Wikipedia talk:Citing sources

Translation Help Request

We're currently translating the German language article on the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme into English. The German version features LOADS of references/citatations. We'd like to incorporate the references into the English article. Does anyone know how to do that other than going after each reference in the source code and manually adapting it to the English wikipedia's markup standards? Is there a bot for this? Or do people not migrate citations in general when they translate articles? TIA, Del Oso (talk) 16:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any bot to do that. But the citations, provided they are accurate, are certainly a very important thing to bring over! Not only are they important data for readers, but they justify the prose you are copying ... how else would WP:Verifiability be satisfied? Also, I'm not sure how WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT fits in with translating articles from other WPs ... I suppose an exception is made, since the understanding is that the editors in the other WP already read the sources: it would be a bit much to expect the article translator to also read all the sources. --Noleander (talk) 16:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

If the translation/importation is happening from one Wikipedia to another Wikipedia, then you import the citations under the same rules that you would if you were WP:SPLITting information out of another Wikipedia article (that is, you trust that the other Wikipedia editor got it right).

If you're importing or translating from some other place (say, some guy's blog that he just happens to have conveniently licensed as CC-SA), then you don't get to cite the blogger's sources just as if you'd read them yourself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Here's one of the first citations in that de.wiki article:

• Uwe M. Schneede: Exposition internationale du Surréalisme, Paris 1938. In: Bernd Klüser, Katharina Hegewisch (Hrsg.): Die Kunst der Ausstellung. Eine Dokumentation dreißig exemplarischer Kunstausstellungen dieses Jahrhunderts, S. 94

It looks to me like you need to change "Hrsg." to "Editor" and "S." to "page", and that's it. The formatting is all fine as it stands. You can optionally add translations for the titles if you want (we usually put them in [square brackets]), but that's not required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

• cough. Editors translating interwiki have been blocked in the last month over failure to check that the sources exist. Don't just trust the Germans, check that the book / chapter exists when you translate it, and that the citation information is correct. For example, "Eine Dokumentation dreißig exemplarischer Kunstausstellungen dieses Jahrhunderts" says that the chapters in this work may be primary sources, as does the title of the chapter, "Exposition internationale du Surréalisme, Paris 1938." Use of Primary sources in this way in an art history article may be considered Original Research on en.wikipedia. I'd check that it is being appropriately used while translating. Your citation, btw:
  • Uwe M. Schneede (DATE REQUIRED HERE OR…) "Exposition internationale du Surréalisme, Paris 1938." In: Bernd Klüser, Katharina Hegewisch (Eds.) Die Kunst der Ausstellung: Eine Dokumentation dreißig exemplarischer Kunstausstellungen dieses Jahrhunderts [The art of the exhibition: Documents from thirty examples of the century's art exhibitions] LOCATION OF PUBLICATION: PUBLISHER, …OR DATE REQUIRED HERE, p. 94. Thanks, Fifelfoo (talk) 02:04, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

By "required here", we of course mean "not required at all". Editors may choose any style of citation, including one that does not include the name of the publisher, the publisher's location, or the date, and of course the information cannot be given if it does not exist (e.g., the publication itself does not choose to name a date, which is not at all unusual for some types of documents). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

UN/UNSC Resolutions/Docs citing previous resolutions/UNCharter Chapters/statements. Are they Secondary Source at that point?

• Example: For the statement "Under UNSC Resolution 662, the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq was declared illegal" could one give a reference thus Linking to UNSC res 664 where it says "Reaffirms its decision in resolution 662 (1990)" ... talknic (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

• An organization restating a previous position isn't a secondary source. I'd go so far as to say that decision by an official organization that adopts a position proposed by some other source, and in so doing, gives it legal force that it wouldn't otherwise have, is a primary source. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:30, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

• OK accepted restating/reaffirming.

• Q 2: A statement like 99. in this document [1], where the speaker is quoting a third party. Does the document[2] become a Secondary Source at that point? ... talknic (talk) 17:20, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

You might want to read Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources and Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent.

The short answer is that it's complicated, but it's probably a primary source (and a primary independent source for the quotation of the third party).

The more relevant response is a question: Why do you really care if it's a secondary source? You are allowed to use primary sources (carefully). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be pointed out that the problem with primary sources is that they may require specialized knowledge to properly evaluate, and that secondary sources are where someone has evaluated the primary source. A source that merely quotes some original source is not thereby "secondary", it is only an indirect quote. If you want to quote what some organization has said (distinct from any inference or interpretation of the statement), quote them directly. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:49, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

How to cite dvd extras

How would i cite dvd extras? D4nnyw14 (talk) 21:10, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

• Director / Producer / Production company. (Year). "Name of DVD Extra" Name of Film Disk volume in disk set (volume). Unique Disk/Disk set ID. Distributor Location: Distributor name. Time within feature that citeable content appears (ie: 0:00), OR methodology to reproduce the cited content ("Select third tree to the left, the Art Director's name appears.").
• Using Template:cite video:
  • {{cite video |people=Director / Producer / Production company |year=Year |chapter=DVD Extra title |title=Film title |url= |format= |medium=DVD (Extra) |language= |trans_title= |publisher=Distributor |location=Distributor location |archiveurl= |archivedate= |accessdate= |volume=Disk 1 of 4 |time=00:00 OR Find the left most banana in the tree, and click it for the lighting guy's favourite toothpaste. |id=Disk release ID code (ie: WIKI04042014) |isbn= |oclc= |quote= |ref= }}
• that renders as:
  • Director / Producer / Production company (Year). "DVD Extra title". Film title (DVD (Extra)). Vol. Disk 1 of 4. Distributor location: Distributor. Event occurs at 00:00 OR Find the left most banana in the tree, and click it for the lighting guy's favourite toothpaste. Disk release ID code (ie: WIKI04042014). {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |trans_title= (help)
• ie:
  • Fifelfoo (Director), D4nnyw14 (Producer), Citing Sources Productions (2011). "Find the Hidden Citation". Lady Macbeth's Tragedy II: Beach Party Tragedy (DVD (Extra)). Vol. Disk 2 of 2. Wikipedia Distributions. Event occurs at 14:53. WIKI04042014. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |Location= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
• thanks Fifelfoo (talk) 23:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Please don't use |date= for just a year; use |year= instead. Anything other than a full date will mangle the anchor when using Harvard or shortened citations. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Ta, updated example as of Fifelfoo (talk) 11:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both for this, it's been really helpful :) D4nnyw14 (talk) 11:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Standards for handling publisher location

We need some kind of standard for how to do the |location= field of the citation templates. I would suggest, per WP:Systemic bias that the recommendations of Chicago Manual of Style, written by American editors for American writers to published in American works for American readers, and those of Oxford's Hart's Rules for the British, and so on, are not sufficient for a global encyclopedia. I would propose the following:

• Always use the common name of the city/town of publication (in English) when there is one: Munich, not München. Do not provide alternatives as we often do in article prose. Citations are metadata.
• Do not rewrite history. If the publisher does not exist any longer, use the common English name of the publisher's location as it was then (e.g. Peking, not Bejing for older books); if the publisher still exists in the same location, it's okay to update the spelling. If the publisher moved, retain the original publication data.
• Always include the country and do not abbreviate it except in the cases of the UK and the U.S. It is not safe to assume that "London", for example, always means "London, England"; to most Canadians, especially in the western provinces, "London" by itself means "London, Ontario". And Wikipedia is written for people who are not as well educated as you, too, who may not know where "the" London is anyway. Use London, UK or London, England, UK. Similarly, to New Mexicans, "Las Vegas" means Las Vegas, New Mexico; the more famous city is referred to by them as "Vegas" or Las Vegas, Nevada. You are not omniscient, and have no idea what geographical assumptions you hold may be confusing to others from different backgrounds. The country name is especially crucial when two or more locations with the same name publish a lot of books, e.g. Cambridge, England in the UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts in the US. Add the country even for well-known, uniquely-named places like Tokyo, Japan, as it is not harmful or difficult, it is consistent, and it serves as a form of metadata that could be useful. When a location has been absorbed by a larger metropolitan area, do not include both names, just use what the publisher used, unless the location name given is no longer valid, in which case use Original location name (now part of Current location name) or something similar.
• For the U.S, include the state. It is okay to use the standard state abbreviation in this case, just as we may use ISO date format for access dates. Do not assume that everyone in the world knows that Los Angeles is in California and that this is in the United States. For non-U.S. areas, it may or may not be helpful to include a regional clarifier (Canadian provinces, Australian states, British sub-Kingdom country divisions), and these may be abbreviated as well when included. Canberra, ACT, Australia, Toronto, ON, Canada. Including them tends not to be helpful for small countries or those with subdivisions few English speakers have ever heard of. It is especially important when there are two or more cities/towns in the country with the same name but in different subdivisions of the country, in which case the subdivision is required for disambiguation; "Jackson, US" is useless since it could refer to over 20 cities and towns. Do not use subdivisional names or abbreviations without also using the country name, of they can be mistaken for countries (Georgia is a U.S. state and a country and "PE" could be Prince Edward I., Canada or the ISO abbreviation of Peru).
• Do not use lower-than-subnational divisions (e.g. counties of U.S. states, administrative counties of England), unless required for disambiguation (as is actually the case for the four Jacksons in Wisconsin, as an extreme example). Editors often leave the state off of Kansas City believing it is redundant, not realizing there is a Kansas City, Missouri, too. Rather that make assumptions about what may or may not be optimal, simply follow the pattern and move on.
• If the name of a city ends with "City", retain that in the location parameter, especially if the bare city name is ambiguous with some other location (overlapping or otherwise): New York City, NY, US. But do not use "City of", "Town of", etc., constructions (City of Johannesburg), except in the unusual circumstance where this construction is universally used, e.g. with City of Industry, California, which is never referred to simply as "Industry" except by locals.
• Do not wikilink the city, sub-national division, or country. While any populated location is notable enough to have an entry in the encyclopedia, such links are distracting and help neither the reader nor an editor checking source verifiability.
• Do not wikilink or externally link to the publisher; even if it is notable and has an article, it's history is not relevant in the context of a citation to something it published the way that an author link might be.

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:36, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that we need any sort of standard for this issue at all. The rule is that the editors at each and every article get to use whatever citation system seems best to them for that article, including omitting locations entirely, linking to the publisher's webpage, including the county name, skipping the state name (do you really believe the average reader needs to be told the state and country for New York City?), or whatever else they want. We do not need a bunch of WP:Instruction creep like this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I do agree we shouldn't be using "town of..." FE. However we shouldn't modernize names. If something was published in Edo, we shouldn't change that to Tokyo.∞陣内Jinnai 00:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I partly agree with WhatamIdoing. People mostly don't follow the instructions we already have, so adding new ones is a waste of time. In particular the fairly standard custom is not to disambiguate world cities like London and Tokyo. I am sure that Canadians are perfectly aware that London (without qualification), in the context of a global encyclopaedia, will mean London England and not London Ontario. We shouldn't have a different rule for the location parameter in citations from the one we use for ordinary text. As for the special case of Cambridge, the problem is solved by not specifying the location because it is not needed when the publisher is "Cambridge University Press". -- Alarics (talk) 16:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

These are generally good points, and certainly ought to be considered, but better put as suggestions? And more appropriately in the WP:Manual of style?

I would disagree on two points: publisher's location (for books) should be as on the title page. If it is really necessary to include the modern name (or perhaps the publisher has moved?) then the new location could be put in brackets. Also, I don't see that the country should always be included; this should be left to the editor's (hopefully informed) discretion. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:54, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

On a related note, can somebody get http://reftag.appspot.com to scrape location data? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 00:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Citing a media guide

I've decided to put forth my best effort and try to turn 1999 Florida State Seminoles football team into a WP:GA. I do have a question about citing a media guide... how the heck do I do it? I got the media guide in my hands, but is it good enough to say "Florida State media guide, page 67"? I've been going through WP:CITE to try and get a clear-cut answer, but either my attention span is super short or I'm just not finding something. Help :-( Aquamelli (talk) 20:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If you are using Citation Style 1, then use {{cite press release}} with |type=Media guide. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:32, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

great, thank you! Aquamelli (talk) 22:23, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Quoting from citation

A question has arisen at WT:NFC regarding source text being used in the "quote" parameter for the various cite templates instead of simply paraphrasing this information into the artist while still providing the remainder of the cite. One editor believes that we actually should be filling out the "quote" parameter for every source.

Ignoring the non-free issue for the moment (as quoting every citation could be harmful), this doesn't seem to be a recommended practice. I do see the general use of "quote" for providing a foreign language statement and its translation, for fiction where a statement that is simply made in the plot is explained by providing the appropriate dialog to justify the point (without making interpretive statements, granted). But for a plainly factual statement where the only thing we as WP editors is paraphrasing it for summary inclusion (like this edit), the "quote" is unnecessary and weighs down the article. This other editor believes that filling in the "quote" parameters allows the reader to affirm easily that what is said is true, but I believe the weight of this requirement is far outweighed by the basic tenet of WP:V, that information must be verifiable, just not at that moment.

My concern from the NFC side is that if the "quote" parameter should be used, we are going to be pushing the cusp of fair use allowance for text depending on how much of a direct quote has to be pulled from the original source.

Is there an established guide to when the "quote" parameter should be used? --MASEM (t) 14:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

In practice, the quote field is little used, nor do major style guides recommend such a practice. I would definitely recommend using a reference quote where the source does not have a good way to reference a page or section, such as some ebooks. See WP:EBOOK. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:55, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Including quotations can be useful in contentious articles, particularly when dealing with a certain class of POV pushers who believe their inability to read and/or understand the source means that the source does not contain the material in question, e.g., "Failed verification, because my plain-text search of the JPEG scan of this old newspaper article did not find any words in the image". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Adding quotes will not fix that problem— it requires discussion. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Where to cite in an article?

Hi I'm interested to know if there is specific instructions on how to properly cite information in an article; specifically, if the reference must immediately follow the documentation. So far I have read that consistency seems to be the policy, in this case meaning, that if the rest of article has citations immediately following the documentation, then the others in the article should as well. The example I'm currently concerned with is citations for coordinates appearing in an infobox. It has been suggested to me that citations do not have to be in an infobox, but should be in the main body of text. I would think that this could cause confusion because it is not consistent and WP:Common Sense may apply. I would also think that any editor could see the coordinates at first glance and believe they are uncited, leading to unnecessary confusion and edits. Thoughts? Leitmotiv (talk) 00:04, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Prior discussion is at Template talk:Infobox cave#location ref. The wider issue is also discussed at

• Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 November 22#Template:Infobox ukcave.
• Template talk:Infobox cave#Merge from Template:Infobox ukcave
• User talk:TParis#Your comments regarding the merge of cave infoboxes
• Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Coordinates for personal residences or holdings
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Cave coordinates
• Wikipedia talk:Village pump#Censorship Exceptions

and more. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

What does citing sources have to do anything I've discussed before? Are you going to wikihound me everywhere I go when trying to educate myself? And are you trying to purposefully steer people away from helping me? That's irresponsible and does not assume good faith. I will also point out that it was you who offered I go reading in this direction. So I did and it lead me here to where I now have some questions for the editors at hand. You were unable to supply those answers at the original TfD so please allow me to find them here. Leitmotiv (talk) 22:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to suggest that you start by reading WP:MINREF, which should help you discover the difference between being able to name a reliable source that supports the material and actually naming a reliable source that supports the material. The first is required for all material; the second is almost always optional for something like coordinates.

When you understand that your question sounds very much like, "What is the best location for a completely unnecessary citation?" then perhaps we can make some recommendations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok I will look it over, thank you. However, coordinates which are very precise in nature, and have the potential to be extremely accurate, might need citations especially if it was put on Wikipedia using original research: see WP:NOR. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Given that there plenty of different tools and maps determine the coordinates of an object, which is usually not subject to dispute either, I don't see any need for explicit citation in most cases, simply comment in the revision history where you've got them from.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not the tools that are the issue, it's the location of the citation. With a citation not present in the article, it's hard to say if the coordinate has one and leads to further confusion. Burying it in the comments doesn't help viewers who routinely visit sources and it doesn't help editors either. Sources aren't strictly for editors, they're for everyone. There is very little gained by burying the citation in the comments where only editors can see them. WP:NOR still applies since any source that is only limited to the comment notes consequently means that it's also not apart of the article and fails to meet the requirements of that policy. An analogy for your proposal is to have some written journal without the citations readily visible, unless you use a decoding pen, except no where on the page does it tell you that you need a decoding pen to reveal the hidden citation that may or may not be there, which means you may have used your decoding pen for nothing and marked up your page needlessly (and perhaps, 99% of your readers don't even own decoding pens). Again, doesn't consistency apply per WP:citing sources#Citation style? Leitmotiv (talk) 19:39, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

You misunderstand my point. Normally you can consider coordinates as common knowledge (and no case of WP:NOR), which requires no citation. Naming it in revision history is purely optional.--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

How could coordinates be common knowledge? I can hardly think of a person that has a single coordinate memorized or can refer to one by demand. If you need a program or device to acquire coordinates then that is a far cry from common knowledge. If it's uncited material with no reliable source, then it looks to be original research. I can see what your saying being true if you already have a location on a map that is identified and needs to be converted. But if there is no source to begin with, then WP:NOR specifically applies. I believe I've seen conversations on Wikipedia demanding people go out and grab coordinates for features... but those are probably for areas that have suitable sources and are not likely to be contested. If you are the one going out on foot to collect data, how is that not original research? Leitmotiv (talk) 02:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

In most cases coordinates are common knowledge for the reasons I explained above, there plenty of obvious methods to look them up (maps, google, gps) that no specific citation is required (=common knowledge to use a map or google earth and normally they are not disputed). Common knowledge requires no citation - period (see also WhatamIdoing above) It is different in the (exceptional) case of an dispute or if you are actually the first to publish some measurements then a citation might be necessary and then there might be on OR issue. However if something OR than in doubt there's no need to argue about citations, then it simply doesn't belong into the article.

As far as the placing of a citation (if one is needed at all) is concerned usually people go with the first mentioning of the information requiring citation or with any established tradition in a particular subject area and its templates. For the latter you need to ask in a portal maintaining that area rather than here. Independent of that if to 2 parties are quarreling over the exact placing of citation, I'd most likely simply ask them, whether they got nothing better to do. In any case you got my thoughts, I'm not really interested to argue this further.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your first paragraph in entirety, so I probably did misunderstand you before. As for your second paragraph... I didn't really understand your second part of your first sentence concerning tradition and portals. Could you be more elaborate? I may not be familiar with what you are referring to. Other than that... yeah some folks may not have anything better to do. I find Wikipedia and its editors (including myself) in a state of irony. It could be argued that as Wikipedeans we have no life, but the entire function of Wikipedia is to document real life and its extensions. Cheers! Leitmotiv (talk) 04:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Certain fields within WP may have their own recommendation/traditions regarding format question and how to organize context, which are beyond general policies or guidelines like this one and more specific. But to discuss these or to get informed about these, this is wrong place. Instead you should ask the portal or wikiproject that is "responsible" for the field in question. So let's say you have a question concerning format styles for math formulas, then the best project site to ask is the math portal or the Wikiproject mathematics. Similarly if you are wondering about any possible traditions/recommendations regarding geographic or geological topics (such as how to use geography templates, placing of citation within their infoboxes, etc.), then you should check the portals and wikiprojects for geology/geography (rather than here).--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Geographic restrictions

The link to a reference on Oregon High Desert Grotto seemingly returns a 403 response to anyone outside the USA (presumably by IP sniffing). This means that it is not working for the majority of our readers. WP:DEADREF doesn't seem to have any advice for such cases (the [http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.tsweekly.com/outside/natural-world/cave-robber-case-closed-intrepid-forest-investigator-hunts-down-missing-lava-cave-formations.html wayback.archive.org version does not show the pictures. How should this be handled? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Can you archive it with WebCite? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not a DEADREF, because the URL works (for some people). What applies is the general principle behind PAYWALL: it does not matter if you personally are able to see the material online. So long as someone can get to the page, the material is still verifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:34, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps not; but we need to account for the fact that it wont work for the majority of our readers. How can we do so, and advise them, so they're not sent to a non-functioning page? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:39, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

With WP:External links, we advise adding some sort of plain-text label that explains the situation after the link, e.g., "(in regions where licensed)" or "(for users within the US)". Perhaps that would work for this situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Done: http://www.webcitation.org/64MfBXO4j but that also doesn't show images. Not an issue for a reference, I suppose. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Use of quote parameter in footnote - a proposal to provide better guidance

I suggest that it would be helpful to give editor more guidance in the use of the quote parameter in citation templates. While there is some guidance currently, I don't believe the guidance is complete. This task will have two challenges: even when we, as a community, know what guidance we want to give, the crafting of suitable language can be a challenge. In this instance, my sense is that we aren't all on the same page, so part of the task will be to determine what is, and is not permissible. It may be premature to discuss specific wording prior to reaching a consensus on what we want as best practices, but draft wording may help clarify the issues to be resolved.

My proposal is to discuss the following for a short period of time, then open an RfC to get broader input.

Background

This issue has two aspects:

• Fair use - ensuring that any such quote is in compliance with the WP:NONFREE guideline
• Editorial - determining what style guidance we wish to give editors regarding the use of the parameter, accepting compliance with WP:NONFREE as a minimum condition

A discussion about the Fair Use aspect began, appropriately enough, at the NONFREE talk page. However, that discussion quickly extended to editorial issues, which, as Masem pointed out, more properly belong at CITE. That discussion is here

Existing guidance

The current guidelines suggests use of the quote parameter in the following cases:

• If the source is an e-book that does not provide page numbers, the citation should include information that enables readers to locate the source material within the e-book, such as chapter number, paragraph number, or a short quote from the source itself.
• In the case of non-English sources, it may be helpful to quote from the original text and then give an English translation. If the article itself contains a translation of a quote from such a source (without the original), then the original should be included in the footnote.

However, this limited guidance does not include all examples, nor give any general guidance on the use of the parameter.

Proposed guidance

I think it would be useful to have a section on the use of the quote parameter, containing a general statement of use, followed by examples of proper usage, and examples where the use would be discouraged.

I'm not yet ready to craft an introductory sentence, but I'll make a list of examples, culled primarily from the discussions, and see if readers are willing to weigh in on whether these are all acceptable uses of the parameter. I'll try to give each a short description, and will start with the two examples in the existing guidance.

Sample supported uses

1. E-Book If the source is an e-book that does not provide page numbers, the citation should include information that enables readers to locate the source material within the e-book, such as chapter number, paragraph number, or a short quote from the source itself.
2. Non-English In the case of non-English sources, it may be helpful to quote from the original text and then give an English translation. If the article itself contains a translation of a quote from such a source (without the original), then the original should be included in the footnote.
3. Fact Support (online) Including a relevant quote helps the reader ensure that a basic fact is supported by the source. While a diligent reader can go to the source, a single sentence or two quoted may be sufficient to support the claim. In addition, while the original material may be online at the time the footnote was added, link rot occurs, and the quote will help ensure that the supporting material is easily found.
4. Fact Support (not online) Including a relevant quote helps the reader ensure that a basic fact is supported by the source. While a diligent reader can go to the source, if the source is not an online source, then tracking down the source may be difficult. While WP:V does not require "ease of access", it is a benefit to the reader to provide the relevant material in the article, as long as it complies with WP:F.
5. Controversial Fact Support It is not necessary, nor desirable, to support every cited fact with a quote. While the facts should, in general, be referenced, in case there is a question, in many cases, there is no controversy, and the reference without a supporting quote may be sufficient. For example, in most cases, a birth date or location is uncontroversial, and a simple citation is sufficient. In other cases, there may be a controversy about the date or location, and the inclusion of a relevant quote may be a service to the reader.
6. Opinion Support In many cases, an opinion about an entity is expressed, and editorial considerations support the use of a paraphrased summary, rather than the inclusion in the article of a direct quote. In these cases, the inclusion of a relevant quote in the footnote will help assure readers that the paraphrase is an appropriate summarization of the source.
7. Explanatory Decorative a source may contain an interesting anecdote that doesn't merit inclusion in the article directly, because it would interrupt the flow of the article. Including the anecdote in the footnote provides a service for the interested reader.

Caution - my inclusion of an item in this list does not mean I support it, I am attempting to cover the examples I have seen, to get a consensus on their use. It addition, it is unlikely we would include all such examples; three of the "fact" items represent broader and narrower usages, and we should determine how broad the support should be.

I'll also note that Richard Arthur Norton's argument is intriguing. I was originally supportive of a narrow list of permitted uses, but his argument for a broader usage is quite interesting.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:56, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

• I'm largely in favor of all of the above. The only thing I think really needs to be added is a notion of how long of a quote is generally acceptable. I realize that adding such guidance is hard, but something like "from non-free sources it is almost always a good idea to quote no more than 50 words or 10% of the text, whichever is smaller". And "even from free sources, best practice is to limit quotes to no more than 100 words" (Note: I'm not hugely attached to any of those values, they just sound about right). I'd also add my voice in saying that I've found quotes in the references to make the article much more interesting/complete. YMMV. Hobit (talk) 19:22, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• I find Richard's argument rather alarming from a fair use standpoint. He is arguing that we can adopt the fair use standards of a search engine, which exists specifically to direct people to the original works, whereas by contrast he argues in part that we need the quotes to help people avoid utilizing the original works. ("The New York Times stored all their abstracts at Proquest then they were moved to the New York Times website. All had to be refound and relinked. The Wall Street Journal is now behind a paywall and the quoted original material is no longer available for free. It allows the fact to be found in a long magazine article. A New York Times magazine article can be 10 pages of un-numbered text, a person verifying the fact only needs to cut and paste the quote to find it and be able to read it in situ.") With the Wall Street Journal argument specifically, we would be expressly setting out to harm the market for the original--one of the factors for assessing fair use. Brief quotes can be useful if a fact is or may be controversial, but when information is not controversial (as, say, footnote 1), we are incorporating non-free content where free content can serve just as well, which is straining the bounds of policy. In the case of that footnote, it is also going beyond supporting the fact that it references; it is not building on the content but simply appropriating it for the information. I do not support points 3 or 4 for that reason and certainly do not support point 7. We can't appropriate non-free content for decorative value. It would provide a service for interested readers if we included jpgs of popular songs, too, but our approach to non-free content just doesn't allow it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Do you really think someone is going to read a sentence or two of an article in Wikipedia weeks, months or years after it was in an original Wall Street Journal article and then cancel their subscription to the Wall Street Journal? You can argue the opposite, that each reference to the WSJ in Wikipedia with a quote is a free advertisement for the WSJ encouraging people to subscribe. Remember, the headline of every article is also copyrighted, and we use them under fair use. One person's decoration is another person's vital fact verified. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

You yourself just said that "The Wall Street Journal is now behind a paywall and the quoted original material is no longer available for free". The only reason that this could justify using the quote is because people are not paying for the source. If by the headline of every article, you mean the title, titles are not copyrightable under US law. We can use them without concern. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• • Hi, you seem to be mixing our NFC policy, NFCC policy and fair use in a few places. The NFCC doesn't apply to raw text. The NFC policy does apply to text, but the only applicable guidance in this situation is that "excessively long" quotes are not acceptable. That leaves us with fair use. Fair use, is, by its nature, not well defined. That said, NFC guidelines are generally extremely conservative so as to fit easily into fair use standards. I don't really see that any of those three issues apply here. Could you clarify? Hobit (talk) 20:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm confused; what makes you think Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria doesn't apply to text? It specifically mentions it: "There is no automatic entitlement to use non-free content in an article or elsewhere on Wikipedia. Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author, and specifically indicated as direct quotations via quotation marks, <blockquote>, or a similar method." It incorporates by references the terms of the guideline, which require that non-free text "be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea"--all transformative usages. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:53, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
      • The 10 point criteria doesn't apply to text AFAICT. After discussing text it says "Other non-free content—including all copyrighted images, audio and video clips, and other media files that lack a free content license—may be used on the English Wikipedia only where all 10 of the following criteria are met." (emphasis added). I take that to mean that those criteria don't apply to text. Your quote about "illustrating a point" seems to come from WP:NFC not WP:NFCC. Perhaps there is some other document you are looking at where both things are on the same page? And again, you jump to using the language of fair use "transformative usages", text that doesn't exist in either the NFC or NFCC. In any case, establishing context isn't a transformative use (or at least I've never seen it even claimed as such before). Can we please take the NFCC, NFC and fair use one at a time? Jumping around between the three not only isn't helpful, it's darn confusing. Hobit (talk) 21:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
        • No, it doesn't. I didn't say anything about the 10 point criteria. Policy says "in accordance with guideline", which incorporates the guideline explicitly by reference. Any use of non-free text that does not accord with guideline does not accord with policy. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:45, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
          • The NFCC is the 10 point criteria, yes? I mean that's what the second "C" stands for. I will admit I'm not sure what the sentence about text is trying to say. I'm not sure which guideline it's trying to refer to. Specifically not the 10 point part and there isn't anything else _there_ to refer to. Could you explain how you are reading it? Hobit (talk) 23:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
            • No, WP:NFCC is the shorthand title of the policy which includes the 10 point criteria. The top of the policy says, "For the full non-free content use guideline (including this policy and its criteria) see Wikipedia:Non-free content." This is how we know to which guideline that content refers when it says "Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline...." Do you suppose others may be similarly confused as to which guideline is meant? We could always suggest wikilinking it in spite of the notice on the top. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) One of the points not listed is that a quote serves as part of the identification of the citation.  My sense is that the quote is a function of the citation, not of the article.  So if one source is used dozens of times, it is not my sense that I should try to provide dozens of quotes.  But allowing that I can add a quote, an artistic element becomes how to use it.  As Hobit mentioned, one of the benefits of the quote can be to make the article more interesting.  While a basic use would be instant WP:V verification of material in the article, another use of the quote is to bring in material not mentioned in the article.  It is also worth mentioning that there is a big difference between a quote in the article and the same quote in the citation, the quote in the citation serves more in the role as an advertisement, in that it draws attention to the original author and publisher.  This becomes a win-win-win for the author, publisher, and reader; with the editor getting the joy of knowing good work has been produced.  Further, we have a precedent from Google books.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:22, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Google books gives us no precedent for doing this for two reasons: first, as a search engine, they have a different function than Wikipedia and so their basis for "fair use" is different than ours, under the first pillar. Second, Google books is not exactly legally cleared in its usage; see [3]. The bulk of copyrighted works displayed on Google are licensed and paid for ([4]), a luxury we don't have. Hoping that copyright owners will actually be pleased if we save people the bother of paying to read their text is not an unheard of argument, but I think it was quite rightly rejected by Commons in their precautionary principle, who list specifically as against their scope such defenses as "“The copyright owner will not mind/should be pleased that we have disseminated his/her work.”" We do not use non-free content where free content serves; our usage must be transformative and not seek to supersede the original. Utilizing a quote in a body of text offers us much more defense than utilizing it to "bring in material not mentioned in the article" and certainly decorative use should play no part in our adaptation of copyrighted content. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:53, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

A most interesting discussion. Generally I agree with much of the above. Here's my two cents but it is in the form of somewhat random musings. I agree with SPhilbrick that a better-worded guideline about the quote parameter |quote= quote goes here might be a worthwhile addition. And I agree with Richard Arthur Norton's general approach to this issue as well. And, I think people understand, correctly, that this is a tough issue with many nuances and facets since we're trying to straddle two competing principles: verifiability and protecting copyrights as per the non-free content rulings. In Wikipedia, we would like to verify facts but at the same time not verify them so much that we plagiarize or steal paid-content from writers who do this for a living. As a result of the ambiguity, I doubt that any kind of hard-and-fast rule is possible, since any particular instance of quoting depends on many variables, such as the context of the quote, the extent of quoting overall within an article, whether the quote serves to verify a fact or whether it is a rip-off of paid material. Looking over the list of "Sample supported uses" above, I am not quite sure what to make of it, in the sense of what is a fact versus what is an opinion, what are e-books versus what are not e-books (since some content may morph between both worlds), which facts are supposedly controversial versus which aren't -- I suppose it might be tough for any of us to nail down what is meant. And I am kind of thinking it boils down to judgment calls, so all I can do at this point is perhaps a few observations from my experience which might help people move this discussion along?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Quoting brings prestige. And citing in general, as we realize, brings respect to the quoted source by implying that the source is important, correct, interesting, worthy of attention. It brings eyeballs to the source. Citations work like plumbing valves (wider pipes, greater pressure) bringing greater web traffic. (I worked on an article on Search engine optimization a while back.) It boosts a source's PageRank if the source quoted is viewable online, such as a web-readable newspaper article. I have often quoted The New York Times and Boston Globe and Washington Post in my contributions to Wikipedia articles, and what I notice is that not once -- in over three years of contributing here -- come across a message from any newspaper editor or reporter accusing me of plagiarizing their material or causing them to lose sales or complaining that I have quoted them too extensively. If there had been a complaint, I have not heard them, when it is easy for any reporter or editor from any publication to write on my talk page or even send me an email. Why no complaints? And I suspect the reason is that newspapers and sources in general, including academic publications, books, e-books, websites, YouTube videos on occasion, and more like being cited since it means greater traffic to their websites, greater prestige, perhaps more sales opportunities for them. If citations hurt for-profit media businesses, wouldn't we have got some backlash? And we should realize that many sources work hard to make themselves readily viewable on the web -- this is their decision -- they know what they're doing -- it's a two-way street, in a sense.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• They don't complain to you because they complain to the Wikimedia Foundation. And, yes, it does happen. I suspect The New York Times doesn't need our help boosting their prestige, but "making themselves readily viewable" may translate as "link me" more readily than "copy from me". This may be why the New York Times' Terms of Use, for example. says, "You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as provided in Section 2.3 of these Terms of Service), create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content or the Services (including software) in whole or in part." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:06, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

The issue of ownership of information is highly complex. Suppose a NY Times reporter interviews a person Y. The words belong to Y. Y said them. But the NY Times publishes Y's words. Does the NY Times forever own the "right" to Y's words? These are tough tough issues as I hope everybody here realizes, and the issue of copyright and ownership of information is bound up in larger legal issues which continue to evolve.- Plus can you give us an idea of how extensive are the complaints of the NY Times?-Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

While there is some complexity involved in who owns the rights to an interview, the one point that is straightforward is this: it isn't us. :) I'm under an NDA, but I think can safely say that I am unfamiliar with any complaints originating from NYT; I am familiar with complaints of overuse of quotations from the American Psychological Association and from individual authors of the ODNB. These were public, so I don't have any secrecy issues there. They predate my contract, in fact. The former was particularly messy, as it involved cleansing dozens of articles. Quotations are perfectly fine, so long as they are comfortably within fair use, but we need to be careful when we start making assumptions regarding tacit consent or approval of news agencies or other publications. If they want to license their content compatibly so that we can copy it, they can do that. Most of them have chosen to retain copyright, and we can't push it by concluding that, by publishing their own content, they are inviting us to publish it as well. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

NDA => nondisclosure agreement? It is interesting to learn about your experiences and viewpoint. I, for one, will try to minimize my using of quotations, including in the "quote parameter" within a citation. At the same time, if a particular media source such as the American Psychological Association or the ODNB (whatever that is) makes a fuss, perhaps a possible reply would be along these lines: would the APA or ODNB be willing to have all references to their organization and accompanying publications removed from Wikipedia entirely? I doubt they would want this. What I am saying (and I think others here are also saying) is that the benefits to APA/ODNB by having their organizations & publications quoted in Wikipedia far exceeds any possible downsides about copyright issues, and that if we gave them a choice -- all or nothing -- in Wikipedia -- that I believe these organizations would see the benefit of being in Wikipedia. I believe there is much hypocrisy regarding many facets of this issue.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sorry. I didn't think to check if that was a disambig page. I'm not trying to be obscure with the ODNB; I'm afraid I just assumed that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography was widely known by those initials. I can't speak for Oxford University Press, but they may feel fairly secure in their place, with or without inclusion as a source in Wikipedia...who after all may siphon off some of their customers. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Making love to an old woman. And by this, what I mean, as you surely guessed, is that quoting a source is akin to making love to an old woman since it's hard to overdo it. Really. Suppose we're writing an article about Flowering plant. Too many quotes? Readers eyes will glaze over. Other contributors will find the overly extensive quoting boring, off-topic, and so there is a built-in tendency within Wikipedia to cut down the clutter for space or editing reasons. Force of reason will naturally keep quoting down to reasonable levels.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Not only did I not guess that, but...what the hell are you talking about? Starting with "Suppose" you make some sense, but before that I'm lost, and I'm not sure I want to understand. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• What I'm getting at is this: there are forces here at Wikipedia which prevent us from over-quoting, from overdoing it, namely, that too much quoting will make articles boring and unhelpful. Quote too much? And another contributor (without any understanding of copyright issues) will chop out what's clearly irrelevant. The point being that we should not worry too much about this issue, but don't quote me on this. :) --Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:26, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• We actually need to be diligent on overquoting. It is a copyright issue, one of the few areas that the Foundation asks us to police aggressively. While the overinclusion of quotes on one article may not cause a legal issue before they are trimmed, it is still not appropriate to work this approach. --MASEM (t) 21:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• I agree on being diligent about not overquoting.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Judgment call. I think it behooves contributors here at Wikipedia to put ourselves in the shoes of the sources we're quoting and ask: what might the source reasonably feel about our quoting them? Using discretion is important, with a possible guideline being: keeping it short and to the point. That seems reasonable. I like the practice of "one or two short sentences" and removing irrelevant material using "..." in their stead within the quote parameter.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it is silly to panic about how a source will react. If they do react negatively, we can remove every single quote with one run of a bot, once the Wikimedia Foundation gets a take down notice. Basing policy on the worst case scenario is never a good idea. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, when there are immediate legal issues at play, we do need proactivity. Copyvios and false BLPs are two of them; we taken action ideally before the person(s) affected notice; and even then, if the Foundation gets a complain, we follow through. If we simply waiting until the Foundation said there was a problem, WP would likely be in more hot water. Are we going to see the project end on over-indulgence of quotes within references? Unlikely but we do need to be aware that that's an issue we need to think about dealing with before it becomes a larger problem. --MASEM (t) 22:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Quoting is advertising. Let me see if I can explain. It comes down to a general problem with the buying and selling of information which I bumped into when I used to be a management consultant, and it's this: how valuable is a specific piece of information X? We don't know X. We know that X is information. We know that we don't know X. We won't know how valuable X is until we learn X, and after we learn X, then why should we pay anything for having learned it? This is a classic problem in marketing research and consulting and it is a doozy. And, to an extent, this issue is present in for-pay media such as newspapers, content such as books, videos -- any kind of information. Newspapers confront this problem by putting their most precious information -- the headline -- in HUGE BOLD LETTERS so that any passing pedestrian might be tempted to read further. Consider movies: how will you sell a movie to the public? And the way the film industry tries to get at this problem is to show trailers -- spliced-together film clips of the movie. I have often seen a movie trailer and gotten a fairly good idea of what the movie was about from start to finish -- for free. What I am saying is that a quote in Wikipedia, even within the quote parameter in a citation or even in an article itself -- is kind of like a film clip of a trailer. A quote is a teaser, a free headline of sorts, a free-promotional giveaway, an advertisement for further information urging a viewer to learn more from the original source (and hopefully buy it there?).--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• I agree that quoting can be advertising, but it can cut both ways. One of the arguments for the inclusion of a quote is that it reduces the need to visit the original material. While I like your analogy to a trailer, not all quotes work that way, in fact, in many cases, they might be the film equivalent of a spoiler. You might reduce the audience for The Sixth Sense if you revealed certain things in the trailer, so they did not. However, our quotes are generally intended to cut to the chase, not tantalize, so I suspect that this argument works against the use of a quote in many cases.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:23, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• I think we're in agreement, essentially, that decisions about quoting are judgment calls.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Good quotes point readers to the source. And maybe that might be the wellspring of a guideline for quoting in Wikipedia -- that we quote to the extent that it incites a reader to see more of the real newspaper article without giving them the whole content of the article. A quote "works" if it gets a reader to click on the NY Times article online; a quote is "overdone" if it is so extensive that a reader gets the full benefit without any incentive to learn more from the NY Times. Another way to put it is this: quoting is helpful when it steers people to sources; it is harmful when used so extensively that it is as if Wikipedia becomes the New York Times by trying to replace it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• More valuable content should be quoted less. Content which we might see as more valuable -- meaning more likely to generate wealth for a medium -- we should use shorter quotes AND give the source greater attention within the articles itself. Particularly: recent content; in-demand content. Less valuable content (ie older) such as dated newspaper reports (eg over 20 years old maybe) I think we can be more liberal with quoting. For example, I noticed in the article Anselm J. McLaurin that one user removed a quote from a newspaper here. Here is the quote: "United States Senator Anselm Joseph McLaurin died suddenly to-night of heart disease at his home in Brandon, Miss. The fatal attack seized Senator McLaurin while he was seated in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace in his library. He fell forward without speaking a word, and life was extinct when members of his family reached his side." I question whether removal of the quote was wise since the information is old and non-commercial. The quote was from an obituary in the NY Times dated 1909. I sincerely doubt that the NY Times cares whether we use the full quote or not. I doubt anybody would pay $3 or more to read a 100+ year old article (although it is possible I may be mistaken about this.) It is helpful for Wikipedia fact-checkers to see the quote since it helps readers verify the accuracy of the Wikipedia article. The big benefit to the NY Times is building a reputation for providing factual information, generally, and Wikipedia quoting this article helps it achieve this purpose.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It is public domain SPhilbrik but is opposed to quotes for the sake of aesthetics, whether they are pd or fair use. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• We should celebrate good sources. When I find a particularly instructive article by The New York Times, for example, I put both the name of the reporter and a wikilink to the publication within the article itself -- readable by people -- to acknowledge the reporter's contribution. This brings more readers to both the Wikipedia article about the medium as well as to the content on the web by that medium -- ie both the New York Times Wikipedia article and the online article itself.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Poetry. Here is an area where I think we should tread very lightly (and quote less) since it takes a writer much longer to come up with even one line. Here, I am loathe to even quote a full line of a poem, particularly if it is a contemporary poet.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• It was my hope that we would cover the fair use rules at WT:F, and take compliance with those rules as a given here, then concentrate on editorial issues here. It is fairly well established over there that the length of an acceptable quote is a function of several things, including the length of the original material, so that a quoted segment of a short poem should be shorter than of a longer text. That applies to prose as well, as I learned when I failed to delete a quote that turned out to be the entire article.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Public domain content. I am not up on copyright law, but there should be something equivalent to the policy on image content, such that if content was written before a certain year (1923?) then there should not be any restrictions on quoting it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• There is; see Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Public domain. There is no restriction on quoting public domain sources. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:09, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oh. I didn't know. Thanks.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I hope these musings are helpful, but it can get so complicated. I know a general boost to mankind is our ability to share information freely (one of the keys of the dominance of homo sapien sapiens) -- it is also a boost to authors if they can chalk off some specific words as "their own" and sell it, since the possibility of the chalking off motivates them to write some very interesting stuff. The weirdness of these two worlds colliding -- free dissemination of information and copyrights -- you can see everyday in the public library, where people can borrow a book for FREE which has the words COPYRIGHT on the third page. Clearly one of you bright people writing here will someday explain this weirdness to me while keeping a straight face.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

We have to be very selective on when we include quoted material. It doesn't have the same rigors as media use, but at the same, what we are basically doing is taking works under a variety of copyright licenses and putting them into the CC-BY-SA/GFDL. The more quoting we pull in from sources, the more unlikely we can justify distribution of the work under these licenses. There are appropriate points to use quotes, but our use in citation templates must be restricted to specific cases where the quotes can't be otherwise easily identified by our verification policy (in which the sources need only be available). We need to err on the minimum quote side to keep this a free-content work. --MASEM (t) 21:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

You raise an issue that is very difficult to implement in guidelines, namely, that if editors starting using the parameter more often, even if every single example complies with the guideline, the aggregate usage may create a problem.

@MRG - when Tomwsulcer noted he hadn't heard complaints form copyright holders, you noted that such complaints are likely to be directed at the Foundation. Is there a way to get a sense of how this community feels (which begs the question whether their interests all match). Are we viewed as close to the line, and need to be more rigorous? Are we viewed as doing OK, and simply need to remain vigilant? --SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean the community of people who write us? Some of them are quite reasonable people; some of them are, erm, proposing a definition of fair use that would not likely be well received in court. :) If you mean the WMF, the WMF seems overall pretty pleased (in my impression) with the community's diligent approach to copyright. I know I've heard chief counsel Geoff comment very admiringly about how knowledgeable the communities specifically of En Wiki and Commons are and how seriously it takes such questions. Of course, they understand that not all individuals adopt community standards, and they are aware of some of the major problem areas we face (like, say, WP:IEP). While of course they don't obstruct DMCA take down requests (and by law can't), they're certainly not quick to throw us under the bus when we get complaints, which can sometimes be resolved quietly to everybody's satisfaction. While there have been complaints about over-use of quotations (and there was an aggregate issue, as you mention, with quotes from one source being spread over multiple articles), I've never heard anybody at WMF complain that as a community we have slack standards. Personally (totally in my volunteer hat), I think we just need to be sure that we continue to remain thoughtful on the question and work within the deliberately narrow constraints we've been given. That said, I've used the quote parameter a time or two myself, so I'm certainly not against them in any blanket way. IMO, it's important that they remain brief and transformative and that we do not use them when we could adequately create free content instead. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the in-depth answer- my question was about people who write to us, but I am interested in hearing how the Foundation views our stance, so thanks for that as well.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 01:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

the term "decorative" as a supported use doesn't seem right. We commonly use "decorative" to describe images which don't meet NFCC-8 and on top of that I gather what we mean by "decorative" is a catch all for an appropriate quote which doesn't meet the rest of the examples. I want to carve out a space for quotations where the flow or presentation of the article would be diminished by a summary of the quote. I don't know where this is written but a common rule of thumb for quotations I have seen goes something like "if the original source makes a claim in a unique, pithy or interesting fashion such that summarizing the quote would damage the reader's understanding, then include the quote" That's a good editorial stance so perhaps it doesn't belong in our guidance on NFC, but I wouldn't want us to undercut that stance in a policy or guideline. Protonk (talk) 22:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting editorial stance. Seems like a good guideline for writing.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

One thing worth noting is the relative frequency of the potential uses of the quote parameter. If, we as a community, decided to support case 1 (e-books without page numbers) and case 2 (non-English) as valid uses of the quote option, this usage would comprise a fraction of one per cent of all citations. In contrast, if the community felt that Case 3 could be supported unreservedly, then we are talking about almost all citations. I'm sympathetic to the notion that adding a quote helps readers and editors in case of link rot, but that argument would justify the use of a quote in virtually every citation. Some might support that, but I predict this would meet resistance. I have a proposal so that we can eat our cake and have it, too.

Use the hidden option - If one adds a quote parameter as follows: |quote= <!--- add the quote of interest here --->, then the material, very likely subject to copyright, will not appear in the footnote, but will be available to editors in case the link rots, or is too an offline source. To anticipate a potential objection, I wouldn't suggest this give anyone license to include a long passage; I would still encourage excerpts no longer than are needed, but this would allow more common use of the parameter, without cluttering up the notes section of the article, or contributing to a sense that we are over quoting material subject to copyright.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:27, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Hidden quotes are just as legally problematic as visible ones. That's not a solution from the copyright side of the equation. --MASEM (t) 22:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion is mainly motivated by editorial considerations; I don't think I would like the looks of a reference section if virtually every footnote had a quote, and the only reason they were included, was to cover the chance that the link might rot. However, I'm also surmising that while a two sentence excerpt from the New York Times in a handful of articles won't raise any hackles there, if everyone started doing this, someone might make the argument that the individual instances aren't a problem, but the aggregate usage is a problem. While I admit I am speculating. I do not think there would be the same concern if the quotes were hidden, and you had to know where to look to find them. I'd love to hear that my concern about aggregate usage is flawed, but if so, then I reiterate that I'm not suggesting the use of more material than is allowed under fair use.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the SPhilbrick hidden quotes solution is excellent and brilliant since it straddles both worlds -- it allows a fact-checker to get the original quote, but it is VERY hard for almost all readers of Wikipedia (the exception, of course, is those who know how to edit an article and choose to edit that particular article -- a very small percent of all readers). So I disagree with the idea that the hidden-quote approach is "just as legally problematic as visible ones" since the practical effect is to reduce visibility dramatically. Yes, some lawyer might raise a technicality, but in practical considerations, this is a much much better solution in my view.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Because anyone can view the source code without having to log in and regardless of the protection on an article, the inclusion of text that is hidden otherwise on delivery of the article (even if not present in the generated HTML) is still being distributed. It is for all purposes equivalent for having that text present in the article to start with. Please note that I'm not saying it's illegal or not, just that the legal weight is simply the same; hiding the text does nothing to change the situation. --MASEM (t) 23:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. While it is still technically possible for anyone to view the code, and read the quote, the actual incidence of real people really reading the quote drops down to microscopic proportions. The fact that very few, if any, people actually read the actual quote must have some kind of legal import. I can not imagine a court or judge not taking this into account. And, in my view, SPhilbrick's brilliant solution is a win-win-win for many parties -- for persons seeking to protect copyright -- for fact-checkers -- for contributors using the "quote" parameter to prevent accusations of plagiarism -- it's a win for everybody in my view.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement. :) One of the issues with hidden text is that it can actually be copied and published by our automated reusers. This is the reason why people placing {{copyvio}} are supposed to remove rather than simply blank the text. I know this because I was part of the group of people that decided that having that template automatically hide the offending text for the week of investigation would be good enough, and I was told it is not. Whether the content is visible to our readers or not, hidden or not, it's still published if it's on our current page. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

The hidden option seems fine so long as the content meets fair use. If it doesn't, though, as I've noted in response to Tomwsulcer above, it's still a problem. It seems like a good solution to me to reduce unnecessary clutter, but we would need to word any recommendation carefully to avoid giving the misimpression that hiding a comment gives one carte blanche on copying copyrighted materials. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

My revised opinion below. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - The topmost proposal incudes "Decorative" (item #7) as an example of the quote parameter. A better term is "explanatory note", because the latter term is already used in WP:FNNR and HELP:Footnotes (see, e.g. Wikipedia:FOOTNOTES#Explanatory_notes). --Noleander (talk) 22:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'll change "decorative" to "explanatory" as WP:EXPLNOTE does cover what I meant.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose based on this. While it seemed like a workable idea on first blush, seeing it in action raises concerns in me that it will make detecting and fixing potential overusages of non-free content that much harder. None of this is intended to suggest that I think SPhilbrick is undeserving of barnstars. :) He deserves that for many reasons, if none other than putting thought into the issue. Because usage of quotes must accord with WP:NFC whether hidden or not, the need for transparency would seem to outweigh the benefit of reducing clutter. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar for Sphilbrick's hidden quote idea

Note -- an intelligent win-win-win solution to a nagging problem that I think Sphilbrick deserves commendation for.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:57, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you should give put it on Sphilbrick's talk page instead of a discussion board? As Wikipedia:Barnstars says, "To give the award to someone, just place the image on their talk page (or their awards page), and say why you have given it to them." (emphasis added) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:07, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, you did. I'm removing it from here. Enough to note that you've bestowed one, if you think that's important. You've given it to the person who merits it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:12, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but I wanted to make a point here as well -- that in my view, the hidden quote idea is a good one, and hopefully people who make a decision later about this whole issue, or revise the guidelines about the quote parameter, may take this into account?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Consensus isn't going to be based on your giving him a barnstar. :) It's based on the strength of arguments. You've made your argument above, and you're welcome to expand on it, but the barnstar is just social clutter here. Barnstars are nice; I've given out plenty myself. There's certainly nothing wrong with noting that you've given him one. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

What? I'm shocked, shocked, shocked that barnstars can't substitute for strength of arguments! (I am teasing). See, I kind of knew someone would delete the barnstar from this page, but the act of deleting it would plant in their mind the idea that the hidden quote strategy was a good one. Is this idea in your mind, possibly? At least maybe in future it may register with folks who write up the guidelines and rules for using the quote parameter, that's all. And I've started using the hidden quote thing in my contributions too until, of course, the Wikipedia community comes up with a different guideline, but based on how difficult these issues are, I do not expect anything clear which settles the issue once and for all.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I believe my mind is more influenced by the initial argument than the barnstar. My opinion of the "hidden quote" strategy is probably more influenced by my experiences in hiding copyrighted text with the {{copyvio}} template and learning that this still constitutes a copyright problem. Having seen now how it may be used in your recent changes to Planned shrinkage, I feel like I need to oppose this. Eliminating "see alsos", image captions, and references (including the hidden text), you have an article there that is 1,308 words. Your hidden comments include 779 words of presumably copyrighted text. (I have not checked each source to see if any are public domain.) Furthermore, some of the contents you are copying are not used to substantiate your facts, but go beyond what is needed for that purpose. You are supporting this sentence:

Yes, maybe I am overdoing it a bit here. Sometimes I work quickly. Perhaps I should have trimmed some of the quotes down further.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Planned shrinkage was mentioned as a development strategy for the South Bronx section of New York City in the 1970s, and more recently for other urban areas in the United States cities of New Orleans,[3][4] and several cities in Michigan such as Flint[5][6] and Benton Harbor.[7]

...with the following copyrighted text:

But New Orleanians resisted such ideas, just as residents of the South Bronx fought against Planned Shrinkage in the 1970s. In fact, the top-down attempt to shrink the city galvanized an enraged citizenry into a level of civic involvement that did not exist before the storms. Five years later it is paying off for New Orleans, just as it did over 30 years ago in the South Bronx. Sensing that spirit, thousands of new and returning residents have poured into the city—including me. source

Planned shrinkage became a workable concept in Michigan a few years ago, when the state changed its laws regarding properties foreclosed for delinquent taxes. Before, these buildings and land tended to become mired in legal limbo, contributing to blight. Now they quickly become the domain of county land banks, giving communities a powerful tool for change. source

The downward spiral — the absence of jobs creates a kind of permanent underclass; the permanent underclass creates a declining tax base; the declining tax base damages city services, local schools most of all, making positive change that much more difficult — is all too common in American cities now. source

I can't figure out how last quote is even supposed to substantiate the sentence. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:46, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

The "downward spiral" quote is in an article which mentions Benton Harbor, a Michigan city dealing with the issue of shrinkage (whether planned or not). The particular citation is not used in only one place in the article, but it used elsewhere to support the idea of the interplay of factors (absence of job => permanent underclass => declining tax base => school problems etc). But that quote points to an article which does mention Benton Harbor, so a diligent fact-checking Wikipedian, doubting whether or not I made up the information that Benton Harbor Michigan is dealing with issues of planned shrinkage. The citation does double duty here.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Before you settle in to opposition (if I'm not too late), I'd like to reiterate that I do not support the use of the hidden feature as a way to hide material under copyright, in the mistaken belief that this is an exemption to copyright. I believe all material hidden this way should meet the fair use criteria (or be PD). I think the inclusion of a quote in a footnote, merely to cover the possibility that the link might rot someday, is not a good editorial policy. Leaving a fair use excerpt as a hidden comment, to be reviewed in the case of link rot (which may also serve to help find the material if it has simply been moved), should qualify as a fair use, and doesn't clutter up the readers view.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Link rot is much better served using services like archive.org or webcite. Again looking to context dependency, these sites are doing the same job as Google in terms of being a search engine, and have the same semi-legalness to caching pages as Google does. We, at WP, do not. --MASEM (t) 14:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

My opposition is based only on concerns that improper implementation will be difficult to detect. We get articles at WP:CP that overuse non-free content in this way; it won't be readily apparent to those reading articles or evaluating them that there's a problem if the problem is hidden. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

What's this to do with anything, Tomwsulcer? </confused> --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

The purpose had been to experiment with the whole hidden quote idea. If you search for <!--- you'd find your quote about barnstars, from your user page, hidden within the quote parameter of my citation. The idea was to try to demonstrate that hidden quotes try to straddle multiple purposes (ie allowing fact-checking while protecting the rights of the original text-creators -- in practice, overall but not totally, since they're still visible but only to those most inclined to really dig into the information using edit mode). But I now am of the view that I am rather over my head in this whole copyright issue stuff, and when you and the others here who are up on this issue figure out some reasonable guidelines that are clear enough for moi to understand, then I'll do my best to follow them. My present understanding is to cool it on the quotes, including quotes within parameters, and even if I do use an occasional hidden quote, even then to try to keep it as short as possible and try to be mindful and respecting of copyrights.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Another arbitrary break

Generally, reading the comments above, I am coming around to the view that there is much here for me to learn. I do not understand much about copyright issues except in a general way. And I have been trying to imagine myself in the shoes of other entities such as media, WMF, other contributors, and such, to try to get a handle on these issues, and what I am saying is that I am less certain about this than I was a day or so before. What I've been doing is something which I had thought was good Wikipedia practice in terms of referencing everything -- and I saw that using quotes within a reference was the best way to do this since it made the fact-checkers job easier, and helped my contributions stick. Only rarely had I come across issues where someone complained about my using quotes within the "quote parameter"; now I am rethinking my choices. But the following is kind of where I am at now in thinking:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with SPhilbrick that the hidden feature should only be used if the "fair use" criterion is met. The "fair use" criterion being the trump consideration seems reasonable. But my concern is that, by reading some of the comments above, that too much weight is being given to the copyright issue, and other issues are being neglected which (in my view) can be very important to Wikipedia. Consider that there are numerous agendas, sometimes opposed, and let me see if I can identify some of them:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Wikimedia Foundation -- an agenda of not wanting to get sued for copyright violations by contributors.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Wikipedia contributors -- an agenda of writing stuff that will "stick" (not get deleted) and therefore referencing (including using quotes at times) helps further this agenda.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Wikipedia fact-checkers -- an agenda of matching text to a source; online sources are easier; link rot, paywalls, and the like block this. Referencing, quoting helps the fact-checker agenda.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Almost all media sources -- an agenda of wanting to be quoted in Wikipedia. I believe sincerely this is true. Quoting sources brings media greater respect, PageRank, increased web traffic. For established media, it reinforces their presence; for up-and-coming media, it helps establish their legitimacy. The few media sources who complain about copyright issues (as far as I can tell) are a vocal sue-happy extreme minority (unless you can provide evidence to the contrary.) I believe this could be tested as follows: If Wikipedia targets one particular source such as Oxford Dictionary or the American Psychological Association and removes every mention of them (including all links) from all Wikipedia articles, this would be a much much greater loss for them than any possibly copyvio issues. It would be like pulling the rug out from under them. And I am tempted to recommend this as a policy for WMF: that if WMF gets sued by any media source, then WMF could insist that all mentions of the source be removed (or that links to the source could be blocked -- perhaps easier to do) as a response. What Oxford does, what all media do, is take material from other sources and re-package it and re-write it in a new way. Oxford takes data from professors, other dictionaries, newspapers, and such when it comes up with its idea of what a word means. It rarely pays these sources. Then it turns around and sells it as if it were the original creator. It wasn't. Wikipedia (in my view) is more honest -- we say where we are getting information from (including Oxford) so people can check that yes, we are using such-and-such a source; how will they check it? Hunting down the citation, seeing the quote.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• We can't confuse reuse of information - which is free from copyright - with reuse of text, which is not. Repackaging and rewriting content in a new way is entirely legal. Overuse of non-free content is not. That's the bottom line here; we are careful not to violate copyright law. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Think about it this way. If Wikipedia was a direct competitor to Oxford -- a dictionary writer such as Merriam-Webster -- and if Wikipedia took Oxford's definitions and used them as our own -- then in my view Oxford would have a real issue with Wikipedia. It's one competitor stealing from another. One dictionary does the work; another benefits. But Wikipedia is a different level from Oxford -- a free resource which doesn't sell anything -- which assimilates material from many different sources. Wikipedia serves a different audience, a different purpose. I wrote much of the current Wikipedia article Equal opportunity. To do this I used many different dictionaries as references, including Blackwell, Merriam-Webster. The compilation Equal opportunity Wikipedia article is entirely different from anything that Blackwell or Webster could possibly do -- it is not a competitor to them. It is a different treatment, a new animal, a creature all its own. It's as if Wikipedia is a different level in the media food chain, and being on a different level implies in a way that the copyright rules don't quite make sense. Like, a NY Times reporter interviews X. It's X's words. NYT publishes Xs words and then uses this to sell newspapers. Does it make sense to see X and the NYT as competitors? Can X sue the NYT for "copyright" issues? Does X own the words that X said? And what I am sensing is that none of this makes sense because X and the NY Times are on different levels, in the same way that Oxford Dictionary and the Wikimedia Foundation are on different levels.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

So, what I am saying is that these agendas, above, conflict. And what would be bad, overall, is if Wikimedia chose one agenda to triumph over all the others. And I guess that is the heart of my concern here -- that Wikimedia is elevating the concerns of the few sue-happy disgruntled media outlets to the detriment of contributors, fact-checkers, readers, and other media. And I had seen the hidden quote parameter as a way to straddle numerous agendas. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

At the same time, I admit now that I am thoroughly confused about what is right here, and I am rethinking my whole practice of using quotes at all.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC) And, just to note, I removed all quotes within the "quote parameter" in the article Planned shrinkage -- just noting that I planned to so shrink the article, which did happen. :) I guess my policy from now on will be not to use the quote parameter unless absolutely necessary until you fine people can iron out what the guidelines are.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

A few things to keep in mind:

• The Foundation has a primary goal of making free content, educational works. They want people to be able to take copies (with proper attribution) and reuse them for whatever goals they want. Yes, the Foundation is worried about legal issues, which is why straight up copyright violations are removed, and why we have a strong BLP policy. But there are other resolutions, specifically, their resolution on non-free content, that recognize there is a need for fair use in creating educational content but set a bar purposely to maintain the goal of being a freely distributable work. This mostly applies to media files as opposed to things like text, but it is not a far cry to assure ourselves that the Foundation would like us to restrict the use of copyrighted text under the pretense of fair use.
• US Fair Use law is purposely vague, and only can be fixed in place by the results of case laws. As MRG has stated, context is very important here, and it is difficult to guess which way it would land should WP be taken to court over that issue. The best suggestion is to keep it to minimal uses, strengthening the fair use defense. But that doesn't necessarily mean zero in this case, since there's a strong recognizition that requoting direct passages has educational value.
• I would not be rushing to remove short statements in "quote" parameters of cite templates just yet. There's a reason we're having this discussion as to determine when is an appropriate time to fill in the "quote" parameter, in considering the fair use implications. --MASEM (t) 16:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok. I'll wait for guidance from you fine people but in the meantime will restrict my use of quote-parameters as much as possible.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• A conflicting agenda for the foundation is to defend fair use rights. So that agenda would urge us to make maximum use of fair use without going over the line into copyright infringement. Adoption of a policy that is so far on the safe side of the boundary that the boundary can't even be seen with a telescope would run contrary to this agenda. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Given the Foundation's statement on the use of non-free media files, they set a bar that is purposely stronger than the requirements of fair use - that is, for media we can't use the maximum amount that fair use would allow due to the Foundation's requirement (this is part of the free content mission). Now, text is not file media, and the resolution specifically doesn't mention text, but I would argue that the Foundation's resolution implies the same - we shouldn't be playing at the line of maximum fair use, but step back and use sounder judgement to keep us away from that line, particularly given the line is very grey and fuzzy. --MASEM (t) 16:36, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Even though our terms of use make no mention or allowance for fair use text at all ("If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available under terms that are compatible with the CC-BY-SA license"), I think it's pretty much given that they expect us to use quotes under fair use. But I'm not sure why you think that the Foundation's agenda urges making maximum use of fair use; on the contrary, the board licensing policy resolution on the contrary notes that the Foundation strives to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license" (emphasis in original), encouraging them to keep their exemption policies limited. Our goal here isn't to liberate content under copyright. It's to produce content under free license.

That said, I'm by no means against using quotes in articles. I do it routinely and sometimes use the quote parameter myself when I think that a fact is likely to be controversial. I just think it's essential that we make sure, though, that any recommendations we make as to the use of non-free content keeps people in the mind of the fact that they must make transformative use of non-free content and that their excerpts must remain brief and proportional. (Speaking of context dependent, a quote that is, say, 100 words out of a book isn't likely to be a problem...but it certainly may be if the article is 102 words long. :) A line out of a poem is likely to be fair use in a critical work about the poem or the poet, but almost certainly not on a coffee mug.)

I've been working copyright on Wikipedia for about four years now, so it stands to reason this is a major focus for me. I don't want to see people inadvertently led into problems. I think wherever we may offer guidance, we need to be very careful to offer clear guidance that can help them avoid some of the unfortunate drama we run into in that area. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I very much don't think the use of quotations to support controversial facts is going to work. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source. It necessarily compresses its sources - or people could just read the original. Thus, if we require (or even expect/encourage) quotations, the supporting quotations may become much longer than the article - and they can still be taken out of context. It is already the case that some editors have a strong pre-formed opinion on a topic, then type a few phrases into Google/Scholar/Books, and uncritically use small fragments of larger works they have neither read nor understood in full to "support" their version. I oppose anything that encourages that. The only way to properly use any source is to spend the time to read a sufficiently large fragment to understand the authors terminology and argument, and to read enough of the literature to understand the standing of the publication in the field. If you are already familiar with the literature and the author, that can be just a paragraph. But it can just as well be the full text, plus most of its references, plus most of the text referenced in the references, plus a few overview articles. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:21, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Text-source integrity: improve to show end-of-paragraph example?

I recently pointed an editor to WP:INTEGRITY to illustrate why per-sentence footnotes are often better than lumping all cites at the end of a paragraph. The editor replied that he read the section and thought it only supplied guidance on how to arrange footnotes within a sentence. Could someone add some guidance into WP:INTEGRITY to make it clear it applies to all ranges of "distance"? In particular, end-of-paragraph cites (supporting a fact at the start of a paragraph) are covered by the guideline? Thanks --Noleander (talk) 23:06, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually I don't really like the idea of explicitly discouraging paragraph based cites, that a decision that should be left to the author in doubt.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

It should be discouraged if they aren't citing directly after a quote or a controversial claim, such as something is better than something else. While the latter is a bit unclear, the former is pretty straight-forward.∞陣内Jinnai 19:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your comment.--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

@Kmhkmh - I agree with you that end-of-paragr cites are sometimes okay. My point was simply that WP:INTEGRITY, as written, is a bit confusing and is giving some readers the impression that it is only addressing end-of-sentence cites. It is not: it is supposed to be talking about all cites, wherever they are. I think WP:INTEGRITY is not a mandate, it is just a guideline, so your concerns (about it being optional) should already be addressed. --Noleander (talk) 20:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

My thought on reading through that section for the first time in a long while is that we need something that says "Use the smallest possible number of citations to adequately support the material". Really: four separate citations for one sentence? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Any step encouraging end-of-sentence cites (WP:BLUE and such of course kept in mind) is a good step. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 00:34, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

No, it is not and there's as you well know there's no consent for it either. Strict end of (each) sentence citing is at best a marginal improvement (coming at a cost of ugly clutter) but mostly bureaucratic window dressing. If you really want to assure the correctness of citations, you need annotated citations and/or flagged/confirmed versions.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: What if I just change one of the existing examples to show the WP:INTEGRITY principle applied to a 2-sentence situation? That would not add any words or detail to the guideline, and it would have the benefit of clarifying the confusion that led to this discussion. --Noleander (talk) 01:35, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, you can give it a try. If it doesn't seem to work, someone will revert it.

On the general question, sometimes per-sentence citations are good, and sometimes they're not. There is no rule that requires them. (Actually, there is a definite rule that doesn't require them, since editors are free to choose any style they want, including dumping all the citations at the end of the paragraph.) Have you considered the example at Wikipedia:Inline citation#Citation_density? Per-sentence citations in a paragraph with that sort of content would be pretty silly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

You are preaching to the choir. I have no strong feelings one way or another regarding WP:INTEGRITY ... but it is a guideline, and at the moment it is not clearly articulating the intention of its original authors. If anyone wants to add material to it that points out that it is sometimes a good idea to bundle cites at the end of a sentence/paragr that is fine with me. My limited focus in this discussion is assisting editors such as those that I mention in my opening post. --Noleander (talk) 21:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)