Template talk:Citequote

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This template is purely for unreferenced quotes!! I don't know why editors have come along and radically altered this template to the point of making it impotent. It is for people (like me) who patrol Wikipedia for quotes that lack references, so that we can fix them. If this is just thrown in with other categories, it is useless. Unverified quotes are usually easy to fix since they can be googled and referenced in most cases. This is not true of whole articles or paragraphs without references. Those require more time to research. So this has benefit as that it addresses a unique problem. I and another editor in particular have benefited from this, and yet it continues to be raped. If any more changes are made to this, the reason should be stated here.--Esprit15d 18:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't this template be redirected to template:fact? It's identical, and the redirect will not affect your use of {{citequote}} in the body of an article.

It was identical because the key portions that represented the differences kept being removed. I have restored them.--Esprit15d 13:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It still is identical, except for the category, and its intended function is a subset of the function of template:fact. If there must be two templates with different functions, then please make this one look different, and narrow the function of the other to clarify the distinction. Otherwise, let's merge them into one template.

Or is it that you want this to be your own private template, and distract other editors with template:fact so that they don't insert hundreds of instances of this one? —Michael Z. 2006-08-10 14:47 Z

To address both of you in one fell swoop: To say the templates are identical exept for categorizing and function is like saying those two sandwhiches are identical except for the meat and bread. That's a significant difference. This is a totally different template in function. It is used on quotes solely, and it categorizes the articles into a unique category by that fact (that they contain quotes without citations which is mandatory in Wikipedia policy). To the casual reader, it may look identical to {{fact}}, since it shows up in the article as "citation needed." The reason for that is (1) that verbiage works nicely and (2) Why have 800 different little tags in a article? That peppers the article like a Christmas tree, when most people just want to read the article and don't give a rip whether it's cited or not. I'm a little lost as to why this is a big deal, since anyone who wanted to add a citation to the quote just has to search for for the quote in the edit box, which they would have to do anyway. My main policy is the simpler the better. Also, I don't know if Mzajac was being offensive when he said "your own private template" so I won't take it that way. But I think {{fact}} is great; I've probably used it about ten times today while doing time in Good Article nominations. But what it takes to cite a fact and quote are different, and quotes can be done in seconds, since you can literally highlight and drop the quote into the Google toolbar and find it in seconds in many instances. As far as this being my own personal template, is there anything personal on Wikipedia? I would love it if others benefit from this template, but I'm not going to start an ad campaign. I've written about 15 templates and radically altered several others, and many have become standard templates for the copyright process, foreign language translation process and image deletion process. Feel free to use them as you wish. Or don't. Just don't delete it (which redirect is essentially doing) without a policy to back you up.--Esprit15d 16:24, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, they look identical to the casual reader. They look identical to the casual editor, who might just be aware that template:fact has about half a dozen redirects. They look identical to the more serious editor who bothers to look at the documentation and can't quite twig to the fact that this one has the category and the other doesn't, and that this template's application is a subset of that one's. I'm interested in these things, and I've forced you to spend a bunch of time writing here just to convey the significant facts.

If there is a functional difference, it should be evident. The documentation should be clearer, and to save confusion, the function of template:fact should be clarified too, since it is intended to fulfil the function of this template and more. —Michael Z. 2006-08-10 16:52 Z

When you say the "documenation should be clearer" what does that mean? And any changes you want to make to {{fact}} knock yourself out - no argument here.

Let's just say the worst case scenario happens and someone confuses citequote with fact. What's the worst thing that could happen? They provide a citation for it? Great! My main point is, I really don't care if you change the actual template to say "cite quote" or "reference?" or "see [[WP:CITE]] or "Idiot, don't you know you have to provide citations for quotes." You would never hear from me again (although I think the current verbiage is non-disruptive, consistent and consise). Proof of this is earlier, with the previous changes, I said nothing - becuase they didn't impede the purpose of the template. There is just no basis for it to be eliminated since it is serving a valid purpose (siphons off unreferenced quotes that can be easily fixed from all the other citation violations) and (to my knowledge) two editors are using even it it's short existence. So change {{fact}}, change the template instructions, change the actual template verbiage...just don't slow down progress in fixing these quotes.--Esprit15d 17:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

How would you feel if the template looked like the following? "This quotation is uncited."[CITE?] Still does the job, is visually differentiated from,^{[citation needed]} follows traditional typographic conventions, is less visually disruptive to readability while remaining distinctive on the page. I've also made this example link directly to the relevant section at WP:CITE. —Michael Z. 2006-08-11 02:23 Z

Sounds great.--Esprit15d 17:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I've edited the template according to our discussion. Please try it out a bit, and let me know if it serves the purpose. If it needs to be a little more visually prominent, then I think bolding the smaller-sized text might be okay without making it too eye-catching.—Michael Z. 2006-08-11 17:35 Z

I hope I'm adding this comment in the right place. I thought you might be interested in the perspective of a relative newbie. I stumbled on this discussion by chance, while looking for the various possibilities of indicating that a reference to a source was required. I think it is very useful to have a separate template for uncited quotations. In a number of places where I looked for help I found statements like "add Citequote or Fact" as if the two were equivalent. These recommendations would have to be altered as well. My actual problem was with a statement about Wikipedia in the article on Nonlinear Management: Recent comparisons with a traditional encyclopedia suggest that lack of centrally-controlled supervision has not produced lower quality content - quite the opposite, in fact. As a relative newbie, I was hesitant about adding a "citation needed" comment, but since this seemed to be a reference to a specific article (the original Nature article I presume), I thought a citation was definitely needed -- especially in view of the nature of the claim. Before I read this discussion, I would have tended toward Citequote (since it was a matter of a specific claim about the contents of specific — but uncited — article), so the documentation that editors are likely to read should make it very clear that Citequote is only intended for direct word-for-word quotes that can be looked up.Boson 21:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

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Reverted good faith edits by Mzajac per policy violation. Please read up on policies and guidelines. Thanks!

I appreciate the detailed edit summary, but it doesn't explain how you think I violated a policy. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2006-08-09 18:34 Z

I used a revert tool, and the edit summary wasn't appropriate for this case. For that, I apologize.--Esprit15d 13:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit suggestion

"CITE?" seems not to be clear enough. Some readers/editors may not understand.

How about the following:

1. require citing
2. need cite
3. need to cite
4. citation required
5. citation needed
6. citation?
7. cite? (non-caps version)
8. source? for requesting a source
9. page? for requesting a page number
10. (maybe some fancy parameterized thing like:) {need|X} for requesting X.

Any comments?--Wai Wai (talk) 10:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

: I would avoid the first two forms, since "cite" is not a noun.

But if its function is not obvious, then it just takes a single click, once, to tell exactly what the label is about. Since it is distinctive, that should be sufficient. Let's not change it until we notice comments on a talk page indicating that a reader actually found it confusing. —Michael Z. 2006-08-12 16:27 Z

I have updated the choices. I deleted the "citation needed" one since it is just the same as {{fact}}.

As to your comments, I agree. Let's see how others respond :) --Wai Wai (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Inline templates proposed

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Inline templates. I've been meaning to do this for a while. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)