[WikiEN-l] Citing open reference works, was article about open access encyclopedias

[Carcharoth]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> phoebe ayers wrote:
>> interesting quick article about the trials and tribulations of other
>> open access encyclopedia projects:
>> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/14/encyclopedias
>>
> In another direction, I'm interested in the issues we have in citing
> online reference works.
>
> (a) We do want permalinks if possible and don't want link rot. It seems
> that such works generally do not provide permalinks.
>
> (b) There is the general {{cite web}} template, but it is cumbersome.
> There is an "access date" field but that can only be a compromise
> solution, if there is no permalink.
>
> (c) For older works that are now in the public domain, the "correct"
> solution is to place the material in Wikisource, support it with proof
> reading and bibliographic details (including author information) over
> there, and link to it via interwiki rather than URL. That is, Wikisource
> should be the repository used by default for older material such as
> Britannica 1911. We are, though, a long way from even linking to
> existing articles there in preference to external links.
>
> (d) Generally, instead of {{cite web}}, each commonly-used external
> reference cited should have a dedicated template for linking. Unlike
> some other areas, the drive for common standards seems not to have taken
> off here.

Bumping this because it's been sitting unread in my inbox for ages,
and I think there are interesting things said here that should be
discussed. Er, how about: how much do people here use wikisource. I
think it is a great resource that gets under-used. Or pick up one of
the point Charles made above, for example, how to motivate and start a
drive for standards in citing common external references (I'm not sure
if Charles means templates to wikisource, templates to other online
stuff, or templates producing a formatted reference to a book).

Carcharoth