Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6

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Cite original title or second title for the continuation of a newspaper story

Sometimes a story from one page of a newspaper (e.g. on page 1 "Easter Bunny Goes Berzerk") is continued on another page under a different title (e.g. on page 2, "Children run in terror; Chocolate eggs spilled everywhere - continued from p. 1"). If the material I want to use is on page 2, do I still cite only the original title? Should I use |page=2 or |pages=1-2 if I am only using material on page 2? In using the GNews archives, I am also wondering if I should use |url= to link to the original title on page 1 where the article starts or the second title on page 2 where the material I want to use is located. Thanks again! - Location (talk) 16:02, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I suppose that you could do this:

{{cite news |title=Easter Bunny Goes Berzerk |chapter=Children run in terror; Chocolate eggs spilled everywhere |newspaper=[[Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!]] |last=Lapin |first=Jacques |page=2 |url=//example.com}}

which gives:

Lapin, Jacques. "Easter Bunny Goes Berzerk". Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!. p. 2. {{cite news}}: |chapter= ignored (help)

That sort of works but just isn't quite right. You might concatenate the two titles:

|title=Easter Bunny Goes Berzerk: Children run in terror; Chocolate eggs spilled everywhere

and then refer to |page=2

Or:

|title=Children run in terror; Chocolate eggs spilled everywhere |page=2 |url=<page 2 url>

Unless there is a need elsewise, link to page 2 if that is where the pertinent information is located.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

|title=Easter Bunny Goes Berzerk|at=p. 2, "Children run in terror; Chocolate eggs spilled everywhere" --Redrose64 (talk) 18:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

IMHO, if possible, use a URL that links to the complete article, not a URL that links only to page 2. The reader may get a better understanding of the information on page 2 iif they have the context of the entire article. GoingBatty (talk) 22:19, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again to all! - Location (talk) 18:45, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Rendering problem with right-to-left language and trans-title

Trappist the monk and others who might know the details of the Lua code: please see the following thread at VPT: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 137#Citations with title parameter in rtl language.2C beginning with numbers: Display issue and workaround – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:32, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

That discussion now in archive 129.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Where is the deprecated parameter in this article?

Where is the deprecated citation parameter in Michael Sells? I have done a null edit and a purge, and it shows the deprecated parameter category, but I do not see any error messages or deprecated parameters.

The category appears to have been added with this recent edit.

The article also sorts at the very top of the error category, before the articles that start with numbers, for some reason. I don't know if that is relevant.

I am also seeing this same situation with Urban College of Boston, Wiktor Eckhaus, and University of Natal. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:05, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: All four were using |access-date= instead of |accessdate=. I've been fixing these for about four years now; there is a citation tool that still insists on using the hyphen even though it's been deprecated for years. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:58, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

|access-date= is a legitimate parameter. But {{citation}} is different. {{citation}} is a hybrid of old Wiki markup and new module. The Wiki markup portion still has a call to {{citation/patent}}. As such it also includes the code that tests for the old list of deprecated parameters.

I don't think that it is necessary to keep the list – |accessdaymonth=, |accessmonthday=, |accessday=, |accessmonth=, |accessyear=, |day=, |access-date=, |dateformat=. There is some small possibility that some of these are still in use out there but none are supported by patent citations so will be silently ignored until patent citations can be brought into Module:Citation/CS1. Shall I remove this code?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:52, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Also, these four pages were listed at the top because the wiki markup categorization uses sort keys. The module doesn't.

[[Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters|{{NAMESPACE}} {{PAGENAME}}]]

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:04, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, please either remove that code (preferred), or remove the portion of the code that categorizes the article in the error category, or add code that emits an error message that makes it possible to track down the error. Thanks.

Redrose64, the addition of |access-date= as a valid parameter is a recent change, after an RFC that standardized all multi-word parameters with aliases that contain hyphens in addition to their previous formats (i.e. lumped together like accessdate, or underscored like trans_title). – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

I took your original request of "Where is the deprecated citation parameter", and your subsequent actions (null edit, purge) to mean "please would somebody help to stop this error being reported". I did exactly that with edits like this. If it's a valid parameter, it shouldn't put the page in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:23, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. It appears to be a valid parameter; it was being rendered properly in the version that I linked to, with no error message. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:28, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Deprecated parameter test removed from {{citation}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:43, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing space in cite conference

*{{cite conference
 | authors=Abe, M. et al.
 | date=2008
 | title=Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3
 | journal=[[Lunar and Planetary Science]]
 | volume=39 |pages=1594
 | conference=37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
 | url=http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1594.pdf
}}

Yields the following output.

Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3 (PDF). 37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Lunar and Planetary Science. Vol. 39. 2008. p. 1594. {{cite conference}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)

Notice the part that says "37th COSPAR Scientific AssemblyLunar and Planetary Science", which should instead be "37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Lunar and Planetary Science". Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:31, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Well ..., |journal= isn't defined for {{cite conference}}; it sort of works but not really. Perhaps you can do this with {{cite conference}}:

*{{cite conference
 | authors=Abe, M. et al.
 | date=2008
 | title=Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3
 | publisher=[[Lunar and Planetary Institute]]
 | volume=39 |page=1594
 | conference=39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
 | url=http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1594.pdf
}}

Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3 (PDF). 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Vol. 39. Lunar and Planetary Institute. 2008. p. 1594. {{cite conference}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)

Or, I think a better solution is to use {{cite journal}} or {{cite book}} because by all appearances, you are citing the proceedings not the actual talk given at the conference. Here's how cite journal might look:

"Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3" (pdf). Lunar and Planetary Science. 39. Lunar and Planetary Institute: 1594. 2008. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)

As an aside, I think that {{cite conference}} should be used only very rarely. It implies a presence at a conference and that leads to verification questions and thus a source that isn't so reliable. Were it up to me, {{cite conference}} would just fade away ...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:07, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

The |Periodical= meta-parameter was not implemented in the old version, thus there was no |journal=:

Cite conference comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite conference\|authors=Abe, M. et al.\|conference=37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly\|date=2008\|journal=[[Lunar and Planetary Science]]\|pages=1594\|title=Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3\|url=http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1594.pdf\|volume=39}}`
Live	Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3 (PDF). 37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Lunar and Planetary Science. Vol. 39. 2008. p. 1594. `{{cite conference}}`: Cite uses deprecated parameter `\|authors=` (help)
Sandbox	Ground-based observational campaign for asteroid 162173 1999 JU3 (PDF). 37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Lunar and Planetary Science. Vol. 39. 2008. p. 1594. `{{cite conference}}`: Unknown parameter `\|authors=` ignored (help)

I agree with Trappist: this citation should use cite journal. Can we disable |journal= and the others for this? -- Gadget850^talk 23:24, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Limiting individual parameter use to certain citation types wasn't something that was contemplated at the beginning of the switch to Module:Citation/CS1. I think that the genii is out and we may never catch him up and stopper the bottle. There is code (written before my time) that purports to 'account for the oddity that is {{cite conference}}, but it isn't qualified in any way (no test to restrict its operation to just {{cite conference}}) so I'm hesitant to simply add code that would set Periodical to nil or empty string.

Perhaps in the future we can begin to look at restricting which parameters are available to the various citation types.

In the meantime, just say no to {{cite conference}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

The solution is to fix the template, not bury our heads in the sand pretending the problem doesn't exist. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:54, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Publication within a publication

The Sun Magazine used to appear every Sunday in The Baltimore Sun. (It now appears to be part of it six times each year: [1].) If I am using Template:Cite news for an article published in The Sun Magazine, do I indicate that for |newspaper= or the parent paper, The Baltimore Sun? Thanks! - Location (talk) 21:18, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Use |department=. -- Gadget850^talk 22:30, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Gadget on this one. That would look something like:

Doe, John (September 13, 2014). "Article". The Sun Magazine. The Baltimore Sun. p. 2.

If you were citing Parade magazine, which is published completely independently of the newspaper itself with separate publication staff, I wouldn't bother to mention the paper into which it was enclosed, whether it is The Baltimore Sun, or The Mining Journal. But in this case, that magazine is a component of a specific larger paper, I would use the |department= parameter. Imzadi 1979 → 02:09, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2014-08-24

After the end of this week I propose to update:

Module:Citation/CS1 to match Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to match Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist to match Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation to match Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox (diff)

This update changes the things: in Module:Citation/CS1:

Normalize LCCN values before validation (discussion)
~~Identify and categorize citations with |firstn= / |lastn= mismatch (discussion)~~ Undone. See discussion.
arXiv validation (discussion)
change |CitationClass= tests to require unspaced class names for {{cite DVD notes}} and {{cite AV media notes}} (discussion)
fix bug in |vanc= handling (discussion)
instances of four consecutive spaces converted to tabs

in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

Identify and categorize citations with |firstn= / |lastn= mismatch
Add hyphenated parameter name aliases (discussion)
instances of four consecutive spaces converted to tabs
override <code>...</code> css formatting for error messages (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

Add hyphenated parameter name aliases

in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation:

Add support for "Winter YYYY–YY" (discussion)
Add support for whole date range validation (dmy - dmy and mdy - mdy formats) (discussion and discussion 2)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:59, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Hooray! Our last update was at the end of March. A reminder that, after the update, if you see pages that still show an error message for something that should no longer show an error message, try purging (to refresh the display of the page) or null editing (to remove category membership) the page to fix it. There is more information in this VPT thread. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:03, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Trappist the monk I'm trying to modify the sandboxes to include the corrections for {{cite podcast}}; what's the problem?—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 19:52, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

It has been my practice to freeze new changes to the sandbox from the time I announce the update to the live module so that new changes don't disrupt seemingly settled changes. It also gives editors another chance to point out my failings before an update affects untold numbers of pages. As you can see from your post below, that last bit works.

Because you hadn't replied to my last post at Transcript parameter for cite podcast by the time I announced this update, I left it out.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Additionally, the current Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox is rendering |id= erroneously as a Usenet ID; |publisherid= was deprecated in favor of using |id=. Wouldn’t it be easier to create a new |usenet= parameter?—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 20:25, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Comparisons
Template	Markup	Renders
Example 1
live	{{Cite AV media notes \|title=Artist Live! \|others=[[Artist]] \|year=2000 \|url=http://www.example.com \|first=Malcolm \|last=Johnson \|page=1 \|type=Liner notes \|publisher=Arid Publications \|id=Catalog no. K2145 \|location=Los Angeles \|accessdate=July 2, 2014}}	Johnson, Malcolm (2000). Artist Live! (Liner notes). Artist. Los Angeles: Arid Publications. p. 1. Catalog no. K2145. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
sandbox	{{Cite AV media notes/sandbox2 \|title=Artist Live! \|others=[[Artist]] \|year=2000 \|url=http://www.example.com \|first=Malcolm \|last=Johnson \|page=1 \|type=Liner notes \|publisher=Arid Publications \|id=Catalog no. K2145 \|location=Los Angeles \|access-date=July 2, 2014}}	Johnson, Malcolm (2000). Artist Live! (Liner notes). Artist. Los Angeles: Arid Publications. p. 1. Catalog no. K2145. http://www.example.com.
Example 2
live	{{Cite AV media notes \|title=Artist Live! \|titlelink=Album Title \|others=[[Artist]] \|year=2000 \|first=Malcolm \|last=Johnson \|page=1 \|type=Liner notes \|publisher=Arid Publications \|id=Catalog no. K2145 \|location=Los Angeles}}	Johnson, Malcolm (2000). Artist Live! (Liner notes). Artist. Los Angeles: Arid Publications. p. 1. Catalog no. K2145. `{{cite AV media notes}}`: Unknown parameter `\|titlelink=` ignored (`\|title-link=` suggested) (help)
sandbox	{{Cite AV media notes/sandbox2 \|title=Artist Live! \|title-link=Album Title \|others=[[Artist]] \|year=2000 \|first=Malcolm \|last=Johnson \|page=1 \|type=Liner notes \|publisher=Arid Publications \|id=Catalog no. K2145 \|location=Los Angeles}}	Johnson, Malcolm (2000). Artist Live! (Liner notes). Artist. Los Angeles: Arid Publications. p. 1. Catalog no. K2145.

The Usenet problem appears to be caused by new code in Configuration/Sandbox that starts with ['USENETID'] = {. Also in the Module itself, search for the new code beginning with -- special case for cite newsgroup which uses |id= for a usenet article or post id – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

This discussion about migration of {{cite newsgroup}} was archived without answering the question of whether to use a new parameter, |message-id=, instead of |id=. Maybe that new parameter is needed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:15, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Right, forgot about this half-done change. Thanks for the reminder. I think that I'll comment-out the relevant portions so that the rest of the update can proceed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Done. In the process I discovered that the documentation for the old style arxiv identifiers does not mention versioning as the new style identifiers do. So, I wrote the original test so that versioning was only allowed in the new style. Turns out that old style identifiers may have versioning. I've fixed both the sandbox and the live versions of the module to correct this error.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Documentation needed

We need documentation sections on Help:CS1 errors for the new arXiv and first name / last name errors. Does anyone have a sandboxed version of those new sections yet? If not, I'll start drafting them in commented sections on the page.

The styling change for the error message means that we will need to re-style the error messages on the Help page as well. Is there a clever way to do this for the whole page, or do we need to edit each instance of code individually? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:40, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

On my list of things to do before the update but I won't turn away willing help. I am unaware of any clever tricks except a change to common.css (which I don't think will fly). So, each <code>...</code> in the example error messages in Help:CS1 errors has to become <code style="color:inherit; border:inherit; padding:inherit;">...</code>.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Error message style in Help:CS1 errors done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I have added commented documentation to the Help page. I think it will look right when it is uncommented, but I am not sure. Feel free to tweak my wording if it does not make sense; consider my work a first draft. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:40, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

And I've rather heavily edited them. I split the author/editor list errors into two descriptions because they really are two separate conditions. I'm wondering if they shouldn't also have separate categories. Have a look.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Your edits look fine to me. I might tweak the wording a bit after it goes live and I can see it in context, but I do not expect to make major changes.

I don't think we need separate categories. In both cases, |lastn= is missing. That's the fundamental error. Now that there are two sections, however, to which section will the "help" link direct editors?

I do think that a missing editor should report "missing |editor-lastn=" instead of "missing |lastn=". The current error message is "missing |lastn=", which is confusing and not strictly accurate.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|displayeditors=29\|editor1=Editor 1\|editor2=Editor 2\|editor4=Editor 4\|sandbox=yes\|title=Title}}`
Live	Editor 1; Editor 2; Editor 4 (eds.). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|editor1=` has generic name (help); Missing `\|editor3=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|displayeditors=` ignored (`\|display-editors=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link)
Sandbox	Editor 1; Editor 2; Editor 4 (eds.). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|editor1=` has generic name (help); Missing `\|editor3=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|displayeditors=` ignored (`\|display-editors=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link)

Is that difficult or easy to modify? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:39, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

That's why the error messages identify the particular list where the error was found and also why I added the blurb about the error messages using a bit of shorthand. I'm sure that we can tweak the error messages to get what we want but I'd rather not do that just now. We can certainly refine them before the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

OL parameter not being processed optimally

I have noticed a problem with the CS1 citations' processing of the (little-used) |ol= parameter. You can see the problem in The Carnival. Click on the link in the OL value in the first paragraph, and you will see that the link leads to a 404 error. If you remove the leading "OL" from the OL value, it takes you to the correct page.

This OL is broken: Marjorie L. Burns (1980). How to Read a Short Story (Scholastic language skills). Scholastic Book Services. ISBN 978-0-590-30611-9. OCLC 8000874. OL 10699186M.

This OL works: Marjorie L. Burns (1980). How to Read a Short Story (Scholastic language skills). Scholastic Book Services. ISBN 978-0-590-30611-9. OCLC 8000874. OL 10699186M.

The OLID listed on the resulting page is "OL10699186M", so we should expect editors to put in such values. We should also expect them to leave off the leading "OL", since doing so has presumably resulted in working links for some period of time.

I was unable to find a spec for the Open Library Identifier (OLID); someone else may have better luck finding it. It appears that we might want to ignore the presence of a leading "OL" in the |ol= parameter, however, when rendering a clickable URL for the OL value. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:18, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

It isn't documented, but the leading OL is not supposed to be included in the id. I think we only check for the terminator. -- Gadget850^talk 00:30, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it's not supposed to be there, but even the Open Library page that you get when you click an OL link shows "ID Numbers: Open Library OL10699186M". That is why I suggest making the code flexible, serving up a working link whether the "OL" prefix is included in the value or not. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:15, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I've tweaked the OL validation code so that it looks for a series of one or more digits followed by one of the characters 'A', 'M', or 'W'.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author=Marjorie L. Burns\|isbn=978-0-590-30611-9\|oclc=8000874\|ol=OL10699186M\|publisher=[[Scholastic Book Services]]\|title=How to Read a Short Story (Scholastic language skills)\|year=1980}}`
Live	Marjorie L. Burns (1980). How to Read a Short Story (Scholastic language skills). Scholastic Book Services. ISBN 978-0-590-30611-9. OCLC 8000874. OL 10699186M.
Sandbox	Marjorie L. Burns (1980). How to Read a Short Story (Scholastic language skills). Scholastic Book Services. ISBN 978-0-590-30611-9. OCLC 8000874. OL 10699186M.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:36, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The page about Open Library's API may help. While it doesn't explicitly say it, a link to https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23377687M will bounce to https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23377687M/The_adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer and similar things happen for works or authors. For some reason, no similar handling is done for publishers.

LeadSongDog come howl! 13:58, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

{{OL}} shows an example of {{OL|ia:publicrecords02conn}} → OL ia:publicrecords02conn which redirects to OL 14052591M. -- Gadget850^talk 14:08, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I've scanned through the developer documentation (such as it is) a couple of times without finding anything that describes the identifier system. I have often been unable to see those things I have been looking for when they are right before me, so other eyes to look would be helpful.

I'm not inclined to support |ol=ia:publicrecords02conn because the OpenLibrary web site does redirect at least some of these kinds of 'identifiers' to a proper OL identifier. Not all Internet archive material has OL identifiers: OL ia:wargardenguyed00nati. If one wants to cite material on Internet Archive, use |url= and perhaps |via=Internet Archive.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

That disinclination is a good thing. Such records as "ia:publicrecords02conn" are, in many cases, defectively linked on OpenLibrary as "books" but not associated as instances of identified "works". The result is that neither edits to correct the book nor the work record are possible. It's a bug in the OpenLibrary software which mines the Internet Archive database which has been identified but the OpenLibrary database has not yet been cleaned up. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:09, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I've linked that book under OL records as OL 25620088M and OL 6617739M under OL 7744673W. They are fixable one at a time, once you figure out the technique. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:52, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, thanks for modifying the code. I expect that if implemented, it would result in a fair number of error messages that would be easy to fix, but I think that it would be better to silently discard the leading "OL" when creating a link. My reasoning is that we do not have a specification to refer people to, and the OL web site itself shows OLIDs with a leading "OL". – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:29, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

That would be inconsistent with the way we handle all of the other IDs. We don't silently ignore PMC or ISBN or any of the other identifier labels. I'd really rather not start making exceptions.

We're sort of at sixes with this one. Historically, CS1, {{citation/core}} through {{citation/identifier}}, has required that |ol= not include the 'OL'; {{OL}} requires that the id not include the'OL'; related templates {{OL author}}, {{OL book}}, and {{OL work}} do require the 'OL'. None of those templates has more than 500 transclusions so it wouldn't be too onerous to change them all to use the id without the 'OL' (which, because it never changes conveys no meaningful information except when the id is used in isolation).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I see the issue with silently ignoring the extra "OL", but perhaps a more useful diagnostic is the better way, suggesting the correction to be made rather than just complaining that it is wrong? There's some history behind all this Template:OL/doc and Template talk:Cite book/Archive 6, which indicates there used to be some ambivalence about including "OL" in the identifier, but ultimately what's past is past. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:32, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

At some point in the dim dark past, {{OL}} may have accepted either OL1234A or simply 1234A, but in its current implementation it doesn't: OL 1234A OL OL1234A.

I have hacked up the sandbox version of {{OL author}} so that it will accept identifiers with or without the 'OL' prefix. See Template:OL author/testcases.

As for more useful diagnostic, that is why we have Help:CS1 errors. We can put a lot more information there than would ever be accepted in an in-article error message. I invite everyone to help us make the help text better.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:15, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I can live with |ol=OL12345A being flagged as an error; I'll whip up a quick AutoEd script to fix the errors that crop up, as I currently do with similar PMC, DOI, ISBN, and other ID errors. I just thought that it might be more forgiving in this case to allow the OL, since the definitive source does not really seem to have its act together. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I once came across this very issue and figured out that I need to remove the "OL" from the parameter value. I would support rolling out the {{OL author/sandbox}} code that lets you both include and omit "OL"; it seems useful for the reasons outlined in the OP. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 10:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

{{OL author}}, {{OL book}}, and {{OL work}} have been updated to accept identifiers with or without the OL prefix. Instances of |id={{OL|...}} in CS1 citations have been converted to |ol=....

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

An ISO 639-1 language name test

Sometime ago somewhere there was a discussion about ISO 639-1 that led me to do a brief experiment with mw.language.fetchLanguageName(). Right now, Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration has a table of ISO 639-1 codes and their English meanings (["af"] = "Afrikaans"). It seems silly to me for us to be maintaining a list of these translations if there is some other place we can get the same information.

So, I've tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to use mw.language.fetchLanguageName(). In the collapse box is a list of simple cites that use the names and codes from the list in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration.

If the tweaked code works, and if mw.language.fetchLanguageName() agrees with Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration then the citation title and the parenthetical language element of the rendered citation should be the same.

{{cite book/new |title=Afar |language=aa}}

Afar (in Afar).

I have been through the list and found a handful of code translations that do not match. Can anyone find others?

Sandbox cites using mw.language.fetchLanguageName()

Afar (in Afar).
Abkhazian (in Abkhazian).
Avestan (in Avestan).
Afrikaans (in Afrikaans).
Akan (in Akan).
Amharic (in Amharic).
Aragonese (in Aragonese).
Arabic (in Arabic).
Assamese (in Assamese).
Avaric (in Avaric).
Aymara (in Aymara).
Azerbaijani (in Azerbaijani).
Bashkir (in Bashkir).
Belarusian (in Belarusian).
Bulgarian (in Bulgarian).
Bihari languages (in Bihari).
Bislama (in Bislama).
Bambara (in Bambara).
Bengali (in Bengali).
Tibetan (in Tibetan).
Breton (in Breton).
Bosnian (in Bosnian).
Catalan (in Catalan).
Chechen (in Chechen).
Chamorro (in Chamorro).
Corsican (in Corsican).
Cree (in Cree).
Czech (in Czech).
Church Slavic (in Church Slavic).
Chuvash (in Chuvash).
Welsh (in Welsh).
Danish (in Danish).
German (in German).
Divehi (in Divehi).
Dhivehi (in Divehi).
Maldivian (in Divehi).
Dzongkha (in Dzongkha).
Ewe (in Ewe).
Modern Greek (in Greek).
English.
Esperanto (in Esperanto).
Spanish (in Spanish).
Estonian (in Estonian).
Basque (in Basque).
Persian (in Persian).
Fulah (in Fula).
Finnish (in Finnish).
Fijian (in Fijian).
Faroese (in Faroese).
French (in French).
Western Frisian (in Western Frisian).
Irish (in Irish).
Scottish Gaelic (in Scottish Gaelic).
Galician (in Galician).
Guarani (in Guarani).
Gujarati (in Gujarati).
Manx (in Manx).
Hausa (in Hausa).
Hebrew (in Hebrew).
Hindi (in Hindi).
Hiri Motu (in Hiri Motu).
Croatian (in Croatian).
Haitian Creole (in Haitian Creole).
Hungarian (in Hungarian).
Armenian (in Armenian).
Herero (in Herero).
Interlingua (in Interlingua).
Indonesian (in Indonesian).
Interlingue (in Interlingue).
Occidental (in Interlingue).
Igbo (in Igbo).
Nuosu (in Sichuan Yi).
Inupiaq (in Inupiaq).
Ido (in Ido).
Icelandic (in Icelandic).
Italian (in Italian).
Inuktitut (in Inuktitut).
Japanese (in Japanese).
Javanese (in Javanese).
Georgian (in Georgian).
Kongo (in Kongo).
Gikuyu (in Kikuyu).
Kwanyama (in Kuanyama).
Kazakh (in Kazakh).
Greenlandic (in Kalaallisut).
Central Khmer (in Khmer).
Kannada (in Kannada).
Korean (in Korean).
Kanuri (in Kanuri).
Kashmiri (in Kashmiri).
Kurdish (in Kurdish).
Komi (in Komi).
Cornish (in Cornish).
Kyrgyz (in Kyrgyz).
Latin (in Latin).
Luxembourgish (in Luxembourgish).
Ganda (in Ganda).
Limburgish (in Limburgish).
Lingala (in Lingala).
Lao (in Lao).
Lithuanian (in Lithuanian).
Luba-Katanga (in Luba-Katanga).
Latvian (in Latvian).
Malagasy (in Malagasy).
Marshallese (in Marshallese).
Maori (in Māori).
Macedonian (in Macedonian).
Malayalam (in Malayalam).
Mongolian (in Mongolian).
Marathi (in Marathi).
Malay (in Malay).
Maltese (in Maltese).
Burmese (in Burmese).
Nauru (in Nauru).
Norwegian Bokmål (in Norwegian Bokmål).
North Ndebele (in North Ndebele).
Nepali (in Nepali).
Ndonga (in Ndonga).
Dutch (in Dutch).
Norwegian Nynorsk (in Norwegian Nynorsk).
Norwegian (in Norwegian).
South Ndebele (in South Ndebele).
Navajo (in Navajo).
Nyanja (in Nyanja).
Occitan (in Occitan).
Ojibwa (in Ojibwa).
Oromo (in Oromo).
Oriya (in Odia).
Ossetian (in Ossetic).
Ossetic (in Ossetic).
Punjabi (in Punjabi).
Pali (in Pali).
Polish (in Polish).
Pashto (in Pashto).
Portuguese (in Portuguese).
Quechua (in Quechua).
Romansh (in Romansh).
Rundi (in Rundi).
Romanian (in Romanian).
Russian (in Russian).
Kinyarwanda (in Kinyarwanda).
Sanskrit (in Sanskrit).
Sardinian (in Sardinian).
Sindhi (in Sindhi).
Northern Sami (in Northern Sami).
Sango (in Sango).
Sinhala (in Sinhala).
Slovak (in Slovak).
Slovenian (in Slovenian).
Samoan (in Samoan).
Shona (in Shona).
Somali (in Somali).
Albanian (in Albanian).
Serbian (in Serbian).
Swati (in Swati).
Southern Sotho (in Southern Sotho).
Sundanese (in Sundanese).
Swedish (in Swedish).
Swahili (in Swahili).
Tamil (in Tamil).
Telugu (in Telugu).
Tajik (in Tajik).
Thai (in Thai).
Tigrinya (in Tigrinya).
Turkmen (in Turkmen).
Tagalog (in Tagalog).
Tswana (in Tswana).
Tonga (Tonga Islands) (in Tongan).
Turkish (in Turkish).
Tsonga (in Tsonga).
Tatar (in Tatar).
Twi (in Twi).
Tahitian (in Tahitian).
Uyghur (in Uyghur).
Ukrainian (in Ukrainian).
Urdu (in Urdu).
Uzbek (in Uzbek).
Venda (in Venda).
Vietnamese (in Vietnamese).
Volapük (in Volapük).
Walloon (in Walloon).
Wolof (in Wolof).
Xhosa (in Xhosa).
Yiddish (in Yiddish).
Yoruba (in Yoruba).
Zhuang (in Zhuang).
Chinese (in Chinese).
Zulu (in Zulu).

These codes produced results different from the current table of definitions in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. Each is accompanied by a link to SIL International (SIL) along with a list of language names. Presumably, where two or more language names are listed, the first listed should be preferred? Right? SIL is, according to the Library of Congress web site, is the keeper of ISO 639 (here is a table of ISO 639 codes at the Library of Congress).

Maldivian (in Divehi). – code dv: Dhivehi; Divehi; Maldivian – neither CS1 nor mw.language.fetchLanguageName() use the preferred language name
Haitian Creole (in Haitian Creole). – code ht: Haitian; Haitian Creole – CS1 does use the preferred language name
Nuosu (in Sichuan Yi). – code ii: Nuosu; Sichuan Yi – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name
Gikuyu (in Kikuyu). – code ki: Gikuyu; Kikuyu – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name
Kwanyama (in Kuanyama). – code kj: Kuanyama; Kwanyama – CS1 does use the preferred language name
Greenlandic (in Kalaallisut). – code kl: Greenlandic; Kalaallisut – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name
Central Khmer (in Khmer). – code km: Central Khmer – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name
Norwegian (in Norwegian). – code no: Norwegian – bug in mw.language.fetchLanguageName()?
Ossetian (in Ossetic). – code os: Ossetian; Ossetic – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name
Tonga (Tonga Islands) (in Tongan). – code to: Tonga (Tonga Islands) – mw.language.fetchLanguageName() does not use the preferred language name

With the exception of codes no and to, mw.language.fetchLanguageName() provides an approved language name for each of the codes I've tested here. If, at the very least, code no can be fixed then I think that Module:Citation/CS1 should discontinue use of it's current table of names in favor of mw.language.fetchLanguageName().

In the mean time I will adjust the existing table so that if it takes a while before code no is fixed at least CS1 will be doing correct code to language name translation for codes dv, ht, and kj.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget the parser function {{#language:}}, e.g. {{#language:dv}} → ދިވެހިބަސް and {{#language:dv|en}} → Divehi --Redrose64 (talk) 23:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to hazard a guess that {{#language:}} and mw.language.fetchLanguageName() are intimately related: {{#language:no|en}} produces Norwegian which is the same wrong language name produced in the Norwegian language test above.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:57, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

See also m:List of Wikipedias#Nonstandard language codes. -- Gadget850^talk 01:10, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to provide a workaround for the code no problem. This does not fix the {{#language:no|en}} magic word which relies on the same code in mw:Extension:CLDR. {{#language:no|en}} produces: Norwegian. More at WT:LUA#Bug in mw.language.fetchLanguageName()?

With this tweak, I think we can remove the translation table from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

If this is intended to appear in the citation, this would be way more helpful if the output was "(language: Langname)" instead of "(in Langname)", an ambiguous construction that relies entirely upon the reader's recognition of Langname as the name of a language. That is unworkable because of the large number of obscure languages on the planet, and the fact that some of them are not distinguished from geonyms or ethnonyms. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 14:49, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that '(in language name)' is an artifact of published style manuals: this example at CMOS 14.110 for example.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I've been wondering if the categorization that Module:Citation/CS1 applies to pages with citations that assign ISO639-1 codes to |language= is correct. Right now, if |language=de is use then the page is added to Category:Articles with German-language external links. This may or may not actually be true. For example this citation provides no links except to Special:BookSources

{{cite book |last1=Busch |first1=Rainer |last2=Röll |first2=Hans-Joachim |title=Deutsche U-Boot-Verluste von September 1939 bis Mai 1945 |work=Der U-Boot-Krieg |volume=IV |publisher=Mittler |location=Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn |year=1999 |isbn=3-8132-0514-2 |language=de}}

Here, |language= is used to identify the language of the source which is in keeping with the CS1 documentation.

So my question is: Are we correctly categorizing these pages? If yes, then we're done; if no, how should these pages be categorized?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I added some comments about the 'no'/'nb' issue here. – Danmichaelo (talk) 20:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Based on my conversation with Editor Danmichaelo, I have taken the decision that Module:Citation/CS1 will return the string '(in Norwegian)' when editors use |language=no.

I have removed the translation table from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox so language codes now get the language names from Mediawiki.

Still unanswered is the categorization question. Category:Articles with non-English-language external links appears to have been intended for just that: external links. Right now, the module is indiscriminate. Whenever a citation with |language=<ISO639-1 code> is used, we add the page to the 'language' sub category of Category:Articles with non-English-language external links regardless of whether the citation has an external link. We aren't the only violators of the category, editors use {{xx icon}} to identify a string of text as a particular language (see Borgund Stave Church at the top of the infobox for an example).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

What about using the categorisation that the lang-xx templates use? For example, at Swansea, it has {{lang-cy|Abertawe}} which puts the page into Category:Articles containing Welsh-language text. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:07, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know. The text at the top of Category:Articles containing non-English-language text does say that articles added to those categories should be added by the {{lang}} family of templates. That restriction sort of disqualifies CS1, né?

Of course the question that I haven't asked yet is: do we need to categorize pages that cite foreign language sources? My guess is that there will be some sort of maintenance or other benefit that can be gained by doing so. As an aside, I've been thinking that CS1 needs a maintenance category any way so this could be the impetus to create one.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:18, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

No opinions? Ok, there is a new category Category:CS1 properties into which we can put stuff like Category:CS1 foreign-language sources into which we put categories like Category:CS1 German-language sources (de), Category:CS1 Spanish-language sources (es), etc. There will be ~~about 270 or so~~ 185 of these language-specific subcategries. I will use AWB to create them all. So that I get it right, are these names acceptable? Is there a better way to name categories that contain citations to sources in languages other than English?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:55, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

It is done: 183 individual subcategories ordered by ISO639-1 two-character codes in Category:CS1 foreign language sources which itself is a subcategory of Category:CS1 properties.

To get the list of individual language categories, I copied the table at the Library of Congress website into a spreadsheet; deleted ISO639-2, French, and German columns; sorted by ISO639-1 and removed all rows without a two-character code; used the spreadsheet to make a simple {{cite book/new}} template that used |language=xx where xx is the ISO639-1 code; copied the list of templates to an edit window in Wikipedia; Show preview to get the names associated with the codes as Wikimedia understands them; copied the result to Notepad++ where I used a regex search and replace to create category names and other info to feed to the AWB CSVloader plugin which did all of the actual work.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:29, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The other half is now implemented in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox. The code will now categorize pages with CS1 citations containing |language=<lang> where lang is a ISO639-1 language name. The code does not check spelling but is immune to capitalization and will render language name correctly capitalized. Language names that aren't ISO639-1 names are allowed but are not categorized.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:05, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Does this test categorize pages only in the namespaces currently categorized by our error messages, or does it categorize pages in all namespaces? I recommend the former; categorizing User and Talk (et al.) pages is probably not useful, since fixing them is often not appropriate and they are not "encyclopedic" pages exposed to regular readers of WP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:35, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Only categorizes mainspace and only if |language= is something other than en or English. This follows the precedence set by other language categorizes like the {{xx icon}} templates. These:

*{{code|{{cite book/new |title=Title |language=gd}}}}
*{{code|{{cite book/new |title=Title |language=Scottish Gaelic}}}}

don't categorize here:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000108-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000010A-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1 cs1-prop-foreign-lang-source">''Title'' (in Scottish Gaelic).</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

but if you copy them to an article in mainspace, click Show preview, you'll see that they do.

But, your question did make me think that we should be applying the same mainspace limitation to categorizing articles with |language=en and |language=English into Category:CS1 maint: English language specified. We aren't right now so I'll fix that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:31, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Should Template:Cite report be listed on this Help page?

I recently came across an invalid LCCN in a {{Cite report}} template, which uses Citation/core, so it did not report an error message. Should {{Cite report}} be listed in the table on this Help page? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

See the talk page. -- Gadget850^talk 01:19, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I must be dense. I looked at Template_talk:Cite_report but did not see anything related to my question. I'll explain more fully. It appears to me that {{cite report}} is a CS1 template, so I'm asking if {{cite report}} should be added to the table at Help:Citation_Style_1#General_use. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Then we need to change the CS1 description:

There are a number of templates that use a name starting with cite; many were developed independently of CS1 and are not compliant with the CS1 style. There are also a number of templates that use one of the general use templates as a meta-template to cite a specific source.
To be compliant with CS1, a template must:

Be based on {{citation/core}}, Module:Citation/CS1 or one of the templates listed below.

Use a period as a punctuation mark to separate fields and end the citation.

Use a semicolon as a punctuation mark to separate authors and editors.

Format longer works in italics.

Format short works such as chapters in quotes.

-- Gadget850^talk 10:31, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

All of those criteria are met, are they not, with the exception of title formatting? It isn't clear to me why the |title= value isn't formatted in the same way as other titles throughout Wikipedia. The title value passed to {{citation/core}} is |Title= ''{{{title|}}}'' which undoes normal italic formatting and adds zero-width no break space characters. Why undo the italic formatting and what purpose do the unicode characters serve?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. This is discussed on the talk page. The template is for "Unpublished reports by government departments, instrumentalities, operated companies, etc" which I also failed to understand. It is redundant to {{cite journal}}. -- Gadget850^talk 11:02, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

And the manner of usage is also odd. See Area 51 for example. -- Gadget850^talk 11:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that the case has been well made for removing title styling contrary to MOS. As for use of {{cite report}} in Area 51, that looks like a case of profound laziness on the part of the editors. A few minutes in Google turned up pdf copies of both documents:

The U-2's Intended Successor: Project Oxcart,1956-1968

A-12, YF-12A, & SR-71 Timeline of Events

That second document doesn't have the pristine provenance of the first, but editors have been satisfied with less.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:25, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The documentation for {{cite report}} is so bad and the title formatting is so non-standard that this template should not be considered part of CS1. I consider the template unfit for any use at all and if I come across a featured article that uses it, I will change it. If the change is reverted I will challenge the FA status of the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the template to the table. Should {{cite report}} be converted to use the CS1 Module? It looks like that would clear up problems with title formatting, lack of availability of some parameters, and documentation. Are there problems that it would create? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:59, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Do you intend to keep the existing formatting? As best I recall, the only difference between {{cite report}} and {{cite journal}} is the title presentation and the 'docket' id (which may not be in use). -- Gadget850^talk 14:20, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It would seem that {{cite report}} is in many ways similar to {{cite thesis}}. Both support |docket= and both are 'unpublished', and each sets |type= to a default value. Similarly, one might claim that {{cite report}} is similar to {{cite techreport}}; |type= set to default values and 'unpublished' in the sense expressed at {{cite report/doc}}. In both {{cite thesis}} and {{cite techreport}}, titles are italicized.

{{cite report |title=Title |id=ID |docket=Docketname}} → Title (Report). Docketname.

{{cite thesis |title=Title |id=ID |docket=Docketname}} → Title (Thesis). Docket Docketname. ID.

{{cite techreport |title=Title |id=ID |docket=Docketname}} → Title (Technical report). ID. {{cite tech report}}: Unknown parameter |docket= ignored (help)

And what does 'docket' mean in this context? The general definition (wikt:docket) isn't much help. Perhaps 'docket' is a contraction of 'docket number'? {{cite thesis}} adds the word 'Docket' to the value assigned to the module's internal variable ID when |docket= is used with {{cite thesis}}. Is there a real value gained from this?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Where are we on this? Either we change cite report (which will make it redundant), we change the description of CS1, or we leave cite report as a different style. -- Gadget850^talk 20:52, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that {{cite report}} should be modified to put report titles in at least quotation marks or italics (my preference being the latter). The template is otherwise no more redundant than {{cite thesis}} and should be included in the CS1 family. Imzadi 1979 → 21:31, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

At this point I am presuming that report titles should be unformatted. I will be updating the documentation as such and redirecting the talk page to the CS1 centralized talk. -- Gadget850^talk 14:20, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Untitled work

I notice that CS1 does not support untitled works. Chicago would use a descriptive phrase where the title would normally go, and the phrase would not be in italics nor would it be enclosed with quotes. So if someone needs to cite an untitled work, what would they do, other than rewrite all the citations in the article to use a style other than CS1? Jc3s5h (talk) 13:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Example? In my mind, untitled would mean unpublished, which would fail the reliability standard. -- Gadget850^talk 13:34, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I will give an example from Chicago Manual of Style 16th ed. section 14.240:

42. Burton to Merriam, telegram, 26 January 1923, Charles E. Merriam Papers, University of Chicago Library.

Jc3s5h (talk) 13:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

That's arguably an unpublished source, per Gadget850's concerns, above, though some might consider it a primary source because it's publicly accessible and validated by the institution. While it's conventional in art-related publishing to treat untitled works as if their title was "Untitled" or Untitled, as appropriate, those are usually also unpublished works. The most common case for this where we'd care about it are small newspaper entries with no title, and these are actually quite common, or were, back in the day. I think the most common way of handling them has been to use their first few words and "..." as if it were a title: |title=Yesterday's Spinks vs. Schaefer match was... ~~|at="Sports" section~~ |department=Sports |work=[[New York Times]].... A |noquotes= parameter could be used to remove quotation marks from around descriptive entries that are not actually titles, per Chicago's usage (and properly documented as to why this parameter would ever be used). A corresponding |noitalics= could also be used, for even rarer cases, to deitalicize names of major works. Actually, the most common use for both cases might be where the title needs to ben manually given in the proper formatting and also be followed by an annotation that should not be quoted/italicized, e.g. |noitalics=y |title=''Serenity'' (original script) |at="Extras" section |work=[[Serenity (film)|Serenity]] |format=Blu-ray .... There are many cases of not-intended-to-be-published works which have subsequently been published as part of bigger collective ones, and which have no titles or have titles, have been assigned later, conventional names in critical lit that are not actually titles, or have titles that would be ambiguous or confusing without such notes. An obvious example is the enormous amount of draft and abandoned and incomplete work by J. R. R. Tolkien edited and published in collected volumes by his son, which includes examples of all three types of cases. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 14:36, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps something like |description-in-lieu-of-title= (yeah, much too long as a parameter name but could be aliased to an initialism |dilot=). If |title= or |chapter= (or any of the appropriate aliases) is present in the template and has an assigned value, do not display |dilot=; else display the unstyled, unquoted content of |dilot=. Content of |dilot= would not be restricted; |url=, if present, attaches to |dilot= just as it does to |title=. CS1 templates that display |dilot= content would add the page to a maintenance category; it would be inappropriate to misuse this parameter for the purpose of affecting title style in a rendered citation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:01, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

But |title= is already mandatory. So, the simple way to get at this is to allow styling (quotes or italics) to be decoupled from that parameter when necessary. That's way simpler than that "dilot" stuff, the name of which no one is likely to remember. The real code to implement how you've described the behavior of such as |dilot= would be quite bloated; it's a bunch of nested ifs, and ifs in multiple sections of essentially unrelated code, etc. Let's go with the KISS principle on this. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 18:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Instead of |at="Sports" section I would recommend |department=Sports: "Regular department within the periodical. Displays after work and is in plain text." -- Gadget850^talk 16:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Noted; that parameter must have been added since the last time I pored over the parameters list in any detail. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 18:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I have seen sources that incorporated a bunch of other documents (usually memos, letters, or messages) that don't have titles. Should we establish some kind of recommended practice that such items be explicitly "titled" with something like "[untitled]"? I think the strongest reason for that is so that the lack of a title is acknowledged, rather than seeming like a possible omission. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The style manuals I've read use a description of such works, but don't give any special typographic treatment to the description (no quote marks, no italics) so readers will know it is a description rather than a title. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:12, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

archivedate considered harmful

(in the tradition of Goto considered harmful)

The existence of Help:CS1_errors#.7Carchiveurl.3D_requires_.7Carchivedate.3D makes little sense to me. 99%^[1] of archiveurl fields on en contain the archive date within the URL, so the archivedate field is redundant, and where the archivedate field conflicts with the archive date within the URL, it's always the former that is wrong. I therefore proclaim archivedate considered harmful, and propose it be deprecated. --{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 08:09, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

References

^ (guesstimate)

Cute, but... MOS:DATEUNIFY, even ignoring those archiveurls which don't "point to" the date. Can you make the template rendering of the date from the archiveurl context sensitive, so it matches the other dates in the article? LeadSongDog come howl! 13:38, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I can't tell if the OP is joking or not. If so, the sarcasm is subtle.

URLs from archive.org typically have their archive dates in the URL, but those from some other archiving sites, like webcitation.org, do not (see, for example, this reference). In any event, someone who does not know how to decode the date in an archive.org URL (which requires hovering over the link with a mouse and reading the URL in the browser's status bar, if it is being displayed) is out of luck unless a human or bot editor converts it to a human-readable archive date. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

For the Owen Edwards example, see [2] to see how timestamps are available. That raises the point though... couldn't a bot check archiveurl strings from major archives for matching archivedate values, and put them in the format appropriate for the article? LeadSongDog come howl! 18:33, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I think so, yes... I meant to include a sentence in my OP suggesting that CS1 render the date from the archiveurl. I think CS1 could be made to match the other dates in the article; I think dates and templates like {{Use dmy dates}} and {{Use mdy dates}} can be detected too, but I'm not sure. --{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 21:26, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

FYI—The other day I ran across several archive.org URLs that had bogus values in the date part; e.g., "15" in the location where the month is supposed to be. The URLs were functional, but IIRC they redirected to "valid" URLs. There is no way of knowing how widespread the problem is, but you can't rely on those values 100% of the time. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 13:08, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Odd. Can you link to an example of where you found one on-wiki?--{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 00:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikimarkup and COinS metadata

One very common corrupter of the COinS metadata is wikimarkup when it is used to add bold and / or italic styling to |title= (or to undo the default italic styling). The problem arises because the markup gets copied into the metadata. In this example, all of the apostrophes used to make the title bold italic appear in the metadata as a string of %27 which are not part of the actual title:

'''''Bold italic''''' title → "Bold italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000121-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''''Bold italic title'''''".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, I have created a function get_coins_title(), that strips the most common legitimate markup from |title= before adding the title to the metadata:

the five-apostrophe cases

'''''Bold italic''''' title → "Bold italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000125-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''''Bold italic title'''''".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

'''''Bold''' italic'' title → "Bold italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000129-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''''Bold''' italic'' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

'''''Italic'' bold''' title → "Bold italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000012D-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''''Bold'' italic''' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

''Italic '''bold''''' title → "Italic bold title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000131-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"''Italic '''bold''''' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Italic+bold+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

'''Bold ''italic''''' title → "Bold italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000135-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''Bold ''italic''''' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

simple bold

'''Bold''' title → "Bold title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000139-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''Bold''' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

simple italics

''Italic'' title → "Italic title".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000013D-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"''Italic'' title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Italic+title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

a combination of all three

'''''Bold''' italic'' title and ''italic'', '''bold''', '''bold again''', last ''italic'' → "Bold italic title and italic, bold, bold again, last italic".:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000141-QINU`"'<cite class="citation news cs1">"'''''Bold''' italic'' title and ''italic'', '''bold''', '''bold again''', last ''italic''".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Bold+italic+title+and+italic%2C+bold%2C+bold+again%2C+last+italic&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

The above examples use {{cite news}} because that template renders titles in upright font.

Have I missed anything obvious?

With this fix, the work discussed at Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 11#non-italic titles may no longer be necessary.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Renamed function to strip_apostrophe_markup() and now also used to strip wikimarkup from |chapter=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:52, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what COinS expects for data, or how resilient it is in the face of obviously bad data, but I would think that any kind of markup that is purely for display purposes is not proper data. Perhaps this is part of a larger problem, of editors trying to coerce the templates? Perhaps that should be flagged as an error? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Accessibility and COinS

There may be an accessibility issue with the COinS metadata that is appended to citations emitted by the {{citation}} template as well as all the Citation Style 1 templates. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 130#Spurious text on source links. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Updating the live module?

moved from Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6#Categories

I support updating the live module. Has the missing editor/author condition been re-implemented in this round of updates? Also, do we feel that there is consensus on enabling any of the hidden error messages? (See discussion above.) If this comment is forking the discussion, feel free to move it to a new section or subsection about updating the module. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:40, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing name detection will be part of the next update.

I don't see much hew and cry about against unhiding date errors so I have set the bad date error hidden parameter to false.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:49, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Date when no date supplied

This webpage does not list a date, but does state the copyright, "© 2009-2014 Concordia Theological Seminary", at the bottom. Should I leave |date= blank or use |date=2009-2014? Thanks! - Location (talk) 23:16, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

|accessdate=

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Date for ArXiv

I'd like to be able to add a separate date for the ArXiv link specified with {{{arxiv}}} in {{cite journal}} and related templates. For those not familiar with this, ArXiv is a site where academic papers (I think overwhelmingly scientific) can be uploaded for free access and peer review before and while being submitted to regular journals. The ArXiv version remains (freely!) available regardless of subsequent publication elsewhere, and the date of submission can be very different from that of eventual publication. I know that {{{orig-year}}} is available but it doesn't mean the same thing. I would therefore like to add {{{arxiv-date}}} to allow this distinction to be displayed. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

publication-date: Date of publication when different from the date the work was written. Displays only if year or date are defined and only if different, else publication-date is used and displayed as date. Use the same format as other dates in the article; do not wikilink. Follows publisher; if work is not defined, then publication-date is preceded by "published" and enclosed in parenthesis.

-- Gadget850^talk 19:21, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

If you want to specify a version of the arxiv link, include the v1, v2, etc... part to the arxiv identifier and that's all. If you want to cite the arxiv link specifically, use {{cite arxiv}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Date template

Just curious - why doesn't the {{date}} template generate a CS1 error, even though the template's documentation says not to use it within citation tempates? For example:

{{cite web|url=http://www.google.com|title=test|accessdate={{date|22 mar 2013}}}} generates
"test". Retrieved 22 March 2013.

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:29, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Umm, you added {{COinS safe|n}}, perhaps you should tell us?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Self-reverted my edit to the documentation. GoingBatty (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any issues with {{date}} except for the template overhead. But I really don't see the use unless you are importing citation data. -- Gadget850^talk 16:02, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I always use {{date}} in the hope that some time in the future it will be recognised by the renderer, and show date in user's preferred style and language. Overhead, schmoverhead. John of Cromer (talk) mytime= Mon 17:41, wikitime= 09:41, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

If the MediaWiki parser ever gets that feature we will add support to the templates. In that case, {{date}} will probably interfere. -- Gadget850^talk 12:27, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely that User:Johnmperry's hope for the renderer to show dates in the user's preferred style and language will ever be fulfilled. During the extensive debates about date linking, it was shown that, in running text, it is impossible to automatically change from the dmy format to the mdy fomat or vice versa without causing usage errors, because the former does not use commas and the latter usually uses 2 commas. So the renderer would have to limit its activity to tables and other structured text which might be predictable enough to automate the change in rendering. Any such change would clash with the unchanged dates in the running text. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:40, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Author alias

I have a work by someone with an English name and a Chinese name. What to do?

What I did was put his English name as author, and his alias as others= alias....

Anyone got a better idea? John of Cromer (talk) mytime= Mon 17:37, wikitime= 09:37, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Deprecated parameters?

Asked at Wikipedia:Help desk#Module:Citation/CS1.

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration has a number of parameters commented with "remove after 1 October 2014". I am guessing that the use would be updated, the documentation updated and the parameters removed. -- Gadget850^talk 10:46, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I thought about doing that with yesterday's update but there was enough in the update that I just didn't want to add more. The 1 October date is not a hard and fast date. I put it there as a reminder to myself to remove those deprecated parameters that it makes sense to remove. Clearly, |coauthors= isn't ready for removal yet but most of the others can be so will likely be removed at the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:52, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Date range

Hi, I just noticed a broken cite journal date in an article. The publication was "date = January-March 1969" but the system doesn't like this, so I changed it to "date = January 1969". But how should a date range be specified? Thanks, Esowteric+Talk 14:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Use an endash instead of a hyphen. Did the link in error message not answer your question? If not, how can we improve it?

Date with hyphen. January–March 1969.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)

Date with endash. January–March 1969.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:46, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! Sorry, I was in too much of a dash and didn't correctly read the help. Esowteric+Talk 14:48, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Similar template with cite web with date format in YYYY-MM-DD

Hello, I am looking for a template similar with {{cite web}}, that is capable to accept the date in the YYYY-MM-DD format and then to transform it into the desired output.

Imagine for example a template named {{cite web US}}, where, when I specify the date like "date= 2014-01-07", it will show it like "January 7, 2014" (or "January 7th, 2014").

And another template named {{cite web UK}}, where, when I specify the date like "date= 2014-01-07", it will show it like "7 January 2014" (or "7th of January 2014").

And then, each Wikipedia will translate that template into their own language. So when you create a reference (manually or automatically), you only have to specify the data in the universally YYYY-MM-DD format, so you don't have to bother to understand how that language outputs the date. For example, at Spanish Wikipedia, "date= 2014-01-07", will output "7 de enero de 2014". Therefore, the same reference can be translated and adapted everywhere (in any other Wikipedia), and then when you use it, you don't need to know how each language outputs the date.

To be more specific, the following reference:

{{cite web US |url=http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26488432 |title=Elephants recognise human voices |newspaper=BBC |date= 2014-03-10 |author=Victoria Gill |accessdate= 2014-09-26}}</ref>

will output it like:

Victoria Gill (March 10, 2014). "Elephants recognise human voices". BBC. Retrieved September 26, 2014.

on Spanish Wikipedia, it ({{cite web YMD}}) will output it like:

Victoria Gill (10 de marzo de 2014). "Elephants recognise human voices". BBC. Consultado el 26 de septiembre de 2014.

Is there such a template, or can anyone create such template? Thanks — Ark25 (talk) 10:45, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

There isn't such a template as far as I know. There was a time when something similar was done based on a user preference setting. That functionality went away. The history of that in in the {{citation}} or {{citation/core}} archives I think. The problem as I see it is that here at en.wiki, each article can have its own date format style which may or may not be specified by templates like {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}}. Templates can only deal with information that they are given so unless each template includes a date format parameter of some sort, it will have no way of knowing what the article requires.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:18, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

This has had a lot of discussion over the years. See User:Gadget850/FAQ/YYYY-MM-DD dates, especially reference 4. Bottom line: write the article and the references with the date styles desired. -- Gadget850^talk 11:41, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The various Citation Style 1 templates did format dates according to user pref setting (known as "dynamic dates") - for about six weeks in December 2008-January 2009. Not only was it technically complicated, it was also unpopular. In more general terms, Wikipedia deprecated the use of dynamic dates in late 2009, and the facility for performing that function was removed from the MediaWiki software itself with the release of MediaWiki 1.21 in March 2013. It's not coming back. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:38, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Wait, I don't need something so deep as a special MediaWiki functionality or article-wide settings for how to output the data. I don't want the template to interfere with any settings. I just need a new template, with this tiny feature: to accept the data field specified in YYYY-MM-DD format and to output it in a certain way. Such a functionality would make it much easier to translate Wikipedia articles from one language to another, because you won't have to bother to translate the dates of every single reference you have in the translated articles. — Ark25 (talk) 17:31, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I suggest User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates. When you edit it gives you options on the side bar to convert all dates to the desired format. This will ensure the entire article is unified, not just the citations. If you add it to your global.js, it should be available cross wiki. -- Gadget850^talk 18:13, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't need anything like unifying an entire article. I just need the template to output the date as I say. I tried it other way, using the {{date}}, it works, but it doesn't work with subst:

This one works:

<ref name="MyUser_BBC_October_15_2014c">{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25462900 |title=How do zoos prepare for dangerous animal escapes? |newspaper=BBC |date= {{date|2014-04-18|mdy}} |author=Laurence Cawley |accessdate= {{date|2014-10-15|mdy}}}}</ref>

And this one doesn't work:

<ref name="MyUser_BBC_October_15_2014c">{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25462900 |title=How do zoos prepare for dangerous animal escapes? |newspaper=BBC |date= {{subst:date|2014-04-18|mdy}} |author=Laurence Cawley |accessdate= {{subst:date|2014-10-15|mdy}}}}</ref>

— Ark25 (talk) 22:34, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

subst: never works inside <ref>...</ref>, this is a known problem, and is not specific to one template (or group of templates). There's nothing that we can do about it except wait for the existing bugzilla: reports to be actioned. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, it looks like there is already a bug report for it: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72079 — Ark25 (talk) 09:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Two months in the date parameter

See also cite journal and quarterly publications]]

I want to use a {{harvnb}} with a year parameter of 1828. See here, the date in the publication is given as "February & June MDCCCXXVIII" which before the introduction of CS1 could be dealt with as in a {{cite book}} with the parameters set to the following values "month=February & June |year=1828" or as "year=1828 |date=February, June 1828" How to deal with it now as CS1 barfs on "date=February, June 1928" (Help:CS1 errors#bad date). Of course one can use "date=February–June 1828" or even "date=June 1828", but that is a distortion of date in the source.

{{cite book |title=Date months with an ndash: |date=February–June 1928}} Date months with an ndash:. February–June 1928.

{{cite book |title=Two months fails: |date=February, June 1828}} Two months fails:. February, June 1828. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

-- PBS (talk) 19:12, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

It looks like that source is the February and June issues of The Foreign Quarterly Review in a single binding. The June issue appears to begin on page 403 – if you 'search in this book' for "list of the principal new works", google will show you two search results at pages 395 and 750. I think that simplifies the problem: cite the issue that contains your source material. If you want to cite the whole book, use the "Published in... as a subtitle: |title=The Foreign Quarterly Review: Published in February & June MDCCCXXVIII and set |date=1828.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:27, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Rather bizarre case, especially if there were any intervening issues. Perhaps they published three times a year, and combined two issues? Something like a single "January—February" issue would be ordinary enough, while two separate issues bound together would cited individually. This seems more like a book which was compiled from two issues, and the "February & June" seems more like a note of the original source than a subtitle. But if you go with this as a date I'd say use "date=February—June 1828". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Date with "onwards"

There are a number of web sites which give their preferred citation in the form "YEAR onwards" (e.g. the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website – see [3]) or "YEAR+" (e.g. the Euro+Med database – as one example see [4])). I recall pointing this out when the date processing in the cite/citation templates was updated. Yet dates of this form produce errors. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Because WP:DATESNO does not support open-ended date ranges (2001–, or 2001+, or 2001 onward, etc.), and in some cases discourages them, CS1 does not support open-ended date ranges.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

But if these are the standards recommended by major websites (and I can list several more) then they should be supported. They are really part of the "external titles and quotes" given by WP:DATESNO: using them is just using the citation given in the source. I use several of these sources very regularly and am very reluctant to have to give up the template in favour of plain text, which is what I will have to do if they aren't supported. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:08, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

The CS1 templates are designed to comply with the MoS, including WP:DATESNO. Thus the place to start this is WP:DATESNO. -- Gadget850^talk 17:26, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

My understanding/memory of the Wikipedia guidance on citing websites is that those sites are in the wrong (in the sense that "YEAR onwards" is unnacceptably ambiguous as to the version of the source consulted) and in this case one can ignore the given date and must use |accessdate= to identify the date you consulted the source. Just because a source asks us to cite in a particular way does not mean we have to, particularly if the format is not fit for our purposes.

--TuxLibNit (talk) 18:31, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

@TuxLibNit:, @Gadget850: so to be clear you would not use |date= at all for such websites, just |accessdate= (which of course I always give)? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:Well I can't speak for Gadget850 but I expect I would omit |date= in this case even if it was a free text field that could accept "<year> onwards" without the red warnings. For me, "<year> onwards" contains almost no useful information, and none at all once "Retrieved on <date>" is given.

– TuxLibNit (talk) 16:49, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Cite Journal/magazine

Is there any particular reason why {{Cite journal}} displays page numbers in a format unlike the rest of the cite x series of templates? Why is p. or pp. missing here? Reso lute 17:27, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

**Cite journal**
Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal\|author=Author\|title=Title\|journal=Journal name\|pages=56-62}}	Author. "Title". Journal name: 56–62. `{{cite journal}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)

**Cite book**
Markup	Renders as
{{cite book\|author=Author\|chapter=Chapter name\|title=Book Title\|pages=56-62}}	Author. "Chapter name". Book Title. pp. 56–62. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)

Examples above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:35, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't know. Perhaps it's because the various templates that eventually became CS1 were independently developed. You might research the the template histories and report back.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:17, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

"test". test: 5.
"test". test: 5.
"test". test: 5.
"test": 5. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
- Looks like the work or journal (or other alias) parameter suppresses this for some reason. That's... just odd, especially when I want to cite a magazine's title. But I don't know enough about how the CS1 modules work to go further than that. This actually came up in a GA review because the reviewer didn't see that the page number is included, just formatted inconsistently compared to book and newspaper sources. I think my immediate solution is to simply use Cite News instead of Cite Journal for my magazine cites. Reso lute 18:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Or use |pages=pp. 56-62. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 19:01, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Not recommended; the extra pp. will be injected into the citation's COinS metadata. Very often, {{cite journal}} includes |volume= and |issue= parameters so perhaps the all-numeric formatting arises from that association.

The {{cite journal}} page handling has been done the way it has been for a long time: Compare the old {{citation/core}} version with the current version:

Cite journal comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite journal\|author=Author\|issue=10\|journal=Journal name\|pages=56–62\|title=Title\|volume=25}}`
Live	Author. "Title". Journal name. 25 (10): 56–62. `{{cite journal}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)
Sandbox	Author. "Title". Journal name. 25 (10): 56–62. `{{cite journal}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:22, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

{{Cite journal}} states that the p. or pp. is displayed (i.e., added) unless |work= or |nopp=y is present. That appears to be incorrect, and either the code or the doc should be fixed. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 19:36, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

The documentation is correct:

{{cite journal|title=test|page=5}} → "test": 5. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

{{cite journal|title=test|journal=Journal|page=5}} → "test". Journal: 5.

|journal= and |work= are aliases of each other.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:47, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. I am fairly certain the templates once displayed the p. and pp., but I can't really argue against that that cite comapre tool. And I have used cite magazine for years. Rather surprising that I haven't picked up on this before. Thanks! Reso lute 19:51, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

{{cite journal}} is primarily used for citing peer-reviewed academic journals ({{cite magazine}} has redirected to {{cite journal}} for some years, but I don't know why), and the people who mainly use peer-reviewed academic journals prefer to omit abbreviations like "vol.", "no." and "p.", preferring instead a system of boldface and parentheses. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

That is along the lines of what I figured, and also why I seriously dislike the idea of template consolidation in many cases. It seems that a possible solution is to split the journal prameter out as its own option which disables those abbreviations, but leave them on by default for the work/magazine/other aliases. Reso lute 22:47, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

People who mainly cite peer-reviewed academic journals normally use a style manual that treats all sources in a reasonably unified manner, and which does not switch between using "p." or "pp." or not depending on what kind of work is being cited. Such style manuals also don't radically change the position of the publication date depending on what kind of source is being cited; an RFC concluded the date behavior should be fixed, but developers have preferred to fix other things. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:54, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

That's quite a stretch, Ttm, to say that the doc is correct if you've been around long enough to know the aliases of |work= (or to know that you have to check for possible aliases to make effective use of the doc). But I've been down this road before at Wikipedia. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 19:58, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Pretty sure that I did not write anything that was not true. But if you believe otherwise, perhaps you can back up your claim and show me where I went wrong. This is a quote from the {{cite journal}} documentation:

work: Name of the source periodical; may be wikilinked if relevant. Displays in italics. Aliases: journal, newspaper, magazine, periodical.

page and pages do not show p. or pp.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:02, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Volume was bolded in January 2006.[5] I don't see it ever used the page abbreviations. {{cite magazine}} was created as a redirect in 2006 with the summary of "creating redirect, 'cause I keep forgetting what the real template is called."

The documentation is correct, but I wrote it based on how the template worked. -- Gadget850^talk 21:08, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Ttm: Yes, but elsewhere on that very long page, it says the following:

page: The number of a single page in the source that supports the content. Use either |page= or |pages=, but not both. Displays preceded by p. unless |nopp=y or |work= is defined.

[followed by similar language for pages:]

There is nothing there that tells the user, Don't take this literally, dummy. When we say "work=", what we really mean is, "work=, or any of its aliases".

The user should not be expected to have read the entire very long page and absorbed everything on it. Inexperienced users know nothing of aliases, and good doc is written for inexperienced users. They are the users who have the greatest need for the doc. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 21:26, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Here is the complete documentation section:

work (required by {{cite journal}} and {{cite magazine}}): Name of the work containing the source; may be wikilinked if relevant. Displays in italics. If the name of the periodical changed over time use the name at the time of the source's publication. If script-work is defined, use work to hold a Romanization (if available) of the title in script-work. Aliases: journal, newspaper, magazine, periodical, website. Use Latin script. For languages written in non-Latin based scripts (Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Indic, Japanese, Korean, etc.) use a standard Romanization in this field.
- script-work: Work title in its original, non-Latin script; not italicized, follows italicized Romanization defined in work (if present). Must be prefixed with one of the supported language codes to help browsers properly display the script. Leave empty for Latin-based scripts (Czech, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.). Aliases: script-journal, script-newspaper, script-magazine, script-periodical, script-website.
- trans-work: English translation of the work title if the source cited is in a foreign language. Displays in square brackets after work or script-work. Aliases: trans-journal, trans-newspaper, trans-magazine, trans-periodical, trans-website.
  ... |work=Zhōngguó piàofáng |script-work=zh:中国票房 |trans-work=China Box Office ...
- issue: When the publication is one of a series that is published periodically. Alias: number. When the issue has a special title of its own, this may be given, in italics, along with the issue number, e.g. |issue=2, ''Modern Canadian Literature''. Please choose either |issue= or |number= depending on what is used in the actual publication. If a publication carries both issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value), provide them both, for example |issue=2 #143. Displayed in parentheses following volume.

When set, work changes the formatting of other parameters in the same citation:

title is not italicized and is enclosed in quotes.

chapter does not display (and will produce an error message).

As noted, if and only if work or one of its aliases is defined, then the formatting changes are applied. If you use {{cite journal}} and don't define work then the formatting is not applied. -- Gadget850^talk 21:50, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

I understand that, but the point I am struggling to make is that a user will not go to the doc for the work parameter for information about the page parameter. Instead, he will go to the doc for the page parameter, and it says nothing about work aliases there. Again, the doc is correct only if taken in its entirety, which is not how doc is used. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 21:57, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

So allow me to state the obvious: If the documentation that we have is unsatisfactory, change it until it is. If you would like assistance in understanding what something does, ask, I'll help. I can't necessarily answer the why, but I can probably tell you the what where and when. We know that documentation is never good enough; help make it better.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:12, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

If I'm understanding how the pieces fit together, the element that needs to be changed is Template:Citation Style documentation/pages. It currently contains the phrase: or work is defined. This phrase needs to read: or work or one of its aliases is defined. If possible I would like to link to the subsection that defines those aliases, which is currently titled "journal", as or '''work''' or one of [[#journal|its aliases]] is defined. Will this work there, and is there any reason the link shouldn't be done that way? ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 01:43, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Can't hurt to try. I would suggest an alternate text: or '''work''' (or an [[#csdoc_work|alias]]) is defined.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:00, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

The master template is {{citation Style documentation}}; each section has an [edit subtemplate] link. Every entry has an anchor, in this case it is "csdoc_work". -- Gadget850^talk 14:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. Two edits, here and here. {{Cite journal}} looks good and the links work. Doc for other Cite templates displays as before, and that's the desired result as I understand it. Thank you. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 15:38, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

@Gadget850: I don't think that it's quite true to say "every entry has an anchor" - the one in question was added by myself just a few days ago and a few minutes later I added another. I expect there are plenty more that I've not got around to yet. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Multiple publishers in cite book

Does anyone know how to go about adding more than one publisher to a book citation? I've got a scenario where a source has two publishers in the same country who jointly published the book - but I don't know how to put the second publisher into the cite template. Thanks! Miyagawa (talk) 16:54, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

There may not be a great solution here. CS1 is not designed to accommodate multiple values except in the |author= and |editor= parameters. If you can, choose one publisher and use that one, especially if that one is a much better known publisher, presumably the one listed first on the book's title page. You could then add a note following the {{cite book}}: also Location:Second Publisher. Alternately, if the two publishers are in different locations, leave out |location= and then do something like this: |publisher=First Publisher, Second Publisher (jointly).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:02, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the advice. Miyagawa (talk) 18:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Time to show date error messages?

Currently, errors categorized in Category:CS1 errors: dates are hidden, pending fixing of as many as reasonably possible by a bot. The hiding decision was a result of this RFC.

BattyBot task 25 has been processing Category:CS1 errors: dates periodically for about eight months now. When BattyBot is not running, date errors are added to the category at a rate of hundreds per week, maybe more. The category population was about 100,000 when BattyBot started running; it is about 60,000 now, and would be tens of thousands higher than 100,000 if not for the bot's work.

I have been working with GoingBatty, the bot's operator, to add more patterns to the list of bot-fixable errors. You can see the latest round of proposed fixes on GoingBatty's talk page, and there are many previous rounds of this exercise in that page's archives.

I believe that we have reached a point of diminishing returns with the bot, and that the bot has "run to sufficient completion" (quoting the RFC closure decision). I believe that the date error messages should be exposed by default to editors when the live version of the citation module is next updated. Thoughts? – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it's unlikely we'll find many more patterns that will significantly reduce the number of errors, although suggestions will always be appreciated. I think our next task is to prepare ourselves (and others) for the onslaught of questions and concerns that will be raised when these errors are visible to all.

People will see a "(help)" link in the article, which will take them to Help:CS1 errors#bad date. Are there any improvements needed here, such as:
- Maybe mentioning why other text in the date field is bad, and providing a link to a simplified explanation of WP:COinS with examples?)
- A link to Wikiblame to help research accessdates?
From there, people will see a link to Wikipedia:Help desk. We should announce there (and where else? WP:VP/T?) when the errors are scheduled to be turned on, and ensure we have extra people checking there.
People may also follow the link to Help:Citation Style 1#Dates. Are there any improvements needed here?
What guidance will we give people who have valid dates that are flagged as false errors?

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:56, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you know of any valid dates that are being flagged as errors?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Seasons (e.g., winter 2013) are being flagged as errors if they are capitalized, but seasons should not be capitalized. This is actually a subtle issue. If the separator between citation elements is a period, and each clause separated by a period is punctuated as a sentence, and if the season is the first word in one of these elements, then it should be capitalized. But if the separator between elements is a comma, or if the season is not the first word in the element, it should not be capitalized. Finally, neither our dates nor the date element in the APA style, is properly punctuated as a sentence, so it isn't clear that seasons should ever be capitalized. I'll poke around to see what other styles do. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:13, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

To clarify: seasons that are not capitalized are flagged as errors.

In the CS1 citations, the separator between elements is a period. In CS1 citations, season dates begin with the season. So clearly in CS1 citations, the season portion of a season date shall be capitalized.

So is your question: What should we do in the {{citation}} template citations where the separator between elements is a comma? And as a corollary: what should we do when CS1 citations override the period separator with some other character?

My answer to those is: nothing different. The element should take precedence over punctuation because the element is the important part. The element is not like the element type indicator words 'retrieved', 'archived', etc.

In the magazine and journal world, do those periodicals that use season dating capitalize the season on the cover of each issue? My experience is that they do; excepting those hipster periodicals that don't capitalize stuff for stylistic reasons and just because they're cool.

Seasons in dates in CS1 citations are roughly synonymous with months in dates. As such they should be treated in the same fashion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I checked the APA Style Blog. Their advice is

If the periodical uses a season with the year, put the year, a comma, and the season in parentheses (2008, Early Spring).

But I think this requires some consensus; we don't automatically follow other style guides. The distinction between the period and comma separator still applies. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

APA style dates are not supported by MOS:DATE and in the example you've posted, the season is capitalized.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The last time I asked about unhiding hidden error messages, I got no real support. I remain in favor of showing error messages so I support showing the date error messages at the next CS1 update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

BattyBot's latest run, which incorporated the new fixes linked above, fixed only 500 articles, out of the 60,000 in the category, and many of those articles had errors introduced between the bot's last run (which finished a few days ago) and this one. I think the bot has reached a point of substantial completion and we have met the conditions of the RFC.

GoingBatty makes some good suggestions above. Let's make sure our documentation is in order before the next code update. I have tweaked the help text a bit already. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it is a bad idea to enable display of 60,000+ error messages at a stroke (I assume we're talking about just Category:CS1 errors: dates not Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL‎ too). The intent can only be that they should all be fixed, but the sheer size of the task is demoralising and the payoff is uninspiring. Preparing thoroughly would be essential but not necessarily sufficient. I think it is also important to be seen to have prepared (What is the effort required? How long will it take? Why is that a favourable cost/benefit ratio?), and to have considered other options (Are |date= and |accessdate= equally important? Could we focus on probable typos over incorrect style? Do we really want to enforce MOS:BADDATEFORMAT regarding dd-mm-yyyy and mm-dd-yyyy? What about trading Category:CS1 errors: dates for Category:Pages with citations having bare URLs‎ and Category:Pages with citations lacking titles‎?). To try to understand some of this better I started my own analysis of the remaining errors here which may be of interest (eg help should address the most common errors first). Is that analysis worth taking further (the sample size is currently far too small), or is there a better analysis already available? I realise some of this has been covered in the past (possibly multiple times) but I find it hard to get a handle on what is agreed, what is still controversial, and what has not been discussed.TuxLibNit (talk) 20:33, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

@TuxLibNit: Thanks for putting together this analysis. Some comments:

I've updated my bot's code to fix mm/dd/yy where "dd" > 12 and "yy" = 13 or 14.
The bot can be updated to change undated to n. d., but I was hoping that CS1 would be changed so that undated would be acceptable.
While my bot normally fixes July/August 2010, it did not in this case because of the (unnecessary) brackets within the citation template.
1997-98 needed to be changed to 1997–98.
Ministry of Defense (Kuwait) contained |date=May–June 2004|year=84|volume=3, which needed to be changed to |date=May–June 2004|volume=84|issue=3
My bot will now fix Octrober, and fixed all five existing instances
I had already updated the bot's code to not create ranges such as Winter 2003–1904, and fixed all existing instances.

The rest are misuses and/or typos that can be fixed manually, and the red error will help editors to notice the issues so they can be fixed. GoingBatty (talk) 21:43, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I've manually fixed as many of the articles that TuxLibNit identified as I could. I would appreciate if others could provide input on the validity of using undated (see above) and work on fixing the following articles:

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Re "undated", here is a previous discussion. Style guides (at least Chicago and MLA) say that "n.d." should be used, but I think that abbreviation is needlessly obscure. I think that "undated" or "no date" should be allowed. I would suggest taking this to MOS or a wider forum, but I have been told recently that MOS is not the right place for citation-specific discussions. A few editors are fond of reminding us that nearly any consistent citation style may be used, so can we just be bold and decide that "undated" is part of CS1's consistent citation style? That would be my preference. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

As far as undated goes, if we're going to have a style, we should follow it. If you want to let folks do their own thing, just remove all the requirements from this page and scrap all the error messages and bots. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I did eventually update my stats to correct errors in my analysis identified from GoingBatty's comments, then added another 20 pages and used those results to guide some updates to the help. TuxLibNit (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there a decision here? If not, what about some of the other hidden error messages?

Category:Pages using citations with format and no URL – 2649 pages

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. – 248 pages

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. in editors – 1167 pages

or, dare I even suggest it:

Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters – 27,815 pages (down from 163,762 pages on 4 January 2014)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:50, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Nobody has disagreed with the statement that BattyBot has run to substantial completion, so I believe we should show the date error messages.

I believe that we should also show the deprecated parameter errors. Monkbot and BattyBot have removed the vast majority of errors from this category (its population has decreased from 164,000 articles to 28,000!). A little tweaking of Monkbot's code to add a few more template aliases may remove another 1,000 or so, but that is "substantial completion" by any measure.

The "et al." messages should be shown. I have worked with Citation Bot and manual edits to get the two categories down from about 12,000 articles to less than 1,500. This one has also run to substantial completion.

I haven't examined the "format and no URL" category in detail, but I don't think it is tractable with a bot, so those errors should probably be exposed as well.

We'll have to be ready for some communication about these error messages from people new to the conversation. Let's remember to treat them gently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:19, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I agree that the bot fixes have run to substantial completion but I'm opposed to displaying the error. While I appreciate the responses that I got to an earlier post here, those responses did nothing to address my reasons for objecting. If the error is to be enabled I'd appreciate at least a few days advance notice because I intend to modify the help text so that it more directly addresses the most common errors.TuxLibNit (talk) 23:42, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Is there a reason that you can't make improvements to the help text now? Even though the errors are hidden from most editors, there are editors who have enabled the error display for hidden errors so whatever improvements you make can help those editors right now.

And why is that you're opposed?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:52, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

TuxLibNit: the error messages used to be displayed. They were hidden after an RFC with one condition: that a bot designed to remove the errors in each category "run to sufficient completion". That condition has been met for the "dates" category. At this time, articles with date errors are being added to the error category at a rate of about 100 per day. If we continue to hide the error messages, some erroneous dates will continue to be added, but some editors will see the error, read the (improved?) help text, and fix the errors.

I reread the comments of TuxLibNit above, and I found it difficult to determine the editor's reasons for objecting. I saw a lot of questions and a link to an analysis of a sample of dates. What are the objections at this point? Do they outweigh the clear reasons for displaying the error messages, e.g. dates generating error codes are ambiguous, missing data, or otherwise not as clear as they should be? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:21, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to be clearer. I was trying to be brief because I didn't want to generate a wall of text and because I'm aware I'm coming late to this discussion so I thought there was a good chance I'd be pointed to some conclusive argument or agreement that would render a more complete post pointless. As that does not appear to be the case, here we go:

A side point regarding the RFC: My understanding of the RFC is that "run to sufficient completion" merely signals the end of an agreement that this error should be disabled. While the closer does explicitly bless re-enabling the errors that the RFC hid, I beleive this is just to restore the status quo — with the messages enabled, but their status disputed. I didn't see a consensus that those arguing for the messages to be disabled more permanently had failed to make their case and that the messages should remain enabled despite their objection.

Trying to be clearer about my position:
- I'm opposed to leaving the red error messages enabled on large numbers (say more than 400 pages/category) of minor errors (subjective, but an ambiguous date in a cite definitely qualifies for me) for long periods of time (really more than a month or so, but I'll be generous and say a year). I hope the principle at least is not too controversial — that the harm done by the presence of an error should be weighed against the harm done by displaying the corresponding error message and the latter harm is at its greatest for an error that does not get fixed for a long time. The messages are there to help ensure the errors are fixed, if they are not doing that job, then they are purely harmful (in the sense that they are defacing the article with no benefit) and should be turned off.
- I'm not disputing that the overwhelming majority of dates flagged in this category are indeed errors that in an ideal world would be fixed. However I'm not convinced that simply enabling the errors as proposed is a fair or effective way to get them fixed.
- Regarding fairness. The intended effect of an error message is to flag up an error that a grateful (or at least dutiful) editor will then voluntarily fix because it is an error. This should apply to all major errors and to recently introduced minor errors, but in the case of sufficiently minor errors this logic can be reversed so that the editor will fix the error primarily because the error message defaces the article not because they consider the error itself particularly worth fixing for its own sake. When the errors arise piecemeal (because the error has just been introduced) this can still be tolerable but if lots of minor errors appear all at once it becomes a problem, because the editor feels forced to expend a significant amount of effort right now simply to suppress the error messages, whereas the errors themselves could have been left until later (or arguably even left indefinitely). Forcing an editor to make trivial changes would be unfair.
- Regarding effectiveness. There are already error categories with red messages enabled that contain huge numbers of members that are not declining significantly. Why should this error be any different (i.e. get fixed rapidly)? I also regard the history of Category:Pages_with_ISBN_errors as support for my position because although there has recently been some success in reducing it, it had remained large for a long period of time and the success has come from a (more or less) coordinated effort by a relatively small number of editors making many edits, and even then, every time that effort flags, the size of the category stabilises again (growing slowly). I think this means that people are mainly fixing these errors from the category and/or from WP:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia/ISBN_errors, not because they happen to be viewing an article containing an error message.

Some final comments for now:
- It appears that no-one here realised that when I was asking questions in my first post it was because I hoped for answers.
- There's nothing stopping me editing the help, its on a to-do list but I haven't got to it yet. If the message enable was imminent it would bump that task up my list.
- If it helps, I could for example support unhiding the error message for a single large category (eg the date errors with 60000 members) if there was also an agreement that if the category did not decline fast enough (say by 5000 messages in a calendar month) while it remained large (say over 400 members) then the message would be hidden again. That doesn't mean I'd be willing to put in much effort into fixing them myself.
- On the other hand I realise there is no particular need for you to get hung up on one person's objections.
- I hope that gives a clearer idea of the arguments and reasoning behind my objections. Apologies for the long post, but you did ask for it.

TuxLibNit (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the long post. I did ask for it, and your post was helpful. I will respond to a few of the points raised.

I got involved in fixing citation errors because I saw a red error message and it made me curious. If all of the error messages had been hidden, I probably would not be here. Since I began fixing those errors in 2013, I have fixed errors in 20,000 to 30,000 pages. I typically fix 50 to 100 errors per day. There are other gnomes and bots who have fixed many more.
There are currently 28 subcategories of CS1 errors. Of those, 19 are essentially empty or are close to empty due to diligent work by a handful of editors. A few more categories have been massively reduced in the last year; many categories had "huge numbers of members" (quoting the response above) recently, but they have been addressed in a reasonable amount of time. The wikilinks error category, for example, had something like 8,000 articles in it last year, and is empty now. The ISBN error category had about 7,000 articles in it just a few months ago, and it has been reduced to 650 during 2014 (it was at about 1,000 a month or two ago; progress has slowed, since the remaining cases are more difficult than the low-hanging fruit that was there initially). The "old style et al." categories had about 12,000 articles and are now down to about 1,400. My point is that significant progress has been made on almost all of the categories. Most of this work has been done by gnomes and bots, many of whom have been attracted to the work by the error messages. I have some evidence to show that individual reader/editors are motivated by the error messages to fix errors; sometimes I will queue up 20 articles to fix, only to find when I get to the 15th article that an editor actively working on the article has already fixed the error.
The categories that have a stable and large number of members may need to be discussed here individually (e.g. accessdate without URL, format without URL). If nobody wants to fix these errors, maybe we need to set them aside. The "dates" and "deprecated parameters" categories are large, but not large and stable; they have both decreased significantly because editors are interested in fixing these errors.
ReferenceBot has been configured to notify editors when they add some types of CS1 errors to articles. There are additional categories that need to be added to its notification list; I will help those categories to get on the bot's list one of these days. I have evidence that these notifications motivate editors to return to articles and clean up after themselves. Not everyone does so, of course, but many do.
You suggest "more than a year" as a time to determine if progress has been made on reducing error messages in articles. There are currently about 60,000 date errors, with about 100 being added daily. That says that we need to fix about 260 articles per day for a year to clear out the category. Based on my own experience with fixing CS1 errors, I think it is reasonable to expect that focused effort by gnomes and bots on this category could achieve that. Adding ReferenceBot notification (optional, to be decided here) and showing the date errors make it more likely that we could reach that goal.

Thanks for your interest and the explanation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:38, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

The date is one of the critical elements of a citation that is used to identify the source. Error checking is intended to identify issues in the citations for quality assurance. Browsing a sample of articles, a large number of errors are due to ambiguous formats such as 9/10/2013 that a bot cannot resolve. Editors should be reviewing their work and if they see an obvious error message they should be able to use the help page and fix the problem quickly. This not currently happening since the messages are hidden by default. -- Gadget850^talk 11:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

ReferenceBot sounds particularly promising. Regarding recruitment of gnomes, I have to admit that I also started fixing ISBN errors as a result of the red text but I also can't help thinking that there must be a better way. TuxLibNit (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

This obscure discussion has suddenly generated '000s of error messages all over the wiki, many relating to very simple "errors" that are generated by current "official" template-filling tools inbuilt to the editing page that throw up dates like "2012 Mar". You can't fix those by bot??? Really? You can't change the tools first??? The whole situation is absurd. Look at Pancreatic cancer for example. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:03, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

@Wiki CRUK John: Hopefully you started at the top of this section and read about BattyBot, which has fixed over 50,000 articles with CS1 date errors, including running five times on the Pancreatic cancer article since December 2013. Making the errors visible to all users will hopefully keep people from adding additional incorrect dates into the article, and encourage people to do the necessary manual cleanup to reduce the number of articles with errors so the bot can run more often. GoingBatty (talk) 00:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Fixing the official ref toolbar in the editing window so it doesn't continue to generate "errors", or indeed changing the MOS so that it accepts perfectly unambiguous forms like "2012 Mar", would seem more efficient and realistic approaches to this. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, so what are we supposed to do with a date like 370 BC, then? That isn't an error, but one is reported. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:48, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

If such citations are legitimate, they must be so rare that a hand-crafted citation will suffice. CS1 is a general purpose tool suitable to most applications but not all.

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, what are you citing that is nearly 2,400 years old?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

"370 BC" could go in |origyear=, with the publication date of the source you are actually citing (and viewing with your own eyes), or to which you are referring readers, in |date=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:06, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Cite4Wiki Phoenix released

Cite4Wiki Phoenix is a Firefox extension intended to make it easier to generate citations for a page which you are currently viewing. It has a number of features which are configurable in order to generate citations formatted as desired for the article which you are working on. The point of view is that the tool should do a good job at generating values for parameters, but ultimately the user is in control of what actually goes in the citation.
Some feature highlights:

Extensible page scraping for any/all parameter(s)

There is not yet a GUI to make it easy to extend the page scraping Profiles, but page scraping configurations are read from a file with each Profile (a domain, or subset of a domain) in JSON format. The user can specify a file containing their own definitions.

Includes fleshed-out profiles for many different websites (many news outlets, JSTOR, HighBeam, Questia, PubMed, arXiv, archive.org, WebCite, Google Books, etc.)
Includes a decent default page scraping definition for domains for which there is not a specific one available.

Automatic and semi-automatic preemptive archiving (Archive.org and/or WebCite) with easy display of the archive page for user verification.

Automatic detection of some failures and fallback to the other archiving site.

Automatic and semi-automatic case formatting for parameters (user selectable, both what type of casing change and what parameters)
Uses TemplateData (when available) for determining available parameters and if there are duplicated aliased parameters (warns user).
"Picker": single click selection of text elements within a webpage and applied to the parameter.
Automatic parsing of author and editor names into first/last (can be overridden by user).
Unlimited number of authors and/or editors, or user can specify a maximum number to use.
Available user selection of the contents of all <meta /> tags on the page.
Automatic selection of the appropriate citation template (based on dynamic or static selection in the Profile used).

User selection of any Citation template (including all CS1 templates)
The list of templates is user definable, or free-form while citing a page.

User selection of citation layout format: horizontal/vertical/vertical with "=" lined up

Option to display in vertical format and automatically use horizontal when copying to the clipboard

Date formats in DMY/MDY/YMD
Automatic and semi-automatic naming of references (user configurable, name defined in the Profile used for the site or a random number component is generated).

A couple of example citations:
<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/ebola-outbreak-boosts-odds-of-mutation-helping-it-spread.html |title=Ebola Outbreak Boosts Odds of Mutation Helping It Spread |last1=Langreth |first1=Robert |last2=Cortez |first2=Michelle Fay |last3=Lauerman |first3=John |date=October 15, 2014 |work=[[Bloomberg News]] |publisher=[[Bloomberg L.P.]] |accessdate=October 19, 2014 |others=Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images |editor1-last=Gale |editor1-first=Reg |editor2-last=Putka |editor2-first=Gary |editor3-last=Pollack |editor3-first=Andrew |location=[[New York, NY]] |archiveurl=//web.archive.org/web/20141019230955/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-15/ebola-outbreak-boosts-odds-of-mutation-helping-it-spread.html |archivedate=October 19, 2014 |deadurl=no}}</ref>^[1]

<ref name="PubMed-22012269">{{cite journal |url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22012269 |title=Requirements for Empirical Immunogenicity Trials, Rather Than Structure-Based Design, for Developing an Effective HIV Vaccine |last=van Regenmortel |first=M. H. |date=January 2012 |journal=Arch Virol |publisher=Springer |accessdate=19 October 2014 |issue=1 |doi=10.1007/s00705-011-1145-2 |volume=157 |pages=1–20 |pmid=22012269}}</ref>^[2]

^ Langreth, Robert; Cortez, Michelle Fay; Lauerman, John (October 15, 2014). Gale, Reg; Putka, Gary; Pollack, Andrew (eds.). "Ebola Outbreak Boosts Odds of Mutation Helping It Spread". Bloomberg News. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images. New York, NY: Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on October 19, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ van Regenmortel, M. H. (January 2012). "Requirements for Empirical Immunogenicity Trials, Rather Than Structure-Based Design, for Developing an Effective HIV Vaccine". Arch Virol. 157 (1). Springer: 1–20. doi:10.1007/s00705-011-1145-2. PMID 22012269. Retrieved 19 October 2014.

This follow-on to Cite4Wiki is a work in progress. This release should be considered to be an alpha or beta level release. I have been using Cite4Wiki Phoenix to make citations for some time now and found it to be quite useful.

It would be helpful to have input from others on any and all aspects of the tool. This includes anything (e.g. bug reports, desired/missing features, GUI changes, page scraping issues, lack of CS1 compliance, etc.). You can add it to Firefox from Mozilla Add-ons. — Makyen (talk) 23:56, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Duplicate template parameters

T71964

On the October 23 update, templates with duplicate parameters will be tracked by a category defined in MediaWiki:duplicate-args-category.[6][7] -- Gadget850^talk 14:00, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It looks like this new category will apply to all templates, not just citation templates. That will be fun. I could not tell from the code diffs whether there will be an error message associated with this categorization, to make it easier for editors to identify the location of the offending template. Can you tell whether there will be such a message, or whether we'll be able to add one here on the English Wikipedia?

For what it's worth, Citation Bot finds duplicate parameters in citation templates and converts the first instance of each duplicate to |DUPLICATE_parameter-name= (e.g. |DUPLICATE_title=). If there is no error message, we can run Citation Bot on the new category and it will create CS1 "unsupported parameter" errors for us. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:02, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this applies to all templates. The category defaults to Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls. Duplicate parameters will only put the page into the tracking category; there is no provision to display an error. -- Gadget850^talk 17:07, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

How is spring 1969 a date error if a publication dates an issue that way?

I seem to be seeing dates indicated as "spring 1969" or "fall 1993" or "Nov./Dec. 1983" on the original publications showing an error when the date= field of the cite template inserts that value. That seems silly; we ought to be able to declare the exact date of a dated publication that is issued quarterly or bimonthly, for careful bibliographic work. You can find examples by page-searching for "(help)" in my user bibliography for updating articles. This brand-new error message isn't helpful to editors. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

The template enforces the Manual of Style, and none of the dates you specified meet the MOS:DATEFORMAT format standard:

Title. spring 1969. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Title. Spring 1969.
Title. fall 1969. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Title. Fall 1969.
Title. Nov./Dec. 1983. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Title. November–December 1983.

-- Gadget850^talk 17:15, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

@WeijiBaikeBianji: I agree that it is critical for the Wikipedia citation clearly provide accurate date information so users can find the source for careful bibliographic work. Note that this source uses "Fall", while you used "fall" on your userpage. Wikipedia has its own house style for capitalization and punctuation that might be slightly different than some publishers.

BattyBot is fixing incorrect dates like those you mentioned in articles (e.g. this edit from June), but not on user pages. Also note that abbreviated months are also OK if that is consistent with the reference format of the Wikipedia article:

Title. Nov–Dec 1983.

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

In most cases, we are not at a point where the information in a citation can be, or should be, matched character-for-character to the corresponding data provided by the publisher. Like all style manuals I have ever seen, the data from the publisher is adjusted to conform to Citation Style 1. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy replies. I used the examples I just encountered to expand the help page for this error message. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:01, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

"The template enforces the Manual of Style, and none of the dates you specified meet the MOS:DATEFORMAT format standard" - perhaps the template does enforce the MOS itself, but if so it is wrong to do so. That MOS section begins: "These requirements do not apply to dates in quotations or titles. Special rules apply to citations; see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Citation style." - aka WP:CITESTYLE. That section begins "While citations should aim to provide the information listed above, Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style.". If "Spring 1969" is how the source dates itself, that is the correct and only correct dating to use, and it the template's job to allow that - ideally including capitalization at least, but not punctuation. It is entirely wrong to attempt to twist citation dates to meet the general MOS article text dating rules. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm somewhat baffled by what you wrote. CS1 is one of several citation styles in use at Wikipedia. Each of the standard styles listed at WP:CITESTYLE no doubt has its own particular rules for date format. Why should CS1 be any different? CS1 chooses to follow the style rules enumerated in Wikipedia's Manual of Style. If you wish to create articles that comply with APA, or with The Chicago Manual of Style, or whatever, then to be in compliance with the chosen style, you must render dates and other details as the style specifies. This same is true if you wish to use CS1 to style your citations. If you wish to create articles that mimic the styles used by your sources, you are of course free to do so. In that case, CS1 may not be useful to you.

CS1 allows |date=Spring 1969 but not |date=spring 1969. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by If "Spring 1969" is how the source dates itself, that is the correct and only correct dating to use, and it the template's job to allow that - ideally including capitalization at least, but not punctuation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:11, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I concur with Trappist the monk. The citation in question from your user page:

Jensen, Arthur R. (spring 1969). "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?". Harvard Educational Review. 39 (1): 1–123. ISSN 0017-8055. Retrieved 15 October 2014. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

The linked source uses "Spring 1969" so I don't see the issue at all.

I have done a bit of cleanup on dates just to see the problems; most are simple typos that we now hope that editors will catch and repair quickly. -- Gadget850^talk 12:55, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Wiki CRUK John, that's a good point. If the Wikipedia manual of style itself doesn't impose a house style on how dates are mentioned in original sources (as some other style guides, such as those I used to work with in professional editing, do), then Wikipedia's citation templates might just as well allow as valid date formats any date format actually encountered in reliable sources. In any event, once a citation throws an error message and a Wikipedian like me follows the link to the help page, I hope the help page is informative (through specific examples) about what the error is and how to fix it. Thanks for the further comments here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:00, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

CS1 forms a distinct citation style which is described at "Help:Citation Style 1". The "CS1 compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style" section of that document states "CS1 uses Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers §§Dates and years (WP:DATESNO) as the reference for all date format checking performed by Module:Citation/CS1." So although Wikipedia in general does not apply the date rules in Wikipedia's "Manual of Style" to citations, CS1 does. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

But if CS1 enforces date styles more strictly than WP:CITESTYLE requires, the unfortunate consequence is that editors may choose not to use templates for those citations which are acceptable under WP:CITESTYLE but not to the CS1 templates. This means that metadata, etc. is lost, and is surely undesirable? This seems a classic case of the best being the enemy of the good: by being too strict, usefulness may be lost. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:18, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

The bots have reached a point of diminishing returns. Should we remove the date checking altogether? This would allow dates such as "posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2008", "05 tháng 08 năm 2014", "2nd cent.", "31 November<newline>2009" and the like. IF we just relax the error checking, what is allowable? -- Gadget850^talk 20:00, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

@Gadget850: conceptually it's easy for me to answer: in citations, we should allow editors to use date styles according to WP:CITESTYLE, i.e. those which editors have deliberately used and for which there is support in style manuals or published sources. Turning this into an algorithm is a different issue. It does seem to me that anything which is bot-fixable is almost certainly an error and so should be corrected. I myself wouldn't leave "red marking" of supposed date errors in place. At the least it should be possible for an editor to turn it off for individual references.
My real objection is to what seems to be Jc3s5h's view, namely that the cite templates should be restrictive rather than trying to encourage their use by supporting a range of styles where this is possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

We should leave date error messages in place until obviously wrong dates like "12/4/11" and "1975, 1986" have been fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Historically, citation templates were created to produce consistently formatted citations, just like most style guides demand. Any value the parameter values might have as metadata was a by-product. To say that what we really care about is the metadata, and we no longer care that templates tend to produce a consistent style, is a reversal of the original purpose of citation templates, so would require a well-advertised RfC to be accepted. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:12, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

@WeijiBaikeBianji: our MOS does actually specify which date formats can be used for citation dates in an article. Under MOS:DATEUNIFY, it says:

Publication dates in an article's citations should all use the same format, which may be
any format from the "Acceptable date formats" table, or

formats required by the citation style being used.

However, all-numeric date formats other than yyyy-mm-dd must still be avoided.

and:

Access and archive dates in an article's citations should all use the same format, which may be:
yyyy-mm-dd, or

the format used for publication dates in the article, or

the format required for the citation style adopted in the article.

In other words, if a Wikipedia article is citing a newspaper article dated today in the APA style, "2014, October 23" would be the appropriate date format. However, if that same Wikipedia article is using CS1 in its references, then it needs to follow the "Acceptable date formats" table, and the templates used for CS1 style are enforcing those formats.

@Wiki CRUK John and Peter coxhead: CS1 has its own style guide, which is Help:Citation Style 1. If editors want to use APA instead of CS1, and WP:CITESTYLE and MOS:DATEUNIFY both allow that option, then they need to consult the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. However, the CS1 templates are their own style, so editors should not mix and match thinking it's acceptable. Imzadi 1979 → 15:17, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Of course people have no idea there is such a thing as "Citation Style 1" or that they are using it, they just use the tool provided in the default editing window, which gives no indication of this. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 17:06, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: no citation style manual – and I've both them in my academic career and taught postgraduate students how to cite and reference – ever covers all the possible complications in dealing with real publications rather than the idealized ones in the examples in the manual, and I've never come across a journal editor who didn't understand this. No-one is arguing that obviously incorrect dates should not be flagged dealt with, only that there needs to be some way of flexibly dealing with less straightforward cases which do occur (open-ended dates and discontinuous dates are two examples). Peter coxhead (talk) 17:26, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

For me, it's enough to have a help page that lists the actual "error" I'm encountering as I use the templates, with examples that suggest what "problem" has been identified by the automatic check, and what I can do as a careful editor to fix the problem. I attempted to fix the help page that the error message links to as soon as I saw the first part of the helpful discussion here. I have a lot of habits that carry over from years of editing print publications according to the Chicago Manual of Style that I've gradually had to unlearn as I do more editing on Wikipedia. I can unlearn old habits and practice new habits more efficiently if a help page linked to an error message takes me directly to the answer to my problem. (Thanks to all of the editors here for your helpful comments.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:42, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Peter coxhead, above you seemed to argue that CS1 templates should accommodate a range of choices. Many style manuals do mandate certain date formats; a publication date of "July 12, 1962" used as a publication date in APA style would be an obvious error. If someone who will submit a manuscript to a journal that requires APA asked me to copy-edit the manuscript, it would be my job to fix it. But in your earlier post, you seemed to say CS1 should only flag date formats that no English-speaker would ever use. But your later post seems to indicate that a style manual cannot anticipate every situation, and should allow flexibility when it is impossible to both comply with the style manual and correctly convey the date information (which I agree with). So which is your position? Jc3s5h (talk) 18:33, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

They are different but related issues. The issue immediately above, on which it seems we agree, is independent of Wikipedia policies. I would go further within the English Wikipedia, which explicitly allows an extremely wide range of citation styles. The citation templates obviously can't support all of them, but I believe the value of the templates – including, but not limited to, some degree of consistency, error-checking, and providing metadata – is such that they should try to support more variation than would be permitted within in a "normal" publication. Where exactly to draw the line is open to discussion. I assume we would all agree that "31 February 2014" should be flagged as an error. However, although it's desirable to standardize "spring" to "Spring", it's perfectly meaningful to a reader, and I'm not convinced that it's sensible to generate a red error notice in an article in such cases. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:39, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The advantage of limiting the choices in CS1 is when an editor (or sometimes, even a bot) comes an article that uses CS1 templates, but the style of the parameters is inconsistent, the editor immediately knows what to change them to, rather than having to go through the article history to see which style was first, or count the instances of different usages to see which one has a plurality. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:49, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

"Limiting choices" is a broad and less than ideal phrasing. More palatable subsets would be error detection and consistency enforcement. But the primary purpose of the templates is to format the supplied data; all the rest is added layers of complexity. While it seems to reasonable to go as far as checking for missing data and outright errors (like "32 May"), perhaps even capitalization and quasi-errors like "Juni" and "Oktober", I wonder how far the template itself should enforce consistency. Especially in matters where even human judgements might well differ. Would it not be better to have some alternate method of doing that, rather than loading the template with code for enforcing somewhat subjective and potentially variable notions of consistency? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:45, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Removing deprecated parameters

I have removed parameters |albumlink=, |albumtype=, |artist=, |publisherid= from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox. The parameters were deprecated when {{cite AV media}}, {{cite AV media notes}}, and {{cite DVD notes}} were migrated from {{citation/core}} to Module:Citation/CS1.

I am currently running an AWB script that looks for these parameters and am replacing what ones I find – there aren't many.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

What about |notestitle=? Have we discussed |titlelink=, |director =, |titleyear =, ? -- Gadget850^talk 16:54, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Here are some old conversations

Music release notes

AV media notes

DVD notes

So, yeah, we have talked about them. A CirrusSearch insource:// search turned up one instance of |notestitle= that isn't part of a CS1 template. There are less than 20 instances of |titleyear=. The same CirrusSearch for |director= turns up nearly 450,000 pages. I tried doing a regex search that forces CirrusSearch to include the pipe. That got the count down to 8800ish. A more complex regex search restricting the search to {{cite anything}} got me a gateway timeout. Which pretty much leaves me with brute force testing each of the 7,800ish pages that use these template

My script is also looking for |titleyear= and |director=.

Any instances of these parameters that are still in the wild after the next live module update will cause unknown parameter errors. We should probably add them to Module:Citation/CS1/Suggestions

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:51, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

My script has finished so I've now removed |director=, |notestitle=, and |titleyear= from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox. I have also removed |day= with attendant changes to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.

My script is currently working on replacing |cointerviewers= with |others=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:30, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

As part of this change, I've made |interviewer= and new parameter |interviewers= 'official' aliases of |others= and tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to use the meta parameter Others. I'll run a script after the next update to harmonize the |interviewer=, |cointerviewers=, and |others= parameters in {{cite interview}}.

It was probably premature to change |cointerviewers= to |others=. Mea culpa.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:11, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Chapters in edited collections not working right

Hello, I have noticed that the chapters in edited collections are not working correctly. For example, the following template:

{{cite book |first=Marie |last=Lall |title=Indian education policy under the NDA government |work=Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism |editor1=Katherine Adeney |editor2=Lawrence Saez |publisher=Routledge |year=2005 |ISBN=0-415-35981-3}}

is producing the following displayed text:

Lall, Marie (2005). Katherine Adeney; Lawrence Saez, eds. Indian education policy under the NDA government. Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism (Routledge). ISBN 0-415-35981-3.

The correct display (which used to be the case till recently) is:

Lall, Marie (2005). "Indian education policy under the NDA government", Katherine Adeney; Lawrence Saez (eds) Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism (Routledge). ISBN 0-415-35981-3.

It looks like there was an update to the template recently, which is breaking things. Specifically, the authors of the chapter and the editors of the collection are being combined. The chapter title and the book title are being combined. This is very confusing! Kautilya3 (talk) 14:57, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

You have to specify a chapter for the chapter styling to take effect:

{{cite book |first=Marie |last=Lall |chapter=Indian education policy under the NDA government |title=Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism |editor1=Katherine Adeney |editor2=Lawrence Saez |publisher=Routledge |year=2005 |ISBN=0-415-35981-3}}

Lall, Marie (2005). "Indian education policy under the NDA government". In Katherine Adeney; Lawrence Saez (eds.). Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-35981-3.

|work= is not synonymous with |title=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

cite journal and quarterly publications

I took a quick search through the archives but I don't see mention of this. Some of the historical journals that I reference for railroad history are issued quarterly and their issue dates read like "First quarter YYYY" through "Fourth quarter YYYY". When I put that information into the date parameter, the page gets added to CS1 errors: dates even though this specification is valid according to WP:SEASON. Typing "the first quarter of YYYY" instead of "first quarter YYYY" seems nonsensical for a citation, so I've used the shorter of the two versions.

So what I guess I'm asking is this: how should I be entering journal issue dates when the journal is issued quarterly and specifies the quarter number in its official issue date rather than the month name? Thanks! Slambo (Speak) 16:33, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

CS1 doesn't support quarterly dates per se; and WP:DATESNO, from which CS1 takes its date format guidance, is mute on the topic. You might write |date=January–March YYYY.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:48, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I would not change the description of the date that the journal used; the reader might wonder if the quarters are based on the journal's fiscal year or the calendar year observed by society in general. It's best if the words in the citation match the words on the cover of the journal (but minor changes in capitalization and punctuation are OK; "FIRST QUARTER" could be changed to "First quarter.") If you don't like the red error message, format the citation by hand and don't use CS1. CS1 is incapable of describing some sources. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:56, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

You could also use |issue=Fourth quarter YYYY. I don't think that would break anything, but I am wrong multiple times every day. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

You could also split it: |date=YYYY and |issue=Fourth quarter. Both |date= and |issue= are included in the COinS metadata. Splitting would at least allow the citation to sort by year.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

This would be complicated if the periodical also has volume and issue numbers. I suppose the one in my case could be done as |volume=11 and |issue=2 – Second quarter along with |year=1973. Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 23:49, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Or we could add "First Quarter XXXX", "1st Quarter XXXX", "Q1 XXXX", etc to the error checking as allowed options and make a note that just as we capitalize season names when used as dates of publication, we have a set of allowed formats for these quarterly publications. I'm neutral on capitalization on the word quarter. but I would recommend the Q1 type format as an option to go along with abbreviated month names in other dates. Imzadi 1979 → 01:23, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Is this one of those 'great minds' coincidences? I've been wondering much the same thing: if MOS is mute on a topic, we can make our own rule. I don't think that ordinal quarters should be used because MOS:BADDATEFORMAT proscribes the use of ordinals in other date styles. I'm ambivalent about Q1, Q2, ...; too informal I think. Certainly First quarter, Second quarter, ... Should quarter be capitalized or no?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:17, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Quarterly journal date format

I have a copy of the Second Quarter 1973 issue of Automobile Quarterly that I have used as a reference in articles on Triumph, Messerschmitt, and ALCO automobiles in general, and on the Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 and first generation of the Pontiac Grand Am in particular, as the magazine has articles on these cars.

However, the date given for the magazine is "Second Quarter 1973", and this triggers an error response in the "date" entry in Template:Cite journal. Is there a solution to this, other than just giving a year and a volume and issue number instead of the date as stated in the magazine?

Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 14:22, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

This is the same topic as Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6#cite journal and quarterly publications.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:42, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

ASIN

At {{asin}} is this note:

If the ASIN begins with a number, it is a standard ISBN; please use "ISBN xxxxxxxxxx" instead of ASIN xxxxxxxxxx, as this will allow us to link to other sites as well as Amazon.

Using |isbn= links to Special:BookSources where there is some hope of finding information about the book so we aren't simply feeding readers to amazon.com.

We should add this to the documentation for |asin= shouldn't we? And that made me wonder if we shouldn't just treat such |asin= values as if they were |isbn=. Obviously we can't treat the alphanumeric asins as isbns so those would still render as they do now.

Here are a couple of (not very good) example citations. The first uses |asin=4081097011 and |asin-tld=co.jp:

"幽☆遊☆白書其之一 (1) 霊界死闘編(SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (単行本)" [Yū Yū Hakusho (1) Spiritual Guide: Deathmatch (SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (Paperback)] (in Japanese). Amazon.com. ASIN 4081097011. Retrieved September 2, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check |asin= value (help)

The second uses |isbn=4081097011:

"幽☆遊☆白書其之一 (1) 霊界死闘編(SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (単行本)" [Yū Yū Hakusho (1) Spiritual Guide: Deathmatch (SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (Paperback)] (in Japanese). Amazon.com. ISBN 4081097011. Retrieved September 2, 2013.

The documentation for |asin-tld= needs to be updated to list or refer to all of the ccTLDs that can be found at amazon.com#Website.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:01, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I was looking at this last week.

The Amazon ASIN should be only used for Amazon unique products. I know it is used quite a bit for video games published in Japan; I added the TLD codes to the CS1 core at the request of WikiProject Video games. But a quick sample shows that {{ASIN}} is often mis-used as a citation template; see The Highway Code for example. This lazy use needs to be replaced with a full citation template where it fits the established style.

The CS1 templates support ca, cn, co.jp, co.uk, de, es, fr, it, so we need to add z.cn (China), amazon.in (India), amazon.com.mx (Mexico), amazon.com.au (Australia) and amazon.com.br (Brazil). -- Gadget850^talk 21:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

India is already supported. I don't see any reason to do anything about z.cn since it gets mapped to amzon.cn. I have added support in the sandbox for Australia, Brazil, and Mexico.

Chandra, Bipan. History of Modern India. ASIN 8125036849. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – India already supported; this from the live version of the module
Corris, Peter. Silent Kill. ASIN B00G65FW0Q. – Auatralia
Follett, Ken. Eternidade por um fio: Terceiro livro da trilogia O Século. ASIN B00KI2HDCS. – Brazil
Jakovlevs, Valerijs. Mazatlan Travel Guide. ASIN B005JFBRFS. – Mexico

Still, my main question remains unanswered. When |asin= is a number, that number is an ISBN. Should we treat it as an ISBN and link it to Special:BookSources?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:53, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I would rather see a bot or an AWB user convert ASINs that are ISBNs into ISBN parameters. That would follow the principle of linking to neutral sources for references instead of to specific vendors (see also WP:ADV). Linking an ASIN to Special:Booksources would be contrary to the principle of least surprise for readers. Converting ASINs to ISBNs would also allow us to validate those ISBNs and flag errors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:22, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Point. So perhaps I'll make us a CS1 maintenance category and add code to categorize citations that use all numeric values for |asin=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget that not all ISBNs are all-numeric: nine digits followed by the letter "X" is a valid ISBN format. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:05, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, not forgotten, I merely misspoke. In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, the value in |asin= is passed to the code that validates ISBNs. If the asin value is a legitimate ISBN, the page is added to category Category:CS1 maint: ASIN uses ISBN.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:26, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Now that Category:CS1 maint: ASIN uses ISBN exists, I've written an AWB script that removes |asin-tld= and removes or replaces |asin= with |isbn= when |asin= has the form of a 10-digit ISBN. The script validates the content of |isbn= before replacement or removal.

I've noticed that the value assigned to some |asin= identifiers is 9 digits. It occurs to me to wonder if we shouldn't be doing at least a length check on the |asin= value. So I've hacked the sand box:

Title. ASIN 123456789. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)
Title. ASIN B234A678D. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)
Title. ASIN 123GOOD890. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)
Title. ASIN B1234A6789D. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)

Anyone ever seen a functioning |asin= that is not 10 characters? Ever seen one that is anything but uppercase letters and digits?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

There was a link to a bare-bones description of ASINs in the Refs at Amazon Standard Identification Number. I just added another. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've tweaked the test a bit so that it will emit an error message if a 10-digit |asin= value fails the isbn10 test:

Title. ASIN 1421560046. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)
Title. ASIN 1421560045. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help)

Do we think its true that alpha-numeric asins always begin with a letter? If we do, that is one last thing to test (the third example above would be an error condition).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Assuming that we do, I've tweaked amazon() so that now mixed alpha numeric asins must begin with an uppercase alpha:

Title. ASIN 123456789. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – not enough characters
Title. ASIN B234A678D. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – not enough characters
Title. ASIN 1234BAD89. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – mixed alpha numeric begins with digit
Title. ASIN B1234G6789. – pass
Title. ASIN B1234A6789D. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – too many characters
Title. ASIN B1234-6789. {{cite book}}: Check |asin= value (help) – invalid character

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Cite DVD notes

I propose to update {{Cite DVD notes}} (366 transclusions) to {{Cite AV media notes}} (7666 transclusions). Thoughts? -- Gadget850^talk 11:48, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I presume by this that you mean to redirect {{cite DVD notes}} to {{cite AV media notes}}. Module:Citation/CS1 handles them as if they were the same so I see no problem doing this and think that we should. I don't see any reason to have a separate CS1 template specifically for DVD notes.

Is this related to the removal of |people= and |medium= from Cite AV media/doc (diff) and |titlelink= from Cite AV media notes/doc (diff)?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:23, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you meant "to {{Cite AV media notes}}". I would update the uses with AWB as well. And I thought we had deprecated those parameters. -- Gadget850^talk 12:42, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, copy pasta strikes again. Fixed.

The parameters that Module:Citation/CS1 considers deprecated are listed at Help:CS1_errors#Cite_uses_deprecated_parameters. As a backup check, one can always look in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist for parameter names assigned the value false. For example, ['albumlink'] = false.

I would like to see us deprecate |people= I think. This because that parameter seems to collect a bunch of stuff that ought not be there: |people=Sam Smith (Director), Joe Shmoe (Producer). Such parameter values do rather add clutter to the metadata. Don't know what the proper solution is but we should bend our minds to finding one.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:41, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Nowrap for accessdate

I was just thinking a bit about this yesterday and then overnight, a ping from Editor GoingBatty caused me to do this experiment. In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox I have added ... to the value assigned to |accessdate=. The code looks for the three MOS compliant date formats and wraps accordingly. YYYY-MM-DD is completely wrapped and for the other two, Mmm dd, yyyy and dd Mmm yyyy, the code wraps everything but the last space and the year. Invalid date formats aren't wrapped.

Live

Sandbox

"Title". Retrieved 2014-10-18.

"Title". Retrieved 2014-10-18.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

I have seen ISBNs that wrapped inappropriately so those and perhaps other identifiers are candidates for nowrap. Is there anything else that should be prevented from wrapping in inappropriate places?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:30, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad this is getting some attention. But am I understanding correctly? You think it's OK to wrap between October and 18, but not between 18, and 2014?

Lack of sensible wrapping in ISBNs, DOIs, and so on is one of my biggest peeves about the citation templates, so I hope those can be rationalized as well. But they're way too long to be simply nowrapped. EEng (talk) 14:36, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Better table.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but what you said is, "the code wraps everything but the last space and the year." That sounds wrong. The effect should be October{{nbsp}}18, 2014 or 18{{nbsp}}October, 2014, but it sounds like you're saying something like October 18,{{nbsp}}2014. Have I got it wrong? EEng (talk) 23:02, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@EEng: I read that as, "the code wraps everything [in the span tags] but the last space and the year". Imzadi 1979 → 23:13, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

This: October 18, 2014, 18 October 2014, and 2014-10-18.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Just curious: 1. Why is this about accessdate and not the other CS1 dates? 2. Are we talking about appearance in the reflist and the citation tooltip? ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 23:39, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

1. No doubt there are other things that could/should be given the nowrap css class. |accessdate= is convenient for testing. And it is at the end of the rendered citation so perhaps has a greater chance of wrapping improperly. 2. Yes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok. I would ask how publications with high MOS standards would handle this. I'm thinking they would break a date only at a comma, but it should be possible to verify that with a style manual. Or the question could be asked at WP:Reference desk/Language. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 00:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

What is a high MOS standard?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:25, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I mean close attention to matters of form as opposed to substance, such as is used at newspapers like NYT. They have what I would call a high MOS standard, whereas my local town newspaper has a lower MOS standard. Btw, I don't see any guidance on the question in WP:DATES. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 00:41, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't know about them. We have MOS:NBSP and if you read between the lines at WP:DATESNO (see the ranges section at MOS:DOB) you can see how dates are formatted to prevent line-wrapping.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:00, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

This is very important... take a look at WP:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Non-breaking_spaces. You can't infer much if anything from the absence of nbsp at any given point in any given example. For whatever reason, there hasn't been enough trouble about where nbsp is/should be used for MOS to give comprehensive treatment of the question (with respect to dates or, generally, anywhere else, with a maybe a few exceptions). EEng (talk) 01:47, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and asked the question at WP:Reference desk/Language, without mentioning the reason for asking, as that might affect the replies. There are a few smart language guys watching that page. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 01:57, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I think that's an extremely poor idea. Most editors will say, with some justice, that this kind of machinery should follow MOS, and if MOS needs clarification it should be done in a MOS discussion. By asking at Refdesk you're just inviting a lot of personal opinions or old remembered style rules. EEng (talk) 03:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Did you read what I posted there? I specifically said I was not looking for personal opinions. If any are given, I will ignore them. If our MOS were clarified as to this question, I suspect it would be made consistent with major style manuals—why wouldn't it?—which is what I asked for in my post. The major style manuals are regularly updated per modern trends, so they don't represent "old remembered style rules". That said, it wouldn't be my first extremely poor idea! ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 03:54, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I just consulted my three style guides, (APA 6th ed., CMOS 16th ed., and MLA 7th ed.), and all three are silent on this issue. That's not too surprising to me since this is more a matter of typesetting. MOS:NBSP does say, "It is desirable to prevent linebreaks ... within expressions such as 17 kg, AD 565, 2:50 pm; in other places where breaking across lines might be disruptive to the reader ...." I've always interpreted that to mean that it is undesirable to have a number separated from other content to which is explicitly related. I edit a lot of highway articles, and we encourage fellow project members to use non-breaking spaces in things like "exit 326", "Route 66" or "US 41" to keep the number together with the text because that is one name. That name forms a unit that should be parsed together. This follows the advice and review commentary I've received in working on Featured Articles over the years, and I would say that the day of a month and the month are similarly a single unit. Now in WP:MOS#Years and longer periods, and advice I've been given over the years, tells me that years can be parsed as a separate unit.One of the examples in the list following that quotation from MOS:NBSP above shows "May 2014" with a non-breaking space to keep them together. Sadly, no examples deal with full dates or months and days taken together. <span style="color:Imzadi 1979 → 05:40, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the research and the rest. That satisfies me, and it sounds consistent with Ttm's opening post. Ttm, you could collapse beginning with my 00:19, 19 October comment, if you like, as everything after it followed from it. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 06:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I have created a function nowrap_date() that, at the moment, can protect any date in one of the three formats YYYY-MM-DD, DD Mmmm YYYY, and Mmmm DD, YYYY. These are the only allowable date formats for |accessdate= so if it is to be used with other date-holding parameters it will need to be expanded to support date formats allowable there.

Here are the other date formats:

Mmmm DD–DD, YYYY
DD–DD Mmmm YYYY
DD Mmmm – DD Mmmm YYYY
Mmmm DD – Mmmm DD, YYYY
DD Mmmm YYYY – DD Mmmm YYYY
Mmmm DD, YYYY – Mmmm DD, YYYY
Winter YYYY–YY
Summer YYYY–YYYY
Mmmm YYYY – Mmmm YYYY
Mmmm–Mmmm YYYY
Mmmm YYYY
YYY–YYY or YYY–YYYY or YYYY–YYYY or YYYY–YY

Question 2: If the answer to Question 1 is affirmative, then where should browsers be allowed to break the other dates? It seems that for #1 and #2, the rule is the same as for date formats DD Mmmm YYYY and Mmmm DD, YYYY but what about the others?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget DD Mmm YYYY, and Mmm DD, YYYY (abbreviated months). Does Mmmm–Mmmm YYYY and Mmmm YYYY include the seasons too? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 19:28, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Error messages across the entire project

Please stop playing around with {{cite web}} immediately. For the first time in years, almost all preformatted dates and accessdates are suddenly "rejected" by this template with a nasty error message. Please put it back where it was. These are not "errors". Thanks, Poeticbent talk 18:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Poeticbent: Please give a few examples. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I really have no time for this but here are a few examples: 1.^[1] 2.^[2] 3.^[3] 4.^[4] 5.^[5]

^ "Stutthof (Sztutowo): Full Listing of Camps, Poland" (Introduction). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2014-10-7. Source: "Atlas of the Holocaust" by Martin Gilbert (1982). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |format= (help)
^ Grossman, Vasily (1946), The Treblinka Hell [Треблинский ад] (PDF file, direct download 2.14 MB), Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House (online version), retrieved 5 October 2014., original in Russian: Гроссман В.С., Повести, рассказы, очерки [Stories, Journalism, and Essays], Воениздат 1958. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |publisher= and |quote= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
^ Sereny, Gitta (1974, 1995, 2013). Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (Google Books preview). Random House. pp. 54–. ISBN 144644967X. Retrieved 5 October 2014. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
^ Burian, Michal; Aleš (2002). "Assassination — Operation Arthropoid, 1941–1942" (PDF file, direct download 7.89 MB). Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. Retrieved 5 October 2014.. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
^ Browning, Christopher R. (1992; 1998). "Arrival in Poland" (PDF file, direct download 7.91 MB complete). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Penguin Books. pp. 52, 77, 79, 80. Retrieved October 5, 2014. Also: PDF cache archived by WebCite. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); External link in |quote= (help)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Poeticbent (talk • contribs) 18:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

See the linked help page, which references MOS:BADDATEFORMAT

"2014-10-7" is missing a leading 0
"5 October 2014." includes a period
"1974, 1995, 2013" my swag is this should use |origyear=
"5 October 2014." includes a period
"1992; 1998" is an ambiguous date; this should use |origyear=

-- Gadget850^talk 19:03, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) OK, here we go. In (1) there is |accessdate=2014-10-7 this should be |accessdate=2014-10-07 - a zero is missing; in (2) there is |accessdate=5 October 2014. this should be |accessdate=5 October 2014 - the full stop is invalid; in (3) there is |year=1974, 1995, 2013 this should be |origyear=1974|year=2013 - only one year per parameter should be given, and the 1995 is superfluous since all we need are the year of the edition that was actually used plus (optionally) the original year of publication; in (4) there is |accessdate=5 October 2014. - full stop again; in (5) there is |year=1992; 1998 this should be |origyear=1992|year=1998 as with (3). --Redrose64 (talk) 19:05, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Please stop defacing articles with this nonsense. A zero missing in 7: 07? A full stop again after 2014? How many thousands of articles have them... and, for God's sake, who cares if the full stop is invalid! The dates are there. They are readable and easy to trace. Unless your intention is to fix all these "errors" yourself, please let go of scare tactics. Thanks, Poeticbent talk 19:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

The intent is to improve the quality of the citations by providing error checking that complies with the Manual of Style. We have had the date checking for several months, but have not displayed the error. This has allowed bots to repair thousands of bad dates. But now we are down to dates that cannot be automatically fixed and need human intervention, thus the errors now show. -- Gadget850^talk 19:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

The "errors" do not show, only the "error message" shows like a sore thumb. The actual numbers (which are dates added by users in a matter-of-factly way) remain hidden from the reader. This whole affair is ripe for some kind of intervention. I wonder how many articles are affected by this new red monster across the entire project. Poeticbent talk 20:11, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

What you're asking is that a programmer should (1) be able to imagine every possible way that an editor could screw up a date in a way that doesn't rise to the level of "error", and (2) spend the time to include toleration of those screw-ups in the code. Have you done much programming? That's simply not practical short of something approaching artificial intelligence. Feel free to start an RfC to ask whether the community would rather have the errors or the red errors reminding editors to correct the errors. I'll be there to negate your !vote. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 20:36, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

You can see the articles with date errors by looking at Category:CS1 errors: dates, which currently has 60,874 articles in it, which is a decline on what it was the last time I looked before the error message was turned on. This is good as it was steadily rising before that and the BOTs could only fix some of the new article errors. Keith D (talk) 23:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Do you guys hear me at all... or you're just to wrapped up in your own chain of sorrow. Twenty four hours went by, and the number of articles affected by this new red monster has gone from 60,874 articles to 60,698 total. Some 176 articles were fixed... sixty thousand six hundred ninety eight articles remain defaced. At this rate, all silly pseudo-errors will be fixed in 344 days providing that no new articles get written and no new references added with even more of those. I'm taking this page off my watchlist. Poeticbent talk 23:25, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
- Whilst I want to remain neutral on the actual issue myself, my overall feeling is that consensus is against you on this thread, at least. I think that, if you want to overturn this, the best way to go is to follow others' advice here and start an RfC. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:03, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Part of me says this thread should be allowed to die a natural death. According to the OP, s/he has given up trying to get through to us morons. But I'm the only one who has mentioned RfC, so if we're encouraging the OP to start one I guess I should clarify what I meant. For starters, I said "feel free to", which is not the same as "advice" to do so. To the contrary, I think it would be a really bad idea, and a waste of people's time. I was not referring to an RfC to ask whether CS1 should flag some some undefinable set of date errors that don't actually prevent the reader from understanding the date. As I said, that is not practical, and we don't ask programmers to do impractical things. That RfC would be a snow close before it got started. What I meant was an RfC to ask whether CS1 should flag any date errors at all. I was only half serious about that, I know it would fail, and I don't think it's what the OP wanted. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 14:34, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

An obscure discussion higher up the page has suddenly generated '000s of error messages all over the wiki, many relating to very simple "errors" that are generated by current "official" template-filling tools inbuilt to the editing page that throw up dates like "2012 Mar". You can't fix those by bot??? Really? You can't change the tools first??? There is in any case no ambiguity there, so no actual need to fix anything. I don't see why a bot can't fix other errors like filling leading zeros to numbers between 1-9. The whole situation is absurd. Look at Pancreatic cancer for example. No-one is ever going to fix all all these errors, and realy why should they bother. I would certainly support an RFC. Let me know if one launches. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:03, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Wiki CRUK John: BattyBot is fixing the errors you describe. It runs about once a month and looks like it will stop by to edit Pancreatic cancer in the next day or two. "2012 Oct" is not a valid date per the MOS, so it is flagged as invalid so that someone, or some bot, will fix it in order to present valid dates to our readers.

The date error messages were exposed for a while in 2013, then hidden for about a year after this RFC resulted in their being hidden until a bot could go through the error category and fix as many as were feasible. We did that, and the vast majority of remaining date errors require human intervention. We have solid evidence that at least some human editors are motivated by the red error messages to bring the dates into compliance with the MOS, which is linked from the help page that you see when you click on "help" immediately following the error message.

We have already alerted the maintainers of some citation-filling tools that their tools were being used to generate citations with formatting errors, and many of those tools have been fixed. If you use a particular tool that is generating citations with errors, contact the maintainer of that tool, and feel free to refer them to this Talk page for assistance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

When you wrote No-one is ever going to fix all all these errors, I expected a sea of red error messages. I found 13 in a list of 107; I fixed the five date errors and the six accessdate errors. The two url-missing-title errors (currently 100 and 102) are left for editors more knowledgeable on the topic to fix. It took me about five minutes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:52, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks both, but @Trappist the monk, you know what you are doing, which most editors won't. Factor in a trip to the MOS to try to work out what is wrong, and the initial fix time rises hugely. Even at 5 minutes, with 68K pages to fix, and presumably new ones being added all the time, that's still 6,000-odd working hours. @Jonesey95, I have no idea who, if anyone, maintains the drop-down cite tool in the standard editing window, which I think isn't even a preference option nowadays. Do you? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 18:06, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

That would be Wikipedia:RefToolbar. -- Gadget850^talk 18:50, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I've raised it there, & we will see what, if anything happens. It still seems bizarre that in one part of the forest there is a tool busy generating "errors" and in another a team busy fixing them, without fixing the tool. Although some of the people seem the same. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:29, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that's a lot of hours. But those errors were not created overnight; it has taken us multiple years to make them all and we didn't even know that we were doing it. Now the foot is in the other shoe.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I worked error tracking cats for some time before the messages were turned on. I could see the messages, but only because I made some modification to my local configuration that I can't remember—something that would be beyond most editors even if they could find the instructions on how to do it. I remember thinking, "of course there are a lot of errors, the editors can't see the messages." I think being a quality encyclopedia, which is the goal, includes consistency in these date values. Since citations are at the core of what WP is about, their quality is as important as anything else an editor does. As for the backlog, see WP:WIP. We'll get there. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 18:45, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the error-fixing rate, my experience has been that once I get going, I can fix about 50–100 errors per hour, depending on how easy they are to fix and whether I need to click through to additional web pages to locate an unambiguous date. 60,000 errors will take a while to fix, but luckily, there is no deadline. Most of the erroneous dates are still human-readable and more or less understandable, so often it is a question of fixing formatting rather than content. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Help:CS1_errors#Controlling_error_message_display. Pretty much just copy and paste.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

@Wiki CRUK John: You posted the same comment in two sections on this page. See my response to you at the end of the #Time to show date error messages? section above. GoingBatty (talk) 00:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

similar comments - replied above. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:29, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Answered at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar#Toolbar generating date errors. -- Gadget850^talk 14:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

One more issue has surfaced since: in (4), the presence of both |accessdate=26 June 2008 and |accessdate=5 October 2014. puts this page in Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls --Redrose64 (talk) 14:21, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Lua module and css presentation

Pretty much invisible to users, but I have changed Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox so that ... tags that effect how something is presented to readers are now in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox in a new table called citation_config.presentation. There you will find the error message, accessdate, bidirectional isolation, kerning, nowrap, and small caps styling. Error message styling was part of citation_config.messages which seemed wrong to me because the styling isn't a message.

This change required minor changes to format_script_value() and to |authorformat=scap and |editorformat=scap handling. It also required a rewrite of kern_quotes(). I think that those changes haven't broken anything.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author=Author\|authorformat=scap\|chapter='leading' and trailing single 'quotes'\|editor=Editor\|editorformat=scap\|sandbox=no\|script-title=en:Script Title}}`
Live	Author. "'leading' and trailing single 'quotes'". In Editor (ed.). Script Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|script-title=`: unknown language code (help); Unknown parameter `\|authorformat=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|editorformat=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	Author. "'leading' and trailing single 'quotes'". In Editor (ed.). Script Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|script-title=`: unknown language code (help); Unknown parameter `\|authorformat=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|editorformat=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000001C0-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFAuthor" class="citation book cs1">Author. "'leading' and trailing single 'quotes'". In Editor (ed.). <bdi lang="en" >Script Title</bdi>.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=%27leading%27+and+trailing+single+%27quotes%27&rft.btitle=Script+Title&rft.au=Author&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988"> <code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: <code class="cs1-code">|author=</code> has generic name ([[Help:CS1 errors#generic_name|help]]); Invalid <code class="cs1-code">|script-title=</code>: unknown language code ([[Help:CS1 errors#script_parameter|help]]); Unknown parameter <code class="cs1-code">|authorformat=</code> ignored ([[Help:CS1 errors#parameter_ignored|help]]); Unknown parameter <code class="cs1-code">|editorformat=</code> ignored ([[Help:CS1 errors#parameter_ignored|help]])

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:03, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Presentation style for major works (italics) and short works (quotes) and |quote= should be moved there as well. We should look at using <cite>...</cite> for works, but we would need a change to common.css for short works. |quote= should be styled with <q>. -- Gadget850^talk 17:11, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok. Where we apply styling, those bits of a rendered citation are held in citation_config.presentation. Where we are simply storing and adding static text to template-supplied information, those bits are held in citation_config.messages. I put these citations here so that I could know if I have obviously broken something. Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox is a bit of a mess right now and I'll get round to cleaning up after myself later.

I think that I've found a bug; under Additional text, the citations that read 'written at Antiqua' are only halfway right. The first one should read 'Written at Antigua'. Somehow we've lost the capitalizer. It's broken in the live version too, so it isn't a result of today's changes. Fixed.

Style Title. some text from quote parameter. "Chapter". Title. "Title". Journal. "Chapter" [Translated chapter title]. Title. "Title" [Translated article title]. Journal. "Chapter" [Translated Chapter]. Title. Title [Translated book title]. //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Additional text Title (in Kyrgyz). Author. Written at Antigua. Title. St Lucia. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help) Author, written at Antigua, Title, St Lucia {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help) Title (2nd ed.). Title – via some other source. Title. Smitco (published 2013). 2014. "Title". Journal. Smitco (published 2013). 2014.

Quoted text is now wrapped in <q>...</q>. I have not done anything about <cite>...</cite>. I have seen quite a few articles that make some use of <cite>...</cite> so if we make changes to common.css that will need to be considered.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

My head hurts. As of 28 October, <cite> is defined as:

The cite element represents a reference to a creative work. It must include the title of the work or the name of the author (person, people or organization) or an URL reference, which may be in an abbreviated form as per the conventions used for the addition of citation metadata.[8]

So it looks like both the author and the title should now be wrapped in <cite> for the proper semantics. The CSS for <cite> is italic presentation, and that is not appropriate for short works or an author. We can fix that by adding rules in Common.css, such as:

.quoted-title:before {font-style: normal; content: '\22';}
.quoted-title{font-style: normal;}
.quoted-title:after {font-style: normal; content: '\22';}

Thus, <cite class="quoted-title">...</cite> would present in an upright font and enclosed in quotes. We could add a similar class for author presentations, such as cite-author.

I cannot find any references on using cite for included works or for authors. We need to solicit opinions from @Edokter: and @Redrose64:. -- Gadget850^talk 21:11, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

It seems that W3C's definition is a bit unsettled. If that's true, I'm content to wait on them. We could do <cite>...</cite> for titles and chapters in {{cite book}} and for titles in {{cite journal}}, etc and do nothing with authors for the time being.

And reading their examples, there's <time>...</time> so I suppose we need to think about that one also.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Small caps

Is writing the editor's name in large and small caps on purpose, or is something broken? I've never seen a citation anywhere, inside or outside Wikipedia, that used large and small caps. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:50, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I have seen it in some, and |authorformat= was added to the module early on with no discussion. |authorformat=scap will style the name as smallcaps. |authorformat=vanc is used in a number of medical articles to trim the first name to an initial, along with other display changes. Looks like I never documented |authorformat=scap -- Gadget850^talk 21:30, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Jc3s5h: Looks like |authorformat=scap is causing the small caps. That's much better than using {{smallcaps}} (or its redirect {{aut}}) - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mesoamerica/Citations and articles within that WikiProject for many examples. GoingBatty (talk) 21:37, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Monkbot has had its beady little eye on {{aut}} for a while now. I'm glad I rediscovered |authorformat=scap so that changing all of those |author= parameters will be mostly invisible to those communities.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I believe that {{aut}} prevents Monkbot from fixing deprecated |coauthors= parameters, so if there is a nice way to get rid of it while maintaining editors' chosen citation styling in the article, that would be useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

There's no reason to use small caps in this way; it's deprecated in the main MOS and shouldn't be used in citations. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:05, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: There is, see edits like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Why Are Publishers and Editors Wasting Time Formatting Citations?

This blog post may be if interest. It's not Wikipedia specific, but a lot of what it says is applicable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:55, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Good article. It seems to be a vindication of our citation template system. -- Gadget850^talk 13:21, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Good post. Carpenter concludes "To implement these suggestions would require a cultural shift in the current publication process." It's worse than that: e-publishers will have to abandon the revenue they get from disclosing citations. Of course this is largely being taken out of their hands by various data aggregators, but they won't go along easily. Expect echoes of the pointless MPAA rearguard actions. I disagree with the "vindication" idea though, he rather is arguing for citations that can be verified against structured metadata. We really need to make progress on a trusted central WMF-wide repository service for language-independent bibliographic metadata that all projects can draw upon when vetting and rendering citations. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

There is this: Tools for using wikidata items as citations. <rant>But I think that any real global use of wikidata for anything must, must be accompanied with changes to the way humans interact with the data. For example, this thing: {{Q|1645493}} produces this:

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Q1645493)

But how could you possibly know that just by looking at {{Q|1645493}}? Or that {{Q|1}} is Universe (Q1)? Human readable access to wikidata is a must have.</rant>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, the example there was this:

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Q1645493) => {{cite item|Q1645493}}
- {{cite item|Q1645493}}

That's not too hard to read in the rendered form, but you're right that the number itself is just a number. Of course, so is an ISBN, a DOI, an LCCN, an OpenLibraryid, or an OCLCno. Don't people routinely rely on those? The real issue is that the mechanism must have a transparent way to correct errors while maintaining a history as a safeguard against vandalism. So far as possible, it should happen without need for human intervention other than to say "yes, that's the right one". If the human editor provides one of the accepted unique identifiers, the tools should automagically provide as many of the equivalent identifiers as they can, particularly favouring online-accessible verification. At least one of those identifiers must be human-readable in the print-form of the WP article.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:56, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Citing multiple contributions to a work

Suppose I need to cite a number of contributions to a single work. One way of doing this, widely accepted in style manuals, is to cite the contribution followed by "in" followed by a "short hand" for the work (itself possibly placed in a Bibliography section). Thus:

Jones, R. (2001). "Rotation". pp. 11-34. In Smith (2001).
Halsted, F. (2001). "Distortion". pp. 124-156. In Smith (2001).
Smith, P. ed. (2001). Geometric transformations. New York: Wiley.

This used to work nicely using the cite/citation templates, but now throws a missing title error:

Jones, R. (2001). "Rotation". pp. 11–34. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) In Smith 2001.
Halsted, F. (2001). "Distortion". pp. 124–156. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) In Smith 2001.
Smith, P., ed. (2001). Geometric transformations. New York: Wiley. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

How is this supposed to be coded now, apart from repeating the full citation every time? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:19, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Like this (simple substition of "title=" for "contribution="):

Jones, R. (2001). Rotation. pp. 11–34. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) In Smith 2001.
Halsted, F. (2001). Distortion. pp. 124–156. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) In Smith 2001.

You shouldn't repeat full citations. Use short cites: Jones (2001, p. 12) harvtxt error: multiple targets (5×): CITEREFJones2001 (help), Jones (2001, pp. 22–24) harvtxt error: multiple targets (5×): CITEREFJones2001 (help). You don't need to repeat the "in Smith ...." bit. (Comment at the bottom.) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:02, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that there is a clean way to do this. The old way you mention isn't all that great because it requires two templates and some additional text and punctuation. I can see that something to do this would be handy, Soil: The Yearbook of Agriculture 1957 at the bottom of Soil §References comes to mind.

You can can get partway there by doing this:

{{cite news |last=Jones |first=R. |date=2001 |title=Rotation |pages=11–34 |editor-last=Smith |editor-link=#CITEREFSmith2001}}

which gives:

Jones, R. (2001). Smith (ed.). "Rotation". pp. 11–34.

Is this style used much?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:58, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Instead of |editor-link=#CITEREFSmith2001 you can do this:

|editor-link=#{{sfnref|Smith|2001}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Is this style of citation used much? Probably not, but it tends to be used or required in longer articles, particularly GA and FA ones, so I think it does need to be provided for by the templates – as it used to be. The work around you suggest is ingenious, but doesn't produce a recommended format. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:55, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

You can still do it the old way, it just isn't a clean single template-no-extra-stuff solution.

Jones, R. (2001). "Rotation". pp. 11–34. In Smith 2001.

Halsted, F. (2001). "Distortion". pp. 124–156. In Smith 2001.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:07, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

What articles is this used in? -- Gadget850^talk 13:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

This can be done. The exact syntax depends on what kind of work it is; I will give an example of a edited book with different authors for each chapter. If needed, short footnote citations could be given.^[1] The code for the preceding footnote is {{sfn|Richards|2013|page=601}}.

~~Source code:~~

*{{cite book| |last1=Richards | first1 = E. G. | chapter =Calendars | editor1-last = Urban |editor1-first = Sean | editor2-last = Seidelmann | editor2-first = P. Kenneth | year = 2013 | title = Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac | edition = 3rd | location = Mill Valley, California | publisher = University Science Books| ref=harv}}

~~Rendered:~~

Richards, E. G. (2013). "Calendars". In Urban, Sean; Seidelmann, P. Kenneth (eds.). Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac (3rd ed.). Mill Valley, California: University Science Books. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Jc3s5h (talk) 13:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC) Struck 14:53 UT.

References

^ Richards 2013, p. 601.

@Jc3s5h: that it can be done for one chapter in a work isn't the issue. It's when multiple chapters in the same work are cited that the issue arises – how to avoid repeating the details of the work every time. See the very ugly list at the bottom of Soil § References that Trappist the monk referred to.

@Trappist the monk: Ah, I now see from your example that the solution is to use |title= and not |contribution=, and then it works the "old way" – if I understand correctly, what has changed is that |contribution= now requires |title=. I don't really understand what exactly determines whether the value of title is rendered as plain text in double-quotes or as italics with no quotes. Is this documented somewhere?

@Gadget850: I know that I've used this approach on a number of occasions. A use at Cactus flagged as an error is what made me raise the issue; doubtless I'll remember or find others later. The ugly list at the bottom of Soil § References should be fixed in this way. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:04, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

The last update to Module:Citation/CS1 modified how CS1 citations render |title= and |chapter= (and their aliases). Before the update, if one of the |work= aliases was set (|journal=, |website=, |newspaper=, etc), the styling that the module applied to these parameters switched from MOS compliant to non-compliant. In the normal course, and in compliance with MOS, we italicized Title and quoted "Chapter". But, when |work= was set we quoted "Title", italicized Chapter, and italicized Work. After the change, we always italicize Title and quote "Chapter" regardless of the state of work (which is still italicized).

For 'periodical'-type citations – {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}, etc – |title= refers to a chapter-like smaller portion of a larger whole so is rendered upright in quotes. I used {{cite article}} which is a redirect to {{cite news}}.

Another change was to require |title= when |chapter= (or an alias) is set; this is where your error message arises. The reasoning is that having only a chapter title in a citation is meaningless; a chapter of what? The {{cite article}} citations that I drew above as equally meaningless without the external information provided in the adjacent {{harvnb}} template. This is a poor construct so we should either discontinue this kind of multi-template use or develop a mechanism that supports this styling. That is why I asked if this styling is much used. If not, then we should abandon the practice. If it is oft used then we should specify what the style should be and then incorporate it into CS1.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Whether it's used a lot or a little isn't quite the point, I think. It's a perfectly valid citation style; the need sometimes to cite separately multiple contributions in a larger work is unquestionable; it's surely much better to avoid the kind of repetition you pointed out at Soil § References.

One of the the side-effects of subsuming CS2 into CS1 is that it's impossible (so far as I can see) to produce the desired effect with {{citation}}, so at Cactus#Bibliography I was forced to use the very ugly {{cite news |separator=, |postscript=, ...}} rather than {{citation |separator=, |postscript=, ...}} as used by all the rest of the citations. I'm beginning to wonder whether those of us who prefer CS2 over CS1 aren't becoming second-class citizens... Peter coxhead (talk) 16:48, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Whether it's used a lot or a little is important. We're talking about adding a new level of structure. The old structure, with optional parts in square brackets, was [short footnote or parenthetical citation] --> full bibliographic information. The new structure would be [short footnote or parenthetical citation] --> [chapter information] --> book or full work bibliographic information. Introducing an entire new level of structure requires a lot of work to code, a lot of work to document, and a lot of work for editors to understand. If it's only used in a few articles, maybe those articles just shouldn't use templates. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Is this citation style defined somewhere?

{{cite article}} is a redirect to {{cite news}}.

Is this what you are looking for in Soil:

Stefferud, Alfred, ed. (1957). Soil: The Yearbook of Agriculture 1957. United States Department of Agriculture. OCLC 704186906. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Chapters:
- Allaway, W. H. "pH, Soil Acidity, and Plant Growth".
- Allison, Franklin E. "Nitrogen and Soil Fertility".
- Broadbent, F. E. "Organic Matter".
- ...

In Cactus you now have:

Brown, Roger (2001). "Cultivation of Cacti". pp. 85–92, {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |separator= ignored (help) in Anderson 2001

If this is what you want, then it should be very simple to create a template to achieve this. What is this style called? -- Gadget850^talk 18:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that this 'style' as it is implemented either in {{cite article}} or in {{citation}} is exactly what we want. Both {{cite article}} and {{citation}} generate COinS metadata from the data provided in the templates. In all of the examples on this page the metadata are incomplete. When I suggested that this two-template scheme only has meaning when both templates are used I hadn't yet recognized that the citation's metadata for this style is flawed. What I was thinking about is that such citations in isolation are incomplete without the 'including whole' (a journal, an encyclopedia, a newspaper, etc) and without the in-source location information provided by {{harvnb}} – it's the 'chapter of what?' question again.

If we are to pursue this style, whatever it is called, this interim portion must be somehow complete in and of itself so that it emits correct and complete metadata (or perhaps none at all, we haven't thought it through completely. I think that the link to the 'including whole' must be within the bounds of this middle-position template; no multi-template solutions.

On and off I have been thinking about citations that I know to be out there in article space: {{cite journal}} templates that don't have |journal= parameters, for example. Such citations are clearly flawed and it has been in my mind to flag these incomplete citations as errors so that someone can fix them. If I do that, this scheme will be right back where this conversation started because the {{cite article}} and {{citation}} templates are similarly missing that important piece.

While Editor Gadget850 is correct in that it is simple to create a wrapping template that would pass a handful of parameters to an embedded CS1, CS2 and {{harvnb}} templates, I'm not sure that it's necessarily the correct solution. Let us start first with a complete definition of what the 'style' is and what it is intended to accomplish and proceed from there.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:57, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Isn't the issue here really a very simple one of an omitted title parameter, just as the error message says? I suspect the confusion arises because when a reference is built using a single cite (or citation) template, describing both the contribution (or chapter) and the enclosing work, both of which have titles, "title=" catches that of the work, while the title of the contribution is subordinated into "contribution=". Alternately, if you use an external harv short cite to link to the work, the cite/citation template no longer has knowledge of the work, and so what was in "contribution=" has to be promoted to "title". (And that clears the error.)

Perhaps it would be useful to recognize that the data in "contribution=" (and "chapter=") parameters are titles, and to accept them in place of "title=" parameters. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:01, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we need an alternative to {{harvnb}} designed to work within the CS1 framework better. For example, it could handle shortening these references to contributions in a larger work. Right now, CS1 encloses the date or year in parentheses after the author to separate it, and {{harvnb}} lacks parentheses, running it into the author list. Also, CS1 uses a period (full stop) as the separator, and {{harvnb}} uses a comma to separate the year from the page or other location. A new {{harvCS1}} could work in the harv framework, link the last names of the authors, put the year in parentheses, have an option for a chapter/contribution name followed by an optional "In <editor name(s)>", and end with the location information. Each segment (author(s)/date, optional contribution, optional editor(s), location information) should be separated by a period (full stop). The shortened citation should then terminate in one last period. If there is/are editor(s), that should be linked in place of the authors.

As for whether or not this is in use, I've used {{harvnb}} to shorten repeated references, but on Michigan State Trunkline Highway System, I have not because I need to cite individually authored contributions to a larger report. I did convert things over in this edit, but the individual references to chapters of the report by Rogers (1920) had to be a mix of template and manual coding. Imzadi 1979 → 00:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

There are variants of {{harvnb}} with parentheses; see Template:Harvard citation no brackets#Author-date citation templates.

Just one {{sfnp}}, and it can't be placed within <ref>...</ref> tags. That means it can't be segregated with other footnotes by scripts, and it also means it can't be combined with the text for individually authored contributions because it can't be placed in the ref tags with other text. Imzadi 1979 → 02:47, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

{{sfnp}} is already enclosed in <ref>...</ref>. -- Gadget850^talk 03:02, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, and that's the problem. Because it already includes the <ref>...</ref>, I can't expand it with the extra text in FN7 on Michigan State Trunkline Highway System to note the author of a section of that report written the state highway commissioner. Because it already includes <ref>...</ref>, any footnotes generated by it won't be separated into the extra editing window created by User:PleaseStand/References segregator. Imzadi 1979 → 03:12, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Pursuing what I think Editor Imzadi1979 has described: what if we create a couple of variant templates, say {{harvc}} and {{sfnc}} where 'c' means contribution? The template in edit mode for one of Editor Peter coxhead's examples would look like this:

{{harvc|Halsted|2001|c=Distortion|in={{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=124-156}}}}

The positional parameters would be rendered in a manner similar to {{harvtxt}} but would not create a CITEREF link to a long-form citation. Instead, the positional parameters would be used to create a CITEREF anchor that would be a suitable target for {{sfn}} and Harvard-family templates. Because this template is for contributions, the value in |c= would be rendered upright and quoted. Parameters |p=, |page=, |pp=, |pages=, and |loc=, typically part of a harv-family template are not supported but should be included in |in= The whole work to which |c= contributes is referenced using |in=. The value assigned to |in= may be free-form text, wikilinks, or, as in this example, templates; whatever an editor wants to put there; could even be a complete CS1 citation though that seems kind of pointless. This parameter identifies the location of the source material within the whole work so page numbers or other location information is appropriate here.

To accommodate style choice, an optional parameter |style=cs2 could be supported that would change the separator from full stop to comma and use lower case. Terminal punctuation is a full stop unless overridden by |postscript= or |ps=. To force {{harvc}} to render without terminal punctuation, use |ps=none.

So then, this:

{{harvc|Halsted|2001|c=Distortion|in={{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=124-156}}}}

would give us this:

Halsted (2001) "Distortion". In Smith 2001, pp. 124-156.

And using CS2 style:

{{harvc|Halsted|2001|c=Distortion|in={{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=124-156}}|style=CS2}}

would give us this:

Halsted (2001) "Distortion", in Smith 2001, pp. 124-156.

A {{sfnc}} template that would be much the same except that the result would be wrapped in a <ref>...</ref> tag might also be possible.

Editor Imzadi1979's solution prevents the misuse of CS1 templates so there is no concern about corrupted metadata or multiple templates tenuously connected by text.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

~~Or, we do none of the above and just use {{harvnb}} with |ref=none:~~

~~{{harvnb|Halsted|2001|ref=none|loc="Distortion". pp. 124-156. In {{harvnb|Smith|2001}}}}~~

~~which gives:~~

~~Halsted 2001, "Distortion". pp. 124-156. In Smith 2001~~

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:00, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: the solution above, although it can produce the correctly formatted text, doesn't provide the required functionality – if it's placed in a bibliography list, a reference generated by the use of {{sfn}} won't link to it. Thanks for your efforts though.

I have concluded, reluctantly, that since the citation templates are now only going to support a more limited range of formats, the answer is to avoid them for anything slightly different. I've now coded the example in Cactus#Bibliography without using a template. Although I don't like using directly, it seems the best way to avoid future problems. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:50, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, strike the {{harvnb}} solution. I've modified my description of how Editor Imzadi1979's solution might be implemented to support {{sfn}} and Harv-family template links.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:04, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

The only external style guide I know of that discusses both footnote citations and a bibliography is Chicago Manual of Style. It uses commas as a separator for footnotes, and periods as a separator in bibliography. I regard Wikipedia's propensity to use periods as separators in footnote citations as an error, and I would rather see us correct this error rather than expand it by using periods in short footnotes. Certainly Chicago illustrates that the use of commas in the footnotes and periods in the bibliography does not constitute inconsistent style. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:15, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Jc3s5h: I don't recall if CMS-16 still does, but CMS-13 discusses two general concepts of style — Style A and Style B — which differ in part on the use of commas versus periods as element separators. Your term "short footnote" is nonsensical. There are short cites (or short citations), but footnotes (notes) are as long as needed for the material contained. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:31, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Chicago, in its footnote (Documentation One) citation style, allows a footnote to be shortened so it refers to an entry in a bibliography. Or, the footnote can refer back to an earlier footnote that sets out the full details. An example on page 669 of the 16th edition is

Morley, Poverty and Inequality, 43.

Jc3s5h (talk) 00:52, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it is not the footnote that is "shortened", but the citation. Nor does a shortened citation (or short cite) "refer back to an earliar footnote that sets out the full details", it refers to a full citation. Which may be in a footnote, just as it may be in a bibliography.

Your example is another form of a short cite, using a shortened title. (Nothing wrong with that, and I often deem it preferable to author-year.) The use of commas as element separators in short cites seems independent of their use in the full citations. The only alternative is no separator at all. I suspect that nearly all writers/editors find use of full-stops (periods) with such short elements just too jerky, and possibly confusable with the generally adjacent end-of-sentence periods. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:15, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

In the original example, the page numbers seem in the wrong place to me, because it refers to pages in Smith 2001, not inside the "Rotation" chapter. (CMOS also places the pages numbers after the short reference to the book.) So I'd expect

Jones, R. (2001). "Rotation", in Smith 2001, pp. 11–34.

and I'd hope to be able to write that as

* {{citation |last=Jones |first=R. |year=2001 |chapter=Rotation }}, in {{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=11–34}}.

but of course the {{citation}} will generate a missing title error. As User:J. Johnson pointed out, this could be fixed by using |chapter= as the title in the metadata if there is no |title=, but still displaying it with chapter formatting (quotation marks and roman font).

Actually the placement of the page numbers is orthogonal to the main point, which is that using |chapter= without |title= should be allowed. Kanguole 16:31, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree that page numbers in these examples are improperly placed and have changed my posts above to reflect that.

I disagree that CS1 or CS2 should be used in this application. If citations contain only chapter, readers cannot print a page of references from a Wikipedia article, toddle off to their local library and hope to find a referenced work by Author called Chapter. It isn't just the metadata. Yes, if the citation template is properly paired with a separate short-form template such as has been used in this topic, then of course the reader should be able to find the source but the two should never be separated like that. CS1 and CS2 templates should always be whole and complete and if they are not, then error messages should notify editors and readers that something is amiss.

Editor Imzadi1979's solution would seem to answer the issue by allowing CS1 and CS2 to do what they do best, to provide all of the necessary information without the visual clutter like that exhibited so well at Soil §References.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:11, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand why you favour a new harv-family template, as that wouldn't make the citation usable as a target for {{sfn}}, with its handy sharing of duplicate references. Would you be happy with an |in= field, e.g.

* {{citation |last=Jones |first=R. |year=2001 |chapter=Rotation |in={{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=11–34}} |postscript=. }}

accepted as a substitute for |title=?

As for the use case, I see this quite a bit: there's a book about the topic of the article consisting of a collection of contributions by different authors, which one wants to cite individually, but repeating the details of the book clutters up the reference list. Kanguole 18:33, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Using |in{{harvnb|Smith|2001|pp=11–34}}= as a sort of alias for |title= does not provide readers nor the metadata with the actual title of the enclosing work. Here is a mock-up (uses |title=):

Jones, R. (2001), "Rotation", Smith 2001, pp. 11–34.

The title portion of the metadata of that citation looks like this:

&rft.atitle=Smith+2001%2C+pp.%26nbsp%3B11%E2%80%9334

It is meaningless because the reader (either human or machine) can't know what Smith 2001 means.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:27, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

My suggestion was that the template should not report an error if |chapter= and |in= are present but not |title=, and that in that case the value of rft.atitle should be the value of |chapter=. Kanguole 12:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

It's still wrong because you end up with a citation and its metadata that doesn't know, so can't report, the identity of the enclosing work containing |chapter=. If the citation template doesn't know, then the readers don't know.

We could modify Module:Citation/CS1 to include a new parameter |in=, I suppose. I think that I'd rather not. Module:Citation/CS1 is complex enough without adding more complexity to either turn off all but a select few parameters before rendering the citation, or alternately, to create a unique rendering if |in= is set. If we did either of those, we should still require all of the parameters that would normally be required for a complete citation so that the template could be lifted from one page and dropped into another (because editors do that sort of thing). If |in= is set and, even though it wouldn't be displayed, we would emit error messages if |title= were empty or missing. We might want to think about emitting metadata. If the enclosing work is already included in the metadata (its presence can be inferred from the presence of |in=<value>) then is there a need to emit what for the most part would be duplicates?

From my point of view, it is simpler, and more reliable, to create a separate tool that does this one thing and leaves Module:Citation/CS1 to do its one thing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

If I understand my own thinking, one might place {{sfn}} templates in some article text, perhaps here.^[1] That would then link to a {{harvc}} template that identifies the contribution and further links to the whole work.^[2] So then someplace there are bibliography and reference sections that will hold all of this stuff.^[3] First the references section:^[4]^[5]

===References===

References

^ Smith & Jones 2012.
^ Barabbas (2012) "Beating the Tortoise". In Lapin 2012, pp. 4-6
^ Cottontail 2012, p. 100.
^ Cottontail 2012, p. 103.
^ Barabbas 2012, p. 9.

=== Bibliography ===

Lapin, Jacques, ed. (2012). Speeding Across the Desert. Black Sands: Warren Publishing. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
- Cottontail (2012) "Evading Capture". In Lapin 2012
- Smith & Jones (2012) "Visual Distortion at High Speeds and the Problems of Non-Binocular Vision". In Lapin 2012, pp. 124-156

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:25, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

No, we do not "need an alternative to to {{harvnb}} designed to work within the CS1 framework better", as there simply is no need. (The available alternatives are quite adequate.) The confusion here arises from a confusion of the proper use of full citations (using cite/citation) and short citations (using harv). This repeated concern about having to repeat bibliographic details arises from a misunderstanding, as they need not (and indeed, should not) be repeated. Each source needs only one full citation, which includes all the details. Where a source needs to reference a containing work that can be done in either of two ways. 1) If there are no other sources from that work, merge all the details into the single full citation. 2) If there is more than one source from that work (the case here) give the work its own full citation, then give each subordinate source a short link to the containing work. Which is exactly what Peter did (above). The only difficulty was in using "contribution=" instead of "title=". I have repeated his examples with that simple correction.

There is no need to repeat any bibliographic detail, and certainly no need for some new version of the Harv templates. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:19, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

There is a difference in formatting between your version and Peter's. A chapter title shouldn't be formatted in the same way as a book title. Kanguole 00:36, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: as Kanguole notes, your formatting isn't right – chapter titles should be roman text and quoted, not in italics unquoted. Something I didn't make clear in my original post is that the citations wouldn't be next to one another in a list as I gave them – they would appear in the natural order generated by <ref> tags and {{reflist}}, so it is necessary to repeat the "in Smith (2001)" part of the citation. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

That functionality is supported by Editor Imzadi1979's solution – the second reference in the mock-up above is placed in the text and is wrapped in <ref>...</ref> tags.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:46, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem with that proposal is that it doesn't allow short citations of specific pages in the chapter. The citation for the chapter belongs with the long citations, not the short ones, because the chapter has the same status as a journal article, a chapter in a book with all the details spelled out, or any other work. It should appear in the list of long citations, in alphabetical order by author. One cites the chapter using {{sfn}} with specific page numbers within the chapter. That should generate a (possibly shared) footnote in the usual short form (author, year and page nos), linked to the long citation of the chapter. The issue is that we want that long citation to link to another long citation describing the book. Kanguole 12:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

It appears that you are addressing my post. But I didn't make a proposal in that post so I'm a bit confused. If you are referring to what I have been calling Editor Imzadi1979's solution, then, you can do short citations of specific pages in the chapter. The fifth item under References in the mock-up above is created by a {{sfn}} template. There is a link from the superscript 5 to §References item 5 which links to §References item 2 which links to the 'book' in §Bibliography.

While it may be true that these mid-length chapter references belong in §Bibliography, we all know that editors don't always do that. I think that was the point that Editor Peter coxhead was making and that was the point I was attempting to answer.

Unless the chapter of a book has independent page numbering the the page numbers in the citation are the page numbers within the book. The chapter is not a stand-alone entity.

The issue is not that we want [a] long citation to link to another long citation, but rather, that we want a short ({{sfn}}, {{harvnb}}, etc) to link to a mid-length to link to a long-length citation when numerous different chapters or articles of a single work are cited. This to reduce the visual clutter that can occur; for which see Soil §References.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:28, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Also, it seems the citations for the chapters will still get a missing title error. Kanguole 15:04, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes. And rightly so. If you write a CS1 or CS2 citation that includes |chapter= but omits |title=, then Module:Citation/CS1 should rightly flag that as an error because from its point of view, the citation is incomplete. The Editor Imzadi1979 solution is a way to do what Editor Peter coxhead appears to want to do without having to misuse CS1 and CS2 templates to get it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:28, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Re style of "titles": whether they should be italicized or quoted depends on just what kind of title they are, and we have some overlapping uses here. One solution would be to not throw out a "missing title" error when "contribution=" is present (though this has other repercussions). Another solution might be to have variant parameters to explicitly specify italics or quotes. This could be a whole discussion in itself.

I must respectfully disagree with Peter that "in Smith 2001" is necessary in a short cite. Just (Jones 2001) harv error: multiple targets (5×): CITEREFJones2001 (help) is sufficient to link to the full citation, which has the additional detail of where this source is included. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Which is exactly how it's done at Soil §References and which offers an excellent example of where mid-length bridging-citations might be a useful tool. If we can reduce the visual clutter by eliminating the mindless repetition of the same stuff in every one of those 20+ CS1 templates by the simple expedience of an 'in Stefferud 1957' link, then we should do so. We should not, however, compromise the integrity of CS1 or CS2 visual rendering and metadata by simply omitting parameters that are repetitive.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

There is now {{harvc}} which implements Editor Imzadi1979's solution (more-or-less). Testcases are derived from the citations at Soil §References.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Nice work, thanks! One request: the terminal full stop is wrong in CS2. The {{sfn}} template can made compatible with CS2 by setting |ps= to nothing. Thus whereas {{sfn|Stefferud|1957}} yields "1. ^ Stefferud 1957.", {{sfn|ps=|Stefferud|1957}} yields "1. ^ Stefferud 1957" without the terminal full stop. Can {{harvc}} please do the same for those of us who prefer CS2? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

|postscript= and |ps= added. But, to turn off terminal punctuation you must set either of those parameters to |ps=none. This is in keeping with other parameters in the CS1/CS2 suite. Follow-on editors who encounter 'empty' parameters can't know if a previous editor intended to leave that parameter blank. Using the keyword none is a positive indication of what the editor intended.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the very rapid response! Yes, I agree that empty parameters aren't a good idea, but |ps=none needs to be allowed for {{sfn}} as well, for consistency. Could you fix this, please? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:16, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Added. |ps= still works as it did before.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

As currently implemented, {{harvc}} is not a scheme I will use, so please stop saying or implying that it was created at my request. Let's examine a few scenarios that would appear in references, and I'll explain how I would handle them.

In citing a book once to a single page, a simple list of page numbers, or to a compact range of pages, I would run the citation in full in the footnote, listing the appropriate page number(s). This satisfies the requirement that we say where I/we got the information, and prevents a reader of having to search half of a book looking for the supporting materials.
In citing just one individually authored contribution to a book, or an article in a journal/magazine, I cite the contribution individually. (In this case, it doesn't matter if John Doe wrote an article a journal or a chapter in a book edited by Jane Roe, the effect is essentially the same.)
In citing a book multiple times to multiple single pages, or multiple compact page ranges, I run a shortened citation in the footnote and list the full citation to the book in a "works cited" section below the footnotes. This eliminates repeating the bibliographic information in successive footnotes.
- If there are enough books or reports used as sources in an article, and I'm shortening some, then I shorten them all, even if one book is only cited once. I do this so there is an easy rule. "If footnotes referring to books are using short citations, then all book footnotes are using short citations."
The issue is when there are different contributions in the same encompassing work, which came up at Michigan State Trunkline Highway System. In that case, a report written by State Highway Commissioner Frank Rogers contained sections contributed by different employees of the Michigan State Highway Department, and each section was attributed to its respective author. In that case, I have two options. The first is to shorten the footnote to list the author name and page number for each contribution cited, and then run a full citation to the specific contribution in the works cited section. The second option is to run a full citation in the footnote up to the point where it switches from the information on the contribution to the information on the encompassing work (the "In Rogers...." part) and then wikilink from there to the full citation to the encompassing report. That's the option I chose, in part because I'm also citing Rogers-authored content, so I'd need to list the full report in the works cited anyway. (Also, this is how Chicago would handle the situation of citing multiple individual contributions to the same encompassing edited volume.)
- In this case, just like the others involving shortened footnotes, a reader looking at the footnote only has to click one link to find the full bilbiographic detail for the encompassing work. With {{harvc}}, the reader has two links to clink, because the first link in the footnote only gets to the rest of the contribution, and then another link gets the reader to the full encompassing work. Sorry, that's too clunky for my taste.

One pet peeve of mine is that {{harvnb}} doesn't enclose the year in parentheses, while the dates or years in the CS1-formatted full citations are in parentheses. With APA-style parenthetical citations, the author-date-page date runs in the body of the article enclosed in parentheses to separate that citation detail from the rest of the prose. In that case, the difference in formatting of dates isn't an issue. But when the author-date-page information is shunted into a footnote alongside other footnotes will full bibliographic details, the shorter format should look similar to the longer one. Gadget mentioned the existence of {{sfnp}} that outputs a shortened citation with the year in parentheses, but that has other issues because it wraps its output in <ref>...</ref> like {{sfn}}. That action causes issues in my workflow, and it eliminates the ability to extend the output text in ways that would resolve the issue of the Rogers report and its differently authored sections. If {{sfnp}} didn't already include the <ref>...</ref>, which meant I could insert it into a footnote myself, you wouldn't have heard from me at all. Imzadi 1979 → 00:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok. I didn't want to take credit for an idea that wasn't mine so I, correctly I think, credited you with the idea that got me to {{harvc}}. I will stop doing that.

But I'm confused. Here are the three elements of the Rogers citation from Michigan State Trunkline Highway System:

{{cite book |type= Report |ref= harv |last= Rogers |first= Frank F. |year= 1920 |title= Eighth Biennial Report of the State Highway Commissioner |url= http://books.google.com/books/about/Biennial_report_of_the_State_Highway_Com.html?id=LH9NAAAAYAAJ |publisher= Michigan State Highway Department |location= Lansing, MI |publisher= Wynkoop, Hallenbeck and Crawford, State Printers |oclc= 11888473 |accessdate= April 12, 2013 |via= Google Books}}
<ref>Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In {{harvnb|Rogers|1920|p=15}}</ref>
<ref>Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In {{harvnb|Rogers|1920|p=10}}</ref>

The full citation remains as it is. Here are the other two parts reworked to use {{harvc}}:

<ref>{{harvc|last=Dillman |first=George C. |c=Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking |in=Rogers |year=1920|p=15}}</ref>
<ref>{{harvc|last=Belknap |first=Leslie H. |c=Construction |in=Rogers|year=1920|p=10}}</ref>

This is a placeholder sentence that uses all four of the references above just as you see them there: Dillman handcrafted,^[1] Dillman harvc,^[2] Belknap handcrafted,^[3] and Belknap harvc.^[4] ===References===

References

^ Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers 1920, p. 15
^ Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers (1920), p. 15.
^ Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers 1920, p. 10
^ Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers (1920), p. 10.

===Bibliography===

Rogers, Frank F. (1920). Eighth Biennial Report of the State Highway Commissioner (Report). Lansing, MI: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck and Crawford, State Printers. OCLC 11888473. Retrieved April 12, 2013 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

The handcrafted and {{harvc}} items listed in §References are quite similar, are they not? The differences amount to commas and capitalization. Each requires the same number of clicks to get from the article text to the full-length citation. Perhaps you can see my confusion. What am I not understanding about your objection to {{harvc}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:06, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: that's not how the other examples you used looked. However, I can't endorse {{harvc}} because it uses commas for separation, while CS1 uses periods. It would match CS2 though. Also, in both cases, the date should really be in parentheses to match CS1 or CS2. because it relies on nesting {{harvnb}}, so it's not the "one template solution that gives consistent output in a footnote to be rendered next to footnotes rendered in the CS1 style" that I seek. Until we have something that does that, I may just go back to manually coding short footnotes instead of using templates.

Ideally, I'd get something like:

Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers (1920). p. 15.
Belknap, Leslie H. (1920). "Construction". In Rogers. p. 10.
Rogers (1920). p. 2.

and it would be generated with a single template. The goal is that the shortened versions would match up the formatting uses by CS1 (separation between citation sections by period, dates in parentheses). Imzadi 1979 → 03:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course, the date's location might need to be shifted around, perhaps as in my tweaked second example above. Imzadi 1979 → 03:47, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Template tweaked. Compare handcrafted to {{harvc}} at §References above.

To use with CS2 add |separator=,:

Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers (1920), p. 10.

|year= is year of publication for source so it should remain with the source link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I went to implement it at MSTHS, but I see it will only work with contributed works. I was hoping for a solution that would also replace {{harvnb}} for other works. I could switch from <ref>{{harvnb|...</ref> to {{sfnp}} for the rest of my shortened citations so that they match better, but the rest of them would not work with the references segregator script I heavily use. So I'm about 50–75% happy now, thanks Trappist the monk. <span style="color:Imzadi 1979 → 17:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

This? Belknap (1920), p. 10 harvp error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFBelknap1920 (help) {{harvp}} You do the documentation for it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I'll get to the documentation in a little bit, but can {{harvp}} end in a terminal period like {{harvdc}}? If so, I'll be 100% happy. Thanks for working on these templates! Imzadi 1979 → 23:30, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

{{harvp|Belknap|1920|p=10|ps=.}} → Belknap (1920), p. 10. harvp error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFBelknap1920 (help)

Because none of the other harv family templates have default terminal punctuation, I don't think that we should make an exception to that rule with this template. It's not too much of a burden since |ps=. is short and relatively painless to type.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree. {{harvp}} is much more useful if it doesn't add a period. Kanguole 23:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but this regrettable. Heretofore there has been a clear and universal distinction across all styles of citation between "full" citations (that include all bibliographic detail useful for identifying and finding a source in the world at large), and "short" citations (which need only enough information to identify a full citation within a source). This entirely novel "mid-length" citation form (besides being entirely unnecessary) goes well beyond what is useful in a short cite, but falls short of what is needful in a full citation. Adding it to the already confusing panoply of WP citation options will mainly blur the distinction and use of short and full citations, further confusing editors in their use. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:07, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

What J. Johnson (JJ) said. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:02, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Translated title error fails to display red error message

I came across an article with the following citation, which caused the article to be categorized in Category:Pages with citations using translated terms without the original but did not display a red error message.

Markup Renders as

{{cite journal | author=Staff |date=5 June 1998|trans-chapter=Coxon, Sachi | title=インタビュー 坂口 博信 |language=Japanese |trans-title=Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi | url=http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html | journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]] | accessdate=2006-07-15}}

Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー坂口博信" [Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi]. Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. {{cite journal}}: |trans-chapter= ignored (help)

Any ideas about why the error message did not display? I expect that the problem is related to the code changes that just went into effect, since the category has been empty for a long time and the article had not been edited recently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

The category is added because of the unmatched |trans_chapter=Coxon, Sachi (which should be |others=Trans. Sachi Coxon) but it's also quashing the url. I'll look into it in the morning.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

When we accepted the notion that |chapter= is inappropriate in {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite conference}}, and {{cite podcast}}, I didn't get the code right. When |trans-chapter= doesn't have a matching |chapter=, an error message is created and the appropriate category is added to the list of error categories. Metaparameter Chapter is a concatenation of |chapter= (an empty string in this case) and |trans-chapter=. The Chapter value is then made into an external link with either |chapter-url= or |url=. Next, the error message is tacked onto the end of Chapter so we get this:

[http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html Coxon, Sachi] |trans_chapter= requires |chapter= (help).

But, we then look at the citation type. If the citation type is one of those I listed above, we set Chapter to an empty string so neither chapter nor error message is in the rendered citation.

I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1 so that the error message is restored and will spend some time pondering the issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:14, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

In your pondering, you might consider the case of an erroneous |accessdate=, for which the error message displays even if the accessdate is hidden because there is no value in |url=. It seems like a similar case, from a programming perspective.

**Citation example**
Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal \| author=Staff \|date=5 June 1998\| title=Title \|language=Japanese \| url= \| journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]] \| accessdate=2006-07-15}}	Staff (5 June 1998). "Title". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). `{{cite journal}}`: `\|access-date=` requires `\|url=` (help)

For clarification, I am not asking for changes to how the above accessdate condition is displayed. I have no objection to that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:01, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

One way of dealing with this is to ignore |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= when the citation type is {{citation}} with |work= set, or is one of {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite conference}}, or {{cite podcast}}. With that in mind as a starting point, I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to selectively ignore the chapter parameter set. Here is the citation you discovered:

Cite journal comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite journal\|accessdate=2006-07-15\|author=Staff\|date=5 June 1998\|journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]]\|language=Japanese\|title=インタビュー坂口博信\|trans_chapter=Coxon, Sachi\|trans_title=Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi\|url=http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html}}`
Live	Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー坂口博信". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. `{{cite journal}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_chapter=` ignored (`\|trans-chapter=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー坂口博信". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. `{{cite journal}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_chapter=` ignored (`\|trans-chapter=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:09, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I am thinking out loud here, but do we want to ignore |chapter= this loudly, with a red error message? Or do we just document the template's behavior and ignore it silently?

In any event, I expect that some people have used {{citation}} with both |chapter= and |work=, because it displays as a citation that presents the name of a chapter from a book. Even though the first parameter usage below is technically wrong, according to the documentation, I expect there are many similar citations in the wild because it displays in a reasonable way (i.e. exactly the same as the second example below).

Citation comparison
Wikitext	`{{citation\|author=Author\|chapter=Chapter name\|date=1998\|work=Book title}}`
Live	Author (1998), Book title `{{citation}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); `\|chapter=` ignored (help); Missing or empty `\|title=` (help)
Sandbox	Author (1998), Book title `{{citation}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); `\|chapter=` ignored (help); Missing or empty `\|title=` (help)

Citation comparison
Wikitext	`{{citation\|author=Author\|chapter=Chapter name\|date=1998\|title=Book title}}`
Live	Author (1998), "Chapter name", Book title `{{citation}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)
Sandbox	Author (1998), "Chapter name", Book title `{{citation}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)

Maybe a maintenance category to see how much of this stuff is out there before dropping chapter names that are currently being displayed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I would not be surprised to learn that what you say is true. Editors are endlessly creative when it comes to misusing parameters. Even though it looks ok, using |work= or one of it's aliases in lieu of |title= leaves that important bit of information out of the COinS metadata. This because |chapter=, when set, tells the module that this is a book citation so the 'periodical-as-title' is ignored.

Maintenance categories are for things that don't rise the the level of broken citations, visually or not. Here we have an error. Of the two maintenance categories that we do have, one (asin) is included in the COinS regardless of whether it's actually an ISBN or not, and the other (|language=English) isn't ever part of COinS.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Alternative title

Is there an option to add an alternative title to the citation? Example in case:

IUPAC (2005). Nomenclature of inorganic chemistry (PDF).

is commonly known as The red book (as the article Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry lead says). IMO, it would be helpful to have that added as the 'popular' (in the science domain) & recognizable name. (btw, isn't it a pity we cannot link to both the article and the website). -DePiep (talk) 09:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that including colloquial titles in a citation is something that CS1 should support. We aren't writing for the cognoscenti. Yes, it is unfortunate that we can't currently link to both. We already have |title-link= so all that's needed is: define the label text, decide where to place that text in a rendered citation, and the code to support it. Do those first two and I'll do the third.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

1. Were "Red Book" a 'colloquial title', you can dismiss the example but still not the question. Publications can have an "alternative" title. (I refrain from giving examples).

2. "Red Book" is a formal alternative title given by the publisher/author. See its url, and its preface (pdf page 5). -DePiep (talk) 12:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Because there are two somewhat related conversations here I've moved your post to this position to keep the two separate.

I did not dismiss the question but I did and do question the correctness of such an option regardless of whether a publisher uses an alternate title or no. CS1 does not have a mechanism that supports alternates of any parameter.

If it were on the title page then I would agree with you that 'The Red Book' is a formal title. As it is, IUPAC first introduces the term Red Book parenthetically as a sort of shorthand: 'Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry, IUPAC Recommendations 1990 (Red Book I)'. This is remarkably similar to the way they introduce initalisms: 'preferred IUPAC names (PINs)' (both Preface). IUPAC also doesn't italicize the term as they do titles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

"If it were on the title page" - well, then let's find an example that has. (Again you are taking a conclusion from the example, while of course it's just an example. Can't you find an example that supports inclusion by you guidline?). Of course if the line is: "too much fuss for CS1", that's a different story. Maybe you could give advice on how these other comparable situations have solved it, outside of CS1 possibly. -DePiep (talk) 14:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Umm, aren't you are the editor who brought this topic here? Aren't you are the editor who wrote Publications can have an "alternative" title. (I refrain from giving examples)? Aren't you are the editor who asserts that "Red Book" is a formal alternative title given by the publisher/author? How do you conclude that I have the responsibility to prove your assertions? If you are the editor who has made these claims, then aren't you the editor who must prove them?

There may be citation styles that support alternate titles. I do not know so can't give advice about those other styles. CS1 does not. Without doubt, it could support something like |alt-title= if sufficient need were demonstrated.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There are a number of works with colloquial titles, including many known as the Red Book. Citations should be the most formal part of an article, and jargon should not be included. If the colloquial title is significant, then discuss it in the content. -- Gadget850^talk 16:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I have a related question. Is there an option to add sub-titles for a news article? I came across a headline with a subhead which I think should be included. It just didn't seem right to use it in the "title=" parameter, unless that's the only option (which I will use for now since I'm currently editing an article). Thanks! --hmich176 11:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Aren't subtitles just added to the title in the form 'Title: Subtitle'? Is there a need to separate one from another in the template?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Trappist. We even advise using the volume in the title for some uses, which follow other styles. -- Gadget850^talk 16:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite newsgroup to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (cont'd)

In May 2014 I began the process of migrating {{cite newsgroup}} to Module:Citation/CS1. That got interrupted by real life so now I return to it here. Previous conversations about the migration and problems attendant thereon are:

I have implemented a new parameter |message-id= which takes the place of |id= in existing {{cite newsgroup}} citations. In the comparison below, |message-id= is ignored by the Live {{cite newsgroup}} because that template does not use |message-id=. Adding |message-id= fixes the problem noted in the archive 6 conversation.

Cite newsgroup comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite newsgroup\|date=January 29, 1992\|first=A. S.\|last=Tanenbaum\|message-id=12595@star.cs.vu.nl\|newsgroup=comp.os.minix\|title=LINUX is obsolete\|url=http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/f447530d082cd95d?tvc=2}}`
Live	Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.
Sandbox	Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.

These two examples are {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}} rendered by {{citation/core}} (top) and {{cite newsgroup/new}} rendered by Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:

Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.
Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.

To prepare for the next upgrade to the live CS1 module, I propose to:

Update the live version of {{cite newsgroup}} to the version in {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}}
Create an AWB script to modify existing {{cite newsgroup}} templates in article space by replacing |id= with |message-id=; by removing any instances of |googleid=; and by replacing any instances of |archiveurl= with |url=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

In scanning through the articles that use {{cite newsgroup}}, I found a couple |id= parameter values that don't fit the 'id-left@id-right' pattern. These should be flagged as errors so that knowledgeable editors can fix them. New error message will categorize in Category:CS1 errors: message-id:

Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595star.cs.vu.nl. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |message-id= value (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

When |message-id= is enclosed in < and >, the resulting news: link is broken (rfc5536 §3.1.3 notwithsatnding):

ca...@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (1990-02-20). "Re: EIA-232 full duplex RTS/CTS flow control standard proposal". Newsgroup: comp.dcom.modems. <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
ca...@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (1990-02-20). "Re: EIA-232 full duplex RTS/CTS flow control standard proposal". Newsgroup: comp.dcom.modems. Usenet: <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>. Retrieved 2008-04-30. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |message-id= value (help)

So, I've enhanced the |message-id= error detection to flag any |message-id= values with leading and/or trailing angle brackets.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Will this delay the next upgrade? The journal formatting bug is quite annoying, and I've seen editors changing articles to work around it. Kanguole 14:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think so. As you can see, the work is basically done. What remains is some indication that I'm doing the right thing. There are several other open topics in this talk page that could take longer to implement. This is mostly due to lack of conversation regarding these topics than for any real technical reasons.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Do we really need |message-id=? With only 470 transclusions we could zip through with AWB and clean this up quickly, then add it to the suggestions. Otherwise this looks good. -- Gadget850^talk 15:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If you are saying that we should discontinue usenet message id support, then I disagree. If you are saying that we should stick with |id=, then I thought about that. In order for us to include the message id in COinS we should give it its own parameter. Remapping |id= (which is not included in COinS) requires special-case code which is something I'm trying to avoid or at least minimize.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I have updated the live template from {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}} and run an AWB script to replace |id= with |message-id=. I think that {{cite newsgroup}} is ready to migrate to the module and will do so on the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Strange interaction between {{Cite encyclopedia}} and `|script-title=`

Monkbot task 6a recently changed this:

Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite encyclopedia\|accessdate=2011-05-16\|edition=online\|encyclopedia=[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]\|language=Japanese\|publisher=[[Shogakukan]]\|title=御室相承記\|trans_title=Omuro sōjōki\|url=http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%BE%A1%E5%AE%A4%E7%9B%B8%E6%89%BF%E8%A8%98&ei=UTF-8&fr=opsrch}}`
Live	"御室相承記". Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. `{{cite encyclopedia}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"御室相承記". Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. `{{cite encyclopedia}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)

into this:

Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite encyclopedia\|accessdate=2011-05-16\|edition=online\|encyclopedia=[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]\|language=Japanese\|publisher=[[Shogakukan]]\|script-title=ja:御室相承記\|trans_title=Omuro sōjōki\|url=http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%BE%A1%E5%AE%A4%E7%9B%B8%E6%89%BF%E8%A8%98&ei=UTF-8&fr=opsrch}}`
Live	御室相承記. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. `{{cite encyclopedia}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	御室相承記. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. `{{cite encyclopedia}}`: Unknown parameter `\|trans_title=` ignored (`\|trans-title=` suggested) (help)

Somehow, the script-title parameter caused the title of the encyclopedia to move to the beginning of the citation and to be linked to the URL, along with the article title, in one long string. That doesn't seem right.

Also, the sandbox version of the original citation links the URL to the encyclopedia, not to the article title, which also doesn't seem like it is what we want. It will break all of the examples on the {{Cite encyclopedia}} documentation, for starters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

History in archives.

I've fixed the url-linking-encyclopedia issue.

Because of how we remap parameters for {{cite encyclopedia}}, |script-title= breaks the citation because it doesn't have a matching |script-chapter= yet. Because |script-title= replaced |title=, what is happening in the second example is:

|encyclopedia= is mapped to metaparameter Title
Title (ex-encyclopedia) is marked-up and then concatenated with |script-title= and |trans-title=
''[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]'' <bdi lang="ja">御室相承記</bdi> [''Omuro sōjōki'']
the whole is then wrapped in external link markup and the wikilink in title error message added
[http://... ''[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]'' <bdi lang="ja">御室相承記</bdi> [''Omuro sōjōki'']]

I don't see a solution to this until we do either of a couple of things:

rethink how we handle {{cite encyclopedia}}
implement |script-chapter=

The second is likely the path of least resistance, though we probably ignore the first at our peril.

In the mean time, I will modify Monkbot task 6 so that it ignores {{cite encyclopedia}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Date bug fix;

In the sandbox, have closed a small hole through which |date=2nd could wriggle:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|date=2nd\|title=Title}}`
Live	Title. 2nd. `{{cite book}}`: Check date values in: `\|date=` (help)
Sandbox	Title. 2nd. `{{cite book}}`: Check date values in: `\|date=` (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Chapter and its associated parameters

Some of the things that I've noticed are:

Like |chapterurl=, |chapterlink= should be applied to |trans-chapter= even in the absence of |chapter=
- {{cite book |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
- {{cite book |title=Title |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
- {{cite book |title=Title |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
- {{cite book |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
|chapterurl= and |chapterlink= are mutually exclusive; currently |chapterlink= has priority; is this correct? The template is citing a source so shouldn't a link to the source take precedence over a Wikipedia article about the source?
- {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org}}
  - "Chapter". {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
- {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org }}
  - "Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
- {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org |url=//example.com}}
  - "Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
- {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org |url=//example.com}}
  - "Chapter". //example.com. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
When a citation contains either or both of |chapter= and |trans-chapter=, these parameters are linked by |url= regardless of the presence of |title=. Is this correct? Shouldn't |url= be limited to |title= just as |chapterurl= is limited to |chapter= and/or |trans-chapter=?
- {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - "Chapter". Title.
- {{cite book |title=Title |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help)
- {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - "Chapter". //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
- {{cite book |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
  - [Trans Chapter]. //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:49, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I do not see item 1 as an error. Once the missing |chapter= is added, the citation will display correctly. I don't think we should bend over backwards to render citations that are missing key parameters.

Item 2 is a new one to me. What is the purpose of |chapterlink=? It does not appear to be documented in any of the CS1 templates. As a reader, I expect a linked chapter title to point me to the source so that I can verify that the referenced information is in the source. |chapterlink= seems unlikely to do that. I would lean toward eliminating it. Do we know how often that parameter is used?

I think I brought up item 3 sometime in the past. Because |chapterurl= exists, |url= should always go with |title=. Given the complexity of CS1's handling of titles, chapters, entries, journal names, and similar parameters, I expect that fixing this without breaking anything will require very careful programming and testing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:37, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

The point of #1 is to note that |chapterlink= doesn't act the same way that |chapterurl= does. Simplified, with |chapter= present:

{{cite book |chapter= Abe's chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}

"Abe's chapter" [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)

|chapterlink= should link both |chapter= and |trans-chapter= like |chapterurl= does in this version:

{{cite book |chapter=Abe's chapter |chapterurl=//example.org |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}

"Abe's chapter" [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

When |chapter= is missing, |chapterurl= still links |trans-chapter= similar to #3. |chapterlink= should do the same I think.

What is the purpose of |chapterlink=? I don't know; perhaps it is the |chapter= equivalent of |titlelink=. I don't recall ever having seen it in the wild so maybe it can/should get deprecated and removed.

By the time we get to the point of deciding to link |chapter= with |url= all of the various aliases have been reduced to the metavariable Chapter. I don't think that it is as complex as you are making it out to be. Of course I say this fully recognizing that I have of late missed the obvious.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

A CirrusSearch using insource: syntax did not find any use of the search term chapterlink in any of the ways I could think of to format it. I was able to find four instances of the term chapter-link and chapter link none of which were |chapterlink= or an alias. I propose to deprecate this parameter because it is unused.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Support. It will be difficult to detect instances of this parameter's deprecation amid the population of deprecated parameter errors, unless we could persuade one of the local bots or an AWB user to search through the category's articles. I suppose deprecating the parameter is the logical first step, in any event. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:37, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Returning to this topic after some thought. In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox is a new function format_chapter_title(). It's purpose is to assemble the values provided by |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= into a single metaparameter Chapter. Unlike the current live module's chapter handling, this new function does not support |chapterlink= and will not link a chapter title with |url=.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|title=Title}}`
Live	Title.
Sandbox	Title.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|contributionurl=//example.com\|title=Title}}`
Live	Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|contributionurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|contributionurl=` ignored (`\|contribution-url=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|contributionurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|contributionurl=` ignored (`\|contribution-url=` suggested) (help)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|title=Title\|trans-chapter=Translation}}`
Live	[Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|trans-chapter=` requires `\|chapter=` or `\|script-chapter=` (help)
Sandbox	[Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|trans-chapter=` requires `\|chapter=` or `\|script-chapter=` (help)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapterurl=//example.com\|title=Title\|trans-chapter=Translation}}`
Live	[Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|trans-chapter=` requires `\|chapter=` or `\|script-chapter=` (help); External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	[Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|trans-chapter=` requires `\|chapter=` or `\|script-chapter=` (help); External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter=Chapter\|title=Title}}`
Live	"Chapter". Title.
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter=Chapter\|chapterurl=//example.com\|title=Title}}`
Live	"Chapter". Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter=Chapter\|title=Title\|trans-chapter=Translation}}`
Live	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title.
Sandbox	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter=Chapter\|chapterurl=//example.com\|title=Title\|trans-chapter=Translation}}`
Live	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title. `{{cite book}}`: External link in `\|chapterurl=` (help); Unknown parameter `\|chapterurl=` ignored (`\|chapter-url=` suggested) (help)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter=Chapter\|format=pdf\|title=Title\|url=//example.pdf}}`
Live	"Chapter". Title (pdf).
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title (pdf).
`\|url=` does not link `\|chapter=`

I have also been wondering if we shouldn't create |chapter-format= so that, when appropriate, the file type annotation is applied in the correct place as it clearly is not in this example:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|chapter-url=//example.pdf\|chapter=Chapter\|format=pdf\|title=Title\|url=//example.com}}`
Live	"Chapter" (PDF). Title (pdf).
Sandbox	"Chapter" (PDF). Title (pdf).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I have added |chapter-format= so that citations like this work properly:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.pdf |chapter-format=pdf |url=//example.com}}
→"Chapter" (pdf). Title.

When |chapter-format= is set but |chapter-url= is empty or missing:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-format=pdf |url=//example.com}}
→"Chapter" (pdf). Title. {{cite book}}: |chapter-format= requires |chapter-url= (help)

The way the error message is rendered differs from the way the format-missing-url error is rendered:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.pdf |chapter-format=pdf |format=pdf}}
→"Chapter" (pdf). Title. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)

I think I prefer the way the chapter format error is rendered. The two should be the same. Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:38, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be great if the red error message could appear after the closing parenthesis in the "format without url" error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, like this:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|format=pdf\|title=Title}}`
Live	Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)
Sandbox	Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That looks better. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.net |archive-date=2014-11-16}}

→"Chapter". Title. Archived from the original on 2014-11-16.

but when all three are present then |archive-url= exchanges with |url=:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.net |url=//example.org |archive-date=2014-11-16}}

→"Chapter". Title. Archived from the original on 2014-11-16.

At some point I think that we should consider creating |chapter-archive-url= and |chapter-archive-date= so that the suite for chapter is complete.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Date and year disagreement: should it generate a redundant parameter error?

Should a citation with a |date= and |year= that disagree generate some sort of error? Perhaps a redundant parameter error?

Cite web comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite web\|author=Author\|date=24 Dec 1986\|ref=harv\|title=Title\|url=//foo.com\|year=2000a}}`
Live	Author (24 Dec 1986). "Title". `{{cite web}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Check date values in: `\|year=` / `\|date=` mismatch (help); Invalid `\|ref=harv` (help)
Sandbox	Author (24 Dec 1986). "Title". `{{cite web}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Check date values in: `\|year=` / `\|date=` mismatch (help); Invalid `\|ref=harv` (help)

I believe that |year= is no longer needed for Harvard-style references to work, so a filled-in |date= and |year= seem redundant to me, even if they do agree. What am I missing? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

No. If both |date= and |year= exist, then the anchor is formed from |year=. This allows for multiple sources where the author and year are the same. For example, if John Smith wrote three articles in 2014, then |year= would respectively be 2014a, 2014b and 2014c. See Template:Sfn#More than one work in a year. -- Gadget850^talk 07:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think that we should think about this. For those CS1 templates still using {{citation/core}}, having both |date= and |year= is still a requirement. This is because you can't use a year disambiguator in |date= for those citations. The parser function ignores the disambiguator:

{{#time:Y|12 January 2013a}} → 2013

But, for those that use Module:Citation/CS1, this requirement went away when we introduced date validation. It is still supported. If both are present, the module will use the value from |year= for the CITEREF anchor id.

I don't think that having both |year= and |date= is necessarily an error, even when the values don't match. It wouldn't be too difficult to add a maintenance category, Category:CS1 maint: Date and year or some such that would allow us to build a script or bot (depending on the magnitude of the 'problem') to fix those citations that use both.

I do think that this should be done because {{sfn}} and the {{harv}} family of templates render their output dates with the disambiguator. When CS1 citations that use the module have both |date= and |year= where |year= is disambiguated, the rendered citation does not include the disambiguator. I think CS1 should always display disambiguators so that it is consistent with the short-form links.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not know that. Need to check the documentation. -- Gadget850^talk 14:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Fitting action to words, I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to add Category:CS1 maint: Date and year when a citation uses both |date= and |year=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Period appears at start of Cite Hansard

{{Cite Hansard}} (which is based on {{cite journal}}) is now showing a period at the start of the line for some instances, see its documentation page for examples. I'm sure it never used to be there, but I don't know when it changed - Evad37 [talk] 01:40, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the period is because of how |last1= is passed, but I need to check that.

Another issue is that the date is being processed as the title and is being linked to the url:

{{cite hansard |jurisdiction=Commonwealth of Australia |house=House of Representatives |url=http://www.example.org |date=April 1, 1994 |column=1234 |speaker=Paul Keating |position=Prime Minister}}
Paul Keating, Prime Minister (April 1, 1994). http://www.example.org. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Commonwealth of Australia: House of Representatives. col. 1234. {{cite book}}: |chapter-url= missing title (help)

But that is in the template markup:

| title = {{{title|{{{date|}}}{{#if:{{{part|}}}|, part {{{part|}}}}}}}}

I have no idea why. -- Gadget850^talk 01:59, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

The first problem is in {{cite journal}} and occurs when you have |others= without an author:

{{cite journal |others=Others |work=Work}}
Work. Others. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: others (link)

-- Gadget850^talk 02:10, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think using cite journal is part of the problem. Based on citation guides for various styles from the University of Canberra [9][10][11][12][13], plus the last version of the template before it was migrated over to cite journal [14], it seems to me the CS1-style format should be something like

Jurisdiction. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House. Date. At (Speaker, Position).

where At would be either the page(s) or column(s) reference, preceded by part (if applicable). (The usual optional extras like |url=, |format=, and |archiveurl= would also be needed.) I don't think this is possible with any of the existing CS1 templates, at least not without misusing the parameters. - Evad37 [talk] 03:48, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

We should discuss this on the {{Cite Hansard}} talk page. I think we need to hash out the elements of this type of citation. -- Gadget850^talk 05:26, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion started at Template talk:Cite Hansard#Citation_format - Evad37 [talk] 06:55, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Part of this conversation should perhaps remain here. Semantically, |others= implies that there are 'others': editors, authors, etc. CS1 citations that use |others= without 'others' are malformed, are they not? Should we not be flagging this condition as an error?

Module:Citation/CS1 assumes that 'something' will precede the |others= value in the rendered citation. This is why the dot-space appear in the Hansard citations. It is not strictly a {{cite journal}} issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

What about a work title?

[Edit: I mean in {{cite web}}. Didn’t realize the talk page redirects here.] If a webpage is a piece of a larger work, and that larger work does not define the website, does this template allow citing it?

Let’s say the website Example.com has a whole section titled The Fooiest Bars. We need to cite “Foobar #37: The Baz Biz.” How do we do that here? Do we just ignore the fact that it’s part of The Fooiest Bars? Or do we cite that title and ignore the individual entry’s title? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 16:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Just so I can wrap my little brain around what it is that you're asking, can you give me real life example, please?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Here’s one. The site is IGN, and I’d say the title is “Rick Grimes - #26 Top Comic Book Heroes”, and the work title is “IGN’s Top 100 Comic Book Heroes”. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:58, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps like this:

{{cite web |department=[http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes] |website=[[IGN]] |title=#26 – Rick Grimes |url=http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes/26 |accessdate=2014-11-18}}

→"#26 – Rick Grimes". IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes. IGN. Retrieved 2014-11-18. {{cite web}}: External link in |department= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I would treat this the same way that we treat subtitles. |title=The Fooiest Bars: Foobar #37: The Baz Biz. There are plenty of {{cite web}} templates in articles with titles like this. Web sites often use the pipe (vertical bar) character, which you need to substitute with {{!}} or the equivalent HTML entity in |title=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I concur with Jonesey95. And you don't have to use the same typographic style, you can replice a pipe or middot with a colon. -- Gadget850^talk 18:44, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Citation formatting RfC

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Aspromonte goat#RFC on citation formatting for an RfC about the scope of WP:CITEVAR and whether it can be used to prevent changes to underlying technical coding of reference citations, including correct XML, and changing problematic ref IDs. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 19:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Additional archive URLs

I have been adding an additional archive URL to citations, to preserve references if an archive link goes dead (had this happen with an Internet Archive url, luckily it was a live website pre-emptively archived). The format I've been using is something like <ref>{{cite xxx|...}} {{webcite|...}}.</ref>, which ends up as something like "Archived from the original on 29 August 2014. Retrieved 13 October 2014. Archived 23 October 2014 at WebCite." I'm wondering if there is, or could be, a better way to do this? - Evad37 [talk] 02:20, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Check {{Cite additional archived pages}}. -- Gadget850^talk 02:32, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Circa

RE: "Supports c. only with a single year value (no ranges or day/month combinations)," it would be helpful if this could be adjusted. There are legitimate times when "c. 1999-2000", for example, is the most accurate thing one can say. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Real life example of where it's important to use such a date? Where neither c. 1999 or c. 2000 are suitable?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

The quotation marks are part of the bibliographic entry for the work, not of the title of or link to the work

This talk contrib applies to {{cite web}}, and (i presume) many other templates within the scope of this talk page.
The topic may well have previously been talked to completion somewhere in the consolidated talk archive, for all i know.

I was forced, by a violation of our nested-quotation-marks guideline, to notice that the quotations marks around some suitable works are

supplied by the templates and
inside the "click to display linked-content" zone of the external link.

That is, the link to the text of "The Night Before Christmas" underlines, and converts from black to blue, not just the four words and the blanks separating them, but also the quotation marks around those.
Now, it's not necessarily the case that anyone's semantic analysis has any bearing at all on what our style should be for the relationship between web pages and the links to them. But for me, that's the best guide, so here's my opinion:

The name of the poem consists of four words separated by spaces, and does not include any punctuation. The quotation marks we place around that name, in a variety of situations, are not part of its name, but rather clarifying marks placed adjacent to the name in those situations, to for instance help distinguish short formats (e.g. essay, or typical-length "poem", or article, or track within an optical-disk sound recording, or speech within a play) from long ones (e.g. book, magazine, optical-disk embodying multiple sound recordings, or play). When a title appears on a physical realization of the work -- on the cover of a book, above the poem, on the CD, and AFAIK at the top of the Web page that presents or, often, comments on on the work (except where titles like

Review of "The Night Before Christmas"

are chosen) -- neither quotes nor italics are used. And orally, very little if any distinction is made, that would correspond to quotes or italics.
(For names of works that deserve italics, of course, the format-cue is inseparable from the letters, and there's no choice to be made in the relationship between the format-cue and the spatial boundary of the click-to-display-linked-content zone.)
My suggestion is that that zone should extend only as far as the title itself does, and exclude the quotation marks, which are about the relationship between the title and the context (prose reference, bibliographic entry, etc.) within which the name is being used. It's a fine distinction, but IMO not an expensive one to shift to, and one that remedies a slight undercutting of semantic clarity.

--Jerzy•t 09:23 & 09:41, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

The quote marks do differ, depending on whether it is a wikilink or a URL:

Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal \|title=The Night Before Christmas \|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas}}	"The Night Before Christmas". `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `\|journal=` (help)
{{cite journal \|title=[[The Night Before Christmas]]}}	"The Night Before Christmas". `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `\|journal=` (help)

-- Gadget850^talk 10:37, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

We are somewhat bound by the limitations imposed by Mediawiki. The wiki markup that Module:Citation/CS1 generates looks like this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas "The Night Before Christmas"]

which gives this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

If we move the enclosing quote marks like this:

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas The Night Before Christmas]"

we get this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

As you can see, the external link icon gets in the way. I don't know of a simple way to avoid that. I think that it is important to keep the icon. We could do this:

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas The Night Before Christmas"]

we get this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

which is halfway to what you want.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:08, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Check date values in date

It might have been months ago, or perhaps even a couple of years ago, when cite web and related templates started displaying date format errors like this:

Check date values in: date

But I am just now getting around to questioning why this check is necessary.

Could someone point to a talk page somewhere where the case was made for introducing that error message? I know about WP:DATESNO but there must be something more than that.

I imagine there's some benefit to it, so I have a follow-on question. Why does this

{{cite news|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-11-12| title= Wikipedia Signpost‎| publisher= Wikimedia Foundation|date= September 03, 2014 | agency= Associated Press |accessdate= 2014-11-23}}

product an error:

"Wikipedia Signpost‎". Wikimedia Foundation. Associated Press. September 03, 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Surely Postel's robustness principle applies:

"implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept"

There is no obvious reason that the leading zero in "September 03" should be treated as an error.

72.244.200.236 (talk) 20:30, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Since you read WP:DATESNO then you know that we don't use leading zeroes in this date format. Our style guidelines are based on current major published guidelines, which allows a leading zero here? -- Gadget850^talk 20:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Postel's principle does not apply because he was writing about input to a computer program, which need not be aesthetically pleasing or readily comprehended by people. Although values of template parameters are used by computer programs, they also are read by editors, so should conform to norms for human-readable text. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:01, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it started here. To answer that, we implemented date validation in Module:Citation/CS1 and later in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation. The beginning of that discussion is here. Rather than invent a CS1-specific standard for date formats, we adopted WP:DATESNO and try to adhere to it because that is a standard that the community have agreed amongst themselves. At present, WP:DATESNO allows leading zero dates only in year initial numeric format. If you believe that leading zeros should be acceptable in other date formats, the proper venue for that discussion is WT:MOSDATE.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the replies. Trappist points to places I can read more about why we are where we are. It sounds like the consensus is its better to prioritize style over an unambiguously-formatted date. When I am filling in the parameters of cite web/cite news I am cutting the date from a web page and pasting into the article. Marking such a date as an error makes adding ref details a bit more tedious than it needs to be. In a bizarre way, rejecting dates on style guidelines can encourage editors to not bother cut/pasting _any_ date at all. By following Postel's principle both editors and readers would benefit. 72.244.200.236 (talk) 21:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Maybe the ideal solution is to allow editors to supply ref dates in any unambiguous format they want, but rendering the article for readers based on settings specified by templates like {{Use dmy dates}} and WP:SKIN 72.244.200.236 (talk) 21:54, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Lets consider two other guidelines:

MOS:DATEUNIFY: "Publication dates in an article's citations should all use the same format."
WP:CITEVAR: "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change."

Thus, when you add a new reference you need to follow the established style and use it for all the publication dates. You also need to consider other style issues such as sentence case v. title case for titles.

The issue of automatic date formatting has a long history of discussion that resulted in the existing methods being removed as useless. There is currently no way to read {{Use dmy dates}} and apply it on the fly. {{Use dmy dates}} is for bots and follow on editors. -- Gadget850^talk 22:04, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Updated Articles

For updated articles, for the date, do you put the date it was published or the date that the latest update happened? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Copulative (talk • contribs) 04:21, 26 November 2014 UTC

Put the date of the version of the article that you are citing in the |date= parameter in the citation. If you want to show that the article was originally published on an earlier date, you can use |origyear=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:26, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to put the original full date instead of just the year? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.137.242.122 (talk • contribs) 09:46, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Put the original full date in |origyear=. It allows free-form text. See Template:Cite_web#Date for an explanation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Time to retire Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al.?

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. is down to about 160 articles, from well over 10,000 last year. I believe that once the remaining articles are fixed, there is no further need for this error category or for the error message that goes along with it.

The category, as I understand it, was intended as a maintenance category to hold citations that had ambiguous uses of exactly nine authors. Once the category is empty, all future citations with exactly nine authors should display all nine of the authors unless editors use |display-authors=.

Can the citation module sandbox be modified before the next code sync to reflect these changes? I will clear out the remaining 160 articles before the sync happens. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps convert to a maintenance category instead? If we do that, the module can fill it with pages that have citations using |display-authors= where the value is the same as the number of |author= parameters. A bot or script can then troll that category and delete extraneous |display-authors=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I disagree "et al" is useful and should be placed in the coauthors parameter. -- PBS (talk) 15:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

A new maint category would be fine with me. It could look for citations where the value of |display-authors= is greater than or equal to the number of displayed authors. A citation with nine authors and |display-authors=29 should be placed in the maint category along with an identical citation with |display-authors=9.

PBS, can you please explain what you mean, preferably with example citations? I can't make sense of your comment as written. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:03, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

If coauthors is used then the Harvard templates link to the long citation,^[1]{{sfn|Smith|2001|p=2}} they do not if display_author is used.^[2]^[3]{{sfn|Beta|2002|p=3}}{{sfn|Beta|Gamma|Delta|2002|p=4}} Adding display_author to the {{harv}} templates is one solution but every change like this makes it more and more complicated and more of a hurdle for beginners (even for beginners with a programming background which will be a minority) to use the citation templates. As you will know if you lurk around WT:CITE there is a lot of resistance to using citation templates and making the interface more complicated does not help encourage their take up. As you will see there is a "et al" default for the harv of 4 last names no matter how many are in the list.^[4] {{sfn|Gamma |Delta |Epsilon |Zeta |2003 |p=5}} it would seem sensible to me to default display_author to four so that the short and long citations defaulted to the same number.

^ Alpha 2001, p. 2.
^ Beta 2002, p. 3.
^ Beta, Gamma & Delta 2002, p. 4.
^ Gamma et al. 2003, p. 5.

{{reflist}}
* Alpha, Fred (2001), A title {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
* Beta, Fred; et al. (2002), B title
* Gamma, Fred; Delta; Epsilon; Zeta; Eta (2003), C title
* {{citation |first=Fred |last=Smith |year=2001 |coauthors=et al |title=A title}}
* {{citation |first=Fred |last=Beta |last2=Gamma |last3=Delta |last5=Eta |display-authors=1 |year=2002 |title=B title}}
* {{citation |first=Fred |last1=Gamma |last2=Delta |last3=Epsilon |last4=Zeta |last5=Eta |year=2003 |title=C title}}

-- PBS (talk) 17:22, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Just for clarity, the harv link to {{citation |first=Fred |last=Beta |last2=Gamma |last3=Delta |display-authors=1 |year=2002 |title=B title}} is not broken because |display-authors=1. It is broken because {{sfn|Beta|2002|p=3}} is incomplete. Figuring out how to better do harv referencing is a topic for another discussion. This discussion is about what to do with the error category and message.

@Jonesey95, you're right: categorize when number of authors is less than or equal to |display-authors=<value>.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author1=Author1\|author2=Author2\|author3=Author3\|author4=Author4\|author5=Author5\|author6=Author6\|author7=Author7\|author8=Author8\|author9=Author9\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author1=Author1\|author2=Author2\|author3=Author3\|author4=Author4\|author5=Author5\|author6=Author6\|author7=Author7\|author8=Author8\|author9=Author9\|display-authors=8\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; et al. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; et al. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author1=Author1\|author2=Author2\|author3=Author3\|author4=Author4\|author5=Author5\|author6=Author6\|author7=Author7\|author8=Author8\|author9=Author9\|display-authors=9\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|display-authors=9` (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|display-authors=9` (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author1=Author1\|author2=Author2\|author3=Author3\|author4=Author4\|author5=Author5\|author6=Author6\|author7=Author7\|author8=Author8\|author9=Author9\|display-authors=10\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|display-authors=10` (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author1=` has generic name (help); Invalid `\|display-authors=10` (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

No more error messages. Categorize in Category:CS1 maint: display-authors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

As of my time stamp, Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. is empty except for a few archived pages that do not need to be modified. The category is ready to go away after the module updates are applied this weekend. A million thanks to Citation Bot for doing the lion's share of work in cleaning up this category. It always has a few little bugs, but it does vast amounts of tedious work that improves the encyclopedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:42, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Insering wikilinks from works

Many academic journals have WP articles about them. Can we enforce some minimal wiki-linking to them (as per Help:Citation_Style_1#Work_and_publisher): "If the work is notable and has an article in Wikipedia, it should be wiki-linked at first appearance in citations in the article." If desirable, could it be automated, with a bot? Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 19:24, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

What is Insering?

Whether to link or not to link the value in |journal= is a decision left entirely to the editors of the article where the citation template is used. CS1 does not require editors to link any parameters to articles within Wikipedia.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Agreed; it absolutely should not be automated. (I'd like to see where the consensus was developed for wiki-linking journal titles in citations. "It should be wiki-linked at first appearance in citations" doesn't make sense; another reference using the same journal may later be added earlier in the article or existing references using the same journal may later be re-ordered.) Peter coxhead (talk) 20:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski: what you are describing is how I link things now. However, as Peter coxhead notes, additional editing can reorder the footnotes, shuffling a new citation to be the first one that should have the link. (By the same token, additional editing can shuffle the text in the body of the article, changing what prose should have the wikilink.) That's why I don't worry about it until its an article that's substantially complete content-wise. Rather than have a bot handle the task, a user script that could shift the links for authors, works, and publishers to their first footnote appearance would be nice. There's a similar script that highlights duplicate wikilinks in body text. Imzadi 1979 → 21:39, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

"format= requires url=" error checking needs adjustment

After the latest changes to the targeting of the |url= parameter, it looks like the error-checking for the "format= requires url=" error may need some adjustment. Here's an example from Template:Citation/doc:

Citation comparison
Wikitext	`{{citation\|contribution-url=http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/1485.pdf\|contribution=Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years\|first=D.B.\|format=PDF\|last=Sullivan\|publisher=National Institute of Standards and Technology\|title=2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp.\|year=2001}}`
Live	Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology `{{citation}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)
Sandbox	Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology `{{citation}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)

Whatever the "access-date= without url=" is doing seems to be working fine though. This is the above citation with |access-date= added.

Citation comparison
Wikitext	`{{citation\|access-date=4 November 2014\|contribution-url=http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/1485.pdf\|contribution=Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years\|first=D.B.\|format=PDF\|last=Sullivan\|publisher=National Institute of Standards and Technology\|title=2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp.\|year=2001}}`
Live	Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology, retrieved 4 November 2014 `{{citation}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)
Sandbox	Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology, retrieved 4 November 2014 `{{citation}}`: `\|format=` requires `\|url=` (help)

I hope it's an easy fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:02, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not broken. There is no |url= so the error message is correct. Changing the citation to use |chapter-format=PDF removes the error message and places the annotation in the correct place:

Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology, retrieved 4 November 2014

What is not quite right is the error message help text which needs a bit of a massage and we need to document |chapter-format=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:19, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Also all the aliases of "chapter" need to work with "...-format". In the specific example from Template:Citation/doc it would be very odd to have to use |chapter-format= with |contribution=, but |contribution-format= doesn't work:

Sullivan, D.B. (2001), "Time and frequency measurement at NIST: The first 100 years" (PDF), 2001 IEEE Int'l Frequency Control Symp., National Institute of Standards and Technology, retrieved 4 November 2014

I commented out |format=PDF from the Template:Citation/doc example for the present until |contribution-format=PDF can be used. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I see that you removed my commenting out and put in |chapter-format=PDF – that is so, so ugly with |contribution= and |contribution-url=! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

New ASIN-checking code marks 10-digit ISBN ending in X as an error

The new ASIN-checking code appears to mark a 10-digit ASIN ending in "X" as an error instead of marking it as an ISBN. I have adjusted the sandbox code to allow ASINs to have 10-digit ISBNs ending in X.

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|asin=630580916X\|author=Author\|sandbox=yes\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author. Title. ASIN 630580916X. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	Author. Title. ASIN 630580916X. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)

ASINs like this that are valid 10-digit ISBNs will be added to Category:CS1 maint: ASIN uses ISBN. Feel free to correct or improve upon my change to the sandbox if I did something wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:02, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Should there be a visible error, to make it easier for editors to know which reference needs to be fixed? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:16, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

We have had complaints about the red error messages, especially when they highlight a condition that may or may not be an actual error. In this case, the ASIN/ISBN is fully functional, but it should be cleaned up to point to a neutral source instead of Amazon. I imagine that a bot or human running a script could take care of it pretty easily. That is the idea behind the maintenance categories.

I understand people's concerns about filling our pages with red error messages, especially for issues that are very minor. I am fully supportive of the error messages for actual errors like the ones that are currently displayed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I have an AWB script that I periodically use to sweep Category:CS1 maint: ASIN uses ISBN which converts |asin= to |isbn=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:33, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that I warned against marking X as an error... ah yes, right here at 07:05, 25 September 2014. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:07, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 11–12 October 2014

Over the 11–12 October 2014 weekend I propose to update:

Module:Citation/CS1 to match Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to match Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist to match Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox (diff)

Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation to match Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox (diff)

This update changes these things:

in Module:Citation/CS1:

Bug fix in get_coins_pages(); (discussion)
Bug fix in extractnames(); (discussion)
Change lccn() to require lower case alpha characters; (discussion)
Change openlibrary() to emit error message when OL identifier contains leading alpha characters; (discussion)
Change |language= support (discussion):
1. get ISO639-1 language name from Wikimedia;
2. Add support for right-to-left languages using new parameter |script-title=; (discussion) and (discussion)
3. Categorize pages when |language=language name;
Change listpeople() so that we don't link to the current page through |authorlinkn= or |editorlinkn=; (discussion)
Add code to strip wikimarkup (italics and bold) from titles and chapters when adding those to COinS metadata; (discussion)
Add Australia, Brazil, Mexico to list of countries supported by |asn-tld=; (discussion)
Undo peculiar title and chapter format swap when |work= or any of its aliases set; (discussion)
Categories:
1. Add support for maintenance categories; discussion
2. Change amazon() to add maintenance category when |asin= value is an isbn; discussion
3. Add support for properties categories; (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

Updated JFM and ZBL prefixes; (discussion)
deleted ISO639-1 table; (discussion)
Changed error categories for doi and ol errors (discussion)
Make date errors visible; (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

add new parameter |script-title= (discussion) and (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation:

Add support for valid date formats Summer yyyy–yy and Summer yyyy–yyyy; (discussion)

There is enough here that there is a deal of documentaion to be done. I think that I'll begin that and not bother to hide it prior to the live update – it's just easier that way.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this update will also re-enable the missing author/editor errors. And wasn't there something about creating an error when |chapter= exists when there is no |title= or |work=? (See "I have removed the tests for" above.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing author/editor is the extractnames() bug (#2); |chapter= is Undo peculiar title ... (#9).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:25, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:20, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

script-title

Could the value of |script-title= not be underlined? Kanguole 17:51, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree. The proper name mark is a Chinese convention that would not apply to other writing systems such as Hebrew or Arabic. -- Gadget850^talk 18:12, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

and an obsolete Chinese convention at that. But these are conventions for Chinese running text, which isn't the situation here. Kanguole 20:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks like that was removed.

{{cite book/new |title=ABC |script-title=ar:العربية}}
ABC العربية.

Documentation:

script-title: Title in the original writing system where it is not appropriate to italicize (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese). Displays after title in upright font and is isolated from the surrounding text-direction settings so that right-to-left scripts render properly. The language may be set by prefixing the value with the ISO 639-1 two-character language code followed by a colon. Unrecognized codes are ignored and will display in the rendered citation. Example: |script-title=ar:العربية.

-- Gadget850^talk 18:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest using Chinese or Japanese as the example language, as those are the two for which CMOS recommends also including the original form. Kanguole 20:50, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Sample? -- Gadget850^talk 12:56, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Wang, Li (1985). Hànyǔ Yǔyīn Shǐ 汉语语音史 [History of Chinese Phonetics] (in Chinese). Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. ISBN 978-7-100-05390-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: missing prefix (help)
Morohashi, Tetsuji (1984–1986). Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辞典 [Comprehensive Chinese–Japanese Dictionary]. Tokyo: Taishukan. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: missing prefix (help)

Kanguole 00:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Arabic is a good example because it is both non-Latin and rtl, and because support for rtl is a substantial reason for the existence of |script-title=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Arabic is an unfortunate example, because it's one of the languages that CMOS recommends be transliterated, whereas Chinese and Japanese are the languages where it recommends using the original form in addition to romanization. Kanguole 00:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Error checking

Unrecognized codes are not ignored:

{{cite book/new |title=ABC |script-title=zz:العربية}}
ABC zz:العربية. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: invalid language code (help)

More than two characters or other than alpha characters do show the language code. -- Gadget850^talk 14:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Fixed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Related discussions

See Template talk:Lang#Rtl-lang in citation titles. -- Gadget850^talk 12:49, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Titles of journal articles

Titles of journal articles used to be in roman, wrapped in double quotes, as in {{cite journal}}:

{{cite journal | author = Author | year = 2000 | title = Article title | journal = Journal | ref = none }}
Author (2000). "Article title". Journal. {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help)

but now in {{citation}} they're in italics:

{{citation | author = Author | year = 2000 | title = Article title | journal = Journal | ref = none }}
Author (2000), "Article title", Journal {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

However {{cite journal}} still does it the old way. Kanguole 00:56, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

It does seem to have changed, yes. This might be the same issue as Template talk:Citation#Formatting of journal article_title. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:39, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Oversight on my part when I undid the peculiar title formatting. Fixed in the sandbox so that now if the using {{citation}} with one of the |work= aliases then |title= is upright and quoted.

Author (2000), "Article title", Journal {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:07, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: {{citation}} is still wrong:

{{citation |last1=Jones |first1=P. |date=2014 |title=Some interesting paper |journal=Journal of Interesting Papers }} → Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers

whereas it did produce and should produce: Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

As I wrote before, it is fixed in the sandbox:

Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers

The live module will get the fix at the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

New error in cite conference: "chapter= ignored"

I'm seeing a lot of "chapter= ignored" errors (and non-formatting of the conference paper title) in {{cite conference}} templates with a conference paper title in |title= and the title of the overall conference proceedings in |booktitle=. There are five of these in isolation lemma, for instance. An example:

Cite conference comparison
Wikitext	{{cite conference\|accessdate=2010-05-10\|booktitle=Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques\|date=2008\|first1=V.\|first2=Partha\|isbn=978-3-540-85362-6\|last1=Arvind\|last2=Mukhopadhyay\|location=Boston, MA, USA\|pages=276–289\|publisher=Springer-Verlag\|ref=harv\|title=Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size\|url=http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1429791.1429816}}
Live	Arvind, V.; Mukhopadhyay, Partha (2008). "Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size". Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques. Boston, MA, USA: Springer-Verlag. pp. 276–289. ISBN 978-3-540-85362-6. Retrieved 2010-05-10. `{{cite conference}}`: Invalid `\|ref=harv` (help); Unknown parameter `\|booktitle=` ignored (`\|book-title=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Arvind, V.; Mukhopadhyay, Partha (2008). "Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size". Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques. Boston, MA, USA: Springer-Verlag. pp. 276–289. ISBN 978-3-540-85362-6. Retrieved 2010-05-10. `{{cite conference}}`: Invalid `\|ref=harv` (help); Unknown parameter `\|booktitle=` ignored (`\|book-title=` suggested) (help)

Is this a new bug? And if so can we please get it fixed? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

It's a new error message, not necessarily a new bug. {{cite conference}} is problematic. Its name suggests that a 'conference' is being cited (what does that mean, exactly?) when it appears that most often, the editor is citing the published proceedings of that conference. A conference and its proceedings are, I think two difference beasts. I think that {{cite conference}} should only be used on those rare occasions when an editor has actually attended the conference, but then, such use is questionable because of verification issues. For these reasons I have suggested elsewhere, though not formally, that {{cite conference}} should be abandoned.

It appears that all of the citations at isolation lemma that display the chapter-ignored error message are actually citing the proceedings of a conference, not the conference itself. Because this example citation appears to be citing the proceedings of the conference, it (and the others at isolation lemma) might be rewritten to use ~~{{cite book}}~~ {{cite encyclopedia}}:

{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Arvind |first1=V. |last2=Mukhopadhyay |first2=Partha |chapter=Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size |title=Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques |date=2008 |url=http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1429791.1429816 |location=Berlin |publisher=Springer-Verlag |isbn=978-3-540-85362-6 |doi=10.1007/978-3-540-85363-3_23 |pages=276–289 |ref=harv}}

Arvind, V.; Mukhopadhyay, Partha (2008). "Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size". Proceedings of the 11th international workshop, APPROX 2008, and 12th international workshop, RANDOM 2008 on Approximation, Randomization and Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Techniques. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 276–289. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-85363-3_23. ISBN 978-3-540-85362-6. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, those citations might be coded better. Nevertheless, the comparison I included in my previous post clearly shows that it used to work ("Old") and now doesn't ("Live"). I have no idea how many of these there are out there but I suspect it's not a small number. Additionally, the "Examples" section of the cite conference documentation is exactly this, a paper in a proceedings, although for some reason that one doesn't seem to be broken — I think because they use |conference= instead of |title=. And the {{cite book}} explicitly says not to use cite book for edited collections (which most conference proceedings including this are). Can't we just get this to work? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:27, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

PS Two of the five problematic citations on isolation lemma really were miscoded, by Citation bot when it filled out some {{cite doi}} templates. It used {{cite journal}} for a conference paper, with |title= being the conference title and |chapter= being the paper title. I'm not going to try to argue that the bad rendering on these ones is a bug in the templates. But this sort of mess is one reason I personally prefer {{citation}}: if you don't have to figure out whether it's a conference or a book or a journal (and there are conference proceedings published as special issues of journals — how are they supposed to be coded) then there are fewer mistakes you can be making. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure why {{cite book}} says: For edited collections, use {{cite encyclopedia}}. So, I changed my example above to use {{cite encyclopedia}}. I also changed it to use |chapter-url= so that the cite links the paper's title rather than the proceedings title. Should have done that when I did the {{cite book}} version.

I believe that the the answer to Can't we just get this to work? is to abandon {{cite conference}} as we know it today. We could do this by redirecting to {{cite encyclopedia}}, deprecating the unique {{cite conference}} parameter combination of |booktitle= and |title= in favor of |title= and |chapter=. |location= has a peculiar meaning in {{cite conference}} where it identifies the place where the conference convened. That is problematic because it ends up in the citation's COinS metadata as the place of publication For this example, Boston, the location of the conference is identified as the place of publication when in reality, that place is Berlin.

The process would seem to be:

redirect {{cite conference}} to {{cite encyclopedia}}
here is your example citation unchanged except to use {{cite encyclopedia}}:
Arvind, V.; Mukhopadhyay, Partha (2008). Derandomizing the Isolation Lemma and Lower Bounds for Circuit Size. Boston, MA, USA: Springer-Verlag. pp. 276–289. ISBN 978-3-540-85362-6. Retrieved 2010-05-10. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (help)
write an AWB script that would:
1. change |title= to |chapter=
2. change |trans-title= to |trans-chapter=
3. change |url= to |chapter-url=
4. change |booktitle= to |title=
5. hide the content of |location= in  markup or perhaps move the content into |type=
6. clarify the documentation to indicate that {{cite conference}} is to be used to cite conference proceedings and to correct examples and parameter documentation
in Module:Citation/CS1 deprecate |booktitle=

Have I missed anything? Probably. What?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I also noticed the large jump in the number of "chapter ignored" errors, so a couple of days ago I saved a screen capture of the error counts on Category:CS1 errors. Among the categories with at least 500 pages containing errors, there are a couple of anomalies that have seen real big increases in error counts in the past 48 hours.

Category:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles - 1,295 pages, up 68.0%
Category:CS1 errors: Chapter ignored - 5,728 pages, up 66.4%
Category:Pages using citations with format and no URL‎ - 2,987 pages, up 5.18%
Category:Pages with citations having bare URLs‎ - 16,114 pages, up 2.45%
Category:Pages using web citations with no URL - 10,615 pages, up 0.29%
Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. in editors - 1,232 pages, up 0.24%
Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL - 47,550 pages, up 0.02%
Category:Pages with citations lacking titles - 12,103 pages, up 0.02%
Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters‎ - 25,744 pages, down 0.01%
Category:CS1 errors: dates - 50,449 pages, down 0.18%
Category:CS1 errors: missing author or editor‎ - 12,327 pages, down 0.73%

There's clearly something going on with recent changes to the way errors are flagged on pages in the top two categories on this list. It appears that {{cite conference}} is one culprit, but I don't know what is causing all the recent "wikilinks embedded in URL" errors. - Stamptrader (talk) 07:23, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

We've been discussing that one over on Template talk:Citation. It's caused when you have |contribution=, |url=, |title=, and a wikilink in the title. The |url= parameter used to attach to the lowest-level named subdivision (the |contribution=, in this case). In the latest version, it always attaches to the title, and any other parameter that wants a url has its own separate url-parameter such as |contribution-url=. So, in a large number of cases that had a |contribution= or |chapter= with a |url= (papers in conference proceedings and chapters in edited volumes) the url is now linked in the wrong place. If that wrong place is a title that happens to also have a wikilink, you get this error. Think how many other references there must be out there that also now have misplaced urls but aren't made visible by wikilinks in the title.

By the way, I remember discussing exactly this issue when we were in the process of switching from the core template to the Lua module (or maybe even earlier when we first started using core? I'm not sure), and the consensus then being that attaching to the lowest level named subdivision was the correct thing to do, because it was the most common case. If there was a subsequent discussion that changed that consensus before this change to the software was made, I don't know where it happened. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:20, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Documentation confusion

I am confused by the matching of |trans-title=/|trans-chapter=, |title=/|chapter=, and |url=/|chapter-url= in Template:Citation_Style_documentation/conference_title. Can someone please look at it to see if it makes sense? It looks all mixed up to me. It would be nice for it to make sense between now and the time when we eventually get rid of this template, if ever. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

As it exists now, |booktitle= is only supposed to be used in {{cite conference}} though, there isn't anything in the module to prevent its use in any other template. If |booktitle= is set then the module does these substitutions:

chapter gets its value from title
chapter-link gets its value from title-link
trans-chapter gets its value from trans-title
title gets its value from booktitle
title-link and trans-title are set to empty strings

This remapping reflects how parameters were remapped in the {{citation/core}} version and shows why the placement and use of |trans-chapter= (with |title=) and |trans-title= (with |booktitle=) is so odd.

Alles klar?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:34, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

To my mind the recommendation to use {{cite encyclopedia}} for citations to papers in conference proceedings is wrongheaded and bizarre. They are not encyclopedia articles. They do not even resemble encyclopedia articles. The whole point of the {{cite}} series of templates, in contrast to the one-size-fits-all {{citation}} (which I prefer) is to have the template name tell you what kind of citation it is. The fact that {{cite conference}} has a |booktitle= parameter (in contrast to other cite templates) should make it obvious that the intent of the template was to support citations to books produced from conferences (i.e. proceedings) and contradicts what is claimed above that this was only ever supposed to be for citations to talks (a very unusual use case, much less common than proceedings). And, when editors saw this template available and used it in the past to produce citations to conference proceedings papers, these citations came out correctly formatted. Now they are broken.

This is part of a change in the way these templates have been managed that I have seen over the past few months and that I strongly object to. It used to be that they were extremely stable, with any incompatible change subject to much debate, and they had a philosophy of being able to handle any citation, with accuracy of the metadata being an important criterion as well but one that was clearly secondary to stability and flexibility. Now, Trappist has taken a hard line that certain templates and certain parameters can only be used in the proper way, that anything that doesn't fit that narrow view is erroneous, and that the templates should fail to render such usages, has changed the templates in multiple ways to fit that point of view, and responds to all complaints with assertions about how he thinks the templates should be used properly rather than with any flexibility. The result has been that thousands of Wikipedia articles have damaged citations, many of them difficult to track down and repair, and that software that depended on the past behavior of these templates is also broken. Another symptom of this was the recent breakage of journal formatting in the citation template. Yet another problematic feature of recent changes is that they have made significant changes to the {{citation}} template formatting but have been discussed if at all only here, at a talk page that does not relate to the citation template.

My desire would be (1) restore the past behavior, including chapter/contribution being allowed to work in cite conference/citation-with-journal/wherever it was recently broken, and also including the behavior that url= attaches to the lowest-level named heading of a citation and that attaching specifically to the title requires a more specific parameter like title-url, (2) that every change to the software be tested for regressions against a large collection of pre-existing citations with a variety of reasonable choices about how to parameterize them, and not made live until no regressions occur, (3) that any incompatible change have a full RFC before happening, and that that RFC should be advertised on all of the relevant talk pages, not just this one, (4) if a major regression is not discovered by testing and goes live (like the citation journal formatting one that was live for all of November) then we immediately revert to the previous version instead of waiting until the next scheduled update, and add those test cases to the bank of test cases for future regression testing, and (5) if Trappist the monk is not willing to be more flexible in how citations are allowed to be formatted, that someone else be found to maintain the software.

In the long term this may be moot as I think eventually we should and probably will shift to a wikidata-based reference formatting system but in the middle term I think the stability and usability of these templates is very important, has been forgotten in recent changes, and that something needs to be done about this. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

CS1 date error at Development of the New Testament canon

The last paragraph of the lead of Development of the New Testament canon contains several CS1 date errors ("Check date values in: |date= (help)". For example, the citation {{Citation | author = Eusebius | title = Church History | at = 3.25.1–7 | year=c. 303–25}} renders as "Eusebius (c. 303–25), Church History, 3.25.1–7 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)". According to MOS:DATERANGE the preferred form would be "c. 303 – c. 325", although that produces the same error. "303–325" works, but omits the circa. "c. 303" works, but omits the range. I've tried various other combinations without success. I assume this is some overzealous editing somewhere in the bowels of template:citation, but I've not yet managed to follow that code far enough to find where, yet. Any suggestions? Rwessel (talk) 04:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Why did the editors of that page do that? I know, a rhetorical question embodying several other questions ...

CS1 and CS2 do not support circa date ranges. This is noted at CS1 compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style. At the time the date validation code was developed, circa date range style was not on the must-have list. You might add it to Module talk:Citation/CS1/Feature requests.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

At least for the Eusebius reference, it's a series of several writings, and the approximate range of years in which they were written is known, but not the exact dates. For example, because of the dedication of the last part, it's known to have been completed before 325, but whether it was 323 or 324 is not known. Some of that is covered at Church History (Eusebius). I believe the same applies to the start date. So using circa is at least reasonable. I will ask over in module talk. Thanks. Rwessel (talk) 20:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Documentation updated: hyphenated parameters, removed parameters

I have updated all of the subtemplates of Template:Citation Style documentation that I could find, with the primary goal of making multi-word parameter hyphenation consistent and the secondary goal of reflecting changes in how |chapter= and |day= are treated in the latest round of updates. If I missed anything, or if I did anything wrong, feel free to correct my omissions or mistakes.

I think there are further updates that could add a little bit of code to separate Lua instructions from non-Lua instructions, but how and where (and even why) to do this is not clear to me.

The hyphenated parameters were standardized after this RFC in July 2014. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:00, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I have also updated all of the template documentation for the individual CS1 templates that use the Lua module. If I missed anything or made any errors, let me know here or correct them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:00, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Some of my edits were reverted for reasons that have not been made clear to me. I am waiting for a response from the reverting editor, but if anyone understands the message on my talk page and can explain what I did wrong, I welcome the feedback. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:19, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

I was trying to figure that as well, so let us know.

Changing the documentation is all well, but the old parameters will continue to be used until you get all the tools changed: AWB, CitationBot, RefScript, RefToolbar, ProveIt, etc. -- Gadget850^talk 11:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

I created a new section below to discuss the reverts.

I'm not worried about the tools, since aliases will continue to work. I just want the documentation to be internally consistent and easy to understand, now that all parameters have similar structures. That documentation consistency has not yet been achieved, due to the reverts. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:34, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite mailing list to Module:Citation/CS1

I've been thinking about migrating {{cite mailing list}} to Module:Citation/CS1. This template is essentially {{cite web}} with a tweak. There is one unique parameter |mailinglist=. If this parameter has a value, {{cite mailing list}} uses in the same way that {{cite web}} uses |work= or |website= except that it tags on the text 'mailing list' to whatever is provided in |mailinglist=:

{{cite mailing list |title=Title |url=//example.com |mailinglist=Example |date=6 December 2014}}

→"Title". Example (Mailing list). 6 December 2014. {{cite mailing list}}: Unknown parameter |mailinglist= ignored (|mailing-list= suggested) (help)

This functionality isn't a lot different from what {{cite AV media notes}}, {{cite DVD notes}}, {{cite podcast}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite techreport}}, {{cite thesis}} do except that these templates provide the annotation text to the meta variable TitleType if |type= is empty or omitted.

If we migrate {{cite mailing list}} I think that we should follow the example set by these other templates. This example, using {{cite web}} with |website=Example and |type=mailing list illustrates how the migrated template would render compared to the previous example:

"Title". Example (Mailing list). 6 December 2014. {{cite mailing list}}: Unknown parameter |mailinglist= ignored (|mailing-list= suggested) (help) – current {{cite mailing list}}

"Title". Example (Mailing list). 6 December 2014. – {{cite web}} as prototype

~~Alternately, since there are 450ish transclusions of {{cite mailing list}} we could just deprecate it and run a script that would convert them all to {{cite web}}.~~

Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:24, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The last thing you said, about converting them all to {{cite web}}, is what occurred to me when I read your second sentence. I would support converting all of them to {{cite web}} and then turning {{cite mailing list}} into a redirect to {{cite web}}.

One caveat: {{cite web}} requires |url= and |title=. It seems possible that someone could cite a mailing list post without providing a URL, although someone else might claim that doing so fails WP:V. What do we do about instances of {{cite mailing list}} that lack |url=?

I don't know enough about the process for this, but I think the first step would be to gain consensus here, then to take {{cite mailing list}} to TfD, proposing to redirect it to {{cite web}}. Does that seem right? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:39, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Good point. First get consensus here and then do it again at TfD. Too much trouble for such a little-used template. So I've stricken that idea.

Like {{cite podcast}} before it, {{cite mailing list}} would be subject to the same tests as {{cite web}}. Though I have not done an exhaustive search, I have not seen the case where |url= is empty or omitted.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:04, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Migrated to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:

Cite mailing list comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite mailing list\|date=9 December 2014\|mailinglist=Example\|title=Title\|url=//example.com}}`
Live	"Title". Example (Mailing list). 9 December 2014. `{{cite mailing list}}`: Unknown parameter `\|mailinglist=` ignored (`\|mailing-list=` suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"Title". Example (Mailing list). 9 December 2014. `{{cite mailing list}}`: Unknown parameter `\|mailinglist=` ignored (`\|mailing-list=` suggested) (help)

Cite conference

{{cite conference}} is broken. Fixed, I think, in the sandbox.

Cite conference comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite conference\|chapter=Chapter\|conference=Conference\|sandbox=yes\|title=Title}}`
Live	"Chapter". Title. Conference. `{{cite conference}}`: Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title. Conference. `{{cite conference}}`: Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)

Cite conference comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite conference\|booktitle=Booktitle\|conference=Conference\|sandbox=yes\|title=Title}}`
Live	"Title". Booktitle. Conference. `{{cite conference}}`: Unknown parameter `\|booktitle=` ignored (`\|book-title=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	"Title". Booktitle. Conference. `{{cite conference}}`: Unknown parameter `\|booktitle=` ignored (`\|book-title=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|sandbox=` ignored (help)

Encyclopedia-style output from citation

{{citation}} does not currently support 'encyclopedia'-style output akin to that produced by {{cite encyclopedia}}. I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that it does. This functionality is invoked when {{citation}} uses |encyclopedia=. These examples compare {{citation}} output to the same parameter set rendered by {{cite encyclopedia}}:

{{citation/new |article=Article |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia}}
- "Article", Encyclopedia
- "Article". Encyclopedia.

{{citation/new |title=Title |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia}}
- "Title", Encyclopedia
- "Title". Encyclopedia.

{{citation/new |article=Article |title=Title |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia}}
- "Article", Title, Encyclopedia
- "Article". Title. Encyclopedia.

Both {{citation}} and {{cite encyclopedia}} produce the same COinS output:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003A6-QINU`"'<cite class="citation cs2">"Article", ''Title'', ''Encyclopedia''</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Title&rft.btitle=Encyclopedia&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003A8-QINU`"'<cite class="citation encyclopaedia cs1">"Article". ''Title''. ''Encyclopedia''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Title&rft.btitle=Encyclopedia&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

It's good that "three level" citations will be available to CS2 /{{citation}} users and I look forward to this being deployed; thanks for your prompt response. Two things I find a little odd, although probably acceptable, are:

The way that |url= shifts from title to encyclopedia when title is omitted.
The fact that both |article= and |title= can be omitted without error if |encyclopedia= is present.

I do also slightly worry that editors are being encouraged to use |encyclopedia= to achieve a formatting effect when semantically the top level work isn't an encyclopedia. Ideally I'd like to be able to use something more generic like |contribution= |title= and |work= to achieve "three levels". Peter coxhead (talk) 19:27, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

You can also leave off a title from a journal citation, and get the same result:

{{citation |journal=Journal}}

→Journal {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Conversely, you can have {{cite journal}} without specifying |journal=:

{{cite journal |title=Title}}

→"Title". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Both of those conditions should probably be addressed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

In the COinS metadata examples above, I notice this:

&rft.atitle=Article&rft.btitle=Title

and wonder if it is really as it should be. The COinS provides for only two title items. It seems that when {{citation}} or {{cite encyclopedia}} use |article=Article, |title=Title, and |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia, then what the COinS should have is:

&rft.atitle=Title&rft.btitle=Encyclopedia

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

I have tweaked the COinS code so that when:

{{cite encyclopedia |article=Article |title=Title |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia}}

or

{{citation |article=Article |title=Title |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia}}

then COinS is:

&rft.atitle=Title&rft.btitle=Encyclopedia

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

CITEREF anchor id without names and dates

Here we have two simple templates:

{{cite book |title=Title |ref=harv}}
{{citation |title=Title}}

And here, the output rendered by Module:Citation/CS1. Neither have authors or dates yet both have id="CITEREF":

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003B3-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988"> <code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: Invalid <code class="cs1-code">|ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003B5-QINU`"'<cite class="citation cs2">''Title''</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

It seems to me that having an anchor id that is just CITEREF serves no useful purpose. So, I've tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to omit the anchor id when the template hasn't got at least one author or a date. Here, the output from the same two templates rendered by the sandbox:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003B7-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988"> <code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: Invalid <code class="cs1-code">|ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000003B9-QINU`"'<cite class="citation cs2">''Title''</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+6" class="Z3988">

For CS1, should we be flagging templates that have |ref=harv but are missing one or both of author and date? No need for CS2; because |ref=harv is the default state, the error category would be flooded. For CS1, we presume that the editor intended to use Harvard referencing if |ref=harv is present.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:28, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Flagging this (in CS1 only) looks like a good idea to me, since there is no sensible ref=harv id to be produced. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

A new kind of author-link error to detect

Can we detect this kind of |author-link= error, in addition to the ones we already detect?

Tolhurst, Nick (2008). The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-72395-1. {{cite book}}: Check |authorlink= value (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

– Jonesey95 (talk) 06:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Tolhurst, Nick (2008). The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-72395-1. {{cite book}}: Check |authorlink= value (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=Author}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[[Author]]}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |authorlink= value (help)
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[[Author]}}
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[[Author]}}
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[[Author}}
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[[Author}}
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[Author}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |authorlink= value (help)
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[Author]]}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |authorlink= value (help)
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=[Author]}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |authorlink= value (help)
{{cite book/new |title=Title |author=Author |authorlink=Author]]}}
Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |authorlink= value (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, checks for authorlink = y, yes, n, no, or one digit would be appreciated. I've just cleaned up a bunch of these. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Just one digit?? So |authorlink=45 is ok? Why the distinction?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I've been trying to think of a case where any purely numerical string would be a valid value for |author-link=. I haven't been able to come up with a person or organization with a purely numerical name. The closest I've been able to come is 99, but she is a fictional character. There are hip-hop artists whose names pretty short, like D12 and D4L, which gives us an upper bound for values to mark as errors.

I propose marking any single-character entry as an error, and any purely numerical value as an error (this may bite us, so we should be willing to do a quick fix to the code). We could try marking two-character values as errors, but I suspect there are valid two-character article names out there for authors of some kind.

On the original topic: Trappist the monk, I don't see error messages for all of the author-link values above, only for some of them. Items 3 and 4 above do not show an error message, but it seems like they should. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

They don't show errors because those particular conditions aren't recognized as valid templates so {{cite book/new}} is never called; the parser gets to the end of the file without finding the matching ]] so doesn't see the closing }}. You can prove that by removing the <nowiki>...</nowiki> tags from around the two square brackets in the previous sentence. The parser then finds the two curly braces and emits the check authorlink error message. Nothing that the module can do about that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk and Jonesey95: I can't think of a valid |authorlink= value with a purely numerical name either. (Even if we were citing something from Agent 99, we wouldn't want to link to the year 99.) Thanks for taking my suggestion a step further. GoingBatty (talk) 19:33, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Duplicate punctuation fix

There has been a long-standing CS1 and CS2 bug where the code that didn't address the case where terminal punctuation of a title matched the separator character when the template had both |title= and |url=. Here I have set |separator=# so that the bug is obvious:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|publisher=Publisher\|separator=#\|title=Title#\|url=//example.com}}`
Live	Title#. Publisher. `{{cite book}}`: Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	Title#. Publisher. `{{cite book}}`: Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)

This fix does not address the same thing occurring when |chapter=Chapter#

Citation comparison
Wikitext	`{{citation\|chapter=Chapter#\|publisher=Publisher\|separator=#\|title=Title#\|url=//example.com}}`
Live	"Chapter#", Title#, Publisher `{{citation}}`: Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	"Chapter#", Title#, Publisher `{{citation}}`: Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)

There is no systematic mechanism deal with title elements that have terminal punctuation either as correct components of the title (see this feature request) or as typographical errors by editors. This will require some thought, but in the meantime this particular bug is fixed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

While I agree that terminal punctuation = separator should cause the separator to vanish, I'm not sure it's the only potential problem of this form. Suppose that the separator is a comma (the default in CS2 but also an option in CS1) and a title or chapter ends with a period (as sometimes happens). Presumably one of the two punctuation characters should vanish in this case, but which one? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

That is the topic of the feature request I mentioned and is not part of this fix.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:20, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

COinS: surname? first?

I notice in the COinS doc section it lists |surname#= as a set of parameters yet the author doc section does not list this as a valid alias. Also, while |last#= is listed as being used by COinS, |first#= is absent. Does COinS use the |first#= information? Jason Quinn (talk) 11:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, |first= is included in the COinS metadata. Thanks for pointing that out. I've fixed the documentation. As for |surname= and |given=, these two parameters are rarely used. I don't think that I've seen them in the wild so am much in favor of deprecating and removing them.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I recall coming across |surname= and |given= either during many thousands of cite template edits. Completely concur with deprecation and removal. Jason Quinn (talk) 13:47, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I haven't seen many |surname= parameters in the wild, but they are out there. Search for insource:/\|\s*surname\s*=\s*[A-Z\d]/ using the beta search (soon to be the default search engine at WP). I get 267 hits from that search; YMMV, as I often get different results each time I use the beta search to search. I would consider that number a minimum. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:38, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

So, while we're thinking about this, should we just go ahead and do the deed? Should also include |given= as well. I can do up an AWB script to scan through the search results and change |surname#= and |given#= to |last#= and |first#=. Changing the search string to insource:/\|\s*[Ss]urname\d?\s*=/ finds 306 pages. Change to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox is just changing the value assigned to these parameters from true to false.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:10, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not document parameters with very low use. If figured they would wither and we would eventually discard them. -- Gadget850^talk 17:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, Gadget850, and Jonesey95: We could add entries to WP:AWB/RTP to change the parameters. I am also willing to enter a AWB request to update its list of valid cite web parameters. GoingBatty (talk) 02:01, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Should we change author doc section to indicate a preference for the author[n] parameter synonym rather than the last[n] parameter when citing a corporate author?

Is it misleading to use the last[n] parameter if the author is from a culture that usually writes the family name first? Jc3s5h (talk) 17:12, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

There is no semantic difference between the parameters |author= and |last=. -- Gadget850^talk 17:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Which reminds me, why do we still have both if they mean the same thing? It just confuses people and complicates software. We ought to be phasing one or the other out. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

While there is no semantic difference between |author= and |last=, there is a semantic difference between the words that they stand for, "author" and "last name of author". If we are going to use names for parameters that suggest the meaning of the parameter, the name should really suggest the meaning of the parameter. If not, lets use parameter names like "p74". Jc3s5h (talk) 18:28, 27 November 2014 (UTC) (edit conflict)

@Jc3s5h: Do you have a suggested wording for an author[n] preference?

I don't know that it's necessarily misleading. It might not render correctly if the family name is placed in |last= and the rest of the name placed in |first= because CS1 will render the two names with a comma separator:

Ban, Ki-moon. Title.

One can use |author-name-separator= : (need to fix this to be |author-name-separator=none)

Ban, Ki-moon. Title. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |author-name-separator= ignored (help)

but that only works when all names have that format. If we mix in western-style names, no comma where there should be one:

Ban, Ki-moon; Smith, Jack. Title. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |author-name-separator= ignored (help)

Still, we want to keep the ability to have separate last/first parameters so that we can provide clean COinS metadata. I'm beginning to wonder if we should have alternate authorname parameters that are equivalent to |last= and |first= that somehow inhibit placement of the author separator (usually the comma) for those parameters. I don't know what these parameters might be called nor do I have any idea how we might implement them.

@Gadget850: From the template and module viewpoint, you are correct. But, I think that humans make a distinction; last is last and only last, but author is the whole enchilada. And, I wonder if the module should also make that distinction when it's creating the metadata. Right now, when |last=Smith, John the author metadata look like this:

&rft.aulast=Smith%2C+John&rft.au=Smith%2C+John

compared to |last=Smith |first=John:

&rft.aufirst=John&rft.aulast=Smith&rft.au=Smith%2C+John

It seems that the former actually violates the COinS specification (see rtf.aulast). If it is in violation, then we should only create rft.aulast when |last1= (or any of its aliases) has a matching |first1=.

@LeadSongDog: I agree that |last= and |author= having the same definition is / can be confusing. I think that there is reason to more formally distinguish them from each other as humans do. —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

We should not make any more changes to the sandbox version of the module before the pending merge, which is supposed to happen in two or three days. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:38, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk:, you asked "@Jc3s5h: Do you have a suggested wording for an author[n] preference?" I don't have an exact wording in mind. Since names of people from various parts of the world as well as corporate authors may already be in "author[n]" or last[n], any sort of bot correction of past entries is probably not feasible. I would prefer for last[n] to only apply to the family name or patronym of a person from a culture where that name is usually written last. The author[n] alias should be used for single word names of a human, corporate authors, and ~~family~~ full names of people from cultures who usually write the family name first. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC) modified 20:54 UT.

I would amend that last phrase as follows: "... and ~~family~~full names of people from cultures who usually write the family name first." --Redrose64 (talk) 20:48, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

It's true that |first= and |last= are not particularly appropriate parameter names for names written surname-first, but I don't think that means they should be combined in one |author= parameter. We still want short citations consisting of Surname (year) for such names. Kanguole 21:27, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Whatever they are called, I agree that we need separate parameters for the family/last name and the given/first name(s). Then there should be numbered parameters, say |nameN-separator=, which can be set to none independently, so that |last1=Ban |first1=Ki-Moon |name1-separator=none |last2=Smith |first2=Jack produces "Ban Ki-Moon; Smith, Jack". Peter coxhead (talk) 23:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

@Kanguole: You can do that. You would put {{cite book |author=Ban Ki-moon |year=2014 |title= (etc. etc.) |ref={{harvid|Ban|2014}} }} and then you can use {{harvnb|Ban|2014|p=123}} --Redrose64 (talk) 23:18, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, but that's a roundabout fix. I don't think it gets "Ban" in rft.aulast and "Ki-Moon" in rft.aufirst either. This discussion seems to be conflating semantics and presentation. These authors have surnames and given names, and we want to treat their surnames in the same way as surnames of other authors, so it's natural to use the same parameter for the surname in both cases. In such cases it's confusing that it's called last, but a more meaningful alias like surname could be offered as well. Ditto for the given name. That is, I suggest that the solution is not to tweak the recommendation for |author=, but to merely retain |surname= and |given= as aliases, possibly with |nameN-separator= as above. Kanguole 23:58, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. The |nameN-separator= idea is only for presentation. The semantics are paramount. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:15, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Since |surname= is used in only 300ish of the 2.4ish million pages that use Module:Citation/CS1, it would seem that regardless of appropriateness, editors prefer |last=, |first=, and |author= to |surname= and |given=. With such an overwhelming preference, I think we should deprecate and remove |surname= and |given=. We need to investigate and implement some method that will solve the presentation problem. I will do that and report back.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree that removing given & surname would be a step forward. Those 300 pages could easily use |author= instead. A peek at Ban's viaf record is illuminating. With all the variations listed, there's not likely much point concerning ourselves about the order we present. We'd do better to focus our efforts on linking to an independent authoritaties database. This would also help article translation efforts to more readily identify the name form that will be recognized by the target language readers. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

The most important thing is to remove the recommendation, both here and at {{Citation Style documentation/author}}, to use |author=/|last= for some personal names. It's particularly incongruous to cite Chinese as an example, when standard practice at WP:CHINA is to use |last= for the surname and |first= for the given name (cf WP:MOSCHINA#Citations and WP:MOSKOREA#Citations; MOSJAPAN has no citation guidance, and WP:HUNGARY has no MoS). That way the short references work (and we get the right data in the COinS fields). Kanguole 22:03, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Let me state the obvious: If the documentation for CS1 is inadequate, have a go at changing it so that it's correct.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:03, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

I made a simple experiment in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox that (mis)used |author-format=nosep to replace the default author-name-separator with a space. I chose |author-format= simply because it was convenient for the experiment. It was enough of an experiment to show that doing |last= and |first= without a separator shouldn't be that difficult. The experiment has been removed from the sandbox.

The question that arises from the experiment is: were we to implement some sort of mechanism to disable the author-name-separator for individual authors, what would the editor use to do that? Some possible answers:

create |author-name-separatorn= which would specify author-name-separator for authorn and where |author-name-separatorn=none would use a space as the separator character
create |author-name-separatorn=none which would replace the author-name-separator for authorn with a space; any value other than none is an error. |author-name-separator= (without the n) specifies the separator character for all author names if different from the default.
Something else?

Presumably, it would be necessary to do the same for editor names.

And all of that, raises other questions: Why do we have |author-name-separator= and |editor-name-separator=? Is there a need to separate author first from last with a character that is different from the character used to separate editor first from last? Similarly, we have |author-separator=, |editor-separator=, and |name-separator=. |name-separator= is an alias of both |author-separator= and |editor-separator= but |author-separator= and |editor-separator= are not aliases of each other. Is there a reason to separate authors in the author-list with a character that is different from the character that separates the editors in the editor-list?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:50, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, disabling the comma separator for names usually written surname-first would require a parameter for each author and each editor, because one often gets a mix of such names. The but I think the motivation for current setup is that although it doesn't cover all those cases, it handles some more, e.g. it covers a case where the sole author has a Chinese name and the editors have English names, or vice versa. That is, it's a kludge; doing it properly requires two families of parameters.

That said, I don't think the ability to disable the name separator is that important. In works aimed at an audience familiar with Chinese names, the bibliography will have all names surname-first, with Chinese author names having no separator and Western ones having a comma. However works aimed at a more general audience will tend to use commas for all names, making the surname (which is also used in Harvard citations) clear to a reader unfamiliar with Chinese. I'd say Wikipedia should be more like the latter. Kanguole 14:49, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Template documentation standard?

In a previous discussion we raised the topic of reducing the workload required because there are two separate and incompatible sets of documentation that must be maintained for every parameter of every template. The first set of documentation is the verbose, human readable documentation that is present on all CS1 and CS2 template pages. The second is the JSON formatted documentation used by the visual editor. This second documentation set imposes certain limits on what is and is not allowed in the documentation.

In the previous discussion, Editor Andy Mabbett suggested: documentation written in standardised, human-readable way (with links and formatting) and have a script (part of VE?) read it and convert that to JSON on the fly. I can't speak to conversion but perhaps the standardized form for human readable documentation light take the form of a series of templates which, when used in the correct order would produce a human readable table. The templates would have parameters to match the JSON keywords. For example, this is the template data for |last= from {{cite book}}:

"last": {
	"label": "Last name",
	"description": "The surname of the author; don't wikilink, use 'authorlink'; can suffix with a numeral to add additional authors",
	"aliases": [
		"author",
		"author1",
		"authors",
		"last1"
	],
	"suggested": true
},

This might be adapted to a template that would look like this:

{{template param doc
|name=last
|ve-label=Last Name
|ve-description=The surname of the author; don't wikilink, use 'authorlink'; can suffix with a numeral to add additional authors
|description='''last''': Surname of author. Do not wikilink—use '''author-link''' instead. For corporate authors, simply use '''last''' to include the same format as the source
|alias1=author
|alias2=author1
|alias3=authors
|alias4=last1
|type=string  <!-- undefined, string, boolean, date, page, user, file, content, unbalanced wikitext, line -->
|default=none
|ve-autovalue=none
|suggested=true
|required=false
}}

So here we have most if not all of the components that ve requires for its documentation all neatly bundled and from which it may take to format as it sees fit. Similarly, we can now take this same bundle of stuff and do likewise. We might create {{template param doc start}} and {{template param doc end}} templates that would create wikitable header and footer and where each {{template param doc}} would be a row in that table. We might add parameters that ve doesn't want or require: |used in COinS=true, |prerequisites=none, |can enumerate=true, etc. Perhaps another presentation style would be better.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Because entering wikitext in the regular editor is so different that creating citations in VE, helpful descriptions of what to do for wikitext are useless as VE tips. So it will be necessary, in general, to provide different descriptions (although some fields might be able to use the same description for both). |last= is a perfect example; if you want to add another author in VE, you go to the bottom of the box and click "add more info", you don't suffix the "last" parameter with a digit. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Which is why there is |ve-description=. It can contain whatever descriptive text is appropriate to ve. Yeah, the above still has two separate descriptions but only one definition for all others and uses only one format and structure.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I like this idea. It could help with consistency between the parameter lists and tables that are typically at the top of our documentation and the VE documentation.

We may have some trouble with variables that are unbounded, like "lastn". I don't know how the VE documentation, which feeds the VE template editor, is set up to deal with those. It seems foolish to list last1, last2, last3, ... last30, but would that be the only way to deal with VE? I guess my question, for now, is: what happens right now if I try to edit a thirty-author "cite journal" template with VE? I haven't tried it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I charge you to try it and report back.

The unbounded parameters is why I suggested the |can enumerate=true parameter so that we don't have to repeat like is currently done at Template:Cite_journal#Template_data.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:37, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Documentation in the form I described above might be rendered this way:

Parameter documentation for {{template param doc}}
name	description	aliases	type	condition
name	name of the template parameter	none	string	required
description	wikitext that describes the purpose and or function of the parameter	none	string	required
ve-description	plain-text that describes the purpose and or function of the parameter; used by visual editor; do not use wikimarkup	none	string	required
aliasn	used when alternate parameter names for a parameter are available; enumerated parameter where n is 1–9	none	string	suggested
type	identifies the type of the parameter value: undefined – <definition> string – a set of characters, like this sentence boolean – <definition> date – <definition> page – <definition> user – <definition> file – <definition> content – <definition> unbalanced wikitext – <definition> line – <definition>	none	string	suggested
default	identifies the parameter's default value when the parameter is empty or omitted	none	string	suggested
ve-autovalue	see mw:Help:TemplateData#Auto_value	none	string	none
suggested	set to true when use of the parameter is recommended; default is false	none	boolean	none
required	set to true when use of the parameter is required for proper template operation; default is false	none	boolean	none

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, for the type, one should explain that all the suggested types are strings. The type described as "string" is a free-form string with minimal rules (what are those rules?). The other types are strings that must represent an instance of the type, for example, "123" is a string of three Unicode characters that represents a number. In a more formal document, a detailed description of allowed values for each type would be specified. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:33, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Type values are lifted from template data editor. Except for 'string', mw:Help:TemplateData doesn't define what those types actually mean. Certainly in the above example, description could wikilink to complete descriptions at an appropriate help page or, as I have modified above, brief descriptions can be provided for each optional value or, we could do both.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

This resurrects a previous problem: what if a parameter value is a true and necessary description of a source, but not supported by CS1 due to software limitations. For example, the date of a newspaper printed in England on 29 February ~~1600~~ 1700; this is not a valid Gregorian calendar date but was a valid Julian calendar date. Accept it in VE and let the red message appear in the article? Advise the editor that CS1, and therefore, VE, are inappropriate for this article and advise the editor to use "Edit Source" and rewrite all the citations without templates? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:41, 9 December 2014 (UTC), fixed 15:53 UT

Sure, that's an issue to be dealt with in the documentation, but is off-topic when the topic is standardizing documentation format so that the maintenance task is reduced to a single format. And 29 February ...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I thought I had an idea. It seemed to me that we could write a couple of templates and some Lua code that would allow us to implement Editor Andy Mabbett's suggestion. So I took a crack at it. The results are {{template parameter doc}}, {{template parameter doc item}}, and Module:template parameter doc. As you can see at both template pages, the implementation doesn't work. I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing that <TemplateData>...</TemplateData> is processed before templates and modules are processed. I surmise this because I can copy and paste the template data created by the module, into the page, save the page, and produce the usual template data documentation table.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:VPT comes through again. {{template parameter doc}}, {{template parameter doc item}}, and Module:template parameter doc are now doing what I had hoped they could do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:46, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Well I spoke too soon. The fix I mentioned above, renders a nice pretty TemplateData table but more is needed. I'm guessing that Visual Editor and the TemplateData editor both read the source file for the template (which transcludes the documentation page). They don't read the rendered page which is where template and module output goes. I believe this to be true because if I attempt to add {{template parameter doc}} to a page, ve produces this message:

You are adding the "Template parameter doc" template to this page. It doesn't yet have a description, but there might be some information on the template's page.

But, if I attempt to add {{template parameter doc item}}, ve finds the TemplateData that I added to that page as a test of the output from Module:template parameter doc.

So, this idea may have run its course.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 29–30 November 2014

Over the weekend of 29–30 November 2014 I propose to update the live versions of:

Module:Citation/CS1 from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:
- restore |work= and its aliases format when used in {{citation}}; see discussion
- make |interviewer= and |interviewers= aliases of |others=; adapt cite interview accordingly; |day= no longer supported;
- add language codes for script-title categorization ('bs', 'dv', 'el', 'fa', 'hy', 'ku', 'ps', 'ru', 'sd', 'sr', 'th', 'uk', 'ug', 'yi');
- added asin length and composition test; see discussion
- separate presentation ... tagging from static text insertion; Bug fix; see discussion
- fixed COinS chapter/title keyword swapped error; see discussion
- migrate cite newsgroup; see discussion
- retire |display-authors error message; shift categorization to Category:CS1 maint: display-authors; see discussion
- revised |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= handling; see discussion
- Add unrecognized language categorization when |language= is not ISO 639-1;
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox:
- change |trans-title= and |trans-chapter= error messages to use hyphens instead of underscores;
- these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: |albumlink=, |artist=, |cointerviewers=, |day=, |director=, |notestitle=, |publisherid=, |titleyear=;
- |interviewer= and |interviewers= are now aliases of |others=;
- added |asin= error message; see discussion
- create citation_config.presentation; move most presentation ... tagging there;
- retire |display-authors= error message; shift categorization to Category:CS1 maint: display-authors; see discussion
Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist from Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox:
- these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: |albumlink=, |albumtype=, |artist=, |cointerviewers=, |day=, |director=, |notestitle=, |publisherid=, |titleyear=;
- added |interviewers=;
- deprecated |chapterlink= and |chapter-link=;
Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation from Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox:
- closed a small hole through which |date=2nd could wriggle; see discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of work!

I looked through the above list a couple of times and did not see "add Category:CS1 maint: Date and year when a citation uses both |date= and |year=," per a discussion above, on this page – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey, wanted to leave a note that immediately following [15] "Synch from sandbox;", the page I was working on in my sandbox began throwing the error "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 189: Argument map not defined for this variable." for each instance of cite web. -- Limulus (talk) 12:13, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

@Limulus and Trappist the monk: I got the same error with {{cite book}} and {{cite news}} while previewing some edits I was making to an article. However, by the time I saved the edits, the error message disappeared and proper citations appeared in the article as normal. Imzadi 1979 → 12:25, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

That sort of thing happens because there are four pages to update so for a short period of time there is a mix of old and new. If you find any articles with that error that aren't fixed by a null edit, let me know.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:29, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I tried a null edit (just entered text in summary field) and that fixed the error. -- Limulus (talk) 12:48, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Cite report

Yeah, I'm about to open that can of worms (see here, continued here).

Apparently, {{cite report}} is to be used only for things that are unpublished, where the definition of unpublished appears to mean that the item has not been made available to the public. This definition seems to be a bit fuzzy. The example in the template's documentation page is:

{{cite report |title=Rhode Island Roads |publisher=Rhode Island Department of Public Works |date=1956}}

→Rhode Island Roads (Report). Rhode Island Department of Public Works. 1956.

Given what I know about that report (nothing, because I don't have access to it) this example clearly fits the definition.

This example, taken from the template's talk page, doesn't seem to fit the definition so well:

{{cite report|url=http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1993/gert/prenhc/prelim01.gif|title=Preliminary Report Hurricane Gert: 14-21 September 1993|series=Hurricane GERT, Hurricane Wallet Digital Archives|date=1993-11-10|first=Richard J.|last=Pasch|accessdate=2011-10-03|location=Miami, Florida|publisher=[[National Hurricane Center]]|page=[1]}}

→Pasch, Richard J. (1993-11-10). Preliminary Report Hurricane Gert: 14-21 September 1993 (Report). Hurricane GERT, Hurricane Wallet Digital Archives. Miami, Florida: National Hurricane Center. p. [1]. Retrieved 2011-10-03.

It doesn't fit the definition because the citation has |url= which seems to me to indicate distribution, if not publication for public consumption. That being the case, the citation should be rewritten as {{cite web}}.

In the documentation, the template skeletons (inconsistently) have |url=, |accessdate=, and |format=. While not in the skeletons, the documentation lists |laysummary= and |laydate=. It isn't quite clear to me if these indicate distribution or not. The template code, supports the standard set of identifiers: ISBN, DOI, JSTOR, etc. all of which, if included in {{cite report}} would, to me, indicate distribution or publication.

{{cite report}} is stylistically different from all other CS1 templates in how it handles the title element. In CS1, titles of items that are a part of a larger whole, are rendered quoted, while the larger whole is rendered in italics. {{cite report}} renders its title element in normal upright font without quote marks. Yet, at the same time, it supports |chapter= or |section= so you end up with this:

{{cite report |title=Title |chapter=Chapter}}

→"Chapter". Title (Report).

In the template code is this:

|Title= ''{{{title|}}}''

What is the purpose of the pair of  (zero width no-break space) characters? Were they on the outside, I could see them separating the italic markup here from the italic markup added by {{citation/core}}. But they aren't so it isn't clear to me why they're there. The final rendered title looks like this:

''''Title'''' 

So, what to do about {{cite report}}? Do we maintain {{cite report}} as a CS1 template? Do we migrate it to Module:Citation/CS1? There has been some discussion about supporting unstyled title elements (here) which may (or may not) have relevance to this discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:SOURCE: "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. 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."

Per {{cite report}}:

Unpublished reports by government departments, instrumentalities, operated companies, etc.

These reports are to be published in the Wikipedia sense of verifiability: a responsible organisation must have fact checked them; and the selection process for publication must not have been automatic.

Examples include: government printed reports which lack ISSN or ISBN numbers, and reports from major semi-governmental instrumentalities that are freely circulating and available for verification, but which lack a formal ISBN / ISSN publication process.

The definition in {{cite report}} has never made sense to me. Neither ISBN nor ISSN have nothing to do with verifiability and ISSN is assigned to a periodical, not an individual publication. And the title formatting has never made sense.

See previous discussion at Template talk:Cite report#Update to citation/core. -- Gadget850^talk 15:56, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Lets take a look at a sample of uses:

Area 51: The U-2's Intended Successor: Project Oxcart,1956-1968 (Report). approved for released by the CIA in October 1994. The new 8,500-foot runway was completed by 15 November 1960. {{cite report}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Approved for release indicates to me this is published, and a quick search readily finds it on the web.[16] Date requires cleanup.

al-Qaeda: Jenkins, Brian Michael (2014). The Dynamics of Syria's Civil War (PDF) (Report). RAND Corporation.

Linked and publisher indicated.

Agent Orange: Darrow Robert A. Historical, Logistical, Political and Technical Aspects of the Herbicide/Defoliant Program, 1967-1971 (Report). Plant Sciences Laboratories, US Army Chemical Corps, Fort Detrick, Frederick MD, September 1971. p. 49. A Resume of the Activities of the Subcommittee on Defoliation/Anticrop Systems (Vegetation Control Subcommittee) for the Joint Technical Coordinating Group/Chemical-Biological. Retrieved April 22, 2013. {{cite report}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Linked and publisher indicated. This one uses |docket= but looking at other use on the web, it is a subtitle.

CIM-10 Bomarc: IM-99 Weapon System: 26 October - 28 November 1958 (PDF) (Report). Approved 17 December 1958, declassified. Retrieved 4 August 2013. technical training facility at Eglin Air Force Auxiliary Field Number 9. The IM-99A and IM-99B warheads (W-40) The IM-99B had been designed to include a "Pattern Patrol" type operation. Missiles could be launched in multiples, or at very close intervals and guided in a line abreast type formation.with target seekers operating in search mode. This would provide a capability to patrol a given area where targets were suspected but where definite tracks had not been established. {{cite report}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Linked, document shows the publisher is the U.S. Air Force.

Cuban missile crisis: The Naval Quarantine of Cuba, 1962: Abeyance and Negotiation, 31 October − 13 November (Report). Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center. January 2001. Retrieved August 26, 2011.

Linked and publisher indicated.

Chicago 16 has a section on "Unpublished and Informally Published Material, 14.224 ff.

14.224 THESES AND DISSERTATIONS: Titles of unpublished works appear in quotation marks--not in italics. This treatment extends to theses and dissertations, which are otherwise cited like books.
14.225 UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS: Titles of unpublished manuscripts, like the titles of other unpublished works, appear in quotation marks.

...and so on.

Chicago 16 does cover generic names:

14.234 SPECIFIC VERSUS GENERIC TITLES FOR MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS: In notes and bibliographies, quotation marks are used only for specific titles (e.g., "Canoeing through Northern Minnesota"), but not for generic names such as report or minutes. Generic names of this kind are capitalized if part of a formal heading actually appearing on the manuscript, lowercased if merely descriptive.

APA 6:

7.09, Unpublished and Informally Published Works: Unpublished work includes work that is in progress, has been submitted for publication, or has been completed but not submitted for publication. This category also includes work that has not been formally published but is available on a personal or institutional website, an electronic archive such as ERIC, or a preprint archive.

It then goes on to show unpublished works formatted with quotes or italics as other sources.

But we need to put this into context. Chicago and APA are for a general audience and do not cover our verifiability polices and the prohibition on original research.

Summary: Every use I have encountered can be replaced by {{cite journal}}. There would be cleanup needed because many of these are badly formatted, especially with dates but that is nothing new. I see no need for |type=Report being set as default. Darned if I know what to do with |docket= except go through and clean it up. -- Gadget850^talk 13:26, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely none of the samples above are suitable for {{cite journal}}. That should only be for papers that are published in academic journals, not true for any of these. And as well as carrying the wrong metadata, {{cite journal}} will probably format these wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:22, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

The {{cite journal}} description is "used to create citations for articles in magazines, journals, newsletters, and for academic papers." Limiting it to academic journals is a lost battle and if you want to discuss it further please start a separate discussion. -- Gadget850^talk 19:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that {{cite report}} appears to be redundant to other citation templates. It looks like it's time for a widely advertised TfD, since the template is used in about 5,000 articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

In academic computer science, at least, and probably also in many other areas of academic publishing (CS is the one I'm most familiar with), preprints of papers that have not yet been published as journals or conferences are considered as "unpublished", but are often made publicly available online as part of a technical report series. That is what this template is for. If you eliminate it, there will be no appropriate cite template for them to go in. They are not books (too short, no isbn, etc), they are not conferences, they are not journals, etc. And they have their own somewhat specialized formatting requirements: they are generally numbered as part of a technical report series, and that number is an important part of their citation data. Being available online is not inconsistent with being "unpublished", because in this context published means having gone through a formal peer review and appearing in a publication put out by a third party rather than merely being available to the public. They are really more self-published than unpublished, but they're called unpublished. Often they should be replaced by a later published version of the same work but sometimes for whatever reason that doesn't happen. We still cite them sometimes, e.g. under the "recognized expert" clause of WP:SPS. The first few examples I found in a quick search all happened to be formatted with CS2 rather than CS1 but I think they are still reasonably representative:

From János Komlós (mathematician): Komlós, János; Simonovits, Miklós (1996), Szemeredi's Regularity Lemma and its applications in graph theory, Technical Report: 96-10, DIMACS
From bipartite dimension: Stockmeyer, Larry J. (1975), The set basis problem is NP-complete, Technical Report RC-5431, IBM.
From Z-order curve: Morton, G. M. (1966), A computer Oriented Geodetic Data Base; and a New Technique in File Sequencing, Technical Report, Ottawa, Canada: IBM Ltd..

So your objections to the existence of this template seem to be founded purely on ignorance of this kind of publication. What alternative template in the CS1 series do you think (1) will adequately format these, and (2) per the CS1 philosophy that the template name tells you what kind of citation it is, will adequately convey that piece of metadata? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:58, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

In the case of all three of your examples, the CS1 template most appropriate would seem to be {{cite techreport}}:

Komlós, János; Simonovits, Miklós (1996). Szemeredi's Regularity Lemma and its applications in graph theory. DIMACS (Technical report). 96-10.
Stockmeyer, Larry J. (1975). The set basis problem is NP-complete (Technical report). IBM. RC-5431.
Morton, G. M. (1966). A computer Oriented Geodetic Data Base; and a New Technique in File Sequencing (Technical report). Ottawa, Canada: IBM Ltd.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:17, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Ok, then. What is the intended difference between cite techreport and cite report? Because maybe they should be merged. Also, is cite techreport capable of using a name for the technical report series other than "Technical report"? Because they're not always called exactly that. And why the parentheses around the words "Technical report" and the separation from the number in the report series? I want to see formatting like "Technical report RC-5431" or "Report no. 172", not to have "(Technical report)" somewhere in the citation and the report number divorced from its context somewhere else. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

|type=none and |number=Report no. 172

Why the parentheses? Because CS1 and CS2 do that with the value assigned to |type=:

Stockmeyer, Larry J. (1975), The set basis problem is NP-complete (Technical Report), IBM, RC-5431.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:41, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the typical sort of answer from you that I've been finding really frustrating. Why? Because that's the way it's programmed. That's not what I want to know. What was the rationale for programming it that way? If CS1 and CS2 parenthesize the type parameter in this way, then either that choice of formatting is wrong, or the type parameter is the wrong one to be using for the name of a technical report series. The formatting from my {{citation}} examples above is much closer to what I want to see. Is there some approved way of obtaining this formatting, that won't suddenly get deprecated later? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

The long gone editors who first created these templates made some style choices and we have consistently maintained them over the years. If you want to see a change, create a new discussion and make a specific proposal with some rationale. -- Gadget850^talk 19:57, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

In my own editing I prefer CS2. But from the discussion above it appears that {{cite report}} can be used to generate what I would consider appropriate formatting for a technical report, and that {{cite techreport}} cannot (as a consequence of the past decision to make the name of the technical report series be a "type" instead of a "series"). If I were to use CS1 (for instance because that was the established style of an existing article) and wanted to cite a technical report, based on this discussion, I would use {{cite report}}. So the status quo is acceptable to me. What I would find objectionable would be the change proposed by others above, where we get rid of the working template {{cite report}} and shoehorn everything into other templates that don't work so well for this kind of publication. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

There are an awful lot of words on this page that I put here. I have no problem being verbose. But, somehow, your posts to and about me have made me unwilling to respond to you with any more words than are absolutely necessary. There is precious little documented rational for why CS1/2 are the way they are. You have been here longer than I so you know this to be true. If there is anything written about why |type= is rendered in parentheses, it will be found in an archive somewhere.

It seems to me that this conversation has come adrift. The topic is {{cite report}} and what to do about it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Some time back I went through archives and template histories going back to 2007. There is little discussion on why certain styles were chosen. If changed is desired, I have some thoughts on formatting. -- Gadget850^talk 20:15, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Migrated to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox. See testcases. Should work more-or-less like the {{citation/core}} version works. If we decide that we don't like the unstyled titles (or anything else about this template), we can change it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

authorlink no longer bold when on author page itself?

It used to be that if an |authorlink= parameter in cite templates pointed to the page itself, the author's name would not be linked but would appear in bold. Now it seems as if it is not bold or linked, it's just ignored. When did this change happen? I thought that the bolding was an excellent feature because it helped readers to see suspicious sources like the article's subject writing about themselves. It also helped locate the author in their list of Works when there were coauthors. I'm not sure removing the bolding was a good change. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 5#self-referential authorlinks

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Not that I disagree with this change, but let me repeat: when making changes of functionality that affect CS2, please include a link to this discussion at Template talk:Citation. This is the first I've heard of this one, since I wasn't watchlisting CS1. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Edits to template documentation per RFC reverted; how to improve documentation consistency?

Back in July, an RFC on this page resulted in a consensus decision that all multi-word parameters should have at least one alias that uses hyphens to separate each word, and that "The documentation is to show this lowercase, hyphenated version as the one for 'normal use'."

I recently updated the shared template documentation, along with the documentation pages for all of the citation templates that use the Lua module, to reflect the above consensus. In the process, I appear to have caused problems with some of the TemplateData sections that are used by the Visual Editor. The edits that caused these problems were reverted in their entirety by another editor. After some discussion on my Talk page, I reinstated some of the changes to the template documentation pages, carefully leaving the TemplateData sections alone, except for a couple of outdated notes about how "et al." is used. Those edits were reverted in their entirety by the same editor.

At this point, the template documentation pages are inconsistent with one another and with the RFC outcome. They also contain inaccurate information about when "et al." is displayed. I am reluctant to edit the pages again, since it appears that I am in the middle of an edit war. Any ideas on how to resolve this situation are welcome.

In addition, if anyone knows of good reference material that explains how to avoid causing problems with the TemplateData section, please link to it here. I found Wikipedia:TemplateData/Tutorial, but it does not contain information about how to avoid or detect the sort of problem that I am told I created.

The template documentation pages in question are Template:Cite journal/doc‎ (history), Template:Cite book/doc (history), Template:Cite press release/doc (history), and Template:Cite news/doc (history). – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:31, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Regarding TemplataData, some important points are:

You have to follow the proper structure, as set out on the tutorial page
If both normal documentation and TemplateData are both present, then the main purpose of the TemplateData is to be used in VisualEditor's template editor
Wikilinks, external links, formatting, templates, and in fact any wikimarkup will not work in the description fields, so [[Template:Cite journal/doc#Date]] will display as "[[Template:Cite journal/doc#Date]]", which as plain text is probably useless for a large percentage of VisualEditor's intended users. (See Wikipedia talk:TemplateData#Extending_use.3B_removing_redundancy, and other discussions in the archives)
Referring to "(above)", as in the normal documentation, is of little value: in VisualEditor, all that will be displayed is what is in the TemplateData
If a parameter name is changed, the previous name should be made an alias, assuming it can still be used
The TemplateData and normal documentation, including examples, should be consistent

—Note: comment from uninvolved editor - Evad37 [talk] 07:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

It seems clear to me that the reverting editor is correct with regard to the use of wikitext in the template data parameter description field. It also seems clear to me that the reverting editor is incorrect with regard to the changes to the main template documentation pursuant to the RFC and incorrect with regard to the |display-authors= description. Perhaps the next step is to make the changes to the main template documentation to bring it into compliance with the RFC. Then, perhaps ask the editors at the VisualEditor feedback page how to safely update the template data to bring it into compliance with the RFC. Then, scrupulously follow their advice.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Treating documentation as code that affects the function of an editor is an egregious sin and this methodology should be forbidden. If the visual editor developers don't agree, rip out visual editor and burn the backup tapes. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:44, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

TemplateData includes both technical controls, and prose descriptions; it is the duplication of the latter which is the problem. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

"If both normal documentation and TemplateData are both present" this is a stupid practice. See Wikipedia talk:TemplateData#Extending use; removing redundancy for reasoning and a proposed resolution. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:53, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Evad37, thanks for the tips. Is this information available in documentation somewhere? I have been unable to find it. It is difficult to do error-free editing without documentation.

Trappist the monk, I agree, and if you read the article history and my talk page, that is exactly what I did with my second set of edits. Nonetheless, those edits were reverted wholesale, leading to the current state of the documentation (i.e. inconsistent and incorrect).

Pigsonthewing and Jc3s5h, I was also surprised that modifying the documentation affected the functioning of a tool. That was the first time I had encountered this effect, and it seems like an undesirable coding practice to me. Perhaps, as a workaround, we should modify these citation template documentation pages so that the TemplateData section is contained within its own subtemplate, with comments before the subtemplate call and within the subtemplate itself explaining that changing the text within the subtemplate could cause problems with VE functioning. That way, someone like me doing straightforward editing of wikitext in the documentation would be alerted that There Be Dragons and I should not mess with the subtemplate. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Widely used templates are protected so only administrators can edit them, but the documentation of those templates is generally unprotected. Presumably this is because there are not enough administrators with the writing skills and interest to do the documentation of templates. But if anything in the unprotected documentation cam mess up VE, and the vandals hear about it, that's the end of VE. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

All the more reason to separate the TemplateData text from the documentation page, via a subtemplate or other means. The subtemplate could be protected while leaving the documentation page available for editing by regular editors willing to do so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:51, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Thereby vastly increasing - virtually ensuring - the likelihood of the two not being kept in sync. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Doc pages are rarely protected: it's nothing to do with admins not having "the writing skills and interest to do the documentation of templates", but because pages aren't pre-emptively protected - only when there is a demonstrable need to do so. Until TemplateData came along, a bad edit to a doc page would, at the worst, compromise the categories or interlanguage links for the template. A bad edit to the TemplateData also won't break anything on an article, although it might make the template more difficult to use in VE. Wikilinks don't work inside TemplateData and not just because the MediaWiki parser ignores Wiki markup inside <templatedata>...</templatedata> - the TemplateData is in JSON format, where the square bracket has a completely different meaning - it encloses an array, so a double square bracket encloses two nested arrays. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the answer, then is to have the documentation written in standardised, human-readable way (with links and formatting) and have a script (part of VE?) read it and convert that to JSON on the fly, when needed? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:55, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I would agree with this. Some standardized documentation format that a machine could read, though probably not JSON because of its no-wiki-text limitations, that some specially developed tool could read would be at least better than what we have now. <rant>What we do have now is the VE crowd essentially saying to us: "We need this, so here is a limited functionality format, write our documentation for us, and, just to show what good guys we are, here is an editing tool for you to use to create and maintain our documentation for us. Yeah, it's marginally usable, but we think it's really quite pretty. Thanks, call us when it's done." You might get the impression that I object to this way of doing things. You would be right.

I object to having two sets of documentation to maintain; I object them both being visible at the same time. Can we at the least wrap <TemplateData>...</TemplateData> in <div style="display:none;">...</div> so that it's out of sight?</rant>

Just so there isn't a misunderstanding: even though I object to the current state of affairs, that doesn't mean that I would not willingly participate in conversation directed toward a solution.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:50, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Can we at the least wrap <TemplateData>...</TemplateData> in <div style="display:none;">...</div> so that it's out of sight? There is no need for it to be immediately visible - it can be wrapped in {{Cot|TemplateData}} ... {{Cob}} so that it is obvious that it has been created, and those who want to look at it can expand it, but most people can just ignore it and look at the normal documentation. Obviously just an interim solution, being able to have a single, unified documentation would be better. - Evad37 [talk] 01:19, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Documentation is still inconsistent

The above discussion wandered off to a valuable place, leading to some experiments in consolidating the template documentation with the TemplateData structure. I expect that those experiments and others like them will eventually lead somewhere useful.

But while we wait for that blessed day to arrive, the documentation pages Template:Cite journal/doc‎, Template:Cite book/doc, Template:Cite press release/doc, and Template:Cite news/doc are inconsistent in their application of hyphens to multi-word parameters. Per a July 2014 RFC on this page, the templates' "documentation is to show this lowercase, hyphenated version as the one for 'normal use'." We are operating in contravention of that RfC. The documentation also contains inaccurate information about when "et al." is displayed.

Any suggestions on how to resolve this inconsistency are welcome. You are also welcome to look at the diffs linked above, along with the subsequent page history, to see how to implement the fixes yourself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:27, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Formatting of Cite news "issues" value not clear

We currently format the Cite news and Cite web as follows:

"Title" Newspaper (2001). p.28.
Author (2001). "Title of webpage"

In my opinion it is not clear that "2001" is an issue number. It is also also ambiguous with a date (especially when compared to the output of Cite web). Would formatting it as "issue #2001" be an improvement? Krinkle (talk) 05:48, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps. The rational behind certain styling choices may (or may not) be found in an archive somewhere. Isn't it true that the vast majority of newspapers, and consequently citations to same, are dated? Redrawing your examples:

{{cite news |author=Author |title=Title |newspaper=Newspaper |url=//example.org |date=24 July 2001 |issue=2001}}

→Author (24 July 2001). "Title". Newspaper. No. 2001. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)

{{cite web |author=Author |title=Title |url=//example.org |website=Website |date=2001}}

→Author (2001). "Title". Website. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)

the same without author:

{{cite news |title=Title |newspaper=Newspaper |url=//example.org |date=24 July 2001 |issue=2001}}

→"Title". Newspaper. No. 2001. 24 July 2001.

{{cite web |title=Title |url=//example.org |website=Website |date=2001}}

→"Title". Website. 2001.

|issue= is also closely associated with |volume=. How would you render |issue= when |volume= is present?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

It appears we uses the APA style here.[17] -- Gadget850^talk 13:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

To summarize what Gadget850's link says, the issue is not the date the issue was published. Academic journals, and some magazines, are formally identified by volume and issue. Usually, a volume consists of all the issues printed during a year. The first year of publication would be volume 1, and so on. Each issue within the year is assigned a number (or sometimes an alphanumeric name, such as S1 for the first special issue). So the issue of QST I have at hand is volume 98 (the 98th year of publication) issue 12 (they print 12 issues per year; 12 is the December issue). Jc3s5h (talk) 14:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I believe that in Krinkle's example, the 2001 is an issue number.

"Title". Newspaper. p. 28.
"Title". Newspaper. No. 2001. December 17, 2014. p. 28.
Last, First (December 17, 2014). "Title". Newspaper (2001): 28.
Last, First (December 17, 2014). "Title". Newspaper. No. 2001. p. 28.

-- Gadget850^talk 14:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I believe Krinkle has probably misused the issue parameter to indicate the year (especially since the date is also 2001). Most publications set the issue number back to 1 at the beginning of each year, and it is unlikely a newspaper will have 2001 issues in a single year. (However, today's New York Times is Vol 164 issue 56,718. Apparently the NYT never resets the issue number and in the last 164 years they have published 56,718 issues.) Example:

Ivory, Danielle; Ruiz, Rebbecca R. (December 17, 2014). "Recalls of Cars Abroad Prompt No U.S. Urgency". New York Times. Vol. 164, no. 56, 718.

It is confusing if the editor fails to supply a volume parameter. Perhaps a solution is to create an error message if the issue (or the synonym number) is given but the volume is not given. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Jc3s5h (talk) 15:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

While I can't point a finger at one, I'm pretty sure that I've seen citations that correctly used |issue= or |number= without |volume=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:05, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's an actual journal that uses "number" but does not organize issues by volume at all: http://www.reei.org/revista/anteriores.php. I have seen others cited in WP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

The documentation from 2007 for cite journal had this to say:

volume: Volume number of the journal in which the article is found
issue: Issue number of the journal in which the article is found

It seems the process of combining the documentation from all the cite templates into one has confused the meaning of volume and issue. They really have different connotations for periodicals than they do for books or websites. (Books don't have issues, and who knows what "issue" would mean for a website.) Clearly our format was chosen to present either a volume and issue, or a volume alone (the latter would be appropriate if the page numbering is continuous throughout the volume). So if we want to keep the format the way it is, we shouldn't allow issue without volume; let the editor put suitable wording in the "at" parameter. If we want to support issue alone, we need to change the format of the citation as presented to the reader. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:47, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Another comment: if the location of the date were made consistent, always the second element, after the author(s) if there are any, or after the title if there are no authors, it would at least be clear that a number in parentheses later in the citation isn't a date. This is already on the list of things to do. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

We cannot assume that |issue=n without |volume= is an error. The use of issue numbers is not confined to academic journals; many other periodicals - including newspapers and magazines - have issue numbers and not all have volume numbers. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Something else that could be noted, is that volume and issue aren't exactly useful information for newspapers. If I were to look for today's edition of The Mining Journal, the local paper for my hometown, and I needed to pull it off microfilm, I'll be looking by "December 17, 2014", not "volume 12, issue 349" because the libraries don't index the volume/issue numbers on the microfilm reels. On the other hand, if I'm looking at my local university library for academic journals, they'll usually be bound by volume number. Sometimes they might be bound, microfilmed, or digitized by year of publication. Magazines could be either way, but by date is more common in my experience.

Anyway, I'd be in favor of setting up {{cite news}} and {{cite journal}} to use the "VV (II): pp" format consistently unless only a page or page range is provided, at which point the "p." or "pp." appears. Imzadi 1979 → 21:36, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

There are actually two distinct meanings of "volume" for books, by the way. If the book is part of a numbered series, indicated in our templates with |series=, then |volume= is its number in that series. And if it is a single book that for reasons of length was split into multiple volumes, but is not part of a series, and we want to refer to something in one of those volumes, then |volume= indicates which one. Often the individual volumes have subtitles as well but then it works better to put that in the title: |title=Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, Vol. I: Games in General. I don't know of a good way of indicating both kinds of volumes for the same book (as sometimes happens) using |volume= parameters. And I don't know of a good way to indicate the multiple-pieces-of-a-single-text meaning for a book that also indicates the series it's in, e.g. my copy of Heath's Euclid is published in three volumes (further split into 13 books, something else we don't have a good way to indicate) but is part of the unnumbered series "Dover Books on Advanced Mathematics". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

CS1/2 templates and voulme/issue/page(s)/at
template	volume	issue	page(s)	at
{{citation}}
{{cite AV media}}	No	No	No	?
{{cite AV media notes}}	No	No
{{cite book}}
{{cite conference}}
{{cite DVD notes}}	No	No
{{cite encyclopedia}}
{{cite episode}}	No	No	No	?
{{cite interview}}	No	No	No	?
{{cite journal}}
{{cite mailing list}}	No	No	No	X
{{cite map}}				?
{{cite news}}
{{cite newsgroup}}	No	No	No	X
{{cite podcast}}	No	No	No	?
{{cite press release}}	No	No	No	X
{{cite report}}	?	?
{{cite serial}}	No	No	No	?
{{cite sign}}	No	No	No	X
{{cite speech}}	No	No	No	X
{{cite techreport}}	?	?
{{cite thesis}}	No	No
{{cite web}}	No	No	?

A previous post in this thread got me wondering where use of the various parameters |volume=, |issue=, |page(s)=, and |at= is appropriate. So I concocted this table. It seemed to me that |at= might have application in any template but, for those templates where the at column is ? , a better in-source location identifier parameter exists or should exist: |time=, |minutes= comes to mind; for maps we have |section=.

For those templates where the at column is X , it isn't clear to me that there is much use for |at=, but I could be persuaded either way.

In the other columns, ? marks parameters and templates where I'm not sure that the parameters should be supported but can imagine that there are times when they should.

So then the question is: what do we do with this? Do we do nothing? Do we make decisions about the templates/parameters marked ? and X and then adopt the result of the decisions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

The documentation for cite interview and speech both indicate they may be used for published works, not just broadcasts. Press releases may extend over several pages on occasion. So the page/pages parameters apply to these. In the case of interviews, they are often contained in magazines or newspapers, so all the parameters for cite journal apply to cite interview. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:24, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

If a speech or interview is published as a transcription then it seems to me that {{cite interview}} and {{cite speech}} are the wrong templates to be using and that the correct template is {{cite book}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, etc. If the cited speech or interview is an audio or video recording then the correct template is {{cite AV media}}, {{cite podcast}}, etc.

Except that they more precisely identify for the editor reading raw wikitext what is being cited, a speech or interview as opposed to the more general magazine or video, I'm not sure there is much real benefit gained by having {{cite interview}} and {{cite speech}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:44, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Two distinctions between interview citations and regular citations. One is that they are alphabetized according to who gave the interview rather than the journalist who conducted the interview. The other is that in place of a title there may be a description of who was interviewed. Here is an example from page 745 of Chicago 14th edition, which has similar distinctions to "cite interview"; I've adapted the example to Wikipedia templates:

Cite interview:

Bellour, Raymond (Summer 1979). "Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Ramond Bellour". Camera Obscura (Interview). No. 2–3. Interviewed by Janet Bergstrom. pp. 89–94.

Cite journal:

Bergstrom, Janet (Summer 1979). "Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Ramond Bellour". Camera Obscura (2–3): 89–94.

We can see that the title handling in cite interview has become defective. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. For this interview, {{cite interview}} is flawed; {{cite journal}} is much more appropriate. Here I've extended the citation as {{cite journal}}:

Bergstrom, Janet; Bellour, Raymond (Summer 1979). "Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Raymond Bellour". Camera Obscura. 1–2 (3-1 3-4): 70–103. doi:10.1215/02705346-1-2-3-1_3-4-70.

I also changed author order because in the journal's TOC Bergstrom is credited as the author (here and here).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

As for maps, they can appear on specific pages of an atlas or even within a journal/magazine, so while |section= |inset= or both names a specific location within the map, we'd still need a way to specify the location of the map within a larger source. I've had to use |at= to specify multiple separate maps within an atlas or a main map plus an inset at the same time. (I've also wondered if the location information for maps shouldn't be in "VV (II): pp" format, with "p." or "pp." appearing where a volume or issue isn't defined, followed by the inset name and lastly the map section [prefaced with "§" for a single section or "§§" for multiple grid sections].) Imzadi 1979 → 17:29, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking of maps as if they were encyclopedia-like in content and form where there would be

map name → atlas name → volume → number → page → inset → section(s)

or

map name → atlas name → volume → number → pages

I can imagine that |at= would be appropriate when identifying a particular layer of a GIS map. But, since {{cite map}} isn't yet part of Module:Citation/CS1 these are things to think about in the future.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:44, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I believe that the use of 2001 as the issue in the example was to illustrate that the date and issue have the potential for confusion. -- Gadget850^talk 03:13, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Slight improvement to deprecated parameter error message

In this example there are three deprecated parameter. Instead of the current generic error message, the new error message identifies the first, usually the only, deprecated parameter it encounters when processing the citation:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author=Author\|coauthor=Coauthor\|month=December\|separator=#\|title=Title\|year=2014}}`
Live	Author (2014). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|coauthor=` ignored (`\|author=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|month=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	Author (2014). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|coauthor=` ignored (`\|author=` suggested) (help); Unknown parameter `\|month=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:35, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

...and when a user fixes the deprecated parameter in the sandbox's error message, they would see then get an error for the next deprecated parameter:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author2=Coauthor\|author=Author\|month=December\|separator=#\|title=Title\|year=2014}}`
Live	Author; Coauthor (2014). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|month=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)
Sandbox	Author; Coauthor (2014). Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help); Unknown parameter `\|month=` ignored (help); Unknown parameter `\|separator=` ignored (help)

-GoingBatty (talk) 23:27, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Only if there are more than one deprecated parameter in the template. I did label this topic 'Slight improvement ...'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:42, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea. When reading an article with a flagged ref (or any sort of tagging really), I'm more likely to edit if it actually tells me a (or at least one) specific thing that is wrong that I recognize how to fix rather than having to work harder to even know the problem. However, I would like to see the message retain some note that there is not just the one specifically-identified problem. Drawing attention that there are multiple problems might help pull in someone interested in making more changes (or at least a louder warning about a more problematic situation). And also, it's somewhat annoying to Show-preview to check ref corrections. If I only see evidence of one easily-fixed problem and I fix it, I'm liable not to get as far as seeing that there is still a remaining new-and-different error message. DMacks (talk) 06:12, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, ultimately I hope to make this particular error message report all of the deprecated parameters in a template. Not yet.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Adding long text to footnotes

An editor used this citation style, and then added what seemed to be unnecessary text to the citation. In their edit summary they defended this by stating Cite_web Quote. To me it seems as if information is being added to a footnote that probably should have been added to the article, or it's just restate what's already in the article. Any help on the use of this method to add detailed text to footnotes would be appreciated. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 05:51, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I am one of many editors who have added brief quotations to references to thousands of articles across Wikipedia using the "Quote=" parameter of the citation templates. The purpose is to provide a sample of the text that supports the material being referenced in the article. As I understand it, this is a design feature of the citation templates, but there is no policy that requires any editor to use the parameter nor anyone that prohibits its use. In Wikipedia, nothing is necessary other than reliable and verifiable sources, and this quote parameter allows editors who choose to use the feature to document the references more carefully. See the good article for Manhattan (footnotes 48, 53, 59, 62, 76, 245, etc.) and the featured article 7 World Trade Center (footnote 22), with many more examples available among Wikipedia's best articles. Alansohn (talk) 06:07, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm one who thinks that |quote= is much too much overused. If you hunt about in the archives of this page, or one of its progenitors, you'll find the brief squabble that resulted from the undiscussed addition of |quote= where the rationale for the addition was something to the effect of "I needed it, so I added it". That initial edit was reverted but the reverting editor couldn't muster sufficient opposition to make the revert stick. So now, we're stuck with |quote=. That is hardly what I would call design.

Because they were offered as examples of the proper use of |quote=, I looked. Mannhatten 48 is used two times in the article. The text in |quote= pretty clearly applies to first use of the reference; not so clear for the second use of the citation. Reuse of the citations with |quote= becomes problematic when the quotation doesn't quite apply in all uses of the citation.

At 7 World Trade Center 22, it isn't clear to me what it is that Mayor Giuliani is talking about. Likewise, it is not clear to me how the quotation supports the two sentences that precede its placement in the article. The quoted sentence is pretty scrambled and doesn't easily parse.

It is my view that |quote= should rarely if ever be used. If quotations from a source are required, then those quotations should be made part of the article's text as block quotes, properly cited per WP:QUOTE, or as footnotes, also properly cited, perhaps using {{efn}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I've been trying to improve and create new articles about the US state of New Jersey, and noticed that this editor has added lengthy "para quotes" to hundreds of articles about that state. In my opinion, they add useless text to the reference section of articles. I'm reluctant to begin removing them without some policy or consensus to support me. Trappist the monk, could a discussion be started again to evaluate the use of "para quote"? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

It isn't "para quote" but is a template {{para}} with a parameter value of quote so {{para|quote}} renders thus: |quote=.

In your initial post you refer to this edit which does not use Citation Style 1 even though the edit summary uses CS1 as partial justification. Because that case isn't CS1-specific, this talk page is probably not the best place to raise the broader issue of quotations in citations. You might consider raising the broad topic at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources.

Before you do that, you might want to read WP:CITE#Links and ID numbers, WP:CITE#Additional annotation, and WP:CITE#Indicating availability and also search the WT:CITE archives for any previous discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Your discussion of the history of the |quote= parameter is an ideal metaphor for its continued usage. Some editors preferred it when the templates were being created, some opposed it, but it remains a design feature -- not a bug -- in one of Wikipedia's most used templates. Now that it exists, some editors prefer to use it and some don't, but edit warring to squabble over its use by those editors who take advantage of this feature seems extremely counterproductive. You oppose it, and you are entirely free to eschew its usage in references. Using WP:ENGVAR or the more relevant WP:CITEVAR as a model, it would seem that no one should be forced to use or not use quotations in references and that edit warring on the matter should be explicitly prohibited. Alansohn (talk) 14:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Citing sources#Additional annotation. -- Gadget850^talk 15:02, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Here is the discussion that followed the initial introduction of |quote= to {{cite book}}.

I'm confused. Not sure how describing the history of |quote= is metaphorical. Both WP:ENGVAR and WP:CITEVAR boil down to "don't change established ______" (fill in the blank) without consensus to make the change, right? So then, without successful solicitations for consensus, adding quotations to citations where quotations were not previously included is not permitted under your example. Of course, the reverse would be the same. And why are you accusing me of edit warring?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Nonsense. If an article uses CS1, pretty much any CS1 template, and pretty much any parameter of those templates could be used. For example, an article that up to a certain time had only used cite journal could have a new passage with cite book added. There would be some changes that would violate WP:CITEVAR, such as changing all the separators from periods to commas. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:15, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

That is exactly what I meant. Editor Alansohn invoked WP:ENGVAR and WP:CITEVAR (not I) apparently as armatures for the construction of some sort of new 'rule'. My intent was to point out the cost of Editor Alansohn's example 'rule'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

"|quote=" is a great feature. No one requires you to read it, but they are there for those who need them to compare the original wording to the wording used in Wikipedia to make sure we are not undergoing semantic drift. Each editor changes the wording slightly until it is incorrect. More and more references are behind paywalls or a gone from the web through link rot so unless we store the actual text we are quoting there will be nothing to compare to. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:13, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

The way I have seen this applied is as follows...

An editor reads a piece of text in a reliable source, and then adds that information to a Wiki article in the form of a paraphrase.

To support the information they added to the Wiki article, they include a citation, which also includes a direct quotation from the reliable source they paraphrased.

For example, an editor adds -- Fred Smith immigrated from Foo in 1920 and settled in Maple Creek (not in quotes) -- to the body of a Wiki article.

To support this edit, they add a citation, and in that citation--in addition to information about the author, date, and so forth--they also add the following direct quotation from the source: "In 1920, Fred Smith settled in Maple Creek after immigrating from Foo".

My concern is that every Wiki article will soon become two articles. The first part will be the paraphrased text added to the body. The second will be the enormous reference sections filled with direct quotes, which support what was added to the body.

This is how I have seen this used.

Is there a more efficient way to avoid link rot, preserve the original text, and ensure honest paraphrasing? Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if it is more efficient, but you can preemptively archive web pages at Internet Archive and WebCite and then include the archived urls in CS1/2 templates with |archive-url= and |archive-date=.

That doesn't answer Editor Richard Arthur Norton's concerns about paywalls, of course, but there is no requirement that reliable sources be easily available or free of cost.

My textbooks, between the table of contents, the index and the endnotes are up to 30% of the pages. No one requires me to read them, my eyes goes right past them, never registering that they exist ... until I need them, then they are indispensable. I suppose some people cannot ignore them and they become obtrusive. Before the cold open was invented, you used to have to sit through 5 minutes of credits at the beginning of a film. That was harder to ignore. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:53, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not uncommon to run into footnotes with limited quoted matter in off-wiki writing. I know that it is somewhat common in the Chicago footnote system. I'm troubled by editors quoting full paragraphs within a footnote. I've found this done frequently in some Washington state highway articles where whole paragraphs of a statute amending the routing of a highway are pasted into the footnote. If the statute were subject to copyright, we'd be pushing the boundaries of fair-use by quoting that much material. In most cases, the reference to a source that can be obtained through a library somewhere is sufficient, and in the case of online-only sources, pre-emptive archival is a great option as Trappist mentions. Quoted material in the footnote may help in some cases to emphasize a point, but it should be done sparingly. Imzadi 1979 → 20:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Two authors

The ampersand no longer appears for this; there's a ; instead. Myrvin (talk) 07:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Never did. Here's a comparison between the old {{citation/core}} and the current Module:Citation/CS1 renderings of a simple {{cite book}} with two authors:

Cite book comparison
Wikitext	`{{cite book\|author2=Author2\|author=Author\|title=Title}}`
Live	Author; Author2. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author; Author2. Title. `{{cite book}}`: `\|author=` has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I missed |last-author-amp=yes. Myrvin (talk) 11:23, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

date=Autumn 1982 – Winter 1983

I have just added a citation (currently footnote one, in the infobox) to Jean Rhys. The Template:cite journal refers to a double-issue of a journal issued quarterly, the appropriate date is "Autumn 1982 – Winter 1983". The footnote appears with the red-letter warning that the date is not in an appropriate format and a link to the appropriate help. I tried several variants, none of them appear without the warning. Is it me, or does the date-checker need tweaking? Choor monster (talk) 16:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

A rather poor choice of dates on boudary 2's part. Which winter are they describing? The winter of 1 January – 21 March 1983 or the winter of 23 September – 31 December 1983? But, that is not why there is an error message. The error message is because the date contains the template {{snd}} which adds this to the date:

 – 

Replace that mess with a simple endash and get this:

Gardiner, Judith Kegan (Autumn 1982 – Winter 1983). "Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism". boundary 2. 11 (1/2): 233–51. JSTOR 303027.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

It's too bad you can't use the – html entity. Some people, like me, don't use the editor options that display possible symbols below the edit box. Even when I did, I had trouble telling the difference between all the dash-like marks that are available. Example:

Gardiner, Judith Kegan (Autumn 1982 – Winter 1983). "Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism". boundary 2. 11 (1/2): 233–51. JSTOR 303027. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Jc3s5h (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You can use {{ndash}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:13, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I used the explicit version, it worked perfectly, although I prefer markup and templates whenever possible. Thanks very much. As to "which" winter, so far as I have noticed, quarterlies that date themselves by the season always use "Winter YYYY" for the issue corresponding to January YYYY. Choor monster (talk) 18:21, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Date using in the format p.e. "2014-12-26"

Hi, please excuse that xx question, but so i use the template by p.e. <ref name="xxxx">{{cite web|url=http://wasauchimmer.com|title=Titel|publisher=Beispiel|author=|language=German|date=2014-12-01|accessdate=2014-12-26}}</ref> .... what parameters do i have to set to have shown in a related wiki 1. ^ "Titel" (in German). Beispiel. 1 December 2014. Retrieved 26 December 2014.? btw: within p.e. DE-WP the date is 'automatically' shown in the long-date-format, that's why i'm asking. Thank you very much for a short explaination, and my best season greetings :-) Roland zh (talk) 03:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I do not know what p.e. is.

At en-wp, dates are not automatic. If you want 1 December 2014 then |date=1 December 2014. Does that answer the question?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 04:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you. ok, no automatization, but so another Wikipedian, p.e. (for example) from the USA, UK or another native English speaking country, may also write, for example

|date=1st December 2014 ?
|date=December 1, 2014 ?
|date=1(st) of December 2014 ?

That's why i asked to avoid date-related miss-understandings and re-editting 'just' related to that topic ;-)

So there are no other opinions, it's recommended always to write the long-date-from |date=1 December 2014 as mentioned, or the short 'international' form |date=2014-12-01 ?

Thank you and kindly regards, Roland zh (talk) 04:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

It depends on context. For publication dates, I would write out the date long-form, but for access dates to urls I usually use the short 2014-12-25 format. There's also another complication related to WP:ENGVAR and MOS:DATETIES: for topics related to England or the former British colonies, the format 25 December 2014 is usually more appropriate, but for US-related topics the format December 25, 2014 is more appropriate. And for topics that have no specific nationality (or another nationality), we should stick with whatever format is already in use (and in any case keep the format consistent within each article). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

|date=1 December 2014 ? Yes
|date=December 1, 2014 ? Yes
|date=2014-12-01 ? Yes
|date=1st December 2014 ? No
|date=1(st) of December 2014 ? No

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Er, Trappist the monk, since when was |date=1st December 2014 permitted? Did you mean |date=1 December 2014? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Its not. Fixed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

[1] (guesstimate)

[2] Langreth, Robert; Cortez, Michelle Fay; Lauerman, John (October 15, 2014). Gale, Reg; Putka, Gary; Pollack, Andrew (eds.). "Ebola Outbreak Boosts Odds of Mutation Helping It Spread". Bloomberg News. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images. New York, NY: Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on October 19, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

[PubMed-22012269-3] van Regenmortel, M. H. (January 2012). "Requirements for Empirical Immunogenicity Trials, Rather Than Structure-Based Design, for Developing an Effective HIV Vaccine". Arch Virol. 157 (1). Springer: 1–20. doi:10.1007/s00705-011-1145-2. PMID 22012269. Retrieved 19 October 2014.

[subcamps40-4] "Stutthof (Sztutowo): Full Listing of Camps, Poland" (Introduction). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2014-10-7. Source: "Atlas of the Holocaust" by Martin Gilbert (1982). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |format= (help)

[5] Grossman, Vasily (1946), The Treblinka Hell [Треблинский ад] (PDF file, direct download 2.14 MB), Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House (online version), retrieved 5 October 2014., original in Russian: Гроссман В.С., Повести, рассказы, очерки [Stories, Journalism, and Essays], Воениздат 1958. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |publisher= and |quote= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

[Sereny54-6] Sereny, Gitta (1974, 1995, 2013). Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (Google Books preview). Random House. pp. 54–. ISBN 144644967X. Retrieved 5 October 2014. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)

[7] Burian, Michal; Aleš (2002). "Assassination — Operation Arthropoid, 1941–1942" (PDF file, direct download 7.89 MB). Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. Retrieved 5 October 2014.. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

[browning-8] Browning, Christopher R. (1992; 1998). "Arrival in Poland" (PDF file, direct download 7.91 MB complete). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Penguin Books. pp. 52, 77, 79, 80. Retrieved October 5, 2014. Also: PDF cache archived by WebCite. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); External link in |quote= (help)

[FOOTNOTERichards2013601-9] Richards 2013, p. 601.

[FOOTNOTESmithJones2012-10] Smith & Jones 2012.

[11] Barabbas (2012) "Beating the Tortoise". In Lapin 2012, pp. 4-6

[FOOTNOTECottontail2012100-12] Cottontail 2012, p. 100.

[FOOTNOTECottontail2012103-13] Cottontail 2012, p. 103.

[FOOTNOTEBarabbas20129-14] Barabbas 2012, p. 9.

[15] Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers 1920, p. 15

[16] Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers (1920), p. 15.

[17] Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers 1920, p. 10

[18] Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers (1920), p. 10.

[FOOTNOTEAlpha20012-19] Alpha 2001, p. 2.

[FOOTNOTEBeta20023-20] Beta 2002, p. 3.

[FOOTNOTEBetaGammaDelta20024-21] Beta, Gamma & Delta 2002, p. 4.

[FOOTNOTEGammaDeltaEpsilonZeta20035-22] Gamma et al. 2003, p. 5.

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Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal \|title=The Night Before Christmas \|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas}}	"The Night Before Christmas". `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `\|journal=` (help)
{{cite journal \|title=[[The Night Before Christmas]]}}	"The Night Before Christmas". `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `\|journal=` (help)

Cite original title or second title for the continuation of a newspaper story

Rendering problem with right-to-left language and trans-title

Where is the deprecated parameter in this article?

Missing space in cite conference

Publication within a publication

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2014-08-24

Documentation needed

OL parameter not being processed optimally

An ISO 639-1 language name test

Should Template:Cite report be listed on this Help page?

Untitled work

archivedate considered harmful

Wikimarkup and COinS metadata

Accessibility and COinS

Categories

Updating the live module?

Date when no date supplied

Date for ArXiv

Date template

Author alias

Deprecated parameters?

Date range

Similar template with cite web with date format in YYYY-MM-DD

Two months in the date parameter

Date with "onwards"

Cite Journal/magazine

Multiple publishers in cite book

Time to show date error messages?

Cite4Wiki Phoenix released

Duplicate template parameters

How is spring 1969 a date error if a publication dates an issue that way?

Removing deprecated parameters

Chapters in edited collections not working right

cite journal and quarterly publications

Quarterly journal date format

ASIN

Cite DVD notes

Nowrap for accessdate

Error messages across the entire project

Lua module and css presentation

Small caps

Why Are Publishers and Editors Wasting Time Formatting Citations?

Citing multiple contributions to a work

Translated title error fails to display red error message

Alternative title

Migrating cite newsgroup to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (cont'd)

Strange interaction between {{Cite encyclopedia}} and |script-title=

Date bug fix;

Chapter and its associated parameters

Date and year disagreement: should it generate a redundant parameter error?

Period appears at start of Cite Hansard

What about a work title?

Citation formatting RfC

Additional archive URLs

Circa

The quotation marks are part of the bibliographic entry for the work, not of the title of or link to the work

Check date values in date

Updated Articles

Time to retire Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al.?

Insering wikilinks from works

"format= requires url=" error checking needs adjustment

New ASIN-checking code marks 10-digit ISBN ending in X as an error

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 11–12 October 2014

script-title

Error checking

Related discussions

Titles of journal articles

New error in cite conference: "chapter= ignored"

Documentation confusion

CS1 date error at Development of the New Testament canon

Documentation updated: hyphenated parameters, removed parameters

Migrating cite mailing list to Module:Citation/CS1

Cite conference

Encyclopedia-style output from citation

CITEREF anchor id without names and dates

A new kind of author-link error to detect

Duplicate punctuation fix

COinS: surname? first?

Template documentation standard?

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 29–30 November 2014

Strange interaction between {{Cite encyclopedia}} and `|script-title=`