Category talk:Ohio-class submarine infobox templates

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Ships

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Using the same references on different templates

When noticing cite errors, same reference name having different values (or similar error message), on an Ohio-class submarine page, I realized the problem was with certain templates in this category using same name references (which is fine as they are the same references) but having minor variations, e.g. a named reference with quotation marks and another (same ref) without, or even with a citation template closing markup (}}) following the last character of one reference while another had a line break first and then close of the citation template. Those differences were causing cite errors wherever the templates are used to populate data into articles. After doing comparisons on the ten templates, making adjustments, problem resolved.

For future reference (no pun intended, hmmm, or is it?), keep the aformentioned and following in mind.

If adding a (new) citation to multiple templates (two or more) in this category, using the same name for a same reference being added (good idea), or if creating a new template for the category (and copying any pertinent reference from another existing template), please insure the same named references are identical. Any differences, however minor, including formatting (e.g. a line break on one and not on another or others, like mentioned above) or wikilinking on newspaper (or "work") on one or more and not another (I fixed one of those too) will likely result in cite errors on article pages where the templates are used. ;-) Thanks! – 99.170.117.163 (talk) 10:07, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is pretty horrible for a couple reasons. First, if I edit one of the templates and get the big red warnings, it's not immediatly obvious what's going on. The individual templates don't have any kind of pointer on their talk pages or as comments in the template source that would send an editor here for the solution. I had to ask at Village Pump to find this cat. Second, this is incredibly awkward to fix. Can we put the named refs in another template, and have all the individual templates use it? (thanks to Galobtter for this suggestion) Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:21, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The best solution is to eliminate these templates and add the information directly to the articles. That makes the articles easier to edit without going down the rabbithole of editing templates.Nigel Ish (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]