What should an BibTeX entry for a Stack Exchange post look like?

Question

On (some?) science SE sites, we can get BibTeX code for citing posts. This is what this can look like:

@MISC{30073,
    TITLE = {Cutting equal sticks from different sticks},
    AUTHOR = {Erel Segal-Halevi (http://cs.stackexchange.com/users/1342/erel-segal-halevi)},
    HOWPUBLISHED = {Computer Science Stack Exchange},
    NOTE = {URL:http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073 (version: 2015-02-16)},
    EPRINT = {http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073},
    URL = {http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073}
}

I think that this is weird; there's lots of redundant URLs and having the profile URL in the author field is likely to skrew with all kinds of sorting and citation routines. (\authorcite, oh dear!)

If you were to propose updating their BibTeX output to SE Oversight, what would you change in the status quo resp. my proposal, and why?
To be clear, I'm asking for the (La)TeX perspective here, not the SE perspective.

Answer 1

I would stick with Bibtex setting (bibltex style citation could and should be added as an additional style, like the amsref they have there).

@misc is the correct type of entry, that fits unpublished or online items.

The most important issue, in my eyes, is to have all the data in the record. It is usually harmless to have extra data, so I'm not so frightened of the URL/EPRINT redundancy. I am missing the year field (which in my eyes should be the year when the question was posted); month may be optional.

One thing that bothers me is the author. Having "user18324" or "themonkeybeater" as an author, doesn't seem right. But maybe there's no other way around it. Adding a link to the author profile is a nice idea.

So I'd go with

@misc{CS:30073,
    title = {Cutting equal sticks from different sticks},
    author = {Erel Segal-Halevi},
    authorurl = {http://cs.stackexchange.com/users/1342/},
    howpublished = {Computer Science Stack Exchange},
    year= {2014},
    note ={[Online:] \url{http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073}},
    url = {http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073},
    urldate = {2014-11-26}
}

---

a bit unrelated: what if you wish to cite the entire thread, rather than the specific question / specific answers? In this case, I would cite the same way as above, but removing the author.

Answer 2

Here is what I have created for the same post after browsing the documentation of biblatex:

@online{cs.SE:30073,
  title = {Cutting equal sticks from different sticks},
  author = {Erel Segal-Halevi},
  nameaddon = {\url{http://cs.stackexchange.com/users/1342/}},
  howpublished = {Computer Science Stack Exchange},
  url = {http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/30073},
  urldate = {2014-11-26},
  date = {2014-09-17}
}

In particular, note that

• the key is changed to be unique across SE sites (and more descriptive),
• every piece of information goes into an appropriate value,
• there is no redundant information, and
• posting and access date are both kept.

This renders to (using biblatex (with biber or bibtex) and alphabetic style):

I find the result quite pleasing; nameaddon is missing and would have to be added to the style if necessary, e.g. like so (for biblatex, due to @moewe):

\renewbibmacro{author}{% 
  \printnames{author}% 
  \setunit{\addspace}% 
  \printfield{nameaddon}% 
}
\DeclareFieldFormat{nameaddon}{\mkbibparens{#1}}

This may break styff your chose style does in arbitrarily nasty ways, so use at your own risk. You have to show the author URL, though, so some change to the style and/or exported entry may be needed; this is a proof-of-concept.

For compatibility with older tools, one may want to add (redundant) year and month fields. Some styles (e.g. plainnat) support url, others (e.g. alpha) do not. Find an MWE here for playing around with.