Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/Referencing

WikiProject Worcestershire
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This page will give some instructions for finding references (Kudpung, Wotnow - you're both experts here), maybe some guidelines about what is a suitable reliable reference (or links to relevant wiki pages), and how to add references to articles (GyroMagician, Wotnow).

Finding references

In the search engine of your choice, there are lots of ways to try finding information. For a specific topic, it often helps to use the broadest term, which will give the most results

1. Sample 'advanced' search page for Internet Archive.
2. Search result using Worcestershire in "any" field gives the broadest number of returns.

If there are too many results to work through, try narrowing it down. You can do this with the same broad term in the title field, to see if there are any books specifically listing the term in the title.

1. Narrower search result using "Worcestershire" in title field.
2. Or you could add another word to see whether that narrows the search down in any helpful way. For example, typing "Malvern Worcestershire" in the 'any' field, gives a narrow number of titles.
3. Or just 'Malvern', gives these results.
4. Or Bromsgrove, which could do with some contributions to the article.

The same approach is used with Google, for which a broad search term such as "Worcestershire" provides many thousands of returns for either the web search, book search, or 'Scholar' search. Even "Bromsgrove" gives a large number of returns for the web, books, and 'Scholar'.

Taking the Bromsgrove example, you can narrow any one of these three searches by using the 'Advanced search' function. For example, to narrow the books down to material you can view, you could select, from the Advanced Book Search page, books with 'Limited preview and full view', thus. But from an unfiltered book search, even returns with only snippet views can provide useful information or search clues, such as this, from which you can do this, then this, then this, and so on. But already you have citations for Bromsgrove up to c.1300, and for relevant records, and some leads. For situations where vital information is just out of view, you can sometimes inch the view forward far enough to solve the problem from the snippet view or the descriptor page preceding the snippet view (as in these examples), or to find other useful search terms which might lead you to the jackpot. If nothing else, you can cite these snippets. But sometimes they'll give you enough leads to find more viewable sources that cover the relevant information.

Reference sources

Apart from search engines, possible sources are limited mostly by our imaginations, especially for more obscure information. Nevertheless, some sources potentially yield a good return for effort. This section lists some that come to mind. Examples provided here will tend to be at the broadest level. But in practice you will probably also search for specific places, people, and issues. It's impossible to be exhaustive in our lists. If you are reading this article and are aware of other useful sources, please feel free to add them, especially for sources with broad-ranging information (people can narrow their own searches as they need to). Alternatively, you could add the source to the equivalent section in one of the Worcestershire project articles, either from the Worcestershire project links, or from the Worcestershire categories list.

• Worcestershire County Council. Council websites are often good places to explore for information, including not contemporary services and issues, but also for example, contemporary and historical demographics, and background information on local areas, either on the site pages, or buried in reports.
• British History Online. This site contains a wealth of information on early British history, providing also several options for exploring. A simple search for 'Worcestershire' yields some 1770 returns.
• The National Archives. The UK government's official archive website, containing a wealth of information and a range of services. Much of the material consists of record listings, with brief details of the records and where they are located. But these can provide useful complementary citations to aid in verifying facts, or other citations.

If you find sources that are potentially useful for an article which is at a very basic stub stage, but you don't have the time to work through the material and use it to build the article, you can still help by listing the resource in a relevant section. You may need to create a section. 'Further reading' is commonly used as a section heading, although it's not the only choice, and indeed may seem silly if there are in fact no references at all in the article (i.e. 'prior' reading). You may also wish to add the following invitation: Messageboxes aren't exactly popular in Wikipedia. Indeed they can be a source of conflict, so should be used very sparingly, and avoided if possible. But some, like the one above, are constructive eye-catchers that provide invitations to contribute.

Adding references to articles

We don't have hard and fast rules here, just some general guidelines. The most important thing is that you add references. So long as it shows up on the page, in a way that readers can see it, we're good. The rest is wikitwiddling, but sometimes that's a good thing.

Reference should generally be placed at the end of the sentence, and always after the full stop. For something particularly contentious, the citation can be placed mid-sentence, but again after punctuation marks (commas, etc).

Simplest form

The very simplest for of reference is to put something between <ref>...</ref> tags (as used for Hanley Castle). Let's use an example: a Well-dressing story from the Malvern Gazette:

<ref name=GetCreative>[http://www.malverngazette.co.uk/news/4888805.Get_creative_for_this_year_s_well_dressing/ Get creative for this year's well-dressing] Retrieved 5 February 2010</ref>

This is displayed as:

The URL is added in single square brackets ([]), enclosed in <ref>...</ref> tags. To keep the reference list readable, it's important to include a title (otherwise the reference appears only as a number in the list). It's also good practice to include the access date for online material - you'd be surprised how often link die. If we know when it was last readable, it makes it easier to find in something like Wayback Machine if we have to.

Dealing with dead links

Dead links can also often be fixed by paring the url back to the home page and finding a new link to the relevant citation, then copying-and-pasting the updated url into the article. This is a good first strategy to try. The internet article page may have been moved for example, creating a whole new link, but the homepage is usually stable. And when the homepage itself has changed, once one finds it by internet searches, one can often find a new link. Failing that, there is a wealth of information out there, and reliable facts can virtually always be verified one way or another, albeit sometimes with a lot of effort.

Using cite templates

See also: Wikipedia:Citation templates

See Bewdley Bridge for an example.

This is displayed as:

And the template looks like this:

<ref name=CreativeDressing>{{cite news

| title = Get creative for this year's well-dressing

| newspaper = Malvern Gazette

| date = 4 February 2010

| url = http://www.malverngazette.co.uk/news/4888805.Get_creative_for_this_year_s_well_dressing/

| publisher = [[Newsquest Media Group]]

| accessdate = 5 February 2010}}

</ref>

The lead tag <ref name=> is handy for repeat uses of the same reference, like this, which is effected by simply copying-and-pasting the <ref name=CreativeDressing> lead ref tag, and inserting a forward slash, thus <ref name=CreativeDressing/>

Note that simple references and cite templates can co-exist perfectly well within the same article - the reader won't see any difference. Indeed they can sit alongside each other, like this, without any problems.

About urls, internet info, and citations generally

If you happen to have cited a book or journal that is accessible in a scanned form online, this makes verification easy. Everyone can see for themselves what was written, and that the book or journal exists. But because links can die or change, it's no help if you just provide the link. It's important to provide the same information that you would provide if the resource wasn't available online. In other words, write your reference in the same way you would if you were citing a hard-copy in your hand that was not available on the internet.

The golden rule is: if the information is from something physically existing somewhere, and you couldn't access it online, could you track it down with nothing more than the information visible in the reference?

If the answer to that is "no", then you need to add more information. This applies to all citations, being an issue that long precedes our internet-based world. One way to illustrate the issue is to take a publication which is well known enough for people to commonly assume that a generic reference will suffice, when in fact it doesn't. Encyclopaedia Britannica seems a particularly illustrative example, although others can be found.

"Using the term Encyclopaedia Britannica in the title field, these results are returned. Notice that the first three listings simply use the generic title. But have a look at them. Each one has different volume and publishing details. It's important to cite enough information so there is no confusion. The simplest rule of thumb is to provide enough information so that someone could track down the specific reference even if the link stopped working. It can be done if the reference information is sufficient. Letters, phone calls, faxes etc, all the methods that people used prior to the internet to obtain information from sources, will always be available. The internet simply makes it easier to find some information. It doesn't take away the need for full referencing. The three volumes above, may for example, be displayed something as below, based on the information on their title pages.

Notice that the first two listings were published in the same year (1907), by the same publisher, with the same information apart from volume number. But the last one, while also the ninth edition, was published in 1888 by a different publisher in a different city, and was already a reprint. It also contains no American Supplement, and no mention of who the editors are.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica is probably particularly illustrative of the need for sufficient information to differentiate the source that you used for your citation. Apart from the above examples, there are other publishers, other editions, and other publishing dates. So the mere use of Encyclopaedia Britannica isn't going to help. Nor as the above illustration shows, even "Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition" etc. If you check out other titles from the above list, you'll sometimes find discrepancies between the listing and the volume. Apart from being a nuisance if you're wading through a lengthy list looking for a specific volume, it highlights that for citation purposes, you need to use the information provided by the publisher, not the information from a list made by someone scanning the book into the internet.

Separating article content from references

As an article grows, and gains more citations, editing the wiki-markup can get a bit difficult. To make life easier for editors (this does not change the appearance of the final page in any way), we sometimes use list defined references (sometimes abbreviated to WP:LDR). For an example, have a look at the Malvern, Worcestershire article.

What's going on here? First, in the body of the text, we add references in the form <ref name=theRefName/>. This is simply using a named reference, as you've probably seen before. The actual details of the references appear in a list at the end of the article, using the following syntax:

{{reflist|group="Ref"|refs=

<ref name="refname1">This is reference 1.</ref>

<ref name="refname2">This is reference 2.</ref>

<ref name="refname3">This is reference 3.</ref>

}}

where the part between the <ref>...</ref> tags can be any valid reference format (although we do prefer cite templates).

When using this reference style, every entry in the reference list must be used in the main article. If it isn't, you'll see an ugly red message in the reference list. The message tells you the name of the problem reference - you then have to go back into the reference list and delete it if the reference is no longer used (although see Retiring references below).

If the red message is because you created the reference but forgot to place the tag in the article, then you should find that the message also helps with the solution. If you've used <ref name=MyReferenceName> lead tags in the references, the red message will mention this, and all you have to do is copy the 'ref name=' tag from the red message and place it into the article at the appropriate place. This is particularly helpful if you've added several references and made an oversight. It also highlights the usefulness of using <ref name=> rather than simply <ref>, because you can more readily keep track of multiple uses for a given citation, and more quickly problem-solve when there are referencing errors. So don't be daunted by the red message. It's intended to help you solve the referencing oversight.

Retiring references

Sometimes, after a bit of editing, you'll find that a particular reference is no longer required by the article. If the reference is wrong or misleading, or you're sure it will never be useful again, just delete it. But if you think there is any change it may be useful again later, copy and paste it to the article talk page. That way the information isn't lost, and we can all find it again if we need it. Or you could also add it to the Further reading list, if that seems appropriate.