On 7/12/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, and not to mention that most newbies don't know how/are afraid to cite sources. I myself have reduced my editing quite a bit because I've never managed to find a way to quickly cite a source for some tidbit of info I'd like to add - sometimes I think the {{cite}} templates people insist on using hurt more than help because I have to keep on going to the template page to see what arguments to add.
I usually draft stuff offline, which gives me time to work out all the vagaries of formatting like this, but if I'm working directly on an article and I don't have time to rigorously format the citations, I just stick the bare URL or the book title or whatever inside <ref> tags and come back and fix it later.
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.