Talk:Roman Republic

message: In addition to the IABot issue discussed above, I think it would be worthwhile to have a larger discussion on desired citation format. At the moment we have a mix of formats and of content: some CS1 templates and some handwritten sources, some sfns and some harvs and some untemplated short citations, some books with publication location and others without... any thoughts on what the preferred approach should be for this article? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:34, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I would prefer (highly predictably) an Sfn-style (Edit. Nb when I refer to this, I mean both  with substitution of  for references with explanatory notes;  with  does not work for notes): it would make the prose more easily parseable from the rest of the mark up. It also is, I think, least disruptive when CS1 templates are already present at the bottom. Ifly6 (talk) 02:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd also weigh in for sfn: it's by far the least cumbersome when dealing with a lot of references, especially where the same work is referenced multiple times. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 05:53, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The drawback to the sfn format is the inability to point to different online pages, within multi-page volumes, with changes in page number. Sfn have an admirable terseness, but I would like full citations to be allowed, as well. If visual clutter becomes a problem for me, due to the number of complex citations amongst text, I turn on a parser, which for me is wikEd. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: In what cases would you want full citations - just for the edge case you mention, or others as well? And full citations in what format? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:10, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I would want them for the edge cases. I prefer citations that use the CS1 templates (I assume the "cite" templates are what are being referred to), rather than roll-your-own formats, although I've encountered valued editors who prefer the latter. In short, flexibility, although when starting articles I tend toward the list-defined, sfn citations myself. In the back of my mind is the thought that citing should be handled at Wikidata, whose full citations would be accessed by identifiers at the articles. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:31, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: What kinds of issues with  /  are you identifying? Ifly6 (talk) 01:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have several citations that point to different sets of pages within the same compendious online volume, you can have direct URLs to those different sets using cite-book templates, but not easily using an sfn citation, which you would otherwise want to use (I've seen someone attempt a workaround, but it's ugly). Dhtwiki (talk) 05:10, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you give an example of what you're describing? I'm not sure I understand. Ifly6 (talk) 14:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: See the references section to Tuileries Palace, where both sfn and full citations pointing to online text are used. But, see following post and reply. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Is the workaround the method shown at "Article text" in  or is that a different method? NebY (talk) 17:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the workaround I'm thinking of was kludgier. What you've found is interesting and may be the solution. However, I don't think we can't still have a flexible approach. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't say I entirely understand what you're pointing to on Tuileries Palace. I was thinking that you were referring to something like  which would render as . I'm also unsure as to what you mean by "flexible approach"; would not just using  with  tags be sufficient? Ifly6 (talk) 01:33, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that you and NebY have found the way around the deficiency I perceived, by merely piping external links, although they could be seen as misplaced external links. At the Tuileries Palace article, there are sfn and full citations living side by side, as they do at many articles, and some of the full citations point to different places in the same online book. I don't know how to explain it better. Dhtwiki (talk) 02:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Do we want journal and web references to be inline, or to also use short cites inline and full cites at the end? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I think it's considered a little archaic now to make a distinction, particularly for journals, and would favour short cites for all secondary sources (if we do use e.g. an ancient or epigraphic primary source, that should be cited in 'full' in the note, but I doubt that it would be appropriate to do so in such a high-level article). UndercoverClassicist (talk) 07:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Problem: a number of short citations currently present either don't correspond with a full citation at all, or could potentially correspond with more than one. Can anyone assist with that issue? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:18, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: There are two Lintott 1999s, one is Violence in republican Rome. Per Wikipedia:Citing sources, it should be marked with two further elements: (1)  and (2) . The other Lintott 1999 is Constitution of the Roman republic, which I think is the book being cited in much of the section on the constitution. Older revisions state it was Constitution. Ifly6 (talk) 15:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation format 

message: Greetings Wikipedians! The lede contains no citations to reliable sources. In my opinion that should be corrected, given the length and level of detail in the lede Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 11:48, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Lead sections are generally not required to include citations, per WP:LEADCITE. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I would venture that the OP above is aware of this, but believes that the level of detail and length therein would justify having citations regardless. Ifly6 (talk) 15:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be an issue if (and only if) the lead contained material which either a) was a direct or near quotation from a source, b) was so controversial that it needs to be cited immediately, or c) didn't also appear later in the article with a citation. Otherwise, as Nikki points out, WP:LEADCITE says we shouldn't cite it in the lead, regardless of how long or detailed that lead is (incidentally, I don't think the lead is anything unusual in that regard, given the length of the article itself). Has anybody identified anything which falls into one of those categories? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 15:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with all of the above; leads are not normally required to be cited except in certain situations noted above, and there's nothing here that meets that requirement.  The information in the lead is, I believe, all cited in the body, which is sufficient.  --Jayron32 15:22, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lede section lacks inline citations 

message: Per
Can we start a discussion on these deletions and some examples on them? I can't say I reviewed them at the time. Not to assign blame – WP:AGF – who is  and what are the content removals you are objecting to? Ifly6 (talk) 15:11, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think they were made in bad faith, but this editor didn't understand how Wikipedia works. It seems that any sentence that did not end with a reference was removed, as well as those with a "citation needed". T8612 (talk) 18:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to be generous and also assume these edits were not made in bad faith, we don't necessarily need to discuss the intentions of the editor, but we should sure discuss the alarming amount of material excised from the article, some of it clearly attached to cited scholarly sources (so that wasn't even enough to save it). Most of the content I restored were images as well as image caption descriptions removed with zero justification or even an edit summary explaining what was going on. Providing profoundly terse one-word edit summaries while removing 3,000 KB of text at a time including cited sources is not how anyone should behave or conduct themselves here on this site. The editor in question did some good work in systematically transforming the citation style of the article, but the very intentional bulldozing of other peoples' hard work was totally unwarranted. This is especially the case for the removal of descriptions that muddled the context and ruined the purpose of image placements in several sub-sections. We should be making things easier for general readers to understand, and this quite clearly achieved the opposite effect. Pericles of AthensTalk 20:33, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Without diffs or an identification, I have to guess that you mean edits carried out after this article and Roman Empire were tagged as too long. If so, the discussion at Talk:Roman Empire/Archive 11#Length may be relevant. That was followed by much copy-editing of Roman Empire which, at least in part and rather to my surprise, skillfully and beneficially trimmed some longwindedness. I don't know if the edits here were similar; it may also be that to some extent they removed material which was and still is also in linked main articles and may even have been copied here from them, and that all that work, effort and research into scholarly sources remains in those articles. NebY (talk) 21:35, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yea the length basis was the main one as to why I didn't review any of the deletions: the article was too long and has been known to be too long. While I appreciate – especially after writing piles of articles on obscure topics or figures like Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, and the Marian reforms – that the detail that we could go into is near limitless, an article such as this really must be a WP:SUMMARY. Ifly6 (talk) 21:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

text: Who is the mysterious editor at hand? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 04:34, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  July removals