Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout/Archive 1

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Discussions

Here we go again. Have at it folks. Ortolan88 23:35 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. :-) -- Tarquin 09:18 Nov 2, 2002 (UTC)

I hope that it's more clear now when I'm claiming that first paragraphs should be short. There's nothing wrong with a stub that consists of nothing but a single paragraph with four sentences, but an article that goes on and on should limit the first paragraph to very basic information (definition, birth date, population, etc) -- just as this article's first paragraph does. Or am I wrong? — Toby 18:47 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)

Yes, that's clearer. I edited the other version because we had two separate injunctions on short paragraphs. This is fine. Ortolan88

I wonder whether we need a style for interwiki links. Now they are put in rather randomly, without any plan or order. Ought they be ordered in some way ? Kpjas 2002-11-12

I proposed some points at Wikipedia talk:Embassy a few days ago. I'd prefer alphabetical sorting. --Elian
I have always used alphabetical order by language code. --Brion 20:52 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)
which alphabetical order? sorting by language code is IMO a good idea bc then you don't have to think in every wiki:
    • english - french - german
    • Deutsch - Englisch - Französisch
    • Allemand - Anglais - Français (I am sure in Polish and Dutch the order is different, too)
Disadvantage: the sorting order is not evident at first glance. --Elian
Top or bottom of the wiki text? I've seen both in use, and both have advantages.
Top is the most common, at least in the German wikipedia. followed by one blank line and the actual article. --Elian

Most french do it by alphabetical order. Without any previous discussions. Problems are

  • it is far quicker to just copy and past links from another wiki, where the order is not the same...
  • when a non-specific language do the links, he/she doesnot necessary know the alphabetical order of that specific language

So, in the end, it's a bit messy; but I think most french would prefer the alphebetical order anyway.

I think it is not logical to do so, for you can't even rely on the habit of always finding the german one on the left...since it will be in another place in another wiki. So, my feeling is that langage code is best for usability. user:anthere

Ideally is should be "sorted" out by the Phase III software. Kpjas 2002-11-13


Would it be possible to have a convention on references where we site them within the text like so: [1] Pizza Puzzle

The convention (unwritten as far as I know) is to have naked wikirefs within the text that are then numbered. All other external links go in the External link section. --mav

But how do we number them? If somebody adds one, its easy for all the numbers to get changed up. Also, it might be useful to have a link to an article on the source.

Don't they automatically number themselves? Lemme try... [2] [3] [4]... yep, they sure do. -- Wapcaplet 22:50 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But mav says not to do it that way... Pizza Puzzle or are those naked wikirefs? Pizza Puzzle

Which reminds me: Is there any way of inserting an anchor <a name="foo">bar</a> in Wiki text? I've looked in obvious places like Manual of Style and Cite Your Sources, but it doesn't seem to be there.


What I'm thinking of is the difficulty of citing specific material from a long printed source, meaning a book. If you have several references, you don't want to repeat the whole gory bibliographic listing in each place. If you put that in a Bibliography, there's the problem of putting a page reference in each place while linking it to the proper item in the bibliography. I see that the Cite entry suggests a Wiki entry for the book itself; but is that really what you want for every work cited? What I'd rather see is something like
...not putting him to torture (NEL, pp. 400, 406). On the other hand,...
Bibliography
<a name="NEL">NEL</a>: Orio Giacchia, Nel Terzo centenario..., Università Cattolica etc etc


where a click on the NEL link would take you to the biblio item to find the publication data. One could use this reference style without the hyperlink, as is done in many books, but that seems so twentieth-century. Any comments?
Dandrake 23:02 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I personally like the [1] [2] citation style (the standard in many journals), with a bibliographic listing at the end. Auto-hyperlinks and auto-numbering would be helpful, but would require code changes. See Depleted uranium for an example of doing this manually, which has the problem of re-numbering your references when you add another one anywhere other than the end of the list. --Delirium 23:13 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Manual renumbering would be a major problem, absolutely. That sort of thing was behind my proposal to use abbreviations of the document name in place of numbers. But I'm not proposing that somebody make code changes to support the anchor capability; just checking that it wasn't already there, obscurely.
Naturally, when the footnote is one of several to pages in a book, I can write a full footnote with biblio data and page numbers in the first one, then use good old loc. cit. and op. cit. in the rest. A pity, though, about having the numbering of footnotes set in stone as the order in which you created them and appended them to the numbered list. Makes the auto-numbering of the list a dubious advantage: arguably, if you're manually numbering the [nnn] references, you should do the same to the footnote bodies, to reduce the chance of crossing them up. Just rambling here, but it seems there might be reason to discuss a more automatic design for footnotes. Should I be on some list or watching some page in order to keep up with any discussion that might arise?
Dandrake 01:17 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Actually the naming sounds okay too, and that also is fairly common in journals. Something like [Smith], or [Smith 1998] if disambiguating is necessary (the latter is sometimes used even when disambiguating isn't necessary if it's in a context where the date of the reference might be of particular importance). That avoids the renumbering problem, without having to put full unwieldy citations in parentheticals. Of course, I personally still prefer a standard footnote method (with superscript footnotes instead of [1]), but that would require the auto-numbering changes just like the [1] method would. --Delirium 02:22 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Subheadings

The following paragraph was on the page, but I find it unclear and unconvincing:

While it may be preferable to use bullet points within a section instead of using sub-headings, bolded text should not be used; good HTML practice dictates that headers are marked up as such. This aids people using browsers which can highlight (or show only-) headings; blind people and others whose text readers can skip from heading to heading, search spiders such as Google's, and robots which may be used to automatically re-style Wikipedia in the future.

Namely: "good HTML practice dictates that headers are marked up as [bolded text]" doesn't seem correct as written. --The Cunctator 05:39, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

  • I find your removal of that pargraph (which I wrote) surprising. Which part of it do you find unclear, or dispute? And what is the relevance of the fallacious quote, which you claim "doesn't seem correct as written" ? Andy Mabbett 19:45, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

'Related topics' header - Should it be changed to 'See also'???

IMO a more proper title would be 'Related articles'. That's what listed under it: articles, not topics. Topic is a broad term. Mikkalai 20:44, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

  • Many people appear to have used See also. A google search for "see also" on the wiki give 122,000 hits [5]; a search for "related topics" gives 2,240 [6]. Do we need to wait for a thunderbolt from on high before we consider that the guidance should change to reflect the actualite? See also has the advantages of being broader (not restricted to "articles" or "topics") and more flexible. --Tagishsimon 20:24, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I just inserted a sentence about "See also", for more informal feel. Ortolan88 07:26, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
De novo, I don't particularly care one way or the other, but since "See also" is a de-facto Wikipedia standard, I feel we ought to recognize that formally.
A question: a lot of people put "See also: [[Article1]], [[Article2]]", as opposed to using a separte section. Which one is correct? Noel 19:06, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I see the difference between the two forms of "See also" is nicely explained here. Noel 19:13, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Updated See also for one section link. --J. J. 00:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

References vs. External Links

Why are these two separate sections? Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate ("Things should not be multiplied without necessity"). —Steven G. Johnson 06:27, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)


External link vs. External links

If there is just one, is it still "External links" ? -- User:Docu

I advocated plural s regardless for a while, but some feel strongly against it, so I just leave the header as is, unless "link" has more than one under it. Dysprosia 06:39, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Wise policy! :-) That's what I do too. Noel 18:54, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I thought this was established policy. I have been changing it whenever I saw it. — PhilHibbs | talk 16:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
It is in a MoS somewhere.

References

1. Since some articles have all three types of references (Wikipedia articles, external Internet links and printed literature), it seems rather aggressive to give each type its own top level heading. Would it better to organize the references into a hierarchy such as:

References
See also
(Wikipedia articles)
External link(s)
(external Internet links)
Literature
(printed literature)

2. To avoid the nuisance of changing words between the singular and plural forms depending upon the number of references, could we change External link(s) to Internet and always use References regardless of the number of references. GreatWhiteNortherner 03:33, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

References vs external links again

In Talk:Barbus, Ram-Man asserted that authoritative reference-type websites ought to go in "References" while interesting but less authoritative sites should be in "External links", a rule that I hadn't heard before, and when I go to look here, I see that both the references and external links sections say that "web sites that one has used or recommends" should be listed in those sections. This is rather ambiguous, and needs to be changed.

Empirically, I think most articles use "References" for printed works, and "External links" for links elsewhere on the web, irrespective of relative authority or reference values. This is a useful distinction for readers, because if they want to click somewhere, they can skip over the references and go straight to the link section; but if they're preparing to visit the library, they'll visit the References section that they previously ignored. For the cases in which the external links include authoritative and less-authoritative links, the notations should indicate the nature of each link. I'd like to make this policy, so if everybody's amenable, I'll draft something on the policy page. Stan 16:03, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

In reading the proposal about having a general "References" section and then the 3 subcategories, I think this solves this problem in some respects, although I think it adds unnecessary header material to an article. There is the additional problem of sources which are both internet links AND some other media (books, CD-ROM, magazine, etc). I've worked on a number which are also published elsewhere but I specifically quote the link because that is the source I used (but enough information is included to look it up in the other medium). To summarize my preference: References are for those areas that are direct citations for content in the articles, External links are for other general external links of interest, and See also is for internal wikipedia links of interest. The reason I prefer this is to keep the citations separate from the non-citations. It may mix some links, but which is more important: verification of the data by looking at citations OR being able to quickly access those same external links? Internet links are capable of being cited in a format along side regular paper-bound versions in a standard format. Of course I believe that integrity of authoritative works should be maintained. See Zebra Danio for an example of what I believe is the ideal format. -- Ram-Man 16:34, May 26, 2004 (UTC)
Given my views on this area, I do not think that we should go through every article and try to change it to a single format. I am not advocating that my way be the only way and that every article must conform. Certain articles, like Schizophrenia, are so heavily cited that mixing the books with the external links really works well by mixing in all of the authoritarian sources. There are plenty of external links which are not cited directly by the article but still have plenty of good information. It should be noted that internet links were not actually necessary in the creation of that page because there were so many journal articles (with internet links to abstracts) used of higher quality than internet sources, however, if an internet link were added that was specifically cited, it would only make sense to put it in the references, since the external links are not in standard citation format. External links as citations should be in references. -- Ram-Man 16:47, May 26, 2004 (UTC)


Geez the citations in Schizophrenia are ugly - somebody didn't think the reader experience through. Given that the audience of readers is much larger than the audience of verifiers, we should be writing and formatting for readers, not editors or reviewers. It does point up the interesting situation of printed references that happen to be online also. I would say that those should be in References, but that the URLs should be unobtrusive "[1]" etc at the end of the conventional biblio info. Extlinking from author names is just nonsensical - what if one of the authors has a WP article and you want to link the name to it? Another way to think about the distinction is that printed work references are permanent - the 19th-century books mentioned in 1911EB articles can still be found in libraries - while websites are rather evanescent; a lot of the sites mentioned in older WP articles have already vanished, or have changed addresses with no forwarding, and one has to go to Google just to re-find them. So the two kinds of references are not only used by the reader differently, but they have qualitative differences as well. It's not a life-or-death issue, we could leave it up to individual taste, but then this page needs to say that so I won't feel compelled to "fix" references on random pages. :-) Stan 18:49, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
It seems so far that no one else will weigh in on this discussion, but I suppose they will eventually. In any respect, I don't mind making the links unobtrusive, as I noticed you did on the Barbus page. I was kind of annoyed at how long they were anyway. Most, but not all, of the sources that I use have some sort of non-internet published form as well. It is probably a good idea to avoid using internet only links as references as much as possible when the same information can be found in a less volatile location. I'd like to see the authoratative sources all be under references, but i'm willing to allow for a "policy" that places internet-only sources under "external links", but even so this does not fix the volatility problem. I think it is implied that citations should go under "References" due to the link to Wikipedia:Cite your sources, and dispite your like of the Schizophrenia page, these citations are really expected, although surely not fully standardized. -- Ram-Man 16:21, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
My objection to the Schizophrenia citations is just with the awful layout. For instance, no distinction is made between books which might be suitable for the nonspecialist reader, and cutting-edge research which may not even be generally accepted in the scientific community. Stan 20:33, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

It's worth noting that this is also being discussed at Wikipedia:Cite sources. Here's what I had to say on the subject over there:

I would strongly oppose melding "Further reading" and "Links", not just for the immediacy, but because "Further reading" implies a level of quality control (as is usual with printed books, etc), permanence, etc that is one level above many (most?) web pages. How many times have you clicked on a link and found that the target wasn't there any more? Now, how many times have you gone to find a book listed in a biblio and found that it doesn't exist in the world anymore? And I won't even get into the editing, etc, etc. Look, I have nothing against the Web (see my bio :-), but in practical terms there is a real difference. Noel 18:58, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In-text Reference Format

I can't agree with any URL citing policy that treats them differently from "regular" reference. Moreover, the whole [1] scheme is currently poorly thought out, because even URL citations need more than just a URL -- they need a descriptive title, author and date (if possible), and to be listed at the end of the article as text so that they print properly. In the absence of better support for numbered links for all references, (Author, Year) in-text pointers still seem the best bet. For proper in-text numbered citations, we need a new named & numbered list format like:

#name1# Name1, ''Blah'', 1998.
#foobar# Foobar, http://blah.baz.com

...so that in-text references like [[#foobar#]] automatically expand to [2] (or whatever the current number of that reference is). I'm not attached to any particular syntax, however. —Steven G. Johnson 18:28, May 27, 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that it doesn't matter to readers that URLs and printed works are mixed together randomly, or that you don't care if it does matter to them? I agree that URLs need annotation; my rule of thumb is that the annotation needs enough info for Google to hit the page accurate if it still exists - for instance "FishBase info for Sciaenidae" or "ITIS 5551212". I don't hold with in-text references in any case, those are appropriate for research papers but not encyclopedia articles, the latter being synthesized summaries in which every statement should have multiple sources saying the same thing, so there's no reason to cite any particular one of them - you just need the best sources at the end of the article. Stan 20:33, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
In general, URLs should be just another reference type (especially since many references exist both in print and online), and the in-text pointer should be the same and (if numbered) numbered consistently. This is orthogonal to the issue of the ordering of the reference list. I agree that it might make sense to put pure web references at, say, the end of the reference list, at least in some articles, or even with another heading in some cases. Except for articles like Linux that are URL factories, though, I don't think it really matters to readers if online and print references are mixed, since the links are hilited and obvious. —Steven G. Johnson 22:41, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
I agree that, in many cases, in-text pointers should not be necessary. I've written articles for (specialized) print encyclopedias, and there also the editors generally recommend avoiding them, but there are exceptions. One exception comes when it is not clear which reference to look in for more information on a particular item. Another exception is if, in the text, you specifically want to refer to a particular work's contribution in discussing the history of a field. The key, as usual, is to be as helpful as possible to the reader. The issue is, when in-text pointers are desirable, the current Wikipedia support is inadequate, and the URL handling is completely unacceptable for the reasons I already described. —Steven G. Johnson 22:41, May 27, 2004 (UTC)

References vs Further Reading

On looking close at this page, I find (to my complete horror) that it has (for a long time) called for the section of further reading entries to be called "References". Following the examples on countless pages I've edited, on new pages I wrote, or pages I worked on, I've always titled them "Further reading", and I think that should be the standard. (I see from the discussion of "See also", above, that this page is out of touch with real practice in the 'Pedia in a number of ways... Sigh, too much replicated content across to many page, e.g. this and Wikipedia:Manual of Style.)

To me, "References" means "list of specific citations for specific facts cited in the article". If you look at a real scholarly book, in addition to references (usually called "Notes", or "Footnotes" - although academic papers almost invariably call them "References", go figure), it also has a section called "Bibliography", which is more akin to our "Further reading" sections. It's never called "References"! I would strongly oppose use of the term "References" for anything except i) lists of specific sources for specific statements, or ii) definitive reference works (e.g. the "PDP-10 Processor Manual" on the PDP-10 page. Noel 19:06, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bull. First of all, in a short scholarly work, such as a journal article, "specific citations for specific facts" are almost invariably mixed inextricably with citations listed for context and further reading, all in the same section (typically called, yes, "References"). In longer books, there are a variety of names used for this section in each chapter (e.g. "References" or "Cited Works and Further Reading" or "References and Suggested Reading" all appear in respected books on my shelf), but they typically mix both types of citation. Moreover, when there is a separate "Bibliography" chapter at the end, in many of my books it merely is a collection and repetition of all of the works listed in all of the individual chapters. (Not that such a collected bibliography for the whole encyclopedia is likely to be useful for WP.) —Steven G. Johnson 00:50, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
We should definitely cite (whether for specific facts or for further reading) in general only credible, respected sources. Requiring them to be "definitive", however, is going to far — for example, an introductory textbook is unlikely to be regarded as "definitive" in a field, but is a probably excellent reference to suggest for most readers. —Steven G. Johnson 00:50, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
I did not suggest that all sources, or suggested reading, have to be "definitive"; far from it. The whole point of "Further reading" is that it contains things that are not definitive - the latter being, by and large, far too much for the average reader who simply wants to know a bit more than is in the article. Clearly (to use the example I gave) one would not send the average reader wanting more information about PDP-10's off to read the PDP-10 Processor Manual. But it is the definitive reference on the topic. Noel 02:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
(As I said, placing too much importance on the title of the section is a red herring. A "reference" is just something you "refer" to, and works cited and suggested reading are both things you refer to, for somewhat different but overlapping reasons.)
From the fact that a variety of names are used in, yes, real scholarly publications, I think we shouldn't get too hung up on the name. It's more important to encourage people to cite good references in the first place. Along these lines, we should discourage the tendency to fret over classifying which sources were "used" to write the article vs. just finding useful references that help readers — real scholars actively search for related work in a field to which they can point the reader in order to provide a broader context and a deeper background, rather than just citing what they "used". —Steven G. Johnson 00:50, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

But the people using an Encyclopaedia aren't, by and large, "real scholars". For such users, it is important to distinguish between:

  • i) things they might find useful to go find and read, if they want more information about the topic than what is available here (what I am calling "Further reading"), and
  • ii) the material used to create the article, which quite likely are detailed academic materials which would be of little use or interest to them (what I am calling "References").

I think it's really important that we not forget who our audience is. Noel 02:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Now, it sounds like you essentially want an "advanced references" and a "introductory references" section. In practice, I don't believe that this is the same thing as the breakdown between works cited and suggested reading, because often an article will be written from a textbook or review article that makes good introductory reading. Moreover, in practice I think that readers, given a list of credible references, are pretty capable of selecting the ones that are most appropriate for them (which is not just a matter of advanced vs. introductory...it also depends on physical accessibility etc.). Furthermore, the most important reason to avoid the distinction you are suggesting is this: there is no easy breakdown, in general, between works used as sources to write an article and works suggested for further reading, since many references will server both purposes. —Steven G. Johnson 03:12, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the model where "works used as sources to write an article" is the conjunction of the "suggested reading" and "advanced references" sections? Also, I can tell you, from my experience in exploring fields by going through bibiographies in books and getting items (something I have done in a very large number of fields) that the (sadly uncommon) bibliograhies which include comments about which items are good for what are a zillion times easier to use productively than the ones that just provide a barren list. I've lost count of the number of times I've ordered a book based on solely the listing in a bibliography, only to find out when it arrived that it was a waste of money. The article writers have (or should, if they are any good) an excellent understanding of which readings are best for "average people", and I think it's our duty to pass that very valuable information on. Noel 14:27, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I was very surprised to see the advice (my bold hilighting)

Put under this header, again in a bulleted list, any books, articles, web pages, et cetera that you used in constructing the article and/or recommend as sources of further information to readers.

The first part are indeed references. The second part is a Bibliography, or Further reading. These should be clearly separated. For example, somethingshould be in references only if it is actually cited as the authority for a fact in the main body of the article - and a specific part should be cited. --Nantonos 18:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:02, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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