Help talk:Citation Style 1

Suggestion to add a printing= parameter similar to edition=

Mentioning the printing batch of a work has come out of fashion in recent years, but many older books mention both, an edition and a printing, and it may be even important to mention both since simple fixes of typographical errors and other slight corrections were often more or less "silently" incorporated into newer print runs, without marking this as a new edition. At present, both information would have to be put into the |edition= free-flow parameter, but this results in inconsistent formatting and more difficult (automatic) parsing, therefore a separate parameter |printing= appears beneficial to me. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:05, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I oppose any automatic parsing of |edition= because of the wide variety of ways publishers may describe their editions. Automatic parsing would just be a stumbling stone to mess up editors. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:36, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Hm, you must have misunderstood my proposal, as it is about adding a |printing= parameter, not about adding any automatic parsing.

|edition= is and |printing= should be free-flow parameters accepting any text. At most, I would add a special case for the case where the value given is a single numerical character ("1".."9"), as this cannot conflict with any other reasonable free-flow text (even not with other short forms like "3rd" or "3." discussed in a thread further above).

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:09, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, dates used to be free-form, but now we can't enter February 29, 1900 because of all the error checking. I oppose trying to parse fields that are not standardized by the outside world. "Edition" is not standardized by the outside world, so I oppose parsing it. If |edition= isn't parsed, then printing information can be included in the edition parameter. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:53, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but I'm afraid there must be a misunderstanding, still. I don't propose at all to add code to somehow "automagically" make sense of whatever an editor might put in a |edition= parameter (it would be way too complicated for the template to sort it out). However, I also don't propose to put printing information into the |edition= parameter. While in lack of a proper parameter for this, |edition= might be the next-best place to put printing information, I don't think it is wise to mix together semantically separate information, this just creates the "mess" (non-standardized and difficult to parse text) you are complaining about. Editions and printings are different properties of a work, therefore we should have different parameters for them, in particular as the |edition= parameter automatically adds "(? ed.)", which clearly does not work for printings.

While (in the other thread above) I propose to add a non-conflicting special case (only for single-character values "1".."9") to |edition= (and |printing=), both parameters should, of course, (continue to) accept any free-flow text and pass it along unaltered. So, I don't see how my proposal could in any way get in the way of your or another editor's edit style.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Jc3s5h: I think you're raising your opposition in the wrong thread? --Izno (talk) 22:30, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I would like to repeat my proposal to add a parameter for print runs like |printing=. To illustrate the fact, why it may sometimes useful/necessary to indicate a particular printing in addition to an edition, the well-known Handbook of mathematical functions by Abramowitz and Stegun was published in 1964 and saw only a single edition (not counting various reprint editions), but went through many printings with a large and growing number of corrections, so, if this work is used to source a formula it might be necessary to indicate the exact print run. Since |edition= automatically appends "ed.", it is difficult to put printing information into the |edition= parameter; it also violates the principle of trying not to combine various information into a single parameter. The idea is to display the contents of the optional |printing= free-flow parameter, if present, following the contents of the |edition= parameter (and separated by a comma), as in this example:

• Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irene A. (December 1972) [June 1964]. Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables. Applied Mathematics Series 55 (1st ed., 10th printing with corrections). Washington D.C., USA: United States Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards. LCCN 64-60036.

The parameter may also be convenient to indicate reprints / facsimilies in a more organized way, as in this example:

• Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irene A. (2005) [1965]. Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables. Applied Mathematics Series 55 (1st ed., 9th reprint with additional corrections of 10th original printing with corrections). New York, USA: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-61272-0. LCCN 65-12253.

If the contents of the |edition= parameter is put into meta-data and there is no meta-data entry for printing information, the whole string "1st ed., 9th reprint with additional corrections of 10th original printing with corrections" rather than only "1st ed." should be put into the meta data, so no information gets lost in the transition, regardless of how the information is given in our template.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Setting aside the possible corruption of the |edition= parameter, as I don't know how it's tracked elsewhere, I think an easy workaround to accommodate the "ed." suffix would be to precede the edition number with print run information, rather than trying to place it after the edition number:

• {{cite book |first1=Milton |last1=Abramowitz |first2=Irena A. |last2=Stegun |title=Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables |publisher=United States Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards |location=Washington D.C. |edition=10th printing with corrections; 1st |lccn=64-60036 |year=December 1972 |orig-year=June 1964 |series=Applied Mathematics Series 55}} yields:

• Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irena A. (December 1972) [June 1964]. Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables. Applied Mathematics Series 55 (10th printing with corrections; 1st ed.). Washington D.C.: United States Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards. LCCN 64-60036.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: year (link)

• {{cite book |first1=Milton |last1=Abramowitz |first2=Irena A. |last2=Stegun |title=Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables |isbn=978-0-486-61272-0 |publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York |edition=9th reprint with additional corrections of 10th original printing with corrections; 1st |lccn=65-12253 |year=2005 |orig-year=1965 |series=Applied Mathematics Series 55}} yields:

• Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irena A. (2005) [1965]. Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables. Applied Mathematics Series 55 (9th reprint with additional corrections of 10th original printing with corrections; 1st ed.). New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-61272-0. LCCN 65-12253.

Does that suffice?

I will also comment that neither |orig-year=, |series=, nor |lccn= are parameters that are included in any of the citation tools to my knowledge.

—D'Ranged 1 | VT^alk :  17:30, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

I have used that as well occasionally, even though I was a bit hesistant to put that info into a parameter it was not designed for originally and also because information on printings typically follows information regarding an edition, not the other way around. Editions and print runs are different properties of a publication. Therefore, lumping them together in a single parameter is not a good idea in general. While the exact future is not predictable, it is clear, that there is a general trend to improved machine readability to enable more advanced link and (re)search methods in the future. So, mixing different kinds of information in a single parameter will fall on our feet sooner or later and cause either valuable information to get lost or unnecessary maintenance overhead in the future when someone uninvolved (=not the original editor and therefore typically without direct access to the sources) will have to sort out what was meant when merged information will have to be split into separate parameters later on. I therefore consider it as a temporary workaround, but only a weak one. Since the template can be improved to fit all requirements I don't think we should settle for anything less than a perfect solution, in particular, if it is about something as easy to implement as this suggestion and does not break anything.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Transcript parameter for cite podcast

This question (Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 5#Transcript parameter for cite podcast) was asked in March 2014 and after becoming frustrated in my attempts to solve it, I left Wikipedia editing for quite some time. Will the question ever be addressed by people who know the Lua coding and can avoid all the mistakes I made in trying to solve it? It still seems a valid parameter to have for the {{Cite podcast}} template.—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 12:37, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

As a follow-up, is this just not going to happen?

—D'Ranged 1 | VT^alk :  18:51, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Retrieved date precedes archived date

At Tennessee Walking Horse#Footnotes in cases where I archived dead URLs (using the archive-url= and archive-date= parameters), the Retrieved date precedes the Archived date. Some indicate they were Retrieved over a year before they were Archived. How and why is that? Also, I retrieved the Archived versions today. Isn't that an important retrieval parameter? Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 07:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Checkingfax Unless you have savvy editors who check for archived versions of sites when they access them, it's quite often the case that the site is archived long after it was accessed by the editor. In those cases, the url of the first available archived site is the one to use, as the intention is to have an archived version of the site that matches what the editor saw when s/he used it as a source. An editor always has the opportunity to either archive the site for the first time when they visit it or add an archive that is dated on the date they access the site. Sadly, it isn't common for that to happen. As for the retrieval date for the archive, that is unimportant compared to the date the site was archived. The archived date identifies which archived version was retrieved. When you retrieved that version is irrelevant, as it doesn't help identify which version is referenced.

In glancing at your edits, I would highly recommend always including |dead-url= for ease in future editing. If omitted, it's understood to be "no" (meaning the original url is still live); if the original goes offline, it's easier to revise the "no" to "yes" than it is to add the parameter and value. Per Trappist below, I stand corrected. Sorry! All the more reason to include the |dead-url= and set it to no.

Additionally, for one of the citations you marked as dead (footnote 12), I searched Google for the title and found another url where the article had been cross-posted. I updated the url, archived the page, and added the archive parameters. I also added a parenthetical note indicating the cross-posting in the |publisher= parameter. For additional methods to rescue dead links, have a look at WP:DEADLINK

For notes about issues with the web archive, it's probably best to enclose them in <!-- --> comment brackets so they're visible to editors but not readers. I didn't fix this, and honestly don't know if it's your edit. I just happened to notice it and didn't do more research.

Thanks for your efforts to stem Link rot, which are greatly appreciated by a bunch of us! Cheers, yourself!

—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 08:20, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

If omitted, it's understood to be "no" (meaning the original url is still live).

The default state of |dead-url= is yes which means that when |dead-url= is omitted or empty, the url in |url= is dead so |title= is linked to the url provided in |archive-url=:

{{cite book |title=Title |url=//example.com |archive-url=//archive.org |archive-date=2016-02-25 |dead-url=}}

Title. Archived from the original on 2016-02-25. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:55, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

My apologies and thanks. I knew that; it was late and I was very tired! Thanks, Trappist!

—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk

Since the process can be automated perhaps one of the bot maintainers should add a task to deliberately trigger archivation of a (new) snapshot at archive.org whenever a new link gets added to an article. While this should be triggered immediately if the link was added by editors with more than perhaps 1000 edits, archivation of links added by new editors or IPs would be triggered only, if they survived in the article for more than a week. Something like this would help alot in keeping information accessible long-term and help improving the quality of articles while keeping potential abuse at a minimum.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:44, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Matthiaspaul, that's an excellent idea. I only hope some of the bot operators see it and at least comment on its feasibility? Citation bot? Any thoughts? What other bots deal with citations that might incorporate an automated archive feature?

—D'Ranged 1 | VT^alk :  19:01, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

web.archive.org/save/...

I just found this template:

{{cite news |ref={{sfnRef|The Jakarta Post, 2002}} |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date=June 5, 2002 |title=Medan loses its historical buildings |url=http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2002/06/05/medan-loses-its-historical-buildings.html |dead-url= |newspaper=The Jakarta Post |location=Jakarta |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2002/06/05/medan-loses-its-historical-buildings.html |archive-date=May 3, 2016 |access-date=May 3, 2016 }}

The May archive and access dates were causing error messages. When I looked at fixing them, I clicked on the citation's title but landed on a page that didn't look like a standard archived page: the header along the top that I usually see was missing. Assuming that I had misclicked, I backtracked and tried again landing in the same place.

Looking at the |archive-url= again, I noticed the 'save' in the path. I wonder then, does that cause archive.org to save a copy of the target url? If it does, we should not be making that kind of link active in cs1|2 templates.

I propose then, to create a test for the content of |archive-url= that looks for |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/save/ (and also https:...) When found, the module will emit an error message and disable the link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:35, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, "/save/" is used to save a snapshot of the given page. It doesn't make sense in |archive-url= as it is a moving target, whilst |archive-date= specifies a specific date. If this was meant as an example, it should be replaced by "/web/20160503/".

Given that saving snapshots of web pages used in cites is good practise (to fight long-term link rot), but consumes precious time, and given that it is a frequently occuring procedure, perhaps the error message could be made "smarter" than usual to not only indicate the problem but help editors saving a snapshot. Let's assume the template code detects that |url= contains a well-formed link and it finds an |archive-url= containing either only "http[s]://web.archive.org/" (that is, an incomplete link indicating intended usage of archive.org), or a link starting with "http[s]://web.archive.org/save/", or - if we assume archive.org is our default archiving service - a |archive-url= parameter with empty content "", the template could display its error message but additionally provide a number of dynamically constructed links to archive.org to help editors select an existing snapshot link from archive.org or create a new snapshot:

• [https://web.archive.org/save/<contents of url= parameter> Save new page snapshot on archive.org?]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/*/<contents of url= parameter> Select existing snapshot on archive.org?]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/1/<contents of url= parameter> Check oldest existing snapshot on archive.org?]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/2/<contents of url= parameter> Check newest existing snapshot on archive.org?]

If |archive-date= contains a parseable date the template could convert it into ISO 8601 format (without separators) and implant it in the url as well:

• [https://web.archive.org/web/<iso date>/<contents of url= parameter> Check nearest existing snapshot to given archive date on archive.org?]

(Of course, the text in the links should be shorter to keep the error message reasonably short as well - this is just to illustrate the idea.)

This would help editors seeing this error message selecting or creating a suitable snapshot with only a minimal number of clicks and 1 or 2 copy and paste actions (for the link and possibly the date from archive.org back into Wikipedia).

In fact, it could become "standard procedure" for editors, who wish to add an archived version of a page, to just give an empty |archive-url= parameter, and use the error message then displayed in edit preview as a tool to create and/or select a snapshot and date then to be stuffed into the |archive-url= and |archive-date= parameters before saving their contribution.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:48, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Where is this documented? I did a quick look at archive.org yesterday and didn't find anything.

I do not think that we should offer the ability to save a new snapshot at archive.org. The error messages are visible to all readers so that provides a mechanism for abuse.

If the module had the ability to modify page sources, then offering to select an existing snapshot could be a useful tool. But, since the module can't ... I didn't find any uses of that form of url.

Apparently, https://web.archive.org/web/1/... doesn't always select the oldest snapshot:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000529023519/http://www.math.iastate.edu/abian/homepage.html

We could replace /*/, /1/, and /2/ with a transformed |archive-date=. That may not be the right thing to do because, apparently, archive.org will select the most recent snapshot from that date which may be wrong. This link shows that the last snapshot taken on 2016-03-05 was at 23:56:38:

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2002/06/05/medan-loses-its-historical-buildings.html

which is the time stamp of the snapshot returned with this url:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160305/http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2002/06/05/medan-loses-its-historical-buildings.html

I've hacked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to detect the /save/ version of an archive.org url. The template described in my first post renders this way:

"Medan loses its historical buildings". The Jakarta Post. Jakarta. June 5, 2002. Retrieved May 3, 2016. {{cite news}}: |archive-url= is malformed: save command (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)

Right now, the error message categorizes into Category:Pages with archiveurl citation errors. If we further modify the module to detect /*/, /1/, and /2/ (are there others?) then perhaps all of them deserve their own category.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I have not seen official documentation for /1/ and /2/, but it is cited in various places. Perhaps an over-simplification (or a left-over from the old millennium). However, using f.e. /1000/ (derived from offical documentation) instead of /1/ works to retrieve the oldest snapshot:

• https://web.archive.org/web/1000/http://www.math.iastate.edu/abian/homepage.html

A documented replacement for the /2/ thing is to just omit it entirely:

• https://web.archive.org/web/http://www.math.iastate.edu/abian/homepage.html

Official documentation can be found here: https://archive.org/web/web-advancedsearch.php

Some additional documentation can be found here: Help:Using the Wayback Machine

Regarding uses, the idea was to make it as simple as possible for editors to create or select snapshots. Without the links, the editor has to open a browser window, type http://web.archive.org, find the search box for the Wayback Machine and copy and paste the desired link from the WP edit window into there, and then later copy and paste the resulting link from the browser url line back into the WP edit window. Tiresome. With the links provided automatically, most of that procedure could be avoided, it would be down to clicking / selecting the desired snapshot and pasting back the link.

Regarding possible abuse of "save" links in error message, since crawlers will create snapshots (of possibly no longer valid contents) anyway from time to time, I don't think it would be a serious problem. After all, the easier we make it for editors to create and/or select a snapshot representing the desired contents, the sooner the error message will disappear.

Alternatively, is there a way for the template to detect "preview mode"? Does Mediawiki define some special symbol in preview? If so, the additional links could be displayed only in preview mode.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I understand the desire to make lives easier for editors but the primary purpose of the module is to render cs1|2 templates into correctly formatted citations. How those templates are created is beyond the scope of the module and properly belongs to source creation tools (Wikipedia:RefToolbar, Wikipedia:VisualEditor, etc.).

The archive link and the static text around it in a rendered citation implies a direct correlation between the original url and the archive url. The module should not render links to unspecified archives; somewhat akin to WP:ELNO item 9. For archive.org, that means that there should be a complete timestamp (YYYYMMDDhhmmss – 14 digits). This is easily checked. Perhaps we should.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

While this will create problems only in cases where a page changes frequently, I agree with you that the actual |archive-url= links to snapshots should be non-ambiguous. Yes, they should use all digits provided by archive.org. I never stated anything different for the normal rendering; those suggested links were only meant as part of the error message (that is, semantically outside normal reader context).

For the same reason, we cannot fully automate the selection process (just make it as easy as possible), it still requires a human to actually check if a particular snapshot supports a statement in an article or not. So, trying to be extra-smart and silently correcting invalid links isn't an option.

However, the question remains how to achieve the goal of minimize the time for error messages to show up and how to possibly fight link rot (IMHO by proactively archiving snapshots of pages used to support articles before they become dead).

I agree with you that the citation template is not the best place to integrate editing tools, but the basic rule to keep users' and editors' views separated is already violated by displaying error messages in the normal page rendering for readers at all. So displaying a few more links in those error messages would not violate that design principle more. But perhaps the idea can be reduced to a single extra link:

• [https://web.archive.org/web/<iso date>*/<contents of url= parameter> Check nearest existing snapshots to given archive date on archive.org?]

If |archive-date= is present, this should be stuffed into <iso date> (with the count of digits depending on what was provided by |archive-date=). The pending * causes archive.org not to select the nearest snapshot but to show all snapshots matching <iso date>. The oldest and newest snapshots (optionally narrowed down by <iso date>) are available from archive.org's list, so we don't need direct links. If the page wasn't archived at all, archive.org will display the dialogue to save the current page (similar to /save/). This doesn't cover the case of saving a new snapshot for pages of which some older snapshots exist already, but it would still be helpful in the majority of other cases, whilst not disturbing the error message display much.

Regarding RefToolbar and VisualEditor. They both require client-side scripting, so they are not an option for people using browsers not supporting client-side scripting (for security policies or in general).

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:38, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I have further hacked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that archive.org urls in |archive-url= cause an error message when it is the save command url and when the timestamp is not 14 digits:

"Title". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.

"Title". {{cite web}}: |archive-url= is malformed: save command (help)

"Title". {{cite web}}: |archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:32, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't know how frequently they are used, but perhaps the "id_" / "js_" / "cs_" / "im_" appendages to the timestamp (see second doc link above) should be allowed as well.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the sandbox, Trappist, but have you included uses of url=//web.archive.org/web/...? For quite some time, there was an effort to make all web.archive.org urls relative, as they weren't accessible in countries blocking https. It's now a moot point, since both Wikipedia and the Internet Archive have adopted secure protocols, but there may be leftovers, although I have no idea how many.

As for making it easier for editors to save a cited page or find an archive of it, there are handy tools available at Help:Using the Wayback Machine#JavaScript bookmarklet that allow editors to add scripts to their toolbars that make both tasks simple. Where should we propose that these archiving tools be added to citation tools; I don't think it's a function of the citation templates but also wonder if there's some help that could be given via the templates? Evidently the availability of these scripts is not well-known; nor is proactive archiving of sites much promoted, to our detriment, I think. So, is there a way that the templates can help?

—D'Ranged 1 | VT^alk :  19:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I continue to maintain my suggestion to add at least a single multi-purpose link to archive.org to the error message. It does not clutter the error message more than displaying convenience information such as the position of offending characters in a parameter (as we do already), and it works also for users who do not want to enable (for security reasons) or simply cannot use JavaScript (for lack of support in their browsers). So, instead of

Title |archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)

we could display

Title |archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help, check)

Note the extra "*" blindly inserted into the check link by the suggested template enhancement after the incomplete or otherwise malformed timestamp and before the target link. This "*" forces archive.org to display the selection bar for all snapshots matching the (incomplete) timestamp instead of silently selecting the nearest snapshot. The user would then check and select the desired snapshot and copy the resulting url (now with valid date string) back into the |archive-url= parameter. If the link target hasn't been archived at all but exists in the live net, archive.org will ask the user if s/he wants to save a snapshot. If the link is invalid and does not exist in the live net, archive.org will ask if the user wants to broaden the scope to other snapshots at the target site. So, this trivial enhancement would already make it much easier for editors to select the desired snapshot and fix an error. In contrast to providing "/save/" links, there is no risk for abuse, as archive.org will only ask to save snapshots if no snapshots exist (so it will happen only once) and it will not save snapshots without explicit confirmation by the user, anyway (whereas "/save/" saves snapshots without user confirmation).

A slightly smarter implementation would provide even more utility value:

This improved enhancement would append the contents of the |url= parameter to the |archive-url= parameter if the template detects that the given |archive-url= does not contain a link target already. If the timestamp is not present at all, but |archive-date= is given, it would use the contents of |archive-date= to create an incomplete timestamp to be implanted into the resulting check url link. The extension would still insert the "*" as described further above.

This enhancement would allow content editors to just add |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/ (and optionally some form of |archive-date=) to the citation template, invoke edit preview, and click on the "auto-completed" check link in the resulting error message in order to select the proper snapshot at archive.org and copy the resulting url back into the |archive-url= parameter before saving their contribution. It would thereby making it trivially easy to select and/or create archive snapshots without external tools - while the "user interface" would remain completely unobtrusive (a single link in an error message typically displayed only in preview mode) and allow no abuse at all.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Maintenance category to check for "=" in parameters?

Many citation errors are caused by a missing pipe (vertical bar), causing the citation template to be missing a title or an author parameter, for example. Some of those errors, like this one, are caught by our existing checks, but others, like this one, are not. I wonder if it would be useful to have a maintenance category that looked for the "=" character in parameters that are highly unlikely to contain one.

I can imagine |title=-holding parameters having "=" characters inside them, but |location= and |pages=, for example, should probably not have such characters. We would not need to check parameters that are already checked for errors that would catch a stray "=", such as |ISBN=, |DOI=, and |date=. Thoughts? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I have just fixed a couple dozen of these. Mostly due to missing pipes, I'm finding "=" characters in |quote=, |pages=, |publisher=, and other parameters. I am finding these via Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/ISBN errors, but extrapolating from that list, I expect that there are hundreds of instances of parameters that are unintentionally being rendered as part of other parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:04, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I've hacked the sandbox and added a test that looks for parameter values that match one of two patterns:

1. %s+(%a[%a%d]+)%s*= – required white space, letters and digits, optional white space, required '='
2. ^(%a[%a%d]+)%s*= – letters and digits at the start of the parameter value, optional white space, required '='

If either of these are found, the string of letters and digits is compared against the list of valid parameter names. If there is a match, the a maintenance category is added. For this hack I'm using the extra text maintenance category until a more appropriate name is chosen.

Each parameter value is inspected:

{{cite book/new |title=Title isbn = 123456789X}} – pattern 1

Title isbn = 123456789X. {{cite book}}: Missing pipe in: |title= (help)

{{cite book/new |title= isbn = 123456789X}} – pattern 2

isbn = 123456789X. {{cite book}}: Missing pipe in: |title= (help)

{{cite book/new |title=isbn = 123456789X}} – pattern 2

isbn = 123456789X. {{cite book}}: Missing pipe in: |title= (help)

{{cite book/new |title=Titleisbn = 123456789X}} – no match

Titleisbn = 123456789X.

{{cite book/new |titl=Title isbn = 123456789X}} – pattern 1

{{cite book}}: Empty citation (help)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |url=//example.com?isbn=123456789X}} – no match

Title.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:23, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I've changed the category to Category:CS1 maint: Missing pipe because this abomination of a citation wasn't making sense with the extra text cat:

{{Cite news |last=Herring |first=G. B. |date=19 May 1966 |title=TBD |url=http://newspaperarchive.com/laurel-leader-call/1966-05-19/page-15 |newspaper=Laurel Leader Call |location=[[Laurel, Mississippi]] |accessdate=July 11, 2012 |quote=''Radar bomb scoring {{sic|began}} in 1946 with 888 bomb releases for the year against a site in the{{Verify source|date=August 2013}} San Diego'' }}

Herring, G. B. (19 May 1966). "TBD". Laurel Leader Call. Laurel, Mississippi. Retrieved July 11, 2012. Radar bomb scoring began [sic] in 1946 with 888 bomb releases for the year against a site in the San Diego

Because that citation shows the 'delete character' error message, I changed it to use the sandbox but that produces this:

Herring, G. B. (19 May 1966). "TBD". Laurel Leader Call. Laurel, Mississippi. Retrieved July 11, 2012. Radar bomb scoring began [sic] in 1946 with 888 bomb releases for the year against a site in the San Diego

Templates within a cs1|2 template are processed before the cs1|2 template. So, the module sees this:

{{Cite news |last=Herring |first=G. B. |date=19 May 1966 |title=TBD |url=http://newspaperarchive.com/laurel-leader-call/1966-05-19/page-15 |newspaper=Laurel Leader Call |location=[[Laurel, Mississippi]] |accessdate=July 11, 2012 |quote=''Radar bomb scoring began&#32;&#91;''[[sic]]''&#93; in 1946 with 888 bomb releases for the year against a site in the<sup class="noprint Inline-Template " style="white-space:nowrap;">&#91;<i>[[Wikipedia:Verifiability|<span title="The material near this tag needs to be fact-checked with the cited source(s).&#32;(August 2013)">verification needed</span>]]</i>&#93;</sup> San Diego'' }}

The missing pipe detector is finding the class= attribute in the <sup> tag. So, the current detector is destined for failure and the rubbish tip unless a way can be found around this issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:05, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

That turned out to be a simple change: remove xml/html tags from the parameter value, then look for missing pipes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Ugh. Thanks for debugging this one. This is why I suggested a maintenance category instead of a red error message. There will be all sorts of false positives at first. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:59, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Open access icon

The Wikipedia Library's recommended citations often request that {{open access}} () be appended at the end of the citation. Is there a reason why this (and {{closed access}} ) isn't baked into the citation template itself? I would think the metadata alone would be worthwhile. czar 22:11, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Link to where that recommendation is written? What metadata? The {{open access}} and {{closed access}} templates are just pictures. Are you looking for some sort of parameter support?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe something like a |url-free=/|doi-free= (and similar for the other identifiers), which could either be set to yes/no, or used instead of |url=/|doi=? This when a free link is identified, then it can be used to automatically populate the url field, like PMC {{{1}}} already does. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:44, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, examples of TWL recommended citations at Wikipedia:Newspapers.com#Citation and Wikipedia:Newspaperarchive.com#Citation, but it's the same for any TWL-partnered database with open access. czar 04:27, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Is this is (over)stating the obvious? One can just click at a weblink – I think that an accessible link would (rightly) be considered the default state by the majority of readers. If the link has any sort of access requirements, there's already embargo, registration, and subscription parameters built into the templates. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:29, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. And the answers to my other questions?

Does this icon only apply to TWL-partnered databases? Is a working doi, pmc, jstor, identifier a requirement for journal cites? For newspapers accessible through the two database you mentioned, do we require |via=?

And why is the icon orange? How does orange imply gratis or libre? Yeah, rhetorical question.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I vaguely recall picking up this practice before TWL distributed database accounts—it went along with the marking of subscriptions within the citation (which I also think could use some reformatting but that's another story). I was helping someone at an edit-a-thon who wanted to know what param to add to get the orange (un)lock and I realized it would be a good idea to bring it here. Could you tell by going to the link directly? Sure. I believe the idea is to incentivize use of open access links in line with our mission. I also think the icon is a nice courtesy, as readers often skip the text, but a lock icon is straightforward. For metadata, I was thinking that it would be easier for someone to parse usage of open access links if they're clearly marked as such in the citation. A separate param (|open=y) could work, or Headbomb's solution works too—the idea is just to get the lock icon at the end of the citation so users don't need to add a template outside the main one. TWL recommends the db identifiers when they fit, I believe, and they appear to use {{via}} (separate template) sometimes and |via= in others. I use the latter. Are you suggesting that certain ISSNs automatically generate the lock icon in their citations? As for orange, after a quick search, I have no idea, but it is the standard icon. czar 15:20, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I made no statement with regard to ISSNs. I was trying to get you to tell me if, as a requirement to display the oa icon, cs1|2 journal cites must have one or more of the normal journal identifiers like doi, like jstor, like pmc. In other words, is it appropriate to apply the oa icon to a {{cite journal}} that only uses |url= and |title=? What about {{cite web}}?

This is where the clutter becomes objectionable. It is the point of my unanswered question: Does this icon only apply to TWL-partnered databases? If all external links in §References are marked with little orange locks, no real usable information is conveyed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there exists such a rule but ostensibly the icon is for distinguishing any potentially closed-looking source as indeed open. If a citation is only using |url= and |title= (out of laziness), I doubt the OA icon will be the third used (over |work=, etc.) czar 14:04, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I do not understand that last sentence. Clarify?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

is it appropriate to apply the oa icon to a {{cite journal}} that only uses |url= and |title=? What about {{cite web}}? Yes, I'd say. It's for any link the editor wants to specify as open. It isn't restricted to DOI or identifier use. If the New Yorker made its pre-1990 archives publicly available, I'd want to note that they were open access. (Also I didn't mean that you made that statement re: ISSNs—I was just affirming it as a neat possibility, if it could be implemented.) czar 22:51, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

The usefulness of this was questioned because imo most readers would reasonably expect external links in citations (or anywhere in article space) to be open; if so, only the exceptions to this expectation need to be signaled, which is already the case. So semantically this imo may be a non-issue. However, there may be a consensus to implement this for style reasons, and at the editor's discretion (following established guidelines, which allow for variance in application of style). At least this icon makes more sense than useless file icons such as the pdf icon which only adds clutter. 64.134.243.9 (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, I think it is an important question because the accessibility of sources deserves to be better indicated. Many paywalls are not marked with the "subscription required" option as far as I can tell. In addition, citations often have multiple sources (say, a link, a DOI, an arXiv id, a PMID…) so it is often unclear where the full text can be found. Ideally, it could be useful to have a way to indicate the availability for all of them (individually), but that could be too verbose. Anyway, if these parameters were available, I think filling them would be a good job for OABOT (I am working on it currently). What do you think? Pintoch (talk) 22:30, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

For a citation with a link, a DOI, an arXiv id, and a PMID, couldn't the reader just click on the four links and look at the resulting web pages to see if there is a free full-text version available? That doesn't seem difficult. In any event, if the citation contains four links and one "open access" icon, how does that help the reader figure out which of the four links leads to the free full-text version? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:10, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

That's my point: a separate, "global" \{\{open access\}\} icon does not help. About clicking on all links: the point of the icons we are discussing here is to avoid just that! There are also cases where people might not even try to click on a DOI, for instance, because by experience they know DOIs tend to be closed, but many of them are actually open. Pintoch (talk) 07:40, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Too much orange is too much orange. This mocks up a {{cite journal}} from Apatosaurus with all links to the source text marked:

Bates, K.T.; Falkingham, P.L.; Macaulay, S.; Brassey, C.; Maidment, S.C.R. (2015). "Downsizing a giant: re-evaluating Dreadnoughtus body mass". The Royal Society 11: 20150215. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2015.0215. ISSN 1744-957X. PMID 26063751.

What are the rules for applying the oa icon? Are there any? Should there be some? If we are to do this, I would favor limiting the number of oa icons per template to one and only one. We could, instead of creating some sort of parameter that just tags the whole of the citation with little orange locks, create something perhaps like:

|oa-icon=<parameter>

where <parameter> is one of only a handful of parameter names that can be associated with the lock: doi, jstor, pmc. Writing |oa-icon=doi would append the identifier to the doi external link:

Bates, K.T.; Falkingham, P.L.; Macaulay, S.; Brassey, C.; Maidment, S.C.R. (2015). "Downsizing a giant: re-evaluating Dreadnoughtus body mass". The Royal Society 11: 20150215. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2015.0215. ISSN 1744-957X. PMID 26063751.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I would think that a single orange icon once at the end of the citation would suffice. (Either way this would be limited to once per citation.) I would think that users would expect the title link to link to the open access resource, if the whole citation is tagged. The identifiers, in my understanding, are for those who want the database page, which is often hit or miss for access. czar 14:04, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

On this note, if there is an available open access link, why would one consider citing additional links? Should such practice be discouraged? I don't include discovery/supply-chain identifiers such as ISSN, since they are pointers to discovery of material and do not refer to the material itself (like a link does). 65.88.88.126 (talk) 14:32, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Providing alternate paths to copies of the same source at perhaps different locations is not necessarily a bad thing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Others have noted that, as things stand today, without the icon users must click each link to discover which of them is open. They have noted that this 'requirement' is undesirable. Adding the icon at the end of a citation that has multiple possible links only tells the reader that at least one of them is open. Its sole benefit then is to encourage the reader to undertake the search. If we are going to do this shouldn't we identify that one so that readers don't have to hunt?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

If we go back to the Wikipedia:Newspaperarchive.com#Citation-style example, even if there are multiple identifiers, I think a single trailing lock icon at the end of the citation is sufficient to indicate that the title linked URL is the one that is open source. If someone is prone to being confused by multiple links, I don't see why they would click the PMID or JSTOR seemingly arbitrary numbers when the title is linked. czar 22:51, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Thinking a bit upon my idea, here's a few ways my option could work, if it's implemented. If we have a free identifier, then the url is automatically generated from it. For arxiv (always free, but not official version), bibcode (sometimes free), and doi (sometimes free), we would have something like this. I'm assuming that the doi is free, but the bibcode isn't.

{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2012 |title=Awesome stuff is awesome |journal=Journal of Stuff |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3-4 |arxiv=1001.1001 |bibcode=2012JStuf...1....3S |doi-free=10.1234/0123456789}}

Or alternatively

{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2012 |title=Awesome stuff is awesome |journal=Journal of Stuff |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3-4 |arxiv=1001.1001 |bibcode=2012JStuf...1....3S |doi=10.1234/0123456789 |doi-free=yes}}

Option A) Autogenerate, mark everything that is open access.

Smith, J. (2012). "Awesome stuff is awesome". Journal of Stuff. 1(2):3-4 arXiv:1001.1001. Bibcode:/abstract 2012JStuf...1....3S doi:10.1234/0123456789.

Option B) Autogenerate, and only mark the link.

Smith, J. (2012). "Awesome stuff is awesome". Journal of Stuff. 1(2):3-4 arXiv:1001.1001. Bibcode:/abstract 2012JStuf...1....3S . doi:10.1234/0123456789.

Option C) Autogenerate, and only mark the identifiers.

Smith, J. (2012). "Awesome stuff is awesome". Journal of Stuff. 1(2):3-4 arXiv:1001.1001. Bibcode:/abstract 2012JStuf...1....3S . doi:10.1234/0123456789.

Obviously a hierarchy of identifiers should be established, with some always generating links (pmc), others only when their foobar-free version is declared (bibcode, doi), and others disallowed (e.g. issn/isbn) because they will never point to a free version. This hierarchy should be customizable, at least in the case of cite arxiv, where an autogenerated link from |arxiv= is desirable while it would not be desirable in others. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:45, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

In the general case, I would be somewhat concerned with adding these links to e.g. DOI, because while the identifier is permanent, the redirected website may not be, and the requirements for access to documents at a changed website may make a document unavailable to open access. --Izno (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

The thing about implementing these options, is that bots can do this maintenance for us. But typically, open access articles remain open access. Entire journals are open access (some from the outset, some after an embargo periods), whereas other articles are only open access because their authors paid a fee. That that remains true regardless of a change of website or publisher. Something open access, rarely, if ever returned from open to closed access, short of a minority of journals which have reverse embargo periods, which again can easily be handled by bots. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:43, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Sure. My concern: Which bot op did you have lined up to program and run a bot associated with such functionality? --Izno (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Pretty much whoever wants to take on the coding effort and goes through a WP:BRFA. Open access is something many bot ops support, and would be more than happy to help with such efforts. Some of this functionality could be implement into existing bots like User:Citation bot, or my own User:Bibcode Bot. A lot of this could also be done through AWB. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:52, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

It is my understanding that the link target of a doi may depend on where you access it from. So some people may see an open access version while others with access to a subscription-only collection may see it there instead. So I think decorating doi's with temporary and contingent information may be a mistake, and goes against the very purpose of identifying things by dois. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:54, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I have had similar experience with JSTOR links which sometimes encapsulate dois. There is also the situation where access is open in some geolocations and not open in others, for a variety of reasons, including copyright/legal. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:27, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I haven't experienced anything based on location. I'm not saying it's impossible, but make sure you don't confuse this with institution-based access. I got access to Phys Rev D at work for example, but not at home. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:57, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

You may not have experienced it, but our digital object identifier article says it can happen: "DOI name resolution may be used with OpenURL to select the most appropriate among multiple locations for a given object, according to the location of the user making the request." —David Eppstein (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, so this only happens when using a DOI in a particular OpenURL resolver, not with the official dx.doi.org resolver, right? Then the same comment that openness depends from the location would be applicable to any other identifier used with OpenURL, if I am not wrong. Pintoch (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are wrong. It is allowed to have multiple URLs corresponding to a DOI in the handle record, with optional extra information specifying how to choose between them. So whatever resolver is used, there can be no guarantee that the same URL results. See here for a detailed account of how choices are made. It would be odd to set up a handle record with a mixture of open and closed access URLs, but nothing appears to forbid this. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:48, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Going to ping @DGG: for his input here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:36, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

• It can be surprisingly difficult to tell if an OA version exists, if the article does not come from one of the obvious all-OA sources, such as PLOS . It can in some cases be even more difficult to tell if an apparently available OA version is a legal copy: for example, the copies authors place on their own website is sometimes legal in the opinion of the author, but not of the publisher, and there can be no practical way for an outsider reaching the site to tell. Blatantly illegal copies of a great many articles exist on the internet, and not necessarily on obvious pirate sites. In the other direction, publishers have been know to claim copyright on material they clearly have no right for, and if they sell paywalled articles for $60, some of them will gladly sell you a pre-1923 article for the same money. There are furthermore some OA-advocates who to say that a copy available by pushing a web button to ask the author to mail you a copy is sort of OA. If such a button is present it works about half the time according to reports. Some publishers consider this legal; some not, some only with restrictions on the number of copies sent. When I was involved in running interlibrary loan services, this was a matter for specialists.

There is also the problem of works that change OA status. This is generally works that are non-OA for the first 6 months or some other period, and then OA, such as PNAS; it an be even more complicated, for articles with open access as "pre-publication", then closed, and then (sometimes) open again after a period. It can't even be done journal by journal, because some articles in even a toll journal will be OA because the authors paid a fee.

It would not be too complicated for us to programmatically add an OA marker for some specific journals known to be entirely OA--we might for example start by adding it to all PLOS journals. We should be able to add a marker for all articles with a PMCID, though I need to verify that there are no exceptions. We could a systematic run updating everything in PNAS that is from 2014 or earlier. These methods might however be misunderstood as saying that the others are not. It should be possible to develop a (complicated) procedure for identifying automatically a considerable portion of those papers that are in fact OA, at least in biomedicine, but it would have to run each time our article was displayed, but that's something I think should be left to Google.

We in any case are dependent on the person adding the entries to do so correctly. Location by country does is indeed part of the doi specification, but I do not know how widely it is used.

The default has to be not to mark as either OA or nonOA. If people choose to add the an OA marker, then they are responsible for seeing it is correct. We need some way of updating all this, & indicating when it will be updated--in fact , we need to verify and update all citations in WP. But what is annoying, is that at least he OA status needs re-verifying--t least its not bada problem as dead weblinks. Where this will really get to be a problem is the centralized database of citations, if we ever get there. DGG ( talk ) 02:38, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I believe PMC articles can have an embargo period. The PMCID can be assigned during the embargo period, but the template currently handles that through |embargo=YYY-MM-DD. Which apparently is an undocumented parameter. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:12, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Concerning the task of finding OA versions of a given article, various resources have been listed on OABOT. Perfect coverage is of course beyond our reach, but the sources listed there already encompass tens of millions of documents. I am working on the Dissemin API, which can be used in a quite straightforward way for this task (here is a proof of concept). If anybody is interested in participating (especially working on the wikipedia-side of things, which I am not so familiar with), it would be great. Pintoch (talk) 17:58, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

• The original purpose of the OA icon was to indicate scholarly publications compliant with the BOAI definition of open access, which encompasses not just the freedom to read but full reuse rights — essentially, compatibility with CC BY (which only became available later). However, licensing (i.e. reusability) has long been (and still is) regarded as less of an issue than read access, and over time, the icon has been used in many different contexts that blurred the original meaning, to the point that many equal it now with "free to read", which is also the sense in which the icon is now increasingly being used for tagging news articles and other things that would not fall under the original scope of scholarly publications. As pointed out above, it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to decide whether a free-to-read copy of an article is actually legal (or in which jurisdictions, or when, or via which URL etc.).

Based on these and other considerations, the OA Signalling project is planning not to rely on the orange lock but to indicate licensing terms instead (or in addition to it), and to focus only on Wikimedia-compatible licenses (essentially CC BY, since almost no scholarly publications are using CC BY-SA) as well as CC0/ public domain. This addresses a number of points raised in this discussion: the presence of such a licensing indicator would signal that all copies of the article are

• free to read (thus encouraging people to click on any of the links and actually dive deeper into the sources without having to endure paywalls)

and

• openly licensed (thus making readers and editors more aware of the possibility to use the sources or parts thereof — e.g. images or media files — in new contexts, e.g. in their own talks or on Wikimedia projects).

If that second condition is absent (as seems to be the case in the discussion so far), we (or the OABOT team) will have to deal with lots of legal edge cases that

• are hard to tackle algorithmically

and

• were one of the main reasons why Creative Commons licenses have been created.

In addition to signalling the licensing of references on Wikipedia, the OA Signalling project also aims to import full texts into Wikisource, media into Commons (expanding on the Open Access Media Importer) and metadata (including licensing) into Wikidata (see here for a more detailed sketch of the envisaged workflows). The latter will hopefully at some point become (or closely integrated with) "the centralized database of citations" mentioned above and thus useful for handling source metadata across Wikimedia projects (see also the upcoming WikiCite 2016). Having a Wikipedia-cited source available on Wikisource would allow to deeplink into the particular statement in the source that is referred to in the Wikipedia statement citing the source, which should facilitate verifiability.

-- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:36, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Why would we need to detect licenses before adding links to full texts in references? I understand it is a requirement if you want to import them in Wikisoource, but I do not see why adding links to arXiv preprints (mostly non CC-licensed) would be a problem. Most of the published versions are not openly licensed anyway, and they link to paywalls. Like you, I value open licenses, but if we only want to deal with openly-licensed content, we will not be able to do add many links. -- Pintoch (talk) 06:31, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

No one is proposing to make it a requirement that links are free. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:41, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Alright, I thought Daniel was (by arguing that we need to take into account his second condition). -- Pintoch (talk) 12:15, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I think that was a remark on the aims of the OA Signalling project, and possibly the original intent/their guideline on when to use the orange lock. It might be that we'll need to use a different icon, or agree that the meaning of the orange lock as evolved. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:45, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

I was not talking about adding/ removing/ forbidding arXiv/ DOI/ PMC/ PMCID links — just about indicating what papers are openly licensed. This is a minority, yes, but that makes the signaling all the more valuable. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 20:52, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Red text in citation tells me to delete math formula from quote

In the citation (from Alphabet (formal languages))

• {{cite book |last1=Ebbinghaus |first1=H.-D. |last2=Flum |first2=J. |last3=Thomas |first3=W. |date=1994 |title=Mathematical Logic |edition=2nd |publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |location=[[New York City|New York]] |isbn=0-387-94258-0 |page=11 |quote=By an ''alphabet'' <math>\mathcal{A}</math> we mean a nonempty set of ''symbols''. |url=http://www.springer.com/mathematics/book/978-0-387-94258-2}}
• Ebbinghaus, H.-D.; Flum, J.; Thomas, W. (1994). Mathematical Logic (2nd ed.). New York: Springer. p. 11. ISBN 0-387-94258-0. By an alphabet ${\mathcal {A}}$ we mean a nonempty set of symbols.

I see the red error text "delete character in |quote= at position 20 (help)" at the end of the citation. Position 20 of the quote is the math formula, which should not be deleted (it is an essential part of the quote), and formatting it as a math formula is necessary in order to accurately convey the quote (the fact that it is shown as a script font is a meaningful piece of mathematical notation and changing the font would change the meaning). So the error message is itself erroneous. In addition this is putting the article into the "CS1 errors: invisible characters" error category. I assume this is something to do with the wikimedia math formatting, since I don't think this passage actually has any invisible characters (I tried copying and pasting into an editor that would show me the fnords, and then back to here again, but this made no change, and I get the same behavior whenever I have math in a quote even when I type it myself with no invisible characters). The same problem also happens with math in titles; see e.g. two examples in squared triangular number. Can this be fixed, please? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

This may be related to recent changes to how wikimedia handles math, in order to fix https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T103269 —David Eppstein (talk) 23:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

This is related to the stripmarkers issue. MediaWiki replaces <gallery>...</gallery>, <math>...</math>, <nowiki>...</nowiki>, <pre>...</pre>, and <ref>...</ref> tags with strip markers. The first and last characters in a stripmarker are delete characters. The error message identifies the first delete character in the strip marker. Here is a highly simplified version of your citation as the module renders it for further processing by MediaWiki:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000004D-QINU`"'<cite class="citation book cs1">''Mathematical Logic''. <q>By an ''alphabet'' '"`UNIQ--math-0000004C-QINU`"' we mean a nonempty set of ''symbols''.</q></cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Mathematical+Logic&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

Highlight and copy the text from the second apostrophe following ''alphabet'' (the last part of the italic markup) to the 'w' in we and paste it into the green box a this unicode decoder. Click the 'Convert' button and look at the content of the 'Percent encoding for URIs' box. You should see something like this:

%20%7F%27%22%60UNIQ--math-00000006-QINU%60%22%27%7F%20

That's the stripmarker. In the old days of just last week, it would have looked like this:

%20%7FUNIQ--math-00000006-QINU%7F%20

But, earlier this week MediaWiki changed how it renders stripmarkers and so made it unrecognizable to the code that used to skip over <math>...</math> tags. The issue is fixed in the sandbox:

Ebbinghaus, H.-D.; Flum, J.; Thomas, W. (1994). Mathematical Logic (2nd ed.). New York: Springer. p. 11. ISBN 0-387-94258-0. By an alphabet ${\mathcal {A}}$ we mean a nonempty set of symbols.

and from squared triangular number:

Benjamin, Arthur T.; Orrison, M. E. (2002), "Two quick combinatorial proofs of $\textstyle \sum k^{3}={n+1 \choose 2}^{2}$" (PDF), College Mathematics Journal, 33 (5): 406–408.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:23, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! So as I suspected, it was something triggered by a change to Wikimedia. This is only visible because I've changed by rendering preferences to make these things visible, not by default, right? So putting it into the sandbox and waiting until the next major batch of updates, as you're doing, rather than rushing to get a fix out, seems like the right thing to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:18, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure because I'm not sure that I understand your question. If you mean the preferences at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, then no, none of those math options prevent the delete character error message. If you mean that you have been intentionally hiding all cs1|2 error messages by using the css specified at Help:CS1 errors#Controlling error message display then yes, because this error message is visible to all readers unless they specifically hide cs1|2 error messages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Ha! That's a cite and quote I added. Small world. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Some more talk page cleanup

I'm working through some of the Module talk:Citation/CS1 subpages in order to centralize those talk pages (as decided earlier) and Module talk:Citation/CS1/Updates exists. It has no main page and it's only linked to by ~10 pages. Should anything be done with it? --Izno (talk) 14:51, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Module talk:Citation/CS1/Error checking also. --Izno (talk) 14:52, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Archive them both someplace? Maybe make a miscellaneous archive into which to dump them? Perhaps Help talk:Citation Style 1/Centralized discussions/Miscellaneous archives? Or, maybe just move them to that folder or one similarly named so that the content doesn't have to be deleted and the original page redirected here.

And while we're talking about archives, can we do away with the enormous {{central}} template and just have a simple box in its place with a link to Help talk:Citation Style 1/Centralized discussions? That box is a big contributor to not landing at the anchor when you click into a section of this talk page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I already pushed the date validation talk page archives to module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 12, which is the 'parent' archive, so that's where I was going to put it. However, the two pages /Updates and /Error checking appear to be from the pre-auto-included /doc pages for modules, so I wasn't sure if the content was best "archived" or "incorporated elsewhere". The errors subpage can probably be archived (per Help:CS1 errors), but the Updates page? --Izno (talk) 17:27, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I would remove the archives templates currently being hosted in the {{central}} invocation but keep the list of redirected pages. What do you think? --Izno (talk) 17:27, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Nah. Because this page is primarily concerned with current topics, I don't see much reason to keep either of those lists here. We can have the bare-bones {{central}} template here like this:

{{central|text=the talk pages for all Citation Style 1 templates and modules redirect here.<br />A list of those talk pages and their historical archives can be found at [[Help talk:Citation Style 1/Centralized discussions]].}}

At Help talk:Citation Style 1/Centralized discussions we remove {{central}}, {{hidden}} and {{big}} templates, keep the <div>...</div> tags, and Bob's your uncle, ne?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:58, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

 Done on the central change. I've simply redirected the "Updates" page to this talk page and have redirected the "Errors" page to Help:CS1 errors. --Izno (talk) 20:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Much better, thanks.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:27, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

date=1011–922 BC

In MOS:DATERANGE 1011–922 BC is given as an example of a legitimate range. There was a discussion in Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6#Time to show date error messages?, which is self explanatory. The archived talk section ends with:

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

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

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

I am running an AWB script and in passing I came across an article (Aristotle) in which there is a citation:

{{cite web
| last =Cicero
| first =Marcus Tullius
| title =flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles
| work =Academica Priora
| date =106–43 BC
| url =http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/1/4/9/7/14970/14970-h/14970-h.htm#BkII_119
| accessdate =25 January 2007}}

It seems to me that as the date given meets the requirements of MOS:DATERANGE one of three things ought to be done. Add code to parse BC dates correctly, or BC dates ought to be silently ignored and not reported as an error, or the advise given by Jonesey95 should be added to the CS1/CS2 documentation. I don't mind which approach is adopted, but it is out of order to flag an error on a correctly formatted (MOS compliant) date without an explanation.-- PBS (talk) 13:27, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I have made what I think is a reasonable edit to Help:Citation Style 1. Help:Citation Style 2 seems to have been abandoned. I don't know the most efficient way to provide this information at Template:cite book, Template:cite web, Template:Citation, and so on. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:17, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Do not report as error. Rendering BC dates per MOS:DATERANGE is not a matter of style. Date ranges should be forward (from older-to-newer date), a practice that is firmly established. It just so happens that BC dates count down instead of up. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Jc3s5h. Your edit seems reasonable to me. As for providing this information in the documentation for the cite templates, there is already a link to the section you edited, so that seems adequate for the concise instructions we try to provide on the template documentation pages.

I'm not sure what the IP editor above is getting at. Dates before 100 AD are marked as errors in the CS1 templates. If you want to reopen a discussion about that, please do so in a separate section. This discussion is about the recommendation to give to editors who want to cite such dates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

The problem is the software underlying the template can't handle any year less than 100. So if you read a stone tablet carved in 3 BC, you will either have to live with the error message or not use a template to cite it. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:38, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I was offering my opinion on PBS' comment above: Add code to parse BC dates correctly, or BC dates ought to be silently ignored and not reported as an error, or the advise given by Jonesey95 should be added to the CS1/CS2 documentation. Not reporting the error (which doesn't mean it is ignored) seems like the least confusing/cumbersome option at present. It is not incompatible with adding proper advice to the doc. 65.88.88.69 (talk) 18:41, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

External link in publisher=

From the archive Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 10#External link in publisher=:

We are now flagging external links in |publisher= as an error. I have been unable to locate consensus discussion to start doing that.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|publisher=[http://www.example.com Publisher]|title=Title}}
Live	Title. Publisher. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
Sandbox	Title. Publisher. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)

Can someone please enlighten me? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:01, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

|publisher= was added to the list of parameters tested because of this discussion et seq.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:28, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The link given under discussion is now archived Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 10#Publisher plus.google.com.

Trappist the monk you used as justification for turning on logging of this "error" on some obscure sentence in Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher " If the publisher is notable and has an article independent of the "work", the "publisher" parameter can include a wiki-link to that article, but should never externally link to the publisher's website."

This was added by user:SMcCandlish at 16:05, 16 December 2011 (diff). Where was the consensus gained for the addition of this prescription? I ask because the very first entry on the talk page is: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 1#This help page not for novel rules and was written by user:Jc3s5h at 21:21, 23 December 2011 (several days after the addition of this obscure novel rule).

So I suggest unless there is a clear consensus to the contrary (and I do not mean two or three comments here) that this "rule" is removed and not acted upon until such time as an RfC is run that shows that this is a prohibition that has a consensus. -- PBS (talk) 14:13, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I think a change 4 years old can reasonably be construed as WP:SILENCE. The thread that Jc3s5h started had nothing to do with the December 16 change. --Izno (talk) 16:11, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

FWIW I agree with both SMcCandlish's addition and Trappist's software check. I think this is an error (or, sometimes, not so much an error as intentional spam) and should be flagged as an error. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:08, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@Izno I disagree there are/were hundreds (thousands?) of such links in the citation templates. This obsucre "rule" was ignored until forced into the open by a software change. There is a underlying assumption of bad faith in this rule. In fact a link is more useful, (for readers and editors), for a less notable publisher than for a notable one. If an editor sees that the publisher is known to "someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize" (to borrow a phrase from WP:AT) then a link to the publisher is not necessary. Ie if the publisher is notable, well known and reliable, (eg "Oxford University Press") then one leg of the three legged stool concerning "sources" in WP:V is met:

The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings:

• The type of the work (some examples include a document, an article, or a book)
• The creator of the work (for example, the writer)
• The publisher of the work (for example, Oxford University Press)

All three can affect reliability.

In cases such as "Oxford University Press" then a link is not needed to help an citation meet the requirements of WP:V. However Including a convenience link to a less well known publisher's website allows readers and editor to asses more easily if a less than notable publisher is reliable. This is the reason I include links to the "about page" non-notable publisher—particularly if the source being cited is a website. It has nothing to do with spam and is not as David Eppstein suggests an error. -- PBS (talk) 11:46, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Use found for accessdate parameter with paper sources

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth. In this edit the article creator acknowledges the article was compiled by cutting and pasting from other Wikipedia articles without reading the citations. My current proposal is to delete the article for lack of sources. But if instead editors step forward to read and verify the sources, those editors could mark the sources they read with |accessdate=. Then other editors could keep track of which sources have been verified, and which have not.

The presence of accessdate parameters is also useful in detecting this approach to creating an article in the first place; if the access dates are earlier than the creation date of the article, that raises a red flag. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

There is a template, {{Verify source}}, that is better suited. Mark each reference in the article under discussion. As each reference is checked, remove the tag. By this means, the task that needs to be accomplished is obvious to editors not familiar with the AfD. This method does not require a change at cs1|2.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:39, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Publisher Item Identifier (PII)

I noticed that this template does not have an entry field for the Publisher Item Identifier (PII). I was citing an article from the Journal of Civil Engineering and Urbanism which had a PII, but no DOI (digital object identifier). Is there a conversion table/website? --Bejnar (talk) 20:20, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

It looks like many publishers use the PII as the second part of the DOI. See this helpful page for some explanation. I don't think that page helps in this case, but some additional digging may turn up something useful.

You can always use |id= if you can't figure out the DOI. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:07, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

harvnb doesn't work correctly within the |in parameter

When using {{harvnb}} within the |in= parameter of {{cite book}}, the page is incorrectly appended following the word "and", while there should be just a comma. Outside {{cite book}} it works fine. See these examples:

Code

{{harvnb|DNC|2016|pages=100–159}}

Example 1 – {{harvnb}} used inside {{cite book}}

• Clinton, Hillary (2016). Who would trust a secret Neocon?. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |in= ignored (help)

Example 2 – {{harvnb}} used outside {{cite book}}

DNC 2016, pp. 100–159

Unfortunately I'm not enough into the whole CS1 module to find the bug, but am hopeful someone else does. Regards, PanchoS (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

|in= is an alias of the parameter |language=.

The {{harvnb}} parameter doesn't belong inside {{cite book}}. Instead, do this:

{{cite book |last=Clinton |first=Hillary |year=2016 |title=Who would trust a secret Neocon? |ref={{sfnref|DNC|2016}}}}

Clinton, Hillary (2016). Who would trust a secret Neocon?.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Usually, if the author is known, |ref=harv is the proper way to create a link from a shortened form to the full citation. It can be confusing to the reader to have differing author-date combinations for the two, which is why a non-"harv" value for |ref= is recommended when the author is unknown or cannot be determined. It may be that you are trying to cite a work (Clinton) that was included in another work (DNC). There are native template parameters that can handle these situations. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Citing software

I vaguely remember seeing a template to cite software, but can't find it. The key thing that seems missing is a parameter to give the version number, which is often critical for software. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:01, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I would use {{citation}} and |edition=v. xx.xx. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:39, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, scratch |edition=. Citation includes |version=. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:41, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

That seems to work, thanks Jc3s5h (talk) 22:25, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 26 March 2016 - LIBRIS

The "Cite book" template misses any suitable parameter for books that uses the Swedish LIBRIS system. These codes looks like 2219566. My suggestion is a parameter in accordance with the MARC Code for the Swedish Union Catalog "selibr". Ie .. Cite book | selibr=2219566 Ferrofield (talk) 21:25, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean by misses any suitable parameter for books that uses the Swedish LIBRIS system?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:33, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

This is, I suspect, another attempt at Template talk:Citation#Swedish LIBRIS database. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:53, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that. Now, there are 50 transclusions of {{LIBRIS}} and 246 pages that use the libris url (insource:http://libris.kb.se/bib/).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:10, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Is there any parameter that can harbor free text?Ferrofield (talk) 22:37, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

For a libris identifier? |id=

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:41, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, |id={{LIBRIS|2219566}} .Imzadi 1979 → 22:42, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I found it though by the hint of LIBRIS and what links here.. But it would be perhaps a good idea if the Cite book template documentation spells this out? and the LIBRIS template documentation is in essence empty. Ferrofield (talk) 23:00, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

With ~300 uses, that's above the threshold of what we typically implemented for identifiers (see Template_talk:Citation/Archive_4#Implementation). I would support adding this identifier. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:52, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Requesting edit—there's a typo on the "Template:Cite web" page

Hi, I noticed a typo in the "Template:Cite web" article when I was reading it for help. I'm not sure if this is the correct place to be requesting edits, but I'd thought I'd let anyone who is able to edit the article know about the typo.

The typo is right under the "Choosing between {{Cite web}} and {{Cite news}}" subheading. Currently, it states, "Before 2014, editors needed to decided whether to use {{Cite web}} or {{Cite news}} based on their features." The word "decided" should be changed to "decide" no? 104.10.252.77 (talk) 04:20, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

 Fixed. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for catching this. Also, for future reference, unlike the template itself, the template documentation is not locked — anyone, even not-logged-in users, can edit it. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:45, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Question: Which Template to use.

Where should I ask about which template to use if it is not clear from the documentation in the article? I'm specifically interested in how to cite a regulatory agencies FAQ's and other published opinions. I have seen these variations (the first four are for the exact same source):

1. found here
2. found: Genetically_modified_food's lede.
3. found Genetically_modified_food#Definition
4. found: Genetically_modified_crops's lede
5. found: Genetically_modified_organism#Mosquitoes

References

I prefer style #1 and #2's order, because it makes clear the author is the World Health Organization, and is consistent with MLA's style here, but I found no template for it. --David Tornheim (talk) 06:29, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps a bit of a kludge, but one could replace |publisher=World Health Organization with |author=World Health Organization in {{cite web}}. Boghog (talk) 07:04, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

References

Thanks! Good idea. --David Tornheim (talk) 09:34, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Except the Publisher isn't the Author, and MLA doesn't do it like you think it does. In this case, the author is unknown, even if he is known to be working on behalf of the WHO. MLA leaves the publisher after the title of the article (regardless whether the author is known or not)--see "A Page on a Web Site" For an individual page on a Web site, list the author or alias if known, followed by the information covered above for entire Web sites. Remember to use n.p. if no publisher name is available and n.d. if no publishing date is given. where the information above is Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site. Version number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available). Medium of publication. Date of access. --Izno (talk) 11:18, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I looked and everything agreed with the first MLA citation style for I gave here where Agency name goes where the author is, even Purdue's OWL website that you cited agreed [1]:

"Online Sources: ...Authors for websites are often corporations, or governments."

"Entire Website: United States Environmental Protection Agency. Drinking Water Standards. EPA, 8 July 2004. Web. 24 Jan. 2006"

(emphasis added)

The other universities had similar responses on how to handle government issued reports, etc.: Radford, EasyBib, Cornell, Walsh, UNF.

Columbia State had a similar response [2]:

"Most government documents do not list a personal author. The agency that issues a government publication is usually considered the author."

This one was a bit more complicated: Univ. Nevada, Reno

Please let me know if you agree that calling the EPA the author is okay. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:08, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

It depends on the citation style established in the article, or, in the absence of an established style, on the style you want to use. CS1 is not MLA. It is being developed (one hopes) primarily for the needs and expertise of Wikipedia readers and editors. The guideline for CS1 is to not substitute publisher for author, even when the latter is unknown. Imo, this is the correct approach for citations in general, regardless of style. 65.88.88.174 (talk) 14:55, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm surprised this is not more straightforward and established, given how common government documents must be in citations. I will agree with you that Wikipedia citations are not MLA, especially since MLA does not even require a URL. And I won't contest the guidelines for proper use of this or the other templates are without more information. My feeling is the templates support the use of citations rather than dictate what form the citations should take in the final product. So, as in my original question, perhaps this is just the wrong template to use for producing the correct citation form.

The definition of "author" and "publisher" is not so straightforward, without further evidence of an established definition on Wikipedia. Part of the reason I have been inclined to the form with Government Agency first (whether by using a template or otherwise) is because, unlike a book, a journal article, or conference presentation, the agency is taking responsibility for it, not whatever specific persons worked on preparing it. In fact, those who prepared the first version of the FAQ above might have been fired or reassigned and someone else became responsible for it--but these things are not transparent to the readers--by design. The agency often takes responsibility and credit for the document, not the author(s). That's one of the reasons the document has more authority and weight than other sources. So, it makes sense to me to put that first, rather than have the first thing be the title, which could be authored by anyone. So, I tend to agree with MLA that the author is the agency, even though this does not meet our normal understanding of an author.

As regards to publisher, this is not so straightforward either. My understanding of publisher is an entity like Random House or the Government Printing Office. These entities are somewhat independent of the author of the documents. If you look at some of the MLA references I gave you can see that they distinguish this [3]:

United States. Cong. House. Committee on House Administration. Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001. 107th Cong. 1st sess. H. Rept. 131, pt. 1. Washington: GPO, 2001. The Library of Congress. Thomas. Web. 12 January 2012.

The U.S. Congress is the author and the GPO is the publisher. This is less clear for documents that are self-published on the web, including the FAQ I presented.

I would like to bring this issue to the appropriate forum for dealing with standardization of Wiki-references, assuming we have one. After reviewing the MLA guidelines at the various universities, I am more firm in my belief that it makes more sense for us to follow MLA in putting the agency name first--as the "author"--than when I first wrote the post. Yet, I might agree that using an agency for author with this template may be a bad idea based on whatever assumptions the template has about the form of authors. I would like to know where to get the form I am suggesting confirmed, and how to use a template--if it exists--to accomplish the goal of getting it to produce as the end product with government agency first, as "author" and not misuse the template. I do think it is better to use a template whenever possible so our bots can review and check the citations, etc., which is why I came here rather than just doing the citation by hand in the form that I think is best. --David Tornheim (talk) 18:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I believe the distinction between publisher and author is much clearer. The author is the person or entity that creates the work. The publisher is the distributor of the work. Congressional committees author laws, so by rights the specific (by year) committee is the author. These may or may not be published (pending approval by the entire congress). If they are published, they are citable as legal documents, and the publisher of first instance is GPO. In the case of the WHO faq, this should be treated as any other work produced by staff writers (unless you know that it was produced by a specific department/section of WHO). The guideline for staff- (or unattributed) works as far as CS1 is concerned, is to just mention the publisher, with the implicit understanding that in the absence of named author(s), the publisher assumes editorial (and legal) responsibility, much the same way articles without a by-line in news sources are considered as fully backed by the publisher. In filling a CS1 template, it is recommended that as a courtesy, these contingencies are commented, e.g. |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line-->. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:40, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate the clarity of your sentences and explanation for proper use of the CS1 template. Your example of Congress makes sense. Your definition of publisher makes sense also. I can't agree that it is appropriate to compare a FAQ on the WHO website as comparable to an editorial in a major newspaper. Newspapers often endorse political candidates or propositions in their editorial sections. I cannot even imagine we could use that as WP:RS most of the time. It is true that the paper is backing the opinion and taking legal responsibility if they lie or for libel, but the kind of opinion they state is of a very different form than something the WHO would publish and stand behind, especially when it is stated in form that is intended to be read as factual rather than opinionated. My sense is the CS1 template may not be designed for this particular application of RS. If so, that leaves the question of which template is most appropriate for a government agency. I am just surprised this question has not come up before and that it is not documented somewhere, like it is for MLA. --David Tornheim (talk) 08:28, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

I didn't read anything in IP editor's comments that made any reference to a newspaper's right to take an editorial position. [A]rticles without a by-line in news sources are considered as fully backed by the publisher says nothing about opinion. The New York Times commonly did not attribute articles to a particular author: example. No doubt other newspapers did, and perhaps still do, the same.

cs1|2 is not MLA, is not Chicago, is not ALA, nor any other TLA. It is cs1|2 and is an amalgam of all of those with our own ideas tossed in. In cs1|2 the parameters are intended to hold the information appropriate to the parameter name: |author= gets the author; |publisher= gets the publisher, |date= gets a date, etc. Beneath the bonnet, these parameters and their data are made available as metadata to reference management tools. It is important that that information be correct.

The advice quoted by IP editor was added to Help:Citation Style 1#Authors with this edit which suggests to me that, indeed, handling of sources without identifiable authors has been considered and that an acceptable method has been adopted.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing to this: Help:Citation Style 1#Authors, which says:

Editors should use an |author= organizational citation when the cited source, such as a committee report, specifically names an official body or a sub-unit of the publisher as the collective author of the work, e.g. |author=Commission on Headphone Safety or |author=Rules Sub-committee.

When using |author= avoid citations like {{cite news|work=Weekday Times|author=Weekday Times editors|title=...}}, unless the article is on a field in which the majority of professional journals covering that field use such a citation style.

This seems consistent with what MLA says about government organizations, and that hence putting World Health Organization as the author would be appropriate in this context. And the scholarly documents put entities like the WHO, FAO and FDA as the author almost all the time. For the particular document above: [4], [5]. More examples in GM literature where organization is first (as the author): see citation 78; (These four are from the same document: [6], [7], [8],[9]);[10]; see citation 16;see citations 47-52. So can we all agree that making the WHO or World Health Organization the author is appropriate in this case as being consistent with the instructions for this template? --David Tornheim (talk) 10:31, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I looked at the FAO link you provided above. As is typical with many government organizations, their document repository links are lagging, many having not been updated. I was able to open a pdf document through their ftp server, and FAO's citation is incorrect as far as cs1|2 is concerned:

FAO/WHO. 2000. Safety aspects of genetically modified foods of plant origin. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, Geneva, Switzerland. 29 May-2 June 2000 (available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/esn/food/gmreport.pdf; accessed March 2004)

The authors in this instance are known (there's a list of the reporting experts on pages 26–27), and the publisher should not be used instead of author per cs1|2. Imo, the proper cs1 template would be {{cite techreport}}. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:24, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Although I agree the work itself appears to be a "technical report", and indeed I saw the list of authors at the end of the report, I searched to see how that report is cited in the literature. With this Google search, every single one of the first five references was in a form similar to the above, with FAO and/or WHO as the author. That appears to be the proper way to cite it in this field. These are the first five that came up: [11],[12],[13],[14],[15] --David Tornheim (talk) 18:42, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

{{cite techreport}} was suggested under the assumption that cs1 would be used. As it is stated in its doc, it is appropriate for a variety of non-peer-reviewed scientific (or quasi-scientific "expert") literature. As has also been stated above, cs1 is not mandatory; you could use the citation style of your choice, taking into account any pre-existing contributions to the article. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 21:02, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Cite web vs. Cite news

Publisher parameter inconsistent formatting

This is in relation to two reversions by Codename Lisa of my edits: to Template:Cite news/doc and to Template:Cite web/doc. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:57, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Moved from User talk:Redrose64 § .7B.7BCite web.7D.7D vs. .7B.7BCite news.7D.7D

 – Redrose64 (talk) 17:56, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi.

I'll get right to the point: It is quite okay to use a mixture of both only for news sources. The problem starts when {{Cite news}} is used along with {{Cite web}} to cite news websites on the web. It happened to me in one FA nomination: They said my citation style was inconsistent because some publishers were in parentheses and some were not. Actually, the main objector was User:Nikkimaria and she put it much vaguer terms. Of course, later I discovered she and others have done this in other FAs as well.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 10:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Once the |url= parameter had been added to all the Citation Style 1 templates, the intention of {{cite web}} has been that it should only be used for web sources that don't fit one of the other templates. That is, for news sources, {{cite news}} should be used - even where the article is only available online, such as with The Huffington Post. Where a website is used as a source, and that web page is not a news page, the use of {{cite web}} is quite in order, even when {{cite news}} has been used elsewhere on the page.

If Nikkimaria (talk · contribs) et al. have problems with the layout of the template output, it should be addressed by altering the template, not by using a different template. The place to bring that up is at Help talk:Citation Style 1 (that being the page that all the template talk pages redirect to), not on a FA nom. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:44, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I would have loved you if you showed up and said it in that FA nom of Microsoft Security Essentials. But apparently, that FA requirement is very well etched in stone and at least has more force than the word of a newcomer who has dared a FA nomination shortly after coming to Wikipedia! (That's me, in 2012—2013.)

Also, regardless of the intention, since 2014, the output of these two templates have been almost similar, so much so that I often contemplated nominating one of them for deletion. (Of course, this is something that cannot be done yet.) But the point is, I myself can no longer call that requirement erroneous. One pair of parenthesis is all the glorious magical difference that there is.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 11:07, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: I don't hang around FAC except for articles which I've worked on, or where I've been invited there by a notice on a WikiProject's talk page. I don't think that I've ever had anything to do with Microsoft Security Essentials, which is probably why I said nothing at its FA nom. You don't link to that, so I'm unsure whether you mean Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Microsoft Security Essentials/archive1, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Microsoft Security Essentials/archive2 or Wikipedia:Featured article review/Microsoft Security Essentials/archive1 - but none of those mention either {{cite news}} or {{cite web}} - or indeed any templates that concern citations. Also, none of them have anything about publishers in (or not in) parentheses.

Anyway, the phrase "articles that use a mixture of {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}} may fail" in the version that you prefer implies that the two templates cannot coexist in the same article, which begs the question "how do I cite a web page that isn't a news source?" --Redrose64 (talk) 15:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

First, we look at WP:FACR. The following is one of the requirements. Focus at the part I colored green.

consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes

This is an example of a {{Cite web}} citation:

Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

This is an example of a {{Cite news}} citation:

Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. (Hearst Corporation). Retrieved May 26, 2015.

I have highlighted the minuscule different between the two with bigger font and the green color. As long as some of your citations have the parentheses and some don't, you are article does not have consistently formatted inline citations.

Here is exactly what Nikkimaria said: "multiple inconsistencies in reference formatting. Compare for example FNs 50 and 51, or 55 and 56, or 22 and 63".

Now, we go to your question: "how do I cite a web page that isn't a news source?" The answer is: The same way you cite a page that is a news source. Either all your web sources must use {{Cite news}} (news and non-news) or all your web sources must use {{Cite web}} (news and non-news). Whatever you do, do not let the names of these templates fool you.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Codename Lisa: as of the revision of the article I was looking at, it appears that each of those compared pairs used the same template as the other, but just used parameters differently. I've also made comments to the effect that citations to the same website should generally use the same template. I don't think I've ever said that {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} can't coexist in an article generally. Could you please clarify where you think I or another reviewer has said that? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:07, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: And I don't think I've ever said that {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} absolutely can't coexist in an article either; every time, I added the phrase "for web sources". Redrose64 claimed that {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} cannot coexist for news sources only. I contested it. That's all. AFAIK, {{Cite news}} can cite offline news sources while {{Cite web}} can cite online ones. That's pretty much what you said after the FAC.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: This is your preferred form:

articles that use a mixture of {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}} may fail to become a Featured Article

and this is my modified form:

articles that use a mixture of {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}} for news sources may fail to become a Featured Article

Do you see the difference? Yours implies that in order to become an FA, an article can use either {{Cite news}} or {{Cite web}} but not both. What if I have two statements in an article, one sourced from a newspaper printed in 1964, and the other sourced from a non-news website? Must I use {{Cite web}} for the newspaper? Or must I use {{Cite news}} for the website? Neither is logical: that's my problem here. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:25, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

My dear Redrose64, have you ever heard of the word "context"? That whole section is talking about web sources and even says {{Cite web}} cannot be used for offline sources. Indeed if this was your sole concern, you should have skipped bringing this discussion here, so that I patch the sentence with a compromise that you and I both love.

And I see that you have ignored all my comments on the caveats of your version. That it implies one can use a mixture of {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}} for non-news site. You seem to have taken for granted that nobody makes that mistake while I am experiencing and countering that mistake on a daily basis.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 19:34, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

That's not quite what I meant, although I see how my phrasing may have caused confusion. You can cite online news articles using {{cite news}} as long as you do so for all online news articles, not just some of them; but that doesn't extend to non-news websites (which is what I was intending by "web sources" in that discussion). Nikkimaria (talk) 00:41, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly what I get from what you said. Believe me, we are on the same page. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:34, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: It is simply wrong to use {{cite news}} for a webpage that isn't news. Accordingly, I have brought the thread to wider attention, at the (redirected) talk pages of the two templates concerned. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:58, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: If you are uncomfortable because there is the word "news" in the template name, use the other one. Template names are arbitrary strings to me. They don't make me uncomfortable so easily. —Codename Lisa (talk) 18:03, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Redrose: You have apparently had some very silly reviews on the point.

That said, I would support changing cite web to be more like cite news on this point. What do the other citation template do in a similar instance? Do any of the others add parentheses around the publisher? --Izno (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks for your support for a change that is already done in 2014. And would you mind not insulting others? Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 18:05, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I called the review silly, not the reviewer.

I just checked your specific reference and it produced problematic output (to me):

cite news:

Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

cite web:

Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

cite book:

Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

So the underlying template is still inconsistent. We should change that, not your article as pointed out. --Izno (talk) 18:09, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Let's check:

{{Cite book}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

{{Cite encyclopedia}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |work= ignored (help)

{{Cite journal}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

{{Cite press release}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). "Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle (Press release). Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

{{Cite thesis}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Houston Chronicle (Thesis). Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

{{Cite techreport}}:
Silverman, Dwight (July 15, 2011). Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Houston Chronicle (Technical report). Hearst Corporation. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 18:20, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I am unable to discern a pattern or a logical reason why the publisher is sometimes in parentheses and sometimes not. Unless one is forthcoming, I recommend removing the parentheses from around the publisher parameter value in all CS1 templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:14, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Parentheses are added if |work= is set and the template is not {{cite encyclopaedia}}, {{cite web}}, {{cite pressrelease}}, or {{cite podcast}}.

Cite encyclopedia. Publisher. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |work= ignored (help)

"Cite web". Work. Publisher.

"Cite press release". Work (Press release). Publisher.

"Cite podcast". Work (Podcast). Publisher.

Here, different templates and |work= set:

Cite book. Publisher. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

"Cite journal". Work. Publisher.

"Cite news". Work. Publisher.

those same but |work= not set:

Cite book. Publisher.

"Cite journal". Publisher. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

"Cite news". Publisher.

The key here is |work= and those four templates. The questions I have are: Why are parentheses added when |work= is set? Why were those four templates excluded? I can answer the last question for {{cite podcast}}: to be the same as {{cite web}} because it is the same except for the parenthetical annotation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that breakdown. If that is the explanation in its entirety, this looks like a case of "we've always done it this way", and I suspect that there was never a considered discussion about how to treat the publisher parameter. My guess is that {{cite web}} was written by one person or group, and {{cite book}} was written by a different person or group, or someone changed one of them at one point without a discussion, and here we are.

Let's get rid of those parentheses. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Add this into your calculations. Here are a couple of {{cite book}} templates with and without |work= and with (I think) all of the publication specific parameters:

{{cite book |author=Author |title=Cite book |work=Work |location=Location |publication-place=Publication Place |publication-date=2016 |date=2010 |publisher=Publisher}}

Author (2010). Written at Location. Cite book. Publication Place: Publisher (published 2016). {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); |work= ignored (help)

{{cite book |author=Author |title=Cite book |location=Location |publication-place=Publication Place |publication-date=2016 |date=2010 |publisher=Publisher}}

Author (2010). Written at Location. Cite book. Publication Place: Publisher (published 2016). {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Because the cs1|2 templates don't all render in exactly the same way, we should do something similar to the above for all of them. That way, we can see how they all render and make a more informed decision.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:44, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I have done what I suggested. Here is a link to my sandbox: Special:Permalink/712675628.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:07, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

(←) I would guess that it's because of the basis of these templates was an external style book. My inclination, given that these modules have evolved from what external style books say to do, is to remove the parentheses in all places also. MLA, Chicago, and APA don't appear to use parentheses from a brief skim of what's online. --Izno (talk) 11:57, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

@Izno: CS1 developed using APA as a basis, and APA uses parentheses for the year/date of publication after the author. It's also been heavily influenced by Chicago, which uses parentheses to group location, publisher and date of publication after a title. Imzadi 1979 → 12:13, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Chicago is a moving target. If I remember correctly, way back when, they only footnotes and endnotes. But now they allow either notes or author-date parenthetical cites. So if we want to continue to be influenced by Chicago, we would do something like this:

Citation template (Chicago p. 530)

1. Emery Blackfoot, Chance Encounters (Boston: Serendipity Press, 1987)

cite book (Chicago p. 652)

Barbor, Ian. 1974. Myths, models, and paradigms: A comparative study in science and religion. New York: Harper and Row.

Jc3s5h (talk) 13:22, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Yet another reason for us to write our own style guide.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:07, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Hi. So does all this means that the cosmetic difference between {{Cite web}} and {{Cite news}} gets eliminated in the near future? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 20:23, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't know. There have been a lot of words expended here with precious few suggesting a path forward – at least, I don't see much expression of opinion about what, if anything, we should do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:47, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Well, I suggest all CS1 citation template must use parentheses consistently; i.e. when there is a |work= include it and when there is not, don't include it. Must I start an explicit RFC? —Codename Lisa (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I notice that {{citation}} puts the publisher in parenthesis, if there is a work, regardless of whether the mode not set or is set to cs1. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:36, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct. |mode=cs1 does not change {{citation}} to another kind of template. The only things that change are the separator character, terminal punctuation, and enable/disable automatic |ref=harv. The template is still {{citation}} so it obeys the rules that I stated earlier.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

There is another reason for the appropriate selection of template - quite apart from variant layouts, they apply different classes. All of them apply the citation class, but those in the Citation Style 1 group apply a second class as well - for {{cite book}}, this is book; for {{cite news}}, this is news; and for {{cite web}}, this is web. These may be found by examining the HTML source, or by checking the template - go to the template page, click "View source" (or "Edit" if you are an admin), and look for the |CitationClass= parameter. The value of that is the extra class that is applied. These extra classes are not used by English Wikipedia, but other organisations may make use of them when examining the references in our web pages. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:57, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Those classes are trivial CSS technicalities and are otherwise insignificant.They are means to an end, not the goal.

If you want to see what it their purpose, I suggest you open your browser's developer console and type the following while you are in this page:

$(".web")

Feel free to inspect the resulting object.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 19:42, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Position of date depends on presence of author

There is an inconsistency that seems more significant to me; there was a consensus to fix it a long time ago but the fix has never been done. Consider these cites without an author:

{{Cite book}}:
Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows. Hearst Corporation. July 15, 2011. Retrieved May 26, 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

{{Cite journal}}:
"Microsoft envisions a universal OS, but it might not be called Windows". Houston Chronicle. Hearst Corporation. July 15, 2011. Retrieved May 26, 2015.

Notice how, for all the cites that have an author, the date is right after the author and in parentheses, but when there is no author the date moves to nearly the end of the citation, and there are no parentheses. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:38, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I have split this into its own subthread so that we can keep the publisher and date discussions separated.

I think the above refers to a June 2013 RfC from this page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

RFC: Should all CS1 citation templates put the publisher name between parentheses when there is a work title?

Hello everyone,

According to a test case compiled by User:Trappist the monk, out of 23 templates that implement the CS1 citation sytle, 17 of them place the publisher name (from |publisher=) between parentheses when there is a work title (from |work= or its numerous aliases like |newspaper=, |website=, etc.) In addition, {{Citation}} also does this (with or without |mode=cs1.) In all 24 cases, the parentheses do not appear when there is no work title.

The question is: Should we change the remaining 6 to adhere to this already-dominant style? In this discussion your verdicts may be:

1. Support adding parentheses to 6 templates — Certainly one style (CS1) can only have one form used consistently, not two inconsistent forms for no reason whatsoever. Templates that need to be changed are {{Cite web}}, {{Cite encyclopedia}}, {{Cite mailing list}}, {{Cite newsgroup}}, {{Cite press release}}, and {{Cite podcast}}.
2. Support removing parentheses from 18 templates — Templates that need to be changed are: {{Cite AV media}}, {{Cite AV media notes}}, {{Cite book}}, {{Cite conference}}, {{cite DVD notes}}, {{Cite episode}}, {{Cite interview}}, {{Cite journal}}, {{Cite magazine}}, {{Cite map}}, {{Cite news}}, {{Cite report}}, {{Cite serial}}, {{Cite sign}}, {{Cite speech}}, {{Cite techreport}}, {{Cite thesis}}, {{Citation}} (when |mode=cs1 is set)
3. Retain status quo — in case you have a genius reason as to why consistency among different template implementing the same style must not be established.

I'd like to invite the people already in the discussion to participate: Jonesey95, Jc3s5h, Redrose64, Trappist the monk, Imzadi1979, Izno, Nikkimaria

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 17:44, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Poll

• Option 2 - remove the parentheses from the 17 templates that include them. This will maintain a consistent form throughout. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:01, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  Which is actually the equivalent to "Oppose" but without a genius reason. —Codename Lisa (talk) 18:20, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  No, it's not. You specifically framed "Oppose" above as supporting inconsistency among different templates implementing the same style; my vote very clearly does not do that. I'm simply proposing a different means of obtaining consistency. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:40, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  You are opposing my proposal. Hence it is option 2, "Oppose". All you can conclude it that the potential reason I provided was not all-encompassing.Looks like someone has changed the RFC. NVM.

  Anyway, why change 18 (not 17) other templates?

  Best regards,

  Codename Lisa (talk) 19:12, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  Because, as Trappist's tests show, all of them leave out the parentheses when no |work= is included, and I think it makes sense to be consistent in that way as well. I would also anecdotally suggest that |publisher= currently appears far more often without parentheses, given that it is most often filled in {{cite web}} (which never puts it in parentheses) and {{cite book}} (which puts it in parentheses only when |work= is present, which is rare for book citations). The other templates are for the most part far less common, or in some cases use of |publisher= is not as prevalent (eg. journals or newspapers) as it is for books. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:37, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

• I'm amenable to options 1 or 2. I prefer option 2 slightly to option 1, but whatever floats the mass's boat. --Izno (talk) 19:16, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
• Support consistency— so either the last six get them added, or the other 17 have them removed. I'd probably prefer the addition to the six over the elimination of the parentheses from the other 17. There's another consideration I have in mind, but it's outside the scope of this RfC. Imzadi 1979 → 20:30, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 - remove the parentheses from the 17 templates that include them. Taking inspiration from the Chicago Manual of Style, a particular form of citation either puts the publisher in parenthesis, or not. It does not depend on whether there is just one title, or two (such as article and journal titles, or chapter and book titles). Chicago does make a distinction, but it is on whether the cite is a footnote/endnote versus a bibliography entry, and we don't seem to be interested in distinguishing on the basis of whether we are using the cs1 mode or cs2 mode. Since the majority of our citations use the cs1 mode, let's no put the publisher in parentheses. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:36, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
• Don't care so long as the end result means that articles are no longer forced to use the wrong cite template in order to satisfy WP:WIAFA criterion 2c. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:49, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
• Support Options 1 or 2. I don't care which one is chosen, as long as the CS1 citations either use parentheses all of the time or none of the time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:44, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

• comment – This statement in the RfC is false: In addition, {{Citation}} also does this when |mode=cs1 is set. |mode= does not change how Module:Citation/CS1 renders |publisher=.—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  In that case, it is not false. If it always exhibits said behavior, then without doubt, it exhibits said behavior when |mode=cs1 is set. Only a case-effect relationship is absent. But nevertheless, it is true. —Codename Lisa (talk) 18:20, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Recycled urls

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Recycled url

The Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign lobbied from 2007 for a new UN gender equality entity, with a website at http://www.gearcampaign.org. It achieved its goals in 2010 and dissolved, letting the domain name lapse. Now the domain name is being used by a blog about electric battery technology. The effect is that links in the Gender Equality Architecture Reform article point to the home page of the electric battery blog. Two suggestions have been made:

• Add |archiveurl=. Problem: there may be no archive copy. And in this case the robots.txt on the electric battery blog is preventing access to archive copies (if they exist).
• Add {{dead link}}. Problem: the link is not dead. Someone may come along, check the link, find it is not dead at all, and remove the {{dead link}}

The url should be preserved. The source page was there once, and quite possibly it is preserved in an archive somewhere which may become accessible in the future. Perhaps the citation template should have a parameter like |usurped-url=yes/no that would suppress the url link and add a message like (page no longer at original location). I am not sure if it should display the url, which is not useful to the general reader. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:58, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

If the original page is archived, the archived url could be added to the template, and the dependent parameter dead-url could be set to |dead-url=usurped, so that it points to the archive even when the non-applicable url is live. I suggest a search for the original page at the various online archives, maybe there is a capture somewhere. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 21:21, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

That works today when the original url is archived. But often it is not archived or, as in this example, even if it is archived the current robots.txt is blocking access to the archive. We need a solution for situations when a search in the archives for the original page fails. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

If you are certain that the original website publisher had forbidden archiving, there is little to be done.

1. You could ask the original publisher to somehow make available their own copy of the site (if any). I think this would be regarded as a primary source, since there would be no way to compare it with the live website as it was published.
2. Maybe a reliable (per Wikipedia) 3rd party has downloaded/screen-captured the website in question somewhere?
3. Reliable sources may be citing/mentioning the original website; you could use that info.

In all cases though, it would imo be against guideline to enter the resulting url in a citation of the now defunct organization. You are no longer citing that. You are citing information about the organization and its website. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 14:59, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

We have no way of telling whether the original website publisher forbade archiving, or whether the original page was archived at all. In this case the original publisher no longer exists and a search finds no online version of the original page. All we know is that, assuming good faith, a statement in the article was supported by a web page with that title at that url on that access date. The url now points to a completely different page. The question is how to represent that in the citation. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

robots.txt will not include a website unless the publisher expressly requests it. If the site was up for any length of time, and the publisher did not forbid it, it is likely some WebCrawler or other captured a snapshot. Again, I suggest you search these archives for possible captures during the time the site was up. The other option is not to include any reference to the website in the citation; it looks unverifiable. You can, as suggested, include refs from reliable sources about the website. 68.166.197.2 (talk) 22:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• Perhaps the example is confusing. Assume an article on goldfish breeding cites a web page found in 2009 at xyz.com. The XYZ Society was an authority on goldfish. The page was never archived and the XYZ Society was dissolved. Later, xyz.com was acquired by an unrelated organization. A statement in the article on goldfish breeding was supported by a web page about goldfish at xyz.com in 2009. The url now points to a completely different page. The question is how to represent that in the citation. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Since the webpage no longer exists in any form, the specific citation is unverifiable, and it cannot support any statement. Whether the url now points elsewhere is irrelevant. I would recommend using a different source (and citation) to support said statement, if it is essential to the article. One example may be a reliable source that 1. mentions the no-longer existing webpage and 2. the specific content in that webpage that is pertinent to the statement. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 00:59, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Links go dead all the time. If we cannot find an archive url we flag them as {{dead link}}. We do not remove the statement that relies on the dead link, and do not remove the citation, but just note that the link is no longer live. We keep a record of the source even though the source cannot now be retrieved. That policy will not change. This is a special case where the dead link has come back to life in a completely different form. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:15, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

@Aymatth2: I think you might be misunderstanding the "dead link" term here. If you were citing http://www.example.com/special_report.pdf published in 2009, and now the new website does not have a "special_report.pdf" file, then the link is dead. Without any archived copies of the old website accessible, it's as if the only copy of a book being cited were destroyed. In either case, it's not longer verifiable in any form. Imzadi 1979 → 02:23, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: If there is no longer a file at http://www.example.com/special_report.pdf the www.example.com server may still handle a request for that url. It may give a "404 File not found" message, or a nicer "Ooops!" message. It may give a search screen or simply present the home page, as with http://www.gearcampaign.org/lost_file.php. The link is truly dead if the browser cannot find the domain or the server says the page does not exist. If the server comes back with a meaningful page, I would say the link has been "usurped", although I dislike the term because it implies something illegal. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:28, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Does this excerpt from the {{cite web}} documentation help?

dead-url: When the URL is still live, but pre-emptively archived, then set |dead-url=no. This changes the display order with the title retaining the original link and the archive linked at the end. When the original URL has been usurped for the purposes of spam, advertising, or is otherwise unsuitable, setting |dead-url=unfit or |dead-url=usurped will not link to the original URL in the rendered citation; |url= is still required. Other accepted values are y, yes, or true. Alias: deadurl.

I think that "usurped" was designed for this situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:43, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Not quite. |dead-url=usurped was intended for the similar case where the original |url= points to something inappropriate and there is an archive of the source that is available through |archive-url=. In this case, the original |url= points to something inappropriate but there is no archive of the source for |archive-url=.

I think that Editor Aymatth2 is looking for a way to prevent |url= from linking |title= like we do with |dead-url=usurped. This preserves the record of the source url, but the rendered title isn't linked. We might accomplish this with |dead-url=usurped no archive or |dead-url=unfit no archive.

Cite web comparison

Wikitext	{{cite web|dead-url=usurped no archive|format=PDF|title=GEAR Campaign Working Group|url=http://www.gearcampaign.org/uploads/cms/_images/4.2010%20GEAR%20Campaign%20Working%20Group.pdf}}
Live	"GEAR Campaign Working Group" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
Sandbox	"GEAR Campaign Working Group" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Editor Aymatth2 might contact Internet Archive to see if there is a way around the robots.txt issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

The above "usurped no archive" would work for me. The url is preserved, because maybe the page was in fact archived somewhere we never heard of, but the link is suppressed. I am pessimistic about Internet Archive doing anything about robots.txt. A change in name of the owner of a domain may just indicate a corporate name change or takeover. Internet Archive is probably correct to respect current robots.txt restrictions even if they were not there in the past. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:28, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I wonder why an unverifiable url needs to be preserved. It adds nothing to the citation or to the statement it supposedly supports. If the only support for that statement was contained in the allegedly existing webpage, then this statement could now be challenged according to WP:V. The function of |dead-url= is to substitute the url when an archive exists. The function of {{dead-link}} is to signal editors that there is a problem url. If that url reputedly contained a source, and there is no other substitute for the url and/or the source, then the source does not exist.

Please find out how robots.txt works before assuming anything: see here. The Internet Archive has nothing to do with it, if the current legal owner requests it. Also the current exclusion does not mean that the page was never archived. There may well be snapshots of the page before the publisher added the exclusion. If there has been a change in publisher the old archived pages may still be public. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:21, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

There are many possible ways to find the new home of a URL that has become dead. A trick that might be unknown to an editor who comes across a dead url may be known to other editors. An editor who is a subject matter expert might know the new website of an organization, or be able to think of search terms that someone who is a good general-interest editor would not think of. So the dead url should remain as a clue to editors who may be able to find where it has moved to. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. However, if the citation depended solely on that url, it is now violating Wikipedia guidelines and policy on verifiability. It should be removed, pending return to verifiability, and the previously supported text should be flagged with {{cn}}. 184.75.21.30 (talk) 20:59, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

At least initially, I think {{verify source}} should be used rather than just deleting the inline citation. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Various government agencies and private companies maintain private internet archives which may become available in the future. We should assume good faith, keep the citation, retain the url and accessdate for potential future use, but suppress the usurped url in the citation display. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:31, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

There can be no assumption of good faith when it comes to verifiability. WP:V is a basic policy and it is one of the clearest such binding documents in Wikipedia. If a source is unsupported it just doesn't belong. I agree with flagging it with {{verify source}}. As is clear this is a temporary measure. If the source cannot be verified after a suitable length of time (which may be a short as hours for highly controversial subjects), any reference to it should be removed. 184.75.21.30 (talk) 23:20, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

A proposal that all citations to un-archived dead links should be removed after a specified period of time could be raised at the Village Pump. This discussion is about how to represent citations to un-archived dead links that have been usurped. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Well this is not a proposal, but unambiguous existing, binding policy. Statements must be supported by citations of sources. Citations must be verifiable. If they are not, they cite nothing. The fact that the URL is usurped is a secondary technicality. What is not secondary is that whatever the allegedly supported statement claims, cannot be verified. It therefore does not belong in any encyclopedia. Flagging with {{verify source}} is an inducement to quickly (per WP:V) rectify this. Otherwise, it should be removed. As the policy makes clear, there is no way around this. 160.79.53.242 (talk) 00:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Some say urls just clutter up a citation. Others say they should be provided as a courtesy if available. There is certainly no requirement to provide a url. This discussion belongs at the Village Pump, not here. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:33, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

This is not the question in this case. Here there is no proper url about the material cited. Some say that the url in question pointed elsewhere at some time in the past. You might as well be saying that you've seen a pig fly. Who can tell? 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:02, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:V is being misunderstood here. It does not require everything to be supported by citations. Nor does it say anything like "if a source is unsupported it just doesn't belong". WP:V requires references for "all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged", which is amplified as

All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. Please remove contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced immediately.

If it's unchallenged, and is not a quotation, and is not a contentious claim concerning a living person, it implicitly satisfies WP:V. It might not satisfy other policies though (not just WP:BLP), but that's not the issue here. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:29, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Interesting. Is the phrase All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable ambiguous? This is not a matter of choice. The material must be verifiable. Also, Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. Any material that needs a source. This discussion is about a statement relying a source that does not exist (some say it existed in the past, but this cannot be verified). Where exactly is the misunderstanding? 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:02, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

This comment moved from Help talk:Citation Style 1#duplicated styling:

If a |dead-url=usurped no archive value is added (bad practice btw), then its superset |dead-url=no archive must be added. And then logically, |dead-url= must stop being dependent on |archive-url=. 65.88.88.200 (talk) 14:24, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

And concurrent with this value being added to the parameter, we will get documentation to show us how to verify that an allegedly usurped url is actually usurped, an allegation evident by the inclusion of said url in the citation. Obviously such verification path will be also be immediately evident in the template output, since this is what citations are there for. All right, then. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 17:25, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Because I don't read any of the above as a definite 'yes, do this' or 'no, don't do this', and so that I can update the live modules, I have hidden the code that supports |dead-url=usurped no archive.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

page question?

I have a fact from a magazine (using cite journal). The article in the magazine goes from page from 11-14, *but* the single fact being referenced is on page 13. So, do I have pages=11-14 or page=13? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs)

The single page. --Izno (talk) 00:45, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

And {{cite magazine}} if the periodical is a magazine and not a scholarly or academic journal. Others apparently disagree with Editor Izno since many many journal cites list all of the pages that an article spans which, to my mind, doesn't really aid the reader in locating the supporting text. I, however, do agree: if the fact is on one page, identify that page in the cs1 template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, I disagree: the full page range is part of the identification of the article, and it is standard practice to give it for journal articles and contributed chapters of edited books. The specific page number is also useful information, but in these cases it would have to go outside the template. Kanguole 01:05, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I might agree that you should cite the page range if the entire page range supported the statement being made. But that is clearly not the case being considered. I don't see how I can agree to the page range identifying the article, much less why it should be standard practice when no other types of works do the same. --Izno (talk) 01:39, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Use {{cite magazine}} and |page=13. The reader should not be expected to hunt through the entire article to find the supporting statement. The identification of the article is not a reason for using a page range, but is a reason why you should also make sure that |title= is filled in with the title of the article. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

When citing journal articles, it's standard academic practice to give the page range; similarly when citing chapters in books. The rationale is that in both cases we are dealing with a contribution: the 'published entity' is the journal volume or the book; the page range locates the contribution within that entity. When the article or chapter is long, I've usually also given an individual page or pages, outside the template as Kanguole says above. However, I've had these 'extra' pages removed by at least one editor on the grounds that it's not normal practice. When |pages= is being used for the 'contribution', I'm wondering whether we can provide an extra parameter for the more precise location. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I might be persuaded that identifying all of the pages of an article or a chapter has value in a bibliographic listing of the author's writings, though I'm not really sure what that value is because identifying both the article title and all of its pages seems redundant to me. I am hard put to imagine how identifying all of the source's pages in a citation helps a Wikipedia reader verify the content of our articles. Searching through an entire journal article is more difficult than searching through a single page – even if you have an electronic copy and can figure out a workable ctrl+f search term.

I think that this 'academic practice' is inappropriate for a general audience; much like abbreviated journal titles are inappropriate for those outside of the specialty. I wonder if this practice is a result of laziness on the part of our editors who are aided by tools like RefToolbar which returned this when I gave it a PMID:

{{cite journal|last1=Mosher|first1=DF|last2=Wing|first2=DA|title=Synthesis and secretion of alpha2-macroglobulin by cultured human fibroblasts.|journal=The Journal of experimental medicine|date=1 February 1976|volume=143|issue=2|pages=462-7|pmid=55456}}

The work is done and because it was done by the machine must be correct, right? Hardly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:16, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

If you are trying to find a paper in a bound volume of a journal in a library (and, yes, sometimes you still have to do that!) then the number of the first page is very helpful. The same applies to a chapter in book, or any other kind of contribution you want to find within a printed work. The end page is just convention, I think. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Isn't that why someone invented the table of contents? A proper citation includes the page number where the supporting text can be found. No need to include the article's first page number (or its last).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I think giving the entire page range might go back to the days when, as a courtesy, libraries would send copies of an article to another library. This way, an engineering major who had a student job as a library aide could make a copy of a French-language history journal while hung over from a party last night. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:35, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I agree with you re the page number where the supporting text can be found, at least for contributions longer than a "few pages". However, I'm not sure there's a consensus for this for journal articles, particularly since it often means multiple references using something like {{sfn}}, and as I said above, I've had them removed. Anyway, WP:CITEVAR protects styles currently in use, so we're stuck with them, and there's no prospect of a change there. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

For journal articles, best practice is to give the full page range. If it's important to know exactly were, you can use |pages=14–19 [17] or similar ("See p. 17 in Smith (2012)." / "See p. 17 in Smith J. (2012) "Important article". Important Journal. 6(4):14–19.") Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:31, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Using |pages=14–19 [17] would pollute the metadata, which assumes that |pages= contains the full page range of the article. In addition to the other solutions, the issue can be avoided by using shortened footnotes or {{rp}}. Kanguole 17:48, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

{{rp}} is a blight upon the world though. Better to have bad metadata and correct visual outputs than those horrors. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:17, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I would put it so strongly, but I also quite disllike {{rp}}. It gunks up the appearance of the article and gratuitously splits the information you're looking for into different places, for no benefit at all that I can see. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with "blight upon the world". {rp} was an attempt to provide a useful bit of information (a specific location within a source). But it is totally in the wrong place, and reflects a lack of understanding of how to use the available tools. It should be deprecated. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:43, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

As to the broader issue: it is mostly definitely established standard practice that the citation of a source, magazines as well as journals, is to give the full page range. This has various benefits, including showing how big the article is (giving an idea of how much material it has, and how comprehensive). If one uses a source only once, and doesn't want to add a separate short cite simply to provide a specific location, just add the specific page number (or section or whatever) following the citation template. E.g.: <ref> {{citation ... |pages= 11-14}}, p.13. </ref>. All the information is present, in a form and the place where it is understood, unlike the cryptic ^[1]13. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:49, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I regularly use this approach, but it does create a small problem with links. If the information is on p.13 and the source is online, it's reasonable to expect a link to this page. So where do you put it? If you use something like [http://... p.13], then you can't put an access date in the citation since this produces an error without |url=. So you have to put a URL for the whole source, even though it's not actually needed. If designing a citation template from the start, I'd suggest something like |pagespan= for the full page range and reserve |p= and |pp= for the location of the information. But I guess it's too late now. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, |p= and |pp= do point to the location of the information within the source: but they do that from {{Harv}}. Perhaps you momentarily confused them with |pages= in the citation/cite templates?

The |accessdate= parameter shouldn't be affected by anythng that comes outside the tmeplate. Are you sure you have closing braces in the right place? E.g.: <ref> {{citation ... |pages= 11-14 }}, [http: ... p.13]. </ref>. Otherwise, perhaps you have an example? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

|p= and |pp= are aliases of |page= and |pages=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:08, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

That is not a good idea. In that the page range of a source (which can be a single page) is NOT the same as the specific page(s) in a source, different parameter names would help to distinguish them, while making them equivalent only weakens the distinction, leading to the kind of confusion we have seen here. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I am not at all sure that I understand what it is that you wrote nor how it bears on parameter aliases (which have been in the module since its first incarnation).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:58, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

What do you not understand: that pagination of a source itself is not the same as pagination of a section within the source? Or that when similar parameters, that use the same kind of data, but in different contexts, are given the same names it will blur the distinction, create confusion, and raise questions and discussions exactly as we have here? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Why you think that for cs1|2 the meaning of |p= is or should be different from the meaning of |page= and that the meaning |pp= is or should be different from the meaning of |pages=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Because (as I have said before): the page range of a source itself is not the same as the page (possibly mulitple pages) of a section within the source. And it is long-established standard practice that the full citation of a source gets the full page range of the source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:55, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Where is it written that it is long-established standard practice? When I cite a source, I put the actual page numbers that the facts were given on. To give more is both misleading and a waste of time for those who later wish to verify my claims. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:27, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Of course you should put in the specific page number(s) where the specific material ("facts") are to be found. That is what would be put into the |p/pp= parameters in Harv. Or following the full citation, as I illustrated above. But the full citation of the source, where it is only part of a larger work (i.e., an article or chapter), is, conventionally, the full (or inclusive) page range of the whole source. E.g.:

CMS-13, Ch. 16, Bibliographic forms:

§16.3: For an article in a periodical include "Pages occupied by the article."

§16.5: Examples of inclusive page ranges.

§16.50: Inclusive page numbers for chapters or parts of books.

§16.106: "Inclusive (first and last) page numbers are usually provided for journal articles in bibliography entries; they not only help the reader find the article but indicate the length of it."

§16.114: Examples.

MLA-6th specifies inclusive page numbers in various places.

§ 5.6.7, p. 158: "Give the inclusive page numbers of the piece you are citing. Be sure to provide the page numbers for the entire piece, not just the material you used."

§5.7.1 (articles in periodicals), p. 183: "The inclusive page numbers cited should encompass the the complete article, not just the portion you used. (Specific page references appear parenthetically at appropriate places in your text ...."

§ 5.7.6, p. 187: "The entry for a magazine article ends with a colon and the page-number range of the article."

And I could go on, but surely this should be sufficient demonstration. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

duplicated styling

In playing around with the code to support |dead-url=usurped no archive, I discovered that the styling used for the bad url error message is being added twice:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000000AE-QINU`"'<cite class="citation web cs1">[http//www.exampl.com "Title"].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=Title&rft_id=http%2F%2Fwww.exampl.com&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 web|cite web]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Check <code class="cs1-code">&#124;url=</code> value ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_url|help]])</span>

I have fixed that with a minor change to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-000000B0-QINU`"'<cite class="citation web cs1">[http//www.exampl.com "Title"].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=Title&rft_id=http%2F%2Fwww.exampl.com&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 web|cite web]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Check <code class="cs1-code">&#124;url=</code> value ([[Help:CS1 errors#bad_url|help]])</span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:17, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Cosmetic difference: |access-date= vs. |archive-date= output.

Markup	Renders as
{{cite book|title=Title|url=http://dummy-url.com|archive-url=http://archive-of-dummy-url.com|access-date=2016|archive-date=2016}}	Title. Archived from the original on 2016. Retrieved 2016. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |access-date= and |archive-date= (help)

Should they both render the same? (Either with or without "on" before the date). 72.43.99.130 (talk) 17:56, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

It's not a problem if the parameters are used properly, that is, with full dates. Partial dates are meaningless in these contexts. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:42, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

No there is still a difference in display:

• Title. Archived from the original on 2016-04-05. Retrieved 2016-04-05.

The archive date is preceded by "on". The access date is not. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 13:49, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh. I thought you were complaining about the grammatical error of "on 2016". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, not really complaining. I hope it didn't come across as whining, it's no big deal. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 17:27, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Cite magazine

{{Cite magazine}} doesn't get a mention on the help page itself and the {{Cite journal}} use description includes magazines. Does this need updating or is there a reason? -- Cavrdg (talk) 19:30, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I've added {{cite magazine}} to the table and tweaked |work= to include it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Placement of Internet Archive URLs in cite templates

There are some editors who say archiveurl should not be used. Archive URL's should be placed directly in the url argument replacing the original URL. There is an open RfC on this question. -- GreenC 14:24, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Sites that block ad blockers

This might not be a big problem yet, but perhaps something that should be on the radar. Forbes is now blocking users who have ad-blocking plugins enabled in their web browsers. The message shown to users is that they must whitelist Forbes' website in order to see the content; it's an all-or-nothing deal. If citations link to this site, or other sites that employ the same tactic, it becomes an accessibility issue much like a WP:PAYWALL. Using |subscription= or |registration= seems a bit misleading. Any ideas on how this could be handled? --Drm310 (talk) 15:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

It shouldn't. That's a browser issue, not a link issue. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. The end-result is that the source is not accessible under some circumstances. This has to be signaled, because it will affect verification for some readers. For now, I would use {{link note}}: (Website must be white-listed). 72.43.99.130 (talk) 17:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

No, use of adblocking software is a user choice. The ability to get to the site to verify a reference is therefore their own choice unlike a page where subscription is required. Nthep (talk) 17:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

In the past, users would choose to load pdf plugins if they wanted to see embedded pdfs. This may also be the case with some browsers today. This requirement is still being signaled by the pdf icon, and recommended in the template doc through the use of |format=. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Separator

Documentation lists a |separator= parameter, but this parameter is unknown. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:43, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Where?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:42, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: Is it mentioned in the textual part of the documentation? I can only find it in templatedata, and then only for some templates e.g. {{Cite journal}}, not {{Cite book}}. So, which templates are you finding this on? --Redrose64 (talk) 09:44, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I see it in the TemplateData documentation for {{cite web}}. I have had my hands slapped for touching TemplateData – programming code that has been placed in template documentation, a terrible programming practice – so I no longer touch it. I do not consider TemplateData part of the template's documentation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, Redrose64: I was on {{Cite news}}, I clicked the talk tab, and the URL displayed as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Cite_news, so I thought I was posting on Template talk:Cite news. I didn't realize I was posting on Help talk:Citation Style 1 (this page). On {{Cite news}}, |separator= is in listed under "Full parameter set in horizontal format", under "Full parameter set in vertical format", and in the TemplateData table. —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Anomalocaris, thanks for the link. I have removed |separator= from the documentation of all of the CS1 templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Jonesey95, thank you for your prompt attention to this matter! —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:15, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

archive-date bug

{{Cite web}} is throwing an error on National Memorial Arboretum (the "Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service 2010" reference) because, it says, "|archive-url= requires |archive-date=". However, the archive cited does not give the date of archiving. The template should be able to cater for such cases. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:03, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The date of archiving is pretty clearly in the URL. --Izno (talk) 11:11, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

. And what of other such cases? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:49, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

[16] also works. Please provide a legitimate case where this error cannot be worked around. Hypothetical "they must exist" doesn't usually work. --Izno (talk) 15:34, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

As with pages on archive.org, the date is embedded in the URL. In this case, the URL is http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121015000000/http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_188086.pdf and the embedded date is 20121015 (the trailing zeros are a time stamp, which appears to be unused), which translates to 15 October 2012. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:51, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:32, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Now you're just being ornery. Back at you: lmgtfy.com/?q=date+code+in+the+archived+url+archive.org&l=1

Also http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/finding-content-web-archive.pdf – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Cite speech title parameter

Shouldn't a speech be in quotation marks rather than italics? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 21:27, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Huh?

Is that a purely hypothetical question, or is there any issue somewhere? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:32, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I believe the title of a speech should be in quotation marks, not italics. But {{Cite speech}} italicizes the title. I'm interested in getting that changed, but I was hoping for some discussion and consensus about it first. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 23:08, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Torchiest; speech titles should be in quotation marks rather than italics, e.g. "I Have a Dream" or "Ain't I a Woman?". —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:00, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I think that I am inclined to agree. Chicago and MLA seem to suggest that speech titles (they use the term 'lectures') should be quoted. APA seems to suggest that one doesn't cite a speech directly but, rather cites an 'authoritative source for the text.' That last I think applies to us because of the nature of WP:RS and WP:V; we should be citing a published transcript. If that is true, then {{cite speech}} should require both the title of the speech and the title of the enclosing work – like a chapter in a book. If the speech is published stand-alone as a pamphlet, then use {{cite book}}.

The way the template documentation is written suggests that it is permissible to cite something that an editor has heard at an |event= because it makes no mention of an enclosing work.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:19, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

In the particular case I'm concerned with, it was a speech given at an event, with a video of the speech available on the site of the hosting entity. The event is notable and has its own article. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 01:02, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

That video is the document that should be cited, when referencing the speech itself (as opposed to the event). I would use {{cite av media}}. Note the title displays in italics. Also note, you are no longer citing the speech, but (as Trappist suggested), a document of the speech. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 13:24, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I would add that this discussion highlights some inconsistencies of cs1 templating. Are they citing 1. media in which source material is distributed (eg {{cite av media}}) or 2. source material type (eg {{cite speech}})? Or (confusingly) both or either? 72.43.99.146 (talk) 13:38, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

If we should cite videos or other documents as sources for a speech (and I probably agree with this), when should {{cite speech}} be used? It seems appropriate in a list of publications as in Albert Einstein, is this right? Perhaps the documentation for {{cite speech}} should give some guidance on when to use it, and when to use other templates that publish the speech. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:27, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

• Getting back to the original point, it seems we have agreement that speeches should be in quotation marks. Does anyone know where to request a change to the template? The talk page for it redirects to here. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:59, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is hard to separate this original point from a bigger discussion of cs1. As far as I can tell, {{cite speech}} treats |title= as an alias of Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist 'work' which to my knowledge is always italicized. In other templates, |title= does not refer to 'work', but to a part enclosed in the work, such as an article in a magazine. So things outside the template must change for your request to be applied. 65.88.88.69 (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 16–17 April 2016

I propose to update the cs1|2 modules over the weekend of 16–17 April 2016. The changes are:

to Module:Citation/CS1:

1. percent encode square brackets where they occur in the path portion of a url; discussion
2. some support for three-character language codes and associated names; discussion
3. internationalized domain names; discussion
4. update stripmarker pattern; discussion
5. attend to items on the TODO list; discussion
6. add multiple names test; discussion
7. add missing pipe test; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

1. create common location for stripmarker patterns discussion
2. fix bad url duplicate styling; see discussion
3. maintenance cat for |ignore-isbn-error=yes; improved isbn error messages; discussion
4. add multiple names test; discussion
5. add missing pipe test; discussion
6. some support for three-character language codes and associated names; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

1. Fix comment identifying templates used by "city" parameter

to Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation:

1. refined |embargo= date validation; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers:

1. maintenance cat for |ignore-isbn-error=yes; improved isbn error messages; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/COinS:

1. update stripmarker pattern; discussion
2. refine coins_cleanup;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Nice proposal, to be sure :). One detail about the multiple names test: in the discussion, you give an example with multiple editors. Shouldn't the role be specified in plural? i.e. (eds.) instead of (ed.). 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:07, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

No. Because |editor= is singular, the annotation that the module adds is also singular. If the cite uses multiple enumerated |editorn= parameters or |veditors= or |editors= then the module adds the plural annotation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:48, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

In this case, it will be likely read as the last name being the only editor, which would be factually and semantically incorrect. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 14:11, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Meaning: I counterpropose suspension of this feature. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 14:13, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

The singular/plural annotation of the editor name lists is not part of the multiple names test change. The annotation that I described is how the live module currently operates. The change does not modify that. Here is the same example you mentioned modified to use the live module:

{{cite book |title=Title |editor=one, two, three}}

one, two, three (ed.). Title.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:31, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I see. Then disregard my counterproposal. Is there no way to search for multiple separators in this field and thereby change the annotation to plural? 204.19.162.34 (talk) 15:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

There is, the same mechanism that adds the maintenance cat. But the purpose is to reduce or eliminate the semantically incorrect multiple-names-in-a-singular-parameter; not to mask it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:13, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Done. I discovered and fixed a bug in fix archive_url_check(). Archive.org accepts urls in the form https://web.archive.org/YYYYMMDDhhmmss/... This form is remapped to https://web.archive.org/web/YYYYMMDDhhmmss/... which is what the code was looking for so the former caused a timestamp error.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:43, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: addition of 'author-id' parameter

Books can be uniquely identified by ISBN, and journals by DOI and other identifiers, which are included in citations. Distinct identification of authors, where names may change, be abbreviated or even misspelled, or variously translated, has been a problem, but is now being addressed by databases such as ORCID, which provide unique identifiers as well as comprehensive information on an author and his or her work. As such identifiers provide valuable bibliographic data I have developed a template to provide links to an author's databae entry.

The {{Authorid}} template, given the proper identfiers, generates links to an author's information in the form of one or more superscripted letters. Example: Josiah CarberryTemplate:Authorid. This can be used now in citation templates by appending it to the |first= parameter. However, that is not suitable, as 1) it pollutes the COINS data, and 2) the links fail when used with |author-link=.

I propose we have an |author-id= parameter (and the corresponding |authorn-id= parameters) to provide a place for author identifiers such as ORCID, ResearcherID, etc. Note: this is not to generate the links, nor to display the identifiers directly (which would overwhelm a citation), but to display links generated by Authorid (or similar templates) in the proper place following an author's name.

Comments? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:46, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I think that Pigsonthewing (talk · contribs) has already requested this. The relevant thread will be in the archives somewhere. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:39, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

My request was for ORCID iDs specifically. The most recent discussion was in April 2014. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:36, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

There's some discussion of the proposed changes on my talk page; in particular the new template needs to use {{abbr}} (or equivalent), for accessibility. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:36, 11 April 2016 (UTC).

Please keep in mind that what I am proposing here is to provide a place for author identifiers in the citation templates, however such identifiers are provided. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:08, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Are you suggesting the equivalent of |at= for authors? --Izno (talk) 23:11, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

I am not certain exactly what you mean, but possibly "yes". At least in regard of accepting free-form content. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't see it as Wikipedia's role to further clutter our editing window with ORCID data. The information is virtually pointless, and does no service to the reader. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:36, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

ORCID iDs provide a number of services to our readers; not least enabling them to disambiguate authors with shared names; and to associate the work of a single author under different name-variants. Not what I would call pointless. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

And that's exactly what I meant by virtually pointless. See WP:DIRECTORY. Citations are there to provide verifiability. When I cite doi:10.3998/3336451.0004.203, it doesn't matter which of the many LA Davidson the article is referring to. If you're interested in that, follow the link and check the journal's website. Any journal that has implemented ORCIDs will have implemented DOIs well before that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:16, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

In an ideal world, that would certainly be the case. This is not an ideal world. You also assume that every work for which at least one author has an ORCID iD, there is a DOI. This is also not the case. WP:DIRECTORY does not prevent us from disambiguating our citations, and this proposal does not entail crating a directory. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

An essential requirement for sources used on WP is that they be reliable, and that is largely a function of the authors. Where an editor (or even a reader) is not familiar with a subject, it is of prime value to see an author's publication history, which is a principal purpose of databases like ORCID. It is also very useful for editors and readers alike in order to follow up on the most recent developments on a topic. Providing a link to such a database does not violate WP:NOTDIR.

If your edit window has gotten too cluttered perhaps the biggest improvement to be made is pulling all of the citation templates into their own section (replacing them with short cites).~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 10 April 2016

I'm using Template talk:Cite act in Academic ranks (Portugal and Brazil)#Federal level with lang=pt, which is being converted to the native name "Português" instead of the name in English "Portuguese"; I traced Template:Cite act/core and believe the problem is linked to Template:Citation Style 1. Could you please check. Thanks. fgnievinski (talk) 22:37, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski: Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Also, it won't be anything to do with Template:Citation Style 1, which is a navbox. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:43, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Hi. Please change "Português" to "Portuguese" that results from invoking Template:Cite act with parameter lang=pt. I don't know how the source code needs to be changed to achieve that result, sorry. Thanks for your time. fgnievinski (talk) 22:47, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

It's also nothing to do with Module:Citation/CS1; it's in Template:Cite act/core, which is not protected. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:53, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

and the fix needed should be this. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I didn't know where else to ask. fgnievinski (talk) 00:56, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

We don't support month ranges and this is unsatisfactory

So right now in the month field it can handle individual months (and seasons) only. That is, it can handle "January", "Jan", and "Summer" (and "Christmas") etc. but cannot handle "January-February" or "January-March" or "January-April" and so forth, and assorted publications do use those publication dates. So this is not satisfactory. It is not satisfactory to have to leave the month blank or put in a false month.

Hmm, coding for each possible month seperator (-, —, :, /, and with and without spaces, and then separate cases for each reasonably possible month combination (January-February, January-March, February-March, etc. etc. etc.) -- this would be require a large hand-written table...

Erm let's see...

Extended coding content

There's no reasons to change function "get_month_number" as it works fine... thinking about the problem I came up with a couple different ways to implement function "get_month_number" which I am NOT suggesting and which I doubt would actually work... these are just byproducts of thinking about ways to find month ranges... alternate 1 function get_month_number (month) legal_months = 'JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember' month_name_loc = {1, 6, 16, 21, 26, 29, 33, 40, 37, 56, 63, 71} month_name_length = {7, 8, 5, 5, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 7, 8, 7} start_match, match_length = string.find(legal_months, month) if start_match -- we found a month name in the input for i 1=1,12 do for j=1,12 do if start_match==month_name_loc[i] -- starting with January if match_length=month_name_length[j] -- check input string length against month name length return i end end return 0 alternate 2 local function get_month_number (month) legal_months = 'JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember' month_name_length = {7, 8, 5, 5, 3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 7, 8, 7} ok = strfind (legal_months, months) -- compare the list of months to the input if ok // -- found a possible good input, still need to make sure its not "uaryFeb" or "a" and so on for i = 1 to 12 if ok==a[i] -- if yes, our input matches the start of a legal month name, at least if strlen(month)==3 return i -- 3 character input, match, its a shorty such as "Jan", we're good else if strlen(month)==month_name_length[i] return(i) -- matching beginning and length of a legal month name, we're good else -- we did NOT find a legal month name in the input -- could be garbage, or "January-February" return false So now lets see.... what if you had... let's assume that month ranges are going to be divided by a dash, hyphen, long hyphen, slash, colon, or space, e.g. "January/April" or whatever (that's not going to cover instances with words or extra spaces, such as "January and February" or "January - February", but let's live with that for now)... Let's see... local function is_valid_month_range -- only called if the month has been spit out as illegal token{} token[1]='-' token[2]='–' token[3]='—' token[4]='/' token[5]=':' token[6]=' ' for i = 1 to 6 do ok = strfind (month, token[i]) if ok -- we have found one of the tokens month_range_start_month=strsub (month, 1, ok-1) -- get all of the string before the token month_range_end_month=strsub(month, ok+1); -- then all of the string after the token m1=get_month_number (month_range_start_month)) if m1 else return false -- if ok so far, do nothing m2=get_month_number (month_range_end_month)) if m2 else return false -- if still ok so far do nothing if m2 > m1 return true else return false; -- still ok? we're good end return false -- never found a token

Wouldn't this work? You find a token such as "/"... you send the (already existing) function "get_month_number" all of the original string before the token, and (if that's accepted) all of the original string after the token, and if that's accepted you must have a "legal month name" and "token" and "legal month name"... then check to make sure the range is not "December-December" or "December-March" (which is possible, but would require two years in the years field which I don't think we accept or probably need to)...

All right, that was fun, I haven't written code in decades, and I'll bet that there are many bugs, errors, and impossibilities there, but couldn't something sort of like that work? Herostratus (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

@Herostratus: the templates do support month ranges that comply with the MOS:

• Author (January–February 2016). "Article". Journal. {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Author (Mar–Apr 2016). "Article". Magazine. {{cite magazine}}: |author= has generic name (help)

The key is to use a proper en dash, which is what the MOS says we're supposed to do. Imzadi 1979 → 01:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh, ok nev-er-mind... thanks! Yes I was using the hyphen... Herostratus (talk) 01:08, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

As most keyboards don't have proper dashes, and picking a dash off the menu is irksome for those of us who generally prepare text off-line, couldn't we have the software simply replace hyphens found in date ranges with the preferred en-dash? Rather than failing with a message to text that doesn't quite explain what the problem is. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• Second that, if it is not too cumbersome to implement. 65.88.88.126 (talk) 13:20, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Quarterly date issues (redux)

Following discussion at Help talk:CS1 errors#Quarterly date issues, I am raising the issue here of providing support for the use of quarterly date formats in citations. There are publications that use this date format, and I can't see any reason not to provide support for this. Some earlier discussions:

• cite journal and quarterly publications
• Quarterly periodicals
• Allow "Quarter" dates in Date parameter?

I've been told that an RfC is needed to make this sort of change. Is that really true? Is it not just common sense to add support for a date format that is used a fair amount, even if not widely used? Carcharoth (talk) 16:25, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Please do not put words into my mouth that I did not speak. I said that it would be best if [WP:MOSNUM] had something more definitive than a single mention (which refers to seasons and not to quarterly dates, per se).

It would be best if WP:MOSNUM succinctly defined how quarterly dates are to be rendered because cs1|2 follow the rules set down there except in the clearly identified cases enumerated at CS1 compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Quarterly dates could be another such exception. But, support for that proposal did not appear.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:14, 12 April 2016 (UTC):

The confusing thing here is that people seem to be deferring to MOS and things such as MOS:BADDATEFORMAT, when that explicitly states "Special rules apply to citations; see Wikipedia:Citing sources#Citation style". This rigid adherence to style guidelines with anything out of line throwing up an error is fine, as long as it is recognised that someone using a correct date format should not be told "we don't support that date format". They should be told "Oops, sorry, we will add support for that date format" (and maybe also - "sorry you were told that was an error, it wasn't really, we are just a bit over-zealous in keeping things in order"). The other thing is source integrity. It is important not to fiddle with what the source actually is (and what the publication uses for its dates) in the name of some consistent style. It is more important for people to be able to find the source if they need to, rather than get confused by changes introduced to comply with some style manual. Carcharoth (talk) 17:39, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

c1|2 have become their own styles. They are none of the published styles: Chicago, APA, MLA, <your TLA here>, from which they were created. The 20ish separate independent templates have over time merged into cs1|2. For the sake of consistency across all of the templates, a decision was taken to adopt MOS as the guide for date formatting. This is no different from the the WP:CITE guideline that dictates italic book titles, quoted chapter and article titles, etc.

The 'special rule' that applies to cs1|2 templated citations is that MOS defines how cs1|2 shall render dates. Because MOS is mute on quarterly dates, when I wrote the date validation code, I did not include support for that format. There is no one who champions the cs1|2 documentation so, for the most part, it sucks. But, at CS1 compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style it does say:

'CS1 uses Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Dates, months and years (MOS:DATEFORMAT) as the reference for all date format checking performed by Module:Citation/CS1.'

The proposal to add quarterly dates in spite of MOS has not gotten any real support; it was proposed but, apparently no one cared enough to comment.

I am not writing all of this as a dismissal of the idea. I am on record as supporting it and my opinion has not changed. However, the 'pressing need' has not been voiced so I've been off doing other stuff.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:06, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

MOS isn't mute on quarterly dates, it explicitly permits them - but only in certain circumstances, see MOS:SEASON. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:11, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what MOS 'permits'. Wikipedia citations must cite the date of an issue of a publication the same way that the publication does (e.g. Quarter 1 2016, not Jan-Mar 2016). This is to allow people looking up that publication to find it! What is needed is to stop the error messages when no actual error has been made. It just makes the (otherwise excellent) error-detection system look silly. Carcharoth (talk) 21:53, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I favor the use of cs1|2 templates but I recognize that it is just a tool suitable for use in most but not all cases. If the tool does not do what it is that you want it to do, don't use it. Nothing compels its use.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:19, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Yep, that was the single mention of quarterly dates to which I referred in the other conversation. For the purposes of establishing what constitutes an acceptable quarterly date format for cs1|2, MOS is indeed mute. Consider the amount of detail applied to specifying how dates should look for numeric dates, for DMY, for MDY, for ranges. A lot of words and symbols are spent carefully defining those date formats. Quarterly dates get just that single mention and that mention suggests a format that looks a lot like three of the unacceptable date formats in the unacceptable date formats table. See these unacceptable examples at MOS:BADDATEFORMAT: the 9th of June, July of 2001, the first of May.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

MOSDATE is intended to give formats for the kind of dates commonly encountered in running text, tables, and infoboxes. It isn't intended to give formats for dates in citations, but cs1|cs2 found that the formats found MOSDATE were mostly sufficient for citations as well, so borrowed those formats. Since quarters are often found in publications and less frequently found in other parts of encyclopedia articles, it would be appropriate for Help:Citation Style 1 and {{Citation}} to define a format for quarters. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:22, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Twin date periods

I have encountered as similar issue with a publication date of "1-14 April 2016", at Symphony No. 7 (Arnold). Note that this could easily be, say, "29 April - 12 May 2016", or indeed "22 December 2016 - 4 January 2017". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:00, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I believe CS1 complies with MOS:DATERANGE here. (And don't forget to use an en dash or a spaced en dash as required). 72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:51, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, changing "-" to "–" removed the (rather vague) error message, thank you - though I'm far from convinced we should be throwing one over such a trivial issue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:02, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Sources (or authors) with a Wikidata item, but no article

Where we cite a work, or journal, which has a corresponding Wikipedia article, we can make the title a link; and we can use |authorlink= if there is an article about the author. What if there is no article, but there is a Wikidata item? How might we include, and display, the "Q" value, and link to the item? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:50, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I suppose d: would work?

Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

EDIT: corrected the citation to comply with CS1.

72.43.99.130 (talk) 19:43, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

More particularly, linking to a "Q" value gives:

Author. Title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

However, that does not indicate to the user that the target is Wikidata, not Wikipedia. Consider also the output of {{Red Wikidata link}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:58, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I assume that links are used in templates in order to aid verification. The link host is immaterial, as long as it provides a path to verification. A properly filled in Wikidata item will do that. I don't see a pressing need to identify the host. 65.88.88.76 (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

From the viewpoint of template design, we wouldn't want to use |authorlink= anymore but some new parameter specifically for wikidata ids. Otherwise we'd have one parameter that accepts data from two different domains (therefore the citation template — an input form — would fail the first normal form criteria from database design), which would make it even more confusing for editors learning to read and edit the templates. But it would also be confusing to readers because clicking on the linked author name would sometimes take them to Wikipedia and sometimes to Wikidata for non-obvious reasons (instead of always going to Wikipedia) so this violates the principle of least surprise in user interface design. But even if we ignored these concerns, why would we even want to link the author's name in such a case? What makes the pros overcome the cons? I certainly see some value in such a link but I also think a convincing argument could be made that it would be a form of overlinking. Even if we did have a whole new parameter for Wikidata ids that displayed separately from the author name (like we do with |doi= and other document identifiers), a case for overlinking could still be made based on the idea that it's adding clutter. Jason Quinn (talk) 07:11, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I think that Jason's analysis is sound. Although it is clearly informative to be able to find other publications by the same author, that's not the purpose of a citation, which is simply to identify a source. I've long thought that authors, journals, etc. should not be wikilinked in citations: the only link should be to the source if it's online. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I disagree (that is, I agree with the first half of Jason's analysis, about FNF & least surprise; but not that this would involve over-linking); but that still leaves the question of how to indicate the existence of a Wikidata item about an author or work. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:04, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

The citation templates are not database templates, neither are they input forms, although they do have a formalized design. They do exist to provide a standardized way for presenting sources that verify text in the article. Contributors can be agnostic about whether a link that aids verfication (for example, to a page that lists author works, and provides a path to them) is from Wikipedia or Wikidata: just use whatever link exists to do that. I doubt that readers (the vast majority of Wikipedia users) care about the provenance of the material that verifies the information. We need to have a link to information that verifies the citation. We don't need to parse every single step in the path to final verification. I don't include Wikisource links in this, since Wikisource is more akin to an online publisher. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:15, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

If there were a single link, as e.g. to a library catalogue item, which then gave ID links to all the authors (of which there can easily be 15+ in some scientific papers), plus the work (book, journal, or whatever), then I would support the proposed addition. Consider a citation like the following, which I recently used in an article: Miller, Jeremy A.; Carmichael, Anthea; Ramírez, Martín J.; Spagna, Joseph C.; Haddad, Charles R.; Řezáč, Milan; Johannesen, Jes; Král, Jiří; Wang, Xin-Ping; Griswold, Charles E. (2010), "Phylogeny of entelegyne spiders: Affinities of the family Penestomidae (NEW RANK), generic phylogeny of Eresidae, and asymmetric rates of change in spinning organ evolution (Araneae, Araneoidea, Entelegynae)", Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 55 (3): 786–804, doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2010.02.021 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help). At least half the authors are well-known in arachnology, and could easily end up with Wikipedia articles; the journal already has an article. Adding yet more links/IDs for every author and the journal just seems inappropriate to me, as opposed to a single link to a Wikidata entry for the citation. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:19, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

How many of our citations name 15 authors? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:59, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Andy, it depends on the area. In molecular phylogenetic studies, increasingly important in most organism articles, many authors are common; also in physics. Is it not possible to have a single data link for the citation? If I want to look up other works by book authors, for example, I use the OCLC WorldCat entry, like this one. I can only repeat that a single link to a data entry for the citation which then linked to authors, work, etc. would be much more likely to find support here than separate links for every author and work. As Jason also pointed out, it's a bad database design to have the amount of redundancy that would result if every article that used a citation had independent links to the authors and the work. Better to get the data design right first, surely? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

My question was how many of our citations have 15 authors. You'll also note that I started thissection by talking about "a work, or journal, which has... a Wikidata item". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

As an aside: I have no idea of just "how many", but I just did three citations that had 18 or 19 authors. Such lengthy lists of authors are often shortened to "Smith and 14 others", but the problem there is that the most significant author may put his name at the end. Or several notable authors may get buried in an alphabetical list. A reader trying to independently assess the quality of the authorship would be greatly assisted if the most notable authors had wikilinks. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:42, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Can you give me an example of where such a cross-project link benefits the reader? Resolute 13:54, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes; see the Reasonator links in {{Red Wikidata link}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:59, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

The example in that Reasonator link (Bach) argues utility as an external or interwiki link for the subject of an article, but I am wondering about the utility of adding a Wikidata link inside a citation template, as is requested here. Particularly given you are framing this around an author without an article, and therefore presumably non-notable. Resolute 14:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about Bach. And no, I'm not "framing this around an author" of any kind; I asked about "a work, or journal [or] author". But notability is a red herring; we don't require authors or their works to be notable before citing them; nor do we require works with DOIs or ISBNs to be notable before linking those identifiers. And if there is a Wikidata item, then they meet notability requirements there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I still see don't see how this really benefits readers even after your template example. I think Resolute's question deserves an in-depth, well-presented and detailed reply. Your idea is an interesting possibility but how many readers would this really help? I suspect very few. As it stands, the idea seems like it belongs in the "solution in search of problem" category. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:36, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

As I noted above: Where we cite a work, or journal, which has a corresponding Wikipedia article, we can make the title a link; and we can use |authorlink= if there is an article about the author. Presumably, we are all agreed (or at least have consensus) that these links are useful to our readers, in a number of ways, which is why we provide them. Where there are no no such articles, but we have information in Wikidata, with a human-friendly interface available at Reasonator, linking to one, or the other (whether on the page or in metadata) will be useful in the same ways. I cannot see any good reason why we would deliberately not inform our readers and re-users that we have additional information on something or someone that is cited in an article. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:37, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but "it is valuable because it is" is not compelling to me. I just want to understand what utility your proposal offers the reader. What "additional info" can I expect Wikidata to provide me in this scenario? Resolute 20:53, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

@Resolute: My argument is not "it is valuable because it is"; it is "it is of comparable value to the links we already provide". Properties which Wikidata may offer, about an author for whom we have no Wikipedia article, include (but are not limited to):

• Alternative names/ name spellings/ translitterations
• Text description (multilingual)
• Affiliations (past and present)
• Alma mater
• Links to Wikipedia articles in other languages
• Unique identifiers (VIAF, ISNI, ORCID, ReseacrherID, and many others, some domain-specific)
  • These may link to other works; library catalogues, etc
• Website
• Social media links
• Image (and Commons category if multiple free images are available)
• Audio recording of voice, including preferred name pronunciation
• Nationality
• PhD supervisor
• PhD students

and of course disambiguation from other, similarly-named, authors. I'm short of time now, but can provide a similar list for works, later. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I guess part of my problem is that I don't agree that it's normally useful to provide wikilinks to authors and works in citations, and I very rarely do so. They distract from the important link, which is to the source, and create duplicated wikilinks, which are hard to fix, since references often get changed and reordered: what may have at one time been the first occurrence of an author soon changes. On the other hand, I do absolutely agree that it's useful to provide access to the information Andy has listed above. I'd just like to find a way of doing it which doesn't potentially involve links to every author in every citation, which I don't think is the right way forward. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

The reliability of a source depends in large part – and its authority entirely – on the authors, which makes information about the authors (or at least the principal authors) of a source potentially useful informaton. (That is why I have proposed [above] providing for author links of some kind.) On whether links to Wikidata items would be good I have no opinion. But author links generally are potentially useful. This does not mean that "every author in every citation" should (or will) be linked. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, as I noted above, there is both consensus and common practice to do provide links, so any objections on that score are moot. And not all sources are online, of course. A ticket to make removing duplicated wikilinks in references part of the core MediaWiki could be raised, if anyone considers the issue sufficiently significant. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:23, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

You know, I'd be far more interested in supporting your ideas if you stopped treating everything you want as fait accompli. While you can argue that consensus exists to allow for links to Wikipedia articles for authors in the citation templates (though I too find them unnecessary and distracting), you do not have consensus for Wikidata links. And on that point, bluntly, I currently oppose their addition. Resolute 13:13, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can help you overcome the misapprehension that the question "How might we include, and display, the 'Q' value, and link to the item?"" is "treating everything [I] want as fait accompli". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Oppose. We don't usually link to articles about sources; I think it's best to save that for cases when it is particularly relevant. Indeed, we don't even have a way to link to both provide an external link to the source itself and also to a Wikipedia article about the source, because linking to Wikipedia articles about sources has never been a priority. As for authors, linking to the author's Wikipedia article serves as a hint to the reader that the author is notable enough to not only qualify for a Wikipedia article, but induce some editor to go the effort of writing the article. If all authors have links to somewhere, we will just have a sea of blue. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:25, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

You oppose the asking of a question? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not in favor of this idea. If I want to know where a wikilink goes, I float the mouse cursor over the link and the tool tip shows the underlying link. So, for Douglas Adams, it shows 'Douglas Adams'. If I link to the same title at de.wiki, the tool tip shows 'de:Douglas Adams'. If I link to the same title at wikidata, the tool tip shows me 'd:q42'. To know what the 'd:q42' link actually points to, I must follow it. There is no way to know by simple inspection that 'd:q42' leads to something meaningful. Wikidata does have the concept of aliases but unless something has changed, doesn't support redirects of those aliases so the only way to guarantee that you will land on a particular q value is to use that value in a link. This is much too unfriendly to humans. Readers and editors should be able to identify the link destination without needing to follow the link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

You seem to be hung up on the user interface that you experience; others have a different experience (and we can configure title attributes on elements, to generate preferred tooltips). Nonetheless, my question about "How might we include, and display, the 'Q' value, and link to the item?" does not presuppose any particular interface. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I am hung up on the user interface. Constructs that generate preferred tooltips like this are not a solution, just a mask:

[[d:q42|<span title="Douglas Adams">Douglas Adams</span>]]

Douglas Adams

If the link is wrong, [[d:q24|...]] instead of [[d:q42|...]], a common typo or digit transposition:

Douglas Adams

the reader still doesn't know where the link leads without following it because the title attribute masks the usual MediaWiki tooltip (which for WikiData is meaningless to humans anyway). Also, because there is no redlink facility for interwiki links:

[[d:42|<span title="Douglas Adams">Douglas Adams</span>]]

Douglas Adams

both readers and editors don't know that the WikiData link is malformed.

The parser function {{ifexist:}} is no help here because it does not work with interwiki links.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:26, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

It's possible, in Lua, to obtain the text label of the Wikidata item, which could then be used as the tooltip. A transposed digit would then be indicated by that text. In any case, we don't avoid "building the web", as User:RexxS put it, just because it's hypothetically possible to use the wrong link. Similarly, malformed Wikidata values can be trapped by error detection in Lua. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:49, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

It is: mw.wikibase.label( 'Q42') returns 'Douglas Adams'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:39, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Oppose. Turning a reference list into a sea of blue is a really bad idea. Including a large number of author links will obscure more useful links such as those to the original source. Author links should be reserved for notable authors for which an article has been written. Even in these cases, I question their usefulness. While the author of the source may be important in determining reliability, the type of source (primary vs. secondary) and where it was published (reputation for fact-checking and accuracy) are probably more important. Including gratuitous author links amounts to little more than hyping the author. Boghog (talk) 09:33, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

You oppose the asking of a question? No-one has suggested "a sea of blue". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:49, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Obviously you would not have asked the question if you were not proposing to implement it in some form. Since I do not see how this could be implemented without facilitating the addition of low value links in citations, I oppose the implementation of the suggestion. Using |author-link= is far more appropriate since the target of these links have already passed a notability threshold. Boghog (talk) 13:04, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Section break 1

The relevant advice for me is build the web: "Wikipedia is based on hypertext, and aims to "build the web" to enable readers to access relevant information on other pages easily." If an author has an entry on Wikipedia, then we usually encourage making the link to their article from a citation. I do understand that not everybody agrees with that, but |author-link=, |contributor-link=, |translator-link= and |editor-link= all exist and are well-documented at e.g. Template:Cite book. There can be little doubt that sufficient need has been expressed for those to justify their existence. And after all, if you have a personal dislike of the parameters, you don't have to use them. So, if an author has a Wikidata entry, but no Wikipedia entry, is there any reason to deny the facility to make that link? Surely the justification of "building the web" works applies equally for links to our sister projects, where available, as it does for internal links? --RexxS (talk) 16:22, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Fo me the issue is more about how to make the link to Wikidata. Ideally, I'd prefer citations to be stored in Wikidata, with the ability to generate differently formatted references here – long term I'm sure this will happen. The alternative is presumably something that works like {{Interlanguage link multi}}, i.e. it generates a link to the Wikipedia article if it exists and to Wikidata otherwise. This does have to use the resource-expensive call to #ifexist, which is considered undesirable – but maybe this has changed? If not, I suspect it would not be a good idea to have it being called from huge numbers of citations. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:51, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS: Who is denying the ability to make a link? Just use |authorlink=d:... as 72.43.99.130 already said early in this thread. I am still not convinced that doing so is a good idea, but the ability is there. No change to the software is needed. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:09, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

As noted above, that does not indicate that the target is Wikidata, not Wikipedia. See also Jason Quinn's comments on that suggestion, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Re prefering citations to be stored in Wikidata; that's what I envisage too, and have done for at least a couple of years; see User:Pigsonthewing/Citations - the future. I'm just asking, here, how we might store and. or display relevant metadata in the interim. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:38, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

And my answer above was that we could explore, as an interim solution, whether something that works like {{Interlanguage link multi}} would be acceptable. Can you comment on the resource cost of all the #ifexist calls? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:26, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest looking at coding a Lua module that takes the author's name and returns either: the name enclosed by a link to the wikidata entry, where the entry exists; or the bare name, where the entry does not exist. That would give a proof-of-concept for the required functionality, although incorporating it into the CS1 citation module would be a little more complex, depending on whether another parameter would be allowed or auto-detection would be required given the present parameters. There is no need for #ifexist because the mw.wikibase calls return nil if the entity does not exist, and that is easy to test for. Unfortunately the use of arbitrary access in the mw.wikibase call is also an expensive function, so your concern remains valid. We couldn't judge the impact, however, without some trials. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 13:19, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Automatic linking of any kind based on the author's name is wrong. If this idea is pursued (which I don't favor) It would be the responsibility of the human editor who adds the citation to determine whether any Wikidata item to be linked to actually refers to the same person who wrote the source being cited. A mere name match is not sufficient. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Accessdate

1. Can "Access date" be renamed to "Accessdate", or (at least) "access-date" be renamed to "accessdate"?
2. Can someone add further description on accessdate as I don’t know if it is OK to enter there date of the access to the archived version or only to date of the access to the URL as stated and bolded right now? Or to introduce new accessdate parameter for archive version URLs (for dead or not dead original URLs, doesn’t matter)?
   This is important as modules can be changed to display error if accessdate is after archivedate (in case it is not OK to enter the date of access to the archived version but only original URL). Note that several archive websites exist and that some can get broken down so other archive would be needed to archive such archive websites... --Obsuser (talk) 21:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

1. Why?
2. The URL, not the archive URL. And there's no reason to have an archive URL access date. Your suggestion that "can be changed to display error if accessdate is after archivedate" is precluded on some false notion that this is an error. I can think of no reason why it would be. --Izno (talk) 23:16, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Both |accessdate= and |access-date= do exactly the same thing, so editors are free to use whichever they prefer. Or did you mean you wanted the heading "Access date" on the Help page to be renamed?

The purpose of having an access date is to allow later editors to ascertain the version of the web page used as a source. Therefore it should normally remain as the date on which the contributing editor viewed the web page. One exception might be if an editor revises the article at a later date and re-checks the source page. Then it would make sense to update the access date because the page may have changed and the version on the later date would then be the one supporting the article text. If the only version available to a later editor is an archived page, then it does not make sense to update the access date. Does that answer your question? --RexxS (talk) 23:30, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@Izno:

1. Because parameter is |accessdate=.
2. So it is OK to enter, let’s say, |accessdate=16 April 2016 when some page broke down on 11 April 2016 and was archived on 5 April 2016 (|archivedate=5 April 2016) i.e. it is not accessble via original URL on 16 April 2016 but only archive one?

@RexxS: I understand both |accessdate= and |access-date= do same thing but I guess former is much more used and more correct form. Please see the question above... --Obsuser (talk) 23:39, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

So do you want the header to be changed? We won't be changing the template itself, and the header doesn't need to be changed either, because that's not how English works.

There is no way to programmatically tell that a page can no longer be accessed even if it has an archive, and this change would not change that fact. So no, it's not okay, and yes, that's just fine. I don't see a need to change this functionality either. --Izno (talk) 00:10, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

No, not header (necessarily); only parameter name. I basically asked this: Can accessdate be for access to the archived version when original page URL is broken? --Obsuser (talk) 01:19, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

The answer to which was "No". --Izno (talk) 01:27, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

So how to enter date of the access to the archived version? It’s not possible except into |accessdate=. --Obsuser (talk) 01:56, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

There's no need to know the date of access to the archived version. The access date tells the reader two things: (1) most importantly, for a site that changes, like an online database, the version that was consulted (2) the likelihood of the URL still being live. Access dates are not needed for archived versions, because (1) they will not change (2) the URL will be live as long as the entire archive is. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:14, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

In response to an earlier question, yes both |accessdate= and |access-date= do the same thing; and yes, the former is much more commonly used - but it is not because it is the "more correct form". The reason for |accessdate= being much more commonly used is simply because |access-date= was added comparatively recently, when it was decided to introduce hyphenated forms for many parameters. They are fully interchangeable, and you may use whichever you prefer. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:04, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Revised documents?

How to handle revised documents?

<ref>{{cite web| title = LM117/LM317A/LM317-N 3-Terminal Adjustable Regulator| url = http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm117.pdf| date = 2004 May, Revised 2013 August| accessdate = 2013-10-02}}</ref>

"date = 2004 May, Revised 2013 August"

Bytesock (talk) 13:10, 16 April 2016 (UTC)