Talk:Price action trading/Archives/2011

How do I include information and data from a report that is only available for purchase and isn't in Library of Congress etc?

(Copied from WP:Help.)

I have seen some data from a commercially available report - cost US$250 - that I wish to include in an article. The company who produced the report say it isn't citable via any library or publisher. I originally included the info in the article and provided a link in the "External Links" section to the company selling the report. The "External Links" section was edited out with the comment "removed spam" by another editor, although they moved the URL into the text and placed it inline with the data. The link now appears with "[1]". Doesn't this confuse readers thinking it might be a citation? Should I or shouldn't I use an External Links section? Or should I edit the link text somehow - in other words, has the second editor not done a complete job?

Regarding the company's commercial report, is there any recommendation I can make to them whereby they can create an official citation for their report?

FYI here's the article Price action trading - the text is in the last sentence of the 9th paragraph in the introduction. --Ahardy66 (talk) 12:43, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

No, the other editor did not move your link into the text. That link has been there since you added it on June 17. I have reformatted it as a reference. It is, I think, acceptable to cite this as a source (see WP:PAYWALL), though if you can find a free-to-access source that would be preferable. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:15, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

The article uses shortened footnotes, so I reformatted the citation to follow the same style as the rest of the article. Ahardy66, it is the responsibility of the editor to compose a citation. Authors or publishers sometimes suggest citations for their works, but usually it is the Wikipedia editors who have to figure it out. Editors who don't know how to do that should do exactly what you did: ask for help. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. @Jc3s5h - I see you made an edit with the comment "alphabetize" - what did you sort on? Title or author? The citation for the report is in there twice now at the beginning and at the end? I'll assume you meant to add it in alphabetical order by author, in which case the authorless report should go first - but doesn't the company count as an author? --Ahardy66 (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h - re responsibility for creating citations - I meant, is there a process that the company could follow, such as sending a copy of their report to the Library of Congress for archival - although of course they would not want to publish it freely since they are demanding payment for it?--Ahardy66 (talk) 14:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Now, I find myself wondering whether this is a reliable source, or just some company mis-using you, Ahardy, to get their name into Wikipedia? What is the company? Are they notable themselves? --Orange Mike | Talk 15:54, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I didn't purchase the report and have no contact with the company except after I realised I wanted to include some of the report's findings in the article - and I only asked them if they could give me any way of officially citing their research despite it only being available commercially. There is no doubt the company would like to be linked to and that they would probably sell more copies through the link from here. However everything tells me that this is bona fide research from data that is for the first time becoming available due to new US regulations demanding greater transparency from financial brokers. I could get the data myself and do the research, although of course it's not in my job description or private interest.

Maybe I should copy this conversation to the talk page of the article and if you're interested, we can continue there. --Ahardy66 (talk) 11:21, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

There is no problem using documents that must be paid for. In practical terms, having a copy at the Library of Congress wouldn't help much because few of us are able to visit the Library of Congress. There is no such thing as "officially citing" a work. Each person preparing a citation does it to follow the style used in a particular article. Occasionally the author or publisher of a source may have prepared a suggested citation in one or more styles, but this is unusual.

As for how I alphabetized the reference list, I alphabetized it by the first item listed. The article uses the {{cite xxx}} family of templates. For that particular item, I used {{cite report}}. That template put the year first, which is rather unusual, but that "problem" is the responsibility of the template authors, so anyone who doesn't like it should complain at Cite report. If the template is "fixed" then it will be presented differently in the article and the list might have to be re-alphabetized.

And yes, I did make the mistake of leaving two copies of the reference in the list; I fixed that. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:59, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

As the report is a corporate self-published document, it is not considered a reliable source. Reliable sources have a third-party publisher. This source should not be used for anything. Yworo (talk) 23:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

While the data quoted from the report would appear to be uncontroversial, it's a shame that the corporation gives an unreliable impression. it is obviously relatively young and obviously intends to set itself up as a reliable source, however it seems the best approach would be to seek out the source it used and to refer to those directly, which i assume are either annual corporate filings from various brokers, or hopefully summary reports from a US govt dept. --Ahardy66 (talk) 14:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

this article appears to be crap and simply a summary of Brooks book @Yworo

What exactly do you mean by 'crap'? I would appreciate if you could be more specific. You are correct that at this time most of the info comes from the Brooks book, but it isn't just a summary - although of course you couldn't know that unless you read it. It is one book in this particular field of financial speculation and I intend to include more info from various other authors on the subject to outline what it is exactly that these traders' activities consist of. The different authors on this subject use different terminology and focus on different areas and are primarily financial traders who have sometimes very noticeable failings as authors. It's not easy to 'grow' an article from scratch and make it conform all the time to the optimal wikipedia article.

I also don't claim myself to be a top class encylcopedia editor. The subject area is difficult and the introduction in the article is as you pointed out deficient, possibly in more ways than one. I would appreciate your input if you want to give advice on what particularly strikes you as problematic. You've said what you think it is. So what isn't it, that it should be?--Ahardy66 (talk) 08:45, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I have made substantial changes to the lead of the article in an attempt to satisfy the "Context", "Lead too long", "One source" templates, which I have therefore removed. I wish to make a note of protest here that "crap" is not a constructive criticism. I assume that in future, editors flagging up deficiencies in the article will be more expansive in their criticism and put the effort in to follow up when queried about their edits.--Ahardy66 (talk) 14:26, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

How do I work out what the problem is re Capitalization?

Hi @Yworo - what's the capitalization issue? I can't see anything in the style manual that tells me anything I don't think I'm already doing. You appear to have corrected the errors that you mention in your commit summaries. --Ahardy66 (talk) 12:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

answer at User talk:Ahardy66#Capitalization --Ahardy66 (talk) 22:02, 26 July 2011 (UTC)