User:J. Johnson/sandbox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page is not an encyclopedia article. It is a "sandbox", used for testing, etc.

But as long as you are here, check out Where citations come from.


Links[edit]

The following are just for my convenience.

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Link to some items of possible interest: /Introduction to citation (essay), /Citation primer, /Citation tools, /Sortrefs.

GW Articles revised[edit]

The following articles have either had their IPCC references revised to the canonical form (Green tickY), need to be revised (=), determined not to need revision (), or not yet checked (?). Feel free to suggest other candidates.

Green tickY (2011) =Global warming#References, Green tickY=Scientific opinion on climate change#References, Green tickYPlanetary boundaries#References, Green tickY=Global_climate_model#References, =IPCC (terrible), Green tickYIPCC Second Assessment Report#References, Green tickYIPCC Third Assessment Report#References, =IPCC Fourth Assessment Report#References(SRES), Green tickYSpecial Report on Emissions Scenarios,

Green tickY=Attribution of recent climate change#References, Green tickYClimate_change#References, Climate change denial#References, =Current sea level rise#References, Green tickYGlobal_warming_controversy#References (but still ugly), =Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years#References, Green tickYEffects_of_global_warming#References, =Climate_sensitivity#References,


Bundling[edit]

Modifications of User:dcljr's original at WT:Citing_sources#Bundling_revisited.

Illustration of "bundling" in the context of references.
Bundling references is taking something like this:

#1: In this first example, the references (notes) are not bundled.[1][2][3]

References

  1. ^ "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  2. ^ "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  3. ^ Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
and turning it into something like this:

#2: In this second example, the references are bundled.[1]

References

  1. ^ For information about references, also called footnotes, see:
    "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about bundling references:
    "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about counting:
    Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
(Yes, I know these references are ridiculous.)
Some other ways of bundling.
The last example used a bulleted list and "labels". Variations include not using a list:

#3: In this third example, the bundled references take the form of a paragraph.[1]

References

  1. ^ For information about references, also called footnotes, see: "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07. For information about bundling references see: "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07. For information about counting see: Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
or not using labels, which results in a so-called "naked bundle":

#4: In this fourth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle.[1]

References

  1. ^
Whether to use a bullet point for the first citation in a naked bundle is a matter of taste, but omitting it might offend some editors (and it may — or may not — be confusing to people using screen readers).

#5: In this fifth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle but the first citation lacks a bullet point.[1]

References

  1. ^ "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
Of course, the list format can be retained without using bullet points:

#6: In this sixth example, the references are listed in a naked bundle without any bullet points.[1]

References

  1. ^ "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
but that can get confusing when the individual citations are long enough to be "wrapped" into multiple lines.

(Split the indubitable illustration of bundling (above) from the argument presented by dcljr. -JJ)

What is the purpose of bundling?
As far as I can tell, the two "legitimate" purposes of bundling are:
  1. To avoid having a series of (bracketed) footnote numbers all in a row in the article text.
  2. To clarify which source supports which piece of information.
Is bundling necessary?
It depends on how important you think it is to accomplish these goals. Note that purpose #2 can usually be accomplished by simply placing the references in the right places in the text:

#7: In this seventh[1] example, the references[2] are not bundled.[3]

References

  1. ^ Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
  2. ^ "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  3. ^ "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
Granted, some people dislike having multiple footnotes spread across a sentence just as much as having several in row at the end — and to be fair, it is sometimes difficult to choose the "right places" for the various references, given that each source can support multiple facts.
Personally, I don't place much value on purpose #1, so merely doing that for it's own sake seems useless to me. Purpose #2 is much more important, but like I said, it can often be accomplished without bundling. In my opinion, bundling should only be used if it is not clear which of multiple sources support which fact and it is not possible to clarify this by proper placement of footnotes. (Obviously, such a case would not be fixed by a naked bundle, so only a "labeled" bundle would be appropriate.)
Note that the second and third examples fulfill both purposes, the fourth through sixth only #1.
How should bundling not be done?
One should not simply wrap a {{refn}} template around the existing series of references without removing the <ref> tags (and without formatting the references in some manner shown above), because then we get this:

#8: In this eighth example, the references are bundled by simply wrapping them in a {{refn}} template.[4]

References

  1. ^ "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  2. ^ "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  3. ^ Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.
  4. ^ [1][2][3]
Why do I have a problem with this way of doing it?
  1. While it avoids having a series of footnote numbers in a row in the article text (purpose #1), it merely pushes this problem to another place on the page; now there's a series of footnote numbers in a row in the list of references. And while it is not impossible to figure out that this means the information at footnote 4 is supported by the sources listed in footnotes 1 through 3, I believe this places an "unnecessary cognitive burden" on readers (it doesn't match what references typically look like in Wikipedia nor in any printed source I know of).
  2. Obviously it doesn't clarify which source supports which piece of information (purpose #2).
  3. The footnote numbers (1 through 3) for the three bundled references do not appear anywhere in the article text, which again is unexpected and might confuse some readers.
  4. The "mouseover" mechanism (which is not enabled in these examples because I'm using {{reflist-talk}}), whereby a reader can "hover" over a footnote number in the article text and see a "tooltip" containing the citation, merely shows "[1][2][3]" in the tooltip, which is very odd and definitely unexpected (and hovering over the 1, 2, or 3 in the tooltip doesn't bring up any additional information). You can see an example of this "in the wild" by hovering over footnote 9 in the lead section of this revision of the "R (programming language)" article.
  5. The "return-link" mechanism (which is likely to not work too well here because everything is so close together in the example), whereby a reader can follow a link back to the article text from a note in the references, does not work for footnotes 1 through 3: clicking on the "^" in front of footnote 2 in the reference list, for example, would bring the reader to footnote 4 in the references section, not to the place in the article text that the source in footnote 2 is related to. Again, you can see this effect "in the wild" in the "References" section of the same article revision: the "return links" on references 5, 6, 7a and 8 all lead the reader to reference 9 instead of to the article's lead section.
Conclusion
References should not be bundled by merely wrapping an existing series of references in a {{refn}} template, as done in this edit (for example).

sandbox[edit]

Alternative form, replacing {refn} with <ref> tags:

#2: In this second example, the references are bundled.[1]

References

  1. ^ For information about references, also called footnotes, see:
    "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about bundling references:
    "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about counting:
    Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.

Compare with original, using {refn}}:

#2: In this second example, the references are bundled.[1]

References

  1. ^ For information about references, also called footnotes, see:
    "Help:Footnotes". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about bundling references:
    "Wikipedia:Citing sources § Bundling citations". English Wikipedia. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
    For information about counting:
    Grundy, Lynn N. (1980). I Can Count. Ladybird Books. ISBN 0721495079.

I don't see any difference in what is displayed. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2015 (UTC)