Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 99

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Archive 95

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Archive 97

Archive 98

Archive 99

Is there a reason Template:CS1 language sources uses Module:Cs1 documentation support/sandbox?

Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Looking into supporting {{CS1 language sources}} categories for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 84, I found that {{CS1 language sources/core}} invokes a function from Module:Cs1 documentation support/sandbox rather than Module:Cs1 documentation support. Is there a reason the sandbox hasn't been synced to the main module and the template updated to use it instead of the sandbox? If not, I'll probably go ahead and do that. Anomie⚔ 02:29, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

That comes from this edit 17 November 2024. Editor Gonnym?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

No idea why I left it like this. If there are no issues you see with it, I can sync with the live verison. Gonnym (talk) 18:20, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Citation templates script-title

Latest comment: 3 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion

For the various {{citation}}/cite templates, could we make it so that script-title is an adequate replacement for "title"? When referencing a non-English source, to my understanding it's more appropriate to use script-title and not title, but when doing so I get a warning message in VisualEditor that tells me that title is required. seefooddiet (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

This is not a failing of cs1|2. But, it is yet another failing of visual editor and templatedata. All cs1|2 templates accept |script-title= regardless of the presence or absence of |title=. If you believe differently, please give a real example of such failing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:30, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I had suspected it was a problem of visual editor and template data. Is it possible to fix/work around? To my knowledge it isn't. seefooddiet (talk) 19:45, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

In these cases, besides putting the original title in |script-title=, it is often useful to put a romanization of the title in |title=. Kanguole 19:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Imo romanizations of titles are often excessively long and useful to few (difficult to read). Instead, I use |trans-title=. But if you use that param instead of title it still triggers the warning in VisualEditor. seefooddiet (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I typically use all three, but it is true that Chinese and Japanese romanizations are more useful than Korean ones. But the reference list is out of the flow of the article text, so space is not at a premium. Kanguole 20:06, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I'll still respectfully withhold from using it though; it's an extremely rare practice for Korea-related articles on enwiki. I've basically never seen it done. seefooddiet (talk) 20:10, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Trans-series?

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It has already been suggested in an edit request, but would it be useful to add a translated version of the paramater series; trans-series? Similar to title and chapter. I have a series of books ("Parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland na 1945"), and it would be helpful for English readers to know what this series is about. Dajasj (talk) 08:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Parameters for English translations of foreign sources?

Latest comment: 3 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

When citing an English translation, how do you indicate the original language, title and chapter title? The documentation for {{citation}} seems to suggest that the obvious parameters are only for use when citing in the original language. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:31, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I would refer to a separate {{citation}} for the original work after the translation. Kanguole 21:00, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

What if all I have is the translation? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

For {{Cite book}}, if you want to indicate the original title there is |trans-title= and |trans-chapter=, or the original publication date |orig-date= or year |orig-year=. The translator is |translator-last= and |translator-first=. Usually these (trans-* and orig-*) are sufficient. There is no |orig-lang= option, don't know why. -- GreenC 00:21, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

That's what I would assume given only the names of the parameters, but the documentation says things like trans-title: If the cited source is in a foreign language,. In the case I'm concerned with, the cited source is the translation. Thus, for this^[1] citation, |title=פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת and |trans-title=Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth) would imply that I was citing the original rather than the translation, as would |script-title=פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת and |trans-title=Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth). There's also the problem that the English title is not actually a translation of the original Hebrew. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

The documentation for |trans-title= says (in part):

trans-title: English translation of the title if the source cited is in a foreign language.

If you are citing the source at sacred-texts.com, do not include |script-title=he:פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת because that text does not appear to be present in that source. Do not shoehorn multiple sources into a single cs1|2 template; the templates are designed (if we can use that term) to support only one source at a time.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

References

1. Sayings of the Jewish Fathers - comprising - Pirqe Aboth - in Hebrew and English - with Notes and Excursuses פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת. Translated by Charles Taylor (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 1897. Retrieved May 8, 2025.

Template:Cite book#csdoc_trans_title

"Module:Citation" listed at Redirects for discussion

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  The redirect Module:Citation has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 14#Module:Citation until a consensus is reached. Rusalkii (talk) 22:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

|page= same value as last n-digits of |doi=

Latest comment: 3 months ago14 comments4 people in discussion

I'm seeing more and more of this sort of misuse of |page(s)=. What to do about templates like this where |page(s)= matches the trailing digits of |doi=?

{{cite journal |last1=Kesari |first1=Vigya |last2=Ramesh |first2=Aadi Moolam |last3=Rangan |first3=Latha |title=''Rhizobium pongamiae'' sp. nov. from root nodules of ''Pongamia pinnata'' |journal=BioMed Research International |volume=2013 |pages=165198 |year=2013 |pmid=24078904 |pmc=3783817 |doi=10.1155/2013/165198 |doi-access=free }}

Example template taken from this edit.

If we look at the pdf version of the article, we can see that 165198 is the article ID so 165198 properly belongs in |article-number=.

Maintenance message? {{citation}} with |journal= and {{cite journal}} templates only? Value assigned to |page(s)= must be greater than some threshold value, perhaps 9999? Other constraints?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:44, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

The example came from this edit[1] a few years prior. I thought this would be citoid being flaky, but it just ignores the article number (at least now it does).
I've come across a limited selection of journals that run there page numbers across issues in the same year, but even then they don't get to over 10k page numbers. A maintenance message would be good as the page number is obviously invalid, although I wouldn't think there's that many. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

This crude search (times out) suggests that there are more than 4000 articles that have |page(s)= with five-digit values. There are journals that do use 5 digit pagination: doi:10.1073/pnas.1203495109

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:51, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

As you know my ability to write regex extends to asking someone else how to do it, but I expected that that would time out. Could the code be set to check configuration and ignore certain journals? It would allow a method to hide false positives en masse, 10.1073 alone has tens of thousands of uses. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Could the code be set to check configuration and ignore certain journals? What code are you asking about? The regex? The cs1|2 module? Sommat else?

If the regex: not really. We can exclude all articles that have the doi prefix 10.1073 (~26000). This search found ~3350 articles but it also times out.

If the cs1|2 module: yes if necessary.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:32, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Sorry that was ambiguous, I did mean the cs1|2 module. That way any other journals that commonly use such large pages numbers could be excluded using the same method. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:10, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that we need to filter by doi prefix. Generally, these days, {{cite journal}} templates use |page(s)= to list a page-range so a journal citation with five-digit pagination will contain some form of dash. When a |page(s)= value has dashes, commas, or semicolons, the code will skip the test.

Journals use a variety of formats for article numbers: some are all digits, some are alphanumeric, some begin with a lowercase 'e', some numeric forms include a dot in the matching doi. It may not be possible to create a test that will find all possible article numbers in |page(s)= but we can start with these more-or-less common formats and see where that gets us.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Physical Review journals have pages in the 6 digit range, e.g. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.170405. 22:41, 19 April 2025 (UTC) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:41, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

But those seem to be article numbers, not page numbers. Looking at the PDF for the article you linked, I see pages numbered from "170405-1" to "170405-4". FWIW, what I assume to be the CCC string is "0031-9007=02=89(17)=170405(4)$20.00".

Solomon Ucko (talk) 21:22, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

As an experiment, I have written an awb script that trawls articles looking for {{cite journal}} templates that have |doi= and |page(s)=. The list of tested articles is more-or-less the first 25000 articles that transclude {{cite journal}} – the same list you would get from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite journal. The most recent test found 9575 {{cite journal}} templates that have |doi= and |page(s)= that meet certain criteria. The script skips templates that have |page(s)= values that:

• are ranges separated by underscore, hyphen, emdash, endash, figure dash, or minus character
• are comma- or semicolon-separated lists of pages
• have external urls
• are digit-only values less than 10000

For those templates that are not skipped, the script compares the trailing (rightmost) characters of the |doi= value against the whole value of the |page(s)= value. When there is a match, the script saves the |doi= and |page(s)= values to a file with the test result.

When the first test does not indicate a match, the script modifies the |page(s)= value:

• when the value is exactly 8 digits, the script inserts a dot between the fourth and fifth digits and retests against the |doi= value
• when the first character is a lowercase e, the script removes that character and retests against the |doi= value
• when the first two characters are uppercase CD, the script retests against the |doi= value
• when the first two characters are uppercase CD, the script retests against the |doi= value but accepts values where the |page(s)= value is suffixed by .pubn where n is any single digit

With those simple tests, the script identified 8611 templates that likely are using |page(s)= when they ought to be using |article-number=.

• 3604 numbers only (example)
• 319 dotted 8-digit numbers (example)
• 687 alpha-numeric (includes some CD and e prefixes) (example)
• 1199 CD prefixes with .pubn suffixes (example)
• 2802 e prefixes (example)

The quantities mentioned reflect the number of templates with these various characteristics, not the number of articles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:19, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

8k is small enough that it could be cleared down without any of the things I mentioned. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:17, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

The 8k number is the number of templates found in 25k articles. {{cite journal}} is used in approximately 1.1 million articles so we can expect perhaps something like (1,100,000/25,000) * 8,000 = 352,000 articles in the maintenance category.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I have hacked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to implement prospective detection:

• {{cite journal/new |title= Title |journal=Journal |doi=10.1016/j.gfs.2020.100393 |page=100393}} – |page(s)= is five or more digits

  "Title". Journal: 100393. doi:10.1016/j.gfs.2020.100393.

• {{cite journal/new |title= Title |journal=Journal |doi=10.1002/14651858.CD004052|page=CD004052}} – |page(s)= is five or more characters

  "Title". Journal: CD004052. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004052.

• {{cite journal/new |title= Title |journal=Journal |doi=10.1126/sciadv.adl0822 |page=eadl0822}} – |page(s)= is five or more characters with e prefix (case insensitive)

  "Title". Journal: eadl0822. doi:10.1126/sciadv.adl0822.

• {{cite journal/new |title= Title |journal=Journal |doi=10.1098/rsbl.2017.0301|page=20170301}} – special case: |page(s)= is exactly eight digits modified by the test to insert a dot between the 4th and 5th digits

  "Title". Journal: 20170301. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2017.0301.

• {{cite journal/new |title= Title |journal=Journal |doi=10.1002/14651858.CD005216.pub2|page=CD005216}} – special case: |page(s)= has CD prefix (case insensitive) followed by typically six digits modified by the test to append .pubn suffix where n is a single digit

  "Title". Journal: CD005216. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD005216.pub2.

Needs a better category name; page will most likely be read to mean 'article' which is not the intended meaning. Suggestions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:27, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Changed category name from 'CS1 maint: page has article number' to 'CS1 maint: article number as page number' which is a smidge better, perhaps?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:03, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

ignored parameters not ignored

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I recently found this template:

{{cite SSRN |first1=Amanda |last1=Glazer |first2=Jacob |last2=Spertus |orig-date=8 March 2020 |date=2020-02-10 |df=dmy-all |title=Start spreading the news: New York's post-election audit has major flaws |ssrn=3536011}}

Glazer, Amanda; Spertus, Jacob (10 February 2020) [8 March 2020]. "Start spreading the news: New York's post-election audit has major flaws". SSRN 3536011. {{cite SSRN}}: Unknown parameter |orig-date= ignored (help)

The error message says that |orig-date= should be ignored yet there it is in the rendering.

Module:Citation gets parameters from the parent frame's args table. Though this table cannot be modified, the code attempted to modify it by setting the value assigned args['orig-date'] = ''. Fixed in the sandbox:

{{cite SSRN/new |first1=Amanda |last1=Glazer |first2=Jacob |last2=Spertus |orig-date=8 March 2020 |date=2020-02-10 |df=dmy-all |title=Start spreading the news: New York's post-election audit has major flaws |ssrn=3536011}}

Glazer, Amanda; Spertus, Jacob (10 February 2020). "Start spreading the news: New York's post-election audit has major flaws". SSRN 3536011. {{cite SSRN}}: Unknown parameter |orig-date= ignored (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:01, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

trans-title is not included in the link

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Template:Cite web#Title says: "trans-title is included in the link". I interpret this to mean that the value of the parameter is clickable but it's not as seen at Template:Cite web#Foreign language and translated title. Is the documentation wrong or did I misunderstand something? I don't think it should be clickable. I'm just commenting on the documentation. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:22, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The decision to exclude |title-link= from the |title= external link was taken at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 30 § Stop linking trans-title. The documentation was never updated. Done now.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Finding invisible characters

Latest comment: 3 months ago13 comments6 people in discussion

I'm looking to address a few entries in Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters but am having a few issues. Take Joel Olson for instance. (1) The page is listed in the above category page but the category is not showing on Olson's page for me, even though I have other hidden categories visible. (2) When I put the page into a hidden character viewer, I'm not seeing any characters afoul. Why is it still listed in that error category? czar 02:35, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Joel Olson is not in that category... Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:08, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I see it in the category, under O for Olson. CMD (talk) 07:17, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Um right, so I did see it when CZAR first posted this. Checking now, it is no longer there. CMD (talk) 07:18, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes the categories don't update immediately, purging the article or doing a dummy edit will usually force the update. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:09, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I'd buy this if the article had been edited since last Christmas. Maybe a template or something the article used was edited. CMD (talk) 09:12, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I've gone and purged the category (and took the opportunity to fix some hard coded nonbreaking spaces), members went down from ~2200 to ~250. I'm now running Citation bot on the category to handle a few more cases. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, all! czar 13:19, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Now down to ~80some citations. Much easier to tackle the rest by hand (though it won't be me). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

These type of problems - pages showing (or not showing) categories at the bottom, and category pages listing (or not listing) pages, is down to the link tables. A WP:PURGE will not update those, but a WP:NULLEDIT normally will. This needs to be performed on the individual pages, not on the category page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:47, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

That's what I did. I suppose I could have been a bit clearer. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:55, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't see why we have this category at all. Surely if the templates are capable of observing the existence of invisible characters they are capable of stripping them out without causing errors. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:32, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

It prevents copy-pasting and search issues, essentially, though the category tracks other issues as well, like stray line breaks and stuff. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:59, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

3-digit year makes error

Latest comment: 3 months ago17 comments4 people in discussion

• {{cite book|title=title|date=Jan 500}}
• title. Jan 500. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• {{cite book|title=title|date=Jan 0500}}
• title. Jan 0500.

The former will result in an error, but the latter will not. This doesn't seem to comply with MOS:BADDATE, but is this intentional? What is the meaning of difference between (%d%d%d%d) and (%d%d%d%d?) in patterns_t of /Date validation? --FlatLanguage (talk) 02:38, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

It is intentional. Please cite the version that you are actually looking at. The assumption in the code is that you are not citing an actual physical book that was created in AD 500. You can use |orig-year=500 for the original publication date. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:09, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

I thought that I had replied to this... Alas, it appears not.

Is it even possible to know the publication date to month precision, for such an old publication? Regardless, the leading zero version (|date=Jan 0500) above should also emit an error message. Further, is there any reason why a leading zero should be allowed in the year portion of a publication date?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Since I'm only localizing it for jawiki, the specifications can be decided by the people at enwiki. Now Mdy, dMy, y-y and y allow 3-digits year, and the others (ymd, Md-dy, d-dMy, dM-dMy, Md-Mdy, dMy-dMy, Mdy-Mdy, My-My, M-My, My, Sy4-y2, Sy-y, y4-y2) don't. All allow leading zero version. --FlatLanguage (talk) 15:44, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

The conformance (and lack thereof) of the citation templates to WP:MOSNUM is documented at Help:Citation Style 1#Date format compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style. I contend we should follow the wisdom of Fred Brooks who in his book The Mythical Man-Month that the designers of OS/360 learned the hard way, it is essential that the behavior of software match its documentation.

A fault with the documentation is that it fails to explain what an exception to compliance is. Is it

• The template renders a falsehood?
• The template ignores the parameter?
• The template renders a true result together with an error message?

So I added the following sentence to "Citation Style 1"

When the template displays an error message (to a reader who has not chosen enhanced errors or warnings) for a value that complies with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Dates, months, and years the template is considered non-compliant for that value.

Of course this will either require changing the table to show values that produce error messages, or changing my sentence to indicate that a correct rendered value along with an error message is compliant. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:34, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: The code should follow the documentation, or at least provide a truthful escape hatch. The documentation says three digit years are allowed. Unfortunately, the documentation isn't limited to citations, and of course there is a need to use three digit years in the running text of articles. I suggest some sort of escape hatch be provided, such as |date=((May 950)). It is wrong to use |orig-year= if one actually read the original, or a scan of the original available from a reliable source, such as Oxford University. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:44, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Trappist the Monk: WP:MOSNUM specifically includes June 0622 in the unacceptable date formats table.

Question for Trappist or others: Where can we add these or similar examples to the test cases? Jc3s5h (talk) 16:51, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Historically, cs1|2 documentation lags the code. The documentation is not protected. If you see where and how the documentation can be improved, please do so. A good place to start might be to confirm that Help:Citation Style 1 § Date format compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style correctly lists compliance with and exceptions to MOS:DATE. For example, the Acceptable date formats table identifies '2 Sep' and 'Sep 2' (dates without years) as acceptable but cs1|2 will reject those sorts of dates though the Date format compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style does not say so.

Date-handling testcases are defined at Module:Citation/CS1/testcases/dates with the results rendered at Module talk:Citation/CS1/testcases/dates.

Thanks for the June 0622 pointer; I'll fix the module to reject zero-padded years.

Still unanswered is my question about three-digit-year publication dates with month or month-day precision. It is pointed out above that we are somewhat inconsistent in our support of three-digit years. Should we really be supporting such dates?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:49, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Advanced searches of Wikipedia are not my strong suit; when I've tried to use Advanced search in Special:Search the finds and misses often mystified me. Can anyone suggest how to search for pages that cite works from the 1st millennium? Jc3s5h (talk) 19:05, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Here are three searches:

|year=### – times out; finds ~100 articles

|date=### – times out; finds ~70 articles

|date=mmmmm ### – times out; finds no articles

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:43, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Sandbox now rejects zero-padded year values:

{{cite book/new|title=title|date=0500}} → title. 0500. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

{{cite book/new|title=title|date=Jan 0500}} → title. Jan 0500. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:43, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

In check_date(), only year2 is checked by is_valid_year() for My-My and y-y, so

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=Jan 0999 – Jan 1000|title=title}}
Live	title. Jan 0999 – Jan 1000.
Sandbox	title. Jan 0999 – Jan 1000. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=0999–1000|title=title}}
Live	title. 0999–1000.
Sandbox	title. 0999–1000. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

I think good way is to use [1-9]%d%d%d? in patterns_t except ymd.

--FlatLanguage (talk) 02:40, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

FlatLanguage, is it your intent to not support three digit years, or would those be handled somewhere else? Jc3s5h (talk) 15:49, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: I don't understand the meaning of your question. Trappist the monk fixed sandbox of the module to make 0YYY error, but I pointed out it overlook 0YYY–YYYY.

Now the module use pattern %d%d%d%d or %d%d%d%d? and what I suggested was [1-9]%d%d%d?. %d means digit, [1-9] means 1 to 9 digit, and '?' means that the previous character is optional. So [1-9]%d%d%d? means 3 or 4 digits led by a non-zero number. FlatLanguage (talk) 01:16, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I was expecting the first digit to be optional, but it's the last digit that's optional, which gives the same result. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:58, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

I've changed my mind and think we should check both year and year2 with is_valid_year() to make error following:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=090–100|title=title}}
Live	title. 090–100.
Sandbox	title. 090–100. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

--FlatLanguage (talk) 09:14, 25 May 2025 (UTC)--(deleted misunderstanding. '[1-9]%d%d%d?' doesn't cause this problem.)FlatLanguage (talk) 09:51, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

I have edited the /sandbox like so, but if there are any problems please revert.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=1 Jan 100 – 1 Jan 101|title=title}}
Live	title. 1 Jan 100 – 1 Jan 101. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Sandbox	title. 1 Jan 100 – 1 Jan 101.

--FlatLanguage (talk) 09:25, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

date: 2000-10-01, year: 2010 doesn't make error

Latest comment: 3 months ago9 comments6 people in discussion

• {{cite book|title=title|date=1 Oct 2000|year=2010}}
• title. 1 Oct 2000. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
• {{cite book|title=title|date=2000-10-01|year=2010}}
• title. 2000-10-01.

A part of year_date_check() in /Date_validation is folowing:

	if date_string:match ('%d%d%d%d%-%d%d%-%d%d') and year_string:match ('%d%d%d%d%a') then	--special case where both date and year are required YYYY-MM-DD and YYYYx
		date1 = date_string:match ('(%d%d%d%d)');
		year = year_string:match ('(%d%d%d%d)');
		if year ~= date1 then
			result = 0;															-- years don't match
		else
			result = 2;															-- years match; but because disambiguated, don't add to maint cat
		end

It should be fixed like following:

	if date_string:match ('%d%d%d%d%-%d%d%-%d%d') then	--special case where both date and year are required YYYY-MM-DD and YYYYx
		date1 = date_string:match ('(%d%d%d%d)');
		year = year_string:match ('(%d%d%d%d)');
		if year ~= date1 then
			result = 0;															-- years don't match
		elseif year_string:match ('%d%d%d%d%a')
			result = 2;															-- years match; but because disambiguated, don't add to maint cat
		end

Or, exclude YYYY-MM-DD at later branch of YYYY-YY. --FlatLanguage (talk) 02:56, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Or, much easier, flag as an error a citation that attempts to use both |date= and |year=. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:32, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Isn't that Category:CS1 maint: date and year? CMD (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, the problem I pointed out is that the latter should be err_bad_date, not maint_date_and_year. Now 2000-10-01 is parsed as 2000–2010 in year_date_check(). --FlatLanguage (talk) 13:13, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

As I recall, when citing two works by the same author in the same year, and at least one of the works had a date more precise than the year, it was necessary to cite the date as, for example, |date=January 18, 2015 |year=2015b. Now, the "b" could be added to the date parameter, |date=January 18, 2015b, but that wasn't always the case. If the publication dates were all-numeric format, one solution would be to write {para|date|2015-01-18}} |year=2015b. It wouldn't work to use |date=2015b-01-18. (My solution would be to change every all-numeric date in all the citations to a format with a spelled-out month since ISO 8601 is not really suitable for Wikipedia articles.) Jc3s5h (talk) 14:41, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

ISO dates are fine for the vast majority of articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:31, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

The YYYY–YY test in the live module isn't correctly bounded. Because of that, the the test extracts the YYYY-MM portion of |date=2000-10-01 believing it to be an abbreviated year range YYYY–YY (2000–10). The test constructs a 4-digit year from the century digits from 2000 (20) and the MM digits (10) of what it thought was the abbreviated year to make YYMM → 2010. Because 2010 from 2010-10-01 matches the constructed value (2010), the test emits the maintenance message instead of the error message. Fixed in the sandbox by properly bounding the YYYY–YY pattern (line 823 (permalink)):

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=2000-10-01|title=title|year=2000}}
Live	title. 2000-10-01.
Sandbox	title. 2000-10-01.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=2000-10-01|title=title|year=2010}}
Live	title. 2000-10-01.
Sandbox	title. 2000-10-01. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=2000-10-01|title=title|year=2010a}}
Live	title. 2000-10-01. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
Sandbox	title. 2000-10-01. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Now Sy4-y2 recognized incorrectly:

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|date=Winter 2000–01|title=title|year=2001}}
Live	title. Winter 2000–01.
Sandbox	title. Winter 2000–01.

I think a good way is to handle all of the YYYY-MM-DD in the first branch, as I indicated at the beginning. FlatLanguage (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I have edited the /sandbox like so, but if there are any problems please revert.--FlatLanguage (talk) 09:25, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

It's weird to display like 'In (someone). (book title)'

Latest comment: 2 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

{{cite book |last=Bloggs |first=Fred |date=January 1, 2001 |editor-last=Doe |editor-first=John |title=Big Compilation Book with Many Chapters and Distinct Chapter Authors |publisher=Book Publishers |pages=100–110 |chapter=Chapter 2: The History of the Bloggs Family |isbn=}}

1. Bloggs, Fred (January 1, 2001). "Chapter 2: The History of the Bloggs Family". In Doe, John (ed.). Big Compilation Book with Many Chapters and Distinct Chapter Authors. Book Publishers. pp. 100–110.

Is it just me who think to be weird coming 'In' in front of editor name, when only coming up with the chapter parameter? Watsondoe (talk) 09:53, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Especially in cite book Watsondoe (talk) 09:57, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

It looks like you are calling the APA style weird. Chicago does it differently, but a style has to settle on something consistent. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:58, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

I didn't realize it is one style of citation. Actually, at first sight, I thought of it as some wiki grammar mess.

Thanks genuinely for correcting me. Watsondoe (talk) 08:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it's weird, but off the top of my head I can't think of an alternative that isn't also klunky in one way or another. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:49, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 May 2025

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This edit request to Template:Cite book/doc has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In Template:Cite book/doc, please change lastauthoramp to name-list-style in four places.

Reason: there is no parameter lastauthoramp; the correct parameter name is name-list-style (with usage: |name-list-style=amp)

Thank you 176.108.139.1 (talk) 02:21, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 26 May 2025 for Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This edit request to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Update

local extended_registrants_t = {												-- known free registrants identifiable by the doi suffix incipit
	['1002'] = {'aelm', 'leap'},												-- Advanced Electronic Materials, Learned Publishing
	['1016'] = {'j.heliyon', 'j.nlp', 'j.proche'},								-- Heliyon, Natural Language Processing, Procedia Chemistry

to:

local extended_registrants_t = {												-- known free registrants identifiable by the doi suffix incipit
	['1002'] = {'aelm', 'leap'},												-- Advanced Electronic Materials, Learned Publishing
	['1016'] = {'j.heliyon', 'j.nlp', 'j.patter', 'j.proche'},					-- Heliyon, Natural Language Processing, Patterns, Procedia Chemistry

since Patterns is a fully open-access journal: Link to Patterns with open-access info highlighted (archived 18 December 2024).

When completing, please also poke User talk:Citation bot per Template:Cite journal/doc § Tracking of free DOIs. BlankEclair (talk) 06:13, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Added to the sandbox. [2]. You can notify Citation bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:26, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Citing old but reprinted books: a suggestion

Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments5 people in discussion

When citing an old book of historical interest that has been reprinted the usual practice is to give details of a modern edition, which is useful to support the text but information about the original is also useful, and the publication date is important. I find it a bit disconcerting to find a reference to, say, The Origin of Species (2010). What I have tried is to use {{Cite book}} to cite the original, with a mention after the closing }} that a reprint/new edition has been published by, say, Skyhorse Publishing, {{ISBN|978-1-62087-640-4}}. Example: an actual original reference.^[1] Alternative version.^[2] If there is a reference to a page number it could be added in the mention to the available edition (and also to the original, if known). I've added invented page references to the examples.

I don't think this suggestion is relevant to what is just an older edition of a book not of historical interest, there's usually no reason to cite the first edition as well as the tenth.

If this suggestion happens to meet with wide approval, it could be added to the {{Cite book}} guideline.

1. Tschiffely, A. F. (Aimé Felix) (2013), Tschiffely's ride : ten thousand miles in the saddle from southern cross to pole star, Skyhorse Publishing, p. 123, ISBN 978-1-62087-640-4
2. Tschiffely, Aimé Felix (1933). From Southern Cross to Pole Star, later published as 'Tschiffely's ride: ten thousand miles in the saddle from southern cross to pole star'. Heinemann. p. 321. Republished in 2013 by Skyhorse Publishing ISBN 978-1-62087-640-4, p. 123.

Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 12:11, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. One source per cs1|2 template. And don't fabricate values for |title= as you did in example 2.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:18, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

I think Pol098's post illustrates the problem of deviating from the custom both Wikipedia and general academic writing. The body of the post and the endnote 2 make it unclear which edition Pol098 read, which version the page numbers refer to. Also, "version" is not a normal word to use in a citation. Is it an edition, or is it a printing?

I wonder if Pol098 is aware of the |orig-date= parameter. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:58, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

One advantage of avoiding modern reprint citations, and going back to the originals, is that they are often out of copyright and available in full online (for instance through the Internet Archive or Hathitrust). —David Eppstein (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

This is a confusing book because From Southern Cross to Pole Star and Tschiffely's Ride were both published in 1933 by the same publisher William Heinmann. It quickly became best known as Tschiffely's Ride and remains so. It's possible there were two editions published at the same time in the US and Europe under different titles, maybe Pole Star came out a month before the other or something. Or maybe the first couple printings were "Pole Star" then later printings were "Ride". The initial printing(s) probably didn't have many copies, it became an unexpected best seller and they cranked up the presses later in 1933. Something like that. The question is does any of this really matter. I would just cite Tschiffely's Ride in whatever edition you have to verify the page numbers, and use |orig-date= per jc3 and the other stuff about publication history discuss in wikitext. -- GreenC 17:22, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

TM:Cite FTP

Latest comment: 2 months ago36 comments6 people in discussion

This does not exist but probably should.

FTP is a long story. Prior to 2020/2021, FTP links were available through a browser at ftp:// and it worked thus we had many {{cite web}} with ftp:// URIs. After that, most modern web browsers stopped supporting the FTP protocol, due to security concerns. Some sites have HTTPS gateways so you only needed to change ftp:// to https:// and it works:

• ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf
• https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf

I did a bot run in 2021, detected when a gateway existed, and converted the URI from ftp:// to https://

The problem is ftp:// links that have no https:// gateway like ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/ .. They are only accessible via a dedicated FTP client eg. the unix ftp command. These URIs do not work with web browsers, without special and possibly insecure add-ons. There are a couple issues for us:

1. Semantically they are not on the web, and thus {{cite web}} is inaccurate
2. Web browsers by default do not work and we should not be providing hyperlinks, if nothing else for security reasons.

Solution: We need a FTP template that will display the FTP URI without hyperlinking it. It will document how to access ftp:// links, such as through a user-supplied FTP program. It would also encourage the reader to find an alternative method - a https:// at a different ___location, or a FTP-https gateway - and encourage replacing the ftp:// with a https:// where possible.

-- GreenC 19:19, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, even if the browser itself can't usually handle FTP nowadays, it can still open another application that supports the scheme. For example, clicking the FTP link on my phone asks me if I want to open it in a file manager app I've installed that supports FTP, which works. So having the clickable link can still be useful sometimes.

Therefore, what would make sense to me would be to keep the existing link, but also add some kind of note or explanation, perhaps linking to a page with instructions for accessing FTP on various operating systems, as well as recommending first trying SFTP and FTPS in hopes that the server supports either of these secure variants.

Does FTP have any vulnerabilities beyond those of HTTP without SSL/TLS? What risks could using add-ons realistically pose?

Solomon Ucko (talk) 20:48, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't know that {{cite FTP}} as a native cs1|2 template is something we should do. You could create a wrapper template around {{citation}} using Module:template wrapper. The wrapper would make sure that |url= has a value using the ftp:// scheme (error message if some other scheme); might append the nowiki'd url to the value in |title= or might force |type=FTP if the link is clickable; might provide a link to the explanatory text that you mentioned. Such templates might look like this (using {{citation}} as a mockup):

{{cite FTP |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |work=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf |link=no}}

W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. – For help viewing ftp documents see <link>

{{cite FTP |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |work=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf |link=yes}}

W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (FTP). – For help viewing ftp documents see <link>

I guess I prefer the second option because it's cleaner and it doesn't hurt to have a live link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm OK with this proposal. Sadly I don't have the time or experience to make a wrapper template. I would though be able to populate it via bot. -- GreenC 06:05, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Why use a separate template? The CS1 templates can have "doi:" at the end, so why treat the FTP address so differently? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:33, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Possibly. It could be messy to adapt CS1 to the requirements: special documentation and help pages, gateway vs. non-gateway, display vs. non-display of URIs. I don't think we are talking a ton of URIs either. Mostly the sites are legacy government or university that are too cheap to change and don't care about data security (climate data etc). When I did the conversion bot in 2021 I found tons of old FTP links that no longer work, every year there are fewer. Isolating them to their own template makes it easier to manage the corpus. -- GreenC 06:33, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

@GreenC, I have started a wrapper template, based on discussion above and several published style guides:[3][4][5][6] No docs yet. It'll do a preview warning and maintenance category with no URL. It works almost just like {{citation}}. It gives CS1 formatting by default. Anything (no, none, nope, n) in the |link= parameter suppresses it right now. Feel free to change anything that I have wrong in the template; I'm just getting a ball rolling.

Default

{{cite FTP |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |work=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf}}

W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF) (FTP). (To view documents see Help:FTP)

No link

{{cite FTP |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |work=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf |link=no}}

W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF) (FTP). {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |link= ignored (help) (To view documents see Help:FTP)

With access-date

{{cite FTP |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |work=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf |access-date=3 May 2025}}

W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF) (FTP). Retrieved 3 May 2025. (To view documents see Help:FTP)

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:21, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

This is wonderful User:Rjjiii very happy with this. Curiously the document "How to Access an FTP Server from the Browser" proceeds to say it can't be done, and to use a dedicated FTP application. We could have an in-house wiki page in the help: namespace. Like Help:FTP similar to Help:Archiving a source, then link the external "How to" page from there. And link to the Help: page from the template.

FTP is in 5,136 pages. Most are {{cite web}} and have no https interface. I think conversion will be simple: change the name of the template, and change |website= to |work=. User:Trappist the monk, is that a reasonable plan, are there any other parameters cite web has citation does not? -- GreenC 06:18, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I've come to believe that the |link= parameter should not be supported. A convenient link is far superior to an unlinked string of url gibberish – cs1|2 had a reason for linking |title= with |url=: this is an electronic encyclopedia; all of those published style guides are for works that have physical form. So, I see no reason for {{cite FTP}} to exclude |url=, |url-access=, |url-status=, |archive-url=, |archive-format=, and |access-date= or, frankly, any of the other parameters that are currently excluded: |chapter-url=, |contribution-url=, |section-url=, |article-url=, |entry-url=, |map-url=, |section-url= – {{citation}} does not support |map-url= or its companion |map=. The other excluded url-holding parameters also have companion 'title-holding' parameters. If we are to exclude all of these url-holding parameters, ought we not exclude their companions? Further, placing the ftp url at the end of the rendered citation prevents it from being included in the citation's metadata.

Since |link= should go away, I see no reason why {{cite web}} cannot underlie {{cite FTP}}.

{{cite FTP}} must not provide free advertising for some company's product in en.wiki articles as its current incarnation will do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:38, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I linked instead to Comparison of FTP client software, no strong preference on link target. Regarding |archive-url=, I didn't realize until this discussion that Archive.org saves FTP links. Archive.today just gives an "Invalid URL: ftp://..." message. An archive link like, https://web.archive.org/web/20220121090419/ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf, is probably accessible to a much broader range of users. If the plan is to have a bot convert these to an FTP template, could the bot also check for archives? No strong on opinions on other notes above, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:00, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Archive.org saves FTP links when they have an HTTPS interface/gateway. It's saving the https version of the link but displaying the URI as if it were ftp:// .. if the URI has no interface then archive providers can't save it. Ideally any ftp:// that has a gateway, we modify the URI to https:// but no guarantee Archive.org saved the URI as https:// they may have it saved the URI ftp:// even though it's actually through a https:// interface. Confusing. The purpose/need for Cite FTP template is to support ftp:// links that do not have an interface gateway, that are pure 100% FTP protocol and nothing else, no hybrid link. Those hybrids, we simply convert the URI to https:// and the FTP problem disappears, they can continue to use cite web. -- GreenC 18:21, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

What template is link a parameter of? Jc3s5h (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

The current incarnation of {{cite FTP}}; see the above examples, in particular: No link.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Is this a wrapper for {{Citation}} or something else, such as {{Cite book}}? If the former, sometimes Citation doesn't guess correctly whether the publication being cited is a book, journal, etc. Is there a way to specify what kind of publication is being cited? Jc3s5h (talk) 15:09, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

In its current form, wrapping {{citation}}, {{cite FTP}} will require some sort of parameter (|server=?) to feed |work= so that {{citation}} renders |title= upright and quoted. If that parameter is not present, |title= will be rendered in italics.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:38, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Trappist, would you be willing to modify or make a template that conforms to what you envision? As noted above, this template is primarily for FTP links that are pure 100% FTP protocol, that do not redirect to a HTTPS server via an interface/gateway. These types of "pure" FTP links will never work in a browser, without special modifications and software installed. For the vast majority of users they will get page not found. Of course this won't stop editors from adding interface FTP links that do work in browsers, thus the need for turning on or off the hyperlink, but in those cases I can't think of any reason why they would use Cite FTP and not Cite web, simply change the URI from ftp:// to https:// -- GreenC 18:29, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

See {{cite FTP/sandbox}}. Using the same example as above:

• {{cite FTP/sandbox |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |server=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf}}

  W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (FTP). (To view documents see Help:FTP.)

The obvious difference here is that |title= is linked and the template uses |server= instead of |work=. Another difference:

• {{cite FTP/sandbox |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |server=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf}}

  W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (FTP). {{Cite FTP}} must use ftp:// scheme (To view documents see Help:FTP.)

The template emits an error message when |url= holds sommat other than an ftp url; category applies only to mainspace. |server= isn't currently required but probably ought to be. There is no preview message.

Earlier in this discussion it was suggested that a help page should be linked from this template. At this writing, both the live and sandbox versions of the template link to Comparison of FTP client software which to my mind does not answer. The help text can be on a separate page in the Help namespace or can be included in the template documentation. I guess the latter would be my preference. I leave it to others to write that help text.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

User:Trappist the monk: This is fine, thank you. I agree the help page should be in Help: namespace, so editors can create custom instructions, and link to relevant pages internal and external. As noted by User:Jc3s5h below, the example FTP link is actually a dead FTP site. How do we handle those? Adding a {{dead link}} won't do anything with bots, nor will adding an |archive-url=, because the web archive providers (Wayback Machine, Archive.today etc) only work with web archives, not FTP. Perhaps the Help: page can have a section on this (searching for alternatives), though I'd still like some way to indicate the FTP site is inoperable. Any thoughts? Possibly a new version of {{dead link}} such as {{dead FTP}} which can be tracked separately. -- GreenC 18:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I would much rather have a help page about ftp access rather than an article about ftp clients, because we can give practical advice without finding "reliable sources". Many users will be using Windows 11, and most of the information about ftp in Windows 11 is in question-and-answer forums rather than Microsoft documentation, or other reliable sources that could be cited in an article. My recommendation for the Windows 11 user who doesn't want to bother installing a special client is use Windows Explorer. For simple cases, just put the URL in the address bar of Windows Explorer. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I have tweaked the ~/sandbox version so that it ignores |archive-date=, |archivedate=, |archive-url=, |archiveurl= and |url-status=. These parameters can be set so when a dead ftp is encountered, editors can set |url-status=dead ({{cite FTP/sandbox}} is a wrapper template so the cs1|2 rules can be bent). There is no visible indication but perhaps better than an unattached {{dead link}} template and perhaps bots can use it. Also changed ~/sandbox to link to Help:FTP:

• {{cite FTP/sandbox |author=W. M. Folkner |author2=E. M. Standish |author3=J. G. Williams |author4=D. H. Boggs |date=2 August 2007 |title=Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418 |server=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels/spk/planets/a_old_versions/de418_announcement.pdf |url-status=dead}}

  W. M. Folkner; E. M. Standish; J. G. Williams; D. H. Boggs (2 August 2007). "Planetary and lunar ephemeris DE418" (PDF). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (FTP).^{[dead ftp link]} (To view documents see Help:FTP.)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:37, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Great. If url-status is set, is it possible to produce a visual notice like ^{[dead link]} except "dead FTP link"? -- GreenC 16:22, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, see the example above. Can be linked; if so, where? Mayhaps we should change the parameter to |ftp-status=dead?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Trappist the monk that's perfect. I guess leave unlinked until something better comes along. According to URL anything with protocol://example.com is a URL/URI while something like "example.com" is not a URL but would be a URI. If we were concerned about using "url-status" there would also be concern with |url= .. however technically URL is correct. Suggest leave as url. -- GreenC 14:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

ok. I've added categorization for dead ftp links and tweaked the category names to: Category:Articles using cite FTP with improper URL and Category:Articles with dead FTP links. Categories created. Live template updated. Documentation tweaked. I'll write an AWB script today that will convert {{cite web}} with |url=ftp://... to {{cite FTP}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:01, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

OK. Conversion is more complex. Need to check each ftp:// and see if it has an HTTPS gateway available and if so convert the url to https:// which is preferable to retain the cite web. Make sure the https:// link works. If no gateway, then covert to {{cite FTP}} and run a FTP client (ncftpget) to verify the link is operational, updating ftp-status accordingly. Feel free to do this if you want, I was going to repurpose some code I wrote in 2021. -- GreenC 20:02, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Oh, ok, you do that. I was just going to do a simple convert. Your way would be much better. Don't forget to change |publisher=, |website=, |work= to |server=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:33, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Still working/bump thread. -- GreenC 17:26, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Does the ftp service on naif.jpl.nasa.gov actually work? I cannot connect to it. Is this example from a real Wikipedia article? Jc3s5h (talk) 23:10, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Here is a working example, in the sense that the FTP server exists, and the file exists:

• {{cite FTP/sandbox |last1=Standish |first1=Myles |date=October 31, 1997 |title=CDroms |server=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/}}
• Standish, Myles (October 31, 1997). "CDroms". Jet Propulsion Laboratory (FTP). (To view documents see Help:FTP.)

Jc3s5h (talk) 23:50, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

I have edited Help:FTP so the example works. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:56, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Why a cite ftp template, and not just url protocol recognition? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:46, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean by url protocol recognition? {{cite web}} recognizes that |url= has a url with an ftp:// scheme? Then what?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:55, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

that any of {{cite xxx}} recognizes the FTP scheme. If there's a journal article hosted on an FTP, the right template to use would still be {{cite journal|url=ftp://...}}. Same for a book chapter hosted on an ftp, {{cite book|chapter-url=ftp://...}}, and so on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:39, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

That was brought up further up, my response began: "Possibly. It could be messy.." In brief this is cleaner and easier to manage. I don't think the quantity and quality of links, and future of FTP, warrants integration. Looking at the links, it's over 50% NOAA. Which is currently being massively defunded. Throughout the federal government there are big changes afoot with computer systems, headed by DOGE ie. Musk's Silicon Valley wrecking crew, for technical reasons alone it's reasonable to assume they are going to deprecate FTP in line with the browser companies. There will always be some small number of holdouts. -- GreenC 20:21, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  Done - conversion process and results. -- GreenC 23:55, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Apparently the API:Parsing wikitext step doesn't work (at least for {{cite map}} → {{cite FTP}}:

Arkansas Highway 142 § References

and {{citation}} → {{cite FTP}}:

Streaming algorithm § References

I've fixed a couple of the latter (conference proceedings) by googling the paper's title and converting {{cite FTP}} to {{cite conference}}. Haven't been so lucky with the {{cite map}} titles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:18, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Citing organizationally self-authored, self-published material

Latest comment: 2 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but as a simple example, let's consider an organization (e.g., a company or NGO) that writes something and puts it on its own website without identifying any personally named author. Should that organization be named as the |author=, the |work=, or the |publisher=, or more than one of these?

My general impression is that "|publisher=" is for someone who publishes a work that is written by someone else (e.g., Bloomsbury Publishing published a book written by J. K. Rowling) or someone who publishes a work that has a distinct work title (e.g., Condé Nast is the publisher of Architectural Digest).

If this was something on a news website or magazine's website (e.g., a news article with no byline), I would tend to use the |work=/|website=/|magazine= parameter, with no author identified. But should I do the same if it's a company, NGO, or other organization that wrote the cited article? Should I put the company/organization name as the |author= instead of the |work=?

—⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:32, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

The /doc pages seem to conflict with each other, so whatever we find to be the best/correct usage should be updated onto each of those pages. Most, like Template:Cite web/doc put it into |work= or an alias (website, magazine, etc.). Template:Cite press release/doc uses |publisher= with no larger work in the examples. Putting it into |author= makes WP:SFN easier and looks more like an APA citation, so I suspect that is why people place it there. Template:Citation/doc shows an example of this, but I think no other /doc pages advise doing it? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:43, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

In this kind of case I would rule of thumb it as prefer work > publisher > author, if the data fits for the parameter. There may be contesting data, for example sometimes there's two levels worth of org authors in which case wherever the cited thing lives goes in work and the publisher gets the other. And yeah, I agree that there's probably a bias toward easy support with SFN in some cases toward author parameter, but that's what {{sfnRef}} is for. Izno (talk) 22:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like all of us think the guidance at Template:Cite press release/doc should be changed. All three of us seem to think that in the simplest case when a press release is on the issuing organization's own website, the citation should put the organization's name in |work=, not |publisher=, which is not what is currently described there. If the press release is republished by someone else (e.g., PR Newswire), I suggest the republisher should be put in |via= and the organization that issued the press release should be in |author= or |work=, not |publisher=. In such a case, the organization that issued the press release is not acting as its publisher, but rather as its source. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:08, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

All three of us Yes, that's agreeable to me.

press release is republished by someone else If the cited release appears on PR Newswire's website, |work=PR Newswire seems reasonable to me, with publisher or author for the company issuing the release. I think I'd tend toward author in that case, given the publisher of PR Newswire is Cision. Izno (talk) 00:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Author-link info lost

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

After the most recent edits by Rjjiii, there is basically no mention of the |author-link= parameter at all. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:53, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

To what extent should Help:Citation Style 1 overlap or duplicate Template:Citation Style documentation? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:06, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

I think readers might benefit from being told about |author-link= and |author-linkn=. Without this being discussed in the Help instructions, they might not find it for themselves. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:03, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Chapter editor

Latest comment: 2 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion

On Wikispecies, species:Template:Lamas, 2004 renders (formatting and links omitted for simplicity) as:

Lamas, G. 2004. (ed.) Checklist: Part 4A. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea. In Heppner, J.B. (ed.) Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera. Vol.5A, Pt.4A. Assn. for Tropical Lepidoptera/Scientific Publishers, Gainesville. 439pp.

With Lamas as editor of the chapter, and Heppner as editor of the volume. Can that be achieved in {{Cite book}}? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Lamas, G. (chapter editor). "Checklist: Part 4A. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea". In Heppner, J. B. (ed.). Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:39, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I was hoping for something more semantically meaningful than |author=((Lamas, G. (chapter editor))).

That corrupts the metadata. Perhaps better is to use |author-mask=:

{{cite book|author=Lamas, G. |author-mask=Lamas, G. (chapter ed.) |chapter=Checklist: Part 4A. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea | editor=Heppner, J. B. |title= Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera}}

Lamas, G. (chapter ed.). "Checklist: Part 4A. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea". In Heppner, J. B. (ed.). Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000090-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFLamas,_G." class="citation book cs1">Lamas, G. (chapter ed.). "Checklist: Part 4A. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea". In Heppner, J. B. (ed.). ''Atlas of Neotropical Lepidoptera''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Checklist%3A+Part+4A.+Hesperioidea+-+Papilionoidea&rft.btitle=Atlas+of+Neotropical+Lepidoptera&rft.au=Lamas%2C+G.&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+99" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:22, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Using the version of the template at Wikispecies (which I appreciate may not be identical to the one here), I can get to species:Template:Lamas, 2004/sandbox, but the author-mask means that the link to the author's page is the entire string "Lamas, G. (chapter ed.)", whereas what is wanted is to link just "Lamas, G.", as seen in the original template mentioned on my OP. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:46, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

get rid of |author-link= and use |author-mask1= [[Gerardo Lamas|Lamas, G.]] (chapter ed.)?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:52, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that works. Thank you again. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:02, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

  This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:02, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

No OCR flag?

Latest comment: 2 months ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Is there a way to indicate in {{cite book}} that the online copy is not searchable and that an OCR alternative is desired? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:47, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

This is not something that needs to be indicated in a citation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:55, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

It's something that would be useful, since it would warn editors that they can't do a search to verify claims. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:10, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

There's a million things that would be useful. It would be useful to know which store had a book on sale. If you tell me "Jim Bob was a comedian born in Petawawa, Ontario", cited to page 23 of "The Life of Jim Bob the Comedian", linking to an unsearchable scan of the book, I can easily find page 23 and read the 3-4 paragraphs on that page to see if Jim Bob was indeed born in Petawawa. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:47, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Not if you're blind, you can't. That said, source inaccessibility is such a broad topic that it probably can't be usefully handled here. For example, all print works are by definition inaccessible unless there are alternative versions available. Mackensen (talk) 12:55, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

In which case you can use services like https://www.imagetotext.info/ to convert an image to text, and have that read to you. No different than encountering a printed book. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:04, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

I think we have a page where you can ask someone to look up a book for you, would that do the trick? Nemo 15:25, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata?

Latest comment: 2 months ago11 comments6 people in discussion

There are params for specifying DOI, PMID, arxiv id, etc; is there such for specifying the Wikidata Qid for those papers that have Wikidata entries? -- 65.93.183.249 (talk) 17:28, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

No reason to do this, as Wikidata is a self-published source and thus can't generally be used to host material that can verify claims for our readers. Article readers don't want to navigate a database, they want to check a paper or chapter. Remsense ‥ 论 17:32, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

"Article readers don't want to navigate a database", yet we have identifiers to link almost 20 databases which provide bibliographic information (whether or not they provide the actual work). Nemo 21:25, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Not quite. Most of our resource ids are potential ways to access the source itself, not merely more metadata. The ones that most likely aren't, off the top of my head, are OCLC and LCCN—though even those you can use to get the source depending on your circumstances. I suppose if I'm asking myself personally whether I'd like the option of the Wikidata alongside those too? Sure, but I'm wary if other would, and if it being user generated is a real problem when consider inclusion. Remsense ‥ 论 21:58, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Also many of our identifiers to 20 databases are usually or always useless to readers and should be trimmed back. Especially, s2cid delenda est. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:37, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Personally I think we should consider adding one more identifier only if we can first agree to remove at least one existing identifier. (I agree s2cid is a prime candidate.) Otherwise there will never be a limit to the bloat (Wikidata has thousands of bibliographic identifiers). It doesn't even need to be a full deprecation, just hiding them by default (e.g. unless they have an -access=free companion parameter). Nemo 15:50, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

s2cid is fine when there's an actual pdf source there (e.g. S2CID 121386035). If it's just "this paper exists" page (e.g. S2CID 199546790), it's worthless. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:42, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, and it follows that in most cases s2cid is worthless. It was added at a time when SemanticScholar had more full text copies, which have since been removed. It would be far easier to remove the parameter and add direct links to pdfs.semanticscholar.org where the PDF is actually available (currently some 1-2 % of the cases, in my estimate). Nemo 14:29, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

One could specify a Qid, and the template would autopopulate from the Wikidata fields (such as how some infoboxes work); or one could just wikilink across to Wikidata to find the various database links, instead of populating them on Wikipedia. It would be like a specific template for a specific source... It would seem to be the purpose for the existence of Wikidata ; how we are currently pulling statistics for shipclasses, or software version numbers... -- 65.93.183.249 (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Does cite {{cite Q}} not already do this? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:33, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, and Cite Q is a fucking blight on Wikipedia. I'd much rather have a standard |qid=... in {{cite journal}} than deal with the horror of Cite Q. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Category:CS1 maint: missing class ?

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

When {{cite arxiv}} has a new (post 2007) style identifier (|arxiv/eprint=####.####/####.#####), there should be a check that |class= is set. E.g. in

• {{cite arXiv |eprint=2412.09676 |title=OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host |last1=Mróz |first1=M. J. |date=2024 |display-authors=etal }}
• Mróz, M. J.; et al. (2024). "OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host". arXiv:2412.09676. A bot will complete this citation soon. Click here to jump the queue

we're missing |class=astro-ph.EP and should display a maintenance message so we can fix it to its proper form.

• {{cite arXiv |eprint=2412.09676 |class=astro-ph.EP |title=OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host |last1=Mróz |first1=M. J. |date=2024 |display-authors=etal}}
• Mróz, M. J.; et al. (2024). "OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host". arXiv:2412.09676 [astro-ph.EP].

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:48, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

{{cite arXiv/new |eprint=2412.09676 |title=OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host |last1=Mróz |first1=M. J. |date=2024 |display-authors=etal}}

Mróz, M. J.; et al. (2024). "OGLE-2015-BLG-1609Lb: Sub-jovian planet orbiting a low-mass stellar or brown dwarf host". arXiv:2412.09676.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:09, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: This seems to affect {{cite journal}} and others too, e.g.

Smith, J. (2016). "Fictitious title". Fictitious Journal. 1 (2): 3. arXiv:1001.1234. doi:10.1234/123456.

It should only affect cite arxiv. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:53, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Way to turn off display of website/work in italics

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The cite news/cite website template throws errors if you try to use it without newspaper/website/work=. However, because some people want to use it without italics for sources like BBC News, they keep trying to use either publisher= or agency= because they don't use italics which gets unendingly corrected back and forth, because these sources are not the publishing company or a news agency, they are the work, so it's both incorrect and it throws errors because it is marked as a "required" parameter. I don't think it matters if it displays in italics, but @Jprg1966 sure seems to. Is there some way we can turn the italics on the work/website parameter off on specific citations? PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:28, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

The cite news/cite website template throws errors if you try to use it without newspaper/website/work=. Not true. ...it throws errors because it is marked as a "required" parameter. Also not true; see these examples:

{{cite news |title=Title}} → "Title".

{{cite web |title=Title |url=//example.com}} → "Title".

No error messages.

These templates, unlike {{cite journal}} and {{cite magazine}} do not require a |work= alias because the editing community got their collective knickers in a bunch when cs1|2 briefly required a |work= alias for {{cite news}} and {{cite web}}. The italic vs. roman display dispute will likely never be resolved. Creating an italic on/off switch will simply change the dispute from editors switching between |work= and |publisher= to editors switching between |italic-work=on and |italic-work=off. Not much of a gain there.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:57, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

My take on this is that it is reasonable for both cite news and cite web to supply a publisher (non-italic) and not to also provide a work (italic) when the two pieces of information are redundant. But the meaning is different. The publisher should be the name of an organization such as "British Broadcasting Corporation", not the name of a work produced by that organization such as "BBC News". On rare occasion the work and organization have the same name and you get to choose which one to use. But I would oppose having a variant parameter for un-italicized work; our citation templates have too much unnecessary variation already. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:56, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Bloat

Latest comment: 2 months ago11 comments7 people in discussion

reference info for Hip-hop

unnamed refs	242
named refs	19
self closed	42
cs1 refs	5
cs1 templates	3
rp templates	50
refbegin templates	1
use xxx dates	mdy
cs1|2 dmy dates	2
cs1|2 dmy access dates	2
cs1|2 last/first	1
List of cs1 templates cite book (1) cite web (2)
explanations

Citation templates are great tools for editors, but they do create massive bloat that accretes to real harm. In an article like hip-hop, converting just one Cite Journal reference to plain text saved 360 bytes. The entire article is 226,834 bytes. An enormous amount of its current bloat is a reliance on templates for citations where they are not necessary. If there were a way to get templates to generate more efficient citations, that would be a blessing.Trumpetrep (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

If you are referring to this edit, please read WP:CITEVAR and MOS:CURLY to see why that edit was probably not in conformance with Wikipedia's guidelines. The majority of that article's references appear to use CS1 templates. Citation templates have both costs and benefits. It appears that you are focused only on the costs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:29, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

If you're concerned about bloat, you can remove some of the automatically prefilled parameters which do not add any value for a {{cite journal}}, starting from the hardcoded URL. Instead of

{{Cite journal|last=Leach|first=Andrew|year=2008|title="One Day It'll All Make Sense": Hip-Hop and Rap Resources for Music Librarians|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30163606|journal=Notes|volume=65|issue=1|pages=9–37|doi=10.1353/not.0.0039|jstor=30163606|s2cid=144572911|issn=0027-4380|access-date=December 5, 2020|archive-date=January 28, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210128051605/https://www.jstor.org/stable/30163606|url-status=live}}

it's enough to have

{{Cite journal|last=Leach|first=Andrew|year=2008|title="One Day It'll All Make Sense": Hip-Hop and Rap Resources for Music Librarians|journal=Notes|volume=65|issue=1|pages=9–37|doi=10.1353/not.0.0039|jstor=30163606}}

Nemo 13:02, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Or you could just have

Leach, Andrew. "[https://doi.org/10.1353/not.0.0039 'One Day It'll All Make Sense': Hip-Hop and Rap Resources for Music Librarians]". ''[[Notes (journal)|Notes]]''. 65 (1), 2008. 9–37.

Skipping the template saves 30 characters which adds up to real savings in such a massive article. Trumpetrep (talk) 00:00, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

These sort of 'savings' are utterly trivial, and lose on all sorts of maintenance benefits, from bots, to error detection, to consitancy of format, etc... Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:11, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

If they look the same in the finished article then there is no space saving, and if there is need to worry about saving 30 characters then there are other issue with you article that mean it should probably be split or better summarised. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:52, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

The problem, such as it is, is not CS1|2 templates. It's lack of a centralized citation database. Define the citation once and use it everywhere with an identifier. There have been initiatives, conferences, papers, proposals, etc.. but the WMF in the end doesn't support it. It is a highly complex undertaking across many layers and stakeholders, that will take millions if not 10s of millions. The way we do things now is not broken, and likely the community would resit change anyway, so it's a risky investment eg visual editor fiasco. If Wikipedia started over with green fields ground up new technology. That day may come, and when it does we will be very happy citations have semantic information (key=value pairs) to import into the new system. Editors who make these free-form citations without consideration for the future are creating much bigger problems than a few bytes of ascii text. GreenC 00:45, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't Template:Cite Q move towards this? CMD (talk) 01:29, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Cite Q is a blight that should be yeeted into the sun. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:32, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Noone should have to edit a completely separate project to update something on Wikipedia. Until there is a method of inputting updates here, and those updates back flushing to Wikidata, it will always be something stuck in the mud. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:49, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

The other issue is the maximalist approach to the inclusion of indiscriminate information, and the lack of customization options. There's no simple way to tell cite q, no STFU, I do not want publisher, issn, oclc, publication ___location, etc... when citing journals. Likewise, no way of telling {{cite q}}, give me authors/editors in "Smith, J. A." format. If there was a way to tell Cite Q that, once per article, it would have a lot better adoption. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:02, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Author check

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello, could we have a check on author fields using "last updated" such as

{{cite news |last=updated |first=Tyler Wilde last |title=Title}}

Thanks Keith D (talk) 11:26, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

{{cite news/new |last=updated |first=Tyler Wilde last |title=Title}}

updated, Tyler Wilde last. "Title". {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:50, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Usurped URL, No Archive

Latest comment: 2 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

I've dug through the talk history and there are a few cases where this has been mentioned, but I'm not finding a solution that currently works. In an article, I ran into citation with a web link with an archive link. The original URL has been usurped to try and push a software download. The linked archive at the Library of Congress Web Archive comes back as "not found". Looking for an archived version on Archive.org returns "this link has been removed from the Wayback Machine. I can set url-status=usurped, and leave a dead value in archive-url= or I can remove the archive URL entirely, but then url-status= no longer suppresses linking to the original (usurped) URL. I can comment out the URL, but that throws a CS1 error about a missing URL. For the moment, I've just used plain text instead of {{Cite web}} on the reference, but is there a workable way to have url-status=usurped suppress a harmful link while still keeping the full citation information intact when there isn't an archived version? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:02, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't know the answer but it might be worth writing to the Internet Archive about this ___domain. It could be that the illegitimate ___domain squatter has abusively gotten the archived pages removed. Nemo 15:08, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to expect the templates to suppress the usurped url in all cases, regardless of the presence/absence of an archive url. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:14, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I agree, Firefangledfeathers, but from what I can tell from prior discussions and the documentation, url-status= requires the presence of archive-url= to work since its primary task is to decide whether to link title= to the original or archived URL. I'm not sure what technical limitations exist to change that. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:43, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

—Carter (Tcr25): Follow this decision tree: Wikipedia:Link rot/Usurpations .. if the citation goes to a web link that is not available in hard copy somewhere, it's probably cleanest to delete the entire citation as unverifiable. Even better replace with a different source. Another option is convert the citation to citenews or citejournal or citation and simply delete the URL, also leave an edit comment (outsisde the template but inside the ref pair). The solution converting to a square link exposes the usurped URL as a live link which is not a good idea. The idea to allow usurped when there is no archive URL might work, but it would be an exception that will trip up various bots and tools that remove orphan |url-status= because normally if there is no archive URL that field is automatically removed by multiple cleanup tools, exceptions are brittle prone to break. IMO your best option is convert to {{citation}} without a |url= along with an edit comment. -- GreenC 16:06, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, GreenC. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:57, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Suggestion for the revision of the order of SC1 fields

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Greetings and felicitations. If and when the order of fields is ever revised, please put "edition" before "series", unlike it is now. Example of the current order, copied from a "templated" reference:

Miller, Timothy S. (2024). Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn: A Critical Companion. Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon (1st ed.). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-53425-6. ISBN 978-3-031-53424-9.

—DocWatson42 (talk) 08:51, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Also, I don't see how in "Cite journal" "publisher: pages" makes much sense. Example:

Lane, Richard (December 1957). "The Beginnings of the Modern Japanese Novel: Kana-zoshi 1600–1682". ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies''. 20 (3–4). Harvard-Yenching Institute: 644–701. doi:10.2307/2718366. JSTOR 2718366.

Journal (Publisher) makes much more sense to me; or Publisher: Journal.

OTOH, please keep the identifiers in alphabetical order, as they seem to be now (DOI, ISSN, JSTOR, OCLC, etc.). —DocWatson42 (talk) 09:17, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Requesting assistance to fix a broken footnote in Nature Index

Latest comment: 2 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Can someone please help fix the footnote in the Top countries section of Nature Index? (I didn't place it there, I just noticed that it doesn't seem to be working correctly and don't use footnotes so I don't know how to fix it.) Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 03:09, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

The article had duplicate "Notes" sections, which I've merged, but I can't see any error otherwise. Could you explain some more? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:26, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

That fixed the problem. Thanks so much! ElKevbo (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

No worries. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:06, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 June 13#Template:Vcite journal

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm nominating the vcite suite for deletion. Feel free to participate in the discussion. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:28, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

How to map document sources accessed via Ancestry.com to CS1 fields

Latest comment: 2 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

When citing primary source documents accessed via Ancestry.com, can someone offer guidance on how to populate the citation template fields? For example, the Certificate of Registration of American Citizen (WP:TWL link) for James W McKean, numbered 10160 in the original paper document, has the following source information provided in the "Source" tab on Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com. U.S., Consular Registration Certificates, 1907-1918 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Original data:

Consular Registration Certificates, compiled 1907–1918. NAID: 1244186. General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, Record Group 59. The National Archives in Washington, D.C.

What citation template is best suited for such documents, and how should the information be mapped to the author, title, work, publisher, etc. fields? --Paul_012 (talk) 15:27, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

This sounds like over-reliance on primary sources (WP:PRIMARY). If you're talking about James and Laura McKean, the article reads like too much WP:ORIG from Ancestry.com (or .co.uk) primary sources.  — sbb (talk) 02:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

I am aware of that position, thank you. I would still appreciate an answer to the question. --Paul_012 (talk) 13:36, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

{{Cite archive}} would probably work, but add a via= parameter and note that it was accessed through Ancestry.com. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:10, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Make 'cite preprint' link

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Here since a citation to the preprint is intentional, the title should be autolinked, i.e.

• Tong-Hua, Zhu; Chao-Wen, Yang; Xin-Xin, Lu; Rong, Liu; Zi-Jie, Han; Li, Jiang; Mei, Wang (2013). "Measurement and Analysis of Fission Rates in a Spherical Mockup of Uranium and Polyethylene". arXiv:1309.0234 [physics.ins-det].

Should display as (sans the error message)

• Tong-Hua, Zhu; Chao-Wen, Yang; Xin-Xin, Lu; Rong, Liu; Zi-Jie, Han; Li, Jiang; Mei, Wang (2013). "Measurement and Analysis of Fission Rates in a Spherical Mockup of Uranium and Polyethylene". arXiv:1309.0234 [physics.ins-det]. {{cite arXiv}}: Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)

Same for {{cite biorxiv}}, {{cite citeseerx}}, {{cite medrxiv}}, {{cite ssrn|ssrn-access=free}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:21, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Update OCLC and S2CID limit values

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have a valid journal article with OCLC and S2CID values above the current limits (link to OCLC, link to S2CID). Could Help:CS1 errors be updated? Averageuntitleduser (talk) 13:14, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Placement of "Series" in entries

Latest comment: 1 month ago8 comments4 people in discussion

I want to note that it's useful to be able to add Series info to the "Cite book" Template, however, it is badly placed in the final display. The logical place for it is after information about the book title, including edition, and volume number. Right now it automatically comes before these things. "Series" information should follow all of these pieces of information about the individual book and volume info, and be right before Publisher or Location: Publisher. Can someone please fix this? I'll note that this issue was brought up previously as far back as 2017: Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_35#Book_edition_vs_series_edition. Peter G Werner (talk) 01:32, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, but in

• Last-au, First-au. "Chapter: A description about something". In Last-ed, First-ed (ed.). Title: The Complete Guide. James Oersted Lectures Notes. Vol. 4 (2nd ed.). p. 24. ISBN 978-7815-15-118-9.

My personal issues is that edition should come after the title, not after the volume, i.e.

• Last-au, First-au. "Chapter: A description about something". In Last-ed, First-ed (ed.). Title: The Complete Guide. (2nd ed.) James Oersted Lectures Notes. Vol. 4. p. 24. ISBN 978-7815-15-118-9.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:49, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Template:Cite book#csdoc_series indicates that the parameter is used When the source is part of a series, such as a book series or a journal, where the issue numbering has restarted. That is, could there be two different books both numbered 1? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:11, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Issue renumbering is for journals, not book series. See Help:Citation_Style_1#cite_note-c17_14.28-5 for details. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:15, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Or, to put it another way: cite book and cite journal both have a |series= parameter but they mean totally different things. Perhaps the documentation for this parameter should diverge to reflect this. —David Eppstein (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Technically, a book series could have renumbering too. CMOS gives the example of C. R. Boxer, ed. South China in the Sixteenth Century, Hakluyt Society Publications, 2nd ser., vol. 106 (Hakluyt, 1953)., but the series here is used no differently than in the case of journals. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:36, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

That example somehow combines both meanings of the series parameter. "Hakluyt Society Publications ... vol. 106" is the book meaning of a series and "2nd ser." is the journal meaning of a series. I would format this as a {{cite book}} with |series=Hakluyt Society Publications, 2nd ser. and |volume=106. —David Eppstein (talk) 09:42, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Unrelated to this, but what an insane coincidence... In WP:JCW/Patterns#Issues (redlinks), there's a citation that's done badly... It's exactly this work being cited. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:39, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

User:DVRTed/refInfo.js script

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This script toggles {{ref info}} on your current article. It's very useful for gnoming. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:12, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Citation Lua error

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello, in my article Senegal women's national football team, the citations are displaying the following error:
Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2123: attempt to index a boolean value
As a result, the references are not appearing on the page, even though they are correctly formatted and display properly in the preview while editing.

It appears the issue originates from this line in the module:
local tab_data_t = mw.ext.data.get('CS1/Identifier limits.tab').data

Lunar Spectrum (Talk) 00:01, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Known issue; transient MediaWiki hiccup. Purge or null edit.

It is expected that after the next cs1|2 update, these error messages won't show. The 'fix' doesn't do anything about MediaWiki's hiccups; just hides the fact that MediaWiki hiccuped.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Default fields in Cite thesis

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Hi, can the ref and the translated title be added as default fields in the Cite thesis template? Riad Salih (talk) 12:57, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

What is a "default field"? If you are talking about the parameters that the Visual Editor suggests, those are determined by the TemplateData section of the documentation, which is not protected (anyone can edit it). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:44, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

@Riad Salih For the VisualEditor, you need to update the TemplateData, not the transcluded template:

1. Go to Template:Cite_thesis/doc#TemplateData.
2. Click "edit source".
3. Either edit the TemplateData JSON text, or click the button that says "Edit template data" to edit it visually. For the second method, the button that says "+ Add parameter" will allow you to add any parameter. You can copy from a more widely used template's /doc page.

Good luck, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

conference= in citation

Latest comment: 1 month ago5 comments3 people in discussion

{{cite conference}} allows a conference paper to be cited with the paper title in the |title= parameter and with the title of the conference proceedings in the |conference= parameter. {{citation}} does not, and raises an error complaining that the |conference= parameter is unrecognized: instead one has to put the paper title in |contribution= or |chapter= and the conference proceedings title in |title=.

This is a (minor) obstacle to making citations consistent (either all CS1 or all CS2, both in appearance and in the underlying template formatting). When the choice is to go with CS2 (usually, to be consistent with some past consistent choice of citation formatting for the same article), it works for most of the standard CS1 templates to just replace them by {{citation}}. The exception is {{cite conference}}, for which this replacement fails and one has to reparameterize. Obviously one could just keep the templates as is and tell them to use CS2 via |mode=cs2 parameter either on the template itself or on {{CS1 config}}, but if we're going to use CS2 I would prefer to do it all the way.

Is there a good reason for {{citation}} to not recognize this parameter or, if not, can this omission be fixed? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:31, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

I have said in the past that {{cite conference}} should be reworked. In {{cite conference}}, |title= is the title of the presented paper; |book-title= is the title of the conference proceedings; both are included in the citation's metadata. I think that these parameters are poorly named and should be |paper= and |proceedings=. |conference= is a free-form parameter for non-bibliographic stuff: conference name, conference dates, conference ___location, etc; this parameter is not included in the citation's metadata. I think that this parameter, should go away. Response to my suggestion that the template should be reworked has been indifference.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:14, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Ttm that the main problem with cite conference is that it's a fundamentally flawed template, in as much as it allows for |conference= to exists and contain non-bibliographic information. If you have Proceedings of the Third Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity, what's the conference here? Third Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity? Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity? Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because what you are citing is a book, and what you report is the book title. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:26, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Ultimately, what I want is to be able to convert the {{cite conference}} citations to {{citation}} by changing the template name and nothing else. I don't care whether that ability is gained by adding |conference= to {{citation}} or by laboriously reparameterizing all existing instances of {{cite conference}}. But telling me that {{cite conference}} is badly designed and therefore this cannot be fixed is unhelpful. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:53, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

The quickest path for that is, at least if you have a DOI, is to TNT the citation and have citation bot expand {{citation|doi=...}} Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:40, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

invoking cite templates

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

For example in Timeline of the Gaza war (27 September 2024 – 16 October 2024) are dozens or 100s like this:

{{#invoke:Cite|web|date=28 September 2024 |title=Rocket fired from Lebanon lands in Jordanian territory |url=https://aje.io/mycvl0?update=3208935 |website=Al Jazeera}}

I never understood what invoking is for. It makes bot maintenance work more challenging. Is there a reason a bot can't simply convert them to non-invoked ?

{{Cite web |date=28 September 2024 |title=Rocket fired from Lebanon lands in Jordanian territory |url=https://aje.io/mycvl0?update=3208935 |website=Al Jazeera}}

-- GreenC 21:46, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

They've hit the template limit and rather than splitting the article, or not jamming every single thing that has ever happened into the article, they've used invoke to get round that limit so the article can continue to grow into an ever more unwieldy mess. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:25, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

No publisher shown

Latest comment: 1 month ago10 comments4 people in discussion

In cite book, if a ___location is shown but no publisher this gives an error message, so what do we do when there is a ___location but not a publisher shown in the physical book? It is probably self-published, but we cannot say this if it is not stated in the book. This case is not covered in wp:cite book. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

If this is in regard to Facsimile and Text of the Book of Taliesin the page before the title page states "Eight hundred Copies of this Work printed at the Private Press of the Editor...". The editor was John Gwenogvryn Evans. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:56, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks. It is and I have revised accordingly. But I would still like to know how to deal with this problem in the future. Have you any suggestion? Dudley Miles (talk) 12:44, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

If the work is self-published I use |publisher=none and add {{self-published inline}}. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:39, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Presumably if it is not known whether the work is self-published I could show it as "not known"? Dudley Miles (talk) 16:52, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Or "Unnamed publisher", something like that, rather than unknown to the editor adding the template since it might be known somewhere. -- GreenC 19:40, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe "Not named". Dudley Miles (talk) 20:19, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I've generally used "Privately printed" for self-published works. Mackensen (talk) 20:59, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

That does not sound right to me. Self-publishers often use Amazon as printers nowadays, and presumably usually used printing firms in the past. In both cases the publisher and printer are different. Following this discussion (and assuming no one comes up with a better idea), I prefer naming the author as publisher if the work is self-published and "Publisher not named" if the publisher is unknown. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:00, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

I suppose the question is whether you want to identify the printer in the case of a self-published work. I would argue no, and that's not what the publisher field is for because the printer didn't act as a publisher. Mackensen (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Using gray/red/green lock icons outside of citation templates

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Is there some template which can be used to easily replace the usual external link icon with one of the lock icons? I know there is {{Plain link}} to get rid of the icon altogether, but it would be nice to show the little red lock for a non-free link or a little gray link for one requiring a free subscription (etc.). Often it's nice to add external links to specific pages or sections from a shortened citation footnote, add extra external links in the at= or pages= parameters of a template, and so on, but since these don't have specific "url-access" parameters to set, they just get the plain external link icon. In theory an otherwise very empty {{cite web}} template could be used for this (like "page something".), but it's kind of verbose and seems likely to confuse source markup readers. –jacobolus (t) 16:40, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

I think you're looking for {{Open access}} and it's associated templates         (see the 'See also' section). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Though these are for whatever reason a smaller symbol than the citation templates use: "pp. 12–14". vs. pp. 12–14 . Also they unfortunately send clicks to random articles rather than acting as part of the external link target. I think it would probably be an improvement to have a separate template for this, with mostly the same API as {{plain link}} but with a parameter for showing the access status of the link, and more closely approximating the appearance and behavior of the icons used in citation templates which readers are familiar with. –jacobolus (t) 13:13, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

No title

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Sometimes I run into situations like this where the piece being cited has no apparent title:

"No title". Army and Navy Journal. 77 (6). October 7, 1939.

It's somewhat apparent because I used a search term in the URL, but that won't work for offline reference. What's the best way to indicate where on the page it is located? This page is relatively small, some pages can have very small font and 8 or 10 columns with dozens of pieces that are not well titled (old broadsheet newspapers). -- GreenC 17:44, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Why not go with the first few words, adding an ellipsis?

Also, you can also specify the column.

"It is apparent from the preparations the President and Secretary Woodring are making…". Army and Navy Journal. 77 (6). p. 116 col. 1. October 7, 1939.

Keriluamox (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Citation styles outside of Wikipedia use either the first few words or a brief description of the source. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:22, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

ISBN checksum error

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Why does 978-1-842-17125-4 in {{cite book}} give the error message "isbn= value: checksum (help)". It's the ISBN printed inside the book.

• Atunes, Miguel Telles (2006). "The Zebro (Equidae) and Its Extinction in Portugal, with an Appendix on the Noun Zebro and the Modern "Zebra"". In Mashkour, Marjan (ed.). Equids in Time and Space: Papers in Honour of Véra Eisenmann. Oxbow. pp. 211–236. ISBN 978-1-842-17125-4. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:34, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

The ISBN resources I've looked at for this book seem to reflect ISBNs of 9781842171196 & 1842171194. I do see the 9781842171254 used as the object ID at University of Gent and as EAN on UCF's Ex Libris implimentation

I do note that the Ex Libris page tags the 9781842171196/1842171194 ISBN's as hardback, so maybe the version you've linked to is paperback or a different edition?

I also wouldn't bet against either an issue at the printer or with whoever originally logged the ISBN into that first database that then disseminated it worldwide.

SirOlgen (talk) 05:15, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: For the partial ISBN 978-1-842-17125 the only valid check digit is 7, i.e.

• Atunes, Miguel Telles (2006). "The Zebro (Equidae) and Its Extinction in Portugal, with an Appendix on the Noun Zebro and the Modern "Zebra"". In Mashkour, Marjan (ed.). Equids in Time and Space: Papers in Honour of Véra Eisenmann. Oxbow. pp. 211–236. ISBN 978-1-842-17125-7.

I've tested the equivalent partial ISBN-10, i.e. 1-842-17125 for which the only valid check digit is 9, i.e.

• Atunes, Miguel Telles (2006). "The Zebro (Equidae) and Its Extinction in Portugal, with an Appendix on the Noun Zebro and the Modern "Zebra"". In Mashkour, Marjan (ed.). Equids in Time and Space: Papers in Honour of Véra Eisenmann. Oxbow. pp. 211–236. ISBN 1-842-17125-9.

so it's not a case of somebody prepending the 978- without also recalculating the check digit. These ISBNs both seem to correspond to two different books, one of which is your title and the other is Beyond affluent foragers; rethinking hunter-gatherer complexity although both seem to relate to the proceedings of the 9th conference of the International Council of Archaeozoology, Durham, August 2002. I suspect that several of the papers from this conference were published at around the same time, and the printers mixed up some information. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:02, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Oh, gotcha, that makes sense. I'll go with a different identifier (OCLC) to avoid confusing people since the ISBN is misprinted in the book. Thanks, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 15:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

identifier label links

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

When identifiers are rendered, they are prefixed with a label that links to a local article about the identifier. For example, at en.wiki, ISBN identifiers are labeled with a link to ISBN via the ISBN (identifier) redirect. We could, if we wanted to, fetch the article name for ISBN from Wikidata using International Standard Book Number (Q33057). Alternately, we could use the explicit link to each identifier's wikipedia article in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. Because en.wiki has chosen to use the redirects we have no need use the other two methods.

I have learned from discussion elsewhere that the Wikidata method does not work for sister projects that don't (probably shouldn't) have articles about identifiers because those sorts of articles belong in Wikipedia. So, I have tweaked the code that fetches article names for identifiers from Wikidata. This tweak should ensure that WikiMedia projects like Wiktionary, etc, can automatically link to their associated Wikipedia article about the identifier.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Direct of text when elements contain languages that read right to left

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I can across this cite and it's behaviour is confusing, whether it's intended or my browser I'm not sure.
{{Cite web |last=الصباح |date=2024-12-13 |title=بوخفة يسائل الترجمة والأخلاق {{!}} جريدة الصباح |url=https://assabah.ma/816781.html |access-date=2025-07-13 |website=assabah.ma |language=ar}}
Displays as:
الصباح (2024-12-13). "بوخفة يسائل الترجمة والأخلاق | جريدة الصباح". assabah.ma (in Arabic). Retrieved 2025-07-13.
So at least for me the first one runs right to left (author in arabic)/(date)/(part of the title in Arabic), the second row starts with the remainder of the part of title in Arabic, followed by the rest of the details running left to right. So the first half of the cite and the second half appear to switch the order in which fields are displayed (r->l switching to l->r).
The issue is made more obvious by the title being bisected, so it may not be so obvious to everyone. I'm using the desktop site with Chrome on Android. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:25, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

That's why we have |script-title=. According to google translate, الصباح, used in |last= and |title=, means 'The Morning' (apparently the name of the newspaper) so shouldn't have been in |last=. Should not name the newspaper in |title=; the almost-always-dead-give-away for that is the pipe template; don't do that, we have parameters for newspapers, use them.

So, given the above, that cite should be written:

{{Cite news |date=2024-12-13 |script-title=ar:بوخفة يسائل الترجمة والأخلاق |script-newspaper=ar:الصباح |url=https://assabah.ma/816781.html |access-date=2025-07-13 |language=ar}}

بوخفة يسائل الترجمة والأخلاق. الصباح (in Arabic). 2024-12-13. Retrieved 2025-07-13.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

Generic title

Latest comment: 30 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Hello, another Generic title to be added to the list "Request Rejected" i.e. {{cite web |title=Request Rejected }} Keith D (talk) 21:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Also "APA PsycNET". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:04, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Also titles containing "Subscription Offers, Specials, and Discounts" - currently 184 of these. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:17, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Another one is "Domain parking page" Keith D (talk) 12:20, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

Another one is "Register &#124 ; British Newspaper Archive" - 11 instances (I have added a space before semicolon to get it to show rather than the pipe symbol). There are also a few using the {{!}} template. Keith D (talk) 21:09, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Is Special:Search/insource:"last=Zeitung" enough results to be added too? 1234qwer1234qwer4 03:09, 27 July 2025 (UTC)

ISBN / Date incompatibility

Latest comment: 23 days ago10 comments6 people in discussion

From Hugh_Glass#Further_reading:

• Morgan, Dale L. (1964) [1953]. Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the American West. Lincoln; London: Bison Book University of Nebraska Books. ISBN 0803251386.

Copyright page says 1964 first printing - this edition is the tenth printing, with no date given. It is triggering the error message because 1964 was pre-ISBN era. There is no apparant way to resolve the error message. -- GreenC 01:33, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

A workaround that bypasses the validity check...

• Morgan, Dale L. (1964) [1953]. Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the American West. Lincoln; London: Bison Book University of Nebraska Books. ISBN 0803251386

Not sure how that rates in terms of WikiEthics, but....

SirOlgen (talk) 05:37, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Another idea might be to forego the ISBN altogether and refer to the Library of Congress identifier via the lccn parameter. In other words:

• Morgan, Dale L. (1964) [1953]. Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the American West. Lincoln; London: Bison Book University of Nebraska Books. LCCN 53-10550.

– SirOlgen (talk) 06:14, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

User:SirOlgen, I'll try the LCCN method, though in either case, it won't stop future bots and tools from readding an ISBN. But these are both good ideas. — GreenC 05:39, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

The number of the printing is irrelevant, but the fact that it was reprinted by a new publisher, Bison Book, in 1964, is relevant. The book that was scanned for the Internet Archive was not the first printing.

First Bison Book Printing June, 1964
Most recent printing shown by first digit below:
                                      9 10

means that the book in the Internet Archive was the 9th printing. But the fact it was the 9th printing is unimportant and not normally mentioned in a citation. Jc3s5h (talk) 06:30, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

The 9th printing is relevant because the printing must have happened post-1964, which we can infer because there were no ISBNs in 1964 - yet this book has one. Thus the "(1964)" is incorrect, though we don't know the correct date. It's an odd situation, and reveals books can have "hidden" publication dates. Normally it would not matter for Wikipedia, but in this case it does in a minor way. — GreenC 05:49, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Could it be that the cut-off year is too strict? Several times I've now seen ISBNs in books unambiguously printed in 1963 with an ISBN. The latest one:

• "Front matter". Duden (in German). Vol. 7. Etymologie. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut. 1963. ISBN 3-411-00907-1 – via Internet Archive. {{cite book}}: |url-access= requires |url= (help)

-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Per our article on ISBN, that would seem to be impossible as the standard hadn't been codified. It has to be a reprint. Mackensen (talk) 14:38, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

As has been pointed out elsewhere, reprints don't always state that they are reprints. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Unfortunately, there's no good way (at the moment) to distinguish these cases. Mackensen (talk) 13:27, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Author of chapter

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

What are the proper parameters in {{cite book}} for the author of a specific chapter? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:30, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Include at least |chapter=, which is the title of the chapter. Continue to use |title= for the book title. Optionally, include |chapter-url=. Once this is done, the author parameters will refer to the authors of the chapter. Use |editor-last1=, |editor-first1=, |editor-last2=, |editor-first2= and so on for the editors of the book. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

why is Cite_AV_media's table missing info?

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Template:Cite_AV_media#Usage has a Full parameter set in vertical format table that's got plenty of empty cells within the Brief instructions / notes column. Considering the fact that some cells have info while others have a "see the below section" link, will the rest ever get the same treatment? It took me awhile to track down an explanation on script-title (see Template:Citation Style documentation/title), but while preparing an edit I stumbled upon that info within the Template:Cite_AV_media#Title section. 😐

The way things are causes unnecessary confusion and loss of time. QuestioningEspecialy (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

An explanation is provided on that page at Template:Cite AV media#Title. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:23, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

...I can't help but feel like that response was intended to be passive aggressively dismissive. If you're gonna respond to that statement, i highly recommend rereading my post first. QuestioningEspecialy (talk) 23:02, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

No, not passively aggressively dismissive, but probably also a question that the user did not read all the way to the end.

Anyway, you can improve the documentation by editing it. That appears to be a relatively recent addition which I do not think I would personally approve of given that it duplicates the later contents. Izno (talk) 22:55, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Comma problem for issue in cite magazine

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Consider this ref which I have copied below:

• Shannon, Paul (September 2014). "British Freight Today - Metals". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 160, no. 1, 362. Horncastle: Morton's Media Group. p. 24. ISSN 0033-8923.

This has |issue=1,362 with a comma and no space; but it's displayed with a space. Why is this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:11, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Because |issue= can sometimes have a comma-separated list of issue numbers. The fix is:

{{cite magazine |last1=Shannon |first1=Paul |title=British Freight Today - Metals |magazine=The Railway Magazine |date=September 2014 |volume=160 |issue=((1,362)) |page=24 |publisher=Morton's Media Group |___location=Horncastle |issn=0033-8923}}

Shannon, Paul (September 2014). "British Freight Today - Metals". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 160, no. 1,362. Horncastle: Morton's Media Group. p. 24. ISSN 0033-8923.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:22, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

It's hacky, and also not documented at Template:Cite magazine#csdoc_issue - which also misleadingly says "Displayed in parentheses following volume." No parentheses are shown above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library errors on a talk page

Latest comment: 27 days ago8 comments3 people in discussion

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: Jones, Bethan (2018). "#AskELJames, Ghostbusters, and #Gamergate: Digital Dislike and Damage Control" (PDF). In Booth, Paul (ed.). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 415–429. doi:10.1002/9781119237211.ch26. ISBN 978-1-1192-3716-7. O'Donnell, Jessica (2022). "Changes Following Gamergate". Gamergate and Anti-Feminism in the Digital Age. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 179–222. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-14057-0_6. ISBN 978-3-031-14057-0 – via The Wikipedia Library. {{cite book}}: |url-access= requires |url= (help); Wikipedia Library link in |chapter-url= (help) Veale, Kevin (2020). "Introduction: The Breadth of Harassment Culture and Contextualising Gamergate" (PDF). Gaming the Dynamics of Online Harassment. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–33. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60410-3_1. ISBN 978-3-030-60410-3 – via The Wikipedia Library. {{cite book}}: |url-access= requires |url= (help); Wikipedia Library link in |chapter-url= (help) Wilson, Katie (2018). "Red Pillers, Sad Puppies, and Gamergaters" (PDF). In Booth, Paul (ed.). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 431–445. doi:10.1002/9781119237211.ch27. ISBN 978-1-119-23721-1 – via The Wikipedia Library. {{cite book}}: |url-access= requires |url= (help); Wikipedia Library link in |chapter-url= (help)

Can someone fix these errors for me. I did look at the linked help pages, but found them less than helpful. Hate wasting a lot of time trying to solve these sorts of cryptic puzzles. Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 21:52, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

You added urls that look like this:

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/doi/epdf/10.1002/9781119237211.ch26

Don't do that. Sometimes the fix is as easy as rewriting that↑ to this↓:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9781119237211.ch26

You should remove |via=[[The Wikipedia Library]] because the Wikipedia Library is not acting as a distributor of the referenced sources.

The |url-access= requires |url= when |url= is not present in the template is a bug in Module:Citation/CS1 which needs fixing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

OK. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9781119237211.ch26 still gets me in, This website sets only cookies which are necessary for it to function. They are used to enable core functionality such as security, network management and accessibility. These cookies cannot be switched off in our systems. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions., maybe because I previously logged in via Wikipedia Library and it set cookies that it remembers. Would that still work if I didn't log in first? wbm1058 (talk) 01:08, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Cookies are set by the publisher, not by cs1|2 templates. When I visit that link, wiley.com wants me to log in or hand over some $$ to read the article/chapter/whatever. They also warn me that they will be setting cookies on my machine. This is the reader experience and to my mind is preferable to sending the reader to the WL landing page which has nothing to do with the source they were attempting to consult. Do not astonish the reader.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:22, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Hey, it already seems to have forgotten my login, and I need to login again. Except now, without that handy link that you made throw a spurious error message, which did not stop me from being able to login, now I'm clueless about whether or how I can login without creating an account first, because the template did not tell me how. I can see the point of error messages on article pages, intended for readers, but not on talk pages, which are intended to help editors. Can you disable the errors in the talk namespace? – wbm1058 (talk) 01:17, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

This doesn't sound like a good idea. If someone comes across this error in an article, and then look for help on a talk page, the error would disappear when they gave an example. That sounds like a confusing situation. Why not instead give the Wikipedia Library link outside the cite, just add it after the cite inside [ ] as Wikipedia Library. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:45, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Concur. This is not a good idea. If you trawl through this help page you can find plenty of discussion about errors that display messaging. When we create a new message, we want to be able to display it here so that it can be discussed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:22, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

I think that I have fixed the module sandboxen so that on error, the correct url access parameter is set to subscription

{{cite book/new |title=Title |url=https://link-springer-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-14057-0_6}}

Title. {{cite book}}: Wikipedia Library link in |url= (help)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |chapter=Chapter |chapter-url=https://link-springer-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-14057-0_6}}

"Chapter". Title. {{cite book}}: Wikipedia Library link in |chapter-url= (help)

Should not set a url access parameter when the wikipedia library url is used to link a non-title-holding parameter:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |pages=[https://link-springer-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-14057-0_6 415–429]}}

Title. pp. 415–429. {{cite book}}: Wikipedia Library link in |pages= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:07, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Cite journal param author181 – how many authors is enough?

Latest comment: 30 days ago8 comments6 people in discussion

Should there be some kind of limit on the number of authors that may be added to a {{cite journal}} or other citation template author list? I am talking about the the number of |authorN= params, even if most authors are hidden by the |display-authors= param.

Micropsalliota is a brief species article which cites 181 authors on the Crous-2021 paper, though it only renders one, et al.-style, in the references section. I see no reason for having that many authors listed in the template. No improvement accrues to the article, nor to verifiability—the prime purpose for a citation—past some reasonable number.

The huge list of authors was originally added in this edit by 178.16.153.114 (talk · contribs), whose 18-edit wiki-career in 2022 was limited to that one article; they added 181 authors of the Crous paper (archive link) to the |authors= param (later deprecated iirc), formatted as a Vancouver-like comma-series, which was later converted in this AWB edit to the author1, author2, ... authorN style. (Let's leave aside for the moment, the fact that the Crous paper itself lists only two authors, and whether that IP edit was a bit of mischief or not, as that is not the point of this discussion.)

What, if anything, should we do about this going forward? Does anybody see a reason ever to list more than, say, twelve authors for a paper? At the least interventionist, it seems to me that we could recommend a new pop-up, analogous to the one you see when trying to add a link to a disambig page, to say something like, 'Are you sure you need this many authors? Often four is enough', or similar, geared mostly to new users. At the other end of the scale, should we have a hard limit at some number of authors? Or some intermediate approach, such as a scripted warning, analogous to the Harv warnings? (edit conflict) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:58, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Or, search the wikicode for |last985=Sivakoff at IceCube Neutrino Observatory, or |last1325=Zylstra at National Ignition Facility. Mathglot (talk) 22:37, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

"What, if anything, should we do about this going forward?"

Nothing in particular. Some papers have thousand of authors. Whenever I encounter those, I usually keep the first, delete the rest, and use |display-authors=etal. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:38, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

I somewhat agree, but would tend toward "question of article consensus" for how many to display. Izno (talk) 22:50, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

It seems to be the practice for some University research students to name everybody who was in their department at any time during the period of research, possibly because one of them might have come up with something that seemed minor at the time but which turned out to be crucial.

I would not advise keeping the first or deleting the rest, because authors are often named alphabetically and the first-named author might not have been the major contributor.

The number of authors that {{cite journal}} allows was once restricted, I think to nine. Since the conversion to Lua, there has been no official limit; but in theory, WP:PEIS could impose a maximum. This max would not be quantifiable, because it would depend upon what else is in the article. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:45, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

The paper with 1325 authors shows the authors as:

H. Abu-Shawareb1, R. Acree2, P. Adams2, J. Adams2, B. Addis2, R. Aden2, P. Adrian3, B. B. Afeyan2,4, M. Aggleton1 et al. (Indirect Drive ICF Collaboration)

Is there a way of displaying "(Indirect Drive ICF Collaboration)" after the et al?  —  Jts1882 | talk  10:28, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

You mean like this:

{{cite journal |last1=Abu-Shawareb |first1=H. |last2=Acree |first2=R. |last3=Adams |first3=P. |last4=Adams |first4=J. |last5=Addis |first5=B. |last6=Aden |first6=R. |last7=Adrian |first7=P. |last8=Afeyan |first8=B. B. |last9=Aggleton |first9=M. |collaboration=Indirect Drive ICF Collaboration |title=Lawson Criterion for Ignition Exceeded in an Inertial Fusion Experiment |journal=Physical Review Letters |date=8 August 2022 |volume=129 |issue=7 |page=075001 |doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001 |pmid=36018710 |bibcode=2022PhRvL.129g5001A |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80x9f381 }}

Abu-Shawareb, H.; Acree, R.; Adams, P.; Adams, J.; Addis, B.; Aden, R.; Adrian, P.; Afeyan, B. B.; Aggleton, M.; et al. (Indirect Drive ICF Collaboration) (8 August 2022). "Lawson Criterion for Ignition Exceeded in an Inertial Fusion Experiment". Physical Review Letters. 129 (7): 075001. Bibcode:2022PhRvL.129g5001A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001. PMID 36018710.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted. I'd missed the |collaboration= parameter. Thanks.  —  Jts1882 | talk  19:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Photo of Rube Goldberg

Latest comment: 29 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

What happened to the photo at the top of the page? Granted, Wikipedia is not a Rube Goldberg machine because of the mix of mechanical and human it's far more complex. Still I liked the levity not to take things too seriously. If this was already discussed sorry for rehashing, happened to notice it was a part of the page for a long time. — GreenC 16:07, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Removed at this edit. I agree with the removal.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Treating all references as dead by default

Latest comment: 27 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

CS1 has two ways of displaying references based on their status. In the first, for links with |url-status=live the main link goes to the live version and the archive portion reads archived from the original. In the second, for links with |url-status=dead, the main link goes to the archived version and the archive portion reads archived from the original.

References that did not have |url-status= defined used to be treated as the first version, but I recently noticed that they are now treated as the second version, effectively assuming by default that they are dead. I'm unable to find where this change was made or what discussion there was about it. Could anyone point me to that? Or is this a bug? Sdkb ^talk 23:06, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I think that you are mistook. Here is an example template rendered by the pre-Lua (c. 2013) wikitext version of {{cite book}} which relies on {{citation/core}} (c. 2015):

{{cite book/old |title=Title |url=//example.com |archiveurl=//archive.org |archivedate=2025-07-28}}

Title. Archived from the original on 2025-07-28. //archive.org. 

In those olden days, we used |deadurl=no to switch the links:

{{cite book/old |title=Title |url=//example.com |archiveurl=//archive.org |archivedate=2025-07-28 |deadurl=no}}

Title. Archived from the original on 2025-07-28. //example.com. 

I don't know where the stray primary link in the above comes from and I probably won't take the time to figure it out.

The live {{cite book}} template works the same way

{{cite book |title=Title |url=//example.com |archiveurl=//archive.org |archivedate=2025-07-28}}

Title. Archived from the original on 2025-07-28.

In modern times, |deadurl=no has been replaced with |url-status=live:

{{cite book |title=Title |url=//example.com |archiveurl=//archive.org |archivedate=2025-07-28 |url-status=live}}

Title. Archived from the original on 2025-07-28.

cs1|2 has pretty much always assumed that the presence of |archive-url= (or its alias |archiveurl=) means that |url= is dead unless countered by |url-status=live (or for the olden days, |deadurl=no).

Show us an example template that does not act as illustrated above.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:47, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, I may be mistaken, and confusing it with instances in which there is no archive URL (which are presumed live). I noticed it through citations generated by {{Wikidata}} (which doesn't currently have any way to specify a URL status), so perhaps it's something that's changed there or perhaps it just was always this way. Sdkb ^talk 00:19, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

The default live/dead had me confused for a while also. I think it was because there is default live and default dead, which is a factor of the archive-url existence. This takes learning and experience to understand, it's not intuitive. IMO it should always be default live. The link only becomes dead when literally marked "dead". Simple and intuitive to understand without special knowledge of the software's behavior. It's probably too late, because changing the default now would cause further confusion. -- GreenC 20:05, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Template:Cite web/German translator (or the MediaWiki translator?) tries to import a CSS file that doesn't exist

Latest comment: 27 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

As far as I can tell, the clever translator at {{Cite web/German}}, perhaps something upstream of it, attempts to import a styles.css file that does not exist. Pinging Trappist the monk. See this edit, which followed the creation edit. I note that the Vorlage:...styles.css transclusions were present before the bot did its substitution work, so maybe a bug needs to be filed against some MediaWiki translation engine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:30, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

The templatestyles preexisted in the article before AnomieBOT's edit, they appear in the article when Akintundedaniel created it. Mediawiki is getting confused in what it thinks has been modified because the cite translation adds the "auto-translated from German" message before the templatestyles. It's a similar issue with replacing « with ", the mediawiki software assumes you changed the whole word not just the speech mark. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:30, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Not the fault of Module:CS1 translator. That module only touches translatable citation templates to convert them to equivalent cs1|2 templates. It does not touch <templatestyles /> tags. I guess that I would point the finger of blame at whatever tool Editor Akintundedaniel used to create the translation of Abdourahamane Soli from de:Abdourahamane Soli. That tool also created this thing:

<span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Abdourahmane+Idrissa%2C+Samuel+Decalo%3A+Historical+Dictionary+of+Niger.&rft.pages=414&rft.edition=4th&rft.pub=Scarecrow&rft.date=2012&rft.isbn=978-0-8108-6094-0&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AAbdourahamane+Soli" class="Z3988" data-ve-ignore="true"></span>

We've seen that sort of thing before as a failure of that abomination that is visual editor. Thought they'd fixed that... Guess not. Sigh.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:22, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

They won't ever fix VE. Well-known fact. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:39, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Darn, I was hoping it was something we could fix here. See T213258 and bugs linked from there. There are at least a half-dozen stale content translation bugs like this. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:37, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

"At=" isn't working

Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion

When I add "at= paragraph 243" as an in-source ___location in a cite web template expression (not yet uploaded), thus:

<ref name=Act>{{cite web |url=https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/copyright-and-the-digital-economy-ip-42/fair-dealing-exceptions/ |title=Fair dealing exceptions |date=2025 |website=Australian Law Reform Commission |access-date=29 July 2025|at= paragraph 243}}</ref>

those details do not appear in the citation. I'd appreciate some help.SCHolar44 (talk) 08:57, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Aaarrgh! I did not realise I was testing on a Commons page. I'm sorry if I have wasted anybody's time. SCHolar44 (talk) 09:14, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Journal volume has its own title

Latest comment: 25 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi, is there a good way to use {{cite journal}} when journal's volumes have their own separate titles? For example, Lithuanian journal Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai (Lithuanian linguistics questions) has volume 29 published in 1991 which has its own title "Lietuvių leksikos ir terminologijos problemos" (Problems of Lithuanian lexicon and terminology). Where should I put this volume title? Inside volume parameter? Renata•3 00:06, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

You don't need to put that information anywhere. Some volumes have title, some issues have titles, these are not important. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:50, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

PMC limit needs increase

Latest comment: 25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Oxytocin receptor agonist has a valid PMC of 12310049 but is throwing an error. Snowman304|talk 16:23, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

medRxiv error detection flaw

Latest comment: 24 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This medRxiv identifier should cause cs1|2 to emit an error message: |medrxiv=11.1101/2025.05.29.25328581 (11 is an incorrect prefix). It doesn't because the last set of digits is exactly eight digits. There is a test in the code that is looking for exactly eight digits at the end of the medRxiv identifier. It is supposed to be looking for identifiers that are only eight digits. Fixed in the sandbox

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|medrxiv=11.1101/2025.05.29.25328581|title=Title}}
Live	Title. medRxiv 11.1101/2025.05.29.25328581.
Sandbox	Title. medRxiv 11.1101/2025.05.29.25328581. {{cite book}}: Check |medrxiv= value (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:21, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

url access level?

Latest comment: 23 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

What is the difference between "url-access=limited" and "url-access=subscription" RoySmith (talk) 01:49, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

My understanding is that "subscription" is for when access requires a paid subscription, while "limited" refers to cases where access is possible after signing-up for a free trial subscription

SirOlgen (talk) 02:36, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Or things like, the first 10 reads are free, and after that it's paywalled. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:40, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Does § Subscription or registration required in most if not all cs1|2 template documentation fail to explain this sufficiently?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:29, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Any way to get editor to appear before the author? No longer an issue.

Latest comment: 22 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Edit: I have found a good solution for this. No longer need any help. Thanks.

Have other editors faced the issue in WP where a book is commonly referred to by the Editors name, not the authors name, and they want the book to appear in the Sources list under the editor's name? How did they resolve it?

In my case, for James Cook article, there is a very important source: the journals of James Cook. The editor is Beaglehole, everyone calls the book "Beaglehole". For the sources section, is there a way to get the name "Beaglehole" to appear first in the displayed text? The normal cite lists Cooks name first:

 {{cite book
 |title=The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery
 |volume=I: ''The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768–1771''
 |editor1-last=Beaglehole
 |editor1-first=John
 |editor1-link=John Cawte Beaglehole
 |author1-last=Cook
 |author1-first=James
 |author1-link=James Cook
 |year=1968
 |via=[[Hakluyt Society]]
 |orig-year=1955
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |oclc=223185477
 |url=https://archive.org/details/journalsofcaptai0001jcbe
 |access-date=23 May 2025
}}

The above displays Cook's name first, but that is not ideal. Maybe call Beaglehole an author:

|author1-last=Beaglehole
|author1-first=((John (ed.)))
|author1-link=John Cawte Beaglehole
|author2-last=Cook
|author2-first=James

The editor, Beaglehole, did write a huge introduction for the book: about 250 pages, so one could argue he is a co-author.

My question is: have other editors faced a similar issue in WP (where a book is commonly referred to by the Editors name, not the authors name) and how did they resolve it? Noleander (talk) 17:45, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

I no longer need any help with this. Noleander (talk) 18:17, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

@Noleander: A review that I found did not credit Cook, only Beaglehole, which makes some sense to me because Cook is prominantly named in the title. So, for me, it is adequate to omit Cook in the author parameters.

The solution you chose naming Beaglehole as the primary author is flawed because Beaglehole is not the primary author and because John (ed.) is not his name. |author1-first=((John (ed.))) is not a legitimate use of the accept-as-written markup.

So, an alternate method that preserves the metadata and presents only Beaglehole might be to suppress Cook entirely:

{{cite book
 |editor1-last=Beaglehole
 |editor1-first=John
 |editor1-link=John Cawte Beaglehole
 |author1-last=Cook
 |author1-first=James
 |author1-link=James Cook
 |author-mask1=0
 |title=The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery
}}

and yet another related method that also preserves the metadata and displays both Cook and Beaglehole:

{{cite book
 |editor1-last=Beaglehole
 |editor1-first=John
 |editor-mask1=[[James Cook|Cook, James]] <!-- spoof to swap the rendered author/editor order -->
 |author1-last=Cook
 |author1-first=James
 |author-mask1=[[John Cawte Beaglehole|Beaglehole, John (ed.)]] <!-- spoof to swap the rendered author/editor order -->
 |title=The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery
}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:35, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Curley quotes

Latest comment: 22 days ago9 comments3 people in discussion

I want to make the quote section have curley “” instead of straight "" quotes for my wiki. Is it possible? NorthernWinds (talk) 07:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by quote section, but {{qi}} will wrap taxt in curly quotes, e.g., {{qi|foo bar}} renders as foo bar. Be aware the wiki style uses ' and ". -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

See, for example: NorthernWinds. example book. Quote section. I want it to look like: NorthernWinds, example book. “Quote section” NorthernWinds (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't see quote section in User:NorthernWinds or User talk:NorthernWinds; could you provide a wikilink to thr relevant text? Thanks. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Well, the relevant page is not in one of the Wikimedia projects. The "quote section" is the section of the citation that quotes the source. I now realize this is not the help page for cite book, I should have probably explained what I am talking about.

Hope this help, NorthernWinds (talk) 16:22, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

At en.wiki the quote marks used for |quote=, which wraps the quotation in <q>...</q> tags, are defined at Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css lines 21–23.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:08, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I need to do this for a few others (title of cite encyclopedia, title of cite journal etc etc). How can I check this for myself? NorthernWinds (talk) 15:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Find ['quoted-title'] = '"$1"', in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration; change that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! This solves my issue NorthernWinds (talk) 16:00, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Access date parameter missing for hdl

Latest comment: 21 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion

In the documentation for {{cite document}}, there is mention of a hdl-access parameter, but adding it into the template generates an error message, and I couldn't find that parameter listed in the code. Could it get added in? I'm not learned enough in this type of code to be able to write it myself. –Dream out loud (talk) 20:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

See "For some identifiers, it is possible to specify the access status using the corresponding |<param>-access= parameter." which take you to Help:Citation Style 1#Registration or subscription required. HDL is a named identifier, so you follow the link there to Help:Citation Style 1#Access indicator for named identifiers.

Basically, if the HDL link is free, you can flag it as free using |hdl-access=free. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:56, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Or more directly, in Template:Cite_document/doc#Identifiers (there was an error where it didn't show |hdl-access=free, this is now fixed)

• hdl: Handle System identifier for digital objects and other resources on the Internet; example |hdl=20.1000/100. Aliases: HDL.
  • Supports |hdl-access=free

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:02, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Great thanks for clarifying and taking care of the error. –Dream out loud (talk) 12:48, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

SSRN limit should be upped

Latest comment: 20 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

SSRN 5346319 is valid. I suggest pushing the limit to 6000000. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:15, 6 August 2025 (UTC)