User:Raul654/When to cite

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This page is incomplete and under development. Others are encouraged to help fill it in

The Featured Article Criteria call for citations "where appropriate". This requirement is vague, and has led to a number of disagreements in its interpretation. The purpose of this page is to clarify this requirement and its interpretation.

1 Situations where it is necessary to cite a source
2 Situations where it is not necessary to cite a source
- 2.1 Special case: Biographies of living people
3 Challenging information
4 Holistic comments

[edit] Situations where it is necessary to cite a source

Quotations -
Data and statistics - "
Counter-intuitive statements" - A statement that is likely to surprise the reader

[edit] Situations where it is not necessary to cite a source

General common knowledge - Information that most everyone already knows. "George W. Bush is the president of the United States"
Subject-specific common knowledge - Knowledge that anyone familiar with a topic is likely to know. Note that "anyone" does not mean only experts, but layman who are familiar with the subject as well. Example: "In a computer, the processor is the component that executes instructions".
Information summarizing another article that is cited there - "There is no need to repeat all specific references for the subtopics in the main "Summary style" article: the "Summary style" article summarizes the content of each of the subtopics, without need to give detailed references for each of them in the main article: these detailed references can be found in the subarticles. The "Summary style" article only contains the main references that apply to that article as a whole." - Wikipedia:Summary style