Talk:Edward Matthew Ward

template:cite EB1911
copied from Template talk:Cite EB1911:  I have a problem with the way this is used. I came across this because of the use of the template on an article I created many years ago. There is no text copied from EB1911 in the article, and yet the template creates a passage which appears to "attribute" the text to the 1911 EB, as appears in the title of this section! This appears to be in conformity with the guidelines for using the template code, but frankly, I fail to see the logic of it. The 1911 EB is an old source, but it happens to be very good for some subjects, including this one (the Victorian artist Edward Matthew Ward). There is no good reason to single out the source from any others that may be used and to create an "attribution" to the EB191 that seems to give it prominence, while parading copyright symbols. It seems entirely arbitrary to pick out one source in this way. The EB1911 is a legitimate source for some topics and surely should be treated as identical to any other source, with the same formatting used. Paul B (talk) 20:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I will try to answer your points in order, and clear up this misunderstanding between yourself and Slowking4.

On Wikipedia we have over 10,000 articles that have text copied from EB1911. Most but not all carry the 1911 template that attributes the Wikipedia article to EB1911. Until August 2010 this template did not allow for the linking of an article to either Wikisource or to a URL (web link).

So to get around that one had to either use cite encyclopedia or hand role one own citation and put in a link to a wikisource article oneself (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ward, Edward Matthew).

In 2008 an enterprising editor wrote a template which would automatically add the correct path to EB1911 articles it was called Wikisource1911Enc Citation.

He proceed to edit well over 1000 Wikipedia articles adding a template, if the Wikpedia article had a corresponding EB1911 article on 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (See here for this page).

The trouble was that in this process sometimes Wikisource1911Enc Citation was added to articles that already had a 1911, sometimes it was used to replace the 1911 template and sometimes (as in this case) it was added to articles that previously did not have a 1911 template on them.

Since this task was carried out before the development of the WP:PLAGIARISM guideline, as such the editor had no community guidance and did what he though was best.

Although 1911 has for some time taken parameters, about 10,000 Wikipedia articles attribute text using this template, but they have no parameters for article, volume or page numbers, so in effect what they say to the reader is some of the text in this article is copied from somewhere in the 27 volumes of EB1911, but I am not going to tell you where.

The idea is that we intend to fix that. But before we can start on that project we need to make sure that the articles that contained the Wikisource1911Enc Citation have on them the correct template.

Last year I used AWB to go through all the articles that contained the  Wikisource1911Enc Citation template, and manually fixed some of the templates using the newer Cite EB1911 or 1911 with all the correct parameters. Where I could not tell immediately which was the correct template to use, I used Cite EB1911 but added a parameter called "W1EC=1" (See this edit on 12 November 2011). Which added any such tagged article to Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that may need Attribution There were just under 1,000 articles in that category and Slowking4 and I are working our way through them (with Slowking doing most of the work with around 400 to her/his credit).

In this case if we use the very useful tool duplicationdetector, we can see that there is little duplication of text between this article and the EB1911 article. Therefore the 1911 attribution template is inappropriate.

However the citation to EB1911 that existed before Slowking4 started to edit the page, does not meet the requirements of WP:CITE. "A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found."

As I said above this can be done by hand or it can be done using cite encyclopedia or one of the other generic templates. Or it can be more easily done using: It is generally considered a good idea to include the icon to Wikisource as it gives some indication that the text is on a sister project but if you do not like it it can be turned off using another parameter called "noicon=1". Whether one uses this this template as a long inline citation link it via a short citation is up to editors preference.

I hope this explanation is satisfactory. But if it is not then please put further comments here, and I will try to answer them to your satisfaction. -- PBS (talk) 22:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I added DNB poster to the article's read section. Just as there are three 1911 templates there three similar DNB templates
 * Attribution, citation, and poster
 * 1911, Cite EB1911 EB1911 poster
 * DNB, Cite DNB, DNB poster
 * --PBS (talk) 23:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)