Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 27

Option #2: Allow reference content to be defined anywhere

Alter <ref> so that the content of references may be defined (without being displayed) at any arbitrary point within the page. For example, references could be collected at the end of the first section in which they occur. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified by the name parameter.

Example

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name="foo" />, consectetur adipisicing elit, 
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.<ref name="bar" />

<ref definition name="foo">abcde</ref>
<ref definition name="bar">xyz</ref>

== References ==

<references/>

Note: The exact syntax for implementing this is still subject to further discussion and possible changes.

Support #2

1. I don't think the cleaner wikitext is worth losing the ability to easily edit a section. My personal preference would be to separate them from the main textarea altogether, but failing that, this would be better. Mr.Z-man 15:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
2. More or less support - I think something along the lines of the "definition" flag is necessary in order to maintain backward-compatibility. It could also be incorporated into the tag name (i.e. refdef) or into the "name" parameter (i.e. ref namedef="").
   talk
   ) 02:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
3. I agree, for the reasons given by Z-man. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:36, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
4. Am I allowed to vote twice...? Can't make up my mind. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 16:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
   • I don't see why not. :-) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:08, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
5. I believe I proposed something like this above, so I ought to vote here :) But #1 would be fine too. Shreevatsa (talk) 22:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
6. May be useful, and would certainly be better than nothing to declutter wiki text, but #1 would be better in my view. AndrewRT(Talk)(WMUK) 00:52, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   Sure, this or option 1 would be great, as long as it is backwards compatible with existing usage. Plastikspork (talk) 20:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC) (moved to oppose) Plastikspork (talk) 18:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose #2

1. Strong oppose As a copyeditor, this would also be horrendous. I'd have to scan the entire text to find where someone had dumped the details of a ref I'm working on. --Dweller (talk) 12:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely; but you already have to do exactly that! (When ref names are used.) So I can't understand why you don't like #1, which makes possible what currently isn't: to dump all the details in one place. Not everyone will have to use the feature, but where someone has done, your editing will be enhanced. PL290 (talk) 19:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Oppose for the exact same reasons that Dweller just mentioned. I do a lot of gnoming and copyediting, and this would make those jobs so much more difficult. More harm would come from this than good. hmwithτ 16:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
2. Oppose for same reason as my oppose to option 1. Also, as Dweller says, this will make copyediting horrendous. Karanacs (talk) 18:27, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
3. Strong oppose This is a superset of #1 but brings no advantages over #1, its additional freedom merely undermining one of #1's two benefits by perpetuating the current distribution of refdefs throughought the prose so that they have to be hunted down during article-to-article moves involving ref names. PL290 (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
4. Per Dweller. The separation of the contents of the ref from the citation tags themselves would be confusing. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
5. Making the wikitext layout more like the published page may seem logical and easier to edit but I think it would lead to problems. Keeping the references in line with the associated facts means they are likely to stay with those facts. It makes it much easier to reuse the text.filceolaire (talk) 21:25, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
6. Strong oppose. Manually hunting for named ref definitions is enough of a nuisance already without making them invisible! ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
7. Strong oppose. What a remarkably dumb idea! References belong alonmgside associated statements. Then they can be checked by editirs and artcile reviewers. Putting them elsewhere has to be one of the most stupid ideas I have seen. Jezhotwells (talk) 14:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
8. Even stronger oppose. The ref link, the ref text, and where the ref shows up are all split up, leading only to confusion, errors and refs (links and texts) leading nowhere. A simply terrible idea.
   DHDR
   18:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
9. This retains the few disadvantages of the general idea (allowing all references to be declared away from their point of display, not just duplicate refs), with none of the benefits. Happy‑melon 22:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
10. Vehement Oppose As an editor, I want my references where they reference something, not hidden elsewhere in the article. Reywas92^Talk 00:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
11. Oppose There is already the {{ref}}/{{note}} convention if someone wants to use that citation style. Plastikspork (talk) 18:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
12. Oppose. Not very different from how it is now, worse then proposal 1 above. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:10, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
13. Strong oppose, confusing and makes referencing an even bigger headache. No benefit at all and only weakens consistency and referencing standards. --
    talk · contribs
    ) 19:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
14. Oppose if we can't know where to look for it, it's hard to find. Also, there is the wonderful occurence when someone adds a different definition of the same source name and you have to find which is being accepted by the parser. Argh. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:15, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments #2

• My thoughts:
  • I see this proposal as at least no worse than proposal #1, and probably better. My understanding of proposal #2 is that reference definitions will be placed at the end of each section rather than in a block towards the end of the article. This will (1) clear the reference definitions out of the body text in each section, thus making the text easier to read; (2) still keep the references in fairly close proximity to the text to which they relate; and (3) enable section editing to be carried out which, for me, is what gives this proposal an edge over proposal #1. The reservation I have about proposal #1 is that one would always have to have the whole article open in order to jump between the body text and the reference definition block at the end of the article.
  • It is true that searching for reference definitions in proposal #2 will be slightly harder than in proposal #1, since in proposal #2 the definitions appear at the end of each section rather than all together at the end of the article. However, searching for the definitions in proposal #2 will be no more difficult than it is at present. In fact, it will probably be slightly easier because the definitions will be grouped together at the end of each section rather than embedded in the body text. Anyway, with the use of the "Find" command (CTRL-F) searching for references is not really a huge problem.
  • As regards ChrisDHDR's comment, one doesn't really need to worry about where the references eventually show up. I believe they will continue to be in a "Notes" section towards the end of the article. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

• In addition to what Jacklee said above, I don't understand many of the oppose votes above, which imagine that references will get placed at arbitrary points in the article instead of as close as possible to their first use (or wherever they are defined now). Why would anyone be so deliberately perverse? Shreevatsa (talk) 05:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

  Where is a 'sensible' place to define a citation? Where the numbered link appears in the text is certainly defensible, although it has the problems espoused above of horribly breaking up the text. Where the references are actually displayed at the bottom of the article is certainly also defensible. Where else would it make sense to define references?? Nowhere. So why encourage such behaviour? The issue is not one of being "deliberately perverse", but rather of what makes 'sense' to one person not being intuitive to another. Maybe one editor's preference is to define each reference at the bottom of the section where it first appears: that seems defensible, certainly. Then the reference is used in another section, later in the article; fair enough. Then the original section is rewritten and the first use of the reference is removed, but the editor forgets to move the citation (fair enough, since it would be needless additional work to work out where to move it to). Now, without any perversity, we have a reference in one section drawing on a definition at a totally "arbitrary point in the article". Why expose ourselves to that problem? Happy‑melon 18:56, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Option #3: Wait for something else / do nothing

This is the option for perserving the status quo, at least until something better comes along. For example, the widespread adoption of a WYSIWYG editor could remove the problem of reference clutter without any other modifications to the reference system. Alternatively, a more comprehensive system could create a separate interface (and edit box) for manipulating references. Such things may be possible, but they are longer-term solutions that could not be immediately implemented.

Support #3

1. There working on it now at http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. It's supposed to come out in January, I think. Neither of the two above ways really make it that easy, and they can also lead to orphaned refs. It they don't come up with something, then someone here needs to make the WYSWYG. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:49, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
2. Support. These proposals both exacerbate the tedium of manually hunting for the definitions of named references by increasing the number of places to check. This is already my No. 2 pet peeve with the current implementation of named references. If a mechanism for traversing an implicit link to the definition were available then the proposals would be more attractive and I would support option #1. My No. 1 pet peeve is that, when editing a section, references are not supported by WYPIWYG ("P" for Preview, never mind WYSIWYG). Aargh! ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
3. Don't waste the programmers' timeShii (tock) 05:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

   The programmer who's time would be spent on this has initiated this RFC, with willingness and intent to implement this change if it is found to be an improvement. It's really not for you to say what would be a waste of his time. Amalthea 13:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose #3

1. WYSIWYG is not coming along anytime soon. Nor is any other solution. Waiting for Godot is a stupid solution. Stevage 07:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect. See these Wikipedia WYSIWYG (or WYSIWYM) editors: [3]. The best one is the UNESCO designed one. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

This rich text editor is apparently already in use on Appropedia. You can play with it, at Appropedia:Sandbox. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:37, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Another one is WikEd ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Technology is always changing. Reasons for waiting would be (a) prohibitive implementation cost/complexity or (b) concern about loss of backward compatibility. Neither applies in this case as far as I can see from what's been said. So while we wait, let's also use the better solution being proposed. PL290 (talk) 19:11, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Option #4: Wait for rich text interface

Apparently a rich text interface is being considered for ease of use. Many of these take extensions, meaning that when available then <ref>...</ref> tags could in principle be collapsed into a yellow highlighted word "ref", which users can click to edit. Long term that's probably quite a nice solution, especially as this kind of interface is (apparently) likely to be under consideration already. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Support Option #4

1. NW (Talk) 16:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
2. CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments #4

Can't something like this be done in javascript, right now? Gigs (talk) 18:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

If you add a tag {{reflist}} to the bottom of any section that is being edited, the references for the block will be visible in the preview. I suggest that this should be the default view for editing. Twocs (talk) 06:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that WikEd has already implemented this, so it is certainly feasible in the near term. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC) There is also a (slightly buggy) wysiwyg editor in use on Appropedia. See Appropedia:Sandbox ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:04, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments on improving <Ref>

I'm jumping into this discussion late (and necessarily briefly as I will be leaving on vacation in a week or two). Let me identify myself right away as the person behind Bugzilla:18890 (to which, incidentally, I am not wedded, and for which a test wiki running that proposed enhancement is available at http://siteslot.com/testwiki2. I do urge anyone interested to click over to that test wiki and to take the added functionality for a test drive. Create an account ... or not. Clone the content of some Wikipedia pages there and try moving some or all of the <Ref>s on those pages into <Ref def ...>s, as illustrated on the main page there. I think that you will find that the functionality there is similar to what is being discussed here.). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Centralized References

(copied from below) It has been proposed in several places (see, e.g,

Is there a consensus on the suitability and feasibility of this idea? Has it stalled? I looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite but it didn't seem to directly discuss this. Njerseyguy (talk) 22:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• What a wonderful idea. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Mediawiki, Wikipedia, and <Ref>

Most participants in this discussion are probably aware that <Ref> is not a Wikipedia thing, but there are probably some participants who are not aware of that. Just to clarify, Wikis are done using

What is being discussed here, I think, is a proposal to (1) modify the Cite extension at Mediawiki (2) in a way which would add additional functionality and in a way which would be transparently 100.00 percent backwards compatible with current functionality. We may or may not be contemplating here bypassing the Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests process. I hope that what is being discussed here is not a proposal to separate the Cite extension used by Wikipedia from the Cite extension distributed by Mediawiki. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it would be a modification of the Cite extension for everyone, and yes it would be 100% backwards compatible. Dragons flight (talk) 09:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Enhanced editor

An enhanced editor which would (optionally, I presume) allow multiple edit windows to be opened into different parts of an article undergoing editing (one window, say, into the article prose containing <Ref name=whatever />s and another window, say, into point in that article where a block with corresponding <Ref name=whatever>Ref body</Ref>s or <Ref def name=whatever>Ref body</Ref>s are placed) is an idea which I would urge be considered separately from the idea of improving <Ref>. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The editor at Appropedia:Sandbox uses a pop up dialog box to edit references. (Push the "r" icon up at the top to open a reference.) WikEd opens or closes the footnote inside the text of the editor. So this functionality is certainly feasible in Wikipedia. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Result

The poll ran for nearly two weeks, with little movement during the last several days. Option #1 received 41 comments in support and 12 in opposition (77% support). In accordance with that result, I've begun writing the necessary software patch. I hope to commit it sometime today or tomorrow (though one will have to wait a while before it becomes live on Wikipedia). Option #2 is generally rejected, and I won't be implementing it. Dragons flight (talk) 02:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Implemented as revision 53790. Dragons flight (talk) 22:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Dragons flight, will you let us know when this change is actually available in the English Wikipedia? Will you be editing

WP:FN to explain the new possibility? --Jc3s5h (talk

) 22:42, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

If I remember, I'll let you know. The delay in these things is often weeks and sometimes months. I don't have any plans to edit CITE / FN directly, though I think there are plenty of people above who understand the gist of the change. If people want to ask questions about implementation details, I am happy to address them. Dragons flight (talk) 23:59, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

FYI, since auto-archiving removed the info: Option1 was "Alter <ref> and <references> as initially proposed so that the content of references may be defined within a <references> ... </references> block. Each call to the reference, including the first one, would then be identified solely by the name parameter." In other words, the content of refs could be defined by editors in a ref section, rather than (as now) defined in the text and collated into the ref section for readers. ~~~~

Note: this change is now live on this wiki. (Note added after archival) Stevage 23:46, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

We could use more eyes at

Editiing in good faith, I implemented various citation templates to a couple of articles some weeks ago, including Passive analogue filter development and Constant k filter. Those edits were, however, both reverted by User:Spinningspark, explaining on my talk page that I was "imposing style rules for others to follow in articles you have otherwise made no contribution to." Now I thought I was doing some useful work by implementing citation templates in order to give "References" and "Further reading" sections a consistent look in as much Wikipedia articles as possible. Is there any recommendation for this dissension? Can citation templates be implemented although the author who "owns" the article does not like them? --bender235 (talk) 09:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The answer to your question is at

Citation templates are used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Templates may be used or removed at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus. Where no agreement can be reached, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

Since the articles already had a reasonably consistent way of citing sources, it was inappropriate to change the system without first gaining consensus on the talk page. Also, although no one "owns" a Wikipedia article, it is inconsiderate for one who has no plans to improve the content of an article to make style changes that may be uncomfortable for those who regularly work on the article. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I often encounter articles which have citations in styles with which I am unfamiliar ("What the heck are those colons doing after the author's name?"). I propose that if a particular citation style is used, especially a specialized one (e.g., Vancouver system, Bluebook), that it be noted in the article to assist future editors, especially ones like myself who are looking to clean up the article up.—DocWatson42 (talk) 05:34, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi! The first sentence in Section Tools / Citation creation tools link to

I'd like to put a note in one ref, that uses another ref. Can anyone tell me my options? I tried doing this but it didn't work, and there's probably a better way. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:21, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Use the #tag: magic word, such as: {{#tag:ref|In the first volume of the English language release of the ''Tokyo Mew Mew'' manga, Tokyopop used the spelling "kirema anima" to refer to the monsters. In subsequent volumes and in ''Tokyo Mew Mew a la Mode'', this is changed to ''chimera anima''.<ref name="TMM Chapter 1" /><ref name="Three Plus Two" /><ref name="TMM Chapter 2" />||group="n"}} (see this in action at

talk · contribs

) 01:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I would say the #tag magic word is too obscure to expect the next editor who comes along to figure it out. When intricate cross-referencing or multiple references to the same work, but with different page numbers, is necessary, Parenthetical referencing works better. --Jc3s5h (talk) 01:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Not dealing with cross referencing within a work, but a note that needs a reference. Different issues and one not easily solved by just throwing in a parenthetical reference. --

talk · contribs

) 02:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Some claim that <ref> itself, templates, and much other wikitext syntax is too "obscure" for some people to figure out, but we don't discourage their use. IMO, it's more likely that the next editor will just treat it as some magic template named "#tag:ref". Anomie⚔ 02:57, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me pick your brain, C. I'm trying to avoid a separate notes section, which may or may not be possible. I can't tell if that's an integral part to your code on TMM, or if I'm just doing it wrong. Here's a diff of my attempt. It seems like the parser (or whatever) is still seeing the first closing HTML ref dealy it finds, regardless of the #tag:ref stuff. - Peregrine Fisher (talk)(contribs) 03:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You were close :) When doing ref within ref, you don't surround the whole thing with a ref tag, just the second ref. --

talk · contribs

) 03:24, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks a lot! I've wanted to do this before, and now I have a nice template I can follow. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A little late to the party, but this is documented at

Wikipedia:Footnotes#Known bugs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk

10:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm GA-reviewing Phineas and Ferb, which cites a podcast 15 times. If a book were cited I'd expect page numbers. I don't intend to listen through the podcast each time I want to check that a point is verified. The editor insists there's no way to provide a route to the required points, e.g. by % through the podcast - especially as I don't know how long it is without listening all the way and the editor just describes it as "long". I guess similar issues occur with DVD commentaries. Any suggestions? --Philcha (talk) 18:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe it's normal to provide a time index for the beginning of the cited portion. Most players should be able to display this information. Anomie⚔ 01:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

After a try-out, I now think podcasts are hopeless as a source of verification - see Talk:Phineas_and_Ferb/GA1#Podcast. Comments?

Is it best to place inline citations within a sentence directly after a point is made or at the end of a sentence? I tend to the use the later as it looks and reads better, even though the source may not be a reference for the whole sentence. Is that poor citing? - Shiftchange (talk) 01:27, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Usually, at the end of the sentence or behind a comma or semi-colon, if the sentence has multiple references. Now, if the source is not a reference for the whole sentence, that should be made clear, either by positioning the ref behind the part of the sentence being cited, removing the uncited portion, or splitting the sentence. --

talk · contribs

) 02:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

If part of a sentence is actually unsupported ("Jane says ___,^[1] but other people disagree^{[citation needed]}"), then clarity is probably desirable.

It might be worth figuring out whether the unsupported phrases should be included at all: they may be wrong, or

WP:NPOV problems. WhatamIdoing (talk

) 03:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I had been wondering about this for ages. Maybe your answers should be integrated into the article page. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this advice for contentious points in contentious articles, but much of the time you only need a citation at the end of a paragraph, possibly at the end of a sentence, even if only part of it is supported by the cite. There is nothing worse^[3] than a string^[4] of references^[5] interrupting the flow^[6] of a sentence^[7] unless absolutely necessary.^[8] SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 12:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Inline citations are typically placed at the end of a statement that is to be verified but if multiple notes from the same source are being recognized, I concur that "bundling" the group of citations with a single citation at the end of a passage or paragraph is acceptable. One of the other pet peeves is seeing a string of citations all verifying the passage and yet being from as many as five or more different sources. This is usually overkill and detracts from the sense of verification. Some of the similar or identical citations could best be sources as part of the bibliographical record. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC).

I'd be happy to see a sentence added that points out that it's not normally necessary to repeat the same reference after every single sentence in a paragraph: once is usually enough.

The counter-argument is that some careless person could later split the paragraph without copying the source to both resulting paragraphs, but I think this is too unlikely a problem to require repeating the same tags throughout an obviously single-topic paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

If you write "not every single sentence", someone will take that to mean you should have one in every second sentence. --Trovatore (talk) 22:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Our current silence is routinely interpreted as requiring a citation after every single sentence (especially by FAC newbies), so cutting the nonsense by half is an improvement in my books. I'm open to suggestions for "least-misunderstandable" language, however. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Giving just a single citation at the end of a paragraph causes problems when another editor inserts unsourced material in the same paragraph. A third editor coming along can no longer easily tell which parts of the paragraph are sourced and which ones are not, or may assume that only the last sentence is sourced. Citing sentence by sentence avoids that ambiguity. JN466 15:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

For <ref></ref> is this not covered by

It might be enough to stress that only material challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotations, need a citation, and that wherever possible, the flow of a sentence or paragraph should not be interrupted by multiple unnecessary sources. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 14:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(Slightly off topic but) SV given that

talk

)

I don't see anything about this. How long should it stay before the statement is removed in its entirety? It says the BLPs should be removed immediately, but nothing about regular articles. ^TheWeak_Willed 02:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

There is no reason to remove something only because it has been tagged for a long time. For example I occasionally tag things that I know are verifiable, but don't want to dig up a reference right then. In general, remove things that are dubious and leave alone things that are not, regardless how long they have had a fact tag. — Carl (

CBM · talk

) 02:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess it would depend on what the statement says, how controversial or "likely to be challenged" it is. -- œ^™ 02:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. ^TheWeak_Willed 02:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with CBM that sentences with "citation needed" tags don't ever need to be removed. They need a citation. Research is called for, not removal. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I also agree that tagged sentences needn't ever be removed unless challenged. Njerseyguy (talk) 03:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Sentences that you believe are false, on the other hand, should be tagged with {{dubious}}. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Or removed entirely, depending on how sure you are... --NE2 19:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a useful distinction. I've occasionally used^{[citation needed]} when I don't think something is true, my quick research doesn't back it up, but I'm not absolutely sure it is false. I've felt that those situations should be rectified at some time, or the statement removed. However, the tag^{[dubious – discuss]} seems to fit my situation better. Moreover, it provides useful advice to the reader, who now see the metaphorical red flag. I'd be tempted to remove the statement eventually, but haven't though through a good policy for time, as it could vary. If I do remove it, I try to mention it in talk, so if the original editor returns, they will see why it is gone.--SPhilbrickT 15:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

or

on which page they are ... --Amalthea

19:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I missed it, but I could find nothing in this guide about whether it is acceptable practice to abbreviate journal names. Personally I like to see the full journal name, particularly for journals covering fields that are unfamiliar to me. Take, for example, Phys. Rev. Lett.: without googling it, is this journal about physiology, physical or physics? (I happen to know it's 'physical', but about physics.) Likewise, what is the ASEA Journal? I have especially mixed feelings when an article mixed full names and abbreviations. Abbreviation of journal names seems like jargon. It would be good if this guide could settle the matter. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 15:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I can see no value in abbreviating journal names and doing so seems more like a version of jargon that only those familiar with the topic would understand. Far better to use the official spelled out name, rather than abbreviations. --

talk · contribs

) 15:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I also agree. It's fine for the article writers who know what the abbreviations mean, but most readers don't, and it's for the latter's benefit that citations are supplied. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Such abbreviations save nothing and make the citation obscure. Journal names in citations should be wikilinked on at least the first use, where there is an article on the journal. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:21, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Devil's advocate:

"In the sciences, journal titles are usually abbreviated (often with periods omitted) unless they consist of only one word. Standard abbreviations for scientific journals may be found in BIOSIS Serial Sources (bibliog. 5) and

Index Medicus (bibliog. 4.5), among other reference works. Both are published annually in print form and are also available online. For a partial list of standard abbreviations of frequently used journal title words, see Scientific Style and Format or the AMA Manual of Style (bibliog. 1.1)."—The Chicago Manual of Style

, 15th Edition (2003), 16.100 "Abbreviations" (p. 618).

(This is taken from the author-date system of citation.)

That said, I agree that abbreviations of journal titles are often obscure and unhelpful to the non-specialist. (The Chicago Manual of Style also states in 17.159 (p. 689) "Except for reference lists in journals, which proscribe their own style, it is never incorrect to spell out all journal titles.") My own recent example: "JHKBRAS" for the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in the Shanghai International Settlement article (until I cleaned it up).—DocWatson42 (talk) 12:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I certainly think these titles should always be written out in full. We should remember that the abbreviated versions were concocted for the use of academics in their particular field. Most Wikipedia readers are not academics, I suspect. Alarics (talk) 18:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing with the devil's advocate, proper citation sometimes requires abbreviations (e.g. the Bluebook). In those cases, the citation guide should be followed, with a wikilink providing the necessary clarification. This is similar to what we do with court cases, where we use the correct method of citation (e.g. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).), where the citation will be linked either to the particular source (here the United States Reports (volume 410, page 113)) or to case citation, which explains the citation system. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:50, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I was wondering if someone could clarify the wikipedia rules on world accessibility of cited sources. I've been reading a few articles that cited sources who's links led to an abstract of the article, but the full article needed subscription to the journal. As I was not subscribed to the journal I couldn't access the full text, and the abstract didn't cover the material being cited. I've looked around the article writing guides but can't find any concrete policy either for or against this practice. Is it accepted or discouraged and if accepted, what is the justification? Does it maybe need to be verified by other editors and if so, how do you know if it's been verified? This information could be useful to add to this page to clarify it for other users who might be confused. --Rentrustic (talk) 15:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Using sources that require payment is acceptable. Refusal to accept non-free sources is equivalent to advocating book burning, and would result in justified hatred towards Wikipedia. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Less dramatically, the best sources on most topics cost money - they cost money to produce, and they know their own worth. Most of the cheapest sources, i.e. are blogs and forums, most of which are worthless. If you doubt a point that cites a source and the source costs money, you can:

WP:AGF any way; ask the relevant Wikiproject, as some one may have access or know a non-WP friend who does; look around for sources of your own that discuss the point - Google books sometimes strikes gold; or you could even visit a library. --Philcha (talk

) 15:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

We actually encourage hard to check sources (offline, pay only, etc.). It makes me wonder about our FAs, though. They use a lot of offline sources, and could be full of inaccuracies and plagiarism, for all we know. AGF is great, but it's kind of a week way to assess something. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you suggest a better alternative? --Philcha (talk) 17:09, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

This is the opposite of FAC, and will never gain consensus, but I think sources that can easily be checked should be preferred when there are options. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:11, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

While I object to the simplistic (and false) assertion that the best or "worthiest" things cost money (this is like saying that any journal becomes worthless the moment it turns open access), it is nevertheless obviously true that the best sources are very often not available online to everyone, and there's no reason not to use them. People should write articles with whatever sources they have or think are best. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:23, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. If a high-quality source happens to be freely accessible, it should certainly be preferred.

WP:V. Fvasconcellos (t·c

) 17:26, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess those are the reasons they will never be preferred. I think it's silly to prefer a high-quality source that no one can/will ever check over a lower quality one that's free online for the same info, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

If there is an online one with the same info, no reason not to include it as well as a "back up" source, so long as it is still a quality (for FA), reliable source. --

talk · contribs

) 17:37, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

(EC) Most sources viewable on those payment sites are easily retrievable through any decent library system, especially the college journal databases. If there is a question about a source, of course one can retrieve it to verify it, however saying "easy to check" sources inevitably indicates online sources, which are not always the best nor useful, particularly for "older topics". I know I've crafted GA articles using pretty much nothing but offline sources for older novels that required me to not only do searches in college journal databases, but sometimes even request copies of articles from a local library that had archives of a paper that was not archived in the databases. Ditto local history and notable structures that received extensive coverage during construction, but require a trip to the local library to go through the old newspaper archives to get them. Giving preference only the online ones, particularly in FA, would be a smack in the face to those who have spent hours, days, even weeks doing the offline library source gathering for an article. --

talk · contribs

) 17:37, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm with you on the "back-up source" practice (I sometimes refer to these as "convenience cites"), by analogy with the "laysummary" parameters of some citation templates. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 17:39, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Many people don't find it convenient to physically visit the library, but the good news is that a lot of stuff can now be accessed free on line if you have the right library card. This is particularly true of newspaper archives, more and more of which are being digitised. For instance, I can now access the whole of The Times (London) back to 1785, right here at home. It doesn't enable you to give a direct link to the item (that would be of no use to anyone without the right library card) but it does make it very much easier to check and verify for those who do. Alarics (talk) 18:49, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

By quoting inaccessible records, a person is also saying "This is not original research". It should of course be remebered that if those records are accessibleto a few people, the "no original research" claim can be verified. Probably the best way to handle this problem is to apply the same rules to inaccessible records as one would apply to a foreign language.Martinvl (talk) 20:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I cannot believe this conversation is even happening. If you only allow free online sources, why bother to write an article at all, just provide a link. The only information you will ever get is the same as what's already on the internet. So just provide links and searches: then rename Wikipedia to Google. SpinningSpark 20:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Rentrustic,

If it's a recent change, then the editor that placed the ref is frequently willing to provide a relevant quotation on the talk page. If that fails, you can usually find someone at a related WikiProject that has access to the source. If that doesn't work, then

WP:LIBRARIANS are also good places to ask. WhatamIdoing (talk

) 21:58, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of what sources are, or are not, acceptable is not appropriate for a style guideline page, which is what this page is. This is a matter for policy to decide. SpinningSpark 09:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The "Footnote summary" section says to add a == Notes == section. But most articles I see seem to use a == References == section

Also it doesn't explain the difference between <references /> and {{Reflist}}. I think the latter is where there are many references to make it smaller, but by definition that's not the case when someone is adding the first reference!

So I think the section can just say:

add the following wiki markup at the bottom of the page

== References ==
<references />

The existing section may be called "Notes" and may use {{Reflist}} instead of the <references /> tag.

Maybe someone who really knows can do this. Remember this is a Quick summary , leave the endless academic babble elsewhere. -- Skierpage (talk) 03:04, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You can get small references without using the template with;

<div class=references-small>
<references/>
</div>

which is all that the reflist template is doing. Notes are used when the inline citation is a shortened form of the full citation under references. This is often used on articles above a certain size when it becomes inconvenient to have the references scattered throughout the article. SpinningSpark 09:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I've recently adopted a style I saw on a few articles and liked—I use both Notes and References. I place offline references, such as books, in the Reference section. Then I use Notes for footnotes, citing online sources directly, and citing the book on my Reference section by author name and page number. Example: Hazel Walker
I'm aware that there is an alternative way to cite different pages of the same book, but it puts the page number in the article—I think it looks ugly.
I'd love some feedback on this approach, as I plan to use it and encourage it—if there is something wrong with it or something better, I'd like to know.--SPhilbrickT 15:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Its one of many common methods for citing sources. "Encouraging" is fine if the article does not have an established method already in place, otherwise please follow the guidelines and not change an existing style. Personally I ate such a method and never use it. I use notes for actual footnotes, and references or references. Its up to editorial preferences so long as it is within the prescribed methods (which that is). --

talk · contribs

) 15:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Sphilbrick, In theory, you shouldn't combine styles (

parenthetical notes

for other reliable sources), because articles should use one consistent system for the refs, and I don't see any way around using two systems with your example.

What I particularly dislike about dividing up the online and offline sources is that it implicitly indicates that their reliability is different. There's also the complication of whether an academic paper is an "online" or "offline" source: most are both.

I think you'd be better off with a system like the one that we worked out for Nitrogen narcosis (which includes explanatory notes, books cited multiple times to different page numbers, academic journal articles, and online sources). Perhaps you'd like to look at it, and let me know what you think of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The style that Sphilbrick uses is pretty common, especially for MilHist articles (have a look through their FA's; for example, Fountain of Time). --Izno (talk) 19:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I have misunderstood his system; I should have looked at the example he linked. I thought he was doing this:

"Here is my text.^[9] Here is another sentence (Smith 2009:15)." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

{{reflist}} also allows for a multi column display of longer lists of references. This works for most browsers. IE may be the only significant one that this does not work with. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

"This works for most browsers. IE may be the only significant one that this does not work with." Ha ha ha! You do realise that IE is still the browser used by 70% of internet users in the world? Alarics (talk) 20:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

<- Thanks for the extensive comments. No WhatamIdoing ::shudder:: that would be horrible :) I don't recall where I first saw the approach, but it was an FA, so I assume that the citation style had been through the usual grilling. Thanks for pointing me to the article on the bends - looks professional, and I know, I know that space is cheap, but multiple references to the same text mean the Title, ISBN and other info are repeated every time a new page is referenced. In contrast, I list the info other than the author and the page exactly once. In the article I referenced, I have 13 references to Ikard covering seven different pages, but only list the ISBN, Title and publisher once.

Thanks Izno, for the improvement you made—I've been struggling with multiple references to the same page, and that's a neat solution.
AnmaFinotera, I'll be gentle about encouraging. For example, I wouldn't think of suggesting it for the nitrogen article, which is in fine shape, and I probably wouldn't mention it to an editor tackling any established article (unless it is a mess). I meant in more in the sense of offering advice to someone who has only cited online sources and wants to add some books as cites, or someone starting an article from scratch and wanted some thoughts on how to proceed with references.--SPhilbrickT 23:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Nitrogen narcosis doesn't repeat any details: see refs 9, 10, 14 (and more). The difference is only that it's all in one list, and that the short citations are clickable to the full citation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

To get back to the topic, "References" is by far the most common title for footnote sections, so should we be encouraging "Footnotes" here? I think not. And is "general referencing" really something we still encourage? I thought the recent emphasis on inline referencing implied a certain deprecation of that approach. Rd232 ^talk 14:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with informing other editors of commonly used alternatives like "Footnotes", especially for short citations ("Smith 2000 p. 15").

General references are still accepted for many purposes. Telling people how to present these citations is not the same thing as encouraging editors to use them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I would like to seek policy clarification on the matter of the author naming convention in wikiped citations. On a pair of occasions I've encountered an issue wherein a well-developed list of citations have been extensively edited so as to replace all of the authors first names with initials. The editor in question justified this in the interest of "uniformity", but to me this seems like excessive and perhaps pedantic adherence to the word "consistency".

Unfortunately I see absolutely no benefit in this editing pattern, and I believe it may even cause harm by increasing the level of authorship ambiguity. It will also make it more difficult to track down and author (in order to establish their bona fides, for example). Thus this formating seems like a needless loss of useful information. I have to wonder how many of the wikipedia readers are going to actually care that some of the citations have full author names whereas some do not? If anything, while acting as a fact-checking editor I would want the full name of the author whenever possible. This is particularly the case for citations that may not necessarily be available over the internet.

For this reason, I would like to suggest a modification to this policy so as to allow for a more reasonable level of discrepancy in how much author information is provided. I would prefer it to say something like, "The complete first and last name of the author should be provided whenever the information is readily available. The exception is for citations that have more than three authors listed; in this case initializing the first and middle names is acceptible." (The limit of three authors above is arbitrary, of course, but I think that would work in most situations.)

Does this seem reasonable? If not, then I would prefer this reference to state clearly the opposite: that the first name should always be initialized. This would eliminate editing conflicts over the issue. I'd prefer not to just rely on common sense, as that doesn't always work. Thank you. :-) —RJH (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

This proposed change reflects common sense and what is normally done across Wikipedia. If the full name of the author is provided on the book, then it ought to be listed in the article. Karanacs (talk) 20:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I fully agree. I suspect the culprit here may be the APA citation style (maybe other styles too), which reduces first names to initials even when the first names are stated on the front of the book. Somewhere or other I think I have seen a guideline that says there is no need to follow that slavishly and that to give at least 1 first name, where available, is recommended. I usually tend to follow whatever is given in WorldCat, myself.Alarics (talk) 20:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The degree to which the authors name is abbreviated is, as Alarics says, part and parcel of the citation system used (APA style, Chicago manual, etc.) The change that RJHall proposes would be the first time I've ever seen where this guideline says "don't follow any of those other style manuals, instead do...."

It would be necessary to modify the sentence "Any of these styles is acceptable on Wikipedia so long as articles are internally consistent, except that citations with three or fewer authors should contain the first and last names of the authors whenever the information is readily available." (Added text underlined.) --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:57, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I support full first names. I don't know the APA from NWA, though. Jc, are you saying that all citation systems do the initials thing, or just some? If it is all of them, that gives me pause. They may have good reasoning. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Only some citation systems abbreviate first names; APA does, Chicago doesn't. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I think initials are the norm in citations in academic books and journal articles, for example in the citations at:

• the "References" section at the end of each chapter of Ruppert, E.E., Fox, R.S., and Barnes, R.D. (2004). "Lophoporata". Invertebrate Zoology (7 ed.). Brooks / Cole.
  ISBN 0030259827.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
  )
• the "Further reading" section at the end of each chapter of Cowen, R. (2002). History of Life. Blackwell Science.
  ISBN 0931292387
  .
• "Further reading" at Nielsen, C. (2001), "Bryozoa (Ectoprocta: 'Moss' Animals)", Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.,
  doi:10.1038/npg.els.0001613
• Eckman, J.E. (December 1998). "A Model of Particle Capture by Bryozoans in Turbulent Flow: Significance of Colony Form". 152: 861–880.
  doi:10.1086/286214. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help
  )
• von Dassow, M. (August 2006). "Function-Dependent Development in a Colonial Animal". Biological Bulletin. 211: 76–82. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
• Halanych, K.M.. (2004). "The new view of animal phylogeny" (PDF). Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 35: 229–256.
  doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.35.112202.130124. Retrieved 21009-04-17. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help
  )
• Massard, J.A. (2008). "Global diversity of bryozoans (Bryozoa or Ectoprocta) in freshwater". Hydrobiologia. 595. Springer: 93–99.
  doi:10.1007/s10750-007-9007-3. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help
  )
• the "References" section at the end of Chapman, A.D. (2006). Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World (PDF). Department of the Environment and Heritage, Autralian Government. p. 34.
  ISBN 978 0 642 56849 6
  . Retrieved 2009-08-07.
• Strathmann, R.R. (March 2006). "Versatile ciliary behaviour in capture of particles by the bryozoan cyphonautes larva". Acta Zoologica. 87 (1). The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: 83–89.
  doi:10.1111/j.1463-6395.2006.00224.x
  .

All publishers appear to provide only initials, although they vary about whether terminate each initial with "." and/or a space. One of the examples is from a U. of Chicago publication. --Philcha (talk) 21:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Those sound Biology related. Is it different in different fields of study? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:33, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

But WP:CITE/ES already says as follows: "A good guideline is to list author names as they are written in the original article/book, without further abbreviation. The APA guidelines recommend abbreviating first names to initial letters instead, but since Wikipedia has no shortage of space, you need not abbreviate names. Indeed, there are good reasons to include the full names of authors; such information makes it much easier to find the cited work, and it also makes it possible to find other related information by the same author."

And all the examples given on that page give first names in full. Alarics (talk) 21:41, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen the example style before. I think it is seriously deficient (for example, it does not explain what the citation within the text should look like) so I don't plan to look at that page again. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not you plan to look at it, the fact is that it's there, and some of us have been following it, assuming that that is what we are supposed to do. Are you saying it is wrong? If so, it needs changing. Alarics (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, it is just an example style that people can follow if they feel like it, just like they can follow APA or Chicago if they feel like it (respecting any established style in an existing article, of course). As for needing to be fixed, well, someone can fix it if he or she wants to, or it can just be abandoned. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I would be more than satisfied by that. I just need something to say (in effect) that a consistent mixed style (of full first names or initials) is acceptable and does not need to be squashed in favor of utter uniformity. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 22:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I also support the original poster and the example style at WP:CITE/ES in the view that there's no reason to lose information and needlessly abbreviate names; we don't have space constraints like a book or journal. Also, please remember that "first names" and "last names" apply only to naming conventions that exist only in some parts of the world (see personal name, Category:Names by culture, etc.), so a misguided attempt to "abbreviate" a name often has undesirable results. Shreevatsa (talk) 23:39, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that the practice of initials is a throwback to a space usage constraint, which doesn't apply here. I'd opt for full names in general, with the acceptance that in the case of multiple authors, initials might make sense, not because of physical space issues, but visual space issues.--SPhilbrickT 17:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Charles, could you say what was wrong with this? [4] SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:22, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The whole question about naming the edition of the book would be irrelevant if the citation provides an ISBN.

I wonder whether, in some instances, chapter names/numbers might also be another useful method of narrowing down the range for verification. "Chapter 3, In which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle" is fairly specific, no matter what edition you're looking at. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The ISBN won't help in the case of older books whose publication predates the ISBN system; but, in terms of simply identifying the version used, both the edition number and the ISBN are secondary to the publication date. Is there any significant citation format which doesn't include publication dates for books?

(Pointing to a chapter only solves this problem if the only difference between the editions is page numbering. If the text itself might be different—for example, with different translations—we still need some indication of which version of the book is being cited.) Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 12:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Where there is no ISBN, one can (and in my view should) give the OCLC number instead. But even so, a lot of people type these numbers wrongly: yesterday for instance there were 4,775 instances on English WP of incorrect ISBNs (see

WP:WPCHECK). On top of that, it's not unknown for the ISBN to refer to the right book but the "wrong" edition, i.e. not the one from which the page number was quoted. I do not think we are going to get a cast-iron solution to this problem. All we can do is urge people to give as much information as possible. Alarics (talk

) 12:39, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the slow reply. Page numbers in different editions are different. So, if you use page numbers, you need to give the edition, otherwise the page numbers serve no purpose. That's all. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The article says "Citations for newspaper articles typically include" bla bla, and does not mention the place of publication. This is all right for U.S. newspapers where the place of publication is usually part of the title (New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune), but that is often not the case in other countries. The Times (London) should always specify "London" because there are other Timeses. Ditto The Guardian (London) as there is also a "The Guardian" in Tanzania.

So would it be possible to amend the article to say " ... place of publication (where this is not part of the newspaper title)"? Alarics (talk) 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this kind of disambiguation is not necessary for well known newspapers like the Guardian and the Times. If there is indeed a paper called "The Guardian" in Tanzania then that one could be disambiguated but the London one doesn't need to. As for The Times, I would expect all the other Timeses to include the name of the place ("Irish Times", "NY Times", etc.) so when no place is specified the reader knows we are talking about the "original" Times from London.

talk

) 17:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is a "The Times" in South Australia (http://www.victorharbortimes.com.au/) and others in Ontario, Canada (http://www.mindentimes.on.ca/), Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA (http://www.pawtuckettimes.com/) and Trenton, New Jersey, USA (http://www.nj.com/times/pageone/). All call themselves simply "The Times" on their mastheads. But perhaps that's not a very good example. There is a "Sunday Times" in Perth, Western Australia, and another one in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one in Sri Lanka, as well as the one in London. There is a "Daily Telegraph" in Sydney, Australia, as well as the one in London. And so on. So I think you are mistaken, and I reiterate my suggestion. There just are lots and lots of newspapers whose titles don't include their place of publication, so the default should be that the place of publication is to be included unless it is absolutely obvious to everybody which newspaper we mean. Alarics (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Either you link the paper in the cite or include the http link. Both of these should not be ambiguous. Or is this more an issue of improper citations. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

My original point was nothing to do with web links. I am talking also about cases where there is just a dead-tree newspaper article which might be tens or hundreds of years old. Or do you think it makes sense to link to a newspaper's home page, always assuming the paper still exists? I would not have thought that made much sense. Alarics (talk) 21:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

So may I go ahead and change it to " ... place of publication (where this is not part of the newspaper title)"? Alarics (talk) 21:47, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

{{cite journal}} includes a |location= parameter. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and more to the point, so does {{cite news}} -- which I think reinforces my point that giving the place of publication is normal and expected in a newspaper citation. Alarics (talk) 07:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I still don't believe that this is needed. Linking will solve the vast majority, if not all, of problems. If we don't already have an article on the paper, then the link would serve to highlight that fact in addition to providing any required disambiguation. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how linking helps. Where there are several newspapers with the same name (see examples I gave above), it is perfectly possible that people will just put double square brackets round the name of the paper and not check where the link is going, so ending up linking to the wrong one. So that is not a useful check at all. In any event, it is useful and sensible and normal to state the place of publication even if the title is unique. Supposing I am citing something from the Eastern Daily Press. Even within the UK, many people in other parts of the country will only dimly have heard of it if at all, and might find it useful to know, or to be reminded, that it is the regional paper published in Norwich. Whether or not Wikipedia happens to have an article on the paper is entirely irrelevant. Even if it does, why put readers to the trouble of going there when all one needs to do is add the word "Norwich"? Alarics (talk) 07:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Have we any consensus on this, or not? I just want to add " ... place of publication (where this is not part of the newspaper title)". Alarics (talk) 07:50, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

A quick, related question: is it generally considered good form to link the name of a newspaper (or similar publishing organ) in a citation, as is often done? -Wormcast (talk) 20:41, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think it is necessary, and just adds confusing blue clutter. It might be acceptable in the case of an obscure newspaper, but I generally remove such links when I come across them. I certainly don't see what is achieved by sending the reader to an article about The New York Times, for instance. It seems to me a clear case of

WP:OVERLINK. - Alarics (talk

) 08:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

and I want to cite material on page 190, but I don't want to lose the information that the cited work appears between pages 140 and 195 of the book... can it be done? Hesperian 11:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Some possible ways, "accepted" to the extent that they are widely used, would be as follows:

• "Chapter 4: Some Chapter", Some Book, pp. 140–195
• "Chapter 4: Some Chapter". Some Book. pp. 140–195.
• "Chapter 4: Some Chapter", Some Book, pp. 140–195. {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |separator= ignored (help)

edit this section and look at the wikitext for details. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:10, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

If I understand your question right, I think you are looking for a way to cite several different page ranges of the same book in several footnotes. The most common solution is

SlimVirgin's change is here. This edit a little earlier added 1 template ("BMJ2"), when all the rest of the article's citations are hand-formatted. So I think SlimVirgin's comment meant, "

WP:CITE

recommends using a consistent approach".

Personally - I don't worry about this unless the artcile is GA or better, or when upgrading an article in order to nominate for GA. Then I use citation templates throughout to: get consistent presentation of citations; remind me of info that should be included.

refTools makes formatting a citation a very simple task well over 90% of the time. If you go to your "preferences" page, in the tab "Gadgets" there is a checkbox "refTools, adds a "cite" button to the editing toolbar for quick and easy addition of commonly used citation templates". Click this then click "Save". This places in the edit box a button

that shows a form where you paste in the title, author(s), etc. Then place the cursor in the right place in the edit box' text, click "Add citation" and it does just that, including all the wiki-markup. Two notes:

• The "Cite journal" option does not have a DOI box (has been requested), and I always insert | doi=....... afterwards if the source provides a DOI, as this provides a link that is automatically updated if the actual URL changes.
• If you specify a URL, you must also specify accessdate - in format yyyy-mm-dd. I think the idea is that one can go to an archive (e.g. Internet Archive) and see the version of the page as it was when cited.

Sometimes none of the {{cite XXXX}} templates is right and you have to use {{citation}}. This gives a slightly different formatting - don't ask me why - and you should make all citations use {{citation}}.

I use

K-meleon, and in Safari and Google Chrome. --Philcha (talk

) 07:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:CITE unless the article was already using that style, or consensus was reached on the article's talk page for the change. --Jc3s5h (talk

) 08:01, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, re differences with {{cite XXXX}}, {{Citation}} can be caused to mimic the {{cite XXXX}} formatting with the separator= and postscript= parameters. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Philcha says: "If you specify a URL, you must also specify accessdate - in format yyyy-mm-dd." There is no "must" about it. If the URL leads to a page that has no date itself, an access date is highly desirable. If it leads to, say, a news item or press release which itself has a clear date, the access date is at best unnecessary, and there seems to be a consensus for the view that, if used at all in such a case, the access date should be commented out so as to be invisible to the casual reader (on the grounds that the only person to whom the information might conceivably be of any use is another editor in the future). The publication date of a news item is much more important than an access date.

Also, if an access date is specified, it doesn't have to be in format yyyy-mm-dd. The official line is that it should be in the same format as all the other dates in the article. - Alarics (talk) 12:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think Philcha was referring to the technical requirements of the refTools tool, not of Wikipedia. And, of course, I note that a visible accessdate is required under some citation manuals (e.g.

Turabian). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.}

13:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

refTools comes (unfortunately) with today's date inserted in the accessdate field by default, but one can simply delete the default date and leave the field blank. So it is not a "requirement". Alarics (talk) 21:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

With some alacrity, I have changed the title to read "templates" as "tamplates" probably took this topic into another realm. As for citation templates, the original purpose was to provide editors with a basic means of providing reference sources, especially contributors who did not have a background or knowledge in coding the citation, or in the use of bibliographic styles of referencing sources. The templates were created in the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide, the most commonly used citation format for the sciences. Although the Modern Language Association (MLA) guide is more suited for the social sciences, the templates were not adapted to allow this format, despite numerous requests. The templates have now become a bewildering jumble of cite tags in every conceivable medium of text and non-text sources which also saddle the ISO dating format to the guide, regardless of the dating convention in use in the body of the text. For those reasons, I use an MLA/Harvard Citation Style Guide as the other issue is that many, not all, editors using the citation templates simply do not understand the coding or even the basics of bibliographical referencing, as noted by the many errors in punctuation, capitalization, alphabetical sorting and ad nauseum mistakes that generally can be classified as "garbage in, garbage out" errors. Reverting to "scratch" cataloging usually rectifies these common mistakes, so I agree with the first statement in that citation templates are available but are neither mandated, required or even (dare I say it) recommended. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

I just experimented with refTools, and found that if one specifies a URL, the current date will be inserted in the accessdate field in the YYYY-MM-DD format, but it can be changed to whatever you want. So there is no technical requirement to use that format. --Jc3s5h (talk) 13:34, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, it can be changed. It can also easily be deleted altogether, which is often the correct course of action. It is a pity the template (and refTool in particular) has given so many people the idea that the access date is always required. - Alarics (talk) 21:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem with putting access dates in the format of yyyy-mm-dd is that this is not a very user-friendly or aesthetically pleasing format. Yes, it's ISO standard, but when reading articles, most readers are looking for something like "January 1, 2009" or "1 January 2009". And all those ISO standard dates were not a problem before the big date dewikilinking not too long ago. Once all the dates were no longer wikilinked, autoformatting stopped working, and we're left with all these dates in an awkward format. This should really be a priority for somebody to fix rather soon. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

The simplest solution is to write out the dates in the date convention that is used in the main body of text. When the question of ISO dating came up in a number of wiki project groups, it was readily apparent that many people did not even understand ISO or worse misinterpreted ISO dating, is it 2009-06-07, or 06-07-2009 (and is it June 7, 2009 or 7 June 2009, or July 6, 2009?...arrggh). FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

Dr. Cash's comment indicates why it is so important to carry out date delinking. Dr. Cash is under the mistaken impression that " all those ISO standard dates were not a problem before the big date dewikilinking not too long ago. Once all the dates were no longer wikilinked, autoformatting stopped working". But for the vast majority of readers, who do not sign in or who did not choose a date preference, date autoformatting never worked. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Re "You should follow the style already established in an article, if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style used by the first editor to use one should be respected" (Jc3s5h; 08:01, 3 September 2009), in most articles that have not passed GA or higher review after mid-2007: there are too few citations, the formatting of what few there are follows no recognisable or consistent format; if there is a discernible formatting convention, it generally does not scale to types of citation not considered previously - for example to identify all the elements in a citation of a journal article or of a book that is a compilation.

In short, I'm an unrepentant user of citation templates, as using them will almost always improve the article and provide conventions that extend to the more complex types of citation. --Philcha (talk) 16:17, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

...and in reply, that is balderdash. Choose your seconds, knave. Seriously, I am of the complete opposite opinion after seeing very few editors even having the basics of knowing what to input into the citation templates, which still are not provided in MLA style. I use a written form throughout and know that it is always correct. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:31, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

I can see Philcha's point in the case where the editors of an article have created a style unique to the article, and only cited a few sources. There would be no way to guess how to format sources of a type different than those already cited. On the other hand, if the article follows a recognizable style, such as MLA, Chicago, or APA, then there is a style guide available that will cover almost every conceivable source; a far greater range than is accommodated by {{Citation}} or the Cite xxx templates. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

How am I supposed to discover whether "the article follows a recognizable style, such as MLA, Chicago, or APA"? Don't tell me I have to work at becoming expert in all of these 3 guides so I can recognise them at a glance - that's a ridiculous investment of effort. So far I've come across nothing the citation templates can't handle - and I've taken articles to GA on science, chess, fiction, computer games and soccer, so I've used several types of source. You've just given me another reason for recommending citation templates to anyone who asks - especially if one uses the tools available to make citation templates very easy. --Philcha (talk) 16:59, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh pleeeeze, they are nothing of the sort, you may know how to use them, but citation templates in the hands of the great unwashed are, and I can emphatically say it, are never used properly. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

Are you suggesting that "the great unwashed" would somehow make a better fist of their citations if the template didn't exist? Seems rather unlikely to me. - Alarics (talk) 21:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) The guideline presently calls on you to preserve any citation style that is presently used in an article. If you don't know which one it is, ask on the talk page. If you think the present guideline is a "ridiculous investment of effort" then try to change it. At present, you are suggesting it is OK for you to ignore any guideline that you consider to be a "ridiculous investment of effort." --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

See comment above, about not wanting to become an expert?! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

(ec)"If you don't know which one it is, ask on the talk page" - and wait for long for a reply? Especially one that is credible, conclusive and links to the appropriate style manual? How do I have to wait if two or more fans of different external style manuals disagree?

Re ignore any guideline that you consider to be a "'ridiculous investment of effort'", some examples:

• As a GA reviewer I'm known as quite hardline on
  WP:NPOV
• WP:LAYOUT
  is simple and helpful, great value for money.
• OTOH
  WP:DASH
  makes "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" look like a reasonable question.

Guiding principle: produce a good product for readers (i.e. good content, clearly presented) at the smallest cost. --Philcha (talk) 17:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

...and all that does not preclude a GA article from being reviewed and accepted using hand-written citations and bibliographic notations. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

Sure. But as a GA reviewer, if I saw an article with lots of citations, most of which could have URLs or DOIs but don't have these, I'd ask the nominator to provide the missing URLs or DOIs. The nominator might find that this is easier if he/she uses citation templates. --Philcha (talk) 18:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

In practice, one quite often comes upon an article with say 100 citations in 50 different styles and with important fields left blank (e.g. publication date) while unimportant ones are filled in (e.g. access date for a URL that in fact leads to a clearly dated and stable page, such as a news article). For those few of us who care about these things, there is nothing for it but to try to standardise it as best one can. Since some of the citations probably use a cite xxx template of one sort or another, the least messy thing one can do is often to use the template to fix all the others, even if one wouldn't necessarily have done so if starting the article from scratch oneself. Alarics (talk) 21:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

What is the difference when an editor uses: Author. Title. Place: Publisher, Date. for a bibliographic record. That's the basis of almost all citation guides and something that is taught in seconds. For notes: Author, date, source (page, url, whatever). Compare that to trying to juxtapose data into templates, which I still maintain are "buggy", do not accommodate all citation styles and are in two or three versions for the very same purpose. FWiW, even the great unwashed could learn a simple, elegant system, why are we giving them a complex, dumb one? Bzuk (talk) 21:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Richard, I meant that citation templates shouldn't be added to articles that already have properly formatted references, per this guideline. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Philcha, it's not a question of becoming familiar with every style. It's just that if you see <ref>Smith, John. ''Title of Book'', Random House, 2009, p. 1.</ref>, it means there's no need (a) to change that to a template, or (b) to start adding other refs using templates, because a ref style has already been chosen.

The problem with templates inside texts is that they add a lot of unnecessary words, and they can make editing difficult for the people who edit after you. It's unusual to see a well-written article with lots of templates in it, because templates can make it very hard, if not impossible, to edit the writing for flow.

There's an article up for FA at the moment where the writing isn't that good. I went into it the other day to fix it up, and found it was littered with templates, so I had to leave it, because I literally couldn't see where one sentence ended and another began. It's not a good thing to write an article in such a way that editors coming after you will have difficulty working on it, and may have to abandon it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There's no guarantee that citation B will follow the style of citation A. Even if they are consistent, without templates you'd have look through the existing citations to see if there's one of the same type (e.g. book) as one you want to add. If you're adding a citation of a new type (for that article), you'd have to guess whether the earlier citations follow MLA / APA / Chicago / whatever and then look up whatever guide recommends for the type of citation you want to add. If you can't see that the article is following some well-known convention, you have to figure out to present the new elements of that in a way that minimises conflicts - and, even you've succeeded, you've increased the difficulties for later editors in devising a format for a further type of citation. IMO it's simpler to use the templates and let the template maintainers worry about all this.

I agree that all the citation mark-up makes the edit box crowded, even if templates are not used. But there are at least 3 solutions, which can be used in various combinations:

• WikEd has an option to collapse refs and citations, so that user-readable text dominates the edit box.
• Long before I knew about WikEd, I got into the habit of using 2 tabs when working on an article - one for the edits, the other for checking the flow.
• The Preview button. --Philcha (talk) 23:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

The important point is that there's never a need for citation templates. All they do is add clutter, and it's faster to write refs manually. Regarding your point about preview, you need to have a clear sweep of an article or section before you can edit for flow, because flow is precisely about how to make one sentence lead nicely into the next. It's impossible do this if you're having to "preview" every few seconds to find out where the sentences begin and end, because you lose track of the flow in your mind when you do that. Can you show me a well-written article with lots of templates in the text? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree, citation templates were a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless as they did not accomplish anything more than making wikipedia less accessible and more difficult to edit. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 00:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

You should consider that templates separate content from styling... much as CSS and HTML are supposed to be… --Izno (talk) 04:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(Undent) I'm a little surprised that so many experienced editors are even having this conversation.

SlimVirgin, with respect, you were wrong to revert the template -- at least, wrong to claim that this page requires it: The injunction here is to have a consistent kind of reference (meaning: Do not mix

Now if there's a consensus at a given article that the editors prefer to manually format all of the citations -- and this appears to be the case at the article in question -- then there's nothing here to prevent them from doing that. However, the reason needs to be a gracious "The consensus at this article is to manually format everything; I changed it to match the others for you", not something that could be (mis)understood as "

The argument being made is that citation templates are not mandated, required and I would go beyond and clamour for a move away from citation templates to the use of scratch cataloging, that is faster, accurate and leaves no ambiguity. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 06:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

I think you are battling fruitlessly against the tide of history there. Since the Mr Z cite tool is now included in the edit window toolbar, many editors are using it and clearly find it helpful. - Alarics (talk) 07:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with

refTools

ever since. For sources that are online, one always has to copy and paste the details from the source to the edit box; refTools enables me to paste them into a form that's easier to read than a template call that one is customising. For offline sources, mainly hardcopy, refTools or other citation formatters make it much easier to type into form fields without having to worry about the order or formatting of the elements. PS I still know nothing about the details of APA, MLA, etc., but my citations appear correctly.

In other words, citation templates make formatting easier for inexperienced editors, provided they are given links to the tools. --Philcha (talk) 08:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

With no disprespect, the citation templates were there for just that purpose, to assist the editor unfamiliar with markup coding or the basics in bibliographic referencing with a tool to place a citation into the article. Here is where it all went off the tracks; the templates were expressly written in the APA style guide to the exclusion of any other citation style guide. The APA guide is widely used in the sciences and was originally formatted as a fast, easy to use system for the student and researcher. The MLA guide however is the preferred system for the arts and social sciences, where many articles on biography or history fall into place within Wikipedia. There is no template to properly form a MLA style, not a Chicago, Turabian or other guide. When questioned about this, the developers wanted to standardize on one form, given that it was difficult to provide newcomers with the rudiments of understanding the framework of a style guide, as it was, and to introduce new templates would make the task even more difficult. Regardless, there was no effort to address a creation of a style guide outside of the APA guide. Here are the standard criticisms of the APA guide, it first attaches the date of publication to the author which is ludicrous when the author is deceased, or when multiple editions or issues are in use. Secondly, the place of publication is omitted although in many cases, the place is important information as imprint companies, reprinters and other facets of the publishing industries can be involved; knowing the source can be useful. The dating of a publication in most style guides typically follows the source of publication, not the author. My books have been printed, reprinted, rebound, translated, made into hard and soft cover and I had nothing to do with it, all of these editions are strictly editorial and publishing choices. (Yes, a confession, I am an author and editor for a number of publishing houses, and worse, I have been an academic librarian for over 35+ years, trained in the old fashioned way of going to school to learn the trade.) To continue my accounting of the citation templates, the first versions were filled with errors such as the laack of accomodation of second authors and were in a constant state of rewrite, and that's when I abandoned them due to the "buggy" nature of the templates and the intransigence of the developers to first fix the problems, and secondly, provide additional templates for other than APA styles. When the APA guide was first instituted, it was widely derided as a "dumb" system created to teach "dumb" students the basics of referencing. My university professors would insist on the APA style despite rejoiners that the guide was providing less information, did not fit the social sciences material well and was not designed for the contingencies of the non-print world which was coming fast. My other main criticism of the templates is that they provide a poorly formed idea of the reference source, and make it appear to the casual user that that is all that is needed to know, copy and paste a template, stuff in the information and you're set. This method, however, is fraught with confusion and errors as newcomers, do not understand the use of standard puctuation, alphabetical ordering or capitalization that makes the template system work properly. After numerous attempts to "shoehorn" corrections into the templates, I have found in any article I write that providing a simple, clear and accurate written ref/cite link is the easiest system of all. FWiW, after all your experience at Wiki editing, I would be amazed that you would not have a grasp of the structure of citation styles, yet that could be possible. When I taught bibliographical referencing (yes, another confession, I was a high school instructor), the bibliographic styles were taught in a brief, half-hour session and subsequently, were effectively incorporated into the research skills that all high school age students were expected to use. Don't get me started on the templates and ISO dating?! Bzuk (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

Yes, but your high school students had to do exactly what you told them to do. You were in a position where you could lay down the law. Unfortunately Wikipedia isn't, or at least it chooses not to do. It makes matters worse (in my view) by telling people to choose from any number of different ways of doing things. The fact that the cite refTool (Mr Z) is now on the edit toolbar by default is, I think, gradually bringing a greater degree of consistency to things. I too would prefer a somewhat different style, but consistency is more important. Alarics (talk) 13:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Your point being that Wikipedia should mandate the use of one system, the citation template for referencing sources of information. Good luck with that, as many editors now are not only familiar with hand-written entry but find that creating rather than manipulating a citation is a much more efficient way of editing. FWiW, the choice of a system cannot be seen as a detriment, especially if the final result is a clear, easy-to-understand and accurate reference note. Bzuk (talk) 13:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

(unindent) Alarics wrote "The fact that the cite refTool (Mr Z) is now on the edit toolbar by default...." I believe that is incorrect. Perhaps Alarics clicked the appropriate checkbox on the "Gadgets" tab of the "my preferences" window long ago, and forgot having done so?

I stand corrected. Alarics (talk) 19:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if Bzuk could point to some text establishing that the cite templates were based on APA style? The current developers of these templates seem to have forgotten that, and having noting to guide them, they tend to have long discussions about how to format any new parameter.

I find it interesting that cite templates are mostly used as footnotes, but the APA style manual only allows parenthetical referencing. It is also interesting that the {{Citation}} template is actually intended for use as a footnote, but except for using the comma to separate elements of the citation rather than a full stop, it mostly imitates the APA style, rather than some style that allows footnote citations (like Chicago). --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The discourse about citation styles goes back to my first years in the Wikiywacky wonderland, but I can try to retrieve them, although at best, the style can be easily determined by observing the final format of the citaition elements, indicating that the present citation templates only recreate one citation style guide, the APA. I did most of my enquiries off line so the response from a template developer is probably buried somewhere in an email. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

(ec)Bzuk's criticisms of the APA style (13:07, 4 September 2009) emphasise the advantages of citation templates - if WP concludes that some other style is a better foundation on which to base its formatting of citations, the templates can be updated and the results can appear immediately on articles. All this without the drudgery of editors' having to memorise however many styles Bzuk listed. --Philcha (talk) 17:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Templates are useful for some editors, but consistently reverting properly formatted hand-written citations with cite templates is not necessarily productive. The canard that Wikipedia developers have created a "magic bullet" is easily dissuaded by comparison to any current off-wiki publications. In certain disciplines, a "house style guide" predominates, and it is overwhelmingly a Modern Language Association (MLA) style that is used in the arts, social sciences, biographies and history. No one forces anyone to use citation templates or even learn what makes up the parameters of a bibliographical record, that is entirely a personal choice. After observing the consistent errors that are inherent in editors improperly using templates, correcting a template compared to rewriting the citation in a "scratch" cataloguing style, is a "no brainer." FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

One has to "learn what makes up the parameters of a bibliographical record" in order to produce a decently-formatted citation. Do-it-self formatting may be OK for an experienced librarian such as

User talk:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar are the easiest way for most editors to produce decently-formatted citations. --Philcha (talk

) 18:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

In the USA, you can't graduate from a decent university without writing some correct citations. You don't have to become an expert librarian. (Of course, one does not have to be a university graduate to contribute to Wikipedia, but we shouldn't make a high school education the maximum permissible level of education for contributors.) --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how "Wikipedia developers" crept in, as that term usually refers to the employees who develop the MediaWiki software. The citation templates were created by fellow editors using their best judgment.

If there is a feeling that the current templates do not format a cite in the desired style, then it isn't that hard to create a new one with a bit of knowledge of wikimarkup. The beauty of {{citation/core}} is that it can be adapted to any desired format.

{tl|Citation/core}} adds the COinS metadata that allows machine retrieval and insertion of cites. I use Zotero to maintain my bibliographies (listed on my user page BTW). If an editor want to manually add the CSS for all of that into a hand crafted cite, then so be it.

The core also wraps bits of the cite in CSS classes so that viewing can be customized. If you hate retrieval dates, then a short CSS rule will make them invisible for you.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Gadget850 wrote "If an editor want to manually add the CSS for all of that into a hand crafted cite, then so be it." The creators of the citation templates have always known that the use of those templates has never been required, or even encouraged; just allowed. There is no requirement that editors manually creating citations add all the paraphernalia that the citation templates add, such as metadata. There is no requirement that editors who have created an article with proper manual citations throughout tolerate the conversion of the article to citation templates on the grounds of a lack of metadata. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"If you hate retrieval dates, then a short CSS rule will make them invisible for you." -- That completely misses the point! There is no point in making them invisible for me when I know that they are visible to everyone else. -- Alarics (talk) 19:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Date formatting

Since this discussion is wandering all over the place, I am going to address the history of date linking in the citation templates. There have been a multitude of discussions on date linking, but I am going to specifically address those related only to the citation templates.

• At one point, ISO dates were the standard and formatted by date linking— see the {{cite web}} documentation for an example

• 4 September 2008:, the removal of date linking in the templates was proposed per Wikipedia_talk:Citation_templates/Archive_4#De-linking_dates; note that the issue of ISO dates remaining was quickly brought up; a bot was proposed to fix this, but I am not aware of any such bot for this purpose; date linking in the templates was quickly removed

• 4 April 2009: I proposed date formatting without linking to resolve the issue of ISO dates; there was little interest

• There appears to have never been any discussion at
  User talk:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar
  on date formats

As best I see, there has been no consensus to go back and fix the formatting problems that resulted from the removal of date linking in the templates, thus the silent consensus has been towards ISO dates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed to death, the ISO dating didn't work for the 90% of the editors who did not set date preferences. All they saw was the jumbles of numbers that did not correspond to the standard written out dates that predominate the article's text. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 00:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

I would greatly appreciate it if no one refers to dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD as ISO dates unless he or she has actually read the ISO 8601 standard. If you write about history, use what you think are ISO dates, and have not read the standard, YOU WILL CERTAINLY SCREW UP. --Jc3s5h (talk) 00:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Then you need to fix ISO 8601, since today is 2009-09-04 according to the article. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You, like the creators of the ISO 8601 standard, only care about dates that are likely to occur in current computer transactions. When writing about historical events, ISO 8601 is a trapping pit, just waiting to lure the unwary into making errors. (If I'm being a bit harsh, consider it payback for replying to a post that mentions writing about history with a discussion of today's date.) --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point, let's not use anything other than clearly understood, written out dates. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 00:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

There are ways to technically fix this and resolve the issues of current YYYY-MM-DD dates. I consider this issue closed, and the consensus is to not change the templates and to leave dates as they were when the linking was removed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It surely does not help that the YYYY-MM-DD format is still shown as the default in most of the examples given in

WP:CITET. Also, can Mr Z not be prevailed upon to change the default given in the accessdate field in his "cite" tool? - Alarics (talk

) 07:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Exactly a year later and still trying to clean up from the delinking. Good luck with getting a consensus on a default date style. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Back on topic

Circling back to the edits that provoked the discuss, everyone's behavior seems quite acceptable and in accordance with the guideline. One key aspect of the guideline, in my view, is that editors are encouraged to add new, useful citations in any format they are comfortable with, even if it is not precisely consistent with the existing style; other editors will come and clean up after them. Which is exactly what happened here. Christopher Parham (talk) 14:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Good point. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:51, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I would like to remove, on the grounds of instruction creep, that the city of publication must be part of a citation. There is no need for it, and I don't recall that there was discussion about adding it (though maybe there was, and I missed it). Whenever I remove it, I'm reverted, [5] so I'm bringing it here for other views. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

We are only talking here about citations of newspaper articles. I have explained in several places what the need for it is. Obviously it's not necessary in the case of The New York Times. In the UK, at least, it is normal to include the city of publication when mentioning the name of a non-London newspaper. Outside the USA, the names of most newspapers don't include the city of publication. As I pointed out further up this very page:

... there is a "The Times" in South Australia (http://www.victorharbortimes.com.au/) and others in Ontario, Canada (http://www.mindentimes.on.ca/), Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA (http://www.pawtuckettimes.com/) and Trenton, New Jersey, USA (http://www.nj.com/times/pageone/). All call themselves simply "The Times" on their mastheads. ... There is a "Sunday Times" in Perth, Western Australia, and another one in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one in Sri Lanka, as well as the one in London. There is a "Daily Telegraph" in Sydney, Australia, as well as the one in London. And so on. ...
... it is useful and sensible and normal to state the place of publication even if the title is unique. Supposing I am citing something from the Eastern Daily Press. Even within the UK, many people in other parts of the country will only dimly have heard of it if at all, and might find it useful to know, or to be reminded, that it is the regional paper published in Norwich.

I would also point out that the "cite news" template includes "location" as one of its parameters. -- Alarics (talk) 09:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

What the templates have is not the point; they have too many parameters. The problem is that refs get very long, and if they're in the text, they become a nuisance if there are lots of them. I'd like to pare what we require down to the bare bones: Name, title of article, name of newspaper, date. If obscure, the name almost always includes the location. So perhaps we could add: plus city if the location isn't obvious from the title and the publication is not a well-known one?

What I wonder, for example, is why anyone would find it useful to be reminded that the Eastern Daily Press is based in Norwich. If they want to know, they can click on the link. Otherwise, what does it tell them that's useful in a citation?

I should add: I'm sorry if I sound short, or "anti-information." It's just that everywhere I look people are adding more and more rules: supply this, tell us that, full stop here, this spelling for that country, use the right date format, on and on, endlessly, to the point where I feel we're driving people crazy — though of course I may be projecting. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"refs get very long, and if they're in the text, they become a nuisance" -- but they aren't in the text, they are in the footnote.

"If obscure, the name almost always includes the location". -- My whole point was that that is simply not the case. Didn't you read what I wrote above? There are a dozen different newspapers all called The Evening News.

"why anyone would find it useful to be reminded that the Eastern Daily Press is based in Norwich". -- I might think that it is based in Hong Kong or Bangkok or Bethnal Green. It can help the reader form a judgement as to how likely the newspaper cited is to know what it is talking about.

"If they want to know, they can click on the link". -- There might not be a link. Not everything is on the web. Or the link might be dead. Even if there is a link, I would like to be able to form a judgement as to whether or not it is going to be worth my while clicking on the link.

"So perhaps we could add: plus city if the location isn't obvious from the title and the publication is not a well-known one?" -- That just adds 8 more words to what I said in the first place (I thought you were trying to reduce the amount of instructions) and gets us into a difficult cultural grey area about which publications count as "well-known" and to whom. There may be many readers to whom hardly any publications are "well-known". Why can we not just say: "plus city, if not included in name of newspaper"? Which is what we have at the moment.

"people are adding more and more rules: supply this, tell us that" -- I agree that we need to not add unnecessarily to the burden on editors, but if you want to cut something, a much better candidate would be the idea that everything found on the web should have a "retrieved on" date. It is necessary only if the page linked to doesn't have a clear date itself. In particular, it is not necessary or useful for news articles and press releases, which always have a publication date shown, and that is the only date required. -- Alarics (talk) 11:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I would agree that the city or place of origin of a periodical is usually not incorporated in a citation "string" wherein the location of publication for a book or encyclopedia may be of value as publishers do tend to have specific editions based on their publishing houses. For example, a book may be re-edited to suit a particular company's needs. In the case of having a source that is not readily identifiable, asuch as "The Evening Standard", there is no great difficulty in adding the location, as in "The Evening Standard (London)". FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

Good, so if "there is no great difficulty in adding the location", let's make that the default recommendation, shall we? - Alarics (talk) 13:45, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

As long as default does not mean "regulated". FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC).

Also: I have just found that

Re your point above, footnotes are usually in the text, which is why it's good to keep them tight. I think we should let people use their common sense with this. Perhaps we could add that advice, that MLA style is to add the name if it's not in the title. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:44, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I was only giving MLA as an example to show that including the city of publication is not some weird freakish idea. I don't see any need to mention MLA in the article. The wording as it stands now ("Citations for newspaper articles typically include ..... city of publication, if not included in name of newspaper") will surely suffice. I don't know why people are making such heavy weather of this. -- Alarics (talk) 13:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I am challenging the article because it has provided two gross innacurracies.

The first error of import is Alonso de Sotomayor's maternal surname. The consequences: 1: The maternal surname of Valmediano leads historical and genealogical researchers to dead ends because they cannot connect Sotomayor with that maternal surname.

2: Alonso de SotoMayor's death date is all wrong.

The result: The person who wrote the article didn't do their research within the archives of Spain. They copied data that had the error from other authors who in turn didn't research as well.

In turn Wikipedia published the article that contains errors and has elevated its status as well...

I am publishing a book whose aim has been to correct errors that have been made by researchers and historians within the records of many importantant historical individuals. The data I will share is in the process of copyright.

Conditions that are to be met if you are going to used the corrected information within Wikipedia....

1: My book and my name must show very clearly within the article as being the source of the corrections: Page numbers must be listed as well.

If the writer of the article wants the corrected genealogy of the Sotomayor to be included they must also Site my book as well as my name....

You have my E mail address. Please feel free to write me regarding the conditions I have set forth above.

I have digitalized copies of the original documents that prove I am right.

Let me know if the conditions I have set forth can be met.

Respectfully,

John J. Browne Ayes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ayesart (talk • contribs) 12:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Copyright only covers the way information is expressed, not the information itself. Once your book is published anyone may write about the information contained in the book, so long as they do not copy the way you will have expressed the information. Wikipedia policy is to cite the source of information.

In the mean time, if the archives you refer to are open to the public, you are free to edit the article and provide citations to the archives. --Jc3s5h (talk) 13:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

for rebuilding the lead section as a nice clean summary of the guideline. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 16:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree, lead as it stands is well focused on the key points. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to go with the last edit of the month to diff for the Update on this page, but let me know if I've missed something and one of the late August edits hasn't survived and didn't have consensus; this is one of the harder pages to do. I'm going with this as my selected version for the Update, that is, the last version that seemed to have consensus. See

Captions aren't all that special. They should contain citations in order to meet

WP:V

.

The facts contained in that caption (e.g. the first sentence) are cited in the article, so it is unlikely that they would be challenged. I don't think it needs a citation because of this, but it also would not hurt it to have one.

The second sentence in that caption could probably be removed to make it more concise (and, arguably, less biased & more topical). But I don't see how a citation could really improve it (unless it was a quote). --Karnesky (talk) 02:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that information in image captions require citations unless the information already appears properly referenced in the main text of the article. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 03:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Captions should tie the image to related content in the article, which is where the primary referencing should be located. In the example caption: I doubt she actually built the church herself, the second statement smacks of peacock terms and the associated content is sourced. BTW- note 1 contradicts the content. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 04:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addition for captions etc.

• Thanks for the above comments. I changed the example caption so that it's clearly supported by the adjacent text and its citations.
• I tried to draft an addition to this guidelines to cover citation of captions, and came up with several issues:

• If a caption is supported by an inline citation in article text, is it OK for the inline citation to be far away? For example, the lead image for Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has a caption "Virginia Poe, as painted after her death", but the only citation for this claim is in Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe #Death, a section far away from the lead. My assumption is that this is not adequate, in that the citation should be in nearby article text so that it's easy to find.
• Does text that appears in an image require citation? For example, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe #Early life contains an image File:PoeFamilyTree.svg that contains textual information (e.g., "George Washington Poe (1782–?)") that is not clearly supported by a citation in the article's adjacent text. My assumption is that this should be cited somewhere, e.g., in the caption.
• Does text that appears in alt text require citation? For technical reasons,
  WP:ALT#Brevity
  . Typically alt text should not contain likely-to-be-challenged statements.
• If the caption attributes the image, does that need to be cited? For example, the lead image of
  Cædwalla of Wessex contains a caption "Imaginary depiction of Cædwalla by Lambert Barnard". Does this caption need a citation, to verify the fact that the depiction is indeed of Cædwalla, and is indeed by Lambert Barnard, and is indeed imaginary? Here, my thought is that this sort of caption is actually a citation, in that it's attributing authorship of the image; since it's a citation, it does not itself need to be sourced (as requiring sources for citations would lead to an infinite regress
  ).