Help talk:CS1 errors/Archive 1

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Unknown parameter

The "Unknown parameter |????= ignored" error would be useful in other templates. Is the code fairly short? It would also be quite useful if we could flag duplicated parameters. — kwami (talk) 01:56, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It relies on the template being Lua-based. This is because with normal Wikicode-based templates, there is no means for testing parameters in a general manner. The presence or absence of any parameter has to be tested explicitly and separately. For example, if we know that |accessdate= is often mis-spelled as |acessdate= we can add a test like this:

{{#if: {{{acessdate|}}}|<span class=error>Error: {{para|acessdate}} is invalid</span>}}

but that will silently ignore other misspellings such as |accesdate= or |acesdate=

However, with Lua, it is possible to write code that reports on the use of parameters which have not been individually catered for. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The code is in Module:Citation/CS1. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Essentially the process is that Lua provides a list of all parameters the template was given and you compare that with a list of all parameters that are supported (in this case provided by Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist), and any parameter that was submitted but is not listed as supported generates an error warning. The code used here is somewhat specialized because Citation need to support endless lists of last1=, last2=, etc., but it wouldn't be that hard to make a general utility that does a whitelist check of parameter names. The only real issue is that people would have to keep and maintain such a whitelist of supported parameters for any template you wanted to check. Dragons flight (talk) 17:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! That's a bit much for me to dive into right now, but I'll link this discussion from the template talk pages for future ref. — kwami (talk) 06:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Section headings

I moved the comments in the headings to a new line, as they cause the section to not show in the edit summary. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I had placed the anchors at the front of the section title so that editors who clicked a citation error's help link would land on the help page at with a section header visible. I've now moved the anchors and their associated comments above the section header which accomplishes the same thing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:07, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

When you edit a section, the section name wasn't being included in the edit summary. I thought it was the anchors at first, but it was the comments after the header markup. Nutshell: don't put any markup after the section header markup. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:31, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems like a bug that needs fixing. Anything inside <!-- --> should be invisible.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:37, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Breakage of the edit-summary pre-fill by trailing HTML comments has been a bug for at least a year now, and I'm pretty sure that there's a bugzilla. When I first noticed this problem, there was a related bug where a trailing space on the section header would also cause the pre-fill of the edit summary to fail; but that bug seems to have been fixed now. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:29, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I checked before and just again and I did not see a bug logged. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:20, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

displayauthors= suggested: how to keep 9?

I have a citation with nine author names, but I can check that there are more (in the source of course). Is there way to have the nine names published, and "et al." afterwards? As it is now, I'll have to drop the ninth to trigger the "et al." (by setting displayauthors=8. -DePiep (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

No. Add more authors. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:32, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I addedd |last10=N.N and |displayauthors=9. -DePiep (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me for asking, but for what purpose? What does N.N mean? Will other editors understand what it means?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

We should have a parameter to disable the COinS output for when it is deliberately polluted. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't COinS need to know the "et al." situation? -DePiep (talk) 00:05, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I found an example in this edit (I don't know if there are any others):

• Fields, P.; Studier, M.; Diamond, H.; Mech, J.; Inghram, M.; Pyle, G.; Stevens, C.; Fried, S.; Manning, W.; N.N. (1956). "Transplutonium Elements in Thermonuclear Test Debris". Physical Review. 102 (1): 180. Bibcode:1956PhRv..102..180F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.102.180. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)

Here is the same citation but omitting |last10=N.N.

• Fields, P.; Studier, M.; Diamond, H.; Mech, J.; Inghram, M.; Pyle, G.; Stevens, C.; Fried, S.; Manning, W. (1956). "Transplutonium Elements in Thermonuclear Test Debris". Physical Review. 102 (1): 180. Bibcode:1956PhRv..102..180F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.102.180. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)

It appears that the source has more than nine authors, but only nine are known, so DePiep is using |last10=N.N. to trigger the "et al." --Redrose64 (talk) 21:17, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, follow the bibcode and doi links and you can find thirteen author names. So it would appear that the names are known and the editor has elected to omit them infavor of this mechanism. Might mean Nomen nescio but this use is sort of a misuse of the term, isn't it?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:46, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

As Redrose64 says, that was my hack. Actually I did not omit them, more like I maintained the omission (the earlier editor did). I do not see a need to add names above nine if they are not displayed; and I thought "N.N." comes close to correctness. Today I've done this about maybe two dozen times (in WP:ELEM).

Since I learn that it is a pollution, I'll stop it and I'll just add the known name #10 for the same effect: it is not shown and "et al." is added. -DePiep (talk) 23:46, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there some reason not to just use all 13 authors?

• Fields, P.; Studier, M.; Diamond, H.; Mech, J.; Inghram, M.; Pyle, G.; Stevens, C.; Fried, S.; Manning, W.; Ghiorso, A.; Thompson, S.; Higgins, G.; Seaborg, G. (1956). "Transplutonium Elements in Thermonuclear Test Debris". Physical Review. 102 (1): 180. Bibcode:1956PhRv..102..180F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.102.180.

The new citations allow arbitrarily long lists of authors. The old citations were often truncated because they didn't support additional authors, and we can maintain that by using displayauthors=, but it seems preferable to add the remaining authors when possible. Dragons flight (talk) 00:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The main reason for keeping just 9 names is that first I (we) want to clean out all "new" cite errors from some 300 WP:ELEMENT pages (task is tracked here). For now we only reproduce the pre-Lua cite situation without error message. Additionaly, the singular situation "nine authors, exactly, so don't add 'et al.'" now can be checked and corrected (done once so far). Apart from the |last10=N.N. hack, which is to be undone I agree, this process is not introducing new ambivalence, incorrectness or errors.

Adding another 1 to 20 names (and removing |displayauthors=) can be a next cite-improvement task. For this we can use the check for pages "|displayauthors=m where m < number of authors listed in the template". -DePiep (talk) 08:57, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

To your earlier question about COinS need[ing] to know the "et al." situation, I don't know if it needs to know. What it gets is not a function of |displayauthor=. If you set |display author=1, only the first author is rendered but all of the authors in the author list are included in the COinS data.

Have I answered your question?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:41, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Dunno, but first let me repeat that my |last10=N.N. hack should be undone for the pulluting reason. Then, I don't know COinS, but indeed it should not bother with the displayed names, but directly with the list of entered names. When and if COinS needs the fact of "et al. list", it could be deducted from wikicode facts. For example, when |author=... et al., or when "|displayauthors=m where m < number of authors listed in the template". For this moment & place it seems enough to get the | message gone by adding correct info. coinS can follow. -DePiep (talk) 08:57, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Behold the glorious new CS1: 33 authors listed (and this transcluded usefully 6 times). I have not limited the number of displays, but added a param to allow so individually, in the specific {{cite doi}}-link. -DePiep (talk) 21:34, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

New issue: how many authors to display? All 30 or 40 is reasonable? Project discussion here, general village pump question here, with example. -14:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed link above after archivingLeadSongDog come howl! 01:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

This error talkpage is hardly a suitable place for a MOS discussion, but there has never been a wide stylistic consensus on how many to display, and that is unlikely to change simply because new code now allows for the technical possibility of displaying more. The practice in different topic areas varies widely. In some disciplines, extensive lists of authors are wanted, while in others two or three is normal. No general rule is available. LeadSongDog come howl! 01:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

unusedurl= is useful and important, and should not be an error

Where should this be discussed, if not here? "unusedurl=" was an allowed formulation used to keep a record of previously working URLs which are now dead but which may return, or alternate URLs which could be used in the event of "url=" going dead. "unusedurl=" entities are "backroom" notes to other editors, without the ugly necessity of <!-- hidden comments -->. They are not intended as "archive" urls, which is why they are not used in "archiveurl=". They are alternates. These are the result of sometimes very difficult spelunking work by editors, and should not be flagged as errors. If another name is preferred, I nominate "alternateurl=". It's great that Lua has allowed improved error handling, but the definition of "what is an error" should be discussed, and not decreed by the developers. --Lexein (talk) 03:15, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

When was this allowed? This parameter name doesn't appear in any of the documentation for Citation Style 1. unusedurl= is used in only a handful of pages, at least according to this search result.

It seems to me that the proper way to identify alternate urls is to place them in a section of the article's talk page rather than in the article itself.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:26, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

It was recommended by other editors for the reasons I list above. In Talk pages, such notes will disappear into the talk page archives, effectively lost. I'm against lost work. --Lexein (talk) 15:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The older templates did little error checking, thus an undefined parameter like 'foo' would not give an error, but it was never parsed. 'unusedurl' was never defined, thus the Lua templates never supported it. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

True, but unhelpful. Hardcoding against slack is similar to "that which is not specifically permitted is prohibited," which is not the Wikipedia way. This goes against the Five Pillars, which explicitly states that there are no hard and fast rules. That syntax can be rigidly checked and enforced doesn't mean it necessarily should be. I'm seeing developer zeal trumping the principles of the project. Slack is good. --Lexein (talk) 15:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

So, we should allow typos such as 'newpaper' to silently fail without showing the field or an error? Or, for editors to use 'day of week' copied from a different template without alerting them that it isn't supported in these templates?

You asked why this parameter did not work, and we answered. In your long opening, was there a specific proposal to add a new parameter? --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:08, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Checking for unknown parameters has caught tens of thousands of citations that were malformed or incomplete due to mistakes or typos in usage. It has also caught roughly several hundred cases where people, like you, were intentionally using undocumented parameters as a way to include hidden comments. Frankly, that's a trade off that I have no problem with. If you wanted to include hidden comments, we have a specific syntax for hidden comments, e.g <!-- hidden comments -->. And having to convert one use of an intentionally blank parameter to an actual hidden comment in order to find and correct several dozen malformed citations, doesn't seem like a bad deal to me. Asking editors to use hidden comments for material like this also has the potential to be clearer than undocumented forms like |unusedurl=, since the person adding such a comment is hopefully more likely to explain why the url is unused (e.g. dead link, alternative source that is the same as |url=), rather than leaving people to guess based on the choice of parameter name. However, if you want to make a case for adding one (or even several) intentionally unused parameters for data storage then you are free to make that case, and consensus will prevail. I'd suggest choosing a more popular forum than this one (e.g. Help talk:Citation Style 1 or one of the village pumps), if you want to make that argument. Dragons flight (talk) 16:13, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Glad that true malformations or typos were caught: that's helpful. But booting "unofficial" but correctly spelled parameters goes too far, and as I said, goes against the Five Pillars. You understand, it's simply a kind of marshal law imposed from outside the usual process of discretion and discussion, and it's a way for developers who are editors to have their way (finally (whew!)), since it will all be hardcoded, done and dusted.

You invite me to a battle which I do not want, forced upon me. Now I'm suddenly expected to defend a position which never needed defending in the first place? Now, just because somebody else suddenly wants to play offense against the Five Pillars? Now, I have to petition to keep what has been working all along? To attempt to stem the tide of obsessive, and on this, pointless and destructive tidying? Coding obsessively for obsessive coding's sake is not the point of Wikipedia. It's not a playground for programmers. The performance improvements offered by Lua were not intended to immediately soaked up by nitpick features: that's the Microsoft (sorry, MS, you know it's true) way, not the Wikipedia way. And Lua isn't a free pass to mess with editors who were perking along quite happily, productively, and errorlessly, for seven years before people who like making rules decided, "Ah, now we can code more rules, and declare sensible editing to be errors."

What's happening here will result in a reduction of use of citation templates IMHO. People will see all that red, and just convert to plain text. Too bad for all the benefits offered by the template. So sorry.

As I said above, If another name is preferred, I nominate "alternateurl="

As for hidden comments: in my experience, they have very curious habit of being deleted by a variety of disrespecters of the work of others, who "don't see the need". Not a good solution, IMHO.

Finally, "move the discussion"? And be falsely accused (again) of forum shopping? Perhaps not. --Lexein (talk) 18:01, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see that I can be of help here. Sorry. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:04, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Further help

I would suggest adding a prominent mention of Wikipedia:Help desk and / or Wikipedia:Teahouse to give people somewhere else to ask for help if they aren't able to figure out what to do from this page alone. Dragons flight (talk) 17:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Help desk

I've added links to the Help desk on the right margin at approximately the line that begins "To resolve ...". I decided against {{shortcut}} because the shortcut box seemed to large when viewed in the relatively small sections of the help page.

Thoughts?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts? I'd like to note first that these "new" red cite text errors are a great improvement to WP, and applied in a smart way. I enjoy cleaning them. I write working on WP:ELEMENTS, this tracking (a serious topic in references I say). My secundary thought is, that it is difficult to connect with (to undestand) the Cite requirements and logic. My reading & understanding of the issue is: it is tough, but we can do it. A rewrite of Help_talk:CS1_errors I could be happy with -- but how and in what way? Best improvement could be to have someone ouside rewrite theis errortext. Really, I am smart but I cannot follow all of the texts. -DePiep (talk) 22:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Whenever you find anything in Help:CS1 errors that is confusing or doesn't explain something completely, please point that out (or just fix it).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I did just that to the Wikilink embedded in URL title section, and you modified my edits, making them less helpful. I have cleaned about 400 of these pages in the last few days and have some hard-earned tips to offer about what specific situations can cause this error and how to best resolve them. If my instructions are going to be removed from this page, is there a better place to post them? Thanks. Jonesey95 (talk) 22:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to step on your toes. The help text is more-or-less organized to list possible causes and then discuss solutions. It is also intended to be general in nature and focused on getting the editor to a reason for, and a solution to, the problem. I took the opportunity of your edit to revise that whole section so that it, I think, better serves the goal of getting an editor to the solution. It isn't just {{lang}} templates that cause the error, it's pretty much any template that outputs some sort of wikilinked text. In keeping with the general nature of the help text, I didn't refer to {{lang}} or any other template.

But you are making me wonder, is there a need for a related topics area? I have no idea how to get my brain around that nor how it might be implemented.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Pseudoreplication appears in Category:Pages with citations lacking titles

Can anyone figure out why Pseudoreplication appears in Category:Pages with citations lacking titles, even though the article has not been edited in a while and all citations seems reasonable. The cat is not listed on the article page, but the article does appear in the cat. Thanks, Illia Connell (talk) 21:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

See Pseudoreplication#cite_note-2 - it shows --Redrose64 (talk) 21:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. However, in my browser (FF 20.0.1, on Windows 7), it does not show the error message. Ref #2 is: <ref>Millar, R.B., Anderson, M.R. 2004. Remedies for pseudoreplication. Fisheries Research 397-407{{cite journal|doi = 10.1016/j.fishres.2004.08.016}}</ref>, which is obviously a mix a citation styles. Regards, Illia Connell (talk) 21:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

As advised at Category:Pages with citations lacking titles: By default, Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 error messages are visible to all readers and maintenance messages are hidden from all readers.

To display maintenance messages in the rendered article, include the following text in your common CSS page (common.css) or your specific skin's CSS page and (skin.css).

(Note to new editors: those CSS pages are specific to you, and control your view of pages, by adding to your user account's CSS code. If you have not yet created such a page, then clicking one of the .css links above will yield a page that starts "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name." Click the "Start the User:username/filename page" link, paste the text below, save the page, follow the instructions at the bottom of the new page on bypassing your browser's cache, and finally, in order to see the previously hidden maintenance messages, refresh the page you were editing earlier.)

.mw-parser-output span.cs1-maint {display: inline;} /* display Citation Style 1 maintenance messages */

To display hidden-by-default error messages:

.mw-parser-output span.cs1-hidden-error {display: inline;} /* display hidden Citation Style 1 error messages */

Even with this CSS installed, older pages in Wikipedia's cache may not have been updated to show these error messages even though the page is listed in one of the tracking categories. A null edit will resolve that issue.

After (error and/maintenance) messages are displayed, it might still not be easy to find them in a large article with a lot of citations. Messages can then be found by searching (with Ctrl-F) for "(help)" or "cs1".

To hide normally-displayed error messages:

.mw-parser-output span.cs1-visible-error {display: none;} /* hide Citation Style 1 error messages */

You can personalize the display of these messages (such as changing the color), but you will need to ask someone who knows CSS or at the technical village pump if you do not understand how.

Nota bene: these CSS rules are not obeyed by Navigation popups. They also do not hide script warning messages in the Preview box that begin with "This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved".

--Redrose64 (talk) 21:59, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

And Category:Pages with citations lacking titles is a hidden category. Preferences → Appearance → Show hidden categories --  Gadget850 ^talk 22:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Got it - updating my common.css fixed the problem - thanks to both for your speedy help. Regards, Illia Connell (talk) 22:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Pages in the User, User talk, and Wikipedia talk namespaces are not included in the error tracking categories.

The note at the top of Category:Pages with citations lacking titles states: "Pages in the User, User talk, and Wikipedia talk namespaces are not included in the error tracking categories." However, these are in the cat: User talk:Pzrmd/Aagots vei, User talk:Pzrmd/Aasta Hansteens vei (Oslo), User talk:Pzrmd/Abbediengen terrasse, User talk:Pzrmd/Abbediengveien. Can anyone figure out why? Thanks, Illia Connell (talk) 21:22, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably a bug in Module:Citation/CS1 or Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. Suggest that you raise a thread at Module talk:Citation/CS1. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:32, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, will do. Illia Connell (talk) 21:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

2009 NCAA Men's Basketball All-Americans appears in Category:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles

I'm having a similar problem to the one two sections above. 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball All-Americans appears (correctly) in Category:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles, but there is no red error message in the References. I believe that Reference number 40 is causing the problem (I have left it unchanged for now). I have fixed this error message in a few hundred pages over the last couple of days, and I have seen this problem in a small handful of the pages, maybe 3-5 out of the ones I have fixed. I have made the change to my CSS file recommended above, even though these wikilink errors show 99% of the time. Jonesey95 (talk) 22:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Strike that. I re-read the info about the lack of error message and found the part about the null edit. Doing a null edit fixed this article. Jonesey95 (talk) 23:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikilink embedded in URL title - overridable?

Is there any way to override the "Wikilink embedded in URL title" warning for cases where the title of the referenced webpage really contains pairs of brackets? I presume this would require encoding the brackets as the corresponding HTML character entities; am I understanding correctly? Should this be mentioned on the help page itself?

(Sorry I don't have a specific example handy; I will keep looking for one.) --SoledadKabocha (talk) 00:31, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Yep, encode with [ ([) and ] (]).

{{cite web |url=http://example.com |title=[[Title in Brackets]]}}

→"[[Title in Brackets]]".

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:13, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Wrong template, right parameter

If {{cite}} is used by mistake when {{cite needed}} was intended, and there are no parameters, the page ends up in Category:Pages with empty citations which has an explanation at the top and describes a suitable fix. The same happens if there are only positional parameters, as in {{cite|May 2013}}. However, if an appropriate named parameter is used, i.e. {{cite|date=May 2013}}, the page is placed in Category:Pages with citations lacking titles which does not describe a suitable fix.

I think that either of two things should be done to cover such uses:

• when the only named parameters are those respected by {{citation needed}}, i.e. |name= |reason= |date= categorise to Category:Pages with empty citations
• add a suitable explanation and fix to Category:Pages with citations lacking titles

--Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Citation without a title of any form and Empty citation tweaked. Is that better?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:03, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think so --Redrose64 (talk) 14:22, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Cite episode; suggestion related to transcripturl= and transcript=

Regarding Cite episode: if transcripturl= is used without transcript=, maybe display a red-colored error. Without transcript=, transcripturl= will not be shown, and the software does not yet warn the editor about this. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 00:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Correct ISBN gives error

Forensic Psychology and Law. ISBN 8387425313. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)

Something's wrong here, because this ISBN is valid. --bender235 (talk) 20:05, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Both Abebooks and isbn.org agree that this ISBN is malformed. According to the documentation, you can suppress the error message by adding |ignore-isbn-error=true. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

When confronted with an invalid ISBN, I assume that it's the last digit that is in error. By my calculations, ISBN 8-38742531-1 or ISBN 978-8-38742531-9 should be correct; but neither of those turn up any search results. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:57, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yep, something is wrong. The isbn number is wrong. Try these: [1], [2] or any of the links at Special:BookSources/8387425313. Only Worldcat seems to think that 8387425313 is a valid isbn.

Can you confirm that 8387425313 matches the printed copy of your source?

Assuming that all of the other digits are correct, the checkdigit should be a 1, not a 3. You should only use |ignore-isbn-error=true if you can show that the flawed ISBN is truly correct. If you do use it, for the benefit of editors who follow you, leave a hidden note explaining why you did.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:01, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I do not have a printed copy in front of me. I only checked the source via Worldcat and came accross this error. I'll add the ignore-isbn-error paramter plus a note. --bender235 (talk) 23:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Some pages I've found:

• Google Books has an entry for the right book, but there is nothing resembling an ISBN;
• Libris (which is in Swedish) also has an entry, containing the item "Ogiltigt nummer / annan version:85-87425-31-3", which resembles the WorldCat number (except for the second digit), but again as an ISBN it's not valid: ISBN 85-87425-31-3 "Ogiltigt nummer" means "Invalid number" or "Void number", which might be significant.
• An entry at Wirtualny Gabinet Rycin-Rekord MARC has an item "020 \z 8387425313"
• There are plenty of academic papers which have references containing text like "[in:] Forensic Psychology and Law: Traditional Quetions and New Ideas, A. Czerederecka, T. Jaśkiewicz - Obydzińska, J. Wójcikiewicz [eds], Institute of Forensic Research Publishers, Kraków 2000", but none of these give an ISBN.

The common theme is that the acronym ISBN is never used, not even by WorldCat. I rather suspect that 8387425313 (or 85-87425-31-3) is not an ISBN at all, but some other identifier which just happens to have ten digits. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:09, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

In which article(s) this book is mentioned? We need to see who introduced the number in WP. Even OP Bender235 says: I only checked the source via Worldcat, so did not find it originally. -DePiep (talk) 10:00, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Facial composite is the one where this "ISBN" is given, but the publication is also used in E-FIT. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:29, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

The number was entered by ... Bender235 [3] OP !? Since the number is nowhere defined as an ISBN, as Redrose noted, I we can conclude that it is not an ISBN (especially since it would be a wrong ISBN). I propose deleting the |ISBN=8387425313. -DePiep (talk) 19:56, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Done [4] -DePiep (talk) 08:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course I was the one introducing the numnber. I was doing WP:WCC work, and WorldCat gave me this number. Anyhow, I will check whether the actual book has this (or any) ISBN this week at Berlin State Library, and then I'll reply here. --bender235 (talk) 12:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I do not doubt your intention. I was just tying to backtrack the origin of the number entered. I understand you concur with the conclusion (not an isbn) here? -DePiep (talk) 13:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Been at State Library. ISBN is printed as such in the book. And the same number is on the back: ISBN 83-87425-31-3. So we keep it now? --bender235 (talk) 15:28, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I reinstalled the isbn and the error-suppression [5]. -DePiep (talk) 15:43, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Cite episode error notes

I've noticed a few things and would like to leave it to someone more knowledgeable and skilled to address them:

1. There is no section on this Help page for "Error: |url= requires |title= when using {{cite episode}}: Empty citation (help)" and similar (but not identical) errors related to the Cite episode template.

2. Articles with these Cite episode errors are currently located in Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax. They should probably be put in their own subcategory.

3. There is some confusion described at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Confusing about these Cite episode errors. This confusion could be addressed in text created to resolve items 1 and 2 above.

Let me know if further clarification is required. Jonesey95 (talk) 21:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Errors listed at Help:CS1 errors are associated with errors detected by the Lua module version of the CS1 citation templates. {{cite episode}} has not been converted from {{Citation/core}} so any error messages produced by {{cite episode}} aren't (and shouldn't) be part of Help:CS1 errors. The error messages that you see arose from a rather long discussion related to the deprecation of certain parameters.

Within the code for {{cite episode}} is a call to {{Citation error}} which specifies the categories.

So, Help:CS1 errors is not the place to address the {{cite episode}} error messages until it is converted to use Module:Citation/CS1. Until such time, the best place to address these error messages may be in the template's documentation page. When converted to Lua, {{cite episode}} will likely categorize errors in a more appropriate way.

Trappist the monk (talk) 21:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Your first sentence is news to me. The lead on the Help page did not state that the page described only Lua-related errors. Cite episode appears to be a CS1 template, so I would have thought that an error generated by this CS1 template would be documented on this page, which is called "Help:CS1 errors". I added a clarification to the lead sentence. If I missed some nuance, feel free to correct it. Thanks. Jonesey95 (talk) 04:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

|format requires |url generated on cite journal templates with valid doi or pmid links

The "|format requires |url" error is being generated by cite journal citations with valid doi links.

Example: Template:cite doi/10.1093.2Fjhered.2Fesm035, which renders as:

Wills, C. (2007). "Principles of Population Genetics, 4th edition". Journal of Heredity (Book Review). 98 (4): 382–382. doi:10.1093/jhered/esm035.

The above example has a valid url embedded in the doi link, so |format should be allowed.

Yes, you can use "type" as a workaround, but (1) the "cite journal" documentation does not list |url as a prerequisite for |format, and (2) the doi link is a url.

The above problem also applies to cite journal citations with valid pmid links, e.g. Template:Cite pmid/2593988, which renders as:

Streissguth, A. B.; Bookstein, F. L.; Sampson, P. D.; Barr, H. M. (September 1989). "Neurobehavioral effects of prenatal alcohol: Part III. PLS analyses of neuropsychologic tests". Neurotoxicology and teratology. 11 (5): 493–507. doi:10.1016/0892-0362(89)90026-3. ISSN 0892-0362. PMID 2593988. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)

Can this be fixed in the Lua code? Jonesey95 (talk) 18:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

|format= is being misused in these citations. Its purpose is to identify the file format of the digital resource provided in |url=: pdf, xls, etc (except html). The error message is correct because the citations underlying the doi and pmid templates don't have values assigned to |url=.

These shortcut citations can be fixed. In the first case simply edit the doi template to include the url of the full text (available at the doi link) and remove |format= or change it to |type=. In the second case, edit the underlying pmid template: |format= should be removed or changed to |type= – though the full article is not available for free so the addition of |subscription=yes is appropriate.

–Trappist the monk (talk) 19:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

FWIW, my understanding is that one benefit of the doi is that it is supposed to be an improvement over using the |url parameter, since the doi is "permanent", while the url can change (that said, I have been cleaning up a bunch of citations with dois that appear to have once been valid but are now dead....). Putting in a linkrot-prone url when the doi serves as a better url seems like a step backwards. Jonesey95 (talk) 20:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

accessdate= requires url=? What if it has pmid= or doi=?

See Help:CS1_errors#accessdate_missing_url.

• Schüffler A, Sterner O, Anke H (2007). "Cytotoxic alpha-pyrones from Xylaria hypoxylon". Z. Naturforsch., C, J. Biosci. 62 (3–4): 169–72. PMID 17542480. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Liu Q, Wang H, Ng TB (2006). "First report of a xylose-specific lectin with potent hemagglutinating, antiproliferative and anti-mitogenic activities from a wild ascomycete mushroom". Biochim. Biophys. Acta. 1760 (12): 1914–9. doi:10.1016/j.bbagen.2006.07.010. PMID 16952421. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Some references have links in the pmid= or doi= parameters, but the url= is empty. This means that accessdate= is appropriate, but it still generates an error?? I have sometimes seen broken DOI links (in an old Nature News source), so there is still a purpose for accessdate=.

This error shouldn't be displayed when doi= or pmid= are being used to generate the external link.

--Enric Naval (talk) 11:27, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

|accessdate= is used to identify the point in time that an editor consulted an on-line source, specifically those sources that are not dated and in the way of the constantly changing web, often ephemeral. Journals, newspapers, books, magazines, etc exist outside the web and are dated, serialized, cataloged. An |accessdate= does not add any value to the citation of these types of sources.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:47, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I concur- PMID and doi sources have a publication date, thus an access date is not needed. Per the documentation:

accessdate: Full date when original URL was accessed; use the same format as other access and archive dates in the citations; do not wikilink. Not required for web pages or linked documents that do not change; mainly of use for web pages that change frequently or have no publication date.

--  Gadget850 ^talk 17:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

This has utterly screwed quite a few hundred references I have added. I understand the reasons above, makes sense, but how the heck is that going to get fixed? Will there be a bot? As it stood I was following the citation template to the letter (albeit apparently putting in more information than was needed) and now everything is screwed. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 21:39, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

We've been saying for well over a year on this page and elsewhere (including the doc pages for the various templates) that accessdates are redundant and unnecessary when there is no url. It's not like it's new news. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Going to every article I've added references to and seeing a giant red error message is news. It wasn't there before and I've just seen Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL - you cannot possibly be telling me that it's acceptable to have that many pages with glaring error messages without some sort of bot intervention. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:49, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL was created five months ago, and it began to be populated straight away. That there are so many pages in it shows the lack of awareness, not necessarily a lack of desire to clean them up. Personally I have been cleaning up some of the other subcategories of Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax - for example, when I started on Category:Pages with empty citations it was well over 1000. Sending a bot in will not mean that all instances are handled correctly.

I'm certain that some of the pages in Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL are there because the magic characters url= are missing (in which case the page will also be in Category:Pages with citations using unnamed parameters). I'm also willing to bet that some of the pages in Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL are there because some vandal has blanked or removed the |url= parameter, or has altered it in some way so that it's no longer recognised for what it should be. Should the vandalism be reverted, or should the vandalism be compounded by a bot making what it thinks is the correct fix but which actually removes even more good info? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

A bot could comment out the accessdate, or comment it only if the url parameter has a value. If the url parameter is empty or missing, I believe that the article will show up in Category:Pages using web citations with no URL, so an editor working on that category will be able to look in the article's history to see if a vandal has wiped the URL. – Jonesey95 (talk)

They only show in Category:Pages using web citations with no URL if they use {{cite web}}, for which a missing URL is always an error (what's the good of citing a web page if you don't indicate which web page?). If a template where the URL is not mandatory but optional (e.g. {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite book}}, etc.) is used with exactly the same parameters, it still goes into Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL but does not go into Category:Pages using web citations with no URL. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I still think a bot should be put into place before the error messages. You're right though, does show an extraordinary lack of knowledge that this was coming. How are we to fix this if it happens again? And shouldn't {{cite book}} be allowed to have an access date as well as a url? If a new edition of the book comes out that drastically changes the original content, that may well be a very important piece of information when it comes to verifying what's in the article. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:11, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Books have publication dates, edition numbers, and isbns to distinguish one version from another. Even if you consulted the book at google books, you are still consulting the book, not an on-line source – yeah, I know, that seems counter-intuitive, but you really are consulting the book. So, that new version with radically different content, is clearly identifiable by using those parameters. |accessdate= should not be used with {{cite book}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:42, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

An |accessdate= may be used with {{cite book}} provided that there is also a |url=. In this respect, {{cite book}} is no different from any of the other templates. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:47, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Error display with newline

See oldid: this error message seem to be picking up newlines as part of the invalid text, hence leading to a display error. It seems to me any leading/trailing whitespace should not be shown in the error text, in the same way that it's not part of a regular parameter value. Thanks Rjwilmsi 16:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, but the text in question was part of a positional parameter, where leading and trailing whitespace is significant. It's only named parameters that do not treat leading/trailing whitespace as part of a parameter value. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:21, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

{{sic|?|nolink=y}}

The {{sic}} template has an extra parameter "nolink=y" so that it can be used in text that is going to be used as a link, for example in the "title" parameter of {{cite web}}. There is also a "?" option that outputs a "?" and adds a tracking category, Category:Articles containing possible transcription errors. I've used this very many times to flag up typographic errors in book/webpage titles, in cases where I can't verify the original title.

This is no longer working. The category is displayed as plain text, with the error message "Wikilink embedded in URL title" - Example. How is this to be made to work again?

The solution adopted by Gilo1969 (talk · contribs) in this edit can't be the best one, since it lost the "?", the category, and the "reason" parameter.

One possibility is to modify the {{sic}} template so that it no longer outputs a category. Another is to modify the LUA code so that category links are treated differently from other links. We can then begin to find and revert all the edits that have inappropriately removed a {{sic|?}} template. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

It's complicated. {{sic}} isn't simply a visual indicator of typos and other anomalies; it adds text and characters to the title. The text and characters are added to the title before Module:Citation/CS1 sees it. As a result, CS1 can't know that the additional text and characters aren't supposed to be part of the title.

I suspect that it's possible to detect and move category wikilinks embedded in a title; the rest of whatever a template adds to the title will remain. The template-modified title is then made part of the COinS metadata which is used by referencing tools outside of Wikipedia. It seems inappropriate to me for a title in COinS metadata to be different from the original with the possible exception of silent corrections – like the silent removal of the second the from your example article (taking MOS:QUOTE as a guide).

I don't know if templates embedded in |title= can be made to work.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Titles of works or articles should be given exactly as shown in the source. There should be no need to use {{sic}} at all. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The variant I've used more often in titles is [sic?], which is for the case where the source is offline or is a dead link. The title might be incorrect in the original, or the problem might just be a copying error. [sic?] tells the reader that there may be a problem with the stated title, and it tells potential editors to check the source if they have an accessible copy. I believe this is useful, both for the readers and the potential editors. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the nolink=y option is working for me in title parameters to fix the "wikilink in title" error. I've applied it a couple of times since learning about it. I browsed through my recent Contributions and couldn't find an example to verify it, though. I checked John of Reading's Example link above, and I don't see the Wikilink category.

To respond to Trappist the monk's comment about templates in title parameters, they work fine for me as long as they do not generate categories. I have been able to use {{sic}} with nolink=y and also {{!}} with no troubles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Sic has been edited so that it does not output a category for the time being. This fixes the immediate problem, in that the editors working on Category:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles won't remove any more [sic?]'s in the short term.

If the meta-data is not supposed to contain "[sic]" or "[sic?]", then could that be handled by the CS1 module somehow? There must be a large number of titles out there containing these, not necessarily using Template:sic. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The metadata doesn't just contain "[sic]" or "[sic?]", it contains Wikicode, albeit in percent-encoded form: %26%2332%3B%26%2391%3B%27%27sic%3F%27%27%26%2393%3B which decodes to  [''sic?''] The   is a space; the [ and ] are the square brackets; but note also the four apostrophes. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure someone could come up with a regex that would match all the likely variants. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess I'm not sure that editing {{sic}} is beneficial. While it's true that editors working in Category:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles won't be seeing and removing the template from citations that include it, similarly, editors working in Category:Articles containing possible transcription errors will soon be seeing the contents of that category disappearing. My sense is that {{sic}} should be restored and that some discussion should take place to determine just what should be done about the issue.

First step in that, I think, is to determine if titles in citations should be 1) copied verbatim from the source without editorial markup; 2) copied verbatim from the source with editorial markup where appropriate; 3) copied from the source but silently edited to fix spellings, remove duplicate words, etc. I don't think that this talk page is the correct venue for that discussion. When that discussion has taken place, then this conversation should resume but at Help talk:Citation Style 1 rather than here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Q

If my browser can read Google Books URLs without the "http://" part in front of it, why can't we? These little red url notifications are irritating. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 17:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to your question, but can you please provide an example of a page where you are seeing url errors? After considerable effort by a small number of editors, there are currently zero Article-space articles in Category:Pages with URL errors (a figure that is down from many thousands when the category was created).

You might take your question to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). There are lots of folks there who know answers to questions like yours. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:38, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Look at this version of an article. Drmies (talk) 18:56, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I completely understand your frustration. There should be a way to make it so that URLs just work. The folks at the Village Pump may be able to provide you with an answer to the "why" question.

And for what it's worth, yes, the red errors are irritating, but irritations sometimes produce beautiful things. This particular red error led you to fix a non-working link. Thank you for being a conscientious editor and actually looking at the results of your edit (not everyone does). – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:53, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Because what Module:Citation/CS1 does is convert the values provided by |url= and |title= into an external link in wiki markup that looks like this:

[<url> <title>]

which is then passed on to the wiki parser.

An external link without the url scheme, regardless of whether it is hand made or created with a template, is not seen by the parser as a valid external link. The parser won't tell you that the link is broken, but CS1 will:

[www.example.com title] → [www.example.com title]

{{cite web |url=www.example.com |title=Title}} → [www.example.com "Title"]. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Which brings me to the real question: why? Or, the realer question, when can you have this fixed? Thanks, Drmies (talk) 18:56, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll have to seek the answers to those questions elsewhere. Issues related to the wiki parser are outside the scope of CS1 and this talk page. Perhaps WP:VPT is a good place to start.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Originally, the http:// or https:// was mandatory for all URLs, whether those be bare (as in http://www.example.com) or enclosed in single square brackets (as in [http://www.example.com/ Example] → Example). About two years ago, the http: or https: became optional for the single square bracket form (as in [//www.example.com/ Example] → Example) but the double slash remained mandatory for all URLs: the [// sequence is one of the methods by which the MediaWiki parser recognises a URL as compared to plain text. Note that the http: or https: remains mandatory for bare URLs. Templates like {{cite book}} are essentially the single square bracket form in disguise; you can verify that by taking a {{cite book}} that has been filled in, pasting it into the "Input text" box at Special:ExpandTemplates and clicking OK. The box that appears below that will contain the equivalent Wiki markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Error message anchors

It occurred to me during an unrelated conversation that the mechanism used to link between a CS1 error message and the related help text in Help:CS1 errors is unnecessarily cumbersome. As it is right now, there is an {{anchor}} template above each error message section heading in Help:CS1 errors. There is a matching anchor in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. It occurred to me that, because each error message is given its own section heading, the anchors aren't necessary and that Module:Citation/CS1 should simply link to the section heading. To test this I've changed the anchors in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox to link to the section headings. The citations below are all created with the CS1/sandbox version to prove (or not) that the idea works:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|sandbox=yes|title=Title}}
Live	Title. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)
Sandbox	Title. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |sandbox= ignored (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Some people (no names) are in the habit of fiddling with section names, even on help pages. If we point the links directly at the headings, sooner or later they will be broken. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:36, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Point. I've reverted the test.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

"et al." twice

Moved to Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 7#"et al." twice -DePiep (talk) 11:47, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Is the correct parameter |displayauthors= or is it |display-authors=  ? The Cite template documentation doesn't agree with this CS1 errors documentation on that issue.

I was fixing some bibliographies today, and was suggested to use the |displayauthors= parameter, but that didn't work as documented here. The Template:Cite_book documentation and documentation of other templates suggests that |display-authors= is actually the correct parameter. Which is correct? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Either |displayauthors= or |display-authors= may be used. They are aliases of each other. When you say that it didn't work as documented here can you be more specific? If there is something broken, we should fix it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your follow-up. I decided to do some more experimenting while update the bibliography where this issue first came up. In user space, I keep a source list for various articles, Books and other monographs on intelligence, and so far I appear to have a reproducible error of neither |displayauthors= nor |display-authors= limiting the display of a numbered list of authors in the bibliographic entry (near the very end of the bibliography) for WISC-IV Advanced Clinical Interpretation edited by Weiss, Saklofske, et al. I'm experimenting with that entry first, because that is where I first encountered the issue. I actually like to make bibliography entries in user space like that by using the "coauthor" field without the "author" field, although I see that throws an error message. The hidden list of co-authors is helpful for me for some purposes, especially as I adapt the bibliographic entries for particular articles. Anyway, in that entry I have a numbered list of authors, but no numerical setting for |displayauthors= or |display-authors= seems to change the actual number of authors displayed. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

If I hide |coauthors= then |display-authors= appears to work correctly. This may be intentional because |displayauthors= doesn't apply to |coauthors=. I'll poke around in the code an see what I learn. Here is your cite with |coauthors= commented out:

• L.G. Weiss; J.G. Harris; A. Prifitera; T. Courville; E. Rolfhus; D.H. Saklofske; J.A. Holdnack; D. Coalson; S.E. Raiford (2006). Weiss, Lawrence G.; Saklofske, Donald H.; Prifitera, Aurelio; Holdnack, James A. (eds.). WISC-IV Advanced Clinical Interpretation. Practical Resources for the Mental Health Professional. Burlington (MA): Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-088763-7. Retrieved 30 October 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |displayeditors= ignored (|display-editors= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:03, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, search Module:Citation/CS1 for the string "prevent ampersand". I don't completely follow the code, but it appears that the code specifically checks for the existence of |coauthors= and, if it exists, prevents |display-authors= from working.

Maybe this is something to put in the "CS1 feature request" list: swap that logic, since "coauthors" is deprecated. The future logic could be "if |display-authors= exists, ignore |coauthors=." We might want to wait to see how many articles use "coauthors", find out if there are unconsidered valid uses for it, obtain consensus on ignoring this deprecated parameter, etc. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep, that's how it works. It didn't work that way in the {{citation/core}}-based citations when {{para|coauthors}] was used as a crude work-around for the nine-author limitation:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|author1=Author1|author2=Author2|author3=Author3|author4=Author4|author5=Author5|author6=Author6|author7=Author7|author8=Author8|author9=Author9|coauthors=Coauthors|display-authors=3|title=Title}}
Live	Author1; Author2; Author3; et al. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Sandbox	Author1; Author2; Author3; et al. Title. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

A quick search found some vaguely related discussion in archive 6.

I'm inclined to agree with Editor Jonesey95 that the code should change to omit |coauthors= from the rendered citation if |displayauthors= is set.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Archive date for Australia's Pandora archive?

(Some of this is copied from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2013_October_14#Archive_date_for_Australia.27s_Pandora_archive.3F)

I've just fixed (in this edit) a dead link by adding "archiveurl" to a {{tl:cite web}} reference, and now the ref list includes the warning that "|archiveurl= requires |archivedate= (help)". The archive website is Pandora Australia's Web Archive, and it's not obvious to me how to get the archive date, or how else to fix the warning. Is there some reason why the date is "mandatory", if not all archive services provide the information?

For what it's worth, I found the archive link by:

1. Following the original (dead) link, which now takes me to http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/
2. Follow the link from http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/ to PANDORA (for ...brandis)
3. Search that Pandora page for the page title "35 per cent increase in funding for Australia's major performing arts companies" Mitch Ames (talk) 14:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Note that Pandora is a dedicated archive site. From http://pandora.nla.gov.au/about.html (I've added the bold for emphasis)

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations.

Perhaps the template help needs a bit more explanation as to what qualifies as an "archive". Mitch Ames (talk) 14:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

To answer your archive date question, I think that the archive url has something that looks suspiciously like a date-time stamp:

|archiveurl=http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/36698/20071112-1356/www.minister.dcita.gov.au/...

That seems to comport with information for Brandis on this Pandora page.

I'm not clear what you mean by the template help needs a bit more explanation as to what qualifies as an "archive". How would you make the help better?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, most archive services put the archive date into the URL, usually just before the beginning of the original URL. In this case, 20071112-1356 can be read as 2007-11-12T13:56, or in other words, 13:56, 12 November 2007. So |archivedate=12 November 2007 would be appropriate. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, I've fixed the article now. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

ISSN error for working ISSN 0022-247x

Here's a working ISSN that generates an error (clicking on the link to Worldcat works), from Ivar Ekeland:

• {{cite journal | doi = 10.1016/0022-247X(74)90025-0 | last = Ekeland | first = Ivar | title = On the variational principle | journal = J. Math. Anal. Appl. | volume = 47 | year = 1974 | pages = 324–353 | issn = 0022-247x}}
• Ekeland, Ivar (1974). "On the variational principle". J. Math. Anal. Appl. 47: 324–353. doi:10.1016/0022-247X(74)90025-0. ISSN 0022-247x. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help)

My understanding was that the permissible values were 0-9, with 0-9 or "x" in the final digit. Is it possible that the lower-case "x" is causing the error message to appear?

Clicking on the ISSN in the citation takes you to the correct page in WorldCat, so I don't think this is an invalid ISSN.

P.S. If I change the "x" to "X", the error message disappears. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the X is supposed to be a capital. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:32, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

ISSN for Billboard Brasil?

In the new Category:CS1 errors: ISSN, I am finding many references that cite Billboard Brasil with an ISSN that looks like an ISBN. It's clearly not a valid ISSN as I understand it (eight digits), and I'm also not finding any reference to this magazine's actual ISSN on the web. Here's an example citation:

BPP, ed. (February/March 2013). "Billboard Brasil Hot 100 Airplay". Billboard Brasil (38): 84–89. ISSN 977-217605400-2. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

There are similar ISSNs that appear in Billboard Brasil citations; they all have the same basic ISBN-like form.

Does anyone have any idea where this apparently-errant ISSN is coming from? It's rampant in articles about pop singles. From a quick scan, it appears that maybe 10% of the 800+ articles in the ISSN error category are there because of Billboard Brasil. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The number looks like a 13-digit ISBN 977-217605400-2. However, I don't think that they start with 977 even though the checksum calculation works. It fools Special:BookSources (and will fool the CS1 ISBN check until I fix that) but doesn't fool the ISBN magic link code. When I googled the number I found multiple pages where most, if not all, of the search results pointed to Wikipedia.

When I clicked around in Category:CS1 errors: ISSN and found a page with the 977-217605400-2 error it had been added by User:Thissz. Has Thissz also added this error to other pages? Where did Thissz editor get this number?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

A 13-digit number beginning 977 is not an ISBN (that would begin 978 or 979), nor is it an ISSN (that would have 8 digits); it is an EAN-13, normally seen in the form of a barcode on almost anything sold retail in Europe. Since the 978 and 979 ranges for ISBNs are a subset of the full EAN-13 series, it follows that the checksum calculation for ISBN-13 works for any EAN-13 barcode, even if the barcode does not represent an ISBN. An EAN-13 which begins 977 is the EAN-13 for a periodical, and often includes the first seven digits of the true ISSN (for example, The Railway Magazine, ISSN 0033-8923 is EAN-13 977-0033-892-293). --Redrose64 (talk) 00:49, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Thissz has added this number to many pages. I left a note on this editor's talk page to ask where the number comes from. It sounds like it might be displayed on a bar code on the front of the physical magazine.

I forgot to mention that I had done a ton of googling to try to locate the source of this number. It's possible that all or most of the instances of this number originate with a single editor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:08, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

ISSN error for working ISSN 0892-4480

There is an ISSN of 0892-4480 listed for the Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law in the citations for Zephyrhills (water). The full citation is:

• Samek, Kelly (2004). "Unknown Quantity: The Bottled Water Industry and Florida's Springs" (PDF). Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law. 19 (2). Tallahassee, Florida: Florida State University College of Law: 582. ISSN 0892-4480. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

The CS1 ISSN error shows for this ISSN, but the ISSN matches the one listed on the journal's web site, and the link to worldcat.org brings up information about this journal.

I tried a couple of tricks that have worked in the past, including retyping the whole ISSN (in case the dash was really an en dash, or something similar; or in case one of the zeros was really a capital letter "o") and typing the ISSN without the dash. What is causing the error message to persist? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:38, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

If one believes the method for calculating a check digit as described at ISSN (which seems to match the methodology specified in ISSN Manual), then the number 0892-4480 is wrong. Assuming the first seven digits are correct (I have not reason to believe that they are) then the check digit should be 1 not 0. Even more perplexing is that WorldCat and the journal's web site agree that it is a correct number.

Could it be a typo? Compare this ISSN: 0892-4880

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:46, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Nice catch. That's a pretty persistent typo. This ISSN validator says that 0892-4480 is invalid as well. It's interesting that Worldcat appears to be working around it, at least partially. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps that ISSN validator shouldn't be trusted? It doesn't like either 0892-4480 or 0892-4880 nor does it like 3424-4532 – a number that it uses as an example. "We don't like it either". ISSN 34244532. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help) (check digit should be 0 assuming all of the other digits are correct).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:56, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Does not give error

Normally there is a date error given when there is something other than a year in the year field such as in this article.

There appears to be no indication of a problem with reference 5 in Aegis Defence Services as I would have expected as exactly the same condition.

May be there is a problem with the combination of parameters causing this not to display as an error. Keith D (talk) 00:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you mean the extra "last update" part? I've seen that with parameter "origyear=", which lets you specify pretty much anything. I'm no expert at this, but I'm thinking as long as you pass it a year within range it generally doesn't care.

In the previous example (Emma Harrison article) there was a slash with two dates. Perhaps it passed the first date, then was confused as to what to do with the second year? meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 01:01, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Paging Trappist the monk, I think this might be a bug. Check this out:

"As U.S. Military Exits Iraq, Contractors To Enter : NPR". npr.org. 2011 [last update]. Archived from the original on 19 May 2011. Retrieved 29 June 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

"As U.S. Military Exits Iraq, Contractors To Enter : NPR". npr.org. 2011 [last update]. Retrieved 29 June 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

Identical citations, except that the second one has the archiveurl and archivedate removed. Only the second throws a red error message, but they both should do so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm at a loss to explain how this is happening. Apparently, something about a valid |archivedate= (and also |doi_brokendate=, |embargo=, and |publicationdate=) suppresses either date-checking or error-reporting for |year=. Even more perplexing is that the problem isn't exhibited by CS1/sandbox:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|embargo=2011|title=Title|year=2x11}}
Live	Title. 2x11. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |embargo= ignored (|pmc-embargo-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Sandbox	Title. 2x11. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |embargo= ignored (|pmc-embargo-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

I'm not inclined to spend too much time trying to noodle this out because the issue doesn't appear to be present in the CS1/sandbox code. CS1/sandbox has seen quite a bit of change that consolidates and streamlines date handling and improves promotion of |publicationdate= and |year= to |date=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for looking. It appears to be fixed in the sandbox version. Any idea of a deployment date for the changes? Keith D (talk) 19:30, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Why was coauthors field deprecated? Can it be undeprecated?

I'm encountering problems with articles being edited by AWB, with user modifications turning coauthor fields in references into author2 fields, which is just wrong in general. I'd actually like coauthor to be an accepted field that doesn't throw an error, and I'm happy to explain why if anyone would like to hear me out. What is the current practice of library scientists (I am neither a librarian nor a programmer, although I try to read about the work of both kinds of specialists in maintaining online bibliography resources) in using fields to describe books with collections of chapters or articles by many authors? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:15, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing the coauthors parameter was "eliminated" after considerable discussion, can someone familiar with it provide a link for WeijiBaikeBianji to check out? In the meantime WeijiBaikeBianji you should probably just give a couple of sentences of your argument here. As far as I can tell, no functionality is lost; the authorn parameters display the same as coauthors when they include multiple names, and even better provide the opportunity to use author2, author3, author4 etc to split each name individually if desired. As far as my AWB replacements go, swapping author2 for coauthors eliminates a tech error message but does not change the display or functionality so I'm not clear on the problem you're having. Thanks!— TAnthony^Talk 07:20, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Deprecated cauthors field does not have the same meaning as author2 and the history of yesterday's edits to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Rename template parameters. AWB users with a default configuration won't be changing coauthors to author2 once they restart the program or reload the configuration. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:58, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

With the conversion of the major CS1 templates from {{citation/core}} to Module:Citation/CS1 the artificial limit on the number of authors that could be listed in a citation was lifted. CS1 citations that use Module:Citation/CS1 can support an unlimited number of authors – {{citation/core}} limited the number of authors to nine with eight displayed and the ninth replaced with et al. |coauthors= was a way of getting around the nine-author limit. That workaround is no longer required.

@WeijiBaikeBianji: Citations to books that are collections of chapters or articles by multiple authors typically cite the |chapter=Title of Chapter or Article, |author=Chapter or Article Author, |title=Collection Title, and |editor=Collection editor.

@TAnthony: I think it was more a growing awareness that |coauthors= is no longer needed than a single discussion. Replacing |coauthors= with |author2= is problematic: it may work as intended but then again it may not. |author#= is an alias of |last#= so when |coauthors= is replaced by |author#= the index (#) must be one greater than the last index of |last#= or |author#= or you end up with an error:

{{cite book |title=Title |last1=Last1 |first1=First1 |last2=Last2 |first2=First2 |author2=Author2}}

→Last1, First1; Last2, First2. Title. {{cite book}}: More than one of |author2= and |last2= specified (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

@WeijiBaikeBianji: In the discussion that Editor John of Reading mentions, you say: On the CS1 talk page I have pointed out that there is a use case for the "coauthor" field and that perhaps this field should not be deprecated, as it currently is. Can you give a link to that discussion? I found this discussion but it doesn't seem to make a use case for |coauthors=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

First of all, thanks to everyone for your careful attention to detail, and your kind offer to discuss the issue here. I should explain that I'm very grateful to the programmers who are implementing the changes in the templates and in the automated editing tools and validation tools for Wikipedians. My background in coming to this issue is having taken a course in cataloging and classification through the library science program (now defunct) at my alma mater university back in the 1970s. Just now I looked up the Library of Congress documentation on the MARC online bibliographic record format [6], which originated way back before when I took my library science course, and I see that it is permitted by the MARC standards to include added fields in a bibliographic record for co-authors.

I'll describe my use case as a Wikipedia here for distinguishing co-authors from main book authors. As Trappist the monk correctly says, usually a specific citation to (for example) a book chapter in a book that is a collection of chapters written by various authors would cite the chapter directly, using the author1, author2, etc. parameters for authors of the chapter in the expected way, with editor1, editor2, etc. parameters used to identify the editors of the collection of chapters that is published in book form. I do that routinely in editing articles.

That said, and perhaps with years of using public library and academic library MARC records in mind, I usually give full co-author information for references to the overall book in talk page references to an especially useful book, and sometimes in article Further reading sections. That's because it happens that my research interests, which motivated me to join in on editing Wikipedia since 2010, happen to coincide with topics that are contentious and heavily edit-warred, including one of the ten most edit-warred articles on Wikipedia.[7] In that context, I've decided that one of the most collegial and helpful things I can do to calm down the atmosphere and progress forward to better article edits is to be really scrupulous about sourcing articles, and painstakingly exact about citing sources. In advance of making article edits, I generally post a lot of sources to article talk pages, and I also keep a bibliography on human intelligence and a bibliography on human genetics in user space for all Wikipedians to use to check sources. (Anyone is welcome to contribute sources to those bibliographies.) It is helpful, especially, in those user bibliographies to give complete information about all included co-authors for all the sources that are practitioner handbooks with contributions from multiple authors, as those are some of the best sources in those disciplines (they fit WP:MEDRS very well). Then Wikipedians who are doubting and evaluating individual chapters from one or another source can find out who else was included in a collection to evaluate the editors' editorial decisions in putting the book together in the first place. Perhaps most of you edit in less contentious editing environments—I sure hope so—but I have found it helpful to use the co-authors field as it was documented when I joined Wikipedia, to store bibliographic information with a given bibliographic record, for editors who desire to examine the source's reliability, with the default display of co-authors not being public-visible on the Wikipedia article pages. A while ago I installed the tool for Wikipedians (which I suppose several of you have installed) that shows error messages about bibliographic entries, and that's when I was dismayed to discover that co-author fields are now deprecated in CS1, even though they are still accepted in professional bibliographic practice (as documented by the MARC documentation). I am, of course, glad to discuss this further with all of you. Best wishes for a very pleasant and collaborative editing environment wherever you edit in article space. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your perspective. Unfortunately, I still do not understand why you prefer to use |coauthors= instead of |author2=, |author3=, etc. I find that it helps in cases like this to give a specific example. Can you give a specific example from your list of sources that shows the advantage of using |coauthors= instead of |author2=, |author3=, etc.? I think that would be helpful in advancing this conversation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarifying follow-up question. My use case ends up preferring a parameter that doesn't display by default, but preserves co-author information in a bibliiographic entry (which I can then trim to use as I gradually cite individually useful chapters of reliable handbooks on the topics I edit about). I can share the main book bibliographic information to readers immediately, using a citation with the co-authors field hidden, allowing editors who care to check the co-authors, while readers who don't care can just look up the book. To me, the hidden (no display by default) nature of the coauthors parameter is a win-win for readers and editors, definitely a feature rather than a bug.

Here is one of the newest entries on my user bibliography, an extremely useful professional handbook with chapters by numerous coauthors. To cite one chapter from that book, it saves me typing to have the full entry at hand, to copy and paste from, and for readers of Wikipedia, seeing the visible (displayed) part of the entry is enough for most readers, while some other editors will check the reliability of this source by peering beneath the hood and seeing which co-authors are on board as chapter authors for this source.

* Weiner, Irving B.; Graham, John R.; Naglieri, Jack A., eds. (2 October 2012). Handbook of Psychology. Vol. Volume 10: Assessment Psychology. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-89127-8. Retrieved 25 November 2013. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laysummary= and |laydate= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Thanks for asking for an example. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

That explanation helps. I now understand specifically how you are using the coauthors parameter. My personal assessment of your usage is that you have been cleverly using an unintended feature (some might call it a bug) of the citation templates, which is that the value of |coauthors= is not displayed when there is no value in |author=.

Your clever use of this feature/bug conflicts with the well-meaning use of |coauthors= by article editors who intended to display multiple authors for a book but who ended up displaying no authors, like this:

• {{cite book |title=Handbook of Psychology |coauthors=Edward Brown and Harvey Smith |date=2012 }}
• Handbook of Psychology. 2012. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

We want to highlight and fix the above usage in articles, where editors clearly intended to display multiple author names but did not know how to do it properly or did not pay attention to the results of their edits.

I have two thoughts about your usage:

1. If you put your coauthors parameter inside comment marks, i.e. <!-- |coauthors = Brown, Smith, etc. -->, you should see your previous output without the "coauthors= without author=" error message.

2. If you are building these bibliographies on User, Talk, or many other kinds of pages, the error will be displayed, but the page will not be added to any error categories. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:35, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I concur with Editor Jonesey95's assessment.

It occurs to me to wonder: if you are creating a bibliography of citations to specific chapters or articles, wouldn't it be less effort in the log term to simply create a citation for each chapter of the book? Do the work once then, editors can go to the bibliography, get the citation that they need and be on their way. Perhaps something like this:

• Book Title citations by chapter:
  • Last, First; Last2, First2 (26 November 2024). "Chapter 1 Chapter title". In Editorlast, EditorFirst (ed.). Book Title. Location: Publisher.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • Last, First; Last2, First2; Last3, First3 (25 November 2024). "Chapter 2 Chapter title". In Editorlast, EditorFirst (ed.). Book Title. Location: Publisher.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Addition of check digit calculator link(s) to ISBN section

Hello all - What does everyone think about adding a link to a check digit calculator to the section Help:CS1_errors#Check_.7Cisbn.3D_value ? I have found several that are helpful, particularly http://www.morovia.com/education/utility/upc-ean.asp . Any thoughts on this? KConWiki (talk) 14:51, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I suggest adding this link to ISBN, perhaps in the External Links section. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:25, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen a similar request somewhere else recently, was it to do with Special:Booksources? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:25, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Section "Text "????" ignored"

Some clarification please at the part where it reads:
"... add an appropriate parameter name to complete the parameter,..."
Does it need a specific parameter name (and if so, where can they be found?) or can one be "made up" as needed? Thanks.TMCk (talk) 20:18, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Citation templates like {{cite web}} and {{cite book}} use parameters, separated by vertical bars, to indicate information about the source being cited, such as title, author, URL (web address), and more. Click on the template links in the previous sentence to see what parameters are available.

The error message that you are seeing means that there is text in between two vertical bars, but no valid parameter name followed by an "=" character. If you need help with a specific article, please provide a link to it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:52, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought my question was quite clear but in any case, your links gave me the answer I was looking for and thus I made a slight adjustment to the paragraph here which would've answered my question and should help others not to ask the same question again. Thanks for the quick response that solved the issue I had.TMCk (talk) 00:32, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

2 related questions regarding Citation Style 1 parameter deprecation

Okay. I'm kind of a newbie here, so bear with—not used to participating in Wiki threads, nor am I sure if this is even the right place.

My two questions:

1. Are coauthors and month & day actually deprecated (i.e., are we still wavering back and forth over whether to keep them, or are they as dead as a doornail)?
2. If so, why? (this pertains more to the month/day parameters, since I've already read Why was [the] coauthors field deprecated?...)

I'll side with whatever you guys say, not here to argue; just looking to be helpful and sort of "unify" everything — update documentation, remove deprecated params from the RefToolbar and lesser-known pages, not actively propagate a phased-out parameter, etc. — I just want a clear answer so I can be clear in what I do.

Or, if this isn't the centralized discussion, a referral to another thread maybe? meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 05:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Welcome! Answering in reverse order: Most of the general discussion about this stuff happens at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Discussion about detailed proposed changes and bugs in the CS1 templates often happens at Module talk:Citation/CS1. I don't think there is a rhyme or reason for this, that's just how it happened. Feel free to add those pages to your watchlist (click the hollow blue star at the upper right to turn it solid) if you want to track and join in on the occasional conversations there. We try not to bite.

My short answer to question 2: |month= and |day= are deprecated because they are no longer needed and comprise unnecessary complexity. They had a purpose once upon a time, when the cite templates were not as clever and sophisticated as they are now.

My short answer to question 1: There are editors and bots that are actively fixing these deprecated parameters, with the goal of eliminating all of them. I can imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when there are no more instances of |month= or |day= or |coauthors= in CS1 templates, at which point the module could be switched to displaying an error like month is not a valid parameter, use date instead. This is just my personal view; a change like that would take significant discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 07:27, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The |day= parameter has been deprecated for years; since at least 2010, IIRC (possibly even 2009 - I recall an early edit of mine, which had used |day=|month=|year=, being altered by SmackBot (talk · contribs) to |date=). One problem was that |day= wasn't being used consistently - some people used it for the day of the month; others used |day= for the day of the week with the |date= parameter used for the day, month and year. |day= was sometimes undisplayed since it relied on the presence of both the |month= and |year= parameters, which some people forgot. The deprecation of |month= is much more recent, and took place less than a year ago. There are two ways of spotting pages which use |coauthors=, |day= and |month= - one is to enable "Show hidden categories" at Preferences → Appearance, and look for Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters at the bottom of the page; the other is to install the CSS shown at Help:CS1 errors#Controlling error message display, and look for red error messages like (the actual text may vary). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:59, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Ukiyo-e

I am doing a GA review for Ukiyo-e and it has "Check date values in: |date= (help)" error messages for the web citations under Ukiyo-e#Works cited. I have something turned on somewhere to see the error messages that others do not see, and I'm not sure why the error message is appearing.

Here's the wikitext for one of the citations:

{{cite web |last = Fiorillo |first = John |title = FAQ: Care and Repair of Japanese Prints |work = Viewing Japanese Prints |url = http://www.viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/topictexts/faq/faq_care_and_repair.html |year = 1999–2001 |accessdate = 2013-12-17 |ref = {{SfnRef|Fiorillo|1999–2001}} }}

And this is what I see on the screen:

Fiorillo, John (1999–2001). "FAQ: Care and Repair of Japanese Prints". Viewing Japanese Prints. Retrieved 2013-12-17. Check date values in: |date= (help)

The year range as an en dash has described on the linked section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:CS1_errors#bad_date

Is there something that I'm missing? Thanks!--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The something that you have turned on that reveals the CS1 error messages is discussed at Help:CS1 errors#Controlling error message display.

The underlying engine that creates CS1 citations is Module:Citation/CS1. That engine does not currently allow year ranges in date-holding parameters. They will, no doubt, be supported in future. I'm not so sure that copyright dates should be used to date a citation – especially on websites where is is very common to see obviously current material with a copyright date in the past. For this citation, I would simply use |accessdate= and leave off |date= altogether.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, Trappist!--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:43, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

In the case of these particular web pages, the author has put different copyright date notices on each article at the site. Should the dates still be avoided? Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:01, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I think so. Dates in CS1 citations are an aid to the reader who wants to consult the same source that the editor cited. This is difficult when citing ephemeral works like websites; a fact that was there in the copyright 2001 version may not be there in the copyright 2001–2004 version. |accessdate= helps to get around that conundrum by identifying the date on which the cited fact was present on the website. Or, consider adding a link to an archived version of the web pages you wish to cite; archive.org, for example. Set |deadurl=no if the website page is still live.

It isn't clear to me just what the author's intent is when he uses a variety of copyright dates. It would seem that he uses these dates much like a last-updated-on kind of date. There are single year copyrights, year range copyrights (as illustrated above), and the odd year range plus another year copyrights (Tsuruya Kôkei (born 1946) copyright 1999–2001, 2010). What does that last mean? Does it mean that it wan't in copyright for the period 2002–2009? It's all too confusing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:01, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree. As long as the accessdate is provided in the citation, it made sense to me, too, to remove the year range for copyrighted dates/years. For me, this contrasts against specific dates, such as article dates for online magazines or newspapers.--CaroleHenson (talk) 22:23, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Okay, just wanted clarification. The date parameter apparently serves a different role than I'd thought. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:00, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion about possibly ambiguous date range

YYYY–YY is sometimes found ambiguous by some editors, if it could be confused with YYYY–MM. The notice already mentions that date ranges may be incorrectly marked, but there is some discussion about whether this range should continue to be marked, though other acceptable year ranges are now unmarked, and if so, what the explanation would be. I would just document whatever happens in the code, saying it may differ from MOS, with links to the relevant MOS pages, continuing to say editors should use discretion. So far, no changes really need to be made, as the ranges are covered in the current explanation. —PC-XT+ 02:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The note in the date error message help text about incorrectly marked citations was referring to the 2014-03-30 update. That update having happened, I have removed the note.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:26, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Now that the note about ranges has been removed, my suggestion applies. I suggest something like this, to better describe this particular range, and the discussion (correct this as needed): "Dates in the form YYYY–YY should be checked to be sure editors have not incorrectly used YYYY–MM. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Months) While the MOS defines YYYY–YY to be correct, consider using YYYY–YYYY instead, to avoid ambiguity, and make it easier for the template to parse." —PC-XT+ 04:23, 1 April 2014 (UTC) 04:25, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I have added text to the help text that I think says what you suggested.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:05, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

what's wrong with this picture?

I cannot understand what's wrong with this citation:

Munday, Rosemary, ed. (l991). "How Australia Began: Significant Dates in Australian History". The Bulletin Australian Almanac & Book of Facts 1992. Sydney: Australian Consolidated Press. p. 3. ISSN 1038-054X. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

There's no |date=, so how can the value be incorrect? -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:21, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a value for the year parameter, and the first character is an ell rather than a one. The editor who wrote it must have learned to type on a manual typewriter. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:27, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

no wonder! Thanks. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:33, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks like the first digit in the year parameter is a lower case L. The individual parameters |year=, |month=, and |day= are promoted to |date= before the date validation code is executed. I am aware of this issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:31, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

no wonder! Thanks. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:33, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Could we say Check values in: |date= or |year=? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Or, we could take |date= out, leaving "Check date values (help)", and just list the parameters in the help text. —PC-XT+ 04:04, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I've added text to the help text that I think explains how an error in |year= is reported as an error in |date=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:13, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Accessdate

maybe accessdate should not raise a flag if doi is filled in? All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:15, 13 April 2014 (UTC).

This was discussed and explained at length on this page last year and also before that at VPP (ignore the non-consensus "consensus" summaries and scroll to the bolded "Do you agree that |accessdate= should only be displayed if there is a URL present" section for a quick overview) and maybe in other places.

The reason that this error message is still hidden is that we need a bot to comment out the accessdates in citations where it doesn't belong, like {{cite journal}} templates where doi/pmid/pmc is filled in, or {{cite book}} in most or all cases. Once that is done, we'll have a better idea of how many of those 42,774 articles have actual errors, and we can expose the error messages so that editors know that there is a problem to be fixed.

The basic consensus that I perceive from previous discussions is:

• |accessdate= in a citation without a |url= should not be displayed
• |accessdate= is only for web-based citations that might change, hence it should not be used for books or journal articles
• comment out, do not delete, |accessdate= when |url= is missing, because sometimes people delete or omit the |url= and the |accessdate= gives a clue about the publication date of the web-based source

I believe that this accessdate category will soon be the largest subcategory of the incorrect syntax category (as it was before the date errors and deprecated parameters were tagged; bots are working on those categories as we speak). It's a nice meaty problem for a bot operator, and it shouldn't be that hard to address. I don't have the bot skills to take it on, but other people who read this page probably do. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:50, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

It would be an interesting and not difficult task. Sadly one I am not at liberty to take up. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 02:05, 13 April 2014 (UTC).

I did everything beginning with "." or "Ř".... All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 03:19, 13 April 2014 (UTC).

Perhaps I'll have a go at it with these assumptions:

1. Only applies to CS1 citations that have |accessdate= but do not have |url=
2. Journal identifiers are: |arxiv=, |bibcode=, |doi=, |issn=, |jfm=, |jstor=, |mr=, |pmc=, |pmid=, |zbl=
3. for {{citation}} templates with:
   • a journal identifier: delete |accessdate= and its value
   • |journal= without an identifier: comment out |accessdate= value (|accessdate=<!--date-->)
   • an isbn: delete |accessdate= and its value
4. for {{cite book}}: delete |accessdate= and its value
5. for {{cite encyclopedia}}: comment out |accessdate= value
6. for {{cite journal}} with:
   • a journal identifier: delete |accessdate= and its value
   • else comment out |accessdate= value
7. for {{cite news}}: comment out |accessdate= value
8. for {{cite web}}: do nothing

And since this is rather a lonely backwater, I'll put a note about this discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I do not think that we should be commenting out |accessdate= for {{cite news}} as it is basically used the same as {{cite web}}. If there is a URL then you would expect to find an accessdate. Keith D (talk) 14:15, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Cite news could frequently refer to an online news source, which is subject to change, so the accessdate may be useful. Cite journal has long been a synonym for cite news, and is commonly applied to any periodical (or the web site of any print periodical). Some of these sources are online and subject to change, so again, accessdate could be useful. Indeed, it suggests it could be useful to have both a date parameter for the date that the publisher designates as the publication date, and a last-updated parameter to indicate the last update designated by the publisher, which might be different from the official publication date. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Most of the cite templates (not just web and news) have a |url= parameter; if that has been filled in, I don't think that |accessdate= should be removed. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:37, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, so I wasn't specifically clear about what I am talking about. For the above list of actions that a bot might take, I am referring to CS1 citations with |accessdate= but without |url=. I've added that restriction to the list above.

The purpose of the list of actions is to guide the development of a relatively mindless bot that can troll through Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL, fixing or hiding the offending |accessdate= parameter in those citations where simple fixes make sense. This is why, for example, {{cite web}} is not fixed; those citations require a human editor to figure out why {{cite web}} doesn't have |url= but does have |accessdate=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Here is a list of test edits that I've made that show what my prospective bot would do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I notice that this edit comments out the access date for a citation where there is a working URL specified in |url= but the article before the edit had the url inexplicably commented out. Maybe the test should be modified to leave a citation alone if there is any non-whitespace characters in |url=. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:12, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

As far as the script is concerned, there is no |url= in those citations. The opening half of an HTML remark tag lies between the pipe and url: |<!--url. I've updated the script to protect from editing any citations that have the opening half of an HTML remark tag between the pipe and url. I have reverted the edit and had the script try again. This time, the script did not edit the page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that accessdates should not be deleted, for the reasons listed in the (long) threads I linked to above. The presence of a filled-in ISBN or journal identifier does not necessarily mean that the identifier is valid; we have basic validation for some of them and do not check the rest. Deleting the accessdate from a citation with an invalid identifier removes a clue that might help fix the identifier. I would replace each instance of "delete" with "comment out" in the list above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:35, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not finding that argument very persuasive. For repair of a malformed parameter value, the other information available in a citation, which is actually related to the source, is much more useful than an arbitrary date that identifies some point in time that an anonymous Wikipedia editor consulted that source. The benefits of |accessdate= for ephemeral internet sources is undeniable, but for journals, books, and other fixed sources, meh, not so much.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:40, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I object to |accessdate= being deleted on any citations.

1. I regularly use access date information, even those on material which is supposedly unchanging (e.g. books, PMID, DOI, etc). |accessdate= provides a hint as to when the citation was entered on the page. Generally, this means that the person who added the citation believed that the reference supported the text at that point. While this may, or may not, be accurate, I routinely use access dates to prioritize which references need to be checked to verify that article content is still supported by the citation. Using it in this way is, of course, imperfect. However, there really is just not enough time in existence to do all the checking which really should be performed. This is one piece of information which can be used to help determine where to spend limited time.
2. I have also found that |accessdate= is useful in attempting to determine to what a reference actually is referring. We all know those references that have inaccurate or corrupted information. Sometimes the citation is copied from page to page with errors/vandalism – I recently fixed one that had the same error on 34 pages across 7 wikis which appeared to be the result of copying a vandalized citation. All information we have, including |accessdate=, is potentially valuable in such situations. |accessdate= can provide a hint as to the time-frame of the actual reference date when that is not included with the citation.
3. It also can be used to eliminate some possibilities of what the reference is (It can't refer to a reference created after that date). Let's not delete the information just because some people feel it is not useful, to them, on a citation that is correctly formatted and not corrupted by vandalism and copied from page to page.
4. |accessdate= is also useful as one of the quick sanity checks for a citation: Is |accessdate= before |date=? If so, that citation needs to be checked.
5. In addition, I have used |accessdate= as an indicator that someone has merely copied a reference from one page to another. This can indicate that the person may have not bothered to read the actual reference which may imply that a closer examination of if the reference actually supports the text is appropriate.

I have not yet read the discussions linked above. I will do so in the reasonably near future. Was anyone arguing that having an access date is actually bad? Or just that they did not feel it was useful, for them? It's not like we have a limited amount of space on a page and we need to trim all information which is not critical.

I see no reason to consider that having an |accessdate= without a URL is inherently an error, let alone that the |accessdate= should be deleted for that reason. I can understand the converse being an error: URL without access date. I can understand not requiring an access date for most references without a URL (i.e. ones which refer to physical objects). It is not reasonable to consider it an error to have an access date when the reference does not have a URL where other information in the citation implies that what is being referenced is not primarily on the web. It is reasonable to give a warning that someone should check the citation and verify that a URL is not supposed to be there and disable the warning (perhaps with something similar to |ignore-isbn-error=true). Alternately, just have the module not flag having an |accessdate= without a URL to be an error if there is a valid ISBN, DOI, or other permanent reference.

The existence of the error is not to indicate that having the access date is wrong. It is to indicate that having an access date makes it likely that the person forgot to enter a URL when a URL is what is being referenced. The solution to this type of error is not to get rid of the access date information. The solution is to change the module so that does not report most of the cases mentioned in the list of tasks above where addition information that the module has (e.g. valid ISBN, DOI, etc.) indicates that a URL should not be required. Additionally, there should be a way to directly inform the module that in the specific instance having a |accessdate= without a URL has been checked by a human and is not an error.

It appears to me that people may be coming at this from the wrong point of view: See error...easiest solution is to remove the access date instead of solving it in another, more appropriate manner.

If you do end up deleting, or commenting out access date information, please keep in mind that you need to check for the existence of any URL. These include (not an exhaustive list):

URL positions:

• bare URLS in, or next to the citation (some are placed next to citations; yep, not the way it is supposed to be, but it is done)
• |url=
• |chapterurl=
• |chapter-url=
• |contributionurl=
• |contribution-url=
• |archive-url=
• |layurl=
• |website= (Yep, again not supposed to happen, but it does)
• |deadurl= (Yep, again not supposed to happen, but it does)
• commented out URLs
• Any parameter in which the editor has placed a URL. example:

Fortescue, Sir John William (1915), A history of the British army, vol. 4 part 2, Macmillan and company, pp. 889–890 {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help) [Note: This example links to a source which should not be changing, but other citations link to changeable content.]

• Keep in mind that all it takes is a missing | character and the |url= is actually in some other parameter.

In your above list of tasks #7 is just wrong. {{cite news}} is used to commonly refer to news websites with and without URLs being included. It would only be reasonable to comment out |accessdate= if you can actually verify that there is enough valid data to indicate that the source really is a physical paper copy of an article.

For the vast majority of tasks listed above the right solution is for the module to not report the missing URL error when enough information is there to indicate a valid physical source, or "permanent" electronic location information.

— Makyen (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

All of the above argues for commenting out, not deleting, the accessdate, in citations that refer to permanent sources. Remember that without a |url=, the access date is already not displayed, so commenting it out does not change the displayed citation.

Makyen's example citation above is a perfect example of why we need to go through this category with a script or a bot. The example uses {{citation}} and it does not contain any identifiers, so it would not be touched by the bot. After the bot removes all of the noise from the category by commenting out accessdates in cite templates for sources believed to be permanent, citations like the one above will be left. We will then be able to troubleshoot and fix them by hand. Thanks for the example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:57, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Proponents of the RfC that resulted in the hiding of access date error messages, promised a bot that would fix citations in Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL. That never happened. A bot to fix these errors was quietly begun and even more quietly abandoned. What there was of it was rather more mindless than my AWB script, it simply deleted |accessdate= when the citation did not include |url=. In my oppose to the RfC, I noted then that I thought that a bot probably couldn't do the job right.

Editor Jonesey95 has twice in this discussion asserted that we need a bot that removes all of the noise from the category. Yet, whatever action a bot takes, whether it's deleting |accessdate= entirely or simply hiding all or part of |accessdate=, the citation will drop off the radar and these broken (according to the current criteria) citations will no longer be easily found.

Since there seemed to be a desire for an automated tool to fix some of these errors, I hacked up a script to do so. But, as I tested my script, I started to wonder if it really is possible to fix these errors in the manner that has been prescribed. I don't think that it is; at least not using the current criteria and definitions which I have also started to question. To that end, I have started a separate discussion about rethinking |accessdate=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:04, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

It is desirable for "broken" citations to drop off the radar when they are fixed. However, simply deleting all of the accessdates from broken citations in the category (something that has not been proposed seriously) would not be appropriate, since some of the error messages indicate a problem, often a subtle problem, with the citation syntax. We need to find some middle ground between wholesale removal of the accessdates and editing each article by hand.

The trick is to send 40,000+ articles through a filter that comments out accessdates in citations that truly do not need them, like books with ISBNs or journal articles with DOI values. Once that is done, we'll be able to see the articles with actual problems. This is the same approach that was taken in the "unsupported parameters" category, where straightforward misspellings were replaced with corrected parameter names. Once that was done, the one-off "oddballs" were left for humans to process. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:53, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

A bot, or multiple bot runs, may be appropriate in the future. However, the correct solution for the specific situations you mention is to change the module to not report an error in those cases. It should be a relatively simple code change to have the module not report an error when either a valid format ISBN or a valid format DOI are present. The solution to these is not to have a bot run through and comment out the |accessdate=.

To me, such simple situations are bugs/RFE issues with the module. They are not fodder for a bot to go change the citations just to remove them from a category in which they were placed due to a lack of discrimination by the module. If we were stuck with a template using wiki template code then that would be the correct solution. We are not. We have a Lua based module which can be programmed to more accurately assign, or not assign, citations to the error category.

Sure, at some point we will need bots/humans to go through the category. We are not there yet.

note: In the list above (2. Journal identifiers), an ISSN does not uniquely identify an article/item (in most cases). ISSNs are automatically provided by some tools when citing web based sources. ISSNs are usually assigned as one number to a particular journal – not even a particular issue of the journal. I am unsure about a couple of the other identifiers. If the ID does not uniquely identify the work to which the citation refers, it should not be cause to not display the error. — Makyen (talk) 22:22, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Yep, I think it's pretty easy to change Module:Citation/CS1's behavior to create variant subsets of the |accessdate= error. In part that's why I started the discussion about rethinking |accessdate=. Before leaping into the code, we need better clarity on just what |accessdate= is, how it should be used, how it should be displayed, etc.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: The filtering you describe is not the same as the filtering that fixes misspellings. A word is either misspelled or it isn't making the citation broken or not broken. Following a bot run, fixed citations are fixed, and the broken ones are still broken. After a bot run where the fix is to hide |accessdate= when there isn't a |url=, broken citations are still broken and fixed citations may be fixed or may be broken, but, in any case, are no longer conveniently listed in a place where editors can find and fix those that are still broken. Fixing in this manner is irreversible – once gone from the category, those pages are gone.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:59, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

lccn error

I am citing a book where the lccn number printed on the inside cover does not match the formatting expected by the template. It is only seven digits long. How do I suppress the error message? Or should I just leave the lccn number off entirely? Reyk _YO! 03:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The code that flags LCCNs as erroneous has a bug that identifies some valid LCCNs as invalid. This bug has been fixed but not deployed to the live code yet. I recommend leaving your LCCN in the citation as it appears in the book, even if it creates a red error message. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I disagree that it should be left as it is in the book. 7 digits is invalid under the current format and will not link correctly. Are we "correcting" yy-xxxx to yyxxxxxx??? Definitely not doing so currently.

@Reyk: As far as I know the error can not be suppressed. The issue is that the format of the LCCN which is in the book does not comply with the current formatting requirements of the LoC. The goal for the citation is for there to be a link from the LCCN in the displayed citation to the LCCN Permalink at the LoC. Doing so provides a direct way for the reader to find the cited item. In order to do so the LCCN mush comply with the current format.

The format requirements are here. The minimum number of digits that the LoC now uses for LCCNs is 8. From fixing a bunch of these, and your statement that you have 7 digits I would guess that it is in the format yy-xxxxx (maybe yyxxxxx, but less likely). Change it to yy0xxxxx (add a zero). That should get it done. The 1st 2 digits are the last two digits of the year for years prior to 2000. For 2000 and on all year digits are used. Sometimes there is a 1 to 3 character alphabetic prefix, but it sounds like yours does not have one. You should double check that the link actually does go to the correct item. From time to time these are printed wrong in the book (not often, but sometimes). If it is, use the LC search to find it. — Makyen (talk) 04:22, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@Makyen:- Thanks for that suggestion. Adding the 0 in place of the hyphen works, and I checked the LC Search to verify that this is correct. Reyk _YO! 04:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

• I've had the same problem as above. The book I was trying to cite had only 5 digits to the right (published in 1967). Adding a 0 in place of the hyphen resolved the problem. Thanks. Mohamed CJ (talk) 10:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

template parameter conflict

|coauthor= is deprecated, yet I have just come across a problem caused by changing |coauthor= to |author2= with this edit. By substituting these, the two relevant calls in the references section no longer find their Biblio target. I didn't see this, but it becomes apparent if you import User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:21, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you can either change the {{sfn}} to add more authors or change ref = harv to ref = {{harvid|...}} if you are going to change |coauthor= into |author2=. Like this. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:59, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Where is the consensus to depreciate coauthor? -- PBS (talk) 15:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Detecting template errors in preview

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T7984

I just had a: |archiveurl= requires |archivedate= error (correctly).

In preview, the modified reference was a link to the edit page, and the mouseover error dialog was not available.

It would be nice if previews of pages with references got a section of reference list automagically tacked on, so that they could have normal referencing behaviour, so that editors could notice referncing errors earlier.

Is this the right forum to ask about this? If not, where should I be asking? ArthurDent006.5 (talk) 12:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

No, this is not the correct place to be asking as the issue is not actually to do with CS1 errors, even though that is one of the things we desire to have displayed. To implement the functionality that you desire for everyone requires changes to the MediaWiki software. I have added a pointer to the appropriate bug (filed in 2006). It had looked like this would be fixed earlier this year, but the changes were abandoned when someone erroneously claimed that the fixes to a different bug would solve the problem (it did not).

For your own use, you can use a user script which will show this information. The one I use is:

• user:js/ajaxPreview

I use the following config in my common.js.

//Faster preview.  Preview shows References in section edit.
importScript('User:Js/ajaxPreview.js'); // [[user:js/ajaxPreview]]
//Config:
var ajaxPreviewPos = 'bottom'; //buttons on the bottom, replacing standard
//And if you want tables to be sortable and collapsible elements
//  to work as usual in the Ajax-updated preview, use the following code:
 
// code to execute after each preview update
window.ajaxPreviewExec = function(previewArea) {
  mw.loader.using( [
    'jquery.tablesorter',
    'jquery.makeCollapsible'
  ], function(){
    $( 'table.sortable' ).tablesorter();
    $( '#wikiPreview .collapsible' ).makeCollapsible();
  } );
}

— Makyen (talk) 16:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

CITEREF and the editor parameter

Some change has broken the generation of the standard CITEREF for editor fields for when I view articles. Has a recent change been made that could have affected the editor field and CITEREF?

Extended content

citation 1 author Y citation 1 editor N Citation 2 authors (format first and last)Y Citation 2 editors (format editor-first editor-last) N cite book|ref=harv 2 authors Y cite book|ref=harv 2 editors N author (1993), Codebreakers {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help) editor, ed. (1993), Codebreakers {{citation}}: |editor= has generic name (help) alast, afirst; a2last, a2first (1993), Codebreakers{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) blast, bfirst; b2last, b2first, eds. (1993), Codebreakers{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link) clast, cfirst; c2last, c2first (1993). Codebreakers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) dlast, dfirst; d2last, d2first, eds. (1993). Codebreakers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link)

All the example in the collapse box are missing the editor parameters in the CITEREF but are including the year (1993) in all the examples. -- PBS (talk) 15:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed by examination of Reading Southern railway station#Notes so reverted. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:08, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem appears to be caused by something in the new version of the function extractnames(). What is perplexing is that the same code processes both the author list and the editor list yet gives obviously different results. I have restored extractnames() from the last known working version of Module:Citation/CS1.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that the problem is fixed in the sandbox. I've changed the examples in the collapse box to use Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:45, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

There seems to have been another problem that the revert fixed. I was editing the article Ultra (cleaning up the citations) -- The intentional witty "title=Codebreakers" parameter I used up above was because I was drilling down on why this Ultra#CITEREFHinsleyStripp1993 CITEREF was being generated as Ultra#CITEREF1993(it was the first title in the References list that used the editor parameters).

But before that issue came up I had added text to the article and included a new full citation in the list. This had included a page parameter with a link to a page in a google book. But this caused a red warning error. Unfortunately I did not keep a record of it as I assumed that it was due to something in the url string and not the underlying code because when I commented it out the red warning (which caused all the entries below it to disappear from the page with similar red warning) disappeared. I have just removed the comments around the url string and the error no longer shows up. QED it follows that the error was in the update that has been reverted.

One of the reasons I was cleaning up the citations in Ultra was to fix any obvious problems in the use of {{citations}} and {{harvnb}} so that I could drill down on why a method I use for citations on many pages was failing on Ultra. That is when I noticed the editor problem, and with the reverse my initial problem has gone away.

Before any code is changed this second problem ought to be identified. It should be fairly easy to place it in the sandbox and replicate it using a version of the Ultra page with that error in it.

But I see from the history of the code it has already been altered! Sigh!

--PBS (talk) 12:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Script_errors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:39, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

year=2002/2003

When a (cite) journal was published for 2002/2003, what should the year= (or date=) value be to prevent the "Check date values" error? --82.136.210.153 (talk) 00:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Write (or copy and paste) date=2002–2003. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:11, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I started an examples table at Help:CS1 errors#bad_date. --  Gadget850 ^talk 13:07, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Error category is circular

The addition of this table by Gadget850 (talk · contribs) means that the page is now in Category:CS1 errors: dates, which it wasn't previously. Since the page is also partially transcluded to that category, that puts the category inside itself, and it is now reported at Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:30, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I moved the table outside the LST. Can't subst it and edit the markup since it invokes a module. Perhaps we need |template doc demo=yes that supresses the category when used on Help pages. --  Gadget850 ^talk 17:39, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I think using |template-doc-demo=true in the example citations is the right workaround for this situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)