User talk:DieSwartzPunkt

Redirects

I reverted an edit you made for two reasons. Both are to be found at WP:NOTBROKEN:

• Paragraph 1 "There is usually nothing wrong with linking to redirects to articles. ..."
• Bullet point that starts "Shortcuts or redirects..."

-- PBS (talk) 21:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

British Rail Class 483

Re your revert at British Rail Class 483 and the edit summary 'WP:SFN doesn't mention "Footnotes" as a heading. In any case, for consistency, virtually very other article in Wikipedia uses "References"'. I suggest that you read WP:SFN again: it says 'a "Notes" or "Footnotes" section, which immediately precedes the "References" section containing the full citations'; the examples also show two headings. The fact that in the examples one of these is called "Notes", not "Footnotes", is unimportant: Wikipedia does not have fixed names for headings. If you follow the link to Help:Shortened footnotes, there are more examples - and none of them use only one heading. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Wikipedia policies are generally about ensuring that the style and presentation of articles across Wikipedia is consistent. I grant that those policies do state "Notes" for the inline references. However just looking at a random selection of articles (using the 'random article' option to the left) shows that in the 40 random articles that came up, 33 of them use the heading "references" prior to the inline references, one used "notes and references" but it did contain a couple of footnotes that were not references as such. None used "notes" or "footnotes" on their own. The remaining 6 were devoid of in-line references.

This rather suggests that user consensus is for "references". Alternatively, if you want to doggedly stick to policy, then you need to visit all the 4,635,783 other articles and make then consistent with British Rail Class 483. You are the second person to point this out to me this week, but the last one conceeded the point. In reality: the policy needs to be looked at in the overall context. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The heading "References" is certainly popular when every ref is a full citation and shortened footnotes (SFN) is not in use, but this heading is not laid down by policy. Indeed, MOS:APPENDIX#Notes and references states 'Editors may use any section title that they choose. The most frequent choice is "References"; other articles use "Notes", "Footnotes", or "Works cited" (in diminishing order of popularity) for this material.' Wikipedia does not advocate any single referencing style (the wide variety of methods described at Wikipedia:Citing sources demonstrates that), and SFN is just one of several that are available. Taking a sample of 40 random articles is fair, but you don't say which those 40 were, and if you used Special:Random, I expect that those articles will have been of widely-varying quality, some will have been stubs. To discover best practice, we should look to the featured articles, and of those, the ones reflecting current practice will be those that have recently been at WP:TFA. The list for October 2014 has 31 entries; I don't propose to go through them all, nor shall I pick and choose to support my case. But in the last two weeks we have had:

• Today (31 October) is Resurrectionists in the United Kingdom - this uses SFN, the subheadings for which are "Notes" and "Bibliography".
• Yesterday's was Peter Warlock - SFN, the subheadings for which are "Citations" and "Sources".
• On 29 October it was Sonic: After the Sequel which does not use SFN.
• 28 October: Ruma Maida - pure SFN, the subheadings for which are "Footnotes" and "Bibliography".
• 27 October: Æthelstan - SFN, the headings for which are "Citations" and "Sources".
• 26 October: Byzantine civil war of 1341–47 - pure SFN, the headings for which are "References" and "Bibliography".
• 25 October: Katy Perry - this mixes SFN with full citations, the subheadings are "Footnotes" and "Sources".
• 24 October: Woolly mammoth - this completely mixes SFN with full citations.
• 23 October: Conte di Cavour-class battleship - SFN, the headings are "Footnotes" and "References" - exactly the same as the ones used at British Rail Class 483.
• 22 October: Chorioactis does not use SFN.
• 21 October: Analytical Review - SFN, the headings are "Notes" and "Bibliography".
• 20 October: James Chadwick - SFN, the headings are "Notes" and "References".
• 19 October: Briarcliff Manor, New York does not use SFN.
• 18 October: Battle of Caishi - pure SFN, the headings are "Notes" and "References".

So, out of 14 recent TFA articles, ten (about 70%) use SFN, and the names of the headings and subheadings are far from consistent: for the first heading or subheading, there have been "Citations" (2), "Footnotes" (3), "Notes" (4) and "References" (1); and for the second, "Bibliography" (4), "References" (3) and "Sources" (3). Notice that "References" is used for both purposes - three times for the second heading or subheading, and once for the first. I expect that if I went back another two weeks, I'd find other terms, other combinations and different proportions. What is consistent is the use of two headings or subheadings whenever SFN are used: none of my sample of 14 recent TFAs use SFN with a single heading and no subheadings. I'm not going to alter all the 4,635,783 other articles and make them consistent with British Rail Class 483, partly for the simple reason that not all of them use SFN, but mainly because of WP:CITEVAR. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:55, 31 October 2014 (UTC)