I just want to take an informal tour of the source types mentioned previously [in email] to look at their main citation elements. These are simply some of the more common ones I've used in citations on my blog, but I want to capture some of the edge-cases and and mention any special considerations for real usage.
Still need to indicate creator types somehow, e.g. author, compiler, editor, illustrator, indexer, transcriber, translator.
We also have authors, article titles (analogous to chapter), and paper name (analogous to published book). The publication date is the issue date, and so would involve a day (in addition to month/year). More than with published books, newspaper editions may precede the Julian-to-Gregorian changeover. I think this will force us to leave room for a calendar indication in the general form of dates, even if it's only this pair of alternatives for now. Obviously, it would be daft to not leave some evolutionary path open, though. The where-in information has some similarities with books: page(s), column(s) (essential for broadsheets).
EE uses a close analogy between these and books so that the general form is:
Author/Creator, Title of Book/Website (Place of publication = URL : Date), specific-item
Specific article or page on Web site -- again, the analogy includes this, in addition to online databases, images, and database-with-images -- I have discussed the differences between these with ESM as she considers a "database" to only contain text extracts. Although applications that put images directly into a database are rare, databases are still common an the essential index in locating image resources. The database name is analogous to a book chapter, and the Web site as the published book title.
Creator of Page/Database/Chapter, "Title of Page/Database/Chapter", Website creator or book editor, Title of Website/Book (Place of publication = URL : Date of creation or access), specific-item
The site creator may be dropped if it's obvious, e.g. Ancestry, as it would introduce duplication. The specific item (what I call "where-in" elsewhere) can get quite complicated if you're citing an entry in a database. I don't know whether we should bother itemising this group of data, or just have a single generic element for it.
It's common to indicate the type of what you're looking at (e.g. image, database, PDF attachment, etc), and when there are layers -- such as when the image of an original record is hosted on the site -- then there are some joining words used (see https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/questions-about-linking-layers-and-item-types). We obviously need to indicate the type of the online item, but I'm unclear whether the joining words between layers affects anything in our plans.
Titles often have a long and a short form, with the shorter form being used on subsequent citations (see https://www.evidenceexplained.com/quicktips/citing-full-titles-vs-short-titles). It strikes me that something similar to our multiple name forms can be employed here.
See also https://www.evidenceexplained.com/quicktips/citing-online-sources-whats-essential for a summary of online-source citations.
The database may not have a specific name (see https://www.facebook.com/evidenceexplained/posts/1587815591293817) in which case a description has to be used (appearing not in quotes, and so must be distinct).
The analogy covers this too (see https://www.evidenceexplained.com/quicktips/citing-facebook-revisited), but there is a problem with citing the timestamp of a post or a comment. ESM may not have considered the issue of time zones, and we briefly discussed this at https://www.facebook.com/evidenceexplained/posts/1587815591293817. Basically, if a time is specified then it must either be UTC (a bit difficult for most users) or the author's local time zone must be stated, in which case the software can convert to UTC. ESM suggested that the corresponding post/comment can be inferred, but then that would mean the timestamp is unnecessary as well as meaningless.
Authors, "title", blog host/creator, name of blog, posted-date (URL : accessed-date), specific-item
It is common for a work to not have an explicit creator or date, and the abbreviation "n.d." indicates "no date". However, I have instances where these elements can be inferred, even though they are not explicit in the consulted source. In print, they would be enclosed in editorial brackets to indicate the difference, but I don't know if a citation element can represent this status.
There are standards for archival hierarchies, but not everyone uses them. If we have elements to hold the archival code at each level (fonds down to item) then we might still need a generic one. We should probably include elements for the internal (sub-item) levels, too, such as folios and pages.
Again, the date may be a Julian one, although when they've been consulted in a database then that may not be obvious. Should we have a way of stating the ambiguity? See Table-1 at http://parallax-viewpoint.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-on-margaret-hallam-nee-astling.html.