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I was wanting to use this template on my own wiki and it references another template called Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 15/doc but I cannot find it anywhere.....and of course it shows up as an error now.
Any suggestions on how to fix this or where I can get a copy of the appropriate cite template? 209.8.233.10 20:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Where can I get up to speed on Youtube as a source? I've never actually watched a Youtube clip, don't understand all the excitement, don't know what it's about, but I'm cleaning up a lot of references in election articles and need to understand:
Thanks, Sandy 22:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
This page has grown into a sprawling mess. It needs some serious reorganization and refactoring. I don't have time to do it myself at the moment, but I would encourage someone to be bold and edit this page down to the essential information. A lot of the stuff on this page is old and not especially relevent any more. Also, we should be pushing the use of cite.php more, as it has become a de facto requirement for featured articles. The way we word things here is very non-commital and ambiguous, i.e. "You may want to do this or you may want to do that" rather than giving some definite recommendations. Kaldari 21:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
What do we do about links to cited articles where there is an online version, but only on a paid subscription site. For example, Paris Commune cites
{{
cite news}}
: CS1 maint: date format (
link)Nothing about that citation indicates that you have to pay to see anything past the first paragraph of the online version. That seems wrong to me. Any suggestions? - Jmabel | Talk 04:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I guess what I don't like is that it provides a URL without saying that all it's going to take you to is a teaser. We should have some way to distinguish that, on more or less the same principle that we don't link a book title to the Amazon page selling the book. - Jmabel | Talk 06:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
What I often do (see Circumcision) is to put “Abstract” in the format tag of the {{ cite journal}} entry, which informs the reader that the statement being corroborated comes from the abstract and that the full-text is often not available. For the few times that abstract does not corroborate the statement, I will leave an editors note (see reference #92 in Circumcision for an example). -- Avi 03:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Although I have confirmed it from many users I just want to make sure that- If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it. means u should only translate the part of the non-english source which u intend to use in the article (and not the whole source).Plz confirm this on my talk page as I am not sure I will be able to locate this page again! Mahawiki 13:08, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I've written an essay on "convenience links" that cites this page heavily and would love to hear any thoughts. Thanks, TheronJ 21:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I have cited a book, and my honesty about having possession of it was questioned. I went so far as to scan the page I was quoting. My honesty is still being questioned. It's not a rare book; am I required to verify myself before I'm allowed to verify facts in articles? Are there any guidelines that talk about this? -- Masamage 05:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I see the rationale - the references are really a part of the article, and things like external links, books on related topics, etc. should appear at the end of the article.
But many of the articles I've worked on have really large numbers of references: Condom, for example, has 59 cited sources, and even in small font the references section takes up 2.5 screens on my monitor. Is it really reasonable to expect readers to scroll through that much text they are not interested in to see the "Further reading" and related sections?
In my view, the Footnotes/References section is integrally tied into the article through the footnote system - where the reader can go back and forth between the text of the article and cites for specific material at the click of a mouse. Because of this hypertext connection, I do not see any benefit to articles of having the cites immediately following the text.
In contrast, "Further reading" type sections benefit from immediately following the text. Readers learn about a topic, and then they learn where they can find even more information. Is there any support to making this change to the Further reading/external links guidelines? Or at least saying the best order of these sections may be different in different articles? Lyrl Talk Contribs 18:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
The order of sections in an article is covered by WP:LAYOUT and I suggest that part of the Manual of Style be discussed and possibly modified, rather than bringing it up here. -- Gerry Ashton 22:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
References are not always further reading. A "References and notes" section can be completely filled with pages of citations that have no content other than the one sentence they support. While further reading and external links type sections may, depending on the article, have books or large webpages full of content relevant to the article. In such cases, it makes more sense to put those sections first, and the references and notes sections at the very end of the article.
WP:LAYOUT says that "Further reading" may go either above or below References/Footnotes sections. Which contradicts this guideline ( Wikipedia:Citing sources#Further reading/external links). Although both locations say that external links have to go at the end, which I do not understand - external links are further reading in online form, why would a section titled "External links" be treated differently than a section titled "Further reading"? I will post on the WP:LAYOUT talk page also, but I think the discussion should continue here since the two guideline pages are not currently consistent with each other. Lyrl Talk Contribs 01:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
When writing a new article or adding references to an existing article that has none, follow the established practice for the appropriate profession or discipline that the article is concerning (if available and unquestioned).
Now, the traditional, unquestioned method of citing papers/books in meteorology articles is to use (Author Year) inline notation. While this method is almost universal for printed media on the subject, it just doesn't seem to make sense in a wikipedia setting where clickable footnotes are available. My main concerns are that
So which convention do we follow here? Wikipedia's or AMS's? - Runningonbrains 16:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
An article which contains both, just in case you were looking for an example.- Runningonbrains 16:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I got one of those notes on the top of my page Cedar Hill Area to site the refernce I did make a note one the bottom where is info is from but I am unsure how to taqg it so that the not verifyed thing comes off my page.??? -- Happypixie 22:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This page specifically forbids duplication of references #: "An ==External links== or ==Further reading== section is placed near the end of an article and offers... that might be of interest to the reader, but which have not been used as sources for the article."
But over at WP:LAYOUT, references are allowed to be listed a second time in the "Further reading" section #: "When there are more than five references about the article, you may want to include them here so that there is a complete bibliography for users in one place."
I don't really have an opinion either way, but two policy pages should be consistent with each other. Which way should it be - duplication prohibited or allowed? Lyrl Talk Contribs 00:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Note: I've also asked this question over on the WP:LAYOUT page Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout#This can't be right... Lyrl Talk Contribs 00:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Folks, I am an absolute newbie, and just added a section under FEMA, under a deadline for my class in Homeland Security, and I have footnotes, but canNOT figure out how to add them, and still meet my deadline. I want to do the right thing, here. How to I make my citations, how do I make them legit and copasetic(spell?), while I go back to my class stuff to finish meeting the deadline? hallebb
I have added a link in see also to Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, a (modest) proposal which has the support of editors from the mathematics and physics WikiProjects. If you have any comments on the guidelines, we would appreciate hearing them. – Joke 03:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
That page has had extremely limited exposure (as far as I can tell), consensus appears based on very few participants, and the title is excessively broad (scientific) considering it appears to be the work of a few members of Physics and Math projects: please correct me if you exposed it to *all* scientific projects, and I missed that. I question the guideline status, considering the limited participation. Sandy ( Talk) 14:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I should note that although the exposure has been limited, quite a number of editors from outside the two projects, including a number who were involved in the recent fracas at WP:CITE and WP:GA, have been quite encouraging about the guidelines. – Joke 14:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
And I reinstated the previous text, which clearly stated the status of the page, unlike the generic proposal banner. Scientific is not too broad, and the scope is clearly defined. It is for writing articles about scientific and mathematical subjects, and it currently has the consensus of editors in physics and mathematics. – Joke 14:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that the other projects should be consulted, and they will be. I suppose, if, for example, the geologists are vehemently opposed to the guidelines, then the page will have to find a new name. Until then, I think it is reasonable to leave it at the present name and clearly indicate that it only has the support of these Projects. This doesn't seem too unusual for proposed Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The reason it was the math and physics editors who have been initially involved in this proposal is that it was principally they who were involved in the discussions at WP:CITE and WP:V. I thought that it was clear that we would never be able to change WP:CITE – because there was more to say about the issue than could reasonably be added to the page, and the red herring "every sentence needs an inline cite: yes or no?" kept rearing its ugly head – so it seemed to make sense to write a complementary proposal. – Joke 15:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Would it be more helpful to keep all discussion in one place, at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines ? Sandy ( Talk) 16:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone has tagged the following sentences in the American football article with "fact" tags:
" Super Bowl Sunday, the day of the game, has become an unofficial February holiday in the U.S. citation needed
" College football is also extremely popular throughout North America. Four college football stadiums seat more than 100,000 fans, which regularly sell out. Even high school football games can attract more than 10,000 people in some areas. The weekly autumn ritual of college and high-school football—which includes marching bands, cheerleaders and parties (including the ubiquitous tailgate party)—is an important part of the culture in much of smalltown America. citation needed It is a long-standing tradition in the United States (though not universally observed) that high school football games are played on Friday, college games on Saturday, and professional games on Sunday (with an additional professional game on Monday nights). citation needed"
The facts tagged here are common knowledge in the U.S., not challengable assertions. Putting footnotes after them wouldn't look professional -- it would look like something done by amateurs trying to look professional.
Anyway, what would you cite for "proof" here? Friday Night Lights?
64.40.60.88 01:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Advice would be appreciated. Thanks -- Mwalcoff 00:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
The first sentence is problematic not just because it is uncited but because its meaning is rather unclear. The current presentation in the Super Bowl article is even worse -- calling it a "de facto national holiday" makes little sense when national holidays are by definition de jure. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:22, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
When a Wikipedia article has ten or more references, and the "citation needed" header is applied to an entire section, or article heading, people who know the field don't know what needs citations/is being challenged. Even worse, asking in the talk pages of the article what needs citating gets zero response. Personally, I am about ready to call every use of those tags wilful vandalism of Wikipedia, unless there is a note in the talk page stating why the tag is added.
64.40.60.88 01:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely right. Here's a related example: On en.wikipedia.org/?title=Harvard_referencing&oldid=84181580, a superseded page, look for the word "obvious". Those statements (as a group, not -- as you point out -- individually) were challenged by two people who wanted citations for the obvious!
I would like to point out that there are three issues here:
TH 02:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
In John Dee, there occured the following paragraph:
I have added a tag at the point challenged. Now, is there any reasonable doubt which book of Casaubon is meant, and where the assertion about evil spirits is to be found? Yet the result of this complaint is that some Wikipedian has spent bits adding the following footnote:
Does this add anything to the full name and title of the book, already in the text? This is only one of the several reprints in modern times; the earliest being from 1974. The publisher does not appear to be a mainstream scholarly press; others are. Yet some Wikipedian's time has been wasted on this. Septentrionalis 02:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Toohoo, I've reverted your edits because I don't see the point to them, and because I'm concerned about the edits you're making to various guidelines, which are not always consistent with WP style, and yet you revert continually in the face of objections. Can you please say succinctly what your aim is? Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 05:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[Positioning] This document could use a short sub section on positioning in-line citations after the relevant punctuation mark. This is mentioned in the sub articles on the various styles of reference, but since it's common, it belongs here. I'm not feeling bold enough to do add the section, since I find I've been doing it wrong for months. Now back to fix all those edits. :( -- J Clear 18:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
According to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.), footnotes come after punctuation (16.30), while in-line (Harvard/author-date style) come before (16.112). -- Avi 03:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Often footnotes support the preceding sentence or paragraph, and in the latter case having the footnote inside the punctuation for a sentence does not seem proper. Harvard style has the reference woven more conversationally in the sentence. There may be exceptions; I recently had one footnote which fit within a sentence, while following the sentence was a footnote for the source for the preceding two paragraphs. ( SEWilco 08:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC))
Folks,
I changed one paragraph in Citing sources to read this way:
First, here's the original paragraph, with my markup:
The Harvard referencing MISLEADING NAME system places a partial citation WRONG TERM — the author's name and year of publication SERIOUSLY INCOMPLETE within parentheses — usually WRONG at the end of the sentence, within the text before the punctuation, and a complete citation WRONG TERM at the end WRONG of the text in an alphabetized list of "References" WRONG PUNCTUATION. According to The Oxford Style Manual MISLEADING EXAMPLE, the Harvard system MISLEADING NAME is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences" (Ritter 2002 INCOMPLETE CITATION) MISLEADING EXAMPLE.
No discredit to the last editor here -- Avraham is NOT responsible for any of the flaws in the paragraph above.
But the errors flagged above are not the worst problem we have here. A worse problem is redundancy -- we have "similar" explanations in at least two other places in WP. So even if that paragraph gets fixed, there are two other pages that may have to be fixed. And notice that I said that redundancy is "a worse problem", because we haven't gotten to the worst problem yet.
The worst problem is that SlimVirgin will defend to the death the existence of these redundant explanations -- making maintenance a nightmare. A "maintenance nightmare"? I didn't say thas. Ling.Nut said it. Trödel said it. 29 Sep 2006, "Harvard referencing" Talk. See the maintenance nightmare that SlimVirgin has defended -- perhaps created -- by comparing Harvard_referencing with Wikipedia:Harvard referencing with this article.
Here's how the paragraph should read:
The author date system places a citation — the authors' names, the year of publication, and the page number or range, all within parentheses — often near the authors' names and often at end of the sentence or phrase before any punctuation; and a corresponding reference in an alphabetized list of References near the end of the text. According to Ritter (2002, NEED PAGE NUMBER), the Harvard system is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences". An example: "Metz and Ankney (1991) documented increased hunter-caused mortality of male ducks with brightly colored plumage compared to dull individuals". Another example: "In mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), Omland (1996a, b) found that females strongly prefer males with brightly colored bills and that females also show a preference for overall plumage condition (Holmberg et al., 1989; Weidmann, 1990)".
TH
16:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
This does not make sense. They do not need to be cited. RRRGH
I absolutely agree. If citations are needed for commonly known facts, you will invite weasel words to creep in, in the attempt to make those known facts appear limited in scope.The attempt to eliminate valuing language is praiseworthy in a reference article but taken to extremes just invites staid and pointlessly overworked writing
—The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
72.80.105.24 (
talk •
contribs) 10:08, 1 November 2006 UTC.
I'm trying to figure out if we could use this. I'm not sure if it can output things in the way we would want. http://www.zotero.org — Omegatron 17:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok. It would be tremendously convenient if I could enter books into Zotero either from ISBN numbers of books I own or from Google Books or whatever, and then go to the Wikipedia article I'm editing, click on the reference I am citing in Zotero and say "Zotero, generate a reference tag", and it just generates it for me, with all relevant information, citation templates, hidden meta-data, and so on in the ideal Wikipedia reference tag format. Then copy and paste and I'm done. I'm wondering if this is already possible, but I don't know how to do it.
This site says:
COinS is an attempt to make OpenURL work the *same* way in our browsers. If you publish OpenURLs, please read the COinS spec and tweak your site templates to publish your OpenURLs in COinS. We're starting to see the benefits of this approach: the biggest non-profit book database in the world (worldcat) supports COinS. The biggest user-generated encyclopedia in the world (wikipedia) supports COinS. Two awesome firefox extensions (zotero and libx) support COinS. This means that with COinS, and with things set up properly in your browser, you can get big benefits from the common OpenURL interface rendering today: browse worldcat or wikipedia, save good references for later citation in zotero: two great tastes that taste great together.
So you would think they could already cooperate. But I have no idea how. Anyone know what this is about? — Omegatron 18:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been talking to some people and I think I will try to create an output citation style for Wikipedia. Just so people aren't duplicating effort. Contact me if you want to help/etc. — Omegatron 14:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Maintaining a separate "References" section in addition to "Notes" is certainly useful, but its main use is IMO to distinguish between general references and accurate sourcing of statements. However, that is not clearly suggested in this guideline, if I see it well. See also my comment on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Thanks.2C_this_is_helpful .
Harald88 10:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that 9 times out of 10 any citations that are put into any of the articles are merely credits to having attained the information from a web page, and typically these web pages have the same odds of providing incorrect information as anything else (for example, reviews, fan-sites, etc.)
Wikipedia is far to anal about citations! Mrlopez2681 18:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I am using sources as an inspiration for the article Prema Sai Baba that are formally non-reputable. Because they are not reputable according Wikipedia policies, I cannot cite them. These non-reputable sources in turn cite reputable sources that I cite in the article. However I think I am plagiarizing the non-reputable sources. The sources that I used as source of inspiration were written by Brian Steel and Alexandra Nagel. I do not think that I can link to them because of the arbcom decision regarding Sathya Sai Baba How can I avoid plagiarism and still draw ideas from these formally non-reputable sources? Andries 13:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
In light of the previous thread and the recent copyright violation study, I'll propose something that's been on my mind for months: let's draft a guideline along the lines of a typical university academic honesty statement. WP:Citing sources really just deals with the nuts and bolts of citation and markup for people who already know what proper citations are. Many contributors honestly don't know what plagiarism is and this page doesn't explain it even though Wikipedia:Plagiarism links here. Citing sources is a good Manual of style page - let's keep this page what it is and draft another to fill the gap. Durova 01:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Something that came up in during a rewrite of WP:RS might go better here, if it has consensus (title changed):
See link.
— Armedblowfish ( talk| mail) 18:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I've listed an article, Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, to GA list. Article is about a recent subject, and all sources that i use is from news. And a reviewer ask me to use MLA style referencing on talk page, Talk:Turkish Airlines Flight 1476. What can i do, is it better to use MLA style and if it's better how can i use MLA style. Btw, i checked all sources and 4 of them goes dead. 2 of the dead ones are from CNN, and it's difficult to find again exact information from other sources. What can i do about dead ones, replace them and rewrite these parts with what can i find. I've read What to do when a reference link "goes dead" part, and checked CNN sources on archieve.org but i couldn't find the article. Thanks in advance -- Ugur Basak 11:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
What's the policy on citing stuff passed down orally? - Peregrinefisher 20:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Please don't add again to the project page comments that would be more appropriate on talk. [7] This is the third or fourth time you've done it here and elsewhere. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Folks,
Hey, don't jump on me -- I'm not the committee that made an ambiguous mandate.
Okay, I was a bad boy in the past, but I've reformed. This situation is different.
If we (Wikipedia) make an ambiguous statement, we need to be honest with the readers and say "we are being ambiguous here". Honest revelation of ambiguity in Wikipedia pages belongs on main pages, not on talk pages.
Either the mandate is ambiguous -- and readers need to know that.
Or it's not ambigous -- and anyone who knows what it means can repair (not delete) my statement of ambiguity.
Masamage, I'd fix it if I could -- but I don't know what the committee meant. All I know is that it's unclear as it stands.
But I did rephrase it -- I hope you like it better now.
Is it true that if one of you reverts now, you'll cross the line into 3RR? I haven't figured out yet how the counting works.
If one of you attempts to repair (not delete) my last version, I will applaud, not complain.
TH 05:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! you've answered my question.
TH 06:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Some sites like http://news.yahoo.com always bring down their articles after a fairly short amount of time has passed. Could we add a warning to the policy page about which sites follow this practice, and advise to search for equivalent articles at other, nonvolatile sources? A built-in warning for editors when they add a link like that inside a <ref> tag would work, too. Phoenix-forgotten 19:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
This woud suggest that it is a particular problem to use a "blind URL" citation to these, since afterwards no one has even a clue what you were citing. - Jmabel | Talk 02:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Humbly requesting the follow appear near the top of the page
For more templates to assist formatting, see the citation templates.
Makes it easier to find them, I come here via WP:CITE
Thanks, Cheers. -- Uncle Bungle 04:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
An editor af Quixtar would like to use an old promotional video as a source. Youtube hosts the video, and at least two Quixtar-related websites hotlink to it - one site belongs to a supporter and the other to an opponent. There is no licensing information at any site. My view is that linking directly to Youtube is the most NPOV (if we need to use the video at all) though that doesn't address the copyright issue. The other editor is concerned that if we link directly to Youtube the link will be removed. Talk:Quixtar#Controversy. Any thoghts? - Will Beback 18:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a way to limit references to a subpart of a page? Say someone is proposing new text in the talk page of an article. In their text they have references, and they add the <references/> tag at the end. Then someone else does the same thing with a different block of text, which will now give one reference block (twice?) with all the references, not just the ones in their newly added text. Disregarding that said texts should have been sandboxed somewhere else, is there a way to limit these references, so I can have one set of references for the first block of text and a separate set for the second? Obviously not a huge problem, simply wondering if it is technically possible. *Spark* 15:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
How do I cite a pdf file from the internet? Wai Hong 06:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Citing/Referencing help pages desperately need to be simplified.
It took me 20 minutes to uncover the fact that cite.php/inline/Harvard style is the preferred method and I am not a newbie. And I'm still not sure. New users will be baffled. A clear consensus on a cite style is needed and someone with a big stick needs to keep the discussion going until it is achieved. -- Nickj69 10:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
This guideline needs to take in account WP:V and WP:RS, especially regarding online sources as references. -- Jordi· ✆ 09:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Seems to me that the advice here for citing with "Embedded HTML links"—what I prefer to call "blind URLs"—is a liability. You end up with inline citations in the article where only by following the link off of Wikipedia can someone tell which of the refrences this cites. And, of course, it only works for Internet citations, you still need a different means to cite any print source.
Embedded HTML links are an OK temporary placeholder to let you work quickly on an article & clean up later, but in the long run they are a lousy solution to citation. - Jmabel | Talk 21:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
How do I do this? HK51 12:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've discovered this article is actually plagiarism as it almost copies word for word a landscape character assessment from North Hertfordshire Council. What should be done about this? I still think the article should be kept however. Simply south 21:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
See River Mimram and [9]
It looks like Chris Stokes only contributed in 2005 by placing random images and doing links. About 10 edits only. I still think the article is notable enough to eist, if be rewritten. Simply south 00:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I need some input about Saipan Sucks. Is it appropriate to cite the html source of http://www.saipansucks.com/about.htm (Open page, go to View > Page Source) at line 39 which shows the page's author? C.m.jones 22:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Can we make it standard practice to put the Notes sections after the References section? To me, it seems stupid to give page numbers before even mentioning what's being cited. For example, on today's FA, Great Fire of London, if I want to scan through what was cited, I have to jump past the Notes section, check the References, then jump back to the Notes. It seems more logical to have the References come first, so that one can know what's being cited before one sees the page numbers. However, if notes and citations are seperated, I'm fine with notes coming before the references, but usually the notes section is filled with citations.-- SeizureDog 05:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Currently the article Roguelike is nominated for deletion. The article deals with a genre of games named for their similarity to Rogue.
Whilst the article includes an extensive selection of external links, User:ChrisGriswold has tagged it as being unreferenced.
My question is: this being an article about a genre of games which is developed by the open source community, to what extent are blogs, personal sites, and newsgroups, able to be cited? For example: the best source for a definition of a roguelike would probably be item 1.2 from this FAQ.
Thanks, Ga rr ie 03:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed the majority of the details below the three methods. We should only describe how to do these once, and in one place. That place appears to be their respective pages -- which could also use some serious reduction. This place should show enough for a most-average case, and a link further. ∴ here… ♠ 12:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
At the risk of appearing dense, I found the following hard to follow at first reading:
Facts that are fully sourced in text need not be further cited; this will most often apply to sources with a well-established and traditional citation system ("Mark 16:48"; Lycidas, l. 135); but other cases are possible: "In the preamble of Magna Carta", "on the first page of the Washington Republican for February 6, 1824".
Since being sourced and being cited are not the same thing, why "further"? Also, something which is fully done can't be further done anyway.
"This will most often apply..." Imprecise and unhelpful.
"Other cases are possible". Self-evident, but in this context, water-muddying.
"Sources with a well-established citation system..." What does that mean? Well-established within that source or beyond it? What's that got to do with Wikipedia's citation system, which can be applied to sources with or without a citation system of their own?
"Sources with a traditional citation system..." How does that affect anything? CMS gives examples of many systems and recommends a few. It's how Wikipedia cites the sources that we are interested in on this page.
("Mark 16:48"; Lycidas, l. 135): Placing the Mark and Lycidas examples together between brackets made me read them at first as one citation (I thought this was the author Mark's edition of Lycidas, or something).
I presume that "Mark 16:48" is a bible reference; shouldn't it be wikilinked, then? And why has it got speech marks round it? (Forgive my non-religiosity, but I first read this one as some kind of Harvard reference—which I had assumed, before I worked out what this paragraph is getting at, would count as a "traditional citation system"—for a book written by an author called Mark—you know, Jan Mark, or someone.)
As for the Lycidas and Magna Carta examples, surely the edition should be cited.
Is the fact that in the examples these are given lines or preamble descriptions the point? I presume from these examples that what is meant by this paragraph is that if you mention the verse number, line, or section of a source in the text, that counts as a reference and doesn't need doubling up in the footnotes if the source is referenced as a whole at the bottom of the page. That's true enough; but it's the same for any reference made explicit in the text, not just for "well-established and traditional" ones. So long as readers are somewhere given the means of checking the reference, that's fine.
Washington Republican. Why saddle ourselves with a red link here?
Finally, why is this point under "Material that is, or is likely to be, challenged", in particular? (Scratches head.)
qp10qp 02:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't seem to find the requirements for citing locale descriptions. I specifically need to know how to make an article on a school acceptable when there aren't any published sources to cite .. Thanks in advance for any and all help. Phentos 07:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
This edit has a comment strongly implying that links to blogs are wrong. My understanding is that a blog is like any other source, and should be evaluated in terms of its reliability. Can some more experienced Wikipedian clarify? Of course the edit in question may have substituted a more reliable source, which is of course a good thing, but that's beside the point for my question - Cheers, 01:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest that the How to cite sources section of this article should amount to roughly quantity of information found at Wikipedia:Citations quick reference. The rest of the details should be covered on the respective technique pages. I would recommend removing the page numbers section entirely and moving the notes discussion out of how to cite sources into a 2nd level header along the lines of further reading/external links. Comments? ∴ here… ♠ 06:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Would like to rename and redirect Wikipedia:Embedded Citations to Wikipedia:Embedded links. Clarity and multiple articles already using term embedded links ( Wikipedia:Harvard referencing). Discuss if problems at Wikipedia_talk:Embedded_Citations. ∴ here… ♠ 08:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I have just removed the following WP-centric material from the WebCite article and replaced it with a Template:Selfref hatnote with a link here. Here is the extracted material:
“ | As suggested in the Wikipedia context, citations incorporating a link to a cached copy should look like the following:
and if the URL is no longer available or no longer contains the information:
|
” |
-- zenohockey 23:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I've made some edits to the effect of strongly recommending to permanently archive cited URLs (
WebCite) before they are cited to combat
link rot and to provide a possibility to check cited sources even if the original source has disappeared. Hopefully, somebody will write a
bot for automating this. —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
Eysen (
talk •
contribs)
19:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
"Caching and archiving webpages is widely done (e.g. by Google, Internet Archive etc.), and is not considered a copyright infringement, as long as the copyright owner has the ability to remove the archived material and to opt out. WebCite® honors robot exclusion standards, as well as no-cache and no-archive tags. Please contact us if you are the copyright owner of an archived webpage which you want to have removed.
A U.S. court has recently (Jan 19th, 2006) ruled that caching does not constitute a copyright violation, because of fair use and an implied license (Field vs Google, US District Court, District of Nevada, CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL, see also news article on Government Technology). Implied license refers to the industry standards mentioned above: If the copyright holder does not use any no-archive tags and robot exclusion standards to prevent caching, WebCite® can (as Google does) assume that a license to archive has been granted. Fair use is even more obvious in the case of WebCite® than for Google, as Google uses a “shotgun” approach, whereas WebCite® archives selectively only material that is relevant for scholarly work. Fair use is therefore justifiable based on the fair-use principles of purpose (caching constitutes transformative and socially valuable use for the purposes of archiving, in the case of WebCite® also specifically for academic research), the nature of the cached material (previously made available for free on the Internet, in the case of WebCite® also mainly scholarly material), amount and substantiality (in the case of WebCite® only cited webpages, rarely entire websites), and effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (in the case of Google it was ruled that there is no economic effect, the same is true for WebCite®)."
Eysen ( talk • contribs) 19:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
Note: Extensive discussion of this has occurred on the External links talk page. The consensus appears to be roughly that a) discussion of how this should be done should move here, b) that the format should retain the original URL as a link, c) editors should be given guidance on services for caching and their attributes, as well as their policies towards Wikipedia citations. Note that this is my interpretation of the consensus; others may not agree.
I suggest a citation method/template/etc that yields something like this:
and if the URL is no longer available or no longer contains the information:
— jesup 23:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Just a note that Eysen is the creator of WebCite and could be seen to be promoting his own technology -- this violates the COI policies of wikipedia.
I changed the example to use the cite news template, as this provides consistency and is pretty common on Wikipedia. Sorry, I marked the change as "cite web" by mistake. --- Remember the dot 06:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I've just made a major change (3 edits) adding a Full citations section under How to cite. As all three listed techniques require that a full citation show up under References, it seems appropriate to address this directly, rather than inadequately under each technique. It needs work, but I think the idea behind this structural change to this guideline is a good one. Comments and improvements encouraged! Done for now... ∴ here… ♠ 09:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking that external links at the end, has dated back to the days before cite.php. WP:LINK states that the "most common" way to place external links is "at the end of an article".
Some articles now have quite extensive references sections, and it often looks better to place these after the article proper (including external links) rather thasn above the "see also" or "external links" sections. Otherwise one potentially has the following article finish:
It seems better that with extensive referencing and citations coming to be the norm, then references should generally go at the end of the article proper, that is after the (usually shorter) sections for notes, links and the like. Would this be acceptable to others to change the MOS slightly to suggest cite.php and similar references should usually be placed after all other sections, or at least may be placed there if 'long'? FT2 ( Talk | email) 19:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
...
I put in an article on Post Secondary Transition Planning for High School Students with Disabilities. Admittedly I need to wikify it, but the original article was replete with references, and I believe this was noted by a reviewer. Before I have been able to do this, someone added to/ edited the article and did not include references. So now, the article has been 'dunned' (I believe that's the right word). What's my recourse? Phil Vitkus 19:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC) Phil Vitkus
It's proabably too late for us to get a seat in this Working Group, but I hope someone with better credentials than me will monitor what the US Library of Congress's Working Group Established To Discuss Future of Bibliographic Control decides to do. (And maybe we can convince them to recruit one of us to assist in future Working Groups.) -- llywrch 22:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I have been trying to assertain the derivation of the place Horndean (See the talk for details) - The current (9th Dec) 'derivation' has once again changed to a popular one but not that which my source is indicating. I would like to have both the academic source I have and leave the popular answer inthe article. So my question is that I wish to cite the email source that I have (from the respected academic university answering my questions) but I am unsure how, and can't find much on citeing personal or email sources anywhere. Are there any suggestions (examples) on how to do this? Thanks Ben 17:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
One can use Template:Cite web to provide citations to letters and correspondence on the web. I'm wondering what citation template you would suggest for use in citing same where the text has not been placed on the web. Further, is there a perceived need for a specific Template:Cite correspondence that would have custom parameters such as 'sender' and 'recipient'? Thanks for the input. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 15:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering, is there a way to properly cite microform? I don't know if I'll need to use it or not, but in the case I do I'd like to know. It's probably a lot simpler than I think it is... -- Wizardman 22:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Decode the text to find the hidden meaning!
There are several reports<ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=182292 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 24, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=181394 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 14, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=143367 ''"The Lia Roberts hope"'', Evenimentul Zilei, January 19, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://ds009.xs4all.nl/artnews/mvrhotartcoldcash.pdf ''"Hot Art, Cold Cash"'', pages 177,184, by Michel van Rijn, Little Brown & Co., October 1994.] Also [http://www.michelvanrijn.nl/artnews/archive/oct2001.htm the report "DEVASTATING ART NEWS", October 29, 2001, by the same UK police expert in art smuggling.] For more on [[Michel van Rijn]]'s credentials, please, see [http://www.museum-security.org/cyprus-and-michel-van-rijn.htm 1] and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3724256.stm 2.]</ref> that the Romanian Communist authorities obedient to Stalin presented King Michael with 42 valuable [[The Crown|Crown]]-owned paintings shortly before the King's abdication, some of which<ref>[http://ds009.xs4all.nl/artnews/mvrhotartcoldcash.pdf ''"Hot Art, Cold Cash"'', pages 177, 184, by Michel van Rijn, Little Brown & Co., October 1994.] Also [http://www.michelvanrijn.nl/artnews/archive/oct2001.htm the report "Devastating Art News", October 29, 2001, by the same UK police expert in art smuggling.] For more on [[Michel van Rijn]]'s credentials, please, see [http://www.museum-security.org/cyprus-and-michel-van-rijn.htm 1] and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3724256.stm 2.]</ref> were reportedly sold through the famed art dealer [[Daniel Wildenstein]]. One of the paintings belonging to the Romanian Crown which was supposedly taken out of the country by King Michael in November 1947, returned to the national patrimony in 2004 as a donation<ref>[http://ziua.ro/display.php?id=162992&data=2004-11-20&ziua=1e5692b536aa233f6d6ac3b1d11dd6c9 "Raibolini's ''Madonna'' at the National Museum of Art of Romania" (in Romanian), Ziua, November 20, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=182292 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 24, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.onlinegallery.ro/museums/muzeul_de_arta/donatie.html "A Prestigious Donation: ''Madonna with the Infant'' by Francesco Raibolini, named "Il Francia"" (in Romanian), Online Gallery site as of December 8, 2006]</ref> made by John Kreuger, the former husband of King Michael's daughter [[Princess Irina of Romania|Princess Irina]]. Prime Minister [[Calin Popescu Tariceanu]], in response to a query of the parliamentarian and former [[Securitate]] officer Ilie Merce<ref>[http://www.adevarulonline.ro/2005-04-19/Politic/nu-exista-dovezi-ca-regele-mihai-ar-fi-scos-tablouri-din-tara_125216.html "There Are No Proofs That King Michael Took Paintings out of Romania" (in Romanian), Adevarul, April 19, 2005]</ref>, stated that the accusations about Michael having taken out of Romania Crown paintings were "more than dubious" and that the Romanian government had no proofs of any such action by King Michael, claiming that, prior to [[1949]], the government had no official records of the artwork taken over from the former royal residences. The renowned Romanian editorialist Dan Cristian Turturica [http://www.romanialibera.ro]<ref>[http://www.hotnews.ro/articole_autor_50-articole-de-Dan-Cristian-Turturica-Evenimentul-Zilei.htm "Articles by Dan Cristian Turturica" (in Romanian), Hotnews.ro site as of December 6, 2006]</ref> claims that "the King did not steal the paintings as they had been offered to him by the communist rulers so that he would leave Romania more quickly<ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=143367 ''"The Lia Roberts hope"'', Evenimentul Zilei, January 19, 2004]</ref>."
- Francis Tyers · 09:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Francis is absolutely right. How about using temporarily the following manual tweak in format?
(Note: Hit [edit] to see code)
There are several reports [2] [3] [4] [5] that the Romanian Communist authorities obedient to Stalin presented King Michael with 42 valuable Crown-owned paintings shortly before the King's abdication, some of which [6] were reportedly sold through the famed art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. One of the paintings belonging to the Romanian Crown which was supposedly taken out of the country by King Michael in November 1947, returned to the national patrimony in 2004 as a donation [7] [8] [9] made by John Kreuger, the former husband of King Michael's daughter Princess Irina. Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, in response to a query of the parliamentarian and former Securitate officer Ilie Merce, [10] stated that the accusations about Michael having taken out of Romania Crown paintings were "more than dubious" and that the Romanian government had no proofs of any such action by King Michael, claiming that, prior to 1949, the government had no official records of the artwork taken over from the former royal residences. The renowned Romanian editorialist Dan Cristian Turturica [11] claims that "the King did not steal the paintings as they had been offered to him by the communist rulers so that he would leave Romania more quickly". [12]
I added hard returns before each block of <ref> tags and after each last <ref/> tag. The only glitch is that it leaves a space before each superscript mark, but this could easily be fixed in code. If we train our eyes, we can skip through the refs more easily by spotting the next orphan <ref/> tag. What do you think? Is the code more readable now? Niko Silver 12:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed a proliferation of citations in lead sections. This makes no sense to me. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article; it should not contain any information the article does not discuss in detail. Thus, any information in the lead will be full cited in the article. See Mark Cuban for an example; there is no need to cite his birthplace and his status as a billionaire in the lead, since the article discusses both in depth later on, with full sourcing. I would like to add a sentence both to this guideline and to Wikipedia:Lead section making clear that the lead does not contain independent information and thus need not cite sources--the lead's source is the article. Please comment; thank you. Chick Bowen 17:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Some articles have understandably large reference sections. Now I'm all for this but some have observed that it makes the articles a bit unwieldy and bottom-heavy, even with two-row formatting and tiny text. I'd rather not crop references to correct this (as has been suggested elsewhere). Would it be possible for us to impliment a "hide" function for references in the same manner as the contents sections can be shown/hidden? Sockatume 21:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I've become interested in the Parker Brothers article (feels like a stub for a company over a century old) and wanted to have an opinion on using the PB website history page as one source.
I am still in the process of sorting out through outside sources but wondered what were the thoughts in regard to those corporate self-histories
Lost Kiwi (talk) 01:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I recently came across a couple of articles that (to my mind) very oddly mixes the Harvard and Chicago styles of referencing (e.g. FA Saffron and soon-to-be FAC Charles Darwin) by using footnotes but then formatting the footnote text as a Harvard citation which jumps to a reference section. As this issue also pertains to WP:FAC, I've started a debate about it on WIAFA talk. Please come join the discussion there. Mikker (...) 02:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I've read the help page on adding a citation but I can't figure out how to actually do it still. I have all the information to add and understand the format, but what button do I hit to add a citation? Do I do it on the 'edit' page? Please help as I would like to make my additions credible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ryanhupka ( talk • contribs) 10:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC).
I've knocked up a template {{ hiderefs}} so that overly long references sections don't clog up the page, because of a request at WP:RT. However, I've thought about it, and I'm not entirely sure such a thing would be appropriate. Is it? - Amarkov blah edits 22:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that there are many articles about television and these are some of my favorite articles. Strangely, I do not see any information on citing television as a source for information in articles, and I have found articles that are filled with information that is clearly using television as it source tend to have few references. I would like to fix this problem. How should I cite television? -- Lilwik 22:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Say Hemsley publishes a work, and Zamudio writes about it years later. If I can't get my hands on a copy of Hemsley's work but want to summarize what he said, how do I best cite this? Obviously I want to make readers aware that I didn't read the work itself but got the information from Zamudio's writing. I'm using inline citations. Thanks, -- NoahElhardt 22:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I think a new ISBN system comes in today, with 13-figure numbers. Should I now quote 13-figure numbers or 10s?
It seems to me that it will take some time for the 13s to become fully link/searchable, and so it would be premature to start changing all the existing 10s to 13s. On the other hand, for new references, would it be a good idea in future to cite both the 10 and the 13 ISBN? (That would be my choice, but my heart sinks at the tedious prospect of doing it.) qp10qp 19:09, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Too many articles have been tagged as unreferenced. Take for example The Bottle Imp. It is a short story, out of copyright and at Wikisource, which is linked from the article. The article is verifiable in the story so there is no need for further references. -- Henrygb 20:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
HUH? This makes like zero sense. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 01001 ( talk) 04:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC).
Is this an acceptable style for citations? See Kernel (computer science) for an example. JulesH 11:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) I have rewritten cite.php so that it now can work 'reversed' as well, but I see the problem. I see what is meant, in scientific (chemistry) publications the ibid. is used for these, sometimes, though that is also not strictly the same. Interesting problem. What you would need is a <ref ibid=origrefname>chapter 1</ref>, which in the end would result in a double list (there were <references /> would occur), similar to the example that you provide ( Battle of Ceresole), or giving a simple list like now, but where you would not have to type double. Thát is not an easy task, but it may be possible. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 18:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC) For those interested, the patches I am referring to are [12] (the actual patch delivers way more functionality than described in the patch) and [13], a demo-wiki running both can be found at [14] (see lower half of the mainpage). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 19:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to discuss this to any length, but these proposals all reinvent the wheel; Harvard referencing already makes it easy to have specific page references when desired while minimizing the redundancy of bibliographic data. CMummert 19:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but it seems logical here. I'd like to see a Wikipedia-based database of citable materials. That way, when I want to include a cite, I can go to the database and copy/paste the reference I need, already in the correct format. All I would have to do is add the page number. Like the old-fashioned card catalogs, it should be searchable by author and title, and, if possible, topic. I have some ideas about how the data input and search dialog boxes should go, but I have no idea where to go or who to talk to. Guidance, please, anyone? -- Cbdorsett 14:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Citations are critical to Wikipedia. That said a small minority of editors use WP:CITE to game the system, in breach of WP:POINT. I have added the (hopefully) fairly non-contentious sentence:
Three quick examples of this tactic from articles I've worked on:
I'm sure these aren't the only three times this has happened.
Hopefully the above wording covers this type of situation without invoking WP:BEANS, and others will approve overall. FT2 ( Talk | email) 00:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Often, we get a lot of information for the article from a single website. But we get a lot of different facts, each from a different page. In this case, we could use <ref> to cite the source for each fact, but that would lead to a "crowded" article, like this: pt:Blackbox (this is Portuguese language, but you can see that it has too many notes, almost all of them from the Blackbox website). On the other hand, if we don't add the notes, and just put the websites in the references, it will be difficult for the reader to know which facts come from which page in each website. What is the guideline?
PS: Despite the page I linked being in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I'm asking it here because I'll apply the guideline here in the English Wikipedia. Jorge Peixoto 16:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC). Edited. Jorge Peixoto 16:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
After a long argument on my talk page about whether citations should be "Firstname Lastname, or "Lastname, Firstname" in style, I decided to do some research. In the hard sciences, which is where I mostly work in WP, the style is pretty uniformly "Firstname Lastname". Assuming that perhaps the Humanities use a different style (I was, after all, being accused of vandalism for the reverts, and came close to the 3RR) I thought I'd do some research.
I picked up books I own, that I have at home. Surprisingly few had references or footnotes. The oldest book I could find was an 1897 Hebrew grammer (written in Latin). It had only a few footnotes, but these were "Firstname Lastname" style. Looked at a number of books from the 1950's-1970s, and a few more recent. Subjects covered Drama, Art, History. Some of these were dusty, e.g. Amy Kelly "Eleanor of Aquitane"; some were best-sellers, e.g. Shirer's "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich", some were iconic, e.g. Howard Carter's "The Tomb of Tutankhamen".
EVERY BOOK I LOOKED AT, with two exceptions, used a "Firstname Lastname" citation style. One exception was a Soviet era book from Eastern Europe, written in the Lithuanian language. It was inconsistent, sometimes using firstname lastname, sometimes lastname firstname. The other was the Amy Kelly, which was inconsistent in every possible way.
Lest I be accused of making things up or whatever, the gory details, with editions and publishers and page citations, are below.
Lets start with popular magazines:
Books: Moving from the obscure at first, to popular and widely available:
From what I looked at, I saw near-perfect consistency in citation style. I would like to understand why the regulars who haunt these talk pages are so insistent on guarding the "Lastname, Firstname" policy, which clearly contradicts widespread and nearly unanimous usage in both the hard sciences and the humanities. linas 05:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
That's right: first of all, it's no big deal, so long as the information is there. But I agree with Kirill's distinction: the bibliography should be alphabetical, and there last name-first name is correct (it's much slower looking a book up in an alphabetical list if the surname comes second); but for notes, first name-last name makes sense because sometimes there's a quote before the short ref:. Look at the difference between
"Długosz had been in the service of Sophia of Halshany." Vanda Sruogienė-Sruoga, Jogaila, p 7.
and
"Długosz had been in the service of Sophia of Halshany." Sruogienė-Sruoga, Vanda, Jogaila , p 7.
It wouldn't sound right to use last name-first name after a quote. But I also find the principle very helful with tricky names like the one above, where I need a clue about which name is the surname.
I'd add that I don't like citation templates because they need messing with to use for both a note and a book list (and sometimes I don't like to just rip up another editor's work by deconstructing them, if they are the done thing on a particular page). qp10qp 06:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
When many (in this case, about 60) citations point to different pages or chapters in a single publication, is there a style or an appropriate manner of simplifying the references to that publication? Another user and I are attempting to figure out what's best for the article, and a standard -- or at least a suggestion for one -- would be very helpful. For comparison, there's the original option with many separate lines or the simplified version with only one line. The former takes up a lot of space, but clearly indicates which page contains each of the 60 or so facts; the latter is much more concise, but at the expense of clearly indicating which fact comes from which page. Any suggestions for which direction we should aim in? Any suggestions for a way that is both simple, concise, and clear? Thanks! Tafkargb 06:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, Sorry for the length of this comment/request. I have been writing a series of articles on modern railway ticket issuing systems used on Britain's railway network, which are incorporated under the general heading British railway ticket systems (computerised). This also contains a few articles on related matters. I will say at the outset that this is a very specialised, niche area in a hobby (railway ticket collecting) which is itself fairly obscure, so it is unlikely that many other editors would be able to contribute substantially to the info I have produced so far.
The following anonymous message was left on my talk page today: "Thank you for all your work on rail and ticketing articles. Can I please implore you to cite your sources though, you must be getting all this detailed information from somewhere!"
This got me thinking, and I have become increasingly concerned that I may not be able to provide suitable and verifiable references to some of the articles - especially those about the systems themselves (see Shere SMART and Ascom B8050 Quickfare for two typical examples). I am purely an enthusiast and collector of railway tickets such as these, rather than being an "insider" (e.g. ticket office worker). I have written the following on my talk page:
Essentially, I have built up a core of knowledge about "New Generation" ticket issuing systems over the past few years through a variety of sources, including partly (although, I must stress, far from exclusively) through personal observation through my ticket-collecting hobby. For the past 4½ years, I have written a column about the latest developments in British railway ticketing in the monthly Journal of the Transport Ticket Society, probably the longest-established and largest such society in the world (there is a sample copy [here http://www.transport-ticket.org.uk/pdf/sample.pdf], which shows the contents of my column from that month, as an example). Sources for the info I write about include personal observation and the findings of others, TOC press releases/website info, internal BR documents (manuals, code lists etc), the manufacturers' own websites (Shere, Scheidt & Bachmann etc), and many others. Unfortunately, there isn't really one definitive published source in the "normal" sense (books/peer-reviewed journals/articles etc.) for me to cite.
Before I continue jabbering on, a few immediate questions I would like to ask of the community:
The point is, I think information about these systems etc. would have sufficient notability and importance to be worthy of articles; but if, as I fear, my current contributions are insufficiently cited/verifiable, I can see difficulties ahead: so little has been written about the systems, given their very recent development and the commercial sensitivity aspect, and the TTS (through me and others) is arguably at the forefront of the current research and knowledge.
Any advice would be very gratefully received! Thanks, Hassocks5489 19:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
One thing that needs to be fixed in this policy urgently is that this policy exclusively mentions the Wayback machine to recover broken links (implying that this is the only service out there), without even mentioning the existence of other non-profit open source caching/archiving systems such as WebCite. The Internet Archive is far from complete, and using other services like WebCite would increase the likelyhood of recovering pages that have gone 404. Note that WebCite - in contrast to Wayback machine, which uses a shotgun-approach (random caching with a crawler) - allows editor/author-initiated prospective archiving (taking a snapshot before the website disappears, and cite the WebCite URL with WebCite caching ID in addition to the original URL), which - if this would be done consistently by authors, i.e. would be part of this Wikipedia "citing sources" policy, or handled by bots - would avoid the problem of link rot on wikipedia in the first place. -- Greg4711 02:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a way to have this:
Display as this:
Please leave a message at my talk page -- Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 22:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) I envisioned that the endnotes would always be in the order in which they are invoked in the wikitext. Let me give an example of my concern. Suppose the new system were in effect, and an article had the following endnotes:
Now, suppose the article is edited so there is a new citation between the existing ones. The correct endnotes would now be:
It would be wrong if the endnotes were:
I would expect any acceptable system to automatically produce the correct endnotes with no work on the part of the second editor, beyond invoking the reference tags at the point where the Spectrum article is cited.
Another minor issue is that Chicago Manual of Style calls for just a page number when using ibid., without using the word page. I don't know what other style manuals call for, but if the new system picks an option, it may be favoring some style manuals over others. -- Gerry Ashton 20:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The result would not be as above: it would be more like this:
Configuration could prove interesting, but we'll work it out. As to what you put in those list items, that's up to you, but I'm getting tired of people relying on external style guides designed for printed matter and edit-warring over them. I'd prefer for us to synthesise our own and, yes, impose it on the whole wiki so people know what to expect and what is expected of them. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 22:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent)I see there are a lot of messages to be answered, I will try and respond to all:
Hope this clarifies. I again want to stress, that the old systems will still work, and editors can use whatever they want, but additional functionality can be built-in which would setting up references in a document easier, especially for large, heavily referenced documents. If you think that these things really improve something, help me bug the developers by voting for bugs, if not, you can simply continue with the system you use. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 15:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I wrote a web-based tool to output the {{ cite book}} format given only the ISBN for a book. This may help in formatting references (I found that to be rather time-consuming if done by hand). I would appreciate it if people would give it a try and any feedback (write below). If it is found useful, perhaps it could go into the "Tools" section in Wikipedia:Citing sources. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 07:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I've had problems using {{cite web}} and inline referencing with url sources. For instance in burden of proof#References you'll see that the link is not working as it should. Could anyone identify for me where the syntax is incorrect, or what may be the cause of this problem? Please let me know on my talk page if you can. Richard001 22:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Alright, as I was about to edit some information under the topic about
recycling, I realize that my sources are not from books or websites. In my case, one of my source is my
environmental science professor at
University of Toronto and the other is a posted information on the club notice board in the
university. Undenyably, these 2 sources are more authentic and realiable than many websites. They can withstand criticism from peers and colleagues at the university so their authenticy is much higher. One reference of such is worth more than a bunch of personal websites and blogs put together. So how would I be able to cite it? It certainly will make the information more accurately.
OhanaUnited
01:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
OhanaUnited 05:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
OhanaUnited 22:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
An editor on Talk:List of publications in philosophy is interpreting "Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor" as meaning that anything without sources can be removed because the challenging is implicit in the removal. I think the tone of the introduction "Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor." implies that material should be challenged before it is removed and editors given time to source the material before it is removed. Is this not the purpose of the "fact" template? Am I correct, and if so, could anyone suggest how the sentence I quote first above, could be improved? -- Bduke 00:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Looking at recent featured and good articles I thought Wikipedia was moving toward inline citations being the standard method for citing sources but Restoration Literature is today's featured article. How many total acceptable systems of citation are there? Quadzilla99 03:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Often {{ PDFlink}} is placed inside a cite template. However, as there often is no first parameter provides little benefit as a hack for IE6, nor as a point to our hopefully-soon-to-be-created bot to list the filesize. We would like to remove this template from the cite templates. -- Dispenser 04:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I would like to propose that as policy:
.
- it is far more important to cite scientific sources than a lot of the online crap that is available
I revised the wording (see below) and will up-date the policy in a few days if there is no objection. Nephron T| C 08:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
In compiling a List of important operas, we are facing a situations where there are many (and growing) references to Grove as a source.
Take a look at List of important operas#Notes and you'll see what I mean. Several editors want this format ONLY BECAUSE THEY CAN REFERENCE THE PAGES directly in the notes, rather than the body of the article.
On the other hand there is the nice, concise format as in Maria Callas#References where 1 a,b,c,d exists, etc.
QUESTION: Is there a format/template which would somehow combine the two to present page numbers next to the letters in a format like this "a p.216" "b p.221-223" ??
Any help would be appreciated. Viva-Verdi 21:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I was just going to create a new section to ask about page numbers. Is it acceptable to use a citation to the book and then use a comment (<!-- -->) for the page number? -- NE2 17:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Not that long ago, an anonymous user added a Eurovision comment on Thunderstone (band), which I cleaned up and promptly gave a citation needed tag. Another anonymous user added in a reference to a Finnish website. I haven't the slightest idea about the Finnish language, but it seems okay; this website [21] seems to be a Finnish TV station that is broadcasting the event, and detailing news about it, and the text itself seems to verify what the citation is for.
So... given this is an English encyclopaedia, should citations other than English be around? --Dayn 02:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
What about the titles of books in other languages? Should they be cited as their English translations or transliterations (in the case of a non-latin alphabet), or should we use the original title? -- Cameltrader 07:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a point where an article can have too many sources. By too many, I mean citations for really obvious things. Preschooler kind of obvious. Pacific Coast Highway { talk • contribs} 05:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry if this has been asked here before but I really have this doubt about the way references and/or notes (or footnotes) should or not be displayed. If I have an article that was created and developed based on few sources and I use inline citations along the text which refer to those same sources, what should I do with the references? Should I simply list them on a exclusive section (===Reference(s)===) and don't include a ===Notes/Footnotes=== (using the Cite.php code) or should I also include this last section even if it lists a source which is already listed as a general source on the References section? It's this doubt that chases me. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I wanted to be sure. So I cite the main sources at the References section and all the inline citations, from those sources, that I make along the text will ought to appear as the author, year and pages.«I use footnotes and cite.php, I prefer to have both a Footnotes and a References section. In the Footnotes section I write a short form of the citation, such as "Smith, 1996, p. 68" and then put the full details about the source in the References section, in alphabetical order.»
What is the best way to cite a text that was first published in hard copy and subsequently published on the web in a different format? I'm trying to polish up the references at Dalek for its ongoing featured article review, and it occured to me that one of the sources cited, Doctor Who: The Television Companion, has been published on the BBC's Doctor Who website. But the publication isn't as an ebook — they merely took the text and put the relevant sections about each serial onto a page that also had other information about it (see here for an example).
The article has citations from two different print editions of this work (added by different editors). Is there value in changing all these to the web citation, for ease of reader access? Or is it better to keep the print citations, because print has more permanence than websites? Or should both be cited, and if so, how? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
How do I refer to the same reference twice in an article without it appearing twice in the reference list? I am trying to sort out the
telithromycin article because there were claims that it was unsourced. One of the references is a New York Times article that can only be accessed if you are a registered NYT user. I have therefore put in as much of the full reference as possible (Author, title, date) so that people can get it in hard copy where possible. I need to refer to this more than once as there are several quotes which have been sourced in that article. Unfortunately every time I do the ref appears twice. I have also provided a link so that they can access the article online. Can someone help me here? Thanks --
Wikipediatastic
15:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I have sorted this out now! -- Wikipediatastic 15:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
In a family scrapbook, there is a photocopy of a page from a book that gives a brief history of Oswego, Montana up to about the year 1972. There are no clues as to the title or author of this book. I would like to use this source in the creation of the Oswego article, but I have no way of citing where the information came from. Should I just go ahead and use the information anyways without a citation, and then put a note in the article's talk page about this unusual source? -- Billdorr 01:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
When there is an allegation or accusation, there is an alleger or accuser, and they should be identified in enough detail to allow the reader to judge their credibility. For example, "It has been alleged that Company A stinks" is sloppy; "Company B has alleged that Company A stinks" provides more perspective. Where there is no citeable reference to identify the alleger or accuser, I suggest that editors take care not to imply that the allegation or accusation is true. For example, where no accuser or alleger can be found, it may be that allegations are merely rumours spread by Chinese Whisper or disinformation. Furthermore, if a blog is the source of the accusation or allegation, editors should check the affilliation of the blogger to the extent of sighting any bio page linked to the blog; for example, to reveal that a seemingly private blog is the private blog of a PR person, for example. Rick Jelliffe 17:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed a number of policy pages have sections on what does not constitute the policy. I think that might be a good idea here. I've been embroiled in a move request discussion over at Ethnic Japanese and the nominator insists on placing inline citations for every term describing the article and has removed the articles current title entirely claiming it's original research and unverified. I'm pro citations but, personally, I don't think common terms which are verifiable by hundreds or thousands of sources, including dictionaries, require citation. For heated arguments, however, a common sense supplement here might be helpful. Doctor Sunshine 13:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
How does one cite TV series episodes, movies, documentaries and the like? What format is used? Shrumster 00:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I note that search links are discouraged (although not forbidden, such a policy I believe increases the likelihood of such a link being removed from the article). I believe that a justifiable use would be as a citation of a phrase in order to demonstrate that the usage is sufficiently common for the phrase to be considered a set phrase and not merely one writer's combination of words. Notatest 07:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
From this page:
"Wikipedia articles cannot be used as sources in and of themselves. Sources 'must' be independant from Wikipedia."
I propose adding two words to the sentence:
"Wikipedia articles and categories cannot be used as sources in and of themselves. Sources 'must' be independant from Wikipedia."
There have been cases where someone will make an argument of the form, "x is in category y, and WP:CAT says something's membership in a category has to be uncontroversial, so this justifies us saying (on a separate article) that 'x is a y' without the need for an outside source." There are other ways to show why this argument is invalid, but adding those two words to the sentence would end such a line of argumentation quickly. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 00:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
After the issue came up at B-17 Flying Fortress, I've got a few questions about the "Accessed on/Referenced on" part of the cite templates. Template:Cite web previously allowed the user to either use accessdate (with the date required to be in ISO form) or accessmonthday and accessyear (with the date in the form "Month DD" and "YYYY", which produces an unwikilinked "Month DD, YYYY"). I would like it to allow a new date format, perhaps by adding a new parameter accessdaymonth, which would allow the date to show up as an unwikilinked "DD Month YYYY", which some people find is the best date format in "serious" writing. Template:Cite journal currently has only the accessdate parameter with no allowance for other date forms, and would require all three parameters to be added.
I've gone ahead and made the edit to Template:Cite web, and it seems to work, but I wonder if it would be better to modify accessmonthday to change the date format (essentially remove the comma) if it detects a numeral before the month. Suggestions? - Trevor MacInnis ( Contribs) 13:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm interested in opinions on whether it is okay to reference the webpage of a commercial entity, when no non-commercial source can be found. In particular, I've been adding a listing of public utilities to articles on cities (see Toccoa, Georgia for an example), and the official city websites don't always provide the necessary information – but the webpage of (e.g.) the local telephone utility or local cable utility will often list their service areas. Is it okay to cite such sources, or should such references be considered inappropriate (i.e. spam) ? -- Bill Clark 17:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
There are often times when I must take a reputable author's word that another author(ity) said such and such. While I do try to track down the original source, it can be in some obscure academic journal, or out-of-print or expensive book. For example, Richard Diehl, a well-known and reputable professor, states in his book The Olmecs that Marcus Winter makes a statement that I would like to include in an article on Olmec culture outside the Olmec heartland. Diehl's footnote says that Winter's essay can be found in "CLARK, John E. (Editor) LOS OLMECAS EN MESOAMERICA", which is unavailable to me (I located it on sale for $250). Should I just cite the Winter work directly, or should I cite Diehl, or should I cite Diehl citing Winter? Help! Madman 05:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Guidelines the preferred citation style is MLA, which uses the following format:
Note that the date is formatted dd mmm yyyy. Currently the cite templates seem to prefer the ISO date format, yyyy-MM-dd, with a few templates offering the option of the format mmm dd, yyyy. Should all the templates be edited to limit them to the MLA style date, for standardization/unity? Or at least offer that date option? See above for my previous request. - Trevor MacInnis ( Contribs) 22:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I moved the tools section down from below templates to the bottom, above see also, and combined with the tools listed there. I also added a few links under see also.
I agree with the comments way up this page that this page should be shorter and less intimidating. Much of the detail can be linked to on other pages. I envision a list of citation types with brief descriptions of each (starting with the simplest). Links to templates, more complete information on the various styles, an tools for building citations would follow. As one not at home with citations (though i must have done it a few times while in school, way back when), i find all of the information overwelming and very time consuming. I, and other non-academics, crave just a short intro on how to do a basic citation (or footnote or reference or whatever), a note about what other styles are possible/permitted and where to look for details of each if needed. - Bcharles 00:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what's to stop someone from making a statement, publishing their own article on a free webhost, and using that as their source? How can we be assured of the validity of anything then unless it is from a bonified news service? But if it's something like "Bob's home page about the Civil War" then is that a valid source? Maybe we should need two or three sources per citation. Stovetopcookies 02:02, 12 February 2007 (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 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
I was wanting to use this template on my own wiki and it references another template called Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 15/doc but I cannot find it anywhere.....and of course it shows up as an error now.
Any suggestions on how to fix this or where I can get a copy of the appropriate cite template? 209.8.233.10 20:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Where can I get up to speed on Youtube as a source? I've never actually watched a Youtube clip, don't understand all the excitement, don't know what it's about, but I'm cleaning up a lot of references in election articles and need to understand:
Thanks, Sandy 22:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
This page has grown into a sprawling mess. It needs some serious reorganization and refactoring. I don't have time to do it myself at the moment, but I would encourage someone to be bold and edit this page down to the essential information. A lot of the stuff on this page is old and not especially relevent any more. Also, we should be pushing the use of cite.php more, as it has become a de facto requirement for featured articles. The way we word things here is very non-commital and ambiguous, i.e. "You may want to do this or you may want to do that" rather than giving some definite recommendations. Kaldari 21:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
What do we do about links to cited articles where there is an online version, but only on a paid subscription site. For example, Paris Commune cites
{{
cite news}}
: CS1 maint: date format (
link)Nothing about that citation indicates that you have to pay to see anything past the first paragraph of the online version. That seems wrong to me. Any suggestions? - Jmabel | Talk 04:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I guess what I don't like is that it provides a URL without saying that all it's going to take you to is a teaser. We should have some way to distinguish that, on more or less the same principle that we don't link a book title to the Amazon page selling the book. - Jmabel | Talk 06:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
What I often do (see Circumcision) is to put “Abstract” in the format tag of the {{ cite journal}} entry, which informs the reader that the statement being corroborated comes from the abstract and that the full-text is often not available. For the few times that abstract does not corroborate the statement, I will leave an editors note (see reference #92 in Circumcision for an example). -- Avi 03:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Although I have confirmed it from many users I just want to make sure that- If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it. means u should only translate the part of the non-english source which u intend to use in the article (and not the whole source).Plz confirm this on my talk page as I am not sure I will be able to locate this page again! Mahawiki 13:08, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I've written an essay on "convenience links" that cites this page heavily and would love to hear any thoughts. Thanks, TheronJ 21:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I have cited a book, and my honesty about having possession of it was questioned. I went so far as to scan the page I was quoting. My honesty is still being questioned. It's not a rare book; am I required to verify myself before I'm allowed to verify facts in articles? Are there any guidelines that talk about this? -- Masamage 05:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I see the rationale - the references are really a part of the article, and things like external links, books on related topics, etc. should appear at the end of the article.
But many of the articles I've worked on have really large numbers of references: Condom, for example, has 59 cited sources, and even in small font the references section takes up 2.5 screens on my monitor. Is it really reasonable to expect readers to scroll through that much text they are not interested in to see the "Further reading" and related sections?
In my view, the Footnotes/References section is integrally tied into the article through the footnote system - where the reader can go back and forth between the text of the article and cites for specific material at the click of a mouse. Because of this hypertext connection, I do not see any benefit to articles of having the cites immediately following the text.
In contrast, "Further reading" type sections benefit from immediately following the text. Readers learn about a topic, and then they learn where they can find even more information. Is there any support to making this change to the Further reading/external links guidelines? Or at least saying the best order of these sections may be different in different articles? Lyrl Talk Contribs 18:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
The order of sections in an article is covered by WP:LAYOUT and I suggest that part of the Manual of Style be discussed and possibly modified, rather than bringing it up here. -- Gerry Ashton 22:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
References are not always further reading. A "References and notes" section can be completely filled with pages of citations that have no content other than the one sentence they support. While further reading and external links type sections may, depending on the article, have books or large webpages full of content relevant to the article. In such cases, it makes more sense to put those sections first, and the references and notes sections at the very end of the article.
WP:LAYOUT says that "Further reading" may go either above or below References/Footnotes sections. Which contradicts this guideline ( Wikipedia:Citing sources#Further reading/external links). Although both locations say that external links have to go at the end, which I do not understand - external links are further reading in online form, why would a section titled "External links" be treated differently than a section titled "Further reading"? I will post on the WP:LAYOUT talk page also, but I think the discussion should continue here since the two guideline pages are not currently consistent with each other. Lyrl Talk Contribs 01:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
When writing a new article or adding references to an existing article that has none, follow the established practice for the appropriate profession or discipline that the article is concerning (if available and unquestioned).
Now, the traditional, unquestioned method of citing papers/books in meteorology articles is to use (Author Year) inline notation. While this method is almost universal for printed media on the subject, it just doesn't seem to make sense in a wikipedia setting where clickable footnotes are available. My main concerns are that
So which convention do we follow here? Wikipedia's or AMS's? - Runningonbrains 16:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
An article which contains both, just in case you were looking for an example.- Runningonbrains 16:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I got one of those notes on the top of my page Cedar Hill Area to site the refernce I did make a note one the bottom where is info is from but I am unsure how to taqg it so that the not verifyed thing comes off my page.??? -- Happypixie 22:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This page specifically forbids duplication of references #: "An ==External links== or ==Further reading== section is placed near the end of an article and offers... that might be of interest to the reader, but which have not been used as sources for the article."
But over at WP:LAYOUT, references are allowed to be listed a second time in the "Further reading" section #: "When there are more than five references about the article, you may want to include them here so that there is a complete bibliography for users in one place."
I don't really have an opinion either way, but two policy pages should be consistent with each other. Which way should it be - duplication prohibited or allowed? Lyrl Talk Contribs 00:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Note: I've also asked this question over on the WP:LAYOUT page Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout#This can't be right... Lyrl Talk Contribs 00:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Folks, I am an absolute newbie, and just added a section under FEMA, under a deadline for my class in Homeland Security, and I have footnotes, but canNOT figure out how to add them, and still meet my deadline. I want to do the right thing, here. How to I make my citations, how do I make them legit and copasetic(spell?), while I go back to my class stuff to finish meeting the deadline? hallebb
I have added a link in see also to Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, a (modest) proposal which has the support of editors from the mathematics and physics WikiProjects. If you have any comments on the guidelines, we would appreciate hearing them. – Joke 03:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
That page has had extremely limited exposure (as far as I can tell), consensus appears based on very few participants, and the title is excessively broad (scientific) considering it appears to be the work of a few members of Physics and Math projects: please correct me if you exposed it to *all* scientific projects, and I missed that. I question the guideline status, considering the limited participation. Sandy ( Talk) 14:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I should note that although the exposure has been limited, quite a number of editors from outside the two projects, including a number who were involved in the recent fracas at WP:CITE and WP:GA, have been quite encouraging about the guidelines. – Joke 14:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
And I reinstated the previous text, which clearly stated the status of the page, unlike the generic proposal banner. Scientific is not too broad, and the scope is clearly defined. It is for writing articles about scientific and mathematical subjects, and it currently has the consensus of editors in physics and mathematics. – Joke 14:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that the other projects should be consulted, and they will be. I suppose, if, for example, the geologists are vehemently opposed to the guidelines, then the page will have to find a new name. Until then, I think it is reasonable to leave it at the present name and clearly indicate that it only has the support of these Projects. This doesn't seem too unusual for proposed Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The reason it was the math and physics editors who have been initially involved in this proposal is that it was principally they who were involved in the discussions at WP:CITE and WP:V. I thought that it was clear that we would never be able to change WP:CITE – because there was more to say about the issue than could reasonably be added to the page, and the red herring "every sentence needs an inline cite: yes or no?" kept rearing its ugly head – so it seemed to make sense to write a complementary proposal. – Joke 15:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Would it be more helpful to keep all discussion in one place, at Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines ? Sandy ( Talk) 16:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone has tagged the following sentences in the American football article with "fact" tags:
" Super Bowl Sunday, the day of the game, has become an unofficial February holiday in the U.S. citation needed
" College football is also extremely popular throughout North America. Four college football stadiums seat more than 100,000 fans, which regularly sell out. Even high school football games can attract more than 10,000 people in some areas. The weekly autumn ritual of college and high-school football—which includes marching bands, cheerleaders and parties (including the ubiquitous tailgate party)—is an important part of the culture in much of smalltown America. citation needed It is a long-standing tradition in the United States (though not universally observed) that high school football games are played on Friday, college games on Saturday, and professional games on Sunday (with an additional professional game on Monday nights). citation needed"
The facts tagged here are common knowledge in the U.S., not challengable assertions. Putting footnotes after them wouldn't look professional -- it would look like something done by amateurs trying to look professional.
Anyway, what would you cite for "proof" here? Friday Night Lights?
64.40.60.88 01:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Advice would be appreciated. Thanks -- Mwalcoff 00:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
The first sentence is problematic not just because it is uncited but because its meaning is rather unclear. The current presentation in the Super Bowl article is even worse -- calling it a "de facto national holiday" makes little sense when national holidays are by definition de jure. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:22, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
When a Wikipedia article has ten or more references, and the "citation needed" header is applied to an entire section, or article heading, people who know the field don't know what needs citations/is being challenged. Even worse, asking in the talk pages of the article what needs citating gets zero response. Personally, I am about ready to call every use of those tags wilful vandalism of Wikipedia, unless there is a note in the talk page stating why the tag is added.
64.40.60.88 01:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely right. Here's a related example: On en.wikipedia.org/?title=Harvard_referencing&oldid=84181580, a superseded page, look for the word "obvious". Those statements (as a group, not -- as you point out -- individually) were challenged by two people who wanted citations for the obvious!
I would like to point out that there are three issues here:
TH 02:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
In John Dee, there occured the following paragraph:
I have added a tag at the point challenged. Now, is there any reasonable doubt which book of Casaubon is meant, and where the assertion about evil spirits is to be found? Yet the result of this complaint is that some Wikipedian has spent bits adding the following footnote:
Does this add anything to the full name and title of the book, already in the text? This is only one of the several reprints in modern times; the earliest being from 1974. The publisher does not appear to be a mainstream scholarly press; others are. Yet some Wikipedian's time has been wasted on this. Septentrionalis 02:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Toohoo, I've reverted your edits because I don't see the point to them, and because I'm concerned about the edits you're making to various guidelines, which are not always consistent with WP style, and yet you revert continually in the face of objections. Can you please say succinctly what your aim is? Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 05:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
[Positioning] This document could use a short sub section on positioning in-line citations after the relevant punctuation mark. This is mentioned in the sub articles on the various styles of reference, but since it's common, it belongs here. I'm not feeling bold enough to do add the section, since I find I've been doing it wrong for months. Now back to fix all those edits. :( -- J Clear 18:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
According to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.), footnotes come after punctuation (16.30), while in-line (Harvard/author-date style) come before (16.112). -- Avi 03:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Often footnotes support the preceding sentence or paragraph, and in the latter case having the footnote inside the punctuation for a sentence does not seem proper. Harvard style has the reference woven more conversationally in the sentence. There may be exceptions; I recently had one footnote which fit within a sentence, while following the sentence was a footnote for the source for the preceding two paragraphs. ( SEWilco 08:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC))
Folks,
I changed one paragraph in Citing sources to read this way:
First, here's the original paragraph, with my markup:
The Harvard referencing MISLEADING NAME system places a partial citation WRONG TERM — the author's name and year of publication SERIOUSLY INCOMPLETE within parentheses — usually WRONG at the end of the sentence, within the text before the punctuation, and a complete citation WRONG TERM at the end WRONG of the text in an alphabetized list of "References" WRONG PUNCTUATION. According to The Oxford Style Manual MISLEADING EXAMPLE, the Harvard system MISLEADING NAME is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences" (Ritter 2002 INCOMPLETE CITATION) MISLEADING EXAMPLE.
No discredit to the last editor here -- Avraham is NOT responsible for any of the flaws in the paragraph above.
But the errors flagged above are not the worst problem we have here. A worse problem is redundancy -- we have "similar" explanations in at least two other places in WP. So even if that paragraph gets fixed, there are two other pages that may have to be fixed. And notice that I said that redundancy is "a worse problem", because we haven't gotten to the worst problem yet.
The worst problem is that SlimVirgin will defend to the death the existence of these redundant explanations -- making maintenance a nightmare. A "maintenance nightmare"? I didn't say thas. Ling.Nut said it. Trödel said it. 29 Sep 2006, "Harvard referencing" Talk. See the maintenance nightmare that SlimVirgin has defended -- perhaps created -- by comparing Harvard_referencing with Wikipedia:Harvard referencing with this article.
Here's how the paragraph should read:
The author date system places a citation — the authors' names, the year of publication, and the page number or range, all within parentheses — often near the authors' names and often at end of the sentence or phrase before any punctuation; and a corresponding reference in an alphabetized list of References near the end of the text. According to Ritter (2002, NEED PAGE NUMBER), the Harvard system is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences". An example: "Metz and Ankney (1991) documented increased hunter-caused mortality of male ducks with brightly colored plumage compared to dull individuals". Another example: "In mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), Omland (1996a, b) found that females strongly prefer males with brightly colored bills and that females also show a preference for overall plumage condition (Holmberg et al., 1989; Weidmann, 1990)".
TH
16:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
This does not make sense. They do not need to be cited. RRRGH
I absolutely agree. If citations are needed for commonly known facts, you will invite weasel words to creep in, in the attempt to make those known facts appear limited in scope.The attempt to eliminate valuing language is praiseworthy in a reference article but taken to extremes just invites staid and pointlessly overworked writing
—The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
72.80.105.24 (
talk •
contribs) 10:08, 1 November 2006 UTC.
I'm trying to figure out if we could use this. I'm not sure if it can output things in the way we would want. http://www.zotero.org — Omegatron 17:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok. It would be tremendously convenient if I could enter books into Zotero either from ISBN numbers of books I own or from Google Books or whatever, and then go to the Wikipedia article I'm editing, click on the reference I am citing in Zotero and say "Zotero, generate a reference tag", and it just generates it for me, with all relevant information, citation templates, hidden meta-data, and so on in the ideal Wikipedia reference tag format. Then copy and paste and I'm done. I'm wondering if this is already possible, but I don't know how to do it.
This site says:
COinS is an attempt to make OpenURL work the *same* way in our browsers. If you publish OpenURLs, please read the COinS spec and tweak your site templates to publish your OpenURLs in COinS. We're starting to see the benefits of this approach: the biggest non-profit book database in the world (worldcat) supports COinS. The biggest user-generated encyclopedia in the world (wikipedia) supports COinS. Two awesome firefox extensions (zotero and libx) support COinS. This means that with COinS, and with things set up properly in your browser, you can get big benefits from the common OpenURL interface rendering today: browse worldcat or wikipedia, save good references for later citation in zotero: two great tastes that taste great together.
So you would think they could already cooperate. But I have no idea how. Anyone know what this is about? — Omegatron 18:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been talking to some people and I think I will try to create an output citation style for Wikipedia. Just so people aren't duplicating effort. Contact me if you want to help/etc. — Omegatron 14:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Maintaining a separate "References" section in addition to "Notes" is certainly useful, but its main use is IMO to distinguish between general references and accurate sourcing of statements. However, that is not clearly suggested in this guideline, if I see it well. See also my comment on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Thanks.2C_this_is_helpful .
Harald88 10:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that 9 times out of 10 any citations that are put into any of the articles are merely credits to having attained the information from a web page, and typically these web pages have the same odds of providing incorrect information as anything else (for example, reviews, fan-sites, etc.)
Wikipedia is far to anal about citations! Mrlopez2681 18:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I am using sources as an inspiration for the article Prema Sai Baba that are formally non-reputable. Because they are not reputable according Wikipedia policies, I cannot cite them. These non-reputable sources in turn cite reputable sources that I cite in the article. However I think I am plagiarizing the non-reputable sources. The sources that I used as source of inspiration were written by Brian Steel and Alexandra Nagel. I do not think that I can link to them because of the arbcom decision regarding Sathya Sai Baba How can I avoid plagiarism and still draw ideas from these formally non-reputable sources? Andries 13:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
In light of the previous thread and the recent copyright violation study, I'll propose something that's been on my mind for months: let's draft a guideline along the lines of a typical university academic honesty statement. WP:Citing sources really just deals with the nuts and bolts of citation and markup for people who already know what proper citations are. Many contributors honestly don't know what plagiarism is and this page doesn't explain it even though Wikipedia:Plagiarism links here. Citing sources is a good Manual of style page - let's keep this page what it is and draft another to fill the gap. Durova 01:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Something that came up in during a rewrite of WP:RS might go better here, if it has consensus (title changed):
See link.
— Armedblowfish ( talk| mail) 18:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I've listed an article, Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, to GA list. Article is about a recent subject, and all sources that i use is from news. And a reviewer ask me to use MLA style referencing on talk page, Talk:Turkish Airlines Flight 1476. What can i do, is it better to use MLA style and if it's better how can i use MLA style. Btw, i checked all sources and 4 of them goes dead. 2 of the dead ones are from CNN, and it's difficult to find again exact information from other sources. What can i do about dead ones, replace them and rewrite these parts with what can i find. I've read What to do when a reference link "goes dead" part, and checked CNN sources on archieve.org but i couldn't find the article. Thanks in advance -- Ugur Basak 11:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
What's the policy on citing stuff passed down orally? - Peregrinefisher 20:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Please don't add again to the project page comments that would be more appropriate on talk. [7] This is the third or fourth time you've done it here and elsewhere. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Folks,
Hey, don't jump on me -- I'm not the committee that made an ambiguous mandate.
Okay, I was a bad boy in the past, but I've reformed. This situation is different.
If we (Wikipedia) make an ambiguous statement, we need to be honest with the readers and say "we are being ambiguous here". Honest revelation of ambiguity in Wikipedia pages belongs on main pages, not on talk pages.
Either the mandate is ambiguous -- and readers need to know that.
Or it's not ambigous -- and anyone who knows what it means can repair (not delete) my statement of ambiguity.
Masamage, I'd fix it if I could -- but I don't know what the committee meant. All I know is that it's unclear as it stands.
But I did rephrase it -- I hope you like it better now.
Is it true that if one of you reverts now, you'll cross the line into 3RR? I haven't figured out yet how the counting works.
If one of you attempts to repair (not delete) my last version, I will applaud, not complain.
TH 05:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! you've answered my question.
TH 06:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Some sites like http://news.yahoo.com always bring down their articles after a fairly short amount of time has passed. Could we add a warning to the policy page about which sites follow this practice, and advise to search for equivalent articles at other, nonvolatile sources? A built-in warning for editors when they add a link like that inside a <ref> tag would work, too. Phoenix-forgotten 19:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
This woud suggest that it is a particular problem to use a "blind URL" citation to these, since afterwards no one has even a clue what you were citing. - Jmabel | Talk 02:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Humbly requesting the follow appear near the top of the page
For more templates to assist formatting, see the citation templates.
Makes it easier to find them, I come here via WP:CITE
Thanks, Cheers. -- Uncle Bungle 04:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
An editor af Quixtar would like to use an old promotional video as a source. Youtube hosts the video, and at least two Quixtar-related websites hotlink to it - one site belongs to a supporter and the other to an opponent. There is no licensing information at any site. My view is that linking directly to Youtube is the most NPOV (if we need to use the video at all) though that doesn't address the copyright issue. The other editor is concerned that if we link directly to Youtube the link will be removed. Talk:Quixtar#Controversy. Any thoghts? - Will Beback 18:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a way to limit references to a subpart of a page? Say someone is proposing new text in the talk page of an article. In their text they have references, and they add the <references/> tag at the end. Then someone else does the same thing with a different block of text, which will now give one reference block (twice?) with all the references, not just the ones in their newly added text. Disregarding that said texts should have been sandboxed somewhere else, is there a way to limit these references, so I can have one set of references for the first block of text and a separate set for the second? Obviously not a huge problem, simply wondering if it is technically possible. *Spark* 15:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
How do I cite a pdf file from the internet? Wai Hong 06:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Citing/Referencing help pages desperately need to be simplified.
It took me 20 minutes to uncover the fact that cite.php/inline/Harvard style is the preferred method and I am not a newbie. And I'm still not sure. New users will be baffled. A clear consensus on a cite style is needed and someone with a big stick needs to keep the discussion going until it is achieved. -- Nickj69 10:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
This guideline needs to take in account WP:V and WP:RS, especially regarding online sources as references. -- Jordi· ✆ 09:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Seems to me that the advice here for citing with "Embedded HTML links"—what I prefer to call "blind URLs"—is a liability. You end up with inline citations in the article where only by following the link off of Wikipedia can someone tell which of the refrences this cites. And, of course, it only works for Internet citations, you still need a different means to cite any print source.
Embedded HTML links are an OK temporary placeholder to let you work quickly on an article & clean up later, but in the long run they are a lousy solution to citation. - Jmabel | Talk 21:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
How do I do this? HK51 12:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've discovered this article is actually plagiarism as it almost copies word for word a landscape character assessment from North Hertfordshire Council. What should be done about this? I still think the article should be kept however. Simply south 21:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
See River Mimram and [9]
It looks like Chris Stokes only contributed in 2005 by placing random images and doing links. About 10 edits only. I still think the article is notable enough to eist, if be rewritten. Simply south 00:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I need some input about Saipan Sucks. Is it appropriate to cite the html source of http://www.saipansucks.com/about.htm (Open page, go to View > Page Source) at line 39 which shows the page's author? C.m.jones 22:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Can we make it standard practice to put the Notes sections after the References section? To me, it seems stupid to give page numbers before even mentioning what's being cited. For example, on today's FA, Great Fire of London, if I want to scan through what was cited, I have to jump past the Notes section, check the References, then jump back to the Notes. It seems more logical to have the References come first, so that one can know what's being cited before one sees the page numbers. However, if notes and citations are seperated, I'm fine with notes coming before the references, but usually the notes section is filled with citations.-- SeizureDog 05:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Currently the article Roguelike is nominated for deletion. The article deals with a genre of games named for their similarity to Rogue.
Whilst the article includes an extensive selection of external links, User:ChrisGriswold has tagged it as being unreferenced.
My question is: this being an article about a genre of games which is developed by the open source community, to what extent are blogs, personal sites, and newsgroups, able to be cited? For example: the best source for a definition of a roguelike would probably be item 1.2 from this FAQ.
Thanks, Ga rr ie 03:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed the majority of the details below the three methods. We should only describe how to do these once, and in one place. That place appears to be their respective pages -- which could also use some serious reduction. This place should show enough for a most-average case, and a link further. ∴ here… ♠ 12:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
At the risk of appearing dense, I found the following hard to follow at first reading:
Facts that are fully sourced in text need not be further cited; this will most often apply to sources with a well-established and traditional citation system ("Mark 16:48"; Lycidas, l. 135); but other cases are possible: "In the preamble of Magna Carta", "on the first page of the Washington Republican for February 6, 1824".
Since being sourced and being cited are not the same thing, why "further"? Also, something which is fully done can't be further done anyway.
"This will most often apply..." Imprecise and unhelpful.
"Other cases are possible". Self-evident, but in this context, water-muddying.
"Sources with a well-established citation system..." What does that mean? Well-established within that source or beyond it? What's that got to do with Wikipedia's citation system, which can be applied to sources with or without a citation system of their own?
"Sources with a traditional citation system..." How does that affect anything? CMS gives examples of many systems and recommends a few. It's how Wikipedia cites the sources that we are interested in on this page.
("Mark 16:48"; Lycidas, l. 135): Placing the Mark and Lycidas examples together between brackets made me read them at first as one citation (I thought this was the author Mark's edition of Lycidas, or something).
I presume that "Mark 16:48" is a bible reference; shouldn't it be wikilinked, then? And why has it got speech marks round it? (Forgive my non-religiosity, but I first read this one as some kind of Harvard reference—which I had assumed, before I worked out what this paragraph is getting at, would count as a "traditional citation system"—for a book written by an author called Mark—you know, Jan Mark, or someone.)
As for the Lycidas and Magna Carta examples, surely the edition should be cited.
Is the fact that in the examples these are given lines or preamble descriptions the point? I presume from these examples that what is meant by this paragraph is that if you mention the verse number, line, or section of a source in the text, that counts as a reference and doesn't need doubling up in the footnotes if the source is referenced as a whole at the bottom of the page. That's true enough; but it's the same for any reference made explicit in the text, not just for "well-established and traditional" ones. So long as readers are somewhere given the means of checking the reference, that's fine.
Washington Republican. Why saddle ourselves with a red link here?
Finally, why is this point under "Material that is, or is likely to be, challenged", in particular? (Scratches head.)
qp10qp 02:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't seem to find the requirements for citing locale descriptions. I specifically need to know how to make an article on a school acceptable when there aren't any published sources to cite .. Thanks in advance for any and all help. Phentos 07:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
This edit has a comment strongly implying that links to blogs are wrong. My understanding is that a blog is like any other source, and should be evaluated in terms of its reliability. Can some more experienced Wikipedian clarify? Of course the edit in question may have substituted a more reliable source, which is of course a good thing, but that's beside the point for my question - Cheers, 01:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest that the How to cite sources section of this article should amount to roughly quantity of information found at Wikipedia:Citations quick reference. The rest of the details should be covered on the respective technique pages. I would recommend removing the page numbers section entirely and moving the notes discussion out of how to cite sources into a 2nd level header along the lines of further reading/external links. Comments? ∴ here… ♠ 06:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Would like to rename and redirect Wikipedia:Embedded Citations to Wikipedia:Embedded links. Clarity and multiple articles already using term embedded links ( Wikipedia:Harvard referencing). Discuss if problems at Wikipedia_talk:Embedded_Citations. ∴ here… ♠ 08:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I have just removed the following WP-centric material from the WebCite article and replaced it with a Template:Selfref hatnote with a link here. Here is the extracted material:
“ | As suggested in the Wikipedia context, citations incorporating a link to a cached copy should look like the following:
and if the URL is no longer available or no longer contains the information:
|
” |
-- zenohockey 23:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I've made some edits to the effect of strongly recommending to permanently archive cited URLs (
WebCite) before they are cited to combat
link rot and to provide a possibility to check cited sources even if the original source has disappeared. Hopefully, somebody will write a
bot for automating this. —The preceding
unsigned comment was added by
Eysen (
talk •
contribs)
19:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
"Caching and archiving webpages is widely done (e.g. by Google, Internet Archive etc.), and is not considered a copyright infringement, as long as the copyright owner has the ability to remove the archived material and to opt out. WebCite® honors robot exclusion standards, as well as no-cache and no-archive tags. Please contact us if you are the copyright owner of an archived webpage which you want to have removed.
A U.S. court has recently (Jan 19th, 2006) ruled that caching does not constitute a copyright violation, because of fair use and an implied license (Field vs Google, US District Court, District of Nevada, CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL, see also news article on Government Technology). Implied license refers to the industry standards mentioned above: If the copyright holder does not use any no-archive tags and robot exclusion standards to prevent caching, WebCite® can (as Google does) assume that a license to archive has been granted. Fair use is even more obvious in the case of WebCite® than for Google, as Google uses a “shotgun” approach, whereas WebCite® archives selectively only material that is relevant for scholarly work. Fair use is therefore justifiable based on the fair-use principles of purpose (caching constitutes transformative and socially valuable use for the purposes of archiving, in the case of WebCite® also specifically for academic research), the nature of the cached material (previously made available for free on the Internet, in the case of WebCite® also mainly scholarly material), amount and substantiality (in the case of WebCite® only cited webpages, rarely entire websites), and effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (in the case of Google it was ruled that there is no economic effect, the same is true for WebCite®)."
Eysen ( talk • contribs) 19:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
Note: Extensive discussion of this has occurred on the External links talk page. The consensus appears to be roughly that a) discussion of how this should be done should move here, b) that the format should retain the original URL as a link, c) editors should be given guidance on services for caching and their attributes, as well as their policies towards Wikipedia citations. Note that this is my interpretation of the consensus; others may not agree.
I suggest a citation method/template/etc that yields something like this:
and if the URL is no longer available or no longer contains the information:
— jesup 23:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Just a note that Eysen is the creator of WebCite and could be seen to be promoting his own technology -- this violates the COI policies of wikipedia.
I changed the example to use the cite news template, as this provides consistency and is pretty common on Wikipedia. Sorry, I marked the change as "cite web" by mistake. --- Remember the dot 06:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I've just made a major change (3 edits) adding a Full citations section under How to cite. As all three listed techniques require that a full citation show up under References, it seems appropriate to address this directly, rather than inadequately under each technique. It needs work, but I think the idea behind this structural change to this guideline is a good one. Comments and improvements encouraged! Done for now... ∴ here… ♠ 09:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking that external links at the end, has dated back to the days before cite.php. WP:LINK states that the "most common" way to place external links is "at the end of an article".
Some articles now have quite extensive references sections, and it often looks better to place these after the article proper (including external links) rather thasn above the "see also" or "external links" sections. Otherwise one potentially has the following article finish:
It seems better that with extensive referencing and citations coming to be the norm, then references should generally go at the end of the article proper, that is after the (usually shorter) sections for notes, links and the like. Would this be acceptable to others to change the MOS slightly to suggest cite.php and similar references should usually be placed after all other sections, or at least may be placed there if 'long'? FT2 ( Talk | email) 19:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
...
I put in an article on Post Secondary Transition Planning for High School Students with Disabilities. Admittedly I need to wikify it, but the original article was replete with references, and I believe this was noted by a reviewer. Before I have been able to do this, someone added to/ edited the article and did not include references. So now, the article has been 'dunned' (I believe that's the right word). What's my recourse? Phil Vitkus 19:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC) Phil Vitkus
It's proabably too late for us to get a seat in this Working Group, but I hope someone with better credentials than me will monitor what the US Library of Congress's Working Group Established To Discuss Future of Bibliographic Control decides to do. (And maybe we can convince them to recruit one of us to assist in future Working Groups.) -- llywrch 22:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I have been trying to assertain the derivation of the place Horndean (See the talk for details) - The current (9th Dec) 'derivation' has once again changed to a popular one but not that which my source is indicating. I would like to have both the academic source I have and leave the popular answer inthe article. So my question is that I wish to cite the email source that I have (from the respected academic university answering my questions) but I am unsure how, and can't find much on citeing personal or email sources anywhere. Are there any suggestions (examples) on how to do this? Thanks Ben 17:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
One can use Template:Cite web to provide citations to letters and correspondence on the web. I'm wondering what citation template you would suggest for use in citing same where the text has not been placed on the web. Further, is there a perceived need for a specific Template:Cite correspondence that would have custom parameters such as 'sender' and 'recipient'? Thanks for the input. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 15:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering, is there a way to properly cite microform? I don't know if I'll need to use it or not, but in the case I do I'd like to know. It's probably a lot simpler than I think it is... -- Wizardman 22:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Decode the text to find the hidden meaning!
There are several reports<ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=182292 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 24, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=181394 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 14, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=143367 ''"The Lia Roberts hope"'', Evenimentul Zilei, January 19, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://ds009.xs4all.nl/artnews/mvrhotartcoldcash.pdf ''"Hot Art, Cold Cash"'', pages 177,184, by Michel van Rijn, Little Brown & Co., October 1994.] Also [http://www.michelvanrijn.nl/artnews/archive/oct2001.htm the report "DEVASTATING ART NEWS", October 29, 2001, by the same UK police expert in art smuggling.] For more on [[Michel van Rijn]]'s credentials, please, see [http://www.museum-security.org/cyprus-and-michel-van-rijn.htm 1] and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3724256.stm 2.]</ref> that the Romanian Communist authorities obedient to Stalin presented King Michael with 42 valuable [[The Crown|Crown]]-owned paintings shortly before the King's abdication, some of which<ref>[http://ds009.xs4all.nl/artnews/mvrhotartcoldcash.pdf ''"Hot Art, Cold Cash"'', pages 177, 184, by Michel van Rijn, Little Brown & Co., October 1994.] Also [http://www.michelvanrijn.nl/artnews/archive/oct2001.htm the report "Devastating Art News", October 29, 2001, by the same UK police expert in art smuggling.] For more on [[Michel van Rijn]]'s credentials, please, see [http://www.museum-security.org/cyprus-and-michel-van-rijn.htm 1] and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3724256.stm 2.]</ref> were reportedly sold through the famed art dealer [[Daniel Wildenstein]]. One of the paintings belonging to the Romanian Crown which was supposedly taken out of the country by King Michael in November 1947, returned to the national patrimony in 2004 as a donation<ref>[http://ziua.ro/display.php?id=162992&data=2004-11-20&ziua=1e5692b536aa233f6d6ac3b1d11dd6c9 "Raibolini's ''Madonna'' at the National Museum of Art of Romania" (in Romanian), Ziua, November 20, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=182292 ''Miscellaneous'', Evenimentul Zilei daily, March 24, 2005]</ref><ref>[http://www.onlinegallery.ro/museums/muzeul_de_arta/donatie.html "A Prestigious Donation: ''Madonna with the Infant'' by Francesco Raibolini, named "Il Francia"" (in Romanian), Online Gallery site as of December 8, 2006]</ref> made by John Kreuger, the former husband of King Michael's daughter [[Princess Irina of Romania|Princess Irina]]. Prime Minister [[Calin Popescu Tariceanu]], in response to a query of the parliamentarian and former [[Securitate]] officer Ilie Merce<ref>[http://www.adevarulonline.ro/2005-04-19/Politic/nu-exista-dovezi-ca-regele-mihai-ar-fi-scos-tablouri-din-tara_125216.html "There Are No Proofs That King Michael Took Paintings out of Romania" (in Romanian), Adevarul, April 19, 2005]</ref>, stated that the accusations about Michael having taken out of Romania Crown paintings were "more than dubious" and that the Romanian government had no proofs of any such action by King Michael, claiming that, prior to [[1949]], the government had no official records of the artwork taken over from the former royal residences. The renowned Romanian editorialist Dan Cristian Turturica [http://www.romanialibera.ro]<ref>[http://www.hotnews.ro/articole_autor_50-articole-de-Dan-Cristian-Turturica-Evenimentul-Zilei.htm "Articles by Dan Cristian Turturica" (in Romanian), Hotnews.ro site as of December 6, 2006]</ref> claims that "the King did not steal the paintings as they had been offered to him by the communist rulers so that he would leave Romania more quickly<ref>[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=143367 ''"The Lia Roberts hope"'', Evenimentul Zilei, January 19, 2004]</ref>."
- Francis Tyers · 09:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Francis is absolutely right. How about using temporarily the following manual tweak in format?
(Note: Hit [edit] to see code)
There are several reports [2] [3] [4] [5] that the Romanian Communist authorities obedient to Stalin presented King Michael with 42 valuable Crown-owned paintings shortly before the King's abdication, some of which [6] were reportedly sold through the famed art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. One of the paintings belonging to the Romanian Crown which was supposedly taken out of the country by King Michael in November 1947, returned to the national patrimony in 2004 as a donation [7] [8] [9] made by John Kreuger, the former husband of King Michael's daughter Princess Irina. Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, in response to a query of the parliamentarian and former Securitate officer Ilie Merce, [10] stated that the accusations about Michael having taken out of Romania Crown paintings were "more than dubious" and that the Romanian government had no proofs of any such action by King Michael, claiming that, prior to 1949, the government had no official records of the artwork taken over from the former royal residences. The renowned Romanian editorialist Dan Cristian Turturica [11] claims that "the King did not steal the paintings as they had been offered to him by the communist rulers so that he would leave Romania more quickly". [12]
I added hard returns before each block of <ref> tags and after each last <ref/> tag. The only glitch is that it leaves a space before each superscript mark, but this could easily be fixed in code. If we train our eyes, we can skip through the refs more easily by spotting the next orphan <ref/> tag. What do you think? Is the code more readable now? Niko Silver 12:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed a proliferation of citations in lead sections. This makes no sense to me. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article; it should not contain any information the article does not discuss in detail. Thus, any information in the lead will be full cited in the article. See Mark Cuban for an example; there is no need to cite his birthplace and his status as a billionaire in the lead, since the article discusses both in depth later on, with full sourcing. I would like to add a sentence both to this guideline and to Wikipedia:Lead section making clear that the lead does not contain independent information and thus need not cite sources--the lead's source is the article. Please comment; thank you. Chick Bowen 17:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Some articles have understandably large reference sections. Now I'm all for this but some have observed that it makes the articles a bit unwieldy and bottom-heavy, even with two-row formatting and tiny text. I'd rather not crop references to correct this (as has been suggested elsewhere). Would it be possible for us to impliment a "hide" function for references in the same manner as the contents sections can be shown/hidden? Sockatume 21:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I've become interested in the Parker Brothers article (feels like a stub for a company over a century old) and wanted to have an opinion on using the PB website history page as one source.
I am still in the process of sorting out through outside sources but wondered what were the thoughts in regard to those corporate self-histories
Lost Kiwi (talk) 01:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I recently came across a couple of articles that (to my mind) very oddly mixes the Harvard and Chicago styles of referencing (e.g. FA Saffron and soon-to-be FAC Charles Darwin) by using footnotes but then formatting the footnote text as a Harvard citation which jumps to a reference section. As this issue also pertains to WP:FAC, I've started a debate about it on WIAFA talk. Please come join the discussion there. Mikker (...) 02:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I've read the help page on adding a citation but I can't figure out how to actually do it still. I have all the information to add and understand the format, but what button do I hit to add a citation? Do I do it on the 'edit' page? Please help as I would like to make my additions credible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ryanhupka ( talk • contribs) 10:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC).
I've knocked up a template {{ hiderefs}} so that overly long references sections don't clog up the page, because of a request at WP:RT. However, I've thought about it, and I'm not entirely sure such a thing would be appropriate. Is it? - Amarkov blah edits 22:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that there are many articles about television and these are some of my favorite articles. Strangely, I do not see any information on citing television as a source for information in articles, and I have found articles that are filled with information that is clearly using television as it source tend to have few references. I would like to fix this problem. How should I cite television? -- Lilwik 22:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Say Hemsley publishes a work, and Zamudio writes about it years later. If I can't get my hands on a copy of Hemsley's work but want to summarize what he said, how do I best cite this? Obviously I want to make readers aware that I didn't read the work itself but got the information from Zamudio's writing. I'm using inline citations. Thanks, -- NoahElhardt 22:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I think a new ISBN system comes in today, with 13-figure numbers. Should I now quote 13-figure numbers or 10s?
It seems to me that it will take some time for the 13s to become fully link/searchable, and so it would be premature to start changing all the existing 10s to 13s. On the other hand, for new references, would it be a good idea in future to cite both the 10 and the 13 ISBN? (That would be my choice, but my heart sinks at the tedious prospect of doing it.) qp10qp 19:09, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Too many articles have been tagged as unreferenced. Take for example The Bottle Imp. It is a short story, out of copyright and at Wikisource, which is linked from the article. The article is verifiable in the story so there is no need for further references. -- Henrygb 20:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
HUH? This makes like zero sense. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 01001 ( talk) 04:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC).
Is this an acceptable style for citations? See Kernel (computer science) for an example. JulesH 11:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) I have rewritten cite.php so that it now can work 'reversed' as well, but I see the problem. I see what is meant, in scientific (chemistry) publications the ibid. is used for these, sometimes, though that is also not strictly the same. Interesting problem. What you would need is a <ref ibid=origrefname>chapter 1</ref>, which in the end would result in a double list (there were <references /> would occur), similar to the example that you provide ( Battle of Ceresole), or giving a simple list like now, but where you would not have to type double. Thát is not an easy task, but it may be possible. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 18:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC) For those interested, the patches I am referring to are [12] (the actual patch delivers way more functionality than described in the patch) and [13], a demo-wiki running both can be found at [14] (see lower half of the mainpage). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 19:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to discuss this to any length, but these proposals all reinvent the wheel; Harvard referencing already makes it easy to have specific page references when desired while minimizing the redundancy of bibliographic data. CMummert 19:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but it seems logical here. I'd like to see a Wikipedia-based database of citable materials. That way, when I want to include a cite, I can go to the database and copy/paste the reference I need, already in the correct format. All I would have to do is add the page number. Like the old-fashioned card catalogs, it should be searchable by author and title, and, if possible, topic. I have some ideas about how the data input and search dialog boxes should go, but I have no idea where to go or who to talk to. Guidance, please, anyone? -- Cbdorsett 14:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Citations are critical to Wikipedia. That said a small minority of editors use WP:CITE to game the system, in breach of WP:POINT. I have added the (hopefully) fairly non-contentious sentence:
Three quick examples of this tactic from articles I've worked on:
I'm sure these aren't the only three times this has happened.
Hopefully the above wording covers this type of situation without invoking WP:BEANS, and others will approve overall. FT2 ( Talk | email) 00:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Often, we get a lot of information for the article from a single website. But we get a lot of different facts, each from a different page. In this case, we could use <ref> to cite the source for each fact, but that would lead to a "crowded" article, like this: pt:Blackbox (this is Portuguese language, but you can see that it has too many notes, almost all of them from the Blackbox website). On the other hand, if we don't add the notes, and just put the websites in the references, it will be difficult for the reader to know which facts come from which page in each website. What is the guideline?
PS: Despite the page I linked being in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I'm asking it here because I'll apply the guideline here in the English Wikipedia. Jorge Peixoto 16:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC). Edited. Jorge Peixoto 16:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
After a long argument on my talk page about whether citations should be "Firstname Lastname, or "Lastname, Firstname" in style, I decided to do some research. In the hard sciences, which is where I mostly work in WP, the style is pretty uniformly "Firstname Lastname". Assuming that perhaps the Humanities use a different style (I was, after all, being accused of vandalism for the reverts, and came close to the 3RR) I thought I'd do some research.
I picked up books I own, that I have at home. Surprisingly few had references or footnotes. The oldest book I could find was an 1897 Hebrew grammer (written in Latin). It had only a few footnotes, but these were "Firstname Lastname" style. Looked at a number of books from the 1950's-1970s, and a few more recent. Subjects covered Drama, Art, History. Some of these were dusty, e.g. Amy Kelly "Eleanor of Aquitane"; some were best-sellers, e.g. Shirer's "The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich", some were iconic, e.g. Howard Carter's "The Tomb of Tutankhamen".
EVERY BOOK I LOOKED AT, with two exceptions, used a "Firstname Lastname" citation style. One exception was a Soviet era book from Eastern Europe, written in the Lithuanian language. It was inconsistent, sometimes using firstname lastname, sometimes lastname firstname. The other was the Amy Kelly, which was inconsistent in every possible way.
Lest I be accused of making things up or whatever, the gory details, with editions and publishers and page citations, are below.
Lets start with popular magazines:
Books: Moving from the obscure at first, to popular and widely available:
From what I looked at, I saw near-perfect consistency in citation style. I would like to understand why the regulars who haunt these talk pages are so insistent on guarding the "Lastname, Firstname" policy, which clearly contradicts widespread and nearly unanimous usage in both the hard sciences and the humanities. linas 05:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
That's right: first of all, it's no big deal, so long as the information is there. But I agree with Kirill's distinction: the bibliography should be alphabetical, and there last name-first name is correct (it's much slower looking a book up in an alphabetical list if the surname comes second); but for notes, first name-last name makes sense because sometimes there's a quote before the short ref:. Look at the difference between
"Długosz had been in the service of Sophia of Halshany." Vanda Sruogienė-Sruoga, Jogaila, p 7.
and
"Długosz had been in the service of Sophia of Halshany." Sruogienė-Sruoga, Vanda, Jogaila , p 7.
It wouldn't sound right to use last name-first name after a quote. But I also find the principle very helful with tricky names like the one above, where I need a clue about which name is the surname.
I'd add that I don't like citation templates because they need messing with to use for both a note and a book list (and sometimes I don't like to just rip up another editor's work by deconstructing them, if they are the done thing on a particular page). qp10qp 06:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
When many (in this case, about 60) citations point to different pages or chapters in a single publication, is there a style or an appropriate manner of simplifying the references to that publication? Another user and I are attempting to figure out what's best for the article, and a standard -- or at least a suggestion for one -- would be very helpful. For comparison, there's the original option with many separate lines or the simplified version with only one line. The former takes up a lot of space, but clearly indicates which page contains each of the 60 or so facts; the latter is much more concise, but at the expense of clearly indicating which fact comes from which page. Any suggestions for which direction we should aim in? Any suggestions for a way that is both simple, concise, and clear? Thanks! Tafkargb 06:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, Sorry for the length of this comment/request. I have been writing a series of articles on modern railway ticket issuing systems used on Britain's railway network, which are incorporated under the general heading British railway ticket systems (computerised). This also contains a few articles on related matters. I will say at the outset that this is a very specialised, niche area in a hobby (railway ticket collecting) which is itself fairly obscure, so it is unlikely that many other editors would be able to contribute substantially to the info I have produced so far.
The following anonymous message was left on my talk page today: "Thank you for all your work on rail and ticketing articles. Can I please implore you to cite your sources though, you must be getting all this detailed information from somewhere!"
This got me thinking, and I have become increasingly concerned that I may not be able to provide suitable and verifiable references to some of the articles - especially those about the systems themselves (see Shere SMART and Ascom B8050 Quickfare for two typical examples). I am purely an enthusiast and collector of railway tickets such as these, rather than being an "insider" (e.g. ticket office worker). I have written the following on my talk page:
Essentially, I have built up a core of knowledge about "New Generation" ticket issuing systems over the past few years through a variety of sources, including partly (although, I must stress, far from exclusively) through personal observation through my ticket-collecting hobby. For the past 4½ years, I have written a column about the latest developments in British railway ticketing in the monthly Journal of the Transport Ticket Society, probably the longest-established and largest such society in the world (there is a sample copy [here http://www.transport-ticket.org.uk/pdf/sample.pdf], which shows the contents of my column from that month, as an example). Sources for the info I write about include personal observation and the findings of others, TOC press releases/website info, internal BR documents (manuals, code lists etc), the manufacturers' own websites (Shere, Scheidt & Bachmann etc), and many others. Unfortunately, there isn't really one definitive published source in the "normal" sense (books/peer-reviewed journals/articles etc.) for me to cite.
Before I continue jabbering on, a few immediate questions I would like to ask of the community:
The point is, I think information about these systems etc. would have sufficient notability and importance to be worthy of articles; but if, as I fear, my current contributions are insufficiently cited/verifiable, I can see difficulties ahead: so little has been written about the systems, given their very recent development and the commercial sensitivity aspect, and the TTS (through me and others) is arguably at the forefront of the current research and knowledge.
Any advice would be very gratefully received! Thanks, Hassocks5489 19:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
One thing that needs to be fixed in this policy urgently is that this policy exclusively mentions the Wayback machine to recover broken links (implying that this is the only service out there), without even mentioning the existence of other non-profit open source caching/archiving systems such as WebCite. The Internet Archive is far from complete, and using other services like WebCite would increase the likelyhood of recovering pages that have gone 404. Note that WebCite - in contrast to Wayback machine, which uses a shotgun-approach (random caching with a crawler) - allows editor/author-initiated prospective archiving (taking a snapshot before the website disappears, and cite the WebCite URL with WebCite caching ID in addition to the original URL), which - if this would be done consistently by authors, i.e. would be part of this Wikipedia "citing sources" policy, or handled by bots - would avoid the problem of link rot on wikipedia in the first place. -- Greg4711 02:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a way to have this:
Display as this:
Please leave a message at my talk page -- Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 22:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) I envisioned that the endnotes would always be in the order in which they are invoked in the wikitext. Let me give an example of my concern. Suppose the new system were in effect, and an article had the following endnotes:
Now, suppose the article is edited so there is a new citation between the existing ones. The correct endnotes would now be:
It would be wrong if the endnotes were:
I would expect any acceptable system to automatically produce the correct endnotes with no work on the part of the second editor, beyond invoking the reference tags at the point where the Spectrum article is cited.
Another minor issue is that Chicago Manual of Style calls for just a page number when using ibid., without using the word page. I don't know what other style manuals call for, but if the new system picks an option, it may be favoring some style manuals over others. -- Gerry Ashton 20:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The result would not be as above: it would be more like this:
Configuration could prove interesting, but we'll work it out. As to what you put in those list items, that's up to you, but I'm getting tired of people relying on external style guides designed for printed matter and edit-warring over them. I'd prefer for us to synthesise our own and, yes, impose it on the whole wiki so people know what to expect and what is expected of them. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 22:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
(unindent)I see there are a lot of messages to be answered, I will try and respond to all:
Hope this clarifies. I again want to stress, that the old systems will still work, and editors can use whatever they want, but additional functionality can be built-in which would setting up references in a document easier, especially for large, heavily referenced documents. If you think that these things really improve something, help me bug the developers by voting for bugs, if not, you can simply continue with the system you use. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 15:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I wrote a web-based tool to output the {{ cite book}} format given only the ISBN for a book. This may help in formatting references (I found that to be rather time-consuming if done by hand). I would appreciate it if people would give it a try and any feedback (write below). If it is found useful, perhaps it could go into the "Tools" section in Wikipedia:Citing sources. Oleg Alexandrov ( talk) 07:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I've had problems using {{cite web}} and inline referencing with url sources. For instance in burden of proof#References you'll see that the link is not working as it should. Could anyone identify for me where the syntax is incorrect, or what may be the cause of this problem? Please let me know on my talk page if you can. Richard001 22:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Alright, as I was about to edit some information under the topic about
recycling, I realize that my sources are not from books or websites. In my case, one of my source is my
environmental science professor at
University of Toronto and the other is a posted information on the club notice board in the
university. Undenyably, these 2 sources are more authentic and realiable than many websites. They can withstand criticism from peers and colleagues at the university so their authenticy is much higher. One reference of such is worth more than a bunch of personal websites and blogs put together. So how would I be able to cite it? It certainly will make the information more accurately.
OhanaUnited
01:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
OhanaUnited 05:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
OhanaUnited 22:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
An editor on Talk:List of publications in philosophy is interpreting "Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor" as meaning that anything without sources can be removed because the challenging is implicit in the removal. I think the tone of the introduction "Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor." implies that material should be challenged before it is removed and editors given time to source the material before it is removed. Is this not the purpose of the "fact" template? Am I correct, and if so, could anyone suggest how the sentence I quote first above, could be improved? -- Bduke 00:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Looking at recent featured and good articles I thought Wikipedia was moving toward inline citations being the standard method for citing sources but Restoration Literature is today's featured article. How many total acceptable systems of citation are there? Quadzilla99 03:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Often {{ PDFlink}} is placed inside a cite template. However, as there often is no first parameter provides little benefit as a hack for IE6, nor as a point to our hopefully-soon-to-be-created bot to list the filesize. We would like to remove this template from the cite templates. -- Dispenser 04:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I would like to propose that as policy:
.
- it is far more important to cite scientific sources than a lot of the online crap that is available
I revised the wording (see below) and will up-date the policy in a few days if there is no objection. Nephron T| C 08:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
In compiling a List of important operas, we are facing a situations where there are many (and growing) references to Grove as a source.
Take a look at List of important operas#Notes and you'll see what I mean. Several editors want this format ONLY BECAUSE THEY CAN REFERENCE THE PAGES directly in the notes, rather than the body of the article.
On the other hand there is the nice, concise format as in Maria Callas#References where 1 a,b,c,d exists, etc.
QUESTION: Is there a format/template which would somehow combine the two to present page numbers next to the letters in a format like this "a p.216" "b p.221-223" ??
Any help would be appreciated. Viva-Verdi 21:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I was just going to create a new section to ask about page numbers. Is it acceptable to use a citation to the book and then use a comment (<!-- -->) for the page number? -- NE2 17:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Not that long ago, an anonymous user added a Eurovision comment on Thunderstone (band), which I cleaned up and promptly gave a citation needed tag. Another anonymous user added in a reference to a Finnish website. I haven't the slightest idea about the Finnish language, but it seems okay; this website [21] seems to be a Finnish TV station that is broadcasting the event, and detailing news about it, and the text itself seems to verify what the citation is for.
So... given this is an English encyclopaedia, should citations other than English be around? --Dayn 02:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
What about the titles of books in other languages? Should they be cited as their English translations or transliterations (in the case of a non-latin alphabet), or should we use the original title? -- Cameltrader 07:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a point where an article can have too many sources. By too many, I mean citations for really obvious things. Preschooler kind of obvious. Pacific Coast Highway { talk • contribs} 05:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry if this has been asked here before but I really have this doubt about the way references and/or notes (or footnotes) should or not be displayed. If I have an article that was created and developed based on few sources and I use inline citations along the text which refer to those same sources, what should I do with the references? Should I simply list them on a exclusive section (===Reference(s)===) and don't include a ===Notes/Footnotes=== (using the Cite.php code) or should I also include this last section even if it lists a source which is already listed as a general source on the References section? It's this doubt that chases me. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I wanted to be sure. So I cite the main sources at the References section and all the inline citations, from those sources, that I make along the text will ought to appear as the author, year and pages.«I use footnotes and cite.php, I prefer to have both a Footnotes and a References section. In the Footnotes section I write a short form of the citation, such as "Smith, 1996, p. 68" and then put the full details about the source in the References section, in alphabetical order.»
What is the best way to cite a text that was first published in hard copy and subsequently published on the web in a different format? I'm trying to polish up the references at Dalek for its ongoing featured article review, and it occured to me that one of the sources cited, Doctor Who: The Television Companion, has been published on the BBC's Doctor Who website. But the publication isn't as an ebook — they merely took the text and put the relevant sections about each serial onto a page that also had other information about it (see here for an example).
The article has citations from two different print editions of this work (added by different editors). Is there value in changing all these to the web citation, for ease of reader access? Or is it better to keep the print citations, because print has more permanence than websites? Or should both be cited, and if so, how? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
How do I refer to the same reference twice in an article without it appearing twice in the reference list? I am trying to sort out the
telithromycin article because there were claims that it was unsourced. One of the references is a New York Times article that can only be accessed if you are a registered NYT user. I have therefore put in as much of the full reference as possible (Author, title, date) so that people can get it in hard copy where possible. I need to refer to this more than once as there are several quotes which have been sourced in that article. Unfortunately every time I do the ref appears twice. I have also provided a link so that they can access the article online. Can someone help me here? Thanks --
Wikipediatastic
15:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I have sorted this out now! -- Wikipediatastic 15:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
In a family scrapbook, there is a photocopy of a page from a book that gives a brief history of Oswego, Montana up to about the year 1972. There are no clues as to the title or author of this book. I would like to use this source in the creation of the Oswego article, but I have no way of citing where the information came from. Should I just go ahead and use the information anyways without a citation, and then put a note in the article's talk page about this unusual source? -- Billdorr 01:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
When there is an allegation or accusation, there is an alleger or accuser, and they should be identified in enough detail to allow the reader to judge their credibility. For example, "It has been alleged that Company A stinks" is sloppy; "Company B has alleged that Company A stinks" provides more perspective. Where there is no citeable reference to identify the alleger or accuser, I suggest that editors take care not to imply that the allegation or accusation is true. For example, where no accuser or alleger can be found, it may be that allegations are merely rumours spread by Chinese Whisper or disinformation. Furthermore, if a blog is the source of the accusation or allegation, editors should check the affilliation of the blogger to the extent of sighting any bio page linked to the blog; for example, to reveal that a seemingly private blog is the private blog of a PR person, for example. Rick Jelliffe 17:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed a number of policy pages have sections on what does not constitute the policy. I think that might be a good idea here. I've been embroiled in a move request discussion over at Ethnic Japanese and the nominator insists on placing inline citations for every term describing the article and has removed the articles current title entirely claiming it's original research and unverified. I'm pro citations but, personally, I don't think common terms which are verifiable by hundreds or thousands of sources, including dictionaries, require citation. For heated arguments, however, a common sense supplement here might be helpful. Doctor Sunshine 13:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
How does one cite TV series episodes, movies, documentaries and the like? What format is used? Shrumster 00:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I note that search links are discouraged (although not forbidden, such a policy I believe increases the likelihood of such a link being removed from the article). I believe that a justifiable use would be as a citation of a phrase in order to demonstrate that the usage is sufficiently common for the phrase to be considered a set phrase and not merely one writer's combination of words. Notatest 07:30, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
From this page:
"Wikipedia articles cannot be used as sources in and of themselves. Sources 'must' be independant from Wikipedia."
I propose adding two words to the sentence:
"Wikipedia articles and categories cannot be used as sources in and of themselves. Sources 'must' be independant from Wikipedia."
There have been cases where someone will make an argument of the form, "x is in category y, and WP:CAT says something's membership in a category has to be uncontroversial, so this justifies us saying (on a separate article) that 'x is a y' without the need for an outside source." There are other ways to show why this argument is invalid, but adding those two words to the sentence would end such a line of argumentation quickly. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 00:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
After the issue came up at B-17 Flying Fortress, I've got a few questions about the "Accessed on/Referenced on" part of the cite templates. Template:Cite web previously allowed the user to either use accessdate (with the date required to be in ISO form) or accessmonthday and accessyear (with the date in the form "Month DD" and "YYYY", which produces an unwikilinked "Month DD, YYYY"). I would like it to allow a new date format, perhaps by adding a new parameter accessdaymonth, which would allow the date to show up as an unwikilinked "DD Month YYYY", which some people find is the best date format in "serious" writing. Template:Cite journal currently has only the accessdate parameter with no allowance for other date forms, and would require all three parameters to be added.
I've gone ahead and made the edit to Template:Cite web, and it seems to work, but I wonder if it would be better to modify accessmonthday to change the date format (essentially remove the comma) if it detects a numeral before the month. Suggestions? - Trevor MacInnis ( Contribs) 13:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm interested in opinions on whether it is okay to reference the webpage of a commercial entity, when no non-commercial source can be found. In particular, I've been adding a listing of public utilities to articles on cities (see Toccoa, Georgia for an example), and the official city websites don't always provide the necessary information – but the webpage of (e.g.) the local telephone utility or local cable utility will often list their service areas. Is it okay to cite such sources, or should such references be considered inappropriate (i.e. spam) ? -- Bill Clark 17:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
There are often times when I must take a reputable author's word that another author(ity) said such and such. While I do try to track down the original source, it can be in some obscure academic journal, or out-of-print or expensive book. For example, Richard Diehl, a well-known and reputable professor, states in his book The Olmecs that Marcus Winter makes a statement that I would like to include in an article on Olmec culture outside the Olmec heartland. Diehl's footnote says that Winter's essay can be found in "CLARK, John E. (Editor) LOS OLMECAS EN MESOAMERICA", which is unavailable to me (I located it on sale for $250). Should I just cite the Winter work directly, or should I cite Diehl, or should I cite Diehl citing Winter? Help! Madman 05:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Guidelines the preferred citation style is MLA, which uses the following format:
Note that the date is formatted dd mmm yyyy. Currently the cite templates seem to prefer the ISO date format, yyyy-MM-dd, with a few templates offering the option of the format mmm dd, yyyy. Should all the templates be edited to limit them to the MLA style date, for standardization/unity? Or at least offer that date option? See above for my previous request. - Trevor MacInnis ( Contribs) 22:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I moved the tools section down from below templates to the bottom, above see also, and combined with the tools listed there. I also added a few links under see also.
I agree with the comments way up this page that this page should be shorter and less intimidating. Much of the detail can be linked to on other pages. I envision a list of citation types with brief descriptions of each (starting with the simplest). Links to templates, more complete information on the various styles, an tools for building citations would follow. As one not at home with citations (though i must have done it a few times while in school, way back when), i find all of the information overwelming and very time consuming. I, and other non-academics, crave just a short intro on how to do a basic citation (or footnote or reference or whatever), a note about what other styles are possible/permitted and where to look for details of each if needed. - Bcharles 00:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what's to stop someone from making a statement, publishing their own article on a free webhost, and using that as their source? How can we be assured of the validity of anything then unless it is from a bonified news service? But if it's something like "Bob's home page about the Civil War" then is that a valid source? Maybe we should need two or three sources per citation. Stovetopcookies 02:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)