Help talk:Citation Style 1

For more talk pages, see Special:WhatLinksHere/Help talk:Citation Style 1.

• Help talk:Citation Style 1 (active, central discussion)
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• Template talk:Citation (the only Citation style 2 template)
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• Template talk:Citation Style documentation
• Module talk:CS1
• Module talk:Citation/CS1
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/COinS (active)
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Configuration
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Date validation
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Identifiers
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/styles.css
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Suggestions
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Utilities
• Module talk:Citation/CS1/Whitelist
• Module talk:Citation
• Category talk:CS1 errors: dates/Archive 1

ASIN

At {{asin}} is this note:

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

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

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

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

"幽☆遊☆白書 其之一 (1) 霊界死闘 編(SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (単行本)" (in Japanese). Amazon.com. ASIN 4081097011. Retrieved September 2, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check |asin= value (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

The second uses |isbn=4081097011:

"幽☆遊☆白書 其之一 (1) 霊界死闘 編(SHUEISHA JUMP REMIX) (単行本)" (in Japanese). Amazon.com. ISBN 4081097011. Retrieved September 2, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

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

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

I was looking at this last week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 11–12 October 2014

Over the 11–12 October 2014 weekend I propose to update:

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

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

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

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

This update changes these things:

in Module:Citation/CS1:

1. Bug fix in get_coins_pages(); (discussion)
2. Bug fix in extractnames(); (discussion)
3. Change lccn() to require lower case alpha characters; (discussion)
4. Change openlibrary() to emit error message when OL identifier contains leading alpha characters; (discussion)
5. Change |language= support (discussion):
   1. get ISO639-1 language name from Wikimedia;
   2. Add support for right-to-left languages using new parameter |script-title=; (discussion) and (discussion)
   3. Categorize pages when |language=language name;
6. Change listpeople() so that we don't link to the current page through |authorlinkn= or |editorlinkn=; (discussion)
7. Add code to strip wikimarkup (italics and bold) from titles and chapters when adding those to COinS metadata; (discussion)
8. Add Australia, Brazil, Mexico to list of countries supported by |asn-tld=; (discussion)
9. Undo peculiar title and chapter format swap when |work= or any of its aliases set; (discussion)
10. Categories:
    1. Add support for maintenance categories; discussion
    2. Change amazon() to add maintenance category when |asin= value is an isbn; discussion
    3. Add support for properties categories; (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

1. Updated JFM and ZBL prefixes; (discussion)
2. deleted ISO639-1 table; (discussion)
3. Changed error categories for doi and ol errors (discussion)
4. Make date errors visible; (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

1. add new parameter |script-title= (discussion) and (discussion)

in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation:

1. Add support for valid date formats Summer yyyy–yy and Summer yyyy–yyyy; (discussion)

There is enough here that there is a deal of documentaion to be done. I think that I'll begin that and not bother to hide it prior to the live update – it's just easier that way.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this update will also re-enable the missing author/editor errors. And wasn't there something about creating an error when |chapter= exists when there is no |title= or |work=? (See "I have removed the tests for" above.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing author/editor is the extractnames() bug (#2); |chapter= is Undo peculiar title ... (#9).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:25, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:20, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

script-title

Could the value of |script-title= not be underlined? Kanguole 17:51, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree. The proper name mark is a Chinese convention that would not apply to other writing systems such as Hebrew or Arabic. --  Gadget850 ^talk 18:12, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

and an obsolete Chinese convention at that. But these are conventions for Chinese running text, which isn't the situation here. Kanguole 20:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks like that was removed.

• {{cite book/new |title=ABC |script-title=ar:العربية}}

  ABC العربية.

Documentation:

script-title: Title in the original writing system where it is not appropriate to italicize (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese). Displays after title in upright font and is isolated from the surrounding text-direction settings so that right-to-left scripts render properly. The language may be set by prefixing the value with the ISO 639-1 two-character language code followed by a colon. Unrecognized codes are ignored and will display in the rendered citation. Example: |script-title=ar:العربية.

--  Gadget850 ^talk 18:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest using Chinese or Japanese as the example language, as those are the two for which CMOS recommends also including the original form. Kanguole 20:50, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Sample? --  Gadget850 ^talk 12:56, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• Wang, Li (1985). Hànyǔ Yǔyīn Shǐ 汉语语音史 (in Chinese). Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. ISBN 978-7-100-05390-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: missing prefix (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
• Morohashi, Tetsuji (1984–1986). Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辞典. Tokyo: Taishukan. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: missing prefix (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Kanguole 00:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Arabic is a good example because it is both non-Latin and rtl, and because support for rtl is a substantial reason for the existence of |script-title=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Arabic is an unfortunate example, because it's one of the languages that CMOS recommends be transliterated, whereas Chinese and Japanese are the languages where it recommends using the original form in addition to romanization. Kanguole 00:45, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Error checking

Unrecognized codes are not ignored:

• {{cite book/new |title=ABC |script-title=zz:العربية}}

  ABC zz:العربية. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-title=: invalid language code (help)

More than two characters or other than alpha characters do show the language code. --  Gadget850 ^talk 14:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Fixed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Related discussions

See Template talk:Lang#Rtl-lang in citation titles. --  Gadget850 ^talk 12:49, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Titles of journal articles

Titles of journal articles used to be in roman, wrapped in double quotes, as in {{cite journal}}:

• {{cite journal | author = Author | year = 2000 | title = Article title | journal = Journal | ref = none }}
• Author (2000). "Article title". Journal. {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help)

but now in {{citation}} they're in italics:

• {{citation | author = Author | year = 2000 | title = Article title | journal = Journal | ref = none }}
• Author (2000), "Article title", Journal {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

However {{cite journal}} still does it the old way. Kanguole 00:56, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

It does seem to have changed, yes. This might be the same issue as Template talk:Citation#Formatting of journal article_title. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:39, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Oversight on my part when I undid the peculiar title formatting. Fixed in the sandbox so that now if the using {{citation}} with one of the |work= aliases then |title= is upright and quoted.

Author (2000), "Article title", Journal {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:07, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: {{citation}} is still wrong:

• {{citation |last1=Jones |first1=P. |date=2014 |title=Some interesting paper |journal=Journal of Interesting Papers }} → Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers

whereas it did produce and should produce: Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

As I wrote before, it is fixed in the sandbox:

Jones, P. (2014), "Some interesting paper", Journal of Interesting Papers

The live module will get the fix at the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Translated title error fails to display red error message

I came across an article with the following citation, which caused the article to be categorized in Category:Pages with citations using translated terms without the original but did not display a red error message.

Citation example

Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal | author=Staff |date=5 June 1998|trans_chapter=Coxon, Sachi | title=インタビュー 坂口 博信 |language=Japanese |trans_title=Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi | url=http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html | journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]] | accessdate=2006-07-15}}	Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー 坂口 博信". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Any ideas about why the error message did not display? I expect that the problem is related to the code changes that just went into effect, since the category has been empty for a long time and the article had not been edited recently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:05, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

The category is added because of the unmatched |trans_chapter=Coxon, Sachi (which should be |others=Trans. Sachi Coxon) but it's also quashing the url. I'll look into it in the morning.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

When we accepted the notion that |chapter= is inappropriate in {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite conference}}, and {{cite podcast}}, I didn't get the code right. When |trans-chapter= doesn't have a matching |chapter=, an error message is created and the appropriate category is added to the list of error categories. Metaparameter Chapter is a concatenation of |chapter= (an empty string in this case) and |trans-chapter=. The Chapter value is then made into an external link with either |chapter-url= or |url=. Next, the error message is tacked onto the end of Chapter so we get this:

[http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html Coxon, Sachi] |trans_chapter= requires |chapter= (help).

But, we then look at the citation type. If the citation type is one of those I listed above, we set Chapter to an empty string so neither chapter nor error message is in the rendered citation.

I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1 so that the error message is restored and will spend some time pondering the issue.

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

In your pondering, you might consider the case of an erroneous |accessdate=, for which the error message displays even if the accessdate is hidden because there is no value in |url=. It seems like a similar case, from a programming perspective.

Citation example

Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal | author=Staff |date=5 June 1998| title=Title |language=Japanese | url= | journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]] | accessdate=2006-07-15}}	Staff (5 June 1998). "Title". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

For clarification, I am not asking for changes to how the above accessdate condition is displayed. I have no objection to that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:01, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

One way of dealing with this is to ignore |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= when the citation type is {{citation}} with |work= set, or is one of {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite conference}}, or {{cite podcast}}. With that in mind as a starting point, I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to selectively ignore the chapter parameter set. Here is the citation you discovered:

Cite journal comparison

Wikitext	{{cite journal|accessdate=2006-07-15|author=Staff|date=5 June 1998|journal=[[Famitsu Weekly]]|language=Japanese|title=インタビュー 坂口 博信|trans_chapter=Coxon, Sachi|trans_title=Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi|url=http://members.tripod.com/PlayStationJapan/Sakaguchi.html}}
Live	Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー 坂口 博信". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	Staff (5 June 1998). "インタビュー 坂口 博信". Famitsu Weekly (in Japanese). Retrieved 2006-07-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |trans_chapter= ignored (|trans-chapter= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:09, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I am thinking out loud here, but do we want to ignore |chapter= this loudly, with a red error message? Or do we just document the template's behavior and ignore it silently?

In any event, I expect that some people have used {{citation}} with both |chapter= and |work=, because it displays as a citation that presents the name of a chapter from a book. Even though the first parameter usage below is technically wrong, according to the documentation, I expect there are many similar citations in the wild because it displays in a reasonable way (i.e. exactly the same as the second example below).

Citation comparison

Wikitext	{{citation|author=Author|chapter=Chapter name|date=1998|title=Book title}}
Live	Author (1998), "Chapter name", Book title {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
Sandbox	Author (1998), "Chapter name", Book title {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Maybe a maintenance category to see how much of this stuff is out there before dropping chapter names that are currently being displayed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I would not be surprised to learn that what you say is true. Editors are endlessly creative when it comes to misusing parameters. Even though it looks ok, using |work= or one of it's aliases in lieu of |title= leaves that important bit of information out of the COinS metadata. This because |chapter=, when set, tells the module that this is a book citation so the 'periodical-as-title' is ignored.

Maintenance categories are for things that don't rise the the level of broken citations, visually or not. Here we have an error. Of the two maintenance categories that we do have, one (asin) is included in the COinS regardless of whether it's actually an ISBN or not, and the other (|language=English) isn't ever part of COinS.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

cite journal and quarterly publications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Error messages across the entire project

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

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

---

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

---

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

See the linked help page, which references MOS:BADDATEFORMAT

1. "2014-10-7" is missing a leading 0
2. "5 October 2014." includes a period
3. "1974, 1995, 2013" my swag is this should use |origyear=
4. "5 October 2014." includes a period
5. "1992; 1998" is an ambiguous date; this should use |origyear=

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter and its associated parameters

I've been wondering about how CS1 handles |chapter= and its associated parameters. There are some sixty possible combinations of |chapter=, |chapterlink=, |chapterurl=, |trans-chapter=, |title=, and |url=. These last two are included in this list because they can change how |chapter= is rendered.

Some of the things that I've noticed are:

1. Like |chapterurl=, |chapterlink= should be applied to |trans-chapter= even in the absence of |chapter=
   • {{cite book |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
   • {{cite book |title=Title |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
   • {{cite book |title=Title |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
   • {{cite book |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)
2. |chapterurl= and |chapterlink= are mutually exclusive; currently |chapterlink= has priority; is this correct? The template is citing a source so shouldn't a link to the source take precedence over a Wikipedia article about the source?
   • {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org}}
     • "Chapter". {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
   • {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org }}
     • "Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
   • {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org |url=//example.com}}
     • "Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
   • {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |chapterurl=//example.org |url=//example.com}}
     • "Chapter". //example.com. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
3. When a citation contains either or both of |chapter= and |trans-chapter=, these parameters are linked by |url= regardless of the presence of |title=. Is this correct? Shouldn't |url= be limited to |title= just as |chapterurl= is limited to |chapter= and/or |trans-chapter=?
   • {{cite book |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • "Chapter". Title.
   • {{cite book |title=Title |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. Title. {{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter= (help)
   • {{cite book |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • "Chapter". //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
   • {{cite book |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter |url=//example.com}}
     • [Trans Chapter]. //example.com. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:49, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I do not see item 1 as an error. Once the missing |chapter= is added, the citation will display correctly. I don't think we should bend over backwards to render citations that are missing key parameters.

Item 2 is a new one to me. What is the purpose of |chapterlink=? It does not appear to be documented in any of the CS1 templates. As a reader, I expect a linked chapter title to point me to the source so that I can verify that the referenced information is in the source. |chapterlink= seems unlikely to do that. I would lean toward eliminating it. Do we know how often that parameter is used?

I think I brought up item 3 sometime in the past. Because |chapterurl= exists, |url= should always go with |title=. Given the complexity of CS1's handling of titles, chapters, entries, journal names, and similar parameters, I expect that fixing this without breaking anything will require very careful programming and testing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:37, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

The point of #1 is to note that |chapterlink= doesn't act the same way that |chapterurl= does. Simplified, with |chapter= present:

{{cite book |chapter= Abe's chapter |chapterlink=Abraham Lincoln |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}

"Abe's chapter" [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterlink= ignored (help)

|chapterlink= should link both |chapter= and |trans-chapter= like |chapterurl= does in this version:

{{cite book |chapter=Abe's chapter |chapterurl=//example.org |trans-chapter=Trans Chapter}}

"Abe's chapter" [Trans Chapter]. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

When |chapter= is missing, |chapterurl= still links |trans-chapter= similar to #3. |chapterlink= should do the same I think.

What is the purpose of |chapterlink=? I don't know; perhaps it is the |chapter= equivalent of |titlelink=. I don't recall ever having seen it in the wild so maybe it can/should get deprecated and removed.

By the time we get to the point of deciding to link |chapter= with |url= all of the various aliases have been reduced to the metavariable Chapter. I don't think that it is as complex as you are making it out to be. Of course I say this fully recognizing that I have of late missed the obvious.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

A CirrusSearch using insource: syntax did not find any use of the search term chapterlink in any of the ways I could think of to format it. I was able to find four instances of the term chapter-link and chapter link none of which were |chapterlink= or an alias. I propose to deprecate this parameter because it is unused.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Support. It will be difficult to detect instances of this parameter's deprecation amid the population of deprecated parameter errors, unless we could persuade one of the local bots or an AWB user to search through the category's articles. I suppose deprecating the parameter is the logical first step, in any event. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:37, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Returning to this topic after some thought. In Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox is a new function format_chapter_title(). It's purpose is to assemble the values provided by |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= into a single metaparameter Chapter. Unlike the current live module's chapter handling, this new function does not support |chapterlink= and will not link a chapter title with |url=.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|title=Title}}
Live	Title.
Sandbox	Title.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter=Chapter|title=Title}}
Live	"Chapter". Title.
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter=Chapter|title=Title|trans-chapter=Translation}}
Live	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title.
Sandbox	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter=Chapter|chapterurl=//example.com|title=Title|trans-chapter=Translation}}
Live	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"Chapter" [Translation]. Title. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter=Chapter|format=pdf|title=Title|url=//example.pdf}}
Live	"Chapter". Title (pdf).
Sandbox	"Chapter". Title (pdf).
|url= does not link |chapter=

I have also been wondering if we shouldn't create |chapter-format= so that, when appropriate, the file type annotation is applied in the correct place as it clearly is not in this example:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|chapter-url=//example.pdf|chapter=Chapter|format=pdf|title=Title|url=//example.com}}
Live	"Chapter" (PDF). Title (pdf).
Sandbox	"Chapter" (PDF). Title (pdf).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I have added |chapter-format= so that citations like this work properly:

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.pdf |chapter-format=pdf |url=//example.com}}
• →"Chapter" (pdf). Title.

When |chapter-format= is set but |chapter-url= is empty or missing:

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-format=pdf |url=//example.com}}
• →"Chapter" (pdf). Title. {{cite book}}: |chapter-format= requires |chapter-url= (help)

The way the error message is rendered differs from the way the format-missing-url error is rendered:

• {{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.pdf |chapter-format=pdf |format=pdf}}
• →"Chapter" (pdf). Title. {{cite book}}: |format= requires |url= (help)

I think I prefer the way the chapter format error is rendered. The two should be the same. Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:38, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be great if the red error message could appear after the closing parenthesis in the "format without url" error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, like this:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That looks better. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

And what about |archive-url=? I have tweaked the archive-url code so that when |chapter-url= and |archive-url= are present but |url= is missing or empty, then |archive-url= swaps with |chapter-url=. This is for legacy reasons because we haven't got (yet) a |chapter-archive-url= parameter:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.net |archive-date=2014-11-16}}

→"Chapter". Title. Archived from the original on 2014-11-16.

but when all three are present then |archive-url= exchanges with |url=:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.net |url=//example.org |archive-date=2014-11-16}}

→"Chapter". Title. Archived from the original on 2014-11-16.

At some point I think that we should consider creating |chapter-archive-url= and |chapter-archive-date= so that the suite for chapter is complete.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Nowrap for accessdate

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

Live	Sandbox
"Title". Retrieved 2014-10-18.	"Title". Retrieved 2014-10-18.
"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.	"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.
"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.	"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.
"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.	"Title". Retrieved 18 October 2014.
"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.	"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.
"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.	"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.
"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.	"Title". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

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

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

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

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

Better table.

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

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

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

This: <span class="nowrap">October 18,</span> 2014, <span class="nowrap">18 October</span> 2014, and <span class="nowrap">2014-10-18</span>.

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

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

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

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

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

What is a high MOS standard?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CS1 has a bunch of date-holding parameters: |accessdate=, |airdate=, |archivedate=, |date=, |doi-broken-date=, |embargo=, |laydate=, |publication-date=. Question 1: Should some or all of these be protected from inappropriate line-wrapping?

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

Here are the other date formats:

1. Mmmm DD–DD, YYYY
2. DD–DD Mmmm YYYY
3. DD Mmmm – DD Mmmm YYYY
4. Mmmm DD – Mmmm DD, YYYY
5. DD Mmmm YYYY – DD Mmmm YYYY
6. Mmmm DD, YYYY – Mmmm DD, YYYY
7. Winter YYYY–YY
8. Summer YYYY–YYYY
9. Mmmm YYYY – Mmmm YYYY
10. Mmmm–Mmmm YYYY
11. Mmmm YYYY
12. YYY–YYY or YYY–YYYY or YYYY–YYYY or YYYY–YY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Title. Nov–Dec 1983.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Publication dates in an article's citations should all use the same format, which may be

• any format from the "Acceptable date formats" table, or
• formats required by the citation style being used.
• However, all-numeric date formats other than yyyy-mm-dd must still be avoided.

and:

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

• yyyy-mm-dd, or
• the format used for publication dates in the article, or
• the format required for the citation style adopted in the article.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Removing deprecated parameters

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

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

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

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

Here are some old conversations

Music release notes

AV media notes

DVD notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters in edited collections not working right

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

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

is producing the following displayed text:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

|work= is not synonymous with |title=.

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

Quarterly journal date format

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

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

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

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

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

Cite DVD notes

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, copy pasta strikes again. Fixed.

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

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

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

Lua module and css presentation

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

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

Cite book comparison

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

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000138-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFAuthor" class="citation book cs1">Author. "<span class="cs1-kern-left"></span>'leading' and trailing single 'quotes'<span class="cs1-kern-right"></span>". In Editor (ed.). <bdi lang="en" >Script Title</bdi>.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=%27leading%27+and+trailing+single+%27quotes%27&rft.btitle=Script+Title&rft.au=Author&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" 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"><code class="cs1-code">&#124;author=</code> has generic name ([[Help:CS1 errors#generic_name|help]])</span>; <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;script-title=</code>: unknown language code ([[Help:CS1 errors#script_parameter|help]])</span>; <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Unknown parameter <code class="cs1-code">&#124;authorformat=</code> ignored ([[Help:CS1 errors#parameter_ignored|help]])</span>; <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Unknown parameter <code class="cs1-code">&#124;editorformat=</code> ignored ([[Help:CS1 errors#parameter_ignored|help]])</span>

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

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

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

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

Style

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

Additional text

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

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

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

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

The cite element represents a reference to a creative work. It must include the title of the work or the name of the author (person, people or organization) or an URL reference, which may be in an abbreviated form as per the conventions used for the addition of citation metadata.[1]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small caps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citing multiple contributions to a work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can can get partway there by doing this:

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

which gives:

Template:Cite article

Is this style used much?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Template:Cite article In Smith 2001.

Template:Cite article In Smith 2001.

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

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

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

Source code:

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

Rendered:

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this citation style defined somewhere?

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

Is this what you are looking for in Soil:

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

In Cactus you now have:

• Template:Cite article in Anderson 2001

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So then, this:

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

would give us this:

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

And using CS2 style:

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

would give us this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

which gives:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morley, Poverty and Inequality, 43.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

accepted as a substitute for |title=?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

===References===

References

=== Bibliography ===

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

There is now {{harvc}} which implements Editor Imzadi1979's solution (more-or-less). Testcases are derived from the citations at Soil §References.

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

@Trappist the monk: Nice work, thanks! One request: the terminal full stop is wrong in CS2. The {{sfn}} template can made compatible with CS2 by setting |ps= to nothing. Thus whereas {{sfn|Stefferud|1957}} yields "1. ^ Stefferud 1957.", {{sfn|ps=|Stefferud|1957}} yields "1. ^ Stefferud 1957" without the terminal full stop. Can {{harvc}} please do the same for those of us who prefer CS2? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

|postscript= and |ps= added. But, to turn off terminal punctuation you must set either of those parameters to |ps=none. This is in keeping with other parameters in the CS1/CS2 suite. Follow-on editors who encounter 'empty' parameters can't know if a previous editor intended to leave that parameter blank. Using the keyword none is a positive indication of what the editor intended.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the very rapid response! Yes, I agree that empty parameters aren't a good idea, but |ps=none needs to be allowed for {{sfn}} as well, for consistency. Could you fix this, please? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:16, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Added. |ps= still works as it did before.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

As currently implemented, {{harvc}} is not a scheme I will use, so please stop saying or implying that it was created at my request. Let's examine a few scenarios that would appear in references, and I'll explain how I would handle them.

• In citing a book once to a single page, a simple list of page numbers, or to a compact range of pages, I would run the citation in full in the footnote, listing the appropriate page number(s). This satisfies the requirement that we say where I/we got the information, and prevents a reader of having to search half of a book looking for the supporting materials.
• In citing just one individually authored contribution to a book, or an article in a journal/magazine, I cite the contribution individually. (In this case, it doesn't matter if John Doe wrote an article a journal or a chapter in a book edited by Jane Roe, the effect is essentially the same.)
• In citing a book multiple times to multiple single pages, or multiple compact page ranges, I run a shortened citation in the footnote and list the full citation to the book in a "works cited" section below the footnotes. This eliminates repeating the bibliographic information in successive footnotes.
  • If there are enough books or reports used as sources in an article, and I'm shortening some, then I shorten them all, even if one book is only cited once. I do this so there is an easy rule. "If footnotes referring to books are using short citations, then all book footnotes are using short citations."
• The issue is when there are different contributions in the same encompassing work, which came up at Michigan State Trunkline Highway System. In that case, a report written by State Highway Commissioner Frank Rogers contained sections contributed by different employees of the Michigan State Highway Department, and each section was attributed to its respective author. In that case, I have two options. The first is to shorten the footnote to list the author name and page number for each contribution cited, and then run a full citation to the specific contribution in the works cited section. The second option is to run a full citation in the footnote up to the point where it switches from the information on the contribution to the information on the encompassing work (the "In Rogers...." part) and then wikilink from there to the full citation to the encompassing report. That's the option I chose, in part because I'm also citing Rogers-authored content, so I'd need to list the full report in the works cited anyway. (Also, this is how Chicago would handle the situation of citing multiple individual contributions to the same encompassing edited volume.)
  • In this case, just like the others involving shortened footnotes, a reader looking at the footnote only has to click one link to find the full bilbiographic detail for the encompassing work. With {{harvc}}, the reader has two links to clink, because the first link in the footnote only gets to the rest of the contribution, and then another link gets the reader to the full encompassing work. Sorry, that's too clunky for my taste.

One pet peeve of mine is that {{harvnb}} doesn't enclose the year in parentheses, while the dates or years in the CS1-formatted full citations are in parentheses. With APA-style parenthetical citations, the author-date-page date runs in the body of the article enclosed in parentheses to separate that citation detail from the rest of the prose. In that case, the difference in formatting of dates isn't an issue. But when the author-date-page information is shunted into a footnote alongside other footnotes will full bibliographic details, the shorter format should look similar to the longer one. Gadget mentioned the existence of {{sfnp}} that outputs a shortened citation with the year in parentheses, but that has other issues because it wraps its output in <ref>...</ref> like {{sfn}}. That action causes issues in my workflow, and it eliminates the ability to extend the output text in ways that would resolve the issue of the Rogers report and its differently authored sections. If {{sfnp}} didn't already include the <ref>...</ref>, which meant I could insert it into a footnote myself, you wouldn't have heard from me at all. Imzadi 1979 → 00:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok. I didn't want to take credit for an idea that wasn't mine so I, correctly I think, credited you with the idea that got me to {{harvc}}. I will stop doing that.

But I'm confused. Here are the three elements of the Rogers citation from Michigan State Trunkline Highway System:

• {{cite book |type= Report |ref= harv |last= Rogers |first= Frank F. |year= 1920 |title= Eighth Biennial Report of the State Highway Commissioner |url= http://books.google.com/books/about/Biennial_report_of_the_State_Highway_Com.html?id=LH9NAAAAYAAJ |publisher= Michigan State Highway Department |location= Lansing, MI |publisher= Wynkoop, Hallenbeck and Crawford, State Printers |oclc= 11888473 |accessdate= April 12, 2013 |via= Google Books}}
• <ref>Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In {{harvnb|Rogers|1920|p=15}}</ref>
• <ref>Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In {{harvnb|Rogers|1920|p=10}}</ref>

The full citation remains as it is. Here are the other two parts reworked to use {{harvc}}:

• <ref>{{harvc|last=Dillman |first=George C. |c=Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking |in=Rogers |year=1920|p=15}}</ref>
• <ref>{{harvc|last=Belknap |first=Leslie H. |c=Construction |in=Rogers|year=1920|p=10}}</ref>

This is a placeholder sentence that uses all four of the references above just as you see them there: Dillman handcrafted, Dillman harvc, Belknap handcrafted, and Belknap harvc. ===References===

References

===Bibliography===

• Rogers, Frank F. (1920). Eighth Biennial Report of the State Highway Commissioner (Report). Lansing, MI: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck and Crawford, State Printers. OCLC 11888473. Retrieved April 12, 2013 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

The handcrafted and {{harvc}} items listed in §References are quite similar, are they not? The differences amount to commas and capitalization. Each requires the same number of clicks to get from the article text to the full-length citation. Perhaps you can see my confusion. What am I not understanding about your objection to {{harvc}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:06, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: that's not how the other examples you used looked. However, I can't endorse {{harvc}} because it uses commas for separation, while CS1 uses periods. It would match CS2 though. Also, in both cases, the date should really be in parentheses to match CS1 or CS2. because it relies on nesting {{harvnb}}, so it's not the "one template solution that gives consistent output in a footnote to be rendered next to footnotes rendered in the CS1 style" that I seek. Until we have something that does that, I may just go back to manually coding short footnotes instead of using templates.

Ideally, I'd get something like:

• Dillman, George C. "Maintenance: Trunk Line Marking". In Rogers (1920). p. 15.
• Belknap, Leslie H. (1920). "Construction". In Rogers. p. 10.
• Rogers (1920). p. 2.

and it would be generated with a single template. The goal is that the shortened versions would match up the formatting uses by CS1 (separation between citation sections by period, dates in parentheses). Imzadi 1979 → 03:29, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course, the date's location might need to be shifted around, perhaps as in my tweaked second example above. Imzadi 1979 → 03:47, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Template tweaked. Compare handcrafted to {{harvc}} at §References above.

To use with CS2 add |separator=,:

Belknap, Leslie H. "Construction". In Rogers (1920), p. 10.

|year= is year of publication for source so it should remain with the source link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I went to implement it at MSTHS, but I see it will only work with contributed works. I was hoping for a solution that would also replace {{harvnb}} for other works. I could switch from <ref>{{harvnb|...</ref> to {{sfnp}} for the rest of my shortened citations so that they match better, but the rest of them would not work with the references segregator script I heavily use. So I'm about 50–75% happy now, thanks Trappist the monk. Imzadi 1979 → 17:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

This? Belknap (1920), p. 10 {{harvp}} You do the documentation for it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I'll get to the documentation in a little bit, but can {{harvp}} end in a terminal period like {{harvdc}}? If so, I'll be 100% happy. Thanks for working on these templates! Imzadi 1979 → 23:30, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

{{harvp|Belknap|1920|p=10|ps=.}} → Belknap (1920), p. 10.

Because none of the other harv family templates have default terminal punctuation, I don't think that we should make an exception to that rule with this template. It's not too much of a burden since |ps=. is short and relatively painless to type.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree. {{harvp}} is much more useful if it doesn't add a period. Kanguole 23:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but this regrettable. Heretofore there has been a clear and universal distinction across all styles of citation between "full" citations (that include all bibliographic detail useful for identifying and finding a source in the world at large), and "short" citations (which need only enough information to identify a full citation within a source). This entirely novel "mid-length" citation form (besides being entirely unnecessary) goes well beyond what is useful in a short cite, but falls short of what is needful in a full citation. Adding it to the already confusing panoply of WP citation options will mainly blur the distinction and use of short and full citations, further confusing editors in their use. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:07, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

What J. Johnson (JJ) said. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:02, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Why Are Publishers and Editors Wasting Time Formatting Citations?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, the example there was this:

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

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

Migrating cite newsgroup to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (cont'd)

In May 2014 I began the process of migrating {{cite newsgroup}} to Module:Citation/CS1. That got interrupted by real life so now I return to it here. Previous conversations about the migration and problems attendant thereon are:

• Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 5#Migrating cite newsgroup to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox
• Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6#Update to the live CS1 module week of 2014-08-24

I have implemented a new parameter |message-id= which takes the place of |id= in existing {{cite newsgroup}} citations. In the comparison below, |message-id= is ignored by the Live {{cite newsgroup}} because that template does not use |message-id=. Adding |message-id= fixes the problem noted in the archive 6 conversation.

Cite newsgroup comparison

Wikitext	{{cite newsgroup|date=January 29, 1992|first=A. S.|last=Tanenbaum|message-id=12595@star.cs.vu.nl|newsgroup=comp.os.minix|title=LINUX is obsolete|url=http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/f447530d082cd95d?tvc=2}}
Live	Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.
Sandbox	Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.

These two examples are {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}} rendered by {{citation/core}} (top) and {{cite newsgroup/new}} rendered by Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:

• Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.
• Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595@star.cs.vu.nl.

To prepare for the next upgrade to the live CS1 module, I propose to:

1. Update the live version of {{cite newsgroup}} to the version in {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}}
2. Create an AWB script to modify existing {{cite newsgroup}} templates in article space by replacing |id= with |message-id=; by removing any instances of |googleid=; and by replacing any instances of |archiveurl= with |url=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

In scanning through the articles that use {{cite newsgroup}}, I found a couple |id= parameter values that don't fit the 'id-left@id-right' pattern. These should be flagged as errors so that knowledgeable editors can fix them. New error message will categorize in Category:CS1 errors: message-id:

• Tanenbaum, A. S. (January 29, 1992). "LINUX is obsolete". Newsgroup: comp.os.minix. Usenet: 12595star.cs.vu.nl. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |message-id= value (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

When |message-id= is enclosed in < and >, the resulting news: link is broken (rfc5536 §3.1.3 notwithsatnding):

• ca...@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (1990-02-20). "Re: EIA-232 full duplex RTS/CTS flow control standard proposal". Newsgroup: comp.dcom.modems. <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
• ca...@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (1990-02-20). "Re: EIA-232 full duplex RTS/CTS flow control standard proposal". Newsgroup: comp.dcom.modems. Usenet: <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <49249@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>. Retrieved 2008-04-30. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |message-id= value (help)

So, I've enhanced the |message-id= error detection to flag any |message-id= values with leading and/or trailing angle brackets.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Will this delay the next upgrade? The journal formatting bug is quite annoying, and I've seen editors changing articles to work around it. Kanguole 14:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think so. As you can see, the work is basically done. What remains is some indication that I'm doing the right thing. There are several other open topics in this talk page that could take longer to implement. This is mostly due to lack of conversation regarding these topics than for any real technical reasons.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Do we really need |message-id=? With only 470 transclusions we could zip through with AWB and clean this up quickly, then add it to the suggestions. Otherwise this looks good. --  Gadget850 ^talk 15:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If you are saying that we should discontinue usenet message id support, then I disagree. If you are saying that we should stick with |id=, then I thought about that. In order for us to include the message id in COinS we should give it its own parameter. Remapping |id= (which is not included in COinS) requires special-case code which is something I'm trying to avoid or at least minimize.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I have updated the live template from {{cite newsgroup/sandbox}} and run an AWB script to replace |id= with |message-id=. I think that {{cite newsgroup}} is ready to migrate to the module and will do so on the next update.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Alternative title

Is there an option to add an alternative title to the citation? Example in case:

• IUPAC (2005). Nomenclature of inorganic chemistry (PDF).

is commonly known as The red book (as the article Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry lead says). IMO, it would be helpful to have that added as the 'popular' (in the science domain) & recognizable name. (btw, isn't it a pity we cannot link to both the article and the website). -DePiep (talk) 09:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that including colloquial titles in a citation is something that CS1 should support. We aren't writing for the cognoscenti. Yes, it is unfortunate that we can't currently link to both. We already have |title-link= so all that's needed is: define the label text, decide where to place that text in a rendered citation, and the code to support it. Do those first two and I'll do the third.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

1. Were "Red Book" a 'colloquial title', you can dismiss the example but still not the question. Publications can have an "alternative" title. (I refrain from giving examples).

2. "Red Book" is a formal alternative title given by the publisher/author. See its url, and its preface (pdf page 5). -DePiep (talk) 12:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Because there are two somewhat related conversations here I've moved your post to this position to keep the two separate.

I did not dismiss the question but I did and do question the correctness of such an option regardless of whether a publisher uses an alternate title or no. CS1 does not have a mechanism that supports alternates of any parameter.

If it were on the title page then I would agree with you that 'The Red Book' is a formal title. As it is, IUPAC first introduces the term Red Book parenthetically as a sort of shorthand: 'Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry, IUPAC Recommendations 1990 (Red Book I)'. This is remarkably similar to the way they introduce initalisms: 'preferred IUPAC names (PINs)' (both Preface). IUPAC also doesn't italicize the term as they do titles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

"If it were on the title page" - well, then let's find an example that has. (Again you are taking a conclusion from the example, while of course it's just an example. Can't you find an example that supports inclusion by you guidline?). Of course if the line is: "too much fuss for CS1", that's a different story. Maybe you could give advice on how these other comparable situations have solved it, outside of CS1 possibly. -DePiep (talk) 14:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Umm, aren't you are the editor who brought this topic here? Aren't you are the editor who wrote Publications can have an "alternative" title. (I refrain from giving examples)? Aren't you are the editor who asserts that "Red Book" is a formal alternative title given by the publisher/author? How do you conclude that I have the responsibility to prove your assertions? If you are the editor who has made these claims, then aren't you the editor who must prove them?

There may be citation styles that support alternate titles. I do not know so can't give advice about those other styles. CS1 does not. Without doubt, it could support something like |alt-title= if sufficient need were demonstrated.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There are a number of works with colloquial titles, including many known as the Red Book. Citations should be the most formal part of an article, and jargon should not be included. If the colloquial title is significant, then discuss it in the content. --  Gadget850 ^talk 16:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I have a related question. Is there an option to add sub-titles for a news article? I came across a headline with a subhead which I think should be included. It just didn't seem right to use it in the "title=" parameter, unless that's the only option (which I will use for now since I'm currently editing an article). Thanks! --hmich176 11:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Aren't subtitles just added to the title in the form 'Title: Subtitle'? Is there a need to separate one from another in the template?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Trappist. We even advise using the volume in the title for some uses, which follow other styles. --  Gadget850 ^talk 16:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Strange interaction between {{Cite encyclopedia}} and |script-title=

Monkbot task 6a recently changed this:

Cite encyclopedia comparison

Wikitext	{{cite encyclopedia|accessdate=2011-05-16|edition=online|encyclopedia=[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]|language=Japanese|publisher=[[Shogakukan]]|title=御室相承記|trans_title=Omuro sōjōki|url=http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%BE%A1%E5%AE%A4%E7%9B%B8%E6%89%BF%E8%A8%98&ei=UTF-8&fr=opsrch}}
Live	"御室相承記". Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"御室相承記". Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

into this:

Cite encyclopedia comparison

Wikitext	{{cite encyclopedia|accessdate=2011-05-16|edition=online|encyclopedia=[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]|language=Japanese|publisher=[[Shogakukan]]|script-title=ja:御室相承記|trans_title=Omuro sōjōki|url=http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%BE%A1%E5%AE%A4%E7%9B%B8%E6%89%BF%E8%A8%98&ei=UTF-8&fr=opsrch}}
Live	御室相承記. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	御室相承記. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in Japanese) (online ed.). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2011-05-16. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Somehow, the script-title parameter caused the title of the encyclopedia to move to the beginning of the citation and to be linked to the URL, along with the article title, in one long string. That doesn't seem right.

Also, the sandbox version of the original citation links the URL to the encyclopedia, not to the article title, which also doesn't seem like it is what we want. It will break all of the examples on the {{Cite encyclopedia}} documentation, for starters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

History in archives.

I've fixed the url-linking-encyclopedia issue.

Because of how we remap parameters for {{cite encyclopedia}}, |script-title= breaks the citation because it doesn't have a matching |script-chapter= yet. Because |script-title= replaced |title=, what is happening in the second example is:

1. |encyclopedia= is mapped to metaparameter Title
2. Title (ex-encyclopedia) is marked-up and then concatenated with |script-title= and |trans-title=

   ''[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]'' <bdi lang="ja">御室相承記</bdi> [''Omuro sōjōki'']

3. the whole is then wrapped in external link markup and the wikilink in title error message added

   [http://... ''[[Nihon Kokugo Daijiten]]'' <bdi lang="ja">御室相承記</bdi> [''Omuro sōjōki'']]

I don't see a solution to this until we do either of a couple of things:

1. rethink how we handle {{cite encyclopedia}}
2. implement |script-chapter=

The second is likely the path of least resistance, though we probably ignore the first at our peril.

In the mean time, I will modify Monkbot task 6 so that it ignores {{cite encyclopedia}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Date and year disagreement: should it generate a redundant parameter error?

Should a citation with a |date= and |year= that disagree generate some sort of error? Perhaps a redundant parameter error?

I believe that |year= is no longer needed for Harvard-style references to work, so a filled-in |date= and |year= seem redundant to me, even if they do agree. What am I missing? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

No. If both |date= and |year= exist, then the anchor is formed from |year=. This allows for multiple sources where the author and year are the same. For example, if John Smith wrote three articles in 2014, then |year= would respectively be 2014a, 2014b and 2014c. See Template:Sfn#More than one work in a year. --  Gadget850 ^talk 07:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think that we should think about this. For those CS1 templates still using {{citation/core}}, having both |date= and |year= is still a requirement. This is because you can't use a year disambiguator in |date= for those citations. The parser function ignores the disambiguator:

{{#time:Y|12 January 2013a}} → 2013

But, for those that use Module:Citation/CS1, this requirement went away when we introduced date validation. It is still supported. If both are present, the module will use the value from |year= for the CITEREF anchor id.

I don't think that having both |year= and |date= is necessarily an error, even when the values don't match. It wouldn't be too difficult to add a maintenance category, Category:CS1 maint: Date and year or some such that would allow us to build a script or bot (depending on the magnitude of the 'problem') to fix those citations that use both.

I do think that this should be done because {{sfn}} and the {{harv}} family of templates render their output dates with the disambiguator. When CS1 citations that use the module have both |date= and |year= where |year= is disambiguated, the rendered citation does not include the disambiguator. I think CS1 should always display disambiguators so that it is consistent with the short-form links.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not know that. Need to check the documentation. --  Gadget850 ^talk 14:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Fitting action to words, I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to add Category:CS1 maint: Date and year when a citation uses both |date= and |year=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Date bug fix;

In the sandbox, have closed a small hole through which |date=2nd could wriggle:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=2nd|title=Title}}
Live	Title. 2nd. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Sandbox	Title. 2nd. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Period appears at start of Cite Hansard

{{Cite Hansard}} (which is based on {{cite journal}}) is now showing a period at the start of the line for some instances, see its documentation page for examples. I'm sure it never used to be there, but I don't know when it changed - Evad37 [talk] 01:40, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the period is because of how |last1= is passed, but I need to check that.

Another issue is that the date is being processed as the title and is being linked to the url:

• {{cite hansard |jurisdiction=Commonwealth of Australia |house=House of Representatives |url=http://www.example.org |date=April 1, 1994 |column=1234 |speaker=Paul Keating |position=Prime Minister}}

  Paul Keating, Prime Minister (April 1, 1994). http://www.example.org. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Commonwealth of Australia: House of Representatives. col. 1234. {{cite book}}: |chapter-url= missing title (help)

But that is in the template markup:

| title = {{{title|{{{date|}}}{{#if:{{{part|}}}|, part {{{part|}}}}}}}}

I have no idea why. --  Gadget850 ^talk 01:59, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

The first problem is in {{cite journal}} and occurs when you have |others= without an author:

• {{cite journal |others=Others |work=Work}}

  Work. Others. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: others (link)

--  Gadget850 ^talk 02:10, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think using cite journal is part of the problem. Based on citation guides for various styles from the University of Canberra [2][3][4][5][6], plus the last version of the template before it was migrated over to cite journal [7], it seems to me the CS1-style format should be something like

Jurisdiction. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House. Date. At (Speaker, Position).

where At would be either the page(s) or column(s) reference, preceded by part (if applicable). (The usual optional extras like |url=, |format=, and |archiveurl= would also be needed.) I don't think this is possible with any of the existing CS1 templates, at least not without misusing the parameters. - Evad37 [talk] 03:48, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

We should discuss this on the {{Cite Hansard}} talk page. I think we need to hash out the elements of this type of citation. --  Gadget850 ^talk 05:26, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion started at Template talk:Cite Hansard#Citation_format - Evad37 [talk] 06:55, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Part of this conversation should perhaps remain here. Semantically, |others= implies that there are 'others': editors, authors, etc. CS1 citations that use |others= without 'others' are malformed, are they not? Should we not be flagging this condition as an error?

Module:Citation/CS1 assumes that 'something' will precede the |others= value in the rendered citation. This is why the dot-space appear in the Hansard citations. It is not strictly a {{cite journal}} issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Time to retire Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al.?

Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. is down to about 160 articles, from well over 10,000 last year. I believe that once the remaining articles are fixed, there is no further need for this error category or for the error message that goes along with it.

The category, as I understand it, was intended as a maintenance category to hold citations that had ambiguous uses of exactly nine authors. Once the category is empty, all future citations with exactly nine authors should display all nine of the authors unless editors use |display-authors=.

Can the citation module sandbox be modified before the next code sync to reflect these changes? I will clear out the remaining 160 articles before the sync happens. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps convert to a maintenance category instead? If we do that, the module can fill it with pages that have citations using |display-authors= where the value is the same as the number of |author= parameters. A bot or script can then troll that category and delete extraneous |display-authors=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I disagree "et al" is useful and should be placed in the coauthors parameter. -- PBS (talk) 15:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

A new maint category would be fine with me. It could look for citations where the value of |display-authors= is greater than or equal to the number of displayed authors. A citation with nine authors and |display-authors=29 should be placed in the maint category along with an identical citation with |display-authors=9.

PBS, can you please explain what you mean, preferably with example citations? I can't make sense of your comment as written. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:03, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

If coauthors is used then the Harvard templates link to the long citation,{{sfn|Smith|2001|p=2}} they do not if display_author is used.{{sfn|Beta|2002|p=3}}{{sfn|Beta|Gamma|Delta|2002|p=4}} Adding display_author to the {{harv}} templates is one solution but every change like this makes it more and more complicated and more of a hurdle for beginners (even for beginners with a programming background which will be a minority) to use the citation templates. As you will know if you lurk around WT:CITE there is a lot of resistance to using citation templates and making the interface more complicated does not help encourage their take up. As you will see there is a "et al" default for the harv of 4 last names no matter how many are in the list. {{sfn|Gamma |Delta |Epsilon |Zeta |2003 |p=5}} it would seem sensible to me to default display_author to four so that the short and long citations defaulted to the same number.

{{reflist}}
* Alpha, Fred (2001), A title {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
* Beta, Fred; et al. (2002), B title
* Gamma, Fred; Delta; Epsilon; Zeta; Eta (2003), C title
* {{citation |first=Fred |last=Smith |year=2001 |coauthors=et al |title=A title}}
* {{citation |first=Fred |last=Beta |last2=Gamma |last3=Delta |last5=Eta |display-authors=1 |year=2002 |title=B title}}
* {{citation |first=Fred |last1=Gamma |last2=Delta |last3=Epsilon |last4=Zeta |last5=Eta |year=2003 |title=C title}}

-- PBS (talk) 17:22, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Just for clarity, the harv link to {{citation |first=Fred |last=Beta |last2=Gamma |last3=Delta |display-authors=1 |year=2002 |title=B title}} is not broken because |display-authors=1. It is broken because {{sfn|Beta|2002|p=3}} is incomplete. Figuring out how to better do harv referencing is a topic for another discussion. This discussion is about what to do with the error category and message.

@Jonesey95, you're right: categorize when number of authors is less than or equal to |display-authors=<value>.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author1=Author1|author2=Author2|author3=Author3|author4=Author4|author5=Author5|author6=Author6|author7=Author7|author8=Author8|author9=Author9|title=Title}}
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author1=Author1|author2=Author2|author3=Author3|author4=Author4|author5=Author5|author6=Author6|author7=Author7|author8=Author8|author9=Author9|display-authors=8|title=Title}}
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; et al. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; et al. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author1=Author1|author2=Author2|author3=Author3|author4=Author4|author5=Author5|author6=Author6|author7=Author7|author8=Author8|author9=Author9|display-authors=9|title=Title}}
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Invalid |display-authors=9 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Invalid |display-authors=9 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author1=Author1|author2=Author2|author3=Author3|author4=Author4|author5=Author5|author6=Author6|author7=Author7|author8=Author8|author9=Author9|display-authors=10|title=Title}}
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Invalid |display-authors=10 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8; Author9. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Invalid |display-authors=10 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

No more error messages. Categorize in Category:CS1 maint: display-authors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

What about a work title?

[Edit: I mean in {{cite web}}. Didn’t realize the talk page redirects here.] If a webpage is a piece of a larger work, and that larger work does not define the website, does this template allow citing it?

Let’s say the website Example.com has a whole section titled The Fooiest Bars. We need to cite “Foobar #37: The Baz Biz.” How do we do that here? Do we just ignore the fact that it’s part of The Fooiest Bars? Or do we cite that title and ignore the individual entry’s title? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 16:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Just so I can wrap my little brain around what it is that you're asking, can you give me real life example, please?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Here’s one. The site is IGN, and I’d say the title is “Rick Grimes - #26 Top Comic Book Heroes”, and the work title is “IGN’s Top 100 Comic Book Heroes”. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:58, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps like this:

{{cite web |department=[http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes] |website=[[IGN]] |title=#26 – Rick Grimes |url=http://www.ign.com/top/comic-book-heroes/26 |accessdate=2014-11-18}}

→"#26 – Rick Grimes". IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes. IGN. Retrieved 2014-11-18. {{cite web}}: External link in |department= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I would treat this the same way that we treat subtitles. |title=The Fooiest Bars: Foobar #37: The Baz Biz. There are plenty of {{cite web}} templates in articles with titles like this. Web sites often use the pipe (vertical bar) character, which you need to substitute with {{!}} or the equivalent HTML entity in |title=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I concur with Jonesey95. And you don't have to use the same typographic style, you can replice a pipe or middot with a colon. --  Gadget850 ^talk 18:44, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 29–30 November 2014

Over the weekend of 29–30 November 2014 I propose to update the live versions of:

• Module:Citation/CS1 from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:
  • restore |work= and its aliases format when used in {{citation}}; see discussion
  • make |interviewer= and |interviewers= aliases of |others=; adapt cite interview accordingly; |day= no longer supported;
  • add language codes for script-title categorization ('bs', 'dv', 'el', 'fa', 'hy', 'ku', 'ps', 'ru', 'sd', 'sr', 'th', 'uk', 'ug', 'yi');
  • added asin length and composition test; see discussion
  • separate presentation <span>...</span> tagging from static text insertion; Bug fix; see discussion
  • fixed COinS chapter/title keyword swapped error; see discussion
  • migrate cite newsgroup; see discussion
  • retire |display-authors error message; shift categorization to Category:CS1 maint: display-authors; see discussion
  • revised |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= handling; see discussion
  • Add unrecognized language categorization when |language= is not ISO 639-1;
• Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox:
  • change |trans-title= and |trans-chapter= error messages to use hyphens instead of underscores;
  • these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: |albumlink=, |artist=, |cointerviewers=, |day=, |director=, |notestitle=, |publisherid=, |titleyear=;
  • |interviewer= and |interviewers= are now aliases of |others=;
  • added |asin= error message; see discussion
  • create citation_config.presentation; move most presentation <span>...</span> tagging there;
  • retire |display-authors= error message; shift categorization to Category:CS1 maint: display-authors; see discussion
• Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist from Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox:
  • these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: |albumlink=, |albumtype=, |artist=, |cointerviewers=, |day=, |director=, |notestitle=, |publisherid=, |titleyear=;
  • added |interviewers=;
  • deprecated |chapterlink= and |chapter-link=;
• Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation from Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox:
  • closed a small hole through which |date=2nd could wriggle; see discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of work!

I looked through the above list a couple of times and did not see "add Category:CS1 maint: Date and year when a citation uses both |date= and |year=," per a discussion above, on this page – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Citation formatting RfC

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Aspromonte goat#RFC on citation formatting for an RfC about the scope of WP:CITEVAR and whether it can be used to prevent changes to underlying technical coding of reference citations, including correct XML, and changing problematic ref IDs.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Additional archive URLs

I have been adding an additional archive URL to citations, to preserve references if an archive link goes dead (had this happen with an Internet Archive url, luckily it was a live website pre-emptively archived). The format I've been using is something like <ref>{{cite xxx|...}} {{webcite|...}}.</ref>, which ends up as something like "Archived from the original on 29 August 2014. Retrieved 13 October 2014. Archived 23 October 2014 at WebCite." I'm wondering if there is, or could be, a better way to do this? - Evad37 [talk] 02:20, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Check {{Cite additional archived pages}}. --  Gadget850 ^talk 02:32, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Circa

RE: "Supports c. only with a single year value (no ranges or day/month combinations)," it would be helpful if this could be adjusted. There are legitimate times when "c. 1999-2000", for example, is the most accurate thing one can say. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Real life example of where it's important to use such a date? Where neither c. 1999 or c. 2000 are suitable?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

The quotation marks are part of the bibliographic entry for the work, not of the title of or link to the work

   This talk contrib applies to {{cite web}}, and (i presume) many other templates within the scope of this talk page.
   The topic may well have previously been talked to completion somewhere in the consolidated talk archive, for all i know.

   I was forced, by a violation of our nested-quotation-marks guideline, to notice that the quotations marks around some suitable works are

1. supplied by the templates and
2. inside the "click to display linked-content" zone of the external link.

That is, the link to the text of "The Night Before Christmas" underlines, and converts from black to blue, not just the four words and the blanks separating them, but also the quotation marks around those.
   Now, it's not necessarily the case that anyone's semantic analysis has any bearing at all on what our style should be for the relationship between web pages and the links to them. But for me, that's the best guide, so here's my opinion:

   The name of the poem consists of four words separated by spaces, and does not include any punctuation. The quotation marks we place around that name, in a variety of situations, are not part of its name, but rather clarifying marks placed adjacent to the name in those situations, to for instance help distinguish short formats (e.g. essay, or typical-length "poem", or article, or track within an optical-disk sound recording, or speech within a play) from long ones (e.g. book, magazine, optical-disk embodying multiple sound recordings, or play). When a title appears on a physical realization of the work -- on the cover of a book, above the poem, on the CD, and AFAIK at the top of the Web page that presents or, often, comments on on the work (except where titles like

Review of "The Night Before Christmas"

are chosen) -- neither quotes nor italics are used. And orally, very little if any distinction is made, that would correspond to quotes or italics.
   (For names of works that deserve italics, of course, the format-cue is inseparable from the letters, and there's no choice to be made in the relationship between the format-cue and the spatial boundary of the click-to-display-linked-content zone.)
   My suggestion is that that zone should extend only as far as the title itself does, and exclude the quotation marks, which are about the relationship between the title and the context (prose reference, bibliographic entry, etc.) within which the name is being used. It's a fine distinction, but IMO not an expensive one to shift to, and one that remedies a slight undercutting of semantic clarity.

--Jerzy•t 09:23 & 09:41, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

The quote marks do differ, depending on whether it is a wikilink or a URL:

Markup	Renders as
{{cite journal |title=The Night Before Christmas |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas}}	"The Night Before Christmas". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
{{cite journal |title=[[The Night Before Christmas]]}}	"The Night Before Christmas". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

--  Gadget850 ^talk 10:37, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

We are somewhat bound by the limitations imposed by Mediawiki. The wiki markup that Module:Citation/CS1 generates looks like this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas "The Night Before Christmas"]

which gives this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

If we move the enclosing quote marks like this:

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas The Night Before Christmas]"

we get this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

As you can see, the external link icon gets in the way. I don't know of a simple way to avoid that. I think that it is important to keep the icon. We could do this:

"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas The Night Before Christmas"]

we get this:

→"The Night Before Christmas"

which is halfway to what you want.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:08, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Check date values in date

It might have been months ago, or perhaps even a couple of years ago, when cite web and related templates started displaying date format errors like this:

Check date values in: date

But I am just now getting around to questioning why this check is necessary.

• Could someone point to a talk page somewhere where the case was made for introducing that error message? I know about WP:DATESNO but there must be something more than that.

I imagine there's some benefit to it, so I have a follow-on question. Why does this

• {{cite news|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2014-11-12| title= Wikipedia Signpost‎| publisher= Wikimedia Foundation|date= September 03, 2014 | agency= Associated Press |accessdate= 2014-11-23}}

product an error:

• "Wikipedia Signpost‎". Wikimedia Foundation. Associated Press. September 03, 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Surely Postel's robustness principle applies:

"implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept"

There is no obvious reason that the leading zero in "September 03" should be treated as an error.

72.244.200.236 (talk) 20:30, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Since you read WP:DATESNO then you know that we don't use leading zeroes in this date format. Our style guidelines are based on current major published guidelines, which allows a leading zero here? --  Gadget850 ^talk 20:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Postel's principle does not apply because he was writing about input to a computer program, which need not be aesthetically pleasing or readily comprehended by people. Although values of template parameters are used by computer programs, they also are read by editors, so should conform to norms for human-readable text. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:01, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it started here. To answer that, we implemented date validation in Module:Citation/CS1 and later in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation. The beginning of that discussion is here. Rather than invent a CS1-specific standard for date formats, we adopted WP:DATESNO and try to adhere to it because that is a standard that the community have agreed amongst themselves. At present, WP:DATESNO allows leading zero dates only in year initial numeric format. If you believe that leading zeros should be acceptable in other date formats, the proper venue for that discussion is WT:MOSDATE.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to all for the replies. Trappist points to places I can read more about why we are where we are. It sounds like the consensus is its better to prioritize style over an unambiguously-formatted date. When I am filling in the parameters of cite web/cite news I am cutting the date from a web page and pasting into the article. Marking such a date as an error makes adding ref details a bit more tedious than it needs to be. In a bizarre way, rejecting dates on style guidelines can encourage editors to not bother cut/pasting _any_ date at all. By following Postel's principle both editors and readers would benefit. 72.244.200.236 (talk) 21:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)