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FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats: Difference between revisions
FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats (view source)
Revision as of 16:28, 9 June 2009
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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) | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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) | ||
[[User:Jbparker|Jbparker]] 17:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
=== Citation Styles: The Real Issue ===<br> | |||
I think the issue needs to be addressed at an even higher level. The Research Wiki is intended to belong to the Community--everyone, not just the scholarly professional genealogist. How can we expect the hobbyist wanting to add something they learned to a page to have to learn the proper style in Turabian? They probably don't own a copy of Turabian, and it might take them an hour to figure out how to add the proper citation when writing the article addition itself only took them 20 minutes. The result will be that many people will not cite sources at all and that others will not want to contribute for fear of being held up to ridicule for improper citations. I especially can't see thousands of our contributors having to buy a copy of Shown Mills and then spend a few hundred hours learning it. | |||
My opinion in both the case of the Wiki and even in the larger issue of citations in genealogical software is simply this -- what's important is the bibliographic information, not the syntax, nor the order of the elements of the citation. If it identifies where it came from, gives credit to its creator, and facilitates locating the source, I DON'T CARE about the format <insert sound of gasps>. Let's get the information in with a scholoarly scope of source information and avoid requiring scholarly discipline in source citation format. I say Turabian, Shown Mills, APA, MLA, Chicago, or Aunt Mary's style are all ok, as long as the full complement of source elements are properly identified. Let's change the thrust of this discussion to say what are all of the elements of a proper source citation for a book, an article, a web page, an email, an audio recording, a forum posting, a blog post, a tweet, etc. etc. [[User:Alan|Alan]] 22:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br> | |||
=== Inline citations vs. footnotes === | === Inline citations vs. footnotes === | ||
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I don't like the example that Wikipedia lists right at the beginning of the article. To me, the publication date should follow the publication info, not the author's name. [[User:Bakerbh|Bakerbh]] 22:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC) | I don't like the example that Wikipedia lists right at the beginning of the article. To me, the publication date should follow the publication info, not the author's name. [[User:Bakerbh|Bakerbh]] 22:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC) | ||
I don't like the Wikipedia example, either. However, I'm willing to accept the publication date in any of several places--as long as it's there. My real problem with Wikipedia is the concept that an article (page) has to be consistent in the citation style used on that page. That means that if a short article used a single source citation, all later contributors would be forced to learn whichever format was employed for that single citation. See my discussion comments above on Terabian, Shown Mills, etc. [[User:Alan|Alan]] 21:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC) | I don't like the Wikipedia example, either. However, I'm willing to accept the publication date in any of several places--as long as it's there. My real problem with Wikipedia is the concept that an article (page) has to be consistent in the citation style used on that page. That means that if a short article used a single source citation, all later contributors would be forced to learn whichever format was employed for that single citation. See my discussion comments above on Terabian, Shown Mills, etc. [[User:Alan|Alan]] 21:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC) | ||
=== Disadvantages of Shown Mills format? === | === Disadvantages of Shown Mills format? === | ||