the failure keeps returning.
The web's default publishing object is a mutable page with a single timestamp, and every content system encourages editing in place. Nothing in the ordinary stack distinguishes first publication from last touch, or a correction from a new version — so the one fact a priority claim rests on is the fact the system is least careful with.
TAKE THE RESPONSE WITH YOU
Give it a form.
Citation
The reference itself, in the formats people paste — plain, BibTeX, APA, CSL-JSON, all from one record.
Provenance
The publication record beneath the page — dates, version, identifiers, history — disclosed on demand, absent where nothing is registered.
Timeline
Dated entries, in order — history as prose, not a widget.
Answer
The question asked the way people ask it, answered first — one lift-able paragraph beneath the editorial surface, addressable by anchor.
PUBLISHED 31 AUG 2026 · REVISED 9 SEP 2026 · VERSION 1.1
CITEsite build fb3ec31 · built 2026-09-26
CITE THIS
Article · 1.1
Hay, C. (2026). Nothing to cite. In HAUSE — the problems (Version 1.1). hause.design. https://hause.design/problems/nothing-to-cite
An argument is a published object: dated, versioned, and referenceable — which is the subject of one of these pages and the practice of all of them.