User talk:Stamptrader: Difference between revisions

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Welcome to here!

Hello, Stamptrader, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay.

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Stamptrader, you are invited to the Teahouse

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Visit the Teahouse

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Thanks

Thanks for fixing up the Quantum Theory cast entries. -AngusWOOF (talk) 17:35, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

	The Hard Worker's Barnstar
	For your work in fixing up other people's mistakes, I hereby award you this Barnstar YSSYguy (talk) 12:11, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll second that. When I reply to peoples' messages about ReferenceBot notifications at User talk:A930913, chances are you've already fixed the problem. Thanks a lot! Huon (talk) 19:10, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Citation of APweb

APweb recommends that it be cited as "Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards)" (see the home page). Although this page goes on to give the citation as "Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 12, July 2012", if you look you'll see that the header is actually "version 13". The website is indeed continuously updated, and as of now, the last update is given as "Page last updated: 01/28/2015 19:03:53". If you search the site there are references to papers dated 2015. So it's quite wrong to use "2001–2012" as the citation date.

I regret that the maintainers of the citation templates have refused to allow open-ended dates, as recommended by a number of important online sources, not just APweb.
There could be an argument for using the access year as the terminal year in the citation. However, this would, in my view, only be correct if the URL given is to an archived version. When the URL is to the current version, the citation should describe this version, and the only valid date is "2001 onwards".
My preferred solution is not to use the citation templates – just use plain text, when the correct citation can be given. Many pages have been "corrected" in this way.
The second best solution is just to delete the date altogether as it cannot be expressed meaningfully with the current citation templates.

Peter coxhead (talk) 11:04, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the simple solution is to remove the date altogether, if a solution (beyond clearing errors, which was my only goal) is needed. It isn't a matter of expressing the date "2001 onwards" meaningfully, however, since there is no useful meaning inherent in an open-ended date. One of the errors I fixed was on Solanaceae - the accessdate parameter used on that citation allows you to know that the reference was current up to 2007. 20 years from now that limit will still hold and you would know that nothing is implied about any validity from 2008 to 2035. "2001 onwards" does nothing to help now or in the future - there's no way of knowing when the info was valid, other than "on some unknown date between 2001 and today". A date / copyright range is bad but at least limits the possibilities - an open-ended date is worse and limits nothing, and in that sense is the equivalent of having no date at all.

In that regard, the correct solution is to go through the edit history on every page that doesn't include an access date, figure out when the citation was added and update the citation to show that. That gives a fixed date when the citation was valid. But that's a large pain in the backside and I doubt anybody cares that much, given how long some of these errors have survived. I removed the ugly red error text because that's what was bothering me enough - perhaps someday I'll be bothered enough about date ranges without useful meaning and will remove those too (or will pinpoint them down to an exact date). Stamptrader (talk) 00:02, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree. The access date is there to show when the source was consulted. The citation date is there to show when the source was written/published. The two dates have different purposes; that's the point of having two. As of now, all we know about the source that is linked (assuming that it hasn't been archived, as noted above) is that it was written and published from 2001 onwards. Being told this is not at all the equivalent of having no date. Knowing that the site started being written in 2001 tells someone knowledgeable a great deal (e.g. that it began by using the original APG system, published in 1998, not the later APG II and APG III systems). When the site ceases to be updated then of course a terminal date should be used in the citation date.

The red errors are caused by changes made to the citation templates without full consultation, e.g. through an RfC. Unless and until this is resolved, the best solution is to use the citation recommended by the author by using plain text. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:36, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Smallcaps in CS1

Why is the smallcaps parameter nolonger supported?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:27, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently it's for compliance with MOS:ALLCAPS. See talk page discussions at Template_talk:Citation#authorformat_smallcaps_error and Module_talk:Citation/CS1#name-list-format.3Dscap_now_producing_error for more info. Stamptrader (talk) 18:41, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MOSCAPS does not say that it cannot be used in references, so that is a bad reason. I find it extremely frustrating that a couple of template editors make changes like this without consulting with the community and the content creators who actually use the templates. I know this is not your fault.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to try to reverse the decision to deprecate small caps for author names by changing the MOS. So perhaps you want to stop implementing this for now, so we wont have to add all the smallcaps again if I succeed.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:38, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I can hold off on further edits. But I see you now have a conflict with your list of changes to the all caps rules - the specific mention of Latin text is now both allowed and excluded. Stamptrader (talk) 13:54, 17 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nature of errors

Hi. I fear I may be repeating errors though lack of knowledge. What was the error in the parameters that you corrected in this edit? thanks. Nurg (talk) 08:52, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are 30+ categories of CS1 errors that can pop up, but there are only 5 of them which have been marked by default as being not visible - you have to set code in a CSS stylesheet in order to see these hidden errors. Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL is one of those errors and that's what I've fixed on the page you show. Help:CS1 errors#|accessdate= requires |url= is the help page for this specific error - in essence, you need to have a URL specified in your citation in order to use the accessdate parameter. If you don't have a URL then accessdate will trigger an error. It's a minor error, and since it's marked as hidden by default I assume you can't even see it.

If you dig back through the archives on Help talk:Citation Style 1 and Help talk:CS1 errors you can find repeated debates on this error. In fact, it cropped up again just 2 days ago. I'm of the opinion that the extra accessdate parameter should simply be deleted, but others think it could maybe be a clue to a URL that once was included in the citation but has since been deleted. They think that leaving the accessdate there could help somebody to find that URL later on. There are 47,000+ errors in that category and I think this edge case is rare enough that it could simply be ignored (as I have been doing up to now), and in any case I doubt anybody is ever planning to go through the list to search for these potential URLs on the old versions of the pages. But without data it's just another opinion, so I'm now going through pages in a pseudo-random fashion and actually testing out this "lost URL" edge case. I'm expecting to find a very small amount of success, probably 2% or less, but I'll wait until I've been through 500 pages (maybe 1000, we'll see how long it takes) before I post my findings. Stamptrader (talk) 10:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I have now added the code to my CSS stylesheet. Nurg (talk) 23:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I just learnt something new! Thanks very much for this explanation and tidying up my references on Aleen Cust. I'll be mindful of not making this mistake again :) thanks again Smirkybec (talk) 15:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're most welcome, certainly - glad to be of help and thanks for the positive note. Stamptrader (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For my own notes, my accessdate error data findings have been posted at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7#Error data - accessdate without URL.

CS1 error fixes

Hi. I just noticed that some of the CS1 error fixes you have been doing are not quite right, though I want to take a closer look before getting into any deep discussions. Until we can discuss this, would you consider slacking off a bit? At least on the Global Warming articles. I'll try to get back to you on this in a couple of days. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:26, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing you're referring to Attribution of recent climate change, one of the random pages for which I fixed some errors the other day. I noted in the edit summary that having no title= parameter in the citation template and placing the reference to it in a {{harvnb}} template has caused CS1 errors. My fix was just meant to clear errors, which I why I also mentioned in the edit summary that further work would probably be needed to clean it up correctly.

The citation method that had been used was this, causing a missing title CS1 error:

<ref>{{citation | author=IPCC | at=[http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html Understanding and Attributing Climate Change] | chapter=Summary for Policymakers}}, in {{Harvnb|IPCC AR4 WG1|2007}}.</ref>

IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", Understanding and Attributing Climate Change {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help), in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007.

I removed the missing title error message this way (I probably should have used both chapter= and chapter-url= rather than keeping it the way it was) - now that there's a title= parameter in use, the title is italicized and the element order is changed, however:

<ref>{{citation | author=IPCC | chapter=[http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html Understanding and Attributing Climate Change] | title=Summary for Policymakers}}, in {{Harvnb|IPCC AR4 WG1|2007}}.</ref>

IPCC, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change", Summary for Policymakers {{citation}}: External link in |chapter= (help), in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007.

Trying to use the {{harvnb}} template in the title= parameter solves the missing title error, of course, but I figured that was probably too far away from how the original editor was trying to make things look:

<ref>{{citation | author=IPCC | at=[http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html Understanding and Attributing Climate Change] | chapter=Summary for Policymakers | title={{Harvnb|IPCC AR4 WG1|2007}}}}.</ref>

IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", IPCC AR4 WG1 2007, Understanding and Attributing Climate Change.

If the requirement is to keep the same text order & format seen in the original citation without generating a CS1 error, then I expect the citation will have to be written freehand. I don't think there's a way to make it work as desired using the {{citation}} template.

<ref>IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", [http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html Understanding and Attributing Climate Change], in {{Harvnb|IPCC AR4 WG1|2007}}.</ref>

IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", Understanding and Attributing Climate Change, in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007.

Stamptrader (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what I'm looking at. (Which I reverted, pending a better resolution.) There are a couple of points of confusion we need to straighten out, particularly regarding "title". It should be noted that the general context here is the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report ("AR4"). This (like the other ARs) consists of four "reports" from the three Working Groups plus a Synthesis Report. Each of these four reports is a work, in that they are comprised of chapters (or "contributions") of separate authorship. So there are multiple levels of citation. E.g.: IPCC > AR4 > WG1 > [some chapter].

The approach here is to cite the chapters in detail, with a link to the citation with the details of the containing work. . E.g.: Le Treut et al., "Chapter 1" [...], in IPCC AR4 WG1. This avoids having to repeat a lot of redundant detail. What you will notice is that "IPCC AR4 WG1" is not a proper title; it is a succinct identifier that links to the full citation for that work. As such it properly follows the citation of the chapter. (Particularly as the Harv template should not be used inside of a citation template.) Also (please pardon me for being a bit pedantic here, but it does make a difference), the title of a chapter contained within a work should go into the |chapter= parameter, |title= being reserved for the work. Also, note that the various |at= parameters, which you shifted into |chapter=, do not reference/link to chapters, they link to individual sections.

So back to the original problem: the new error messages now emitted by CS1. I very much doubt that "freehand" (i.e., removing the templates) is necessary, which would also be very objectionable. However, fixing that is going to take some looking into. I'll let you know what I find. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you find a method of clearing a missing title CS1 error using any sort of citation template without populating |title=, let me know about it, please. I don't think there's anything except for the case of |journal= set while using a magic word |title=none (and without |chapter= set, since that would cause a further CS1 error). Again, I think these citations without |title= set will need to be written freehand to make them look like they used to. I note that 5 other "Summary for Policymakers" citations are already written freehand in that article. Stamptrader (talk) 11:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Freehand" would be massively unacceptable, existing instances being evidence not of acceptability, but of the inconsistency and poor quality of many of those citations. But I am confident something can be worked out. (If nothing else, I will go back to the CS1 coders and complain about the error.) I'll let you know what I find. Hopefully you are okay with leaving IPCC citations alone for the time being? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I can hold off on further editing of these citations. I don't know if you'll have much success in trying to revert the changes to the citation templates, though - there was a specific intent to address the former lack of an error message if |title= had been left blank. See the CS1 talk page archived here.[1] Stamptrader (talk) 08:37, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was just looking at that. I've started a new thread at Help talk:Citation Style 1#.22Missing or empty .7Ctitle.3D.22_error_message. Don't worry about the GW articles, I'll take care of those (eventually); they have other problems I might as well fix while I'm at it. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Sir

For your citation correction in Kalyan, India Ankush 89 (talk) 14:29, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! Stamptrader (talk) 14:46, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Corrupted references

Please be more careful when you edit references. You stumbled onto some references in After School Nightmare that where corrupted with this edit. Generally except for minor edits such as date format changes you should treat reference edits as re-referencing ie. checking the references, looking for needed replacements, adding {{Dead link}}, etc. Any references that you can not fix properly should either be left in place or taken to the article talk page. – Allen4names (contributions) 00:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Aum Shinrikyo

I don't understand the errors correct at the Aum Shinrikyo article. It seems you only removed the authors name and accessdates on two citations and the format parameter on another. Would you explain the error? I've reverted for now. Thanks. JodyB_talk 22:21, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 111: / Line 111: @@
 Please be more careful when you edit references. You stumbled onto some references in [[After School Nightmare]] that where corrupted with [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=After_School_Nightmare&diff=next&oldid=594560432 this edit]. Generally except for minor edits such as date format changes you should treat reference edits as re-referencing ie. checking the references, looking for needed replacements, adding {{Tl|Dead link}}, etc. Any references that you can not fix properly should either be left in place or taken to the article talk page. – [[User:Allen4names|Allen]]4[[User talk:Allen4names|names]] ([[Special:Contributions/Allen4names|contributions]]) 00:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
+== [[Aum Shinrikyo]] ==
+I don't understand the errors correct at the Aum Shinrikyo article. It seems you only removed the authors name and accessdates on two citations and the format parameter on another. Would you explain the error? I've reverted for now. Thanks. [[User:JodyB|'''JodyB''']]<sub>[[User talk:JodyB| <font color="red">talk</font>]]</sub> 22:21, 15 April 2015 (UTC)