Category talk:Wikipedia articles containing unlinked shortened footnotes

Contested deletion

This category should not be speedy deleted as being unpopulated, because... it is normal for it to be totally empty periodically. I added the template to reflect this. --Sm8900 (talk) 14:42, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Adding disclaimer to the category cmbox

I have added the following disclaimer to the {{cmbox}}:

• Please note that changes should be in accordance with the existing citation methods and in a manner that would be generally considered helpful. When in doubt, consider seeking consensus for the change first. Listing in this category should not preclude considerations of these or other policies and guidelines.

I think this should be sufficient to those who objected that this category would somehow violate WP:CITEVAR.

Peaceray (talk) 17:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

No use for this category

I am sorry to say this category is misleading in that it solicits editors to perform changes other editors deem inappropriate. Lately I had about 50% of reversions (always by the same censor), the reason being WP:CITEVAR, which is called even when there isn't a precise "existing citation method". My opinion is that there is no change of citation style between a non-linked short footnote and a linked footnote to its full reference, the latter being only the most resourceful version, paramount for an online encyclopedia. So, until it is fully accepted the equivalence in style between linked and non-linked footnotes, or until unlinked footnotes are considered a deprecated condition of an acceptable method) it is better to avoid wasting time in this exercise. Carlotm (talk) 00:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Carlotm: My experience has been different. I generally explain my intent on the talk page first. This category is not intended to identify articles for complete conversion to shortened footnotes, but to identify opportunities where unlinked shortened footnotes can be converted to linked shortened footnotes ({{sfn}}).

If you would let me know what articles on which you were getting reverted, perhaps I could suss out the problem(s).

A safer effort might be to address the backlog in the conversion from inline parenthetical citations (AKA Harvard referencing), which has been deprecated by WP:PARREF. I wrote a detailed set of instructions for this, located at commons:File:Converting Harvard citations to shortened footnotes (sfn).pdf. If you download it rather than opening it in a browser, the links should be life.

You can find the categories containing articles that need can be converted from parenthetical referencing to shortened footnotes in the subcategories of Category:Use Harvard referencing.

I hope this is helpful. Peaceray (talk) 01:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Peaceray: thank you for your considerations. I never try a total conversion to shortened footnotes. My goal is simply to add links to the already existent shortened notes. Nevertheless these pages present also other issues, namely, in particular, duplicated references. When a full reference is repeated more than once in "Notes", and maybe is also present in "Bibliography", it goes without saying that the best thing to do is to put in place a series of shortened notes linked to the full ref in "Biblio". This should be seen what else but an improvement to a baroquish citation environment and to a redundancy of bytes. And, when there is a full ref in "Notes" and the same one also in "Biblio", what do you do? Surely not keeping them both. Can you?

The reverted pages are three: Pope Julius II, Henriette Caillaux and Gudimallam Lingam for which I was accused of "cite-banditry" (!?).

Maybe I'll follow your suggestion. Carlotm (talk) 00:54, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Good idea! I won't claim you are unique in believing that "there is no change of citation style between a non-linked short footnote and a linked footnote to its full reference" but previous discussions around the place (sorry, can't remember where) suggest this is not the majority interpretation of WP:CITEVAR, which certainly doesn't explicitly say this. The way to avoid accusations of breaching WP:CITEVAR is to raise the issue on talk first, as the policy emphasizes. But very few drive-by cite-bandits ever try this, and they shouldn't be amazed if the locals come out with pitchforks. There are of course other ways of dealing with issues of duplication & repetition than implementing sfn or similar. I certainly agree with you that "this category is misleading in that it solicits editors to perform changes other editors deem inappropriate" - I added a bit to the instructions to say that "unlinked shortened footnotes" are actually an entirely acceptable referencing method, as the template previously gave the impression they are not. I did think of putting it up for deletion, as encouraging breaches of CITEVAR, but for the moment I'm holding off on that. Wikipedia survived 19.5 years without this category, & I'm doubtful it is needed. Johnbod (talk) 16:27, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Johnbod, I respectfully disagree. First, the banners on the category page specifically indicate that

• Please note that changes should be in accordance with the existing citation methods and in a manner that would be generally considered helpful. When in doubt, consider seeking consensus for the change first. Inclusion in this category should not preclude considerations of these or other policies and guidelines.
• Also consider than when short citations make up an insignificant proportion of the references, and when page numbers are not included in the short citation, it may be more advantageous to convert these short citations to regular footnotes.

{{sfn}} in particular, furthers a couple of CITEVAR's goals:

1. combining duplicate citations (see Duplicate citations, ...). The sfn template automatically consolidates citations with the unique combination of author last name(s), year, & page number(s). This would be an improvement on at least a few, such as Leon Festinger, Gudimallam Lingam, & argueably Philip the Arab.
2. imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles There are articles that have mixed citation styles. I only advocate entirely forcing mixed styles into shortened footnotes where it makes sense. That said, there are articles in which some shortened footnotes that are linked & some that are unlinked. This category facilitates the linking all of those shortened footnotes to be consistent. Examples of this include Cassowary, Napoleon III, Emperor Wu of Han, Pope Julius II, Suharto, & War of Jenkins' Ear.

Additionally, I wish to address the difference between a problem & an opportunity for improvement. One could argue that a book citation can be minimally sufficient without an ISBN, OCLC numbers linking to Worldcat (particularly for pre-ISBN books), or online links to the Internet Archive or other online source. Similarly, we have journal articles that would be minimally sufficient even though they could have DOI, JSTOR, or URLs. The citation templates have parameters for these. It is not a problem that citations that lack these parameters, but it greatly improves the usability (please see WP:WikiProject Usability#Issues) of a citation.

It is the same with shortened footnotes. We create a shortened footnote & a full citation. That is minimally sufficient. However, we increase the utility by (insert favorite WP:PEACOCK words here) when we link the shortened footnote to the full citation. It is a visual cue to the casual user of Wikipedia that may not know that all of the functionality of a full citation is available in another section. Linking it makes it a click away.

I am open to improving the language on the category page to emphasize that this category is to identify opportunities for improvement, consistent with CITEVAR & CONSENSUS, & should only be attempted by users familiar with WP:SRF. Peaceray (talk) 00:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Categorization

@Nikkimaria: Could you explain why you did this? Category:Hidden categories is a huge category with 35,000 members and there's no reason I can think of that this shouldn't be in more specific categories. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any appropriate more specific category for this, and to my mind if that already has 35,000 members one more doesn't make much of a difference. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:19, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

What makes Category:Maintenance categories (or my previous attempt of Category:Wikipedia references cleanup for that matter) not appropriate? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

See the section above - this category doesn't identify something in need of cleanup. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

How about Category:Wikipedia citation administration as a parent then? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:33, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, that works - I've done that. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:35, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)