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I think an imperative of using in-line citations should be added to that section in this article, such as: "If not already in use, the references in an article should be converted to in-line citations as soon as possible, because the more an article grows, the harder it is to figure out which reference refers to which statement.". Mikael Häggström ( talk) 10:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion at the MOS about ISBN formatting here that editors here may be interested in. Rjwilmsi 08:35, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
Ref 21 keeps telling me that no title is cited, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Serendi pod ous 23:59, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
{{cite web |url=http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm |publisher=USA Today |year=2007 |author= G. Jeffrey MacDonald |accessdate=2010-02-26}}
| title =
parameter.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
00:43, 27 February 2011 (UTC)Recent addition by User:WhatamIdoing states "General references are allowed in all articles except Featured Articles." I do not see this addition discussed or the fact mentioned at WP:FACR. It would be impossible for an article to become FA with just general refs, but this doesn't mean they are not allowed. Am I missing something? — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 19:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not convinced this is a real problem. It isn't any more onerous to use an inline citation, even in a stub. For example:
I can't see why we would want to say the second is okay, when the first is just as easy to write and more informative. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 22:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
SV I think that a general reference section is useful with short citations. to take your example:
- Stub with 2 inline citations to the same book
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. [i 1]
- John Smith is an American footballer, best known for his charity work for the urban poor. [i 2]
- Notes
- ^ Jones 2011, p. 1
- ^ Jones 2011, p. 100
- References
- Jones, Paul (2011). Urban Poverty. Routledge.
I think that your example above would have been better if you had included the page number in you example because we have got distracted. Let us suppose that we used you two examples but both had page numbers and no quote. Then another editor adds a line:
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. [1] In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- Notes
- ^ Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011, p. 1.
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- General references
- Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011. p.1
The problem is that the second version not using in-line citations is already obvious. It is impossible to spot which part of the stub is not referenced without resorting to the history of the article. This makes it much more difficult for an editor (or general reader) just arriving at an article to know which parts are sourced and which parts are not. If it is fixed then the problem remains in the version using general references (but not with in-line citation), because unless one read both sources one can not be sure that both facts are covered (as they could both cover the same one fact):
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- General references
- Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011. p.1
- Star, Ringo Adventures down Mexico way, OUP, 1993, p.10
-- PBS ( talk) 11:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
There's a lot of talk in various places about how to attract new editors, particularly women and more mature people. One of the issues raised is the shock they often get when articles they've created are deleted or proposed for deletion. Having a page that seems to imply general references are okay feeds into that, by creating false expectations.
The fact is, as we all know, that a page with clear inline citations is much more likely to survive—and not only survive, but stabilize—that a page without them. It's the secret sauce of experienced editing. Citing inline, using good sources, and citing very clearly so that sources are easy to find, is the way to create stable articles. It isn't fair not to make that clear to new editors up front. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 22:44, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
(Campbell)
to the end of the sole paragraph in your brand-new stub. Getting hung up on the format really is mindless formalism.(undent) At User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors I'm putting together some advice. It aims to show what happens when a new editor enters WP for the first times, emphasises tools and techniques rather than rules, and uses a more informal style than WP's policies and guideline. Would it be worth publishing as an essay in main space? -- Philcha ( talk) 09:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing you wrote "To say that they are not acceptable in addition to any necessary inline citations is quite odd." I do not think that anyone is saying that they are not to be placed into an article, but as citations for verification they are not acceptable any more than list of items in "further reading" or "external sources" are acceptable as verification. Indeed I would go further and say that sources listed in a ==References== section that are not used as in-line citations should be moved into ==Further reading== if that was a rule, it would clarify the difference between referenced and unreferenced articles. --
PBS (
talk)
21:41, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
How might one go about providing a citation for a table in which all information comes from a single source? Specifically, the Pirate Party of Canada article contains two tables that are taken from information on the website, and it seems redundant to add a <ref> tag to each cell. Right now it's provided by a single tag at the end, but it looks a bit odd. — INTRIGUEBLUE ( talk| contribs) 12:57, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion regarding fundamental interpretation of the verifiability policy regarding citing sources is here [4], which is based on the discussion here [5]. PPdd ( talk) 00:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Has anyone looked into adding a way to make WP:CITESHORT citations easier? Seems that all it would require would be the addition of a tag like the "ref name=" functionality that would be used to distinguish what appears with {{ Reflist}} and the like versus what currently has to be added by hand to the second section that WP:CITESHORT requires. Eg: When using WP:CITESHORT, there is the "Notes" section that is populated with {tl|Reflist}} or the like, plus there's a second section for the full citations, "References", that has to be filled by hand. I don't see why the second section cannot also be automatically populated as well by adding a way to identify the full citations. -- Ronz ( talk) 18:22, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Thinking a bit more on this: By automating it in a manner similar to what I've outlined, it shouldn't be too difficult to automatically create links from the entries in the "Notes" section to the corresponding full references in the "References" section. -- Ronz ( talk) 17:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses. Maybe we don't need the additional automation. I certainly don't have the time to look into implementing the changes. Still, a few more thoughts: Because we wouldn't want any of the currently used citation templates to need changes, it would have to be done as new parameters in citation templates. Let's call them "Isshortref" and "Fullrefname." Isshortref would simply identify short references, distinguishing them from full references. Fullrefname would be a parameter used with short references to identify the name of a full reference used, and this assumes that full references would be named. With this, both the Notes and References could be populated automatically, and entries in each section could be automatically linked to the corresponding entries in the other section. -- Ronz ( talk) 02:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
, which is a more advanced version of the "standard" technique which uses <ref>{{harvnb|...}}</ref>
.{{
harv}}
is pretty thorough, I think. And the section at
WP:CITESHORT links to this documentation in two places!)It was recommended that I bring this here. I have been updating some references in a couple of articles and have noticed several stylistic inconsistencies between the various templates I have been using. Here is an example of what I am referring to:
Here are some examples of the more widely used templates with the most common fields filled in:
{{
citation}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
citation}}){{
cite web}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite web}}){{
cite book}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite book}}){{
cite news}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite news}}){{
cite journal}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite journal}}){{
cite press release}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite press release}})Here are some of the main inconsistencies:
Wouldn't it make sense to have all the templates format citations the same?
There were some other issues I raised in some of my original posts in a few locations, but they errors of my ways have been pointed out and I have removed those issues from this post. -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 06:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
My point is that there should be one citation format for consistency sake, they should all utilize a standard layout of design regardless of who designed them. They should all use commas or the should all use periods, not some this format while others use that. If you look at professional publications, the formats of the citations are consistent across the entire document, not a mish-mash of competing styles. Do the citations in volume 1 of the Encyclopedia Britannica differ from those of volume 14 because the editors preferred different citation formats? No, they do not and since the project is putting out published version eventually, whether on electronic media or hard copy, this should be addressed.
If you could, please take a look at the article Burger King products (the one I was editing when I noticed the variances). There are over two hundred citations and close to fifty notes, and as you scan through the various references you see the differences and it doesn't look neat. Yeah, they're mostly the same, but mostly really isn't very good. I understand that there are some differences because of the source cited has different pices of data that need to be included, but the general layout should be standardized. I would like to discuss this and come to a consensus as to how we should design our citations to insure that we have a constant look across the project, regardless of who developed what.
Gadget's list is a lot more comprehensive than my little one above and he points out every inconsistency in every citation currently used. -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 16:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that good points are made here — for example, the comment now just above but which I will requote as "There is a small but nondecreasing number of non-English-language articles ..." in case later comments separate it. IMHO, consensus developed here (if that can happen) could/should be propagated to developers/maintainers of {{ citation}} {{ cite xxx}} and {{ citation/core}} as Requirements (Requirements with a capital R, in the software engineering sense). Whether such a thing can ever happen in a wiki environment is an open question. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Yet another CITEVAR/REFPUNC issue has come up. An editor is insisting that refs relating to parenthetic material must go outside the parentheses. [6] [7] It is my view that WP:REFPUNC allows refs inside parentheses, and so moving the ref outside is contrary to the WP:CITEVAR principle. The opposition appears to claim that "inside" is allowed only when the referenced material is "part" of the material inside the parentheses, and that a ref which covers the "entirety" of a parenthetic ref must, without exception, always be placed outside the parentheses. Gimmetoo ( talk) 03:51, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
The MLA Style Manual (Achtert & Gibaldi, 1985), referring directly on point to superscripted note numbers, says: "They follow punctuation marks except dashes and occasionally parentheses. (When the note is to only the material that appears within parentheses, the note number is placed before the closing parenthesis.)". Gimmetoo ( talk) 02:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
[8] A point about broader implications, here. Gimmetoo ( talk) 23:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Like CBM says, it looks like the currently prevailing view is to place refs after periods, commas, colons, and probably semicolons, and before dashes. I don't think we have any resolution about parentheses - and indeed, BAG-approved ref-placement-changing scripts that I know of do not touch refs near parentheses. The MLA handbook I have access to clearly says to put footnotes for parenthetic material inside the closing parentheses. This was also consistent with the 15th edition of the CMoS (2003), and it may or may not be consistent with the 16th edition of the CMoS (2010) depending on how one chooses to read it. We could survey other style manuals, but I think it ought to be clear that putting refs for parenthetic material inside the parentheses is at least an accepted style. The last major editorial discussion about ref placement that I recall resolved to allow any established style. Gimmetoo ( talk) 00:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{
citation}}, {{
cite journal}}, {{
cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id=
(or worse {{
arxiv|0123.4567}}
|url=
http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567
), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567
, likewise for |id=
and {{
JSTOR|0123456789}}
|url=
http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789
→ |jstor=0123456789
.
The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):
Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed.
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
15:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Is there a standard somewhere about whether to go through the references on an article and change all the citation author's first names to initials in the name of consistency? (I seem to recall a page about this but I can't track it down now.) I don't agree with this practice, but I would like to know the consensus first. Thanks.— RJH ( talk) 17:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
WP:CITE allows any style. If an article is started with full names, that's fine, and if it's started with initials, that's fine. The style that's already present should be followed for subsequent references. In practice, in the presence of other citation information, initials rarely make a difference in locating a source. To get some confusion, you would need something like two different papers published in the same issue of the same journal on the same pages whose authors have the same last name :) So readers can locate the source with initials or with full names. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Haven't read all the previous stuff. I am in favor of a standard (names or initials, don't care). Academice journals differ in if they use names or initials (and even if they put periods on the initials, run them together, etc.) But they follow the same format WITHIN A JOURNAL. So let's pick a style for the journal of Wikipedia and use it. And don't tell me we do it by the article...that is a clusterfuck and we know it doesn't work....the articles endup a mishmash of styles inside the articles and it requires people to learn 10 different styles. Let's standardize.
My inclination would be to go for full names for the same rationale that we don't generally abbreviate journal names and that we do generally give article names instead of just pages. It's because we are not paper. And a fuller citation better allows the reader to decide if he should try to get the cite, and it really helps with all the verification and such. Of course, sometimes we won't have a full name, but no biggie, use it when we have it. But again, if we can standardize, I am totally fine with initials too.
TCO ( talk) 06:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Per the prior discussion, what I'd like to propose is to insert the following compromise recommendation into the Style variation section of the style guide:
Alternatively, we could just list cases where we would want to retain the full author name. Thanks.— RJH ( talk) 14:44, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I think I see where there is a problem in our discussion. You and I may be interpreting the example differently; to me it means to use each of the individual words of the names as they appear in the source: Smith, John Q. rather than Smith, J. Q., when the source says John Q. Smith. For me this follows from the statement that, "Wikipedia has no shortage of space, you need not abbreviate names." Yes, of course we should use a consistent layout. I'm not disputing that. My only concern is with the format of the first (or middle name).— RJH ( talk) 19:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Open Library has an option to get a full Wikipedia citation for any book in it's catalogue, for example http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13538404M/Der_Steppenwolf . I think we should mention that somewhere, because it's a really handy and simple way to get citations for books. Any suggestions? Sadads ( talk) 14:12, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
{{Citation |publisher = Suhrkamp |publication-place = Frankfurt am Main |title = Steppenwolf |url = http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13538404M/Der_Steppenwolf |author = Hermann Hesse |edition = Der Steppenwolf |publication-date = 1960 |oclc = 6584578 }}
{{
cite book}}
is far more commonly used than {{
citation}}
, and cite book has the advantage that it handles the |trans_title=
parameter, which citation doesn't (hence the misuse of |edition=
). --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:40, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm... I see. The citation should most likely use |ol=13538404M
rather than the URL, since that will lead to better appearance and tell people the link will take them to OpenLibrary. It should also make better use of the parameters (for this book, the following would be optimal), and give the option of multiline
{{Citation |author=Hermann Hesse <!-- Or possibly |last=Hesse |first=Hermann --> |year=1960 <!-- Or possibly |date=1960 to simplify compatibility |title=Der Steppenwolf with full dates such as 18 February 1974 --> |series=His Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben |language=German <!-- Which should be omitted if it's English --> |publisher=Suhrkamp |location=Frankfurt am Main |oclc=6584578 |ol=13538404M }}
or single line
{{Citation |author=Hermann Hesse |year=1960 |title=Der Steppenwolf |series=His Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben |language=German |publisher=Suhrkamp |location=Frankfurt am Main |oclc=6584578 |ol=13538404M}}
to produce
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
|date=
for a pure year, 60% of the time it's misinterpreted and Harvard reference linking fails; as it happens, 1960 falls within the 40% where |date=1960
does work. Further info at
Template:Harv#Wikilink to citation does not work item 2.1.1.4 and
the linked note.|last=
|first=
are used, since otherwise the Harvard ref will need to contain the full author name. Compare (
Hesse 1960, p. 123) , which doesn't link to the above citation, with (
Hermann Hesse 1960, p. 123), which does. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
|date=
and |author=
because it might not be possible to ensure data integrity if |last=
|first=
and |year=
are used. If |last=
|first=
(and |last2=
|first2=
...) can't be filled properly, then |author=
should be used. If |year=
can't be filled properly, |date=
should be used (AWB and Bots will convert |date=
into |year=
when appropriate anyway).
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
15:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
How does one make it clear that a given ref is applicable to the entire content of a section, or a whole list, table, paragraph, etc? Roger ( talk) 19:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I have noticed that the following template {{Dead link|date=}} is occasionally added to some references where the reference link has gone dead. This seems to allow for AGF that the reflink did exist when it was added. My question is should we add this as an alternative to item five in the WP:DEADREF section that requires removal of the reference. I am not asking that we chose one over the other, that should be left to an editors discretion. I just think that we might want to acknowledge the template in the guideline. I look forward to your input and thank you for your time. MarnetteD | Talk 16:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
In my opinion, item 5 of WP:Citing sources#Preventing and repairing dead links should be removed as it violates WP:AGF. The same reference could easily pop up at a new site sometime later. New archives of information are constantly appearing online as new services and websites appear. Some examples.
There are many more examples. It would be extremely easy for somebody to think they searched everywhere — not realizing there were other sources — and remove information that could be verifiied by somebody else. Item 5 of WP:DEADREF should be removed. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 23:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
(TL:DR version: just remove item five as it is harmful) I just found this discussion from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Conflict between guidelines and I am quite surprised by item five from Wikipedia:DEADREF#Preventing and repairing dead_links which reads: "If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage, then the citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unsourced." I am absolutely against this advice. Yes, it conflicts with Wikipedia:Link rot which contains better advice. The compromise is the minimum I would accept, but we should allow a dead link template to remain regardless. Indeed, assume good faith of the editor that added the original cite. A first hand example: back in 2008 I moved cites from a Danish museum to LZ 13 Hansa. I remember going through that site ( now dead) carefully gathering all possible sources for several Zeppelin facts. The museum website URL went 404 some time back; I recall another editor finding its replacement URL (and some are now at Zeppelin#Danish Post & Tele Museum Zeppelin articles); nevertheless the old URL in LZ 13 Hansa is still dead and not in the Internet Archive. I now see the museum revamped their site at http://mini.ptt-museum.dk/zeppex/en/enFront.html so someone *may* be able to re-find the Flash page I had cited, but it took me quite a search the first time. If my cite was just deleted (after a dead link tag was added maybe), that would be a net loss to wikipedia. - 84user ( talk) 19:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Now that I have read more of this thread, I agree with User:Hydroxonium and again call for that item five to be removed. Even cutting and moving it to the talk page runs the risk it gets buried in an archive and lost. I feel how we handle citations is a short-term stop-gap measure until we have a better method of copying cited sources ala WebCite or Internet Archive. Preferably superior to both as they risk "losing" their copies. Another example, David Schwarz (aviation_inventor) has a potentially controversial claim cited by this note which links to exhibit list from now-stale Traum von Fliegen museum site. That link sometimes goes 404 (I use [9] to check). In fact even the Internet Archive cache copy of it went "server error" on me a few minutes ago. Yes, I should add more identifying details. But what if both it and its archive went 404? - 84user ( talk) 20:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
"Not visible today in the archives" is importantly different from "not in the archives". Given that it is impossible to determine whether a recently dead link has or has not been archived recently, I think we should probably change the guidance to normally retaining dead links, but labeling them as dead citations. Specifically, given the ~18-month delay in archive visibility, I think it appropriate to retain dead links for at least ~24 months (to increase the likelihood that they're actually not in the archives). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Hydoxonium responded to my post above asking for specific recommendations. I think it might help to have a step-by-step process of recommendations and/or requirements for preventing and repairing dead links. What we have now is something like that, but falls a bit short. Following are some ideas, not exactly what I think should be put in the guideline, as I have a number of explanatory remarks to the editors here about why I thought some of these things are good ideas.
When editors find a dead link in an article, even though that reference has ceased to be Verifiable, they should follow this process:
Thoughts? Шизомби (Sz) ( talk) 22:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Four quick thoughts:
There was no consensus to remove item 5, but the general feeling was that due diligence should be taken before removing references. This could include the following:
I believe that's all of the suggestions people had before removing a reference. - Hydroxonium ( T• C• V) 09:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Current | Proposed |
---|---|
1. First, check the link to confirm that it is dead. The site may have been temporarily down or have changed its linking structure. | Confirm status: First, check the link to confirm that it is dead and not temporarily down. Search the website to see whether it has been rearranged. |
2. The Internet Archive (
http://www.archive.org/) has billions of archived webpages. There may be a delay of six months before a link shows up there. See Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine.
3. UK Government Web Archive ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/), a project of The National Archives, preserves 1500 UK central government websites captured by the European Archive Foundation.[13] |
Check for web archives: Several archive services exist; add one of these URLs if available:
Most archives currently operate with a delay of ~18 months before a link is made public. As a result, editors should wait ~24 months after the link is first tagged as dead before declaring that no web archive exists. Dead URLs to reliable sources should normally be tagged with |
4. Remove the dead link and keep the citation without a link if the material exists offline; for example a journal or newspaper article. | Remove convenience links: If the material was published on paper (e.g., academic journal, newspaper article, magazine, book), then the URL is not necessary. Simply remove it. |
Find a replacement source: Search the web for quoted text or the article title. Consider contacting the website/person that originally published the reference and asking them to republish it. Ask other editors for help finding the reference somewhere else. Find a different source that says essentially the same thing as the reference in question. | |
5. If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage, then the citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unsourced. | Remove hopelessly lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you are unable to find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverifiable. If it is material that is
specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with {{
citation needed}} . It may be helpful to future editors if you move the citation to the talk page with an explanation.
|
The above takes the existing text and incorporates the advice that Hydroxonium summarized above. Does this work for people? Shall we update this and be done with this question? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Since everyone agrees, I'll make the changes in a minute. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
The explanatory text at Template:Cite web states that it is to be used to cite online sources, but that Cite news can also be used when citing a news source. This seems to clearly indicate that if your source is an 'online newspaper' you can use either template. However, see this bot revision [10] has changed the reference from a cite web to a cite news. Is there any consensus for this? Eldumpo ( talk) 12:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
OK, there seems to be consensus that news should be used in preference to web. I therefore propose the following text should be included as the intro to Template:cite web.
"This template is used to cite online sources in Wikipedia articles. However, it is preferred that {{ Cite news}}, {{ Cite book}} and {{ Cite journal}} are used instead for those citations that are online versions of newspapers, books or journals. For general information about citations in Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Cite sources. A general discussion of the use of templates for adding citations to Wikipedia articles is available at Wikipedia:Citation templates."
Any comments on this text, and also, is it OK to just go in and edit the template (given it is in use on so many pages), or does it need to be done by an admin? Eldumpo ( talk) 22:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Per your request Eldumpo here is a table comparing the parameter differences between the three citation types above. As you can see, although all three have fields in common each has fields the others do not. The wording looks good to me though.
Cite parameter | Web | Journal | News |
---|---|---|---|
|accessdate=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|agency=
|
No | No | Yes |
|archivedate=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|archiveurl=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|at=
|
Yes | No | Yes |
|author=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|author2=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author3=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author4=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author5=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author6=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author7=
|
No | No | Yes |
|authorlink=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|authorlink2=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|bibcode=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|coauthors=
|
Yes | No | No |
|date=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|doi=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|editor-first=
|
No | Yes | No |
|editor-last=
|
No | Yes | No |
|editor-link=
|
No | Yes | No |
|first=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|first1=
|
No | Yes | No |
|first2=
|
No | Yes | No |
|format=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|id=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|isbn=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|issn=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|issue=
|
No | Yes | No |
|journal=
|
No | Yes | No |
|language=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|last=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|last1=
|
No | Yes | No |
|last2=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laydate=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laysource=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laysummary=
|
No | Yes | No |
|location=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|month=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|newspaper=
|
No | No | Yes |
|oclc=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|page=
|
Yes | No | Yes |
|pages=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|pmc=
|
No | Yes | No |
|pmd=
|
No | No | Yes |
|pmid=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|postscript=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|publisher=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|quote=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|ref=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|separator=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|series=
|
No | Yes | No |
|title=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|trans_title=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|url=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|volume=
|
No | Yes | No |
|work=
|
Yes | No | No |
|year=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
-- Kumioko ( talk) 01:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I undid an edit that changed this guideline to say that the use of "named" references is mandatory when the same footnote content is used more than once. My reasons:
If there is some general agreement that using named references is mandatory, then by all means we should clarify it in this page or at WP:FOOTNOTES. But it seems strange to me to mandate that.
Of course, if we do mandate it, a bot will take care of implementing named references for all duplicate footnotes in all articles; the change to this guideline was by a bot operator who has proposed running that task. So we have to keep in mind whether that's desirable. Other people use footnotes more than I do, so I'd value some other opinions. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
<ref name="CROG199"/>
. You can't tell what it is. And it's utterly unintelligible to new editors. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
06:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)<ref name=Smith2001p123>Smith (2001) p. 123</ref>
be preferred to <ref>Smith (2001) p. 123</ref>
. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
15:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
tags, I name them but only where necessary to consolidate duplicate refs - if an inline ref supports only one paragraph, sentence or phrase, I leave it un-named. For new articles, I use {{
sfn}}
instead. This names all inline refs, whether necessary or not: but the crucial thing is that it's done invisibly, see
Wolf's Castle Halt railway station in particular the Parker & Morris 2008 refs. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
18:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Yes I agree, the {{
sfn}}
is pretty nice. Perhaps we need something equivalent for people who use full inline cites? (I.e. a template that requires just enough fields filled out to uniquely correlate it with a full cite.)—
RJH (
talk)
18:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that this is drifting seriously off-topic, because some people posting here are misunderstanding the original question. Carl (CBM) states that he 'undid an edit that changed this guideline to say that the use of "named" references is mandatory when the same footnote content is used more than once'. Some recent postings seem to be mixing this up with list-defined references, for which naming of the reference is most definitely mandatory.
The relevant revert is here, an amendment to WP:CITEFOOT. The text that Carl reverted was:
and the text that he reverted to is:
Consider the situation where two facts are drawn from the same page in the same book, but in between them is a fact drawn from a different source. Other than placing all the refs at the end of the paragraph, there are at least two ways of doing this:
The first fact.<ref>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref> The second fact.<ref>Jones, S. (2010} ''Another book'', p. 321</ref> The third fact.<ref>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref>
The first fact.<ref name=Smith>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref> The second fact.<ref name=Jones>Jones, S. (2010} ''Another book'', p. 321</ref> The third fact.<ref name=Smith />
The question is, therefore,
A user ( User:Fleetham) who likes to provide multiple references for every sentence when they edit, has picked up on the possibility of bundling references. However, since they provide so very many references and often the same one repeatedly, the same reference is often quoted several times in the reference. For an illustration, the reference section of the BYD Auto article currently shows a Wall Street Journal article ("Beijing Halts Construction of BYD Auto Plant") FOUR times and several other cites are listed twice or more.
To me, the obvious solution is to provide less references, but the other user is adamant about providing citations for everything. Is it best to bundle and cite the same reference over and over again, or are multiple superscripts preferred? ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃ ( talk) 16:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
How is it done? Kindle does not display page numbers, which is a huge pain in the ass for any student in class who has to refer to a certain page or reference it for a research paper. Instead they have these worthless "location numbers" which as far as I know are not accepted outside of Kindle in any standard referencing. Are location numbers acceptable in a citation on Wikipedia? I would not be surprised if the answer is a big resounding no. And if not, do you cite Kindle like you would a webpage or like a theatrical play? i.e. "Chapter 5, Section 2, Paragraph 8" etc. Thanks to anyone who knows anything about this subject and is willing to answer my questions. Cheers.-- Pericles of Athens Talk 20:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I have a source coming from the United States Census Bureau, but it is convenience linked on Ancestry.com. I have checked with WP:RSN and it (Ancestry.com) is a Reliable Source (since it is actually coming from the Census Bureau). My question is, who do I source in the source template? Ancestry.com, the US Census Bureau, or both? - Neutralhomer • Talk • Coor. Online Amb'dor • 22:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Is there any guidance/best practice for the use of the accessdate parameter on the citation templates. If you click on an existing reference which already has a 'retrieved on...' entry, should you automatically update the date to the day you checked it, or should you only update the access date if you make other changes to the citation (title, author etc)? Eldumpo ( talk) 10:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
|url=
parameter, instead you should add both |archiveurl=
and |archivedate=
, leaving |url=
alone. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
12:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your responses on this. I wasn't intending to go around randomly updating access dates for various articles, my query really was more related to if I was changing the citations anyway, and I take the point that if you do update the access date you should check that there is not more than one reference and that they are all still referenced at the source. Just to clarify one point above, access date is very important when there is no publication date listed for the source. I think that updating the access date may give some general confidence to the reader that the reference is still current, if it's been recently updated. Eldumpo ( talk) 09:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Some time ago there was an extended discussion of adopting a single citation style for Wikipedia. Does anyone remember where the discussion is located? Jc3s5h ( talk) 15:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
I was reading Win Butler's biography which states that he has met co-singer Regine Chassagne at McGill University. Other biographies on the band itself imply that they met at Concordia university.
Which is the correct version???
My Sources: Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.152.52.22 ( talk) 16:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
If I have several citations supporting a sentence, say "[1][2][3]", is there a way (a template?) to have this automatically be converted into "[1–3]"? bamse ( talk) 10:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
For an article I'm working on, there is a likely high-priority source that I need to use that is basically, at the present time, an e-featurette written specifically for the iPad (the work is discussed here: [11]). It is unlikely it will be made as a printed work, and also unlikely it would be posted to the web (the app has a website to tell people what it is about), but it may see other OS support (android, PC/Mac, etc), so it always will basically be an interactive application that provides information.
I cannot see any of the existing cite templates easily working for that. I can shoehorn it into them (cite web and pointing to the app's homepage would be one way), but I'd rather see if there's an existing template or should we consider one for the future if such types of works become more common. -- MASEM ( t) 13:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Although this may be quite obvious, we still need to have some formal policy on this (I am not sure if there already is. Please point me towards one if there is.). Very often different news reports from different reliable sources do not agree with each other. This happens more often when it comes to numbers (e.g. number of casualties, etc. See July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike for example). Under such circumstances the best thing to do is to clearly mention that there are conflicting reports, and then clearly explain each report/view, and provide multiple citations for each. Please discuss this below. - Subh83 ( talk | contribs) 18:32, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
My apologies if this has already been addressed and I just can't find it, but my question is what page number should be used when the source is a PDF file: The original page of the document or the page of the PDF file? The PDF file may also contain the document cover and other pages that are not numbered on a hard copy. Thanks, Alanraywiki ( talk) 23:09, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
The section Text-source integrity makes a claim that is not supportable:
The following inline citation, for example, is not helpful, because the reader does not know whether each source supports the material; each source supports part of it; or just one source supports it with the others added as further reading:
Delia Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below for how to do that.
The next section ( Bundling citations) then goes on to suggest :
A simple example of citation bundling:
The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot. [1]
Notes
- ^ For the sun's size, see Miller, Edward. The Sun. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1.
- For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon," Scientific American, 51(78):46.
- For the sun's heat, see Smith, John. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2005, p. 2.
But to solve this alleged problem instead of bundling them one could simple add the additional information to the separate citations:
A simple example of not bundling citations:
The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot. [b 1] [b 2] [b 3]
- Notes
AFAICT there may be aesthetic reasons for bundling up citations but Text-source integrity is not one of the other reasons. If bundling is removed from Text-source integrity should the section be removed or should it be altered to say place inline citations where they most clearly support the text. and give an example of a longer sentence such as "Charels II's Scottish coronation took pace on 1 January 1651, while his English coronation was over 10 years later on 23 April 1661." with 2 citations at the end, and then, to demonstrate Text-source integrity the same two sources, one placed after the comma and the other at the end of the sentence. -- PBS ( talk) 12:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
SV you wrote "then pls discuss instead; some of the addition is unclear" If I am to discuss the changes with you need to explain what parts of my changes you think were unclear. -- PBS ( talk) 15:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
All the edit I made did to the Text-source integrity section was to delete "Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below (Bundling citations) for how to do that." and used the previous example from the guideline to demonstrate a failure of in Text-source integrity
Bundling citations is not the only way that can done see the top of this talk page section for an example of another way it can be done. It can also be done by moving the citations back to where they are relevant as they are in the the original example sentences "The sun is pretty big,..." -- PBS ( talk) 22:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the consider sentence coupled with the wording in next section is a false claim. But I an not going to argue further with you over whether it is claim or something else. It is that the wording is inappropriate for this section, as it is only one of several ways to solve the problem, and there is no need in this section to emphasise one solution. It can be deleted without affecting the important message conveyed in the section. As to your point "people generally try to avoid [placing citations after commas]" I suspect you mean "I (SV) generally try to avoid them". Perhaps for the sake of "text-source integrity" you should reconsider that self imposed prohibition.
As the Sun example is used in previous sections it seems to me appropriate to use it here to demonstrate text-source integrity by presenting it as it has already been presented and then again with the citations all clumped together at the end of the two sentences. -- PBS ( talk) 16:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
From the history of the article:
"was better before;" matter of opinion. "not clear what some of this means" Which part? -- PBS ( talk) 09:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
It looks like PBS's issue is the implicit claim that the only way to prevent this problem is to bundle all the citations into a single footnote. This is both obviously not true and obviously (to me, at least) not what any of us intended.
Why don't we create a brief section or sub-section on ==Describing sources== or some such? CITEBUNDLE could refer to it, but it could be linked in other situations, e.g., when separate footnotes are being used at the end of a multi-fact sentence.
Additionally, we could be clearer in CITEBUNDLE that the technique is useful when naming many sources that all support exactly the same single fact in a single-fact sentence. If the sentence is "The Earth is an oblate spheroid", and you follow it with six independent reliable sources, each of which says exactly "The Earth is an oblate spheroid," then typing "For the shape of the Earth being an oblate spheroid, see:" six times—or even once—is silly. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
I have neither the time nor inclination to enter into a debate on this issue, but I have independently come to this talk page in order to comment on the Delia Smith example, and was surprised to discover an ongoing discussion about it. However, I can't work out whether the discussion above is particularly pertinent to the point I was hoping to make - mostly because I can't quite see what PBS is driving at, nor can I identify the locus of the dispute that SV has with PBS, or why the debate seems so hot-tempered. So please treat this not as an attempt to extend the above discussion, but the raising of a fresh point. (It's quite possible that I'm alarmed by the same thing that PBS is. In fact I am having great difficulty putting my finger on the best way to phrase my complaint, and it's entirely possible nobody is going to comprehend the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps the same fate befell PBS?)
I'm not going to repeat the "Delia Smith" text as it is visible above. But from the moment I saw it, my alarm bells started ringing. As it stands, I'm not currently sure that I understand its meaning, or the point that it is trying to make. If I do understand it, I think it's clearly wrong as written. If I don't understand, then I am "misreading" it - at least, I am reading the words in a way that is different to how the writer intended me to. Either way, the point that the text is intended to drive home, is not well-made.
I have no intention of getting bogged down arguing the toss over whether the text is technically true or false or somewhere in between, or quite why/how I'm misreading or miscomprehending it, partly because it's naturally difficult to verbalize misreadings, and partly because I may simply be blind to what is staring at my face. But I'm not normally an idiot, I'm clearly not the only one struggling with this section, and this is theoretically a guide to teach (often newish) editors how to reference properly - so the fact it's causing confusion even among experienced editors is not a healthy sign. Instead I'm going to suggest a simple amendment to the wording, by tweaking the [deliberately bad] example slightly.
"Delia Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer.[3][4][5][6]" --> "Delia Smith is one of the UK's most well-known cooks, and that country's best-selling cookery writer.[3][4][5][6]"
If the point this section is trying to drive at, is what I think it ought to be, then this rewording makes the point much clearer, at least to me. I suspect some other readers will find the same. Perhaps others will find that this wouldn't make it any clearer to them, but they might grasp why it makes it clearer to me. I'm sure others still will not see what the fuss is about, because their reading of the section seems so natural to them, they can't even imagine what could be throwing me: in that case I beg you to accept the change regardless, because confusion among the audience is real (treat me and perhaps PBS as "user experience" data) and it can be difficult to understand the misunderstandings of others! On the other hand, perhaps those who wrote or feel they understand the section, will consider that my proposed change to the example obfuscates - or even utterly invalidates - the "learning point" it was intended to establish. (That's quite possible, for I'm aware I may have totally misconceived the meaning of the section.) If that's the case then my suggestion is useless, but please have a go at recrafting a fresh example/wording to use instead, because it is sorely needed.
This is no criticism of the author(s) of that section! Sometimes we all write things that make total sense to us, because we know what we mean and the point we are trying to express, yet which almost inexplicably some readers cannot derive the same sense from. FWIW my interest in this page is because many years ago I created {{ harvnb}} and am therefore partly responsible for the upwards trend in WP:CITESHORT. It's interesting to see how this format is now incorporated into the editorial guidelines. In fact I found the guidelines on the whole very clear, and a massive improvement on the help available when I was starting out on WP, back in the days when even FAs had no inline citations! TheGrappler ( talk) 01:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
(Query about a specific problem moved to user's talk page and replied to there. — SMALL JIM 12:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC))
I have been working on User:Gadget850/Citation templates— anchors. Should this be moved into Wikipedia space somewhere so it can be used and updated? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I have seen short footnotes used effectively where a book is cited at several different pages. Each page ref has a separate footnote, and then the full citation is given in the "References" or "Bibliography" section. However, I am starting to see a number of short articles now that do not have multiple footnotes to different pages in the same book, and can be easily covered by the full citation in the footnotes without a separate references section. I find this to be much easier to use because the footnotes have a ^ link symbol that allows me to return to the text, which is not present in the bibliography. Could we amend the short footnote MOS to state a preference for the long footnotes except in cases where multiple footnotes refer to different pages in the same book or other source? Thanks Racepacket ( talk) 18:02, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
An issue came up during the GA review for Don't Look Now in regards to the reference format. The review is at Talk:Don't_Look_Now/GA1, and the relevant parts are the reviewer's last review point and my point listed at #8.
The issue revolved around me putting the website name in the 'work' parameter:
Canby, Vincent (10 December 1973). "Don't Look Now (1973) – Film:'Don't Look Now,' a Horror Tale:Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Leads The Cast Suspense Yarn Turns Into a Travelogue". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
The reviewer felt that the newspaper name (The New York Times) should have gone in the 'work' parameter and the "The New York Times Company" in the 'publisher' parameter.
I'm happy to do this if this is the preferred protocol, but the reason I did it is that newspaper references rarely list the publishing company, they effectively publish themselves. In all the academic references I've seen only the newspaper name is given. When it's sourced online it is usually accompanied by the full url, so the name of the website is still explicitly given in the reference, which is effectively where you got your information from. A quirk of Wikipedia is that the url is hidden beneath the title, so just to make the information sources explicit I used the work parameter to provide the website address; it just seemed a bit weird looking at list of online references and not seeing the website names.
There are a lot of policies and guidelines about referencing so my apologies if this is covered somewhere, but is there a specific guideline for using these parameters in this context? I can pull the work parameter if I've incorrectly used it, that isn't a problem, but is it common practice to add in the actual publishing company? My aim is to get the article to FA status eventually, so I'd like to get the references in order, especially if my citations are unorthodox and could derail an FA nomination. I'm interested in personal opinions as well as the policy perspective. Betty Logan ( talk) 05:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I am doing some cleanup on Fantastic Mr. Fox (film) and encountered the use of a wikiquote as a references. The existence of {{ Cite wikisource}} suggests it is generally accepted to cite wikisource; is it also okay to cite wikiquote, and if so, is there a template that is recommended to use? Thanks. 67.100.125.30 ( talk) 01:36, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I think that for high quality articles, FA at the very least, all book references should have Google Book page links (where possible). They make verification tremendously easier. Thoughts? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:24, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
There isn't really much to debate here. Google links are optional but of course not mandatory. There is no requirement for sources being available online nor is there (currently) a consent for such a thing iamginable.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC) Also note that if you want to use Google links nevertheless, that there is a template available: {{Google books|ID|displayed text|page=}}-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, one should point out that the legal controversy is about the GB books with "snippet view", which are fairly irrelevant here because you can't really link to individual page of those. Those with (limited) page view have an explicit agreement with the publisher. See WSJ; I've updated the Wikipedia article from that. Tijfo098 ( talk) 20:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
I completely missed that the guideline has now an explicit section on Google Books for a while. I'm not against that, however there are a few points that imho need to be considered:
-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 13:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
http://faq.dtnorway.com/question?questionid=1032#comments —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atremist ( talk • contribs) 09:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
A relevant RfC is in progress at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Dead url parameter for citations. Your comments are welcome, thanks! — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:59, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi all: I thought it might be useful to have a note in "Identifying parts of a source" about using times to refer to specific points of interest in audio-visual material. I moved the "books" example into its own bullet point and expanded it to "books and print articles", and added a new bullet point for "audio and video sources". The various {{ cite media}} templates support this parameter already.
I also added "Sound recordings" and "Film, TV, or video recordings" to the "Examples" section to indicate the kind of information that usually goes into citing this type of material.
More eyes and fine-tuning certainly welcome! Cheers -- Rlandmann ( talk) 12:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
This is a common misconception. I've seen this reasonably enough to wonder if we shouldn't make some clear statement in this (?) policy that yes, most sentences need references. With a nod towards Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue, this is a wiki, and sentences may be moved, added to, and so on. Just few days ago I reviewed a DYK and asked the nom for an ref for the hook inside a para. The para's last sentence had a same ref, and you'd think the middle, where the hook was from, would have the same one, right? But it was instead another source the nom used, but forgot to add to that para (see this). This is just one of many cases which prove that it is better safe than sorry, and referencing each sentence is the right thing to do.
If you are not convinced, imagine a paragraph with only end-of-para reference. Do you assume that the last reference cover all the sentences? If so, you trust Wikipedia more than I would. Can you be certain that it wasn't an unreferenced para to which somebody added a new, referenced sentence, or if that ref at some point really was for all sentences, that nobody added unreferenced content to the middle? If somebody were to add new content to the middle of that para, with a reference - would you then assume that the beginning of that para is referenced with the new, middle-of-the para ref? Or if such a para was split into two, thus leaving the first one unreferenced? I hope it is clear why each sentence has to have its own reference. Suggestions on how to stress it (in this policy?) would be welcome.
PS. A while ago, I reviewed a DYK and asked the nom for inline cites. He grudgingly added the single one necessary for the hook, and for the few cite needed templates I added. The article used a single source, and he "promised" me that he would remove all the inline cites as "the article is good enough with a general reference, and all those footnotes look ugly...". Ugh. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 01:00, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Piotrus has just arrived at an article I've been editing, and that he has never edited, to add an unreferenced tag [16] because of this exchange. This is POINTy and disruptive. Please don't do that kind of thing again. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 01:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Sourcing single sentences rather than paragraphs might have a slightly better text source integrity but you can't trust that either and it can easily manipulated by other editors as well. Hence the notion that single sentence sourcing is always a real improvement is imho nonsense and false focus on formalities or visual gimmicks. The only way to check whether an article is properly sourced is to actually read the sources. Generally we require only that the citation is "reasonably close" to the sourced text, which you usually means that latest at the end of the paragraph the source should show up or in the case of very short articles you simply might list them at the end. If you want to be particularly precise yourself you could use annotated bundled citations. However I don't think that is something can be required (maybe recommended though), as it significantly increases the workload for the author and as a general idea keep it simple to contribute.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 01:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
The important thing to remember here is that citations are primarily for editors and "power readers", the vast majority of people aren't interested in finding out where the material came from.
Our policies are clear; every piece of material must be verifiable, but there is nothing that prescribes whether that is via inline citation, bibliography or simply by linking to it in an edit summary. This is good, it gives editors a degree of flexibility, which means that if you are writing an article and want to cite every single sentence then you can do so. And those of us who prefer to use citations in a more restrained way can do so.
There are some Wikipedia processes which force a particular form of reference; for example if you want an article to be promoted for FA (and to a lesser extend GA) you are going to need to have inline cites at least for each paragraph (and, conversely, you'd likely be asked to remove cites duplicated sentence after sentence).
On the specific issue of citing each sentence; I do think it is messy, and I suggest that we try to be considerate of readers when placing cites. It is the same issue of "citation stacking" where a word or sentence is queued up with 5 references to support it (perhaps because it has been contentious). This can interrupt the flow of reading.
When I read an article (for my own education/enjoyment) I usually hide the references (for which I have a neat little script) because it can become distracting.
Reading Piotrus' comments I have to question what purpose citing every sentence serves; everything has to be verifiable, whether it has an inline citation or not. I do not think that having a duplicated inline citation for every sentence helps - if those citations are all different, with specific page numbers, then yes, perhaps. But otherwise surely a paragrapgh sourced to a single source need only be cited once :)
There is a balance between editorial ease and readability, I think demanding per-sentence citation for every sentence sacrifices too much readability. For exmaple, my pet article would be a mess of [1]'s and each reference at the foot of the page would have about 20 linksabcdefghijklmnopqrstuv. I fail to see the use of this.
Essentially this is making the argument that stuffing inline citations improves the referencing of articles, a concept which completely misses the point IMO and does nothing to improve quality, verifiability or readability. Everything should be verifiable to a source, ideally that source should be noted on the article and convention suggests adequate inline citations for ease of verification. Requiring per sentence citations is a step way too far (it is something you would never get past the FA crowd, for example) and serves no useful purpose.
On a personal note; if I came across a paragraph with every sentence cited to the same sources it would actually raise a red flag to me as likely dubious content that needs to be looked at. -- Errant ( chat!) 10:27, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
With production bases located in China,[9] the Philippines,[9] and Taiwan,[9] Yulon makes license-built[citation needed] versions of many automakers' models.[9] The companies it manufactures in cooperation with include Chrysler,[9] Geely,[10] GM,[9] Mercedes Benz,[9] Mitsubishi,[9] and Nissan.[9]
Rather than having the reader guess what part of the text is cited, it would be nice if the range were highlighted in some manner. A possibility would be to change the shape of the cursor over a range of cited text. Currently the page shows either the 'text' cursor or the 'hand' cursor. What if it showed, say, the 'default' (or perhaps the 'help') cursor over a range of cited text? This would provide feedback to the viewer. For example, this range of blue text has a different cursor shape.[1] Regards, RJH ( talk) 16:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I, for one, am not sure which universe the folks who oppose referencing each sentence have arrived from—have they not edited anything around here or what? It would, of course, be great if all editors always made sure that whatever they are editing at the moment is covered by the source which is cited at the end of the paragraph, but let's be real, shall we? It's not gonna happen. Ours, indeed, is not an ideal world. People move stuff around, insert/delete sentences, and re-arrange citations all the time, and more often than not all they care about is the material, not how well that material is represented in the source being cited. Sadly, for many people referencing is an afterthought, a mundane chore, something to get out of the way quickly. And while such attitudes continue, it's very naive to expect the ideal behavior from everyone. Ugly or not, citing every sentence is the best way to keep up with the fluidity of the content, and while not everyone wants to do it or is even capable of doing it, at least don't tell those who are to cease and desist!— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); June 1, 2011; 17:20 (UTC)
I agree with the consensus here and policy, that one need not (and indeed should not) cite every sentence unless required. A citation that covers two or three sentences, or even an entire paragraph, is preferable to filling up the page with repeated citation superscripts. Jayjg (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Ëzhiki, I think it is important have experience with a problem before proposing a solution. Citations getting mixed up is a problem - it is not one caused by citing paragraphs, and it is not one solved by citing sentences. I've worked on articles where citations get churned all over the place regardless of where they were placed. If the article is undergoing a lot of work by a number of editors you are going to lose track of sources, nothing much can change that. If you have an article with minimal activity where an editor comes in an breaks up a paragraph then it is their responsibility to make sure it is all adequately cited afterwards :) Sure, citing sentences allows them to be lazy, but it's too much of a trade off to disrupt the reader. -- Errant ( chat!) 10:11, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The day may come when Wikipedia finds itself with millions of Google Books citations that are broken.
Google Books is not a reliable long term site for linking citations on Wikipeida: Google makes no promise it will maintain the archive in current format; URL formats may change; books may switch from free to pay, since publishers re-publish old titles and Google removes them as free; Google may go out of business or be acquired; Google may determine books are no longer profitable and cancel or change the service.
Yet, Google is a huge resource, what is one to do? There are two solutions: Internet Archive and HathiTrust. Both of these non-profit academic-oriented sites mirror books from Google, plus have additional books they have scanned independently. In fact both these sites are larger than Google, in terms of Public Domain titles. Most people think of Google Books is the biggest/best, but it's really a poor quality also-ran whose future is uncertain. Probably the best site for long-term linking is HathiTrust because its run and maintained by the same University libraries where Google scanned the books originally. They have stated the links will be permanent and unchanging for 1000 years (or however long these Universities are in existence). If your serious about citations to scanned books that will last, it's the one to use. Green Cardamom ( talk) 20:39, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Well free alternatives to Google Books are welcome and the issues with Google Books are known. However that doesn't change the fact that Google Books is by far the most convenient and most comprehensive thing out there for the moment (and at least the near future). Note that in most cases archive.org or HathiTrust offer no alternative, since the most common use of Google in WP is the limited preview of authoritative recent books rather than (old) PD books and the former are not available on archive.org or HathiTrust.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 06:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
Book link}}
or {{
Cite link}}
and tried to encourage people to link to book pages only through this template? For now, the template would be identical to {{
Google books}}
, except that it takes an ISBN rather than Google ID. Then, going forward, if Google books ceases to do it's job, we can change the template and fix all of the articles in one go. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
07:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC){{
Google books}}
. --
Alarics (
talk)
08:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Ok here is something to consider. Internet Archive has copied over 1 million public domain titles from Google Books, which is AFAIK most or all of the Google Book PD collection. Internet Archive has maintained Google's metadata, so it would be possible to write a script to match up the Google Book URL with the books Internet Archive URL, and then convert citations over to Internet Archive on Wikipedia. It wouldn't be the easiest programming job, but worse things have been done. I'm not suggesting this be done now, but if things ever became desperate due to Google Fail, I think the metadata exists to switch to a new provider. As for Copyright works, different story of course. Green Cardamom ( talk) 18:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
If material can be found online, is it enough to give a link plus enough information to aid recovery after link rot, or should editors strive for references that are complete enough to pass muster in an academic setting?
For example I have been linking to military topographic maps accessible online through Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection [17] for the U.S. military topos or through Poehali [18] for Soviet counterparts.
In both cases, titles and affiliations of issuing agencies have changed a few times since comprehensive topographic mapping programs came into play during World War II. I assume that academically satisfactory citation would reflect these changes, whereas something more concise and casual might ignore them and perhaps even ignore the fact that the Soviet Union is no more!
Map index numbers are the single most critical piece of information, using a row/column scheme that has remained constant and was even remarkably simiilar between the British-American and Soviet mapping programs. If you know the index number of a map and it is available online, you can probably find it without concerning yourself with the institutional details.
Nevertheless there is a certain pride of craftsmanship in getting the institutional details correctly documented. Does Wikipedia encourage this as a matter of policy, or is just getting the index number right, good enough? LADave ( talk) 16:47, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
(I originally raised this at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates, but was advised that this was a more appropriate location). When citing Print-on-Demand titles, or listing them in a bibliography, who should be cited as the publisher? See, for example, the bibliographies at Stefan Stenudd, Kerri Bennett Williamson, Garry Davis and many more, which list titles as published by BookSurge Publishing. BookSurge is actually the Print-on-Demand subsidiary of Amazon.com, and these books are in effect self-published. Should the authors be listed as publisher? RolandR ( talk) 07:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
In the section Wikipedia:Footnotes#Citation_templates and also in the reference Wikipedia:CITE, it says that cite templates are optional and that they make editing harder. I think this guidance should be deprecated by Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references, which overcomes this difficulty. Jarhed ( talk) 19:30, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
<ref name="SPQ49rev"/>
which are illegible to a new person editing the article. (Unlike {{
sfn}}
, or simple <ref>
tages.) I personally agree they are useful when the number citations-per-paragraph gets above a certain level. (I added them to
artificial intelligence myself, because, in that case, the pros outweighed the cons.)If you scroll all the way down to just say this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Price
You see :
^ "Katie Price: Celeb Profile". OK! Magazine. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
Now I know how to get the reference link with [10] but how do you put text to the link?-- Jimmyson1991 ( talk) 21:29, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Ignatowicz-84-86
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I am waay new here. I was surprised to see ZERO results for my Google "smilaugh" produced ZERO results on Wikipedia.
So let's get this done - please help this is my first forte.
Urban Dictionary won with this result:
. Smilaugh 1 thumb up
Mixture between a Smile and a Laugh or Smiling and Laughing at the same time.
Thats so funny im going to Smilaugh.
Person smiling and lauging. You say: Oh your Smilaughing buy smilaugh mugs & shirts sponsor this wordsmile laugh laughing smiling funny by Coal Train28 Nov 19, 2008 share this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chipabirdee ( talk • contribs) 01:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I am trying to provide more references for the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year article, but I'm having trouble with a particular one I've found. Manchester United F.C. produces fact sheets for its museum, and one of these has a complete list of winners of the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award. However, I'm not sure how I would go about referencing this fact sheet in the article. Any ideas? – Pee Jay 10:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
{{
Citation}}
template. If you've found the list online, you could also consider {{
Cite web}}
.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
04:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)I don't see any guidance for citing books in electronic form, such as Kindle. While I sort of own one, if a present to my spouse counts, I don't use it, although I do use the Kindle app on an iPad, I'll give some thought to what makes sense, but I hope others can weigh in on how this should be handled.-- SPhilbrick T 17:47, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
{{cite ebook}}
redirects to {{cite book}}
, for reasons that confused me when I first noticed that. However, really there are only two major differences: format (should note it's an ebook, and probably specify the system), and (possible) replacement of page numbers with location numbers or similar.
Nikkimaria (
talk)
19:15, 23 July 2011 (UTC)I used to think of hard copy as immutable and preferable to softcopy which often disappeared from my media links. But I copied a title from my newspaper some years back. An editor, verifying this (!) found the paper in "permanent" storage in subscription online and changed it. I have no doubt he did this correctly. Various soft copies change until the paper (or whoever) finally "freezes" it.
Having said that, subscriptions aren't available to everyone. On the other hand, libraries don't keep hard copies much anymore.
Should we state a preference for "permanent" softcopy over hard copy? I am particularly thinking of periodic media here. Student7 ( talk) 14:56, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
-- Alarics ( talk) 10:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I made this post at Wp:citation templates, but I haven't had a response yet, and it is quite quiet there. If you have comments please post them there for ease. Thanks. Eldumpo ( talk) 15:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Having been frustrated for some time about quotations that do not include any in-text indication of who is being quoted, I created (on the fly) a new inline template to alert contributors to the need for attribution. The template, which is currently used in just one article (as I said, I created it on the fly!), is Template:Whosequote. Comments -- and assistance with documentation, etc., would be appreciated. -- Orlady ( talk) 16:58, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
{{
whom?}}
? --
Redrose64 (
talk)
17:12, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
<ref>Minsky (1969), quoted in Crevier (1993, p. 67)</ref>
. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
01:54, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Member of Abbots Cross Congregational Church. Qualified Soccer Coach. Popular speaker on Ulster-Scots History
2.219.82.238 (
talk)
10:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The vast majority of footnotes in articles are references identifying sources. In some cases, editors use footnotes to contain explanatory material. In general, when editors include both, they do not distinguish and use a single sequential numbering for each.
I quickly scanned this guideline and did not see any discussion of the distinction between these two types of footnotes, nor any guidance on how numbering should be done in case both are used. Is it here and I missed it, or is it covered in another page?
My question is motivated by Atlantis (newspaper). (As an aside, this is the editors first article!) Back on topic, the editor used the cref template with Roman numerals for explanatory footnotes, and the usual ref template for citation footnotes. What guidance should I give the editor?-- SPhilbrick T 22:22, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT seems to be explicit in saying that the material that is sourced is what the editor has analysed and the in-line citation should not be given as only where the source gained information from. However, there is a different interpenetration to this at by an outreach project that are transcribing material from ARKive, and they have been transcribing material from ARKive and using the the sources within ARKive as the in-line references. Contributions to advance the discussion at welcome at Wikipedia_talk:GLAM/ARKive#WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT_when_writing_in-line_citations. Snowman ( talk) 09:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles are based on WP:V and WP:RS; copying text from anywhere that is not a reliable source (and that includes translating from other Wikis), instead of reading the sources yourself and writing the text yourself, amounts to using non-reliable sources and trying to pass them off as reliable. We shouldn't be importing info from anywhere. We should be reading sources and writing text based on sources. Who knows how many errors are proliferated throughout Wikis by translations from poorly sourced and poorly written articles in other Wikis: this should be forbidden. Well, by policy it is, actually, but people still do it regularly and get away with it regularly, since it's not always apparent to others that they never even read the sources. Same business here. You shouldn't be citing anything imported or translated unless you've read the sources yourself. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
In order to make Nintendo DSi#Reception more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read, I am nesting references that have 4 or more sources grouped together after a sentence. I've done this with the first sentence and would like input on what I'm doing right/wrong. « ₣M₣ » 19:34, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
|ref=
in the full citation is in a format that {{
harvnb}}
will link to, because it won't recognise the existing |ref=CITEREFConference2008
. Try |ref=harv
; if that doesn't work, you'll need to manually construct it like this: |ref={{
harvid|Satoru Iwata|2008}}
--
Redrose64 (
talk)
18:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)An RfC is in progress at Proposal: date formats in reference sections. I have offered a counter-proposal that the "Manual of Style (dates and numbers)" defer to this guideline for dates that occur in citations. I have also proposed that this guideline be modified to recommend against all-numeric dates with the day or month first, such as writing yesterday's date as "8/7/2011", even if an external style guide calls for that format, or even if the article already uses that format. Please discuss at WT:MOSNUM. Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:50, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Which Wikipedia guideline(s) should establish citation format? Currently Citing sources, Manual of Style, and Manual of Style (date and numbers) all attempt to control citation format, and contradictions currently exist concerning date format. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:51, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As initiator of the RfC, I favor regarding "Citing sources" as the definitive guideline for citations, and any mention in other guidelines to be regarded as convenience summaries. This corresponds to the practice of printed style manuals, such as APA style or The Chicago Manual of Style, which devote one or more chapters exclusively to citation format. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski asked the following question at WT:MOS, but I will answer here in order to centralize discussion:
I still don't see any contradiction between what's said at MOSNUM and what's said at WP:CITE. Do you think there's some inconsistency? MOSNUM seems to be more detailed, that's all.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:08, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
"Citing sources" allows any citation style, and specifically mentions APA style and MLA style. APA would give the publication date for today's newspaper as "2011, August 13" and MLA style would give it as "13 Aug. 2011". The MLA style would allow either "August 13, 2011," or "13 August 2011" in running text. These contradict the attempts at WP:MOS and WP:MOSNUM to require publication dates to match the format in the running text. By designating only one guideline as the definitive guide for citations, contradictions introduced into non-definitive guidelines could be reverted with relatively little fuss or controversy. Jc3s5h ( talk) 17:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
A related discussion from January 2010 may be found at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion. The length of that discussion is 458,843 bytes. Jc3s5h ( talk) 19:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for the functionality of the encyclopedia: the purpose of footnotes is to indicate sources. Any clear style of footnoting will accomplish this; consistency is part of clarity. For many editors, some published style will be easiest to write; some readers will find whatever style is most common in their field easiest to understand. (Although those readers will tend to be the specialists we are not writing for; they have better sources.) Therefore, permitting each widely used style is good for the encyclopedia; those editors who have nothing better to than reformat dates are not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:59, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
What contradiction? No, seriously: what contradiction? CITE says you can use any citation format you want, including ones that you've completely made up out of thin air. So how could an absolute lack of requirements possibly contradict the recommendation on some other page? For that matter, what makes you think that MOSNUM's (multiple) recommended formats apply to citations rather than to the body of the article? MOS directly says "All the dates in a given article should have the same format (day-month or month-day). However, for citations, see Citing sources (style variation)." I cannot imagine how anyone could interpret that as leaving open even the possibility of a contradiction. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:30, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Since discussion seems to have died down, I will summarize my interpretation of the discussion
Would anyone who did not take a position care to endorse my summary? Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I have struck out SlimVirgin from my summary, because her edits to this guideline make it appear that she has a much different definition of "citation style" than I do. She would allow MOS or MOSNUM to cover date format. But at least two style manuals (APA and MLA) specify a (potentially) different date format in citations than in running text. Thus I do not understand SlimVirgin's position. Jc3s5h ( talk) 15:06, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi Jc, you've add this to the section asking editors to refrain from changing citation styles, but it's not really about that. It's best left for the relevant MoS page:
SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 08:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Although I wouldn't strictly have a problem with such a date format, it means gobbledegook to the vast majority of readers. Even formats such as "(2008, June)", "(2006, November/December)", "(1993, September 30)" would be at odds with MOSNUM, and be inconsistent with dates in running text. As Jc3 already notes that he expects date format such as "8/21/11" or "21/8/2011" to be overriden, thus I see MOSNUM operating as a layer of guidance supplementing it by superpositioning onto WP:CITE, overriding dates like "(2006, November/December)", "(1993, September 30)". -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)「處置失當 菲警界究責 警署署長下台 4指揮官停職」《大公報》A03,2010年8月26日
In the #Numbers thread Kotniski wrote "I would prefer it if Wikipedia had its own single defined citation style or small set of alternative styles". Personally, I'm not prepared to endorse citation templates, due to their bulk and performance problems. Past attempts to establish a single house style, whether citation templates or something else, did not reach consensus. Let em outline what I see as the most we could hope to achieve consensus on in the direction of standardizing styles.
An area that would require further discussion is shortened footnotes. For articles that do not use citation templates, the only published style I know of that recognizes shortened footnotes is Chicago. Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
I've run into a curious issue. An article with >100 references had a total of 6 instances of cite templates. I rewrote those to match the other 98 or so refs. An editor reverted; I quoted CITEVAR, and the editor insisted that we had to have a discussion on the talk page and achieve consensus to rewrite any refs. If people are interpreting CITEVAR that way, then either CITEVAR needs to be rewritten, or this same principle needs to be applied to every style change, including date formats. Gimmetoo ( talk) 17:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I undid this edit because it changes the meaning of the date restriction. Without the heading, it means any style, such as APA style, may be used, so long as that style does not call for dates like "8/9/2011". If the style calls for dates within citations to be inconsistent, such as one format for publication dates and a different style for access dates, that's fine, so long as none of the dates look like "8/9/2011".
I don't know if any published style manual recommends dates like "8/9/2011" in citations, but if so, that style manual should not be used on Wikipedia.
By adding the "Dates" heading, the paragraph prohibits different date formats within citations, for which there is no consensus. Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello, there is a bot approval request at WP:BRFA/H3llBot 9 for adding wikilinks to work/publisher fields where the entity can be unambiguously identified from a pre-selected list. Comments welcome, thanks. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 16:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
J. Johnson has once again proposed that we adopt a house style for handling authors' names (vs. initials). Please see Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Citation_discussion#Full_name.2C_or_initials.3F. I believe this is the third time he's asked tried to gather support for his preferences at some page other than WT:CITE. I'm hoping that eventually he'll discover this page, and that perhaps eventually he will understand the meaning of "no house style" and "any style the editors want", but in the meantime, people familiar with this guideline will probably want to comment there. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:17, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Let's say I rewrite a non-cited section of an article, adding sources for the assertions my edit includes. Another editor then contributes to my edit by changing what I wrote to reflect what he knows of the topic; he includes information that is arguably true, but not academically certain. However, that editors change alters enough of the substance of what I wrote that the source I cited no longer supports the assertion made in the synthesis of the two edits. Should I revert? Do I pull the cite and ask for a different, separate citation? And what if the other editor persists by reverting my removal of the cite (which, due to the timing of the edits, I can say with reasonable certainty is a book the other editor has neither read nor owns)? -- Foofighter20x ( talk) 06:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
<ref>
follow the statements which can be directly supported. Put a {{
citation needed}}
on those statements which are unsupported. Note that this may mean having the <ref>...</ref>
within the paragraph, or even within the sentence, which some people don't like (preferring to place the lot at the end of the paragraph). --
Redrose64 (
talk)
13:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
and the citation within it to reference a particular part of a specific book. I then <ref>...</ref>
tagged each sentence that made an assertion that is directly supported by the book. The second editor then made his edits; his edits reflected popular, conventional wisdom on the historical topic, but was not supported by the cited source. I then pulled the cite, inserted {{
citation needed}}
after his text, and left this in the comments block of the edit:Since the edit does not reflect the source material, I'm pulling the source [on that sentence] and asking for a separate citation.
A source need not be quoted in order to appropriate.
that makes it easy to replace complicated template citations with standard "ref" ones? The plague of undiscussed drive-by "improvements" and "upgradings" to complicated templates, totally contrary to policy, continues, & if they aren't spotted straight away & reverted, they are a real nuisance to remove manually. Johnbod ( talk) 13:25, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Google Books has a facility to export bibliographic data in BibTeX, Endnote an RefMan formats (see for example, http://books.google.com/books/about/City_Sculpture.html?id=p1ufAAAACAAJ ). Is there a way to convert one of these to wikimarkup? Or get it as cut-n-paste citation template code? If not could we persuade Google to add a facility? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
As if this page wasn't bad enough, we also have WP:Manual of Style/Footnotes and Help:Footnotes, which all basically hover around the same subject area. Could we not bring all this together into one page? (I see the other two were proposed to be merged a while back, though it never actually happened.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
See further postings at [22]. Please post there if you have comments. Eldumpo ( talk) 07:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
An article discusses when a building was torn down. We don't have a source for the exact date of its removal. However there is an image in Google Earth which shows the building, and then a later image which shows it gone and some new buildings in its place. (There are also regular photos from various years published on myriad websites which show the changes, but some of those are undated.) We know the building is gone, but how do we cite its removal? We can't link to Google Earth, though we can provide coordinates, and we can't upload a KMZ file. Based on the two Google Earth images, we now say that "Between 1994 and 2005, the building was removed." Would this work as a citation? Footnote: Google Earth historical images for this site shows the building in 1994 and absent in 2005. Will Beback talk 04:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Do we really mean that whatever citation style someone introduces to an article, all future editors are bound by that decision? For example, if someone starts off a largely unreferenced article but adds one parenthetical reference (against the de facto standard of using footnotes), is everyone else constrained to follow that for ever and ever? If someone decides they want their references to be in pink type or something similarly absurd-looking, are we all obliged to go along with it just because they happened to get to an article first? I can accept that we might not want to force just one single citation style on the whole of Wikipedia, but surely we can express a preference on certain points?-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:14, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
The main point that authors should be able to write in a style they are comfortable with. And as long as that style in is precise, easily understandable and common practice outside WP, I see no good reason to regulate that. (Enforced) Standardization should be kept to areas/topics where it is essential for the functioning of WP and not be used to enforce mere taste decision on authors.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 05:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi WhatamIdoing, you reverted that people can choose to use any style consistent with the advice in CITE, saying I had "lost that debate." Can you say what you mean? SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 00:04, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:CITECONSENSUS says, in part, "The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged." That has been a part of this guideline for a long time. It's been here since sometime prior to this February 2007 edit which tweaked its wording.
I see that there has apparently been some creep lately towards discouraging use of citation templates.
I may have missed some relevant edits, I'm guessing that there might have been some confusion between editors from unrecognized editing collisions. Also, I haven't been following whatever discussion might have taken place re these edits and I've missed whatever has transpired there. However, I do see that the longstanding statement saying, "The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged." is still a part of this guideline. I urge that this longstanding part of the guideline be followed in this guideline -- that the use of citation templates actually be neither encouraged nor discouraged here.
Also, I think describing or referring to the use of citation templates as a "citation style" introduces confusion. I suggest that the term "citation style" be taken in this guideline and in this associated discussion page as having to do with how citations are presented in rendered wikitext, and as not having anything at all to do with the composition of raw, unrendered wikitext. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I apologize for not seeing this earlier. The discussion I have in mind can be found at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive_30#ENGVAR_to_CITEVAR. We proposed including a ban on adding citation templates to articles not using them, and it was directly opposed by more than one editor.
More pointfully, the "Do not do this" rule you added here is actually wrong. Editors may convert simple, elegant manually formatted citations to clunky, confusing citation templates, so long as they have established that there is a consensus to do so at that article. The actual rule is already stated in the section: Avoid this (see bullet #2), but "If you think the existing citation system is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page", and if such a consensus actually exists, then you may actually add citation templates to an article currently using manually formatted citations. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't get it - as SlimVirgin herself says, this sentence is already in the guideline just a few lines down, so I don't see the point of repeating it. This page is long and confusing enough as it is.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
WtMitchell wrote "...should [the guideline] not also say something like, "Do not add hand-crafted cites (in whatever hand-crafted citation format) to an article that already uses citation templates"? Absolutely not. This would forbid the use of any source for which a citation template does not exist, or which has unusual characteristics that prevent the use of a citation template. If an article used citation templates, and it were necessary to cite a source for which no template exists, it would be necessary to hand-craft a citation that follows the general pattern of citation templates. Jc3s5h ( talk) 20:35, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Help:Citation Style 1 now documents templates based on {{ citation/core}}. It needs expansion. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Assuming the style is consistent throughout the article, is wiki-linking necessary for author, location, publisher, or work parameters in a reference? « ₣M₣ » 17:54, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
There were two competing definitions for general references:
A general reference identifies a work which has been used as a source for an article, but without page numbers etc. to say where specific information can be found. For example: Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971. General references, if used, are listed separately in a section at the end of the article.
and lower down in its own section:
A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not displayed as an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section. They may be found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source.
I have edited the page so that there is only one (and chosen the second one). -- PBS ( talk) 21:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The reason why I have chosen the second one is that the first one does not make sense. We have about 10,000 {{
1911}} templates in reference sections in articles it contains the following:
{{
cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help){{
cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help); Unknown parameter |wikisource=
ignored (
help)does not alter the fact that it is a general reference. To do that, some or all of the the information contained in the general reference will have to be added as an inline citation into the body of the article. -- PBS ( talk) 21:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found, but without giving full details of the source – these will have been provided in a general reference.
Consider a footnote like:<ref>See [[glial cell]] for a detailed description of this process.</ref>
Note that this is not a citation, but is an inline "see also". Are there any policies are in place to either discourage or allow footnotes like this? (Sorry to post this here, but I thought you all might know). ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
18:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
I was editing an article recently and saw it had a new style of referencing. instead of REF tags, it used a very short {{ format. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It doesn't seem to be mentioned here. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 17:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
? It would help to know which article and which template. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
17:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
It's sfn, thanks! Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:52, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Are reflists permitted to be enclosed by show/hide boxes? Example
here, which uses {{
Collapsible list}}
. The closest I can find is
WP:ASL and
Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 18#Scrolling Reference Lists: Formal Policy Discussion. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:23, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
Collapsible list}}
as a direct result of Gadget's cmt. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
15:32, 18 September 2011 (UTC)I'm moving to the rfn format for referencing. Then I came across the references in Skylab, which seem to be a dramatic improvement in format - they greatly reduce the size of the "notes" section while at the same time eliminating considerable page flipping. Is there a way to do this using the rfn template (without the rp)? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 12:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
rfn}}
--
Redrose64 (
talk)
12:48, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Right, so is there a way to do the same thing using sfn without hand-crafting? It seems there should be? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 16:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
exclusively in the main text. It made it to
GA status in that form, so it's something that is considered "good". --
Redrose64 (
talk)
17:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)To get back to the original question: {{ sfn}} is for Shortened footnotes. You may want to consider list-defined footnotes; the in-text cite can be created with {{ r}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
I think that the previous bullet point layout in the section " What information to include" is/was clearer/superior to the new layout (textual paragraphs) in the same section (see WP:CITEHOW). -- PBS ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
It's being suggested in recent edit summaries that "Bibliography" is not an appropriate title for the general references section. If this is the case, what do we propose calling the three sections in a case where we have explanatory footnotes separate from citations and inline citations separate from general references?-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The point is not what is appropriate, that is beyond the scope of this guideline. The point is that there are a number of different ways these things can be named and using just the most common one saves having to repeat what is in [WP:FNNR]]. For example Bibliography can be used, but it has several problems. The OED has four definitions for Bibliography (one is archaic) the closes fit to this usage is "4. A list of the books of a particular author, printer, or country, or of those dealing with any particular theme; the literature of a subject." but a general reference section is likely to include bullets points for journals, websites and newspapers all of which are not books so titling a section thus is confusing for readers, and, if the list does not to date include anything but books, may be seen by new editors as restricting. In biography articles, if the subject of the biography wrote books, it is not uncommon to call the section that list them a biography (which does fit the fourth definition in the OED) so naming the general reference section bibliography in biography articles is confusing. Therefore it is better to avoid its usage in examples given on this page. The same goes for section names like "Sources" (cooking) and "Citations" (military) when presenting general guidance on this page. -- PBS ( talk) 01:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
This section needs to be pared down to an overview of the methods of creating in-text cites and general cites and formatting the reference list. There is a lot of duplication of instruction, but with variations. The separate Help pages do a better job on this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The discussion under #Gregorian calendar suggest the following paragraph in the guideline does not give sufficient guidance.
Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582.
I therefore suggest replacing it with a "Dates" section similar to this:
Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I've wikilinked Gregorian calendar, I believe this to be a non-controversial edit. However, I have a problem with the phrase immediately following: "dates where the year is after 1582". The thing is, the GC didn't begin in 1582 in all countries - for example, it began in 1752 in Great Britain and the American Colonies. Examples of this may be seen by examining 18th-century copies of the London Gazette, most issues of which are online; at the time, it was published twice weekly. First, see "No. 9198". The London Gazette. 1 September 1752. which is headed "From Tuesday September 1, O. S. to Saturday September 16, N. S. 1752" - this spans the change of calendar: "O.S." and "N.S." are "Old Style" and "New Style" respectively, and eleven days within this period didn't exist (Sept 2 was followed by Sept 14). There is another reason to suggest 1752: although the calendar changed from 1751 to 1752 at the start of January, it had changed from 1750 to 1751 in late March, as it had in previous years, see these examples:
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to remove the words "dates where the year is after 1582". -- Redrose64 ( talk) 13:14, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't really want to get into all these past discussions (I was part of one of them). All I wanted was to remove the implication that all dates after 1582 are Gregorian. To show this I provided examples of an English newspaper still using dates in the Julian calendar well after 1582. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 19:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
To return to the original question: Best I can suggest is something like "The YYYY-MM-DD format should be limited to Gregorian calendar dates; note that national adoption varies from 1582 to 1926 and that Orthodox Churches use Revised Julian." I would like to see the whole YYYY-MM-DD format go away, but discussions go down the rathole, so I'm not going there. See User:Gadget850/YYYY-MM-DD dates for background. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Just remove the 1582 date, as it is not needed and is to all intense and purposes an arbitrary date as far as British dating is concerned.
Also remove from the guideline the use of "Retrieved 2008-07-15" because since we stopped linking dates (so that one could set date views in the preferences and see them change format) I have stopped using that format on access dating, and AFAICT so have most others. In fact in recent months I have stopped using day and only put "month year" eg "September year" because I realised the field/information is only useful for finding the page in an historical internet archive like wayback machine and their granularity is only to the nearest month. Removing the day from the date field has the advantage that one does not have to decide which format the article would use "day month" or "day month" and so cuts down on maintenance. -- PBS ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe it is better to devote this page, and some of the pages it refers to, for citation style, and confine MOS and MOSNUM to the text and tables of the article. This is in keeping with printed style manuals, which typically have separate chapters for citations, and the citation style does not always agree with the running text style. Since we allow almost any citation style, it is not feasible to cover citation style in MOS or MOSNUM.
My first impression is that would be unwieldy to address Kotinski's concerns in the current short paragraph. Therefore I will shortly propose a dates section. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Hello. For the page on Katharine Hepburn, I am using some comments she gave on television as sources, and also comments made at the Academy Awards after she died. I'd like to check the correct way to source them please? Currently I've just got them written as:
As you can see, they're inconsistent and I've completely guessed as to the best way to source them. If anyone can give me a concrete formula that would be great. Thanks! -- Lobo512 ( talk) 10:15, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite episode}}
, but be very careful that you don't drift into
WP:OR since TV episodes can be considered to be
primary sources. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
13:11, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
This may be an odd question. How does one cite a comment that a person made behind closed doors if it wasn't published in any media? I'm trying to add a section to an article and part of it entails meetings that were held about an issue with a major player expressing their point of view about the topic. There were only about eight of us in the room to have heard the statement. I can't prove it happened though it did. Do I just put it up and defend it if it is criticized? Ayzmo ( talk) 01:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
A dispute arose last month over the proper interpretation of WP:CITEVAR in an article about a US Supreme Court case. The article included inline cites to court cases, as well as cites to journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. The question, in a nutshell, was whether the statement in WP:CITEVAR that "citations within a given article should follow a consistent style" does (or does not) expect or require court case citations to be formatted the same way as the "Citation Style 1" method used in journal / book / newspaper citations.
See Template talk:Cite court#Update to citation/core; Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive1; and WP:CS1.
An effort to fix bugs in {{ Cite court}} ran aground over this issue, and an editor who had been trying to fix the template (but who was not prepared to produce an end result that failed to conform to Citation Style 1) eventually abandoned his efforts — leaving the {{ Cite court}} template still broken and not usable for US court case citations in its current form.
I believe a key issue that needs to be clarified here is whether this particular sort of uniformity is really what WP:CITEVAR is or ought to be seeking. My own impression is that legal writers simply will not accept US court case citations that are not formatted in the US legal profession's standard style (basically the Bluebook style or one of its accepted minor variations) — but no one is really pushing for requiring the Bluebook citation style for non-case cites in legal articles, and a mixed environment in which a legal article includes cases cited in Bluebook fashion, and citations to other kinds of material formatted per WP:CS1, is perfectly appropriate. Others may or may not agree, of course. Should WP:CITEVAR be tweaked to clarify this point? Richwales ( talk) 19:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
This issue was already conclusively resolved at
Template_talk:Cite_court#Issues, so I'm really surprised to see it brought up here again. I'll recap some of my comments from there.
First, it is completely improper to treat a court opinion as if it were a book/journal/periodical, and there is no real citation format that would do so. The standard is to state a short-form name of the case, cite to the volume and page number of at least one
case reporter, give an abbreviation identifying the court if it is not the only court covered by that reporter, and the year of the decision: Smith v. Doe, 176
F. 3d 10 (
5th Cir. 2009). Bluebook is only one form of that standard, in that there are minor variations in terms of what order the information goes in (i.e., New York courts would list the year in brackets before the reporter volume and page instead of in parentheses after), but it is the most observed format (as in all federal courts) and there is not any variation as far as what information goes in the cite even if Bluebook isn't used. The publisher is never listed (which would be the institution that issued the case reporter, not the court in any event), and the court is not treated as an author. To treat case law that way makes no more sense than if we were to treat statutes as if they were books: It's
17 U.S.C.
§ 101, not Congress, United States (2011) "Section 101" in United States Code, Vol. 17. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. We would just be making up our own citation format if we tried to shoehorn case law and other primary legal sources into some other kind of category of printed material. Cites to legal materials (case law, statutes, regulations, etc.) are far more analogous to Bible citations, for which you'd cite book, chapter, and verse, and probably the particular translation.
Second, it's simply a false claim that it would be inconsistent to use Bluebook for case law but not for books, because many (if not most, or even all) non-legal style guides expressly import Bluebook citation format for case law citations (see linked comment above for examples). The only consistency we should be concerned with is citing all cases within an article the same way, and all books in that article the same way. It would be a foolish consistency to insist that cases should be cited in the same format as books, because, again, it would involve a made up format.
postdlf (
talk)
21:25, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Gadget850 stated "FAC discussions have set some precedent by not mixing CS1 and CS2." If it isn't stated where a person trying to bring an article up to featured article standards, it shouldn't count. The idea of a crowd of FAC reviewers springing secret rules upon FAC editors is distasteful. It's possible that an attempt to place this criteria in a more public place would fail.
As to the question at hand, I take the guideline to mean that the established style of the article should be followed for each and every citation. A very few articles actually state, perhaps in a comment, which style guide they follow. Often they follow a published guide well enough that people familiar with the guide will realize which one to follow. When there is no style guide, as in the case of the Citation and Cite xxx templates, and the work to be cited is unlike the sources already cited, I see two plausible choices. Citation uses commas as the element separator, and so most closely resembles Chicago style, so do what Chicago would do; Cite xxx uses periods as separators and puts the date in parenthesis after the author, like APA, so do what APA would do. The other choice is to hand-edit a citation so it resembles the other citations in the article.
The Citation and Cite xxx templates are a bit of a special case, in that they work as intended for some types of sources, have bugs or limited function for other sources, and don't provide at all for still other sources. So if the current version of an article only cites books with {{ Cite book}}, and one wishes to cite a journal, one would use {{tl:Cite journal}} rather than APA. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Lets look at the differences here:
As such, we hold it unconstitutional.
They contain exactly the same information, but Cite court does not use the same same style as CS1. I interpret CITEVAR that you can use any style you desire, as long as it it consistent throughout the article; i.e. all citations use the same style. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
The bottom line is a court opinion is not a book and should not be cited to as if it were, no more than a statute or Bible verse are cited to as if they were books. That is not inconsistency; that is treating materials in accordance with what they are and in accordance with how the real word treats them. To do otherwise is to push a made-up citation format. The court is not the publisher of the opinion. In the DC Circuit example above,
Westlaw happens to be the publisher of the
Federal Reporter (abbreviated in the citation as F. 3d), but no proper citation to any case will note that any more than a citation to the
United States Reports will credit the
Government Printing Office. And the citation works regardless of whether you referenced a print copy or online text, because online texts insert the same pagination; it is edition-independent in the same way that citing to Matthew 23:24 (KJV) does not require a "publisher" or "author".
So let's drop this nonsense that we can or should treat everything as if it were a book, because that's what's keeping this confused. You treat case law like case law, not like a book or a journal.
And I can cite to the Bluebook itself, or to other non-legal style guides that import Bluebook (or its general form) for case citations, statutes, and other primary legal materials, and treat such materials as different than books or periodicals:
APA Style ("The APA style of citing legal materials is based on The Bluebook...[However] The Bluebook style is not used to cite legal periodical articles or books. Use the regular APA style.");
AMA Style,
Chicago Style...
Can anyone who still disagrees that this is how it should be done point to a real-world usage or style guide to the contrary, to prove that this disagreement is more than just a
WP:Randy in Boise moment? Rather than just pushing tortured interpretations of
WP:CITEVAR, as if that could trump real world standards and justify making shit up, please prove it or drop it.
postdlf (
talk)
02:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't know which of the above editors are right about the status of citation templates, but I'm quite sure a few editors making declarations about the status will not settle it. Jc3s5h ( talk)
Sometimes a source will say something like "Published: July 2, 2000", while the url is like www.dailytruth.com/2000/07/01/man-bites-hotdog.html. Presumably, that is because the article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Truth on July 2, 2000, but was already put on the web around July 1, 2000, 11:59 pm. Here is an example. And sometimes, for whatever reason, it is the other way around: the "url date" is later than the publication date given in the text, as seen, for example, here. Has there been some discussion or guidance on which one to use for the date field in such cases? -- Lambiam 20:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
|type=
to indicate online or print versions. If a particular template ({{
cite news}} for example) does not support |type=
, then it is very easy to add. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
16:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
{{{PublicationDate}}}
(date of publication) and {{{Date}}}
(date of the authorship, if different from date of publication) -- presently rendering something like: "Title", Periodical (Publisher), Date, PublicationDate. {{
cite news}} passes {{{date}}}
alone to core as {{{Date}}}
, if present (the actual details are slightly more complicated). Perhaps {{
cite news}} could pass both dates down if they are specified -- but what percentage of template users would read and understand the docs about that?
Wtmitchell
(talk) (earlier Boracay Bill)
10:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)I think you should probably state both versions if they are different, which implies becoming much more sytematic about distinguishing between e.g. The Guardian (in print) and guardian.co.uk (for the website). But with some papers there is not a different name for the online version. The real problem is, whatever those few of us who obsess about these matters might decide is the ideal solution, how are we ever going to get the majority of editors to even understand that there is a problem, let alone follow our solution? Alarics ( talk) 07:45, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
I recently noticed a potential problems with some ODNB ( Oxford Dictionary of National Biography citation styles, namely that they seem to be being cited with the wrong template. Look at the example at Template:Cite doi/10.1093.2Fref:odnb.2F58125. That was filled in by a citation bot with {{ cite journal}}, but I think {{ cite encyclopedia}} is more appropriate for the ODNB, as it is a single collection of discrete articles with different authors. It was issued in 2004, with updates since then, and in some areas built on the earlier work of the DNB ( Dictionary of National Biography) and in other areas effectively rewrote the biographies or wrote new ones that hadn't been covered before. The point being that 'cite journal' is the wrong template to use. There are also problems with Template:ODNBweb as that really needs updating but I'm not sure how to do that. For an example of a correctly filled out ODNB citation, see Template:Cite doi/10.1093.2Fref:odnb.2F34601, but even there it needed human tweaking to get it right. There are around 45 templates that need checking, see here. Is there an easy way to get a citation bot to deal with all this? {{ ODNBweb}} is even more problematic, as it is transcluded on 447 pages at the moment. Is there an easy way to convert those into a citation format that: (a) names the actual article cited (and names the ODNB as the encyclopedia, rather than the title); and (b) names the actual authors of the article? Carcharoth ( talk) 23:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Regarding WP:CITEBUNDLE's guidance on how to display multiple sources within a single footnote: It suggests placing each source in a separate bullet. That works fine. But as I look at scholarly books, their footnotes are arranged differently: each footnote is a "paragraph" that lists the distinct sources as separate sentences. Like this:
I have no problem with the bulletized approach ... my question is whether the scholaraly "list multiple sources in one paragraph" approach was considered for WP in the past and rejected? (I could not find such a discussion in this Talk page archives). Or is the scholarly approach an acceptable alternative? If it is acceptable for WP, should it be mentioned in WP:CITEBUNDLE as an option? -- Noleander ( talk) 17:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 31#Text-source integrity. I think that there is a problem with both the bundling section and with the section immediately before it ( Text-source integrity) that introduces the bundling section. -- PBS ( talk) 21:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Consider the following citation:
Clicking on either the doi or the jstor link will take the user to the same location (the doi goes to the jstor page). In these situations, I typically leave out the doi link because it's redundant, but citation bot eventually comes along and puts it in. I curse softly and sometimes revert, depending on my mood. Would like to see what the general opinion is about redundant identifier links like this, and if I should just shift my paradigm and accept them? (In this particular instance, clicking the title will take the reader directly to the article hosted at Cyberliber, but I understand that this site is not 100% reliable and has downtimes, so having at least one of the identifiers is useful). Sasata ( talk) 07:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I posted a query at BLP regarding nationalities, which has some bearing on citing sources. If you have any comments please post there. Eldumpo ( talk) 08:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Layout#Add_example_into_WP:FNNR.3F about a proposal to add examples showing various section layouts for Notes/Footnotes/Citations/References section. There is some overlap with this Citations topic area, so editors interested in citations may want to weigh in. -- Noleander ( talk) 13:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Should we always place a space after the comma when we separate different page numbers in a citation? Eg. "G. Woodfall. pp. 111,112." Is there a rule? What do you think? I have been harshly criticized for adding a space in "111,112" and I have to find out the rule about it. Thanks in advance. -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 09:05, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a set of proposals on WP:VPR to allow him to perform mass changes of a certain sort, particularly with respect to citation formatting. You'll have to go through the proposal as there are some 20 of them right now. Searching for "CITEVAR" on that page might help. Have mörser, will travel ( talk) 16:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
The discussion here may interest some of you. The question is whether it is appropriate to revert an editor who used a consistent date format in refs in an article. So that instead, inconsistent date formats exist (even within the same refs).
Some guidelines at issue are WP:DATESNO, WP:STRONGNAT, and Wikipedia:Citing sources.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 06:44, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
I just read the Text-Source integrity section for the first time, and the second portion of the section strikes me as very confusing:
The following arrangement, for example, is not helpful, because the reader does not know whether each source supports the material, each source supports part of it, or just one source supports it with the others added as further reading:
Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer and one of the country's highest-earning women.[4][5][6][7]
Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below for how to do that.
It seems to me that it would be clearer if it explicitly stated the following points of guidance, independently:
- When there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source pertains to a particular portion of the sentence, the footnotes[4] can[5] be interspersed[6] like this.[7] Or, all the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this.[4][5][6][7] Another option is to bundle them all into one footnote at the end of the sentence, like this.[4]
Generally, the latter option (bundling) is preferred, and the first option (interspersed) is discouraged.- When there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source applies to the entire the sentence, the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this,[4][5][6][7] or they can be bundled into one footnote at the end of the sentence, like this.[4]
Generally, the latter option (bundling) is preferred.See WP:CITEBUNDLE.- If there are multiple sources for a single sentence, and the individual sources each apply only to a particular porton of the sentence, and the footnotes are not interspersed in the sentence, then it is recommended that the footnote(s) include comments (whether bundled or not) explaining which sources relate to which parts of the sentence.
Does this look like clearer statement of what the Text-Source Integrity section (second half) is trying to say? (PS: This may have been discussed in this Talk page archive discussion). -- Noleander ( talk) 23:08, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
This might be a separate issue, but I think it's part of the same topic. Sometimes a sentence has multiple assertions, each with a separate citation. It seems like it's logical to place the citations in the same order as the assertions. However if the citations are being reused they would already have footnote numbers, leading to a seemingly random sequence of numbers. At FAC, reviewers want the footnotes to be in numerical order. Is that really the best way to arrange footnotes? Will Beback talk 06:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I Undid revision 457735684 by SlimVirgin it depends it is not always poor practice, and not every case needs a bundle. -- PBS ( talk) 10:32, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
If it were so then we would be condemning the version used higher up the guideline page:
The Sun is pretty big, [1] but the Moon is not so big. [2] The Sun is also quite hot. [3]
Notes
References
- Brown, Rebecca (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
- Miller, Edward (2005). The Sun. Academic Press.
-- PBS ( talk) 10:36, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Also there is a problem with "The footnote should explain which source supports which point; see WP:CITEBUNDLE." It is also true that multiple footnotes are the end of a sentence can explain which source supports which point, they do not have to be bundled to do that (as Noleande mentioned in his/her point three above). -- PBS ( talk) 10:38, 28 October 2011 (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 25 | ← | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 |
I think an imperative of using in-line citations should be added to that section in this article, such as: "If not already in use, the references in an article should be converted to in-line citations as soon as possible, because the more an article grows, the harder it is to figure out which reference refers to which statement.". Mikael Häggström ( talk) 10:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion at the MOS about ISBN formatting here that editors here may be interested in. Rjwilmsi 08:35, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
Ref 21 keeps telling me that no title is cited, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Serendi pod ous 23:59, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
{{cite web |url=http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm |publisher=USA Today |year=2007 |author= G. Jeffrey MacDonald |accessdate=2010-02-26}}
| title =
parameter.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
00:43, 27 February 2011 (UTC)Recent addition by User:WhatamIdoing states "General references are allowed in all articles except Featured Articles." I do not see this addition discussed or the fact mentioned at WP:FACR. It would be impossible for an article to become FA with just general refs, but this doesn't mean they are not allowed. Am I missing something? — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 19:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not convinced this is a real problem. It isn't any more onerous to use an inline citation, even in a stub. For example:
I can't see why we would want to say the second is okay, when the first is just as easy to write and more informative. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 22:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
SV I think that a general reference section is useful with short citations. to take your example:
- Stub with 2 inline citations to the same book
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. [i 1]
- John Smith is an American footballer, best known for his charity work for the urban poor. [i 2]
- Notes
- ^ Jones 2011, p. 1
- ^ Jones 2011, p. 100
- References
- Jones, Paul (2011). Urban Poverty. Routledge.
I think that your example above would have been better if you had included the page number in you example because we have got distracted. Let us suppose that we used you two examples but both had page numbers and no quote. Then another editor adds a line:
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. [1] In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- Notes
- ^ Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011, p. 1.
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- General references
- Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011. p.1
The problem is that the second version not using in-line citations is already obvious. It is impossible to spot which part of the stub is not referenced without resorting to the history of the article. This makes it much more difficult for an editor (or general reader) just arriving at an article to know which parts are sourced and which parts are not. If it is fixed then the problem remains in the version using general references (but not with in-line citation), because unless one read both sources one can not be sure that both facts are covered (as they could both cover the same one fact):
- Sam Smith is an American writer, best known for her studies of urban poverty. In 1989 she punished a work on poverty in Mexico city.
- General references
- Jones, Paul. Urban Poverty. Routledge, 2011. p.1
- Star, Ringo Adventures down Mexico way, OUP, 1993, p.10
-- PBS ( talk) 11:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
There's a lot of talk in various places about how to attract new editors, particularly women and more mature people. One of the issues raised is the shock they often get when articles they've created are deleted or proposed for deletion. Having a page that seems to imply general references are okay feeds into that, by creating false expectations.
The fact is, as we all know, that a page with clear inline citations is much more likely to survive—and not only survive, but stabilize—that a page without them. It's the secret sauce of experienced editing. Citing inline, using good sources, and citing very clearly so that sources are easy to find, is the way to create stable articles. It isn't fair not to make that clear to new editors up front. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 22:44, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
(Campbell)
to the end of the sole paragraph in your brand-new stub. Getting hung up on the format really is mindless formalism.(undent) At User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors I'm putting together some advice. It aims to show what happens when a new editor enters WP for the first times, emphasises tools and techniques rather than rules, and uses a more informal style than WP's policies and guideline. Would it be worth publishing as an essay in main space? -- Philcha ( talk) 09:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing you wrote "To say that they are not acceptable in addition to any necessary inline citations is quite odd." I do not think that anyone is saying that they are not to be placed into an article, but as citations for verification they are not acceptable any more than list of items in "further reading" or "external sources" are acceptable as verification. Indeed I would go further and say that sources listed in a ==References== section that are not used as in-line citations should be moved into ==Further reading== if that was a rule, it would clarify the difference between referenced and unreferenced articles. --
PBS (
talk)
21:41, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
How might one go about providing a citation for a table in which all information comes from a single source? Specifically, the Pirate Party of Canada article contains two tables that are taken from information on the website, and it seems redundant to add a <ref> tag to each cell. Right now it's provided by a single tag at the end, but it looks a bit odd. — INTRIGUEBLUE ( talk| contribs) 12:57, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion regarding fundamental interpretation of the verifiability policy regarding citing sources is here [4], which is based on the discussion here [5]. PPdd ( talk) 00:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Has anyone looked into adding a way to make WP:CITESHORT citations easier? Seems that all it would require would be the addition of a tag like the "ref name=" functionality that would be used to distinguish what appears with {{ Reflist}} and the like versus what currently has to be added by hand to the second section that WP:CITESHORT requires. Eg: When using WP:CITESHORT, there is the "Notes" section that is populated with {tl|Reflist}} or the like, plus there's a second section for the full citations, "References", that has to be filled by hand. I don't see why the second section cannot also be automatically populated as well by adding a way to identify the full citations. -- Ronz ( talk) 18:22, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Thinking a bit more on this: By automating it in a manner similar to what I've outlined, it shouldn't be too difficult to automatically create links from the entries in the "Notes" section to the corresponding full references in the "References" section. -- Ronz ( talk) 17:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses. Maybe we don't need the additional automation. I certainly don't have the time to look into implementing the changes. Still, a few more thoughts: Because we wouldn't want any of the currently used citation templates to need changes, it would have to be done as new parameters in citation templates. Let's call them "Isshortref" and "Fullrefname." Isshortref would simply identify short references, distinguishing them from full references. Fullrefname would be a parameter used with short references to identify the name of a full reference used, and this assumes that full references would be named. With this, both the Notes and References could be populated automatically, and entries in each section could be automatically linked to the corresponding entries in the other section. -- Ronz ( talk) 02:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
, which is a more advanced version of the "standard" technique which uses <ref>{{harvnb|...}}</ref>
.{{
harv}}
is pretty thorough, I think. And the section at
WP:CITESHORT links to this documentation in two places!)It was recommended that I bring this here. I have been updating some references in a couple of articles and have noticed several stylistic inconsistencies between the various templates I have been using. Here is an example of what I am referring to:
Here are some examples of the more widely used templates with the most common fields filled in:
{{
citation}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
citation}}){{
cite web}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite web}}){{
cite book}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite book}}){{
cite news}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite news}}){{
cite journal}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite journal}}){{
cite press release}}
: |author=
has generic name (
help) ({{
cite press release}})Here are some of the main inconsistencies:
Wouldn't it make sense to have all the templates format citations the same?
There were some other issues I raised in some of my original posts in a few locations, but they errors of my ways have been pointed out and I have removed those issues from this post. -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 06:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
My point is that there should be one citation format for consistency sake, they should all utilize a standard layout of design regardless of who designed them. They should all use commas or the should all use periods, not some this format while others use that. If you look at professional publications, the formats of the citations are consistent across the entire document, not a mish-mash of competing styles. Do the citations in volume 1 of the Encyclopedia Britannica differ from those of volume 14 because the editors preferred different citation formats? No, they do not and since the project is putting out published version eventually, whether on electronic media or hard copy, this should be addressed.
If you could, please take a look at the article Burger King products (the one I was editing when I noticed the variances). There are over two hundred citations and close to fifty notes, and as you scan through the various references you see the differences and it doesn't look neat. Yeah, they're mostly the same, but mostly really isn't very good. I understand that there are some differences because of the source cited has different pices of data that need to be included, but the general layout should be standardized. I would like to discuss this and come to a consensus as to how we should design our citations to insure that we have a constant look across the project, regardless of who developed what.
Gadget's list is a lot more comprehensive than my little one above and he points out every inconsistency in every citation currently used. -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 16:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that good points are made here — for example, the comment now just above but which I will requote as "There is a small but nondecreasing number of non-English-language articles ..." in case later comments separate it. IMHO, consensus developed here (if that can happen) could/should be propagated to developers/maintainers of {{ citation}} {{ cite xxx}} and {{ citation/core}} as Requirements (Requirements with a capital R, in the software engineering sense). Whether such a thing can ever happen in a wiki environment is an open question. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Yet another CITEVAR/REFPUNC issue has come up. An editor is insisting that refs relating to parenthetic material must go outside the parentheses. [6] [7] It is my view that WP:REFPUNC allows refs inside parentheses, and so moving the ref outside is contrary to the WP:CITEVAR principle. The opposition appears to claim that "inside" is allowed only when the referenced material is "part" of the material inside the parentheses, and that a ref which covers the "entirety" of a parenthetic ref must, without exception, always be placed outside the parentheses. Gimmetoo ( talk) 03:51, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
The MLA Style Manual (Achtert & Gibaldi, 1985), referring directly on point to superscripted note numbers, says: "They follow punctuation marks except dashes and occasionally parentheses. (When the note is to only the material that appears within parentheses, the note number is placed before the closing parenthesis.)". Gimmetoo ( talk) 02:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
[8] A point about broader implications, here. Gimmetoo ( talk) 23:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Like CBM says, it looks like the currently prevailing view is to place refs after periods, commas, colons, and probably semicolons, and before dashes. I don't think we have any resolution about parentheses - and indeed, BAG-approved ref-placement-changing scripts that I know of do not touch refs near parentheses. The MLA handbook I have access to clearly says to put footnotes for parenthetic material inside the closing parentheses. This was also consistent with the 15th edition of the CMoS (2003), and it may or may not be consistent with the 16th edition of the CMoS (2010) depending on how one chooses to read it. We could survey other style manuals, but I think it ought to be clear that putting refs for parenthetic material inside the parentheses is at least an accepted style. The last major editorial discussion about ref placement that I recall resolved to allow any established style. Gimmetoo ( talk) 00:04, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{
citation}}, {{
cite journal}}, {{
cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id=
(or worse {{
arxiv|0123.4567}}
|url=
http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567
), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567
, likewise for |id=
and {{
JSTOR|0123456789}}
|url=
http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789
→ |jstor=0123456789
.
The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):
Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed.
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
15:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Is there a standard somewhere about whether to go through the references on an article and change all the citation author's first names to initials in the name of consistency? (I seem to recall a page about this but I can't track it down now.) I don't agree with this practice, but I would like to know the consensus first. Thanks.— RJH ( talk) 17:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
WP:CITE allows any style. If an article is started with full names, that's fine, and if it's started with initials, that's fine. The style that's already present should be followed for subsequent references. In practice, in the presence of other citation information, initials rarely make a difference in locating a source. To get some confusion, you would need something like two different papers published in the same issue of the same journal on the same pages whose authors have the same last name :) So readers can locate the source with initials or with full names. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 20:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Haven't read all the previous stuff. I am in favor of a standard (names or initials, don't care). Academice journals differ in if they use names or initials (and even if they put periods on the initials, run them together, etc.) But they follow the same format WITHIN A JOURNAL. So let's pick a style for the journal of Wikipedia and use it. And don't tell me we do it by the article...that is a clusterfuck and we know it doesn't work....the articles endup a mishmash of styles inside the articles and it requires people to learn 10 different styles. Let's standardize.
My inclination would be to go for full names for the same rationale that we don't generally abbreviate journal names and that we do generally give article names instead of just pages. It's because we are not paper. And a fuller citation better allows the reader to decide if he should try to get the cite, and it really helps with all the verification and such. Of course, sometimes we won't have a full name, but no biggie, use it when we have it. But again, if we can standardize, I am totally fine with initials too.
TCO ( talk) 06:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Per the prior discussion, what I'd like to propose is to insert the following compromise recommendation into the Style variation section of the style guide:
Alternatively, we could just list cases where we would want to retain the full author name. Thanks.— RJH ( talk) 14:44, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I think I see where there is a problem in our discussion. You and I may be interpreting the example differently; to me it means to use each of the individual words of the names as they appear in the source: Smith, John Q. rather than Smith, J. Q., when the source says John Q. Smith. For me this follows from the statement that, "Wikipedia has no shortage of space, you need not abbreviate names." Yes, of course we should use a consistent layout. I'm not disputing that. My only concern is with the format of the first (or middle name).— RJH ( talk) 19:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Open Library has an option to get a full Wikipedia citation for any book in it's catalogue, for example http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13538404M/Der_Steppenwolf . I think we should mention that somewhere, because it's a really handy and simple way to get citations for books. Any suggestions? Sadads ( talk) 14:12, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
{{Citation |publisher = Suhrkamp |publication-place = Frankfurt am Main |title = Steppenwolf |url = http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13538404M/Der_Steppenwolf |author = Hermann Hesse |edition = Der Steppenwolf |publication-date = 1960 |oclc = 6584578 }}
{{
cite book}}
is far more commonly used than {{
citation}}
, and cite book has the advantage that it handles the |trans_title=
parameter, which citation doesn't (hence the misuse of |edition=
). --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:40, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm... I see. The citation should most likely use |ol=13538404M
rather than the URL, since that will lead to better appearance and tell people the link will take them to OpenLibrary. It should also make better use of the parameters (for this book, the following would be optimal), and give the option of multiline
{{Citation |author=Hermann Hesse <!-- Or possibly |last=Hesse |first=Hermann --> |year=1960 <!-- Or possibly |date=1960 to simplify compatibility |title=Der Steppenwolf with full dates such as 18 February 1974 --> |series=His Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben |language=German <!-- Which should be omitted if it's English --> |publisher=Suhrkamp |location=Frankfurt am Main |oclc=6584578 |ol=13538404M }}
or single line
{{Citation |author=Hermann Hesse |year=1960 |title=Der Steppenwolf |series=His Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben |language=German |publisher=Suhrkamp |location=Frankfurt am Main |oclc=6584578 |ol=13538404M}}
to produce
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
|date=
for a pure year, 60% of the time it's misinterpreted and Harvard reference linking fails; as it happens, 1960 falls within the 40% where |date=1960
does work. Further info at
Template:Harv#Wikilink to citation does not work item 2.1.1.4 and
the linked note.|last=
|first=
are used, since otherwise the Harvard ref will need to contain the full author name. Compare (
Hesse 1960, p. 123) , which doesn't link to the above citation, with (
Hermann Hesse 1960, p. 123), which does. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
|date=
and |author=
because it might not be possible to ensure data integrity if |last=
|first=
and |year=
are used. If |last=
|first=
(and |last2=
|first2=
...) can't be filled properly, then |author=
should be used. If |year=
can't be filled properly, |date=
should be used (AWB and Bots will convert |date=
into |year=
when appropriate anyway).
Headbomb {
talk /
contribs /
physics /
books}
15:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
How does one make it clear that a given ref is applicable to the entire content of a section, or a whole list, table, paragraph, etc? Roger ( talk) 19:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I have noticed that the following template {{Dead link|date=}} is occasionally added to some references where the reference link has gone dead. This seems to allow for AGF that the reflink did exist when it was added. My question is should we add this as an alternative to item five in the WP:DEADREF section that requires removal of the reference. I am not asking that we chose one over the other, that should be left to an editors discretion. I just think that we might want to acknowledge the template in the guideline. I look forward to your input and thank you for your time. MarnetteD | Talk 16:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
In my opinion, item 5 of WP:Citing sources#Preventing and repairing dead links should be removed as it violates WP:AGF. The same reference could easily pop up at a new site sometime later. New archives of information are constantly appearing online as new services and websites appear. Some examples.
There are many more examples. It would be extremely easy for somebody to think they searched everywhere — not realizing there were other sources — and remove information that could be verifiied by somebody else. Item 5 of WP:DEADREF should be removed. - Hydroxonium ( H3O+) 23:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
(TL:DR version: just remove item five as it is harmful) I just found this discussion from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Conflict between guidelines and I am quite surprised by item five from Wikipedia:DEADREF#Preventing and repairing dead_links which reads: "If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage, then the citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unsourced." I am absolutely against this advice. Yes, it conflicts with Wikipedia:Link rot which contains better advice. The compromise is the minimum I would accept, but we should allow a dead link template to remain regardless. Indeed, assume good faith of the editor that added the original cite. A first hand example: back in 2008 I moved cites from a Danish museum to LZ 13 Hansa. I remember going through that site ( now dead) carefully gathering all possible sources for several Zeppelin facts. The museum website URL went 404 some time back; I recall another editor finding its replacement URL (and some are now at Zeppelin#Danish Post & Tele Museum Zeppelin articles); nevertheless the old URL in LZ 13 Hansa is still dead and not in the Internet Archive. I now see the museum revamped their site at http://mini.ptt-museum.dk/zeppex/en/enFront.html so someone *may* be able to re-find the Flash page I had cited, but it took me quite a search the first time. If my cite was just deleted (after a dead link tag was added maybe), that would be a net loss to wikipedia. - 84user ( talk) 19:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Now that I have read more of this thread, I agree with User:Hydroxonium and again call for that item five to be removed. Even cutting and moving it to the talk page runs the risk it gets buried in an archive and lost. I feel how we handle citations is a short-term stop-gap measure until we have a better method of copying cited sources ala WebCite or Internet Archive. Preferably superior to both as they risk "losing" their copies. Another example, David Schwarz (aviation_inventor) has a potentially controversial claim cited by this note which links to exhibit list from now-stale Traum von Fliegen museum site. That link sometimes goes 404 (I use [9] to check). In fact even the Internet Archive cache copy of it went "server error" on me a few minutes ago. Yes, I should add more identifying details. But what if both it and its archive went 404? - 84user ( talk) 20:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
"Not visible today in the archives" is importantly different from "not in the archives". Given that it is impossible to determine whether a recently dead link has or has not been archived recently, I think we should probably change the guidance to normally retaining dead links, but labeling them as dead citations. Specifically, given the ~18-month delay in archive visibility, I think it appropriate to retain dead links for at least ~24 months (to increase the likelihood that they're actually not in the archives). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Hydoxonium responded to my post above asking for specific recommendations. I think it might help to have a step-by-step process of recommendations and/or requirements for preventing and repairing dead links. What we have now is something like that, but falls a bit short. Following are some ideas, not exactly what I think should be put in the guideline, as I have a number of explanatory remarks to the editors here about why I thought some of these things are good ideas.
When editors find a dead link in an article, even though that reference has ceased to be Verifiable, they should follow this process:
Thoughts? Шизомби (Sz) ( talk) 22:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
Four quick thoughts:
There was no consensus to remove item 5, but the general feeling was that due diligence should be taken before removing references. This could include the following:
I believe that's all of the suggestions people had before removing a reference. - Hydroxonium ( T• C• V) 09:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Current | Proposed |
---|---|
1. First, check the link to confirm that it is dead. The site may have been temporarily down or have changed its linking structure. | Confirm status: First, check the link to confirm that it is dead and not temporarily down. Search the website to see whether it has been rearranged. |
2. The Internet Archive (
http://www.archive.org/) has billions of archived webpages. There may be a delay of six months before a link shows up there. See Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine.
3. UK Government Web Archive ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/), a project of The National Archives, preserves 1500 UK central government websites captured by the European Archive Foundation.[13] |
Check for web archives: Several archive services exist; add one of these URLs if available:
Most archives currently operate with a delay of ~18 months before a link is made public. As a result, editors should wait ~24 months after the link is first tagged as dead before declaring that no web archive exists. Dead URLs to reliable sources should normally be tagged with |
4. Remove the dead link and keep the citation without a link if the material exists offline; for example a journal or newspaper article. | Remove convenience links: If the material was published on paper (e.g., academic journal, newspaper article, magazine, book), then the URL is not necessary. Simply remove it. |
Find a replacement source: Search the web for quoted text or the article title. Consider contacting the website/person that originally published the reference and asking them to republish it. Ask other editors for help finding the reference somewhere else. Find a different source that says essentially the same thing as the reference in question. | |
5. If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage, then the citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unsourced. | Remove hopelessly lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you are unable to find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverifiable. If it is material that is
specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with {{
citation needed}} . It may be helpful to future editors if you move the citation to the talk page with an explanation.
|
The above takes the existing text and incorporates the advice that Hydroxonium summarized above. Does this work for people? Shall we update this and be done with this question? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Since everyone agrees, I'll make the changes in a minute. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
The explanatory text at Template:Cite web states that it is to be used to cite online sources, but that Cite news can also be used when citing a news source. This seems to clearly indicate that if your source is an 'online newspaper' you can use either template. However, see this bot revision [10] has changed the reference from a cite web to a cite news. Is there any consensus for this? Eldumpo ( talk) 12:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
OK, there seems to be consensus that news should be used in preference to web. I therefore propose the following text should be included as the intro to Template:cite web.
"This template is used to cite online sources in Wikipedia articles. However, it is preferred that {{ Cite news}}, {{ Cite book}} and {{ Cite journal}} are used instead for those citations that are online versions of newspapers, books or journals. For general information about citations in Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Cite sources. A general discussion of the use of templates for adding citations to Wikipedia articles is available at Wikipedia:Citation templates."
Any comments on this text, and also, is it OK to just go in and edit the template (given it is in use on so many pages), or does it need to be done by an admin? Eldumpo ( talk) 22:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Per your request Eldumpo here is a table comparing the parameter differences between the three citation types above. As you can see, although all three have fields in common each has fields the others do not. The wording looks good to me though.
Cite parameter | Web | Journal | News |
---|---|---|---|
|accessdate=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|agency=
|
No | No | Yes |
|archivedate=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|archiveurl=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|at=
|
Yes | No | Yes |
|author=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|author2=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author3=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author4=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author5=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author6=
|
No | No | Yes |
|author7=
|
No | No | Yes |
|authorlink=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|authorlink2=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|bibcode=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|coauthors=
|
Yes | No | No |
|date=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|doi=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|editor-first=
|
No | Yes | No |
|editor-last=
|
No | Yes | No |
|editor-link=
|
No | Yes | No |
|first=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|first1=
|
No | Yes | No |
|first2=
|
No | Yes | No |
|format=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|id=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|isbn=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|issn=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|issue=
|
No | Yes | No |
|journal=
|
No | Yes | No |
|language=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|last=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|last1=
|
No | Yes | No |
|last2=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laydate=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laysource=
|
No | Yes | No |
|laysummary=
|
No | Yes | No |
|location=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|month=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|newspaper=
|
No | No | Yes |
|oclc=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|page=
|
Yes | No | Yes |
|pages=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|pmc=
|
No | Yes | No |
|pmd=
|
No | No | Yes |
|pmid=
|
No | Yes | Yes |
|postscript=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|publisher=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|quote=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|ref=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|separator=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
|series=
|
No | Yes | No |
|title=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|trans_title=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|url=
|
Yes | Yes | Yes |
|volume=
|
No | Yes | No |
|work=
|
Yes | No | No |
|year=
|
Yes | Yes | No |
-- Kumioko ( talk) 01:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I undid an edit that changed this guideline to say that the use of "named" references is mandatory when the same footnote content is used more than once. My reasons:
If there is some general agreement that using named references is mandatory, then by all means we should clarify it in this page or at WP:FOOTNOTES. But it seems strange to me to mandate that.
Of course, if we do mandate it, a bot will take care of implementing named references for all duplicate footnotes in all articles; the change to this guideline was by a bot operator who has proposed running that task. So we have to keep in mind whether that's desirable. Other people use footnotes more than I do, so I'd value some other opinions. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 01:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
<ref name="CROG199"/>
. You can't tell what it is. And it's utterly unintelligible to new editors. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
06:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)<ref name=Smith2001p123>Smith (2001) p. 123</ref>
be preferred to <ref>Smith (2001) p. 123</ref>
. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
15:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
tags, I name them but only where necessary to consolidate duplicate refs - if an inline ref supports only one paragraph, sentence or phrase, I leave it un-named. For new articles, I use {{
sfn}}
instead. This names all inline refs, whether necessary or not: but the crucial thing is that it's done invisibly, see
Wolf's Castle Halt railway station in particular the Parker & Morris 2008 refs. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
18:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)Yes I agree, the {{
sfn}}
is pretty nice. Perhaps we need something equivalent for people who use full inline cites? (I.e. a template that requires just enough fields filled out to uniquely correlate it with a full cite.)—
RJH (
talk)
18:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that this is drifting seriously off-topic, because some people posting here are misunderstanding the original question. Carl (CBM) states that he 'undid an edit that changed this guideline to say that the use of "named" references is mandatory when the same footnote content is used more than once'. Some recent postings seem to be mixing this up with list-defined references, for which naming of the reference is most definitely mandatory.
The relevant revert is here, an amendment to WP:CITEFOOT. The text that Carl reverted was:
and the text that he reverted to is:
Consider the situation where two facts are drawn from the same page in the same book, but in between them is a fact drawn from a different source. Other than placing all the refs at the end of the paragraph, there are at least two ways of doing this:
The first fact.<ref>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref> The second fact.<ref>Jones, S. (2010} ''Another book'', p. 321</ref> The third fact.<ref>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref>
The first fact.<ref name=Smith>Smith, J. (2001) ''A book'', p. 123</ref> The second fact.<ref name=Jones>Jones, S. (2010} ''Another book'', p. 321</ref> The third fact.<ref name=Smith />
The question is, therefore,
A user ( User:Fleetham) who likes to provide multiple references for every sentence when they edit, has picked up on the possibility of bundling references. However, since they provide so very many references and often the same one repeatedly, the same reference is often quoted several times in the reference. For an illustration, the reference section of the BYD Auto article currently shows a Wall Street Journal article ("Beijing Halts Construction of BYD Auto Plant") FOUR times and several other cites are listed twice or more.
To me, the obvious solution is to provide less references, but the other user is adamant about providing citations for everything. Is it best to bundle and cite the same reference over and over again, or are multiple superscripts preferred? ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃ ( talk) 16:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
How is it done? Kindle does not display page numbers, which is a huge pain in the ass for any student in class who has to refer to a certain page or reference it for a research paper. Instead they have these worthless "location numbers" which as far as I know are not accepted outside of Kindle in any standard referencing. Are location numbers acceptable in a citation on Wikipedia? I would not be surprised if the answer is a big resounding no. And if not, do you cite Kindle like you would a webpage or like a theatrical play? i.e. "Chapter 5, Section 2, Paragraph 8" etc. Thanks to anyone who knows anything about this subject and is willing to answer my questions. Cheers.-- Pericles of Athens Talk 20:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I have a source coming from the United States Census Bureau, but it is convenience linked on Ancestry.com. I have checked with WP:RSN and it (Ancestry.com) is a Reliable Source (since it is actually coming from the Census Bureau). My question is, who do I source in the source template? Ancestry.com, the US Census Bureau, or both? - Neutralhomer • Talk • Coor. Online Amb'dor • 22:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Is there any guidance/best practice for the use of the accessdate parameter on the citation templates. If you click on an existing reference which already has a 'retrieved on...' entry, should you automatically update the date to the day you checked it, or should you only update the access date if you make other changes to the citation (title, author etc)? Eldumpo ( talk) 10:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
|url=
parameter, instead you should add both |archiveurl=
and |archivedate=
, leaving |url=
alone. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
12:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your responses on this. I wasn't intending to go around randomly updating access dates for various articles, my query really was more related to if I was changing the citations anyway, and I take the point that if you do update the access date you should check that there is not more than one reference and that they are all still referenced at the source. Just to clarify one point above, access date is very important when there is no publication date listed for the source. I think that updating the access date may give some general confidence to the reader that the reference is still current, if it's been recently updated. Eldumpo ( talk) 09:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Some time ago there was an extended discussion of adopting a single citation style for Wikipedia. Does anyone remember where the discussion is located? Jc3s5h ( talk) 15:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
I was reading Win Butler's biography which states that he has met co-singer Regine Chassagne at McGill University. Other biographies on the band itself imply that they met at Concordia university.
Which is the correct version???
My Sources: Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.152.52.22 ( talk) 16:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
If I have several citations supporting a sentence, say "[1][2][3]", is there a way (a template?) to have this automatically be converted into "[1–3]"? bamse ( talk) 10:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
For an article I'm working on, there is a likely high-priority source that I need to use that is basically, at the present time, an e-featurette written specifically for the iPad (the work is discussed here: [11]). It is unlikely it will be made as a printed work, and also unlikely it would be posted to the web (the app has a website to tell people what it is about), but it may see other OS support (android, PC/Mac, etc), so it always will basically be an interactive application that provides information.
I cannot see any of the existing cite templates easily working for that. I can shoehorn it into them (cite web and pointing to the app's homepage would be one way), but I'd rather see if there's an existing template or should we consider one for the future if such types of works become more common. -- MASEM ( t) 13:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Although this may be quite obvious, we still need to have some formal policy on this (I am not sure if there already is. Please point me towards one if there is.). Very often different news reports from different reliable sources do not agree with each other. This happens more often when it comes to numbers (e.g. number of casualties, etc. See July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike for example). Under such circumstances the best thing to do is to clearly mention that there are conflicting reports, and then clearly explain each report/view, and provide multiple citations for each. Please discuss this below. - Subh83 ( talk | contribs) 18:32, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
My apologies if this has already been addressed and I just can't find it, but my question is what page number should be used when the source is a PDF file: The original page of the document or the page of the PDF file? The PDF file may also contain the document cover and other pages that are not numbered on a hard copy. Thanks, Alanraywiki ( talk) 23:09, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
The section Text-source integrity makes a claim that is not supportable:
The following inline citation, for example, is not helpful, because the reader does not know whether each source supports the material; each source supports part of it; or just one source supports it with the others added as further reading:
Delia Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below for how to do that.
The next section ( Bundling citations) then goes on to suggest :
A simple example of citation bundling:
The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot. [1]
Notes
- ^ For the sun's size, see Miller, Edward. The Sun. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1.
- For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon," Scientific American, 51(78):46.
- For the sun's heat, see Smith, John. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2005, p. 2.
But to solve this alleged problem instead of bundling them one could simple add the additional information to the separate citations:
A simple example of not bundling citations:
The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot. [b 1] [b 2] [b 3]
- Notes
AFAICT there may be aesthetic reasons for bundling up citations but Text-source integrity is not one of the other reasons. If bundling is removed from Text-source integrity should the section be removed or should it be altered to say place inline citations where they most clearly support the text. and give an example of a longer sentence such as "Charels II's Scottish coronation took pace on 1 January 1651, while his English coronation was over 10 years later on 23 April 1661." with 2 citations at the end, and then, to demonstrate Text-source integrity the same two sources, one placed after the comma and the other at the end of the sentence. -- PBS ( talk) 12:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
SV you wrote "then pls discuss instead; some of the addition is unclear" If I am to discuss the changes with you need to explain what parts of my changes you think were unclear. -- PBS ( talk) 15:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
All the edit I made did to the Text-source integrity section was to delete "Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below (Bundling citations) for how to do that." and used the previous example from the guideline to demonstrate a failure of in Text-source integrity
Bundling citations is not the only way that can done see the top of this talk page section for an example of another way it can be done. It can also be done by moving the citations back to where they are relevant as they are in the the original example sentences "The sun is pretty big,..." -- PBS ( talk) 22:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the consider sentence coupled with the wording in next section is a false claim. But I an not going to argue further with you over whether it is claim or something else. It is that the wording is inappropriate for this section, as it is only one of several ways to solve the problem, and there is no need in this section to emphasise one solution. It can be deleted without affecting the important message conveyed in the section. As to your point "people generally try to avoid [placing citations after commas]" I suspect you mean "I (SV) generally try to avoid them". Perhaps for the sake of "text-source integrity" you should reconsider that self imposed prohibition.
As the Sun example is used in previous sections it seems to me appropriate to use it here to demonstrate text-source integrity by presenting it as it has already been presented and then again with the citations all clumped together at the end of the two sentences. -- PBS ( talk) 16:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
From the history of the article:
"was better before;" matter of opinion. "not clear what some of this means" Which part? -- PBS ( talk) 09:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
It looks like PBS's issue is the implicit claim that the only way to prevent this problem is to bundle all the citations into a single footnote. This is both obviously not true and obviously (to me, at least) not what any of us intended.
Why don't we create a brief section or sub-section on ==Describing sources== or some such? CITEBUNDLE could refer to it, but it could be linked in other situations, e.g., when separate footnotes are being used at the end of a multi-fact sentence.
Additionally, we could be clearer in CITEBUNDLE that the technique is useful when naming many sources that all support exactly the same single fact in a single-fact sentence. If the sentence is "The Earth is an oblate spheroid", and you follow it with six independent reliable sources, each of which says exactly "The Earth is an oblate spheroid," then typing "For the shape of the Earth being an oblate spheroid, see:" six times—or even once—is silly. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
I have neither the time nor inclination to enter into a debate on this issue, but I have independently come to this talk page in order to comment on the Delia Smith example, and was surprised to discover an ongoing discussion about it. However, I can't work out whether the discussion above is particularly pertinent to the point I was hoping to make - mostly because I can't quite see what PBS is driving at, nor can I identify the locus of the dispute that SV has with PBS, or why the debate seems so hot-tempered. So please treat this not as an attempt to extend the above discussion, but the raising of a fresh point. (It's quite possible that I'm alarmed by the same thing that PBS is. In fact I am having great difficulty putting my finger on the best way to phrase my complaint, and it's entirely possible nobody is going to comprehend the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps the same fate befell PBS?)
I'm not going to repeat the "Delia Smith" text as it is visible above. But from the moment I saw it, my alarm bells started ringing. As it stands, I'm not currently sure that I understand its meaning, or the point that it is trying to make. If I do understand it, I think it's clearly wrong as written. If I don't understand, then I am "misreading" it - at least, I am reading the words in a way that is different to how the writer intended me to. Either way, the point that the text is intended to drive home, is not well-made.
I have no intention of getting bogged down arguing the toss over whether the text is technically true or false or somewhere in between, or quite why/how I'm misreading or miscomprehending it, partly because it's naturally difficult to verbalize misreadings, and partly because I may simply be blind to what is staring at my face. But I'm not normally an idiot, I'm clearly not the only one struggling with this section, and this is theoretically a guide to teach (often newish) editors how to reference properly - so the fact it's causing confusion even among experienced editors is not a healthy sign. Instead I'm going to suggest a simple amendment to the wording, by tweaking the [deliberately bad] example slightly.
"Delia Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer.[3][4][5][6]" --> "Delia Smith is one of the UK's most well-known cooks, and that country's best-selling cookery writer.[3][4][5][6]"
If the point this section is trying to drive at, is what I think it ought to be, then this rewording makes the point much clearer, at least to me. I suspect some other readers will find the same. Perhaps others will find that this wouldn't make it any clearer to them, but they might grasp why it makes it clearer to me. I'm sure others still will not see what the fuss is about, because their reading of the section seems so natural to them, they can't even imagine what could be throwing me: in that case I beg you to accept the change regardless, because confusion among the audience is real (treat me and perhaps PBS as "user experience" data) and it can be difficult to understand the misunderstandings of others! On the other hand, perhaps those who wrote or feel they understand the section, will consider that my proposed change to the example obfuscates - or even utterly invalidates - the "learning point" it was intended to establish. (That's quite possible, for I'm aware I may have totally misconceived the meaning of the section.) If that's the case then my suggestion is useless, but please have a go at recrafting a fresh example/wording to use instead, because it is sorely needed.
This is no criticism of the author(s) of that section! Sometimes we all write things that make total sense to us, because we know what we mean and the point we are trying to express, yet which almost inexplicably some readers cannot derive the same sense from. FWIW my interest in this page is because many years ago I created {{ harvnb}} and am therefore partly responsible for the upwards trend in WP:CITESHORT. It's interesting to see how this format is now incorporated into the editorial guidelines. In fact I found the guidelines on the whole very clear, and a massive improvement on the help available when I was starting out on WP, back in the days when even FAs had no inline citations! TheGrappler ( talk) 01:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
(Query about a specific problem moved to user's talk page and replied to there. — SMALL JIM 12:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC))
I have been working on User:Gadget850/Citation templates— anchors. Should this be moved into Wikipedia space somewhere so it can be used and updated? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I have seen short footnotes used effectively where a book is cited at several different pages. Each page ref has a separate footnote, and then the full citation is given in the "References" or "Bibliography" section. However, I am starting to see a number of short articles now that do not have multiple footnotes to different pages in the same book, and can be easily covered by the full citation in the footnotes without a separate references section. I find this to be much easier to use because the footnotes have a ^ link symbol that allows me to return to the text, which is not present in the bibliography. Could we amend the short footnote MOS to state a preference for the long footnotes except in cases where multiple footnotes refer to different pages in the same book or other source? Thanks Racepacket ( talk) 18:02, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
An issue came up during the GA review for Don't Look Now in regards to the reference format. The review is at Talk:Don't_Look_Now/GA1, and the relevant parts are the reviewer's last review point and my point listed at #8.
The issue revolved around me putting the website name in the 'work' parameter:
Canby, Vincent (10 December 1973). "Don't Look Now (1973) – Film:'Don't Look Now,' a Horror Tale:Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Leads The Cast Suspense Yarn Turns Into a Travelogue". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
The reviewer felt that the newspaper name (The New York Times) should have gone in the 'work' parameter and the "The New York Times Company" in the 'publisher' parameter.
I'm happy to do this if this is the preferred protocol, but the reason I did it is that newspaper references rarely list the publishing company, they effectively publish themselves. In all the academic references I've seen only the newspaper name is given. When it's sourced online it is usually accompanied by the full url, so the name of the website is still explicitly given in the reference, which is effectively where you got your information from. A quirk of Wikipedia is that the url is hidden beneath the title, so just to make the information sources explicit I used the work parameter to provide the website address; it just seemed a bit weird looking at list of online references and not seeing the website names.
There are a lot of policies and guidelines about referencing so my apologies if this is covered somewhere, but is there a specific guideline for using these parameters in this context? I can pull the work parameter if I've incorrectly used it, that isn't a problem, but is it common practice to add in the actual publishing company? My aim is to get the article to FA status eventually, so I'd like to get the references in order, especially if my citations are unorthodox and could derail an FA nomination. I'm interested in personal opinions as well as the policy perspective. Betty Logan ( talk) 05:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I am doing some cleanup on Fantastic Mr. Fox (film) and encountered the use of a wikiquote as a references. The existence of {{ Cite wikisource}} suggests it is generally accepted to cite wikisource; is it also okay to cite wikiquote, and if so, is there a template that is recommended to use? Thanks. 67.100.125.30 ( talk) 01:36, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I think that for high quality articles, FA at the very least, all book references should have Google Book page links (where possible). They make verification tremendously easier. Thoughts? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:24, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
There isn't really much to debate here. Google links are optional but of course not mandatory. There is no requirement for sources being available online nor is there (currently) a consent for such a thing iamginable.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC) Also note that if you want to use Google links nevertheless, that there is a template available: {{Google books|ID|displayed text|page=}}-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, one should point out that the legal controversy is about the GB books with "snippet view", which are fairly irrelevant here because you can't really link to individual page of those. Those with (limited) page view have an explicit agreement with the publisher. See WSJ; I've updated the Wikipedia article from that. Tijfo098 ( talk) 20:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
I completely missed that the guideline has now an explicit section on Google Books for a while. I'm not against that, however there are a few points that imho need to be considered:
-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 13:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
http://faq.dtnorway.com/question?questionid=1032#comments —Preceding unsigned comment added by Atremist ( talk • contribs) 09:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
A relevant RfC is in progress at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Dead url parameter for citations. Your comments are welcome, thanks! — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:59, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi all: I thought it might be useful to have a note in "Identifying parts of a source" about using times to refer to specific points of interest in audio-visual material. I moved the "books" example into its own bullet point and expanded it to "books and print articles", and added a new bullet point for "audio and video sources". The various {{ cite media}} templates support this parameter already.
I also added "Sound recordings" and "Film, TV, or video recordings" to the "Examples" section to indicate the kind of information that usually goes into citing this type of material.
More eyes and fine-tuning certainly welcome! Cheers -- Rlandmann ( talk) 12:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
This is a common misconception. I've seen this reasonably enough to wonder if we shouldn't make some clear statement in this (?) policy that yes, most sentences need references. With a nod towards Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue, this is a wiki, and sentences may be moved, added to, and so on. Just few days ago I reviewed a DYK and asked the nom for an ref for the hook inside a para. The para's last sentence had a same ref, and you'd think the middle, where the hook was from, would have the same one, right? But it was instead another source the nom used, but forgot to add to that para (see this). This is just one of many cases which prove that it is better safe than sorry, and referencing each sentence is the right thing to do.
If you are not convinced, imagine a paragraph with only end-of-para reference. Do you assume that the last reference cover all the sentences? If so, you trust Wikipedia more than I would. Can you be certain that it wasn't an unreferenced para to which somebody added a new, referenced sentence, or if that ref at some point really was for all sentences, that nobody added unreferenced content to the middle? If somebody were to add new content to the middle of that para, with a reference - would you then assume that the beginning of that para is referenced with the new, middle-of-the para ref? Or if such a para was split into two, thus leaving the first one unreferenced? I hope it is clear why each sentence has to have its own reference. Suggestions on how to stress it (in this policy?) would be welcome.
PS. A while ago, I reviewed a DYK and asked the nom for inline cites. He grudgingly added the single one necessary for the hook, and for the few cite needed templates I added. The article used a single source, and he "promised" me that he would remove all the inline cites as "the article is good enough with a general reference, and all those footnotes look ugly...". Ugh. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 01:00, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Piotrus has just arrived at an article I've been editing, and that he has never edited, to add an unreferenced tag [16] because of this exchange. This is POINTy and disruptive. Please don't do that kind of thing again. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 01:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Sourcing single sentences rather than paragraphs might have a slightly better text source integrity but you can't trust that either and it can easily manipulated by other editors as well. Hence the notion that single sentence sourcing is always a real improvement is imho nonsense and false focus on formalities or visual gimmicks. The only way to check whether an article is properly sourced is to actually read the sources. Generally we require only that the citation is "reasonably close" to the sourced text, which you usually means that latest at the end of the paragraph the source should show up or in the case of very short articles you simply might list them at the end. If you want to be particularly precise yourself you could use annotated bundled citations. However I don't think that is something can be required (maybe recommended though), as it significantly increases the workload for the author and as a general idea keep it simple to contribute.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 01:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
The important thing to remember here is that citations are primarily for editors and "power readers", the vast majority of people aren't interested in finding out where the material came from.
Our policies are clear; every piece of material must be verifiable, but there is nothing that prescribes whether that is via inline citation, bibliography or simply by linking to it in an edit summary. This is good, it gives editors a degree of flexibility, which means that if you are writing an article and want to cite every single sentence then you can do so. And those of us who prefer to use citations in a more restrained way can do so.
There are some Wikipedia processes which force a particular form of reference; for example if you want an article to be promoted for FA (and to a lesser extend GA) you are going to need to have inline cites at least for each paragraph (and, conversely, you'd likely be asked to remove cites duplicated sentence after sentence).
On the specific issue of citing each sentence; I do think it is messy, and I suggest that we try to be considerate of readers when placing cites. It is the same issue of "citation stacking" where a word or sentence is queued up with 5 references to support it (perhaps because it has been contentious). This can interrupt the flow of reading.
When I read an article (for my own education/enjoyment) I usually hide the references (for which I have a neat little script) because it can become distracting.
Reading Piotrus' comments I have to question what purpose citing every sentence serves; everything has to be verifiable, whether it has an inline citation or not. I do not think that having a duplicated inline citation for every sentence helps - if those citations are all different, with specific page numbers, then yes, perhaps. But otherwise surely a paragrapgh sourced to a single source need only be cited once :)
There is a balance between editorial ease and readability, I think demanding per-sentence citation for every sentence sacrifices too much readability. For exmaple, my pet article would be a mess of [1]'s and each reference at the foot of the page would have about 20 linksabcdefghijklmnopqrstuv. I fail to see the use of this.
Essentially this is making the argument that stuffing inline citations improves the referencing of articles, a concept which completely misses the point IMO and does nothing to improve quality, verifiability or readability. Everything should be verifiable to a source, ideally that source should be noted on the article and convention suggests adequate inline citations for ease of verification. Requiring per sentence citations is a step way too far (it is something you would never get past the FA crowd, for example) and serves no useful purpose.
On a personal note; if I came across a paragraph with every sentence cited to the same sources it would actually raise a red flag to me as likely dubious content that needs to be looked at. -- Errant ( chat!) 10:27, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
With production bases located in China,[9] the Philippines,[9] and Taiwan,[9] Yulon makes license-built[citation needed] versions of many automakers' models.[9] The companies it manufactures in cooperation with include Chrysler,[9] Geely,[10] GM,[9] Mercedes Benz,[9] Mitsubishi,[9] and Nissan.[9]
Rather than having the reader guess what part of the text is cited, it would be nice if the range were highlighted in some manner. A possibility would be to change the shape of the cursor over a range of cited text. Currently the page shows either the 'text' cursor or the 'hand' cursor. What if it showed, say, the 'default' (or perhaps the 'help') cursor over a range of cited text? This would provide feedback to the viewer. For example, this range of blue text has a different cursor shape.[1] Regards, RJH ( talk) 16:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I, for one, am not sure which universe the folks who oppose referencing each sentence have arrived from—have they not edited anything around here or what? It would, of course, be great if all editors always made sure that whatever they are editing at the moment is covered by the source which is cited at the end of the paragraph, but let's be real, shall we? It's not gonna happen. Ours, indeed, is not an ideal world. People move stuff around, insert/delete sentences, and re-arrange citations all the time, and more often than not all they care about is the material, not how well that material is represented in the source being cited. Sadly, for many people referencing is an afterthought, a mundane chore, something to get out of the way quickly. And while such attitudes continue, it's very naive to expect the ideal behavior from everyone. Ugly or not, citing every sentence is the best way to keep up with the fluidity of the content, and while not everyone wants to do it or is even capable of doing it, at least don't tell those who are to cease and desist!— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); June 1, 2011; 17:20 (UTC)
I agree with the consensus here and policy, that one need not (and indeed should not) cite every sentence unless required. A citation that covers two or three sentences, or even an entire paragraph, is preferable to filling up the page with repeated citation superscripts. Jayjg (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Ëzhiki, I think it is important have experience with a problem before proposing a solution. Citations getting mixed up is a problem - it is not one caused by citing paragraphs, and it is not one solved by citing sentences. I've worked on articles where citations get churned all over the place regardless of where they were placed. If the article is undergoing a lot of work by a number of editors you are going to lose track of sources, nothing much can change that. If you have an article with minimal activity where an editor comes in an breaks up a paragraph then it is their responsibility to make sure it is all adequately cited afterwards :) Sure, citing sentences allows them to be lazy, but it's too much of a trade off to disrupt the reader. -- Errant ( chat!) 10:11, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The day may come when Wikipedia finds itself with millions of Google Books citations that are broken.
Google Books is not a reliable long term site for linking citations on Wikipeida: Google makes no promise it will maintain the archive in current format; URL formats may change; books may switch from free to pay, since publishers re-publish old titles and Google removes them as free; Google may go out of business or be acquired; Google may determine books are no longer profitable and cancel or change the service.
Yet, Google is a huge resource, what is one to do? There are two solutions: Internet Archive and HathiTrust. Both of these non-profit academic-oriented sites mirror books from Google, plus have additional books they have scanned independently. In fact both these sites are larger than Google, in terms of Public Domain titles. Most people think of Google Books is the biggest/best, but it's really a poor quality also-ran whose future is uncertain. Probably the best site for long-term linking is HathiTrust because its run and maintained by the same University libraries where Google scanned the books originally. They have stated the links will be permanent and unchanging for 1000 years (or however long these Universities are in existence). If your serious about citations to scanned books that will last, it's the one to use. Green Cardamom ( talk) 20:39, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Well free alternatives to Google Books are welcome and the issues with Google Books are known. However that doesn't change the fact that Google Books is by far the most convenient and most comprehensive thing out there for the moment (and at least the near future). Note that in most cases archive.org or HathiTrust offer no alternative, since the most common use of Google in WP is the limited preview of authoritative recent books rather than (old) PD books and the former are not available on archive.org or HathiTrust.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 06:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
Book link}}
or {{
Cite link}}
and tried to encourage people to link to book pages only through this template? For now, the template would be identical to {{
Google books}}
, except that it takes an ISBN rather than Google ID. Then, going forward, if Google books ceases to do it's job, we can change the template and fix all of the articles in one go. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
07:10, 6 June 2011 (UTC){{
Google books}}
. --
Alarics (
talk)
08:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Ok here is something to consider. Internet Archive has copied over 1 million public domain titles from Google Books, which is AFAIK most or all of the Google Book PD collection. Internet Archive has maintained Google's metadata, so it would be possible to write a script to match up the Google Book URL with the books Internet Archive URL, and then convert citations over to Internet Archive on Wikipedia. It wouldn't be the easiest programming job, but worse things have been done. I'm not suggesting this be done now, but if things ever became desperate due to Google Fail, I think the metadata exists to switch to a new provider. As for Copyright works, different story of course. Green Cardamom ( talk) 18:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
If material can be found online, is it enough to give a link plus enough information to aid recovery after link rot, or should editors strive for references that are complete enough to pass muster in an academic setting?
For example I have been linking to military topographic maps accessible online through Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection [17] for the U.S. military topos or through Poehali [18] for Soviet counterparts.
In both cases, titles and affiliations of issuing agencies have changed a few times since comprehensive topographic mapping programs came into play during World War II. I assume that academically satisfactory citation would reflect these changes, whereas something more concise and casual might ignore them and perhaps even ignore the fact that the Soviet Union is no more!
Map index numbers are the single most critical piece of information, using a row/column scheme that has remained constant and was even remarkably simiilar between the British-American and Soviet mapping programs. If you know the index number of a map and it is available online, you can probably find it without concerning yourself with the institutional details.
Nevertheless there is a certain pride of craftsmanship in getting the institutional details correctly documented. Does Wikipedia encourage this as a matter of policy, or is just getting the index number right, good enough? LADave ( talk) 16:47, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
(I originally raised this at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates, but was advised that this was a more appropriate location). When citing Print-on-Demand titles, or listing them in a bibliography, who should be cited as the publisher? See, for example, the bibliographies at Stefan Stenudd, Kerri Bennett Williamson, Garry Davis and many more, which list titles as published by BookSurge Publishing. BookSurge is actually the Print-on-Demand subsidiary of Amazon.com, and these books are in effect self-published. Should the authors be listed as publisher? RolandR ( talk) 07:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
In the section Wikipedia:Footnotes#Citation_templates and also in the reference Wikipedia:CITE, it says that cite templates are optional and that they make editing harder. I think this guidance should be deprecated by Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references, which overcomes this difficulty. Jarhed ( talk) 19:30, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
<ref name="SPQ49rev"/>
which are illegible to a new person editing the article. (Unlike {{
sfn}}
, or simple <ref>
tages.) I personally agree they are useful when the number citations-per-paragraph gets above a certain level. (I added them to
artificial intelligence myself, because, in that case, the pros outweighed the cons.)If you scroll all the way down to just say this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Price
You see :
^ "Katie Price: Celeb Profile". OK! Magazine. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
Now I know how to get the reference link with [10] but how do you put text to the link?-- Jimmyson1991 ( talk) 21:29, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Ignatowicz-84-86
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I am waay new here. I was surprised to see ZERO results for my Google "smilaugh" produced ZERO results on Wikipedia.
So let's get this done - please help this is my first forte.
Urban Dictionary won with this result:
. Smilaugh 1 thumb up
Mixture between a Smile and a Laugh or Smiling and Laughing at the same time.
Thats so funny im going to Smilaugh.
Person smiling and lauging. You say: Oh your Smilaughing buy smilaugh mugs & shirts sponsor this wordsmile laugh laughing smiling funny by Coal Train28 Nov 19, 2008 share this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chipabirdee ( talk • contribs) 01:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I am trying to provide more references for the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year article, but I'm having trouble with a particular one I've found. Manchester United F.C. produces fact sheets for its museum, and one of these has a complete list of winners of the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award. However, I'm not sure how I would go about referencing this fact sheet in the article. Any ideas? – Pee Jay 10:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
{{
Citation}}
template. If you've found the list online, you could also consider {{
Cite web}}
.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
04:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)I don't see any guidance for citing books in electronic form, such as Kindle. While I sort of own one, if a present to my spouse counts, I don't use it, although I do use the Kindle app on an iPad, I'll give some thought to what makes sense, but I hope others can weigh in on how this should be handled.-- SPhilbrick T 17:47, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
{{cite ebook}}
redirects to {{cite book}}
, for reasons that confused me when I first noticed that. However, really there are only two major differences: format (should note it's an ebook, and probably specify the system), and (possible) replacement of page numbers with location numbers or similar.
Nikkimaria (
talk)
19:15, 23 July 2011 (UTC)I used to think of hard copy as immutable and preferable to softcopy which often disappeared from my media links. But I copied a title from my newspaper some years back. An editor, verifying this (!) found the paper in "permanent" storage in subscription online and changed it. I have no doubt he did this correctly. Various soft copies change until the paper (or whoever) finally "freezes" it.
Having said that, subscriptions aren't available to everyone. On the other hand, libraries don't keep hard copies much anymore.
Should we state a preference for "permanent" softcopy over hard copy? I am particularly thinking of periodic media here. Student7 ( talk) 14:56, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
-- Alarics ( talk) 10:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I made this post at Wp:citation templates, but I haven't had a response yet, and it is quite quiet there. If you have comments please post them there for ease. Thanks. Eldumpo ( talk) 15:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Having been frustrated for some time about quotations that do not include any in-text indication of who is being quoted, I created (on the fly) a new inline template to alert contributors to the need for attribution. The template, which is currently used in just one article (as I said, I created it on the fly!), is Template:Whosequote. Comments -- and assistance with documentation, etc., would be appreciated. -- Orlady ( talk) 16:58, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
{{
whom?}}
? --
Redrose64 (
talk)
17:12, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
<ref>Minsky (1969), quoted in Crevier (1993, p. 67)</ref>
. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
01:54, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Member of Abbots Cross Congregational Church. Qualified Soccer Coach. Popular speaker on Ulster-Scots History
2.219.82.238 (
talk)
10:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The vast majority of footnotes in articles are references identifying sources. In some cases, editors use footnotes to contain explanatory material. In general, when editors include both, they do not distinguish and use a single sequential numbering for each.
I quickly scanned this guideline and did not see any discussion of the distinction between these two types of footnotes, nor any guidance on how numbering should be done in case both are used. Is it here and I missed it, or is it covered in another page?
My question is motivated by Atlantis (newspaper). (As an aside, this is the editors first article!) Back on topic, the editor used the cref template with Roman numerals for explanatory footnotes, and the usual ref template for citation footnotes. What guidance should I give the editor?-- SPhilbrick T 22:22, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT seems to be explicit in saying that the material that is sourced is what the editor has analysed and the in-line citation should not be given as only where the source gained information from. However, there is a different interpenetration to this at by an outreach project that are transcribing material from ARKive, and they have been transcribing material from ARKive and using the the sources within ARKive as the in-line references. Contributions to advance the discussion at welcome at Wikipedia_talk:GLAM/ARKive#WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT_when_writing_in-line_citations. Snowman ( talk) 09:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles are based on WP:V and WP:RS; copying text from anywhere that is not a reliable source (and that includes translating from other Wikis), instead of reading the sources yourself and writing the text yourself, amounts to using non-reliable sources and trying to pass them off as reliable. We shouldn't be importing info from anywhere. We should be reading sources and writing text based on sources. Who knows how many errors are proliferated throughout Wikis by translations from poorly sourced and poorly written articles in other Wikis: this should be forbidden. Well, by policy it is, actually, but people still do it regularly and get away with it regularly, since it's not always apparent to others that they never even read the sources. Same business here. You shouldn't be citing anything imported or translated unless you've read the sources yourself. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
In order to make Nintendo DSi#Reception more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read, I am nesting references that have 4 or more sources grouped together after a sentence. I've done this with the first sentence and would like input on what I'm doing right/wrong. « ₣M₣ » 19:34, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
|ref=
in the full citation is in a format that {{
harvnb}}
will link to, because it won't recognise the existing |ref=CITEREFConference2008
. Try |ref=harv
; if that doesn't work, you'll need to manually construct it like this: |ref={{
harvid|Satoru Iwata|2008}}
--
Redrose64 (
talk)
18:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)An RfC is in progress at Proposal: date formats in reference sections. I have offered a counter-proposal that the "Manual of Style (dates and numbers)" defer to this guideline for dates that occur in citations. I have also proposed that this guideline be modified to recommend against all-numeric dates with the day or month first, such as writing yesterday's date as "8/7/2011", even if an external style guide calls for that format, or even if the article already uses that format. Please discuss at WT:MOSNUM. Jc3s5h ( talk) 21:50, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Which Wikipedia guideline(s) should establish citation format? Currently Citing sources, Manual of Style, and Manual of Style (date and numbers) all attempt to control citation format, and contradictions currently exist concerning date format. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:51, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As initiator of the RfC, I favor regarding "Citing sources" as the definitive guideline for citations, and any mention in other guidelines to be regarded as convenience summaries. This corresponds to the practice of printed style manuals, such as APA style or The Chicago Manual of Style, which devote one or more chapters exclusively to citation format. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski asked the following question at WT:MOS, but I will answer here in order to centralize discussion:
I still don't see any contradiction between what's said at MOSNUM and what's said at WP:CITE. Do you think there's some inconsistency? MOSNUM seems to be more detailed, that's all.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:08, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
"Citing sources" allows any citation style, and specifically mentions APA style and MLA style. APA would give the publication date for today's newspaper as "2011, August 13" and MLA style would give it as "13 Aug. 2011". The MLA style would allow either "August 13, 2011," or "13 August 2011" in running text. These contradict the attempts at WP:MOS and WP:MOSNUM to require publication dates to match the format in the running text. By designating only one guideline as the definitive guide for citations, contradictions introduced into non-definitive guidelines could be reverted with relatively little fuss or controversy. Jc3s5h ( talk) 17:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
A related discussion from January 2010 may be found at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion. The length of that discussion is 458,843 bytes. Jc3s5h ( talk) 19:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for the functionality of the encyclopedia: the purpose of footnotes is to indicate sources. Any clear style of footnoting will accomplish this; consistency is part of clarity. For many editors, some published style will be easiest to write; some readers will find whatever style is most common in their field easiest to understand. (Although those readers will tend to be the specialists we are not writing for; they have better sources.) Therefore, permitting each widely used style is good for the encyclopedia; those editors who have nothing better to than reformat dates are not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:59, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
What contradiction? No, seriously: what contradiction? CITE says you can use any citation format you want, including ones that you've completely made up out of thin air. So how could an absolute lack of requirements possibly contradict the recommendation on some other page? For that matter, what makes you think that MOSNUM's (multiple) recommended formats apply to citations rather than to the body of the article? MOS directly says "All the dates in a given article should have the same format (day-month or month-day). However, for citations, see Citing sources (style variation)." I cannot imagine how anyone could interpret that as leaving open even the possibility of a contradiction. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:30, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Since discussion seems to have died down, I will summarize my interpretation of the discussion
Would anyone who did not take a position care to endorse my summary? Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I have struck out SlimVirgin from my summary, because her edits to this guideline make it appear that she has a much different definition of "citation style" than I do. She would allow MOS or MOSNUM to cover date format. But at least two style manuals (APA and MLA) specify a (potentially) different date format in citations than in running text. Thus I do not understand SlimVirgin's position. Jc3s5h ( talk) 15:06, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi Jc, you've add this to the section asking editors to refrain from changing citation styles, but it's not really about that. It's best left for the relevant MoS page:
SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 08:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Although I wouldn't strictly have a problem with such a date format, it means gobbledegook to the vast majority of readers. Even formats such as "(2008, June)", "(2006, November/December)", "(1993, September 30)" would be at odds with MOSNUM, and be inconsistent with dates in running text. As Jc3 already notes that he expects date format such as "8/21/11" or "21/8/2011" to be overriden, thus I see MOSNUM operating as a layer of guidance supplementing it by superpositioning onto WP:CITE, overriding dates like "(2006, November/December)", "(1993, September 30)". -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)「處置失當 菲警界究責 警署署長下台 4指揮官停職」《大公報》A03,2010年8月26日
In the #Numbers thread Kotniski wrote "I would prefer it if Wikipedia had its own single defined citation style or small set of alternative styles". Personally, I'm not prepared to endorse citation templates, due to their bulk and performance problems. Past attempts to establish a single house style, whether citation templates or something else, did not reach consensus. Let em outline what I see as the most we could hope to achieve consensus on in the direction of standardizing styles.
An area that would require further discussion is shortened footnotes. For articles that do not use citation templates, the only published style I know of that recognizes shortened footnotes is Chicago. Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
I've run into a curious issue. An article with >100 references had a total of 6 instances of cite templates. I rewrote those to match the other 98 or so refs. An editor reverted; I quoted CITEVAR, and the editor insisted that we had to have a discussion on the talk page and achieve consensus to rewrite any refs. If people are interpreting CITEVAR that way, then either CITEVAR needs to be rewritten, or this same principle needs to be applied to every style change, including date formats. Gimmetoo ( talk) 17:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I undid this edit because it changes the meaning of the date restriction. Without the heading, it means any style, such as APA style, may be used, so long as that style does not call for dates like "8/9/2011". If the style calls for dates within citations to be inconsistent, such as one format for publication dates and a different style for access dates, that's fine, so long as none of the dates look like "8/9/2011".
I don't know if any published style manual recommends dates like "8/9/2011" in citations, but if so, that style manual should not be used on Wikipedia.
By adding the "Dates" heading, the paragraph prohibits different date formats within citations, for which there is no consensus. Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello, there is a bot approval request at WP:BRFA/H3llBot 9 for adding wikilinks to work/publisher fields where the entity can be unambiguously identified from a pre-selected list. Comments welcome, thanks. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 16:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
J. Johnson has once again proposed that we adopt a house style for handling authors' names (vs. initials). Please see Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Citation_discussion#Full_name.2C_or_initials.3F. I believe this is the third time he's asked tried to gather support for his preferences at some page other than WT:CITE. I'm hoping that eventually he'll discover this page, and that perhaps eventually he will understand the meaning of "no house style" and "any style the editors want", but in the meantime, people familiar with this guideline will probably want to comment there. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:17, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Let's say I rewrite a non-cited section of an article, adding sources for the assertions my edit includes. Another editor then contributes to my edit by changing what I wrote to reflect what he knows of the topic; he includes information that is arguably true, but not academically certain. However, that editors change alters enough of the substance of what I wrote that the source I cited no longer supports the assertion made in the synthesis of the two edits. Should I revert? Do I pull the cite and ask for a different, separate citation? And what if the other editor persists by reverting my removal of the cite (which, due to the timing of the edits, I can say with reasonable certainty is a book the other editor has neither read nor owns)? -- Foofighter20x ( talk) 06:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
<ref>
follow the statements which can be directly supported. Put a {{
citation needed}}
on those statements which are unsupported. Note that this may mean having the <ref>...</ref>
within the paragraph, or even within the sentence, which some people don't like (preferring to place the lot at the end of the paragraph). --
Redrose64 (
talk)
13:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
<ref>...</ref>
and the citation within it to reference a particular part of a specific book. I then <ref>...</ref>
tagged each sentence that made an assertion that is directly supported by the book. The second editor then made his edits; his edits reflected popular, conventional wisdom on the historical topic, but was not supported by the cited source. I then pulled the cite, inserted {{
citation needed}}
after his text, and left this in the comments block of the edit:Since the edit does not reflect the source material, I'm pulling the source [on that sentence] and asking for a separate citation.
A source need not be quoted in order to appropriate.
that makes it easy to replace complicated template citations with standard "ref" ones? The plague of undiscussed drive-by "improvements" and "upgradings" to complicated templates, totally contrary to policy, continues, & if they aren't spotted straight away & reverted, they are a real nuisance to remove manually. Johnbod ( talk) 13:25, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Google Books has a facility to export bibliographic data in BibTeX, Endnote an RefMan formats (see for example, http://books.google.com/books/about/City_Sculpture.html?id=p1ufAAAACAAJ ). Is there a way to convert one of these to wikimarkup? Or get it as cut-n-paste citation template code? If not could we persuade Google to add a facility? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
As if this page wasn't bad enough, we also have WP:Manual of Style/Footnotes and Help:Footnotes, which all basically hover around the same subject area. Could we not bring all this together into one page? (I see the other two were proposed to be merged a while back, though it never actually happened.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
See further postings at [22]. Please post there if you have comments. Eldumpo ( talk) 07:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
An article discusses when a building was torn down. We don't have a source for the exact date of its removal. However there is an image in Google Earth which shows the building, and then a later image which shows it gone and some new buildings in its place. (There are also regular photos from various years published on myriad websites which show the changes, but some of those are undated.) We know the building is gone, but how do we cite its removal? We can't link to Google Earth, though we can provide coordinates, and we can't upload a KMZ file. Based on the two Google Earth images, we now say that "Between 1994 and 2005, the building was removed." Would this work as a citation? Footnote: Google Earth historical images for this site shows the building in 1994 and absent in 2005. Will Beback talk 04:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Do we really mean that whatever citation style someone introduces to an article, all future editors are bound by that decision? For example, if someone starts off a largely unreferenced article but adds one parenthetical reference (against the de facto standard of using footnotes), is everyone else constrained to follow that for ever and ever? If someone decides they want their references to be in pink type or something similarly absurd-looking, are we all obliged to go along with it just because they happened to get to an article first? I can accept that we might not want to force just one single citation style on the whole of Wikipedia, but surely we can express a preference on certain points?-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:14, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
The main point that authors should be able to write in a style they are comfortable with. And as long as that style in is precise, easily understandable and common practice outside WP, I see no good reason to regulate that. (Enforced) Standardization should be kept to areas/topics where it is essential for the functioning of WP and not be used to enforce mere taste decision on authors.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 05:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi WhatamIdoing, you reverted that people can choose to use any style consistent with the advice in CITE, saying I had "lost that debate." Can you say what you mean? SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 00:04, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:CITECONSENSUS says, in part, "The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged." That has been a part of this guideline for a long time. It's been here since sometime prior to this February 2007 edit which tweaked its wording.
I see that there has apparently been some creep lately towards discouraging use of citation templates.
I may have missed some relevant edits, I'm guessing that there might have been some confusion between editors from unrecognized editing collisions. Also, I haven't been following whatever discussion might have taken place re these edits and I've missed whatever has transpired there. However, I do see that the longstanding statement saying, "The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged." is still a part of this guideline. I urge that this longstanding part of the guideline be followed in this guideline -- that the use of citation templates actually be neither encouraged nor discouraged here.
Also, I think describing or referring to the use of citation templates as a "citation style" introduces confusion. I suggest that the term "citation style" be taken in this guideline and in this associated discussion page as having to do with how citations are presented in rendered wikitext, and as not having anything at all to do with the composition of raw, unrendered wikitext. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I apologize for not seeing this earlier. The discussion I have in mind can be found at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive_30#ENGVAR_to_CITEVAR. We proposed including a ban on adding citation templates to articles not using them, and it was directly opposed by more than one editor.
More pointfully, the "Do not do this" rule you added here is actually wrong. Editors may convert simple, elegant manually formatted citations to clunky, confusing citation templates, so long as they have established that there is a consensus to do so at that article. The actual rule is already stated in the section: Avoid this (see bullet #2), but "If you think the existing citation system is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page", and if such a consensus actually exists, then you may actually add citation templates to an article currently using manually formatted citations. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't get it - as SlimVirgin herself says, this sentence is already in the guideline just a few lines down, so I don't see the point of repeating it. This page is long and confusing enough as it is.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
WtMitchell wrote "...should [the guideline] not also say something like, "Do not add hand-crafted cites (in whatever hand-crafted citation format) to an article that already uses citation templates"? Absolutely not. This would forbid the use of any source for which a citation template does not exist, or which has unusual characteristics that prevent the use of a citation template. If an article used citation templates, and it were necessary to cite a source for which no template exists, it would be necessary to hand-craft a citation that follows the general pattern of citation templates. Jc3s5h ( talk) 20:35, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Help:Citation Style 1 now documents templates based on {{ citation/core}}. It needs expansion. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Assuming the style is consistent throughout the article, is wiki-linking necessary for author, location, publisher, or work parameters in a reference? « ₣M₣ » 17:54, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
There were two competing definitions for general references:
A general reference identifies a work which has been used as a source for an article, but without page numbers etc. to say where specific information can be found. For example: Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971. General references, if used, are listed separately in a section at the end of the article.
and lower down in its own section:
A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not displayed as an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section. They may be found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source.
I have edited the page so that there is only one (and chosen the second one). -- PBS ( talk) 21:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The reason why I have chosen the second one is that the first one does not make sense. We have about 10,000 {{
1911}} templates in reference sections in articles it contains the following:
{{
cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help){{
cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help); Unknown parameter |wikisource=
ignored (
help)does not alter the fact that it is a general reference. To do that, some or all of the the information contained in the general reference will have to be added as an inline citation into the body of the article. -- PBS ( talk) 21:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found, but without giving full details of the source – these will have been provided in a general reference.
Consider a footnote like:<ref>See [[glial cell]] for a detailed description of this process.</ref>
Note that this is not a citation, but is an inline "see also". Are there any policies are in place to either discourage or allow footnotes like this? (Sorry to post this here, but I thought you all might know). ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
18:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
I was editing an article recently and saw it had a new style of referencing. instead of REF tags, it used a very short {{ format. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It doesn't seem to be mentioned here. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 17:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
? It would help to know which article and which template. ----
CharlesGillingham (
talk)
17:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
It's sfn, thanks! Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:52, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Are reflists permitted to be enclosed by show/hide boxes? Example
here, which uses {{
Collapsible list}}
. The closest I can find is
WP:ASL and
Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 18#Scrolling Reference Lists: Formal Policy Discussion. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:23, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
Collapsible list}}
as a direct result of Gadget's cmt. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
15:32, 18 September 2011 (UTC)I'm moving to the rfn format for referencing. Then I came across the references in Skylab, which seem to be a dramatic improvement in format - they greatly reduce the size of the "notes" section while at the same time eliminating considerable page flipping. Is there a way to do this using the rfn template (without the rp)? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 12:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
rfn}}
--
Redrose64 (
talk)
12:48, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Right, so is there a way to do the same thing using sfn without hand-crafting? It seems there should be? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 16:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
{{
sfn}}
exclusively in the main text. It made it to
GA status in that form, so it's something that is considered "good". --
Redrose64 (
talk)
17:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)To get back to the original question: {{ sfn}} is for Shortened footnotes. You may want to consider list-defined footnotes; the in-text cite can be created with {{ r}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
I think that the previous bullet point layout in the section " What information to include" is/was clearer/superior to the new layout (textual paragraphs) in the same section (see WP:CITEHOW). -- PBS ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
It's being suggested in recent edit summaries that "Bibliography" is not an appropriate title for the general references section. If this is the case, what do we propose calling the three sections in a case where we have explanatory footnotes separate from citations and inline citations separate from general references?-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The point is not what is appropriate, that is beyond the scope of this guideline. The point is that there are a number of different ways these things can be named and using just the most common one saves having to repeat what is in [WP:FNNR]]. For example Bibliography can be used, but it has several problems. The OED has four definitions for Bibliography (one is archaic) the closes fit to this usage is "4. A list of the books of a particular author, printer, or country, or of those dealing with any particular theme; the literature of a subject." but a general reference section is likely to include bullets points for journals, websites and newspapers all of which are not books so titling a section thus is confusing for readers, and, if the list does not to date include anything but books, may be seen by new editors as restricting. In biography articles, if the subject of the biography wrote books, it is not uncommon to call the section that list them a biography (which does fit the fourth definition in the OED) so naming the general reference section bibliography in biography articles is confusing. Therefore it is better to avoid its usage in examples given on this page. The same goes for section names like "Sources" (cooking) and "Citations" (military) when presenting general guidance on this page. -- PBS ( talk) 01:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
This section needs to be pared down to an overview of the methods of creating in-text cites and general cites and formatting the reference list. There is a lot of duplication of instruction, but with variations. The separate Help pages do a better job on this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The discussion under #Gregorian calendar suggest the following paragraph in the guideline does not give sufficient guidance.
Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582.
I therefore suggest replacing it with a "Dates" section similar to this:
Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I've wikilinked Gregorian calendar, I believe this to be a non-controversial edit. However, I have a problem with the phrase immediately following: "dates where the year is after 1582". The thing is, the GC didn't begin in 1582 in all countries - for example, it began in 1752 in Great Britain and the American Colonies. Examples of this may be seen by examining 18th-century copies of the London Gazette, most issues of which are online; at the time, it was published twice weekly. First, see "No. 9198". The London Gazette. 1 September 1752. which is headed "From Tuesday September 1, O. S. to Saturday September 16, N. S. 1752" - this spans the change of calendar: "O.S." and "N.S." are "Old Style" and "New Style" respectively, and eleven days within this period didn't exist (Sept 2 was followed by Sept 14). There is another reason to suggest 1752: although the calendar changed from 1751 to 1752 at the start of January, it had changed from 1750 to 1751 in late March, as it had in previous years, see these examples:
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to remove the words "dates where the year is after 1582". -- Redrose64 ( talk) 13:14, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't really want to get into all these past discussions (I was part of one of them). All I wanted was to remove the implication that all dates after 1582 are Gregorian. To show this I provided examples of an English newspaper still using dates in the Julian calendar well after 1582. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 19:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
To return to the original question: Best I can suggest is something like "The YYYY-MM-DD format should be limited to Gregorian calendar dates; note that national adoption varies from 1582 to 1926 and that Orthodox Churches use Revised Julian." I would like to see the whole YYYY-MM-DD format go away, but discussions go down the rathole, so I'm not going there. See User:Gadget850/YYYY-MM-DD dates for background. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Just remove the 1582 date, as it is not needed and is to all intense and purposes an arbitrary date as far as British dating is concerned.
Also remove from the guideline the use of "Retrieved 2008-07-15" because since we stopped linking dates (so that one could set date views in the preferences and see them change format) I have stopped using that format on access dating, and AFAICT so have most others. In fact in recent months I have stopped using day and only put "month year" eg "September year" because I realised the field/information is only useful for finding the page in an historical internet archive like wayback machine and their granularity is only to the nearest month. Removing the day from the date field has the advantage that one does not have to decide which format the article would use "day month" or "day month" and so cuts down on maintenance. -- PBS ( talk) 02:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe it is better to devote this page, and some of the pages it refers to, for citation style, and confine MOS and MOSNUM to the text and tables of the article. This is in keeping with printed style manuals, which typically have separate chapters for citations, and the citation style does not always agree with the running text style. Since we allow almost any citation style, it is not feasible to cover citation style in MOS or MOSNUM.
My first impression is that would be unwieldy to address Kotinski's concerns in the current short paragraph. Therefore I will shortly propose a dates section. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Hello. For the page on Katharine Hepburn, I am using some comments she gave on television as sources, and also comments made at the Academy Awards after she died. I'd like to check the correct way to source them please? Currently I've just got them written as:
As you can see, they're inconsistent and I've completely guessed as to the best way to source them. If anyone can give me a concrete formula that would be great. Thanks! -- Lobo512 ( talk) 10:15, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
{{
cite episode}}
, but be very careful that you don't drift into
WP:OR since TV episodes can be considered to be
primary sources. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
13:11, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
This may be an odd question. How does one cite a comment that a person made behind closed doors if it wasn't published in any media? I'm trying to add a section to an article and part of it entails meetings that were held about an issue with a major player expressing their point of view about the topic. There were only about eight of us in the room to have heard the statement. I can't prove it happened though it did. Do I just put it up and defend it if it is criticized? Ayzmo ( talk) 01:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
A dispute arose last month over the proper interpretation of WP:CITEVAR in an article about a US Supreme Court case. The article included inline cites to court cases, as well as cites to journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. The question, in a nutshell, was whether the statement in WP:CITEVAR that "citations within a given article should follow a consistent style" does (or does not) expect or require court case citations to be formatted the same way as the "Citation Style 1" method used in journal / book / newspaper citations.
See Template talk:Cite court#Update to citation/core; Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive1; and WP:CS1.
An effort to fix bugs in {{ Cite court}} ran aground over this issue, and an editor who had been trying to fix the template (but who was not prepared to produce an end result that failed to conform to Citation Style 1) eventually abandoned his efforts — leaving the {{ Cite court}} template still broken and not usable for US court case citations in its current form.
I believe a key issue that needs to be clarified here is whether this particular sort of uniformity is really what WP:CITEVAR is or ought to be seeking. My own impression is that legal writers simply will not accept US court case citations that are not formatted in the US legal profession's standard style (basically the Bluebook style or one of its accepted minor variations) — but no one is really pushing for requiring the Bluebook citation style for non-case cites in legal articles, and a mixed environment in which a legal article includes cases cited in Bluebook fashion, and citations to other kinds of material formatted per WP:CS1, is perfectly appropriate. Others may or may not agree, of course. Should WP:CITEVAR be tweaked to clarify this point? Richwales ( talk) 19:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
This issue was already conclusively resolved at
Template_talk:Cite_court#Issues, so I'm really surprised to see it brought up here again. I'll recap some of my comments from there.
First, it is completely improper to treat a court opinion as if it were a book/journal/periodical, and there is no real citation format that would do so. The standard is to state a short-form name of the case, cite to the volume and page number of at least one
case reporter, give an abbreviation identifying the court if it is not the only court covered by that reporter, and the year of the decision: Smith v. Doe, 176
F. 3d 10 (
5th Cir. 2009). Bluebook is only one form of that standard, in that there are minor variations in terms of what order the information goes in (i.e., New York courts would list the year in brackets before the reporter volume and page instead of in parentheses after), but it is the most observed format (as in all federal courts) and there is not any variation as far as what information goes in the cite even if Bluebook isn't used. The publisher is never listed (which would be the institution that issued the case reporter, not the court in any event), and the court is not treated as an author. To treat case law that way makes no more sense than if we were to treat statutes as if they were books: It's
17 U.S.C.
§ 101, not Congress, United States (2011) "Section 101" in United States Code, Vol. 17. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. We would just be making up our own citation format if we tried to shoehorn case law and other primary legal sources into some other kind of category of printed material. Cites to legal materials (case law, statutes, regulations, etc.) are far more analogous to Bible citations, for which you'd cite book, chapter, and verse, and probably the particular translation.
Second, it's simply a false claim that it would be inconsistent to use Bluebook for case law but not for books, because many (if not most, or even all) non-legal style guides expressly import Bluebook citation format for case law citations (see linked comment above for examples). The only consistency we should be concerned with is citing all cases within an article the same way, and all books in that article the same way. It would be a foolish consistency to insist that cases should be cited in the same format as books, because, again, it would involve a made up format.
postdlf (
talk)
21:25, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Gadget850 stated "FAC discussions have set some precedent by not mixing CS1 and CS2." If it isn't stated where a person trying to bring an article up to featured article standards, it shouldn't count. The idea of a crowd of FAC reviewers springing secret rules upon FAC editors is distasteful. It's possible that an attempt to place this criteria in a more public place would fail.
As to the question at hand, I take the guideline to mean that the established style of the article should be followed for each and every citation. A very few articles actually state, perhaps in a comment, which style guide they follow. Often they follow a published guide well enough that people familiar with the guide will realize which one to follow. When there is no style guide, as in the case of the Citation and Cite xxx templates, and the work to be cited is unlike the sources already cited, I see two plausible choices. Citation uses commas as the element separator, and so most closely resembles Chicago style, so do what Chicago would do; Cite xxx uses periods as separators and puts the date in parenthesis after the author, like APA, so do what APA would do. The other choice is to hand-edit a citation so it resembles the other citations in the article.
The Citation and Cite xxx templates are a bit of a special case, in that they work as intended for some types of sources, have bugs or limited function for other sources, and don't provide at all for still other sources. So if the current version of an article only cites books with {{ Cite book}}, and one wishes to cite a journal, one would use {{tl:Cite journal}} rather than APA. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Lets look at the differences here:
As such, we hold it unconstitutional.
They contain exactly the same information, but Cite court does not use the same same style as CS1. I interpret CITEVAR that you can use any style you desire, as long as it it consistent throughout the article; i.e. all citations use the same style. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:11, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
The bottom line is a court opinion is not a book and should not be cited to as if it were, no more than a statute or Bible verse are cited to as if they were books. That is not inconsistency; that is treating materials in accordance with what they are and in accordance with how the real word treats them. To do otherwise is to push a made-up citation format. The court is not the publisher of the opinion. In the DC Circuit example above,
Westlaw happens to be the publisher of the
Federal Reporter (abbreviated in the citation as F. 3d), but no proper citation to any case will note that any more than a citation to the
United States Reports will credit the
Government Printing Office. And the citation works regardless of whether you referenced a print copy or online text, because online texts insert the same pagination; it is edition-independent in the same way that citing to Matthew 23:24 (KJV) does not require a "publisher" or "author".
So let's drop this nonsense that we can or should treat everything as if it were a book, because that's what's keeping this confused. You treat case law like case law, not like a book or a journal.
And I can cite to the Bluebook itself, or to other non-legal style guides that import Bluebook (or its general form) for case citations, statutes, and other primary legal materials, and treat such materials as different than books or periodicals:
APA Style ("The APA style of citing legal materials is based on The Bluebook...[However] The Bluebook style is not used to cite legal periodical articles or books. Use the regular APA style.");
AMA Style,
Chicago Style...
Can anyone who still disagrees that this is how it should be done point to a real-world usage or style guide to the contrary, to prove that this disagreement is more than just a
WP:Randy in Boise moment? Rather than just pushing tortured interpretations of
WP:CITEVAR, as if that could trump real world standards and justify making shit up, please prove it or drop it.
postdlf (
talk)
02:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't know which of the above editors are right about the status of citation templates, but I'm quite sure a few editors making declarations about the status will not settle it. Jc3s5h ( talk)
Sometimes a source will say something like "Published: July 2, 2000", while the url is like www.dailytruth.com/2000/07/01/man-bites-hotdog.html. Presumably, that is because the article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Truth on July 2, 2000, but was already put on the web around July 1, 2000, 11:59 pm. Here is an example. And sometimes, for whatever reason, it is the other way around: the "url date" is later than the publication date given in the text, as seen, for example, here. Has there been some discussion or guidance on which one to use for the date field in such cases? -- Lambiam 20:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
|type=
to indicate online or print versions. If a particular template ({{
cite news}} for example) does not support |type=
, then it is very easy to add. ---—
Gadget850 (Ed)
talk
16:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
{{{PublicationDate}}}
(date of publication) and {{{Date}}}
(date of the authorship, if different from date of publication) -- presently rendering something like: "Title", Periodical (Publisher), Date, PublicationDate. {{
cite news}} passes {{{date}}}
alone to core as {{{Date}}}
, if present (the actual details are slightly more complicated). Perhaps {{
cite news}} could pass both dates down if they are specified -- but what percentage of template users would read and understand the docs about that?
Wtmitchell
(talk) (earlier Boracay Bill)
10:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)I think you should probably state both versions if they are different, which implies becoming much more sytematic about distinguishing between e.g. The Guardian (in print) and guardian.co.uk (for the website). But with some papers there is not a different name for the online version. The real problem is, whatever those few of us who obsess about these matters might decide is the ideal solution, how are we ever going to get the majority of editors to even understand that there is a problem, let alone follow our solution? Alarics ( talk) 07:45, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
I recently noticed a potential problems with some ODNB ( Oxford Dictionary of National Biography citation styles, namely that they seem to be being cited with the wrong template. Look at the example at Template:Cite doi/10.1093.2Fref:odnb.2F58125. That was filled in by a citation bot with {{ cite journal}}, but I think {{ cite encyclopedia}} is more appropriate for the ODNB, as it is a single collection of discrete articles with different authors. It was issued in 2004, with updates since then, and in some areas built on the earlier work of the DNB ( Dictionary of National Biography) and in other areas effectively rewrote the biographies or wrote new ones that hadn't been covered before. The point being that 'cite journal' is the wrong template to use. There are also problems with Template:ODNBweb as that really needs updating but I'm not sure how to do that. For an example of a correctly filled out ODNB citation, see Template:Cite doi/10.1093.2Fref:odnb.2F34601, but even there it needed human tweaking to get it right. There are around 45 templates that need checking, see here. Is there an easy way to get a citation bot to deal with all this? {{ ODNBweb}} is even more problematic, as it is transcluded on 447 pages at the moment. Is there an easy way to convert those into a citation format that: (a) names the actual article cited (and names the ODNB as the encyclopedia, rather than the title); and (b) names the actual authors of the article? Carcharoth ( talk) 23:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Regarding WP:CITEBUNDLE's guidance on how to display multiple sources within a single footnote: It suggests placing each source in a separate bullet. That works fine. But as I look at scholarly books, their footnotes are arranged differently: each footnote is a "paragraph" that lists the distinct sources as separate sentences. Like this:
I have no problem with the bulletized approach ... my question is whether the scholaraly "list multiple sources in one paragraph" approach was considered for WP in the past and rejected? (I could not find such a discussion in this Talk page archives). Or is the scholarly approach an acceptable alternative? If it is acceptable for WP, should it be mentioned in WP:CITEBUNDLE as an option? -- Noleander ( talk) 17:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 31#Text-source integrity. I think that there is a problem with both the bundling section and with the section immediately before it ( Text-source integrity) that introduces the bundling section. -- PBS ( talk) 21:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Consider the following citation:
Clicking on either the doi or the jstor link will take the user to the same location (the doi goes to the jstor page). In these situations, I typically leave out the doi link because it's redundant, but citation bot eventually comes along and puts it in. I curse softly and sometimes revert, depending on my mood. Would like to see what the general opinion is about redundant identifier links like this, and if I should just shift my paradigm and accept them? (In this particular instance, clicking the title will take the reader directly to the article hosted at Cyberliber, but I understand that this site is not 100% reliable and has downtimes, so having at least one of the identifiers is useful). Sasata ( talk) 07:02, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I posted a query at BLP regarding nationalities, which has some bearing on citing sources. If you have any comments please post there. Eldumpo ( talk) 08:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Layout#Add_example_into_WP:FNNR.3F about a proposal to add examples showing various section layouts for Notes/Footnotes/Citations/References section. There is some overlap with this Citations topic area, so editors interested in citations may want to weigh in. -- Noleander ( talk) 13:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Should we always place a space after the comma when we separate different page numbers in a citation? Eg. "G. Woodfall. pp. 111,112." Is there a rule? What do you think? I have been harshly criticized for adding a space in "111,112" and I have to find out the rule about it. Thanks in advance. -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 09:05, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a set of proposals on WP:VPR to allow him to perform mass changes of a certain sort, particularly with respect to citation formatting. You'll have to go through the proposal as there are some 20 of them right now. Searching for "CITEVAR" on that page might help. Have mörser, will travel ( talk) 16:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
The discussion here may interest some of you. The question is whether it is appropriate to revert an editor who used a consistent date format in refs in an article. So that instead, inconsistent date formats exist (even within the same refs).
Some guidelines at issue are WP:DATESNO, WP:STRONGNAT, and Wikipedia:Citing sources.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 06:44, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
I just read the Text-Source integrity section for the first time, and the second portion of the section strikes me as very confusing:
The following arrangement, for example, is not helpful, because the reader does not know whether each source supports the material, each source supports part of it, or just one source supports it with the others added as further reading:
Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer and one of the country's highest-earning women.[4][5][6][7]
Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, consider bundling citations at the end of the sentence or paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below for how to do that.
It seems to me that it would be clearer if it explicitly stated the following points of guidance, independently:
- When there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source pertains to a particular portion of the sentence, the footnotes[4] can[5] be interspersed[6] like this.[7] Or, all the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this.[4][5][6][7] Another option is to bundle them all into one footnote at the end of the sentence, like this.[4]
Generally, the latter option (bundling) is preferred, and the first option (interspersed) is discouraged.- When there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source applies to the entire the sentence, the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this,[4][5][6][7] or they can be bundled into one footnote at the end of the sentence, like this.[4]
Generally, the latter option (bundling) is preferred.See WP:CITEBUNDLE.- If there are multiple sources for a single sentence, and the individual sources each apply only to a particular porton of the sentence, and the footnotes are not interspersed in the sentence, then it is recommended that the footnote(s) include comments (whether bundled or not) explaining which sources relate to which parts of the sentence.
Does this look like clearer statement of what the Text-Source Integrity section (second half) is trying to say? (PS: This may have been discussed in this Talk page archive discussion). -- Noleander ( talk) 23:08, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
This might be a separate issue, but I think it's part of the same topic. Sometimes a sentence has multiple assertions, each with a separate citation. It seems like it's logical to place the citations in the same order as the assertions. However if the citations are being reused they would already have footnote numbers, leading to a seemingly random sequence of numbers. At FAC, reviewers want the footnotes to be in numerical order. Is that really the best way to arrange footnotes? Will Beback talk 06:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I Undid revision 457735684 by SlimVirgin it depends it is not always poor practice, and not every case needs a bundle. -- PBS ( talk) 10:32, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
If it were so then we would be condemning the version used higher up the guideline page:
The Sun is pretty big, [1] but the Moon is not so big. [2] The Sun is also quite hot. [3]
Notes
References
- Brown, Rebecca (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
- Miller, Edward (2005). The Sun. Academic Press.
-- PBS ( talk) 10:36, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Also there is a problem with "The footnote should explain which source supports which point; see WP:CITEBUNDLE." It is also true that multiple footnotes are the end of a sentence can explain which source supports which point, they do not have to be bundled to do that (as Noleande mentioned in his/her point three above). -- PBS ( talk) 10:38, 28 October 2011 (UTC)