<snip>
Would it be all that hard to provide a specific page reference as a
footnote. e.g. (hypothetical example) <ref>See, for example, J. Doe
/Origins of Somethingorother/ p.29, J. Bloggs /Somethingorother
explained p.60</ref>.</ref>? And there is no need to cite a source after
every fact - after every paragraph or subtopic would be fine. But no
citations is unlikely to result in a successful GA review, at least
unless/until the proposed changes to the GA criteria are accepted.
</snip>
Inline citations have now been added to Dido and Aeneas, easily enough
(there are no page numbers given, because Grove online doesn't have page
numbers, and this particular article is short enough to not have
sub-sections). The point is that if reasonable references are given, inline
citations should not be necessary for uncontroversial facts. If you look at
actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline
references, especially for generally accepted facts.
Please not that I am not against inline references, and I am a big fan of
creating good bibliographies for articles. I just think the current fashion
of requiring an inline citation for every little thing is not helpful or
productive. I think it lessens the usefulness of inline citations, because
they are splattered everywhere. It's not that I /can't/ do it, it's just
that I think
adding inline citations for each fact in an article misrepresents the nature
of the information. Generally, in actual academic artilces, inline citations
are used for comments, or controversial material. If the accepted reference
work is given in the references section, every piece of information taken
from that source shouldn't need to be cited to that source specifically.
User:Makemi