Thread:Bizippo/@comment-27075564-20170710092047/@comment-27075564-20180123011334

Thing is, I think you're placing too much emphasis on references, thinking most readers come here and read them, when in reality most are looking to just read the page itself.

For me, it's really blatantly obvious, especially for shorter pages, like Essi, where all the information comes from, as she only appears in one story (and the one time she's mentioned outside of it, there's a reference for it). And if we can pinpoint when the story took place, we can later add a reference to note the year she died because that wouldn't be obvious from just reading her story. Pages like Yennefer and Geralt, on the other hand, it makes more sense to reference one of the books occasionally because they're spread out over the books and games so it helps to pinpoint which book the information came from. If you also look at the more minor charcter references on HP, you'll notice most of the references aren't the books, they're other official sources (like Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's twitter, etc.).

I think you're also too focused on wanting to make us like the other wikis you like, when we're simply not, and while some things work for one wiki, they don't always work for another. Case in point: we don't do "male" and "female" categories, like HP wiki does, as it's way too generalized, and the same reason we don't break everything down into miniscule categories like they do for Dumbledore's Army, Battle participants, etc. If we start adding references after every year, detail, paragraph, etc. you start to overwhelm the reader to the point the exact opposite happens and they tune out the numbers and ignore them rather than actually seeing the reference.