PESWiki:Citing evidence

From PESWiki

This page is a style guide, describing how to add evidence or how to create citations in articles. You may be in search of citation details or the PESWiki Reference Desk.

PESWiki:Original research and PESWiki:Verifiability, which are policy, request editors to provide evidence, reasonings, and sources. This page can help in construction attribution for and explination of material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. We cannot check the accuracy of claims, but we can see that:

1. the content is observable,
2. the content is empirical,
3. the content has measurable evidence, and/or
4. the content is subject to the principles of reasoning.

Articles should therefore provide evidence or supply sufficient reasoning whenever possible. Any material may be challenged and removed if it does not provide evidence or supply sufficient reasoning. Any material that is challenged and for which no evidence is provided may be removed. For information about using sources in biographies, see PESWiki:Biographies. If you don't know how to format the evidence citations, provide as much information as you can, and others may fix it for you. Cite It!

Why evidence, reasonings, and sources should be cited

• To providing useful information.
• To show that an edit is original research.
• To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by any reader or editor.
• To help users find additional information on the topic.
• To improve the overall credibility and authoritative character of PESWiki.
• To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.
• To ensure that material about individuals is reliable and complies with PESWiki:Biographies.

When to cite evidence

When you add content

All material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs evidence or a source.

The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions held on a particular issue. It is acceptable, but less desirable, to use words such as, "Some people say ...". Alternatively, make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that PESWiki is a place for expressing new technologies or for original research.

Because PESWiki is English based, English language evidence should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal calibre. However, do give evidence in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language set of facts, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it.

When you verify content

You can add evidence even for material you didn't write, by using a source to verify the material or explaining the content. Adding citations is an excellent way to contribute to PESWiki. See PESWiki:Forum for Standards and PESWiki:Fact and Reference Check for organized efforts to add citations.

Material that is, or is likely to be, challenged

Think ahead. Try to imagine whether or not people might doubt what you wrote, or need more information about it. Supporting what is written in PESWiki by clear and logical content will add stability to your contribution.

When adding material to a biography

Main article: PESWiki:Biographies

Biographies should be bolstered by evidence with care, for legal and ethical reasons. All negative material about living individuals must be sourced to a reliable source. If you find shaky or poorly sourced negative content about a living individuals — whether in an article or on a talk page — remove it! Do not leave it in the article and ask for a source. Do not move it to the talk page. This applies whether the material is in a biography or any other article.

When you quote someone

You should always add a citation when quoting material, and the citation should be placed directly after the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it's a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." For long quotes, you may wish to use Template:Quotation.

How to cite evidence

Citations may require a detailed full citation. Some articles only need to include a brief inline reference. Full citations may be formatted by hand or using one of the citation templates. These are placed under a separate references section.

Inline citations may use one of the following three systems.

• Embedded HTML links
• Footnotes
• Follow the system used for an article's existing citations. Do not change formats without checking for objections on the talk page. If there is no agreement, prefer the style used by the first major contributor.
• When evidence is mentioned within the body of an article, it is helpful to identify them clearly on the first mention.
• It is helpful to briefly mention in the citation what evidence it is that is being referenced. This allows later editors to tell whether it's a phrase, sentence or paragraph that's being documented, and also to find uncited evidence sneaking into paragraphs that were otherwise referenced.
• If you are unclear as to which system or style to use, remember: the most important thing is to provide all the information one would need to identify and find the evidence. If necessary, put this information in the talk page, or in a comment on the main page, and ask others how to format it correctly for that article.

Embedded HTML links

For more details on embedded citations, see PESWiki:Embedded citations.

Web pages referenced in an article can be linked to directly by enclosing the URL in square brackets. For example, a reference to a online article can be embedded like: [http://www.example.com], which looks like this: [1]

A full citation can also be placed in the References section.

* {{cite news |last=Last_name |first=First_name |url=http://www.example.com |title=New Technnology Concept |publisher=A Media Source |date=01-01-2007 |accessdate=01-01-2007}}

which appears as:

• Last_name, First_name, "New Technnology Concept". A Media Source, 01-01-2007 (Accessed: 01-01-2007)

Footnotes

For more details on footnotes, see PESWiki:Footnotes.

A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a document to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference for it, or both. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote.

Footnotes come after punctuation

Footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are placed immediately after the punctuation.

What footnotes are normally used for

Some publications use footnotes for both the full citation of a source, and for additional comments or information of interest to the reader.

Full citations

Citation techniques include detailed information to be shown in a citation or reference section following the text. Full citations may be formatted by hand or using one of the citation templates. Full citations typically include: the name of the author, the title of the book or article, and the date of publication. Page numbers are essential whenever possible. The name of the publisher and its city is optional. The ISBN of a book is optional. Journal articles should include volume number, issue number and page numbers. Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in quotes, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, and the date you retrieved it if it is online. It is crucial that complete references be provided for each distinct edition referred to (or cited) in the article, and that each such in-line citation provide enough information to distinguish between editions.

Tools and Templates

Citation templates are available to help format citations for various source formats. Although they help to maintain a consisten citation style across articles, and specify the citation data unambiguously, the use of these templates is not required by PESWiki:Citing sources, and is neither encouraged nor discouraged by any other PESWiki guideline. Templates may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with the other editors on the article. Some editors find them helpful, while other editors find them annoying, particularly when used inline in the text. Because they are optional, editors should not add templates without consensus.

See the references and further reading sections of this article for numerous links to formatting details and style guides.

Images

Images should include both source details and a copyright notice on the image description page. If you downloaded this image from the web, you should give the URL. Example:

Source: Downloaded from http://www.example.com

If you got the image from an offline source, you should specify. For example:

Source: Scanned from public record #333 on file with Anytown, Somestate office/department

It is important that you list the author of the image (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. Examples:

Author: The Corporation

Photographer: User:user (User_name)

Author: Source

Notes

It may be useful to refer to explanatory notes in addition to citations. The citation technique named Footnotes works for both purposes. These notes may be referred to as endnotes, footnotes, or just notes.

Further reading/External articles

An ==External articles== or ==Further reading== or ==Bibliography== section is placed near the end of an article and offers articles and links to websites related to the topic that might be of interest to the reader. The section "Further reading" may include both online material and material not available online. All items used to for evidence in the article should be listed in the "References" or "Notes" section, and are generally not included in "Further reading" or "External articles". However, if an item used as a reference covers the topic beyond the scope of the article, and has significant usefulness beyond verification of the article, you may want to include it here as well. This also makes it easier for users to identify all the major recommended resources on a topic.

What to do when a evidence link "goes dead"

When a link in a section (a link to a evidence source for information in the article) "goes dead", it should be repaired or replaced if possible. External articles/Further reading sections are not as important, but bad links in those sections should also be fixed. Often, a live substitute link can be found. In most cases, one of the following approaches will preserve an acceptable citation:

• Some pages can be recovered from the Internet Archive. Just go to http://www.archive.org/ and search for the old link by URL. Make sure that your new citation mentions the date the page was archived by the Internet Archive.
• If this was a non-blind citation of web-only material, it may be worth the effort to search the target site for an equivalent page at a new location, an indication that the whole site has moved, etc.
• If the link was merely a "convenience link" to an online copy of material that originally appeared in print, and an appropriate substitute cannot be found, it is acceptable to drop the link but keep the citation.
• If you cannot find the page on the Internet Archive, remember that you can often find recently deleted pages in Google's cache. They won't be there long, and it is no use linking to them, but this may let you find the content, which can be useful in finding an equivalent page elsewhere on the Internet and linking to that.

If none of those strategies succeed, do not remove the inactive evidence, but rather record the date that the original link was found to be inactive — even inactive, it still records the sources that were used, and it is possible hard copies of such references may exist, or alternatively that the page will turn up in the near future in the Internet Archive, which deliberately lags by six months or more. When printed sources become outdated, scholars still routinely cite those works when referenced.

Tagging material needing evidence

If an article needs evidence but you are unable to produce it yourself, you can tag the article with the templates {{Unreferenced}}, {{Not verified}}, or {{Primarysources}}. It's often useful to indicate specific statements that need references by placing {{fact}} ("citation needed") after the sentence, but be careful not to overuse these tags. Don't be inappropriately cautious about removing unsourced material.

To summarize the use of in line tags for unsourced or poorly sourced material:

1. If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article, use the {{fact}} tag to ask for evidence and verification, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.
2. If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it is as very harmful or absurd, in which case it shouldn't be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense.
   

All material without evidence and poorly evidence contentious material about living individuals should be removed from articles and talk pages immediately. It should not be tagged. See PESWiki:Biographies and PESWiki:Libel.

See also

• PESWiki:Citation templates
• PESWiki:Scientific citations – guidelines for dealing with scientific and mathematical articles
• PESWiki:Copyright problems – in case of text that has been copied verbatim inappropriately
• PESWiki:Citing sources/example style – listing several examples of APA and Harvard referencing techniques