Wikipedia talk:Citation templates/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archives: Sep 2006 - May 2007

TV shows

How do I cite a T.V show? and is there a tag I could use?--Lucy-marie 23:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC) {{cite episode}} — Omegatron 22:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Citing the same source from different places in the article

Is there a way to do that? Copying the same cite to two different places will naturally repeat the source in the references section. — Ravikiran 15:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. When you make the ref, use <ref name="Smith">blah blah blah</ref> or whatever the author's name is.. here I assume "Smith" wrote the article or book.

If Smith wrote more than one thing, or there are more than 1 "Smith"s, you can use <ref name="Smith99"> or whatever.

If you refer to exactly the same source again, I think you can do it either one of two ways:

1. Either repeat the exact same link. Just copy/paste. Actually, all you need is the two tags with nothing in between, after you have accurately and fully made the first reference. You don't need the blah blah blah in between.
2. Or, if I remember correctly, you just need a single tag <ref name="Smith99" />...after you have accurately and fully made the first reference.

There's documentation somewhere, but I gotta run... --Ling.Nut 17:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Footnotes#How to use, though I would start with Help:Footnotes. I also inserted examples above and below --Trödel 22:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

References

Thanks! That was really helpful. — Ravikiran 04:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Source code?

How can I cite source code? Visor 22:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would you need to do that? — Omegatron 22:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Newspaper

Which, if any, of these citation templates should be used to cite a news paper? TomStar81 (Talk) 21:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

{{cite news}} would be my choice. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 22:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Inline page-number refs while reusing citation templates

I want to place page numbers inline re WP:CITE#Page_numbers and use the appropriate template. For example, on

White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is this sentence and its ref:

Between fiscal years 2003 and 2005, the total dollar amount of all grants awarded to FBOs increased by 21 percent (GAO 2006:43^[3]).

I've done it this way so that the footnote link can be reused, and the inline page ref is different. (Note that this example references an online PDF, in which a specific page cannot be linked.) Is there a better way to do this? -- Renice 14:04, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Explicit hand-created superscripts is generally a bad idea, because they are unlikely to be maintained consistently as the article evolves. What you could do is something like:

(GAO 2006:43<ref name=GAO-2006> Provide the footnote text and links here </ref>) on first reference

(GAO 2006:43<ref name=GAO-2006/>) on subsequent references

Another approach is to describe and link the document in a separate references section, then make links like this:

([http:blah_blah_blah.pdf GAO 2006:43])

This gives you Harvard references that double as links to the PDF.

If this is unclear, ask me on my user talk page and I'll try to give more concrete examples.

Jmabel | Talk 06:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Cite Music, CD, LP

Anyone care to recommend how I cite a CD? I'm referring to the lyrics on a track on the CD.

Ashley VH 07:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

{{Cite album-notes}}? — Omegatron 22:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

AFD - Explanation

An article for speedy deletion tag on the grounds of pure vandalism and a content totally disputed tag were recently added to this page by an anonymous user. I reverted them both on the premis that they were added as vandalism, and that the normal protocol for not deleting deletion tags did not apply in this situation.

If you disagree, feel free to restore that tags.

perfectblue 18:18, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Citing mailing lists

We're missing a template for citing mailing list archives, and they are cited pretty often in computing/software-related articles. Currently, {{cite web}} is typically used, but I think the {{cite newsgroup}} template should be generalized to also work for mailing lists, as they are very often used for analogous purposes and mailing lists are also sometimes mirrored on Usenet. -- intgr 10:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Only public mailing lists would be acceptable sources, I believe. It should also be extended to cover discussion boards, forums, etc. — Omegatron 22:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Edition ?

Why isn't edition given as part of the citation template of a book? I see edition mentioned once in the archive: Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/Sources_of_articles/Generic_citations/Archive_01#Book_.26_journal_template_suggestions but evidently this was not taken seriously or (at least) is not being shown in the templates. The edition of a book often makes a great deal of difference when you are trying to locate specific material. --Ben Best 20:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

{{Harvard reference}} and alternatively {{Harvrefcol}} handle edition information.--Ling.Nut 20:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

PS so does {{Cite book}}, according to its documentation.--Ling.Nut 20:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

accessdate

A common description of the "accessdate" param is:

accessdate: Full date when item was accessed, in ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD format, for example "accessdate = 2006-02-17". Must not be wikilinked

This leaves a few aspects unclear:

• In the event that it was not provided by the original contributor, what should be done to add it after the fact: should it record the earliest time the page was retrieved (i.e. dig back through the history and find the date the citation appeared), or the most recent time.
• When a webpage indicates it was updated after a retrieved date, is there a standard practise to indicate that the citation is stale. If not, is there an existing appropriate template; something like {{review required|yyyy-mm-dd|The internet resource has been updated}}: ^{[review required]} ?

John Vandenberg 21:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of an access date is to say that the page was valid and contained the cited content on a given date. If no date was provided by an earlier contributor, then go to the site and see if the info is correct as cited. If so.. then put today's date on it as the last date accessed. Easy.

As for updated/stale, I haven't looked into the "Wayback Machine" yet. Dunno how it works. I'll have to look into that. In the absence of some "Wayback Machine" option; if the info is stale as in no longer exists on the cited page, then I would remove the content and the relevant citation.

--Ling.Nut 21:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I poked around a bit. At the bottom of this page Template talk:Waybackref there's discussion of a new version of "cite web" that covers archived data. But I still don't know how to use the Wayback Machine. --Ling.Nut 21:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

If the page linked to no longer exists, don't delete the info and reference. Find another reference or find an archived version of the page. If you can't be bothered to do either, leave it in the article and someone else will. — Omegatron 22:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Table of templates

This must exist. I'm looking for a template that contains a listing of all the parameters of all the other templates, so you can put it in your article, Preview, and copy and paste the bare template you want, instead of opening up a separate page for each one to copy and paste from. — Omegatron 17:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Ummmm, not sure.. but that sounds like something that should be on someone's to do list. Perhaps I can help in a couple weeks, but it's final exams time now. --Ling.Nut 18:08, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Better idea

If you just type {{cite book}} by itself, it just says {{{title}}}, bceause the title field is mandatory. What it should do is show you the full citation template with all of the possible parameters for copying and pasting. So you'd go:

1. Edit the page
2. Type {{cite book}}
3. Push preview
4. Copy from the preview the full {{cite book|title=|author=... bare template
5. Paste over the original you typed
6. Fill in the blanks — Omegatron 05:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

CITE Letters

How do you cite letters like a letter from the President to Congress? Sam D Ware 20:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

We don't have a template for that. There are quite a few things for which we don't have a template, and even where we have a template, many footnotes need additional material following the template. My suggestion is that you just make sure that you cite it clearly and unambiguously; if a copy is available on line, your citation should include a link, but it should also read clearly to anyone who does not follow the link. - Jmabel | Talk 06:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Usage of citation templates: some possible suggestions

I've been seeing quite a bit of debate in the wikipedia community recently regarding the usage of these citation templates. It seems to me that about 50% of users love them, and 50% hate them. Personally, I'm not a big fan of them. But I do see the advantages of having a clear and consistent format for handling references. And it's in the best interests of further establishing wikipedia's overall credibility to have a consistent format, and definitely something more than the simple single-link-URL-references that many anonymous editors seem to throw in.

My two biggest beefs with the citation templates are mainly inconsistent date formatting and difficulty of use. The date formatting thing isn't quite as big of an issue now that I've learned to adjust my date preferences in the 'my preferences' menu. This issue is mainly that the default numeric date format (e.g. 2006-12-20) is a bit confusing to non-technical types, and writing out the date (e.g. December 20, 2006 or 20 December 2006) makes a lot more sense to your average reader. Furthermore, your average reader could get confused when reading dates like 2006-03-04 (is it March 4, 2006, or April 3, 2006?). Those of use that understand the YYYY-MM-DD format might not be confused, but I think a lot of people like to swap the MM & DD numbers (european vs. US, for example). Changing the setting under 'my preferences' seems to solve this for logged in users, but I still think it would a good idea to change the default setting for non-logged-in users, which are perhaps the largest percentage of users that read wikipedia.

The bigger problem I have with the templates is their difficulty of use. I find it ridiculously cumbersome to have to remember all of the variables for all the templates, and then put them in. Furthermore, a lot of non-technical users would equate this more with programming, and probably shy away from using them because they don't want to screw up (e.g. forget a comma between variables, put an extra equal sign in, etc). True, you could just open up a separate browser window with a blank template to use for cut-and-paste, and this might work well for intense, active editing of articles. But I think the vast majority of edits are more casual edits; you want to go in, and a brief sentence or two and need to cite your source from the news article you read it in. For that case, it's too cumbersome to have to open up the separate blank template to cut-and-paste from. A reasonable solution here, that would appeal mostly to the non-technical user (but would also make things easier for the techies as well) would be to design some type of widget (pop-up window or something) using javascript or AJAX or something, that would have some fields in it for author, title, and other information, and would automatically insert the correct citation template into the article in the correct format. If something like this existed, I think usage of the citation templates would skyrocket (and you might even convince those pesky Germans to use it over there, too,... hehehe ;-). Until then, the citation templates may only remain in somewhat of an experimental and optional usage.

Any thoughts on this? Dr. Cash 00:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Talking of difficulty, non-techies could (and usually do) use plain old free-format citations in their favorite style, and just rely on more technical editors to convert those for them. I think this should even be encouraged for people who don't like the cite templates for whatever reason. Even if the editor does not enter all the necessary information in free form, it can usually be found from the supplied URL or Google search to make the conversion. I've myself done lots of such conversions, and I'm even starting to remember all the fields and templates without referring to WP:CITET. ;)

I agree with you about dates. While I myself prefer the ISO 8601 date format, dynamically "translating" them to the local or preferred format would be a good idea, especially if the same approach could be applied to, for example, dates on talk pages. However, I'm not sure whether or how this would work with caching of prerendered articles. I would guess that MediaWiki developers have thought of this before and have decided not to implement it for their reasons. -- intgr 08:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't particularly like the templates. My biggest beef is that people leave out any useful information that doesn't neatly fit the template. This has been particularly frustrating to me when someone imposes these templates on an existing, well-cited article and throws away information that they cannot easily squeeze into the template. - Jmabel | Talk 04:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey jmabel, I know this is a lot to ask, but do you remember specific examples? Some time when I have time (not now) I could fix the templates to include the offending info.

As for dates... I confess to be at a loss to see any problem. A date is a date is a date, and it takes less than a second to interpret any date format, except for the European preference of reversing month and day. [Here insert snide comment about how we reverse the European style, blah blah blah.].

I'm always willing to help with this kind of stuff (if I can), provided (again) that I have time.

--Ling.Nut 15:36, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is readily solved by changing the templates. The sort of things I'm thinking of include:

1. changing a weekly paper that should have a date like 23-29 March to just 23 March
2. throwing away a foreign-language quotation that was a relevant part of a citation
3. throwing away the distinction between original publication and where something was accessed online or (similarly) that a quotation was from one work, as cited in another.

Jmabel | Talk 06:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Substitution

I would say it is highly advisable that these templates should be substituted. Not only are these templated incredibly bulky in the edit window, but there is very little value for them to not be subst'd considering the bandwith issue. I think we should start contemplating making the substitution of these templates mandatory.--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 13:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say it is highly inadvisable that these templates be substituted. Do you have a good reason for them to be? — Omegatron 14:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose: What "bandwidth issue"? Not substituting templates does not incur any bandwidth overhead. I also don't think substituting them would be a good idea, as the templates could not be updated later in that case. -- intgr 14:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Conditional code (such as in the cite templates) often doesn't subst nicely. Just look at most vandal warnings. Gimmetrow 15:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

There's a bug filed fro this already. Circeus 16:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

One of the primary values of these templates is that if changes are needed to the format, all articles will reflect those changes and maintain a consistant appearance. There is no sense in subst'ing...little good can come from it in this situation. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 20:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Reference templates, GOOD. Citation templates BAD.

After monkeying around with citations, lately, I have come to the conclusion that what the WP project needs are Reference templates, and not Citation templates. I'll say how it is I reckon this, and I invite the comment of others -- as I'm sure you've guessed that I do, dear reader, else why would I have typed this here? ;-) Here goes:

The main trouble I see with citation templates is that, when seen in editing mode, they interfere with the text of the article proper, in which they are embedded. This is awkward for editors. If templates are left in tabular form, running vertically down the page, they break the article-text horribly. If they're strung out horizontally, linewise, they still break the surrounding article-text badly -- not as badly as they do in tabular form, but still badly -- and they become most awkward to use, themselves, because it is largely the tabular form that makes them so clear and handy to use.

For ease of editing, what in-text "...<ref>citations</ref>..." need most of all is to be as short as possible. Of course named references -- "...<ref name=Foo>Foo-citation</ref>..." for the first use, and thereafter "...<ref name=Foo/>..." -- help much with keeping these citations short, but those first citations remain troublesome because of the way that they break the article-text, as said. This is so in any case where some fairly thorough citation is given, not just when a template is used, but it is even more so when a template is used, because the template's fields (or whatever you call them: "| first = Joe | last = Blogs" etc.) take up so much further space, even when strung horizontally. (I know that they can be condensed by taking out the extra spaces, but this only partially solves the problem, and makes the template itself a good deal harder to read and to work with.)

So, on the one hand, long in-text citations are undesirable, and using templates makes them even worse that way. But, on the other hand, templates are handy for constructing references in a standard, semi-mechanical way -- at least some folk think so, myself among them. It is a dilemma.

But LW has a solution! (Stop me if you've heard this one.):

1. Articles should have both a "Notes" section and a separate "References" section.
2. Under the "Notes" section goes "<references/>" (which perhaps would better be re-named or alternatively named as "<notes/>", but with the exact same function, if these ideas are generally adopted).
3. Under "References" go the reference templates -- like citation templates, but not quite. Each reference template produces a full, standard-form reference to the cited item, based on the information put into its "fields". But it does so in situ (instead producing the reference elsewhere, in response to "<references/>", the way a citation template does). The beauty is that, actually, the existing templates do exactly that if they are just put in by themselves, without <ref>...</ref> surrounding them! It's my guess that most of my readers, here, already realised this, but it is my impression that most WP editors are quite unaware that the "citation" templates can work in that way.
   The "References" are listed alphabetically under their section-heading, by author (with anonymous or corporate works treated in the usual ways as regards where they fall in that list).
4. The entries under "References" detail only each work (book, journal-article, etc.) consulted, without getting into the nitty-gritty of page-number and such-like, as sometimes are needed to specify just where in the cited work the particular information may be found.
5. The in-text citations then become short, sweet, and simple: Each first-one is given a name, which generally would be the surname of the source-author, as listed in "References", followed if need be by a page-number or such-like, and likewise each actual citation consists of the author's surname and, if need be, the page-number or such-like, thus: "...<ref name=Blogs>Blogs</ref>...", or "...<ref name=Blogs6>Blogs, p.6</ref>, with the book (let's say) by Blogs being fully detailed in the References section. Where needed, both the "name" and the citation would include an initial or first name (if more than one fellow surnamed Blogs is used as a source), a date (if more than one work by the same Blogs is cited), and perhaps a letter ("a", "b", etc., if more than one work published by the same Blogs in the same year is cited), thus: "...<ref name=BlogsJ>Blogs, Joe</ref>...", "...<ref name=Blogs1886>Blogs (1886)</ref>...", "...<ref name=Blogs1886a>Blogs (1886)a</ref>...", and so forth.
   Note that the same work need only appear once in "References", but any number of different citations of that work -- for different page numbers, typically -- may be made to appear under "Notes".
   Any subsequent, identical, citations can simply use the "...<ref name=Blogs/>..." form.

And that's it!

It turns out that the tools to do this already are available, and that all that would be needed to implement this idea would be to make it well known within WP. I think that this potential is not gotten across well in the various "WP:" pages related to citations. Certainly it was not obvious to me, as I began to teach myself about doing citations in WP, and puzzling it out took me some doing. If this idea seems good to other folk, I suggest that those various pages be amended to make clear how this (as it seems to me) easy and trouble-free way of citing sources can be accomplished.

(Incidentally, the quotation marks generally shown around the "names" of named references seem to be altogether redundant: <ref name=Foo>...</ref> works just as well as <ref name="Foo">...</ref>. Does anyone know what the story is with that?)

-- Lonewolf BC 10:33, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Citation templates are good. They link the text to the the reference. They are not distracting to anyone who reads academic literature. They provide crucial information.
2. All that time you spent typing the above, you could've been writing/improving an article. No offense, seriously. Just an observation.

--Ling.Nut 12:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It really isn't your place to say what another editor should or should not be doing with their time, Ling. That aside, I personally love the current citation templates. I'm borderline fanatic about them. What I would like to see changed, however, is a way to write the actual citations in the references section once, and only use a <ref name="foo" /> tag in the body where needed. This would clean up the body of the article considerably, and still retain the usefulness of the templates. Is this even feasible?

Also, regarding the quotation marks in the ref tags...this is just standard HTML formatting. No, it isn't necessary, but as I understand it, it is proper format. It just ensures that there is no question as to what the data is. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 18:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. If my remarks seemed rude, then I apologize. I didn't think they sounded that way when I typed them, but words on a screen can be interpreted with any tone of voice in the reader's mind. So, sorry. --Ling.Nut 18:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

No worries, Ling. Apology accepted, if you wish, but I'm really not as sensitive as that, so the apology, although much appreciated by me on principle, was not really needed. Please read my next bit, below, though, because I think you've overlooked the real substance and value of my proposal.
-- Lonewolf BC 00:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Jeez, Hunster! No offence meant, but didn't you read my proposal? It says how to "...write the actual citations in the references section once, and only use a <ref name="foo" /> tag in the body...". That can be done using the existing "citation" templates, but in a different way. Please read over my proposal, especially its third point, wherein I've now underlined the part you should be gladdest to see -- and rejoice, for your sourcing-salvation is at hand! ;-)
Your reply tends to confirm my suspicion that this potential use of the existing templates as "reference templates" in a "References" section, instead of as "citation templates" embedded in the body of the article, is generally not realised among WP editors, and would be widely welcomed if it were just made widely known.
Really, folks, I don't get the impression that either of you looked beyond, "Citation templates, BAD", before answering me with, "No, citation templates GOOD!". I agree that they are good, potentially. They just are not being used in the best way, because of which they are, on the balance, bad (in my opinion). However, there's a simple solution to that, which is to publicise their potential for use as "reference templates"! And then they will become an unmixed blessing to the WP project, and almost everyone should be well pleased.
-- Lonewolf BC 00:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I really do not believe we're talking about the same thing. As I said above, i don't want to have to wrap Ref tags around *anything* in the body, and instead use only <ref name="foo" />. Similarly to what you seem to be proposing, the main citation would be at the bottom, except there would be nothing in the body except the unique reference tag referring to the full bit below. I'm interpreting your idea as creating a base reference at the bottom, and using ref tags to surround a simple cite in the body. Either way, I'd like to see a working example of what you propose. Care to make one up? -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 02:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I understand you now. My mistake in not looking closely enough at what you wanted all the tags to be like, and my apologies if I seemed a little impatient. I believe you have altogether understood me, also. I like your idea, too. In fact, when I started investigating citation methods, I had the impression that there already was one like it on WP, and expected that if I just looked around a bit I would discover out how to use it -- but of course I found none, to my disappointment. We are thinking along much the same lines, at least. I'm not sure which way I'd prefer, "mine" or "yours", if both were available. Under the present circumstances, though, I still think my proposal makes good sense.
I'll make an example page in my user space (just as soon as I can puzzle out how to create user-space pages), to illustrate my proposal, and then put a link to it in this discussion. Thanks for the suggestion, although I was already fixing to do that.
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Citation templates aren't the problem. Cite.php is the problem. We shouldn't limit the amount of information in citation templates just to prevent the wiki markup from being cluttered. The whole referencing paradigm in Wikipedia is dreadful. It will be replaced by something better someday. In the meantime, just use unsubsted citation templates that take up many lines vertically and include as much information as relevant and ignore anyone who says you're cluttering things. — Omegatron 01:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

While existing templates are limited (really, that's half the usefulness of them, to keep things like infoboxes from overflowing with useless junk), you can certainly add additional information after the template but before the closing Ref tag. I've done this many times to include additional data outside the template parameters. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 02:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Omegatron, you seem to be overlooking the fact that my proposal would satisfy the objections of folk who dislike the cluttering effect of the templates, by moving the templates out of the body of an article. There, they could be used in full, vertical form, without that form, or the templates as such, bothering anybody. To me, this seems a more collegial approach than does "...ignore anyone who says you're cluttering things."
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard this one. I wrote much of Wikipedia:Footnotes#Disadvantages and future improvements and Wikipedia:Footnotes#See also. (SEWilco 05:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC))

It's nice to know others have been thinking along similar lines. I think that this more worked-out presentation of this particular idea, outside of a more general consideration of how footnoting in WP might be bettered, is of some worth, though. Don't you agree?
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

In computer programming terminology, it's called a "forward reference" and was discussed in m:Talk:Cite.[1] The above links also include a link to a Bugzilla request for a References window to make it easier to edit References at the same time as another section. (SEWilco 15:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC))

Okay, so it's "such a good idea that it's been discussed already" -- but what has anyone done about it? It seems that similar ideas have been mentioned before, although I've not seen anything as fleshed out as what I've proposed. These prior mentions are good, insofar as they point away from such ideas being merely idiosyncratic. But if all that has happened is that a few people have made proposals, and perhaps a few more have tossed the idea around a little -- and so far as I can find, that is all that has happened -- what's the use of it been? I don't mean to denigrate anyone else's prior ideas, much less to blow my own horn, but this seems like a right fine idea that would be well worth the while of taking forward. I'm disappointed by what seems to be a response of "So what? That's been thought of already." Thinking it up is all very fine, but what good does it do, by itself? Not bloody much, is what! I was hoping for a bit more enthusiasm, and some thoughts on how to pubicise the system, if people think it is worthy of that. -- Lonewolf BC 12:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

It has interesting points. Can you summarize what is different from Cite.pm, WikiTextrose, Wikicite, and Biblio? (SEWilco 05:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC))

That would be difficult, given that I've never heard of any of those before. They sound like tools of the technical illuminati. I am not one, and my interest is in helping the rest of the uninitiated. If that aim does not interest you, just say so, or just say nought more. Your irony is unhelpful.
-- Lonewolf BC 12:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

You say "I've not seen anything as fleshed out as what I've proposed." but apparently haven't looked at the suggested links to previous work, so how relevant is your not having seen anything? Often such a proposal would be placed on a WP or Wikiproject page (although I don't know if that can be called publicity), but in order for people to learn of it they have to follow links to it from existing related pages when they are trying to learn about a Wikipedia subject. If you'll look at the already provided links to related work you'll learn more about what has already been fleshed out. (SEWilco 18:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC))

Demonstration Page

It is ready, here. -- Lonewolf BC 02:33, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

This system has been in use for a long time, and is used on a large number of articles already, as have similar systems, e.g. author-date ones. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that you are mistaken as to the system being proposed, whereas I have not seen it used in any article I have come across, aside from the ones for which I have used it. Its components are already in widespread use, and it uses familiar forms of citation. The only innovation (assuming it to be an innovation) is to use the templates outside of the body of the text, rather than inside. This is not the way they are generally used, unless the sample of articles which I have seen is somehow altogether unrepresentative of WP articles. If you know of other articles using this system, please point them out to me. I very much wish to make contact with anyone else using the same system, with an eye toward making it better known and put into general use.
-- Lonewolf BC 07:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

More or less equivalent systems are used (at least intermittently) in Blaise Pascal, Point Park Civic Center, and Federalist No. 10, Pericles, Alcibiades, and many other articles that use author-page type citations. Whether they use the citation templates at all I am not sure, but this is not of great importance. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for giving those examples. No, I'm sorry to say that those are not using the system proposed. They are using a similar style of citing references, but the proposed system does not seek to innovate so far as that goes, so of course it uses familar forms. Rather, the proposed system is essentially a way of getting citation templates, on the one hand, and the <ref>...</ref> and <references/> programming ("cite.php", I believe it is called), on the other hand, to work together, each to full advantage, without the unwanted side-effect of cluttering up the bodies of articles with long citations. So the proposal is not so much formal as ... I guess meta-technical is the word for it. That is, the idea is to put the existing technical tools to better use.
-- Lonewolf BC 08:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether a formal harvard citation with date system or the article title (which can be used for similar content according to Chicago, IIRC) is not very relevant to saying it is the "same system". Look at Vijayanagara Empire. It is pretty much the same (the only difference is that is a few cases, I couldn't tell the exact meaning of the original citation, so they are not pure Harvard.) Circeus 13:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

(reducing indent) I do a whole lot of citation fixing, and I must say, I looked at your Demo page and it looks like a damn fine idea. Only took a quick look, but I'd say, go for it. A suggestion: if you want widespread adoption, it would be best to develop some kind of tool that converts existing pages. Also, maybe it would be a good idea to try it out on some popular pages, and see what kind of reaction it gets. Just my 2...or 3...cents...-Pete 08:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Court cases

Well, which shoe would come closest to fitting the foot? Any ideas? —freak(talk) 07:45, Nov. 18, 2006 (UTC)

I agree what should be done for citation of court cases?Hackajar 03:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Bump. —freak(talk) 08:22, Dec. 30, 2006 (UTC)

Well, if nothing fits, then create a new template. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what all is relevant, but certainly a set of fields could be developed to address legal situations ranging from court cases to legal documents to anything else that needs to be included. Ahem, any lawyers around? -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 08:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Consider Case citation and Roe_v._Wade#_note-0 (sometimes a link will exist). Also: Kelo v. City of New London, UofMn Case Citation (as in "Case citation", it mentions The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation), Legal Research and Citation Style in USA. (SEWilco 01:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC))

Sadly this is entirely US POV. In England and Wales we use a slightly different form (with date first) and other jurisdictions use even more distinctive forms of citation. It might be a good idea to qualify this template as US specific. If you like, I can do one for my jurisdiction, but we'd have to agree how to name the templates and I might need a little help on this. Francis Davey 23:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Saying it is POV implies a skewing to intentionally push one side or the other. This is just a basic template which clearly says it is experimental. In any case, it might be better suited to take this problem to Template talk:Cite court. It should be easy to create regionalised editions within the same template by using a field like "system=US" "UK" etc, which would call the proper set. First, however, different potential layouts need to be presented. I must ask, though, is there no national system that could be used instead of dozens of local ones? If not, then it may be best to not use templates for these at all. Surely a generic system can be established per-country. Eh? -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 23:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Cite court

Try Template:Cite court as a starting point. I am aware that it inserts a comma ahead of pinpoint citations, while the proposed AALL Universal Citation Guide uses a paragraph symbol. The first version is based on what is in Case citation. Fix it up and remove the EXPERIMENTAL header. (SEWilco 20:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC))

• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Case text courtesy of Cornell Law School.
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Test without case URL.
• Geary v. Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish School, 7 F.3d 324 (3d Cir. 1993).
• Fuqua Homes, Inc. v. Beattie, No. 03-3587, 2004 WL 2495842 (8th Cir. November 8, 2004). Stretching it with Westlaw format.

Legislation

Hey, I've been looking for a template to cite a legislation with. I don't need anything very specific or fancy, just maybe a template that can be used for any general piece of legislation, including the legislating body that passed it, the bill number, the year, yada yada.

I noticed a {{cite law}} template discussed in the last archives of this page, but I didn't see that it went anywhere and the template is still non-existent. Considering that we have a citation template for as much as video games, it seems like we should have some appropriate template.

My current problem should prove to be a common set of parameters:

I'm citing information from [2], which is North Carolina legislation. It's hosted on some state run site, presumably official.

• url=http://ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/SessionLaws/HTML/1991-1992/SL1991-85.html
• legislating body=North Carolina General Assembly
• legislating area=North Carolina
• year=1991
• bill=932
• chapter=85
• result=passed

So there are my thoughts on what it seems to me like we should be able to do. I would like to know if this exists, or if it doesn't exist due to lack of effort (so we could just make it right?), or if I should be using something else entirely. Thanks! -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Nothing like this exists that I know of, and to be honest, I've never even considered such a template (never saw a need for it before). Would be quite simple to put together, however, do you know of any prescribed format for citing such legislation? Having such a format defined somewhere is always the first step to building a template. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 04:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment will be left aligned due to complexity.

Indeed, this is a difficult question, I was never one for using all the correct styles. But here's one mention of citing a government document addressed in MLA format: [3]

So I guess here's where things get complicated... someone could be citing a hearing or an entire host of public government activities, which I'm sure could be valid issues that come up in Wikipedia. But I don't want to touch it.

Here's another example: [4] - see the part about Legislation accessed from electronic sources But once again, this complicates the issue beyond what my simplified case called for. There is much legislation out there that is a living, changing body of work, in which case you do have to be very accurate as to which amendment you're referring to. Some legislation, on the other hand is passed once and isn't worth a legislators time of day to challenge later on. The case I was describing above is one of these, the state designated a Tartan as a state symbol, that's about as simple (and unchallengeable) of legislation as you can get.

I understand your question is about the format of such a cite, and two links I gave above are intended as an "official" example of such cases, but they don't particularly match. Putting some together, what I think it would look is this:

(Governing organization). (underlined title of legislation with external link to state site). (Bill/section indexing number). (optional amendment information, possibilities are endless). (year, date optional).

Which would make my example compress to something like this:
North Carolina General Assembly. An Act to Adopt the Carolina Tartan as the Official Scottish Tartan of the State of North Carolina. Bill 932 Chapter 85. Passed in 1991.

As far as I understand, it's still mostly our free will as Wikipedia as to how we format citations, so MLA, APA, or whatever can be more a guideline than anything else. Tell me what you think. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of either of those formats to be honest. My first thought is to simply go with the general {{Cite book}} format, though as you'll see that causes some significant problems:

[Last, First OR Author] (Date). "Title", Work, pages. Location, Publisher. Accessdate.

Now, if the legislation is written or sponsored by a single individual, then the Last, First fields should be used (and I'll try to incorporate coauthors to account for primary coauthors or cosigners), but if the work is better attributed to the entire congressional body, then Author can be used, for example, your North Carolina General Assembly. Where it gets tricky is with Title and Work. Title is best used to describe subsections of an overall work, and Work of course describes the publication itself. However, if an entire bill is being referenced, then I'm not certain how that should be handled. I'm going to reapproach this tomorrow with fresh eyes and see how it looks. Hopefully we can get some independent comments in the meantime. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 19:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Shilpa Shetty

I would also like to request your assistance if its not too much trouble? Please take a look at Shilpa_Shetty#Obscene_Pictures; why are the references for that section pointing to earlier references listed for other sections of the article? Quoting the same reference several times seems to work fine in the Romanov Vodka section, so why not elsewhere? I've tried verifying the syntax and it is correct, maybe it is an issue with the template itself? Thanks in advance. Ekantik ^talk 03:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the problem has been solved, or at least, I cannot find anything wrong. Can you elaborate? -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 06:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The ref doesn't become a footnote??

Hey, I'm not sure if this has been discussed, but I have made a reference from a magazine using the journal citation (wrong, I know, but it seemed the most correct). Now the citation will not go to the footnotes, it just sits in the body text - it is not even superscript or anything. What am I doing wrong? The article in question is Peter Canavan - the section is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Canavan#Under_Age. The third paragraph of this subheading (under-age) the last few words.--Macca7174 01:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey there. You had left out the <ref></ref> tags. Everything should be fixed up. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 01:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, cheers. I would have thought that was already included in the template. Thanks anyway.--Macca7174 18:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The citation is the description of the source. A reference (footnote) to the citation is what connects the text to the citation. The citation is the rose, and the reference is your pointing at the rose. (SEWilco 06:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC))

wayback machine

why doesn't any of the templates at Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine appear here? and would you answer my questions on the talk page's newest discussion? trespassers william 21:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Tool to format citations

I'd appreciate some comments at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Tool to format citations. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Can someone add this one to the list?

I just made Template:cite BDE (Brooklyn Daily Eagle); see it in action on Long Island Rail Road. (Also, if anyone can find a better page URL to link to that will pop up the articles properly, please fix it.) --NE2 06:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I hate to say this, but your template is rather unnecessary. One would just use {{cite news}} or {{cite web}} to link to those resources. Both provide the functionality to link to a website, so I don't see the immediate purpose of having a dedicated template for that single newspaper. What does yours do that the available templates here don't? -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 11:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Due to the long URL, this makes the text a lot smaller and easier to edit. --NE2 12:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

That newspaper's archives use URLs with the year and date, so the BDE template assembles the URL when given the date. It's a shame there isn't a standard URL format for such archives. The BDE template requires the date be in a certain format; would Wikipedia's date formatting maintain the original format of the date, or might the template end up being given a reformatted date? (SEWilco 17:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC))

Given that it's a U.S. newspaper, I don't think it's a problem to use U.S. date format. But I see what you mean - I would doubt that the date preferences are applied until after everything is processed. I changed my preferences and it works exactly as expected: "Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1851 July 5, page 4" By the way, if anyone wants to make this use one of the other templates for a consistent "look and feel", feel free. --NE2 23:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Access date usage

I've left comments at Template talk:Cite web, and Template talk:Cite journal, and would like to also make the suggestion here. Template:Cite web currently allows the user to either use accessdate (with the date required to be in ISO form) or accessmonthday and accessyear (with the date in the form "Month DD" and "YYYY", which produces an unwikilinked "Month DD, YYYY"). I would like it to allow a new date format, perhaps by adding a new parameter accessdaymonth, which would allow the date to show up as an unwikilinked "DD Month YYYY", which some people find is the best date format in "serious" writing. Template:Cite journal currently has only the accessdate parameter with no allowance for other date forms, and would require all three parameters to be added. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 20:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

keyword name

For "website" citation templates using the "Citation" template type. there appears to be two different names for the "access date" keyword. One name is accessdate and the other is access-date. Question: Which is correct? Or are both acceptable (which appears to be the case)? -Lastingwar 03:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Both will work, but "accessdate" seems to be the standard in all of the citation templates. I'd advise simply using accessdate, to avoid confusing those that aren't as familiar, but it really doesn't matter. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 04:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

If accessdate is the prefered keyword, maybe the article should be changed to reflect that by changing occrrences of access-date to the prefered keyword name. In a separate matter, I guess that a robot could fix up occurrences of access-date in the whole of the encyclopedia if ever that was needed. Thanks for the reply. -Lastingwar 15:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the hyphen from the table. –Pomte 16:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much to all of you who clarified this matter and fixed the page to reflect a uniform usage. -Lastingwar 01:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Cite archives

What would be best to cite archives of historical facts published by a government, such as past leaders of the opposition in Canada? So far I've been using Cite web like this:

• Government of Canada (2006-02-24). "Leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons:1867 to Date". Library of Parliament. Retrieved 2006-11-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

But I'm not sure if that it the best way. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That's fine. You don't have to contrive to add an "author" in {{cite web}}, though. I would do it like this:

• "Leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons: 1867 to Date". Parliament of Canada website. 2006-02-24. Retrieved 2006-11-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

cite newsgroup change

I thought that VPR was the right place, so I started the discussion there. (go)

Anyone have anything else to add? --Random832(tc) 14:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

language field in cite book

Do you think it would be reasonable to have "language" field in cite book template? Several BibTeX styles do have such a field. --Kompik 09:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. Such a field should exist for citing sources in languages other than English. I'll see if I can change the template myself. Galanskov 19:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Hold on. I just took a look at Template:Cite book. It appears to already have such a field, but this page dosen't mention it. Galanskov 19:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

{{citation}} template: Pages doesn't work

I haven't a clue how to fix a template, so maybe someone else can. Or, tell me what I'm doing wrong.

<ref>{{Citation | last = Boraas | first = Alan S. | author-link = Alan Boraas | editor-last = Kalifornsky | editor-first = Peter | editor2-last = Kari | editor2-first = James | editor3-last = Boraas | editor3-first = Alan | contribution = Peter Kalifornsky: A Biography | title = A Dena’ina Legacy — K’tl’egh’i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky | year = 1991 | pages = 470–481 | place = Fairbanks, AK | publisher = [[Alaska Native Language Center]], [[University of Alaska Fairbanks]] }}</ref>

produces this:

Boraas, Alan S. (1991), "Peter Kalifornsky: A Biography", in Kalifornsky, Peter; James Kari & Alan Boraas, A Dena’ina Legacy — K’tl’egh’i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky, Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Note the page numbers aren't showing up. Which is bad news if you're referring to a large work, & actually want to help readers who might go to it to find the page(s).

A lot of the examples given on the templates page show the same problem of page #s not showing.

Oh, & while we're at it -- some of these templates (including this one) don't provide a period to close the citation out. Call me picky, but I'm a publication specialist... things like this bug me.

-- Yksin 17:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

{{citation}} is not nearly as develloped as {{cite book}}, and certainly not nearly as used. Your problem is thatthe template currently does not implement any "pages parameter". it is not an accurate fork of {{cite book}}.

Your best bet is probably to use the Wikipedia:Footnote3 system combined with the usual cite_X templates. Circeus 00:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Circeus. I ended up rather giving up on most of the citation templates in favor of something I've got a bit better control over -- & is also a lot easier on me while taking notes than the templates. Results so far can be seen on the article I've been working to improve on Peter Kalifornsky. Not much there so far, but now I've discovered how I want to do it, it's making it lots simpler to continue work on this article. Best wishes. == Yksin 07:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Citing academic anthologies?

Hi, I would like to cite an academic paper that is published as an academic anthology by Oxford University Press i.e.: "This author" in "This paper" published in "This book" edited by "these professors" scenario. Which of the citation templates would best assist me in doing this? Could/Should a new template be designed to accomodate this type of scholarly reference? Ekantik ^talk 03:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

{{cite book}} with "chapter" and using "editor" for... well... the editors. If the book (assuming it's a ISBN-tagged monography) is part of a series (especially if said series itself has an ISSN), you can use the "series" variable (e.g. |series=Devellopments in foobarium research, 14). Circeus 04:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Citing brochures

Is there a template or model suitable for citing a brochure? I have in mine in particular brochures released by CERN about an experiment there. -- SCZenz 14:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Style of citation markup

Are the any styles for the citation templates —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fnielsen (talk • contribs) 10:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

Style of citation markup

Are there any styles for the citation templates. Here are two versions. The first is by another user,

...to endocytose JCV.<ref name=Elphick_2004>{{cite journal |author=Elphick G, Querbes W, Jordan J, Gee G, Eash S, Manley K, Dugan A, Stanifer M, Bhatnagar A, Kroeze W, Roth B, Atwood W |title=The human polyomavirus, JCV, uses serotonin receptors to infect cells |journal=Science |volume=306 |issue=5700 |pages=1380-3 |year=2004 |doi = 10.1126/science.1103492 |pmid=15550673}}</ref>

while the second is by me:

...to endocytose JCV.<ref name="ElphickG2004Human">{{cite journal 
 | author = [[Gwendolyn F. Elphick]], William Querbes, Joslynn A. Jordan, Gretchen V. Gee, Sylvia Eash, Kate Manley, Aisling Dugan, Megan Stanifer, Anushree Bhatnagar, Wesley K. Kroeze, Bryan L. Roth, and [[Walter J. Atwood]]
 | title = The human polyomavirus, JCV, uses serotonin receptors to infect cells 
 | journal = [[Science (journal)|Science]] 
 | volume = 306 
 | issue = 5700 
 | pages = 1380–1383 
 | year = 2004 
 | doi = 10.1126/science.1103492 
 | pmid = 15550673
}}</ref>

The differences are:

• Wikipedia links for authors even if they do not exist.
• Authors written with full name and in 'ordinary' firstname-surname order.
• Wikipedia links for the journal – also full names (such as 'Journal of Neuroschemistry') rather than abbreviated (such as 'J. Neurochem.').
• The citation formatted on several lines.

These are my preferences (I find it more readable/editable and 'linked'), but I guess that others may have a different oppinion? -- fnielsen 10:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no preferences for the last part, but I'm with you with full journal and author names, where I disagree is that:

• Links should ONLY be made in references if the article exists. (otherwise they are useless AMND distracting, see also WP:CONTEXT)
• The first/main author should still be in Last, First to make possible later references to "Elphick et al" more easy to locate. This can and does occur when the referenced item is a book.

Overall, the editors are split on these issues (except that most will want to keep links to a minimum and names in Last, First format.)Circeus 19:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

cite audio

I see that a cite video template has been added - but does anyone have any idea how i should cite some mp3 audio files? I want to use this on Bristol Riots to cite an mp3 of a lecture which was delivered on the subject by Mike Manson. I will cite the web page for now bu the actual items of interest such as the exact date, number killed etc comes from the audio files.— Rod ^talk 14:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Use the "format" parameter and link directly to the MP3?Circeus 22:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Cite map?

Would anyone object to my creating a {{cite map}} template? Maps have special requirements, such as the map publisher/branding, the company who did the actual cartography, and (possibly) the map coordinate of the data referenced (e.g. A6), that other templates don't cover.—Scott5114↗ 17:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds good, just don't know how much immediately use it will find :) -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 23:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I know WP:USRD will put it to use :) I've created it - would anyone like to check the syntax to make sure it's consistent with the other citation templates? —Scott5114↗ 01:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Cite episode

Could someone possibly add this template into the list? I had a hard time finding it (i needed it for radio recordings) and I am afraid I may mess up this article if i try to add it in myself (:O) -Nima Baghaei ^{talk · cont · email} 15:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll take care of it. I'm probably going to do a code update of the article while I'm at it. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 19:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• very cool, thanks! (:O) -Nima Baghaei ^{talk · cont · email} 15:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Publisher and location parameters desired

The "cite" family of templates, as well as "citation", are variable in providing "publisher" and "location" parameters, yet these are very important, especially for references published outside of the USA and Canada.

• Template:Citation provides both.
• Template:Cite book provides both parameters.
• Template:Cite journal provides neither (and the text in Wikipedia:Citation_templates says it provides publisher.)
• Template:Cite conference provides both.
• Template:Cite encyclopedia provides only publisher.
• Template:Cite news provides only publisher.
• Template:Cite web provides only publisher. Even for a web service, there's sometimes reason to reference a location.
• Template:Cite newsgroup provides neither. Since there are multiple disconnected networks using the USENET/NNTP protocols, at least a publisher parameter is required, and location might have some use as well.
• Template:Cite paper provides only publisher.
• Template:Cite press release provides only publishers.
• Template:Cite video provides both, and a good thing, too--obscure videos can be very hard to find. "Producer" and "director" might also be desirable.
• Template:Cite episode doesn't have them; doesn't (seem to) need them.
• Template:Cite court doesn't have them; doesn't seem to need them. Unfortunately, "cite court" is probably US-specific.
• Template:Cite mailing list doesn't provide publisher or location (e-mail lists do sometimes have publishers), and it only supports lists with URLs, which omits plain Majordomo and LISTSERV mailing lists.

My suggestion is to uniformly provide "publisher" and "location" parameters in all citation templates.

Randwolf 16:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Seconding (glad I saw Randwolf's note, thank you). Template:Cite journal had a publisher field according to WP:CITET. I removed it for now to maybe help others avoid a trip to the Village Pump. -Susanlesch 18:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Naming references

I will use whatever format is preferred by editors. I have noticed that some people name the references. I have tried to do this without much success so I just repeat the same citation. How should the citations be named? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cherylyoung (talk • contribs) 00:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

When naming references, you have to use <ref name="whatever">{{cite... for the first instance, where whatever is any unique name you want to give it. Each following instance, you need to use just <ref name="whatever"/>. Note the trailing slash mark, this is important. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 08:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Need Help with Citing Court Papers

I would like to cite original source documents from court cases like this one:

http://wtvf.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/SmithsIndict.pdf

I am unsure of the proper way to do so. Could I get some help?Efkeathley 12:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

While {{Cite court}} could potentially be used, it is so highly experimental right now that I would not recommend it. It is highly focused only on court decisions, and doesn't work well for general legal papers. This is the best I could come up with for usage with that template:

• {{cite court |litigants=Georgia v. Sonya and Joseph Smith |court=Cobb County Superior Court |date=[[2006-06-15]] |url=http://wtvf.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/SmithsIndict.pdf}}
• Georgia v. Sonya and Joseph Smith (Cobb County Superior Court 2006-06-15), Text.

It would be highly useful, unfortunately, it appears its creator has abandoned it, and I simply don't possess the necessary level of legal knowledge to flesh it out more. Either way, take your pick of which format appears better to you. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 05:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Next week I plan to start citing original government issued papers where I can.Efkeathley 13:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem, however, be very conscious of what the end result looks like. If it appears mangled or doesn't include all the information you would like, please use {{Cite web}} or simply write it out without using a template. Cite court simply doesn't work in a wide variety of applications yet. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 14:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Cite court was requested for citing court cases. It cites court cases. What wide variety of applications does it need to work for? (SEWilco 16:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC))

Template:Harvard reference obsolete?

This page gives links to Template:Harvard reference which now begins "THIS TEMPLATE IS DEPRECATED. USE Template:Citation INSTEAD, WHICH HAS THE SAME FUNCTIONALITY." Should this page not be updated? Also, both this page and Wikipedia:Citing sources begin by suggesting Template:Cite book etc. which appear to lack that functionality, with the result that pages such as Alfred Russel Wallace are produced using that template in a Harvard system without the links down to the references. It seems desirable to encourage standardising on Template:Citation unless there's a good reason otherwise, and this would suggest showing that template at the outset. ...... dave souza, talk 21:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Harvard reference section is redundant. I just removed it. COGDEN 08:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Good start. However, the "cite book" type versions are still shown as the first option in each case, implying first preference. I've added a couple of notes to make it clear that the "citation" template works better with Harvard referencing. Certainly the linking function did not work with "cite book" when I tried it out. Altering the sequence in the table would be helpful. .. dave souza, talk 12:05, 13 May 2007 (UTC)