On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:10 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that general or
summary Wikipedia
articles should be based upon the work done and cited in the more
detailed and specific articles. I really don't see the point in citing
everything in such articles twice--though it does mean we have to be
careful to actually have the references somewhere instead of assuming
that they're where they ought to be, or using circular references
I agree with Dr. Goodman. I have, in the past, referenced articles by
just linking to the article on the book I've been using & adding a
page number.
From my programmer's perspective, asking editors to
repeat reference
information in each place it is needed is complete and utter FAIL.
I
am hard-pressed to think of an even more massive violation of good
practices like the DRY Principle*.
Why should I have <ref></ref>s which are 20 lines of {{cite book}}
gunk, when I could just do <ref>[[Seeds in the Heart]], pg 172</ref>?
I just don't see it. It introduces no more risks than the current
system, and makes it easier for out of date bibliographic information
to remain and be propagated.
*
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Don't_repeat_yourself
--
gwern