Re https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LMS_6399_Fury&curid=2024630&diff=693616758&oldid=693616168
Is it better to use |title=none and remove the error (a magazine cite, where the magazine title is present), or is this "a cop out" ?
|title=none
Thoughts? Andy Dingley (talk) 19:09, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
|department=
|title=
I think that all CS1/2 citations must have |title=.
[w]hat we need is the title of the article
{{cite journal}}
want to see is an actual article title
department: Title of a regular department, column, or section within the periodical or journal. Examples include "Communication", "Editorial", "Letter to the Editor", and "Review".
I'd like to point out that the idea of reference bundling, while not terrible per se, is being "blindly" applied in certain articles without regard to whether it's really necessary (not every instance of 2 refs in a row calls for bundling), and with no apparent consideration to what the ref list looks like after it's done (see the first example here—I'm not citing a specific "real" example so as not to call out a particular editor). As with anything, editors still need to think about what they're doing, and whether their changes benefit readers. - dcljr (talk) 05:06, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
here) instead of naked bundles (no indication of what the cites have in common, like footnote 29 here). Titled bundles are especially needful on Wikipedia since text gets shifted, footnotes get orphaned. Without the title you can't be sure all the cites in the bundle still support a revised sentence or paragraph. Now, editors with habits leftover from print publications, books and articles, don't see the need for titles on bundled footnotes. The habitual assumption is the text over the footnote suffices. But Wikipedia is a different animal: footnotes on Wikipedia don't stay glued to their text. In sum: yes to bundling, and preferably titled bundles.ElijahBosley (talk ☞) 13:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
Notes ^ Phillips-Fein 2009, p. 115; Hamowy 2008, p. 217; Perelman 2007, p. 64; Schneider 2009, p. 47; Mirowski & Plehwe 2009, p. 285; Olson 2009; Lichtman 2008, p. 160. References Phillips-Fein, Kim (2009). Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: W. W. Norton. p. ii, 27, 52, 60, 86, 101, 115, 116, 124, 149, 167, 265, 270, 285, 286. ISBN 978-0-393-05930-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Hamowy, Ronald, ed. (2008). "The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Cato Institute. pp. 62, 217, 221, 335, 416, 417. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Perelman, Michael (2007). The Confiscation of American Prosperity from Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-230-60046-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Schneider, Gregory L (2009). The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-7425-4284-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Mirowski, Philip; Plehwe, Dieter (2009). The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 15, 19, 21, 53, 156, 190, 196, 243, 281, 284, 293, 387, 397, 410. ISBN 978-0-674-03318-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Olson, Wayne (September 28, 2009). "An Inside Look at the Foundation for Economic Education FEE" (Interview). Interviewed by Pete Eyre. {{cite interview}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help) Lichtman, Allan J (2008). White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. New York: Grove Press. pp. 160, 171, 173, 206. ISBN 978-0-8021-4420-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
{{cite book}}
|ref=harv
{{cite encyclopedia}}
{{cite interview}}
|access-date=
|url=
|city=
|location=
|program=
"While citations should aim to provide the information listed above, Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style."
Just learned that you can link directly to the References sections so for anyone placing a request on a talk page the following might be helpful: "Please chime in with your preference for the current or the proposed formatting."
Please chime in with your preference for the [[Special:Diff/690200494#References|current]] or the [[Special:Diff/690200296#Notes|proposed]] formatting.
Abel (talk) 01:13, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
problematical edits to an article
^ Lopez, Mary Stachyra (2014-06-16). Centreville and Chantilly. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4671-2023-4. ^ Brent, Chester Horton (1946). Descendants of Col. Giles Brent, Capt George Brent and Robert Brent, Gentlemen. Priv. print. by the Tuttle Pub. Co. ^ [1][2]"
Notes ^ Lopez 2014 sfnm error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFLopez2014 (help); Brent 1946 sfnm error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFBrent1946 (help). References Lopez, Mary Stachyra (2014-06-16). Centreville and Chantilly. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4671-2023-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Brent, Chester Horton (1946). Descendants of Col. Giles Brent, Capt George Brent and Robert Brent, Gentlemen. Priv. print. by the Tuttle Pub. Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
multiple refs in a {refn} template
Starting over. Having unexpectedly had quite a bit of free time on my hands over the last two days, I have composed the following description of exactly what bundling is, how it can be done, and how it should not be done. I hope this is clear to everyone.
In this first example, the references are not bundled.[1][2][3]
References
In this second example, the references are bundled.[1]
In this third example, the bundled references take the form of a paragraph.[1]
In this fourth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle.[1]
In this fifth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle but the first citation lacks a bullet point.[1]
In this sixth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle without any bullet points.[1]
In this seventh[1] example, the references[2] are not bundled.[3]
In this eighth example, the references are bundled by simply wrapping them in a {{refn}} template.[4]
Does anyone take issue with any of this? Can we agree that the eighth example shows what should not be done when bundling references? - dcljr (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I've seen some other editors saying that it's Wikipedia policy to not put citations in the lede sections. I can't find anything in the policies - am I missing something?Timtempleton (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I saw a red URL reference error on the Eden ahbez page, and can't figure out how to get it to go away. It's reference #10 and the full text of the reference is this:<ref>{{cite book|title=Nature Boy|url=http://books.google.pt/books?id=DEYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA131| title = Life Magazine May 10, 1948, pp. 131-135}}</ref> It shows up as this: Life Magazine May 10, 1948, pp. 131-135 Nature Boy Check |url= value (help). Is it because the Wiki code doesn't recognize the .pt domain? If so, can a request be made to fix that?Timtempleton (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
|journal=
All of a sudden I am seeing these annoying quote marks in my reference names again. Can these be permanently not used again. They were blessedly missing for a very long time. They are very unnecessary in my opinion. Not sure why they are making an unwelcome comeback. Adding this here too as well as Note talk page, not sure which is best area of discussion -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Allow a more structured, orderly listing of references. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Should there be a signifier for Print on demand (POD) titles in citations? These works may be normally hard to find (out-of-print, small runs, vanity press editions etc.) which could affect reliability and/or verifiability. To quote from the lead of the POD article,
Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers. Many academic publishers, including university presses, use POD services to maintain a large backlist; some even use POD for all of their publications. Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that are out of print or for performing test marketing.— Print on demand (lead section)
I have also noticed that Amazon may list the work type as "Print on demand (paperback|hardcover)" in such cases. Any thoughts? 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:37, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Some of you may be interested in this:
There is a Tech Talk next Monday, 29 February at 20:00 UTC (12 Noon Pacific Time) about Zotero and the mw:citoid service.
The main subject is how to extract accurate, automated bibliographic citations from websites. This talk is mostly about Zotero, which is a free and open-source citation management tool. Zotero is used on the Wikipedias through the automagic citoid service. Citoid is currently an option in the visual editor and will (eventually) be used for automated citations in the wikitext editor at some Wikipedias. Zotero is also used by many academics and researchers, and most of the information presented will be useful to people outside of Wikipedia as well.
Please share this invitation with anyone that you believe will be interested. If you have questions, then please leave a note on my talk page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:46, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
A new point to make, here, about the content of the "Citing sources" article. Appearing in the text is content that argues, that if a dead link exists, a series of steps should be taken to replace that source. I would, as an experienced editor and professional content expert, make the following observations:
Sometimes, on principle, one might spend significant time on an article or subject where one is not an expert and so time is hard to justify, to interrupt an editing trend or to call attention to an edit that violates clear WP policies. (I spend far too much time, given my priorities and expertise, on all too common copy-paste kinds of hidden plagiarism, because it is widespread and in my view cancerous, and because plagiarism of that or any other sort is serious business, e.g., see here.)
However, sub-par or marginally notable article text that violates policies and guidelines, including text with deadlinks, is often best dealt with quickly, especially in BLP or other clearly defined cases—by removing the offending text, or, at least, by placing a [citation needed] tag and querying the original editor to make the correction. Whether it is plagiarism or poor sourcing, one accomplishes little, long-term, for this or any other written work, by post hoc fixing the mistakes of others, without addressing the root cause (by inviting those making such mistakes to make fewer of them).
To mix proverbial sayings badly, better to teach a person to fish, then to commit to forever deal with the laundry of such editor's overflowing laundry hampers. I say / editorialize more about forensic sourcing at my User page, should anyone care to read (or know the basis in experience for these opinions). Cheers, Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 15:36, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
For the same reasons expressed above, I often prefer to leave a deadlink so marked, and simply add citation to additional authority. Deadlinks can be annoying, but the original, in many cases, still exists in libraries, or commercial databases. --Bejnar (talk) 02:13, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
WP:CITEVAR begins "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style..." The phrase "established citation style" isn't clearly defined, but I believe that it has been taken primarily to mean the visible style of the citations: CS1/CS2/Vancouver, etc.; how they are arranged in the sections of the article, whether in a single references list or separate Notes and Sources/Bibliography sections, etc.
This edit on 4 November 2015 made a significant addition to a long-standing and important source of guidance (it was subsequently substantially edited, but the same point remained).
I do not believe that a sufficiently wide discussion was held to produce a consensus for a change of this kind, which represents substantial instruction creep, telling editors not only what citations should look like to the reader but how they should be written in wikitext. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I think people need to know why CITEVAR was introduced in the first place. It came into existence be an editor was using a bot to change citations (I forget what style (s)he was changing but it was to or from one of the long disused tagging methods no longer used). I think it is reasonable for a prohibition on bots enforcing homogenised citation styles on pages, by mass changing them is reasonable.
Style as defined in WP:CITESTYLE has nothing to do with formatting, and I agree totally with what what WhatamIdoing, it is appearance that matters not the underlying format. The addition of anything other than style being: "footnote long", or "in-line parenthetical with long in a references section" or "footnote short, long in a reference section", is in my view less than helpful. As to the format used in long references/citations, I think they should be the same as those in templates whether template are in use or not, as that means templates can be added or removed without changing the look of the long references/citations.
The number of people involved in these discussions is always very small (for example the number in the 2010 discussion was ~10) and to impose prohibitions as consensus based, when the number of editors is so small, is I think a mistake. -- PBS (talk) 19:42, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
"I think people need to know why CITEVAR was introduced in the first place."
{{reflist}}
"convert articles from using templates to not"
It absolutely cannot be the intent of WP:CITEVAR to violate WP:EDITING and WP:OWN policies by creating some system by which an individual or a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS / WP:FALSECONSENSUS at some article can invent their own citation formatting "rules" and force other editors to comply with them. In this regard, please see also WP:COMMONSENSE, WP:LAWYER, WP:GAMING, WP:VESTED, and the WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY policy (add WP:NFT and WP:NOT#SOABOX when it comes to made-up "styles"). It is not correct that CITEVAR "has long been interpreted to also include, for example, whether citation templates are used". Rather, a handful of editors have latched onto and advanced this misinterpretation, and the rest of Wikipedia happily ignores them and continues to change untemplated cites to templated ones, because the latter provide many features that the community wants. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to take the citation templates to WP:TFD and see how far that gets.
made-up, ghastly, arbitrary, idiosyncratic, etc. [styles]
Subsequent discussions have emphatically not "demonstrated consistent support for applying this more broadly"; it has led to repeated conflict for a long time, including the present discussion and the broader ones at WT:MOS. It always divides along lines of "allow people to act in good faith to do what's best for the article" vs. "do what people who feel proprietary about the article demand, just to get their way". I doubt any of us have any difficulty understanding which of these approaches has policy support and which does not, nor that "getting my way" tends to draw out a bloc vote from people who feel this way, resulting in WP:FALSECONSENSUS in some localized discussions. We have a policy about that, too, at WP:CONLEVEL: No amount of insular fiefdom behavior trumps our basic editing policies. Some of the editwarring in this regard has been so petty and childish it looks like elementary school squabbling over playground equipment, and the principal uses to which this particular interpretation of CITEVAR seems to be put are: a) the perpetuating of extraneous interpersonal conflicts (editor X is angry at editor Y over something, so reverts actually useful citation coding changes by Y in other articles); and b) "slow-editwarring" against the acceptance or existence of citation coding that some editor has a pet peeve about.
One has only to look at the responses posted to this thread so far and see what it's drawing out: Personal attacks, by editors who refuse to use citation templates, that those who use them are "idiots" who should be "revert[ed] on sight" and "blocked". This is precisely the kind of WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior guidelines exist to prevent, but this bogus interpretation of CITEVAR is a breeding ground for it instead. I smell a WP:RFARB in the making here, if this is not resolved.
I note that zero of the points I made about policy have been refuted, and the only defense offered for your interpretation of this fake rule is that you prefer it that way and intended it that way. That's not sufficient. Just as a basic WP:COMMONSENSE matter, it is not possible for the over-broad interpretation of CITEVAR as covering all aspects of citation coding to be legitimate. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
The problem here is that there is no provision in policy anywhere for "locking in" any aspect of anything at any article such that it requires anyone to seek permission first before changing it. Even WP:ENGVAR, on which CITEVAR is poorly based, doesn't work this way, and only discourages change when a style (which is not code detail, it's rendered style) is already established, is appropriate, and there is no valid reason for such a change. There is very often, if not almost always, a valid reason for a change of citation coding markup, most often to move full citation details out of the paraphrase of content and into the references section, either by switching to WP:LDR (which is not a style change in an article just using <ref name="...">...</ref> and <ref name="..." /> markup) or to WP:SFN (which arguably is a style change, because it splits the the citations up into two sections and increases both editor and reader work). Switching from SFN to LDR would also arguably be a style change and vice versa, like imposing on SFN on an article with a more compact presentation of citations. Making such a change will often be controversial for a reasons of legitimate differences of viewpoint regarding citation efficiency and the needs of editors vs. readers. A change to LDR (and various other code changes, e.g. to using templated citations instead of manually cobbled-together ones, to using vertical template formatting in LDRs and horizontal in in-text citations, to clearing out bot-generated noise, to bypassing template parameter aliases for the real parameter names, to human-parseable name= labels, etc., etc.) is not controversial, except when someone is being a WP:JERK and attempting to misuse CITEVAR for obstinate, unconstructive WP:STONEWALL purposes. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:00, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
<ref name="...">...</ref>
<ref name="..." />
name=
Some further points, as a followup to what I posted above: Made-up citation styles should be normalized on sight to a recognized one (whichever someone wants to normalize it to, and if others prefer a different one, a regular consensus discussion will determine which to use).
Citation markup (code) is most often a matter of practical considerations, and when it comes to anything subjective (rather than a matter of code correctness or other technical issues which must be fixed), a normal consensus discussion will determine which approach to use again, when necessary. And not all such matters are as subjective as someone with overly proprietary feelings about their contributions might think. Example: Vertical layout of citation templates is more practical when the full citations are grouped at the bottom of the page in the code (either in LDR format or footnoted short-inline-references format), since it makes editing their details easier, with no impact on content of the article. Meanwhile, the horizontal layout is more practical when full cites are inline in the article text, since doing them vertically creates a serious a usability problem for content editors, interfering with the ability to even get a single paragraph in the editing viewpoint at once.
No guideline on WP can force editors, much less new editors, to learn any complicated citation style; we're happy if they cite at all, even with a copy-pasted URL and nothing more. Citation formatting is principally a WP:GNOME and experienced editor matter, like all of our style and formatting details. But a guideline also does not permit anyone to prevent other editors from properly formatting citations in the templates we have for them. These templates produce useful metadata, do basic data integrity checking (missing title? invalid date?), allow us to pre-archive Web sources that might disappear at any time, and provide many other features that the community wants. No one gets to "forbid" all this functionality in "their" article (see WP:5P – everything you submit here may be "mercilessly edited" by others). The belief that CITEVAR allows someone to forbid conversion of raw-data citations to templated ones is false, and the entire editing community performs this conversion routinely, every single day. In over a decade of editing here, I've had people revert me on that two times, and both of the articles now use citation templates of course.
About the only CITEVAR conflict that can legitimately arise in this area is if an article a) has an established citation style (that is a real one), b) CS1 templates do not yet handle it, and c) consensus at the article's talk page is not reached to change to a style that CS1 templates can handle. This is rare, and the solution is to go to Help talk:CS1 and have the additional citation style handled by CS1. The last time I recall this arising was for Vancouver style, and CS1 now accounts for it. Any time there's a problem on WP, the solution is to work collaboratively to solve it, not dig your heels in and WP:BATTLEGROUND until you WP:WIN. These articles and their citations do not belong to you.
Even the existence of an established citation style at an article cannot prevent consensus from forming to change any aspect of citations there, and people also mis-cite CITEVAR as if the old citation style at an article cannot be changed simply because someone who claims to be the first major contributor objects. The FMC (or now we're moving to "first non-stub edit that established the style" at many of these *VAR and *RETAIN guidelines because the FMC idea has proven to be a GAMING festival for OWN players) has no more say than anyone else; we simply default to that status quo when and only when consensus cannot be reached as to what the style should be, and this is often a temporary state of affairs, e.g. pending an RfC.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 03:50, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
the guideline intended for years
A long time ago I tried to get the guideline modified to say something akin to SMcandLish's "Made-up citation styles should be normalized on sight to a recognized one (whichever someone wants to normalize it to, and if others prefer a different one, a regular consensus discussion will determine which to use)." My proposal failed. This means SMcandLish's statement is contrary to the guideline.
All this blather about being allowed to introduce citation templates into articles that consistently use some style without templates is nonsense. The templates only support a few styles; they will not be able to mimic other styles such as APA or Chicago. Oh, by the way, I regard the metadata in templates as affirmative statements about the source. Anyone who knowingly and persistently inserts false information into templates (e.g. author = ''The Color Purple'') so that the visual appearance of the rendered citation looks like some unsupported style is telling lies and needs to be shown the door. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:29, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
author = ''The Color Purple''
|mode=
|author=
CITEVAR should be constructed to emulate WP:ENGVAR, i.e. to a) promote intra-article consistency and b) defuse stupid fights over style. It should not be allowed to promote ownership-like control, and most importantly it should never block improvements from being made to articles (especially for the sake of newbies). In particular, Peter coxhead's Lilioid monocots example is good: ignoring CITEVAR in the name of article improvement was clearly the right choice. That sort of behaviour should be explicitly encouraged. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Claiming that CITEVAR blocks people from "genuinely improving citations" is inaccurate. If there is consensus that something is an improvement, we can put it directly in WP:CITE, at which point CITEVAR won't apply. But many things that are touted as "improvements" would not gain consensus to be recommended by WP:CITE, and are really only "improvements" in the minds of the minority of editors who favor them. List-defined references are a perfect example of this: we would never get consensus to put in WP:CITE that articles should all be converted to use LDR, because there have never been a consensus that LDR is actually an improvement over ordinary referencing (and that has nothing to do with CITEVAR). — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I'd also like to point out an important problem with changing styles in a more specific way. It might make a good illustration of how CITEVAR works in practice.
I wrote Breast cancer awareness a few years ago. I chose classic WP:Parenthetical citations for a specific, encyclopedic reason (to make it more obvious to the reader that I was leaning heavily on a single excellent author) and also in the hope that any brand-new editors would figure out how to add a source (because you just type it in plain text, exactly like everyone did back in the time of typewriters).
Occasionally, someone added a source with ref tags; I converted those to match the established style. (Per the lead of CITE, making things "match" is the job of anyone who notices, cares, and knows how to fix it, and for this relatively unpopular article, that task always fell to me.) Occasionally, someone would add {{unref}} to the article on the grounds that there were no blue clicky numbers. That was sloppy of them, but it's trivially easy to revert that kind of honest mistake.
Almost two years later, a few editors – editors who have contributed almost nothing to the article's contents, but who did complain at length that NPOV was not the same as "man-in-the-street POV" – decided that they didn't like parenthetical citations. I believe that one of them said that mentioning the author's name in parenthetical citations was "promotional", but in the end, I suspect that their actual complaint was that it did not follow the Official Wikipedia House Style of having blue clicky numbers. They voted to change it to {{sfn}}.
Like most, but certainly not all, editors, I don't particularly like {{sfn}}. It's a bit brittle (only certain citation templates can be used and parameter values must match exactly), it's unfamiliar to most editors, it confuses new editors, it doesn't work well in the visual editor, etc. – all the usual reasons. On the other hand, it's not a wildly inappropriate style for this article, since the article largely cites books. I (and several other experienced editors) opposed the change, but its proponents won.
This is how CITEVAR works: as the main author, I established a consistent style for use in the article. That style was Harvard citations inline with CS1 templates in the bibliography. Other people didn't like it, so they had a discussion and voted to change it. I'm not very happy about the outcome (and perhaps, if your main goal is article improvement, then you might want the editor who wrote >95% of a GA-quality article content to be happy about the citation style, in the hope that I would continue improving the article), but I'm bound by the "have a discussion and abide by the outcome" rules of CITEVAR every bit as much as they were bound by the "have a discussion instead of unilaterally changing the style" rules of CITEVAR. This is how CITEVAR works in actual practice: talk first, change later, and everyone's equal in the end. I really cannot imagine a better or more collegial approach for a Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Please see centralized discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Cleaning up and normalizing MOS:ENGVAR, WP:CITEVAR, WP:DATEVAR, etc.. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:56, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Please see centralized discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Cleaning up and normalizing MOS:ENGVAR, WP:CITEVAR, WP:DATEVAR, etc.. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change. As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved. If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If you are the first contributor to add citations to an article, you may choose whichever style you think best for the article.
As with spelling differences, editors should not change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles. If you believe an established style is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If discussion does not resolve the issue, default to the style used in the first post-stub revision to introduce a consistent citation style. If an article has no consistent citation style, an editor may use whichever style seems best for the article.
As with spelling differences, editors should not change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles. If you believe an established style is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If discussion does not resolve the issue, use the style found in the first post-stub revision that introduced a consistent citation style. If an article has no consistent citation style, an editor may use whatever style seems best for the article.
After recent edits WP:CITEVAR lays some stress on a "Consistent citation style" as something that should not be changed without consensus. I would like to make an addition that says that use of bare URLs is not a consistent style, or else that it is an exception, and changing from a "style" consisting solely or primarily of bare URLs to one including proper metadata for citations does not need explicit consensus. Would anyone object to such a change? DES (talk) 12:39, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Another thing I'd intended to add but didn't get around to: Need an anti-WP:GAME footnote that: Recent changes to insert citations not compliant with an established style does not make for lack of a consistent style that can then be "normalized" to a new style without consensus." But ENGVAR needs the exact equivalent rule, and so does MOSVAR, illustrating why I'm trying to centralize this to the extent possible. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 13:04, 22 March 2016 (UTC)</p).
Recent changes to insert citations not compliant with an established style does not make for lack of a consistent style that can then be "normalized" to a new style without consensus."
Going back to the "Revised" proposal at the top of the thread, I'm afraid this part isn't quite right:
If you believe an established style is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If discussion does not resolve the issue, use the style found in the first post-stub revision to introduce a consistent citation style.
If there is an established style, and a proposal on the talk page for a different style fails, the style remains as it was before the proposal. Going back to the first non-stub style would apply if a style was established way back when, and then the article descended into a mish-mash. Ideally, editors would look through the edit history for the last period when an established style existed, but this is probably too much to ask. The practical reality is that editors would look for an established style that existed within the last few months, and if none is found, go back to the beginning. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:05, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Now my view and that of Nikkimaria are each pretty clear, I think. Does anyone else have a view here, please? DES (talk) 21:25, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish, SlimVirgin, Jc3s5h, and Peter coxhead: Pinging editors in the larger discussion from which this sub-thread grew. Do any of you support my edit (as corrected) (supported by Blueboar above), or do you prefer Nikkimaria's revert, or some third option? I would like to form consensus on this. i think the point is important, but my exact wording is not. My comments above should make my views clear. DES (talk) 16:39, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
name
<ref name="...">
The deeper challenge with inconsistent citations is that some editors use them as an excuse to "standardize" an article. For example, if an article had 20 templated citations, and then over time a couple random editors add three or four non-templated ones, the article is now "inconsistent", so someone might go through and either convert the 4 new citations to use templates, or convert the old 20 to not use templates. (The same applies equally if the article has 20 non-template citations and someone adds 4 template citations!) Ideally, each editor would check the history of the citations and then go with the originally established style, but that doesn't seem to happen very often. Similarly, AWB treats the existence of just one named reference as an excuse to convert *every* reference to named references - without considering the article history. Frankly, I would be glad to have more flexibility to convert articles I work on to styles I prefer, and if everyone else also has that flexibility then I ought to make use of it too. I'll keep an eye on it from a distance to see how the policy falls out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:42, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Citation needed#Apologies, but object strongly, to content in article here based on decades of experience. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:18, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Nowhere had a guideline or even an essay mentioned benefits of adding full citations and not just short ones, so what are they? Gamingforfun365 (talk) 05:06, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
When an article cites many different pages from the same source
to avoid the redundancy of many big, nearly identical full citations
Each style of referencing has its own advantages and disadvantages. It's just a matter of taste which one each person prefers. However, for existing articles, you should simply follow the existing style, rather than trying to worry about it. The question of which style you prefer is really only relevant when you start new articles, or add references to articles that don't have them yet.
The use of short citations is neither required, recommended, or prohibited by the MOS; nor are "duplicated full" citations required, recommended, or prohibited. None of them is viewed as any better than the others from the point of view of the MOS. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Duplicated citations can be confusing for the reader, and particularly in evaluating relatively new or challenged articles on a quick scan, cna make it appear that the article has more supporting sources than it actually does. I suggest that this guideline be amended to say that it is strongly encouraged to combine duplicated citations, and that it is always acceptable for an editor to use one of the described methods to avoid duplicated full citations, and this is not a change in citation style that needs consensus under CITEVAR. We don't want to prevent relatively inexperienced editors from adding proper cites just because they create duplicates, and the editor doesn't know how to combine them, or doesn't have time to do so. (cites are better than no cites.) But we want to strongly encourage the 'best practice' of combining them in a way appropriate to the overall citation style of the article. I would want to encourage combining even when there are only two occurrences of the same citation. That is my view. DES (talk) 22:27, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
only a problem in articles with a great deal of citation
If a reputable source (the creator of the content in question) sends a blast email to thousands of people, can that email be cited as a source? I'd like to add some detail to facts on a page, but the only source of this information is a blast email that the well-known creator of the content sent out to announce a new episode of the web series. No reputable online source has commented on this particular fact directly, but the current Wikipedia article states "It seems that ...", when in fact the content creator confirmed the assumption made in the Wikipedia article completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.80.102.52 (talk) 04:50, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
While I now agree that there isn't a specific availability/archive requirement in the guideline for text sources, i think that probably there should be. In any case, if this email blast were actually to be cited in an article, i would be inclined to revert and take the matter to the reliable source notice board arguing for removal of such a citation as unreliable. DES (talk) 09:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.
It's tautological (in the proof sense, not the criticism-of-wording sense) that the source must be available at some effort or other cost. No amount of lawyering about "private archives" or "published but no longer available to anyone anywhere" will get past the fact that it's the verifiability policy. If the source does not make it possible to verify the content, then it does not qualify. A possible solution in a case like this would be to post the blast e-mail to some site for discussion of spam or whatever, archive that page via archive.org, then cite the e-mail as a primary source and the forum as a |via=, and archive.org as the |archive-url=. Forums and other WP:UGC are not themselves reliable sources, but if you're using one as a carrier for the original content, it's hard to see what the issue would be (archive.org itself is a user-generated carrier of original non-user-generated sources; all this would do it add another carrier so that archive.org has something to archive). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 18:35, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
|via=
|archive-url=
Recent discussions, especially Instruction creep in WP:CITEVAR and RFC: Is a change in citation markup method a change in citation style?, got me wondering if there could be a tool that might aid editors in evaluating the coding part of citations. To that end I've hacked up a proof of concept template that takes a stab at doing that.
The template is {{ref info}}. It can be saved in an article so that the referencing information is automatically available to any editor who clicks the Show preview button or as the examples here show, can take a single parameter that is the title of an article of interest:
{{ref info}}
{{ref info|alzheimer's disease}}
{{ref info|Barack Obama}}
{{ref info|aristotle}}
This is just a hack that requires improvement if it is to be useful. I would like your opinions. Does the concept have merit? Should it be pursued? What information should the template provide? How should the results be displayed? What else?
Please comment at the template's talk page.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:52, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
|sidebar=y
{{archive box}}
It still does not address the clear distinction between code and content, and I think we're arriving at a tripartite distinction between: 1) actual citation style (CS1, Vancouver, Jim-Bob's made up one, whatever) seen by the reader; 2) coding standards like LDR and SFN, or vertical vs. horizontal templating, or mass-conversion to/from using templates at all; and 3) trivial coding tweaks like using canonical not alias parameter names of templates, using <ref name= values that are human-readable, or using a particular footnote template that provides an additional feature. Regardless of those questions, {{Ref info}} is a major step in the right direction. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:36, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
<ref name=
{{Ref info}}
I had thought about using an id to look at older versions of an article. I've just spent a bit of time trying to get that to work, but alas, no success. I've posted at WP:LUA to see if there is a solution.
I'll take the suggestion portions of the above comments and make a list of them at Template talk:Ref info.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:25, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi!
I was recently TBANned from the topic in which I am most interested and on which I have access to the best print sources. I don't want to go around English Wikipedia adding a bunch of citations to Japanese-language print sources to which most other editors don't have access to articles on, say, Chinese literature and the Bible, but I also don't want to pay and wait for international shipping on print books in English from American and European publishers. So I've been using my Kindle a whole lot more. But I'm not sure about something.
I read Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 32#How do you cite E-Books from Kindle?, but it might be out of date. User:Kmhkmh said use whatever description works to narrow down the content in question for that "Chapter 5, Section 2, Paragraph 8" ais fine, but now (perhaps not true back in 2011?) I can provide much more precise "Loc"s to give almost the exact line I'm citing, but this is only useful if one has the Kindle version, and I'm worried that providing a unique and original citation format that includes something like "Kindle edition. Locs 22405-22417." would be especially unattractive. It's also tedious trying to locate these exact Locs, as I don't know how to do it beyond zooming in to the max and scrolling around...
Thoughts?
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:43, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
See also my recent hack job on Xiaopin (literary genre). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
.epub
.mobi
Why does Dealing with unsourced material say "If an article is unreferenced, you can tag it with the {{unreferenced}} template, so long as it is not nonsensical or a biography of a living person, in which case request admin assistance"? What is it that an admin would do that we would not expect any editor to do? I can see that an admin's assistance might be needed in a dispute over biographical material, but if that's the intention it needs to be a little clearer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
{{unreferenced}}
OK, here's a proposed rewording of the section, based on Noyster's comments above.
If an article has no references at all, then: If the entire article is nonsense, tag it for speedy deletion using criterion G1. If the article is a biography of a living person, it can be tagged with {{subst:prod blp} to propose deletion. If it's a biography of a living person and is an attack page, then it should be tagged for speedy deletion using criterion G10, which will blank the page. If the article doesn't fit into the above two categories, then consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the article creator. You may also tag the article with the {{unreferenced}} template and consider nominating it for deletion. For individual unreferenced claims in an article: If an unreferenced claim is doubtful but not harmful, you may remove it from the article or, alternatively, use the {{citation needed}} template, which will add an inline tag. If you choose to use the tag, please go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time. If a claim is doubtful and harmful, remove it from the article. You may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless it is very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to the talk page either. Use common sense.
If an article has no references at all, then:
For individual unreferenced claims in an article:
Comments? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:44, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
For individual unreferenced claims in an article: If the article is a biography of a living person, then any contentious material must be removed immediately: see Biographies of living persons. If the material added appears to be false or an expression of opinion, remove it and inform the editor who added the unsourced material. The {{uw-unsourced1}} template may be placed on their talk page. In any other case consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the editor who added the unsourced material. You may place a {{citation needed}} or {{dubious}} tag against the added text.
{{uw-unsourced1}}
{{citation needed}}
{{dubious}}
If an article has no references at all, then: If the entire article is nonsense, tag it for speedy deletion using criterion G1. If the article is a biography of a living person, it can be tagged with {{subst:prod blp} to propose deletion. If it's a biography of a living person and is an attack page, then it should be tagged for speedy deletion using criterion G10, which will blank the page. If the article doesn't fit into the above two categories, then consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the article creator. You may also tag the article with the {{unreferenced}} template and consider nominating it for deletion. For individual unreferenced claims in an article: If the article is a biography of a living person, then any contentious material must be removed immediately: see Biographies of living persons. If the unreferenced material is seriously inappropriate, it may need to be hidden from general view, in which case request admin assistance. If the material added appears to be false or an expression of opinion, remove it and inform the editor who added the unsourced material. The {{uw-unsourced1}} template may be placed on their talk page. In any other case consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the editor who added the unsourced material. You may place a {{citation needed}} or {{dubious}} tag against the added text.
Is this ready to go? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:38, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
The article Sabah Chinese Association is referenced using this source, the records of the Sabah state government. The title of the page in question is "Govermental Records", i.e. with a spelling mistake.
Parkywiki corrected the spelling of the reference, but I reverted on the basis that the title of the source is effectively a quotation, and we should leave it as it is. Parkywiki then reverted to the correct spelling on the basis that it's clearly an error (which I agree with) and that correcting it will avoid spell-check issues in future.
Is there an agreed way of dealing with this? Cheers, Number 57 23:32, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
So how do we cite something attributed to "Edward H. Field and members of the 2014 WGCEP"? (This is analogous to cases like "Smith and 14 others".)
For the citation template, something like "|first1= Edward H. |last1= Field |author2= members of the 2014 WGCEP" might work. But how should Harv be done: {{Harv|Field|2014 WGCEP}}, and add a suitable CITEREF to the citation template?
{{Harv|Field|2014 WGCEP}}
I suppose all that might work, but would be interested in any other ideas. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
|collaboration=2014 WGCEP
{{citation |author=Edward H. Field |collaboration=2014 WGCEP |title=Title |date=2014}}
{{harvnb|Edward H. Field|2014}}
|collaboration=
What do the rest of you think of this? Should I have just not included the quotations? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Since the introduction of the Chinese culture of the Han Dynasty the basic system of wooden building frames has been passed down to recent years, Such structures coincidentally blended with other indigenous architectural details.
|quote=
{{cite web |author=Yoon Chang Sup |work=A Brief History of Korean Architecture |title=2. Ancient Architecture |url=http://nongae.gsnu.ac.kr/~mirkoh/ob2.html |publisher=[[Gyeongsang National University]] |access-date=3 May 2016}}
|work=
{{efn}}
At what size do we give up on linking to an online version of a source that can be verified offline? I am referencing one page in a 500 (or-so) page book, and there is an online PDF version of the book. Unfortunately in this case, at more than 200 M, it does not make sense to link it. Is there a rule of thumb for how big a linked source can be before we don't link to it?
To forestall possible asides on the particular case that raised this question:
<ref>
Hey, this doesn't look right to me -- any ideas? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:57, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
|last= Buswell
|first= Robert E., Jr.
(non-admin closure) ~ RobTalk 20:55, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Some editors believe that a change in the wikisource formatting of citations, such as a change to or from List-defined References, or a change to or from the use of citation templates, is a change in citation style, and under WP:CITEVAR should not be made without obtaining consensus first, if there is an existing established citation style. Others believe that as long as the visible citations are unchanged, changing the wikicode does not amount to a change in style. Various arguments have been made in recent threads here on WT:CITE, as well as on WT:MOS. I ask for comments to resolve this issue with clear consensus, if possible. DES (talk) 21:55, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
This issue was being discussed at least as far back as 2010, in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 29#Consistent style. Changes to WP:CITE in October 2015 favored the "coding is style" view, but were disputed at the time and since. Recently the matter has become heated once more. Extended dispute over the meaning of an important guideline is not good, and should be settled by wider discussion. DES (talk) 22:02, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
{{cite ...}}
{{citation}}
{{cite}}
it's a choice that someone has to make at some point in the article's development
style=
{{Harv}}
<ref>...</ref>
{{Reflist|refs= ...}}
<ref name=Washin_08/>
<ref name=_39xps#p8/>
<ref name="Washington 2008" />
interested editors can improve the formatting later
If you have an issue with what a bot or AWB is doing, take it up at the bot and AWB talk pages. There may be a potential problem of an AWB user mistaking a lone case of a citation done one way as the norm in an article actually otherwise done a different way, and mis-normalize to the non-majority style, but this doesn't seem to come up often enough to care about. It seems to cause fewer problems than editor-vs.-editor filibustering of code improvements, which is the reason we're here disputing your view on this.
A more sensible solution to the whole matter would be to normalize to the majority style in the article (aside from recent changes that altered existing citations). If I come to "your" C-class article you just improved from a stub, and I triple the size of it and the number of citations in it, why should you have any more say over what the citation style is to be now, other than as one editorial voice among all others? I know Curly Turkey takes this view (it's his #1 concern raised about CITEVAR, at any rate), but perhaps it's a different proposal for another time.
The real point is that whatever the best solution may be, there's definitely not a consensus in favor of the one you prefer, or there would not be so much dispute about this. "I get my way pretty often in bitter fights, and people give up because I fight to the end" is the approach too many have taken to this. It is not evidence of consensus, but of tendentious possessiveness that everyone rolls they eyes about and moves on because its petty and a waste of time. Ask yourself: How does preventing Peter Coxhead from using LDR in this article, or even preventing Jane Doe from using APA references in this article instead of Vancouver ones, for that matter, help the reader? Ask yourself also this: If this provision was enacted to prevent editorial disputes but is just leading to a long-term and increasingly dug-in editorial dispute of a broader nature, how well is it working? We tried it for a while, for lack of anything better to try, and it has not worked well. There's an old saying that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but expect different results. So, let's not be crazy. Is broke, do fix it. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:16, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
<ref name=7>
<ref name="Hendricks 2015">
ossifies the status quo
{{citation|mode=cs1}}
{{EB1911}}
{{cite SEP}}
{{Cite DCB}}
{{Cite wikisource}}
This RfC is basically a false dichotomy and we're talking past each other a lot because many of our concerns are tangential to those of others. I can identify at least all of the following issues (not all of which are valid) in the above discussions, and feel free to add more. Some are clearly much more legitimate than others, and it's pretty obvious that there's a culture clash here between GA/FA-focused editors and stub-expansion editors, both of which camps feel they're doing more important work than the other.
{{cite foo |para1=value1 |para2=value2 |...}}
{{cite foo | para1 = value1 | para2 = value2 | ...}}
{{cite foo| para1= value1| para2= value2| ...}}
=
I think the causes of this fracture are: Firstly, GA and FA tend to give a lot of deference to whoever worked the most on an article (this is a choice by the participants at those processes, and is not a WP policy matter when it comes to who may edit and how). Secondly, some WP:MOS-focused editors, early on, resisted the use of external citation styles that do stylistically unusual things like using smallcaps extensively; but none of the current MoS regulars seems to care any longer, so this rift is illusory and only being maintained by WP:CITE regulars. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 03:26, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
|answered=
In the bulleted example under § Bundling citations, the first line should also be bulleted. 67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:57, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
{{edit semi-protected}}
In § Citing multiple pages of the same source, the text
The use of ibid., Id. (or similar abbreviations) is discouraged, …
should read either
The use of ibid. or Id. (or similar abbreviations) is discouraged, …
or
The use of ibid., Id., or similar abbreviations is discouraged, …
67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:36, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
I think it would be good if the page (or other location) info (as is currently sometimes given using {{Rp}}) when rendered, appeared twice - both in the References section and where the reference is cited. (Perhaps this is perennially discussed? RFC?) It currently just appears in the latter location, and I find I often don't notice it there. I think it should appear in the References section, or at least the References section should have some indication that there is page/loc data for the source. Thoughts? Clear or should I provide examples? Implementation ideas? --Elvey(t•c) 19:09, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
What I'm unhappy with, in other words, is that the only way (AFAIK) to have page numbers appear in the References section is to duplicate the references. If the references are combined, the page numbers move up to the article body. My workaround was to put (§s cited in article body above) where I did. I suppose another workaround would be to replace that with the actual §s - but then you have a maintenance nightmare - I don't want the page #s to appear twice in the source. The editorializing at Template:Rp#Function suggsts that there's consensus for a change like this, but the technical implementation is far from trivial.--Elvey(t•c) 20:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I wasn't sure which venue would be the best one to ask this question at, so I picked this one. I'm also posing this same question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. I created an article on Amy Bess Miller fairly recently, and that article includes her bibliography. However, there is another work currently not listed to which Miller contributed. The Shaker Image Second and Annotated Edition includes annotations by Magda Gabor-Hotchkiss, with captions written by Amy Bess Miller and John Harlow Ott. How would I credit this in a bibliography? For the introduction that Miller wrote for the fascimile reprint of The gardener's manual, I just used the "cite book" template and entered "Introduction" into the chapter parameter. But this type of thing I don't think would work in this case. So what would be the solution?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 04:10, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Checkingfax that might be of interest to editors here, As far as I can tell it concerns the question of whether changing the |authors= parameter of the citation templates to split out multiple authors into separate parameters (and in so doing change the formatting of the author lists) counts as a "change of style" that needs a discussion per WP:CITEVAR, or whether this sort of change is just routine cleanup not requiring discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:37, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
|authors=
Which template should be used to cite a spreadsheet on Google docs such as [8]. Also, is there an archive service that works with such links? Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 11:57, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
{{cite web}}
How would I cite a grave marker placed by an official historical society? Would the answer change if a picture of the grave marker is available (personally taken)? jmcgowan2 (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
{{cite sign}}
{{cite sign |title=Andrew Drake |title-link=:File:Gravestone_of_Andrew_Drake.jpg |type=Grave marker |location=Stelton Baptist Church Edison, New Jersey |publisher=Official Historical Society |date=1743}}
Opinions are needed the following matter Template talk:According to whom#In-text attribution for cited material. As noted, I responded in the section below that one since I wanted my reply to clearly address what is stated in both sections. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:23, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure there's probably a few volumes of material in the archives about this but given my late discovery of it, I'll just post my thoughts and it can get added to any future consensus tallies.
It's unquestionably better to have some citations than no citations. New and academic editors should be welcomed to use parenthetical citation and not be obliged to take introductory courses on {{citation}} syntax.
That said, CITEVAR doesn't seem like ERA or ENGVAR where there isn't a better answer and we have to default to the first major editor as a kludge. Currently we list "Improving existing citations by adding missing information..." and "Combining duplicate citations" as unquestionable improvements. Footnote citations are better than parenthetical citation on both counts. I didn't know about this policy and—amid other improvements—converted the referencing of Morrison's Chinese dictionary. Going from the old parenthetical version to the new footnoted version, there are over 20 duplicate citations that are now combined and every one of the 100+ citations links quickly and helpfully to the full bibliographic record and direct links. The running text of the article now only consists of the running text. Those are all unquestionable improvements in the article that will be undone just as soon as the old editor gets his computer fixed, because of this policy. And they're one of the kind and polite editors, going an hour or so out of their way to revert by hand so as to keep the other improvements.
The reason for the ERA and ENGVAR kludges is to avoid the edit wars of the early years by having a bright line rule. We don't want edit warring here either, but a better bright line rule than what we have is
Is there any reason that shouldn't be the policy? Fear that editors who prefer parenthetical citation would take it personally and stop editing because other people are improving their articles for them? Shouldn't not minding that fall under thanking them for their work but counseling them to avoid feelings of OWNERSHIP?
Parenthetical citations work fine in print. We should figure out some way to convert our footnotes into parenthetical citations when we print articles out. That said, Wikipedia isn't a print encyclopedia and it's just not as helpful in general. — LlywelynII 00:13, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
I have a 12th printing of a 2008 source; there is no date on the printing. If I knew the date of the printing I could use "origdate=2008", but how can I indicate I consulted the 12th printing without a date? If I use the edition field, I'll get "12th printing ed." which is ugly. Typically in a reprint there is no change of text, but that's not a universal rule, so I'd prefer to indicate the printing if possible. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
|date = 2008
|orig-year = 2008
|date = c. 2012
|edition = 12th corrected reprinting of 1st
Are download links (PDFs, zip archives, executables, etc.) acceptable in citations? Or else if a source is only available in the form of a file in a zip archive or something, what do we do? I can’t find anything in project space about this, or I don’t know where to look. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 01:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
|format=ZIP archive
The bots all give the case that story uses. MOS:CAPS doesn't offer anything clearly, but I was reverted https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shania_Twain&type=revision&diff=732706594&oldid=732705050 and the usual title case was removed. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:18, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
I notice the article in question uses a mixture of hand-formatted cites, cite xxx templates, and the {{Citation}} template. So the article really has no citation style at this point. Perhaps if you look in the article's history you will find the article used to be consistent; if so, use that style. If not, someone should establish a consistent style.
Even if the style ends up being to use cite xxx templates, the documentation for the cite xxx templates, Help:Citation Style 1, only discusses how to use the template parameters to include the title; it contains no guidelines about the capitalization of titles. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:32, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
A discussion has been started at Template talk:Citation needed regarding an apparent conflict between the documentation for the tags {{citation needed}} and {{dubious}} – namely, which to use for statements in articles that are both unsourced and of questionable validity. Wikipedia:Citing sources § Dealing with unsourced material states that either can be used. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 23:24, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I have started a discussion about the use of Google translate links in citations and external links sections. Please comment there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:23, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
The problem seems to have arisen nearly 6 years ago, when it was decided to link Google Books pages not adding pageurl to titleurl and chapterurl, but distorting the use of titleurl, which since then can also address no longer at the front cover of the books. Personally I solve by placing a link in the page or quote parameter, but an editor disagrees and reverts me. I mean, what do you think of updating the template {{cite book}}? --Mauro Lanari (talk) 04:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
That is independent of screen size/aspect ratio. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 19:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
Does any have a problem with indicating that ref group is an acceptable use that does not run afoul with WP:IBID. Because, I have an editor that decides because it looks like IBID that it must act the same. But using group tag in references expressly keeps these references together. Thus using ref groups does not break like IBID. You have to expressly go in and break the references by removing the group name to have the problem. Spshu (talk) 13:48, 27 September 2016 (UTC) If any one wish to see the issue is at Defunct Scout and Scout-like organizations in the United States with additional discussion. Spshu (talk) 14:17, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
This might have been addressed, but I wouldn't know where to look. But where would Snopes.com and other such sites fall in terms referencing and citating. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 02:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
On the Blockbuster LLC article, there a number of dead references. Out of couriosity, is there a bot enabled to switch them the archived links in order to save time on doing multiple switches? Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it! 20:43, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
I would like to make an amendment to CITEHOW to reflect that a translation of a foreign language title into English should be included along with the title. To me it seems commonsense on en WP, but I work in several languages and I think it needs to be stated explicitly. Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
|trans-title=
Providing a straightforward translation of the title
straightforward
Title translations should not be mandatory and one thing we should avoid under any circumstance are "This source has no translation, hence I remove it"-scenarios. It is important to remember that the primary purpose of a citation is to provide an exact reference to the source, so that others can look it up if they wish to do so. This can be achieved fine without any title translations.
However pointing out that the option for title translations exists and that some editors/readers consider them desirable or helpful is ok.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
When the title of a reference does not quite reflect its contents, is it possible to add a note as to clarify what is in the webpage referencing? For example, if my reference is a Youtube video called "Completing a report card," but in fact the video covers far more topics than how to complete a report card, and among teachers they usually refer to this video as "The generals of grading in High School" is it acceptable to indicate next to the title "(a.k.a. The generals of grading in High School)"?
Mariana.dawe (talk) 15:06, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia is a bot-generated list of journals cited on Wikipedia using the "journal=" parameter of the {{Citation}}, {{Cite journal}}, {{Vancite journal}}, and {{Vcite journal}} templates. It is a useful resource, but citations not based on templates, such as "<ref>J. Smith (2010), ''Journal of Foobar'' '''13'''(7):28–31</ref>" are completely ignored by the compilation. Therefore, I believe that journal citations using citation templates should be preferred, even if an article already uses a consistent system without templates. WP:CITEVAR says, "When an article is already consistent, avoid ... adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates...." In view of the value of Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia, I recommend that this provision of WP:CITEVAR be modified, at least for academic journals. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
<ref>J. Smith (2010), ''Journal of Foobar'' '''13'''(7):28–31</ref>
{{oldid}}
<span class="classname">...</span>
Under the heading "Journal articles" it says,
I believe that an article published in a periodical should have the periodical date, not just the year. I believe that an article published online should have date of online publication. —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:34, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
See here This permanent version of Bill Goldberg has 139 instances of reference #131 (which is itself a bare link but that's beside the point). I don't see anything at Help:Footnotes#Footnotes:_using_a_source_more_than_once or Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Repeated_citations that states a maximum limit on how many times we should use a reference but certainly over 100 is too many. Thoughts? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:20, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
