Note: this is not a duplicate of any of these meta questions but a reminder that on the basis of those discussions we had agreed to include references/citations whenever possible:
Do we want references in our answers?
What is the site recommendation for citations and references when we post an answer here?
Reading many answers at Interpersonal.SE including my own, I was surprised at the lack of references/citations even where it would have been easy to include them.
When I had raised the question of citations in meta a month ago, it had already been asked and the consensus reply was:
Citations are best included wherever possible. If impossible to cite references, personal experience is a valid substitute. [summary / paraphrase]
Sure, we know that many answers here are based on personal experience, and not all can possibly include references, but the situation at present is that users get the message "you don't need to include citations in your questions or answers" which goes against the grain of the StackExchange ethos.
Example of a recent well referenced answer:https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/a/1762/381
This answer was written by a member who can be seen to have cited useful articles to support certain points in most of the answers on the profile page.
Even if some users argue that there are not many authoritative published resources for interpersonal skills (which I am not really convinced about) the whole Stack Exchange experience shows that well-chosen citations do inprove credibility.
I am not asking for every statement to be backed up by citations. That is not possible here. But why not include credible citations to establish points whenever there is published material that supports the specific statement?
No need to debate this issue too much, and I have neglected to include citations myself, so let's simply remember to include citations in future Q and A whenever possible.
OR ELSE... OPTION 2:
This is a site that gives major importance to personal experience, while the Stack Exchange network generally encourages the practice of citing references. However, if the Interpersonal.SE community consensus decides that no references are required and experience based answers are good enough then we should adopt the official or unofficial policy that
we don't need any references or citations.
Related meta questions: