User:Yiba/sfn

These questions may well come from my total lack of knowledge on the history of the sfnref/harvid template, and my question may be re-worded as: "when is |ref= used without a {{SfnRef}} ?" or "How is {{SfnRef}} used without |ref= ?" As far as I can tell, one of the answers may be "when anchor name is in the form CITEREFanchornameYEAR" which, in my mind, is not a good practice (or is it?). I am asking these questions before asking: "Why is Staff writer name or no by-line required/recommended with |author= when there is no credited author for the source in {{cite journal}} and other citation templates." This may be resolved by the answer to the first two questions, I hope.

• no by-line (2 March 1933). "Some Title". Scientific Journal.
• "ABC Memory". BCD Journal (Spring). 2020.

Hmmm, I am surprised how difficult it is to get my points across on this issue. Please let me try a different approach:

Suppose I am relatively new to Wikipedia, and find my areas of experience and knowledge can contribute to improve Wikipedia articles, so I decide to edit one of the poorly written articles called ABC Memory. I knew there was a good sidebar article about ABC Memory on BCD Journal, where I used to work, and use some info from the column on the Wikipedia page. The article was not signed, but I know such short pieces are normally written by a staff writer John Jones. As a Wiki editor, I don't even know what CS1 stands for, but decide to use a commonly used citation format:
{{sfn|BCD Journal|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
I omitted |author= entry because I know (book) 'authors' are credited, paid, and responsible for what he/she writes, and Jones is not yet a Senior Editor who gets to sign (and paid/responsible for) what he/she writes and publishes. I'm not 100% sure if he actually wrote the piece, but I know for a fact he is a staff writer there. It doesn't work. Then I find the info "To cite a journal article with no credited author" and try:
{{sfn|Jones|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
but the pair fails to link.
{{sfn|<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|2020|page=4}}
doesn't work.
{{sfn|writer|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|author=Staff writer|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
doesn't work.
{{sfn|by-line|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|author=no by-line|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
doesn't work. I kept trying because I really don't want to name Jones an author. I'm cornered to give in, but:
{{sfn|Jones|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|author=John Jones|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
doesn't work. (! This pair does not link. A bug in CITEREF anchor automatic generation handling |author= )
{{sfn|Jones|2020|page=4}}
{{cite journal|last=Jones|first=John|title=ABC Memory|journal=BCD Journal|issue=Spring|date=2020}}
finally works (mind you, without |ref= and the editor being fully aware Jones is a staff writer without any copyright responsibility), and I publish it thinking "Well, this is what Wikipedia documentation instructed me to do."

John gets sued later because I named him as the source despite my strong preference not to name him an author, and the sidebar column was found to have been written by an outside contributor Mrs.X who obtained the sensitive inside info illegally. Mrs.X has long fled abroad, and BCD Journal ends up paying for the damages and sues me for 90% of it because pageview spiked after my edit and the page attracted 9 times more number of pageviews than their subscription base. You could imagine how 'I' feel about Wikipedia documentation.

I think I established in Module talk:Footnotes that {{SfnRef}} and {{Cite journal, book, etc.}}, do not require author surname when there is no credited author. Template:Cite journal/doc and other info pages for these templates 1. Recommends use of |author= when there is no credited author, 2. Recommends use of staff writer names in author= in such case, 3. Do not clearly explain |ref= is needed to link if |author= , |last= , etc. is omitted. And the above mentioned proposal of mine solves all these problems, (I think).  

This may not be what you expected, or asked for, but here are my comments:

The more I think about what I see as problems on Wikipedia documentation, the more I see cases of smaller issues being rooted in higher-level problems.
I feel one major reason why Wikipedia documentation is difficult to use, is because the distinction between Template:cite journal and Template:Cite journal/doc (and of course other pages and their corresponding /doc pages including SfnRef and SfnRef/doc) was ill-defined ad hoc. (or more likely, /doc's were created simply because the main pages became too long, without a differentiation with clear-cut purpose, with difficult-to-find Help: pages added.) If this mess is not cleaned up, your nice change on Template:SfnRef (and my unsuccessful edit and proposal discussed on Module talk:Footnotes) might just feed the information overloading for first-time readers.

I feel, differentiating them into a "practical use guide (for newbies)" (e.g. Template:SfnRef) and a "full documentation" (e.g. Template:SfnRef/doc) will eventually clean up the mess, and the often complicated and intertwined issues will become easier to recognize/understand, and become easier to fix.

I do realize this is a huge undertaking if tried to implement all at once, but deciding on these simple definitions with the intent to gradually conforming the docs to the new definitions may be reasonable.

For example:

• Wikipedian language (which may be the highest-level problem) including "short citation", the difference between "Anchor and AnchorID" and "Author= and Last=", etc. may confuse newbies without an explanation. So I feel words should be carefully chosen, and lingo (or rather, words with complicated Wiki concepts behind) should be excluded from a practical guide.
• A statement like "{{SfnRef}} is often used as {{cite journal, etc. |ref={{SfnRef}}}}" may be worth being added up front, before showing the good Rolling Stone example. That example kills two birds, 1. Explains why SfnRef is needed, and 2. Shows an usage example. This makes it excellent for a documentation, but may not for a newbie.
• "The above documentation is transcluded from Template:SfnRef/doc." is not for the newbies. "This is a practical guide for the use of {{SfnRef}}. See Template:SfnRef/doc for full documentation." is.
• {{harvid}} and {{harvnb}} info are not for the newbies. First-time readers should not be confused on "Sfnref anchor markup" vs. "Short citation markup". That "Short citation markup" column in the wikitable would be better replaced by "Paired with:" column with a list of cite web, book, magazine, news, etc. paired full citation examples, although it is an excellent column for a full documentation.
  

I prefer (for both practical guide and full documentation):  • MoMA 2024.{{Citation |title=Title |date=2024 |publisher=Museum of Modern Art |ref={{sfnref|MoMA|2024}} |mode=cs1}} over:  • {{Citation |title=Title |date=2024 |publisher=Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) |ref={{sfnref|MoMA|2024}} |mode=cs1}}
because (I realized after you showed your solution to me) sometimes Anchorname has a different first character from author/publisher name, and the first format makes looking up the full citation on a long list in Bibliography a lot easier. For example, if Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics is mostly known as RFM and 'RFM' is used as the anchor name (and Bibliography has over 40 entries), the first format above will naturally list it under R in Bibliography list of full citations, the second format would encourage the editor to list it under 'A'. Since a reader normally looks up the full citation (in Bibliography) from a short citation (on the article text showing "RFM 2024"), the second format listed near the top of bibliography makes looking up very difficult.

• "Other Harvard templates", |ref=harv info, "Documentation subpage", "Vcite", "High-use", "Deprecated", "What's new", "COinS", "Vancouver system/style", "{{csdoc|lua|lua=yes}}", "Full parameter set", etc. do not have a place for newbies, but "Popular parameters" does.

Please try to imagine an use-guide page without the clutter and lingo. Then you will see where I'm coming from, although I realize only few of the above are useful to you at this time.