Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Quotation cleanup

Note: This page will need an overhaul before serious work can be done. But it still indicates some useful ideas.

Goal is to do a bit of cleanup in the area of quotation templates. A bit of background and summary about what we have currently.

There are basically 3 types of quotations.

Pull quote. This usually highlights a section that is already in the article and often has some styling quotes applied (but the same type of styling can be used to highlight quotes that are not already in the article).
Inline quote. This is a quotation that is relatively short and placed inline of the current paragraph.
Block quote. This is reserved for longer quotations, including poetry; the text often has an inset and sometimes distinct background styling or typography styling.

These are the templates we have currently (see also Category:Quotation templates):

Block quotes

{{quote}}: Blockquote, defined in Common.css, full width. No styling possible. Allows for source.
{{block quote}}: Blockquote. Dupe with quote, full width, No styling possible. Allows for source
{{quote box}}: Div, does everything, yet nothing right... Styles everything, allows for title and source.
{{quotation}}: Blockquote, dupe with {{quote}}, table display, fit to width, Boxed toc-styling. Allows for right aligned source.
~~{{quotation1}}: Table based, full width, no margin, bordered box......~~
~~{{quotation2}}: Table based, fit to width, no margin, bordered box......~~
~~{{quote box4}}: Table based, fit to width, bordered box, right floating, yellow......~~
{{bq}}: Similar to quote, with more styling options. (and title attribute.. how often is this used ?)
~~{{blockquotetop}}, {{blockquotebottom}}: Blockquote, dupe with {{quote}}, full width, background and border styling. No option for source. Should be deprecated...~~
~~{{pquote}}: Div, alias for {{quotebox}}.~~
{{imagequote}}: blockquote to add margin when quote positioned right of left floating image.
{{imagequote2}}: table base variant of {{imagequote}}... these are indeed a problem.. need to figure this out.
~~{{jimboquote}}: quotation variant, with specific styling etc...~~
{{talkquote}}: blockquote, similar to {{quote}}, just fine this way, fully optimized for talk pages.
{{Quote2col}}: Table based, method to set a 2 column block quote. sometimes used for translations. Width, margin and background stylable. has header.
~~{{Quoted}}: Audio sample annotated version of a blockquote. Div base, fit to width, no styling. Allows for source.~~
~~{{Quoter}}: Alias for {{quote}}~~
{{smq}}: Copy of {{quote}}, but in a small fontsize... <head></desk>

Pull quotes

{{reduced pull quote}}: Table, fixed width, decorated with quote signs, left or right floating. Allows for source.
{{pull quote}}: Table, fit to width of content, max 100%, decorated with quote signs, left or right floating. Allows for source
{{cquote2}}: Table based, pull quote, dupe with {{centered pull quote}}. Deprecate, kill with fire...
~~{{lquote}}: Table based. left floating version of {{centered pull quote}}...~~
~~{{vquote}}: Table based. Like {{reduced pull quote}} and {{centered pull quote}}, but more options to set width and alignment....~~
{{Selected quote}}: Portal namespace version of {{centered pull quote}}.
{{Quote Quran Translation}}: table base, yellow border, background colored, pull quote.... wow....

Cleanup work

Wherever you read version... That probably needs to be reworked to use a /core template
Wherever you read alias, that probably requires subst. and then deletion.
Wherever you read sigh, wow, head desk, kill it with fire.. that probably means deletion...

Steps taken

Made {{Block quote}} an alias for {{quote}}: diff
TfD for {{quoter}}: diff
TfD for {{quoted}}: diff
Made a start for a Lua module that can be reused by the various quotation templates
Added some tracking cats for rare options used by {{bq}}. Category:Template bq using title param, Category:Template bq using id param, Category:Template bq using class param, Category:Template bq using style param
Removed uses of {{quotation2}}, since it virtually identical to {{quotation}}
{{quotation2}} redirected to {{quotation}} for remaining talk/archive etc pages.
Made {{quote box4}} reuse {{quote box}}
{{Lquote}}, {{Vquote}} merged into {{Pull quote}} after TfD
{{Quotation1}}, {{quote box4}}, {{jimboquote}} deleted after TfD
{{Quote}}, {{block quote}}, {{Quote2col}}, at TfD

Outstanding questions

Question... how to deal with differences in left and right alignment of the citations in the various templates ? Seems non-boxed aligns to the left, boxed aligns to the right ? why, do we care, etc..
Consider adding a field for making reference statements, seems to be a common use case, not currently supported very well.

Usages of templates

On 31 august, 2014. 13:45 UTC

+-------------------------+----------------+
| tl_title                | COUNT(page_id) |
+-------------------------+----------------+
| Block_quote             |           2401 |  190,377 as of 19 October 2024
| Blockquotetop           |              5 |
| Bq                      |            412 |
| Centered_pull_quote     |          18106 |
| Cquote2                 |            910 |
| Imagequote              |             19 |
| Imagequote2             |             69 |
| Lquote                  |             20 |
| Pquote                  |            107 |
| Quotation               |           7780 |
| Quotation1              |             67 |
| Quotation2              |             26 |
| Quote                   |          29823 |
| Quote2col               |             14 |
| Quote_Quran_Translation |             12 |
| Quote_box               |           9920 |
| Quote_box4              |             15 |
| Quoted                  |              2 |
| Quoter                  |             17 |
| Reduced_pull_quote      |           1289 |
| Smq                     |              1 |
| Talkquote               |              1 |
| Vquote                  |             24 |
+-------------------------+----------------+