On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:

But, as Laura comments, there may be a lot of citations clustered in a small part of the article, but few elsewhere. Also, the number of sources is relevant – I can cite the same source 1000 times in one article and that’s probably not quality either. I’d be inclined to reduce the influence of both multiple citations at the same point of the text (or very close in the text) as well as repeated citations to the same source. It’s not that either is bad but there should be some limit to how much they influence any conclusions.

The issue of volume of citations can also be subject specific. An article about Sudan women's national football team, which is a Good Article, has 26 total citations. Topically, this makes a lot of sense. Sioma, an article about a town in Zambia, has 23 citations and is a Start. I would expect an article about a town to potentially have more sources. There more well known a topic is, the more page views, it seems a sliding scale for sources should be used if trying to assess relative quality.

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