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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ClueBot III (talk | contribs) at 06:31, 1 May 2014 (Archiving 1 discussion from Help talk:Citation Style 1. (BOT)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Vancouver system authors

Concerning Template:Cite journal/doc, to get Vancouver system formatted authors one must add:

  • | authorformat = vanc | author-separator=, | author-name-separator = &#32;

to the {{cite journal}} template (see this discussion). Alternatively one can use a single author parameter. I have updated the documentation accordingly. Boghog (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

As before, why use a CS1 template for Vancouver? We already have a Citation Style Vancouver series. If you insist on the CS1 module, then it would simple to create a new series. --  Gadget850 talk 16:43, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Also as discussed before, the vcite templates are no longer maintained nor were they ever widely used. Today, fewer than 300 articles transclude {{vcite journal}}. The new cite journal templates that are based on the CS1 module are much faster, hence one of the primary reasons for using the vcite templates is no longer valid. I suppose that we could create new Vancouver citation templates based on the CS1 module, but some have expressed strong opposition to forking citations in the past (see for example the enormous controversy surrounding the cite_quick templates. Hence I would like to avoid forking templates if possible.
What is widely used are {{cite journal}} templates with a single author parameter with Vancouver system author formatting. A single parameter option (e.g., "authorformat = NLM") which in turn sets "| authorformat = vanc | author-separator=, | author-name-separator = &#32;" has been previously requested, but as far as I know, never implemented. On a related issued, I have also requested that pass through parameters be added to the {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}} templates so that these templates could optionally render authors in the Vancouver style. Boghog (talk) 17:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that follow on authors who don't understand the purpose of those parameters have no idea that you are not using standard CS1. If you use Vancouver for journals, shouldn't you use the same for books and the rest in the same article? But I am tired of arguing for consistency. Perhaps there is a reason the Vancouver templates are not well used? --  Gadget850 talk 18:30, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Editors see how the citations are rendered and will also see that using a different set of parameters in different citation templates produces inconsistent citation formats. A single authorformat parameter should not be that hard for editors to understand. I agree that formatting should be consistent for all citations within one article including books. But this does not present any special problem since {{cite book}} also supports either a single author parameter or alternatively authorformat, author-separator, and author-name-separator parameters. Vancouver templates are not used because they are no longer needed. The primary reason for using the Vancouver templates was for performance, not formatting. With the new CS1 module, there is no longer a significant performance advantage to the Vancouver templates. Editors that prefer the Vancouver system authors use a single author parameter in the regular citation templates. Boghog (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
You truly think that other editors will realize that a different citation style is in use by examining the parameters and values? --  Gadget850 talk 00:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
No, they will first notice that there is a difference in how they are formatted and then investigate why. Alternatively the editors that first established the citation format for the article will step in and modify the parameters so that the citations are consistently formatted. Boghog (talk) 00:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate your naivete. --  Gadget850 talk 00:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Don't underestimate the intelligence of editors. Also you don't seem to understand WP:CITEVAR. Boghog (talk) 05:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I understand CITEVAR and it is crap. I guess that what it does not say is use a consistent citation style within an article.Regardless, I'm not going to change your mind, so do whatever you want. --  Gadget850 talk 12:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
"... what it does not say is use a consistent citation style within an article" – False. What CITEVAR does say is "If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it". Hence CITEVAR does encourage using a consistent citation style within an article. CITEVAR is a content guideline that has been adopted by community consensus. Boghog (talk) 16:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Concur. "Consistent citation style within an article" is sprinkled in several places. But really Gadget850, help us out: use <sarc> tag as needed. --Lexein (talk) 17:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
OK. Now: Is Citation Style 1 the same as Vancouver Style? --  Gadget850 talk 18:33, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Objection your Honor! Asked and answered (see previous discussion). ;-) Boghog (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Overruled. You started a new discussion.--  Gadget850 talk 19:25, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
To summarize what I wrote before, a variant of the Vancouver style (produced by User:Diberri's Wikipedia template filling tool) is widely used in the WP:MED and WP:MCB projects. Furthermore the use of Diberri's tool is mentioned (but not required) in MEDMOS and MCBMOS. This variant only modifies the display of the author list and uses the default display of journals produced by {{cite journal}}. While this style does not match the full Vancouver system format (the only other significant difference is the placement of the date), it still is a format that is widely used in Wikipedia articles and therefore per WP:CITEVAR should be supported. I also wanted to point out that the "authorformat = vanc" is only a partial implementation of the Vancouver style for the display of the author names as it only converts first names to initials. Hence the syntax of "authorformat = vanc" as it is currently implemented is misleading. Logically if "authorformat = vanc" is set, it should also apply the Vancouver convention to the punctuation used within (no comma) and between authors (comma). Boghog (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Or, as I have suggested before, create a new set of templates that call these parameters. You also won't have to monitor and fix follow on edits for the next few decades. --  Gadget850 talk 19:27, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

That is easy:
  • {{vcite2 journal |last=Bannen |first=RM |last2=Suresh |first2=V |last3=Phillips |first3=GN Jr |last4=Wright |first4=SJ |last5=Mitchell |first5=JC |year=2008 |title=Optimal design of thermally stable proteins |url=http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/20/2339 |journal=Bioinformatics |volume=24 |issue=20 |pages=2339–43 |doi=10.1093/bioinformatics/btn450 |pmc=2562006 |pmid=18723523 }} →
  • Bannen, RM; Suresh, V; Phillips, GN Jr; Wright, SJ; Mitchell, JC (2008). "Optimal design of thermally stable proteins". Bioinformatics. 24 (20): 2339–43. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn450. PMC 2562006. PMID 18723523.
However that is something that I would not normally use. I would continue to the the normal cite journal template with a single author parameter. Where it would be used is with passthrough parameters to {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}}. Boghog (talk) 21:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The cite quick controversy was about creating templates that duplicated the CS1 functionality, not doing enough testing to ensure style compatibility, then pushing them onto articles without discussion. While the concept was good, some of the implementation and a lot of the discussion was poor. And we knew that Lua was coming on board soon, which quickly made the whole issue moot.
  • The problem is that many templates have been created independently with a variety of styles that use similar naming schemes (Cite *) that many editors use via copy/paste. The use of citation/core was the first real effort to standardize templates into a formalized style, followed by the codification of CS1 and the update of several popular citation templates to incorporate that style.
  • If I were doing it over again, I would have pushed for renaming the templates to reflect a common style- CS1 book, CS1 journal, etc.
  • It is certainly valid to use or create templates for citation styles. You want to use the CS1 style to create a variant for medical-related articles. Whether you use the use the existing templates or create new ones, you are forking the style. If you want to create 'medcite journal' or whatever as a Vancouver-like fork of CS1, then I don't see an issue, and indeed see benefits. You can create all the templates you need, update the documentation modules as needed and create a comprehensive style guide. The Lua CS1 modules have enough power to accommodate many variant styles, although this should be used judiciously.
--  Gadget850 talk 16:30, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Looking for trans_title for {{cite encyclopedia}}

In the documentation for {{cite encyclopedia}}, specifically Template:Cite_encyclopedia#Title, |trans_title= is repeated, appearing once under |title= and again under |encyclopedia=. I believe that I have identified two problems.

1. |trans_title= goes with |title= or |article=. There does not appear to be a way to provide a translation of the title of the encyclopedia itself.

2. The "Pages with citations using translated terms without the original" error appears when there is a translated title and |article= is used instead of |title= (|article= is an alias of |title=).

I believe that there should be a parameter allowing #1 above to work. It is possible that such a parameter exists but that the documentation is unclear (to me).

I also believe that the presence of a valid |article= should prevent the error message in #2 from appearing.

Some examples:

A citation where |trans_title= is intended to translate |encyclopedia=:

{{cite encyclopedia|ref=harv|last=Bricka|first=Carl Frederik|authorlink=Carl Frederik Bricka|encyclopedia=[[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]|trans_title=Danish Biographic Lexicon, including Norway for the period 1537–1814|url=http://runeberg.org/dbl/9/0067.html|edition=1st|year=1895|volume=IX|pages=65–71|article=Niels Kaas}}
Bricka, Carl Frederik (1895). "Niels Kaas". [[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]. Vol. IX (1st ed.). pp. 65–71. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

The same citation, using |title= instead of |article=:

{{cite encyclopedia|ref=harv|last=Bricka|first=Carl Frederik|authorlink=Carl Frederik Bricka|encyclopedia=[[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]|trans_title=Danish Biographic Lexicon, including Norway for the period 1537–1814|url=http://runeberg.org/dbl/9/0067.html|edition=1st|year=1895|volume=IX|pages=65–71|title=Niels Kaas}}
Bricka, Carl Frederik (1895). "Niels Kaas". Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814. Vol. IX (1st ed.). pp. 65–71. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Am I doing it wrong, which happens a lot, or have I found one or more bugs? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:35, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

|article= is an alias of |chapter=, not of |title=. It will give you the same type of citation as your second example . But, that seems wrong because "Danish Biographic ..." is not a translation of Niels Kaas. So, it does look like you've found a bug. Comparing old to live:
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Niels Kaas|encyclopedia=Dansk biografisk|trans_title=Danish Biographic}}
Live "Niels Kaas". Dansk biografisk. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Niels Kaas". Dansk biografisk. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Dansk biografisk|title=Niels Kaas|trans_title=Danish Biographic}}
Live "Niels Kaas". Dansk biografisk. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Niels Kaas". Dansk biografisk. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Additional information to confuse us more, here is the markup from {{cite encyclopedia/old}}:
|Title={{{encyclopedia|{{{title|}}}}}}
|TransTitle={{{trans_chapter|}}}
|TransItalic={{{trans_title|}}}
|IncludedWorkTitle={{{title|{{{article|}}}}}}
Clearly, in the case of {{cite encyclopedia}}, |article= is an alias of |title=. That isn't the case in Module:Citation/CS1:
['Chapter'] = {'chapter', 'contribution', 'entry', 'article', 'section' }
|chapter= is not supported by {{cite encyclopedia/old}}.
–Trappist the monk (talk) 16:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
You are seeing an old bug in the old cite encyclopedia. I discussed it a few times in that 'title' was assigned to two different meta-parameters, but there was no consensus on a solution. Which also meant that the documentation was odd in the aliases. --  Gadget850 talk 17:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Article|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|title=Title|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle}}
Live "Article". Title. Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Title. Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Article|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle}}
Live "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|title=Title|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle}}
Live "Title". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Title". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Article|title=Title|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle}}
Live "Article". Title. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Title. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

I think that I conclude from this series of comparisons that Module:Citation/CS1 isn't too badly broken, if it's broken at all. The {{citation/core}} version of {{cite encyclopedia}} is flawed so using it as a reference is problematic but I've used it here to show that the Module is fundamentally correct. If we are are to "fix" anything, it might be to alias |encyclopedia= and |title= for {{cite encyclopedia}} – if an editor needed |article=, |title=, and |work= then {{cite book}} can be used.

Aliasing |encyclopedia= and |title= for {{cite encyclopedia}} will also improve the metadata because then the encyclopedia's title will be included.

From the above comparisons, I've discovered that Editor Jonesey95's example citation can be properly rendered:

{{cite encyclopedia|ref=harv|last=Bricka|first=Carl Frederik|authorlink=Carl Frederik Bricka|title=[[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]|trans_title=Danish Biographic Lexicon, including Norway for the period 1537–1814|url=http://runeberg.org/dbl/9/0067.html|edition=1st|year=1895|volume=IX|pages=65–71|article=Niels Kaas}}
→Bricka, Carl Frederik (1895). "Niels Kaas". [[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]. Vol. IX (1st ed.). pp. 65–71. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

This is how it would render if we alias |encyclopedia= and |title= for {{cite encyclopedia}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Further head scratching:

This issue basically involves three parameters: |encyclopedia=, |title=, and |article=. Set or not set gives eight possible combinations:

  1. none are set which is pointless
  2. |article=
  3. |title=
  4. |title= and |article=
  5. |encyclopedia=
  6. |encyclopedia= and |article=
  7. |encyclopedia= and |title=
  8. |encyclopedia= |title=, and |article=

Nothing wrong with combinations 2, 3, 4, and 8. For the rest, if, within reason, we re-map parameters to positions of greater specificity, then for:

Case 5: |encyclopedia= maps to |title=
Case 6: |encyclopedia= maps to |title=
Case 7: |title= maps to |article= and |encyclopedia= maps to |title=

When |title= maps to |article=, |trans_title= maps to (and overwrites) |trans_chapter=.

I've tweaked the sandbox code so now we get this (|url= and |chapterurl= added to make sure that they follow their proper title parameters):

Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|trans_title=TransTitle|url=//example.com}}
Live Encyclopedia //example.com. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox Encyclopedia //example.com. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Case 5
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Article|chapterurl=//chapterurl.org|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle|url=//example.com}}
Live "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Case 6
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|chapterurl=//chapterurl.org|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|title=Title|trans_chapter=TransArticle|trans_title=TransTitle|url=//example.com}}
Live "Title". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Title". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Case 7

This tweak fixes Editor Jonesey95's first example:

{{cite encyclopedia|ref=harv|last=Bricka|first=Carl Frederik|authorlink=Carl Frederik Bricka|encyclopedia=[[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]|trans_title=Danish Biographic Lexicon, including Norway for the period 1537–1814|url=http://runeberg.org/dbl/9/0067.html|edition=1st|year=1895|volume=IX|pages=65–71|article=Niels Kaas}}
Bricka, Carl Frederik (1895). "Niels Kaas". [[Dansk biografisk leksikon|Dansk biografisk Lexikon, tillige omfattende Norge for tidsrummet 1537–1814]]. Vol. IX (1st ed.). pp. 65–71. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:02, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow, how did we get into this mess? I am definitely still confused about |title=, |chapter=, and |article=, and the existing documentation is not helping me. Should these two citations behave in the same way?
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|article=Article|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|trans_title=TransTitle|url=//example.com}}
Live "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Case 6 with article name in "article" but no trans_chapter
Cite encyclopedia comparison
Wikitext {{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia|title=Article|trans_title=TransTitle|url=//example.com}}
Live "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Article". Encyclopedia. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Case 7 with article name in "title" but no trans_chapter
Do we know what the usual usage is for the parameters in {{cite encyclopedia}}? Are people using |title= for the article title? I expect they are either using |title= or |article=, but those two parameters are apparently not equivalent. We might be able to make a very nice change to the template if we could first get a bot to substitute appropriate parameter names in existing articles and templates that use {{cite encyclopedia}}. Maybe.
First draft of a set of steps that might get us out of this mess (definitely needs debugging and testing and more complexity):
  1. Change all |title= to |article=
  2. Change template to alias |title= to |encyclopedia= (mirroring {{cite book}}, since encyclopedias are books)
  3. Make |trans_title= apply to |encyclopedia=
  4. Introduce |trans_article= for translated article names (it would be equivalent to |trans_chapter=)
  • How do we detect trans_titles that are translations of article names?
I'm sure there are four bad ideas in there. Please help refine my idea or otherwise show ways in which it is no good. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:05, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
How did we get here? I've heard that it's the result of multiple authors writing each of the twenty or so CS1 templates. Editor Gadget850 did yeoman's work in cleaning up the mess that was {{citation/core}}. This issue was one that didn't get resolved. See his comment above regarding the snippet of code from {{citation/core}}.
I look at |article= (an alias of |chapter=) as the citation element with the smallest scope. This is reflected in its leftmost position in the rendered citation. Next is |title= and then finally |encyclopedia=. When |article= isn't present, the next "larger" parameter, |title= gives its value to |article=; the now vacant |title= gets its value from |encyclopedia=. In this way we adjust to what we've been given and produce a more-or-less sensibly rendered citation. Is it optimal? Probably not. Were we designing {{cite encyclopedia}} anew, we might choose to have only |encyclopedia= and |article=. It would make things simpler.
So, with regard to your two examples and whether they should behave the same way: No, they should not, and do not. In your first example, we have |article= and |encyclopedia=. Since there is no |title=, |encyclopedia= gives up its value to |title=. Because |title= did not give its value to |article=, |trans_title= will not give up its value to |trans_chapter=. Similarly, in your second example, |title= gives its value to |article=, |trans_title= gives its value to |trans_chapter=, and |encyclopedia= gives its value |title=. "So that, as clear as is the summer's sun," explains that. (Quoted bit from Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1, Scene 2)
I don't know how {{cite encyclopedia}} is used. You'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical about getting a robot to do anything and do it reliably. I remember that not too long ago there were assertions made that a "bot remedy [was] in hand"; assertions that seem to have been unfounded.
Is there a mess? Certainly there is in the documentation; as it is now, it's no wonder there is confusion. For the rest of your enumerated list of steps to a solution perhaps that is best undertaken in a different thread so that we don't derail?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Usual usage? That will be based on the established (pre-lua) documentation at [1]. Clearly |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia is self explanatory. As |article= is an alias for |title=, it is simplest to eschew it and simply use |title= and |trans_title= in reference to the cited article. Any use of |title=Encyclopaedia is simply an error, that should be corrected if found, to |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia. Doing so should not create any problems. LeadSongDog come howl! 02:29, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
The link to the older version of the {{cite encyclopedia}} documentation is pretty much the same as the current documentation because of how the CS1 documentation is structured. All of the CS1 templates share bits, pieces, and parts from {{Citation Style documentation}} which transcludes multiple other templates that contain the actual documentation for the various parameters.
Except for the case of citations like the one that opened this discussion, I might agree with the rest of your comment. Clearly, in that case, it is necessary to have the name of the encyclopedia associated with |title= so that |trans_title= can be used and the two rendered properly in the template's output.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Not at all. There's no excuse for disrupting all the articles which use this template just for the sake of a few added citations. It would be quite legitimate and much less disruptive to use the existing parameter: |— Preceding unsigned comment added by LeadSongDog (talk • contribs) 14:49, 6 December 2013‎ (UTC)
Signed the apparently incomplete comment above by Editor LeadSongDog.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Don't get hung up on the documentation: in the old template, 'title' is an alias for both 'encyclopedia' and 'article' and can certainly give odd output. All of the other templates use 'title' for the main work title and 'chapter' or an alias for the included title. The best solution would be to make 'encyclopedia' and 'title' aliases and make 'article' and 'chapter' aliases and have a bot fix the 68k articles. --  Gadget850 talk 23:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Strongly Agree with Gadget850's recommendation here, hence my proposed actions in "First draft of a set of steps..." above. I think that having "title" be an alias for more than one parameter in some sort of if/then setup is WAY too confusing for me, let alone for your typical non-citation-format-obsessed editor. And it would be hell to document.
My only quibble with Gadget850's statement immediately above is that {{cite journal}} uses "title" for an academic article's title, while "journal" (aka "work") is the title of the larger encompassing work containing the item represented in "title". I don't foresee changing that setup any time soon; certain wikiprojects would explode. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:09, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Title

Reflecting upon Jonesey95's last comment, I checked the use of 'title' in all the templates. They are split between using 'title' for the main work or the included work; {{cite news}} uses it for both conditionally. This doesn't change the issue that the way {{cite encyclopedia}} uses 'title' is wrong. --  Gadget850 talk 14:04, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

suggestion for new arg to ((cite web)) template

This suggestion is for Template:Cite web. There is a quote= parameter for use when giving an exact quotation from the source. There is also a laysummary= arg which is used to point to a URL, and is a synonym for layurl.

  Unless I'm misunderstanding something, there is no provision for adding additional text, which is an on-the-spot summary, or perhaps a paraphrase (if it is partial rather than full). Suggest that there be a new arg or two, which permit these things to happen, plus a generic one for explanatory/disclamatory(sp?)/similar text of purposely-unspecified nature.

  1. paraphrase=
  2. tenWordSummary=
  3. misc=

Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

  p.s. The particular use-case here is for a high-school athletics program, which from time to time wins awards at the state championship level, for the dozen different sports they compete in. I would like to have a reference using ((cite web)) which points to the story about the championship, and then specify the traditional details like this.

misc= Game was played 2013-02-01 against $otherTeam in $namedStadium of $whateverTown, final score $n to $m.

That level of detail is mind-numbing for inclusion in the main body as prose... there, I would just say "2013 Boys Golf State Champs" or something similarly brief.

  I realize that I could create the necessary references without using ((cite web)), and include my additional disclaimer-text... but the article already exists, and is already using ((cite web)). I'm just trying to push the overly-detailed stuff into a footnote-sort-of-area, where it belongs. Thanks for any suggestions on the best way forward. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

p.s. After going back to the article, it finally dawned on me, and I realized that one can use (ref) ((cite web)), miscTextHere (/ref) ... so my problem is solved. Maybe a link from the ((cite web)) helpdocs, to the (ref)(/ref) helpdocs, which presumably mention how to add miscellaneous trailing text? Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
As far as I know, the solution you found is the only one that exists. I don't find it satisfying, since the text is not structured in any way and therefore we do not have a way to present it differently in the rendered reference/citation by changing the {{cite web}} rendering code. I feel slightly unclean after I just leave text lying around between the closing curly brackets and the closing ref tag, but what other options are there? Anyone? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The purpose of the citation is to enable the reader to locate the source. Content belongs in the article body. --  Gadget850 talk 23:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Ref tags can also be used for footnotes containing text that is relevant but not worthy of inclusion in the main body of an article. The above editor is essentially combining a citation with a footnote, a practice that is used in academic texts. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Those are explanatory notes and usually separate from citations. --  Gadget850 talk 00:59, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Title vs article in Cite encyclopedia

As User:Debresser/Sandbox shows, the title and article parameters are treated the same by {{Cite encyclopedia}}, unless they are given both, in which case the title parameter is italicized. The documentation on Template:Cite_encyclopedia/doc#Title says that title and article are aliases. Could somebody please explain this seeming contradiction, and propose how to change the documentation or the template accordingly. Debresser (talk) 02:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Scroll up a bit for a long discussion of this very problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:01, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2013-12-08

Toward 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) and Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist to match Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox (diff). This update is, for the most part, bug fixes and minor enhancements:

  1. Fix Script Error bug that occured when |doi_brokendate= did not contain a year value;
  2. Fix doi() so that dois with invalid doi_brokendate categorize to "Pages with inactive DOIs" and not to "Pages with DOIs inactive since";
  3. Change deprecated_parameter() to emit a single error message; (discussion}
  4. Fix bug in checkisbn() that stripped-out non-isbn characters before validation so that ISBNs were declared good as long as the stripped (not displayed) version of the isbn passed the remaining tests; (discussion)
  5. Year and PublicationDate promotion to Date consolidation; (discussion)
  6. Change validate() and the whitelist to recognize deprecated parameters; (discussion)
  7. Change pmc/url handling; (discussion)
  8. Modify |encyclopedia, |title and |article parameter handling for cite encyclopedia; (discussion)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Auto-formatting dashes in page numbers

It appears that the templates now convert any hyphens in page numbers. I had to use the code for a hyphen in this edit to get them to appear as hyphens again. (Environmental impact studies tend to use hyphenated pagination for the chapter and the page number within the chapter.) I understand that people don't always use a dash for page ranges, but it seems to be very counterintuitive to resort to codes like this when a hyphen is correct, and I had to dig to find the code which isn't documented, and instead the documentation says to use at... :( Imzadi 1979 → 20:52, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, who cares? It has always been a complete mystery to me why some people are so hung up on the differences between hyphens and various supposedly different sorts of dashes. To the casual reader they are all the same. A complete and, in my view, absurd waste of time and effort. -- Alarics (talk) 21:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Mostly I don't have much sympathy for all the hyper-correctness about dash-like marks. But if an electronic document has pages numbers that contain a particular mark, its kind of nice to get it right, so someone using the source can cut from the citation and paste into whatever kind of find command is available in the electronic reading environment. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I believe the way to avoid having your correct hyphens replaced is to specify the page number using at=p. 1-1 instead of putting a hyphen in the |page= parameter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:18, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Only for |pages=. A hyphenated page number in |page=1-1 like the one in your example is not converted to an endash:
{{cite book |title=Title |page=1-1}} → Title. p. 1-1.
{{cite book |title=Title |pages=1-1}} → Title. pp. 1–1.
Using &#8209; in hyphenated page numbers corrupts the COinS metadata.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:33, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Hyphenated page numbers are often converted to endashed page numbers by bots and scripts that believe the numbers are page ranges. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I wonder if there is a way to "escape" a hyphen so that CS1 and the various robots can distinguish intentional hyphens like this case where the hyphen is appropriate. And, what about hyphenated page ranges? 1-1–1-3 for example. Double hyphens: 1-1--1-3? Some other character? Of course, it's easy enough to detect and replace &#8209; with a hyphen but that string is more difficult to type that a couple of hyphens.
Ideas?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Whatever solution should be coordinated with User:Citation bot; that's where I found the code because that bot will replace a hyphen with a dash... Imzadi 1979 → 00:58, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
There are a number of editing tools that will convert HTML entities to standard ASCII characters, so that is not a real solution. --  Gadget850 talk 20:00, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm on the fence about all of this. On one hand, I appreciate that the correct dash can be hard to type, and that people are ignorant (some intentionally) of good typography, so the concept of the templates correcting a hyphen to a dash is nice. However, in this case, such a concept does actual harm since hyphenated page numbers are not a totally obscure concept. I think given those harms, the template should not attempt the autocorrection, and we should deal with educating people or just wikignoming dashes into place as needed. Imzadi 1979 → 16:41, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

The cite templates do not convert hyphens to dashes in |page=page number parameters. Bots like Citation Bot, and scripts that use AWB and similar fixes, sometimes convert hyphens to dashes in that parameter. In other words, WP currently behaves like the latter suggestion ("just wikignoming dashes into place"), with the exception that the scripts and bots are unable to distinguish between a proper hyphen in a page number like "3-1". Hence the suggestion to put hyphenated page numbers into |at=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:45, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, sort of. Module:Citation/CS1 does change hyphens to endashes when hyphens are encountered in |pages= (the plural).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:57, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Documentation question regarding deprecated month parameter

Since |month= has been deprecated, should Help:Citation Style 1#Dates be update, similar to Template:Cite web#Deprecated does? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 06:20, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:56, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

nsbp allowed in dates?

I haven't done much digging into the articles in the new date error category, but I came across one today that looked like a false positive. The date format was: |accessdate=September 23, 2011 in the article Mel Pearson. Should non-breaking spaces be allowed where spaces are allowed in valid date formats? MOS:DATEFORMAT is not explicit on the issue.

I can see why someone would put non-breaking spaces into a date like this, but it seems overly fancy to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Even though &nbsp; is legitimate html, to CS1 it is just extraneous text. If CS1 is working correctly, there should be no need for editors to add markup that effects the display of the rendered citation (external links and wikilinks excepted, and then only in certain circumstances). On my list of things to do is to insert &nbsp; in appropriate places in dates, in time, and perhaps elsewhere.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
The script for standardising date formats automatically removes non-breaking spaces from dates, so I presume they are frowned upon. -- Alarics (talk) 10:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Hopefully, in the fullness of time, the template will insert nbsp when needed in dates, and we'll be able to remove all explicit nbsp from the parameter values. However, template doesn't do that yet, so for the moment we should leave these be otherwise some editors who spend time putting in these nbsp will complain. Rjwilmsi 12:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
What script is that? MOS:DATEFORMAT seems to be mute on &nbsp; in properly formatted dates except within date ranges. Here's a rather long discussion about &nbsp; in citations which I have not yet had the time to read. Perhaps that will be helpful.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
The script I was referring to is User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates. -- Alarics (talk) 09:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I like that script very much. It does strip &nbsp; out, but I've only spotted nbsp in two articles in 2 or 3 places; these are easily reinserted manually if needed, because the script automatically does "Show Changes" after it runs. See WP:NBSP for the prime advice about &nbsp; - it's pretty conservative, suggesting use in a limited way only where absolutely needed. To me, stray HTML which stops me from searching for plain dates while editing is just invalid wikitext. May I suggest {{nowrap}} ({{nowrap| 2 November 1823}}) rather than fussing with &nbsp; ? --Lexein (talk) 20:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Really, the only part of a date that would need a non-breaking space or a nowrap is the month and day portions. A year can stand alone as a discrete unit, but the number for the day of a month depends on the month for meaning just as the numerical portion of a measurement depends on its unit. Imzadi 1979 → 20:59, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I've changed my example to suggest that the year also conveys meaning - wouldn't allowing the year to break obscure that meaning, if only for a moment? --Lexein (talk) 21:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Remembering that this page and this discussion is about Citation style 1, {{nowrap}} has no place in a CS1 citation template. When I suggested that one of the things on my my todo list is to insert &nbsp; in appropriate places in dates, in time, and perhaps elsewhere, I meant that Module:Citation/CS1 would do that to the template output and not in the wikitext that an editor sees.
I'm inclined to agree with Editor Imzadi1979 that for the MOS approved date formats, the first space gets replaced with &nbsp; and the remainder of the date can break at the second space:
30&nbsp;November 2013
November&nbsp;30, 2013
June&nbsp;– July 2013
And for ISO 8601 dates, the hyphens are replaced with non-breaking hyphen &#8209;:
2013&#8209;11&#8209;30
Alternately, these same sections of the dates can be wrapped: <span class="nowrap">30 November</span> 2013
This latter is arguably more technically correct because we're discussing presentation not content.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:16, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
What about metadata? --  Gadget850 talk 00:56, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
As I understand it, Trappist is suggesting the output as displayed, not the metadata and not the wikicode input, would have the substitutions made to prevent the undesirable line breaking. Imzadi 1979 → 01:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:14, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I was pointed here by GoingBatty. I use {{nowrap}} for dollar figures and dates in film articles, but Batty's bot was removing it per CS1. I am trying to get a grasp on the technical detail here. Is it not possible to ensure non-breaking spaces for dates without running afoul of CS1? Trappist the monk, can you explain what you mean by the template output and not the wikitext? Just wondering what I need to do personally. Erik (talk | contribs) 16:13, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This issue only applies to the use of {{nowrap}} or &nbsp; within a Citation Style 1 template. Here is a simple {{cite book}}:

{{cite book |title=Title |date=20 December 2013}}

It renders like this:

Title. 20 December 2013.

When Module:Citation/CS1 processes the template the output (which the Mediawiki code will convert to a displayable page as HTML) looks like this:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000071-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. 20 December 2013.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.date=2013-12-20&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>

If you hunt through that tangle of stuff you will find the date in the COinS metadata: &rft.date=20+December+2013

Here is what the {{nowrap}} template output looks like:

<span class="nowrap">20 December 2013</span>

Now, if we change our original {{cite book}} template to use {{nowrap}} in |date={{nowrap|20 December 2013}}:

{{cite book |title=Title |date={{nowrap|20 December 2013}}}}

It renders like this:

Title. 20 December 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

When Module:Citation/CS1 processes the template the output looks like this:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000077-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Title''. <span class="nowrap">20 December 2013</span>.</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+4" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite book|cite book]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Check date values in: <code class="cs1-code">&#124;date=</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_date|help]])</span>

If you hunt through that tangle of stuff you will find the corrupted date:

&rft.date=%3Cspan+class%3D%22nowrap%22%3E20+December+2013%3C%2Fspan%3E

And that is the problem. Presentation information should not be included in CS1 parameter values because that information ends up in the COinS metadata because when external referencing tools read the date value they get non-date text.

Use {{nowrap}} all you want in your article's text but leave it out of your CS1-based citations Handcrafted citations, because they don't generate machine readable metadata can use {{nowrap}}. Have I answered your questions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, your edit on 30 November indicated that ISO 8601 [sic] dates would be displayed with non-breaking hyphens. I would think that anyone under the delusion that the English Wikipedia has adopted ISO 8601 would expect a date that appears to be in that format to be in exactly that format, with every single character specifically endorsed in the standard. Can you cite the paragraphs in the ISO 8601 standard that endorses the non-breaking hyphen? If not, it would be safer to stick with nowrap. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:17, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

In the comments to which you refer, I was speculating on possible solutions to the wrapping issue. I probably should have used a term somewhat akin to year initial dates. I also wrote that I thought that the better solution is to wrap displayable dates in a no wrap span because wrapping is presentation, not content.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above did not result in any changes to the way that the CS1 module formats citations, as far as I can tell. The discussion explored some ways that the module might present dates in a way that optimized wrapping (or not wrapping). I think that changing that presentation format would best be done through a discussion at WT:MOS.
The short answer to Erik's question is that formatting markup in citation date parameters causes problems with external tools that parse those citations, so that markup is automatically flagged as an error by the module. If editors think that citation dates should universally be formatted with some combination of non-breaking spaces, that issue should be raised at WT:MOS. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:46, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Master of the Rolls references http://oxforddnb.com

Excuse my bad english. Hello looking for Master of the Rolls I see many problems with the link to http://oxforddnb.com. F.e.: {{cite web |url=http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/16040?&docPos=1&backToResults=list=yes|group=yes|feature=yes|aor=3|orderfield=alpha |title=Oxford DNB: Langton, John |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |accessdate=18 November 2009}}

  • "Oxford DNB: Langton, John". Oxford University Press. 2004. Retrieved 18 November 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |aor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |group= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |orderfield= ignored (help)

The term between url and title are parameters from the oxforddnb.com but cite web are interpreted there as parameters from cite web. Could someone looking for this? With best regards --Markus S. (talk) 14:05, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The errors occur because the |url= value contains the pipe symbol "|" which Wikipedia templates use to identify parameters. To fix these citations, replace the pipe symbols in the |url= with {{!}}:
{{cite web |url=http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/16040?&docPos=1&backToResults=list=yes{{!}}group=yes{{!}}feature=yes{{!}}aor=3{{!}}orderfield=alpha |title=Oxford DNB: Langton, John |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |accessdate=18 November 2009|subscription=yes}}
→"Oxford DNB: Langton, John". Oxford University Press. 2004. Retrieved 18 November 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
or just truncate the url at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16040 The additional parameters all seem to relate to having searched ODNB for this entry so aren't relevant for a direct link from WP. NtheP (talk) 14:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the Help :) The references are fixed. --Markus S. (talk) 15:20, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm looking for former versions and I see that untill December 2012 this parameters don't make any problems. Were some fixes in the last month in the template or in the wiki-software? --Markus S. (talk) 06:15, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Former versions of what? The use of the pipe symbol within |url= values has always caused problems because the Wikipedia software uses it to separate a template's parameters. The change from markup-based {{citation/core}} to Lua-based Module:Citation/CS1 processing allowed us to detect malformed citation parameters. That change was made this year.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:29, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Former version of Master of the Rolls. I'm searching for this because I doesn't understand this malformed references. And with your answer is this now okay. Thanks for this. --Markus S. (talk) 13:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Template:Cite court

Should {{cite court}} be added to Template:Citation Style documentation/cs1, Help:Citation_Style_1#Templates, etc.? It Is Me Here t / c 12:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

No. Citation Style 1 templates are characterized by their common use of either {{citation/core}} or Module:Citation/CS1. {{cite court}} uses neither.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:16, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Is there some kind of roadmap for converting such templates to CS1? Is the plan to have them all using CS1 eventually? It's just that, my thought is, if these templates get listed alongside {{cite news}} and so on at Template:Citation Style documentation/cs1, they will gain more prominence and so editors will be more likely to use them. It Is Me Here t / c 13:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
As far as I know, there is no such plan. If it is the collective judgement that a particular citation template would benefit from conversion to CS1, editors are, of course, welcome to do that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
{{cite court}} uses the US Bluebook style. Previous attempts to incorporate it into CS1 were rebuffed- see {{cite court}} talk. I am not aware of any legal citation templates that use the CS1 style. --  Gadget850 talk 15:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

New ReferenceBot notifying editors when they cause certain CS1 errors

This is a note, in case it hasn't come to the attention of the editors here, that there is a new bot, User:ReferenceBot, that is notifying editors when they place an article in one of a handful of reference error categories. It works in almost the same way as User:BracketBot, adding a notification to the editor's Talk page letting them know that their edit appears to have caused a reference error.

ReferenceBot currently checks the following categories for new articles once per day:

Those categories were chosen because they are currently (or recently) free of problem articles. This means that editors who revert to previous versions of articles will not be accused of introducing an error unless they revert an article to a state before the citation errors were fixed.

I am hopeful that this new bot will help keep the emptied CS1 categories from refilling quite so fast, allowing us to focus on fixing longstanding errors instead of trying to keep up with the new ones.

Here are a few diffs that show ReferenceBot's messages to editors: URL error, cite error, missing references list, unnamed parameter error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Does the bot also check Category:Pages with URL errors? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:10, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes. I have added it above, but it was already in the bot; you can see a typical notification in the "URL error" link above. Thanks for catching that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:00, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Extra newspaper parameters

Some newspaper citations, such as the one added in this edit, referring to The Times, have values for issue and column. Should {{Cite news}} have equivalent parameters? If not how else should they be entered? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:25, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Like this?
{{cite news|title=Local Authorities And Cremation |date=31 August 1928 |newspaper=[[The Times]] |at=p. 9 col E |issue=44986}}
→"Local Authorities And Cremation". The Times. No. 44986. 31 August 1928. p. 9 col E.
Use |at= for page and column, |issue= for the issue number, change date to dmy format, no |accessdate= because no |url=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:46, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)There's a {{cite news}} version of {{Cite newspaper The Times}} to be found at {{Cite newspaper The Times/sandbox}} which I guess what the edit you've seen is trying to emulate and the sandbox may solve. NtheP (talk) 17:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Ha! That was me. I'd completely forgotten about that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:54, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. The existing parameters which you use are not in the toolbar dialogue which I used, and the access date is generated automatically by that tool uses. Can these bugs be addressed? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure that the tool's bugs (if they are bugs and not an intentionally limited subset of the {{cite news}} template) can be addressed. I suspect that here is probably not the best place to accomplish that. Surely there is a talk page for your tool?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:40, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
As I understand it, the only reason the special Times template (of which I disapprove) includes those parameters is because issue and column are part of the Times Archive's special way of citing itself. These features are not usually included in newspaper citations in the real world, and I don't think they should be included in "cite news" generally. They are not necessary. Things are complicated enough already. -- Alarics (talk) 21:52, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Icon templates in language parameters

When the icon templates (e.g. {{sv icon}}) are used in the |language= parameter, we see references like this:

I believe that the Reflinks tool is the primary way these templates are ending up in citations. Although I contacted Dispenser about this almost two years ago, it's still making the same error. Should the citation templates be fixed to display the references properly when the icon templates are used, or should I submit a bot proposal to fix these? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:05, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Let's not hold our breath for Reflinks to get fixed. There a a zillion bug reports and some very long-standing bugs.
The documentation for the language parameter clearly states that templates should not be used, and that statement has been in the documentation for almost two years (the statement was added to {{cite web/doc}} on Feb 15, 2012, AFAICT), so it should be uncontroversial to have a bot that replaces "language={{sv icon}}" with "language=sv". The bot would need to operate on an ongoing basis, since Reflinks will keep creating these links, and the fix should probably be included in the AWB common fixes.
What are the potential bugs in a simple replacement regex like "language=\{\{([a-z][a-z]) icon\}\}/language=\1" ? (I am not a professional regex writer, so that could be totally wrong.) Note that a few of the xx icon templates use a three-letter language code, e.g. {{ace icon}}, which yields Template:Ace icon. We would also need to ensure that replacements happened only within citations, not within infoboxes and other places where "language={{sv icon}}" might be valid.
I am also OK with having the CS1 module automatically render the language in plain text if that is simpler overall. It would give editors immediate feedback, though it's a bit opaque and confusing, since when I add a template to an article, I expect to see that template rendered. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:33, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
We still have 11 CS1 templates that use {{citation/core}}, not the Lua CS1 module. --  Gadget850 talk 17:53, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Reflinks always suggests {{cite web}}, so I would guess most of the issues would be within this template. However, the tool allows the user to change it to a template that uses {{citation/core}}. GoingBatty (talk) 18:21, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Check ISO 639-1

On a related note, {{Check ISO 639-1}} may be of interest; see discussion at Wikipedia:Lua requests/Archive 3#Language of native names. Perhaps a similar approach could be used to catch instances such as those discussed above? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:38, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Question about displaying error messages

Category:CS1 errors: dates states "While most of the Citation Style 1 error messages are visible to all readers, some remain hidden." How much flexibility do we have with displaying error messages for this particular category? Is it all or nothing, or can we get more granular than that, such as displaying some error messages for dates that can't be fixed by bot? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:42, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

A few months ago, there was a hue and cry on this page or a similar one (I'll dig it up if you're interested) about the red messages that had recently been exposed. At that point, all CS1 error messages were displayed by default (some of them only recently). After a discussion, the consensus was to re-hide the most recently revealed messages until a bot could go through the categories and fix the bot-fixable errors.
My takeaway from that discussion is that once a bot has fixed all of the fixable error messages in a category, the consensus was that we should unhide the error messages for that category so that editors would know there were errors and possibly try to fix them. This involves changing a "hidden" variable's value from "yes" to "no" (or something equivalent) in the CS1 module's code. I don't think there is further granularity at this point; a given category's message is either hidden or visible to regular editors/readers who have not modified their CSS files.
Trappist the monk will be able to correct any errors in the above paragraphs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:44, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Currently there is only one error message for date checking. We would have to add separate error checking for "dates that can't be fixed by bot". First, you would have to define and differentiate it. --  Gadget850 talk 22:29, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Procedure when author is "Staff"

I'm looking at a Featured List nomination and some of the refs are credited to "Newsarama Staff" as this is what is given as the author. My understanding is that in this case the author field should just be empty, but I wanted to be sure before I advise the candidate to enact this. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 20:39, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree. "Staff" is never a useful piece of information. The reader can surely take it as given that, if no specific author is mentioned, the author belongs to the staff of the source in question. -- Alarics (talk) 09:51, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I concur. Same goes for "team", "editors", etc. --Lexein (talk) 11:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
See Help:Citation Style 1#Authors where is included this example:
|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with the suggestion of leaving it blank, or even a hidden comment clarifying it. This has come up as an issue in several GAN's I've ran early, where the reviewers questioned who the author was when the field was left blank. I see no harm in informing the reader that the author was staff directly and not a possibly-unreliable guest contributor (as can be the case with many websites).--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Better than leaving the field blank is to delete it altogether. -- Alarics (talk) 10:15, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@Kung Fu Man: If any of those GANs involved articles where the author field was commented out as above, could you please provide links to those discussions, so we can invite the reviewers to join the discussion here? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Do not blank or remove unless there is a local consensus to do so (on the talk page of the article). Although there is no harm in a editor making a bold edit to a page, this is not a job for a bot or a user running a semi-automated script such as AWB (as that is potentially disruptive and not bold unless there has been an RfC with many participants to gauge the consensus on this -- eg an RfC at village pump). Usually "author=...staff..." should be left alone, particularly as it is an link field to {{harvnb}} and similar templates. -- PBS (talk) 12:00, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

@PBS: Thanks for continuing the conversation here. If you have an example where "author=...staff..." is included in {{harvnb}} or a similar template, could you please post it here so we can review it together? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a symptom that grows out of the history of CS1. It originally was kinda sorta modelled on APA and MLA, but never had a style manual of its own. Now it is being regarded as a separate style, but many issues that have been decided in more established styles have never been considered for CS1. In the case of an institutional that is both the author and publisher (or stated another way, the name of the individual author(s) is/are not given), there is no guidance about which of these options should be adopted:

  1. List the institution as the author and omit the publisher
  2. List the institution as the author and list the publisher as "author"
  3. Omit the author and list the institution as publisher
  4. Put some generic word like "staff" for the author and list the institution as publisher.

If one of these options is to be selected, a well-advertised RFC should be conducted. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:13, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

A fifth option, especially considering that the input value(s) of the parameters are emitted as metadata would be to redundantly list the institution as both author and publisher. Imzadi 1979 → 02:38, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
This fifth option is similar to how I handle maps and their cartographers. For some, a different company drew the map for publication by the entity that actually issued it, but in other cases, the publisher drew it. So you'd get:
  • 1936 Official Michigan Highway Map (Map). Scale not given. Cartography by Rand McNally. Michigan State Highway Department. June 1, 1936. § B10. {{cite map}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • State Transportation Map (Map). 1 in:15 mi / 1 cm:9 km. Cartography by MDOT. Michigan Department of Transportation. 2012. § B10.
The publisher and cartographer are each credited, so there's no real reason we couldn't double up by crediting some works authored by the same corporate entity that published it by redundantly listing said entity as both the author and publisher where appropriate. Of course, if there is a specific office or committee that can be attributed, then more specific group should be used instead. Imzadi 1979 → 08:51, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I find that "Staff" is entirely appropriate for citing news stories where the author is given as "staff" or "Times staff" or "our correspondent". It does provide information, just not as much as a specific name. "Staff" is not appropriate when the document is in fact a corporate utterance, then the corporate name is appropriate for the author. See OCLC's 110 Main Entry–Corporate Name (NR)] course down the page for the definition. But just because an entity publishes a book or article, does not mean that it is a corporate utterance. Take a look at Resource Description and Access (RDA) or the earlier AACR2, your library should have a copy. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Or more to the point, let us not make things more difficult than necessary. --Bejnar (talk) 07:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I notice the advice about adding an HTML comment in the author parameter when no individual author (or group or institution that isn't identical to the publisher, journal, or newspaper) was added 16 December 2011 with this edit by User:SMcCandlish. This change was never discussed on this talk page; the first talk page comment is dated 23 December 2011.
I also notice that the template where this question is most likely to arise, {{cite news}}, does not repeat this advice. Thus I consider the advice to not have been properly advertised and discussed. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
As far as I know, there is nothing that requires that discussion must accompany edits made in Wikipedia. Were that a requirement, nothing would ever be done. Can you direct me to a policy or guideline that mandates advertisement and discussion before changes, like the edit to which you refer?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't claim every change requires discussion. But considering that the help:Citation Style 1 page isn't widely followed now, and was followed even less in 2011, and that now that people have finally noticed the advice, there are a variety of points of view being expressed, I don't think the notice and discussion were adequate for this particular piece of advice. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:38, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Question about bot edits

As PBS alluded to above, I started using my bot to make edits such as |author=Staff to |author=<!-- Staff --> based on the conversation here, and this previously approved request. My bot was temporarily blocked, and two editors would like me to revert each of the edits. I'm happy to do so, but concerned that other people will be equally concerned about the mass reversion. Instead of acting hastily, I'd like to take a moment and discuss it here and then take the appropriate action. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:34, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The previous consensus seems reasonable enough to me notwithstanding that only three editors commented at the time. Sure, there's no real "harm" to including it just like there's no real harm in eating cardboard. I fail to see the problem in removing |author=staff, as I also see little point in having something so seemingly useless apparently for the sake of populating an empty field. However, I would reserve final comment until PBS demonstrates just how/where it's "useful" to include it.  Ohc ¡digame! 22:04, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@User:Ohconfucius: Can you explain why or how your edit apparently vandalized Editor GoingBatty's post?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
I have verified in my sandbox that the {{sfn}} template (and I presume other Harvard-related templates) works when the parameter "author = Staff" is used with cite journal. So if anyone has set up short footnotes or Harvard citations relying on the author being "Staff", removing the author parameter will break those citations. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
  • All that means is that the harvard template expects that field to be populated. It makes the assumption that use of the template is appropriate, although it may not be. it also assumes that there is no better data to put into.that field. -- Ohc ¡digame! 11:14, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
I, at least, have done that with Harvard style. --Bejnar (talk) 08:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
There are ways to link a short footnote to the corresponding full citation without using an author, but a bot wouldn't be able to do that, so a bot should not going around destroying working citations just because Ohconfucius prefers to not use "Staff" for the author parameter. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:09, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Three people on a projectwide issue, on a rarely watched Help talk: page, is not consensus sufficient to run a bot to remove something from hundreds of articles. The onus to demonstrate consensus sufficient to run such a bot is on the bot operator, not on the people "complaining" about the bot edits; yes, BAG should have caught this, but its failure to do so does not excuse the bot operator from this important responsibility. Bots should not be used to win disputes over reference formatting. --Rschen7754 08:18, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, this is the wrong forum for this sort of discussion: in order for it to actually apply, it needs to be part of WP:MOS. --Rschen7754 08:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I disagree. Our MOS is silent on defining a citation style for use in the articles, deferring to the usage of a citation style defined elsewhere. Since MLA style has its stylebook, and Chicago has its book, the guidelines for how to handle "Citation Style 1" are this page. Imzadi 1979 → 08:51, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
However, this page cannot mandate a particular style, as it is not a guideline and has not been established through the consensus of the greater Wikipedia community. --Rschen7754 08:58, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
Actually, in a sense, it can. This page defines what is CS1. The problem is that the definition hasn't caught up to real-world usages and considerations, as the above discussion shows. Our MOS defines the in-house style used when writing Wikipedia articles, except the in-house style used for citation formatting. On that topic, it punts. Editors are then free to use APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, Bluebook, or our editor-created CS1 or CS2 styles, among others. All the MOS says is that the application of a particular citation style be consistent. Imzadi 1979 → 09:03, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
But it cannot prohibit or mandate the use of certain fields, however, across Wikipedia. --Rschen7754 09:08, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't need to be part of MOS to apply. Bot operations are done upon WikiProject instructions and template instruction all the time.
As |author=<!-- Staff --> has been part of the {{cite news}} doc for at least five years, it is pretty much codified. With its long history, I see no problem in BAG approving this.
The problem arises when the real world (people not following cite news' instructions for legitimate reasons) vs what is written conflicts. Nothing new. This discussion is dead in the water until the above discussion is revolved. No reason to revert bots edits *if* the above discussion keeps the docs the way they are. Bgwhite (talk) 08:54, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
Wrong, see Jc3s5h's message above about broken internal citations. Can the bot selectively restore those? --Bejnar (talk) 09:17, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
I can write my own "guidelines" in some tucked away page in the Help: namespace, but as long as there's no consensus behind these guidelines, they're useless. I do not see the appropriate level of consensus for such a bot run that would have such far-ranging effects, over many WikiProjects and subject areas. --Rschen7754 09:05, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Templates cannot be designed to cover all eventualities, so there's more to editing than just blindly using templates. It still makes little sense to me when i see "staff" or "editor" or "admin" in the author parameter. -- Ohc ¡digame! 11:14, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • On another bot issue, I just saw an example of cite web where the byline was "admin", i.e. the site admin, and that's what the editor used in the template. BattyBot deleted the author information. this edit. --Bejnar (talk) 09:17, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree with Rschen7754's statement "Three people on a projectwide issue,..."
  • I strongly disagree with User:Imzadi1979's statement "Actually, in a sense, it can. This page defines what is CS1." CS1 is really just an implementation of what was here before and there has to be consensus for change and a change that involves many pages across whole spectrum of articles needs to be done only after an RfC is held in a prominent place and is widely advertised. -- PBS (talk) 13:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Re the comment about {{cite news}} then just change it for those articles that use staff in that template, although I think that is a mistake as documentation does not have to compile and so the documentation my not affect what people do.

As to the use of staff in the author field linked to harvnb is a tricky thing to search, however a search "BBC staff" returns Battle of Worcester as the first example of using "BBC staff" with harvnb/sfn. -- PBS (talk) 13:06, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I have proposed the approval of BattyBot 24 be revoked. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Reversion of bot edits

Happy New Year, and thank you all for your input on this important matter. While I don't see any examples of where any of the bot's edits actually broke any citations with {{sfn}} or similar templates, the fact that it COULD do so is very troubling. Therefore, I will be manually reverting each of the bot's edits that commented out "Staff". I will also post all of BattyBot's find and replace rules at Jc3s5h's proposal for further discussion. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Note that when I am reverting the bot's edits, I am stating in the edit summary per discussion at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Procedure_when_author_is_"Staff", so curious editors can come join this discussion. GoingBatty (talk) 22:30, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm about halfway done with the reversions, although some were already done by Bejnar, Rschen7754, PBS, Imzadi1979, Dough4872, Awardgive, and Kung Fu Man. It was interesting to see that while those editors involved in improving articles related to US roads were likely to have reverted the edits, some articles related to space or UFC had editors make subsequent changes without restoring "Staff". I wonder how many people will be reverting my reversions. I also noticed that a few editors were inspired to change "Staff" to a more descriptive value.
This section started with Darkwarriorblake asking about |author=Newsarama staff in regards to a Featured list nomination. The bot changed 11 articles to |author=<!--Newsarama staff-->. None of these edits have been reverted by other editors. Based on the conversation in Featured list discussion, I'd like to let these edits stand, unless someone who works in comics-related articles would like me to revert them. Any objections? GoingBatty (talk) 02:44, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 Done - 697 reversions. GoingBatty (talk) 04:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  • My !vote is to include staff writer. If the source itself provides "staff author" we should mirror what the source says. It's difficult to know why or how end users will use that information but it's presumptuous to assume it is useless or not needed, otherwise why did the source include it. As well, Wikipedia readers may interpret a blank author field as a lazy or incomplete citation - it's often unclear why the author field is blank - including "staff writer" resolves any question. -- GreenC 03:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
    A lot depends on whether there is known editor. In the case of {{EB1911}} as most of the articles do not have a specific author then just leaving it blank means that the editor Chisholm can be user for {{harv}}. In the case of the Economist it is their policy not to include authors of their articles, but the chief editor may not always be known to the person citing the article, in which case "Economist staff" is useful. Also selecting on the word "staff" leads to the bizarre case were if an editor uses the construct "author=National Heritage" its OK, but if they use "author=National Heritage staff" it is not. -- PBS (talk) 11:27, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I notice the advice about adding an HTML comment in the author parameter when no individual author (or group or institution that isn't identical to the publisher, journal, or newspaper) was added 16 December 2011 with this edit by User:SMcCandlish. This change was never discussed on this talk page; the first talk page comment is dated 23 December 2011.
I also notice that the template where this question is most likely to arise, {{cite news}}, does not repeat this advice. Thus I consider the advice to not have been properly advertised and discussed. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite speech

I have begun migrating {{cite speech}} from {{citation/core}} to Module:Citation/CS1. A parameter unique to {{cite speech}} is |event=. This parameter is assigned to the {{citation/core}} parameter |Series=. This seems odd to me. In many respects, {{cite speech}} is similar to {{cite conference/old}}. A difference is that the {{cite conference/old}}-unique parameter |conference= is assigned to the {{citation/core}} parameter |Other=.

From {{citation/core/doc}}:

  • |Other= Other details to be inserted in a particular place.
  • ⊗ |Series= series of which this periodical is a part.

(⊗ indicates a parameter included in the citation's COinS metadata)

It seems that the roughly analogous parameters |event= and |conference= should have been using the same {{citation/core}} parameter which I think should have been |Other=. I think this because in the context of {{cite speech}} and {{cite conference}} the two unique parameters serve much the same purpose.

With that in mind, I have, in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox added parameters |event= and |eventurl= as aliases of |conference= and |conferenceurl=. When compared with the current {{citation/core}}-based {{cite speech}}, the Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox version of {{cite speech}} renders slightly differently as can be seen in this comparison:

Cite speech comparison
Wikitext {{cite speech|date=December 9, 1948|event=Third regular session of the United Nations General Assembly|first=Eleanor|last=Roosevelt|location=Paris, France|title=On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights|url=http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/eleanorrooseveltdeclarationhumanrights.htm}}
Live Roosevelt, Eleanor (December 9, 1948). On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Speech). Third regular session of the United Nations General Assembly. Paris, France.
Sandbox Roosevelt, Eleanor (December 9, 1948). On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Speech). Third regular session of the United Nations General Assembly. Paris, France.

When |event= is not included in the citation, the new renders the same as the old. See the testcases for more.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:30, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

All of the test cases look reasonable. Nice work. I think that locating "(Speech)" after the title makes more sense than after the event. The modifier "(Speech)" applies to the title. The event itself is not the speech. Does that make sense? – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't remember my rationale for this when I updated speech to core, but this looks good. --  Gadget850 talk 16:50, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Ok. I've tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to unconditionally set the local variable TitleNote (normally assigned the value provided by |department=) to hold the text string " (Speech)" (without quotes but with the leading space). Since |department= is used by {{cite news}}, I suspect that this won't be a problem.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
That looks good. I suspect I updated Cite Speech to core before I discovered TitleNote, which makes more sense. --  Gadget850 talk 18:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
You know, it's looking like the Wikimedia software has it in for me. Yet again, one of my postings has removed one of yours. Sigh. I've restored your 2013-12-30T16:50 posting.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:11, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Quote within title parameter

When a quote is used for the title of an article, as in this reference from Love and Affection, the single quotes butt right up against the automatically generated quotation marks.

  • {{cite web|author=Birch, Helen|title='I prefer birdsong to chatter'|url=http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1627347,00.html|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=3 November 2005|accessdate=7 April 2008}}
  • Birch, Helen (3 November 2005). "'I prefer birdsong to chatter'". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2008.

Is it acceptable to use {{'-}} and {{-'}} to add a bit of space between them, as I did below, or does that mess up the COinS output? Is this documented anywhere?

  • {{cite web|author=Birch, Helen|title={{-'}}I prefer birdsong to chatter{{'-}}|url=http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1627347,00.html|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=3 November 2005|accessdate=7 April 2008}}
  • Birch, Helen (3 November 2005). "'I prefer birdsong to chatter'". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2008.

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:39, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Doing so makes the COinS data for the title look like this:
&rft.atitle=%3Cspan+style%3D%22padding-left%3A0.2em%3B%22%3E%26%2339%3B%3C%2Fspan%3EI+prefer+birdsong+to+chatter%3Cspan+style%3D%22padding-right%3A0.2em%3B%22%3E%26%2339%3B%3C%2Fspan%3E
when it should look like this:
&rft.atitle=%27I+prefer+birdsong+to+chatter%27
This issue of quote marks, either as single or double is one of those things on my todo list. Module:Citation/CS1 should detect leading and trailing quote marks and insert the appropriate markup in the displayed version of the title when the title would normally be quoted.
So, the answer to your question is: no, don't add {{'-}} and {{-'}} to CS1 |title=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Do we need the single quotes here? We already allow for refactoring titles to a point, such as all caps to title case. If quotes are included, I would rather see the module add the spacing by checking for opening and closing quotes, single quotes and apostrophes. --  Gadget850 talk 16:03, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Answering Gadget850: The quotation marks here are part of the original title of the article, so yes, they are appropriate. A similar, clearer example title might be something like " 'I only kissed her,' says wife accused of adultery", where the original title already has quotation marks in it.
Answering the original query: I often use &thinsp; to separate multiple quotation marks in articles; I expect that messes up the COinS data as well. I look forward to having the module be able to insert a little space without editors having to do it manually.
  • {{cite web|author=Birch, Helen|title=&thinsp;'I prefer birdsong to chatter'&thinsp;| url=http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1627347,00.html|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=3 November 2005|accessdate=7 April 2008}}
  • Birch, Helen (3 November 2005). " 'I prefer birdsong to chatter' ". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2008.
– Jonesey95 (talk) 16:31, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
I expect that messes up the COinS data as well. Yep: &rft.btitle=%26thinsp%3B%27I+prefer+birdsong+to+chatter%27%26thinsp%3B
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}} and {{cite web}}:
And to be sure I didn't break anything:
  • "Unquoted chapter". Unquoted title.
  • "Unquoted title". Prestigious Journal.
  • "Unquoted title".
And some likely mistyped titles:
  • ""Doubled double-quote at end of chapter""". "Fully double quoted title".
  • "'Doubled single quote at end of title". Prestigious Journal.
  • "Doubled single quote at start of title". Prestigious Journal.
  • "Double single-quote" at start and end of title".
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
I've been following the MOS quote nesting rule so that the outer quotes in the title itself are single, etc., to take account of the enclosing double quotes we add. Is this wrong? I find the above examples with repeated double quotes typographically clumsy. --78.43.79.189 (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree, the pairs of double quotes does look odd. I'm inclined, though, at least for now, to let editors decide how they want to handle quote nesting. Perhaps if I'm feeling ambitious, I'll tackle getting nested quotes to work according to the MOS. For the time being, I think that kerning the quote marks, regardless of pairing, is an improvement.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Your inclination sounds fine! Parsing the nesting quotes would be "quite interesting" but probably not justified. It is good and thorough to test all combinations as you have, but any examples in the documentation should be MOS-conformant. Perhaps we can have a link to MOS:QUOTEMARKS and at least one conformant example in the CS1 documentation? --78.43.79.189 (talk) 23:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Cite DNB

{{Cite DNB}} is returning Help:CS1 errors#bad_date in examples like this - Hayton Castle - presumably because no volume is specified and the default otherwise is a date range. Anyway round this? NtheP (talk) 21:58, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I followed the Wikisource link. At the top of the page it says volume 34. I have no reason to believe that it isn't volume 34 so:
{{cite DNB|wstitle=Lowther, Richard |volume=34}}
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Lowther, Richard" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 34. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:28, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
that fixes this example but I was talking about the general case where |volume= isn't specified. NtheP (talk) 23:00, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
@Nthep: I hope we get an answer at Template talk:Cite DNB#CS1 errors when volume not included. GoingBatty (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

The general case is being discussed at Module_talk:Citation/CS1. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Trappist the monk if you want to fix cases such as {{cite DNB|wstitle=Lowther, Richard |volume=34}} then all power to you, but if you do then please include the author and page numbers as well:
However this is not really a fix for this page as it uses both {{cite DNB}} {{DNB}}. Here is a more elegant solution (but even that does not go far enough as the in-line citations need breaking down into specific page numbers and not a page range).
This is type of fix is easy in the case of "cite DNB" as just about all of it is on wikisource with page numbers on display. However for others encyclopaedias it is more difficult and time consuming take for example s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aix, it not include page numbers, for that you have to go and look at a source like this Encyclopædia Britannica/Aix and see here s:Wikisource:Bot_requests#Volume_information_for_CE1913 for an examle where the volume and article information on Wikisource is known to be inaccurate.
What I have proposed on template talk:Cite DNB is that we create another category for where the volume parameter is not set, that will allow us to see how large this problem is, and make it easier to monitor. -- PBS (talk) 12:22, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

For {{cite DNB}}, one conversation in one place please.

Moved to Template talk:Cite DNB

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Deprecated month parameter AWB script

I have created a simple AWB script to attack the largest of the CS1 error categories. The script concatenates |day=, |month=, and |year= when they are adjacent to each other in CS1 citations. The script concatenates them into a single |date=DD Mmmm YYYY parameter at the end of the citation; this is the format that Module:Citation/CS1 uses. The script is set to use Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters.

The script does not do error checking (User:BattyBot/CS1 errors-dates is already doing that so I see no reason to duplicate that effort), it simply captures the content of the various parameters and lumps them together.

There has been enough testing to convince myself that the most common arrangement of the date parameters, |month= and |year= in that order, is working reliably. Editors don't seem to place these parameters in the reverse order – at least I haven't seen it more than once or twice in the limited testing I've done. I have yet to encounter the three parameter (|day=, |month=, |year=) case in any order.

Feel free to use and improve the script, perhaps it can be robotized.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Since your suggestion resolves the error without changing the format of the date, I've added a new rule to User:BattyBot/CS1 errors-dates to also cover this.
Cite web comparison
Wikitext {{cite web|day=4|month=June|title=DMY test|url=http://wwww.google.com|year=2004}}
Live "DMY test". 2004. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
Sandbox "DMY test". 2004. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:29, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: It appears your script doesn't add in commas for Mmmm dd yyyy format - see this edit. GoingBatty (talk) 02:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
True. But, it isn't intended to be making any fixes other than to move parameter values from |day=/|date=, |month=, and |year= into |date=<day/date> <month> <year>. I don't see much point in duplicating the function adequately handled by BattyBot 25‎.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
It may be necessary to do some bare minimum checking. This set of parameters from Arab Gas Pipeline:
|date=13/11/2012|month=11|year=2012
concatenates into:
|date=13/11/2012 11 2012
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:18, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Status

Status of converting this simple script to a robot to troll through Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters:

  1. I'm relatively sure that the script is working properly. I've made some 1000–1500 supervised edits with it.
  2. Because I don't have a bot account and because the name of the account I would like was once used, I have initiated a usurpation request which should be settled 5 January 2014.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

BRFA.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Community consensus includes not only template maintainers, but also those that use templates to create article content. The deprecation of the month parameter has not been discussed outside template talk pages. Hence there is no broad consensus to deprecate this parameter. I will open up a discussion here shortly requesting wider community input. In the meantime, I request that bots hold off on automated replacement of the month parameter in {{cite journal}} templates. Boghog (talk) 06:54, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for posting here. You have already been listened to. As was already explained in the bot request, month/year pairs will not be combined by the bot unless |date= (or |day=) is already present and contains a single number, indicating that the editor intended to show a day, month, and year. When a day is intended to be shown, the month parameter cannot be used, because the day parameter has been deprecated for a long time. The change above concatenates a day, month, and year into a date parameter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:26, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
I have failed to clearly state what it is that this script does. This script is separate and apart from Editor GoingBatty's robot script. This script is intended to concatenate |date= or |day= with |month= and |year= into |date= when all three are adjacent to each other in the CS1 template. Also, when |date= or |day= are not present, the script concatenates adjacent |month= and |year= into |date=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
OK, thanks for the clarification. If there is no |date= or |day= parameter present, I question why it is necessary to concatenate adjacent |month= and |year= parameters. The |month= parameter has been widely used for a long time without problem. Furthermore concatenation increases the chances for inconsistency in the way dates are rendered. Finally it will create a lot of unnecessary edits. Why fix something that isn't broken? Boghog (talk) 16:25, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
I suggest that it might be best to open a separate, formal discussion about the month parameter. There have been a few discussions in scattered locations. Bring all of those discussions together in a new location, link to previous discussions, state your case with examples of how joining month and year may cause harm, ask for discussion, and be open to reasoned arguments. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
|day= was also used for a long time as were various flavors of |accessdate=; we seem to have survived the withdrawal and consolidation of those parameters. How does concatenation of |month= with |year= increase the chances of rendered date inconsistency?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:16, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
We have survived the consolidation of |day= and |accessdate= in {{cite journal}} templates because they are rarely used. Specifying the day on which a journal article was published is overkill. Hence citation template filling tools such as WP:REFTOOLS and Diberri's Template filler do not even support the day parameter. Journal articles, after they are published almost never change, hence specifying an access date for a journal article generally does not make sense. In contrast |month= and |year= are frequently used. Consolidating the month with year into a single free format date parameter allows editors to specify "January 2014" or "2014 January", hence the possibility of inconsistency. Finally no one has provided a clear and concise explanation for why this deprecation necessary. How is the month parameter causing harm? Boghog (talk) 02:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
"date=2014 January" would generate an error message: Author (2014 January). "Title". {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
I suggest that it might be best to open a separate discussion thread about the month parameter. Having a discussion about the month parameter in this thread will be confusing, since the thread is about an AWB script. There have been a few discussions in scattered locations. Bring all of those discussions together in a new location, link to previous discussions, state your case with examples (preferably from actual citations in actual articles) of how joining month and year may cause harm, ask for discussion, and be open to reasoned arguments. (p.s. I fixed a typo in your post above, since that particular typo has led to tangents in the recent past.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:58, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
I am questioning the need for this particular AWB script, so how could having this discussion here possibly be confusing?
I am open to reasoned arguments. The problem is no one has provided a compelling argument for the deprecation. What harm is it causing? Please answer the question. The advantage of using using separate month and year parameters insures that month will always be displayed before year while merging the parameters into a single date parameter introduces the possibility of inconsistent formatting. Boghog (talk) 12:09, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
I have no interest in rewriting what I've written before on this same topic both in this forum and in Module talk:Citation/CS1. But, I will restate one point that somehow seems to be misunderstood: Deprecated does not mean deleted. |day=, for example, has been deprecated for a long time yet, when used, is still concatenated with |month= and |year= to form the displayed dmy format date. You are free to continue to use any and all of these three parameters and will be able to do so for the foreseeable future.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:45, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Great! But then why is the parameter being proactively removed from existing citations by scripts and bots? Boghog (talk) 14:12, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Journals themselves almost never include month or day in reference lists (see a list of representative examples below). The year, volume, issue, and page number is sufficient to unambiguously identify an article. Furthermore the year parameter has not be deprecated. If year, month, volume, issue, and page are all specified, it would be much cleaner to remove the month parameter entirely and leave the year parameter untouched.
List of representative citation styles used in scholarly journals (data obtained from EndNote):
Extended content
Please note that not a single one includes month or day of publication. Boghog (talk) 14:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Articles in journals of that sort mostly cite other journals, with the occasional book or conference thrown in. But Wikipedia often cites magazines and newspapers, which may not have volume and issue numbers, and if they do, they are not as widely used as the date for citation purposes. Also note that cite journal, cite magazine, and cite news are all essentially synonyms, so many citations to magazines and newspapers may be made with the cite journal template.
Why don't you go back to all those style guides and see how they recommend citing a newspaper or magazine? Let me do one for you, the APA style (6th ed, p. 200, example 8)
Clay, R. (2000, June). Science vs. ideology: Psychologists fight back about the misuse of research. Monitor on Psychology, 39(6). Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/
Jc3s5h (talk) 14:30, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
The issue is the deprecation of the month parameter within the {{cite journal}} template. I have no issue with date parameters in {{cite news}}. If someone is citing a news paper article, they really ought to be using {{cite news}} and not {{cite journal}}. Boghog (talk) 14:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Just to be clear, my preference is not to deprecate the month parameter in the first place. Furthermore if someone has included the date parameter in a cite journal template from the beginning, I have no objection. My only objection is proactive merging of month and year parameters into a single date parameter. Boghog (talk) 14:43, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Leaving cite news aside, cite magazine is now a redirect to cite journal. If an editor wanted to cite the magazine Monitor on Psychology in an article that used CS1 she would have to use cite journal. If she were wondering whether to include the month in the date, and looked to the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association for guidance, the answer would clearly be yes, she should include the month. Therefore your post incorrectly characterized the position of the APA manual. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:54, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out this exception. I now agree that removing the month parameter entirely is bad idea. Again, my only objection is merging month with year into a single date parameter. The fact that citations to magazine articles often require month strengthens the argument not to deprecate the month parameter. Boghog (talk) 15:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Bot to fix CS1 date errors

This is a note to say that a bot has been proposed that would fix CS1 date errors. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BattyBot 25. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:56, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

FYI, this bot has been approved and is now running. I will direct any questions I receive to this page for further discussion. GoingBatty (talk) 14:28, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
Good. As of this moment, Category:CS1 errors: dates has 130,513 pages.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
BattyBot has gone through a little more than half the articles in the category, and has made 27,000+ edits. As of this moment, Category:CS1 errors: dates has 117,210 pages. Once it finishes the first pass, I'll look at some of the pages that it didn't update, add more rules and run again. GoingBatty (talk) 07:50, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
BattyBot has completed its first pass through the category, and has made 48,000+ edits. As of this moment, Category:CS1 errors: dates has 104,176 pages. I've updated the bot's code to fix more dates (with suggestions from Jonesey95) and now it's making a second pass. GoingBatty (talk) 01:56, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
The bot is finding and fixing a ton of errors in this pass. That's good. I just looked at a random sample of about 100 articles at the beginning of the alphabet, i.e. the articles through which the revised BattyBot has made a second pass. When I looked at a sample of articles after the bot's first pass a few days ago, I found that maybe 50-60% of errors were still bot-fixable via simple regular expression searches. In this second sample, I estimate that the bot-fixable portion is more like 10-15%. We're reaching a point of diminishing returns.
I estimate that about a third of the remaining erroneous dates were in an ambiguous format like "05/07/2003" or "2012.04.09" (i.e. human intervention is needed); about a fifth of them were valid date ranges like "5-11 December 2001" or "1999-2000" (i.e. the module code needs updating); another tenth (or so) were bot-fixable; and the rest were one-off nuttiness that needs human intervention.
I think that after this bot run, we could 1. compile a new list of errors for the bot to fix; 2. change the module code to allow valid date ranges; and 3. change the module code to make the error message visible after posting a notification to this effect in a highly visible location, since it will appear on 30,000+ articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:46, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Agreed with this proposed process, but you don't have to wait for the bot to finish run #2 to let me know if you find more date formats you think the bot could handle. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:29, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
BattyBot has completed its second full pass through the category (plus extra pages as I tweak the bot rules), and has made 71,000+ edits. As of this moment, Category:CS1 errors: dates has 87,921 pages. GoingBatty (talk) 04:55, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Agency parameter

{{Cite press release}} has a parameter 'agency' for the press agency thru which the release is made, but this parameter is not even listed in the documentation for this template. Is there a reason to omit it, or should it be added promptly? DES (talk) 08:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

It would be better to abolish it as unnecessary. -- Alarics (talk) 11:30, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
It was added when the template was converted to the Lua module. I don't see any issue with it being included. --  Gadget850 talk 14:06, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
It is not unnecessary. It can be a significant element of metadata in such cases. i am going to add it to the documentation. DES (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I concur that |agency= is important: it's closer to the original source, regardless of publisher or work published in. Here, it is closer in meaning to "publicity agency", as opposed to news agencies or wire services like U.S. UP/API and French AF. --Lexein (talk) 07:50, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Does accessdate always need URL?

I'm used to seeing the |accessdate= requires |url= in citations for books and magazines where the reference has no link to an external web site, which I understand. However, if a citation has a |doi= parameter to link to an external web site, should it then be OK to include the accessdate? See Photoredox catalysis references 23 and 24 for examples. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's an example of where a presumably published immutable source, such as a journal (and unlike a website), does not get an accessdate because the content would always be the same regardless of when one accesses it. DMacks (talk) 03:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
I've asked this before, on this page I believe, and gotten the same answer. |doi=, |pmid=, and |pmc= all render as URLs that link directly to the source, or at least to an abstract of it. |pmc= even links a URL to the article's title.
Previous discussions here: March 2013, April 2013 at the Village Pump (LONG), August 2013.
In each of the above discussions, the idea of commenting out the accessdate parameter was brought up. Note that, as far as I can tell (disclaimer: I am often wrong), the accessdate is displayed only if the URL is present, so commenting out the accessdate will not remove rendered information from articles. Commenting out the accessdate will leave the information in the citation as a clue for editors who might want to locate a missing URL or a missing publication date. Apparently, people sometimes remove non-working URLs, leaving the accessdate in place. The accessdate gives a clue about which version of an archived page to include in the citation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:58, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
The criterion should be whether the URL parameter is populated. This parameter may be a link to a mutable webpage and so requires an accessdate. A generated URL based on the DOI, PMC or similar identifier is intended to link to an immutable target, so does not require an accessdate.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite podcast

I have begun migrating {{cite podcast}} from {{citation/core}} to Module:Citation/CS1. {{cite podcast}} looks to be a minor variant of {{cite web}} with a default |type=Podcast and an additional parameter |host=, an alias of |author=.

Because a podcast is an online resource, it seems to me that the citation is required to include |url=. We can create a whole new error message and category or we can choose to add pages with malformed {{cite podcast}} templates to Category:Pages using web citations with no URL which in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox I have done.

{{cite podcast/new |title=Title |host=Host |date=27 Sep 1995}}
→Host (27 Sep 1995). "Title" (Podcast). {{cite podcast}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

The error message help text will need to be tweaked if this part of the migration is retained.

Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

IMHO, for defunct podcasts, requiring URL is fine as long as there's some way to indicate that the podcast has gone offline and the URL is no longer "live". Example: http://deadpodcast.com vs http://livepodcast.com. Precedent: we presently intentionally "deadlink" malware links in hand-made refs, by removing or hidden-commenting the URL. --Lexein (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2014 (URC) (struckthrough --14:11, 12 January 2014 (UTC))
This looks good. When I updated podcast, I copied it from web. I also cleaned up all the templates before Lua was introduced so that you can easily compare them to non-Lua book or web. --  Gadget850 talk 14:57, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
{{dead link}}? How is a defunct podcast so different from a defunct text-based website that it (the defunct podcast) requires a separate mechanism to indicate its dead or defunct status?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
I retract chunks of my comment: we have |archiveurl=, so the problem is essentially solved if there's an archive. (My bad: the display of dead urls so that they're not clickable is actually a separate issue, and is not relevant to this discussion, so, sorry.) --Lexein (talk) 14:11, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thoughts on COinS

There are two main reasons why articles end up in Category:CS1 errors: dates: a date that doesn't conform with MOS:DATEFORMAT or extra text in a date field. The latter should be fixed because it causes problems with COinS. However, when someone clicks the Help link next to the Check date values error, it takes them to Help:CS1 errors#bad date, which only mentions the first issue. Should this be updated with a layman description of COinS and instructions to remove the extra text from the date field?

Also, I've seen many templates nested within CS1 templates, such as:

|work=[[Billboard (magazine){{!}}Billboard]]
|author={{aut|Clendinnen, Inga}} (see Xelha)

If these cause COinS issues, should they be removed, and should the template documentation be updated to state why they should not be used inside citation templates?

Should this information also be added to Help:Citation Style 1? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:00, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Please turn this thread into a Request for Comment and advertise it in appropriate places. Since the statement about not adding explanatory text to parameters was added to Help:CS1 without discussion at a time when Help:CS1 was very obscure indeed, I feel this point needs ratification by the community. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:30, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Parameters that become part of the COinS metadata are stripped of wikilink markup so that only the displayed portion of the wikilink (Billboard, in your example) becomes part of the COinS. This is done so that editors can wikilink various portions of the citation to accompanying Wikipedia articles.
{{aut}} should not be used in CS1 citations and there is a note in the template documentation that so states.
The documentation at Help:CS1 errors can always be improved. The error message help text does mention extraneous text but I have added further explanatory text.
Similarly, Help:Citation Style 1 can always be improved. I suspect that it should be rewritten so that it becomes more like a style guide. As it is, it seems to parrot the content of the various template documentation pages so offers little in the way of complete explanations and guidance. It's on my list of things to do.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
{{!}} is transcluded as a pipe, so it doesn't hurt anything; but it can certainly be replaced with a pipe as using the template doesn't fix anything. The Lua module injects only the piped text into the metadata.
{{aut}}, which redirects to {{smallcaps}} does inject HTML into the CoiNS metadata; this is documented on the template page. The Lua module does support |authorformat=scap but we have never discussed use. --  Gadget850 talk 15:52, 11 January 2014 (UTC)--  Gadget850 talk 15:52, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the quick replies. I guess the RfC should be on the to do list before turning on the error message for everyone to see. Glad that {{!}} doesn't hurt anything, and sorry for missing the instructions at Template:Smallcaps. GoingBatty (talk) 16:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Template:Cite AV media notes

If Template:Cite AV media notes "is used to create citations for liner notes from albums, DVDs, CDs and similar audio-visual media.", why have Template:Cite music release notes ("is used to create citations for the cover notes, booklet, liner notes, etc. of a music release (album or single).") and Template:Cite DVD-notes ("is used to create citations for DVD liner notes and booklets.")? It seems the "type" (or "format") parameter in Cite AV media notes can be used to specify "Release notes", "Liner notes", "CD insert notes", "DVD booklet", etc. Perhaps add these to the description section:

  • type: Provides additional information about the media type of the source; format in sentence case, e.g., CD insert notes, album liner notes, DVD booklet, etc. Displays in parentheses following the title. Defaults to Media notes.
Aliases: type, format

—Ojorojo (talk) 19:24, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 July 18. The first step would be to deprecate the other two templates, then migrate them. --  Gadget850 talk 19:28, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Help with template: website?

In the website parameter.should one add the actual website, such as www.norfolkmills.co.uk when the full URL is http://www.norfolkmills.co.uk/Windmills/mileham-postmill.html , or when there is no clear official name for the site, just make up a name such as "Norfolk windmills," which is informative, but would provide little help if the link went dead. Edison (talk) 21:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks to me like it should be |website=Norfolk Mills. See Norfolk Mills.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:58, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
What should be entered for the "website" parameter for http://www.ecastles.co.uk/mileham.html ? "Castles and fortifications of England and Wales"? Is it correct to append "website" to the chosen website name, or is that understood? Edison (talk) 22:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Yep, |website=Castles and Fortifications of England and Wales (fortifications should be capitalized). No need to say that it's a website just as there is no need to say that On the Origin of Species is a book or that The Lancet is a journal.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:59, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Should these be put in the publisher parameter instead, so the output isn't italicized? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
CS1 in general italicizes the larger work and quotes the smaller work. These are {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite encyclopedia}}:
"Chapter 1". A Famous Book.
"The Pedant: Insufferable Snobs Past, Present, and Future". The Journal of Pretentious Snobbery.
"The Paradox of Knowing Everything about Nothing". The All-encompassing Encyclopedia of Little Known and Mostly Useless Facts.
I think of the website <title> as something akin to a book title, or a journal title, or the name of an encyclopedia. The website <title>, Norfolk Mills or Castles and Fortifications of England and Wales in Editor Edison's examples, is then properly italicized. The name of the page addressed by |url= is more-or-less synonymous with the book's chapter name or the journal's or encyclopedia's article name.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the insights. On random article patrol I constantly find raw URLs and I'd rather fix'em than just tag'em. But it is best to use cite web with the correct inputs. Edison (talk) 01:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: WP:ITALICS states:
  • "Website titles may or may not be italicized depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon.com or The Huffington Post). Online encyclopedias and dictionaries should also be italicized (Scholarpedia or Merriam-Webster Online). Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
What criteria do you suggest to use when making the case-by-case basis decisions? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
If we're talking about website titles in CS1 templates then I do as I illustrated with Editor Edison's examples above. Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher may be helpful. If we're talking about website titles in article text, to which I think WP:ITALICS primarily applies, then I have no opinion that I will express here because that topic is outside of CS1's bailiwick.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:32, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
I can follow the logic/reasoning behind the move, but can't say that I agree with it. By looking at it in such a way defines the virtual property as a separate category of work that is in practice undistinguishable from the organisation. That distinction is way too abstract and fine for much of our audience, which consists of our lay editors and readers, and will result in no end of confusion. That logic may be accepted widely in the long run, but we should not meanwhile pioneer the definition of websites as "works" that ought to be italicised, quite contrary to how the outside world looks at it, and contrary to our own style guidelines. -- Ohc ¡digame! 03:19, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Should we use both website and publisher tags? Wouldn't these be the same thing 99% of the time? Hcobb (talk) 21:22, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I'm extremely unhappy that |website= is [the italicised] alias for "|work=". The confusion that is caused is real. There's certainly no point in using both, particularly when they are one and the same organisation behind it. Otherwise, we would have the same result but rendered with conflicting formatting – "Norfolk Mills, Norfolk Mills" in the example given above. We see that problem here, where all websites are italicised contrary to what's stated at MOS:ITALIC, which states that these should be on a case by case basis. The problem for websites is that most tend not to be italicised. Some are dynamic and many are static and the first point of contact for any given organisation. It's a frontspiece and not considered a mouthpiece, like a company journal. Yet by aliasing |website= to |work=, we implicitly declare that all websites generate original content and ought thus be italicised. Just take the example above, or the Microsoft website: these would be respectively rendered in the citation as "Norfolk Mills" and "Microsoft", whereas under usual conditions, these would never be italicised. If, however, we populate the |website= field with "norfolkmills.co.uk", it is immediately clear the information came from the website itself. But either way both instances would be incorrectly italicised. It doesn't make it right to italicise "norfolkmills.co.uk" irregardless, but it would not be "wrong" in any event to have 'Norfolk Mills' and 'Microsoft' as "publisher". It would have made much more sense aliasing it to |publisher=. -- Ohc ¡digame! 02:54, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Month / season range order validation

In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox I have enhanced the month / season range validation to require that the order in which the months or seasons appear in a citation is left to right, earliest to latest in time.

Month range order:

  • Pass: months are in proper order. February–March 2013.
  • Error: months are the same. June–June 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Error: months not in proper order. December–March 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Error: season / month pair. Spring–March 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Error: month / season pair. December–Summer 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Season range order:

  • Pass: seasons are in proper order. Autumn–Winter 2013.
  • Pass: seasons are in proper order. Summer–Fall 2013. – fall and autumn are synonymous
  • Pass: seasons are in proper order. Winter–Spring 2013. – this case unique to seasons because winter overlaps the new year boundary
  • Error: seasons are the same. Spring–Spring 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Error: seasons not in proper order. Summer–Spring 2013.

Single season validation code changed so test single seasons:

  • Pass. Winter 2013.
  • Pass. Spring 2013.
  • Pass. Summer 2013.
  • Pass. Fall 2013.
  • Pass. Autumn 2013.
  • Error: capitalization. spring 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Error: spelling. Sprong 2013. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:55, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. Will you also be considering the date ranges proposed at Module_talk:Citation/CS1#Legitimate_date_range_examples_to_add_to_the_date_checking_part_of_the_CS1_module (specifically #1-5)? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
This change was the result of an experiment to see how to check other date ranges for proper left to right, earliest to latest, in time order. The experiment was inconclusive because I saw an easier way to do the comparisons for month/season ranges.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Because WP:DATESNO specifies unspaced enadashes as the proper separator for date ranges like Month–Month year, I have changed Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that a hyphen or solidus separator will be caught as an error. Both BattyBot 25 and Monkbot 1 make this repair to dates they encounter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Testing in my sandbox seems to indicate that if a genuine n-dash is used, all is well, but if the &ndash; HTML entity is used, it is flagged as an error. I don't think this is appropriate, both due to the difficulty of typing a genuine n-dash, and the difficulty of distinguishing an n-dash from other dash-like marks in the edit window.

An additional point I was testing, but was stopped by the HTML entity problem, was testing whether a date such as "December 2230 – January 2231" for a journal which publishes issue 1 in the middle of the calendar year. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

CS1 doesn't really adopt a date format after all

The "Dates" section says "Dates formats per WP:DATESNO." That is a short cut to section 2.4, "Dates and years" section of the Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. One of the subsections is 2.4.1.4, "Consistency", which says:

* Publication dates in article references should all have the same format. Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD.

This text is present to allow for the fact that printed style guides might call for a different date format than what is suggested for the article body by MOS and MOSNUM.

So the intend of the statement in this help page was to apply the MOSNUM rules for article bodies, tables, and other places where space is limited, to CS1 citations. But by referencing a large section that includes the exemption for printed style guides, those limitations were not really adopted after all. I suggest the help page either be revised to point to more specific subsections, or the desired text be copied to this help page. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:33, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I have made a change to CS1 indicating that the phrase "Although nearly any consistent style may be used" does not apply to CS1. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:08, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps my brain isn't up to the task, but I see no such invalidation and cannot see how the line you've quoted prevents CS1 from adopting the date formats spelled out at WP:DATESNO. Nothing in that quote refers to any style, CS1 included. The line you quote only serves to notify editors that date format citation-to-citation should be consistent. Nothing more, nothing less.
The line of text that you have added to Help:Citation Style 1#Dates does not clarify anything for anyone. Had you revised Help:Citation Style 1#Dates to point to more specific subsections rather than editorialize, I would not have objected. As it is, I must object.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The way the DATESNO shorcut is placed, it includes all of the following subsections: 

3.4 Dates and years

    3.4.1 Formats
        3.4.1.1 Acceptable date formats
        3.4.1.2 Unacceptable date formats
        3.4.1.3 Consistency
        3.4.1.4 Strong national ties to a topic
        3.4.1.5 Retaining existing format
    3.4.2 Era style
    3.4.3 Julian and Gregorian calendars
    3.4.4 Ranges
    3.4.5 Uncertain, incomplete, or approximate dates
    3.4.6 Linking and autoformatting of dates

It may not be obvious by reading the guideline, but reviewing the talk page history will reveal that "Although nearly any consistent style may be used..." to include the possibility that the style adopted for citations in a particular article may specify a date format different from the acceptable date formats listed near the beginning of DATESNO. A specific example is that APA style calls for publication dates to be written like "2014, January 14". Since CS1 is adopting its own date style, which is intended to be what the same as what is allowed in article text, tables, and areas where space is limited, the "escape clause" for printed style guides does not apply.

Maybe a way to describe what is allowed is:

Dates formats per WP:DATESNO:[Note 1]CS1 citations may use the same date formats that are allowed in article text; some view citations as areas where space is limited, so date formats allowed for tables may also be used. See WP:DATESNO. Further points:...

Jc3s5h (talk) 23:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Better. Perhaps:
CS1 may may use any of the date formats permitted in the Table of acceptable date formats.
(this assumes that the table there has that caption; which it should do if for no other reason than accessibility by those who use screen readers)
By being more specific, I think that the need to describe what some people think becomes superfluous. Also the direct link to WP:DATES#Acceptable date formats removes the need to See WP:DATESNO.
As date ranges come online, we will have to carefully consider how to apply the rules at WP:DATES#Ranges. For example, nonbreakable spaces and nonbreakable hyphens should not be used with CS1 templates. While CS1 doesn't currently support wrap protection, it will (at least I intend it to do that). Presentation is the job of the template processor not the content provider.
Have you considered writing a CS1 style guide? You seem to have a unique interest in that realm so perhaps you might commandeer Draft:CS1 style guide and give it a go?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
I have revised my revision in line with what Trappist the monk suggested. I also removed the point that implied the YYYY-MM-DD format shouldn't be used for publication dates because there is no consensus for that restriction (although I personally have no use for that format in encyclopedia articles). Jc3s5h (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Advisors on thesis

Any suggestions as to a good way to record someone's thesis advisor? {{cite thesis}} doesn't have anywhere, and it really doesn't fit with {{{editor}}} and the like. Maybe suitable fields could be added? —Phil | Talk 18:16, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

You can use |others=. Would an advisor write any part of the thesis? --  Gadget850 talk 18:31, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
The proper place to name the advisor is an article about the author of the thesis. This information does not belong in a citation to a thesis in other articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Consistency within "work" and "publisher" fields

I have just made an edit to the help page that, whilst not completely doing away with any ambiguity, reduces it. The problem arises with the instruction to omit "The" unless where it would cause ambiguity. My preferred solution is for the data in such fields to mirror the WP namespace which the subject occupies. We would thus use "The Boston Globe" or "The Miami Herald" throughout any given article, to avoid awkward piping, or instances where citations would alternately show the two above as well as "Boston Globe" or "Miami Herald". -- Ohc ¡digame! 03:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree, I have long thought the present instruction is wrong. In my view, practice should reflect what the newspaper calls itself, i.e. what does it say on the masthead. Thus for instance in the UK it should be The Daily Telegraph but just Daily Mail, which has no "The" on its masthead. In the US, it is The New York Times, but just Los Angeles Times without a "The". -- Alarics (talk) 08:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2013-11-03

Toward the end of this week I propose to update Module:Citation/CS1 to match Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (diff) and Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to match Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox (diff). This update changes several things:

  1. Added deprecated parameter tracking for deprecated parameters: Adds pages to Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters when they contain the parameters |month=, |coauthor=, and |coauthors=
  2. Extract common code from checkisbn() and issn() into new function is_valid_isxn(): Checkdigit calculation code for ISSN and for ISBN-10 is esentially the same so created a single function to do that
  3. Migrate cite thesis: discussion
  4. ISBN 13 checked for 978 and 979 prefixes: discussion
  5. Migrate cite techreport: discussion
  6. Date validation: discussion – by far the largest, this change checks dates for format compliance with MOS:DATE, checks date validity (no June 31, etc), allows year disambiguation in CITEREF identifiers when referenced authors have multiple works published in the same year without the need to use both |date= and |year=, and does not corrupt the COinS metadata.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:16, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, articles are still being brought into the new categories based on these changes. The job queue, or whatever it is that sweeps through all of the articles doing the equivalent of null edits, hasn't made it through all of the articles in the last 40 days. {{Anápolis weatherbox}}, for example, just popped into Category:CS1 errors: dates in the last 12 hours, along with six other weatherbox templates. Don't assume that the new categories currently contain all articles with the errors. The older categories appear to be stable.
Items 1 and 6 above are the source of the vast majority of additions to the CS1 error categories. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Articles are still being added to the CS1 date error and CS1 deprecated parameter error categories, more than 60 days after the module was changed. Don't assume that the new categories currently contain all articles with the errors, and don't be discouraged when the number of articles in the deprecated parameter category keeps rising. Editors are not adding deprecated parameters at that rate; the job queue is just catching up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm not holding my breath, but it looks like articles may have stopped flowing into these two "new" categories. They were coming in at a fast clip, thousands a day, sometime last week, but I don't think I've seen any new ones since January 18. So it took 70 days for the job queue to recategorize all of the articles, unless there is a batch sitting in a corner somewhere that hasn't been touched. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
On January 11, Category:CS1 errors: dates had 87,921 pages (see below). Right now it has 95,030 pages - that's an addition of about 700 per day. Ugh! GoingBatty (talk) 02:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
I think it pretty much stopped on January 18, though, so it was more like 1,000 per day for a week, then 10-50 a day since then. I believe that the low-speed additions are manual edits. The dates category could use another BattyBot run, maybe with disputed code commented out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
I hope you're right. Now there are 95,070 articles, which is in line with your stats. I made a commitment to not run the bot task until the RFC was done, so I'm going to honor that. I've been doing some work to find more things the bot can fix, and manually fix articles that require human research. Hope the CS1 code can be updated soon to ignore valid date ranges. GoingBatty (talk) 23:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Bot to fix ISBN errors?

After the success of BattyBot 25, which has made over 71,000 edits and removed at least 40,000 articles from Category:CS1 errors: dates, I am inspired to propose another CS1 error category to be fixed by a bot. I think Category:Pages with ISBN errors is ready for a pass by a competent find-and-replace bot.

Here's a list of error types I have seen in that category. They are numbered manually for ease of discussion. All links are to actual instances of erroneous |isbn= parameters in actual articles.

  • 1. "|isbn=ISBN 978-1907475689" from Elizabeth Báthory in popular culture. Note the extra "ISBN" before the number.
  • 2. "|isbn=ISBN 9780773532861." from Elena Cornaro Piscopia. Note extra ISBN and final period; both should be removed.
  • 3. "|isbn= unknown" from Embouchure. I propose removing "unknown" entirely, since it provides no information that helps a reader locate the source. The bot could also comment it to be more conservative.
  • 4. "|isbn=978-0-226-53431-2 (hbk.)" from Emery Molyneux. Maybe comment out the extra text in case it is somehow useful to someone.
  • 5. "|isbn=0-8304-1580-7, 9780830415809" from Epic film. This is a very common construction in this category. The first ISBN should be removed, leaving only the second one, which will start with "97". Note that valid 10-digit ISBNs may have an "X" at the end. Otherwise, only numbers, hyphens, and spaces are valid characters (I believe).
  • 6. "|isbn=0-912483-99-7;" and "|isbn=0-7475-4213-9," from Electronic music. Note trailing punctuation.
  • 7. "|isbn = 0‐7637‐3823‐9" from Ergotism. These are apparently not hyphens. All non-hyphen dashes should be replaced by hyphens.
  • 8. "|isbn=1-85153-214-5." from Eriophyes inangulis. Trailing period.
  • 9. "|ISBN=0-903413-88-4)" from Ethel R. Harraden. Note trailing punctuation. Also note that "ISBN=" or "isbn=" are both valid parameter names.
  • 10. "| isbn = 978-0-415-77200-6 (hardback)" from Ethics of care. Comment out any text in parentheses. I believe that I have also seen "(paperback)" and variations of "(on-line)".
  • 11. "|isbn=ISBN0252030060" from Ethnographic film. A slight variation on #1 above. I expect there are also instances of "|isbn=ISBN:0252030060", although I haven't run across any yet.

Comments? Questions? Objections? Dope slaps? I suppose since there are only 9,000 articles in the category, someone might be willing to run through it with an AWB script based on the above errors instead of going to the trouble of creating a bot and getting it approved. I do not have access to the technology required to run AWB. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:49, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Here is a rule for #1 and #2 (also picks up trailing comma, semicolon, and right parenthesis):
Find: ({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*)ISBN\s*([\d\-X]+)[\.,;\)]?(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$3$4$5
And a slight variant for #6:
({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*)([\d\-X]+)[\.,;\)]?(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$3$4$5
Do you want access to AWB? I'm pretty sure that if you do, you could have it.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
And for #3:
Find: ({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*unknown)[\.,;\)]?(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$4$5
And #11 (with or without trailing punctuation) should be picked up by the same rule that catches #1 and #2.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
For #4 and #10:
Find: ({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*)([\d\-X]+)(\s*\([\w\s]+\))(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$3$4<!--$5-->$6
For #5:
Find: ({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*)[\d\-X]+,\s*(97[89][\d\-]+)(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$3$4$5
Numbers 8 and 9 should be caught by the rule that catches #6.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:24, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Better rule for #5:
Find: ({{\s*[Cc]it(?:e|ation))([^}]+)(\s*\|\s*isbn\s*=\s*)([\d\-X]+,\s*)(97[89][\d\-]+)(\s*\|[^}]*)
Replace: $1$2$3<!--$4-->$5$6
Since the script hides extraneous parenthetical text w=that may be of value, similarly, the ISBN10 might also be of value.
Is there a need for a reverse order version of this rule: |isbn=ISBN13, ISBN10?
Not sure what to about #7. Dashes can be properly located just about anywhere in an isbn ...
I'll publish a settings file that has all of these rules in a bit.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
The rules above may be obsolete. Here is the current settings file.
Yes, there is a case for |isbn=ISBN13, ISBN10. The rule for it is in the settings file.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Is the tail end of these regexes right? I use ([\}\|]) to indicate that I'm looking for one and only one of those two characters.
Re "Is there a need for...", I have been trying to be conservative in detecting only strings that I actually see.
Re "Dashes can be properly located...", good point. We could simply remove all non-hyphen dashes, unless GoingBatty knows of a way to replace them exactly where they reside. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: Thanks for your kind words about BattyBot 25. However, there have been several editors who did not appreciate the edits, as can be seen at my bot's talk page, my talk page, and the RFC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style‎‎. I'm willing to set up a bot task for this as well, but suggest we take the following approach:
  1. Ensure all ISBN related documentation is up to date. (This may already be done.)
  2. Develop simple documentation about WP:COinS to educate editors on the importance of having accurate data in the citation parameters, and not having extra data in the parameters. I appreciate the editors who have responded to recent questions about COinS metadata, and that would be good information to gather for the documentation.
  3. Open an RFC for ISBN format, citing the information in #1 and #2 above.
  4. Based on the results of the RFC, tweak the rules for the error category, if needed.
  5. We collaborate on what the bot should - and should NOT - change. Also involve with the WP:CHECKWIKI folks, who have several tests to identify ISBN errors.
  6. I would then request bot approval, referencing everything above.
Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Redirecting credit for compliments regarding BattyBot 25 to Editor Jonesey95 ...
I am not all that convinced that this particular task requires all of the work necessary to become a bot. But, if one were to proceed with that goal in mind, the steps you've outlined are certainly appropriate. I have tweaked Check |isbn= value and checked Help:Citation Style 1 and {{csdoc}} for obvious errors.
For quite a while, each of the individual CS1 template pages have had text discussing COinS. For those templates that use Module:Citation/CS1 I have separated that text into its own separate section; see for example {{cite web#COinS}}.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
We may also want to involve whoever maintains Special:BookSources. They appear to have implemented ISBN cleaning code that works just fine when ISBNs contain preceding or trailing text. It would be useful to have a copy of the strings that they remove, since they have no doubt encountered many more oddball strings than are listed above.
Related: as a result of their cleaning code, clicking on most of the ISBNs in the above citations works just fine. There may be some editors who argue that if the link works fine, it's pointless for a bot to mess with it. That's where the COinS explanation comes in. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
ISBN 978-1907475689 is a magic link and is processed by Parser.php. The CS1 templates don't use magic links; they only work above because they are plain text. --  Gadget850 talk 22:51, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Clarifying: If I use "|isbn=9780773532861." in a citation, I get a link that includes a trailing period. When I click on it, I am taken to Special:BookSources, but the trailing period has been stripped away in the search box, even though it was in the URL. It looks like that link may be handled by Parser.php or equivalent code (thanks for the link). Looking at the Parser.php code may be helpful. It looks to me, as non-Perl hacker, that the code is extracting just the leading numbers, spaces, and dashes, in these lines of code: 

01266                ISBN\s+(\b                  # m[5]: ISBN, capture number
01267                     (?: 97[89] [\ \-]? )?   # optional 13-digit ISBN prefix
01268                     (?: [0-9]  [\ \-]? ){9} # 9 digits with opt. delimiters
01269                     [0-9Xx]                 # check digit
01270                     \b)

...and then removing the spaces and dashes and converting "x" to "X" when it fills the Search box: 

01310             # ISBN
01311             $isbn = $m[5];
01312             $num = strtr( $isbn, array(
01313                 '-' => '',
01314                 ' ' => '',
01315                 'x' => 'X',
01316             ));

Here's a citation that has a malformed ISBN but results in a successful search at Special:BookSources:

Author. Title. ISBN 978-0-226-53431-2 (hbk.). {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

Note that the URL includes the extraneous text, but somehow the ISBN in the search box is stripped of that text (possibly by Parser.php?). Clicking the Worldcat search link for that book works fine. An |isbn= parameter with two ISBNs does not work, however:

Author. Title. ISBN 0-8304-1580-7, 9780830415809. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)

Drawing tentative conclusions from all of this rambling: the code that leads from a cite template to Special:BookSources does a good job of ignoring extraneous text (and also non-hyphen dashes, it appears). It may or may not help us fix these malformed ISBNs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Found it. SpecialBooksources.php does some cleanup as well. --  Gadget850 talk 10:28, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm happy to add starting ISBN, endash not hyphen and trailing punctuation fixes to AWB genfixes. The multiple ISBN, format in brackets and free-text issues are not something that I think are sufficiently clear cut to put in AWB genfixes. Rjwilmsi 17:07, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
That would be great. I think adding 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11 above should be uncontroversial. They are all either a leading and extraneous "ISBN" (with no space, a space, or a colon following), non-hyphen dashes (I think there are at least three kinds of non-hyphen dashes), or trailing punctuation (I have seen [,.;)] ). Anything else should wait for an RfC to gain consensus, since they may be at least mildly controversial. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Can you clarify please? What do you mean by starting ISBN? Legal separators in an ISBN are simple hyphens and simple spaces. ISBNs without separators should be left as they are because the positioning of the separator has meaning depending on the adjacent digits.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
By "leading 'ISBN'" I mean examples 1, 2, and 11 above, where the letters "ISBN" appear in the parameter value before the numbers and dashes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:43, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, that question was for Editor Rjwilmsi, but thanks for the answer.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Logic is now in AWB genfixes and I've run through the ISBN errors category and made about 1000 edits I think. It looks like it took just under 1000 pages out of the category. Rjwilmsi 11:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Brilliant! There are now 7,333 articles in the category, down from about 9,000. I did notice that one of the edits removed the text "ISBN" from a parameter that read something like "|isbn=ISBN=978...", leaving behind an extra "=". I fixed that article, but a tweak to the AWB genfixes might be in order. To be clear: AWB did not introduce a new error, it just changed one kind of error to another kind. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

pmc with no title

can we make this return a "missing title" error? currently {{cite journal|pmc=2693255}} returns a script error. Frietjes (talk) 16:24, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Markup Renders as 
{{cite journal|pmc=2693255}}

. PMC 2693255 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693255. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help) 

{{cite journal|pmid=2693255}}

. PMID 2693255. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help) 

{{cite journal|jstor=2693255}}

. JSTOR 2693255. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help) 

{{cite journal|pmc=2693255|url=http://www.example.com}}

. PMC 2693255 http://www.example.com. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help) 

{{cite journal|pmc=2693255|title=Title}}

"Title". PMC 2693255. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) 

{{cite journal|pmc=2693255|url=http://www.example.com|title=Title}}

"Title". PMC 2693255. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

It certainly does. --  Gadget850 talk 19:49, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm guessing this is due to a recent change (back to pre-Lua behavior) in which the title is linked to the PMC URL unless |url= is specified. Displaying the PMC and a missing title error seems like the expected behavior. I added a clarifying example above, with a URL. I also added one with a title and a PMC, and one with title, URL, and PMC. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
I dont think that a wrong (or what it is) PMC value is expected to give a script error. I think it should be fixed. Christian75 (talk) 15:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, this is a bug. A PMC without a title parameter should give a missing title error, not a script error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:54, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
The script error bug was fixed in the sandbox 2013-12-21.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:17, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Should we roll the sandbox changes into the live module? There are some useful changes in there, and it's been about six weeks since the last update. I would support it. (Although if Trappist has the energy to work on date ranges in the short term, I'd be willing to wait.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Use {cite_journal/old} until fixed: Many parameters will work correctly in the old, markup-based versions of the CS1 cite templates. So, "pmc=" works and also "month=June" as well:
However, even {cite_book/old} cannot format "isbn=ISBN-10: 1234567890" and repeats "IBSN ISBN-10: 1234567890". -Wikid77 (talk) 18:06, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
no need to use an old template in articles, when there are zero transclusions of this bug in article space (see Category:Pages with script errors). Frietjes (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Using the old template is not a good workaround, because someone will just have to go back and change it back once this script error bug is fixed. A better workaround is to fill in the title parameter, and other parameters if you want. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:23, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Misleading date field

The full Cite Journal template is misleading. It asks for year, month, date, in that order. I and many others interpreted this as asking for the year month and day of publication. That is not the case, as date is apparently supposed to be the full date and is the only field shown in the cite if present.. See, for example, Necrotizing enterocolitis where I just added a cite, which I then fixed. Other references there still show a similar mistake, and I presume this is true in many many articles. One possible fix would be to assume a two-digit date is not valid and show the year instead.--agr (talk) 00:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Where are you being asked for the month parameter? What button or link are you clicking? |month= is clearly listed as deprecated in the documentation at Template:Cite journal#Date. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:57, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
My guess would be the RefToolbar. --  Gadget850 talk 01:21, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
I turned on the Reftoolbar in my Preferences, and it asks for "Publicate date" in each of the different reference types. ArnoldReinhold, can you help us identify the thing you are clicking on? We may be able to get it fixed. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:01, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Cite book: total number of pages

Right now, some pages are, incorrectly, using the template's pages= field to indicate the total pages in the work, rather than for a specific page range citation.
Is there a different template these pages should be using, or could total_pages= be a field here?
99.247.1.157 (talk) 21:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any existing parameter to give the total number of pages. It is not customary, either in Wikipedia, or in citations in other publications, to give the total number of pages in a book; I think you would have convince the Wikipedia community there is a good reason to add this information. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:10, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Correct. Editors who use the parameters for the total number of pages are confused. --  Gadget850 talk 00:19, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Use of initials

I and some others are on a drive to improve the utility of the {Cite doi} family of templates. One thing that would help would be if templates allowed greater flexibility in the formatting of output, something that I believe the Lua language now allows. Is it possible to create a parameter that allows authors' forenames to be truncated to their initials, such that if a template {Cite journal | last = Smith | first = John} would output "Smith, John", a template {Cite journal | last = Smith | first = John | author-initials = yes} would output "Smith, J." (but "Smith, John" in the metadata)? This would allow Cite Doi templates to store authors full names where possible, but allow pages to present the data in these templates in a fashion consistent with the formatting of other references already on that page.

Thanks!

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

{{cite journal |title=Title |last=Smith |first= John Brown |authorformat=vanc}}
→Smith, John Brown. "Title". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |authorformat= ignored (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:06, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I believe that the cite doi sandbox (and documentation) contains a proposed edit by Boghog that adds a passthrough of the authorformat=vanc parameter in the cite doi template (although it uses "van=yes", confusingly, when it should probably use "authorformat=vanc" for consistency). Take a look at the documentation at {{Cite doi}} to see where that has been added. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:44, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I hope you are not assuming that a simple Lua program is capable of correctly abbreviating full names to initials. For instance, I have a co-author whose full first name is Jean-Claude and who insists that the correct abbreviation of this name is J.-Cl. — should we expect a program to be able to find this? As another example, Russian names are often abbreviated to match their Cyrillic rather than Latin orthography; e.g. "V. Ya. Propp". I very much like the idea of separating the data from the format and allowing different articles that use different citation formats to share their data, but if we want to abbreviate names properly then the data should store both the unabbreviated and abbreviated forms of the name rather than expecting to be able to derive one from the other. The same thing is true for journal abbreviations. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Using the same |authorformat=vanc parameter name in {{cite pmid}} and {{cite journal}} is a bad idea since the parameter produces some what different output in the two cases. As discussed here and here, what is confusing is that {{cite journal}} |authorformat=vanc parameter is only a partial implementation of the Vancouver author format. The full Vancouver author implementation should also remove commas between the last name and first initials and replace the semi colon that separates authors with a comma (To get closer to the "Vancouver-like" style, one needs to add author-separator and author-name-separator parameters: | authorformat = vanc | author-separator=, | author-name-separator = &#32; ). Finally as David Eppstein has pointed out, authorformat=vanc doesn't abbreviate properly hyphenated names. Lua program does support regular expression search and replace, hence it should be able to correctly abbreviate hyphenated names.
IMHO, the best solution is to implement a more complete implementation of the Vancouver style author format (including properly abbreviating hyphenated names) directly in Module:Citation/CS1. This would also reduce the number of {{cite pmid}} passthrough parameters. Boghog (talk) 03:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Hyphenation can be handled with a little care as you say. Weird rules like "Jean-Claude is abbreviated J.-Cl. rather than J.-C." are less clear. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps these unusual cases (and as the Russian example illustrates, they are not entirely uncommon) could be handled by the implementation of an 'author#-initialization' parameter that would trump the automatic determination produced through authorformat=vanc? Or perhaps there is a regular expression that would handle the unusual cases?
The ultimate goal is to be able to produce any desired output format by passing parameters to the Cite PMID or Cite DOI templates. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:34, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
I think it requires too much additional knowledge of the subject to be done with a regular expression. E.g. If someone is named "Yuri", that doesn't inform us whether he primarily spells his name with Cyrillic letters (which should be abbreviated "Yu." in transliteration) or with Latin letters ("Y."). —David Eppstein (talk) 16:39, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Examples

I started Help:Citation Style 1/Examples. The intent is to show how to cite various sources. --  Gadget850 talk 00:14, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

|In= parameter

Hi. Apparently, {{Cite journal}} accepts an |in= parameter but I can't find any documentation for it. Any idea? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:41, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

It is an alias for 'language'. It has never been documented and I have never seen it used, but it has been supported by the templates for years. --  Gadget850 talk 09:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Really!? I saw it once used as "|in=Computerworld" and I myself recently used it in Compiler article to write "|in=Computer (magazine)" because the manual citation had an "in" parameter. But its rendering struck me as odd. I had a hunch and I thought I should ask.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 11:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Should |in= be deprecated and eventually removed given that it is rarely used, that it is relatively easy to misinterpret its meaning, and that it lacks documentation?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
It seems confusing. I would support its deprecation. Can we get a count of how many times it is used in all CS1 templates? And if we deprecate it, we should advertise the discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Support. Per the examples, it is confusing. If and when we add more language support, misuse will cause errors. --  Gadget850 talk 17:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I support too. This wasn't my intention when I asked the question but it is a wise move. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 17:45, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
It was a good question. Looking at Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration, under the section "Aliases table for commonly passed parameters" there are several aliases that are not documented. Need to see what is documented and what is used. We could move 'in' from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to Module:Citation/CS1/Suggestions— it would then give an error and suggest 'language'. --  Gadget850 talk 18:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Same issue with 'number'

We were having a similar conversation elsewhere about the |number= parameter; it would be good to get feedback on whether that is a useful alias for 'issue' or should similarly be deprecated. Incidentally, it's worth pinging User talk:Citation bot when a parameter is deprecated; it's relatively easy to modify the bot to replace the deprecated parameter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:05, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
BibTeX uses number= where our templates use issue=. So it's an easy enough mistake to use one in place of the other when typing in templates by hand, and seems harmless enough to keep working. But I wouldn't complain about a bot going through and changing them all to the main parameter. So deprecated but not removed seems like the right level for the number= parameter to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:27, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Great. I've updated the doc accordingly. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 10:30, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
|number= is specifically used with {{Cite techreport}}. --  Gadget850 talk 20:57, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Just to further muddy the water, |number= in {{cite techreport}} is simultaneously an alias of |id= and of |issue=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I rise to object. Editor Smith609 is using the above discussion (three posts, two editors – prior to Editor Gadget850's edit which occurred as I wrote this) as a sufficient statement of consensus to deprecate |number= as an alias for |issue= (this edit and edit summary, this edit). So that we are all clear, I am generally in favor of deprecating parameters that simply duplicate the functionality of other parameters. However, as an editor has mentioned in the |in= discussion above (and of which this conversation is a subthread), such intent to deprecate should be properly announced, advertised, and discussed before action is taken. Until such time as these things have been accomplished, |number= should remain as it is, an active and allowed parameter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:29, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

|number= has not been deprecated in any discussion, as far as I know. We have already had enough arguments about parameters being declared deprecated without a full, advertised discussion. Let's not repeat familiar mistakes. Smith609, please undo your edits until there is consensus. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:44, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Well please undertake whatever bureaucracy is necessary to document the parameter properly and establish whether the correct behaviour for a bot is to (1) replace 'number' with 'issue' (2) not. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:06, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Shall I update the documentation to say number is an alias of issue? The bot needs to do (2) and support both parameters. We do this in AWB genfixes. Rjwilmsi 08:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

PMID error flagging

I have come across many templates that include an incorrect PMID (example: 30036011). As far as I can tell, PMIDs are issued sequentially; therefore it would be easy to flag any template with an eight-digit PMID as erroneous, in the same way that the parameter doi_brokendate identifies citations with a misformatted doi. Would someone with knowledge of LUA be able to implement this? (Ping me on my userpage if you need more input from me, as I don't often check my watchlist.) Thanks! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Pubmed has had 8 digits in use for some time, e.g. PMID 23757186 from July 2013. Could check 9 or longer as invalid, and also (if not done already) validate that value of PMID field is only a number (no punctuation or alpha characters) without leading zeros. Rjwilmsi 19:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
25000000 is invalid, so perhaps the cut-off point could be 30000000, to be updated in ~10 years when PMID reaches this point? I have seen a lot of invalid PMIDS in the range 30000000-39999999, and it would be useful if these could be flagged automatically to users. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Is there a minimum number?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:07, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
PMID 1 exists, PMID must be a positive integer. So validate range 1 to 30000000? Rjwilmsi 20:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

It would seem that PMIDs are issued in blocks unless, just coincidentally, I happened to hit on the magic time when PMID 24399999 has been issued but PMID 24400000 has not. Regardless, in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, simple PMID validation:

"Pass: within allowed range". Journal. PMID 1.
"Pass: within allowed range". Journal. PMID 30000000.
"Fail: outside allowed range". Journal. PMID 0. {{cite journal}}: Check |pmid= value (help)
"Fail: outside allowed range". Journal. PMID 30000001.
"Fail: punctuation". Journal. PMID 30,123,456. {{cite journal}}: Check |pmid= value (help) – valid in a sense (because the |PMID=30,123,456 is treated as multiple PMIDs by pubmed) but for CS1 purposes invalid
"Fail: non-digit". Journal. PMID 300000O. {{cite journal}}: Check |pmid= value (help)
"Pass: leading zeros ok". Journal. PMID 00030000.

If this change proceeds, pages that contain PMID errors will be categorized into Category:CS1 errors: PMID; the error message for the time being is not hidden. Help text needs to be written.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I can write the help text, ping me when it needs to be done (& tell me where to write it). On a related matter, would it be possible to extend the |doi= validation mark any DOI ending in a full stop as invalid (common error)? Thanks Rjwilmsi 09:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

doi subthread

In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Tweaked so that any spaces in the doi identifier are detected as errors:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good. Also, if not done already, it would be good to detect use of any endashes (–) as errors as well please, fairly common problem that hyphens are converted to endashes by insufficiently intelligent dash formatting scripts. Rjwilmsi 08:16, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Will these be added to Category:CS1 errors: doi? It should be easy for Citation Bot to watch this category and make any easy corrections. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:42, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Since the beginning, pages with doi errors have been placed in Category:Pages with DOI errors. Do we need a separate category for doi errors detected by Module:Citation/CS1?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
The existing category should do the job. I've been out of the loop a while so didn't catch that it existed. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:23, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Tweaked so that en dashes are detected as errors:
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:20, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Depending on how far you want to go, you could confirm with JSTOR that their DOIs will all be of the 10.2307/(\d+) form mapping to http://www.jstor.org/stable/$1 (Perl re-s). ie "Pass". Journal. doi:10.2307/2225023. JSTOR 2225023.
My preference would be to replace such DOIs with the jstor parameter... RDBrown (talk) 02:02, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Many doi values that look like they should work with JSTOR do not. 10.2307/JSTORID is invalid for many JSTOR IDs, unfortunately. I sent them a message through their web site last week, but I haven't heard anything from them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:04, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that in theory, each article should have a unique DOI; thus if an article is assigned a DOI by its publisher and then archived in JSTOR, the publisher's DOI should be the valid DOI and JSTOR should not issue it with a second. I seem to recall that this theoretical state is not always upheld, however. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:23, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Requested parameter for citation templates: "chapter-author"

Can a new parameter (or series of parameters), possibly called "chapter-author" (with alias "note-author"), please be created?

I often cite chapters or footnotes by author X in books by authors Y edited by X or Z, and there is no simple way to do this with the citation templates.

Using a real example:

I wish to cite Jacob Freimann's introduction to Nathan ben Judah's early 14th-century book Mahkim in Freimann's 1909 edition of that work, thus:

  • Freimann, Jacob. "Editor's introduction". pp. xi–xv. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) In Nathan ben Judah (1909). Freimann, Jacob (ed.). Mahkim.

As of now, I must type 

* {{cite book |last=Freimann |first=Jacob |chapter=Editor's introduction |title= |pages=xi–xv}}
In {{cite book |author=Nathan ben Judah |year=1909 |editor-last=Freimann |editor-first=Jacob |title=Mahkim}}

using two citation templates to get the desired result.

Spent examples

Were I to type 

* {{cite book |last=Freimann |first=Jacob |chapter=Editor's introduction |pages=xi–xv |year=1909
 |editor-last=Freimann |editor-first=Jacob |title=Mahkim}}

or 

* {{cite book |last=Freimann |first=Jacob |chapter=Editor's introduction |pages=xi–xv |year=1909
 |editor=Nathan ben Judah |title=Mahkim}}

It would result in

  • Freimann, Jacob (1909). "Editor's introduction". In Freimann, Jacob (ed.). Mahkim. pp. xi–xv.

or

  • Freimann, Jacob (1909). "Editor's introduction". In Nathan ben Judah (ed.). Mahkim. pp. xi–xv.

which are both ridiculous and misleading.

I would like to be able to type 

* {{cite book |chapter-author-last=Freimann |chapter-author-first=Jacob |year=1909
 |chapter=Editor's introduction |pages=xi–xv |author=Nathan ben Judah |editor-last=Freimann |editor-first=Jacob |title=Mahkim}}

to get the same result as the two-template solution.

Similar problems present themselves when citing footnotes by the editor to a new edition of a classic work, for example, to cite Alban Krailsheimer's notes to Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, I typed 

* {{cite book |last=Hugo |first=Victor |title=Notre-Dame de Paris
 |editor-last=Krailsheimer |editor-first=Alban |page=555, note to p. 288 |isbn=9780191593673}}

to get

  • Hugo, Victor. Krailsheimer, Alban (ed.). Notre-Dame de Paris. p. 555, note to p. 288. ISBN 9780191593673.

which does not make it clear that Krailsheimer is the author of the notes, but there is no simple way of citing it the way it should be, as in the example before.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance, הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 00:04, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Use {{cite encyclopedia}}. --  Gadget850 talk 01:56, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, but I don't see how that helps; {{cite encyclopedia}} only allows for two "levels" of authorship, as {{cite book}} and most other similar templates do. The examples I used require three levels of authorship (so to speak): chapter author, work author, and work editor. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 02:02, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Markup 
{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last=Hugo |editor-first=Victor |title=Footnotes |encyclopedia=Notre-Dame de Paris |last=Krailsheimer |first=Alban |others=Alban, Krailsheimer (ed.) |page=555, note to p. 288 |isbn=9780191593673}}
Renders as
Krailsheimer, Alban. "Footnotes". In Hugo, Victor (ed.). Notre-Dame de Paris. Alban, Krailsheimer (ed.). p. 555, note to p. 288. ISBN 9780191593673.

--  Gadget850 talk 12:12, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you indeed, very interesting! For that matter, {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} (and all other citation templates?) also have the |others= parameter. This is definitely preferable to my "homemade" two-template solution—though this is apparently not the parameter's intended function and looks artificial (in wikicode, that is), and it would be nice if such citations could be coded intuitively. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 13:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
You can do the same with {{cite book}}— it is |encyclopedia= that adds the text "in". With the Lua templates, most parameters work in each of the templates, but we only document the ones applicable to the intent of the particular template. --  Gadget850 talk 17:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
I mean that were I to replace |title= and |encyclopedia= with, respectively, the somewhat more intuitive |chapter= and |title=, I would also have "in". הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 20:00, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that using {{cite encyclopedia}} is appropriate. The book is Notre-Dame de Paris, the book is not an encyclopedia, and the book's author is Victor Hugo. The particular edition being cited was translated and editorial material written by Alban Krailsheimer. Readers who wish to check the source may be confused by such a citation that lists Krailsheimer as the author and both Krailsheimer and Hugo as the editors. Instead, perhaps craft the citation as you would any other citation with particular attention to in-source location:
Markup 
{{cite book |last=Hugo |first=Victor |authorlink=Victor Hugo |title=Notre-Dame de Paris  |editor-last=Krailsheimer |editor-first=Alban |at="Explanatory Notes". p. 555, note to p. 288 |isbn=0-19-283701-X |date=1999 |origyear=1993 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=SN3Rhip342cC&pg=PA555}}
Renders as
Hugo, Victor (1999) [1993]. Krailsheimer, Alban (ed.). Notre-Dame de Paris. "Explanatory Notes". p. 555, note to p. 288. ISBN 0-19-283701-X.
My example citation refers to the facsimile available at google books for illustrative purposes.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Trappist the monk: thank you for your reply.
I agree that {{cite encyclopedia}} is inappropriate, but, as I wrote above, the same functionality exists in {{cite book}}. I also agree that using |editor= and |others= alongside each other is misleading to the wikicode reader (and potential editor, who might "fix" things and break references).
However, your recommended rewording of the "footnotes" citation does not seem ideal. Firstly, I distinctly remember style guides recommending the form that Gadget850 and I used. Also, this is not an option when citing material other than footnotes, such as the "foreword" or "introduction" ("Freimann") example above. Even when citing footnotes, your version can be ambiguous; for example:
Without being familiar with Waite's edition of Lévi's The History of Magic, would you know whether Waite edited (in this case, translated) Lévi's own annotated book, or perhaps Waite annotated his translation of Lévi's work? Worse yet is the case when the three "levels of authorship" are populated by three distinct authors/editors; using a real example (written without templates, of course):
  • Metzger, David (1992). "The Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh and Its Author". In Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona. Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh. Weiss, Y. Y. (ed.). pp. 7–10.
How would code this with the available citation templates? It doesn't seem possible without contrived workarounds, such as my ugly two-template version, or Gadget850's pseudo-editor and pseudo-others version. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 20:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
If a style guide recommends a particular form for a particular kind of citation and if the article's editors have chosen that citation style for the article, then CS1 may not be appropriate and one shouldn't try to shoehorn the particular style into CS1. CS1 is an amalgam of different styles but is none of them. It is a general purpose citation tool that suits the needs of a large number of editors and their citation requirements, and as such, will never be suitable for every citation need.
Editors are not required to attribute authorship; rather, they are required to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Simply doing as you have done with your Lévi example fulfills that requirement. Wikipedia articles are not academic papers where the provenance of each detail must remain clear, but rather, are summaries of a topic referenced to numerous more complete treatments.
I have no suggestions for your Metzger et al citation. I don't know the structure of the work; I can't tell if Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona is a person or a title or something else.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Trappist the monk: Regarding my reference to style guides, you misunderstood my point. I am well aware that Wikipedia has no house style, but all citation styles usually agree on what information is ultimately given, and Wikipedia is usually in accordance.
As for attributing authorship: WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT is the minimum, but I think most editors would consider full attribution of authorship good practice, and in some cases not doing so can be confusing—as is the case in this with the Lévi/Waite example. (Lévi and Waite disagree on whether electrical lights existed in the 13th century, and to the uninitiated reader Lévi seems to be contradicting himself, or to be much less credulous in his footnotes than in the main text.)
As for the Metzger example, here it is rendered in ordinary English: ...David Metzger's article "The Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh and Its Author", pages 7–10 in Y. Y. Weiss' 1992 edition of Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona's Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh. How would you word that CS1-style? (As it happens, Metzger believes—as do all scholars since the early 20th century—that Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona was not the author of Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh, whatever Wikipedia's 1906 article writes, but I called it "Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona's Sefer ha-Ḥinnukh" following bibliographic tradition, as the Library of Congress' catalog does.)
I intend to soon restate the problem and its possible solutions more clearly; tomorrow, or perhaps tonight (EST) if I have the time.
הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 04:25, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
There are times when a tool is not the right tool – a hammer can be used to drive a screw or set a staple, but using a screwdriver or stapler would be more approriate. CS1 is a good tool for most citations; it is not and cannot be a good tool for all citations.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Gadget850, thank you again for your patient advice (though I haven't finished testing your patience yet). Incidentally, my compliments for your {{markupv}} template; I find it both practical and aesthetically pleasant.

Meta-question: is this the correct venue for proposed modification of citation templates? I still want to revise my original proposal (having noticed a serious logical flaw, and I have other citation issues that I think need fixing; where should I post? (There seems to be, despite the 100+ page watchers, only one regular respondent here—you—so I must be in the wrong place for consensus-building. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 02:13, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a good venue for proposed modification of Citation Style 1 templates. There are more of us here than just Gadget850. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
My apologies—but it does seem that way when one skims through this page. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 20:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Revised proposal: alternate to |editor=

|editor= is, in my opinion, the root of the problem—the term editor itself is ambiguous, and the parameter that bears its name also does double duty.

The editor of a journal, book with chapters by multiple authors, or encyclopedia is the primary author of that work as a whole and should appear after In..., while the editor of a book of ordinary structure, with one (or several) author(s) responsible for most of the book, is of secondary importance and should always be marked as ed. and not be prefixed by In....

While |editor= executes it "book-mode" well when the |title= parameter is used alone

Markup Renders as 
{{cite book |last=Doe |first=John |year=2014 |title=Foo |editor-last=Doe |editor-first=Jane}}

Doe, John (2014). Doe, Jane (ed.). Foo.

when |chapter= or |article= is used with |title=, |editor= shifts to "journal-mode"
Markup Renders as 
{{cite book |last=Doe |first=John |year=2014 |chapter=Bar |title=Foo |editor-last=Doe |editor-first=Jane}}

Doe, John (2014). "Bar". In Doe, Jane (ed.). Foo.

and the author and editor are assigned to the chapter and book respectively.

Further, in the examples I gave in my original post above (Freimann, Krailsheimer, Metzger), |editor= is doubly problematic: its journal-mode is needed to generate In..., but prefixed to an author who is not the editor in the book-sense, and, once used, is not available to providing a book-mode editor.

I think the trouble could be avoided if one of the following solutions could be implemented (of course, I know nothing about their technical feasibility, so this may be ridiculous)

  • (Workaround) Create an alias for |editor= to be used when the main author, that is, the author who is listed as the work's primary author, is not the editor—|main[n]-last= and |main[n]-first=, say? The actual editor could be included in |other=, per the second half of Gadget850's solution.
    This would at least not confuse future editors.
  • Create a set of parameters, |main[n]-last= and |main[n]-first=, that would behave like |editor= does now, but which would induce (?) |editor=, when used, to retain its "book-mode" function.
  • If the above is not feasible or acceptable, at the very least I would recommend adding Gadget850's solution (both halves) to the CS1 documentation.

Gratefully yours, הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 05:19, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Extra data in date entry

Why does the COinS section of the Template:Cite Web page say that explanatory or alternate text is not allowed? I sometimes add '(updated)' when a page only shows the date it was last updated (and not the date of original production), as this is more accurate but was reversed. See query I raised (with example) at talk page. What problem is being caused by having the 'updated' text added. Eldumpo (talk) 20:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Module:Citation/CS1, the engine that processes {{cite web}} citations creates COinS metadata from several parameters, |date= being one. The date metadata for this very simple citation:
{{cite web |title=Title |url=//example/com |date=1 February 2014}}
looks like this:
&rft.date=1+February+2014
The parameter &rft.date= tells external referencing software that the value (1+February+2014) is a date. If |date= in a CS1 citation contains information other than a date, that information is included in the COinS metadata and is likely meaningless to the external referencing software. The purpose for the resrictions stated in the COinS sections of the various template documentation is to help keep the metadata clean and uncorrupted for the users of these external referencing tools.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your response although I note you say that the presence of a non-date is 'likely' to be meaningless, so has this not been confirmed? What exactly do users of the external referencing tools do with the data. Is their usage important enough that we should exclude the use of 'updated' to Wikipedia readers, so they are not able at a glance to see that the date listed is not the true date originally of the source. Eldumpo (talk) 08:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Editors put a great variety of extra text in the various CS1 template fields from relatively simple plain-text to templates that emit large amounts of CSS, wiki-formatting, etc. For example, we have seen stuff like this:
|date={{dts|1776|July|4}}
and the resulting COinS data for date then looks like this:
&rft.date=%3Cspan+style%3D%22display%3Anone%3B+speak%3Anone%22+class%3D%22sortkey%22%3E01776-07-04%3C%2Fspan%3E%3Cspan+style%3D%22white-space%3Anowrap%3B%22%3EJuly+4%2C+1776%3C%2Fspan%3E
Readers who use external referencing tools are no less (and no more) important than readers who use their eyes. We should not present information in a way that is a benefit to one but is a detriment to the other.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
But not allowing the use of 'updated' (or other appropriate extra information) is a loss of functionality to readers. So how does this COinS data look if the 'updated' text is used? Eldumpo (talk) 23:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that adding text to a date to indicate that it's an updated-on date has much meaning – especially for {{cite web}}. Web pages are notorious for lacking dates and for having dates that are clearly out of date. This is why we have |accessdate= to record the date that an editor consulted an ephemeral source that at a particular point in time supported the article. There is no need to note that the date on a web page is an updated-on date or a copyright date or some other kind of date. It is just a date that may or may not be correct. Use |accessdate=; should the web page go 404, this is the date that editors will be using when attempting to recover the source from an online archive.
The COinS metadata for |date=2 February 2014 (updated) is: &rft.date=2+February+2013+%28updated%29. Pretty straight forward, pretty sure that a reasonably adept external tool should be able to recover the date from that. But, the proscription against extraneous stuff in CS1 citation parameters applies to all parameters from which COinS metadata are assembled. Most of those parameters contain free form text – they don't adhere to the strict format requirements of things like dates by the very nature of their content (titles, author names, publishers, and the like). Allowing extraneous text in some parameters but not in others is a recipe for garbage metadata because editors will forget which parameters can hold ancillary text and which cannot.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
My interpretation of WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT is that you should cite that you read the version dated "29 November 2012", so users that want to independently validate the information in the article can find the appropriate version of the web page. I don't see that knowing whether that was the initial date of the web page or an updated date makes a difference. GoingBatty (talk) 14:11, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
If a reader isn't concerned that the web page was misrepresented, but rather is interested in whether the web page was likely to have been updated to account for current events, it would be helpful to know when the web page was updated, rather than when the web page was last read. Perhaps a parameter could be provided, date-description, which describes the date and is inserted between the date and the ending punctuation for the date. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:48, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The key point for the source in question (RSSSF) is that they were not listing the original date, but only the updated date, so it does not seem unreasonable to try and follow that. They clearly see it is significant to note when it was updated so why not pass that on to readers? Given that the COinS results are noted as being acceptable in this instance why can't the template section describing COinS state that exceptions are allowed only when clearly set out, and then under the date section state there that certain text is allowed? The suggestion by Jc35 could be a compromise; allow a separate field for when there is an updated entry at a source - it is useful for readers to know at a glance the date/details of when the information was posted. Eldumpo (talk) 23:05, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to add an open-ended comment to a citation?

I'm citing multiple topographic maps available online in support of a series of geographical articles. If I want to add an open-ended phrase or sentence to the cite that doesn't necessarily fit a predefined category, how can I do this? LADave (talk) 23:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Examples so we know what it is you mean?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Relevant parameters might include |quote= (for text taken from the source and copied for convenience into the reference), |id= (for identification numbers that don't already have their own separate parameter), or |postscript= (for any text you want to appear at the end of the citation). For that matter, it's also possible to write text after the actual citation template. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:58, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
|postscript= is terminating punctuation, and shows in the COinS metadata as such. Just place any desired text between the terminating }} and the closing </ref>. --  Gadget850 talk 01:45, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
After reflection, I realized |postscript= doesn't show in COinS. --  Gadget850 talk 12:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, but if you're using {{harv}}-style linking from the article text to the references, stuff inside |postscript= will be highlighted when the reader clicks on a reference name, but stuff after the closing brackets of the template won't be. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
|ps= (short for postscript) is part of {{harv}} is not the same as |postscript= which is part of a CS1 citation. Let us not confuse the two.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
You are the one confusing the two, not I. I mean the postscript parameter of the citation template. If you use postscript for some nontrivial text, that text will be part of the region highlighted when you click on the harv link. If you write the text after the brackets instead, it will not be highlighted. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:04, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Example please. --  Gadget850 talk 12:34, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Some text.[1][2] Click preceding superscript [2] then click Example 2 link.

References

  1. ^ "Example 1". Some explanatory text.
  2. ^ Example 2.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
From {{cite web}} at Display options"
  • postscript: Controls the closing punctuation for a citation; defaults to a period (.); for no terminating punctuation, specify |postscript=none – leaving |postscript= empty has the same effect but is ambiguous. Ignored if quote is defined.
Using |postscript= to hold nontrivial text, while possible to do, is not contemplated nor specifically supported by the parameter's definition nor by the underlying Module:Citation/CS1 (it does not provide proper inter-parameter termination or spacing in the rendered citation). The highlighting differences you describe are not within the scope of CS1. That topic is better taken up elsewhere.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The highlighting is done through CSS. The cite template wraps the citation in <span class="citation">...</span>. The CSS span.citation:target causes the content of the <span> to be highlighted when it is a target from a link— any text outside the span would not be highlighted. This works whether or not the citation template is inside a <ref> or not.

The CSS ol.references causes the content of <ref>...</ref> tags to be highlighted when targeted in the output of reflist markup ({{reflist}} or {{tag|references|s)— this is independent of the citation span highlighting.

If you have a cite template inside a <ref> tag you technically highlight it twice, but is is the same color so it shows the same.

Markup Renders as 
{{harv|author|2014}}
* {{cite book|author=author |title=title |year=2014 |ref=harv}} Comment after citation.

(author 2014)

  • author (2014). title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help) Comment after citation.
<ref>{{cite book|author=author2 |title=title |year=2014}} Comment after citation.</ref>
{{reflist|close=1}}

[1]

  1. ^ author2 (2014). title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) Comment after citation.

The highlighting is a convenience that helps readers to find the matching citation. Since the accompanying text is not part of the citation, then I don't see an issue if it highlights it or not. --  Gadget850 talk 20:51, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Quotes

The quote_field probably needs more precise guidelines. Right now it says that "relevant text quoted"; however, this leaves some grey zone what relevant means. In case of Hydraulic fracturing, Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing and Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing some references use very extensive quotes. The most drastic is probably the following:

"Shale has a radioactive signature – from uranium isotopes such as radium-226 and radium-228 — that geologists and drillers often measure to chart the vast underground formations. The higher the radiation levels, the greater the likelihood those deposits will yield significant amounts of gas. But that does not necessarily mean the radioactivity poses a public health hazard; after all, some homes in Pennsylvania and New York have been built directly on Marcellus shale. Tests conducted earlier this year in Pennsylvania waterways that had received treated water—both produced water (the fracking fluid that returns to the surface) and brine (naturally occurring water that contains radioactive elements, as well as other toxins and heavy metals from the shale)—found no evidence of elevated radiation levels...Conrad Dan Volz, former scientific director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh, is a vocal critic of the speed with which the Marcellus is being developed—but even he says that radioactivity is probably one of the least pressing issues. ‘If I were to bet on this, I'd bet that it's not going to be a problem,’ he says."

For a references that kind of quotation seems to be too extensive and creates also copyrights issues. Any suggestion how to deal with this issue? As I said, probably some clarification in the template guidelines is needed. Beagel (talk) 17:09, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

In this specific case, each of the sources seems to be available online, so a lengthy quote is rather redundant. There is always the issue of link rot over time. Much of what I see here is used to amplify the content— if it is this pertinent, then the content should be expanded.
Quotes should be short, very relevant, and have a purpose.
Where the source does not have a proper page— such as some eBooks —short quotes may also be used to locate the in-text material that is being cited.
--  Gadget850 talk 17:19, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Interesting. A "scientific director" who thinks radium-226 is a uranium isotope? Or a bad quotation? Not really on topic here though. LeadSongDog come howl! 01:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Way of finding {{web|...}}

Hi,

I discovered, by committing a desperation move, while adding an archive URL to an external link on Corita Kent that 

{{web |...}}

with the same same parameters as 

{{cite web |...}}

would work.

It would be nice if the real description of that template was easy to find while searching. Because this page is easy to find while searching, it might be nice to add a link from here.

ArthurDent006.5 (talk) 02:28, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

{{web}} is simply a redirect to {{cite web}} so they are the same thing.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:48, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I expect a lot of bots and tools won't recognize it as a cite template. There are only a handful of articles using it. When I get some time, I am going to RfD it and migrate the existing links. Probably need to check other templates for non-useful redirects. --  Gadget850 talk 16:34, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Note the redirect's history: it was originally a redirect to {{db-web}}, and was then boldly retargeted to {{cite web}} for being inconsistent with the db- family of templates; it was not created out of a perceived need for an alternate citation template, so no one is likely to miss it. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 17:08, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Now at RfD. --  Gadget850 talk 18:53, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Translator

This has probably been discussed before, but is there a reason that there isn't a field for translators? Style guides like Turabian and APA recommend specifying translators in full citations. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 15:43, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I think |others= is specifically meant for translators and the like. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 15:50, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Correct. There is no COinS metadata for translators, illustrators and the like, so we haven't seen the need for separate parameters. As currently documented in each template:
others: To record other contributors to the work, such as Illustrated by John Smith or Translated by John Smith.
--  Gadget850 talk 19:01, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough, I guess since you can just type in whatever you want in "others=" there's no real reason to go through the trouble of adding specific fields. Thanks for the answer. Parsecboy (talk) 15:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Categorization and inconsistencies between "cite" and "language icon" templates

Hello,

I have reported an issue between {{cite}} templates and {{language icon}} templates at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Categorization and inconsistencies between "cite" and "language icon" templates. Place Clichy (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I responded on the original page, but this discrepancy makes me wonder whether the CS1 template should use the same source for language names that the xx icon templates use, namely {{ISO 639 name}}, rather than maintaining a separate, forked list in CS1/Configuration. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:45, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Co-publisher needed

How do one enter a co-publisher info in {{Cite book}}? It's needed in Mann–Whitney U#Further reading, first item. Data pieces have been named publisher2 and location2, but that seems wrong...
Compare http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=1604954
CiaPan (talk) 17:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Which edition did you consult? There are two ISBNs— I haven't looked, but I expect they represent the London and New York editions. --  Gadget850 talk 18:04, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I think your guess is correct; see this catalog entry. הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 18:14, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand why you suggest I did (or should) consult any edition. I didn't. I just noticed the page is one of Pages with citations using unsupported parameters and Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters and tried to fix the error. When I failed and found in the template's doc there's no such parameters, I decided to ask here. Didn't need any edition to ask how to mention both of them. --CiaPan (talk) 22:15, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
The CS1 templates are designed to identify a single source. Because there are two publishers and two ISBNs, perhaps the correct way to repair this citation is to create one citation for each publisher; or, since both of the ISBNs at WorldCat and Google identify Arnold as the only or as the first of two publishers, simply do one citation listing Arnold as the publisher. Alternately, another option is to create a hand-crafted citation that meets your needs (CS1 being a general purpose tool that is suitable for may but not all tasks).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:09, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2014-02-09

In about a week's time I intend to update these files from their respective sandboxes:

Module:Citation/CS1 (diff);
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration (diff);
Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist (diff)

The update makes these changes to Module:Citation/CS1:

  1. Fixes cite journal script error that occurred when the citation had a |pmc= without |title=; (see "Script_error")
  2. Migrate cite speech; (see Migrating cite speech)
  3. Kerning for title and chapter leading and trailing single or double quote marks for quoted titles; (see Quote within title parameter)
  4. Enhance month / season year date range to check for proper left to right time sequencing of month or seasons in the range; (see Month / season range order validation)
  5. Streamline date validation; Add day range validation; (see Legitimate date range examples to add to the date checking part of the CS1 module)
  6. Migrate cite podcast; (see Migrating cite podcast)
  7. Add simple PMID error checking; (see PMID error flagging)
  8. Refine DOI error check to catch trailing punctuation errors; (see doi subthread)

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

  1. Added Draft and Draft Talk namespaces to uncategorized namespaces. [Jonesey95]
  2. Add |event= and |eventurl as aliases of |conference and |conferenceurl= in support of {{cite speech}};
  3. Add |host= as alias of |authors in support of {{cite podcast}};
  4. Add simple PMID error checking;
  5. Reflect change made to live version by Editor Smith609; remove U+200E (left to right mark) from category names;

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

  1. Add |event= and |eventurl as aliases of |conference and |conferenceurl= in support of {{cite speech}};
  2. Add |host= as alias of |authors in support of {{cite podcast}};

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:55, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:40, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Garbled italics in title

The handling of italics (or bold), at the start/end of a webpage title, no longer works as it did in the early Lua versions for {cite_web}:

In mid-March 2013, the Lua {cite_web} would show title "Italics More Text" for italics at the start of a webpage title, and italics mid-title will still work. Meanwhile, I have noted to use i-tag format: '<i>...</i>' at start/end of title, so this new bug has a work-around until a bugfix can be tested. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:36/17:45, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 9#Italics in citation title broken. --  Gadget850 talk 18:03, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi. I still fail to grasp the issue. Is it fixed? Or am I not properly understanding your intent? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 00:51, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I can't speak for Editor Gadget850, but to answer the question about the garbled italics, I think it's fixed as I think can be seen from the current state of Editor Wikid77's examples.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:15, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for clarification. What made the understanding more difficult was the fact that Wikid77 had – in good faith, I am sure – resorted to using strange markup instead of a pair of <nowiki>...</nowiki> tag. So, I couldn't tell whether single quote–space–single quote sequence meant to represent itself or a single quote–single quote sequence, as a way of suppressing wikimarkup. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 14:15, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Indicating file size for large PDF

When the URL parameter points to a large PDF, is there a way to indicate the file size, so the person reading can make an informed decision about whether to click the link and how long they may have to wait for it to download? Nurg (talk) 01:25, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Not logical to single out PDFs. Some PDF files are smaller than some image files. If we are going to do this is should be only for files (of any file type) above a given size (to be decided upon). But anyway is this still a relevant consideration nowadays? Would have made more sense in the early days perhaps than it does now. -- Alarics (talk) 10:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
You can put the size in the 'format' field- it does not render in the COinS metadata, so we can be fairly free here. I am curious as to what you consider large. --  Gadget850 talk 11:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Not to suggest that this was recommended practice, but I put the size in the format field in a citation at Taquan Air three years ago and no one has complained:
Unscintillating (talk) 12:11, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Another solution to the problem is to not link to the PDF at all, but rather link to the Google cache, as in this example from Richard Conn Henry:
Unscintillating (talk) 12:21, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
That is an ugly citation. And its not the real title of the document. --  Gadget850 talk 19:01, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
If there is a concern about the large size of a linked file, using |format=PDF, 1.6MB or similar should be sufficient. The format should still be explicitly stated because not all URLs end in .pdf nor can/will all browsers display the icon if the URL does end in the appropriate file extension. Additionally, that icon lacks any sort of alternate text (as far as I know) to alert users of screen readers or other adaptive technology of the icon's intended meaning. In short, a little redundancy is a good thing. Imzadi 1979 → 19:59, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

"Work and publisher" issues

In section Work and publisher there are several issues. Numbered items below are taken directly from Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher.

  1. A leading "The" can usually be left off a website, unless confusion might result.
    • This needs to be harmonized with the instructions at WP:CITEHOW, template:cite news and all the other cite templates, which make no mention of this alleged rule.
    • I disagree at least in the case of news websites such as The Huffington Post.
    • The word may should replace can here.
  2. For periodicals, it is conventional in citations (not running prose) to omit a leading "The" for publications with multi-part names (|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle and |journals=Astrophysical Journal but |newspaper=The Nation) unless ambiguity would result.
    • San Francisco Chronicle is an invalid example of this alleged rule because this newspaper's name does not being with The. A better example of this alleged rule would be |newspaper=New York Times, because that newspaper's name does begin with The.
    • This needs to be harmonized with the instructions at WP:CITEHOW, template:cite news and all the other cite templates, which make no mention of this alleged rule.
    • I don't think this alleged rule is well known or respected, because I have edited many hundreds if not thousands of articles inserting The before New York Times, Washington Post, Jerusalem Post, Wall Street Journal, and others; I've seen other editors do likewise; I note this in my edit summary, e.g. ''The'' New York Times; nobody has ever commented that I needn't or shouldn't make this change and I've never noticed the change being reverted.
  3. Many journals use highly abbreviated titles when citing other journals (e.g. "J Am Vet Med" for "Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association") because specialists in the field the journal covers usually already know what these abbreviations mean. Our readers do not, so these abbreviations should always be expanded.
    • This needs to be harmonized with the instructions at WP:CITEHOW and template:cite journal, which make no mention of this alleged rule.
    • This alleged rule is not well known or respected. I have seen thousands if not tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles that use such abbreviations with or without {{cite journal}} and I have observed no trend toward expanding these abbreviations.
  4. publisher: the name of the company that actually published the source. The field should not include the corporate designation such as "Ltd" or "Inc.", unless some ambiguity would result or the company is usually known with that designation even in everyday use.
    • I agree; if this is a rule, the instructions at WP:CITEHOW and at the citation templates should reiterate the rule.
  5. The "publisher" parameter can be included even where it would be the same or mostly the same as the work/site/journal/etc., for example:
    |work=Amazon.com    and   |publisher=Amazon
    |newspaper=The New York Times    and   |publisher=The New York Times Company
    • I vigorously disagree with this and routinely remove the |publisher= parameter when it duplicates the work. It does not provide any useful information to "inform" the user in citations that The New York Times is published by The New York Times Company, or that the Journal of the American Chemical Society is published by the American Chemical Society. Such |publisher= parameters should always be omitted.
    • The word may should replace can here if this alleged rule is allowed to remain.
  6. Location
    • It should specify that the |location= parameter should be used when the location is part of the common name but not the actual name of a newspaper. For example, the newspaper commonly known as the New York Daily News is actually Daily News (New York) and can be entered with |newspaper=Daily News |location=New York, which yields Daily News (New York).

—Anomalocaris (talk) 10:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I have been mulling over style issues for a while. If this is to actually be an actual citation style, then we need to go though and expand and clean the documentation. We actually have two sets of documentation: Help:Citation Style 1 and {{Citation Style documentation}} which is used to build the documentation pages for each template.
WP:CITEHOW is an overview of citing sources and not a comprehensive style guide.
My opinions:
  1. There is no need to remove articles such as the. We are not short of storage.
  2. Ditto.
  3. We are an encyclopedia. Our target audience is the general public, not professionals who would immediately understand these abbreviations. Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable touches on this. The issue is prevelant in medical and legal articles.
  4. Agree. The inclusion of publisher is to identify the source.
  5. Agree. If the publisher is implied in the publication name, then it is redundant.
  6. Agree. The purpose of location is to identify the source. If the it is implied in the publication name, then it is redundant (The New York Times). If it clarifies the publication then it is useful (Daily News (New York)).

--  Gadget850 talk 11:26, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:CITEHOW MUST NOT be edited to agree with Citation Style 1. CS1 is a separate style, and only one of many that may be used in Wikipedia articles. CITEHOW is a section in WP:CITE, which allows any consistent style. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:13, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
In my view, the "publisher" parameter should always be left blank or deleted in the case of mainstream newspapers, whether or not the name of the publisher is similar to that of the newspaper. It is the "location" parameter which uniquely defines the newspaper. The "publisher" parameter is meant only for obscure or long-defunct publications where there might be doubt as to which publication is meant.
Also, I agree that there is no point is dropping the "The" from "The New York Times" and other papers whose title on the masthead includes "The". -- Alarics (talk) 19:55, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Publication date is a range

In cleaning up the CS1 messages "check date=" I encounter this situation. Old code says |date=2007–2009 (ndash used, not by entity). I could not find in MOS:DATEFORMAT that that is incorrect, still the CS1 message appears. I also met |date=2007– for publication. My question is: is that date (period) non-MOS, wrong, or to be tricked around? (This question was raised some months ago when this date issue was in development; I don't recall a solution more a sort of postponement/see individual cases). -DePiep (talk) 11:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The earlier talk started November 2013 and is now in archive. -DePiep (talk) 11:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
YYYY–YYYY ranges not currently supported by Module:Citation/CS1 (and that includes open ended ranges like your |date=2007– example).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:41, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Could the helppage reflect this and suggest a workaround? -DePiep (talk) 14:11, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
The workaround is to ignore MOS-valid date ranges that cause an error until date ranges are supported by the module. Remember that these date errors are exposed only to those editors who have chosen to see them, so they are only bothering a few gnomes.
I have updated the Help page text accordingly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:02, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
OK. -DePiep (talk) 18:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

subst?

Can this be subst'ed ? I'm trying to put some citations onto wikimedia.org.uk (where the templates aren't installed or maintained) and expected to be able to subst: them into me en:WP sandbox (see User:Andy Dingley/sandbox), then copy the results over. Instead it just leaves the wikitext 

{{#invoke:Citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=journal
}}

Andy Dingley (talk) 10:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I have no experience with subst'ing. If I understand your question, you want a wiki-markup version of the citation – the template's output to the wikimedia parser. You can get that by wrapping the citation template in a {{code}} template:
{{code|1={{cite book |title=Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML |author=Basham, Sierra & Bates |publisher=O'Reilly |date=2004 |isbn=0-596-10197-X }}}}
which gives:
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000147-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFBasham,_Sierra_&amp;_Bates2004" class="citation book cs1">Basham, Sierra & Bates (2004). ''Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML''. O'Reilly. [[ISBN (identifier)|ISBN]]&nbsp;[[Special:BookSources/0-596-10197-X|<bdi>0-596-10197-X</bdi>]].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Head+First+HTML+with+CSS+%26+XHTML&rft.pub=O%27Reilly&rft.date=2004&rft.isbn=0-596-10197-X&rft.au=Basham%2C+Sierra+%26+Bates&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
The contents of <span class="citation book">...</span> is your citaion:
Basham, Sierra & Bates (2004). ''Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML''. O'Reilly. [[International Standard Book Number|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/0-596-10197-X|0-596-10197-X]].
→Basham, Sierra & Bates (2004). Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. O'Reilly. ISBN 0-596-10197-X.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Subst'ing can be done with dummy parameter

The Lua-based wp:CS1 cite templates could be updated to allow wp:subst'ing, to store the formatted citation in place of template calls, using:

{{{{{zz|safesubst:}}}#invoke:citation/CS1|citation|CitationClass=journal}}.

The parameter name "zz" is a dummy name to avoid problems with a blank-named parameter containing "safesubst:" but could be some other rare name such as "∞" or such. I have created a version, as Template:Cite_journal/subst, to allow further testing before updating the major live templates to reformat the 2.3 million affected pages. Note the stored results of the test below:
Test {cite_journal/subst}:

  • Markup: {{subst:cite journal/subst |last=Doe|first=John |last2=Dooe|first2=Jane |editor=staff |title=Academic Paper|journal=Science|page=1435-39|volume=5|issue=7|date=4 May 2013}}
  • Result: Doe, John; Dooe, Jane (4 May 2013). "Academic Paper". In staff. Science 5 (7): 1435-39. 

Recall how a CS1 cite template also stores the cryptic COinS metadata internally at the end of each cite, as a titled span-tag: <span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004...> (etc.), which would no longer match a hand-updated citation unless also hand-updating the span-tag. I apologize for not putting safesubst in the original Lua-based cite templates, earlier, when I completed writing Module:Citation/CS1 last year. All the sideshow problems with the wp:VE debacle, and the lost edits caused by forced https protocol, and numerous Wikipedia database failures (etc.) have delayed real improvements. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Differences for display-authors documentation actual function

There is a difference between all three of the documentation for |display-authors= on Help:Citation Style 1#Display options, Template:Cite web/doc, and the actual function.

Help:Citation Style 1#Display options: States that the number of authors displayed when published is limited to 9 by default.

Template:Cite web/doc: States that all authors are always displayed except in the case where there are exactly 9 authors and then only 8 are displayed. The documentation is actually on: Template:Citation Style documentation/doc which is transcluded into teh documentation for multiple other CS1 templates.

The actual template: Displays all authors up to at least 28:[1]

Same citation, but with |display-authors=5[2]

  1. ^ Rowe, Jason F.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Lissauer, Jack J.; Jontof-Hutter, Daniel; Mullally, Fergal; Gilliland, Ronald L.; Issacson, Howard; Ford, Eric; Howell, Steve B.; Borucki, William J.; Haas, Michael; Huber, Daniel; Steffen, Jason H.; Thompson, Susan E.; Quintana, Elisa; Barclay, Thomas; Still, Martin; Fortney, Jonathan; Gautier III, T. N.; Hunter, Roger; Caldwell, Douglas A.; Devore, David R. Ciardi Edna; Cochran, William; Jenkins, Jon; Agol, Eric; Carter, Joshua A.; Geary, John (February 26, 2014). "Validation of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates. III: Light Curve Analysis & Announcement of Hundreds of New Multi-planet Systems" (PDF). astro-ph.EP. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Library. arXiv:1402.6534v1. Retrieved March 2, 2014. {{cite journal}}: External link in |journal= (help)
  2. ^ Rowe, Jason F.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Lissauer, Jack J.; Jontof-Hutter, Daniel; et al. (February 26, 2014). "Validation of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates. III: Light Curve Analysis & Announcement of Hundreds of New Multi-planet Systems" (PDF). astro-ph.EP. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Library. arXiv:1402.6534v1. Retrieved March 2, 2014. {{cite journal}}: External link in |journal= (help)

My normal default would be to change the documentation to reflect what the template actually does. However, it is not clear to me if the current behavior is what is desired, or if there is a bug (i.e |display-authors= not being set to 8 by default) which should be fixed. Is the template currently operating the way that is intended (i.e. no default limit on the number of authors displayed)? I have not tested if the number of editors is operating in a similar manner. — Makyen (talk) 11:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

The citations above are working as they should be. The documentation at Help:Citation Style 1#Display options describes operation for those CS1 templates still using {{citation/core}}. What you need to do is fix Template:Citation_Style_documentation/display so that it displays appropriate text depending on where it is transcluded. For {{citation/core}}-based templates it should display the default of 8 text; for Module:Citation/CS1-based templates it should display the all authors default text; and for cases like Help:Citation Style 1#Display options, it should display an appropriate combination of both.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
The documentation shown in {{cite web}} describes the function of |display-authors= in that template and in all others that use Module:Citation/CS1 (see table in Help:Citation Style 1). These templates display all authors unless there are exactly 9 authors or display-authors is set.
I have looked at the documentation, and it is set up such that if it is transcluded on doc pages for templates that use Module:Citation/CS1, it shows the correct text. If it is transcluded on doc pages for templates that use {{citation/core}}, it shows the correct text. It does not show the correct text on the Help:Citation Style 1 page, because that page is intended to show documentation for both types of template, but only the citation/core text is shown. I expect that this dual-documentation problem exists throughout the Help page, and the page would need a complete rewrite to be accurate in explaining how both types of template work.
I can't figure out an elegant way to proceed. One brute force way would be to use a nested if statement saying "if lua, show this; if non-lua, show this; else show this new combined text." We would have to label the non-lua templates and recode all of the documentation subpages, I believe. I could be wrong about any of this, since I showed up a little late to this lua party. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:43, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
That is exactly what I have done for other parameter sets; see Template:Csdoc#author. I'm rather busy at the moment, but I will get to it when I can. --  Gadget850 talk 23:48, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

e-Books, redux

Is this still the status quo regarding citing location in e-Books, such as Kindle stuff? I've just downloaded a book that is in Kindle format but the article uses {{sfnp}} I can supply some "proper" page numbers because small chunks of the printed version are available online ... but the vast majority is not. With hindsight, I should have paid the extra few quid & bought the physical version: live and learn! - Sitush (talk) 13:25, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

REF cited once, but has two pointers in REFlist

Please have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Berlin-Sch%C3%B6neberg_station&oldid=598265855 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Berlin_Feuerbachstra%C3%9Fe_station&oldid=598255926

The REFs made by "cite journal" in the reflist are referred to only once in the text itself, but in the finished article, there are two pointers a, and b each for each entry in the References list. How come? How to fix it? --L.Willms (talk) 21:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Changing REF to ref fixes the problem, why I've no idea. Nthep (talk) 21:36, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
(e/c) I changed ref to ref, and it seems the problem has been fixed... though it's unclear why. - Purplewowies (talk) 21:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Interesting. It appears that if you use List-defined references and capitalize any character within ref in the defined reference inside the list, then Cite adds extra backlinks. I will file a bug report later today. --  Gadget850 talk 11:22, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The wonderworld of computer programming. Thanks for the changes to "Nthep". I'm not sure, but I think that I had used capitalized spelling of REF in earlier edits in other articles. But my memory might cheat me. Anyway, I now to know how to avoid that strange feature. --L.Willms (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The bug only shows up when you use it inside LDR refs. While HTML allows upper or lower case tags (but recommends lower case), you must remember that <ref> is a parser tag that resembles HTML but works very differently. See Template talk:Reflist#Capitalized <ref> causes extra backlink. --  Gadget850 talk 15:41, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Why is there a proscription against wikilinks in author parameters? CS1 templates that use Module:Citation/CS1 don't seem to have a problem with wikilinked authors; the display is correct, and the COinS metadata aren't corrupted. The same is true of the remaining CS1 templates that use {{citation/core}} except that none of those templates produce COinS metadata:

  • {{cite book |title=Title |author=[[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln, A]]}}
    • Lincoln, A. Title.
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000154-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFLincoln,_A" class="citation book cs1">[[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln, A]]. ''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.au=Lincoln%2C+A&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
  • {{cite interview |title=Title |author=[[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln, A]]}}
    • Lincoln, A. "Title" (Interview).
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000158-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFLincoln,_A" class="citation interview cs1">[[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln, A]]. "Title" (Interview).</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=Title&rft.au=Lincoln%2C+A&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Wikilinked author names complicate author lists last/first or ref=harv: So, the general method has been to have everyone use "authorlink=" and allow "ref=harv" to build the span-tag id from the "last=" and "year=". It is also difficult to get users to wikilink lists as "Last, First". However, Lua could auto-extract the last name from a wikilinked author name (when "ref=harv" is used), by detecting the leading double-bracket "[[" and parsing "Hernando de Soto" and auto-capitalizing as "De Soto". Currently, I am finding a similar problem where several users think a URL must have outer "[__]" as in url=[http__] and so the autofix of URLs requires removal of outer brackets in such URLs, then log the page in a tracking category. It is interesting to see how some new users think all URLs must be specified in "[__]" where some even enclose the whole "[url=http]" which creates a parameter named "[url" as an unknown keyword. Fortunately, there are fewer than 200 such urls, and Lua is very fast when resetting a URL=string.sub(URL,2,-2), without "[__]" in those rare cases. For {citation/core}, we could autofix URLs by invoking Lua Module:String to extract the center from regex '%[*(.*)%]*' or similar. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:15, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
    • The citation/core versions don't strip the markup when generating COinS, which is why we still document 'author-link'. And the only way to include the author link like this is to use 'author'. This doesn't play well with shortened footnotes, as the link for your example would be "Lincoln, A", which is nonstandard. --  Gadget850 talk 22:24, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
It isn't clear to me that {{citation/core}} is generating COinS. When I look at the html source for this page, I don't see any COinS for the {{cite interview}} citations.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:27, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Should we manually format with proper author links and avoid this template until it is ready to search for and automatically find matching authors? Hcobb (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Please elaborate, I don't understand what it is that you are asking.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I should clarify. I meant my question to be specifically about |author=, |authors=, |authorn=, etc, not the divided author-name parameters |last=, |first=, |author-last=, |author-first=, etc.
I don't think that |ref=harv is the reason. Here are two references one to {{cite book}}[1] which uses Module:Citation/CS1 and the other {{cite interview}}[2] which uses {{citation/core}}. Both of these citations are the same citations as above to which I've added |ref=harv and |year=1865a/b.

References

  1. ^ Lincoln, A 1865a.
  2. ^ Lincoln, A 1865b.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
I had forgotten that COinS was removed from core due to performance issues. We should be able to restore it now, and I will start that discussion. And again, shortened footnotes use only the author last nem for the in-text cite. --  Gadget850 talk 13:22, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
I guess I would suggest not restoring COinS to {{citation/core}} simply because as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer templates that will be using it – {{cite interview}} is next up to abandon {{citation/core}} (which see).
Yes, the author's last name is intended for use with shortened footnotes. But, because |author=, |authors=, and |author1= are aliases of |last= and |last1=, it is possible to use any of the |author=-type parameters with shortened footnotes. I suspect that we can trap citations without |lastn= and with |ref=harv to prevent use of |author=-type parameters for CITEREF creation.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:46, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
We have discussed {{cite wikisource}} here— it uses {{citation/core}}, but is not well used and includes some oddball parameters. Then we have {{cite IETF}}, which again uses core, but also includes a bunch of specific parameters. I started a discussion at core, and we can continue there. --  Gadget850 talk 14:27, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't we just drop "|last=" and insert a wikilink to a person page instead? Then the template can wander over yonder and fetch the proper formatting of the person's name from their own page. Hcobb (talk) 13:27, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I must be an idiot, but I still don't understand what it is that you are asking.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:46, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite interview to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox

I think that I have finished migrating {{cite interview}} to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox. See Template:Cite interview/testcases.

The sandbox versions differ slightly from the live version where Module:Citation/CS1 renders certain parameters in different positions and adds punctuation not provided by the {{citation/core}} version.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:44, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it really an error to not have a title for an interview? The Gene Simmons interview, for example (which I recommend to everyone), doesn't really have a title that could be cited. A WP editor would have to make up something better than "Interview with Terry Gross", which seems unreasonable to me.
Coming to the point: should we suppress or display the "url without title" error for {cite interview}? I would suppress it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:53, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
For your particular example, I would use "Leader and bassist of the band Kiss, Gene Simmons" per NPR, just as it is used in the Terry Gross article. --  Gadget850 talk 20:18, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Approximate year

I thought it was agreed that approximate years, in the form |year=c. 2009, was allowed. I note, however, that this no longer works (see the source by Time Service Dept. in Coordinated Universal Time, which no longer connects the inline cite to the bibliography. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Fixed using {{sfnref}}. There may be another way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:45, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Fixed in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.
Time Service Dept. (c. 2009). "Leap Seconds". United States Naval Observatory. Retrieved 17 July 2011. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
What is now allowable in the date field? --  Gadget850 talk 18:18, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
When an approximate year is specified, the form is: c.<space>year<CITEREF disambiguator> where year is a three or four digit number, the first digit of which must be in the range 1–9 (100–9999); and where <CITEREF disambiguator> is an upper or lower case letter (A–Z and a–z). Approximate years may be specified with either |date= or |year=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Of course c.<space> and <CITEREF disambiguator> are optional. Either or both may be omitted. Or that's how it ought to work. Also, the year range limitation only applies if one wants automatic linking from a parenthetical citation or short footnote to the bibliography entry. If the editors of an article aren't using the feature, years outside that range could be used. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:14, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Years outside the 100–9999 range are not valid regardless of the use of the circa prefix or the CITEREF disambiguator. This constraint is a holdover from the limitations imposed by the #time parser function. As far as I know, there has been no determination made to extend this range.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Help:Citation Style 1 says nothing about accurate dates not being allowed. It does say that the date formats in the acceptable date format table of WP:DATESNO are allowed. That table says nothing about a limit on the date range. Obviously WP:DATESNO must allow for the representation of every possible date. Help:Citation Style 1 says nothing about limiting the date range in all cases, only that the automatic linking won't work if the date is outside the indicated range. So if there was ever a discussion saying this limitation is OK in general, that limitation never made it into Help:Citation Style 1. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:47, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I see this was discussed at Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 9#Should date validation allow "BC" and other eras? and the majority of editors seemed to accept the idea of entering whatever date was correct, even if it was before 100.

external links in page parameters

Corrupted COinS metadata occurs when editors place external links in any of the |page= parameters. To fix this, I have added a small bit of code to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox that extracts the page number strings from the |page= value and uses the extracted data for COinS. If this change is retained, editors may freely add external links in any of the page parameters.

Of course there is a caveat: When the value assigned to |pages= contains the square brackets, hyphens are not converted to endashes as they would be if the page range was not part of a url. I have a vague memory of a conversation that resulted in this restriction, but I suspect that it is imposed because the replacement code would indiscriminately replace hyphens in a url with an endash which would break the url. I'll give some thought to fixing this.

  • Page number without external link. p. 45.
    • {{cite book/new |title=Page number without external link |page=45}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000164-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Page number without external link''. p.&nbsp;45.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Page+number+without+external+link&rft.pages=45&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
  • Page number with external link. p. 24.
    • {{cite book/new |title=Page number with external link |page=[http://www.example.com 24]}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000168-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Page number with external link''. p.&nbsp;[http://www.example.com 24].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Page+number+with+external+link&rft.pages=24&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
  • Page numbers with mixture of linked and unlinked. pp. 24, 28–32, 57, 77–80, 106.
    • {{cite book/new |title=Page numbers with mixture of linked and unlinked |pages=24, [http://www.example.com 28–32], [http://www.example.com 57, 77–80], 106}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000016C-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Page numbers with mixture of linked''. pp.&nbsp;24, [http://www.example.com 28–32], [http://www.example.com 57, 77–80], 106.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Page+numbers+with+mixture+of+linked&rft.pages=24%2C+28-32%2C+57%2C+77-80%2C+106&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
  • Page numbers with mixture of linked and unlinked and different urls. pp. 24, 28–32, 57, 77–80.
    • {{cite book/new |title=Page numbers with mixture of linked and unlinked and different urls |pages=[http://www.example.com 24], 28–32, [//example.org 57, 77–80]}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000170-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Page numbers with mixture of linked and unlinked and different urls''. pp.&nbsp;[http://www.example.com 24], <span class="nowrap">28–</span>32, [//example.org 57, 77–80].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Page+numbers+with+mixture+of+linked+and+unlinked+and+different+urls&rft.pages=24%2C+28-32%2C+57%2C+77-80&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>
  • No page number value.
    • {{cite book/new |title=No page number value}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000174-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''No page number value''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=No+page+number+value&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Tweaked to support page numbers that are alpha and alphanumeric.

  • Roman numeral and alphanumeric page numbers. pp. i, iii–vii, A-2.
    • {{cite book/new |title=Roman numeral and alphanumeric page numbers |pages=[http://www.example.com i, iii–vii, A-2]}}
    • '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000178-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Roman numeral and alphanumeric page numbers''. p.&nbsp;[http://www.example.com i, iii–vii, A-2].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Roman+numeral+and+alphanumeric+page+numbers&rft.pages=i%2C+iii-vii%2C+A-2&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+4" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:16, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

  • Dashes in page numbers are optional: Remember how some page numbers should retain hyphens, such as page "B-19" or similar in newspapers, and so the auto-adjustment of page-number dashes in "pages=" is just a courtesy to users who can hand-edit to use dashes if wanted. For that reason, singular option "page=B-19 — B-21" can be used to retain hyphens. Otherwise, I would not worry about hyphens in page-number ranges because over 94% of real-world sources tend to use hyphens everywhere (except new Britannica), and when other punctuation is used, then slash is far more common than dashes, such as in "pp. 5/7-8" or dates "May/June 1976" etc. The COinS metadata has been used by Bots to check for deadlinks and insert title, or archiveurl and archivedate (as in User:DASHBot), but I am not sure if page number is checked by Bots very much. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:37, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite DVD-notes to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox

Because I'm in the process of migrating {{cite AV media notes}} to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and because {{cite DVD-notes}} has certain similarities, I've started migrating {{cite DVD-notes}} as well. (testcases)

During this migration, as it is with {{cite AV media notes}}, I'm wondering if we should make certain changes:

  1. rename {{cite DVD-notes}} to {{cite DVD notes}} to get rid of the hyphen – it is the only CS1 template that uses a hyphenated name
  2. |format= – in most CS1 citations, |format= has a specific definition: the file format of an online resource (pdf, xls, mpeg, etc). The {{citation/core}} version of the template tests the value assigned to |format=. If |format=Liner notes then, the value is not displayed. I guess this is because |type= is assigned a default value of Liner notes – no sense in having both |format= and |type= display the same thing. Because |format= specifies the format of an online resource, it is interesting that the basic skeletons in the documentation don't include |url=. Until the template was converted to {{citation/core}}, online accessible DVD notes were not supported by this template. I propose to deprecate this peculiar functionality of |format=; before migrating to Lua, replace |format= with |type= in existing citations; and add documentation to support the use of |url=.
  3. |director= – it isn't clear to me why this parameter is available. Sure, a director may have written the DVD's notes and should be credited as the author. But I see no reason for a special parameter here. For comparison, in {{cite AV media notes}}, |artist= is an alias of |others= (as I think about it now, it isn't really clear why that is). |director= is an alias of |author=. I propose to deprecate |director= in favor of the standard suite of |author= parameters.
  4. |titleyear= – this parameter is an alias of |origyear=. It isn't clear to me what it is that this parameter is supposed to be doing – the name itself doesn't offer any real clues. It appears that editors are using |titleyear= to document the original release year of the DVD subject (see the testcases for examples). I think that this is a misuse of the parameter which should be the original publication year of the notes. I propose to deprecate |titleyear= in favor of |origyear=.
  5. |publisherid= – I propose to deprecate |publisherid= because it is simply a long-winded form of |id=.

Alternately, as was suggested in the discussion about migrating {{cite AV media notes}}, we might merge {{cite DVD-notes}} into {{cite AV media notes}}; a subject that I will address in another post.

I will be adding a note about this migration to the projects notified for the {{cite AV media notes}} migration.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been looking at some uses and have found several where 'publisherid' is an ASIN, thus 'asin' should be used; but it will take eyes on to fix those, so updating to 'id' is a first step. Some of the oddball parameter use is because I updated the original template to citation/core while trying to maintain backward compatibility. I agree that it is time to update the use. --  Gadget850 talk 14:43, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I just found one with an ISBN so there you go. I've updated item 2 in the list above to replace |format= with |type=. None of the pages I looked at, were using |format= to identify the online format (makes sense since I haven't found any that use |url= ...). I have an AWB script that will do much of this work.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:54, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree with all of the above, with the same recommendation I made in the section above. Let's get as much fixed before migration to Lua so that there are as few red error messages as possible. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Please merge; the AV template is intended to be used when citing DVD liner notes; the mroe specific template is therefore redundant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:23, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Documentation changed according to items 1–5 above with these exceptions:

3. |director= – may or may not be the author of the note and so similar to |artist= in {{cite AV media notes}}; deprecated in favor of |others= like |artist= in {{cite AV media notes}}; makes it easier to deprecate {{cite DVD notes}} in favor of {{cite AV media notes}}.

New:

6. Default type changed from "Liner notes" to "Media notes" (same as {{cite AV media notes}})

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:09, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

One of the common errors is providing URLs in the |authorlink= parameter, which produces malformed links - how about catching this as a CS1 error? GregorB (talk) 19:02, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Good idea. I posted a similar idea at Module_talk:Citation/CS1/Feature_requests#Detect_and_report_wikilinks_in_author_parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:15, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Yep, such a good idea that you have suggested it before. There is a version of the check in the sandbox.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:19, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Sigh. I must be getting old. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:03, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Fixes that bots could take on

Here's a list of fixes that a bot should be able to take on. I come across these frequently. I have numbered them manually for ease of discussion. These are similar to fixes suggested by Wikid77 above.

1. Change {cite web|http} to {cite web|url=http} in Category:Pages with empty citations and Category:Pages with citations using unnamed parameters. Many errors in these two categories are of this specific type, and they should be very easy to fix.

2. Change |translator= to |others=... (translator) in Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters.

3. Fix ISBN errors in Category:Pages with ISBN errors as described in Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_4#Bot_to_fix_ISBN_errors.3F. This may require an RFC first.

4. Fix articles in Category:Pages with citations having bare URLs using some sort of Reflinks-like tool. These fixes will have to be run by hand using a script rather than a bot, since experience with Reflinks has shown that pulling data from web pages requires human oversight.

5. I keep coming back to Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL and not knowing what a good fix would look like. Commenting out accessdates in those citations is tempting, but the error is sometimes a symptom of another error (like #1 above). We may have to clear out Category:Pages using web citations with no URL first.

More? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:48, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Let me know when there's consensus that these errors should be corrected (perhaps a post to my user page?) and I'll modify Citation Bot to address 1 & 2 (and others if there's a clear way of how to). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:12, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
I believe #1 could be automatically fixed by a bot. Regarding #2, there is some discussion on adding a |translator=-like property, but so far no consensus to do so. It would be nice to have a bot fix ISBN errors as in #3. I've seen bad bot-generated titles around, some including pipes (|) for instance. There may be a good way to automatically do #4, though, filtering the title. For #5, I recently had a discussion with an IP about accessdates. I often have commented them out, if I thought a url was left out, but there are times when they aren't needed at all. If there is a proper date for the work, the accessdate is most likely redundant. To start, a bot could run through all the pages, deleting accessdates if there is no url and a properly formatted MOS date prior to (or the same as) the accessdate. That would reduce the log some, because people who fill in accessdates for printed material often fill in the date of the work as well. (That's my observation, anyway.) —PC-XT+ 04:16, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Many editor tools auto-fill |accessdate= with the current date irrespective of whether |date= is populated or not. If this behaviour could be amended, suppressing the addition of |accessdate= where |date= is already stated, the number of new cases would likely rapidly plummet. One such widely-used tool is Reflinks. There are others. 79.67.241.244 (talk) 11:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
But Reflinks works with online sources that actually do have meaningful accessdates, so nothing wrong with its behavior.
I've fixed a lot of refs where accessdate was provided without URL, and I don't think I've ever encountered a case where simply deleting the accessdate would not be a proper fix. Still, it is tricky, but there is a simple heuristics: if there's accessdate without URL, and the template is {{cite book}}, it is safe to do it (barring #1 above, which can be fixed beforehand). GregorB (talk) 12:17, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Stating the retrieval date of a date-stamped online newspaper or journal article adds unnecessary clutter to the reference. Where the publication date is stated, there is no need to state the retrieval date. If editors are stating the retrieval date instead of the publication date then perhaps more guidance is needed. -- 79.67.241.244 (talk) 13:02, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not aware of a guideline to omit accessdates if date is provided. I tend to always provide |accessdate=, even with |date=. The only exception I can think of right now is e.g. Google Books: the content that is pointed to is not going to change in a meaningful way, nor it is going to go offline (well, hopefully), so I suppose there is no scenario in which |accessdate= could prove useful. Still, what you say does make a lot of sense to me: undated online content might change, so we use |accessdate= to indicate which version of the webpage was used; dated content, however, shouldn't change, so it doesn't really matter when we accessed it. This might even be an argument to say that accessdate should be mandatory if no date is provided, although introducing this would create a hellish backlog... GregorB (talk) 13:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the discussion, everyone. Deleting |accessdate= automatically is probably acceptable in {{cite book}} templates and in {{cite journal}} templates where a |doi= or other identifier is present, since those sources are unlikely to change.
I think that in other templates, commenting out |accessdate= is better than deleting it. For example, a {{cite web}} template with no URL will generate a different CS1 error; someone trying to fix that error may find it useful to see the accessdate that was entered by a previous editor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Some say that, for web pages with archiving forbidden in robots.txt, accessdates in addition to dates can be useful to help determine the likelihood of a dead url coming back. (In this case, a date range is specified, from date to accessdate. This seems to suggest that we should update these particular accessdates for accurate records, though.) There may be other uses for accessdates, besides specifying the version referenced, though I don't know of any. I do think deleting them for books and journals with specific identifiers would be fine. For others, comment them out if in doubt, since the bot will likely not have the capacity to notice if they may be used. (I am sure that in most cases, they are unused.) —PC-XT+ 04:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Migrating cite AV media notes to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox

I'm migrating {{cite AV media notes}}, more commonly {{cite album notes}}, to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox. (testcases)

During this migration, I'm wondering if we should make certain changes:

  1. |format= – in most CS1 citations, |format= has a specific definition: the file format of an online resource (pdf, xls, mpeg, etc). Here, in {{cite AV media notes}}, |format= is mapped to |type=. This usage prevents legitimate uses like |format=pdf for an online copy of the media notes in Adobe Acrobat format. I propose to deprecate |format= as an alias of |type=.
  2. |albumtype= – if I understand correctly, the purpose of {{cite AV media notes}} is to make reference to "liner notes from albums, DVDs, CDs and similar audio-visual media" (emphasis mine). It is not the purpose of {{cite AV media notes}} to make reference to the album, DVD, CD, etc that the notes discuss (that is for {{cite AV media}} to do). When |albumtype=single, {{cite AV media notes}} changes the format of the citation title from italic to normal and quotes the title: Title → "Title". This, presumably, because individual song titles are quoted, not italicized. But, {{cite AV media notes}} cites the notes, not the song, so this functionality is inappropriate in this template. For this reason, I propose to deprecate |albumtype= and the functionality of |albumtype=single.
  3. |albumlink= – similar to |albumtype=, |albumlink= implies that this citation refers to the album, DVD, CD, etc that the notes discuss. I think that this is misleading. Editors can wikilink the title or use |titlelink= to create a citation where the title links to a related Wikipedia article. Because |albumlink= is essentially an alias of |titlelink=, I propose to deprecate |albumlink=.
  4. |publisherid= – I propose to deprecate |publisherid= because it is simply a long-winded form of |id=.

Items 1 & 4 above also occur in {{cite DVD-notes}} which, when its time comes, should have similar changes made.

As part of these proposals, if carried, I shall change the documentation and then run an AWB script or three to implement the changes to the source templates.

Opinions? WikiProject Albums, WikiProject Discographies, and WikiProject Songs, have been invited. Who else should be invited into this discussion?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:45, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me. As to {{cite DVD-notes}} (355 uses), I recommend we migrate it to {{Cite AV media notes}} (5952 uses). --  Gadget850 talk 17:31, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
It appears that there are only a few significant differences between {{cite AV media notes}} and {{cite DVD-notes}}. In {{cite DVD-notes}}:
  • |director= is an alias of |author=
  • the default value for |title= is Liner notes
  • there is some peculiar markup for format
  • |titleyear= is an alias of |origyear=
So, yeah, I agree. But {{cite DVD-notes}} isn't really the purpose of this thread.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with all four points made by Trappist the monk. To avoid creating a new batch of error messages, I recommend changing all of the deprecated parameters in existing instances of {{cite AV media notes}} to the new supported parameters, or commenting out parameters that will not have a new equivalent. Is that what is proposed in the note about using AWB? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Before the migration to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox, an AWB script can change |format= to |type= (#1), change |publisherid= to |id= (#4), and delete |albumtype= and its value (#2). We would need to edit {{cite AV media notes}} before the AWB run so that {{cite AV media notes}} accepts either |titlelink= or |albumlink=. Then, the AWB script can replace |albumlink= with |titlelink= (#3).
Except for attendant documentation, I think that this is all that needs doing.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:49, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
AWB script ready; {{cite AV media notes/sandbox}} now accepts either |albumlink= or |titlelink=. (testcases)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:21, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I clicked through a random sample of 30 or so articles that transclude this template to see which projects they are a part of. Based on that, here are some other groups to invite to this discussion: WikiProject Musicians, WikiProject Film, WikiProject Rock music, WikiProject Video games. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:18, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Invited.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:45, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

There having been no further discussion, I have changed the documentation and the {{citation/core}}-based template according to items 1–4 above. I have made two additional adjustments:

5. |artist= – simply a unique alias of |others= so I have deprecated it in favor of |others=
6. |notestitle= – a unique alias of the more common parameter |chapter= which already has four aliases; deprecated it in favor of |chapter=

I will run my AWB script against Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite_AV_media_notes shortly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:44, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, In item 6 above, did you mean to say that you have "deprecated it in favor of |chapter="? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:21, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
yep.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:24, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Anything sending complex templates to the bin is to be applauded. Thank you! - David Gerard (talk) 17:52, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I noticed a link to this page from several articles I watchlist. Can somebody explain all of the above in plain English? Why are we doing this? What advantage does it give editors? Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox might as well be gobbledegook. We need citations to be as simple and as easy to use as possible, and stop this culture of coming down like a ton of bricks to newbies who don't understand them. The main change seems to be changing "artist" to "other". Not really an obvious change from my point of view - CDs have "artists", they don't have "others"! Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Editors fill out a Citation Style 1 (CS1) template in an edit window. Right now there are two mechanisms that translate the template and its data into the rendered citation that readers see. The two mechanisms are {{citation/core}} and Module:Citation/CS1. The first is old-style Wikimarkup, and the second is the more modern Lua scripting language. The big name CS1 templates ({{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, etc) have already been switched from {{citation/core}} to Module:Citation/CS1. It is now time to switch {{cite AV media notes}}.
This switchover is part of a long-ongoing process to unify all of the CS1 templates from some 21 individual templates, each doing its own formatting and rendering, to a common base where all of the CS1 templates share common rules for formatting, parameter names, etc. Common rules and parameter names do, in fact, make the whole suite of templates easier to use and understand.
The reason for changing |artist= to |others= is because this particular template is about citing the printed notes that accompany a CD, a cassette, an LP, etc – not about citing the accompanying CD, cassette, or LP for which, editors should use {{cite AV media}}. In general, the author of the notes is not the artist who made the music or video; if the artist is the author, then there is |author= to serve that purpose.
Can you show evidence of where I have pursued the culture of coming down like a ton of bricks to newbies who don't understand them?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The initial AWB run is complete. During that I found one other change that I implemented. Apparently, at some time, |bandname= was a legitimate alias for |artist=. So, I have replaced that parameter where it occurred. Because I started replacing |bandname= sometime after I started the AWB run, I'll rerun my script to see if I missed |bandname= in pages that were changed before I found it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:53, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I also found some with |director= as an alias for |artist=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:11, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

... and |mbid= which I'm just deleting because in 2009, editors determined that that identifier wasn't appropriate. (Discussion here and here)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Bold/non-bold volume parameter doc issue, or bug

I encountered an issue with |volume=. It appears that it is displayed bold unless the argument contains non-alphanumeric characters. In addition, if it is not bold a period is used as a separator. Examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

  1. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. 3914: 1–2.
  2. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. (nbr. 3914): 1–2.
  3. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. VI: 1–2.
  4. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. Z VI: 1–2.
  5. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. test: 1–2.
  6. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. (test): 1–2.
  7. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. te(s)t: 1–2.
  8. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. te[s]t: 1–2.
  9. ^ ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. te$st: 1–2.

I did not see the behavior documented anywhere. At a minimum, the documentation should include the conditions under which it is not bold and doesn't use the period. I'm not sure if this is the intended operation, so I have not just changed the docs. — Makyen (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Displays non-bold over 4 characters: Years ago, there was a request to not bold "vol 3" and so the length is checked for 5 or longer, to omit the bolding, but it can be forced by triple tic-marks: volume='''vol 3'''. -Wikid77 20:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Which corrupts the volume metadata by wrapping it in %27%27%27. --  Gadget850 talk 22:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
The template documentation pages are up to date.
  • volume: For one publication published in several volumes. Displays after the title and series fields; volume numbers should be entered just as a numeral (e.g. 37). Volume values that are wholly digits, wholly uppercase Roman numerals, or fewer than five characters will appear in bold. Any alphanumeric value of five or more characters will not appear in bold. In rare cases, publications carry both an ongoing volume and a year-related value; if so, provide them both, for example |volume=IV / #10.
--  Gadget850 talk 23:28, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Bold text is a function of length. If the value assigned to |volume= is greater than four characters long, then Module:Citation/CS1 inserts the separator character (either the default period or the character specified by |separator=) followed by the volume. When four characters or less, CS1 omits the separator character and displays volume in bold font.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Thank you both. Great; so I was not discriminating enough in trying different test cases 8-).
@Gadget850:The documentation displayed to users is not correct. The text you quoted was not displayed on any of Help:Citation Style 1, Template:Cite web or Template:Cite journal. None of those pages have any mention of the possibility that |volume= will not be displayed bold. Help:Citation Style 1 and Template:Cite journal say that if you want it not to be bold, then include it in the |title=. Template:Cite web has no documentation at all as to the function of |volume=. In fact, on Template:Cite web the text "volume" only exists once and that is in the section on COinS data.
It appears that a large amount of work has gone into creating the framework for the documentation to be easily switched between lua/non-lua. A brief glance indicates that a lot of the work to do so was done by you, Gadget850. Thank you.
After adding |lua=yes to every occurrence of {{csdoc}} in Template:Cite journal/doc, it appears the only thing on which it made a difference was |volume=. Sorry I happened to pick up one the one thing that was off. That still leaves handling both types in Help:Citation Style 1 and some amount of documentation in Template:Cite web.
Floating an idea: Maybe it would be a good idea to have a separate, centralized CS1 template documentation page which is either almost completely transcluded into each of the templates, or each template documentation tells people to go there via a link. That way the documentation in each template concentrates on how it is different from the base, standard template, while not having to restate each piece of the documentation. Having them have to restate each piece, even though each piece is individually transcluded, makes the documentation less easy to maintain than having the basic standard documentation in a single page. — Makyen (talk) 02:35, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
We could add volume to the {{cite web}} documentation, but why would you use volume for a web page? With the Lua updates, most parameters now work on every template, but we only document the parameters that are applicable. And yes, a lot of work needs to be done on documentation. --  Gadget850 talk 08:26, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Anyone know why the 'series' separator does not show when 'volume' is four characters? --  Gadget850 talk 15:11, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Because that is how the code in Module:Citation/CS1 is written. It is easy to fix and doing so would make module citation match core citations. Shall I fix it?
Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|sandbox=yes|series=Series|title=Title|volume=vol}}
Live Title. Series. Vol. vol. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)
Sandbox Title. Series. Vol. vol. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Yep, I figured it was in the code. I was looking for the rationale. And I just checked the old core as well and it did not do it that way, so I think this is a bug that should be fixed. --  Gadget850 talk 16:18, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't know what the rational was, or if there even was a rational. Could have simply been an oversight. Fixed in the sandbox.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:08, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Support making volume display consistently, regardless of content or length. I trust Trappist to make it work right. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Minor history here. All I've done is add the separator character so that it follows whatever the last parameter is before volume. It is still true that if the |volume=value has more than four characters, it will not be in bold font.
Cite book comparison
Wikitext {{cite book|sandbox=yes|series=Series|title=Title|volume=MMXIV}}
Live Title. Series. Vol. MMXIV. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)
Sandbox Title. Series. Vol. MMXIV. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:58, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for hunting down that link. I read it, and the embedded link within that section (which goes to Archive 2). I did not see a justification for a four-character limit, which seems too short. I understand that a twenty-character bold volume name might be a bit garish, but six or seven characters of bold seems reasonable. At this point we might need some examples from real articles of longer-than-four-character volume names that are not bold, but should be. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Years ago, there was a request to not bold "vol 3" and so the length is checked for 5 or longer (length of "Vol" +space+digit) to omit the bolding; but it can be forced as bold by triple tic-marks: volume='''vol 3'''. -Wikid77 20:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
I've been wondering if the bold / no bold determination should be made on content rather than length. For example: |volume=23 and |volume=MCMLXXXVIII should be bold font but |volume=3rd Crusade should be normal font. So if the value for |volume= contains only digits or uppercase roman numerals then bold; else normal.
These mock-ups demonstrate how this style might look:
ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. MCMLXXXVIII: 1–2.
ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. 3914: 1–2.
ln, fn (1 April 1971). "title". journal. 1. 3rd Crusade: 1–2.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:14, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Checking volume length was easiest method and insert dot: In cases where a volume number includes letters, such as volume "23a" (or "B-2"), then the 4-character limit has worked well to not bold "vol 4" but instead bold "B2" or "98-c". As mentioned above, the bolding becomes garrish, or glaring, with longer words, and even volume 48, as "XLVIII" could be a quieter "XLVIII" and no one would overlook it as being the volume number.
  • Cite journal:       "Paper 5". My Journal. 8c. May 2013.
  • Cite journal/new: "Paper 5". My Journal. 8c. May 2013.
  • Cite journal/new: "Paper 5". My Journal. Series X. 8c. May 2013.
Only inserting the dot at length 5 had fixed most volume titles, without disturbing journal volumes which should not have a preceding dot. -Wikid77 20:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
What? I do not understand what you wrote. And, what was the purpose of this edit? Why should we treat |volume= differently when it follows |series=?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:31, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Avoid dot between journal name and volume: This is about the common typesetting convention, in technical journals, to show the volume number bolded, with no separator after a journal name: Journal 67, which has been used in wp:CS1 style for years. However, when "series=" is used, between journal name and volume, then the separator (dot "." or comma) is added by {cite_journal/old}, and hence the module /sandbox has been changed to match that. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:28, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
But why only |series=? What about the other parameters that are rendered between |journal= and |volume=? And, perhaps more importantly, why are |volume= and |issue= separated from |journal=? There is some sense in separating |volume= from |journal= when |series= is set because that implies that |journal= is volume n of the |series=. Why should any other parameter be placed between |journal= and |volume=?
For {{citation}} and {{cite journal}}, if a periodical parameter is set (dictionary, encyclopaedia, encyclopedia, journal, magazine, newspaper, periodical, website, work) then, in this order and if set, these parameters are rendered between the periodical and volume parameters:
format, type, scale, series, language, cartography, edition, publisher, agency
For all other citations, these parameters are rendered between the periodical and volume parameters:
format, type, scale, series, language
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Just a quick thought for discussion, but can we eliminate the boldface completely? It's not used in APA, MLA or Chicago-style citations (the non-WP styles I've had to use the most in college), so I don't see why we would need to retain it. Imzadi 1979 → 01:04, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I have reverted all changes to this part of Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox while this discussion continues so that the update to the live module can proceed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Physics articles with 30+ authors

Citation bot helpfully came along and filled out some references at Neutrino[2]. This has caused some problems with some physics papers with very many authors belonging to collaborations. Originally the first author had et al and the name of the Collaboration

N. Agafonova et al. (OPERA Collaboration) (2010). "Observation of a first ντ candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam". Physics Letters B. 691 (3): 138–145. arXiv:1006.1623. Bibcode:2010PhLB..691..138A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022.

after citation bot came along it added the first 30 of the 100+ actual authors

N. Agafonova et al. (OPERA Collaboration); Aleksandrov; Altinok; Ambrosio; Anokhina; Aoki; Ariga; Ariga; Autiero; Badertscher; Bagulya; Bendhabi; Bertolin; Besnier; Bick; Boyarkin; Bozza; Brugière; Brugnera; Brunet; Brunetti; Buontempo; Cazes; Chaussard; Chernyavsky; Chiarella; Chon-Sen; Chukanov; Ciesielski; et al. (2010). "Observation of a first ντ candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam". Physics Letters B. 691 (3): 138–145. arXiv:1006.1623. Bibcode:2010PhLB..691..138A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022.

setting |display-authors=1 looks odd as there are two copies of et al.

N. Agafonova et al. (OPERA Collaboration); et al. (2010). "Observation of a first ντ candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam". Physics Letters B. 691 (3): 138–145. arXiv:1006.1623. Bibcode:2010PhLB..691..138A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022.

Is there a way of getting this to display OK without having to remove all the co-authors, which I'm reluctant to do as it means deleting data. I'm thinking there may be a case for a |collaboration= parameter or a way of suppressing the et al.--Salix alba (talk): 14:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The only information in an author parameter should be an author name. The reason for this is that whatever text and wiki markup is in an author parameter gets copied into the citation's COinS metadata. So, don't put ''et al.'' (OPERA Collaboration) in an author parameter. The CS1 templates will give you a properly formatted et al. with |displayauthors=n. Consider using |others=OPERA Collaboration:
{{cite journal |author=N. Agafonova |others=OPERA Collaboration |displayauthors=1 |year=2010 |title=Observation of a first ν<sub>τ</sub> candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam |journal=[[Physics Letters B]] |volume=691 |issue=3 |pages=138–145 |arxiv=1006.1623 |bibcode=2010PhLB..691..138A |doi=10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022 |last2=Aleksandrov |last3=Altinok }}
→N. Agafonova; Aleksandrov; Altinok (2010). Observation of a first ντ candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam. Vol. 691. OPERA Collaboration. pp. 138–145. arXiv:1006.1623. Bibcode:2010PhLB..691..138A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes I've thought of using the |others= but this puts the (OPERA Collaboration) in the wrong place, after the title. If you look at the various places these appear the group needs to bind tightly to the authors. For example arxiv[3] has
"N. Agafonova et al. (OPERA Collaboration) Title"
--Salix alba (talk): 18:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Then I think you're going to be disappointed. CS1 is a general purpose citation tool that satisfies a large number of citation needs. It is not, never has been, and never will be the perfect tool for all applications. (If I knew how to create such a tool, I certainly wouldn't be doing it here for free.) There are going to be citation needs like yours that are outside of the tool's capability.
There is however, an undocumented and unsupported possibility – if you use this, be forewarned that it might one day produce unexpected results. Set all of the |author= parameters as you should normally do; set |others=N. Agafonova; et al. (OPERA Collaboration); set |displayauthors=0:
{{cite book |author=N. Agafonova |others=N. Agafonova; et al. (OPERA Collaboration) |displayauthors=0 |year=2010 |title=Observation of a first ν<sub>τ</sub> candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam |journal=[[Physics Letters B]] |volume=691 |issue=3 |pages=138–145 |arxiv=1006.1623 |bibcode=2010PhLB..691..138A |doi=10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022 |last2=Aleksandrov |last3=Altinok }}
→N. Agafonova; Aleksandrov; Altinok (2010). Observation of a first ντ candidate event in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam. Vol. 691. N. Agafonova; et al. (OPERA Collaboration). pp. 138–145. arXiv:1006.1623. Bibcode:2010PhLB..691..138A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.06.022. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:30, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module week of 2014-03-23

In about a week's time I intend to update these files from their respective sandboxes:

Module:Citation/CS1 (diff);
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration (diff);
Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist (diff)

The update makes these changes to Module:Citation/CS1:

  1. Add PMC error checking; (discussion)
  2. Fixed a circa year date validation bug; (discussion)
  3. Add url in |authorlink parameter error checking; (discuassion and discussion)
  4. Expand DOI error checking; (discussion)
  5. Fix longstanding bug that broke citation terminal punctuation if the value assigned to |postscript= is multicharacter (like html entities); Moved citation template's default assignments for |separator=, |postscript, and ref=harv from the invoking template into the module; Added support for |postscript=none; (discussion)
  6. Limit acceptable years in dates to current year+1; (discussion)
  7. Expand date validation; all allowable date formats should now be supported; (discussion)
  8. Migrate cite interview; (discussion)
  9. Move date validation code into a separate page Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation;
  10. Extract page numbers from external wikilinks in any of the |page=, |pages=, or |at= parameters for use in COinS; discussion)
  11. Add lccn error detection; (discussion)
  12. Migrate cite AV media notes; (discussion)
  13. Migrate cite DVD notes; (discussion)

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

  1. PMC error checking;
  2. url in |authorlink parameter error checking;
  3. Move |postscript= and |separator= default initialization into Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox;
  4. Add subject and subject link for cite interview migration;
  5. Add artist, albumlink, albumtype, notestitle, publisherid for cite AV media notes migration;
  6. Add lccn error detection;
  7. Delete albumtype; merge deprecated parameters albumlink, artist, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear as aliases of other parameters; remove these parameters after 1 October 2014;

to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

  1. Add subject and subjectlink for cite interview migration;
  2. Add artist, albumlink, albumtype, notestitle, publisherid for cite AV media notes;
  3. Invalidate albumtype; deprecate artist, albumlink, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear; these last to be invalidated after 1 October 2014;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:53, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Corrected item 5 for Module:Citation/CS1 to read: Added support for |postscript=none;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Bots edit-warring on hand-fixed cites

It has taken a while to confirm the bizarre introduction of invalid parameters by Bots, but it has happened in numerous pages, such as dif834 in article:
     • "Premenstrual syndrome (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
During that edit, the only "title=" parameter was incorrectly fubarred to be "duplicate_title" and required yet another hand-edit to correct a Bot ruining more pages with such crap. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:43, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

@Wikid77: Have you reported the incorrect edit to the bot owner? GoingBatty (talk) 21:48, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
I reported this bug on Citation Bot's Talk page, along with a suggested cause and a suggestion for how to change the bot's behavior in this case. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
The bot is seemingly confused because |url= is missing. -- 79.67.241.242 (talk) 22:14, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
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