Help talk:Referencing for beginners with citation templates

Created article
Based on discussion on the page Wikipedia talk:Referencing for beginners with users such as User:Tyrenius it was suggested to make a daughter article to offer a fast referencing tool. The idea was to offer a quick, easy-to-use but versatile referencing method for beginners; at the same time, it was felt that the longer, more detailed page was still necessary and helpful. So this article was created as a daughter article to the page Referencing for beginners. The idea is to keep this article short and simple to make referencing seem less intimidating to beginning Wikipedians.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Not required, sometimes not allowed
Since this is for beginners, it should point out, in the first paragraph, the need to follow existing style, including respecting the decision to not use citation templates. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * There are other pages which mention these options. But the whole idea of this page here is to shorten and simplify the referencing procedure so beginners don't get turned off. When I tried to learn about referencing a year ago, I found myself wading through pages and pages of instructions; it felt overwhelming. Please, let's try to keep this page short; I'm even thinking of deleting the bottom part about "reflist". Make it easy. So many nooBs don't know how to reference.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Beginners must be warned, otherwise their edits will be reverted and they will receive templates such as uw-mos1 all over their talk pages. If you don't add a warning I will. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Please keep it very short and sweet. The vast majority of beginners don't know how to reference at all. This simple short easy quick basic no-frills page shows how. And decisions about when to reference or whether to reference are discussed on other talk pages; this is about how to reference. Strongly urge keeping this focus.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope you think my change is short and sweet enough. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I know you mean well, but I still think this is adding unnecessary complication. This article is only talking about how to use ONE citation method. That's it. It isn't advice about how to find out which citation method is being used. They can explore that topic elsewhere. It's so easy to have these advice pages grow into gargantuan marvels that offer SO MUCH ADVICE that it overwhelms most people. And frankly, I think this standard method, described on the project page, will work almost everywhere. Please understand how complex referencing will seem for nooBs, and please try to keep this simple.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I cannot accept a page that advises people to impose a system that some editors HATE on articles that do not currently use it. If you remove the warning, I will have to pursue dispute resolution processes. But if you can get the point across more succinctly, be my guest. --Jc3s5h (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Who hates this template form? I'm curious. I thought it was universally workable. I have yet to come across some kind of article where this template wasn't liked. Please let me know what you're talking about.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC) And no, I really don't like your addition; I think you mean well, but it goes against the purpose here. When a user comes to this template, they've already decided that they want to reference; and I don't see how your "warning" is helpful when all they're trying to do is learn how to reference.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I took a stab at rewriting. Any better? In my view, it's a detail, and it doesn't belong in the LEDE, but I can see if you feel strongly about inclusion that we put it in there somewhere.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * If you look in WP:CITE you will find the phrase "Editors are free to use any method; no method is preferred over another". If you look through the archives of the talk page you will find instances where people tried to put in language that either favored, or assumed the use of, templates, and all these attempted changes were rebuffed. The arguments against templates include too many keystrokes, making pages harder to edit because the citations contain more text, and slowing down the rendering of pages and increasing the size of the html because the templates are inefficient. User:SlimVirgin might be able to point you to specific discussions. --Jc3s5h (talk) 00:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think your change is fine. I reordered the further reading list to go from the general to the more specific, and annotated them to give a hint of what they are about. I added WP:Parenthetical referencing for two reasons: (1) the beginner might come across it and not know what to make of it, and (2) the beginner might be a middle or high school student who is required to use it, and be wondering how come Wikipedia doesn't do it like their teacher taught them. --Jc3s5h (talk) 01:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Check "page view statistics". Do you know how many people look at this page? 12. So I don't think it makes much sense to fuss over this particular page much; nobody's reading it. I agree editors are free to choose any method they want; all of this discussion happens on the parent article Referencing for beginners, or on other articles. Rather, the idea of this article is this: IF people want to reference using a citation template, here's how. That's it. Not a discussion about whether templates are good or not. This little article won't push people to try one method or the other. Nobody's reading it. Not worth us fussing over it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Btw are you good at computers? I'm trying to figure out how I can do a double box? Like, I'd like to have a box to the side, but inside the box it's split left and right, with arguments for on one side, and arguments against on the other. Do you know how I can do this?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Tom, this page needs to reference the guideline, because the use of these templates is contentious, and increasingly so. In fact, it's reaching the point where I think the community will soon do something about them, so we don't want to encourage their use anymore than it's already encouraged. SlimVirgin TALK  contribs 12:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Battling over templates? Sheesh. What next? I thought the battling was about the content! Are there alternative reference methods? Please keep me informed here. I've been using this basic template about a year and have had no problems. Let me know if there's a better way. I know it's hard for me to read text in editing mode with the reference things inside it; I'm wondering whether there's a better method myself.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * There are multiple problems with them, Tom. It's very hard, actually impossible, to copy edit an article well if it has a lot of templates cluttering up the text, so using templates leads to bad writing. The templates also encourage the addition of unnecessary information, because editors will tend to fill the parameters without thinking, which is more clutter. They also slow down loading time, sometimes significantly. Plus, when I last looked, some or all of them used a citation style that didn't exist outside Wikipedia. So really, they make very little sense to use. It's easier and faster to write e.g. or better still, with a long citation in the References section. SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 12:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your explanation, SlimVirgin. It's easier for us (Wikipedia contributors) to use the abbreviated style above, but what about people wishing to check our references? I agree about inline citation templates cluttering up the text -- I notice that it's sometimes hard to figure out what's a reference and what's text. But after it's done, and the reference appears neatly in the text, it's great. The reference is easily checked with two mouse clicks -- boom -- there's the reference. So, while the inputting method is somewhat more difficult, it's great for checkers. The overall result works for me because it's much less likely that my stuff will be reverted. Is there a way to use your method (in paragraph above) while still permitting two-mouse-click reference checking?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Templates have no benefits for checkers, Tom. If I want to ref the Guardian, for instance, I write:, which turns out as this.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by SlimVirgin (talk • contribs) 19:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * So templates are only things with 🇦🇩 ? I think I could start using this style too. So there are no pipe-characters (vertical bars) in it. Are you saying this is easier on Wikipedia's computers? Faster loading & such?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Citation templates are the things that begin e.g.  SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 01:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion
(section break for easier editing)

Fair enough. I prefer the citation template style to the template-free style since I'm accustomed to it, and I find it easier. But others might like the template-free citation style. Perhaps what we need is another quickie-reference guide for the template-free version. Check out this: Proposed new Wikipedia guide. Just the top half of the sandbox. See what you think. If you like it, let's float a second simple guide for the template-free referencing. But may I ask a favor? The battling over the preferred referencing method -- can we keep battling off of the tool guides? Like, the idea of these guides is to help nooBs learn a fairly complex Wikipedia task (referencing). And slapping on warnings on the top of a simple-how-to-reference guide, in my view, is counterproductive, since it lengthens the page and will surely turn off some users. Let's keep rules on rule-pages; and let's keep how-to guides for beginners simple, short, and sweet.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the academic community has not settled on one single citation style. For better or worse, Wikipedia has decided not to pick one single style, but rather, to allow editors to use any recognized style they want. Thus you can't write a short guide explaining how to use the template free citation style, because there are many of them. Frankly, I don't think anyone who hasn't been chewed out by a professor for getting citations wrong should be writing style guides. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Granted. There are many citation methods available. Wikipedia hasn't picked one. Fair enough. There are pluses and minuses with different methods. Let people pick. I have no problem with these ideas. But my general concern is this: that nooBs don't know how to reference using any method. When I was a nooB, I had trouble figuring this stuff out. And, here's the kicker: not knowing how to reference, particularly when much of the encyclopedia is written, means that it's very difficult for nooBs to contribute since much of their stuff gets reverted. If you've been following pages like the Areas for Reform, you'll know that there are huge problems retaining and recruiting new editors. And trying to learn a method, any method, is tricky when there are (in my view) senseless battles over citation style preferences, extremely long and wordy lawyer-like laden tracts mentioning every detail to wade through -- it's hard learning how to reference. That's what prompted my effort at Referencing for beginners with citation templates. But nobody reads my quickie guide for all practical purposes. I tried winnowing down the lengthy Referencing for beginners but ran into article police who like it long. I'll be happy to advocate template-free, template-laden methods. But I think this whole problem is important. Let's teach nooBs to reference.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * That's what WP:CITE is for, Tom. It's long because it lays out the option, but they're there, and it's the main guideline on this point. SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article about citing scares the bejesus out of me. It's intimidatingly long. You and I -- we know how to reference. But we may be the only ones left writing this encyclopedia if there are no nooBs who get competent at this task. Did you look at my sandbox page and what do you think? It's here: Proposed new Wikipedia guide And why do you call yourself SlimVirgin?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Editorial choices questioned

 * 1) I think that the more general Citation template would be a better choice as the template around which this article is built than the Cite news template.
 * 2) I question the editorial decision to manually italicize the content of the publisher field in the example. That (a) seems to be suggesting that this is a citation style choice which is endorsed by WP and (b) that may cause those citations to break if the maintainers of the template used at some point, for whatever reason, decide to italicize the content of that field inside the template.
 * note:
 * renders as: 'test'
 * renders as: 'test'

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The purpose of this article isn't to make an argument about which referencing method is best; rather, the idea is to help nooBs learn to use one referencing method. The idea is to keep it short, easy, focused on only the bare things people need to know. But there are other methods. My problem with Citation and almost all other "instruction" manuals is that they're hopelessly long, detailed, stuffed with arcane rules and variants, so they intimidate nooB writers. So I'm trying to keep these quickie how-to guides short & simple & useful. I wrote a quickie guide teaching a different method too; a preliminary one is in my sandbox -- check it out: my sandbox. I'll be glad to write a third quickie how-to guide to teach the "citation" method over the "cite" method. My concern, overall, is that the vital skill of referencing, needed especially for nooBs trying to elbow their way into an increasingly filled-up encyclopedia, isn't getting through. And it's important for the whole WP project since there are huge issues with retaining & recruiting new editors (see: Areas for Reform.


 * About the italics: From my own experience, I added lots of references without italicizing the publisher; I was told Italicize the publisher. So I added the apostrophes to make it easier. But maybe it's easier for bots to add italics later? Or maybe there isn't universal agreement about italicizing the publisher? This isn't a big issue for me; I'll go along with whatever people decide here.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * My comment recommending that this beginner's guide use Citation as its example rather than Cite news was prompted by the thought that if I were a beginner and wanted to add a reference for (say) a book, I might infer from finding Cite news in this beginners guide that it is not applicable to citing books. My comment re the italics is that the template maintainers ought to be deciding the formatting of the fields, not the template users (and also that manually italicized fields can be broken by later changes to the template, as I tried to illustrate with my examples above&mdash;with the inner italicization presumed to be done inside the template and the outer being an attempted italicization of passed-in field by a template user.). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * How about a line in the guide, saying briefly, that one can change "Cite news" to "Cite book"? Plus, I've used the "cite news" template to cite books. It works. Author = book author. Title = book title. People can add an "ISBN= " line or "pages=" line if they want. The whole idea is to get them started referencing. And about the italics -- I'm less sure about that one myself. I've only been editing a year. What I found was when I didn't put italics, that a month later, other editors would use some kind of automated tools to italicize publication titles. I had some correspondence with them and they told me to italicize please. So I put the apostrophes in. I'm wondering whether there may be some automated bots which can hunt down these issues later, and change things automatically.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Another question: there is debate between template vs non-template citation methods. I don't care which people use. I've heard template ones slow down the computer, causing pages to load more slowly. Is this true? And, if so, is it possible to write a bot program which automatically switches the reference methods to one that's easier for the computer?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

New guide created
Check out: Referencing for beginners without using templates. SlimVirgin suggested the non-template method was preferred to the template method in many instances. So I made a separate guide for the non-template method. I can make another guide if there's a third method that people prefer.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin we're having a dispute
I propose dispute resolution. I think you mean well. But you and I have differing ideas about how this page should be used.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

My position is simply this, as I've said many times. This is a how-to guide for beginners. To be effective, it needs to be short and to the point. It's NOT a place for battling over which reference method is best; and it's NOT a place for bringing Wikipedia's imposing and complex rule-o-cracy to bear. Let other pages do this. It's no way to start a guide with an imposing nasty-sounding rule like you're putting on the top of the page. If we can't agree to go to dispute resolution, I'll need to seek administrator intervention.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Dispute posted. See here: Editor assistance/Requests.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know what's going on here, but Tom has also been editing Terrorism to add an enormous number of citation templates to the lead, making it practically unreadable in read or edit mode, and reverting several editors. See here for read mode and below for the first paragraph in edit mode. If I were assuming bad faith, I'd think it was a breaching experiment, but as I never assume bad faith, I must be wrong! :) SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 22:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)



Terrorism, despite considerable disagreement about a precise definition, is often considered to be deliberate violence or the threat of violence directed at innocent  non-combatants and governments to cause fear systematically to attract media attention for causes which may be political or ideological or religious and which are viewed as coercive. An act which meets many or all of these criteria is often considered to be terrorism. There is considerable disagreement about whether the term can describe government or religious leaders and whether the term should be extended to include wartime acts. Further, the distinction between terrorism and crime is hard to specify.

SlimVirgin, this stuff about Terrorism doesn't belong here. It goes on the Talk:Terrorism page. This is the page about this reference guide. So I will address your objections on the talk page for terrorism, not here.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:CITE
Tom, CITE is the guideline that governs citation in Wikipedia. These templates are highly contentious with some editors, and the guideline addresses that. In addition, no one is supposed to go around changing from one style to another (whether regarding templates or some other issue), unless there are reasons other than preference. The ArbCom has upheld that principle more than once.

For both these reasons, it's very misleading to create a page that encourages new editors to go around adding citation templates. It will lead to reverting, disputes, and possible trouble for them if they persist. The caution about templates needs to be prominent at the top of the page, so they understand the restrictions. SlimVirgin TALK  contribs 00:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * SlimVirgin, I tried an experiment. I loaded up a sandbox page with single lines of text, with 1000 references. First, I did it with the template method. Second, I did it with the non-template method. Then I compared how long each page loaded. With the template method, it took 3 to 4 seconds to load. With the non-template method, it was about 3 seconds to load, maybe a TAD quicker. But what I noticed was this: the template page had 345K bytes; the non-template page had 245K bytes -- considerably shorter. So I'm probably going to be switching to the non-template method since it saves space. Again, as I've said, I'm not that partial to which reference method is used; rather, I'd like more users to learn to use any reference method, period. I've said this again and again. But my sense is there's not a strong community consensus behind either method. Did you see my article Referencing for beginners without using templates. What did you think of it?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * About you and referencing and templates. I don't think this is such a huge issue like you make out. I don't think there are "lots of editors" fussing about reference methods. Wikipedia is a battleground for all kinds of people with differing agendas, and there's plenty of substantive stuff to debate, like what goes IN to an article. But a reference method? Who cares! It's a non issue. The bigger problem is, in my view, lack of referencing. The whole impetus on my part is that I think Wikipedia is dying because new editors don't know how to constructively contribute since they don't know how to reference. Helping teach this skill will help keep Wikipedia alive, in my view. And the way to teach this is with quick guides, not making nooBs slog through long lists of mean-sounding rules. If you'd like to steer nooBs to a non-template method, please be my guest; I tried to write a quick guide to teach this which you've ignored. Again, I'll support you in teaching a reference method you prefer; I'm coming around to thinking the non-template method is better anyway.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Tell you what. Let's leave your rule at the top, but can I tone down the nastiness of it? I really don't care that much about this page; I was only trying to do what I thought best to help keep Wikipedia from dying out.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * WP is not going to die out for lack of citation templates. :) The wording is mostly taken from CITE, and shouldn't really be rewritten. Which part do you want to change?  SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 00:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * What do you think about my most recent wording? And what do you think about the other article about referencing? But WP does have REAL problems recruiting editors; did you see the WSJournal article a while back? I've found fewer and fewer quality editors even during my short stint here. It doesn't bode well for the future. Check out: Areas for Reform and read about "problems retaining and recruiting" etc. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

"cite news" template
I have changed this article, because in "cite news", telling people to use the "publisher" parameter for the name of the newspaper is quite wrong. "Publisher" is for use only in the case of an obscure local paper published by a larger group, in which case it is used for giving the name of the publishing group, not the name of the paper. In the vast majority of cases it is not needed. The correct parameter is "newspaper" or "work", either of which will render the name of the publication in italics, as required. -- Alarics (talk) 13:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I am slowly cleaning up doc pages and trying to make them consistent by using Citation Style documentation. Please review. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I came here for help with a book citation. Why is this page titled "Help:Referencing for beginners with citation templates" when it discusses only one template and one type of reference? --Thnidu (talk) 19:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The idea behind this article was a very short, brief, nutshell way to help beginners reference. The idea was not to intimidate beginners with a variety of information but to make it look quick, easy, short and sweet. There are other articles which go into greater depth.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Use of templates
The title of this article is explicitly for "referencing . . . with citation templates". However, the examples it provide do not use citation templates. It seems that either the title is wrong or the contents are in the wrong place. Is this done deliberately for some reason? —Salton Finneger (talk) 14:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Nevermind--I'm being dumb and read right past it. D'oh. —Salton Finneger (talk) 14:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * If you wish to compete in the category of obvious-mistakes, you'll have a tough time besting my infamous record. I've made doozers and will probably make loads more as time goes by.:)--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Author name
It might be a good idea to update the example to include last and first for the names of authors since their usage seems to have become common practice in recent years. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:51, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Possibly, although there is a benefit here in keeping this as simple as possible -- the idea of this page was to make a less complicated, shorter, faster-to-read version of Help:Referencing for beginners which is so long and detailed that it may overwhelm some newbies trying to learn how to do referencing. My preference is to keep this page short and sweet to not be intimidating to new contributors. Plus, is it all that important if last name and first name are separated? That is, what is the benefit of that?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 10:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Merge and Redirect to WP:INTREF
It looks as though this page is beginning to get out of date. The pages Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor and Help:Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup contain more up to date info on the current editing interface. I suggest merging in any information from this page that is missing from those pages and redirecting to reduce the number of pages in need of maintenance. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 21:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I tried to add The Film Wonder Twins to DC Films
This topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Films was edited, but the paragraphs was split off. Undoing it didn't help out either.

Also, If anyone could add Wonder Twins at the end of the "upcoming DC Films," that would be great. Here are some reference links. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/wonder-twins-dc-movie-adam-sztykiel-director-1235093333/ https://deadline.com/2022/04/kj-apa-isabel-may-wonder-twins-hbo-max-movie-1235003114/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberfrenzy27 (talk • contribs) 15:55, 22 April 2022 (UTC)