Useage of See Also:

Question

I've not been putting See Also: in my profile though having seen that it's the ideal according to the help files.  I see also that the sources are supposed to be in alphabetical order.  I've been arranging the sources sort of chronologically, first census if there are any, then birth items, then marriage then death items.  Should I add the See Also: and is it worth the trouble of rearranging the sources?

Comments

I'm with you, Dave, I put my sources in chronological order ... just seems to make more sense to me ...

I do add a 'See also' if I have footnotes ... put the 'See also' between the footnotes and the sources.

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When you say "footnotes" are inline references the same thing, or something else?  I usually put in piece of boilerplate about censuses which doesn't refer to any particular item of data.  Should I put the See Also: after that or just between the references and the sources?

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I also put all sources in chronological order.  It just makes more sense that way.  I feel that an interested party should just be able to glance at the sources and see the profiled person's life in a single glance.  Nobody should have to dig around for it, that was my job.  I want to make it easy it for the reader.

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Dave, footnotes are <ref> source </ref> that appear above the <references /> line.  I put the 'See also' after the <references /> and before my list of sources ...

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I also put source in chronological order, as it makes more sense when a Biography is written. Personally I find the "See Also" wording superfluous. Is the wording of "Sources" as a section header not clear enough what is underneath it?

Answer 1

The See also: line is there for any sources that are not used as inline references, in other words the inline references would be footnotes for the fact they refer to and the see also is for anything else. If done that way most of your sources would be footnotes and mostly in chronological order with only a few that have information about the person not recorded in the biography. So yes it should be added and is recommended in the Sources Style Guide

Comments

OK, I'm going to put them in at the bottom of the sources for the use by non-footnote referenced sources.  Since that describes my boilerplate (I think?) for census I'll move it down.  Where should Resource Notes go then?

Answer 2

I use See Also to provide a break between the footnotes from inline sourcing, and other sources on the page that are not in an inline reference.

Answer 3

I don't use the "See also" heading because many of the items I want to list in the Sources section are not "see also" items, but documents that are cited in multiple inline notes in the profile, with different pages cited (or different text included) in different notes.

On a Wiki, we can't depend on footnotes always remaining in their current sequence, and we can't assume that the first note that cites a particular source document will always be the first citation to that source document (or will not be removed by a future edit). Therefore, instead of putting the full citation details into the first note (and hoping that the current profile structure will stay intact forever), I like to provide a full citation in the Sources section and use shorter citations in the inline notes. And I like for the list of sources cited to be alphabetical because that makes it easier to find a specific item.

Comments

Ellen, the See also line is to show sources that are not used in inline references. If thee sourcing and headers are done the way the Sourcing Style Guide recommends then everything will be in it's proper place when you are done.