Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 39

Recently (in this diff) there was a major addition about some common errors relating to supported and unsupported facts in one sentence. I see the point – if you add a cite to support one fact, you don't want to imply that other facts are also supported. But I am wondering if we should demand that editors insert {{citation needed}} for the other facts.

The new text is also really hard to understand: "Inserting new text with an inline citation into text that is not supported with an inline citation, requires that the cited text is clearly defined with a {{citation needed}} template placed before the new text (unless the new text is placed at the start of a paragraph)." IMO this is almost incomprehensible until you look at the example.

The new text could probably be rewritten to be easier to understand. But I'm wondering, are editors actually going to do that? Adding a source improves the verifiability of the sentence by supporting a fact. But we are demanding that editors add one or more {{citation needed}} templates, which makes it look less verifiable. That strikes me as a bit obsessive, and I doubt that anyone is going to it.

Would it not be possible to make the same point without demanding that editors add new {{citation needed}} templates? For example, suggest that they do something (e.g. rewrite the sentence) to clarify which fact they are supporting. – Margin1522 (talk) 05:52, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

The addition is wrong. It says that if a supported claim is added to the end of a pre-existing sentence that is not supported with a citation, a {{citation needed}} template must be added before the supported additon. But it is not required that all statements be supported by an inline cite; "the sun is bigger than the earth" is a well-known fact that does not require a citation. This whole new passage strives for a level of specificity in citations that is just not feasible in English and is not expected in quality writing. Some of the burden falls on the reader: if the reader cares which cite supports which fact, it is up to the reader to obtain the sources, read the specified pages, and figure out for herself which part of the sentence is supported by the source. I favor reverting [[User:PBS]]'s edit. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:02, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

You write "But it is not required that all statements be supported by an inline cite" yes that is true. Blue sky citations are not needed. The Sun and the moon examples are used throughout this text so please put to one side the idea that it is obvious, otherwise we have to change all the example. Here is a problem expressed using facts that would not be obvious:

"The girls came from Liverpool, England. They both had dark hair.^{source a}"

Let us suppose a new phrase is added

"The girls came from Liverpool, in north-west England.^{source b}" They both had dark hair.^{source a}"

Let us suppose that source b is a book about Liverpool not one about the girls. We have now lost text–source integrity. This can be fixed so:

"The girls came from Liverpool,^{source a} in north-west England.^{source b}" They both had dark hair.^{source a}"

Of course the other solution is as the sentence are now a summary of two sources to place the sources in other positions. Like this

"The girls came from Liverpool, in north-west England.^{source a;source b} They both had dark hair.^{source a}"

or

"The girls came from Liverpool, north-west England. They both had dark hair.^{source a;source b}"

It depends on exactly what is being inserted where, and what the editor considers the best solution, but which ever solution is chosen it can not be

"The girls came from Liverpool, in north-west England.^{source b}" They both had dark hair.^{source a}

as that looses text–source integrity. In a similar way if the same paragraph exists in a paragraph without a source:

"The girls came from Liverpool, England. They both had dark hair."

If source b is added then there also needs to be a citation needed so that it is clear that source be does not cover the girls:

"The girls came from Liverpool,^{[citation needed]} in north-west England ^{source b} They both had dark hair."

Jc3s5h, now that the example does not use a well know blue sky facts it is probably clearer to you. The inclusion of "^{source b}", implies that it supports all the facts in the sentence. Without a {{citation needed}} one has lost Text—source integrity, but equally no {{citation needed}} needs to be place at the end of the second sentence due the inclusion of "^{source b}" because its inclusion does not affect the Text—source integrity of that second sentence.

@user:Margin1522 you write "The new text could probably be rewritten to be easier to understand." My explanation is a first cut and no doubt it can be improved in the usual way (and I look forward to seeing your improvements). As to your second point "For example, suggest that they do something (e.g. rewrite the sentence) to clarify which fact they are supporting." In reality that is not what happens. If we followed your suggestion we could also remove the older:

• "Do not add other facts or assertions into a fully cited paragraph or sentence ...without including a source to support the new information."

These are really common errors that degrade Text–source integrity in lots of articles, and while rewriting might be desirable as often as not that is not what editors do. Instead the incrementally adjust a paragraph by making incremental changes. -- PBS (talk) 15:23, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

PBS's post does nothing to change my opposition. Text-source integrity is impossible and this addition is trying to hold the ocean back. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree in opposition with Jc3s5h. The project page addition is confusingly inadequate in this regard, as detailed somewhat in the examples above. It articulates requirements which do not solve all problems and which, if strictly complied with, create new problems by isolating previously supported content from their supporting sources by inserting intervening cite(s) not providing support to the newly isolated assertion. I think that the insertion does not provide a comprehensive solution to the problem it attempts to address, that the addition is both overly specific and overly complicated as it stands, and that making it more comprehensive would only worsen the overcomplication problem. Perhaps an essay or a help page addressing this issue more completely which could be mentioned in and wikilinked from this project page would be a better approach. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:39, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me Jc3s5h that your logic favours of deleting of the whole section. If that is not what you think, and I have misunderstood you then please explain further what it is that ought to be in the section Text-source integrity. -- PBS (talk) 12:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I think deleting the entire section would be better than leaving it as it was just before PBS's change. I think text-source integrity is good, but only if it can be achieved without turning a passage into a tangled confusing mess. It's just one factor to consider in good writing. My cardinal principle is that placing a citation does not verify a claim; readers verify claims by obtaining the cited source and comparing it to the Wikipedia passage; at that time, the reader will know which parts of the claim are supported and which parts are not. Citations are merely citation aids. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:17, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

text-source integrity was introduced into this guideline by SlimVirgin with Revision as of 22:11, 29 September 2010. She introduced a section describing the conecpt later the same year (8 November 2010). As the concept has been present in this guideline for four and half years. It helps new editors, who are not familiar with the concept of inline citations, and the particular problems that a collective work such as this has, meet the policy requirements of WP:CHALLENGE in a way that most more experienced editors consider acceptable. -- PBS (talk) 17:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Wtmitchell you write "create new problems by isolating previously supported content from their supporting sources by inserting intervening cite(s) not providing support to the newly isolated assertion." I am not advocating anything I am trying to highlight some of the problems that already exist in editing and maintaining Text-source integrity. What I am describing is what happens at the moment. Typically there will be a paragraph supported by a citation at the end of the paragraph. A new fact in a new sentence will be inserted into the paragraph with a citation. If a copy of the paragraph's citation is not added before the new sentence Text-source integrity is lost. -- PBS (talk) 12:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I removed that recent extension of text-source integrity, which made it hard to understand. Also, that section needs to be higher in the guideline, near footnotes. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 17:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

SV moving the secion up has been discussed before and rejected (simply because "Text–source integrity", "Bundling citations" and "In-text attribution" do not fit into the how to create a citation which is what most of this guideline is about. If you wanted to move it up where would you want to place it? The two examples that I added any you have removed document problems that frequently occur when inexperienced editors add text into a fully cited article, you said in the history "too long and confusing" (aside from deleting them completely!) how would you suggest shorting them and making them less confusing? -- PBS (talk) 19:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't recall it being rejected; I recall that you moved it without discussion, but I may not be remembering the discussion. I don't know how I would write it, but that long addition was too much. Even as written it's not great, but I'd need to think about it. The only point of the section is to remind people that cites need to be near the cited material or in some way flagged as belonging to it, so we don't need a lot of detail. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Basically I agree with that, and I agree with PBS's point. Editors should be aware that simply placing a cite at the end of the sentence can be unclear. Another idea might be to take a hint from the next section (Bundling citations) and say that the supported fact(s) could be mentioned explicitly in the footnote, like <ref>For the Moon's size, see {{cite book|.... – Margin1522 (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Margin1522, the section used to do that. It said:

When using inline citations, it is important to maintain text-source integrity. The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to check that the material is sourced; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed. The following inline citation, for example, is not helpful, because the reader does not know whether each source supports the material, or each source supports part of it, or whether just one source supports it with the others added as further reading:

Delia Smith is the UK's best-selling cookery writer.^[1][2][3][4]

The distance between material and its source is a matter of editorial judgment, but adding text without placing its source clearly can lead to allegations of original research, violations of the sourcing policy, and even plagiarism. Where you are using multiple sources for one sentence, or where you prefer not to add each source directly after the phrase or sentence it supports, consider bundling citations at the end of the paragraph with an explanation in the footnote regarding which source supports which point; see below for how to do that. Editors should exercise caution when rearranging material to ensure that the text-source relationship is maintained.

I can't remember when or why it was changed, but I think I prefer (something like) the above. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 16:18, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Adding ping to PBS. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 16:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

As the Avoiding clutter subsection notes, "inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become difficult and confusing." When trying to edit an article with a significant number of references, such as the Boston Marathon bombings article, it is very difficult to read and work in the edit space when all the reference information is in the midst of the text. Contrast that with the Knights of Columbus article. There are over 130 references, but all the data is at the very end, in the References section. I propose that we encourage the use of WP:NAMEDREFS in the body of the article, and place the full references in the References section. --Briancua (talk) 15:15, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I was with you all the way to "namedrefs" — whoa, all stop! You have identified a problem, but your specified solution (which implies list-defined references) is not the only one, and is not entirely acceptable because of certain problems. A better way (IMHO) is to use short cites in the text, but this is opposed by many editors who choke on the implied use of {{Harv}} templates. So where do you want to go with this? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

• Named refs suck because it is hard for the editor to know the name of a given reference or to find it if it is invoked several times and you don't know in which one the reference is defined. Harv shortrefs with the {{sfn|author|year|page}} template are much easier to work with and so are inline parenthetical refs. Also we do not have a house citation style and we dont need one.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:19, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I added a {{citation needed}} tag to the following statement in The Exaltation of the Flower:

In antiquity, the area was named Pharsalos, and became known for the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BCE, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey during the Great Roman Civil War.

That seemed an awful lot of information crammed into one short sentence to go uncited, especially as it's a GAN. To my surprise, Viriditas removed it and objected on my talk page that it was a "sky is blue" sort of statement that didn't require citation.

Is it really acceptable to leave such a statement uncited? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 09:47, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:When_to_cite#When_a_source_may_not_be_needed. As you already know, "the policy on sourcing is Wikipedia:Verifiability. This requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations." Are you challenging the common knowledge that Farsala was known as Pharsalos, that it was known for the Battle of Pharsalus, and that Julius Caesar defeated Pompey? The appropriate links were provided inline to common historical matters of fact, and frankly, that's all that is required. I've added an additional inline source at your request, but it's not necessary. Viriditas (talk) 10:31, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I would say that the statement Farsala was known as Pharsalos does not need a citation.

However that it was known for the battle of Pharsalus is less obvious. How well know was it? Only to the Romans, or also after the fall of the Roman empire in Medieval, Renaissance, or Modern European cultures? (I guess it was probably not know to the Chinese for that battle). It is also not very clear what the reference to the battle adds to this specific article whose topic is about 500 years before the battle. Arnoutf (talk) 11:15, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

It is very clear why the battle is referenced because the next sourced sentence explains that's why the archaeologist was in the town looking for artifacts. If you missed that, then you probably missed the internal links pointing to unchallenged statements of common knowledge about the name of the town and the battle, neither of which require sources. Viriditas (talk) 18:40, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

"Are you challenging the common knowledge that Farsala was known as Pharsalos, that it was known for the Battle of Pharsalus, and that Julius Caesar defeated Pompey?" Maybe this level of detail is common knowledge to historians, but it's not common knowledge to laypersons. I don't see how this can be defended on "unlikely to be challenged because it's common knowledge" grounds; it is in no way comparable to "the sky is blue" or, for a more subject-specific example of common knowledge, "The Roman Empire conquered much of Europe." Of course, seeing as you added a source for the claim, this particular example is now mute. But I would be wary of too liberally relying of the "unlikely to be challenged because it's subject-specific common knowledge" concept when delving into the fine details of a subject. And certainly, if someone has doubts and does challenge something, Wikipedia dictates that we must err on the side of providing a source. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 16:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The finer details, as you call them, are easy to verify in the parent articles. The editor did not have doubts, they simply asked why there wasn't a source. If I said, by way of passing reference that New York was named after the Duke of York or was once known as New Amsterdam, or that the French Revolution occurred on such and such date, while at the same time providing a wiki link to the parent article, that would not require a source either. Viriditas (talk) 18:40, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

In a GA, I think the sentence might need to be reworded. The exact location of the battle in 48 BCE is apparently controversial. According to Battle of Pharsalus#Date and location, most historians now think it was some distance from modern Farsala. So I think it might be best to reword the sentence to say "thought to be" and "near" Farsala and wikilink to the complete description. Or if a couple of cites are enough to cover it, and it's important enough to cover, cite it in the article. – Margin1522 (talk) 18:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The dispute about the location of the battle occurs within the area of modern Farsala. The source that I added (which has now been removed by the disruptive and childish OP) says that "Pharsalus is generally agreed to be the modern Farsala", while dispute occurs over the location of the battle within this area. Since there's consensus that the battle took place somewhere within this area, there's no no need to hedge the statement. Other sources I've reviewed say the same thing. Looking at the wiki article you refer to, it appears an editor has given undue weight to a minority POV that is at odds with the historical consensus, giving this so-called controversy more emphasis than the current sources. Viriditas (talk) 19:13, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

To give context to the personal attack above: I reverted the article to its state before I started copyediting after repeated accusations of having ulterior motives for having moved an image. It appears nothing will untagle me from Viriditas' unquenchable desire to do battle. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:41, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

@Margin1522: I will look at your proposal again a bit later when I have free time. There are a few more sources that lend additional weight to this matter. While your recommendation for precision is useful, the point isn't the exact location where the battle occurred, but the fact that the town's name is famous for this campaign, which is why the archaeologist in question was looking for artifacts. Does it really matter in this context how close or how far the battle occurred to the town? To me, it does not, but I'll look into this again to see if the wording can be improved. Viriditas (talk) 20:37, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

This is true. And maybe you could take the opportunity to mention that Pharsalus is the Latin name, as opposed to the Greek one. Some readers might wonder why the battle and town are spelled differently. – Margin1522 (talk) 22:47, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Following from a recent debate, a few quick questions;

Regarding republished sources (e.g. an AP news piece republished by CNN), several questions.

1. When citing republished pieces, is there any requirement to cite the original source? In other words, should one cite AP if AP is the original source?
2. Is there a policy anywhere which specifically calls out how to deal with citing republished sources?
3. If there is no existing policy, should we have one? Is this topic worth an RfC?

Thanks in advance for weighing in! NickCT (talk) 15:57, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I believe this is already addressed by WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT (which is followed by the also-somewhat-relevant section titled "Reprints of older publications"), which is a part of this guideline?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2015; 16:04 (UTC)

@Ezhiki: - Good reference cite. But I'm having trouble interpreting it for this situation. If I read an AP news article on CNN, then I feel as though I've got the news from CNN, not AP. So would I cite CNN? NickCT (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The cite, whatever form it takes, should mention both AP (since that's the source) and CNN (since that's where you got the news from). The actual implementation doesn't matter that much; as long as the formatting matches that of other cites in the article, it would be acceptable. Does this help?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2015; 16:42 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. In terms of the mechanics of our citation template slots, how do we document both? in this example |publisher=CNN |?=AP? Thanks again. Hugh (talk) 16:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

|work=CNN |agency=AP

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Trappist the monk. Can you look at this article. Would that be |work=NBC |agency=The Center for Public Integrity, or something else? NickCT (talk) 17:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I think so.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:51, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

WP:NEWSORG: "Most newspapers reprint items from news agencies such as BBC News, Reuters, Agence France-Presse or the Associated Press, which are responsible for the accuracy. The agency should be cited in addition to the newspaper that reprinted it." Hugh (talk) 14:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Ezhiki, I don't think SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT quite applies. That guideline is just for when one source is cited by another source, and you've read the citING source but not the citED source. Here we have a different situation. The two sources are identical to each other, like a syndication, and we've read both of them. SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT would suggest (second para) that the original source may be cited directly without credit. But Nick's question is, which source is preferable? I submit the original source is preferable, as it allows readers to more easily assess reliability. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ezhiki and DrFleischman: - Not sure about that Fleis. If for nothing else than the practical concern that the original source might not be available. If I get an AP piece off of Fox News, and the original AP material isn't readily available, what am I meant to do? Cite something I can't see? If we follow SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, at least we guarantee that an editor is citing material they have in front of them. NickCT (talk) 21:03, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You certainly aren't supposed to cite what you can't see. If you did read the news directly from AP, then of course there is no need to include CNN/Fox/ABC/etc. (although you might still choose to do so for convenience, if the AP link is not easily accessible but CNN or some other news outlet is). But if something is coming from AP but you can only read it on CNN/etc., then SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT definitely applies.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2015; 21:11 (UTC)

@Ezhiki: - Hmmmm.... Anticipating the follow up question; What if you can read it on AP, even though you originally read it on CNN? Is there obligation to go to the original source? NickCT (talk) 21:15, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Right, we're talking about cases when both sources are available online, no paywalls, and you've confirmed they have exactly the same content. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:22, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

While we're at it, why don't we go ahead and add another wrinkle to our scenario, say a wide differential in noteworthiness, say one version was on the front page of the NYT and another was on a news agency website. Hugh (talk) 21:29, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

"the original source is preferable, as it allows readers to more easily assess reliability" Long term, which is the hat we are expected to wear, easier access is afforded by the most noteworthy version, which would be most likely to be indexed and archived in an EBSCO or a ProQuest. The biggest agencies such as McClatrey may be indexed and archived, regardless of whether or not a paper picks them up, but in general a smaller news agency is not. Hugh (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The original source is the best; "most noteworthy" is an inherently non-objective standard that is likely to bring on endless disputes. "The WaPo is more important than NYT!" or "ABC news is more noteworthy than Brookings." Endless and unneccesary. Capitalismojo (talk) 01:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Guys, I think you are losing the big picture here. As long as both the original and the republisher are reliable sources and with all other things being equal, the choice of one over the other is guided primarily by practical concerns. Wikipedia does not employ citations to collect the "best" (or the "most noteworthy") versions out there; citations are used first and foremost to enable readers to verify the statements being made in the article. And if republished content is more easily accessible and comes from a reliable source, there is no reason why it can't be used over the original, but perhaps no longer easily accessible source (and that's one possible scenario where SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT comes into play). The needs of the readers normally outweigh more esoteric concerns (such as which of the two equally acceptable reliable sources is "better", and especially why it is better).
To return to Dr. Fleischman's scenario (when both sources are available online, no paywalls, and you've confirmed they have exactly the same content), in that case it would be just a personal preference. As long as a statement made in the article can be verified with one or another reliable source, your job is done. If both sources are equally accessible, editors shouldn't be changing one to another simply because they like the other one better. If circumstances change, then it's a different story, of course.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 12, 2015; 13:22 (UTC)

@Capitalismojo: Circulation is on our RS checklist WP:RSVETTING. Hugh (talk) 14:49, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

This is not about identifying RS, if it is we are all at the wrong noticeboard. Capitalismojo (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

"As long as a statement made in the article can be verified with one or another reliable source, your job is done." Thanks for your reply. I see what you are saying, but in practice in WP, once you get passed the reliability of sources, and the verifiability of proposed content, might you run into issues of noteworthiness, at which point there may well be a difference in noteworthiness between two similar/identical sources? Thanks again. Hugh (talk) 16:31, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

"Noteworthiness" of a source is not a criterion Wikipedians should consider; only reliability and suitability in a given context. If two otherwise reliable sources are similar/identical, one may still be somewhat superior for practical reasons (e.g., one is the original and the other one is a re-publication; one can be linked to and the other can't; etc.), but barring that, it makes no difference which one you end up using.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 12, 2015; 16:40 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience. I understand that in terms of reliability and verifiability, the topics of this talk page, other practical things being equal, it makes no difference, but respectfully beyond that, might "no difference" be just a little too strong, in that beyond reliability and verifiability, proposed content may have to jump through a hoop of noteworthiness AKA due weight, off-topic here perhaps, but would you acknowledge that in the context of a weight discussion, the front page of the NYT is different from a local/regional newspaper or wire service website? Thanks again. Hugh (talk) 16:56, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I kind of bundled (un)due weight and other similar concerns under "given context". It's not uncommon for a source to be reliable but not acceptable in some contexts (for example, a specific writer's biography is not a good source to use in articles about geography or history, even if it does mention some geographic/historical details in passing). In a similar fashion, I can very well imagine a situation when a local paper would be a better choice than the front page of the NYT. But these are the situations when other things are not being equal, and that always warrants some discussion.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 12, 2015; 18:38 (UTC)

OK, thank you for your reply. Hugh (talk) 18:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

For scientific papers, more and more are first put up on a preprint server like arXiv, and then peer-reviewed republished in a journal. Or they are first published at a workshop, and then published in a journal special edition. In those cases, I would nearly always cite the final version, as it has had additional quality control. I think that is a general situation - the same article may not meet WP:RS if self-published, but will meet WP:RS when picked up by a reliable publisher. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

If we are talking material that is just republished, not re-edited or changed in any way? First version or re-published? Capitalismojo (talk) 14:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

It depends. Most often the journal version will have minor or even major changes, but not necessarily so. Even if identical, the later version will have more layers of quality control. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I concur with Ezhiki; Wikipedia does not have a "best evidence rule", nor should it. Editors should feel free to cite to whichever reliable version of the source they wish. (I qualify that with "reliable" version because I also agree with Stephan Schulz that self-published drafts generally fail WP:RS, even if they are identical to a final version published by third parties.) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 15:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

And if a dispute arises over which of two identical reliable sources is better, what then? It's a wash? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:34, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

As long as its reliable... One thing with wire-service stories is that newspapers typically edit them. So the versions of AP stories that you see in different papers will often be slightly different. So if you get it from a paper you should cite the paper. And set the agency= parameter to indicate that it was a wire-service story. – Margin1522 (talk) 16:41, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Margin1522, I'm no journalism expert but that's news to me. I always thought syndicated stories were identical in every newspaper, but I have no evidence to back that up; it was just an assumption. Can you point me to something suggesting otherwise? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: Mainly experience. The headlines of course are different, and often part of the story gets left out due to space constraints. I used to read a copy editors' mailing list (Copyediting-L) and they would talk about how sometimes they would change this or that. Bill Walsh's site (The Slot) is great for the things that a good copy editor will do with a story. – Margin1522 (talk) 20:03, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Concur with Prototime & Margin1522 & Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky). And strongly agree with the comment "As long as both .. are reliable sources .. the choice .. is guided primarily by practical concerns." Frankly, I don't think this concept is explicitly called out in Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Say_where_you_read_it. Can we add it? Something like;

When referencing republished materials or materials duplicated at two or more different sources (e.g. a news article from an agency duplicated by various news outlets, exerts from books reprinted in other media, etc), as long as both the sources are reliable, editors should cite the source they originally got the material from, unless there is good reason to believe that one source is significantly easier to access than another. There is no need to cite the most original source.

Anyone think this would be worthwhile? NickCT (talk) 16:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Something like that might be worthwhile. We are exhorted not to make too many rules. The advice about the agency parameter is already in identifying RS, many of us missed that. Hugh (talk) 17:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic of this proposal. Why is "the source they originally got the material from" preferable? WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT is ultimately about verifiability; when both sources have been verified there's no longer a verifiability issue. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @DrFleischman: I'm not sure why there would be a dispute over which of "two identical reliable sources is better" (except, perhaps, that one source is more accessible than another). So long as a reliable source is cited, the material it supports is verifiable, satisfying WP:V. Whether the reliable source cited is an original version or a republished version doesn't affect the verifiability of the claim. If there ever were such a dispute (and it wasn't about accessibility), the original citation should be maintained because there would be no reason to disturb it.

That's a decent proposal, NickCT. In response to HughD's concern, NickCT's proposal states what is already the rule; since there's nothing in Wikipedia policies or guidelines that establishes a best evidence rule, NickCT's proposal is not making a new rule. But I do think there's valuing in stating the rule outright so that editors have clarity when this situation arises. I'd support adding something like NickCT's proposal to this guideline. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 17:47, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

In response to Dr. Fleischman's newest comment (didn't see due to the edit conflict): I agree with you that NickCT's proposal isn't necessarily justified by WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, since multiple editors could read and cite different versions of the same source; it's more of a WP:IFITAINTBROKE issue. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 17:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

"I'm not sure why there would be a dispute over which of "two identical reliable sources is better" (except, perhaps, that one source is more accessible than another)" Even after reliability and verifiability and accessibility issues are settled, proposed content also has to pass muster in terms of due weight. The context of a weight discussion is an example of when two similar sources may be different in noteworthiness. Hugh (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@Hugh: Due weight requires claims be presented "in proportion to their representation in reliable sources"; it does not speak the nature of the reliable sources themselves. If due weight is a concern, it would make more sense to cite to both versions of the source than to cite to any one particular version (and more sense still to cite to multiple sources that are completely different). –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:45, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your reply. Hugh (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)There is a dispute, and I do believe there's a small but real benefit to citing the original source, other issues (such as access) being equal. By citing the original source we make it clearer who was responsible for producing the content (i.e. who the author and editor worked for). Although there is consensus the outlet for the original source is reliable, there are sometimes questions raised about its bias, including possible COI (see WP:QS). Making it clear who produced the content helps readers to evaluate this for themselves. As I see it, following WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT just because it's related and already in the guideline would be a triumph of rote bureaucracy to the (slight) detriment of the encyclopedia. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:08, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: - re "sometimes questions raised about its bias" - If the original source is biased, and republisher isn't biased, why is the republisher publishing something that they feel is biased and/or inaccurate material? If you said something that I felt was biased, I wouldn't present that thing to some third party as my own idea. NickCT (talk) 18:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what the republisher's thought process is; maybe they think the original source is unbiased or maybe they don't. I'm not saying the original source is biased. I'm saying questions have been raised about the content producer's bias, and readers are less able to evaluate those questions for themselves when the identity of the content producer is obscured. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:41, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

"the identity of the content producer" That's what the agency parameter of the citation template is for WP:NEWSORG. Hugh (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Well that's interesting - I hadn't noticed that tidbit in WP:RS. So that's what Srich was referring to. In our case the content producer isn't exactly a news agency, and I still think if the original source is available it should be used instead of the republished version to avoid confusion. But that definitely mitigates the problem, not perfectly, but it's an improvement. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@Dr. Fleischman: If there is a COI that destroys a source's reliability, then per WP:QS the source is unreliable (except as a source about itself) regardless of which version is cited to, and thus the citation should be removed completely, not replaced with a citation to the original version. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:45, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not saying there's a COI. Concerns were raised about COI but they haven't been fully investigated. But that shouldn't matter, as it's a mere illustration of why this matters. My point is that original source should always be cited in these otherwise-equal situations so that readers know who the content producer is and can evaluate its bias for themselves. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

We've been discussing this assuming that the source, regardless of the version cited to, is reliable. But you seem to suggest that reliability cannot be adequately determined without reviewing the original version; is that right? That would create a very high threshold for determining reliability. And I'm not sure how that principle, if adopted, could be applied only in "otherwise-equal" situations given that reliability concerns trump access concerns. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 19:13, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Prototime, I guess I'm not being very clear. The reliability of both sources is established in this scenario. But that doesn't mean they're free of bias, per WP:BIASED. Readers should be informed who the content producer is so they can evaluate their bias. Let's take a hypothetical but concrete example. There is consensus here that Fox News sources are often reliable. But Fox News is a bit of a lightning rod; some readers don't trust Fox News and discount content sourced to it, and they have every right to do so. If Fox News produces a story that's then republished by another outlet, say, I don't know, WSJ, should we be citing Fox News or WSJ? We should cite Fox News, so that readers can make informed decisions. The same thing works vice versa: if Fox News republishes a WSJ story, we should cite the WSJ version. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:42, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Are we talking about citing or republishing? Hugh (talk) 19:46, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Your question is essentially about a different topic, the question of neutrality and bias is distinct from the question of which source to cite when a piece is republished. We simply cannot require editors to find the original source, that would be too much of an obstacle for many editors. What we can do is encourage using the original source, because that is simply the best scholarly practice. But the question of bias in either the primary por secondary publisher is not relevant in terms of what source to cite - that is a discussion to be had at the talkpage of the article, and decided in the given context. The function of the citation on the page is to show where the information comes from, we have no obligation to assist the reader in evaluating the source - rather that is an editorial question.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:49, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

This is exactly what we're talking about, except we're talking about when the original sources has been found and confirmed to be identical to the republished version. A decision must be made, whether you call it an "editorial" decision or otherwise, about which source to cite. I submit that source bias is very relevant to the analysis. Regardless, NickCT came here seeking guidance as well as possible clarification of the guideline. I don't think that was a bad choice of forum, as it appears to be the most relevant guideline. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:04, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: Forgive me if I am mistaken again, but it sounds like you're concerned that readers might think that a news story (or other type of source), regardless of its reliability, is still untrustworthy because it is biased--and that an indication of bias is who originally published it. I'm not sure it's wise to add another layer of trustworthiness on top of reliability, but assuming it is, let's discuss your proposal for a best evidence rule in light of the three definitions of source per WP:V--type, creator/author, and publisher. The creator/author of a news story might be biased, but that bias will exist regardless of who publishes it, so citing to the original publication won't help readers there. A publisher of the news story may also be biased, but not all publishers of that news story are necessarily biased, and each publication and republication of the news story is its own separate source because the publisher is different. For example, if a publisher that has a poor reputation for factchecking and a COI publishes a news story, then that publisher is biased and unreliable; but if that story is then republished by a publisher with a stellar reputation for factchecking and is neutral, then the second publisher is neither biased nor unreliable. It would be unfair to the second publisher, the author, and the editor to say that the story must forever be tainted because of its original publisher. Of course, the opposite scenario might also occur: an unbiased publisher's story will be republished by a biased publisher. Either way, the second publisher is an entirely new source, and readers can judge whether they think that publisher is biased just as they can with any other source. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 03:49, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

We cite the source we use. Good scholarship tries to find the original source and use that, but good scholarship is not a requirement here unfortunately, except for sometimes in the context of reviews.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:17, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your comments. I think we got the answers we needed about a thousand words ago: say where you got it, use the agency parameter, context matters. At some point before this thread devolves into pure venue shopping we should probably point out to the fine folks hanging at WT:Citing sources an earlier WP:RSN request WP:RSN#Column_on_Donors_Trust_on_.28but_not_by.29_NBC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HughD (talk • contribs)

Once again you're misrepresenting the consensus. Grr. Having re-read the entire discussion, I'm getting the sense there's a growing consensus that there should not be a one-size-fits-all rule for these types of situations. I.e.: when one source is a republication of the other, and the two sources are confirmed to be identical to each other in content and and accessibility, the decision as to which one should be used should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

DrFleischman - I take your point that there could potentially be situations where the application of this rule could raise POV concerns. That said there is no such thing as a perfect rule. No rule applies perfectly 100% of the time. That's why we have WP:IAR. You should ask yourself whether the guidance above is going to work 95% of the time to see if you're willing to support it as policy.

It sounds like you're not so opposed to just using the agency tag in our current situation. If that's the case, haven't we come to some resolution on this debate? Can't you support (or at least be neutral towards), the policy change? NickCT (talk) 14:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

You are both misunderstanding me. I don't agree with the consensus. I am simply summarizing it and abiding by it. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:32, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Summary: When a major media source is found to be a news agency report, add the agency parameter to the citation template. Hugh (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Summary of what? Seems like still more disruption to me. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 06:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

If you know - have confirmed - that two sources are indeed identical because you personally read and compared both sources, then you are free to use which ever you deem best. (Usually the original.) If you have not read both sources, then you can use only the one you read. That someone else claims such sources are identical is their knowledge, not yours, and unless it is published as a reliable source you cannot rely on it. This is especially important with news and other popular media, as the "news" outlets (print and visual) frequently carry stories from other sources, but rewrite them. DrF keeps going on about when "two sources are confirmed to be identical to each other in content", but I suspect that seldom happens (examples?), and he fails consider just how that would be known. There is no showing here of any problem. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

That is a reasonable position that I believe reflects the consensus. However I do ask that you do your homework before taking an unnecessary dig at me. Here (this vs this) are the two specific sources that were being discussed. You can confirm for yourself that they're identical. I do agree that this issue comes up so rarely that a change in the guideline is probably overkill. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A "dig"? It seems a fair statement of fact that you do keep going on about sources "confirmed to be identical" without considering just how that would be known. That you or I or anyone else compares two sources and finds them identical is a matter of personal belief. But such a finding does not arise to the level of reliable source such as can be cited in an article. And as you "agree that this issue comes up so rarely that a change in the guideline is probably overkill", why are we even discussing this? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:52, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A section under examples for video games should be added. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources#Video_games Bullets and Bracelets (talk) 19:52, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Another editor and I have differed (cordially, but differed) on whether it is better to add a title to bundled footnotes. I think the title helps readers know what exactly the sources support, especially if the cites themselves are nondescript. It also helps editors keep track of which bundles belong with which text, when shifting text and paragraphs. My colleague is concerned that bundle titles might reflect a pov. But that to me seems a makeweight argument: text is more likely to suffer the affliction of pov than a bundled footnote. In the field, I have seen both types of footnotes. Examples of naked bundles on the Sweet Briar College page; examples of titled bundles on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. It seems to me the latter are more more helpful and informative. Adding a descriptive title is also standard practice in many book endnote source lists. Any views on whether I should add here a clarifying "Titles on bundled footnotes are optional, but helpful if neutrally phrased", with the following example?ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 13:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

1. Comparison of sun and moon ^
   • For the sun's size, see Miller, Edward. The Sun. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1.
   • For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78):46.
   • For the sun's heat, see Smith, John. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2005, p. 2.

I think the tags used by ElijahBosley are too obscure; few editors will know how to use them. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Jc3s5h. I will switch from "Title" to "Footnote Descriptions" and see if that works better. I'll try a revision to the main page accordingly.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 12:46, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

An editor (Softlavender) has now reverted that change, within minutes of its being offered. Strange, as the editor has not favored us with comments here on the talk page. I will invite her to do so. Meantime, further to the point: the Chicago Manual of Style (mine is the 13th ed. of 1982) encourages reducing clutter by grouping footnotes or endnotes (15.62). With any note whether grouped or not, footnote or endnote—clarity for the reader is the objective. They say "avoid exasperating readers” with (for instance) simple unadorned ibid.’s or page numbers. Always explain; always describe; always say what the note supports. Likewise in bibliographies authors annotate entries, group books by topic, or provide bibliographic essays, so the reader can identify which books are useful for what purpose. Wikipedia often combines the traditional footnote, endnote, and bibliography. Whatever the Wikipedia citation function, the relation of the note to the text should be clear. Unexasperating. On grouped notes, descriptive titles serve this purpose. A large heap of citations without a descriptive title confuses the reader. And it disserves subsequent editors, when that note gets orphaned in the course of text revisions. Descriptive titles would certainly seem to be the best practice.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 14:09, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

• Bundled citations do not need an added heading any more than a single citation needs a heading. Adding a heading is POV. There is no need to editorialize groups of citations which substantiate the body text they are placed directly after, especially when the editorial comment can so easily be wrong or misleading or non-neutral. Citations speak for themselves and have their own titles and authors, and substantiate the text they are placed after in the body text of the article; they do not need headings added by editors. Elijah, you are an editor with less than 4,000 edits and should not be changing guidelines and policies without very extensive discussion and agreement from a wide number of editors, none of which you got here. Even if after extensive discussion and possible consensus, you should not make any changes yourself, but ask others to do so. Even the example for your case that you presented in your OP is of headings you yourself added to Wikipedia. Furthermore, this discussion is complicated by the fact that two different things are being discussed: footnotes and citations. Footnotes are actual notes (and may include citations, as they do in the examples in this guideline article); citations (such as those in the example you presented in your OP) are simply title, author, publication/publisher, date, and page number. Softlavender (talk) 14:49, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Responding to the objection "bundled citations do not need an added heading any more than a single citation does--" Single citations: in the case of newspaper articles the relevance usually is reflected in the headline. When citing books, if not self-evident from the title, best practice is to offer a short explanatory note or a quote explaining why that page of the book is relevant. Bundled citations in contrast group several seemingly unrelated sources. They may speak to one or more points within a sentence, or the entire preceeding paragraph. They need a description explaining their relevance. As to the POV issue--might this editor offer an example of a bundled footnote with impermissable POV from the field? All the descriptive titles this editor deleted from footnotes on the Sweet Briar College page had no POV, as two editors agreed on that talk page. The example given above: "Comparison of sun and moon" hardly seems POV. For fear of POV one might forbid all editing on Wikipedia, but if one is to allow editing, then POV seems hardly a legitimate objection to a title describing the purpose of a bundled footnote. The opposition to a useful practice for improving footnotes seems unwarranted, and as to the personal remark inaccurate, and uncharacteristic of this editor. This is about footnotes.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 14:30, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

First of all Softlavender is right when he points out that shouldn't change guidelines without assuring consent on the talk page first,

Second offering a short explanatory note in case of book pages is not wrong per se, but that doesn't mean it is necessarily a "best practice" and it is certainly not true that they would need to explain their relevance. The relevance (and meaning) of a citation tied to portion of a text by footnote is usually self explanatory, it sources that text either completely or a part of it. I. e. it doesn't really what the book title is, you know with or without and explanatory remark and completely independent of the title, that those pages source the text tied to the footnote.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

No offense, but claiming that adding a head as such is necessarily a NPOV/POV issue is plain nonsense. You can of course create editorialized headings that are problematic but i see no issues with headings as long as you avoid that.

As far as the guideline is concerned it should be restricted to minimal required set of standards and avoid unnecessary micromanagement of editors. So if an editor wants to provide a heading for his bundled citations, he should be free to do so as long as stays away from inappropriate editorializing. But the same goes for an editor who doesn't want to have headings for his bundled citations, he should be free to do so as well. If two different approaches clash in one article, there is already a principle to handle potential disputes and that states that the already established style of on article is maintained (in case of dispute).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:53, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your view Kmhkmh. Following up on your point "if an editor wants. . . "--would you object to adding the sentence in this guideline: "Titles on bundled footnotes are optional, but helpful if neutrally phrased"  ?ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 15:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Non neutral titles are not simply optional, instead they are strongly discouraged as they create the POV/NPOV issues Softlavender has mentioned above. So your literal formulation is no-go from my perspective. Generally speaking I don't really see the need for adding something to the guideline at all. As long as the guideline doesn't discourages titles for bundled citations in general, you should be be free to use them (provided you don't abuse them for inappropriate editorializing).--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:16, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks but I am not free to use them, because Softlavender deletes them as she did here (erroneously in my view). Her remarks above indicate so far as she is concerned they are not optional at all. That is why I felt it had to be stated that they are optional, rather than that being merely assumed. What do you think?ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 15:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Well this looks like a disagreement between editors at first glance and it is not a good idea to change a guideline simply to settle an individual dispute (in fact that is sort of a no-go almost). As far as that dispute over the citation format is concerned there are imho 2 rationales that should be considered.

• a) In a dispute the established format of that article is kept.
• b) Leave the decision to the main content providers/most active editors of that article.

My superficial impression is that b) might work in your favour while a) might not (you seemed to have introduced titles only recently). If the the two of you cannot agree on solution and neither one is willing to drop it, you should enlist third opinions or ask for some dispute resolution/mediation process.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:18, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I've nominated {{Article style}} for discussion. Since this template has parameters for things that would be present in nearly every article, such as citations, dates, and words that are spelled differently in the US and UK, the logical inference is that it should be added as an edit notice to almost every article. Followers of this page may have an opinion about whether any edit notice intended for use on nearly all articles is appropriate. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

• {{Article style}} was deleted on 28 March 2015 by Gadget850 as a T2: Template that unambiguously misrepresents established policy. --Bejnar (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I thought there was some merit to the concept of that template. The deletion (discussion) appears to have followed Jc3s5h's view that "[i]t's contrary to WP:MOS to require administrator action to change article style ....". Which seems rather odd, as 1) being a rather petty aspect, 2) not in accord with his statement here, and 3) the MOS not being a policy, but only a guideline. Imzadi 1979 commented at WP:Deletion review/Log/2015 March 29#Template:Article_style that this was "an improper use of WP:CSD#T2. The template did not misrepresent any policy that I know about." (Likewise for me.) I document all this for the sake of any future consideration of such a template. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:55, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I am working through an article where one of the primary sources is the project home page. The site, like all (IMHO) good web sites, breaks its material down into separate web pages. This leads me to wonder how to best cite it.

If this web site were published as a book, it would have multiple pages. I would not cite each page as a separate document, I would have a single "ubercite" for the book as a whole, and then refer to pages in it using sfn (a godsend).

But to be more accurate, each web page more closely conceptually matches a chapter in the book. In that case I would still use a single ubercite and use the loc= to refer to sub-pages.

But it appears neither such system can be handled by sfn unless I'm missing something here. Can an sfn have a loc or page ref that is an url to another document?

More generally, can anyone offer advice on how to cite such works, without having to have individual cites/refs in the body or refs section.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:54, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe sfn accepts |loc=. At any rate, it is just {{harv}}} (which has 'loc') automatically wrapped in <ref>...</ref> tags. Either way you can populate your text (notes) with stuff like "Smith, 2005, §25", all of which automatically link to your full citation for the source (e.g.: "Smith, John, 2005, Mucho flapdoodle"). It's not that the short cites (from sfn/harv) link to another document; they all link to a single full citation for that source.

Web pages often have sections, but I don't recall ever seeing anything that would amount to a chapter. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:35, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Can editors please clarify whether it is acceptable for a direct quotation to only have a mention of the author and book title without a linked citation with page numbers etc. A disagreement has just arisen on this issue between me and another editor on the Thomas More article. My understanding of the MoS is that all quotations should always have a linked citation with full details of the source. Am I correct in thinking this or not? Thanks, Afterwriting (talk) 10:51, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

This seems to be about a quote from a popular historian, that St Thomas More was "a particularly nasty sado-masochistic pervert." That seems like a rather controversial statement, to say the least. So it's likely to be challenged. The policy here is

Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate). (WP:Verifiability#Responsibility for providing citations)

So I edited that passage to add a {{page needed}} tag. Sources like newspaper articles don't require a page number, but cites to books usually do. – Margin1522 (talk) 13:16, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. Afterwriting (talk) 15:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The author's last name and a shortened form of the title is sometimes used for the short cite (instead of the more common name and year). But that should always point to a full citation, with the full bibliographic details of the source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:57, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point, especially since this book has two titles. The English edition (OCLC 560325149 has the title The statesman and the fanatic: Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, while the American edition (OCLC 644950439) has the title Statesman and saint: Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, and the politics of Henry VIII. I looked for the quote in snippet view of the American edition and couldn't find it. We really do need a page number and edition to verify if the author actually wrote this. – Margin1522 (talk) 20:19, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Just saw note about no changes without "extensive discussion", after I had "edited boldly!"

My goal was not to change any policy. I am an academic, and have done freelance editing, and my goal was/is to make some minor changes to make help pages a bit more accessible to non-programmer, and/or non-academic types, and faster/easier for everyone else. With that in mind, my specific goals were to:

1. Preserve existing information 2. Add brief overview of citations 3. Optimize clarity via order of explanation, consistency of terms, etc.

Please review to ensure I didn't alter any meanings, and see if I achieved my goal! - Then we can have an "extensive discussion" if necessary! Peacedance (talk) 03:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peacedance: you didn't include the name of the article which any editor concerned should go to to review Whalestate (talk) 17:36, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

@Whalestate: I'm not doing anything fancy here. I edited the article Wikipedia:Citing sources. Then, I wrote on that article's talk page (the one we are on) to invite anyone to review the medium-sized change I made on the article intro. The article is Wikipedia:Citing sources, the place to discuss concerns is this page, Wikipedia_talk:Citing sources. Every WP article has its own talk page. The only other relevant page may be the article's History page, where someone left a pretty unenforceable and not very noticeable, but heartfelt plea to discuss changes berfore making them. But that is not a really great place for discussion. Please tell me if I am misunderstanding your question. Peacedance (talk) 03:27, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

The article Socrates is suffering from an editor who insists on including quite large pieces of biographical material in citation footnotes. For example

"A Grafton, GW Most, S Settis (Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, where he is also Professor of the History of Classical Art and Archaeology c.2010) The Classical Tradition Harvard University Press, 25 Oct 2010 ISBN 0674035720[Retrieved 2015-04-17]" and

"SS Monoson (P Meineck Associate Professor of Classics at New York University c.2014, D Konstan - Professor of Classics at New York University and Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Brown University, USA c.2014) - Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (p.136) Palgrave Macmillan, 11 Sep 2014 ISBN 1137398868 [Retrieved 2015-04-17]".

Perhaps something could be included in the guideline to inhibit this. Myrvin (talk) 10:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I do not see any instances of this in the current version, so presumably the problem has been straightened out. I do see a lot of instances of sloppy editing by an inexperienced editor, but that is a different problem. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Winner 42,

Kindly check below for the citation that you asked for changes in Balija page and request to do approve the changes.

While seeking a Kshatriya varna position in the Census of 1901, a reference was made to the Srimad Bhagavatham, Vishnu Puranam and Brahmanda Puranam to seek classification as Somavanshi Kshatriyas.[1][35][36] The Balijas claimed to be descendents of Mahabali.[1]

The position of the Banas in Iron Age Vedic India Bana was also called Balijata.[37] The clan of Mahabali was called Bali-Kula and Bana was called a descendent of Balikula. It is also seen from several inscriptions that the Bana chieftains are said to have belonged to the Balikula clan only.[38][39] The interest of Bali Vamsa in general, and the branch ruling in Kisukad in particular, is provided in Epigraphia Indica, Volume 15, By Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar. It mentions an inscription edited by Dr. Fleet, Vol XIII, p.185, in which Turagavedanga (Thiruvenkata ?) is mentioned as the "scion of Bali race" as Kishkinda-puravar-sevara and Bali-vamsa-odbhava.[40] Another incomplete inscription was also found mentioning "Turagavedanga, the illustrious lord of the world-renowned Kiskinda, a best town, born in Bali vamsa race".[41] While referring to the origin of the Chalukyan feudatories in the 12th century, namely the Bappura family of the Bali Vamsa that ruled over Kisukad, an inscription speaks of its origins from the caverns ('Vala' or 'Bala') of Mount Kishkinda in connection to Parashurama's visit to the place. The inscription apparently indicates that after Parashurama's extirpation of the Kshatriyas, a new branch arose deriving their name from 'Bala'.[42] A grant dated 1142 AD mentions that Janmajeya gave a village to the Brahmans of Kodanganur. However, King Vishnuvardhana gave them a better village and settled them at Kellangere. They were of the Bali-vamsa, and are said to be 200 ornaments of Soma-drinkers.[43][44][45] Nagamangala is referred as Kellangere in inscriptions. An undated record of a Vijayanagar king Devaraya in the Mallikarjuna temple states that Kellangere was famous because of Bhattarakadeva (a Jain thirthankara) and a certain Varadayyanayaka of Kellangere caused the construction of this temple in the eastern part of the village with garbhagriha, sukhanasi, and rangamantapa, converting the village, a Shudravada into an Agrahara, and named it Varadarajapura. He restored the tank, named it Varadaraja Samudra and gave grants to the services of the god.[46] One of the earliest mention of the Banas in authentic historical records is from the middle of the 4th century when their king Brihad-Bana has been referred to as the contemporary of the first Kadamba king [47] The Balikula or Banakula chieftains ruled in various parts of India and Ceylon at various points in time. The Banas were a prominent feudatory family figuring in inscriptions of almost all the great powers of Southern India from the 4th century to the 16th century;[48] and were connected with most of them through matrimony.[49] The earliest mention of Banas in authentic history were as the feudatories of the Satavahana and early Pallavas.[50] The kingdom of Banas, Perumbanappadi, lay to the west of Andhrapatha. Andhrapatha developed into Andhramandala borne by a Bana grant of Vadhuvallaba Malladeva Nandivarman in AD 338.[51] The Bhagavatha Purana mentions one Andhra, who was one of the six sons begotten by the Rishi Dirghatamas on Sudesana, the wife of Bali, king of the lower gangetic valley. His patrimony lay down south and he gave his name to his people and kingdom. Presumably that was the Andhrapatha of Pallava Shivaskandavarman.[52] The Mayidavolu plates of Shivaskandavarman prove that Andhrapatha or the region of Andhra was made up of the Krishna district with Bezwada as the capital.[53] Various inscriptions describe the region ruled by Banas as a country to the west of Andhrapatha. They are also called rulers of Ganga, lords of Nandagiri (Nandi hills) and of Paruvipura.[54] However, the country ruled by Banas is also called Andhrapatha itself.[55] The Banas ruled in the regions of Kolar district in the 9th century.[56] The Banas had frequent matrimonial ties with the Pallavas.[57][58] However, the Pallava king Mahendradhiraja's conquest of the Banas, in the 9th century, in Puli-Nadu earned him the title "destroyer of the Mahabali-race".[59] Supposedly, their ties with the Pallavas soured after a Bana chief (persumably Vijayabahu Vikramaditya II), married Arinjigap-Pirattiyar, the daughter of Pillaiar (Junior Prince) Arikulakesari Deva of the Chola dynasty; and the sister of Sundara Chola Parantak II (AD 957-973).[60][61][62] After their defeat, they sought refuge in the Rashtrakuta court of Krishna III.[63] Subsequently, we find that Srivijaya, the dandanayaka or commander general of the Räshtraküta king Indra III (AD 915—917) (aka King Narendra, the grandson of Krishna III) is mentioned as belonging to "family of Bali-Kula" [64][65] {see Dânavulapâdu inscription }. The Banas were also feudatories of the Chalukyas.[66] A stone inscription from Kondupalli, Ananthapur district mentions gift of land when Vikramaditya Bali Indra Banaraja of Balikula was governing Turumara vishaya in the 23rd regnal year of the Chalukya overlord.[67] The Vijnapti of the Chirrur plates issued in the sixth year of Nrpatunga was Muttaraiyan, who also had the title Paranjaya. He was a Bana and is called a descendent of Balikula. He is also called Agatrayesa and Saila trayendra (names of the Trikuta mountain of the Himalayas). Rulers of eminence assumed the title Trikutachalapati to mark their valour. The Cholas, a little later, assumed the little Mummudi which in all probability refers to Trikuta.[68] The Punganur record mentions that Kadupatti Muttaraiya raided Koyattur in the reign of Bana Vijayaditta Virachulamani Prabhumeru.[68] Between 224 to 614 AD, Balikula nadu, the land of Banas, lay to the west of Andhrapatha. It initially comprised the modern Kadapa (Cuddapah) and Chittoor districts and was later made up of the Cuddapah and Nellore districts with Pottapi as its capital, a city that figured in many later Telugu Chola inscriptions. This dynasty was affiliated with the Tamil Chola dynasty [69]. An inscription in the Thirunageshwaram temple of Kumbakonam mentions "the heroic achievements in Simhala (Ceylon) of a Bana chief (name lost) ‘the ornament of Bali-kula’"[70][71][72]. The Bana chief, killed in a battle in Ceylon, was mentioned as the brother-in-law of a Chola monarch [73]. However, another Bana king Malladeva Nandivarman, is said to have been disloyal to the Chola authority and helped Sundara Pandya in his wars against the Cholas [74] [edit]Puranas and mythologies

The Padma Purana and the Shrimad Bhagavatham narrate the story of Jaya-Vijaya, the Gandharva doorkeepers of Vishnu who fell from Vaikuntha, due to a curse by four sages, and entered the womb of Diti, the wife of Kashyapa.[75] Jaya and Vijaya were given the option of being born on Earth seven times as devotees of Vishnu or three times as the enemies of Vishnu to be killed (given moksham) by the Lord Himself. Jaya and Vijaya chose the latter. Thus they were born first as Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, next as Ravana and Kumbhakarna, and finally as Sishupala and Dantavaktra.[76] As Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, they were killed by the Varaha and Narasimha avataras of Maha Vishnu respectively. In their second birth as Ravana and Kumbhakarna, they were killed by Rama and in their third birth as Sishupala and Dantavaktra, they were killed by Krishna. In the Shrimad Bhagavatham 11.12.3-6, Krishna mentions the following as having attained His supreme abode: Vṛtrāsura (Vritra), Prahlada, Vṛṣaparvā (Vrishparva), Bali, Banasura, Maya, Vibhishana, Sugriva, Hanuman, Jāmbavān, Gajendra, Jaṭāyu, Tulādhāra, Dharma-vyādha, Kubjā [77] The daitya Vrishparva's daughter Sharmishtha Daiteyi married Yayati. Vrsaparva, the asura, is thus the ancestor of the Kurus and the Pandus through Asurendra suta.[78] Asurendra is an epithet for Bali, the grandson of Prahalada [79] [edit]Controversies The publication "Genealogies of the Hindus, extracted from their sacred writings, pg. 48-49" mentions: Bali is supposed to have been the great-grandson of Kasyapa; but it is probable that Hiranya was a son of Kasyapa who married the daughter of Biswanara. Even on this supposition, it is impossible that Bali could be the great-great grandson of Kasyapa and many generations must have been omitted from the Tables; for Banasura the son of Bali was contemporary with Sri Krishna and his son Virat was engaged in the great war on the side of the five sons of Pandu. The Epigraphia Indica, by Bhandarakar, Volume 42, p. 37, informs us that Vishnuvardhana IV, the father of Vijayaditya II, is credited with a victory over certain Bali and is compared, on that account, with god Vishnu, in His fifth or Vamana incarnation.[80] [edit]Historical notes Historically, the Banas were devotees of Vishnu and minted coins bearing the Garuda, Shanka and Chakra insignia.[81] Their flag displayed a Blackbuck and their crest was a Bull.[82] Yashoda Devi mentions in her book The History of Andhra Country, 1000 A.D.-1500 A.D.: Administration, literature and society that "The Banas humbly state that they were appointed as the door-keepers by God Paramesvara".[83] An inscription from the Bilvanatheswara Temple of Thiruvallam that records the gift of land by a goldsmith to the temple with the approval of the king Mahavalivanaraya mentions: "Om. Obeisance to Siva! Hail! Prosperity! In the sixty-second year (of the reign) of king Vijaya-Nandivikramavarman, while the glorious Mavalivanaraya, - born from the family of Mahabali, who had been made door-keeper by the lord of gods and demons, Paramesvara (Siva), who is worshipped in all the three worlds,- was ruling the Vadu[gava]li twelve-thousand..".[84] A Bana queen is said to have built the Shiva temple at Nandi (Nandidurg) before 806 AD, and the Kalamukhas, adherents of the Pashupatha system were at that time established on the hill and places around it.[85] Hastings notes in the "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics" that the defeat of Bana by Krishna points to the supersession of the Shiva-cult by that of Vishnu, and refers to an early period. He brings out the tendency for cults to harmonise after such events, through assimilation of their devotion identities, which was reflected in the bearing of their crests.[86] Presently, amongst the Balijas, there are both Saivites and Vaishnavites, the latter being more numerous than the former.[87] [edit]Dynasties — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChandruRoyal (talk • contribs) 20:24, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I'm trying to work out how to cite this document. It is a Flash rendering of a booklet produced by a race organiser and I need to cite various pages within it. (Some of them are available separately as PDF files, but the links will go stale and robots.txt prevents using the Wayback Machine.) I can't work out the correct way to use the {{cite *}} templates in this case. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks. Relentlessly (talk) 09:14, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The original source is of an actual booklet, with numbered pages, so cite it cite as a book, using either {{cite book}} or {{citation}}. As you are referencing a web ("electronic") version you should also include an access date in case any questions arise regarding version. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that's great. Many thanks for your advice. Relentlessly (talk) 06:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I am pleased to be of assistance. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I've asked a question on the above over at WT:MOS. Aa77zz (talk) 17:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_in_the_last_place

Paragraph "Language Support" shows a typical reference to a computing source that is entirely web based.

A typical example is:

The C language library math.h provides the function nextafter to calculate the next double.^{[citation needed]}

and displays the "citation needed" at the end of the line.

However the link itself is the citation (and it known 'good'), so the comment is unhelpful clutter.

Adding a ref that would generate a superscript number means lots of duplication of information and doesn't help the reader at all.

(The other links are similar).

Please can someone advise how this should better/best be handled.

Thank you.

Paul A Bristow (talk) 13:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

There are two problems.

The first problem was with the "Unit in the last place" article as it existed before your edit today. As an example, the "Language support" section has three claims, and some editor marked each of them with the {{fact|date=March 2015}} template. You say "However the link itself is the citation". What link? All the links in that section, except Math.ulp(double) and Math.ulp(float) are links to Wikipedia articles, and Wikipedia articles are not considered reliable sources; they don't count as citations.

The second problem is that your edit today caused the citation needed template to be associated with a different claim than before your edit, but you did not resolve the problem with the original claim. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:33, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

OK - I see now that you don't allow 'self-reference' to anything in Wikipedia.

So does the float_distance reference 5 now meet the Wikipedia desiderata?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_in_the_last_place#Language_support

(The one below on ulp below does still need a citation, but this will only be possible when the next Boost version comes out and a full link can be provided).

(We still have a problem with providing an up-to-date link to the most recent version, but that's another issue that I am persuing elsewhere - now fixed). Paul A Bristow (talk) 11:52, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Some people here might be interested in these lists:

• English: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P587
• Spanish: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P654
• Italian: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P655
• French: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P656
• Polish: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P669
• Romanian: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P690
• Swedish: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P691
• Chinese: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P692
• Russian: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P699

These are the websites that are most commonly cited in each of the named Wikipedias. These were created to support testing of mw:Citoid automagic ref filling (currently available in VisualEditor; opt in here if you haven't already), but they may be interesting to people for other reasons, too. Also, if you're active in any of these communities, you might want to share the relevant links with editors at those wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Quite useful - and somewhat surprising that Google Books tops all others. Thanks. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Any comments on this and this as edits?

We have a policy that says we "should not attempt to change an article's established citation style ". As I read this, it's about the presented format of a citation for the reader. There are good reasons for this.

So is a revert, like the series noted above, a good or bad thing? If a new ref is added, and (for reasons of easy source code editing) it's laid out as a {{Cite book}} template within the {{Reflist}}, with line breaks between parameters, should that be reverted as "don't mix WP:LDR with normal named refs; and the article wasn't using LDR before, so please don't introduce it without discussion"? Is that preserving "an article's established citation style ", or is it just nitpicking too enforce the reverter's personal whim upon other editors? See also User talk:Andy Dingley#The Bristolian (train)

Thanks for any comment Andy Dingley (talk) 09:24, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I certainly don't read CITEVAR as only referring to the style as visible to readers. Like most editors, there are some styles/templates I can use and others I can't. If a driveby editor changes the style (normally without changing any actual text) I would be prevented from making future edits consistent with the "new" style. This has happened in the past when I did not spot a template bandit until after many intervening changes. Equally CITEVAR doesn't imo support reverting a useful text addition using a different citation style (I have to admit I sometimes do these). I'm not wholly clear what's going on here, & can't be bothered to excavate, but I think I agree with the reverter, as you seem to be templating up an existing ref, no? This is a bit clearer, & I agree with him. Johnbod (talk) 11:21, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

As stated already, this was the addition of a new reference. I have a narrow interest and a large personal library. So I make a lot of edits that are to add new references. I find that a couple of other editors (not many, but these few are persistent) keep changing the format of my added references.

The point in this particular case was about list-defined refs (WP:LDR), where the bulk of a citation is placed at the foot of the article, making it easier to find for future editors. In both cases, it used the same {{cite}} template. As LDR is invisible to the reader, and irrelevant to anyone editing the other refs (it affects each ref separately, not "the article" overall), there is no reason at all it should fall under CITEVAR, other than an admin pulling the "my way or the highway" attitude.

As to your other point, then editing should be accessible, so technical arcana are a problem. However I don't see this as a problem for editing existing template calls. It's quite easy for someone who has little idea about templates to take an existing example and change its parameters - changing a page number, title casing a pasted-in uppercase title, turning a newspaper name into a wikilink, that sort of thing is obvious. Easier even than remembering the Harvard ordering for citation parts, or hand-editing MARC. I agree that the vast pile of {{efn-lr}} / {{refn}} / {{sfnp}} / {{harvid}} / {{harvnb}} / {{harvp}} can be confusing as to which to choose, but even there: once added it's quite easy to work with them or change the parameters.

As to whitespace in ref template calls, then this has clear readability benefits for future editors having to do manual editing. A linebreak between parameters is clear and size-efficient. One byte for a linefeed character consumes less space than the space padding that many editors place around the param bar |. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:59, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm afrwid that I don't regard WP:CITEVAR as applying just to the visible citation as presented to readers, but to the citation markup as well. Converting a manual citation to a Cite XX template that produces the same output (until the template changes, at least) is a change in citation style. I happen to like LDRs and on several occasions when I have drafted an article using LDRs throughout I placed a note on the talk pagr not to change this without discussion leading to a changed consensus. Moreover, LDRs are not an unmixed benefit -- they are not friendly to section editing. There is no way to add a new ref using LDRs without either editing the entire article (usually a bad idea for large articles) or else having a cite error present briefly. As for line feeds in a cite template, i would like them in an LDR, bit not inline. They separate the parameters nicely, but they take up far too much vertical room in the edit box for my taste. Diferent editors have different prefernces, but local consensus should govern on any given article. DES ^(talk) 12:24, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I believe consensus is required to use LDR in an article that does not yet use that technique. Help:List-defined references says "After gaining consensus, reference styles may be converted from or to List-defined references". It also states "List-defined references and references defined in the body of the article may be mixed on a page - this is not a technical limitation of the template. However, this may be confusing to ongoing editors."

In the "Avoiding clutter" section of this guideline, it mentions LDR as a method to avoid clutter, and goes on to say "As with other citation formats, articles should not undergo large-scale conversion between formats without consensus to do so." Jc3s5h (talk) 12:30, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Help-namespace pages are not guidelines, and few watch list them or pay much attention to their content. A statement like "After gaining consensus," in of them is just someone pushing their "don't touch my pet citation style" stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:07, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Andy Dingley, since I wrote CITEVAR originally, I'll tell you two facts:

• I did not intend for it to cover relatively minor issues of wikitext formatting. I don't recall thinking specifically about LDR formatting at the time, but issues such as whether citation templates are given in one long line or with each parameter on a separate line were, in my mind, too trivial for anyone to care about.
• A majority (sometimes slim) of editors have always interpreted it as covering absolutely anything and everything, down to unimportant details like whether there are spaces next to the equals signs in citation templates.

I therefore conclude that your cause is hopeless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I think you're probably right. It seems in practice to depend far more on adminship, projects or our other various cabals. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• So what about a massive change like this, to existing refs? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

That I would consider to clearly fall under by WP:citevar. Changing to named references is easily the most annoying thing that someone can do if they are not the main author because it makes it really difficult for the main editor to subsequently change the citation since there is no way of knowing which of the times it is called it is defined and one has to comb through the entire article to find the definition of the named ref when one needs to change it.

·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Named refs in the ref list are easy to work with though. It's when the definitions are "somewhere" in the article body that I would agree it's a pain. The main reason I favour them in a list now is to avoid the problem of searching whole articles for the matching name (which makes editing by section impractical too). Andy Dingley (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

No because it stillr equires the author to memorize the arbitrary names of the references. That is why using the sfn template is much better, you only have to memorize the author name and year.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:13, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Of course, the article before conversion to LDR already had several named references, so there was no "changing to named references". I always find it amusing that everyone is perfectly amenable to adding named references (allowing a definition to take place almost anywhere in the text), because it's the obviously most sensible way of using the same source more than once; yet almost everyone is scandalised by the logical step of collecting those reference definitions into the References section, where they should belong if designers of mediawiki software had had any common sense in the first place. --RexxS (talk) 01:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

• It is a clear misreading of the intent which is that it is the style used by the original author. The purpose is to make sure that the citation style is one that is manageable for its main contributers so article writing isnt stifled by making style choices that the main authors are not familiar or comfortable with using.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

What is "style" though? Presentation or source code? Andy Dingley (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Both.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:08, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Maunus, since I wrote CITEVAR, I feel like I am unusually qualified to comment on what its intent was. I hereby declare that "make sure that the citation style is one that is manageable for its main contributers" was not one of my considerations, much less a primary intention. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Whatever your initial considerations may have been, I agree with Maunus that this is an important one for this guideline. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:15, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

As with all such documents, it is what it says, not what it intended to say, that matters. It achieved concensus, and who can say what all the intentions of those supporting it were? I daresay things were much simpler in those distant days, & unmanageable citation styles mostly just a gleam in the eye of some editors. Johnbod (talk) 13:52, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) WhatamIdoing, thank you very much for clarifying that. I've been saying this couldn't really be the intent for a long time, but some handful of editors just will not listent. I'm not swayed by the above argument by Nikkamaria, which amounts to "I don't care my interpretation is wrong". It simply can't be true that CITEVAR's point to is to make things comfy for one particular editor. The entire rationale of ENGVAR and CITEVAR both are reduction in page churn that dirupts articles for readers and editors alike, and an arbitrary decision that when consensus cannot be reached what the best option is, default to first major contributor. It's not because first major contributors have more rights or because their opinions are being valued more, it's just something that is easy to determine. The goal line one a football field is not marked where it is for some objective reason, it's just arbitrary so there can be a rule at all that people can agree on. In our case, this rule is turning out to be more problematic than anticipated (especially with ENGVAR), and the entire notion probably needs to be revisited. Very often there is a rationale, namely the nature of the subject itself, that indicates what the proper ENGVAR and CITEVAR should be, and consensus on that should normally not be difficult to achieve. But no one even tries any more, because too many over-controlling editors scream "first major contributor! hands off!" until they get their way. It's a bad choice because it falsely empowers a single editor to lord it over an article (or at least they think it does, and too often it does in practice because others get tired of arguing against the screamer).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:07, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

My argument is rather that the interpretation of the guideline is determined by the community and may well have evolved from what the original author intended. Indeed, this seems to mesh nicely with your subsequent arguments regarding first major editor. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:16, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Changing from LDR to inline refs and vice versa is a change in citation style, or so the current consensus is. I faintly lean toward supporting that consensus, but not for stubs. None of this applies to stubs. Another definite change of citation style is changing from Harvard to Vancouver, or whatever. Changing from copy-pasted text references to citation templates that mimic the same output is emphatically not a change of citation style, it's routine cleanup. Using the templates has benefits, including metadata generation, parseability by bots and other tools, etc. Converting to them is part or normal wikification. Changing citations that are not consistently in a WP-recognized style is expressly permitted: It's "imposition" of a style where there was none before. This is also true of imposing a WP-recognized style on citations that, although consistent, are not in a recognized style. Other minor cleanup such as making the name of a <ref> more sensible, making the entire citation more readable by normalizing the spacing to what the rest of the article is doing in citations (or imposing one spacing where there is no consistency in this regard), imposing a consistent parameter order, putting quotation marks around name values, adding name values to citations that don't have them but which are likely or planned to be reused for additional material, correcting misused parameters, etc. are not changes of citation style, but routine cleanup. We need to clearly state this in the guideline, to forestall an never-ending river to WP:LAME revert wars over this kind of trivia by inveterate page WP:OWNers. Being super-extra inclusive with regard to what CITEVAR encompasses is absolutely not worth this level of constant strife.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:07, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

No, the fact that you start talking about the "benefits" of your preferred styles give the game away. What are "WP-recognized style"s? There's no list. If you keep encountering "constant strife" etc, it'll be because you keep breaching the guideline and failing to accept this. Johnbod (talk) 13:48, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I can see your reasoning, but the funny thing is, whenever people try to change CITEVAR, there's firm consensus against boldly switching between plain-text and template-based citations (so that's explicitly in the guideline as an undesirable action). But the stuff that you think is probably no big deal, like normalizing the spacing or changing the parameter order, is too contentious to add (either way), because editors don't agree on whether that's okay or a CITEVAR problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The digitized newspaper service Trove of the National Library of Australia has an inbuilt facility to supply a Wikipedia-formatted citation for any article they have in their collection. However, there are a lot of problems with it. For example, here's the generated citation for an article in the 25 July 1932 edition of the The News (Adelaide):

{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129820832 |title=WINDFALL FOR NURSE. |newspaper=[[News |News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954)]] |location=Adelaide, SA |date=25 July 1923 |accessdate=14 June 2015 |page=1 Edition: HOME EDITION |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

The principal problem of course is that the wikilink is completely wrong; also the formatting of the newspaper name unnecessarily includes the date range the paper was published, it fails to use the 'edition' parameter of the template (and there a couple of other minor issues). And also, is it really helpful to have the 'publisher' parameter as National Library of Australia? Wouldn't 'via' be a more appropriate parameter? Did anyone officially consult with Trove on the formatting of these citations? This isn't an isolated case - another example would be the Adelaide Chronicle, where a Trove-supplied citation looks like this:

{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article87168526 |title=Advertising. |newspaper=[[Chronicle |Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954)]] |location=Adelaide, SA |date=21 December 1895 |accessdate=14 June 2015 |page=1 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

(This is from http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/87168526 - just click on Cite to generate it).

And there are many other examples, from different newspapers. I've been fixing a lot of these; I had been assuming that they were down to the quirks of one or two editors, but in fact they are being generated by Trove as Wikipedia citations. Action need to be taken to sort this out ASAP, but I'd like to check first whether there is some official channel of communication between WP and Trove before I take it up with them myself. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:26, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

@Colonies Chris: Trove has a forum apparently monitored by staff. That it might actually be a good method to get this message in front of the relevant personnel is indicated by the fact that a member posted a bug report there about the Wikipedia cite generator (though a different specific issue than we're discussing here), and a "staff moderator" responded to the member within two days that the issue would be passed along. See here. I just signed up for an account there to see if it was problematic but it was no problem at all. I suggest something along these lines:

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:42, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this detailed response. I've discovered that some of the same points were raised with Trove as recently as March this year, without any success (see User_talk:Doug_butler#Citation_formatting). I'll try submitting these points again, using the model you've suggested. If Trove are unwilling to do anything about it, we'll need to offer some clear guidelines to editors that those generated citations are not to be used - I've fixed many hundreds of them over the last few weeks, before discovering that I wasn't simply fixing a historic issue but in fact trying to keep up with an ever-expanding problem. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:18, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome. Maybe the posting to the forum, rather than to the email submission as was done in March, will result in more eyes on it as well as the higher scrutiny a public conversation versus a private one often result in.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

User:Kerry Raymond might have some ideas about how to contact Trove, or maybe User:The Interior could look into it. They probably didn't know about options like |via= when they set these up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I do know how to contact them. This issue of improving the format of these citation has been raised with them a number of times, but the response is usually "good idea, but we are pretty stretched for resources right now" (which is their response to most feedback). But maybe this is not an ideal time to approach them. The new Visual Editor has no way to add these pre-formatted Trove citations. For anyone not familiar with the VE, it is inconsistent in regard to the use of markup. There are parts of the VE where markup is forbidden (such as in citations) and parts of it where markup is necessary (e.g. in fields of templates). From my perspective, it makes it a bit hard to approach Trove to say "please please fix your Wikipedia citations" when WMF engineering efforts are (intentionally or not) deprecating the use of these Trove citations. I am a believer that the VE is the right direction to go in order to make contributing easier for more folk, but it has to have a way for these folk to incorporate markup supplied to them by tools (like Trove, uploaded files in Commons, spreadsheet-to-table tools etc) or mentioned in many instructions around Wikipedia. Kerry (talk) 00:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Just to add that I added a comment on the Trove forums in support Colonies Chris's request. One thing I do note in the response is that Chris's request is obviously a bit different to some of the others they have received. Perhaps we should have one of the unconference sessions at Wikiconference Australia 2015 in October to get everyone interested in this topic to sit down and agree on what we'd like to see from these citations. Obviously if we are all asking for slight variations, it will make it harder to get a result than if we can have a more unified position on what the ideal Trove citation would look like. Kerry (talk) 01:25, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Newspaper citations generated from ProQuest have a curious format: here's an example, from Something of Value:

<ref>Grace Kelly's Future Blooming; Lana Turner Film Found by Thorpe
Schallert, Edwin. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 01 Apr 1955: B11</ref>

There's often (but not always) an embedded <newline> after the article title (I've simulated it here with a <br>), and of course the formatting doesn't conform to WP-recommended style at all, and it has this mysterious "(1923-Current File) " whose significance is far from obvious - it's not specific to the LA Times - citations from other papers have it too. See, for example, in Sexton Foods <ref>Sherry Building Is Sold In Queens :Plant in Long Island City Bought by Investors. (1962, January 30). New York Times (1923-Current file),p. 44. Retrieved November 1, 2010.</ref> And in that example, the date format is not WP-standard either. I don't have a ProQuest account, so I can't follow this up - does anyone else know anything about it? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:59, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the 1923-Current File is attempting to indicate copyright status; the 1923 at least makes that obvious. I'm unsure about Current file. --Izno (talk) 13:40, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I thank that was meant to indicate that the cite is in their file of works from 1923 to the current day, the 1923-Current file, as opposed to, say, the 1870-1922 file. DES ^(talk) 11:32, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

That's plausible and not mutually-exclusive to my supposition. --Izno (talk) 13:24, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I am trying my best to stay faithful to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, but I cannot find any proper format for a source I am citing which was found in another source. If someone can help me, that would be much appreciated, as the sources I am using to include into Wikipedia articles are largely non-fiction books on history and United Nations reports which pull their facts from external cited sources very often. Skywalker Kush (talk) 04:07, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Could you relate some details on what you are trying to cite? I looked at your contributions and could see attempts to edit related to this. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:19, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Skywalker Kush, In general if you read a source "Marks" that quotes another source "Spencer" you cite Spencer as "Spencer quoted in Marks" (with full bibliographic detail for both Marks and Spencer). However if Marks is a secondary source that is itself sourced to Spencer, but you don't want to quote Spencer, merely support a fact stated AS a fact in Marks, you can simply cite Marks, you don't need to cite the various sources that Marks used. If Marks is a WP:RS, s/he is trusted to evaluate sources, and Marks's sources need not be cited to confirm Marks's statements. Only if you want to quote Spencer, or to use Spencer because Spencer is a source of higher reputation, need you sues the "quoted in" form. Or if you wish to indicate that the ultimate source of a fact is Spencer, but not to quote Spencer, you can use "Spencer, cited in Marks" instead. That latter form might also be used when Spencer is in fact a weak source, and you want to point out that the staement rests only on Spencer's authprity, not really on that of Marks. DES ^(talk) 11:28, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

In this situation, I'm citing a fact from a journal article which was cited in a book I am reading. I've had to spend some time on search for examples where other people did something similar, and I think I have the basic idea. I believe this is basically what I would have to do:

<ref>{{cite journal| Journal}} cited in {{cite book| Book}}</ref> If I did something wrong, please let me know. Skywalker Kush (talk) 12:31, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Skywalker Kush, for supporting anything except a direct quotation, then it's much simpler. Did you (personally) read the journal article?

If yes, then your citation can look like this: <ref>{{cite journal| Journal}}</ref>.

If not, then your citation must look like this: <ref>{{cite book| Book}}</ref> – and that's it. You don't even need to mention the journal article in that situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, really? I don't need to cite where a fact came from that I found in a book, just the book itself? Skywalker Kush (talk) 01:59, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Unlike a scholarly article, we're not trying to trace the origin of an idea. We're only trying to keep track of where the editor found the claim. If you've only read the book, then you should cite only the book. Also, if you're writing about health-related claims (a common source of "journal article cited in a book" issues), then please squawk, because I think you'll find that it's (unfortunately) a bit more complicated than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Strictly speaking you are not citing "where a fact came from", but "who asserted such-and-such is a fact". More particularly, where you saw someone assert something as a fact. And the primary rule here is say where you read it. If Smith discovers something, which you read about in Jones, you cite Jones. But you can also do a citation like "Smith ... cited in Jones ...." This credits the original discoverer, but also shows you are relying on Jones' interpretation (and who knows, he may have gotten it wrong). Whether you use {{cite journal}} or {{cite book}} depends only on the type of the source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:43, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

As seen here, I got into a discussion with Synthwave.94 about consistent citation styles for WP:Featured articles and adhering to WP:CITEVAR. When I told Synthwave.94 that it is generally best to adhere to WP:CITEVAR, Synthwave.94 pointed to WP:Article size for reasons to change a citation style, and stated that editors don't seem to care about WP:CITEVAR and that "clever editing" can prevent editors from citing WP:CITEVAR when the reference style is changed. Since no one else weighed in on that discussion (well, except for this latest comment I tweaked; actual tweak here), and Synthwave.94 seemingly will continue to ignore the WP:CITEVAR guideline, and thinks that I am making a big deal about it, I have brought the matter here for further input. Looking at this discussion that Synthwave.94 had with IndianBio and De728631, I see that Synthwave.94 has been challenged on a reference style matter before. There might be other examples. Maybe Synthwave.94 has been reverted on reference matters more than Synthwave.94 thinks. Flyer22 (talk) 01:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Failures to follow CITEVAR only make editing and reading articles harder for all involved. Alansohn (talk) 02:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Flyer22, the issue you're mentionning is not really relevent here. I only wanted to change the template used for the German singles chart because the website used to support German peak positions doesn't work any longer and I wanted to solve the problem. However, as you can see on my talk page, I was thanked for this because other editors are now aware of the problem generated by this sudden change. On the other hand, as I mentionned here, WP:CITEVAR doesn't seem to be respected by many editors (I often edit articles watched by several other editors to change/complete newly added references without being reverted at all, for example) and this guideline seems to lead to an obvious ownership behaviour and all the negative sides linked to this disruptive behaviour. Synthwave.94 (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

No it's cite bandits who are disruptive, though they will sometimes get away with it. Don't kid yourself: asserting CITEVAR is not ownership behaviour. You protest far too much! If you think it is such a great idea, ask first, as you are supposed to do. Sometimes people won't mind, but often they do. The most important thing about changing citation styles is that those who actually add to the article remain able to do so. Johnbod (talk) 03:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree that the other issue is unrelated.

In the Michael Jackson edit, it appears that Synthwave.94 is replacing some (not all) citation templates with manually formatted citations, and replacing manually formatted short citations with {{sfn}}. Both of those actions are prohibited by CITEVAR without explicit consensus, especially because those are both actions that have long and hostile histories behind them.

However, other changes, such as turning bare URLs into fully formatted citations (using citation templates), are obviously helpful and should be encouraged.

WP:SIZE is about what the reader reads. But even if it were about the database size for the markup, it'd be silly to remove {{cite web}} from one citation on the grounds that it makes the file size slightly larger, while adding the same citation template to another—and in terms of the overall database, making any change to an article makes the database larger, even if the change is to make the current revision be shorter than the previous revision. And mixing the styles means that the page no longer meets FA standards. If you use {{cite news}} for one news article, then you need to use it for everything. These just aren't the same style:

• Jermaine Jackson reveals escape plan for Michael at the Wayback Machine (archived February 24, 2012). Associated Press. September 10, 2011.
• "Jermaine Jackson reveals escape plan for Michael". Associated Press. September 10, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2011.

One adds quotation marks, which the other omits; one italicizes the wire service, while the other doesn't. This does not meet the basic rule of using the same style throughout the article.

Furthermore, the URL changed from the Associated Press to (an archive of) news.yahoo.com, and news.yahoo.com is one of the least stable URLs for news sources, and not all editions of wire services' stories are identical. That kind of change, while it seems entirely helpful, really should not be made without carefully checking the newly linked source.

We need people who improve citation formatting. I'm glad that Synth is helping out with that work. This example really just shows how difficult it is to do perfectly in some cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Synthwave.94, from what I know, Alansohn, Johnbod and WhatamIdoing have it right when it comes to WP:CITEVAR. While the discussion you had with IndianBio and De728631 is unrelated to this matter, I pointed to it to as an additional example of how you go about reference matters. At Talk:Michael Jackson#Reference style, you stated, "[WP:CITEVAR] seems to be respected by a small number of editors, doesn't seem to be useful to improve the quality/readibility/accessibility of an article, and seems to be heavily linked with the ownership behaviour anyway (a sensitive case that you should be aware of and which is not welcomed over Wikipedia articles because of the problems it generates)." And like I mentioned there, that misguided notion is exactly why I brought this matter to Wikipedia talk:Citing sources. Flyer22 (talk) 04:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: : The Wayback machine template unfortunately requires some manual additions (authors, date, publisher, agency,...) but archiving urls is essential to avoid dead links and unverifiable sources. It's also a way to reduce the weight of an article. Also:

• There's no reason to italicize "Associated Press" (see corresponding article) while magazines,... should be italicized (and you can see I did it manually).
• I imagine the fact this template doesn't used quotation marks can be modified on the corresponding template.
• Regarding the source itself, the original link was dead so I searched the Internet to see if another website posted the AP release and I decided using an archived reference from Yahoo! because it is not considered an unreliable source.
• Some sources, including recent AllMusic urls and The New York Times, often redirect to other links when they're archived or are simply "badly" archived (eg. The New York Times logo appears over the written text and it's impossible to read it), so I didn't archive these specific references but I provided more recent links, especially for the AllMusic references. And as archive.is is blocked by Wikipedia I can't use any other form of archives for these specific websites.

I agree with you that it's a hard task but, as you can see, I archived as much references as possible to keep the most uniform citation style thoughout the article. And I'm perfectly competent to use the template correctly. @Flyer22: : But would you make me believe that the both of them can't be linked together ? Synthwave.94 (talk) 04:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Synthwave.94, what do you mean by your "both of them can't be linked together" question?

Also, your WP:Ping didn't work, but there is no need to WP:Ping me to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 05:09, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

And either way, as noted, one of the reasons that I brought this discussion here is because you essentially stated that WP:CITEVAR is not important, have indicated that you don't follow it and that you commonly change the citation style of articles because of WP:Article size issues and because editors don't seem to care about WP:CITEVAR. Flyer22 (talk) 05:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Synthwave, are you aware that you can archive links without using the badly inadequate Wayback template? Because then you can both have the archive link (which is good) and also keep a consistent citation format. This isn't an either-or thing. You can have both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• CITEVAR is extremely important. I use the citation style that has been implemented by the first major contributor, even if I think it is an inferior style. When I find someone has changed it, I'll revert and have them gain consensus, per policy. One editor cannot just arbitrarily change citation style. GregJackP Boomer! 07:05, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
• @Flyer22: : I mean that WP:CITEVAR may be linked to a ownership behaviour anyway. Synthwave.94 (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Synthwave.94, I didn't state that WP:CITEVAR is never linked to ownership behavior; it can be linked to it in some cases, but I don't think WP:CITEVAR concerns ownership behavior as much as you think it does. Flyer22 (talk) 00:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

• @GregJackP: : So according to you, it means that if there's no major contributor to a page, the style can be changed without any problem ? And how is it "important" if the main contributor of the page doesn't care about the citation style ? You're not proving anything at all about the importance of this "guideline". Synthwave.94 (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

That is not what GregJackP said. If you want to change the citation style from an existing style you need consensus first. Its as simple as that.It is not ownership that when two people disagree about something that is a question of personal preference and one of them wrote the article and the other didn't then we defer to the person who did, untill there is a consensus that another choice is preferable. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:58, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

And if the main contributor of an article doesn't revert you, doesn't disagree with you and accept your changes (something which happens to me a huge number of times) ? It proves WP:CITEVAR is not important at all. Again it seems to me that this guideline is heavily linked to a ownership behaviour. Synthwave.94 (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

No it doesnt. It just proves that the main contributor either didnt see the change or is a more reasonable person than you apparently are. Just as most other policies WP:CITEVAR specifically deals with the cases in which conflict arises - the fact that sometimes conflict doesnt arise in spite of someone not following the guidelines to avoid conflict does not show that the guidelines are superfluous.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I've been edited a huge number of articles and I've never had much problems with the main contributor(s) of the articles I've been edited on so far, including other featured articles and numerous good articles as well. It seems to me that it should be followed in very specific cases only, such as when the main contributor of the page actually disagrees your changes. Synthwave.94 (talk) 18:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The point of the policy is that it provides a guideline for how to avoid and solve conflicts about choice of citation style. If your experience is that others do not object to your changes to citation style then that is fine, but it has no relevance for the policy or how it should be applied. We have the policy IAR for this kind of reason exactly - as long as ignoring a rule does not cause problems or conflicts and improves the encyclopedia then the rule can be ignored. The rules are applied in the cases where behavior does cause problems and conflict. If an editor does revert your citation changes however, they will probably tell you that you didnt follow the guideline for how to establish consensus for citation changes and that would be correct.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes I've understood this specific point. But if I there's no objection/disagreement regarding citation style changes then this guideline doesn't look very relevent in any way. Also I'm experienced enough regarding how improving the citation style throughout an article and I know what I'm doing when I change all of this. This is probably the reason why other editors accept my changes and thank me for this reason. Synthwave.94 (talk) 18:39, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

There is plenty of disagreeement and conflicting personal preferences. I dont know what kind of changes you make, but if there are no objections that is a good sign. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:43, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I perfectly know it and this is the reason why I usually take care about looking if there is a consensus regarding genres (because I often change genres providing reliable references to support my changes, even if it's sometimes a very sensitive case...) or any other However, regarding citation styles, I've never seen any form of specific consensus so far. To give you a slight idea of what I do, I often archive dead links, as well as other urls which are still working. I also complete incomplete references providing, for example adding the author, the publisher, the newspaper,... of the source and I make sure to use a consistent dmy (or mdy) format throughout. I also use a "sfn" template because it automatically links the in-text template to the book/journal/magazine at the bottom of the page, which is very useful for both the reader and other editors, etc. So I'm quite "specialized" in cleaning up an article using an appropriate citation style. Synthwave.94 (talk) 19:04, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Cleaning up or enforcing consistency is not a type of change that is associated with WP:CITEVAR. But for example a blanket change of consistent use of named citations with the <ref name=> to the us of {{sfn|}} template would be covered by CITEVAR, and an editor might reasonably object if they are more familiar or accustomed to using the ref=name style, and have used that in building the article. Here you would then have to convince the editor why your style is better and easier (I prefer sfn myself) or otherwise generate a consensus for your change.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok, now I'm aware that if someone else disagree with my changes then I would discuss them in order to seek a consensus and to explain why I think my changes regarding citation styles are better. Synthwave.94 (talk) 19:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yep, explaining it is not enough though it requires getting consensus, as long as it is just two people with different preferences the preference of the original/main contributor takes precedence. That is all WP:CITEVAR is about in terms of behavior - the other main function of WP:CITEVAR is to make it clear that wikipedia allows any consistently used citation style and does not have a house style that must be followed.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

That Synthwave.94 has done some good work in making citations better and more consistent, and that other editors have tacitly accepted his work, in no way disproves the importance of CITEVAR. At most it shows that formal consensus is not always needed. What I find disturbing here is the claim that asserting CITEVAR (presumably in defense of the status quo) amounts to "ownership behaviour". There has been no question here of ownership; this claim is just blowing smoke in lieu of a valid argument. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:46, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Synthwave.94, you can edit on articles all you want, you can improve them by removing dead links, using archived links, etc. What you cannot do is change the citation style without consent. OK, so maybe other editors didn't complain. Here, you've had numerous editors tell you that it is not OK to make the changes to the citation style of a featured article. That mean's if you want to make those changes to the refs, you have to either use the current citation style, or obtain consensus to change the style. GregJackP Boomer! 19:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Well I edited few featured articles so far and I think the main editors didn't seem to care about it anyway. This is probably the reason why I didn't have much problems about it before. I would be more careful the newt time I edit a featured article in this case. Regarding the "ownership" argument, this is the main idea this guideline makes me think of : you prevent other editors to improve a citation style for example Synthwave.94 (talk) 20:14, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with ownership. For example, I have exactly one edit to the Jackson article. I was drawn there by this discussion. As J. Johnson said, it is disturbing that you would equate asserting CITEVAR to article ownership. It has nothing to do with ownership, it has to do with you changing things without consensus. GregJackP Boomer! 04:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

It's not just a featured article matter, though. For example, before going to the WP:Good article Lady Gaga and changing its citation style (and I don't mean minor tweaks), you should attempt to gain consensus for the matter on the article's talk page. It's the same for non-WP:Good and non-WP:Featured articles as well. If, after a reasonable amount of time, no one replies or objects if they do reply, then you should feel free to be WP:Bold and change the citation style. GregJackP and/or others might feel differently about that matter, but if the first major contributor has abandoned the article and it isn't clear that others care about the current citation style of the article, I don't think that the article should have to forever use the citation style of that first major contributor. You can see in this case where I was queried about the first major contributor regarding WP:CITEVAR at the Clitoris article, and pointed out the following: The Clitoris article was very poor eight years ago, before I brought the article to WP:Good article status, that WP:CITEVAR speaks of WP:Consensus, that a WP:Good article review is a WP:Consensus process, and I would not call the editor in question "the first major contributor." I essentially asked in that discussion: "Was I supposed to use the citation style of an editor who made small changes to the article, had sparingly edited it, and had long since abandoned it, when I had become the article's main contributor?" My thought process on that matter was "no," but I remained open to the notion of changing the citation style that I am currently using for the Clitoris article. And since that article uses a complicated citation style, which I've commented on, it might be best to change it anyway. Flyer22 (talk) 00:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

CITEVAR is one of the most abused guidelines in Wikipedia. It is basically used to freeze an article in a poor state of referencing and thwart efforts at improving referencing because of the ownership displayed at so many articles. Let's be clear about this: CITEVAR was intended to be a tie-breaker in the event of dispute between two competing, equivalent styles of referencing. Its value is in preventing an editor changing everything to Vancouver style because they prefer that style over Chicago style, etc. What it was never intended to do was stop an editor from regularising the citations where multiple styles are present, nor to prevent an editor from improving bare urls to proper citations that are much less affected by linkrot. One only has to take a look at the mish-mash of styles in the Michael Jackson article as it stands today to see CS1-style, hand-written text, pseudo-harvard style book cites, bare urls, a file on Commons and other inventions, many of which are inconsistent even within each type. It beggars belief that anyone seriously thinks there is any value in preserving this spectrum of confused referencing. I defy anybody to justify using the words "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change. to admonish Synthwave.94 for attempting to regularise the citations. Half-a-dozen mutually incompatible variations of referencing do not qualify as "an article's established citation style" and common sense dictates that the key tenet of Wikipedia:Citing sources - "Each article should use one citation method or style throughout" takes precedence over anything else. --RexxS (talk) 20:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

RexxS, it's not clear to me, and apparently not clear to others above, that Synthwave.94 was attempting to regularize the citation style in the article. I didn't think about the inconsistency of the citation style in the article until Synthwave.94 made the changes; I then noted to Synthwave.94 the existence of WP:CITEVAR and that WP:Featured articles in particular should have consistent citation style; it was not meant to admonish Synthwave.94, and I made it clear to Synthwave.94 in my second post addressing him or her at that article's talk page that "I didn't start this section to contest [Synthwave.94's] changes." This link, when one clicks on the "Edit" feature, shows what the article's citation style looked like in 2008 when it was promoted to WP:Featured article status. While I know that WP:Featured article standards have gotten stricter over the years, the way the article formatted citations at that time was good enough to pass as WP:Featured. This link shows what it was like after passing WP:Peer review in 2009. Instead of being more consistent with a previous/existing style of the article, Synthwave.94 chose to add a new style to the article; that didn't strike me as ideal, but I was more concerned with the article going with some type of consistent style. It was not until Synthwave.94 and I were actually into a debate about WP:CITEVAR that Synthwave.94 indicated that he or she intends to make the citation style more consistent. Flyer22 (talk) 20:52, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

RexxS: You are talking nonesense. You seem to have missed that CITEVAR expressly encourages

* Improving existing citations by adding missing information, such as by replacing bare URLs with full bibliographic citations ....

* Imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles ....

It seems you have also missed that no one is chiding Synthwave for any improving or regularizing. (Though he seems to have contributed to some of the "mish-mash" you complain of.) The issue here is about his view that CITEVAR is unimportant, and "seems to lead to an obvious ownership behaviour and all the negative sides linked to this disruptive behaviour." (03:22, 2 June). Your statement that CITEVAR "is basically used to freeze an article in a poor state of referencing and thwart efforts at improving referencing" (besides being unsupported) quite overlooks its intended purpose of thwarting degradation (whether wholesale or piecemeal) of articles in a good state of referencing. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: I'm not talking "nonesense" (sic), but thank you for for personalising the discussion. So much for civil debate here. The question here is at the top of the section: "How important is WP:CITEVAR?" and you have my response to that question: it's much less important than WP:CITE; and it has the disadvantage that it's sometimes used to attack editors when article owners don't like those editors' changes to their article. I have not said that is the case here, but your defensiveness about the issue is telling. Most editors would attempt to AGF that an editor was genuinely trying to improve an article, whether or not they were doing a good job of it. Now it's a pity that you can't spend the effort you've put into arguing here into improving the poor state of referencing on Michael Jackson. The very least you could do is take a good look at the state of the citations in that article and comment in the light of that at the RfC on its talk page. --RexxS (talk) 00:04, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The facts remain that CITEVAR does NOT prevent, but expressly encourages, improving or regularizing citations (as I have shown), and that no one is being chided here for any such improving or regularizing. Allegations that this policy is "sometimes used to attack editors when article owners don't like those editors' changes", lacking any examples, amount to mere arm-waving. But even if we grant that such cases exist, there is no showing that they amount to anything more than misuse of a good policy. And most certainly no one "thinks there is any value in preserving this spectrum of confused referencing"; that is a strawman argument of no relevance here.~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The fact is that a tool is only as good as the worker who wields it. The same goes for Wikipedia policies and CITEVAR is one of the most abused guidelines that we have. You're living in a dream world if you really think that it doesn't get used regularly to justify knee-jerk reverts of referencing improvements. And if you maintain that nobody wants to hang on to a collection of confused referencing, I suggest you mosey over to Michael Jackson; have a look at the sheer number of different reference styles there; and then take a gander at the RfC on the talk page. Now tell me again that "most certainly no one thinks there is any value in preserving this spectrum of confused referencing. You think the referencing at that article is fine, do you? --RexxS (talk) 02:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

RexxS, the problem was that Synthwave ended up making this happen in real life. The article started with half a dozen citation "styles" in use, and rather than convert everything to a single style, he added yet another non-matching style. The established style was 100% consistent at the time of its FAC. Synthwave screwed up the formatting of some by turning perfectly formatted citations into a mishmash of {{wayback}} templates and manual formatting, and also introduced the use of {{sfn}}—but only for some citations, not for all of them. At least most of us are in favor of a consistent format. Unfortunately, "one consistent style throughout the article" is the opposite of what Synthwave did. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Exactly.

RexxS: civil debate is not advanced when you keep pulling in this strawman argument that anyone thinks the referencing at Michael Jackson "is fine". And your repeated attempts to attribute that to me amounts to misrepresentation (see WP:TALKNO). ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

So you haven't looked at Michael Jackson, have you? You tell me that no one is in favour of keeping a mish-mash of reference styles, and as soon as I show you an obvious counter-example, you call it "strawman". You really need to stop talking bollocks and admit when you've been clearly shown to be wrong. --RexxS (talk) 03:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

No, you have not shown us any "obvious counter-example" of someone who "thinks there is any value in preserving this spectrum of confused referencing". Perhaps that is how you interpret some comments or edits, but lacking direct quotes or diffs that is only your view. And your attempts to attribute such views to me amounts to misrepresentation. You really ought to not bother with the mis-leading questions. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:53, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I have shown an obvious counter-example. Editors answering the RfC question: "Should the citation style on this article be changed from the complex, mixed style?" with "No change", "change isn't needed", "Fine as it is". I'm guessing you're interpreting those comments as "Yes, let's change from the complex, mixed style". Is English your first language? --RexxS (talk) 20:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Are you stupid? Are you always a jerk? Are you done with the snippy leading questions? More seriously, do you know how to use dfffs? More particularly, you have failed to note that at Talk:Michael_Jackson#Request_for_comment_on_citation_style three editors expressly confirmed (at "Administrivia") that "no change" meant [emphasis added] "No change to long-established style", not the then current "mish-mash" exacerbated by Synthwave. Your "obvious counter-example" is flat-out contradicted. (So who needs to "stop talking bollocks"?) Of course it "beggars belief that anyone seriously thinks there is any value in preserving this spectrum of confused referencing" – for the extremely simple reason that no one thinks that. Again: that is a strawman argument. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:40, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

It is a horrible mish-mash these days. The problem is that Synthwave's effort to improve it made the mish-mash even worse. Did you look at the diffs? He removed correctly formatted {{cite web}} citations, and substituted in this half-manual, half-templated thing so he could use {{wayback}} (I don't think he knew that |archive-url= existed and would save him a lot of time). But then he went to the next citation, which was a bare URL, and added {{cite web}} for it. If he'd turned them all into CS1, nobody would be complaining; in fact, people would probably be handing out barnstars. But that's not what he did.

No, let me make this easier for you. Here's the massive diff. Search for "Novack". Look in both columns. See how he changed that perfectly good CS1 citation into something weird with the {{Wayback}} template? That's bad. Now search for "ldyRUqGN3XA". See how he turned that bare URL into a perfectly good CS1 citation? That's good. But it also creates a mis-match when the first one that he changed. If he'd done the second and left the first alone, nobody would be complaining. We just want him to stop screwing up the few citations that were already in good shape. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I fully agree with what you want, but I was hoping that encouraging him to do the job right would be more productive than beating him about the head over mistakes. Having tried to offer him advice, I can appreciate the problem you're facing. Nevertheless, he spotted that the Michael Jackson references were in dire straights and his intention was to fix them, so we can't doubt his good faith. Why not see if we can't get consensus to regularise the references to something standard? I'd prefer CS1/sfn, but I could live with CS1/manual-harv (even though it's inferior from a maintenance perspective). --RexxS (talk) 04:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I think there already is consensus for CS1/manual-harv, since everyone except you has supported that option in the RFC. Synthwave hasn't expressed a preference for any of the options proposed. Of course, it's always possible that if the RFC continues longer, that a different approach would be favored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The question at Talk:Michael Jackson asks the question "Should the citation style on this article be changed from the complex, mixed style, to: ...?" with four options, including "No change". Four out of the five commentators supported "No Change" (i.e. keep the complex, mixed style) before you altered "No Change" to mean something else. You can't change an RfC question after editors have !voted, so I'll be restoring the question to its state when the comments were made. I can't see any consensus there for anything other than keeping the current mess, unless the weight of the argument for settling on a particular style persuades the commentators to change their minds. --RexxS (talk) 05:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I've pinged the other three !voters at that page to ask them to explicitly agree or disagree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

And there is a winner! (See Talk:Michael_Jackson#Administrivia.) It's a unanimous "No change to long-established style." ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:33, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

CITEVAR's sole purpose is to avoid pointless quarrels over which citation style an article uses. If someone uses a few cites of the "wrong" variety, then that is easily fixed. If someone changes the style of an article completely, and someone else prefers the former style, then it can be reverted. If no-one cares, it is bad form to use a policy intended to avoid disputes to create them-though I have seen that done a number of times.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:14, 6 June 2015 (UTC).

I agree with you. It's not very relevant, though, because he did not change the style "completely". He only changed some of the citations, so that the style confusion was worse when he finished than it was before he started. Some of his changes (especially writing complete citations for bare URLs) are very praiseworthy, but the overall effect was negative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Do we have to comply with MOS:DASH in citations' titles ({{cite web}}, {{cite news}} etc)? For example, "TeamA 1-0 TeamB", should it be displayed "TeamA 1–0 TeamB" regardless of its original title? SLBedit (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Some discussions I have found: Featured article criteria/Archive 7#Another question about dashes, Archive 93#Things that shouldn't be changed. SLBedit (talk) 17:17, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I thought there was a guideline for not using a Wikipedia article as a cite, but I can't locate it. Can anyone point out to me where it's located? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: WP:CIRC. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I would note that I expected to see some reference to WP:CIRC on this page. I find it odd that on a page that discusses sources to cite, that it doesn't say anything about this. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:43, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I am having a hard time finding the answer to this -- I've received opposite opinions from two experienced editors.

When an article includes a brief and non-controversial mention of the subject of another article which is very well-sourced, and includes a 'See main article:' pointer to that article, do we need to cite those sources again for this brief mention?

Here's the recent example: Cincinnati#Local_specialties mentions Cincinnati chili and Goetta.

Here's the diff:

I'm just trying to get this straight for myself -- I was assuming that in an ideal world, everything would be sourced everywhere it appears, but that in this type of case (brief/noncontroversial/points to well-sourced main article) that a {{cn}} isn't necessary and may not even be helpful given that there may be other more important things to fix. I usually drop a {{cn}} if I see something that clearly needs it and I don't have time to fix it myself, but should I actually be placing them in these kinds of situations too? Thanks for any help! valereee (talk) 16:28, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Summary style#References notes that anything warranting a citation should be cited everywhere it appears, whether in the main article or the summary. Looking at the diff you provide, I would tend to agree a citation is warranted for at least some of that material. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, NikkiMaria! That was exactly what I was trying to find! valereee (talk) 16:45, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so I'd like to make this specific and clear within the guidelines (that anything needing a citation can't depend on the citations in the main article but must be brought to mentions in other articles.) This seems like a common situation that isn't dealt with directly (or at least needs to be clarified) in the guidelines. Since discretionary sanctions apply, I wanted to mention it here before I did it. valereee (talk) 17:28, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good - any particular place you were thinking of adding this? Nikkimaria (talk) 18:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: well, I think somewhere within 'When and why to cite sources' maybe? Perhaps as part of 'when not to cite' -- a specific instruction that while a mention in another article might very well contain the exact info that the lead does in the subject's main article, unlike the lead section, such mentions require citation to allow each article to stand alone? valereee (talk)

It is helpful to distinguish citing from linking. In general you should not cite Wikipedia in support of any fact, etc. (That is, for purposes of verifiability.) Linking - specifically, wikilinking - is for purposes of connecting the reader to other material, and has its own considerations. (E.g., see WP:OVERLINK.) Also, if you were to rely on wikilinks to support material there would be problems if the original cites are deleted. Basically, citations need to be complete within the article, independently of use in any other article. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: oh, definitely -- sorry if I wasn't clear; I wasn't talking about citing Wikipedia at all. valereee (talk) 18:39, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

In effect you were: you want to use a wikilink - the "[[...]]" construct - to point to another place where a citation can be found. Such links are not citations (they say nothing about the source), they only connect elsewhere within Wikipedia. To rely on a wikilink where there should be citation is, effectively, citing Wikipedia, and improper. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

However, non-controversial facts, particularly in non-BLB articles, need not be cited unless challenged or likely to be challenged. When a fact is cited in the primary article on a topic, and is a straightforward factual statement, a brief mention of that same fact in a summary article might not be cited unless some editor challenges it. At that point, the relevant citation could be copied from the more specific article. But it would do not harm to preemptively cite such a fact by copying the citation. Of course, no editor should copy a cite blindly, without verifying it. DES ^(talk) 21:05, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: Ah, I see your point! Thanks, very true! valereee (talk) 21:08, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

@DES: Which I guess is what I thought I was doing -- the mention to me seemed very uncontroversial, but then apparently to the other editor, it seemed like something that needed sourcing. So in any event, if the general policy is to source if anyone else thinks it's controversial, then clearly source. valereee (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC) Damn. @DESiegel: valereee (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

This use of "a mention" might be a bit confusing, as it may carry a sense that a casual or slight use of some material somehow relaxes the need for citation. That is not correct. Whether something must be cited is a different issue. (I note in passing that the exemption for summaries and leads is allowed only if there is a citation elsewhere in that same article.) But where citation is required, a wikilink does not serve. I would also underline what DES said: copying a citation implies that you are citing the source, and that you are affirming the reliability and accuracy of the source. So definitely look before you cite. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:11, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

This section currently states:

• If a claim is doubtful but not harmful, use the {{citation needed}} template, which will add an inline tag, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.

Isn't this particular case exactly what the {{dubious}} template is for? The {{citation needed}} typically has the much milder use of tagging as statement for which a source is required to satisfy WP:V, even though that the statement is well-known to be true by anybody with some knowledge of the subject. Example, the statement: "the fine structure constant is approximately 0.007" is true, as most people with a graduate degree in high energy physics will know, yet it certainly needs a citation.

I suggest the text be changed to (inline with current best practices):

• If a claim is doubtful, use the {{dubious}} template, which will add an inline tag.

• If a claim is probably true but needs verification, use the {{citation needed}} template, which will add an inline tag. Or better yet, go and find a source for verification.

TR 07:47, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think there is precise consensus about when a citation is needed. Is the exception only for claims that nearly all readers know are true, or is it broad enough for claims that people in the field know are true? So I don't think TimothyRias's distinction between the "citation needed" and "dubious" templates has a consensus.

Also, the "dubious" template could be applied when there is a citation, but the reliability of the source is in doubt, or the person applying the template doubts that the source has been correctly interpreted. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:16, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Wherever you would draw the line, there will always be statements that need citations, despite nobody having a reason to doubt the statement. (other than healthy skepticism of unsourced statements). If somebody would write: "The currently accepted value of α is 0.0072973525698(24)". Than that certainly would be true, and there is no reason to doubt it. Yet, there is every reason to request a source for such a precise statement. The current statement in this guideline restricting the use of the {{citation needed}} to "doubtful" claims certainly does not have consensus, and runs against years of Wikipedia "best practices". A more neutral version would be:

• If a claim is in need of a citation but not harmful, use the {{citation needed}} template, which will add an inline tag.

The main point here is that placing a {{citation needed}} template makes no judgement whether the editor placing the tag thinks the statement is true or not.TR 15:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I know we don't usually use Amazon as refs (because of NONCOM), but I cannot figure out how to get old Library Journal or Midwest Book Reviews information any other way. If they've made Amazon, they've got to be considered "major enough", so I want to use them. Is there a problem with this in that circumstance? It seems like there's a 50/50 chance of it being removed depending on who sees it, so at the moment I've just used an "NB" note to state that the stated reviews are available on Amazon without actually giving the URL. Conversely, does anyone know how to get old reviews from either of those publications? MSJapan (talk) 09:11, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Clarify for me, please : what do you mean when some potential source has "made Amazon"? My understanding is that Amazon lists the bibliographic information of the books it sells (and thus is a sometimes useful source for finding other editions), but does not publish any content from such items. So I am rather curious as to how you could use Amazon as a source. Also, by "major enough", were you thinking in terms of notability? Have you looked at WP:Notability (books)? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:16, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

If one goes to an Amazon listing and actually scrolls down, there are outside reviews (or at least excerpts) when available. My assumption was that if the book reviews are on Amazon in the first place, they are book reviews from major review publications (and thus reviews suitable for establishing notability of a book). It has nothing to do with content of the actual book. MSJapan (talk) 21:05, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

So your interest is in citing the book reviews at Amazon for determining the notability of a book. Again, please look at WP:NBOOK, where it is pointed out (see the footnotes) that for purposes of notability such book reviews must be from reliable sources, non-trivial, and independent of the author and publisher. I think that largely rules out the consumer-generated "reviews" (so-called) at Amazon and similar sites. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:37, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

No, Amazon also has Kirkus, Library journal, etc., and that;s what I'm interested in finding the originals of, but barring that, is it OK to use the Amazon link to cite the review? MSJapan (talk) 05:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

If you (say) use a review from Library Journal you should cite it directly. If you haven't been able see the review, and are relying on an excerpt from it that was quoted at Amazon then you still cite Library Journal (because that is where is from), but note that it was "quoted in" Amazon (because that is where you read it, and what you are relying on). This would be easier to explain if you could provide specific details of what you are trying to do. And I still wonder if you have a potential NBOOK issue. ~ 21:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

No, because I'm not trying to do a standalone book article. I'm sourcing reviews on books for individual works by John J. Robinson, who definitely meets the AUTHOR reqs. He's an oft-cited historian in his subject area. MSJapan (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan: RE:old reviews from either of those publications. Some academic libraries keep back runs of Library Journal. try here for Library Journal holdings near you. Also you might visit a library that has access to EBSCO or Gale on-line materials. Their databases have Library Journal and School Libraries, and it is possible they might have Midwest Book Reviews. --Bejnar (talk) 20:53, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I think I need to go the EBSCO route - I don't recall that Amazon gave me the actual publication dates on the reviews, so I would need to find that first. MSJapan (talk) 21:05, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

My understanding it that the excerpts from reviews on Amazon are chosen and uploaded by the publisher and/or author, through the Author Central portal, so my cautionary comment on using them would be: a) they will have (understandably) have been cherry picked to help to sell the book concerned, and b) the particular excerpt used may not necessarily represent the overall tone or thrust of the original review. Hchc2009 (talk) 22:10, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, then tracing the original is still the better idea. Now that I've got the resource direction, I can do that. Thanks! MSJapan (talk) 05:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Projects, Earthquake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by VonDutchess (talk • contribs) 02:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Please take part in the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure challenge: Template talk:Cite doi#RfC: Should Template:cite doi cease creating a separate subpage for each DOI? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:12, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

A brief note: I made this edit to make clear that use of the "citation needed" template is optional, not mandatory (i.e., editors can remove any unsourced content, even if it is not "harmful"). This conforms to the direct language of Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility_for_providing_citations, which makes clear that:

Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step.

(Emphasis added). Thanks. Neutrality^talk 01:28, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

"championed" - I have personally done no such thing myself, only included the link which seems to have had consensus for inclusion for a while. I still agree with what I wrote in my edit summary regarding the reversion of the removal. The link to the "example" page has been present in that exact location since at least April 2013. (Only checked the most recent 500 revisions.) --Izno (talk) 18:59, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The link which restored the essay stated "rv--take the page to mfd if you think its invalid; or rewrite it to more correctly state the case for examples". I don't agree that the only thing to do with essays is either delete them or link to them from guidelines. I don't think the essay is particularly good, and apparently neither does Markworthen, who removed it with the edit summary "The linked article [sic] does *not* provide examples of the various styles. It provides a newly-created 'style', which is an amalgamation of two or three different existing styles, and which no publishers actually use." I also think the text in this guideline around the link makes it seem the linked essay is something it is not: it is not a collection of examples of widely-accepted styles. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:08, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Jc3s5h for articulating the concerns better than I did, and for correcting my reference to the essay as an "article". Mark D Worthen PsyD 06:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

And thank you to Izno for suggesting {{mfd}}, which I did not know about. I agree with you that proposing deletion is the appropriate step to take. Thus my proposal to delete: Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example style. (Although I would still prefer that we do not link to the essay from the Citing sources page.) Mark D Worthen PsyD 06:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I just want to point out for anyone who might be interested that a new tool would be useful to create cite journal citations for the IUCN Red List conservation assessment of a species. Many IUCN templates already exist, but they are based on id numbers which are not intended to be permanent, and at any rate these templates no longer produce the type of citation the IUCN requests, which is a citation for an electronic journal article. The cite journal template can easily be used, as follows for the example of Myotis ater:

{{cite journal | authors = Wiles, G. | title = ''Myotis ater'' | journal = [[IUCN Red List of Threatened Species]] | volume= 2008 | page = e.T14144A4408913 | publisher = [[IUCN]] | year = 2008 | url = http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2008.RLTS.T14144A4408913.en | accessdate = 17 September 2015}}

This will be displayed as:

1. "Myotis ater". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2008. IUCN: e.T14144A4408913. 2008. Retrieved 29 September 2015. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

This citation style is preferable to the use of older IUCN templates, because a url based on a doi should be permanent, whereas a url based on an id number may not be, and it is in the now recommended style. The year does appear twice, as both a date and volume number, as currently recommended by the IUCN.

However, given the very large number of species whose IUCN Red List assessment citations should be updated, a tool to streamline the process would be useful. The DOI Wikipedia reference generator, Citation bot and reFill don't work. What I have in mind is a tool where one could enter the assessment url, or perhaps paste in the suggested citation at the bottom of the assessment page (possibly along with the year of the assessment), and have the tool spit out the appropriate cite journal citation. Any takers?

Thanks, WolfmanSF (talk) 06:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:CITEVAR says "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change." I realize it's primarily talking about changing from MLA to Chicago or similar, but does this include changing the way citations are laid out in the code? I ask because I leave citation templates expanded (for ease of editing) and intersperse them in the article prose (as habit). If someone were to collapse all the citation templates and move them to the bottom of the article without discussion, would that be in contravention of CITEVAR? — fourthords | =Λ= | 19:16, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes. It has a substantial effect on editors who edit the article, just as changing from MLA to Chicago would.Jc3s5h (talk)

Even if that is not strictly a style issue it would be a substantial change in the organization of the article, for which it is always best to ask before proceeding. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Such as going to all list-defined references, or contrariwise away from them? I would call that a change in style, subject to the CITEVAR restrictions. However, if an article is already mixed, or is filled with bare URL cites, then i would say it has no style at present, and an editor is free to impose any consistent and reasonable style that s/he chooses. Also if an Editor posts on the talk change proposing a change in style and no one objects or comments, after a reasonable time (several days, perhaps) then i think the editor is free to change any existing style, and changing it back later would require consensus. Note that Citation style can be a highly contentious issue for some editors. DES ^(talk) 23:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

I think we all most certainly agree with the last part. However, there is some difference of opinion on whether "style" covers just the formatting and appearance of the results, or includes the tools, techniques, and general arrangement of these by which the results are generated. Even if the latter are not exactly within the scope of what some editors take to be "style", I think CITEVAR should cover both aspects.

I also agree that if an editor asks, and no one objects, then changing the "style" should be permissible. But just because an article is not entirely consistent should not be grounds for any mass changes. There have been instances of someone adding a few inconsistent citations, and then someone else takes that as a free license to change everything else to another style. Even where style is entirely chaotic the mass imposition of any style should be considered a change for which an editor should ask before proceeding. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:54, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

J. Johnson, WP:CITEVAR says: "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference..." (emphasis mine) and later under the heading "Generally considered helpful" lists: "Imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles...". I will agree that if the inconsistent citations are recently added, they should simply be changed to the previous prevailing style. But if inconsistancy has persisted for a significant time, especially while other edits failed to change inconsistent citations, then I think it is high time to impose a single consistent style. DES ^(talk) 22:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Should "high time to impose a single consistent style" ever relieve an editor from asking on the talk page if anyone has any objections? Or even the minimal courtesy of warning others that one intends to make non-significant changes? If an article has 20 citations in one format, and someone adds two in a different format, does "persistence" give those two more weight than the other 20? Do we really want to add "recent" and "persistence" as qualifying terms which editors can freely interpret and then endlessly quibble about? I think the answer to all of these should be a definite and unqualified "no". It is so little trouble to ask – and potentially avoids so much trouble and wasted effort if there is an objection – that I don't see why we would not want a definite and unambiguous requirement to always ask before making any mass changes. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for all the input! — fourthords | =Λ= | 00:53, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I have modified WP:REF#To be avoided accordingly. Epic Genius (talk) 22:03, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Citing sources has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

115.248.160.3 (talk) 10:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC) sdsddfwedsxaxxzcxczxczxczxc

Nonsense request. Relentlessly (talk) 10:43, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I've been looking through the archives and have found quite a bit of discussion about embedded links/embedded citations, but I haven't found anything yet about the use of embedded links in templates/tables. WP:CS#Avoid embedded links says that "embedded links should never be used to place external links in the content of the article", so embedding an external link in a sentence like "The company's website Example.com was officially launched in May 2015" is considered incorrect, right? My question is whether the same applies to external links embedded into templates/tables, particularly when it comes to game results in sports related articles.

Personally, I think a properly formatted inline citation is almost always an improvement since it provides information about the source being cited which may help fix any future link rot related issues, but embedding links seems to be pretty much the de facto practice for such articles. The embedded links I've come across are nothing more than a bare url with a generic label such as "Result", "Summary", "Report, "Statistics", etc. with nothing at all about the source added to "References". The arguments I've encountered from those in favor of embedding always seem to boil down to "that's how it's done in other similar articles", "that's the way it's always been done", "our WikiProject does it this way", "having too many citations is not good", etc. with no consideration being given at all to the possibility of link rot even though many sports websites tend to recycle their content regularly and re-use their urls for other content.

Has the community ever come to a consensus on this kind of thing? Are such links considered acceptable exceptions like the "official website" links in infoboxes? Are there any guidelines regarding such links and link rot? Do you simple re-embed an archived version of the dead link or do you need to convert it to an inline citations since |archiveurl= and |archivedate= are typically used in such cases? Is this simply a case of it being better to leave well enough alone instead of tying to tilt at windmills? -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

See Help talk:Citation Style 1#Contribution rather than Others (I can't make the section link work properly here!)

The idea is to deprecate the |editor= set of parameters and deprecate using |others= for other types of contributor, such as prefacers, translators, illustrators etc. The |author= family of parameters plus a new |role= parameter would be used instead. All input welcome. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:14, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 9#contribution= rather than others=. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:39, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Are we meant to correct typos in the titles of web-based sources, or leave them exactly as they are? (besides changing ` to '). I've always thought it's the latter, for absolute accuracy; likewise not changing hyphens to dashes and vice versa. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

It is normal to adjust titles to follow the conventions followed by the publication (Wikipedia) that is mentioning some other publication. So if a book-length source writes its title as ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE we would write it One for All and All for One in the body of an article. If we were putting it in a citation, we would follow whatever citation style was being used in the article. For example, if the article used APA style we would write One for all and all for one. The citation templates don't have any rule about how to write titles, so do whatever the previous editors of the article have done. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

How about this ref, which has a typo in the title: "W.A.S.P. Announces 'The Crimson Idol' 15th-Anniverary Tour". I've been under the impression that such mistakes are to be left as is, since they are not being used in prose. Granted, it's a glaring typo, but that is how the article authors decided to leave it—for the sake of accuracy, surely we should reproduce it as such? Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:51, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

The idea underlying the metadata included in citations is to make it possible for readers to verify the information in them. It becomes especially important that the data be exactly as given in the source in the event that the link goes dead due to the source page being moved or deleted, since otherwise Google searches may not find the correct result. So yes, when it comes to article titles (chapter titles, other short work titles, etc.) leave non-punctuation errors as found in the source. If there's an error in a source's title that really bothers you, you can always add a [sic]. —GrammarFascist _contribs^talk 21:15, 17 November 2015 (UTC)