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 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
I'd like to suggest that wording as shown in articles, citation needed, be changed to something shorter so as to not break up the flow of the text quite so much. need citation would probably be just as clear and would shorten the interruption by two character. Whereas need cite would be even shorter, but perhaps not quite as clear. ( Previous discussion) -- Atomes ( talk) 17:34, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I see the citation needed template used in every manner of situation even ones that are highly inappropriate where the statements made are entirely uncontroversial and purely factual or descriptive in nature. These tend to be along the lines of: "The allies won the second world war citation needed" and are just annoyances to the editors of wikipedia who actually do the useful work of adding new material.
The presence of a fact template suggests that there is something wrong with a statement or that it is doubtful or controversial.
I think that fact templates should only be added when the factuality of a statement is seriously in doubt or of controversial nature. In order to deal with incidences of drive by tagging I think there should be a reqiurement of anyone who makes a citation needed tag must write in the talk section exactly what they think is wrong with a statement.
There is also the issue of things which may not be documented, though they might be generally held as being true. If I wrote that "Alice Springs in Australia is not inhabited by four legged martians citation needed" I doubt I'd be able to find a source anywhere on earth that will specifically agree with that fact. In a more practical sense, if in a mathematical context one were to write 2 + 2 = 4 citation needed, there is no mathematical proof for the truth of such a statement (a point made by Roger Penrose) but the statement is almost universally held as true and certainly not controversial or doubtful in any way. Some statements are really difficult or impossible to find references for, not because they are wrong or 'original research' but because of their nature. Although there are statements where references can be found (sometimes only in print) wiki editors are not paid and many useful contributors don't want to waste their own time looking up references and writing them in when the statements themselves are completely sound.
I don't understand the motivations of people who add fact tags in inappropriate places (although I sometimes question their intelligence or character in my own mind) but anyone who adds a fact tag should be required to make a note on the discussion page of the article saying why they thought it was necessary to have the tag in the first place. I think it's important to use common sense when tagging the fact tag because it can do more harm than good in some cases. The potential harm includes: discouraging editors, wasting editor's time and fostering unfounded doubts in the minds of readers. Sometimes the citation needed tag seems to be the wikipedia analog of vexatious litigation.
I hope that the policies can be changed to retain the advantages of this tag without all the downsides which I have just outlined -- I ( talk) 08:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
So (reading above), there's a bot which will date any fact tag I place? Because I really like knowing how long something has been tagged as unsourced - and I don't find easy documentation telling me how to get that behavior.
~ender 2008-10-28 01:42:AM MST —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
4.240.12.231 (
talk)
{{fact}}
in the page, and a bot (currently
SmackBot) will add the date tag for you. (If, for some reason, {{fact}}
is not dated automatically, the only way to find out when it was added is by checking the page history.) —
DragonHawk (
talk|
hist) 21:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I have removed this suggestion. Peoples sigs can be complicated an break stuff, including User:SmackBot. Any significant discussion should be on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:23 21 November 2008 (UTC).
I have lost count of the times I have added '{{fact}}<!-- please add [[ISBN]]s -->' to articles, could we create a new tag that looks something like this: ISBN needed to ask for the ISBN or ISSN on book and periodicals mentioned. -- Nate 14 81 09:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
For better or worse, some people manually input the date parameter rather than letting the bot do it. If someone manually inputs december 2008 rather than December 2008 the template does not recognise the date as valid, would it be possible to change the template so it recognised small deviations such as non-capitals?, thanks Tom B ( talk) 18:58, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
...the date specified in the tag being displayed on the link's tooltip? That was incredibly handy, and I'm 99% sure I'm not imagining such a feature. Why did it get removed? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:07, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Instead of having Text requiring a reference.{{fact}} produce Text requiring a reference. citation needed, let's also (as in on top of the current behaviour) have it so {{fact|Text requiring a reference.}} produces Text requiring a reference. citation needed.
The French wiki produces a more eye-pleasing gray underline (rather than the black one) through the need_ref span class, but it doesn't seem to work here.
Headbomb {
ταλκ
κοντριβς –
WP Physics} 08:54, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Between "visual blight" and unreferenced statements, visual blight is by far the lesser evil. If you don't want to use the new way, then don't. Just write the good old "Text requiring a reference.{{fact}}. and things won't be any different. I, amongst many others, would rather use the new way. Consider a section like this (from the current version of Economy of Angola:
The U.S. exports industrial goods and services, primarily oilfield equipment, mining equipment, chemicals, aircraft, and food, to Angola, while principally importing petroleum. citation needed
Now what exactly is the reference needed for? The entire sentence or just petrolum as the principal import from Angola? Now consider a section like this (from the current version of Ayn Rand:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy citation needed, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property citation needed. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason citation needed. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
This is part of a larger, well referenced section, to the unreferenced section tag is innapropriate. However in the current version, four {{ fact}} tags carries no greater information than the following:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
but introduces a lot of unnecessary clutter. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
(got here via a note at WT:MOSNUM) Yes, the example above with the four citation needed tags looks horribly cluttered, and the alternate version with the underline is much easier on the eyes. On the other hand, after the references are put in, the paragraph will STILL look horribly cluttered… only now it will be in-line [34] cites [35] doing [36] the cluttering [37] instead of the citation needed tags. On top of which are the Wikilinks, which some editors like to put in with mad abandon… and some will even put in in-line links to external sites, so that the end result will look like this:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy citation needed, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor [38] and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property [38]. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason [39]. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
For readability Wikipedia ranks at the bottom of the pile, and one of the biggest problems is the many ugly splotches of blue in the form of in-line cites, in-line tags, Wikilinks, and in-line external links. Putting underline on a paragraph instead of several citation needed tags is easier on the eyes but does not solve the most pressing problems. Also, it makes it more difficult to identify exactly which facts, factoids, assertions or opinions should receive citations. For those who are interested, see my proposal to turn off display of in-line cites by default (buried somewhere in the Village Pump archives).-- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 17:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
/* inconspicuous inline reference citations */ sup.reference { white-space: nowrap; } sup.reference a { font-size: 0.85em; font-weight: 600; /* semibold; currently doesn't work for Minion Pro */ font-weight: bold; } sup.reference:after { content: ' '; /* non-break space after cites */ text-decoration: none; } sup.reference a span { display: none; /* hide the brackets */ } p sup.reference a, tr sup.reference a, ol sup.reference a, ul sup.reference a, dl sup.reference a { color: black; } p:hover sup.reference a, tr:hover sup.reference a, ol:hover sup.reference a, ul:hover sup.reference a, dl:hover sup.reference a { text-decoration: underline; } p:hover sup.reference a:visited, tr:hover sup.reference a:visited, ol:hover sup.reference a:visited, ul:hover sup.reference a:visited, dl:hover sup.reference a:visited { color: #5A3696; } p:hover sup.reference a:hover, tr:hover sup.reference a:hover, ol:hover sup.reference a:hover, ul:hover sup.reference a:hover, dl:hover sup.reference a:hover { color: #002BB8; } p:hover sup.reference a:active, tr:hover sup.reference a:active, ol:hover sup.reference a:active, ul:hover sup.reference a:active, dl:hover sup.reference a:active { color: #FAA700; }
On it.wiki, it shows gray text with pink background. -- 80.104.234.134 ( talk) 18:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a smart idea that has the potential to end ambiguity to precisely what needs citing (was it the preceding sentence, paragraph, or even section?). It would act as a tremendous motivator for people to verify material in articles. I say go for it. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I really dislike this proposal to underline statements that need citations. This will lead to incredibly ugly pages that are difficult to read. This is also an accessibility issue. I have vision problems (largely corrected by bifocals), but underlined statements are still hard for me to read, especially if they cross multiple lines. Do we really want to potentially turn away readers - or future editors - because the page is unnecessarily difficult to read? If there is ambiguity over which statement the tags are for, use the article talk page or hidden comments in the text.
Karanacs (
talk) 22:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I quite like this idea - I can see that for <ahem>academic</ahem> purposes, or for others wanting to know serious information about a topic, it would immediately flag up which bits needed referencing, especially if it is in a small point of a long sentence/line (as in one of the above examples). Whether it is through underlining, or shaded text is open to options, but if it causes accessability issues (as Karanacs suggestions, then it should be used very cautiously indeed. It is also less useful if the majority of an article gets {{|fact}} splashed all over it (although they could all be exchanged for a blanked 'unreferenced' template.— MDCollins 23:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
(outdent)to readers uninformed about the nuances of wikipedia markup - ie the vast majority - the question mark in Mzajac's proposal/sample would imply that the assertions it follows are dubious, rather than that a source needs to be cited for them. i object to that. i don't see any advantage to the shading/underlining proposals: i don't perceive them as pinpointing where refs are needed any better than well-placed "citation needed" tags (oh and by the way, to a few folks in the discussion above: "well-placed" means after the end punctuation of the clause or sentence it refers to); and to me the underlining/shading ideas look like an increase in visual clutter, which isn't what wikipedia needs.
i gather that the "problem" these proposals are supposed to solve is that the "citation needed" tag is overly bulky and doesn't look good when it's used often enough for precision - what about changing it to generate a shorter tag, like (for example) this source? or ref? (while we're at it, "fact" is not a very adequate name for this template, is it.)
Sssoul (
talk) 09:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
style
attributes, requires adding a class to the sheet): The U.S. exports industrial goods and services, primarily oilfield equipment, mining equipment, chemicals, aircraft, and food, to Angola, while principally importing petroleum.
source? --
A. di M. (
talk) 14:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)When you think about it, it's kind of depressing that while we're knocking ourselves out thinking of improvements, 99.99% of which will never see the light of day, the Wikimedia foundation has hired several full-time employees for the "Usability Initiative" supported by a million-bucks grant. In other words, we're allowed to play pattycakes but when something important needs to get done, the Wiki model flies out of the window. And when I think about the implications for the writing side of the Wiki…-- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 11:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
<sup class="noprint Template-Fact"><span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources" style="white-space: nowrap;">[<i><a href="/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a></i>]</span></sup>
Is there any reason for the span? The title attribute could be placed on the sup element, but since it only shows up when mousing over the bracket characters, let's remove it). Since there's a class, the style can be moved to the style sheet. The i element can also be removed, by adding font-style: italic to the CSS. As long as we're making changes, let's change the class to a shorter one, like tl-fact. The resulting code in each transclusion would be shorter and cleaner:
<sup class="noprint tl-fact">[<a href="/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>]</sup>
The style sheet MediaWiki:Common.css would have:
.tl-fact { white-space: nowrap; } .tl-fact a { font-style: italic; }
Any comments or objections? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mzajac ( talk • contribs)
I could not find an appropiate template in the German Wikipedia... perhaps maybe someone could help me? Thank you! -- Lazer erazer ( talk) 22:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
So the documentation currently reads. Why not simply show how to do this, as is done on most other maintenance and cleanup templates, i.e. {{fact|date=March 2009}}
? __
meco (
talk) 09:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
I have been doing some work to bring a more diverse array of tags and boilerplates to Wikiquote. After the Obama administration took over, all archived news and presidential radio addresses on whitehouse.gov were wiped out, leaving many dead links on the WQ page for George W. Bush. I created a tag for labeling deadlinks in the article, exactly duplicating the tag on this project, but noticed it was difficult to make out the tags in the flow of text. I altered the WQ version by simply reddening the flanking brackets, and now the tag sticks out far better. deadlink I thought this would be something to consider for the various in-text tags on Wikipedia. Thoughts? » S0CO( talk| contribs) 01:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Following on from User:Jc-S0CO's thought above, which I agree with by the way, I noticed the Italian wikipedia equivalent for this template has two modes of use (I have modified the wikitext to show the effect):
l'uso è duplice:
Is it possible to add this second mode to the English template? Or provide a second template that does this? See it:Algoritmo for an example of its use. 84user ( talk) 05:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I made an example at Template:Fact-span. It could be used citation needed like this. 84user ( talk) 05:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Why are so many articles with {{ fact}} tags showing up in categories such as Category:Articles with unsourced statements from May 2009 (from instead of since)? That's a huge but, I'm finding tons of "from" categories all over the place. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ( Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 01:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe because those tags were made in May 2009? I dunno, just a thought. BrenMan 94 ( talk) 14:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
More heck: Keynote is "truly 3D" -- this is an exaggeration -- to be truly 3D there has to be a separate view for each eye and the view has to change with the position of the viewer's head. Keynote is bundled with several 3D-like transitions which are mapped onto a 2D screen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.78.186.52 ( talk) 00:18, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Someone please reproduce this at commons:Template:Fact and make it work. Many (50+) pages already use this template even though it's never existed on that wiki. More than simple copy is needed.-- Elvey ( talk) 19:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
citation needed really should be included in the list of Wiki markups viewed when editing a page, it'd save people from having to open up a new window/tab to find the code for it.
BrenMan 94 (
talk) 14:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Suppose you want to add this tag to a statement that is in parenthesis, for example:"...the Swiss (the foremost experts of Sambucus cultivation and culinary applications)" is it best to put the tag within the parenthesis or right after the closing one? Colincbn ( talk) 04:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Template:Fact → Template:Citation needed — As already noted on the documentation page, the word "fact" is vague and confusing to new editors. Instead of
John Smith was born January 1, 1801.{{fact}}
we should encourage
John Smith was born January 1, 1801.{{citation needed}}
Spelling out the "citation needed" helps make the wikicode more readable, less ambiguous, and easier to learn. — Remember the dot ( talk) 01:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This rename is a Good Thing and one that has crossed my mind. It is the work of a moment (for me) and about 40 minutes (for my PC) to rebuild the SB rulebase. And yes people do us {{ cn}} a lot and why not? Short to type, easy to remember and gets clarified within a day. Rich Farmbrough, 11:15, 4 July 2009 (UTC).
(outdent) but the template has already been renamed. it's now called "citation needed", but you can still type just {{cn}}. i don't think a further renaming is warranted, but if that's what you're proposing ... is {{refplease}} taken? Sssoul ( talk) 06:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
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 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
I'd like to suggest that wording as shown in articles, citation needed, be changed to something shorter so as to not break up the flow of the text quite so much. need citation would probably be just as clear and would shorten the interruption by two character. Whereas need cite would be even shorter, but perhaps not quite as clear. ( Previous discussion) -- Atomes ( talk) 17:34, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I see the citation needed template used in every manner of situation even ones that are highly inappropriate where the statements made are entirely uncontroversial and purely factual or descriptive in nature. These tend to be along the lines of: "The allies won the second world war citation needed" and are just annoyances to the editors of wikipedia who actually do the useful work of adding new material.
The presence of a fact template suggests that there is something wrong with a statement or that it is doubtful or controversial.
I think that fact templates should only be added when the factuality of a statement is seriously in doubt or of controversial nature. In order to deal with incidences of drive by tagging I think there should be a reqiurement of anyone who makes a citation needed tag must write in the talk section exactly what they think is wrong with a statement.
There is also the issue of things which may not be documented, though they might be generally held as being true. If I wrote that "Alice Springs in Australia is not inhabited by four legged martians citation needed" I doubt I'd be able to find a source anywhere on earth that will specifically agree with that fact. In a more practical sense, if in a mathematical context one were to write 2 + 2 = 4 citation needed, there is no mathematical proof for the truth of such a statement (a point made by Roger Penrose) but the statement is almost universally held as true and certainly not controversial or doubtful in any way. Some statements are really difficult or impossible to find references for, not because they are wrong or 'original research' but because of their nature. Although there are statements where references can be found (sometimes only in print) wiki editors are not paid and many useful contributors don't want to waste their own time looking up references and writing them in when the statements themselves are completely sound.
I don't understand the motivations of people who add fact tags in inappropriate places (although I sometimes question their intelligence or character in my own mind) but anyone who adds a fact tag should be required to make a note on the discussion page of the article saying why they thought it was necessary to have the tag in the first place. I think it's important to use common sense when tagging the fact tag because it can do more harm than good in some cases. The potential harm includes: discouraging editors, wasting editor's time and fostering unfounded doubts in the minds of readers. Sometimes the citation needed tag seems to be the wikipedia analog of vexatious litigation.
I hope that the policies can be changed to retain the advantages of this tag without all the downsides which I have just outlined -- I ( talk) 08:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
So (reading above), there's a bot which will date any fact tag I place? Because I really like knowing how long something has been tagged as unsourced - and I don't find easy documentation telling me how to get that behavior.
~ender 2008-10-28 01:42:AM MST —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
4.240.12.231 (
talk)
{{fact}}
in the page, and a bot (currently
SmackBot) will add the date tag for you. (If, for some reason, {{fact}}
is not dated automatically, the only way to find out when it was added is by checking the page history.) —
DragonHawk (
talk|
hist) 21:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I have removed this suggestion. Peoples sigs can be complicated an break stuff, including User:SmackBot. Any significant discussion should be on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:23 21 November 2008 (UTC).
I have lost count of the times I have added '{{fact}}<!-- please add [[ISBN]]s -->' to articles, could we create a new tag that looks something like this: ISBN needed to ask for the ISBN or ISSN on book and periodicals mentioned. -- Nate 14 81 09:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
For better or worse, some people manually input the date parameter rather than letting the bot do it. If someone manually inputs december 2008 rather than December 2008 the template does not recognise the date as valid, would it be possible to change the template so it recognised small deviations such as non-capitals?, thanks Tom B ( talk) 18:58, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
...the date specified in the tag being displayed on the link's tooltip? That was incredibly handy, and I'm 99% sure I'm not imagining such a feature. Why did it get removed? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:07, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Instead of having Text requiring a reference.{{fact}} produce Text requiring a reference. citation needed, let's also (as in on top of the current behaviour) have it so {{fact|Text requiring a reference.}} produces Text requiring a reference. citation needed.
The French wiki produces a more eye-pleasing gray underline (rather than the black one) through the need_ref span class, but it doesn't seem to work here.
Headbomb {
ταλκ
κοντριβς –
WP Physics} 08:54, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Between "visual blight" and unreferenced statements, visual blight is by far the lesser evil. If you don't want to use the new way, then don't. Just write the good old "Text requiring a reference.{{fact}}. and things won't be any different. I, amongst many others, would rather use the new way. Consider a section like this (from the current version of Economy of Angola:
The U.S. exports industrial goods and services, primarily oilfield equipment, mining equipment, chemicals, aircraft, and food, to Angola, while principally importing petroleum. citation needed
Now what exactly is the reference needed for? The entire sentence or just petrolum as the principal import from Angola? Now consider a section like this (from the current version of Ayn Rand:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy citation needed, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property citation needed. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason citation needed. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
This is part of a larger, well referenced section, to the unreferenced section tag is innapropriate. However in the current version, four {{ fact}} tags carries no greater information than the following:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
but introduces a lot of unnecessary clutter. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
(got here via a note at WT:MOSNUM) Yes, the example above with the four citation needed tags looks horribly cluttered, and the alternate version with the underline is much easier on the eyes. On the other hand, after the references are put in, the paragraph will STILL look horribly cluttered… only now it will be in-line [34] cites [35] doing [36] the cluttering [37] instead of the citation needed tags. On top of which are the Wikilinks, which some editors like to put in with mad abandon… and some will even put in in-line links to external sites, so that the end result will look like this:
She recognized an intellectual kinship with John Locke in political philosophy citation needed, agreeing with Locke's ideas that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor [38] and have natural rights to life, liberty, and property [38]. Unlike Locke, she found the basis for individual rights in man's nature as a being whose survival depends upon his independent exercise of reason [39]. She agreed in a general way with the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and reported her approval of specific philosophical positions, including some of Baruch Spinoza and St. Thomas Aquinas. citation needed
For readability Wikipedia ranks at the bottom of the pile, and one of the biggest problems is the many ugly splotches of blue in the form of in-line cites, in-line tags, Wikilinks, and in-line external links. Putting underline on a paragraph instead of several citation needed tags is easier on the eyes but does not solve the most pressing problems. Also, it makes it more difficult to identify exactly which facts, factoids, assertions or opinions should receive citations. For those who are interested, see my proposal to turn off display of in-line cites by default (buried somewhere in the Village Pump archives).-- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 17:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
/* inconspicuous inline reference citations */ sup.reference { white-space: nowrap; } sup.reference a { font-size: 0.85em; font-weight: 600; /* semibold; currently doesn't work for Minion Pro */ font-weight: bold; } sup.reference:after { content: ' '; /* non-break space after cites */ text-decoration: none; } sup.reference a span { display: none; /* hide the brackets */ } p sup.reference a, tr sup.reference a, ol sup.reference a, ul sup.reference a, dl sup.reference a { color: black; } p:hover sup.reference a, tr:hover sup.reference a, ol:hover sup.reference a, ul:hover sup.reference a, dl:hover sup.reference a { text-decoration: underline; } p:hover sup.reference a:visited, tr:hover sup.reference a:visited, ol:hover sup.reference a:visited, ul:hover sup.reference a:visited, dl:hover sup.reference a:visited { color: #5A3696; } p:hover sup.reference a:hover, tr:hover sup.reference a:hover, ol:hover sup.reference a:hover, ul:hover sup.reference a:hover, dl:hover sup.reference a:hover { color: #002BB8; } p:hover sup.reference a:active, tr:hover sup.reference a:active, ol:hover sup.reference a:active, ul:hover sup.reference a:active, dl:hover sup.reference a:active { color: #FAA700; }
On it.wiki, it shows gray text with pink background. -- 80.104.234.134 ( talk) 18:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a smart idea that has the potential to end ambiguity to precisely what needs citing (was it the preceding sentence, paragraph, or even section?). It would act as a tremendous motivator for people to verify material in articles. I say go for it. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I really dislike this proposal to underline statements that need citations. This will lead to incredibly ugly pages that are difficult to read. This is also an accessibility issue. I have vision problems (largely corrected by bifocals), but underlined statements are still hard for me to read, especially if they cross multiple lines. Do we really want to potentially turn away readers - or future editors - because the page is unnecessarily difficult to read? If there is ambiguity over which statement the tags are for, use the article talk page or hidden comments in the text.
Karanacs (
talk) 22:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I quite like this idea - I can see that for <ahem>academic</ahem> purposes, or for others wanting to know serious information about a topic, it would immediately flag up which bits needed referencing, especially if it is in a small point of a long sentence/line (as in one of the above examples). Whether it is through underlining, or shaded text is open to options, but if it causes accessability issues (as Karanacs suggestions, then it should be used very cautiously indeed. It is also less useful if the majority of an article gets {{|fact}} splashed all over it (although they could all be exchanged for a blanked 'unreferenced' template.— MDCollins 23:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
(outdent)to readers uninformed about the nuances of wikipedia markup - ie the vast majority - the question mark in Mzajac's proposal/sample would imply that the assertions it follows are dubious, rather than that a source needs to be cited for them. i object to that. i don't see any advantage to the shading/underlining proposals: i don't perceive them as pinpointing where refs are needed any better than well-placed "citation needed" tags (oh and by the way, to a few folks in the discussion above: "well-placed" means after the end punctuation of the clause or sentence it refers to); and to me the underlining/shading ideas look like an increase in visual clutter, which isn't what wikipedia needs.
i gather that the "problem" these proposals are supposed to solve is that the "citation needed" tag is overly bulky and doesn't look good when it's used often enough for precision - what about changing it to generate a shorter tag, like (for example) this source? or ref? (while we're at it, "fact" is not a very adequate name for this template, is it.)
Sssoul (
talk) 09:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
style
attributes, requires adding a class to the sheet): The U.S. exports industrial goods and services, primarily oilfield equipment, mining equipment, chemicals, aircraft, and food, to Angola, while principally importing petroleum.
source? --
A. di M. (
talk) 14:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)When you think about it, it's kind of depressing that while we're knocking ourselves out thinking of improvements, 99.99% of which will never see the light of day, the Wikimedia foundation has hired several full-time employees for the "Usability Initiative" supported by a million-bucks grant. In other words, we're allowed to play pattycakes but when something important needs to get done, the Wiki model flies out of the window. And when I think about the implications for the writing side of the Wiki…-- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 11:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
<sup class="noprint Template-Fact"><span title="This claim needs references to reliable sources" style="white-space: nowrap;">[<i><a href="/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a></i>]</span></sup>
Is there any reason for the span? The title attribute could be placed on the sup element, but since it only shows up when mousing over the bracket characters, let's remove it). Since there's a class, the style can be moved to the style sheet. The i element can also be removed, by adding font-style: italic to the CSS. As long as we're making changes, let's change the class to a shorter one, like tl-fact. The resulting code in each transclusion would be shorter and cleaner:
<sup class="noprint tl-fact">[<a href="/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>]</sup>
The style sheet MediaWiki:Common.css would have:
.tl-fact { white-space: nowrap; } .tl-fact a { font-style: italic; }
Any comments or objections? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mzajac ( talk • contribs)
I could not find an appropiate template in the German Wikipedia... perhaps maybe someone could help me? Thank you! -- Lazer erazer ( talk) 22:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
So the documentation currently reads. Why not simply show how to do this, as is done on most other maintenance and cleanup templates, i.e. {{fact|date=March 2009}}
? __
meco (
talk) 09:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
I have been doing some work to bring a more diverse array of tags and boilerplates to Wikiquote. After the Obama administration took over, all archived news and presidential radio addresses on whitehouse.gov were wiped out, leaving many dead links on the WQ page for George W. Bush. I created a tag for labeling deadlinks in the article, exactly duplicating the tag on this project, but noticed it was difficult to make out the tags in the flow of text. I altered the WQ version by simply reddening the flanking brackets, and now the tag sticks out far better. deadlink I thought this would be something to consider for the various in-text tags on Wikipedia. Thoughts? » S0CO( talk| contribs) 01:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Following on from User:Jc-S0CO's thought above, which I agree with by the way, I noticed the Italian wikipedia equivalent for this template has two modes of use (I have modified the wikitext to show the effect):
l'uso è duplice:
Is it possible to add this second mode to the English template? Or provide a second template that does this? See it:Algoritmo for an example of its use. 84user ( talk) 05:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I made an example at Template:Fact-span. It could be used citation needed like this. 84user ( talk) 05:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Why are so many articles with {{ fact}} tags showing up in categories such as Category:Articles with unsourced statements from May 2009 (from instead of since)? That's a huge but, I'm finding tons of "from" categories all over the place. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ( Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 01:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe because those tags were made in May 2009? I dunno, just a thought. BrenMan 94 ( talk) 14:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
More heck: Keynote is "truly 3D" -- this is an exaggeration -- to be truly 3D there has to be a separate view for each eye and the view has to change with the position of the viewer's head. Keynote is bundled with several 3D-like transitions which are mapped onto a 2D screen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.78.186.52 ( talk) 00:18, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Someone please reproduce this at commons:Template:Fact and make it work. Many (50+) pages already use this template even though it's never existed on that wiki. More than simple copy is needed.-- Elvey ( talk) 19:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
citation needed really should be included in the list of Wiki markups viewed when editing a page, it'd save people from having to open up a new window/tab to find the code for it.
BrenMan 94 (
talk) 14:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Suppose you want to add this tag to a statement that is in parenthesis, for example:"...the Swiss (the foremost experts of Sambucus cultivation and culinary applications)" is it best to put the tag within the parenthesis or right after the closing one? Colincbn ( talk) 04:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Template:Fact → Template:Citation needed — As already noted on the documentation page, the word "fact" is vague and confusing to new editors. Instead of
John Smith was born January 1, 1801.{{fact}}
we should encourage
John Smith was born January 1, 1801.{{citation needed}}
Spelling out the "citation needed" helps make the wikicode more readable, less ambiguous, and easier to learn. — Remember the dot ( talk) 01:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
This rename is a Good Thing and one that has crossed my mind. It is the work of a moment (for me) and about 40 minutes (for my PC) to rebuild the SB rulebase. And yes people do us {{ cn}} a lot and why not? Short to type, easy to remember and gets clarified within a day. Rich Farmbrough, 11:15, 4 July 2009 (UTC).
(outdent) but the template has already been renamed. it's now called "citation needed", but you can still type just {{cn}}. i don't think a further renaming is warranted, but if that's what you're proposing ... is {{refplease}} taken? Sssoul ( talk) 06:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)