Wikipedia talk:Citing sources

Citing books

I am in the middle of a disagreement with an editor who believes that it's preferable in this instance to cite a whole book to cover about four or five paragraphs, and without citing page numbers. Perhaps it's my memory failing me, but I had remembered reading a guideline which required citing pages numbers or chapters with books. Now I see WP: Citing sources#What information to include states in the ninth bullet point, "chapter or page numbers cited, if appropriate." When would it not be appropriate? How is a third party to verify a reference to a book without narrowing the scope to at least a range of pages or a chapter? The second issue is how many citations? I am not aware that there is such a guideline, but I generally sense there is something wrong when there not at least one citation per paragraph.

The book in question is 223 pages. If I am right, what policies support this? Cheers, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:BURDEN, part of WP:V has this: "Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)."

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Namely, the word "precise". Citing an entire book for 5 paragraphs of information is not a precise citation. --Izno (talk) 22:11, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

That formulation "if appropriate" can be a misleading as specifying page numbers or at least a chapter is the default case for normal sourcing. But note that these format and template descriptions are also used for so called "general references" and "further reading" or selected bibliography sections and for those cases a specification down to chapters or pages usually doesn't make sense, i.e. is not appropriate.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:24, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks everybody. I don't know the policy details as I should. On the other hand, the "if appropriate" clause seems ripe for abuse. I think I will appeal to the general idea of making it easier for other editors to check our work, plus the "clear and precise" language. Cheers, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 22:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that "if appropriate" can be misread or abused and don't mind it to be rephrased of others feel the same way. Maybe simply adding a footnote to the "if appropriate" phrase stating that usually for content sourcing page numbers or at least a chapter specification is required.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't have a clear idea yet of how to express this, but I think "appropriate" should be understood to mean the smallest unit (page range, section, chapter, etc.) available that provides support for the specific contents of a sentence or paragraph in the WP article. This may sometimes mean that adjacent paragraphs have citations to overlapping page ranges. We need to make it as easy as possible for readers to find the relevant portions of a cited source. As I said, I'm not yet sure how to state this in a non-convoluted way. - Donald Albury 11:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I feel the need to point out that WP:BURDEN does not use the phrase if appropriate. There is no if in the sentence that I quoted. The parenthetical clause is merely shorthand to avoid listing many possible divisions (as was done at Template:Cite book#In-source locations).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The problem is that using a full inline citation for each reference is a PITA. Using short references or named references to books already cited looks ugly, in 50 or 100 references where is the main one? There are a number of approaches which overcome this:

• Use List-defined references (WP:LDR), see Royal Oak, Frindsbury for an example. Where a book is involved you will probably need to use either {{r}} or {{rp}} to give the page numbers, or else add the abbreviated references with pages after the extended ones.
• Cite all the books in a separate list and then use {{sfn}} to link a specific page reference to the citation. See St. Mary & St. George Anglican Church for a straightforward example or Subhas Chandra Bose for a complex one involving notes, references and citations. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Basically what I've been doing for a while, now: Francisco Menéndez Márquez. - Donald Albury 13:12, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)See your talk page for a comment on this. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this leaving the scope original question and mixing in highly controversial and somewhat subjective issues about citation styles. I think we should focus on simply making clear to readers, that "if appropriate" is not to be understood as it being ok to skip a more detailed specification (page numbers, chapters) when sourcing Wikipedia content with book citations. There seems to be a (long practised and established) general consensus for that. For the question however, how the specification should be done in detail, that is in which format, there is afaik no real consensus whatsoever, on the contrary it is a long standing controversial issue.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there are many acceptable styles of citation, and I tried several before settling on what I am comfortable with, but I think we should encourage editors to provide citations that make it as easy as possible for readers to verify that a source does support the statements in an article. In my opinion, that means using page numbers when available, and if not, the lowest level division or divisions in a source that support the text of an article. Failing to be as specific as possible in a citation is a disservice to the readers, at least whatever proportion of readers care to check the citations. - Donald Albury 13:48, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I think your first sentence is a little strong, given that I showed two different ways of doing things, and mentioned a third. What is germane is that simply repeating full citations inline leads to a mess such as this old version which is the sort of clutter that I assume HGFriedman is concerned about. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Well there is nothing wrong with making suggestions how to facilitate a more specific citation. However the original question was not about that. The was no issue with how to provide a page number just with editor declining to provide one.

I wanted to avoid this thread moving into the pros and cons of your suggestions as they are part of an longtime unresolved wider issue. And as great or superior they might appear to you, they might do so to others. There is a reason this field is longtime contentious and imho people don't even really what is annoying clutter and what not and all the suggested templates have supporters and opponents. I for instance intentionally use none of those templates (and for good reasons from my perspective).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I have notified HGFriedman since his name has come up. @Martin of Sheffield: I never raised the issue of citation style. I asked about when and how often a citation should be required or appropriate. As matter of policy, it is uncontroversial that (aside from the lede text) every statement must have a source. So the clutter in the article you cite is caused by different statements backed up by different sources. I raised the issue of a single book citation with no page references to backup a handful of paragraphs. My intuitions told me this was very wrong, but my knowledge of WP policy details did not match my confidence in my own intuitions. So I asked for help. Though this is not a WP policy, for my own rule for editing, I provide no less than a citation per paragraph. However, when a single source supports all of the claims in the paragraph, I use only one citation. Therefor, I am not advocating for clutter either.

In addition to learning some details about citation policies from this thread, I have come to the conclusion that I should improve my own citation practices. For example, IIRC, WP:CIT says that it is not necessary to include page numbers in a citation of an article. I have used that to follow many others who do not cite specific page number or ranges for articles. However, with a long article of 25 to 50 pages, I have not been serving my readers well. I will start citing page numbers for long articles. Thanks again, Oldsanfelipe (talk) 16:49, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

There's a few people putting words into my mouth, or at least misunderstanding my points. I would agree that page numbers (or similar) should always be used. I do understand though that if references are not done carefully then they do degenerate into a clutter, which is why I assume that HGFriedman was not using page numbers and allowing all the references to coalesce (see Talk:Streetcars_in_New_Orleans#Citing_sources). I do think that endlessly repeating a full citation with only a page number change is fruitless, as shown in this example. You'll notice that the first source is repeated at length 7 time, the third 11 times! If editors come here asking questions I assume that they are seeking information, and that is why I gave three different ways of doing it (named references, List-defined references and Harvard). For the record I do prefer data normalisation and ordering, so would choose one of the latter two, but have worked on many articles where the established style is the first. In summary, on policy Oldsanfelipe, Trappist, Donald Albury and myself appear to be in agreement that page numbers should be used. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

"As matter of policy, it is uncontroversial that (aside from the lede text) every statement must have a source." No, that is not correct. An inline citation is only required if the statement is a direct quotation, has been challenged, or is likely to be challenged. Of course, it's often helpful to provide citations in other cases too.

Also, it is not required that successive statements each have their own citation if one location within one source supports several statements. The first example below overdoes citations, and the second example is more appropriate:

AD 2018 is year 6730 of the Julian Period. The Jewish (A.M.) year 5778 begins September 20, 2018.

AD 2018 is year 6730 of the Julian Period. The Jewish (A.M.) year 5778 begins September 20, 2018.

Jc3s5h (talk) 17:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Jc3s5h: how does your example contradict my statement, "every statement must have a source."?

"Every statement must have a source", as I read it, the editor must already have located a source for every statement, even if the editor does not cite the source in the article. The actual requirement from WP:V, "all content must be verifiable", means the editor should be confident a source can easily be found in the unlikely event the statement is challenged. So I'm allowed to add "when an NPN bipolar junction transistor is operating in the active region, current flows out of the emitter", because I know that information can be found in thousands of sources, even though I don't have one of the sources on the couch next to me opened to the appropriate page. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

And someone may come along and think that it needs to be cited, and tag it with {{cn}}, at which point it needs to be cited because it has been challenged and is not "common knowledge". · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:59, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

From my editing experience in the past, you can have a book open in front of you while editing, and even place a multi-page citation at the end of a paragraph, but you may have trouble finding which page in the source supports a specific statement in the paragraph when that statement gets challenged years later. Without even a clue as to what book or other source was consulted in writing the article, it can be very difficult to recover a source. What you think is obvious or well-known is not so for many readers. And what some people think is "common knowledge" turns out to be not-true. So, policy may only require that something added to an article be verifiable, but it saves time and trouble later on if everything added to Wikipedia is cited to a reliable source. - Donald Albury 10:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If the editor doesn't know anything about the topic, and had to look up every tidbit in a source, then Albury's comment is true. But if the editor is a subject matter expert, having to look up each fact, no matter how well known, before adding it makes editing much more difficult. Having that as a policy would change the Wikipedia policy from "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" to "the encyclopedia only ignorant people can edit". Jc3s5h (talk) 11:24, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't track. Being an expert who knows whether a fact is real, from professional experience, has nothing to do with whether they need to prove that it's real; in fact, the expert is far more likely to be able to do this well, already being familiar with standard reference works in the field in question, and is more likely to either have them at hand or to be able to get to them easily (e.g. through journal-site paywalls). Being broadly ignorant of the topic means you're less likely to a) have any idea whether the claim is legit, or b) have any idea who to prove it. More to the point, there's no connection between "I know my stuff" and how to write encyclopedic material. The end reader has no idea who wrote which words in the article, and even if they dug that out of the page history, they have no reason to know that editor IPFrehley has a doctorate in the field while the next editor at the page Jimbo69, is a 16-year-old stock clerk at Wal-Mart who doesn't even have GED. I've had direct experience with alleged subject-matter experts being massively problematic at articles like Albinism, just deleting sourced material and inserting unreferenced claims based on what they learned in med school 30 years ago rather than based on what current sources know about the condition and its causes. It's the old "I'm an expert so I am a reliable source" confusion; WP relies on published sources, not claims about what is inside one's grey matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:49, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If the original editor is not around when a statement is challenged, then someone else has to come up with the citation, or the statement may be removed. Not every editor has sources on the tip of their tongue. I tend to edit articles relating to history and archaeology. While I (think) I know facts about a historical subject, I do not have a photographic memory, so I have to search to find a reliable source that supports what I remember reading in the past. Even if I have a suitable source at home, it still takes time to find what I want. If I originally found something in a library book, and didn't note the page number at the time, it is even more trouble to track down the reference. And, every once in a while, I can't find the source, and have to let something be deleted. I am an amateur historian, so I have to depend on reliable sources. I have a PhD in linguistics, and worked many years with computers, and I do not edit Wikipedia articles in those fields. Too much temptation there to rely on what I know (which is likely out of date) rather than what I can find in reliable sources. - Donald Albury 12:00, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with providing more references than strictly needed as convenience service to readers. However our policies don't really require that and for good reasons. Individual cases need to be approached with some measure of common sense rather than absolute rules. What "common knowledge" is and how individual sourcing is minimally required depends on the article's topic and the primary target audiences. "Common knowledge" with regard to target audiences are in doubt well known facts/domain knowledge, that can easily be looked up in (any) standard textbook in the issue or reference books. None of that however justifies the "I add that because i'm an expert"-approach, but the justification is always that it can indeed be looked up easily. The latter than also can be used to be added as a source if really needed.

As far as unsourced sentences are concerned, simply removing them just because one can't find a source (quickly) is not always a good idea, but this heavily depends on context as well. In articles which are apparently well written and informed, one should remove unsourced content only if there is at least some (additional) reason to be believe the statement could be wrong, seems questionable or might violate policy. Simply not being sourced and not being able to find a source right away is often not good enough to justify a removal. The last thing we need is a "quality assurance" that combs through articles the topics of which it has no clue about and starts removing content it deems unsourced and for which it can't quickly find (not to say google) one.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Subject matter experts should provide citations for anything that is the least bit obscure or difficult to look up. But, in an article full of calculus and differential equations, requiring a subject matter expert to provide a citation to show that a quotient is the result of a division is just plain hostile to the editor, and to the readers who are competent to read the article because those readers have to wade through lots of unnecessary citations. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Bundling cites and CITEVAR?

Does switching to bundled citations count as a change which requires consensus, per WP:CITEVAR?

If so, should this be made clearer at CITEVAR?

@Emeraude:

See Britain First, [1][2][3] Andy Dingley (talk) 09:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Also at Freemen on the land Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I would argue not, if the nature of the reference remains fundamentally the same. In those diffs the content of the citation templates have remained the same, so the citation style has remained the same. If for example an article uses Harvard referencing the guideline is supposed to prevent an editor coming along and templating all the citations. What you've got there is a change in the footnoting format, but not a change in citation. However, if you believe that bundling is detrimental in some way you are under no obligation to accept the change. Betty Logan (talk) 10:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

It is a WP:CITEVAR thing, yes, but it can also be a tidying up thing. For instance, in the Diels-Alder reaction article, Ref 47 combines all 28 papers as a single ref. That's a tidying up thing because these papers aren't cited independently of one-another in this context and having 28 different [47][48]...[75] would be incredibly ugly/annoying (in print, this would simply be [47-75], but that's not feasible on Wikipedia). However, the clustering of references [1][2][3] in the lead would be a clearly editor-and-reader hostile downgrade because they're cited independently of one another and re-used in the article in different places, for different things.

I have no opinion on if those diffs are tidying or not, but in my experience, bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe is necessary, nor even sufficient, to cite 28 papers to establish that Deils and Alder wrote 28 papers about that reaction; that is more of a matter for a secondary reference. It is an anomalous case that does not show a general value of bundling; a better "tidying up" would be to replace that list of papers with a single, appropriate citation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe it falls under CITEVAR because that applies not only to the rendered appearance of the citation, but the approach future editors will have to take when editing the article. Bundling makes it a little more difficult to reuse or change citations. This is much the same as changing to list defined refereces, which also primarily affects how future editors edit the article. I also agree with Headbomb that bundling for bundling's sake is not very helpful. The situation where I would be likely to bundle would be if the footnote explains the relationship among sources,for example, "Brown^[1] uses the data of Jones^[2] and the curve fitting of Young^[3]". Jc3s5h (talk) 12:44, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Or something like

[1] Original ref

            Errata

. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. CITEVAR has never been clear over whether "technical" changes, such as whitespace (and linebreaks) around template params, which do not change the rendered content are within its scope or not. Although a switch to listing named refs within reflist (very innocuous, IMHO) does seem to be regarded as contentious, and the use or not of templates is unsurprisingly so. Where the results of the citations change though (and this is surely the case for bundling), then isn't that precisely why we have CITEVAR, thus (as here) they're covered by it?

As to most of the situations, such as that described by Jc3s5h, I would regard that "bundle" as a footnote, not a citation. I'd mark it up as a footnote, then have the three separate citations from within that. For the Diels-Alder case I might go further than that and set it as a paragraph of text or list: it's pretty much a historical bibliography of one author's work. My main concern with bundled citations is that they make it impossible to share citations to the same reference. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

The key points here are "it can also be a tidying up thing" and "bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice" and "Bundling makes it a little more difficult to reuse or change citations". I.e., this is not a citation "style" matter, it's WP:Common sense and practicality one. Sometimes bundling is the best idea, often it's not, and that rarely if every has anything to do with the citation style chosen, but rather is about how the specific sources are being used. The danger in trying to add this to the increasingly fetishized CITEVAR is that if someone does really bad bundling, we're likely to be stuck with it. (Or to be stuck with never doing bundling even when it makes sense, because some territorial twit will claim that doing the sensible thing is a violation of their precious CITEVAR natural rights). So, just don't.

Re, 'CITEVAR has never been clear over whether "technical" changes, such as whitespace (and linebreaks) around template params, which do not change the rendered content are within its scope or not.': We had an RfC on this a year or two ago, and the result was "no, they're not". When it comes to spaces, just (per WP:Common_sense again) do what everyone else is doing which is {{cite foo |title=Blah blah |first=Same |last=Bazzquxx |date=2018 ...}} This has been the vast-majority style for over a decade. It's simple, it's readable, it doesn't waste space, and it keeps each entire parameter grouped as a unit. More common sense: Vertical citations make sense at the bottom of the article (e.g. in WP:LDR layout); they do not work well in mid-article, because they make it hard to clearly discern the paragraph structure of the material. Thus virtually no one puts vertical citations in mid-article, meanwhile most LDR material is done vertically, where the cite details are easier to read. Context matters. In the context of prose, inline cites work better by not screwing with the ability of editors to make sense of the material without headaches. In the context of a thick pile of cite after cite, separated from the prose, the vertical cites (just like infobox parameters at the top of the article), are easier to manage. The more people a) apply common sense, and b) do what the consensus of other editors are doing instead of doing something weird because someone think they're unique snowflake, and c) stop bible-thumping CITEVAR like some kind of 11th Commandment from God, the better off we all are.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

On the basis of changed appearance of rendered content: "bundling" (in its various forms) is not a small matter of "tidying up". It is a definite and significant change of appearance, certainly greater than the difference of using periods or commas for field separators (a key difference of CS1 versus CS2). On this basis alone CITEVAR is applicable.

Nonetheless, the objections to bundling go beyond appearance. I agree with Headbomb that "bundling for bundling's sake is bad practice." This in part because (as Jc3s5h and Andy say) bundling makes it more difficult to "reuse", share, or change citations (which I think applies to all use of "named-refs"). It is also confusing to the readers when a list of "references" (bad term) contains scattered sublists.

I disagree with Andy that "listing named refs within reflist" is "very innocous". But I strongly agree that there needs to be a stronger distinction between citations and footnotes. A footnote – or simply note – is the place or container created with <ref>...</ref> tags. Which may contain individual "citations" (full or short), bundles of citations (full or short), comments, or combinations thereof.

It should also be noted that questions of "bundling" seem to always involve full citations. Bundling of short-cites – rather than stringing them out in a series of notes – is actually preferable, and I recall no cases where that has been contentious. The recurring problem is not simply "bundling", it is bundling of full citations within notes. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:29, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

CITEVAR is very applicable here - articles that do not use bundled citations should not be switched to use them without a clear justification, and ideally not without discussion ahead of time to establish consensus. "One reference in each footnote" is a perfectly acceptable style for an article, and so this edit should have had a talk page discussion first. "Tidying" is often a synonym for "personal preference", which is not a valid reason to change established citation styles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:19, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd say it's fine to be WP:BOLD in most cases of WP:CITEVAR, but WP:1RR applies when there's pushback. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:27, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd take a more conservative approach. This is the same principle as with ENGVAR - it doesn't say "it's OK to change from British to American English as long as nobody complains" - even if you think you are just tidying up. The language of both MOS passages is pretty clear against bold changes: "If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page." — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:51, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The difference mostly being that "colour vs color" doesn't yield to any improvements on enhanced in functionality, whereas citation style is often shit, sub-optimal, or even completely un-established with an incoherent mishmash of styles. I've changed citation styles on hundreds of articles without any fuss, but they were also smart changes done for a reason, rather than simply personal preferences. (E.g. converting a {{harvnb}} to a non-harvnb system would not yield any significant improvements, but changing manual citations to templated ones will yield huge improvements in consistency, completeness, and functionality.) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If there was a broad consensus that a particular change would be an improvement, we would put it in WP:CITE. The reason we don't have a preferred style is that there is no consensus that adding templates, bundling citations, or many other things is actually generally an improvement. In the end, it's all just personal opinion, like "colour" vs. "color". That's why we use the "go with the first established style" policy, because there is no broad consensus about which method to use. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:06, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Dropping a line on the Talk page asking if anyone objects is so little trouble, and can so easily avoid a big battle and possibly having to scrap a significant investment of time and effort, that anyone failing to do so ought to spend some quiet time in a corner.

Something else to consider: if CITEVAR does not apply to "bundling" (however conceived), then it likewise does not apply to unbundling. Whether a change is significant (on any basis), or not, applies in both directions. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:44, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

My experience matches that of CBM. I routinely impose a consistent citation system in the absence of one at an article, without any fuss whatsoever. The idea that WP is full of CITEVAR obsessives is just nonsense. It's really a total of about a dozen editors, and one simply learns to avoid them (and to not be a wikilawyer: if a drive-by editor added a differently formatted citation to an article that was consistently using another style until that point, that doesn't magically make the article "inconsistent" in a way that makes it okay to subject the entire thing to the newly introduced style).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I have a preferred style for citations that I use on new articles and when expanding un-sourced or poorly sourced articles. I don't remember anyone making wholesale changes to citations in an article where I have supplied most of the citations, but editors show up every once in a while who bundle or un-bundle citations, remove citations they consider to be excessive, or make other changes to individual citations. Unless such changes degrade the appearance of the article, or leave part of the article un-sourced, I generally ignore them. I don't like the stress of drama shows, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. - Donald Albury 12:36, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually I'm pretty sure I've reverted changes by SMcCandlish, as I usually do with cite-bandits. There are quite a few of these, and they disrupt, sometimes totally prevent, further editing. I have had to abandon articles because siome fool has come along and imposed his own style, & I haven't noticed until there have been so many subsequent changes I can't be bothered to unpick them, or to struugle on with some ghastly style I don't understand. Typically, when it is pointed out that their behaviour is wholly against WP:CITEVAR, they are entirely unapologetic, and often arrogant with it. Johnbod (talk) 18:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Diff? I think you've probably reverted me a long time ago on a change from cite style to another, something I don't attempt any longer. Please read what I wrote: "I routinely impose a consistent citation system in the absence of one". This is not only permissible under CITEVAR, it's what CITEVAR instructs us to do.

What's weird to me is your claim that a cite style change "totally prevent[s]" your "further editing", that you've "had to abandon articles because" of such a change, and that you "don't understand" the citations after the change. I've never experienced anything like any of that, and I edit very broadly here. There is no citation style in use on WP that I've haven't encountered. More to the point, if this effect were actually plausible, it would actually be the death of CITEVAR. It would mean that any divergence in citation style – something terribly difficult that all editors had to try really hard to learn in one ultra-consistent format, to prevent ultimate chaos – would cause thousands of other editors to be, in your words, totally prevented from further editing, to abandon articles, and to just not understand. You can't have it both ways. Either citation styles are fine to flourish and diverge, or them doing so is a serious problem. It can't only be a serious problem when the style isn't your favorite one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:02, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, well, "that was the night", as they say. I think technically-minded editors (increasingly dominant on WP) completely fail to grasp how difficult or tiresome non-technical editors find these things. For example a conversion to the sfn form, is quite enough to drive me away from an article, though many will point out how delightfully simple it is etc etc. I don't understand your 2nd point at all, but never mind. I am certainly in favour of retaining diversity; it's the cite-bandits who aren't. Johnbod (talk) 23:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure what your definition of "cite-bandit" is. I still don't really see where you're coming from. You praise and defend citation diversity, yet complain when you encounter it. I can't tell the difference between your stance and "every citation style should be valid, as long as none of them that I don't like are ever used on articles I care about", which is precisely what's wrong with CITEVAR and how a particular camp of editors are trying to misinterpret it. PS: I agree with you about SFN being generally awful; I never use it, though I can see how, if you are familiar with it, it could be useful in certain kinds of articles. I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs most of the time, especially since we have alternatives that are easier for readers (which matters more than easier for editors). As a side matter: the obvious WP:IAR solution (and it's a genuine, defensible IAR) is to simply use whatever cite format you like when adding new sourced material to the article, if it is using a cite style you can't or don't have to time figure out. It's more important that we have more and better content with sources identifiable, than that twiddly footnotes be coded "just so". If someone at the article is a CITEVAR obsessive and want to tooth-gnash at you, let them clean it up. Or some gnome (like me) will normalize it later. I've done two just in the last couple of hours, simply as an afterthought while doing punctuation fixes [4], [5].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits that do not follow CITEVAR. If I'm adding to an article with an established style, I often do just use my own if I don't know the one in use, and anyone is welcome to make it conform. But I write many new articles, or large expansions setting the convention, and then I get annoyed when this is changed ("normaliized"!) on a drive-by whim. I will revert that, but if I miss it and there are many intervening edits, it may prevent me from further work on the article. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I just have dain bramage, but what I'm seeing is: "A cite bandit is someone who doesn't follow CITEVAR at an article. Sometimes I don't follow CITEVAR at an article"; followed by a complaint that seems at first to be about wholesale change of cite style as a general matter, yet your main issue is when someone changes a cite style after you set it; followed by another odd suggestion that if this happens you are somehow "prevented" from ever editing there again. The last two points seem to amount to "I quit if I don't get what I want, and this really isn't about citation styles in general, just me". I think I can be forgiven for having remained skeptical throughout.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Clearly not what I said or do - I never try to change an established style without a talk page discussion, and very rarely doing that. But the brain damage explanation could explain a lot. Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

So, if the plain English of what you wrote isn't what you meant, what do you mean? E.g. "My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits that do not follow CITEVAR. If I'm adding to an article with an established style, I often do just use my own if I don't know the one in use, and anyone is welcome to make it conform." That appears to say exactly what I paraphrased it as saying: "A cite bandit is someone who doesn't follow CITEVAR at an article. Sometimes I don't follow CITEVAR at an article".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:03, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Ok, try: ""My definition of a "cite-bandit" is someone who roams around doing drive-by edits just changing citation styles, that do not follow CITEVAR." - the addition was, I thought, sufficiently signalled by "drive-by". Johnbod (talk) 14:52, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Sufficiently signaled in what way? The second part is you saying you just use the cite format you like at whatever article you're at if you don't get the cite format in use at the article, and leave it to someone else to clean up after you later. These appear to be the same. Or maybe the second is worse, since its willful rather than I-don't-know-better. I feel compelled to cite the first law of holes at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

arbitrary break

• The essence of CITEVAR is to seek consensus (if not explicit approval, at least a lack of objection) prior to making certain changes to citation. (The specific language is "without first seeking consensus".) It seems to me that CITEVAR spats are invariably cases where an editor claims some change is exempt from CITEVAR. I am increasingly convinced that (as I stated above) if some change is not subject to CITEVAR, then reverting such a change is also not subject to CITEVAR. Any issue is then one of WP:BRD. Which has led me to wonder: do those who claim exemption from CITEVAR also claim exemption from BRD?

In this light I am concerned about @Emeraude's assertion (in this edit summary) that "Agreement is unnecessary: see Wikipedia:Citing sources#Bundling citations". That section claims some advantages for bundling, but it does not say "agreement is unnecessary". Yet it appears some editors are claiming that exemption from CITEVAR's requirement to seek prior consensus means that no agreement is required, even in the face of an objection. That might be trivially true for an initial Bold edit, but in no way should be allowed as an exemption from the requirement for consensus where a change is contested.

Any confusion about this not only supports answering the question Andy posed in the affirmative, but also suggests the language of CITEVAR needs to made stronger: that all changes are subject to WP:BRD, and that notification should always be made before changing any aspect of citation (aside from adding citations in the established style). ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

My feeling: if a change in how citations are handled (such as this bundling one) turns out to be controversial (as this one clearly is), then it is at least retroactively subject to CITEVAR: the change should be reverted and not reinstated unless/until consensus can be obtained. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:33, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, except that the concept of retroactive discussion (that is, edit first, then discuss) is more in the nature of BRD. The essence of CITEVAR is to first seek consensus. That is, discuss first, then edit. There is no amount of post-discussion that can retroactively make up for a lack of pre-discussion. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The problem with this reasoning, which we've been over many times before, is of course that actual policy doesn't agree, namely WP:EDITING and WP:OWN policies. No one needs prior approval/permission to edit any article. If they're not acting in good faith, or if what they do isn't constructive, anyone's free to revert, and the onus is on the one wanting to make the change to gain consensus that it's a good idea (while WP:BRD is technically an essay, the community treats it as more than that, the same way it approaches WP:AADD, WP:Common sense, and a few other "super-essays"). A habit of making bad faith or unconstructive changes is disruptive and addressable at noticeboards. The point of CITEVAR is to suggest as a guideline, a best practice, to avoid making unnecessary or potentially controversial changes to citations. This suggestion is made based on experience and predicability, so it is generally sensible, but as with all guidelines some exceptions may apply, especially if not applying them leads to excessive bureaucracy, like repetitive, time-sucking, pointless RfCs over trivial citation formatting details. CITEVAR is not Holy Writ or a law of nature, and it cannot be wielded against people like a weapon; trying to do so is itself disruptive. The goal is to have the best citation layout and coding for the article and its context. Territorially fighting half to death over how we get there is not working on the encyclopedia and is entirely missing the point of the endeavor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:48, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Of course, the same applies to ENGVAR: it is not holy writ, but it does not violate WP:EDITING or WP:OWN to tell people not to change the style of English from American to British, and they cannot justify such edits by "I don't need permission to edit an article" or "I was jsut being bold" or "nobody complained". The same applies to CITEVAR and WP:STYLEVAR. The real difficulty with citations is when editors refuse to accept that no citation style is really better than any other, and instead insist on changing styles to the ones they personally prefer. If they would focus on more constructive improvements to articles, we would avoid a huge amount of wasted conversation, and the purpose of CITEVAR (like ENGVAR and STYLEVAR) is to be direct that these nonconstructive style, citation, or English variation changes should be avoided. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

It's fine to make any kind of *VAR change, if the change is clearly an improvement. I wouldn't say I do it "routinely", since it doesn't come up that often, but I have numerous times changed the ENGVAR of an article to match the subject per MOS:TIES (e.g. an American biography written in British/Commonwealth English, or vice versa, more often vice versa due to the number of American editors). I don't go beg for permission first, I just do it when it's the right thing to do, and no one fights me on it. I'm not making any kind of argument about CITEVAR that I wouldn't make about ENGVAR or DATEVAR or TITLEVAR. It actually most often comes up in DATEVAR cases, because people use citation scripts indiscriminately, with hard-coded date formats, and they just DGaF what the article's established (or common-sensical) date format might be. "If they would focus on more constructive improvements" really is the key. But it's also central the problem with "CITEVAR obsessiveness" or whatever one might want to call it; the territorial response can be so thickheaded that change will be resisted simply because it's change. The reason certain individuals like and rely on CITEVAR isn't what's best for the article, it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control. We don't have that problem with any of the other *VARs. It's why things like this keep coming up here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, WP:ENGVAR really has no tradeoff. colour vs color has no benefits, although I fully agree with SMcCandlish that bringing an article in line with WP:MOSTIES doesn't need begging for permission first. WP:CITEVAR however, has plenty of WP:IAR situations. For instance, one could write an article in a completely consistent, but fully non-standard "AUTHOR. YEAR, TITLE. DAY-MONTH, PAGE. VOLUME, JOURNAL: ISSUE.". This is a scheme that makes zero sense, and pretty much no one would get in trouble for boldy converting that to a proper {{cite xxx}} scheme. Where WP:CITEVAR applies is in converting something like Quark#References into a {{sfn}}/{{harvnb}} scheme, or going from CS1 style to CS2 style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:38, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Even if someone think an article has an idiosyncratic style, it's still not in accordance with CITEVAR to boldy change it: "if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page". In the case mentioned, it would really make little sense to take an article with a consistent non-templated system and replace it with a templated system only because the non-templated system seemed idiosyncratic - CITEVAR specifically discourages "adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates". There is nothing particularly "proper" about templates, which are neither preferred nor discouraged as a method for citations. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:46, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

And that's where WP:BURO/WP:IAR applies. If a rule prevents you from improving Wikipedia, fuck the rule. And that is policy. That said, if you get pushback on this, it's best to follow a WP:1RR mindset, mostly per WP:CITEVAR. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The point of CITEVAR, ENGVAR, etc. is that we have a consensus that particular kinds of changes generally do not improve Wikipedia, making IAR more difficult to apply :). — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Experience and reality disagrees with that. I've made zillions of those changes with little to no pushback, and will keep doing so. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:02, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The very fact that someone will argue against the idea of changing without prior consensus discussion away from an insane and confusing, totally made-up, idiosyncratic citation "style" used by no one else in the world, such as illustrated by Headbomb, is the very crux of CITEVAR's long-running WP:CONLEVEL problem. No one on WP believes this other than a handful of people who spend too much time on this talk page. It's turning into a deeply un-wiki echo chamber. We should probably just to RfC the matter at WP:VPPOL. I would happily place a large wager on the outcome, since the policy problems with this idea are really quite clear. PS: The idea that "template[d citations] ... are neither preferred nor discouraged" is clearly not really true. Actual usage proves it, and that the guideline text is divergent from actual, operational consensus, as it has been for a very long time. I'm not here to try to change it, since I find drama tiresome, but WP:P&G instructs us to have guidelines codify practice not try to dictate it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish - "it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control" applies equally well to the editors who change the established system at an article, when in reality no system is better than any other one. If a particular change is an improvement, it will be documented in the MOS - as with MOS:TIES. For changes covered by one of the VAR policies, if a particular change has consensus as an improvement, it will be listed in the MOS, So, if a change is not required by the MOS, we should assume there is no consensus that the change is actually an improvement, or develop consensus to change the MOS first. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Sure, many arbitrary changes to cite style really are just arbitrary, like insisting on Vancouver format, or whatever. But many of them are not. Switching from unformatted citations to CS1, for example, produces objective benefits. Depending on the nature and layout and stability of the article, so can moving to WP:LDR (e.g. at and above the WP:GA level) or away from it (at the stub to C-class level). Harvard referencing and SFN are very helpful in some cases, but onerous impediments for the average editor in others. Horizontal cites work better in prose, vertical ones in LDR. The supposition that a particular citation style and/or formatting scheme is always better or worse regardless of context is like assuming that a reliable, secondary source for something is both reliable and secondary for everything. We actually have long-term editors who do not understand why those assumptions are false. I'm sure we also have editors who insist that their preferred cite style is the One True Style, but they're cranks and we can ignore them.

"So, if a change is not required by the MOS, we should assume there is no consensus that the change is actually an improvement" – except not, per WP:EDITING, WP:AGF, etc. WP's actual assumption is that any change an editor wants to make is probably an improvement, and no one is barred from trying to make one. If that assumption turns out to be untrue or questionable in a particular case, revert away. CITEVAR suggests that the assumption is less likely to be true for citation style changes than for most other kinds of editorial alterations, but that doesn't mean that the assumption a citation change isn't an improvement is automatically correct. Otherwise we would not have a CITEVAR guideline, we would have a "WP:NOCITECHANGE" policy that flatly forbade any citation formatting changes without a pre-established consensus. Never going to happen.

Your formulation is a pretty good summary, if you shift the emphasis point: We have a consensus (in the *VAR guidelines) that particular kinds of changes generally do not improve Wikipedia, making IAR more difficult to apply. More accurately, we have consensus to warn that those kinds of changes are more frequently controversial and potentially disruptive. "Generally" is not synonymous with "always". Experienced editors who are not flaming asshats usually learn to figure out competently where "generally" does/doesn't apply. If they didn't, we wouldn't have any "generally" rules of any kind, only legalistic absolute ones, and no IAR policy at all. The problem we have is that a handful of CITEVAR aficionados deny these realities and treat CITEVAR as if it were the imaginary "NOCITECHANGE policy". Yes, there's a countervailing problem of random drivebys changing citation formats completely for no good reason. I'm sure that's frustrating, but it's easy enough to revert it, and in the end the readers don't care, and 99+% of editors don't either. It's easy to learn to care less and to just absorb multiple citation systems; if I have, you all can too. (Ages ago I was opposed to CITEVAR existing at all, and was in favor of CS1 being the only recognized WP citation format.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

"Switching from unformatted citations to CS1, for example, produces objective benefits." - if it did have *objective* benefits, we would see the MOS say that articles should be converted to CS1 - but the MOS says the opposite. Looking at it plainly, the reason this has never gotten consensus is that there is 'not an objective benefit to the change to CS1 - some prefer it, some disprefer it. This is why CITEVAR is clear about not changing articles with a consistent non-template system to use templates.

With ENGVAR, CITEVAR, etc., our assumption is that random changes are rarely improvements, and therefore changes should be discussed before being implemented. This is indeed different than many other aspects of editing. The reason we have ENGVAR, CITEVAR, etc. is that these are particular areas where "bold" editing does not lead to good results, but instead leads to endless arguments on talk pages about issues that often come down to nothing more than opinion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:14, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Switching to CS1 does have objective benefits in almost all cases. But so does switching to CS2. A plain "Smith 2006, p. 25" with a plain "Smith, J. (2006). "Article of things". Journal of Things. 2 (3): 34." is objectively worse than a templated "Smith 2006, p. 26" paired with a templated Smith, J. (2006). "Article of things". Journal of Things. 2 (3): 34. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

If you think it has consensus as objectively better, get it into the MOS. Until then, nobody can claim that it actually has consensus as being objectively better. We know very well that it has been proposed many times and never found consensus. Indeed, one of the reasons CITEVAR was added in the first place was to address people unilaterally converting articles to use citation templates. "Objectively better" does not mean "I prefer it". Keep in mind that if someone else thought templates were objectively worse, they could use your argument to go around removing them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Improved navigability for the reader, improved consistency, improved bot integration, improved error flagging. Those are all objectively better things, not preferences. Reality takes precedence over the MOS. WP:CITEVAR is not a suicide pact. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:06, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

There's no suicide here - perhaps only sour grapes that CITEVAR doesn't support your favored position. But you won me over. From this point, I am also just going to ignore CITEVAR and change articles to match my own preferences when I feel like it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:42, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

It's not a matter of preference. Switching from CS1 to CS2 still doesn't fly if CS1 was the established style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:14, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Responding to all the above at once and in series: MOS has nothing to do with it; as the CITEVAR faction have resisted attempts to merge this material into MoS, as if their very lives were on the line, for years. The situation is stupid and unfortunate, and it probably can't continue forever, but it's where we're at right now: A blatant policy fork to have an "anti-MOS" style guide devoted to citations, and the entire motivation for it is to prevent normalization of CITEVAR to the standards of ENGVAR and DATEVAR (especially the more policy-cognizant approach to "first major contributor" – it is not a default and it is not "super-voting right", it's a last resort after attempts to reach consensus have failed, and it doesn't permit whoever that first major contributor was to have any more say than anyone else in the present and future of the article. We switched to "first post-stub version"-style wording for a very well-considered reasons, but a handful of over-controllers of this page are never going to let that happen here if they can prevent it. It's going to take a WP:VPPOL RfC to break down this stonewall. If you want to see how nasty this "CITEVAR against MoS to the bitter end" anti-collaborative bullshit gets, dig through this page's archives a couple of years back and you'll find a huuuge thread on the matter.

Next, I wasn't meaning to imply CS1's superiority over CS2; CS2 is so disused, I don't even think about it, and it's actually the CS1 scripting that outputs it these day, as a parameter option. So, let's not manufacture an extra dispute for no reason. :-) As to the obvious objective benefits of templated citations, I see that someone else is already covering that, so I won't reiterate beyond four words (or five, depending on how you view hyphenated compounds): consistency, automation, error-detection, metadata.

"You don't have consensus because this page doesn't say what you say" is childish WP:Wikilawyering that badly fails to understand how WP:P&G actually work and what they really are. This page does not determine consensus, it is must reflect it. When what it says does not match what the majority of editors do and think, then this page is what it out-of-step with consensus. This is what happens when a guideline page gets "owned" by a tiny clique; it's called false consensus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: in a previous comment (at 12:48) I was with you up to "[CITEVAR] cannot be wielded against people like a weapon". That seems to be the particular point of difficulty in these CITEVAR spats: some editors feeling like it as been wielded against them. (And "like a weapon".) You don't provide any examples, but in your following comment you start with "It's fine to make any kind of *VAR change, if the change is clearly an improvement", and then proceed to "The reason certain individuals like and rely on CITEVAR isn't what's best for the article, it's what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control." Whoaa!

What you are saying is that any change that you deem "is clearly an improvement" is exempt from CITEVAR, and that "certain individuals" who "like and rely on CITEVAR" are acting in bad faith. But here is the key question: how are we to tell what is actually an improvement? You seem to think "it's obvious", and anyone else that can't see (clearly?) that the emperor's new suit is wonderful is an idiot. Well, if something is clearly an improvement than that should be clear to most of us. In such cases most editors will be glad if someone volunteers to implement it, and a simple "Anyone mind if I do xxxx?" suffices to meet CITEVAR. Your characterization of such a query as having to "beg for permission" suggests that what you do is NOT "clearly an improvement".

All these arguments that CITEVAR should not apply be applied restrictively where the change is "clearly an improvement", or "just tidying", or "makes no change in the rendered result", etc., are nonsense. If some change is truly an improvement then discussing it first does not diminish it, and if it is truly "just tidying" then there shouldn't be any objection. If there is objection, well, the theory of an evil cabal might explain it, but WP:AGF suggests that we should adopt the more parsiminous explanation that the desired change is NOT "clearly an improvement". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:29, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say anyone's acting in bad faith. They're acting with the best of intentions; they're convinced that it's vitally important to the survival of Wikipedia (or something like that; I don't read minds) to support not only every citation format ever invented, but any new one you want to invent out of nothing, not matter how awful it is, and to not permit anyone to change it without a bunch of RfC drama on a one-article-at-a-time basis. That's not bad faith, it's just a bad idea, and it's typical hominid territorialism. It's no different from all the "You must capitalize 'Method Acting' because the Screen Actors' Guild says so!" WP:SSF crap, and all the other chest-beating we encounter on Wikipedia and in off-site life.

I also didn't suggest my citation changes are automatically objective improvements and yours and that's other person's are not; you're imagining a hypocritical argument, but it is not my argument. Mine in a nutshell is: policy makes it clear that an objective, good-faith improvement requires no permission (nor does attempting one); the guideline suggests that if you think you're making one and you're wrong – which is unusually likely – that people may treat what you're doing as disruptive and at minimum will revert you; ergo most such attempts should probably not be made without discussing it first. Meanwhile, the CITEVAR pundits misinterpret it as "you must not ever make a citation style change without getting permission", and they're simply wrong. Not because I'm smarter, but because we have policies, and guidelines don't get to pretend they don't exist. I often say that when people think there's a conflict between a policy and a guideline they're wrong; the closest we have to an exception to that rule of thumb is CITEVAR (but it's really an interpretation not wording error). So, the issue isn't "what I want to change in this article's cites is better than what you want to change", it's that changes are in fact permissible (at some personal risk if, you will), and refusal to admit this fact is a failure to understand how WP operates. The resistance-at-all-costs mindset is the problem, not any particular citation style (though denuding templated citations to plain-text ones is a net negative and is not a change of citation style, it's a removal of citation functionality; that's a different matter).

I never said "CITEVAR should not apply where the change is clearly an improvement". I said people need to actually read CITEVAR and also read our policies, and interpret them together. If you don't like the "CITEVAR is not a suicide pact" metaphor someone used, then: CITEVAR is not the Eleventh Commandment. Even our policies are not treated like laws here (the closest we get are ones with actual legal ramifications, imposed on us by WP:OFFICE, such as WP:Copyright, WP:BLP, and a few others, but WP:IAR is still taken to apply to them, just rarely and in an even more limited way). Lastly, "If some change is truly an improvement then discussing it first does not diminish it" is missing the point. We have better things to do that yaketty-yak about style trivia over and over and over again, page by page. We have policy on this too: WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. It's nothing to do with whether "some change is ... diminish[ed]" (which doesn't even really parse). It's that nothing would ever get done on WP if we had to beg for acquiescence to do it first. (Especially when there's a camp of editors resistant to change simply to resist change, largely unwilling to consider the merits of any cite-change case put before them. See, e.g., all the baldfaced reality-denial against the fact that templated citations provide objectively demonstrable benefits.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

They have objective disadvantages as well and there are a lot of things that get done in WP, that don't need to get done at all.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Nah. They're a net positive, or they wouldn't be the dominant approach (by a very wide margin). And "get done" in English idiom refers to work and other legitimate tasks; it's not synonymous with "are done" (which may imply, e.g. "are done to me against my will", etc.; "get done" never has negative connotations). So ixnay on your word-gaming.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:08, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

They are a net positive from your perspective but not necessarily for the perspective of others. As far as the phrase "get done" is concerned I think you missed the intended irony there, maybe I should have put it in quotes. To put it this way, Things you consider as getting done, actually "are done to me against my will" to borrow your phrase from above. I. e. it is in the eye of the beholder whether somdething is getting done or being done.--Kmhkmh (talk)

[sigh] You seem to think that's terribly clever, but it's simply contradiction without a rationale, without any actual rebuttal of anything substantive. "I just disagree" isn't an argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Well it was not an "argument" just a reminder if you will as I assumed you are very well aware over the pros and cons for various citations formats and templates. That's a partially/mostly unresolved issue for over a decade and rehashing all the arguments seems to be out of scope for this discussion und imho somewhat pointless. As mentioned by others above if you strongly feel that the net benefits of your preferred approach are overwhelming or more important, then you need to convince others to change guidelines accordingly. However if you want specific reason why I personally dislike them in particular, they mostly don't work across other language wikipedias, which make them a pain in the ass for content creators working across several languages.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The fact that some people will continue pretending all cite styles are "created equal" when particular ones actually have demonstrable benefits (or drawbacks) in particular contexts, is an actual problem. It's irrational WP:STONEWALLing. And you can't seriously suggest that people try to convince others to change the guidelines then declare it off-topic to try to convince others to change the guidelines.

On the technical point: Our code is open-source. Copy the templates to the other wiki and adapt them as needed. CS1 is fairly complicated; you need a bunch of sub pages in the right hierarchies, will need to do so search-and-replace on namespaces and pagenames to get the code working. But many people have already done this on various wikis. You're likely to find that the template you need already exists on the other wiki, just at a different, local-language name, and can make "cite book" or whatever work at the other wiki by creating a template redirect from that English name to whatever the local non-English one is.

The "I hate templates" approach is to copy-paste the rendered citation instead of the citation code, so you don't need to do anything but italicize the title of the major work (if you're even working in a language that has a convention to do that), and copy the URL if it's an online source. The whole sequence is: open source editor on both pages, and do preview on the source page so you can see the rendered and source views at the same time; copy-paste plain-text citation; copy-paste URL from citation source; then ''...'' around major-work title. The end.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

What you are probably more likely to find is, that larger Wikipedia have implemented their own citation templates and are quarreling over them as well. That by the way also kills your copy suggestion as you will have to deal with different citation templates in parallel.

My personal annoyance when editing across language wikis aside. Functionality that offers significant "real" benefits should not just be mandatory via guideline in doubt, but ultimately also incorporated into the Wikisyntax itself rather than being used via (local) template. Aside from not existing across all language Wikipedias and being standardized, there is also a performance drawback. There is actually currently discussion a discussion on meta about the ref-tags to incoporate some of the templae functionality. Ironically enough, last time I lokked it got "stonewalled" by template fans.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:10, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: you deny saying that "anyone's acting in bad faith", but bad faith is a fair inference of what you impugn when you do say that others are motivated by "what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control.". Similarly when you say that "change will be resisted simply because it's change", or attribute "the problem" to "[t]he resistance-at-all-costs mindset." All of which add a degree of emotionalism – i.e., drama – which impairs the discussion. Likewise with name-calling (such as "territorial twit").

Nor is this discussion (nor Wikipedia) served well when you mischaracterize other views as (with your italicization) "it's vitally important to the survival of Wikipedia ... to support not only every citation format ever invented, but any new one you want to invent out of nothing, not matter how awful it is, and to not permit anyone to change it without a bunch of RfC drama on a one-article-at-a-time basis." No one as argued that in this discussion (nor, I suspect, in any discussion); that's a strawman argument. Even a red-herring.

As my reference to "arguments that CITEVAR should not apply" may be ambiguous, I will clarify that as meaning "arguments that CITEVAR should not be applied restrictively". Your "fine to make" comment certainly is an argument for non-restriction, and similarly for your recent "objective, good-faith improvement requires no permission". Now I do agree with you (at least part way) on "people need to actually read CITEVAR". And when I read it I see NO mention of "permission" in any context. Nor do I see any statement or suggestion – even for "standard practices" – that consensus is not required.

I don't know just what your point is, but you do seem rather hung up on not havng to "go beg for permission first". "Beg" is yet more over-wrought emotionalism. My experience – which I think all of us, including yourself, share – is that most of the time a simply query ("would anyone object to ...?") is sufficient for CITEVAR. If you have ever had to beg to do something it was quite likely not "clearly an improvement", and therefore, by your own criterion, not "fine to make". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Taking these 'graphs in order: 1) Already addressed the substantive part of that; you're just not absorbing what I'm saying because you're choosing to emotively react and tone-police me instead of paying any attention to the meaning. 2) See the lengthy previous discussions. Many of CITEVAR's defenders on the OWN-ish misinterpretation side do maintain that it's crucial, for reasons like ... the experts in field X will think WP is junk because it doesn't use the cite formats they do, and that it brings the project into disrepute, or that editors will quit the project if they can't use their own cite formats, or various other hyperbolic claims that just aren't plausible. 3) (and this applies to much of the rest of this) please stop being overly literal-minded and bent on misinterpreting things in the worst or least likely way, looking hard to ways to feel offended. It's not credible to me that you're unable to understand that misinterpreting CITEVAR as requiring, no matter what, getting a pre-established consensus record before changing any citation style/formatting details equates to a permission-based system; it isn't necessary that the exact text string "permission" appear, and everyone can understand that. So, you seem to just be playing argumentative word games for sport, and I don't have the patience for it. It's not responsive to anything of substance. 4) This isn't an article, and encyclopedic MOS:TONE doesn't apply to talk page threads. CITEVAR extremism severely pisses me off (nor I am alone in this). To with:

The mind-set does a lot of damage to the project: to editorial goodwill, to user experience, to ease of editing and thus to total project output and quality, and to back-end maintainability. I'm not going to apologize for being "emotional" about it. These things really do matter. They matter orders of magnitude more than "I wanna use the citation style I made up yesterday", or even "I wanna use the citation style I use at work". There are very good reasons that publishers settle on a single house citation style. WP failing to do so may not even be tenable forever; but as long as we are still experimenting with a hyper-permissive approach, we cannot let it be hyper-non-permissive behind the curtain, especially when the "use whatever style you like" permissiveness runs into practical and common-sense and basic policy problems. The tail cannot be allowed to wag the dog.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Er.... ALl I did was bundle some citations to make the text easier to read and cleaner to look at. Let's remember that Wikipedia exists for people to read, not the gratification of its editors. I have never, ever, seen multiple citation numbers in a book - they are always "bundled" - and should be here. As I pointed out in my edit rationale, I did not make any change to citation style at all. This is a discussion that seems to be wide ranging but losing the initial point. Emeraude (talk) 09:11, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe you! This too is my own root point: "remember that Wikipedia exists for people to read, not the gratification of its editors". I'm addressing the whole CITEVAR extremism fiasco, which is deeply rooted in editor gratification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And even less so for the gratification of format and template warriors/coders.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:52, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

The scope of what should be included in citation style is debated, but nearly always includes any change of appearance in the rendered content. Which your edits certainly did. But even if it be arguable that CITEVAR was not applicable, after Andy Reverted your Bold edit WP:BRD would certainly apply. Right? Or would you argue that exemption from CITEVAR also gives you exemption from BRD? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Mac: I am quite amazed. You accuse me of "choosing to emotively react and tone-police [you] instead of paying any attention to the meaning", even though it is YOU who emotively interprets "seek consensus first" as begging for permission. You want me to "stop being overly literal-minded and bent on misinterpreting things in the worst or least likely way, looking hard to ways to feel offended", yet it is YOU that keeps misinterpreting things. And this includes the motives of others. E.g., even though you don't actually say "bad faith" anywhere, yet that is the effect when you say others are motivated by "what's best for their personal preferences and sense of control", that "change will be resisted simply because it's change", "they're cranks", or "over-controllers", have a "resistance-at-all-costs mindset", are "playing argumentative word games for sport", etc. All of those are your misinterpretations; they are imputations of "bad" motive that violates WP:Assume good faith.

You say you are not going to apologize for being emotional (I presume because you refuse to beg for forgiveness), but then: who asked? What I would ask is that you not be so emotional. All of this tiresome drama you have inflicted on us here appears to arise from your interpreting "seek consensus first" as "beg for permission", which likely drives your mass misinterpretations. All that only confounds useful discussion. As long as you are hung up on that it seems best to just ignore you. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:32, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm amazed, too. I'm objecting to being dodged and tone-policed, and you're amazed that I think you're doing it, then tone-police me again with ""it is YOU who emotively interprets ..." without rebutting anything on-topic. You're also failing to distinguish between having strong feelings about a matter but also laying out in great detail what has me up in arms, and why, and why it matters for Wikipedia, as I've done, versus just reacting rantily and not substantively but with more tone-policing, as you're doing. I'm not objecting to you being emotive; I'm objecting to the handwavey lack of substance and responsiveness behind any of your emoting. It's a qualitatively different kind of emoting. Everything you're saying here just comes across as "no way in hell am I going to actually address anything he's saying; the only course of action for me is to continue pressing a demonization; if I can spin everything he says in the worst possible way, maybe someone will agree with me that I'm being attacked somehow." It would not be the first time our interactions have gone this route, and it's really very tiresome. I'm not likely to respond further because this is patently a waste of time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you that you and I can't debate these matters; I will leave it to others (if anyone be so interested) to decide whose language and concepts are most emotional, who impugns the motives of other editors, who takes everything "in the worst possible way,", and, ultimately, who drove this discussion into the weeds. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Return to the question

I would like to return to the question I posed above (at #arbitrary break): do those who claim exemption from CITEVAR (in regard of seeking consensus) also claim exemption from WP:BRD? This question was prompted by Emeraude's assertion (without stating scope) that "Agreement is unnecessary". To summarize the intervening comments: I am inclined to reject that view, along with David Eppstein and Carl, while SMcCandlish and Headbomb argue that WP:IAR trumps all other rules when improvements are involved. (Altlhough Headbomb adds: "if you get pushback on this, it's best to follow a WP:1RR mindset, mostly per WP:CITEVAR.")

To avoid another trip down the rabbit hole I'd like to posit that IAR does not apply, and that we stay focused on the relationship between CITEVAR and BRD. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:30, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

This is just a straw man. There are no parties here "who claim exemption from CITEVAR"; rather, the nature of the dispute is twofold: 1) a guideline recommending seeking a consensus determination before changing citation style is being misinterpreted as an inviolable law under which someone should be punishable for disobedience; and 2) there's a lot of disagreement about what "citation style" means, with one camp proposing an extremist interpretation that doesn't match actual editorial practice among the bulk of the editorship.

The problems with this attempt to re-frame the discussion continue: "Exemption from WP:BRD" doesn't even parse. BRD is an essay. Even if we put a guideline tag on it, it still wouldn't make sense, because BRD describes an explicitly voluntary process that works well for many situations and poorly for others; everyone is already "exempt" from it. What they're not exempt from the actual policy underling BRD (which is basically "follow policies in this order": WP:EDITING and WP:CONSENSUS (an order that some CITEVAR aficionado are trying to reverse when it comes to citation formatting). Next it's isn't my or Headbomb's "argument" that IAR trumps other rules when improvements are made; that is IAR. That's all of IAR. Just go read it.

We already have actual policies about WP:EDITING and WP:CONSENSUS. Trying to turn CITEVAR into something like a magical commandment that overrules site-wide policies, which govern everything, is just out-of-band. It's clear why there's so much recurrent dispute about CITEVAR. The average editor really DGaFs about citation formatting. Of the significant subset who do care, only a few are zealots about it. But it only takes a few.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Example in Solutrean hypothesis

Can't resist: I just saw this example yesterday. Would anyone object if I bundled the citations at the end of the fourth paragraph? - Donald Albury 10:20, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And just for laughs, that page had popped up on my watchlist because someone had removed the cn template from in front of those 9 citations. - Donald Albury 10:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

That's a prime example of where bundling is a negative. Of refs 7-15, Refs 8, 9, 12 are re-used twice, and ref 14 is re-used 4 times. Bundling makes re-use much, much harder. What you have here is a case of WP:CITEOVERKILL. You do not need 8 references to back up the claim "Recent research has shown everything that has been previously associated with ancient Atlantic contact to be more consistent with other scenarios." Get one solid review about the Solutrean hypothesis, and use that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:18, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

"One solid review"? This isn't medicine. Probably the material needs breaking out somewhat. I don't really see why bundling would make "re-use much, much harder". But I always use short cites for repeated sources, bundled where necessary, so all of this is foreign to me. Johnbod (talk) 12:45, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And yet Metzler and Strauss isare exactly that. I've cleaned up the article, although not saying these are necessarily the best sources for this, since I don't have any background in the early history of Americas. Also remember that the lead is to summarize the existing article content, not to make claimed not supported in the body of the article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Very dubious. Metzler and Strauss is 2005, but 8/9 of the previous taxi-queue are later than that. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Metzler is 2009, Strauss is 2017. But that's for the article's talk page, not here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:01, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You said "Metzler and Strauss is exactly that" - singular, and "Metzler and Strauss" is 2005. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Note the variety of citation styles used in the article. I also found one paragraph where the same named ref is used three times, with another citation in between the first and second occurrences of the named ref. The article is mildly controversial and somewhat attractive to supporters of fringe theories, and editors have apparently wanted to nail down every statement that might ever be challenged or misused. I'm trying at the article's talk page to initiate a cleanup using a consistent citation style. - Donald Albury 13:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes I cleaned that up. It was an absolute mess. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

That example is much like the one cited above (top of discussion) in Diels-Alder reaction: citing a series of primary sources to establish a point not not found in any of the individual sources. Any summary or overview should be based on one or two appropriate secondary sources. Bundling a bunch of inappropriate sources does nothing to fix the real problem. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Newspapers.com citations

Newspapers.com uses "Page number" erroneously. Actually, its number refers only to the microfilm shot being referenced. If the newspaper was filmed out of order, as when there were many sections of a newspaper, then the "Page number" will not match with the actual number of the page as printed in the newspaper. Therefore, I have recently started to cite "Image number" instead of "Page number," so that the searcher can find the correct place on the microfilm reel. An editor has been making changes to my citations which deleted the image number. I find that annoying and counterproductive. Any comments? Thanks to all. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 16:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, it's breaking the verifiability of the citation, so it should stop. It's a WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT matter. Even if someone wants to add the original page number, if the cite is to these scanned microfiches numbered by image, something like |via=Newspapers.com|at=image no. ### should be retained. This sort of thing is why we have |at=. I think the |page= / |pages= and |at= parameters conflict in most templates, so it might have to be something like |at=image no. ### (original p. ###), I suppose.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:25, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes. There is a similar problem with PDFs. I generally use the pagination of the original printed source, but there are times when the pdf pagination needs to be included. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes... I would agree that the best solution would be to list BOTH the image number, AND the original page number. That way those searching on the hosting site can easily find it AND those searching the hard copy original can do so. Blueboar (talk) 22:48, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Newspapers.com usually shows the page numbers from the original source in the images, although these are sometimes obscured in scanning. If possible I would encourage using the original page number. That should make it easier for someone accessing the paper in a different way (another site, physical copies, etc.) to find the material. If it isn't available, then the image number is a reasonable alternative. --RL0919 (talk) 16:38, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Numeric dating

The guideline in WP:CITESTYLE says:

Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582.

Given the excellent sense presented during the first sentence, why would we encourage any numeric date format? Why is YYYY-MM-DD less confusing than YYYY-DD-MM? They're all confusing. Is 2018-08-09 the 9th of August or the 8th of September? Depends on who wrote it and who's reading it. Surely we should discourage any numeric dating. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 16:38, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

See MOS:DATEFORMAT. YYYY-MM-DD is an ISO standard, I've never come across YYYY-DD-MM, can you cite an actual use of this form? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I think the point is that 99% of our readers would not have a clue what an ISO standard is, let alone be able to read these frankly ridiculous machine-based date formats. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:45, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I almost never come across MM-DD-YYYY, yet I know it exists, widely, in the American world and elsewhere, despite its lack of logic. And I've never seen YYYY-MM-DD except on Wikipedia. The point remains, why would we tolerate anything that is confusing? We make the point really persuasively that numeric dates are confusing and then say that we are quite happy for it to be used, which is just daft. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 16:53, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

FYI, the American format uses slashes: MM/DD/YYYY. It is very widespread (in the US) but I would not recommend it here because of its ambiguity and (as you say) lack of logic. But the fact that it is so widespread is pretty strong evidence that TRM's claims for the unintelligibility of YYYY-MM-DD are not well founded. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Classic non sequitur. Nothing relates the MM/DD/YYYY format to my claim that the ISO format needs knowledge of its format before it can be understood. Another attempt to sully me from an admin. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

The point is that YYYY-MM-DD is an unambiguous date format. Every other format is ambigous, case in point if I write a date like 06/04/12, you have absolutely zero idea which element is a day, which is a month, and which is a year. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:00, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, that's not the point. It's an unambiguous date format IFF you understand the definition of the ISO format. Which 99% of readers do not. Why on earth don't we limit to human-readable date formats? The Rambling Man (talk) 17:07, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

It's unambiguous regardless of whether or not you can understand it. Writing "An energy of 3.2 eV" is not ambiguous, even if you don't know that eV means electronvolt. And if you don't know that 2008-06-12 is 12 June 2008, then you mustn't understand most of your receipts, transactions, financial statements, file your taxes, or be able to get around the world very much. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:13, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

"It's unambiguous regardless of whether or not you can understand it." A magnificent attempt to redefine "ambiguous"! Johnbod (talk) 17:21, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, that's nonsense I'm afraid, most of the human interactions I make with other humans involve dates in human-readable format. I get around the world just fine and for what it's worth, I do get ISO date formats, because I'm actually very intelligent, but we shouldn't assume that of our readers. And these bullshit date formats litter the encyclopedia (nicely mixed together in many cases with mdy and dmy dates too) without explanation, unlike eV which would be linked in all but the most specialist of articles. So think again before resorting to such poorly reasoned accusations. Can you explain the benefit of ISO dates in English language Wikipedia over human-readable dates such as 26 June 2018 or even (gasp) June 26, 2018? The Rambling Man (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

This is an equivocation issue. HB is correct that the format is technically unambiguous from a standards perspective; JB and TRM are correct that it's ambiguous from a typical user perspective. That latter is the more important consideration here, and is why we really should not permit this date format to be used on WP, though that's a WT:MOSDATE matter, not a WT:CITE one. The fact that a proposal to stop allowing it failed once doesn't mean that it can't succeed in the future (WP:CCC). As far as I can tell, virtually no one uses this format manually on purpose; almost all of it in our articles is inserted there by automated citation tools.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:56, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd guess part of the reason very few use it is that it will be immediately changed (with a comment along the lines of "I've better things to do than clear up your mess") to MMM-DD-YYYY regardless of WP:ENGVAR. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:06, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I know an editor (Maplestrip) who uses them deliberately. --Izno (talk) 03:00, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Thus "virtually" and "almost". >;-) PS: I'd bet real money Maplestrip a techie ora scientist; no one else would do that. And, more to the key point, most of them wouldn't, because they know this isn't a database or a journal. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:03, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I do think they look better, result in less clutter, and are more easily readable than other date formats. I find longer date formats to be difficult to skim through when looking at a list of sources. But it's true, I have an IT background. ~Mable (chat) 11:38, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

We usually allow Y-M-D dates in footnotes (and most citations in Wikipedia are in the form of footnotes) because this proposal to disallow them failed. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It is human readable, and easily so. If you want to see a real machine date consider 1530033214 which is the current date ant time as I write. I'll pass over the 99% claim as self-evident hyperbole. As for only seeing the format on Wiki, I use it for both personal and professional purposes: as an example all photos on my home machine are filed as YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.jpg which makes sorting and finding them trivial. IIRC, the format originated with the military in the pre-computer era, I seem to remember coming across it in the 1970s. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Human readable if and only if you know how to decode it. This isn't about professional purposes, this is about a consistent approach to serving our readers, not our computer geek editors. Of which I am one. P.S. Your sorting argument went out with the Ark, we can even present our readers with human-readable sortable tables of dates these days! Who knew?! P.P.S. Computers pre-dated the 1970s. Tsk. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Maybe tables, but can you quote a filesystem that would correctly sort text dates? Re PPS: yes, academic and big business had them, but I doubt many squaddies would have thanked you for an AS400 or VAX 11/780 as a PC! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'll ask one more time, can you tell me why our readers would want to see date formats like this? Behind the scenes, sure, for the myriad reasons I'm sure existed in the 1970s for sorting file systems, but humans reading Wikipedia in English? Seriously? The Rambling Man (talk) 17:30, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Human readable if you're over the age of 8 and went to school. Or ever had a receipt. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:25, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, you're sort of just trying to say the same thing again and again, and not making any more logical sense. I'm over the age of 8 and have a pocket of receipts which are in human-readable format. Where on planet Earth does it say that receipts are ISO-date-formatted, and more importantly, where does it say that's better than actual human-readable dates without any kind of ISO standard to fall back on? What a curious line of sort-of argument. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: and so are you (saying the same thing again and again). All these arguments about date styles in the end come down to "I like this one but not that one". I happen to like the YYYY-MM-DD style for some purposes; you don't. As Headbomb says it's perfectly human readable to anyone capable of understanding most of our articles. The MoS has established a workable set of guidelines which don't please everyone, but do not need changing. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:33, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, you see you're wrong. I'm saying that anyone who reads in English can understand 26 June 2018 and June 26, 2018, but not anyone can understand 2018-06-26. Please prove me wrong. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:35, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Wow, it's gone from 99% to "not anyone". Well I understand them (along with millions of others) so your assertion fails. Let's get this in context though, MOS mandates text format for use in the main body of the page, ISO format is permitted for footnotes and tables only. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:40, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh dear, the precision police are out. (By "not anyone", it was the Boolean not of "anyone" (i.e. !anyone), but I suppose you need me to explain I should have said "not everyone"). Honestly, I'm still waiting for an answer to why we would use ISO dates in references in English language Wikipedia when human-readable dates are completely 100% unambiguous and need no reference to an ISO to understand. While you claim my assertion fails and get things into context, please answer that very simple question. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:43, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Because 1) They are easier to parse quickly and rank by date 2) They take much less space 3) avoids WP:ENGVAR nonsense, and 4) are easier to localize and translate (because they don't need to be translated in the first place). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:49, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Because 1) is a computer speaking 2) is irrelevant 3) is irrelevant and 4) is irrelevant, for 2, 3 and 4, see the title of the project, it's the "ENGLISH LANGUAGE WIKIPEDIA". The Rambling Man (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

See WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

See WP:DONTANSWERTHEACTUALQUESTIONTHEN! You failed summarily to address any of the key points, your own points being mainly irrelevant or relying on the ability of our general readers to understand ISO standards. I'd give that a D minus. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:03, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

As a colleague here would say, "for those of you playing along at home..." the question here is "why we would use ISO dates in references in English language Wikipedia when human-readable dates are completely 100% unambiguous and need no reference to an ISO to understand."? Why? All answers so far relate to computer geekery which has no place in our general readership. So..... anything? Or just a stock (and sadly incorrect) answer? (although "They take much less space" is one of the funniest things I've read on Wikipedia this decade, it really is...) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:06, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Space is less of a silly reason than you imply. It has nothing to do with Wikipedia resources and everything to do with reader attention. The access dates and archive dates of a reference are qualitatively different from the publication dates: contingent on editor and archive timing rather than an essential part of the reference, and useful primarily for editors (who may need them to verify references or find more recent versions) rather than for readers (for whom it is useful to know when the reference was written but not when it was read by someone else). Because of the different nature of these two kinds of dates it makes sense to format them differently, as a flag to the reader that the archive dates and access dates are safer to skip over. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Summon the mathematician! No, there's no advantage to our readers by giving them a saving of a handful of bytes or screen characters. That's absolutely nonsensical. Readers would like to be able to read the encyclopedia, not have to translate the encyclopedia. This is, after all, English language Wikipedia. We can cope with the two human readable formats by writing them out in English, no guide required. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Being a mathematician is a pejorative now? Wow, I wouldn't have expected such anti-intellectualism from a Wikipedian. In any case, (1) this format is very non-difficult for readers (other than, apparently, you), and (2) I think that helping readers read the encyclopedia is better achieved by making the unimportant parts easier to skip over than by expanding them into an inordinately long string just to satisfy your innumeracy. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, only if you say so. I simply said "summon the mathematician". This format requires an ISO translation whereas all other formats do not. So by that maxim, this format is more difficult than other human readable formats for our readers. I'll ignore your personal attack (although I will log it as normal) but since when is "June 28, 2018" an "inordinately long string"? Are you joking now? We no longer copy things onto tape you know, we're up with the disks and megabytes and things, the items which were once restricted to eight bytes are no longer..... Seriously? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:26, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, I have no idea what you mean when you say that "this format requires an ISO translation". It is perfectly understandable by (most) humans without aid of calculating devices or manuals. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Eppstein, it matters not. Your personal attack on me means I'm not conversing with you here. You are not fit to be an admin. Disgusting. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:35, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

And no, if you properly format the references (which I've corrected for you numerous times), there's no confusion, as one says "accessed on" and the other says "archived on". Or similar. So that's really a non-argument there. Disappointing. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Note that here "corrected for you" means that TRM has repeatedly changed one valid format into another, with no consensus, in violation of our guidelines, and is here promising to keep doing so. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:25, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Also note that admin Eppstein has repeatedly made errors in references and has now resorted to personal attacks. Very much in opposition to WP:CIR and WP:ADMIN. Noted Eppstein. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:30, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

We're treading into WP:POINT-block worthy behaviour here. Do not edit war over date formats TRM, lest you end up on the ass end of a block and possibly a WP:RESTRICT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

No, we're treading into WP:DICK territory here. I'm not edit warring over anything. Perhaps you need to calm down and take a step back because you clearly don't have an unobstructed view of what's happening here. This is a discussion about date formats. Threatening to block me for engaging in discussion about date formats is very much territory for you to be blocked. And that would be a real shame. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:39, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

See also WP:CHILL. I'm not the one furiously typing on my keyboard at home, arguing until I'm blue that consensus needs to be overturned. You got your answers, you don't like them, tough luck. Start an RFC or live with the consensus as established in the previous RFC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:43, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

See also WP:DICK. I can type just fine, not furiously. And I'm not at home either. How weird is that? Your answers were inadequate. I can summarise "It's all about the geek". Our readers deserve better. That's fine, I like arguing in favour of our readers. Now then, this discussion has resulted in a couple of direct personal attacks from an admin, and enough gusto to take it further. I'm content to accept that those arguing in favour of the ISO format are clearly not interested in our readers. I'm content that nothing will change here. I'm also content that I have more evidence of personal attacks from a desperate admin. So it's not been a bad discussion. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:46, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I fail to see any attacks by David Eppstein, personally or not. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Good job you're not an admin then. (P.S. "having neither knowledge nor understanding of mathematics or science") The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Not sure what's that got to do with the price of beans, or where that quote is from. No one attacked you here, admin or not. You, however, have been cranked up to 11, about to blow a fuse or three for the entire discussion. So again, WP:CHILL. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

It's the definition of "innumeracy" which I was accused of by admin Eppstein. I'm not cranked up at all. You and a couple of others have just got this all wrong, and that's your problem, not mine. I'm just fine with it all. You don't need to keep being a WP:DICK by telling me to chill. I'm cool as. But I will not tolerate personal attacks from admins. Ever. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I've answered the question, you just don't like the answer. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Lol. That's the best you have here? You didn't answer the question which relates directly to our readers. They don't care about any of the things you mentioned, but you already know that. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Says you. I'm a reader, those things affect me when I read the Encylopedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:21, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

And once again (for the fifth time?) you miss the point. You know what the ISO format it. EVERYONE knows what the other formats are. It's you who doesn't like the other approach of human readable formats. You, not me. You. Not me. You. Not. Me. (As repeating things here seems to be everyone's forte). The Rambling Man (talk) 18:22, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

You're the one arguing that YYYY-MM-DD needs to be purged from Wikipedia. This is textbook WP:IDONTLIKEIT from your part. I'm not arguing that we need to purge 26 June 2018 from Wikipedia in favour of 2018-06-26, I'm entirely fine with the current guidelines. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:30, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

You're the one arguing ... I don't even know what. You haven't answered any questions with any satisfaction. Your "answers" are textbook "IDONTLIKEIT" because you have proved nothing at all. Our readers are more important than the geeks than edit the project. You should think more about that really. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

• Don’t really care enough about any of this to change the guidance... but to put in my 2 bits worth... I have just come home from shopping, and have multiple receipts. NONE use ISO date format (since I am in the US, they use US standard mm/dd/yy format). Also, in my professional life, I deal with lots of govenmental documents and forms... I can say that none of them use ISO either. In fact, I can not recall seeing anything that uses it. Of course, that does not mean it isn’t used. My only point... I think that ISO is s lot less common (at least here in the US) than proponents think it is. Blueboar (talk) 18:54, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Indeed. And apparently my objection to any such alternative assertion renders me "innumerate" by an admin. Who knew? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:56, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Again, a fake quote? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Oh sorry, "your innumeracy". Get a grip. I always find that relying on Ctrl (or Cmd) and F to be not the best way to read a discussion from top to bottom. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:00, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  My bad, indeed Ctrl+F isn't the best. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:03, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  You (TRM) are claiming to be unable to read numeric dates without assistance. What other word is there for the inability to read numbers? It's certainly not purely an attack word, such as, oh, I don't know, "disgusting". —David Eppstein (talk) 19:04, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Or you know, WP:DICK. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:05, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Which proves that neither of you have read this thread at all. You both fouled. Eppstein, you personally attacked me, (read the thread again, learn from it) you can retract it and apologise and we'll say no more. Headbomb, no words. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  There's no attacks from anyone but you in this thread. I suggest you end it, before someone takes you to WP:AN. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:12, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Sorry, claiming that someone suffers from "innumeracy" isn't a PA? Go away. Or take me to AN, and we'll see how that pans out for Eppstein and you both. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:13, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  And while I'm here, please list the diffs which contain the "attacks" from me. Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:15, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  If you can't understand what 2018-06-02 means, then yes, that innumeracy. It's as much of a personal attack as describing someone who can't read as illiterate. As for diffs, no need, your repeated references to WP:DICK can be found quite easily with a CTRL+F search. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:18, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  Please show me the diff where I said I didn't understand it? Or show me the numerous diffs where I said our readers shouldn't have to understand ISO to get it. You've made a complete foul-up of this. Re-read the thread and find the pertinent sentence which completely destroys your and Eppstein's accusations. As for WP:DICK, it's a Wikipedia essay. Nothing more. If you're getting worked up by that, then perhaps you need to take a break. Regardless, you and Eppstein owe me an apology, and Eppstein needs to consider his position. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:22, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

  David Eppstein, Headbomb, whenever you're ready. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:58, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

It strikes me that TRM is taking a combative attitude that is not especially helpful. That said, on the merits he has a point. While YYYY-MM-DD is far less ambiguous than DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY, it is not clear that all readers will understand it (the problem might be less that they will have to choose between two meanings than that they might struggle to find even one). Writing out the month removes this difficulty, and where space needs to be saved or dates need to be of uniform length, we could always use a three-letter abbreviation for the month. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

It strikes me that admin Eppstein has made a personal attack. And that's not especially helpful either, especially when aided by user Headbomb. But the point is made here, nothing so far has been written above that demonstrates our readers are better off with the ISO formats than with the human-readable formats. Where is there a requirement for "uniform length" date strings for our readers? That's really important. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:29, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

There are screeds and screeds of text above. Can someone please explain why we continue to permit in our MOS numeric dates of any format given that we describe well that any choice of numeric format is potentially confusing, when simply using "June" instead of "6" or "06" totally removes ambiguity? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 21:29, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I'll repeat my previous answer: "We usually allow Y-M-D dates in footnotes (and most citations in Wikipedia are in the form of footnotes) because this proposal to disallow them failed."

If someone wants a change, that someone should start a well-advertised RFC in the same guideline where it was discussed back in 2009. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:38, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

"why we continue to permit in our MOS numeric dates of any format" We don't. The only allowed all-numeric format is YYYY-MM-DD. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:41, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose not allowing YYYY-MM-DD. It is the only date format that sorts correctly no matter which sort program you use. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but what's the use model for sorting dates in a WP article? --Trovatore (talk) 00:48, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

In citations? None that I know of. But I could imagine using them in a sortable table. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:34, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Aha, the imaginary use case. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:31, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

What that really meant was something more like "I'm sure they exist but searching for them sounds like enough of a pain that I won't bother." But since you asked... oh look, here's one you've edited. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:55, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

You do realise that the wiki table supports sorting of human readable dates, right? Just because shit exists it doesn’t mean it’s not shit. If you like I can show you the help pages for how to sort tables properly without relying on a alphanumeric sort via an ISO standard. But you should already know that by now. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

If we're done waving around references to WP:DICK (which is just a soft redir at this point, which is kind of funny), I'd like to get back to the idea of at least recommending against / phasing out use of ISO dates, except for special purposes like date-sortable tables. They really aren't helpful for readers in the aggregate, even if, yes, we all know that some people can parse them without difficulty (I'm among them) and some small percentage prefer them from professional exposure via geeky jobs. The central issues to me are a) too confusing to too many people, and b) we don't need this many date formats, as it just makes it harder to keep stuff consistent even in a single short article, much less more broadly. We only "need" even two date formats instead of one because of ENGVAR (and a few little mutant children of it, like "use DD MM YYYY in U.S. military articles"). There is no English variety in which ISO dates are the norm, so we don't need it being used for dates in running prose, in citation data per se, or in other meta-data like |archive-date=. It pretty much literally does nothing at all but waste other editors time normalizing it to the style used in the rest of the article. PS: I know I said it's a WT:MOSNUM matter, but it might not hurt to think on it a bit, and the citation-side of the question, before drafting a proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:14, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

You don’t need to use ISO format for dates to be sortable in a table. You can use 27 June 2018 or June 27, 2018, both formats will sort just fine in chronological order in a wiki table. There’s simply no need for ISO dates in an encyclopaedia read by humans. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:45, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Please note that some branches of quakerism and some Islamic sects object to the use of some English month names as either giving honor to other gods or speaking untruth.

• January is named after the Roman god Janus.
• February is ultimately based on Latin februarius, from februa, the feast of purification.
• March is named after the Roman god Mars.
• April? we aren't quite sure what it is named after.
• May may be (or may not be) connected with the greek goddess Maia, daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes.
• June is named after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter.
• July was named after Julius Caesar, the first historical Roman to be officially deified.
• August was named after Augustus Caesar, also deified.
• September means the seventh month, so unless you use the ancient roman calendar, you are uttering an untruth when you use that name. 300 years ago this was considered a big deal, and even today some Quakers use terms like "ninthmonth".
• October means the eighth month.
• November means the ninth month.
• December means the tenth month.

Also, some languages don't use the same month names we do.

• In Italian July is Luglio.
• In Tagalog January is Enéro
• In Turkish June is Haziran
• In Polish September is Wrzesień

Also, in the UK today is the 27 June 2018, while in the US today is June 27, 2018. In both countries 2018-06-27 is considered proper.

So YYYY-MM-DD is not only the only date representation that is easily sortable, it is also understandable in most languages (Some would have to learn what words like "1" and "7" mean if their native language uses different characters) and avoids ENGVAR issues. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:03, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Please, we need to stop claiming any sorting benefit. Wiki tables are quite capable of sorting human readable dates with no coding. That argument doesn’t hold. Also, it may have escaped the attention of some but this is English language Wikipedia. If someone has trouble with the words we use for months, don’t you think they’ll have more trouble with the actual articles?!! And while your attempt to demonstrate the insensitivity of words in dates, this encyclopaedia is not here to right great wrongs or to be censored in that way. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

date1	date2
28 June 2019	2019-06-28
23 February 2028	2028-02-13
8 October 1944	1944-10-08
24 July 1744	1744-07-24

Sort them and see for yourself. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:27, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm... this is new functionality. Didn't use to be the case. Still, YYYY-MM-DD it saves spaces and is easier to parse in sortable context. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

No, not new at all. And ISO is easier for a robot to parse, not a human. And I’m not clear what you mean by in a sortabl context. Once sorted chronologically, it is trivial to parse human readable date formats. I think we’re now in the clutching at straws end game. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:46, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

And why do we need to save space? In very very rare occasions in tables with many columns, I could see an argument for it, but never in references, that makes no sense at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:49, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Quite possibly new to many editors though. Your example did reinforce one thing, scanning a series of dates spaced over many years/centuries is a whole lot easier with ISO style. It's the equivalent of listing names as surname, first name for ease of location. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:16, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

In your opinion as an ISO fan. Making subjective claims sound like fact doesn’t make them fact. I by far prefer human readable dates where I don’t work backwards from year. And in actuality, most tables with dates are usually about other subjects, the date is a convenient sorting method and not in itself that significant. I should know. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:37, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

And of course none of those arguments are relevant to ISO dates in citations. In any way. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:39, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

So, I'm/we're a robot now? Stop casting aspersions as to my/our motives. Start an RFC, gain consensus, or stop beating the WP:DEADHORSE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:53, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

That's very clever but not true. I'm not casting any aspersions (sic) as to anyone's motives. I'm stating facts. A large number of those involved in editing and maintaining Wikipedia will be technically competent and probably have some background which means ISO date formats are simple. I am indeed one of these individuals (as noted before, despite Eppstein's personal attack) but I still do not believe that for references or even in most cases, tables, ISO dates are better for our general readership. Software engineers, technically-inclined people, etc sure, love the ISO, but regular readers? Nope. Do you see ISO dates in Britannica? Do you see ISO dates in The New York Times or National Geographic? I didn't think so. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:05, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Insinuating ISO as not human readable sounds rather ridiculous to me.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Summarising

It seems that the arguments given for perpetuating tolerating numeric dates are:

1. A previous proposal failed
2. They sort
3. They save spaces
4. They are easier for machines to read

To which the responses have been

1. No response yet, but obviously a new proposal would need to be made
2. So do text based dates
3. At the expense of readability for humans
4. At the expense of readability for humans (and the computers have no problems either)

. I think we're about in position to make a proposal which we'd all presumably agree with, unless there are some new arguments not previously made? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:22, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

They are also easier for humans to read. And there are good advantages to having a citation in the style of Smith, John (15 August 2015). "Article of stuff". Example.com. Retrieved 2018-06-27., or in tables, or anywhere where space is limited. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Our own guideline states, correctly, that they are more difficult for humans to read. I don't understand why we're short of space in citations, but I've covered it in point 3. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:34, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

They are abundantly not easier for humans to read. And there are no known advantages to seeing this format in the references. Space is simply not limited. That is a red herring. The only place it could possibly apply is in highly crammed in columns in tables. Nowhere else are we "limited" in space. Nowhere. This isn't 1980s 8-bit land any longer... The Rambling Man (talk) 14:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Dweller: your heading "Summarising" is highly inappropriate for a very biassed set of statements. Anywhere that the date is not intended to be read as part of text, the YYYY-MM-DD format is concise, inobtrusive, and perfectly easy to understand for anyone able to read most of our articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Which of the points 1-4 is biased? I think I've covered all of your other comments and the guideline itself disagrees with you on them being easy to understand. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:34, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Point 4 depends upon context. In a long list of dates ISO may be easier to scan by humans than having to skip over the day and month, putting the most important part first draws attention to it. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:49, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd also argue that not only did the previous proposal simply fail, it resoundingly failed by a more than 2-1 margin. And not everyone agrees that YYYY-MM-DD format comes at the expense of readability for humans. That's a 100% WP:IDONTLIKEIT issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:54, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Well yes, that's the point of preference but it is 100% clear that more English-speaking humans will understand 27 June 2018 than 2018-06-27. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:00, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

[citation needed]. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:49, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

As an admin, I'd expect you to know that that tag is for article space only. And I suppose I could point you to WP:SKYISBLUE because it's fundamentally obvious that human beings who read and write in text rather than ISO standards would prefer to see regular date formats in text. But since you personally attacked me, I guess all bets are off on your judgement right now. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

As a putatively intelligent human, I expect you to understand that as a request for evidence that's not purely your opinion. That tag has had wider use than Wikipedia articles since at least https://xkcd.com/285/. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:02, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

As a current admin, I'd expect you to apologise for personal attacks, and to understand concepts such as the sky being blue. You are way beyond the pale in this regard (and I think you know it) so arguing that more people or even an equal number of people recognise the ISO standard than a normal written date as per every other publication I mentioned is somewhat absurd, borderline disruptive really, and certainly not becoming of an admin. Reflect on that, and once you've apologised for claiming me to be innumerate, we might be able to move on. Otherwise, we're simply spiralling towards your accountability being called into serious question once again and a very sad outcome for you. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:32, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Your bluster just makes your continued lack of evidence more obvious. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:07, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Your refusal to apologise and retract your accusation of my innumeracy is self-evident. You should not be an admin. You have soiled the position. By the way, the "sky is blue" does not need any "evidence", it relies on human beings being capable of logical thought. This is clearly an issue if you believe that an ISO format date is more or equally accessible to our readers than a human readable format. That you would even attempt to defend such a position is staggering beyond belief. I'll ask you one more time, where else do you see ISO dates in the usual run of things? Britannica? The New York Times? The Daily Telegraph? Please let me know. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:12, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the failure of the previous proposal, that was in 2009, so I would not put too much weight on that. I just looked at it and noticed that I voted oppose, which 1) I did not previously recall, and 2) I am not sure I would do the same now. --RL0919 (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

That's interesting to know. I definitely do get a feeling of "we've always done it this way, why change?" from some quarters who inevitably are entrenched with a software engineering mentality. Once anyone can find a single printed source about generalist material which uses ISO dates, I'd consider re-considering, but it's just not the case. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:14, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

A salient point is that "saving space in tables" is not a general goal, it's a goal only when the table is wide. See the main MoS page, MOS:ABBR, MOS:DATE, etc., and search for "table". You'll find various references to when something can be done to save space in a table, that whatever it is is generally discouraged otherwise, and (when the section is written well) that it only pertains to when we actually need to compress the table. Then see MOS:ACCESS on tables and all the accessibility problems they present. So, even aside from the fact that our tables are actually smart enough to sort human-readable date formats, "because tables" is actually a non-argument except for wide tables.

Second point: This can't be about banning all uses of ISO dates, only limiting them to context in which they're actually helpful. In a table of general historical data they are not; it's a principle of least surprise matter, a tone thing. Readers find a descent into computer geekery in the middle of material about Ancient Greece very jarring. ISO dates may well make sense in a table of dates of forking of various "flavors" of Linux. They don't make sense in citations, for anything at all, nor in running encyclopedic prose, nor is most lists (including infoboxes). They may make sense in lists, on a technical topics, that are arranged chronologically. And so on. WP:Common sense applies.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:38, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Dates in yyyy-mm-dd format are often used for indexing, notably in most earthquake catalogs. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

TRM asked for non-tech sources that use the YYYY-MM-DD format for human-readable information. So here are a few:

• The BBC (with slashes rather than dashes)
• NASA
• The US National Weather Service
• Deutsche Bundesbank
• IMDB
• TV.com (I think this is a television episode listing service?)
• Budget Rent A Car
• The Barbados Stock Exchange
• The URLs of countless sites including CNN, Scientific American, The New Yorker, Wikipedia (POTD), etc. Ok, it's debatable whether these are actually human-readable, but they make it very difficult to search for other in-text usages

So the argument that this is a tech-only unfamiliar format doesn't fly. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:33, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Most commercial sites are using pre-packaged blog/CMS packages; some of them do this by default unless told not to, and many of them are configured and operated by "geeks" at the company; we have no evidence any of them are subjected to a lot of oversight. A telling point is that the BBC doesn't use this format more broadly, only on web stuff. And it could change formats tomorrow; there's no evidence this is a house style of any of these publishers (aside from online-only ones) nor why they are using it. Some likely chose it specifically to avoid the US vs. everyone else style fight, but WP has taken a different route, in permitting both on a per-article basis per TIES, obviating any "dispute resolution" argument in favor of ISO dates here. At any rate, we really don't care if some other publishers use it, and love it, and think it is the best ever. We have real reasons to discourage it except for special contexts (though again that's probably a proposal to make at either WT:MOSNUM or WP:VPPOL, since it's not any more related to citations than to anything else).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

All the "examples" provided by Eppstein are pretty much tech-only examples. So that somewhat backs up the point rather well. Of course, I saw no Britannica, The New York Times, The Guardian etc in there either, but hey... The Rambling Man (talk) 08:22, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Citation bundle

How does one bundle citations that use ref name? WP:CITEBUNDLE isn't very clear, and doesn't mention this. Lapadite (talk) 20:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

You could use template:refn. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you want to bundle citations? Or notes? The <ref> tags create notes, which the superscripted, bracketed numbers link to, and which can contain citations (full or short), comments, and all sorts of other stuff except other notes (<ref> tags). Your question reflects the common confusion that a "citation" to a source includes the <ref>...</ref> tags.

The straight-forward answer to your question is simple: "bundle" all of your citations – presumably full citations using {{citation}} or {{cite xxx}} templates – into a single "note" (<ref> tag), without wrapping them individually in <ref> tags.

If you already have a full citation for the source elsewhere (such as in another note) just use a "short-cite" in your "bundle". This is most easily done using the {{harvnb}} template. Note if you are using any of the "cite xxx" family of templates you will need to add |ref=harv to the cite template. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:48, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Emir of Wikipedia and J. Johnson: I've been trying to apply template:refn to a citation bundle that includes < ref name="Smith"/ > without using a #Notes section to no avail; the "ref name" citations are not recognized in the bundle. J. Johnson, I want to bundle standard citations (which are using ref tags & citation templates) that include "ref name" (so as to avoid repeating full citations) without having to turn them into "notes", having to split or group the bundled citations into another section, or having to change the citation style. Is it possible to bundle "ref name" citations and keep them listed alongside all other citations in the standard References section? See for example Alicia_Keys#Early_life - Three of the four citations beside the sentence ending with "romanticism of "blue composers" like Chopin" use "ref name", which isn't recognized in a standard bundle. Lapadite (talk) 05:34, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

RFC on use of via

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Should WP:TWL be allowed to acknowledge the services they have partnership with in our articles? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:42, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Remove the bullet point that starts "adding citation templates..."

Remove the bullet point "* adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently;" from Wikipedia:Citing sources, and rely on the standard consensus policy processes such as WP:BRD in its stead. -- PBS (talk) 12:56, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

• Support as nominator. In the good old days when Wikipedia was young I never came across citation templates. It seems that the dispute about them started in 2005. For a time it could be argued that it was possibly to have a page without templates, let alone citation templates; and later pages with templates, but not citation templates. However with the deprecation of "ISBN 978-3-16-148410-0" and the introduction {{ISBN|978-3-16-148410-0}} (without prior consensus on the talk page of every article that received a bot alteration see the RfC) and the widespread use of templates such as {{webarchive}} both are put into articles without first gaining consensus on an article's talk page (along with other templates such as {{better source}}), it seems to me that the bullet point in WP:CITEVAR "adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates,..." is irrelevant in many case as all such altered pages already have templates in inline-citations or in the "References" section. I think it is time to remove that whole bullet point and rely on WP:BRD instead. -- PBS (talk) 12:56, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
• Comment For those who will argue ("'Once more unto the breach...") that the wording should be changed to "adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without citation templates," using the argument that {{ISBN}} is not a "citation" template--well nor is {{sfn}} or {{efn}} yet I have seen people on this talk page who dislike those template argue that they are--given the widespread use of templates within reference sections and inline-citations, what is it that currently justifies singling out citation template as unique in requiring consensus on the talk page before adding one (and so creating an exception to the usual WP:BRD process)? -- PBS (talk) 12:56, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Weakening Citevar will result in mass changes to reference formats of articles with no benefit to the articles. The rule is in place for a reason.Nigel Ish (talk) 14:52, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
• I generally support moving to citation templates, but we need to be really careful a change here isn't interpreted as an invitation for someone to go start making large scale changes across many articles. Such efforts almost always generate more disruption than they are worth. Monty₈₄₅ 14:58, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
  • This concern seems particularly valid given that this RFC has been advertised on other pages as "RFC to ease introduction of citation templates to articles not presently using them" - although the change proposed would equally allow users to remove templates from articles that do use them. I suspect that if adding templates became viewed as a form of "cleanup", we would indeed see large-scale projects aiming to convert nearly all articles to use templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:02, 4 July 2018 (UTC)