From July to August 2008, originally posted to Wikiquote:Village pump.

Village pump archive 24

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Bold or not bold?

Hi, can someone tell me why some quotations within the same page are in bold, while others are in standard font? An example would be on W. Somerset Maugham, but I've noticed it on lots of other pages as well. Is there some significance (the quotes in bold don't seem more important or striking than the others) or is it just because this is a wiki and can display the different styles of different contributors even on the same page? Thanks. Stratford490 13:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, please let me know if this is the right place for a question like this. Thanks. Stratford490 14:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly this is the right place. Some contributors like to put quotes in bold that they think are more important or better-known. I have very occasionally done so myself, particularly to pick out a famous phrase from a longer passage. Of course, since this is a wiki, others are free to alter pages if they disagree.--Cato 21:45, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the reply. I feel when I look at some of these pages that there's no real difference in significance between the bold quotations and the standard ones. I feel a bit inclined to make them all the same, unless there are some that really should stand out, but I think I'll wait until I have a bit more of a feel for the place. I don't want to stamp on anyone's toes. ;-) Stratford490 22:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I find the bold is a violation of the text. Either it's an important quote as a whole—in which case it should be read as a whole—or only some of it is the significant part—in which case, keep that and omit the rest. To bold some is an editorial distortion of the the author's intent. Tyrenius 03:55, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree there. We need to say what the author said.--Poetlister 16:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am also inclined to agree with Tyrenius, although I can also see an argument for slightly longer tracts that might have their most famous excerpts bolded. (I would still consider this a rare exception, because we shouldn't be in the business of recording large tracts, however seminal they may be.)

Bolding quotes is a controversial issue that has been discussed many times in the past. Here's a list of earlier discussions, in forward-chronological order, to see how the community has felt about this:

Here are also some related WQ:VP discussions involving formatting:

Selectively and subjectively bolding quotes, or parts of quotes, in general articles is currently an accepted practice. If we want to change this tradition that I believe dates back to the earliest times of Wikiquote, we probably need to have a formal discussion to establish an official policy. Bear in mind that any discussion should also consider what, if any, effect this might have on certain types of quotes (e.g., dialogue segments that current have a different established practice for the use of bolding and italicization). I'd recommend it be raised at Wikiquote talk:Manual of style. Even though we've been pretty lax about maintaining our WQ:MoS policy-and-practices page, it's the logical place to make any style decisions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder about bolding parts of quotes being an accepted practice? Maybe we should give some good examples of such pages, so they could be reviewed for the discussion. I recall Muhammad Ali, for example. My humble opinion is that this practice can be beneficial for casual readers, so if there's consensus (in each specific page) then the bolded parts can be kept, but if there's disagreement then it should probably be considered editorializing and be removed. Though others might prefer to have a policy that avoids it altogether (as opposed to it being decided on each specific page individually), so that could be considered too (maybe along with whether we should bold entire quotes). ~ iddo999 21:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reflist

Am I correct in understanding that we prefer not to use ref tags and this accompanying template? I can't think of a circumstance where the material for which it is usually used should not be directly after the quote, so I'd like to clean it out of all the articles now using it. BD2412 T 02:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's my (possibly outdated) understanding. 121a0012 02:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this remains the clear consensus of regular editors; interlinear citation is the standard, and footnote citations of quotes is simply an unnecessary and frustrating complication. Though I've not had time to do as much format cleanup lately as I would like to, I eradicate footnote formatting wherever I encounter it, when I do have the time. ~ Kalki 03:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good, then I'll keep on it. Cheers! BD2412 T 03:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that pushing the entire source line to the bottom, as Wikipedians and WP-quote transferrers sometimes do, is not a good idea. But like the general citation templates, {{reflist}} has at least one slightly different use here in a number of articles. Rather than to push all the info to the bottom, which consensus has long been to avoid, I know I at least have used it to deal with two problems:

Excessive repetition of a fully qualified source. We need to have the entire source available on each line, because we have not yet managed to come up with a way to make quotes and their supplemental info (like sources) "atomic" — i.e., obviously indivisible — so that shuffling them around (as frequently occurs for good reasons) does not break assumptions based on order (e.g., "I've already quoted the full source for the first quote, so I'll just say 'ibid' and give a page number for the rest"). But this repetition can distract from focus on the quote itself.
Ensuring accurate, specific sources. We have yet to resolve many of our sourcing problems. One significant one is that people treat mere citation of books as adequate sources, as if it's reasonable to force readers to go through an entire book to verify quotes. (For our newer wikians, I'll point out that reasonable verification is an essential element of any wiki that aspires to be accurate.) But just adding page numbers is worse than unhelpful when there are multiple editions of a book. (Even where there's currently only one, how long does that typically last, and who will check back to update the entries?) A page number without an edition can lead other editors to remove quotes thinking they don't exist in the cited work because they couldn't find them anywhere near the cited page. Therefore, each book quote's should include a title, a page number, and the edition (better yet, the ISBN) from which the page number was obtained — making the already long source line even longer.

One approach I've tried, especially useful for author articles (where people are inclined to omit any source line because they mistakenly believe that grouping the quotes under a book title is sufficient), is to place a short source line under each quote that includes a reference link with the entire citation. The source line need only include a page number and probably an edition or ISBN (see below), and the hyperlink reference citation gives the full details for verifiers, who only need to see it once anyway while they're verifying (speaking as someone who frequently does verification work). One place I've done this for some works is Dean Koontz; take a look at how that can work.

None of this is alluded to in Wikiquote:Templates/Literary works, but neither is a considerable amount of best-practices stuff that we've developed for many of our templates. (As with many things, we tend to be behind on updating our formal help info.) Furthermore, I doubt I'm the only who's seen the limitations of presenting anything more than basic layout in this template form, which we inherited from the very earliest days of a much simpler Wikiquote. (A serious revamping of our entire layout-guideline scheme is just one more thing we really need to do sometime.)

This use of {{reflist}}, which yet has very little use, is not a panacea, of course. My first pass failed to comprehend the likelihood that different editors would add quotes from different editions (which is why ISBNs or at least edition info should be added to the short source lines). And the ref/reference system isn't the most graceful MediaWiki mechanism. But it does accomplish some badly need source improvement without "uglifying" the quote page too much.

I really think that we're eventually going to move toward some kind of atomicity for quotes, perhaps using templates like French Wikiquote does. But until we do, we really need to fix the major sourcing problems in our articles, and this is one approach. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would see no problem in having the material in Dean Koontz in line. A possible solution that meets both concerns might be to use a show/hide tag, so the full citation can be inline but hidden until the peruser clicks the appropriate button (see for example the translation blocks at wiktionary:solution). This has the added benefit (I consider) of not taking the user to the bottom of the page. BD2412 T 11:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely like that idea, but it's a bit more novel than ref/references. On the other hand, it's less awkward than the split aspect of the more commonly known markup, since everything is in one place (just as with our standard source lines). I suspect that this would also be a good thing to consider as part of a proposed atomic-quote markup. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see if I can get a sample working the way it should for our purposes. BD2412 T 13:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Still working on it - I'm going to have to consult an expert. BD2412 T 06:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where you have several quotes from the same source, you can put them in a sub-section, with the reference in the sub-section title. That is frequently done with poems; see John Milton for example.--Cato 20:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Cato. To avoid repeating the same information, you can name the publisher, edition, ISBN, translator, etc. in small print under the subsection heading, as seen here. This would leave only the chapters and page numbers to accompany the quotes. - InvisibleSun 20:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a rule of thumb, I do that wherever I have four or more quotes from the same source. Still, I can see the use of having a means to hide lengthy citation information for a single quote. BD2412 T 22:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had this conversation on Wikipedia (about making a specialized show/hide template), and I'm still not clear on what must be done. I was told that "Wikiquote doesn't seem to have the code for collapsibles at all (q:MediaWiki:Common.js)" and the way to get it is to ask a local Wikiquote admin to copy the code from en.wp MediaWiki:Common.js, including the hasClass() function. So how do I do that again? BD2412 T 21:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The quote above is confusing because it came from Wikipedia, so its links are exactly backwards. According to w:WP:US/R#"Hidden template" help request on Wikiquote. (from which the quote is taken), we need to copy some parts (unspecified except for "hasClass()" and implicitly the group of "collapsible table" material) of w:MediaWiki:Common.js and add them to ours (MediaWiki:Common.js). I did that, then reverted it because it appears we need more than that, possibly including material from their w:MediaWiki:Common.css for our MediaWiki:Common.css, according to w:Wikipedia:NavFrame. Since it doesn't appear to be quick-and-dirty, I can't do this right now, but I believe studying the NavFrame page is the key. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I really need to learn this stuff, but thanks - conceptually, it should not be so outrageously difficult to make a template that lets us hide part of a line. BD2412 T 05:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this going anywhere? BD2412 T 07:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is wikiquote a good place for posting anecdotes?

I'm not sure about that, for that reason I'm asking. In Wikipedia pages like Satyendra NathBose include an anectode section, which I think inapropriate for an enciclopedia, but maybe would fit here in wikiquote. What do you think? --Micru 07:37, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If they are short and properly sourced, as the one you refer to is, you can put them in an == About == section. See Martin Ryle for one I added. You should then add {{Wikiquote}} to the WP article as a link.--Poetlister 20:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to disable hotlinking

For all those interested, I have made a proposal to disable hotlinking on all Wikimedia projects. Please join the discussion at Meta. JohnnyMrNinja 20:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might help if you explained what "disabling hotlinking" means in this context. I've never heard of that term before. 121a0012 05:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If there is a photo on Commons or another Wiki, some sites will allow you to add code like [img]Commons:Prettypicture.jpg[/img], which will display that picture on the extenal site without having to copy it to that site. It facilitates using Commons for what I assume is its purpose, namely making pictures available to everyone. However, it imposes extra work on the Wikimedia servers and uses bandwidth.--Yehudi 19:07, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changing username policy: trial period ended

Your review and comment will be highly appreciated at Wikiquote talk:Changing username. Thanks! --Aphaia 06:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to create a category

I added Kurds to Mullah Krekar but it doesnt exist. How can I create it?--Crum375 12:31, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The same way you create a new article. Click on the redlink and start editing. Adding Category:Asians would do it. Having said that, I'm not sure we need this category. Do we have any other articles about Kurds?--Poetlister 06:44, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Repetition of fair use copyright text

We claim fair use for quotations. I don't think that this can then extend, in the case of text still in copyright, to repeating the same text under an image on the same page, as, for example, in Roger McGough. Tyrenius 03:57, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<Copyright lawyer hat on> I don't see how that would make a difference. Repetition of material is not a problem at all; it's the quantity of material from a single copyrighted source that raises an issue. If I post a page with nothing but five hundred repetitions of a line from a Stephen King book, no more has been taken from the book than if I posted that line a single time. And, of course, we are also a non-commercial, non-profit, educational service, so all other fair use factors weigh very heavily in our favor. Cheers! </Copyright lawyer hat off> BD2412 T 05:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Couldn't there be a problem if the quote is used just to "decorate" the picture? Not that I expect this would ever come up. Steve Dufour 22:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The test of fair use is first and foremost concerned with how much of the entire work is being used. To the extent that the law is concerned with how a quote is being used, having it decorate a picture is actually makes a stronger case for fair use as it is more of a transformative use of the work. BD2412 T 01:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those answers are open to dispute, and individual cases lead to individual judgements. For reference purposes, there is information at w:Fair use and w:Transformation (law). However, the Wikimedia Licensing Policy is stricter than legal requirements and necessitates "minimal" use of non-free content, so the repeat use of quotations in copyright with images needs to be assessed on that basis. I would say such usage is not minimal and not necessary to fulfil the core purpose of the project.

Moving on to the bigger picture, the Foundation requirement in general is "By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted."

EDP is Exemption Doctrine Policy and, as far as I can see, still only exists for WQ at the moment in draft at User:Jeffq/Wikiquote:Exemption Doctrine Policy. It needs to justify usage of non-free material, and the repeat use on non-free text with images should be considered for it.

Another requirement of the Licencing Policy is that "Non-free content used under an EDP must be identified in a machine-readable format so that it can be easily identified by users of the site as well as re-users." This applies to many pages, and presumably a suitable template or category should be placed on those pages.

Tyrenius 01:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, quotes in copyrighted domain popular works are useful and legal, but if one quote page about a particular copyrighted fictional work has all the dialogues in the work, then IT MAY BE ILLGEGAL. --RekishiEJ 14:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Year pages

I just checked out the link to 1941 and it has no quotes. How about using that page for some of the most notable quotes of the year? (And other year pages the same of course.) We could start with FDR's "a day that will live in infamy." Steve Dufour 21:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be on the safe side, if we're going to do that we ought to limit the pages to some X number of the most notable quotes from that year. Otherwise, we'd end up transcribing all the quotes from a given book or movie into the page for its year of publication. BD2412 T 01:46, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you 100% on that!!! How about "the top ten quotes of the year"? :-) Steve Dufour 00:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on how you decide which quotes are top 10.--Jusjih 23:47, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd go with way more than a top ten -- maybe a top 100. BD2412 T 01:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"That's my story, and I'm sticking to it"

Does anybody know where the quote "That's my story, and I'm sticking to it" came from —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Katowell (talk • contribs) 04:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It's found in a country western song. But you probably already knew that. Steve Dufour 00:26, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To all:

Hello all fellow users, I just wanted to tell you that the Simple English Wikiquote is up and running, and that any users are welcome to contribute. Thanks — American Eagle (talk) 18:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright of quotations

http://boingboing.hexten.net/2008/08/12/grateful-dead-lyrics.html Read carefully --Histo 13:41, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. We always try to stay within the bounds of fair use but of course if anything is a copyright violation we will fix it.--Cato 18:05, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bear in mind that we have much greater leeway with quotes than does the author of a commercial product being sold for profit. BD2412 T 19:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for heading up, Histo. Would you also like to post it to mailinglist? --Aphaia 19:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Repetition of quotees in "About" sections and theme pages

We now have 17 quotes by Keith Olbermann in the "About" section of the page for John McCain. We have 23 quotes by Olbermann on the page for the Fox News Channel. This is plainly disproportionate and can be traced to one editor, but it raises policy questions we haven't yet answered:

1) How many times can one person be quoted on another person's page?

2) How many times can one person be quoted on a theme page?

My own suggestion for each of these questions would be three times per article.- InvisibleSun 15:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO the norm should be one quote, and two quotes at most, in order to force a selection process in which only the quote that is most worthwhile to be included would appear, and in order to encourage diversity. I would be in favor having this as an official guideline, after there's agreement on a maximum number such as one/two/three. ~ iddo999 18:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to be overly prescriptive. There are circumstances (James Boswell on Samuel Johnson?) when you might expect masses of quotes in an About section. However, normally more than three definitely needs to be queried.--Poetlister 18:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Debito Arudou

I noticed the Wikiquote for Debito Arudou includes entries like:

" * If I thought there would be anything to gain from debating with this person, I would. But there isn’t. He isn’t even open to considering all the evidence (such as reading book JAPANESE ONLY), and has proven time and again (even within this thread) that he wants to play intellectual cat and mouse. No thanks. I only want serious debaters and point raisers on their blog, ones that actually have the possibility of changing their mind.

o Debito Arudou, on why he bans people who disagree with him from his blog [2] Debito.Org" What is the standard for Wikiquote entries? Which of these quotes are appropriate, and which of these is not appropriate? I have a feeling that some quotes could be given undue weight or used in a POV matter. On EN.Wikipedia we have the "BLP" standard, and I wonder if Wikiquote has similar considerations for living people. WhisperToMe 00:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have WQ:Q. Please feel free to apply it to this article.--Yehudi 06:24, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to split long presidential pages.

Some of our longest pages are those of U.S. Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush. I propose that these pages be divided into eras, with separate entries for pre-presidency, presidency, and post-presidency quotes for each (Lincoln had no post-presidential period, of course, but some quotes about Lincoln are post-presidency). Objections? BD2412 T 17:40, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Of course, George W. Bush has no post-presidential period yet.--Cato 21:23, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This seems okay to me as well, so long as it is a proposal to add sections within the page, rather than to create separate pages. ~ Kalki 23:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the proposal is to create separate pages, because the primary pages are too long. Why not separate pages? BD2412 T 00:23, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I simply see don't see that there is actually need for such separate pages for different eras in the life of people, and don't find the idea desirable. ~ Kalki 00:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are, to my understanding, still technical limitations which cause large pages to load slowly. Our project serves the entire world, and most of it does not yet have DSL. BD2412 T 02:28, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412, maybe you could create on your userpage an example, I suggest by copying the page of one president and dividing it into eras, keeping the more notable quotes of each era in the main example page (and trimming the rest), and creating three additional pages that contain the trimmed (+untrimmed) quotes of each era. If the end results looks good, then other editors here could review it to decide whether your proposal is beneficial. My guess is that if the quality of such an example is high, most editors (including me) will like it, though it still means that more effort would be needed for high quality versions of other pages... BTW do you care only about U.S. presidents, or is this supposed to be an initial step that shows how we should split all the long pages? ~ iddo999 23:49, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will put together an example. I hadn't really thought about other pages, as Presidents are so easily divisible by era in this way. I suppose any national leader who had many pre- and post- office quotes could be treated the same. BD2412 T 02:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]