Help talk:Citation Style 1

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• Category talk:CS1 errors: dates/Archive 1

citing contributed forewords, prefaces etc

This topic began at Foreword and branches from Moving forward to continue here so that discussion of implementation detail can be separate from whatever conversation continues there.

The model for this feature is this {{cite book}} armature:

{{cite book |contributor-last=Pynchon|contributor-first=Thomas|contributor-link=Thomas Pynchon|contribution=Introduction |last=Orwell |first=George |title=Nineteen Eighty-Four |location=New York |publisher=Plume-Penguin |date=2003 |pages=vii-xxvi}}

If the code is right, then Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox should produce citations that look like these hand crafted cites:

Pynchon, Thomas (2003). Introduction. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By Orwell, George. New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii-xxvi. (cs1)

Pynchon, Thomas (2003), Introduction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by Orwell, George, New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii-xxvi (cs2)

The tests:

{{cite book/new |contributor-last=Pynchon|contributor-first=Thomas|contributor-link=Thomas Pynchon|contribution=Introduction |last=Orwell |first=George |title=Nineteen Eighty-Four |location=New York |publisher=Plume-Penguin |date=2003 |pages=vii-xxvi}}

Pynchon, Thomas (2003). Introduction. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By Orwell, George. New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii–xxvi.

{{citation/new |contributor-last=Pynchon|contributor-first=Thomas|contributor-link=Thomas Pynchon|contribution=Introduction |last=Orwell |first=George |title=Nineteen Eighty-Four |location=New York |publisher=Plume-Penguin |date=2003 |pages=vii-xxvi}}

Pynchon, Thomas (2003), Introduction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by Orwell, George, New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii–xxvi

Since this is the first test, something is bound to be wrong. In this case, 'By' should be in lowercase in the cs2 version.

Contributor has the standard enumerated suite of name parameters and modifiers. et al is not supported. This facility is only available for {{cite book}} and {{citation}} (where |work= or aliases is not set). The module understands the common contribution titles 'afterword', 'foreword', 'introduction', and 'preface' and renders these upright without quotes. For contributions that are not any of these four, the contribution title is quoted:

"Contribution". Title. {{cite book}}: |contributor= has generic name (help); |contributor= requires |author= (help)

When |contributor= is set and |contribution= is not set the module emits an error:

"Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: |contributor= has generic name (help); |contributor= requires |author= (help); |contributor= requires |contribution= (help)

Errors of this type will be categorized in Category:CS1 errors: missing contribution

Still to do:

1. fix the casing of 'by'
2. adjust the CITEREF anchor creation to use the contributor name list when |ref=harv
3. adjust the metadata creation to use the contributor name list instead of the author list
4. properly handle editor(s)
5. tests to make sure that I haven't broken anything
6. fix other things that I've no doubt overlooked

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:41, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Overlooked: most style guides do not invert the author(s) names after "by" or "in". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:17, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I presume that you are correct. However, cs1|2 from the days of {{citation/core}}, has rendered all |last= / |first=-defined name lists in last-first order. This change is consistent with that norm.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:02, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

The code for CITEREF anchors has been adjusted:

• '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000005D-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFPynchon2003" class="citation book cs1">[[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon, Thomas]] (2003). Introduction. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. By Orwell, George. New York: Plume-Penguin. pp.&nbsp;vii–xxvi.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Introduction&rft.btitle=Nineteen+Eighty-Four&rft.place=New+York&rft.pages=vii-xxvi&rft.pub=Plume-Penguin&rft.date=2003&rft.aulast=Pynchon&rft.aufirst=Thomas&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>
• '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000005F-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFLast2009" class="citation cs2">Last, First (2009), ''Title''</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2009&rft.aulast=Last&rft.aufirst=First&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>
• '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000061-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFElast2009" class="citation cs2">Elast, Efirst, ed. (2009), ''Title''</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2009&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:46, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

And metadata as can be seen the the above examples.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:00, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Editor fixed, I think. |orig-year= is included because I've tweaked how the meta-parameter Date is handled at that particular point in the code:

Pynchon, Thomas (2003) [1949]. Introduction. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By Orwell, George. Smithson, James; Beecham, Thomas (eds.). New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii–xxvi.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:26, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Because the |contributor= / |contribution= pair is specific to book cites with a book author, detect and flag cites with |contributor= but without one of the |author= aliases:

"Contribution". Title. 2009. {{cite book}}: |contributor= has generic name (help); |contributor= requires |author= (help)

and flag cites that are not book cites:

"Contribution". Title. 2009. {{cite AV media}}: |contributor= ignored (help) ({{cite AV media}})

"Title". 2009. {{cite journal}}: |contribution= ignored (help); |contributor= ignored (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help) ({{cite journal}} – |contribution= here treated as alias of |chapter=)

but {{cite book}} with |contribution= and |author=, no error:

Author (2009). "Contribution". Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Because there are multiple different errors, I've changed the category name to Category:CS1 errors: contributor.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:00, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• Ta-Da! See Eugène Millet#Publications 1869:

• Millet, Eugène (1869). "Plans des salles du Musée de Saint-Germain". Promenades au musée de Saint-Germain. By Gabriel de Mortillet. catalogue illustré de 79 figures par Arthur Rhoné. Paris: C. Reinwald. p. 88.

This really is a useful solution to a long-standing problem. Great job! Aymatth2 (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

It is not good practice to use the sandbox versions of cs1|2 templates in article space. The sandbox can break at any time and remain broken for extended periods. I will also note that |others=catalogue illustré de 79 figures par Arthur Rhoné is a misuse of that parameter which purpose is to "record other contributors to the work ...", not for subtitles or descriptive text.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:52, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• I just wanted to try it out. Probably for Millet's bibliography it should be:

• Millet, Eugène (1869). "Plans des salles". Promenades au musée de Saint-Germain – catalogue illustré de 79 figures. By Gabriel de Mortillet. Arthur Rhoné, illustrations. Paris: C. Reinwald. p. 88. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

For Rhoné's bibliography it should be:

• Rhoné, Arthur (1869). "Illustrations". Promenades au musée de Saint-Germain – catalogue illustré de 79 figures. By Gabriel de Mortillet. Eugène Millet, plans des salles. Paris: C. Reinwald. p. 88. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

and for de Mortillet's bibliography is should be:

• Gabriel de Mortillet (1869). Promenades au musée de Saint-Germain – catalogue illustré de 79 figures. Arthur Rhoné, illustrations; Eugène Millet, plans des salles. Paris: C. Reinwald. p. 88. Retrieved 16 November 2015.

This seems consistent with the Harvard guideline for scholarly works, where the main person being cited goes to the front. I wonder if unrecognized types of contribution should be treated more like chapters, i.e. followed by "In"? Is there a way to make |pages=88 generate pp. 88 in a bibliography? Any idea when the new template will be released? Once again, this really is a big improvement. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:24, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Non-standard contribution titles are treated like chapters in that they are quoted. If you mean that:

... |contributor=Contributor |contribution=Contribution |author=Author |title=Title |date=<date>|...

should render something like:

Contributor. "Contribution". In Title. By Author ...

then I see no real benefit.

I think that your Rhoné example is improper. Rhoné may have contributed the illustrations to de Mortillet's work, but there doesn't appear to be anything in that work with the proper title "Illustrations". |contribution= as currently supported is a title, not a class of things.

If you mean that you want |pages= to indicate the total number of pages, that goes against the long-defined and documented purpose of |pages= as an in-source locator; see Template:cite book#csdoc_pages.

I want to address a bug that I've found in the metadata handling of in-source locators. Since I'm there I will also see if I can address the issues raised in Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 10#Page display in journal could use improvement. So I don't know when I will update the live module.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• It is quite unimportant, but in this example the plans and illustrations are "in" the book. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• Then I am not sure how to represent Rhoné's role in the book in his bibliography, the list of works he contributed to. He is credited on the title page with having illustrated the book with 79 figures, presumably scattered throughout it, like this one. Taken together they represent a significant work, But the credit is not really a subtitle, more a description. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• Understood that in a citation, |pages= gives the location in the book. But in a bibliography, list of works by the author, number of pages is a fairly significant bit of information. Again, not sure how to represent it. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Please do not interleave your comments in mine. I have moved them.

My objection to Rhoné also applies to Millet for the same reasons.

There seems to be a wide variety of ways that illustrator bibliographies are handled. I peaked at a few articles in Category:American children's book illustrators and Category:British children's book illustrators and didn't find much in the way of consistency except, that the illustrator is rarely listed in the bibliographic entry. In most cases that I saw, bibliographic entries were composed freehand.

Primary mission for cs1|2 is, and must remain, citation. That it can be used for bibliographies is a plus. But, that is why I mentioned elsewhere that someday we might use |mode= to tell Module:Citation/CS1 to treat the template contents as a bibliographic entry rather than as a citation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Both Rhoné and Millet are sometimes illustrators, sometimes authors.

A |mode= parameter could be useful. I would usually set it to |mode=bibliography. I almost always use {{sfn}} references that give locations in the sources and point to a list of source definitions. I often also list works by the subject of the article, so have two sections that list books and articles (by and about), both the same format. I would like both lists to give fairly complete bibliographic data. Mostly the stuff that does not fit elsewhere can go into |others=, but a clean way to cite the introduction would be useful – there is no good workaround.

Smith, Fred. Preface (2015). Poor alternative. Jane Doe. Penguin.

Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 20:24, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

... but a clean way to cite the introduction would be useful – there is no good workaround. Which is what this change does so I don't understand your point.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:39, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

• When this enhancement is implemented, it will be a major improvement. It would be nice if the template gave fuller support for Harvard-style bibliography information in MLA format. I understand this is not a priority, and accept putting the other stuff in |others=. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

There is a curious inconsistency in the ordering of elements in the following:

• {{cite book/new |first=A. |last=Contributor |chapter=Chapter |editor-first=Ann |editor-last=Editor |title=Title |year=2000 }} yields

  Contributor, A. (2000). "Chapter". In Editor, Ann (ed.). Title. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)

• {{cite book/new |first=Ann |last=Author |title=Title |year=2000 }} yields

  Author, Ann (2000). Title. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)

• {{cite book/new |contributor-first=A. |contributor-last=Contributor |contribution=Contribution |first=Ann |last=Author |title=Title |year=2000 }} (newly introduced) yields

  Contributor, A. (2000). "Contribution". Title. By Author, Ann. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)

Kanguole 13:25, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any inconsistency. Perhaps that's because I wrote the code and see it doing what I expect from it. The last example should be following the contributor and author ordering shown in the MLA forms at Harvard Guide to Using Sources. The MLA form was chosen over APA because we use the static text 'in' to introduce the editor when there is a contribution.

Can you point out exactly what it is that you see as an inconsistency?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:54, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

It seems you have followed APA order (editor before title) in one case, and MLA order (title before author) in the other. For the purpose of distinguishing editors from authors, the prefix "in" is not a strong signal, as both cases refer to a contributed part of a book – indeed in both cases MLA omits the preposition while APA includes it. The explicit text (Ed.)/(Eds.) would be more effective (but we'd need to find and fix cases where people have already explicitly attached it to the name of the last editor). Kanguole 14:44, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

cs1|2 is neither APA nor MLA; for all that, cs1|2 isn't any of the published style guides. The APA-like ordering for 'In Editor. Title.' is not new to this version of the module's sandbox. I don't see that there is anything that is 'broken' here. Given that, I think that we should do nothing and allow the new feature to go live this weekend.

If there is an issue with the contributor-author-editor name-order, we should address it in its own discussion and then act accordingly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

My point is that it is an arbitrary switching of styles between the two cases. As you point out, "In Editor. Title" has been used for some time, so it would be consistent to use "In Author. Title" for the new case. Kanguole 16:08, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Protocol-relative URLs to Internet Archive

Hello, in Hoseynabad, Jam the Template:IranCensus2006 generates a valid URL (atleast it works, inserting the URL directly in FF 42.0). Still CS1 marks this URL as "Check |archiveurl= value" (the same URL in the regular "url=" parameter also produces a similar warning message). Maybe that issue has already been mentioned somewhere else, but could someone have a look please? Should Internet Archive-URLs be protocol-relative to begin with? GermanJoe (talk) 18:10, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

This bug has been fixed in the sandbox code. When other debugging and testing is done, we will move the sandbox code to the live module. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:10, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

See also WP:PRURL. -- GreenC 16:55, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

An essay which should probably be amended since a) Wikimedia only serves content on Wikipedia via HTTPS now and b) a number of sites quoted on said essay only want incoming links from HTTPS as well. --Izno (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Partial autofixing of cites

There are some major causes of cite errors (such as fix text "http" to be "url=http") which we could try autofixing and compare the results. For example, the easy ones:

• The raw text "http..." or "//..." could become the "url=" if not already set (30% of pages).
• Allow "accessdate" as 1-c "acessdate" or 1-s "accesdate" or spaced "access date".
• Allow caps "Title=" for "title=" when people are thinking to capitalize words in Titles.
• Accept "month=" with year when no "date=" parameter given.

Among the harder autofixes is the bar "|" in title which appears in 35% of cite errors:

• Append the "|text" into the "title=" when specified, but note "^{[fix cite]}".
• Set "date=" from text spaced when "|date May 1999" or similar "accessdate 10 Dec 2015"
• Set "title=" from text spaced when "|title This Book".
• Set "first2=" or "last2=" from "|first2John" or "|last2Doe" etc.

Those basic autofixes could remove about 75% of pages (300 of 400 pages) from the current cite-error categories (see: WP:CS1CAT), but logged instead into some "Autofixed cite" categories. So, if we focus on just simple autofixes, then the more-difficult hand-fixes could be done (by hand) to the remaining 25% of cite errors. Eventually, I have found even bars "|" in a URL could be autofixed for common URL formats, where the risk is appending URL parts in the wrong order, but that could be autofixed much later next year.

Meanwhile, many popular pages have retained cite errors for weeks or months (see: "The Band Perry", 500 pageviews/day), because cites are left unfixed not by lack of thousands of pageviews, but because most people DO NOT KNOW how to fix a bar "|" as "{{!}}" for a bar in a title. Similarly, we could autofix text "http" as "url=http" to fix 30% of cite errors. Otherwise, the harder the cite error, the more weeks/months before it gets fixed. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:28, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Nearly every day, I fix a dozen or three citation errors of the types listed above, and many more flavors, using User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/unnamed.js, an AutoEd script, and others like it in the same subdirectory. Anyone who wants to is welcome to copy and modify pieces of this script to create a bot that resolves unambiguous citation errors. Note that I run this script attended, and sometimes it produces false positives and other fun results, so bot code would need to be crafted more carefully than my regexes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:23, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

The show-stopper for Bot-based fixes (of Category:Pages_with_citations_using_unnamed_parameters) is the potential for "hyper-correction" of cite errors, while wp:autofixing cites would leave the internal cite markup as-is but inform cite gnomes by entries in new autofixed-page categories. An example of a hyper-correction might be "title=Election Results | Last Chance Recount" where the Bot autofix might add parameter "last=Chance Recount" for the pipe/bar "|" in the "title=" markup. However, because autofixing would reduce the cite-error categories, then some major articles could be spotted faster and hand-fixed sooner, such as the recent cite error in mega-page "Hello (Adele song)" (pageviews 12,000/day) which became lost among hundreds of pages with unnamed parameters (until I fixed about 450 of those older pages). Of course, when most cite-errors are autofixed, then there is less need to rush to fix pages, because many cites are effectively "good enough" to free time to fix the really garbled cites which autofixing would abandon (and not link into autofixed-cite categories), such as the garbled Twitter-link cite in popular page "The Band Perry" (cite "Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter") which remained unfixed for 2 months, sorted under "T" and hidden near the end of the unnamed-parameter category. Again, there is no need to rush-fix all cite errors, but rather find the mega-pages with cite errors seen thousands of times (or 1 million times) as in page "Cogito ergo sum" with cite errors left for 2.5 years. Meanwhile, we can set category-sort to "B" for "The Band Perry" (during the next 4 months), to keep it near the top of cite-error categories. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

what to do about <math>...<math> tags?

The <math>...</math> tag pair is sometimes used in cs1|2 citation templates to render formulae as part of a journal article title.

{{cite journal|last=Roy|first=Ranjan|year=1990|title=Discovery of the Series Formula for <math> \pi </math> by Leibniz, Gregory, and Nilakantha|work=Mathematics Magazine|publisher=Mathematical Association of America|volume=63|issue=5|pages=291–306}}

Roy, Ranjan (1990). "Discovery of the Series Formula for $\pi$ by Leibniz, Gregory, and Nilakantha". Mathematics Magazine. 63 (5). Mathematical Association of America: 291–306.

The problem is what we get for metadata from the current live module:

&rft.atitle=Discovery+of+the+Series+Formula+for+%7FUNIQ--math-00000007-QINU%7F+by+Leibniz%2C+Gregory%2C+and+Nilakantha

Clearly, that is broken because the content of the <math>...</math> tags is replaced with the nowiki stripmarker and so unintelligible to users of the metadata.

As part of the recent invisible character test fixes, I tweaked the metadata creation code to use mw.text.unstripNoWiki() to remove nowiki stripmarkers from parameter values before adding those values to the metadata. I discovered that the library function does not work as its documentation suggests that it should (see phab:T121085); mw.text.unstripNoWiki() also (inappropriately) unstrips <math>...</math> tags so using the current module sandbox we get this for article title metadata:

&rft.atitle=Discovery+of+the+Series+Formula+for+%3Cimg+class%3D%22mwe-math-fallback-image-inline+tex%22+alt%3D%22%5Cpi+%22+src%3D%22%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fmath%2F5%2F2%2F2%2F522359592d78569a9eac16498aa7a087.png%22+%2F%3E+by+Leibniz%2C+Gregory%2C+and+Nilakantha

which is hardly better, and percent decoded, is text and an <img /> tag:

Discovery of the Series Formula for <img class="mwe-math-fallback-image-inline tex" alt="\pi " src="//upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/2/2/522359592d78569a9eac16498aa7a087.png" /> by Leibniz%2C Gregory%2C and Nilakantha

The <img /> tag does contain an alt= attribute so we might take its value and replace the math stripmarker with it. An equation written as:

<math>r_i^2=(r_ir_j)^{k_{ij}}=1</math>

renders:

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$

produces this alt text:

alt%3D%22r_%7Bi%7D%5E%7B2%7D%3D%28r_%7Bi%7Dr_%7Bj%7D%29%5E%7Bk_%7Bij%7D%7D%3D1%22

which, percent decoded, is:

r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1

and which renders:

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$

To my untrained eye, the two equations look the same.

Is there a better solution to this problem?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm a little confused: are you discussing using the alt text to produce <math> code that gets run through the Wikimedia rendering engine again, or do you just want to use it to generate COINS metadata? In your example this seems to work but I worry that running math coding through Google translate to Kurdish and back (or whatever the local equivalent for the Wikimedia engine is) will not always be so clean. But if this is only going to affect COINS metadata, this seems like a good solution: who cares if it doesn't always work perfectly as long as it generates something meaningful rather than the current unhelpful text.

In general, Wikimedia math formula rendering is a total disaster and has been since Wikipedia started. I have a long blog post about what I see as the reasons for this [1] but basically they boil down to too much concern for how clean the semantics of the generated html markup is and not enough concern for whether it looks readable. In these specific cases, I would recommend using the {{math}} template series rather than <math>, (despite it being less clean semantically) for two reasons: (1) it more reliably generates mathematical formulae that both look like they should and match the surrounding text, and (2) to put more pressure on Wikimedia to make <math> actually usable if they want us to use it. So for your example, I would prefer to code it as

{{cite journal|last=Roy|first=Ranjan|year=1990|title=Discovery of the Series Formula for {{pi}} by Leibniz, Gregory, and Nilakantha|work=Mathematics Magazine|publisher=Mathematical Association of America|volume=63|issue=5|pages=291–306}}

Roy, Ranjan (1990). "Discovery of the Series Formula for π by Leibniz, Gregory, and Nilakantha". Mathematics Magazine. 63 (5). Mathematical Association of America: 291–306.

That doesn't really address your question about what to do about <math> but should be kept in mind to the extent that it affects citation formatting, since these templates are also going to appear in some citations.

One other thought: the Wikimedia engine does different things with <math> depending on your rendering preferences and what browser you use to view the page. E.g. it currently can generate math as bitmap images, TeX source, mathml, or svg, and it used to have an option to generate mathjax as well. Is this going to affect your metadata generation? Will it be a problem that different viewers see different metadata for the same citations? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

PS I found the example reference that uses your other example equation: the reference Coxeter 1935 in Coxeter group. Unfortunately, for this case, there is no easy way to replace the math markup with templates: the overlaid subscript-superscript pair and subscripted-superscript are too difficult to get right. So for now we're still getting the C0 character error in that article. I guess we'll have to wait for your fix to the template software to make that one go away. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:59, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

This question is about <math>...</math> tag markup and the metadata. The {{math}} markup brings its own set of problems because of included html and css.

I had forgotten about the math preferences. What that implies, is that the content of the <math>...</math> tags isn't rendered until the page is served to the reader because MediaWiki can't know beforehand the settings of the reader's math preferences. But, I think that the rest of the cs1|2 template has been rendered. So the problem becomes, how to get the original <math>...</math> tags content.

After the next module update, the metadata will hold the rendered <math>...</math> tags content according to the settings of the user who last saved the page. That is ugly, especially the SVG version. Each of the three optional renderings does include some form of text string that describes the equation so perhaps what I will do after the update is simply extract that from the rendering for use in the metadata.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I have added code to Module:Citation/CS1/COinS that detects the three various flavors of html renderings of equations in <math>...</math> markup. From each of these, the code extracts a text string that represents the rendering. For PNG, the text is the value assigned to the <img /> tag's alt= attribute; for TeX, the contents between the '$ ' and ' $' substrings in the <span>...</span> tag; for SVG, the content of the <annotation>...</annotation> tag. Each of these extracted strings is slightly different but when they are put in <math>...</math> tags similar results are rendered:

r_i^2=(r_ir_j)^{k_{ij}}=1

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$ PNG

r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$ TeX

{\displaystyle r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1}

${\displaystyle r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1}$ MathML

The code then replaces the math stripmarker in the metadata with the extracted string. The code can handle multiple equations in a cs1|2 parameter. If there are rendering errors, the stripmarker is replaces with the text string 'MATH RENDER ERROR' so that metadata consumers know that an editor is ignoring the big bold red rendering error message (like that ever happens).

The above equation in the live and sandbox versions of {{cite book}} showing the metadata output:

{{cite book |title=<math>r_i^2=(r_ir_j)^{k_{ij}}=1</math>}}

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000008B-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">'''"`UNIQ--math-0000008A-QINU`"'''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=MATH+RENDER+ERROR&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

{{cite book/new |title=<math>r_i^2=(r_ir_j)^{k_{ij}}=1</math>}}

$r_{i}^{2}=(r_{i}r_{j})^{k_{ij}}=1$.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000091-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">'''"`UNIQ--math-00000090-QINU`"'''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=MATH+RENDER+ERROR&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:27, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

breaking up Module:Citation/CS1

Module:Citation/CS1 is nearly 187,000 bytes big. For some time I have been contemplating splitting off certain bits of it into separate pages, much like I did for Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation.

To begin this task I have created Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities which will hold functions and tables that are common to multiple pages. Right now, it holds the error and categorization tables and the function is_set() because these things are/will be shared among the various modules.

I intend to create another page for the named identifiers (isbn, doi, etc) because the code for those identifiers is large, rarely modified, and unique to each identifier.

You should expect large red script error messages on this page though I will try to keep that to a minimum.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The greater part of this is done. There are two new pages: Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers and Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities. Identifiers holds all of the code that supports rendering and error checking of the named identifiers (isbn, doi, pmc, etc). Utilities holds code that is used by Identifiers, Module:Citation/CS1, and Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation.

The code that was moved from Citation/CS1 into these two new pages has not been modified so continues to function as before. There is new code that is required to link pages together.

I have also added code to Utilities that looks for global functions and variables. There should be none. If you see big red error messages that begin 'Tried to read nil global ...' or 'Tried to write global ...' let me know and I'll fix that.

I have not yet created sandbox versions of the new pages but will do so at the next update to the live module.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:25, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

And another: Module:Citation/CS1/COinS.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikilink in param= with param-link= populated causes error

I came across this citation in the wild today:

Cite episode comparison

Wikitext	{{cite episode|air-date=March 5, 2014|network=[[Fox Broadcasting Company]]|season=13|series-link=American Idol (season 13)|series=[[American Idol]]|title=Home|url=http://www.americanidol.com/recaps/episode/the-top-12---home}}
Live	"Home". American Idol. Season 13. 5 March 2014. Fox Broadcasting Company. {{cite episode}}: Check |series= value (help)
Sandbox	"Home". American Idol. Season 13. 5 March 2014. Fox Broadcasting Company. {{cite episode}}: Check |series= value (help)

|series= has a wikilink in it, and |series-link= is populated. Under those conditions, the citation does not render correctly. Should we detect some aspect of this condition as an error? – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:09, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

It's definitely an error. The question, to me, is the cost-benefit of detecting it. How common an error is it, and how easy is it to detect? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Detecting this condition for |title= and |series= is pretty painless:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|title-link=American Idol (season 13)|title=[[American Idol]]}}
Live	American Idol. {{cite book}}: Check |title= value (help)
Sandbox	American Idol. {{cite book}}: Check |title= value (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|title-link=[[American Idol (season 13)]]|title=American Idol}}
Live	American Idol. {{cite book}}: Check |title-link= value (help)
Sandbox	American Idol. {{cite book}}: Check |title-link= value (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|title-link=American Idol (season 13)|title=American Idol}}
Live	American Idol.
Sandbox	American Idol.

And for author-editor-contributor-translator name-lists:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author-link=[[Abraham Lincoln]]|first=Abe|last=Lincoln|title=Title}}
Live	Lincoln, Abe. Title. {{cite book}}: Check |author-link= value (help)
Sandbox	Lincoln, Abe. Title. {{cite book}}: Check |author-link= value (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author-link=Abraham Lincoln|author=[[Abraham Lincoln]]|title=Title}}
Live	Abraham Lincoln. Title. {{cite book}}: Check |author= value (help)
Sandbox	Abraham Lincoln. Title. {{cite book}}: Check |author= value (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author-link=Abraham Lincoln|author=Abraham Lincoln|title=Title}}
Live	Abraham Lincoln. Title.
Sandbox	Abraham Lincoln. Title.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:32, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm thinking that all of these error conditions should emit the "check param-link value" category, even if the |author= value is what needs to be fixed. Does that make sense, or am I off track? I'll be happy to edit the Help text accordingly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Not sure I understand what you're saying. When |author= is the parameter that needs to be fixed (as in the example where |author=[[Abraham Lincoln]] |author-link=Abraham Lincoln), that page is categorized into Category:CS1 errors: parameter link. Is that not correct?

Regardless, the help text will need to be edited to explain that wikilinks in a title-holding parameter are not allowed when the matching link-holding parameter has a value. In the case of author-, editor-, contributor-, and translator-name parameters, the error message parameter is fixed to the list name (author when the actual parameter used is |last=, etc).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say that elegantly, did I? I tried the sandbox version of the |author=[[Abraham Lincoln]] |author-link=Abraham Lincoln citation in an article preview, and I couldn't get it to emit any category, so I just wanted to confirm here. It sounds like it is doing the right thing. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

From the |author=[[Abraham Lincoln]] |author-link=Abraham Lincoln compare above I copied the template and pasted it into Abraham Lincoln (because the link was there in the comparison), changed {{cite book}} to {{cite book/new}}, wrapped the template in {{code}}, clicked Show preview and got this:

<cite class="citation book">[[Abraham Lincoln]]. ''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AAbraham+Lincoln&rft.au=Abraham+Lincoln&rft.btitle=Title&rft.genre=book&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook" class="Z3988"><span style="display:none;"> </span></span> <span style="font-size:100%" class="error citation-comment"><span style="font-size:100%" class="error citation-comment">Check <code style="color:inherit; border:inherit; padding:inherit;">|author-last1=</code> value ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_paramlink|help]])</span></span>[[Category:CS1 errors: parameter link]]

The very last bit of that is the category.

A simpler way is to paste the template into Special:ExpandTemplates, change to {{cite book/new}} and click OK.

There is a {{cite book/sandbox}}; did you use that instead of {{cite book/new}}? It uses the live version of the module. Not sure why we keep it around.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

eissn, hdl, citeseer^x

Because it was easy, I have added support for |eissn=:

Atema E, Mulder E, Dugdale HL, Briga M, van Noordwijk AJ, Verhulst S. "Heritability of telomere length in the Zebra Finch". Journal of Ornithology. eISSN 1439-0361. ISSN 0021-8375. LCCN 2005252102. OCLC 754654105.

Should we add support for Handle System (hdl) and or citeseer^x?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:16, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I support adding |hdl=. This value is frequently placed in |id=, and it would be nice to have a cleaner place to put it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I've added hdl. It's pretty much just a clone of a portion of the doi code (which itself is an hdl).

{{cite journal/new |title=Title |journal=Journal |hdl=1808/3638}}

"Title". Journal. hdl:1808/3638.

We'll need a new error category Category:CS1 errors: HDL and new help text (most of which can by cloned from the doi help text).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:53, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Regex help needed to replace line feed character in title=

I'm digging in to the invisible character category, and I am trying to add some regexes to the AutoEd script that I use for unsupported parameters and similar fixes. I have noticed that line feed characters are particularly prevalent, so I'm trying to create a regex to find a line feed character in |title= and replace it with a space. Here's what I have so far:

str = str.replace(/({{\s*[cC]it[ea](?:[^}{]*(?:\{\{[^}{]*}}[^}{]*)*))(\|\s*title\s*=.+)\n+(.+?(?=[\|\}]))/gi, '$1$2 $3');

This should translate to "Find a cite template without opening braces inside it, then find | followed by white space and then |title=, then find any characters until you get to one or more line feeds (\n+), then find more characters until you find a pipe or a closing curly brace. Replace it with everything you found except the line feed, which is replaced with a space character."

I am finding that my regex reaches too far if it finds a cite template without a line feed in it, going all the way to the end of a citation template and replacing the line feed at the end of the paragraph that contains the template. I think I need something after the first .+ and before the \n+ to tell my regex to act only if it finds a line feed before it finds a pipe or closing brace, but I haven't been able to manage it. Can anyone help? – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:25, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't use your tool so I don't know if this will work for you. You might replace the .+ with [^\|\}]+ (consume one or more characters that are not in the set of | and }).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:52, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

That works great. I'm off to the races. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:17, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

External link detection not always working?

I'm being my usual confused and probably dumb self here. In the external link error help text, I see:

This error occurs when any of the CS1 or CS2 citation title-holding parameters – |title=, |chapter=, |work=, |publisher= or any of their aliases – hold an external link (URL).

In the documentation for {{cite web}}, I see:

website: Title of website; may be wikilinked. Displays in italics. Aliases: work

My little brain comes to the conclusion that URLs in both |work= and |website= should display an error. That does not appear to be the case, however (the first cite web template uses |website= and the second one uses |work=, an alias of |website=; they are otherwise identical):

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|first=Elizabeth|last=Stanton|title=Declaration of Sentiments|url=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/pdfs/1848_declaration_of_sentiments.pdf|website=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/}}
Live	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |website= (help)
Sandbox	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |website= (help)

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|first=Elizabeth|last=Stanton|title=Declaration of Sentiments|url=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/pdfs/1848_declaration_of_sentiments.pdf|work=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/}}
Live	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
Sandbox	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)

Here's the same URL in |publisher= in cite web and cite book:

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|first=Elizabeth|last=Stanton|publisher=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/|title=Declaration of Sentiments|url=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/pdfs/1848_declaration_of_sentiments.pdf}}
Live	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
Sandbox	Stanton, Elizabeth. "Declaration of Sentiments" (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|first=Elizabeth|last=Stanton|publisher=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/|title=Declaration of Sentiments|url=http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/pdfs/1848_declaration_of_sentiments.pdf}}
Live	Stanton, Elizabeth. Declaration of Sentiments (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
Sandbox	Stanton, Elizabeth. Declaration of Sentiments (PDF). http://www.womensrightsfriends.org/. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)

But it works sometimes:

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|publisher=http://stats.cfldb.ca|title=The Toronto Argonauts’ 1935 Season|url=http://stats.cfldb.ca/team/toronto-argonauts/1935/}}
Live	"The Toronto Argonauts' 1935 Season". http://stats.cfldb.ca. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
Sandbox	"The Toronto Argonauts' 1935 Season". http://stats.cfldb.ca. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|accessdate=14 July 2012|author=Nick Warburton|date=June 2005|title=RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS|url=http://www.earcandymag.com/rrcase-mynahbirds-part2.htm|work=http://earcandymag.com}}
Live	Nick Warburton (June 2005). "RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS". http://earcandymag.com. Retrieved 14 July 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
Sandbox	Nick Warburton (June 2005). "RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS". http://earcandymag.com. Retrieved 14 July 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)

Here's the above citation with a trailing slash in the |work= URL:

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|accessdate=14 July 2012|author=Nick Warburton|date=June 2005|title=RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS|url=http://www.earcandymag.com/rrcase-mynahbirds-part2.htm|work=http://earcandymag.com/}}
Live	Nick Warburton (June 2005). "RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS". http://earcandymag.com/. Retrieved 14 July 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
Sandbox	Nick Warburton (June 2005). "RICK JAMES AND THE MYNAH BIRDS". http://earcandymag.com/. Retrieved 14 July 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)

What am I missing this time? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, do stop with the self-deprecation.

The problem, as you discovered, is the trailing slash; the parameter names in the error message are, I think, reported correctly. The function is_parameter_ext_wikilink() used a flawed snippet of code that didn't strip off an empty path. is_domain_name() then returned false because it expected the last character in the tld to be a letter. I've changed is_parameter_ext_wikilink() to use split_url() which should produce more reliable results.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That looks like it works as expected. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Automatic ISO conversion

Forgive me if you've heard this one before, but I didn't see in the archives. I frequently add references to articles that are in both mdy and dmy formats and it's a pain in the ass to not have a template doing the format switching for me. This is to say that I would prefer to enter |date=2015-12-18 and have the template detect which format to use (either set within each individual {{cite web}} instance or by detecting some article-wide {{use dmy}} or the like). Is this possible or has it been discussed? I also ask because I'm working on a WP:Citoid browser extension. They're planning to stay in ISO 8601 and instead ask the local template creators to convert the dates, and this seems like the right choice. I use a citation manager for my more academic WP articles and it also spits out ISO format, meaning that I need to manually rewrite the dates or use {{date|2006-08-04|mdy}} around each instance. While page date style detection would be nice, at the very least, it'd be nice to do something like |dateformat=dmy rather than changing three date instances with the {{date}} template (publication date, access date, archive date). Thoughts? czar 19:19, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Check out User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates.js. He still hasn't implemented a "convert all dates in an article to the template version e.g. {{use dmy}}", but it's usually pretty easy to hunt that down on a page. --Izno (talk) 19:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

It is generally the case that a template cannot see the universe outside of its bounding {{ and }} so figuring out what the page style is may not be possible. On the otherhand, Scribuntu has this:

mw.title.getCurrentTitle():getContent()

which can read the unparsed content of a page. A module can then search for a string, in this case, {{use xxx dates (where xxx is dmy or mdy). It could then render dates according to the page style. I can imagine, though, that this could be costly in terms of processing time or memory consumption so while doable, may not be practical for a large page with a large number of cs1|2 templates.

A date format parameter is certainly an option especially if Citoid is going to use a year-initial date format similar to ISO 8601. I expect that use of that tool will increase as more cs1|2 templates are created with VE which, as I understand it, makes use of Citoid.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:28, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

At present, assuming we are using the cite xxx or citation templates {{use mdy}} sometimes applies to all the dates, sometimes it applies to the body of the article but not the citations, and sometimes it applies to the body and the publication dates but not the access and archive dates. (The dates that {{use mdy}} would be YYYY-MM-DD format.) So if the templates were to detect and act on {{use mdy}}, it would be first be necessary to propose at Help talk:Citation Style 1 (with notices in other appropriate places) that Citation Style 1 and 2 be changed to make all the dates in the article follow the same format. That would be jut fine with me, but good luck getting a consensus. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

There has repeatedly been a consensus that ISO dates may be used consistently for access and archive dates, regardless of the format of other dates in the article. So it would not be possible to automate conversion of these dates. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:38, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Presumably, for the case where we create a new cs1|2 template parameter, |df= perhaps, and for it define certain keywords: dmy, mdy, ymd, dmy-all, mdy-all, ymd-all. Then, the -all keywords would cause the module to apply date formatting to all dates whereas the xxx keywords would not reformat access- and archive-dates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, yes, I really like this |df= solution. (I'm not really interested in pushing for new standardization right now, just to have a method of converting ISO to dmy/mdy easily in my own work.) I would recommend, though, that |df=dmy rather than |df=dmy-all default to changing all three (publication, access, archive) dates to dmy because that's how most people will use it. I suppose that would make dmy-pub the option for only converting the publication date. What's the next step for this proposal? czar 16:53, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think a df parameter for cite xxx and citation would help. The whole idea is to have the template pick up the date format from information already in the article, rather than having a tool that adds the template figure out what date format(s) to use. So if the idea was to not standardize, and still allow the full range of options that are currently allowed, it is the {{use dmy}} and cousins that would have to change, maybe to something like {{use dmy | scope = s}}} where s = all, not-cites, or pub (pub would make the scope the publication date but not the access date or archive date). Any date specified by a cite xxx or citation parameter that didn't fall within the scope would be YYYY-MM-DD format. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:42, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that a page-wide solution is still on the table here. In addition to a page-wide solution, Editor Czar also suggested |dateformat=dmy which is more likely to be acceptable to the editor community as you pointed out.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

As a test, I added this code to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:

if not is_set (DF) then   -- if date format is not set in the template see if page has {{use xxx dates}} template
  local text = this_page:getContent();                  -- get the page content
  DF = text:match ('{{%s*[Uu]se%s*([Dd][Mm][Yy])') or text:match ('{{%s*[Uu]se%s*([Mm][Dd][Yy])') or text:match ('{{%s*([Dd][Mm][Yy])') or
       text:match ('{{%s*([Mm][Dd][Yy])') or '';
  DF = DF:lower();
end

The code fetches the unparsed page source and then searches for a match to any of the {{use ... dates}} templates and their redirects and sets meta-parameter DF to the specified format which it then sets to lowercase.

I checked to make sure that the code worked. It does. My next test was to render my testcases page but without adding a {{use ... dates}} template. The testcases page bombed with lua time-out errors. From this I conclude that this mechanism for page-wide date reformatting is impractical.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:43, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The cs1|2 date-holding parameters are: |access-date=, |archive-date=, |date=, |doi-broken-date=, |embargo=, |lay-date=, and |publication-date=.

Legitimate date formats are dmy, mdy, ymd, my, y, and various limited combinations of these in ranges. Except for ymd, m can be a full month name or three letter abbreviation. Also supported are seasons and certain named dates. It would seem that for any setting of |df=, the module should convert valid dates to the specified format. No conversions are done if there are any invalid dates because it simplifies things to know beforehand that the dates are in a valid format before converting them to another format.

Date ranges in ISO 8601-like format are not currently supported by WP:DATESNO so are not supported by cs1|2. If Citoid needs to specify a date range will it use the ISO 8601 format? If Citoid needs to specify a season, will it use ISO 8601 format? Is there an ISO 8601 format for seasons? What about dates outside of the Gregorian calendar; does Citoid support those? In what format? In a conversion, how do we specify use of abbreviated month names?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

ISO 8601 date ranges can be somewhat convoluted, and imo pretty unappealing aesthetically. Auto-formatting of |access-date=, |archive-date=, and |doi-broken-date= into ISO 8601 through the discussed new parameter sounds like a good idea. For most readers, these dates would fall into the "too technical" category anyway, I think. 65.88.88.46 (talk) 19:55, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I left a note on the Citoid dev page about those questions, but would it be all right to start with a version of |df= that solely converts ISO to dmy/mdy? And then add other contingencies later? I'm sure Citoid is just working these things out now so the answers will come in time. When I have publications with date ranges (which aren't supported in the template by any means, last time I checked), I just use the first date of the range (November–December 2015 becomes November 2015). czar 23:42, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, if we do this we can certainly start with just ymd→dmy|mdy.

cs1|2 has supported date ranges in a variety of form for a long time:

{{cite book |title=Title |date=November–December 2015}}

Title. November–December 2015.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:32, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Using |df=. Keywords are: dmy, dmy-all, mdy, mdy-all, ymd, ymd-all. The module will reformat single dates among dmy, mdy, and ymd. Ranges, seasons, proper-name dates are not supported. No reformatting if there are date errors.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=2015-12-20 |df=dmy}}

Title. 20 December 2015.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=2015-12-20 |df=mdy}}

Title. December 20, 2015.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=20 December 2015 |df=mdy}}

Title. December 20, 2015.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=20 December 2015 |df=ymd}}

Title. 2015-12-20.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=December 20, 2015 |df=dmy}}

Title. 20 December 2015.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=December 20, 2015 |df=ymd}}

Title. 1582-12-20.

|access-date= and |archive-date= are not converted unless the -all suffix is used with the |df= keyword:

{{cite web/new |title=Title |url=//example.com |date=2010-12-20 |access-date=2012-07-14 |archive-url=//example.org |archive-date=2011-06-04 |df=dmy}}

"Title". 20 December 2010. Archived from the original on 2011-06-04. Retrieved 2012-07-14.

{{cite web/new |title=Title |url=//example.com |date=2010-12-20 |access-date=2012-07-14 |archive-url=//example.org |archive-date=2011-06-04 |df=dmy-all}}

"Title". 20 December 2010. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 4 July 2012.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:59, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

(meta comment) It seems odd that there is no intra-article global variable facility. That would make this and other intra-article consistency a relative snap. Has it been established that such a facility has insurmountable technical obstacles? If not, perhaps we'd be better off, in the long run, putting our energies into helping that happen? ―Mandruss ☎ 04:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Trappist the monk, would you be opposed to swapping dmy→dmy-pub (or -single) and dmy-all→dmy? I think dmy should default to changing all instances, as that will be the most likely use case. czar 05:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The -all suffix is, I think, very clearly understood to mean exactly what it does. A -pub suffix pretty clearly applies to |date= and |publication-date= but not so clear for |doi-broken-date=, |embargo=, and |lay-date=. We must be able to accommodate WP:DATEUNIFY which allows access- and archive-dates in ymd format when all other dates are dmy or mdy so some mechanism is required to support that. I'm not opposed to changing but I do like the very clear an unambiguous nature of -all. Is there a better option than -pub?

While we're thinking about keywords, right now, the module unconditionally reformats to long month names. Do we need to have a mechanism to specify abbreviated month names? (supported in the module but currently hard-coded to reformat to long month names)

What about the case where |access-date= or |archive-date= is in a format different from the format specified in |df= and that format is not ymd:

|access-date=Mmmm dd, yyyy and |df=dmy

Should the module reformat |access-date= to ymd?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:56, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Should the module reformat |access-date= to ymd?

Even though I consistently use ymd for |access-date= and the like, I would not like to see any default formatting implemented without more inclusive discussion. To avoid possible future headaches. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 18:34, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

When I asked Should the module reformat |access-date= to ymd? I meant it to be understood to mean reformat |access-date= and/or |archive-date= when present and using a date format different from ymd and different from the format specified in |df=. So, if |access-date=March 15, 2001 and |df=dmy, should the module reformat |access-date=2001-03-15? I asked this because WP:DATEUNIFY says that dates should be the same format except that access- and archive-dates may be in ymd format as long as the other dates are consistent. WP:DATEUNIFY does not allow for a mix of dmy and mdy dates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

If Citoid actually follows ISO 8601, they would format the date for the December issue of a 2011 magazine as 2011-12, which defies the Citing sources guideline. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

And also WP:MOSDATE#Ranges. --Izno (talk) 22:32, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I personally wonder if this change is problematic from the Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll perspective. --Izno (talk) 22:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

What change? The additions of |df= and its attendant code? Reformatting |access-date= and/or |archive-date= as I described in my reply to IP Editor 72.43.99.130? Automatic reformatting to comply with the {{use dmy dates}} family of templates? All or combinations of the above?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

What changes would I find troublesome?

• Making any change outside of a sandbox until either Citoid developers provide a citation that can be made to obey WP:Citing sources and Help:Citation Style 1, or the community agrees to make the necessary changes to "WP:Citing sources" and "Help:Citation Style 1".
• Any change that would make existing hand-edited templates incorrect or confusing, such as one that uses 2011–12 to mean 2011 through 2012. (And neither editors nor readers are expected to be able to distinguish "–" from "-".
• The citation or cite xxx templates converting Gregorian dates to Julian dates because a publication bears a Julian publication date and ISO 8601, which Citoid has apparently adopted, always uses Gregorian dates.

In view of the fact that Citoid is only handy for a limited range of citations, those with an identifier that it can use to generate a citation, and it is part of a high-risk project (Visual Editor) that may end up being a total flop, I'm inclined to think it's up to Citoid to find a way to work with the existing citation system, rather than altering the existing citation system to work with Citoid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talk • contribs) 22 December 2015‎ (UTC)

@Jc3s5h, Citoid is only part of this. Even without Citoid, my citation manager (and most publisher RIS data I've found) exports dates in ISO format. This is about accommodating those formats instead of rewriting dates manually. czar 08:10, 22 December |2015 (UTC)

Please tell us (or me) more about your citation manager. In the mean time, we're still talking about a manual step; the editor adding the citation must look at the article, figure out the date format in general, and specifically the citation format for publication dates and the group access dates and archive dates, and add the proposed df parameter. I'm skeptical that this step will be performed. So I think we'll remain where we are today; people who would like consistent style in articles will have to run various scripts or bots to enforce such consistency, independent of editors who add content with no concern for consistent style, whether the new content be infoboxes, citations, or paragraphs in the body of the article.Jc3s5h (talk) 08:59, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

@Czar: I see that we have an article about RIS (file format) which in turn links to this specification. Considering that the specification allows for "Ancient Text" and that there is no mention of ISO 8601 or Julian or Gregorian calendar, and that the earliest supported year appears to be 1, we should infer that so long as dates were originally expressed either in the Julian or Gregorian calendar, whatever date appeared in the publication should appear in the citation, and it is up to the reader to figure out from context which calendar was used. The date format is NOT ISO 8601; the following are examples of RIS date formats:

YYYY or

YYYY/MM or

YYYY/MM/DD or

YYYY/MM/DD/other info

If Citoid intends to rely on the RIS data, it would be a falsification to blindly convert YYYY/MM/DD to ISO 8601 format (that is, to just change the slashes to dashes without considering what the calendar is). Such falsifications are intolerable and Citoid must be banned if it persists in such falsifications.

If Citoid isn't willing to output the correct format for the article, it should output the RIS format (but completely suppress dates with "other info"). The templates could require that citations with slashes in the date contain a df parameter; any citation with slashes in the date and no rf parameter would be displayed with red warnings replacing the date. As for Citoid's plan to eventually use WikiData, the developers should demand WikiData provide a date type that is agnostic about whether the date is Julian or Gregorian, and agnostic about the time zone, since the RIS format is agnostic about these matters. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:07, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The question was intended for Editor Izno, but I'll answer your points:

• nothing we do here can compel Citoid developers to do anything; the code supporting |df= specifically requires all date-holding parameters to be error-free before those values are reformatted to the format specified in |df=
• nothing in this change overrides an editor's decisions; hand-edited templates without |df= are rendered as is, warts, error messages and all; the module cannot rewrite wikitext
• this change does not convert dates from one calendar to another; |df= only specifies how the date is rendered; cs1|2 emits an error message for dates in the YYYY-MM-DD style where YYYY is earlier than 1582 so for such a template |df= is ignored

Your post caused me to realize that there is a bug in the YYYY-MM-DD error checking code that emits and error message when |date=1582-MM-DD. I have fixed that in the sandbox. The current version of the |df= code will improperly reformat a dmy or mdy Julian date into ymd. I'll fix that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: It is correct to flag all YMD dates with a year less than 1583 as an error. The rational behind the error message is that many readers will infer that YMD dates are ISO 8601 dates, and ISO 8601 requires consent of data exchange partners before expressing any year less that 1583. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

In this discussion we first addressed the issue of Gregorian and Julian calendars. In that discussion, the demarcation between the two is 1582. The documentation at Help:Citation Style 1#Dates and Check date values in: |param1=, |param2=, ... refers to 1582.

In this version of ISO 8601 (I don't have access to a current copy), 1582 is mentioned four times; 1583, none:

§3.11 Gregorian calendar – "... introduced in 1582 ..."

§4.3.2.1 The Gregorian calendar (2×) – "The use of this calendar for dates preceding the introduction of the Gregorian calendar (i.e. before 1582) should only be done by agreement of the partners in information interchange."

§5.2.1 Calendar date – "Values in the range [0000] through [1582] shall only be used by mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange." (this seems to conflict with the others)

The Acceptable date formats table mentions 1583. Our Gregorian calendar article identifies 1582 as the year of introduction and also as the year of adoption by several countries.

For cs1|2, Julian or Gregorian only matters when determining the validity of a 29 February date.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:18, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

When |df=ymd and the year portion of the source date is earlier than 1582, dates are not reformatted:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=December 20, 1582 |df=ymd}}

Title. 1582-12-20.

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=December 20, 1581 |df=ymd}}

Title. December 20, 1581.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:44, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

What about this:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |date=December 20, 1582 |df=ymd}}

Title. 1582-02-24.

That is before the Gregorian calendar went into effect.

As for cs1|2 not carrying about dates other than February 29, the templates issue the "Check date values in: |date=" error message for dates earlier than 1 January 1583 if they are in the YYYY-MM-DD format, and should continue to do so because cs1|2 dates are supposed to comply with MOS:DATEFORMAT which says "Use yyyy-mm-dd format only with Gregorian dates from 1583 onward." Jc3s5h (talk) 14:10, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that MOS:DATEFORMAT is wrong. The Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582 so MOS:DATEFORMAT should permit 1582 ymd dates. You're right, cs1|2 also cares about ymd dates earlier than 1582. It has never cared about the exact date of adoption; neither has MOS:DATEFORMAT.

I think that this is a minor issue because: in general, numeric date formats are not much used in article text; because publication dates in citations, per MOS:DATEUNIFY, are supposed follow article date format or the format specified by a particular citation style; because MOS:DATEUNIFY permits ymd dates in access- and archive-dates, which both require |url= so cannot be meaningful earlier than the late 20th century. A simple insource: search using this pattern insource:/\| *\w*date *= *158[0-9]\-/, found no cs1|2 citations using ymd dates for the 1580s.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

If you read Fred Brook's The Mythical Man Month you would have seen that the IBM System/360 Principles of Operation (or whatever it was called at the time) served as a contract between the operating system developers and the hardware developers. A hardware developer wasn't allowed to decide that a required machine instruction wasn't the best way to do it, and build hardware that did something else. I think MOS:DATEFORMAT should serve as a contract among readers, editors, and template developers. Templates should act like one would expect after reading MOS:DATEFORMAT, regardless if the template developer has some quibbles with MOS:DATEFORMAT. Among other things, this gives template developers an idea of what templates might need to change if MOS:DATEFORMAT changes. If this "contract" is ignored, and MOS:DATEFORMAT, the attitude will be "the templates are all over the map anyway, we'll just continue to ignore the mess". Jc3s5h (talk) 17:07, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I have moved your comment out of my comment.

Of course, were this a hierarchical engineering department where nothing changes without there are reams of paperwork requesting approval from on high, then perhaps such a scheme as you describe might apply. Wikipedia is clearly not a hierarchical organization so there is no 'authority' vested in MOS:DATEFORMAT. We, among ourselves, decide. But you know all of this so I needn't restate it here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• Please tell us (or me) more about your citation manager. I use Zotero. Its default WP citation export defaults to ymd (I call this ISO because it's close enough, even if it's not exactly the spec) instead of dmy/mdy, which I think is fair enough. (I looked into this.) My options are to either write a custom WP citation style for each date format (dmy/mdy), which I think would be overkill, or to manually use {{date}} on each ymd date it spits out (which I would consider a very clunky solution). I don't think it matters that my citation matter ingests slashes between dates and converts them to dashes. All that matters is that I get my dates into the right date format for the article with less effort than I need to exert right now. czar 15:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

@Czar:Thanks, I have used Zotero too; I wasn't sure if you writing about a citation manager you use, or a citation manager you were creating. I'm sure there are many editors who never refer to any publication printed long enough ago that the publication date would be in the Julian calendar, and who feel no need to think about the possibility of non-Gregorian dates. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Trappist the monk and Jc3s5h, what's the next step in moving ahead with this basic |df= param that converts ymd → dmy/mdy (or vice versa, if you want to support it)? I think the other discussions can be worthwhile but I don't see them changing this basic functionality, and since it's apparently already coded in the /new template, I'd like to use it and get back to editing ASAP. czar 16:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Not much happens all that quickly here, so perhaps you are destined for disappointment. Because it is the time for year's-end holidays, we may not have the eyeballs that normally keep us from going too far astray. The owners of those eyeballs should be given the opportunity to have their say. Assuming that there isn't implacable opposition, this change will probably go live sometime around mid-January 2016.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, how about now? czar 08:30, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Trappist the monk, @Whatamidoing (WMF) responded to some of your questions at MediaWiki czar 03:33, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

This is what I wanted to write at that conversation. It didn't come out right. Apparently that flow thing is not ready for primetime:

cs1|2 supports a subset of date formats allowed by the various sections of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Dates.2C_months_and_years of which Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Ranges is a portion. DATESNO is a term often (mis)used to refer to the dates portion of that MOS page because it is a redirect to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Unacceptable date formats. cs1|2 compliance with MOS is specified at Help:Citation_Style_1#CS1_compliance_with_Wikipedia.27s_Manual_of_Style.

cs1|2 do not support ISO 8601-like date-range-formats because MOS only supports YYYY-MM-DD single-date style. At present, cs1|2 will emit an error message if given a YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD range.

It is very common for periodicals to date issues according to season. How does Citoid report those dates? What about dates that are proper names? cs1|2 allows Christmas YYYY as a date because there are periodicals that use that date. How does Citoid report that kind of date?

I don't know how Citoid gets its dates. If Citoid only works with on-line publications where the date of the cited material is guaranteed to be Gregorian, then there is no issue. But, if Citoid can report dates in the Julian calendar then that may or may not be a problem.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The citoid service copies the date from the webpage that it is given. There are "translators" that tell citoid where the date is on the webpage. Originally, if the translator said that the date on Example.Com is two inches to the left of the first picture (or whatever the machine-reading equivalent of that is), then citoid returned whatever was two inches to the left of the first picture as the "date". When feasible, that's now being turned into a standard date format. When not feasible, then you get whatever is in the field that is labeled as a date according to the translator, including "Christmas YYYY" or "Second week of January 2015" or whatever (including foreign languages). Finally, if the date field is empty on the page, or the page has been re-designed and the translator hasn't been updated with information about the new HTML label for the date, then you'll get nothing (e.g., probably csmonitor.com at the moment; that website used to return dates right down to the second, but now URLs there aren't returning dates at all).

With the exception of scanned hard copies of old periodicals or books, I would be surprised if you managed to find a URL to a reliable source whose date is before the creation of the world wide web, and astonished if you managed to find one that used the Julian calendar but shouldn't be listed according to the date printed in the publication. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't know the extent to which Citoid is currently implemented in the visual editor, but I tried the visual editor (without saving cnanges) and found that I had a choice of "Automatic" or "Manual" tabs. If one chooses the manual tab, there is no requirement to include a URL and the date is free-form. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

You can also fill out a citation template under the Manual tab. The "favorites" are listed there, but if you go to "Basic", you can insert any template you want (or use regular text, exactly as if you were typing the bibliographical details straight into the article). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Just realized that we never resolved the dmy, mdy, ymd, dmy-all, mdy-all, ymd-all situation. My preference would be to have dmy, mdy, ymd default to converting all three dates, because I would think continuity between all three is the common usage. So to accommodate those who do mdy/dmy for the pub date and ymd for the access/archive dates, we could use mdy-ymd and dmy-ymd. I think that would be fair. @Trappist the monk czar 02:44, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't |df=dmy-ymd imply the possibility of |df=dmy-mdy or even |df=dmy-dmy or that date ranges could be formatted as 1 January 2016 – 2016-01-11. Yeah, I know, that last seems a bit of a stretch but editors are amazingly creative when it comes to misinterpreting how parameters are to be used. I guess I think that |df=dmy-all is to be preferred because of its simple clarity.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:29, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, I expect there to be much greater confusion when |df=dmy converts a single field instead of all fields. While it's nice to support editor choice to use ymd for the access/archive dates, it's far more common to see the same format used throughout the citation. Anyone looking for dmy-ymd (and who is familiar with that rule) will not be confused by that option, which they would expect to not be the default, but those who want dmy throughout will be confused when their param only changes the first of three dates. Eh? If I am unconvincing, a potential compromise could be to not use unhyphenated dmy/mdy/ymd at all and only use dmy-all and dmy-ymd or something along those lines. Appreciate your help with this czar 21:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

it's far more common to see the same format used throughout the citation – I've no idea what the situation is across the English Wikipedia as a whole, but in areas that I edit, YYYY-MM-DD seems to me at least as common for access/archive dates, if not more common. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:33, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I imagine a tracking cat could get metrics on this, if necessary czar 05:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, thoughts? And as much as I don't like the proposed param scheme, I'd really like to start using this param (in any form) as soon as possible, if that implementation is still scheduled to go through czar 05:00, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

This went live 16 January 2016 as announced.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Clarify usage of publisher

I couldn't find anything in the archives that specifically and clearly addressed this question. Are cable TV channels and local TV stations considered publishers for CS1 purposes? Or, are their owning companies the publishers? There is a script being used to mass-change |work= and |website= for these entities to |publisher=, and this seems wrong to me. Either way, the template doc could use some clarification to avoid endless spinning between the two forms. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:02, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

In this RfC, Editor SMcCandlish wrote (at the bullet point 'Support italics') one of the better descriptions of just what it is that |work= is supposed to be. Perhaps that's helpful?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I read it and need some interpretation as to this question. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

To add, there is actually no real context-based citation template doc. There is doc for cs1|2-wide parameters, with few exceptions. What little citation context does exist, is buried in the systemwide documentation. I assume that the context here is {{cite av media}}, {{cite episode}} and the like. Imo, in these cases the TV channels etc. should not be considered publishers, just like magazines or encyclopedias are not the publishers of their articles. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:39, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

For my purposes I'm interested primarily in the guidance at Template:Cite news and Template:Cite web, which share a description of |publisher=. It's that description that I feel needs clarification. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Traditionally, a network or TV station would be considered a publisher, not a work, for citation purposes. In the case of TV, the work is the program. My oft-used example is this. 60 Minutes is a "television news magazine". It is rendered in italics as a work. Individual segments or episodes of that program are considered the analog to articles within a print magazine, so their titles are rendered in quotation marks. Broadcasting a TV program is the analog to publication, so CBS, as the network, is the publisher. In terms of the distinction between an individual TV station and the company that owns it, look at the distinction between a publishing house (Simon & Schuster) and one of its imprints (Charles Scribner's Sons) or the company that owns it (CBS Corporation). In that case, only the most specific entity needed to locate the source need be included. Imzadi 1979 → 20:09, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm speaking of websites for the cable TV channels and local TV stations. If a news article at nytimes.com is correctly cited as |work=The New York Times, how can one oppose citing the article at CNN.com, containing equivalent reporting of the very same subject, as |work=CNN or |website=CNN? ―Mandruss ☎ 20:20, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

"cnn.com" might be a work, but "CNN" is still a publisher. The website lacks a name separate from that of its publisher, and in those cases, I would never list the name of the publisher as a work. In distinction, WLUC-TV has named its news website Upper Michigan's Source, and so I do list that as a work along with the station call letters and location in citations. Imzadi 1979 → 20:24, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Then you would be in conflict with the |publisher= guidance at {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}}: "Omit where the publisher's name is substantially the same as the name of the work". Following your reasoning we should code |work=nytimes.com, not |work=The New York Times. In my opinion the publisher of CNN.com is Turner Broadcasting System (or parent company Time Warner), and publisher should be omitted as largely irrelevant and unuseful in that context. Can you see a need for clarification here? ―Mandruss ☎ 20:26, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

The name of that website is the same as the name of their newspaper, The New York Times based on the usage of the same masthead (logo) between the two. CNN's website also shares the same logo as the network, implying the same situation, but to a different result as "CNN" the network is a publisher. However, WLUC-TV has three logos/names for its distinct entities: WLUC-TV (the NBC subchannel), WLUC-DT2/FoxUP (the Fox subchannel) and Upper Michigan's Source (their website). As for "CNN" vs. "Turner Broadcasting System", that's same relationship between Simon & Schuster and CBS Corporation, the corporate parent of the publishing house or "WLUC-TV" and "Sinclair Broadcast Group".

The guidance of which you speak relates to the traditional notion that the name of the publishing company behind a periodical publication is unnecessary for most citation purposes, especially where it is the same, or substantially (The New York Times vs. The New York Times Company") so to its publications. Imzadi 1979 → 20:44, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

We've had this debate before. The |work= parameter should be the name of the site, not the name of the web server hosting the site. The name of the CNN site is CNN, not cnn.com. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:47, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, our guidance says that not all website names are rendered in italics. For websites that are the equivalent to a publication type traditionally rendered in italics (Wikipedia as an encyclopedia title, The New York Times as a newspaper title), we should continue to class them as works at the moment, but if a website title is the equivalent of something considered a publisher (CNN as a cable network, CBS News as a broadcast network division [but not The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley]), then we'd render those as publishers. Maybe in the future other style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style will come to consider all website names as works, but they don't, and we don't, at the moment. Imzadi 1979 → 20:49, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Even if you are correctly stating community consensus on this, and that's not at all clear to me, you're adding a ton of interpretation not present in the guidance, and that dearly needs fixing. That guidance, not the archives of this page, is where virtually all editors will go to determine the correct thing to do in these cases, as long as Wikipedia exists, and it is currently highly ambiguous. The average editor should not have to hunt down, parse, analyze, and synthesize widely dispersed wisdom in the archives. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:56, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I think context is everything. What is it that is cited?

If what cited is an episode in a TV series at a certain channel, then:

|title=episode-title |work=series-name |publisher=station/channel-name

If what cited is a TV series at a certain channel syndicated/owned by some entity, then:

|title=series-name |work=station/channel name |publisher=station/channel owner/syndicator

As was stated above, there is very little guidance on context in the doc. Instead, it is more of a one-size-fits-all approach I think.

208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:29, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Since it's so difficult for so many people to grasp the amount of editor effort wasted due to this lack of guidance, I'll now give up (again) trying to improve the situation for the sake of the project. It's far from the first time I've encountered this, but I've yet to fully learn the lesson. We shall continue to spin, working at about 60% efficiency, with ongoing acrimonious conflict out there in the real editing world, per Wikipedia tradition. Thanks. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:21, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Red error for missing url parameter on cite web

Now that we see so many clear citation errors, I've been going around my projects cleanup listing and fixing them, and I've noticed one that's really difficult to find on large pages- "Web citation with no URL"; basically, when you use Cite web and the url parameter isn't filled in. This error does not produce any visible red text, it just adds the page to Category:Pages using web citations with no URL (as well is Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL, when applicable). On a page with ~100 citation it can be hard to manually track down which one has the error; is it possible for the offending citation to emit red text like many of the other errors? --PresN 00:13, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

That error message is hidden. You can force a display of all error messages. See Controlling error message display.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:33, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I presume that there's a reason why that error is hidden by default, since you obviously know about it, so I'll just use the css fix. Thank you! --PresN 02:36, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that the category pages also say it's hidden by default and show the CSS. Maybe it's hidden because some editors use {{cite web}} when it isn't actually on the web, for example when they copy and adapt another citation. It still works in many such cases without having an error from the point of view of readers. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:23, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

This discussion ends in an RFC that hides certain error messages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 04:00, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

year/date categorization fixes

I have fixed a couple of small bugs in year_date_check() in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox.

When |date= does not contain a recognizable year, the citation should not be categorized in Category:CS1 maint: Date and year

Cite journal comparison

Wikitext	{{cite journal|date=June 3|journal=New York Times|last=Associated Press|title=Francois Genoud, Nazi Sympathizer, 81|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E0DD1F39F930A35755C0A960958260|year=1996}}
Live	Associated Press (June 3). "Francois Genoud, Nazi Sympathizer, 81". New York Times. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
Sandbox	Associated Press (June 3). "Francois Genoud, Nazi Sympathizer, 81". New York Times. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

The pattern used to test for |date=YYYY-YY accepts a hyphen as separator so it matches the year and month portions of ymd dates. The test converts the YY to YYYY (using the century from the first year in the range). One of the years defining the range in |date= must match the value in |year= to add the citation to Category:CS1 maint: Date and year. In this case, the pattern matches |date=2003-04-29 returning 2003-04 which is then converted to 2003-2004. Since |year=2004 matches one of the years in the 'range', the citation is added to the maintenance category:

Cite news comparison

Wikitext	{{cite news|accessdate=2009-09-15|archivedate=29 October 2009|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091029064455/http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html|date=2003-04-29|deadurl=no|publisher=[[New York Times]]|title=1,000 Greatest Movies Ever Made|url=http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html|year=2004}}
Live	"1,000 Greatest Movies Ever Made". New York Times. 29 April 2003. Archived from the original on 29 October 2009. Retrieved 15 September 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
Sandbox	"1,000 Greatest Movies Ever Made". New York Times. 29 April 2003. Archived from the original on 29 October 2009. Retrieved 15 September 2009. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:02, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

??? Shouldn't |date= and |year= in the same citation be mutually exclusive? Or am I missing something? 208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:32, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

When it is necessary to disambiguate citations (two or more of an author's works cited in the same article), and when the article uses {{sfn}} or {{harv}}-family templates, a letter suffix is added to the year portion of |date= or |year=. For dmy and mdy date formats, |year= is redundant. For templates that use ymd date formats, inserting a disambiguator is not permitted (|date=2015a-12-24) so these templates use |year= with the disambiguator (|date=2015-12-24 |year=2015a).

It is permissible, as a carry-over from past practice, to use both |date= (in either dmy or mdy formats) and |year= with |year= having the disambiguator. When the cs1|2 templates used {{citation/core}} as the rendering engine, this was the only way that a full date could be rendered and at the same time support {{sfn}} and {{harv}} short-form citation linking.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 15:14, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Any update on the collaboration parameter?

See Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 12#Let's add a collaboration parameter. for the discussion. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:15, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

You might be able to do this now with |contributorn= and |contributionn=, which is presently undocumented on Help:CS1. --Izno (talk) 17:25, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder that |contributor= hadn't yet been documented. I have hacked a bit of documentation for it at {{cite book}} and {{citation}}.

I don't think that |contributor= and |contribution= is an answer to the question posed at the start of this discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:34, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Sort of like this then?

Yao, W.-M.; et al. (Particle Data Group) (2015). "Using last/first". Journal.

Yao WM, et al. (Particle Data Group) (2015). "Using vauthors". Journal.

"Using authors". Journal. 2015. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

"Without author parameter". Journal. 2015. – this should probably have an error message

If |collaboration= is set, et al. is automatically appended to the author name-list so |display-authors= is not required.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:18, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Depends, some papers have one author, which speaks on behalf of a collaboration, e.g. arXiv:1511.00264 which should be cited as 'K. Stifter (CMS Collaboration)' (or some variation of it) without the et al.. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:14, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

The majority of cases would have the et al. though. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:16, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't you expect that papers authored by a collaboration are written by a small subset of collaborators and that the small subset does the writing on behalf of the whole collaboration?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:09, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Well yes, but in the case of 'K. Stifter (CMS Collaboration)', it is still a single-author paper. Just written on behalf of the CMS Collaboration. Having a 'et al.' there would make it look like a multi-author paper. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:20, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

So in that case, Stifter is affiliated with CMS Collaboration just as s/he is affiliated with University of Minnesota. We don't include affiliations in citations, just authors. If CMS Collaboration is not an author then it doesn't belong in the citation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:16, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Many-to-one references and various plurality issues

[Continuing on, loosely, from the thread #Ref id related proposal above.]

Apologies for resurrecting this thread, and please indulge me as I perpetrate some thinking out loud to the general amusement or boredom of the indigents. I have no solutions or concrete proposals, so this is fairly literally just me thinking out loud in the hopes it may spur… something of some kind of use.

I've ran into this sort of issue a couple of times in my field and have so far not found a solution that doesn't in some way seem suboptimal. An example that illustrates the category of problem: Shakespeare's plays are published in critical editions, where a modern editor modernises the text and collates the extant sources for that play (typically one or more quarto editions and a folio edition), adds extensive explanatory notes to each line (literally every line of the play has one or more notes attached), etc. The edition also typically contain an "Introduction" that is really book-length on its own, and that contains an extensive discussion of the play (sources, its dating, textual issues and editions, critical reception, themes and motifs, notable performances and adaptations, etc.).

That is, for these editions what you're really citing is almost always the work of the editor, except in the few cases where you want to quote directly from the text of the play (e.g. "To be or not to be").

A typical citation would be something like (picked at random from Hamlet):

• Shakespeare, William (2006). Thompson, Ann; Taylor, Neil (eds.). Hamlet. third series. Vol. 1. London: The Arden Shakespeare. ISBN 1-904271-33-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)

(Arden publishes all the plays in individual editions over decades, and when they've done them all they start over with a new "series"; we're currently on the "third series")

Just something so basic as the display here feels off: Shakespeare may strictly speaking be the "author", but the work we're citing in 99% of the cases is that of Thompson and Taylor, so having Shakespeare shown most prominently feels off. Adding to this, the first name in the citation determines where it's placed in the list of sources for the article, so in an equivalent example from King Lear, the edition edited by "Brode, Douglas" gets sorted under "Shakespeare, William". And then the final insult is that in use of the author—date reference templates (typically {{sfn}}), due to the way the link is generated, you'd have to use Shakespeare 2006 to refer to Thompson & Taylor's work. Not to mention the apparent incongruity of citing a work written by Shakespare in 2006 (~400 years after his death). The latter point also creates a barrier (increases cognitive load) for editors: when they actually mean to cite Thompson & Taylor they have to remember to write "Shakespeare" in the citation template.

The approach the WikiProject has currently landed on is to simply drop Shakespeare from the citation template and let it be inferred for readers (the style guide places all editions of the play in a separate subsection of the bibliography where all citations may be assumed to have an implicit |author=William Shakespare included. However this fails to capture that piece of metadata in order to achieve the desired visual rendering, which is, I hope everyone will agree, suboptimal.

An alternative approach would be, as suggested in the thread above, to leave |author=Shakespeare in the full citation and then use a custom link id so you can cite Thompson and Taylor but link to Shakespeare, but this gets really complicated real fast (and entirely defeats the purpose of using things like {{sfn}}).

A further problem, also mentioned above, which is very common in this area is citing chapters in a larger work. For instance, Cambridge University Press publishes a lot of Cambridge Guides to Shakespeare … on Film, on Screen, on Stage, etc.; that are edited collections of essays from multiple authors, where each chapter covers one aspect of whatever the topic of the overall book is. Needing to include an entry for each cited chapter in the bibliography is awkward (lots of duplication) and leads to inconsistent bibliographic details for the same work even with experienced and meticulous editors (I've had to clean up a lot of these in the FA drives for articles in the WikiProject's scope). Here the short citations are logical (you give the author of the chapter, not the editor of the overall work), so the problem is constrained to the bibliography.

And a final category of issue is citing a multi-volume work, where, as best I can tell, you have to include a full citation for each volume in the bibliography and then use YYYYa, YYYYb publication years to refer to them in short references. The exempli gratia here would be the (still current, even though published in 1923) standard reference work:

• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (2009). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567485.
• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (2009). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567492.
• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (2009). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 3. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567508.
• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (2009). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 4. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567515.

You could of course forego the |p= parameter to {{sfn}} and use |loc= with a manual specification that includes both page and volume instead, but this too seems suboptimal (forgoing a structured field for an unstructured one).

Now I don't really have any concrete proposals for this, and I doubt it can be solved in just Module:CS1 alone without also changing things like {{sfn}}, but I have a feeling that somewhere in all this there is a magic bullet that could solve these in a more elegant way; and I think there may be something lurking around the issue of multiple ways to refer to the same cite as the IP was suggesting above.

For instance, if one could include |author=Shakespeare but specify that we want the link target to be generated from the |editor= (without having to use |ref=harvid or similar) you'd solve a couple of the issues (at the expense of complexity in Module:CS1), but still be left with the problem of sometimes needing to actually cite Shakespeare. On the other hand, having multiple anchors (using nested span elements as suggest above, or some similar method) would allow both, but would generate bloated markup.

And neither way would address the issues of citing multiple chapters from the same work. If you add that concern to the mix we're talking something along the line of being able to specify all the chapters and their authors in a single full citation and having the anchors to link them from distinct short refs. I shudder at the mere thought of trying to implement that in Module:CS1, and finding a way to display that in the bibliography would require a part of the functionality to reside in javascript on the client side. At that point I suspect we're really talking about some hypothetical future where all bibliographic data is kept in Wikidata and the bibliography in any given article is dynamically generated based on queries to that.

Anyways, I can hold my nose and keep using the various workarounds we've come up with (and periodically clean up the various confusion introduced by random editors), but I wanted to air these thoughts out here in the hopes that better minds than mine could come up with better ways to solve the underlying problems, and that my thoughts might serve as useful data points when reasoning about how to design this system.

Regards, --Xover (talk) 10:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Three issues, right?

1. someway to have multiple anchor ids for a single cs1|2 template
2. someway to list multiple chapters of a single edited work without duplicating all of the bibliographic details for each chapter
3. someway to identify and link to the separate volumes of a single work without without repeating full bibliographic detail for each volume; {{sfn}} links to the appropriate volume somehow

Have I got this right?

1. For this, it occurs to me that we might, as a first hack, allow |ref= to accept multiple keywords, perhaps: |ref=harv-ed, |harv-contrib=. Then if there are |author=, |editor=, and |contributor=, Module:Citation/CS1 would make its CITEREF anchor from whichever name-list is specified in |ref=. That then might be extended to accept multiple comma separated keywords so that second and third keywords caused the rendered citation to be wrapped in <span id=CITEREFnamelistYYYY>...</span>.
2. Does {{harvc}} do what you want?
3. I don't have a suggestion for this. Each volume in your example has its own ISBN so the templates differ by more than just volume number.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you have the issues down right (at least at the "bulletpoint" level), provided I myself have them down right in my head (for which there is no guarantee). :-)

Your idea #1 at first blush sounds like a remarkably elegant solution to that issue (and, if I understood it right, also the IP's issue in the previous thread). It adds complexity, but (without being familiar with the code) at least manageable complexity; and given you've articulated it clearly and succinctly I'd say the odds are good that it fits within a clean design too (a good rule of thumb in my experience). I see no obvious gotchas with this beyond the complexity, except perhaps a theoretical risk of collisions with manually generated values for |ref= (which I think is very unlikely, and if any are in the wild must be very rare).

As for #2, {{harvc}} is one approach to this that represents a set of tradeoffs which happen to be ones I dislike more than the tradeoffs in the way we do it right now. It's an entirely valid approach, and will suit many editors just fine, but I dislike it enough that I don't consider it an option. This may of course be simply because I a) haven't looked at it enough to understand it fully (not unlikely), and b) my wishing for a unicorn that just isn't possible to have with the current Mediawiki infrastructure. Again, I suspect a lot of this kind of stuff ultimately depends on keeping citation data on Wikidata.

I can picture ways to approach #3, but none I'd necessarily suggest as good ways. For instance (and a bit off the cuff), we could have a setup like |volumeN-identifier=(1 or I or i or...), |volumeN-isbn=(…), and even possibly |volumeN-year=yyyy for things like (iirc) the ODNB which was published as a single work in multiple volumes which came out spread over decades. But I wouldn't go so far as to say I suggest this approach without thinking a lot more about it. But perhaps your gut feeling has better foundation, by knowing the code and clearly having a model for what this template/module/system is (my grasp of it is pretty fuzzy). --Xover (talk) 13:27, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

#1: to address the |author=William Shakespeare metadata issue when these templates are confined to a section of 'William Shakespeare's editions' where Shakespeare can be inferred as the author, |author-mask=0 works to hide |author= and this works

{{harvnb|Thompson|Taylor|2006|ref=CITEREFShakespeare2006}}

Thompson & Taylor 2006

#2: You don't say how you 'do it right now', nor do you identify the trade-offs that you don't like about {{harvc}}. It's hard to offer any better suggestions when this information is left out of the discussion.

#3: cs1|2 templates are designed (if one can use that term) to render a complete citation for a single work. If I understand your idea for |volumeN-identifier= and |volumeN-isbn=, then that seems like an attempt to squeeze multiple volumes into a single template so should not be considered. These constructs don't fix the problem of linking via {{sfn}} to the appropriate volume.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding #1, if there is a short reference "Name 2009, p. 45", readers will expect that to refer to an entry "Name, A. (2009) ..." in the list of cited works. You could make the link go to a different entry, but that would be surprising, and therefore best avoided. If different things are being cited, they need different citations, even though this involves repetition of the #2 kind. Kanguole 15:07, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

#1: Hmm. Clever, and a bit of a cheat, but it will certainly give the visual appearance that makes sense. However, anything requiring editors to manually construct a fragment identifier is a no-go in practice. Using citation templates is a struggle for many non-technical editors (and even for people with a technical background it's a bit of a chore). IOW, I think for this to work in practice would require the |ref=harv-ed support you outlined above.

#2: Well, as I mentioned I may not have sufficiently considered {{harvc}}, but my initial assessment is that its tradeoffs are toward exactly the wrong mix of duplication of bibliographic details and spreading information out among multiple templates. If I've understood it correctly (and that's not just a rhetorical caveat), it puts information (chapter author, chapter name) in a separate template that I consider strongly associated with the work (and hence should be in the main citation in the bibliography) and includes this information in the short citation which should ideally be just Name, Year, and Page. And on the other end it duplicates information from the main citation in its |in= parameter, with the duplication of effort to maintain and inherent risks of errors or letting the two get out of sync. But, of course, as I said, these are valid tradeoffs, they're just not ones I agree with. As for what I'm doing now I didn't mention it because it's essentially "nothing": for multi-volume works I list the volumes that are cited separately (and distinguish using |year=YYYYa).

#3: Hmm. That reasoning holds true only if one considers each volume to be a separate work; but in this case all four volumes make up a single work. They're split into volumes simply due to limitations of the printing process (somewhere around 500 pages printing gets increasingly expensive, and somewhere around 1000 pages they're unable to actually make it hold together for love or money). In popular works (fiction, say) there are pricing considerations and the ability to charge more when published in parts, but in this work (and most similar reference works) their only customers are institutional ones (with prices to match): I'd bet good money you will not find a single extant copy of the original edition of this particular work outside a well-stocked university library. In fact, the 2009 facsimile reprint (which is still expensive, but now priced so a normal private individual may conceivably want to buy it) probably only has separate ISBNs because they want to be able to sell individual volumes. In other words, I see no inherent conflict between limiting the CS1/2 templates to a single work, and including a multi-volume work with individual identifiers (which happen to be of the ISBN type) in it. Unlike, obviously, something like the Harry Potter series, where each "volume" is a separate work in a series. --Xover (talk) 16:52, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

PS. In the case I'm outlining here, sfn wouldn't need to link to different works: there's just one work so linking to it covers all four cases (volumes). However, sfn would need to support giving the volume in the rendered short citation (which you can do unstructured in |loc= today, but would probably be best handled by supporting a |volume= parameter in addition to |p=, neither of which affect the generated link). --Xover (talk) 16:57, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

#1: The argument that we shouldn't implement template features because these features are complex and difficult to understand, or because they require technical competence is not persuasive. Pretty much any article can be properly and adequately cited and referenced using the basic tools available in VE and RefToolBar. To do more sophisticated citing and referencing necessarily requires that editors have more sophisticated knowledge of the capabilities and nuances of the citing and referencing systems employed at en:wp. It is true that it would be easier to write |ref=harv-ed than to write:

{{harvnb|Thompson|Taylor|2006|ref=CITEREFShakespeare2006}}

or

{{harvnb|Thompson|Taylor|2006|ref={{sfnref|Shakespeare|2006}}}}

|author-mask=0 is not a cheat. It isn't commonly used but this insource: search shows that it is occasionally used. Another alternative is |display-authors=0 which might be easier to understand and is also occasionally used.

#2: compare this (from Romeo and Juliet):

• Dawson, Anthony B. (2002). "International Shakespeare". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 174–193. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Gay, Penny (2002). "Women and Shakespearean Performance". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155–173. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Holland, Peter (2002). "Touring Shakespeare". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 194–211. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Marsden, Jean I. (2002). "Shakespeare from the Restoration to Garrick". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 21–36. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Schoch, Richard W. (2002). "Pictorial Shakespeare". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Smallwood, Robert (2002). "Twentieth-century Performance: the Stratford and London companies". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 98–117. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.
• Taylor, Gary (2002). "Shakespeare plays on Renaissance Stages". In Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5.

to this: [Dawson 2002, pp. 174–193, Gay 2002, pp. 155–173, Holland 2002, pp. 194–211, Marsden 2002, pp. 21–36, Schoch 2002, pp. 62–63, Smallwood 2002, pp. 98–117, Taylor 2002, pp. 1–20]

• Wells, Stanley; Stanton, Sarah, eds. (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-79711-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Dawson, Anthony B. "International Shakespeare". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Gay, Penny. "Women and Shakespearean Performance". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Holland, Peter. "Touring Shakespeare". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Marsden, Jean I. "Shakespeare from the Restoration to Garrick". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Schoch, Richard W. "Pictorial Shakespeare". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Smallwood, Robert. "Twentieth-century Performance: the Stratford and London companies". In Wells & Stanton (2002).
  • Taylor, Gary. "Shakespeare plays on Renaissance Stages". In Wells & Stanton (2002).

#3: With each volume getting its own ISBN, I think that you have to treat each volume as a separate work. You could do this:

[Chambers V1 2009 Chambers V2 2009 Chambers V3 2009 Chambers V4 2009]

• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever (2009). The Elizabethan Stage. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • volume 1; ISBN 9780199567485
  • volume 2; ISBN 9780199567492
  • volume 3; ISBN 9780199567508
  • volume 4; ISBN 9780199567515

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

access-date with archiveurl?

When archiveurl is set (and deadurl=yes), is there any reason to keep the access-date? It clutters the displayed ref with 3 dates, it's confusing and I don't see why the access-date would be needed since providing access-date to the archive is redundant with archivedate, and providing access-date to the original article is pointless since it's been replaced with an archive. Thanks. -- GreenC 16:51, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I'll be deleting accessdate from citations whenever I add archiveurl (and deadurl=yes). I am doing 100s (thousands?) of this via scripts etc.. if you think that's a bad idea, please ping me to discuss. -- GreenC 15:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

@Green Cardamom: I think that's basically a personal preference whether or not to include it. As for |dead-url=yes, that doesn't do anything. Setting it to no has the effect of switching the links around so that the citation still links the title to the original url, but the reverse value is useless. Imzadi 1979 → 16:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't necessarily object but I can imagine that there are people who will object. I have seen cases where the date of an archive isn't even approximately close to the date specified in |access-date=. It would seem that the correct procedure is to confirm that the archive actually supports the article content before removing |access-date=. Even then, instead of deletion, it might be best to simply hide the date portion of and add a note, perhaps like this:

|access-date=<!-- 2012-04-21 note text explaining why this date is hidden -->

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggest if deadurl=yes and archivedate are set, the template suppress display of accessdate. It can remain in the cite template if anyone needs it, but it wouldn't clutter up and confuse the displayed reference. -- GreenC 16:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Deleting accessdate: You're not the first to suggest they are redundant. I've come around that side of thinking. However, I highly recommend that if you are using a script on pages you've not previously edited before that you get some wider consensus than is generally present here (and if it's automated, running it through WP:Bot approvals).

Deadurl=yes/no: I think this parameter is quite useless, because it needs to be updated on a regular basis for websites that go offline. But it's there, so, see my previous recommendation regarding using a script. --Izno (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not seeing consensus here. Common sense and multiple stated reasons point to removing it. No actual reason for keeping it has been put forward. A compromise solution is the template suppresses display of accessdate if deadurl=yes and archiveurl are set. deadurl is useful, it's a manual flag that clarifies status of the primary link which is then useful for the citation template display, and for other scripts and bots. -- GreenC 16:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

You've made what appear to be two contrary proposals:

suppress |access-date= when:

1. |deadurl=no and |archive-date=<has date>
2. |deadurl=yes and |archive-url=<has url>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Suppress when |archive-url=<has url> and |archive-date=<has date> and |deadurl=yes (I made a typo above fixed) -- GreenC 18:25, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

"I'm not seeing consensus here." - I mean this, as I said, in the general sense and not specific to this section. --Izno (talk) 21:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

What do you think is the best way to get consensus for making changes to the template? Do we kinda decide here or is there more formal process? I personally think suppression of display is the best solution to preserve the information for whatever unforeseeable reason, but prevent its display when no longer needed as it confuses readers. -- GreenC 23:07, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps consensus is not necessary, you can hide access-dates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:16, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

This is on a per-user basis, and removes it all the time, not only when archiveurl is set. -- GreenC 16:20, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is access-date redundant with archive-date? I'm apt to find a dead URL with an access-date of, say, 2010; replace it with an archive snapshot from 2012 (but often not later, when the archive snapshots themselves are broken-link messages); and set an access-date of 2015, to show when the situation was last assessed, which is useful to tell me when I did something, but could be useful to tell others that later archive snapshots are possibly flawed and that a middle date is better. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:14, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Well the proposal (now) is not to remove access-date entirely from the wikisource, but suppress its display in the rendered citation (when the primary link is dead and archiveurl is set). I think your point underscores the confusion. I wouldn't be able to derive what you're thinking based only on the existence of an access-date. I might see the 2015 access-date and think maybe the primary link went back active in 2015 and someone forgot to change the deadurl=yes to no. And then see it wasn't live and think, well maybe I should remove the access-date since it's no longer active. Or think someone made a mistake. Or not know what to think and be confused. There's a lot of confusion and uncertainly about what the access-date means once the link is archived. -- GreenC 16:20, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

URL parameter validation doesn't take port numberl into account

See for example at the first reference at Gudivada. Currently, it's throwing an error but if the port number is removed, it doesn't throw it. --Glaisher (talk) 12:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

That has been fixed in the sandbox; see Spurious 'Check |url= value' error?:

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|accessdate=29 December 2015|format=PDF|publisher=Government of Andhra Pradesh|title=Municipalities, Municipal Corporations & UDAs|url=http://dtcp.ap.gov.in:9090/webdtcp/7-ULBs.pdf|website=Directorate of Town and Country Planning}}
Live	"Municipalities, Municipal Corporations & UDAs" (PDF). Directorate of Town and Country Planning. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Retrieved 29 December 2015.
Sandbox	"Municipalities, Municipal Corporations & UDAs" (PDF). Directorate of Town and Country Planning. Government of Andhra Pradesh. Retrieved 29 December 2015.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. in editors can be retired or converted to a maintenance category

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. in editors is empty and can be retired or converted to a maintenance category.

For background, see this discussion for a similar situation.

There are no longer citations – in the WP namespaces to which we apply CS1 error categories, at least – that contain exactly four editors without a |display-editors= parameter.

Any new citations with exactly four editors should display all four editors, on the assumption that WP editors will enter the editors that they want to display and will use |display-editors= to limit the number of editors displayed. We will need to adjust the CS1 documentation accordingly to wipe out the historical explanation of the display of "et al." for exactly four editors.

We could add a maintenance category for |display-editors=4 as we did for |display-authors=9 when we retired the similar author-related error category, since |display-editors=4 with exactly four editors is no longer necessary. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Well done! I'm glad to see it gone and will be glad to get rid of the special code in the module that supports it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:19, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that this is the desired result:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|editor2=Second|editor3=Third|editor=First|title=Title}}
Live	First; Second; Third (eds.). Title.
Sandbox	First; Second; Third (eds.). Title.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|editor2=Second|editor3=Third|editor4=Fourth|editor=First|title=Title}}
Live	First; Second; Third; Fourth (eds.). Title.
Sandbox	First; Second; Third; Fourth (eds.). Title.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|editor2=Second|editor3=Third|editor4=Fourth|editor5=Fifth|editor=First|title=Title}}
Live	First; Second; Third; Fourth; Fifth (eds.). Title.
Sandbox	First; Second; Third; Fourth; Fifth (eds.). Title.

Add maintenance category when the value in |display-editors= is set to a number equal to or greater than the number of editors listed in the template:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |editor=First |editor2=Second |editor3=Third |editor4=Fourth |display-editors=4}}

First; Second; Third; Fourth (eds.). Title. {{cite book}}: Invalid |display-editors=4 (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:09, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

'Display-authors=etal' replacement screw-up

The recent mass replacement of "et al." in author fields with 'display-authors=etal' (see list)) is screwed-up: extraneous semi-colons have been inserted following the author. E.g.: Folland; et al. (1990), "Chap. 7", none {{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help).

Also, in places where the "etal" was used in the CITEREF link the corresponding adjustment was not made in the Harv template, breaking the link. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:00, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The discussion that led to the decision to insert a separator character before 'et al.' at the end of a name list began here and concluded here.

The discussion regarding handling and removal of embedded 'et al.' text in name-list parameters is here – yours is the last voice in that conversation. When that change went live (21 March), any {{harv}}-family or {{sfn}} links that used the 'et al.' as an author-name, broke.

We can compare versions of your example with and without |display-authors=etal:

Folland; et al. (1990), "Chap. 7", none {{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help) – your original

Folland; et al. (1990), "Chap. 7", none – and with with |display-authors=etal

From this we can see that the AWB script that I used to replace 'et al.' in author/editor name-list parameters with the appropriate |display-authors=etal or |display-editors=etal parameters has done no harm.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Since the CITEREF links were broken earlier a little more degradation shouldn't be a noticable problem. Let someone else fix them.

The insertion of extraneous semi-colons (e.g.: Folland; et al.) screws up those cases where "author" is intended to be in the form of a short cite (e.g., "Folland et al.", or even "Folland and others").

The "conversation" you refer to Help_talk:Citation Style 1/Archive_7#Treatment of a literal "et al." in an author parameter was about the treatment of literal "et al.", and had nothing to say about the appropriate separator. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:00, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

You are correct that Help_talk:Citation Style 1/Archive_7#Treatment of a literal "et al." in an author parameter ... [has] nothing to say about the appropriate separator. That conversation, as I stated in my previous post, was about handling and removal of embedded 'et al.' text in name-list parameters. The conversations about the separator character were these (also in my previous post):

1. Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 12#Et al 2 and
2. Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 8#separator preceding et al. static_text

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:49, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Printable URLs

Any URLs in the citation templates are lost when trying to create a print version of an article. This is especially bad for things like {{cite web}}, where the URL tends to be the only real canonical identifier. For example, while all the naked links in the article, like under 'External links,' append the URL in parentheses automatically like normal, most of the citations that include hyperlinks just hide it completely in the print medium. Surely the URL should be visible somewhere in the citation. --BeebLee (talk) 09:50, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know that this issue is the fault of the cs1|2 templates or Module:Citation/CS1. Rather, I think that MediaWiki chooses to treat external link that are wrapped in <cite>...</cite> tags (as all cs1|2 templates are) differently from the way it treats those that are not. Here are two external links, one with and one without <cite>...</cite> tags:

[http://www.example.com Example.com plain external link]

Example.com plain external link

<cite>[http://www.example.com Example.com external link in cite tags]</cite>

Example.com external link in cite tags

If you create a printable version of this page, the first should show the url while the second will not.

Perhaps your question is better asked at WP:VPT?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:41, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Cite episode - series

In {{Cite episode}}, |series= is required. This causes problems when it is used for one-off programmes. Please make the parameter optional. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:48, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

That's like citing a book's chapter without naming the title of the book, isn't it? Doesn't 'episode' imply, by definition, that it is one of a collection or |series= of other 'episodes'?

{{cite AV media}} instead?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:25, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Logically, a one off programme may be considered a single-episode series; the cite episode template documentation opens with "This Citation Style 1 template is used to create citations for television or radio programs and episodes." (my emphasis; perhaps the template would be better named as "Cite broadcast"). Furthermore, {{cite AV media}} lacks several relevant parameters. [BTW, your sig still includes the blank line, about which I've written on your talk page more than once; I've fixed this instance, but please fix it at source, per WP:LISTGAP ]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:39, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Although I agree that {{cite episode}} may be too specific (along with {{cite DVD notes}}, etc.), I wouldn't call a one off programme "a single-episode series". Any more than a book is a "single-volume series". 65.88.88.69 (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it one either - nor did I. I said "Logically, a one off programme may be considered a single-episode series" (emphasis added for clarity). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:19, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Can anyone help to resolve this?? User:Trappist the monk? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

cite interview - title is often nonexistent.

If one has an interview citation like this one:

• Portlano, Bonnie (7 January 1998). (Interview). Interviewed by Kristin Jeannette-Meyers. {{cite interview}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help)

The interview itself doesn't really have a title, but there's still a visible citation error on the page. What's the best way around this? --Slashme (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

There is this example at {{cite interview}}:

{{cite interview |last=Nader |first=Ralph |author-link=Ralph Nader |others=Ray Suarez |title=Talk of the Nation |program=[[National Public Radio]] |call-sign=[[WBUR]] |city=Boston, Massachusetts |date=April 16, 1998}}

Nader, Ralph (16 April 1998). "Talk of the Nation" (Interview). Ray Suarez. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |call-sign= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help)

In this example, the program name goes in |title= and |program= gets the 'publisher'. Applying that to your example:

{{cite interview|first=Bonnie|last=Portlano|interviewer=Kristin Jeannette-Meyers|title=CBS Public Eye|program=CBS|date=1998-01-07}}

Portlano, Bonnie (7 January 1998). "CBS Public Eye" (Interview). Interviewed by Kristin Jeannette-Meyers. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:55, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I guess we haven't had enough fun trying to rationalize the ambiguous use of parameters like publisher=/website=/work=/title= but now we should have Which also pollutes the meta-data ("CBS" is not a program). We wouldn't have to shuffle parameters around to fill in a mandated title if we had some way of telling the idiot code that in some cases we don't have a title. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

{{cite interview}} was converted to use Module:Citation/CS1 from the old {{citation/core}} version with minimal changes. I don't recall that there have been any substantive changes to it since the conversion. In my comments above, I quoted 'publisher' because, in fact, |program= is aliased into |id=. Why did the old version do that? Fine question. I don't know. Probably because the ability to shuffle things around within the highly constraining limits of {{citation/core}} made it difficult to do else-wise.

|interviewer= is an alias of |others= which, along with |id=, is not part of the metadata so the metadata for my tweak of Editor Slashme's example contains the interviewee, the program title, and the date. Nothing was corrupted, but certainly, the metadata are incomplete.

We should probably look at all of the lesser cs1|2 templates to see what refinements can/should be made.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Be sure to copy all that to the documentation for the edification of editors who want to know why sometimes the program name goes into the |program= parameter, but other times into |title=. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Journal articles in collections

What's the best way to cite a journal article that's been included in a collection? This is the specific example - I'd quite like to be able to show both the book and the original journal in the cite. Thanks!  — Scott • talk 15:52, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a book, not a journal, right? So, as a book, like this:

{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Barbara |editor-last=Tilley |editor-first=Chris |editor-last2=Keane |editor-first2=Webb |editor-last3=Kuechler |editor-first3=Susanne |editor-last4=Rowlands |editor-first4=Mike |editor-last5=Spyer |editor-first5=Patricia |display-editors=1 |chapter=Heritage and the Present Past |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CLA-kzevgu4C&pg=PA463 |title=Handbook of Material Culture |date=2006 |location=London |publisher=Sage |isbn=9781446206430}}

Butler, Barbara (2006). "Heritage and the Present Past". In Tilley, Chris; et al. (eds.). Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage. ISBN 9781446206430.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:37, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The linked academia.edu page lists two publications, the book chapter formatted above and a journal article, both by the same author but with quite different titles. I don't understand why both are listed but if you want to also cite the journal one I would think the best way would be with a separate journal article citation for the journal article. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:52, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, I would use {{cite encyclopedia}} since this is an edited collection.

{{cite encyclopedia |last=Butler |first=Barbara |editor-last=Tilley |editor-first=Chris |editor-last2=Keane |editor-first2=Webb |editor-last3=Kuechler |editor-first3=Susanne |editor-last4=Rowlands |editor-first4=Mike |editor-last5=Spyer |editor-first5=Patricia |display-editors=1 |title=Heritage and the Present Past |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CLA-kzevgu4C&pg=PA463 |encyclopedia=Handbook of Material Culture |date=2006 |orig-year=originally published [some date] in ''Journal-name''|location=London |publisher=Sage |via=[[Google Books]]|isbn=9781446206430}}

Butler, Barbara (2006) [originally published [some date] in Journal-name]. "Heritage and the Present Past". In Tilley, Chris; et al. (eds.). Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage. ISBN 9781446206430 – via Google Books.

208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:57, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Looking at it again after David's comment, it does in fact appear that the author has uploaded the wrong article to Academia.edu (or given the wrong attribution to the right article), so I only need to cite the journal. Thanks all!  — Scott • talk 17:00, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

You might want to include the |doi=10.1177/135918359600100304 because of the wrong article/wrong title issue and note that the journal article requires |registration=yes or |subscription=yes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:13, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I shall, thanks.  — Scott • talk 18:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Any way to pass |display-authors/editors= values to {{Harvard citation}}?

Inspired, for better or worse, by 'Display-authors=etal' replacement screw-up.

So that, if |display-authors=etal --> autoformats {{harv|Last1 et al.}}

Don't scream at me if it can't/won't be done.

65.88.88.69 (talk) 20:47, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Not certain what you are trying to do. (Example?) Harv will automatically display the 'et al.' when four or more authors are specfied. If you want to want to use the et al. form with only two or three authors use something like {{harv|Smith et al.|1995}} in the text, then add a |ref= with {{harvid|Smith et al.|1995}} to the citation template.

See example at Template:Harvard_citation#Large_numbers_of_authors. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:45, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

"autoformats"
— User:65.88.88.69

208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:28, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion for improvement. (cite web)

One thing I would like to see is to be able to include the root URL of a website in the citation, along with the URL of the specific page. Currently, you have a |website= parameter to provide the name of the root website, but you don't have a corresponding |website-url= parameter.

My thinking behind this idea is this: Just as you can cite a book, and also make specific references to particular pages, you ought to be able to cite a website, and also make specific references to particular webpages.

I want to be able to point the user to both the book / website as a whole, and to specific pages / webpages.

It would seem adding a |website-url= parameter should be a relatively simple task.

Much more complex is another issue I've run across: being able to combine multiple references to several webpages from a single website. For books, you build the cite for the book as a whole, and add {{rp|15}} for a cite of that book to page 15. Perhaps you could split cite web into cite website and cite webpage (or something along that line). The cite website would build a core reference entry, and the cite webpage would add specific page references. The result would look something like this:

Lastname, Firstname (date). A Really Cool Website About Widgets. Publisher.

1. ^ "A Page Describing Widgets" Retrieved 2020-01-01.

2. ^ "A Page About How Widgets Are Made" Retrieved 2020-01-01.

3. ^ "A Page About Using Widgets" Retrieved 2020-01-01.

Currently, all we can do is have three cite webs which leave three refs randomly appearing in the list, giving no clue that they are all from the same site, like this:

1. ^ Lastname1, Firstname1 (date). "A Page About Tuits" An Exciting Website Dedicated to the Tuit. Publisher1. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

2. ^ Lastname2, Firstname2 (date). "A Page Describing Widgets" A Really Cool Website About Widgets. Publisher2. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

3. ^ Lastname3, Firstname3 (date). "A Page About Whatzits" A Neato Website About Whatzits. Publisher3. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

4. ^ Lastname2, Firstname2 (date). "A Page About How Widgets Are Made" A Really Cool Website About Widgets. Publisher2. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

5. ^ Lastname4, Firstname4 (date). "A Page About Thingies" An Amazing Website in Regards to Thingies. Publisher4. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

6. ^ Lastname2, Firstname2 (date). "A Page About Using Widgets" A Really Cool Website About Widgets. Publisher2. Retrieved 2020-01-01.

You see how it's difficult to discern that refs 2, 4, and 6 are all different pages of the same website. You can imagine how confusing it would be if you did the same for books ... having to have a separate citation each time the page number changes in the same book. The alternate approach, provide one ref for the root of the website, is as unsatisfying as being forced to provide one ref to a 2000 page book, but never being able to refer people to specific pages in the book.

I realize this suggestion will be much more technically involved ... but something to keep in mind for the future. For now, just being able to implement the |website-url= parameter would be a great help.

Thanks for your consideration.

Hi-storian (talk) 06:30, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe that most of what you want in the second half of your post is addressed here. Short citations of some form, along with a list of sources organized in a way that makes sense to you, is how most editors deal with an organizational challenge of this type.

As for adding a parameter that would explicitly link to the root-level page of an external web site that by definition does not contain information about the statement being cited, how does that help readers? It seems like a kind of link spam to me. As a specific example, how would linking to http://www.nytimes.com help a reader looking at a citation that already links to an article on the New York Times web site? The reader would see a list of today's headlines, which is highly unlikely to be relevant to anything in the article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:59, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95 I think you're missing my points. We're not talking about New York Times ... that is a "cite news" btw, not a "cite web". What we're talking about is a website that is essentially a book, with each page a separate webpage. The Wikipedia article in question is about a broad topic, that includes the entire scope of the website, and then some. Let's say the Wikipedia article is about Whatchamacallits, a group of objects that include Widgets, Thingies, Tuits, and Whatzits. Think of the website as a book. Think of having to do "cite book" for page 21, another "cite book" for page 92, a third "cite book" for page 142 ... and then have no way to realize that it's all the same book, about the same topic, which is highly related to the article in question. Yes, if you have such a feature it could be misused as you describe, but it could also be properly used, as I describe. But in your case, the first mistake was to use the wrong template.

The point of a reference is to lead the user to sources of interest and relevance as well as supporting narrow points. What if you had page 21, 92, and 142 and wanted to read the book, but you weren't allowed to have the book? Or if you had the book, but couldn't open it? Both are unacceptable, but when it comes to websites, you have to choose between one and the other.

BTW, speaking about WP:IBID, op. cit. can be just as problematic as ibid. What if you copy an op. cit. reference from one article to another?? The reference in the new article is totally meaningless, as the book is not referenced in the new article. You have to try to figure out which Wikipedia article the ref may have come from in hopes of figuring out what the book is. I just had such a case, tonight. I would strongly discourage both ibid and op. cit. because Wikipedia content is too dynamic, and the references are sure to become meaningless over time. Hi-storian (talk) 08:08, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@High-storian:, I've encountered your basic situation before, and I used shortened footnotes to handle it on M-35 (Michigan highway). I was citing the various pages from Hunts' Guide to Michigan's Upper Peninsula like this.

Some statement. Another statement. A third statment.

References

• Hunt, Mary; Hunt, Don (2007). Hunts' Guide to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Albion, MI: Midwestern Guides. Retrieved 29 August 2007. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |last-author-amp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)

Since it's essentially a book, that's how I treated it in the full citation, but each shortened footnote links to the specific "chapter" of that book online in the |loc= parameter in lieu of a page number. Imzadi 1979 → 13:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: Thanks! That looks like an interesting approach, and worth investigating further. I really appreciate your examples, of both how to build it, and of an article "in the wild" with a forest of references, and how you handled it. Very constructive feedback. Thanks again! Hi-storian (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Complaint Box - coauthors:

If we want to slap editors with a CS1 error (Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors=) than we shouldn't be using the citation toolbar to capture this. Am I missing a good reason for this mismatch? First one to reply with {{sofixit}} gets slapped with a trout. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Xaosflux, please link to the toolbar you are describing and a recent diff that it produced for you. It looks like support for |coauthors= was removed from RefToolbar 2.0 in 2014. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Ok here is the diff Special:Diff/697961560, created using the CITE button above the edit box as seen on the highlighted sections below: and .

— xaosflux ^Talk 02:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Guessing this is coming from function citeJournal in MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, that looks like RefToolbarLegacy.js. Based on the discussion on the talk page for RefToolbar, I am guessing that only the 2.0 version is under (occasional) active development. Given that notice was posted on that page as early as 2012 that |coauthors= was deprecated, I suspect that changes to the legacy toolbar are not forthcoming. You may want to switch to the 2.0 version, and if you are feeling bold, place a note on the page describing the legacy version to the effect that it is no longer under active development. Or suggest something like that on the talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:00, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like it ALSO is dependent on preference "Enable wizards for inserting links, tables as well as the search and replace function" being enabled. I'll check in to amending that description. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: this is in MediaWiki:Wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference, any suggestions on update? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Barring any objections, will be tweaking this as shown on MediaWiki talk:Wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:32, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Date format - when not formal date?

So, the problem is the Date field has to be a verifiable "date" - dd-mmm-yyyy or somesuch

What can we do if the formal Journal date is published as "Autumn 1995" or "Fall 1995" or even "Jan-Mar 2001"

The Volume and Issue field deal as I would expect with the normal conventions of a certain format of Journal referencing - but not the Date field. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 10:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

|date=Autumn 1995 and |date=Fall 1995 (also Winter, Spring, Summer) are acceptable date formats. I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by your last sentence. Can you rephrase, expand, and/or provide an example?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, |date=Jan–Mar 2001 or |date=January–March 2001 work, Kevinalewis, but you need to use the proper en dash and not a hyphen. Imzadi 1979 → 12:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah - okay I will try those - excuse my ignorance :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 13:24, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

All I will say in my defense is the "help" could be more "helpful" - regards :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 13:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

If you can see a way to improve the help texts, please do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

newsgroup addresses

With the changes to get url detection and validation correct, I broke the validation of |newsgroup=. The module makes an external link from the contents of |newsgroup= so:

|newsgroup=comp.sys.atari.8bit

becomes

[news:comp.sys.atari.8bit comp.sys.atari.8bit]

The module then tests news:comp.sys.atari.8bit to see if it is valid using the same code that validates URLs. But, the order of things in a newsgroup and a URL are reversed. Where the top level of the hierarchy for a URL, .com for example, comes at the end, the top level of the hierarchy for newsgroups comes at the beginning. The live module is seeing the digit in .8bit as a malformed TLD

Cite newsgroup comparison

Wikitext	{{cite newsgroup|accessdate=27 January 2015|author=Harris, Neil|date=1987-05-12|message-id=730@atari.UUCP|newsgroup=comp.sys.atari.8bit|title=Re: Is Atari killing the 8 bit?|url=https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/comp.sys.atari.8bit/CHaivDd-Hy4/zNYxPzguppgJ}}
Live	Harris, Neil (12 May 1987). "Re: Is Atari killing the 8 bit?". Newsgroup: comp.sys.atari.8bit. Usenet: 730@atari.UUCP. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
Sandbox	Harris, Neil (12 May 1987). "Re: Is Atari killing the 8 bit?". Newsgroup: comp.sys.atari.8bit. Usenet: 730@atari.UUCP. Retrieved 27 January 2015.

I've short-stopped the test so that when the scheme is news:, the rest of the newsgroup link must begin with a letter, may be followed by any combination of letters, digits, and dots, and must not end with a dot.

Does anyone know where the can find the real specification for newsgroup addresses?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:59, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Perchance, here ? 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Excellent! That reference led to RFC5536 §3.1.4 which does have what I want. Module modified accordingly. Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Is there a way to fix these newsgroup links:

• Jim Hall (29 June 1994). "PD-DOS project *announcement*". Newsgroup: comp.os.msdos.apps.
• Jim Hall (2 October 2007). "Removing old distributions from ibiblio". Newsgroup: Freedos-devel. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |newsgroup= value (help)

... or should I just remove the parameter?

• Jim Hall (29 June 1994). "PD-DOS project *announcement*".
• Jim Hall (2 October 2007). "Removing old distributions from ibiblio".

— Wbm1058 (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with the first one except that perhaps it should also include its |message-id=1994Jun29.002412.4803@rivers:

Jim Hall (29 June 1994). "PD-DOS project *announcement*". Newsgroup: comp.os.msdos.apps. Usenet: 1994Jun29.002412.4803@rivers.

The second doesn't appear to be a usenet newsgroup. |newsgroup= is intended hold the value from the message's Newsgroups: header (comp.os.msdos.apps in the first example – see here). The template adds the news: scheme to make the complete url → news:comp.os.msdos.apps. |newsgroup=Freedos-devel doesn't produce a valid usenet newsgroup address so we get the error.

For the second example, perhaps {{cite mailing list}} should be preferred. Of course, you can always fall back on {{cite web}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

cite conference title= parameter is incorrectly formatted

The cite conference title= parameter is currently being formatted in italics. But this is the title of an individual article or paper presented or published at the conference, and thus should be in double quotes, just like an article in a scholarly journal. Consider the example given on that page – "The Twilight of the Naturally-Occurring Elements" is a short paper of 15 pages or so that belongs in double quotes not italics. Indeed the description at Template:Cite conference#Title says "Displays in quotes". So I think the fact that it is currently displaying in italics is a mistake. I've created an article that uses cite conference a lot, so I'd appreciate someone fixing this. Thanks. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The individual article should be listed with |chapter= or |contribution= (but not both!). The title of the whole conference is what goes in |title=. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:32, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Then what goes in |conference=? From the documentation: "conference: Name of the conference, may include location if different from location and date if different from date or year."

Something is not quite right here. The documentation doesn't seem to match the rendering. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:53, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that {{cite conference}} is working as it should do but it is perhaps more confusing than it ought to be. Here are the three parameters that are at issue and how the various combinations render:

1. Title.
2. Book-title.
3. "Title". Book-title.
4. . Conference. {{cite conference}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
5. Title. Conference.
6. Book-title. Conference.
7. "Title". Book-title. Conference.

|conference= was created so that editors would have a place for the conference name, location, and date; this because the conference name might be different from the proceeding's name, the venue location different from the place of publication, and the conference date different from publication date.

It seems to me that we could change {{cite conference}}:

1. require |conference= – otherwise editors should simply use {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, or {{citation}}
2. add an alias for |book-title=, perhaps |proceedings= – for clarity (and then deprecate |book-title=)
3. require |proceedings= – essentially same as {{cite book}} requires |title=
4. replace functionality of current |title= with |contribution=, |article=, and/or perhaps new |paper= –
5. current |title= shifts to be come an alias of |proceedings= (or is just ignored)
6. support |journal= – I don't know how this should be rendered; perhaps concatenated with |proceedings=
7. use existing |city= parameter?
8. create |conference-date= to allow date validation?
9. other stuff I haven't thought of yet goes here

Because the functionality of |title= is redefined, the transition from the old to new might require a transitional form; perhaps {{cite conference-transitional}}. There are about 7,000 pages that use {{cite conference}}. The process might be something like this:

1. create new {{cite conference-transitional}}
2. create new {{cite conference-transitional}} documentation
3. implement new {{cite conference-transitional}} in Module:Citation/CS1
4. replace existing {{cite conference}} templates with {{cite conference-transitional}} templates and rename parameters – a bot or AWB task
5. remove support for old {{cite conference}} from Module:Citation/CS1
6. parallel support for {{cite conference}} and {{cite conference-transitional}} in Module:Citation/CS1
7. replace existing {{cite conference-transitional}} templates with {{cite conference}} templates – a bot or AWB task
8. remove support for {{cite conference-transitional}} from Module:Citation/CS1
9. replace {{cite conference}} documentation with {{cite conference-transitional}} documentation
10. delete {{cite conference-transitional}}

Difficult? Complex? Yes, but probably one of those bullets that should be bitten. Shall we bite it?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

|title= should not be deprecated. This is what is being cited: a specific paper presented in a conference, whose title is |title=. |conference= should be an alias of |work=. The "Proceedings" are basically official transcripts of an entire conference. The cited paper may have its own transcript or it may be a chapter/article in the "Proceedings". To cite the entire conference, {{cite encyclopedia}} should be used since the official "Proceedings" is a published, edited collection. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 15:05, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

No one said anything about deprecating |title=.

We don't really have a proper way to cite a paper in isolation. {{cite paper}} is a redirect to {{cite journal}} which really ought to have |journal= set so that isn't really citing a paper in isolation. Certainly we can use {{cite web}} to cite an on-line copy but that's about it. Of course, citing a paper in isolation has WP:RS implications; self published perhaps, no editorial oversight, etc.

It should be permissible to use {{cite conference}} without the title of a paper/article/contribution so that the conference proceedings as a whole may be listed in a bibliography.

|conference= is permitted to hold the conference name, its location, and dates. These are not the name of the published collection of papers (the proceedings) so |conference= should not be an alias of |work=. |journal=, which is an alias of |work=, should be kept available for those conference proceedings that are published as a special or regular issue of a journal.

I don't know where the use-{{cite encyclopedia}}-for-edited-collections notion comes from. Yes, it's there at the top of {{cite book}} but, {{cite book}} is capable of citing such collections and is often used to do just that. There are those among us who will say that it is entirely improper for editors to use one type of cs1 template to cite material of another type.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

[5.] current |title= shifts to be come an alias of |proceedings= (or is just ignored)

This seems to me a de-facto deprecation of the current use of |title= in {{cite conference}}.

If you do not want editors to use {{cite encyclopedia}} for edited collections, gather sufficient consensus and change the documentation, and the cs1 guidelines. As it stands now, this is the template to use for any collection of articles/papers/chapters that have an editor (as is the case with conference proceedings). We agree: editors should not use {{cite book}} where it is not appropriate, like in this case.

The "Conference" is functionally and actually the "work" in citations of individual papers. Nor should |conference= be used to convey anything but the name of the conference. The date & location (which may be variables) should have their own parameters. The template and its doc needs work so that it reflects the intended usage and real-world conventions. One can safely assume that that is what readers expect.

208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:58, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The problem with |title= is that its definition is inconstant and that can lead to confusion. In {{cite book}}, |title= is a book title; in {{cite journal}}, |title= is an article title; in {{cite encyclopedia}}, |title= can be either the name of the encyclopedia or the name of the article depending on the presence of |article= and |encyclopedia=. If we choose to upgrade {{cite conference}}, we can and should choose parameter names that accurately reflect their content, then confusion is, I hope, minimized.

In item 5 of my list, |title= is redefined to be the title of the proceedings and is aliased with |proceedings=. In my scheme, |title= is not required because there is a new, clearly defined parameter to hold the title of the conference's collection of papers.

I disagree. The conference cannot be the work because the conference is not a published thing; it is merely the arena at which the paper was formally presented. I cannot go to a library and checkout the conference; the proceedings yes, the conference no.

I do agree that |conference= should not be a free-form parameter that holds conference name, location, and date; items 7 and 8 in my list. Documentation that matches the new {{cite conference}} is listed as item 2 in the implementation list.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:34, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It is a citation for a conference paper. This item (title) itself would not exist without the enclosing conference. Semantically and in fact a conference is published as it happens (cf. speeches). But I am willing to accept that functionally, conference=proceedings=work. However, equating a single paper with proceedings is incorrect imo. That is substituting a chapter for a whole book. Such incongruities have led to the current jumble of ill-defined parameters. 64.134.101.203 (talk) 00:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Just so I know who I'm talking to, are you also 208.87.234.201?

Proceedings may be published in book-form or journal form. If we use {{cite book}} to cite a paper in a proceedings then |title= gets the title of the proceedings and |contribution= (or |chapter=) gets the title of the paper. If we use {{cite journal}} then |title= gets the title of the paper and |journal= gets the title of the proceedings. In {{cite conference}} as it is currently implemented, |title= can be used to name either the proceedings or the paper. I want to remove that fluidity so that |title= within {{cite conference}} has one and only one meaning. Because it is expected that {{cite conference}} will be used to render a bibliographic entry for the proceedings alone (no paper in the rendering), then |title=, if it is used, should be at the highest level of that hierarchy.

I am not sure I understand how it is that you think that anything that I've written [equates] a single paper with proceedings. Can you clarify?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

This is what I think most people would expect when referring (citing) a conference paper. Organizers (publishers) arrange/produce Conferences (works) at certain Venues (locations) where Moderators (editors) introduce Presenters (contributors/authors) who submit Presentations (titles/items/articles) in Lectures (speeches) that are almost always accompaniied by self-published Papers (transcripts) containing the subject matter. Such conferences may happen Periodically (series). They may also have separate Conference Tracts (editions), if one wants to cite in such detail. And there you have it. All the reasonably expected, real-world parameter aliases for cite conference, and their technical, programmatic counterparts, which (in good programming practice) should be invisible to the end-user. Sometime later, a record (proceedings) of the entire conference may be printed in a variety of media. Then, people may want to cite parts of the conference record rather than the conference itself. For that, there is already a template for such edited collections of items from multiple contributors: cite encyclopedia. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

After all of this, I wonder if we're talking about two different things. You appear to be talking about citing a conference itself; I am talking about citing the conference record.

WP:RS says in its first sentence:

"Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, ..." (emphasis in original; NPOV text omitted)

That link leads to WP:V §Reliable sources which contains this sentence:

"Source material must have been published, the definition of which for our purposes is "made available to the public in some form". Unpublished materials are not considered reliable." (emphasis in original)

If I understand these, citing a paper from a conference itself is not permitted by WP:RS and WP:V until that paper is published.

At the top of Template:Cite conference/doc there have been various statements of purpose over time, all more-or-less saying the same thing:

15 December 2009

26 November 2012

3 July 2015 – current which reads:

"This Citation Style 1 template is used to create citations for published conference proceedings."

Similarly, at the top of Template:Cite encyclopedia/doc:

9 May 2011

9 May 2011

26 November 2012 – current where the portion applicable to this discussion reads:

"[not for journals or magazines]; nor is it intended for conference proceedings, which should be cited with {{Cite conference}}."

These indicate to me that the consensus expectation for {{cite conference}} is that it is intended to be used when citing papers published in a conference's proceedings.

References

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

In fact, I thought that we were discussing citing a conference, mainly because I believe that we already have an unambiguous citing facility for books and other such works (which may contain conference proceedings). So my point is moot, but now I wonder why we need {{cite conference}} as anything more than an alias of some other template (I still think the fit of proceedings into {{cite book}} is clumsy). A propos of nothing, imo this also brings up the general issue of sources behind a paywall. Proceedings (basically verbatim transcripts) may not generally available (published for select recipients behind a paywall). Compare conferences, that are also "published" for select participants (the invited audience). 208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

A simple insource: search for 'proceedings' found this book. Here the citation is written using {{cite conference}}:

Ansari, S. M. Razaullah, ed. (2002). History of Oriental Astronomy. Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite conference}}: Check |asin= value (help)

and the same again, written using {{cite encyclopedia}}:

Ansari, S. M. Razaullah, ed. (2002). "History of Oriental Astronomy". Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help)

I included |asin= for this example only because at Amazon you can look inside.

In the above examples, the {{cite encyclopedia}} version does not render correctly so would be inappropriate for use in a bibliography. Additionally, the Joint Discussion-17 ... text ends up in the template's metadata as &rft.btitle (book title) which it is not. Additionally, the metadata includes this: &rft.genre=bookitem because {{cite encyclopedia}} expects to be citing an article; ({{cite conference}}, not surprisingly, includes: &rft.genre=conference).

Two more examples, this time including a paper. First {{cite conference}}:

Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). History of Oriental Astronomy. Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. p. 3. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite conference}}: Check |asin= value (help)

and {{cite encyclopedia}}:

Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). History of Oriental Astronomy. Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. p. 3. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help)

This time the {{cite encyclopedia}} version is really no better and perhaps worse. The Discussion-17 ... text is italicized when it shouldn't be. In the metadata, &rft.atitle=History+of+Oriental+Astronomy (article title) is wrong as is &rft.btitle=Joint+Discussion-17+23rd ... (book title).

There has been some good come out of this conversation, I have discovered and fixed a metadata error that was leaving the paper's title out of the metadata. Here is the metadata for the {{cite conference}} template with |article=The Two Supreme Stars, ...:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000001D7-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFMaeyama2002" class="citation conference cs1">Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). ''History of Oriental Astronomy''. Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. p.&nbsp;3. [[ASIN (identifier)|ASIN]]&nbsp;[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1402006578 1402006578]. [[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/1-4020-0657-8|<bdi>1-4020-0657-8</bdi>]].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=conference&rft.atitle=The+Two+Supreme+Stars%2C+Thien-i+and+Thai-i%2C+and+the+Foundation+of+the+Purple+Palace&rft.btitle=History+of+Oriental+Astronomy&rft.pages=3&rft.pub=Kluwer+Academic&rft.date=2002&rft.isbn=1-4020-0657-8&rft.aulast=Maeyama&rft.aufirst=Y.&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite conference|cite conference]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Check <code class="cs1-code">&#124;asin=</code> value ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_asin|help]])</span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:57, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I have small bones to pick here. Using {{cite encyclopedia}}.

Yours:

Ansari, S. M. Razaullah, ed. (2002). "History of Oriental Astronomy". Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help)

Mine:

Ansari, S. M. Razaullah, ed. (2002). History of Oriental Astronomy: Proceedings of Joint Discussion-17 at the 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Vol. 274. Kluwer Academic. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)

Yours:

Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). History of Oriental Astronomy. Joint Discussion-17 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union; Kyoto; August 25–26, 1997. Kluwer Academic. p. 3. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help)

Mine:

Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). History of Oriental Astronomy: Proceedings of Joint Discussion-17 at the 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Vol. 274. Kluwer Academic. p. 3. ASIN 1402006578. ISBN 1-4020-0657-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check |asin= value (help)

and

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000001DD-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFMaeyama2002" class="citation encyclopaedia cs1">Maeyama, Y. (2002). "The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace". In Ansari, S. M. Razaullah (ed.). ''History of Oriental Astronomy: Proceedings of Joint Discussion-17 at the 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union''. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Vol.&nbsp;274. Kluwer Academic. p.&nbsp;3. [[ASIN (identifier)|ASIN]]&nbsp;[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1402006578 1402006578]. [[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/1-4020-0657-8|<bdi>1-4020-0657-8</bdi>]].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=The+Two+Supreme+Stars%2C+Thien-i+and+Thai-i%2C+and+the+Foundation+of+the+Purple+Palace&rft.btitle=History+of+Oriental+Astronomy%3A+Proceedings+of+Joint+Discussion-17+at+the+23rd+General+Assembly+of+the+International+Astronomical+Union&rft.series=Astrophysics+and+Space+Science+Library&rft.pages=3&rft.pub=Kluwer+Academic&rft.date=2002&rft.isbn=1-4020-0657-8&rft.aulast=Maeyama&rft.aufirst=Y.&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite encyclopedia|cite encyclopedia]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Check <code class="cs1-code">&#124;asin=</code> value ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_asin|help]])</span>

208.87.234.201 (talk) 18:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 16–17 January 2016

I propose to update the live Lua modules on the weekend of 16–17 January 2016

changes to Module:Citation/CS1:

1. bug fix. accept urls with port numbers; discussion
2. bug fix. accept fully qualified domain name terminal period; discussion
3. move code for identifiers and common utility functions to separate files; discussion
4. move code for metadata creation to a separate page; discussion
5. identify and announce |<title>= with wikilink when matching |<param>-link= is set; discussion
6. discontinue implicit etal error messaging for editor name-lists; discussion
7. add Amharic and Malayalam to format_script_value();
8. bug fix. newsgroup check in check_url(); discussion
9. improve invisible character detection; discussion
10. add |collaboration= support; discussion
11. add |df= support; discussion

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers (new page)

1. add support for eissn; discussion
2. add support for hdl;

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities (new page)

1. none

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/COinS (new page)

1. remove extraneous map parameter from COinS(); not used
2. replace math stripmarkers in metadata with something vaguely resembling the source equation; discussion
3. bug fix; article title (aka chapter) missing from cite conference book metadata; discussion

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration

1. typo fix; discussion
2. add eissn support;
3. add hdl support;
4. use protocol relative URL for LCCN
5. discontinue implicit etal error messaging for editor name-lists;
6. discontinue invisible character detection for the specials and private use areas characters; discussion
7. add |collaboration= support;
8. add |df= support;

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist

1. add |eissn= support;
2. add |hdl= support;
3. add |collaboration= support;
4. add |df= (date format);

changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation

1. bug fix; ymd format dates not allowed before 1582; discussion
2. bug fix in year_date_check(); discussion
3. add |df= support;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I read the list above a couple of times and didn't see a link to the "external link detection" section above. Is it there somewhere? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:55, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

You're right, that change will also be part of the update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:00, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I missed the discussion on |collaboration=. Could you please explain. Other than that, everything looks good. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:15, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a link above at #10. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I somehow missed that. Will this be active in {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} only? 208.87.234.201 (talk) 16:40, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

All cs1|2 templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Misuse of ref= param

I think that we need to be able to detect misuse of the |ref= parameter. See this edit; several times I have seen page numbers being put in that parameter by Jgrantduff (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 17:42, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

What pattern(s) should we search for to find this misuse? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I have added a rule to my extra-text script that will catch a |ref=pp. ... and turn it into the proper |page= or |pages=. When I've finished with Category:CS1 maint: Extra text I can run the script against Special:Contributions/Jgrantduff.

I want to expand the extra text test in Module:Citation/CS1 to include |volume= and |issue=. I've fixed a lot of those while fixing the extra text in pages. I can include |ref= as well.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:52, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Something in the template doc and the help page should make clear that |ref= does not specify a page/in-source reference and should not be used for this purpose? Or change the easily misconstrued "ref" to the more specific "anchor" or "link-id" or similar. I sometimes wonder what were the people who originally named these parameters thinking. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 15:18, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I've had a go at that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Add exception? Do not find out where..

"registration: For online sources that require registration"->"For online sources that require (note, some allow to read a few articles, then not needed) registration". E.g. New Scientist, is that way, and people may not know/remember that it applies after looking up some articles. This may not even be the best example, as I'm not sure if I didn't see all of the first articles, I guess then this applies.. comp.arch (talk) 18:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

If I understand correctly you want to cite a source that allows limited access after which registration is required? I would not characterize this as a free-access source. I would set |registration=yes and add a note after the citation stating that open access is limited, using {{link note}} as in (limited open access). 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

No, limited access before registration. I'm not sure registration= is for that. I didn't check, I assume there is full access after the registration. Should such sites be labeled, as you might not need to register (that is offputting to many..) in case it's the first article at that site you are looking up. comp.arch (talk) 11:24, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

If a source will require registration at some uncertain future point, it is prudent to be rid of the uncertainty by bringing that future point to the present. It is better to make an error on the side of caution. That is why it was suggested to set registration and have a link note explaining that the registration requirement may be conditional or that free access may be temporary (a source that requires registration is not considered "free" even when it gives full access. You "pay" by providing information, which makes it an exchange, not a grant).

Or, you can lobby here for alternative parameter renderings such as "registration may be required", etc. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 18:42, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

minor bug in date validation flattened

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=2016-01-00|title=Title}}
Live	Title. 2016-01-00. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Sandbox	Title. 2016-01-00. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Template to use for TV guides

I have access to two TV guides provided to me by my TV distributor. The first is viewable on the TV and lists "Original air date" for programs. The second is viewable online and lists "First aired" for programs. These mean the same things and the date matches up, it's just a difference in formatting.

I am trying to use both of these guides as a reference to support the original air dates of a TV program called Little Charmers on the Canadian "Treehouse" channel. You can see the shots at http://imgur.com/a/KGCdp where I wrote the key phrase overtop of the image.

The only thing is I do not know what template is best to use. A digital TV guide accessed via your TV interface is not example a "cite web" but what to call it? An encyclopedia? A report? A press release?

The online version of the guide I guess technically is on the web, but because viewing this version of the guide requires logging in (a simpler TV guide is viewable without logging in but does not convey detailed info like original air dates) it is not a URL I can simply give out to others or feed into Wayback Machine or something.

It is kind of like when someone will cite pubMed or something for a paper but the paper is only available to those who purchase it or have a subscription. Technically it is there but it is not available freely to all.

However since I took a screenshot of the program on it, I would like to convey it this way.

All I can think to do in this case is use archive-url and feed my IMGUR screenshot into that (to function as an archive) and put a simplified form of the URL in (minus my account number since that is sensitive information) as the original URL. I don't know any other way to put two URLs into a template.

Any other suggestions? 174.92.135.167 (talk) 03:41, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

You might want to raise this topic at WT:TV. Editors there may be better able to assist you. It is perfectly legitimate to cite something behind a pay or registration barrier as long as that source qualifies as WP:RS.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Regards the web citation, using imgur in such a fashion is linking to a known (albeit good-faith) copyright violation. This is not an acceptable option. Link to the page dedicated to the guide as if you were logged in, and set |subscription=yes.

Regards the TV citation, {{cite episode}} or {{cite AV media}} seem acceptable, but I'd defer to WP:TV as suggested.

If you can for either of these two options, see if you can find a copy of TV Guide (American TV guide booklet; not sure if there's a Canadian equivalent or if it's the same publication) for the date. --Izno (talk) 12:18, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

We had TV Guide (Canada) which I remember getting as a kid but it stopped publication in 2006, I think distributors only use digital guides via the TV or their website nowadays. I regret not collecting it like that guy on Seinfeld when it comes to sourcing the air dates of certain old series I love. No help in sourcing series of the last decade or so though.

Seeing as how the episode itself does not list a debut date, the guide is the only source I can think of for this since most TV reviers are only giving the Nick dates for U.S. debuts even when they debut first in Treehouse in Canada. AV media sounds closer, did not know about the subscription thing. I guess the trouble is, if someone ever goes back and checks it, even if they did have a subscription, once the episode actually airs it will not be listed and 'original air date' will not be viewable unless they know where to locate a rerun so they can click on it. This is easy enough using the 'search' function on the TV to scroll a list and find the title you're looking for but not sure how easy it would be on the website. Also there's really no specific URL it's just a basic URL where you access your subscription-based guide.

Aside from the more extensive data (original air date) the subscription-guide also goes further into the future. The non-subscrubed guide for example when I checked last night stopped at Jan 21 while the sub-based one went up to around Jan 28. Will bring it up at the TV wikiproject as suggested. I have to wonder though: is it copyvio or fair use when we are simply showing a brief snapshot of a guide verifying the air date by a distributor? 174.92.135.167 (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

If you can't do the equivalent by logging onto a website, then I think cite AV media would have to do. The postscript= parameter would outline all the steps you took to get to the information. Same issue if you have to cite content that is only accessible by an app. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 00:04, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Order of (Map) and (PDF) in Cite map

I've noticed that in {{Cite map}}, PDF format maps cited with |title=, |map= and |map-url= will display "(Map) (PDF)", while those that can be cited with just |title= and |url= will display "(PDF) (Map)". I would have though that the order should be consistent. - Evad37 [talk] 03:20, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Cite map comparison

Wikitext	{{cite map|title=Title|url=http://example.com/map.pdf}}
Live	Title (PDF) (Map).
Sandbox	Title (PDF) (Map).

Cite map comparison

Wikitext	{{cite map|map-url=http://example.com/map.pdf|map=A Map|title=Title}}
Live	"A Map" (PDF) (Map). Title.
Sandbox	"A Map" (PDF) (Map). Title.

Yep. Fixed in the sandbox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks - Evad37 [talk] 13:47, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Access dates disappearing from citations when DOI or JSTOR etc. are set

Why?

access-date is not required for links to copies of published research papers accessed via DOI or a published book,
— Help:Citation Style 1#Access date

Where was the discussion to make the non-requirement obligatory? Apart from the fact that there is no such thing as a "stable" or "fixed" http link, it makes the continuous existence of doi-broken-date incomprehensible. Please restore to previous (and discuss first). 208.87.234.201 (talk) 15:44, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

1. The text you quote was added to Help:Citation Style 1 with this edit; the edit summary refers to the standard documentation used by all cs1|2 templates: Template:Citation Style documentation/url
2. There, the first text that approximately equates to your quote was added with this edit. The edit summary refers to a discussion; perhaps this one.
3. The text in your quote appears with this edit and has since remained unchanged except that a hyphen was added to the parameter name.
4. |access-date= without |url= is an error. Detection of that error condition first appears in Module:Citation/CS1 with this edit. As a result of that edit, when |url= is not set and |accessdate= is set, the internal variable AccessDate is set to nil and so not displayed in the rendered citation. This functionality has not changed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand the first 3 points above. I am not questioning the help text. I am questioning the fact that it differs from what is actually happening. Access date is not now allowed when these identifiers are set, even though the help text does not state that. It doesn't state that is disallowed as it happens now, only that it is not required.

[4.] |access-date= without |url= is an error

This is specious. Of course there is a url, it is masked behind the identifier. This brings up a new inconsistency. Either all links may be accompanied by an access-date or none should be. And I do believe that |access-date= co-existed peacefully with |jstor=, |doi=, etc. until the latest update. What happened?

And to repeat: no link is "stable". If there is such a thing, then the parameter |doi-broken-date= is superfluous. Which one will it be?

Was there a discussion about this? I don't seem to recall any. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 21:10, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say there wasn't a url; I said that |access-date= without |url= is an error. The requirement for |access-date= is that there must be a value assigned to |url=.

Here is a diff of the latest update to Module:Citation/CS1. Search for this string (you should not find it in the diff but will find it in the code):

Test if accessdate is given without giving a URL

Also, for completeness, search for that string in the live module and in the previous revision. Compare the code in the two versions. There was no change this long-standing code. (there will be next time because I'm going to clean up the extraneous --and comment)

If |access-date= is to apply to the identifiers as well as to |url= to which should it apply in the event that there are multiple identifiers? pmid, doi, pmc, zbl, isbn, ...? For scientific and medial articles, multiple identifiers are common. Are you suggesting that we need an access-date for each?

Certainly, nothing is ever perfect, so yeah, sometimes a doi breaks. I haven't spent any substantive time checking those dois with |doi-broken-date= to see if the broken parameter was added because the doi is truly broken or if the doi has a typo and the editor misdiagnosed the problem. There may be editors watching this page who can speak to that. If not, there's a research project for you.

I know that this access-date and identifiers topic has come up before. Search the archives of this page and you will likely find some.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to add my support for the status quo: yes, doi's sometimes don't work, but we don't want to have access dates for all the identifiers (jstor can be added to Trappist's list above), and there's absolutely no logic in having one for doi and not for the others. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:38, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Will get back to this after I have time to go through the code (not just the main module but also the subroutines). I might be wrong, but I remember |access-date= coexisting with |doi= and |jstor=.

Prior discussions on access date are somewhat convoluted and largely inconclusive as far as I can tell.

If |access-date= is to apply to the identifiers as well as to |url= to which should it apply in the event that there are multiple identifiers? pmid, doi, pmc, zbl, isbn, ...? For scientific and medial articles, multiple identifiers are common. Are you suggesting that we need an access-date for each?

Depends on the accessed version, imo. If all identifiers point to the same version, only one date is needed. If identifiers point to different versions this should be made explicit, even when the different versions support the extract of the source cited in the Wikipedia page.

65.88.88.126 (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Will get back to this after I have time to go through the code (not just the main module but also the subroutines)

Or perhaps someone would be kind enough to direct me to the module(s) and code that suppresses |access-date= when certain identifiers are set. I am stating "certain" because this does not happen in the case of |isbn= or |issn= for example. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 19:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm confused. Here is a nonsense template; the issn and isbn are valid but not related; there is an access date without |url= which gives us the '' error message and does not render the access date:

{{cite book |title=Title |issn=0028-0836 |isbn=123456789X |accessdate=2016-01-19}}

Title. ISBN 123456789X. ISSN 0028-0836. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

The meta parameter AccessDate is set to an empty string when the cs1 template is {{cite arxiv}} (line 2097) and it is set to an empty string as I described above (line 2355). That's it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

First, thank you.

Secondly, I was in error with my latest comment, and I thought I did strike it out, but I guess I didn't. I did find the routine in the main module, I quote loosely: if is_set(AccessDate) and not is_set(ChapterURL) then table.insert( z.message_tail, { set_error( 'accessdate_missing_url', {}, true ) } ); AccessDate = '';

As there are several remappings, and the porting to the new modules (and also new routines such as the DF stuff), it makes this slow going on my part. I will look into them. If anything turns up I will continue at the proper page, not here.

Cursorily looking at Module:Citation/CS1 and Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers I don't see anything that contradicts what you say. It seems my memory was playing tricks with me. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

The behaviour is correct. You don't need accessdates with static resources like jstor, bibcodes, and dois. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:07, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I dispute there is any http link that is "static". As far as identifiers go, even ISBNs change or are reassigned. But this was not my point. I think it is confusing to consider doi stable and also include doi-broken-date as an option. The other objection was probably a mistake on my part. (I thought identifiers and access dates coexisted in the previous version). 65.88.88.127 (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

From the {{cite journal}} documentation: |doi-broken-date=: "Date the DOI was found to be non-working at http://dx.doi.org". In my experience, this parameter is most often filled in by Citation Bot when it tries to look up the DOI and fails to find data. This typically happens (a) when the DOI is not and has never been valid, or (b) when the DOI is valid but the article has not been linked to the DOI database yet, often because it is new. I can't recall coming across a DOI that used to work at dx.doi.org but has stopped working. In any event, the solution to getting it to work again is to report it to dx.doi.org or crossref.org and ask them to get it linked back up. |access-date= should not matter in this context, since the underlying journal article remains unchanged, unlike other web-based resources. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:31, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I did not suggest that broken DOIs are an everyday occurrence. But keep in mind that DOIs may link to material hosted at a 3rd party. For example, JSTOR also provides DOI links to material, sometimes in addition to JSTOR's own id scheme, sometimes not. Recently I came across a DOI for a journal's archive that was previously hosted at an information provider/aggregator. The hosting company decided to drop the journal archive, and as far as I know, nobody has picked it up yet (I did try to find out through doi.org). My original complaint (which was partly wrong) had more to do with the confusing language at WP:CS1 and the incongruous (imo) existence of doi-broken-date. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 22:07, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not that the http link is static. It's that the source you are citing is. If I cite D. Sobral; et al. (2014). "Evidence for PopIII-like Stellar Populations in the Most Luminous Lyman-α Emitters at the Epoch of Reionization: Spectroscopic Confirmation". Astrophysical Journal. 808 (2): 139. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/808/2/139. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help), I'm referring to the article identified by the doi. This article will not change. You can come back 24 years from now and it will still be the same article. Accessdate are required for citing a web page. A scientific article is not a web page, although it may be hosted on one, so it does not require an accessdate. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Surely, doi etc. is a link identifier? And if the link is not accessible or has changed, then access to the source is affected. If the link is wrong, effectively the source has changed: it is no longer there. Then, the citation as previously formatted is unverifiable. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 15:03, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Please re-read the responses above. The source has not changed and cannot change. It is a published journal article. |access-date= applies only to web-based sources whose content may change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I am looking at a citation. It claims that something has been published in a journal. It may also claim that specific things in the article that includes the citation are in specific places at this published source. How am I to verify that? The journal may be obscure/otherwise hard to come by. If a link is given that points to a way of verifying the citation, then this is not a "convenience". It is necessary, in order to verify the claims of anonymous editors (as all Wikipedia editors are). One can reasonably say that then, and only then, do the cited claims become encyclopedic facts. For the person trying to verify all this, an inaccessible link means an inaccessible source, which makes the cited claims unverifiable. If there is an access date for a previously working link, it will give the enquiry a s suitable starting point. You can consider then whether information about the link's accessibility, state, and past history is important. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 22:34, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

It is perfectly legitimate to cite a journal article with no online link at all. The link is only a courtesy to allow readers to find the journal online. The journal title, publication date and page numbers, and other print publication data (including ISSN if it's an obscure journal that would otherwise be hard to find) are the parts that are necessary for verification. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:02, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Nobody disputes the legitimacy of doing the absolute minimum. Or the facility (as in ease) of adding citations that may be difficult to verify, or incorrect about the citation content, intentionally or unintentionally. This is not about the correct citation format, but about the content the citation is pointing to. Imo, the formatting guidelines (this page's parent) negatively affect verification in this case. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 23:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

The access date of a mutable url is useful so that, when you look up a deadlink on archive.org, you can tell which of multiple different archived versions is the one you should be referring to. That argument is invalid for dois, because dois are not mutable: they are supposed to only ever refer to a single document, and the exceptions are rare enough that we don't need to worry about them much. In other words, this field is useless both for the binary question of whether a reference is or is not verifiable (which can be satisfied without any online link), and for the reader convenience in actually carrying out a verification (because there is no use the reader can make of the access date). —David Eppstein (talk) 00:25, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I disagree, but I have nothing more to add to my position as stated in the comments above. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:22, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

This page is way too complicated.

There are a ton of options that aren't even related to a series like chapters. Also parameters are divided by category which makes it difficult to figure out where the parameter is that you need. Isn't there a way to link from the parameter set to its explanation? I mostly make text and grammar corrections, or add sources, so I'm not a wikification genius. I'm sure someone out there knows how to do this. As more parameters are added to Wikipedia this pages become completely overloaded with information. Soon people won't want the hassle of citations. Just saying. MagnoliaSouth ^(talk) 12:28, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand your first sentence.

I think that you are suggesting that we should have some sort of list of all parameters with their definitions and some mechanism to cross-reference or index by some generic term. Am I close?

Yes, the cs1|2 templates are complex, have a lot of parameters, and the documentation at best, is lamentable. Your help in fixing that would be much appreciated.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:39, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

A lot of the parameters do have anchors, these are normally of the form "csdoc_xxx", where xxx is the parameter name. For example: Template:Cite journal#csdoc_author; Template:Cite magazine#csdoc_date; Template:Cite book#csdoc_page; Template:Cite web#csdoc_url. Not all parameter names are covered in this way, there are too many aliases to do it sensibly. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

|language= parameter internationalization

On and off I've been working with editors at other-language wikis to adapt our module suite to their needs. As part of that I have discovered that the spoof required to properly render the ISO 639-1 code no is no longer required. Calls to mw.language.fetchLanguageName('no', 'en') now returns Norwegian as it should.

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=no}} → Title (in Norwegian).

I have tweaked the language support code to get the current wiki's language code and name so that languages are rendered in the local wiki's language. These examples were taken from our language parameter code at the Bosnian wiki (bs:Modul:Citation/CS1/igralište – their sandbox):

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=no}} → Title (in norveški).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=nn}} → Title (in norveški njorsk).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=nb}} → Title (in norveški bokmal).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=en}} → Title (in engleski).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=bs}} → Title.
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=bosanski}} → Title.

the same examples here:

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=no}} → Title (in Norwegian).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=nn}} → Title (in Norwegian Nynorsk).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=nb}} → Title (in Norwegian Bokmål).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=en}} → Title.
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=bs}} → Title (in Bosnian).
• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=bosanski}} → Title (in bosanski).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:50, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Neat. I'm curious: Is the "in" part of the language description coincidentally the same in Bosnian and English, or is that part not internationalized yet? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The 'in' part is handled by this line in bs:Modul:Citation/CS1:

return (" " .. wrap_msg ('language', name));

where 'language' is the index into the citation_config.messages table in bs:Modul:Citation/CS1/Configuration which contains this line:

['language'] = '(jezik: $1)'

wrap_msg replaces the $1 with the value of name. ("So that, as clear as is the summer's sun."—Canterbury; Henry V, Act 1, Scene 2)

In short, editors must translate the various static text for use in their wiki; this is one of the primary purposes of the Configuration module.

The Bosnian sandbox modules are slightly modified versions of the en.wiki sandboxen so that is why my examples above used 'in' and not 'jezik:'. Date validation involving dots in odd places, dots required for month abbreviations except when they're not required is the primary issue with internationalization of the modules.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks for fixing "language=cn" for China: I have been editing some Chinese text inside {cite_web}, so I needed "cn" for China as follows:

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |language=cn}} → Title (in cn).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

I'm not sure what code to use for China. Thanks again for taking time to add those major languages codes. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

If you follow the link in the error message, you'll get to List of ISO 639-1 codes, where you can do a find for "Chinese", which is "zh". – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:15, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

presentation tweaks

In Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox we keep static text, usually html and css, that is applied to various portions of the rendered citation. I have just moved the <cite>...</cite> tag and COinS <span>...</span> tag code to there from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox. This change does not effect how the citations render but is merely better coding practice. Some simple comparisons without and with |ref= set:

Title. 20 January 2016.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000210-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. 20 January 2016.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2016-01-20&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

Title. 20 January 2016. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000213-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. 20 January 2016.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2016-01-20&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>

comparing live metadata to sandbox metadata:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000215-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. 20 January 2016.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2016-01-20&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000217-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. 20 January 2016.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2016-01-20&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Good. Yesterday, I saw the references to the sandbox while looking at the live module code and I was a bit mystified. 65.88.88.76 (talk) 22:59, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

url again

In the Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox I have tweaked the code in split_url() to properly handle urls with queries (? delimiter) or fragments (# delimiter) but without paths (/ delimiter) :

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|accessdate=2009-03-08|publisher=www.paraselene.de|title=120° Parhelia|url=http://www.paraselene.de?uk:114164}}
Live	"120° Parhelia". www.paraselene.de. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
Sandbox	"120° Parhelia". www.paraselene.de. Retrieved 8 March 2009.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Nice. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Cite gateway templates for French cites

The cite-gateway templates to other languages do not affect wp:CS1, but I am working on an actual {Lien_web} to auto-translate the myriad of French {Lien_web} parameters+dates into {cite_web} format. For example, our CS1 "url=" can be French "url=" (not "URL=") or "url texte=" or Template:J to set the external link. Several new French pages have appeared here on enwiki, and I have tried to quickly hand-edit those pages, but too many wp:edit_conflicts wasted hours, and so the cite-gateway templates for French are needed to handle fr:Template:Lien_web and fr:Template:Ouvrage etc. The French also have subtitles as "sous-titre=" to append after title "<title> : <sous>" and similar for chapter as "sous-chapitre=" among a dozen other "new" parameters. The French cites also wp:autofix dates, such as "date=July 6, 2015" on French WP will auto-translate to show typical French date "6 juillet 2015" etc. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:36/01:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I use an AutoEd script to make short work of copy-paste French (and other language) citation templates. I haven't been able to monitor the unsupported parameter category lately. Maybe a bot could do a daily pass through that category to translate foreign-language citations. My script should be easily portable to AWB. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Template alias {{Cite contribution}}

An alias of {{cite encyclopedia}}, and a useful one, imo. However it does not support |contributor= which seems counterintuitive. Any plans of adding the parameter to this? 208.87.234.201 (talk) 14:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

"Check title= value" links to param-link error

I'm confused about the error messages here and how to fix them. I found this citation in Bayou Country.

Cite AV media notes comparison

Wikitext	{{cite AV media notes|authorlink=Joel Selvin|first=Joel|id=FAN-30877-02|last=Selvin|location=U.S.A.|others=Creedence Clearwater Revival|publisher=[[Concord Music Group]]|title=Bayou Country [Expanded Reissue]|titlelink=Bayou Country|type=CD booklet|url=http://www.concordmusicgroup.com/assets/documents01/Artists/Creedence-Clearwater-Revival/FAN-30877-02/Bayou-Country-40th-Anniversary-Liner-Notes.pdf|year=2008}}
Live	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country [Expanded Reissue] (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |titlelink= ignored (|title-link= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country [Expanded Reissue] (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |titlelink= ignored (|title-link= suggested) (help)

I see "|url= missing title (help). Check |title= value (help)". There is a title, and the second help link leads to the param-link error explanation. I'm guessing it has to do with the single square brackets in the title parameter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the brackets are causing the title value error but not the url error.

Cite AV media notes comparison

Wikitext	{{cite AV media notes|authorlink=Joel Selvin|first=Joel|id=FAN-30877-02|last=Selvin|location=U.S.A.|others=Creedence Clearwater Revival|publisher=[[Concord Music Group]]|title=Bayou Country Expanded Reissue|titlelink=Bayou Country|type=CD booklet|url=http://www.concordmusicgroup.com/assets/documents01/Artists/Creedence-Clearwater-Revival/FAN-30877-02/Bayou-Country-40th-Anniversary-Liner-Notes.pdf|year=2008}}
Live	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country Expanded Reissue (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |titlelink= ignored (|title-link= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country Expanded Reissue (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |titlelink= ignored (|title-link= suggested) (help)

I would guess that because there's a title link the url-title checker is going a little haywire:

Cite AV media notes comparison

Wikitext	{{cite AV media notes|authorlink=Joel Selvin|first=Joel|id=FAN-30877-02|last=Selvin|location=U.S.A.|others=Creedence Clearwater Revival|publisher=[[Concord Music Group]]|title=Bayou Country Expanded Reissue|type=CD booklet|url=http://www.concordmusicgroup.com/assets/documents01/Artists/Creedence-Clearwater-Revival/FAN-30877-02/Bayou-Country-40th-Anniversary-Liner-Notes.pdf|year=2008}}
Live	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country Expanded Reissue (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02.
Sandbox	Selvin, Joel (2008). Bayou Country Expanded Reissue (PDF) (CD booklet). Creedence Clearwater Revival. U.S.A.: Concord Music Group. FAN-30877-02.

On an aside, I've removed the link from the article in question, since articles shouldn't have self-links (aside from navigation, etc.). --Izno (talk) 23:05, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestion about how to fix this instance of the problem, but I think the sandbox code might need to be adjusted. There are a number of articles that appeared in Category:CS1 errors: parameter link after the latest code update that seem to be false positives. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:30, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Repetition in Cite magazine

{{Cite magazine}} displays a duplicated for. "This Citation Style 1 template is used to create citations for for articles in magazines and newsletters." SLBedit (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@SLBedit:  Fixed - thanks for pointing that out! GoingBatty (talk) 00:18, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

|editor= documentation

Editor ‎SMcCandlish added this to the |editor= documentation:

These parameters are for editors of collaborative printed works, such as multi-author anthologies. Wikipedia does not use them to indicate the managing editors of periodicals such as journals, newspapers, magazines, or news sites (this information is not needed in source citations). For editor-revisers of later editions of previously published unitary works, add any editors as authors, with an "(ed.)" annotation after their given names, e.g. |author2-last=Doe |author2-first=Jane (ed.); this will prevent formatting that implies the cited |chapter= in a |title= (for books), or the |title= in a |work= or |website=, is an isolated contribution contained within a multi-author work compiled by the named editor(s). None of these parameters should be used to add other, non-essential contributors who are not needed in citations, such as foreword authors or illustrators, only credited editors, revisers, and work-wide commentators.

I am on wikibreak and have no time to discuss right now so have reverted the addition and started this discussion. Please discuss.

My objection lies in the 'add any editors as authors, with an "(ed.)" annotation ...'. We should not be encouraging the improper practice of adding extraneous text to parameters that are part of the metadata nor should we misuse parameters in this way.

We can, and probably should disable |editor= when the template is {{cite journal}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite magazine}}. Foreword authors is supported in {{cite book}} with |contributor= and |others= serves for illustrators and other non-essential contributors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

That solution would work for some cases, but not for the main problem. I'm not trying to impose a permanent solution, just work around a problem that bites us really often. The number of misleading citations that imply that a chapter in a single-author book, in a revised edition with an author-posthumous editor, is just one author's minor contribution to an anthology, greatly outnumber the cases of metadata-extraneous "(ed.)" annotations. You've said before that any such editorial insertions can be used with square brackets, so just changing it to "[ed.]" is sufficient for my documentation to be correct. (And I already know that for some of these templates we have special parameters for other contributor types, and I still see editor parameters abused for this purpose frequently, so the documentation still needs to say not to use editors parameters for those.) I would prefer that this be fixed in some parameter-based way, that suppresses the "in" output when it's not wanted, but until that's implemented, what I documented (plus the square-brackets fix) is the most correct approach, because it's overwhelmingly more important that our citations be correct and be parsed properly by our own readers than that COinS metadata be perfect. That metadata is an afterthought, a convenience we provide for non-central purposes, and some of us are starting to think that directly implementing it in these templates is more trouble than its worth.

Almost every time I document a real, reader- or editor-affecting problem here and try to work around or fix it, I get shot down or ignored by the same one or two editors for whom COinS seems to be more important than WP:CITE, but who effectively totally control these templates. I've been a vocal supporter of CS1 for years, and would like to see CS2 eliminated, but over the last year and half I get increasingly inspired to go create a CS3 that looks almost identical to CS1, and has one consistent set of parameters, and no extraneous fiddly stuff. CS1 has turned into an enormous pile of "feeping creaturism", and hardly anyone can figure out how to use it effectively any longer. I've been here a decade, and these template still screw up my sourcing attempts at least once a week. I spend more time reading these templates' documentation than any others. I've reported more problems with these templates than any others. Fewer of them have been resolved than with any others. Given that people are not required to use any of our templates at all to insert citations, it would be a entirely valid approach to simplicity-fork this. If the principal and rather my-way-only maintainers of these templates don't want to see that happen, they need to be more responsive to problem reports, including paying attention to the details they report, and not dismissing them "oh well, you can do this complicated hack no one will remember nor understand when they encounter it", much less "we can't fix this because our precious metadata won't be ideal". Faaaaaack...  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Where have I said that editorial insertions can be used with square brackets?

Yes, Wikipedia editors abuse |editor= and |author= to include names that are neither (sometimes with annotation; sometimes not). That will be a problem forever I'm afraid.

Yes, a parametric remedy is best. A couple of solutions occur to me off the top of my head: perhaps a modification of |mode= to accept additional keywords to control how the editor name list is rendered; perhaps alternate editor parameters that render in a certain way; perhaps some other parameter or parameter modification. Of these, I think that modifying |mode= is likely the better solution. Suggest other solutions.

Consumers of the metadata are also our own readers and though only a small minority of our own readers their right to quality information is the same as that of the majority.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

We could also modify |display-editors= in some fashion; this would be my new favorite solution.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that we need to be careful not to allow the metadata aspect of citation templates to prevent reasonable use within Wikipedia, but recommending something like |author2-first=Jane (ed.) can't possibly be a sensible way forward – it's simply a misuse of the parameters regardless of whether it generates misleading metadata. (@SMcCandlish: it's like using '' instead of {{em}} or <tt> instead of <code>, both of which you have rightly deprecated in the past. Parameters, like markup, should be used semantically.)

The purpose of a citation is not to record every last minute detail of the contributions of different people to the work, but to enable readers to find a source. The templates are over-complex partly because editors have been allowed to keep adding "features" which have nothing to do with their primary purpose, which, I repeat, is to provide sufficient information (and no more) to allow readers to locate the source. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the purpose of citations. But I thought the topic here (CS1) is citation style. That is, after citation requirements have been agreed upon, how do we proceed with presentation?

Because there has been haphazard discussion on citation requirements elsewhere, discussion on requirements creeps into this forum. It shouldn't be so, imo. There should be a more organized discussion on citation design (discovering & implementing requirements) separately from the discussion on citation formatting (presentation).

72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• I Oppose any attempt to remove editor from {{cite magazine}}, {{cite news}} etc. Many articles have no credited author, for example this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:54, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Seconded. Oppose removal of editor from the templates mentioned. As an aside, most of the problems mentioned in the thread I believe could be resolved with better, clearer documentation. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

  It is not the usual practice to give the editor name in this situation. CMOS recommends using the magazine name in such a case.

  The reason we name the editors of collections of contributions by several authors, or of an author's work, is because it helps the reader find the book, as that is how they are typically catalogued. That doesn't apply in the case of magazines or newspapers. Kanguole 22:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose changing the templates to remove the possibility of setting an editor. Although the editor or editorial board of most journal publications should not be cited, editors are occasionally useful for journals, for instance when citing a special issue or special section of a journal that has its own separate editors. Making the templates more rigid in what they accept has the cost of making more special-case citations that cannot be properly handled by the templates (pushing people to not use the templates at all) for only a very small benefit of catching a few unusual cases where people are citing things the wrong way. It's the wrong tradeoff to take. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • PS I also agree with Trappist's reversion of the change to the documentation: adding "(ed.)" to values of other parameters is the wrong way to do it and should not be encouraged. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:15, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• I also oppose any disablement of |editor= in journal, etc. However, note that such disablement is only TM's secondary comment, that the main point is regarding Mac's documentation change that editors can be cited as authors. I also oppose that change (effectively supporting TM's reversion), though as a possible work-around it might merit discussion. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:46, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: editor, cite encyclopedia

1. Remove the text "in {{{editor}}}" from all templates except {{cite encyclopedia}}; keep the display of editor role (ed.) in all templates
2. Rename {{cite encyclopedia}} into {{cite compilation}} (or similar); keep {{cite encyclopedia}} as an alias
3. Activate {{{contributor}}} in proposed {{cite compilation}}

Thank you. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Pages with reference errors

Does anyone know what errors put a page into Category:Pages with reference errors? List of Mystery Dungeon video games (and several others on my cleanup list) are in it, but nothing obvious is jumping out at me. I know you can get it by putting a "<ref/>" inside of a list-defined reference list, but that's not present here. --PresN 19:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

That one is most often added by MediaWiki. Most commonly among those cases, it's for the case where a named referenced is defined twice. I tried purging the article but it didn't seem to work, and for me also, nothing is jumping out. --Izno (talk) 19:27, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Possibly, here. Because <ref> ... </ref> are inside a template ({{reflist}}), and some of the query strings include =, mainly for page numbers? An example would be

<ref name="MDSW1SNES">{{cite web |script-title=ja:株式会社スパイク・チュンソフト ゲームソフト 検索一覧 |publisher=[[Spike Chunsoft]] |url=http://www.spike-chunsoft.co.jp/game/search?page=19&platform_id=other&lowend_flag=0&download_flag=0&abroad_flag=0 |accessdate=2013-06-13 |language=Japanese |archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/6O7evi7ld |archivedate=2014-03-16 |deadurl=no}}</ref>

65.88.88.127 (talk) 20:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

See Help:Cite errors, which might help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@Izno: After about an hour spent chopping bits out of the article and previewing, I eventually realised that List of Mystery Dungeon video games contained two different references named "MDSW1SNES". It is very unhelpful that there is no error message for this case. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: It is normal for an error to be displayed in this case, and were I to hazard a guess, the error is not displayed because the references are list-defined. Might be worth opening a Phabricator task for it. --Izno (talk) 12:51, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, in my spare microseconds, noticed duplicate wp:reftag names are allowed under {Reflist|refs=} and no error msg upon edit-preview, but good to know triggered error category. The cite templates also categorize as unnamed parameter for blank Template:J but no msg there either. Wikid77 (talk) 14:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Status of filtering square brackets in URLs

Are we planning to handle brackets in URLs? I found an article (at redirect "EAPPI") where the "url=" contains sets of single brackets Template:J and should be encoded by a Lua filter (as '%7b' and '%7d' values?). Apparently those are very rare inside a URL, but they should be filtered by the Lua module, some day. This problem goes back 15 years due to the poor design of the MediaWiki markup language which should have used 2-character tokens to denote an external URL link, such as with both angle+square brackets, "<[http:...]>" rather than just single brackets "[http...]" as now unable to include each ']' inside a URL address. Anyway, 15 years later, now the cite templates should handle "[...]" inside each URL parameter. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:37, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Technically, unencoded single brackets are actually forbidden in the path part of a URL according to the URL specification. Of course, in practice anything is allowed provided that browsers and servers support it. Wikipedia also have issues with angle brackets ("<", ">") breaking urls. There might be other examples too. Dragons flight (talk) 12:39, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

The embedded brackets "[...]" are so rare, it can wait to be handled, along with other URL characters. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Allowing blank parameters

Has anyone figured how to get the Lua code to accept blank parameters such as empty Template:J so it would not trigger unnamed-parameter category? It took me hours to realize that error condition, after they omit "url=" at "|http...." how a lone newline "{cite_web|  |...}" also triggered as a parameter with no '=' in the parameter. Everything is considered an error now (date "Feb." or "April/May" invalid??), and cite templates almost unusable now. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:13, 27 January 2016 (UTC)