Wikipedia:Citation underkill

This is an essay on the Verifiable policies and the Citing sources guidelines.

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.

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This page in a nutshell: It is always best to cite each idea or concept, even those that may seem obvious. You may be wrong, or they may be less than obvious to others. Instead of putting accuracy, neutrality, and verifiability at stake, simply source all your statements.

The quality of Wikipedia improves when each statement is cited; our material is required to be verifiable with reliable sources as is covered in the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Maintaining article standards is possible by following core content policies. The Verifiability policy maintains that "all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources." This means, when adding information, you must be able to back up each statement with a source. It must not only be possible to verify a claim, but also feasible. This is best achieved by using inline citations and plenty of them.

One cause for "citation underkill" is the thought that it does not matter when good content is unsourced: that general knowledge needs no citations. The line separating general knowledge from folk knowledge, folk belief, and superstition is thin. By allowing certain statements to go unreferenced, Wikipedia risks furthering false beliefs, spreading errors in reasoning, and reinforcing widely held misconceptions.

Without citations, it is difficult to know that material is not just made up. In order to maintain a neutral point of view, it is critically important for an article to be verifiable, especially when sources disagree. Changing single words can cause a statement that was sourced to become a statement which fails verification. When no citation is nearby, this error risks being missed. By not including a source when it can be, we make it hard to verify our articles and put their neutrality at risk, diminishing their encyclopedic value.

The integrity of content depends on where a citation is placed. Misplaced citations cause citation confusion, which makes it harder to verify claims. Placing citations where they clearly correspond to specific claims improves the verifiability in accordance with guidelines on footnotes. When no citation is placed to verify a claim or if the citation is made invisible (commented out), it decreases the verifiability of content, and readers may incorrectly hold that those statements are unsourced. Unsourced material on Wikipedia risks (rightly or wrongly) being considered as original research. It also may be deleted.

Controversial claims usually require only single citations, but additional citations may decrease the degree with which the claim is likely to be challenged. Citation overkill can occur when many (often weak) sources are used to support the same statement, which can give a false sense of authority. Using as many sources as you need to ensure verifiability is not overkill. In most cases, one citation to a reliable source for each statement is sufficient to satisfy verifiability.