Talk:How to Use Sources and References

A couple of points

 * The researcher in me quails at the statement that 'not everything needs to be sourced'. Really? Why not? It feels like a failure of futureproofing to me - sure, everyone might know that the SO is the head of the DMS - but when the Board decides twenty years from now to kill him off, a writer thirty years after that won't know. So why not source it? It's not like the pixels cost anything!


 * Actually, this is kind of related... I don't like sources. Specifically, because when a page becomes large enough to need references instead, it means a lot of extra work for the person adding them - why not just reference as we go? They're also vastly less useful; if an article states that, say, Dafydd Illian has a magic ring - well, how do I figure out which of his many missions and side stories that's in? (In this case, 'because there's an article about it', but it's just an example). Far better to have a little number in blue brackets that tells me exactly where it is.

Don't get me wrong - sources are better than nothing at all (remember Fix-It? Or Cold, for that matter)... but references are far better. In the case of my Great Readthrough, I may well start a page with just one source, but find more later on - and I'll swim in the Sea of Núrnen before I'll make extra work for myself by sourcing it first, and then going back to figure out which source is which later. Huinesoron (talk) 18:01, June 3, 2014 (UTC)