I think the current guideline on cite templates neither encourage nor discourage is sound The problem is that many editors are not aware that this is the case and we need to aggressively discourage the idea that citation templates are required or better than hand written ones On the other hand I think citation templates have a few benefits and we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater here moreover I seriously doubt that editors would unconditionally agree to even discourage citation templates let alone ban them This issue is more important and far reaching than date autoformatting and we all know how much time it took to change the status quo on that issue Personally I don t mind citation templates and use them often but would not be bothered if I couldn t use them I think the more successful path is to strongly encourage moderation don t provide more information than necessary and prefer citations at the end of paragraphs rather than after ever sentence List defined referencing sounds and looks like a good idea but we shouldn t try to push it as a Wikipedia wide standard