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Vault: examples of good/bad citations
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RAG 5 min read

Vault: examples of good/bad citations

It is not enough to say 'cite your sources'. Teams need to see what a traceable, relevant, and operationally reliable citation looks like.

In this article

What this vault contains

The asset includes annotated examples of well-formed and poorly formed citations, contrasting answers that merely name a document with answers that actually support verification.

The intention is both pedagogical and operational: it helps train human judgment, review prompts, and sharpen quality evaluation.

How to use it in QA or enablement

It works well in calibration sessions where support, content, product, or compliance teams need to align on what they consider sufficient evidence. Compared examples usually create more clarity than abstract principle debates.

It can also be turned into a manual review rubric or a base set for qualitative regression checks.

What practical problem it solves

It solves the problem of teams that think they added citation because the model includes links or document titles, even though the user still cannot quickly verify the claim.

When the citation is structured well, the answer earns more trust and the reviewer spends less time validating it.

When not to use it as a single rule

It should not be used as a rigid doctrine when context changes: internal, external, and regulated answers can require different citation formats.

It also does not replace the need for source quality. A perfect citation pointing to an outdated document is still a bad answer.

What the CTA unlocks

The CTA unlocks the annotated example set so it can become an internal guide, training asset, or QA criterion for cited answers.

The follow-up work is adapting those examples to the source types, risks, and users of the real system.

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