Reliability
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What is Wikimedia policy about providing links to URLs only, as described in Template:URL and Template:PDFlink? I thought I had seen notices that such practices were deprecated, presumably because it can be practically impossible to do anything with a broken link if that's all that is provided. I wonder if these other pages should recommend providing more information, as provided with this Wikipedia:Citation templates page. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much covered by Wikipedia:Embedded citations, Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Bare URLs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How could we structure citations for music performance, music scores or music recordings? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christophe Dupriez (talk • contribs) 11:50, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Performances are not reliable sources, because they're ephemeral. You could cite a video of a performance using {{cite video}} (or doing the same sort of thing by hand), though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 7 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with poor or mangled citations is a perennial problem on Wikipedia and anything that can be done to provide help to users to quickly find and select relevant help on how to reference and cite outside Wikipedia can only help improve the quality of referencing and citing generally.

I suggest it would be helpful to have a launch page as an index of the available resources, something like what is shown here in the quote box...

I am sure an index such as this that is easily found would help many users to locate the appropriate level and type of resource they need.

Comments or feedback?
Enquire (talk) 03:22, 30 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See the {{Wikipedia referencing}} navbox. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:58, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd skip the refbegin/refend stuff. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The current list of default options for video resources should be enhanced. There should be far more options due to the vast array of types of videos out there for use as a source. For example, when citing a segment of a television news program, there should be options similar to those for a news article, including: title of the segment (in addition to the show or series title); lead reporter (if different from the main host of the show); URL and access date for archive of the news clip; etc. Girona7 (talk) 06:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For a news program, what is missing from {{cite news}} or {{cite video}}? Do you have an example citation? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to these citation templates, is there a switch you can put in so that only author1 is alphabetized? Based off some other academic citation styles, in my manual (non-template) citations I alphabetize only the first author. For instance: Smith, Amy and Carol Jones....

WhisperToMe (talk) 19:13, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to vary the order of lastname/firstname, you will need to use the |authorn= parameters instead of |lastn=|firstn= for all those where you don't want lastname to be shown first, as in |last1=Smith |first1=Amy |author2=Carol Jones

Bear in mind that if ref styles such as Harvard referencing or Shortened footnotes are in use, this will break the linking between short note and full citation. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback! I usually just do bare code instead of citation templates but it's good to know in case there's a demand for citation templates in a particular article. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:43, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PLEASE don't use "Smith, Amy and Carol Jones..." It is absolutely illogical and looks awful and silly. What is wrong with "Smith, Amy; Jones, Carol ...."? That's what I always change it to anyway, whenever I come across that particular abomination. I know different people prefer different styles, but honestly, there are limits. -- Alarics (talk) 21:35, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]