Forum:Clarification on how to cite of out-of-universe information

I was archiving a discussion that ended with an apparently easy definite change to the Manual of Style, when it occurred to me that it made no sense.

The thread suggested, and Tangerineduel accepted, that when you're citing an in-universe fact, use in-line citations, but when you're citing an out-of-universe fact, use footnotes. And that's pretty much what tardis:Manual of Style says right now. But if that's true, why do we have the REF tag? Or CON, or DCOM, or. ..

Is all out-of-universe information to be cited with footnotes universally? Cause I know I've not done that. In articles like Planet of Giants, I'm droppin' REF: The First Doctor Handbook with impunity. I often use DOC or CON references. Is that really meant to be wrong? I mean, sure, I could switch over to always using footnotes, but if we do that, we really should remove all the non-fictional prefixes. Their existence implies it's okay to use them.

Also, in the previous discussion, the example given was Varnax. The footnote there merely lists the name of the book. It's a long way around of achieving the same level of information as REF: The Nth Doctor. If we're going to insist on footnotes in real world passages, I think we need to settle on a proscribed footnote format that gives us more bang for our buck. We have to insist, at a minimum, upon a linked book name (if that book exists on this wiki), and a page number. Otherwise we're taking up way more space for the same amount of information.

Thoughts? 23:11:02 Tue 31 May 2011


 * Yep, I agree (I know I'm sort of agreeing with myself).
 * I thought it a little odd when all these CON/DCOM prefixes started turning up, but they aren't on a lot of pages I frequently edit, so when I saw them I'm sorry to say I sort of got distracted by 100 other things.
 * The REF tag is a tricky one and one I think we need to sort out, it sort of serves a dual purpose (which it shouldn't), but it's used to cite reference texts like Dalek Survival Guide and stuff like The Nth Doctor. Really I think it should only be used to cite in-universe "fictional" reference guides, so it fits in with our in-line referencing and prefixing and footnotes for OOU.
 * I will hold my hand up and say the Varnax one was me not getting it right with the footnotes, I have improved though; Gothic stories, The Dark Dimension for example.
 * Ideally I'd like to see a simplified system of templates that Wikipedia has for citation, a web based one, one for books, one for publications (magazines etc), and a general use "other", I say simplified as I think Wikipedia tends to go overkill a little bit on the citation front. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:20, June 1, 2011 (UTC)