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Not expanding

Hello. During a citation fixing session, I noticed that at the cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War article, the template does not seem to expand. A quick look shows that there are references in the article, however. Perhaps that there's a limit the article exceeds? There are duplicate reference tags there, but without the expansion and red warnings, it's difficult to track and fix. Thanks, PaleoNeonate (talk) 10:48, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

There are too many templates in that article. Here is the NewPP limit report (you can find this report by viewing the article's page source – it's located toward the bottom), specifically see Post-expand include size:

NewPP limit report
Parsed by mw1214
Cached time: 20170401103943
Cache expiry: 2592000
Dynamic content: false
CPU time usage: 10.720 seconds
Real time usage: 11.615 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 42191/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 0/1500000
Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 32920/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 12/40
Expensive parser function count: 13/500
Lua time usage: 2.612/10.000 seconds
Lua memory usage: 24.66 MB/50 MB


Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)
100.00% 3821.148      1 -total
 51.37% 1962.793      1 Template:Reflist
 19.27%  736.188    178 Template:Cite_news
 18.26%  697.735    170 Template:Cite_web
 11.98%  457.942     46 Template:Fix
 11.55%  441.430     33 Template:Citation_needed
  7.68%  293.536     34 Template:Delink
  6.19%  236.667    262 Template:Anchor
  3.72%  141.995     92 Template:Category_handler
  2.29%   87.356      1 Template:Syrian_Civil_War

Not the fault of {{reflist}}. The way forward is to address the issue at the article's talk page; consider splitting it into multiple smaller articles, substing some of the templates, etc.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:06, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

That's great to know, thank you very much for the details. PaleoNeonate (talk) 11:45, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: is there a category or template I should use to tag this page appropriately? I've looked at various categories and templates without necessarily finding the most appropriate one (i.e. in this case, a technical limitations reason for needing a split), that I don't really see at Wikipedia:Template_messages/Splitting. Perhaps that ultimately, what would be even better would be like for redundant citation tags, for the system to automatically add the article to a category when templates cannnot expand in reasonable time/space. Or is this already done, and I don't have to do anything? Thanks again, PaleoNeonate (talk) 06:45, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

The page is already a member of Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Super, thanks again. I added a manual warning at the top of the page before posting the above question, I'm not sure if it was a good approach. I'll leave other editors reverse it if not, as the talk page was warned anyway. PaleoNeonate (talk) 10:42, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem on List of Australian treaties once I expanded the citations using refill with cite web. I have now turned off the cite web and it works. The page does not use many templates. The list is very large, and there are pros and cons with breaking it up (it is still work in progress), however, would be good if the template could handle it... gives us more options. Perhaps it is a problem with cite web? Thanks. Really appreciate your tireless work on this template.Supcmd (talk) 20:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

This is not the fault of {{reflist}} nor is it the fault of {{cite web}}; both templates are working as they should do. The problem occured because when you expanded the citations using refill, the size of the expansion exceeded the two megabyte limit that is enforced by MediaWiki. The list is too long. Fix that, and the problem is resolved. For more information, see WP:TLIMIT.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Number of columns in other reference templates

Does the consensus to deprecate fixing the number of columns for this template also extend to other reference templates such as {{reflist-talk}} or {{refbegin}}? The former may not ever be a real issue, but the later was just done here and I'm wondering if that needs to be tweaked for the same reasons. Template:Refbegin#Option 2: Multiple columns makes no mention of this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:33, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Yes. The thing is, once you have more than one column, you have no idea exactly how many columns are most suitable for the situation, since you do not know how wide anybody else's screen is. Somebody using an iPhone or Andriod, with a screen three inches wide (or less), may find that even two columns is one too many. So by setting a minimum width for the columns, we give the browser the freedom to choose an appropriate number of columns - which might be just one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:21, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification Redrose64. It might be a good idea then to add something about this to those other template pages. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:46, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Layout issues with Portal template

Of interest may be Special:Permalink/782767419#Layout issues. I am wondering if it would make sense for {{reflist}} to include the equivalent of an implicit {{clear}} as prologue. Thanks, — PaleoNeonate — 01:52, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Looking at this version of the Anna Nicole Smith article, you can see how the {{Portal bar}}, a floating element, extends into the References section. The {{Reflist}} template is a <div>...</div>, so it could incorporate style="clear:both;" to ensure that it begins below the Portal bar. Unfortunately, that would create a whitespace gap between the References heading and the start of the references, because the clear won't be applied to the heading. I think most readers would find that far worse than the issue as seen in that version of the Anna Nicole Smith article.

For that reason, I don't think that setting this template to style="clear:both;" would represent a solution. The style needs to be applied to an element placed at the bottom of {{Portal bar}} for it to have the desired effect. --RexxS (talk) 19:14, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. This probably means that both my reverted edit, or this more recent one from another editor (moving the See also section), were the proper means to correct this? On the other hand a test edit placing {{clear}} just before {{reflist}} did look fine to me (I have no diff to this one as I had only previewed it). — PaleoNeonate — 20:38, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

You can actually edit this old version of Anna Nicole Smith (edit the whole page), and preview to see how it looks. Obviously, don't save. You can see how placing {{clear}} immediately before {{reflist}} creates a gap between the References heading and the references – imagine how it would look if there were more portals in the {{Portal}} bar. On the other hand, try placing {{clear}} just before the ==References==, which would be the preferred solution in general. Of course, moving the {{Portal}} bar into the External links section works nicely as well, as long as that section exists. --RexxS (talk) 21:49, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the gap you are refering to personally, if adding {{clear}} just before {{reflist}} (after the section header), maybe that it is only obvious at certain resolutions. However, you are confirming that I can keep adding an explicit {{clear}} before the References section header where that is needed (as I used to do in these cases, although my attempt was reverted his time). So I'll simply keep doing that when needed and there's no better place to move the Portal template to. Thanks again, — PaleoNeonate — 02:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Suppress groupname function

I'm developing a very long article and because there will be a load of references (literally hundreds) I would like to split them into groups based on major sections, a bit like the way a lot of historical book authors have their in-line references listed per chapter at the back rather than as one one long cumbersome list. I think it would be better for the article to have the references divided this way than a very long monotonous numbered list. However, I tested this by adding a group name to every <ref> tag (I'm not using reference templates as this causes a lot of overhead when parsing) and I notice the names are shown in the article body as ^{[name 1][name 2]} etc. It adds a lot of unnecessary bulk and is not very appealing. Is there a way, or can a way be incorporated, so that the groupname can be manually suppressed within the article by some argument in the reflist template, such as {{reflist|group="example"|grouphide="yes"}} so that you wouldn't get ^{[example 1]} as a citation link, just a standard ^[1] since the html for the link should still be able to function with or without the groupname actual being visible. By doing this I hope to demonstrate that lengthy articles with a lot of references can be customised to be more navigationable, but as it stands, by always displaying the group name in the article it can't be done at present without making the article look clunky. — Marcus^(talk) 17:15, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Can you (try to) take advantage of WP:CITESHORT? That seems like a better start. --Izno (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I already do; I don't use any other way. There's still going to be hundreds of pages referenced throughout the article, which is why I want to group them more selectively. — Marcus^(talk) 18:44, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Could using the existing predefined groups work? There are not many of them, but these will show up with a small symbol: lower-alpha, upper-alpha, lower-roman, upper-roman, lower-greek (see Template:efn for the list); although alpha references are usually used for text notes, they can also serve for references... — PaleoNeonate — 19:01, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

No, there's not enough of those groups, as you say, and I want to avoid using reference templates as the wiki parser has a limit how many templates it can parse before the page fails to render; I'm reserving that for other things like tables and other display templates. Don't know if I'll reach that limit but it's a real potential. — Marcus^(talk) 19:18, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

See this Notes section to see how I've grouped refs from sections, but then go up into the article text and see how daft it looks with the group name showing against every citation. If this could be supressed and leave just the [numbers] it would look good. — Marcus^(talk) 20:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

That is quite an impressive work. I actually don't mind seeing the group names when looking at it, but I admit that it is uncommon. I was next to suggest possibly splitting the article, but I also see that there are main article links under sections already. Yet another possibility would be to name groups after letters (resulting in i.e. ^{[e 1]}, but I don't really think that would be necessary... Since the notes are not much longer than the links, another possibility would be archaic inline harvard-style with brackets (also uncommon on Wikipedia now, I'm not sure if it's a good idea)... —PaleoNeonate· 21:34, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

It's got a long way to go. I'm only upto 1799 and have to reach 1815... so there are far more references, yet to come. Which is why I don't want a continuous reference section, rather a broken down one that makes it more academically formatted. That's why I'd have thought the group name argument which already exists in the template could be expanded so that it could be hidden. — Marcus^(talk) 22:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are still printed out quite often. Suppressing the groupname would make it impossible to ascertain which reference supported which piece of text. --RexxS (talk) 21:57, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't, because I've listed them under the titles to match the sections, so the ref numbers would match [1] to [1] [2] to [2] [3] to [3], etc ... as I said originally, a lot of history texts do that by chapter. Also, it should be possible to make a template hidden on-screen but not in print... since they are two different mediums. e.g. Template:Print version — Marcus^(talk) 22:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Leaving the references to line up by trying to synchronise the section title to the sub-heading of the references section is incredibly fragile, as it assumes all subsequent editors will maintain the structure and labelling of the sections. History texts can do that because they are fixed, i.e. printed, and not susceptible to being modified indefinitely, as Wikipedia articles are. Yes, I know it's possible to change the display between the printed version and the screen version of an article, but I wanted you to understand that's another complication that would have to be dealt with by the developer who attempts to implement your request. --RexxS (talk) 22:44, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the only other though I had in mind was a whole new reflist template function which has a section number argument, e.g. {{reflist|section=2}} and only the ref tags in that section would be displayed for that template but wouldn't need any additional in-tag arguments, since every heading generates a section number automatically, it might be possible to generate references from a specific section or sections. That would make the matter less complicated for future editors or a long article, though it would still need some attention to maintain – but I believe in quality, and that some of the extremely long articles on Wiki, say like WW1 or WW2 that attempt to summarise a long and very important area of history, need special attention to keep them focused and prevent them becoming a mess, as often happens with long articles once a few dozen editors have pitched in here and there with scrappy additions that don't attempt to keep the whole together and presentational. Rather than act as a deterant, I would suggest that more complex formatting encourages more productive editing instead of drive-by nit-picking tweaks which achieve very little overall. — Marcus^(talk) 23:03, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Template data doc

The Template Data table in the doc says that the default for the first parameter is "1". Should this be changed to "empty"? Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:22, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to add parameter name checking to this template

This is a proposal to add parameter name checking to this template. This report shows that {{reflist}} is used with dozens of unsupported parameters that are currently ignored. Module:Check for unknown parameters can categorize pages in mainspace with unsupported parameters and display a red error message in preview, making it easy for editors to fix reflist templates with errors.

I would have made this change myself, since it is almost always uncontroversial, but I do not have (or want) admin rights. I have added the necessary code to the sandbox. Note that the sandbox was not synced to the main template before my edit, since another editor is using the sandbox to experiment.

If this code is added, I will be happy to create and document the necessary error category, and to help clean it out. You can see other examples of tracking categories for similar templates at Category:Unknown parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:04, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I had been looking at that long list of problems and even fixing some of it, but it's a LOT. Using this system is likely more efficient. I'll make the change in the coming week if there are no objections. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:52, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

The number of articles doesn't look too bad to me, maybe a few hundred pages. (I've seen MUCH worse; WP editors are very creative.) I didn't add them up or verify that the TemplateData matches the live template, though. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I would totally jump in to clear out the resulting maintenance category and police it moving forward, that's just the sort of thing I like to do on the side, and I could probably make easy work of it with AWB.— TAnthony^Talk 04:10, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ: Whenever you're ready. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:17, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Jonesey95, TAnthony this is now done. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:38, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll check back in with Category:Pages using reflist with unknown parameters as it populates.— TAnthony^Talk 16:14, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Well it looks like Jennica and I have cleared the maintenance category for now ;) — TAnthony^Talk 18:04, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

I just fixed two more. They will trickle in over the next few months. When the report linked above is updated on August 1, you can use that to find more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:37, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

What's gone wrong? I've just reverted TAnthony who has been removing huge numbers of column widths as if they were deprecated. Can somebody please look at the tracking category and ensure that pages where the allowed parameters (column width, refs, group and liststyle) are not appearing. It would be optimal not to remove |colwidth= as well, because editors have made a clear decision to set a column width in those cases. --RexxS (talk) 19:45, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

The maintenance category is fine, my run that you're objecting to is not based on that. I just explained on my talk page that I have been primarily removing |2 and |3. I am ignoring |30em even though it matches the default to mitigate disruption. I admit that in many cases I was getting rid of |25em and |35em because it seems like an arbitrary tweak from the default, but I will stop that since RexxS has objected. I've also been removing |colwidth but again, only removing 25, 30, and 35em.— TAnthony^Talk 19:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

There's no problem with amending |colwidth=30em to |30em, and the other widths, etc. but that's not the issue. There's no good reason to change other editors' decisions on the best minimum column width for a given article and shoe-horn the references into a "one-size-fits-all" implementation. We've spent considerable time making this template capable of displaying variable column widths for a reason. --RexxS (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Point taken, I've been restoring such removals and will preserve all editor-set widths moving forward.— TAnthony^Talk 20:26, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Issues with recent changes

Recent changes in July cause an ugly layout artifact. The citations in the reflist do not "float" anymore around an intruding infobox. See example using an old sandbox version:

• 1140 Crimea (current version)
• 1140 Crimea (old version)

The old version is significantly better. Can the template be amended or is there a work around? Thx, Rfassbind – talk 17:01, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

For further persons to review, you should make your monitor size smaller while watching the interaction between the references list and the infobox.

FWIW, I don't see this as a significant issue, since it will predominantly be an issue only on short or stub articles. There is probably no workaround. --Izno (talk) 17:31, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll investigate if there is something I can do about that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:42, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, I think that's a bad use of your time. It's a minor problem arising in unusual cases. EEng 23:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

This artifact affects thousands of articles, i.e. any stub/start article that has an infobox and a few references. I consider this significant. Rfassbind – talk 18:03, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

No, not "any stub/start article that has an infobox and a few references": it has to have a small amount of text, combined with a big infobox (so that the article proper ends before the references begin) yet enough references to extend past the infobox. And it's a minor visual issue. There are so many real problems that need solving. EEng 18:14, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

It's not just stub articles. It can happen with an article of any length. I am running into articles with long reference lists that have something, such as an image, intruding just ahead of References. See French playing cards and Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. Is this something to do with the MediaWiki implementation or our use of it? StarryGrandma (talk) 19:05, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Isn't this just because the default is now multicol if there are more than 10 refs? If you force the column width to 100%, so you only get one column, then it floats and wraps just like it always did. I'm not sure what you would want it to do in the multicol case. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:13, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

StarryGrandma Is there a reason that the "External media" box can't go under an External links header? I fixed the playing cards one. --Jennica✿ / ^talk 19:39, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks nice. External media boxes aren't for external links, but I was thinking of moving the videos to external links, removing some of the excess console photos, and distributing the rest in smaller external media boxes into the article. And now I see that I can add {{clear}} if it isn't small enough. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:05, 30 July 2017 (UTC)