Talk:Tammie Teclemariam

citations at the end of each sentence
Hey,, that's an essay, not policy. The reason I add a citation to each sentence is that if someone comes along and adds a sentence in between, unless they check and carry the citation to the sentence they're adding stuff after, now we don't know where the earlier sentenced is sourced to and it looks like it's sourced to the reference for the added sentence. Is there some reason you object to citing each sentence? —valereee (talk) 20:22, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand the reasoning, and it's not a bad thought. But the Wikipedia policy on that is found at WP:REPCITE, which states "If one source alone supports consecutive sentences in the same paragraph, one citation of it at the end of the final sentence is sufficient. It is not necessary to include a citation for each individual consecutive sentence, as this is overkill." The goal is to keep the prose flowing well and to not clutter as much as possible. Additionally, your concern is valid, but its editors' responsibility to be wary of this happening if they are adding sentences, along the lines of WP:HIJACK. --Cerebral726 (talk) 20:29, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Edit sorry didn't read the first few words, my bad. It is just an essay, but it reflects a broad consensus and style used across Wikipedia and probably should be followed unless there is some exceptional reason.--Cerebral726 (talk) 20:30, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Cerebral726, what broad consensus does it reflect? Please ping on reply, I've got 5000+ pages on my watch, I lose track. HIJACK is also an essay, not policy. —valereee (talk) 20:41, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Valereee From what a could find, the direct policy on this is most explicitly stated in WP:INTEGRITY as (emphasis my own) "If a sentence or paragraph is footnoted with a source, adding new material that is not supported by the existing source to the sentence/paragraph, without a source for the new text, is highly misleading if placed to appear that the cited source supports it. When new text is inserted into a paragraph, make sure it is supported by the existing or a new source." This sentence both presumes that an entire paragraph can (or should) be cited with a single footnote, and puts the onus of ensuring newly added content is properly cited on the editor adding the new citation. This same assumption is made with the definition of an inline citation which states, "An inline citation means any citation added close to the material it supports, for example after the sentence or paragraph, normally in the form of a footnote." If you look at the majority of a random sampling of articles on the front page, none of them have such an overabundance of citations, and for good reason. It makes the article look cluttered and read stilted. In my opinion, it's best just to match the general style of Wikipedia in almost all cases, and I don't see a compelling reason to not follow that style, nor do I see the same citation on every sentence on any random sampling of articles from the front page. --Cerebral726 (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Cerebral726, yes, obviously that's best practices. But unfortunately many, many less-experienced editors will simply insert information, either with or without a source, and then someone else has to go dig things out, possibly needing to read the full text of several sources in order to figure out which source the information is in.
 * In a printed work, we can provide the source at the end of an entire paragraph -- it's less distracting for the reader that way, and no one can insert anything into our published edition. But here...well, there is no hard-and-fast policy, and there are many content creators who do it that way and make the same argument you do. Because I don't actually know of established policy on this (probably because we can't get consensus), and since I made the decision to do it this way for what I feel are good reasons, I'd like to leave these in. If you want to use the style you prefer when you create articles, I promise not to come in and try to insist you cite every sentence. :) —valereee (talk) 13:22, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Valereee, I guess my question is do you recognize that the way it's done across Wikipedia are in line with my edits? I don't see a good reason not to match what can be seen in any random article. I feel it's critical with such a large project that the encyclopedia is kept as cohesive as possible. Your concern is specifically addressed in actual policy as the responsibility of editors adding content, not something that needs to be worked around for everybody. I know you're trying to keep the article well cited and clear, but I always try to make articles more cohesive and internally consistent. Do you a) disagree that your method isn't what you find on a typical Wikipedia page, b)that it is important to try to be stylistically consistent across articles, or c)some other response to my concern? I don't think there really is a bad outcome where the article is explicitly worse and I know you're a good editor who's trying to improve this article just like me. But I still feel fairly strongly [somewhat] against this. --Cerebral726 (talk) 13:54, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Cerebral726, well...no, not actually. I think different editors do it different ways. We generally try to be consistent within an article, but across articles we allow all sorts of different choices, and some of those choices are made by the article's creator. For instance, we allow multiple citation styles (but only one style per a given article), multiple English versions (but if the article uses AmEng, it uses AmEng throughout), we use infoboxes or not, and for the most part it's left up to the article creator which choice to make on such things. In fact going into an article and changing any of those things will often get push back. We allow the article creator to decide on a lot of things. —valereee (talk) 14:25, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Case in point, since I'm here anyway, I'm taking the opportunity to update, and I was just going to move a sentence, but because it doesn't have a source, now I don't know where to look for the information in that sentence so that I can move it. —valereee (talk) 14:37, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Cerebral726, and in fact at some point someone did exactly what I explained people do: moved a source to the end of the paragraph, and then someone came through and inserted more information. I'd looked at two sources, didn't find it, and only figured it out by going back to a September version. So this type of change has cost me some time and in the meantime left information in the article difficult to verify. —valereee (talk) 14:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Valereee I strongly disagree that the article creator has the sole or even primary decision making power over the article they created, which seems to be a stance that goes against WP:OWN. Also, it's in pretty pour form to revert the changes we are discussing before anything resembling a consensus has been reached. --Cerebral726 (talk) 15:07, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Cerebral726, I didn't revert anything. As I said, I'm doing some updating, and those sentences had become unverifiable because someone inserted information and sources, so the information wasn't in the next source. I left the early life para alone, because I'm not working on it. —valereee (talk) 15:19, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I will also add that I don't think it is difficult to look one sentence forward for the source (which is what I did by removing the extra instance), and that that is an expected responsibility of WP editors per the policy that I cited above. The primary goal of Wikipedia is to make the content readable and verifiable for the readers, not primarily editable for the editors. Your method makes it (slightly) less readable and (slightly) more editable, and I would argue both are equally verifiable. It is not a worthy trade off in my opinion. --Cerebral726 (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * And some of the info had become difficult to verify because, as I explained often happens, someone had moved all the sources to the end of the para and someone else had inserted new info with sources. So some of the sentences weren't sourced to the next citation but to some later citation. —valereee (talk) 15:21, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Your edit did create two consecutive sentences with the same citation after each one, which is the topic of the discussion. Even if it wasn't an explicit revert, I take issue with making the exact kind of edit we are discussing while we are discussing it, which signals to me you don't really feel that consensus is necessary for you to edit it that way as the article creator. I'll leave it at that since I don't believe your method is making the article significantly worse and is also improving it in some way, and honestly it isn't as big a deal as the word count of this discussion/my responses might imply. I won't edit the citations or object to you directly reverting the specific edits I originally made unless someone else chimes in on the discussion in my perspective's favor. --Cerebral726 (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Morgan695 who did a lot of work on Bon Appetit and may be interested in this discussion and this article. --Cerebral726 (talk) 13:56, 11 June 2021 (UTC)