The Wikipedia roads thread

[Scott5114]

I don't know how to join a WikiProject or what I could contribute - especially with road stuff, because I don't know anything outside of Michigan, and Michigan already has some of the best coverage of any state. It's like there's nothing left to add in my "territory." And bulldog1979 talks a lot about Wikipedian gatherings and places that Wikipedians chat online - where are those?

Joining a WikiProject is as easy as editing in the topic area and contributing to discussions on the project talk page when you're interested. You can add your name to a participants list, but lots of people do that and never really contribute, so I don't lend much credence to them.

Just because you live in Michigan doesn't mean you have to edit there. Do you have connections to another part of the country? Used to live elsewhere? Have family that you visit frequently? Go to college out of state? Failing that, every state that borders Michigan could use the help–nobody's touched Wisconsin in ages, so that might be the place to start.

I don't contribute to Wikipedia other than small corrections because I don't want to put all that work in and not get credit for it (sure, my screenname will be listed in the edit page, but most users don't even click there) and because any random asshole can completely undo my work and replace it with total garbage.

The only person who really edits Oklahoma road articles is me. Seriously. I have every page watchlisted, and I pretty much never see any of them pop up as having being edited unless I did it myself. (This is not counting the automated and semi-automated typo-fix bots that go through occasionally.) People trashing articles just doesn't happen in OK. (That's a phenomenon mostly limited to CA, it seems.) Random one-off vandalism is typically caught by the people who sit around watching for that on any article, anyway.

[hbelkins]

I did an edit on a Wiki page the other day; that being for US 48. I got directed there looking for information on some of the ARC corridors, and the Wiki entry said US 48 was sparsely signed in Virginia. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as it has been fully signed for nearly 10 years now. So I changed it.

[NE2]

And the anal retentives continue to run the laxative factory: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Route_385_in_Colorado&action=history

[english si]

That guy is an ass.

Actually, that's far too nice to asses.

He clearly is in the wrong for changing the citation templates without consensus, but still doesn't care about creating one.

With the rest of the changes that you undid, you did something similar (remove   + some other formatting stuff and have state names in wikilinks that are masked changed into abbrevs) after an edit of Scott5144 (also changed concurrent mileages, but explained why on his talk page). Scott didn't act like a dick about it and start a revert war - because he's not a dick, unlike this other guy.

[Scott5114]

In adding the citation templates, Imzadi1979 (who is also a member here, by the way, so he has read the above post) was also adding more information to the citations and harmonizing the citations with the rest of Wikipedia. The   is a non-breaking space. It's a typographical nicety (it prevents line breaks between the "US" and the number in constructions like "US 385") that there's no reason to revert out.

You're being childish, Dan. You're picking a fight here when there's no reason for there to be one, other than citation templates make you sad for some inarticulated reason. Just stick to adding content and don't argue over dumb shit like this.

[J N Winkler]

After looking at the article in question, I think NE2's Imzadi1979's citations are more closely in accord with accepted conventions of scholarship since author and title are clearly identified and the cited resource is described in a way that allows a reader to form an unbiased judgment as to whether it might actually have the information the article author says it does.  This is a case in point (first example is NE2's Imzadi1979's revision, second is Imzadi1979's revision NE2's original):

Associated Cultural Resource Experts; Colorado Historical Society; Colorado. Department of Transportation (2002). "Appendix C: Compiled Information, Colorado Highway System" (PDF). Highways to the Sky. Littleton, CO: Associated Cultural Resource Experts. p. a-xxix. OCLC 68695471. Retrieved November 18, 2013.

1923 list of state highways, reproduced in Highways to the Sky, Appendix C, p. 39

Imzadi1979's NE2's version is shorter, but omits authorship information and substitutes an interpretive description of the resource for a chapter heading.  It leaves the reader asking, "What kind of thing is Highways to the Sky?"  In contradistinction, Highways to the Sky as cited by NE2 Imzadi1979 is easy to recognize as an example of the reference books which state DOTs prepare (or hire consultants to prepare) for their environmental planners to use in helping the agencies meet their obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act.

And while I acknowledge that Imzadi1979 was acting under provocation, language like this promotes the exact opposite of building a consensus:

Your last edit summary to the article said to "bugger off", but using that language causes me to dig my heels in a bit. You're now stuck discussing this with me until we reach a mutually agreed solution.

It is the sort of thing one says when one is trying to drive someone off.

[Scott5114]

After looking at the article in question, I think NE2's citations are more closely in accord with accepted conventions of scholarship since author and title are clearly identified and the cited resource is described in a way that allows a reader to form an unbiased judgment as to whether it might actually have the information the article author says it does.  This is a case in point (first example is NE2's, second is Imzadi1979's revision):

Associated Cultural Resource Experts; Colorado Historical Society; Colorado. Department of Transportation (2002). "Appendix C: Compiled Information, Colorado Highway System" (PDF). Highways to the Sky. Littleton, CO: Associated Cultural Resource Experts. p. a-xxix. OCLC 68695471. Retrieved November 18, 2013.

1923 list of state highways, reproduced in Highways to the Sky, Appendix C, p. 39

Imzadi1979's version is shorter, but omits authorship information and substitutes an interpretive description of the resource for a chapter heading.  It leaves the reader asking, "What kind of thing is Highways to the Sky?"  In contradistinction, Highways to the Sky as cited by NE2 is easy to recognize as an example of the reference books which state DOTs prepare (or hire consultants to prepare) for their environmental planners to use in helping the agencies meet their obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act.

You actually have these backward. The longer one is Imzadi1979's preferred version (diff). NE2 reverted to the short version, and then Imzadi1979 made several non-citation related edits, leaving the citations on NE2's version.

[J N Winkler]

You actually have these backward. The longer one is Imzadi1979's preferred version (diff). NE2 reverted to the short version, and then Imzadi1979 made several non-citation related edits, leaving the citations on NE2's version.

My apologies--after looking more closely at multiple versions of the article, I see my mistake.  I have amended my previous post accordingly.

I am sorry to see bad feeling develop over this article, but I really do think readers would be better served by the longer citation.

[english si]

In adding the citation templates, Imzadi1979 (who is also a member here, by the way, so he has read the above post)

And I wouldn't have said so on a public forum if I cared that he read it - he is the reason why WikiProject:UK Roads is shite, having pushed away British Roadgeeks. Sure, others were there causing the damage, but Imzadi1979 had his fingers in all the alienating pies.

Every time someone posts something negative on SABRE wrt something specific (and roads related) on Wikipedia, he's always there on the baddies side, stirring things up and creating bad blood.

The   is a non-breaking space. It's a typographical nicety (it prevents line breaks between the "US" and the number in constructions like "US 385") that there's no reason to revert out.

I agree, but it was easier for NE2 to revert the lot as changing those citations would have been difficult. That losing the formatting changes means that the article matches his preferences is almost irrelevant.

If you are looking for overly heavy-handed, then look at the revert back (and isn't there a rule over double reverts?) when the main point of contention - that Imzadi had gone against policy on the citations - had been clearly stated as the reason for the revert and remained unaddressed, then a reversion by NE2 would have been pointless. However the main point of contention was unaddressed and Imzadi reverted that back, despite having changed them without consensus, which is against policy (as NE2 pointed out).

The description of the revert of the revert

restoring additional details about the sources and other GF improvements to the article, take to talk if you object

was basically an "I don't give a flying fuck what the official policy about citations, I'm doing it rather than seeking to build consensus before acting". It's clear that while NE2's reversion of the GF improvements were a reason to revert, the revert was mostly about reimposing the citations that pissed NE2 off and, per policy, need a consensus to change.

I think "bugger off", while unlikely to enhance dialogue, isn't that much of an inappropriate response to that kind of "fuck you, I rule" response to citing policy. Especially if you've done most of the work on the page and someone else comes along doesn't just say that you don't own it (you don't NE2 - and Scott's points about formatting are valid), but makes it clear that he feels that he owns it and consensus isn't worth bothering with*.

*unless of course you tell him to bugger off, when he'll then bore you to death with walls of text and demand that consensus is reached just to spite you.

[rschen7754]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a roadfan site, so the citations have to look professional.

And Wikipedia:Citing templates is not policy or even a guideline. However, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD is.

[NE2]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a roadfan site, so the citations have to look professional.

Um... most encyclopedias don't have citations at all.

[J N Winkler]

Um... most encyclopedias don't have citations at all.

The traditional encyclopedia does not allow its readers to edit itself.  For this reason alone, fuller citations are better in Wikipedia (even when they do not add to the precision with which the cited resource can be located) since they function as a signal that the article has been adequately researched.  Avoiding line breaks within route designations seems to me a bit of a fine point, but I would have kept Imzadi1979's revised citations.

It takes a lot of mental energy to carry on a dispute, so it seems more prudent to reserve it for genuine disagreements as to fact.  There seem to me to be none here--this is all about presentation.

[NE2]

It takes a lot of mental energy to carry on a dispute, so it seems more prudent to reserve it for genuine disagreements as to fact.  There seem to me to be none here--this is all about presentation.

Presentation and making it more difficult to edit the code.

[Scott5114]

It takes a lot of mental energy to carry on a dispute, so it seems more prudent to reserve it for genuine disagreements as to fact.  There seem to me to be none here--this is all about presentation.

Presentation and making it more difficult to edit the code.

I don't think there is much to this argument–you pass the template various key/value pairs ("name=yada|url=yada|date=yada") and you get an automatically formatted citation. I think this is easier for most people (certainly it is for me) than having to manually format the citation.

[J N Winkler]

I don't think there is much to this argument–you pass the template various key/value pairs ("name=yada|url=yada|date=yada") and you get an automatically formatted citation. I think this is easier for most people (certainly it is for me) than having to manually format the citation.

I don't think I completely understand NE2's point.  I can see the citing style Imzadi1979 wishing to have followed causing difficulties to the extent that it removes the severability of the body text.  (Body text can be said to be severable in the sense I mean if some of it can be added or removed without damaging the citations.  This does not happen, for example, if there is an ibid. chain in the citations and the citation to which they all point is in the body text that is removed.  Also, since Imzadi1979 seems keen on enforcing the convention of giving a full citation including links only the first time a particular resource is cited, editorial changes cause problems if they result in a new citation to a given resource being inserted before an existing full citation to that resource, thus requiring transfer of the full bibliographical information from the old citation to the new one.)

However, the observation that the road to economic surplus lies through specialization applies to Wikipedia editing just as it does to other fields of production.  NE2 seems to me to do quite well producing content, so this strikes me as an appropriate area for specialization.  I am less qualified to judge whether Imzadi1979's focus on citation formatting and other matters of style actually helps road-related Wikipedia articles gain featured-article status or survive attempts at deletion, but as long as his concern with such matters doesn't impair content provision, I don't really see a need to object.  Having written a 100,000-word doctoral thesis with over 800 citations, I know full well what a thankless job it is to keep them precise and neatly formatted, so if I were actively editing Wikipedia articles, this is a job I would gladly farm off to someone else.  If I were Imzadi1979, I am sure I would be tearing my hair out over all the different sources that are available for road-related research that clearly aren't anticipated by any citation templates--how do you identify authorship and title for construction plans sets, for example?

[andy3175]

Since we're talking Wikipedia, and I am not an editor ... can someone change the leftover links to rockymountainroads.com into aaroads.com/west?

An example is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Highway_130

Regards,
Andy

[rschen7754]

California had the same problem too, with westcoastroads.com, but I ran a tool to change all the links about a year ago. I'll see what I can do for the rest.

Unfortunately, it appears that on the German and Spanish Wikipedias, they also use the old links.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Since we're talking Wikipedia, and I am not an editor ... can someone change the leftover links to rockymountainroads.com into aaroads.com/west?

An example is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Highway_130

Regards,
Andy

Nothing keeps you from doing it. You become an editor as soon as you click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page.

[Scott5114]

I don't think there is much to this argument–you pass the template various key/value pairs ("name=yada|url=yada|date=yada") and you get an automatically formatted citation. I think this is easier for most people (certainly it is for me) than having to manually format the citation.

I don't think I completely understand NE2's point.  I can see the citing style Imzadi1979 wishing to have followed causing difficulties to the extent that it removes the severability of the body text.

I think–I don't know for sure since he likes to state his opinion in short, opaque, and usually rude bursts–his objection is solely to the use of citation templates. On Wikipedia, a template is a small piece of software that works much like a software function call–when passed a number of named parameters, it performs processing on them behind the scenes and produces output. (A more visible example of one of these is the "infobox" found at the top right of each article.)

Citation templates help ensure consistent references because, as long as the input is consistent, the output will always be formatted in the same way, and will be automatically updated when changes to the reference style occur. (Imagine your document magically updating to the newest version of the MLA and you get the right idea.) NE2's objection seems to be that this makes the source code more difficult to read. I don't believe this is the case, and to what degree that it is it seems clear to me that the drawback is so minor that the benefits the templates provide overwhelm this objection.

However, the observation that the road to economic surplus lies through specialization applies to Wikipedia editing just as it does to other fields of production.  NE2 seems to me to do quite well producing content, so this strikes me as an appropriate area for specialization.  I am less qualified to judge whether Imzadi1979's focus on citation formatting and other matters of style actually helps road-related Wikipedia articles gain featured-article status or survive attempts at deletion, but as long as his concern with such matters doesn't impair content provision, I don't really see a need to object.  Having written a 100,000-word doctoral thesis with over 800 citations, I know full well what a thankless job it is to keep them precise and neatly formatted, so if I were actively editing Wikipedia articles, this is a job I would gladly farm off to someone else.  If I were Imzadi1979, I am sure I would be tearing my hair out over all the different sources that are available for road-related research that clearly aren't anticipated by any citation templates--how do you identify authorship and title for construction plans sets, for example?

Imzadi1979 is very much a featured-article specialist, producing more than a dozen featured articles on roads, which is something that nobody else on Wikipedia has ever done. Citations are indeed a very big part of an article becoming featured, so if there's one subject upon which Imzadi1979 can speak with authority, it's citations. (I've solicited his advice several times on this subject.)

As for construction plan sets, they are rarely cited, since it is usually more appropriate to cite a book or map showing the completed road. However, the one time I did cite one, I just did a lazy cite of "ODOT Job Piece No. 17428(34), sheet 209". A more complete approach would probably have "Staff" as the title (or perhaps the PE whose seal is attached to the sheet), "Oklahoma Department of Transportation" as publisher, "Job Piece No. ..." as title, and the sheet number as the page number.

[J N Winkler]

Scott--thanks for the explanation of the template.  Does it address the severability issues, such as the "first citation" problem?  (E.g. if I make a full citation and give it an alias, and then cite the alias at a footnote call that precedes the full citation, will Wikipedia see this and move the full citation information to the first instance of the resource being cited?)

As for construction plan sets, they are rarely cited, since it is usually more appropriate to cite a book or map showing the completed road. However, the one time I did cite one, I just did a lazy cite of "ODOT Job Piece No. 17428(34), sheet 209". A more complete approach would probably have "Staff" as the title (or perhaps the PE whose seal is attached to the sheet), "Oklahoma Department of Transportation" as publisher, "Job Piece No. ..." as title, and the sheet number as the page number.

I have cited specific construction plans sets, most notably in the Wikipedia article on I-19.  My citations were generally in these forms:

Construction plans for Arizona federal-aid projects NH-19-1(110) (Arizona DOT TRACS H260701C) and NH-19-1(116) (TRACS H260702C) (most sheets sealed March 1997).

Construction plans for Arizona federal-aid project I-19-1(81) (title sheet signed January 17, 1980).

I am not aware that any of the generally accepted bibliographic formats out there have a standard method of citing construction plans for highways.  On the principle that a citation should permit easy localization of the resource and should maintain segregation among author, title, and publication data, this is what I would suggest:

*  State DOT identified as corporate author, on the basis that all other possible identifications are more troublesome.  (Consultants are not always identified; sheets are not always sealed by a named engineer; title sheets may have illegible approval signatures, especially if scanned from microfilm or badly mistreated paper or linen originals; actual production of the drawings might be handled by multiple technicians identified by initials only; and in the US, it is almost universally the convention that the state DOT or other owning agency is responsible for having the plans prepared, publishing them as part of the contract advertisement process, and then accepting and retaining the as-built versions of the plans as construction record drawings.)

*  The phrase "Construction plans" as part of the title, but left unitalicized and unsurrounded by quotes since construction plans sets do not have titles as that concept is understood for books and journal articles.

*  As part of the title, the federal-aid designation of the project if it is a federal-aid project or, alternatively, the state or state-aid designation if it has one and the format mimics that used for FAP numbers (which is generally funding type-route-section-agreement-milepost for Interstate jobs, or funding type-route-agreement for more recent non-Interstate FAPs).

*  Also as part of the title, generally in parentheses, an identifying number or caption assigned by the state DOT to the project which is both persistent (unlike, say, letting call numbers) and convenient to use for localization.  This is generally an alphanumeric code of fixed width that is unique to the project and can be used as a database key, such as job piece numbers for Oklahoma DOT, TRACS numbers for Arizona DOT, PID numbers for Ohio DOT, state project numbers for MnDOT, CCSJs for TxDOT, job numbers for MoDOT, PPMS numbers for VDOT, TIP numbers for NCDOT, contract numbers for Michigan DOT, ECMS numbers for PennDOT, PI numbers for GDOT, etc.  If the state DOT maintains separate identifying series of project numbers, as Oregon DOT does, the project's description under each series should be cited when that is known (e.g. contract number and V-file number for recent Oregon DOT projects).

*  As part of the publication data, title sheet signature date (month precision at least) or range (month precision at least) of signature dates on sheets that form a majority of the plans set.

There are several reasons I suggest putting the federal-aid project caption ahead of state-specific metadata when citing construction plans sets:

*  Often, despite organizing schemes like job piece numbers or TRACS numbers, state DOTs continue to file their projects under FAP numbers or FAP "clones" which they have developed for their internal accounting use.  This is partly because fixed-width project captions often go back only to the recent past--Oklahoma DOT, for example, seems not to have used job piece numbers before the late 1970's, while Arizona DOT developed the TRACS system in the early 1980's.  If you go to Arizona DOT Engineering Records in Phoenix to examine paper plans, as I have done on several occasions in the past, you will find that projects are organized using the numeric parts of the FAP number (or equivalent), treating each digit group separately:  e.g. construction plans for I-10-4(3) filed before construction plans for I-IG-10-4(20), which in turn are filed before construction plans for F-026(53) and RAM-600(507).  There are a few states like TxDOT which developed robust fixed-width numbering early on (the CCSJ system dates from the 1950's, for example), but these are the exception rather than the rule.

*  As a general rule, FAP numbers are more descriptive than numbers under fixed-width systems since they include the route number for Interstates and the FAP segment number for FAP projects.  (There are exceptions, of course--Interstate projects in the early to mid-1950's, before the advent of Interstate numbering, had FAP numbers beginning with "I" where the following digit group appears to refer to a FAP segment number rather than the Interstate route number.)

*  Because FAP numbers are used by the federal government for its own internal accounting purposes, they correlate with material found in NARA, such as payment vouchers.

I agree that it is getting a bit ahead of ourselves to worry about a standard citation format for construction plans sets, but in the next 10 years--editor interest permitting--I predict that they will be used much more extensively in Wikipedia articles than they are at present.  We are up to about 40 states with online availability of construction plans for their current lettings (NY came onstream just last summer), and there are already four states with self-serve access to construction plans for past projects through online electronic document management systems (IA came onstream recently; MN, KY, and GA have been around for a while; I'm not counting SC because they charge a subscription fee).

Online availability of construction plans is a technological change, so it is appropriate to fit a logistic curve to its diffusion, as the economist Zvi Griliches did long ago with hybrid corn.  It is my judgment that in the last 10 years we have gone from the toe to the head of the logistic curve with current letting plans, while we are still at the toe in terms of as-built plans and will take another 10-15 years to go to the head.  If this thumbnail analysis is correct, then we should see states coming online with as-built construction plans at a fast pace in about five to seven years.

[Scott5114]

Scott--thanks for the explanation of the template.  Does it address the severability issues, such as the "first citation" problem?  (E.g. if I make a full citation and give it an alias, and then cite the alias at a footnote call that precedes the full citation, will Wikipedia see this and move the full citation information to the first instance of the resource being cited?)

The way references work on Wikipedia, whether a template is used or not, is through XML-style tags, of the format <ref name="foo">bar . . .</ref>. Anything can appear in between the opening and closing tags, template, plain text, or wikitext. This reference can then be called at another point on the page by <ref name="foo"/>. The parser does not require the full specification to appear first, only that it must be fully specified at some point on the page. Therefore, severability is somewhat limited, although it is simple to use the browser's find function to search for the full reference when copying text to another page.

As mentioned before, NE2's issue appears to be a dislike of the template that Imzadi1979 included between the tags. This is the raw code that Imzadi1979 included:

Code Select Expand

<ref name=list-1923>{{cite book |author1= Associated Cultural Resource Experts |author2= Colorado Historical Society
|author3= Colorado Department of Transportation |year= 2002 |chapter= Appendix C: Compiled Information, Colorado Highway System 
|url= http://www.coloradodot.info/programs/environmental/archaeology-and-history/highways-to-the-sky/appendices.pdf |format= PDF
|title= Highways to the Sky |location= Littleton, CO |publisher= Associated Cultural Resource Experts |page=a-xxix |oclc= 68695471
|accessdate= November 18, 2013}}</ref>

The equivalent version, including the same information that Imzadi1979 did (which NE2 reverted out), without the template (and thus missing out on the automatic-formatting and -updating benefits) would be:

Code Select Expand

<ref name=list-1923>Associated Cultural Resource Experts; Colorado Historical Society; Colorado Department of Transportation (2002).
[http://www.coloradodot.info/programs/environmental/archaeology-and-history/highways-to-the-sky/appendices.pdf "Appendix C: Compiled Information,
Colorado Highway System"] (PDF). ''Highways to the Sky''. Littleton, CO: Associated Cultural Resource Experts. p. a-xxix. [[OCLC]] [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/68695471 68695471].
Retrieved November 18, 2013.</ref>

The key question: is this enough of a readability improvement to forgo the benefits of a piece of software automatically formatting and updating the reference when the prevailing reference format changes?

I agree that it is getting a bit ahead of ourselves to worry about a standard citation format for construction plans sets, but in the next 10 years--editor interest permitting--I predict that they will be used much more extensively in Wikipedia articles than they are at present.

The problem with using construction plans is not so much availability but (wrongheaded, in my opinion) policies saying that, as an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, it should only use secondary sources. Using primary sources such as construction plans, they say, allows editors to introduce an original opinion while interpreting the source. This policy makes sense when the primary source is, say, raw lab data or poll results, but not so much for engineering plans. This policy has even lead to some non-road editors taking a negative view of using maps as sources, although the prevailing wisdom is currently that a map is a secondary source, as it is based upon a primary source like aerial photos or GPS tracks.

I am unaware if any construction plan citations have been given the featured-article sniff test. I tend to avoid using them where possible and only cite them when it is unavoidable. The instance I cited above is the sign plan for the I-40 Crosstown project in Oklahoma City, used to cite the name of an planned exit to a road which has yet to be constructed. No signs are posted yet–and may not have even been fabricated at this point in time–but the road's name is clearly laid out on the sign plan. There is no other way to verify the information than by the sign plan.

[english si]

Citations are indeed a very big part of an article becoming featured, so if there's one subject upon which Imzadi1979 can speak with authority, it's citations. (I've solicited his advice several times on this subject.)

And yet he doesn't know that "Citation templates can be used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged: an article should not be switched between templated and non-templated citations without good reason and consensus — see Variation in citation methods above."? And that looks to me to be a page is official policy.

Wikipedia is about consensus, and while I prefer Izmadi's formatting, the approach he took is alienating and against wikipedia policy. When confronted with a request to create consensus, he started a revert war. Surely, as a wikipedian of good repute (apparently), he should know better than to be a dick?

Sure NE2 has been NE2, and that will irk Izmadi more, but NE2's acting as responder, not instigator here.

[Dr Frankenstein]

NE2's objection seems to be that this makes the source code more difficult to read. I don't believe this is the case, and to what degree that it is it seems clear to me that the drawback is so minor that the benefits the templates provide overwhelm this objection.

Something to clarify about source code... it's not meant to be read in a continuous way like, you know, its output.

Similarly, when you read or edit source code, if you encounter something (especially a template or function call) you don't understand, you look it up in the documentation or find its definition in the source; you don't expand it into its definition just because "it's easier to read," breaking the standardization, modularity and reusability they provide in the process.

[Scott5114]

Citations are indeed a very big part of an article becoming featured, so if there's one subject upon which Imzadi1979 can speak with authority, it's citations. (I've solicited his advice several times on this subject.)

And yet he doesn't know that "Citation templates can be used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged: an article should not be switched between templated and non-templated citations without good reason and consensus — see Variation in citation methods above."? And that looks to me to be a page is official policy.

There is little good reason to not use them.

[english si]

There is little good reason to not use them.

Yes, but (if you actually read what is there), policy is to need good reason and consensus before making a switch. 

Izmadi had good reason, but made no attempt at consensus until the whole thing had blown open.