Talk:St Peter's Church, Southrop

Why {{Cite book}} and {{Cite web}} in place of {{Citation}}

The {{cite book}} and {{cite web}} templates are derivatives of the {{citation}} template. Given the same parameters, {{cite web}} and {{citation}} sometimes produce slightly different outputs (see the examples).

However, that wasn't the primary reason for changing the {{citation}} templates to {{cite book}} and {{cite web}}. Editors who encounter a {{citation}} template may need to read the whole citation to know whether the citation is to a book, journal, periodical, online source, etc: <ref name=EH>{{Citation | title = Church of St Peter | work = ''National Heritage List for England'' | publisher = [[English Heritage]] | url = http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1089198 | accessdate =2 July 2011}}</ref> Using the appropriate {{cite xxx}} template allows editors to know at a glance that the citation identifies an online source, or book, or periodical, or journal, or comic, or video, etc. That makes life easier for the editors who will follow.

It is this editor's opinion that anything that editors do should make life easier for those who follow us. We will be edited. For this reason, I think that all citation family templates should be in the vertical format. Horizontally formatted citation-family templates may or may not contain white space except where required for human readability in the template's output:

<ref name=EH>{{Citation|title=Church of St Peter|work=''National Heritage List for England''|publisher=[[English Heritage]]|url=http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1089198|accessdate=2 July 2011}}</ref>

For readers of English, the brain is trained to expect white space between words. The|machine|that|will|translate|the|content|of|the|citation-family|template|has|no|such|requirement. Formatting templates into a vertical format (as is done in the article with the David Verey Cotswold Churches book citation) provides the white space that the brain needs to easily scan and understand what is there, to see what can be improved, and when comparing the differences between article versions, to easily see what another editor has changed. I'll get off my soapbox now, shall I?

--Trappist the monk (talk) 14:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem with the vertical format. It's an issue that hadn't occurred to me before; as far as I can tell editors usually use the horizontal format to save space. With the list-defined refs, space isn't such an issue.

As far as {{citation}} vs. {{cite xxx}}, generally the preferred style of the article's first major editor (basically whoever picks the style in the first place) is followed, within reason of course. I personally prefer {{citation}} because it seems to be easier to keep the refs consistently formatted. Unless they've been changed recently, there are subtle differences between some of the {{cite xxx}} templates. I can't remember which off the top of my head, perhaps with {{cite news}} and some of the others, not sure. It's not the most important issue in the world, but making sure they are consistent from the start is good practice. That kind of stuff gets picked up at WP:FAC.

Now, to be honest, letting editors know at a glance what kind of ref it is has not really occurred to me, and I can't see a huge advantage in it. I've never found it an issue when editing other people's work. That said, I'm not hugely invested in the {{Citation}} templates for this article. I see your point, even if I don't really agree. If you want to change them back again, I won't revert. :) --BelovedFreak 20:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I will change have changed them back.

Frankly, I've never understood the admonition to use the article's first major editor's preferred style. That seems counter to another, and more commonly seen, admonition to editors: be bold. One can't really be bold and at the same time yield to another's preferences.

The other thing I've never understood is the notion that horizontally formatted {{citation}} family templates save space. The edit window seems to be enormous. An article so large that it would require space-saving tricks like horizontally formatted {{citation}} family templates would have become truly unwieldy for other reasons long before space-saving tricks would be required. Yeah, yeah, climbing down off the soapbox again.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2012 (UTC)