Majorly wrote:
This is often stuff from a long time ago, when things
like verifiablity were
probably not as well enforced as today. People would probably copy stuff
from other places, or what they personally knew (original research) but not
give a source (or, they didn't research properly and simply cited another
Wikipedia article which was done in the same way.) For an article like
Italy, I personally think it is vital such source don't exist. It's one of
our "Vital articles" and an article that should be on every language
Wikipedia. It's a bad choice for an article to have such bad sourcing.
It is wrong to equate what someone personally knew with original research.
I see nothing wrong with citing other Wikipedia articles in some
circumstances. In some cases a link to an other-language wikipedia may
be suitable because the material does not yet appear on the English
language version. Like other web references such citations should
probably be dated to allow for the fact that the material may have later
been removed from the article.
Ec