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I'm looking to cite both of the following articles:

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Free_Speech https://ballotpedia.org/Institute_for_Free_Speech

For web pages like this, my understanding is the citation should look like this:

[Title]. [Web Site]. Retrieved from [URL]

Since both have the same title, how should I distinguish between the two in in-text citations? Should I list both the title and web site somehow?

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  • Pretty sure those articles do have dates, because they’re wiki articles that you should be able to check the edit history for?
    – nick012000
    Dec 16, 2019 at 2:34
  • Curious: What sort of publication is it that requires formal citations yet allows wiki articles as sources?
    – puppetsock
    Dec 16, 2019 at 19:01
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    For citing wiki content, which is likely to change over time, it's generally best to cite to a specific dated version of the page. For instance, rather than the URL you give, I'd cite to sourcewatch.org/… and specify "22:22, 15 February 2019" in the citation. Otherwise, a later edit might change the page so that it no longer says what you cited it as saying, and then where are you?
    – GB supports the mod strike
    Dec 16, 2019 at 21:02
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    @puppetsockreinstateMonica Wiki cites can be appropriate for illustrating how an issue is popularly discussed/represented (e.g. the two links in the OP give very different pictures of the same organisation - that difference of representations may be of interest in itself) or when definitions are changing faster than more conventional sources can keep up. See e.g. this article - it's in a judicial context but a lot of it is applicable to academia.
    – GB supports the mod strike
    Dec 16, 2019 at 21:23

1 Answer 1

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("Title of the page", n.d.a) and ("Title of the page", n.d.b) would combine:

  • naming the title in quotation marks "Article Title" due to the unavailability of an author; and
  • the n.d. (no date) due to the unavailable date; and
  • the letter that is added to the date because of multiple same-titles and same-dates (a, b ...).

However, your case is special as the first link is a Wiki. As Geoffrey Brent wrote in a comment, in case of a Wiki, you can click on "View history" and find a permalink to an article's current version with a date attribution. You can then link to that versioned permalink with the date. Here is an example of a version history page pertaining to your first link; the permalink to the most recent version (Feb. 2019) is this one: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Free_Speech&oldid=745869 (you can find this link by clicking on the most recent date listed in the version history page).

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