Wikipedia talk:Quotations

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[edit] Support

Excelent guidline. I would support this becoming an official guidline. Wikibout-Talk to me! 01:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Needs more?

Sounds like an all-around good guideline. Is there anything else that really needs to be added? I can't think of anything. But it definitely needs more support from other editors. Stanselmdoc 18:47, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am sure people can think of other times that quotations should or shouldn't be used. But I poste dthis on the Village Pump, and haven't gotten much response. I guess we just give it time. Thanks! --LV (Dark Mark) 18:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

I just happened to NPOVify a couple of articles so they didn't read as an advert. While doing that, I had to remove a lot of quotes. Basically I would add:

Don't use quotes to describe something. Instead of saying: The director of the technology company said "We always use the most up-to-date technology." say The technology company always tries to use the most up-to-date technology.

and

When making an article less POV, don't be afraid to remove POV quotes, but try to add what the quote is trying to convey elswhere. Wikibout-Talk to me! 23:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

See, I would have said it should be the other way around. By saying, "The technology company always tries to use the most up-to-date technology", we (as Wikipedia) are making a value judgement about what they do. By quoting the director, we do not inject our POV or OR into it. We state the quote. That way we are not the ones stating it as a fact. --LV (Dark Mark) 00:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm, true. The reason I said that was because of my personal experience. The article had a large block of a quote, where it would have been better stated in non-quote form. What do you think of my second suggestion. Wikibout-Talk to me! 01:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you made a lot of quotes that explained aspects of whatever the article was about, the article would be overly cluttered with quotes. Wikibout-Talk to me! 01:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quoteboxes

I'd like to propose adding the following. I was going to add it myself, but wording it was difficult, so I am proposed it here first. Tuf-Kat 03:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Fifth, quotations that are encyclopedically important in and of themselves may be best presented set apart from the rest of the text, such as in a small box. These sorts of quotations may include lyrics or dialogue that illustrate a point, culturally important or iconic phrases from speeches or other sources, or possibly other forms of quotations. Quotations that are not inherently notable and specifically germane to the topic should not be set apart in boxes or other formats; doing so places special emphasis on that quote, and the opinions it expresses. Notable opinions should be described, possibly using quotations, in the article text.
Call me dense, perhaps, but is this common practice? I just haven't seen it in recent memory. Thanks. --LV (Dark Mark) 04:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Not really common practice, but it does occur. See these two recent FACS, for example: 1 and 2, where I got into somewhat unpleasant arguments about it. I saw an inappropriate quotebox in an article the other day too, but didn't remove it because there was an ongoing dispute on an unrelated issue that I didn't want to get involved in (I think it was a city in Australia, but can't remember now). Tuf-Kat 04:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I see. Hmmm... well it is up to the community, really. I personally don't really care for them. If they are inherently notable, they should probably be introduced and used in the article. If they don't fit somewhere in the body of the article, I would say they don't fit at all. If the article (or subsection thereof) is about the quote, then it might be nice to have it set out (for visibility purposes), but random quotations sprinkled throughout an article doesn't make sense to me. My opinion. --LV (Dark Mark) 04:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the concept of "quote boxes". How often does it occur that a quote in and of itself is encyclopedically important? Even then, it would have to be something so important that it basically defines a large part of the article subject. I'm not sure I'm against it, I just must be new to the idea of quote boxes. I've never seen one, maybe? Can I get a better example?Stanselmdoc 18:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm opposed to their use too, which is the point of the proposal. A poor example of their use is here. I could imagine them being justifiable in, say, Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream or maybe some movie/song/album articles, but I haven't actually seen any that I agree with. However, I wouldn't want to propose a blanket ban on putting quotes in boxes, which might very well be a useful thing to do sometime. Tuf-Kat 18:50, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I don't think we should put a blanket ban on them (after all... instruction creep, anti-wiki, yadda, yadda, yadda...). We may want to discourage them though. ;-) --LV (Dark Mark) 14:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the both of you. Your examples, Tuf, are good, hadn't thought about them. Perhaps they should be discouraged. And encourage a consensus on articles' talk pages decide on a box for the quotes? Stanselmdoc 14:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Not quite a quotebox per se, but it is a quote in an infobox - the saintbox, such as at Maximilian Kolbe, has a little section for a prayer. It seems fairly appropriate to me. Anyway, I'm going to edit this page to reflect this discussion. Tuf-Kat 22:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
What the h*ll is a quotebox??? The article needs to have examples of a quotation in line with the text, of a quotation set off by the blockquote tag, of a quotation set off with whatever is the name for the tag that inserts the very large blue quotation marks, and of a quotebox. This could be done without using a lot of space, and IMHO would be very useful for editors. This editor, two months into doing this, and with a reasonable level of activity, sure could use it. Lou Sander 15:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Insertions to / omissions from the quoted text

An example from Role-playing game:

To Hickman, roleplaying is an exploration of ethical choice; in his words, “The characters[’] actions in a role playing game must have lawful consequences just as surely as we expect a mace to do damage. Anything else would be a lie. [. . .] Good fantasy demands ethics and good fantasy role playing demands ethical play and design.”[1]

Somewhere, someone should note that insertions into the quoted text (like the apostrophe after the second word in the quotation) must/should be enclosed in square brackets. Should the ellipses be enclosed in square brackets (“[. . .]”), too? --TowerDragon 18:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... well that's tricky. I suppose we could go in two directions here. I had originally tried to omit most of the Manual of Style type stuff, including the use of punctuation, etc. But we could include all of the grammar and style stuff here too. Thoughts? --LV (Dark Mark) 14:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we should try to make this as comprehensive as possible, without being overly analyzing. Perhaps discussing MoS parts that people may not know directly from reference should be mentioned (i.e. ellipses and such). And maybe there could be some directs to other wiki policies, like punctuation and others. But this policy, I think, should try to maintain the focus almost entirely on the USE of quotations, as opposed to the grammatical accuracy of them. Stanselmdoc 14:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

All the business of ellipses, punctuation, etc. is pretty important stuff, and should either be in this article or linked to from it. The idea is that you either put it here or there, but wherever you put it, it should comprehensively cover punctuation etc. of quotations. I'm agnostic on here vs. there -- every time I think about it, I come to a different opinion. Lou Sander 15:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to include a quotation

Great guideline. But, when I read several articles I see that quotations are included in different ways: using different boxes and different templates. Could this guideline list all these? CG 19:53, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

See the discussion two sections above, and the new paragraph I just added on quoteboxes. I agree that all methods of presenting a quotation ought to be discussed here. Tuf-Kat 22:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I like what you've added, Tuf-Kat. Stanselmdoc 17:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's a template I could find Template:Cquote. I'm sure there's also several other templates and template-boxes. Could we include them in the guideline? CG 19:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I like it

It looks pretty good to me -- concise and easy to follow. (IMHO a lot of Wikipedia guidelines are not either). I'd like to see another example of putting italics inside a quote, so people can better understand the matter. My preference would be a quote that includes some foreign words, which would, of course, be italicized. Here's a famous one from Yogi Berra:

This is like deja vu all over again.

Or a longer one from JFK:

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner!
  • I, too, wonder what a quotebox is.
  • There's also the blockquote tag, which might be briefly explained here (or mentioned, with a link to a fuller explanation elsewhere, if there is one.
  • And there's some sort of tag that puts big blue quotation marks in the vicinity of the quoted material. I don't know what it's called, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it in the Ann Coulter article, or the one about her recent book, or ???? Lou Sander 19:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soooo...?

So should we start including everything regarding quotations (all the MoS stuff about punctuation, blockquote templates, etc.) or just leave it basically as is? Should we try to merge the proposed page? I personally do not like the incoming page as it eliminates the possibility of pertinant links being made and restricts the openness of WP where none existed before, but that's just me. --LV (Dark Mark) 22:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quoteboxes again

See the current FAC Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Baden-Powell House, which has a quotebox right near the top. Tuf-Kat 00:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes sections

I find a lot of sections devoted to quotations in articles that are largely unsourced and are about fictional topics. In trying to address these, I have been looking for a guideline that specifically discusses quotation sections. They usually appear along with trivia sections, and both usually come off as unencylcopedic. Can someone point me in the right direction? --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 14:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

YES! This is the page to discuss it on. I dislike quotation sections severely, as Wikiquote's entire purpose is to list quotations of people, so there is no reason to have them on Wikipedia. Also, an editor can almost always find ways to incorporate quotations from quotation sections into the body of the article. I propose that quotation sections should be extremely restricted, if not completely banned. Stanselmdoc 01:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this quote used correctly?

Is the quote on this page used correctly? It seems to me that it either needs to be incorporated or moved to wikiquote. Asmeurer (talk ♬ contribs) 00:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reopening this proposal

I have restored the {{proposed}} tag for this page for the following reasons:

  • I found no evidence that it had been deemed historical by anyone except the editor declaring it thus. No mention of this decision had been made on this talk page.
  • It does not appear in Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals.
  • It is actively being used as a guideline to remove quotes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode articles, in view of the fact that Wikiquote has its own collection. This quote removal/transfer is a common practice being executed by many editors in many subject areas.
  • This talk page seems to me to be the logical place to start a critically needed discussion of the refusal to follow the Transwiki process by most Wikipedians doing transfers to Wikiquote, ignoring GFDL crediting requirements.

Does anyone have information that would indicate why we should not restart this discussion (e.g., specific policy addressed elsewhere relevant to the last two points)? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:11, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Please learn what you're talking about before attacking other people. Thank you. There is an obvious difference between a historical proposal (e.g. "nobody cares") and a rejected proposal (e.g. people don't like it). >Radiant< 10:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Radiant, I'm sorry that you felt I was attacking you. My concern was that I am not familiar with the formal processes of Wikipedia policy/guideline proposal approval and rejection. I spent a few minutes reviewing Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, Category:Wikipedia proposals, Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and this talk page, and found nothing that suggested there was a dicussion to close this proposal, merely a determination by a single editor that the proposal had lost steam. But my quick review could easily have missed something not obvious to a first-time policy proposer (as is true for so many processes within Wikipedia, which can indeed be quite bureaucratic and has many times the formality of most other Wikimedia projects), so I wanted to be sure I was not missing something.
As I try to be thorough, I stated my findings to date and asked for any information I'd missed. Within minutes of my announcement, I was warned that some might take exception to my implied criticism; thus my subsequent caveat at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia:Quotations. Criticism was not my intent. My primary goal here is to ensure that Wikipedia and Wikiquote have a place to establish how they interact, because we at Wikiquote are getting tired of fixing or deleting massive GFDL violations by those of us at Wikipedia who have the good intention of transferring quotes from WP but seem unaware of the requirements for crediting contributions.
I have no quarrel with your historical tagging. I believe I understand the rationale, and clearly no one disagreed with it back then. But we surely need something now. I hope that you will accept my apology for this inadvertent offense, and that we can move on to the effort of resurrecting and updating this proposal. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I just found out about this proposal, and I would support a renewed look at it. It's somewhat related to some efforts now taking place at Wikipedia:No original research and the new proposal Wikipedia:Classification of sources. I think we need a good guideline on quotations, and looking at the proposal as it now exists, I can't see much that would be controversial.COGDEN 20:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I strongly agree with COGDEN, as it stands the only policy which can be cited in dealing with articles like Colemanballs and Dumb Britain is WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which doesn't cover it precisely enough IMHO. Although clearly this proposal would need people to care about it and consider it if it was to become policy proper. Jdcooper 13:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I like this page and would support seeing it promoted to a guideline. --Elonka 12:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
As one of the first editors to review this proposal, I would LOVE to see it reopened to discussion. I was a huge proponent of it in the beginning, and still strongly desire to see some kind of Quotations guideline for editors. Too many pages of Wikipedia look like Wikiquote. Stanselmdoc 00:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Support. I also favor reopening this because of stuff like this. There's no easy place to refer people who insist that citing using monstrous blocks of text (without any explanation) is somehow acceptable, when in reality, it makes articles confusing and difficult to read, at least, in my opinion. --slakr\ talk / 12:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Support. This guideline is not great, but is better than nothing.Yamanbaiia 21:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Practicing what one speaks, or perhaps my misunderstanding

Perhaps I misunderstand, but should not the following line quoted in this article be source-attributed, containing as it does more than three consecutive quoted words?

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (emphasis added)

-- Boracay Bill 02:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "How-to" page

I think the best use WP:Quote is a "How-to" page. A guideline about how to use quotes. I think it should include a separate paragraph about when and how to move quotes to Wikiquote. It needs to cover attribution concerns for Wikipedia content as well as the best ways to convert quotes from Wikipedia to Wikiquote.

Ideas for wording? Other suggestions? FloNight 16:54, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates to note too many quotations

Do we have cleanup templates that can be used to tag articles with too much quotations, or inline quotations themselves that seem 'too much' for Wikipedia?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  21:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

{{Quotefarm}} -- Boracay Bill 02:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Indicating Original Source Mistakes in Quotations

What is WP practice with respect to indicating errors in grammar, spelling, etc. within quoted material. I am concerned about protecting such apparent errors from well-intended editors. Some misspellings are obvious, as in heavy slang quotations. Some are not. As an example, there is one and only one exact duplication of a piece of advice in a list of 30 pieces of advice. It looks like an error in the quotation, although I am told it is not. It should have been possible for the provider of the quote to indicate that it was accurate as written or for me to do so. How should that

The traditional means is inserting "[sic]" for certain kinds of errors and footnoting others. I have noted that some editors oppose the use of such Latin. What would be the English equivalent that would be brief enough to not disrupt the reader's experience? I know that many editors also disapprove of inserting internal links within quotations. Would they feel the same way about footnotes within quoates? DCDuring 14:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what problem anyone should have with "[sic]"; it's standard English publishing practice, just like ibid. and other borrowed Latin terms. From a practical point of view, to stop well-behaved bots from automatically making unwanted corrections, you can often wrap the erroneous text in a nowiki element (e.g., "<nowiki>Childrens</nowiki> do learn", to cite a recent, famous faux pas). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
True. Plus, it seems to me the more general public who doesn't understand WP:FOOTNOTES but does understand [sic] would benefit as well. Personally, I've used [sic] in edit summaries to indicate intentional errors (where footnotes inherently don't apply). *shrug*. --slakr\ talk / 05:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

I'd like to request a move to Help:Quotations. I was minded to be bold, but as discussion died out not too long ago I thought I'd check and see. Hiding Talk 17:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

This could be a guideline if rewritten in a more formal way and vetted. It appears to have enjoyed enough support above that I'm surprised the historical tag wasn't removed (as it stands, it should probably be marked as an essay). I don't think it belongs in the help space, which is generally reserved for more technical help. This is more along the lines of the MOS pages, which sit in the Wikipedia space. Dekimasuよ! 03:31, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Fair play. Hiding T 23:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unclear Sentence

What does this mean: "Similarly, quotations should always be introduced in articles as stand alone quotations are not proper paragraphs." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.169.5.169 (talk) 09:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] copyright

Neither this essay or Wikipedia:MOSQUOTE#Quotations mention copyright or fair-use issues to do with quotations. I see a small note at Wikipedia:Fair_use#Text. Is it covered in more detail on another project page? Is it worth mentioning here? John Vandenberg (talk) 02:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)