Template talk:Cite DAB

the unnamed parameter depreciated

I have remove the unnamed parameter as an option in line with how Lua Module:Citation/CS1 expects parameters to be used. Before I did so, I went through all pages that incorporated this template and changed all the instances of an unamed parameter to a named parameter called "title=". -- PBS (talk) 15:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

@PBS: When you removed the unnamed parameter you added the line |1={{{1|}}} to the template with the comment "pass on for error handling". I've just removed it again, since it was causing the CS1 module to emit "empty unknown parameter" errors. I am rather conscious, though, that I don't really know what I'm doing! Is there any reason why this line should be retained, or anything that it should be replaced with? Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 20:09, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

@User:Wham2001 please demonstrate what you mean. I have created a copy of the template with the line you deleted in the sandbox:{{Cite DAB/sandbox}} and it does not seem to show any such problem:

No unnamed parameter

• {{Cite DAB/sandbox}} "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1928–1990.

with an unnamed parameter

• {{Cite DAB/sandbox|UnnamedParameter}} "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1928–1990.

without the parameter's inclusion as with the current version unnamed parameters are just swallowed silently:

• {{Cite DAB|UnnamedParameter}} "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1928–1990.

-- PBS (talk) 18:24, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Display of these error messages is suppressed by default, which is why you can't see the message being generated by the sandbox (it appears for me - the two sandbox examples generate the Cite has empty unknown parameter and Text "UnnamedParameter" ignored errors whereas the example calling {{Cite DAB}} does not generate an error message). I had forgotten this wrinkle which is why I neglected to mention it; sorry about that. I don't know why some of the CS1/2 error messages are suppressed by default; possibly because there are currently very many pages that generate them. The message in question is described at Help:CS1_errors#param unknown empty and there are instructions about how to enable its display at Help:CS1 errors#Controlling error message display. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 10:23, 26 November 2020 (UTC)