Template talk:Citation

Case for continuing to maintain no trailing or internal periods

I'm generally in support of consistency, wherever possible between all the citation formats, and I think some of the recent chages are good, but I have a problem with the trailing period, and this is one area I think the cite family has gone astray. Not all citations are sentences. Some citations are inline, and others are part of the main flow of text. This is particularly true when the full citations appear in footnotes. For example, you may need to be able to make a citation such as the following:

For example, see Smith, John (1996), Flabbergusting for Dummies, New York: Random House, which questions the theory that flabbergusting should be classified as a water sport.

For example, see {{Citation|last=Smith|first=John|title=Flabbergusting for Dummies|year=1996|publisher=Random House|publication-place=New York}}, which questions the theory that flabbergusting should be classified as a water sport.

Citation has lacked a trailing period from the beginning, and this has been an assumption of users using this template, so I have at least temporarily reversed that change pending further discussion on the matter. A lot of citations rely on the fact that there is no trailing period. Also, the internal periods don't seem to be consistent with the use of these citations in an inline manner, either. Thanks to Martin, however, on the other consistency changes, which I think age good.

One possibility might be to switch to some sort of "consistency mode" by use of a parameter, and possibly having a "wrapper" citation template that calls Citation in that consistency mode. COGDEN 16:29, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

When referring to a reference in-line, it is unconventional to cite the full reference, which is usually given in the "references" or "bibliography" section. I don't recall ever seeing this in Wikipedia - can you give some in-article examples of this usage? I would expect to see your example as one of

For example, see Smith (1996), which questions the theory that flabbergusting should be classified as a water sport.

or

For example, see Flabbergusting for Dummies (John Smith, 1996), which questions the theory that flabbergusting should be classified as a water sport.

==References==

• Smith, John (1996), Flabbergusting for Dummies, New York: Random House

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

What Martin said. There's really no good reason to be using the full citation template within a full sentence in the article text. (This of course is where the {{Harvnb}} template really shines.) {{Citation}} should have a trailing period. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I was unhappy this morning to see that the formatting of the refs at Mathematical logic had completely changed. I'm sure that is not the only article that makes the assumption that you can string more after the citation template, like this:

Fraenkel, Abraham A. (1922), "Der Begriff 'definit' und die Unabhängigkeit des Auswahlsaxioms", Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische Klasse, pp. 253–257 (German), reprinted in English translation as "The notion of 'definite' and the independence of the axiom of choice", van Heijenoort 1976, pp. 284–289.

I would prefer (selfishly) not to have to look through every article I have added citations to in order to remove double periods and correct formatting. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

What would be the difference between that and the following:

Fraenkel, Abraham A. (1922), "Der Begriff 'definit' und die Unabhängigkeit des Auswahlsaxioms", Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische Klasse, pp. 253–257 (German). Reprinted in English translation as "The notion of 'definite' and the independence of the axiom of choice", van Heijenoort 1976, pp. 284–289.

Here's how we do something similar (in El Señor Presidente), albeit with cite xxx:

Lorenz, Gunter W. (1994). "Miguel Ángel Asturias with Gunter W. Lorenz (interview date 1970)". Hispanic Literature Criticism. Jelena Krstovic (ed.). Detroit: Gale Research. pp. 159–163. ISBN 0810393751. Excerpted from Lorenz, Gunter W. (Fall, 1975). "Miguel Ángel Asturias with Gunter W. Lorenz". Review (15). Tom J. Lewis (trans.): 5–11. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Indeed, as far as I'm concerned that's better. (It's certainly closer to the style I know best, the MLA.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

A bot could probably get on the case if necessary. Or the closing period of a citation could be removed completely. Or a parameter could declare "final-punctuation = ". What's the best way forwards? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:44, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

"Citation" should not have a trailing period: this is changing functionality in a way that actually does do some harm. I assume the plan is to rewrite "cite-book" to call "Citation/Core", right? Just add the period to that template. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

In addition, using commas rather than periods for separating the clauses of a citation makes more sense in the context of a strung-together citation in the format Carl describes. One could of course use periods and change the gluing text to capitalize "reprinted", but that would entail significant human editing to many articles; I don't think a bot could be trusted for that sort of thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

How about a "use-commas" (and maybe also a "show-accessdate") parameter? If requested, a bot could add that to everything that uses "citation", putting things back to how they were; I honestly suspect that in the majority of instances, full stops are more appropriate, but there's no point in upsetting editors when there is a simple workaround. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:28, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was thinking. We could use a parameter, and then even have a separate "compatibility" template that calls Citation using the parameters. The Citation template could have a use-commas parameter, and then pass a Sep variable to Citation/core. The Sep variable would either be a period or a comma. I think the best permanent solution, though, is to convince the Cite family people to switch to commas. Internal commas, with no trailing period, are the most versatile solution. COGDEN 16:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

If, eventually, commas are always to be the separator, then consensus should be gained at WP:Manual of style and WP:Citing sources that citation elements should always be separated by commas. Those two pages are the appropriate place to decide what citation style should be; the templates are the place to implement the decisions. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:45, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

How's that? WP:CITE doesn't prefer any particular formatting method:

There are a number of styles used in different fields. They all include the same information but vary in punctuation and the order of the author's name, publication date, title, and page numbers. Any of these styles is acceptable on Wikipedia so long as articles are internally consistent

— Carl (CBM · talk) 18:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

If Cite xxx and Citation only support one style, fine, then editors who want to use a different style can't use these templates. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought the whole point of rewriting the templates was to reduce the inconsistency in style among our citations. I have no problem with eventually moving with a style in which we separate everything by periods (as would have the advantage of matching the Chicago Manual of Style), and I don't want to add extra parameters that would encourage editors to use other styles. But I would like to see a clearer plan for getting from where we are now to that more consistent state. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:01, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, but I have seen purported CMS-compliant citations that use commas. Does CMS really always require periods? I think periods are not a problem so long as you can assume that the only place where a full citation will show up is in a bibliography at the end of the article. Personally, that's how I use Citation, and then I use Harvtxt in footnotes or Harv inline. But some articles put full citations in the footnotes. Maybe the answer might be to have a series of Citation-like templates that are specific the particular citation system you are using, and which assume and require either that the citation appears in a footnote, or at the end in a bibliography. There could be, for example, a Citation-CMS template that 100% conforms to the CMS, and could use periods. There could also be a Citation-BB that conforms to The Blue Book for legal citations, and maybe also a Citation-APA and Citation-MLA. These would all have essentially the same parameters, so it would be easy to switch between several formats. The default Citation would be like the present one, keeping it as general as possible, which would probably mean using commas.

At some point, I think some Wikipedia programmer is going to step up and provide a much better solution to citations in MediaWiki source code, and perhaps a centralized citation database, or an ability to generate a citation based soley on a PMID or ISBN. A few efforts to do this like this one or this one have been started over the last few years, but none has ever taken off. COGDEN 19:22, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

CMoS has two major documentation styles, which it calls "Documentation 1: Notes and Bibliographies" and "Documentation 2: Author-Date Citations and Reference Lists". In the Notes and Bibliographies style, full citations go in footnotes, and commas are used in those footnotes. The biblography is optional, and if present, uses periods. The reference list used in the author-date system uses periods. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:43, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If we all decided to basically just adopt CMS for Citation, we could have the Citation (alias Citation-CMS1) template just follow CMS Documentation 1, and then write a Citation-CMS (alias Citation-CMS2) template that follows Documentation 2. For anything that CMS does not explicitly cover, we could just pick something reasonable. COGDEN 21:27, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't imagine Wikipedia editors making a decision about style, or even the style for one template. But if that did happen, it would have still another advantage: when a case comes along that the template can't handle, an editor could just look up what to do in the paper CMoS and format it by hand. There would have to be a few minor changes, for example, Wikipedia does not indent the first line of footnotes, and there is no easy method to do hanging indents in reference lists. Even if it were possible to do these in a template, it should not be done because it would be hard to do by hand. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:55, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

We couldn't ever format everything according to CMS specs, but we could follow it's spirit where appropriate. At least we would have a basic standard to refer to in case of any disagreement. There wouldn't have to be Wikipedia-wide agreement, either, just an option for those who want to follow the style. COGDEN 21:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Accessdate

Who killed accessdate? It no longer shows at all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:22, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

See two sections up: #accessdate disappearance, with link to the discussion. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 02:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

issue parameter

For a couple of weeks now, the |issue parameter is no longer displayed correctly in the {{citation}} template, because there is a space lacking before the brackets. See e.g. ref #15 in Unending (the TV Zone one). Nothing major, but if someone with admin powers can fix this, I'd be grateful. – sgeureka ^t•c 19:13, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a consequence of Martin's changes; see #Proposal to merge redundant citation templates. I don't know why he removed the space, or even if he did it on purpose or not, so I'll ask him to comment. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The Harvard reference style, which this template implicitly uses, does not contain a space before the bracket. It seems bizarre to invent a new style of referencing rather than using a well established standard. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Which description of the Harvard style are you using? I find it hard to believe that a style guide would recommend us to typeset the reference in Unending that Sgeureka is refering to as it is now. Perhaps I should have explained that the question is about what to do when there is no volume number present. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, okay - I hadn't encountered that layout. Clearly a little change needs making: insert

{{#if:{{{volume|}}}|| }}

just before the bracket, and a space will appear unless a volume is specified. Feel free to make an {{editprotected}} request if that would fix it. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Request for admin: Please make a change to this template like what Martin suggested right above, resulting in an extra space in desired cases. (Thanks guys.) – sgeureka ^t•c 05:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

problems for third parties

Third parties have been in the past been known to use template names to work out what kind of cite is being used (it's how we know that that wikipedia cites high impact journals more often than say a typical scientific paper).Geni 22:28, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Why would you use a different template to cite a paper in Nature than for one in The Unnotable Journal of Inconsequential Science? And why wouldn't such people simply search the source for the phrase "|journal = #####" to generate a list of the journals which have been cited? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:34, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

"Unnotable Journal of Inconsequential Science" is still a formal journal. Things like newspapers and books are not.Geni 23:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

But "nature" is a high impact journal, and typical scientific papers probably end up in the "Unnotable Journal of Inconsequential Science". Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 12:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Searching the source is not as effective as useing what links here. Then you hit the issues that you already get a fair number of non jounals. Adding to that is not good.Geni 23:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Trying to derive conclusions by what template was used great has potential for error. A completely different style of citation may have been used, such as not using any template, using the Citation template, or using the author-date system. Journal articles may be cited with Cite web because an online version is available. Although this problem might be reduced by ignoring the absolute number of citations, and only comparing relative numbers of Cite web, Cite book, Cite news, Cite journal, and so forth, there may be systematic biases such that writers who like to cite high quality journals are more or less likely to use a template in the Cite family than the average editor than editors who do use those tempates. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The aproach used was to take every use of cite journal, strip out everything that wasn't a journal then count what was left.Geni 23:34, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

If you want, I can have a bot generate a list of every journal name cited and the number of times it is referenced. (A human would still have to identify duplicates such as J. Bot = Journal of Botany" Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 12:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

So it's still posible with the changes system? I don't need a practial demonstraition.Geni

yes. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Foreign language sources

In the citation template, is there any way of including the English translation of a reference that is written in another language, or a pointer to the fact that it is not in English? Such as Goethe, J. V., "So schoen ist es am Griebnitzsee" ["Ah, beautiful Griebnitzsee"] (in German). Journal of Things in German, 42 (1989), 56–58? Markus Poessel (talk) 21:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Could say something like: Goethe, J. V. (1989), "So schoen ist es am Griebnitzsee", Journal of Things in German, 42: 56–58 (in German, title in English translation: "Ah, beautiful Griebnitzsee"). -- Boracay Bill (talk)

That would of course be a solution, leaving it out of the template altogether. I had hoped there might be a way to include this information with the template data. Markus Poessel (talk) 20:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Date format

Why is this template forcing accessdates to the international style, even when the editor enters US style? Articles can't consistently use one style of date formatting if articles written in US English have citation dates written in international style. The template overrides what the editor enters, converting July 23 to 23 July, so editors using this template are forced to manually configure accessdates outside of the template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Sandy, this template uses the date template for the access date. There you find an explanation of the formatting. HTH, --EnOreg (talk) 18:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, EnOreg; so, we're waiting for a bug to be fixed?

• However, this functionality (not to be confused with wikilinking of dates) is disabled pending resolution of bug #4582. In the meanwhile, 9 May 2024 will display dates in 'day month year' format (e.g. 9 August 2008) for dates between 1970 and 2038.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Merging

{{editprotected}} Is there any way we can merge all the other "cites" such as cite video, cite podcast, etc.? --I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 17:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Did you read #Proposal to merge redundant citation templates? The consensus seems to be to maintain separate templates, but to strive for consistency. --Karnesky (talk) 17:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Cite audio has no equivalent at "citation". This has been causing problems at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1964 Gabon coup d'état. I propose we add these features. --I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 23:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Edit request disabled. Please only use this when you're ready for an admin to make an edit. --- RockMFR 01:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

COinS

Resolved

The COinS metadata[1] see to be missing the rft.series data corresponding to the series parameter. For example

• {{citation|first=A.D.|last=Aleksandrov|authorlink=Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov|first2=V.A.|last2=Zalgaller|title=Instrinsic Geometry of Surfaces|volume =15|series=Translations of Mathematical Monographs|publisher= American Mathematical Society|year=1967}}

has

• <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.title=Instrinsic Geometry of Surfaces&rft.aulast=Aleksandrov&rft.aufirst=A.D.&rft.date=1967&rft.volume=15&rft.pub=American Mathematical Society">

It seems like all that is needed is

{{#if: {{{Series|}}} |&rft.series={{urlencode:{{{Series}}}}} }}

but I'm hesitant about editing a high use template. --Salix alba (talk) 14:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

interwiki link

{{Editprotected}}

I'd like to add the link fr:Modèle:Citation Wikipédia anglaise to the template, thanks. Mro (talk) 14:43, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. For future reference, the interwiki links are in Template:Citation/doc, which is not protected, so you can do it yourself. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

format parameter

The format parameter doesn't appear to be documented, or am I just not seeing it? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 17:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Citation until somewhat recently was incompatible with cite journal, and that was part of a somewhat recent string of additions that perhaps never got documented (and yes, that was how we ended up with the PDF issue at Johnson, when someone insisted that we use this inferior template, which has now been somewhat corrected :-) I suggest seeing the complete documentation at cite journal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The Johnson question was what prompted me to look at this template's source code, as you probably guessed. Actually though, I quite like this template, even if its documentation isn't entirely up-to-date. :-) --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 17:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Harvnb and this template not playing well together

... in the article Harry Murray the {{Harvnb}}s aren't playing well with the {{Citation}}s. Links don't work, since the former are (for example) linking to CITEREFFrankiSlatyer2003 and the latter to CITEREF_Franki_Slatyer_2003.... any thoughts? Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The {{Citation}}s in that article had e.g., ref=CITEREF_Franki_Slatyer_2003 parameters specified which forced that. I removed these. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

<smacks forehead> I hereby lose my status as a man who has a firm grasp of the obvious. Thanks for the looksee. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 04:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Bug?

There seems to be a problem with the new "format" parameter, in that it does not display the format unless the "periodical" parameter is also set. Here's an example, which contains two {{citation}}s to web sites. Neither display the pdf format unless the periodical parameter is added. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 18:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the problem is that the 'Anything else with a title, including books' section of citation/core doesn't mention the format parameter, but does mention the URL parameter. I don't have time to test any changes right now, but adding a format parameter to that section should fix the bug. That section also seems to be missing the language parameter. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

COINS error

Resolved

{{Editprotected}}

There's a small bug in the COINS tag generation;

{{{Journal|}}}

should be replaced with

{{{Publication|}}}

where it appears in Template:Citation/core (1 occurrence).

Thanks,

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

And another one...

{{Editprotected}}

Multiple authors ought to be listed in the COINS information. The correct format, as listed at http://generator.ocoins.info/ , would be generated by replacing

    {{
      #if: {{{Surname1|}}} |&rft.aulast={{urlencode:{{{Surname1}}}}}
    }}{{
      #if: {{{Given1|}}} |&rft.aufirst={{urlencode:{{{Given1}}}}}
    }}

with

   {{
     #if: {{{Surname1|}}} |&rft.au={{urlencode:{{{Surname1}}}}}
     {{
       #if: {{{Given1|}}} |{{urlencode:,{{{Given1}}}}}&rft.aufirst={{urlencode:{{{Given1}}}}}&rft.aulast={{urlencode:{{{Surname1}}}}}
     }}
   }}
   {{
     #if: {{{Surname2|}}} |&rft.au={{urlencode:{{{Surname2}}}}}
     {{
       #if: {{{Given2|}}} |{{urlencode:, {{{Given2}}}}}
     }}
   }}

(in Template:Citation/core).

I'd be grateful if somebody could make that change. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the Coins meta data. Changes

• Changed the #if: {{{Journal|}}} to #if: {{{Periodical|}}}
• Periodicals now have info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal
• rft.jtitle,rft.atitle used for journals, rft.btitle,rft.atitle used for books. As opposed to rft.title
• Authors upto 9 listes in rft.au
• added rft.series tag when needed for books in series
• {{{Place}}} no longer used, as duplicated
• rft_id=info:doi/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} used instead of rft_id=info:doi/{{urlencode:{{{DOI}}}}} as Template:Citation passes doi rather than DOI to Citation/core. This seems to go agains the general capitilisation scheme, and theres also some code in core which used DOI for something.
• rft_id=info:bibcode, and rft_id=info:oclcnum tags added when available
• added and rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}} so source is visable

Also correct capitilisation of Bibcode in the main part of the template. There are still some bugs if people include links [[Cambridge University Press]] in the publisher then the square brackets get passed through, which is sub-optimal. The rft.genre is only one of book, bookitem or article. The proceeding and other genera don't get passed in. --Salix alba (talk) 23:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wonderful, thanks so much. Now my Endnote plugin will work properly! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Period, not comma

There should be a period after the author and date, not a comma. Can this be fixed? Badagnani (talk) 07:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

origyear

Template:Cite book allows for origyear parameter. Can this be added to Template:Citation as well? — ¾-10 16:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Can somebody unlink dates in the citation template?

Resolved

 – Discussion centralized at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates#De-linking dates

Hi, per MOS:UNLINKDATES, can somebody fix the citation templates so that autoformatted dates aren't automatically linked in the references? Thanks, NJGW (talk) 04:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't really see consensus for the proposal. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 110 end up with a proposal for mass unlinking to stop. And the revsion history of MOS:DATE is far to active to say the this matter is settled. --Salix alba (talk) 05:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that there... all I see is disagreement on how to get dates to show up properly. Can you quote me the part you're talking about? NJGW (talk) 05:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks like there is nothing to do in the template code. The formatting of dates is basically just what is used in the date= and accessdate= parameters. --Salix alba (talk) 06:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

How are the appearance of those parameters changed? NJGW (talk) 06:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It all depends on parameters passed in. with accessdate = 2008-01-28 | date=1851-01-28

Turner, O. (1851-01-28), History of the Pioneer Settlement, William Alling, retrieved 2008-01-28{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

with accessdate = [[January 28]] [[2008]] | date = [[January 28]] [[1851]]

Turner, O. (January 28 1851), History of the Pioneer Settlement, William Alling, retrieved January 28 2008 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

with accessdate = [[28 January]] [[2008]] | date = [[28 January]] [[1851]]

Turner, O. (28 January 1851), History of the Pioneer Settlement, William Alling, retrieved 28 January 2008 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

exact output depends on your preferences. --Salix alba (talk) 07:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

What I mean is, how is the global output changed? I realize input affects it, but for any given input of one parameter, where would one go to change the output? NJGW (talk) 07:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

When logged-in as NJGW, you should see a line like

NJGW My talk My preferences My watchlist My contributions Log out

at the top-right of the web page. Click My preferences. On the page which that brings up, click the Date and time tab. -- Boracay Bill (talk) Boracay Bill (talk) 07:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That's really not the question I'm asking. As you know, Ohconfucius claims to dislike using cite templates because they causes formatted dates to show up as links in the reference section. I'm wondering how this is handled (the prefs you pointed me to only show the date format, nothing about linking). NJGW (talk) 07:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

et al

With more than three authors, a patent template (see example on documentation page) produces

Degermark, Mikael; Andrej Brodnik & Svante Carlsson et al.,

Isn't the ampersand is redundant if et al. is included, and shouldn't et al. should be italicised?

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

options for archive-url and archive-data

This has been discussed already ([2]), but no concensus seems to have been reached. In short, a feature to add a second url to an archived (wayback archive, webcite or similar) copy of a cited webpage is requested. This exists already for the Template:web cite template. One wikipedian was against adding this feature (see previous discussion) because, in his opinion, only the archived webpage should be referenced, since this is the "most stable" copy. I strongly disagree with this opinion, and I think it is important to be able to link the original url as well as a copy. Why? It is normal scientific practice to refer the original work, not a quote of it. However, giving an additional backup solution is valuable in the moment the original work changes or merely disappears. Besides, trusting the archive alone is also dangerous. Another wikipedian has already implemented this feature in User:RossPatterson/Citation. What are the views on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nillerdk (talk • contribs) 15:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Since Nillerdk mentioned it, I'll point out that User:RossPatterson/Citation is stale - an experiment from some time back. But I'd be happy to re-implement the change if consensus approves. RossPatterson (talk) 22:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Just piping up to mention that the wording of the resulting formatted cite can get messy when both the url and contribution-url (AKA chapter-url) parameters are used and either or both of those go to dead links which are available in the archive. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Can you generate an example of just how messy it would be? In any case, it is up to the editor to judge which parameters are neccesary for a particular citation. Have a look a RossPatterson's examples here. That's how I would like to use Template:Citation and I don't find his layout messy. Can anyone support me in my opinion that we should never rely solely on an url of an archived copy, but always specify the original url - whether or not the original is still available? Nils Emil (talk) 11:18, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

OK. something like this:

• {{Citation |last=Smith |first=John |author2=Jane Doe |author3=Bonnie Brown |editor=John Witherspoon |title=A book about something |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=ABcdefg |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/*/books.google.com/books?id=ABcdefg/readfile?fk_files=12345&pageno=67 |archive-date=12 January 2006 |chapter=III. A chapter about some particular bit of something |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/somepage |archive-chapter-url=http://web.archive.org/web/*/books.google.com/books?id=ABcdefg /readfile?fk_files=8901234&pageno=56 |chapter-archive-date=23 February 2006 |pages=78-90 |publisher=Macmillan |year=2001 |isbn=1234567890 }}

Could produce something like this:

• Smith, John; Jane Doe & Bonnie Brown (2001), "III. A chapter about some particular bit of something" (archived from the original on 23 February 2006), in John Witherspoon, "A book about something" (archived from the original on 12 January 2006), Macmillan, pp. 78-90, ISBN 1234567890

Regarding preserving info about the original links, there has been a discussion about that recently (which I failed tofind on a quick search) where it was argued that it is good practice to always cite the original source, even if that source has become unavailable and the editor is now relying on a purportedly true copy of the original source. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC) (updated by Boracay Bill (talk) 02:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC))

I think for citations to books it's best just to include the ISBN and not try to provide URLs. From the ISBN it's easy enough to get to Google books etc. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:08, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

... if there is an ISBN. It may be that some books available online are isbn-less, e.g. The Development of Philippine Politics (1872-1920) By Maximo Manguiat Kalaw, which I have cited elsewhere as:

• Kalaw, Maximo Manguiat (1927), "V. The Katipunan revolt under Bonifacio and Aguinaldo", The Development of Philippine Politics, Oriental commercial, pp. 69–98, retrieved 2008-02-07

or it may be that the citation is of a page on a website where it is appropriate to name both the website-title and the website-section-title in the cite. In any case, the topic of discussion in this section is what support, if anything, {{Citation}} should provide for archived links, not about how editors might properly use {{Citation}}. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the example, which I don't find too messy. Citations are not prose, but technical information you need for verifying or clarifying something. It's ok. In the case of books, which are less unlikely to disappear, the archive option might be less useful (but why not provide it and leave it to the editor to judge?). For quoting websites of companies, ministeries and the like, the archive option is IMHO very important as it is only a matter of time (weeks, months, ...) before they change the website layout rendering the original link broken. Now, are there any negative side-effets of adding the archive-functionality as an option for the editor? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nillerdk (talk • contribs) 07:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Multiple citations from a year

How can we use the #citeref function of Template:Harvnb, etc, to link to mulitple citation from a single year with the same author? In my case they are newspaper and magazine articles. The standard in parenthetical referencing is (Smith 2008a)(Smith 2008b) and the citation template has no trouble with that. But I don't see how to force the #citeref to be Smith2008a. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Use e.g. {{Harvnb|Smith|2008|Ref=CITEREFSmith2008a}} paired with {{Citation |... |ref=CITEREFSmith2008a}} (note uppercase 'R' in {{Harvnb}}, etc.)-- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You should not have to "force" #citeref to be 'Smith2008a'. It will be that automatically when your reference is {{harvnb|Smith|2008a}}.

And, when you have '(Smith 2008a)(Smith 2008b)' you should also have {{citation}} reflecting year=2008a, year=2008b. The #citerefs will then also automatically match.

In other words, use year= and optionally date=, but not date= alone. The a/b/c/etc obviously can't be inferred from a date=. -- Fullstop (talk) 12:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Need agency= field for news sources

The agency= parameter was added to the {{cite news}} template to capture and properly format the news agency (e.g. Associated Press, Reuters, etc.) in news stories. It also needs to be added here. It appears after the quoted title, but before the italicized work in the standard typeface. Dhaluza (talk) 00:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Since it is sometimes the only source listed for an article, should it be used as the author if there are no other author names in the template? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

For one, that doesn't work when the name of the author is known (e.g. for a syndicated column). Secondly, it is not formally correct to do that (one would minimally need something like "AP staff writer").

I don't think it is particularly useful to know that article "foo" in publication bar was originally from a wire agency. After all, it is 'foo in bar' that is being cited. Also, the original wire story might be different from what is actually being cited.

However, there are other circumstances where an "x"** field might be necessary, and such a field could also be used for agency=. I've recommended such a field before, so here goes again. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 13:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
** Whatever the generic name for such a field might be; [contribution-]type =, -object =, -class =, -container =, -format =, -media = ... whatever.

According to Wiki Answers the wire service should not be entered in the author field (also many wire service stories have authors as stated above). Dhaluza (talk) 22:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)