Help talk:How should the articles be written

References

Existing Conversation

Transferred (and date-sorted) from: User_talk:Drducker#Refs_to_foot and User_talk:Prophecy#Refs to foot

---

Hi Drducker,

I noticed that you moved the References section down on some pages. Well... When I started writing articles here, that was my opinion too: As every section above can have references, it's normal that the references section is at the very end of an article.

Then another user started to move the References section above the External links section in some of my articles - I was quite upset, because he labelled his action lapidarly with "Cleaned up". I never got a response to my question why, but I started to look at Wikipedia pages. The rules there are: "near the end of an article". Then I looked at a lot of pages, and to my astonishment, the External links section was always after the References section. So I started to convert all my articles. References at the end (like before), but still above External links.

Now I see another guy (you) who has the same opinion like me before. I really don't know... Could there be a reason to have the External links after the References, or should we just let Wikipedia do what it wants and have our References at the very end of an article?

Prophecy 18:19, 3 July 2008 (EDT)

---

My take on it is that references are what we have been calling "footnotes", and as is implied by the word itself, that means they should be at the very bottom (structural items like categories, GFDL disclaimers, and such, not withstanding).

I'm of the opion that it might be a good idea to somewhat formalize some article writing guidelines. We certainly don't need to be anywhere near as rigorous as wikipedia, but a few loose rules could certainly go a long way.

I'm not exactly sure of how to go about setting up such a process here, but I suppose this might be a start.

Take a look at Aimee Sweet. That's a reasonably good example of how I think a page should look. What do you think?

Drducker 07:41, 4 July 2008 (EDT)

---

Aimee Sweet: Agreed. This is exactly how all my articles are. For myself, I even set up guidelines where which header has to be, so you'll always find the same order of chapters in my articles. But without the double blank lines between the headers like in Aimee Sweet. And references at the very end. Like I said, Wikipedia says References should be "near" the end, and articles place them above External links, but I did not find any reason for this anywhere. Even External links could have a footnote theoretically, and it would be stupid if you'd have to look up to see the footnote.

So I'll reconvert my articles and put the references back at the very end. It always annoyed me anyway.

As for the guidelines: I already set up a few guidelines, and we have the help namespace for this. But it was not developed any further since the establishment of Boobpedia. There's only the two pages Help and FAQ in the navigational box, but they are outdated. I'll start to rewrite these one day, taking into account the new de facto rules that have since been established. If there is no consensus, the rules will be edited, so it won't hurt anyone - but there'd be a start. It could be simple - with How-tos that explain how to start a simple new page (that already has a predefined {{Biobox new}} in it. I wrote an e-mail on that to Hexvoodoo, but never got an answer. But hey - why not simply start these pages. When they are ready they can replace the old FAQ and Help pages - with better navigation and instructions if you are searching for something. Prophecy 07:52, 4 July 2008 (EDT)

---

Er - do you really think it's a good idea to force the references at the very very bottom of an article? When I said that I'd like to have them at the end of an article, I meant that they should be the last section, but not forced to the bottom with white space between the article body and the references. I think we should not get too far away from Wikipedia standard. We should have the references at the end of an article, but not forced to the bottom. If articles get longer, this could produce unwanted empty lines. And we don't know how it looks when a page is printed. If an article gets longer, the references are at the end anyway, and I think we should not confuse readers with forced-to-bottom references. Just my opinion though. I wouldn't like my articles to be edited this way. I know what you are thinking about, though. I worked in the field of print publications formatting, and there it's normal to have the references at the very bottom of a page. But I think Wikipedia has developed its own standards in some cases, due to the "endless page" concept for example that print media don't have. Mainly I'm afraid that this would cause greater inconsistency, because there'd be thousands of pages to convert. I clearly vote for references at the end, but not forced to the bottom of a page. Perhaps ask The Honorable and other editors who write many articles for their opinion.

Prophecy 14:49, 5 July 2008 (EDT)

---

Compare Aimee Sweet with Amanda White. The actual code that pushes it down is the same: <p style="clear:both;" />, which means that as a shorter article get longer, the extra space goes away. It's not "real" white space, only a bit of CSS doing it. And it means that the references are always available with a simple [END] key-press.

I think of the references as being more Meta-Article rather than real article, much the same way the categories are. You'll note that the category box is also always at the bottom. Likewise the {{GFDL}} disclaimer is about the article itself, rather than the subject of the article, and should also, IMHO, be at the end of the page.

It seems like you get most of what I'm putting forth here, but this is kind of why I thought something a bit more formalized would be a good idea; While I'd obviously advocate for the way I've been doing it, if the consensus was something else I'd go along with that too.

Drducker 20:25, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

---

I know that the blank space vanishes when the article gets longer, but it creates at least one superfluent blank line which is somewhat disturbing the layout. But this should be a minor issue. My two problems are:

• Most of the things you do reflect what I'm thinking too. References at the very bottom - the same, I tend to preferring them at the bottom like you. I was used to see them directly after the article when I joined here and I saw that Wikipedia does it the same way. Well, the question is: I support the idea of Boobpedia becoming an autonomous system of its own - with its own rules, mostly due to the specific subject. We have developed our own templates, we have cooler bioboxes, we have started a fancier chronology system (which just found its way to the main page today) - but should we really differ in the case of references? Hm... perhaps the only reason why Wikipedia has them at the end of an article is to make it easier for new editors who are not familiar with p and br and CSS.
• Ok, if we say: We have the possibility to make it better than Wikipedia, with a more stringent article formatting, because we started later - how do we
  • convert the existing articles?
  • get new and existing users to follow that rule too? If a new user comes from Wikipedia, he/she will certainly adapt the Wikipedia style first. So even if we converted all existing pages (we don't have bots so far), I see a problem that new users won't follow this rule and we'd still have inconsistent layouts. But ok, if there was a new style guideline (I see that it becomes more necessary every day), and if it was linked at the important places, we could get it right...

Ok, to cut it short: Generally I agree with you. Until today, you and me seem to be the only two users who really care about layout - that gives us the chance to set up some rules (that can be edited if there is no consensus). And perhaps you are right - somebody has to start it, otherwise how can editors know there can be a nicer style than on the existing pages.

Please answer on this page, I'll ask The Honorable to join the discussion. It's too difficult to follow messages on different pages, so I think it's a good idea to continue here. -

Prophecy 20:47, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

---

I prefer References, then pay sites, then external links, though this may just be because I'm used to Wikipedia-type formatting. The Honorable 21:22, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

Concerns Expressed:

Extraneous Line

I think I figured out that using a <P> tag will allow that problem to be resolved, either through some sort of main.css setting, or by using custom styling in the tag itself. P, being a container tag should allow it to be rendered at 1px (or even 0px) height; BR always added a line because that's what it does. Took me a while to figure that out ;) I do still need to go through and fix my older BR edits, and figure out if setting the height will actually work. As to the the double lines between sections, that was purely about having the code in the edit box be more legible, and isn't anything I consider strictly necessary. Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Yup, I was right. P will do it.

I added a template to make it easier to type: {{clearboth}} Which generates: <p style="clear:both; margin:0px; padding:0px; border:0px;" />

This does the push-down, and does not add an extra line. Yay, does what I want. :) Drducker 05:08, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Conversion of existing articles

The number of articles here is still moderately small; It would take a while, but simply correcting them as we go would probably not be too onerous at this point. If that is however too much, some sort of 5 minute-cycle activated light script/bot could probably handle it with fair ease (I'll look at the possibilities there and get back). Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Getting users to do it

Well first we should probably invite the regular users to these discussions. For example: User:Apara‎, User:Dekkappai, User:Bustanut seem to be pretty heavy editors right now. Beyond that having a consistent location to send new editors to would do wonders. The main page off this discussion is my poor start at such. Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Doing it like Wikipedia

Wikipedia's articles have a very different purpose as ours do, so I don't think we should necessarily feel constrained by their process. Mind you, they've been through a lot so it's worth paying attention to what they've done, so as to avoid the same pitfalls. In the case of references, the thinking was probably something related to assuring the credibility of the site as a whole, as well as the specific article in question; For the readers of this site, the exact veracity of the facts may not be the first thing in their minds ;). Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT)

Proposals Regarding References

Proposals at this point: (Mark yourself as for something by signing with four tildes ~~~~)

Order:

1. Pay Sites then External Links then References then Disclaimers then Categories. (For: Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT) )
2. References then pay sites then External Links then Disclaimers then Categories. (For: )

Layout:

1. References as a pushed-down piece of meta-info. (For: Drducker 04:45, 7 July 2008 (EDT) )
2. References contained within the normal flow of the article. (For: )