A fact from Double-balloon enteroscopy appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 June 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:
It's not helpful to cite every single sentence when they state uncontroversial facts. The footnotes break up the text and make for ugly reading. We can just put the sources we used in a reference section and cite any specific or controversial statements that need support, like statistics. Night Gyr04:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they're well referenced, rather than overreferenced. We don't cite every single sentence in cystic fibrosis, we just use a couple refs per paragraph. Does "The technique involves the use of a balloon at the end of a special enteroscope camera and an overtube, which is a tube that fits over the endoscope, and which is also fitted with a balloon." really need a citation, or is it a general piece of knowledge that would be confirmed by any source? We don't cite the sentence "AIDS is the most severe manifestation of infection with HIV." because it's a fairly uncontroversial statement with broad scientific consensus. I'm all for having citations and support, but it's ugly to have footnotes after every single sentence. Night Gyr15:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That sentence does need a citation as it is NOT a general piece of knowledge that would be confirmed by any source. Saying that a conventional endoscope examination uses an endoscope which is a flexible tube with a camera, light and instruments, that wouldn't need reference. This particular technique is IMO rather new and not widely used, so that the reference to the original articles on the creation and first experiences with this technique is excellently in its place. References do not only need to confirm controversial statements, they can direct the reader to read more about the preceding declaration. This style of referencing used in biomedical wikipedia articles like this article, corresponds to the referencing standards in biomedical scientific literature (which is centered on evidence and reproducability), in contrast to articles of human sciences, who follow a citation style that may correspond to professional literature in that field. I think that the ugliness of a reference is an argument that doesn't hold any sense. The looks are not as important as the contents. If you want good looking, flashy articles, Wikipedia isn't the place to be. We should concentrate our forces on quality, evidence, reproducability.
And besides, I don't see anything ugly in a small blue number in superscript! :)
