Wikipedia:Citing sources/Alternative proposal

Providing sources for your edits, in particular for edits that are challenged by other editors, is mandated by Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability, which are policy.

Citing reliable sources serves several purposes:

To ensure that articles are accurate and credible.
To show that your edit isn't original research.
To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.
To enhance the overall credibility and authoritative character of Wikipedia.
To credit a source for providing useful information.
To avoid claims of plagiarism or any other form of intellectual dishonesty.
To provide more information or further reading.
To facilitate quick and efficient verification of facts.

When to cite sources

When you add content

For all of the above reasons, if you add information to an article that you obtained from a specific external source, please cite the source of your information. If you can properly format your citation, that's great. If not, others can re-format it for you, as long as you provide all the information necessary to find the original source.

In general, even if you are writing from memory, you should actively search for authoritative references to cite. (If you are writing from your own knowledge, then you should know enough to identify good references that the reader can consult on the subject — you will not be around forever to answer questions.) The main point is to help the reader and other editors.

The need for citations is especially important when writing about the opinions held on a particular issue. Avoid weasel words such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, find a specific person or group who holds that opinion, mention them by name, and give a citation to some place where they can be seen or heard expressing that opinion.

Remember that Wikipedia is not for your opinions or for original research.

When there is a factual dispute

Disputed information which, if verified, would remain in an article, should be placed on the article's talk page — this gives other users the opportunity to find sources to support it, in which case the information could be re-inserted into the article proper.

When there is no factual dispute

Think ahead: Try to imagine whether people might doubt what you wrote. Supporting what is written in Wikipedia by referring to a clear and reliable source will add stability to your contribution.

Adding citations to an article is an excellent way to contribute to Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check for organized efforts to do this.

Style and how-to

The most important thing is to enter comprehensive reference information — that is, enough information so that a reader can find the original source with relative ease.

There are different ways of accomplishing this. At one extreme, one may place the complete citation in the main text of the article; this makes the specific reference for a specific point immediately available to the reader, but disrupts the text and makes it difficult to read. At the other extreme, one may place all citations at the end of the document, in a bibliography; this leaves the text uninterrupted and easy to read, but makes it harder to find the correct references for specific points. Different professions and academic disciplines have developed different means for finding a balance between these two extremes.

If available and unquestioned, follow the established practice for the appropriate profession or discipline.
An article's content contributors usually know the established practice.
If the established practice is unavailable or disputed, contributors should decide on a style that they believe strikes an appropriate balance between preserving the readability of the text and making citations as precise and accessible as possible.
If contributors differ as to the appropriate style of citation, they should defer to the article's main content contributors in deciding the most suitable format for the presentation of references. In the event that no agreement can be reached, the style used by the first major contributor should be kept.

If you are unclear as to which system or style to use, remember: the most important thing is to provide all the information one would need to identify and find the source. If necessary, put this information in the talk page, or in a comment on the main page, and ask others how to format it correctly for that article

Complete Citations in a "References" section

Complete citations — also called "references," because the citations identify the referred-to sources — are collected at the end of the article under a ==References== heading. Under this heading, list the comprehensive reference information as a bulleted (*) list, one per reference work.

References typically include: the name of the author, the title of the book or article, the name of the publisher, and the date of publication. Different professions, academic disciplines, and publishers have different conventions as to the order in which this information should be arranged, or whether additional information is required.

Typical references would be:

Smith, J. How to cite your sources, Random House, 2005. ISBN 1607000X
"Trauma of quake's shattered children" by Dan McDougall, The Observer, October 23, 2005, retrieved October 23, 2005
Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in inverted commas, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, and the date you retrieved it if it's online.
Some books have been reprinted several times over the course of the year. Sometimes they have gone through several editions, and sometimes a book may be published by several different publishers. It is important that all citations refer to the same edition by the same publisher, and that this information be included in the reference at the end of the article.

If you are the first to add references to an article, try to follow conventions generally accepted in the field of knowledge the article is about. Some of these might follow from formats proposed by WikiProjects.

If nothing in particular appears applicable, or if you don't know which style would work best:

The examples given in Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style might be helpful.
Applying the templates provided by Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles#Citations of generic sources frequently leads to acceptable formatting.

Further assistance may be derived from WikiBib, a simple bibliography maker written in javascript that has most of these templates built in.

The system of presenting references in a Wikipedia article can change over time. The important thing is to strive for clarity, and consistency within the article.

The guideline for footnotes and references using templates can be found at Wikipedia:Footnotes.

Sometimes — for example, when the article treats an uncontroversial or simple topic, and draws on a few, widely accepted general sources — it is sufficient to provide a "References" section at the end of the article, containing an alphabetized list of general references and authoritative overviews of a subject (such as textbooks and review articles). Sometimes, however, this is not enough. In such cases, we turn to in-line citations.

Inline citations

In-line citations are particularly useful if there is a long list of references, because they make clear which one the reader should consult for more information on a specific point. In-line citations are valuable if there is doubt or disagreement on some point, because they immediately establish that the information can be verified. Generally, articles that involve strong opposing viewpoints may need to have numerous in-text citations for this reason.

The two most popular systems of in-text citations are Harvard style and footnotes. In addition to either of these systems, many Wikipedia articles also use embedded HTML links to refer to online texts.

Note that no matter which inline-citation system is used, all the sources used in an article should be listed at the end in a ==References== section.

Harvard style

The Harvard referencing system, also called the author-date reference system, places a partial, or abbreviated, citation — the author's name and year of publication within parentheses — in the text itself, and a complete citation at the end of the text in an alphabetized list of "references" or "Works Cited." According to The Oxford Style Manual, the Harvard system is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences" (Ritter 2002).

For one author, add the author's surname and the year of publication in parentheses (round brackets) after the sentence or paragraph, and before the period: for example (Smith 2005).
For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005); for more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).
If the "References" section contains two or more works by the same author but published the same year, use a letter after the year to distinguish the different sources (for example, (Smith 2005a) and (Smith 2005b). Make sure that the in-text citations use the correct letters that correspond to the full citation in the "References" at the end of the article.
When providing a page number, the convention is (Smith 2005:73).
For a quotation that is within the text and marked by quotation marks, the citation follows the end-quotation mark ("), and precedes the period (.)
For a quotation that is indented, the citation follows the period.
When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says ..."

Note: Harvard referencing is not complete without the full citation at the end of the page in the References section.

Footnote notation

Technical issues

Citations using numbered footnotes are controversial in Wikipedia for several reasons:

The current MediaWiki software has limited footnote support. In particular, automatic numbering of footnotes conflicts with use of embedded HTML links in single square brackets, and the same footnote cannot be used multiple times with automatic numbering. In contrast, the software is currently quite sufficient to support the parenthetical author-date format (Harvard style) suggested above.
Many of today's style guides forbid or deprecate footnotes and reference endnotes when used simply to cite sources (Concordia Libraries). The APA style does not use footnotes to cite sources. The MLA style manual has deprecated reference footnotes and reference endnotes for decades in favor of in-line bibliographic references.
Footnotes are normally simply numbered numerically. Thus, determining who said what typically requires a reader to continually jump back and forth between the main body and the footnote/endnote to see if there is something of value. When footnotes are simply providing a much more detailed argument, this is often not a problem, but if the footnotes are the primary citation method, this can be critical (since it is sometimes important to keep track of who claims what).

Note: If a Wikipedia article does use footnotes, it must also have a complete list of sources in the "References" section at the end of the article.

What footnotes are normally used for

Some publications use footnotes for both the full citation of a source, and for tangential comments or information of interest only to a small number of specialists.
Some publications use Harvard style notation for sources, and use footnotes exclusively for tangential comments or information of interest only to a small number of specialists. In this case, in other words, footnotes are notes with relevant text that would distract from the main point if embedded in the main text, yet are helpful in explaining a point in greater detail. Such footnotes can be especially helpful for later fact-checkers, to ensure that the article text is well-supported. Thus, using footnotes to provide useful clarifying information outside the main point is fine where this is needed.

What to call the section

Technically, footnotes appear at the bottom of a page; endnotes appear at the end of a chapter or book. Since wikipedia articles may be considered to consist of one long page, or of no pages at all, Wikipedia footnotes appear at the end of an article, but are nevertheless called footnotes.

Recommended section names to use for footnotes in Wikipedia:

==Notes== section: Used for footnotes which are not full citations of sources.
==Notes and references== section: Used if there is no separate section with general references, and if all sources of the general content of the article are covered by the footnotes.

Embedded HTML links

The MediaWiki software supports embedding HTML links directly into an article. Simply using a bare URL (surrounded by whitespace) will cause the URL to be hyperlinked, but since some URLs are very long, this can make the result difficult to read. A more common alternative is to use a single square bracket, for example, [http://www.google.com/ Google's web site]. If only the URL is provided, those URLs are automatically numbered (making it appear like a footnote); an example would be [http://www.google.com/]. This usage is deprecated and at minimum there should be text provided, as in [http://www.google.com/ The Google search service].

An advantage of these embedded links is that it is easy for an online reader to click on the link and jump immediately to the cited article, if the article is still at the given URL and still contains the cited information. Another advantage of these embedded links is that they are very easy to create and maintain.

There are disadvantages with such embedded links, however. They do not normally provide all the information that a traditional citation would have; thus, if the material moves or is dramatically changed, it can be difficult to rediscover the cited material, which is why it is particularly important to include a full citation in the References section.

Automatically numbered links have some additional problems. Automatically numbered links provide no information to the reader before moving the mouse to the link, so it can be difficult to determine if the same author is referenced in different citations or not.

As with Harvard (author-date) style, and footnotes, a full list of articles and websites linked to must be included in the ==References== section.

Inline wikilinks

You can link to another Wikipedia article simply by surrounding its name with double square brackets, for example, [[Wikipedia]], which becomes Wikipedia. If the title doesn't flow well in the sentence, you can use a piped link (so-called because the vertical bar symbol is called a "pipe"): for example, [[Wikipedia|Wikipedia's contents]], which becomes Wikipedia's contents. In general, only create a link to another Wikipedia article the first time a reference to it is made, because pages full of links, which can be distracting, may be difficult to read — though if the page is very long, linking to the same article more than once may be justified.

Note that Wikipedia articles may not use other Wikipedia articles as sources. See Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability.

External links/Further reading

The ==External links== or ==Further reading== section is placed after the references section, and offers books, articles, and links to websites related to the topic that might be of interest to the reader, but which have not been used as sources for the article. Where there is a references section, editors may prefer to call the external links section "further reading," because the references section may also contain external links, and the further reading section may contain items that are not online.

Numbered

A URL surrounded by single square brackets displays as a clickable number between square brackets followed by an arrow, and leads to the webpage mentioned in the URL. For example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources] renders as [1]. Note that inline links of this kind are placed after the punctuation, not before it, like this. [2]

Displaying a text

See Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style#Web sites and articles (not from periodicals). Of course, a Harvard style reference can be the displayed text for an external link, if the referenced work is available on-line.

What to do when a reference link "goes dead"

When a link in the External links/Further reading sections "goes dead", it is not a serious matter, and it can be removed from the article. Reference links (i.e. links to sources actually used to support material) in the article are another matter. In general, they are still worth keeping as part of the referencing apparatus of the article; often, a live substitute link can be found. Here are some pointers. In most cases, these approaches will preserve an acceptable citation.

A very large proportion of pages can be recovered from the Internet Archive. Just go to http://www.archive.org/ and search for the old link by URL. Make sure that your new citation mentions the date the page was archived by the Internet Archive.
If this was a non-blind citation of web-only material, it may be worth the effort to search the target site for an equivalent page at a new location, an indication that the whole site has moved, etc.
If the link was merely a "convenience link" to an online copy of material that originally appeared in print, and an appropriate substitute cannot be found, it is acceptable to drop the link but keep the citation.
If you cannot find the page on the Internet Archive, remember that you can often find recently deleted pages in Google's cache. They won't be there long, and it is no use linking to them, but this may let you find the content, which can be useful in finding an equivalent page elsewhere on the Internet and linking to that.

Wikipedia does not currently have a policy for what to do when none of those strategies succeed, but here are some suggestions.

Be careful not to remove a link prematurely. If you reach the site, and it says the particular page is gone, that is pretty definitive, but one failure to access a site does not mean it is permanently dead. In the latter case, note (in an HTML comment) the date on which the link seemed dead.
You can place the link in an HTML comment, marked as dead. Date the comment. The Internet Archive deliberately lags by six months, so there is a fair chance that at any time in the next six months we might, again, be able to get an equivalent link.
If the link has been dead more than six months, keep it (commented out) as the record of a reference used.

Citing Wikipedia in other works

For suggestions on how to cite Wikipedia in other works, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia

References

Concordia Libraries (Concordia University). Citation and Style Guides. Retrieved December 28, 2004. (This provides a list of common citation styles.)
Citation Styles Handbook: APA
Citation Styles Handbook: MLA
APA Style.org
Using American Psychological Association (APA) Format (Updated to 5th Edition)
Citing Electronic Documentation (APA, Chicago, MLA)
The Columbia Guide to Online Style
Ritter, R. (2002) The Oxford Style Manual, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198605641