Talk:Jane Austen/Archive 7

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Archive 1

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Archive 5

Cleaning up references using cite templates

I have proposed to clean up the references using cite templates following this discussion at the FAC page. The references are currently inconsistent and confusing, as noted in the discussion.

For an example of a previous conversion that I have done, see these diffs for Euthyphro dilemma. Note that the sources cited are organized and that the short citations link to the full citations (with a couple of exceptions that I fixed in subsequent edits).

If there are no objections, I will work on this formatting over the next few days. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:58, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Three of the editors are in apparent agreement from the assessment page including Rexx, Prairie, and myself. Should be ok for you to move forward when you are ready for the citation section edits. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 18:12, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Converting citations (was: Your good idea and good approach)

(moved from User talk:Jonesey95 on 16 August 2016)

Your good idea which you just placed on the assessment page for Jane Austen I think is a good approach for the references there and I support your going forward with it. Doing the references one at a time by other editors would be noble and long-winded, and your approach is the better one. Let me know when and how much time you think you might need to apply your approach before we should be able to return to regular editing of the main article content there. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 16:42, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I put a note on the JA talk page to make sure there were no objections. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:59, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

The editors all seem in agreement on this including Prairie, Rexx, and myself. Looks like agreement for you to move forward. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95 @Fountains-of-Paris:, I did a few changes to Jane Austen references. I am not skilled with Harvard system, which you are, Jonesey95. I think it is totally clear that the references need to use standard formats, and the comments from the reviewers make that clear as well. It is a lot of work, as there are so many references, in many different formats. I suggest doing this in phases. One phase is the "loners" which I offer to do, using standard formats. The next issue to decide is which method to use for the most frequently cited authors: rp which puts the page number in the body of the article, or Harvard, which you understand well. If you can do the Harvard method quickly, Jonesey, please go ahead! I am more familiar with rp. I did use rp on a few references to Claire Tomalin's book. Otherwise, Jonesey95, she would fit well with the Harvard method, and please undo my few rp| for Tomalin in favor of Harvard method. The third issue with this article is having five references in one, instead of five references one after the other. I never saw that before. I assume we all agree that those should be done in what I think is the ordinary way, one reference for each source named. The fourth issue is dealing with comments mixed into a list of references; I thought it better to put the comments in the text associated with those references, a task to do last, I believe, as affecting the article and not simply the references. Would this split of the work be acceptable to all? --Prairieplant (talk) 18:16, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

If you would like, I can put the correct authors, and ISBN if needed for the Chelsea House publications. They are by Harold Bloom or an author in a book he edited. Let me know so we are not both doing it. I am watching your page and Jane Austen. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:22, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Wonderful. Please hold off until I am done with the mass changes to the References section so that we don't have edit conflicts. I'll put in an edit summary to that effect. Thanks. (Also, the title cited does not match the title listed in Worldcat, and the series name should use the |series= parameter.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

/* Essay collections */ Good catch by Jonesey. This is certainly the Modern Critical Interpretations series and is updated accordingly. Archiving comment field notices which have been applied. The only exception was the Modern Literary Characters volume which I have left unchanged. I shall also hold-off from further edits for now to avoid further edit conflicts until your saying the one way or the other. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 19:27, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Fountains-of-Paris I will watch for the note from Jonesey and do the task of adding authors, etc. and the series= parameter. Okay? You have done a lot already. I think I am finished with the one-off references, as they are put in a format, and I checked they are still good if url used, plus checked or added isbn for those. The big task is at hand and Jonesey works fast! --Prairieplant (talk) 19:36, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

It looks like everyone is on the same page again, and Jonesey will take the lead now with no edit conflicts. We will stand-by and wait for the all-is-done sign from Jonesey whenever the reference editing is completed. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 19:40, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I am done editing the Bibliography section for now. Please look for typos and errors, and also go ahead and make changes to the Chelsea House sources as you see fit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:03, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Okay, doing it now. No errors noted so far! Found missing isbn for Kordich --Prairieplant (talk) 20:19, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Done with my edits. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:04, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Is this the right direction?

Please take a look at the edits I have made so far. I have noticed that there are many refs citing multiple publications. Do we want to keep this pattern (it is possible to do so) or replace these refs with multiple individual citations?

What about edge cases, where it says "Jones, 150; see also Smith, 240; but Brown disagrees, see Brown, 135–136."? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:52, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95 Progress so far looks very good. As to the references now with one ref number, but containing three to five citations, my suggestion is to make each a separate reference, so what was [ Le Faye, "Chronology", 2–3; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", 190–191; Honan, 31–34; Lascelles, 7–8. Irene Collins believes that Austen "used some of the same school books as the boys" her father tutored. Collins, 42.] becomes five separate references, sequential. In this particular case, the words belong in the text. Perhaps four refs in a row, then new sentence, Austen "used some of the same school books as the boys" her father tutored. and ref to Collins page 42. In some other instances, the remarks in the citation repeat the text, so I would drop those remarks, as in the note on publishing in her era. May I say, you are very quick at this. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:17, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

An author is referenced but the book title is not in the lists. I think the citation belongs in Monographs and articles, citation |author=Sutherland, Kathryn |title=Jane Austen's Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood |date=6 October 2005 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0191555367 I hope whoever used that reference can confirm that I found the right book to match the page citations. The text visible in the google book seems to match the topics here, for example, the novella Lady Susan, at https://books.google.com/books?id=P0hcUyhuEpgC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=Lady+Susan++Jane+Austen%27s+Textual+Lives+Kathryn+Sutherland&source=bl&ots=Ze8CC_gBlU&sig=tiEG_Xb9e6eHoF-GZIqekPxU0ms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt-Iq-8cbOAhWG8x4KHUO0DX4Q6AEIPzAF#v=onepage&q=Lady%20Susan%20%20Jane%20Austen%27s%20Textual%20Lives%20Kathryn%20Sutherland&f=false --Prairieplant (talk) 21:35, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

There will be more of these. Bronte, for example, and some of the ones noted on the FAC page. They will become obvious as I convert refs to the sfn template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Can someone please work on converting the full sentences in the references (e.g. "Irene Collins believes that Austen "used some of the same school books as the boys" her father tutored. Collins, 42.") to either prose for the article or Notes? Thanks. You can leave the "Collins, 42" in the note; I'll convert it to use an sfn template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:41, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I moved several full sentences into the text, leaving the references in place, including the example above. I do not know if I got the all, so I am not posting done. Each one was done separately, easy to see in the edit history. --Prairieplant (talk) 14:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

REVERT EVERYTHING. MLA is a perfectly acceptable standard; cite book is wikipedia-only crap that we are forced to use. No. Revert all. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:45, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
- Nobody's forced to use any particular citation style, but the style should be consistent throughout the article (WP:CITESTYLE). clpo13_(talk) 22:54, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Lingzhi, please make a proposal that will result in a consistent citation style and that you are willing to implement. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:26, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Move to JA talk page?

If we are going to talk about the article, I'd like to move this whole discussion to the JA talk page so that future editors can see what we talked about. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:06, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Response is on Jane Austen Talk page. Good idea. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:18, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Cleanup tasks when the conversion is mostly done

Check for correct pp/p/loc parameters in sfn templates. If page numbers in short cites are not desired, use |loc= instead of |pp=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:30, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Fix consistency in use of "Mr." and "Mr". – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:44, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Come up with and implement a consensus method of citing multiple chapters from the same book (see discussion below). I am doing this in a consistent (but IMO ugly) way within the References, but it might not be the desired method. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Make sure that short footnotes consistently end with (or without) a full stop (period). – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:18, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Done Use a template other than {{Cnote2}} (e.g. {{efn-ua}}) for lettered explanatory notes so that notes can be inserted without having to manually rename (re-letter) each note. It doesn't make sense to letter them manually when templates can do it for us. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Address all questions and concerns in hidden HTML comments. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

headlong rush to change format, discussed with whom, how long?

When I started editing this page, I saw this prominently in the biblio section: LISTS OF WORKS ARE IN MLA — PLEASE FOLLOW — THANKS. I dunno who added that or when; I don't have time to mine the hist. Then I commented on the dreadful state of the refs. WHAM! An editor shows up... had he/she edited the article before?.. and offers to completely overhaul the format. WHAM. Two others agree. WHAM. It's done. Every bit of that happened while I was alseep after posting! No. That just isn't the way we do things. WP:CONSENSUS does not mean "two or three editors show up, agree with each other, and hijack the page overnight". No. That is not the Wikipedia way. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:13, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like this situation is frustrating for you. Please see and respond to my notes about the many inconsistent citation format at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jane Austen/archive2. Make a proposal that makes it so that future editors can easily add and maintain sources.

The format of the Bibliography citations can easily be changed to a consistent MLA format if it makes sense to do so. In the meantime, multiple editors are standardizing the References and Bibliography sections, adding missing authors and editors, fixing titles of works, linking short footnotes to full citations, fixing citation formatting to be consistent, clarifying which work is being cited when an author has more than one work listed in References and/or Bibliography, moving article prose from References to Notes (or to the article's body if appropriate), and other valuable work that makes the text in the article easier to verify. Verification is a core policy of Wikipedia, and it was simply not possible with the citations as they were written a few days ago, making this article clearly ineligible for FA status (heck, it doesn't even meet the GA criteria at this point). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:05, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The hidden text was added by Wadewitz in 2007 as the article began to have references organised. Having done some research, I don't think we can change to Modern Language Association format easily, after all. According to this page, it seems that MLA requires parenthetical inline citations, which this article has never had. On the other hand, this site defines the citation style of the full citation as "These are the general pieces of information that MLA suggests including in each Works Cited entry. In your citation, the elements should be listed in the following order: Author. Title of source. Title of container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location. Each element should be followed by the punctuation mark shown here." Following the reference clean-up, the full citations are consistently in the format "Author (Publication date). Title of source. Title of container. Version. Location: Publisher. ISBN." They are in that revised order because CS1 templates consistently impose that order on citations, removing the chance for inadvertent variations. I'm having a lot of difficulty in understanding why that minor rearrangement, for the sake of improving consistency, should the source of such outrage. For what it's worth, MLA dictates "1-inch margins all around; double-spaced; no extra spacing after paragraphs; 12-point typeface (usually Times New Roman)" – none of which are in place in the article either. --RexxS (talk) 16:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Break

Jonesey95, Laser brain asked that the citation discussion continue here, so this is a reply to your last post. If you look at Awadewit's last version, the cites seem consistent. WP:CITEVAR cautions against changing style without consensus; against adding templates to well-formed refs; and against changing from one academic style to another.

Had a scientist written a well-developed science article using a style common to science articles, you wouldn't have changed it to some other style. When articles are a mess, things like citation style are up for grabs, but this wasn't a mess, and if someone introduced inconsistencies, they could have been reverted or the inconsistencies fixed while retaining the style.

The issue of long cites missing seems to be because editors copied material from other articles without carrying the refs over. The long cites could have been added without changing the style. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The citations may seem consistent, but they have problems. Examples:

Troost, "The Nineteenth-Century Novel on Film", 79. (no full citation available)
Reference 94: "Fergus, 18–19;" (no indication of which chapter or book by Fergus this is citing)
Reference 126: "De Bruxelles, Simon. "How A Laydee showed that First Impressions really are misleading." The Times. 19 July 2007. p21." (no italics for name of work, and full citation is in the short References instead of in the Bibliography)
Reference 127: "Morris, Stephen.‘The author and the Austen plot that exposed publishers’ pride and prejudice.’ The Guardian, 19 July 2007. p3." (single typographer's quotes instead of double straight quotes, no italics for name of work)

The Bibliography is carefully done, with many fewer of the inconsistencies that I noted on the FAC page, but there are still a few:

Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen. 1926. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. (one way of showing the original publication year)
Lascelles, Mary. Jane Austen and Her Art. Original publication 1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. (a different way of showing the original publication year)

But these are minor problems that could be fixed easily. The article's References and Bibliography as they stood a few days ago were a mess, as we have documented on the FAC page. They were a mess from a consistency standpoint, and – much more concerning – they were a mess from a verifiability standpoint. There was absolutely no way to fix them via reverting.

The problems with this article's References and Bibliography were so severe that an overhaul was needed. I am in the middle of that overhaul and have greatly improved the consistency and verifiability of the references. Once that work is done, it will be straightforward to return the references to the 2013 style, with enhancements like linking from short citations to full citations that are necessary for an article that anyone can edit. A short citation like "Smith 105" is fine for a paper publication, but in the medium of Wikipedia, where anyone can add another source by Smith, it is too fragile. We need links, at a minimum. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

This is extremely frustrating because no one, except three of us, seem to understand that before the citations are "cleaned up" in whichever format you wish, the important work involves matching short cites to long cites. The long cites were not copied over, as SarahSV says, but finding them shouldn't be that difficult. First the bibliographic entries need to be supplied - and the nominator really has to do this work because presumably the nominator read those works. Then the short cites can be matched to the bibliographic entry. Then you all can wrap in whichever templates you wish. But trying to match short cites to bibliographic entry while it's all being wiped out makes it more difficult. Why can't this work cease for a day or two? Victoria (tk) 21:59, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes. That is something I have been trying to convey as well. Thank you for your support. So far, I have converted many (well over half, I believe) short cites to link to the full citations, in many cases doing detective work to resolve ambiguity or omission. In the case of chapters, I have used the format "Smith, 'Chapter name', in Brown 2002, p. 205", with a link from "Brown 2002" to the full citation. If we want to change that format to something like "Smith 205" with a link directly to a full citation of the Smith chapter, we can add that full chapter citation below the entry for the full book in the Bibliography. I recommend starting a new section to gain consensus for that major change. I would support it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:16, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm logging off now. I have a family to feed. I have suggested multiple time that you all take a look at existing FA literature articles for models. Furthermore, all these references are very easy to find because they exist in the suite of articles. They simply need to be brought here to this article. I'd still advise against changing to templates until inline short cites are matched to their bibliographic entry. No detective work involved. The nominator brought it all in in a single edit and forgot to move over the bibliographic entry from each article's ref section. Victoria (tk) 22:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Re this. You say you can't find Fergus. I find Fergus (who wrote the scholarly piece) and you want to attribute to the editors. I'm off. Sorry. Supper is late. Victoria (tk) 22:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I said no such thing and I want no such thing. I'll need to let someone else try to express what I am trying to express about the chapters. Enjoy your supper. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:39, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95, you're missing the point that you shouldn't have added the templates without consensus. Adding templates counts as changing the style, even if nothing else changes, but other factors did change, and it was all unnecessary. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

As I have said many times, if people agree that CITEVAR dictates MLA formatting for the full citations, I have no intention of keeping the current templates in the Bibliography. They are a very useful tool for ensuring that the short citations are properly linked to the full citations, that all of the full citations that should be present are actually present, and that full citations have all of the information they need to have. They are also useful in ensuring consistent formatting, but if someone wants hand-formatted citations, I have no problem with that; they will require page watchers to be much more diligent than they have been over the past four years, however. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:39, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95, that's good, thanks. The style that was in the article was:

Honan, 29–30
Honan, Park. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01451-1.

I'll leave it to you and others to decide which style to use. My concern is only that CITEVAR be respected if someone invokes it. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

That style works for me, as long as there is a link from the first line to the full citation in the second line. That way, if someone adds a reference to a different work by Honan, there is no ambiguity about which source is being cited. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:12, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

That means adding templates, and that would need consensus. What we really need is for someone to sort the templates out, so that they're flexible and consistent. I avoid them because they force us into one style, and when citing newspaper articles, they produce inconsistent date positions depending on whether there's a byline, so articles citing lots of newspapers always look a bit messy. But that's a topic for another day and another page. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Unclear citations

This section is for discussing unclear citations. Fixed citations can be marked as Done.

Le Faye, "Chronology", 2–3 and similar page references: This appears to be a chapter from a book, but the book does not appear to be listed.
- Check these four:
- Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh; revised and enlarged by Deirdre Le Faye. Jane Austen, a family record, British Library, 1989.
- Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's letters, 3rd. ed. Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Le Faye, Deirdre (2003). Jane Austen: A Family Record (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53417-8.
- Le Faye, Deirdre (2002). Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3285-7.
  - Thanks for the suggestions. I checked the first three on Google Books, and none of them have a Chronology section with page numbers that match the citations in the article. I looked back through eight years of the article's history, and sometime between May and December of 2008, someone removed Le Faye, "Chronology of Jane Austen's Life", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 2. from the article, leaving behind only a string of Le Faye, "Chronology", 2–3 citations that were otherwise untraceable. Again, this means that all of the sources supporting this prose became unverifiable, which is one of the reasons I am committed to fixing the citation mess in this otherwise well-written article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:53, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", 190–191.
Tucker, "Jane Austen's Family", The Jane Austen Companion, 143.
- This is likely to be one of:
- Grey, J. David, ed., A. Walton Litz and Brian Southam, consulting editors. The Jane Austen companion, with A dictionary of Jane Austen's life and works by H. Abigail Bok, Macmillan, 1986.
- Pinion, F. B. A Jane Austen companion: a critical survey and reference book,, Macmillan, 1973.
- Tucker, George Holbert. A goodly heritage: a history of Jane Austen's family, Carcanet New Press, 1983.

More citations can be listed above my signature. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I've added "Tucker" and some suggestions. There's a useful online resource at http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austfbib.html which gives a sizeable Bibliography of books on Jane Austen. That may offer possibilities to check when citations are unclear. In the meantime, I'll try to track down who added each unclear reference and see if we do some detective work on which books they were using. --RexxS (talk) 16:26, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Tucker is very clearly The Jane Austen Companion. To those of us who know this material, there's no mystery. It would be best to slow down imo, and maybe ask for help. The issue is: often you have to have the book in hand. Victoria (tk) 17:19, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Grundy is the author of a chapter.

Full cite = Grundy, Isabel. "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions". In Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet MacMaster. 189-210. Cambridge:CUP, 1997

Victoria (tk) 17:35, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Any additional information you can provide about the chapters listed in the short footnotes will be appreciated. A link to a table of contents for relevant books, or to other WP articles that cite the same chapters, would be most welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:42, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

This work cannot be done during a FAC nor should these citation be put in templates because Wikipedia templates don't support MLA style, yet most of our literature FAs follow MLA. I only stopped in for a moment, had the page on watch and am very disturbed to see how this unfolding, would love to help but this is a huge task. A small example is that MLA no longer uses pp. or even p. They simply give the page number. Beyond that, it's impossible to sort these out without being immersed in the sources and having them all available. If the nominators don't have the sources available, how can they respond to comments? Will crosspost to the FAC. Victoria (tk) 17:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

As you can see from the diffs, I have had no trouble sorting out a large number of short citations. Whether MLA uses pp. is not a big deal; the citation formats can be adjusted once the verifiability work is done.

As for it being "impossible to sort these out without being immersed in the sources and having them all available", that should not be the case if the article is following Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Since it is the case, the article does not comply with the verifiability policy. I welcome your help with fixing this problem and will continue to list questions in this section. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:55, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

No! This article has been submitted to FA, as Wikipedia's best work. This is not an issue of verifying the information, it's an issue of having read the books, understanding the information, and knowing it inside and out. If FA is simply to "verify" then I'm gobsmacked. Victoria (tk) 17:58, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Fiddling about with consistency of referencing very rarely has anything to do with verifiability, and it is unhelpful to wave that stick. You don't seem to have any real queries affecting verifiability, beyond the La Faye one. Johnbod (talk) 18:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions.
Did you check that the cites you gave supported the relevant text in the article?
Fixing problems can be done during a FAC: FA Criterion 1e stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process. The regularising of citations is in response to the issues raised on the FAC page.
It doesn't matter whether MLA uses p/pp or not, this article has never used the parenthetical citations used by MLA and has never been in MLA format.
The nominator is Fountains-of-Paris, who is the principle active contributor to the article, and who asked for help in overcoming the concerns raised. --RexxS (talk) 18:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Victoriaearle: One of the FA criteria is "Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate." When a claim in the article is supported by a short footnote like "Brontë, p. 128." (or "Brownstein, 13." or "Troost, 'The Nineteenth-Century Novel on Film', 82–84." – there are many of these) and the full citation corresponding to that short footnote is not available in the article, then the claim in the article is not verifiable. Therefore the article does not meet the FA criteria. This is one of the many problems we are trying to address at this time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:30, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Yep, been through about 24/25 times, just at FA. Three vital articles for lit and dunno how many others (and that's only counting the ones that went to FA, something I basically avoid). Leaving you all to it now. Thanks for explaining to me. Victoria (tk) 18:33, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi RexxS, parenthetical isn't required under MLA and our short cites do the job anyway. I only used pp v p v nothing as an example. What is important is the nature in which the bibliographic data is presented. For example, if information come from a chapter then the data is like this (off the top of my head): author, chapter title in quotations, names of editor/s (first name, last name), book where the chapter lives and the book title is in italics, location, publisher, date. I can read fast, but I can't verify a snippet view on google books, nor for that matter can anyone. Furthermore, the person raising the concerns very clearly mentioned MLA style - shoving in Wikipedia templates is counterproductive without having the material (ie the sources) at hand. I'm really busy in real life, but will try to help you all with this, which includes a trip to the library so as to have the books in hand. It probably will also involve ordering book via interlibrary loan. If the nominator does not have the books in hand, then I'm at a loss as how this FAC can proceed. Victoria (tk) 18:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

To give you an example: this is wrong. It was correct before being converted. I strongly oppose the conversion. Victoria (tk) 18:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

What is "wrong" with that edit? Are you objecting to the content or the format? The content was clearly inadequate for verifiability. I replaced short footnotes that, in many cases, were incomplete and did not include or link to the information you require immediately above (author, chapter title in quotations, names of editor/s (first name, last name), book where the chapter lives and the book title is in italics, location, publisher, date) with short footnotes that link to full citations that do include all of that information. If I made an error, please let me know and I will fix it.

Again, if you are concerned about the format, please wait until the content of citations has been fixed so that all of the notes unambiguously refer to full citations (which they very much did not do before I started this work), and then we can modify the format. It is much easier to modify the format once everything is in a standard format and short footnotes are linked to the correct full citations. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:37, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

1. per WP:CITEVAR consensus has to be established to change. Consensus has not been established, so waiting to have the templates put in goes against consensus (as it currently stands)

2. Doody is the author of a chapter in a book. All the short cite needs is her name and page number. I also add dates because it's not uncommon for literary scholars to publish in multiple books or publish multiple papers, either in different years or even sometimes in the same year. Then that cite has to match a bibliographic entry (as explained above) which includes name of author (last/first), title of chapter (in quotations), names of editor/s (first/last), book where the chapter lives (in italics), etc. This is necessary so that when seeing the author cited in the short cite it matches an entry below. As it is now, it indicates that editors wrote the chapter (the material being verified, if you will, but in fact it has nothing to do with verification and everything to do with citing the author) when in fact the editors only compiled the works in the book. Victoria (tk) 18:50, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with all of that (except for your note about "Doody", which I do not understand). See, for example, this "Troost" citation that I just rescued. There are many citations in this article that are ambiguous to the point that a lay reader would not be able to locate the full citation being referred to. In many cases, that is because the full citation is missing from the article.

As for citation style, I am not proposing to change the citation style permanently. What I am doing at this time is making the citations consistent and verifiable. Once that process is done, it will be much easier to change the citations to a different consistent and verifiable style. As Lingzhi and I listed in detail on the FAC page, the citations were far from consistent or verifiable before this work started. If they had been, none of this work would have been undertaken.

Can you explain your concern about the Doody citation? Which citation in particular are you concerned with? There are multiple citations to multiple works by her. I do not see any that imply that editors wrote a chapter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I very much dislike being rude and have been verging on it, so let me take a few moments away from this. In the diff I posted, Doody is very clearly the author of a chapter in a book (which I can tell without having the book at hand) and if that's not obvious to others, then I'd like to suggest that all this work cease. Without knowing that crucial piece of information the cites will become more muddled rather than less. In terms of there being multiple refs by the same author, yes, that's common in literature and where using MLA (but not templates) will help. I will try to help sort this out, but not here, and certainly not "it has to be done immediately" mode, or in "we've already started and the work will go on like this" mode. Victoria (tk) 19:15, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

This edit is also wrong. Some papers exist as a standalone paper, as a journal article and as a chapter in a book, i.e the author wrote one piece of criticism and it was published in more than one place. That edit is shoving the paper into a book. Did the editors compile that paper in that book? If so, all you need is the author's name in the short cite. Victoria (tk) 19:21, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Take your time. I am committed to not removing any useful information from the article, so don't worry about that. And sorry, I still do not understand your objection to my formatting change to the Doody short footnote. I replaced the title of the work with a link to the full citation, which makes it easier for readers to locate the work in question.

Maybe this will help clarify one of the principles behind these edits: I am adding links to many other citations, replacing fragile footnote constructions like "Gay, ix, 1" with a link to the full citation. That way, if a second work by Gay, or a work by a completely different person named Gay, is added to the article, nothing breaks. Unlinked incomplete short citations like this in articles that anyone can edit are simply too fragile. They are fine for published journal articles that do not change, but they are unsuitable for Wikipedia's requirements and policies.

As for the Troost citation, it was unverifiable as it existed in the article, just a last name and an article title with no additional information that would help a reader locate the source. That is simply inadequate for verifiability. How would you propose resolving problems like this? Thanks for engaging, and take your time in responding. I have not found you to be rude at all. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:43, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The issue with the Doody cite is that Doody is the author of a paper; that paper apparently was compiled as a chapter in a book. The short cite should mention the author (Doody), the bibliographic info mentions the author (Doody) and where that particular piece of writing is located (often in a book). But it's paramount that the cite reference the author and that the bibliographic entry references the author. It's really easier for me to show than to tell. Re adding links: that's not how it works. Either create a bibliographic entry for the online version and remove the book and its editors, or simply (again), mention the author within the book. It has to be one or the other. You can't say that lit crit paper titled "A", which is compiled in book titled "B" actually is located at "C". "A" is either at "B" or "C" (take your pick) but we don't need to mention both (for one thing because pagination is an issue). Victoria (tk) 20:19, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Wow, I'm just not understanding what you are saying. You are correct that showing examples would help me understand. Maybe on a sandbox page?

You mention that the bibliographic citation should mention the author, but very few of the bibliographic citations for chapters of edited works mentioned the authors. That made it very difficult to locate the full citation as well as fragile if additional citations by the same author were later added. See the example of "Gay" above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I get that you're not understanding and this is my big concern. I look in the edit window (pre-template version) and immediately see author/chapter. From there it's super easy for me to match author to book. That I understand it easily means it's not that difficult to fix. I don't know what to say beyond that. Lingzhi sees the issue, I see the issue and I see that the article is moving in the wrong direction. Victoria (tk) 21:07, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Examples please. I can provide a problematic example, just one of many: "Fergus, 18–19;" in reference 165 in the 26 July 2016 version. There are two books by Fergus listed in the Bibliography, and this reference refers to neither of them. It also does not refer to Fergus, "Biography", a chapter in Jane Austen in Context. It refers instead to Fergus, "The Professional Woman Writer", a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, something that can be discovered only if a reader stumbles across reference 105. Fragility like that will simply not do, and it is both the cause and the result of much of the inconsistency and confusion that existed in the article until I started work on it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:17, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you have more than one Fergus. I think I mentioned above that it's fairly common for an Austen scholar to be, well an Austen scholar, and to publish multiple scholarly works, hence it's necessary to put a date in the short cite. Have a look at Big Two-Hearted River, not a template in sight, yet more than one Benson, more than one Beegel, probably more than one Reynolds (if not there, then another article). I can't think of a literature article where I haven't encountered this issue (and sometimes you'll get an author who publishes multiple works in a single year or publishes multiple chapters in a single book in a single year). There are two issues here: if the nominators don't know where the cites belong (or to whom) then there's a problem, the second problem is that it's not a problem of fragility. It's simply a problem of matching the short cite to the bibliographic entry. The person who writes the article should be able to say this Fergus goes here; this Fergus does there and so on. Victoria (tk) 21:31, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd rather not be rude either, but this isn't wrong. If the reader follows any of those references, they find a short footnote naming the author (e.g. Doody page 105) with the collection and editors where the essay is found. That is linked immediately to the full citation (e.g. the The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf edited by Alexander and McMaster). All very much standard Wikipedia referencing as used on thousands of articles. Nothing is lost, but it is much clearer than your suggestion of MLA which would simply have (Doody 105), leaving the reader no idea that it is an essay in Alexander, Christine and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. --RexxS (talk) 19:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Victoria. Where did you get the idea that MLA doesn't require parenthetical citations? Here are three different sites that explain how to create MLA:

Perhaps you could indicate the source of your belief in what constitutes MLA? because I haven't found a single one that doesn't use parenthetical citations in line. Before Jonesey95 kindly put all that effort into cleaning up the citations, the article used a mix of formats similar to Harvard referencing, but there were no examples of MLA. WP:CITEVAR considers the following helpful: Imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles ... an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit. Do you not agree that the consistency of referencing is now much greater than before the clean-up? --RexxS (talk) 19:26, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Moving forward

Moving forward, the best option is to roll the article back to a version before text was copied over from the subarticles, then work on the existing citations (if they need work), by gaining consensus on the talk page as to what form they should take. The current conversion of the citations muddies the waters and should stop. Furthermore, given recent edit summaries such as this it would be better to have someone who understands the intricacies help with the citation formatting. Regardless of whether the citation conversion continues, the copied text has to be removed, but it will take time to go through history and figure out what happened. It would be best if in the meantime editing were to stop and, if necessary, I might request page protection for a few days. So to reiterate:

The best solution is to roll back to about February, something like this
If there is no consensus to roll back, then someone can boldly remove the copied text.
In the meantime, cease converting the citations
If there is no consensus to cease converting the citations then open a talk page discussion to gain consensus per WP:CITEVAR
Request page protection so the work ceases

I can offer help, guidance, etc., for this article, but there's a lot to sort out, it will take time, and the work should be done methodically. Please discuss. Victoria (tk) 12:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree with this rollback suggestion. Other editors and I have rescued so many orphaned references, straightened up others, and highlighted a few that are simply missing, that undoing this reference work would be a major setback for the article's verifiability. I am almost done with cleaning up the references and will have a list of questions about them shortly. This list of questions will include a discussion about formatting of short footnotes and formatting of full citations. Neither is currently ideal.

I have no opinion on the "copied text", whatever it is. I suggest that you check with the recent major contributor(s) to the content of the article to determine why new text was added. I think it was suggested during the April 2016 FAC.

Page semi-protection is already in place for this article, and it does not meet the criteria for full protection. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that when text was copied in the text/source integrity was lost. It's best to regain that by rolling back and then to work forward. Regardless, anyone can make bold edits. Victoria (tk) 13:14, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I have fixed the highlighted edit above. The previous version of the citation, using |author2=, was not right, but removing |chapter=Introduction was not right either. Someone with access to the source should check who actually wrote the Introduction. Our Sense and Sensibility article says that it was Looser. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:15, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95 I was looking at the text of the Jane West book published last year; it is easy to see as an e-book on Amazon's page https://www.amazon.com/Gossips-Story-Valancourt-Classics/dp/1943910154#reader_B019CRD6UW. Nowhere in that edition was an author listed for the Introduction. You might read footnote 17 in the Introduction to Jane West's novel, where the work of the three editors is discussed. It seems to be Looser speaking (because hers is the only name not mentioned in the footnote), crediting O'Connor with the research for the Introduction, and then mentioning Kelly as coming in at the end of the process of producing the annotated edition. From the book itself, I cannot settle the point, bur perhaps others can by reading the last citation for the Introduction

The text on Sense and Sensibility refers to the West book as being edited by Looser et al. In the book itself, the three editors are listed in the order I put in that citation. I am sorry that it was the wrong solution to delete the mention of the Introduction. Looser is a major writer on Austen, perhaps that is why the original writer of that text listed her without the other two editors named as well. I have been pleased to learn about the contributor parameter for writers of introductions; I hope I recall the articles where I put that person as second author instead of contributor, and use the correct parameter. And I apologize for the extra work I made for you, using the shorthand of author instead of first and last, to be consistent in this article. --Prairieplant (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

You've just made my point. Why would you doubt that the source article is wrong. These sections about the books shouldn't be here, were copied over, and now we have to go through all this work to ensure text/source integrity here. It would be better to remove these sections, which I will be doing but wanted to post to talk first. Victoria (tk) 13:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95 do you understand why the refs you've rescued were orphaned? Victoria (tk) 13:49, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, as I have demonstrated on this talk page. I provided details about Le Faye, "Chronology", 2–3 above. It was orphaned way back in 2008 because the referencing system that was used until a few days ago was extremely fragile. Unlinked references like "Todd, 20" are fine for printed material, because nobody is going to come along later and add another source by Todd. On Wikipedia, however, since anyone can edit, we need to be more diligent about reducing ambiguity and making references robust enough to survive things like deletion of a single short footnote, or copying and pasting between articles. If the copied section had used {{sfn}}, for example, a big pile of red error messages would have appeared immediately to anyone using the User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js script (as they do now for the Brontë and Brownfield short references). With fragile plain-text short references, such errors are invisible until someone does a careful scan of them or tries to verify a specific piece of article prose. By then, eight years may have passed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Victoria, I support rolling back to the version you identified, then moving forward from there. SarahSV ^(talk) 14:02, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

With much respect, I disagree with any proposal to roll this article back to a prior version. All the prior versions I examined are full of these problems with sources. No one used the Harvard method to link the reference to the full citation of the source each editor meant, and also annoying, the citations are sometimes one source per ref notation, and other times 3, 4, or 5 bunched in one ref. Now these problems are nearly resolved, and the article is far easier to follow for anyone who wants to know what author supports which point. The sections added to describe each novel seem quite logical to me, as this author was cut off in her prime, and there are so few novels to summarize. The section on the Reception of her works is improved as well, in my view. I strongly support moving forward from here. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:02, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I've left a comment at FAC talk about what to do, [1]. The citation conversion has continued despite opposition and calls for discussion. The conversions of the cites makes it harder to evaluate source/text integrity (what came from where, which cite matches which bits of text) so at this point I'm inclined to roll back. But maybe someone else will have a better solution. Victoria (tk) 15:03, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Prairieplant, Wadewitz didn't submit this article for FAC, at least in part because it was missing a "styles and themes" section and a novels section, but we can assume that, otherwise, it was FA standard or very close. This was the last version she edited.

Wadewitz and others wrote Styles and themes of Jane Austen, which can be summarized in our own words in this article, ideally by someone familiar with the secondary literature. Fountains-of-Paris did good work in creating two new sections (themes and novels), but arguably too much was copied over, and at least some (perhaps most) of the new themes section came from Reception history of Jane Austen, rather than from the "styles and themes" article.

When it was copied over, short cites were added without long cites (an easy thing to overlook), and other inconsistencies appeared, which caused Jonesey to change the style and add templates in an effort to achieve consistency. That has led to a dispute. Everyone has acted in good faith and done good work, but people have been pulling to some extent in different directions.

In these circumstances, rolling back can be the best solution. We can then restore parts of Fountain's text and sources as appropriate, rather than trying to sort them out in situ. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:04, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

SlimVirgin Thanks for your clear explanation. I cannot see rolling back to 2013; is that what you want to do? We would lose a lot of good work in the Bibliography section, the number of references (not their layout) just to start. The article as it is now reads well, but I understand your desire to improve the Themes section. I am not the person to do the updating that you want, but Fountains may be. Or someone else.

I am hoping that the dispute on formats will disappear, as Jonesey has tried multiple times to explain – that the article can accommodate different formats in the Bibliography, the long citations, once everyone is clear what they favor, perhaps even MLA, the one that began the dispute. Using formats during this period of clean up and linking each inline citation to the correct item in the Bibliography makes it simpler for the editors doing the clean up. Once linked, and this is nearly done if you look over the reference list, then normal editing, both adding and deleting by all editors with appropriate access to the Jane Austen article, can proceed, and editors relying on the Bibliography list for their citations would be wise to follow the way Jonesey does it. In other words, the dispute that arose about formats does not in any way stop the discussions about content. Somehow this point is hard to absorb, though I understand it, and I feel like the slow one in this bunch!

Rolling back means having to fix the errors in the older versions again, and that seems ungrateful for all the work Jonesey has done. Jonesey is most generous with time and knowledge of the ways to link inline citations to a Bibliography, and the proper way to handle pretty much everything, including the proper citation to the author of the notes in an annotated version of a novel, fine point that. Did I make it any clearer that you can have a clear field for content edits, and discuss the best way to lay out the Bibliography sections, without a roll back? That is my goal, once I understood that you felt that the discussion about formats prevented good editing of content from now on. I will wait on the sidelines now, until others have time to speak up. Thank you again for making this clear, both what your issue are with the content of the article, and how you describe the process of folks not understanding the format issues. --Prairieplant (talk) 17:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Prairieplant, Victoria suggested rolling back to this February version. I disagree that the current article reads well; parts of it are well-written and other parts are not. Certain changes have caused inadvertent deterioration.

Which errors would have to be fixed in the previous version? As I understand it, Jonesey was fixing citation errors that were introduced after the February revision. The easiest thing in these cases is to roll back to the status quo ante, then restore the text and sources we want to keep. I've done that several times with my own work. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:11, 18 August 2016 (UTC) (edited 18:34, 18 August 2016 (UTC))

SlimVirgin Here is one example, which is reference number 4 in that February version: Litz, 3–14; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, 192–193; Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early", Jane Austen in Context, p. 83, 89–90; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814–1870", The Jane Austen Companion, 93–94. This is placed in the lead/lede, and it was agreed in spring that references should be removed from the lead as the topics in the lead are meant to be covered in the main text, which they are now. Moving to the main article, Number 13 in the February version is this – Tomalin, 6, 13–16, 147–151, 170–171; Greene, "Jane Austen and the Peerage", Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, 156–157; Fergus, "Biography", Jane Austen in Context, 5–6; Collins, 10–11. That is now numbers 12, 13, 14, 15, each inline citation pointing to one source in the Bibliography list, as you can see in the current article for the sentence "They married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath."

There are many like this, in what might be called the original article, not brought in by the spring additions of text. Jonesey has listed others that he improved for consistent style (each inline citation is one reference or it has text to expand on a point), for correct original source matching the page numbers given. February version has 9 entries in the Essay collection list, while we now have 17 entries there. There are 51 or 52 entries (I lost count) in the Monographs and articles section, compared to 36 in the February version of that same list. The layout is better in the current article, items not discussed now, but mentioned in earlier check lists of needed improvements – the family trees are not tiny things in a gallery but in a section called Family trees, e.g., alternate text for the images has been provided and approved as clear, there is a section on Critical editions now not in the February version, Popular culture section is moved out of the article. And in the current version, most all the inline citations are connected by a simple click (simple for the reader) to the full citation in the Bibliography. No need to hunt up and down those long lists to find the exact source being cited. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:06, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, Prairie, I can't really follow this. (Just a point about the lead: there's no need to remove refs, though people can if they want to. But it's a myth that leads should not have refs.) As for unbundling, it has led to a lot of clutter in read mode, which is not a good look for an FA, perhaps especially for a literature FA. "They married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath" looks odd with four refs after it.

What's needed now is for the editors who are willing to stick around to start hitting the books. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:36, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

You cannot follow the changes made, I am sorry. This article has Good Article status since about June -- 2 months ago, and Fountains-of-Paris shepherded that achievement. Miniapolis did edits on this article from June 11 to June 17, as noted up top of this talk page. If you turn back to February, all the factors that brought this to Good article status are erased. Perhaps that is easier to understand. Those editors judging for Good Article said that references should not appear in the lead, I did not make that up. It would be a shame to lose Good Article status in the effort for Featured Article. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Prairieplant, the problems you mention above aren't really problems. The rule about no citations in the lead is general advice, but it's ok to have citations and I did take a look at the notes, which in my opinion should be kept. If the GA was in June then the reviewers were looking at the text copied from the other articles and the copyeditors were likewise copyediting that text. It's really best to work this up in an appropriate manner, using summary style, and not copying from the other articles. I'm more than happy to collaborate with anyone (and to teach) how this is done for an FA level (or GA level) literature article. Perhaps you can ping the appropriate reviewers to this thread and the one below titled "An offer" so they can see where we're at. I'm not completely unknown around here and perhaps your reviewers will have enough faith that I'm capable keeping this at GA level - particularly so if others pitch in to help. Technically, I suppose we might have to go through GAR, but honestly I don't think it's much of a step from the February version to GA. I'll take a look at the reviews - haven't done so yet. I'm not stripping anyone of credit; that's something I'm spectacularly uninterested in. So you all can keep the credit if it's deemed it doesn't have to go through GAR. Otherwise you can have it if has to go through GA again. Does that work? Victoria (tk) 20:44, 18 August 2016 (UTC)