Please note this is not a formal policy, and may be edited by anyone. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Proposal: when the presented etymology for a word is derivation from a reconstructed proto-form, it should be sufficient to record the references for the reconstruction and what words descend from it on the Appendix page for the reconstructed form, and not duplicate them on every descendant entry. --Tropylium (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Wiktionary:Etymology#References says
Etymologies should be referenced if possible, ideally by inline references, secondarily just by listing references in the “References” section.
Wiktionary:References#Etymologies says:
Due to the limited space that Wiktionary etymologies occupy (a few sentences at best), Wikipedia-style inline citations are generally not needed to back up particular statements, and a simple L3 ===References=== section enumerating the sources would suffice
I interpret these as contradictory. Although the latter document could be interpreted to could be interpreted otherwise, in this context no citations are usually necessary, so I understand it as a recommendation rather than a minimum requirement.
One of the documents should be changed. I suspect Wiktionary:References is correct that inline citations are usually not necessary or beneficial, and Wiktionary:Etymology is the one that should be amended. Daask (talk) 15:20, 2 December 2024 (UTC)