Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 26

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Number of cites per inline statement

If we have a statement like "Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall", and that event is reported by 100 news agencies, is it appropriate to list as cite every one of them using an inline EL? I think its obviously redundant and clutters the article. Let's say only 3 sources report the event. Shouldn't that also be considered redundant? At what point does one how many cites is enough and over that is too many?--Fasttimes68 (talk) 13:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes that is excessive, especially since all reports are copies of a single eye-witness report. In general it is good practice that if you want to report an undisputed fact, a single reference suffices (e.g.: "Humpty Dumpty fell of the wall [1]"). If there are opposing views, or you want to refer to several examples you need more (e.g.: "there are several reports about Humpty Dumpty falling of the wall [1],[2],[3]"). Arnoutf (talk) 14:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Normally, one would be enough, but more might be useful if the best source is hard to access, so a more accessible but less reliable source is required. For example:

"Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and died." ^[1][2]

^[1]Death Certificate of Humpty Dumpty. (12 December 2007) On file at Wonderland County Clerk's office.

^[2]"Egg dies in fall." (8 December 2007) Wonderland College Student News. Retrieved from not.a.real.web.site 9 August 2009.

--Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, could you look at the multiple references listed in Stephanie_Adams and comment as to why those extra references are acceptable or not?--Fasttimes68 (talk) 15:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons have particularly strict demands on referencing, especially when dealing with potentially contentious issues like sexual orientation and legal issues. Multiple references can sometime be bundled together, however, using the syntax <ref><ul><li><li></ul></ref>, to help with ease of reading (this does not work with named references).

In any case, as I've mentioned above, I think a guideline should be introduced to curb the unnecessary multiple referencing that we see in some articles. It's an impediment both to reading, editing and page load. Lampman (talk) 16:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

slobbovia (not the game)

Al Capp the cartoonist made references to Slobbovia and Slobovians in his cartoons which are not available to me to be specific. I Dont have the resources to research this. Help 64.35.200.6 (talk) 21:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Name order

Why do we put surname before given name(s) in our citations? I.e. "Bloom, Harold" for Harold Bloom. Most sources (both news and academic publishers) seem to do it the other way. --Apoc2400 (talk) 17:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

One of the allowable citation styles is Parenthetical referencing, where the author and either title or year are placed after the passage to be supported, in parentheses. If this is done without templates, or if the article has been printed, the only reasonable way for the reader to find the reference is to look in the alphabetized "References" section. Placing the surname first in that section makes it easier for the reader to find the reference of interest. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I suspect this is not what Apoc2400 is talking about, though. I have noticed many articles not with parenthesized, in-text author-date citations, but rather with footnote citations, which use templates clearly designed for lists of references or bibliographies. These templates invert the author names, which is decidedly not normal practice in footnotes found in both news and academic publications.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Many of the citation templates can be used for either parenthetical referencing or footnotes, so they must put surname first in case they are being used with parenthetical referencing. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is basically what I said. The question is, why can they be used for footnotes, when the format they generate is clearly meant for alphabetized reference lists?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It's infuriating. qp10qp (talk) 14:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

What is a legitimate source?

Are there any guidelines as to what is a legitimate source? I cited an Amazon.com editorial review of a DVD (not a user review, the site's official review) and it was removed as not notable. That seems strange, since Amazon is one of the largest retailers in the world and I have seen their reviews cited elsewhere. Note that this is in an article where there are a couple of editors who are very adamant about removing things they deem unworthy, and so I'd like to get some sort of official word on this. Thanks. 128.151.71.18 (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I am unaware of any notability requirement for qualifying supporting sources. WP:RS provides source reliability guidelines. It seems to me that the an editorial review by Amazon staff should be as acceptable as editorial reviews from other sources, and that reviews by individual readers which might be found on Amazon should be unacceptable. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

A close reading of WP:RS might suggest that a "review" by the seller of an item, might not be considered neutral or reliabel. Jezhotwells (talk) 09:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

New template related to CITE proposed

Please see here for my proposal of a new template, that would be put on articles that need to have their sources globalized - i.e. on articles that rely on a very similar set of sources likely representing one and the same POV.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 13:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

American to International date.

On a lot of Articles you are doing American format, how about changing format to non US? Govvy (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The relevant guideline to apply here is "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Full date formatting". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:08, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

hmm, k, I because a lot of editors doing 2008-11-11 type style I noticed. So maybe they have been doing it wrong? Govvy (talk) 17:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean that editors have been putting dates in the format "2008-11-11" in citation templates? This is probably because the previous practice was to wikilink such dates (like this: "[[2008-11-11]]"), but later on consensus was reached to stop linking such dates. Therefore, what could have happened was that an editor or a bot removed the link without changing the format of the date. You can help to convert such dates to "11 November 2008" or "November 11, 2008", following the guidelines set out in "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Full date formatting". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

k, I shall use the British format day-month-year. Cheers. Govvy (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Govvy, do have a look at the guideline. It's not just a matter of what you prefer. It also depends on the subject of the article (US format for US-related articles, UK format for UK-related articles and articles relating to countries that use British English), as well as whether one format has consistently been used in the article in the past. Simply changing from one formatting style to the other without following the guidelines is a no-no. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:20, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Parenthetical referencing

Apologies if this has been discussed here before. I wonder what others' opinions are of the readability of articles such as Harold Pinter and The arts and politics where a form of MLA style citation is used. In the case of the Pinter article, clicking on an inline footnote number brings one to a footnote, somtimes the footnote quotes from the source, and gives the name of the cited autor, e.g. Pinter's paternal "grandmother's maiden name was Baron … he adopted it as his stage-name … [and] used it [Baron] for the autobiographical character of Mark in the first draft of [his novel] The Dwarfs" (Billington, Harold Pinter 3, 47–48). (footnote 22), sometimes the footnote simply directs to various authours, e.g. See discussions of these plays throughout Batty; Grimes; and Baker (footnote 35), sometimes the inline citation is simply parenthetical, e.g. ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In all of these cases one has to seek out the actual source in another article Bibliography for Harold Pinter.

It is very confusing and several users have commented on this in talk pages, but the editor who imposed this style insists that it is perfectly clear. Please check out these pages if you have the time and energy. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Are all the references to the articles listed on the page itself, or are there cited sources whose bibliographic information is only listed on another page. The second I would find problematic for various reasons, including reuse, but the first seems pretty workable (if the bibliography subpage is only for "further reading" type works). Christopher Parham (talk) 22:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

As I stated above, to pursue the references in the article Harold Pinter one has to look up another article Bibliography for Harold Pinter. Take a look at Harold Pinter to see what I am talking about. Jezhotwells (talk) 09:39, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

As the editor (J.) commenting above already knows, since I have explained it several times, and since the "Style Sheet" makes it clear, the format is The MLA Style Manual format, it has existed in the article through its "good article" review (since October 7, 2007), and the Bibliography for Harold Pinter is not a "separate article"; it is a split-off section that serves as the "Works Cited" for Harold Pinter, which contains many print-published sources. [The split occurred as a result of the 2007 "good article" review; there are many sections of earlier versions (pre-good article review versions) of the article that became developed parts of sections; but the Bibliography is clearly still a major section of the article, as it serves as the article's "Works Cited" (Harold Pinter#Works cited = Bibliography for Harold Pinter).]

(cont.) This is a very common method in Wikipedia that exists for many articles; e.g., see Rwandan genocide#Bibliography, where a (earlier version) model for devising such a split originated in my own 2005 to 2007 editing experience in Wikipedia. [since I've looked at it then, the citations appear to have become a mixture of formats, due to other editing, but it still uses the short parenthetical citation method keyed to its bibliography for its print sources; people have been strewing ELs into Rwandan Genocide and it needs further cleaning up. Not a job that I can now engage in due to too much other non-Wikipedia etc. work obligations.] --NYScholar (talk) 11:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC) [updated in brackets. --NYScholar (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2009 (UTC)]

(cont.) J. has been "shopping around" in various project pages, talk pages, and wherever possible, to oppose a long-standing prevailing citation format in an article that apparently J. first encountered only after the death of the subject on December 24, 2008. This topic [the use of MLA style parenthetical source citations keyed to a list of "Works cited": the "Style Sheet" of Harold Pinter since 2005 and through its "good article" review culminating in "good article" status in October 2007] is fully discussed in the appropriate place for such discussion, in the RfC that J. started in Talk:Harold Pinter.

(cont.) The need for citations is for verification. They are not meant to interrupt reading the article. If one wants to read the sources (if online), one can either read them via the links (convenience links restored to the article) and/or in the Bibliography section. As the one who has added almost every source in that article, I have verified every print and every online source.

(cont.)The point of MLA style of parenthetical referencing is actually (as the articles relating to parenthetical referencing already state) to give the simplest way of doing that. Author-title is simpler than author-date, and for humanities subjects (as pointed out) more relevant. Dates are not as relevant as authors' identities and titles to humanities subjects[: "Moreover, in the arts and humanities, one is more likely to know the title of a work rather than its date (as opposed to the sciences, where it is common to refer to, for example, 'the 2004 study by Jones, et. al.')." (Some earlier ed. contributed that.) --NYScholar (talk) 11:19, 13 March 2009 (UTC)]

Please discuss this [in context on the relevant talk page, not here, where it is being taken out of context of extensive discussion]. Thanks. (I am exhausted from the contentiousness of J.'s approach, which elsewhere often moves into incivilities, as it works against the article's major contributors and good article reviewers rather than with us.) --NYScholar (talk) 11:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Quotation from the lead of Bibliography for Harold Pinter: "Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography ("Works cited") for the main article on Harold Pinter and for several articles relating to him and his works." --NYScholar (talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

One has to make an effort to understand Parenthetical referencing which is not merely "Harvard style" or "Harvard referencing" as many editors from outside the U.S. appear to think; that is a misunderstanding of Parenthetical referencing. The article Parenthetical referencing and the section of Wikipedia:Citing sources seem to have been in the past controlled by various editors from outside the U.S. who do not realize that there are multiple methods or multiple styles of parenthetical referencing, because they only use one method where they are located. (And their specialties may not be writing.) Bibliographical specialists within the fields of writing and literary studies (English departments in U.S. colleges and universities)--and I am one of them--recognize, however, that almost every discipline now has adapted use of parenthetical citations (parenthetical referencing) to its various specific formats. Wikipedians, who may not be knowledgable about bibliography and documentation formats (specialties within writing and literary studies, where such formats are taught in American colleges and universities in introductory courses in "writing across the disciplines") just may be unaware of the breadth and scope and variety of documentation and citation methodogies. --NYScholar (talk) 11:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

(cont.) J.'s account is confusing (or the product of J.'s own confusions), not the format of the citations themselves (which are consistent). Please go to the article and examine it firsthand. It will stand up to scrutiny. --NYScholar (talk) 11:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It is our current consensus that we should allow editors to invent any system for placing citations in articles that accurately verifies the text. This allows editors to be creative and perhaps someone will come up with a method that we all like better that anything we are currently using. That being said, there are many who have argued that a more consistent style between articles would be a benefit to readers and editors. So I think the appropriate attitude is that we may encourage editors to change unusual citation styles, but, if they feel strongly that their idiosyncratic method is better, they should be allowed to continue to use it. In other words, this isn't worth fighting over. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:31, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Books

Hi folks - hope life is treating everyone well. Question. I'm citing a book, and pulling information from various pages - I'm assuming that I don't need to list the book as 15 different references - and that if I just put (ex: pages: Preface, 3, 7, 25, 78, 124 etc.) in the one reference that I'm doing it the proper way. The question is, since I don't like to assume, is where would I find that documented in policy, or rather guideline I expect. I'm not asking anyone to do my wiki-homework - just point me to the proper section/page. Thanks. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 07:23, 13 March 2009 (UTC) (a tb tag would be nice, since a lot of these pages go many days without answer) — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 07:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a case for inline Parenthetical referencing. Jezhotwells (talk) 09:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Parenthetical referencing is one possiblility, as Jezhotwells says. The guideline you are looking for is WP:CITE#Including page numbers. It's really a question of attitude. The wrong attitude is "I can prove I didn't make this up if I really have to". The right attitude is "assuming the reader has a copy of the book, how can I make it easy to find where the statement in the Wikipedia article is supported, and possibly find additional material of interest?" --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:49, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

You are free to use any method that you like, just so long as it is still possible for the reader to find the source for any information in the article. There are thousands of articles in Wikipedia that use several pages from the same source. Most (but by no means all) editors have chosen to use WP:Citing sources#Shortened notes to solve this problem. WP:Citing sources#Parenthetical referencing will also work, but is far less popular.

It's not clear from your post whether the citation you describe appears in a footnote, or in the references section at the bottom of the article. In either case, there is something you should consider. What if, several years from now, another editor changes the paragraph in the article that is based on the information on page 7 of the source. Now the citation claims that there is information in the article from page 7 of the source, but this isn't true any more. The citation needs to be fixed, but it is very unlikely that anyone will ever fix this, unless you fix it yourself. Do you see what I mean? This is one motivation for shortened notes (or parenthetical referencing): the short citation is right next to the text it supports, and it's easier for later editors to keep the citation in sync with the source.

Again, you are free to use any method you like, just so long as it works. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:23, 22 March 2009 (UTC)