Wikipedia talk:Citation templates

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[edit] How to cite unpublished material?

QUESTION: I have been working on the Wikipedia College Football project and have gotten information from the Sports Information Department from the University of Texas-Arlington about their college football program that was discontinued back in the 1980's. This is the only source I have found on the program and coaching records--but the events are noteworthy because many of the coaches went on to other schools after successful seasons at UTA. But all I have are "scratch notes" on the program. I'm sure the information is correct because it came from their SID dept... how do I cite the source?--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The reliable sources guideline requires that sources in WP be published. Is there any other way to get the information (local newspapers, etc.)? UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I've been searching and searching, and will keep searching. I have forwarded the information to the College Football Data Warehouse and they will eventually post it on the web (it's a regular cited source in our project). But perhaps now with the information I may be able to find more of it, now that I know what I'm looking for... but I doubt it. Any other ideas?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cite video game

Can the {{Cite video game}} citation template be added to the list? It would make it much easier for people to realize there is such a template. Collectonian (talk) 21:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I would rather see this as a general software citation as in a broad sense video games are just another form of software and from my outside point of view a similar structure to general software development. I notice you leave out a URL field for instance, which should link back to any active company which published it. Further, aren't there usually authors attributed to the games, just like in software? In some cases I realize there are teams, but in many instances there are individuals who are considered the creators. There also must be a way to locate information within the game. In software, I could cite a specific resource within the code. In a video game, how would you provide a verifiable citation of an event that occurs only after advancing to the highest levels of the game? e.g. in a video, one could specify an approximate time-code within the video and a reviewer could fast-forward to that point. In a video game, I guess you would just have to play the thing and get VERY good at it?--Mac128 (talk) 17:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] need a template for citing a work from an electronic library or subscription service

Following the MLA style, it would need the parameters of citing a periodical:

"(author, article title, periodical title, and volume, date, and page number information) followed by the name of the database or subscription collection, the name of the library through which you accessed the content, including the library's city and state, plus date of access. If a URL is available for the home page of the service, include it." [1]

Earthsound (talk) 16:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] multiple editors

In the example for encyclopedia, should we include the way of handling multiple editors? (eg. editor1-last, editor2-last) DGG (talk) 00:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

At most, I would suggest a field called "coeditors", similar to how all the other templates treat multiple people. I think allowing for multiple individual editor fields adds unnecessary complexity (not to mention, just how many editors should we allow for?). — Huntster (t • @ • c) 02:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The code is already there, it works to use it the way i mentioned. andd it looks like it automatically moves to et al after a certain number. It's just a question of adding an example. DGG (talk) 05:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you're referring to {{Citation}} rather than {{Cite encyclopedia}} (sorry, I don't like or use Citation, so didn't realise your intent). It wouldn't hurt to mention the multiple editor fields, but I feel this page should be about 'advertising' the different types of templates available, and should feature the most basic code to get people by. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 09:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citing sources discussion

There's a discussion in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources about the current guideline wording, and the wider issue of whether or not the use of Citation templates on the whole should be discouraged.

--SallyScot (talk) 21:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citing Brochures

Is there a way to cite a brochure for a location as a source for information? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow (talk) 04:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Place or location

For book citations, the common usage column for the citation template shows both location and place, but the documentation seems to indicate these are synonyms. Shouldn't just one of these be listed? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I've removed location. –Pomte 20:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] hello interview citations

why isn't the interview template Template:Cite_interview listed on the template page??

[edit] Bookmarklet

Hi, I posted this over on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources and it was suggested I mention it here too:

I've made a simple bookmarklet that helps to create formatted citations. You can find it here, with a description and example usage. Much lower-rent than Zotero, but I find it frustrating when Zotero won't extract perfectly good metadata. I don't want to blow my own horn by adding it to the list of tools straight away, since I don't know if anything like this already exists (I couldn't find anything quite like this), or if anyone else would find this useful. Feel free to play with it. --Bazzargh (talk) 01:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

While it is an interesting (and fairly accurate) tool, the usability is reduced to almost nil given that the content in the window that pops up cannot be copied. Also, there were "h1" and "h2" parameters (among others) shown a few times, which don't exist in the {{cite web}} template. I'm assuming that aside from a handful of necessary fields, your tool simply makes a direct copy of the metadata (heh, trying running it here). — Huntster (t • @ • c) 02:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The content can be copied in both Firefox and Safari. Cmd-A Cmd-C on the mac, Ctrl-A Ctrl-C on windows. Try it! (I'll add that to the docs). Firefox is a bit annoying here as the text isn't highlighted, but it does copy. And it is deliberately dumping out all the metadata, whether or not it fits the template. Take the title for example - on some sites this is just the page title; on the NY Times website its the meta field named 'hdl'. Its dumping all the candidates so you can apply some intelligence to it. The alternative is to go to the page and individually copy and paste all the fields across, which is painful. I guess the docs should make it clearer that the field names won't all match those in the template, I hoped the example had covered that. --Bazzargh (talk) 09:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha, interesting. Learn something new about Firefox all the time. Sorry for being dumb on the 'h1', 'h2', etc, bit; I stopped reading at the source code section, and I guess I didn't properly read the rest! I'm going to take some further comments to your talk page, if you don't mind (running out of time right now). — Huntster (t • @ • c) 12:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem; feedback on things I didn't make plain enough in the docs is good too. BTW theres a newer version of the tool on its talk page which does grabs the selection too - useful for picking a quote, or grabbing some metadata off the text of the page. I'll be moving that to the tool page if it works on Safari. Unfortunately it looks like the tool will never work on IE, but I could maybe get a cut down version to work (grabbing just the basic metadata). IE can't deal with long bookmarklets. --Bazzargh (talk) 12:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

(last one, I'll stop being noisy here). Updated to support selections and IE, and the documentation should be more navigable now. --Bazzargh (talk) 15:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] question about "cite video" template

when i use this template the release date doesn't show up in the footnotes generated, even though i enter it each time. is that deliberate, or am i doing something wrong, or ... ? one example of what i mean is the citation of Four Flicks, currently numbered 100 on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gibson_players i entered the 2003 release date in what i believe is the proper place, but it doesn't appear in the footnote. thanks for any insights!

and as long as i'm here ... the "citation" template for periodicals seems to use a different convention for page numbers than the "cite book" template. maybe it would be worthwhile for some generous Template Expert to tinker with those to make them consistent? that would be easier for well-meaning non-experts struggling to get the hang of these things. thanks Sssoul (talk) 11:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Use year2= instead of date=. See {{cite video}} for the documentation and the talk page for why this kludge exists. Speaking of kludges, why is List of Gibson players using {{reflist|4}}? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The Rolling Stones. (2003). Four Flicks (disk 1: "Keys to Your Love" segment [DVD]. Warner Music Vision.

thanks for the clarification! i was using the "cite video" template as i found it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates - would it be worthwhile updating that page to include this "year2" variation and/or a recommendation to check out the {{cite video}} page?

as for the reflist|4 format ... i have no idea. thanks again for the help Sssoul (talk) 12:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] article in book

Is there a template to cite an article in book? If so, what, where, etc. If not, why not? --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 04:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what an "article in book" is, but this might help. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 05:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, that's grand. And I think I can just about do it with the "cite book" template, which is the one I've been using (for books). I've been playing with it at Facundo. Thanks. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 05:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You might take a look at History of the Philippines (1898–1946). -- Boracay Bill (talk) 05:29, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion: "accessed" instead of "retrieved"

I propose that the various templates be reformed to output the word "accessed" rather than "retrieved" in response to the accessdate parameter. In the case of {{cite web}} in particular, the source being cited is sometimes an interactive site that is being accessed to obtain the information to which the cite applies. Retrieving the cited URL, by itself, does not obtain the information.

An example is in D. B. Cooper where we have:

{{cite web| title = Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator | publisher = [[United States Department of Labor]] [[Bureau of Labor Statistics]] | author = | date = | url = http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl |accessdate = 2007-12-26 }}

which expands to:

Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator. United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved on 2007-12-26.

It seems to me that "accessed" will always be accurate, but sometime "retrieved" will not be. Another admittedly minor point is that it matches the parameter name, so it's more intuitive to see what parameter generates what text. TJRC (talk) 22:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In theory I'd support such a change, however, the current format is somewhat based on APA, which uses the "Retrieved" term. Also, when expanding templates like you did, don't subst them, just use Special:ExpandTemplates. Handy, see? — Huntster (t • @ • c) 23:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citing laws

I very often find myself in need of citing Russian laws in articles, and I've been looking for a way to use an existing citation template for that. Unfortunately, none of the existing options work well. To see what I need, take a look at, for example, Gruzinsky (settlement) (where the citation is entered as plain text). The choke points in this example are, first, that the date should not be in parentheses, and second, and more importantly, that existing templates provide no means to add English translation after the Russian title. Any suggestions would be appreciated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything specific to Russian laws, but there are {{Cite swiss law}} and {{Cite Ukrainian law}}. Take a look in Category:Law citation templates and see if anything applies. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Great! I must've missed this cat. Thanks much.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Datelinking in the doc

Was there a deliberate decision to show date=[[yyyy-mm-dd]] examples vice date=yyyy-mm-dd in the template documentation? I thought the templates all handled this without datelinking. LeadSongDog (talk) 20:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The major-use templates have been brought up to code, but most of the lesser used ones don't allow that yet. If they do, then feel free to reflect that in the /doc page examples, but otherwise it doesn't hurt for them to remain wikilinked. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 06:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cite book with url?

Should their be a special template for the likes of Google books [2] i've been using {{cite web}} however {{cite book}} would also apply , perhaps we need a {{cite book with url}}Gnevin (talk) 13:59, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

There are url and chapterurl parameters on Cite Book, url, chapter-url and contribution-url on Citation. Anyway, I don't think it is proper to fill wp with GBooks links. Links should be put to fully available books or book parts. ISBN is a more neutral alternative, set either in the templates or as a Magic word. trespassers william (talk) 15:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I've lately been trying to use {{citation}} for everything, including books with url. Can you give an example of how your {{cite book with url}} might differ from that? -- Boracay Bill (talk) 15:05, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the question.trespassers william (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't realise {{cite book}} supported url's. No need for a other template I will use that for Google book reference in the future 23:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there a policy or guideline discouraging the addition of Google Books links? Google Books has limited previews for many publications. The potential advantages of adding such links are (1) that users can refer to the corresponding page of the source, if it is included in the Google books preview (it is possible to have the ref link jump directly to the correct page in the preview), which enhances verifiability and (2) that people can look at a book named in a list of references or literature to decide whether they would want to buy it. I think these could be significant benefits to the user that would add value. Jayen466 13:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I've certainly not seen anything discouraging a link to Google Books; indeed, I've used the site many times myself. As you have pointed out, even if the entire book cannot be linked, it can conclusively back up a particular citation, and make such information available to everyone, rather than just those that can obtain a physical copy. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 18:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Published Software Template

Can't seem to find a reference anywhere in Wiki for citing software (except a Micosoft Style book I'd rather not buy). Either way, a template would certainly be useful. In the meantime, I suppose I should treat it like a book?--Mac128 (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again

Please contribute to this discussion at Citing sources: Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again --EnOreg (talk) 16:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Consensus: We have a consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. Could somebody who is competent to adapt the citation templates please do so? The idea is to keep the access date as a template parameter but remove the code that displays it. Thanks, --EnOreg (talk) 09:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A doubt

How does one cite matter from a chapter in a book that has contributors that are different from the editors mentioned on the cover and elsewhere? Which all authors are to be included in the citation?

Kindly help me with this doubt.

Regards.

—KetanPanchal^taLK 13:25, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing you'd use the "coauthors" attribute of the Cite Book template. Bettia ^(talk) 14:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Use the author field for the author of the chapter. Put the editors in the editor field. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 14:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, thanks a lot! Somehow, had never cared to see the template in its expanded form. Regards. —KetanPanchal^taLK 14:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikilink of airdate

The 'airdate' field of the {{cite episode}} template produces a wikilink to the date. (Example: "The Gymnast". Seinfeld. November 3, 1994. No. 6, season 6. ) I don't think it should be doing so, since the full date doesn't necessarily have a page. The editor should be allowed to wikilink the date themselves.—RJH (talk) 20:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The format for the airdate is meant to be in yyyy-mm-dd format, so in this case 1994-11-03, and the cite would then appear as: "The Gymnast". Seinfeld. 1994-11-03. No. 6, season 6. ) This is the standard way of inputing dates into cites.--十八 20:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Beat me to it. This is the ISO 8601 format and it allows the date to be formatted according to the editor's preferences. See MOS:SYL for more on date formatting. In my opinion, date links are not useful, but the ability to show a date in U.S. or European formats is quite useful. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It'd be simple to include a bit of code that would automatically check to see if it is formatted in YYYY-MM-DD format, and auto-link if it is. Can be pulled from {{Cite map}} or other templates if desired. Template is protected, so can't do it myself at this time. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 22:30, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conference citation template, wiki of retrieval date is unnecessary

Hi, I'm using the conference citation template - the template wikifies the Retrieved on date - this must be a mistake, no reason for that, and it produces an ugly link in red. See this example:

Last, First (2006). "[ww.ishm2006.hu/abstracts/files/ishmpaper_093.doc The title comes out nice]". 40th International Congress on the History of Medicine. Retrieved on June 5, 2008. - Power.corrupts (talk) 13:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

No, the citation is correct. You just didn't format the date correctly. It should be:

Last, First (2006-01-01). "The title comes out nice". 40th International Congress on the History of Medicine. Retrieved on 2008-06-05.

-- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 14:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. But why is the date wikilinked? It is a completely arbitrary date when I accessed that document, there is no info added linking it to "June 5 is the 156th day of the year (157th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar...." etc. It may be a matter of personal taste, but find overlinking confusing, and I prefer links that add value. Power.corrupts (talk) 15:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Full format and ISO dates are an exception to "overlinking." It isn't linked to provide a link, but to allow the date to be formatted per user preferences. :) So for me, all dates that are properly wikilinked appear in the format of mmmm dd, yyyy. Others, like UK users, may have their set so it shows as dd mmmm, yyyy. So it does add value, just not in the usual way one might expect.-- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 15:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

See MOS:SYL for more information on date formatting. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Point taken, I see the value added. Thanks, Power.corrupts (talk) 09:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)