Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Quoted citations

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was  Userify, without keeping the shortcuts; this essay is the personal opinion of a single editor, and has only been linked to by that editor or in the context of this MfD. Essays belong in mainspace, as John Blackburne noted, when they are the result of collaborative work or they have been refered to regularily by independent editors (as an indication that it has sufficient "mindshare" to belong there. Neither of those apply to this essay. I have not examined the purported dispute that is said to have led to this essay's creation, as this is not a relevant factor given the above. &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:08, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Quoted citations


is currently involved in a dispute with another editor,, at Talk:Mind-body problem. It began at Talk:Mind–body problem, continued at Talk:Mind–body problem, and, having failed to get their way on the matter of handling citations in quoted text, Brews ohare began forum shopping, first at Village pump (policy), then Wikipedia talk:Citing sources. Having failed to achieve consensus for getting their proposal added to Citing sources, Brews ohare then created this essay (and a redirect, WP:CITEinQUOTE), containing the very text that they had been arguing about on the original article talk page.

Creating official-sounding essays is not the way to "win" a dispute. This page should be deleted or, at the very least, moved to Brews ohare's user space until the dispute is resolved through other methods, such as WP:3. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   18:19, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Additional: the point made below by John Blackburne is valid and important. Essays are usually kept in user space as part of Category:User essays until they become the collaborative work of several authors. This essay is so far entirely the work of Brews ohare, but it is entirely possible that it could eventually become "an evolving expression of multiple editors", as the introduction to that category states. At such a time it would be a valid candidate for the Wikipedia namespace, but not before (that is to say, now). Therefore I change my primary opinion on this matter to userfy page, delete shortcut. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   19:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. The essay lacks merit. In particular, the statement " it is preferable where possible to provide the reader with information about the embedded sources" departs from the usual practice in most scholarly works, which is to omit embedded citations (with a note that they were omitted). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talk • contribs) 18:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete/userfy. The response to being unable to win a dispute with an editor is not to take to the village pump, then to rewrite the policy so it supports your argumement, then to a guidance essay which you can cite instead. So forum shopping and trying to rewrite or create rules to win the argument. Guidance should not be created by editorial fiat in such a way.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep: My Response
 * The possibility of an existing dispute is not germane to this deletion request. Quoted citations treats the question of how to handle embedded references, a topic that can be considered for itself, in the abstract.


 * The only objection here with an attempt at substance is that of Jc3s5h. He claims that it is standard practice to omit embedded references with a note to that effect. If this claim can be substantiated, it provides an alternative course of action in dealing with such references that is not mentioned in Quoted citations. I believe this approach should be included there with supporting references, if they can be found.
 * → Note: I have added this option to the article. Brews ohare (talk) 06:30, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem of how to deal with embedded references exists and will not go away. This essay attempts to fill this need. It may be that revisions in its treatment are necessary or at least useful, but that certainly can be done. The Talk page is the correct venue for suggesting modifications, and an invitation to do that was posted on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources.


 * This page is an Essay, and is headed with the standard Template:Guidance essay explicitly stating that such Essays are a matter of personal opinion, and have no standing as official WP policy or guideline. Arguments by Blackburne and Hex that a personal Essay can end-run a dispute have no substance, and such claims make no attempt to challenge the content of the essay. They challenge only my purported motives in writing it, not exactly an example of AGF.


 * Deletion of the page is not how to deal with embedded references. Brews ohare (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You deny that this has anything to do with the dispute at the article. Yet here is where you rerfered to the advice as if it were policy, policy you had created to try and win the argument. You later change the redirect used to point to the essay. So yes, this essay was created to help you win an argument, the one at Talk:Mind–body problem.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * John: Your imaginings about the point and purpose of my actions are baloney. Quoted citations is an approach to this issue, an Essay clearly flagged as such, not a policy nor an official guideline. Focus upon the content of Quoted citations, and stop trying to generate a forum for a conduct issue from this deletion action. Brews ohare (talk) 22:21, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Editors are encouraged to write up essays describing their solutions to complicated problems. Essays are fine choices for explaining a new idea or a minority viewpoint.  If you think that essays are "official-sounding", then the problem is likely with your reading comprehension skills.  It's says it's an essay by one (or more) editors right at the top of the page.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The shortcut to this page, WP:CITEinQUOTE, is most certainly official-sounding. Since when do single editors' opinions in essay format get upper-case shortcuts in the style of policies and guidelines? And I would note that you yourself had to remove a guideline category from this page. The whole thing stinks of trying to game the system. Well, whether this MfD succeeds or not, at least it will remain on the record for wherever the dispute its author is engaged in eventually ends up being examined - you can see that mess coming from a mile away. &mdash; Hex    (❝ ?!  ❞)   22:58, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * When do single editors' essays get upper-case shortcuts? All the time.  WP:POLICY tells you not to conflate shortcuts with policy.  There are about 14,000 shortcuts and the moment, and only 55 policies and about 250 guidelines. Also, all of our paqes originally started off as a single user's project.  That's how the software works.  Too long; didn't read, which is one of our most heavily cited essays, was written by one user in September 2007, and nobody else edited it until the following April.  But nobody complains about the WP:TLDR shortcuts, do they?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Is that list of 14,000 shortcuts available somewhere? I would be very interested to see an overview of what people are doing on that front.
 * Regarding shortcuts - yes, of course. I realized that later after writing the preceding. Thinking about it, I was able to narrow down my concern to the naming style of the shortcut itself, "CITEinQUOTE". To my ear it has an imperative tone. Yes, when you go there you get an essay banner; but not everyone is guaranteed to actually read the links they're presented with, or be familiar with the way guidance material is presented. I'm not the only person concerned about this; see for example this 2010 discussion at WT:PG and this very recent policy pump discussion. Our best intentions notwithstanding, there is aways a possibility that using shortcuts in this fashion may cause confusion. In this particular case, given the history of how the essay in question was created, the presence of such an officious-sounding shortcut causes me unease. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   16:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - The Essay subject falls well into WP:CITE, and explains just how to use one possible citation method, without pretending that that method is the only method. Perfectly acceptable. Achowat (talk) 22:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete – this usual Brews ohare tactic is tiresome and harmful; he has now inserted it into the MOS] as if it's not a hotly contested issue. Just shut it down, please.  An RfC about what to say in the MOS about cites in quotes might be in order, but not this one-sided treatment.  Dicklyon (talk) 16:49, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In case anyone reading this is unsure what "this usual Brews ohare tactic" may refer to, is some context that I have now found and understood. There is no way that this essay should be seen as anything but a battleground/attempted fait accompli move from a proven disruptive editor. &mdash;  Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   17:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Smear tactics: The essay is not one-sided, but contains three now four alternative treatments. If there are other ways to handle embedded citations, the Talk page is available to present them. Instead, Blackburne and Hex and now Dicklyon inject behavioral conjecture into a deletion request. It is lamentable that a simple question of the utility and accuracy of a personal essay should digress to indulge these contributors' attempts at character assassination. Brews ohare (talk) 17:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, get over yourself, pal. I'd never even heard of you before encountering your lamentably obvious attempt to game the system in the form of this essay. Your past and present conduct is entirely relevant to anyone assessing its validity. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   18:36, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * If it's a personal essay, otherwise known as a user essay, then it should be userfied. As is written at that category:
 * An essay here may be moved categorically into the Wikipedia namespace, Category:Wikipedia essays, if it is frequently referenced, as evidenced by becoming an evolving expression of multiple editors.
 * so if and when other editors start using it it can be moved into the WP namespace.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * A brief look at Category:Wikipedia guidance essays indicates (i) very many of these essays began with a single author, and after a while others contributed to them, and (ii) many of them have associated shortcuts like WP:CITEinQUOTE, and the Template:Guidance essay has associated with it a | -option to include a shortcut. So Blackburne's suggestion that a non-controversial piece about a technical WP-formatting issue should be "userfied" is not standard WP practice, and neither is Hex's position that a shortcut should be disallowed. Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Other stuff exists, a classic response. However, those other essays were probably not written by a tendentious editor such as yourself as a backdoor "fix" to a content dispute. Either way, as they are not under consideration here, it's irrelevant. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   16:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hex: A classic and very valid response is to indicate present policy accepts what is objected to by yourself. And it is not policy to userfy articles because of hypothetical circumstances postulated to lead to their creation. Brews ohare (talk) 17:36, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There's nothing hypothetical about it, you're still actively engaged in that dispute: it's the sole example on which you keep harping! You've also conveniently neglected to mention that fact on the essay's talk page, where you'd rather have the reader believe it arose out of the blue, from your proposals at the Village Pump, if not from your edit warring to insert it into the WP:CITE guideline... to which you proactively assigned the shortcut WP:CITEinQUOTE. Failing that, only then did you create this essay and redirect the shortcut here... not that you've included the advice you received at the Village Pump, that all these elaborations you're proposing should simply be appended to the end of a single WP footnote... the "primary purpose" of which is to cite the actual source of the direct quotation. Your essay is no less riddled with half-truths and bad advice, but with all due sympathy to the newcomer, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader... or perhaps having come here by way of your incessant lamentations at the locus of dispute, someone will act on your behalf at long last... in this case, something even the loyal supporters of your farcical exploits have been loath to do.—Machine Elf 1735   21:45, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Policy is to userfy if consensus is formed in discussions such as this one that it's the right thing to do. That can be for any reason. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   17:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Hex, possibly you have the actual WP practice nailed. However, according to Determining consensus:&emsp;"Consensus is determined by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy. " [Emphasis added.]Brews ohare (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keeping with the pettifoggery, you are now trying to drag this conversation out into an abstract discussion that has nothing to do with the subject of this MfD. I shall not indulge you. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   19:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * keep There is nothing objectionable in the essay. It is important to separate the content issue from the merits of the essay.  The essay is not polemic or unreasonable. HominidMachinae (talk) 07:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete/userfy and delete WP:CITEinQUOTE: to help avert misleading advice and deceptive grandstanding.—Machine Elf 1735  01:40, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
 * MachineElf: Two things would be helpful additions to your comments here: (i) what specifically is misleading about Quoted citations and why not suggest changes to fix that? and (ii) what constitutes "grandstanding" here, and supposing it has occurred what on Earth has it to do with a deletion discussion, which is about article content? Brews ohare (talk) 01:55, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It's misleading as it looks like official advice, at least when used as you used it, immediately after adding it to WP:CITE, as seen at the above link. This was after you could not get consensus for these changes at the village pump: lacking consensus there you decided to amend the guidance on your own. Once it was pointed out you could not do that you moved to an essay, keeping the redirect and adding links to it from policy pages, again as if it were policy. Few experienced editors will be fooled by something so badly written but new editors might misunderstand it as something they should follow, not the views of one editor.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 02:45, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
 * John: I don't know if your answer is the same as MachineElf would provide. You've already expressed your own opinions here several times, which do not address content at all, and ignore the page header Template:Guidance essay. In addition, it may be noted as some have said already above, there is nothing controversial or unreasonable in Quoted citations. Brews ohare (talk) 03:43, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep per the arguments for deletion/userification by Hex, John Blackburne, and Dicklyon. What is in essays here on Wikipedia are usually minority viewpoints that don't have sufficient consensus to merit inclusion in policy pages. That Brews stumbled on such a issue, first thinking that it should be included in an official policy page and then eventually appreciating that it doesn't have sufficient support is thus not a problem for this essay.


 * If Brews made mistakes in the way he initially argued at those other venues, that's a different matter, it's totally irrelevant for this essay. In fact, it is highly disruptive to conflate the question of what to do with this essay with alledged problematic behavior of Brews elsewhere, as you import those problems where it isn't initially present. Count Iblis (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * To claim that presenting this item in its context - as the tainted fruit of a dispute - was "highly disruptive" is pure hyperbole. However I've since found that there is a clear policy basis for userfying the essay. Were I beginning this again I would have gone ahead with that and filed an RFD for the shortcut only. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   21:30, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hex: Surely from the point of view of Wikipedia the important question is whether Quoted citations is useful to WP readers, not the circumstances leading to its creation, whatever those may be. If a reader wants some suggestions about how to handle citations embedded in a quotation they wish to use, then Quoted citations offers several suggestions, and so it is useful.


 * These suggestions were not my invention, actually, but were made by others at the Village Pump and at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources, as noted and linked at Wikipedia talk:Quoted citations. I just wrote these suggestions up, and added the suggestion by Jc3s5h made in this deletion discussion. Possibly in the future other suggestions will come up on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources for consideration.


 * Hex, I think my involvement with Quoted citations has seriously affected your perception of the article. Had it been written by say Noleander, the main creative force here, your reaction to this article probably would have been different, perhaps no reaction at all. What do you think? Brews ohare (talk) 05:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It doesn't matter who the author was. If they'd created this page in the same way that you did, I would have performed the same action.
 * Incidentally, I don't know who that is. I'd also never heard of you before encountering your posts about this on the policy pump. Don't try and recast it as a personality issue. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   09:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hex, as I understand these remarks of yours, in assessing retention of a Wikipedia article, it is less significant just what a Wikipedia article contains as content than the events involved in its creation. Perhaps I have misunderstood you? To my knowledge there are no WP policies or guidelines that suggest particular events occurring during the creation of an article that should lead to its deletion, which should take place regardless of the article content. Brews ohare (talk) 15:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Nor do there need to be, because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and our administrators are trusted to be able to identify people attempting to game the system with the kind of pettifoggery that it appears you specialize in, your contributions to this discussion being a case in point. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   17:17, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hex: WP's trust in your judgment as an Administrator probably does not extend to rewriting the deletion criteria to suit yourself. Brews ohare (talk) 17:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Lucky for you, me and the project that I did nothing of the kind, then. Or are you insinuating that I've been using a time machine to subtly influence discussions from years ago that I never had a part in? Sir, I am personally offended at your implication that I'd waste valuable plutonium on something so trivial. My lawyer and I shall be seeing you in Internets Court, where I shall expect a large sum of lols in compensation. &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   18:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Just starting to look into the dispute, I see MachineElf citing another essay, WP:Quote: "Never quote a false statement without immediately saying the statement is false... There is no difference between quoting a falsehood without saying it's false and inserting falsehoods into articles." That essay is not policy or guideline either, and shouldn't be - I see that as an unreasonable policy to apply to ancient medicine, for example, where editors should not put themselves into the position of saying what practices are true and which false, as often there turns out to be some basis of validity to ancient practices and saying whether the belief was true or false is quite a complex interpretation.  And politics is no easier!  So let's just all remember that essays are essays. Wnt (talk) 23:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)  (I since modified this essay as so) Wnt (talk) 23:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That was a prior dispute... there are about a dozen disputes on that talk page. Needless to say, you would have found the current one on the bottom, had you cared to make an informed comment or two.—Machine Elf 1735  05:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. I have no idea at the moment what the dispute is that people are mentioning, but it's not obvious in the essay.  Dealing with these quoted citations is indeed a valid issue that we should have an essay about, for people who like lots of guidance.  If you think there's something wrong with it, fix it - but the question hasn't gone away.  I see no evidence that anyone has even tried to change the actual content of the essay to match some other opinion of what is the best practice; either it's OK as is or somebody is taking altogether the wrong approach at seeking consensus. Wnt (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Wnt: This Essay evolved from initial discussions at the Village Pump here and here, and later at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources; see this and this. However, in this deletion discussion the only suggestion for change came from Jc3s5h and this suggestion is now a subsection of the Essay. I've made numerous other additions and reorganizations since then, as its history page shows. If there are other changes needed, they should be proposed here as you have suggested instead of sniping at my behavior. Brews ohare (talk) 00:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure Brews, you didn't hear that...—Machine Elf 1735  05:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * MachineElf: I read what you have written above. I'd say this: it is hard to see its relevance to this deletion discussion, and it's not constructive. As to your fury over whatever you think happened at Talk:Mind-body problem, yours was not an attempt to engage, and that also is the case here. The only bearing upon Quoted citations from our strange encounter, as I explained there, was to lead me to the Village Pump, where some real discussion began the development of the ideas now found in Quoted citations. Brews ohare (talk) 06:24, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Ruling? It appears that all commentary on this deletion proposal has ended. Can we have a ruling on this matter? Brews ohare (talk) 14:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.