Talk:The Rocketeer (film)

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[edit] Recent revision

I am willing to work on the article but there are some sections that were altered that need to be retained. For example, taking out a notes and bibliography section in favour of a further reading section is not consistent with the use of the individual source materials. I am about to add further details to this article based on a new reference source. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 01:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC).

I tweaked the Notes/Reference section to keep it consistent with other film articles. If you have references cited throughout the article they belong in the References section. Anything else, that isn't cited (i.e. a novelization) should really put in another section usually called Further reading. You don't really divide it up into Notes and Bibliography under a general References section. I was just trying to clean-up the article a little bit.--J.D. (talk) 14:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

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The Notes are a part of the references section and when you use other sources, they are part of a Bibliography and not a Further reading section which implies that these are ancillary sources. This style guide is employed in WP:Aviation and a format, see the use of Aviation:Films and the multiple uses within this category.

The use of this convention has been very carefully screened since a Swedish editor implemented it last year. It follows and fits MoS guides and has not been reverted even once (well, once- in the case of this article). Admins and other experienced editors use this format throughout the Aviation group. The reason for its implementation was the nonstandard use of references as a "catch-all section" when in fact they incorporated an endnotes or footnotes section and a bibliographical record. The Further reading section is just what it says, further to the article's research sources. My background is as a reference librarian and presently, author/editor for a number of publishing houses. See: 49th Parallel, A Wonderful Life, The Right Stuff and countless other film articles for examples of this use of referencing.

As to the reasoning behind the use of bibliographic protocols, Wikipedia is mainly created by the efforts of countless editors worldwide. One of the first concerns was that in order to maintain professional standards in writing and research, assistance had to be provided to editors who did not have a background in academic or research writing. The "templates" were offered as a means of helping non-professionals in complex tasks. Citations in bibliographic format are difficult to cite for most editors in Wikipedia and the templates offer a solution. They are guides not policy and are useful up to a point but even now, there are many errors in their format and the use of templates brings in a question as to which style guide is being followed. As an author and a 30-year+ librarian, I have been exposed to many differing styles and formats. Most publishing style guides utilize the MLA (The Modern Language Association) Style for identifying research sources. The very simple form of this style is the tried and true: "Author. 'Title.' Place of publication: Publisher, Date. ISBN: (optional)." The academic or scientific citation style that you have adopted is not generally used in school, public and other libraries. See the following website (one of countless digital aids available) for a primer on this bibliographic standard: <style guides> Many of the Wiki templates are written in a APA (American Psychological Association) style guide which is a simplified format that often is used in university and scholarly works although it is not as widely accepted as the MLA guide.

This is the reference guide you may wish to use: "Formatting of a Wikipedia article reference list is a secondary detail, and there is currently no consensus on a precise prescribed citation format in Wikipedia." MLA style is the most widely accepted style in the world and certainly is accepted in Wikipedia. Since I do Wikipedia editing as a diversion from my other work, I tend to spend little time and give articles only a cursory examination. If there is a very minor error such as a misplaced comma, I "tweak" the article and I don't usually elaborate on the change since it will show up in the history note on the article. As for citations, I rely on the MLA (Modern Language Association) style which is the world's most common bibliographic style and one that is accepted by Wikipedia. I have been utilizing this citation style in my own writing and in the cataloging that I carried out in my other life as a librarian. I know that the standard today for library cataloging is to simply download an entire MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) record from an established library but I continued to be a curmudgeon and relied on "scratch" editing which I still apply to Wikipedia work today. Basically it follows the old format of: Author. Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, Date of publication (with variations to satisfy ordering and researching stipulations, usually ended by including an ISBN (international standard book number) and at times, page references). There are some subtle variations of the MLA style to facilitate multiple authors, articles, multimedia and other questions. Sorry for being verbose but I will make a point of stopping to clarify some of my edits but when it's merely a spelling, sentence or grammatical error, I will still give it a "tweak."

Let me further explain my use of references. I am a former librarian with 33 years experience in cataloguing and I tend to revert to "scratch" cataloging whenever I am working in Wikipedia. The format chosen for the majority of templates for citations and bibliographies is the American Psychiatric Association (APA) style guide which is one of the most used formats for research works. The most commonly used style guide is the Modern Language Association (MLA) which is the style guide I tend to use. Templates are not mandated in Wikipedia and many editors use full edit cataloging or scratch cataloging since it does away with the variances in some of the templates extant. As a matter of form, a number of articles have also utilized the Harvard Citation style guide as a link to the bibliographical reference. The actual format that I have used is to provide full cataloging in MLA style for a citation if it only appears once in the text as a quote or note and if more than one instance, then Harvard Citation is placed inline and a full bibliographical MLA record is provided in "References." The references area is kind of a catch-all in that it can often incorporate endnotes and footnotes if there are only a few citations. Many editors prefer to provide a "Notes" and "References" section. It is presumed that if entries are made in the references list that the reference source is used for corroboration in writing the article. In some instances wherein an editor identifies a useful source of information that was not part of the research than a "Further Reading" section can be established. In the The Rocketeer (film) article, any instances of two citations were placed in Harvard Citation style while all others were set forth in MLA style in the references section. There is no need to re-do an MLA entry into a APA style, in fact, it is most often preferable not to mix formats or style guides for consistency and readability.

I know that your eyes have probably glazed over long ago, but that is the rationale behind my editing the "The Rocketeer (film)" citation/reference notes. The "true style" is primarily use one consistent style guide (I choose the MLA as it is the standard worldwide for research articles) and adapt it when needed. If so desired, that is the actual correctly attributed source wherein all the "tracings" are provided and placed in the correct order. A suggestion made by Jeff Finlayson, one of the prolific editors in the Aviation Project Group on Wikipedia (which both of us are also members) was to "shortcut" the electronic citation partly due to reasons of need for brevity but also because many of the sources are not as well defined as our example. The final form that he proposed is one that maintains the core element of the source and provides a "hot link" to the URL where it is found on the Internet. FWIW, you may have to read this note in the edit mode in order to see what I have done to the citations.

As to the website citations, the simplest system is all that is required as per Jeff's suggestion ^[1] FWIW, it works for me and I don't need to go into the full bibliographic record especially for a Wikipedia article. The simpler form should predominate, not to say, that if someone insists on a full bibliographical accounting that another format might be used, but generally speaking, go with the simple system.

Excuse the pedantic ranting, but I can follow up with more information on referencing on your talk page if your wish. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 15:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC).

[edit] Filming locations

How was Bakersfield, California used in the production? Bzuk (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2008 (UTC).

[edit] WikiProject Aircraft/page layout

Isn't this article, first and foremost a Film one and really should adhere to that format? The excess number of pictures and where they are located will never allow this film to be promoted to a higher status (GA, etc.). And if this is party of WikiProject Aircraft how come it's not stated as such on this page? Just my two cents.--J.D. (talk) 14:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Five images on a page does not disqualify the article and this is the tag on the article: <-- This article is a part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/page content for recommended layout. --> FWIW, this article should also be noted as a film article as well. As to image placement, there is a wide variety of choices to be made, and graphically, there are some problems with the images as such but "orphaning them" is not a good solution. Bzuk (talk) 19:24, 14 March 2008 (UTC).