Talk:Sie werden euch in den Bann tun, BWV 183

Cites at end
No real need to discuss this issue here as it is being simultaneously beaten to death at Talk:Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, BWV 37‎. Moving all the citations to inline ones is extraordinarily rude to the creator of the article and lead editor, who made these changes. Montanabw (talk) 22:20, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello Montana! CITEVAR and BRD both require that disputed changes get consensus before restoration, and consensus is of course based on discussion and arguments - so there is in fact a "real need to discuss this issue". Now, do you have any points to present about the merits of the actual change at issue, rather than the personalities involved? Inline citations are more familiar to editors and make section editing simpler; the issues associated with inline are easier to mitigate than those of LDR. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:19, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Nonsense, you are just reverting edits made by Gerda - who created this article and made the citation changes - just to harass Gerda and you know it. Now knock off this stuff and grow up.   Montanabw (talk)  05:32, 29 May 2014 (UTC)


 * But to the point, the person doing most of the real work should be allowed to use their preferred editing style, it's a matter of simple respect. As for your assertion of simplicity, you are neither the creator nor the person who did most of the work here, so why make more work for the one who is? That's just rude and inconsiderate. As for the rest, section editing is only easier if the source is only used once, otherwise if you have a repeated ref, you have the same problem of having to look at the whole article to find the abbreviation, but if they are all at the end, at least it's easy to find.  In my own experience, I find that an article that only I am working on can be easy enough to search through an entire article to find the first use of a citation somewhere in the body text, because I remember putting it there, but when I am working with others, it actually is easier to find previously used cites if they are all at the end.  My own style is usually to insert the citation inline as I write, but then if there are other editors and all the cites are set up at the end of the article, I move it there afterwards.  It's an extra step, but a useful one when multiple editors are working on an article.  On a big FA like the Yogo Sapphire article, it was a lifesaver.  But of course, you prefer not to collaborate, it seems.  Montanabw (talk)  05:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Since this is a rather short article, searching is not the problem it might be on a "big FA". I remind you again that consensus is based on strength of argument rather than either number of supporters or petty insults. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:36, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * No, consensus is based on people mostly agreeing, but does not require unanimity; one troll cannot defeat a larger group consensus. And strength of argument is wholly subjective; Socrates was executed for making the weaker argument defeat the stronger. As for size, who knows how long this article could become some day?  Your own argument about ease of section editing is defeated by your argument that the article is short.  Really, this is not about you getting your own way.  Prove that you are not personally involved by dropping this stick and moving on.  Montanabw (talk)  18:22, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Not unanimity, but rational discussion. Section editing with inline allows addition of a new reference easily, in a single edit. As already noted, this form is more common, even in FAs, so most people can work with it. "Some day" a stronger case might be made to convert to LDR, but it hasn't been yet. Keep in mind that personal preference and consistency with other articles are both explicitly not valid rationales for style changes per WP:CITE. Gerda, since you made the change without providing your reasoning, care to present it now? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:15, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * No. (Routine improvement of referencing standard, as in hundreds of other articles. I several times, and believe that to repeat it every article is a waste of energy, both for the writer and the reader. If someone adds a reference in whatever style, beginning with a bare url, I look if it is to kept, and if yes, format it. I do that all the time in articles I come across. I am not willing to fight over this.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:48, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay. If you are unwilling or unable to explain why you consider the change here to be an improvement (your diff does not), then I suppose there will be no consensus to change unless/until others weigh in. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:38, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. As I'm invited, I'll weigh in. List defined references are simply named references where all of the citations have been collected together in the same place as they will be displayed in the rendered text: the References section. That's it. Nothing more and nothing less. They function to improve the value of using named references by taking all of the long cite templates out of the wikitext, allowing it to be scanned and read far more easily. All of the disadvantages of LDRs are exactly those of named references - section editing is complicated by possible duplication of refs when a new ref is added and the full citation needs to be found when small amounts of content is ported into other articles. However, LDRs mitigate that problem somewhat by placing the full cite in a predictable place. I no longer have to curse when I can't find a multiply-cited reference in the wiki-text because someone has re-arranged the content or sections so that it's not defined at first occurrence: with LDRs, it's always defined in the same place - at the and where it belongs and where there is never any need to move it.
 * LDRs do not alter in the slightest the way the references are presented to the reader. That is why their use is not a consideration of style, but of convenience for the editor. Use of LDRs does not prohibit an editor from adding inline citations; it merely requires someone to tidy them into the references section in due time and there's no harm done in the meantime. In fact the only downside of upgrading an article that uses named refs to use LDRs is the unnecessary time and effort that progressive editors have to put into discussions such as this, just to explain why a particular edit is an improvement, not an "arbitrary change of style". I'd like to see us reach consensus on this point, but if we can't find something we can all live with, I will restore Gerda's preference for LDRs to this article. I see no good reason why the major contributor to an article should have their improvements stymied because of an inherent resistance to any change or development in the features that Wikipedia offers. --RexxS (talk) 15:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your detailed explanation. Consensus at WT:CITE is that conversion to LDR does in fact represent a change in citation style for the purposes of CITEVAR, much like a change between templated and untemplated citations would be even if the output is the same. However, now that there is a consensus to change to LDR on this article, feel free to re-implement the change. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:50, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for detailing your reasoning, Nikki. I was aware of the consensus at WT:CITE, but I feel that it is representative of a general malaise in Wikipedia that is costing us good editors. I know I am being heretical in suggesting this, but policy (or guidelines, if you will) was originally meant to be descriptive of practice on the Wiki, not prescriptive of what may be done in articles. When a group of editors agree something on a policy page - or even when an editor makes a unilateral change to the text of the policy - and use that policy page to enforce a rigid interpretation of what may or may not be done in trying to improve an article, then the encyclopedia suffers. There have been many technical changes made over the years that are not properly explained to editors, so they tend to be resisted for all the wrong reasons.
 * Don't get me wrong: there are often very good reasons why we would not want to make wholesale changes to the citation method used in an article, and I remember fondly the first time I encountered you, when we were both struggling to preserve the FA status and Geogre's parenthetical referencing style in the Ormulum. But the citation style there was part of the charm of Geogre's writing; we won't see his like again.
 * In the meantime, we now have citation templates mainly written in Lua. That has removed the principal objection to using cite templates: the time the server took to recreate a page with large numbers of cites. What are the remaining reasons why we should not consider it an improvement to change from hand-crafted citations to cite templates with the same style? It would lead to guaranteed consistency and ease of maintenance by automated tools. Yet there we have CITEVAR, ostensibly designed to prevent arbitrary changes between equivalent styles like Chicago and Vancouver, being used to prevent an improvement to an article's referencing mechanism that has demonstrable benefits. I wonder sometimes why I still bother to edit. --RexxS (talk) 17:18, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * While I understand some of the points you're making, I don't think we're at the point where cite templates (of any type or placement) always have the advantages you describe: I've reviewed enough sources at FAC to know that templates in no way guarantee consistency, and I've seen enough automated "fixes" that create more reference problems then they solve to believe that our automated tools can maintain citations correctly. But this is a conversation for another page. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right: "guaranteed" is too strong - people make mistakes and manage to introduce errors even into citation templates. But in general the help they give to regularise punctuation and order in the rendered citation is worthwhile. Where I'm doing most of my work (teaching new editors), they really appreciate having a template that resolves trivial issues like where to use periods, commas, italics, etc. for them. Automated tools may not be perfect either, but they almost invariably improve articles. Citation bot, for example, does make mistakes - errare non semper humanum est - yet most of the time it adds real value to references; however it only works with refs containing citation templates. We shouldn't need to be waiting for perfection in templates and tools; they do a worthwhile job almost all of the time. --RexxS (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right: "guaranteed" is too strong - people make mistakes and manage to introduce errors even into citation templates. But in general the help they give to regularise punctuation and order in the rendered citation is worthwhile. Where I'm doing most of my work (teaching new editors), they really appreciate having a template that resolves trivial issues like where to use periods, commas, italics, etc. for them. Automated tools may not be perfect either, but they almost invariably improve articles. Citation bot, for example, does make mistakes - errare non semper humanum est - yet most of the time it adds real value to references; however it only works with refs containing citation templates. We shouldn't need to be waiting for perfection in templates and tools; they do a worthwhile job almost all of the time. --RexxS (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Consensus here is 3-1 for LDR. I restored that style. Montanabw (talk) 17:56, 30 May 2014 (UTC)::::::::::::

BC
Who claims that bach-cantatas is not a reliable source, and on what basis is the claim made? This source is used in a large number of articles, so the claim (if it has merit) has significant implications. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:25, 29 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Um, looks like Gerda did. I allowed both sources to be used just to keep the peace, but looking at the pages, they are rather inferior in quality.  I'll defer to her.   Montanabw (talk)  05:35, 29 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't remember who, but I remember that it was early in writing on the cantatas, and I could help a DYK statement only by saying that a recording is a recording. There are many mistakes on the site. Self-published Mincham, btw, is also not considered a reliable source, see discussions on Project Classical music. I respect him as a person and use his work, but try to back it up by others. I have no time for the ref discussion today, happy Ascension Day! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Link to relevant discussions, please? Montana, Gerda said "some don't think", which suggests someone other than her. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:38, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The first, I forgot, see above. (2010?) I still see many mistakes on that site, but it's better than no source. The other: An interesting new source for information about Bach cantatas. I told Julian what a chorale cantata is. (Admitted: it's difficult for non-Germans.) He changed a lot on his site, is able to learn. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I see no reason to link to a weaker source where there previously was a stronger source. But if there is no possibility of agreement, then the solution I had earlier of simply linking both sources might settle matters until more research is completed. But I will note that an amateurish-looking site that appears self-published usually doesn't pass muster for RS.   Montanabw (talk)  18:22, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There was and is not currently a stronger source for the Mincham material; the bach-cantatas material is otherwise sourced here, but isn't on a large number of other articles, so that too would need addressing. The bach-cantatas site appears to be cited in several published books on Bach, though, which means it likely passes the SPS bar. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:15, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Bach-cantatas receives regular high rankings in Google searches so it is popular and has been around long enough to merit the attention that Google gives to it. That doesn't make it RS, of course, but it's an indication of its credibility. We should acknowledge that even reliable sources are sometimes wrong, so having inaccuracies doesn't disqualify BC from consideration as a source. I would simply recommend that it be used cautiously. Montanabw has the right idea: cite it alongside another source where we can. Sometimes we can't find very strong sources, so we do the best we can with what we have available. --RexxS (talk) 15:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't disqualify, however I encountered others to question it. Therefore I am cautious and try to use it only in supporting function or if there is no other. In this case, there are plenty of sources for the date of the first performance, and the translation given by bach-cantatas is - as everybody can see - not a good one: German has a verb "verbannen" = "to ban", but it's not used here. - For all references in articles for which I feel responsible: please use as a referece name the full name of the author if available, please avoid abbreviations, and please enclose the name in quotation marks, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:29, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Instead of arguing about the value of bc, we should user the Leipzig University data base more, as done here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Instead of arguing about the value of bc, we should user the Leipzig University data base more, as done here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)