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FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats: Difference between revisions
FamilySearch Wiki talk:Source Citation Formats (view source)
Revision as of 08:11, 10 June 2009
, 10 June 2009Added argument to allow more citation styles than Turabian, Chicago, and Shown Mills.
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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) | 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) | ||
=== Citation Styles: The Real Issue <br> | === 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. | 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> | 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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Looking at some pages, you will find a single source referenced multiple times, other pages will have each reference having its own reference to the same source. Does that make sense? An example of what I am referring to is [[New Sweden|New Sweden]]. This is an excellent page with excellent sources. I noticed that the first source is cited multiple times and then the second source is repeated multiple times. According to Diltsgd in the Talk page, the footnotes have problems when the second source is referenced once. If this is the case, that is a very bad bug in my opinion. [[User:Thomas Lerman|Thomas Lerman]] 16:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC) | Looking at some pages, you will find a single source referenced multiple times, other pages will have each reference having its own reference to the same source. Does that make sense? An example of what I am referring to is [[New Sweden|New Sweden]]. This is an excellent page with excellent sources. I noticed that the first source is cited multiple times and then the second source is repeated multiple times. According to Diltsgd in the Talk page, the footnotes have problems when the second source is referenced once. If this is the case, that is a very bad bug in my opinion. [[User:Thomas Lerman|Thomas Lerman]] 16:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC) | ||
=== Allow more citation styles than Chicago, Turabian, or Shown Mills? === | |||
Wikipedia allows many citation formats, probably because its content is multidisciplinary. FamilySearch Wiki is far less multidisciplinary, so some might argue that it makes sense to limit citation styles here to those designed for history or genealogy. However, this may be a bad idea because one needn't be a genealogist to add value to FamilySearch Wiki, so some contributors who don't have a copy of Chicago or Shown Mills will have access to MLA, APA, or some other handbook because they use it in their profession or in their studies. It seems unwise to say to these folks "You can't play in our sandbox unless you speak our language." [[User:Ritcheymt|Ritcheymt]] 14:11, 10 June 2009 (UTC) | |||
=== Related pages === | |||
[[FamilySearch Wiki:Manual of Style|Manual of Style]] | |||