Forum:SH:Sourcing policy rewrite

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. JocastaBot (talk) 01:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Sourcing policy rewrite

Building on the Layout Guide and Manual of Style restructurings earlier this year, it's time for the Sourcing policy. Again, the focus is on restructuring and clarifying rather than changing existing practice.

  • Notable additions
    • A section on complicated/explanatory references has been added. This is standard practice since long ago.
    • A small section on transcluded references (like those in the Year infobox) has been added.
    • A (hopefully) comprehensive list of exceptions to referential need has been added.
  • Other notable changes
    • Wikipedia policy mention has been removed from the intro.
    • The Citations subsection from the Manual of Style has been moved to this policy. This way, everything related to references is on one policy page instead of spreading it out across multiple pages.
    • The formatting of reflists with scroll boxes will be moved to the LG, which deals with placement and formatting of sections.
    • The list of sourcing rules has been divided into subsections. The references that have been used to clarify rules have been turned into normal text. While it's kinda meta to use references to explain rules that concern references, it's not really a convenient method.

To summarize the changes, no current practice will change. This is merely a restructuring. Here's the entire proposed version:

I hope to get as much feedback as possible before taking this to the CT. Thanks! 1358 (Talk) 12:28, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

EDIT 17:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC): The CT is now live: Forum:CT:Sourcing revamp revamp revamp. 1358 (Talk) 17:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Good work! Imperators II(Talk) 12:36, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
  • "References cannot be transcluded via templates." This obviously isn't the case because we have templates which transclude references, like {{Year}}. 01miki10 Open comlink 16:12, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
    • Good catch. It must've changed sometime over the past 10 years, I suppose. 1358 (Talk) 20:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
  • I am fully supportive of this change, however, this would change how some things work. For example Unidentified veteran clone trooper, a good article promoted a week ago sourced the birthplace of the clone to the databank without using a ref note, which under your version of the policy, a ref note would be needed. -ThrawnChiss7 (talk) 00:16, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
    • Good catch on that one, that was something that was missed during the review. I've added it in now. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 02:37, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
      • Yeah, this has been de facto practice for a while now but many articles, including some older status articles, do not yet reflect this. 1358 (Talk) 15:24, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Nice work on the MOST important policy of Wookieepedia, ecks ^^. I have a list of comments:
    • "When to use references": The initial paragraph don't need to be bulleted, since it's the only bullet.
      • Removed bullet. 1358 (Talk) 11:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "Although so-called "self-sourcing" may seem redundant": why not provide a definition and/or example to what exactly is "self-sourcing"?
      • Added a small example. 1358 (Talk) 16:32, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "Do not insert more than one reference per paragraph/sentence/word unless necessary.": It would probably be beneficial to provide examples of when it is necessary, such as when a claim regarding an OOU subject fall under "Exceptional claims", for which the current practice is to provide 3 references from solid non-official sources.
      • Added a link to WP:ATT there. Not sure I want to codify 3 references at this time, that can be done in a later CT if someone wants to do it. 1358 (Talk) 11:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "If more than one reference is used, list them in ascending order.": What exactly do you mean by "ascending order"?
      • E.g. [1][4][5] not [4][1][5]. 1358 (Talk) 11:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "References go immediately after punctuation and outside of quotation marks": What about parenthesis? In my experience, we place the ref after the closing parenthesis, except when the parenthesis content needs to be referenced by more than one source, such as in OOU creators articles, example: Name (birth date<ref 1> – death date<ref 2>).
      • mdashes should also be noted in here as we typically place the ref note in front of the mdash Manoof (he/him/his) (talk) 13:03, 14 October 2022 (UTC) Just realised it's already noted ^^' Manoof (he/him/his) (talk) 13:31, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
        • The full passage reads: "References go immediately after punctuation and outside of quotation marks, with no space between the end of a sentence and a reference tag. One exception is the use of dashes (see WP:DASH). References should immediately precede dashes." :P Imperators II(Talk) 13:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "Articles shall cite information from comic, books by individual comic issue or comic story": Should this be updated to also includes individuals short stories (ex: FACPOV), or even TORcite? (which is enforced as a policy)?
      • I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to including short stories, but I feel like video games are a more complex story. AFAIK, our treatment of video game citations varies from game to game. More discussion is probably needed before codifying this. 1358 (Talk) 16:32, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "References to print works [etc.]": But we have a specific template for this: {{BookCite}}.
      • Is this template using the MLA format for citing books? I'm not sure but at a quick glance, it is (at least almost). If it is, then I guess we could amend the proposed policy to include a link to BookCite. If BookCite is not using MLA, then it's in violation of current site policy (MOS Citations section). 1358 (Talk) 11:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
        • I'd be damn, we completely overlooked the MOS hard ruling on non-official book citation when working on this. Technically it's a tiny variation on MLA, in that it as a minor difference in syntax (. instead of a , somewhere I believe) only, and the addition of "language=|isbn=|issn=|quote=|link=". Do you think we need to do an emergency CT to change the original policy or just include it within the sourcing rewrite? NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
          • Removed MLA line since BookCite is standard nowadays. 1358 (Talk) 20:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
          • Specified that MLA should only be used in cases where a dedicated citation template like BookCite does not exist. 1358 (Talk) 21:12, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
    • "Use archive.today or Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for this purpose." Since we tend to prefer IA, shouldn't this mention IA first to reflect this preference? NanoLuukeCloning Facility 10:41, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
      • Switched orders. 1358 (Talk) 11:43, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
  • "Note: Wookieepedia and other wiki-based articles and categories cannot be used as sources." Should this be rephrased to "wiki-based articles or open-source webpages", to covers such sites as imdb Manoof (he/him/his) (talk) 13:31, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
    • Right, "open-source webpages" or "tertiary web sources" (potentially linking to Wikipedia:Tertiary source). Also, I realize that for the policy to be complete, it also need to account for instance where Wookieepedia IS a correct source (see Wookieepedia itself, but also Dreadnaught cruiser and any use of {{WookCite}}. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 17:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
      • I'm just wondering if this entire line could be removed and let WP:ATT do the job. What is and isn't a reliable source isn't really within the purview of the Sourcing policy. 1358 (Talk) 11:29, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
        • I'd say "remove", considering at the very least we can't have a contradictory policy left staying. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 13:56, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Forum:CT:Clarify_the_requirement_to_name_all_Refs Specifically resulted in overwhelming opposition to clarifying that all refs should be named, so this update should not bypass that CT by adding such wording without a separate CT overturning that result Manoof (he/him/his) (talk) 13:31, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
    • If this CT has more votes than that one it can just do that on its own. With the old policy it may have been a little instruction creep-y but seeing as it's as of now an unwritten requirement, it's not a huge deal in my opinion. Fred's comment on that CT is also relevant. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 14:00, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
      • I had completely forgotten that CT, and I still think the fact that VE doesn't allow ref naming is enough argument against mandatory reference naming. I'll take a look at this tomorrow. 1358 (Talk) 14:11, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
        • Removed that requirement for now. 1358 (Talk) 11:29, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. This proposal will now be taken to the Consensus Track for a vote. 1358 (Talk) 17:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC)