Wikipedia talk:Citing sources

Pesto
"There is a biennial international Genovese Pesto al Mortaio competition, in which 100 finalists use traditional mortars and pestles as well as the above ingredients, which 30 local and international judges then assess." This sentence is without reference; do I add the citation needed template or do I take the drastic solution of deleting it? JacktheBrown (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Per WP:BURDEN, which is part of the policy on verifiability, unsourced material can be removed. However, unless the unsourced content might damage the reputation of living people or existing groups (in which case you must delete it), or you are confident that no reliable source can be found to support the content, or you feel that the content is not relevant to the article, it is usually better to tag the content as unsourced and give other editors an opportunity to provide an appropriate citation. In the case you point to, I think the sentence is not relevant to the section it is in. Whether it is due anywhere in the article with an appropriate citation is something that could be discussed on the page of the article. Ordinarily, questions about the contents of an article are best discussed on the article's talk page before asking in other venues. Donald Albury 16:31, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to argue that it's best practice, but for whatever it's worth, my personal policy is that if unsourced material was recently added and I can identify the editor who added it then I usually remove it and drop a notice on their Talk page (my rationale is that the editor who added the material is probably best-situated to provide a source), but if it's longstanding material and/or I can't identify the editor who added the material then I'll tag it and eventually (I usually give it a couple of months) circle back to remove it. DonIago (talk) 16:42, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The point is to improve the encyclopedia.
 * People can often improve the encyclopedia by providing citations for uncited statements. They cannot do that if the statement is no longer there.
 * On the other hand, sufficiently large or complicated passages without citations are often difficult to properly cite compared to just writing from sources to begin with. The passage may still be useful as a roadmap as to what editors should research.
 * On the third hand, uncited passages are frequently original research and shouldn't be there.
 * In my mind, what one should do largely depends on which of the three above scenarios best describes the situation. Remsense  诉  17:15, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree with Remsense: it depends. Telling between the three, however, sometimes requires some familiarity with the topic. This can be difficult. In the absence of information allowing me to tell, I prefer to wrap the specific portion that needs citation with cn span. If, however, the addition is just not really important or relevant deletion is I think not unreasonable. Ifly6 (talk) 18:25, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Best practice comes down to this: first, do a quick WP:BEFORE search to see if a source can easily be found. If so, add it yourself.  If not, then ask: “Do I think a source supporting the uncited statement is likely to exist?”  If the answer to that is yes, the best option is to tag. However, if you think a source unlikely, then you are absolutely allowed to remove the statement. You are trying to improve the article. Blueboar (talk) 19:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's also worth considering dueness after verifiability: a lot of time can be wasted tracking down citations for content that is likely to be cut during peer review or GAN. Remsense  诉  19:07, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem sentence has been there since some time in 2018. In that time, it must have been read by plenty of people who do not see it as a problem – it still needs a citation but one can conclude that it is not obviously wrong. Tagging is appropriate to warn the encyclopaedia user that this is an unverified fact. (Many editors seem to forget this purpose of, but seem to think it is only to communicate with other editors.) Do not expect a speedy response, as the original editor may well have taken this article off their watchlist. In the meantime, try and find a source yourself. If neither step produces a reference, then delete it as unverified. It does not seem to be a crucial part of the article. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 19:46, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem to be difficult to find potential sources (e.g. which google will translate into English). This issue is more whether such candidates are WP:RSs ThoughtIdRetired TIR 19:54, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * [] is more likely to be an RS. Over to you to work out the best RS, I think. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 19:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:BOOKLINKS" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BOOKLINKS&redirect=no Wikipedia:BOOKLINKS] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Daask (talk) 21:24, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

How do I cite maps?
One is a USGS quadrangle. The others are city maps.

It would be nice if some index gave me specific dates for events, but so far I haven't been able to find anything.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:18, 5 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Cite map What are you looking for in the last comment? I don't understand. Donald Albury 22:35, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If anyone thinks the maps aren't good enough or their dates are too far apart, I'm just stating this is all I have until more information is found.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Didn't we have a huge discussion a year or two ago on whether it was permissible to infer timing of events from the non-appearance or later appearance of features on maps, with the general sense of the discussion being no, it violates WP:SYN? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Requests for comment/Using maps as sources specifically proposal 3 was to add specific language to allow this, but it was closed as no consensus. The close left it down to editorial consensus. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 00:10, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I asked a library and I asked the people in charge of roads and never got a clear answer. Going to the library didn't even help that much.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  15:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You more you write the more you make it sound as if the details aren't clearly verifiable. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 15:58, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, we need something until we can find clear evidence. It makes no sense not to have anything. And someone should have been saving this information.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * No, everything in Wikipedia must be verifiable from reliable sources. If reliable sources do not yet exist, then the information must wait for inclusion until it is covered in reliable sources. It is not our job to preserve information that has not been published in a reliable source. Donald Albury 19:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect the sources exist but I don't know where they are. Yet. I'm going to ask someone who has edited a lot of related articles for advice.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Maps don't get updated very often. The town where I have lived for the last 25 years has grown significantly during that period - and had been doing so at intervals for around 200 years. The street where I live was built in stages from about 1935 to about 1965, but some portions are missing from maps published about ten years after they were actually built. Maps can't be used to cite when something was built, or even that it existed at the publication date. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:05, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

What if a source in another language is quoted?
Enka, North Carolina Reference 4. Shouldn't there be a translation, and if so, how to put it there?— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Ifly6 (talk) 23:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, per WP:RSUEQ a translation should be included… the policy section explains how to request one. Blueboar (talk) 23:31, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if I did it wrong, but the translation has not been done.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You have to provide the translation. Just adding trans-quote does nothing. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:49, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * References given as footnotes, such as this one, don't need to include quotes at all. A quotation in the main text should always be translated, but that's not the case here anyway. Gawaon (talk) 20:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * True, we don’t require that citations include quotations - however, if a citation does quote a non-English source (as is the case here) we need to translate it … per WP:RSUEQ. Even a machine translation is preferable to no translation. The alternative is to remove the non-English text from the citation.  Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Noting here – after reading the guideline – that WP:RSUEQ uses the language should. That is, non-English quotations in footnotes do not translation, but they are encouraged and recommended.There are quite a few Classical Chinese quotations scattered about the project, where the quote primarily serves as a search string to locate the text in the source. Translating all of these would take a whole lot of work, and they're already summarised in English in the prose citing them. Removing them would nearly break verifiability. Folly Mox (talk) 13:12, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Folly Mox; if there's a reason to provide a non-English quotation, it should never be removed, and WP:RSUEQ doesn't recommend this. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:21, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that there are two things that need translation into English for a non-English source: the title and any quotations (in text or in the citation). --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Not the title. Gawaon (talk) 04:35, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * the title needs to be translated and presented in the trans-title parameter -- this is an essential thing, I believe. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * (sorry if trans-title is the wrong field - not checking the template at the moment so memory might not serve.) User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, there's a trans-title parameter, but its usage is optional. I've seen dozens or hundreds of references to French, Spanish, German etc. works, and the title is never translated – indeed to me it would feel a bit silly if it were. Now, if the original is in a different script (Cyrillic, Chinese etc.), a translation might be more useful – but I don't have found any rule suggesting that it must be translated. The only rule that seems to exist is WP:RSUEQ, which refers to translating quotations, not titles. Gawaon (talk) 06:24, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the only information required to be in English is body prose (including direct quotes). Citation information – title, quote, author, anything – does not require translation, although translation is recommended and often quite helpful for readers and editors both. Folly Mox (talk) 13:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I’d encourage translation but not require it (status quo). Similar to WP:OFFLINE sources it's allowed, but if there’s doubt and inability to verify, that’s a good reason to request clarification, but solely on its own we shouldn’t be removing sources merely because we don't access it or understand its language. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * People posting here might like to check out the template documentation, e.g. Template:Cite web, Template:Cite web, Template:Cite web, Template:Cite web. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Just keep in mind that not all citations are created using a template. We still allow editors to type them out the old fashioned way. Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure, but the OP was specifically about Enka, North Carolina Reference 4, which uses . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 June 2024
Under the sub-heading Citation generation tools there is a statement: "Citer is an all-purpose tool that generates complete scientific citations." This is true, but restrictive. Citer is useful for many types of citations that are not necessarily scientific. General web pages and news articles are two examples. Please remove the word "scientific" from the description.

Thanks. 76.14.122.5 (talk) 00:22, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅   [[User:CanonNi ]]  (talk • contribs) 00:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Dating webpages
A notable example of a date of limited relevance is the date when an author accessed a document.
 * Including the date of access inexplicably breaks with tradition. Would a reference to an ink-and-paper document show when the authors of the citing document accessed that document, say at a public library? No.
 * Unlike other elements in a reference, an access date is not a property of the referenced content.
 * An access date doesn't show whether the referenced content has changed between the time the citing document was written and the time the reader might view the referenced document. The way to learn that is to compare the date of the citing document to the update date of the referenced document.
 * Using an access date in place of an update date is something of a con. If a referenced document's date were missing in the ink-and-paper world, the reference would say "n. d." or "no date."

Recommendation: Allow "date of last update" as well as the access date in references. Page Notes (talk) 01:16, 17 June 2024 (UTC) Page Notes 01:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * You seem to be arguing that access date is not a useful datapoint, but then propose that another parameter be added to it rather than replace it. Could you explain the reasoning there? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. Replacing access-date with last-update rather than including both is better.Page Notes (talk) 15:58, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello, "date of last update" would just go into the date parameter. (Like using the date of whatever later edition of a book you're reading.) The access-date parameter is useful on a page that changes,(6) and when a link goes dead. Access dates are used in APA, Chicago, and Harvard Style citations. Rjjiii  (talk) 05:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * These style guides differ regarding last update. APA has this to say: "If a date of last update is available (such as for a webpage), use it in the reference." ... "Include a retrieval date only if the work is unarchived and designed to change over time. Most references do not include retrieval dates." -- https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry#retrieval
 * I agree that access dates are useful for webpages that go dead. Page Notes (talk) 16:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here's the Chicago view: “Chicago does not [...] require access dates in its published citations of electronic sources unless no date publication or revision can be determined from the source.” (CMOS 14.12) -- https://library.bowdoin.edu/research/chicago-author-date.pdf Page Notes (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We don't require them either. Including them is nevertheless a good idea, especially if the page is more or less likely to change or go away. Gawaon (talk) 18:13, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Access dates are used by editors who are trying to match the correct versions at archive.org. They therefore have a practical purpose.
 * Also, they put a limit on "no date" sources. We may not know when the webpage was published, but we know it was on or before the access date. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * For a lengthy and recentish discussion on the uses of access-date, we have Folly Mox (talk) 23:42, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

What if I cite something in parentheses?
I encountered a situation today where I needed to put an additional detail in parentheses that is covered by a separate source from the sources used for the rest of the sentence. It seems kind of strange to use all three sources for the sentence that was there before both at the end and before the parentheses, but the source I added does not cover what came before the parentheses.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:44, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Would an explanatory foot note work? It will hide the content you are putting in parentheses until the reader clicks on the link, but it certainly makes the connection between the content and the reference clearer. If you want to keep the extra content always visible, you could also break up the sentence. Donald Albury 20:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Won't help if I don't know when I've done this previously. I found that one of the three sources for the entire sentence didn't verify anything, and got a 404 error for another source. So I concluded the third source would verify everything (it requires a subscription) and put it before what was in parentheses, and reworded so the information would match.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 July 2024
Note: Not sure if my first attempt went through (please excuse if this is redundant).

Regarding "Slavery in colonial Spanish America" article:

4. Seijas, Tatiana.Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians. New York: Cambridge University Press 2014.[page needed]

Add: space after author's name and "pp. 73-98" after the year of publication. Mearnest1 (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Not done. edit semi-protected is placed on a talk page to request an edit of the corresponding article or project. The citation mentioned in the request is not present on Citing sources, rather, it is in Slavery in colonial Spanish America. That article does not appear to be protected. I'd do it myself but I don't have that book. Since Mearnest1 has done the research to find the page number, it's Mearnest1 who should make the edit. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * TWL has the book 🤫 Folly Mox (talk) 20:42, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Repeating publisher and location information for different articles from same website?
This is a relatively niche question. Let's say an article, such as AHS Krab, cites ten or more separate articles from the same news website. The citations cannot be combined using a single reference name, because each one links to a different URL. Must the publisher and location information be repeated for every single citation, or is it sufficient to include it in the first reference to that website? Huntthetroll (talk) 23:45, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it will help in that case, but I did something like that in citing several sub-pages of a web site in Molasses Reef Wreck. Donald Albury 00:01, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * A similar effect can be achieved using harvc. Folly Mox (talk) 13:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Huntthetroll, the editors at the article are welcome to set up whatever system they think is sensible. See WP:CITEVAR.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 5 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I would make each cite stand totally by itself.
 * In many articles references are removed or replaced with better ones. If that replace reference happened to be the one that contained the complete set of source details then they are lost for all the subsequent references from the same source. Of course, they are still in the article's history, so they could be recovered but at extra cost of editor effort - which often doesn't happen. Or sometimes the order of cites is changed, making a middle cite fuller then both preceding and following cites from the same source - weird looking!
 * On the flip side, the cost of putting full the details in every reference from that source is just a copy/paste operation, so it is quite minimal effort. In fact, I often build up one in full by hand, then copy it many times and then alter the specific details - much quicker than typing it all by hand.  Stepho  talk 00:41, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree, making each citation self-contained seems best, as it is probably easiest to follow for the reader and robust in view of future changes. Gawaon (talk) 08:05, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Gawaon, I came to the same conclusion as you and |Stepho did when I was editing AHS Krab last night. Since I intend to continue adding content and citations to the article, I prioritize reader convenience and robustness in the face of a changing set of references. I will also investigate Folly Mox's suggestion about using . Huntthetroll (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)


 * , this reply will assume you're referring to the citations to the websites and, repeatedly cited with the respective parameters Defence24Defence24Warsaw, Poland and AltairAltair Agencja LotniczaWarsaw, Poland. I'd argue that the publisher and location of these websites are unnecessary in every case, including the first references to these sources.It's almost never helpful to include both website and publisher where the values for those parameters match to a large degree, as they do in these cases. It's also rare to include the location of a website, unless it's the website of what used to be a physical news-paper. Folly Mox (talk) 13:29, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I initially thought the same, but I eventually changed my mind.
 * I tried to imagine the perspective of a reader that is completely unfamiliar with the article's topic, or with any of the sources cited. I would not expect the reader to know or assume that, for instance, the Polish-language website defence24.pl and the English-language website defence24.com are published by the same Polish limited-liability company, Defence24 Sp. z o.o. In fact, I was going to leave out the publisher for the similarly named site nowiny24.pl, because I assumed that the same company would be responsible, but decided to double-check the site's "O nas" ("about us") page, just to be sure. Suprisingly, nowiny24.pl is published by a completely different company, which should mean that it can be used to cross-check information from Defence24. I would not have known this, nor would any reader, if I had not looked up the publisher.
 * In the case of a web citation, I treat location as the location of the publisher's headquarters. I find that this provides important information about the publisher's "institutional perspective", for lack of a better phrase, by showing the publisher's proximity to centers of political and economic power.
 * Huntthetroll (talk) 17:52, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure! Whatever works best for your own editing flow and job satisfaction. I said above, which appears to have been incorrect. Happy editing, Folly Mox (talk) 16:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)