User talk:Brews ohare/CITEinQUOTE

History

This article is an innocuous attempt at the topic of formatting footnotes. It was previously presented as WP:Quoted citations. In that incarnation it was met with a storm of protest and was then userfied. The basis for objection was:

Essays are usually kept in user space as part of Category:Wikipedia essays until they become the collaborative work of several authors. Hex (❝?!❞) 19:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

If it's a personal essay, otherwise known as a user essay, then it should be userfied. As is written at that category:

An essay here may be moved categorically into the Wikipedia namespace, Category:Wikipedia essays, if it is frequently referenced, as evidenced by becoming an evolving expression of multiple editors.

so if and when other editors start using it it can be moved into the WP namespace.--JohnBlackburne 18:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

This argument is fallacious: A brief look at Category:Wikipedia guidance essays indicates very many of these essays began with a single author, and after a while others contributed to them. So the suggestion that a non-controversial piece about a technical WP-formatting issue should be "userfied" is not standard WP practice. The policy quoted by Blackburne and by Hex is policy for the entire broad general category of Essays, which may be on any topic, no matter how controversial the opinion. All essays in the sub-category of Guidance Essays contain the block header with the following text: {{Guidance essay}} Notice the wording:

This guidance essay contains comments and advice of one or more Wikipedia contributors.

On that basis an article on a narrow technical and uncontroversial topic like this one is well within the parameters for a guidance essay that can be placed either in Wikipedia:Main namespace or in Wikipedia:Project namespace, which allows contributions of essays.

Of course, if there are other approaches to this topic, any editor is entirely free to add them, or for that matter, to adjust the proposals already within this document. This article can be edited by anyone. Brews ohare (talk) 17:28, 18 December 2012 (UTC)