Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 59

Italics of websites in citations and references – implementation
Following the close above at, any thoughts about implementing this? I'm not feeling creative or analytical right now. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 04:56, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * That's the status quo. Nothing needs to be done.&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:16, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I have undone the change described at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 57. This will now permit us to do the long overdo update that the rfc was blocking.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:56, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Since the test case was in the batch, #3 in that list has two warnings I wouldn't expect for this citation: . Is that intentional? --Izno (talk) 13:57, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, intentional. At the moment, there are two tests in two separate locations in the code.  For the next iteration, we might refine the code so that both tests occur in the same place or do some other clever something so that only one of the two error messages is emitted.  I choose to defer that until later.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:55, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:55, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

RfC on linking title to PMC
Currently if url is not specified, then the title of an article generated by a CS1 template is linked to the pmc link. Should we continue to include this link or should we remove it? Boghog (talk) 05:51, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Include link
Stop making me have to guess which link works please. Just put that one first by default. It's currently almost never clear for lowly people like me. Please fix. (In case people wonder if I am joking because I am more well prosed, I'm really not. Some days I used to find reading Wikipedia very frustrating if I wanted to dig through the refs for more info. What isn't a deadlink always felt like a paywall. It felt like knowledge was being robbed from me). &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 05:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The link is very useful because not everybody knows how to navigate the publication IDs or what the green link means. It's also easy to override whenever the PMC link is not the preferred final destination. In 99,9 % of cases, the PMC link is the best possible because it's official, open access and technically high quality (fast, no bloatware, no cookies or JavaScript required etc. etc.). Nemo 10:24, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The link is very useful because not everybody knows how to navigate the publication IDs Delicious baloney (I actually detest baloney). My expectation, and what I think the more reasonable one is, is that if the user has URLs in the citation, he'll follow each of them (either in turn or separately) until he can access a free source. (And if there is no free source, then he will rarely access any of them as requiring extraordinary effort for anyone but the most-serious researcher.) PMC link is the best possible because it's official, open access and technically high quality None of which we care about for the purposes of a rendered citation. (Well, perhaps open-access, but that's not sufficient to duplicate a link from one place to another.) what the green link means The average reader has a browser which can display the title of the link, which is set to 'free access', when the green is present. He'll figure it out eventually. --Izno (talk) 13:57, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe you can find many examples on wiki of me saying that I believe our readers are smarter than that... but this isn't one of them. Normal people really have no idea what those things are and don't click on them.  Try it out some time.  Show a Wikipedia article to your neighbors and ask them what they think all those numbers at the end are there for.  Don't be surprised if the answer is something that amounts to "Nuttin' that's got anything to do with me". Nemo, I understand that the PMC articles are usually "author accepted article versions" (i.e., the thing that they're going to publish), but not technically the "official" version (which has the journal's official formatting style, etc.).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Without wishing to appear quarrelsome, the average reader doesn't have a browser that displays the title. The majority of pageviews now come from mobile devices, so the most probable reader has no mouse to hover over a link. --RexxS (talk) 02:53, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep What is wrong with making it easy to open a fully readable version? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:23, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep link from title I believe most readers are most likely to follow a link from the article title. It's what they are used to doing on Wikipedia, and my contention is that the link from the title should be the best link we can offer the reader. If it's the same link as the PMC, then redundancy is fine: either one will do. But only today I came across a PMC that had an updated/amended later version available as free access on the journal site, and that should be the resource linked to from the title, because it's slightly better than the PMC. Either version would serve to verify the article content, but we should offer the reader the best source we can, and that's not always the PMC. I see no good reason to have the title unlinked when |url is unspecified; if the PMC is available then it is the best we have to offer and should be linked from the title as well. --RexxS (talk) 02:53, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep link from title and use the same logic for all other identifiers with free full text, such as arXiv or doi with free. In this way, the discrepancy between PMC and the other identifiers is resolved. As a reader, clicking on the title is more natural than having to click on an id. − Pintoch (talk) 09:42, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep and consider expanding to other parameters if they identify free-to-read urls. Changing this would be a major breaking change for articles that have been for years written without a url= link to the PMC. Readers expect article titles to be URLs if they can read them. Hieroglyphics at the end of the citation are impenetrable to normal folk. The proposal offers no benefits to the reader at all. It makes it less likely they will know they can read the source and less likely that they will read the source. See below for my comment on "duplication". -- Colin°Talk 13:37, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand functionality to other free versions of records (e.g. when free/free etc.). This is a huge accessibility boost to readers. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:38, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'll say I'm probably less intelligent than the average wikipedia reader. Here is how things work for me: I see link. I click first link. Link leads to paywall. Get sad. Go back. Click next link. Dead end. Give up. Watch YouTube. Don't learn knowledge.
 * In case it wasn't clear, I hated digging to figure which links worked and which didn't. Of course I would give up after a while. I'll be honest and say I really miss those little locks that used to be there, I think. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 06:09, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * PMC links are suffixed by the open padlock Lock-green.svg indicating open access anyway. Is that not enough? Keeping this feature doesn't guarantee the link will lead to a desirable version; oftentimes there are better (i.e. peer-reviewed) versions available for free. Nardog (talk) 08:25, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The padlock doesn't display on mobile devices, I thought? Also, if there are better versions available for free, why aren't they already linked to using the url parameter? &#8211;  MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 13:47, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The padlock doesn't display on mobile devices Do you have evidence to back that up?  Here is a contrived  template:
 * Here is the link to mobile view of this discussion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Include_link
 * We do know that MediaWiki css for Modern skin is flawed (see )
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand functionality to other identifiers. Per, I've sat with readers who did not know to click through when the citation title was unlinked but identifiers were provided. Most people I know have no idea what "PMC", "ISSN", and sometimes even "JSTOR" means within a citation, and they'd only click through when feeling particularly adventurous. I'm glad the identifiers are there for those who desire them, but using the identifiers to link the citation title when no url is explicitly provided is to meet our general audience where they are. (not watching, please )  czar  22:21, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * We do know that MediaWiki css for Modern skin is flawed (see )
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand functionality to other identifiers. Per, I've sat with readers who did not know to click through when the citation title was unlinked but identifiers were provided. Most people I know have no idea what "PMC", "ISSN", and sometimes even "JSTOR" means within a citation, and they'd only click through when feeling particularly adventurous. I'm glad the identifiers are there for those who desire them, but using the identifiers to link the citation title when no url is explicitly provided is to meet our general audience where they are. (not watching, please )  czar  22:21, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Remove link

 * Remove as redundant to the pmc link. The pmc link is now followed by a "green/open padlock icon" which makes it clear that the source is free to read. Redundantly linking titles to pmc links creates a counter productive sea of blue in reference sections. Boghog (talk) 05:51, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Support removal – redundant; no more reason to link to pmc than, say, jstor; confusing. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:07, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove as redundant.  Imzadi 1979  →   06:10, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Making the PMC parameter not link will not reduce redundancy, but increase it. People will start adding links to the url parameter so that users can more easily find the link, especially as it's recommended to link a full text. Nemo 10:31, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * That's an assumption of user behavior without any evidence yet whatsoever. I'd expect that such people will use the URL field regardless of whether the PMC field is filled. (On the note of duplicate links, I would presume that Citoid adds the majority or entirety of duplicate links for identifiers, not the average editor.) --Izno (talk) 13:53, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Regardless of the merits of icons etc., this is inconsistent behavior. Identifiers should be placed in the identifiers section, and the links thereto should be relegated to that section. If someone is intent on reading some paper of interest, they're going to click every URL they can to see which will provide the easiest access; the suggested subtle cue that the URL is free if the title is linked seems like a false starting position (it's often or perhaps usually-to-mostly not--see our widespread linking to Google Books). Remove the extraneous link. --Izno (talk) 13:00, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The policy is that the url parameter should normally contain freely accessible URLs. It's trivial to remove the URLs which don't comply with this. Nemo 10:31, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * No, it's assumed that when the URL does it holds something freely accessible. It does not require the duplication of a link from elsewhere in the citation. Certainly, I would be careful about tossing the word "policy" around when there is nothing of the sort whatsoever that is "policy". --Izno (talk) 13:49, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The convention is that the link from the title is the "best" link we have to offer, because it's the most obvious to be followed. It is quite likely to be free access, as that's the principal factor in judging what's "best". It may or may not be a duplicate of another link in the citation, but omitting it on grounds of "redundancy" does a disservice to the reader: "redundant" =/= "not useful". --RexxS (talk) 03:08, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove as above. Masum Reza 📞 10:26, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove the alternative linking of the title to the pmc url. Despite the unssupported statements of Nemo and Doc James, I do not see that any case has been presented for retaining this alternative linking. And I find the statement that "not everybody knows how to navigate the publication IDs" a bit ludicrous. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:52, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've presented a case that the link from the title should be the "best" link we can offer the average reader. If readers know they can click on the title, certain that none of the other links will be better, we can eliminate the need for the average reader to have to work out which of the other coded links is best to follow. Do you want to reconsider? --RexxS (talk) 03:08, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * No. I think your argument (above) that the title should link to the best source has some merit. But: 1) Per other editors (such as WhatamIdoing [above] and Boghog [immediately following]) I don't see that PMC is always best. 2) "Best" should be a matter for the involved editor to determine and set; I don't accept that PMC as default should be built into the software. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:19, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The assumption is that the PMC is the best available link is not always true. Sometimes only the pre-publication version is stored on PMC and the original publisher has posted the final open access version that is easier to read. The automatic title link to PMC can be oven ridden by url but this requires the editor to insert this link which is not always done.  To make matters worse, citoid often inserts url completely oblivious to whether it is free or not.  An open/green padlock always follows the specific PMC link, so it should be obvious to the average reader that the PMC link is free. Boghog (talk) 03:44, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * But the assumption that the PMC link is the best is true most of the time, and that makes it a good default value for the title link – at the very least, it's guaranteed to be free. In the minority of cases when it isn't the best link, that's when we use the |url parameter to override it. Just because that's not always done doesn't stop it being the best solution. The behaviour of citoid in inserting spurious urls shouldn't be a factor deciding whether to link the title from PMC or leave it blank, as citoid's choice for |url would produce the same result in either case. --RexxS (talk) 04:43, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Why is it necessary to include a redundant link in the title? Because readers can't see the open/green padlock? I think you are underestimating the average reader.  Boghog (talk) 08:38, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Why is it necessary to remove a useful link from the title? Readers know that if they click the link from the title, they'll most likely get the best version of the source we can deliver to them. That's how it's been for a long time, and I think you're underestimating the power of habit. If there's an open/green padlock then there's a free version, and the link from the title will be at least as good as that. No need to check multiple links until they get the best one; we serve it up on a plate (the title) for them. --RexxS (talk) 17:24, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * You keep using the word "best". That's not what this link represents. It is the "most-open", at best. The link to the DOI or whatnot is the "most authoritative" and could just as trivially be the preferred link. (Best is value-laden and we don't need that to be value-laden here.) In this case, it may not be the best because there may be a both free-as-in-libre and free-as-in-beer identifier which also happens to be one of the other identifiers. (Rare, but possible.) That would clearly be "the best". --Izno (talk) 17:55, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I do keep using the word "best", because it's the appropriate word, and it's exactly what the link from the title represents. When multiple links occur, we are perfectly capable of picking one that is most likely to be the one an average reader will benefit most from following, and the title link is available for that purpose. Free access, full text, updated, and so on are all factors and we can order them as we see fit (usually that order). The fact that PMC will usually tick the first two boxes makes it the most likely candidate for "best link", and that's why it's copied into the title link in the absence of a link to override it (the url). If you don't like the word "best", just mentally substitute "most beneficial for the reader". The reasoning remains unchanged and unchallenged. There is never any good reason not to present the reader with a link from the title, unless the source simply doesn't exist online. --RexxS (talk) 19:21, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove the automatic linking as it is redundant and misleading. As discussed above, the auto-linking leads to falsely suggesting that the PMC version is the authoritative one when a reviewed and published version is available, whether behind a paywall or not. When the published version is not freely available anywhere, yet the article is referencing the published version, the title link is utterly inappropriate. When the DOI provides free access to the published version, one can override the PMC link by putting the URL the DOI redirects to in url, but that again is redundant and leads to WP:SEAOFBLUE, when free will do. It is inconsistent that PMC is being singled out as the only source that automatically links the title in the absence of url. But if we expanded this feature, determining the priority of sources would be a nightmare. The editor who inserts the template should be able to decide which part of the citation is linked where. Nardog (talk) 10:07, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Well said. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:26, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove links. We should only link versions that are either authoritative, or explicitly chosen by editors as the choice to link via the url parameter. The people commenting that "pubmed is obviously the best link" presumably work in a field covered by pubmed; for many other fields, pubmed coverage is sporadic, random, and unhelpful. In astronomy, maybe ads/abs (bibcode) is the best link; maybe in mathematics it is mathscinet (mr). I don't think we should be in the business of picking and choosing when there are multiple ids like this to link to. I would not be strongly opposed to doi links, because they are almost always authoritative, but even for those I prefer the current system of linking them only through the id. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:02, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Remove the redundant link. It doesn't always work (as in the original issue that led to this discussion), and fixing that would only make things more complicated.  Generalizing the repeated linking to other identifiers would be yet more complexity for readers and editors, in a template already criticized as over-complicated.  Kanguole 14:32, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

 * See also 

The proposal is poorly stated. When url is non-empty it is used to link the title. The proposal appears to be: don't use pmc for that purpose when url is empty. I don't see that any "link" (or link parameter?) is being removed. It's more like a link using pmc is not created in the first place. But this is not quite certain. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:09, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Taking an example given above by Nardog of a citation using pmc but not url:
 * currently displays as
 * The proposal is that the article title should not be linked in this situation (but the doi and PMC identifiers should still be), so in comparison with the current implementation, one copy of the link would be removed from the generated HTML. Kanguole 22:35, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * A title link to pmc is created if url is empty. The removal proposal is not to link the title to pmc. Boghog (talk) 22:51, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The proposal is that the article title should not be linked in this situation (but the doi and PMC identifiers should still be), so in comparison with the current implementation, one copy of the link would be removed from the generated HTML. Kanguole 22:35, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * A title link to pmc is created if url is empty. The removal proposal is not to link the title to pmc. Boghog (talk) 22:51, 25 May 2019 (UTC)


 * So what you are proposing is: to remove the functionality of using the pmc link as an alternate title link. (Essentially: not creating a 'title->pmc' link in the first place.) Right? &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Correct. Boghog (talk) 19:26, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I think the concern about duplicate is misplaced. In the case where a URL is supplied and to the official journal article, then the DOI link takes one to the same place. So in fact the title link is nearly always duplicating another link. Both the DOI and PMC ID are, textually, part of a full citation text, so we wouldn't eliminate them. I think the convention of having the title link to freely available editions of the article is a fine one to retain. -- Colin°Talk 13:47, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * But many editors wouldn't supply a URL that is pointed to by the DOI. Useful URLs are alternatives to a DOI link, e.g. to a copy on the authors' website or in ResearchGate. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:13, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The frustrating thing about this feature is that there's no way to opt it out. Even if the outcome of this turns out to be "keep", surely an option to turn it off wouldn't be controversial, or would it? Nardog (talk) 16:20, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There's already an option to turn it off: users who don't like PMC links can effectively disable them with some custom CSS. Nemo 13:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That's not a solution. I'm talking about an option to turn it off from the editor's perspective, not the reader's. Nardog (talk) 13:54, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You could have none and that would be a pretty simple option to bypass things in the minority cases it doesn't make sense to have the automatic url. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:25, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Or just none. Nardog (talk) 06:22, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I would not want to have a feature where  gets used for the title link in the absence of url by default. If ever, I would like to have this feature enabled only on demand (not by default), and to also have a feature to select the identifier used for this purpose from the list of available ones. This could be easily done if the url parameter would support the number of supported identifiers as selectors: pmc, doi, etc. The advantage of having to explicitly activate this feature would also help arguments brought forward above that this should not be forced onto our users by default and that defaulting to   would be arbitrary.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:13, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * This would also address the problem where to point to access-date, archive-url and archive-date parameters when an url parameter gets deleted because it has been found to be redundant with one of the more specific identifier links like doi. Some editors just remove these parameters, which in my opinion is a very bad idea and not very far-sighted, because even "permanent links" like a doi are not garanteed to be working forever, and by removing archived links and access dates we loose parts of our quality assurance ("the link was checked to be functional and supporting the statement on date xyz") and backup system against link-rot. With something like f.e. doi, access-date, archive-url and archive-date could stay and would refer to the doi as well.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:21, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal for an "in-title" ("In" + title) parameter
I propose having an in-title form of the title parameter that prefixes an unitalicized "In" before the title. This is currently done for the titles of books (or "works") containing chapters ("contributions") when an editor is specified, but not when an editor is not specified. I have instances of multiple chapters in books where it is preferable to not list the book's editors in each chapter's citation, yet I would like to indicate that the chapter is "in" a larger work. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:43, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Instead of a new parameter, how about always marking a component of a larger book in that way? That is, currently the following:
 * are rendered as
 * It would be more comprehensible to render them consistently as
 * Contributor, A. Introduction. In
 * Contributor, A. "Chapter". In
 * ChapterAuthor, A. "Chapter". In
 * ChapterAuthor, F. "Chapter". In
 * now that editors are marked differently from book authors. Kanguole 23:26, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It would be more comprehensible to render them consistently as
 * Contributor, A. Introduction. In
 * Contributor, A. "Chapter". In
 * ChapterAuthor, A. "Chapter". In
 * ChapterAuthor, F. "Chapter". In
 * now that editors are marked differently from book authors. Kanguole 23:26, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ChapterAuthor, F. "Chapter". In
 * now that editors are marked differently from book authors. Kanguole 23:26, 20 August 2019 (UTC)


 * There are subtle semantic differences between "in" and "by" as used currently in book citations. It is best to leave them alone. I believe the OP's request may be more trouble than is worth? 72.43.99.130 (talk) 15:59, 21 August 2019 (UTC)


 * K: Your "Contributor" examples are not relevant here, as they apply (per the cite book documentation) to afterwords, forewards, introductions, and such, what might be considered ancillary parts of a work. Your "ChapterAuthor" examples illustrate the problem: "In" is supplied only when an editor is specified, which in my instances is not desired. (Or supplied outside of the template, as you did in the latter examples.) Code to display the "In" is already present; I would like to trigger that (but without the "(ed.)") without having to specify an editor. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Leaving aside contributor for the present, would this change do what you want? Examples:

Kanguole 14:39, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * As a result of the completion of this unrelated rfc, I have undone Editor Kanguole's changes in the sandbox to facilitate preparation for a long overdo update to the live module suite that the rfc was blocking. Editor Kanguole's changes may be restored after the next update.  More at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 72.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:52, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

I think that I oppose this change. 'In' ('in' in ) appears to have a use in that it names the editors who compiled the book and whose names appear on the front cover (it is their book so they are listed in the bibliographic information for the book). Authors of the individual chapters may not be or are not so named. 'In' without editors, to me, seems to be extraneous because authorn (and aliases) identify the author(s) of the entire book so saying explicitly that "Chapter title" is 'In' Book title written by Author(s) is overkill or clutter. The "Chapter title". Book title form of cs1|2 rendering has been in use for a long, long time and, so far as I know, has not caused our readers untoward confusion. That being the case, this proposal seems like a fix for something that isn't broken.

The proposed use case, instances of multiple chapters in books where it is preferable to not list the book's editors in each chapter's citation, would result in incomplete citations with, consequently, incomplete metadata. Why are multiple less-than-a-full citation templates preferable to full citations? Can this not be handled by a mixture of templates pointing to  templates that point to a single full citation template?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:02, 22 August 2019 (UTC)


 * K: I think so. The result you show looks good, but I am uncertain of the code. As far as I can read it, the current code outputs "in" if (Editors) and (Chapter) is set (and "0 == #c"??), while the sandbox code leaves off testing (Chapter), tweaks (Editors) further on, then outputs "in" if (Chapter) and (Editors) or (Title)". I think the result is to do the editor stuff if (Editors) is set (independently of (Chapter)?), and do the "in" if (Chapter) plus either (Editors) or (Title) is set. Right?


 * If that is the case, then the missing functionality is supplied, and an explict "in-title=" parameter would not be needed.


 * T: Your first comment is muddled. You seem to be thinking that the ambiguity of whether "author" applies to a book-title or a chapter-title depends on whether "editors" are specified. I think it should depend on whether "chapter" is specified.


 * To the essential point: I am working on citing the IPCC Assessment Reviews at Global warming. Here is a fairly typical complete chapter citation as requested by the IPCC:


 * Undoubtedly your first thought on seeing this – and perhaps second and third thoughts as well – is: it's BIG. That's only ten editors and 34 authors (and I have several instances of over 50 authors); it does not include the chapter's contributing authors and review editors. This is a surfeit of "fullness", a useless glut of metadata that paralyzes the grasp of essential information. (A demonstration: how quickly can you scan that citation and pick out which chapter it refers to?)


 * But wait! it gets worse. You may have noticed that this citation for a chapter carries full information of the containing volume. Which is fine if that is the only citation to that work. But at GW, between just two Assessment Reviews, we have 9 volumes that get cited by about 43 chapters. Repeating the full volume info 43 times is just pounding any useful information into the ground. To insist on complete metadata about the volume in every citation of a chapter goes beyond pedantic, it is senseless.


 * You might also notice that in the IPCC's own requested citation the list of editors is enclosed in square brackets. I have never seen this done in an actual citation; I take those brackets to be metadata saying the list of editors is optional.


 * So what I have done is work out a system where the editors of the volumes (the Reports) are listed in the full citation for the volume, but not in the full citation for each chapter. Editor metadata is complete, it just isn't uselessly replicated at a lower level. The result is much slimmer, clearer, easier to use, and less intimidating to the editors. Does that satisfactorily answer your question of "Why are multiple less-than-a-full citation templates preferable to full citations?"?


 * Incidentally: no, this can NOT "be handled by a mixture of sfn templates pointing to harvc templates that point to a single full citation template". And what needs fixing is the current inability to get "in" without an editor. But possibly Kangoule has a fix in hand. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:41, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The current code prefixes "In" to Editors if Chapter is set and there are no contributors (0 == #c), so it is tied to the presence of editors. The change is to take that logic out the editors part and have a separate decision whether to insert "In".  I don't see "In" as a marker of editors – that is "(eds.)" – but rather an indication that the item being referenced is "in" a book.  Kanguole 23:03, 23 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think that is the better way. As a little bit of a tangential matter: My recollection is that elsewhere editors are listed following the work they edited. Is there any particular reason why we display editors before the book title? &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:36, 24 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Not a good idea to only have a contributor in a citation. Book sources are indexed by author and title, mostly. That is how most people would look for them. In cases where there is no main author, as in a collection of contributors, the editor is considered the "author". That is because in such works, the editors are the biggest influence on the work. They normally choose and vet the contributors, have knowledge of the underlying material etc. The function of editor in a single-author work is quite different. That book is "by" someone, edited by an editor. In the case of collections, the book may come about by the editor, but the contributors are "in" it. It has been far easier to find such a source when looking for the editor. Because this was traditionally the way such works were indexed. When everything is online, such indexing may not be that important since it is easier to have, for all practical purposes, custom search indices on demand. But we are not there just yet. Not every source is online. So: if the source has an author, it does not matter if that author is the person who wrote it or the person who assembled it. This person should not be left out of the citation. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 14:58, 24 August 2019 (UTC)


 * 72.*: You have missed an essential point; please re-read my comments above. In particular, please note that I am NOT saying that editors (or a small, representative subset) should be entirely left out, I am saying that extended details about a volume — such as a list of its editors — should not have to be repeated every time a chapter of that volume is cited. Note also that even the IPCC requested citation suggests that editors may be left out, which is in fact the practice at many (all?) journals. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:36, 24 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I believe your OP references books specifically?? If the template in question is, then different treatment could be applied, closer to what you propose (the journal being the source, with the article being the in-source location). I believe that a journal's editor(s) need not always be cited. And I am aware that there are cases of article-specific editors, for which a case-by-case determination may be the best option. 65.88.88.93 (talk) 21:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

See reference #20 at Schlumbergera. Is this the effect you want?

More generally, catering for every exceptional case in the citation templates is a mistake, in my view. Some unusual and complex citations are best handled manually. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:27, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It was J. Johnson that was asking for this. Your example raises different issues, I think.  Kanguole 17:19, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Peter: yes, that is the effect desired. I did try that approach, but there were some other complications. That the s/w currently rejects this case appears to be an accidental oversight, and I think correcting it in the manner illustrated by Kanguole is the better approach. While the IPCC citations may be small potatoes in the overall scheme of things, yet they are essential to some of our most visible articles (such as Global warming), and need to be done well. Experience has shown that expecting editors to do much "manual assembly" of citations is not realistic, so I am trying to make these as simple as possible. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Jumping in to note that I too have desired a similar effect at times. Template:Harvc doesn't really do what I need it to do (not enough fields for individual chapters/contributions, e.g., author, orig-year, date (to allow YEARa, YEARb, YEARc for sfns when multiple contributors in the same book have the same author(s)), conceivably doi, translator, but doing "[chapter title]", while a bit "hacky", produces the desired effect perfectly, so thanks for showing me that method, . Umimmak (talk) 02:43, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Editor Peter coxhead's suggestion is, I think, not a good suggestion. The wikisource for reference #20 is:
 * The metadata for the portion of that is this:
 * That decodes to a book citation where the book's title is "Appendix III Excerpts from a Brazilian diary" (with the quote marks). There are two other citations like this in that page.  An alternate would be to use individual  templates for the appendix authors that link to appropriate  templates that in turn link to the single citation template:
 * the templates (in the text)
 * the templates:
 * and the single template:
 * This works, shows that CITEREF disambiguation works (contrary to claims by Editor Umimmak). For Editor Umimmak's other concerns, date has never been supported by  because CITEREFs produced by the  family and  only use the year portion of a date; similarly, author, orig-year, and translator are not supported just as they are not supported by  and  (there is a three-year-old request for translator though I do not recall having seen that request before); there may be some sense in supporting doi in  because dois are often assigned to book chapters; though, to date, no one has requested such support.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:41, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm still confused how your method works for disambiguation. It would only work as a link, no? If, say, a Wikipedia article was printed or the links break there would be no way to tell which is Hunt 1995a and which is 1995b. And I guess in citations when author would have been used in the CS1 family, the whole name should go in last? Umimmak (talk) 21:54, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Point. I wonder if creating anchor-year in  would solve that.  If that parameter has a disambiguated year (year portion must match year) then  would use that in its CITEREF anchor and render the value parenthetically after the author names; year would continue to be used in the CITEREF link to the cs1|2 template.  Doing this would mean that  templates in my examples above would not be required.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've changed the above examples to  which uses Module:Harvc/sandbox.  The sandboxen now support anchor-year and nb.  In the renderings, when anchor-year is used, and is the same 'year' as year, and has a required disambiguator, the value of anchor-year is used in the CITEREF identifier and is rendered after the author name-list.  When yes, link to the cs1|2 template is rendered the same as a  rendering.
 * I expect to update the live Module:Harvc shortly.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Which all perhaps shows that {harvc} could be used for to get "in", but I think it would be much simpler to just fix cs1|2 to work in the expected manner.
 * and the single template:
 * This works, shows that CITEREF disambiguation works (contrary to claims by Editor Umimmak). For Editor Umimmak's other concerns, date has never been supported by  because CITEREFs produced by the  family and  only use the year portion of a date; similarly, author, orig-year, and translator are not supported just as they are not supported by  and  (there is a three-year-old request for translator though I do not recall having seen that request before); there may be some sense in supporting doi in  because dois are often assigned to book chapters; though, to date, no one has requested such support.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:41, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm still confused how your method works for disambiguation. It would only work as a link, no? If, say, a Wikipedia article was printed or the links break there would be no way to tell which is Hunt 1995a and which is 1995b. And I guess in citations when author would have been used in the CS1 family, the whole name should go in last? Umimmak (talk) 21:54, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Point. I wonder if creating anchor-year in  would solve that.  If that parameter has a disambiguated year (year portion must match year) then  would use that in its CITEREF anchor and render the value parenthetically after the author names; year would continue to be used in the CITEREF link to the cs1|2 template.  Doing this would mean that  templates in my examples above would not be required.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've changed the above examples to  which uses Module:Harvc/sandbox.  The sandboxen now support anchor-year and nb.  In the renderings, when anchor-year is used, and is the same 'year' as year, and has a required disambiguator, the value of anchor-year is used in the CITEREF identifier and is rendered after the author name-list.  When yes, link to the cs1|2 template is rendered the same as a  rendering.
 * I expect to update the live Module:Harvc shortly.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Which all perhaps shows that {harvc} could be used for to get "in", but I think it would be much simpler to just fix cs1|2 to work in the expected manner.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've changed the above examples to  which uses Module:Harvc/sandbox.  The sandboxen now support anchor-year and nb.  In the renderings, when anchor-year is used, and is the same 'year' as year, and has a required disambiguator, the value of anchor-year is used in the CITEREF identifier and is rendered after the author name-list.  When yes, link to the cs1|2 template is rendered the same as a  rendering.
 * I expect to update the live Module:Harvc shortly.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Which all perhaps shows that {harvc} could be used for to get "in", but I think it would be much simpler to just fix cs1|2 to work in the expected manner.
 * Which all perhaps shows that {harvc} could be used for to get "in", but I think it would be much simpler to just fix cs1|2 to work in the expected manner.


 * One of the concerns I have with harvc is that it seems to be morphing into a full citation. The main function of Harv family of templates is to link to the full citation, not replace it. If harvc's use and options start looking like a full citation I think it will only further confuse some editors on how to use short-cites.


 * Unimmak: no! "Whole name" should not go into author (etc.). Universal bibilographic practice is to sort and search by surname (family name, "last" in Western usage); links to citations are (e.g.) in the form of "Smith and Jones, 2001", not "Smith, Larry, and Jones, William, 2001". &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:35, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Like I said, I was only asking about citations where author is more apt than last, first. Template:Harvc only has the latter which doesn’t work for, say, collective authors credited under an organizational name or whatever, and it’s also less than ideal for names with non-Western word orders as an incorrect comma gets added. Umimmak (talk) 00:43, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * harvc ... seems to be morphing into a full citation. Hardly.   has not been touched since December 2015.  There is some sense to adding authorn support so that corporate authors are placed into semantically meaningful parameters; this is simply the addition of alias support (it would be the same as cs1|2 in which lastn and authorn are aliases).  It is unlikely that  will ever be a full citation because the bibliographic detail required by a full citation is not required and not supported by  and would be redundant to bibliographic detail in the associated cs1|2 template.   supports firstn because the visual rendering should show all of the chapter / section / article author's name.  The comma separator inserted in non-western names has been an unsolved problem in cs1|2 forever and it's no different in .  Find a solution for this with either of cs1|2 or  and you've solved the problem in both.
 * One other thing that might be added to would be some sort of mechanism to control parentheses in the rendering to allow  to match parentheses rendered by the article's chosen short-form templates.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * One other thing that might be added to would be some sort of mechanism to control parentheses in the rendering to allow  to match parentheses rendered by the article's chosen short-form templates.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

I think what you demonstrated would be a satisfactory resolution. Is there any chance it might be implmented soon? &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:11, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it's a reasonable fix, but it seems it will take a while: diff. Kanguole 23:03, 27 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Oh, I didn't see that comment. Okay, hopefully this will eventually be done, and I will abide a while without "in". Thank you. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:47, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

author-affiliation?
In collections like conference notes and similar works, it is common for authors to list their affiliations, like "Brookhaven National Laboratory". Would it be possible to get an author-affiliation tag for this purpose? It would not be for the work as a whole, which would be covered by publisher (or, I suppose, editor-affiliation?). Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Exact same topic barely a month old. --Izno (talk) 21:18, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * And, as in that discussion, it is false that it is common to list affiliations in references or bibliographies, to the point that I don't recall having ever seen it. It is common for authors to list their own affiliations, but as we don't list the authors of Wikipedia articles there is no need to do that here. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:17, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't recall ever seeing affiliations in a bibliography, either. (Bibliographies are very compressed things; it's common to omit titles of papers and to abbreviate journal names.) If an author is wiki-notable, we have the authorlink parameter, which makes their full employment history only a click away. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:52, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Psycho-Pass Movie Pamphlet
I found translations for this Psycho-Pass Movie Pamphlet from 2015. How should the reference be handled? The website has some data about the pamphlet but I'm not sure what to make of it. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 17:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Where did you find the translations? Presumably you'll be using the translations to work on the article, not the original pamphlet? So the translations are what should be cited, in whichever medium they were published. Umimmak (talk) 22:59, 29 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Well you see, the pamphlet was not released in English regions so there's no official translations. It tends to happen to certain series that have books talking about their making but are never translated.Tintor2 (talk) 00:25, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to overturn the mass change made to Module:Citation/CS1
Please comment at Administrators' noticeboard. --- Coffee  and crumbs  13:58, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Template documentation updates needed in cite template examples for dead-url= parameter
I have been away for a few months, so I am not up to date on the detailed discussions about dead-url and what it should be replaced with. It looks like documentation updates are needed on some or all of the doc pages for the individual cite templates listed at Help:Citation Style 1.

Can someone who understands the changes better than I please take on the (onerous, I know) task of replacing dead-url with its updated equivalent every time it appears on cite news/doc and the doc pages for the other CS1 templates? It may help reduce the controversy around the latest updates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * This is currently being discussed at WP:AN, I would place your input there before making any edits. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I did that already. Part of the complaint there is that the documentation has not yet been updated, hence my request here. I believe that the main complaint is the requirement of website for cite web. The change to dead-url in articles is just housekeeping and can be fixed by a bot, so I think that the documentation will need to be updated at some point. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Whatever all this means, the reference sections in articles now look diabolical. -  NewTestLeper79  talk  17:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, but only in preview mode . SLBedit (talk) 20:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * When was this proposal made? I don't see any of the wikiprojects getting notified for this change or even the discussion to make this change.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 20:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my mistake. SLBedit (talk) 20:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The fact that there are no red links there on the Template doc page now, is thanks to these changes by, who was kind enough to clean up after someone else crapped all over the place. Mathglot (talk) 20:59, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with the changes that were recently made. I made the Template doc changes to align with the new parameters. I don't think "someone else crapped all over the place". The crap was already there. They just exposed it so it can be fixed. I have fixed the GA's I have promoted such as Yuri Gagarin and Mae Jemison. I also fixed some pages linked from Main Page like The Breeders Tour 2014 and tomorrow's TFA Sasha (DJ) so people would stop complaining and get to fixing the issues. --- Coffee  and crumbs  21:14, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm suddenly getting a lot of warnings "Cite web requires |website=". Under no circumstances will I supply this, so I need to switch off the warning. Anyone know where it comes from and how to shut it off? Hawkeye7  (discuss)  21:10, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please see the much larger discussion of this at WP:AN. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:45, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Help:Duplicate parameters
I am just going to ask it here: Is it possible that we do something like this but only for instances of a missing website parameter for cite web?

It's just a question. I do not intend to promote this as a solution to the current predicament or engaging in that drama. I'm just curious if it can be done on a technical level. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 21:02, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Preview-only error messages are possible. Unfortunately, my anecdotal experience with them is that they are rarely fixed, especially those where the error message is remote from where the error occurs and where the editor is focusing their attention.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:31, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Would you be willing to help a smaller language wiki implement it at the very least based off consensus there? &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 16:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I am but am hesitant to do so be cause that can and likely will create a roadblock to future updates happening here. I try to write code that will work most anywhere,  only requiring local changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration – that isn't always possible but is the goal.  Modifying a copy of the module suite specifically for other wikis will likely require that someone there be willing and capable to: reapply the changes with every update, never update again, or continue development on their own on a divergent path from en.wiki cs1|2.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Et al
Does anyone know how to get rid of the script error if we write "Smith, John, et al." manually? I know we can add all the names and "display-author". But sometimes I can only remember the first author and don't have time to look up the others. I want to be able to add "et al." manually without causing the red message to appear. SarahSV (talk) 02:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Not possible. One author name and etal is how it's done.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 02:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * , thank you! SarahSV (talk) 02:48, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 02:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * , thank you! SarahSV (talk) 02:48, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * "Et al." is generally applicable only with four or more authors; with two or three authors it is expected to name them all. But only by the "last" name (surname). If you are doing this for the full citation then you are omitting important bibliographic information. I would suggest that waiting until you do have such information is better than providing incomplete information. &diams; J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:03, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Cite web requires website
I'm suddenly getting a lot of warnings "Cite web requires |website=". Under no circumstances will I supply this, so I need to switch off the warning. Anyone know where it comes from and how to shut it off? Hawkeye7  (discuss)  21:10, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Right, I am arriving too to ask about the same. Whatever change just implemented has caused that display error in tens of thousands of WikiProject NRHP articles, where a standard reference citing a National Register document uses the cite web template (John Boyum House being one new example).  A url is in fact provided within this reference to a standard NRHP nomination document provided by the National Park Service.  I have always thought "cite web" was the right way to refer to these.  It is certainly not "cite news".  So I think whatever changed should be reversed, probably, though I admit I don't know much about what is going on here.  Anyhow, it has affected probably the majority of 68,918 current articles about NRHP listings. --Doncram (talk) 21:23, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I find "cite web" to be an extraordinarily troublesome template. MOS does not say that anything other than a newspaper, magazine or journal must be italicized, but cite web italicizes the website field automatically. So we wind up with ridiculous things like Marvel Comics italicized since we can't put it in the "publisher" field because the "publisher" is The Walt Disney Company.


 * And even though MOS says to use common sense, editors in the closed discussion above argue for italicizing everything, no exceptions, no matter what. Thank you "cite web." --Tenebrae (talk) 21:45, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * This is not correct. First, there has to be leeway on the application of WP:MOS when it comes to what is for all intents and purposes an article's back matter. Citation systems target ease-of-proof, concisely presented. Doubly so in a delivery system like Wikipedia where the vast majority of users are non-experts. In the outside world, the decision to follow the style of content in references is entirely up to the individual editor or to her/his publisher's own editing guidelines. Generally, part of a citation's ease-of-verifiability is to make the most important parameter (the source or "work") the most easily identifiable one. The way this happens in CS1 is by applying . That is why the particular source (happens to be a website in this case) is italicized. Citations are not prose. 108.182.15.109 (talk) 01:04, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Citing books, magazines and newspapers in italics and company names and the like in non-italics has worked fine and clearly for a couple hundred years. Adding bad grammar and factual inaccuracy to footnotes for the sake of an extremist and arbitrary one-size-fits-all policy is wrong.--Tenebrae (talk) 21:02, 4 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Cite tweet is affected by this as well. AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 23:32, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please see the much larger discussion of this at WP:AN. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Irritating change to allowed values of mode parameter
Previously, both lowercase "cs" and uppercase "CS" were allowed in values of mode. Now the uppercase isn't recognized, generating many unnecessary errors. Please fix this. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:33, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , I attempted a few hours ago to fix all instances of upper-case "CS" in article and template space, using insource searches to locate the problem articles. Please link to a couple of articles that still have the problem, and I will continue the fixes. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this is a decent search? --Izno (talk) 02:50, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I used that search to scour all namespaces, and I found only a half-dozen article-space pages and a few talk-space pages and User pages. I carefully fixed some of the User pages and Talk pages after looking at the context of the templates, on the good-faith assumption that people want their meanings to be preserved even when template functionality changes. I left the remaining three pages alone where I could not be sure that changing the past would be a good thing., I changed two of your User-space pages; if that is an unwelcome intrusion, I apologize and will be happy to be reverted. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:56, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Two of the three remaining, I think could be changed without affecting the meaning of those examples. I think a clear error log is useful and the disgrace of changing archived content is probably forgivable. Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_7 is an interesting counter-example to that. It was in 2014 the test case to make sure that "|mode= is case insensitive". There's also the negative test to make sure "Invalid |mode=cs3".
 * As Coxhead hinted, I think removing that case insensitivity was not motivated. Even so, going as far as exposing this as an Error was unnecessary. If there was a wide consensus on it, the manual or bot-assisted search&replace could have been done before activating the error. And releasing this change at the same time as the "italics war" was hardly helping the discussion.
 * PS. There is a similar thread already as, that focus on assisting the "cleaning up" activity. JAGulin (talk) 10:36, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * given that the change had been made, I'm happy with all of your clean-up activities. But it remains an irritating change, that was not, so far as I can tell, discussed. I have several personal tools and templates that now need to be checked to prevent them causing errors. I see no need for the restriction, which is inconsistent with the way we normally use "CS1" and "CS2" in other contexts. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:51, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see it in the list of changes in the section above, but apparently there was a bug that was demonstrated in this discussion and fixed during the latest update. I was away from WP for the last few months, so I don't know the reason that the restriction was put in place, but I'm happy to tidy up the few hundred pages that are now out of compliance. I know how you feel about the scripts that you have worked so hard to maintain, though; I have AutoEd scripts that I use for gnome work, and they require continual care and feeding, just like any modern bit of software. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Format vs type
I'm now seeing errors about lacking urls when filling in the format field. I thought that was the right one to use for electronic versions like .azw or .epub. If those should be used in the type field instead, the documentation needs to clearly state that as neither are currently mentioned at all.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:11, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * See Template:Cite web for instructions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:19, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Why? Given that electronic books are books, first and foremost, why would that even be relevant? It seems very counter-intuitive.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * For books, see Template:Cite book. The documentation is essentially the same. format is for URLs, as described in the documentation. The documentation under format says For media format, use type. The documentation for type says type: Provides additional information about the media type of the source. If you have suggestions for how the documentation could be improved, this page is a good place to make those suggestions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:10, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That is the correct intent of format, but the format per the documentation has always been about the URL. If you do not have a URL, you should not have a format parameter. There has been previous discussion about changing the name to e.g. url-format or url-file-format to make that clear, but no-one has moved on that. --Izno (talk) 19:22, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That would clear things up, but clarity should be added to the documentation regarding the proper place for electronic books.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The format parameter is there to alert the user of a citation that there may be additional requirements in order to verify the wikitext. A common example is  which displays as (pdf) after the source. This alerts the reader that s/he has to have Adobe document format functionality on their device, perhaps as a browser add-in. Another common use would be in situations where the source may be formatted in one of the picture formats. 24.105.132.254 (talk) 20:12, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Then why would it be necessarily need to be linked to a url?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Because you are providing a path to online verification. format refers to the digital file format. It is irrelevant when a digital means to verify the citation is not given. The media type that is referenced by type is the medium the source was accessed in: print, video, digital etc. Hope this is clearer. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 23:22, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

No suitable template for top level of a website
Suppose I want to cite the top level of a website. For purposes of this discussion, the thing I want to cite only exists in the form of a website, and the true nature of it is a website. It isn't a book, journal, newspaper, or anything but a website. For example, I want to make the claim "USAGov is the Official Guide to Government Information and Services" and I wish to cite https://www.usa.gov/. I'm citing the top level of the website, and the website is a large work, so I should cite it like this:

Since I have an extra level of error messages being shown (I forget how I set it) and there has been recent play with error display, I will state that when I look at the rendered citations, I see Missing or empty |title=

If I were citing a much smaller website, I would want to be able to use the same citation, but somehow indicate that the website title should be surrounded by double quotes rather than be in italics. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I would instead cite this case (if indeed it is valid for a general fact) instead as because that fact will have been found on a specific page, not in/on the work in its entirety.
 * The part before the bar at the end is essentially the name of the main page. The part after the bar is the part that persists to other parts of the work, which is what is usually the name of the website as a whole.
 * Remember that you provide a sufficient level of detail for someone else to identify where the fact resides which you are verifying. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)


 * , In this case, "USAGov" is the publisher, not the website name. On many websites, the part after the bar in page titles is either the publisher or the website name, or they're both the same thing., see also , above. "USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal" is the title of the home page, not the name of the website. The website name is "USA.gov", as explained at "About the Website USA.gov": "USA.gov is an interagency product administered by USAGov (formerly the Federal Citizen Information Center), a division of the U.S. General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service." So, in the current incarnation of , it's USA.gov. The publisher would be USAGov, but since it's substantially the same as USA.gov, it should be omitted. For the page title, you can use USA.gov: The U.S. Government's Official Web Portal.
 * To your last question about how to "somehow indicate that the website title should be surrounded by double quotes rather than be in italics", the answer is you can't, not with . Apparently it's been decided that all website names will be in italics, though that might be up in the air at the moment, not sure - check the Admin Noticeboard... --IamNotU (talk) 22:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I've been involved in that a discussion here at WP:AN, and the majority of editors there are in fact not in favor of the extremist position that all website names be in italics, even the World Health Organization and Sears.--Tenebrae (talk) 22:40, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , feel free to comment above at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1; I've laid out a comment there that already covers that to some/large degree. --Izno (talk) 00:08, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Categories for doi-broken-date
[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers&diff=913814848&oldid=900551956] by Trappist the monk started adding month (when specified) to categories for pages with DOIs inactive:. For example, the page Template:Cite journal displays a cite journal example with. The module edit has moved the page from Category:Pages with DOIs inactive as of 2019 to Category:Pages with DOIs inactive as of 2019 January. Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Pages with DOIs inactive shows none of the monthly categories currently exist. Template:Cite journal claims another category name is added: If the doi link is broken, then use of doi-broken-date unlinks the doi value, indicates when the doi-problem was first noticed, and will also add the page to "Category:Pages with DOIs broken since YYYY". Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Pages with DOIs broken shows no such categories. I don't care how this is solved as long as articles stop showing red maintenance categories. One solution is to create the monthly categories with the current red names. Category:Pages with DOIs inactive as of 2019 August currently has 1175 members. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:35, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The most straightforward fix would be to have a bot create the categories with, I believe. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:53, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That edit is the result of this discussion. Anyone can create those categories; it doesn't have to be me.  I've done it for 2019 but this issue will show itself again in January 2020.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Cite tweet
I know it's already been pointed out elsewhere and the folks maintaining these templates are dealing with a lot right now, but cite tweet is still generating a "cite web requires website" error (not visible, but categorized). That's clearly not how that's supposed to work, but I don't know how to fix it. I was just working on David Akin where there is a tweet citation, if you want to see for yourself. Just one more requested bugfix for your attention, I'm sure it'll be repaired eventually. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:22, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * It'll go away at the same time that the cite web errors will go away, since cite tweet invokes cite web. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I realize that, the error message is already hidden unless you have the css hack to display the hidden errors. I mean that it seems to be a problem in the way that cite tweet calls cite web, in that cite tweet doesn't supply anything to the website parameter. And seemingly rightly so, as the output of cite tweet doesn't render anything in italics, and that seems to be the correct format based on sources like this and this and this. Should cite tweet use a different underlying template maybe? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:59, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I suppose you could always hack something, but waiting should be enough to return things to the norm. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:45, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 7 September 2019
For Module:Citation/CS1:

In Special:Diff/914376409, updated the module and, in doing so, also wrapped the output in the `cs1-sandbox` class by adding   to line 3885. I think this was a mistake during the update (ping just in case). Accordingly, please replace

with

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 03:34, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Izno (talk) 03:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Issue issues
Can someone tell me what has gone wrong here:

gives:

Where did the issue number go? It used to say 14(2). The reader needs the issue number to find it. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  22:48, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You should be using to cite Diplomacy and Statecraft.   does not support issue
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:52, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * D'oh!   Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Trappist, why can't it allow "issue=" in case someone makes a mistake? Rather than people having to fight with templates and search for another one. Flexibility would be much appreciated. SarahSV (talk) 23:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Because the cs1|2 templates create COinS metadata.  creates book-object metadata.  Book-object metadata does not support issue.  We do not control the metadata standard.  If all you are writing is book and periodical citations you can use  which will most-of-the-time get it right.  If you want cs1 styling with that set cs1:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:14, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * If "issue=" isn't in the template people choose, they will simply leave out the issue number. That doesn't help the metadata aspect. What would be wonderful is, if someone adds "issue=" to cite book and saves or previews, for an error message to say (for a few seconds before disappearing): "Did you mean to use cite journal?" The problem with the templates is that they sometimes leave us baffled with no clear solution. Trappist, I don't know whether you do this work purely as a volunteer. If you do, you should consider going to meta and asking the WMF for a project grant. They give out grants for all kinds of (sometimes puzzling) things. What you're doing here is core work that a huge percentage of editors rely on. SarahSV (talk) 23:37, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I cannot even blame the generally unhelpful documentation for the OP's error. At some point, common sense should dictate that when you want to cite a journal, the template to use would likely be cite journal. No offense intended, but if one wants to use this citation system they should at least familiarize themselves with its components. Also, the error messaging described above is I'm afraid beyond the scope of this project. But even if it was, I don't think that the complexity of adding conditional error levels would justify the effort. 24.105.132.254 (talk) 15:26, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The thing that might be done for this particular condition would be to emit an error message when a periodical parameter is used with a non-periodical template. Having been nearly drawn and quartered at WP:AN for presuming to require periodical parameters in periodical templates does not make me enthusiastic about prohibiting periodical parameters in non-periodical templates.   Attempting to be helpful with Did you mean ... messaging as described would be complex and, I think, not really worth the effort.  We have page preview so that editors can inspect their work before they hit the Publish changes button.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * In the new and improved doc, an additional distinction? "Universal" vs. "Template-specific" parameters perhaps. Corresponding to the treatment of the underlying module arguments, so that aliases are properly identified for the benefit of the "higher" level citation writers. It seems the current monolithic presentation of parameters is not enough. 72.89.161.42 (talk) 21:33, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The thing that might be done for this particular condition would be to emit an error message when a periodical parameter is used with a non-periodical template. Having been nearly drawn and quartered at WP:AN for presuming to require periodical parameters in periodical templates does not make me enthusiastic about prohibiting periodical parameters in non-periodical templates.   Attempting to be helpful with Did you mean ... messaging as described would be complex and, I think, not really worth the effort.  We have page preview so that editors can inspect their work before they hit the Publish changes button.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * In the new and improved doc, an additional distinction? "Universal" vs. "Template-specific" parameters perhaps. Corresponding to the treatment of the underlying module arguments, so that aliases are properly identified for the benefit of the "higher" level citation writers. It seems the current monolithic presentation of parameters is not enough. 72.89.161.42 (talk) 21:33, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

what cite template should be used now for govt docs such as NRHP nominations?
WikiProject NRHP has 50,000 or so citations using "cite web" to National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) nomination/registration documents, from the 1970s until now. These are not "news" items nor are they "periodicals" or "journals". It has seemed best to use "cite web". For ones hosted by the National Park Service supposedly in Washington D.C., we include "publisher=National Park Service". For the same document hosted by a state website, we would include "publisher=State of Arkansas" or whatever. These documents exist, published or not, somewhere, for every NRHP listing. (Addition: Well, sometimes the document used to justify NRHP listing is on a different state or local form.) Sometimes they are not available anywhere online (especially archeological site ones). Some states like Louisiana and Arkansas and New York have their own separate systems making these available, and make decisions differently than does the National Park Service about which documents to make available, or what versions of them. For a long time New York State provided archeological site ones which were not redacted to conceal location information, while the National Park Service is more likely to provide redacted versions, if they provide anything at all. It seems to me that it is reasonable to say the "publisher" is the government entity that is putting forth, on the internet, the specific document that is linked. I don't think saying "website=State of Arkansas" would make sense, because the state government is not a website. And these documents are sometimes available in quite scattered places, often not just in one coherent "website".

Given recent changes to the CS templates, and/or recent decisions about displaying italics or not and using "website=" and "publisher=", or whatever, I am now completely unclear on what Wikipedia citation experts want for us to do now. I personally don't care what shows in italics or not; I'd just like to do whatever makes sense and does not show display errors. Help! What are we supposed to do, going forward? --Doncram (talk) 23:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Can you provide an example or three of these citations so that we all know what it is that you are talking about?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * what you need to do is exactly nothing save for waiting until Trappist the monk stops being dense, or that someone else with editing rights and LUA knowledge stops the nonsense going on with cite web and cite news. Your usage of the templates is most likely correct. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:44, 6 September 2019 (UTC)


 * (ec) Sure:
 * 1. Francis Rahrer House in Montana, has a fairly regular NRHP Registration document, available from the National Park Service:
 * 2. Joliet Bridge, also in Montana, is documented in a "Montana Historical and Archeological Inventory" form, in lieu of an official national NRHP form, but nonetheless served up by the National Park Service:
 * 3. Magnolia Petroleum Company Filling Station, in Arkansas, on a national NRHP form but available from (published by) the state, and not available from the national NRHP system.
 * 4. Muskegon Historic District, in Michigan. This reference should include "publisher=National Archives" but happens not to, and maybe it should include a note about photos it includes. Michigan NRHP docs are not ever available from the National Park Service, but they are mostly available now from the National Archives and Records Administration.
 * More and more files from states or from the National Park Service are being added to the National Archives, but it is better to cite the Texas-state-published version which loads quickly, say, rather than the slow/big National Archives version. Sometimes there are different versions of NRHP documents for one historic site available at different places, e.g. including photos or not, or including copies of correspondence from during the nomination process, or including copies of earlier local registration documents preceding a new NRHP registration. Sometimes a draft version may be available first and used in Wikipedia, from a temporary "Announcements of new listings in February 2019" page of a state's historical society, which I think should be noted as the "publisher". Which may disappear, before or after a "final" version shows up in some supposedly permanent location.


 * These are all government documents supposedly kept permanently, forever documenting why each listing was done. Note that most of us use the "title=" field to spell out the type of form and then a colon and then the name of the specific historic site. In our practice the "work=" field is rarely used, but I think some editors have used that to state "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination" and just put the name of individual site in the "title=" field. Also I don't mind if it might take us a long time to edit, using a bot or manually, all our references over into any "better" citation format, if there is one. --Doncram (talk) 00:05, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, the 4th one above used template:citation rather than template:cite web.
 * Hmm, there does exist cite report, which i've never considered using. Its intro documentation says it is for government documents and mentions "title=", "url=", and "publisher=" fields without mentioning the problematic/difficult-for-me-to-understand "website=" field. So if we switched from "cite web" to "cite report" maybe we would not get the current display problems? But much further down in the documentation, it is mentioned that "website=" is an allowable field.
 * Lemme try those same four references, just changing to "cite report" from "cite web":


 * Okay, hey, there are no display errors currently! (is that because previous changes have been rolled back or because this is cite report now rather than cite web? hmm, now the previous ones using "cite web" show no problems, either) So WikiProject NRHP could conceivably change their 50,000 or so references to use "cite report", and get out of whatever are the current issues, perhaps?  These references do each include display of the term "(Report)" which seems non-helpful, not exactly applicable.  These docs are documentations of historicity, usually submitted voluntarily; it is maybe a stretch to call them "Reports", as if they are the results of a required or requested study/report on whatever.  I wonder if that element of display can be turned off?  When I have seen NRHP documents cited outside of Wikipedia, I have NEVER EVER seen '(Report)' randomly included. --Doncram (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Partially rolled back. --Izno (talk) 04:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Cite report oddity: please drop display of "(Report)"
Well, although the error displays are gone now in all versions, I am still open to the idea that the NRHP documents are fundamentally "reports", suitable for "cite report", and should not have been using "cite web". In fact sometimes I want to refer to one of these which is only available offline, and "cite web" then shows errors, i.e. if "url=" is blank. And whatever is the philosophical issue with "cite web" that makes some want to require a "website=" field, may really be valid, despite some rollback just done. Perhaps it is more correct to remove the NRHP docs from the "cite web" world. But, it remains that "cite report" inserts display of "(Report)" into the reference. I have NEVER EVER seen that done in any non-Wikipedia citation of government documents, so that seems just awkward and wrong, and I would like to remove it from "cite report". Else it sorta seems "cite report" cannot be used. Although I must confess i don't know how often it has been used in practice, or for what types of government documents it is used without editors' objections. This is the forum to discuss changes in cite report though, right? I hereby request the change of dropping default display of "(Report)" or at least being allowed to turn that off. --Doncram (talk) 05:49, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Cite report defaults the type parameter to "Report". You can choose to set it to another value if you have a preferable one:  outputs.
 * As for the rest of your text, yes, if these are occasionally or even usually offline-only, it would be better to select one of the other cite templates. I thought cite document might be available, but that unfortunately redirects to cite journal. --Izno (talk) 05:59, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * is supposed to render with the type preset to .  You will also notice that the report title is not quoted.  You can prevent the rendering of the   annotation by setting none.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:16, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow, thank you very much, Izno and Trappist the monk. This probably should be used for NRHP docs, I am thinking.  I wouldn't want to include "(Registration)" or any other word that way, given how I/we have been including the title of the form (which usually includes "Registration" or "Inventory-Nomination") in the title= field already.  I note that the documentation at Cite report does not mention this "type=" usage at all.  It uses the word "type" in several ways, including one mention which should probably wikilink to some detail about this type of type somewhere else, i.e. probably to para which where Trappist the Monk pipelinks to just now.  And the documentation should be expanded a little to cover this, which maybe I can try to do, within Template:Cite report/doc.
 * Just testing now with "type=none" for the four NRHP doc examples.
 * Just testing now with "type=none" for the four NRHP doc examples.


 * In preview mode, I can see that seems to work fine. Okay, good, I think I am convinced that using "cite report" is better for NRHP documents, and I will advocate for switchover (though that could take a long time, perhaps years).  It seems better because it is not asserting/implying the source is a website, with all that entails, when in fact it is just a single document that happens to be available on the internet, at one or more URLs.  This should take NRHP docs away from the concerns about what "cite web" should display for real websites.  And this allows uniform treatment of many NRHP docs which are available only off-line, too, for which "url=" will be blank.  Maybe NRHP editors can be involved constructively in developing "cite report" going forward, e.g. perhaps for explicit presentation of multiple urls with same or slightly varying versions of a document, providing backup when the National Park Service's website or other sources are down, which happens often.  Thank you all for your assistance! (Do any NRHP editors have concerns? I will ask at wt:NRHP.) --Doncram (talk) 22:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

template styles is broken?
Yesterday when I decided to hide the deprecated parameter and missing periodical error messages, I thought that just switching the error conditions  value from   to   would be sufficient. It wasn't so I implemented a brute force method in Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities that did work. I have undone the brute force method in the sandbox. This very simple template should not be showing an error message:

The module clearly thinks that the error message should be hidden because it has added class  to the wrapping span. The old show-every-error css in my common.css is commented out so that isn't it. @Izno, you're more knowledgeable about css than I, any ideas?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:05, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * What TemplateStyles does is de-duplicate rather than 'cascade'. That means we must be sensitive to where we are testing the CSS. In phab:T200441 I requested and got a way to do so. Here is a sandbox with the issue:
 * And one I think should be without:
 * But I have to save this to see if this works the way I think it does. --Izno (talk) 12:56, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * So, the above works (apparently with/without adding a custom class? bizarre). I had to remove my personal CSS. You are still seeing them? --Izno (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Just to play separately, should display nothing. --Izno (talk) 13:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, so, I can confirm that TemplateStyles isn't broken (by doing some fun inverse testing). The issue, as I thought might be the case, is that you have global CSS (presumably to help other wikis). See meta:User:Trappist_the_monk/global.css. --Izno (talk) 14:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Just to follow up, the wrapper element on the sandbox template must be removed when you sync to live in the general case. But otherwise, it can provide for same-page/side-by-side testing simply by wrapping the sandbox template in an element with the class you specify as the wrapper class (see second example above). --Izno (talk) 14:10, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the global css was it (this is why global variables in Lua are bad). Thanks.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the global css was it (this is why global variables in Lua are bad). Thanks.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Wrapper
@Izno: What does do? What happens when that module is copied to Module:Citation/CS1?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:07, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * See my follow up above; it must be removed each time you go to sync to the sandbox. I was thinking on the way in to work that there is a more elegant way to do this like we have today with the other sandbox lines. But it does allow us to sandbox CSS changes on the same page as a non-sandbox template. --Izno (talk) 12:44, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Where is the templatestyles wrapper parameter documented?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The only place it is documented is the task linked in phab:T200441. It should probably also be documented on the extension/help pages on Mediawiki.org, but is not. --Izno (talk) 16:37, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I've reopened that task. Likely it will be promptly closed without action but I can always hope ...
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:48, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

TemplateData and IABot and website param
IABot (User:InternetArchiveBot / ) reads and respects TemplateData specifically Template:Cite_web/doc. Recently it was changed that website is "required". As a result IABot automatically adds an empty website to every template it touches. Example. It also adds website when a newspaper already exists thus creating a duplication. Example. I'm not sure what to do as there are multiple issues but want to bring it to the attention what is occurring. -- Green  C  13:44, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Your first example is difficult, because it may also involve publisher. The second is easier. If cite news is used, use newspaper. If is used, use website. Both stand for the same thing (the work), therefore the module ignores additional instances of the same argument. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 14:15, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * website is no longer required per the AN thread closure. Does that resolve this issue, GC? – Levivich 14:27, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Adding empty parameters is just proliferating clutter. IABot, and any other tool, should not do that.  As for the TemplateData, if it's broke, fix it.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I reverted the change to TemplateData done September 3. Please discuss before re-adding. Given how powerful TemplateData can impact automated tools it is surprising it is not locked like templates. IABot has added thousands of empty and duplicate parameters in the past 5 days. -- Green  C  14:47, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Before you posted this I did not know that IABot uses TemplateData. Perhaps Editor Cyberpower678 should document what is used and how it is used at  and the other cs1|2 templates that IABot interacts with so that editors can be aware of that usage.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:21, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I added a warning banner and linked to a new section Help:Citation_Style_1 to document. Feel free to adjust as needed. --  Green  C  16:00, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , oh that’s just the beginning. In IABot v2.1, it will parse the CS1|2 configuration page and self-update which parameters to use. — CYBERPOWER  ( Chat ) 18:56, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration is much less susceptible to changes made by well-meaning editors who may or may not have a good grasp of the consequences of their edits. Anyone can edit templatedata, not so with ~/Configuration.  When can we expect IABot 2.1?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:09, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , I would caution any bot operator against programming a bot to be dependent on the contents of an unprotected page. TemplateData code typically lives on unprotected documentation pages (don't get me started; see Trappist's valid rant elsewhere on this page for views similar to mine). It sounds like you are moving toward making IABot dependent on the actual module code; let us know here if you need assistance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Question about use of cite journal for academic/scientific papers
Template:Cite journal is for "citations for academic and scientific papers and journals." When citing a paper that appears in a journal, I agree that the citation should contain the journal name in the journal parameter. The new Cite journal requires |journal= error and corresponding Category:CS1 errors: missing periodical will help us find (and fix) these. However, what's the proper solution for academic and scientific papers that were not published in a journal? For example, see the citations in 2 Andromedae, 46,XX testicular disorders of sex development, 5 Lacertae, and 54 Piscium. I tried using cite paper, but that just redirects to cite journal and retains the error message. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:15, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

P.S. I find that some errors should be fixed by changing cite journal to cite report or cite thesis when the cited material is a report or thesis, but don't want to use those templates incorrectly just to make an error go away. GoingBatty (talk) 03:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Running citation bot will often deal with those errors. In the case of 46,XX testicular disorders of sex development, I believe GeneReviews is a database, so a cite web / cite encyclopedia would be appropriate. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:48, 9 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Can you be specific as to which references are academic papers which were not published in a journal, and which aren’t a thesis or a report? I’m not sure which citation examples you have in mind. Umimmak (talk) 03:50, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Headbomb kindly fixed 2 Andromedae reference #5 with Citation bot in this edit.
 * I fixed 46,XX testicular disorders of sex development reference #2 by changing it to cite web per Headbomb's suggestion in this edit
 * Headbomb kindly fixed 5 Lacertae reference #10 with Citation bot in this edit.
 * Headbomb kindly fixed 54 Piscium reference #4 by changing it to cite book in this edit. GoingBatty (talk) 04:09, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The second reference seems to be mixing the authors of the article and the editors of the whole work. Using editor parameters with cite web leaves the title in a strange place with repect to the authors. cite journal produces the same result. The NCBI seem to treat GeneReviews like an online book and suggest the following citation:
 * Délot EC, Vilain EJ. Nonsyndromic 46,XX Testicular Disorders of Sex Development. 2003 Oct 30 [Updated 2015 May 7]. In: Adam MP, Ardinger HH, Pagon RA, et al., editors. GeneReviews® [Internet]. Seattle (WA): University of Washington, Seattle; 1993-2019. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1416/
 * This can be most closely matched with cite book and chapter.
 * There is also the issue of how to handle the "last updated" part. Tagging it on at the end (as now) seems inappropriate and is it necessary with the access date given?  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * There is also the issue of how to handle the "last updated" part. Tagging it on at the end (as now) seems inappropriate and is it necessary with the access date given?  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Seeking advice
Can anyone advise how I can write this with cite book?


 * Stouck, David (1993). "Introduction", in Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine. The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. xvii.

This is where Cather and Milmine are the book's authors, not the editors. SarahSV (talk) 01:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not quite the same, but
 * produces
 * —David Eppstein (talk) 02:01, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi David, thanks for that. The only problem is that it introduces a different citation style. I don't know how difficult it would be to edit the template so that using "contributor=" doesn't move the authors to the end. SarahSV (talk) 04:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * ??? The author of the item you cite is in the correct place, right at the beginning, followed by the next important thing, the item itself. As one reads the citation, it can be seen that this item is not the actual source, i.e. in order to easily find it, one has to look for something else. The actual source is emphasized for clarity. And the source's author ("by") is right after. David Eppstein's rendering is the correct one. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:37, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The rearranged order and flagging with "By" were originally introduced to mark the difference between an authored book and edited one, but are no longer necessary as editors are now marked with (ed.)/(eds.). I would also suggest that "Introduction" should be removed from the list of special contributions that are dequoted, yielding a more consistent layout:
 * Stouck, David (1993). "Introduction". In Cather, Willa; Milmine, Georgine. The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. xvii.
 * which is closer to the format you wanted. Kanguole 09:04, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The rearranged order and flagging with "By" were originally introduced to mark the difference between an authored book and edited one, but are no longer necessary as editors are now marked with (ed.)/(eds.). This is not so. There are obvious semantic differences between contributions in an authored book vs an edited one. The rationale for adding the contributor params in the templates was laid out in several posts through the years. One impetus was the relative obscurity and complexity of harvc. The reason Introduction is not in quotes is because it is considered a standard part of a book (see front matter and back matter). The module strips the quotes. Similarly, one would not quote "Table of Contents", or "Index". However, if the Introduction was titled, then it is properly quoted, as in "Introduction: My Wonderful Introduction". 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:50, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , yes, that's roughly what I'm looking for. How do we make that happen? SarahSV (talk) 00:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * 72.43.99.138, we should be able to do with the templates what we do manually. We often need the kind of citation I've written above, and since starting to use templates (relatively recently), I've had to do it manually. An author might write a chapter in a book otherwise authored by others, where the latter are named as authors not editors. Or one of the main authors might write a chapter on her own that needs to be highlighted for some reason.
 * As for "Introduction" not being in quotes, there's no difference between that and a chapter title. In the introduction above, David Stouck explains over 14 pages why Willa Cather is named as an author, whereas in earlier editions she wasn't. It's an essay or chapter with the title "Introduction". SarahSV (talk) 00:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * we should be able to do with the templates what we do manually. No.  By their very nature templates are / can / will  be as flexible as manual, free-form-text citations.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * SarahSV: changing the formatting would need an RFC, but might be possible now that (ed.)/(eds.) has been added.
 * "Introduction" is something of a borderline case. The MLA style, for example, treats it similarly to "Preface", "Foreword" and "Afterword" and presents it unquoted in contrast to descriptive chapter names.  Kanguole 10:46, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Any element that doesn't have a title by definition cannot be in quotation marks, because there is nothing to quote. In contrast, when one cites "Preface: A really good preface" one literally quotes from the work. The Preface in that work is named (a name that may or may not include the word "Preface") and, if it is the element cited, it should be presented accordingly. Otherwise, might as well quote page numbers too. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 14:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * SarahSV: changing the formatting would need an RFC, but might be possible now that (ed.)/(eds.) has been added.
 * "Introduction" is something of a borderline case. The MLA style, for example, treats it similarly to "Preface", "Foreword" and "Afterword" and presents it unquoted in contrast to descriptive chapter names.  Kanguole 10:46, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Any element that doesn't have a title by definition cannot be in quotation marks, because there is nothing to quote. In contrast, when one cites "Preface: A really good preface" one literally quotes from the work. The Preface in that work is named (a name that may or may not include the word "Preface") and, if it is the element cited, it should be presented accordingly. Otherwise, might as well quote page numbers too. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 14:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Omitting "website=" for simple, one page sites
A page I've cited a lot is https://dadgum.com/giantlist/. It's a single-page database of programmers for early video games. Most of the citations of this I've seen set "title", but not "website", because it isn't clear what the website tag should be. The same as the title? The domain name? Both of those are redundant. Feels like this is a legitimate reason to omit "website" without having a warning displayed. Dgpop (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , you can use "Programming in the Twenty-first Century", "Halcyon Days", "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers" for.
 * --- Coffee  and crumbs  16:58, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You can also add . --- Coffee  and crumbs  17:01, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * You can also add . --- Coffee  and crumbs  17:01, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Some change was made to cite web that I think has to do with this discussion thread. An article I made a few days back, Eddie Picken, now shows several red error messages in the references section, stating "cite web requires | website = (help)". Someone please fix this citation template back. SportsGuy789 (talk) 17:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * This is currently being discussed at WP:AN, I would place your input there before making any edits. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Good to know. This appears to be the current source of the problem. Dgpop (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * ye, seems silly with the element |=website, coming up on red on thousands of articles, can we reverse this fix? Govvy (talk) 17:45, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , for that particular example, I'd take dadgum.com as the overall website, which has a number of pages. The website parameter is for the name of the website, most often that's found in the html "title" on the home index page of the site. In this case, going to https://dadgum.com/, it's "Dadgum Games". I think it should be:
 * I don't really understand the other example, or the use of via, suggested above.
 * On the other hand, it's a good point, because there are many true single-page websites, where the title of the page and the name of the website are the same. If both parameters are now required, it will be redundant. --IamNotU (talk) 23:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing hundreds of "cite web requires website=" error messages in article references that were previously non-problematic. Category:CS1 errors: missing periodical has over 100,000 of them (I think this is where these errors are being listed). I don't think that this has been adequately discussed. Please reverse. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, it's a good point, because there are many true single-page websites, where the title of the page and the name of the website are the same. If both parameters are now required, it will be redundant. --IamNotU (talk) 23:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing hundreds of "cite web requires website=" error messages in article references that were previously non-problematic. Category:CS1 errors: missing periodical has over 100,000 of them (I think this is where these errors are being listed). I don't think that this has been adequately discussed. Please reverse. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * , someone has made a change that is causing lots of error messages. For example, if we use publisher= in cite news, it says we have to use newspaper, work etc. For example, the following now causes an error message: . Publisher is often appropriate in cite web too. Please undo that change. SarahSV (talk) 20:54, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
 * If that's a citation to a story on the BBC News website, it seems like a good example of what not to do. It should be instead. See the RFC here that was closed at 15:49, 26 August 2019 (UTC). —BarrelProof (talk) 23:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * See, my feeling is that BBC News is an organization and should not be italicized. For instance: CBS News is an organization. CBS Evening News is a TV program. Italicizing CBS News gives a factual misimpression, and why would we want to do that? When CBS News and CBS Evening News are treated differently in the real world, I'm not sure what's gained by eccentrically and confusingly treating them the same in Wikipedia.--Tenebrae (talk) 23:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * CBS News is an organization, and if you go to that organization's website, the website is named CBS News. Wikipedia's style is that the names of websites in references are italicized. It wouldn't be italicized in text, but it is in a reference. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 00:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, WP:CITESTYLE says "Wikipedia does not [emphasis added] have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. A number of citation styles exist [emphasis added] including those described in the Wikipedia articles for Citation, APA style, ASA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Author-date referencing, the Vancouver system and Bluebook." The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, does not italicize website names. --Tenebrae (talk) 01:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * And one of the styles that can be used on Wikipedia is called WP:Citation Style 1, what we are talking about is how Citation Style 1 is formatted. In Citation Style 1, website names, such as CNN and CBS News and Reuters, are rendered in italics. If you want to use a different style instead of using Citation Style 1, that is permitted (provided that the style is consistent within the article). —BarrelProof (talk) 05:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I understand. Yet there's no alternative cite style that doesn't automatically italicize the field ... and Citation Style 1 doesn't allow markup to de-italicize. So for all intents and purposes, it prevents Chicago Manual of Style from being used. And yes, we're not required to use citation templates, but editors regularly take footnotes not using a template and put them into a template, so that really doesn't work. Citation Style 1 needs to allow markup for flexibility — or else we've have, in any practical sense, forbidden Chicago Manual of Style to be used. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Review of current release process and suggestion of improvements
The recent discussion is a manifestation of the reaction to an enWp-wide impact of a change in this module. Trying to make a summary, the public reaction were basically triggered by these:


 * The release notes didn't cover all changes introduced.
 * Some changes were not presented with enough impact analysis.
 * What may have been intended or understood as catching an obvious error turned out to be of wide-spread impact and high visibility.
 * Some changes were based on RfC/consensus that were later seen as misinterpreted or misused.
 * Due to this, when introduced the change was perceived as "out of the blue" and "agenda-driven".

Looking back to learn from this event is not so much about the exact conditions of this event, but what can be made to minimized the risk of similar protests again.

This may not be the most urgent action just now, but it is important to get your view of what lead to the situation. Please address it when time permits.

I'm starting this topic as you said you considered in AN. Please help moderate it and invite relevant participants. JAGulin (talk) 11:50, 7 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Let me add, that the concern about changes in "cite web" was widespread perhaps in part because of inappropriate use of "cite web", which probably should be about sources that are real websites. A sensible change for treating website sources causes errors for sources that are not properly websites, but are using "cite web" anyhow.  See  (a discussion section currently located above on this page), where Izno and Trappist the monk are helpful, and where I come to conclusion that all 50,000 plus NRHP documents cited in Wikipedia should be taken out of the "cite web" domain, and moved over to more proper "cite report" usage (appropriate for government documents).  Maybe other big chunks of current "cite web" usage should be moved out, too, such as World Health Organization reports. --Doncram (talk) 23:14, 7 September 2019 (UTC) 02:20, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , there's often no need to specify "website=" in cite web. Supreme Court of the United States is not the name of a creative work (in this case a website) in We could add "supremecourt.gov", but it's superfluous and italicizing it looks odd. Most websites don't have names, i.e. there is no title to italicize. That seems to be the issue some template editors are struggling with. SarahSV (talk) 01:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * This template editor is not struggling. Supreme Court of the United States is the eponymous electronic publication (website) of the government entity that is Supreme Court of the United States, the publisher.  It is, really, just that simple.
 * creative work? What does that really mean?  Whatever it is, it is, I think, a poorly chosen term that, at best, is wholly subjective.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Saying a website is a publication is like saying a library is a publication. – Levivich 15:10, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Really? That is a stretch.  How do you figure?
 * There are online locations, archive.org for one, that hold facsimiles of whole books. Were you citing On the Origin of Species at archive.org, you wouldn't use  and website.  Instead, you would use  and Internet Archive.  archive.org, in this case, could be considered to be like a library.  Regular websites like those published by World Health Organization, Supreme Court of the United States, Sears, corporate and governmental organizations recently mentioned, are not like libraries.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:39, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Is Google the eponymous name of a publication (google.com) published by Google? If so, how do you determine which edition of the publication you're citing, since this "publication" is updated in real-time? Suppose I want to cite to a card in my library's card catalog. Is the card catalog at Anytown Public Library a publication called Anytown Public Library or Anytown Public Library Card Catalog? Or is it "Card catalog, Anytown Public Library"? Suppose I cite to Episode 1 of the YouTube channel PewDiePie. Is PewDiePie the publication, or is it YouTube? And if PDP is the publication, then what does that make YouTube? The publication's publication? Unnamed != eponymous; to say otherwise is to invent a rule. To say that the same website is sometimes a publication with a name (PewDiePie), and sometimes an eponymous publication (YouTube, when it's, say, the YouTube About Us page), is also just inventing a rule. If YouTube.com is not the publication YouTube when I'm citing to YouTube.com/PewDiePie, then it's also not the publication YouTube when I'm citing YouTube.com/AboutUs. Unless the publication changes its name depending on what part of the publication you're reading? – Levivich 16:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * If you mean citing Google search results that are updated in real-time, what would be the purpose of citing the results if the results can change moment to moment? Still, I'll bite.  You might archive a snapshot of the Google search results, give them some sort of title, perhaps the search string, and set Google.
 * cs1|2 is a general purpose citation system with some specialized templates. There isn't a cs1 template to cite the card in your local library's card catalog.  You'll have to cite that manually.
 * This whole discussion is about website in . Citing a PewDiePie episode or any other AV media is best done with the appropriate templates  which, not being, are out of scope here.  If you want to cite something on the YouTube/About page with  then: YouTube.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * If YouTube.com is not the publication YouTube when I'm citing to YouTube.com/PewDiePie [with cite episode], then it's also not the publication YouTube when I'm citing YouTube.com/AboutUs [with cite web], because the website YouTube.com either is, or is not, a publication. It can't be a publication when you cite one of its pages (/About Us), but not a publication when you cite a different page (/PewDiePie). – Levivich 17:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please do not put words into my mouth that I have not spoken. Your use of  (Talk quote inline) implies that all of the green text in the first sentence of your post originates with me.  It does not.  Please don't do that again.
 * Earlier I provided the example of a facsimile of On the Origin of Species at archive.org. Here is one such facsimile.  Clearly, the publisher is D. Appleton and Company, not archive.org.  archive.org is the deliverer so for these kinds of citations, Internet Archive in .  If you were citing what archive.org has to say about the Political TV Ad Archive on its projects page, then Internet Archive in .  So too with PewDiePie (author / publisher) and YouTube (deliverer) using an appropriate cs1 template; YouTube/About with  and YouTube.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this argument inadvertently shows the inherent inconsistency of treating all websites as "electronic publications," which is term Trappist the monk did use. The very same entity being italicized in one footnote but not in another footnote is an eccentricity I've never seen followed in any other footnoting style — in which something either is or isn't a publication. YouTube, the entity, doesn't magically change back and forth. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * For those platforms like archive.org that host both their own and others' content, how you use the name (in this case 'Internet Archive') identifies the role of the host. When the publication is their own content, then Internet Archive (italicized); when hosting content belonging to someone else (a hosted publisher's publication) the Internet Archive (not italicized).  Two adjacent citations rendering   differently?  You can see at a glance the role played by the host.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That is an eccentric citation style I don't believe is used anywhere outside Wikipedia. And one can see the role played simply by whether there is the "via=" parameter, so we don't need to use eccentric citations.--Tenebrae (talk) 23:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this argument inadvertently shows the inherent inconsistency of treating all websites as "electronic publications," which is term Trappist the monk did use. The very same entity being italicized in one footnote but not in another footnote is an eccentricity I've never seen followed in any other footnoting style — in which something either is or isn't a publication. YouTube, the entity, doesn't magically change back and forth. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * For those platforms like archive.org that host both their own and others' content, how you use the name (in this case 'Internet Archive') identifies the role of the host. When the publication is their own content, then Internet Archive (italicized); when hosting content belonging to someone else (a hosted publisher's publication) the Internet Archive (not italicized).  Two adjacent citations rendering   differently?  You can see at a glance the role played by the host.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That is an eccentric citation style I don't believe is used anywhere outside Wikipedia. And one can see the role played simply by whether there is the "via=" parameter, so we don't need to use eccentric citations.--Tenebrae (talk) 23:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposed module change: change static text relative to presentation of person roles, and related error message
The discussion "Seeking advice" on this page prompted a look at how the module presents some person roles (author, contributor and editor). I believe current presentation is confusing in a couple of cases. If memory serves, this has been remarked on before.


 * The examples below use cite book, but the template application is immaterial.
 * 1. A book by an author, book edited by an editor
 * displays:  - OK
 * 2. A chapter in a book by an author
 * displays: - OK
 * 3. A chapter in a book by an author, book edited by an editor
 * displays: - NOT OK. I believe the editor role should be presented as in #1.
 * 4. A contribution in a book by an author
 * displays: - OK
 * 5. A contribution in a book by an author, book edited by an editor
 * displays: - OK
 * 6. A contribution in a collection supervised by an editor
 * displays: - NOT OK. I believe that there should be no error, and the static text should include "In" editor. "Author" is not really relevant here. "In editor" should be enough to show this as an edited collection of contributions.
 * 7. A contribution in a book by many authors, book edited by an editor
 * displays: - OK
 * displays: - OK
 * 6. A contribution in a collection supervised by an editor
 * displays: - NOT OK. I believe that there should be no error, and the static text should include "In" editor. "Author" is not really relevant here. "In editor" should be enough to show this as an edited collection of contributions.
 * 7. A contribution in a book by many authors, book edited by an editor
 * displays: - OK
 * displays: - OK
 * displays: - OK

72.43.99.130 (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * There seem to be two proposed changes here (3 and 6).
 * In 3, it is not clear what presentation is desired.
 * As for 6, I agree that contribution should be allowed with editor. That would allow us to present citations of separately-authored prefaces of edited books in a consistent way to those of authored books.  In fact, I would make contribution an alias of chapter.  (Other changes would be required for full consistency, though).  Kanguole 18:29, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Does CMS or any other style guide with citations similar to ours provide guidance on this issue? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * For #3, what is asked is to omit "In", instead to reserve this for edited collections. Somewhat related to #6, where "In" would signify that the editor in such cases acts more as a curator, like the supervisory editor of an encyclopedia or the senior editor of a collection of research papers. Recently, there have been additional comments at . 108.182.15.109 (talk) 12:05, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * But #3 does designate an author's chapter in an edited collection. Kanguole 12:43, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * That is a book by a single author, edited by an editor. In an edited collection, the editor usually determines the collection's roster of contributors and/or selects their works. As remarked, s/he acts more as a curator. The contributors are "in" hers/his collection. 108.182.15.109 (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * No, #3 really is a chapter in an edited collection of chapters by different authors, not an authored book. You have misunderstood what that form is used for, which is apparently the source of our disagreements above. Kanguole 13:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that any citation of a chapter in a book that has an editor (that's practically all of them) must necessarily mean that the work in question is an edited collection? Why? 108.182.15.109 (talk) 13:19, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that we use form #3 for authored chapters in edited collections, e.g. the sixth example in Template:Cite book/doc (a bit like APA citation style). Kanguole 13:24, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Aren't "authored chapters in edited collections"... contributions? #3 cites a chapter in a book by a single author. For any or no reason, the writer of the citation has decided to add the book's editor, as s/he has a right to do. This form has been used extensively for the purpose. How else would you cite a chapter in a book by a single author? 108.182.15.109 (talk) 13:46, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * They are indeed contributions, but chapter was in use for separately-authored parts of edited collections for a long time before contribution was introduced for separately-authored parts of authored books (with inconsistent formatting, as I've said above). You are simply mistaken about how this form of the template is used.  Kanguole 14:07, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * chapter was in use for separately-authored parts of edited collections for a long time before contribution was introduced. That is one of the reasons the contributor (vs. author) parameter-group was introduced, to distinguish then from citations of chapters in single-authored or multi-authored books. A collection however is not a book with many authors. It does have separately authored . But no single author can take credit for the entire work, that is the job of the editor who assembled the collection. 108.182.15.109 (talk) 14:19, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Better explanation for "website" parameter in docs
Seems like there may soon be a very large number of new website parameters added to existing citations... Reading many of the recent comments, it's apparent that there's still a fairly widespread belief that website is for a simplified URL, like "example.com", rather than a name like "Example Domain", most often found in the HTML on the home index.html page. See for example this comment and its followups:.

The current documentation is a little sparse:
 * website (required): Title of website; may be wikilinked. Displays in italics. Aliases: work.

and:

Title (name) of the website (or its short URL if no plain-language title is discernible); may be wikilinked; will display in italics. Having both 'publisher' and 'website' is redundant in many cases.

Example
 * Rotten Tomatoes

Would it be beneficial to add something along the lines of:


 * website (required): Title of website; may be wikilinked. Displays in italics. Aliases: work. This is a plain-language title or name of the overall website, often found in the HTML element of the main home index page, displayed in the browser's window or tab title. For instance, at the website https://example.com, it is Example Domain. If no title is discernible, a short URL may be used. If publisher is substantially the same as website, then publisher should be omitted.

and/or:

Title (name) of the website (or its short URL if no plain-language title is discernible); may be wikilinked; will display in italics. Often found in the browser tab or window title on the home page of a website. Having both 'publisher' and 'website' is redundant in many cases; if so, 'publisher' should be omitted.

Example
 * Rotten Tomatoes

? --IamNotU (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * simply defines the title of the HTML document, typically the title of the tab in your browser, which may or may not be the actual name of the website. For instance, on Rotten Tomatoes it is actually . I am under the impression that there are other tags specifically for this purpose:,  and . On Rotten Tomatoes it is  . I use User:V111P/js/WebRef which is pretty good at fetching the correct name of the website. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:07, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think that things like RefToolbar/2.0 are the reason for is for a simplified URL, like "example.com" and that the reason why the documentation is so vague is because it is not actually a very useful parameter that also combines several not-always-related pieces of information.
 * We need a discussion or RfC to decide how website should work. In some cases, the website is also the publisher; in others it is merely a platform where the material published by someone else is hosted. The correct way would be to make publisher be the essential parameter and website an optional one for when one is getting the info from another website than that of the publisher per WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:46, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the /doc page needs to explain it better. Even the #Examples section at the various cite templates are not self-consistent, sometimes using an English website name ('Encyclopaedia of Things') and sometimes using the domain name ('NFL.com').
 * Meta property 'og:sitename' is not standard HTML; it's part of Open Graph Protocol a proprietary property in a framework used for social media (Facebook, primarily, and others). 'Title' is standard Html since the beginning, and is often a good choice for |title=, and *sometimes* for website. Agree with Jo-Jo, that it's sometimes this, and sometimes that; in organizations with many nested levels (governmental, or large private or public orgs) it can be very unclear what the 'website' really is.  Because of this, making it mandatory is a bad idea, imho, because you will get editors of all different levels trying to decide what it is for a given page on the web, and coming up with ten different answers for the exact same url (except for the simple cases). A lot more thought needs to be put into this. Mathglot (talk) 09:58, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , you're right about Citoid/RefToolbar slapping a short URL into website by default, that's quite counterproductive and misleading., the NFL example is unclear, because "NFL.com" is actually the website name of http://nfl.com, as opposed to "www.nfl.com" that Citoid generates - a lot of sites are branded that way. On the other hand, the URL given in that example, http://www.nfl.com/rulebook/digestofrules, is now a dead link that redirects to https://operations.nfl.com/ - the website name there is "NFL Football Operations"... --IamNotU (talk) 10:26, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * PS, I just updated that NFL example... --IamNotU (talk) 10:40, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , thanks, yes I did mention the "og:site_name" in the thread I linked above as being helpful when present, but it's part of Facebook's open graph scheme and not universally used. I also noted the fact that the HTML title of the home page typically includes the website name, but also includes things like the word "home" etc., which the editor has to figure out. What I'd like to do is give people better clues about what and where to look for the most appropriate value for website, not to say definitively "this is it", because it's sometimes not straightforward.
 * Btw., the tag is a generic way to associate a name with a set of values as metadata, "name" is an attribute of the tag, which is the name of the variable. You could define for example,, but there's no standard for that.  doesn't exist, there's only , which like  goes in the  of the html, and is metadata, defining the name of the page as you noted. Again, by convention the name of the home page usually includes (often among other things) the name of the website itself, but there's no real standard. --IamNotU (talk) 10:03, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I have no issue either with short version of domain (as currently auto-populated by a number of tools), stylized with capitals or even spaces as desired (cnn.com, CNN.com, The New York Times.com) or with some other stylized name perhaps matching the name of the publisher as they so often name their website after the company in the interest of branding (CNN). Today if we talk about a website, sometimes we use the TLD and sometimes not. An example is Overstock.com (to use a favorite out of Wikipedia history). I also find this way of describing things easier for a lot of the same people who have heartburn about the italics--Overstock.com is the name of the work or website, Overstock is its owning company (I presume; just an example). I also know some sites lend themselves through branding away from the TLD and toward the name of the work i.e. the big social media sites are Facebook and Twitter and rarely include the .com in discussion today. Sometimes of course we have the name of a journalistic entity like The New York Times for which zero people have heartburn italicizing even if it's the web resource which was accessed rather than a paper copy.
 * I had some commentary in the context of the italics RFC that would be worth reading as well.
 * I do agree we should beef up the description of the parameter for cite web/citation with website regardless. I think from a bare-bones, fill-in the parameter sense, it should say "you should at least have the domain and TLD" (couched in non-technical terms as desired). If the website has an obvious name, that is preferred but not required.
 * I was playing around with some "personal" websites yesterday for which I do not know if there is an easy answer, but I think those are sufficiently edge-case primary/non-independent sources that don't need a whole lot of thought in this context. --Izno (talk) 13:18, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * It is better for any guidance to match the way a verifier searches for the source. If someone tells me something was on the New York Times website, I will input "New York Times" on my favorite search engine. What comes up first, is most likely a promotional page. Under it though one sees "The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia". This is the page's html &lt;title>. It can be abbreviated to "The New York Times" when entered as the website without any semantic or cosmetic loss. If I search for "NFL", one of the top results is the actual website. The website's landing page's title is "NFL.com - Official Site of the National Football League" - that is also what the pertinent search result is. Again, what comes after the dash can be omitted. So I don't think we have to agonize much about which html property is best. Just use the website's title as it comes up on a real-world search. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Since the heading of this thread is "Better explanation for "website" parameter in docs" I will confine my comments to how the existing behavior could be documented, not how the parameter ought to behave.

The value of the website parameter is the title of the website, as assigned by the publisher (sometimes the author is also the publisher). The publisher is the entity responsible for the content of the website, not a web hosting service or the like.

As mentioned in other posts, it is tempting to look to the HTML title element for the title of the website. The current HTML 5 standard describes this element as "The title element represents the document's title or name. Authors should use titles that identify their documents even when they are used out of context, for example in a user's history or bookmarks, or in search results. The document's title is often different from its first heading, since the first heading does not have to stand alone when taken out of context. [Internal links omitted]"

But just as Wikipedia editors often are ignorant of, or defy, the documentation of parameters, website publishers often put stuff in this parameter that looks nice in a browser tab, but is not a suitable title. Furthermore, just as book publishers often display the title of books in all kinds of crazy ways on the book jacket or cover, the website publisher may display the real website title in all kinds of ways, and in various levels of the website hierarchy. It may be difficult for the Wikipedia editor to discern what the real title is.

The Wikipedia editor should inspect the website to discern what the title of the website is, using a degree of flexibility similar to the way the editor would inspect a book jacket to discern a book title. The website title should be a word or phrase that actually appears on the website. A phrase composed by the editor is a description, not a title, and is not supported by citation templates (although many printed style manuals allow a description instead of a title, with appropriate typography to inform the reader that it is not a literal title.) If the website title cannot be determined, some template other than "cite web" or "cite news" should be used, or the citation should be written without the use of templates.

The website publisher may, for branding purposes, decide to adopt a short version of the URL as the title of the website, and may also choose the shortened URL as the official name of the publisher's corporation, or may do business under the shortened URL. The shortened URL may be used as the value of the website parameter if and only if the publisher is using it as the title of the website, which is something the Wikipedia editor will have to discern by inspecting the website. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok,, since you have strong opinions on your belief that a snippet of text available on the web can only be part of a larger entity, a web site, and not be a standalone source in and of itself, let me ask your opinion of how we should list an academic's personal single-page web site, say for sake of example (as it's been popular in certain circles recently) http://math.mit.edu/~drew/, whose current html-encoded title is "Life, the Universe, and Everything" and whose entire content is the text "(-80538738812075974)^3 + 80435758145817515^3 + 12602123297335631^3". We could reasonably cites its author as Andrew Sutherland and its publisher as the MIT Mathematics department. Neither the person nor the organization is a website (they are, respectively, a person and an academic department, neither of which is a website). We could reasonably cite the title of the page itself as "Life, the Universe, and Everything" as its html encodes, or plausibly instead call it "Andrew Sutherland's home page" or some such. But it is not one of the official pages of MIT as a whole (an organization with a large official site but one that neither provides a clear name for the whole site nor contains Sutherland's personal page) nor of the MIT mathematics department (for the same reasons). So what grouping of pages do you think constitutes the web site that this page belongs to, what name do you think that grouping of pages should have, and by what reasoning do you come up with that name? As for your expressed opinion that the hostname of the url can be used in the website field, the community has considered that before and roundly rejected it. The site field should be a human name, not a computer identifier. What is the point of repeating parts of the url multiple times? It doesn't help anyone find anything. It's completely redundant. And if it doesn't help find or identify the resource named in the citation, it has no reason to be listed there. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:48, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The cite web template, in its present form, is only capable of representing a titled smaller work, which is part of a titled website. So for Professor Sutherland's page, I wouldn't use a citation template at all. I'd write something like
 * Sutherland, Andrew. (n.d.). "Life, the Universe, and Everything". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
 * which renders as
 * Sutherland, Andrew. (n.d.). "Life, the Universe, and Everything". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talk • contribs)
 * If cite web is incapable of citing solitary web pages then it is broken. You seem to be praising that broken state, arguing that it is the only state it could be in, and (by extension) arguing that we should give up on the cite templates as unfit for purpose and unusable. I would like to think that there is still hope for continuing to use them, but this sort of dogmatism makes my hope weaker. The whole point of templates is to make things easier for human editors, but you and the other like-minded people here seem to want them to be as difficult and inflexible as possible. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:53, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * With many templates, not just citation templates, the templates get changed from time to time because a consensus forms that they should be displayed differently. Also people find ways to extract data from the templates and use the information elsewhere, such as Wikidata extracting birth and death dates from Infobox person. But that only works if parameter values are assigned in accord with the template documentation. If people assign a value that conflicts with the defined purpose because they like how the result is rendered, it will come back to bite them in the ass when the template is revised, or when some bot imports false values into Wikidata.
 * I have no problem with making some appropriate changes to how the template works, such as adding parameters to specify how each of the title and website-title should be rendered, with the choices being italics, double quotes, or inside square brackets (the last being for a description created by the Wikipedia editor because the author or publisher did not give the piece of writing a title). Another logic change would be to treat the website title as the title in the absence of a title parameter. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:12, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * A point about Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, it should not be italicized — no footnoting other than Wikipedia's tries to italicize it — and as WP:CITESTYLE, which allows what it calls "common sense" exceptions, even states, "Wikipedia does not [emphasis added] have a single house style"; it notes that the widley Chicago Manual of Style, which does not italicize websites, may be used here.
 * However, because Fandango is the parent company, some editors insist on "website=Rotten Tomatoes| publisher= Fandango", italicizing RT. That to me is like saying Marvel Comics must be italicized since Disney is the parent company. --Tenebrae (talk) 15:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:CITESTYLE, which allows what it calls "common sense" exceptions... The words 'common sense' appear exactly twice in Citing sources, the home of WP:CITESTYLE.  The first is the second positional parameter in a  template; the second is provided by, a boilerplate template used in a lot of guideline pages.  The word 'exceptions' occurs three times (the singular form is not used) the first in , the second in Citing sources and the last in Citing sources.  None of these mention italic formatting.  This is not, it seems to me, much of an argument against italic formatting of 'Rotten Tomatoes' or any other website name.  Rotten Tomatoes is an electronic publication of the corporate entity Fandango Media (publisher).
 * Yes, Wikipedia does not have a single house style and does say that the [widely used] Chicago Manual of Style ... may be used here. But, here, on this page we are discussing cs1|2. CMOS has no control over cs1|2.  If you want to use CMOS in articles that you author, or edit, you are absolutely free to do so, assuming that there is consensus to support you in your efforts.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm glad we actually agree that Citing sources, of which WP:CITESTYLE is a part, says in a box at the very top that, "This page documents an English Wikipedia content guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, [emphasis added] and occasional exceptions may apply."
 * RE: "None of these mention italic formatting." I find this a bad-faith argument. We've established that the Chicago Manual of Style, for one, does not italicize website names. So when WP:CITESTYLE says the Chicago Manual of Style is allowed, that means website names need not be italicized. C'mon. You know that.
 * And I gather you're a programmer, but could you please state this in plain English: "[W]e are discussing cs1|2. CMOS has no control over cs1|2." I know that when I use "cite web" that "website=" does not allow non-italicizing, throwing "common sense exceptions" out the window.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * A bad-faith argument? Go back and reread what I wrote.  When I said: None of these mention italic formatting, I was talking about the immediately preceding sentence where I pointed out that the words "common sense" and "exceptions" appeared only in, the  template, and two subsections of WP:CITE, to wit: Citing sources and Citing sources.  None of those places mention italics.
 * I think that [W]e are discussing cs1 is plain-speak. cs1|2 is not CMOS.  They are different styles just as CMOS is not ALA and CMOS is not MLA and CMOS is not Bluebook.  Because cs1|2 is not CMOS, the rules that apply to CMOS do not apply to cs1|2.  In the past, CMOS may have influenced the development of cs1|2.  Or not, I don't know; perhaps if you troll through the archives here and the various templates and modules you can learn if and where CMOS influence is felt.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * And I gather you're a programmer, but could you please state this in plain English: "[W]e are discussing cs1|2. CMOS has no control over cs1|2." I know that when I use "cite web" that "website=" does not allow non-italicizing, throwing "common sense exceptions" out the window.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * A bad-faith argument? Go back and reread what I wrote.  When I said: None of these mention italic formatting, I was talking about the immediately preceding sentence where I pointed out that the words "common sense" and "exceptions" appeared only in, the  template, and two subsections of WP:CITE, to wit: Citing sources and Citing sources.  None of those places mention italics.
 * I think that [W]e are discussing cs1 is plain-speak. cs1|2 is not CMOS.  They are different styles just as CMOS is not ALA and CMOS is not MLA and CMOS is not Bluebook.  Because cs1|2 is not CMOS, the rules that apply to CMOS do not apply to cs1|2.  In the past, CMOS may have influenced the development of cs1|2.  Or not, I don't know; perhaps if you troll through the archives here and the various templates and modules you can learn if and where CMOS influence is felt.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Should we exclude Template:Cite AV media notes from CS1 maint: others category?
Cite AV media notes uses others for the name of the recording's artist, and media notes often do not have a listed author. Here's an example pulled from a real article:

The example categorizes the article in, but this seems like a valid – and from the documentation and category population, widespread – usage.

Should we exclude Template:Cite AV media notes from the CS1 maint: others category? That would help us focus our analysis of potential problems on citations that are actually missing useful, available information. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:56, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 * What we really should do is spend some time rewriting, , so that they properly handle name lists: don't use aliases of authors and don't misuse others.  I've been saying this on and off for a long time.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Use of |id= instead of |url= breaks |url-access= and |access-date
I noticed in a reference to an old newspaper I added, through ProQuest, that someone changed https://search.proquest.com/nahs/docview/344377835 to id but now using url-access and access-date creates an error message that there's no url - which makes me wonder if it's better off the way it was. Is there any other option - or an error suppression flag? Nfitz (talk) 21:49, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * No templates in section headers please.
 * Better off the way it was if you want the access icon and access date. These make no sense with out a value in url.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:06, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:06, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Well ProQuest contains papers which were published in print; it's not like the access-date would be useful since it's not like it could change like other websites. For the same reason we don't have jstor-access-date, doi-access-date, etc. And just like DOIs, JSTOR IDs, etc., the default is that it's assumed a ProQuest link requires a subscription to access papers. So I'm not sure why it's necessarily better to say when you accessed a given paper via ProQuest or to use url and subscription instead of just a ProQuest ID. Umimmak (talk) 23:24, 10 September 2019 (UTC)