BattleTechWiki talk:Manual of Style/References

Unveiled

Okay, if I ever felt like I've put tons of effort into anything here, this ranks up in the top 5. The help sections get progressively detailed, assuming that Editors will choose to match the method that best fits their skills. And I love how Special:UserScore says I've only contributed 6 edits today, when I've easily saved 50x that number. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 03:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

References, Links and Bibliographies

I've been chatting with one of the new users here about the formatting of references because I'd noticed the sourcebook within reference tags appearing as a link. I was under the impression that making the sourcebook title within a reference was discouraged in favour of listing the various sourcebooks referenced as links within the Bibliography section of each article, but this help page doesn't say that - instead, it calls for sourcebook names within every reference to be a link. Is that still the current policy? If it is, then I've been getting it wrong for almost two years now. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 23:45, 9 May 2013 (PDT)

Saw that discussion. And I agree, the Help page is a bit outdated and doesn't seem to describe the most common procedure on BTW. To be honest, I never actually read it before. I think we should reword the Help page to reflect what we're actually doing: Put links into references only if the referenced source is not already covered in (linked from) a Bibiography or Sources section within the article.
There are cases where you need to reference a source that shouldn't appear in a Bibliography section for one reason or another (for example because it is only quoted on a tangential and has nothing to do with the article's subject, or because there is only a single reference and this wouldn't warrant a Bibliography section in the first place). In that case, putting the link into the reference proper is okay. At least that's how I'm going about it. Frabby (talk) 03:58, 10 May 2013 (PDT)

Indicating multiple pages per #Specific References

"FedCom Civil War, p. 104, pp. 120-121, p. 133"

The pp. should be for the entire group of pages - pp. 104, 120–121, 133, that same way it would be used for pp. 1, 5, 9, 13.

I didn't think I should edit this myself without checking here. Madness Divine (talk) 22:42, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Nearly a month and no comment. I'm going to make to correction on the page. Madness Divine (talk) 02:07, 23 May 2022 (EDT)

I have never stumbled upon this reference talk page until now! The way you're doing it is correct as far as I know, and I've been independently doing the same. --Csdavis715 (talk) 22:26, 24 August 2023 (EDT)

Citation format

Currently the preferred format is product, page, description. This has a problem when pages are a list that includes a comma.

Somebody else was using product, page: description, which gets around the page list issue. I've been using it because it makes a lot more sense to me.

I'd like feedback on changing the page guidelines to recommend the second format. Madness Divine (talk) 02:07, 23 May 2022 (EDT)

I think this was already discussed in Discord some time ago but this new method of using the colon between the page and description has caught on and seems to be the new de facto standard. I think almost all of us do it now, so good suggestion. --Csdavis715 (talk) 22:26, 24 August 2023 (EDT)

Second detailed method

Just read through this help article about the second detailed method of references.

I don’t think this is explicitly stated, but I just wanted someone to confirm the following

It is best practice to refrain from using shorthand reference tags in an article before the reference tag is fully defined, correct?

I recently came across the kervil protectorate militia article that had reference tag definitions after the shorthand reference tags. It was a bear to find the reference tag definitions later on in the article. 75.23.228.139 06:01, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Took me a bit to figure out what you meant; slow brain day. You mean like having a <ref name=Bob/> in the infobox but the full reference further down the page, correct?

Yes, it's bad practice, but a project I'll let somebody else take on. Madness Divine (talk) 11:50, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Yes, that’s precisely what I meant. I was actually a bit shocked to find out that wikitags allowed shorthand ref tags to be used before the ref tag was fully defined...seems to encourage the equivalent of spaghetti coding.75.23.228.139 12:37, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

As Madness said, it is best practice to get the actual reference as high up in the article as possible (infobox is best of all), but for some strange reason has never specifically spelled out. As a secondary thought, looking through the article, I think we could quite comfortably remove most of it and simply have "second detailed method" as our standard method.--Dmon (talk) 13:58, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

And as a third thought, the biblio section says nothing about the sources being listed alphabetically being best practice.--Dmon (talk) 14:01, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

That last one's about to change. Madness Divine (talk) 15:54, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Ordering of Bibliography

Hello, this question is only appropriate to bibliography, since the reference section should be ordered by appearance within the article.
I have not been using alphabetical order in articles I am writing for an important reason. If there is a primary source and several secondary sources, the first reference is more likely than not to be less important to the article. Moreover, I found I could often avoid this issue by listing my bibliography in order of date of publication, since the first time a subject is introduced, the source material tends to adequately introduce the new material.
I intend use alphabetical order in the future, but I still think this alternative method was worth discussion.--S.gage (talk) 22:00, 24 August 2023 (EDT)

The issues I see with ordering by publication date are:

1) it requires more work on the part of any editor to check when the sources came out, which most casual editors won't think to do

2) on a lot of occasions something is just mentioned in passing in the first source or two, and then is later expanded upon by BT authors down the line, so the first source is not always the most important for the article

3) there is a BT-wide policy in which if there is conflicting information, the more recent source is the correct one

4) at first glance, readers/future editors who who look at the bibliography might only see disorganization and not assume there was any sort of thought behind the ordering (and it's also safe to assume that we editors are accidentally messy from time to time!)

5) this would be an unfathomable task to review and reorder the bibliographies of the entire wiki

IMO a reader can tell which sources are more important just by seeing which ones are referenced the most in the main body. --Csdavis715 (talk) 22:50, 24 August 2023 (EDT)

Some of these counter-arguments are reasonable concerns

1. is a reasonable concern; it would make the learning curve for editing steeper.
2. is one of the admitted caveats to publication date, and concerns a small subset of topics introduced in the source material.
3. is another admitted caveat to publication date, but concerns a small subset of topics retconned by the publishers.
4. questioning the competence of wiki editors is a general caveat to using wikis in general, and really is above the scope of ordering of bibliography.
5. is very convincing. Rearranging the bibliography of 40,000 articles is quite an undertaking.

Moreover, your conclusion is the best reason: redundancy. Because citations in the reference section specify the source for information, the bibliography does not have to be re-ordered to give an idea of timeline (if not priority) for the information.

Of note, I also order my reference citations by publication date, too. Should I begin reordering these as well, for instance:

How I would order references within a citation, ordered by date of publication: <ref>House Davion, p. 117: "Unfinished Book Movement"</ref><ref>Handbook: House Davion, pp. 146–147: "Unfinished Book Movement"</ref> Reordered alphabetically by Title: <ref>Handbook: House Davion, pp. 146–147: "Unfinished Book Movement"</ref><ref>House Davion, p. 117: "Unfinished Book Movement"</ref>

Thank you for your thoughts!--S.gage (talk) 12:51, 25 August 2023 (EDT)

This is something that the work to benefit outcome ratio would off the chart. Lots of work for very little actual true improvement to the wiki. Any idea that requires thousands of changes needs to be a big improvement or to be a building block for another improvement.--Dmon (talk) 13:08, 25 August 2023 (EDT)