Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 8

message: Are there any plans for the mediawiki software we use to support footnotes?
I generally avoid them myself because they're too messy with syntax to be used often, in my opinion, but footnotes are good otherwise.  Neonumbers 12:55, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mediawiki software & footnotes 

message: Why? As far as I can see, these just make citations harder to edit, especially for the less computer-literate. And I'm fairly techy; I program in ASP etc, but find these templates substantially more of a pain to use (and edit when others have used them) than the plain versions. I think standardisation of style can be perfectly well accomplished by looking at similar webpages. The strict standardisation imposed by templates is neither that worth having (when it works), nor does it always work in every situation (without a proliferation of templates). At the risk of repeating myself, why?. Rd232 11:24, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation templates 

message: I would suggest that it is not good practice to set up as a guideline an aim to reduce the amount of information available in Wikipedia.  I am not opposed to cleaning up things and providing focus to an article and its supporting information ... things that grow organically need trimming just as any bush does.  However, I am opposed to the sentiment behind statements like "...remove a related but unnecessary quote..." or "Obviously sometimes quotations and cited statements should be removed for editorial reasons."  The notion expressed is one of (it seems) _if it doesn't belong in the article as a professionally written piece it doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all_ .  Rather I would suggest that the default behavior be "preserve information"... which does not mean that information is inviolate from removal from the article space but that if it is removed from the article space the removal is acknowledged and made available for discussion in the discussion space.  History-pages do provide an archival reference, but the granularity of histories is such that things get lost to sight quickly.
Now I think that some things are "obviously" to be expunged: vandalism, advertising, POV editorializing.  What I am getting at is the notion that "redundant" and "superfluous" are not synonyms and need to be distinguished from one another in this environment.  Redundancy can work in our favor as it can be tremendously annoying when someone goes to a source and finds that either a) it is no longer available or b) the excerpting/interpretation of information from one source was less than perfect.  I do agree that the article space should be clean and favor readability, coherence and single-voice parsing over inclusionist tendencies; this principle should not carry over to either article discussion space or to (not mentioned above) WikiProject space, where non-article information might exist that either supplements or extends the articles under a particular WikiProjects stewardship (not equal in any way to ownership, another thing I oppose in the Wikipedia environment).
Thanks for sitting through the words.  Thoughts? Courtland 10:34, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
:I think your point that the aim is not to reduce the amount of information available in Wikipedia is a good one. I think there should be a Wikipedia "Law of Conservation of Information" to that effect and would support such a guideline of policy. However, I am of the opinion that the addition is totally compatible with this aim. If you look at the article itself, the example given is a removal of a quote to Wikiquote -- which effectively conserves the information presented.
:While Wikipedia is amateur in its nature, I think it is useful to use professional standards as a bellwether with the knowledge that we are engaged in a project that is much larger in scope. This is why I think it important to be clear how to use citations. I have read more than a few high school and college essays that read like halting treatises rather than coherent arguments sometimes with three or four citations per sentence. We need to encourage citations while also encouraging good writing. Joshuaschroeder 12:03, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Inclusionism" 

message: Hi, all. 
I decided today that ASINs weren't, fundamentally, any use for references. So I started removing them. After about a hundred I asked the mailing list, and got a couple of "go ahead" comments; at about two hundred I got collared by another editor & reported for vandalism. This, I decided, was A Bit Of A Hint to stop and think about what I was doing.
So, I'd like people's thoughts. Using ISBNs instead of ASINs (since they're usually identical!) seems clearly preferable, but removing ASINs wholesale? Contentious...
Comments appreciated at User:Shimgray/ASIN, so we can try and hash out a consensus on this. Shimgray 00:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of ASINs in citations 

message: This page has been suffering from very bad instruction creep. This page should be about the policy of citing sources in order to support articles as much as a part of the manual of style. I've moved the huge example styles and template systems to their own pages and linked to them instead, and removed the duplicate/crufty advice that had built up.
Hopefully now people will actually read the page and take it on board, instead of taking one look at the monster ToC and going "no thanks". Dan100 (Talk) 15:56, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
The examples were the most useful part of the page.  When I first spotted the page, I spotted it and found what I was looking for.  It should be restored.  lots of issues  | leave me a message 01:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A clean 

message: I've read over most of the guidlines/rules regarding sourcing and reliability etc.  But I'm afraid I am still quite confused.  What is an acceptable source?  I don't really have a specific article in mind when I ask this question, but it seems to be interpreted differently by just about everyone.  To try to give you an idea what I am asking, here is an article  where many of the sources are op/ed's, blog posts etc.  I understand that such sources would be acceptable when used in the formulation of "(person who wrote it) asserts...", but too often its given a greater weight. 172.209.76.25
:It semms probable to me (based on your posting of this question) that you already have an appropriate sense of which sources are acceptable in each context.  I suggest that you trust your judgement.  This is not a statement that all editors should trust their judgement on this matter; the example that you cite is just one of many that demonstrate the difficulties that editors have in identifying appropriate sources.  Your confusion may arise because you imagine that articles reflect best practice.  If you want to see appropriate referencing, I suggest that you watch recent Featured Articles. —Theo  (Talk) 09:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Question