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The Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange sites have a great feature that allows a user to quickly create a citation to answers and questions. This is accomplished by clicking share and then clicking cite:

Example of citation creation from Mathematics Stack Exchange

For ease of copying and pasting the cite feature even provides the BibTex and amsrefs LaTeX formats (something which probably wouldn't be needed on other sites).

Currently I am working on a paper which has heavily referenced the User Experience site. As such having the ability to quickly cite each question / answer would be incredibly helpful. While I agree the ability to easily cite is more applicable to certain SE sites, this seems like a frictionless feature with a lot of benefit.

Is there a reason this feature isn't available across the entire Stack Exchange network? Is this something that each Stack Exchange site needs to decide within its community (i.e. I need to move this discussion to meta.ux.se)? Can the ability to cite question and answers please be added to all other Stack Exchange sites?

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    I think this is rarely needed on most sites, but another entry in the share dialog wouldn't hurt and I see no reason why this shouldn't be enabled on all SE sites by default.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 19:45
  • I think that citing a Q&A on a website -- as "peer reviewed" as it is -- should generally be avoided. It's hardly an authoritative source. Still, I'd like to see it for less formal use cases, such as software documentation or an internal paper describing an algorithm.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jul 25, 2013 at 12:27
  • 2
    @LightnessRacesinOrbit I do agree that a paper filled with nothing but citations from SE sites would be circumspect. At the same time I think it's important to thank those that brought you.
    – ahsteele
    Commented Jul 25, 2013 at 12:43
  • ThIs is similar to what my my answer over here does
    – ᔕᖺᘎᕊ
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 6:28
  • 5
    @LightnessRacesinOrbit that depends entirely on what is being written. I'd never submit a paper to a journal that uses SE Q&As as references but I might for a blog post. Also, I might refer to a post here in a published paper. Not to use as evidence but, for example, to discuss it. It would be useful to be able to cite one easily then.
    – terdon
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 13:33
  • 2
    On one hand, the share button URL contains a 'q' for questions and an 'a' for answers. On the other hand, the cite button URL contains a 'q' for both questions and answers. Is this a bug? If it is on purpose, why the difference?
    – Qmechanic
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 12:50
  • 1
    @Qmechanic: I'd suggest reporting that as a separate issue (assuming it hasn't been reported already) if you feel it should be fixed.
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Commented Jun 26, 2023 at 16:56
  • 3
    Related: Shortening URL is not listed in the Linked section
    – Qmechanic
    Commented Aug 29, 2023 at 6:21

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