User talk:MacAuslan

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Welcome!

Hello, MacAuslan, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Ling.Nut 22:41, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] discussing fomatting details of your edits

MacAuslan, here are your edits to the Harvard referencing article. If you wish, we can go over the details point by point. The conversation may take time, though, because I have papers to write. But I can add comments bit by bit. Meanwhile, reading the articles in the links I gave on the Harvard referencing talk page will help you get a good start:

''Harvard referencing''' is a citation system first used by Professor Edward Laurens '''Mark''' (1847-1946), professor of anatomy and director of the zoological laboratory at [[Harvard University]] in a paper published in 1881<ref name=Mark>Mark Mark EL 'Maturation, fecundation, and segnmentation of Limax campestris', Binney, ''Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology'' 1881;'''6'''(part 2, No 12): 173-625 [''sic'']</ref>. It is now used all over the world. It is also known as the the '''author-date system''' [http://www.imoat.net/handbook/doc-sty.htm] (which has the advantage of describing the system in a way which shows how it works) and the '''parenthetical system''', [http://www.libs.uga.edu/ref/chicago.html#authordate]. At Harvard University itself, some academics call it 'the social science system'. This citation system is increasingly preferred by scholars, especially in the social sciences, and professional writers as being less cumbersome than footnotes. Scholars in other fields have other favourites: many in Biological Science prefer the Vancouver system, while in Britain at any rate, History and English tend to require all references to be constructed under the old-fashioned [[footnotes]] system, and Law has its own system. The system was developed by Mark from the cataloguing system of the Library in the Laboratory of which he was Director<ref name=Chernin>Chernin, Eli (1988) 'The "Harvard System": a mystery dispelled' ''British Medical Journal'' vol 297 22nd October 1062-1063</ref>.

  • Chernin, Eli (1988) 'The "Harvard System": a mystery dispelled' British Medical Journal vol 297 22nd October 1062-1063
Some quick thoughts:
  • Check the page for American or British spelling. If the pages uses one or the other, you should follow that system.
  • Your link to the Vancouver system is red because the article does not exist on the English Wikipedia. Consider writing that article first, then linking to it.
  • You need double quotes (be careful not to use two single-quotes) in the ref's name:
<ref name="Mark">
  • Giving Mark's dates of birth & death is probably too many details; unrelated to this article.
  • I would define the Harvard system before I gave so much info about who made it. In the current version, that info is very brief & so is not distracting. But some people would change even that version. I might, in fact.
  • Use [[footnote]]s instead of [[footnotes]].
  • The information about usage in Britain, and esp. info about other systems used by other academic fields in Britain, may again be too detailed. I would delete it, personally.
  • Your sentence, "At Harvard university itself..." needs to be referenced. Where did you get that info?
  • Finally, your reference formatting is indeed noticeably different from what is typically used around here. I suggest you read up on the subject; but we can discuss that later if you like.

--Ling.Nut 00:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ling.Nut
Thanks - a) for the generous welcome, and b) for the thought and attention you've given this.
I hate to distract you from your papers - but
  • Thanks for reminding me to make spelling consistent...
  • The article on Vancouver will be written I need to look at the manual, and get it right. In my use of Wikimedia software for another project (in development), I have become accustomed to write links first to act as a reminder to wfrite them later. Is this considered bad practice on WikiPedia?
  • Thanks too for the tip on quote marks - I thought I HAD entered double; I must be getting old.
  • Isn't the period of his life relevant? - though I now see that the date of his original article will do that.
  • This is really the principal reason for my first amendment to the article. I rather object to the use of 'Harvard' to mean a system not universally used at Harvard University. In some ways, I'd like to start by defining 'Harvard System' as a misnomer; but that felt extreme. Truly, 'author-date' is more logical, helpful - and in my view accurate.
  • Your "Use [[footnote]]s instead of [[footnotes]]." confuses me - all I typed was "the old-fashioned footnotes system". I think 'nowiki' must have been interjected by a machine.
  • The info about UK is only to be aware that US and UK often differ, and I wanted to be clear about where I am coming from.
  • What is WikiPedia's stance about 'personal communication'? I got this in a private chat with a Head of Department at Harvard, who asked me what I meant by 'the Harvard System'; and when I described it, thought for a while and then said "That sounds like what we call the Social Science system." I can't reference this yet, without asking his permission.
  • Finally.... It's because my reading up on the subject so far has left me very confused that I contacted this helpdesk. I feel that an article on the author-date system or' Harvard System (misnomer for author-date system)' should use that system in its own referencing. I now think that it should be clear that that is what is happening in the text of the article; but that indeed it should not use the 'cite.php' system. This is getting near the debate (which I eventually found very hard to follow, and do not think I understand yet) in the talk between SE and SlimVirgin.
Again, thanks.MacAuslan 08:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] more comments

Hi

I completely re-wrote the article. I put the historical info (which covers your terminological objections) in a new section. Please read it carefully. I think moving the history & terminological debate to a lower section is actually the objective solution...

  • What you contacted was not a helpdesk. What you contacted was the discussion page or talk page that is specific to the article about Harvard referencing. It's a meaningful distinction.
  1. There are several help desks which exist for the sole reason of helping people with their questions. The main help desk is here: Wikipedia:Help desk. You can ask questions there, plus it includes a list of links to other help desks is here. Another useful page is Help:Contents. That page is not the best place to ask questions; it contains links to some help desks and policy/guidelines pages.
  2. The talk page of a given article exists to discuss (and often, debate) the contents of that particular article. It's OK to ask questions & even to ask for help on a talk page, but that is definitely not the main purpose of talk pages in general. A very general question, such as "how do I make these links work?" would perhaps be something to ask a help desk
  • I put the nowiki tags around your tags (see above) myself, to show what the formatting of your references looked like. Nowiki tags prevent wikipedia from processing link information (and all other kinds of wikitext), and instead simply displays them as text. For example, here is a link to "Taiwanese aborigines" first without nowiki tags, and then with (surrounded by) them:
    • Taiwanese aborigines -- [[Taiwanese aborigines]]
    • It's perfectly acceptable to say that the US and UK differ, In fact, it's a good idea.
However -- and here I am expressing opinion rather than rules, although there may be something about it in the various guidelines about style -- that is something of a secondary point with respect to the main purpose of the article. When the explanation of a secondary point goes into too much detail, it becomes distracting. Here I'm referring to these words in particular:

Scholars in other fields have other favourites: many in Biological Science prefer the Vancouver system, while in Britain at any rate, History and English tend to require all references to be constructed under the old-fashioned footnotes system, and Law has its own system.

That's a pretty lengthy sentence. It pulls the reader away from Harvard referencing and into thought about other systems. If I were going to include that information, I would say something like this:

Outside of the social sciences, scholars may use other methods of formatting and organization of citations and references. There are also stylistic differences between the systems used by scholars in different countries.

  • Information obtained through personal communication is obtained from a primary source. In general, Wikipedia articles should not depend on primary sources but rather on reliable secondary sources who have made careful use of the primary-source material. Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources.
  • As for "Harvard system" being a misnomer... OK you can mention the source of the system and the other nnames (but you're right to be cautious about describing it as a "misnomer".) But pull away from the feelings caused by your objections. If some undergraduate student in the US were looking at the article on Harvard referencing for the first time, what would he/she want to see? I suspect s/he would want to know what the heck a Harvard reference is before being exposed to a terminological debate. This is an important point: The first or lead-in paragraph of an article should be a brief summary of the entire article; it shouldn't delve into details.

--Ling.Nut 13:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] another editor is now involved; the page is not as i had edited it.

MacAuslan,

A third editor has become involved in the process. I mentioned earlier that I had changed your edits, but none of my changes are visible now. That person and I are currently involved in a lengthy discussion about "what to put where." I'm sorry to tell you that it is possible that this kind of discussion may become heated.

Cheers! --Ling.Nut 20:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ling.Nut,

I have now written a first stab at the 'Vancouver System' article to which I wanted this page to link.

Thanks for your patience and helpful comments. I am amazed - and impressed - by the work you put in, with papers to write as well. (I wrote more an hour or two ago, but forgot to "Save Page" on the talk... so it's gone...) You say "What you contacted was not a helpdesk. What you contacted was the discussion page or talk page that is specific to the article about Harvard referencing. It's a meaningful distinction" - thanks for the distinction. I used 'helpdesk' because I originally contacted you through the 'Editing help' tag (I think - I cannot now trace the link I used. It wasn't a simple click on the 'discussion' tag) and am still finding my way round bits of Wiki. (I guess that will take the rest of my life.)

I notice that the 3rd editor is one of the authors of an earlier controversy whose details rather escaped my understanding. They certainly involved the word 'citation', which is difficult. I think some of the confusion may arise from its different use in UK and US contexts; but it may also be accounted for by variation between usage in different subjects.

I don't - so far! - mind the possibility of 'heat' in the discussion; I hope that it will not be unpleasant for you. What is the etiquette on Wiki for me now? You are handling the 'Harvard system' article in some way as an editor; should I just muscle back in and change things as I want? Should I not just handle the argument myself? MacAuslan 08:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm really glad I could be of help. I hope you enjoy your newfound area of interest in editing Wikipedia!
Did you read that whole argument? Every word?
There are several guidelines for how to deal with others, including Wikipedia:Assume good faith and Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages. I think you should do both of those. I have opted completely out of editing that article. Good luck in dealing with it.
I also think you should do this: read, read, read. In the course of all that discussion, I gave you many links to articles about how to edit, style guidelines, etc. Read them all. Some of them are humorous, but all of them make some valuable point. Also, you can always ask me questions, at the links below. Cheers!
Ling.Nut (talk • contribs • count • logs • page moves • block log • email)
OH PS I will say one specific thing. Regrettably, I believe you need to Delete the sentence about people in Harvard calling it the "social science system" (if the sentence is still there; I am not looking at the page). If you look at it (if it's still there), the third editr put a tag on it that says "Citation needed" or similar. If you wanna be a good editor, you should take action when someone puts that tag on your stuff. Either find a secondary reference for it, or delete it (kind of like "put up or shut up," but that may sound rude to your ears... I don't intend it to be rude at all).
I know you have an email from someone saying that it's true that people in Harvard say that, but emails are primary sources. Wikipedia uses secondary sources. After you delete it, put a brief note on the Talk page(by clicking the little plus (+) sign atop the page to start a new topic) telling why you have deleted it. ... Cheers! --Ling.Nut 14:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:Widener Lib - handout on Harvard system p1.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Widener Lib - handout on Harvard system p1.jpg. Wikipedia gets thousands of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

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This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. If you need help on selecting a tag to use, or in adding the tag to the image description, feel free to post a message at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 22:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Widener Lib - handout on Harvard system p2.jpg & Image:Widener Lib - handout on Harvard system p2.jpg

These images are not in the public domain and have been deleted. All written works are copyrighted unless they include a specific release or licensing details. These images could be used as a reference or selectively quoted, but they should not be inserted in the article. For more information, please see WP:IUP. Thanks, ˉˉanetode╦╩ 02:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have been at some pains to obtain the following from Joe Bourneuf/Head of Reference Services/Widener Library/Harvard University in relation to the images I uploaded:
"It is not under copyright and you are more than welcome to quote it in Wikipedia."
I will now try to upload my images again. If they are not to be accepted, I cannot imagine a way of proving my contention that 'Harvard' is a misnomer (or an ill-judged and inaccurate name) for the 'author-date' system of referencing: please can someone tell me one? I have found (by chance, and the help of a good friend) a piece of writing in the public domain from an impeccable source. That counts as authoritative citation to me.

SORRY! I HAVE JUST READ YOUR IMPROVED VERSION WITH ENOUGH CARE TO SEE THAT MY OBJECTION HAS BEEN MET, AND I RETRACT THE IRRITATED TONE OF THE ABOVE. However, the point still remains. The document to which I refer is hardly likely to be available, except at the Widener's help desks and to a very limited extent beyond; and the attribution (n.d.) is hardly likely to guide a researcher to the original. That is why I wanted to upload the copy: to make sure that the evidence was publically available, as well as in the public domain. And, as I say, Bourneuf her/himself has asserted that it is not a copyright document. MacAuslan 23:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC) MacAuslan 22:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vancouver system

Hello, MacAuslan - Can you briefly check on the talk page for the entry Vancouver system? There seems to be an inconsistency with the very formatting that is being described in the article. I'm about to change it but I'd like to run this by the article's expert first. Thanks! 216.165.126.18 14:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Harvard referencing

I've reraised an issue at Harvard referencing on changing Harvard referencing to author-date referencing before Wikipedia changes the reality. Author-date is a much more intuitive name. OptimistBen (talk) 05:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed! Thanks for getting this further than I have ever done.

MacAuslan (talk) 11:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)