Wikipedia talk:Citing sources

Not linking to a copyvio

Nemo bis being 'reasonable certain' that it's not copyvio is at odds with WP:ELNEVER and other copyvio policy that say you must have no reason to believe it's copyvio. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Can you explain in what circumstances you would be "reasonably certain" it's not copyvio while having a reason to believe it's copyvio, or vice versa? Are you saying that your change would make more link additions fall afoul of this guideline, or less? It's not clear to me which language is stricter.

If there's a difference, it would be useful to clarify which version actually reflects consensus, considering that this page's phrasing is apparent consensus since 2008, while the other language is more recent. Nemo 15:48, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

If a source was of a kind the editor doesn't usually use, the editor may not have any idea if it is of a type that is commonly a copyright violation. If the editor hadn't come across some indication that it is a violation, under the "no reason to believe" criterion the editor could use it. But under the "reasonably certain" criterion the editor would be obliged to conduct some sort of investigation before using it. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:35, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

If you felt there could be a chance that the content is copyvio but you don't think that chance is reasonable, then the current wording says it's ok to link to it. This is wrong the standard, if you have any concerns (even if you feel they are unreasonable) then you shouldn't link to it.
The wording here is using a different weighting of responsibility than the policy pages for copyvio, which is why I imported the wording from WP:ELNEVER. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

As to consensus the policy of WP:COPYVIO and it's legal requirements outweigh a guideline. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the current wording is fine and there is no need to change it. We can't expect unreasonable things from editors. Gawaon (talk) 18:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The policy requirement is that a link should be excluded unless there is certainty that it's not copyvio, this doesn't place any greater burden on editors. The only difference is changing "if you're almost certain it's OK" to "if you're almost certain it's not OK".
Again, regardless of the wording here, editors are required by policy to follow that practice. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:57, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The important thing is that, as long as you're reasonably certain, it's OK. Which is what this page already says. I don't think that "almost certain" and "reasonably certain" mean the same thing. Or do you think that someone who's "almost healthy" is "reasonably healthy"? Gawaon (talk) 21:25, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

One issue here is that a link can be non-copyvio in and of itself (because it is fair use, for instance as part of a reading list for a university course) and yet unusable by us (because that fair use does not apply to us and we are unwilling to make our own claims of a different fair use for such links). We should not link these, and we should not change the wording into something that would seem to allow linking them. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:10, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

That wouldn't be covered by the current wording and possibly not by the wording from ELNEVER. Do you have an alternative? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The copyright violations policy states "Copyright-infringing material should also not be linked to." I read that as meaning that if the editor believes a page that might be linked to contains copyright violations, it should not be linked to. The criterion is not "if some of the material on the page about to be linked to were copied to a Wikipedia article, it would be a copyright violation". If it appears material was copied into the potentially linked-to source is fair use in that context, it is not a copyright violation and we can link to it, even if the same material in a Wikipedia article would not be fair use and would be a copyright violation. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Sounds plausible. Fair use is, by definition, not a copyvio. Gawaon (talk) 18:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

That's also my understanding of the law. Nemo 18:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

It is not my understanding. Fair use by us that we properly declare to be a fair use is not a copyvio, but is highly constrained by our internal requirements for fair use. Fair use by someone else is not relevant for how we use something. The fact that someone made a fair use claim on certain material does not throw it open to public domain for the world; it only legitimizes their own use of that material, not anyone else's. Using it in ways not part of that fair use claim can be and often is copyvio.

We should not link to material for which the use of that material as a link from Wikipedia would be a copyright violation. The existence of some other non-Wikipedia use of the same link does not make Wikipedia's use any less of a copyright violation. For instance, we should not link to sci-hub, because it is widely agreed that sci-hub links are copyright violations, even if we find someone outside Wikipedia who also links to sci-hub but justifies them as fair use. For the same reason we should not link to the web site of a university course that makes copies of readings available to its students, which are copyright violations for us, even if making readings available to course students is fair use. Anything else is making excuses for piracy.

The only links we should make to public copies of copyrighted references are links where we can be reasonably certain that the publisher or author has licensed the material for free reading or has provided a copy free to the public. Archived copies of formerly-free copies, showing their provenance from a free copy are ok. Random copies on other sites of unclear provenance are not. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Uh, "fair use" is actually a well-defined term. Just because somebody says "sci-hub is fair use", doesn't make it so. Gawaon (talk) 21:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Someone can easily say that their link to sci-hub is not contributory infringement because they have a legitimate fair use to the linked material. That does not cause sci-hub itself to be fair use, but (the point you are missing) it also does not open the same material to copyright-free access by anyone anywhere else. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, "That does not cause sci-hub itself to be fair use" is the important piece here. Since it isn't, we wouldn't link to it. End of story. Gawaon (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I add to Gawaon's comments that just because somebody says ____ is not fair use, doesn't make it so, either. Fair use is what a court declares, and what we "we properly declare to be a fair use" is irrelevant. You don't have to declare whether something is fair use for it to be fair use. Our NFCC paperwork is for our own internal convenience; it is not legally necessary.

Also, as a side note, ELNEVER is irrelevant, as the Wikipedia:External links guideline is about ==External links==, not about citing sources in the ==References==. See Wikipedia:Copyrights#Linking to copyrighted works ("LINKVIO") for the relevant rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

When Wikipedia links to a source, Wikipedia is not using the words of the source, just bringing attention to the source. There is no problem with linking unless the source contains copyright violations. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

There is a problem with linking if we are linking to a source whose public availability is a copyvio, even if the people who made the link available could plausibly claim that they have an unrelated fair use. We should never do that. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes you're it's only a problem if there isn't certainty over the copyvio issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 December 2023

i want to be wikipedia editor. Qaisar Hussain1 (talk) 10:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Congratulations, you already are one! Gawaon (talk) 14:07, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

How to cite an archived EBSCO source?

Reference 9 in Special:Permalink/1193884301 is:

Slone, George B (September 2015). "Sloane's Column: American Bank Note Co. – Centenary". U. S. Stamp News. 21 (9): 21–22. ISSN 1082-9423. Archived from the original on December 8, 2023. Retrieved December 8, 2023 – via The Wikipedia Library.

Clicking on the url= link gets me to the wikipedia library page for that document, with a "PDF Full Text" link that works properly. The problem is, the archive-url= link is farshtunken. When you click on it, you get to what looks like a correct archive of the original but a few seconds later that's replaced by a EBSCO login screen. I don't know if this is EBSCO's fault, or IABot's fault, or archive.org's fault. But, is there some way to make this work right? RoySmith (talk) 03:36, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this answers your question about how to archive these links, but see User talk:Citation bot § Should not remove via=The Wikipedia Library on cite encyclopedia. As the outcome of that discussion, I think instead of using a |url= parameter with an EBSCO link, it would be better to do the following:

• Look at the EBSCO url
• Instead of |url=whatever, use |id={{EBSCOhost}}
• Fill in the first (unnamed) parameter of the EBSCOhost template with the number in the AN= part of the EBSCO url
• Fill in the |dbcode= parameter of the EBSCOhost template with the value of the db= part of the EBSCO url

In this case, that would give you a link looking like EBSCOhost 109018814 in the citation, freeing up the url parameter for something more archiveable. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, that seems to work, at least as far as generating a usefully clickable link and preventing IABot from producing a broken archive entry. It wold be nice if there was a way to actually get this archived, but this is at least an improvement. Thanks. RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Citation bot does a lot of good work subbing out nonfree URLs in favour of identical stable identifiers (chiefly DOI) in order to prevent situations like this, but I sometimes wonder how many of Internet Archive's eight hundred billion plus webpage snapshots are variations of "you must be logged in to view this content", "this content no longer exists at this address", "you have reached your viewing limit for this book", etc. User:GreenC may have information on what Internet Archive does to identify these non-content snapshots and if they have any plans to deal with them (if not, apologies for the ping). Folly Mox (talk) 15:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

User:RoySmith: gets me to the wikipedia library page for that document, with a "PDF Full Text" link that works properly - that's true, but only because you are logged into your library account. Try it in an incognito window ie. logged out doesn't work. This is a subscription site, archive providers won't be able to capture it. The go-to place for subscription links is archive.today but they appear to not support the Wikipedia Library: [1] -- GreenC 17:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Fine style point with "Citations" and "Works cited" subsections

Hello. Presently, my preferred style for articles is to have a top "References" heading, with "Citations" consisting mostly of shortcites, and "Works cited" containing the works those shortcites point to. Possibly, a "Further reading" top heading also.

But—I often find it redundant when a work only has one shortcite pointing to it, so my natural inclination is to have the full citation in the {{Reflist}} alongside the shortcites to works that are cited multiple times, as one can presently see on Zhuangzi (book). Do other editors prefer that all works go in the latter section, regardless of how many times they're cited? My preference is not strong, but I could see a strong preference the other way. Remsense留 02:13, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Predominant practice (in articles with consistent citations, and which are regularly maintained) seems to be to have the full citation be in your "Works cited" section only when cited multiple times. There's no point making a reader click twice to get to the citation details if this is not effectively necessary due to the work being cited repeatedly and needing shortened footnotes for that (to avoid repeating the entire citation mutiple times). The majority of our editors (especially those using VisualEditor) are never going to put a one-use citation manually at the bottom of the page and use {{sfnp}} or <ref>{{harvp|...}}....</ref> to refer to it, so trying to impose that structure is futile. PS: Using three headings for this is redundant; it is sufficient to have ==References== for the entirely inline cites and the shortenend footnotes, and below that a ===Sources=== or ===Bibliography=== (not advised for a bio of an author!) or ===Works cited=== for the long-form citations that are reused. Some editors even omit that subheading and simply put the reused long-form ones between a {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} right below the {{reflist}} or <references>.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:08, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

sfn/harvnb or sfnp/harvp

@SMcCandlish: I don't think the {{harvnb}} or {{sfn}} templates are meant to look like the output of the {{citation}} template (CS2-style). They seem to have evolved from {{harv}} which provided nearly Harvard-style in-text citations normally found in parentheses.[2] {{sfn}} places that instead into a footnote. {{sfnp}} was made to give a more consistent presentation (the editor doesn't say if they mean with APA footnotes, Harvard full citations, {{citation}}, or CS1 full citations but all would be true).[3] It looks like there was once a plan to update to {{sfn}} to {{sfnp}} but a fork resulted instead.[4]1 below this

I personally use "sfn" examples because it's so widely used, but have left "sfnp" on the page because there's no policy reason to reason to prefer it (that I know of; there are many policies). Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 20:43, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

{{Sfn}} and {{harvnb}} are so widely used simply because they were first (and {{sfn}} has a shorter name), and they're consequently mentioned in more documentation. The solution is the clean up the documentation. :-) What they do is output like "Smith 2020, p. 97". You're right about CS2 {{Citation}}; I had mis-remembered what this disused template's output was. Anyway, WP:CITESTYLE says to use a consistent citation style throughout the page, and {{sfnp}} and (where actually needed) {{harvp}} are the templates in that family that will actually do this, with "Smith (2020), p. 97" output that matches the "Smith, Janet (2020). Things and Stuff. London: Big Book Company." output of the full-length citation. Recommending the consistent ones is something we should have done ages ago, but it just kind of slipped under the radar. {{Sfn}} really shouldn't be used except in articles with Vancouver system citations or some other odd-ball format with dates without parentheses/round-brackets around the years, and the ratio of articles using such non-CS1/CS2 citations goes down over time (maybe even the raw headcount of them does, too, as the rate of editorial shifting to CS1 probably outstrips the creation of new articles in manually-enforced off-site citation styles, which was mostly a 2000s obsession).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

What's the problem in using sfn together with CS2-style citations? They seem to play together well. Gawaon (talk) 03:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

There are none - both harvnb/sfn and harvnp/sfnp are legitimate citation methods which are compatible with CS1 or CS2 references. Changing between types is covered by WP:CITEVAR (i.e. obtain consensus before changing an established style).Nigel Ish (talk) 17:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposed amendment regarding links/IDs

This guideline currently states that A citation ideally includes a link or ID number to help editors locate the source. I suggest amending it to be more direct, along the lines of If a source is available online and/or has an ID number, those links and identifiers should be included in the citation.

The equivocal language of the current wording makes sense to a degree: some of the best sources are not available online, and some do not have even an OCLC to help track them down. But sources increasingly can be found online, as they are increasingly published digitally or scanned. If a source has a URL or a DOI, I think the default should be to expect its inclusion. Even if it has only an ISBN or an OCLC, those should be expected too. And if it has none of those identifiers, the proposed wording would still ensure that citing the source remains fully appropriate. --Usernameunique (talk) 00:51, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose this proposal as written, although there might be a way to incorporate the intent. One major issue is a potential conflict with WP:COPYLINK, since "available online" would include illegitimate copies. Another is the vagueness of "ID number" - some of these are more useful than others, and we want to avoid piling on ones that are less useful. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I would also strongly oppose mandating ID numbers. There are certain ID numbers that we currently frequently include, like s2cid, that I think are mostly useless spam and would be better omitted. OCLC and ISSN are again almost always useless noise. And I agree with Nikkimaria that wording encouraging direct source links to, say, sci-hub, would be inappropriate. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with both of you: that is to say, links should be cabined to legitimate sites, and not every ID number need be added (personally, I add only those that are on a work's copyright page, such as an ISBN or LCCN, and add after-the-fact IDs, such as an OCLC, only if the former are missing). But I think those caveats can be ably dealt with in either a footnote or the text that follows. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:32, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Donald Trump and using WP:LOCALCON to disallow citation archives

The fine folks over at Talk:Donald Trump currently have a "Current consensus" item on their talk page that disallows including archive URLs for citations that aren't dead (25. Do not add web archives to cited sources which are not dead. (Dec 2017, March 2018)). This runs counter to this guideline, specifically WP:DEADREF, which seems to suggest that it's better to preventatively archive pages than to wait for them to be dead and hope that an archived copy is available (this guideline also notes that even if a link doesn't necessarily die, the content of the link can change and make the source unsuitable for statements it is used to support). My gut says to simply strike that item as a clear WP:LOCALCON and direct those editors here to make their case for an exception, but I wanted to see what the feeling was here before proceeding. Also relevant is this closed discussion: Special:Permalink/1197984238#Reversion_of_archives. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

You know that it is entirely possible to "preventatively archive pages" without pushing the archive link into Wikipedia, right? Just tell archive.org to archive the page. Then, if you ever need it, there it is on archive.org waiting for you. If you don't yet need it, what is the point of keeping a prematurely frozen archive link here, when archive.org will keep track of all the archived versions that it has and let you choose which one you want when you want it?

I would suggest that, to the extent that WP:DEADREF suggests copying the archive link here rather than merely making an archived copy, that language should be changed. But I note that the actual language of DEADREF is merely to consider making an archived copy; the actual language suggesting copying it here is in WP:ARCHIVEEARLY which does not even have the status of a Wikipedia guideline. Therefore, there is nothing for LOCALCON to be violating.

As for why it can be a bad idea to copy the links here: because sources may still be in flux and the editors may prefer readers to see the current version than an old frozen version. This may be especially true for topics in current politics. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:52, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) I was about to suggest something similar, i.e. making sure archives exist without actually adding them (if that's possible). Primefac (talk) 07:57, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:DEADREF links to a section titled Preventing and repairing dead links, which is kind of where I got the impression it was more than simply a suggestion (and as to WP:ARCHIVEEARLY, it is literally tagged as a how-to guide). I agree it's possible to create an archive and not link it, but this still places the burden on future editors/readers to find a revision of the page that supports the statement being cited which can be problematic if a source changes (as you note for political content, this can happen frequently). I've also always viewed citations as a point-in-time thing when it comes to people/events, so the idea that an archive link might point to an "old" version is a feature, not a bug. The reasons given at Talk:Donald Trump all seemed to revolve around bloating of the page size which seems like a technical concern that shouldn't be getting used as a means to stifle page development. —Locke Cole • t • c 08:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

So your position is that this guideline forces editors to use frozen versions of sources rather than allowing sources to be dynamic? Instead, that seems to me to be the kind of content-based editorial decision that a local consensus is entirely appropriate for. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

*sigh* If the live source changes after a statement is written, the frozen archive can be used to verify the source as it was originally seen... Nothing is being "forced", I'm just stating plainly that it's better behavior for editors to preserve their sources as they write rather than have to go through archives for potentially years to find the source that originally said something if the source ended up being dynamic/changing. Regardless of that, I'm concerned that we're recommending preventing dead links here in this guideline and a page has taken it upon itself to wholly disallow this good and desirable behavior. I'll again point to Special:Permalink/1197984238#Reversion_of_archives, where an editor was basically hit with a hammer over this and their response was about as good as you'd expect (I am never touching this article again). Do we really want individual pages to unilaterally decide these guidelines are irrelevant and drive off productive editors doing what we're suggesting? —Locke Cole • t • c 18:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

"disallows including archive URLs for citations that aren't dead" – Good. It's not "good and desirable behavior". It's code bloat that we don't need, and additional cite-by-cite verbiage and link confusion that the reader doesn't need. Removing that cruft does nothing whatsoever to "stifle page development". It's entirely sufficient to have IA archive something while you cite it, and just not add to Wikipedia the archive-url that we do not presently need. If linkrot happens for a particular citation, the add it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the theory is that if the archive links are added now, then they will less likely to be archive links to 404 pages (thus requiring manual intervention to find the correct one, rather than just using the most recent). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand how you think that changing Wikipedia to point to an archive link now, rather than merely telling the archive to make a copy but then only using that copy later when it is needed, would have any effect on what one finds at the archive link. If the archive link works, it works, and linking to it will not change that. If the archive link 404s, it 404s, and linking to it will not change that either. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• If you make the archive link today, and you record the archive link today, then you know the content is good, and you know which archive link you need to use.
• If you make the archive link today, and sometime during the next several years, the page becomes a 404, then at some future, post-breakage date, you will have to go through multiple archived links, some of which have the desired content and some of which don't, to figure out which one actually verifies the contents (see "requiring manual intervention" in my comment above).

This is due to the structure and goals of the Internet Archive. They don't archive a URL just once. They make multiple copies at different points in time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:54, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Does WP:DEADREF not reflect the current consensus here? I honestly don't care if people here want to shoot themselves in the foot anymore, so if the thought process from @David Eppstein and @SMcCandlish is that early archiving is code bloat that we don't need or it is entirely possible to "preventatively archive pages" without pushing the archive link into Wikipedia (sic, emphasis added) then perhaps it's time to strike DEADREF or shuffle it off to a different (non-guideline) page. Sources, especially online sources, can be brittle and subject to the whims of website designers and complete site overhauls where old links die completely (and current "archives" are just "not found" pages). I don't think "code bloat" should be a concern used to undermine preventative measures to preserve sources/citations. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

DEADREF is not broken in any way, and is quite clear: When permanent links [DOIs, etc.] aren't available, consider making an archived copy of the cited document when writing the article; on-demand web archiving services such as the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/save) or archive.today (https://archive.today) are fairly easy to use (see pre-emptive archiving). That does not say "and put the archived copy into the article before it is actually needed". All of the other material in that section, as in every single word of it, is about repairing citations with dead links.

What is broken is WP:ARCHIVEEARLY (which is part of a supplementary how-to essay, not a guideline), which someone added as their opinion and which clearly does not represent an actual consensus. It says To ensure link accessibility and stability, please consider pre-emptively adding an archive URL from an archive source such as the Internet Archive or WebCite. This practice is actually and clearly disputed, and that material should be changed, unless/until there is a firm consensus that not only is it good advice but that we actually need it despite WP:CREEP. It should instead re-state in a how-to manner what is said about this at DEADREF: create the archive on-demand today, but do not put it into the article if it is not already needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

create the archive on-demand today, but do not put it into the article if it is not already needed —Locke Cole • t • c 17:44, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Require in-text attribution where reputable authorities differ.

Too many Wikipedia pages are a mess, with erroneous assertions being presented as statements of fact qualified only by footnotes to which few readers probably pay attention anyway ("It was online so it must be true" being only a dumber rendition of the similarly naive "It was in a book so it must be true").

Where there is reasonable doubt about a claim or where multiple reputable sources disagree, in-text attribution should be a requirement: "Gubbins says (a); Muggins says (b)." To present both (a) and (b) as facts differentiated only by footnotes is nonsensical, and to offer just the one when there are valid grounds to query it is even worse. Let's say who said what, and not just assert it as fact when it isn't: burying a source in a footnote doesn't nullify a falsehood. Quantist (talk) 12:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

If there are differing view points backed up by reliable sources, then there is already policy to cover this, see WP:INTEXT and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. But note the caution about inadvertently making statements not neutral by doing so though, per the example "Humans evolved through natural selection" not "Charles Darwin says that humans evolved through natural selection". Where the majority view is clear, and backed up by independent reliable sources, attribution can cause a WP:FALSEBALANCE. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:28, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, I understand that there's a tightrope to be walked to avoid false equivalence of sound and crackpot propositions, but on that score I'd rely on the general good sense of the community. I was trying to tackle that in my outline of when such a requirement should operate: the threshold for "reasonable doubt" can be a high one where well-founded findings exist, but statements are too often based on little more than speculation (which may or may not be well-reasoned) on the part of some putative authority, or occasionally on misinterpretation or misrepresentation of sometimes inconclusive evidence.

For the record, I'm not an "alternative facts" type by any means, I'm very much for traditional scholarly process, but to me part of that is not to state a questionable finding as a fact, though it may properly be presented as a finding prefaced by an attribution of authorship. I think there's a wider discussion to be had too about "verifiability": being able to cite a seemingly authoritative source for an assertion doesn't prove it's true, as verification implies: where there is legitimate uncertainty and no scientific or scholarly consensus (which of course doesn't have to be unanimous), only saying that an author offers a given finding is demonstrably true. A supporting source does not confer verifiability: I can come up with reputable supporting sources for all manner of nonsense - even the best sometimes get it wrong when they stray from their core field or from scholarly objectivity, or even when they miss an element from a calculation (I can think of two such readily-demonstrable bloopers by leading scholars I rate very highly indeed). Quantist (talk) 16:12, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

As I'm sure you can imagine Wikipedia attracts all kinds, so these questions always attract some caution. As to verification on Wikipedia it is that the content in Wikipedia is backed up by reliable sources, so it's not used here as you might expect elsewhere. You may be interested in WP:EXPERT which has some advise on how Wikipedia differs from scholarly and scientific publishing.
Many editors who are writing articles will be people interested in the topic rather than experts in the field, so editors with expert knowledge can be invaluable in adding nuance missed by others. This would certainly include attribution of positions that other editors mistakenly took as being the consensus. This shouldn't be taken to say editors have no knowledge in the areas they write, but someone with a degree and someone well published in the field will have different levels of understanding. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:55, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I just think it's a misnomer that conveys an unfounded degree of confidence: offering a reputable source alone doesn't confer reliability, which is why I think the attribution should be upfront when the uncertainty justifies it. In practice editors make that call all the time, some assertions warranting attribution, others not: I'm essentially just proposing that it should preface the assertion rather than being appended as a footnote to a statement that may not be as factual as its form might suggest. Quantist (talk) 20:58, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Putting the attributions in body text rather than in footnotes risks running afoul of our deprecation of in-text citations. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:49, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Doubtless so. So I suppose I'm questioning that deprecation. I think it's a gross error that devalues the information that does merit presentation as generally-accepted fact rather than the finding of a given authority (which may be widely accepted even if consensus as so far lacking - and that broad agreement too can be noted where it applies). The unintended consequence of relegating attribution to a footnote is ironically to offer nonsensical claims just the spurious authority that the policy seeks to avoid. Quantist (talk) 05:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure of you mean something like parenthetical referencing which is, as David Eppstein says, deprecated on Wikipedia or something else. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:40, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

My preference would be to put the attribution at the start of the statement, so "David Eppstein says..." rather than "... (Eppstein 2024)." - but again it's only in instances where an assertion is already considered to warrant attribution rather than to rank as generally-understood fact. There's really no ideal solution: I just think the existing convention's failing badly in allowing claims that may be patent rubbish to be presented as factual statements. Quantist (talk) 05:19, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's a problem of policy, but rather a question of editors enforcing, as good as they can, the policies that are already in place. If rubbish or factually doubtful statements are detected, they should be removed or at least marked as such. There is nothing in the existing policies that hinders such improvements, but of course somebody needs to notice first. On the other hand, rubbish doesn't cease being rubbish if somebody adds "XY says" before it. Gawaon (talk) 06:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm still not sure of the protocol for removing the "rubbish": in olden days there was a presumption against deletion unless it amounted to vandalism or evident fabrication: I take it that's eased.

Yes XY can still be cited as the source of a nonsensical claim, but "XY says... while AB says..." offers an opportunity to address the relative standing of the two assertions. "Life expectancy at birth was about 20.[1] Life expectancy at birth was 42.[2]" (just to cite a recent case I encountered) makes no sense. Quantist (talk) 13:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Assuming that both sources seem reliable, I'd probably rewrite that as something like Modern estimates of life expectancy at birth vary widely, ranging from about 20[1] to 42.[2] Gawaon (talk) 13:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

That seems a good way round it. The catch though is that one of the sources (and indeed the higher number) isn't reliable at all, but I don't have access to it so I can't really challenge its credibility. In fact the other figure looks improbably low to me too, though that's from a reputable scholar in the field and it's doubtless closer to the reality. These things are sent to try us. Quantist (talk) 22:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

And I actually don't think a case such as this would in any way benefit from "X says 20, Y says 42." Lay readers will have no idea who X and Y are, so it won't help them at all, and the knowledgeable will easily find this information by hovering over the references, so they don't need it in the text. Gawaon (talk) 13:34, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that naming people isn't always helpful. Strictly speaking, we don't necessarily want in-text attribution to individuals for views that are held by groups of people, either. We should often be saying "Republocrats say X and Demicans say not-X" or "Consequentialists say X and and deontologists say not-X" rather than giving in-text attribution to individuals like "Alice says X and Bob says not-X". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Troublesome reference link

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, since this is more a technical external link issue than it is a referencing issue, but...

I cleaned up a reference in the article Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (ref #3, the Financial Times article) and added an URL accessed through a Google search result. When I used the link in the search results page, it went right to the correct page with no problem. But now, when I try to use the link in the Wikipedia article, it sends me to a "subscribe to FT" page. Is there any way to manipulate the URL so that it works on Wikipedia? Or is this a paywall mechanism where the FT website decides who gets in depending on where the query comes from? Any insights appreciated. —ShelfSkewed Talk 07:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a paywall mechanism, and I'd guess that it is specific to you. Some websites detect how many articles you've read recently and prevent subsequent ones. If you need to access the source yourself, then it might be worth trying Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library, but if you are concerned about readers (99.7% of whom won't try to read any refs), then I wouldn't worry about it. It might work just fine for them as it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps that's it, and in any case another editor has addressed the issue by adding an archive link that works. Thanks all! —ShelfSkewed Talk 15:15, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I've encountered this with the paper: I think it allows you to view one page for free, maybe in a given period, perhaps a couple more pages over a longer period. But as the earlier reply suggests, most users probably aren't returning readers, and the new link will hopefully solve the problem (I'm not sure about the netiquette, but I won't tell). Quantist (talk) 22:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Why are changes to/from citation templates not allowed?

WP:CITEVAR says we should avoid adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently.

I fail to see how this fits with the intent of the arbitration ruled in 2006, which is presumably concerned with styles that are of high visibility to the encyclopaedia user (the person served by this project). So it would be clear that, for instance, US versus British English is something that the reader will see. I question whether or not referencing using a citebook template would even be visible to a reader – I argue that this sort of thing is only an issue for a limited number of Wikipedia editors.

I note that I can find no clear definition of what is meant by "citation style". The definition could come in at a number of levels – I had presumed (perhaps wrongly) that this differentiated between short and full citations (per WP:SFN). Have I missed this term being defined or is there a general understanding that I have missed? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 16:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you're not reading CITEVAR the way most editors do: it's used for styles that are primarily visible to editors as much as it is used for styles visible to end users. There are editors who don't use citation templates, and those who prefer them; CITEVAR allows those editors to retain those preference on the articles they edit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

But why should it matter to an editor if someone else working on the same article uses a cite template when they choose not to? I see no logic to this whatsoever. The main thrust of all rules on Wikipedia is that this is all about developing an encyclopaedia, and hence all about what the reader sees. A result of current practices is that older articles are less readable to the user as they tend not to use the more recent (though well established) functionality of templates. I am sure you are well aware of this functionality, but what these older articles miss out on is demonstrated here. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The real point of CITEVAR, along with other types of preferred styles, is to stop people edit warring to enforce their own preferences. As long as the style of referencing is clear, it doesn't really matter, but edit warring about it is damaging to the encyclopedia and is contrary to a collaborative editing environment.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

My experience of this is of an editor who has a strong objection to templates going on to change the templates used by other editors to non-template forms. This I see as nascent edit warring. So in this case CITEVAR is doing nothing to prevent edit warring; rather it is arguably encouraging it. A principle of not messing with other editor's references as long as they do the job and meet the higher level referencing method of the article would be more likely to supress edit warring. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

If some citations in an article use templates and others do not, this (often) leads to inconsistency in how citations are displayed to the reader, in addition to how referencing is done from the editor perspective. I'm not sure why you would describe making citations consistent as "nascent edit warring" - if I add a citation and you change how it's formatted, there's no reverting involved there. It's only if there is disagreement that that might become a problem, and that's the purpose for which CITEVAR exists. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:40, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

There are good reasons to deliberately avoid using citation templates. Among them: to prevent the bots from spamming useless ids to the citations, and to handle situations that the citation templates do not cover well. If one is deliberately avoiding templates for such reasons, then it can be highly annoying for some other consistency-obsessed editor to steamroller over that preference, and only common courtesy to discuss the issue first. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree, citation templates do not handle every situation. I very strongly support concerns about consistency-obsessed editors. Unfortunately my experience of such an editor is for it to be impossible to engage them in any sort of productive discussion. Any comeback on a lengthy "no" gives an accusation of disruptive editing. Whilst my original aim of producing an article where the reader can easily see where the content comes from will clearly be blocked by such an individual, a ban on using the automation that is widely used in Wikipedia will make adding extra content to the problem article extremely burdensome – and a lot of extra content is now overdue following the publication of a new totally definitive source.
I have not seen any of the bot related problems with templates – is this a real thing or just a theoretical possibility? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

See e.g. User talk:Citation bot#Semantic scholar links continue to mostly consist of spam. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:20, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the example. Whilst I agree this is a problem, I don't see it as a reason not to use templates – that would be like not using electronic banking because of potential security problems. In either case, you block the abusing entity and get on with using welcome functionality. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:31, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree. We should cure the disease (Semantic Scholar spam), not collude by concealing the symptoms. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:45, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. A bot doing a wrong thing is a reason to fix the bot, and if it's bad enough even to stop the bot until it's fixed; it's not a reason to avoid using citation templates, which are really the only way we get pretty close to consistent citations (except in a vanishingly small number of articles that are obsessively hand-maintained by a single editor with a particular citation-style pecadillo, and that's a dying breed). It's a bit like insisting on spinning your own yarn and weaving your own cloth to make socks for your family instead of going to the store and buying some socks. Use the tools we have, save a lot of time and effort, get the feet warm sooner than later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I recommend knitting the socks instead of weaving them. ;-) They'll stay on your feet better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a hobby for those with time to spare. Kinda the same here, except "hand knitting" citations imposes complications on other editors who come to the article. It's ultimately a lost cause that we tolerate due to "my citation format is better than yours" holy-warring in the early 2000s, before we even had a citation template system. When the hand-maintainer of a "precious" citation format eventually isn't around any longer, conveniently templated citations will creep in, the cite style will become inconsistent, and someone will eventually renormalize them all, sensibly to templated citations. Happens all the time, and should.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

The 2006 ArbCom statement is a bit of a retcon; it didn't have any role in the creation of this section (in 2010 and 2011).

I suspect that if we set up an RFC on this subject today, there would be a majority in favor of treating WP:CS1 templates as the normal and default (but not required) way to add citations to any article. I would also not be surprised to discover that editors specifically believed that CITEVAR should say that switching to CS1 templates was usually okay, and removing them was generally not. There seem to be few experienced editors, and basically no new ones, who feel strongly about maintaining an absolutely even-handed approach.

What I think is most important is not in CITEVAR, but at the top: While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I. for one. feel that. CS2. is. far. far. better. than CS1. It isn't. so. choppy. because. it. isn't. interrupted. with. so. many. periods. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

The presence or absence of full stops seems ... really minor. I mean, I would prefer all cases of eg (and akin abbreviations such as viz, ie, nb, sv, and etc) to be without points, same with titles like Dr or MSt and names like T R S Broughton. But people all have different preferences on this sort of thing. Ifly6 (talk) 15:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I also prefer CS2 for another reason: its default formatting template, {{citation}}, doesn't force me to decide whether the thing I am citing was published in a magazine or a journal or a newspaper or a web site. You can just cite it, without having to pick the right kind of citation template for the right kind of publication venue. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:17, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

They mostly support the same parameters anyway; if you cite a journal as a magazine or vice versa, it will still work fine. {{cite magazine}} even supports {{cite journal}} parameters the documentation of the former doesn't specify, including |journal=, |vauthors=, |citeseerx=, etc. They're all processed by the same Lua module code. Where there are differences is mostly books; it uses |title= as the work and |chapter= AKA |contribution= as the sub-work; all the periodical templates use |title= as the sub-work, and for the main work it's |work= or one of its numerous aliases (|journal=, |magazine=, |newspaper=, |website=, etc.) But CS2 also has issues like this; if you don't include something like |journal=, it defaults to treating the work as a book, and you'll get undesired results if it's not one. CS2 is all actually now handled by the same module code anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:21, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It's the same module, but the CS1 templates are more inflexible; they have many parameters that only work within one of the templates but not the others, or that have different interpretations in different templates. Try using |work= with {{cite book}}, for instance, or explaining why |title= is the title of a book for {{cite book}} but not for {{cite encyclopedia}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:23, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

How about allowing articles to be migrated to either CS1 or CS2 (based on editorial discretion), but not away from any existing citation template style? I can see very little downsides to allowing such migrations. Gawaon (talk) 06:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I would support this. Ifly6 (talk) 15:30, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I do find it sometimes confusing to know whether an article which doesn't make use of citation templates was just written by someone who didn't know about them / just didn't feel like doing it or who by someone who does know about them but there is a local consensus to avoid using them for a specific reason. I use CS1 templates when I write articles, but there have definitely been a few times where I'm sort of hacking together what to put in various parameters to get it to best work and a freeform citation would allow editors to be strictly speaking more accurate when a citation doesn't neatly fit into what the templates expect the parameters for a given type of work should have; I've also been annoyed at bots in the past changing/reformatting/adding useless or incorrect information to citations making use of templates and can also imagine some editors just finding it easier to not use the citation templates to avoid all this.

Before a big change like changing all of an article's citations it still is probably worth discussing on the talk page to see if there is a reason why the citations were formatted that way or not. Umimmak (talk) 20:32, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking purely from my own recent experience, if a website gives me a copy-and-paste option for a citation and its URL gets parsed badly by our automagic tools, I'm likely to copy the pre-made citation instead of putting it into a citation template. I figure that if the article ever reaches Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, and the source is still being cited by that point, then the FAC nom will clean it up, and I won't care which method they use to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I've always taken the spirit of CITEVAR, ENGVAR, and such as "go do something useful instead". The vast majority of readers don't care whether references are text based or use a template, and a vanishingly small part of those that do care even understand the formatting differences between CS1 and CS2. As long as you're not generating large red error messages the important part is putting in enough information that it can be reasonably verified by another person.
Personally I prefer templates because they are less likely to suffer from information rot than a text based version, and will usually generate notices if something has gone wrong. But unless you are writing or rewriting an article, there are far more important issues to deal with than the style of referencing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps this is because I am older than many here, but I find citation templates very confusing to use. So, I usually don’t. I just write my citations out by hand, the old way… even when the article clearly already uses templates. I assume that someone else will follow along after me and convert my hand written citation into whatever preferred template format has been chosen. No big deal. Blueboar (talk) 12:41, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough, as long as that's not forbidden! But the (text-mode) editor has a nice enough Cite / Templates function that can be used to create CS1 citations. I use it all the time and I guess it's the main reason I use CS1 rather than CS2. Gawaon (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

But a wikilawyer reading of CITEVAR says that someone who comes along and converts hand-written references to templates may be wrong – however much that might improve the encyclopaedia user's experience. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:48, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Unless you're planning to work on the article content yourself, I agree with ActivelyDisinterested that it's best to just not change the formats, as it's article content that's the most valuable thing for our readers. If you do want to work on the article, a quick look at the history stats and a note on the talk page will soon tell you if there are objections to making this sort of change -- and in most cases, unless it's an article that an active editor has put a good deal of work into, there will be no objections. When you do run into a situation like that, there's little value to the encyclopedia in prolonging a discussion. At a minimum it'll annoy an editor who's put a lot of work into the article, and it might stop them from maintaining it. There are more productive things to do with one's time than push back on CITEVAR disagreements -- and I think that's the main reason CITEVAR exists, because those discussions are unproductive. And as you can see from the comments above, not everyone agrees with you about whether the templatese are important to the end-user's experience. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired, according to CITEVAR, it's only wrong to change whole articles that already have an established style. Improving on the best efforts of any editor who provides information about a source to the best of their ability is 100% okay. If Blueboar does his best (a complete citation is very much appreciated even if it's formatted the "wrong" way), and you make it match whatever style is established for that article, then nobody will yell at you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that comment. I am beginning to think I need to work on people handling skills to solve the precise problem in front of me, not broader knowledge on referencing guidance. I have invested a large amount of reading time (many days, and more to go) for one particular article, but find the referencing to be (in my view) somewhat chaotic and archaic, with the 40% editor of it switching horses between "you can use templates if you wish" to removing the templates that I have used on a reference problem I sorted out. The article should have a large amount of new text soon due to a new authoritative source. I recently realised it might even justify an article of its own, which is an appealing idea in the circumstance, and just have a summary transcluded into the main article. I have a lot more reading to do before I need to make a decision on this. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:52, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Are you working with the most popular citation templates (like {{cite book}}) or with something less common, like {{sfn}}? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, these are commonly combined? I always use {{cite book}}) when citing a book for the first time (or in the general list of references), {{sfn}} for references to (other) specific page numbers in the same book. {{cite book}}) by itself can't handle such situations. Gawaon (talk) 05:11, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

You can use the cite book template for a title–page number short ref: "Government Report. p. 23." Other people (especially if the book is only used for a couple of pages) simply repeat the full citation, putting in different page numbers each time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

No, don't write {{cite book |title=Government Report |page=23}}. That creates an incomplete citation both visually and in the metadata. {{sfn}} and the {{harv}} family of templates are designed specifically for such 'short form' referencing. Use an appropriate template of simply write a short-form reference with wikitext (''Government Report''. p. 23); don't abuse the {{cite book}} template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:21, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Plus {{sfn}} and friends also have the advantage of showing the full citation details in an additional mouseover, while with a repeated short {{cite}} the user needs to find the full citation details manually (which might be non-fun, especially if the article has 100s of references). Gawaon (talk) 22:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

To answer User:WhatamIdoing, my referencing repertoire is:
(case A, where there is a single list of references, each showing the full reference): For a new source, I use a cite book/journal/etc. template as offered in the wikitext editing window I am using now. I always give a reference a name, whether I immediately expect to re-use the reference or not, with name almost invariably being author surname plus year of publication. I use the {{rp}} template for the page numbers in this first use. On second use of one of these sources I use the {{r}} template, putting the page number or other location in the template.
(case B, where there is a list of short references and a list of full references). For a new source I put the full reference in using wikitext cite book/etc. templates and then use the {{sfn}} template in the article text to produce a short reference and page number.
Having got this far with learning how to reference, this seems to meet all my requirements and meets what I see as the major referencing style division, which I have called case A and case B. (Terminology gap here: what do other editors call my "case A" and "case B"?)
I am also a great fan of the {{efn}} template. I find it is helpful for explaining points that would otherwise be unexplained, but will (a) be obvious to some readers, (b) seriously breaks up the flow of the article or (c) slightly steps away from the summary style of an article by giving just a bit more detail. In an article that has a lot of these explanatory footnotes, it is useful to see them all collected together at the end. I particularly dislike articles that muddle explanatory notes in with the rest of the references – I cannot see why that is allowed, even if it mimics some printed works. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 10:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I think your 'case B' is popular among FAC folks, particularly for history-like subjects (i.e., articles mostly written from 10 good books instead of 20 good journal articles or 50 good websites). I think it's mostly called "using sfn", though that's not at really specific.

For your 'case A', I'm not sure why you are using {{r}} at all; after the first , why not keep using {{rp}}, e.g., , , and so forth? I'm not familiar with the {{r}}, so perhaps it has some convenience that I'm unaware of. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. The {{r}} template was recommended to me by another user. I use it solely because if involves typing one less character, but you can read the technical details on the template for yourself. I appreciate it has only 43% of the popularity of {{rp}}, but that is still a sizeable constituency.
BTW, sfn/case B referencing is not my first choice, but I will use it when it is established in an article. Case A referencing has the advantage that you can go to the list of references and see exactly how much of an article relies on one reference – tracking up into the article (one click) to see exactly what content is involved and then quickly back to the reference. That's important if you are improving an article that is over-reliant on one poorer quality reference. (The example I have in mind is with author Basil Lubbock in, for example Clipper and Great Tea Race of 1866 – Lubbock is a prolific source, but his historical work is not up to the standards of a proper maritime historian. However, (1) we know some of his identified inaccuracies and (2) he is sometimes the only source, so you have to go with it. Checking an article's reliance on him leads to cutting his involvement to the minimum necessary. Sorry, deep in one aspect of maritime history there, but it illustrates one useful feature of how Wikipedia displays references.) ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

If I see an article with an inconsistent or messy citing style, and I have the time to spare, I will try to impose a consistent citation style (I generally use CS1, Sfn, and Efn). If there are a lot of page watchers, I will ask first on the talk page if there are objections, as I did here. On more obscure articles, I will be bold and rework the citations. No one has reverted me or objected to such changes, so far. - Donald Albury 15:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I am very interested to see how your work on Joseph Conrad removed the necessity for the now-deprecated parenthetical referencing in individual notes. (Obvious when you see it demonstrated, but not beforehand!) ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 15:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

An illustration

Whilst commending the very useful breadth of discussion on this, I just wanted to illustrate (literally) the focus on the enclyopedia user who wants to see where article content is sourced. These screenshots show how full use of templates make if easier to do this. Source articles are Yawl and Vasa (ship). The former uses entirely short referencing with sfn and cite book/journal/etc. templates, the latter article mostly short referencing but few templates. I appreciate different browsers may depict this differently but my mobile phone, at least, gives different displays where I still think the "preferred" version has better functionality. I appreciate that this may be obvious to some, but using my own technical knowledge as a model, it is likely not obvious to all. A further note on the screenshot should have emphasised the irritation in a long article of having to go to the cited sources at the end to find a full reference and then get back to the point where you were reading.

Shows different visibility of full reference depending on whether or not a template is used

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 15:46, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Fun fact: All of this can be done without citation templates, too. You just put an anchor at the full citation (the one you show in the top article for John Leather's book is "#CITEREFLeather1989", but you can name it anything) and add a regular [[#section link]] to your anchor in the ref.

I have actually done this before, but I don't necessarily recommend it. It's easier to have the templates manage all the anchors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Same. I did this kind of linking by hand in a long article, but am going to redo it all with {{sfnp}} (and {{harvp}} in a few cases that need annotations within the ref tag). The templated method is actualy still superior, because you get a mouseover popup (on any kind of system that supports that functionality) for the short cite and get another one for the long cite if you mouse-hover that inside the short cite's popup; the latter part doesn't happen if this stuff's link-coded manually.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

"Mouseover popup" – that's the terminology I was looking for! And the second mouse-hover is definitely the bit that aids readability for the encyclopaedia user. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 11:08, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Automatic citation question

Hi, not sure where to ask this, so I'm trying a few different places.

Last year, I had a zotero translator accepted into the main github repo. I use the source I wrote the translator for a lot, but automatic citations for it still don't work on Wikipedia for some reason. Is there something I should do or someone I should ask to make sure it'll work going forward? toobigtokale (talk) 05:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

clarification of CITEVAR

Not too long ago I was castigated for adding content with a different citation style than was in use at an article. But I don't actually understand how to use the other citation style and find it clunky to even try to verify content from. I'm completely fine if someone wants to change the citation style I used to conform with what's currently being used (and I can see how it would be annoying if someone feels they have to come along behind me to convert my additions to that style), but the strong implication from the other editor was that I shouldn't be adding citations at all if I didn't want to use the current citation style myself.

At any rate, can I get some clarity on what CITEVAR actually means in this situation? I've always interpreted it as "Don't change the current style, and particularly not if anyone objects" rather than "Adhere to the current style", if you see what I mean? CITEVAR does say "If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it", though.

Thanks for any insight! Valereee (talk) 14:05, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I take CITEVAR to mean that it would be polite to try to follow the established style, so if I edit an article in an unfamiliar style I do my best to follow it. Most articles don't have an established style, though; for anything that's not GA/FA/A class it probably doesn't matter much, though sometimes you can tell someone's worked to make it consistent. If I felt unable to comply with the style because I didn't understand it, I'd probably post a simple plain text citation and leave an apologetic note on the talk page, or (if it's clear there's an active editor maintaining the article) I'd post the information on the talk page and let them deal with it. But I don't think I've ever run into a case where I couldn't add the information in the requested style, though for sfn and r I would have to spend a bit of time figuring it out. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:31, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, sfn is just opaque for me. And I don't even know what r is. :) The citation form I was using was whatever VisEd uses. I'd be happy to convert if there were a script or something that made that easy. Valereee (talk) 15:00, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

CITEVAR says you shouldn't attempt to change the referencing style that is already in the article, as a courtesy you should try to add references that match the articles style but CITEVAR doesn't say that failing to do so is a crime. Anyone wanting to keep a consistent style can always update your references to match the article. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:05, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

And I do see the appeal of a consistent style, it's prettier. Valereee (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

This is the second question along these lines in the last couple of weeks. I'll go add a reminder to CITEVAR that this is a collaborative project, not a children's game. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

☛ What matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed.

Done. If that doesn't work, then we can add this box to the top of the section. (It's a quote from the lead of this guideline.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I think this just highlights that the subjects of
(a) how references are displayed in Wikipedia and
(b) how we achieve that
are a complete mess. Taking this edit [5] by User:Valereee as an example (please don't take this personally – I just needed edits by someone who used visual editor), we can see that it generates wikitext references behind the scenes that give meaningless names to references. In this case it assigns ref name=":3">, but here in citevar we are encouraged to set about replacing opaque named-reference names with conventional ones, such as "Einstein-1905" instead of ":27" So Visual editor is automatically creating content that it is deemed desirable to change. The discussion above (Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Why are changes to/from citation templates not allowed?) demonstrates that there are wide variations in how much editors understand referencing. I went to quite a bit of trouble to learn my limited understanding, helped along by one or two other editors who generously took me through things step by step. I don't think what I learnt was difficult to understand – it's just that a simple "how to" explanation didn't seem to exist anywhere. This may be a cause of so many different editors having their own way of doing things. A review of the whole subject now seems due - What we want and how editors learn to achieve that. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I discovered Nardog's RefRenamer recently, a very cool script that replaces those crappy VisEd names. I've been using it frequently on articles I've added citations to. Valereee (talk) 20:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Just used it at Liege waffle, which was a creation from today. Valereee (talk) 20:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Great find, but this illustrates the typical sticking plaster solutions that come up in Wikipedia and that are not known to the vast majority of editors. We really should be free to concentrate on article content (what an encyclopaedia is all about) rather than the vagaries of the referencing system. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:28, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, definitely great script! I wish there were one that would let me change a ref to adhere to the currently used one in an article, but the best I've found will just do it for cite book > sfn. Valereee (talk) 22:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Citing page numbers in PDF documents?

@Daniel Case in Valhalla train crash there's a large number of citations to a NTSB report as a PDF document (ref 13 in Special:Permalink/1202959297) which refer to page numbers (i.e. {{rp|58–61}}) using the PDF page numbers instead of the numbers printed on each page. What do folks think of this? I'm inclined to say it's not a good idea because somebody who has access to the report in printed form won't be able to map the citations to the paper copy. But I'd like to hear what other people feel about this. RoySmith (talk) 22:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe if it's a very large PDF with multiple documents with their own pagination it might be a useful, additional convenience to also include the page of the PDF, but I think in most cases it makes more sense to use the pages printed on the page when possible. Past discussion: Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 44#Which page number to use when citing PDFs? and Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 32#PDF Page Number. Umimmak (talk) 23:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

There was just recently a thread about this at WT:CS1. The gist is that it should cite the printed page numbers, since people may access the document in multiple formats, including paper, but links can go directly to the PDF page number, e.g.: |pages=[https://example.com/foo/bar.pdf#page=65 62–63].

PS: {{rp}} should no longer be used; it's a form of parenthetical referencing (injecting citation details into the article body instead of keeping them in the citation), and all of that was deprecated by the community in 2022. See User:SMcCandlish/How to use the sfnp family of templates for a crash course on one replacement system. It supports the parameter example I just gave, as do CS1/CS2 templates directly; in sfnp, harvp, and related templates, the shorthand |p= or |pp= can also be used, while if something more specific needed like naming a section, the CS1/CS2 |at= can be used to include a page number with an annotation, and sfnp, etc., have the equivalent |loc=.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:07, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Funny that you should say this. On another article I've been working on in draftspace recently one source is a 77-minute video documentary. It's obviously not enough just to cite the video; one has to cite the timestamp of the material that supports it, much as we would cite the page number or range of a 300-page book. And I found myself having to use {{rp}} ... I'd love to use {{sfn}} but there's just no way to make that work with {{cite AV media}}. Someone, in the process of creating that former template, failed to remember that people cite things other than documents, even though that should have been obvious at the time it was created. Perhaps that can be addressed soon in the Community Wishlist Survey.

Likewise, I'd love to see some equivalent version that works with {{bluebook journal}} or {{cite court}} to produce acceptable short versions of cites in Bluebook format (i.e. "AUTHOR, at PAGE" or "CASE SHORT TITLE, at PAGE" for the first time a single page is cited after the original full cite. Daniel Case (talk) 02:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Cite AV media supports the |ref= field, so you can use {{sfnref}} to setup the link. Bluebook journal can be used with sfn in the normal way you would use it with {{cite journal}}, it will cause a false-positive error but that can be suppressed with {{sfn whitelist}}.
{{cite court}} doesn't support either method, but that's what {{wikicite}} is for. Wrap the 'cite court' inside the wikicite, and setup the |ref= field with sfnref. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 03:14, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

{{cite court}} now supports |ref=. You can use {{sfnref}} to create the anchor however you need, the same as CS1 templates. The short citation templates all have a |loc= parameter to cite things that are not pages. @Daniel Case: where were you looking for this in the documentation? It should likely be added there. And would |at= be more intuitive than |loc= for the sfn/sfnp/harv templates? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

SMcCandlish recently raised the loc / at point at Module talk:Footnotes#loc, at, but that page doesn't have much traffic. It does seem more consistent, as |location= is for the general physical location of the publisher. I hate to think how many corrections would have to be made of it was changed though. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd like it if loc= and at= were aliases, that would make {{sfn}} and {{cite}} more consistent to use with each other. Since loc= would remain valid, existing usages wouldn't need to be changed, as I understand it. Gawaon (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I use loc= for all sorts of free-form usages. I've cited things I've found in old newspapers and put something like "near the bottom of column three on page 47" in the loc field, because otherwise there's no way anybody could find what I was talking about. Services like newspaper.com do provide URL-addressable clippings, but they have the same problem as PDF page numbers; they won't be of any use to somebody accessing the original source material via a different format (paper archive, microfilm, etc). But, yeah, a computer should be smart enough to see "loc=47", figure out that the digit string is a page number, and format it accordingly. RoySmith (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I go by what I read in template documentation. It should be no surprise; we seem to be absolutely horrible at updating it. For instance, only thanks to SMcCandlish above did I learn that {{rp}} has been deprecated for over a year. There is still nothing on the documentation to advise editors of that, much less tell us what we should do instead. Daniel Case (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not really deprecated though… what was decided in 2022 was to get rid of in-line MLA/Harvard style parenthetical referencing; {{rp}} barely came up in that discussion. Having multiple back to back instances like this can get cluttered, but there isn’t a blanket proscription on this template (yet). Umimmak (talk) 18:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. SMcCandlish created that template and has been steadily encouraging people to develop and use better options, but it's not actually banned, and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 December 17#Template:Rp (more than a year after the RFC about parenthetical citations) had a WP:SNOW-level keep response. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I would not use the PDF's own page numbers if there are printed page numbers visible in the doc. We have had questions about this for academic journal articles, and the advice has always been to use the printed/official ones (which could be something like pp. 124–131) rather than the PDF's (always and automatically starting a 1). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from, but more often than not the PDF's numbering is more visible than that on the pages in it. Sometimes, with more recent PDFs, it seems that it is possible for the equivalent page numbers to be used by the software, but a lot of older ones don't do that, and IME too many readers take the reader's numeration as canonical. Daniel Case (talk) 02:29, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed -- where there are page numbers visible use those; where they are not, use the PDF-associate numbers. Note that some publishers have eschewed the addition of page numbers even to their printed works (looking at you Chasma Press), which presents some special issues. I believe the retirement of {{rp}} in favor of {{sfnp}} is a mistake, but I won't go into that more here as it's an aside. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

On Google Books, a lot of times when it gives you Google's e-book version there are no page numbers visible. You sort of have to guess from what the URL numbered the page you landed on from "Preview". Daniel Case (talk) 18:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:EBOOK If there are no page numbers, whether in ebooks or print materials, then you can use other means of identifying the relevant section of a lengthy work, such as the chapter number or the section title. -- Ebooks do not have fixed page numbers; the content per "page" dynamically adjusts based on window/screen size, font size, etc. You should not arbitrarily assign one based on how Google Books happened to format a particular title since that page number is meaningless for anyone who accesses that (e)book in any format other than the Google Books Preview. Umimmak (talk) 19:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Page numbers in older books can sometimes be interesting. I guess due to the requirements of the printing technology of the day, sometimes you would find a bunch of color plates bound into a book but outside of the normal page numbers. So, page 144, 145, no-number, no-number, no-number, no-number, 146, 147. I tend to cite those as "unnumbered page after page 145". I could see somebody naively looking at such a book and saying, "I don't know why they didn't number it, but it's after page 145 so it must be 146" and cite it as page 146, which would be wrong. RoySmith (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I would firmly believe that the page numbers as printed should be those cited. Journals are regularly consecutively paginated; a PDF of a single chapter has the same issue. Moreover, some people might try to access it through other formats (eg Westlaw or Lexis' long web pages with [*123] to mark page divisions; see also Federal Register's version of the same with side notes). These are not compatible with this very naive approach to page number assignment. Ifly6 (talk) 19:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Why not put BOTH in the citation? We had the flexibility to do that when we formatted citations by hand (just add a parenthetical to explain). I would think it would be easy to add an extra parameter to our templates… One for printed pagination, another for PDF pagination. While we would not use both pagination fields often, having two would be very helpful on the rare occasions when there are two distinct paginations. Blueboar (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  Why not put BOTH in the citation? — The citation originally being asked about is "Highway-Railroad Grade Crossing Collision, Commerce Street, Valhalla, New York; February 3, 2015" (PDF). National Transportation Safety Board. July 25, 2017. pp. 18–19. Retrieved March 25, 2018. Hereafter cited as NTSB Report; page numbers will be those given by the PDF software, rather than those indicated in the document's pages. — to me, this is not one of those rare occasions which would benefit from including both. This article makes use of {{rp}} so has citations like ; to me it seems much more intuitive to ignore the line about page numbers will be those given by the PDF software, rather than those indicated in the document's pages. and just have . There's no easy way to include both sets of page numbers with {{rp}} but even if these were converted to more standard short referencing I don't think any reader would benefit more from NTSB 2015, pp. 26–27 [37–38 PDF] over just NTSB 2015, pp. 26–27 in this particular case. Umimmak (talk) 20:32, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  Absolutely. If a doc has page numbers, there's no good reason not to use them. If not, the question of "both" won't arise. Gawaon (talk) 20:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  I would only use the printed page numbers for that NTSB report. I would expect others to do the same (e.g., if a news report needs to say something like "the photo on page 12 of the report"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  What would we do, however, if what we wanted to cite was on a page that is unnumbered in the document? Daniel Case (talk) 06:52, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  Is that the case here? On the odd occasion you would have to do that, you’d treat it like you would when you cite an unnumbered page of a print report/book: |at=Front cover, |at=Title page, |at=Copyright page, etc. I guess in a pinch you could say something like |at=Frontmatter, n.p., but just because one might conceivably cite a non-numbered page from a report doesn’t mean one should completely ignore the actual page numbers printed on each page. Umimmak (talk) 07:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Why is all this not in the documentation?

It has been such a pleasure to get dragged into this discussion and learn about all these things, rather than in, oh, the appropriate template documentation, you know, that big wall o' text on green background that most users consult when they want to know how to cite things? Template:Cite web/doc#In-source locations, for instance, says nothing about using a PDF's internal page; nor does its book counterpart explain anything about what WP:EBOOKS tells us (In fact, I can't find where EBOOKS takes me other to the main WP:CITE page ... there is no boxed shortcut I can end up at. I realize that template documentation is mainly technical, but there is absolutely nowhere on them that I can remember ever being directed to one of these links to know what I've been doing wrong all these years of not participating in discussions here because I was too busy creating content and blocking vandals.

There's WP:PAGENUM, but it says nothing that would lead an editor to conclude that the printed page number is preferred over the one given by the reader.

Also, there is WP:PAGELINKS ... what number do we put in the URL? The printed one or the one the reading software uses (which may not always be the same)? Daniel Case (talk) 07:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I suppose no one just ever expected an editor to not just use the page numbers printed on the page for the page numbers. This is the appropriate venue because one can cite pages with the CS1 family of citations, {{citation}}, or without any template at all — this is a question about citing sources in general, not about a specific template, although the documentation in various templates could be changed if this is deemed necessary. WP:PAGENUM reads If there are no page numbers, whether in ebooks or print materials, then you can use other means of identifying the relevant section of a lengthy work, such as the chapter number or the section title. — to me that suggests if there are page numbers then no additional instructions are needed because one would just use those. Umimmak (talk) 07:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I decided to stop being snotty about this and ponder why we started doing it that way. I think it goes back to the late 2000s, when we only had the now-long-deprecated {{PDFlink}} (which had no page number support IIRC) for PDFs and we didn't have all the {{cite}} ones yet. At the time, also, I remember, a lot of PDFs were often created specifically for the web, usually from Word. They were rarely more than one-page documents, and those that were often weren't numbered within the documents because no one expected them to be used anywhere but online. And further, clicking on one usually triggered Adobe Acrobat Reader or whatever other software you had installed to read them, externally entirely from your browser.

I remember over at WP:NRHP we often had to deal with scanned copies of old nominations to the National Register which had never been numbered because no one expected them to be so easily readable when they were created and reviewed. That may have been where we used software-assigned pagination.

Nowadays, with a lot of online PDFs being versions of hard-copy documents even though they may be read much more online than off, that's less of an issue than it was, but I must admit that even in 2017 I was still holding to the old way.

For things that clearly have a real-world existence, like journal articles or court decisions (anything using consecutive pagination, really), I have always used that pagination.

Of course there's another issue ... PDFs comprising a collection of documents from disparate sources whose on-page pagination isn't sequential, so you might have several possible page 7s. Yes, you could give the title of the collection of documents within the PDF, but a reader might not know that and wonder where your source is and, when they don't find it, plant a {{failed verification}} tag that really wasn't justified inline and give you a small headache. In that case it would make more sense to use the software's pagination; the issue that prompted Roy to start this thread would not be a problem because the document represented by the PDF wouldn't/doesn't exist in real life.

Daniel Case (talk) 07:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to state the obvious, usage of {{rp}} (and {{r}} as well?) and whether or not it is desirable/deprecated or whatever should be in documentation. Generally, I think a lot of the grief over referencing is due to a lack of clear, up-to-date and well thought out documentation that is accessible to the ordinary editor. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that much of the documentation around citations is just plain terrible. I suspect much of it makes sense to the insiders, but to people coming at this new, it's impenetrable. I also think (and I know I'm not going to convince anybody of this) we need to standardize on one common reference style that's used everywhere. Even if we went with a style that I don't like, at least it would be a common target that everybody could aim for, ranging from end users, to the people who document templates, to the people who write tools like Visual Editor or Citoid. RoySmith (talk) 15:44, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

You will get no argument from me when you say that documentation around citations is just plain terrible. If you think it needs improving, improve it. None of the cs1|2 documentation is protected; anyone who has the skill to improve the documentation may do so. If you know how to improve the citation documentation, don't complain about it, improve it.

If the past is any predictor of the future, what happens now will be absolutely nothing ... until the next time it is convenient to complain about citation documentation. Whereupon, I shall reissue this challenge, get the same result; wash rinse repeat.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:02, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect, that's blaming the victim. How can somebody who doesn't understand how something works improve the documentation which explains how it works? RoySmith (talk) 16:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so. My experience suggests that newbies who don't understand ask for help rather than complain about documentation quality. It's the experienced editors who do understand that complain about documentation quality. I suspect that you are a member of that latter group. Because I am so close to the cs1|2 templates from a technical point of view, I tend to write from that point of view which is not really accessible to non-technical editors. In the real world, there are people (there were when I was living in the real world) who translate writing written by technical people into something that a user can understand. That is what we need here. Wikipedia has lots of people who are skilled at writing for those who don't 'know'. They are the people who can make citation documentation accessible. Will they? Will you?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:59, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

It keeps going back to the fact that we are all volunteers here. I have experience at creating and presenting training materials for bureaucratic procedures and for computer use, but I edit WP because I enjoy finding good sources and adding content. That, and trying to follow the selection of project pages that are on my watchlist, already eats up more time than I am comfortable with spending on WP. I've also seen editors put in a lot of time revamping policy or guidance pages, only to see the community flatly reject the changes (although, what I'm thinking of happened many years ago). So, while I might consider helping on a rewrite of the citation procedures, I would want to be sure first that the community wants it to happen, and there was some clear consensus on what would constitute an improvement. That means there would have to be a lot more discussion than we have seen here. Donald Albury 17:57, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

If there were to be a revamp of referencing advice/methods/etc. it would make sense to start with analysing whether what we have actually meets the hopes and aspirations on the subject. A particular problem is the way the long form reference displays the page numbers in the text of an article. Fine if it is just one page number, but if you have two page ranges that support the article text, or a non-numerical location identifier, it takes a lot of article space. I am no fan of {{sfn}} (pain in the neck to edit) but it gives a much better result for the reader. Surely something like that could be replicated with long form references? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Should our aspirations on referencing include a target of reducing the number of ways of doing this? We already have parenthetical referencing deprecated. Is this a clue that we should perhaps target just two main referencing styles (long and short form) and achieve those with a limited number of templates that would give style consistency? The advantage would be for the reader, as they would consistently see better technical displays of referencing info (getting mouse-over displays, etc.). I suspect that it would also weed out some "problem" references – for example ambiguous identification of the work cited in a short referencing arrangement. I am not suggesting a massive conversion of all of Wikipedia to a new system, just preferring a more limited range of methods for new content. Clearly, a slimmed down methodology would be much easier to document for new and existing users. I appreciate this might upset the "Betamax man" editors who are wedded to an older system, but I think that is just a feature of a changing world. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Established citation style

If I completely rewrite an article (not keeping any of the original text or references), I usually use whatever citation style makes sense to me. If someone else comes along and says they want the citation style changed to what it was before the rewrite, are they correct? (t · c) buidhe 00:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Assuming that what was there had an established citation style, yes. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:12, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

If there was a clear style beforehand, and you heavily modified the article then the style shouldn't change. But if the article is completely replaced with a new version then choosing a new style would seem appropriate. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:16, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with ActivelyDisinterested; a rewriter has discretion to choose a new citation style. Ifly6 (talk) 22:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

In particular, as articles grow in size and complexity, a change to the citation style can often be a good idea.

Even if none of that applies, it's important to remember that the other editor can't single-handedly require that the old style be used. They can only require that a discussion happen on the talk page, and that both of you adhere to the result of any consensus reached there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

You should ask on talk first. If the article is in such a state that it needs completely rewriting, probably no one will object. Johnbod (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that there should be a discussion on the talk page. However, just to be clear, there was a previously established citation style that was 100% consistent and follows a widely used citation style. The article was completely rewritten, but extensive edits (from more than one editor) using the previously established citation style were made afterwards. Boghog (talk) 22:37, 8 February 2024 (UTC) So it is OK to change the citation style once, but not twice? Boghog (talk) 22:59, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion the edits afterwards the rewrite should have confirmed to the article style as it was after it had been rewritten. If the article is basically a different article, the previous style has no bearing on the the article after the rewrite. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:41, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The subsequent edits are substantial approaching another rewrite. What really matters is consensus on the article's talk page. Boghog (talk) 00:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

And, I recommend, on the article's actual talk page, not the GA review page. The Wikipedia:Good article criteria explicitly say that consistent citation format is not required for GA status. Therefore, that's a problem that you can solve at your leisure, after the GA review (hopefully) gets resolved one way or the other soon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

@Boghog: I agree that the discussion is unrelated to the GA review. As WhatamIdoing says, a consistent format is not part of the standard. The GA criteria only require citations sufficient to locate the cited source. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:41, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

An article rewrite requires a significant amount of input from the editor(s) tackling it. A rewrite also implies that there is something fundamentally wrong with the article in its previous state. One of those may well be an old-fashioned citation style that is not appropriate to the needs of the article. It seems rather onerous on editor(s) who are prepared to put in the work on a rewrite to have their hands tied on one aspect of how it is done.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Their hands are only tied if there is a consensus on the talk page not to change the citation style. If there's something fundamentally wrong with the article, it's usually going to be the case that there's no editor who is actively looking after it and there would be no objections on the talk page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:03, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. We have probably millions of articles with "something fundamentally wrong with" them, but, contrary to what many editors seem to think, this is never or almost never "an old-fashioned citation style that is not appropriate to the needs of the article". That's a very minor aspect. Johnbod (talk) 15:39, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

MOS:RETAIN pertains to the first non-stub version of an article. If it was previously a stub, you are free to change the citation style. Otherwise, as noted above, you require consensus on the talk page for a change. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 17:27, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Am I reading MOS:RETAIN wrong? It's just about the English version, isn't it? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

What about if subsequent citations added have not conformed to the style of the first citation? What if the original citations did not conform to current standards? Consider Vaquita, which looked like this (definitely not a stub) after the first edit on 25 November 2003? The citations had become a mess by this version on 18 April 2023. Are you saying that I was wrong to revise the citations to a current standard (not the original style) here, as of 5 May 2023, without finding a consensus to do so on the talk page? Donald Albury 17:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

This would seem to go against the third pint of "Generally considered helpful" under CITEVAR, "imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles". If the article is now a mess of citation styles now, I don't believe it's helpful to insist editors search back through the article history before tidying the referencing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

• This is simple… go to the article talk page and reach a consensus on which citation style should be used in the article going forward. Do that, and any previous citation styles that may have been used/not used no longer matter. Blueboar (talk) 19:17, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The expectation of a consensus on citation style may well come up against an article-watching editor who, almost by definition, thinks the existing set-up is OK. I suggest that is why there are articles out there with referencing that is difficult to handle (largely from a reader point of view). To pick an example: in Vasa (ship), where you will also find explanatory footnotes treated as references, and lots of meaningless ref names (e.g. ref name=":0") – and an editor who seems to resist change. OK, there will be another point of view on that example, but it looks like a barrier to improvement to me. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

There certainly is; I personally find splitting explanatory footnotes and references tiresome and unhelpful, both as an editor and a reader. Academic books almost never do it, and I simply don't understand why so many of our editors do. I agree re the "ref name=":0""though, but these are produced by the templates that new editors are instructed to use these days. Johnbod (talk) 04:35, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The issue of separate notes is about an online encyclopaedia that is trying to use summary style. An explanatory footnote allows the editor to handle something that breaks the flow of an article (perhaps an explanation that will be well-known to some readers). This is similar to the links to other articles – sure there are links in printed encyclopaedias, but not so speedy as we have here. What an {{efn}} allows is the ability to reference the content of a footnote without risking breaking the constraints of the referencing system being used. Whether or not our system follows the format of most academic works has little relevance as the majority of Wikipedia readers do not spend a lot of time (any?) reading such academic material. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:28, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

This makes little sense frankly. A long (or short) footnote also "allows the editor to handle something that breaks the flow of an article", whether or not it is lumped in with mere citations. If it is true that "the majority of Wikipedia readers do not spend a lot of time (any?) reading such academic material", which probably depends a lot on the article subject, then we are probably all wasting our time adding referencing and notes at all. In general departures from the style of the best WP:RS should be regarded with suspicion. Johnbod (talk) 12:32, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

When I am reading a WP article just for pleasure, I don't bother checking the references, but I always click through to the extended footnotes. Similarly, when I am reading a book with end-of-chapter or end-of-book footnotes, I like to look at any footnotes that provide information beyond a cited work and page number, and find it a little annoying when I have to look at many footnotes to find the few that do provide information beyond just a citation. I think it is useful to distinguish between footnotes that are only providing a citation and footnotes that are providing additional/peripheral information. Donald Albury 19:06, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The named reference thing is covered by replacing opaque named-reference names with conventional ones, such as "Einstein-1905" instead of ":27", and changing them to something more descriptive shouldn't be seen as controversial. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

My general impression of that article is that the citation style is in pretty good shape and certainly not in need of a major overhaul. Gawaon (talk) 20:39, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it's easier than that - if you at the point of making mass changes because you don't like the citation style, go do something else. This applies if someone has rewritten an article and changed the style while doing so, or you find an article and don't like it's current style. If the there is no consistent style then making it consistent is fine and helpful, as per policy, but otherwise there is much more important work to be done. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I perhaps should have explained that the consensus in the example I gave is, arguably, not that in the head of the resisting editor. On not mixing explanatory footnotes with references, they actively removed efn templates from three different editors in different parts of the article (surely a consensus – actions speak louder than words) and then claim they have a consensus against that template. Going into detail on that article (a WP:FA!!) would be out of place here, but the referencing is chaotic, with ref names for the same work having multiple unrelated versions. Oh, and I have just altered some of the opaque refnames to something identifiable. To be clear, I am leaving what I see as antiquated referencing alone where possible, but since the style is already mixed and the talk page did give an OK to using templates, I use them on new content. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to say my comment was in reply to Blueboar and about the situation in general. It shouldn't be read as criticism of you or any other editor. I would agree the specific details are better discussed at the articles talk page rather than here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

References

What to do if original website was replaced by predatory dangerous website

What is the easiest way to modify the "cite web"? See example of what I did [6]. Do not click on link I replaced! But obviously it is not a good way. And there are several dozens of links to this website - Altenmann >talk 06:20, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

@Altenmann, I believe that you are looking for |url-status=usurped. See the options in Template:Cite web#URL if you want to read more about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

|url-status=unfit.  — Archer1234 (t·c) 06:51, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

url-status=usurped worked great in George de Godzinsky, thanks! It made the original link invisible. - Altenmann >talk 06:57, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, here is a link to the section of the {{cite web}} documentation where all of the supported values for |url-status= are explained: Template:Cite_web#csdoc_urlstatus  — Archer1234 (t·c) 07:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Separate section for explanatory notes

A few comments above show resistance to having explanatory notes separate from the references that support the article text. Two points here: (1) a (very brief) survey of featured articles and (2) thoughts on technical reasons whey separate notes are desirable (is the technical argument right?)

(1) Surveyed 10 featured articles and found 2 that did not use explanatory notes in any way. The remaining 8 all had the explanatory notes separate from references.

(2) I believe that the only way to put explanatory notes in the same section as the references is with ref../ref. However, for technical reasons, you could not put any links or other markup elements in the explanatory note. The only way to reference the note (and if it is an explanatory note, it almost certainly needs a reference) is to just type it in with the rest of the note content. This is, essentially, parenthetical referencing, which is deprecated. The only way that I know to show explanatory notes without using ref.../ref is with a template such as {{efn}}, which seems to compel a separate explanatory notes section. Therefore, if explanatory notes are to be referenced, surely anything other than a separate explanatory notes section is deprecated. Does this idea hold water? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this does hold water. See Wulfhere of Mercia for a featured article with explanatory notes in amongst the footnotes, and with embedded links. (I'm not sure why you think markup is not possible in a reference.) You've posted many times over the last few weeks, arguing for or against certain citation formats. I don't think the results of those discussions have been productive, and it's worth repeating that the point of CITEVAR is almost entirely to avoid having such discussions in the first place, because people have such strong opinions about citation formats (as you've seen) that it's almost never productive to do so. What's your ultimate goal here? To get rid of CITEVAR? To deprecate one or more currently acceptable formats? If so I think you are most unlikely to be successful, and I doubt it's worth the time investment you're making in it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:32, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

In reverse order: My goals are (1) to try and understand exactly how the mechanics of referencing works so that we can all concentrate on article content – I regard myself as a "content" editor not a "technical" editor (2) have a referencing system that uses the technology in a way that is helpful to the reader.

Technical limitations come from (a) Template:Refn, which I now see is incorrect on not being able to link to another article within the ref../ref text.
(b) because: article text<ref>this is an explanatory note and here is its reference <ref> cited work</ref></ref>
gives: article text</ref>
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:04, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I think Cefnllys Castle#Notes demonstrates a different sort of explanatory note (especially note 2) than we see in Wulfhere of Mercia. The former example gives information forks which the reader can choose or not choose to follow, whereas the latter is really just exploring the matter of sources in more detail. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Mike Christie. None of these lengthy musings are likely to lead anywhere. Johnbod (talk) 16:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Item (2) is plain wrong. It is bad ides to put notes in the same section as references, for several reasons. And I often use {{efn}} syntax, which allows references within, see eg. Town of fools or Wise Men of Chelm. - Altenmann >talk 17:20, 15 February 2024‎ (UTC)

I think the situation in which mixing the two types is most common is when there is only one or two explanatory notes and not very many sources, either. If editors don't want to bother with separate sections in that circumstance, I don't really blame them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that ThoughtIdRetired is very aggressively campaigning to force a change of the note standard in talk:Vasa (ship). They've been at it at galley too. Peter ^Isotalo 20:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)