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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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What’s the problem with excessive citations? Citing only a single publication to prove a fact is shaky scientifically. Multiple citations are more robust in case of a dead link or if a book goes out of print or a particular version of it has the reference and others don’t.
If you’re bothered by seeing excessive citations, then the solution is to hide them, e.g. [12] (+12), and expand them on demand.
Wikipedia actually has an article about it. They are mainly bothered by the unreadability of it. Editors can indeed bundle citations as you suggest, but it takes some manual effort.
Citation overkill is also a bit of a red flag for edit wars, or barely-notable things that someone really wants to have on a wiki page.
Yeah, no citations is suspect, 15 citations is usually well funded bullshit.
Seems like that may be able to be solved on the website side of things. Make the citations expandable, so they all look like one, click the plus sign to show them all.