Template talk:Cite Q

FYI a discussion on widespread removal of Cite Q from publication lists

Please see discussion on talk page here DrThneed. (talk) 01:52, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

That's archived now. Boud (talk) 17:36, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I've put a related comment, after an anti-Cite-Q enthusiast did a generic replacement of Cite Q citations in an article, at Talk:Decidim#Sources for other languages and other WMF wikis. There are too few editors there to get a consensus decision one way or another for that particular article; valid arguments exist both for and against the current version of Cite Q. The main problem I see is that replacing Cite Q citations makes life more difficult for people in other language Wikipedias; they may think that they have to create the citations using their own script that converts parameter names from the English names to the parameter names in their language (I still have a private script like that from the pre-Cite-Q epoch), or do the whole thing by hand. And it means that a citation used on e.g. 10 or 30 Wikipedias cannot be updated or corrected on all of them at once - and consensed on at Wikidata in the case of disputes.

Another problem (of the particular edit) is the omission of archive links for open-access URLs, on the assumption that they will not become obsolete. Boud (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Another problem with replacing cite Q citations by hard-wired, expanded citations is within en.Wikipedia. When a reference is used within several different en.Wikipedia articles and is a cite Q reference, any updates or corrections are automatically updated in all the en.Wikipedia articles. If, instead, the references are expanded, then chances are that someone will fix/update the reference in one article, or not the others, making that person's work less useful. Alternatively, the person has to search for all the articles that use the reference (which may be unnamed in some, or have different names in different articles), and painstakingly do the update in each article. The Don't Repeat Yourself principle generally reduces the amount of work to fix errors and tends to help humans focus on thinking rather than repetitive administrative tasks. Boud (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

The edit to Decidim had a summary of "cite repair", and at least in the case of the "Aragón; Kaltenbrunner" arXiv citation, that was true. The cited article has a type of "scholarly article" on Wikidata, yet {{Cite Q}} italicized the title of the article as if it were a book. These kinds of basic bugs that have been part of Cite Q from the start are what drives what you call "enthusiasts" to replace it with working templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bath water, because surely this is solvable.

Wikipedians will continue to argue about formatting citations, until each reader gets to decide how that reader wants to see citations formatted for them. Then Wikipedians can stop arguing, and instead direct that energy to something useful, like improving Wikipedia. Elrondil (talk) 06:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Adding that user-preference for formatting was one of the reasons for this template's creation, and is on the (long-term) road-map. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

How do I fix this citation?

An editor added {{Cite Q|Q27013862}}. What does this number mean? Johnjbarton (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

To humans, Q27013862 is more-or-less meaningless. It's just a series of digits that require a machine to translate it into summat that has meaning. In this case, it refers to a page at wikidata: d:Q27013862 which is a collection of data about Galaxy clusters discovered via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey (Q27013862). {{cite q}} translates (not always successfully) that wikidata page into a cs1|2 template:

{{Cite Q|Q27013862}} →

{{Cite journal |arxiv=1409.0850 |author-link13=John Carlstrom |author-link51=Clement Pryke |author-link55=John Ruhl (physicist) |author-link68=Christopher Stubbs |author1=L. E. Bleem |author2=B. Stalder |author3=T. de Haan |author4=K. A. Aird |author5=S. W. Allen |author6=D. E. Applegate |author7=M. L. N. Ashby |author8=M. Bautz |author9=M. Bayliss |author10=B. A. Benson |author11=S. Bocquet |author12=M. Brodwin |author13=J. E. Carlstrom |author14=C. L. Chang |author15=I. Chiu |author16=H. M. Cho |author17=A. Clocchiatti |author18=T. M. Crawford |author19=A. T. Crites |author20=S. Desai |author21=J. P. Dietrich |author22=M. A. Dobbs |author23=R. J. Foley |author24=W. R. Forman |author25=E. M. George |author26=M. D. Gladders |author27=A. H. Gonzalez |author28=N. W. Halverson |author29=C. Hennig |author30=H. Hoekstra |author31=G. P. Holder |author32=W. L. Holzapfel |author33=J. D. Hrubes |author34=C. Jones |author35=R. Keisler |author36=L. Knox |author37=A. T. Lee |author38=E. M. Leitch |author39=J. Liu |author40=M. Lueker |author41=D. Luong-Van |author42=A. Mantz |author43=D. P. Marrone |author44=M. McDonald |author45=J. J. McMahon |author46=S. S. Meyer |author47=L. Mocanu |author48=J. J. Mohr |author49=S. S. Murray |author50=S. Padin |author51=C. Pryke |author52=C. L. Reichardt |author53=A. Rest |author54=J. Ruel |author55=J. E. Ruhl |author56=B. R. Saliwanchik |author57=A. Saro |author58=J. T. Sayre |author59=K. K. Schaffer |author60=T. Schrabback |author61=E. Shirokoff |author62=J. Song |author63=H. G. Spieler |author64=S. A. Stanford |author65=Z. Staniszewski |author66=A. A. Stark |author67=K. T. Story |author68=C. W. Stubbs |author69=K. Vanderlinde |author70=J. D. Vieira |author71=A. Vikhlinin |author72=R. Williamson |author73=O. Zahn |author74=A. Zenteno |bibcode=2015ApJS..216...27B |display-authors=3 |doi=10.1088/0067-0049/216/2/27 |id=[[WDQ (identifier)|Wikidata]] [[:d:Q27013862|Q27013862]] |issn=0067-0049 |issue=2 |journal=The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series |language=en |pages=27 |publication-date=29 January 2015 |title=Galaxy clusters discovered via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey |volume=216}}

L. E. Bleem; B. Stalder; T. de Haan; et al. (29 January 2015). "Galaxy clusters discovered via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in the 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 216 (2): 27. arXiv:1409.0850. Bibcode:2015ApJS..216...27B. doi:10.1088/0067-0049/216/2/27. ISSN 0067-0049. Wikidata Q27013862.

You don't say what it is that needs to be fixed, but, as shown above, any {{cite q}} citation can be expanded to show its underlying cs1|2 template. That cs1|2 template can be copy/pasted into wikitext, edited, and then saved.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! So to my understanding, my steps are:

1. open a wikipedia page
2. Copy the q number, eg Q27013862 into the search box, pre-pend "d:", hit enter.
3. Scroll through that page, stopping to learn what the heck a "series ordinal" is.
4. Figure if I need to fix "author" or "author name string"
5. Decide life is too short and move on.

(I recall there being some Law of Computer Science that every problem can be made more complex by adding a level of indirection. ;-)

I think some practical steps like this on the doc page would be very helpful. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:48, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

For step 2, you could also just click on the Q27013862 shown after "Wikidata" in the rendered citation 😀.

I agree the author name rendering isn’t ideal, and should be fixed.

But there really are quite a few benefits to using {{cite Q}}. Elrondil (talk) 02:08, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

When I see the q number I am in the editing view and the q number is not linked in that view. So as I understand it, you propose:

1. Copy the q number, eg Q27013862
2. Open a new copy of the page you are editing
3. Search that page for the q number
4. click on the link over the number.
5. continue at 3 above.

Seems like more steps to me. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:43, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Use previews (which can be toggled on and off as required) and that will not be an issue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:55, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! If I understand you correctly, you are proposing steps like

1. Open the edit Preview panel if it is not already visible.
2. Search through that panel for text surrounding the cite-Q usage.
3. Determine which citation number matches the cite-Q and click on it.
4. Within the references now showing in the Preview, click on the Q number to the right of "Wikidata".

This does seem a little better. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:23, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

No; your step 2 should be "scroll to the bottom of the preview and view the rendered citation. Step 3 "click the QID in the citation". There is no step 4. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:36, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

How would I know which of the 347 citations to examine for the Q number?

But there is a better way:

1. copy the Q number in the cite-Q template in the edit panel
2. Open the edit Preview panel if it is not already visible.
3. search the Preview panel for the Q number, it should appear in a reference.
4. Open the linked Q number in new tab.

Johnjbarton (talk) 18:52, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

To which article do you refer?

You have found this template-talk page. Did you read the documentation on the associated template page? What part of its explanation of Wikidata identifiers (QIDs) was not clear? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

The part that describes how to find the text defining the citation entry. The wikitext only shows a cryptic number and the template documentation did not and still does not provide that information. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:17, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

My first question in the comment to which you reply was "To which article do you refer?"

So, when you see:

For example, Wikidata item Biodiversity assessment of the fishes of Saba Bank atoll, Netherlands Antilles (Q15625490) is a scholarly item. To cite this as a source:
{{Cite Q|Q15625490}} →
Jeffrey T. Williams; Kent E. Carpenter; James L. Van Tassell; Paul Hoetjes; Wes Toller; Peter Etnoyer; Michael Smith (21 May 2010). "Biodiversity Assessment of the Fishes of Saba Bank Atoll, Netherlands Antilles". PLOS One. 5 (5). Bibcode:2010PLoSO...510676W. doi:10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0010676. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 2873961. PMID 20505760. Wikidata Q15625490.

the first link "Biodiversity assessment of the fishes of Saba Bank atoll, Netherlands Antilles (Q15625490)", nor the presence of a clickable link text "Q15625490", prefixed "Wikidata", are not sufficiently clear to you? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:42, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Your example does not match my view. What I see when editing a page is {{Cite Q|Q15625490}}. I do not see two things with links. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by "To which article do you refer?" In my experience every article in wikipedia will be open the same editor window. I encountered this issue in South_Pole_Telescope. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

"An editor added {{Cite Q|Q27013862}}"—to which article? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:08, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

South Pole Telescope Johnjbarton (talk) 19:11, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Then, as I suspected, what you said in your first post is misleading. What the editor entered was not {{Cite Q|Q27013862}}, but <ref name = bleem15>{{Cite Q|Q27013862}}</ref>; and in doing so they have—as the template documentation recommends—given the template a name, "bleem15" by which you can recognise the source cited: "L. E. Bleem; B. Stalder; T. de Haan; et al. (January 29, 2015)."

This is little different to finding a source marked up as <ref name = bleem15 /> while editing a section of an article other than the one where the source is given in full. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:23, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Given <ref name = bleem15 /> I know to search for "bleem15" because this is a key to a data item in the same page. But in the case of <ref name = bleem15>{{Cite Q|Q27013862}}</ref> my search from "bleem15" gives no information. If I search for "Bleem" on that page I get 27 hits. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:12, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

My example is taken from the documentation we were discussing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:10, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok so if I want to look up that Biodiversity article I am all set. But I want to look up arbitrary sources given only the Q number visible in the edit window. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:13, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

You are, I trust, familiar with the concept of an example? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:25, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Please do not mock me. I've offered multiple suggestions on how to improve the doc page to help users of cite-Q find the source and all you have done is push back. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:14, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: I for one would welcome any genuine improvement. Concretely, how are you proposing to improve the {{cite Q}} documentation page?

As an aside, I am wondering if using {{sfnp}} or {{sfn}} to reference {{cite Q}} citations would work better for you (see shortened citations). Have a look at article Midgegooroo, where the citations are listed in section Sources in alphabetical order. That is,

1. they are easy to find,
2. they don’t move about,
3. the {{sfn whitelist}} needed when using {{cite Q}} this way exposes the CITEREF identifer (e.g., CITEREFGreen1984) right there in the source, and
4. in that article the authors are listed surname first so (until {{cite Q}} is extended to address that) the {{cite Q}}s override authors to adhere to that format and in the process expose authors in the source as well.

Another way of making {{cite Q}}s more readable in the source would be to append a comment, for example: {{cite Q |Q136385324 |last=Green |first=Neville }}{{sfn whitelist|CITEREFGreen1984}}<!-- Green (1984) -->.

Long term, frankly, I think the solution is:

1. better support in the editors (imagine hovering over the QID in source view and seeing the citation rendered the way YOU prefer citations to be rendered for you), and
2. rendering citations for each reader the way that THEY (that is, each individual reader) prefers citations to be rendered at the time they read the article, instead of letting editors decide what they should look like at the time they edit the article.

Elrondil (talk) 04:27, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

In the case described in the OP, the article is already well developed using a non-sfn method of citation, and should not be converted (at least not without a discussion resulting in consensus).

How is an HTML comment like the one you suggest better than a reference name like in my example (given that a name is required if the citation is referred to more than once)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:12, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Discussion is possible though, right? I also suspect this thread isn’t just about one article, and I’m simply suggesting alternative solutions. As for the comment, if reference names are possible and work for you, great, and if they don’t then maybe comments work. Point is: there are multiple ways to make {{cite Q}} work. Elrondil (talk) 13:20, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Why on Earth would reference names "not work"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:49, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

See correction above. Elrondil (talk) 13:55, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

My point stands. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:57, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

”Doesn’t work for me” can be an expression that means “yeah, I don’t wanna do that” or “I don’t like it”. Elrondil (talk) 14:08, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Well, if you don't like good practice and prefer bad practice, we can be of no further help to you here.

As I already said: Hand-wringing over examples of deprecated practice is a waste of time.. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:16, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

A royal “we”? And … you haven’t actually been that helpful. Elrondil (talk) 14:19, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: And as much as I love {{cite Q}} (and I do), I also do think Johnjbarton has a point because I too find just <ref>{{cite Q |Q136385324}}</ref> cryptic in the code, as <ref name=":0">{{cite Q |Q136385324}}</ref> would be. Would you really object to <ref>{{cite Q |Q136385324}}<!-- Green (1984) --></ref> if you were to happen upon it? Elrondil (talk) 13:35, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, <ref>{{cite Q |Q136385324}}</ref was not used.

What was used—as recommended in the template documentation—was <ref name = bleem15>{{Cite Q|Q27013862}}</ref>. Hand-wringing over examples of deprecated practice is a waste of time.

Nowhere is the form <ref name=":0">{{cite Q |Q136385324}}</ref> recommended.

If I came across your latter example, I would remove the comment and add a meaningful reference name. As recommended in the template documentation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:54, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

So is it a recommendation, or a directive that MUST be followed? An uncompromising directive that prohibits alternatives at that? Elrondil (talk) 14:07, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

And where did I say that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

You’ve done more than say it, you said you would do it. Elrondil (talk) 14:21, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

@Elrondil I edited the template doc to include suggestions that arose from discussions earlier in this Topic. Please review. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:49, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

This template is being discussed ...

... at wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat#CiteQ — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:31, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

More than just being discussed. It appears that Wikidata considers news items invalid in terms of Wikidata notability, with at least one news item already having been deleted without any prior warning, despite being used here on en.Wikipedia. This risks forcing Wikipedia citation of news sources to return to the text-heavy, correct-citations-in-every-article-and-in-every-language-Wikipedia-independently-if-you're-enthusiastic pre-cite-Q epoch. A mass deletion of existing news items would make a whole lot of en.Wikipedia articles suddenly a lot less WP:VERIFIABLE. Anyway, the decision process will presumably take place at d:Wikidata:Project chat#CiteQ. Boud (talk) 22:24, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion is archived at Wikidata. Seems like there is no consensus there for a mass deletion or for banning news items for Cite Q purposes, but there are also some people who expect Wikipedia to return to a text-heavy repeat-copies-at-every-usage instead of Cite Q for news articles. Hopefully people active in Wikidata decision-making will update us here if there's a deprecation decision. Boud (talk) 20:56, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Request for tracking category for nonexistent wikidata items

At Social_Media:_The_Unverified_Rusical#cite_note-3, the Cite Q template currently displays "No label or title -- debug: Q137644811, Wikidata Q137644811". That subtle error message indicates that a nonexistent Wikidata item is being cited (because it was deleted in error, in this case). This major error needs an error-tracking category. Can someone please add one to this template? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:40, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I have hacked Module:Cite Q/sandbox (ugly). The message 'No label or title -- debug: Q...' is removed because that string of text does not belong in |title= nor in the citation's metadata. Removing that text allows cs1|2 to emit an appropriate error message. When the title is empty, Module:Cite Q/sandbox emits a category: Category:Cite Q - missing label or title. There are no name-space constraints for {{cite q}} categorization.

{{cite Q/sandbox|Q136356968}}

{{Citation |id=[[WDQ (identifier)|Wikidata]] [[:d:Q136356968|Q136356968]]}}

, Wikidata Q136356968 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

compare to the live version:

{{cite Q|Q136356968}}

{{Citation |id=[[WDQ (identifier)|Wikidata]] [[:d:Q136356968|Q136356968]]}}

, Wikidata Q136356968 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

Comments?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:29, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that work. I would prefer a more conventional category name like "Pages using Cite Q with missing title or label". Other than that, it looks ready to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:10, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I chose that name to be consistent with most of the other categories emitted by {{cite q}}; see lines 27–34 in the configuration module. The oddball is Category:Articles with missing Wikidata information which is apparently intended to be used by Module:WikidataIB; use by {{cite q}} just muddies that pond.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:23, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Consistency is good, even though those names are bad for a variety of reasons. Go ahead with the original name, and if I ever get the energy, I'll propose a group category renaming. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:49, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:18, 1 February 2026 (UTC)