Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 52

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Citing a Birth Certificate

Hey everyone, thank yall for everything you do at wikipedia.

I was trying to write an article but Im having trouble with citations. I can't find out how to cite birth/ marriage/ death certificates. The certificates are the only places I was able to find certain information. Also I bought the certificates, so they're paper copies and I can't cite anywhere that theyre posted online.

Can someone please tell me how to cite them? Thank you--2600:1017:B8DD:BD67:206B:2DAA:8FFA:AA70 (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

That kind of public record based source is forbidden for use in biographies of living people. If it is the only source you can find, then you need to omit that information. See WP:BLPPRIMARY. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:39, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

User:David Eppstein It's for people who are deceased. Do you know the answer? 2600:1017:B809:25DB:4D1E:32BE:8037:F0C3 (talk) 02:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Still primary and bad. You can get away with more on articles about dead people, but that doesn't mean you should. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion: Update to include preferred use of http secure (https) in online reference URLs

Currently this guide provides examples which use http:// instead of https://. It's widely accepted that https (where available) should be used over http as it adds security and trust, providing some protection for users against man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. I tried to search if this had been discussed previously, but found no clear discussion. My suggestion is to update this guide to include that https is preferred over http; and that all examples use https where available. Aeonx (talk) 01:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Aeonx completely makes sense please WP:BOLDLY change it where it still says that! Important thing is that we don't promote www.domain.com since that's outdated practice. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Google Books

In the Section Linking to Google Books pages it's mentioned how to link to 'Google Books', however it doesn't seem up to date, perhaps worth mentioning the citation style for '{{google book|id=' ?? Cltjames (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Cltjames: Note that {{google book}}/{{google books}}, according to basically every conversation on its talk page, is not a citation template. The citation style should be {{cite book|...}}, as documented.

That being said, if its transclusion count is anything to go by it seems {{google books|...|plainurl=yes}} is used as the |url= parameter for a citation template on a lot of pages. It feels to me like that makes the template largely pointless, since you still have to complete all of the other fields of the citation template by hand... but, I guess there are editors who like the convenience.

There used to be a tool, which is linked to in the {{Google books}} template documentation, that you could feed https://books.google.com/... URLs into, and it would spit out a populated, insertion-ready {{cite book}} template transclusion for the source at that URL. However, that tool was an offsite link that's currently returning error pages, so I'm not too hopeful about the state of that resource.

As far as using {{cite book|url={{google books|...}}}} to cite sources, I don't personally have any strong objections to that being covered in WP:CITE. Since nobody's responded in the negative, you're probably safe to BOLDly upgrade the existing section with a few words on {{google books}} and an example or two in that form. Someone can always revert your good-faith edits if they object. Any kind of more-substantial alterations to the existing guidelines should, as the notice on the top of the page makes clear, be proposed here first.

And yes, I realize that's what you're already doing. A more specific proposal for what you'd like to see added/changed may attract more conversation from the community. Or, like I said, sometimes the best way to spark a conversation is to be bold and charge ahead. People will definitely tell you if they disagree! (Cunningham's Law) FeRDNYC (talk) 09:13, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, good — Citer, a Wikimedia-supported resource, still works just fine for converting Google Books URLs (and many other) into fleshed-out {{Cite book}} syntax. (And is already mentioned in WP:CITE#Linking_to_Google_Books_pages.) I'll update the {{google books}} template documentation to link there instead of the current offline, offsite tool it points at. FeRDNYC (talk) 09:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Contents of a product, or ingredients

How do I cite the contents of a product? Essentially I am trying to add to the "Uses" section on a chemical page.

so far other editors have refused the manufacture's website, pictures of the ingredients list, non scholarly articles. (scholarly articles do not cover the subject that I can find)

So I'm asking you all. How do I properly cite the listed ingredients on a product? TheAuthoritativeSource (talk) 22:57, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Apparently the APA has a format for Product Labels... would that apply even though there would be no link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheAuthoritativeSource (talk • contribs) 23:18, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Works of art in the "Aesthetics of Resistance"

Hi, how do you cite using sfn with an author with two different chapters in the same book. On the Works of art in the "Aesthetics of Resistance" article on reference 1 and 6, the "&" looks odd. It is right? scope_creep^Talk 19:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Like this:

{{sfn|Badenberg|1995a|p=115}}

Badenberg 1995a, p. 115 – {{harvnb}} used here for demo purposes

{{sfn|Badenberg|1995b|p=210}}

Badenberg 1995b, p. 210

{{cite book |last1=Badenberg |first1=Nana |editor1-last=Honold |editor1-first=Alexander |editor2-last=Schreiber |editor2-first=Ulrich |editor3-last=Badenberg |editor3-first=Nana |title=Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss |date=1995a |publisher=Argument-Verlag |location=Hamburg |isbn=9783886192274 |pages=114–163 |edition=1st |language=de |chapter=Die Ästhetik und ihre Kunstwerke. Eine Inventur}}

Badenberg, Nana (1995a). "Die Ästhetik und ihre Kunstwerke. Eine Inventur". In Honold, Alexander; Schreiber, Ulrich; Badenberg, Nana (eds.). Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss (in German) (1st ed.). Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. pp. 114–163. ISBN 9783886192274.

{{cite book |last1=Badenberg |first1=Nana |editor1-last=Honold |editor1-first=Alexander |editor2-last=Schreiber |editor2-first=Ulrich |title=Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss |date=1995b |publisher=Argument-Verlag |location=Hamburg |isbn=9783886192274 |edition=1st |language=de|chapter=Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der in der Ästhetik des Wider-stands erwähnten bildenden Künstler und Kunstwerke|pages=163–231}}

Badenberg, Nana (1995b). "Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der in der Ästhetik des Wider-stands erwähnten bildenden Künstler und Kunstwerke". In Honold, Alexander; Schreiber, Ulrich (eds.). Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss (in German) (1st ed.). Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. pp. 163–231. ISBN 9783886192274.

This is explained in the {{sfn}} documentation at Template:Sfn § More than one work in a year.

Another alternative is to use {{harvc}}:

{{sfn|Badenberg|1995c|p=115}}

Badenberg 1995c, p. 115 – again, {{harvnb}} used here for demo purposes

{{sfn|Badenberg|1995d|p=210}}

Badenberg 1995d, p. 210

{{cite book |last1=Badenberg |first1=Nana |editor1-last=Honold |editor1-first=Alexander |editor2-last=Schreiber |editor2-first=Ulrich |editor3-last=Badenberg |editor3-first=Nana |title=Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss |date=1995a |publisher=Argument-Verlag |location=Hamburg |isbn=9783886192274 |pages=114-163 |edition=1st |language=de |chapter=Die Ästhetik und ihre Kunstwerke. Eine Inventur}}

Honold, Alexander; Schreiber, Ulrich; Badenberg, Nana, eds. (1995). Die Bilderwelt des Peter Weiss (in German) (1st ed.). Hamburg: Argument-Verlag. ISBN 9783886192274.

{{harvc |last1=Badenberg |first1=Nana |chapter=Die Ästhetik und ihre Kunstwerke. Eine Inventur |in=Honold |in2=Schreiber |in3=Badenberg |pages=114–163 |year=1995 |anchor-year=1995c}}

Badenberg, Nana (1995c). "Die Ästhetik und ihre Kunstwerke. Eine Inventur". In Honold, Schreiber & Badenberg (1995), pp. 114–163.

{{harvc |last1=Badenberg |first1=Nana |chapter=Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der in der Ästhetik des Wider-stands erwähnten bildenden Künstler und Kunstwerke |in=Honold |in2=Schreiber |in3=Badenberg |pages=163–231|year=1995 |anchor-year=1995d}}

Badenberg, Nana (1995d). "Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der in der Ästhetik des Wider-stands erwähnten bildenden Künstler und Kunstwerke". In Honold, Schreiber & Badenberg (1995), pp. 163–231.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

How do you reference theatre performances?

Hello, I have read through this article, but I am unsure on how to reference theatre performances/theatre plays. Does anybody know how to do that? Please get back to me as soon as you can. Thanks. - Therealscorp1an (talk) 23:14, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

If the performance was recorded, follow the section on recordings; if you're citing the written play, follow the format for books. You shouldn't cite unpublished performances. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:26, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

What about the “Author, play name, Act, Scene” format? Or is that now “old fashioned”? Blueboar (talk) 02:01, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

That's fine for published plays, sure. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:30, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Cite Q and WP:CITEVAR

Headbomb and I recently noticed that Int21h has been converting selected citation templates in articles to {{Cite Q}} (for example: diff). The current user talk comments about this concur that these conversions are against WP:CITEVAR and produce source code that is very difficult for content editors to evaluate. I would like to know if there are other opinions about this and whether {{Cite Q}} conversions should be explicitly mentioned in the WP:CITEVAR content guideline? Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Cite Q is not a citation style.

I have not changed any citation styles. Cite journal is called with the same parameters as before. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 00:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Int21h: Look at the heading: WP:CITEVAR refers to "variation in citation methods" not only "variation in citation style". It includes "changing where the references are defined", according to the current text of WP:CITEVAR. Now look at the diff of your edit: You say that change is not a variation in citation method? I say you're wrong! It's a huge change in citation method: it makes the content of the citation invisible in editing mode. On your talk page you said that Cite Q evaluates on Visual Editor for newer editors, but not all of us are using Visual Editor, and the change of citation method is very apparent and very debilitating for editors who don't use Visual Editor. Biogeographist (talk) 02:23, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

"Cite journal is called with the same parameters as before" It is not. It mass imports everything from Wikidata, including the stuff that's deliberately left out. It's also a change in how citations are handled. Converting clear and easily edited inputs into impossibly obscure ones. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

As noted above, this is absolute a change that is against WP:CITEVAR. There is no consensus for changing citations to "Cite Q". Peter coxhead (talk) 07:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I tend to think that migrating citation metadata to Wikidata is a good idea; that sort of thing is what Wikidata is good at. Despite that, though, I completely agree with others here that it should not be done en masse, and not to individual articles against consensus, per WP:CITEVAR. Among other things, Cite Q has a viral effect, in that once a citation is formatted using Cite Q, it becomes much more difficult to copy it to other articles without using Cite Q again. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:59, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I almost forgot, but there's another reason not to use Cite Q (as currently implemented) and not to replace citations with it: because its default behavior cannot properly split authors into separate last and first names, as many styles use and as required when linking to citations with harv templates. You could spell out the authors yourself but then what's the point of even using the template. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

• This should be nuked from space. We have discussed citations to Wikidata before… and firmly rejected them every time. Repeatedly. Blueboar (talk) 12:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

  The template was discussed in 2017 for deletion with an outcome of "no consensus"; the closer gave some options for renomination should certain issues not be addressed. Primefac (talk) 13:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Takuya Nagase § Bundling citations

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Takuya Nagase § Bundling citations. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:41, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Checking this talk page's archives, it seems that WP:REFBUNDLE has been discussed a number of times in the past. So, perhaps some of those more familiar with it and how it's typically applied could provide some input with respect it's application in the above-mentioned article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:44, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Page number tags

reference info for Bay of Pigs Invasion

unnamed refs	149
named refs	45
self closed	102
	1
cs1 refs	63
cs1 templates	76
harv refs	1
harv templates	2
sfn templates	82
refbegin templates	1
cleanup templates	132
dead link templates	1
webarchive templates	12
use xxx dates	dmy
cs1|2 df dmy	6
cs1|2 dmy dates	13
cs1|2 ymd dates	6
cs1|2 last/first	36
cs1|2 author	4
List of cs1 templates cite AV media (1) Cite book (1) cite book (19) Cite journal (1) cite journal (3) Cite magazine (1) cite news (10) Cite news (2) Cite web (15) cite web (23)
List of sfn templates sfn (82)
List of harv templates harvnb (2)
explanations

At Bay of Pigs Invasion we've got Template:Page needed tags on every ref to a book that doesn't have a page number. I don't see this as useful, and it clutters up the text. These don't seem to have been added when there was a problem, for example someone tried to verify a fact, but rather they were added everywhere. Is this appropriate? GA-RT-22 (talk) 22:12, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Unless the whole book is being cited, then yes, the citations should include page numbers/ranges. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:27, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Or for ebooks some sort of other identifier for the location.Nigel Ish (talk) 11:20, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

That wasn't the question. I did find an essay, Wikipedia:Tag bombing, that suggests the answer is "no". GA-RT-22 (talk) 04:34, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Asking for specific locations for sourced information to aid in verifiability is not an "unjustified" tag, and thus it's not tag bombing. 16:08, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Referencing at Bay of Pigs Invasion is rather a mess. As such, I'm inclined to agree that the tagging is justified. Instead of expending time and energy debating whether the tagging is justified, better to just fix the article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Bundling citations

This is sort of related to this above, but is more general in scope; so, I thought it would be OK to ask about separately. I'm looking for clarification about a few things related to WP:CITEBUNDLE and perhaps those who frequent this talk page can help out.

1. What's the relationships between CITEBUNDLE and WP:CITEVAR? Do they simply coexist or does one typically take precedence over the other? I found Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 45#Bundling cites and CITEVAR? from 2018, but it appears there was still quite a bit of disagreement among those participating when the discussion ended up being archived. Has there been a further discussion relating to this since that time? As a courtesy, I'm going to ping all those who were involved in the previous discussion in the order they posted (@Andy Dingley, Betty Logan, Headbomb, J. Johnson, Jc3s5h, SMcCandlish, CBM, Donald Albury, Johnbod, David Eppstein, Kmhkmh, Emeraude, and Donald Albury); this is not so much to restart or rehash that discussion per se, but just to see whether anything was resolved by it. Even though two of the editors (J. Johnson and CBM) haven't edited in about a year or more, I still decided to ping them as a courtesy.
2. How should the words "sometimes" and "multiple" in the first sentence of CITEBUNDLE be interpreted? Since there's usually a reason why most policy and guideline pages are worded the way they are, I'm wondering whether there's any special meaning attached to those two words. To me "sometimes" means there may be times when bundling citations isn't desirable, but that might be too simplistic of an interpretation. Similarly, "multiple" generally means "two or more", but again that could be too simple of an interpretation. Does the use of "sometimes" mean bundling doesn't always make an article "more readable"? Does the use of "multple" mean that bundling two or more citations into one always makes an article "more readable"? I understand why citations are bundled when there are lots of citations are involved, but it's harder to understand how bundling two citations (maybe even three citations) into one always means "more readable".
3. Should the use of line breaks as a bundling method be deprecated? The very last sentence of CITEBUNDLE states that the use of line breaks "breaches WP:Accessibility § Nobreaks". Since MOS:ACCESS deals with how different users using different devices to read Wikipedia may be impacted by various things, it seems like it's not a good idea to still allow something that creates possible ACCESS issues. The "Bullet" and "Paragraph" methods for bundling seem to be without such concerns; so, maybe it's time for the "Line break" method taken out of the mix.

Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:45, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

The wording there is confusing, and I think because of that you have misread it. The use of one-per-line bundled citations is not problematic and should not be removed. The problem is encoding them with <br> separators rather than with the templates recommended for this purpose at the end of that section. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:19, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you David Eppstein for the clarification. Just for reference, my Q3 wasn't to ask whether bundling citations as a whole or when done using the recommended templates should be deprecated; my intention was to ask whether the "line break" method using the syntax <br> should be deprecated. The reason I'm asking about this is that it's given as an example in H:CITEMERGE#Syntax even though it also states that doing so is problematic. If doing it in such a way creates problems, maybe it would be better to replace the example with ones that show how the recommended templates can be used instead. Perhaps the same should be done for the in CITEBUNDLE since it also uses the syntax <br>. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:21, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

The code in both locations should be updated to use the templates and to stop using <br>.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:54, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it's a little more nuanced than that, isn't it? If you want the citations to be processed as a list, then you shouldn't use <br />, because that doesn't make a list. But if you want the citations to be read out in what that page calls "Paragraph format" (only with some whitespacing for purely visual purposes), then the line break method will achieve that goal. ACCESS says "Do not separate list items with line breaks". It's up to you to decide whether these should be considered list items (and therefore introduced by the screen reader with the additional words "List of three items:"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow this since it seems to be primarily based upon the personal preference of the user doing the bundling and not a consensus that bundling (or at least this method of bundling) always should be done exists or a consensus that using <br> for bundling doesn't create ACCESS problems. I'm going to ask Graham87 for some insight into this because he uses a screenreader and he also happens to be an admin (so he's familiar with Wikipedia). Perhaps Graham87 could provide some technical insight regarding this from at least an ACCESS perspective. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:14, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

As a screen reader user, use of line breaks here isn't that big a deal for me. In terms of importance I'd give it about a two out of ten, at the most. Graham87 01:27, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Please someone do a bot to eliminate the spaces in citations

Administrators should do a routine automatic to clean the blank spaces. Those spaces serves nothing, but increase a lot of servers disk spaces clusters and costs to store the edit data.

As it is : Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 18.

As must be : Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 18.

--188.96.90.63 (talk) 17:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Don't worry about performance. Besides, using bots for pointless edits like this would also take up resources. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I actually want spaces in my citations and I see far too many scripts that condense out these spaces already which technically go against WP:CITEVAR. --Masem (t) 18:33, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Masem; a lack of spaces in the wikitext makes editing harder and tends to make lines break in awkward places while editing in source mode. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:01, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree per above. The spaces help. Carlstak (talk) 20:48, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I also agree with the above. Removing the spaces would make the article harder to read when editing for no clear benefit. Egsan Bacon (talk) 20:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any scripts or bots that strip spaces out of citation templates. If anyone sees such an edit, would you please ping me with a diff? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

First, let me say that there is appropriate usage of scripts when it is to retain the style. For example, while I personally add refs using spaces on articles where the prevailing style is compact, using a script like User:Meteor_sandwich_yum/Tidy_citations.js is reasonable, eg: [1]. (That is, this is a fully legit CITEVAR script fix). But I've seen cases of articles I've started with my preferred "breathing room" for citations then get have a user use one of these scripts to compact down the citations (eg: [2] (I'm the original editor of that article). That's a annoyance when that happens, for certain. Scripts can exist, but they should be used for maintaining only the established CITEVAR. --Masem (t) 21:37, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The opposite might actually be usefull, have a bot add these spaces where they are lacking. The spaces vastly improve the readability of source text. The "cost" is negligible - a couple of dozen bytes per article will not bankrupt the WMF. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

To Masem, Jc3s5h, Carlstak, Egsan Bacon, Dodger67: I'm using Firefox with the alternative syntax highlighter (enabled in Preferences/Gadgets/Editing), and it doesn't break lines at | and =, so such unspaced template invocations sometimes produce lines twice wider than my editor window, which makes editing and even viewing them really painful (I have to scroll it right and left). Do you experience similar problems? I was thinking to raise the question about adding somewhere a recommendation to use spaces between named parameters (as all WP guides and template documentations currently do anyway, but without a formal rule). Not that a bot should add them, but I think that the complete removal of spaces must be at least discouraged. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:06, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

This sort of bot task is not merely pointless, but actually forbidden. See both WP:CITEVAR (which prohibits out-of-consensus changes to citation formatting including how the templates are coded) and WP:COSMETICBOT (which forbits bot tasks that only make this sort of invisible-to-readers change). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:20, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

What the others said (with the clarification that WP:COSMETICBOT only forbids these cosmetic edits in the absence of consensus for them, which this will never get). Additionally, these spaces are actually a good thing (see this old discussion and editor-hostile wikitext), because they greatly improve code readability and line breaking. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:57, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Can we please add this recommendation about spaces (to use  |parameter=value or  |parameter = value or  | parameter = value – always with a space (or newline) before |) to some user guidelines as well? Because in addition to the complete lack of spaces, discussed above, I also sometimes see crazy things like (line breaks exaggerated to demonstrate the effects)

{{cite
web|last =
Surname|first
= Name|title
=
Something|url
= ...}}

or a more tolerable but still strange multiline format

{{cite web|
  last = Surname|
  first = Name| 
  title = Something|
  url = ...
}}

with pipes immediately at ends of values instead of before parameter names. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:24, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I sometimes use no-space formats, for the following good reason: I have software that generates citations in multiline format but for inline references that can use too much space and a more compact format without line breaks may be preferable. But a global search and replace from "\s*([|=])\s*" to " \1 ", to convert to spaced parameters without the line breaks (as advocated here) will often break urls containing equal signs, such as those from Google books. Instead, replacing to "\1" to create an unspaced format, is safer for the urls in the citations. I would strongly object to recommendations to use only one format, based on some individual's aesthetic preferences for what the coding should look like, but failing to take into account practicalities like this. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:34, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

First of all, "recommending" ≠ "forbidding other". I mean, if possible and feasible – please use spaces; if not – somebody else can add them later. Second, the | character is not allowed in URLs (it can be present in wikilinks, but they tolerate spaces), so if you just process | without touching =, nothing should break. Third, if your software can't produce readable wikicode (as recommended in WP:BOTDICT#editor-hostile wikitext), it's a good reason to improve your software, not to declare that poorly formatted wikicode is perfectly fine and must be retained no matter what. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 21:12, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

If you cannot read wikicode without spaces, perhaps you should be the one to upgrade the software in your eyes. Or write yourself a special script to reformat the code in a special format that you can read. Or in whatever other way do the work yourself rather than whining that others should do the work because you don't think it's pretty. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:22, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

It isn't a question of "software in your eyes"; accessibility is better with spacing. Those of us who are older need the help that good layout can give. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I use spaces around | for the reasons mentioned. A bot to make the format consistent (which I don't see a crying need for) should be required to leave urls alone. Zero^talk 11:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It would really be best if we settled on a standard format for inline citations, perhaps: {{cite whatever |param1=val1 |param2=val2}}, and same for vertical citations, perhaps:
{{cite whatever
 |param1=val1
 |param2=val2
}}
It would be a bit arbitrary, but at least people would stop fighting about it if there were a rule. I hold out no hope of this, however, due to the amount of "Don't you dare touch my precious and perfect citation preferences" zealotry in this venue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:05, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

It is pointless busywork to standardize spacing in citation formats and then run around enforcing those standards. We would be better off if the editors who want to do this found a more constructive use for their time. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

VisualEditor is follows the format defined in the Wikipedia:TemplateData for each template. After a couple of requests over the last year, Template:Cite journal was changed to use simple spacing. The other CS1 templates might still doing unspaced formatting. If you want to establish an arbitrary rule, then it'd make sense to start by setting the TemplateData to whatever the end goal is. After all, it's already (necessarily) following an arbitrary rule, so it might as well be whatever arbitrary rule we want to see. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

The missing references: TemplateData change, template discussion (last?), WPMED discussion (last?). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:34, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

From my point of view, almost any format with a space (or line break) before | is fine, and we don't need to set a strict "standard format". But, as many have noticed here and in other discussions, the lack of spacing (especially before | is indeed "editor-hostile", and we already have a suggestion for bots, but it's impossible to find. So I suggest adding that part about code readability at least to H:PARAMETER, such that human editors (for whom the results are much more important than for bots) can also learn that completely removing spaces before named arguments is a bad idea. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:34, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Linking short citations

WP:CITESHORT says: "The short citations and full citations may be linked so that the reader can click on the short note to find full information about the source." Shouldn't we recommend such linking instead of merely allowing it, as it is an obvious improvement in reading experience without any drawbacks? With reference tooltips enabled (they are by default), even clicking is not required to see the full reference (and then possibly open the actual source by clicking the link directly in the tooltip). On the contrary, without such linking, getting to the source requires nontrivial manual work (even "select text"/"find in page" wouldn't always help much, since strings like "Author & Author" are most likely not present in corresponding full citations, and searching for just "Author" is likely to find many irrelevant occurrences). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 18:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

(By the way, there is a demo at Reference Tooltips § User experience how convenient it is with such linking.)

So if nobody has objections against these arguments, let's then change

The short citations and full citations may be linked so that the reader can click on the short note to find full information about the source.

to

It is useful to link the short citations to full citations, so that the reader can click on or hover over the short note to find full information about the source.

or something similar. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:53, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose "recommending" it, as officious editors would be demanding it, or just doing it, in no time at all. But "it is useful" doesn't quite rise to that, & would be ok. As we now know, very few readers look at references anyway (though I think they like to know they are there), and how all this works for the majority of our readers who are using phones, heaven only knows. Johnbod (talk) 02:50, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't understand your position: you say that my proposed wording "would be ok", but start your comment with a bold "oppose". Regarding phone users, such linking is still useful for them because although they might not have the popups, they can surely tap on the link. I would say that for them this provides an even more significant UX improvement – while I can easily double-click the bare-text short citation and press Ctrl+F to (hopefully, quickly) find the full citation, doing so or scrolling back and forth on a phone is much more painful. In any case, WP:Verifiability is one of the core policies, and linking helps with it without harming anyone. WP:REF § Handling links in citations already says that "it is helpful to include hyperlinks to source material", so if some editors for some reasons prefer to add another level of indirection instead of just using {{r}}, it would be also helpful to aid the readers in making it through this additional indirection. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
    • That reflects the contradiction in your post between "Shouldn't we recommend such linking instead of merely allowing it", and then a draft that doesn't include "recommend" language. Hope all is clear now. Johnbod (talk) 16:12, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
      • There is no contradiction. "Shouldn't we recommend" was a question to discuss, posted more than a month ago. Now, after some consideration, I propose the actual wording, so whatever words were used in the original question is not relevant at this moment (notice that "merely allowing" isn't used anywhere in WP:CITESHORT either). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose changing the wording of WP:CITESHORT where it says "The short citations and full citations may be linked..." because stating support stronger than "may" would imply it is needed, that this is a response to a problem. If there is a case to be made that the absence of linking has caused problems, I can moderate my position. Adding links can introduce errors. Linking to enable hover reveal will not help phone and tablet users with touchscreens, it will not help folks using browsers without javascript enabled. These are reasons for maintaining the current status of the wording. Paleorthid (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
  • The absence of linking causes verifiability and accessibility problems – it's more difficult "to find full information about the source" without linking. Helping phones and tablets users was already explained (tapping a link is still much better than staring at bare text); the same applies to browsers without javascript (clicking a link is still much better than staring at bare text). The argument that "adding links can introduce errors" looks very strange – any improvements can introduce errors. But even from this perspective, detecting broken hyperlinks is also much easier than detecting errors in bare-text short citations. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Citations in a list

I'm not sure if this is the best place to make this inquiry, but here goes... We're dealing with a list of Founding Fathers, composed of more than 150 names, most of them members of the Continental Congress, and are referred to as such because they were involved in the drafting and debates involving documents like the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Association and the U.S. Constitution. Since there are many sources that refer to the Continental Congress members and/or major revolutionary leaders, as those who were involved in the founding process, or as Founding Fathers, which actually is a modern figure of speech, do we still need to provide a specific citation that spells out that exact phrase for every individual in the list? Or would it suffice to provide general sourcing which explicitly outlines the involvements of the Continental Congress as a whole, in the drafting, debates, signing, all involved in the founding. i.e.Must we provide a source that says Founding Father, verbatim, for every one of the 150 names? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
( This inquiry was also posted on the Help talk:List page. )

"MOS:IBID" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect MOS:IBID and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 May 20#MOS:IBID until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:45, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Page title

The page needs to be moved to 'Citations'. The page title is 'Citing sources'. The first sentence of the article starts with 'A citation'. When searching the Wiki MoS for 'citation(s)', the first result should be to the page that explains what citations are and how to use them in an article. The search leads to 'Wikipedia:Manual of Style/U.S. legal citations/Bluebook' as a first result. I doubt that Wiki editors searching the word 'citations' in the Wiki MoS want the specific US legal style Bluebook manual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Absolutely Certainly (talk • contribs) 15:54, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Parenthetical referencing shortcut

I would like to add a shortcut for parenthetical referencing specifically to refer to it in edit summaries. I can't think of any good shortcut names though: NOPARENTHETICAL would seem too long, and the current most-similar shortcut CITEVAR seems too non-specific. Would appreciate any other thoughts on this. Darcyisverycute (talk) 06:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Shorter names of book series

The History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence series of British official histories is a well known source however the proper title is rather long and takes up a lot of space in what can already be a long citation. eg

Edmonds, J. E.; Falls, C. B.; Wynne, G. C. (1948). Military Operations: France and Belgium 1917. History of the Great War based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Vol. II: 7th June – 10th November: Messines and Third Ypres (Passchendaele). London: HMSO. OCLC 769477027.

Are there guidelines that affect whether one could use the common short title of the series - History of the Great War - or not? For what it's worth, on the frontispiece, "based on Official Documents .... Committee of Imperial Defence" is generally rendered in a smaller font than History of the Great Wat", the book and volume title. As seen in this scanned example at archive.org GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Editors are free to use any style in any article that they decide is best for that article. In this case, if you link to the article about the series, then there would be very little opportunity for confusion about which book is being cited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Citations of Images/Museums

How should I cite the content of an image taken in a museum? I visited the Habsburg Castle where they had a display of the early family tree. Most of the pages for the early Habsburgs are missing sources, so I'd like to add the castle, or my image of the display, as a source for these pages. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Here's the image I took and uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, which I would like to add it as a source for Radbot of Klettgau, among others.

Family Tree for the Early Habsburgs

Kairom13 (talk) 02:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Permanently installed signs can be cited. Many editors use the template {{cite sign}} for this. But a temporary sign is probably not eligible, because sources must be "accessible" to the general public, and the sign is no longer accessible once it has been removed (even if you took a photo or remember what the sign said, because Wikipedia:You are not a reliable source).

I expect that all of the information on this sign is available in other sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Web page authors and publication dates

Currently, this guideline prohibits the use of a web page unless the author and publication date are known, which they are usually not. I propose that these be made optional. Neither field has any use. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:26, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

prohibits? Where is that prohibition written?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Right here (WP:CITEWEB). It is a guideline and it says that citing a web page requires the name of the author and the date of publication. While it says the "it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply", the persons who wrote it had no common sense, and exceptions are not occasional, but commonplace. So no exception. Therefore, web pages without authors cannot be used due to this guideline. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:32, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Where do you see the word "require"? What I see in there is not "require", but instead "typically include", which means something very different. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:06, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

What does it mean then? It says "Listed below is the information that a typical inline citation or general reference will provide, though other details may be added as necessary." So that has been interpreted as the minimum requirement. Can I turn down flat anyone who wants to see authors and publication dates listed? If it is optional, can I mark it as such? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:58, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

"Typically includes" means many citations would include the items listed. Obviously any item that is not provided on the web page can't be included. The only item that is certainly required for a citation to a web page is the URL for the web page. The phrase "typically includes" is sufficient to let readers know the items are not mandatory. However, the citation must be sufficient for a reader to find the information that supports the claim in the Wikipedia article. Other editors might decide that a citation, taken as a whole, is not good enough to locate the information that supports the claim in the Wikipedia article. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:09, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

That's right. There are only three fields that are essential:

1. |URL=, which is needed to locate the object (which, strictly speaking, may not be a web page)
2. |access-date=, which is used by the humans and bots to locate the best page from an archive if link rot sets in. (Not date as the guideline says.)
3. |title=, which is used by humans to locate the page if it moves

• The archive parameters are necessary if the page has to be retrieved from an archive but not otherwise.

Others should be considered strictly optional. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:22, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

AIAA as humanities publisher?

While setting up AIAA (disambiguation) I ran into several pages that cited humanities books supposedly published by AIAA, an aerospace association. Looking up these books inevitably found that the publisher is currently listed as Palgrave Macmillan. Was this a mistake in some database that was once used to build these citations, or were they ever really published under an "AIAA" name, and if so what does it stand for? Examples:

• British Archives: A Guide to Archive Resources in the UK in County Hall, Hertford
• Constructing a Fiscal Military State in Eighteenth Century Spain in Third Treaty of San Ildefonso and Treaty of Aranjuez (1801)
• The Jacobite Movement in Scotland and in Exile in John O'Sullivan (soldier), Sir John Douglas, 3rd Baronet, of Kelhead, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, William Drummond, 4th Viscount Strathallan, and John Murray of Broughton
• A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance in Theatre Owners Booking Association
• Agents of Atrocity: Leadership, Political Violence and Human Rights in Sack of Wexford
• The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics in Munich Cosmic Circle and Ludwig Klages
• Cameron and the Conservatives: The Transition to Coalition Government in Laurence Robertson
• Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era in Franco-Dutch War
• Loyalty and Identity: Jacobites at Home and Abroad in Manchester Regiment (Jacobite)

Any ideas? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:20, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Must be a mistake. The title & oppo title pages of the first two are visible on google books, & indeed say Palgrave Macmillan, with nothing about AIAA. I can't imagine many/any of these have multiple editions. Probably some isbn mix up or duplication? These do happen. Johnbod (talk) 04:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

The Library of Congress for the first one shows four editions with different publishers (Gale Research c1982, Stockton Press 1989, Macmillan Press 1995, Palgrave 2002). No AIAA. Zero^talk 04:56, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

All these imprints are part of the same publishing group. Johnbod (talk) 13:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok, replaced all. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:25, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

How to cite a reply to a Freedom of Information request?

I noticed that the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury (a finance minister in the UK Government) ceased to be of full cabinet rank in 2015 and that a citation was needed for this on the Wikipedia page. I was unable to find a source for this anywhere so I submitted a freedom of information request. Later I received a reply, a letter from HM Treasury in PDF form that answered my query.

How do I cite this letter on Wikipedia? I have thought of 2 ways but neither seems ideal:

• Make an image file of the PDF letter and upload it to Wikimedia Commons as my own work.
• Upload the PDF letter to my GitHub account and cite it from there as a web source.

Any suggestions or comments as to how I should proceed would be welcome. Perhaps {{cite reply to freedom of information request}} is needed.

Thanks. Mattstan (talk) 13:05, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Others may disagree, but I believe this is original research and you can't cite it. Have you tried searching Hansard? It is online. Zero^talk 14:10, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

@Mattstan Welcome to Teahouse! This is definitely primary research, however seems like an acceptable use case to verify a basic fact. Uploading it to Commons is definitely much more preferable, as doubts about its veracity/licensing can be adjudicated there. I would then reference a link to the commons image as a "source" and cite the publisher as HM Treasury etc.. If there is a more reliable/authoritative source than a FOI email, that can replace this in the near future. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:21, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

@Mattstan I did a little digging, and the announcement of the new posts in 2015 did include an explicit footnote that the Chief Secretary was simply "attending cabinet" (Gazette). Similarly 2016, 2017, (can't find 2019), and 2020. Interestingly they don't always define who is a full Cabinet member, but they do always specify "attending" for the intermediate ones. Potentially those could be used as citations and avoid the FOI problem?

In the more general case, I've seen FOI responses cited via whatdotheyknow, or where the department proactively publishes its FOI responses, but of course that's not amazingly helpful if you only have the original email and didn't go through those channels. Andrew Gray (talk) 15:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Unless the response is published in some way by a RS, we cannot directly use the documents provided by a FIOA request, since it can be interpretation of what the documents mean. Having an RS discuss the results of the FIOA provides the necessary analysis of the results to give them context. --Masem (t) 17:05, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Unique "name" in named references

Currently at Citing sources#Repeated citations we have this:

The text of the name can be almost anything‍—‌apart from being completely numeric. If spaces are used in the text of the name, the text must be placed within double quotes. Placing all named references within double quotes may be helpful to future editors who do not know that rule. To help with page maintenance, it is recommended that the text of the name have a connection to the inline citation or footnote, for example "author year page": <ref name="Smith 2005 p94">text of the citation</ref>. (Bold added.

This "almost anything‍" goes wording often results in a mess with multiple uses of the same ref in an article, but with different names. A MOS isn't worth much if it recommends "almost anything‍" goes. It should be specific.

My proposition below results in a unique ref name that independent editors would create without even talking to each other because it is based on objectively unique information from the source. It also means that the same unique ref name will be found across all articles that use that same source.

Note the last bolded sentence in the box above. I would like to see us formalize that idea into a MOS guideline requiring a unique ref name. The commonly used citation tool Yadkard produces a format common in scientific literature (last name(s) of the author(s) and publication date). That is much more unique than using the source publication, such as The New York Times. Even adding the date doesn't help much, as there are myriad articles written there on that date.

• Example with two authors: <ref name="Harding_Lemon_20171115"> (ISO 8601 date format)

What think ye? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:33, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

What would you propose doing where one or both of these datapoints is not available (as is the case for many web sources)? What would you propose doing in the case that there were multiple works with the same author(s) and date? 22:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

It's rare, but it does happen, unlike where it happens daily with the other types of ad hoc formats one often sees. One can get creative and add a number. No suggestion, including mine, can be used, unaltered, 100% of the time. When that data is absent, then get creative. There are myriad exceptions to every rule, but "almost anything‍" goes is too loose to be useful in a MOS guideline. Give guidelines and then say that in exceptional situations, get creative. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose any such requirement on refname format. Requiring "unique ref names" in a specific format is very much counter to WP:CITEVAR, and also unworkable when we have widely-used automatic tools generating not-very-unique names like ":0" and widely-used templates like {{sfn}} generating differently-formatted names like "Smith2008p25". Your format also works very badly for citations with dozens of authors (as is fairly common in some areas of science), and leads to confusing names in articles that cite multiple sources by the same author (where a more-easily-remembered refname such as a keyword from the title can work better for distinguishing these refs). And in general, insisting on a specific format for something that is only visible to editors and not authors is calling for a lot more work for gnomes and clutter on our watchlists instead of useful contributions to the encyclopedia, not a positive thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:01, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I see you've tried to think up every possible exception (there are many) and possible problem, rather than seeing an improvement for most situations. See my reply above. Get creative. I am not proposing one format for every possible situation. That's unrealistic. There are others that also work, but most of the time the suggested format works fine and prevents the types of duplications we find in large articles, and sometimes smaller ones.

For many authors, name the first two and then add et al. That's a standard way to deal with many authors. "Smith2008p25" is perfectly good when one wishes to add the page number. It's the basic format I favor, using name and date, although the date is too vague. There can be many articles by Smith in that year, so it's better to use the exact date. (See modified suggestion below.) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Forcing all edits into a rigid mechanical framework is the exact opposite of getting creative. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:36, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

For the record, {{sfn|Smith|2008|p=25}} creates <ref name="FOOTNOTESmith200825">

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:27, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I couldn't find this documented so I used the format from the equivalent non-template coding listed in the documentation for {{sfn}}. The point remains that it's not the same as the proposed format, and that the proposed format is not usable for sfn in its proposed form (sfn needs the page numbers to be part of the ref name so that it can be used for different pages from the same reference). —David Eppstein (talk) 00:21, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that format is still good. I am not suggesting we stop using it. Most refs don't need page numbers, but those that do can use that format. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

It's there; see: Template:Sfn § {{sfn}}'s ref name.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:21, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Modified suggestion

"Smith2008p25" is a format recommended in the guideline, but the date is too vague. There can be many articles by Smith in that year, so it's better to use the exact date. We should, if nothing else I suggest here gets accepted, at least improve that and suggest using the full date, preferably in the ISO format for international use. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose anything resembling a mandate. There is a plethora of formats that all makes sense. Use whichever is the most convenient. For example

• Amsler, C.; et al. (Particle Data Group) (2008). "Review of Particle Physics: b′ (4th Generation) Quarks, Searches for" (PDF). Physics Letters B. 667 (1): 1–1340. Bibcode:2008PhLB..667....1A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2008.07.018. hdl:1854/LU-685594.

Could have the short name Amsler2008, Amsler2008c (if this is the third time a different section of Amsler2008 is cited), PDG 2008, RPP2008, or even BPrime or PDG-BPrime. All of those are intelligible and make sense. Which to use depends on context and should be left to editors. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:23, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

• I don't think there is a reasonable prospect of having a standard form that is easy for editors to understand and use. I also don't see this as solving a problem so severe that it needs a solution. Zero^talk 02:38, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
• I feel there's not much appetite in the community for a mandatory house naming convention for editor-facing parameter values, and I do not believe there's a standard case for citations: rather a series of edge cases with varying degrees of share in the enclosed space. For a further example following on the ones raised above, the full publication date is not usually provided for articles in print journals, which often give only the year.

Being that "almost anything" is indeed little guidance, why not remove the wording and rewrite the paragraph to emphasize the important bit? Like

It is recommended that the text of the name have a connection to the inline citation or footnote, for example "author year page": <ref name="Smith 2005 p94">text of the citation</ref> The text of the name cannot be completely numeric, and must be placed within double quotes if spaces are used. Placing all named references within double quotes may be helpful to future editors who do not know that rule.

Blessings, Folly Mox (talk) 16:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

"Almost anything" is a technical clarification, not an encouragement to put weird stuff that doesn't make s ense. You can put almost anything in the ref name. What you can't put is a purely numerical format, and spaces if you don't use double quotes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:23, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. As a technical clarification, I feel the allowable values of the name parameter should follow the recommended guidance for usage, rather than lead into the recommendation. Folly Mox (talk) 16:47, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

If we're going to recommend a specific format, I would strongly prefer that the recommended format (1) be concise, not "long reference name that is hard to remember and type out 1989 pages 29 to 45, see especially the footnote on page 38", and (2) not use spaces or other characters that require double quoting. Folly Mox's suggested "author year page" is too long and requires quoting. Typical formats that I use might be "surname", "initials", in cases of ambiguity "surnameYY" with the year of publication, or sometimes "keyword" drawn from the title. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: for clarity, I have not proposed a specific format and do not believe any format will generalize well enough to be appropriate for all use cases. I just reorganized the paragraph already present on the project page, which the OP quotes at the top of this thread. Folly Mox (talk) 18:54, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Question about altering the style of titles in citations

Back when I was pursuing FA nominations, I was told by a reviewer at one point that the titles of citations should be altered to match Wikipedia's MOS. So, for example, a Rolling Stone article titled "It’s Real Now: Joe Biden Has Signed the Climate Bill Into Law" should be cited with the title "It's real now: Joe Biden has signed the climate bill into law".

I personally think it's good practice because it creates consistency within Wikipedia articles. It means citation titles are consistent both with the style used in the article body, and with other titles cited in the article — for example, the Guardian and BBC do not capitalize the titles of their articles.

But now that I search around, I can't seem to find any guideline or policy around this. Am I missing something? Is there a consensus over whether this is a good or bad idea? Popcornfud (talk) 11:17, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

There's no policy, you're free to style things as you want, but do so consistently. I use sentence case for articles/chapters, and title case for book titles/works (like journal names, magazines, etc...). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:08, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the style I favor too — following Wikipedia's standard policies for capitalizing. Popcornfud (talk) 12:29, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Popcornfud I think that the official guideline is at MOS:ALLCAPS, which mentions citations. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:37, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I prefer to go with what the citation actually says, instead of re-writing it "for consistency". DuncanHill (talk) 16:41, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Is any this a problem *for the reader*? Are readers being confused or annoyed by any of this? If a reader is of the mind "Wait... wha? Is this an article title, or the name of a Swedish ice-milk company? It seems like it should be an article title, but the case is all wrong, so now I don't know what it is???" then she is going to be constantly confused by a very big lot of things here, and there's a limit to how much we can help people like that.

If the reader isn't confused but just annoyed, being of the mind "Wait, the previous article used title case for articles and this one uses sentence case, and that bothers me", then she is is going to be constantly annoyed by a very big lot of things here, and there's a limit to how much we can gruntle people like that or want to, and if it's a deal-killer for her she should probably get a subscription to Britannica or some other publications where everyone uses the same style or gets fired. Cos that ain't us. Herostratus (talk) 17:47, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, sure, but by that argument we shouldn't have guidance around sentence/title case for anything, let alone source titles... Popcornfud (talk) 17:56, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

We shouldn't have guidelines for anything where the guideline isn't required to:

1) Prevent some non-trivial number of reasonable readers from being even momentarily confused, or

2) Prevent some non-trivial number of reasonable readers from being measurably annoyed or distracted, on reasonable grounds

3) Make us look overly foolish or amateurish, bearing in mind that we are never going to be as crisp and consistent as other large publications (and this is not our goal, otherwise we would have been set up differently).

4) Help our process by setting down a rule to follow that results in a reduction of effort spent on talking about the matter, with little enough downside as to be a net benefit.

All of these are subject to argument on the margins -- what is really helpful, and what isn't? Having a rule about case for our articles makes sense, because not having one would make us look amateurish and would be at least slightly distracting, because article titles are very prominent. However, a rule for the case used in citations doesn't meet one of these criteria. In my opinion. Like most everything else except foundational policies (and even those), this is subject to opinion on where the lines are. There's nothing that can be done about that. But if you disagree, give me at least a reasonable argument where one of these four might be in play.

As to #4, downsides include annoying and micromanaging editors, or imposing a rule that isn't near universally accepted, for insufficient reason, even if the rule itself is OK. Rules are supposed to mostly codify existing practice rather then be imposed directives from an RFC which has 23 contributors. If we're codifying general practice here, there's not real cause for argument. I guess I can divide rules into four types:

1) Key foundational policies, such as NPOV and RS, which must be followed

2) Rules which objectively benefit (a plurality of) the readership, as far as we can figure, and definitely ought to be followed

3) Silly rules where any alternative is not any better, and there isn't really going to be much objection to them, and might as well have a place for new or unsure editors to look it up, which generally ought to be followed just for peace

4) Silly rules which editors should ignore, either because they are net negative for the readerships, or they're either not going to quash arguments much and/or will make editors feel straightjacketed

I think a rule on this matter would be in category #4, so I wouldn't pay any attention to it. So wouldn't some other editors, one major reason is that they can't keep track of all the rules here. I can't. So it's not necessarily going to help quash arguments. I appreciate OPs point of view, but for rules sake, or because editors want to tell other editors to follow their style preferences, is not helpful IMO. Herostratus (talk) 00:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough! This is not a position I feel strongly about at all, and really I wanted to check if this was a rule I should be taking seriously (as I heard about it second-hand). Like I say, I see the logic of standardizing formatting and personally I think it looks nice and tidy, but it wouldn't be something I would battle anyone on. Popcornfud (talk) 09:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Coincidentally, just in the past few days I was explaining to Sunwin1960 (at Talk:Kathryn Schulz and Talk:Susan Orlean) that WP:CS permits any consistent citation style in an article and does not universally require using title case as Sunwin1960 claimed on multiple talk pages. Biogeographist (talk) 17:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Theatre shows/plays

What is the parameter for citing theatre shows/plays? - Therealscorp1an (talk) 04:20, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Crossposting Idea Lab - Ask Top Websites to add Share Cite Option

Crossposting Idea Lab - Ask Top Content Providers to add Cite to their Share Options Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:24, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Swapped first and last in refs

Many articles (e.g. Julie C. Price, Merit Cudkowicz) have author last names in first name fields, and initials in last name field (e.g. perhaps via an automatic conversion from a style like "Lyon RF" to "first=Lyon|last=Rf". I presume this is not just a legitimate ref style variation, but rather an error, likely caused by some tool. Does anyone know what tool does this, how to detect and fix, etc.? Dicklyon (talk) 19:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

That's Vancouver style, btw, with |lastx= being abused in lieu of |authorx=. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:26, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

So… it is a legitimate style, but one that is rare enough that we don’t have a template for it. Editors are trying to make templates that are designed for other styles work with Vancouver. The solution would be to a) create a Vancouver template, b) cite by hand (ie not use any template), or c) ignore it. Blueboar (talk) 00:37, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that an author list that displays as "Bj, Lopresti; We, Klunk; Ca, Mathis; Ja, Hoge; Sk, Ziolko; X, Lu; Cc, Meltzer; K, Schimmel; Nd, Tsopelas" is not a legitimate Vancouner-like style. Rather, it looks like it was derived from a Vancouver-style listing (e.g. me as "Lyon RF") and mangled (e.g. to Rf, Lyon). Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

This template from Julie C. Price has malformed |lastn= / |firstn= pairs and was created by an editor using visual editor:

{{Cite web|title=Simplified Quantification of Pittsburgh Compound B Amyloid Imaging PET Studies: A Comparative Analysis|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16330558/|last=Bj|first=Lopresti|last2=We|first2=Klunk|date=2005 Dec|website=Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine|language=en|pmid=16330558|access-date=2020-06-02|last3=Ca|first3=Mathis|last4=Ja|first4=Hoge|last5=Sk|first5=Ziolko|last6=X|first6=Lu|last7=Cc|first7=Meltzer|last8=K|first8=Schimmel|last9=Nd|first9=Tsopelas}}

Bj, Lopresti; We, Klunk; Ca, Mathis; Ja, Hoge; Sk, Ziolko; X, Lu; Cc, Meltzer; K, Schimmel; Nd, Tsopelas (2005 Dec). "Simplified Quantification of Pittsburgh Compound B Amyloid Imaging PET Studies: A Comparative Analysis". Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine. PMID 16330558. Retrieved 2020-06-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

|lastn= / |firstn= pairs were malformed from the start.

Intervening edits have changed it some (date format, url removed) but those edits have not fixed the author-name problem. Because this template and others like it were created by an editor using Visual Editor, that suggests that there is or was something wrong with ve or with citoid or with the translator (Zotero?) that citoid used.

Vancouver style is known and supported by all of the cs1|2 templates. Rewriting the above (from its current form) using Vancouver style looks like this:

{{Cite journal |vauthors=Lopresti BJ, Klunk WE, Mathis CA, Hoge JA, Ziolko SK, Lu X, Meltzer CC, Schimmel K, Tsopelas ND, DeKosky ST, Price JC |title=Simplified Quantification of Pittsburgh Compound B Amyloid Imaging PET Studies: A Comparative Analysis |date=December 2005 |language=en |pmid=16330558 |journal=Journal of Nuclear Medicine |volume=46 |issue=12 |pages=1959–1972}}

Lopresti BJ, Klunk WE, Mathis CA, Hoge JA, Ziolko SK, Lu X, Meltzer CC, Schimmel K, Tsopelas ND, DeKosky ST, Price JC (December 2005). "Simplified Quantification of Pittsburgh Compound B Amyloid Imaging PET Studies: A Comparative Analysis". Journal of Nuclear Medicine. 46 (12): 1959–1972. PMID 16330558.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

This problem is pretty widespread. Does someone have a bot, or a script, or a JWB setup, that will help with fixing it? Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Dead or now inaccurate reference link

Should a reference link that was being used to support the validity of information on a wikipage be removed if that link still works but leads to a different page at the organization which initially provided the source given that the organization confirms that they intentionally took down the webpage for various reasons including that the information on the page was outdated? Lwalkingwoman (talk) 19:22, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Without knowing which article and which reference, it's hard to say. My gut reaction is that you should see if the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has an archived snapshot of the source that supports the text in the article. If it does, add the archive's url to the citation. Does WP:LINKROT help to answer your question?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:41, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I am a novice here and am learning so please excuse me if I am sharing the following links improperly. I do see that the link has been replaced with a web archive. Here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20220901061023/https://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/quad-caucus/list-of-federal-and-state-recognized-tribes.aspx so the information is still available by doing this. But NCSL has purposely taken down this page and no longer supports that the information on it is accurate and that they never intended for it to be used in any official capacity. Here is the link as it is now: www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/quad-caucus/list-of-federal-and-state-recognized-tribes.aspx . So, should the information still available through an internet archive source but that is not supported by the NCSL anymore such that they purposely took it down still be used as a reference? Lwalkingwoman (talk) 19:55, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Again, it really would help to know which article you are talking about. References shouldn't be removed without considering what to do about the statements they support. You can add {{failed verification}} after the reference. Or find a source that currently supports the statement. Or find a source that supports a corrected version of the material. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:04, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

It's this sentence from State-recognized tribes in the United States:

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 14 states recognize tribes at the state level.

That sentence has this citation:

"State Recognized Tribes". National Conference of State Legislatures. Archived from the original on 26 May 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2017. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 1 September 2022 suggested (help)

Using the search at ncsl.org finds this page which says 11 states, not 14:

Martha Salazar (October 2016). "State Recognition of American Indian Tribes". LegisBrief. Vol. 24, no. 39.

But, that source is older than the archived source. Apparently National Conference of State Legislatures is somewhat secretive and requires a login for many of its pages. So, if you can, I would see if you can find an up-to-date source that isn't secretive and then replace the NCSL source with the new source. Until then, use the archived source because the archived snapshot supports our article's text.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:21, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you and that it is the site I was referring to. I spoke to Martha Salazar two days ago and she was the one who share the reasoning for taking totally down the page so that it is no longer on their website even if one logs in. But, I do see that the archived source as the reference in Note #5 is supported by text in the Citing sources page. Even if the information now being shared on this site is not truly supported. Perhaps someone, not me, can consider editing the Citing sources page to fix this small flaw. Thank you both for your input; I do appreciate it. Lwalkingwoman (talk) 20:45, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Ref to google maps isn't shown?

In Southern Boulevard (Bronx), there's a reference 1.^ Google (July 3, 2018). "Southern Boulevard" (Map). Google Maps. Google. Retrieved July 3, 2018. but there's no corresponding "[1]" anywhere on the page. If you edit the page with the visual editor, the reference goes away. The citation is inside the {{infobox street}} length_ref field. Can somebody figure out what's going on here and fix it? I'm out of my depth on this one. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:46, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The reason that there is no matching ^[1] is because there is no value assigned to |length_mi= or |length_km=. You should probably comment on this at {{infobox street}}. If both of those parameters are omitted, {{infobox street}} should not be rendered or may be rendered with an error message so that editors know that something is wrong.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:07, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I do have to wonder why a <ref>...</ref> inside of an infobox would still trigger an entry in a reflist if it's not actually being passed to anything. I do realise that's not an issue for this board, but I thought I'd mention it. Primefac (talk) 17:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I would guess that happens because references are processed separately from the infobox template. In this case, {{Infobox street/meta/length}} always processes |length_ref=. When |length_ref= has a <ref>...</ref> MediaWiki creates a reference stripmarker for the reference. This happens regardless of whether there is any value assigned to |length_mi=, |length_km=, |length_ft=, or |length_m=. When there are no values assigned to these parameters, nothing is assigned to |data8= in {{Infobox street}} so it does not display the ^[1] reference link. But, because {{Infobox street/meta/length}} processed |length_ref=, the reference was added to whatever internal list of references that MediaWiki keeps so when the reference stripmarkers are converted to real references, the reference in |length_ref= value is rendered. To fix this, {{Infobox street/meta/length}} should be fixed so that |length_ref= is only processed when one of |length_mi=, |length_km=, |length_ft=, or |length_m= has a value.

Why doesn't {{Infobox street/meta/length}} use {{convert}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:32, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

That was a copy of {{Infobox road/meta/length}} which did not use {{Convert}} because of referencing, ironically. We road people wanted the reference after the local unit, the logic being that sources in the US will say that a road is "X miles" long not "X miles (Y km)" long. So we home-brewed that template in our 2010 infobox rewrite. I've since rewritten it in Lua and that submodule uses Convert. –Fredddie™ 06:21, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Now that I looked at the history closer, @Trappist the monk, you fixed the module that I created. –Fredddie™ 06:28, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, so what I wrote before is pretty much not true. If you add a parameter |nonsense=<ref>nonsense ref</ref> to {{Infobox street}} in Southern Boulevard (Bronx) and then Show preview, the superscripted number for <ref>nonsense ref</ref> does not appear in the rendered infobox but the reference does appear in the reference list. That suggests that the only fix is to have the infobox emit an error message when the |length_ref= parameter is used without an accompanying |length_mi=, |length_km=, |length_ft=, or |length_m= parameter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The ref parameter is currently not used in that template if the length parameter(s) are not used, which is why I asked my question above. But, if it's not a page-side issue (as you have demonstrated) I suppose I shall have to play around with the infobox directly and see about sorting it out. Primefac (talk) 09:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

UPDATE: It is not the infobox. I made a change to the template, and even after making the length parameter the primary use in the Bronx article (which means the {{{length_ref}}} isn't even called) it still shows the reference. Primefac (talk) 09:55, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Is this kind of in-text attribution deprecated anywhere?

This sentence was in Ellipsis until I removed the parenthesised phrase. In her book on the ellipsis, Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Anne Toner suggests ... [The book it cited conventionally at the end of the sentence.] But I can't easily spot a specific statement that says that it is not appropriate. I haven't been challenged but right now it maybe qualifies as a WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. Have I failed to look hard enough? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:34, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

If it is in text, it is text, not a citation. The question is, would it be useful to readers of this passage to be told, as part of the text of the article, which publisher published the book and when. The publisher lends an imprimatur of reliability to the quote (it is not just some random person suggesting this on social media or something) and the date puts it into context. But whether it is sufficiently relevant to include as part of the article content should be a subject for editors of that article to determine, the same way they would determine the relevance of any other piece of article content. Trying to force Wikipedia citation formatting standards to fit so that you can get your way in this disagreement is an abuse of process. Go back to the article talk and try to build consensus there based on content-related considerations. Regardless of whether this appears in-text, the text describing Toner's suggestion still requires a separate citation, which should be a footnote (inline citations, which this is not, are deprecated) and much more detailed than this (including page numbers and ISBN, at least). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

There is no disagreement. As of eleven hours later, no-one has even questioned it, let alone reverted it. If it happens, it can be resolved in the normal way.

My reason for raising it here is not specific to that article, it is the more general principle of "house style" for this type of in-text citation. This particular notation is one that I have come across very rarely, so I though that it might be mentioned in our MOS. Am I to take it from your response that there is no such guidance?

I am accustomed to Parenthetical referencing, as in (for example) Toner (2015) suggests that the first use of the punctuation in the English language dates to a 1588 translation of Terence's Andria, by Maurice Kyffin. leaving the reader to consult the bibliography to the details of the book by Toner. Since we have hypertext markup not paper, we would normally write that as

Toner suggests that the first use of the punctuation in the English language dates to a 1588 translation of [[Terence]]'s ''[[Andria (comedy)|Andria]]'', by [[Maurice Kyffin]].{{sfnp|Toner|2015}} 

which would generate a numbered footnote that resolves to Turner (2015) which would in turn call out the full bibliographic citation Toner, Anne (2015). Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 151.. Help:Harvard references describes how to do that but nowhere (that I can see) does it suggest how one might do (let alone prefer to do) an in-text parenthetical reference. Is the {{sfnp}}/{{harv}} method just another Wikipedia "custom and practice" rather than a formal MOS guidance? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk)

Wikipedia does not have a house style for citing sources. Any consistent style may be used. A number of style guides, including MLA, consider a citation as part of a sentence, such as the example by David Eppstein, proper, so long as the sentence contains enough information to find the relevant part of the supporting work. Since it is a widely accepted practice, there is no reason why Wikipedia should deprecate it.

There is no requirement to use any kind of citation templates. But if an article is using them, having a mix of sentence citations and endnote citations with templates would make the article more difficult to maintain. If there is a desire to depricate sentence citations, or explain how to do them, with templates, it would go in Help:Citation style 1, not in WP:Citing sources.

The largest example of sentence citation I can think of is newspapers, who never use endnotes. Newspaper-oriented guides such as the AP Stylebook might provide useful information on how to do it. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:03, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

According to: Template:Harvard citation

"Also note that inline use of these templates, i.e. use of {{harv}} without <ref>...</ref> tags around it, was deprecated in September 2020."

See also WP:PAREN. A455bcd9 (talk) 15:17, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, A455bcd9, that is exactly what I was looking for. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:21, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

That discussion is exactly why I insist that referring to titles, publishers, and dates in inline text, regardless of whether they happen to be formatted in a style that matches harvard citation style, cannot be considered to be a citation. It is article text. If the date is article content, for instance because the chronology of discovery of a topic is important for readers to learn, then any deprecation of citation style cannot be relevant to it, because that 2020 discussion was purely about citations and not content. If the date is intended purely as a citation, for the usual purposes one makes a citation (verification, attribution, or helping readers find sources where they can learn more) then it should be formatted as a footnote. In the case in question, the information is not even in the specific style discussed in that 2020 discussion (which was "(author year)", not involving publishers), so that deprecation is doubly irrelevant. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I see that one result of the discussion mentioned is that WP:CITEVAR was changed, so that converting parenthetical in-line citations to numbered footnotes is now generally considered helpful. So if the original post had included a page number in the parenthesis, and omitted the numbered endnote at the end of the sentence, it would have been appropriate to convert the citation into a numbered endnote. But it was a citation, just not in a form preferred by Wikipedia. So it would be wrong to simply delete the sentence on the basis that it was unsourced. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:08, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Manuscripts

The {{cite book}} template lacks fields needed by manuscripts. Manuscripts require a library, a shelfmark, and a folio number. I propose the addition of a {{cite manuscript}} template for sources that predate the printing press. I hope will be useful for the Etymology Task Force to add examples of old handwritten text, as well as for historians more broadly. Tvquizphd (talk) 15:22, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Can't we add the library, shelfmark, and folio number parameters to {{cite book}} instead? A455bcd9 (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a fine solution. Would I need to submit a more formal proposal or anything of that nature? Tvquizphd (talk) 01:56, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I would first post a message here. Also, please note that Help:Citation_Style_1 says: "Wikipedia does not treat ancient manuscripts as sources that can be cited directly; a specific, modern, published edition is what goes in the source citation." {{Cite archive}} may also be used with "library" as "institution", shelfmark and folio number in "item-id", "box", "collection", "series", or "fonds". A455bcd9 (talk) 16:17, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I just revised Help:Citation Style 1 because it implied the reason old manuscripts can't be cited is that WP:Citing sources says so. But "Citing sources" doesn't say that, it just says the editor adding material should cite the version of the source the editor actually read. So if an edition of an ancient manuscript written c. 85 were photographed, and the photos were published in 2004, and the editor viewed the photographic edition, that's what the editor would cite. The main point of the passage in "Citation Style 1" is that the templates don't support publication dates earlier than 100. There is no need to support such early dates because it is so unusual for Wikipedia editors to read such old works directly. If it ever happens, the citation can be written without using any template. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:17, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! I appreciate the new clarity in the guide. The requirement of say where you read it seems much more valid than an outright ban on manuscripts. I am citing a 2008 e-archive of a 1390 cookbook. An academic citation of this image demands the library, shelfmark, and folio number. Given that I am citing an archive, perhaps {{ cite archive }} is exactly the right template. Tvquizphd (talk) 20:57, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I would appreciate knowing which academic field calls for citing the library, shelfmark, and folio number if it is a facsimile that was read. Is there a particular printed style guide for this. I can see it could make sense; different hand-written copies of the same work, stored in different libraries, could be a little different. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:54, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the rational is the uniqueness of each manuscript. Often, medieval manuscript citation guides cite the Speculum Style Sheet for the Speculum journal of medieval studies. For manuscripts, the guide recommends " the place-name, the name of the library, and the shelf mark." For archival material, the guide recommends "the place-name, the name of the archive, the institution, and the shelf mark." The distinction between archives and physical copies is subtle. I'm also awaiting the response of a specialist at my university's library's microfilm collection. Tvquizphd (talk) 18:33, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Wonderful-- it's an interesting question whether {{ cite archive }} may be more suited than {{ cite book }}. One solution may be to update Help:Citation_Style_1 to provide a guide for citing manuscripts. I am grateful to Jc3s5h for updating the wording about ancient manuscripts to say "Wikipedia editors seldom read ancient manuscripts directly," and citing the technical limit against sources before 100AD.

Following the guide to say where you read it, I intend to only cite medieval manuscripts I have read directly. The text in question cites the use of "Almaund Mylke" in 14th century Middle English. I have not found a full modern translation, but I'll also include a secondary source to attest the reading of "Almond Milk" is accurate.

Following your advice, I'll post on the talk page of Help:Citation_Style_1. Thank you! Tvquizphd (talk) 20:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

References

MOS:CITEPUNCT bot/script?

Evening all - just wondered if there was a bot or script which could be used to move references after the punctuation, if they are before them? E.g., changing Blah blah[1]. to Blah blah.[1]. Please do let me know if there's something automated to do this. Thx Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 20:49, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Oral stories

How should oral stories be cited? Specifically I'm talking about oral stories that are transcribed somewhere.

For example, George Kappianaq's telling of Sun and moon (Inuit myth) as transcribed in the book The Arctic Sky. I can cite just the book (which is what I'm doing now).

{{cite book |first=John |last=MacDonald |date=1998 |title=The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend |publisher=Royal Ontario Museum |isbn=9780888544278 |url=https://archive.org/details/arcticskyinuitas0000macd |via=[[Internet Archive]] |page=211}}

But there's more to say. We're really talking about George Kappianaq as the source, not John MacDonald, and the date of the story's telling was 1986 though the book wasn't published until 1998.

I can include that additional information in the article itself, and that's what I'm doing now, but it kinda bogs that article down because it's really citation information.

1. Storyteller's name
2. Place and date of the story's telling
3. What language it was originally told in
4. Who transcribed it and translated it
5. Where the transcript was published (maybe a book template could nest here)

How does the creation of new citation templates work? How to go about that? Eievie (talk) 03:50, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Eievie: In this case you can have |contributor-first=George |contributor-last=Kappinaq with |contribution=The Sun and the Moon The book lists two translators: Louis Tapardjuk and Leah Otak, |translator= for this if you think it's necessary; I'm not sure if both worked on everything though. Things also don't have to be in citation templates, you could, within the ref tags, have [Recorded December 1986 in interview IE-071; on audio-tape cassettes in the archives of the Inullariit Society, Igloolik Research Society] but outside the citation templates if you think this is necessary information. The primary role of a citation is to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, and to allow a reader to verify information. Other information might be worth including in a footnote or in the body of the text, but what you're citing is a 1998 book published by the Royal Ontario Museum; you're not citing the original audiotapes. We do have |others= if you wanted to cite the transcription, but then you'd have pages 240, not 211. Altogether this would like this:

• Kappianaq, George (1998). "The Sun and the Moon". The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. By MacDonald, John. Translated by Louis Tapardjuk; Leah Otak. Royal Ontario Museum. pp. 211–218. ISBN 9780888544278. [Recorded December 1986, Interview IE-071, see p. 309 for archival details.]

Or, if you wanted to cite the original:

• Kappianaq, George (1998). "Aningaat" [The Sun and the Moon]. The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. By MacDonald, John (in Inuktitut). Transcribed by Leah Otak. Royal Ontario Museum. pp. 240–248. ISBN 9780888544278.

I'm not really sure what's standard when citing oral stories? Do you have examples of how other authors have cited translations of oral stories which have appeared in published collections?

Umimmak (talk) 21:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, this is really helpful! I haven't seen anyone else citing oral stories. Eievie (talk) 04:12, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Could there be a parameter |contribution-location=Igloolik? Since oral myths have relational variation, it's good to specify where this one comes from? Also, the date is supposedly correlated with the book, yet it appears in the listing as if it were associated with the contribution, could that be cleaned up? Eievie (talk) 05:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT — you are citing a translation/transcription published in Toronto in 1998; you are not citing the archival audiotapes recorded in Igloolik in 1986 (but if you were see {{Cite AV media}}). If the details about how the story was collected are important they can go in the article (or I suppose in a footnote outside the citation template), but they don’t belong in a citation parameter. Again, have you seen any citations for translations of oral stories published in collections where information about the original story-telling event get included? Is there any sort of precedent for including this sort of information in a citation? Umimmak (talk) 12:54, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I will say we have |orig-date= as well, but the implication would still be that was the original date of the publication of this translation if the rest of the citation is about the translation (e.g. if some future anthology published this story you'd put 1998 in field), so if you were to use that parameter I'd spell it out as like |orig-date=Interviewed Dec 1986, but again I think this probably doesn't need to go in the citation template. Umimmak (talk) 23:47, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

|orig-date= is great, and I'll use it, but that's not really what I'm talking about.

Kappianaq, George (1998). "The Sun and the Moon". The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. By MacDonald, John. Toranto: Royal Ontario Museum. pp. 211–218. ISBN 9780888544278 – via Internet Archive.

See how 1998 appears alongside the contribution and contributor, not the book and author? Since they're visually paired together, it really seems like it's implying it's the date of the contribution, rather than of the book. Is there any way to make it go next to the book instead? Eievie (talk) 21:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

No, it’s standard for the first, most prominent year to be the publication year of the book. That’s the year that will help people find the book (which is your source—not the archival tapes) in library catalogues or bibliographic databases; the year 1986 does not tell the reader anything about the book. This is standard citation procedure in every style guide as can think of (and hence the only thing a reader will think is that that’s when the book was published; obviously a lot goes into publishing a book that happens beforehand); unless you have seen citations that act differently? Umimmak (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I’ll just also add that if you have questions specifically about citation templates Help talk:Citation Style 1 is a venue more devoted to that, with generally more eyeballs. Umimmak (talk) 21:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

How about |trans-contribution= in the same vein as |trans-chapter=? Eievie (talk) 05:21, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

That already exists. See my example above. Like I said though see help talk:cs1 for discussion specifically about these templates Umimmak (talk) 06:32, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

removing old deadlinks

Are we OK with the section "Remove hopelessly-lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the web page (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you cannot find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverified if there is no other supporting citation. If it is material that is specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with . It may be appropriate for you to move the citation to the talk page with an explanation, and notify the editor who added the now-dead link" wouldn't it be better to remove this section, especially if the cite was made by an otherwise trusted editor? If an editor left ten years ago, but the material that they wrote where the links still work checks out correctly, then the material they wrote where the links have since died has to be more trustworthy than material that has never been supported by a citation. Equally deadlink supported material added by an IP editor or a fly by edit by an account that did little else has to be treated with more suspicion as it is rather more likely to be covert vandalism, or a goodfaith addition by someone who isn't very good at accurate precis. ϢereSpielChequers 13:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

There have been both "trusted" editors who were later shown to misrepresent sources, and IPs that edit with great accuracy. While the section may warrant re-examination, I wouldn't agree with doing it based on who the adding editor was - except of course where they have a demonstrated history of problems. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:02, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

If there is no source, then material should be regarded as unverified and removed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:38, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7,@WereSpielChequers,@Nikkimaria I support the use as a standard replacement for "old deadlinks." Is that not the current practice?

Opportunity should be given for editors to find a relevant newer replacement to the "hopelessly-lost web-only" deadlink(s). There are multiple archiving websites that may be checked. Perhaps, as important is the digitized books and other source materials found at The Internet Archive and some Universities, etc. These sourced replacement(s) for the deadlink(s) may even be better quality sources to support a claim of fact, while also retaining the valued contributions to this project of any past editors. Using gives the chance to rescue past contributions and honors the effort and time given by those contributors -- Ooligan (talk) 20:28, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Ooligan, the current practice is described in WP:DEADREF - it's the final step of that which WSC has questioned. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:38, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

"Which edition" hints?

Is there any guidance, either in P&G terms or technical assistance, in how to deal with sources that have multiple editions, especially where those have conflicting page numbering? Either on the one hand, to help decide on which (I know the time-honoured traditions are "edit war about it", and "have a bad-tempered takpage argument", but any other suggestions welcome), or on the other, if there's any at-all elegant way to combine the two. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:18, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The guidance is WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT: list the edition you used to find this information. If you have access to multiple editions, it's at your discretion which one to cite. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

If you have access to multiple editions, it's at your discretion which one to cite. just to add to this, if you have the liberty to choose, factors to consider are: is one edition already being cited by other editors for the article? is one edition found in significantly more libraries? is one edition found in a database the Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library has access to? is one edition seen as "the standard" in its field and cited more often by other source? does the time which the author wrote this matter for the article? I think in general though it's probably best to cite the most recently-published edition if they're revised editions (versus reprints), though, since the odds are greater that each successive edition will catch and fix any possible errata -- you'll save future editors from making sure a more recent/up-to-date edition didn't change anything. Again this is all if you have the liberty to pick an edition. Umimmak (talk) 05:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Occasionally, when something is cited for historical purposes, the earliest edition that contains the claim in question is best. Or if there is an out-of-copyright and an in-copyright one, and the out-of-copyright one is good enough, that might make for better accessibility to the source for others. But ceteris paribus later is usually better. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:02, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah agreed with that. Apparently in this case they’re asking about an article where editors have variously cited the hardback and paperback of the same edition, and there’s debate about which to consolidate them all to. Here I’m less certain if I have strong opinions. If the paperback wasn’t "reprinted with corrections" and doesn’t have an update specific to that edition, part of me thinks the hardcover would be in more libraries since they stand up to more wear? Umimmak (talk) 06:15, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

A few older books have been reprinted so many times by different publishers in different formats that it makes more sense to use chapter numbers, or refer the reader to the index if that works. Johnbod (talk) 13:28, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the genuinely helpful and informative replies. Yes, for clarity and full disclosure I'm indeed inspired to ask by the Dudley Clarke article. I asked in the abstract because I wanted to know in general, not be venue-shopping regarding that particular dispute (that I'm not directly party to). I did speculate that in that case it might be HB vs PB, but from the (unfortunately rather bad-tempered) discussion it seems to be two (or potentially more!) different HB editions. I do agree on the point that HBs might generally be preferred on that basis. If anyone has any insights or opinions on this particular article, by all means weigh in there: last thing we need is a 1-1 (or maybe a 1-1-1) tie. Seems that if there's an intractable deadlock, CITEVAR implies "first strike wins". Or does so at least for as long as the original supplier of those is around to grumble about any changes... Given the heavy (IMO, over-) reliance of the article on this particular source, it seems a pity the two versions can't be reconciled, but I can't see of a way of doing this that isn't excessively clumsy. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 16:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Consensus for s2cid / Semantic Scholar ID added to every citation?

In 2020, someone working for Semantic Scholar reached out (Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 66#Request to add Semantic Scholar IDs to the citation template) to request the CS1 family allow |s2cid= indicators to link citations to the Semantic Scholar page for a citation. 2020 is also when Citation Bot also began automatically adding s2cid to all possible citations. Is there any sort of consensus that if an s2cid id exists that it must be included? I've always found it kind of spammy that someone who worked for that organization was able to get it to be a consistent part of citations on Wikipedia. They also just clutter up citations, at most only duplicating a DOI or JSTOR id. Maybe within certain fields like computer science, geoscience, and neuroscience it's standard to include a semantic scholar id for citations, but just as (I think) it doesn't make sense to add a Bibcode identifier to citations for articles outside of astronomy (even though bots do this automatically), I'm not sure I see the benefit to adding a Semantic Scholar identifier to every citation. Does this fall under WP:CITEVAR? I know there's been some discussion in the past because of WP:ELNO violations of copyright, but even when that isn't the case it still feels like editors of an article should decide if Semantic Scholar identifiers would improve that article's citations. Curious if this has come up before.Umimmak (talk) 19:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Meh… this type of citation data clutter is one reason why I don’t use the citation templates, and still format my citations by hand. Blueboar (talk) 20:05, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree many identifiers are a bit spammy/redundant (especially the bibcode which is so long), but it's hard to prioritise them once the template parameter is accepted... Nemo 16:59, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

What? Bibcodes are super userful. You don't need to be an astronomer to use those. Way better than those PMID spam links which only have abstracts. 99.192.57.223 (talk) 00:26, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree about thinking PMID isn't particularly useful either, but why are bibcodes useful? The information in a bibcode just repeats information that should ideally already be spelled out in the citation? Umimmak (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Bibcodes often link to full-text articles that aren't otherwise available. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:29, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Also includes citation data and related papers. Very useful for article writing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:15, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It is not standard in the academic computer science publications that I'm familiar with. For those, the only standard id to include when available is the doi. I agree that the s2cid is spammy and usually unhelpful. It only provides a free-to-read copy of works for which either such copies are anyway available by other legitimate means, or by pirate or fair use links (like course reading lists) that would fail WP:ELNEVER, and otherwise it's just useless clutter. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:28, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It is not standard in the academic computer science publications that I'm familiar with. thank you for clarifying that; I'm less familiar with this literature and see that this was originally developed for that field so I just wanted to hedge my statement a bit. Okay I'll continue to feel no guilt about reverting citation bot's additions then. Umimmak (talk) 03:33, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

"I agree that the s2cid is spammy and usually unhelpful."

I believe the bot only adds S2CIDs when the articles are open access, or when S2CID url is already present. In which case it's a solid source and a good backup when other sources are down (like server maintenance), which is not uncommon at all. It's a very useful identifier. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:42, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

PMID is quite useful, in the sense that PubMed offers a plethora of information, significantly more than the publishers do. In particular it's better at presenting citations and retraction notices (indeed it's one of the most common sources for retraction information). However, it loses much of this utility when the paper is on PMC.

SemanticScholar also presents interesting information, in particular how a paper was cited (e.g. it's useful to know whether a paper was cited only to debunk it, or because it's considered useful). However for most people it will just duplicate what PubMed does, unless you're the kind of person who's actively looking for that specific information, so it's less useful when the PMID is already available.

All in all I think the bots adding identifiers are unquestionably useful, however the templates may need to be modified so that they don't show all identifiers when there's some redundancy in the list. Nemo 00:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, all databases have their uses. S2CID's citation data also differs from pubmed's so they'll give slightly different, and complementary, information. The solution, as usual, is if you don't like it, don't use it, but don't limit others' ability to use it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:14, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:KINDLE" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:KINDLE and it has been listed for discussion. Readers of this page are welcome to participate at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 February 10 § Wikipedia:KINDLE until a consensus is reached. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 03:38, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Dates in citations

"Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582."

What format are pre-1582 exact date citations supposed to use? (Do any of those exist? I would assume so, but I don't actually know; either way, there should be precedent.) Likewise, should they use Julian calendar or Gregorian calendar dates?

I don't actually have a use case for this, but reading through this guideline and seeing this paragraph confused me, so I figured I'd ask what questions I had. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 01:58, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of a way to search Wikipedia for an article that contains a citation with a date range for the publication date, so I can't find any specific citation that specifies a publication date that is to a specific day in 1582 or earlier. I'm also unable to find a citation to a Julian calendar publication date, although I think there are probably quite a few newspaper articles from Britain before 1752, Russia before 1918, and Greece before 1923 that were dated in the Julian calendar because that's what was in force in those times and places.

If a publication is a type that has a publication date that gives a specific day of the year, such as a letter or newspaper, and it's in the Julian calendar, then that's the date that should be given in the citation. If, as an example, the date was May 1, 1582, then it could be written that way, or as 1 May 1582 in the citation. Any publication date in 1582 or earlier should be given in the Julian calendar. It could also be given in another (dual-dated) if some other calendar was stated in the publication, such as an Islamic calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:33, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I managed to find a citation that contains a Julian calendar date. It's in "William Parks (publisher)" and the citation reads

• "Advertisements". The American Weekly Mercury. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 4, 1728. p. 4. The said Post-Office will be kept at the house of Andrew Bradford in Philadelphia, and William Parks in Annapolis; and Notice shall be hereafter given of all other Places on the Road, that shall be fix'd on for the Reception and Delivery of Letters.

Jc3s5h (talk) 02:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

When to cite, algorithmic version

Editing is hosting a meeting about their new mw:Edit check extension for the visual editor this Friday and hopes to learn a bit more about RecentChanges and watchlist patrolling. They're trying to find a balance prompting editors to add citations often enough to be useful, but not so often that it's annoying.

If you are interested in this project, please see mw:Editing team/Community Conversations#3 March 2023 and plan to join the meeting (17:00 UCT/9:00 a.m. California). If you can't join the meeting, then they'd be happy to have your advice at mw:Talk:Edit check. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Documentaries

Is there a certain citation format for documentaries? If not, how might we cite a documentary? - Therealscorp1an (talk) 10:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

As in a documentary film? {{cite av media}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep, that would work! I was just wondering if there was a more specific format, but I guess not. Thanks for your help. - Therealscorp1an (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2023 (UTC)