Template talk:Cite web

What is the accessdate used for?

Resolved: We use it here because all citation style authorities demand this information.

I use WP:Twinkle which can fill in the accessdate field. The field seems useless to me and the resulting "Retrieved some date" clutters the reference list. Why does the template display the date? --Marc Kupper|talk 21:33, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Because web page are prone to amendment, and few are dated with any form of decent revision date: often the only date on a page is the copyright year, which is at best vague (covers a 365-day span) and at worst always seems to be the current year, even if the page in question was last amended a year ago. For the purposes of verifiability, it is very important that we be able to detect if a current version of a web page is not the same as the one which existed at the time that the reference was added. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I still don't see how retaining and displaying the accessdate helps with this. Let's say a page is dated. In that case we can document it with the date field and someone later verifying the citation can see if the date matches. If a web page is not dated then I don't see how accessdate allows me to detect that the "current version of a web page is not the same as the one which existed at the time that the reference was added." Let's say I look at the page and see that it seems to support the Wikipedia article. Did the accessdate date help me? No. Has the web page been revised since it was used as a citation? I have no idea. Let's say I look at the page and see that it does not seem to to support the Wikipedia article. Does knowing the accessdate help me? No as I don't know if the web page changed, if the editor who added the cite was mistaken, or if the cite ended up where it was in article as a result of editing.

One potential value of accessdate is it allows me to know when someone added that citation to the article. Using the article history I could see what it looked like at that time and see if the citation supports that version. However, if someone knows Mediawiki well enough to do that then an editor likely knows they can view the page in edit mode (or view-source for protected articles). The other option is to have the accessdate available as hover text (float the mouse here to see what I mean) meaning there would be less reflist clutter while still making the information available. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:09, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

The access date is important because the content may change. It may be removed, it may be altered, it may be expanded. Besides, sources may not have a date at all, like a team roster. MediaWiki page history is an unreliable way to determine access date, simply because adding a citation does not equal retrieving the page. One may have written a draft months ago, copied content, restored long-term blanking vandalism, etc. One of the other main reasons to fill in access date is so that the page can be properly archived and restored later on, when it inevitably goes 404. Be it via archive.org, URL change, or a different citation. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi, just thought I'd flag this up here, the access date appears to be broken, usually when one comes to get the template the access date is always today's date and today it says 28 July 2011. What's up, Doc? CaptainScreebo ^Parley! 20:52, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm seeing 1 August 2011 (today is 2 August). You're probably viewing a cached copy of the page. Try purging. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

That would be it then ,cheers, now says 2 August, will bear this in mind for the future. CaptainScreebo ^Parley! 15:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I likewise see no point in cluttering up reference lists with lists of the last access date. It's great that it's stored in the code for posterity, it does have some benefits for someone creating or searching for an archive (and therefore modifying the code), but it should not be displayed, should be behind some javascript magic, or should be so tiny that it doesn't blend in with the rest of the list. It's a HUGE amount of visible text clutter for no benefit. I've tried to use javascript on my end to hide it, but because it's not enclosed in any tags, I can't. It's pointless and needs to go. Foxyshadis^(talk) 02:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The accessdate parameter is first of all confusing. From the usage patterns for the last few years, most editors put both |date= as the date of publication and |accessdate= as the actual date they added the citation to the article; however the documentation currently says that |accessdate= "should be given if the publication date is unknown; see Citation styles - Webpages" - so |date= and |accessdate= are presumed to be mutually exclusive! How did it happen that so many editors got this wrong - was it a recent policy change? Anyway, this is not emphasized enough in the documentaion, so I moved the description of accessdate to immediately follow date for now. --Dmitry _{(talk •contibs )} 09:28, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

You have to be careful with the wording though. If the date is given by |year=, the citation would still need an access date. Also, |accessdate= should not be used instead of the |date=, so the "or" part does not work both ways. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The documentation suggests specifying both |year= and |month=, not the year alone. This was not clear at the first glance, so I have moved the parameter names to be closer together, and also changed the description of |accessdate= to read "should only be given etc." --Dmitry _{(talk •contibs )} 11:30, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

That's assuming month is even available, which is not a fact. Anyhow, I clarified the documentation so you see what I meant -- if |year=2001 is set, then |accessdate=November 11, 2011 should still be set. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:27, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I restored the previous language and placement. Accessdate is not an alternative option for the other dates. It is most important (or required per Citation styles - Webpages) if the publication dates are not available. However, it is always good practice to include the access date for a web page. With the access date, it is often possible to recover information from dead urls using the Internet Archive. older ≠ wiser 13:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I am really looking for the language I thought I've seen that accessdate is not required where there is a publication date. (Tips would be appreciated.) But having glanced over several similiar discussions I wonder if I might offer some summarization. "Publication" has traditionally implied a definite form or content, pretty much fixed as of the date of publication. Publishers might subequently alter the content, but this is generally deemed a revison, or even a new edition, and is distinguished by a different publication date. Web pages, and possibly other sources of similiar malleability, can be continuously modified ("prone to amendment", as Redrose64 said above), and therefore must be specified as of a specific time (date alone is usually considered sufficient); this is equivalent to a time of publication. Where material from a web page (not otherwise published in a definite version) is used in an article the access date is when the material was accessed, not when it was included in the article.

Perhaps that helps. One of the issues I've seen is where editors reference a web form of material with a definite publication date (such as a book, or a journal article); it seems over pedantic to cite when a book was "accessed". Although I have seen pdfs of journal articles that were subsequently modified (corrected??). That seems to warrant a revision date (do we have that?), perhaps even a file size or (!!) CRC of the file content. But these verge off-topic, and I mention them only to show that access date is not the only method of identifying content. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:54, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

• Template:Cite web states: "accessdate: Full date when item was accessed. Should not be wikilinked. This should be given if the publication date is unknown." This is included as one of the optional parameters.
• Wikipedia:Citing sources#Web pages states: "Citations for World Wide Web pages typically include ... the date of publication (if known), the date you retrieved the page, for example Retrieved 2008-07-15. (this is required if the publication date is unknown)."
• Template:Cite book states: "accessdate: Full date when url was accessed. Should be used when url parameter is used."
• Template:Cite news states: "accessdate: Date when the news item was accessed, if it was found online." This is included as one of the optional parameters.
• Template:Cite journal states: "accessdate: Full date when URL/DOI was last checked." This is included as one of the common parameters.

Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 02:31, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

When correcting wp:LINKROT (dead links), it is very useful to know what date the url was accessed. It often helps in identification of the correct snapshot archived by the Wayback machine (or other archiving engine). LeadSongDog come howl! 15:08, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

(Outdent). A much shorter answer is that all citation style authorities of any note demand that proper source citations in any kind of formal writing (scientific papers, legal briefs, student essays, post-graduate dissertations, etc., etc.) provide date of access of online materials. Regardless whether all Wikipedians find this information useful, enough people in the real world do find it useful and expect it, that we'd be collectively idiotic to disallow our citation templates from including such metadata. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Linking to publisher and work entity articles

Hello, there is a bot approval request at WP:BRFA/H3llBot 9 for adding wikilinks to work/publisher fields where the entity can be unambiguously identified from a pre-selected list. Comments welcome, thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:18, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

As long as it actually gets this right. I cannot tell you how many times (surely over 1000 by now) I have personally had to correct |publisher= to |work= because for some reason this template in particular seems to short-circuit people's brains and make them treat the name of a website as the name of the publisher instead of the work. This makes as much sense as confusing the album name of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same with Rhino Records, the label that issued it, or confusing the game Doom with id Software, the software company that produced it. It completely mystifies me that this happens at all, and the only explanation that makes sense to me is that broken tools are doing it automatically. I know for a fact that WP:Cite4Wiki was originally doing this, which is why I took it over and fixed it when the original authors were non-responsive. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Reqest to allow URL to be used with parameter authorlink

As many cited authors don't have a lemma on Wikipedia, but have internet pages with valuable information about themselves and their work, allowing WP readers to better judge their credibility, I would suggest to allow also URLs for the parameter authorlink. Many users of this template assume this to work anyway (see #authorlink does not work and #Problem with authorlink), because the name link is confusing and can be used for both: a WP link and an external link as well. In case it's too complicated to implement both usages in one parameter, I'd suggest to change the authorlink parameter name to a less confusing authorlemma and have a new parameter authorurl in addition. For downward compatibility authorlink could still be used in the code, but documented as obsolete and replaced by authorlemma.--Berny68 (talk) 12:03, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

For one, I think the name authorlemma would be much more confusing than authorlink. I have never heard the word “lemma” used to refer to Wikipedia article, and I think most other people too. User<Svick>.Talk(); 21:06, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 10 November 2011

1. The page lists 3 possible archive parameters, but speaks of "both" of them. "Deadurl" is the new 3rd one. A grammar fix is needed; I suggest "(if one of the first two is used, the other must be used as well)".
2. I propose a 4th possible parameter, archived=[WC|IA|no|maybe] which defaults to maybe.

• archived=IA is substituted with [http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/[URL] Internet Archive copy]. That is, it displays a link to the IA page showing links to all archived copies of the cited page.

• archived=WC is substituted with HTML so a click brings up a WebCitation.org page showing the results of a query for the base URL.

• archived=no produces nothing

• archived=maybe produces a combination of =IA and =WC: Possibly working archive search links: [http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/[URL] Internet Archive possible copy search]; WebCitation archive search.

The idea is to make it easier to create working archive links, and less likely for folks to simply remove dead links simply because they're dead, which is AGAINST POLICY.

Clear? Thoughts? I'm really tired of seeing folks damage articles by removing dead links simply because they're dead, when there are archives available.

Elvey (talk) 21:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I set the edit request to no for now because you don't have a clear change to make immediately; see Wikipedia:Edit requests. The archive parameters are passed to and implemented in {{citation/core}}, which is where any new parameters must be added. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

author parameters

This template recognises |author= and |authorn= where n is an integer between 2 and 9: |author1= is invalid. This is in contrast to {{cite book}} where n may be from 1 to 9, and |author1= is a synonym for |author= - is there a reason for the difference? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, {{cite web}} only supports |author= and |author2=. The author and editor parameters should be updated from {{cite book}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, you're right. I rarely use the author parameters, preferring |lastn=|firstn= - but I was tidying a {{cite web}} citation which had used |author= to hold two names. I altered it to |author1=|author2= - and saw that it didn't work, so checked for the validity of those two. I kind of assumed then that if |author2= was valid, |author3= etc. would be too. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I truly cannot see any issues, so I made the updates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:05, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Could you please also update the documentation at Template:Cite web/doc? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:58, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I have been working on it since the update. Had a real life interrupt. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

When you have a chance, could you please add |editor= to the appropriate place in the All parameters section?

Also, the Optional parameters section states "The template automatically adds "ed." after the editor's name unless the chapter parameter is used in which case the template adds "in" before the editor's name which appears after the chapter and before the title." However, in Formation and evolution of the Solar System, reference 108 uses "in" even though the |chapter= parameter is not used. Is this an issue with the code or documentation? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in documentation. This template does not have |chapter=, but |title= is always formatted as a chapter. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:34, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Since the |author= is deprecated, shouldn't the example on Template:Cite web/doc be changed? — DarkFrog (talk) — 09:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that |author= is deprecated. There are times when |last=|first= are unsuitable - for example, corporate authors which differ from the publisher. Another time when |author= may be the better choice is for foreign names when the person adding the ref may not (as a native English speaker) be fully aware of the name conventions in that language. Consider somebody like Kim Jong-il: we know that his parents were Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-suk, and his son is Kim Jong-un, so the family name is likely to be Kim. If he had written a book which we use as a ref source, should we put |first=Jong-il|last=Kim - or play safe with |author=Kim Jong-il? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I strongly favor separating first and last names, and deplore your example, because I have seen quite a bit of editors sloppily (lazily?) stuffing everything into one field, sometimes inverted, sometimes not. Having said that, I agree that |author= should not be deprecated: there are cases where "author name" is a single entity, and it would be incorrect to classify it as "first" or "last". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Technical comments: These parameters are aliases and feed into the Surname1 meta-parameters: last, surname, last1, surname1, author1, author, authors and author. There is no difference in visual or meta-data output.

Opinions:

• Use lastn and firstn for normal use. This creates separate fields in the meta-data rendering and creates proper anchors for shortened and harv footnotes. Author should be deprecated for this use.
• The last and first parameters are not ideally suited to authors whose surname is usually written first (e.g. as in Chinese) or for a corporate or academic entity credited as the author. Use last to include the same format as the source. Or use author, since it doesn't really matter.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... There is an extra author parameter in the template. Looks harmless, but should be cleaned up. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I think what should be deprecated is this certain usage of 'author', not of 'author' itself. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Note that Reflinks uses |author= when it adds citation templates. GoingBatty (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Instead of deprecating author, why not just note the aliases:

Aliases: last, author; last1, author1 through last9, author9

-— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

URL parameters

What does this mean: "Any parameter that provides a URL (excluding archiveurl, isbn, issn, etc.) may be substituted." ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:40, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that means you can do ...|url={{Allmusic|class = foo}}... and it works. Rjwilmsi 11:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The url field gets merged with the title to produce an external link, so anything other than a proper URL will mangle the link.

Example: [Led Zeppelin at Allmusic "Led Zeppelin"]. Led Zeppelin at Allmusic. .

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it only sort of works. There are quite a lot of citations like this, particularly with the {{Allmusic}} template (not personally in favour, just providing information). Rjwilmsi 12:09, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it might be confused with the action of {{cite journal}}, where if you have provided |pmc= (or similar), then |url= may be omitted, but the title is still set up as an external link. Consider the following, which has no |url=:

• Dobson, R. (2005). "Ozone depletion will bring big rise in number of cataracts". BMJ 331 (7528): 1292–1295. PMC 1298891. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1298891. 

Might be worth asking the editor who amended the doc. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:30, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Needs edition parameter

Like just about an other work, this should have an "edition" parameter, with code borrowed directly from {{cite book}}. This is especially important as books move online and are frequently cited with {{cite web}} instead of {{cite book}}. In the docs, it should not be included in the "quick copy-paste" versions, since it won't be used much. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Y Done Also added |others= since it was documented but not actually in the markup. Doc updated. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

D'oh! I wonder how that got left out. While we're at it, is there anything else we can do to make the options and output between these two templates more consistent? For those of us who cite, cite, cite it can be a bit of a hair-pulling exercise to try to remember all of the quirks these templates display. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 09:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Probably added to the doc in a copy/paste. I have actually been working on making the CS1 templates more consistent bit by bit, as well as updating other templates to comply with CS1. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

That's what I mean. I wasn't thinking about stuff outside CS1, which I believe will ultimately go extinct. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Embargo

I noticed that this template documents an |embargo= parameter:

• embargo: The date that an article will be freely accessible at PubMed central

However the markup uses |pmc-embargo-date=:

|Embargo={{{pmc-embargo-date|1010-10-10}}}

Which doesn't work, since {{citation/core}} does not support |Embargo=. What is this? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Added to core on 17 Oct 2009.[1] Removed on 6 March 2011. [2] I am going to clean up here and possibly other templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Should this be added to the list of deprecated parameters in the template (at least temporarily), so the citations using this parameter can be cleaned up?

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

{{Cite journal}} has markup supporting this. I did a search and found the paramter in one article where it was blank. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:03, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like useless cruft, including in a more generalized {{cite journal}} or {{cite news}} context; if the source it not yet available to the public, it fails WP:V, so it shouldn't be available in any of these templates. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:34, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It's the full text that is not yet public, the citation and/or abstract will still be there to cover WP:V. Rjwilmsi 18:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

If not used, still cruft. It's also grossly misleading, and if it ever gets used, people will misuse it to cited press-embargoed stuff that cannot be cited per WP:V. If kept, it should be renamed something like |pubmed-release=. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 02:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

As noted, this parameter was removed from core; I removed it here since it did nothing. Only cite journal now supports this. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:11, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense. Rjwilmsi 10:21, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Nowiki

Please don't use <nowiki> or other parser tags in values. This causes the COinS metadata to expose the strip markers. This is hidden, but will show up in reference management systems. For example:

• {{cite web|title=foo}} properly generates rft.btitle=foo

• {{cite web|title=<nowiki>foo</nowiki>}} improperly generates title=%7FUNIQ1c9a3b4432e3e11e-nowiki-00000002-QINU%7F

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadget850 (talk • contribs) 16:36, January 10, 2012

Ouch! I have been using <nowiki> tags in titles a lot lately. Hopefully I will remember as I do not consider COinS to be important but I know that others do. – Allen4names 03:16, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I know not everyone really cares about metadata, but it is used and this template supports it. As soon as I saw the doc change to use <nowiki>, I knew this was not going to be a good thing, but I was surprised to see the strip markers exposed.

I am going to look at the issue of encoding in the core, but will need to investigate how expensive it is. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:16, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

It may be a good idea to have a bot perform replacements (ie. "["=>"&#x5B;", "]"=>"&#x5D;" and "|'=>"&#x7C;") in the title parameter and removing the <nowiki> tags as I am sure I am not the only one who has been making such edits. – Allen4names 17:40, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Publisher full name

When listing the publisher, should they be listed under their full name, i.e. Rovi Corporation, or truncated to Rovi? Mac Dreamstate (talk) 00:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It's better to give the full name in case of ambiguity. Can you be sure that there isn't an entirely unrelated (for example) Rovi Products, Inc someplace? The normal times that we shorten publishers names are to drop the "Inc", although with an outfit like Time Inc. we would show the "Inc", because "Time" is just too ambiguous. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. But what about the way in which I did it above, where the shortened Rovi still links to Rovi Corporation's article? Does the full name always have to be externally conspicious, even though internally the link points to the correct article in question? Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It's OK. Is it essential that the reader have a link to the publisher? If not, then don't link it. Is there enough information to identify the source? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:57, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Well now I'm not sure.. From what you're saying, does that mean hardly anything at all (besides maybe a well-known author) should be Wiki-linked in the template? What about the 'work', if it has an article? I always thought everything should be piped to something if there's an article for it, for the sake of informativity. Whether or not it's essential to the reader never crossed my mind. Have I been going about this the wrong way? Mac Dreamstate (talk) 23:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, I've read the discussion here and it answers all my questions. Therefore I'll use my own judgement when citing, since there seems to be enough freedom on Wikipedia to do so. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 06:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Subscription required parameter?

hello,

may I ask why there is no parameter for sources which requires subscription, something like subscription=yes/no? It is especially useful for new users (or for lazy people like me...). Regards.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 18:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

See Help:Citation Style 1#Subscription or registration required. If you really want this added to the template, take it to {{citation/core}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually we don't know if this template meets WP:ACCESS.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 09:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Which template? How would this affect accessibility? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:53, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The one which looks like your signature :)--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 11:56, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Capitalisation

If the page title contains words in all caps, should they be left that way when citing? For some reason I've always changed them to lower/title case to make it look less like shouting on the refs list, but there doesn't seem to be any guidelines on that. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 15:41, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

You are correct to do so in general; see MOS:ALLCAPS. You may find http://titlecase.com/ handy. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

They should definitely be changed to title case. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 07:46, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Minor fixes

Propose to fix some minor issues:

• Add nopp to match other Citation Style 1 templates (yes, page numbers are not often used with cite web, but they are used)
• Remove deprecated parameters from AccessDate (the template already detects these)
• Remove unsupported DateFormat
• Add AuthorSep, NameSep, Trunc and amp to match other Citation Style 1 templates
• Add laysource and supporting parameters
• Add others

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Now in sandbox. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support: Maximum consistency between these templates would be a good thing. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 07:42, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Y Done ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Is the "others" field working?

I have just used it in the Mona Bone Jakon article. Neither syntax –

others=trans. Michael Valenzuela
others="trans. Michael Valenzuela"

– produces any output. Varlaam (talk) 03:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see it when I view the template code, and it's not included in the list of all parameters, so I removed it from the documentation. GoingBatty (talk) 04:43, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It works in {{citation}} but not {{cite web}}. It switched the article, but absent an author, it still looks pretty ich. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:16, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, in the interim just use |last2=Valenzuela|first2=Michael (trans.) to add someone like that. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 07:38, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I added it to the sandbox version, with the other updates listed above. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Is it in {{citation core}}?

{{tl|citation/core supports |Other=. Per above, |others= in now in {{cite web/sandbox}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixed ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Where should |others= be placed in the list of all parameters in the documentation? GoingBatty (talk) 21:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

deadurl should default to no

Is there a good reason why the "deadurl" parameter defaults to "yes"? Tim1357 ^talk 01:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

|deadurl= doesn't default to anything. When set to no, then it swaps the order of the original and archive URL links. See Help:Citation Style 1#Web archives. I agree that the implementation is a bit confusing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

When there is no |deadurl= paramter, the template puts the archive first. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Tim1357 ^talk 02:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Backwards compatibility mostly. If it would default to "no", it would invalidate a whole lot of existing citations (100k+ last I checked). You'd need to put a |deadurl=yes to all of them. Editors who put archive params wouldn't necessarily know this even exits. For the sake of implementation it was easier to get consensus to make changes to the citation templates as opposed to citation templates and 100k+ articles. It could default to "no" subject to updating all existing citations (but not preemptively archived ones) and all tools being aware they need to us it. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The default is that deadurl does nothing, so the templates render just as they did before deadurl was added. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I know, I proposed that, I was replying to Tim. I meant "defaults" as a simplified concept of "it happens, because it is not coded not to happen", not the specific implementation. Also I had a "yes/no" typo there and that may have been the issue? Sorry. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the template can be changed so that if archiveurl is set but deadurl is not it will add the page it is on to a maintenance category. For example Category:Pages with archive links to be checked. – Allen4names 18:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It would make sense. Bots can check if the link is dead pretty well. Bots cannot really check if the link is live. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

What is the intent of deadurl? As best I see, it simply swaps the original and archived links. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's it really. It's meant to be used when the links aren't dead. Linkrot's has been getting pretty bad and many editors have started archiving preemptively, mainly in FAs. It's a much bigger pain to restore (and detect) links when they die. It's very easy with preemptive archiving (just swap to |deadurl=yes). Without that, the archived url appears as the main url. It's slow and sometimes unreliable service, and strains their servers unnecessarily. Original RfC: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Dead url parameter for citations; some info on linkrot: Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Webcitebot2. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

But |deadurl=yes doesn't do anything different from the original action of the template; unless a bot is supposed to look at it? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Tools and editors know the link is dead and not "may be dead, may be preemptively archived". Checking links is expensive (time and bandwidth) and it's a blessing if a bot can skip links. There was also idea of putting {{dead link}} next to the url when |deadurl=yes is set but the params aren't. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

OK. Any bots actully doing that? And it looks like markup in {{citation/core}} is supposed to do some error checking if deadurl is set without other parameters, but I can't invoke the error and have not dug into the markup yet. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I think there are bots (or something); this self-rv of mine put that page into User:West.andrew.g/Dead links (it's now in User:West.andrew.g/Dead links/Archive 439). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

User:WebCiteBOT uses |deadurl=no. User:DASHBot may be checking for it. I don't know about Checklinks but I remember mentioning it. Currently all other bots I know are down. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Archiveurl

I have several BOT generated archiveurls in an article I'm updating. When I click on the hotlink in the reference to go to the web page, I get some "Wayback" page, but it never takes me to the archived page. My questions is will this pose a problem since the article in question is a featured article. Do I need to update the cite web reference within the article in any way? thanksCcson (talk) 06:18, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes Wayback will display a generic page for a period, whilst it reassembles the actual page in which you're interested. This can take some time. How long have you let it process the page for? --Redrose64 (talk) 09:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I left the house and returned ata least 1 hour later and it was still on the Wayback Page. There was an "Impatient?" link at the bottom right corner of the page which would display the archived page if I click on impatient, but other than that, no page was presented.Ccson (talk) 17:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

What article and references? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

See List of Alpha Phi Alpha brothers, reference number "14", Alpha Phi Alpha Educators when I waited at least 1 hour for the page to display. There are nineteen more (i.e. 1, 20, 47, 63, 119, etc.) where a BOT has updated references with the archived page. I searched within the page for "the original" to see which pages the BOT had udpated.Ccson (talk) 17:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Those archived links work for me; for example: Reference 14 ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:43, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried using the link you supplied and still no page except the wayback page. Perhaps my browser doesn't correctly redirect ans the user below hast stated. Is there a troubleshooting page to indicate how the browser settings should be set for wayback to work properly.Ccson (talk) 17:48, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Try another browser or PC. Reboot your modem and router. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I will try both. thanksCcson (talk) 23:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried rebooting and using the computer at the office, still no page is displayed.Ccson (talk) 23:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

My first impression without details is that your browser doesn't correctly redirect on the Wayback page. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:59, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

thanksCcson (talk) 17:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought, do you have javascript blocked? That page uses it. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:44, 29 February 2012 (UTC)