User talk:Speednat/Archive/2013/Nov
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Tinamou
[edit]Hi Speednat; thanks for the barnstar! Always nice to get some positive feedback and much appreciated. With regard to getting Tinamou to FA, I would love to see it get there, but it will need someone other than I to do the final checking and polishing. Essentially, I have done what I can with the article, but it needs someone to do stuff such as reference tweaking. Feel free to nominate it for FA; it is still the WP:BIRD current collaboration. Cheers. Maias (talk) 06:27, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
You accepted the edits made by a sock, when the PC was added to prevent edits by that sock. Please be more careful and if you aren't sure, don't accept the edits. Legoktm (talk) 22:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
RE:Crested Moa
[edit]I also used the "short citation" for editing in an easy way many articles (Enantiornithes for example), and for that reason they create some months (¿or weeks?) ago a "Visual Editor" (an interface that hides the wikitext), to simplify this problem.--Ornithodiez (talk) 01:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
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November 2013
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- are farm products, sporting goods, boats, and packaging material.<ref name=Cohen>Cohen, Saul B. (1998}</ref>
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Reference citation styles and WP:CITEVAR
[edit]Hi. I'm concerned about the way you are completely overhauling reference sections, which I gather is for Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup. While the referencing cleanup work is very much appreciated, changing the citation styles from long form to short form is explicitly against the policies. There are no "standard" ways of referencing in Wikipedia, aside from the fact that the preexisting citation styles should remain in place unless there is consensus to change it. See WP:CITEVAR
I personally strongly dislike short citations. They are confusing to readers as they do not link directly to the actual details of the source. Future editors are also far more likely to use the more widespread full style (and thus lead to citation style clashes later on). Wikipedia is in digital not printed form and does not need to conserve space. Furthermore, in articles likeAbaca, it's completely unnecessary to have to create two sections just to point to a mere handful of references.
Please do not unilaterally change citation styles. And if you do, consider using full citations instead to avoid having to clean it up again. The latter is more widely used in Wikipedia and is the style available in the templates presented to new editors. Cheers.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 12:45, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- The issue I have with the long citation style is when numerous different citations refer to the same source but with different info (mainly page #'s). In this situation the short citation style is the only way to maintain order. However, not every page requires that, Abaca is one where it works either way. I used to think the long was better too, but the aforementioned reason swayed me, when I could not see a logical way to reconcile the problem in keeping with the long style. speednat (talk) 14:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- Unless a book is used heavily for an article (which in itself would not be ideal for POV reasons), that rarely becomes a problem in my experience. Usually the number of pages used for the entire article is less than 4 per book and right next to each other (e.g. "202–205"). Simply enumerating them should be enough, as the reader can quickly flip through those pages and check which verifies what. The same system is used in scientific journals, incidentally.
- The most common way I usually encounter same books with different info are when different chapters are used with different authors but the same editor. In which case, it simply isn't a problem to cite both as different inline refs. Again, I don't see why Wikipedia can't. We don't have to conserve space. And given that most of the references come in the form of hyperlinks (also the reason why we don't need to list references alphabetically), it's more important for the reader to see the actual reference detail immediately, rather than having to manually look for it in the bibliography section.
- Additionally, short citations aren't used for journal articles (they don't require specific pages, only page ranges) and webpages, videos, audio recordings, etc. are ill-suited for it; which means that using short citation styles in articles which use a variety of source media would devolve into confusion pretty quickly. Really, the only places I commonly encounter short citation styles are in very longprinted books which necessitate separating a footnotes section from a bibliography at the end due to the expense of printing additional pages. This is why I tend to view short cites as relics of printed material.
- But the main problem I see with short citation styles is really the huge potential for citation clashes later on, which would mean someone familiar with how it is done would have to watch the article constantly and convert new reference insertions almost every time. Very few people use it or are familiar with it. And Wikipedia explicitly does not use it as the preferred citation style.
- But agree to disagree, I guess. Just please don't change citation styles unilaterally. Keep the style used previously per our policies.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 19:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- I appreciate the food for thought, I am trying to do what works best and makes the articles involved professional looking and efficient. speednat (talk) 20:06, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- I really do appreciate the work you're doing though. Long or short styles, it's still better than the mess the reference sections are for some articles. :) -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL22:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks, I really do appreciate the input and not just a quick revert and nose thumb. speednat (talk) 23:08, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
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