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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
This template looks terrible in an article. For reference, here are examples of the conventional form of an editorial note [ citation needed], and the version of this template before I changed it. Citation needed This is an editorial comment, and editorial comments go in square brackets, in all types of writing. Small superscript ("superior text") is reserved for footnote or endnote references using symbols or figures (cite*, another 1), mathematical expressions (E=mc2), and sometimes ordinals (1st, 2nd).
Superscript letters are never used for long words like this template, which puts a big empty space in the middle of the text—it's an empty blot that stands out so much I can see it on my monitor from across the room, and further emphasizing it by italicizing is completely unnecessary. The note is long enough that when it appears after a period, it looks like the beginning of the next sentence rather than a note. and in many browsers superscripts also add line space above, which confuses the reader by masquerading as a paragraph break.
I'm going to change this back to a normal editorial note in brackets; please don't pick an arbitrary and unsuitable formatting style, like superscripted text—please stick to conventional editorial style. — Michael Z. 2005-11-30 22:27 Z
I have been bold and added the square brackets back in so that this template is clearly distinguished from the text. Alternatives are welcome, but this appears to me as the best current choice. Blackcap (talk) (vandalfighters, take a look) 23:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
[discussion moved from user talk:Mzajac —MZ]
the square brackets look very unprofessional. maybe it's just because I've spent too much time on wikipedia. maybe they should be replaced with parentheses or glowing silver pentagrams, I dunno, but the squarebrackets look ... amateurish. Tom e r TALK 07:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Obviously, the way I'm accustomed to using it, it would be best as This statement made without any notable support, but that might run into just a little bit more opposition than I care to fight off... :-p Tom e r TALK 08:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I liked the template much better as Citation needed, i.e. as superscript. Now in the text it looks much uglier (IMHO).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
First of all, it is not "editorial comment". An editorial comment is a normal element in the book or article. and live "forever", so to say. We don't comment the isssue. This is a wikipedia's marker that something is poorly done. I would compare them to big ugly margin marks, This thing must be clearly visible with quick eye scan. I am against color conding, since the page are already raibow: bold black, blue, red, magenta.
Unilike "editorial comment", which is a perm part of the finished text, this template will be deleted once the problem fixed.
While be bold is OK, but if people object and revert, then sorry, you have to back off. The priority is for the original version, since for a long time no one objected. And if you feel change needed, wait for consensus. mikka (t) 03:12, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
An balance must be stricken between:
mikka (t) 21:36, 3 December 2005 (UTC) </nowiki>
The best way to remove the ugliness of the template in an article is to fix the problem! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah. Kudos for an excellent idea! :-) Tom e r talk 00:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
You know this is perhaps a useless template. Next thing you know we weill have a template that only contains the link to Wikipedia -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 00:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Could someone with more template ability look into the problem that this template adds line breaks on lists? Here's an example:
The second example pastes (what I think is) the template text directly into the page. Can the template be made to work with lists? Lsommerer 17:19, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks to whomever fixed this. LloydSommerer 17:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I see someone has added square brackets to this. I preferred it without. Does anyone mind if I revert? SlimVirgin (talk) 08:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I just noticed this template being used on Hugo Kelly, which is currently facing AfD. It just seems a bit odd to me - I thought the preferred way to deal with unsourced claims was to remove them to the Talk page until citations were/could be provided. Thoughts? pfctdayelise 05:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be pertinent t rename the cat for this article with something like Category:Article needing specific sources. Currently, it feeds into the same cat as {{ unreferenced}} and {{ Primarysources}}, but has a very different purpose,notably oin that it can be addedto an already well-sourced article without contradiction. Circeus 18:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Comments? Infinity0 talk 01:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, the ?? is pretty challenging, since not only is it saying "citation needed", it's putting the statement in question marks, ie. adding touch of doubt. Infinity0 talk 15:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Oh right. Well, my main complaint is that the template takes up too much space atm. Also "citation needed" says only that - it doesn't question the validity of the statement. Infinity0 talk 16:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
How about uncited ? Infinity0 talk 16:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
"Citation needed" invites the reader/editor to seek out a source and post the citation in the article. "Uncited" or "??" does not. If the only argument against "citation needed" is that it is long, I don't think a change is necessary. I'm reverting the change to the template until consensus is apparent on a change. - Jersyko· talk 02:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
In 2-1/2 months, this template's usage has grown from about 280 inclusions to somewhere around 2,500! If anyone is still claiming that it is okay that this template is an eyesore because it's only going to be in place temporarily, then I ask you to retract that statement, or get ready to work full-time in your local library finding references or removing this template.
Let's make it look like a small single question mark, either superscripted [?] or not [?] (two question marks are redundant), linking through the phrase "citation needed", which will be visible in the tool-tip, but redirects to Wikipedia:Citing sources. — Michael Z. 2006-02-20 01:54 Z
Being an incentive to find a source shouldn't be a reason for making this template bloated. Wikipedia articles are read by everyone, and the point of the template should only be to inform the reader that the statement may not be true; without being at the expense of layout and style. Infinity0 talk 17:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Folks, I was surprised to see {{fact}} as a synomym for this page, "Citation needed." For newbies, and even experienced users like me, it's completely misleading and confusing, as it appears in the wikimarkup that this is a declared "fact" rather than something that needs "fact checking." Can someone provide an explanation for how this has evolved? -- Fuzheado | Talk 06:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
This template has at least ten redirects:
— Michael Z. 2006-04-02 22:37 Z
I like {{ fact}}, it's handy. Mangojuice 19:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Any further thinking on whether this redirect should go or not? There's not much point in replacing all the current usages unless it actually is going to be "officially" deprecated and eventually deleted, otherwise people will simply keep using it, making more work for the renaming effort, and hence more server load, and so on ad infinitum. (Nothing crippling in and of itself, but 5-6000 edits is not to be sneezed at either.) Alai 11:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Very recently, use of "fact" led to a misunderstanding between editors in a feature article. Clearly, there is and always was a good reason why {{ fact}} is deprecated. From what I have observed, {{ fact}} reads to the average editor as "not a fact", and it has been just as inflammatory as accusing the submitter of the corresponding statement of vandalism. Henceforth, I feel that we should not endorse {{ fact}} by leaving the official title of this template as it is. (Unfortunately somebody went and moved the page from Citation needed to fact before we could truly reach consensus. :p) Therefore I propose the following steps:
(My reasoning behind step 2 is so that the process isn't interrupted part-way.) Whatever the case, we need more discussion on this, albeit not so far as requesting a move just yet. -- DavidHOzAu 14:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Some kind of official declaration on the matter would be greatly appreciated, as the competing templates are sowing confusion (not to mention the actual confusion caused by {{fact}}). And if not here, then where. Tewfik Talk 18:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
In the last 41 days the number of inclusions of this template has doubled, to about 4,900. Its occurrence grew by about 120 per day, and appears to be accelerating. Perhaps it will level off, but this template will continue to be seen more and more by Wikipedia readers. Please let's not continue to accept poor typography just because the template's placement is intended to be temporary (the details have been discussed above, so let's not get into that here).
Here's an idea to improve the template's appearance, without compromising the typography of an article or the template's function: instead of using a superscript, set the text in an italic serif font, like this example [ citation needed], or in small capitals [ citation needed].
Such a font switch is used in many publications to indicate a change of context, for example, to indicate different parts of a definition in a dictionary. The different font stands out significantly in running text. The square brackets still imply an editorial remark, standing outside of the text article itself. But it uses conventional typographic techniques and doesn't present as much of a jarring visual element on the page as a long superscript.
Would anyone object to such a change in the template? — Michael Z. 2006-04-02 22:27 Z
There is also a change of color too, you have to take that into account. color change. What we really need is a small image like we have for external links, and I have taken the liberty of making a small image and it should suffice for verbatim use in Wikipedia. -- DavidHOzAu 00:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Since there has been no objection, I'll implement this. — Michael Z. 2006-05-12 17:58 Z
I think it'd be good if the vertical-align style of the template was changed to top, because at the moment it is seriously borks up the line heights. In my opinion, the .reference class used for the <ref> tag should use this vertical alignment too, because at the moment it also borks line heights, an effect very evident on heavily-cited articles. I'll demonstrate here:
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
Lorem ipsum |
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
Lorem ipsum |
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
Note that this separation of lines only happens in some browsers. Kaldosh 08:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
It happens on IE and Mozilla, and that's 95% of the browser market. -- DavidHOzAu 14:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I changed the category from Category:Articles lacking sources to Category:Articles with unsourced statements, as the old categorization was really not appropriately titled. This template is for articles that do list sources, but have some statements that need citations.
I also changed the formatting of the text from italics to normal. The text is already superscripted and in brackets... the italics didn't make it stand out any more. I won't yell if anyone reverts the formatting, but I really do think that the new category is a better name. — Seqsea ( talk) 05:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know why the fact template is being changed to this one? SlimVirgin (talk) 17:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
This template currently has 8,674 inclusions and links. Its rate of inclusion is beginning to drop, having been added to Wikipedia only an average of 94 times per day over the last forty days (compared to 120 times per day over the previous 41 days).
If someone still thinks the ridiculous design of this template is encouraging its removal, then maybe we should set it in 64-point pink script letters. When they see that, they'll hit the stacks and enter all those references by next week. — Michael Z. 2006-05-12 17:53 Z
I'd like to suggest that this template should render its output based on the style used to render sources in the article. As noted in WP:CITE, as of 19:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC) there are three "acceptable" styles:
If this proposal were accepted, here are examples of how this template's appearance would vary based on an article's style, ignoring any User styles:
There may be a gotcha I'm not thinking of at first glance for making this template sensitive to styles in this way, but before any implementations are attempted it would be useful to know if the idea has merit. Thanks. 66.167.141.119 19:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC).
Why are these templates being shuffled around? Needlessly transcluding templates, such as was done in Template:Citation needed is bad practice, and may affect Wikipedia's performace. — Michael Z. 2006-05-14 14:46 Z
<sup title="Needs citation">
should be changed to just <sup>
. The title tool-tip only appears when mousing over the brackets, because the link's tool-tip overrides it. And anyway, what's the point of adding the label "needs citation" to the text "citation needed"? This helps no one. —
Michael
Z. 2006-05-14 14:50 Z
I've made a few changes to the template:
— May. 19, '06 [07:25] < freak| talk>
One day a MediaWiki developer will fix the main.css file so that superscripts/references do not muck up line heights in bulleted lists or indented text; this would have the unfortunate side-effect of making this template unobtrusive, which we don't want. I propose adding something like <sup class="uncited">
so that this template can be customized on a skin-by-skin basis (see
m:User styles and
m:Gallery of user styles) and always kept ugly even though other superscripts are typographically correct. Javascript code and/or css needs a title or class to distinguish between this template and normal superscripts, regardless of a skin customization. --
DavidHOzAu 03:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
class="uncited"
to the template. Note that this allows the
Paper Wikipedia project (besides others) to quickly censor this template by setting sup.uncited { display:none; }
in a css file. --
DavidHOzAu 03:34, 23 May 2006 (UTC)sup.reference
, which the <ref> tag uses, in either monobook.css, common.css, or main.css. I don't see the problem here. --
DavidHOzAu 01:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)How about we use correct typography (remove the sup tag altogether) and :gasp: use the evil <blink> tag to draw attention? -- DavidHOzAu 14:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why, but this template is HIGHLY effective. Users often cite things within a single day! Amazing! My thanks to the creators/maintainers :). RN 19:16, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Make it possible to use the template like this {{citeneeded|what-to-reference}}
, so that when the mouse hovers over the link, "Citation needed: what to reference" appears as the tooltip. This would help point other editors in the right direction and avoid misunderstandings between editors over what is needed to fix up that section.
For example, the text "Object was not designed for verbatim use by people with allergies.{{citeneeded|that use is not verbatim}}" shows that we are requesting a citation about said Object not being for verbatim use, instead of about its use by people with allergies.
My rationale is that even if we decide not to use a second parameter in the template, recommending that people add a reason as the second parameter might be useful in helping other editors clean up articles. (Note that this would have the added benefit of reducing viral growth since the template would be replaced quicker.) -- DavidHOzAu 09:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a template that can be used when there is a citation but when one thinks it to be somehow "deficient" or "not adequate" ? Like for stating that there is well a citation but an additional one (or more) would be pertinent? Regards. Cretanforever
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
This template looks terrible in an article. For reference, here are examples of the conventional form of an editorial note [ citation needed], and the version of this template before I changed it. Citation needed This is an editorial comment, and editorial comments go in square brackets, in all types of writing. Small superscript ("superior text") is reserved for footnote or endnote references using symbols or figures (cite*, another 1), mathematical expressions (E=mc2), and sometimes ordinals (1st, 2nd).
Superscript letters are never used for long words like this template, which puts a big empty space in the middle of the text—it's an empty blot that stands out so much I can see it on my monitor from across the room, and further emphasizing it by italicizing is completely unnecessary. The note is long enough that when it appears after a period, it looks like the beginning of the next sentence rather than a note. and in many browsers superscripts also add line space above, which confuses the reader by masquerading as a paragraph break.
I'm going to change this back to a normal editorial note in brackets; please don't pick an arbitrary and unsuitable formatting style, like superscripted text—please stick to conventional editorial style. — Michael Z. 2005-11-30 22:27 Z
I have been bold and added the square brackets back in so that this template is clearly distinguished from the text. Alternatives are welcome, but this appears to me as the best current choice. Blackcap (talk) (vandalfighters, take a look) 23:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
[discussion moved from user talk:Mzajac —MZ]
the square brackets look very unprofessional. maybe it's just because I've spent too much time on wikipedia. maybe they should be replaced with parentheses or glowing silver pentagrams, I dunno, but the squarebrackets look ... amateurish. Tom e r TALK 07:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Obviously, the way I'm accustomed to using it, it would be best as This statement made without any notable support, but that might run into just a little bit more opposition than I care to fight off... :-p Tom e r TALK 08:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I liked the template much better as Citation needed, i.e. as superscript. Now in the text it looks much uglier (IMHO).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
First of all, it is not "editorial comment". An editorial comment is a normal element in the book or article. and live "forever", so to say. We don't comment the isssue. This is a wikipedia's marker that something is poorly done. I would compare them to big ugly margin marks, This thing must be clearly visible with quick eye scan. I am against color conding, since the page are already raibow: bold black, blue, red, magenta.
Unilike "editorial comment", which is a perm part of the finished text, this template will be deleted once the problem fixed.
While be bold is OK, but if people object and revert, then sorry, you have to back off. The priority is for the original version, since for a long time no one objected. And if you feel change needed, wait for consensus. mikka (t) 03:12, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
An balance must be stricken between:
mikka (t) 21:36, 3 December 2005 (UTC) </nowiki>
The best way to remove the ugliness of the template in an article is to fix the problem! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah. Kudos for an excellent idea! :-) Tom e r talk 00:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
You know this is perhaps a useless template. Next thing you know we weill have a template that only contains the link to Wikipedia -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 00:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Could someone with more template ability look into the problem that this template adds line breaks on lists? Here's an example:
The second example pastes (what I think is) the template text directly into the page. Can the template be made to work with lists? Lsommerer 17:19, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks to whomever fixed this. LloydSommerer 17:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I see someone has added square brackets to this. I preferred it without. Does anyone mind if I revert? SlimVirgin (talk) 08:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I just noticed this template being used on Hugo Kelly, which is currently facing AfD. It just seems a bit odd to me - I thought the preferred way to deal with unsourced claims was to remove them to the Talk page until citations were/could be provided. Thoughts? pfctdayelise 05:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be pertinent t rename the cat for this article with something like Category:Article needing specific sources. Currently, it feeds into the same cat as {{ unreferenced}} and {{ Primarysources}}, but has a very different purpose,notably oin that it can be addedto an already well-sourced article without contradiction. Circeus 18:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Comments? Infinity0 talk 01:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, the ?? is pretty challenging, since not only is it saying "citation needed", it's putting the statement in question marks, ie. adding touch of doubt. Infinity0 talk 15:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Oh right. Well, my main complaint is that the template takes up too much space atm. Also "citation needed" says only that - it doesn't question the validity of the statement. Infinity0 talk 16:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
How about uncited ? Infinity0 talk 16:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
"Citation needed" invites the reader/editor to seek out a source and post the citation in the article. "Uncited" or "??" does not. If the only argument against "citation needed" is that it is long, I don't think a change is necessary. I'm reverting the change to the template until consensus is apparent on a change. - Jersyko· talk 02:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
In 2-1/2 months, this template's usage has grown from about 280 inclusions to somewhere around 2,500! If anyone is still claiming that it is okay that this template is an eyesore because it's only going to be in place temporarily, then I ask you to retract that statement, or get ready to work full-time in your local library finding references or removing this template.
Let's make it look like a small single question mark, either superscripted [?] or not [?] (two question marks are redundant), linking through the phrase "citation needed", which will be visible in the tool-tip, but redirects to Wikipedia:Citing sources. — Michael Z. 2006-02-20 01:54 Z
Being an incentive to find a source shouldn't be a reason for making this template bloated. Wikipedia articles are read by everyone, and the point of the template should only be to inform the reader that the statement may not be true; without being at the expense of layout and style. Infinity0 talk 17:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Folks, I was surprised to see {{fact}} as a synomym for this page, "Citation needed." For newbies, and even experienced users like me, it's completely misleading and confusing, as it appears in the wikimarkup that this is a declared "fact" rather than something that needs "fact checking." Can someone provide an explanation for how this has evolved? -- Fuzheado | Talk 06:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
This template has at least ten redirects:
— Michael Z. 2006-04-02 22:37 Z
I like {{ fact}}, it's handy. Mangojuice 19:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Any further thinking on whether this redirect should go or not? There's not much point in replacing all the current usages unless it actually is going to be "officially" deprecated and eventually deleted, otherwise people will simply keep using it, making more work for the renaming effort, and hence more server load, and so on ad infinitum. (Nothing crippling in and of itself, but 5-6000 edits is not to be sneezed at either.) Alai 11:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Very recently, use of "fact" led to a misunderstanding between editors in a feature article. Clearly, there is and always was a good reason why {{ fact}} is deprecated. From what I have observed, {{ fact}} reads to the average editor as "not a fact", and it has been just as inflammatory as accusing the submitter of the corresponding statement of vandalism. Henceforth, I feel that we should not endorse {{ fact}} by leaving the official title of this template as it is. (Unfortunately somebody went and moved the page from Citation needed to fact before we could truly reach consensus. :p) Therefore I propose the following steps:
(My reasoning behind step 2 is so that the process isn't interrupted part-way.) Whatever the case, we need more discussion on this, albeit not so far as requesting a move just yet. -- DavidHOzAu 14:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Some kind of official declaration on the matter would be greatly appreciated, as the competing templates are sowing confusion (not to mention the actual confusion caused by {{fact}}). And if not here, then where. Tewfik Talk 18:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
In the last 41 days the number of inclusions of this template has doubled, to about 4,900. Its occurrence grew by about 120 per day, and appears to be accelerating. Perhaps it will level off, but this template will continue to be seen more and more by Wikipedia readers. Please let's not continue to accept poor typography just because the template's placement is intended to be temporary (the details have been discussed above, so let's not get into that here).
Here's an idea to improve the template's appearance, without compromising the typography of an article or the template's function: instead of using a superscript, set the text in an italic serif font, like this example [ citation needed], or in small capitals [ citation needed].
Such a font switch is used in many publications to indicate a change of context, for example, to indicate different parts of a definition in a dictionary. The different font stands out significantly in running text. The square brackets still imply an editorial remark, standing outside of the text article itself. But it uses conventional typographic techniques and doesn't present as much of a jarring visual element on the page as a long superscript.
Would anyone object to such a change in the template? — Michael Z. 2006-04-02 22:27 Z
There is also a change of color too, you have to take that into account. color change. What we really need is a small image like we have for external links, and I have taken the liberty of making a small image and it should suffice for verbatim use in Wikipedia. -- DavidHOzAu 00:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Since there has been no objection, I'll implement this. — Michael Z. 2006-05-12 17:58 Z
I think it'd be good if the vertical-align style of the template was changed to top, because at the moment it is seriously borks up the line heights. In my opinion, the .reference class used for the <ref> tag should use this vertical alignment too, because at the moment it also borks line heights, an effect very evident on heavily-cited articles. I'll demonstrate here:
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. [1] Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. citation needed Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum. Aenean imperdiet. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Curabitur ullamcorper ultricies nisi. Nam eget dui. |
Note that this separation of lines only happens in some browsers. Kaldosh 08:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
It happens on IE and Mozilla, and that's 95% of the browser market. -- DavidHOzAu 14:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I changed the category from Category:Articles lacking sources to Category:Articles with unsourced statements, as the old categorization was really not appropriately titled. This template is for articles that do list sources, but have some statements that need citations.
I also changed the formatting of the text from italics to normal. The text is already superscripted and in brackets... the italics didn't make it stand out any more. I won't yell if anyone reverts the formatting, but I really do think that the new category is a better name. — Seqsea ( talk) 05:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know why the fact template is being changed to this one? SlimVirgin (talk) 17:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
This template currently has 8,674 inclusions and links. Its rate of inclusion is beginning to drop, having been added to Wikipedia only an average of 94 times per day over the last forty days (compared to 120 times per day over the previous 41 days).
If someone still thinks the ridiculous design of this template is encouraging its removal, then maybe we should set it in 64-point pink script letters. When they see that, they'll hit the stacks and enter all those references by next week. — Michael Z. 2006-05-12 17:53 Z
I'd like to suggest that this template should render its output based on the style used to render sources in the article. As noted in WP:CITE, as of 19:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC) there are three "acceptable" styles:
If this proposal were accepted, here are examples of how this template's appearance would vary based on an article's style, ignoring any User styles:
There may be a gotcha I'm not thinking of at first glance for making this template sensitive to styles in this way, but before any implementations are attempted it would be useful to know if the idea has merit. Thanks. 66.167.141.119 19:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC).
Why are these templates being shuffled around? Needlessly transcluding templates, such as was done in Template:Citation needed is bad practice, and may affect Wikipedia's performace. — Michael Z. 2006-05-14 14:46 Z
<sup title="Needs citation">
should be changed to just <sup>
. The title tool-tip only appears when mousing over the brackets, because the link's tool-tip overrides it. And anyway, what's the point of adding the label "needs citation" to the text "citation needed"? This helps no one. —
Michael
Z. 2006-05-14 14:50 Z
I've made a few changes to the template:
— May. 19, '06 [07:25] < freak| talk>
One day a MediaWiki developer will fix the main.css file so that superscripts/references do not muck up line heights in bulleted lists or indented text; this would have the unfortunate side-effect of making this template unobtrusive, which we don't want. I propose adding something like <sup class="uncited">
so that this template can be customized on a skin-by-skin basis (see
m:User styles and
m:Gallery of user styles) and always kept ugly even though other superscripts are typographically correct. Javascript code and/or css needs a title or class to distinguish between this template and normal superscripts, regardless of a skin customization. --
DavidHOzAu 03:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
class="uncited"
to the template. Note that this allows the
Paper Wikipedia project (besides others) to quickly censor this template by setting sup.uncited { display:none; }
in a css file. --
DavidHOzAu 03:34, 23 May 2006 (UTC)sup.reference
, which the <ref> tag uses, in either monobook.css, common.css, or main.css. I don't see the problem here. --
DavidHOzAu 01:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)How about we use correct typography (remove the sup tag altogether) and :gasp: use the evil <blink> tag to draw attention? -- DavidHOzAu 14:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't know why, but this template is HIGHLY effective. Users often cite things within a single day! Amazing! My thanks to the creators/maintainers :). RN 19:16, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Make it possible to use the template like this {{citeneeded|what-to-reference}}
, so that when the mouse hovers over the link, "Citation needed: what to reference" appears as the tooltip. This would help point other editors in the right direction and avoid misunderstandings between editors over what is needed to fix up that section.
For example, the text "Object was not designed for verbatim use by people with allergies.{{citeneeded|that use is not verbatim}}" shows that we are requesting a citation about said Object not being for verbatim use, instead of about its use by people with allergies.
My rationale is that even if we decide not to use a second parameter in the template, recommending that people add a reason as the second parameter might be useful in helping other editors clean up articles. (Note that this would have the added benefit of reducing viral growth since the template would be replaced quicker.) -- DavidHOzAu 09:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Is there a template that can be used when there is a citation but when one thinks it to be somehow "deficient" or "not adequate" ? Like for stating that there is well a citation but an additional one (or more) would be pertinent? Regards. Cretanforever