[edit] See also I started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#See_also_and_categories regarding how see also and categories intersect with NOR and POV and how problematic that may or may not be relative to NOR and POV in the article body, if anyone would like to join. Some prior discussions of See also occurred at Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_1#See_also_after_references, Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_2#See_also, Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_3#Length_of_See_Also, Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_4#See_also_suggestion, Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_5#See_also, Wikipedia_talk:Layout/Archive_6#See_also. Шизомби (talk) 18:15, 6 December 2009 (UTC) Is there any problem with nested see alsos? If for example there were some broad topic of relevance and other subtopics? Like for Krampus to have the see also section read in relevant part: I would guess this would be fine, but I can't recall if I've seen it done. Шизомби (talk) 16:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC) - I don't think so, although nesting implies that an increase in specificity, for example Black Peter is a specific Companion of Saint Nicholas. In some cases, this would make the See also really long. The resolve was navigation templates, you're probably familiar with Template:Navbox. ChyranandChloe (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Small style edits User:Belovedeagle,[1] User:Graham87,[2] User:Eagle4000,[3] User:Dank,[4] User:MrKIA11,[5] User:Finell,[6] and myself [7]—have all made minor stylistic changes to the article within the past week. The overall change[8] isn't major, although the last edit by Finell introduced errors into the code example in "Links". Please be careful. Death by a thousand small cuts is a concern. Leaving a short message so that changes can be traced would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. ChyranandChloe (talk) 07:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC) What is a watcher? It can count to seven edits. History has a number of watchers. The History page has a Number of watchers process activation link. It is the third of four external tools shown in sequence. Sorry, I could not resist the flow of what I had experienced while satisfying my wondering, confirming what kind of post this was. — CpiralCpiral 02:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC) [edit] Sections: Further Reading I propose a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Section since going here, I did not find the information I was looking for (use of __NOTOC__). —Preceding unsigned comment added by MI6 (talk • contribs) 08:37, 8 December 2009
- Why did you expect to find that information at WP:Layout#Further reading, instead of at something like WP:Layout#Headings_and_sections? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
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- Good point. Added the link to WP:TOC, "[...]organizing content, and populating the table of contents that".[9] Made a small clarification about collapsing the TOC, there's a difference between: (1) viewing the TOC, (2) collapsing it, and (3) not having them show at all. Although I'm not sure if the last clause describing how to use the TOC is necessary here at WP:LAYOUT, it's probably something that can be deferred to WP:TOC. ChyranandChloe (talk) 22:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Notes and References The discussion under this heading is unclear; having read the first paragraph, I was left wondering: - Is it obvious that the first explanation defines "references" and the second "notes"?
- Why these two unrelated kinds of information were not treated separately?
- Whether suggesting that they both appear in articles under just one of the various headings, e.g. "References", does not make it harder for a reader to find any explanatory footnotes? This would not be a problem if it were clear that an article may have both a "References" and a "Notes" section, which I believe to be the case.
Accordingly, I propose that the material under this heading be divided and discussed under two separate headings, viz. "References" and "Notes". Before acting on this proposal, I'd like any feedback you may have. yoyo (talk) 12:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC) - When the section was last being revised, the title of the discussion was ironically "Confusing". Concur with dividing this section. This is the general idea:
- "Notes" or "Footnotes" are possible titles for Explanatory notes. It's exposition that's too detailed to include in the body, but relevant enough to be mentioned. Jane Austen is a good example, here's three more Reston ebolavirus, Global warming, and Battle of Britain.
- Often this is an easy pick: "References". However (1) in articles that cite from within a work and (2) since most articles don't use parenthetical references—there are essentially two types of references called:
- Short citations are like this "Smith, p. 256"
The containing section may be titled "Notes", "Footnotes", "References", or "Citations". - Full citations are like this "Smith, John. 2008. The Story of Everyman. One Publisher, Earth."
The containing section may be titled "References", "Bibliography", "Sources" (very rare), and "Works cited" (very rare). - Some editors keep them the two types of references together slightly separated within the section (e.g. Virus), others keep them separate (e.g. Jane Austen).
- Some editors subsection or merge the explanatory notes and references in two important ways: (1) separated in subsections or some sort, e.g. Battle of Britain, old-version of Reston ebolavirus; (2) or in the same list, e.g. old-version Global warming.
There have been statistical studies done, I do have numbers.[10] This is a lot and probably more than you asked for, I'm sorry. Realize that the more complex schemes are relatively rare, by a factor of twelve or more. However most longer articles need them. From this you can infer how we got here. This is comprehensive, (1) if you want to use the list above for the guideline or (2) if you have something else in mind that more directly separates "Notes" from "References"—feel free to post another draft here. What do you think? ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC) -
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- Yoyo, what seems like "unrelated" information isn't unrelated. They are sometimes listed commingled, in the fashion popular in nearly all scholarly books from the invention of moveable type until the last couple of decades. We don't separate them because editors have done all of the following:
- Given more than a dozen different section names to sections exclusively used for proper bibliographic citations (like "1. Smith, John. (2009) Book Title, page 23."), including ==Notes==, ==References==, and ==Footnotes==.
- Given several names to explanatory text ("1. The moon is not made of cheese"), including both ==Notes== and ==Footnotes==.
- Listed both bibliographic citations and explanatory text in the same section ("1. Smith, John. (2009) Book Title, page 23; 2. The moon is not made of cheese."). This style is most commonly titled either ==Notes==, ==Footnotes==, or ==Notes and references==.
- There is no single right answer, because different academic disciplines require the use of entirely different styles. If an editor's education taught him (or her) that "Notes" was supposed to be explanatory text, and "Footnotes" was supposed to be bibliographic citations (or the other way around) -- and this page listed the opposite -- then the editor would find this document unnecessarily confusing and (from his limited education) "wrong". So this page therefore does not tell editors what to do, and they leaves you free to do what you think is best and most appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
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- It might be a good idea to clarify this in the introductory paragraph of that section. Perhaps something like "Some articles divide these into two separate sections, other articles don't divide them and use just one section." Also, adding WP:FOOT as another {{main}} article might help readers seeking clarity. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Template for example Template:for example says that we say to put for example templates at the head of a section. We don't. It should go at the end of a section. Yes? — CpiralCpiral 19:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC) - Don't understand, the guideline doesn't use the template {{For example}}; it has examples typed into the prose though. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:42, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
- Then I will remove references to WP:MOS in that statement at {{for example}}. But now I'm curious. Can just anyone write a template and make any usage statements? Must they then lobby for it's mention here? They look so official to me. — CpiralCpiral 09:54, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Template {{style wide}} is like for example, but with a different documentation error that could have unintended consequences: "Place this template at the end of pages relevant to the Manual of Style." That's it. A command from whom, and for what purpose? Who regulates/polices Wikipedia templates? The Brits could be planning to change Norté American spellings! — CpiralCpiral 22:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC) - Yes, Wikipedia editors are encouraged to be bold.
- WP:MOSCO and other interested projects exist to help create some order out of the resulting chaos. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
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- Oh! I thought you meant that the page WP:LAYOUT uses the {{For example}} template! WP:MOSCO is one, Wikiprojects such as Wikiproject templates and its children (e.g. WikiProject user warnings) bring order (especially to the potentially controversial ones) although they aren't a stifling institution. {{Style wide}} is really generic, if you look at the code, it's is a special case of {{Navbox}}, which has very well known standards (in fact WP:LAYOUT prescribes this one, see WP:FOOTERS). {{For example}} is also very generic. The scope of this template or type of template isn't very large, so it's controlled informally by well meaning editors. The guideline is also described, ironically, in WP:LAYOUT, see section "Section templates and summary style", {{For example}} is a similar to {{Details}} so we present through example (I told you about being concrete rather than abstract remember?).
There are a few more such as {{infobox}}, {{Portal}}, success boxes—but I think you'd be more interested in templates that don't follow a well known standard. I don't know if I should be saying this, but I have been a bit associated with a couple non-standard templates. "Part of a series" such as {{Islam}}, {{Smoking}}, {{Atmospheric sciences}}, and {{Style}} are infobox-like, but because of their very specific application an their relative rarity, editors innovate instead. I'll just tell you right now, I do have a preference towards collapsible sort: think fixed height, static part of the series templates are backward. There are more examples, each with its own story. If you want I can tell you the stories of {{Gallery}}, {{Cnote2}}, {{FAQ row}}, and {{Outline header}}. There are some controversies, for example some editors disapprove of infoboxes, and their argument is that they're un-needed or controlled by a small group of editors (Jane Austen is a good example). Despite this, templates are usually much quieter since the number of editors who understand templates well enough to write, modify, and deploy them are very few in number than those who just know how to hit the edit button. There's also innovation in templates. The big thing in the infobox world is microformats, which is a type of meta-data, for example if you enter the population of a city into an infobox, the search engine will interpret it as, well, the population of the city rather than some number. I don't do infoboxes though, friend does, talk to Dudemanfellabra. Pretzels does the Signpost. My job, well, probably has an explanation of its own. ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC) [edit] Position of navboxes I'm not sure I always agree with the instruction under "Standard appendices and footers" that navboxes should go after notes, references, further reading and external links. What if the navbox is a list of links to related topics? Surely the logical place is then the "See also" section. 86.146.47.248 (talk) 04:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC). - The Navbox suite was designed to be placed at the end of the article. Is it logical to place them in the "See also"? Yes, but one emerging practice is for Navboxes to replace the "See also", not to supplement it. For succession boxes, there has been a proposal to write a new template that'll go in the article or in the "See also" rather than the end, the same might occur for Navboxes.[11] ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:55, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
- Since navboxes stretch across the width of the page, they look quite ugly if placed anywhere other than the very end of the article. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:18, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
- I don't particularly agree with that. 86.134.72.35 (talk) 12:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC).
- We have 4 main types of "See also these articles ..." page elements: Navboxes, Categories, SeeAlso sections, and SisterProject linkboxes.
It would be great if they were all clearly integrated/supplementary/mutually-supporting/etc. I've suggested something similar a few times in various places, but neither I nor anyone else has come up with a good technical&social way to achieve that.(afaik)
The precedent of ExternalLinks going at the very end of all articles is too ingrained/popular to really challenge. So, unless we manage to move the categories up the page, it makes about as much sense to leave the Navboxes at the end (just above the Categories - drawing useful attention to them), as it does to move the Navboxes up the page to be inside the SeeAlso section. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:08, 27 December 2009 (UTC) |
