User talk:Otto9W9otto

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Happy editing! Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Citations

Hi Otto9W9otto. I noticed your question at the Teahouse yesterday and thought you might like some tips on editing on academic topics using DOI: we need editors with expertise! You were adding material from doi:10.1002/ana.24150 which in the revision I'm seeing now at ALS you used twice as references #5 and #10. Ideally, we would just place the citation once in the article (usually at its first occurrence) and then use named references to re-use it. Note that I've made a direct clickable link to the doi by using standard WP:Wikilink techniques, which is good for Talk Pages but not normally used in articles, especially those rated "Good", which ALS is. Instead, we provide the full citation:

• Pupillo, Elisabetta; Messina, Paolo; Giussani, Giorgia; Logroscino, Giancarlo; Zoccolella, Stefano; Chiò, Adriano; Calvo, Andrea; Corbo, Massimo; Lunetta, Christian; Marin, Benoit; Mitchell, Douglas; Hardiman, Orla; Rooney, James; Stevic, Zorica; Bandettini Di Poggio, Monica; Filosto, Massimiliano; Cotelli, Maria Sofia; Perini, Michele; Riva, Nilo; Tremolizzo, Lucio; Vitelli, Eugenio; Damiani, Danira; Beghi, Ettore; EURALS Consortium (2014). "Physical activity and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A European population-based case-control study". Annals of Neurology. 75 (5): 708–716. doi:10.1002/ana.24150. PMID 24706338. S2CID 16652252.

That looks like a lot of work for you as an editor but in reality it doesn't need to be! There is a WP:Citation expander gadget you can install which will take the DOI and accurately convert it into the full citation (see the link for the details). In this particular case, you want to use the citation multiple times, so you need the aforementioned named reference, and we don't need the reader to see all the long list of authors, so we can add the |display-authors=3 parameter to get this. The next time we want to use the same reference we put the name again. You'll have to look at the source code to see the details and note that I added the template {{talkref}} to ensure that the reference was placed correctly in this thread: in articles the template that is used is normally {{reflist}}.

Please reply here if you want to ask me more questions about the technicalities of editing. I think that you probably ought to read WP:MEDRS and WP:EXPERT as well, if you have not already done so. Best wishes for your future at Wikipedia! Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:31, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Could you kindly provide an example of "

To invoke the named footnote:

 ?

I learn much better by viewing examples. Otto9W9otto (talk) 21:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello Otto9W9otto - I just reverted your edits on ALS primarily because the refs were not properly formatted, but also ALS is a medical article which requires Reviews as citations rather than 'studies' and preferably a review with a free article. Another pointer for a Good Article is to use reviews of up to 5 years. I was not aware of the previous helpful input from Mike Turnbull. Hope I haven't discouraged you. Best --Iztwoz (talk) 20:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Kindly expand on "refs were not properly formatted". I appreciate your help. Otto9W9otto (talk) 21:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I've moved the {{talkref}} template to the foot of this section so hopefully things will be clearer. You used the <ref name="name">content</ref> absolutely correctly in your reply here, so the list of references now includes the word "content" — which is the part you want readers to see that is the actual citation — and by subsequently placing <ref name="name" /> into your text you re-invoked that citation as instance "b". Notice how you can now click on the "b" in the reference box and the software will move the cursor to the correct place in this thread (and would in an article).

What Iztwoz is pointing out is really the same as I mentioned in my first paragraph. We don't format references merely as bare DOI or bare URL: we take the trouble to expand them into full citations. There are lots of reasons for doing that: 1) it gives credit to the original authors we are citing 2) it gives the original title of the article 3) it gives the journal name (which helps experienced readers regarding the credibility of the source) and 4) it links to other places the article may be available online (e.g. PubMed in the case of the Pupillo work). I'm not going to comment on whether any of the citations you suggested should go into ALS are worth placing there, as it isn't my area of expertise. I'm just trying to help out on the technicalities. Now that your additons were reverted by Iztwoz, you are in what we call the WP:DISCUSS part of the Wikipedia WP:BRD process and I'll leave that aspect to you both. Please read the linked guidance to see what to do next. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:18, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

References