Template talk:Cite web

This template is one of several templates used to provide or request sources for articles.

This template spreads U.S. centrism across British English articles

This template should be deleted as it is U.S. centric. It requires people to enter dates in U.S. numerical format (month first), which can lead to errors, and it displays dates in U.S. format, which is insensitive and a violation of the principle that British English has equality. Unless these issues can be completely overcome, it should be deleted. Postlebury 10:15, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

So is there a speedy delete tag? What is the process for getting rid of this template? Tony 10:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

In fact, the day-month-year format is not British, it is used all over the world except in the United States. Still, I don't see the problem, because you can change the way of displaying dates by going to your preferences. Melsaran (talk) 10:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, you're wrong. None of the three numerical dates (date=, accessdate=, and archivedate=) require the format you mention nor do they force a US display style. The accessdate= and archivedate= parameters must be entered in yyyy-mm-dd format and are displayed according to the reader's preferences. The date= parameter is displayed exactly as entered by the editor, and can be formatted according to the reader's preference at the editor's discretion. RossPatterson 12:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

He appears to believe that because "year-month-day" is a US format because it contains "month-day", despite it being an international standard, the US format being "month/day/year", and YMD order in everyday usage being primarily the case in eastern european and asian countries rather than north america --—Random832

Should support omitting url

url should not be a required parameter when archiveurl is provided, to allow to cite sources that are no longer available except from the archive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Random832 (talk • contribs) 17:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

But even on archive sites, it'll tell you what the original URL was, right? Besides, you never know when the original page might come back online. --zenohockey 22:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Hanging indent proposal

For a proposal to add an optional formatting parameter to this and related citation templates, which would allow display as a hanging indent, see this discussion. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

AGAIN: Redundant word "on" before the date

Someone has wrongly archived my query about this glitch (it's right at the end of the most recent archive).

Here is the previous text.

I wonder whether someone here can remove this word from the template; it's appearing in the thousands all over the place, and is quite unnecessary (= irritating). This issue has come up in the FAC room. Tony 13:49, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

This may be a minor issue to some, but as I am currently suffering in said FAC room, here is my tuppence worth. WP:CITE#Embedded Links suggests the format: Accessed [[October 27]] [[2005]]., which is of course what many editors choose to do (although 'Retrieved' seems to be the standard verb at present). If an article ends up with a mixture of reference types those using 'citeweb' will say 'Retrieved on' and those using the standard embedded link will say 'Retrieved'. Editors accused of inconsistency thus have to amend all the standard ref tags, or remove all the citeweb templates, which is a nuisance (=very irritating). My conclusion is that the template is in minor breach of WP:CITE and that one or other of them should be changed. Ben MacDui (Talk) 09:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep, the template needs to be changed. Inconsistency is bad, and so is a redundant word, especially when repeated ad infinitum through a work list. I have no option but to discourage the use of the template unless this change is made. Tony 09:45, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I ask again why this template should not be deleted, since no one seems willing to fix up this redundant word that is now scattered through WP's reference lists, inconsistently within lists, of course, since manual entries are usually required as well.

Can we have some action on this? It can't be very hard. Tony (talk) 02:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess your question 'why shouldn't this be deleted' is more a rhetorical one borne of irritation, than a serious proposal to delete a template used across many thousands of articles on the basis of a possibly unnecessary word. I don't quite see the inconsistency, given that it seems that all of the various templates commonly used for formatting references that have this field ({{cite journal}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite conference}}, and a few others listed at WP:CITET) display as "Retrieved on [date]". The example given for the embedded link at WP:CITE would itself appear to be the odd-one-out. IMO, I don't think that example's formatting is meant to be definitive, just illustrative. If there are issues arising at FAC because references which are manually formatted don't exactly match those that are generated by one of the templates, then why wouldn't the remedy be to make the manually coded match the templates' outputs? Or, if typographical consistency is a dealbreaker there, why not convert the discrepant embedded links-style references to the appropriate template? --cjllw ʘ TALK 14:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Because the word on is redundant. Yes, it certainly is irritating. Why can't someone fix it? Does it take more than two minutes? Tony (talk) 15:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You will perhaps forgive my confusion here. WP:CITE is a guideline that "is generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow." This template and others does something that produces a result different from that guideline. This in turn means that you expect me to waste my time amending references so that either they contradict WP:CITE or that this template is removed from the article in question. This is an absurd, even Kafkaesque situation that is not acceptable. Two solutions make sense to me. Either the template (and the others if necessary) should be changed, or we can agree to continue the discussion at WP:CITE. The idea that a template should de facto over-rule a style guideline is absurd. Ben MacDui (Talk) 20:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:CITE points to Wikipedia:Embedded citations "[f]or more details". Wikipedia:Embedded citations has two examples, one hand-coded and the other generated by {{cite news}}. Both say "Retrieved on". RossPatterson 01:55, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, why is removing the errant word "on" anything to do with following a standard or guideline? Where is the code, so I can do it myself? Tony (talk) 01:31, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The code is right here in this template. However, it has been protected so that only an admin can edit it. Pagrashtak 19:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The word "on" is not redundant, it's proper grammar. Just like how you say "I went to the store on 9 September" and not "I went to the store 9 September". Melsaran (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

In the context of a list of external references, between "Retrieved" and "[date]", it most certainly is redundant. It's irritating to read scores of them in a row. Tony (talk) 07:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think Tony's complaint is that it is ungrammatical, just not necessary. And yes, it would be a relatively trivial change mechanically, but if done should also be done for all of the half-dozen or more templates which are presently phrased that way. I don't know when or what prompted the template standardisation to "Retrieved on", but it would probably be best to propose said change at somewhere more central like Wikipedia talk:Citing sources as other templates would be involved, and FAIK others may take a different view. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

date not wiki linked

Out of curiosity why is the accessdate automatically wikilinked but not the date? -- Argash  |  talk  |  contribs  04:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a good question that I've wonder as well. The only thing I can think of is if the full date is not available, like it's just the year, or month-year, something like that. I have found that adding the [[ ]]s works, but it would be nice if it did it automatically. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 14:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC))

Could someone make the date= field auto wiki linked? -- Argash  |  talk  |  contribs  14:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)