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RFC: Is a change in citation markup method a change in citation style?
Some editors believe that a change in the wikisource formatting of citations, such as a change to or from List-defined References, or a change to or from the use of citation templates, is a change in citation style, and under WP:CITEVAR should not be made without obtaining consensus first, if there is an existing established citation style. Others believe that as long as the visible citations are unchanged, changing the wikicode does not amount to a change in style. Various arguments have been made in recent threads here on WT:CITE, as well as on WT:MOS. I ask for comments to resolve this issue with clear consensus, if possible. DES (talk) 21:55, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Background
This issue was being discussed at least as far back as 2010, in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 28#Consistent style. Changes to WP:CITE in October 2015 favored the "coding is style" view, but were disputed at the time and since. Recently the matter has become heated once more. Extended dispute over the meaning of an important guideline is not good, and should be settled by wider discussion. DES (talk) 22:02, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- Comment: Here's a link to a possibly relevant previous discussion from 2010. There may be others between then and now. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:37, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, coding is part of style
- Yes, coding is part of style, because it causes the same kind of mental adjustments and tool selection adjustments that editors would have to make when changing among completely different kinds of styles (APA Style vs Chicago Manual of Style, for example). Jc3s5h (talk) 22:43, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- The formatting of the wiki-code is at least as important to editors, perhaps more important, than is the rendered appearance. Moreover, even if it makes no difference in appearance at a given moment, the use or non-use of templates may make a significant difference in future, as the templates might well be changed to emit different output. Moreover even now it is not really possible for the output to be identical: most of the citation templates emit machine-readable microformats, which manually formatted citations that are otherwise identical will not. Thus a change to or from the use of citation templates is a change in rendered output, even if that change is not readily visible to the non-automated reader. Similarly the use of WP:LDRs facilitates particular editing styles, and not others. Changing existing citations to use or not use LDRs without consensus is undesirable, as neither is favored or disfavored by any guideline. DES (talk) 22:41, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes. How citations are rendered is a stylistic choice, as much as is choosing to use APA over MLA. We don't mandate that users format citations using {{cite}} over {{citation}}, or use LDR over inline refs; it's a choice that someone has to make at some point in the article's development. Changing that is not "coding cleanup" unless we have a community consensus on a single approach that all articles must use - and we aren't there now. Until that happens, this is the best way to avoid endless edit-warring over optional preferences. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Perhaps you mean
{{cite ...}}
(cs1) v.{{citation}}
(cs2) since{{cite}}
redirects to{{citation}}
. We should make the distinction between the cs1 templates and{{citation}}
because they render differently:- Author (2016). Title. Publisher. –
{{cite book}}
- Author (2016), Title, Publisher –
{{citation}}
- Author (2016). Title. Publisher. –
- The cs1|2 templates have
|mode=
which allows cs1 to render in the same fashion as cs2 and vice versa so that the reader does not know that there are differences in the coding. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:06, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Perhaps you mean
-
- it's a choice that someone has to make at some point in the article's development There are two problems with this: (1) allowing "someone" to make a choice is pure WP:OWN (2) as noted below, coding style often needs to change with article length, so a choice made at one point should not be privileged over choices made later. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- "it's a choice that someone has to make" is a simple statement of fact: if you are the first person to add a reference to an article, you obviously must make some sort of decision about how you are going to format that reference, since there is no mandatory style. As for your point (2), no, it doesn't need to change. You might prefer using different formatting for longer articles vs shorter, but it's perfectly possible to keep it the same. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:33, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- it's a choice that someone has to make at some point in the article's development There are two problems with this: (1) allowing "someone" to make a choice is pure WP:OWN (2) as noted below, coding style often needs to change with article length, so a choice made at one point should not be privileged over choices made later. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, coding is an important aspect of style for editors and I agree with Nikkimaria — until we have templates that can invoke styles through a
style=
-parameter — it is important that we don't allow arbitrary changes by saying "coding is not style". ~99% of so called "code-cleanup" consists of wasteful edits which only intend to inflate edit-counts of the editors who perform them. CFCF 💌 📧 14:24, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, coding is part of style. The reason we have WP:CITEVAR is to avoid situations where people are discouraged from contributing by being forced to use unfamiliar citation styles. Coding differences is probably the most significant deterrent from contributing. Changing for example simple inline short references (Johnson 2001:59), to linked ones using the harv template creates the same visual output style, but the second forces the editor to learn much more wikimarkup. WP:CITEVAR just needs to be respected. This of course does not mean that you cant change <ref>M</ref> to <ref name=M> (which I think is basically the same style and requires the same level of expertise), but it does mean that if someone takes exception to that choice you need to go to the talkpage and argue your case.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:59, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Maunus: Funnily enough if you make coding part of style sensu CITEVAR, then no-one can add "(Johnson 2001:59)" to a
{{Harv}}
based article, causing precisely the deterrent you want to avoid. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:27, 31 March 2016 (UTC).
- @Maunus: Funnily enough if you make coding part of style sensu CITEVAR, then no-one can add "(Johnson 2001:59)" to a
- Yes. Coding is part of how citations are written. In fact, CITEVAR's origins go back to preventing editors from forcing citation templates onto manual cites. I don't use citation templates, so when I edit articles where templates are used, I add manual refs in a style that copies the style the templates use. But I fully expect someone to convert those refs to templates, because the preference of the first major contributor, or whoever is most active on the page, is for templates. Similarly, when manual cites are dominant, I expect those who prefer templates not to impose them. SarahSV (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- See next subsection. For everyone who's taking the reflexive position – based on the intent in an old discussion and pretty much nothing else, least of all whether the rationale behind that intent made any sense at all and wasn't just more WP:OWNish territorialism, and whether current consensus cares what the original idea was – there's just as many people providing frankly pretty obvious rationales for why it cannot actually be that code = style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:28, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, per several of the comments above. For the articles I've worked on, I can't remember a situation where I've argued against a proposed coding change, but for the reasons given above I think it should not be done unilaterally. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:54, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes: this is another aspect of the relatively arbitrary choices which must be made when creating (or whatever) an article and all of the relevant guidelines (and whatever) which deal with such arbitrary choices – WP:RETAIN, WP:ENGVAR, WP:CITEVAR – stress the importance of content stability and consistency within an article. They also say that when there is an objective reason for a change then that is allowed within normal evolution of consensus.
- An example of this would be a stub article with four "vanilla" web page references (
<ref>...</ref>
) being expanded to an article with 25 inlines referring to various page ranges in a dozen books, plus a few web references. In this case it makes obvious sense to start using Harvard-style references at least for the books and it would be proper for the person adding the new content to decide how to do that while updating the article. - If an article is obviously (as evidenced by its inconsistencies) not being maintained, then I see nothing wrong with anybody who is prepared to tidy it up deciding how they want to do that, which would then become the reference for any "which style" or "stability" consideration.
- Nothing forces editors to follow the existing style slavishly, although it is considerate to try to do so as much as practicable. The expectation of stability and consistency does however, define the acceptable direction of any subsequent tidying up.
- Not all editors put the same emphasis on such tidiness, but there can be no harm in allowing those for whom it is important to address those issues as long as they do so tactfully.
- We are also expected to respect the contributions of our fellow editors. That absolutely precludes allowing every new editor who starts working on an article to rewrite it in the new editor's preferred style. Apart from any issue of stability this is a matter of common courtesy. --Mirokado (talk) 23:07, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
- An example of this would be a stub article with four "vanilla" web page references (
No, coding is not part of style
- Style is what readers see. Code is how we make that happen, and the exact methods for doing this change over time. Furthermore, the attempts by certain editors to prevent other editors from improving citation markup, without changing the rendered style of the citations, violates WP:EDITING, WP:OWN, and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY policies; no one needs permission to do coding cleanup. It would also interfere with various bot and AWB work; is an unreasonable burden on other editors (to remember which tiny handful of editors out of our many thousands believe that no one is allowed to touch "their" cite coding); is not practical (citation coding requirements change over time, and thus must be updated whether their "owner" understands or not). And it's against the WP:5P ("mercilessly edited") and WP:COMMONSENSE principles. Among many other reasons covered in more detail in #Instruction creep in WP:CITEVAR, above, the most obvious being WP:CREEP. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:03, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- Clearly, otherwise every change to a Cite template would result in mass bannings and nuclear war. Moreover many improvements have made parameters obsolete. Many editors do not know how to use Cite templates, and welcome others improving their referencing. Some of us are not allowed to use things like "refill" and rely on others applying it.
There are enough restrictions on who can edit and what they can do already, without making minor changes in references yet another prohibition.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:55, 27 March 2016 (UTC). - The best solution to problems of this kind is to gain community consensuses on the largely inconsequential details that we spend so much time arguing about, and codify those consensuses in the guidelines so that we are all on the same page. Except for the few who refuse to follow a guideline, even on such trivial details, because they disagree with it and "it's only a guideline", that solution would put an end to the arguing.
For example, we should be able to reach a consensus that a refname should be meaningful. And we should be able to reach a consensus on preferred parameter formatting within a citation template. There is no merit in an argument that such decisions should be left to local consensus because, for example, some articles might need a space before the separator character while others might be better served by no space there; these are cases where one size could in fact fit all.
The common argument against such guidelines, CREEP, is easy to defeat. Guidelines are justified when they discourage editors from spending a vast amount of time arguing about relatively unimportant things. A legitimate function of guidelines is (or should be) the elimination of bikeshed opportunities. The guiding principle should be sensible use of editor resources—not individual freedom of expression.
Another opposing argument, that it would make it more difficult to learn editing, is also fallacious. No editor would be forced to conform, and no editor would be chastised if they did something "wrong", but they should not object when "their" coding is modified to conform by someone else (preferably with a link to the guideline in the editsum). Again, no time wasted arguing about it.
I see no other good solution to the problems addressed in this RfC, but to corrupt the intent of CITEVAR would be a step in the wrong direction. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:23, 28 March 2016 (UTC)- In that example I like meaningful ref names. But I would not object to someone improving an article by naming references with "ref1" etc.. Someone else can add meaning later (if they want to). However someone changing "BBC" to "Ref1" would get a "stern look".
- I think that means I agree with you.
- All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:02, 29 March 2016 (UTC).
- Seems a bit superfluous at this point. If I edit a page with the VisualEditor, I end up inserting citations which are "styled differently" from those on the page currently without thinking about the current style or knowing that I'm inserting a variant. Likewise I am very skeptical of proposals which would hem in our ability to update references to templates (or some future tool) by invoking a longstanding policy that was developed for (largely) different purposes. Protonk (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Taking the opinion that "coding is a part of style" (or vice versa) seems a bit black and white. For example, VisualEditor currently moves parameters around when you edit a citation. Should I take that to mean that VE is broken in some way, or that it's editing in non-compliance with CITEVAR? Rich's comment above, wherein a change to an established template citation method is applied, makes the answer painfully obvious. No, that result would plainly be ludicrous. I find myself most in-agreement with the notion that "it's clearly not a part of style at a 'low level'", but that it may be a part of style at a "higher level". By "higher level", I mean the distinction between CS1/2/published X style/unpublished Y style. I am not sure about the question of whether e.g. changing a "bare" Harvard reference to a "linked Harvard reference using {{sfn}}" would be more likely to be "low level style" or "high level style"--You've already made the choice to use Harvard style referencing. This decision itself was a style decision and seems clearly to me to be a "high level" style choice. But at the next level, to choose whether to use templates or not? Not so clear. If you were to ask me? {{sfn}} looks like a pain to manage compared to an un-templated reference. But I prefer using general CS1 when I don't have a citation for the same work repeated. Hmm. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
- This position makes the most sense to me. As long as the visible appearance doesn't change, replacing manual markup with templates should be unproblematic. (I would argue against changes in the other direction, but not on the basis of CITEVAR.) For that matter, expanding references with additional useful information in the same general style (e.g. adding dois to journal references) should also not count as a change in citation style. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:54, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Partly, some aspects of coding are relevant, others not
- I am a strong advocate of using templates for citations. They are simpler to use, consistent in rendered appearance and facilitate the generation of metadata. I would favour a change in policy that favoured the widespread and general conversion to templates, on the grounds that they are objectively better. That said, I know that some editors oppose their use. I see, at minimum, a need to separate the question of whether to use templates from some other questions about their more subtle use.
- There are (at least) two other issues of whitespace, formatting and layout that have no effect on the rendered page and for one of them is only of strong relevance within the templated context anyway. Despite that, both have been contentious of late. These are the use of
{{Reflist|refs= ...}}
and also the layout of parameters to a citation template, either in-line or per-line, and with or without whitespace. Whatever is (if anything) decided about conversions to and from templates overall, we should separate out these changes as clearly being, "minor changes that affect neither rendered behaviour, nor the overall use or not of templates". - As to our behaviour over these changes, then I see that there is very little reason to prohibit changes in either direction, other than a general reluctance against churn or edit-warring. As they are so inconsequential to the finished result, there can be little strong reason to favour one over the other. For the use of lists of refs in particular, this is likely to become more attractive as an article grows in size. The current view that "preserving the status quo is all that matters" is deeply unhelpful here. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed. I would modify my own comment above with the suggestion that these matters might be something we want to have guidance on, but it/they must be separated out from the style issue. The problem is that we have a guideline on not changing from AMA to Harvard style (or whatever). Some people separately want to also not change from LDR to entirely-inline references, or (when inline) from horizontal to vertical or (when LDR) from vertical to horizontal. These are not style matters, they're coding standards. But by shoe-horning them into the sentence on style (what the reader sees) it opens the unintentional back door of people editwarring to the death other whether you can change their
<ref name=Washin_08/>
[or worse – I see crap like<ref name=_39xps#p8/>
with increasing frequency] to<ref name="Washington 2008" />
. The present situation is untenable, robbing Peter to pay Paul by defending one kind editwarring to prevent another. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 03:02, 27 March 2016 (UTC) - Agreed. We need to separate out the different issues. In particular, a coding style for a short article, however long-standing, is often not appropriate for a longer article, particularly when the same sources are used repeatedly. It's unacceptable that a coding style adopted when an article first ceases to become a stub is then imposed on editors when the article undergoes a major expansion; it can discourage them from expanding the article. (I've a short list of articles I won't work on because of encountering this issue.) On the other hand, there are different ways of dealing with referencing in long articles (e.g. using the sfn family of templates or not), and flipping between them isn't helpful, which is why I say the issues need to be separated out. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:06, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- If editors working on an article think that, as it grows, a different coding style would be an improvement, all that they need do is hold a brief talk page discussion to establish that that is the new consensus for the article. What should not happen is for one editor to decided that he knows better than all other editors and make a wholesale change without consulting other editors who work on the article. What is even less desirable is edit wars over coding style. The point of CITEVAR is to prevent such edit wars, and prevent such unilateral undiscussed changes. But if a change is clearly an improvement, then obtaining consensus to change should be quick and easy, If it isn't so easy, maybe its status as an improvement isn't so clear. DES (talk) 16:09, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Or maybe there's a small group of editors with fixed views and a sense of ownership. The point is that most articles have few editors working on them so a local consensus builds up. That's why we need project-wide guidance. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:30, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes. The key problem here is the "other editors who work on the article" sentiment, the WP:VESTED / WP:OWN belief that whoever has put in more time at a particular article has "tenure" at it and must be obeyed or at least deferred to. This is an un-wiki and anti-policy viewpoint that needs to be scrubbed away vigorously and with strong solvents until no trace remains. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
- Whereas the idea that who ever manages to get their preference encrusted in the MOS has the moral right to make everyone else conform to their wishes on any detail of writing and presentation is profoundly wikipedian? People who are WP:VESTED in their WP:OWN citation preferences are no less WP:VESTED than those who happen to WP:kNOW about a topic and therefore take a special interest in writing about it and like to have some say about how that knowledge is represented.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:59, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
- @Maunus: No-one is suggesting imposing a single visible uniform citation style, and I would be strongly opposed if they did. The main issue is whether WP:CITEVAR should give the first main contributor even more control in even more detail over the internal coding of referencing, which is quite a different matter. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:22, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- In fact I think, lots of people are waiting for any sign that citevar is loosing consensus to do just that. It is not about "more" control, since the difference between hand formatted and coded referencing is in fact the original context for wp:citevar. Of course the same rules should apply to the case with the difference between <ref> tags and {{sfn|}} cites for example. There just is no reason why anyone's preference for one or the other should overrule the first style that is systematically used in an article. Changes to citation coding can always be changed through normal talkpage consensus. But as long as it is one persons preference vs. the preference of another, then of course it makes sense to use WP:CITEVAR as a grandfather clause.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:07, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
- Nice conspiracy theory there. What "lots of people"? Ping them, and let's see if they agree with the way you've characterized them. 23:30, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
- In fact I think, lots of people are waiting for any sign that citevar is loosing consensus to do just that. It is not about "more" control, since the difference between hand formatted and coded referencing is in fact the original context for wp:citevar. Of course the same rules should apply to the case with the difference between <ref> tags and {{sfn|}} cites for example. There just is no reason why anyone's preference for one or the other should overrule the first style that is systematically used in an article. Changes to citation coding can always be changed through normal talkpage consensus. But as long as it is one persons preference vs. the preference of another, then of course it makes sense to use WP:CITEVAR as a grandfather clause.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:07, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- @Maunus: No-one is suggesting imposing a single visible uniform citation style, and I would be strongly opposed if they did. The main issue is whether WP:CITEVAR should give the first main contributor even more control in even more detail over the internal coding of referencing, which is quite a different matter. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:22, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
- Whereas the idea that who ever manages to get their preference encrusted in the MOS has the moral right to make everyone else conform to their wishes on any detail of writing and presentation is profoundly wikipedian? People who are WP:VESTED in their WP:OWN citation preferences are no less WP:VESTED than those who happen to WP:kNOW about a topic and therefore take a special interest in writing about it and like to have some say about how that knowledge is represented.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:59, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
- Yes. The key problem here is the "other editors who work on the article" sentiment, the WP:VESTED / WP:OWN belief that whoever has put in more time at a particular article has "tenure" at it and must be obeyed or at least deferred to. This is an un-wiki and anti-policy viewpoint that needs to be scrubbed away vigorously and with strong solvents until no trace remains. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
- Or maybe there's a small group of editors with fixed views and a sense of ownership. The point is that most articles have few editors working on them so a local consensus builds up. That's why we need project-wide guidance. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:30, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- If editors working on an article think that, as it grows, a different coding style would be an improvement, all that they need do is hold a brief talk page discussion to establish that that is the new consensus for the article. What should not happen is for one editor to decided that he knows better than all other editors and make a wholesale change without consulting other editors who work on the article. What is even less desirable is edit wars over coding style. The point of CITEVAR is to prevent such edit wars, and prevent such unilateral undiscussed changes. But if a change is clearly an improvement, then obtaining consensus to change should be quick and easy, If it isn't so easy, maybe its status as an improvement isn't so clear. DES (talk) 16:09, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed. I would modify my own comment above with the suggestion that these matters might be something we want to have guidance on, but it/they must be separated out from the style issue. The problem is that we have a guideline on not changing from AMA to Harvard style (or whatever). Some people separately want to also not change from LDR to entirely-inline references, or (when inline) from horizontal to vertical or (when LDR) from vertical to horizontal. These are not style matters, they're coding standards. But by shoe-horning them into the sentence on style (what the reader sees) it opens the unintentional back door of people editwarring to the death other whether you can change their
- IMO coding normally should not be "style" as far as WP:CITEVAR is concerned, although stopping edit wars over the templates-vs-manual question is clearly a plus-good side effect.
All of this guideline, including the CITEVAR section, ought to be built upon the sensible, practical "do your best" standard that is introduced in the lead, rather than the "Shame on you for violating a guideline!" attitude that some editors show. Interested editors can improve the formatting later if that's needed. The important point is to be able to figure out what the source is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- @WhatamIdoing: yes, a very sensible view, but the problem is with interested editors can improve the formatting later – there simply isn't agreement on what "improve" means. I think that if an article uses Harvard style references, it's an improvement to make these wikilink to the full citation; other editors dislike the blue colour this produces and don't think it's an improvement, and so use WP:CITEVAR to prevent wikilinking (see the long discussions at Talk:Ancient Roman pottery if you want an example). There's no way of reconciling these two positions. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:32, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
- Your example changes the appearance as perceived by a non-editing reader, and therefore is not a question of "coding" at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: your comment illustrates how WP:CITEVAR leads to instruction creep and restrictions quite absent elsewhere. No-one would say that you can't add appropriate wikilinks to article text, yet WP:CITEVAR is interpreted to mean that you can't add wikilinks to citations. Note that by this logic, if I create an article and do not include any author links in the citations (and as it happens I personally dislike them), then I can object to others adding them later since this will change the "visible style". How is this helpful to readers? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- Does this page (WP:CITE) require author links? If so, then you can certainly add them. If not, then there is no consensus that they do help readers. The implicit argument you are making is that the change you want to make (e.g. adding author links) will help readers. But everyone thinks that the changes they make will help readers, so that is really no argument at all. The truth is that usually these things make very little difference. If something is important enough that it should be done everywhere, it should not be too difficult to get consensus to add it to the guideline, at which point CITEVAR would not apply. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:09, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @CBM: sorry, I don't quite understand your point. Mine is to ask why adding relevant wikilinks to an article is always allowed, but adding relevant wikilinks to citations is treated as violating WP:CITEVAR (whether they are links to authors, journals, book titles, publishers, or whatever). If WhatamIdoing's interpretation above is correct, then an editor would need to seek consensus at the article talk page before adding wikilinks to citations if none were already present and an editor objected. I don't believe that WP:CITEVAR should have this authority. Do you? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:19, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- Your commentary is confusing because you are conflating adding wikilinks within citations (eg. to author or publisher articles elsewhere on Wikipedia) with adding links from short to long citations within an article (ie. harvlinks, however these are done). Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Nikkimaria: why is this "confusing"? The objection to adding wikilinks from short to long citations within an article is that it makes the citations look different – part of them will then be blue. Adding wikilinks from within a citation to anywhere (either a section in the same article or a different article) makes the citations look different – part of them will be blue or even red. The interpretation offered above is that making citations look different is against WP:CITEVAR and so needs consensus. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- But the two are still different issues, and one might reasonably object to one change but not the other (we are, after all, in a section devoted to arguing that some format changes are against CITEVAR and others are not). Conflating the two in this way only further confuses the discussion. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:30, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- Of course one might object to one change but not the other. But that's not the issue. The issue is whether CITEVAR can be used to support such an objection. If all visible changes to citations are covered by CITEVAR, then it necessarily covers adding wikilinks to citations. If you want CITEVAR to cover adding wikilinks from short to long citations, but not from citations to articles/sections, then it needs to be written differently. I think it should not cover either case. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:35, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- But it does, and you've already explained why - because there isn't agreement about what it means to "improve" a citation. An argument could be made that wikilinking is governed by MOS and harvlinking by CITE, but if there's disagreement you'll end up needing to discuss either way. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- Well, we agree on how the current CITEVAR can be interpreted. I want to change it, so that it protects a much more limited range of major choices of citation style, not details like blue vs. black text. "Discussions" under CITEVAR are, in my experience, usually unhelpful, since CITEVAR is essentially based on preference – I like it this way, you like it that way, but I got here first/I have more friends here than you do. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- One could say the same about pretty much any style discussion where the guideline leaves room for interpretation. If you think linking short cites to long is always an improvement, then as CBM suggested you could open a broader (not article specific) discussion to gain consensus to put that in the guideline. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- Well, we agree on how the current CITEVAR can be interpreted. I want to change it, so that it protects a much more limited range of major choices of citation style, not details like blue vs. black text. "Discussions" under CITEVAR are, in my experience, usually unhelpful, since CITEVAR is essentially based on preference – I like it this way, you like it that way, but I got here first/I have more friends here than you do. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- But it does, and you've already explained why - because there isn't agreement about what it means to "improve" a citation. An argument could be made that wikilinking is governed by MOS and harvlinking by CITE, but if there's disagreement you'll end up needing to discuss either way. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- Of course one might object to one change but not the other. But that's not the issue. The issue is whether CITEVAR can be used to support such an objection. If all visible changes to citations are covered by CITEVAR, then it necessarily covers adding wikilinks to citations. If you want CITEVAR to cover adding wikilinks from short to long citations, but not from citations to articles/sections, then it needs to be written differently. I think it should not cover either case. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:35, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- But the two are still different issues, and one might reasonably object to one change but not the other (we are, after all, in a section devoted to arguing that some format changes are against CITEVAR and others are not). Conflating the two in this way only further confuses the discussion. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:30, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Nikkimaria: why is this "confusing"? The objection to adding wikilinks from short to long citations within an article is that it makes the citations look different – part of them will then be blue. Adding wikilinks from within a citation to anywhere (either a section in the same article or a different article) makes the citations look different – part of them will be blue or even red. The interpretation offered above is that making citations look different is against WP:CITEVAR and so needs consensus. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- Your commentary is confusing because you are conflating adding wikilinks within citations (eg. to author or publisher articles elsewhere on Wikipedia) with adding links from short to long citations within an article (ie. harvlinks, however these are done). Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @CBM: sorry, I don't quite understand your point. Mine is to ask why adding relevant wikilinks to an article is always allowed, but adding relevant wikilinks to citations is treated as violating WP:CITEVAR (whether they are links to authors, journals, book titles, publishers, or whatever). If WhatamIdoing's interpretation above is correct, then an editor would need to seek consensus at the article talk page before adding wikilinks to citations if none were already present and an editor objected. I don't believe that WP:CITEVAR should have this authority. Do you? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:19, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- Does this page (WP:CITE) require author links? If so, then you can certainly add them. If not, then there is no consensus that they do help readers. The implicit argument you are making is that the change you want to make (e.g. adding author links) will help readers. But everyone thinks that the changes they make will help readers, so that is really no argument at all. The truth is that usually these things make very little difference. If something is important enough that it should be done everywhere, it should not be too difficult to get consensus to add it to the guideline, at which point CITEVAR would not apply. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:09, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: your comment illustrates how WP:CITEVAR leads to instruction creep and restrictions quite absent elsewhere. No-one would say that you can't add appropriate wikilinks to article text, yet WP:CITEVAR is interpreted to mean that you can't add wikilinks to citations. Note that by this logic, if I create an article and do not include any author links in the citations (and as it happens I personally dislike them), then I can object to others adding them later since this will change the "visible style". How is this helpful to readers? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- Your example changes the appearance as perceived by a non-editing reader, and therefore is not a question of "coding" at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: yes, a very sensible view, but the problem is with interested editors can improve the formatting later – there simply isn't agreement on what "improve" means. I think that if an article uses Harvard style references, it's an improvement to make these wikilink to the full citation; other editors dislike the blue colour this produces and don't think it's an improvement, and so use WP:CITEVAR to prevent wikilinking (see the long discussions at Talk:Ancient Roman pottery if you want an example). There's no way of reconciling these two positions. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:32, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Extended discussion of the Style RFC
- It doesn't really matter whether the use of citation templates is "part of style" or not. The key point is that there has never been consensus for either of these two options: (1) all citations should be converted, over time, to use citation templates; (2) all citations should be converted, over time, to not use citation templates. Because there is no general agreement over whether to use citation templates, the guideline here is neutral about the use or non-use of templates, and at the same time the guideline here discourages users from converting articles that are well-established with or without templates from being randomly "switched" to the other method. Even if citation templates are "not part of style", the guideline would still explicitly say not to change articles from one method to another, at least not without gaining consensus that the current method is inappropriate for the needs of the article. That fact is really what should be discussed at the RFC; the question about what is "really" a "part of style" is mostly irrelevant. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:18, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- @CBM: the October 2015 addition is concerned with the placement of citation templates, not whether they should be used or not, and so goes well beyond "templates or not". The current wording is used to defend all kinds of "coding style", such as whether the parameters to templates are placed on separate lines or not. What absolutely needs to be discussed is what counts as "style", and how to prevent continual creep of the guidelines. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:42, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- As WP:CITEVAR says that what should not be changed without consensus is "style" the question of what requires a consensus discussion to change is the question of what constitutes "style" unless we opt to change how CITEVAR is worded. The real question here is what things require a local consensus in advance to change. DES (talk) 22:46, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- I think that SMcCandlish is badly mistaken is several points made in the "no" section above. An insistence that coding style as well as rendered style be RETAINED, and not changed without consensus, is not a violation of WP:OWN It does not privilege any one editor, what it does privilege is the established stable style, if one exists. Anyone may change it after obtaining consensus, no one may change it without doing so, not even the "first major contributor". Nor does it require remembering "which tiny handful of editors out of our many thousands believe that no one is allowed to touch "their" cite coding" because it applies equally to every editor's cite coding, or more exactly, to every article's existing consistent coding style, where one does exist. Neither bots nor AWB users should be making automated or semi-automated changes that change such a style -- they might well make changes to move inconsistent, more recently added cites to the pre-existing style of the article. That will require a good algorithm to determine that style, or else use of human judgement to filter the list of articles to be worked on. But that is probably a good idea anyway. As this has been understood by many editors (and I argue has been the accepted albeit not unopposed consensus) for years, this is not CREEP, it is merely clarifying an existing guideline. DES (talk) 22:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
- It absolutely privileges any one editor, namely a) the first major contributor who believes they have WP:VESTED editorial rights (a falsehood perpetuated by the wording in this page, and often vigoriously defended by wikilawyering by various people who defend that anti-policy wording), or b) any random editwarrior who wants to over-control every aspect of a squatted-on article which pretty much no one else cares about, but which some gnome tried to improve before stepping on the hidden land mine that the page has a would-be owner. These are the two most common cases I encounter. I believe they're also among the cases Peter coxhead runs into, though I think his major concern is orthogonal to my main one, being only one of my secondary ones: people resisting LDR formatting without any actual rationale for their stonewalling, just an "I don't like it" complaint, using the incorrect and anti-policy interpretation of CITEVAR as a system-gaming platform from which to filibuster changes they don't understand or want to resist for the same of opposing change generally, but cannot formulate an actually rational objection to.
If you have an issue with what a bot or AWB is doing, take it up at the bot and AWB talk pages. There may be a potential problem of an AWB user mistaking a lone case of a citation done one way as the norm in an article actually otherwise done a different way, and mis-normalize to the non-majority style, but this doesn't seem to come up often enough to care about. It seems to cause fewer problems than editor-vs.-editor filibustering of code improvements, which is the reason we're here disputing your view on this.
A more sensible solution to the whole matter would be to normalize to the majority style in the article (aside from recent changes that altered existing citations). If I come to "your" C-class article you just improved from a stub, and I triple the size of it and the number of citations in it, why should you have any more say over what the citation style is to be now, other than as one editorial voice among all others? I know Curly Turkey takes this view (it's his #1 concern raised about CITEVAR, at any rate), but perhaps it's a different proposal for another time.
The real point is that whatever the best solution may be, there's definitely not a consensus in favor of the one you prefer, or there would not be so much dispute about this. "I get my way pretty often in bitter fights, and people give up because I fight to the end" is the approach too many have taken to this. It is not evidence of consensus, but of tendentious possessiveness that everyone rolls they eyes about and moves on because its petty and a waste of time. Ask yourself: How does preventing Peter Coxhead from using LDR in this article, or even preventing Jane Doe from using APA references in this article instead of Vancouver ones, for that matter, help the reader? Ask yourself also this: If this provision was enacted to prevent editorial disputes but is just leading to a long-term and increasingly dug-in editorial dispute of a broader nature, how well is it working? We tried it for a while, for lack of anything better to try, and it has not worked well. There's an old saying that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but expect different results. So, let's not be crazy. Is broke, do fix it. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:16, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- It absolutely privileges any one editor, namely a) the first major contributor who believes they have WP:VESTED editorial rights (a falsehood perpetuated by the wording in this page, and often vigoriously defended by wikilawyering by various people who defend that anti-policy wording), or b) any random editwarrior who wants to over-control every aspect of a squatted-on article which pretty much no one else cares about, but which some gnome tried to improve before stepping on the hidden land mine that the page has a would-be owner. These are the two most common cases I encounter. I believe they're also among the cases Peter coxhead runs into, though I think his major concern is orthogonal to my main one, being only one of my secondary ones: people resisting LDR formatting without any actual rationale for their stonewalling, just an "I don't like it" complaint, using the incorrect and anti-policy interpretation of CITEVAR as a system-gaming platform from which to filibuster changes they don't understand or want to resist for the same of opposing change generally, but cannot formulate an actually rational objection to.
-
-
-
- Just to clarify: my particular examples were ukiyo-e and comics, wher I completely scrapped what was there are rewrote the articles from scratch. This is not SMcCandlish's example of "If I come to 'your' C-class article you just improved from a stub, and I triple the size of it and the number of citations in it". I don't necessarily disagree with SMcCandlish, but it's not really the same as my situation. My point was that it would be merely disruptive and WP:LAWYER-ly to force the previous ENGVAR (assuming there was one) on an article that was completely rewritten from scratch. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:15, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for the clarification; I wasn't meaning to mis-analogize your cases. We are arguing the same point, I think. The wikilawyering about forcing the previous CITEVAR (or, rather, against introducing a consistent one or a better one) after major article improvement is what brings me to this discussion in the first place. I never have trouble with people over citation formatting except when expanding a poor, barely-above-stub article, and thereby rousing some page "owner" from a year or three ago who starts using every excuse they can think of to put the article back to their perfect version. I've also seen (and experienced) it used in a hounding manner by editor A who has a personal beef with editor B, following B around article after article in a particular topic area in which A desires control and desires B's absence, using CITEVAR as a bogus revert excuse, just another way to may life difficult for B at "A's own" articles. This can be particular destructive, given the habit of some editors of using a revert-all-work-punitively-to-object-to-one-particular-change tactic of editorial participation discouragement. This kind of nonsense is only possible under the "CITEVAR means code not style, despite being written to address style" interpretation. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:12, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
- Just to clarify: my particular examples were ukiyo-e and comics, wher I completely scrapped what was there are rewrote the articles from scratch. This is not SMcCandlish's example of "If I come to 'your' C-class article you just improved from a stub, and I triple the size of it and the number of citations in it". I don't necessarily disagree with SMcCandlish, but it's not really the same as my situation. My point was that it would be merely disruptive and WP:LAWYER-ly to force the previous ENGVAR (assuming there was one) on an article that was completely rewritten from scratch. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:15, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- So, in lieu of the current policy, we would have some number of completely avoidable edit wars, and a larger number of completely avoidable discussions on talk pages where people waste their time arguing whether LDR is better or worse, rather than working on actual article content. This is the WP:BIKESHED effect spread over thousands of articles. The current guideline has an easy fix: just leave the current style alone. That fix, like ENGVAR, *has* worked well. Very rarely do I see people come around my large watchlist randomly changing citation styles. Almost everyone does what the guideline says. The small number of self-appointed "gnomes" who insist that their preferences should override the preferences of everyone else are usually reasonable enough to cut it out once the fact their their preferences are not actually guidelines is noted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:29, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- This isn't a policy. WP:EDITING is the policy. The current guideline is not up for deletion, so I'm not sure what you mean by "in lieu of". What's under discussion here is whether editor A can prevent editor B from improving underlying citation code, in ways that are invisible to the reader, and can filibuster in this way with no rationale at all for the objection other that bible-thumping CITEVAR as if it applied to citation code formatting, not style as it actually says. Editwarring would not magically become permissible all of sudden, under any interpretation. The very fact that editor A in this scenario is gaming a guideline, against policy, to engage in a form of editwarring, however, is a good summary of the problem that brought us here. I'm not sure why you think the bicycle shed and debate problem is in any way improved by the interpretation you seem to favor. The exact opposite is the case. If editor B is making improvements to the citation code that make the article easier to work with, this increases the likelihood that people will work on it, and the efficiency with which they can do so. No one without a real argument is likely to get in the way. However, if there's a perception that CITEVAR allows someone to object to any citation-related alteration of any kind at all, and that they'll get their way if they can stonewall again consensus-forming without a real reason, just CITEVAR by itself – which is precisely the interpretation being advanced – this gives a very strong incentive to WP:OWN / WP:VESTED types to raise as much hell as possible on the talk page, hand-waving at CITEVAR until they are blue in the face, without ever raising a single substantive objection to the changes. If another couple of fans of this interpretation of CITEVAR show up (and they always seem to as if out of the blue ... I wonder why that is, since so few editors actually hold this view?), the over-controller of the citation code will probably WP:WIN, and the article will continue to be their personal playground, and will suffer in quality as a result. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:29, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- "If editor B is making improvements to the citation code that make the article easier to work with," then there will be consensus to document those improvements directly into the WP:CITE or WP:MOS guideline, and CITEVAR won't apply. Invariably, the actual issues are with things for which there is *not* a general consensus that they are improvements, such as list-defined references, citation templates, etc. The argument by editor B that they are "improving" the article falls flat in these cases, where editor B is only imposing their own optional preferences over someone else's optional preferences, and there is no consensus that either is better. If the guideline says that either of two options is acceptable, there is no reason to think that changing from one to another is an "improvement". — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- We're talking past each other, since our concerns about CITEVAR are largely unrelated. I can tell you from a mostly observer perspective (LDR isn't a big issue to me) that most of us have figured out by now that LDR is very helpful in long articles, and not so much in short ones. The exact same thing is true of SFN formatting and splitting references up into two refs sections, short and long. The disputes really are about a) which of these is a better approach, and b) at what point an article needs one of them. The underlying brainfart in CITEVAR, when wrongly applied to cite formatting not cite style, is that it is massive roadblock to ever coming to consensus on these matters at any article at all, because it ossifies the status quo. Secondly, the idea that there is not a broad consensus for templated references is totally untenable, sorry. There are a handful of people who hate them, and that's it. Everyone else uses them, and there is no real controversy in imposing them. I do it very frequently, and have run into people reverting me on that, in over ten years, fewer times than I can count on a single hand. Maybe reversing this situation is important to you in this RfC. Good luck. I have my eye on a more likely outcome: no one has any business reverting me on CITEVAR grounds if they have put in
<ref name=7>
and I change this to<ref name="Hendricks 2015">
so it's actually helpful and isn't meaningless noise. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 03:26, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- We're talking past each other, since our concerns about CITEVAR are largely unrelated. I can tell you from a mostly observer perspective (LDR isn't a big issue to me) that most of us have figured out by now that LDR is very helpful in long articles, and not so much in short ones. The exact same thing is true of SFN formatting and splitting references up into two refs sections, short and long. The disputes really are about a) which of these is a better approach, and b) at what point an article needs one of them. The underlying brainfart in CITEVAR, when wrongly applied to cite formatting not cite style, is that it is massive roadblock to ever coming to consensus on these matters at any article at all, because it ossifies the status quo. Secondly, the idea that there is not a broad consensus for templated references is totally untenable, sorry. There are a handful of people who hate them, and that's it. Everyone else uses them, and there is no real controversy in imposing them. I do it very frequently, and have run into people reverting me on that, in over ten years, fewer times than I can count on a single hand. Maybe reversing this situation is important to you in this RfC. Good luck. I have my eye on a more likely outcome: no one has any business reverting me on CITEVAR grounds if they have put in
- "If editor B is making improvements to the citation code that make the article easier to work with," then there will be consensus to document those improvements directly into the WP:CITE or WP:MOS guideline, and CITEVAR won't apply. Invariably, the actual issues are with things for which there is *not* a general consensus that they are improvements, such as list-defined references, citation templates, etc. The argument by editor B that they are "improving" the article falls flat in these cases, where editor B is only imposing their own optional preferences over someone else's optional preferences, and there is no consensus that either is better. If the guideline says that either of two options is acceptable, there is no reason to think that changing from one to another is an "improvement". — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- This isn't a policy. WP:EDITING is the policy. The current guideline is not up for deletion, so I'm not sure what you mean by "in lieu of". What's under discussion here is whether editor A can prevent editor B from improving underlying citation code, in ways that are invisible to the reader, and can filibuster in this way with no rationale at all for the objection other that bible-thumping CITEVAR as if it applied to citation code formatting, not style as it actually says. Editwarring would not magically become permissible all of sudden, under any interpretation. The very fact that editor A in this scenario is gaming a guideline, against policy, to engage in a form of editwarring, however, is a good summary of the problem that brought us here. I'm not sure why you think the bicycle shed and debate problem is in any way improved by the interpretation you seem to favor. The exact opposite is the case. If editor B is making improvements to the citation code that make the article easier to work with, this increases the likelihood that people will work on it, and the efficiency with which they can do so. No one without a real argument is likely to get in the way. However, if there's a perception that CITEVAR allows someone to object to any citation-related alteration of any kind at all, and that they'll get their way if they can stonewall again consensus-forming without a real reason, just CITEVAR by itself – which is precisely the interpretation being advanced – this gives a very strong incentive to WP:OWN / WP:VESTED types to raise as much hell as possible on the talk page, hand-waving at CITEVAR until they are blue in the face, without ever raising a single substantive objection to the changes. If another couple of fans of this interpretation of CITEVAR show up (and they always seem to as if out of the blue ... I wonder why that is, since so few editors actually hold this view?), the over-controller of the citation code will probably WP:WIN, and the article will continue to be their personal playground, and will suffer in quality as a result. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:29, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
-
-
- SMcCandlish above wrote that CITEVAR, when applied to coding style rather than visible style, ossifies the status quo. If taken to its extremes (which some of those posting here seem determined to do) it does, and so would have prevented some of the recent developments in editing tools and the re-working and improvement of the cite/citation templates. Fortunately, those involved have rightly ignored this extreme interpretation. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:47, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
- The definition of "Style" is given in the section WP:CITESTYLE. The first sentence of WP:CITEVAR states "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference ..."(my emphasis). There is no mention in definition of WP:CITESTYLE about how the style is achieved. Using templates is a method for achieving a style, but templates are not a style in their own right. In other words using
{{citation}}
or{{cite book}}
introduce a slightly different style, because of differences such as the seperator, but{{citation|mode=cs1}}
changes the style to that of{{cite book}}
and such usage does not introduce a different style. Style should be put back in its box and be used as was always intended, to prevent changes from footnoted inline long citations to footnote inline short citations (or vice versa), or from inline bracketed citations to footnoted citations. Those are changes in style the use of templates does not affect such things. -- PBS (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- I agree with you, but it's clear that many (if not most) of those commenting here do not. Whether there is any way to hold a wider discussion and reach consensus, I don't know, but I'm beginning to fear that we are stuck with the very broad interpretation of "cite style". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
- Templates such as
{{EB1911}}
apart from hiding the complexities of linking to Wikisource also add categories that are useful for maintenance, article development and checking attribution. The linking to Wikisource from within a template allows for easy changing of the path in one place if the path to the article changes on Wikisource. The same is true with other templates which provide a link to external sources. If the external path changes then a change to one template fixes the problem in all the article that use such a template instead of having to run a bot job to do the same thing (see for example{{cite SEP}}
and{{Cite DCB}}
for two templates where such changes have been made). In such case using templates such as these is not "merely on the grounds of personal preference". However if these templates are used is it reasonable for other to insist that the other citations in an article should not for example continue to insist that the year of the publication comes at the end of a hand-crafted citation or does that mean insisting or retaining a style "merely on the grounds of personal preference"?-- PBS (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- However, such templates must provide for at least the choice between CS1 and CS2 styles, and not all do, which means that they are not acceptable in some articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
- Those that wrap around standard citation can easily be modified. Those that do not can usually be modified quite quickly. The exception are those that use
{{Cite wikisource}}
. That would be a much larger job. I can think of an elegant LUA solution but that is best discussed elsewhere. If you come across any templates that need mode added let me know and i'have a go at adding it. -- PBS (talk) 12:04, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
- Those that wrap around standard citation can easily be modified. Those that do not can usually be modified quite quickly. The exception are those that use
- However, such templates must provide for at least the choice between CS1 and CS2 styles, and not all do, which means that they are not acceptable in some articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
- The elephant in the room is change. When a language is selected for spelling purposes, it does not mean that the names of entities can not change, indeed we encourage the usage of modern names in WP:AT eg Myanmar. What we are doing is saying use British or American spelling or whatever are to be used and so far spellings such as color/colour have not altered, but if they do presumably we will update the wording (as is often done for archaic words and phases imported from a PD source). But citations are not like that because over the years citation templates have become used more and more. Millions of articles were created before templates were commonly used so WP:CITEVAR is being used by some to support a status quo ante, and it is time this stopped. There are numerous advantages to using templates so using them is not a "personal choice", they do not in themselves introduce a style. The use by editors should not be mandated, but altering citations to use templates should not be reverted "merely on the grounds of personal preference". -- PBS (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- No, it shouldn't, but it will continue to be, whatever you or I think, since this is how WP:CITEVAR is interpreted by those that wish to enforce minor details of their preferred style and coding. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Identifying the actual concerns and their validity
This RfC is basically a false dichotomy and we're talking past each other a lot because many of our concerns are tangential to those of others. I can identify at least all of the following issues (not all of which are valid) in the above discussions, and feel free to add more. Some are clearly much more legitimate than others, and it's pretty obvious that there's a culture clash here between GA/FA-focused editors and stub-expansion editors, both of which camps feel they're doing more important work than the other.
- There are concerns that undiscussed changes of style (i.e. visual display) of citations in an article may be disruptive of article stability. (This is alleged to affect both readers and editors.)
- There are concerns that undiscussed changes of certain kinds of coding standards (article-wide formatting) of citations in an article may be disruptive of article stability. Examples include WP:LDR, WP:SFN, and the conversion to or stripping of templated citation formatting. (This is a different analysis, and largely on affects particular editors who like or dislike particular code approaches, though removal of template citations also destroys metadata and introduces maintenance problems.)
- There are concerns about WP:GAMING by using the pretense that undiscussed changes of trivial code formatting (a third category of change, affecting a particular cite, set of cites, or use of particular templates) may supposedly be disruptive of article stability, without any plausible rationale to support such a notion.
- There is a dispute (thus the RfC above) about whether these concerns should be commingled as if identical despite raising different potential problems in different circumstances, or treated separately for clarity (or even at all, in the case of code).
- There are concerns about misuse of CITEVAR to prevent coding-standards changes (the article-wide sort) that are needed for editorial efficiency, on the basis that it's "change in style", a disputed claim.
- There are concerns that over-extension of CITEVAR's scope enables furtherance of interpersonal disputes between editors by providing a "weapon" for revertwarring over trivia, to the detriment of community peace, article quality, and maintainability.
- There are disputes about which citation style (i.e. visual display) is most appropriate for a particular article, often tied to what is done in journals in the field to which the article's scope most pertains (though there can often be more than one, thus many of these disputes).
- There are disputes about whether WP should be importing external styles, and they feel we should stick with WP:CS1. (There does appear to be consensus to permit these styles.)
- There are disputes about whether WP should be permitting made-up styles that are neither CS1 [including CS2, now handled by CS1 templates, and increasingly merging], nor a recognized, documented style found in professional literature. (There is a local consensus at this page to permit this, but it has not actually be subjected to a site-wide consensus discussion. Given WP's hostility to "made up nonsense" it is actually unlikely that the community really supports the idea that fake citation styles cannot be changed without a big discussion, even if it would support the idea that citations may be added in any form as long as they're usable.)
- There are disputes about which citation-grouping coding standards (invisible to the user) are best for editors, at a particular level of article development, or when the use of WP:LDR or WP:SFN is warranted.
- There are disputes about which citation template-layout coding standards (horizontal vs. vertical) are best for editors, depending on citation placement. (In reality, we know from experience that horizontal works best for full citations when used inline, since it does not interfere with the ability to understand that paragraph structure of he document, and that vertical works best when full citations are grouped at page bottom, via either SFN or LDR, since it makes the citation details easier to parse and each cite easier to distinguish from the next.)
- There are disputes about which citation template parameter-spacing coding standards are best for editors. (In reality we know that: 1) in horizontal cites,
{{cite foo |para1=value1 |para2=value2 |...}}
is the vast-majority usage and that weird formatting like{{cite foo | para1 = value1 | para2 = value2 | ...}}
, or{{cite foo| para1= value1| para2= value2| ...}}
is cleaned up on sight as a parseability problem, with virtually no one ever reverting it; and 2) aligning=
characters in vertical templates is common but not enforced, and also virtually never reverted.) - There are concerns about misuse of the "consistent" provision to game the system by adding a few cites in a different style then claiming the style is inconsistent and imposing a new one. (See below for a tool that could short-circuit such behavior, if it's actually even happening.)
- There are disputes about expectations that an editor who did more work at an article – a) to get it past stub stage, b) in total, or c) recently – has more say about what citation style is to be used, what citation coding standards are employed, and what citation cleanup tweaks are permissible. (Policy does not support either of the first two cases – see WP:EDITING, WP:OWN and associated pages like WP:5P and WP:VESTED – and seems to favor the latter, since all of WP is built and maintained by the WP:CONSENSUS of who is doing the work now, not who was around in 2007, and consensus can change at any time. Further, the "first major contributor" rule was determined to be problematic at MOS and removed, further evidence of consensus against the first of these "control criteria". Nevertheless, we have a long-standing proviso site-wide that in the event of a dispute and its failure to reach resolution, preserve the status quo ante.)
- There are concerns that even the "first post-stub revision to introduce a style" rule, which replaced "first major contributor", may interfere with our normal status quo ante rule.
- There are concerns that despite attempts to resolve this WP:CONLEVEL conflict that people are still incorrectly interpreting CITEVAR (and WP:ENGVAR, WP:DATEVAR, WP:TITLEVAR) as "I did it this way, so you can't change it" WP:OWNership rules, when in fact they were intended as last-resort default when no other solution can be reached.
- There is a dispute about CITEVAR and other style-related material in WP:CITE being a WP:POVFORK from WP:MOS, and how to reintegrate them to prevent further conflict.
I think the causes of this fracture are: Firstly, GA and FA tend to give a lot of deference to whoever worked the most on an article (this is a choice by the participants at those processes, and is not a WP policy matter when it comes to who may edit and how). Secondly, some WP:MOS-focused editors, early on, resisted the use of external citation styles that do stylistically unusual things like using smallcaps extensively; but none of the current MoS regulars seems to care any longer, so this rift is illusory and only being maintained by WP:CITE regulars.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 03:26, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
- I think per point 4, the point-by-point analysis suggests that there should really be multiple RFCs. The RFC above doesn't say "making refnames understandable and converting between templated/untemplated citations are the same", it says "CITEVAR covers coding yes/no". We're getting more division on that because of different interpretations of "coding"; if we ran more limited RFCs on some of the individual points above (particularly 1-3), we would get a clearer consensus. Points 7-12 really shouldn't be part of a CITEVAR RFC unless/until a different RFC is run to determine which style is better/preferred/deprecated, because until that point all styles are available on the table. (And I would like to see some citations on some of your interpretation above). Nikkimaria (talk) 19:54, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
- Right. The point of this exercise is to see what the actual sticking points are, and RfC those separately. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:07, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
Which capitalization to use for citations
Hello, a recent discussion that sparked over on the Toby Fox article, is how to properly capitalize the name of source. The source itself displays the title in full caps, which is common for Polygon and IGN, but therefore the source code of the page or generally the tab title reveals the capitalization. In this case, the Polygon site source suggests "Land of memes and trolls: The epic and ridiculous self-aware world of Homestuck", however, user Maplestrip suggests that it should rather state "Land of Memes and Trolls: The Epic and Ridiculous Self-Aware World of Homestuck", saying that the Manual of Style (or more precisely, WP:MOSCAPS or WP:MOS#Titles of works) does not state that citations are no exception from the general rule of "English-language titles of compositions [...] are given in title case." I am therefore turning to you, as I am not really sure about this, and seemingly there is no consensus on this yet. Lordtobi (✉) 15:07, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
", Jr." in the "Surname, Firstname" format?
Hey, this doesn't look right to me -- any ideas? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:57, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- Indeed. I don't have any authoritative sources at hand, but generally the presentation in inverted format is "Buswell, Robert E., Jr.", which is obtained with
|last= Buswell
and|first= Robert E., Jr.
. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Quoting passages written in bad English
What do the rest of you think of this? Should I have just not included the quotations? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- It isn't obvious that you are quoting anyone. This for example:
- Yoon, Chang Sup. "A Brief History of Korean Architecture: 2. Ancient Architecture". Atelier Professor KOH Architectural Design Lab, Gyeongsang National University. Gyeongsang National University. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
Since the introduction of the Chinese culture of the Han Dynasty the basic system of wooden building frames has been passed down to recent years, Such structures coincidentally blended with other indigenous architectural details.
- Yoon, Chang Sup. "A Brief History of Korean Architecture: 2. Ancient Architecture". Atelier Professor KOH Architectural Design Lab, Gyeongsang National University. Gyeongsang National University. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
- That quote doesn't appear in the referenced web page.
|quote=
, because it renders its assigned value in quotation mark indicates that the quoted text can be found in the source material. As an aside, since the source is available and not hidden behind a paywall, there isn't really any need to quote material from the source in a reference.
- I can find nothing that uses the term "Atelier Professor KOH Architectural Design Lab" in any of the source pages I looked at. Where does that come from?
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
-
- "Atelier Professor KOH Architectural Design Lab" comes from the "main" page here. It contains no significant information, so it never occurred to me to link it (sorry!).
- As for the quote that doesn't appear on the page, that was an error on my part and only applied to two of the quotes. It's fixed now.
- Anyway, you think I should drop the quotes?
- Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:17, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- You would never know that from the section pages so perhaps the cites should be rewritten:
{{cite web |author=Yoon Chang Sup |work=A Brief History of Korean Architecture |title=2. Ancient Architecture |url=http://nongae.gsnu.ac.kr/~mirkoh/ob2.html |publisher=[[Gyeongsang National University]] |access-date=3 May 2016}}
- Yoon Chang Sup. "2. Ancient Architecture". A Brief History of Korean Architecture. Gyeongsang National University. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
- I used
|author=
because typical Asian names should render 'Surname forenames' not 'Surname, forenames' (this particular source notwithstanding); I used|work=
to hold the overall title because that is something seen on all of the section pages. And, yes, I think that quotations should rarely if ever be used and when they are they should be extremely brief. If it is necessary to quote a source, quote it in an end note ({{efn}}
and the like) and add citations to that. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:33, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- You would never know that from the section pages so perhaps the cites should be rewritten: