Wikipedia:Citation overkill

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
These are probably too many sources to cite for a single point.

Wikipedia policy requires all content within articles to be

inline citations
is helpful, adding too many can cause citation clutter, making articles look untidy in read mode and difficult to navigate in markup edit mode. If a page features citations that are mirror pages of others, or which simply parrot the other sources, they contribute nothing to the article's reliability and are detrimental to its readability.

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

bundling
(merging) the citations.

Not only does citation overkill impact the readability of an article, it can

notability guidelines
appear to be notable through sheer quantity of sources, without actually paying any attention to the quality of the sources. Ironically, this serves as a red flag to experienced editors that the article needs scrutiny and that each citation needs to be verified carefully to ensure that it was really used to contribute to the article.

Misuse to prove an obvious point

It is possible that an editor who is trying to promote an article to

Wikipedia is not a dictionary
and we do not need citations for the meanings of everyday words and phrases.

Notability bomb

Metaphorical Ref Bombs being deployed on a Wikipedia article.

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

multiple sources support different parts of a paragraph or passage
.

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

hidden text
syntax <!-- --> 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

wire service article, or a newspaper or magazine article getting picked up by a news aggregator
 – as if they constituted distinct citations. Such duplicated citations may be piled up as multiple references for the same fact or they may be split up as distinct footnotes for different pieces of content, so watching out for this type of overkill may sometimes require special attention.

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

biographies of living people
may sometimes result in "back-up" citations to original reportage of statements or allegations that are later repeated by secondary sources that provide an overview.

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 "

edit war at once, happening inside the article's very content itself, and is an example of the fallacy of proof by assertion
: "According to scholars in My School of Thought, Claim 1.[1][2][3][4][5] However, experts at The Other Camp suggest that Claim 2.[6][7][8][9][10]"

If this is primarily an inter-editor dispute over a

formal dispute resolution
.

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

quotations
that are necessary for reader understanding of the controversy.

Other views and solutions

Contrary views (and approaches to addressing their concerns) include:

How to trim excessive citations

This barber has the right idea: trim away the excess.

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.

Templates

See also