User talk:凰兰时罗/Archives/2016/December

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James Russell Lowell

In no way did your addition to James Russell Lowell conform to the established style of citations on that page. I'm not sure how you can question that. Your edit was literally the only one that used a citation template. My revert is customary for a featured article, where consensus has already established its quality. Traditionally, Wikipedians recognize that any addition with any error, no matter how minor, lowers its quality. Sorry if you took it personally. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:15, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Midnightdreary: thank you for your explanation. No, I did not take it personally — I was just determined to make it right, i.e. to follow the policies. I think Wikipedia has many smart policies that promote collaboration, and the successful collaboration is reliant upon building on each other's contributions rather than negating them. Hence, if you simply revert my edit, as you did the first time, not much was accomplished. On the other hand, this time, you've built on my edit, and the article has improved a little. Thank you for that! During my time here, I learned that I need to stand my ground and insist on policies being followed. I've met "Wikipedians" who devote most of their time to pushing around others, especially newcomers, so, perhaps, my comment came out unnecessary harsh for the occasion. I apologize for that — taking it to a personal level was the last thing on my mind.
Finally, back to the the citation standards. I thought that your comment referred to inline citations, and I was careful to follow that standard (and I used <ref>Lowell, p.121</ref> as opposed to {{sfn|Lowell|1899|p=121}} which I usually use in my articles). Now it's clear that you also referred to the list of the literature cited. There are some things here that I kindly ask you to clarify. My questions might not be applicable to this article, since you already fixed everything, but they might be pertinent to my future edits.
  1. What if I changed all the literature cited to 'cite book' templates (there are only five books there). Would this be considered improper?
  2. I edited under assumption that using citation templates is the best approach. You never denied that, but based on our exchange, I have a feeling that some editors might be of different opinion. So, hypothetically, if I consistently and accurately upgrade all the citations in this article to Harvard citation style using the templates, would this action be taken as an unambiguous improvement?
凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate the comment. To defend myself a moment, I did not "simply revert [your] edit", as you write. I explained my reasoning for the revert in the edit summary, which your own link to WP:EDITCONSENSUS actually notes is a fine way to build consensus. I offered those additional edits with detailed edit summaries for your benefit as well, so I'm glad you noticed!
To your question: It would not inherently constitute an "upgrade" to switch to any citation style. I personally do not prefer the cite templates, for example, as I find them a bit clunky (though I have used them in some of the other featured articles I've collaborated on), but that's irrelevant. Much of the documentation on how to cite on Wikipedia offers no "right" format to citations, so long as the method is consistent on any given page — which means it's always subjective. I think you would be welcome to make that adjustment on any article to all the citations if that is your preference but, because there is no specific one-size-fits-all method, be prepared for a possible disagreement. And, incidentally, as an "old-timer" Wikipedian, I hope you never feel pushed around. Opening anything up for discussion (as you did) should be well respected around here. --Midnightdreary (talk) 00:53, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
@Midnightdreary: thank you for a kind word and for taking time to explain the intricacies of the citation template usage. I now have a better understanding of the established conventions. The way we handled this situation is perfectly acceptable to me, including your initial revert with the explanation. The key difference from the other cases that I encountered before is that this revert indeed led to a dialog, so everything worked out fine: the information is added to the article; its citation style is intact; my understanding of the conventions has deepened, so next time my edits should be sharper.
Thanks again! 凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:00, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

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