Template talk:Scientific American Frontiers

Archives

I changed the template so that it would show the years that the season aired. I also added a link to the archive of the original PBS site. Before season 11, it links to the transcript. For season 11 and later, it links to the full site to the show. (These were just the sites that have been archived.) DougHill (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Edit request: add custom archive date

Would it be possible to add an optional archive-date param? The actual archive used on the page Dowsing (currently the last external link) is https://web.archive.org/web/20060208183031/http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript802.htm, and the archive-url param doesn't handle just having a year. = paul2520 💬 17:10, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@Paul2520: This template has been using the archive-date parameter internally and incorrectly for some considerable time. Please explain better about what you would want to see be different. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 18:49, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh: would it be possible to add an |archive-date= option so it would be like so:

{{Scientific American Frontiers | season = | episode = | name = | archive-date = }}

...and if populated, this value would supersede the value that gets generated? = paul2520 💬 16:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not persuaded that what this template attempts to do - generate a pointer to an archive complete with a valid archive-date - is even possible. I'll look at it all again in a bit. There's no technical reason we can't add that param, but I want to figure out if there's no better solution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmcgnh (talk • contribs) 06:03, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh: as an alternative solution, would it make sense to remove the archive-url and archive-date params altogether? There is no guarantee that a page has been crawled; this would put the onus on the editor to validate (or use a tool like IABot). = paul2520 💬 15:25, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Paul2520: I've made a change to silence the complaint from software. Archive.org is apparently not upset by an archive URL with a date set in between one of its captures. So instead of 200600000000 and 2006 I've used 20601010000 and 2006-01-01. If there's a demonstrated need for a different archive-date parameter, we can discuss further. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:29, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Paul2520: I meant for the edit summary to say "No new parameters", but I can't fix that.

So the archive URLs generated by the template are assuming that the episodes or episode transcripts were archived by January 2006 after the last episode of the last season aired. There is no other assumption about crawling. This is all very specifically about this show - there is not much in the template's source code that could be adapted to a different show unless there were very close parallels in how it was made available on the web and was archived.

But you were asking about the very last external link listed at Dowsing, which includes one use of this template and a second entry that does not use this template. Are all of your concerns now resolved or is there more that needs to be done? — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 04:04, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh: I think we're all good! I've been working on managing Category:CS1 errors: dates & the count dropped once this fix was implemented.

I agree with your concerns, that this assumes the pages have been archived. But I think any exceptions can be resolved through standard reference templates.

Thanks so much for your help! = paul2520 💬 15:10, 8 September 2023 (UTC)