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If we have a statement like "Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall", and that event is reported by 100 news agencies, is it appropriate to list as cite every one of them using an inline EL? I think its obviously redundant and clutters the article. Let's say only 3 sources report the event. Shouldn't that also be considered redundant? At what point does one how many cites is enough and over that is too many?-- Fasttimes68 ( talk) 13:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Al Capp the cartoonist made references to Slobbovia and Slobovians in his cartoons which are not available to me to be specific. I Dont have the resources to research this. Help 64.35.200.6 ( talk) 21:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Why do we put surname before given name(s) in our citations? I.e. "Bloom, Harold" for Harold Bloom. Most sources (both news and academic publishers) seem to do it the other way. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 17:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines as to what is a legitimate source? I cited an Amazon.com editorial review of a DVD (not a user review, the site's official review) and it was removed as not notable. That seems strange, since Amazon is one of the largest retailers in the world and I have seen their reviews cited elsewhere. Note that this is in an article where there are a couple of editors who are very adamant about removing things they deem unworthy, and so I'd like to get some sort of official word on this. Thanks. 128.151.71.18 ( talk) 21:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Please see here for my proposal of a new template, that would be put on articles that need to have their sources globalized - i.e. on articles that rely on a very similar set of sources likely representing one and the same POV.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
On a lot of Articles you are doing American format, how about changing format to non US? Govvy ( talk) 23:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
hmm, k, I because a lot of editors doing 2008-11-11 type style I noticed. So maybe they have been doing it wrong? Govvy ( talk) 17:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
k, I shall use the British format day-month-year. Cheers. Govvy ( talk) 20:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Apologies if this has been discussed here before. I wonder what others' opinions are of the readability of articles such as Harold Pinter and The arts and politics where a form of MLA style citation is used. In the case of the Pinter article, clicking on an inline footnote number brings one to a footnote, somtimes the footnote quotes from the source, and gives the name of the cited autor, e.g. Pinter's paternal "grandmother's maiden name was Baron … he adopted it as his stage-name … [and] used it [Baron] for the autobiographical character of Mark in the first draft of [his novel] The Dwarfs" (Billington, Harold Pinter 3, 47–48). (footnote 22), sometimes the footnote simply directs to various authours, e.g. See discussions of these plays throughout Batty; Grimes; and Baker (footnote 35), sometimes the inline citation is simply parenthetical, e.g. ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In all of these cases one has to seek out the actual source in another article Bibliography for Harold Pinter.
It is very confusing and several users have commented on this in talk pages, but the editor who imposed this style insists that it is perfectly clear. Please check out these pages if you have the time and energy. Jezhotwells ( talk) 21:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
As the editor (J.) commenting above already knows, since I have explained it several times, and since the "Style Sheet" makes it clear, the format is The MLA Style Manual format, it has existed in the article through its "good article" review (since October 7, 2007), and the Bibliography for Harold Pinter is not a "separate article"; it is a split-off section that serves as the "Works Cited" for Harold Pinter, which contains many print-published sources. [The split occurred as a result of the 2007 "good article" review; there are many sections of earlier versions (pre-good article review versions) of the article that became developed parts of sections; but the Bibliography is clearly still a major section of the article, as it serves as the article's "Works Cited" ( Harold Pinter#Works cited = Bibliography for Harold Pinter).]
Please discuss this [in context on the relevant talk page, not here, where it is being taken out of context of extensive discussion]. Thanks. (I am exhausted from the contentiousness of J.'s approach, which elsewhere often moves into incivilities, as it works against the article's major contributors and good article reviewers rather than with us.) -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Quotation from the lead of Bibliography for Harold Pinter: "Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography ("Works cited") for the main article on Harold Pinter and for several articles relating to him and his works." -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
One has to make an effort to understand Parenthetical referencing which is not merely "Harvard style" or "Harvard referencing" as many editors from outside the U.S. appear to think; that is a misunderstanding of Parenthetical referencing. The article Parenthetical referencing and the section of Wikipedia:Citing sources seem to have been in the past controlled by various editors from outside the U.S. who do not realize that there are multiple methods or multiple styles of parenthetical referencing, because they only use one method where they are located. (And their specialties may not be writing.) Bibliographical specialists within the fields of writing and literary studies (English departments in U.S. colleges and universities)--and I am one of them--recognize, however, that almost every discipline now has adapted use of parenthetical citations (parenthetical referencing) to its various specific formats. Wikipedians, who may not be knowledgable about bibliography and documentation formats (specialties within writing and literary studies, where such formats are taught in American colleges and universities in introductory courses in "writing across the disciplines") just may be unaware of the breadth and scope and variety of documentation and citation methodogies. -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks - hope life is treating everyone well. Question. I'm citing a book, and pulling information from various pages - I'm assuming that I don't need to list the book as 15 different references - and that if I just put (ex: pages: Preface, 3, 7, 25, 78, 124 etc.) in the one reference that I'm doing it the proper way. The question is, since I don't like to assume, is where would I find that documented in policy, or rather guideline I expect. I'm not asking anyone to do my wiki-homework - just point me to the proper section/page. Thanks. — Ched ~ (yes?) 07:23, 13 March 2009 (UTC) (a tb tag would be nice, since a lot of these pages go many days without answer) — Ched ~ (yes?) 07:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Use of terms: “This guideline uses the terms citation and reference interchangeably.”
Why not reduce ambiguity, and use precise language? A reference is a source which is referred to. The “References” section of an article is a list of references. A citation is the occurrence in the body of an article where a quotation or passage from a reference is cited.
This stuff is discussed in a thousand talk pages. Why not help editors say what they mean by avoiding loose language in the MOS?
(Yeah, it's too bad the WP:Cite extension uses the terminology incorrectly, with the <ref> tag representing a citation, and <references/> for the “Notes” section, and not “References”. C'est la vie.) — Michael Z. 2009-02-07 17:21 z
I have several long standing problems with this guideline. (I've placed each under a different topic to keep the threads from getting entangled.) I plan on making changes based on these suggestions later in the week, if no one freaks out. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
This guideline discusses several issues for which there is no consensus. There is wide disagreement about citation templates, about various citation styles, about particular techniques and so on. When we discuss one of these issues in the guideline, we should try to stay descriptive rather than prescriptive. We are letting newer editors know what the alternatives are and hopefully showing them how previous editors have chosen to solve the same problems. We're not telling them what to do; we're describing what's been done. So it's better say that a technique is "commonplace" rather than "encouraged" or to say that it is "preferred by some editors" rather than "permitted". This is a more accurate way to talk about the current status of this guideline. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
This guideline only needs to describe the most popular methods, used in thousands of articles. It should, of course, also note that other methods exist and make it clear that the editor is free to use (or invent) any method that works. But right now, some parts of the text bog down unnecessary detail (the second list under WP:CITE#How to present citations is a prime example). We don't need to iterate over every possible permutation of these techniques; the reader can figure it out. By attempting to be comprehensive, we only succeed in confusing the reader and making it look like there are a lot more rules than there really are. We could improve and expand (and retitle?) " WP:Citing sources/Further considerations" or WP:Verification methods so that it covers every permutation. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
The Citing Sources article says: .. remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time, my question is: how long is considered reasonable time? NinjaKid ( talk) 11:13, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
There appears to be a collision of methods by which to reference an article at Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis. If others with a more detailed knowledge of referencing styles - especially within Wikipedia - could offer their input, it would be appreciated, especially as I, at least, can take any lessons learned on to my future editing. The discussion is taking place at Talk:Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis#References. -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 19:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
This is a little thing, but I'd like to retitle "How to present citations" to "Where to put citations in articles". It's clearer. Anybody married to the original language? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
I've gone back to Charles Gillingham's March 22 version, as the writing was clearer and more streamlined, and the terms were used more consistently. Some of the changes since then seem to be a deterioration, especially the replacement of "citation" with "source." SlimVirgin talk| contribs 13:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
I know this has been discussed a couple of times in these Talk archives, but I want to bring it up again. What is the rationale for requiring access/retrieval dates for online versions of past printed materials?
For example, editors are beginning to link book cites to Google Books. Thus, editors are putting "Retrieved on" on their cites, in addition to the usual author, title, publisher, year, ISBN, and page information. It looks very strange to see a book being "retrieved" ... such a link is just a convenience link (problematic too, given the semi-random way Google Books' "limited view" works); the content of the book is unchanging. If the link goes bad, the rest of the cite remains: an unchanging reference to an unchanging book.
Another case are old newspaper and magazine articles. If a cite gives a 1983 New York Times story's publication date, title, and author, and also gives a convenience link to the NYT archive, what is the value of having the retrieval date for this? The content of the story is fixed and unchanging, and is defined by the print/microfilm version. Again, if the archive goes away, the rest of the cite remains, an unchanging reference to an unchanging story. If the archive gets moved, one would re-lookup the online version by the published date/title/author information; knowing the old retrieval date wouldn't tell you anything.
And there is a real cost to having retrieval dates in place everywhere: to us they take up article edit space, to browsers they increase output HTML space, and to readers they clutter up the cite and can be visually confused with publication date. I understand that retrieval dates are necessary for web pages without publication dates, and arguably necessary for dated news stories originally published online (CNN, current NYT, etc.), but I just don't see the rationale for them in the above cases. Wasted Time R ( talk) 23:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The "retrieved date" merely refers to the convenience link to the online version, and may be safely removed on any cite that is not an online link. That's all. (And if the link goes bad, the dead-tree portion of the cite remains valid.) -- Yellowdesk ( talk) 00:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
{{
cite news}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors=
(
help) --
Yellowdesk (
talk) 14:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)accessdate=
parameter. No HTML comment is necessary, nor is it necessary to rename the parameter. After all, its still in the source.The retrieved date allows a reader to understand the age of the online link. In the past, I have done a manual link check and have updated those retrieved dates to show that the links were still valid as of that date. The CheckLinks tool checks links, updates to archived links on dead links and now optionally updates the retrieved dates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 15:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate what is being discussed here. In my opinion there are two issues popping up:
Consensus: It indeed seems we have consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. I have removed the RFC (style) tag and will modify the policy. Anybody who is competent to adapt the citation templates, please do so. Thanks everybody, -- EnOreg ( talk) 08:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
HTML comments are stripped out by the Mediawiki software, so these won't be visible except in the original template call. I've included one here, for instance: Would it be better to hide the date with CSS? — Omegatron ( talk) 17:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
.reference-accessdate {display: none}
{{
cite meta}}
is not possible, to centralise and de-duplicate the considerable amount of code (the CoinS tags, for instance) that is almost identical across all the cite templates, and needs to be maintained in the same way in each. But that's another story.
Happy‑
melon 19:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)No. Doesn't agree with best practice, no discernible benefit, doesn't agree with most common ciation methods on Wiki. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any strong consensus to hide this parameter for templates where the availability of material might be ephemeral. I think it should stay visible on, at least, the generic citation template, the mailing list template, the newsgroup template. -- Karnesky ( talk) 13:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd like state that I'm strongly opposed to this idea for any template that may cite any kind of online material. For Cite book, Cite paper, etc, that are only used to cite physical or "permanent" publications (even if it may be found online and linked to in a particular template), then so be it, Accessdate isn't necessary. But to hide it in Cite news, Cite press release, Cite map, etc etc (which more and more may cite a document online that *cannot* be found in print) is doing a grave disservice to anyone who doesn't want or know how do delve into the edit page and figure things out, yet still may want information that will allow them to access a website that has been lost over time. That is precisely what Accessdate is useful for; not to mention, even for webpages that are still existent, it says precisely when data was originally pulled from the source. "Accessed on..." or some variant of it is an almost universal standard for citation formats outside of Wiki...I see no reason why we should be the oddballs and not use them in a citation display. — Huntster ( t • @ • c) 14:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Hiding the date for one template such as {{ cite news}} without changing all of the templates is going to cause some inconsistency. There are already enough differences among the cite templates. There are opinions on both sides of the issue as to show or hide the accessdate— why not allow editors who don't want to see the accessdate to be able to hide it? We should be able to come up with a script to do this and get it approved as a gadget. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
After Happy‑ melon's CSS-ification of the access date it is up to the users whether they want to see the access date of stable references or not—that's great. (Note that this only applies to references that also have a publication date!)
Changing the default behavior, however, requires fiddling with the user's monobook.css which only expert users will be competent to do. Now after the discussion above it seems to me that the access date is relevant mostly to these expert users and editors. For casual WP users showing two different dates for one reference is confusing and clutters the reference sections—but they don't know how to hide it. Therefore, I would suggest to hide the access date of stable references per default, i.e., modify MediaWiki:Common.css accordingly. Comments? -- EnOreg ( talk) 00:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Any objection? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 01:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
People may be interested to know that the Poll on date autoformatting and linking is now open. All users are invited to participate. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be general agreement that the number of references should be kept to a reasonable number, so I went ahead and added the following section to "Dealing with citation problems":
In some cases, more than one reference may be necessary to support a fact. This can be because the claim is particularly controversial, because links can go dead (as described above), because the superior source is not available online, or because the claim itself is one of wide external coverage of a fact. Excessive referencing should nevertheless be avoided, as this can impede readability, complicate editing, and slow down article load time. If an article contains too many references, feel free to remove some of these, but take care that no essential information is lost.
Lampman (
talk) 02:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Should the above section be included in the guidelines?
The article is too long to be useful. I'm particularly bothered by the repetition between WP:CITE#Quick summary, the first list in WP:CITE#How present citations and the second list in WP:CITE#How to present citations. Do we need all three of these? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm in two (or even three) minds about how far to take the idea of "saying where I got it", particularly when I have used Google Books to find a source. I don't usually link to the Google Books page if I have an ISBN, as I prefer to let readers use the ISBN link to choose where to look up the source rather than push them in one direction, but by the letter of this guideline it looks like I should. Is it really necessary to say where I got it when it came from a source that is widely accepted to provide reliable copies of the original? I don't think I had read this guideline before now, but I just did so to look for guidance on how to cite a journal article reprinted in a book. By trying to follow the guideline I came up with this citation:
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help) reprinted in Smith, Malcolm (2003).
Research methods in accounting.
SAGE. p. 202.
ISBN
9780761971474. Retrieved 2009-03-27.Is it really necessary to do all of that "saying where I got it"? Can't I just make the citation to Management Accounting on the assumption a book published by SAGE and displayed by Google Books is a reliable copy of the original source? Phil Bridger ( talk) 22:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help) reprinted in Smith, Malcolm (2003). Research methods in accounting.
SAGE.
ISBN
9780761971474. {{
cite book}}
: |access-date=
requires |url=
(
help)
p. 202", because then if several different pages are referenced the citation can be turned into a
short footnote and each different page links to a specific page in a book. BTW I don't usually use citation templates so I don't know how to link pages to URLs inside the template -- perhaps someone else can tell us how to do it. Also you can strip the search string out of the URL as it is not needed to link to the page in this case all of this: "&dq=%22lion+tamer%22+%22monty+python%22+accountant&num=100&client=firefox-a&output=html". One you have done that it is easy to reference any other page in the book. Just scroll down one page to
p. 203 and the format is clear you can add any page to the new addition to the URL "#PPA203" by changing the "203" to the desired page number. --
PBS (
talk) 10:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
How can I implement a collapsible reference table, such as here. Thank you. --- Altruism T a l k - Contribs. 13:46, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks a lot to both WhatamIdoing & Arnoutf for your responses. - Altruism T a l k - Contribs. 10:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Is it alright to use it as a reference? I recall reading somewhere from the rules that it's not allowed? Ominae ( talk) 04:11, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Based on the Tokusatsu article, the Foreign productions as tokusatsu subsection uses the Japanese Tokusatsu wikipedia page as a reference. When I checked it, there was no reference whatsoever there. Please advise. Ominae ( talk) 00:55, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
I've transcribed part of a public domain U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission report at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/ICC valuations/Chesapeake and Ohio Railway of Indiana, and am citing the report in an article. I know that I can simply cite it without a link, but would it be appropriate to link to that transcription? If so, should it be an internal or external link? -- NE2 20:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
The section Citation styles names some reference styles like APA style. Could we add Parenthetical (a.k.a. Harvard) referencing? The list is limited, isn't it? - DePiep ( talk) 11:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The use of "ISBN Number" is an incident of RAS syndrome. 173.72.137.7 ( talk) 11:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
There's a small debate going on at Talk:Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan#References column removed? about how to format citations in the table/list of casualties. The guidelines seem very clear on what is expected in terms of metadata, however, they seem a little unclear on the idea of footnote tags being in their own dedicated column of the table, as opposed to within the text. Could someone perhaps drop in and clarify what's possible? Cheers. -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 12:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I have removed the following passage:
One can argue that just the citation Brown v. Board of Education would be good enough in an article, but it makes a poor example for the Citing sources guideline. It is a poor example because it appears to cite a Wikipedia article, rather than a reliable source, and it cites a court case by a popular name. A handful of court cases are famous enough for the general reader to find them by their popular name, but most cases can't be found by a non-lawyer if given only the popular name. The guideline should not give advise that only works in a handful of situations.
The bullet point is also faulty in that a reference in running text may be used whether or not an internal link is included: "Gibson's Neuromancer (Ace, 1984) was a science fiction article that featured direct interfaces between brains and computers" is an acceptable citation even without an internal link to either William Gibson or Neuromancer. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Seriously, some people don't beleive everything they hear, and would love to contribute what they discovered themselves. Think about this, how did Albert Einstein know about E=MC^2 if nobody told him it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.193.252 ( talk) 00:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
I would like to replace the second list under WP:CITE#Presenting the citation with these two sentences:
"Some articles use a combination of general references, citations in footnotes and shortened notes. (See, for example, Starship Troopers, Rosa Parks or Absinthe) Some articles use separate sections for citations and explanatory notes (e.g. Augustus)."
The way the list is written now, it repeats the points made just inches above in almost the same order. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 16:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I dithered about whether to place this here or on WT:FOOT. WP:CITE and WP:FOOT both identify themselves as Editing style guidelines. I decided to place this here because of the {{ Nutshell}} info at the head of this page which says, "This citing sources guideline (a) discusses when to use citations, (b) shows how to format individual citations, and (c) provides methods for presenting citations within Wikipedia articles."
WP:FOOT#Style_recommendations contains recommendations regarding placement of superscripted footnote links in relation to punctuation which appear to me to conflict with consensus results from discussions of this subject which I have seen here in the past. I want to raise a yellow flag about this. I will leave a note on WT:FOOT mentioning this and pointing here. -- Boracay Bill ( talk) 01:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Why do we use reference marks after the period instead of before it? I think it should be attached to words but not a punctuation. 160.39.88.109 ( talk) 12:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I recently wrote an article. I had three sources which each had a lot of info. Most of it overlapped, but each one had some info that the other two didn't. So I listed those three sources in the References section. I had three more sources, each of which applied to specific sentences or paragraphs, so I made those inline refs, with the references appearing in that same References section (two different lists in the one section). Is this okay? Also, since all of my sources were web pages which would be of interest to the reader, and there is also an External Links section, should my three general sources be listed under External Links, References or both? - Freekee ( talk) 02:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
A while ago, I hacked together a stupid script (works only on Firefox, with Greasemonkey) to automatically generate {{ citation}} text by scraping data from Google Books webpages. I don't know if it's good enough for inclusion in the list of citation tools (I'd say it's not) but just in case anyone's interested, I've uploaded it here. Regards, Shreevatsa ( talk) 15:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
What is the actual proper punctuation for referencing? I am unsure how this actually works. I'll give a few examples:
When citing a reference in the middle of a sentence-
Example 1: This is a reference,
[1] after a space.
Example 2: This is a reference,
[1] after a comma.
When citing a reference at the end of a sentence-
Example 1: This is a reference, after a space.
[1]
Example 2: This is a reference, after a period.
[1]
Which ways are correct? Thanks, VG Editor ( talk).
How do you cite a video or DVD? Presumably Title, copyright year, then Chapter and hmm:ss(hour,minutes,seconds from start) of start of relavent portion? What of author? Producer? Director? Many DVDs have a whole list of entities making/paying for/comissioning the work. Is there a guideline already? GraL ( talk) 13:26, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
This is the billing address for numerous false charges made to credit/debit cards in Texas. I am in the process of forwarding the multiple theft complaints from various banks in the Central Texas area. Traditionally, like Googletree, credit/debit card "charges" are run through banks in a money laundering - theft scheme. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.0.93.182 ( talk) 03:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
A statement made by an editor, Almost-instinct, at " User:Citation bot/bugs#Philip Larkin" worried me. The editor was commenting about supposed errors in the article " Philip Larkin" created by Citation bot, and said: "The information given on the page relates to the initial publication date, but the ISBN numbers are there to link to current available editions (no point linking to ancient first editions)". My view is that one shouldn't be adding modern ISBNs to older books that did not have such numbers because that is misleading. It would be better to do something like this: "[citation of old work without ISBN]; now reissued/reprinted as [new citation with ISBN]." Anyway, you are welcome to comment on the issue here or at the Citation bot page (though perhaps a discussion here is better to avoid forking). — Cheers, JackLee – talk– 04:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the format for a named references according to the article includes quotation marks: <ref name="somename"> I wasn't aware of this, and have often found, and used, names without marks: <ref name=somename>
The use of quotation marks doesn't have to be consistent within the article; the name can be used with marks in some places, without in others.
Presumably the actual rule is that quotation marks are required only if names have embedded spaces, slashes, etc., similar to general computing practice, and are otherwise optional. Perhaps the documentation can be revised to make this official? I can't see the use of quotation marks being enforced: a great many articles would suddenly misbehave. Pol098 ( talk) 15:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
One editor is insisting on renaming a "References" section to "Notes", stated "enumerated in-line citations marked by superscripts are universally referred to as "notes"" [2]. I have repeatedly asked him to stop per the guideline noting that one should not change an established style and there is no "universal guideline" dictating that a references section be called notes. It is called references in every article I have ever worked on, with notes only used when having separate notes or using the shortened form of referencing. The guideline is not entirely clear on this, and as it has NEVER been brought up in a single FA, FLC, or GA discussion I've been in, I'm curious as to how this can be made clearer that "References" is a perfectly acceptable section name for this type of reference, or to see if someone can point out to me exactly where it says it is not. -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 13:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
1080° Snowboarding · 1933 Atlantic hurricane season · 1981 Irish hunger strike · 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack · 1987 · 200 (Stargate SG-1) · 300 (film), · 35 mm film · 3D Monster Maze. · Ace Books · Acetic acid · Acrocanthosaurus · Aggie Bonfire · Ahmedabad · Aikido · Al-Kateb v Godwin · Alanya · Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act · Aldol reaction · Apollo 8 · Archimedes · Flag of Armenia · ASCII · Asteroid belt
What's the correct way / template to quote a book (not a journal or conference proceedings, but a "real" book) where each chapter was written by and credited to different authors? The wiki-article cites at least six of these chapters, should I do six separate {{ cite}} entries or ... ? TIA, NVO ( talk) 22:47, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, the name pretty much says it all. Wiktionary probably can't, or can it? -- The High Fin Sperm Whale ( talk) 00:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
It should be noted that while a list of external links is not standard or correct referencing format on Wikipedia, a significant number of articles do exist which use that format instead of inline references. Before Wikipedia developed its current inline referencing tools and practices, in fact, piling on the weblinks was a common and virtually normal manner of "citing" references. Some articles have simply never been upgraded properly, and some newer articles are "referenced" in that style precisely because older articles with that style of referencing still exist.
This policy, thus, should probably point out that an article which contains no individual footnotes, but does contain one or more external links which do provide reference support for the article's content, should not be tagged as {{ unreferenced}}, but rather {{ No footnotes}}. Using ELs is a poor and outdated style of referencing which certainly needs to be upgraded to current referencing standards, no question — but the fact that such conversion hasn't already taken place doesn't, in and of itself, make an article unreferenced if the existing external links are to sites that would be valid as footnotes. Bearcat ( talk) 18:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Someone has (indirectly) requested at WT:EL that this page deprecate links to (for example) books listed at Amazon.com in references. For books with ISBNs, the magic word is clearly preferable, even to full view Google Books links, as it's not location- or browser-dependent. Can someone here figure out a good place to include that information? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC) who is not watching this page
Is there a way of citing media sources such as a TV show or episode? After watching the A&E special: "The Secret Life of Vampires", I looked at the wiki article of Vampire lifestyle. I noticed that two of the terms in the article, were also attributed to sources in the show. How can this be cited? Sephiroth storm ( talk) 18:12, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I propose to take out the {{ dubious}} tags from the Citation styles section re the advice to make the retrieval date invisible to the reader.
If previous discussion otherwise hasn't managed to agree this then alternatively reword it more optionally.
My preferred options (i.e. left as they are with the dubious tags simply removed):
Citations for newspaper articles typically include: ...
Citations for World Wide Web articles ...
Alternate options:
Citations for newspaper articles typically include: ...
Citations for World Wide Web articles ...
Either way, there's already been discussion and I don't think the {{ dubious}} tags should remain in the project page forever.
-- SallyScot ( talk) 18:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
How should titles in foreign language scripts be presented? Original text, transliteration, and translation could all be useful to the reader.
(For transliterating Cyrillic titles, I'm proposing we follow worldwide English-language libraries by using the Library of Congress system, at WT:CYR#Bibliographic information.) — Michael Z. 2009-02-07 17:39 z
I've had users complain to me about this when reviewing GA, and I've had users complain to me about this when I bring up FAs. Where exactly does it say in the Manual of Style where you shouldn't mix and match citation templates (i.e. using a combination of {{ cite web}}, {{ cite news}}, and {{ cite journal}} in the same article). MuZemike 07:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
See this. -- Boracay Bill ( talk) 02:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
{{
citation}}
: Unknown parameter |separator=
ignored (
help). (Citation with separator=. and with a manually-supplied closing full-stop)The various citatation templates can only cover cases that the template editors have thought of. There will always be a place for citations written from scratch for situations not covered by the existing templates, even in an article where most of the citations are use templates. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I should know the answer to this, but I don't.
When you're quoting something that a person has written, are you supposed to respect their formatting? That is, if someone has written something in very short paragraphs, must we reproduce those paragraphs, or is it acceptable to compact it?
I'm asking because of this quote, which was a letter to the editor, and which is taking up too much space:
We, the Arab inhabitants of Lod train station, did not participate in any defiant acts against the Israeli army ... Neverthless, we were treated in a hard manner ...
Since the occupation, we continued to work and our salaries have still not been paid to this day. Then our work was taken from us and now we are unemployed.
The curfew is still valid ... [W]e are not allowed to go to Lod or Ramla, as we are prisoners.
No one is allowed to look for a job but with the mediation of the members of the Local Committee ... we are like slaves.
I am asking you to cancel the restrictions and to let us live freely in the state of Israel. [2]
Is it acceptable to format it as one paragraph? Does anyone know what the accepted practice is (e.g. in academia)? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 02:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
When I see a lack of distinction between refs and article text such as in the Swine flu 2009 article - [3] I am discouraged from editing. I believe that a far clearer and more user friendly way of formatting refs was implemented in the British Airways Flight 38 article - [4]. Which do other experienced and inexperienced editors find clearer and more user friendly ? I propose that the latter format should be Wikipedia desired format for inline references. -- John ( Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 08:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Blah blah.<ref>{{cite web | url=x | title=y }}</ref> Blah blah blah.
Blah blah.<ref> {{cite web | url=x | title=y }}</ref> Blah blah blah.
Please consider these points, which follow from a discussion started on User_talk:TedPavlic#Restoring_some_references_sections.
Ideally, we would like to have three sections (at most):
( It would be even better if MediaWiki's <ref> would have the ability to refer to an existing in-line citation with some additional note (like a page number) ) There's no way to enforce this much discipline among Wikipedia editors. Hence, the next best thing is to have a References section containing documents that are referred to and a Further reading section for everything else. If you want your doc to get listed in the References section, then refer to it within the document. — TedPavlic ( talk) 15:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
...then, later, people start adding in-line references with ref tags. That leads them to change the references section to be== References ==
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or, even worse,== References ==
<references/>
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or...== References ==
<references/>
# Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or...== References ==
{{reflist}}
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
All three of these look awful; they mix number order, numbering type, font, etc. The only remedy (at the moment) is to go and FIND A WAY to cite the old reference. However, without consulting the old reference directly and then parsing through the Wikipedia article, it's impossible to know where to add a citation. So, without an "unreferenced references" or an "uncited references" section, it's better to advise people to always use explicit citations. — TedPavlic ( talk) 14:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)== References ==
{{reflist}}
# Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
I can't quite follow what's being suggested here, but best practice is to have a Notes section listing inline citations using "reflist"; a References section that lists the sources with full citations in alphabetical order; and a Further reading or External links section, for relevant material not used as a source.
Although that's best practice, usual practice is just to have the Notes section, and FR or EL. But when going to FA, it's best to have the three. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 16:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
The utility of citations is greatly enhanced if metadata is included with them. The COinS microformat is automatically produced by some citation templates. This metadata makes the citation information accessible to bots, so that the citation can be formatted and updated with URLs, object identifiers, etc automatically, reducing editor workload. It also allows readers' browser plugins to recognise citations. Readers may use plugins such as LibX to identify an online version of a source which they can access via their library's subscription, or may use scripts such as User:Smith609/endnote.js to export citation information to a reference manager.
Since metadata increases the utility and verifiability of citations in Wikipedia, and can be readily provided - either manually, or via a citation template - I would propose that the manual of style note that Where appropriate, citations should include COinS-formatted metadata. This metadata is automatically produced by most citation templates, and can also be added manually..
COinS is a developing web standard for citation microformatting and is widely used already; hence it makes sense to advocate the consistent application of this format.
Would anybody have grounds to object to this proposal?
Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 16:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
The only argument I can see against preferring metadata is that "if it's a good idea, editors will add it of their own accord". However, I'm not sure that this is true. Everybody agrees that good spelling, well written prose, and citations are 'good ideas', but there are thousands of articles which don't contain any of these elements. The advantage of providing a guideline is that it demonstrates consensus; with a clear consensus it is possible for bot coders to automate the (somewhat tedious) task.
With that in mind, would the following wording address the points raised above?
Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 14:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
P.S. what is MLA use?
(unindent) It is against this guideline to convert an article that consistently uses manual citations to templates, or to make other wholesale changes in the citation style. So a bot that goes around and changes manual citations to templates, whether adding metadata at the same time, or not, goes against the present guideline. Furthermore, a major objection to templates is the amount of space they take up in the wikitext; if metadata is added, this will make articles harder to edit, whether the metadata is in the form of templates or in some other form. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I see no objections of allowing metadata to be added. As with the use of templates, it appears that some want to be able to keep their own style. While they may choose to use or not use the tools available, there seems to be no reason to not inform people that the tools are available. As such, I've rephrased the section on the guideline. It should probably be "demoted" in the position on the page. Perhaps right above or below the template section? I'd personally prefer, like Martin, to see it phrased a bit stronger. But I, like AnmaFinotera, do not yet see clear consensus on this issue. -- Karnesky ( talk) 17:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
The French Wikipedia has a really interesting way of collating information about references. Information about a reference book can be stored in the "Reference" namespace, for example fr:Référence:La vie quotidienne des Aztèques à la veille de la conquête espagnole (Jacques Soustelle), where you can find for instance a list of editions and can choose from a drop-down a range of formatting options for the reference. These references can be categorized by topic (for example this one is in fr:Catégorie:Ouvrage sur l'Amérique précolombienne). To insert the reference into an article, it's possible to use a template (in this case fr:Modèle:Soustelle VQA) to include key bibliographic data and provide a link to the list of editions in the "Reference" namespace - see for instance the article fr:Calmecac. The template aspect of this would need a bit of amendment to fit into the English Wikipedia, particularly bearing in mind that the template only lists one edition (and editors on different articles may use different ones), and also in terms of formatting, but the basic idea would work fine without the template, with the appropriate link to the "Reference" namespace placed after the reference is used (in cases like Checkers speech, where the reference inside the <ref>...</ref> tags is just the minimal Template:Harvnb author, date and page and with a link down to the full reference information in the "Bibliography" section - not sure how consistently those sections are named - then the link to the Reference namespace would belong by the fuller citation in that section).
I wonder whether there is a discussion somewhere, perhaps relegated to "perennial proposals", where it has been discussed to bring a similar set-up to the English Wikipedia? TheGrappler ( talk) 22:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Can the standard reference templates be expanded to auto-generate wiki-links to media (and other) sources? So if for example I've never heard of the New York Times and have doubts about what this guy Blair is saying I can click over and see that it is a well respected source. Hcobb ( talk) 13:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
WP:GNGA#Inline_citations asserts that <ref> tags must always be placed immediately after punctuation -- a practice that I always use, because I happen to like it, but one which I thought was not actually required anywhere. In fact, I was rather under the impression that we used the original author's style/spelling/etc unless there was a good reason to change it, and that this might reasonably be construed as following the punctuation pattern.
I have long-term concerns about the Good Article process being pushed well beyond its original "pretty good" mandate into "Really, Very, Extremely, Officially Certified Good Articles" territory, and since this "essay" is recommended by the GA process and followed quite closely by both nominators and reviewers, it has a lot of power to shape "normal practice", even if that's not the stated intention.
If any of the regular editors here would like to take a look at this section, I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC) who is not watching this page
I have noticed the the pywikipediabot has changed a few citation templated to say page instead of pages even when the are more than 1 page. For example ir might say pages= 22. Is this appropriate and if so where is it mentioned?-- Kumioko ( talk) 20:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
A question has arisen in the Pro Wrestling project about citing a flash based website where you can't directly link to the subpage the info is on. Is there a general take on this problem? Can you site a site when you can't directly link to the page the information is on?? MPJ-DK ( talk) 12:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
According to WP:Citing sources#When quoting someone a citation must directly follow a quote (I'm ignoring the other location for the time being because it's irrelevant to my query.) However, does that really have to be taken so literally? For instance, look at the this section of the article that I am currently working on: Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen#Reception. This edit is perfectly in-line with what is said on the policy page, but if you look at the article, it simply makes more sense to cite the entire thought, as opposed to attributing every sentence to the same citation, like WP:Citing sources#When quoting someone seems to advocate. It seems to me that the way the section was written did not account for the possibility that more info about the review/paper would follow the quote. Perhaps the section should be taken liberally? Artichoker talk 16:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I am new at this so please bare with me. I am Modoc Indian. My mother had all the paperwork i.e. scroll, type of Indian, ect. When she passed away, I could not find any of the paperwork she had. We all were paid a certain amount for our land, but still being able to use it. I would like to know how I can find out where the scrolls are located and ask for information regarding how to get myself and my childrens names on the scrolls. I know we are on them. Need a phone number or address to get me started. I have been looking all over the net and cannot seem to find anything regarding this information. If you could be of any help I would surely appreciate it.
Thanking you in advance. Pat Roth aka Rambo and Maloney Rambo from Mom, Irish from Dad. My e-mail is : charityblues@hotmail.com. Address Pat Roth, P.O. Box 720, Wofford Heights, CA. I was born in Klamath Falls, lived in Merill till I was 5, then moved with Mom to San Francisco. Still in California, am located in the beginning of the Sierra Mountains.
I look forward to hearing from those who have any info I can get.
Thanks, Pat 173.16.63.222 ( talk) 16:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that different articles in the wikipedia are not mutually consistent. This means that moving appropriate references from one article to another in general cannot be done without significant rework, work which does not improve the accuracy or readability of the wikipedia or anything else of any importance. We're not doing this to make pretty looking references for someone with OCD, we add references for purely practical reasons; any form of reference that permits the fact to be checked is fine.
Can anyone give a completely convincing practical argument for this, otherwise I am simply going to remove it.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". - ( User) Wolfkeeper ( Talk) 02:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what universities are like outside the US, but in the US many university professors insist students carefully follow whichever style guildeline has been adopted for a particular course; papers that fail to comply receive lower grades. It is possible that people who attended university in the US will carry this attitude about citations forward in later life and suspect that any article they see with inconsistent citations is poorly written in general, just as many people suspect that articles with poor spelling are poorly written in general. So perhaps consistent citations adds to the credibility of Wikipedia articles. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm in a mood to patch something. In particular, I'd like to improve the <ref> system to reduce the clutter in wikicode. There are several possible ways to do this, but at current I am leaning to towards expanding <references /> to allow reference definitions to appear within a references block, i.e.:
<references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
One could then change all the prior <ref> calls into <ref name="foo" /> and move the cluttered wikicode out of the main body of the text. Of course the current system would continue to function as is, but this would provide an option for greater readability of wikicode if people chose to use it.
Does that sound like a good idea? Do people have other suggestions for (small) ways to improve <ref>? Dragons flight ( talk) 10:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
reflist|3|refs=
<ref name=foo>Foo</ref>
<ref name=bar>Bar</ref>
}}
<ref parent="foo">Page 4</ref>
so we can still use wikitext in the subref bodies (the suggestion in comment #3 is definitely not a good way to do it)).
Anomie
⚔ 11:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)This is a paragraph<ref name="foo"> within a section. <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> This is another paragraph.
== Improving <ref> == I'm in a mood to patch something. In particular, I'd like to improve the <tt><nowiki><ref></tt> system to reduce the clutter in wikicode. There are several possible ways to do this, but at current I am leaning to towards expanding <tt><references /></tt> to allow reference definitions to appear within a references block, i.e.: <pre> <references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
One could then change all the prior <ref> calls into <ref name="foo" /> and move the cluttered wikicode out of the main body of the text. Of course the current system would continue to function as is, but this would provide an option for greater readability of wikicode if people chose to use it.
Does that sound like a good idea? Do people have other suggestions for (small) ways to improve <ref>? Dragons flight ( talk) 10:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
reflist|3|refs=
<ref name=foo>Foo</ref>
<ref name=bar>Bar</ref>
}}
<ref parent="foo">Page 4</ref>
so we can still use wikitext in the subref bodies (the suggestion in comment #3 is definitely not a good way to do it)).
Anomie
⚔ 11:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)This is a paragraph<ref name="foo"> within a section. <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> This is another paragraph.
=== Section === <ref display="foo">This is a sentence in a paragraph.</ref> <ref display="bar">This is another sentence in a paragraph.</ref> === References === <references> <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> <ref define="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
<define>...</define>
tag; that is just asking for confusion and poorly-constructed pages, the wiki equivalent of the evil 'jump' statement in some programming languages. Why are refs different? Because refs are what we'd describe as 'inline' elements: they come between, and sometimes within, the prose sentences. An infobox might be a huge block of ugly code, but it is distinct from the prose: whether or not people understand what the code does, they can easily recognise it as 'the code that makes the infobox appear', and skim past it to the text. Refs are not like that: because they break up the prose so horribly - often many lines of code for something that comes out as four characters on the screen - they are incredibly distracting, and make it almost impossible to copyedit or even read the prose. The reason we have so many problems with punctuation and references being in the wrong order (lorem
[3], ipsum), or even duplicated (lorem,
[4], ipsum) is because by the time you've skimmed through the huge ref body, you've completely forgotten what the preceeding text was like. Anything that makes ref tags less intrusive into the article prose itself is, IMO, a very good idea.Person is X,<ref name=nytimes/> Y,<ref name=post/> and Z.<ref name=la/>
" is more readable for users than "Person is X,<ref>{{citation | date=...(4 lines of markup)}}, Y<ref>(another 4 lines)</ref>, and Z.
". Of course, other ways to reduce clutter and make prose readable when editing are also most welcome.
Shreevatsa (
talk) 00:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
< It is already possible to separate references from the text, using the {{ Note}} and {{ Ref}} templates. (This was mentioned before by Golbez and others but I want to underline it to make sure newer editors understand the issues. This example is adopted from WP:Verification methods.)
Article | This is some information.
1 This information comes from a book.
2 This is more information that comes from a different book.
3 This is a point that needs clarification.
4 This is more information from the first book.
2
|
Wikitext | This is some information.{{ref|1|1}} This information comes from a book.{{ref|2a|2}} This is more information that comes from a different book.{{ref|3|3}} This is a point that needs clarification.{{ref|4|4}} This is more information from the first book.{{ref|2a|2}} === References === # {{note|1}}This tells exactly where this information came from. # {{note|2a}}{{note|2b}}[[John Doe|Doe, John]] (1996), ''Book of Information'', Great Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|3}}[[Jane Doe|Doe, Jane]] (2020), ''More Information'', Better Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|4}}This is a footnote that clarifies the point above. |
What you propose is certainly an improvement over {{ Note}} and {{ Ref}}, because it automatically numbers the footnotes. As several people have noted, many editors would like to see clutter-free text like this example. However, as others have noted, this method was abandoned for several reasons that go beyond just the numbering issue, as discussed by Golbez, JackLee and others above. My own view is this:
That's my two cents. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 18:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Based on the previous discussion, there would appear to be three possible courses of action at the software level for improving <ref>
at the present time.
<ref>
and <references>
as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references>
block.<ref>
so that the content of references may be defined in some other way at an arbitrary point in the page (such as at the end of the relevant section).I would note that the first two of these aren't mutually exclusive, so one could support both and envision changes to allow for both. In order to move forward, I would like to know if a supermajority of Wikipedians support any of these options, hence the purpose of this straw poll, which I will try to advertise in the appropriate places.
Rgardless of any possible changes, the current <ref>
syntax would continue to be fully supported, and changes would affect only how wikicode could be written with no change at all to the rendered page.
Dragons flight (
talk) 11:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Alter <ref>
and <references>
as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references>
block. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified solely by the name parameter.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name="foo" />, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.<ref name="bar" />
While we are discussing how WP handles ref tags, I was wondering if anyone else would prefer a different method for generating the anchor text for a named reference tag. For example, if I create a reference <ref name="NotTheBestReference">, then the anchor used in the generated HTML markup is '#cite_note-NotTheBestReference-1', while for unnamed references you get a simple '#cite_note-0'. Also, the numbering for the references are indexed from 1, but the anchors are indexed from 0, which means that note-0 points to reference 1. This is probably very trivial, but for some reason I find it mildly irritating. Plastikspork ( talk) 20:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Help! I need formatting assistance with citations & reflist supporting the article Enron scandal. If there is an editor who would enjoy tidying this up, he/she will get a barnstar from me, as this article has more citations than I have had hot dinners, and there are probably more to come. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 09:38, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Someone above commented that it would be nice if <references/>
was appended to the end of pages automatically in cases where it was missing. This could be done already by placing <references/>
in
MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references.
It would need some thoughtful formatting to look good, but it is certainly possible. Do people want to pursue that? Dragons flight ( talk) 09:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
<references />
is missing? I did figure out how to link that message to
Help:Cite errors yesterday, so that should help. This issue is no longer a major problem. We did a lot of work documenting the problems and creating messages and categories and it is well monitored. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk 10:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)I think all references across the project should use the same format. How about once and for all deciding whether commas or periods should be used to separate items within footnotes and reference lists? The citation templates could then be updated and maybe even merged in some cases which would make them easier to maintain and hopefully result in fewer bugs and inconsistencies. Tocant ( talk) 12:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
As a huge reference contributor (sometimes I go into articles and all I do is add references or clean up the existing references) i can say that (1) the vast majority of people don't give a flying flip about formatting references anyway. They stick a url in ref tags or put all pertinent information in ref tags and bolt. I don't think any system would keep people who find that reffing is too tedious from doing that. (2) Wikipedia is ultimately an academic endeavor. I would be highly wary of just coming up with a new consolidated reference system. The current one has been culled from already well-established reference norms in the greater journalistic community. We should put forth some effort to keep with larger academic protocol to maintain respect. (3) If we do simplify, which could be good, we should keep in mind that difference sources have really different needs. Citing a journal, a newspaper, an interview, a magazine article, a television show and a YouTube video has different requirements, and really should be treated accordingly. I'm not against change, and I personally loathe the current citation templates and NEVER use them, but just saying "one citation template to keep it easy" is oversimplifying the issue. I would recommend having a Wikipedia process like Twinkle where you have a series of drop down menus that narrow down which fields are relevant and then auto-formats it. That makes it simple without compromising academic integrity.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 11:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | → | Archive 30 |
If we have a statement like "Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall", and that event is reported by 100 news agencies, is it appropriate to list as cite every one of them using an inline EL? I think its obviously redundant and clutters the article. Let's say only 3 sources report the event. Shouldn't that also be considered redundant? At what point does one how many cites is enough and over that is too many?-- Fasttimes68 ( talk) 13:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Al Capp the cartoonist made references to Slobbovia and Slobovians in his cartoons which are not available to me to be specific. I Dont have the resources to research this. Help 64.35.200.6 ( talk) 21:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Why do we put surname before given name(s) in our citations? I.e. "Bloom, Harold" for Harold Bloom. Most sources (both news and academic publishers) seem to do it the other way. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 17:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines as to what is a legitimate source? I cited an Amazon.com editorial review of a DVD (not a user review, the site's official review) and it was removed as not notable. That seems strange, since Amazon is one of the largest retailers in the world and I have seen their reviews cited elsewhere. Note that this is in an article where there are a couple of editors who are very adamant about removing things they deem unworthy, and so I'd like to get some sort of official word on this. Thanks. 128.151.71.18 ( talk) 21:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
Please see here for my proposal of a new template, that would be put on articles that need to have their sources globalized - i.e. on articles that rely on a very similar set of sources likely representing one and the same POV.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
On a lot of Articles you are doing American format, how about changing format to non US? Govvy ( talk) 23:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
hmm, k, I because a lot of editors doing 2008-11-11 type style I noticed. So maybe they have been doing it wrong? Govvy ( talk) 17:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
k, I shall use the British format day-month-year. Cheers. Govvy ( talk) 20:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Apologies if this has been discussed here before. I wonder what others' opinions are of the readability of articles such as Harold Pinter and The arts and politics where a form of MLA style citation is used. In the case of the Pinter article, clicking on an inline footnote number brings one to a footnote, somtimes the footnote quotes from the source, and gives the name of the cited autor, e.g. Pinter's paternal "grandmother's maiden name was Baron … he adopted it as his stage-name … [and] used it [Baron] for the autobiographical character of Mark in the first draft of [his novel] The Dwarfs" (Billington, Harold Pinter 3, 47–48). (footnote 22), sometimes the footnote simply directs to various authours, e.g. See discussions of these plays throughout Batty; Grimes; and Baker (footnote 35), sometimes the inline citation is simply parenthetical, e.g. ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In all of these cases one has to seek out the actual source in another article Bibliography for Harold Pinter.
It is very confusing and several users have commented on this in talk pages, but the editor who imposed this style insists that it is perfectly clear. Please check out these pages if you have the time and energy. Jezhotwells ( talk) 21:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
As the editor (J.) commenting above already knows, since I have explained it several times, and since the "Style Sheet" makes it clear, the format is The MLA Style Manual format, it has existed in the article through its "good article" review (since October 7, 2007), and the Bibliography for Harold Pinter is not a "separate article"; it is a split-off section that serves as the "Works Cited" for Harold Pinter, which contains many print-published sources. [The split occurred as a result of the 2007 "good article" review; there are many sections of earlier versions (pre-good article review versions) of the article that became developed parts of sections; but the Bibliography is clearly still a major section of the article, as it serves as the article's "Works Cited" ( Harold Pinter#Works cited = Bibliography for Harold Pinter).]
Please discuss this [in context on the relevant talk page, not here, where it is being taken out of context of extensive discussion]. Thanks. (I am exhausted from the contentiousness of J.'s approach, which elsewhere often moves into incivilities, as it works against the article's major contributors and good article reviewers rather than with us.) -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Quotation from the lead of Bibliography for Harold Pinter: "Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography ("Works cited") for the main article on Harold Pinter and for several articles relating to him and his works." -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
One has to make an effort to understand Parenthetical referencing which is not merely "Harvard style" or "Harvard referencing" as many editors from outside the U.S. appear to think; that is a misunderstanding of Parenthetical referencing. The article Parenthetical referencing and the section of Wikipedia:Citing sources seem to have been in the past controlled by various editors from outside the U.S. who do not realize that there are multiple methods or multiple styles of parenthetical referencing, because they only use one method where they are located. (And their specialties may not be writing.) Bibliographical specialists within the fields of writing and literary studies (English departments in U.S. colleges and universities)--and I am one of them--recognize, however, that almost every discipline now has adapted use of parenthetical citations (parenthetical referencing) to its various specific formats. Wikipedians, who may not be knowledgable about bibliography and documentation formats (specialties within writing and literary studies, where such formats are taught in American colleges and universities in introductory courses in "writing across the disciplines") just may be unaware of the breadth and scope and variety of documentation and citation methodogies. -- NYScholar ( talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks - hope life is treating everyone well. Question. I'm citing a book, and pulling information from various pages - I'm assuming that I don't need to list the book as 15 different references - and that if I just put (ex: pages: Preface, 3, 7, 25, 78, 124 etc.) in the one reference that I'm doing it the proper way. The question is, since I don't like to assume, is where would I find that documented in policy, or rather guideline I expect. I'm not asking anyone to do my wiki-homework - just point me to the proper section/page. Thanks. — Ched ~ (yes?) 07:23, 13 March 2009 (UTC) (a tb tag would be nice, since a lot of these pages go many days without answer) — Ched ~ (yes?) 07:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Use of terms: “This guideline uses the terms citation and reference interchangeably.”
Why not reduce ambiguity, and use precise language? A reference is a source which is referred to. The “References” section of an article is a list of references. A citation is the occurrence in the body of an article where a quotation or passage from a reference is cited.
This stuff is discussed in a thousand talk pages. Why not help editors say what they mean by avoiding loose language in the MOS?
(Yeah, it's too bad the WP:Cite extension uses the terminology incorrectly, with the <ref> tag representing a citation, and <references/> for the “Notes” section, and not “References”. C'est la vie.) — Michael Z. 2009-02-07 17:21 z
I have several long standing problems with this guideline. (I've placed each under a different topic to keep the threads from getting entangled.) I plan on making changes based on these suggestions later in the week, if no one freaks out. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
This guideline discusses several issues for which there is no consensus. There is wide disagreement about citation templates, about various citation styles, about particular techniques and so on. When we discuss one of these issues in the guideline, we should try to stay descriptive rather than prescriptive. We are letting newer editors know what the alternatives are and hopefully showing them how previous editors have chosen to solve the same problems. We're not telling them what to do; we're describing what's been done. So it's better say that a technique is "commonplace" rather than "encouraged" or to say that it is "preferred by some editors" rather than "permitted". This is a more accurate way to talk about the current status of this guideline. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
This guideline only needs to describe the most popular methods, used in thousands of articles. It should, of course, also note that other methods exist and make it clear that the editor is free to use (or invent) any method that works. But right now, some parts of the text bog down unnecessary detail (the second list under WP:CITE#How to present citations is a prime example). We don't need to iterate over every possible permutation of these techniques; the reader can figure it out. By attempting to be comprehensive, we only succeed in confusing the reader and making it look like there are a lot more rules than there really are. We could improve and expand (and retitle?) " WP:Citing sources/Further considerations" or WP:Verification methods so that it covers every permutation. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
The Citing Sources article says: .. remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time, my question is: how long is considered reasonable time? NinjaKid ( talk) 11:13, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
There appears to be a collision of methods by which to reference an article at Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis. If others with a more detailed knowledge of referencing styles - especially within Wikipedia - could offer their input, it would be appreciated, especially as I, at least, can take any lessons learned on to my future editing. The discussion is taking place at Talk:Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis#References. -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 19:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
This is a little thing, but I'd like to retitle "How to present citations" to "Where to put citations in articles". It's clearer. Anybody married to the original language? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
I've gone back to Charles Gillingham's March 22 version, as the writing was clearer and more streamlined, and the terms were used more consistently. Some of the changes since then seem to be a deterioration, especially the replacement of "citation" with "source." SlimVirgin talk| contribs 13:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
I know this has been discussed a couple of times in these Talk archives, but I want to bring it up again. What is the rationale for requiring access/retrieval dates for online versions of past printed materials?
For example, editors are beginning to link book cites to Google Books. Thus, editors are putting "Retrieved on" on their cites, in addition to the usual author, title, publisher, year, ISBN, and page information. It looks very strange to see a book being "retrieved" ... such a link is just a convenience link (problematic too, given the semi-random way Google Books' "limited view" works); the content of the book is unchanging. If the link goes bad, the rest of the cite remains: an unchanging reference to an unchanging book.
Another case are old newspaper and magazine articles. If a cite gives a 1983 New York Times story's publication date, title, and author, and also gives a convenience link to the NYT archive, what is the value of having the retrieval date for this? The content of the story is fixed and unchanging, and is defined by the print/microfilm version. Again, if the archive goes away, the rest of the cite remains, an unchanging reference to an unchanging story. If the archive gets moved, one would re-lookup the online version by the published date/title/author information; knowing the old retrieval date wouldn't tell you anything.
And there is a real cost to having retrieval dates in place everywhere: to us they take up article edit space, to browsers they increase output HTML space, and to readers they clutter up the cite and can be visually confused with publication date. I understand that retrieval dates are necessary for web pages without publication dates, and arguably necessary for dated news stories originally published online (CNN, current NYT, etc.), but I just don't see the rationale for them in the above cases. Wasted Time R ( talk) 23:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The "retrieved date" merely refers to the convenience link to the online version, and may be safely removed on any cite that is not an online link. That's all. (And if the link goes bad, the dead-tree portion of the cite remains valid.) -- Yellowdesk ( talk) 00:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
{{
cite news}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors=
(
help) --
Yellowdesk (
talk) 14:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)accessdate=
parameter. No HTML comment is necessary, nor is it necessary to rename the parameter. After all, its still in the source.The retrieved date allows a reader to understand the age of the online link. In the past, I have done a manual link check and have updated those retrieved dates to show that the links were still valid as of that date. The CheckLinks tool checks links, updates to archived links on dead links and now optionally updates the retrieved dates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 15:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate what is being discussed here. In my opinion there are two issues popping up:
Consensus: It indeed seems we have consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. I have removed the RFC (style) tag and will modify the policy. Anybody who is competent to adapt the citation templates, please do so. Thanks everybody, -- EnOreg ( talk) 08:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
HTML comments are stripped out by the Mediawiki software, so these won't be visible except in the original template call. I've included one here, for instance: Would it be better to hide the date with CSS? — Omegatron ( talk) 17:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
.reference-accessdate {display: none}
{{
cite meta}}
is not possible, to centralise and de-duplicate the considerable amount of code (the CoinS tags, for instance) that is almost identical across all the cite templates, and needs to be maintained in the same way in each. But that's another story.
Happy‑
melon 19:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)No. Doesn't agree with best practice, no discernible benefit, doesn't agree with most common ciation methods on Wiki. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any strong consensus to hide this parameter for templates where the availability of material might be ephemeral. I think it should stay visible on, at least, the generic citation template, the mailing list template, the newsgroup template. -- Karnesky ( talk) 13:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd like state that I'm strongly opposed to this idea for any template that may cite any kind of online material. For Cite book, Cite paper, etc, that are only used to cite physical or "permanent" publications (even if it may be found online and linked to in a particular template), then so be it, Accessdate isn't necessary. But to hide it in Cite news, Cite press release, Cite map, etc etc (which more and more may cite a document online that *cannot* be found in print) is doing a grave disservice to anyone who doesn't want or know how do delve into the edit page and figure things out, yet still may want information that will allow them to access a website that has been lost over time. That is precisely what Accessdate is useful for; not to mention, even for webpages that are still existent, it says precisely when data was originally pulled from the source. "Accessed on..." or some variant of it is an almost universal standard for citation formats outside of Wiki...I see no reason why we should be the oddballs and not use them in a citation display. — Huntster ( t • @ • c) 14:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Hiding the date for one template such as {{ cite news}} without changing all of the templates is going to cause some inconsistency. There are already enough differences among the cite templates. There are opinions on both sides of the issue as to show or hide the accessdate— why not allow editors who don't want to see the accessdate to be able to hide it? We should be able to come up with a script to do this and get it approved as a gadget. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
After Happy‑ melon's CSS-ification of the access date it is up to the users whether they want to see the access date of stable references or not—that's great. (Note that this only applies to references that also have a publication date!)
Changing the default behavior, however, requires fiddling with the user's monobook.css which only expert users will be competent to do. Now after the discussion above it seems to me that the access date is relevant mostly to these expert users and editors. For casual WP users showing two different dates for one reference is confusing and clutters the reference sections—but they don't know how to hide it. Therefore, I would suggest to hide the access date of stable references per default, i.e., modify MediaWiki:Common.css accordingly. Comments? -- EnOreg ( talk) 00:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Any objection? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 01:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
People may be interested to know that the Poll on date autoformatting and linking is now open. All users are invited to participate. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be general agreement that the number of references should be kept to a reasonable number, so I went ahead and added the following section to "Dealing with citation problems":
In some cases, more than one reference may be necessary to support a fact. This can be because the claim is particularly controversial, because links can go dead (as described above), because the superior source is not available online, or because the claim itself is one of wide external coverage of a fact. Excessive referencing should nevertheless be avoided, as this can impede readability, complicate editing, and slow down article load time. If an article contains too many references, feel free to remove some of these, but take care that no essential information is lost.
Lampman (
talk) 02:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Should the above section be included in the guidelines?
The article is too long to be useful. I'm particularly bothered by the repetition between WP:CITE#Quick summary, the first list in WP:CITE#How present citations and the second list in WP:CITE#How to present citations. Do we need all three of these? ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 09:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm in two (or even three) minds about how far to take the idea of "saying where I got it", particularly when I have used Google Books to find a source. I don't usually link to the Google Books page if I have an ISBN, as I prefer to let readers use the ISBN link to choose where to look up the source rather than push them in one direction, but by the letter of this guideline it looks like I should. Is it really necessary to say where I got it when it came from a source that is widely accepted to provide reliable copies of the original? I don't think I had read this guideline before now, but I just did so to look for guidance on how to cite a journal article reprinted in a book. By trying to follow the guideline I came up with this citation:
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help) reprinted in Smith, Malcolm (2003).
Research methods in accounting.
SAGE. p. 202.
ISBN
9780761971474. Retrieved 2009-03-27.Is it really necessary to do all of that "saying where I got it"? Can't I just make the citation to Management Accounting on the assumption a book published by SAGE and displayed by Google Books is a reliable copy of the original source? Phil Bridger ( talk) 22:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
{{
cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter |coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (
help) reprinted in Smith, Malcolm (2003). Research methods in accounting.
SAGE.
ISBN
9780761971474. {{
cite book}}
: |access-date=
requires |url=
(
help)
p. 202", because then if several different pages are referenced the citation can be turned into a
short footnote and each different page links to a specific page in a book. BTW I don't usually use citation templates so I don't know how to link pages to URLs inside the template -- perhaps someone else can tell us how to do it. Also you can strip the search string out of the URL as it is not needed to link to the page in this case all of this: "&dq=%22lion+tamer%22+%22monty+python%22+accountant&num=100&client=firefox-a&output=html". One you have done that it is easy to reference any other page in the book. Just scroll down one page to
p. 203 and the format is clear you can add any page to the new addition to the URL "#PPA203" by changing the "203" to the desired page number. --
PBS (
talk) 10:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
How can I implement a collapsible reference table, such as here. Thank you. --- Altruism T a l k - Contribs. 13:46, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks a lot to both WhatamIdoing & Arnoutf for your responses. - Altruism T a l k - Contribs. 10:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Is it alright to use it as a reference? I recall reading somewhere from the rules that it's not allowed? Ominae ( talk) 04:11, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Based on the Tokusatsu article, the Foreign productions as tokusatsu subsection uses the Japanese Tokusatsu wikipedia page as a reference. When I checked it, there was no reference whatsoever there. Please advise. Ominae ( talk) 00:55, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
I've transcribed part of a public domain U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission report at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/ICC valuations/Chesapeake and Ohio Railway of Indiana, and am citing the report in an article. I know that I can simply cite it without a link, but would it be appropriate to link to that transcription? If so, should it be an internal or external link? -- NE2 20:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
The section Citation styles names some reference styles like APA style. Could we add Parenthetical (a.k.a. Harvard) referencing? The list is limited, isn't it? - DePiep ( talk) 11:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The use of "ISBN Number" is an incident of RAS syndrome. 173.72.137.7 ( talk) 11:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
There's a small debate going on at Talk:Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan#References column removed? about how to format citations in the table/list of casualties. The guidelines seem very clear on what is expected in terms of metadata, however, they seem a little unclear on the idea of footnote tags being in their own dedicated column of the table, as opposed to within the text. Could someone perhaps drop in and clarify what's possible? Cheers. -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 12:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I have removed the following passage:
One can argue that just the citation Brown v. Board of Education would be good enough in an article, but it makes a poor example for the Citing sources guideline. It is a poor example because it appears to cite a Wikipedia article, rather than a reliable source, and it cites a court case by a popular name. A handful of court cases are famous enough for the general reader to find them by their popular name, but most cases can't be found by a non-lawyer if given only the popular name. The guideline should not give advise that only works in a handful of situations.
The bullet point is also faulty in that a reference in running text may be used whether or not an internal link is included: "Gibson's Neuromancer (Ace, 1984) was a science fiction article that featured direct interfaces between brains and computers" is an acceptable citation even without an internal link to either William Gibson or Neuromancer. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Seriously, some people don't beleive everything they hear, and would love to contribute what they discovered themselves. Think about this, how did Albert Einstein know about E=MC^2 if nobody told him it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.193.252 ( talk) 00:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
I would like to replace the second list under WP:CITE#Presenting the citation with these two sentences:
"Some articles use a combination of general references, citations in footnotes and shortened notes. (See, for example, Starship Troopers, Rosa Parks or Absinthe) Some articles use separate sections for citations and explanatory notes (e.g. Augustus)."
The way the list is written now, it repeats the points made just inches above in almost the same order. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 16:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I dithered about whether to place this here or on WT:FOOT. WP:CITE and WP:FOOT both identify themselves as Editing style guidelines. I decided to place this here because of the {{ Nutshell}} info at the head of this page which says, "This citing sources guideline (a) discusses when to use citations, (b) shows how to format individual citations, and (c) provides methods for presenting citations within Wikipedia articles."
WP:FOOT#Style_recommendations contains recommendations regarding placement of superscripted footnote links in relation to punctuation which appear to me to conflict with consensus results from discussions of this subject which I have seen here in the past. I want to raise a yellow flag about this. I will leave a note on WT:FOOT mentioning this and pointing here. -- Boracay Bill ( talk) 01:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Why do we use reference marks after the period instead of before it? I think it should be attached to words but not a punctuation. 160.39.88.109 ( talk) 12:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I recently wrote an article. I had three sources which each had a lot of info. Most of it overlapped, but each one had some info that the other two didn't. So I listed those three sources in the References section. I had three more sources, each of which applied to specific sentences or paragraphs, so I made those inline refs, with the references appearing in that same References section (two different lists in the one section). Is this okay? Also, since all of my sources were web pages which would be of interest to the reader, and there is also an External Links section, should my three general sources be listed under External Links, References or both? - Freekee ( talk) 02:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
A while ago, I hacked together a stupid script (works only on Firefox, with Greasemonkey) to automatically generate {{ citation}} text by scraping data from Google Books webpages. I don't know if it's good enough for inclusion in the list of citation tools (I'd say it's not) but just in case anyone's interested, I've uploaded it here. Regards, Shreevatsa ( talk) 15:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
What is the actual proper punctuation for referencing? I am unsure how this actually works. I'll give a few examples:
When citing a reference in the middle of a sentence-
Example 1: This is a reference,
[1] after a space.
Example 2: This is a reference,
[1] after a comma.
When citing a reference at the end of a sentence-
Example 1: This is a reference, after a space.
[1]
Example 2: This is a reference, after a period.
[1]
Which ways are correct? Thanks, VG Editor ( talk).
How do you cite a video or DVD? Presumably Title, copyright year, then Chapter and hmm:ss(hour,minutes,seconds from start) of start of relavent portion? What of author? Producer? Director? Many DVDs have a whole list of entities making/paying for/comissioning the work. Is there a guideline already? GraL ( talk) 13:26, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
This is the billing address for numerous false charges made to credit/debit cards in Texas. I am in the process of forwarding the multiple theft complaints from various banks in the Central Texas area. Traditionally, like Googletree, credit/debit card "charges" are run through banks in a money laundering - theft scheme. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.0.93.182 ( talk) 03:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
A statement made by an editor, Almost-instinct, at " User:Citation bot/bugs#Philip Larkin" worried me. The editor was commenting about supposed errors in the article " Philip Larkin" created by Citation bot, and said: "The information given on the page relates to the initial publication date, but the ISBN numbers are there to link to current available editions (no point linking to ancient first editions)". My view is that one shouldn't be adding modern ISBNs to older books that did not have such numbers because that is misleading. It would be better to do something like this: "[citation of old work without ISBN]; now reissued/reprinted as [new citation with ISBN]." Anyway, you are welcome to comment on the issue here or at the Citation bot page (though perhaps a discussion here is better to avoid forking). — Cheers, JackLee – talk– 04:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the format for a named references according to the article includes quotation marks: <ref name="somename"> I wasn't aware of this, and have often found, and used, names without marks: <ref name=somename>
The use of quotation marks doesn't have to be consistent within the article; the name can be used with marks in some places, without in others.
Presumably the actual rule is that quotation marks are required only if names have embedded spaces, slashes, etc., similar to general computing practice, and are otherwise optional. Perhaps the documentation can be revised to make this official? I can't see the use of quotation marks being enforced: a great many articles would suddenly misbehave. Pol098 ( talk) 15:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
One editor is insisting on renaming a "References" section to "Notes", stated "enumerated in-line citations marked by superscripts are universally referred to as "notes"" [2]. I have repeatedly asked him to stop per the guideline noting that one should not change an established style and there is no "universal guideline" dictating that a references section be called notes. It is called references in every article I have ever worked on, with notes only used when having separate notes or using the shortened form of referencing. The guideline is not entirely clear on this, and as it has NEVER been brought up in a single FA, FLC, or GA discussion I've been in, I'm curious as to how this can be made clearer that "References" is a perfectly acceptable section name for this type of reference, or to see if someone can point out to me exactly where it says it is not. -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 13:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
1080° Snowboarding · 1933 Atlantic hurricane season · 1981 Irish hunger strike · 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack · 1987 · 200 (Stargate SG-1) · 300 (film), · 35 mm film · 3D Monster Maze. · Ace Books · Acetic acid · Acrocanthosaurus · Aggie Bonfire · Ahmedabad · Aikido · Al-Kateb v Godwin · Alanya · Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act · Aldol reaction · Apollo 8 · Archimedes · Flag of Armenia · ASCII · Asteroid belt
What's the correct way / template to quote a book (not a journal or conference proceedings, but a "real" book) where each chapter was written by and credited to different authors? The wiki-article cites at least six of these chapters, should I do six separate {{ cite}} entries or ... ? TIA, NVO ( talk) 22:47, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, the name pretty much says it all. Wiktionary probably can't, or can it? -- The High Fin Sperm Whale ( talk) 00:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
It should be noted that while a list of external links is not standard or correct referencing format on Wikipedia, a significant number of articles do exist which use that format instead of inline references. Before Wikipedia developed its current inline referencing tools and practices, in fact, piling on the weblinks was a common and virtually normal manner of "citing" references. Some articles have simply never been upgraded properly, and some newer articles are "referenced" in that style precisely because older articles with that style of referencing still exist.
This policy, thus, should probably point out that an article which contains no individual footnotes, but does contain one or more external links which do provide reference support for the article's content, should not be tagged as {{ unreferenced}}, but rather {{ No footnotes}}. Using ELs is a poor and outdated style of referencing which certainly needs to be upgraded to current referencing standards, no question — but the fact that such conversion hasn't already taken place doesn't, in and of itself, make an article unreferenced if the existing external links are to sites that would be valid as footnotes. Bearcat ( talk) 18:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Someone has (indirectly) requested at WT:EL that this page deprecate links to (for example) books listed at Amazon.com in references. For books with ISBNs, the magic word is clearly preferable, even to full view Google Books links, as it's not location- or browser-dependent. Can someone here figure out a good place to include that information? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC) who is not watching this page
Is there a way of citing media sources such as a TV show or episode? After watching the A&E special: "The Secret Life of Vampires", I looked at the wiki article of Vampire lifestyle. I noticed that two of the terms in the article, were also attributed to sources in the show. How can this be cited? Sephiroth storm ( talk) 18:12, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I propose to take out the {{ dubious}} tags from the Citation styles section re the advice to make the retrieval date invisible to the reader.
If previous discussion otherwise hasn't managed to agree this then alternatively reword it more optionally.
My preferred options (i.e. left as they are with the dubious tags simply removed):
Citations for newspaper articles typically include: ...
Citations for World Wide Web articles ...
Alternate options:
Citations for newspaper articles typically include: ...
Citations for World Wide Web articles ...
Either way, there's already been discussion and I don't think the {{ dubious}} tags should remain in the project page forever.
-- SallyScot ( talk) 18:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
How should titles in foreign language scripts be presented? Original text, transliteration, and translation could all be useful to the reader.
(For transliterating Cyrillic titles, I'm proposing we follow worldwide English-language libraries by using the Library of Congress system, at WT:CYR#Bibliographic information.) — Michael Z. 2009-02-07 17:39 z
I've had users complain to me about this when reviewing GA, and I've had users complain to me about this when I bring up FAs. Where exactly does it say in the Manual of Style where you shouldn't mix and match citation templates (i.e. using a combination of {{ cite web}}, {{ cite news}}, and {{ cite journal}} in the same article). MuZemike 07:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
See this. -- Boracay Bill ( talk) 02:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
{{
citation}}
: Unknown parameter |separator=
ignored (
help). (Citation with separator=. and with a manually-supplied closing full-stop)The various citatation templates can only cover cases that the template editors have thought of. There will always be a place for citations written from scratch for situations not covered by the existing templates, even in an article where most of the citations are use templates. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I should know the answer to this, but I don't.
When you're quoting something that a person has written, are you supposed to respect their formatting? That is, if someone has written something in very short paragraphs, must we reproduce those paragraphs, or is it acceptable to compact it?
I'm asking because of this quote, which was a letter to the editor, and which is taking up too much space:
We, the Arab inhabitants of Lod train station, did not participate in any defiant acts against the Israeli army ... Neverthless, we were treated in a hard manner ...
Since the occupation, we continued to work and our salaries have still not been paid to this day. Then our work was taken from us and now we are unemployed.
The curfew is still valid ... [W]e are not allowed to go to Lod or Ramla, as we are prisoners.
No one is allowed to look for a job but with the mediation of the members of the Local Committee ... we are like slaves.
I am asking you to cancel the restrictions and to let us live freely in the state of Israel. [2]
Is it acceptable to format it as one paragraph? Does anyone know what the accepted practice is (e.g. in academia)? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 02:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
When I see a lack of distinction between refs and article text such as in the Swine flu 2009 article - [3] I am discouraged from editing. I believe that a far clearer and more user friendly way of formatting refs was implemented in the British Airways Flight 38 article - [4]. Which do other experienced and inexperienced editors find clearer and more user friendly ? I propose that the latter format should be Wikipedia desired format for inline references. -- John ( Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 08:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Blah blah.<ref>{{cite web | url=x | title=y }}</ref> Blah blah blah.
Blah blah.<ref> {{cite web | url=x | title=y }}</ref> Blah blah blah.
Please consider these points, which follow from a discussion started on User_talk:TedPavlic#Restoring_some_references_sections.
Ideally, we would like to have three sections (at most):
( It would be even better if MediaWiki's <ref> would have the ability to refer to an existing in-line citation with some additional note (like a page number) ) There's no way to enforce this much discipline among Wikipedia editors. Hence, the next best thing is to have a References section containing documents that are referred to and a Further reading section for everything else. If you want your doc to get listed in the References section, then refer to it within the document. — TedPavlic ( talk) 15:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
...then, later, people start adding in-line references with ref tags. That leads them to change the references section to be== References ==
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or, even worse,== References ==
<references/>
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or...== References ==
<references/>
# Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
...or...== References ==
{{reflist}}
* Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
All three of these look awful; they mix number order, numbering type, font, etc. The only remedy (at the moment) is to go and FIND A WAY to cite the old reference. However, without consulting the old reference directly and then parsing through the Wikipedia article, it's impossible to know where to add a citation. So, without an "unreferenced references" or an "uncited references" section, it's better to advise people to always use explicit citations. — TedPavlic ( talk) 14:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)== References ==
{{reflist}}
# Doe, John. "A reference." 2009.
I can't quite follow what's being suggested here, but best practice is to have a Notes section listing inline citations using "reflist"; a References section that lists the sources with full citations in alphabetical order; and a Further reading or External links section, for relevant material not used as a source.
Although that's best practice, usual practice is just to have the Notes section, and FR or EL. But when going to FA, it's best to have the three. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 16:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
The utility of citations is greatly enhanced if metadata is included with them. The COinS microformat is automatically produced by some citation templates. This metadata makes the citation information accessible to bots, so that the citation can be formatted and updated with URLs, object identifiers, etc automatically, reducing editor workload. It also allows readers' browser plugins to recognise citations. Readers may use plugins such as LibX to identify an online version of a source which they can access via their library's subscription, or may use scripts such as User:Smith609/endnote.js to export citation information to a reference manager.
Since metadata increases the utility and verifiability of citations in Wikipedia, and can be readily provided - either manually, or via a citation template - I would propose that the manual of style note that Where appropriate, citations should include COinS-formatted metadata. This metadata is automatically produced by most citation templates, and can also be added manually..
COinS is a developing web standard for citation microformatting and is widely used already; hence it makes sense to advocate the consistent application of this format.
Would anybody have grounds to object to this proposal?
Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 16:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
The only argument I can see against preferring metadata is that "if it's a good idea, editors will add it of their own accord". However, I'm not sure that this is true. Everybody agrees that good spelling, well written prose, and citations are 'good ideas', but there are thousands of articles which don't contain any of these elements. The advantage of providing a guideline is that it demonstrates consensus; with a clear consensus it is possible for bot coders to automate the (somewhat tedious) task.
With that in mind, would the following wording address the points raised above?
Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 14:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
P.S. what is MLA use?
(unindent) It is against this guideline to convert an article that consistently uses manual citations to templates, or to make other wholesale changes in the citation style. So a bot that goes around and changes manual citations to templates, whether adding metadata at the same time, or not, goes against the present guideline. Furthermore, a major objection to templates is the amount of space they take up in the wikitext; if metadata is added, this will make articles harder to edit, whether the metadata is in the form of templates or in some other form. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I see no objections of allowing metadata to be added. As with the use of templates, it appears that some want to be able to keep their own style. While they may choose to use or not use the tools available, there seems to be no reason to not inform people that the tools are available. As such, I've rephrased the section on the guideline. It should probably be "demoted" in the position on the page. Perhaps right above or below the template section? I'd personally prefer, like Martin, to see it phrased a bit stronger. But I, like AnmaFinotera, do not yet see clear consensus on this issue. -- Karnesky ( talk) 17:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
The French Wikipedia has a really interesting way of collating information about references. Information about a reference book can be stored in the "Reference" namespace, for example fr:Référence:La vie quotidienne des Aztèques à la veille de la conquête espagnole (Jacques Soustelle), where you can find for instance a list of editions and can choose from a drop-down a range of formatting options for the reference. These references can be categorized by topic (for example this one is in fr:Catégorie:Ouvrage sur l'Amérique précolombienne). To insert the reference into an article, it's possible to use a template (in this case fr:Modèle:Soustelle VQA) to include key bibliographic data and provide a link to the list of editions in the "Reference" namespace - see for instance the article fr:Calmecac. The template aspect of this would need a bit of amendment to fit into the English Wikipedia, particularly bearing in mind that the template only lists one edition (and editors on different articles may use different ones), and also in terms of formatting, but the basic idea would work fine without the template, with the appropriate link to the "Reference" namespace placed after the reference is used (in cases like Checkers speech, where the reference inside the <ref>...</ref> tags is just the minimal Template:Harvnb author, date and page and with a link down to the full reference information in the "Bibliography" section - not sure how consistently those sections are named - then the link to the Reference namespace would belong by the fuller citation in that section).
I wonder whether there is a discussion somewhere, perhaps relegated to "perennial proposals", where it has been discussed to bring a similar set-up to the English Wikipedia? TheGrappler ( talk) 22:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Can the standard reference templates be expanded to auto-generate wiki-links to media (and other) sources? So if for example I've never heard of the New York Times and have doubts about what this guy Blair is saying I can click over and see that it is a well respected source. Hcobb ( talk) 13:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
WP:GNGA#Inline_citations asserts that <ref> tags must always be placed immediately after punctuation -- a practice that I always use, because I happen to like it, but one which I thought was not actually required anywhere. In fact, I was rather under the impression that we used the original author's style/spelling/etc unless there was a good reason to change it, and that this might reasonably be construed as following the punctuation pattern.
I have long-term concerns about the Good Article process being pushed well beyond its original "pretty good" mandate into "Really, Very, Extremely, Officially Certified Good Articles" territory, and since this "essay" is recommended by the GA process and followed quite closely by both nominators and reviewers, it has a lot of power to shape "normal practice", even if that's not the stated intention.
If any of the regular editors here would like to take a look at this section, I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC) who is not watching this page
I have noticed the the pywikipediabot has changed a few citation templated to say page instead of pages even when the are more than 1 page. For example ir might say pages= 22. Is this appropriate and if so where is it mentioned?-- Kumioko ( talk) 20:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
A question has arisen in the Pro Wrestling project about citing a flash based website where you can't directly link to the subpage the info is on. Is there a general take on this problem? Can you site a site when you can't directly link to the page the information is on?? MPJ-DK ( talk) 12:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
According to WP:Citing sources#When quoting someone a citation must directly follow a quote (I'm ignoring the other location for the time being because it's irrelevant to my query.) However, does that really have to be taken so literally? For instance, look at the this section of the article that I am currently working on: Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen#Reception. This edit is perfectly in-line with what is said on the policy page, but if you look at the article, it simply makes more sense to cite the entire thought, as opposed to attributing every sentence to the same citation, like WP:Citing sources#When quoting someone seems to advocate. It seems to me that the way the section was written did not account for the possibility that more info about the review/paper would follow the quote. Perhaps the section should be taken liberally? Artichoker talk 16:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I am new at this so please bare with me. I am Modoc Indian. My mother had all the paperwork i.e. scroll, type of Indian, ect. When she passed away, I could not find any of the paperwork she had. We all were paid a certain amount for our land, but still being able to use it. I would like to know how I can find out where the scrolls are located and ask for information regarding how to get myself and my childrens names on the scrolls. I know we are on them. Need a phone number or address to get me started. I have been looking all over the net and cannot seem to find anything regarding this information. If you could be of any help I would surely appreciate it.
Thanking you in advance. Pat Roth aka Rambo and Maloney Rambo from Mom, Irish from Dad. My e-mail is : charityblues@hotmail.com. Address Pat Roth, P.O. Box 720, Wofford Heights, CA. I was born in Klamath Falls, lived in Merill till I was 5, then moved with Mom to San Francisco. Still in California, am located in the beginning of the Sierra Mountains.
I look forward to hearing from those who have any info I can get.
Thanks, Pat 173.16.63.222 ( talk) 16:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that different articles in the wikipedia are not mutually consistent. This means that moving appropriate references from one article to another in general cannot be done without significant rework, work which does not improve the accuracy or readability of the wikipedia or anything else of any importance. We're not doing this to make pretty looking references for someone with OCD, we add references for purely practical reasons; any form of reference that permits the fact to be checked is fine.
Can anyone give a completely convincing practical argument for this, otherwise I am simply going to remove it.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". - ( User) Wolfkeeper ( Talk) 02:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what universities are like outside the US, but in the US many university professors insist students carefully follow whichever style guildeline has been adopted for a particular course; papers that fail to comply receive lower grades. It is possible that people who attended university in the US will carry this attitude about citations forward in later life and suspect that any article they see with inconsistent citations is poorly written in general, just as many people suspect that articles with poor spelling are poorly written in general. So perhaps consistent citations adds to the credibility of Wikipedia articles. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm in a mood to patch something. In particular, I'd like to improve the <ref> system to reduce the clutter in wikicode. There are several possible ways to do this, but at current I am leaning to towards expanding <references /> to allow reference definitions to appear within a references block, i.e.:
<references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
One could then change all the prior <ref> calls into <ref name="foo" /> and move the cluttered wikicode out of the main body of the text. Of course the current system would continue to function as is, but this would provide an option for greater readability of wikicode if people chose to use it.
Does that sound like a good idea? Do people have other suggestions for (small) ways to improve <ref>? Dragons flight ( talk) 10:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
reflist|3|refs=
<ref name=foo>Foo</ref>
<ref name=bar>Bar</ref>
}}
<ref parent="foo">Page 4</ref>
so we can still use wikitext in the subref bodies (the suggestion in comment #3 is definitely not a good way to do it)).
Anomie
⚔ 11:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)This is a paragraph<ref name="foo"> within a section. <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> This is another paragraph.
== Improving <ref> == I'm in a mood to patch something. In particular, I'd like to improve the <tt><nowiki><ref></tt> system to reduce the clutter in wikicode. There are several possible ways to do this, but at current I am leaning to towards expanding <tt><references /></tt> to allow reference definitions to appear within a references block, i.e.: <pre> <references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
One could then change all the prior <ref> calls into <ref name="foo" /> and move the cluttered wikicode out of the main body of the text. Of course the current system would continue to function as is, but this would provide an option for greater readability of wikicode if people chose to use it.
Does that sound like a good idea? Do people have other suggestions for (small) ways to improve <ref>? Dragons flight ( talk) 10:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
{{
reflist|3|refs=
<ref name=foo>Foo</ref>
<ref name=bar>Bar</ref>
}}
<ref parent="foo">Page 4</ref>
so we can still use wikitext in the subref bodies (the suggestion in comment #3 is definitely not a good way to do it)).
Anomie
⚔ 11:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)This is a paragraph<ref name="foo"> within a section. <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> This is another paragraph.
=== Section === <ref display="foo">This is a sentence in a paragraph.</ref> <ref display="bar">This is another sentence in a paragraph.</ref> === References === <references> <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> <ref define="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
<define>...</define>
tag; that is just asking for confusion and poorly-constructed pages, the wiki equivalent of the evil 'jump' statement in some programming languages. Why are refs different? Because refs are what we'd describe as 'inline' elements: they come between, and sometimes within, the prose sentences. An infobox might be a huge block of ugly code, but it is distinct from the prose: whether or not people understand what the code does, they can easily recognise it as 'the code that makes the infobox appear', and skim past it to the text. Refs are not like that: because they break up the prose so horribly - often many lines of code for something that comes out as four characters on the screen - they are incredibly distracting, and make it almost impossible to copyedit or even read the prose. The reason we have so many problems with punctuation and references being in the wrong order (lorem
[3], ipsum), or even duplicated (lorem,
[4], ipsum) is because by the time you've skimmed through the huge ref body, you've completely forgotten what the preceeding text was like. Anything that makes ref tags less intrusive into the article prose itself is, IMO, a very good idea.Person is X,<ref name=nytimes/> Y,<ref name=post/> and Z.<ref name=la/>
" is more readable for users than "Person is X,<ref>{{citation | date=...(4 lines of markup)}}, Y<ref>(another 4 lines)</ref>, and Z.
". Of course, other ways to reduce clutter and make prose readable when editing are also most welcome.
Shreevatsa (
talk) 00:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
< It is already possible to separate references from the text, using the {{ Note}} and {{ Ref}} templates. (This was mentioned before by Golbez and others but I want to underline it to make sure newer editors understand the issues. This example is adopted from WP:Verification methods.)
Article | This is some information.
1 This information comes from a book.
2 This is more information that comes from a different book.
3 This is a point that needs clarification.
4 This is more information from the first book.
2
|
Wikitext | This is some information.{{ref|1|1}} This information comes from a book.{{ref|2a|2}} This is more information that comes from a different book.{{ref|3|3}} This is a point that needs clarification.{{ref|4|4}} This is more information from the first book.{{ref|2a|2}} === References === # {{note|1}}This tells exactly where this information came from. # {{note|2a}}{{note|2b}}[[John Doe|Doe, John]] (1996), ''Book of Information'', Great Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|3}}[[Jane Doe|Doe, Jane]] (2020), ''More Information'', Better Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|4}}This is a footnote that clarifies the point above. |
What you propose is certainly an improvement over {{ Note}} and {{ Ref}}, because it automatically numbers the footnotes. As several people have noted, many editors would like to see clutter-free text like this example. However, as others have noted, this method was abandoned for several reasons that go beyond just the numbering issue, as discussed by Golbez, JackLee and others above. My own view is this:
That's my two cents. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 18:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Based on the previous discussion, there would appear to be three possible courses of action at the software level for improving <ref>
at the present time.
<ref>
and <references>
as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references>
block.<ref>
so that the content of references may be defined in some other way at an arbitrary point in the page (such as at the end of the relevant section).I would note that the first two of these aren't mutually exclusive, so one could support both and envision changes to allow for both. In order to move forward, I would like to know if a supermajority of Wikipedians support any of these options, hence the purpose of this straw poll, which I will try to advertise in the appropriate places.
Rgardless of any possible changes, the current <ref>
syntax would continue to be fully supported, and changes would affect only how wikicode could be written with no change at all to the rendered page.
Dragons flight (
talk) 11:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Alter <ref>
and <references>
as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references>
block. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified solely by the name parameter.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name="foo" />, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.<ref name="bar" />
While we are discussing how WP handles ref tags, I was wondering if anyone else would prefer a different method for generating the anchor text for a named reference tag. For example, if I create a reference <ref name="NotTheBestReference">, then the anchor used in the generated HTML markup is '#cite_note-NotTheBestReference-1', while for unnamed references you get a simple '#cite_note-0'. Also, the numbering for the references are indexed from 1, but the anchors are indexed from 0, which means that note-0 points to reference 1. This is probably very trivial, but for some reason I find it mildly irritating. Plastikspork ( talk) 20:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Help! I need formatting assistance with citations & reflist supporting the article Enron scandal. If there is an editor who would enjoy tidying this up, he/she will get a barnstar from me, as this article has more citations than I have had hot dinners, and there are probably more to come. -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 09:38, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Someone above commented that it would be nice if <references/>
was appended to the end of pages automatically in cases where it was missing. This could be done already by placing <references/>
in
MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references.
It would need some thoughtful formatting to look good, but it is certainly possible. Do people want to pursue that? Dragons flight ( talk) 09:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
<references />
is missing? I did figure out how to link that message to
Help:Cite errors yesterday, so that should help. This issue is no longer a major problem. We did a lot of work documenting the problems and creating messages and categories and it is well monitored. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk 10:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)I think all references across the project should use the same format. How about once and for all deciding whether commas or periods should be used to separate items within footnotes and reference lists? The citation templates could then be updated and maybe even merged in some cases which would make them easier to maintain and hopefully result in fewer bugs and inconsistencies. Tocant ( talk) 12:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
As a huge reference contributor (sometimes I go into articles and all I do is add references or clean up the existing references) i can say that (1) the vast majority of people don't give a flying flip about formatting references anyway. They stick a url in ref tags or put all pertinent information in ref tags and bolt. I don't think any system would keep people who find that reffing is too tedious from doing that. (2) Wikipedia is ultimately an academic endeavor. I would be highly wary of just coming up with a new consolidated reference system. The current one has been culled from already well-established reference norms in the greater journalistic community. We should put forth some effort to keep with larger academic protocol to maintain respect. (3) If we do simplify, which could be good, we should keep in mind that difference sources have really different needs. Citing a journal, a newspaper, an interview, a magazine article, a television show and a YouTube video has different requirements, and really should be treated accordingly. I'm not against change, and I personally loathe the current citation templates and NEVER use them, but just saying "one citation template to keep it easy" is oversimplifying the issue. I would recommend having a Wikipedia process like Twinkle where you have a series of drop down menus that narrow down which fields are relevant and then auto-formats it. That makes it simple without compromising academic integrity.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 11:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)