Template talk:Excessive citations

Move discussion in progress completed

There is a move discussion in progress on Template talk:Overcite which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 07:01, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

About the above discussion: "The result of the move request was: moved as proposed.... 18 May 2017 (UTC)." —Geekdiva (talk) 05:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Massive parameter errors?

@Mr. Guye: I see you tagged this template as having 'Massive parameter errors'. Could you explain what you meant by that? I created some test cases and they all seemed to work as expected (with the exception that 'small' doesn't work unless you specifically provide the value 'left'). I'm not that familiar with TemplateData and the visual editor, but I tried inserting the template in the visual editor and everything seemed to work okay. Colin M (talk) 16:19, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

A bit ironic. This is the same sort of effect that this template often has on editors trying to improve articles where it has been used without sufficient explanation. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete maybe?

Almost everything on Wikipedia must be based on reliable sources. There is nothing wrong with a lot of citations in a Wikipedia article, in fact, it’s actually a good thing. It means that the information is verifiable and can be trusted. It means that the article is reliable. If the sources are unreliable than that’s a different story. But all in all I don’t see the problem with a lot of citations in Wikipedia articles. I have seen articles that have hundreds of citations. How does it ruin the article’s quality in any way? GenZenny💖 (talk) 20:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

No, this template should not be deleted. As the template says, "a large number of citations can be aesthetically unappealing and may make the article unreadable or may lead to confusion about what exactly each citation is used in support of." Meters (talk) 22:01, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

So apparently appearance matters more than verifability. Lina211_{Follow your dreams} 03:27, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

By what criteria?

Who decides which are the excessive references? How does an editor identify which references the tagger was referring to? If this is not specified on the talk page, do we summarily delete the tag as unactionable? Several years later, how does one know if the situation has materially changed? Please ping with response.· · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Disreputable sources should be directly tagged as such or removed with a suitable edit summary. It is not reasonable to project one's vague doubts or personal opinions by casting suspicion on all the references and the work of other editors in this arbitrary and opinion-based manner. Without adequate additional information the tempplate is unactioable, and may be offensive, passive-aggressive, and disruptive. If no-one can produce a rational rebuttal I intend to add instructions to the documentation to this effect, or change the template accordingly. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)