Wikipedia talk:Layout/Archives/2008

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Order of 'See Also', References (using bot) 1.1 arbitrary break 1.2 arbitrary break 1.3 arbitrary break 1.4 Rewrite 2 My bad 3 "Recommended order" 4 Infobox colouring RFC 5 How many articles have a "Related topics" section instead of "See also"? 6 References without their being cited is becoming depreciated 7 "References and notes" or "Notes and references"

Order of 'See Also', References (using bot)

I made a bot request to find all articles that don't follow the order outlined in WP:LAYOUT. User:Betacommand figured out a way to make a bot that not only found those articles, but fixed them as well, instead of having a user do it manually. However, a couple users are opposed to the bot automatically making these changes because of the "preference line" (1. Although the preferred order is as above, it is permissible to change the sequence of these ending sections if there is good reason to do so.) Frankly, I don't think a writer's preference is enough to override the MOS.

I'm not really sure what good reason there would be to change the sequence. Generally, articles should follow the manual of style so they all have a consistent format. Even if there were good reasons, there would only be a few articles with a different preference and the changes can be reverted.

I support having the bot make all changes and think it'll bring much needed consistency to Wikipedia's articles. I'd like to hear what other users think. Mahanga^Talk 20:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. I also think the "preference line" is not necessary in this guideline (couldn't we add a "preference line" to every MoS page?), and I am going to be bold and remove it. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd be fine with a bot moving "see also" to the beginning and "external links" to the end, so long as it didn't mess about with any other sections. The problem with touching the other sections is that a wide variety of names are used for these sections, and there is no particular widely used practice about what order they should be in. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there now a strong-enough consensus for "see also" first and "external links" last? Many articles have "see also" last, or "external links" before notes. Gimmetrow 00:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

My impression in exploring the encyclopedia is that this order is pretty widely followed, but obviously if there are people who actively disagree this would be a good time to speak. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree (see also first, external links last): Wikified content has preferenced, and don't want to encourage external link farms popping up before citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The articles going through FAC look like that, but it's not how all articles look "in the wild". Right above, #See also should go in the middle?, someone is asking about see also at the end. A quick search with special:random found Hemolytic-uremic syndrome, a fairly typical article with the notes at the very end, after external links. Gimmetrow 03:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal; consistency is important. However, this is going to be problematic, as there are certain WikiProjects that deviate from the standard pattern; I can name Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation off the top of my head, and certainly there are others. In articles about aircraft, "See also" comes last, after "External links" (see e.g. Douglas DC-3). People from the project are not going to like this... GregorB (talk) 18:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you link to the Aviation guideline that has this preference? I only found this, but it doesn't mention the order of see also and external links. There certainly isn't any mention of a good reason to put See also after EL. Interestingly, their FA articles are inconsistent (BAE_Systems#See_also, B-17_Flying_Fortress#See_also, Ben_Gurion_International_Airport#See_also. Mahanga^Talk 19:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Funny, there's this page, and it doesn't spell it out, although it looks to me that it implies the standard order. There's {{aerostart}}, a template that is meant to be subst-ed, and it generates the standard order. So, it may all be fine then... GregorB (talk) 19:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:AIR is a subset of WP:AVIATION. They were working on article structure a couple months ago. A template was including see also content and navigation links, so it was by necessity at the end of a page. That template has been split. Gimmetrow 19:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like to add that it has been agreed through the WP:AIR/PC guide and other recent clarifying discussions that we follow the order 'See also','References' with 'External links' and navboxes last. I expect one of our admins will confirm this here soon. Several editors including myself have been changing many articles to this layout recently, I would be in favour of a bot doing the task. I often find the 'Commons' link in the 'See also' section and had to move this to 'External links' when making the change, I wonder if the bot could also do this? Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 15:48, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject:Aircraft (not WikiProject:Aviation) had been specifying a different order up until last month, when a decision was taken to change to fall in with convention. I think that WP:Aircraft would gratefully agree to have a bot help with this task (I'll ask), but I object strongly to the idea of such a bot being turned loose right across Wikipedia. Apart from a period of a few weeks some years ago, the ordering of these sections has never been formally mandated, and unless we know for certain that there are no other guidelines out there that mandate a different order in a certain subset of articles it would be the height of arrogance to proceed. Perhaps the bot could do an initial run that added an invisible comment to each article that alerted editors as to what was being proposed, and if there were no objections after a couple of weeks, it could make another run to implement the change? --Rlandmann (talk) 19:47, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I concur: some kind of a test run is in order here, since it is impossible to foresee all the consequences, even if the bot itself does a perfect job. GregorB (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I will not add comments to pages that the bot edits, but what the bot does do is split the articles into sections and then sections that match key words are removed sorted and re-inserted, then I extract all the categoies and interwikis, sort them and re-add them (so that I can ensure they are in the proper locations). I hope this helps. β^_command 20:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I would like to examine that code before you run it, beta. Would that be possible? Gimmetrow 21:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I would really like to do some more testing and make sure that this proposal gets approved. once this proposal goes through and I have tested the code, I dont see any problems showing you Gimmetrow. β^_command 21:31, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree; while I like the notion, I'm a bit nervous about the application. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:22, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

So the code can't be modified to save an invisible comment instead of saving the re-ordered sections? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

it could be, but there is very strong opinion that bots should not leave those kind of notes. β^_command 21:42, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Acknowledged; but I'm only suggesting it as a temporary measure in order to alert human editors as to what is being proposed. Assuming there are no serious objections in the intervening weeks and the bot goes ahead to complete its intended mission, the note could be removed at that point. Can anyone think of a better way to achieve widespread notification of what's intended? --Rlandmann (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

use a site or watchlist notice. β^_command 22:30, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - could you explain what you mean? --Rlandmann (talk) 22:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Update: I'm surprised to report that reaction on the WP:Aircraft talk page has been extremely negative. I've linked to this discussion, so maybe contributors there may chime in here. --Rlandmann (talk) 05:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• I'm fine with running some test or limited use of a bot for switching the order of the See also and References sections. I still don't see why this needs to be done Wikipedia-wide. The Layout guide clearly says their order is optional with no preference stated. -Fnlayson (talk) 05:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Christopher and Rlandmann, where are we with removing "it is permissible to change the sequence of these ending sections" now? Rlandmann mentioned the "negative reaction" at WP:Aircraft talk page, but I only see a negative reaction by one editor to MoS in general about a month ago, and recently they had a negative reaction to bots ... but I wouldn't describe their reaction to putting External links last as negative, more of a we'll-get-around-to-it-when-we-can kind of thing. Are there any other wikiprojects that have a problem with what clearly seems to be the consensus order of See also first, External links last? It seems to me that a casual reader is likely to read the article once, or a few times, so if External links were in a place they weren't expecting (despite the fact that virtually all WP articles follow that order), then it wouldn't be a problem. But those of us who patrol EL's have to go to the same article over and over again, and would have to hunt over and over again if they were farther up in the article. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 04:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if my comments were unclear: the negative reaction was to a bot doing this work. In January, WP:AIR changed its page content recommendations to align with the generally-used convention; as far as Aircraft articles go, then, the decision has already been taken, and we are getting around to re-ordering old articles manually, little by little :). --Rlandmann (talk) 04:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem, I wanted to make sure I got it right. If no one knows of a wikiproject that disagrees with the usual order, then we've just fixed a disagreement between style pages: WP:MoS says "The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed." Now, how about the other problem? MoS says Notes and References can be reversed, this page says they can't. Was the bot running around putting Notes before References, RLandmann, and if so, did anyone object? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 05:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, we seem to be at cross-purposes. We have not had a bot re-arranging sections; the objection was to the proposal on this page here that a bot be used to rearrange sections. (We did indeed recently have a bot make some wide-spread changes for us, but that wasn't related to this question of section ordering; well, not directly anyway.) --Rlandmann (talk) 06:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary break

←One more thing to fix, this article says:

1. Notes
2. References (or combined with Notes into Notes and references)
3. Bibliography (or Books or Further reading)

while MoS says "Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography)". Which is better? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 05:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Neither, and there are yet other options for the various references sections. In #"Notes", I mention some involving splitting the notes into a section for text annotations, and a section for citations. I'm thinking it could be difficult to identify by bot all the sections which "see also" should come before. I don't think it's entirely trivial to move the external links section by bot correctly, either. Gimmetrow 06:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That's why it's not okay to remove the sentences saying the sections can be reordered. The order and naming of the references sections is not consistent even among featured articles, let alone throughout the rest of Wikipedia. Let's leave this to editor discretion. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Which featured article? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 01:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Game theory lists explanatory ==Footnotes== before ==See also==. However, I see nothing on the talk page (or its archive) that suggests that this was done intentionally or that anyone would object to reversing the order. (Presumably there are other examples as well.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously no featured article can demonstrate inconsistency, so it's not clear what you mean. Just open a few and compare. For instance, Report of 1800, John Martin Scripps, Anabolic steroid and Mary Wollstonecraft use different orders and names for the list-of-works and inline-citations sections. Articles may also differ in other ways. Because there is no commonly used standard, any number of systems have emerged. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The one that WhatamIdoing mentioned has See also second...although, it's just one link, it's certainly easy to see why it didn't seem important. I've left a message on the talk page. The four that Christopher mentions all have the standard order, according to WP:MoS: when these sections exist, the order is See also, then Notes or Footnotes and References (in either order), and External links last. Of course, we're currently discussing here whether we like what MoS says, but I don't get why you're saying "there is no commonly used standard", Christopher, as least as far as Featured Articles go...did you mean there's no standard for non-mature articles? These articles are important, too, of course, and if people really do feel a need for a different order, I'd like to hear about that. I haven't heard an argument yet for why that would be a good thing, and several other people in this this thread have said they've never heard an argument, either. I love the chaos on Wikipedia as much as the next guy, but what's the benefit here? What's the argument against any of the many reasons in favor? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

To say that there is a standard order, except that you are free to put some of the sections in any order you want, seems self-contradictory. Also, you are mixing two different ideas: that the MOS says something is a standard and that something actually is a standard. The two are quite distinct. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyone want to take up the argument? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(Undent) Okay, Christopher, let's make sure I understand your point correctly. Are you saying that: (1) there's a suggested list for the order of appendices in the Manual of Style, but (2) nobody has paid much attention to it in the past, so (3) it's wrong to change articles now to conform with the Manual of Style because (4) some the editors might have put a lot of time and effort into selecting the order and/or (5) articles are so different from each other that one can't reasonably standardize the order of relatively unimportant sections like "See also" and "External links"? Note that I've numbered the phrases in this sentence so you can trivially tell me where I've misunderstood you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

All I intend to say is (2), and the fact that nobody is particularly paying attention is why all the relevant guidelines (CITE, LAYOUT, MOS) say slightly different or contradictory things. It's important to realize when you see content on these pages that some sentences are the result of careful deliberation and others are the result of some random person just editing the page and nobody reverting it; there's no way to tell which is which without going through the talk archives. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(copied from WT:CITE by Dank55) I think it is probably the Layout page that should change, at least the one sentence that conflicts, since practical application is in line with this guideline. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(copied from WT:CITE) "This guideline" being: "Recommended section names to use for footnotes in Wikipedia are [Notes, Footnotes and References]". Agreed that the various style and guideline pages should at least agree on the names, even if there's disagreement over whether the list of names does a good job or not of describing practice. But to be fair, the proper naming of footnotes isn't a focus of current discussion at WT:Layout. The argument of the moment is whether current wording in MoS (See also comes first, External links comes last) or the current wording in LAYOUT is more accurate, and this article doesn't address that question. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Christopher, it seems to me that you're claiming (2) and perhaps also (4). What I want to talk about is just (3): In those cases where there is no evidence that the order of the appendices is anything more than a random mistake -- perhaps sections added at different times, by newbie or anon editors -- do you personally think it's wrong to conform the order of sections in these articles to a standard? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

It's fine if a meaningful standard, i.e. one supported by a broad consensus of editors, exists. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

...and not just in a web encyclopedia, but in a printed version as well? Some Version 0.7 deadlines are this month, and Version 1.0 isn't that far away. We already have to endure a stream of criticism that Wikipedia isn't a proper encyclopedia, and the more people lose prestige and job security because of the growing success of Wikipedia, the higher the volume of criticism gets. Publishing a printed and DVD version of Wikipedia with end sections in a random order would be more so-called proof that we're not a serious encyclopedia. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

That last reply was to WhatamIdoing. To Christopher: I just reread the discussion, and it sounds like your main point is that we should not confuse a policy with a guideline. I agree...and perhaps this discussion was made more confusing by the fact that this guideline (and only this one, that I can think of) feels to me as if it ought to be a policy, at least for articles mature enough to make it into Version 1.0, for the reason I just gave. But we can't decide policy in a guidelines page, we can only give the argument and pull in evidence. A large random sampling of articles would be helpful. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Christopher, for your reply. I believe that the mere fact that such a guideline has existed for so many months in the closely scrutinized Manual of Style is already proof that a broad consensus for this guideline exists. If you believe that such a consensus does not exist, then I invite you to show me an article -- any single article in the entire English-language Wikipedia -- in which an editor (a) was aware that a suggested order exists and (b) did not follow the suggested order for any good reason. My only condition is that the good reason was articulated before this conversation started.

Alternatively, you could imagine the immediate outcry if someone were to remove that guideline from MoS with an explanation along the lines of "most editors ignore this guideline anyway." I have no doubt that there is a broad consensus for having a standard order here. Do you disagree? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with that for the most part; the MoS isn't subject to any exceptional scrutiny and people regularly complain about changes that passed without comment weeks and months earlier. When guidelines disagree, it is usually because there is no real consensus about what to do, not because one guideline is simply out of date. Specifically, I disagree that there is consensus for a standard order. At best, there is consensus for placing See Also first and External Links last, and a good case has been raised to call that into question. To your challenge: I think that would be difficult, because I have difficulty imagining what a "good reason" would be. To my knowledge, nobody has provided a particularly good reason for the suggested order, let alone any other. This is one reason to seek a particularly solid consensus before using a bot to bring articles in compliance - the choice we are making is effectively arbitrary and, since it lacks any compelling basis, is not very urgent. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary break

I don't think bots should be used for this type of thing as it causes stress to people who edit articles and resent such changes. It is much better to discuss it on the article talk page and get a consensus to make such a change. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you really think so? Do you really think that every single article needs to first have an official discussion about the order of these sections, and let everyone have his say, and then finally an editor can spend two seconds making a simple and easily reversible change? Most people don't care about this issue. I suspect that it nearly all cases, nobody will pay the slightest bit of attention to it. How about we use the bots to do make these changes, and in those rare cases where someone objects, then the objecting editor can revert it and start the talk page discussion himself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

In every formal printed compilation of articles I can think of (conference proceedings, article collections sold as a book volume, encyclopedias, etc), authors are not allowed discretion in the order of footnotes, bibliographies, and references, even when they're allowed latitude in subject matter and language usage. The probable reason for that is, when readers get used to a certain order, they're more likely to rely on the order than to check the heading to make sure they're in the proper section. It would be unfortunate if a reader of Wikipedia assumed that a link was a reliable source because it was in the usual place for reliable sources, when in fact it was an external link, or if someone on external link patrol removed a link that turned out to be a source for the article. On top of that, there seems to be very wide consensus on Wikipedia for the order of end sections. If you look at it as weighing the needs of the many against the needs of the few, there are a huge number of potential readers of the article who will be expecting a certain order if they're regular Wikipedia readers, compared with the one or two editors who think a different order makes sense. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 22:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

All true. However, GTL still says that the order of the supplementary sections may be varied at the contributor's discretion. While the conventional order is not mandatory and set in stone, I think it's very bad on a procedural level to send a bot through the whole project effectively enforce a rule that doesn't exist. First resolve whether or not it's permissible to vary the order of these sections, then talk about whether to send out the bot or not. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Although...perhaps the guy running the bot read WP:MoS instead of WP:Layout, which said the order was fixed. [See below]. More reasons pop up all the time to synchronize the various style guides. There's a rule of database design that you don't store information in two different places, it's just asking for things to get out of sync...maybe that would be a good rule here, too. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

We have two issues, it seems. The first is whether articles should normally conform to the recommendation. I think the answer here is clearly yes: editor discretion is an excellent thing, but when there actually is no good reason for a variant, then we should follow the usual order.

Does anyone here believe that a significant number of articles with a "variant" order were so ordered on purpose (i.e., because there was a good reason for it)? I strongly believe that the overwhelming majority of variant articles represent trivial accidents: an editor didn't know that there was a recommended order, for example, or thought that the recommendation was the other way around. For example, I don't believe I've ever seen a Talk page comment about why someone chose a non-standard order of appendices. (For reference, I've edited more than 5,000 talk pages in the last three months as part of the WPMED assessment project, and I can't remember a single talk page comment that proposed, explained or supported a variant order.)

The second issue is -- given a belief that variants should be supported only when the variance serves a purpose -- whether it is better to correct hundreds (thousands?) of unwanted variants by hand or by a bot. I vote for the bot. I don't see this as a process of "enforcing" a rule that doesn't exist: I see it as a process of quickly cleaning up unintentional variants, and trusting that Wikipedia editors are smart enough to hit the Undo button whenever a bot does something undesirable to an article (exactly as I expect them to do whenever a real, live editor does the same thing by hand).

If I didn't think that nearly every existing variant was strictly of the accidental variety, then I might have a different opinion about the use of a bot. I can see some value to having a "leave me alone template" available for articles in which editors want to maintain a nonstandard order for the appendices. I would, however, be astonished if anyone here could name even ten articles out of our more-than-two-million English language articles in which ==See also== was deliberately listed after ==External links== (for example) for a real purpose. If you can provide such a list, then I will certainly reconsider my view. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a guideline not a policy. By its nature a guideline are advisory not compulsory. Bots are an attempt to enforce guidelines on other editors as if they are policy and I think that is undesirable as it has a tendency to bring disharmony to the project. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Oops! I was thinking you were both responding to someone else, but you might have been responding in part to my "Although...perhaps the guy running the bot read WP:MoS instead of WP:Layout". I'm sorry, that was very confusing, and you're right. WP:Bots/Requests for approval is the place to talk about whether a bot should be unleashed on WP or not, that's not the job of this page. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, variants don't need to serve a purpose. They never have. I therefore have a problem with variants being characterised as "accidental", implying that if only the contributor knew about the conventional order, then surely they would have used it; I'm uncomfortable with that "baptism of desire" type of thinking. As far as GTL goes, the section order has never been mandatory, and editors have not been required to have a "real purpose", or indeed any reason at all to vary it. And yes, editors who notice and care (and think they have a choice) could revert the bot, but that's a bit of a one-sided contest, I think. Especially since after the run of such a bot, those arguing for mandating the order will be able to point out that the conventional order would then be used on an overwhelming majority of articles and would have stronger grounds than ever for reverting back. I've been on the receiving end of the efforts of such zealots while WP:AIR was actively promoting a variant section order for the articles within its sphere of influence, and I don't think they should be assisted by automation. --Rlandmann (talk) 02:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

So you object to stylistic uniformity on principle? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Not at all - quite the contrary in fact; but I'm wary of "top down" actions, and strongly object to any such action when it's to enforce something that isn't mandatory anyway. Like I said, build consensus to change GTL to say that (subject to the usual "common sense" disclaimer) these sections must go in this order, and if that consensus is there (as I imagine it would be), then think about mechanically enforcing it. Or, let the bot do a test run first to leave invisible comments without actually changing anything else and wait to see what the reaction is. Steamrollering is a Bad Thing. --Rlandmann (talk) 05:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I have the impression that the MoS folks won't let anyone use the word "must" if there is any other alternative, so that consensus can't happen. Everything in MoS and its related pages is technically a "suggestion" or a "guideline". But as an interim measure, I'd be fine with an automated Talk page note that "suggests" that changes be made by an article's usual editors. I was looking at the history earlier, and this guideline was just organized into its current form during the last year, which doubtless explains why many articles do not conform. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd imagine most of the atypical articles are purely accidental. In my days in patrolling new articles, I'd have many articles with completely different order than what was expected, simply because they didn't know. If you ask any experienced user, they'll say, put see also, refs, ext links. Some people seem to think that just because the MoS/Layout is just a guideline they're at their liberty to just ignore it as they please, for whatever reason. Again, in my experience cleaning up disambiguation articles, consistency was the key (except for the rare exception). Furthermore, the guideline states, if a different order is chosen, a sufficiently good reason must be given. There is very little, in terms of style, that is policy. In a 5 minute search, I couldn't find any sort of policy that External links had to be named so. I could possibly name it Other Links. Lastly, I've seen several other bots make automatic manual-of-style fixes, such as changing External link to External links as the guideline states. As Dan said above, publishing an encyclopedia with such inconsistent styles would make Wikipedia look less professional. Mahanga^Talk 19:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not that MOS/GTL is "just a guideline"; it's that GTL specifically states that the order may be varied. And where does the guideline state that a sufficiently good reason must be chosen (or any reason at all for that matter)? I return to my original point that if the order here is discretionary, then it's pure arrogance to send out a bot to enforce a non-existent rule. Build consensus to tighten the guideline first if that's what you want to do. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

(Undent) Yes, LAYOUT says that it is "permissible" to vary certain parts (but not other parts) of the order. However, the big box at the very top of the page says, "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception." This suggests that in all normal cases (certainly in a majority of cases), the preferred order should be followed. I'm sure we can agree that we have way the heck more than "occasional" exceptions at the moment. I'm still waiting for the nonconformists in this discussion to name even one article that shows evidence of a deliberate variation from the recommended order. No one has found any. (I believe that no one has found any because there aren't any.)

LAYOUT belongs to MOS, and MOS says -- again, at the top of the article -- "One way of presenting information is often just as good as another, but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Wikipedia articles. An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise." While their specific sentences apply to intra-article consistency, I think we can assume that the "overriding principle" of reasonable consistency applies to all parts of MoS, like LAYOUT.

So yes: I believe that, under MOS and LAYOUT guidelines, it is entirely appropriate to edit articles to conform the appendix order to the preferred order.

As a separate issue, I believe that the fastest and simplest way to do this is to run a bot -- once -- through all the articles. Conforming even a quarter million articles by hand is tedious and time consuming. Add to that the necessity of posting a message at a quarter million talk pages, checking back for comments, discussing the issues if needed -- it's hopeless. I could spend all day long doing this for months, and still not be done. I'm willing to assume that anyone who reverts a bot-corrected order to a previous form has a "good reason" per MOS. Are you willing to assume that if a page gets corrected, and is left corrected, that nobody much cared about the variant order? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The big box at the top is the standard disclaimer that appears at the top of all policy pages, as you know. In this case, there is a specific and explicit instruction that goes beyond that. I'd even say that the nuance conveyed by its original wording (up to a week or so ago) made this even clearer - to me, "permissible" sounds like we "tolerate" it; the original "OK" sounds more like "go ahead and do it".

I suppose I'm being included here in the "non-conformists" - why I don't know, since I believe and have said that it would be a good thing for pages to all follow the conventional order. That being said, I haven't even looked for any articles that deliberately vary the section order - because the existence or non-existence of such articles is completely irrelevant to the point that I'm making (and reject having the "burden of proof" placed on me anyway). It's not the ends that concern me at all; it's the means. If you're looking for "even one example", User:Gimmetrow provided a link close to the very start of this discussion.

The "run the bot and then let people manually revert if they want to" approach is simply too one-sided - you're unwilling to do the manual work to implement the change that you want to see happen, but are quite happy to force other people into doing that work to undo the change. Tell me, if there's a group of articles with a variant order for a reason that you find acceptable (not that any reason is required under GTL), will there be a bot to help the editors of those articles undo these changes?

I guess I'm especially horrified that a decision like this is being made in such a rarified atmosphere. Specifically: until WP:AIR changed its page content guidelines a few weeks ago, there were something like 4,000 articles deliberately and consistently following a variant order. When this discussion started, the bot's proponents were seemingly completely unaware of this situation; and even the first editors to respond were only dimly aware of it and not even certain which WikiProject was responsible. That was for a large and actively (even aggressively) maintained WikiProject. When discussions taking place "up here at the top" are so demonstrably fallible, unilateral action such as what's being proposed is a Very Bad Thing. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

When printed sections of Wikipedia's Version 1.0 come out, Wikipedia will get even more criticism from journalists and publishers who feel that their place in the world is being threatened. TV news and newspapers prefer to criticize style over substance, so the look-and-feel of the printed Wikipedia is likely to be very important to Jimbo and the Foundation ... and it would be a matter of pride even if there were no criticism at all. Instead of arguing about which look-and-feel issues, such as ordering of sections, are important, why don't we take all similar issues (some of which have been argued literally for months), and dump all the arguments pro and con in the laps of the bureaucrats and the Foundation, since they're going to step in on any important look-and-feel issue anyway before Wikipedia ever goes to print, so we can get on with deciding things that are purely guidelines? We don't really have a choice ... WP:Bureaucrat says, "Bureaucrats are Wikipedia users with the technical ability to ... grant and revoke an account's bot status", so bot tasks are going to be decided by Bureaucrats anyway, and we can't review over two million pages for stylistic consistency without a bot. If we don't ask the Bureaucrats for help with these issues now, judging from how long it takes now to even keep style pages from contradicting each other, there's no chance that we'll finish the job of creating the Version 1.0 edition of all the style guidelines in time for editors to have reliable, stable guidelines for Wikipedia Version 1.0. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucrats flag bot status, but they do not "decide" bot tasks—the bot approvals group does that. Anyway, I think most MoS-related bot tasks are unlikely to have consensus. Even if we agreed this task was good, doing this particular task right involves some technical issues, and a naive implementation will screw up certain article components. Gimmetrow 20:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we're in disagreement, Gimmetrow. I mentioned above that the bot approvals page is the right place to go, generally. But Bureaucrats wouldn't have ultimate authority over bots unless it was thought that at least some bot issues require something more than a rubber stamp. But whether that's right or wrong, what do you guys think of my other points? Wouldn't it be prudent to get some feedback on what constitutes a "look-and-feel" issue to the people who are probably going to decide those issues anyway, before we spend a lot more time arguing about this? As I argued above, order of end sections is one of those things that most printed compilations don't leave up to individual editors, and maybe Jimbo and friends feel the same way. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The last thing this issue needs is to be kicked even further upstairs. It would make more sense for the proponents of this idea to leave notes on each WikiProject's talk page inviting comment. At least then we would know if there's any organised opposition. Input on this needs to come from below, not above. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Asking everyone for comments before making any decisions is probably what they would do as a first step anyway, that works for me. Any disagreement with Rlandmann's suggestion to put a message on the talk page of every wikiproject? (That's a huge number btw, there are for instance around 160 active science and tech wikiprojects and more inactive ones...could a bot do this? Do we want to post the notice other places as well?) I agree that we need help gathering data and opinions, but if the question is just "What's the proper order of end sections?", you're going to get a lot of complaints about spam, so why not solve all these issues at once, and at the same time keep it generally relevant so that it doesn't look so spammy, and say (paraphrasing) "please go to X page if you want to record any comments on all the printed-look-and-feel issues for Version 1.0, current issues are ..., but you can add more", and anyone can discuss any such issue there, as long as it really is a look-and-feel or layout issue of the kind that would be standardized in any printed encyclopedia, the kind that will probably need approval from "upstairs". If possible, let's set a date for when we summarize all of the pro and con arguments and hand them upstairs. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 22:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary break

Rlandmann, you have objected above to the means but not the ends. So here's how I compare the means:

Scenario one: I personally open one thousand articles. I personally find one hundred with a variant order. I personally check one hundred talk pages just in case there's a note about the importance of the variant order. I find none. I personally change all one hundred of those articles. During the next week, an editor reviews each changed article (from his watchlist) and decides on two of those articles undo the change I made.

• Means: Three to four hours of my time, maybe 1300-1400 pages served by the WIkiserver. Routine check of changes made to 100 articles: totaling perhaps ten minutes of editor attention.
• Ends: 98 articles conformed to LAYOUT. Two articles reverted (at a cost of four seconds of other editors' time).
• Total cost to all WP editors: Three to four hours of tedious work for me. Ten minutes to check changes to articles. Four seconds to undo.

Alternative scenario: Some bot checks the same thousand articles and finds the same one hundred with a variant order. Bot ignores rare comments on talk pages because it doesn't know how to interpret them. The bot makes exactly the same changes I would have made. During the next week, editors on two of those articles undo the change that the bot made.

• Means: A few minutes to set up the bot, a few minutes times several editors to discuss its approval, slightly less load on the Wikiserver. Two articles reverted (at a cost of four seconds of other editors' time).
• Ends: 98 articles conformed to LAYOUT.
• Total cost to all WP editors: Less than an hour for setup overhead. The same ten minutes to check changes to articles. The same four seconds to remove unwanted changes.

Now can you explain to me what I'm missing here? Do you think that editors are dramatically more likely to object to a given change if the user name is somethingoranotherBOT instead of mine? Do you think that I'm going to conscientiously consider the article instead of mindlessly plowing through the articles to get it over with? (I assure you that such a belief is misplaced.) How exactly is doing this by hand supposed to save time for other editors? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• It's more than a few minutes to set up the bot, unless you want the bot to mess up a lot of articles. Otherwise the "end" of your 1000 article run might be 91 of the 100 recognized and fixed properly (2 of those reverted to original), 5 other articles "fixed" incorrectly (3 of those reverted to original), 3 other articles unchanged that should have been, and 36 articles changed that should not have been (24 of those reverted). Gimmetrow 22:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not even slightly qualified to evaluate the likelihood of this happening, but I did not count development time because the script already exists. Its development is a sunk cost, no matter what decision we make. If you like, we could add a line to the means in both sections: "Time spent writing a bot (which we are/aren't using here): several hours." It is the nature of sunk costs that they do not materially change the rational decisions.

However, for my question to Rlandmann, I specifically said that I'm assuming that the bot makes exactly the same changes that I would make by hand. He seems to object to the use of a bot because it's a bot. I want to know why automation, if it produces exactly the same results, is a problem. Alternatively, if Rlandmann doesn't actually object to the means, despite his statement above that it's the means and not the ends that worry him, then he can retract his prior statement as not representing his actual position, and move on to arguments about quality programming of bots, or anything else that he wants to claim. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like I haven't made myself clear. The "means" that I'm talking about is not the use of the bot, per se, it's the taking of such a decision up here at this level without any consultation or input from below. It's the arrogant presumption of lets-enforce-a-rule-that's-not-a-rule-anyway, without any real investigation of what the actual implications of the move are. Using a bot to do that just makes it worse. In other words, I'd have the same objections if you were proposing to do this by hand, just not as strongly. At least if it were done by hand, it would give human editors more time to react, respond, and object in an organised fashion if necessary.

And not that it's relevant to my position, but I do think that editors would react more strongly and more negatively to changes made by "somethingortheotherBOT", since the use of a bot suggests that the changes have been made mindlessly and uncaringly; at least a human editor would have looked at the page first. Maybe not a rational reaction, but a very real one, I think. Maybe bot owners contributing here have seen this effect in action? --Rlandmann (talk) 22:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand, Rlandmann: You do not believe that editors at WP:LAYOUT actually have sufficient authority to conform articles to the recommendations in WP:LAYOUT.

The bot proposal people, of course, would have to agree with us, if such an effort were to involve a bot, but even if the whole mess were corrected by hand, you do not think that any handful of editors should be able to declare that the guidelines of this MOS subpage should be imposed on any articles, even though all mainspace articles are nominally subject to its guidelines. To do so, in your opinion, would seriously overstep the boundaries of normal editing authority. Right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Close, but not quite. I'm not making any comment on the "guidelines of this MOS subpage": it's this particular guideline that I don't think should be imposed, because it contains and has (almost) always contained specific advice that it was "OK" to vary the order. I've been trying to think of any other guideline that contains a similar disclaimer, and the closest I've been able to think of is the UK/US spelling question. Not a perfect analogy by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the issue is the same, even if the magnitude is very different.

So: in a small way, I think what's being proposed here is similar to a small group of editors deciding to run a bot that would impose UK spellings on every article within Category:France and its subcategories. Articles in these categories are typically not going to be about specifically-US or specifically-UK topics, and any articles inadvertently so caught up can always be reverted by hand. It could be argued that most first major contributors "accidentally" chose the national variety of English that they use in their everyday lives, without worrying about the consequences. As we move towards print versions of Wikipedia 1.0, one of the things that critics are likely to pick up on is the inconsistency of our spellings. I would oppose this hypothetical bot, since MOS specifically states that spellings used in an article without strong national ties to a topic should conform to whatever the first major contributor used - and doesn't require the first major contributor to have supplied a reason as to why s/he chose that particular national variety of English for that topic.

Conversely, if the proposal was that the bot should impose US spellings on every article within Category:United States and its subcategories, I'd have no problem with it. --Rlandmann (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

←Regarding "has (almost) always contained specific advice that it was "OK" to vary the order": my understanding from the above discussion was that MoS has always had the current language saying See also first, External links last, and that the change in Layout to "vary the order" was made sometime within the last 12 months. MoS is not more important than Layout, but given that the two guidelines have said opposite things for less than a year, it's more likely that no one caught the discrepancy because people weren't paying close enough attention to Layout than that people weren't paying close enough attention to MoS. Changes to MoS never go unnoticed; Layout, not so much (up til recently ... obviously this has to change, changes to any style guideline have to be discussed before they wind up causing these kinds of problems. Perhaps we need a Style Guidelines Version 1.0 before Wikipedia 1.0).
I may be missing something, but hasn't everyone made their points already? Isn't there consensus to gather information and get on with it? If we put something about "order of end sections" on a bunch of wikiproject talk pages and other places besides, people are going to think the issue is too narrow and accuse us of spam. We can get more done at once, and get a better reception, by giving a link instead of an argument, "Go to X page to give your input...", and making the subject a bit more widely relevant, so first we should invite people to a page to make their case for which other questions are also "printed look-and-feel" issues ... perhaps at Village Pump (misc)?

On second thought, it wouldn't hurt to ask first how widely we should ask around! Lots of people have been flamed for being too spammy on the one hand or not notifying a wide enough audience on the other hand, I'll go ask over at WP:VPP what the target audience is, and whether WP:VPM or WP:VPP is better for discussions that are part policy and part not. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:13, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Christopher disagreed with "Changes to MoS never go unnoticed" ... I didn't think that was controversial, but now that you mention it, I remember that someone recently said at WT:MoS that something had gone unnoticed for a while, but I don't remember who or about what. I don't want to get into the "supremacy of MoS", that's a hot-button issue, but it would be helpful in the future to be able to figure out when we need to go through some big hairy process of consensus-gathering and when we don't, so I'll take this over to WT:WPMoS (where all viewpoints are pretty well represented) and see if there's consensus. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This discussion appears to have died, but as I just commented in the article itself, the current situation is a bit unclear. Just to add my two cents:

• consistency would be good, so an order should be chosen and stuck to, using bots to make initial changes if necessary.
• I would put the "see also" first because it should be a part of the article. This section should include useful further reading within wikipedia. I don't think notes and references are "part" of the article in the same way, but are additional details or confirmation of source which you jump up and down to from within the main body of the article as you want. There's also an aesthetic reason: see also's are usually narrow, but external links, notes and references fill the width of the screen. It looks better having something that fills the width of the screen at the end IMHO. GDallimore (Talk) 10:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

For my part, I deliberately dropped the ball here because I had a sense that people were saying things that were possibly important but probably were parts of other arguments in other places that never reached a satisfactory conclusion. Am I correct that recent discussions at WT:MoS and other places have cleared the air a bit? If so, is the argument here now ready for resolution? Is there at least a general agreement that style guidelines shouldn't directly contradict each other? WP:COPYEDIT, WP:EL, various sublinks and discussions at WP:WikiProject External links, and especially WP:MoS all say that external links should be at the end and always have said that. WP:CITE says "near the end", but in context, that seems to mean after the other end sections we've been talking about. WP:LAYOUT was changed within the past year to say that the order was optional, and I really don't see evidence that people watch this page as closely as those other pages; the fact that this page was allowed to contradict all those other pages kind of suggests that attention wasn't being paid. People made many good arguments in this discussion, but one stands out to me (and immodestly, it was my argument): people just don't always read things. Since 99% of articles that have an External links section put it after References or Notes, there is a chance that people will simply assume that the last section is External links even when it isn't, and make a mistake because of that; we'll create less clean-up work for ourselves if sections are where people are expecting them to be.

So: one small step at a time. Can I at least change the recommendation on the order of External links back to the way it used to be? I'm not talking about See also, and I'm not talking about bots or forcing anyone to comply with a guideline. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:11, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay! Style guidelines editors seem to be happier these days; I don't see any long disagreements going on at the moment. Let's take advantage of the momentum; I'm going to go notify all the wikiprojects (via WP:COUNCIL#Current notices) that this would be a good time to give their input to style guidelines, and after everyone has had their say, maybe we can make everyone reasonable happy and achieve some stable style guidelines, wouldn't that be special? There have been no complaints in 3.5 days about GDallimore's tag and my suggestion, so I made the edit. I also was a bit bold and added that See also should be first (which, again, is what other style guidelines pages say and what this page used to say), and more important, I gave a reason: most end sections try to keep a separation between sections that concern material outside Wikipedia (References, External links) and sections that concern material inside Wikipedia (See also, and sometimes Notes or Footnotes). It seems like a pretty useful distinction to me, and a very common practice. Again, I'm not breathing a word about a "bot" here; we're just talking about what it's useful to recommend, not enforce. As always, anyone should feel free to revert if they disagree. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm complaining now, sorry :-) These edits introduces a lot of vague verbose confusion and instruction creep. I'm not going to revert, because I agree in principle with some of the content, but I don't think this is an improvement. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I tried cleaning up, but I'm afraid it's still rough. Perhaps reverting and starting over would yield a better result. Too much instruction creep, too much redundancy, not enough clarity, and no consistency in how each section is referred to. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

←Sandy, you can complain any time you like :) Regarding "too much redundancy" and "no consistency in how each section is referred to" ... it had been noted, I was trying to take this one small step at a time. Regarding too much WP:instruction creep, I am a huge fan of that page, but in this case, the argument just kept coming up time after time, "Why should we?" How about this for a compromise: can I move the text you didn't like into a footnote? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

There are at least four different things going on there. First, there was a lot of redundant language already in the version you started to work on (Example, All boxes = boxes). Second, there was some prescription that just isn't warranted (like ;utting a note telling people to alphabeticize, we avoid self-reference that should be transparent to our readers). Third, there was too much justification/instruction creep for why we do what we do. Fourth, headings are dealt with inconsistently in the entire section. I'm afraid it's such a mess that just moving things into footnotes won't solve it, and I don't think what I left there is much better. Someone needs to rewrite the whole thing. I suggest asking Tony. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with everything you just said, except that I didn't want to have another month-long discussion about "Why", I wanted to head that off at the pass. I'll check with WT:MoS; we'll get this figured out. The defense should be tailored to the offense. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

My bad

I did some changes by mistake on this page, so i changed it back (deleting the changes). :3 feel free to check and fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.73.30.108 (talk) 12:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Net total, you deleted a section: diff. I have restored this text, as I read you to say this was unintentional. Please correct me if I'm wrong.  :) — the Sidhekin (talk) 12:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

"Recommended order"

Thoughts about Jidanni's edit? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've always assumed it was the recommended order, and I think that various discussions (such as this one) have tended to support this idea. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

There remains no apparent consensus that, for instance, the Notes section should be in a certain position relative to the References section. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't care on this one, I just want to make sure we have a guideline that reflects consensus. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:20, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Infobox colouring RFC

Just a quick note about a RFC that may be of interest to some here: link - 52 Pickup (deal) 21:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

How many articles have a "Related topics" section instead of "See also"?

We already say that people can make up their own sections, and that would include "Related topics" or anything else if they like. I wouldn't want to specifically mention an alternate section name unless that's common. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, we could possibly have an extra section of "Other end sections", and throw "Related topics" and other unusual, but possibly useful, end section names in there. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Recently, WP:AWB has been "correcting" the encyclopedian Related topics to the addressing-the-reader See also; it's important we mention that either are acceptable (although I would like to see See also deprecated) to avoid circumstances like this. Skomorokh 23:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes we're stuck with what we've got; so many articles say "See also" that I don't see that going away. I don't know any reason not to allow an article to have a "Related topics" section, but it's not common, so I don't want to suggest it in WP:Layout. I don't think we should randomly change a "See also" section to "Related topics", because the pages linked to might not be related topics, they could be anything: a list, a biography, a calendar date, etc. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I just ran a database scan (on the March 15th database dump) and 144 articles used "Related topics", and 72 articles used "Related articles". However, a quick look seems to indicate that handful of those have been converted to use "See also" since the database dump. The complete lists are located at User:CapitalR/Lists. -CapitalR (talk) 00:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

References without their being cited is becoming depreciated

Currently the text says

Put under this heading, again in a bulleted list that should usually be alphabetized, any books, articles, web pages, et cetera that you used in constructing the article and have referenced (cited) in the article...

Thanks to WP:PROVEIT and templates like {{unreferenced}} the use of references without their being cited is becoming depreciated. It often makes little sense to have a separate Notes and References section if the number of citations is so few that there is no need to keep an alphabetized list as well. At its most absurd if one takes the current wording of this guideline literally one reference cited once in the text would mean two sections with identical text in them:

==Notes==

{{reflist}} containing

1.^ :Anne Author (2008). "her book", a common publisher, ISBN. p. 1.

==References==

• Anne Author (2008). "her book", a common publisher, ISBN

This does not seem like the best advice. Further there are cases where notes contain not only citations but footnotes as well, if there are only a few footnotes and a few citations the use of ==References and notes== can be useful--Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Separate references and notes sections are useful when quoting different pages from the same document. We should never mix citation styles (i.e. "Jones 1998 pg. 14" followed by "Surname, Firstname, "Article name", Website.com. Retrieved 2000-09-08"). WP:PROVEIT should be pushed where possible, but if one comes across an article that has {{nofootnotes}}, and then one adds one inline citation, surely one should keep the Footnote and the References separate until one can figure out which statements in the article the original author was using the References for? I'm not quite clear what your proposed rewording would be... Skomorokh 23:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, the "at its most absurd" example which you provided would be done less absurdly something like:

==Notes==

Author 2008, p. 1

==References==

• Author, Anne (2008), her book, a common publisher, ISBN 0000000000000 

I agree with the above that the style you speak of makes much more sense when short footnotes are used. I also question whether general references are really being deprecated as you say; I find that their presence really spares editors the trouble of citing many facts where citations would not add value. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Suppose that instead of a book it is an article or two? The one can do the split but in reality people don't.In fact in articles often have books cited a number of times in the References section but leave articles, particularly media articles, that are cited just once in an article as citations and do not include them in the reference section.

If one comes across an article with no reference section the easist way to fix it is to add;

==References==

{{unreferenced}}

{{reflist}}

This gets around the "empty section" problem.

It may save time editorial time initially (just to put general references at the bottom of a page and not cite the paragraphs), but the effort is just pushed out until it is more difficult to solve. Suppose only references have been given without citations, then that a year later someone {{fact}}s a paragraph, or puts in a new sentence in the middle of a paragraph and a citation for the new factoid, without a citation for the paragraph, one has to have access to the original source, either to answer the {{fact}}s or to cite the original sentences before the new cited one (otherwise the citation appears to cover the whole paragraph down to the citation -- false). Often a year down the road the author of the original paragraph may not have access to the original source, and even if they do they may not remember the page and have to read a chapter to find it, or that author is not around any more and some other editor has to find the original source and read many pages to find it. This is the reason why templates like {{unreferenced}} and {{refimprove}} say what they say and not "Please add [more] references to this article" --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Obviously this depends on the original author being correct about what is likely to be challenged down the road. The question in this case would be whether the person answering the {{fact}} is actually challenging the statement. In any case, I'm not sympathetic to the view that we are advancing to a point where any statement that is not cited inline will be considered incomplete. {{refimprove}} is a particularly unhelpful template and when I see it on an article I usually think less of the tagger, not the article. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

But what ever you think of the tagger, the fact is that on many articles {{reflist}} is used in the reference section and often this is the sensible thing to do if there are relatively few citations. I think that this guideline should reflect that usage. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Assuming that you are still talking about {{refimprove}} throughout them I disagree. It's not a sensible thing to do because "relatively few citations" isn't a measure of anything. It's like measuring the quality of an article by letters per word or "E"s per line. If you've seen statements in the article that require citation, then identify them specifically. If you haven't, it can hardly be best practice to add a tag saying that you have. Christopher Parham (talk) 11:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not anything to do with measuring the good the bad or the ugly, I am specifically raising the issue of whether the current guideline is worded in a way that accurately reflects current usage and I do not think it does. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

But slightly off topic I added a citation to an article a couple of hours ago Revision as of 10:23, 5 May 2008 Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, and on reflection decided to check the rest of the article. It is now fully cited with a ^{[citation needed]} made for the only information I could not find in the article where a following citation might be mistaken as covering it. Comparing before and after which is more useful for a passing reader? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

"References and notes" or "Notes and references"

From the history of the article

• 12:59, 8 May 2008 Bkonrad (re changing Notes and references to References and notes -- was this discussed somewhere -- Notes and references seems a more logical choice)

I have looked through the archives and could not see this subject discussed. Please list the sections in the archive where it was decided that a section called "Notes and references" was preferred over "References and notes". And if it is not discussed in the archived section please explain why it seems a more logical choice. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

My comment was in response to your changing a relatively long-standing formulation without discussion. "Notes and references" has been in the guideline since at least July 26, 2006. I'm not aware of prior discussion on the topic, but this is a fairly actively monitored page and the fact that there haven't been objections seems a reasonable indication of consensus (whether passively accepted or actively supported). I'd suggest you should demonstrate some support for changing long-standing guidance. As for the logic, the guideline suggest that the Notes section goes before the References section -- and although not explicitly addressed, presumably the notes would appear prior to the references in a combined section. Another of your edits introduces a distinction between notes and citations that is in conflict with Note 3 under Standard appendices and descriptions:"Notes" is for footnotes containing source citations or commentary on the main text. "References" is a list of referenced materials (books, websites, etc. cited in the main text). Notes and references are often listed under one heading. I'm not sure what the benefit is -- seems to me that making such fine distinctions is WP:CREEP. older ≠ wiser 17:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

So it is clear to every one who reads this we are debating the name of a section if there are only a few citations in an article, without explicitly naming the number lets say under half a dozen and typically about three.

"As for the logic, the guideline suggest that the Notes section goes before the References section -- and although not explicitly addressed, presumably the notes would appear prior to the references in a combined section." This is only true if one accepts that notes and references should be next to each other, then as "Further reading/External links" section usually follows a References section, the only logical place to place a separate "Notes" section is before a References section.

However in this case we are not talking about separate sections we are talking about the naming of a single section and the word ordering in a section name. One can not predict if citations or notes will come first in the section's {{reflist}} as it depends on the ordering in the article. If all the footnotes are notes and not citations, then clearly the section needs to be called "Notes" and if all the footnotes are citations then it should be called "References". If it is a combination of notes and citations then it should be called "R&n" or "N&R" (the ordering of which we are debating). Usually in an article, most of the footnotes are citations, so I think "References and notes" is a better description as it emphasise that the section contains references/sources. A search of the article space returns 3272 for "References and notes" and 10054 for "Notes and references", so out of two million articles we are not talking about a very large percentage and looking at some returned on the first page of each search, the usage is not always accurate for example Jahiliyyah has "Notes and references" when it should have two separate sections and the "References and notes" section in Bjorli should be under "Notes" as it does not contain any references. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Your reasoning seems largely based on a rather unintuitive assumption that everyone shares your distinction between a citation and a note. That is not by any means a very clear or meaningful distinction to many readers/editors. Which type appears first in an article is likely to change as the article is edited and is useless as a basis for naming the section. When combined, the implied order is the {{reflist}} listing of notes (and I as I suggested previously, regardless of whether the note contains a citation or a sidebar commentary, I think most people would regard the superscripted numbers as "notes"). This would be followed by other references that may be either directly referenced by citations in the notes or indirectly cited as general references for the article. That sequence, a list of superscripted numbered notes, followed by additional references suggests that the section heading is more logically "Notes and references". older ≠ wiser 16:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding editor-controlled ordering of <Ref>-produced footnotes, see Bugzilla:12796. If implemented, this would allow footnotes containing Cites to be separated from informative notes containing no cites. This bugzilla entry contains cite.php code modified to implement this functionality.-- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Do we have an actual problem in a live article here? Or is this all about editing the guidelines just because we can? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not a problem as such but there are many articles that have a section ==Referenecs== that only contain {{reflist}}. Further I think it better to have "References and notes" instead of "Notes and References" as usually citations (References) are in the majority -- checking the first 20 pages returned with a search on "Notes and reference" that have a notes and references section, they all have majority of cited sources or exclusively cited sources. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Right, I'm having the same reaction. This seems like part of a larger problem of material from other pages (in this case, WP:CITE) creeping in to style guidelines pages. Or more generally: material that is ultimately about how to handle policy issues (in this case, WP:V, but the same kinds of problems are caused by trying to deal with WP:NPOV or WP:OR in style guidelines). I've just finished my sweep of pages that are or are intended to be style guidelines pages, and I keep seeing the same thing: these pages are actually pretty easy to maintain and very much appreciated by editors (see the WP:GAU survey), until and unless fights get dragged in from somewhere else. I'll go write up a recommendation now; please see WT:MoS#Recommendations from sweep of style guidelines. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Style guidelines need to complement policy pages on content. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen a lot of disagreement on style guidelines pages over what goes where. I'm about to make that post on WT:MOS; after I see what people want, I'll go back and have a second look at this page and all the CAT:MOS pages to see if there are parts that are more contentious than other parts, and if that seems to be because the material actually is more relevant to a different page (such as WP:CITE). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

As this is a solution in search of a problem, I propose that we make no change at this time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see a particularly good reason to recommend either order. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)