In re Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_July_10#Template:Ref_indent
Template:Ref indent, which formats references into non-bulleted hanging indent paragraphs (instead of the bulleted list recommended here), has been proposed for deletion. Must of the previous discussion was essentially WP:ILIKEIT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Since it has been relisted for further discussion, the policy- and MOS-based opinions of regular editors here might be particularly helpful in reaching a recommendation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Editors who use WebCite to archive web pages may wish to note that there seem to be some continuing problems with the site, even though it appears to be up again. (It may be that it is not fully functional yet.) I have tried archiving a few web pages but it doesn't appear to be working properly. More worryingly, web pages that I archived before the site was taken down for server migration (see, for instance, "Choor Singh" and "Han Sai Por") are not accessible at the moment.
I sent an e-mail to Gunther Eysenbach, the initiator of the WebCite system, using the e-mail address stated at http://www.webcitation.org/faq but have not received any response. I also left a message on his Wikipedia user talk page, but another editor has pointed out that he hasn't been active on Wikipedia since February 2009. Anyway, until WebCite has ironed out these issues, editors should be cautious about using the service. I also sincerely hope that web pages that have previously been archived using WebCite will be accessible soon, and have not been "lost".
I'm not sure where the best place to discuss this issue is. Please feel free to leave messages on relevant talk pages directing editors to the discussion here. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 09:49, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Here is what I know (and I've probably followed this more closely than anyone else due to being User:WebCiteBOT's programmer:
In short, I think the data (& corresponding links) is still good, but I wouldn't expect the bugs to be fixed soon. Unfortunately, every time I have pointed out a non-trivial bug over the last several months it has taken a while before it was acted upon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Wow, great info. Thanks. How would you summarize that for a message to the general population to let them know not to remove these links?--Blargh29 (talk) 00:36, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Starting with what you wrote above, I'd say something like:
WebCite, a popular on-demand web archiving service referenced by Wikipedia over 20,000 times, went down for a server upgrade on June 24th. WebCite is currently "on-line" but a few things were broken in the upgrade and it is currently not working properly - for example, returning error messages or blank pages for most previous archives. ThaddeusB has been in contact with Gunther Eysenbach throughout the process and would like to assure the community that efforts are underway to fix the broken links. In the mean time, please do not remove, or otherwise attempt to fix, "broken links" to webcitation.org. See this discussion for more information.
A shorter version for where a long message is inappropriate might read:
WebCite, a popular web archiving service referenced by Wikipedia over 20,000 times, is currently returning error messages for most pages. Efforts are underway to resolve the problem. In the mean time, please do not remove "broken links" to webcitation.org. (more information)
--ThaddeusB (talk) 01:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
So, I still can't access archived pages through WebCite, but it seems that I can make new archives of pages (e.g., [1]. Is archiving links now a good idea, or should we wait until this whole thing is figured out? Thanks. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Most older archives are loading now. There still seem to be some problems with pictures not loading, but the text does. The formatting is all messed up because of the missing pictures, but the textual info is there. PDF archives don't load properly currently; and, multi-byte characters (primarily on Chinese/Japanese pages, but occasionally on other pages with extended characters used as separators) load as black question marks rather than the proper characters.
So, there are still some issues but at least all the data appears to be intact. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:50, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
The WebCite outage, and the possibility that it was to some degree precipitated by calls to its database from Wikipedia readers, brings up one issue regarding Wikipedia's usage of the archive services. Currently, including the |archiveurl= ... parameters in a citation using the {{cite ...}} template causes the main hyperlink in a citation to call the archiving service. This usage implicitly assumes that the original URL is non-functioning, and it shifts all the server load from the original URLs to the archiving service.
I think that we should consider reducing the load on the archive servers by modifying Wikipedia's procedure so that the original URL is normally used for the main hyperlink. This is the procedure that WebCite itself suggested in its documentation. The main disadvantage of this procedure is that readers will more often find dead links on their first attempt. That could be mitigated by adding still another parameter to the template to indicate that the original URL is dead. On balance, the WebCite experience suggests to me that we should make this change. Easchiff (talk) 12:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
It has been proposed in several places (see, e.g, this essay) that wikipedia centralize its references, perhaps as part of the wiki commons. That is, every journal article, newspaper article, book, etc, would have a single entry in a centralized database. Wikipedia articles would then include in-line references to the database (which could be collected at the bottom of the page, if desired). Such a system seems much better than the current potpourri of referencing conventions currently in use, solving several problems at once. And, it has been implemented elsewhere. See Quantiki, which implements bibwiki, as an example.
Is there a consensus on the suitability and feasibility of this idea? Has it stalled? I looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite but it didn't seem to directly discuss this. Njerseyguy (talk) 15:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
When using citation templates, I always put them on a single line. Another editor recently went to a few articles I've worked on, including some GAs, and changed them to the vertical align method. As I abhor this method and I felt it was in violation of this guideline (which says to use the existing format and not change it purely for personal preferences) and the vertical format is the far more commonly used in the media related areas where we're interacting. So I reverted, noting so. However, he continues attempting to do this, and is edit warring across multiple related articles. The one time he bothered with an edit summary, he said he was doing it because it "looks better to me", which to me is not a valid reason to change this and its getting really annoying. Are there any guidelines regarding this that can be reviewed to (hopefully) help stop this? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm in a mood to patch something. In particular, I'd like to improve the <ref> system to reduce the clutter in wikicode. There are several possible ways to do this, but at current I am leaning to towards expanding <references /> to allow reference definitions to appear within a references block, i.e.:
<references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
One could then change all the prior <ref> calls into <ref name="foo" /> and move the cluttered wikicode out of the main body of the text. Of course the current system would continue to function as is, but this would provide an option for greater readability of wikicode if people chose to use it.
Does that sound like a good idea? Do people have other suggestions for (small) ways to improve <ref>? Dragons flight (talk) 10:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
{{reflist|3|refs=<ref name=foo>Foo</ref><ref name=bar>Bar</ref>}}
<ref parent="foo">Page 4</ref>
This is a paragraph<ref name="foo"> within a section. <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> This is another paragraph.
=== Section === <ref display="foo">This is a sentence in a paragraph.</ref> <ref display="bar">This is another sentence in a paragraph.</ref> === References === <references> <ref define="foo">abcde</ref> <ref define="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
<define>...</define>
Person is X,<ref name=nytimes/> Y,<ref name=post/> and Z.<ref name=la/>
Person is X,<ref>{{citation | date=...(4 lines of markup)}}, Y<ref>(another 4 lines)</ref>, and Z.
< It is already possible to separate references from the text, using the {{Note}} and {{Ref}} templates. (This was mentioned before by Golbez and others but I want to underline it to make sure newer editors understand the issues. This example is adopted from WP:Verification methods.)
{{isbn}}
isbn
This is some information.{{ref|1|1}} This information comes from a book.{{ref|2a|2}} This is more information that comes from a different book.{{ref|3|3}} This is a point that needs clarification.{{ref|4|4}} This is more information from the first book.{{ref|2a|2}} === References === # {{note|1}}This tells exactly where this information came from. # {{note|2a}}{{note|2b}}[[John Doe|Doe, John]] (1996), ''Book of Information'', Great Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|3}}[[Jane Doe|Doe, Jane]] (2020), ''More Information'', Better Books, ISBN 1234567890 # {{note|4}}This is a footnote that clarifies the point above.
What you propose is certainly an improvement over {{Note}} and {{Ref}}, because it automatically numbers the footnotes. As several people have noted, many editors would like to see clutter-free text like this example. However, as others have noted, this method was abandoned for several reasons that go beyond just the numbering issue, as discussed by Golbez, JackLee and others above. My own view is this:
That's my two cents. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Based on the previous discussion, there would appear to be three possible courses of action at the software level for improving <ref> at the present time.
<ref>
<references>
<references> ... </references>
I would note that the first two of these aren't mutually exclusive, so one could support both and envision changes to allow for both. In order to move forward, I would like to know if a supermajority of Wikipedians support any of these options, hence the purpose of this straw poll, which I will try to advertise in the appropriate places.
Rgardless of any possible changes, the current <ref> syntax would continue to be fully supported, and changes would affect only how wikicode could be written with no change at all to the rendered page. Dragons flight (talk) 11:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Alter <ref> and <references> as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references> block. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified solely by the name parameter.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name="foo" />, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.<ref name="bar" /> <references> <ref name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref name="bar">xyz</ref> </references>
This is simply a repeat of history. We used to do references like this with templates until <ref> was implemented. When we used {{ref}} templates, references would very often get separated when paragraphs were moved between articles and such. You would end up with orphaned references, missing references, etc. It was a mess. We need proper code folding of references in the text area, in my opinion. That, or split them out entirely into their own namespace. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Out of the 5 general classes of referencing systems described at WP:CITE, the issue this is trying to address is really a problem for only one of these, #2 [full] footnote system (possibly #5 embedded links also, but that's generally deprecated anyway). I'd agree that it is an issue for the 'full footnote' system (one of the reasons I avoid that system wherever I can, but it has several other serious deficiencies as well.) But it is not an issue for these others. Any proposal to alter the technical functioning of cites/refs must bear in mind that these other valid referencing systems exist, function perfectly fine the way they are, and need to continue to function as they do. If it could be implemented so that there is absolutely zero impact or change to the way CITESHORT and PARENS work currently, including the option of not requiring so-called "named references" (quite unneeded for CITESHORT), then well and good, I suppose. But I'm not seeing if this would be the case; would the tag <references/> on its own still just generate a numbered list compiling all the entries between <ref></ref> tags? Would all the ref tags have to be labeled ('named references') now? Presumably section editing & previewing with ref tags would still work (for previewing, it's a simple matter to add a temporary {reflist} when previewing to see how the section's refs will look)?
If anything, the implication of this proposal and some general agreement that there are issues with the 'full footnote' system, is an argument to move away from the 'full footnote' system altogether, which I personally think is not a bad idea...--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:08, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Alter <ref> so that the content of references may be defined (without being displayed) at any arbitrary point within the page. For example, references could be collected at the end of the first section in which they occur. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified by the name parameter.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name="foo" />, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.<ref name="bar" /> <ref definition name="foo">abcde</ref> <ref definition name="bar">xyz</ref> == References == <references/>
refdef
ref namedef=""
This is the option for perserving the status quo, at least until something better comes along. For example, the widespread adoption of a WYSIWYG editor could remove the problem of reference clutter without any other modifications to the reference system. Alternatively, a more comprehensive system could create a separate interface (and edit box) for manipulating references. Such things may be possible, but they are longer-term solutions that could not be immediately implemented.
Apparently a rich text interface is being considered for ease of use. Many of these take extensions, meaning that when available then <ref>...</ref> tags could in principle be collapsed into a yellow highlighted word "ref", which users can click to edit. Long term that's probably quite a nice solution, especially as this kind of interface is (apparently) likely to be under consideration already. FT2 (Talk | email) 08:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Can't something like this be done in javascript, right now? Gigs (talk) 18:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Note that WikEd has already implemented this, so it is certainly feasible in the near term. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC) There is also a (slightly buggy) wysiwyg editor in use on Appropedia. See Appropedia:Sandbox ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:04, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm jumping into this discussion late (and necessarily briefly as I will be leaving on vacation in a week or two). Let me identify myself right away as the person behind Bugzilla:18890 (to which, incidentally, I am not wedded, and for which a test wiki running that proposed enhancement is available at http://siteslot.com/testwiki2. I do urge anyone interested to click over to that test wiki and to take the added functionality for a test drive. Create an account ... or not. Clone the content of some Wikipedia pages there and try moving some or all of the <Ref>s on those pages into <Ref def ...>s, as illustrated on the main page there. I think that you will find that the functionality there is similar to what is being discussed here.). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
(copied from below) It has been proposed in several places (see, e.g, this essay) that wikipedia centralize its references, perhaps as part of the wiki commons. That is, every journal article, newspaper article, book, etc, would have a single entry in a centralized database. Wikipedia articles would then include in-line references to the database (which could be collected at the bottom of the page, if desired). Such a system seems much better than the current potpourri of referencing conventions currently in use, solving several problems at once. And, it has been implemented elsewhere. See Quantiki, which implements bibwiki, as an example.
Is there a consensus on the suitability and feasibility of this idea? Has it stalled? I looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite but it didn't seem to directly discuss this. Njerseyguy (talk) 22:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Most participants in this discussion are probably aware that <Ref> is not a Wikipedia thing, but there are probably some participants who are not aware of that. Just to clarify, Wikis are done using Mediawiki software which runs on a web server. That software is used by a lot of users other than Wikipedia. Extensions may be added to that software. One extension which is used by Wikipedia and by a lot of people.projects/organizations outside of Wikipedia is Mediawiki:Extension:Cite, which does <Ref>s.
What is being discussed here, I think, is a proposal to (1) modify the Cite extension at Mediawiki (2) in a way which would add additional functionality and in a way which would be transparently 100.00 percent backwards compatible with current functionality. We may or may not be contemplating here bypassing the Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests process. I hope that what is being discussed here is not a proposal to separate the Cite extension used by Wikipedia from the Cite extension distributed by Mediawiki. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
An enhanced editor which would (optionally, I presume) allow multiple edit windows to be opened into different parts of an article undergoing editing (one window, say, into the article prose containing <Ref name=whatever />s and another window, say, into point in that article where a block with corresponding <Ref name=whatever>Ref body</Ref>s or <Ref def name=whatever>Ref body</Ref>s are placed) is an idea which I would urge be considered separately from the idea of improving <Ref>. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
The poll ran for nearly two weeks, with little movement during the last several days. Option #1 received 41 comments in support and 12 in opposition (77% support). In accordance with that result, I've begun writing the necessary software patch. I hope to commit it sometime today or tomorrow (though one will have to wait a while before it becomes live on Wikipedia). Option #2 is generally rejected, and I won't be implementing it. Dragons flight (talk) 02:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
FYI, since auto-archiving removed the info: Option1 was "Alter <ref> and <references> as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references> block. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified solely by the name parameter." In other words, the content of refs could be defined by editors in a ref section, rather than (as now) defined in the text and collated into the ref section for readers. ~~~~
We could use more eyes at WT:Footnotes#REFPUNC. The text of WP:REFPUNC expressly permitted the placement of footnotes before punctuation (a style used in many scientific journals), and a footnote in an example expressly prohibited it (for no discernable reason). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Editiing in good faith, I implemented various citation templates to a couple of articles some weeks ago, including Passive analogue filter development and Constant k filter. Those edits were, however, both reverted by User:Spinningspark, explaining on my talk page that I was "imposing style rules for others to follow in articles you have otherwise made no contribution to." Now I thought I was doing some useful work by implementing citation templates in order to give "References" and "Further reading" sections a consistent look in as much Wikipedia articles as possible. Is there any recommendation for this dissension? Can citation templates be implemented although the author who "owns" the article does not like them? --bender235 (talk) 09:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
The answer to your question is at WP:CITE#Citation templates and tools, and reads as follows:
Citation templates are used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Templates may be used or removed at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus. Where no agreement can be reached, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.
Since the articles already had a reasonably consistent way of citing sources, it was inappropriate to change the system without first gaining consensus on the talk page. Also, although no one "owns" a Wikipedia article, it is inconsiderate for one who has no plans to improve the content of an article to make style changes that may be uncomfortable for those who regularly work on the article. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I often encounter articles which have citations in styles with which I am unfamiliar ("What the heck are those colons doing after the author's name?"). I propose that if a particular citation style is used, especially a specialized one (e.g., Vancouver system, Bluebook), that it be noted in the article to assist future editors, especially ones like myself who are looking to clean up the article up.—DocWatson42 (talk) 05:34, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi! The first sentence in Section Tools / Citation creation tools link to WP:Citation tools which contains exactly the same information as already given below. What about simply dropping the sentence? —Alfie±Talk 12:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to put a note in one ref, that uses another ref. Can anyone tell me my options? I tried doing this but it didn't work, and there's probably a better way. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:21, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm GA-reviewing Phineas and Ferb, which cites a podcast 15 times. If a book were cited I'd expect page numbers. I don't intend to listen through the podcast each time I want to check that a point is verified. The editor insists there's no way to provide a route to the required points, e.g. by % through the podcast - especially as I don't know how long it is without listening all the way and the editor just describes it as "long". I guess similar issues occur with DVD commentaries. Any suggestions? --Philcha (talk) 18:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it best to place inline citations within a sentence directly after a point is made or at the end of a sentence? I tend to the use the later as it looks and reads better, even though the source may not be a reference for the whole sentence. Is that poor citing? - Shiftchange (talk) 01:27, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the responses. I had been wondering about this for ages. Maybe your answers should be integrated into the article page. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
For <ref></ref> is this not covered by WP:REFPUNCT and a very very long edit war? For parenthetical referencing in Wikipedia:Parenthetical referencing#Inline citation in the body of the article -- PBS (talk) 14:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't see anything about this. How long should it stay before the statement is removed in its entirety? It says the BLPs should be removed immediately, but nothing about regular articles. TheWeakWilled 02:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps I missed it, but I could find nothing in this guide about whether it is acceptable practice to abbreviate journal names. Personally I like to see the full journal name, particularly for journals covering fields that are unfamiliar to me. Take, for example, Phys. Rev. Lett.: without googling it, is this journal about physiology, physical or physics? (I happen to know it's 'physical', but about physics.) Likewise, what is the ASEA Journal? I have especially mixed feelings when an article mixed full names and abbreviations. Abbreviation of journal names seems like jargon. It would be good if this guide could settle the matter. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 15:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
"In the sciences, journal titles are usually abbreviated (often with periods omitted) unless they consist of only one word. Standard abbreviations for scientific journals may be found in BIOSIS Serial Sources (bibliog. 5) and Index Medicus (bibliog. 4.5), among other reference works. Both are published annually in print form and are also available online. For a partial list of standard abbreviations of frequently used journal title words, see Scientific Style and Format or the AMA Manual of Style (bibliog. 1.1)."—The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition (2003), 16.100 "Abbreviations" (p. 618).
Hello, I was wondering if someone could clarify the wikipedia rules on world accessibility of cited sources. I've been reading a few articles that cited sources who's links led to an abstract of the article, but the full article needed subscription to the journal. As I was not subscribed to the journal I couldn't access the full text, and the abstract didn't cover the material being cited. I've looked around the article writing guides but can't find any concrete policy either for or against this practice. Is it accepted or discouraged and if accepted, what is the justification? Does it maybe need to be verified by other editors and if so, how do you know if it's been verified? This information could be useful to add to this page to clarify it for other users who might be confused. --Rentrustic (talk) 15:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I'm with you on the "back-up source" practice (I sometimes refer to these as "convenience cites"), by analogy with the "laysummary" parameters of some citation templates. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 17:39, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
The "Footnote summary" section says to add a == Notes == section. But most articles I see seem to use a == References == section
Also it doesn't explain the difference between <references /> and {{Reflist}}. I think the latter is where there are many references to make it smaller, but by definition that's not the case when someone is adding the first reference!
So I think the section can just say:
Maybe someone who really knows can do this. Remember this is a Quick summary , leave the endless academic babble elsewhere. -- Skierpage (talk) 03:04, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
<div class=references-small> <references/> </div>
<- Thanks for the extensive comments. No WhatamIdoing ::shudder:: that would be horrible :) I don't recall where I first saw the approach, but it was an FA, so I assume that the citation style had been through the usual grilling. Thanks for pointing me to the article on the bends - looks professional, and I know, I know that space is cheap, but multiple references to the same text mean the Title, ISBN and other info are repeated every time a new page is referenced. In contrast, I list the info other than the author and the page exactly once. In the article I referenced, I have 13 references to Ikard covering seven different pages, but only list the ISBN, Title and publisher once. Thanks Izno, for the improvement you made—I've been struggling with multiple references to the same page, and that's a neat solution. AnmaFinotera, I'll be gentle about encouraging. For example, I wouldn't think of suggesting it for the nitrogen article, which is in fine shape, and I probably wouldn't mention it to an editor tackling any established article (unless it is a mess). I meant in more in the sense of offering advice to someone who has only cited online sources and wants to add some books as cites, or someone starting an article from scratch and wanted some thoughts on how to proceed with references.--SPhilbrickT 23:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
To get back to the topic, "References" is by far the most common title for footnote sections, so should we be encouraging "Footnotes" here? I think not. And is "general referencing" really something we still encourage? I thought the recent emphasis on inline referencing implied a certain deprecation of that approach. Rd232 talk 14:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
I would like to seek policy clarification on the matter of the author naming convention in wikiped citations. On a pair of occasions I've encountered an issue wherein a well-developed list of citations have been extensively edited so as to replace all of the authors first names with initials. The editor in question justified this in the interest of "uniformity", but to me this seems like excessive and perhaps pedantic adherence to the word "consistency".
Unfortunately I see absolutely no benefit in this editing pattern, and I believe it may even cause harm by increasing the level of authorship ambiguity. It will also make it more difficult to track down and author (in order to establish their bona fides, for example). Thus this formating seems like a needless loss of useful information. I have to wonder how many of the wikipedia readers are going to actually care that some of the citations have full author names whereas some do not? If anything, while acting as a fact-checking editor I would want the full name of the author whenever possible. This is particularly the case for citations that may not necessarily be available over the internet.
For this reason, I would like to suggest a modification to this policy so as to allow for a more reasonable level of discrepancy in how much author information is provided. I would prefer it to say something like, "The complete first and last name of the author should be provided whenever the information is readily available. The exception is for citations that have more than three authors listed; in this case initializing the first and middle names is acceptible." (The limit of three authors above is arbitrary, of course, but I think that would work in most situations.)
Does this seem reasonable? If not, then I would prefer this reference to state clearly the opposite: that the first name should always be initialized. This would eliminate editing conflicts over the issue. I'd prefer not to just rely on common sense, as that doesn't always work. Thank you. :-) —RJH (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
{{cite book}}
{{cite journal}}
|journal=
|coauthors=
|author=
|accessdate=
But WP:CITE/ES already says as follows: "A good guideline is to list author names as they are written in the original article/book, without further abbreviation. The APA guidelines recommend abbreviating first names to initial letters instead, but since Wikipedia has no shortage of space, you need not abbreviate names. Indeed, there are good reasons to include the full names of authors; such information makes it much easier to find the cited work, and it also makes it possible to find other related information by the same author."
And all the examples given on that page give first names in full. Alarics (talk) 21:41, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
I also support the original poster and the example style at WP:CITE/ES in the view that there's no reason to lose information and needlessly abbreviate names; we don't have space constraints like a book or journal. Also, please remember that "first names" and "last names" apply only to naming conventions that exist only in some parts of the world (see personal name, Category:Names by culture, etc.), so a misguided attempt to "abbreviate" a name often has undesirable results. Shreevatsa (talk) 23:39, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi Charles, could you say what was wrong with this? [4] SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:22, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for the slow reply. Page numbers in different editions are different. So, if you use page numbers, you need to give the edition, otherwise the page numbers serve no purpose. That's all. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The article says "Citations for newspaper articles typically include" bla bla, and does not mention the place of publication. This is all right for U.S. newspapers where the place of publication is usually part of the title (New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune), but that is often not the case in other countries. The Times (London) should always specify "London" because there are other Timeses. Ditto The Guardian (London) as there is also a "The Guardian" in Tanzania.
So would it be possible to amend the article to say " ... place of publication (where this is not part of the newspaper title)"? Alarics (talk) 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
|location=
A quick, related question: is it generally considered good form to link the name of a newspaper (or similar publishing organ) in a citation, as is often done? -Wormcast (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
It there an accepted method of specifying both the page range location of a chapter or article being cited, and the specific pages being cited? e.g. if the work is
and I want to cite material on page 190, but I don't want to lose the information that the cited work appears between pages 140 and 195 of the book... can it be done? Hesperian 11:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
{{citation}}
|separator=
If I understand your question right, I think you are looking for a way to cite several different page ranges of the same book in several footnotes. The most common solution is shortened footnotes. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:29, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
User:SlimVirgin says we don't use citation templates any more. When did this occur? Should I be deleting them whenever I see them, or is this her interpretation of policy? She wrote: "removed citation templates please don't add any more, see WP:CITE". The message was here. Answer on my page please. Isnt the concept to have a standardized format and a template so say, in 10 years when we decide that newspaper names do or don't get italics, we can change all 10 million at once? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) The guideline presently calls on you to preserve any citation style that is presently used in an article. If you don't know which one it is, ask on the talk page. If you think the present guideline is a "ridiculous investment of effort" then try to change it. At present, you are suggesting it is OK for you to ignore any guideline that you consider to be a "ridiculous investment of effort." --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
In practice, one quite often comes upon an article with say 100 citations in 50 different styles and with important fields left blank (e.g. publication date) while unimportant ones are filled in (e.g. access date for a URL that in fact leads to a clearly dated and stable page, such as a news article). For those few of us who care about these things, there is nothing for it but to try to standardise it as best one can. Since some of the citations probably use a cite xxx template of one sort or another, the least messy thing one can do is often to use the template to fix all the others, even if one wouldn't necessarily have done so if starting the article from scratch oneself. Alarics (talk) 21:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
(Undent) I'm a little surprised that so many experienced editors are even having this conversation.
SlimVirgin, with respect, you were wrong to revert the template -- at least, wrong to claim that this page requires it: The injunction here is to have a consistent kind of reference (meaning: Do not mix WP:FOOT and WP:PAREN!) and, to a lesser degree that is only relevant at FA nominations (the Good Article criteria do not have any requirements about citation formatting), to use the same order, punctuation, italics, etc. If that can be achieved by having half the citations manually formatted, and the other half using templates, then there's not one word here that will prevent you from doing so. We care about what the reader sees, not what the guts of the file looks like.
Now if there's a consensus at a given article that the editors prefer to manually format all of the citations -- and this appears to be the case at the article in question -- then there's nothing here to prevent them from doing that. However, the reason needs to be a gracious "The consensus at this article is to manually format everything; I changed it to match the others for you", not something that could be (mis)understood as "WP:CITE says you did this wrong." WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Alarics wrote "The fact that the cite refTool (Mr Z) is now on the edit toolbar by default...." I believe that is incorrect. Perhaps Alarics clicked the appropriate checkbox on the "Gadgets" tab of the "my preferences" window long ago, and forgot having done so?
I wonder if Bzuk could point to some text establishing that the cite templates were based on APA style? The current developers of these templates seem to have forgotten that, and having noting to guide them, they tend to have long discussions about how to format any new parameter.
I find it interesting that cite templates are mostly used as footnotes, but the APA style manual only allows parenthetical referencing. It is also interesting that the {{Citation}} template is actually intended for use as a footnote, but except for using the comma to separate elements of the citation rather than a full stop, it mostly imitates the APA style, rather than some style that allows footnote citations (like Chicago). --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Since this discussion is wandering all over the place, I am going to address the history of date linking in the citation templates. There have been a multitude of discussions on date linking, but I am going to specifically address those related only to the citation templates.
As best I see, there has been no consensus to go back and fix the formatting problems that resulted from the removal of date linking in the templates, thus the silent consensus has been towards ISO dates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Circling back to the edits that provoked the discuss, everyone's behavior seems quite acceptable and in accordance with the guideline. One key aspect of the guideline, in my view, is that editors are encouraged to add new, useful citations in any format they are comfortable with, even if it is not precisely consistent with the existing style; other editors will come and clean up after them. Which is exactly what happened here. Christopher Parham (talk) 14:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
I would like to remove, on the grounds of instruction creep, that the city of publication must be part of a citation. There is no need for it, and I don't recall that there was discussion about adding it (though maybe there was, and I missed it). Whenever I remove it, I'm reverted, [5] so I'm bringing it here for other views. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
... there is a "The Times" in South Australia (http://www.victorharbortimes.com.au/) and others in Ontario, Canada (http://www.mindentimes.on.ca/), Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA (http://www.pawtuckettimes.com/) and Trenton, New Jersey, USA (http://www.nj.com/times/pageone/). All call themselves simply "The Times" on their mastheads. ... There is a "Sunday Times" in Perth, Western Australia, and another one in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one in Sri Lanka, as well as the one in London. There is a "Daily Telegraph" in Sydney, Australia, as well as the one in London. And so on. ... ... it is useful and sensible and normal to state the place of publication even if the title is unique. Supposing I am citing something from the Eastern Daily Press. Even within the UK, many people in other parts of the country will only dimly have heard of it if at all, and might find it useful to know, or to be reminded, that it is the regional paper published in Norwich.
Also: I have just found that MLA style says "If citing a "locally-published newspaper" whose city of publication is not in its title, the city is put in square brackets (but not italicized) after the title of the newspaper (178–79)." -- Alarics (talk) 19:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
I am challenging the article because it has provided two gross innacurracies.
The first error of import is Alonso de Sotomayor's maternal surname. The consequences: 1: The maternal surname of Valmediano leads historical and genealogical researchers to dead ends because they cannot connect Sotomayor with that maternal surname.
2: Alonso de SotoMayor's death date is all wrong.
The result: The person who wrote the article didn't do their research within the archives of Spain. They copied data that had the error from other authors who in turn didn't research as well.
In turn Wikipedia published the article that contains errors and has elevated its status as well...
I am publishing a book whose aim has been to correct errors that have been made by researchers and historians within the records of many importantant historical individuals. The data I will share is in the process of copyright.
Conditions that are to be met if you are going to used the corrected information within Wikipedia....
1: My book and my name must show very clearly within the article as being the source of the corrections: Page numbers must be listed as well.
If the writer of the article wants the corrected genealogy of the Sotomayor to be included they must also Site my book as well as my name....
You have my E mail address. Please feel free to write me regarding the conditions I have set forth above.
I have digitalized copies of the original documents that prove I am right.
Let me know if the conditions I have set forth can be met.
Respectfully,
John J. Browne Ayes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ayesart (talk • contribs) 12:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
for rebuilding the lead section as a nice clean summary of the guideline. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 16:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to go with the last edit of the month to diff for the Update on this page, but let me know if I've missed something and one of the late August edits hasn't survived and didn't have consensus; this is one of the harder pages to do. I'm going with this as my selected version for the Update, that is, the last version that seemed to have consensus. See WP:Update for more information, and let me know if you disagree. FYI, the only two policy pages this month where I felt the last version of the month had significantly less support than another version from the last week of the month were WP:CSD and WP:BLOCK; now I'm working on Category:General style guidelines. - Dank (push to talk) 21:59, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm looking for guidance as to when captions need to cite sources. For example, Image:Jane Stanford.jpg, the first image in Stanford Memorial Church #Early history, currently has the caption "Jane Stanford, who built Stanford Memorial Church. Her taste and sensibilities are evident in the execution of the church." with no citation to any source. This sort of caption is quite common in Wikipedia: I assume it's OK? If not, then why not? And either way, there should be guidance about this topic in Wikipedia:Citing sources and in Wikipedia:Captions. Sorry if this is an FAQ, but I didn't find any guidance when I looked in the obvious places. Eubulides (talk) 23:51, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Eubulides (talk) 09:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for all these comments. I agree that the guideline shouldn't require that every instance of duplicated material contain a nearby citation, that as a corollary a caption that contains only claims supported elsewhere need not have citations, and that the citation to support the media itself should be on the file page. The draft's point about alt text was too narrow: it applies to descriptive material in general (not just in alt text; it could be in the caption, for example); the point is that material that merely describes an image does not require a citation, as it can be verified directly from the image.
Three other points have occurred to me as well. First, tables and infoboxes are similar to images and other media files with respect to citations, and deserve a mention. Second, there's no need here to mention the relatively unimportant detail that alt text cannot contain footnotes. Finally, there are two different topics being covered here: one related to proximity (which applies only to inline citations, not to general references), and the other related to when citations are needed at all. I changed the above draft to make these points as well, with the results below. Further comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 19:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Eubulides (talk) 19:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't see any support for these changes at all. And you waited less than two days for comments. I think that we should only add this if you've generated real consensus, but multiple editors seem to believe the guideline was adequate without any specific section for captions. --Karnesky (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Here's a revised draft of the proposal, which takes into account the comments above. It makes more clearly the point that the references associated with a multimedia file itself should be in the file page, whereas the references associated with material in the article that includes the file (e.g., the caption) belong in the article.
Further comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 17:35, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
By the way, the previously discussed Cite update is now live: Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes#cite.php_update, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Footnotes_update. Dragons flight (talk) 19:47, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I do not know why the actual story of this micronation cannot be told without allowing Australians with spurious motives to hack on it.
I was asked for opinions and those opinions, as well as all of the Gayzettes, are posted at www.gaykingdom.org. I am the owner of that site's URL and to the extent Wikipedia allows untried editing this article will be misleading to those that follow our work. It is clearly misleading now.
I am not a wiki editor, so I'll ask for help in setting down a few facts and asking that the original article be restored. While it was never perfect, it is much more truthful than what is posted now.
William J. Freeman Lord Chancellor Gay and Lesbian Kingdom www.gaykingdom.org
Volley36 (talk) 00:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
It has become more and more difficult for editors to navigate guff in the edit mode because of the sometimes overpowering length/numbers of refs which make it difficult to follow the text. For instance, here is the first paragraph (following the lead) in the Barack Obama article
I'm sure that's not the worst (best) example in Wiki, but you will see what I mean. Anyway, what if all article text (in the edit mode) was a different colour to the cite text? If one of our geeks created a bot, perhaps they could run it around Wiki to change all text between the <ref> and </ref> tags to a different colour from the article text. Would be a big help to all editors I believe. I'm not a geek, so I don't know how these bot thingies work, or even if it could be done. First off, does anyone else think it would be a good idea? Should I take it somewhere else? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 23:55, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Wtmitchell, what are you talking about, I know perfectly well how to adjust my browser text size. We are talking about how references should be displayed in the edit window independently of the other text. No browser can address that issue. SpinningSpark 02:20, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
