Forum:Hey, let's not be too formal!

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The purpose of references is to improve our credibility, to prove that we aren't making anything up, and to give the reader a way to quickly and independently verify our claims.

Articles whose material is based on a number of sources will profit the most from the reference system as it stands, but for articles where the majority of information comes from one source, pointing LOTS of references to a single source isn't going to help the situation at all. Look at Bastila Shan (the article, not its subject): a gazillion references all pointing to KOTOR. However, since Bastila is almost exclusively a KOTOR character, and KOTOR is a long game, it will only cause people to question: "but where in KOTOR is it said Bastila did this?"

I, for one, advocate a more liberal referencing system: for an example of what I mean, see Jedi Exile. In other words, I think you should feel free to include any extra information helping the reader to unambiguously identify the source fragment, even at the cost of being informal. Page numbers, for instance, are not mandatory, but if you know them, why not include them?

- Sikon 10:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)