User:Knowledgebattle/references

How I organize (and reorganize) reference lists (and why):
I've fiddled with reorganizing references for a while now, and I've seen that some articles use the "reflist | 30em | refs =" tag, and host all of their references at the bottom. Used properly and consistently, I believe that this is the perfect solution for references.

Why "30em"?
30em is pretty standard across Wikipedia for cramming mass amounts of references into columns, so that short references don't end up wasting whitespace in the References section. It is not controversial to do so. Top-to-bottom, single-bulleted reference lists looks tacky and uses up a lot of screen space.

Why "refs =" and moving the references to the bottom?

 * 1) Easier to edit: When entire references get added into paragraphs, those paragraphs can become unwieldy, often causing it to become difficult to edit the paragraph.
 * 2) Easier to find references: When looking for specific references to update, it's much easier if they're all in one spot.
 * 3) Published articles auto-adjust references for readability: Moving references to the bottom and using inline reference tags does not affect how references are ordered to the reader, which automatically orders references by where they fall in place in the article.
 * 4) Cutting redundancy: Whereas many articles accidentally end up with multiple references to the exact same page, moving references to the bottom (placing them in alphabetical order) would allow editors to identify multiple references and combine them. This would also make it easier for new contributors to quickly check to see if a certain reference already exists, since they should all be easy to find.
 * 5) Greater reference credibility: When references are scattered throughout articles, readers and editors must double-check the References list to ensure that they are getting information from credible websites. Organizing references by alphabetical order would basically force editors to quick-scan over the other references listed, when they're editing, which might lead them to fix references.
 * 6) Because it's there: The tool for utilizing this format already exists, and so there's no need to reinvent the wheel. It's just a matter of greasing the wheels we already have, now.
 * 7) It's cleaner: Organization is a beautiful thing.

Why alphabetical order by domain name (or by book's author surname, by journal, by newspaper, etc)?
A website might be host to many authors, who all publish on the same website, but that same website might publish articles with no author, too. Organizing references in alphabetical order by domain name should reduce the chance for references redundancy, as new contributors will be able to quickly and easily identify that the sources they're looking for already exist. Organizing alphabetically by author wouldn't work, since some articles have multiple authors, and some have no official author listed. Organizing by date wouldn't work, since old articles are sometimes rehashed, and some articles have no creation date specified. Alphabetical by publisher/website could work, but organizations sometimes change their names - whereas if they own the old domain, they'll likely forward their old domain to their new website, anyway, or else that old website might just become a dead link and Internet-archived.


 * Websites
 * Alphabetically by domain name
 * Books
 * Alphabetically by book title
 * Journals
 * Alphabetically by journal title, then by chronological date
 * Magazines
 * Alphabetically by magazine title, then by chronological date
 * News
 * Alphabetically by newspaper title, then by chronological date

Why in that order? (last, first, date, title, url)
Because that's the order they show up when you look at the references, which makes it easier to ensure that you've filled out all of the necessary points, and using spaces helps to make reference lists much easier to read.

Article references I've cleaned up
Andrew Young | Center for Responsive Politics | Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016 | Freedman | Hazel Turner | James R. Fouts | John David Hoppe | MyCloud | SOHOware Incorporated | SPEAK FREE Act of 2015

Article references in progress
Objections to evolution