An open letter to Wikipedia users re: permalinks
[Re-surfacing quickly to point out something that gets overlooked all the freakin' time.]
Dear Professor Lessig et al.,
I read your comments in the New York Times article “Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively” with great interest. However, I believe you may have overlooked something.
If you would like to cite a specific revision of an article on Wikipedia, then you should use the “Permanent link” option. Alternately, you can use the “Cite this article” link, which will return some metadata on the revision and will also show appropriate citation formats (MLA, APA, AMA, Chicago style, etc.). Both are available on the left side of each article in the “toolbox” underneath the search box.
As an example, let us consider the article about you. The most recent revision can always be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig.
However, if you would like to cite the revision of 22 January 2007 16:44 UTC, then you can click the “Permanent link” item in the toolbox on the left to get this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lawrence_Lessig&oldid=102458070
And if you would like to see a citation for this article in a common bibliographical format, then you can click the “Cite this article” item in the toolbox, then copy-and-paste your favorite one. As an example, let’s try Bluebook style as used in Harvard’s Journal of Law and Technology:
See Wikipedia, Lawrence Lessig, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig (optional description here) (as of Jan. 29, 2007, 18:48 GMT).
Thank you for your time. Please keep up the good work.
jeem
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