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WP:Citation overkill

As seen here and here, Aquillion removed the long-standing mention of WP:Citation overkill from the guideline. Then QuackGuru came along and replaced one of the mentions with a link to a section in his WP:Citation underkill essay. I reverted both them pending further discussion.

The edits, in part, have to do with the Wikipedia talk:Citation overkill#Controversial tag discussion, where CFCF, QuackGuru, GoneIn60, Blueboar and myself weighed in. Aquillion has also now weighed in on that discussion. A permalink for it is here. My issue with the edits I reverted is that not engaging citation overkill is well-supported by the community; I don't see that the essay is controversial at all. Only a small minority, especially QuackGuru, has objected to the WP:Citation overkill essay, while there have been more protests with regard to his WP:Citation underkill essay. He's been the main one editing and citing that essay. So I feel that Aquillion's complaint that WP:Citation overkill "is too controversial to be safely linked here [...] People are starting to try and cite it like policy" is not completely accurate. Yes, people often cite it like a guideline (the same goes for the well-supported WP:BRD page, which is now a supplement page instead of an essay page), but it's not "too controversial." Without thoroughly checking Aquillion's latest edits, I assume that Aquillion recently encountered someone objecting to citation overkill and decided to challenge the essay. Whatever the case, I don't see that we should remove all mention of WP:Citation overkill from this page. Bundling is one of the ways to avoid to citation overkill. That's why it's linked to in the WP:CITEBUNDLE section. At the very least, WP:Citation overkill should remain linked in the See also section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:31, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I strongly object to linking that essay here because I feel that it minimizes bundling as a goal (mentioning it only in passing at the very end.) The only way I could support it being mentioned on this page is if it were heavily rewritten to unambiguously state that, for otherwise-valid sources, bundling is always preferable to removal. Although I recently encountered it, it was only the most recent incident (the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak); the fact that I've repeatedly encountered people leaping to removal over bundling and citing an arbitrarily dogmatic "three cite" rule made me realize it's probably necessary to push back against that essay a bit more aggressively. While the general idea that we should avoid massive strings of cites is uncontroversial, the specific proscriptions in that essay are absolutely controversial, as can be seen from the frequency with which it's been challenged on its own talk page. --Aquillion (talk) 18:39, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to wait and see what others have to state before I weigh in more on this, but, like I pointed out on the WP:Citation overkill talk page, the supposed controversy regarding that page was mostly driven by QuackGuru. In general, there's no objection to the WP:Citation overkill essay. As for staying at three references, I see experienced editors preferring to stay at two references more than three, but three is also often accepted. I also still see four accepted at enough articles. Editors usually don't bundle; this is because they usually don't need to. But the bundling section at the essay does encourage bundling when it's needed. So the essay is not saying that additional sources or repetition of sources are bad. It's just saying that needless repetition is bad. Furthermore, stating that "bundling is always preferable to removal" could lead to editors (mainly newbies and otherwise less experienced editors) bundling many sources just to fix the citation overkill problem even when the additional sources are not needed. And where does it stop? It could go up to 20 unnecessary citations in a bundle. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Flyer22 Reborn and support the reenstatement of the old page and i see no problem with linking the citation overkill essay.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

We should include both or nothing at all IMO. I've had an instance in the past where a user tried to edit out some of my citations citing CO, we eventually came to the understanding that I was referencing different points and that I felt that they should be cited equally, however the CO doesn't cover that while CU does. My point. I guess is that we should attempt to show people that there are multiple philosophies for citing and beyond that multiple reasonings. --Deathawk (talk) 00:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Comment – Seems like there are several issues being brought up by Aquillion and Deathawk. The first is that they are frequently encountering other editors citing WP:OVERKILL as if it were a policy or guideline. Any editor doing that should be promptly advised or reminded that it is indeed just an essay and should be directed to WP:POLICIES as needed.

The second issue appears to be a concern that the essay is promoting a hard stop at three citations, and that excessive citations should be removed. A careful reading of the essay suggests that one citation is usually sufficient, and two or three is sometimes needed for better support or to help prevent linkrot. The lead even states, "if more than three are truly beneficial as an additional range, consider bundling (merging) the citations." Bundling exists as an option for a reason. It gives editors, who might be concerned about citation clutter, an alternative to removal. WP:CITEBUNDLE along with the essay both clearly support that notion. I'm not seeing strong evidence in either location that promotes removal over bundling. More evidence of this being an issue is needed.

And finally, the third issue Deathawk encountered with another editor isn't very clear, but it seems like a one-off anomaly. We would need more information to understand what that's all about. Overall, I think the opposition here needs to provide more details on why they believe the essay is controversial. It is simply providing more information on how to avoid or reduce citation clutter, and nothing it prescribes directly contradicts a guideline or policy. --GoneIn60 (talk) 02:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Suggesting that one citation is ideal for anything remotely controversial strikes me as patiently absurd. Fortunately, I've never previously seen anyone suggest that WP:OVERCITE could remotely be considered applicable in a situation with two or three citations (which demonstrates, again, that the essay doesn't reflect any sort of existing behavior or consensus), but that's something else that will have to be addressed on that page. To be 100% clear - you are suggesting that when two or three entirely-valid citations are present, they could be trimmed down to one, without further discussion, based solely on WP:OVERCITE? And you believe that this is uncontroversial and reflects existing community editing standards? --Aquillion (talk) 04:22, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I had to re-read your comments a second time, because I am frankly baffled at how you came to these conclusions. WP:CITE does not take a stance on the number of citations, but it gives advice on how to reduce clutter (which implies that clutter should be avoided when possible). WP:OVERKILL says that one citation can be sufficient, but it doesn't have a problem with two or three. It also doesn't recommend trimming two or three down to one. How are you arriving at the accusation: "...you are suggesting that when two or three entirely-valid citations are present, they could be trimmed down to one, without further discussion..."? It should be clear from this reply that you should probably re-read my previous comments more carefully. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Citation underkill#Overciting content gives editors leeway and focuses on the quality of citations. Wikipedia:Citation underkill#Bundling citations teaches editors how to bundle in accordance with Wikipedia's Verifiability policy. Citation overkill appears to cause more problems that it supposedly solves. For example, see Wikipedia:Citation overkill#Needless repetition. Does anyone think it is appropriate to delete repeated single citations? What is the issue with underkill? It is too hard to follow Wikipedia's WP:POLICIES? Either we include both or only underkill or nothing. QuackGuru (talk) 03:32, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying that paragraph citations shouldn't be allowed? That goes against WP:CITETYPE which clearly states, "An inline citation means any citation added close to the material it supports, for example after the sentence or paragraph, normally in the form of a footnote." If that's what you're saying, I strongly recommend you start a new section on this talk page to discuss in depth.

Underkill, by the way, was primarily written by one editor, QuackGuru, and numerous attempts by others to contribute were reverted or argued against on its talk page. It needs more time to demonstrate a comfortable level of community acceptance before being placed in a more prominent position. Also, its lack of focus and coherency with sections like "Citation balancekill" and "Overciting content" shows just how green and early in the teething process it really is. Concerns like these (and I'm sure there's more) should be addressed before listing it anywhere on WP:CITE. That too should probably be discussed in another thread. This is about maintaining the inclusion of Overkill, which has had consensus for being listing here. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:25, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Underkill goes well beyond placing a citation after each sentence. It tells things others may have a hard time following in accordance with polices.

It does not lack focus and coherency with sections including "Citation balancekill" and "Overciting content".

WP:WEASEL words is extremity vague and editors often delete supported weasel words. "Citation balancekill" shows how to write neutral words when encountering weasel words. I have seen editors delete supported weasel words or replace supported weasel words with words that clearly fail verification. Just telling editors to place a citation after each claim lacks direction and instruction on how to create high-quality content. "Overciting content" also shows a simply way for editors to trim excessive citations. This improves readability for our readers. Deathawk wrote above, We should include both or nothing at all IMO." I agree with Deathawk. Including overkill without including underkill does not seem to be neutral. It is better to read both overkill and underkill to think through and understand the issues rather than read only overkill. QuackGuru (talk) 14:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Being primarily written by one editor is still a major concern. Also, the title of your essay uses the term "Underkill", (which you may recall I suggested to you in an RfC). The title implies it is meant to counter Overkill, but the "Overciting content" section actually complements it. "Citation balancekill" has nothing to do with the "Underkill" term, and therefore the focus of that section is not in cohesion with the essay's title. You should consider renaming it if you wish to include those two sections, and you should probably avoid repeating some of the same advice already mentioned in Overkill if your goal is to make this a counter-essay. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Quack... just a reminder... essays, guidelines and policy pages are intentionally NOT “neutral”. Consensus rules, and minority views get shunted to the side. Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

You say consensus rules. That has been addressed. "Citation balancekill" states "Consensus on Wikipedia does not magically generate accuracy." QuackGuru (talk) 17:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

"Citation balancekill" is related to underkill and thus on point. Citation balancekill starts off with, "Placing a citation after each idea or concept does not guarantee the content is verifiable." An editor will quickly realize placing a citation after each claim is just the beginning to creating high-quality content. The title is not meant to simply counter Overkill. It goes well past countering it. "Overciting content" section is simpler and better written and is part of underkill. For example, see "If the claim is extraordinarily controversial then the content may require more than one citation." QuackGuru (talk) 17:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

"The title is not meant to simply counter Overkill"

Then you should consider renaming it, because the Underkill title doesn't make sense if the entire essay isn't focused on what Underkill means. Balancekill introduces a different concept that has nothing to do with increasing the number of citations.

""If the claim is extraordinarily controversial then the content may require more than one citation.""

This is already mentioned in Overkill: "A good rule of thumb is that, except for certain controversial topics, one footnote after a sentence is almost always sufficient. Two or three may be a good way of ... providing a range of sources that support the fact..." --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Underkill title make senses when the essay is about underkill in the general sense. Balancekill introduces a related concept that has to do with increasing the number of citations that verify each claim rather that use citations that fail verification. "Overciting content" section also states "Quality of citations, not the quantity of citations added improves article content." That is about underkilling and using high-quality sources instead. QuackGuru (talk) 18:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

It's confusing and convoluted if you ask me, which often comes from trying to do too much. I think it would be more effective if you laser-focused its theme on simply contradicting Overkill, and including only material that demonstrates the benefits of increasing the number of citations. Focusing on the quality of sources does not separate it from Overkill, which shares the same view that highly-reputable sources are preferred. You also need to be willing to let go of the reins and not be so protective of the essay. Public acceptance requires open collaboration. --GoneIn60 (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

It's more effective in creating a better quality essay and thus high-quality content when not narrowly focused on just being a counter-essay. Public acceptance requires WP:TEAMWORK as well as adhering to core policies. Underkill requires editors to adhere to policy rather than just placing a citation after each claim. That's what makes underkill more effective than just being a counter-essay. QuackGuru (talk) 19:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

QG: Funny thing: while I accept your core idea ("It is always best to cite each idea or concept"), my take on your essay (prior to reading the comments above) is just like the others': it lacks focus. I would also add: it's bloated. (It is about quadruple the length of Overkill.) It is NOT effective as a "counter-essay", nor is it even close to being a critical essay. In short, it is NOT ready to have readers referred to it. I would also strongly question this "balancekill" term. That is just plain nonsensical as it stands, and you have not given it any better meaning.

On the otherhand, even though I do not entirely agree with "Overkill", nor some of the ways it has been invoked, there is long-standing consensus to refer to it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

• Request: Would someone care to explain – concisely, please – just what is the issue here? And how it is different from that other discussion referred to? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:47, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

J. Johnson: I'm not sure the opposition agrees on a clear stance against WP:OVERKILL. So far the points made are all over the place. My first comment above was an attempt to summarize, but it's still about as clear as mud. --GoneIn60 (talk) 11:54, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Clearly no consensus for removal let alone replacement with an essay of the opposite View. Perhaps the newer essay would have more merit if it wasn't just a rebuttal of the older essay... but actually stood on its own two feet-Moxy (talk) 01:11, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

• The newer essay does not lack focus and it is not just a rebuttal of the older essay. It gives better instructions than just placing a citation after each statement. Following policy by using supported weasel words and writing neutral content in accordance with "balancekill" shows it is not just a counter-essay. The issue here is one essay is being linked to without linking to the other possible interpretation of policy. Open collaboration is presenting both sides rather than presenting one side. QuackGuru (talk) 10:53, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

QG, this is becoming a case of WP:IDHT. Your response above is regurgitating a previous one and indicates you're in denial of the feedback the community is giving you. I'm also not sure you fully understand the meaning behind "open collaboration", as that phrase does not apply to your essay. --GoneIn60 (talk) 11:45, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

QG: Bullshit, on all counts. Your self-evaluation of "focus" and "better instructions", contrary to what the rest of us find, suggests a failure of judgment. Your concept of "balancekill" is ludicrous. And your supposed issue of unfairness in that one essay gets linked but yours does not is based on a serious misapprehension that every POV should be "countered" with an opposite view. Even if that was the case – that it was agreed there should be a link to a counter-essay – your essay is not the one to link. Even as a proponent of "cite each idea" I find your essay unsatisfactory.

If I am being a bit short with you here it is because you are wasting our time. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Essay: Basic citation concepts

The practice of citation is perhaps the most intimidating challenge a new editor faces, and challenging even for experienced editors. Discussion of citation is often even more challenging because of differing usage of terms and even of the underlying concepts. After much thought I have formulated definitions of some key terms and concepts which can resolve much of the difficulty. I present these in an essay at Draft:Basic citation concepts, which I invite everyone to comment on and discuss. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Citing web sources that only work in select geographic areas

I was recently trying to access a US-based website that would not load on my computer. As I do not live in the US, I set up a VPN for a US-based IP and the site worked fine. Is there a way to mention this in a citation, that the website will only work in certain areas? Otherwise the reader might assume it is a broken or dead link. –Dream out loud (talk) 14:04, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

On citing censored sources

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see WT:Manual of Style#Citing a bowdlerised source. This is kind of a side-issue of WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Citations with wrong access dates

The access dates, as used for example within {{cite web}}, are meant to give the date that it was last checked that the webpage supports the article text that cites it. Now, there is a tool, WP:REFILL, that enables editors to semi-automatically add metadata (like title, author, website, etc) to bare URL references. Apparently, this tool adds the current date as an access date by default. The problem is, that not all people who use that tool actually check the webpages. There was a recent case where one user had expanded the bare URL citations of about 10,000 articles before they were finally persuaded (not without some resistance and a bit of time spent at ANI) to disable the access-date option unless they've actually checked the webpage concerned.

Is that something we should worry about? Maybe a bot could go over this user's edits and simply remove any access-dates that were added, or is that going to be too much trouble? And probably, that user isn't the first, and is unlikely to be the last, so maybe this tool's access-dates option should be turned off by default, so that it's used only by users who know what they're doing? – Uanfala (talk) 08:28, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Johnbod (talk) 13:06, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

When I open reFill, "Do not add access dates" (emphasis mine) is selected. I don't believe there's a way to save one's personal preferences for the tool, which would lead me to believe that access dates are not updated as a default. DonIago (talk) 13:08, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

A bot to undo those kinds of edits would seem to me to be an onerous task. The better long-term solution is to kill WP:REFILL. Too often that tool produces junk that many editors, through, laziness, incompetence, naivete, don't fix before saving the tool's edits. Posts at the tool's talk page go unanswered by the maintainer (maintainer's last post there was 6 July 2017). Kill refill.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:18, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Or maybe use of the tool could be restricted to those who have been approved, as with WP:AWB? – Uanfala (talk) 09:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

That, or have that option turned off by default, and have a strong rule about its use, such that use of the tool could be restricted if the rule is not followed (i.e., have a revocation procedure rather than an approval one). I agree with the core idea that this is "something we should worry about", since misuse of this feature of the tool is strongly counter to our verification efforts.

At least as importantly: This is also why I've repeatedly opposed attempts to remove |access-date= from citation templates for books and the like, and will revert on sight any attempt to remove this parameter from citations that lack a URL. On WP, it does not mean "the last time someone looked at this URL", it means much more specifically "the last time someone verified that this source is good for what it was cited for", which has nothing at all to do with whether there's a URL.. I think there may even be a bot that is auto-removing the parameter from citations without at URL and that needs to stop immediately if that's the case. What's happening here is that people are assuming that the reason that an off-site citation style like AMA or whatever might have a similar field is the one and only reason that WP might have one, and this assumption is dead wrong.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:36, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Vertical references in wikipedia

Hi again - as an offshoot of my CIA-document question above, I discovered the vertical templates for citations. Those seem (to me) to be a lot easier to read when in edit mode, as I'm often frustrated by long paragraphs with lots of citations because everything gets very jumbled up. But obviously, it seems like almost all of the citations on WIkipedia use the horizontal style. What is your (the community's) opinion on using the vertical style? thanks Amsgearing (talk) 00:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

They used to be common 10 years ago. Actually in quantity they drive you completely nuts, so people have ? changed the templates, or now use different ones. But you can still use them I presume - there are many still about. Johnbod (talk) 00:34, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Vertical references?? The term "references" is quite problematical itself, as it means too many different things, but in regard of the so-called "references" (actually full citations) as found in the typical "References" section, those are universally displayed as a vertical list (in one or more columns), with each citation displayed as one or more lines (that is, horizontally).

Presumably you are referring to the style of how a template's parameters are formatted, whether horizontally or vertically. Which is nothing to with a template (it makes absolutely no difference). It is entirely a matter of individual editorial preference. And one which can invoke strong opinions.

Most ("almost all"?) full citations (containing the full bibliographic details describing a source) are in horizonatal format because 1) they are in the text, and 2) the edit window's limited height makes it easier to read horizontal format. Some definite advantages to vertical format are traded-off for having more text (including the citation) in the edit window. On the other hand, if the full citations are put into a separate section (which among other advantages reduces citation clutter in the raw text), a structured vertical format is clearer, and aids in proof-reading and maintenance.

By and large the "community" does things in certain ways because that is what they see everyone else doing, without careful consideration of the alternatives or their merits. If you create a new article, you should experiment with both styles. (Ask if you would like some pointers.) But be cautious in converting from one style to the other, lest you trip over some strong opinions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:16, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Vertical references are by far much easier to read, review and edit, but also takes much more space in the edit window. If you don't mind the space, put them vertical. If you think it takes too much space, put them horizontal. But don't switch styles just because it's your preference. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:39, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

The case against long horizontally formatted templates (LHTs) is set out here (warning: it's a long read). JJ is basically correct, but I would add that the space "disadvantage" (but I don't see it as a disadvantage at all) disappears if all the long citations are listed in their own section, using either short-form referencing, or list-defined references or parenthetical referencing (an underrated citation style, which should be used more often in my opinion). And yes, I have strong opinions on this subject, since LHTs drive me up the wall with frustration. --NSH001 (talk) 23:01, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

There is no substitute for looking at examples. Take a look at the hundreds of articles on Aboriginal Australians I've been working on recently with Nishidani, or the examples given in the links I provided in my previous reply. --NSH001 (talk) 23:15, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

For those who haven't got time to read the very long thread I linked to above, I should mention that the template format used in the Aboriginal Australian articles is neither "vertical" nor "horizontal", but a form that I call "ETVP" ("Easy To Visually Parse"). Since it is physically impossible (with a few exceptions) to edit so-called "horizontal" templates (they aren't really horizontal at all, but that's explained in the link), I designed a format that is intended to be as easy as possible to read and to edit. The basic principles of ETVP are outlined in the link, and I set about writing a script to transform cite templates into this form. This script is now in operation on Nishidani's Aboriginal Australian articles. --NSH001 (talk) 08:22, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

It took me a while to understand what this is about, but apparently it's whether you put newlines between parameters of cite templates (so they spread out over multiple source lines) or omit the newlines (so they turn into one long horizontal line of source code). Right? My own preference is to put all of the details of the references at the end of the article in the references section, either by using harvard-style short footnotes ({{sfnp}}) or by using {{reflist|refs= <ref name=x>...</ref>... }} and then referring to the footnotes by name in the text of the article. It has the disadvantage of making it hard to edit a single section at a time instead of the whole article, but it has the advantage of making the article text much more readable. And if you're going to do it that way, it doesn't much matter whether you format the actual citation parameters vertically or horizontally. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:01, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I first noted vertical referencing as the preferred format adopted by the Shakespearean scholar Tom Reedy when he was struggling to haul the endlessly messy, crudely amateurish and incoherent POV mess that was the Shakespeare authorship question out of its pit of despair, and adopted it when we finally managed to obtain the consent of admins to redo the article from top to bottom with one internally consistent template and format. With the aid of several other highly experienced and knowledgeable editors it passed all the rigorous review and vetting criteria to become not only a Favourite article, but one now cited by Shakespearean scholars in the technical literature. When I decided, confident in NSH001's technical presence, to write up the 700+ articles required to cover the whole field of indigenous Australian peoples tribe by tribe, to apply it throughout as the default citational style. Vertical referencing allows for the kind of rapid filling in of source data, and, for close readers, presents the key source data in an immediately intelligible form. I don't impose it on established articles I work on in other areas that have a different set of formats.

All publishing houses have a preferred style, and in academic publications there is a recommended citational model. In the long term, as an encyclopedic project, wikipedia ought to encourage editors to accommodate their article contributions to the prevailing academic forms. One need not worry too much over an aut/aut choice between vertical versus horizontal (though I find horizontal referencing aesthetically ugly and difficult to use): the important thing is to use one or the other form consistently in any page, or over all articles in a thematic field, so that, aesthetically and functionally, our collective work looks professional, and mirrors in its templates and formats the rigour we require as best practice in sourcing (professional sources by specialists in each topic wherever possible). NSH001 has been the driving mind behind what is I think the first attempt to have all articles in a wikipedia topic field conform to a single unified editing pattern, and the results are, I think, cogent proofs of the aesthetic quality and readerly comfort such a principle, duly applied, can produce for our readership.Nishidani (talk) 05:03, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Nishidani, I think you mean "vertical" in your first sentence above? --NSH001 (talk) 06:42, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I was suffering from the vertigo of editing Palestinian articles in the face of sheer obstructive POV pushing, obviously. Corrected.Nishidani (talk) 08:12, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

It is an established principle that Wikipedia does not have a "house-style", apparently adopted to avoid wasting any more effort in an utterly futile battle of what it should be. (With overtones of "don't strike that match!") And I would object to adopting any particular "academic" style because 1) there are so many, and 2) each (as far as I have seen) has been adapted to its own context, which is unlikely to be optimum for WP. (And also because I detest this ill-defined term "academic".) Furthermore, I don't think we should have "a single unified editing pattern", as we can't tell (yet) what is right in all cases. But what we could do is work up some recommended "good practices". Though even that should be done provisionally, as something not entirely settled, or even "settle-able". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:26, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Actually we do have a house style, WP:CS1 (actually two; there's also WP:CS2, but it's rather disused, and now the CS1 templates actually have folded it in and just emit a slight variance in formatting when told to do so). It's just that the house style is not mandatory, because people have historically bickered too much. Basically, certain parties from field A or field B are strongly reluctant to not write citations in the style they're used to using for journals they write for off-site, and the community's historically been more willing to live with citation chaos than to irritate those editors. It's probably something we should revisit, now that over a decade has passed. The real fact of the matter is that no one competent to write for WP is unfamiliar with the ideas that they have to use the citation style demanded by the publisher or they won't get published, and that publishers' demanded citation styles actually differ. Ergo, there is no real underlying reason WP can't use a single citation style; there is no one who can't handle it. But none of this really relates to the original question, which isn't about citation style, but about citation code formatting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:47, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Whether to use horizontal or vertical citation template formatting is primarily if not solely a matter of where the citations are. Vertical citations are preferable if you're using WP:LDR citations, with the cites piled up at the end (an approach that's really only practical toward the FA stage, when an article is very stable and random editors aren't likely to be inserting a bunch more stuff with new inline citations). In LDR, vertical cites make the citation management easier. By contrast, horizontal cites (the most commonly used style, by a wide margin) work better with inline citations, because they flow with the content. If you inject vertical citations mid-article, it makes it much more difficult to discern the paragraph structure of the material you're working on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:47, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

How do I properly source a CIA document?

Hi all, I have no problem sourcing online articles and even books in Google Books URLs, they're pretty easy, but recently I ran across this document: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000606360001-1.pdf

My question is, how can I best format the reference in the article for this? I guess I'm really asking which template I should use. thanks. Amsgearing (talk) 16:01, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

The Associated Press appears to have created the original, so I would probably use {{cite news}} with a |via=Central Intelligence Agency. --Izno (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd use: * {{citation|last=Hampson|first=Rick|date=28 September 1984|title=The American Pope|publisher=Associated Press|place=New York|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000606360001-1.pdf|accessdate=1 May 2018|ref=none}} Sanitized version approved by the CIA: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606360001-1 which yields:

• Hampson, Rick (28 September 1984), The American Pope (PDF), New York: Associated Press, retrieved 1 May 2018 Sanitized version approved by the CIA: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606360001-1

If you don't need the Harvard link you can use ref=none (as I've done here to avoid an error message). If you want to use {{cite web}} it is essentially the same, but remeber to add ref=harv if you are linking to it. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:30, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

@Martin of Sheffield: leave |ref= blank produces no error message. Not sure what you're talking about here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:45, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

"Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFHampson1984.", but now I think about it the error message is produced by an add-on I was given. It shows this message in brown for unreferenced citations, and another message in red for references pointing nowhere. See my User:Martin of Sheffield/common.js and the two pages it includes. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:08, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks guys, very helpful. I'm a little unclear on the Harvard style as I guess I've been using the <ref> style exclusively. But I think that I can convert what you've given me here easily enough. I actually didn't realize that was an AP piece originally; I'm probably going to try and find that instead. Amsgearing (talk) 00:25, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with using that style - the key here is that it is an AP release, the CIA are just the archive, unless you want to talk about their annotations. Johnbod (talk) 00:37, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed with Izno. This is exactly the kind of thing we have |via= for. Same goes for when you're citing a scan of a book via Google Books. Google Books didn't publish the material; they're just the WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT conduit through which you read the material published by someone else; it's |via=Google Books.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:52, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Potential replacement for Template:Rp

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

The new improvement to <ref>...</ref> proposed at meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Book referencing/Call for feedback (May 2018) would obviate the need for the {{Rp}} template, as well as provide various other enhancements. The discussion is presently swamped by people who just don't like fully-inline citations and only want to use {{sfn}} and page-bottom referencing, but this is a false dichotomy. The discussion isn't about which citation style is better (the answer to that is "it depends on the article"); the question is whether this feature would be good to have for referencing that is fully inline, and the answer is clearly "yes". I would be delighted if my old {{Rp}} template was finally superseded by an actual (and more tidy) feature of MediaWiki itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:04, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Value of ISSNs

Editors following this page may be interested in WP:VPPOL#Including ISSNs in citations. Consider commenting there. --Izno (talk) 14:51, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Bundling citations

May be it worth to leave a link to the relevant (IMHO) Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes article in this section? DAVRONOVA.A. ✉ ⚑ 13:44, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Or not? The very concept of "nesting footnotes" is dubious, and I think we should not be encouraging it. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:37, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Citing a web page with no URL?

I want to cite a result page from performing a search on https://kodiapps.com/search.php. Unfortunately, it is a stupidly designed site and there doesn't appear to be any URL that gets you directly to the search result. How should I cite it? -- RoySmith (talk) 12:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I would use the same approach generally used in external citation guidelines, such as Chicago Manual of Style when citing a dictionary or encyclopedia. Rather than giving a page number, the entry to search for is given, after the abbreviation s.v., which stands for sub verbo, "under the word". So the parameter would be |at= s.v. "Perry Mason" if that is who you were looking up. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

How about not using obscure Latin abbreviations that very few readers will understand? The principle of listing the web page and the search term is good but there is no need to duplicate the paper-saving practices of specialist journals. Spell it out in English. —David Eppstein (talk) 13:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd go simply

• "Perry Mason search results". kodiapps.com. Retrieved 2018-06-14.

or

• Search for "Perry Mason" in "Search for a Movie, TV Show or Person". kodiapps.com. Retrieved 2018-06-14.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:32, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

|at=Found at the result starting "Banana Man…" in the search results for "Foo bar *.?" Fifelfoo (talk) 11:14, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

A "web" page always has a url, or you would not be able to access it. What you are really trying to cite is the search result. In many cases the search terms are encoded in the url – e.g., look at any Google Books url – so that can be recorded. Which is a good idea, as I vaguely recall a dispute years back where two people were getting different search results, even though both entered the same terms in the search box. It seems one person's browser was throwing in some extra parameters, which were found only upon comparing the entire search url.

I would be cautious about "citing" a search result. It's okay as an index of where to find a source, but as a source in itself (perhaps as authority for something like "78% of blonds prefer ..."?) it's just too soft to rely on. Even if the underlying database is reliable enough, it is conceivable that some search terms could return results not endorsed by the "authors", and so would verge on OR. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:34, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

"How about not using obscure Latin abbreviations that very few readers will understand?" is easily dealt with by providing wikilink assistance for such readers. E.g., S.v.. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

"S.v." is virtually never used in our citations. It should not be used in our templated ones, because we have the |at= parameter for this, e.g. {{Cite book|title=Collins English Dictionary|at="antidisestablishmentarianism" entry|...}}. It's also common and permissible to simply do {{Cite book|title=Collins English Dictionary|...}}; this is preferable, because it also permits the inclusion of the |page= or |pages= parameter (with which |at= is mutually exclusive).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:30, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Citing a govenment document - Specifically a RCAF Organization Order

I am working on the page RCAF Station Vulcan where was some misinformation on the page and I have found an original source document that clarifies the issue. http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c12325/457?r=0&s=6 is the web address this document is published at but really it is only displayed on the website. The document itself is RCAF Organizational Order No. 204, File Number 925-247-1 (D . of O.) dated 3 June 1942. What is the best way to site this source document? Mech1949 (talk) 00:13, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I would use {{cite}} to make the following: RCAF Organizational Order No. 204, Royal Canadian Air Force, 3 June 1942, File Number 925-247-1 (D . of O.), retrieved 16 June 2018 – via Héritage  Stepho  talk  10:02, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the recomendation, this looks much better than what I had put together.Mech1949 (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, but don't use "D. of O." per MOS:ABBR. That string is meaningless to most readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

SMcC, the "D. of O." string is a part of the file reference, see top right of the cited document. I'm guessing that it is the originating body (I've found a reference to Australia/NZ using D of O for "Director/Directorate of Organisation") and that file number 925-247-1 could be reused by another body. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:16, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

If it's not in the title or work parameters, it should be wikimarkup-capable, I think, so we can use {{abbr}} to explain it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:03, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Such as: id=File Number 925-247-1 ({{abbr|D. of O.|Director/Directorate of Organisation}}) which gives

RCAF Organizational Order No. 204, Royal Canadian Air Force, 3 June 1942, File Number 925-247-1 D. of O., retrieved 16 June 2018 – via Héritage ? That's assuming that the Canadian meaning of D of O is the same as the Australian one of course! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Citing books

I am in the middle of a disagreement with an editor who believes that it's preferable in this instance to cite a whole book to cover about four or five paragraphs, and without citing page numbers. Perhaps it's my memory failing me, but I had remembered reading a guideline which required citing pages numbers or chapters with books. Now I see WP: Citing sources#What information to include states in the ninth bullet point, "chapter or page numbers cited, if appropriate." When would it not be appropriate? How is a third party to verify a reference to a book without narrowing the scope to at least a range of pages or a chapter? The second issue is how many citations? I am not aware that there is such a guideline, but I generally sense there is something wrong when there not at least one citation per paragraph.

The book in question is 223 pages. If I am right, what policies support this? Cheers, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:BURDEN, part of WP:V has this: "Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)."

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Namely, the word "precise". Citing an entire book for 5 paragraphs of information is not a precise citation. --Izno (talk) 22:11, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

That formulation "if appropriate" can be a misleading as specifying page numbers or at least a chapter is the default case for normal sourcing. But note that these format and template descriptions are also used for so called "general references" and "further reading" or selected bibliography sections and for those cases a specification down to chapters or pages usually doesn't make sense, i.e. is not appropriate.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:24, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks everybody. I don't know the policy details as I should. On the other hand, the "if appropriate" clause seems ripe for abuse. I think I will appeal to the general idea of making it easier for other editors to check our work, plus the "clear and precise" language. Cheers, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 22:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that "if appropriate" can be misread or abused and don't mind it to be rephrased of others feel the same way. Maybe simply adding a footnote to the "if appropriate" phrase stating that usually for content sourcing page numbers or at least a chapter specification is required.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a clear idea yet of how to express this, but I think "appropriate" should be understood to mean the smallest unit (page range, section, chapter, etc.) available that provides support for the specific contents of a sentence or paragraph in the WP article. This may sometimes mean that adjacent paragraphs have citations to overlapping page ranges. We need to make it as easy as possible for readers to find the relevant portions of a cited source. As I said, I'm not yet sure how to state this in a non-convoluted way. - Donald Albury 11:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I feel the need to point out that WP:BURDEN does not use the phrase if appropriate. There is no if in the sentence that I quoted. The parenthetical clause is merely shorthand to avoid listing many possible divisions (as was done at Template:Cite book#In-source locations).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The problem is that using a full inline citation for each reference is a PITA. Using short references or named references to books already cited looks ugly, in 50 or 100 references where is the main one? There are a number of approaches which overcome this:

• Use List-defined references (WP:LDR), see Royal Oak, Frindsbury for an example. Where a book is involved you will probably need to use either {{r}} or {{rp}} to give the page numbers, or else add the abbreviated references with pages after the extended ones.
• Cite all the books in a separate list and then use {{sfn}} to link a specific page reference to the citation. See St. Mary & St. George Anglican Church for a straightforward example or Subhas Chandra Bose for a complex one involving notes, references and citations. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Basically what I've been doing for a while, now: Francisco Menéndez Márquez. - Donald Albury 13:12, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)See your talk page for a comment on this. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this leaving the scope original question and mixing in highly controversial and somewhat subjective issues about citation styles. I think we should focus on simply making clear to readers, that "if appropriate" is not to be understood as it being ok to skip a more detailed specification (page numbers, chapters) when sourcing Wikipedia content with book citations. There seems to be a (long practised and established) general consensus for that. For the question however, how the specification should be done in detail, that is in which format, there is afaik no real consensus whatsoever, on the contrary it is a long standing controversial issue.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there are many acceptable styles of citation, and I tried several before settling on what I am comfortable with, but I think we should encourage editors to provide citations that make it as easy as possible for readers to verify that a source does support the statements in an article. In my opinion, that means using page numbers when available, and if not, the lowest level division or divisions in a source that support the text of an article. Failing to be as specific as possible in a citation is a disservice to the readers, at least whatever proportion of readers care to check the citations. - Donald Albury 13:48, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I think your first sentence is a little strong, given that I showed two different ways of doing things, and mentioned a third. What is germane is that simply repeating full citations inline leads to a mess such as this old version which is the sort of clutter that I assume HGFriedman is concerned about. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Well there is nothing wrong with making suggestions how to facilitate a more specific citation. However the original question was not about that. The was no issue with how to provide a page number just with editor declining to provide one.

I wanted to avoid this thread moving into the pros and cons of your suggestions as they are part of an longtime unresolved wider issue. And as great or superior they might appear to you, they might do so to others. There is a reason this field is longtime contentious and imho people don't even really what is annoying clutter and what not and all the suggested templates have supporters and opponents. I for instance intentionally use none of those templates (and for good reasons from my perspective).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I have notified HGFriedman since his name has come up. @Martin of Sheffield: I never raised the issue of citation style. I asked about when and how often a citation should be required or appropriate. As matter of policy, it is uncontroversial that (aside from the lede text) every statement must have a source. So the clutter in the article you cite is caused by different statements backed up by different sources. I raised the issue of a single book citation with no page references to backup a handful of paragraphs. My intuitions told me this was very wrong, but my knowledge of WP policy details did not match my confidence in my own intuitions. So I asked for help. Though this is not a WP policy, for my own rule for editing, I provide no less than a citation per paragraph. However, when a single source supports all of the claims in the paragraph, I use only one citation. Therefor, I am not advocating for clutter either.

In addition to learning some details about citation policies from this thread, I have come to the conclusion that I should improve my own citation practices. For example, IIRC, WP:CIT says that it is not necessary to include page numbers in a citation of an article. I have used that to follow many others who do not cite specific page number or ranges for articles. However, with a long article of 25 to 50 pages, I have not been serving my readers well. I will start citing page numbers for long articles. Thanks again, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 16:49, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

There's a few people putting words into my mouth, or at least misunderstanding my points. I would agree that page numbers (or similar) should always be used. I do understand though that if references are not done carefully then they do degenerate into a clutter, which is why I assume that HGFriedman was not using page numbers and allowing all the references to coalesce (see Talk:Streetcars_in_New_Orleans#Citing_sources). I do think that endlessly repeating a full citation with only a page number change is fruitless, as shown in this example. You'll notice that the first source is repeated at length 7 time, the third 11 times! If editors come here asking questions I assume that they are seeking information, and that is why I gave three different ways of doing it (named references, List-defined references and Harvard). For the record I do prefer data normalisation and ordering, so would choose one of the latter two, but have worked on many articles where the established style is the first. In summary, on policy Oldsanfelipe, Trappist, Donald Albury and myself appear to be in agreement that page numbers should be used. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

"As matter of policy, it is uncontroversial that (aside from the lede text) every statement must have a source." No, that is not correct. An inline citation is only required if the statement is a direct quotation, has been challenged, or is likely to be challenged. Of course, it's often helpful to provide citations in other cases too.

Also, it is not required that successive statements each have their own citation if one location within one source supports several statements. The first example below overdoes citations, and the second example is more appropriate:

AD 2018 is year 6730 of the Julian Period. The Jewish (A.M.) year 5778 begins September 20, 2018.

AD 2018 is year 6730 of the Julian Period. The Jewish (A.M.) year 5778 begins September 20, 2018.

Jc3s5h (talk) 17:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Jc3s5h: how does your example contradict my statement, "every statement must have a source."?

"Every statement must have a source", as I read it, the editor must already have located a source for every statement, even if the editor does not cite the source in the article. The actual requirement from WP:V, "all content must be verifiable", means the editor should be confident a source can easily be found in the unlikely event the statement is challenged. So I'm allowed to add "when an NPN bipolar junction transistor is operating in the active region, current flows out of the emitter", because I know that information can be found in thousands of sources, even though I don't have one of the sources on the couch next to me opened to the appropriate page. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

And someone may come along and think that it needs to be cited, and tag it with {{cn}}, at which point it needs to be cited because it has been challenged and is not "common knowledge". · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:59, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

From my editing experience in the past, you can have a book open in front of you while editing, and even place a multi-page citation at the end of a paragraph, but you may have trouble finding which page in the source supports a specific statement in the paragraph when that statement gets challenged years later. Without even a clue as to what book or other source was consulted in writing the article, it can be very difficult to recover a source. What you think is obvious or well-known is not so for many readers. And what some people think is "common knowledge" turns out to be not-true. So, policy may only require that something added to an article be verifiable, but it saves time and trouble later on if everything added to Wikipedia is cited to a reliable source. - Donald Albury 10:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If the editor doesn't know anything about the topic, and had to look up every tidbit in a source, then Albury's comment is true. But if the editor is a subject matter expert, having to look up each fact, no matter how well known, before adding it makes editing much more difficult. Having that as a policy would change the Wikipedia policy from "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" to "the encyclopedia only ignorant people can edit". Jc3s5h (talk) 11:24, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't track. Being an expert who knows whether a fact is real, from professional experience, has nothing to do with whether they need to prove that it's real; in fact, the expert is far more likely to be able to do this well, already being familiar with standard reference works in the field in question, and is more likely to either have them at hand or to be able to get to them easily (e.g. through journal-site paywalls). Being broadly ignorant of the topic means you're less likely to a) have any idea whether the claim is legit, or b) have any idea who to prove it. More to the point, there's no connection between "I know my stuff" and how to write encyclopedic material. The end reader has no idea who wrote which words in the article, and even if they dug that out of the page history, they have no reason to know that editor IPFrehley has a doctorate in the field while the next editor at the page Jimbo69, is a 16-year-old stock clerk at Wal-Mart who doesn't even have GED. I've had direct experience with alleged subject-matter experts being massively problematic at articles like Albinism, just deleting sourced material and inserting unreferenced claims based on what they learned in med school 30 years ago rather than based on what current sources know about the condition and its causes. It's the old "I'm an expert so I am a reliable source" confusion; WP relies on published sources, not claims about what is inside one's grey matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:49, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If the original editor is not around when a statement is challenged, then someone else has to come up with the citation, or the statement may be removed. Not every editor has sources on the tip of their tongue. I tend to edit articles relating to history and archaeology. While I (think) I know facts about a historical subject, I do not have a photographic memory, so I have to search to find a reliable source that supports what I remember reading in the past. Even if I have a suitable source at home, it still takes time to find what I want. If I originally found something in a library book, and didn't note the page number at the time, it is even more trouble to track down the reference. And, every once in a while, I can't find the source, and have to let something be deleted. I am an amateur historian, so I have to depend on reliable sources. I have a PhD in linguistics, and worked many years with computers, and I do not edit Wikipedia articles in those fields. Too much temptation there to rely on what I know (which is likely out of date) rather than what I can find in reliable sources. - Donald Albury 12:00, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with providing more references than strictly needed as convenience service to readers. However our policies don't really require that and for good reasons. Individual cases need to be approached with some measure of common sense rather than absolute rules. What "common knowledge" is and how individual sourcing is minimally required depends on the article's topic and the primary target audiences. "Common knowledge" with regard to target audiences are in doubt well known facts/domain knowledge, that can easily be looked up in (any) standard textbook in the issue or reference books. None of that however justifies the "I add that because i'm an expert"-approach, but the justification is always that it can indeed be looked up easily. The latter than also can be used to be added as a source if really needed.

As far as unsourced sentences are concerned, simply removing them just because one can't find a source (quickly) is not always a good idea, but this heavily depends on context as well. In articles which are apparently well written and informed, one should remove unsourced content only if there is at least some (additional) reason to be believe the statement could be wrong, seems questionable or might violate policy. Simply not being sourced and not being able to find a source right away is often not good enough to justify a removal. The last thing we need is a "quality assurance" that combs through articles the topics of which it has no clue about and starts removing content it deems unsourced and for which it can't quickly find (not to say google) one.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Subject matter experts should provide citations for anything that is the least bit obscure or difficult to look up. But, in an article full of calculus and differential equations, requiring a subject matter expert to provide a citation to show that a quotient is the result of a division is just plain hostile to the editor, and to the readers who are competent to read the article because those readers have to wade through lots of unnecessary citations. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Bundling cites and CITEVAR?

Does switching to bundled citations count as a change which requires consensus, per WP:CITEVAR?

If so, should this be made clearer at CITEVAR?

@Emeraude:

See Britain First, [1][2][3] Andy Dingley (talk) 09:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Also at Freemen on the land Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I would argue not, if the nature of the reference remains fundamentally the same. In those diffs the content of the citation templates have remained the same, so the citation style has remained the same. If for example an article uses Harvard referencing the guideline is supposed to prevent an editor coming along and templating all the citations. What you've got there is a change in the footnoting format, but not a change in citation. However, if you believe that bundling is detrimental in some way you are under no obligation to accept the change. Betty Logan (talk) 10:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

It is a WP:CITEVAR thing, yes, but it can also be a tidying up thing. For instance, in the Diels-Alder reaction article, Ref 47 combines all 28 papers as a single ref. That's a tidying up thing because these papers aren't cited independently of one-another in this context and having 28 different [47][48]...[75] would be incredibly ugly/annoying (in print, this would simply be [47-75], but that's not feasible on Wikipedia). However, the clustering of references [1][2][3] in the lead would be a clearly editor-and-reader hostile downgrade because they're cited independently of one another and re-used in the article in different places, for different things.

I have no opinion on if those diffs are tidying or not, but in my experience, bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe is necessary, nor even sufficient, to cite 28 papers to establish that Deils and Alder wrote 28 papers about that reaction; that is more of a matter for a secondary reference. It is an anomalous case that does not show a general value of bundling; a better "tidying up" would be to replace that list of papers with a single, appropriate citation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe it falls under CITEVAR because that applies not only to the rendered appearance of the citation, but the approach future editors will have to take when editing the article. Bundling makes it a little more difficult to reuse or change citations. This is much the same as changing to list defined refereces, which also primarily affects how future editors edit the article. I also agree with Headbomb that bundling for bundling's sake is not very helpful. The situation where I would be likely to bundle would be if the footnote explains the relationship among sources,for example, "Brown^[1] uses the data of Jones^[2] and the curve fitting of Young^[3]". Jc3s5h (talk) 12:44, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Or something like

[1] Original ref

            Errata

. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. CITEVAR has never been clear over whether "technical" changes, such as whitespace (and linebreaks) around template params, which do not change the rendered content are within its scope or not. Although a switch to listing named refs within reflist (very innocuous, IMHO) does seem to be regarded as contentious, and the use or not of templates is unsurprisingly so. Where the results of the citations change though (and this is surely the case for bundling), then isn't that precisely why we have CITEVAR, thus (as here) they're covered by it?

As to most of the situations, such as that described by Jc3s5h, I would regard that "bundle" as a footnote, not a citation. I'd mark it up as a footnote, then have the three separate citations from within that. For the Diels-Alder case I might go further than that and set it as a paragraph of text or list: it's pretty much a historical bibliography of one author's work. My main concern with bundled citations is that they make it impossible to share citations to the same reference. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

The key points here are "it can also be a tidying up thing" and "bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice" and "Bundling makes it a little more difficult to reuse or change citations". I.e., this is not a citation "style" matter, it's WP:Common sense and practicality one. Sometimes bundling is the best idea, often it's not, and that rarely if every has anything to do with the citation style chosen, but rather is about how the specific sources are being used. The danger in trying to add this to the increasingly fetishized CITEVAR is that if someone does really bad bundling, we're likely to be stuck with it. (Or to be stuck with never doing bundling even when it makes sense, because some territorial twit will claim that doing the sensible thing is a violation of their precious CITEVAR natural rights). So, just don't.

Re, 'CITEVAR has never been clear over whether "technical" changes, such as whitespace (and linebreaks) around template params, which do not change the rendered content are within its scope or not.': We had an RfC on this a year or two ago, and the result was "no, they're not". When it comes to spaces, just (per WP:Common_sense again) do what everyone else is doing which is {{cite foo |title=Blah blah |first=Same |last=Bazzquxx |date=2018 ...}} This has been the vast-majority style for over a decade. It's simple, it's readable, it doesn't waste space, and it keeps each entire parameter grouped as a unit. More common sense: Vertical citations make sense at the bottom of the article (e.g. in WP:LDR layout); they do not work well in mid-article, because they make it hard to clearly discern the paragraph structure of the material. Thus virtually no one puts vertical citations in mid-article, meanwhile most LDR material is done vertically, where the cite details are easier to read. Context matters. In the context of prose, inline cites work better by not screwing with the ability of editors to make sense of the material without headaches. In the context of a thick pile of cite after cite, separated from the prose, the vertical cites (just like infobox parameters at the top of the article), are easier to manage. The more people a) apply common sense, and b) do what the consensus of other editors are doing instead of doing something weird because someone think they're unique snowflake, and c) stop bible-thumping CITEVAR like some kind of 11th Commandment from God, the better off we all are.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

On the basis of changed appearance of rendered content: "bundling" (in its various forms) is not a small matter of "tidying up". It is a definite and significant change of appearance, certainly greater than the difference of using periods or commas for field separators (a key difference of CS1 versus CS2). On this basis alone CITEVAR is applicable.

Nonetheless, the objections to bundling go beyond appearance. I agree with Headbomb that "bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice." This in part because (as Jc3s5h and Andy say) bundling makes it more difficult to "reuse", share, or change citations (which I think applies to all use of "named-refs"). It is also confusing to the readers when a list of "references" (bad term) contains scattered sublists.

I disagree with Andy that "listing named refs within reflist" is "very innocous". But I strongly agree that there needs to be a stronger distinction between citations and footnotes. A footnote – or simply note – is the place or container created with <ref>...</ref> tags. Which may contain individual "citations" (full or short), bundles of citations (full or short), comments, or combinations thereof.

It should also be noted that questions of "bundling" seem to always involve full citations. Bundling of short-cites – rather than stringing them out in a series of notes – is actually preferable, and I recall no cases where that has been contentious. The recurring problem is not simply "bundling", it is bundling of full citations within notes. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:29, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

CITEVAR is very applicable here - articles that do not use bundled citations should not be switched to use them without a clear justification, and ideally not without discussion ahead of time to establish consensus. "One reference in each footnote" is a perfectly acceptable style for an article, and so this edit should have had a talk page discussion first. "Tidying" is often a synonym for "personal preference", which is not a valid reason to change established citation styles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:19, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd say it's fine to be WP:BOLD in most cases of WP:CITEVAR, but WP:1RR applies when there's pushback. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:27, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd take a more conservative approach. This is the same principle as with ENGVAR - it doesn't say "it's OK to change from British to American English as long as nobody complains" - even if you think you are just tidying up. The language of both MOS passages is pretty clear against bold changes: "If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page." — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:51, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The difference mostly being that "colour vs color" doesn't yield to any improvements on enhanced in functionality, whereas citation style is often shit, sub-optimal, or even completely un-established with an incoherent mishmash of styles. I've changed citation styles on hundreds of articles without any fuss, but they were also smart changes done for a reason, rather than simply personal preferences. (E.g. converting a {{harvnb}} to a non-harvnb system would not yield any significant improvements, but changing manual citations to templated ones will yield huge improvements in consistency, completeness, and functionality.) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If there was a broad consensus that a particular change would be an improvement, we would put it in WP:CITE. The reason we don't have a preferred style is that there is no consensus that adding templates, bundling citations, or many other things is actually generally an improvement. In the end, it's all just personal opinion, like "colour" vs. "color". That's why we use the "go with the first established style" policy, because there is no broad consensus about which method to use. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:06, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Dropping a line on the Talk page asking if anyone objects is so little trouble, and can so easily avoid a big battle and possibly having to scrap a significant investment of time and effort, that anyone failing to do so ought to spend some quiet time in a corner.

Something else to consider: if CITEVAR does not apply to "bundling" (however conceived), then it likewise does not apply to unbundling. Whether a change is significant (on any basis), or not, applies in both directions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:44, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

My experience matches that of CBM. I routinely impose a consistent citation system in the absence of one at an article, without any fuss whatsoever. The idea that WP is full of CITEVAR obsessives is just nonsense. It's really a total of about a dozen editors, and one simply learns to avoid them (and to not be a wikilawyer: if a drive-by editor added a differently formatted citation to an article that was consistently using another style until that point, that doesn't magically make the article "inconsistent" in a way that makes it okay to subject the entire thing to the newly introduced style).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I have a preferred style for citations that I use on new articles and when expanding un-sourced or poorly sourced articles. I don't remember anyone making wholesale changes to citations in an article where I have supplied most of the citations, but editors show up every once in a while who bundle or un-bundle citations, remove citations they consider to be excessive, or make other changes to individual citations. Unless such changes degrade the appearance of the article, or leave part of the article un-sourced, I generally ignore them. I don't like the stress of drama shows, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. - Donald Albury 12:36, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually I'm pretty sure I've reverted changes by SMcCandlish, as I usually do with cite-bandits. There are quite a few of these, and they disrupt, sometimes totally prevent, further editing. I have had to abandon articles because siome fool has come along and imposed his own style, & I haven't noticed until there have been so many subsequent changes I can't be bothered to unpick them, or to struugle on with some ghastly style I don't understand. Typically, when it is pointed out that their behaviour is wholly against WP:CITEVAR, they are entirely unapologetic, and often arrogant with it. Johnbod (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Diff? I think you've probably reverted me a long time ago on a change from cite style to another, something I don't attempt any longer. Please read what I wrote: "I routinely impose a consistent citation system in the absence of one". This is not only permissible under CITEVAR, it's what CITEVAR instructs us to do.

What's weird to me is your claim that a cite style change "totally prevent[s]" your "further editing", that you've "had to abandon articles because" of such a change, and that you "don't understand" the citations after the change. I've never experienced anything like any of that, and I edit very broadly here. There is no citation style in use on WP that I've haven't encountered. More to the point, if this effect were actually plausible, it would actually be the death of CITEVAR. It would mean that any divergence in citation style – something terribly difficult that all editors had to try really hard to learn in one ultra-consistent format, to prevent ultimate chaos – would cause thousands of other editors to be, in your words, totally prevented from further editing, to abandon articles, and to just not understand. You can't have it both ways. Either citation styles are fine to flourish and diverge, or them doing so is a serious problem. It can't only be a serious problem when the style isn't your favorite one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:02, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, well, "that was the night", as they say. I think technically-minded editors (increasingly dominant on WP) completely fail to grasp how difficult or tiresome non-technical editors find these things. For example a conversion to the sfn form, is quite enough to drive me away from an article, though many will point out how delightfully simple it is etc etc. I don't understand your 2nd point at all, but never mind. I am certainly in favour of retaining diversity; it's the cite-bandits who aren't. Johnbod (talk) 23:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure what your definition of "cite-bandit" is. I still don't really see where you're coming from. You praise and defend citation diversity, yet complain when you encounter it. I can't tell the difference between your stance and "every citation style should be valid, as long as none of them that I don't like are ever used on articles I care about", which is precisely what's wrong with CITEVAR and how a particular camp of editors are trying to misinterpret it. PS: I agree with you about SFN being generally awful; I never use it, though I can see how, if you are familiar with it, it could be useful in certain kinds of articles. I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs most of the time, especially since we have alternatives that are easier for readers (which matters more than easier for editors). As a side matter: the obvious WP:IAR solution (and it's a genuine, defensible IAR) is to simply use whatever cite format you like when adding new sourced material to the article, if it is using a cite style you can't or don't have to time figure out. It's more important that we have more and better content with sources identifiable, than that twiddly footnotes be coded "just so". If someone at the article is a CITEVAR obsessive and want to tooth-gnash at you, let them clean it up. Or some gnome (like me) will normalize it later. I've done two just in the last couple of hours, simply as an afterthought while doing punctuation fixes [4], [5].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits that do not follow CITEVAR. If I'm adding to an article with an established style, I often do just use my own if I don't know the one in use, and anyone is welcome to make it conform. But I write many new articles, or large expansions setting the convention, and then I get annoyed when this is changed ("normaliized"!) on a drive-by whim. I will revert that, but if I miss it and there are many intervening edits, it may prevent me from further work on the article. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I just have dain bramage, but what I'm seeing is: "A cite bandit is someone who doesn't follow CITEVAR at an article. Sometimes I don't follow CITEVAR at an article"; followed by a complaint that seems at first to be about wholesale change of cite style as a general matter, yet your main issue is when someone changes a cite style after you set it; followed by another odd suggestion that if this happens you are somehow "prevented" from ever editing there again. The last two points seem to amount to "I quit if I don't get what I want, and this really isn't about citation styles in general, just me". I think I can be forgiven for having remained skeptical throughout.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Clearly not what I said or do - I never try to change an established style without a talk page discussion, and very rarely doing that. But the brain damage explanation could explain a lot. Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

So, if the plain English of what you wrote isn't what you meant, what do you mean? E.g. "My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits that do not follow CITEVAR. If I'm adding to an article with an established style, I often do just use my own if I don't know the one in use, and anyone is welcome to make it conform." That appears to say exactly what I paraphrased it as saying: "A cite bandit is someone who doesn't follow CITEVAR at an article. Sometimes I don't follow CITEVAR at an article".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:03, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Ok, try: ""My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits just changing citation styles, that do not follow CITEVAR." - the addition was, I thought, sufficiently signalled by "drive-by". Johnbod (talk) 14:52, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Sufficiently signaled in what way? The second part is you saying you just use the cite format you like at whatever article you're at if you don't get the cite format in use at the article, and leave it to someone else to clean up after you later. These appear to be the same. Or maybe the second is worse, since its willful rather than I-don't-know-better. I feel compelled to cite the first law of holes at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

arbitrary break

• The essence of CITEVAR is to seek consensus (if not explicit approval, at least a lack of objection) prior to making certain changes to citation. (The specific language is "without first seeking consensus".) It seems to me that CITEVAR spats are invariably cases where an editor claims some change is exempt from CITEVAR. I am increasingly convinced that (as I stated above) if some change is not subject to CITEVAR, then reverting such a change is also not subject to CITEVAR. Any issue is then one of WP:BRD. Which has led me to wonder: do those who claim exemption from CITEVAR also claim exemption from BRD?

In this light I am concerned about @Emeraude's assertion (in this edit summary) that "Agreement is unnecessary: see Wikipedia:Citing sources#Bundling citations". That section claims some advantages for bundling, but it does not say "agreement is unnecessary". Yet it appears some editors are claiming that exemption from CITEVAR's requirement to seek prior consensus means that no agreement is required, even in the face of an objection. That might be trivially true for an initial Bold edit, but in no way should be allowed as an exemption from the requirement for consensus where a change is contested.

Any confusion about this not only supports answering the question Andy posed in the affirmative, but also suggests the language of CITEVAR needs to made stronger: that all changes are subject to WP:BRD, and that notification should always be made before changing any aspect of citation (aside from adding citations in the established style). ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

My feeling: if a change in how citations are handled (such as this bundling one) turns out to be controversial (as this one clearly is), then it is at least retroactively subject to CITEVAR: the change should be reverted and not reinstated unless/until consensus can be obtained. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:33, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, except that the concept of retroactive discussion (that is, edit first, then discuss) is more in the nature of BRD. The essence of CITEVAR is to first seek consensus. That is, discuss first, then edit. There is no amount of post-discussion that can retroactively make up for a lack of pre-discussion. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The problem with this reasoning, which we've been over many times before, is of course that actual policy doesn't agree, namely WP:EDITING and WP:OWN policies. No one needs prior approval/permission to edit any article. If they're not acting in good faith, or if what they do isn't constructive, anyone's free to revert, and the onus is on the one wanting to make the change to gain consensus that it's a good idea (while WP:BRD is technically an essay, the community treats it as more than that, the same way it approaches WP:AADD, WP:Common sense, and a few other "super-essays"). A habit of making bad faith or unconstructive changes is disruptive and addressable at noticeboards. The point of CITEVAR is to suggest as a guideline, a best practice, to avoid making unnecessary or potentially controversial changes to citations. This suggestion is made based on experience and predicability, so it is generally sensible, but as with all guidelines some exceptions may apply, especially if not applying them leads to excessive bureaucracy, like repetitive, time-sucking, pointless RfCs over trivial citation formatting details. CITEVAR is not Holy Writ or a law of nature, and it cannot be wielded against people like a weapon; trying to do so is itself disruptive. The goal is to have the best citation layout and coding for the article and its context. Territorially fighting half to death over how we get there is not working on the encyclopedia and is entirely missing the point of the endeavor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:48, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Of course, the same applies to ENGVAR: it is not holy writ, but it does not violate WP:EDITING or WP:OWN to tell people not to change the style of English from American to British, and they cannot justify such edits by "I don't need permission to edit an article" or "I was jsut being bold" or "nobody complained". The same applies to CITEVAR and WP:STYLEVAR. The real difficulty with citations is when editors refuse to accept that no citation style is really better than any other, and instead insist on changing styles to the ones they personally prefer. If they would focus on more constructive improvements to articles, we would avoid a huge amount of wasted conversation, and the purpose of CITEVAR (like ENGVAR and STYLEVAR) is to be direct that these nonconstructive style, citation, or English variation changes should be avoided. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

It's fine to make any kind of *VAR change, if the change is clearly an improvement. I wouldn't say I do it "routinely", since it doesn't come up that often, but I have numerous times changed the ENGVAR of an article to match the subject per MOS:TIES (e.g. an American biography written in British/Commonwealth English, or vice versa, more often vice versa due to the number of American editors). I don't go beg for permission first, I just do it when it's the right thing to do, and no one fights me on it. I'm not making any kind of argument about CITEVAR that I wouldn't make about ENGVAR or DATEVAR or TITLEVAR. It actually most often comes up in DATEVAR cases, because people use citation scripts indiscriminately, with hard-coded date formats, and they just DGaF what the article's established (or common-sensical) date format might be. "If they would focus on more constructive improvements" really is the key. But it's also central the problem with "CITEVAR obsessiveness" or whatever one might want to call it; the territorial response can be so thickheaded that change will be resisted simply because it's change. The reason certain individuals like and rely on CITEVAR isn't what's best for the article, it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control. We don't have that problem with any of the other *VARs. It's why things like this keep coming up here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, WP:ENGVAR really has no tradeoff. colour vs color has no benefits, although I fully agree with SMcCandlish that bringing an article in line with WP:MOSTIES doesn't need begging for permission first. WP:CITEVAR however, has plenty of WP:IAR situations. For instance, one could write an article in a completely consistent, but fully non-standard "AUTHOR. YEAR, TITLE. DAY-MONTH, PAGE. VOLUME, JOURNAL: ISSUE.". This is a scheme that makes zero sense, and pretty much no one would get in trouble for boldy converting that to a proper {{cite xxx}} scheme. Where WP:CITEVAR applies is in converting something like Quark#References into a {{sfn}}/{{harvnb}} scheme, or going from CS1 style to CS2 style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:38, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Even if someone think an article has an idiosyncratic style, it's still not in accordance with CITEVAR to boldy change it: "if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page". In the case mentioned, it would really make little sense to take an article with a consistent non-templated system and replace it with a templated system only because the non-templated system seemed idiosyncratic - CITEVAR specifically discourages "adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates". There is nothing particularly "proper" about templates, which are neither preferred nor discouraged as a method for citations. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:46, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

And that's where WP:BURO/WP:IAR applies. If a rule prevents you from improving Wikipedia, fuck the rule. And that is policy. That said, if you get pushback on this, it's best to follow a WP:1RR mindset, mostly per WP:CITEVAR. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The point of CITEVAR, ENGVAR, etc. is that we have a consensus that particular kinds of changes generally do not improve Wikipedia, making IAR more difficult to apply :). — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Experience and reality disagrees with that. I've made zillions of those changes with little to no pushback, and will keep doing so. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:02, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The very fact that someone will argue against the idea of changing without prior consensus discussion away from an insane and confusing, totally made-up, idiosyncratic citation "style" used by no one else in the world, such as illustrated by Headbomb, is the very crux of CITEVAR's long-running WP:CONLEVEL problem. No one on WP believes this other than a handful of people who spend too much time on this talk page. It's turning into a deeply un-wiki echo chamber. We should probably just to RfC the matter at WP:VPPOL. I would happily place a large wager on the outcome, since the policy problems with this idea are really quite clear. PS: The idea that "template[d citations] ... are neither preferred nor discouraged" is clearly not really true. Actual usage proves it, and that the guideline text is divergent from actual, operational consensus, as it has been for a very long time. I'm not here to try to change it, since I find drama tiresome, but WP:P&G instructs us to have guidelines codify practice not try to dictate it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish - "it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control" applies equally well to the editors who change the established system at an article, when in reality no system is better than any other one. If a particular change is an improvement, it will be documented in the MOS - as with MOS:TIES. For changes covered by one of the VAR policies, if a particular change has consensus as an improvement, it will be listed in the MOS, So, if a change is not required by the MOS, we should assume there is no consensus that the change is actually an improvement, or develop consensus to change the MOS first. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Sure, many arbitrary changes to cite style really are just arbitrary, like insisting on Vancouver format, or whatever. But many of them are not. Switching from unformatted citations to CS1, for example, produces objective benefits. Depending on the nature and layout and stability of the article, so can moving to WP:LDR (e.g. at and above the WP:GA level) or away from it (at the stub to C-class level). Harvard referencing and SFN are very helpful in some cases, but onerous impediments for the average editor in others. Horizontal cites work better in prose, vertical ones in LDR. The supposition that a particular citation style and/or formatting scheme is always better or worse regardless of context is like assuming that a reliable, secondary source for something is both reliable and secondary for everything. We actually have long-term editors who do not understand why those assumptions are false. I'm sure we also have editors who insist that their preferred cite style is the One True Style, but they're cranks and we can ignore them.

"So, if a change is not required by the MOS, we should assume there is no consensus that the change is actually an improvement" – except not, per WP:EDITING, WP:AGF, etc. WP's actual assumption is that any change an editor wants to make is probably an improvement, and no one is barred from trying to make one. If that assumption turns out to be untrue or questionable in a particular case, revert away. CITEVAR suggests that the assumption is less likely to be true for citation style changes than for most other kinds of editorial alterations, but that doesn't mean that the assumption a citation change isn't an improvement is automatically correct. Otherwise we would not have a CITEVAR guideline, we would have a "WP:NOCITECHANGE" policy that flatly forbade any citation formatting changes without a pre-established consensus. Never going to happen.

Your formulation is a pretty good summary, if you shift the emphasis point: We have a consensus (in the *VAR guidelines) that particular kinds of changes generally do not improve Wikipedia, making IAR more difficult to apply. More accurately, we have consensus to warn that those kinds of changes are more frequently controversial and potentially disruptive. "Generally" is not synonymous with "always". Experienced editors who are not flaming asshats usually learn to figure out competently where "generally" does/doesn't apply. If they didn't, we wouldn't have any "generally" rules of any kind, only legalistic absolute ones, and no IAR policy at all. The problem we have is that a handful of CITEVAR aficionados deny these realities and treat CITEVAR as if it were the imaginary "NOCITECHANGE policy". Yes, there's a countervailing problem of random drivebys changing citation formats completely for no good reason. I'm sure that's frustrating, but it's easy enough to revert it, and in the end the readers don't care, and 99+% of editors don't either. It's easy to learn to care less and to just absorb multiple citation systems; if I have, you all can too. (Ages ago I was opposed to CITEVAR existing at all, and was in favor of CS1 being the only recognized WP citation format.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

"Switching from unformatted citations to CS1, for example, produces objective benefits." - if it did have *objective* benefits, we would see the MOS say that articles should be converted to CS1 - but the MOS says the opposite. Looking at it plainly, the reason this has never gotten consensus is that there is 'not an objective benefit to the change to CS1 - some prefer it, some disprefer it. This is why CITEVAR is clear about not changing articles with a consistent non-template system to use templates.

With ENGVAR, CITEVAR, etc., our assumption is that random changes are rarely improvements, and therefore changes should be discussed before being implemented. This is indeed different than many other aspects of editing. The reason we have ENGVAR, CITEVAR, etc. is that these are particular areas where "bold" editing does not lead to good results, but instead leads to endless arguments on talk pages about issues that often come down to nothing more than opinion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:14, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Switching to CS1 does have objective benefits in almost all cases. But so does switching to CS2. A plain "Smith 2006, p. 25" with a plain "Smith, J. (2006). "Article of things". Journal of Things. 2 (3): 34." is objectively worse than a templated "Smith 2006, p. 26" paired with a templated Smith, J. (2006). "Article of things". Journal of Things. 2 (3): 34. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

If you think it has consensus as objectively better, get it into the MOS. Until then, nobody can claim that it actually has consensus as being objectively better. We know very well that it has been proposed many times and never found consensus. Indeed, one of the reasons CITEVAR was added in the first place was to address people unilaterally converting articles to use citation templates. "Objectively better" does not mean "I prefer it". Keep in mind that if someone else thought templates were objectively worse, they could use your argument to go around removing them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Improved navigability for the reader, improved consistency, improved bot integration, improved error flagging. Those are all objectively better things, not preferences. Reality takes precedence over the MOS. WP:CITEVAR is not a suicide pact. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:06, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

There's no suicide here - perhaps only sour grapes that CITEVAR doesn't support your favored position. But you won me over. From this point, I am also just going to ignore CITEVAR and change articles to match my own preferences when I feel like it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:42, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

It's not a matter of preference. Switching from CS1 to CS2 still doesn't fly if CS1 was the established style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:14, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Responding to all the above at once and in series: MOS has nothing to do with it; as the CITEVAR faction have resisted attempts to merge this material into MoS, as if their very lives were on the line, for years. The situation is stupid and unfortunate, and it probably can't continue forever, but it's where we're at right now: A blatant policy fork to have an "anti-MOS" style guide devoted to citations, and the entire motivation for it is to prevent normalization of CITEVAR to the standards of ENGVAR and DATEVAR (especially the more policy-cognizant approach to "first major contributor" – it is not a default and it is not "super-voting right", it's a last resort after attempts to reach consensus have failed, and it doesn't permit whoever that first major contributor was to have any more say than anyone else in the present and future of the article. We switched to "first post-stub version"-style wording for a very well-considered reasons, but a handful of over-controllers of this page are never going to let that happen here if they can prevent it. It's going to take a WP:VPPOL RfC to break down this stonewall. If you want to see how nasty this "CITEVAR against MoS to the bitter end" anti-collaborative bullshit gets, dig through this page's archives a couple of years back and you'll find a huuuge thread on the matter.

Next, I wasn't meaning to imply CS1's superiority over CS2; CS2 is so disused, I don't even think about it, and it's actually the CS1 scripting that outputs it these day, as a parameter option. So, let's not manufacture an extra dispute for no reason. :-) As to the obvious objective benefits of templated citations, I see that someone else is already covering that, so I won't reiterate beyond four words (or five, depending on how you view hyphenated compounds): consistency, automation, error-detection, metadata.

"You don't have consensus because this page doesn't say what you say" is childish WP:Wikilawyering that badly fails to understand how WP:P&G actually work and what they really are. This page does not determine consensus, it is must reflect it. When what it says does not match what the majority of editors do and think, then this page is what it out-of-step with consensus. This is what happens when a guideline page gets "owned" by a tiny clique; it's called false consensus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: in a previous comment (at 12:48) I was with you up to "[CITEVAR] cannot be wielded against people like a weapon". That seems to be the particular point of difficulty in these CITEVAR spats: some editors feeling like it as been wielded against them. (And "like a weapon".) You don't provide any examples, but in your following comment you start with "It's fine to make any kind of *VAR change, if the change is clearly an improvement", and then proceed to "The reason certain individuals like and rely on CITEVAR isn't what's best for the article, it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control." Whoaa!

What you are saying is that any change that you deem "is clearly an improvement" is exempt from CITEVAR, and that "certain individuals" who "like and rely on CITEVAR" are acting in bad faith. But here is the key question: how are we to tell what is actually an improvement? You seem to think "it's obvious", and anyone else that can't see (clearly?) that the emperor's new suit is wonderful is an idiot. Well, if something is clearly an improvement than that should be clear to most of us. In such cases most editors will be glad if someone volunteers to implement it, and a simple "Anyone mind if I do xxxx?" suffices to meet CITEVAR. Your characterization of such a query as having to "beg for permission" suggests that what you do is NOT "clearly an improvement".

All these arguments that CITEVAR should not apply be applied restrictively where the change is "clearly an improvement", or "just tidying", or "makes no change in the rendered result", etc., are nonsense. If some change is truly an improvement then discussing it first does not diminish it, and if it is truly "just tidying" then there shouldn't be any objection. If there is objection, well, the theory of an evil cabal might explain it, but WP:AGF suggests that we should adopt the more parsiminous explanation that the desired change is NOT "clearly an improvement". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:29, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say anyone's acting in bad faith. They're acting with the best of intentions; they're convinced that it's vitally important to the survival of Wikipedia (or something like that; I don't read minds) to support not only every citation format ever invented, but any new one you want to invent out of nothing, not matter how awful it is, and to not permit anyone to change it without a bunch of RfC drama on a one-article-at-a-time basis. That's not bad faith, it's just a bad idea, and it's typical hominid territorialism. It's no different from all the "You must capitalize 'Method Acting' because the Screen Actors' Guild says so!" WP:SSF crap, and all the other chest-beating we encounter on Wikipedia and in off-site life.

I also didn't suggest my citation changes are automatically objective improvements and yours and that's other person's are not; you're imagining a hypocritical argument, but it is not my argument. Mine in a nutshell is: policy makes it clear that an objective, good-faith improvement requires no permission (nor does attempting one); the guideline suggests that if you think you're making one and you're wrong – which is unusually likely – that people may treat what you're doing as disruptive and at minimum will revert you; ergo most such attempts should probably not be made without discussing it first. Meanwhile, the CITEVAR pundits misinterpret it as "you must not ever make a citation style change without getting permission", and they're simply wrong. Not because I'm smarter, but because we have policies, and guidelines don't get to pretend they don't exist. I often say that when people think there's a conflict between a policy and a guideline they're wrong; the closest we have to an exception to that rule of thumb is CITEVAR (but it's really an interpretation not wording error). So, the issue isn't "what I want to change in this article's cites is better than what you want to change", it's that changes are in fact permissible (at some personal risk if, you will), and refusal to admit this fact is a failure to understand how WP operates. The resistance-at-all-costs mindset is the problem, not any particular citation style (though denuding templated citations to plain-text ones is a net negative and is not a change of citation style, it's a removal of citation functionality; that's a different matter).

I never said "CITEVAR should not apply where the change is clearly an improvement". I said people need to actually read CITEVAR and also read our policies, and interpret them together. If you don't like the "CITEVAR is not a suicide pact" metaphor someone used, then: CITEVAR is not the Eleventh Commandment. Even our policies are not treated like laws here (the closest we get are ones with actual legal ramifications, imposed on us by WP:OFFICE, such as WP:Copyright, WP:BLP, and a few others, but WP:IAR is still taken to apply to them, just rarely and in an even more limited way). Lastly, "If some change is truly an improvement then discussing it first does not diminish it" is missing the point. We have better things to do that yaketty-yak about style trivia over and over and over again, page by page. We have policy on this too: WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. It's nothing to do with whether "some change is ... diminish[ed]" (which doesn't even really parse). It's that nothing would ever get done on WP if we had to beg for acquiescence to do it first. (Especially when there's a camp of editors resistant to change simply to resist change, largely unwilling to consider the merits of any cite-change case put before them. See, e.g., all the baldfaced reality-denial against the fact that templated citations provide objectively demonstrable benefits.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

They have objective disadvantages as well and there are a lot of things that get done in WP, that don't need to get done at all.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Nah. They're a net positive, or they wouldn't be the dominant approach (by a very wide margin). And "get done" in English idiom refers to work and other legitimate tasks; it's not synonymous with "are done" (which may imply, e.g. "are done to me against my will", etc.; "get done" never has negative connotations). So ixnay on your word-gaming.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:08, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

They are a net positive from your perspective but not necessarily for the perspective of others. As far as the phrase "get done" is concerned I think you missed the intended irony there, maybe I should have put it in quotes. To put it this way, Things you consider as getting done, actually "are done to me against my will" to borrow your phrase from above. I. e. it is in the eye of the beholder whether somdething is getting done or being done.--Kmhkmh (talk)

[sigh] You seem to think that's terribly clever, but it's simply contradiction without a rationale, without any actual rebuttal of anything substantive. "I just disagree" isn't an argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Well it was not an "argument" just a reminder if you will as I assumed you are very well aware over the pros and cons for various citations formats and templates. That's a partially/mostly unresolved issue for over a decade and rehashing all the arguments seems to be out of scope for this discussion und imho somewhat pointless. As mentioned by others above if you strongly feel that the net benefits of your preferred approach are overwhelming or more important, then you need to convince others to change guidelines accordingly. However if you want specific reason why I personally dislike them in particular, they mostly don't work across other language wikipedias, which make them a pain in the ass for content creators working across several languages.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The fact that some people will continue pretending all cite styles are "created equal" when particular ones actually have demonstrable benefits (or drawbacks) in particular contexts, is an actual problem. It's irrational WP:STONEWALLing. And you can't seriously suggest that people try to convince others to change the guidelines then declare it off-topic to try to convince others to change the guidelines.

On the technical point: Our code is open-source. Copy the templates to the other wiki and adapt them as needed. CS1 is fairly complicated; you need a bunch of sub pages in the right hierarchies, will need to do so search-and-replace on namespaces and pagenames to get the code working. But many people have already done this on various wikis. You're likely to find that the template you need already exists on the other wiki, just at a different, local-language name, and can make "cite book" or whatever work at the other wiki by creating a template redirect from that English name to whatever the local non-English one is.

The "I hate templates" approach is to copy-paste the rendered citation instead of the citation code, so you don't need to do anything but italicize the title of the major work (if you're even working in a language that has a convention to do that), and copy the URL if it's an online source. The whole sequence is: open source editor on both pages, and do preview on the source page so you can see the rendered and source views at the same time; copy-paste plain-text citation; copy-paste URL from citation source; then ''...'' around major-work title. The end.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

What you are probably more likely to find is, that larger Wikipedia have implemented their own citation templates and are quarreling over them as well. That by the way also kills your copy suggestion as you will have to deal with different citation templates in parallel.

My personal annoyance when editing across language wikis aside. Functionality that offers significant "real" benefits should not just be mandatory via guideline in doubt, but ultimately also incorporated into the Wikisyntax itself rather than being used via (local) template. Aside from not existing across all language Wikipedias and being standardized, there is also a performance drawback. There is actually currently discussion a discussion on meta about the ref-tags to incoporate some of the templae functionality. Ironically enough, last time I lokked it got "stonewalled" by template fans.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:10, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: you deny saying that "anyone's acting in bad faith", but bad faith is a fair inference of what you impugn when you do say that others are motivated by "what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control.". Similarly when you say that "change will be resisted simply because it's change", or attribute "the problem" to "[t]he resistance-at-all-costs mindset." All of which add a degree of emotionalism – i.e., drama – which impairs the discussion. Likewise with name-calling (such as "territorial twit").

Nor is this discussion (nor Wikipedia) served well when you mischaracterize other views as (with your italicization) "it's vitally important to the survival of Wikipedia ... to support not only every citation format ever invented, but any new one you want to invent out of nothing, not matter how awful it is, and to not permit anyone to change it without a bunch of RfC drama on a one-article-at-a-time basis." No one as argued that in this discussion (nor, I suspect, in any discussion); that's a strawman argument. Even a red-herring.

As my reference to "arguments that CITEVAR should not apply" may be ambiguous, I will clarify that as meaning "arguments that CITEVAR should not be applied restrictively". Your "fine to make" comment certainly is an argument for non-restriction, and similarly for your recent "objective, good-faith improvement requires no permission". Now I do agree with you (at least part way) on "people need to actually read CITEVAR". And when I read it I see NO mention of "permission" in any context. Nor do I see any statement or suggestion – even for "standard practices" – that consensus is not required.

I don't know just what your point is, but you do seem rather hung up on not havng to "go beg for permission first". "Beg" is yet more over-wrought emotionalism. My experience – which I think all of us, including yourself, share – is that most of the time a simply query ("would anyone object to ...?") is sufficient for CITEVAR. If you have ever had to beg to do something it was quite likely not "clearly an improvement", and therefore, by your own criterion, not "fine to make". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Taking these 'graphs in order: 1) Already addressed the substantive part of that; you're just not absorbing what I'm saying because you're choosing to emotively react and tone-police me instead of paying any attention to the meaning. 2) See the lengthy previous discussions. Many of CITEVAR's defenders on the OWN-ish misinterpretation side do maintain that it's crucial, for reasons like ... the experts in field X will think WP is junk because it doesn't use the cite formats they do, and that it brings the project into disrepute, or that editors will quit the project if they can't use their own cite formats, or various other hyperbolic claims that just aren't plausible. 3) (and this applies to much of the rest of this) please stop being overly literal-minded and bent on misinterpreting things in the worst or least likely way, looking hard to ways to feel offended. It's not credible to me that you're unable to understand that misinterpreting CITEVAR as requiring, no matter what, getting a pre-established consensus record before changing any citation style/formatting details equates to a permission-based system; it isn't necessary that the exact text string "permission" appear, and everyone can understand that. So, you seem to just be playing argumentative word games for sport, and I don't have the patience for it. It's not responsive to anything of substance. 4) This isn't an article, and encyclopedic MOS:TONE doesn't apply to talk page threads. CITEVAR extremism severely pisses me off (nor I am alone in this). To with:

The mind-set does a lot of damage to the project: to editorial goodwill, to user experience, to ease of editing and thus to total project output and quality, and to back-end maintainability. I'm not going to apologize for being "emotional" about it. These things really do matter. They matter orders of magnitude more than "I wanna use the citation style I made up yesterday", or even "I wanna use the citation style I use at work". There are very good reasons that publishers settle on a single house citation style. WP failing to do so may not even be tenable forever; but as long as we are still experimenting with a hyper-permissive approach, we cannot let it be hyper-non-permissive behind the curtain, especially when the "use whatever style you like" permissiveness runs into practical and common-sense and basic policy problems. The tail cannot be allowed to wag the dog.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Er.... ALl I did was bundle some citations to make the text easier to read and cleaner to look at. Let's remember that Wikipedia exists for people to read, not the gratification of its editors. I have never, ever, seen multiple citation numbers in a book - they are always "bundled" - and should be here. As I pointed out in my edit rationale, I did not make any change to citation style at all. This is a discussion that seems to be wide ranging but losing the initial point. Emeraude (talk) 09:11, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe you! This too is my own root point: "remember that Wikipedia exists for people to read, not the gratification of its editors". I'm addressing the whole CITEVAR extremism fiasco, which is deeply rooted in editor gratification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And even less so for the gratification of format and template warriors/coders.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:52, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

The scope of what should be included in citation style is debated, but nearly always includes any change of appearance in the rendered content. Which your edits certainly did. But even if it be arguable that CITEVAR was not applicable, after Andy Reverted your Bold edit WP:BRD would certainly apply. Right? Or would you argue that exemption from CITEVAR also gives you exemption from BRD? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: I am quite amazed. You accuse me of "choosing to emotively react and tone-police [you] instead of paying any attention to the meaning", even though it is YOU who emotively interprets "seek consensus first" as begging for permission. You want me to "stop being overly literal-minded and bent on misinterpreting things in the worst or least likely way, looking hard to ways to feel offended", yet it is YOU that keeps misinterpreting things. And this includes the motives of others. E.g., even though you don't actually say "bad faith" anywhere, yet that is the effect when you say others are motivated by "what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control", that "change will be resisted simply because it's change", "they're cranks", or "over-controllers", have a "resistance-at-all-costs mindset", are "playing argumentative word games for sport", etc. All of those are your misinterpretations; they are imputations of "bad" motive that violates WP:Assume good faith.

You say you are not going to apologize for being emotional (I presume because you refuse to beg for forgiveness), but then: who asked? What I would ask is that you not be so emotional. All of this tiresome drama you have inflicted on us here appears to arise from your interpreting "seek consensus first" as "beg for permission", which likely drives your mass misinterpretations. All that only confounds useful discussion. As long as you are hung up on that it seems best to just ignore you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:32, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm amazed, too. I'm objecting to being dodged and tone-policed, and you're amazed that I think you're doing it, then tone-police me again with ""it is YOU who emotively interprets ..." without rebutting anything on-topic. You're also failing to distinguish between having strong feelings about a matter but also laying out in great detail what has me up in arms, and why, and why it matters for Wikipedia, as I've done, versus just reacting rantily and not substantively but with more tone-policing, as you're doing. I'm not objecting to you being emotive; I'm objecting to the handwavey lack of substance and responsiveness behind any of your emoting. It's a qualitatively different kind of emoting. Everything you're saying here just comes across as "no way in hell am I going to actually address anything he's saying; the only course of action for me is to continue pressing a demonization; if I can spin everything he says in the worst possible way, maybe someone will agree with me that I'm being attacked somehow." It would not be the first time our interactions have gone this route, and it's really very tiresome. I'm not likely to respond further because this is patently a waste of time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you that you and I can't debate these matters; I will leave it to others (if anyone be so interested) to decide whose language and concepts are most emotional, who impugns the motives of other editors, who takes everything "in the worst possible way,", and, ultimately, who drove this discussion into the weeds. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Return to the question

I would like to return to the question I posed above (at #arbitrary break): do those who claim exemption from CITEVAR (in regard of seeking consensus) also claim exemption from WP:BRD? This question was prompted by Emeraude's assertion (without stating scope) that "Agreement is unnecessary". To summarize the intervening comments: I am inclined to reject that view, along with David Eppstein and Carl, while SMcCandlish and Headbomb argue that WP:IAR trumps all other rules when improvements are involved. (Altlhough Headbomb adds: "if you get pushback on this, it's best to follow a WP:1RR mindset, mostly per WP:CITEVAR.")

To avoid another trip down the rabbit hole I'd like to posit that IAR does not apply, and that we stay focused on the relationship between CITEVAR and BRD. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:30, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

This is just a straw man. There are no parties here "who claim exemption from CITEVAR"; rather, the nature of the dispute is twofold: 1) a guideline recommending seeking a consensus determination before changing citation style is being misinterpreted as an inviolable law under which someone should be punishable for disobedience; and 2) there's a lot of disagreement about what "citation style" means, with one camp proposing an extremist interpretation that doesn't match actual editorial practice among the bulk of the editorship.

The problems with this attempt to re-frame the discussion continue: "Exemption from WP:BRD" doesn't even parse. BRD is an essay. Even if we put a guideline tag on it, it still wouldn't make sense, because BRD describes an explicitly voluntary process that works well for many situations and poorly for others; everyone is already "exempt" from it. What they're not exempt from the actual policy underling BRD (which is basically "follow policies in this order": WP:EDITING and WP:CONSENSUS (an order that some CITEVAR aficionado are trying to reverse when it comes to citation formatting). Next it's isn't my or Headbomb's "argument" that IAR trumps other rules when improvements are made; that is IAR. That's all of IAR. Just go read it.

We already have actual policies about WP:EDITING and WP:CONSENSUS. Trying to turn CITEVAR into something like a magical commandment that overrules site-wide policies, which govern everything, is just out-of-band. It's clear why there's so much recurrent dispute about CITEVAR. The average editor really DGaFs about citation formatting. Of the significant subset who do care, only a few are zealots about it. But it only takes a few.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Example in Solutrean hypothesis

Can't resist: I just saw this example yesterday. Would anyone object if I bundled the citations at the end of the fourth paragraph? - Donald Albury 10:20, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And just for laughs, that page had popped up on my watchlist because someone had removed the cn template from in front of those 9 citations. - Donald Albury 10:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

That's a prime example of where bundling is a negative. Of refs 7-15, Refs 8, 9, 12 are re-used twice, and ref 14 is re-used 4 times. Bundling makes re-use much, much harder. What you have here is a case of WP:CITEOVERKILL. You do not need 8 references to back up the claim "Recent research has shown everything that has been previously associated with ancient Atlantic contact to be more consistent with other scenarios." Get one solid review about the Solutrean hypothesis, and use that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:18, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

"One solid review"? This isn't medicine. Probably the material needs breaking out somewhat. I don't really see why bundling would make "re-use much, much harder". But I always use short cites for repeated sources, bundled where necessary, so all of this is foreign to me. Johnbod (talk) 12:45, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And yet Metzler and Strauss isare exactly that. I've cleaned up the article, although not saying these are necessarily the best sources for this, since I don't have any background in the early history of Americas. Also remember that the lead is to summarize the existing article content, not to make claimed not supported in the body of the article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Very dubious. Metzler and Strauss is 2005, but 8/9 of the previous taxi-queue are later than that. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Metzler is 2009, Strauss is 2017. But that's for the article's talk page, not here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:01, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You said "Metzler and Strauss is exactly that" - singular, and "Metzler and Strauss" is 2005. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Note the variety of citation styles used in the article. I also found one paragraph where the same named ref is used three times, with another citation in between the first and second occurrences of the named ref. The article is mildly controversial and somewhat attractive to supporters of fringe theories, and editors have apparently wanted to nail down every statement that might ever be challenged or misused. I'm trying at the article's talk page to initiate a cleanup using a consistent citation style. - Donald Albury 13:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes I cleaned that up. It was an absolute mess. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

That example is much like the one cited above (top of discussion) in Diels-Alder reaction: citing a series of primary sources to establish a point not not found in any of the individual sources. Any summary or overview should be based on one or two appropriate secondary sources. Bundling a bunch of inappropriate sources does nothing to fix the real problem. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

RFC on use of via

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Should WP:TWL be allowed to acknowledge the services they have partnership with in our articles? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:42, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Citation bundle

How does one bundle citations that use ref name? WP:CITEBUNDLE isn't very clear, and doesn't mention this. Lapadite (talk) 20:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

You could use template:refn. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you want to bundle citations? Or notes? The <ref> tags create notes, which the superscripted, bracketed numbers link to, and which can contain citations (full or short), comments, and all sorts of other stuff except other notes (<ref> tags). Your question reflects the common confusion that a "citation" to a source includes the <ref>...</ref> tags.

The straight-forward answer to your question is simple: "bundle" all of your citations – presumably full citations using {{citation}} or {{cite xxx}} templates – into a single "note" (<ref> tag), without wrapping them individually in <ref> tags.

If you already have a full citation for the source elsewhere (such as in another note) just use a "short-cite" in your "bundle". This is most easily done using the {{harvnb}} template. Note if you are using any of the "cite xxx" family of templates you will need to add |ref=harv to the cite template. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:48, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Emir of Wikipedia and J. Johnson: I've been trying to apply template:refn to a citation bundle that includes < ref name="Smith"/ > without using a #Notes section to no avail; the "ref name" citations are not recognized in the bundle. J. Johnson, I want to bundle standard citations (which are using ref tags & citation templates) that include "ref name" (so as to avoid repeating full citations) without having to turn them into "notes", having to split or group the bundled citations into another section, or having to change the citation style. Is it possible to bundle "ref name" citations and keep them listed alongside all other citations in the standard References section? See for example Alicia_Keys#Early_life - Three of the four citations beside the sentence ending with "romanticism of "blue composers" like Chopin" use "ref name", which isn't recognized in a standard bundle. Lapadite (talk) 05:34, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

How were you trying to use refn? Check out my edit please. Is that what you wanted? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2018 (UTC) (please  mention me on reply; thanks!)

Short answer to your question: you can't get there from here. Partly because you are tangled up in some misconceptions.

For instance, you say you want to "bundle standard citations ... that include "ref name" ... without having to turn them into "notes"". First, a citation, properly understood, never includes the <ref> tags. (It's more the other way around.) Second, citations are not "turned" – in the sense of converted – into "notes". Notes are what the <ref> tags (with or without "name=") create: a place for putting stuff. Citations (or other content) might be "turned into" a note in the same way a horse might be "turned into" a pasture, but that does not make the pasture part of the horse.

To continue the analogy: you can a) put multiple "horses" (such as citation templates) into a single "pasture", or you can b) collect multiple "pastures" – that is, multiple notes created using <ref> – with whatever they contain into a "farm" using {{refn}}. For the latter see the documentation for the details, and see how it has been used elsewhere in the article. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:28, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@Emir of Wikipedia and J. Johnson:: I meant note as in a [note] separate/split from a regularly formatted citation listed in References list. I get your point though. I was using refn in a unnecessarily complicated way that I don't even recall. Again, those how to pages can be rather confusing. I didn't even realize just wrapping it around the refs does the trick. Doh. Thank you both! Lapadite (talk) 07:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

If you have something working, great.

That there is a LOT of confusion re citation practice (including the documentation) is an on-going problem. I attribute that confusion to confusion of concepts and terminology. E.g.: your "note as in a [note] separate/split from a regularly formatted citation listed in References list" confuses me: perhaps by "separate" you recognize that citations and notes are different kinds of things (analogous to horses and pastures). But your wikilink to {{Efn}} reflects the common (and erroneous!) notion that "explanatory footnotes" have to be handled "separately" from "citation notes".

Similarly for "listed in References list". Most articles (for no better reason than rote replication) have a "References" section, containing a list of notes (mostly filled with citations that describe references) produced by the {{reflist}} template. This can be done anywhere, and the name of the section is irrelevant (I prefer "Notes"). In this case it seems obvious (but! see WP:It's obvious) that you mean the list produced by reflist. But doing these kinds of "obvious" extrapolations can lead to unrecognized divergence of understandings, such as what you mean above by "separate". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:06, 5 July 2018 (UTC)