Recently on foundation-l, in the Oral Citations thread has been the beginning of a conversation that is far too important to be relegated to a few back-and-forth responses.

Manish and I have submitted for a community fellowship to formalise the discussion around an expanded role of alternate citation techniques, and to try and tease out any consensus that may exist. The project's name is "InCite" in trying to reflect it's value-neutral position. If you'd like to see a serious and constructive approach to solving this sensitive and controversial problem then please endorse it's acceptance on meta visiting the link [1]. Max

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/InCite