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• WT:CITE

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Citing sources page.

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Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again

I know this has been discussed a couple of times in these Talk archives, but I want to bring it up again. What is the rationale for requiring access/retrieval dates for online versions of past printed materials?

For example, editors are beginning to link book cites to Google Books. Thus, editors are putting "Retrieved on" on their cites, in addition to the usual author, title, publisher, year, ISBN, and page information. It looks very strange to see a book being "retrieved" ... such a link is just a convenience link (problematic too, given the semi-random way Google Books' "limited view" works); the content of the book is unchanging. If the link goes bad, the rest of the cite remains: an unchanging reference to an unchanging book.

Another case are old newspaper and magazine articles. If a cite gives a 1983 New York Times story's publication date, title, and author, and also gives a convenience link to the NYT archive, what is the value of having the retrieval date for this? The content of the story is fixed and unchanging, and is defined by the print/microfilm version. Again, if the archive goes away, the rest of the cite remains, an unchanging reference to an unchanging story. If the archive gets moved, one would re-lookup the online version by the published date/title/author information; knowing the old retrieval date wouldn't tell you anything.

And there is a real cost to having retrieval dates in place everywhere: to us they take up article edit space, to browsers they increase output HTML space, and to readers they clutter up the cite and can be visually confused with publication date. I understand that retrieval dates are necessary for web pages without publication dates, and arguably necessary for dated news stories originally published online (CNN, current NYT, etc.), but I just don't see the rationale for them in the above cases. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It's useful to be able to refer to that date in the WayBack Machine at archive.org. In the case of the NYT archive, we can be fairly certain that those will always remain, but other links won't. It's quite possible that some print sources could be basically impossible (or rather expensive/time-consuming) to track down. People will increasingly rid of print archives. However, if you're crunched for time, do what you can. If it's a podunk town newspaper, put the date; if it's the NYT, don't worry about it. That's my take at least. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 23:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The most common cause of newspaper links going bad is that articles get moved behind pay/subscriber walls. Is the WayBack machine able to show the article anyway, or are they enjoined from making free what is otherwise supposed to be charged for? Wasted Time R (talk) 23:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

One of the issues with the citation template is that the nomenclature of "retrieved on" is tacked on automatically and now has become part of the architecture of the citationa as judged by the amount of citation templates in place. I agree that the term looks arcane but with its widespread use, it is hard now to incorporate a "found," "accessed" or "located" tag as an alternative. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2008 (UTC).

To clarify, my issue is not with what word is used here. I don't think books or old newspaper articles should be listed as "found", "accessed", or "located" either. Those printed sources are unchanging over time; it doesn't matter if you "find" a 1976 book in 1988 or 2008, it's the same book. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely agree on that point, sources that are "fixed" in time, do not require a location date. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 19:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC).

The "retrieved date" merely refers to the convenience link to the online version, and may be safely removed on any cite that is not an online link. That's all. (And if the link goes bad, the dead-tree portion of the cite remains valid.) -- Yellowdesk (talk) 00:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

But what's the purpose of a retrieval date for an online version that's just mirroring a print original? What usefulness does it have? What does it tell anyone? Wasted Time R (talk) 04:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• On more than a few occasions I have used the retrieval date for munged references to rediscover the orginal edit that created it, and on more ephemeral sources, search for likely new location for the changing location of the convenience link. In some cases a retireval date indicates when the (changing) source was viewed and relied upon, occasionally important, when the source has changed. It's not superflous, but I would consider it optional.
  Who's to say that even a supposedly fixed archival convenience link will stay that way, and what harm comes from using the access date even there, such as in this example:
  "New Hampshire: Nomination of Bainbridge Wadleigh for United States Senator at the Republican Caucus". New York Times. June 14, 1872. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-05-05. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) -- Yellowdesk (talk) 14:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• The harm is that the "Retrieved on" takes up extra space (a real issue for our longer, heavily-cited BLP articles) and moreoever is visually confusing — the reader sees two dates, instead of the expected one, and has to figure out what each means, which a possible risk of mistaking the retrieval date for the publication date. In the example of this old NYT story, if the link stops working, it's because the NYT moved its archive or changed its for-free policy on this time period or something like that. If you need to find where they moved it to, you'll do a lookup within nytimes.com using the article's title and publication date; when someone last retrieved it won't matter one way or another. And would you really use a retrieval date for a book, that someone happened to look up in Google Books instead of at a physical library? That really seems offbase to me. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, I would, and have. Especially on heavily edited articles. For the reasons I stated further above: an indicator of when the convenience link worked. I do consider it optional. For example, if some link has an old retrieval date, and apparently not findable by search, then I tend toward deleting the convenience link. For more recent dead links, I'm less likely to remove the link--perhaps the publisher/source is in process of revising the link/location. Essential? No. Useful? Yes. The "retrieved on" is in english, and if using a template, the template does indicate through the parameters how to properly use it. Say more about the confusion you've encountered. (I have to remark, there's plenty of other confusion on articles surrounding refs, such as puctuation, quotations, where to place it and so on, and I've done a fair big of cleaning up other's typos and misplacments on that score. Is this that much different?) -- Yellowdesk (talk) 05:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this largely depends on the 'dependability' of the on-line source. For the NYT above, the accessdate is not really needed. On the other end of the spectrum, here is where someone (it's not even clear who) added sections of a (very) small town newspaper from the first half of the 1900s. It's true that this is on-line copy of a print original, but I think it would be rather difficult for even a motivated researcher to find that original. So in practice, the web copy is all that exists, its maintenance is unknown, and an accessdate tag is appropriate. As to how this might be implemented in practice, I think there could be a list of sources that are considered stable enough that accessdate tags are not needed (major newspapers, academic journals (DOIs are an explicit attempt to address this here), arXiv and other pre-print servers, and so on). LouScheffer (talk) 17:51, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

(off topic) You deserve a barnstar if you've been cleaning up refs. I'm surprised you haven't run off screaming. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Hide the access date

In order to find the content of broken links in archives it would be sufficient to store the retrieval date in a comment that is not visible to a reader, only to editors. This is an approach I would support.

Otherwise, I second the notion that (visible) retrieval dates for off-line media are visually irritating, cluttering and superfluous. --EnOreg (talk) 05:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

• Fair enough. How do you propose to obtain uniform use of the proposed standard? -- Yellowdesk (talk) 04:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

A partial solution would be modify the citation templates to store info generated by the accessdate= parameters as a in an HTML comment that is not visible to a reader, only to editors. That would quickly handle a large percentage of retrieval dates. Many thousands of articles would need to be individually edited to bring the handcrafted cites into line. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 05:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Bill suggests what I had in mind: Leave the parameters of the citation templates as they are, just modify their implementation to not display the access date (except cite web). And adjust the WP policy pages to reflect this change. --EnOreg (talk) 01:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier to just use a field that is visible to people editing the page but not to people viewing the page? But that function is available now in all templates: just use a field that the template does not itself already use. E.g. invisible-retrieval-date= ... —David Eppstein (talk) 16:23, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. By removing any mention of {{{accessdate}}} in the template implementation, the data would remain, but wouldn't be parsed by the server, so the casual reader's display wouldn't be cluttered. I'd support that for {{cite journal}}, at the very least, as with this template the accessdate is of no real utility when rendered. Smith609 Talk 16:59, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Not sure sure I follow. Sounds to me like we violently agree. What's the difference between your proposal and Bill's? --EnOreg (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

To "hide" the access date, the templates only have to not parse accessdate= parameter. No HTML comment is necessary, nor is it necessary to rename the parameter. After all, its still in the source.

But "hiding" the access date only addresses the symptoms. It does not fix the underlying problem, which is the misconception that a source on the web is a web source.

As such, merely hiding the access date (however that hiding occurs) for all but {{cite web}} will not be much use -- {{cite web}} is being used for virtually everything that editors happen to find on the "web".

The source of this misconception is of course the {{cite xyz}} farrago. That a source on the web must be cited with {{cite web}} is merely a "logical" continuation of that nonsensical paradigm. That is the real problem (and living proof that caring about sources has zero priority).

But hiding accessdate is a start, even if its only a band-aid. Next step other insane linking (e.g. google books, amazon, jstor and so on). In the long run we must teach editors how to cite properly, how to quote properly, and why it is necessary to do both.

-- Fullstop (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The retrieved date allows a reader to understand the age of the online link. In the past, I have done a manual link check and have updated those retrieved dates to show that the links were still valid as of that date. The CheckLinks tool checks links, updates to archived links on dead links and now optionally updates the retrieved dates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 15:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

• I invite someone to apprise those who watch the various "cite" templates to put a notice on each of the cite-template talk pages, that this conversation is occurring. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 05:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I put a notice there already some days ago. Anything else we can do to invite feedback? --EnOreg (talk) 15:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not see how an accessdate on sources which do not change - such as journal articles - is beneficial. However, on sources which may change, such as web content, it helps clarify which version of a page is being cited. Therefore I feel it ought to be displayed only in the cite web template. I don't think anyone has disagreed with this feeling here, so I suggest that someone bold goes ahead and proposes or enacts the change at all non-"cite-web" templates. People have had the chance to complain if they feel otherwise! Smith609 Talk 23:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate what is being discussed here. In my opinion there are two issues popping up:

1. Print sources of which you get a copy from the web (JSTOR etc) should be referred to as their print version. Access date is irrelevant as the content is not dependent on the web, nor will it ever change. For such sources the use of citeweb should discouraged, and access date not listed or removed
2. True web sources, which are rarer than most editors seem to think is another issue altogether. Websources are not permanent, and even if they are long term the content may dramatically change. Therefore it is not only essential that access date is recorded and reported, but also that when updating text for such sources a critical reflection whether the text is still covered by the website has to be applied. In printed articles, this is not so much an issue as you refer to the website once, and your text will not change, even if the website content does. As both Misplaced Pages and referred to websites change this is very complicated indeed. Arnoutf (talk) 06:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Consensus: It indeed seems we have consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. I have removed the RFC (style) tag and will modify the policy. Anybody who is competent to adapt the citation templates, please do so. Thanks everybody, --EnOreg (talk) 08:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

HTML comments are stripped out by the Mediawiki software, so these won't be visible except in the original template call. I've included one here, for instance: Would it be better to hide the date with CSS? — Omegatron (talk) 17:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. We can also assign an ID to it in case people want to make it visible with user css. --Karnesky (talk) 18:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I've responded to all the editprotected requests that are up at the moment by wrapping the "retrieved on..." text in a CSS class (reference-accessdate), so it can be hidden in either personal or sitewide CSS while still being accessible for those that want to see it. You can personally hide the accessdates yourself by adding

.reference-accessdate {display: none}

to your monobook.css. If there is a real and extensive consensus to hide these data, adding the same code to MediaWiki:Common.css would have the same effect for all users who didn't override it in their own monobook. Happy‑melon 17:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Options are better than hard coding here. Where do we document this? --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 18:36, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

No idea :D. From a technical end, I've added to the catalogue at WP:CLASS; where and how you note the new feature is the balliwack of people on this page. As an ultimate goal, we ought to be working towards encapsulating all the similar reference 'facts' in suitable css (reference-title, reference-volume, etc) and defining their appearance centrally in Mediawiki:Common.css. That greatly facilitates updating and standardisation between cite templates (I shouldn't have had to edit five templates to implement this change), and instantly circumvents the "data X should have formatting Y because it's the standard of source Z": we can just say: go on then, add foo to your monobook and the problem is solved. Ultimately, I have yet to see a good reason why a properly-built {{cite meta}} is not possible, to centralise and de-duplicate the considerable amount of code (the CoinS tags, for instance) that is almost identical across all the cite templates, and needs to be maintained in the same way in each. But that's another story. Happy‑melon 19:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is the better implementation. Many thanks, Happy-melon! I believe now the default CSS should hide the access date from unexperienced users. They are most unlikely to go and research a broken link and therefore wouldn't lose anything. But they would gain a less cluttered WP appearance. The same is probably true for the vast majority even of experienced users. Where do I campaign for this change? Cheers, --EnOreg (talk) 05:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Access date for newsgroups and mailing lists

I don't see any strong consensus to hide this parameter for templates where the availability of material might be ephemeral. I think it should stay visible on, at least, the generic citation template, the mailing list template, the newsgroup template. --Karnesky (talk) 13:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, I'm afraid this hasn't been discussed properly, yet. To make this clear: I don't advocate removing the access date, only hiding it from the reader. Unlike most web pages, posts to mailing lists and newsgroups carry a "publication" date that doesn't change. Therefore, the additional access date doesn't add any value for the reader. It can, however, make it easier for editors to recover a link that has become unavailable. That's why we should keep it in the page source as a comment. Note that mailing lists and newsgroups are being replicated and archived in so many different places that it is much easier to find a post than a copy of an arbitrary web page. --EnOreg (talk) 13:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you are advocating, but I think that it should stay visible for content that might not be locatable or might have changed at some future date.

As a reader, I've printed out articles & retrieved the references from them (both physical sources & online sources), and the accessdate is useful for sources that might change URLs, disappear completely (some usenet posts have requests not to archive, for example), etc. The parameter's utility is greater than any aesthetic objections. At bare minimum, the accessdate should be visible when the publication date parameter is not given. But I think it should always be visible for sources that don't have physical manifestations. --Karnesky (talk) 14:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like state that I'm strongly opposed to this idea for any template that may cite any kind of online material. For Cite book, Cite paper, etc, that are only used to cite physical or "permanent" publications (even if it may be found online and linked to in a particular template), then so be it, Accessdate isn't necessary. But to hide it in Cite news, Cite press release, Cite map, etc etc (which more and more may cite a document online that *cannot* be found in print) is doing a grave disservice to anyone who doesn't want or know how do delve into the edit page and figure things out, yet still may want information that will allow them to access a website that has been lost over time. That is precisely what Accessdate is useful for; not to mention, even for webpages that are still existent, it says precisely when data was originally pulled from the source. "Accessed on..." or some variant of it is an almost universal standard for citation formats outside of Wiki...I see no reason why we should be the oddballs and not use them in a citation display. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 14:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I only argue to hide the access date for sources that already have a publication date. These source typically don't change after initial publication, and even if they do the publication date is enough to find the original content in the Internet Archive. What additional value do you see that the access date provides that makes it too important to hide? --EnOreg (talk) 05:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hiding the date for one template such as {{cite news}} without changing all of the templates is going to cause some inconsistency. There are already enough differences among the cite templates. There are opinions on both sides of the issue as to show or hide the accessdate— why not allow editors who don't want to see the accessdate to be able to hide it? We should be able to come up with a script to do this and get it approved as a gadget. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  - 19:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess this has largely been taken care of by Happy-melons implementation (s)he explains above? --EnOreg (talk) 05:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Default setting: show or hide access date?

After Happy‑melon's CSS-ification of the access date it is up to the users whether they want to see the access date of stable references or not—that's great. (Note that this only applies to references that also have a publication date!)

Changing the default behavior, however, requires fiddling with the user's monobook.css which only expert users will be competent to do. Now after the discussion above it seems to me that the access date is relevant mostly to these expert users and editors. For casual WP users showing two different dates for one reference is confusing and clutters the reference sections—but they don't know how to hide it. Therefore, I would suggest to hide the access date of stable references per default, i.e., modify MediaWiki:Common.css accordingly. Comments? --EnOreg (talk) 00:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I suggest not hiding it by default for web references, since such a source can change with time. It's important to document when the page was visited, in case content changes or becomes unavailable. This remains true even if the page has a known publication date.--Srleffler (talk) 02:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, this question has been discussed in the previous sections. Three points:

1. Most web references don't have a publication date, hence hiding the access date doesn't apply to them. This discussion is only about sources that don't change after publication.
2. I would argue that chasing broken links can safely be left to slightly experienced editors in the interest of not confusing readers with two different dates.
3. Could someone explain again why we wouldn't find the original content under the publication date?

Thanks, --EnOreg (talk) 03:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the true source should always be given, even if that is a Web source that purports to be a true copy of a print publication. In that case, the access date should be specified and should not be hidden by default, because it is part of the correct reference. I suppose it occasionally happens that the editor has actually read the print version and is merely adding the URL for the convenience of the reader; in that case, I suppose a case could be made for omitting the access date. --Boson (talk) 06:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Quite often; many weblinks are for the reader's convenience. Commenting out the access date would be a reasonable compromise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm definitely in favor of hiding the access date by default for stable references. The extra visual clutter and possible confusion of having two dates on cites affects many, while the need to track down and inspect cites by access dates affects only a few (and they'll still be able to do it by looking at the article source or changing the default setting). Wasted Time R (talk) 18:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Quick how-to guide

I have a vague impression that most links on citing sources are made to this article, including above the edit box of new articles. But this article is quite complicated and technically discursive, especially when you're new (as I once found it, even though I was very familar with normal citing). I'm guessing as it's not in the help space that it's not meant to be a quick help article exactly? The lead says "This page describes how to write citations in articles" so you think you might be in the right place.

But for inline citations a subsubheading "How to write them" doesn't appear until half-way down, and then starts: "Creating an anchor to the References section is highly recommended e.g. (Ritter 2002:40)." which I think would throw many new people right away. Then the ref tag system is covered but under the subheading of "Footnotes" - as if something different from citations. Only if you realise this is what you want, and follow the link to Misplaced Pages:Footnotes and then scroll down to start reading the article and notice the link to the simplified Help:Footnotes do you actually get to a more user-friendly summary of how to do it. And then back in this article, the section on citation templates quickly baffles ("There are (at least) two families...The other family has names of the form {{Cite xxx}}..." and then one look at Misplaced Pages:Citation templates is enough to make you lose the will altogether.

I wanted to check if there is already, or should there be, a single simple help page to serve as the main quick how-to guide (cheat sheet?) on the general basics of citing, and how to in-line cite in Misplaced Pages (including getting those template bot pages to format it for you)? So more people can easily add what they want to, with a source. EverSince (talk) 21:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that that would be very helpful. The current page could use a major re-write; I suspect that much of the content may originate from before the ref tag was introduced! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem with this is that there are many different methods for citation and no preference between them, so how do you begin such a how-to guide? Admittedly unfamiliar users may find this confusing. Anyone who finds this too daunting should be directed to the second paragraph of the guideline: "If you don't know how to format a citation, provide as much information as you can, and others will help to write it correctly." Format is a very secondary concern and a useful citation, no matter how incorrectly written, is better than nothing. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that relatively minor formatting variations are secondary. And I think relatively minor method variations are secondary. And so neither need cloud the basics that people want to know. It seems to me that a first basic thing you need to learn on Misplaced Pages is that some articles have automated listing of references at the end, and others don't. And that for the latter you just stick the whole ref at the end (author/year where appropriate in the text), the former you put the whole thing at the appropriate point in the text enclosed in ref or cite tags. Use a template-filler to do the work for you if you want. Give it a name if you want to use it again. Create the automated listing section at the end if there isn't one. I don't know if I'm missing things due to not having the breadth of experience or technical know-how as many...is that how it generally goes? Does the basic outline have to be much more complicated? EverSince (talk) 08:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and how to include a URL or ID link in the citation. EverSince (talk) 11:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this page is too long and complicated. It's cluttered with a lot of unimportant detail, much of which is duplicated elsewhere. I would prefer this article as quick outline of each of the most popular verification methods, starting with the most popular, which EverSince is describing. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:08, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like it might be worthwhile, then, to try some edits here as per the above. I'm personally a bit wary of mis-summarizing technical points that I might not fully appreciate myself and people have put a lot of work into accurately describing, but I assume if this happens then it can just be changed again. EverSince (talk) 16:54, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm intending to reorder and reword what is now the "Adding the citation" section, to highlight what seem the most important distinctions and requirements; started to do it but got a bit lost. I'll pause for now anyway in case any objections to the changes already. EverSince (talk) 21:44, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I don't know if it's any improvement...I've tried not to lose anything that was there, I'm really confused by the "Shortened notes" and footnotes stuff, now in "non-automated citation listing" - can anyone clarify? Is some of this what Martin was sayign was written before the ref tags were introduced? Are anchors the same as the wikilinks referred to? In the creating-the-citation section, still need to expand on including links and the different kinds of ID numbers. I'm not sure if I've introduced the citation templates/tools properly.EverSince (talk) 14:38, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

EverSince: there are at least two problems with footnotes.

1. A large number of sources may be listed in the order they were cited, making it hard to see if any particular source was used.
2. A complete footnote must be created for each instance in which a different page number in the same source is used, making the text harder to edit and making the list of citations much longer.

Shortened notes just give the author, year, and pages. The reader then looks in an alphetical reference list for full details on the source. This method is not "non-automated"; depending on how it is done, at least the connection from the citation to the short note is automated as usual. Some people have figured out how to link from the shortened note to the reference list as well. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've made some changes. I think some confusion (in my case at least) is due to the usage of "footnotes" and "notes" in this article and related ones. I'm used to thinking of these as meaning comments rather than citations (although the comments may reference sources of course). It seems that Misplaced Pages does use these terms in that way, but also in a different sense to do with using the technical "footnotes" and "shortened notes" systems for citations? Is there any way to avoid this? Incidentally I have a feeling the automated vs non-automated headings I added might not be the best - would it be accurate to divide it into "Ref tag system" and "Other methods" or something? EverSince (talk) 17:15, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose what I mean as well is, in general usage doesn't "footnotes" refer to bits (whether comments or references) at the bottom of each page of a book or long article, whereas a list of all citations right at the end (as in Misplaced Pages articles) would normally be called references/citations or maybe endnotes? I suppose notes could refer to either...I'm confusing myself now. EverSince (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Like most HTML documents, Misplaced Pages is usually displayed as a series of screens. It has unfortunately common to speak of HTML documents as "pages" even though they often occupy more than one screenful. So for our purposes, every Misplaced Pages article consists of one page, and "footnote", "endnote", and "note" are synonyms. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I made one minor change, to remove the distinction between automated and non-automated notes. It is not clear why cite.php is any more "automated" than, for instance, embedded links. I also made a significant change to remove the language that cite.php is considered best practice in most situations. This is a new notion and I think likely to be disputed. In the past, footnotes and Harvard have been considered equally acceptable. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I got that statement about best practice from Help:Footnotes (unfortunately I didn't cite my sources :). I'm not sure what you mean by cite.php

The problem I find with the subheading "footnotes" is that every method seems to involve a footnotes section (although it may be called the References section). If I'm understanding properly, a key distinction from an editor's point of view is whether or not the ref tag system (cite.php?) is in use in an article (determining whether citation listing is automated or not). If it is, the choice then seems to be between full citations in text (job done), or "short notes" meaning shortened citations in text + manually adding the full citations in a separate section. If it isn't, the choice is between just manually adding the full citations at the end, or also adding a parenthetical citation (or embedded link) within the text.

This would be a lot easier if "footnotes" and "citations" weren't used in differing but overlapping ways...I guess there's nothing can be done about that. For exmaple, that warning tag for articles that goes "This article or section may be missing citations or require footnotes"... what distinction is that making between the two?...Ref tag citations are discussed in Help:Footnotes under the heading "footnotes" (although the section you make for it is called "References") (unless it's the short note form and then it's called notes!) (but then you can make a separate manually-generated "References" section!) EverSince (talk) 22:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

p.s. I finally noticed Misplaced Pages:Referencing for beginners in the wikilinks at the end of this article, which seems to partly address my initial query. EverSince (talk) 23:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

You are overlooking Parenthetical referencing, also known as Harvard referencing. This system uses short information about the source in parenthesis, just after the statement that is based on the source. This is backed up by an alphabetical reference list near the end of the article. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:10, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I mentioned parenthetical citation - I was meaning what you describe anyway. Thanks for clarifying about the html page definition thing by the way, which as you'll have seen I tried to relay into the article. EverSince (talk) 23:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Paranthetical citations do not involve footnotes. They involve a full citation at the bottom of the page (in a reference list, not a footnote) and a paranthetical inline citation within the article.

I see where you were confused by Help:Footnotes; cite.php (the <ref></references> system) is currently the prevailing method for creating footnotes, but it is not particularly recommended for referencing articles, compared to other acceptable referencing systems. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed the "Parenthetical citation" section because it stated that this type of citation might consist only of a list of general references at the end. Not so. If there are no in-line citations in parenthesis in the article text, it isn't parenthetical citation. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

That's why it wasn't headed parenthetical citation previously; it was discussing things according to a different grouping. But I realise that distinction didn't quite hold up anyway. EverSince (talk) 07:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that the references section is not being referred to as a foonote section if it is linked to inline author-date parenthetical citations, but only if it is linked to inline numbered citations (I guess I should have realised that but I didn't). And I understand from what you are saying that there is no preference on Misplaced Pages between the two. And I see that the good and featured article criteria don't mention any preference. But I'm quite suprised by that. Are there any guidelines or statistics on it at all? I had the impression that numbered inline citations were favoured for anyting beyond quite a short article, for reasons of flow and automatic linking down to the full reference list. Good or featured articles (nearly?) always seem to have numbered inline citations. Misplaced Pages:Scientific citation guidelines only covers inline author-date parenthetical referencing (and yet states in the intro that there is no preference either way).

Incidentially that scientific citation guideline includes another exmaple of confusing variation in use of the term "footnotes". Even though it is talking about inline numbered citation thoughout (which both there and here has been referred to as footnotes), it seems to start talking as if notes/footnotes are something else (or maybe I'm just confused). EverSince (talk) 10:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I began the essay Misplaced Pages:Verification methods partly as an effort to create the "statistics" you are asking for --- I wanted to know what methods of verification (i.e. citation & reference) were in use, and which were most common. I began to sort the FA articles but I didn't get very far past the As. I came to the conclusion that there are really four systems in use: (1) general reference list, (2) full citation in footnotes, (3) "shortened notes" (i.e., author-date in footnote/full citation in general reference list) and (4) "author-date" (i.e. author-date in parenthesis/full citation in general reference list). By far the most popular is full citation in footnotes. There are variations of each and combinations of each. For example, some articles have both a general reference section and full citations in footnotes, some articles have separate sections for explanatory footnotes (Notes) and citation footnotes (References).

I think the confusion about the word "footnotes" is because the most popular system uses full-citations in footnotes, so (in that system), "footnotes" and "citations" are the same thing. They are not the same thing in any of the other systems.

Forgive me if I'm explaining anything obvious to you here. I think the changes you are making to the structure of this article are excellent and long overdue. Be WP:BOLD. Nice work. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for that... Can I ask one more thing - the article on parenthetical referencing talks about two kinds, author-date (harvard) and author-title, with different usage in different fields. This guideline only talks about author-date (the "shortened notes" section does give an example of using author-title instead). Are both used/ok to use on Misplaced Pages? EverSince (talk) 13:12, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It's okay to use anything you like, as long as it verifies the article. <ref>Author date, pp</ref> is more common than <ref>Author title, pp</ref>, but author-title has certainly been used in featured articles, such as Ælle of Sussex. Still another option is <ref>Author, pp</ref>, as in The Age of Reason. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I see, but those examples are using the footnote system right? "Shortened notes" if I'm understanding the lingo. I confused things by mentioning both in the same sentence above but I was meaning parenthetical referencing that's visible in the text to the reader. Author-date parenthetical referencing being covered in a section here and in the verification essay you started (with the example of Actuary) but author-title parenthetical referencing not being mentioned. Just wanted to check if that's on purpose or whether, as you say, any standard method is theoretically acceptable (can't imagine how cluttered it would look in any developed article with significant referencing..). EverSince (talk) 19:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Sorry. As far as I can tell (Author title, pp ) is extremely rare in Misplaced Pages. I'd be surprised if there was even one such article. In my opinion, it's too rare to be worth mentioning in this article. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 00:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering whether some basic guidelines on locating and using sources would go in a briefish section here... or in another guideline? Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, Misplaced Pages:reliable sources and Misplaced Pages:No original research briefly touch on issues of primary/secondary/tertiary sources, focused on reliability. Am thinking of stuff like the finding and using of scientific sources for example. EverSince (talk) 09:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Citing sources; footnotes in-text make editing painful

I've said it before, and I'll still raise the issue. I do not like the cite.php style from day 1. Simply put, it makes editing, especially copyediting a pain. Wiki is supposed to be simple. As a workaround, how about listing all the reference details in the ==References== section, and using the <ref name=""> in the text? Or something on those lines? =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:33, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

You're not alone. Check out this discussion, which is over at Perennial proposals, and vote for Bugzilla:12796 so that we can create a base list of footnote references. The code has been done; it just needs to be reviewed, and then we can do this and just use named cites in-text. I've got this Bugzilla at the top of my userpage; I can't wait till it gets implemented. II | (t - c) 08:46, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Why not just use {{Ref}} and {{Note}}? All that you need to put in the text is a microscopic {{ref|1}} and all you need to put in the general reference list is :1 {{note|1}}{{cite book|...}}. (This isn't my favorite system and I'm not advocating that people should use it. I'm just pointing out that it exists, it's simple, you are free to use it, it's already working and it seems to solve the problem that you guys have with <ref>{{cite book| ... }}</ref>.) ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that system. I've dug deeper and found Misplaced Pages:Ref reform. This is a major problem which has been noted since August 2006. The Bugzilla bugs have not really been looked into in that time. It is pretty disappointing. While I think that the {{Ref}} method is an improvement over the current, I doubt people would like me using it, and it's not the ideal system .... II | (t - c) 08:09, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Charles! ImperfectlyInformed, what's wrong with the {{Ref}} and {{Note}} system proposed here?? --Phenylalanine (talk) 09:58, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

For one thing, that doc. page makes my head spin. But I don't think that system is going to jive with <ref> references, and I suspect people will get upset if I try to use it in articles with them. And since that includes pretty much all articles ... sigh We need to fix Cite.php rather than use the older system. You do understand that it is older, and that it is considered by many to be "deprecated", right? II | (t - c) 11:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Deprecated schmeprecated. The system is still fairly common in older featured articles. (More common than, for example, parenthetical referencing, I'd wager) I don't see any reason to extend cite.php to allow yet another citation system that is pretty much the same as {{ref}}/{{note}}. There are too many citation systems as it is. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 14:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Cite web

When citing a source, say with cite web, how should the publisher entry be formatted. Usually i put who owns the website. For example the European Broadcasting Union owns eurovision.tv. Someone put eurovision.tv as the publisher but i prefer a pipe linked with EBU. Is there a convention for these links? cite web does not specify on the formatting. Grk1011 (talk) 21:05, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the template documentation at {{Cite web}} doesn't deal with this issue. Personally, I'd put "work=]", and "publisher=]". — Cheers, JackLee 02:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I would do the same. --Adoniscik 14:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Citing the source's sources?

I've gotten into the habit of citing the sources used in a source to verify the information derived from that source. Is this acceptable? Here's an example:

Ströhle et al. argue that it is questionable if all hunter-gatherers living between 150,000 and 10,000 years ago in different geographical regions ate a low-carbohydrate diet.

That's a quotation. Please show how you attribute the quotation; I can't really understand the example until I see that. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not a quotation, it's a sentence I myself wrote here. Thnaks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 23:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

As written, it isn't 100% clear if the Misplaced Pages editor (Phenylalanine) has read 1, 116, and 117, and concurs with the way Ströhle et al. interpreted the sources, or if the Misplaced Pages editor is just taking Ströhle et al.'s word for it that those sources can be so interpreted. Perhaps it could have been written like this:

Ströhle et al. rely on Lindeberg , Jenike , and Conklin-Brittain et al. to argue . . . .

--Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point. Do you think that it is advisable to mention that "Ströhle et al. rely on Lindeberg , Jenike , and Conklin-Brittain et al. to argue..." or is it preferable to simply state that "Ströhle et al. argue that it is questionable if all hunter-gatherers living between 150,000 and 10,000 years ago in different geographical regions ate a low-carbohydrate diet." without indicating the sources used by that source? --Phenylalanine (talk) 00:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I would probably just mention Ströhle et al. unless the other sources are a lot more accessible than Ströhle et al. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 02:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If you can get the original source being cited, and the secondary source is not adding value to it, it seems better to me to glance at that article and use it if the language is clear. This is more convenient and honest for the reader, and is strongly encouraged in academic referencing. In cases where you want to add extra weight to the assertion, or the primary article is complex, it is better to use the secondary source; noting their source seems preferable to me, but it doesn't seem to be required. II | (t - c) 03:00, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi ImperfectlyInformed, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "primary" and "secondary". In my example sentence, which citations would be the primary and secondary sources? Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Check out PSTS. Strohle would be the secondary source; he is commenting (secondary); he is making claims based on information generated by others. Strohle could be a tertiary source commenting on a secondary source -- in this case, I think it is preferable to use the sources he is using. Strohle could also be a sort of hybrid -- he could be making synthetic, primary claims based loosely on papers cited. In science many papers fall into this sort of mode. Most primary articles are also secondary sources of prior literature. II | (t - c) 03:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The problem with using the Lindeberg , Jenike , and Conklin-Brittain et al. instead of Strohle is that the former sources are not directly criticizing the low-carb version of the diet. Strohle is relying on these sources to explicitly criticize this type of diet - he refers to the arguments underlying the low-carb Paleo diet approach and attempts to show how they are unfounded by using these sources. So, in this case, if I only source the statement with Lindeberg , Jenike , and Conklin-Brittain et al. , I would be violating WP:NOR. Also, the full-text version of Strohle is not freely accessible on the Internet (no abstract). What do you think? --Phenylalanine (talk) 10:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It is tricky since a reader may want to investigate, but not have access to Strohle, and if you note Strohle's sources, at least they can try to look for those. I'd say it can't hurt to say that Strohle is using those sources, and it can help -- so go for it. At some point it could overwhelm the reader with citations ... II | (t - c) 11:30, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll use the approach you suggest "Ströhle et al. rely on Lindeberg , Jenike , and Conklin-Brittain et al. to argue..." in cases where the secondary or tertiary sources are not freely available on-line. Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 00:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Do I need to self-revert?

In the article Quackwatch, I moved all the inline references to the ends of sentences, as I thought that was preferred. However, in this edit I have been asked to self-revert the changes. Do I need to? I thought I was sure what policy was, but I want to be absolutely 100% certain. The article is under editing restrictions due to edit-warring. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

A discussion now archived at "Misplaced Pages talk:Citing sources/Archive 23#Placement of Citations" may answer your query. Have a look at it. — Cheers, JackLee 16:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Very helpful, thank you. I am surprised, though, that it didn't result in an amendment to the guideline. I was not clear about this when I made a large number of edits. Would you be able to look at the result in the article and let me know if you think it needs reverting? I have said on the talk page that I think the fact that so many sentences are list-like needs addressing. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

An amendment to the guideline is probably unnecessary since, as was pointed out in the archived discussion, "Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Ref tags and punctuation" already states: "Material may be referenced mid-sentence, but footnotes are usually placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are normally placed immediately after the punctuation..."

I had a quick look at the changes you made and the talk page discussion. I would generally agree with your "According to A, pigs can fly, but according to B, they can't." example – there wouldn't be a problem identifying which fact was referenced by which source. But in other cases where the link between fact and source is not clear, I would suggest that those changes which you made be reverted. I'm afraid I don't have time at the moment to scrutinize the changes you made in detail; perhaps another editor can help you with that. I'm also not very sure how your view that sentences in the article are "list-like" is related to the referencing issue. — Cheers, JackLee 18:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

What I meant is that many different points from different sources are condensed into sentences, hence the large amount of mid-sentence referencing (before I changed it). Thanks for your suggestion. I will do some reversion combined with some expansion of the material taken from sources. Thanks again for your time. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I do find the wording of the guideline confusing and think it must be even more confusing to new users. The sentence you quote seems to be self-contradictory. Is "referencing" material the same as "placing footnotes"? I see it as the same, but perhaps I misunderstand the whole thing. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, feel free to suggest here on this talk page that the guideline be written more clearly. Like you, I understand the word "referenced" in the guideline to mean "provided with a reference", i.e., "footnoted". — Cheers, JackLee 23:22, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That section of the guideline was solely about whether ref tags go before or after punctuation when they happen to coincide with punctuation. It doesn't say refs must or should coincide with punctuation, nor that they should be moved to the end of a sentence as a general rule. Gimmetrow 23:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion about citing third parties

A discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Reliable sources#Government as a Reliable Source is considering whether a source is not reliable when they are using material from certain other sources, and the third parties should instead be the source. Good luck making rules to label which organizations create tainted fruit. -- SEWilco (talk) 04:33, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Malfunction

Imperfectlyinformed, it appears that your reply here here has caused the following section to collapse... ;-) --Phenylalanine (talk) 10:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes even I am surprised by my power. :p II | (t - c) 11:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The name of the publisher

Currently the article says:

"The name of the publisher, city of publication, and ISBN are optional, although publisher is generally required for featured articles."

I think this should be changed to:

,the name of the publisher, (city of publication, and ISBN are optional).

I can't think of a reason for not including the publisher particularly as without it page numbers are often near to useless as different editions often use different pagination, a problem I have encountered when two editors are using different editions of the same book to add information to a page. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree the name of the publisher is important, but I would phrase it differently.

• The name of the publisher, and optionally the city of publication and the ISBN.

Paraphrasing

I have an unusual problem: an editor who wants to change the title of a reference to conform with his/her personal preferences. This seems obviously wrong: even if the word was patently offensive in every context (which is not the case here), you quote titles verbatim. But I haven't been able to find an explicit statement to that effect. Am I missing something? Or is this the first time in Misplaced Pages's history that someone has tried to bowdlerize a reference? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

If the publication is in a foreign language and what is in dispute is the translation into English of the title, there could be a case for more than one choice. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, of course, references should use the precise title of the published work if feasible. This should always be possible if the title is alphanumeric. As Gerry says, it can be more difficult in exceptional cases. However, if the title is simply in another language, it is best to give the actual untranslated title if possible. Here is a typical example:

Fraenkel, Abraham A. (1922), "Der Begriff 'definit' und die Unabhängigkeit des Auswahlsaxioms", Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische Klasse, pp. 253–257 (German). Reprinted in English translation as "The notion of 'definite' and the independence of the axiom of choice", van Heijenoort 1976, pp. 284–289.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 20:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

No, this is a case of merely not approving of the authors' word choice. The ref is entirely in English. Only one word is being changed in the title. Do we have an actual rule on this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course you can't change the title of a published work! What will be next - changing the name of the journal it appeared in, and modifying anything in volume 13 to volume 12a in case the reference brings bad luck? Not approving of the authors' conclusions, and misquoting them too? All details should be exactly as on the published source. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, we better make one up!</sarcasm> This is one of those "common sense" things, I think. II | (t - c) 20:40, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The talk page discussion is here. If you review the article's history and the talk page, you'll find that the editor explicitly cites the Manual of Style and Misplaced Pages policy as authorizing changing the title of a reference to reflect preferred terminology. I'd be astonished to find an official statement that approves his actions -- but surely the opposite already exists? Surely this is not the first time this problem has come up? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Quick summary ADDED

There's substantial agreement that this page is too complex, but there isn't a good intro elsewhere. So I created "Quick summary" at its start, compressing stuff from Misplaced Pages:Referencing for beginners and my own primitive understanding into three steps and three examples. That's enough for casual editors who just want to "do the right thing". So feel free to edit the Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Quick summary section but don't make it any more complicated or any longer!! Misplaced Pages experts can always improve an existing citation, but it's hella hard to fabricate them after the fact and the previous crummy over-complex state of the documentation actively discouraged casual editors from citing sources. -- Skierpage (talk) 09:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted the change. You need to get agreement for this here on this talk page as you have ignored Harvard referencing. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Moving this down. First of all, thumbs up -- looks like good work to me. Philip, you can mention Harvard referencing if you want, but it does mention that there are other methods. Why not adding or tweaking instead of knee-jerk reversion? The next thing I would like to do is move all of the "When to cite" down below the mechanics; most of this stuff is self-explanatory. We should discuss how much of a mention Harvard referencing should get. Although I like it, it is a specialized method which most newbies aren't going to want to deal with. Those who will want to use it can quickly see it in the Contents titles. II | (t - c) 10:02, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I personally think a quick summary at the top like that could be helpful. I guess the intro could also be reworded to reflect the flow of the article. EverSince (talk) 12:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with that. Citing sources is one of the trickier things to do on wikipedia. It's especially intimidating to people not familiar with Markup languages. Something that guides people towards a 90% compliance with the standard would be a good addition. I would avoid any reference to any particular style of refs in the intro, but we can leave that to the edit warring discussion over the summary when that happens.GameKeeper (talk) 21:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Endless fiddling is destabilizing this page

1. Per other guidelines, pls take care with changing section headings, which renders past links unuseful. The information about not mixing styles was previously in the section "Citation styles", and then was moved to the nebulous section, "Technical details", which rendered all past links to the info invalid.
2. This change is likely incorrect, so I've reverted. Even if the citation template was made to conform with cite journal (I'm not yet convinced), that doesn't necessarily address the inconsistency across other templates in the cite xxx family.
3. The page is beginning to duplicate a lot of information found elsewhere.

This is an important guildeine page; stability and accuracy here would be appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding #2 above, I have now compared, and that change was incorrect. For an example, see the journal citations at Samuel Johnson (which uses {{citation}}) and compare them to cite journal templates at autism. That change was incorrect, and I've reverted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Samples:

{{citation}}

• Pearce, J.M.S. (July 1994), "Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'the Great Convulsionary' a Victim of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome" (PDF), Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 87: 396–399, PMID 8046726, retrieved 24 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

{{cite journal}}

• Pearce, J.M.S. (July 1994). "Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'the Great Convulsionary' a Victim of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome" (PDF). Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 87: 396–399. PMID 8046726. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

As always, citation still uses commas where cite xxx use periods, and accessdate is currently missing from citation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

FYI, the Template:Cite journal description states that the accessdate will not be shown. It is shown, but that's not consistent. If the cite journal template worked the way it says it works, then the only difference would be a period instead of a comma, and that a rather insignificant quibble isn't it? – Quadell 19:12, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

And Citation also lost the accessdate yesterday (without consensus) and still hasn't fixed it; more examples of the kinds of decisions that might have gone to a broader audience before implementation. If they don't repair it, I suppose we'll have to add them manually. Too many changes being made without broader input and reflected incorrectly or with too much detail on this page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Quadell asks "if the cite journal template worked the way it says it works, then the only difference would be a period instead of a comma, and that a rather insignificant quibble isn't it?" The authors of the Chicago Manual of Style do not seem to consider it insignificant, because they take the trouble to use commas when for their footnote system but full stops for their author-date system. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:06, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Fussy gits like me hate using comma style for bibliographical references. The Chicago/Turabian style is commas for footnoes, full stops for bibliographies. Does it matter? Not much, I suppose, but mixing these up comes over as a bit amateurish, I think. Harvnb, for example, is very clever, but it does look a bit naff, in my opinion, in both the footnote part and the bibliography part.

On the wider point, I think this page should recommend two or three favoured styles (Harvard, footnotes, embedded, or whatever) and leave the details of all the different templates and mechanisms to other pages.qp10qp (talk) 20:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

There has been a large reorganization of this page in the last week or so. (By other editors, by the way.) It will stabilize soon. I think the older version of this page was poorly organized and I think the recent changes were sorely needed. Having said that, I agree with your original three points: (1) the links into sections need to be carefully repaired, and more work needs to go into checking that these are repaired at the same time changes are made. (2) the editors at {{Citation}} are hard at work merging the templates. Eventually they will share the same functionality, appearance and (I would hope) the same core code. (See Template talk:Citation). This project is not yet finished, but is nearing completion. The edit you reverted will, if all goes well, need to be put back in when they are finished. For now, you are correct. (3) I agree strongly with you here, but I think most of the redundant material was in the old version of the article as well. I would support removing large swaths of material that is better suited to other articles. (Do we need all those examples of unusual parenthetical references? Do we need such a detailed discussion of "when to cite" when these policies are actually set elsewhere (i.e. at Misplaced Pages:Verifiability)?) ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 22:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

If you're saying that citation is going to lose its commas, or the cite xxx family is going to lose its periods, in either case, a lot of editors are going to be unhappy, and that discussion (in fact, the entire matter of solving the many different inconsistencies in citation and cite xxx templates) should be taken to a broader forum, like the Village pump. In the meantime, these fiddles affect WP:FACs that are underway, as WP:WIAFA crit 2c requires consistent formatting in citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Re no. 1, personally I wasn't aware across enough guidelines to know what was linking in to which headings - not sure what an efficient way is to check that? For the record, as far as I can see the comment about not mixing citation templates was actually previously in subsection "How to use them" within the section on citation templates, and it is still in the section on citation templates, but subsection renamed technical details just because it seemed bafflingly technical to the non-initiated (but presumably could be easily renamed again). The point about keeping to a consistent style within the article is also made in intro to the citation templates section. EverSince (talk) 22:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Charles that these changes were sorely needed. Broken links will be fixed in time; they are not a good enough reason to prevent positive change. II | (t - c) 01:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Citing a chapter in a book with multiple authors

How do I cite one chapter, written by one (set of) authors, in a book with multiple authors? I'm looking for something along the lines of

Smith, John. "How to properly cite chapters," in Working with citations," J. Doe, ed. Some publisher (1903).

I can't find a way to do this using citation templates. --Amble (talk) 21:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

King Arthur is a mine of complicated templates. What about this one:

Charles-Edwards, Thomas M. (1991), "The Arthur of History", in Bromwich, Rachel; Jarman, A. O. H.; Roberts, Brynley F. (eds.), The Arthur of the Welsh, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 15–32, ISBN 978-0708311073.

qp10qp (talk) 23:26, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Perfect! Thank you. --Amble (talk) 23:58, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Explanations

I think more directions are needed on pages such as Template:Cite web. For instance, saying "put publisher name here" does not go into detail on what the format should be. Should it be in italics? Should it be a website or the owner of the website? Grk1011 (talk) 22:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

For information about when to use italics, see WP:ITALICS. This page should be reverted back to a week or so (more?) ago, as it's now repeating info that belongs elsewhere, like on the individual citation or cite xxx template pages, and keeping the info synced has already proven to be a problem. The excess how-to detail shouldn't be here at all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, it should be said exactly how to use the template. Its not just use it as you please. There must be a format that is consistent. Grk1011 (talk) 22:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, are you saying I shouldn't have asked here? Since templates usually have a slow response, I always ask on the main project page. Grk1011 (talk) 23:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

First, there isn't a consistent format, so whether there should be one is a separate question. Second, the info here is often wrong or out of sync with what is at the actual template page. Third, the info here is repetitive and hard to keep in sync. Finally, no, I wasn't saying you shouldn't ask the question here, but I was saying the page needs a major revert (more than a month, turns out) and rewrite. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I just want someone to add an explanation and make it consistent regardless of the problems of this page. I'd be happy to help out. Grk1011 (talk) 02:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Question about "ref name=" tag

Hi everyone. The "ref name=" tag is useful, but is there a way to change the page number that is displayed for the same source in different instances? For example, can I define a source as "Smith 1998", but indicate a different page number each time I use "ref name=" to cite it? – SJL 02:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Currently there is no such feature. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Not by using a "ref name=" tag, I'm afraid. One solution is to give the full citation the first time it occurs, then subsequently to use an abbreviated citation like this: "Lee, Citing Sources, p. 12." Then put the full citation in a "References" section at the bottom of the article as well. Another editor has reminded me that if there are several references to page 12 of a particular work, then "ref name=" should be used on the footnote containing the abbreviated citation. — Cheers, JackLee 02:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That's too bad. I guess I'm just used to using EndNote, and was hoping to save some work. :) – SJL 03:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Another option which I've seen in some places is to use superscripts for this ref. I'm not terribly wild about that option myself, however (I think it's rather ugly); I prefer the abbreviated tag in a footnote, often using {{harvtxt | Lee | 2008 | loc=p. 100}}. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 03:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Rp seems to do what you're asking. II | (t - c) 03:15, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Yuck! It has none of the advantages of Harvard or footnotes with the disadvantages of both and the complexity of yet another template thrown in for good measure. I think it is beter to use: <ref name=author-12>author (2007) p. 12</ref> or <ref name=author-13-18>author (2008), pp. 13,14,18</ref>. Then they can be used as often as needed. The full book reference can be added at the end in a references section as recommended in shortened footnotes section and the guideline WP:LAYOUT --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind mentioning some of these advantages/disadvantages, cause I'm not seeing them? {{rp|number}} is appended to the footnote. It's not that terrible and these are much less obtrusive than parenthetical references. Shortened footnotes are annoying in that you can end up with 50 footnotes referencing a single work; it clutters up your references section and then forces you to glance through the bibliography. Ideally, it means that all your footnotes should be anchored as well. II | (t - c) 03:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Cite book controversy

Is there any Misplaced Pages consensus (sigh, if there CAN be) on whether it is acceptable to take references using Template:cite book which have multiple fields filled out (specifically, authors last name, authors first name, author link, publisher link, publishing year, page number) and the transform it into a non-template reference giving only author's last name, book name and page number? It goes TOTALLY against my grain that someone would actually remove useful information, (apparently) solely on the basis that the existing style of citations is the simpler version? Sadly, "Misplaced Pages:Citing sources" seems to infer that he can, as me adding new sources in a diferent style could be considered a change to an established cite style. Ingolfson (talk) 08:40, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would revert the change you describe per Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Citation styles, as the author's full name and publication date are required and the other information should be provided if available. However, separate Notes and References sections where the notes refer to the references (as in Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Shortened footnotes and this morning's version of Horses in warfare#Notes) is certainly OK and should not be reverted.

On a side note, would anyone object if I adjust Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#Shortened footnotes to suggest (without necessarily recommending) that the short note can link to the longer note to help readers to find the full version of the information? Anomie⚔ 12:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I missed the fact that the author had kept the full info (though with the publisher link removed, natch) in a bibliography section. Don't like it too much, but at least its still there. Ingolfson (talk) 21:25, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

citaions and footnotes.

I am involved in an argument over a reformatting of an article (Battle of Berlin see Talk:Battle of Berlin#Layout, footnotes and citations that uses ref tags for footnotes and citations with sections in the standard WP:LAYOUT.

user:Dapi89 insists that breaking out footnotes and citations is the way to go and " I suggest you check out the Battle of Britain article, or the Battle of Kursk, and you will find it is perfectly acceptable. Putting 'notes' with 'citations' doesn't make any sense. They are two different things. "

The change from the standard notes and references sections was made by user: Minorhistorian Revision as of 02:03, 25 May 2008. The battle of Kursk was changed by user:Dapi89 Revision as of 11:07, 16 July 2008.

I have pointed out that this is not standard and that if he wishes to impose this on articles then he ought to get the guidelines changed, but he seems determined to impose his format on the article and is willing to edit war over it.

What do others think? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 02:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I take issue with you regarding "edit war". I find you obstinate, not only about formatting but in general. And given that you have more or less accepted there isn't much of a problem with it, you can hardly imply I am determined to wrongly edit war over it can you? Dapi89 (talk) 12:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with separating content notes and citation notes; IMO it makes it much easier to read when they are not all jumbled together. I also find content notes easier to read in a single column, while I find citations easier to read in 2. Others' opinions differ on the column issue, of course.

The problem is that nothing really addresses the distinction between content notes, citation notes, and references when all three are separated.

• WP:LAYOUT doesn't really address the difference between content notes and citation notes, lumping them both together as "notes". Fine for most articles that don't really use content notes, but not too helpful here. If nothing else, WP:IAR applies when separating content notes and citation notes improves the article.
• WP:REFGROUP addresses the case of separating content notes and citation notes, and additionally points out how to use the new group parameter to the <ref> tag if you prefer that to {{cref}}/{{cnote}}. But it doesn't address separating citation notes and references.
• WP:CITESHORT, of course, addresses separating citation notes and references, but doesn't touch on content notes at all.

But the Battle of Berlin article is still not laid out per WP:LAYOUT, anyway: the order should be Citations, then References, then Further reading. Footnotes should be an h2-level heading rather than h3, and should either go before or after Citations (I prefer before) to really fit with WP:LAYOUT.

On a side note, it looks like there is some discussion on WT:Layout, but it doesn't seem to have reached much of a conclusion (at least partially to unclear terminology). Anomie⚔ 03:29, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on WP:REFGROUP (I did not know of that option). It seems the way to go on this as it is a fairly minor change to the text and it is easy to move a footnote from one group to another. To work around the Layout issue it seems to me best to place a couple of comment headers in the Notes section

==Notes==
;Footnotes
{{reflist|2|group=nb}}
;Citations
{{reflist|2}}
==References==
*Author, Anne A Book

-Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Quoting

We are having problems in Balkan related articles and I want to hear comments/advices/wiki rules about quoting. For example I will use this version of article about Miroslav Filipović. In that version we are having 40 lines which are taken from books (quoting) and 30 lines (39 if you take data about his birth and beginning of article) of article which are speaking about other things. In this article it is possible to see that this is not only example of that sort of editing. Now 90 % of users which has been edit warring for that sort of articles is blocked or banned but question about that sort of editing is not closed. In my thinking this is POV pushing but I am interested to read wikipedia policy about that or if nothing else comments about this style of editing--Rjecina (talk) 03:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

"Misplaced Pages:Quotations" and "Misplaced Pages:Summary style" are relevant guidelines to look at. — Cheers, JackLee 14:56, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

1. Cite error: The named reference test was invoked but never defined (see the help page).