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61.246.55.120 ( talk) 10:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)(A mistake in the website namely known as www.harivarasanam.com\malayalamname.puranooru instead of purananooru) Thankyou.
I'm not sure I always agree with the instruction under "Standard appendices and footers" that navboxes should go after notes, references, further reading and external links. What if the navbox is a list of links to related topics? Surely the logical place is then the "See also" section. 86.146.47.248 ( talk) 04:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC).
I'm not sure whether I agree with the most recent change: Succession boxes are navboxes and thus can't really be listed "before" navboxes. However, if this way of listing them makes more sense to people, then my quibble is unimportant. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi i am recently new to this site. I was wanting to make a ribbon for a friend of mine so that we can raise awareness to her cause and i dont exactly know what to do can you please help me
Mistyskyebatemon ( talk) 00:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)misty
It seems to me that these excellent suggestions for the content (as opposed to the positioning or graphic look) of section headings should be moved to wp:Manual of Style#Section headings. Any comments before I make that move? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 14:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Could someone point me to the discussion that prompted this change? Эlcobbola talk 13:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Will anyone object if I add that "You should use the template {{ further reading}}" for the "Further reading" section? — MC10 ( T• C• GB• L) 03:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
The Layout guide currently says, "the first stub template should be preceded by two blank lines". Why is that? I've tended to use only one in my editing and never had any problems. The stub style guideline only says, "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." This suggests that it is only a matter of taste regarding the number of blank lines, and not any technical reason, so it is similar to all the other article layout element like headings, references, external links, and so on. I would suggest that we remove this suggestion of two blank lines. It is not needed. Let editors choose what they like: one, two, or a hundred. Jason Quinn ( talk) 17:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
1 blank line.
2 blank lines creates a <br> (linebreak) in the rendered page. This is useful to visually separate the stug-tag from the actual article content. It isn't 'required' anywhere, but it is generally helpful for accessibility purposes. eg
Eve Titus vs
Anne Manning.
I wouldn't object to any tweaking of the wording to reflect its "recommended" status (instead of "should be"), but would object to wholesale removal of this advice.
An alternative to potentially consider, is adding 2 blank lines (or a <br>, or similar) to the beginning of each stub template. (best raised elsewhere though. WP:STUB or WP:WSS). Possibly this has already been considered? Let us know what you find out :) -- Quiddity ( talk) 19:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Should books be treated like portal links and put in the see also section (or the first appendix)? Dabomb87 ( talk) 21:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I have posted some questions and comments related to portals at Wikipedia talk:Portal#Question relating to portals. I am interested at getting other comments/opinions related to the use and maintenance of portals. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
There are at least two navboxes that are too wide to fit in small windows:
Template:Mental and behavioral disorders has a minimum width of about 130 characters as currently formatted, and
Template:HolmesFilms needs about 110. They both have multiple levels of heading and long words or unwrapped phrases. I've reformatted both of them to fit in under 100 characters, but both have been reverted by people who use small text fonts and/or large monitors. Here's Mental and behavioral disorders as an example:
Original, standard format
Flexible, compact format
Should there be some official preference for making text boxes convenient for readers who use mobile devices, small monitors, or large fonts? People with good eyesight and big flat-screen displays don't seem to care about this issue. The Images section of this page mentioned fitting images in an 800x600-pixel window. Should editors be encouraged to make text boxes so they fit in text areas around 80 to 100 characters wide? —
Codrdan (
talk) 03:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody explain why the references should be buried below the “see also” section. The latter merely lists titles of related pages and is not part of the article text. Never should it contain statements requiring refs, but this arrangement only encourages such a conflation. ― AoV² 07:30, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I've seen a complaint that an editor introduced multiple show/hide sections in ADHD recently (of the "click here to read the next two paragraphs" kind). I'm pretty sure that is explicitly prohibited, but my quick scan didn't find anything here. Does anyone know of any relevant guidelines? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Please note that this page has been nominated to be
consolidated with the primary
Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 20:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Is this now a dead issue? Should we remove the tag off of the article page? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Who discourages it? -- PBS ( talk) 07:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I would recommend a policy of some redundancy such that some links in the articles should be or can be repeated in the "See also" sections. The reason is, PEOPLE SKIM. Skimming an article is very common. I find "See also" extremely useful when skimming Wikipedia: it saves much time. I'm sure all could see and agree that if such lists become too long they become a hindrance. But five "see also"s with two of them already in the text, would be an actual improvement, to me, over the current recommendations to have no repeats. Mydogtrouble ( talk) 14:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:53, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Where is the consensus for this change? I'm starting to see users place the reference sources under "Further reading", which previously explicitly prohibited it. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 17:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I think that this conversation has drifted from Redrose64's initial comments. I see "Further reading" as a convenient halfway house, for references that are no longer in an article but may go back in, or for books or articles that may be useful for expanding an article. But I don't think that usually sources in the Reference section should appear in further reading. Indeed one of the processes I go through when improving articles which do not have a separate "References" and "Further reading" sections is to see if there are books in the References section that are not cited in the footnotes. If not I look back through the history and if the book was added to References section without an addition to the text of the article by the editor who added the book, I move it into "Further reading". This helps clarify what was and was not used as a reference to write the article. Doing that helps any reader to know what was used to compile the article and it is of great help for any editor who wants to improve the article by adding inline citations from the sources in the reference section. It is misleading for our readers if say one source was used to write an article (eg text copied from 11th edition of EB) but half a dozen article are listed in the References section.
Personally I don't like external links sections because I think all sources at the bottom of an article should be formatted as if they were in the References section (with author, title, publisher, date etc). I think external links should be reserved for non text entries such as pictures and vidio clips etc. -- PBS ( talk) 13:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I have restored the wording about Wiktionary and Wikisource. These two projects were started as spin-offs from this project, to remove certain type of articles from the encyclopaedia, and as such it is quite common for links to words and works to appear in the text where appropriate.
As a general rule we do not write articles on words, so if there is a word which an editor thinks may for some reason not be familiar to a general audience, they will link to to the that word in Wiktionary in the text for example the phrase " seised in fee" or " pettah" are not ones that most people would know, but they do not qualify for an articles, but it would be silly to insist that links to the words should be placed in the external links section of the article. If I do not know what a word means I do not go to the external links section of an article to see if a link to it has been placed there!
Similarly there are times when links to wikisource makes sense, for example if there is an article discussing the legal issues of mercenary soldiers it might be desirable to place a convince link for our readers to Article 47 of Protocol I in the text of the article, as it saves cluttering up an article with a quote of the text from Wikisource in the encyclopaedia article which was the reason for creating Wikisoure in the first place. -- PBS ( talk) 12:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
@PBS (and @Student7 partially as well): You are correct in doubting SandyGeorgia's argument, in fact there are 2 or actually 3 different issues getting mixed here namely:
SandyGeorgia's was making a correct argument about b) (wiktionary is no source), however the argument here is about a).
Nevertheless as far as a) is concerned it has been a (long) established practice that interlinking should remain within wikipedia and that links outside WP are placed under references/footnotes if used as sourced or under external links otherwise. Note that all other Wikimedia project are sister projects but they are still logically separated projects and in that sense external. Note that the unified login doesn't change that all, these WM projects still have their own local login administration, but more importantly their own community, authors, goal, rules and practices and though there is an a considerable overlap they are by no means identical. The difference between commons and another WM projects (including WP itself) is, that Commons is designed as shared multimedia repository and it usually provides mulitmedia material as content and not as interlinks to WP.
So why shouldn't we link to (logically) external projects, well because the WP community does not control external projects (even if they are within the WM foundation) and to provide a uniform behaviour (interface to users, all interlinks stay within WP). As far as the quality argument is concerned Wiktionary is not a reputable source, so from the quality aspect you probably would better link to other external projects like dictionary.com or various publically available "authoritative" dictionaries. Also I hardly see any practical reason to have interlinks to Wikitionary, since we don't want to turn WP articles into a blue landscape by linking somewhat regular vocabulary and as far as technical terms or most very particular words, which you usually want to link, are concerned, they could/should have their own WP article anyhow.
Also note that this has nothing to do with WP being superior or better than other WM projects, it is merely a question of logical separation and uniform linking behaviour.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
WP:ELMAYBE says "Professional reviews should ... be used as sources in a "Reception" section." Is this something we should be saying on this page as well? Or, because the Reception section is part of the body of an article, is it not for us to mention? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 20:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
See Marco Polo's birthplace where I discovered this. Is this within the guidelines? And can a 'note' be to a tourist site that we wouldn't allow as a reference normally? Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 17:43, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
::Not really notes is a section for footnotes which can be either references or or explanatory notes. Some authors prefer to separate general references/sources for the articles as a whole from specific references/sources for individual statements, in such cases the specific references are in the notes sectionand the general references are in the references section.--
Kmhkmh (
talk) 18:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC) sorry prematurely saved while editing, see below for the intended comment--
Kmhkmh (
talk) 18:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Folks, a question has arisen over links to categories in the see also section at Sequoia National Park. WP:SEEALSO doesn't specifically prohibit links to categories, but I've never seen them implemented and the text of WP:SEEALSO only refers to "articles," not any other kind of content. Links in a see also section are there usually because they haven't been included in the text (yet) in a reasonable way. I don't see how it would ever be necessary to include an internal link to a category within the text. The three categories mentioned above were (as styled):
Could anyone here clarify? How do you see the current wording of WP:SEEALSO applying to this situation? Could you see any reason to include see also links to categories? Any thoughts are appreciated. Rkitko ( talk) 02:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
[[:Category:See also templates]]
although sometimes piping the wikilink can be more aesthetically pleasing: [[:Category:Internal link templates|Internal link templates]]
. Within the body or a section of an article, it is generally preferable to use one of the special purpose templates such as {{
Category see also}}, {{
Main category}}, {{
Related category}}, etc when linking to categories. We also commonly link to Wikimedia commons categories in See also sections using templates such as {{
Commons category}}, {{
Commons category-inline}}, {{
Commons cat multi}}, {{
Commons and category}}, etc. --
Tothwolf (
talk) 15:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)To cite one of many such examples, it very much makes sense to link to categories such as say Category:Missouri State University alumni from Missouri State University#Notable alumni. I see nothing wrong with the category links you've removed from Sequoia National Park [5] which followed a similar scheme and I'm beginning to feel that you may have come here with your mind already made up that such category links in See also sections were verboden. While the wording of WP:SEEALSO is certainly not ideal (and very much should be updated and refined to reflect actual usage), the wording as currently written includes the term "article" because historically that was the most common wikilink type associated with See also sections. There have been similar arguments in the past over linking to the Portal namespace (such as, but not limited to {{ Portal}}) in See also sections. We also had major problems with well meaning editors removing links for Wikipedia:Books when that was first introduced (prior to the creation of the dedicated Book: namespace, when it still used the Wikipedia: namespace). I created the original {{ Wikipedia-Books}} and {{ Wikipedia-Books link}} templates after seeing a well meaning editor bulk remove several hundred Wikipedia:Books links from articles. Portal and Book wikilinks are usually not inline within an article, but are instead placed in an article's See also section. (That said, Books wikilinks are occasionally done inline or as a hatnote or footnote in a section within an article, when it makes sense to do so.) -- Tothwolf ( talk) 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
There is also no hard and fast "rule" that topics which are already linked somewhere in the article itself should never be linked in a See also section. If a wikilink to a related topic is buried in a section of a large article, it can make sense to still include a link to that related topic in the See also section in order to make it more visible to a reader.
WP:SEEALSO explicitly states: "However, whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense" and "Links included in the "See also" section may be useful for readers seeking to read as much about a topic as possible, including subjects only peripherally related to the one in question."
Put simply, Wikipedia exists for the readers, not the editors. If it will help the reader to include a particular wikilink in the See also section, it should be included. If a wikilink would not help the reader, it should not be included.
Just because documentation doesn't always reflect actual usage doesn't mean that the way something is done is wrong. It often means the documentation needs to be updated. Since you mentioned template documentation above, template documentation in particular is often badly neglected and incomplete. Oddly enough, the See also sections commonly seen in template documentation often include wikilinks not only to other Templates and other documentation, but also wikilinks to Categories. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 11:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Links to categories like {{commonscat}} are definitely useful, however personal I'd rather place them under External links section, although they are sister project they are nevertheless logically external, since the sister projects have their set of rules and agendas and are not controlled by the WP community as such, despite a significant overlap. The See also section should only contain links to other WP articles.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 17:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
For Commons categories, actual practice has been to place templates such as {{ Commons category}} in the External links section if it is already present, but if a populated External links section is not present and a See also section exists, {{ Commons category}} is instead placed in See also. The reverse also holds true for floating box templates such as {{ Portal}}, {{ Wikipedia-Books}}, etc. If a See also section does not exist but a populated External links section does, then such templates are typically placed in the External links section. This makes sense in that you otherwise end up with a more cluttered user interface due to unused section headings that only have a floating box template in them. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 11:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The
Category:Flora of the Sierra Nevada region (U.S.) was recently created and [to-date] populated by me. I also did the edit, that is being discussed here, placing it and the
Category:Fauna of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) links under ==See also== in the
Sequoia National Park article. I've seen this cat. > link done for the readers' benefit in other
Protected areas' articles, in the U.S and abroad, that have a meager or non-existent natural history section or are without any directly specific independent flora/fauna articles.
To date the flora/fauna sections in the present Sequoia National Park article are very under-developed for readers interested in learning more.
Regarding the links' sufficient specificity to Sequoia National Park questions:
If one opens the specific [plant species] articles in
Category:Flora of the Sierra Nevada region (U.S.) and then under ==External links== opens the " Jepson" or "USDA" links there are: range maps - Jepson very detailed by
ecoregion-
habitat and USDA [after second click on CA state in U.S. map] by counties; and descriptive geographic text. To not rely on the original research of personal experiences I opened those before adding [Cat:Flora of the Sierras] to those articles when populating the cat. and a preponderance have ranges including Sequoia National Park's various elevation determined plant habitats. These Cat:links do not go to a species Easter egg hunt in a mega-category. This is specifically why, for the readers' benefit which surmounts the editors' general category link and style standards-preferences, that these two "see also" links do belong in this park's article.
I respect the many editors' time to consider and express their views, insights, and [far superior to mine] knowledge of wiki-style and policy resources on this topic. If I'm understanding correctly, a See also > category link is to be used only with reticence after deliberate consideration.--Thank you-- Look2See1 t a l k → 18:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems implicit in the statement, but editors have been adding category pointers (with a bit of effort! :) to 'See also" subsections, instead of creating a separate article (list). Should this be explicitly banned? Student7 ( talk) 21:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Can someone fix the layout in the Lille Comics Festival article? The EL section is in between the section heading for the Location table and the table itself, even though in edit mode, it's not. I don't know how to fix that. Nightscream ( talk) 10:11, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that Etymology sections are often the first section after the lead. I assumed this was common but am not seeing anything in the MoS. An editor has suggested moving the section to the end of the article since it seems like trivia. I disagree but didn't want to push it if I am incorrect about past precedent. Any thoughts? The article in question is Bukkake (not work appropriate). Cptnono ( talk) 22:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
If there is no External links or Further reading sections, should there be an empty line between {{ Reflist}} and a navbox for readability when editing? McLerristarr | Mclay1 01:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I suggested adding a blank line below {{ Reflist}} at WP:AWB/FR but I was asked if it is actually policy to do that. Is there any reason not to add a blank line? McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
From the end of WP:LSC:
Is this a good idea? Has anyone seen this done? Do we need to accommodate that variant layout here? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
How about we just take it out of LSC, and thus provide no advice (anywhere) on the point? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
I wish to propose a radical change to Wikipedia. I think we should delete the further reading sections of articles. There does not see to be any point to them. If the links or books were not used as sources, then all it is is advertising. If people want to find more information on a subject then they can look on their local library catalogue or something. Besides, the goal of Wikipedia, in Jimbo's words, is to be the source of all human knowledge. If there is any more interesting and relevant information on subject, then it should be included in an article, which makes a further reading section pointless and just a place for people to list their own websites on a topic. What are other people's thoughts on this? McLerristarr (Mclay1) ( talk) 11:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
McLerristarr (Mclay1) you wrote above "If it says 'Smith's 1905 publication scandalised the country' then you have to reference Smith's 1905 publication, so it needs to be included in references rather than further reading". This is in my opinion a good example of a candidate for further reading. The citation should not be to "Smith's 1905 publication" but to a source that says it "scandalised the country". Smith's book should not be used as a citied source, because it says nothing about scandalising the country. However for someone who wishes to go into the scandal in more detail, then more bibliographic details about Smith's publication would be useful and the place to put such details is in further reading. -- PBS ( talk) 23:29, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
Further reading are supposed to be reading recommendations by the article authors, I see nothing wrong with that and no reason to block authors from creating such sections. True, at least in theory such a section could be abused for hidden advertising but that applies in the same fashion for references themselves, because you can favour/push certain publishers or authors there as well. Most references citing some textbook X could of course cite textbook Y instead (and often there might be 100s of Ys available for a particular article content). I'm rather skeptical of yet another rule for authors regarding how they have to name their sections and paragraphs or what information to compile.
As far as WP goals are concerned "collecting the knowledge of the world" does not mean that we collect any possibly interesting information on some subject. This should be obvious since we do not write textbooks on those subject but encyclopedic articles (containing the most important aspects in a concise and accessible manner)-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 00:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I am now coming by this Manual of style talk page section after seeing a discussion on the talk page of a thoughtful editor about the rationale for and usefulness of further reading sections in Wikipedia articles. Most professionally edited encyclopedias have further reading references at the end of their articles. That seems to be a general characteristic of many of the subject-specialized encyclopedias that are acquired by academic libraries. Take a look around in the academic library reference section nearest you and see how many specialty encyclopedia sets you find. Then look at the articles, and observe how often an encyclopedia article in a dead-tree encyclopedia has a bibliography at the end of the article suggesting books readers could read for more information on the subject. The Wikipedia Manual of style section on the issue makes clear enough that this has been routine practice on Wikipedia for years as well. What I try to do when editing further reading sections is to put well researched, meticulously edited references into them as I discover those references, and then eventually (sometimes many months later) dig into those sections for sources for further edits of article text. Most of the 6,837,507 articles on Wikipedia need a lot more editing, but as far as I know most of us few thousand active editors are volunteers who are either working or studying full-time besides editing Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that not every possible edit is done at once. Listing a further reading source with an article, as long as it is a well chosen source, has immediate usefulness to every reader of the article (and some articles have hundreds of page views a day even while they languish with no edits for weeks at a time), and it has lasting usefulness to any other editor who surfs by and thinks "I could improve this article if only I knew of a source on this topic." On my part, now that I have gathered hundreds of sources published by major commercial or academic publishers, purchased by major academic or public library systems, I simply don't have time simultaneously to edit all of the hundreds of Wikipedia articles that could be edited on the basis of those sources. I have my particular priority list of articles to edit on my volunteer time between work and family responsibilities. It may be that other editors have fewer means for finding such sources, but more time to use such sources once someone else finds them, so that if one editor shares a reference to a source or sources in an article further reading section, then other editors can use their volunteer time productively updating the articles based on current, reliable sources. Division of labor helps everyone get more work done more efficiently. I have seen instances of further reading sections being spammed for political or commercial purposes, and I boldly delete sources from such further reading sections (which, fortunately, are not commonplace) if I find them. The main thing is to keep looking for reliable sources all the time that have usefulness for follow-up reading by readers of Wikipedia and eventually usefulness for editors editing Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 19:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
Some thoughts:
I think an essay would be a good idea for preparing a guideline, but as a few of us are here right now, can we work on some principles? For the moment, are we all (or nearly all) agreed that "Further reading", if it it exists, should consist of good starter texts/foundation texts for any subject? Here are some principles, including ideas on how to deal with spamming and bias:
People's thoughts? VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 15:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
O.k., I've moved this discussion over to the new wp:Further reading essay. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Interesting discussion about RS-ness. For example, would Mad in America be a suitable "further reading" at Schizophrenia? (disclosure: I've added the wiki article on the book as a "see also", but unlike a "further reading", the wiki article on the book explicitly has reviews, some quite negative). As another example, I moved The Gene Illusion, which was a further reading at heritability to a inline ref about the existence of a small minority POV that discredits the concept of heritability. I think that as a general rule, it's preferable to deal with POV sources in text (or as "see also" if an appropriate article exists on the source itself) instead of adding them to "further reading", because that can give the impression that Wikipedia is recommending a certain POV. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
The following section is currently in Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines
When referring to one or more textbooks or reviews it can be very useful to give a brief annotation for each entry which indicates the level and comprehensiveness of the reference. In this case, it may be helpful to maintain separate "Notes" and "References" sections, with the Notes section containing the annotations and the References section the full formatted reference. For example:
- In cosmology, the cosmic microwave background radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation discovered in 1965 that fills the entire universe. [1]
It is also possible to provide annotations in other ways: by including them in the references section itself or by including everything in a footnote. If an annotation is particularly long (more than one or two sentences), it may be appropriate to merge some of the information into the main article instead of placing it in an annotation.
There is an ongoing discussion on the talk page there and the general feeling seems to be that the section does not belong there since it's not really about citations (annotation is not referencing) or science. I'd like to propose that the section be moved to this guideline since it's really layout issue. I'd also like to propose the following edited version since in it's current form it's confusing and the example does not illustrate what I think are our best practices.
When an article lists a large number of sources or materials for further reading then it is often helpful to annotate each entry with a brief indication of the type of work it is (beginner, advanced, detailed, survey etc.). For example:
- J. Smith, Introduction to Linear Programming, Acme Press, 2010. (An introductory text.)
- D. Jones, Linear Programming Theory, Excelsior Press, 2008. (A rigorous theoretical text for advanced readers.)
-- RDBury ( talk) 20:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
References
I'm not enthusiastic about the word "often" in "often helpful to annotate". Sometimes it's self-evident what audience the further reading stuff is for, e.g. newspaper articles or scientific journal papers have an obvious audience. So, just having a large number of further reading entries doesn't seem sufficient to recommend annotations. Tijfo098 ( talk) 21:15, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Further reading has an ongoing discussion on the Layout rule that says items listed in the references should not also be listed in the Further reading. Rjensen ( talk) 07:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Should I hit a double return to make a blank line space, between a section header and the text that follows? How about "before a section"? TCO ( talk) 13:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
OK, so do it, but it does not change the appearance? Also, the blank space before the header, noone does that and I've had it changed when I put it in. (right?) TCO ( talk) 21:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Elaborate please? I very rarely see people use those angle bracket style line breaks. What are you saying I should do? TCO ( talk) 22:15, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
The etymology post did not. And I expect if you sample article space, will find less. OK, I just went to the first article I linked to Egg (biology). The headers did not have that space. BTW, lately I see less than 50% having that space. But knowing that we are supposed to do it for editing view but that it does not affect reader view is helpful. TCO ( talk) 00:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I mean if you open each section on it's own, you will not have a blank line as the very first line. TCO ( talk) 00:29, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Nother question (honest, just trying to get this straight). In the Egg (biology) article, there are no spaces after the section header (before the section text). Is that how you are supposed to do it? I'm just asking because I'm used to writing off-line (and then would put a blank line after the header before the text). TCO ( talk) 00:32, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Rjensen ( talk · contribs) would like to remove the principle of non-duplication from the WP:FURTHER section of this guideline. It was discussed previously at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (layout)/Archive 7#Significant_change_to_Further_reading, and s/he would like to discuss it again at another page. Please see the new discussion.
While I oppose listing a source once under ==References== and then again under ==Further reading==, my primary goal is to prevent direct conflicts between this guideline and the page under construction. Please join the new discussion to share your opinion. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The Notes and references section of Layout says:
But that link is no longer valid and Citing sources doesn't seem to talk about layout anymore. Is it there and I am missing it? If so, please update the link. If not, did this information go into some other article? If not, should we discuss it here? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
This problem still needs to be resolved. (Well, I've been busy.) So I'm making this entry to prevent automatic archiving. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 13:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:LAYOUT#Specialized layouts contains four items. Two of them make sense (talk pages and list articles) to me, and these two don't:
The content is basically 'use the normal layout, and we recommend putting the content in this order'. There are dozens of similar WikiProject guidelines. Why are we linking these two? Anyone mind if we remove them as largely irrelevant? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Is it correct to say that headings for footer navboxes are currently neither required nor prohibited by any previous wp:layout consensus? (Note: I am not asking whether Layout should require or prohibit such headings in the future, only whether it currently does.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:20, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
The lack of response makes me think that my understanding is correct: There is no rule requiring or prohibiting a navbox heading. In fact, when the idea of having a navbox heading was proposed to this list the suggestion was to put it out in the community and see what sort of response it received. wp:layout However, it is difficult to give this proposal a fair hearing when some editors mistakenly believe it is prohibited by Layout. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Absinthe&action=historysubmit&diff=385641561&oldid=385641457 Accordingly, I propose to add the following text at wp:layout#Navigation_templates:
Anyone object? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 01:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
A footnote providing a suggested title for those who wish to add a title to the Navigation templates section has been reverted as " vague and irrelevant." The information in the footnote certainly seems relevant to the text, which states that there is no consensus requiring or prohibiting a title. And the footnote certainly seems clear, suggesting a title name for those who choose to provide a title. Or am I missing something? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 16:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
In the "See also section" subsection of the "Standard appendices and footers" section, it says:
Well, why not? Is there some justification for this? It seems that, especially in a rather lengthy article, the link may be rather buried in the text. From a purely human factors viewpoint, doesn't it make sense to have more than one entry point to germane data? Why deliberately restrict the entry points? Has this been thought through? Herostratus ( talk) 04:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Appears to be case sensitive - it would be useful to mention that to reduce the number of red links. Scottonsocks ( talk) 00:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
I have created a new template that eliminates the need to use the floating portal, book, and sister project boxes within articles. Called the {{ Subject bar}}, it integrates all 3 and has a fairly decent amount of flexibility. At present, it can show up to 10 portals, 10 books, and all 8 sister projects. It can easily be expanded to cover more, if desired. Demos can be viewed on the documentation page, but here's a quick peek:
I have a live demo up on the Lemur article. Be sure to compare before and after.
For starters, I'm looking for feedback, positive or negative. Please share your comments. If the demo looks wrong, someone may be mucking around with it. If that's the case, the working code (as of the time of posting) can be found here. It uses a small sub-template called {{ Subject bar/item}} ( original), and points to the subpages of {{ Portal}} in order obtain the names of the portal icons. – VisionHolder « talk » 09:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Should there be any particular guidance here about linking to a section?
My specific example: in the article Time formatting and storage bugs, I want to add a "See also" link to material about issues with Daylight Savings Time. Just including
isn't very specific. Linking instead to
focuses to the proper part of the article, but it needlessly (IMO) exposes the mechanics of section links to the reader. So I'm thinking
might be a little more reader-friendly, or even
Any thoughts, both on what to do here, and whether there should be guidance in WP:SEEALSO? -- NapoliRoma ( talk) 19:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I've added a sentence to the External links section, as discussed above. The article subject's official site, if any, should always be listed under External links, per WP:ELYES and WP:ELOFFICIAL, regardless of whether it has been cited or not. As written, our text instructed editors not to list the official site if it has previously been used to source article content. Feel free to tweak the wording. -- JN 466 02:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
For small articles like academic journal stubs, I think it looks rather silly to have both. Tijfo098 ( talk) 20:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
This page 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. |
61.246.55.120 ( talk) 10:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)(A mistake in the website namely known as www.harivarasanam.com\malayalamname.puranooru instead of purananooru) Thankyou.
I'm not sure I always agree with the instruction under "Standard appendices and footers" that navboxes should go after notes, references, further reading and external links. What if the navbox is a list of links to related topics? Surely the logical place is then the "See also" section. 86.146.47.248 ( talk) 04:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC).
I'm not sure whether I agree with the most recent change: Succession boxes are navboxes and thus can't really be listed "before" navboxes. However, if this way of listing them makes more sense to people, then my quibble is unimportant. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 22:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Hi i am recently new to this site. I was wanting to make a ribbon for a friend of mine so that we can raise awareness to her cause and i dont exactly know what to do can you please help me
Mistyskyebatemon ( talk) 00:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)misty
It seems to me that these excellent suggestions for the content (as opposed to the positioning or graphic look) of section headings should be moved to wp:Manual of Style#Section headings. Any comments before I make that move? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 14:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Could someone point me to the discussion that prompted this change? Эlcobbola talk 13:51, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Will anyone object if I add that "You should use the template {{ further reading}}" for the "Further reading" section? — MC10 ( T• C• GB• L) 03:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
The Layout guide currently says, "the first stub template should be preceded by two blank lines". Why is that? I've tended to use only one in my editing and never had any problems. The stub style guideline only says, "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." This suggests that it is only a matter of taste regarding the number of blank lines, and not any technical reason, so it is similar to all the other article layout element like headings, references, external links, and so on. I would suggest that we remove this suggestion of two blank lines. It is not needed. Let editors choose what they like: one, two, or a hundred. Jason Quinn ( talk) 17:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
1 blank line.
2 blank lines creates a <br> (linebreak) in the rendered page. This is useful to visually separate the stug-tag from the actual article content. It isn't 'required' anywhere, but it is generally helpful for accessibility purposes. eg
Eve Titus vs
Anne Manning.
I wouldn't object to any tweaking of the wording to reflect its "recommended" status (instead of "should be"), but would object to wholesale removal of this advice.
An alternative to potentially consider, is adding 2 blank lines (or a <br>, or similar) to the beginning of each stub template. (best raised elsewhere though. WP:STUB or WP:WSS). Possibly this has already been considered? Let us know what you find out :) -- Quiddity ( talk) 19:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Should books be treated like portal links and put in the see also section (or the first appendix)? Dabomb87 ( talk) 21:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I have posted some questions and comments related to portals at Wikipedia talk:Portal#Question relating to portals. I am interested at getting other comments/opinions related to the use and maintenance of portals. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
There are at least two navboxes that are too wide to fit in small windows:
Template:Mental and behavioral disorders has a minimum width of about 130 characters as currently formatted, and
Template:HolmesFilms needs about 110. They both have multiple levels of heading and long words or unwrapped phrases. I've reformatted both of them to fit in under 100 characters, but both have been reverted by people who use small text fonts and/or large monitors. Here's Mental and behavioral disorders as an example:
Original, standard format
Flexible, compact format
Should there be some official preference for making text boxes convenient for readers who use mobile devices, small monitors, or large fonts? People with good eyesight and big flat-screen displays don't seem to care about this issue. The Images section of this page mentioned fitting images in an 800x600-pixel window. Should editors be encouraged to make text boxes so they fit in text areas around 80 to 100 characters wide? —
Codrdan (
talk) 03:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody explain why the references should be buried below the “see also” section. The latter merely lists titles of related pages and is not part of the article text. Never should it contain statements requiring refs, but this arrangement only encourages such a conflation. ― AoV² 07:30, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I've seen a complaint that an editor introduced multiple show/hide sections in ADHD recently (of the "click here to read the next two paragraphs" kind). I'm pretty sure that is explicitly prohibited, but my quick scan didn't find anything here. Does anyone know of any relevant guidelines? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Please note that this page has been nominated to be
consolidated with the primary
Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs) 20:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Is this now a dead issue? Should we remove the tag off of the article page? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Who discourages it? -- PBS ( talk) 07:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I would recommend a policy of some redundancy such that some links in the articles should be or can be repeated in the "See also" sections. The reason is, PEOPLE SKIM. Skimming an article is very common. I find "See also" extremely useful when skimming Wikipedia: it saves much time. I'm sure all could see and agree that if such lists become too long they become a hindrance. But five "see also"s with two of them already in the text, would be an actual improvement, to me, over the current recommendations to have no repeats. Mydogtrouble ( talk) 14:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:53, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Where is the consensus for this change? I'm starting to see users place the reference sources under "Further reading", which previously explicitly prohibited it. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 17:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I think that this conversation has drifted from Redrose64's initial comments. I see "Further reading" as a convenient halfway house, for references that are no longer in an article but may go back in, or for books or articles that may be useful for expanding an article. But I don't think that usually sources in the Reference section should appear in further reading. Indeed one of the processes I go through when improving articles which do not have a separate "References" and "Further reading" sections is to see if there are books in the References section that are not cited in the footnotes. If not I look back through the history and if the book was added to References section without an addition to the text of the article by the editor who added the book, I move it into "Further reading". This helps clarify what was and was not used as a reference to write the article. Doing that helps any reader to know what was used to compile the article and it is of great help for any editor who wants to improve the article by adding inline citations from the sources in the reference section. It is misleading for our readers if say one source was used to write an article (eg text copied from 11th edition of EB) but half a dozen article are listed in the References section.
Personally I don't like external links sections because I think all sources at the bottom of an article should be formatted as if they were in the References section (with author, title, publisher, date etc). I think external links should be reserved for non text entries such as pictures and vidio clips etc. -- PBS ( talk) 13:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I have restored the wording about Wiktionary and Wikisource. These two projects were started as spin-offs from this project, to remove certain type of articles from the encyclopaedia, and as such it is quite common for links to words and works to appear in the text where appropriate.
As a general rule we do not write articles on words, so if there is a word which an editor thinks may for some reason not be familiar to a general audience, they will link to to the that word in Wiktionary in the text for example the phrase " seised in fee" or " pettah" are not ones that most people would know, but they do not qualify for an articles, but it would be silly to insist that links to the words should be placed in the external links section of the article. If I do not know what a word means I do not go to the external links section of an article to see if a link to it has been placed there!
Similarly there are times when links to wikisource makes sense, for example if there is an article discussing the legal issues of mercenary soldiers it might be desirable to place a convince link for our readers to Article 47 of Protocol I in the text of the article, as it saves cluttering up an article with a quote of the text from Wikisource in the encyclopaedia article which was the reason for creating Wikisoure in the first place. -- PBS ( talk) 12:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
@PBS (and @Student7 partially as well): You are correct in doubting SandyGeorgia's argument, in fact there are 2 or actually 3 different issues getting mixed here namely:
SandyGeorgia's was making a correct argument about b) (wiktionary is no source), however the argument here is about a).
Nevertheless as far as a) is concerned it has been a (long) established practice that interlinking should remain within wikipedia and that links outside WP are placed under references/footnotes if used as sourced or under external links otherwise. Note that all other Wikimedia project are sister projects but they are still logically separated projects and in that sense external. Note that the unified login doesn't change that all, these WM projects still have their own local login administration, but more importantly their own community, authors, goal, rules and practices and though there is an a considerable overlap they are by no means identical. The difference between commons and another WM projects (including WP itself) is, that Commons is designed as shared multimedia repository and it usually provides mulitmedia material as content and not as interlinks to WP.
So why shouldn't we link to (logically) external projects, well because the WP community does not control external projects (even if they are within the WM foundation) and to provide a uniform behaviour (interface to users, all interlinks stay within WP). As far as the quality argument is concerned Wiktionary is not a reputable source, so from the quality aspect you probably would better link to other external projects like dictionary.com or various publically available "authoritative" dictionaries. Also I hardly see any practical reason to have interlinks to Wikitionary, since we don't want to turn WP articles into a blue landscape by linking somewhat regular vocabulary and as far as technical terms or most very particular words, which you usually want to link, are concerned, they could/should have their own WP article anyhow.
Also note that this has nothing to do with WP being superior or better than other WM projects, it is merely a question of logical separation and uniform linking behaviour.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 21:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
WP:ELMAYBE says "Professional reviews should ... be used as sources in a "Reception" section." Is this something we should be saying on this page as well? Or, because the Reception section is part of the body of an article, is it not for us to mention? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 20:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
See Marco Polo's birthplace where I discovered this. Is this within the guidelines? And can a 'note' be to a tourist site that we wouldn't allow as a reference normally? Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 17:43, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
::Not really notes is a section for footnotes which can be either references or or explanatory notes. Some authors prefer to separate general references/sources for the articles as a whole from specific references/sources for individual statements, in such cases the specific references are in the notes sectionand the general references are in the references section.--
Kmhkmh (
talk) 18:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC) sorry prematurely saved while editing, see below for the intended comment--
Kmhkmh (
talk) 18:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Folks, a question has arisen over links to categories in the see also section at Sequoia National Park. WP:SEEALSO doesn't specifically prohibit links to categories, but I've never seen them implemented and the text of WP:SEEALSO only refers to "articles," not any other kind of content. Links in a see also section are there usually because they haven't been included in the text (yet) in a reasonable way. I don't see how it would ever be necessary to include an internal link to a category within the text. The three categories mentioned above were (as styled):
Could anyone here clarify? How do you see the current wording of WP:SEEALSO applying to this situation? Could you see any reason to include see also links to categories? Any thoughts are appreciated. Rkitko ( talk) 02:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
[[:Category:See also templates]]
although sometimes piping the wikilink can be more aesthetically pleasing: [[:Category:Internal link templates|Internal link templates]]
. Within the body or a section of an article, it is generally preferable to use one of the special purpose templates such as {{
Category see also}}, {{
Main category}}, {{
Related category}}, etc when linking to categories. We also commonly link to Wikimedia commons categories in See also sections using templates such as {{
Commons category}}, {{
Commons category-inline}}, {{
Commons cat multi}}, {{
Commons and category}}, etc. --
Tothwolf (
talk) 15:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)To cite one of many such examples, it very much makes sense to link to categories such as say Category:Missouri State University alumni from Missouri State University#Notable alumni. I see nothing wrong with the category links you've removed from Sequoia National Park [5] which followed a similar scheme and I'm beginning to feel that you may have come here with your mind already made up that such category links in See also sections were verboden. While the wording of WP:SEEALSO is certainly not ideal (and very much should be updated and refined to reflect actual usage), the wording as currently written includes the term "article" because historically that was the most common wikilink type associated with See also sections. There have been similar arguments in the past over linking to the Portal namespace (such as, but not limited to {{ Portal}}) in See also sections. We also had major problems with well meaning editors removing links for Wikipedia:Books when that was first introduced (prior to the creation of the dedicated Book: namespace, when it still used the Wikipedia: namespace). I created the original {{ Wikipedia-Books}} and {{ Wikipedia-Books link}} templates after seeing a well meaning editor bulk remove several hundred Wikipedia:Books links from articles. Portal and Book wikilinks are usually not inline within an article, but are instead placed in an article's See also section. (That said, Books wikilinks are occasionally done inline or as a hatnote or footnote in a section within an article, when it makes sense to do so.) -- Tothwolf ( talk) 17:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
There is also no hard and fast "rule" that topics which are already linked somewhere in the article itself should never be linked in a See also section. If a wikilink to a related topic is buried in a section of a large article, it can make sense to still include a link to that related topic in the See also section in order to make it more visible to a reader.
WP:SEEALSO explicitly states: "However, whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense" and "Links included in the "See also" section may be useful for readers seeking to read as much about a topic as possible, including subjects only peripherally related to the one in question."
Put simply, Wikipedia exists for the readers, not the editors. If it will help the reader to include a particular wikilink in the See also section, it should be included. If a wikilink would not help the reader, it should not be included.
Just because documentation doesn't always reflect actual usage doesn't mean that the way something is done is wrong. It often means the documentation needs to be updated. Since you mentioned template documentation above, template documentation in particular is often badly neglected and incomplete. Oddly enough, the See also sections commonly seen in template documentation often include wikilinks not only to other Templates and other documentation, but also wikilinks to Categories. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 11:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Links to categories like {{commonscat}} are definitely useful, however personal I'd rather place them under External links section, although they are sister project they are nevertheless logically external, since the sister projects have their set of rules and agendas and are not controlled by the WP community as such, despite a significant overlap. The See also section should only contain links to other WP articles.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 17:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
For Commons categories, actual practice has been to place templates such as {{ Commons category}} in the External links section if it is already present, but if a populated External links section is not present and a See also section exists, {{ Commons category}} is instead placed in See also. The reverse also holds true for floating box templates such as {{ Portal}}, {{ Wikipedia-Books}}, etc. If a See also section does not exist but a populated External links section does, then such templates are typically placed in the External links section. This makes sense in that you otherwise end up with a more cluttered user interface due to unused section headings that only have a floating box template in them. -- Tothwolf ( talk) 11:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
The
Category:Flora of the Sierra Nevada region (U.S.) was recently created and [to-date] populated by me. I also did the edit, that is being discussed here, placing it and the
Category:Fauna of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) links under ==See also== in the
Sequoia National Park article. I've seen this cat. > link done for the readers' benefit in other
Protected areas' articles, in the U.S and abroad, that have a meager or non-existent natural history section or are without any directly specific independent flora/fauna articles.
To date the flora/fauna sections in the present Sequoia National Park article are very under-developed for readers interested in learning more.
Regarding the links' sufficient specificity to Sequoia National Park questions:
If one opens the specific [plant species] articles in
Category:Flora of the Sierra Nevada region (U.S.) and then under ==External links== opens the " Jepson" or "USDA" links there are: range maps - Jepson very detailed by
ecoregion-
habitat and USDA [after second click on CA state in U.S. map] by counties; and descriptive geographic text. To not rely on the original research of personal experiences I opened those before adding [Cat:Flora of the Sierras] to those articles when populating the cat. and a preponderance have ranges including Sequoia National Park's various elevation determined plant habitats. These Cat:links do not go to a species Easter egg hunt in a mega-category. This is specifically why, for the readers' benefit which surmounts the editors' general category link and style standards-preferences, that these two "see also" links do belong in this park's article.
I respect the many editors' time to consider and express their views, insights, and [far superior to mine] knowledge of wiki-style and policy resources on this topic. If I'm understanding correctly, a See also > category link is to be used only with reticence after deliberate consideration.--Thank you-- Look2See1 t a l k → 18:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems implicit in the statement, but editors have been adding category pointers (with a bit of effort! :) to 'See also" subsections, instead of creating a separate article (list). Should this be explicitly banned? Student7 ( talk) 21:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Can someone fix the layout in the Lille Comics Festival article? The EL section is in between the section heading for the Location table and the table itself, even though in edit mode, it's not. I don't know how to fix that. Nightscream ( talk) 10:11, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that Etymology sections are often the first section after the lead. I assumed this was common but am not seeing anything in the MoS. An editor has suggested moving the section to the end of the article since it seems like trivia. I disagree but didn't want to push it if I am incorrect about past precedent. Any thoughts? The article in question is Bukkake (not work appropriate). Cptnono ( talk) 22:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
If there is no External links or Further reading sections, should there be an empty line between {{ Reflist}} and a navbox for readability when editing? McLerristarr | Mclay1 01:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I suggested adding a blank line below {{ Reflist}} at WP:AWB/FR but I was asked if it is actually policy to do that. Is there any reason not to add a blank line? McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
From the end of WP:LSC:
Is this a good idea? Has anyone seen this done? Do we need to accommodate that variant layout here? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
How about we just take it out of LSC, and thus provide no advice (anywhere) on the point? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
I wish to propose a radical change to Wikipedia. I think we should delete the further reading sections of articles. There does not see to be any point to them. If the links or books were not used as sources, then all it is is advertising. If people want to find more information on a subject then they can look on their local library catalogue or something. Besides, the goal of Wikipedia, in Jimbo's words, is to be the source of all human knowledge. If there is any more interesting and relevant information on subject, then it should be included in an article, which makes a further reading section pointless and just a place for people to list their own websites on a topic. What are other people's thoughts on this? McLerristarr (Mclay1) ( talk) 11:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
McLerristarr (Mclay1) you wrote above "If it says 'Smith's 1905 publication scandalised the country' then you have to reference Smith's 1905 publication, so it needs to be included in references rather than further reading". This is in my opinion a good example of a candidate for further reading. The citation should not be to "Smith's 1905 publication" but to a source that says it "scandalised the country". Smith's book should not be used as a citied source, because it says nothing about scandalising the country. However for someone who wishes to go into the scandal in more detail, then more bibliographic details about Smith's publication would be useful and the place to put such details is in further reading. -- PBS ( talk) 23:29, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
Further reading are supposed to be reading recommendations by the article authors, I see nothing wrong with that and no reason to block authors from creating such sections. True, at least in theory such a section could be abused for hidden advertising but that applies in the same fashion for references themselves, because you can favour/push certain publishers or authors there as well. Most references citing some textbook X could of course cite textbook Y instead (and often there might be 100s of Ys available for a particular article content). I'm rather skeptical of yet another rule for authors regarding how they have to name their sections and paragraphs or what information to compile.
As far as WP goals are concerned "collecting the knowledge of the world" does not mean that we collect any possibly interesting information on some subject. This should be obvious since we do not write textbooks on those subject but encyclopedic articles (containing the most important aspects in a concise and accessible manner)-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 00:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I am now coming by this Manual of style talk page section after seeing a discussion on the talk page of a thoughtful editor about the rationale for and usefulness of further reading sections in Wikipedia articles. Most professionally edited encyclopedias have further reading references at the end of their articles. That seems to be a general characteristic of many of the subject-specialized encyclopedias that are acquired by academic libraries. Take a look around in the academic library reference section nearest you and see how many specialty encyclopedia sets you find. Then look at the articles, and observe how often an encyclopedia article in a dead-tree encyclopedia has a bibliography at the end of the article suggesting books readers could read for more information on the subject. The Wikipedia Manual of style section on the issue makes clear enough that this has been routine practice on Wikipedia for years as well. What I try to do when editing further reading sections is to put well researched, meticulously edited references into them as I discover those references, and then eventually (sometimes many months later) dig into those sections for sources for further edits of article text. Most of the 6,837,507 articles on Wikipedia need a lot more editing, but as far as I know most of us few thousand active editors are volunteers who are either working or studying full-time besides editing Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that not every possible edit is done at once. Listing a further reading source with an article, as long as it is a well chosen source, has immediate usefulness to every reader of the article (and some articles have hundreds of page views a day even while they languish with no edits for weeks at a time), and it has lasting usefulness to any other editor who surfs by and thinks "I could improve this article if only I knew of a source on this topic." On my part, now that I have gathered hundreds of sources published by major commercial or academic publishers, purchased by major academic or public library systems, I simply don't have time simultaneously to edit all of the hundreds of Wikipedia articles that could be edited on the basis of those sources. I have my particular priority list of articles to edit on my volunteer time between work and family responsibilities. It may be that other editors have fewer means for finding such sources, but more time to use such sources once someone else finds them, so that if one editor shares a reference to a source or sources in an article further reading section, then other editors can use their volunteer time productively updating the articles based on current, reliable sources. Division of labor helps everyone get more work done more efficiently. I have seen instances of further reading sections being spammed for political or commercial purposes, and I boldly delete sources from such further reading sections (which, fortunately, are not commonplace) if I find them. The main thing is to keep looking for reliable sources all the time that have usefulness for follow-up reading by readers of Wikipedia and eventually usefulness for editors editing Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 19:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
Some thoughts:
I think an essay would be a good idea for preparing a guideline, but as a few of us are here right now, can we work on some principles? For the moment, are we all (or nearly all) agreed that "Further reading", if it it exists, should consist of good starter texts/foundation texts for any subject? Here are some principles, including ideas on how to deal with spamming and bias:
People's thoughts? VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 15:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
O.k., I've moved this discussion over to the new wp:Further reading essay. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Interesting discussion about RS-ness. For example, would Mad in America be a suitable "further reading" at Schizophrenia? (disclosure: I've added the wiki article on the book as a "see also", but unlike a "further reading", the wiki article on the book explicitly has reviews, some quite negative). As another example, I moved The Gene Illusion, which was a further reading at heritability to a inline ref about the existence of a small minority POV that discredits the concept of heritability. I think that as a general rule, it's preferable to deal with POV sources in text (or as "see also" if an appropriate article exists on the source itself) instead of adding them to "further reading", because that can give the impression that Wikipedia is recommending a certain POV. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
The following section is currently in Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines
When referring to one or more textbooks or reviews it can be very useful to give a brief annotation for each entry which indicates the level and comprehensiveness of the reference. In this case, it may be helpful to maintain separate "Notes" and "References" sections, with the Notes section containing the annotations and the References section the full formatted reference. For example:
- In cosmology, the cosmic microwave background radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation discovered in 1965 that fills the entire universe. [1]
It is also possible to provide annotations in other ways: by including them in the references section itself or by including everything in a footnote. If an annotation is particularly long (more than one or two sentences), it may be appropriate to merge some of the information into the main article instead of placing it in an annotation.
There is an ongoing discussion on the talk page there and the general feeling seems to be that the section does not belong there since it's not really about citations (annotation is not referencing) or science. I'd like to propose that the section be moved to this guideline since it's really layout issue. I'd also like to propose the following edited version since in it's current form it's confusing and the example does not illustrate what I think are our best practices.
When an article lists a large number of sources or materials for further reading then it is often helpful to annotate each entry with a brief indication of the type of work it is (beginner, advanced, detailed, survey etc.). For example:
- J. Smith, Introduction to Linear Programming, Acme Press, 2010. (An introductory text.)
- D. Jones, Linear Programming Theory, Excelsior Press, 2008. (A rigorous theoretical text for advanced readers.)
-- RDBury ( talk) 20:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
References
I'm not enthusiastic about the word "often" in "often helpful to annotate". Sometimes it's self-evident what audience the further reading stuff is for, e.g. newspaper articles or scientific journal papers have an obvious audience. So, just having a large number of further reading entries doesn't seem sufficient to recommend annotations. Tijfo098 ( talk) 21:15, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Further reading has an ongoing discussion on the Layout rule that says items listed in the references should not also be listed in the Further reading. Rjensen ( talk) 07:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Should I hit a double return to make a blank line space, between a section header and the text that follows? How about "before a section"? TCO ( talk) 13:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
OK, so do it, but it does not change the appearance? Also, the blank space before the header, noone does that and I've had it changed when I put it in. (right?) TCO ( talk) 21:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Elaborate please? I very rarely see people use those angle bracket style line breaks. What are you saying I should do? TCO ( talk) 22:15, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
The etymology post did not. And I expect if you sample article space, will find less. OK, I just went to the first article I linked to Egg (biology). The headers did not have that space. BTW, lately I see less than 50% having that space. But knowing that we are supposed to do it for editing view but that it does not affect reader view is helpful. TCO ( talk) 00:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I mean if you open each section on it's own, you will not have a blank line as the very first line. TCO ( talk) 00:29, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Nother question (honest, just trying to get this straight). In the Egg (biology) article, there are no spaces after the section header (before the section text). Is that how you are supposed to do it? I'm just asking because I'm used to writing off-line (and then would put a blank line after the header before the text). TCO ( talk) 00:32, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Rjensen ( talk · contribs) would like to remove the principle of non-duplication from the WP:FURTHER section of this guideline. It was discussed previously at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (layout)/Archive 7#Significant_change_to_Further_reading, and s/he would like to discuss it again at another page. Please see the new discussion.
While I oppose listing a source once under ==References== and then again under ==Further reading==, my primary goal is to prevent direct conflicts between this guideline and the page under construction. Please join the new discussion to share your opinion. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
The Notes and references section of Layout says:
But that link is no longer valid and Citing sources doesn't seem to talk about layout anymore. Is it there and I am missing it? If so, please update the link. If not, did this information go into some other article? If not, should we discuss it here? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
This problem still needs to be resolved. (Well, I've been busy.) So I'm making this entry to prevent automatic archiving. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 13:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:LAYOUT#Specialized layouts contains four items. Two of them make sense (talk pages and list articles) to me, and these two don't:
The content is basically 'use the normal layout, and we recommend putting the content in this order'. There are dozens of similar WikiProject guidelines. Why are we linking these two? Anyone mind if we remove them as largely irrelevant? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Is it correct to say that headings for footer navboxes are currently neither required nor prohibited by any previous wp:layout consensus? (Note: I am not asking whether Layout should require or prohibit such headings in the future, only whether it currently does.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:20, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
The lack of response makes me think that my understanding is correct: There is no rule requiring or prohibiting a navbox heading. In fact, when the idea of having a navbox heading was proposed to this list the suggestion was to put it out in the community and see what sort of response it received. wp:layout However, it is difficult to give this proposal a fair hearing when some editors mistakenly believe it is prohibited by Layout. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Absinthe&action=historysubmit&diff=385641561&oldid=385641457 Accordingly, I propose to add the following text at wp:layout#Navigation_templates:
Anyone object? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 01:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
A footnote providing a suggested title for those who wish to add a title to the Navigation templates section has been reverted as " vague and irrelevant." The information in the footnote certainly seems relevant to the text, which states that there is no consensus requiring or prohibiting a title. And the footnote certainly seems clear, suggesting a title name for those who choose to provide a title. Or am I missing something? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 16:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
In the "See also section" subsection of the "Standard appendices and footers" section, it says:
Well, why not? Is there some justification for this? It seems that, especially in a rather lengthy article, the link may be rather buried in the text. From a purely human factors viewpoint, doesn't it make sense to have more than one entry point to germane data? Why deliberately restrict the entry points? Has this been thought through? Herostratus ( talk) 04:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Appears to be case sensitive - it would be useful to mention that to reduce the number of red links. Scottonsocks ( talk) 00:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
I have created a new template that eliminates the need to use the floating portal, book, and sister project boxes within articles. Called the {{ Subject bar}}, it integrates all 3 and has a fairly decent amount of flexibility. At present, it can show up to 10 portals, 10 books, and all 8 sister projects. It can easily be expanded to cover more, if desired. Demos can be viewed on the documentation page, but here's a quick peek:
I have a live demo up on the Lemur article. Be sure to compare before and after.
For starters, I'm looking for feedback, positive or negative. Please share your comments. If the demo looks wrong, someone may be mucking around with it. If that's the case, the working code (as of the time of posting) can be found here. It uses a small sub-template called {{ Subject bar/item}} ( original), and points to the subpages of {{ Portal}} in order obtain the names of the portal icons. – VisionHolder « talk » 09:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Should there be any particular guidance here about linking to a section?
My specific example: in the article Time formatting and storage bugs, I want to add a "See also" link to material about issues with Daylight Savings Time. Just including
isn't very specific. Linking instead to
focuses to the proper part of the article, but it needlessly (IMO) exposes the mechanics of section links to the reader. So I'm thinking
might be a little more reader-friendly, or even
Any thoughts, both on what to do here, and whether there should be guidance in WP:SEEALSO? -- NapoliRoma ( talk) 19:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I've added a sentence to the External links section, as discussed above. The article subject's official site, if any, should always be listed under External links, per WP:ELYES and WP:ELOFFICIAL, regardless of whether it has been cited or not. As written, our text instructed editors not to list the official site if it has previously been used to source article content. Feel free to tweak the wording. -- JN 466 02:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
For small articles like academic journal stubs, I think it looks rather silly to have both. Tijfo098 ( talk) 20:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)