Forum:Where to use cite source

Index → The Panopticon → Where to use cite source

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Opening post

As Forum:Cite source, a new citation template has concluded, {{cite source}} has been rolled out and implemented on many pages, with little issue other than a few bug fixes and a visual change or two. For citations, this template works perfectly, living up to the expectation set by the initial forum, and all is good. I've nothing to change, in this thread, about the template.

What I do want to do, however, is clarify where to use it; this, unfortunately, has seemed to have been glossed over in the original thread.

How I saw the suggested usage of the template is when we want to — operative word here; it's in the title of the template — cite information. So instead of using

([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Time Traveller's Almanac (reference book)|The Time Traveller's Almanac]]'')

We would instead use

[[PROSE]]: {{cs|The Time Traveller's Almanac (reference book)|chaptnum=3|chaptname=Everything Changes|page=74}})

But in practise, I've been observing others use the template in places that, in my opinion, think unnecessary. So think of this thread as my ideas on where to use and where not to use {{cite source}}. Please note that the examples I use below aren't meant to be a slight or criticism of any of the editors who used the template!

Infoboxes

Doctor Strange
Job:	Superhero
First appearance:	The Totally Stonking, Surprisingly Educational And Utterly Mindboggling Comic Relief Comic
Appearances:	COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head [+]Loading...["The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)"] PROSE: Millennial Rites [+]Loading...["Millennial Rites (novel)"] TV: The Return of Doctor Mysterio [+]Loading...["The Return of Doctor Mysterio (TV story)"]

As seen in this revision of Doctor Strange, {{cite source}} has been used in the |appearances= field of {{Infobox Individual}}.

Now... I don't think this works for several reasons.

• First of all, we aren't citing anything, we're listing off sources. I don't think a list needs cite source.
• Second of all, this adds visual clutter to the infobox. Not only does it look, in my opinion, distracting, when you expand the citation it stretches the length of the infobox and all the text that is revealed is forced into multiple line breaks as the infobox is too narrow to display a full sentence.
• Third of all, it doesn't match the autolinking fields of |first mention= and |first=, so only some of the sources in infoboxes has cite source and some don't, leaving it all very inconsistent.

Image captions

Erin explores Victorian London with Rollo and Jim Waters. (GAME: The Iytean Menace ^[+]Loading...["The Iytean Menace (game)"])

Now, technically, the usage of {{cite source}} in image captions, as a citation to in-universe text, is using the template in a way generally describable as correct. But I feel, that, like the second reason I gave for infoboxes, this doesn't quite work. It looks cluttered, it stretches the image caption pushing the paragraph(s) of text around it, the area is too small to display a full sentence so there are lots of line breaks, etc.

Out of universe sections

Well, {{cite source}} hasn't been used in out of universe sections — that I know of — but given this thread, I want to future proof the usage of the template.

If we're referencing a source in plain paragraphs of text, for example:

• First, the establishing shots of the camera zooming from space onto Rose's alarm clock at 48 Bucknall House after the opening titles in the first episode of series one, Rose, (reused in the pre-titles scene in the 2005 Christmas Special The Christmas Invasion, this time transitioning to a bauble Jackie picks up at home) shows the geography of Kennington, including the Brandon Estate, the Oval and Kennington Park.

We shouldn't need to do:

• First, the establishing shots of the camera zooming from space onto Rose's alarm clock at 48 Bucknall House after the opening titles in the first episode of series one, Rose ^[+]Loading...["Rose (TV story)"], (reused in the pre-titles scene in the 2005 Christmas Special The Christmas Invasion ^[+]Loading...["The Christmas Invasion (TV story)"], this time transitioning to a bauble Jackie picks up at home) shows the geography of Kennington, including the Brandon Estate, the Oval and Kennington Park.

I feel, given the out of universe perspective, we can give any necessary context to the reference of a source (e.g. "first episode of series one", "2005 Christmas Special", etc.). Cite source is a bit redundant and unnecessary.

Conclusion

I don't expect people will fully agree with me, but it is a small issue I want to establish some ground rules on. We've figured out how to use cite source, but not where, so this thread should hopefully clear that up. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Epsilon the Eternal (talk • contribs) .

Discussion

I think it is absolutely vital that it be used in image caption: knowing when in a given book the image comes from is as useful as knowing where a given tidbit of information comes from. It even pairs beautifully with the recent reform authorising the use of production photos from missing episodes: this can now be specified via {{cite source}}, preventing any confusion about the image being an actual screenshot.

Setting that aside, I don't understand the rest of your objections. The collapsed "+" is only a single character more than the titles would otherwise include, so I find it rather confusing to hold that it "clutters" the infoboxes unduly. If people want to expand the collapsible, that's their own choice; personally I could often imagine doing so. But if it bothers you, no one's forcing you to. The fact that "first" and "first mention" are autolinking is a fair point, though, so I might support banning it from infoboxes for consistency's sake. Maybe. (The flipside is that it allows us to sort series data and such that are visible in new-style, tabular lists of appearances, so there's consistency in another respect there…) But I don't at all see the problem in using it in BTS plaintext. Sure, you could also include some details in the prose itself, but that just forces you to make the text wordier, instead of the data being automatically there if you want it, but hidden if you don't. I don't think it should be universalised in BTS text the way we hope to make it for ordinary citations, of course, but the option should very much exist. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 16:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

It would be possible to add {{cs}} to "first" and "first mention" fields while retaining the autolinking ability and any SMW data collection. Bongo50 ☎ 17:27, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, as I said above, the infobox is so narrow the sentence of text is forced to have several line breaks, all while extending the length of the infobox. I feel it is a unnecessary, especially as one a lot of pages we have subpages for appearances.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

…What's wrong with line-breaks? Especially in these mobile-phone days, people are very used to there being line-breaks in text. As for making the infobox taller, again, that's only when you expand the collapsible. Presumably you'd click it to read the contents of the collapsible, then close it again before you resumed browsing the page, so design issues caused by the infobox being taller would never actually bother you while you were actually reading the rest of the page. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:19, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll just see about presenting an image to better illustrate what I mean.

COMIC: The
Incomplete Death's
Head ^[+] Dan Abnett,
Marvel Comics UK
(1993).)

It's downright messy. It's an ocean of information with borders and jarring line breaks between forename, surnames, other names, etc etc etc.

I understand your reasoning about using {{cite source}} in images, but I still think it looks messy.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)