A Wikipedia reference for the origin of the word 'tonneau'

In the post on Setting up a Wikipedia account I made a simple edit; adding a reference to the Wikipedia page for Tonneau. As I was short of time I left the edit factually complete but partly finished, hoping that another editor might come along and tidy it up. A quick check reveals that the edit is unaltered.

So, now that I have the time (and a need for a non-method post) I shall go back and clean up my own mess. But first let's take a couple of steps back: What is a 'Reference' and why bother anyway?

Adding references (from the Latin referre, "to carry back") to a text carries out several functions:

1. They enable an author to condense their work, as the inclusion of references allows them to shorthand content, ideas or assumptions written elsewhere. Also, doing so allows readers to follow how an argument or line of reasoning has come about by looking at the same references and following the breadcrumbs. For example;

I reference Newton's Laws of Motion. Most people are familiar with them/have been taught them/have heard of them, and what I am describing relies on an understanding of them and the assumptions that they imply. If none of the above apply, here they are, go look at them.

Hyperlinking in Wikipedia performs the same function. Allowing a reader to 'jump off' the page to familiarise themselves with what is being discussed before returning.

Also, using references in this way means that the flow of an argument or description isn't broken up with lots of other information. As such, they act in the same manner as footnotes, but contained in other books.

2. They are an appeal to authority/reputation, ie look at these people who support what I am saying. For example;

I reference Newton's Laws of Motion. What I am describing relies on accepting them, and his work is overwhelmingly accepted to be true. If you don't agree go and look at the work yourself.

I reference the WSJ. Implying that the referenced data is sound, as they spend a large amount of time & money on fact checking (this is also why papers get away without referencing their work).

Just like a plumber's references, the validity of a reference is based on the reliability of its' source (comes from your brother-in-law, OK; comes from the plumber's brother-in-law, not so much).

3. They allow you to give credit to sources on which your work is based. For example;

I reference Newton's Laws of Motion, what a clever chap (shoulders, giants, etc).

4. They stop you being accused of plagiarism. Generally, you are expected to become acquainted with the previous work on the topic you are writing about before putting pen to paper. However, if you independently and secondly come to the same conclusion (ie nothing you can do that can’t be done) you'll just have to fight your corner on that one.

So, having established the practice of referencing as generally being a good thing, how does a reference turn into a citation? Mostly by being written down it seems.

A citation system is basically a set of parsing rules to turn a reference to a book, journal, paper, etc, into a shorthand form that you can take to a library and extract the referenced article from. How this plays into the future when more (or even most) content is video or audio rather than print is not too clear, as the current citation systems are a little clunky when dealing with these sources.

Wikipedia, of course, has its' own citation style, which, given the diverse subject range covered, is actually a collection of different styles. Specific templates are available to use for some of the styles.

But, interestingly, there is no style provided for referencing other Wiki works. A search of the Citing sources talk page on Wikipedia revealed that inter-Wiki links are not recommended as they are self-published material [1, 2, 3] and therefore fail the second point above. This is slightly counterintuitive. Initially, when the number of users is low, I can see the validity in this. But, when the number of users is very large, the benefits of crowd-sourcing and the Law of Large Numbers should come into play. Are the eyes of 10,000 Wiki editors less reliable than one editor in a commercial publishing house?

Anyhow, I need a non-Wiki reference for the origin of the word tonneau. Is there anything in the Wiktionary entry? Nope, nothing there (and another job to do [work out how to add references to Wiktionary]).

What about the OED? The ground truth of the English language. Well it is paywalled for a start. But, as tonneau is far from a new word, I can use the 1^st edition as a source.

Formatting the citation now becomes easier as this is simply a book reference, for which Wikipedia has a citation style template. There are two applicable citation templates, Template:Citation and Template:Cite book.

Here is the full citation template for the first of these;

Template:Citation

Full citation parameters

These can be used for all types of publication. All are optional and indentation is used simply to group related items — these may be mutually exclusive where indicated. Some hyphenated names can also be placed without hyphens.

{{Citation | author  = | last    = | first   = | author2 = | last2   = | first2  = | author-link  = | author2-link = | author-separator = | author-name-separator = | author-mask = | display-authors = | editor        = | editor-last   = | editor-first  = | editor2       = | editor2-last  = | editor2-first = | editor-link   = | editor2-link  = | translator-last = | translator-first = | translator-link = | translator2-last = | translator2-first = | translator2-link = | others   = | publication-date = | date     = | year     = | origyear = | title    = | chapter  = | chapter-url  = | chapter-format  = | contribution = | contribution-url = | type    = | journal = | periodical = | newspaper  = | magazine   = | encyclopedia = | work = | edition = | series  = | volume  = | issue   = | publisher = | publication-place = | place    = | language = | page  = | pages = | nopp  = | at   = | id   = | isbn = | issn = | oclc = | pmid = | pmc  = | bibcode = | doi = | doi-inactive-date= | zbl = | url = | accessdate  = | format      = | archiveurl  = | archivedate = | dead-url    = | quote      = | layurl = | laysource  = | laydate    = | separator  = | postscript = | ref = }}

Yikes!

However, it should just be a matter of filling in the blanks. Even so, constructing the reference will be a post in and of itself.