Talk:Macrohectopus
Add topicLatest comment: 1 year ago by TheTechnician27 in topic Citations in the lead
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Citations in the lead
[edit]@Anthropophoca: As you've already established the style of having no leads in the citation (which is valid per WP:V as long as they're cited later in the prose), I was wondering what your thoughts would be on changing this to include citations. I'm planning to write an essay about this at some point, but I think having no citations in the lead is neutral at best and negative at worst:
- Because it's very time-consuming, most editors will never check the rest of the article to verify that these facts are asserted in the rest of the article.
- Even if they do, slight rephrasings of facts in the lead can make them suddenly incorrect (I've done this myself before), but this is hard to detect. Basically, it makes it easier for WP:SYNTH to accidentally slip in.
- Because citations in the lead are often very general, its citations are often among the most general and high-level about the subject. Having these in the lead can greatly benefit researchers (anywhere from a middle school essay all the way to university-level) who want to find and read a reliable, secondary source giving a high-level overview.
- Because the vast majority of readers likely do not know about our WP:V exception, citations in the lead reassure readers that what we're saying has been cited to a reliable source.
You're well within Wikipedia policy not to, and the consensus so far for this article is not to use them, so I don't have a leg to stand on except to suggest a change. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 17:18, 23 May 2025 (UTC)