Why are people foregoing inline citations and removing the <references /> tags? [closed]

Question

More and more, I find that the references tags are removed, and citations are just bulleted at the bottom of the profile.  Too many of these also omit links and page numbes in the citations.

It does make for a neater, prettier page ... but we lose so much.

This method does not allow for any inline notation, so there is no way to tell which citation pertains to which fact.

This might make a profile look more polished and finished ... which is fine, if that's the goal.

But this is a Wiki, and I want as many other eyes as possible to read the citation, too.  Someone else may see something that I didn't, may know some background I don't, (and often they do).  To me, this is the goal .. to work together.

Sure, it's messier on the edit page, and we have to use the preview button. (or work in a text program and copy to the profile).  Our system isn't perfect, but this is the one we have right now, until we come up with something better.

Am I imagining something here?  Have others noticed this?  Does this seem like a trend to anyone else?

Comments

This is a most useful thread so I'm faving it. I too would be extremely annoyed if anyone erased good work I did. As for how we go about sourcing, formatting and writing biographies, many "partial offenders" have explained here why they don't get around to completing in-line references or biographies, and the reasons given need to be pondered. There's a race to source the unsourced, a race to clean-up Gedcom , maybe other races too? and in those races many profiles are never "fine tuned".  

I'll support all efforts to make explanations on formatting clearer or easier to learn.  In this regard I'm a partial offender too.  In the beginning, reading chapters on formatting sent me into such despair that I almost gave it all up. Picture this, when I saw what the text area looked like (gibberish) and realized I would have to peruse this mess of characters and make sense out of it, my eyeballs bulged out of the sockets, the page went blurry, lines and triangles and figures and slashes danced about the page, as I struggled to remember what year so and so got married...  and I said to myself, no no no, I can't do it.... 

That was only a few months ago. The process is easier now.  Reading this thread is reassuring. Other people also find it difficult to do everything right. (Thank you everyone for pointing out the usefulness of this, by the way [[Category:Needs_Narrative/Bio]].  :))

This is a vague idea: what about creating a tag for people who have "formatting phobia" (like I did). WikiTreers who understand why formatting is so difficult for some of us could answer with special patience.  

Another idea, what about defining 4 or 5 levels of competence in formatting and ask inexperienced WikiTreers to achieve step by step.  When you're really comfortable with step one, you move on to step two, and so one.  With each step a badge.

Yours sincerely,

a former dunce

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It is posts like these that make me consider leaving WikiTree. I do not remove ref. tags, but I find them entirely unusable and it makes reading a profile impossible for me. (I have low vision.)  I do not simply put in a list of citations, but I note at the end what those citations had of value in them. I do not think it helpful at all to have a list of 15 numbers at the end of every sentence that leads to an incomplete citation.

I recently was going to work on a profile until I discovered profile name, father's name, mother's name, location of birth, who married to, names of 9 children, date of death, place of death and more all with the same ref tag. So I left it completely alone even though I have multiple sources to add to it. I did take that ref tag and look it up and sourced it with a link, date of publication, and noted the author in addition to the editor of the book and added it to 8 of the children's profile and the father.  After the full citation on the father's profiIe I put source of name, birth, death, marriage and extensive information about his sibling Thomas, both of their children and some grandchildren.   On each of the children's profiles I put the information specific to them, including their named children who as yet have no profiles.

I understand the need for some consistency, but I think there are far more important factors to improve wikitree than to attack people who are sourcing their work and taking great pains to fo so.

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It's not just me who has come across this " 9 sources for the existence of his name" style of sourcing all with ref tags that take you to an incomplete source with another ref tag that takes you to a footnote with source information, the same 9 sources being ref'd numerous times to validate a list of often relatively mundane "facts"(usually in bold) like his address, when in fact if a basic bio was written in a timeline style, the profile would come alive and they would seldom need to cite the same source twice. They are really missing a chance here to properly document a life.

I glaze over at these type of profiles and skip along to something else, having lost the will to contribute. These profiles look like they have many sources, but when you strip it down, it's the same old thing repeated. Style over substance, and the style isn't all that.

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Regarding the nine citations for a given fact, this is likely an artifact of gedcoms generated from ancestry.com family trees that were then uploaded to wikitree. Ancestry.com makes it very easy when finding a source to attach that source to multiple facts. The result can be a mess. Especially when those sources are other family trees or the horrid Millennium file or anything with Edmund West’s name on it.

I don’t hesitate to clean those up when I encounter them, especially when I have a better source to replace them with. I encourage you to do so as well.

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Addressing the issue of multiple ref tags making things messy, you can always "collapse" that into a single "forward-link" to a paragraph that argues/justifies the facts proposed, creating a 3 level structure:

1. biography, nice and neat
2. arguments/justifications
3. sources, complete

...possibly splitting 3 into 3A) citations and 3B) sources.

Example:

== Biography ==

Here is a paragraph within which I might have multiple sources used to argue the facts proposed, but I don't want to have multiple ref tags which make it messy. [[#ARGUMENT1 | argument]]

== Arguments ==

<span id=ARGUMENT1></span>Here I make the argument, citing sources such as <ref>[[#Whittemore1]]</ref>, <ref>[[#Cutter]]</ref> and <ref>[[#Hurd]]</ref>. It is also clear that <ref>[[#Chapman]]</ref> blah blah mumble mumble. Note also that...yadda yadda

 

== Sources ==

<references />

* ...

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Actually, I think that makes it messier.  You now have three sections where before you had only two: ==Biography== and ==Sources==.  If you really felt the need for more, you could slip in a ==Notes== section.

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Yikes!  I re-read this follow-up comment I made (almost two and a half years ago now), because some folks have added to this thread in the last couple of days. 

I'm feeling a bit sheepish and regret that I came across with an accusatory tone - didn't mean it that way - certainly don't feel that way today - but it did come across that way.   Should've been titled "My rant about ... "  (also, I certainly did not mean to imply that anyone had removed any sources - just that people weren't doing what I wanted - pretty silly, really)

I still struggle with our Help and Style pages for adding Sources, but my perspective now is that we need more clarity and simplicity.  I love and highly recommend Jillaine's Dream Source Help Page

Bottom line:

To anyone who is newish or struggling with the coding gibberish, I am sorry.  My question (and subsequent comments) were not written to you.

I am also the biggest techno-phobe myself and felt like I would never "get it."  It took some practice - lots of practice - and lots of frustration, before I "got it" myself.  No one expects you to be able to do all this stuff on day one, and if you just do whatever you can, that's plenty.

No one's paying us.  We're all volunteers here, doing this as a gift, and after all, it's supposed to be fun.

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Thanks Cynthia for Jillaine's Dream Source Help Page. I never thought your 2015 post sounded accusatory, and only realized after writing a comment that this was an old post brought to life again. All is well, and WikiTree is a fascinating place :)

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I know this an older post, but I also had trouble figuring out inline referencing,  I was familiar with APA style and really wanted to have those footnote things that other people had, but I didn't know they were produced.  I am technically challenged anyway, not necessarily in the abstract, but in the actual performance,  I really wish there had been a module that taught inline referencing at my level.

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Yes, it would be nice if WT had a video tutorial about source citations.

I just checked its youtube channel and didn't find one.

Answer 1

I love writing a complete Biography and adding inline reference tags, but I have many profiles that are not complete. When I started using wikitree I had no idea about style guides and inline reference tags. If I had had to study style guides before I started it would have frightened me away. We should all strive for perfection, but realise that it will never be achieved. It would be far better if people would help each other, rather than be critical of those who are doing their best and have not yet developed to skills to do better.

Answer 2

I'll be honest - I'm an OFFENDER in this...

However, in my defense, I started off in WikiTree copying in my family tree manually from another site, and got to a point, generated a Gedcom and uploaded a lot more in a semi-blind manner (as many Gedcoms do).

So much of my tree was bare of leaves (citations) altogether. Since then I've labored hard to correct that, but am still surprised when I find profiles without a single documented source.

And this brings me all the way around to your question. Why don't I use the Ref tags? At first, I didn't understand them - later, I figured out their use, but find them time consuing and unwieldy, and my focus has tended to be to get the data stored as opposed to making it pretty. While I continue to tell myself that I'll go back one day and tie up the loose ends, I wonder if I'm fooling myself as there are any number of profiles I've created that I may never revisit or if I do it could be a long time before I get back to them.

Long-winded answer, but at least it explains my dilemma with these tags. Honestly, they take me too long to structure and it's easier to ensure I have documented sources with links to all the specific pages and that gets me closer to my goal of a well-documented tree (at least).

Comments

Kitty, the Sources help page you linked has a very clear statement very early in the page that says:

For information on how to include sources in a profile, see Source Style Guide.  (on that page, Source Style Guide is a link to the Source Style Guide, which has the instructions for using <ref> ...</ref> tags and <references /> to add footnoted sources.

Once I got into the swing of it, I now find it comes very naturally to do it the right way to begin with.  It is really no more effort to do it with the tags than to list them all in one place at the bottom.  In addition, Dale has come up with a superb way to remove the "bloat" from profiles by listing all the citations in one place and still having the footnotes.  Please see Katz-827 for one example of this and be sure to look at the editing page to see how it is done.  If your problem is that you want to be able to list the sources all together in one place then this is your solution.

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Kitty and Scott, I can understand that if you are only putting the barest details about someone in their biography and all that infomation only comes from one source that it is easier to just put the source at the bottom of the page.  Certainly there are many G2G questions/comments, imploring people to do just that, and anyone you adds a source to an unsourced profile should be commended.

But with my perfectionist hat on, I do think that makes it a bit more difficult for the person who wants to write a full biography, because they have to effectively re-check your work, to find the page number or other exact detail that refers to that person.

When I add a source, I use a footnote style of referencing, where in the body of the biography I will add something simple like <ref>Brown, p. 25</ref> which can often be done easily, while I have the book/website etc open.

Then at the bottom under the sources heading, I will add the whole reference for that source as you do now. eg.

*Brown, John, History of the Brown family in Australia, Canberra: ABC Publications, 2009.

It's pretty quick, but does give both the full citation of the reference, and also the exact page or other detail for someone else to find that information, if they want to.

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I can see where you're coming from John, but I think it ends up coming down to a po-tah-toe versus po-tay-toe kind of discussion.

If I create a protile, add no sources, and move on with the expectation that someone else will add them later - I get that. It could be literally impossible to determine how they established their facts, and should be corrected as soon as possible.

However, if I create a profile, the bio reads essentially "Born, Died, Buried" and there are numerous sources laid out in chronological order directly below outlining their life, then I put that in a stage 2 sort of place - where the profile is in a usuable format, others can interpret as they may or even correct my facts if they feel I've erred, but it doesn't mean that I'm done - just that I can feel comfortable moving to the next unsourced profile to get it to this stage as well.

And then, as you mention, there's further work to be done in a full bio, with references, and honestly there's been very few that I've been able to get to that point where I've felt I had the facts in a usable format where I could begin adding reference tags. That last part just plain takes time for me, and in most cases, I just haven't got around to it.

Could I? Yes - however, when I first started here, that was too technically challenging. The references tag was something not explained well as far as I could tell, and so I created numerous profiles up front without even realizing its purpose. Once I understood, there were far too many profiles now under my watchlist to simply go back and completely rewrite them all from scratch. Plus, in my writing style, the footnotes have always been the finishing touches on any paper I've written, and so very few of my profiles have reached the final draft stage where they would receive those.

I see your point that if I were focused on a single profile at a time, editing from start to finish to make that profile to its final draft stage, I would naturally put in ref tags as they would then fit into a more robust bio, but I'm facing too many challenges of just getting my profiles into usable order and my time is better spent ensuring I have an adequate source pool to work from for now, and I'll write and ref the bio at a later time.

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Scott,

If your point is that you can not write a simple bio and add the inline <ref> tags then there is a template that you can use and someone else will see the profile and help with that. It is [[Category:Needs_Narrative/Bio]], But I think you and everyone else is slightly off topic about this one.  The actual question was about people removing the inline references not about those who just do not add them.

:

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Dale, you're right - Cynthia, I apologize for my part in hijacking this topic. I never even noticed that's what was happening here.

I think perhaps the reason we got off on this tangent is that it is very closely related.  Most of the people who remove the <ref> tags do it without entering any sources at all.

I can't resist one more itty bitty comment on the off-topic part here.  I am going to start another G2G post to address one thing mentioned in this thread - I will offer an example of instructions for how to add inline references in (a) a user friendly way that you don't have to be a geek to understand and (b) a way that will not add "bloat" and will also not interrupt people who want to just write the narrative and list all the sources at the bottom.  Dale's new way of adding inline sources makes that possible - be sure to thank him for it!

I am not going to attempt to address the difficulty of finding the right help pages, which applies to new members even more than the rest of us, but I am very often frustrated by this to the point of giving up and muddling through as best I can.  I recently (maybe a month ago) saw a post on this topic - don't understand how the ball got dropped, but we really should do something to make the help more user friendly, both to better organize the hierarchy of pages and also to better organize their content.  This has been mentioned here, as well as in posts on several other topics - an overarching and comprehensive solution is desperately needed.

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Gaile, I look forward to your guidance G2G post.  I think Dale's new way sounds like something I would like to use too.

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Now if we can just get dale to use that method, I honestly have not started that yet, SORRY.

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Kitty,

I'm about 3/4 through with writing it.  I'm literally creating a formal proposal document within the post.  Give it about 10 or 15 more minutes, please!

Dale, I suspect that even you will start using it when you see my recommended work styles and how people with widely divergent personal work styles will be satisfied with it.

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i just posted it - sorry, but it took longer than I anticipated.  What with letting dongs in and out and in and out and ... listening to phone recordings that want to sell me stuff, holding some wood in place for husband's boat building adventures, and - finally - the ultimate topper-off-er was that I hit the max size for a question and had to make 3 or 4 tries before I got it small enough, then had to paste the rest as a comment to the question!!!

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I haven't noticed a trend towards removing the references tag , it's been something I have come across now and then.

When I first started here, I may have removed a few of my own before realising what it was but as soon as I caught on, I reinstated them. I now always add the missing references tag back on others' profiles too, if it's been deleted. I would never remove an inline citation, I'd remove the bullet pointed source if it was duplicating the same source, but usually only on my own profiles.

For those who think it's hard, adding an inline citation is not difficult or time consuming, it's just placing your cursor where you want the source, clicking the C button then pasting the source citation in between the refs (if you use Familysearch, they provide citations which in most cases are complete and need no additions - the 1871 UK census is an exception to that). If you do it as you go along, you don't need to come back to it and rework. This is what I do now, but I have a lot of bullet point list profiles I created before I became competent that I am revisiting and upgrading to inline style. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it took me a whole year to become comfortable with inline referencing as I have used HTML before, but way back in the past.

My one big tip (especially for those who are reticent at inline refs) is use the preview pane for every profile edit you make, before saving. It takes little time, saves corrections, and you learn what is happening with each edit. Once you master inline citations, you won't go back.

Answer 3

I have noticed this is getting more and more prevalent.  People have even edited out my inline references.  I think that a list of sources at the end is useless without linking it to the actual fact that is being verified.  If new people do not know how to use the tags, then why remove them from a profile where it is already in place.

To be honest, I feel quite annoyed that my hard work is erased so easily.  I realize that I can use the  Restore function, but wonder if it will only be removed again.  I do try to contact the member making the changes and find out why they wanted to remove them.  Some people have even removed facts about marriages and children saying the preferr the stipped down version.  Trying to be tolertant.

Comments

This is one of the few answers/comments that address the initial post on this subject. If you don't have time/interest to do all the correct way to enter references on a profile, entering at least one or two sources should be fine, in whatever way you enter them--way better than nothing! The problem Cynthia B is referring to is when someone comes along and removes a properly documented source so that it's no longer attached to the information it supports. There's absolutely no excuse for doing that, and I hope those of you who have said you're an 'offender' are not doing it.

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I've only done this once or twice -- on profiles I manage when I KNOW the references was not about the individual the profile was about,

I do remove in-line citations when the main source is at the bottom and the in-line is just restating what is already provided.

I see so reason to use an in-line citation to point to the same birth certificate multiple times. You can in-line cite once - it doen't have to be done every time you mention the person was born.

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I do think it helpful to have more than one source of a fact because sometimes a single source is not that reliable or accurate.

In line citations are linked to a specific fact; whereas, the sources are just a list of sources without any ties to a specific fact.  They are not redundant.

 I also keep all the facts within the source so people can see exactly what facts the source is verifying.  For example if there is a marriage record that also include the birth dates of husband and wife, I put it in the inline citation: example:  Tennesse Marriage Records, 1699-1800.  [website if applicable], Birth Date: 5 Mar 1712 Marriage Date: 20 Aug 1732

Answer 4

I am a partial offender with this one.  When I am editing/researching sources for profiles I will do the one I start with the proper way but I like to add the source document to all profiles that I can so that I don't have to find it again so on the "extra" profiles I just add the source to the bottom after the See also line.  It is my plan to come back to them later and fix them, but with the large number of profiles on my
to do" list it is going to take some time.  I do always try to add the proper source heading with the <referemces/> line when editing however.

Comments

I guess I must be a "partial offender," too!  

I spend a great deal of my Wiki-time cleaning up GEDCOM flotsam, finding or estimating birthdates where there are none, and adding sources to unsourced profiles. Because I'm in a mode where I'm finding record after record for related profiles, I don't normally have the time to write a narrative or timeline. So, I'll make a chronological bulleted list of sources at the end of the profile which basically tell the story of the person's life. 

Something I haven't been doing and am now aware of is adding the category you mentioned above: [[Category:Needs_Narrative/Bio]]

I will try to remember to add that to the profiles I'm working on in the future. Thanks for pointing that out!

More to the topic at hand: I would *never* remove anyone's sources -- I even reformat the link to the Ancestry.com profiles that come in with the GEDCOMs, even though I don't have a subscription to go look at them. Ugh.

Answer 5

Removing page numbers and clean citations would be destructive  That's happened to me and it's distressing to see work removed.  I'm not seeing that in the profile you mention.  The <references /> tag was not removed, nor were page numbers removed.  He's actually not using the S1, S2 tags that were a concern when we talked about this in April. Instead the format follows that in this long thread in May.

The citations in the example did not originally have page numbers listed. It was purely a formatting job. <ref>Source: [[#S1486]]</ref> was replaced with <ref>[[#Banks|Banks]] </ref>That's not a loss in this instance.

Every style (MLA, APA, Chicago) has shortcuts to avoid redundancy, as do NEHGR and Anderson.  I think we're still coming to a consensus on how best to do that on Wikitree.

Answer 6

I don't remove the <references /> tag listed under == Sources == and I try to keep the inline citation tags <ref></ref> or <span></span> in the inline citations.  However, it seems that *Source listing under <references /> creates the bulleting.  So when you use both the inline citation tags and the *Source tag, your final inline citations get numbered and the numbering matches the bulleted source listing in == Sources == below.  I try to put page numbers, etc. in both the inline citations and the sources section when there are specific page numbers listed.  Having numbers as inline citations is less distracting in reading the complete biography than having either full or short listed sources in line.

Answer 7

I always use <ref> </ref> tags to link the events in the bio and their sources.  If there are other sources, I use  ==See also== with a bullit for extra sources available.

Comments

Just a gentle reminder that the original post was not about whether or not to use inline citations but about the removal of them from existing profiles.

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Yes Jillaine,   so since I used the <ref> and don't delete the <references /> but add it so I can use inline <ref>.

Answer 8

You are being proscriptive.  I understand how to use inline citation, and rarely, I feel that it is important.  Usually, I think it's ridiculous and ugly. Mostly, I think that few people use it in a way that isn't ugly.  There is a way to tell which fact goes with which citation.  It's called an end note.

Comments

Actually, I went and re-read the extremely proscriptive style guide, and I guess this means that it is time to phase myself out of Wikitree. I obviously do not belong here.

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One person's proscriptive is another person's standardisation. Don't let it upset you. I notice you are removing photos from your profiles, so you evidently are upset. You have made a lot of valuable contributions here and it would be a shame to spoil it. I'd suggest having a cuppa and going to do something else for a bit, then see if you still feel the same later on. I hope that doesn't sound too proscriptive to you!

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Actually, I've never had a cuppa in my life, and I'm not even LDS.  This thread confirms something I've been thinking for quite awhile.  I've even been told by several people, including Chris Whitten, "Wikitree isn't for everyone."  I now have an insurmountable reason why it isn't for me.

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Here’s the Source help page: 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources

Curious to know what you find overly proscriptive. It actually opens with great flexibility. 

I also revisited the Sources Style Guide. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources_Style_Guide

That poor page has been rewritten so many times it’s a bit confusing. But proscriptive? Maybe a little. 

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Proscriptive? Totally.  It clearly states that all profiles have to use inline citations.  I'd been operating under the friendlier delusion of the Source Help page.  Silly me.

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I’ve read the source style guide twice and do not see where it says you must use inline citations. Granted I have not yet had my morning coffee.

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HAHA I completely agree, I mean if someone wanted add them it would be useful but the real work is in the information gathering for the sources it seems, and what you taught me on how to link up unconnected profiles like [[wiki-ID| name on of link]]is very important. but yeah inline citations def. not mandatory.

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How are inline references visually different from end notes?

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Jamie,

Inline citations (<ref>..... </ref>) result in a superscript, clickable footnote number associated with a particular element of the narrative, that when clicked takes you down to where <references /> has been entered, and displays the citation in the order they've been placed in the text. There's also a little up arrow at the beginning of each citation that enables you to click back to the narrative where the inline citation reference had been placed.

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Isn't an end note also just a number? I'm wondering why an end note is not "ugly" but an inline reference is.

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An end note is not a number, but I'm removing myself from this thread so hopefully I won't get any more emails.  Discuss amongst yourselves.  It no longer matters to me.

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Jamie, what people find "ugly" about the inline citations is when viewed in EDIT mode, the code is embedded within the narrative.  Frankly this doesn't bother me; I'm used to it.  And given that it's for the benefit of the final presentation (which is NOT in Edit mode), I think the benefits outweigh the "ugliness" of the text in Edit mode.

And while J. Crook is no longer reading this thread, I went back to the Sources Style Guide after a cup of coffee and still do not see where it says we must use inline citations. Just want that to be clear to other readers of this thread. So contrary to his claims, there is nothing proscriptive on the Source Style Guide page about inline citations.

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Unfortunately, emails are still coming to me in this thread, so I can say that what I find ugly about inline citation is not that it looks ugly in edit mode.  It looks ugly in every mode. Isn't this entire thread about how wrong those of us are who don't use it? If you don't want people to "misinterpret" the Style Guide, then it needs to clearly state that we can use the citation format we prefer. It doesn't.  I get just as upset when people "vandalize" my preferred format on profiles I manage.  Anyway, my problem was that I actually cared.  I'm attempting to no longer care, and I'm extricating myself from this site, where I obviously do not belong.

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J Crook, I understand completely where you are coming from. I do not use incline citations and will not edit any profile that does. I have vision issues and profile in edit mode are incomprehensible when a screen reader reads them.  That being said, I have noticed in the last year WikiTree becoming a less and less friendly place to be. This thread is an example of that. I see various reasons for this happening, but one is definitely pressure unduly placed to do inline citations even though I KNOW they are not required. I will not leave WikiTree. I put all my eggs in this basket. I do note though that my participation has lessened. I rarely collaborate, instead I just hand a profile over and walk away if they use inline citations.

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Susan, can you post a link to a profile you like that does NOT use inline citations? I’m curious to compare. Thanks.

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Emma is my 8th great grandmother and a brick wall. It was a Gedcom import with no sources yesterday. Not finished yet. Trying to find the entry in the source that supposedly documents her last name as Maddox.

Unknown-311617

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Thanks Susan. That format generally works. I like the level of detail you provide and appreciate the links. 

It would be a bit more readable if you highlighted the fact  each source is associated with. For example: 

Marriage to first husband John Smith. (Then the details of the source as you have them.) 

While I continue to prefer inline citations, I’m very appreciative of all you’re doing to provide sources for these profiles. 

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AND I apologize to all here.  The original thread was about he REMOVAL of inline citations and/or the <references /> tag. Many of us, myself included, allowed ourselves to get distracted on related but different topics.

Answer 9

I don't think it is a matter of more people choosing to not do it. I think that is is rather a matter of more new members that do not know they can, and should use inline citations. In that respect we may have to bring this under their attention through greeters/mentors by providing sample profiles early on in their membership.

Comments

And making sure new folks do not remove the citation coding they find in profiles.

Answer 10

I have found myself dealing with so many un-sourced and misplaced profiles that I have been doing non-stop source hunting and bio-fixing, and that the certain profiles have misplaced <reference /> tags to begin with. And I do like it that you have too read most of the profile and look in the sources section to develop some more insight on said profiles. Although marking em up with <reference /> is a great preference, I don't prefer it.

Answer 11

It would seem to me that deliberate removal of <references /> is vandalism and needs to trigger an MIR process.

I suspect that as we have moved to be more aggressive in removing GEDCOM detritus, we have enthusiastic members who don't realize that the <references /> tag is a required part of every single profile.  It wasn't put there by a GEDCOM.

Comments

I’d be hesitant to conclude that all such removal is intentional vandalism. More likely it’s due to ignorance.

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Agreed -- see my second paragraph.  But it does feel that as we have gotten frustrated with the amount of Gedcom detritis still remaining on WikiTree, we've gotten more aggressive in removing things, and that does bother many of us who believe there are still babies in the bathwater.

Answer 12

It was a very  steep learning kerb for me to learn how to do it. I protested on here that I was interested in genealogy not computer programming After I had 'mastered' it, (well not quite, since I still give up with 'advanced' inlinde citations.) I got quite cross with those who removed the ref 'tag' (is that the right word) and made my additions look like garbage.

I've seen someone remove the tag and then attempt to provide inline sources manually (cause of even more frustration for me since you can't add something withour mucking up the numbering system) But I now realise is that  they weren't being deliberately awkward. Just someone requiring some help.

Comments

Helen, you’re not alone in avoiding the “advanced” inline citations.

Answer 13

It drives me nuts. It's messier and much more difficult to follow!!

Comments

As discussed elsewhere, there are a variety of approaches to citing one’s source.  The point of this original thread is not to remove the <references /> coding or inline citations when you encounter them.