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FAR citation styles

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Hi

I think I might be misinterpreting criterion 2c from the FAC.

I took it to mean that either footnotes or Harvard should be used in an article, not both. The problem is how I see the usage. The article I am having difficulty with uses <ref> for all its cites, but has cites such as <ref>Sammon, p. 211</ref>

I thought that these were incorrect, as they had commas and were a Harvard style ref, but it seems I may be mistaken. Any chance you can clarify with links to other discussions or your own experience? (I have already been pointed to Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria/Archive 10#Clarification on 2c)

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 19:07, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

That's perfectly OK, a lot of editors don't like the citation templates and prefer to format manually. Ealdgyth does it somewhat like that, see Gerard (archbishop of York) for instance. I'd prefer to see either the year or the title included in the citation, as in "Owen 1983, p. 3", or as Ealdgyth does it, but so long as the style is consistent and there's no ambiguity as to what "Sammon, p. 211" is referring to there's no problem. The important point is that the citations all have a logical and consistent style, however that's achieved. Malleus Fatuorum 19:49, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I also had to query my use of a couple of templates, at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles#Citations, as I was uncertain as to how best to link the pages to the ref. - something I am still unsure of. It seems silly to have 30 refs to the same book listed separately under "References" when it is just the page numbers that are different. I started using the {{rp template but have run into a couple of instances where editors feel they are no good, or even detrimental. Chaosdruid (talk) 21:25, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I prefer the shortened refs format .. see WP:CITESHORT. That way you only repeat the huge bibliographical stuff in one spot at the bottom, but are able to specify exact page numbers. You can either do <ref>Author ''Short Title'' p. X</ref> or <ref>Author, p. X</ref> or <ref>Author (year), p. X</ref> Besides the examples above that Malleus mentioned, you can also see Maximian or Richard Hawes. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not that fond myself of the {{rp}} style of citations, but I can understand that some prefer it, and I've got no problem with that. One thing you have to learn Chaosdruid is that whatever you do here there will be someone jumping up and down shouting that you've done it wrong. Malleus Fatuorum 21:35, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
AKAIK there are 6 ways to give page numbers for books or long journal articles:
  • <ref>Author, p. X</ref> etc. forces readers to search manually for the work. IMO that's horrible.
  • <ref name=X></ref>{{rp|n}} has the risk that the ref name and the page number(s) are split by a careless editor.
  • Using different refs for different parts of the same work. Becomes unusable for both editors and readers if there many parts of the same work.
  • Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{r}}, where each use of {{r}} links to a citation and also shows a page number (range) in the main text. Disadvantage: shows page number (range) in the main text. Advantage: gets the reader to the work in 1 click rather than 2.
  • {{Harv}} etc. Advantage: does not show page number (range) in the main text. Disadvantage: gets the reader to the work in 2 clicks rather than 1,and 2 more clicks back to the text; (I think) equivalent of a ref name= appears after the 1st click, and can be as long and obscure.
  • {{sfn}} etc. Advantage: does not show page number (range) in the main text; sorts page numbers in the same work so that each group of refs to the name page(s) appear as abcdef..., as in the output of <ref name=...> - while AFAIK {{Harv}} does not sort and group page numbers, and you get a longer list of "refs". Disadvantage: gets the reader to the work in 2 clicks rather than 1,and 2 more clicks back to the text; equivalent of a ref name= appears after the 1st click, and can be as long and obscure.
Are there other choices? --Philcha (talk) 22:10, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
PS If you want realistic examples, I used Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{r}} at e.g. Phaeacius and {{sfn}} at Robert Rossen. --Philcha (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
PPS I current use Wikipedia:Cite#List-defined_references with {{r}}, as IMO the page numbers in the main text are not obstructive and this method uses fewer clicks; YYMV. This method also plays nicely with the basic <ref name=...>, which is most editors learn first, and avoids a mixing of citation methods, which Wikipedia:Cite does not like. --Philcha (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Citations

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Hi

I have two queries about template usage in criterion 2c:

"consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes (<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1.</ref>) or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1)—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended. The use of citation templates is not required."

  • I have been using the {{rp|1}} template for page numbers (Template:Rp). This gives the result as[1]:1 and[1]:24.
  • I have been using the {{#tag:ref|Note text.<ref>Ref for the text.</ref>|group="nb"}} for footnotes, giving[nb 1].

Are these two templates acceptable when used in FAs? Chaosdruid (talk) 17:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the general rule is that as long as it's clear where the information came from and you keep the format consistent, exactly how you format citations is up to you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:55, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I am thinking about switching over to doing them manually. Maybe something close to what the cite templates do (which seem roughly but not perfectly AP style). I really don't like the lags for cite templates when working on a page. Also, someone loading a big page like painted turtle (out in RL) the first time is looking at a several second wait. I think SV was right on that. Gadget even backed her up. Of course, I need to write an FA first. Well...the first step of rabit stew recipe, ya know. Plus I really hate how hard it is to use the cite toolbar thingie (micro font, layout of entries poor), plus doing it manual keeps you more in touch with the actual output.TCO (reviews needed) 19:05, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I love ldr and want to start doing that as well. wikitext is an abortion in edit window mode with all the markup text inline.TCO (reviews needed) 19:05, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree with HJ on that point: you could write an entire article and follow APA or MLA or any specific style guide's citation format, and so long as you did so consistently, you'd be fine. You could use the citation templates here if you wanted, and if you did so consistently, you'd be fine. One thing to note about the templates is that they generate metadata in the HTML code that a reader's browser interprets. That metadata allows browsers or browser plugins to interpret the citation so it knows that the author names, publication titles, etc are. That would allow a browser to reformat or interpret the data in various ways. As for TCO's flippant comment about wikicoding: it's a far cry better than hand encoding in pure HTML, and I'm frankly sick of TCO using any discussion thread to attack wikicoding. If you don't like it so much, stop working on a wiki. Imzadi 1979  19:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification.
My friend used to hand code html, but in the time it took him to produce one website I had produced around 10 (using HotDog and then Dreamweaver). More importantly, the ones I had done used flash and javascript and looked 10 times better. Currently we use Joomla, much better and quicker for us in most cases. Chaosdruid (talk) 21:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference referencedbook was invoked but never defined (see the help page).