Template talk:Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles tree

Inline citations needed

I reverted reverted at 12:37, 26 August 2018 by user:Randy Kryn who made the edit Revision as of 18:30, 28 May 2017

• Randy Kryn's edit comment "removed unreferenced tag (references are the links themselves, esp. if editors have been watching this and assuring its accuracy"
• My (PBS) edit comment "undid revision 782713826 by Randy Kryn See WP:BURDEN to remove this without providing reliable sources is a breach of the WP:V policy. If as you say it is accurate then WP:PROVEIT by supplying inline citations to reliable sources"

This is just what is done for similar templates (see category:Fictional family tree templates for examples) -- PBS (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

No interest in proving it, sounds like a kids game. See you in the funny papers.Randy Kryn (talk) 15:45, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

p.s. you already reverted and left a summary, so the note on this talk page seems like overkill. Anne Rice fans may be able to "prove it", although I saw her future burial site last year so I've got a head start on her eventual vampirismal rebirth. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

It is not overkill it is following WP:BRD (dispute resolution). -- PBS (talk) 17:51, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Thing is, there was no dispute, you left an adequate edit summary and then moved the information to the talk page and pinged me, maybe expecting a dispute. I think the edit is fine, although I would oppose an RfD of the page. I had already seen the new addition, and since the edit you reverted was well over a year old if someone removes it again it should stay removed and come to the talk page, and if so I'll chime in again. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:57, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

(athough I do end up disputing it later on the page, but in a non-dispute way, just discussing another viewpoint) Randy Kryn (talk) 03:09, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Although maybe template creator TAnthony will have a go at "proving it". Randy Kryn (talk) 16:03, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

As I recall, a couple of years ago user:PBS tagged multiple family trees (fictional characters and historical figures, I believe) for sources. I think any discussion may have occurred on one of the talk pages of the deleted A Song of Ice and Fire standalone trees, though that deletion discussion itself sheds some light on it. I can't recall PBS' exact argument, but I did apparently add primary sources to some of the ASOIAF tree templates (like Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen)—PBS was very persistent. Also see this template discussion, which was closed with no consensus.— TAnthony^Talk 17:19, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

I did, it was in fact three years ago. Here are a couple of recent deletion discussions:

• Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_July_27#Template:Birley_family_tree
• Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_August_15#Template:Anarion_family_tree

All family tree templates are subject to WP:V and as such can be deleted if they are not sourced. There seem to be a number of deletionists who do not approve of fictional family trees. If they are not sourced then it is likely that that will weigh heavily in favour of deletion. -- PBS (talk) 17:32, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense. From another viewpoint, I guess I see it as a template which is on a lot of Wikipedia pages, and those pages are seen every day by a lot of screens. I didn't look all the numbers up, but just checked a couple of page view histories, but if the ones I checked are any indication then the pages are seen by many thousands of readers a day, every day, week after week and so on) and I'd imagine a good percentage of them, even as high as one or two percent, open up the template and have a look at an interesting family tree. So I would think errors would have been caught by now. This stuff has chapter and verse fans. That's a common sense reason in favor of keeping this page, even making it an exception. So I hope that someone explains what needs to be referenced. That the characters exist in the books? That's obvious, at least for the linked articles. It's probably the family relationship which should be referenced, and that would be accomplished by finding information in one of the books and then putting up a quick book and page reference. I'm not that big of a fan, and stopped reading them after the fifth volume, so I'm not going to dive into digging up quotes or whatever else proves the family connection. But I hope that they do all stay, if accurate, because holes in the family history make no sense. It would seem to the informed that Wikipedia is missing obvious characters. Readers who know what's what in this series would find Wikipedia lacking in sharing accurate coverage of the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:28, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Maybe in-line citations aren't needed. I just added this template to Anne Rice, as a footer template. No other footer template - and that's essentially what this is - is asked to provide sources. Enough editors patrol them, and they catch mistakes or vandalism as well as add to the topic map. But they are not asked to source the information, they are templates and not articles. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:00, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

There are several points on your comments that I wish to address and so I will bullet point them and my reply will not cover them in the order you raised them.

• Many popular articles are view by tens of thousands of people a day. That does not mean that they are not subject to WP:V. Choosing an example I knew would have lots of views: the Lady Diana article has had nearly 10,000 view a day over the last 30 days and it has 110 editors watching the page, but its ancestry section and with its ahnentafel chart are fully cited. The number of views is not a reason to ignore the verifiability policy requirements.
• This template is not necessarily placed as a footer at the bottom of an article. The very first article in the list of links is to the article "The Vampire Chronicles" and in that article the template appears in a section called "Characters" (I looked no further).
• Even if it is put at the bottom of an article, there is a fundamental difference between a navigational list such as often appears in the end of an article and a family tree. A navigational list such as the "Novels by Anne Rice" at the end of the article "The Vampire Chronicles" contains a series of facts, each of which can be checked in the link provided. However in a family tree there is information conveyed in the tree that is probably not available in the individual articles to which it may link, which is why such trees need citations.

-- PBS (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2018 (UTC)