Wikipedia:Citation overkill
This is an essay on the Verifiability policy and the Citing Sources guideline. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: When citing material in an article, it is better to cite a couple of great sources than a stack of decent or sub-par ones. |
Wikipedia policy requires all content within articles to be
One cause of "citation overkill" is edit warring, which can lead to examples like "Graphism is the study[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] of ...". Extreme cases have seen fifteen or more footnotes after a single word, as an editor desperately tries to shore up one's point or overall notability of the subject with extra citations, in the hope that their opponents will accept that there are reliable sources for their edit. Similar circumstances can also lead to overkill with legitimate sources, when existing sources have been repeatedly removed or disputed on spurious grounds or against consensus.
Another common cause of citation overkill is simply that people want the source they've seen to be included in the article too, so they just tack it onto the end of existing content without making an effort to actually add any new content.
The purpose of any article is first and foremost to be
Not only does citation overkill impact the readability of an article, it can
Misuse to prove an obvious point
It is possible that an editor who is trying to promote an article to
Notability bomb
A common form of citation overkill is adding sources to an article without regard as to whether they support substantive or noteworthy content about the topic. This may boost the number of footnotes and create a superficial appearance of notability, which can obscure a lack of substantive, reliable, and relevant information. This phenomenon is especially common in articles about people and organizations.
Examples of this type of citation overkill include:
- Citations lacking significant coverage – Citations which briefly namecheck the fact that the subject exists, but are not actually about the subject to any non-trivial degree.
- Example: A source which quotes the subject giving a brief soundbite to a reporter in an article about something or someone else.
- Citations that verify random facts – Citations which don't even namecheck the subject at all, but are present solely to verify a fact that's entirely tangential to the topic's own notability or lack thereof.
- Example: A statement of where the person was born referenced to a source which only verifies that the named town exists; a statement about a charitable organization is sourced to a source that talks about the subject the organization is interested in, e.g., hunger or homelessness or art, but does not mention this charity at all.
- Citations to work that the article's subject produced – A series of citations that Gish gallop their way through a rapid-fire list of content which doesn't help to establish notability.
- Example: An article about an author sourced to works they have published; an article about an artist sourced to songs that they released.
- Citations that name-drop reliable sources – Citations which are added only to make it seem that 'this topic was covered by X', rather than to actually support any substantive content about the topic.
- Example: A citation to a source which is cited to support a statement in the Wikipedia article that merely says "The Times published an article about them" or "Chris Celebrity was interviewed by Big Show", instead of supporting any encyclopedic content about anything stated in that source, such as "In 2019, The Times said they were at high risk for bankruptcy".
Some people might try to rest notability on a handful of sources that do not contribute, while other people might try to build the pile of sources up into the dozens or even hundreds instead – so this type of citation overkill may require special attention. Either way, the principle is the same: Sources support notability based on what they say about the topic, not just the number of footnotes present. An article with just four or five really good sources is considered better referenced than an article that cites 500 bad ones.
Overloading an article with bad citations can backfire if the article is nominated for deletion. Participators may not want to look at all one hundred citations, and they may instead choose to look at just a smaller sample. If they find only unreliable sources or sources that do not discuss the subject in depth, they could recommend deletion. The good sources could be missed.
Draft articles with excessive citations are likely to be ignored by volunteer reviewers in the articles for creation (AfC) process, contributing to the backlog and resulting in a delay of several months before the draft is reviewed, usually only to be declined.
Needless repetition
Material that is repeated multiple times in an article does not require an inline citation for every mention. If you say an elephant is a mammal more than once, provide one only at the first instance.
Avoid cluttering text with redundant citations like this:
Elephants are large[1] land[2] mammals[3] ... Elephants' teeth[4] are very different[4] from those of most other mammals.[3][4] Unlike most mammals,[3] which grow baby teeth[5] and then replace them with a permanent set of adult teeth,[4] elephants have cycles of tooth[5] rotation throughout their entire[6] lives.[4]
- 1. Expert, Alice. (2010) Size of elephants: large.
- 2. Smith, Bob. (2009) Land-based animals, Chapter 2: The Elephant.
- 3. Christenson, Chris. (2010) An exhausting list of mammals.
- 4. Maizy, Daisy. (2009) All about the elephants' teeth, p. 23–29
- 5. Reporter, Rae. (2012) Yes, Elephants Still Have Teeth.
- 6. Portant, I.M. (2015) "Analysis of Tooth Presence during Elephant Lifespan". J. Imp.
In addition, as per
This is correct:
In the first collected volume, Marder explains that his work is "about the affinity of life", wherein the characters "understand that ultimately they depend on each other for survival". Wiater and Bissette see this relationship as a wider metaphor for the interdependency of the comics industry. Indeed, addressing the potential underlying complexity, Marder suggests that "it's harder to describe it than it is to read it". He also calls it "an ecological romance ... a self-contained fairy tale about a group of beings who live in the center of their perfect world [and are] obsessed with maintaining its food chain", a self-described "really low concept!" Equally, he says, "the reader has to invest a certain amount of mental energy to follow the book", which includes "maps and a rather long glossary". Despite these potentially conflicting comments, Wiater and Bissette reiterate that "there is no simpler or more iconographic comic book in existence".<ref name="Rebels">[[Stanley Wiater|Wiater, Stanley]] and [[Stephen R. Bissette|Bissette, Stephen R.]] (eds.) "Larry Marder Building Bridges" in ''Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics'' (Donald I. Fine, Inc. 1993) ISBN 1-55611-355-2 pp. 17–27</ref>
This is also correct, but is an example of overkill:
In the first collected volume, Marder explains that his work is "about the affinity of life", wherein the characters "understand that ultimately they depend on each other for survival".<ref name="Rebels" /> Wiater and Bissette see this relationship as a wider metaphor for the interdependency of the comics industry.<ref name="Rebels" /> Indeed, addressing the potential underlying complexity, Marder suggests that "it's harder to describe it than it is to read it".<ref name="Rebels" /> He also calls it "an ecological romance ... a self-contained fairy tale about a group of beings who live in the center of their perfect world [and are] obsessed with maintaining its food chain", a self-described "really low concept!"<ref name="Rebels" /> Equally, he says, "the reader has to invest a certain amount of mental energy to follow the book", which includes "maps and a rather long glossary".<ref name="Rebels" /> Despite these potentially conflicting comments, Wiater and Bissette reiterate that "there is no simpler or more iconographic comic book in existence".<ref name="Rebels">[[Stanley Wiater|Wiater, Stanley]] and [[Stephen R. Bissette|Bissette, Stephen R.]] (ed.s) "Larry Marder Building Bridges" in ''Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics'' (Donald I. Fine, Inc. 1993) ISBN 1-55611-355-2 pp. 17–27</ref>
If consecutive sentences are supported by the same reference, and that reference's inline citation is placed at the end of the paragraph as described at
<!-- -->
to place hidden ref name tags at the end of each sentence. Doing so may benefit others adding material to that paragraph in the future. If that happens, they can uncomment the hidden citations and switch to citing references after every sentence. Having hidden citations could cause confusion, especially among inexperienced editors, so the approach is strictly optional and should be used cautiously.
Reprints
Another common form of citation overkill is to cite multiple reprintings of the same content in different publications – such as several different newspapers reprinting the same
This type of overkill should be resolved by merging all of the citations into a single one and stripping unhelpful repetitions – when possible, the retained citation should be the originator of the content rather than a reprinter or aggregator, but if this is not possible (e.g. some wire service articles) then retain the most reliable and widely distributed available reprinter (for example, if the same article has been linked to both The New York Times and The Palookaville Herald, then The New York Times should be retained as the citation link.)
A similar case is redundant citation of an article that got its information from an article we have already cited. An exception, to many scientific and technical editors, is when we cite a peer-reviewed
In-article conflict
In controversial topics, sometimes editors will stack citations that do not add additional facts or really improve article reliability, in an attempt to "
If this is primarily an inter-editor dispute over a
If the matter is the subject of real-world dispute in reliable sources, our readers actually need to know the conflict exists and what its parameters are (unless one of the conflicting views is a
Other views and solutions
Contrary views (and approaches to addressing their concerns) include:
- A cited source usually contains further relevant information than the particular bit(s) it was cited for, and its removal may be thought to "deprive" the reader of those additional resources. Wikipedia is not a Web index, and our readers know how to use online search engines. In most cases, if a source would be somewhat or entirely redundant to cite for a particular fact, but has important additional information, it is better to use it to add these facts to the article. Or, if the additional material is not quite encyclopedically pertinent to the article but provides useful background information, add it to the "Further reading" or "External links" section instead of citing it inline in a way that does not actually improve verifiability.
- An additional citation may allay concerns of some editors that the text constitutes a copyright violation. This is usually a short-term issue, and is often better handled by discussing the evidence on the talk page, if the additional citation does not really increase verifiability (e.g., because the original citation, with which the added one would be redundant, is to a clearly natureof its use).
- As alluded to above, an additional citation may allay concerns as to whether the other citation(s) are sufficient, for RfCif necessary, especially if the alleged fact, topic, or source is controversial. Adding competing stacks of citations is not how to address WP content disputes or real-world lack of expert consensus.
How to trim excessive citations
If there are six citations on a point of information, and the first three are highly reputable sources (e.g., books published by university presses), and the last three citations are less reputable or less widely circulated (e.g., local newsletters), then trim out those less-reputable sources.
If all of the citations are to highly reputable sources, another way to trim their number is to make sure that there is a good mix of types of sources. For example, if the six citations include two books, two journal articles, and two encyclopedia articles, the citations could be trimmed down to one citation from each type of source. Comprehensive works on a topic often include many of the same points. Not all such works on a topic need be cited – choose the one or ones that seem to be the best combination of eminent, balanced, and current.
In some cases, such as articles related to technology or computing or other fields that are changing very rapidly, it may be desirable to have the sources be as up-to-date as possible. In these cases, a few of the older citations could be removed.
For many subjects, some sources are official or otherwise authoritative, while others are only interpretative, summarizing, or opinionated. If the authoritative sources are not controversial, they should generally be preferred. For example, a company's own website is probably authoritative for an uncontroversial fact like where its headquarters is located, so newspaper articles need not be cited on that point. The World Wide Web Consortium's specifications are, by definition, more authoritative about HTML and CSS standards than third-party Web development tutorials.
Try to construct passages so that an entire sentence or more can be cited to a particular source, instead of having sentences that each require multiple sources.
Sometimes it may also be possible to salvage sources from a citekill pileup by simply moving them to other places in the article. Sometimes, a source which has been stacked on top of another source may also support other content in the article that is presently unreferenced, or may support additional content that isn't in the article at all yet, and can thus be saved by simply moving it to the other fact or adding new content to the article.
Citation merging
If there is a good reason to keep multiple citations, for example, to avoid perennial edit warring or because the sources offer a range of beneficial information, clutter may be avoided by merging the citations into a single footnote. This can be done by putting, inside the reference, bullet points before each source, as in this example, which produces all of the sources under a single footnote number. Within a simple text citation, semicolons can be used to separate multiple sources.
Examples
Each of these articles has been corrected. Links here are to previous versions where a citation problem existed.
- Iris graminea – 275 citations for one section out of 580 in the article, citing 44 unique sources
- Customs and Excise Department (Hong Kong) – 83 citations for one sentence, part of 139 citations in a single paragraph. Notably, the rest of the article remained largely uncited.
- 2004 Madrid train bombings – 17 citations for one sentence
- Combatant Status Review Tribunal transcripts – 54 citations to verify one statement (all but one from the same domain)
- Generation Y – 18 citations for one sentence
- China–United States trade war – 20 citations for one statement, after the phrase "advanced technology"
- Palestinian Christians – 65 citations in opening paragraph
- Stewie Griffin – many unnecessary citations
- White power skinhead – 14 citations for one statement
- William Evans (Medal of Honor recipient) – 16 citations
- New York Chiropractic College – 18 citations for notable alumna Ora Golan
- Carrfour Supportive Housing – 33 citations for one sentence
- Drifting (motorsport) – 29 citations for one sentence
- Howard Cosell – 20 citations for one sentence, 3 of which were YouTube
- Alvin Duskin – 77 citations for an article not even 70 words in length
- William Selig – 22 citations for one sentence
- Electrical Transient Analyzer Program – 33 academic citations for lists of features and uses
Templates
See also
- Wikipedia:Citation underkill – An essay with a contrary viewpoint suggesting to cite every sentence/statement
- Wikipedia:Wisps' Law
- Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue
- Wikipedia:Masking the lack of notability
- Wikipedia:Overlink crisis
- mw:Extension:HarvardReferences – extension to improve references into Harvard style
- Wikipedia:Why most sentences should be cited
- Category:Citation overkill, for Wikipedia articles that display a case of citation overkill
- Wikipedia:Must I add a citation? – What should one do on finding a correct but uncited statement in an article.