Help talk:CS1 errors/Archive 4

Vol broken
I know it has been for some time, but there needs to be a way to entire multiple volumes with multiple URL links into a single citation entry. It's simple enough to fix: stop throwing out useless error messages and allow the default "vol." to be omitted so it can be properly pluralized. Volume also shouldn't be lower case, but yeah English is gradually getting shoehorned into European standards there. — Llywelyn II   22:40, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Invalid |display- =
This is entirely useless. It throws errors for no helpful reason when it's possible later editors might extend the number of editors but the displayed list should be limited to et al. regardless. Remove it entirely. — Llywelyn II   09:00, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

CS1 errors: URL
Some questions about Category:CS1 errors: URL, which has about 6,500 pages even after I run my bot through them: Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:25, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Is there a way to generate a report with the most common errors, so we can see if we can fix them via bot?
 * 2) What's the right way to deal with the error at /e/ (operating system), which contains a working link to https://doc.e.foundation/how-tos/upgrade-ecloud-storage
 * 3) What's the right way to deal with the error at Abakan, which contains a working link to http://абакан.рф/main/glava-goroda-i-ego-zamestiteli/aleksej-viktorovich-lyomin.html (I tried Verisign's IDN Conversion Tool, but it didn't suggest an alternate URL).
 * This page is for discussing Help:CS1 errors; there is a larger, more appropriate audience at Help talk:Citation Style 1.
 * Are you sure? Verisign gave me  :
 * http://абакан.рф/main/glava-goroda-i-ego-zamestiteli/aleksej-viktorovich-lyomin.html → http://xn--80aaac0ct.xn--p1ai/main/glava-goroda-i-ego-zamestiteli/aleksej-viktorovich-lyomin.html
 * e.foundation fixed in the module sandbox:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk: Thank you for your responses. I'll repost question 1 at Help talk:Citation Style 1.  I was using the conversion tool incorrectly by pasting the whole URL instead of just the domain name.  Thanks for updating the module sandbox.  Happy New Year!  GoingBatty (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk: Thank you for your responses. I'll repost question 1 at Help talk:Citation Style 1.  I was using the conversion tool incorrectly by pasting the whole URL instead of just the domain name.  Thanks for updating the module sandbox.  Happy New Year!  GoingBatty (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk: Thank you for your responses. I'll repost question 1 at Help talk:Citation Style 1.  I was using the conversion tool incorrectly by pasting the whole URL instead of just the domain name.  Thanks for updating the module sandbox.  Happy New Year!  GoingBatty (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Help with reference for Opening Ceremony Olympic flag
I need help and fix the reference for the Opening Ceremony Athens Olympic Games 2004 for the reference section number 20. 100.2.114.167 (talk) 04:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like you're referring to the article 2004 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Someone accidentally included the title in the url parameter.  I fixed the reference in .  Happy editing!  GoingBatty (talk) 06:14, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Error message
Adding ".mw-parser-output span.cs1-maint {display: inline;} /* display Citation Style 1 maintenance messages */" to my css page produces the pointless message: "Warning: Element (span.cs1-maint) is overqualified, just use .cs1-maint without element name." Any ideas how I actually display maintenance messages? Davidelit (Talk) 13:34, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, it works. Perhaps a note could be added warning editors to ignore the error message. Davidelit (Talk) 13:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Enhancement request: a simple way of displaying maintenance messages
Maintenance messages are hidden by default: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:CS1_errors#Preview_messages If I add an account, then I can do something that I don't understand, in order to see the maintenance messages, in order to submit edits without loose ends. I edit wikipedia about once every three years, when something annoys me, so there is going to be a limit to my patience and technical ability.

Please can there be a simple way for people like me to enable maintenance messages on edit pages, without creating another account, which we will lose in in the mean-time. 222.154.121.175 (talk) 23:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I think I may have misheard you. It sounded like you were asking volunteer editors to modify, test, and deploy a set of modules that are used in millions of pages so that you don't have to worry about a loose end once every three years. I think the community's effort, as a whole, would be better spent helping you to either create an account and join the fun, editing more often, or helping you to learn to survive a minor annoyance three times per decade. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Excerpt
Yesterday, I fixed an error regarding a missing author from a New York Times article in Ferdinand Marcos's cult of personality, but an error message will not be hidden in another page, cult of personality, until when? Achmad Rachmani (talk) 14:53, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Your edit, the addition of Gerth, appeared immediately at cult of personality. If you don't see it, you may need to refresh or WP:PURGE the page in order to clear your browser's cache or the cached page on the server. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:47, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

unhelpful error message for cite magazine location parameter
At I got a warning at the top of the page (during edit mode) "Script warning: One or more cite magazine templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help)." Unfortunately it did not tell me which 'cite magazine' had the problem, nor what the problem was. Luckily there were only 2 'cite magazine' references in the article (out of 156 references), so I was able to do a search and rescue mission by hand. This might not always be practical on other articles. Turned out the problem was - which I changed to. The error messages are usually very precise and helpful and I thank the template maintainers for the work they put into this feature. Is it possible to tweak the template so that the warning appears on the actual reference itself (this one only showed at the top of the page) and specifies the location field (no such help was given). Thanks.  Stepho  talk 01:10, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to tweak the template so that the warning appears on the actual reference itself? It does.  But, because it is a maintenance message, not an error message, you have to enable its display.  That is the purpose of the messages may be hidden (help) message.  If you follow the help link to  you will find text that describes the reason for the message and you will find instructions that will explain how to enable maintenance message display.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 02:25, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you - that did the trick.  Stepho  talk 10:31, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Kruskal count
A citation on the book ''Impossible? Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums'' has a correct and all-numeric ASIN value but has an error message. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 00:49, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * . GoingBatty (talk) 02:33, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The assigned value is not an ASIN but is an ISBN as you will see if you do a google search for  and if you follow the links at Special:BookSources/0691150028.  Do not put ten-digit ISBNs in asin.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:54, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * as explained in the text that appears when you follow the help link, "If the asin value is correct and all-numeric, use isbn instead and delete any asin-tld parameters." – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:28, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * as explained in the text that appears when you follow the help link, "If the asin value is correct and all-numeric, use isbn instead and delete any asin-tld parameters." – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:28, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Only Latin letters allowed
That creates problems as there are links in other scripts such as Cyrillic: Datsan. Nakonana (talk) 20:00, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Did the help text not tell you how to fix URLs not written in Latin script? If not, how would you improve the help text?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:40, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Took another look and figured it out. The error I saw was, but the information on internationalization of the url is written in the   section further down. I didn't read the latter section first time around because I thought the archive-url section in the help text would only address issues with the archive-url, not the url. Nakonana (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suck at writing documentation, but I've had a go at tweaking it so perhaps now it makes more sense... which see.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:57, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That looks good to me. Thanks for the update :) Nakonana (talk) 15:16, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Harv error that is not one of those documented
By trial and error, I have discovered that a harv error that looks like arises if the citation is given after the  line and resolved if placed before it. Maybe this is in the MOS somewhere but it needs to be documented. (See this diff] for evidence.

Or have I missed something? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:19, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * cs1|2 does not emit Harv error... messages. The message comes from a user script that you have in your common.js page.  See the script's documentation.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:59, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Ha! I should have guessed it would be All Your Fault!™
 * Yes, I have importScript('User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js'); // Backlink: User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js
 * (A tongue-in-cheek reply, in case it is not obvious.) Strange as it may seem, I won't be removing that script. And I've just added .mw-parser-output span.cs1-hidden-error {display: inline;} /* display hidden Citation Style 1 error messages */ to my .css, which would have resolved my "some messages may hidden" frustration had I spotted its existence earlier. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:05, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Displaying maintenance messages
To display maintenance messages in the rendered article, include the following text in your common CSS page (common.css) or your specific skin's CSS page and (skin.css). (Note to new editors: those CSS pages are specific to you, and control your view of pages, by adding to your user account's CSS code. If you have not yet created such a page, then clicking one of the .css links above will yield a page that starts "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name." Click the "Start the User:username/filename page" link, paste the text below, save the page, follow the instructions at the bottom of the new page on bypassing your browser's cache, and finally, in order to see the previously hidden maintenance messages, refresh the page you were editing earlier.)

Given unregistered editors can't create pages (and even if we could, I'll be given another address with a different common.css page in less than 24 hours), how can I go about viewing such messages? 2603:8001:4542:28FB:C917:2D30:4F00:28C9 (talk) 01:43, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Create an account? – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The one time I registered a Wikimedia account before ended with a pornography addiction and me quitting the site for two years. With all due respect, are there any other options? 2603:8001:4542:28FB:C917:2D30:4F00:28C9 (talk) 02:55, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * No, and what on earth would WP have to do with pornography addiction?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:12, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Other options include working on any of thousands of other issues on Wikipedia that do not require registering an account. It sounds like editing related to CS1 maintenance messages is not for you. Sorry to hear about your previous experience. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:23, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

So there's no accommodation intended for unregistered editors to ever see these messages, even if only during the preview stage of editing an article? Or should i just go into DevTools and hijack those classes each time? -- 188.26.44.57 (talk) 14:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Some features are not available to unregistered editors. Hidden categories, for example. There has been pushback on CS1 maintenance messages being displayed to all viewers, since they are not error messages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Date error message in cite news template
In the "cite news" template I'm getting template error messages for newspaper dates in the late 1880s, while early 1900s I have no problem. The dates are real calendar dates and can additionally be seen on the front pages of the newspapers. All urls go to books.google where a scan of the dated newspaper exists.













Any way to fix this error message? Thanks.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 16:07, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Make sure that your dates don't contain invisible characters. In each of the examples with error messages, there is a U+200E left-to-right mark character immediately after the '=' assignment operator.  These are most often the result of copy pasta.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Fascinating. In the future if this happens I'll copy the string of code into an online Unicode Character Detector, which will locate the invisible character. In this case it was located at the equal sign "date=". I backspaced and typed in a new sign. I've occassionally seen this red error message in reference lists. Now I'll know how to fix it. Thanks.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 13:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Date error message in cite tweet template
Dead Twitter posts have future dates. For example, in List of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir episodes:



The above message appears because the date value provided (8 April 2116) is 100 years later than the date in the source (8 April 2016). Achmad Rachmani (talk) 00:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And when you clicked on the "help" link in the error message and were taken to the explanatory text, did that help you to resolve the problem? If not, how would you improve the documentation? When I click on that link to Twitter, I get an error, and archive.org does not have a record of the tweet, so the citation may have to be replaced by a citation to a different source. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:32, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Overriding date parameter
Hello! Over at Template:Marquette (MILW train), there a reference with a legitimate date of January–February–March 1940. Is it possible to override the template error that gives? Ed [talk] [OMT] 23:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No. You can rewrite as:
 * I used because the timetable is not a magazine. 10 (table 18) from the original template is misleading.  Table 18 is not on page 10 but rather, is on page 22.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:59, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I appreciate the work. I went with cite book to match the article it's used in. Ed [talk] [OMT] 00:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I fixed the above to have the correct publisher, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railway, not Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:08, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I appreciate the work. I went with cite book to match the article it's used in. Ed [talk] [OMT] 00:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I fixed the above to have the correct publisher, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railway, not Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:08, 5 April 2024 (UTC)