A text for thought...

or not?

Noam Cohen's recent article (more properly an op-ed!) in the New York Times highlights a failing of Wikipedia: its citation system.

All historians at IHEID, as at most Western institutions, rely on citation of published sources as a way to document and/or prove the validity of the knowledge presented, and to center themselves within a specific tradition. Cohen's piece pokes a hole in the first part of this logic, giving salient examples of undocumented (at least in the footnoted way) knowledge that Wikipedia rejects on citation technicalities. He makes reference in particular to the video project, "People Are Knowledge," which points to oral history as a parallel development to written history, and fully as valid.

How do you cite less traditional sources? Is it viable to have a not-traditionally-cited reference encyclopedia?