Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 2

message: You might be interested in Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards. The group is discussing reference standards, possible software changes and the like. Perhaps there should be some coordination between here and there. Maurreen 15:47, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Related page

message: The following was recently added: "If the author cannot be determined, then you may reconsider whether you have a reliable source at all." Was this on the basis of some consensus I missed? If so, I disagree. Official statements of organizations and governments, texts of laws, etc. are rarely attributable to authors; for that matter, articles in Wikipedia are rarely attributable to a particular author. I would really like to see this sentence either removed or expanded to the point where it resembles a sane policy. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:18, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
:Dittoed. Johnleemk | Talk 07:39, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  If the author cannot be determined... 

message: I guess because I mostly focus on historical topics of Wikipedia I've encountered some problems in citation not discussed here. These are:
* Citations from the Bible. The style I'm most familiar with is to write out in full the name of the book, then abbreviate it afterwards (e.g., Genesis & afterwards Gen.); chapter & verse are given in arabic numerals, separated by a colon (e.g. 3:16). 
* Citations from Classical sources. These are the ancient Greek & Roman authors: Homer, Hesiod, Vergil, Livy, etc. Whenever possible, write out the complete name of the work in Latin or Latinized Greek; italicize the title if it is considered book-sized, otherwise use quotation marks; book & line or section are given in arabic numerals, separated by a period (e.g. Iliad .100, & afterwards Il.; not Natural History but Naturalis Historiae 5.20, & afterwards N.H.)
ISTR that this is in line with the MLA guidelines, or matches established practice by scholarly classical journals -- but I could be wrong. Yes, I've been changing every citation I've seen to fit these; & yes, I've occasionally been inconsistent. -- llywrch 03:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: About the names of books, it seems like that would fall under the general rule of using whatever title the book is most commonly known by in the English-speaking world. Maurreen 05:15, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: One could finesse by making links to our growing collection of articles on the ancient source works, and making redirs from Latin/English as desired. Even after studying all this for some years, some of the names of works do not ring a bell for me (even when written out), casual readers will be even more mystified. Stan 17:17, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories not Covered 

message: I recently saw someone misunderstand why I had paragraph symbols in my footnotes to Kristin Hersh because I don't think they had seen the current Cite sources wikipedia guide mention it and the person thought I meant to use page numbers till I explained it to him. I had found the paragraph symbol method by going to the bottom of the Cite Sources page to the link to Citation Style Guides, and clicking the link at the top for APA style. That page includes the following example:
For electronic sources that do not provide page numbers, use the paragraph number, if available, preceded by the ? symbol or abbreviation para. If neither is visible, cite the heading and the number of the paragraph following it to direct the reader to the quoted material.	
(Myers, 2000, ? 5) 
(Beutler, 2000, Conclusion section, para. 1) 
Examples addressing online publications without page numbers should be in our wiki cite sources page because people need to be as specific as possible when citing in a footnote to the source of material we directly paraphrase or quote.
Here is MLA style on the same subject:
http://www.mla.org/publications/style/style_faq/style_faq7
If your source includes fixed page numbers or section numbering (such as numbering of paragraphs), cite the relevant numbers. For numbers other than page numbers, give the appropriate abbreviation before the numbers: "(Moulthrop, pars. 19-20)." (Pars. is the abbreviation for paragraphs. Common abbreviations are listed in the MLA Handbook, sec. 7.4.) Do not count paragraphs yourself if your source lacks numbering.
So, MLA would have me not cite to a paragraph of an unnumbered webpage. That makes footnoting to an online periodical less specific in showing people the location paraphrased material was taken from. I am curious as to whether I should go with APA or MLA since there is a discussion about this here. I have used APA so far in footnoting paraphrases from such material so far (mainly because that's what I thought the Cite sources page recommended), and I think it's actually better to provide the specific paragraph number when paraphrasing or quoting. (Of course it's easier not to. And here's another source that tends not to get into paragraph numbers: Columbia Online Style). Emerman 08:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citing to online publications in footnotes by paragraph number 

message: I strongly disagree with Stevenj's recent edits drastically reducing the discussion on how to correctly cite books, and assuming that it's just a matter of telling people to use templates.
# Somewhere we need to discuss the actual policy on what is correct. I think this is the place to do this. Stevenj's edit is tanatamount to burning the requirements document because you believe you now have a correct implementation...  or at least one that can be tweaked.
# Furthermore, not everyone likes using templates. Someone should be able to look at this page and see how to write a citation. They should not be effectively told, "hey, if you are not comfortable with parameterized templates, don't try to cite things."
# Even if you disagree with me on the previous points, this change is incredibly premature. We have effectively dropped discussion on citing a particular article within a larger book and on handling the situation where a book is attributed to particular editors rather than particular authors.
It is possible that some of the deleted material is, indeed, redundant, but I stand by my general points. 
I don't want an edit war, so I will not revert; I would appreciate other people's comments on this. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:53, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
: I strongly agree and feel the examples should be immediately replaced. There is no consensus at all that the templates are preferable to plain-text citations.  (And even if there were such a consensus, it would behoove us to support non-technically-minded users with strong examples which provide all the information necessary for later template cleanup.)  The removal of the discussion of the citation templates' technical limitations is especially strange; has the cap on 5 citations per template been removed (and in that case, why preserve "template 2" and "template 3"), or are we just brushing it under the rug? -- Rbellin|Talk 23:06, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, MediaWiki 1.4 (we just switched to it) removed the "only allowed to use any template 5 times per page" limit. I imagine we'll have to keep template 2/3 around until all the pages that use them get updated. (Although I suppose they could be turned into redirects.) Noel (talk) 23:11, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: That looks better!  Thanks for fixing this so quickly.  I agree, it's probably better to put all the template information together, and if possible in a form that parallels the plain-text citation examples so that comparison is easier.  -- Rbellin|Talk 23:43, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stevenj's recent edits