Talk:Living in the Material World (song)

changes in ref formatting style
Hey everyone. Mea culpa – a note to explain that I'm intending to change the style of cite formatting here.

Before I started expanding the article in September, this was the most recent user edit, which shows that ref templates were used throughout – that is, the article followed Harvard-style citation, as there is no template that allows for an alternative style. I won't lie: I admit I'm no fan of Harvard. But the main reason I'm wanting to change the format now is that I can't figure out how to correctly present the cites containing links to Rock's Backpages. By "correctly" I mean that, while mention of a sourced article being available on RBP is needed, together with the fact that access is dependent on paying a subscription, wording in a cite such as 'Anne Moore, "George Harrison On Tour – Press Conference Q&A", Valley Advocate, 13 November 1974' is quite sufficient as a reliable source in its own right, surely; yet the parameters of the ref template appear to restrict whether those print details can stand alone, separate from a secondary point regarding availability online. So what I'm concerned about is that, should the article(s) no longer appear on RBP sometime in the future, and if print and online details are not clearly separated, editors might remove the citation entirely and with it, the point being made in the song article. (It happens!)

I'm raising the issue here with what I concede might be an almost "after-the-event" tone/message. At the same time, I guess I'm hoping that it's clear how much I've expanded the article from September to its current form. In other words, the work I've done is not just doubling what was there originally, it's more like tenfold – and from my point of view, it's so much easier to bring over cite details from other articles I've expanded (containing non-Harvard refs) by simply pasting them in each time, rather than having to negotiate a cite template. The proof of the degree of expansion is in the amount of cites to magazine or online pieces where items are separated by commas instead of ref temp/Harvard full stops. (Only individual cites to the Allmusic, Rolling Stone and PopMatters reviews are set in the ref template style currently, since they were the only reviews included back in September.) So I admit that this is not just about the RBP situation.

Happy to discuss, even if – in the interests of making style consistent throughout, in preparation for taking the article to GAN – I now get started on removing the templates. Any thoughts or objections, anyone? JG66 (talk) 03:47, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

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 * His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.jpg