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FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats: Difference between revisions
FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats (view source)
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I'm preparing to launch [[FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives|WikiProject:Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives]] but I don't know which format to use for the inline references which will link to the digital copies of local histories online. Should I use APA? MLA? Chicago? Shown Mills? Turabian? Any ideas? It would be nice to come to a consensus before adding these 1300 references so the community won't have to come back and change their citation format later. [[User:Ritcheymt|Ritcheymt]] 17:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC) | I'm preparing to launch [[FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives|WikiProject:Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives]] but I don't know which format to use for the inline references which will link to the digital copies of local histories online. Should I use APA? MLA? Chicago? Shown Mills? Turabian? Any ideas? It would be nice to come to a consensus before adding these 1300 references so the community won't have to come back and change their citation format later. [[User:Ritcheymt|Ritcheymt]] 17:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC) | ||
Is Shown Mills widely accepted outside the Wasatch? I tried to get a copy through Books-A-Million here in Virginia and was told it was "too obscure a title" for their distributor... They suggested I get Chicago or Turabian. That doesn't matter a whole lot in terms of what direction the FS wiki takes. I just thought it was interesting. [[User:Lembley|Eirebrain]] 00:48, 31 May 2009 (UTC) | |||
My preference is to use Chicago as the basic format guide, with Shown Mills as the back-up for citations specific to genealogical manuscripts and specific types of documents peculiar to the genealogical world. That said, I have some additional comments to add. | |||
The whole purpose of bibliographic and footnote citations is to guide the reader to the source of information from whence the statements made in the Wiki page came. For that reason, I guess I am less concerned about which style we use than I am about helping the reader find the source of what we contribute. Remembering that the Wiki is a community project, contributors will add things with no citations, all the way to having so many citations that it is hard to read through an article without losing what is really being said. The latter is especially true of too many inline citations. | |||
I think we should strongly suggest a standard for citations, both bibliographic and footnote, but realize that many of our contributors will simply not contribute if those guidelines are too stringent. We who are pioneering this effort can do much to set the standard by adding the right kind of citation now, so whatever the standard we are going to use, we need to stick by them and try to be as consistent as possible. | |||
[[User:Jbparker|Jbparker]] 17:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
=== Inline citations vs. footnotes === | === Inline citations vs. footnotes === | ||