[WikiEN-l] Citation obsession

[Phil Boswell]

C.J. Croy wrote:
> 
> On 4/29/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I would say that is bad sourcing. It should be possible to find one
>> source for all that information and just cite it at the end of the
>> paragraph. Combining lots of sources like that ends up bordering on OR
>> and can introduce bias.
> 
> But if you only have one cite in a paragraph someone will slap a
> [citation needed] on individual facts within the paragraph.  There's
> no way in Wikipedia to differentiate between "This cite covers the
> entire paragraph" from "This cite covers this sentence" without
> leaving a comment in the code.
> 
> 
The horrible habit of moving the citation *outside* the sentence punctuation
does not help.

: This is a fact[1]. This is another fact[2]. These two facts and indeed
another one can be supported
: by a single reference. [3]

See, that's easy enough to tell that the first two citation markers each
apply to the sentence in which they are embedded, and not too difficult to
infer that the last applies to the whole paragraph. Sadly it seems to have
become the norm to move the markers *after* the concluding punctuation, this
leaving it open to interpretation as to whether they might actually to the
**following** sentence.

HTH HAND
-- 
Phil
-- 
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