On 7/19/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/06, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
There is no such thing as over-referencing. There is no such thing as "common knowledge" regarding encyclopedic content. If it feels "common knowledge", it may be lacking relevancy at least in a certain context.
Actually there are times when leaving something as "common knowledge" is better than providing a source. Recently there was a discussion at [[Evolution]] about a statement to the effect that evolution was considered to be responsible for the vast diversity of living things and whether to source that statement. It's very easy to find someone who has said that, but to source it to anyone in particular could be misleading because it implies that there is some special relationship between the idea and the source. If something is common knowledge it should only be sourced if the sourcing helps to establist the origin or development of the idea. Just sticking in a source at random can be misleading.
I think a better idea might be to make the general statement, but source it to multiple sources. If it's common knowledge then there will be plenty of sources saying the same thing; once you have enough reliable sources repeating a claim, you can simply state it generally.
Jay.