On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:10 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@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 It introduces no more risks than the current system, and makes it easier for out of date bibliographic information to remain and be propagated.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%27t_repeat_yourself
-- gwern