[WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

[jayjg]

On 8/21/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is all spelt out on policy pages, but I can't find
> it clearly enough.  I'm wondering how self-contained articles
> need to be with regard to citations.
>
> Take an example (but please answer on the principle and
> not on the example).  Suppose an article has this:
>    [[Babe Ruth]] hit 60 home runs in the 1927 season.
>
> Now someone comes along and slaps a "citation required"
> tag on it.  Someone else takes off the tag on the grounds
> that the WP article on Babe Ruth is linked right there and
> has copious citations that covers this fact.

Often the problem is that the Babe Ruth article doesn't have a
specific citation for this either.

> Who is right?  We aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a
> source, but I always took that to mean that Wikipedia is
> not an -ultimate- source for anything, not that a wikilink
> can never be an adequate way to show where the source
> for something can be found.

There's an easy solution; if there's a citation in the Babe Ruth
article, then copy it into the other article. Keep in mind that
Wikipedia is a Wiki, so you don't know, at any given time, whether or
not the article on Babe Ruth will actually have that citation in it.
Putting in the other article means you don't have to rely on the Babe
Ruth article, and, if it ever somehow gets deleted, there's still a
history that one can go back to to find and restore it.

Jay.