CZ Talk:Citation templates

This page is absolutely dreadful. --Robert W King 18:59, 13 January 2008 (CST)

We can be sure that nobody will use them :-) Martin Baldwin-Edwards 09:00, 14 January 2008 (CST)

It desperately needs order and structure, and ease-of-use. --Robert W King 09:55, 14 January 2008 (CST)

So fix it.

This page is imported from Wikipedia, as are the templates. It's the technical manual for the citation templates themselves, not the <ref></ref>/Cite.php system of referencing. Among other things, it should make searching through references easier, as well as providing moderately uniform citation styles. If you think the explanation needs improvement, then improve it. Anthony Argyriou 15:06, 14 January 2008 (CST)

May an old hand at print editing and publishing make a comment? The cite web template -- borrowed from Wikipedia -- is not what any print scholarly journal or book would accept. The reason is that the template erases the URL from the reference as it appears on the screen and as it prints out when the article is downloaded and printed. The reference is thus useless for all scholarly purposes. This problem arose, I think, because Wikipedia treats references to the web only as a convenient hyperlink for the casual online user.

If you want a genuine reference, the URL must appear on the screen and in a downloaded printout. The two style manuals I use in my own work as a (print) editor and writer -- University of Chicago and American Psychological Association -- have an absolute requirement for including the URL where it can be seen at all times, most emphatically in the print version of an article. By "absolute," I mean that if you submit an Ms. that does not include the URL, the paper will be sent back to you with an editor's note telling you to include it.

Wikipedia -- which makes no pretense except perhaps in their propaganda to being scholarly -- ignores such niceties. But if you want articles here to reflect scholarly practice, then the URL must appear in the final bibliography.

I have no idea how to fix this; it's a matter of rewriting the original code to get it to print out and to hyperlink. Is this important? You bet.

Timothy Perper 05:45, 25 September 2008 (CDT)

Are you sure this is the case, or i am misunderstanding you? When I go to print mode on my computer the URL is shown. For example:

{{Citation
  | last1 = Bailey  | first1 = David H.
  | author1-link = David H. Bailey
  | last2 = Borwein | first2 = Peter
  | author2-link = Peter Borwein
  | last3 = Borwein | first3 = Jonathan M.
  | author3-link = Jonathan Borwein
  | title = The Quest for Pi
  | journal = Mathematical Intelligencer
  | volume = 19
  | issue = 1
  | pages = 50–57
  | date = [[1999-06-25]]
  | year = 1999
  | url = http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/pi-quest.pdf
  | id = ISSN 0343-6993 }}

On the computer screen this will be viewed as:

Bailey, David H.; Peter Borwein & Jonathan M. Borwein (1999-06-25), "The Quest for Pi", Mathematical Intelligencer 19 (1): 50–57, ISSN 0343-6993

But in print mode it will be seen approximately as:

Bailey, David H.; Peter Borwein & Jonathan M. Borwein (1999-06-25), "The Quest for Pi (http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/pi-quest.pdf)", Mathematical Intelligencer 19 (1): 50–57, ISSN 0343-6993

At least this is the case with my computer. Chris Day 08:35, 25 September 2008 (CDT)