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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dementia13 (talk | contribs) at 17:39, 21 July 2013 (→type param repeats information). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

CGNDB Discussion

I thought some page watchers might be interested in a discussion for changing CGNDB into a redirect here. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk)

Access date

The documentation for this template includes this: "accessdate: Date[n 1] when the url was accessed." That's clear enough. So why does it output "Retrieved on [date]"? If it's an access date we're talking about, wouldn't it make more sense for it to output "Accessed on [date]"? As is recommended by the MHRA Style Guide, for example? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:29, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because that is how the creators designed it. --  Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:40, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Accessed and retrieved mean exactly the same thing. All that matters is that usage be consistent within any one article. -- Alarics (talk) 05:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Right. So how do I get the template to consistently output "Accessed" instead of "Retrieved", as recommended by the style guide that I personally like to follow, the MHRA Style Guide? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You don't. You use the style already established in the article. See WP:CITEVAR. --  Gadget850 talk 01:14, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll phrase that differently; where do I find the series of citation templates that output "Accessed" for the access date, for use in those articles where that style is already established? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of any such templates. You will have to create them. --  Gadget850 talk 14:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missing or empty |title=

In some articles, we have started getting errors of the following type where the citation template is used without the title parameter in the form of a short footnote. This technique is used so that quotes can be included. Can someone take a look at it please?

{{citation |last=Burns |first=Douglas |year=2010 |page=355 |quote=By May 1953, ''Variety'' was reporting that the Best Picture winner had amassed $18.35 million in worldwide rentals.}} In: {{harvnb|Block|Wilson|2010}}.

Burns, Douglas (2010), p. 355, By May 1953, Variety was reporting that the Best Picture winner had amassed $18.35 million in worldwide rentals. {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) In: Block & Wilson 2010.

Betty Logan (talk) 10:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is an undocumented and unanticipated method of use. Where is this used? --  Gadget850 talk 11:25, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This particular example comes from the List of highest-grossing films, but this error has only appeared today I think. I edited the article yesterday and I didn't notice it. It is sometimes used when the Sfn system is in place and editors want to add a quote. Betty Logan (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The error check has been in place for a while, but caching may hide it until the page is edited. Does this method have a name? --  Gadget850 talk 12:37, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not to my knowledge, it's basically a hack. It problem isn't a major issue anyway since the book in question has bits written by authors but without an internal title which is quite unusual. It just caught my eye, but I can sort it out at least on this article by writing them out manually. Betty Logan (talk) 12:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Use |title=none. This feature was just added. --  Gadget850 talk 14:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lua problem?

I see a problem where {{citation}} no longer accepts "More than one of |location= and |place=". This seems to be a Lua change. Is this the best place to discuss this? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The template never supported multiple parameters like that. The new version detects it as an error. Example? --  Gadget850 talk 23:29, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The |location= and |place= parameters are aliases for each other; if both are specified, only |place= is displayed. Previously, if |location= was specified in addition, it would be silently ignored; but since the Lua upgrade, we display the message "More than one of |location= and |place= specified (help)". Choose either |location= or |place= but don't use both in the same {{citation}}.
It might be that |location= has been misused and that the |at= parameter should have been used instead. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:21, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see. This has come up where I specified the 'location' of a conference where a paper was presented and the 'place' where it was published. Apparently I had not noticed that one parameter was silently ignored. I am inclined to just drop 'place'. Any suggestions as to a better way? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:46, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The way these sorts of things are often formatted in MathSciNet is (in terms of our equivalent parameters) to have |title=Conference name (Location, date) and then to have the date and location parameters refer to the publisher's address and the actual date of publication (which is often a different year from the conference date). For example:
In this example the conference location and publisher location happen to both be "Cambridge", but that's coincidental. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I understand your intent (examples really help), then I can point you to 'publication-place'.
Markup Renders as 
{{citation |title=title |place=place |publication-place=publication-place}}

written at place, title, publication-place

If any one of 'publication-place', 'place' or 'location' are defined, then the location shows after the title; if 'publication-place' and 'place' or 'location' are defined, then 'place' or 'location' are shown before the title prefixed with "written at" and 'publication-place' is shown after the title.
And it looks like it got lost in the documentation. I will fix that in a moment. --  Gadget850 talk 22:24, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the doc. This is pretty clean in core, but each template has this swap the fields around kludge. --  Gadget850 talk 22:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Of course "written at" and "presented at" are two different things...for most references to conference papers, saying the paper was written at that location is not right. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chapter-url and archiveurl

Hi. If I've used |chapter-url= but also want to indicate the archive URL in a citation, is there a parameter for this? (I didn't see one mentioned in the documentation.) I tried using |archiveurl=, but this parameter works only with |url= and generates an error message if it is missing and only |chapter-url= is present. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:00, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Short citation - op cit

Sometimes I wish to cite the same article with multiple {{cite manual}} or {{cite web}} tags, using a different quote or sectionurl for each. Is there a way to provide a single tag with full publication details and to link to it for each quotation or section, but getting standard formatting of, e.g., pages, section? I saw {{sfn}}, but it doesn't seem to do the formatting. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:22, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

{{sfn}}, which is used in Shortened footnotes, has a 'loc' parameter. --  Gadget850 talk 17:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
However, as I noted, it is missing other parameters. Also,{{sfn|loc=}} seems to entail an extraneous wikilink. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 03:25, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The wikilink in {{sfn}}, like those in the other {{harv}}-related templates, takes you to the full citation. Go to NBR 224 and 420 Classes#Notes and click any of the bluelinks; the browser moves to the relevant full citation which should also gain a pale blue background. That's if you have Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera; some versions of Internet Explorer don't support the :target pseudo-class (probably because it's CSS 3 but not CSS 2.1) so the background doesn't change colour although the movement should still be made. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You will have to give us an example of what you need. And what is an "extraneous wikilink"? --  Gadget850 talk 10:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure from the responses above whether the answer to User:Chatul's original query has been made clear; apologies if it has. As I understand it, he wants to provide a different url for each page/section/chapter, etc., which can be done by externally linking the value of |loc=, e.g. {{sfn|Smith|2005|loc=[http://... section 2]}}. (A common mistake I make is to put "|" here as in an internal Wikilink.) This works for a single page if you want the "p." to be included in the link text, which looks better to me, e.g. {{sfn|Smith|2005|loc=[http://... p. 2]}}. If the "cite" templates are being used, rather than the "citation" template, you must add |ref=harv. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:01, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm looking for is a means to get the formatting the {{cite manual|id=|chapter=|chapter-url=|page=|quote=}} does and link to an earlier {{cite manual}} for the details on the full publication. I'd like something like the following to make SC24-6073-03 in the second citation a wikilink to the first citation.
  • . SC24-6073-03. When you do not specify either the RECOMP or LABEL option, the disk area is initialized by writing a device-dependent number of records (containing binary zeros) on each track. Any previous data on the disk is erased. {{cite web}}: |chapter= ignored (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |separator= ignored (help)
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:21, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now that what User:Chatul wants is clearly explained, there are several ways of achieving it (I had a different one, but Gadget850's is neater). Whether you should link through an arbitrary component of a citation is another question, and the second citation above just looks as though fields such as the author and date are missing. Why not use the more standard style:
  • IBM (2008, FORMAT), "When you do not specify either the RECOMP or LABEL option, the disk area is initialized by writing a device-dependent number of records (containing binary zeros) on each track. Any previous data on the disk is erased."
Peter coxhead (talk) 20:03, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's almost universal in the IBM mainframe world to refer to manuals by form code and the use of Harvard notation is unheard of. Historically that was true of several other hardware vendors as well. Further, IBM typically publishes hundreds or thousands of manuals in a given year, many on the same day; the date can not serve as a unique identifier. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 04:18, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am quite familiar with IBM documentation. "the use of Harvard notation is unheard of" Not sure what you mean, as Harvard is well used here. "the date can not serve as a unique identifier" If you check the {{sfn}} documentation, you will see that the standard fix is to add an alpha suffix.
What I mean is that all o0f the IBM shops and IBM publications that I am familiar with refer to IBM manuals by form code, title or both; I have never seen them use Harvard notation to refer to them. Which is not to say that they don't use Harvard notation to refer to other publications. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As best I see, you want to cite the whole book in one place by book title and the chapter by chapter title in another place. Is there a style guide that illustrates this? --  Gadget850 talk 11:08, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not aware of such a style guide, but I'm wondering whether a similar issue exists for Army regulations, which I've always seen referred to by number rather than author and date. Likewise BCP, RFC and STD numbers for IETF documents. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And I am quite familiar with Army regulations and manuals. It is immaterial how IBM creates citations, as we have our own styles. --  Gadget850 talk 00:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The key is the CITEREF. In {{harv}} (I believe {{sfn}} is similar) you are not limited to author(s) and year, you can use your own key (CITEREF), provided you supply the same key in the citation template. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But, as Gadget850 rightly points out, the issue is not what effects you can technically achieve, but what style should be used in Wikipedia. We should not use different styles for IBM manuals, army manuals, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:21, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
IBM turns out lots of documents (the Army even more so), and if your "style" limits you to strictly author-year then I'd say you're screwed. The purpose of a short citation (such as "Smith 2000") is to identify the full citation, and if "IBM SC24-6073-0" works then use it. Or as Ed suggested, use the year and a suffix. (I 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, etc., rather opaque, but suit yourself.) These are hardly differences in style, only accommodation to the exigencies of different kinds of sources. The point is to not let over-concern with petty consistency get in the way of writing good articles. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing "petty" about consistency in Wikipedia; it's a very serious subject, witness the reams of discussion on MOS talk pages! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:13, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You misstate my words. I did not say anything like "consistency in Wikipedia is petty"; I said: to "not let over-concern with petty consistency get in the way of writing good articles." If your concept of "style" is so rigid that you can't show some flexibility then I think it will get in the way of writing. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:47, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I'm generally an advocate of flexibility in styles; indeed I've had long debates with those who support the MOS dictating a single style where I think that flexibility is better. If I've mis-understood your use of "petty", then I apologize; we can agree that "over-concern with consistency should not get in the way of writing good articles". Peter coxhead (talk) 22:04, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No problem then. Getting back to the point of interest, where I suggested that if the "author-date" (though more typically "authorlastname-year") is inadequate as a short-citation then it is reasonable to use something like "organization-document#". This certainly is not like the conventional "Smith 2004", but I would argue that it conforms to the basic idea of a short-cite pointing to a full citation. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are examples of {{sfn}} working satisfactorily without an author at NBR 224 and 420 Classes - several instances of SLS 1970, and one instance of Gradient Profiles 2003 - in the first case I used the initials of the publisher; in the second I used a shortened form of the book's title. Both were achieved by means of |ref={{SfnRef}} in the {{cite book}} - the {{sfn}} got no special treatment. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:53, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which work, and look good. Nice work. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:51, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

HTML special characters are not unescaped before being encoded for COinS

I hope this is the right place for this. To illustrate what I mean, see the page field for citation at http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wendel%27s_theorem&oldid=529017245 The value for page is entered as 109–111, which, while unnecessarily escaped, is not incorrect (I think. It's certainly rendered correctly in the references). The COinS that is rendered for the page field, however, looks like rft.pages=109%26ndash%3B111, which is not right. Looks to me like the right way to handle this would be to first unescape HTML special characters and only then URL encode the string. That should result in correct encoding rft.pages=109%E2%80%93111. Aurimas (talk) 03:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chapterurl and Archiveurl

Is there some way we can get these two to work in harmony? See reference 19 here for what I'm describing; it's showing up right, but for some reason it's still giving angry red text. Both urls are showing up exactly where they're supposed to, but the template is still giving an error message. Anyone have some idea of what's going on? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:45, 30 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Misplaced language in journal citation

The citation

  • {{citation|last=Euler|first=L.|authorlink=Leonhard Euler|url=http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~euler/pages/E053.html|title=Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis|language=Latin|journal=Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Petropolitanae|volume=8|year=1736|pages=128–140}}.

yields

(or, expanded out in case the template changes):

Note the "(in Latin)" between the journal name and journal volume number. It makes no sense for the language to be there; it should be after the article title. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:54, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

cite interview problems

type param repeats information

Is it a bug that "Audio interview" is rendered twice in the output from

  • {{cite interview | interviewer = Larry Lee | title = Current events | date = January 1, 2013 | last = Smith | first = John | type = Audio interview }}

i.e.

  • Smith, John (January 1, 2013). "Current events" (Audio interview). Interviewed by Larry Lee.

03:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting the same thing where type="Television broadcast". I'd rather not use "cite interview", it would be better to use {{Citation}}, but I can't find a way to fit an interview subject in there. Dementia13 (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although the documentation for Template:Cite interview include various |subjectlink= parameters, the template code appears to only support |authorlink= parameters. Should the template be fixed or should the documentation be changed? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:35, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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