Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 87

access-date and Gale links
Is there any reason to include an access-date parameter if the only outbound link is a Gale ID generated thru Template:Gale? I'm getting the error message. My assumption is that there isn't a reason to include access-date because Gale is an archive and the content shouldn't change, but I thought I'd double check. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 17:14, 18 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Please post the CS1 error message. Otherwise your assumption is correct. Citations of stable-link repositories such as Gale should not display an access date. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 21:09, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The error message is "access-date without URL" - And thanks, that's what I figured. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 23:43, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

CS1 maint: location
I was recently made aware that location and the like do not allow any digits to prevent misuse of the parameter, such as inserting page- and chapter numbers or unnecessary postal codes. But what if the number is essential to the location, say, 10 Downing Street? lol1 VNIO ( I made a mistake?  talk to me ) 21:19, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Please link to an actual article where this need would be present. Without seeing an actual article, my guess is that London would suffice. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:40, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Ref 133 of this article (permalink). I guess London does work but I think it's a bit of a shame that we can't be more specific. lol1 VNIO ( I made a mistake?  talk to me ) 21:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC); edited 22:08, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Traditionally the location in a citation is the city of publication, which would just be London. We wouldn't list the address of the publisher.
 * If we're thinking about the original utterance of a speech as its publication, then the location would be where it was given, which is "Guildhall, London", not 10 Downing Street, and not the Prime Minister's Office. But in this case, you're citing a transcript published from elsewhere, so trying to be more specific is just confusing or inaccurate.
 * The publisher is the Prime Minister's Office, or 10 Downing Street if you want to use the residence as a metonym for the office (like The White House substitutes for the Executive Office of the President on this side of the pond). In short, your best option is London Prime Minister's Office.  Imzadi 1979  →   23:20, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Some older works do list addresses on the title page, although these were usually where they were to be sold. eg Sir John Oldcastle, the location is London, but the publishers part says, "Printed by V.S. for Thomas Panier, and areto be ſolde at his ſhop at the ſigne of the Catte and Parrots neere the Exchange."-- Auric   talk  18:38, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Must translation parameters use the translations in the text?
When a text is published with a translation, must trans-quote and similar parameters use the translation in the text, or may an editor substitute a translation that she believes to be more accurate? This question is prompted by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hillel_the_Elder&curid=313892&diff=1125022169&oldid=1124176915, which I believe to be WP:OR. Either way, it would be helpful if the documentation of, e.g., trans-title, specified whether editors must respect the translations in the text. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:50, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, use the text, Quotes should be verbatim. Editor interpolations are allowed only for context, for example when substituting a generic "he" in the quote with the actual name of the person/character. The translated title is part of the work's publication data and the citation's retrieval data. Should be entered as is at all times. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * , I run into this from time to time. First, let me just agree with the above; use the quote exactly as it appears. But it's possible to mitigate any ill effect, if you feel that it could be problematic. My response in similar situations depends on the severity of the problem. If it's just a poor translation, or an annoying issue such as false friends confusion that doesn't really interfere with understanding, then I just let it go. If I believe that the translation is inaccurate or ambiguous in a way that could affect the article or its verifiability, then I might add a Talk page section "Possibly inaccurate translation" or similar, and then add a clarify template to the article immediately after the citation and include the reason and post-text parameters, linking the template to the Talk section you just added. Mathglot (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * My issue was the opposite; there was an inline translation that I considered problematical, and I added English and Hebrew quotes directly from the text of the cited book rather than start an edit war over the translation in the body of the article. The other editor proceeded to change the trans-quote in the cite book; I view that as close to vandalism. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:26, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikilink and external link
I have come across an unusual situation where the book I want to cite has a Wikipedia article and there is an external source where the book can be viewed freely. Is there any way to link both the Wikipedia article and the external source in the citation? Obi2canibe (talk) 22:10, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Only if the external source can be reached through a content-resolving identifier such as doi. The book article ideally should have an external url link to the book if one exists, and you can link the book article. Following the link, readers will eventually have access to the url. Alternately, use url and forgo title-link. 24.103.241.218 (talk) 22:33, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * A citation doesn't have to restrict itself to what citation templates provide. Adding (online) after the template will do what you want. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:39, 21 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you both for your suggestions.--Obi2canibe (talk) 19:48, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Postal abbreviations
H:CS1 currently says This does not appear to actually be consistent with MOS:POSTABBR, which provides  (emphasis added). References are not normal text, and are often allowed to deviate from abbreviation-related aspects of MoS. See e.g. MOS:&. This also does not appear to be consistent with current practice, even in FAs. I count 174 featured articles matching the regex ; 38 for location  ; 25 for  ; etc. It also doesn't seem consistent with common sense: One, because we abbreviate all sorts of things in references, and it's not clear why we would suddenly break with that practice for locations, even when something like "CA" for California is probably more recognizable than "eds." And two, because we allow location strings consisting only of city name (with fairly vague guidance as to when it's acceptable), creating a paradoxical situation in which "Boston" is allowed but the less ambiguous "Boston, MA" and "Boston, Mass." are not.

If this guidance must be kept, we should at a minimum remove the reference to a part of MoS that does not apply. But I would submit we should go further and remove the line outright, for the reasons outlined above—or walk it back to something like Do not use obscure or made-up abbreviations for place names. -- Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 07:39, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it is best left to the individual citation writer to choose between an official abbreviation and the official locale name. The MOS:POSTABBR reference should be removed from the doc for this case, perhaps with guidance to use only official nomenclature, and the (obvious but necessary) remark that full names are non-ambiguous.
 * As an aside, I do not consider usage in Wikipedia an indication of anything. CS1 template elements are decided primarily here by anyone willing to participate. The fact that editors choose to divert from suggested usage could be for a variety of reasons that may or may not be valid. I presume anyone really interested could come here to state their case for consideration, just like you did. 65.88.88.179 (talk) 16:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * MOS:POSTABBR does apply everywhere except for the allowances it makes for limited space, which does not include citations, so the guidance here is consistent. Abbreviations of states are non-standard and not universally known; there's no reason to use them. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:30, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Citations are classically included in the set of items where there is limited space, hence why ISO dates are allowed here. Izno (talk) 01:39, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * So you argue in line with Tamzin for the removal of that passage from H:CS1? And allow "Boston, MA", "Boston, Mass.", "San Francisco, CA", "San Francisco, Calif.", "Grafton, NSW", "Gronau, NRW", "Stanstead, Que."? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:35, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I was clarifying your possibly ambiguous statement on whether citations are considered to be a limited space case. They are, hence we allow ISO dates. The reason I call it possibly ambiguous is because I am not sure on a second reading that you are noting that the allowance provided in the context of POSTABBR is only for tables, which are one kind of limited space, or whether you thought that citations are indeed not a limited space. Izno (talk) 03:37, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The exception in POSTABBR does not extend to all instances of limited space beyond tables - it specifically notes they should not be used in infoboxes, for example, whereas MOS:DATE includes those as instances where space is limited. Thus the current text is appropriate. (As an aside, POSTABBR states that in the space-limited-exception case these abbreviations should be marked up using abbr - while I have seen citations using postal abbreviations, I don't think I've ever seen that markup applied to them there). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * On the aside, I am neither surprised about the suggestion to mark them up with abbr nor surprised to see that it's never used (and I have observed similarly). I'd say it's probably one of those cases where the context of an address is clear so users don't think it's needed, and usually the user can click to the article on the local region to understand more about the pair of letters after the local region. Contrast EIT, as a particular example, which has multiple meanings, some of which may be applicable in more contexts than not, being dropped in an article (I was thinking Engineer in Training [I'm glad to see the exam is now 6 hours long instead of the 8 hour day it was when I skipped taking the voluntary exam during college]). Izno (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * If POSTABBR is supposed to apply to everything but tables, it should be rewritten to apply to everything but tables. As currently written, there's no "table exception": Rather, the complete prohibition only applies in normal text and in infoboxes, while a separate rule (use abbr) applies in tables, and no rule is specified for other space-limited areas. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 22:24, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * A specification related to references was unilaterally removed a couple of months ago. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:51, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah yeah, I see Why? I Ask removed it citing lack of consensus, pending a full RfC. Is it maybe time to have that RfC? --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 20:10, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It was removed because it had been discussed before, never found consensus to be added, and yet it was. That's WP:CREEP if I ever. Personally, this whole thing is silly. No reader (especially one that looks at a source's location) will be confused by something such as "San Francisco, CA". If there is such a confusion between terms (e.g., Leipsic, DE referring to either Germany (Deutschland) or Delaware), then just use common sense and write it in full. Such a case is so rare that it won't matter for 99% of the articles that it applies to. Let the article editor decide. Why? I Ask (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Cambridge MA - is it a degree or a place? DuncanHill (talk) 23:09, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * If it's placed where the location parameter is, then it's a no brainer. Why? I Ask (talk) 23:38, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The reader of a thesis citation doesn't see to which parameter "Cambridge MA" applies. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:59, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * No, you don't need to see the parameter, you just need to know what a citation looks like. However, as I said, in that case that applies to less that 0.1% of articles, sure, expand it to say Massachusetts. Why? I Ask (talk) 03:19, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Not true. Location is always followed by colons and the value in publisher, it is meaningless otherwise. There is scarce chance for ambiguity there. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 14:41, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * location is sometimes used, especially in, as a disambiguator for same-named newspapers (The Times for example):
 * No colon; no publisher.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * But then why would a degree be listed for a newspaper? Still no chance of confusion. Why? I Ask (talk) 15:19, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * What? I'm pretty sure that I said nothing about a degree.  I was referring to IP editor's statement: Location is always followed by colons and the value in publisher.  That is not wholly true as my example shows.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Read up further in the chain; other editors are complaining that there would be a confusion between the degree Master of Arts (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin) and the location, Cambridge, MA. I find that highly dubious with the layout of the citations. Why? I Ask (talk) 16:03, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know that. Nothing in what I have written is or was intended to address those complaints so why are we having this discussion?  If you want to discuss confusion between the degree ... and the location, you should be responding to posters who are discussing those things.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:35, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Then location itself is ambiguous because it may refer either to the place of publication or to the place of the publisher (as a commercial entity), which may be different. So either have publisher-location and publication-place, or fix location to mean "publisher location" (i.e. make it a conditional parameter dependent on publisher) and disambiguate newspapers in another manner, perhaps following MOS (parenthetical location after title). 65.88.88.69 (talk) 19:54, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * At least one example of a template using location to disambiguate newspaper can be seen at  so apparently that sort of use of location is not new.
 * When used alone, publication-place, place, and location function identically. The confusion arises when publication-place is used with either of location or place which confusion I should like to see go away by making these three parameters equal aliases of one another (something that I have periodically raised on these talk pages in the past – last discussion that referred to that is at ).
 * No doubt,, the template documentation can be improved so please do so.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:22, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Generally, move away from aliases. Citations are (supposed to be) exact, unambiguous statements and are understood best with unique parameter labels. Aliases make sense as transition aids when code labels are new and the old way is grandfathered in temporarily. In other programming situations aliases may be important as related terms may actually (in the real world) be fuzzy, or have multiple applications. In a well-designed system you would never find a generic code label like "location". As you pointed out in the news example it could mean publisher location. Or it could mean publication place. These are two different attributes and if it is decided that both should be available then what is needed are separate labels applied to different parameters. Otherwise the winning combination is publisher location. Publisher information is unique and authoritative in the sense that place(s) of publication derive from the publisher entity. 24.193.2.168 (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Generally, move away from aliases. Right.  Don't hold your breath; that cow has been out of the barn for far too long.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:01, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:22, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Generally, move away from aliases. Citations are (supposed to be) exact, unambiguous statements and are understood best with unique parameter labels. Aliases make sense as transition aids when code labels are new and the old way is grandfathered in temporarily. In other programming situations aliases may be important as related terms may actually (in the real world) be fuzzy, or have multiple applications. In a well-designed system you would never find a generic code label like "location". As you pointed out in the news example it could mean publisher location. Or it could mean publication place. These are two different attributes and if it is decided that both should be available then what is needed are separate labels applied to different parameters. Otherwise the winning combination is publisher location. Publisher information is unique and authoritative in the sense that place(s) of publication derive from the publisher entity. 24.193.2.168 (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Generally, move away from aliases. Right.  Don't hold your breath; that cow has been out of the barn for far too long.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:01, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. But let's not add more. Perhaps it is better to think of adding CS3, built with the hopeful view that all the intractable design glitches that have nothing to do with technical issues could be swept away in a clean slate. And let the best solution win. 24.168.89.97 (talk) 20:51, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know how one could call official state abbreviations, or any postal abbreviation, "non-standard". They are designated by a proper naming authority and applied widely. 65.88.88.59 (talk) 16:32, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * But limited to a specific geographical area, vs something like "UK" which is international. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:51, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Why is this discussion here? The use of postal abbreviations is not a cs1|2-specific issue is it?  Doesn't this also apply to hand-crafted citations so wouldn't a better place for this discussion be at perhaps WT:CITE?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The original comment makes the implication that there is something wrong with how Help:CS1 describes use of the relevant policy. Hence the followon discussion on whether the policy is of interest.
 * I think given the discussion about an RFC above that people are tending toward a discussion elsewhere, they just haven't gotten yet. :^) Izno (talk) 17:18, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It is not useless. For example, I just found out that location may mean two different things, something that should be fixed. 65.88.88.69 (talk) 19:57, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Which ISBN?
I'm adding details to a citation, and the publisher shows The documentation doesn't show isbn-10 and isbn-13 parameters. Which ISBN goes in the isbn parameter? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:39, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * ISBN-10: ISBN 0738457256
 * ISBN-13: ISBN 9780738457253
 * See ISBN documentation.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:53, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * When the 13 digit one is actually printed, use it over the 10 please. — xaosflux  Talk 17:27, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes! ✅ Sadhuguru (talk) 13:01, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

DOI "inactive"
Trying to overhaul Howard Florey and getting a warning:. How do you suppress this warning? Obviously we can just drop it but I keyed it in to the university system and it came up okay, via the Wiley Online Library. Looks like a "virtual" doi. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  03:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Fix the doi and then unset or remove doi-broken-date. The actual doi appears to be  not.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 03:53, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
 * ...which was broken by DMacks (talk) 04:09, 26 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Oh. I see. Thanks for that. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:51, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

CS1 errors: URL
Category:CS1 errors: URL has about 6,500 pages even after I run my bot through them. Is there a way to generate a report with the most common errors, so we can see if we can fix them via bot? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 06:08, 2 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I can separate out the text warnings with url and archive-url, but there's nothing else in the output today to indicate which of the errors triggered. Izno (talk) 06:26, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that suggestion. Some of the archive-url errors occur when archive-url is a duplicate of url, so that's something to look into.  There's also a few chapter-url and contribution-url issues.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 07:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Dates: first, reprint and PDF
If a book is published on foo, reprinted on bar and scanned from the bar printing on baz, what date parameters are appropriate for citing the baz PDF of bar? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:19, 4 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I think the specifics might be helpful here instead of variables, I could see it either being the original publication date if the reprint is just a later impression within the same edition (or some sort of print on demand type thing), or the reprint date if, say, this is an entirely new publication (e.g., a facsimile production of a historical book, in which case also use orig-date). Umimmak (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I concur with the above. If I understand correctly, you are citing a reprint edition of a book that is bound digitally. The content is provided by the "printer". I would do something like this:
 * The (media/binding) type here would be "pdf", but this is preformatted in the citation (the parameter format would be superfluous for the same reason). Even though binding info is not included in CS1/2 metadata, you may want to include one of these parameters anyway, in case some aggregator imports the citation texts themselves, in which case the format/binding icon will not display.
 * 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In my question, foo, bar and baz were all dates, so oroginally published 2021 by Foo and Baz would be inappropriate. What inspired my question was edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Newline&curid=238775&diff=1131455576&oldid=1121592635, which includes the comment in the cite book template.
 * Well here it might be that the url is just a convenience link for the reader. The book itself was published in 2001 as far as I can tell from WorldCat . Kind of frustrating that this PDF seems to lack the frontmatter with the actual date and copyright information, but the comment I guess got the date from metadata and is just making a note on the off chance this PDF is not the exact same as the book. Umimmak (talk) 16:32, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry for my misunderstanding. Again I agree with Umimmak. Assuming the PDF is a fascimile transfer to digital, its creation date is immaterial for the reader. The useful date info is the publication date of the edition the PDF was based on. Also. for long works it is important that the URL points to a location where the correct metadata is easily available: compare the landing page on Google Books. It seems the content in that citation is offered in "reader mode", which is perfect for in-source locations, but the front matter that includes relevant metadata is missing. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 17:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In my question, foo, bar and baz were all dates, so oroginally published 2021 by Foo and Baz would be inappropriate. What inspired my question was edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Newline&curid=238775&diff=1131455576&oldid=1121592635, which includes the comment in the cite book template.
 * Well here it might be that the url is just a convenience link for the reader. The book itself was published in 2001 as far as I can tell from WorldCat . Kind of frustrating that this PDF seems to lack the frontmatter with the actual date and copyright information, but the comment I guess got the date from metadata and is just making a note on the off chance this PDF is not the exact same as the book. Umimmak (talk) 16:32, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry for my misunderstanding. Again I agree with Umimmak. Assuming the PDF is a fascimile transfer to digital, its creation date is immaterial for the reader. The useful date info is the publication date of the edition the PDF was based on. Also. for long works it is important that the URL points to a location where the correct metadata is easily available: compare the landing page on Google Books. It seems the content in that citation is offered in "reader mode", which is perfect for in-source locations, but the front matter that includes relevant metadata is missing. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 17:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Podcast dates range
If you want to cite the dates a podcast runs from, how do you do that? Like Dec 18, 2020 – present? The field does not like that parameter and throws up errors. How do you do that without causing a problem? Eievie (talk) 01:02, 8 January 2023 (UTC)


 * You should be citing a specific episode of the podcast, not the entire series. Izno (talk) 01:09, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's for a bibliography listing someone's various different works. Using the template in the list of someone's books is common practice; why not use the associated templates for rest of a person's works as well? Eievie (talk) 01:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Books also don't have continuing dates. :) This series of modules is primarily intended for citations and its use for bibliographies has kind of been grafted on.
 * There is no way to add the date as you would prefer. You can probably cheat and use today but that will update somewhat sporadically, and also does not reflect specific publication dates. You could probably be relatively safe with year as in 2020–. Izno (talk) 01:34, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Using 2023 as a stand-in for "present" still requires updating, and implies an end, which isn't great. This suggests only including the start date and leaving the end unsaid, so I tried from Dec 2020 and that threw an error too :/ Is there any way to just silence the error in the template? Eievie (talk) 01:58, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't use 2023, use the template indicated. Izno (talk) 02:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * And no, you cannot silence the error. Anyway, MOS:DATETOPRES says to include the end date regardless, so in the context of a citation template I do not think it is too onerous to use something like year to indicate your intent. You can always choose not to use the template, but I think that work around is sufficient, perhaps with an in-wikitext comment. Izno (talk) 02:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Mark as accessible through Wikipedia Library
I know not all users have access to Wikipedia Library, but especially with its recent expansion, many previously pay-for or institution-locked journals etc. are completely accessible for users meeting requirements. Would it be possible, then, to add a parameter (or an option for the url-access parameter) that says a source is free through Wikipedia Library? Kingsif (talk) 02:52, 9 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia Library. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 12:58, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd say that would work, if the link in citation is specific to the Wikipedia Library, but most are not. For example, I have a Newspapers.com account through the Wikipedia Library, and if I cite a newspaper article from those archives, I'd be using via to indicate that website, not the library because the library didn't republish the article.  Imzadi 1979  →   19:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * At least from my past experience, a bunch of the URLs for Wikipedia library sources are either rejected by the insert citation tool in the source editor, or are soon "anonymized" by a bot, so I'm not sure that basing something off of the link itself will be of great use, unless something has changed recently. Hog Farm Talk 19:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * What TWL has access to at any given point varies. I would not support an actual parameter on the point.
 * Here is a 2018 RFC which permits its use in via, which is certainly sufficient to me. There's other discussion in the archives about the utility in general of using via to indicate libraries (short answer is don't, which I think is also either directly in WP:Citing sources or similarly discussed on its talk page) as well as a few other discussions directly pertinent mostly under "TWL" but all older than that RFC. Izno (talk) 19:22, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps hastily, mine was the initial reply. Thinking it through, it seems the TWL is not an alternate provider or a content aggregator, but a facility/conduit to the former.
 * So now I agree with replies that suggested that via may not be proper (even though allowable), and the citation should be silent on the matter. I also agree with Izno that a specific parameter adds nothing to the citation's purpose. With well-established rationale, citations don't credit other physical or virtual libraries; I don't see why TWL should be an exception. 65.88.88.70 (talk) 20:46, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia articles are primarily written for, no? I sort of was under the impression that the vast majority of people who read Wikipedia articles do not have an account, let alone one which meets all the requirements for the Wikipedia Library. A Wikipedia editor might have to click on a DOI before realizing they won't have access to it via the Wikipedia Library, but the alternative is adding clutter to a citation that goes in and out of date. Umimmak (talk) 21:37, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, while I agree with the replies above that citation metadata is primarily for the benefit of readers, I do think there's potential scope for a gadget or user script which could add highlighting or links to the library next to the relevant resources. It's not something we have capacity to work on at the moment but if someone was interested we'd be happy to advise/support with data or maybe even APIs from the library. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Book belonging to multiple series?
Are there provisions in the template for referring to multiple series when a book is listed as part of more than one series? For example, Itineraria Phoenicia is the volume 127 of the Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta series and the volume 18 of the Studia Phoenicia series. But I am not sure how to add both of these to the template when using it in articles. Antiquistik (talk) 11:12, 18 December 2022 (UTC)


 * In general, one should list the one that is more readily available, which usually is the one more often classified in providers' metadata. For example, at the WorldCat entry the work is classified under "Series: Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta". 67.243.247.14 (talk) 16:47, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I would still request for provisions to be added to the template so that multiple series can be mentioned when using the template, because doing so would in fact facilitate doing research regarding citations as well as navigation. Antiquistik (talk) 22:41, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with Antiquistik. --Ooligan (talk) 19:00, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

doi: avoiding crossref
The following doi lands on a Crossref disambiguation page: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823287437

Is it possible to bypass it? The actual object can be directly accessed as: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780823287437/html

Adding  at the end of doi is not clever: 65.88.88.69 (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There is nothing that cs1|2 can do about this; modules cannot follow external urls to their ultimate destinations. If you wish to avoid the disambiguation page you can do either (or both) of these:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:01, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Understood. Actually I wanted to add both ids. Resolved as follows:
 * doi:10.1515/9780823287437
 * 172.254.255.250 (talk) 14:03, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Is it really that bad if the DOI goes to a disambiguation page? The whole point of a DOI is that it's a permanent identifier for the document, even if it ends up moving websites; putting a URL there defeats the purpose. Umimmak (talk) 23:31, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is good for a doi to go to a disambiguation page like that. Some readers may have subscription access to the document through one or the other of the choices, but not both (it looks like in this case I have neither). A disambiguated doi like this allows them to try the one they have access to. Shortcutting it to avoid the disambiguation would disallow them that choice. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:42, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I am sceptical. Unlike ISBN or issn, doi is a content identifier. It should lead directly to the cited material, not to another page from an unrelated entity. As a reader I expect citations to lead me to verifying material as easily as possible, not to have me do the research the citation writer should have done when explicitly offering a doi as the source-content resolver. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 02:29, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * not to have me do the research the citation writer should have done — what "research"? Both links in the crossref disambiguation page go to the same source; one's just on JSTOR and one's on DeGruyter. As says it's good to include both in case a reader has access to one versus the other. Umimmak (talk) 02:49, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The doi system (incorporating an identifier) was specifically created to unambiguously and directly provide access to source material at the discretion of publishers. If CS1 is going to formally use this facility and the label "doi", it should adhere to the norms of the object's retrieval. It is up to the citation writer to find a way to offer the right target for any given doi. Alternately, don't call a dab page "doi". It is not that. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 03:15, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The "norms of the object's retrieval" are that you use the link targeted by doi.org, not try to make up your own version because you don't believe them when they say that you could get the document in more than one way. It is a specific goal of the doi system to provide flexible access to documents for which different people might need different access methods. This sort of disambiguation page works towards that goal. We should not circumvent it. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * not to have me do the research the citation writer should have done — what "research"? Both links in the crossref disambiguation page go to the same source; one's just on JSTOR and one's on DeGruyter. As says it's good to include both in case a reader has access to one versus the other. Umimmak (talk) 02:49, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The doi system (incorporating an identifier) was specifically created to unambiguously and directly provide access to source material at the discretion of publishers. If CS1 is going to formally use this facility and the label "doi", it should adhere to the norms of the object's retrieval. It is up to the citation writer to find a way to offer the right target for any given doi. Alternately, don't call a dab page "doi". It is not that. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 03:15, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The "norms of the object's retrieval" are that you use the link targeted by doi.org, not try to make up your own version because you don't believe them when they say that you could get the document in more than one way. It is a specific goal of the doi system to provide flexible access to documents for which different people might need different access methods. This sort of disambiguation page works towards that goal. We should not circumvent it. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Isn't the point of doi to retrieve the source? unlike title or issn that are used to find it. If the consensus is to accept doi as a (sometime) lookup parameter rather than an access/retrieval one, that should be explicitly pointed out. 69.203.140.37 (talk) 14:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

edit module issn lookup
Switch lookup to The ISSN Portal (or its advanced search facility ). Far less likely to return multiple targets compared to Worldcat. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 23:09, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


 * How does that help readers locate the periodical though? A worldcat link immediately tells me which libraries have it, the issn portal just gives the periodical title (presumably already in the citation) and publisher information. Umimmak (talk) 23:28, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is a valid point, but can't the same argument be used for say, ISBN? 69.193.161.90 (talk) 00:31, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The ISBN identifier links to Special:BookSources which, conveniently, has a link to WorldCat among others.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Interlanguage link
Template Interlanguage link doesn't works in author parameter. Eurohunter (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2023 (UTC)


 * From Interlanguage link:
 * Archer1234 (t·c) 21:55, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't see it in our documentation, but this works:
 * Someone will post here if this advice is misguided. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:27, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is discussed in the error message help text.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Why does it say the entire name of the language unlike ill which uses standard language abbreviations?
 * Gerhard Radke
 * Having the full language name takes up a lot of space; it used to just be a different color text was used to signal a non-English Wikipedia link. Was the idea that [de] would be too opaque in some situations but not others? Umimmak (talk) 07:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The current implementation, as shown above, is an improvement on the previous situation, and I don't think space is at a premium in citations. If you prefer the way works, you can always write a citation manually. Let's be grateful for small mercies – thanks to Trappist for implementing this. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:18, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The current implementation, as shown above, is an improvement on the previous situation, and I don't think space is at a premium in citations. If you prefer the way works, you can always write a citation manually. Let's be grateful for small mercies – thanks to Trappist for implementing this. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:18, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Multiple publishers/ISBNs/series
According to its copyright page, this book was "[p]ublished jointly by Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Institute of Archaeology, Beaumont Street, Oxford and UCLA Institute of Archaeology Los Angeles, California". In keeping therewith, it has two ISBNs (ISBN 0-947816-19-4), and is part of two series (University of Oxford Committee for Archaeology, Monograph No. 19; UCLA Institute for Archaeology, Archaeological Research Tools 5). Is there a way to record all of this information in the cite book template? --Usernameunique (talk) 01:27, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You don't need to try to stuff all of that into a single template. Just WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT, or put the second version in a second template after the first one (e.g. "Also published as..."). – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:35, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In the case where you have the ISBN of the source you used and an OCLC (WorldCat) link but no available preview, please add the oclc parameter, perhaps a chapter/section title and or short relevant quote as well as the pagination. WorldCat will show other editions & formats, as will google books most of the time. Worldcat should assist in finding the referenced section in future editions. RDBrown (talk) 05:07, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

ISBN wikilink is redirected
On Template:Cite book the output links to the old ISBN (identifier) article via a redirect from a page move instead of directly to the updated article name of ISBN. See David_Crosby for an output example of the ISBN redirect link. Cheers! 10:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is by design. Izno (talk) 10:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's so the Special:WhatLinksHere/ISBN can clearly delineate which Wikipedia pages are actually linking to the article about ISBN and which are just using a citation with an ISBN. Umimmak (talk) 12:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

publisher/series order
In a cite book like the order of presentation is a bit messed up, with the location/publisher inserted between volume and pages. Contrast with cite journal which keeps such information together

This is extremely jarring, as opposed to the more natural presentation that would keep like information together (series, volume, issues, pages, then publisher). I believe we should follow cite journal and present things in this order instead
 * Smith, J. (2022). "Chapter". Title. Series. Location: Publisher. Vol. 10. pp. 1–13. . ISBN 978-1-01234-012-4.

&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)


 * While discussing this, let's also consider the situation of cite magazine:
 * For that, we have the same issue of location/publisher separating volume/issue from pages, and that should be fixed. (I've mentioned it several times without any traction on a fix.)
 * Now going back to books, I disagree. At least to me, the volume is a function of a book's title and should be kept in its current location. It's not uncommon for a volume to have its own name that would be included, and moving that away from the title would be jarring. Thus this looks correct to me:
 * With a periodical, the volume number is part of the in-source location along with the issue number and page numbers, so I agree that they should be clustered together, as cite journal does and cite magazine should do:
 * Smith, J. (2022). "Title". Magazine. Series. Location: Publisher. Vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 1–13. (note that volume, issue and pages are separated by commas as a single grouping my example.)
 *  Imzadi 1979  →   06:22, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with everything said here. cite magazine could def be changed; the inelegance you point out luckily doesn't happen too often since it's rare to include publisher and location for magazines, but for the odd time where either of those would be necessary to help a reader identify a periodical, I agree for magazines it should be as you say. Also agree with your reasoning about book volumes being different. Umimmak (talk) Umimmak (talk) 06:31, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree about it being extremely jarring, plenty of citation styles have the volume number before the publication information, not next to the pages:
 * APA:
 * Strong, E. K., Jr., & Uhrbrock, R. S. (1923). Bibliography on job analysis. In L. Outhwaite (Series Ed.), Personnel Research Series: Vol. 1. Job analysis and the curriculum (pp. 140–146). doi:10.1037/10762-000
 * Katz, I., Gabayan, K., & Aghajan, H. (2007). A multi-touch surface using multiple cameras. In J. Blanc-Talon, W. Philips, D. Popescu, & P. Scheunders (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Vol. 4678. Advanced Concepts forIntelligent Vision Systems (pp. 97–108). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74607-2_9
 * Chicago:
 * The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. 9, Contra Keynes and Cambridge: Essays, Correspondence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 44–45.
 * The Complete Tales of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel, vol. 5, 1883–1884 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963), 32–33.
 * MLA:
 * Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2nd ed., vol. 2, Oxford UP, 2002.
 * Wellek, René. A History of Modern Criticism, 1750–1950. Vol. 5, Yale UP, 1986.
 * Umimmak (talk) 06:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Umimmak: as CS1 was heavily based on APA with influences from other guides like CMOS, I'm glad you brought up this point. (I was going to mention it, but felt my posting was already getting long.)  Imzadi 1979  →   06:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Umimmak (talk) 06:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Umimmak: as CS1 was heavily based on APA with influences from other guides like CMOS, I'm glad you brought up this point. (I was going to mention it, but felt my posting was already getting long.)  Imzadi 1979  →   06:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Imzadi and disagree with Headbomb on book series. I would find it very jarring to have the volume within a series separated from the series title. I don't so much care whether the series+volume go before or after the publisher, but they should not be separated. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't care about where (as in before/after) the publisher information is, but volume/issue/pages should be together. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:23, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * For books, we're going to have to agree to disagree. For books, the volume should be considered an extension of the title of the book along with series and edition, not an extension of the page number like it is with a periodical.  Imzadi 1979  →   16:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * For book series, the volume isn't an extension of the title. It's the series volume. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:14, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Not all multi-volume books have series titles, and the volume would be an extension of the book title absent an intervening series title. Books aren't periodicals, so it shouldn't be a surprise that there are slightly different formats at work.  Imzadi 1979  →   21:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In order of importance (re: discovering the source): the publisher information block (which includes the edition) should be kept together. After that, the series/volume information. Then, page ranges of title (journal/magazine) or chapter (book). In-source locations such as page numbers, sections etc. are secondary search elements that can also be presented in short cites. When in full citations, their position could be part of the series/volume block I suppose. 184.74.237.158 (talk) 14:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Which template to use?
I would like to cite this pdf which contains material related to the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). I initially thought it was an excerpt from a book due to the appearance and page numbers noted, however, I could not identify an author or book title. Trying to locate title page information, I found that the pdf could be accessed through this page at dea.gov which has a few other sections in pdf format, but the earliest one began with page 12. There is nothing prior to page 12 or a title page. I then found that material was hosted by the United States Department of Justice here almost 18 years ago. This material may never have truly been a book, so I am wondering which template to use to cite the material in the pdf. My initial impression was to use but I don't have a book title. Thanks! - Location (talk) 20:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)


 * This looks like a coffee-table book published by the FBI/DEA, but since you can't identify the title, I'd probably just use cite web. Izno (talk) 20:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Based on a text search, it looks like a reformatted version of this book. Drug Enforcement Administration: A Tradition of Excellence, 1973-2003. United States. Drug Enforcement Administration. U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, 2003. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Thanks for the feedback! - Location (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Adding multiple editors with cite book
How do I add multiple editors to cite book? Mucube (talk • contribs) 05:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Either 1) preferred: editor1-first and editor1-last, or 2) acceptable: editor1. Increment the number as appropriate. Izno (talk) 05:23, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Quote page in AV media citations
Case A:



Case B:



What happened here? It was working a few days ago. Please fix. 65.88.88.69 (talk) 21:39, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Bug fix. From :
 * – emphasis added
 * Choose a more appropriate template or, for locating a point in time in the media playback, use minutes or time.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:21, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh? What bug was that? When was it reported on this page? The discussion?
 * What is cited is AV media. Case A involves the media transcript (quoting text from a transcript page). Case B involves the media credits. Specific text metadata (from the title sequence) is cited. So this is the exact template for both.
 * Timetable for the erroneously removecd parameter to reappear? It's absence is a bug that should be dealt promptly. 68.173.78.83 (talk) 00:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There was clear opposition to the removal of quote-page by itself, or as an alias of quote-time, one of the few aliases that make sense as functionally they both describe in-source locations. I was one of those against it, and reasoning was given. Unilaterally you went ahead and changed it anyway. This is a disruptive change as it removes attribution specifics from a quote (the location where the quote can be verified). Two valid cases for the parameter were offered in the OP. This parameter has to be restored. 24.103.91.82 (talk) 14:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, restricting editor choice by presenting this as a bug is disingenuous. 24.103.91.82 (talk) 14:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, restricting editor choice by presenting this as a bug is disingenuous. 24.103.91.82 (talk) 14:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

?? this needs fixing. 68.173.78.83 (talk) 12:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Which version to cite?
This may not be the proper forum for this inquiry, so I apologize in advance. I wonder if I should cite the original article in French or the translated article in English for material I read in the English version. I only read/speak English, it is the English version that I read, and this is the English version of Wikipedia. If I use the English version, do I link to the French version in { {cite journal}} ? Thus far I have:

Thanks! - Location (talk) 16:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)


 * If you read the English version then cite the English version. Especially as the source provides an English translation, which is likely better than say Google translate. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:28, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Location: See also WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. Happy editing!  GoingBatty (talk) 22:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Edit Request

 * Request restoring parameter quote-page in the cite AV media templates. The parameter was withdrawn without acknowledgement in the latest module update, advertised here:.
 * The diff in question:
 * An informal request was made above, in . Note the indicated use-cases.
 * Previous discussion:
 * This unheralded removal of the parameter is not trivial. Quoted material must always be attributed, and its location must be made available to the reader.
 * The relevant module lines (current version):
 * Note that audiovisual templates are erroneously included in the templates not using page array in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration line 673
 * The template in question uses (text) transcript parameters that often are published with some sort of pagination or sectioning. Video also uses "pages" (frames/frame sequences) as location indicators.
 * The template in question uses (text) transcript parameters that often are published with some sort of pagination or sectioning. Video also uses "pages" (frames/frame sequences) as location indicators.
 * The template in question uses (text) transcript parameters that often are published with some sort of pagination or sectioning. Video also uses "pages" (frames/frame sequences) as location indicators.

104.247.55.106 (talk) 15:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. You know how it works around here. Izno (talk) 17:01, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There was no consensus, warning, or discussion for the change that removed quote-page. It should be reverted and then consensus should be established for its removal. Revert immediately, as this affects verification.
 * This is not a case of WP:BRD. The removal was unilateral and hidden. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 20:49, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The requested changes can be put in the sandbox for the next quarterly update and discussed. Due to the nature of the citation template suite and their wide usage collectively on millions of articles, we traditionally only make updates to them in batches. Otherwise we'd be dumping millions of pages into the job queue for every edit to the suite, large or small.  Imzadi 1979  →   20:56, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that someone can make a unilateral change that affects core attribution and verifiability, surreptitiously hide it in a module update, and then present it as a done deal because otherwise Wikipedia's job queue will be ruffled? Don't think so. Revert the undocumented, undiscussed change now. It affects citations now, in a material way. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 21:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Clarifying that what is asked is not the revert of the entire update, only the revert of the unilateral change regarding quote-page. A simple edit in the main module to remove move lines 2686 and 2687, highlighted in the OP outside the conditional "if" statement. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 21:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * All module updates need discussion and consensus. The issue here is a change that had neither. Reverting such a change needs no consensus. This edit request is for such a non-controversial revert. Do not mark the request as answered by insisting on non-applicable consensus. That is not an answer, and is also incorrect. Before the formal request was made, a section discussing the issue was added. It should have been resolved there. 65.254.10.26 (talk) 00:39, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like it was announced at &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It was not. When it was pointed out in the related thread it was brushed off as a "bug". 67.243.247.14 (talk) 14:14, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

please can you comment on this? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:00, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is true that this particular change was (unintentionally) omitted from the summary of changes listed in ; I have never claimed to be perfect in all things that I do. The change was, however, discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 85 in particular quote-page= and |quote-pages= support removal.  I think that this edit request should be declined.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this is not a serious answer. When the change was discovered and pointed out, the response was that it was a "bug fix". Doesn't exactly sound "unintentional". Secondly, there was no consensus to remove the parameter in the discussions referenced above. The first discussion was the opposite: enhancing the parameter with aliases. In both discussions there was opposition to the removal. And why should the parameter be removed? There is no real argument presented. There is ample reasoning for retaining and enhancing the parameter, some of which was put forth in these discussions. As a first step the non-consensual change should be reverted, and soon, as it has policy implications re:attribution & verifiability. 65.88.88.216 (talk) 19:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 65.88.88.216: It seems that wrote that omitting this change from the summary list was unintentional.  GoingBatty (talk) 22:06, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok. Unfortunately, second-guessing one's intentions is easy when the arguments are so flimsy. And when emoji presentation questions get prompt responses but something as important as properly attributing quotes is treated as a trivial issue. 65.254.10.26 (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There's still the question of how a template designed to cite an audio-visual work can have page numbers. Based on a strict application of the title, that's just not possible. Perhaps citations to transcripts, which would have page numbers, should be handled using different templates?  Imzadi 1979  →   02:19, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with this, you should be citing what you are reading/watching, if it's from a transcript then it's not AV media. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:41, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't get hung up on a badly named template. The fact that the entire CS1\CS2 is illogically designed and misnamed (it is much more than a "style" to begin with) has some bearing on this, but let's put it aside for the moment. A proper citation system cites classes of works, not media. That is why a book citation should use and not  even when the book is online. Publishers of AV works often publish transcripts and other accessibility aids. These are integral parts of the work on another medium or format. We are not going to rehash arguments about accessibility regarding citations. Properly, the accessibility parameters belong in a citation of the work (in this case the transcript parameters), to be used at the discretion of citation writers. Secondly, it has been proposed previously to rationalize the quote-location parameter. An argument   could have aliases depending on the medium quoted from:   etc. It is up to the citation writer to make the choices so that the citation is understood and is relevant to the related wikitext. 24.103.101.218 (talk) 15:16, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Add: generally most aliases should be avoided. However in situations like the above the aliases have semantic significance. They signify different data types that have equivalent application (the location of the data). Programmatically they make sense and rationalize data-entry. Separate static-text labels could be provided. 24.103.101.218 (talk) 15:23, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry none of that changes my opinion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:43, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Not trying to change anybody's opinion. The facts are presented and one can recognize them or hold an opinion instead. Such as, the fact that the change that is the subject of the edit request had no consensus, and it is ok to be reverted on that basis alone. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 17:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The facts are presented and one can recognize them or hold an opinion instead. No you opinion of the facts is presented, I don't think its presented very well. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

What is not a fact? That the removal of quote-page from the AV template was non-consensual? That quotes from the source may be given to support wikitext? That transcript parameters exist in templates for accessibility reasons and may be quoted? That quote locations are needed to find and verify the quote? That citations cite sources, and the medium/media of the source is secondary? 208.253.152.74 (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2023 (UTC)


 * It's also a fact that if you are not citing AV media you should not be using cite av media, but something appropriate to the source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 01:22, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not the case here. 68.173.78.83 (talk) 01:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Break
While the consensus for this change may not have been initially established clearly, subsequent discussion in this thread shows that this change does have general support. To help me decide whether this change needs reverting, please can you answer the following questions as succintly as possible: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:02, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Are any citations in the article namespace currently broken or otherwise unusable?
 * Is it possible to achieve what you are trying to do using the workarounds described above? If not, please give a simple example of something that you want to do which is not now possible.
 * In the archived discussion, I wrote (16:59, 21 August 2022):
 * At the time of this writing, is used on 32,473 articles.  Of those:
 * five use quote
 * of those, one uses time
 * of those, none use quote-page or quote-pages
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:15, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course none show the use of quote-page since it is ignored. I have used it in several references where the quote location is not now shown. 198.179.75.38 (talk) 14:24, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This comment is a misunderstanding of how search works. Izno (talk) 17:18, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually it seems you misunderstand my comment, which is not a reply to any regex search or more specialized template-parametet search. The comment is about what citations show to readers. Basically a quote that just hangs there. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 23:43, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Then how does Of course none show the use of quote-page since it is ignored. pertain to Trappist's comment? He posted results of a search which identifies where the parameter is used. You either understand what those searches do and so that comment is irrelevant, or you don't understand what they do and so that comment is incorrect. Izno (talk) 23:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Or, you could stop making assumptions. My comment was directed at user Martin who asked a related question. Trappist interjected while I was still formulating an answer. It was certainly not a response to a 5 month old search. If I'm guilty of anything is not indenting for clarity. 4.30.91.142 (talk) 00:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For some reason, you don't like the quote parameters in full citations. And obviously the related quote-location parameters. Your dislike, including the section you started (in the same archive) to remove it, found no support but there was opposition, with proper reasoning, based both on existing policy, practices, and common sense. But then you went ahead and removed the quote-page parameter anyway. So that is where we stand. 198.179.75.38 (talk) 14:31, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Your search is bad. A broader search finds 9 potential articles. Of the 9, only 2 (Krishnamurti's Notebook, and Choiceless awareness) have quote-page in AV media. Neither of these two uses are implicated by the two questions that MSGJ asked. Izno (talk) 17:20, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yep, two articles. My search did not find them because the  templates in those articles have this:
 * where the closing  of the  template terminates the regex match before it gets to quote-page(s).  Not clear to me why  is needed nor why the values assigned to first and last appear to be swapped... Fixing that would, it seems, negate the need for .  Editor Izno's search finds seven false positives because   is greedy so it finds the start of a  template and then continues to consume text until it finds   in the same template (a true match) or in some other template (false positive).
 * The templates in these pages appear to be attempts to shoehorn two sources (the video and an edited transcript) into a single citation template. To me, the rendered results are too complex to be useful to readers.  The obvious workaround is to simplify by creating a separate transcript citation using, marking the transcript citation with Transcript, and setting none so that the short-form references link to the video citation.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:30, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The change was undisclosed and had no consensus. It should be reverted on that basis, and then anyone can start a discussion on whether to remove the parameter from the AV template. The burden is on those who want to change the template.
 * There have been ample statements above about the necessity of the parameter, which directly implicates WP:V. See WP:BURDEN, and it has been a fundamental requirement that all quotes should be attributable and verifiable. The parameter in question promotes attribution & verifiability. 198.179.75.38 (talk) 14:21, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The change was undisclosed and had no consensus. It should be reverted on that basis, and then anyone can start a discussion on whether to remove the parameter from the AV template. The burden is on those who want to change the template.
 * There have been ample statements above about the necessity of the parameter, which directly implicates WP:V. See WP:BURDEN, and it has been a fundamental requirement that all quotes should be attributable and verifiable. The parameter in question promotes attribution & verifiability. 198.179.75.38 (talk) 14:21, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

❌ I am satisfied that reverting this change is not necessary nor desirable, for the various reasons given &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I hope you realize that removing the parameter is liable to leave a quote in place without the means to directly locate it. This contravenes policy.
 * The idea that the transcript, linked in the citation with the appropriate parameters, cannot be quoted in the same citation is novel, and never discussed.
 * The removal of quote-page affects quotes from the non-text rendition too. The parameter time is equivalent to the parameter page. There is no parameter quote-time in AV media templates as an equivalent of quote-page in other media templates
 * I believe an RFC will be required so this may have wider discussion 65.88.88.70 (talk) 22:58, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

"Cita web" errors
As noted at User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 14, sometimes substituting cita web causes the actual cite information to be erased and an error to be put inappropriately into the wikitext. I have today encountered several cases where someone wrote "cita web" where "cite web" would have been correct. User:Anomie suggested changing the template so it does the right thing if the English "title" parameter is detected. Would that be feasible, and is there anyone who knows how to do that? -- Beland (talk) 17:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Beland: I believe is suggesting that you post the suggestion at Template talk:Cita web.  GoingBatty (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * psst that a redirect to this page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 01:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Wow - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * A brief history:
 * 3 January 2010 – changed from a nonsense template to a simple redirect to  with this edit
 * 13 November 2022 – original citation added to 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at this edit; at the time,  was still a simple redirect to .  I wonder if Editor Island92 copied that template from the Spanish Wikipedia article es:Anexo:Gran Premio de Abu Dabi de 2022 and then modified it to fix the unrecognized parameter errors but did not change the template's name
 * 25 December 2022 – repointed to  – this invokes the auto-translation supplied by Module:CS1 translator. In this case, auto-translator cannot know which language (Italian or Spanish) it should translate because the indicators, título (Spanish) or titolo (Italian), have been replaced with title (English) so it emits the &#123;&#123;cita book/news/web&#125;&#125; requires |título= (Spanish) or |titolo= (Italian) error message.  The error message is visible to editors before substing so they have the opportunity to fix the template.  This of course presumes that editors preview their work...
 * 27 December 2022 – AnomieBOT substs the template with this edit
 * This is a case of GIGO because the 'manual' translation (if the template was copied from es.wiki) was incomplete. AnomieBOT did nothing wrong.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * But the "manual" translation presumably worked when the template was inserted, according to the timeline, so the editor would not have seen any errors. What could have happened before 25 December, in order to avoid this problem, was that all instances of "cita web" could have ben renamed to "cite web". This step was skipped.
 * I see this as an opportunity to improve the translator module. In the past, when the template was a redirect, the foreign-language parameters generated error messages, and English-language parameters worked fine. If someone using AWB wanted to sweep by and do an auto-replacement of the redirect and/or the parameters, it worked fine. Now, if editors go to the trouble of inserting the correct parameters, the template does not work. What if the module recognized English-language parameters as well as the foreign-language parameters so that substing would not discard useful information? In addition, foreign-language versions of these templates sometimes have additional parameters that are not supported by our CS1 templates, but which have useful information in them; AFAIK, that information is discarded upon substitution, which is not ideal. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:42, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The purpose of Module:CS1 translator is to make it so that editors don't have to manually translate non-English cs1|2-like templates. For example, this template (which could have been the original of the template identified in the AnomieBOT discussion) taken from es:Anexo:Gran Premio de Abu Dabi de 2022:
 * translates to (yes added to get this rendering):
 * and renders as:
 * For the most part, the translation is transparent. When a non-English template has parameters that are not supported by cs1|2, those parameters are retained as-is so that cs1|2 can emit an appropriate error message notifying editors to manually fix those parameters.  English language parameters are also retained as-is though they may be overwritten if a non-English parameter translates to the same name.
 * The only time that anything is discarded is when an Italian or Spanish template does not have a native-language title parameter.  The error message is supposed to tell editors that something is wrong that needs attention.  In the example case, we have an edge condition where  was placed in the article before the auto-translation and substitution was activated.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Today I finished fixing several dozen of the same type of error. If I'm understanding correctly, we're thinking all of them were probably caused by changing the redirect without properly examining the unsubstituted uses, so this is a one-time wave that probably won't repeat? You can see my recent contributions if you want more examples. -- Beland (talk) 03:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For the most part, the translation is transparent. When a non-English template has parameters that are not supported by cs1|2, those parameters are retained as-is so that cs1|2 can emit an appropriate error message notifying editors to manually fix those parameters.  English language parameters are also retained as-is though they may be overwritten if a non-English parameter translates to the same name.
 * The only time that anything is discarded is when an Italian or Spanish template does not have a native-language title parameter.  The error message is supposed to tell editors that something is wrong that needs attention.  In the example case, we have an edge condition where  was placed in the article before the auto-translation and substitution was activated.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Today I finished fixing several dozen of the same type of error. If I'm understanding correctly, we're thinking all of them were probably caused by changing the redirect without properly examining the unsubstituted uses, so this is a one-time wave that probably won't repeat? You can see my recent contributions if you want more examples. -- Beland (talk) 03:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Today I finished fixing several dozen of the same type of error. If I'm understanding correctly, we're thinking all of them were probably caused by changing the redirect without properly examining the unsubstituted uses, so this is a one-time wave that probably won't repeat? You can see my recent contributions if you want more examples. -- Beland (talk) 03:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

"Staff"
Staff should be added as a generic name for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_errors:_generic_name BhamBoi (talk) 01:06, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @BhamBoi: A few years ago, I tried commenting out "Staff" from author parameters, and ended up reverting all those edits - see Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 4 for the discussion. Unless there is a new consensus to remove/hide "Staff" from references, then I don't recommend adding an generic name error to those references.
 * There are over 37,000 pages in Category:CS1 errors: generic name. I'd like us to work on reducing that volume before adding many more pages to it.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 03:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Double quotes in titles and quotes
So the issue of double quote marks in fields that are automatically enclosed in double quote marks (like "title" and "quote") seems to come up periodically:
 * Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 4 (Jan 2014)
 * Help talk:Citation_Style 1/Archive 80 (Nov 2021)
 * Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 86 (Nov 2022)

Intending to enforce MOS:DOUBLE I had been using a regex to replace lots of single quote marks with double quote marks. I didn't realize that doing this in cite web and friends renders as double-inside-double quote marks, which I agree looks bad. I disabled that and was going to write a new regex to fix my mistakes (and I guess everyone else's) but then I had the same question as those who came before - should this instead be fixed by just making the template smarter?

If that's not in the works and it's "only" 60K instances or so, I can start slowly normalizing all instances. User:Trappist the monk mentioned this nice search, but that's not something I can use when I'm grepping surface-level wikitext in Python without Mediawiki. If anyone can produce a complete list of which templates and parameters this kind of fix should be applied to, I can put that to good use; otherwise I'll probably just start with the "title" and "quote" parameters of cite web, cite news, and cite journal, and the "chapter" parameter of cite book. -- Beland (talk) 04:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * How would you make the template "smarter"? What should it do with a copy-pasted title with double-nested quote marks like ? And what if an editor uses the correct syntax and writes  ? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:06, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

template:cite thesis
What is template:cite thesis, if not a giant violation of Wikipedia's policy against original research? By definition a thesis is original research, as it is something submitted by a student to the head of a department at a university. Am I missing something? Are we now considering what is effectively a very large homework assignment to be on equal footing with peer-reviewed research? — Soap — 23:42, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * They are covered by the third point of WP:SCHOLARSHIP;
 * Dissertations – Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a doctorate, and which are publicly available (most via interlibrary loan or from Proquest), can be used but care should be exercised, as they are often, in part, primary sources. It goes on with other details. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 00:49, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

S2CID limit needs to be increased
March 29 has a cite journal ref with S2CID error. The S2CID is 256374391 and it was added by the Citation bot. The link also works correctly.



The limit needs to be increased. Ciridae (talk) 08:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Magazine issue parameter
The issue field in automatically adds a "no." before the issue number. Sometimes, however, there are unnumbered and named issues (like a special issue for a trade show) or issues are named things like January-March 1983. Could we add either a new field (I suggest issue-name) or add a parameter akin to no-pp? Thank you,  Mr.choppers &#124;   ✎  05:10, 6 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Mr.choppers In those instances where issues are named things like January-March 1983, I would use January–March 1983 instead of issue. GoingBatty (talk) 14:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty - thanks, that works for the dated ones. Well, it didn't work for me at first because the date ranged over two years, but once I realized that it has to be formatted with spaces around the dash I got it to work: October 1883 – March 1884.  Mr.choppers &#124;   ✎  02:28, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Bump PMC limit
throws an error. The limit should be increased to 10000000 &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:49, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Addition to generic titles
Could "PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions" be added to the generic titles list. There are currently 409 articles with this title in the references. Thanks. Keith D (talk) 09:58, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

In citations of books, should wikilinks or URLs have primacy?
I personally would prefer that the templates be redesigned so that they can support a URL and a wikilink at the same time, with the URL becoming a "read online" link (like how FRwiki has "voir en ligne" links).

Until that happens, the question is whether citations of books should have general URLs (not page number specific URLs but general URLs) as supreme over wikilinks (in the case the book has a Wikipedia article) or whether the wikilink should be supreme (with the general URL to the book being taken out of the template and/or being listed on the external links section of the book's Wikipedia article).

The reason why I prefer wikilinks is that it encourages the Wikipedians checking the sources to consider in-depth information about the book itself when evaluating claims made by the source (for example academic book reviews on a book may reveal weaknesses in the book's methodology, minor errors, etc. and such would be covered in a Wikipedia article on the book). WhisperToMe (talk) 21:47, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * This has been a settled question in Citation Style 1 for ten years or so. If a book citation template contains both a wikilink and a URL intended to link the title, the template will generate an error message, "URL–wikilink conflict". – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I acknowledged above that both a URL and a wikilink won't work ("I personally would prefer that the templates be redesigned[...]"). The question is which one should be selected: URL or wikilink. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You can have both, if you put the url on the page numbers rather than on the book title. If we have an article about a book, I think that article should be linked, because the link will often contain useful information about the reliability of the source that might not be easily found otherwise. Example: our article The Symmetries of Things, heavily used as a source in some mathematics subtopics, includes sourced material (published book reviews) according to which we need to use it with caution as a source, because of its use of neologisms and its failure to give proper credit for previous work. When we cite this book without including this link, it makes it look more authoritative than it should. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:27, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I oppose that because a fundamental principle of website usability is that interactive things that look the same should always behave the same. If readers are used to the title in a footnote being linked to the cited source, then it's going to surprise and frustrate them when one title leads, instead, to a Wikipedia article about the source. In that case, what is the likelihood that that reader who was looking for the source and got thwarted will (a) guess that the source is also available via a link, rather than assuming that they've been denied and walking away, and (b) notice that the page number is a link and try it on the off-chance that it'll take them where they wanted to go? More concisely, take it as given that the imperative of every web user is "Don't make me guess." Largoplazo (talk) 23:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That may be why I wouldn't mind having the French-style "lire en ligne"/"read online" style normalized, and/or make wikilinks show up as a distinctly different color compared to external links, or both. When I did push URLs out of templates to accommodate wikilinks (prior to this discussion), I added the URLs to "read online" links to mimic what FRwiki does. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In the case of page-specific citations I do put in the URLs for those. I was wondering though in a choice between a general (non-page specific) URL or a wikilink. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * If it’s something like WP:GOOGLEBOOKS where there isn’t free access to the entire book, I’m not sure that’s necessary. Some books online would perhaps be better linked to via an identifier such as a hdl or doi. But I kind of generally think if it’s important enough to wikilink a title in a citation to contextualize a citation, just name the book in the article text and wikilink it there? You can also have a link to the book outside the citation template but still part of the citation. Umimmak (talk) 22:28, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * If there's a url where the book can be read freely, it should be linked from our article on the book. Why try to read the minds of readers about which kind of resource they want, when we can provide both, by including an internal wikilink that in turn provides the extlink? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:30, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Another option is also to have a link to the chapter in the chapter field and wikilink the title in the title field if it’s all coming from one chapter, but this won’t always be an option. Umimmak (talk) 22:31, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Book references should always include page numbers. So putting the extlink on the page numbers is always an option. I don't understand the opposition to wikilinking titles. If you wikilink the title, readers can find both the article about the source and the source itself (either through a link elsewhere in the reference or an extlink from the article on the book). If you don't, you are blocking readers from finding the article about the source, and forcing them to only look at the source itself. Why would you want to constrain the readers in this way? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I’m not sure where you’re getting opposition… I’m just saying in some cases it might make sense to include a wikilinked title of the book in the article text if it’s that important to contexualize a particular source, and providing suggestions for ways multiple options both could be included. Umimmak (talk) 22:37, 24 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I advise people not to link to Google Books. The links are not stable, and a page that may be available one day might not be available the next. See WP:GOOGLEBOOKS for details. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  23:41, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I linked that page above and explicitly said that Google Books links probably werent necessary, yes. Umimmak (talk) 23:52, 24 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Always prefer a wikilink. This also is a settled point in CS1. Izno (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Funny, cause WP:CS1 says the exact opposite: A link to the actual source is preferred to a link to a Wikipedia article about the source. Umimmak (talk) 22:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I also checked the history of WP:CS1 and the phrase there has been on the page for years. see this revision from 2013. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:45, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Cool, the documentation is outdated. What else is new? :) Every time this question has ever come up in the past half a decade I've been watching this page the answer has been "prefer a wikilink to the article about the source" because you should be able to access the source the same way from the wikilinked page. And as David says up the page, if you need the precise source location linked, there are other places you can add that link. Izno (talk) 23:44, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The original form of that sentence was created at this edit 16 December 2011: A link to the actual source is better than a link to a Wikipedia article about the source.. The current version was created at this edit 18 October 2013: A link to the actual source is preferred to a link to a Wikipedia article about the source.
 * The original titlelink was added to Module:Citation (the now-defunct predecessor of Module:Citation/CS1) at this edit 7 September 2012. Before that, linking title to a wikipedia article about the title could only be accomplished by wikilinking the value assigned to title (titlelink is not supported by ).
 * No doubt,, I am in the minority here, but I believe that url should take precedence over title-link. The purpose of a citation is to identify for the reader where the editor found the information that is included in the en.wiki article.  If you want the reader to visit the en.wiki page about the title, add a wikilink at the end of the citation:   or some such.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:52, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Gah, what an ugly way of suggesting to format citations when no such workaround is needed.
 * The point is to not tell the reader what to visit; it is to allow the reader to decide where to go.
 * URLs for book citations are often a clumsy choice anyway, because the same book can be provided by multiple sources, many of which are not canonical. Suppose you have a book that is available online paywalled from the book publisher, available online to subscribers from archive.org, maybe some of its pages previewable online from Google books, and also available for piracy on Z-library. The question you are probably asking is "which one do you link" but I think it's the wrong question. We should instead ask "how can we format citations so that the choice of which link to use can be made by the readers, not by the editors". (Well, and maybe not include the Z-library one per WP:ELNEVER, but even so.) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:22, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose the OP is asking about CS1 templates specifically, not about citations in general. Forgive the preamble: For citations in general, the objective is directly related to WP:V. This means that a verifying reader should be able to discover and retrieve the source as quickly and easily as possible. The citations themselves are immaterial. What matters is to verify the wikitext and keep reading, because that's what Wikipedia is for. Related requirements follow logically: The title link should be in order of preference, 1. the freely accessible one 2. the partially-freely accessible one 3. the one with least onerous requirements (e.g. free registration) 4. further choices with increasing access requirements. Among two or more links with the same access pick the most relevant: that is the one with the most concise and precise information about the title (book) as it pertains to finding it. Let the reader get over it quickly.
 * When it comes to CS1 templates, the same should apply. But. 65.254.10.26 (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That's what WP:V says. It says the exact opposite: Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. Some reliable sources are not easily accessible. Instead, it talks about the  of sources. That can be verified by looking up the book, the creator and the publisher. That's why we have author-link and title-link. That's why the Wikipedia article on the book is so relevant. As it happens, the links you are describing would be of little use to me.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:44, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you replying to some other comment? Nobody said anything about rejecting sources, "reliable" or not. It is about making it easy for the reader to verify the particulars of a source. One does not link the entire book just to verify specific context. That is what inline citations with in-source locations are for. Both (title) url and title-link are lookup parameters, not access ones. They should help the reader to quickly find the correct source so s/he can verify the wikitext and move on. 67.243.247.14 (talk) 15:33, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is a reader may read a citation of Hmong: History of a People and think "oh, it's verified, let's move on." But that overlooks that the work is deeply flawed and maybe it shouldn't be cited in that way. Having Wikipedia articles of books allows readers to check for the reputation of the work itself, which is an important ingredient in verifiability. Also even reliable source works occasionally make minor errors, and the book reviews document these minor errors. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not a citation issue. Proper sourcing happens before citations are formatted and it should be dealt there. Citations deal with identifying and locating sources that support the wikitext. If wikitext uses dodgy sources to support otherwise unsupported claims then the issue is with the wikitext. 68.173.78.83 (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The thing is the readers won't know the source is dodgy unless they are in the habit of clicking wikilinks to the sources themselves; the wikilinks are there to nudge the reader into doing so. And the issue is with the source being used, which is the root of the wikitext. Think of sourcing as making a foundation of a house. If the underlying sources (foundation) are bad, the entire house (article text) is not good. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:12, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's the other way round. You claim something in Wikipedia and find sources to support that claim. In order to make the source available you use in this case, a citation. Whether the source is appropriate or not is not a citation issue, and will not be resolved there. If the claim has no proper sources remove the claim. If the claim is ambiguous, note the ambiguity in wikitext, and support the claim of ambiguity with the appropriate (ambiguous) sources. Then cite those sources (last step). Citations are not value statements, they are discovery and access aids. 24.103.91.82 (talk) 14:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * My statement about citations being the foundation of the article content stems from this from Verifiability: "Its content is determined by previously published information rather than editors' beliefs, opinions, or experiences." People can and do think of a statement and then look for a source to support it, and oftentimes that practice is okay. However I do not agree that citations are only ways of supporting statements; they are the content that we want to direct readers to, and articles are more or less summaries of the sums of reliable sources. Also it's important that the reader knows that they should check if the source is proper or not, and if no wikilinks are to be found, the reader may not know to check, for example Hmong: History of a People. A link like Hmong: History of a People makes it more obvious that the reader should check out the claim. WhisperToMe (talk) 11:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The idea that readers would read anything because, or prompted by, its citations is certainly a novel one. Citations are not even considered part of the copy of any material. Like indices, TOCs, bibliographies, etc. they are back matter or foot matter. Wikipedia isn't a research facility, it is a tertiary information provider. Citations are important because Wikipedia articles are inherently unreliable, and publish claims that must be supported. Here we deal with the presentation and formatting of that support. The quality of the support is a different matter that should ideally be dealt with before the citation is written, taking into account the context. 68.173.78.83 (talk) 12:50, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel that maybe readers should be prompted to read the citations and read what the citations say to get a handle on the topic. I remember a guy on a bus telling me to read the citations, and then read what those cite, etc: follow the rabbit trail. Of course not everyone has the time and patience to do that, but people who do should be encouraged to do so. Also, I see Wikipedia as the starting point for research; don't cite Wikipedia directly, but use it to case out a topic and get the key reliable sources on the topic so that those can be read directly. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:51, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Citations ideally do two things: 1. identify a source 2. provide sufficient information to locate it. The citation is supposed to verify some claim in wikitext. The claim may be a bold-faced lie: A citation that provides a source for that lie and the means to locate it is a good (i.e. "reliable") citation. Why the wikitext says what it says has nothing to do with citation formatting and presentation. The wikitext writer may be malicious; or, the writer may be stating the lie as an actual, important event; or may be stating the lie as an event that was debunked. In all cases, a citation proving that the lie actually happened is needed. An additional citation proving the lie as a lie will also be needed in a properly wrtten article. That citation may be from the same work, or from another one. The second citation, if it provides a debunking source and the means to locate it, is also a good (i.e. "reliable") citation. Do not confuse citations with § Bibliography, § Further reading, or § External links. All of these provide avenues for further information. The verification tool (citation) has narrow, vital scope: is the source identified/identifiable? Can it be easily and quickly located it so readers verify the claim and keep on reading the article? Because the point is reading the articles, not dwelling in citations. 65.88.88.237 (talk) 17:04, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * IMO the goal of "reading the articles" is best accomplished through the page number field (in regards to large books). The "general URLs at title" for books would only link to a cover page or something to that effect, and we wouldn't expect a drive-by reader to just read the whole book. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:18, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I can't speak for others, but I have encountered quite a few inaccurate or unclear articles where the only useful part was the references. IMHO, providing references on a topic is valuable in itself, not just for verification. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:12, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think the importance of references is underestimated in this thread. But I fail to understand how an article can be inaccurate or unclear if its references are the opposite. If this is so, there may a WP:TSI issue among others, or more generally misapplication of/insufficient WP:INCITE. Or perhaps more serious formatting issues regarding grammar and context, or preponderance of things like editorializing, jargon, NPOV etc. It would be the wikitext that needs fixing. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't believe this is a question that needs an answer. Use URLs or use wikilinks, we shouldn't be deciding what others should use nor making an issue of it. Copying a title to search online is extremely simple, a link to the Wikipedia article about the book can be useful. A URL to the correct version, that may have differing page numbers, may be required when used with short form refs. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:31, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The issue though is it may not occur to them that they should copy the title and check the reputation of the work. Having the wikilink there is a reminder to people that there is more information about the work cited and they should check the wikilink to check the reputation of the book. Hmong: History of a People partly exists to let Wikipedians know about the reputation of that source. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * If it’s that important to do to contextualize a source, do so in the article itself; wikilink it in the text, and explain any possible issues there. An article should stand on its own; you shouldn’t need to expect a reader will click on a wikilink in a citation to know there’s a caveat with a source being cited. Umimmak (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * While one should try to contextualize in the article when possible, I would prefer to ensure book sources are linked even if the writers choose not to/cannot plausibly link the title of the book in the body of the article. The article is effectively built on a foundation of sources, and knowing whether the article has good foundations (such as not being sourced to the likes of Hmong: History of a People) is important. Also, the goal is to encourage readers to examine the sources themselves, something they should be doing. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:09, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is up to the person creating the cite. This thread shows there is no correct way, because there is no argreement on what that should be. Wikipedia allows an extremely broad range of how referencing should be done, and there shouldn't be any concerted effort to formalise this in articles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:17, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I thought about this issue some more. If the statement "A link to the actual source is preferred [...]" was changed to "either is fine", that would be okay with me. I would like to see more emphasis of adding wikilinks into the citation brackets, but whether the citation template itself has a URL or whether it has a wikilink (with the other being outside the template) is not as important as whether there is a wikilink within the citation (that may be outside of the citation template). WhisperToMe (talk) 11:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You can do so with citations you create if you wish. But I would be against any change, I just don't see the issue you do. If anything it seems to conflict with the idea that Wikipedia is never a valid source for referencing. What Wikipedia says about a source, positive or negative, is user generated content.
 * Editors are expected to use reliable sources, not whatever they can find to support their statements. It is that second behaviour that ends up with bad sources being used, well that and those pushing a POV (they will generally use anything to push their idea). Pushing wikilinks won't change that, nor I believe encourage more validation of articles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:32, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The articles about books aren't strictly speaking all about the user generated content: they link to book reviews. It's really each collection of book reviews, and not the user-generated content per se, which are meant to validate the sources which in turn validate articles (the reviews say the book is good, and therefore the book is a good source, or the reviews say the book like Hmong: History of a People is deeply flawed, and therefore the book shouldn't be used). The user generated content of course is meant to summarize the reviews and/or express highlights in the reviews, but the articles are also meant to give attention to the various book reviews themselves.
 * I am keenly aware that there are POV pushers who use biased sources, but book reviews may also ferret out sources that are flawed, or do not represent mainstream science.
 * The one issue with book reviews is that many of them are paywalled. Wikipedians in academic institutions or who have access to the Wikipedia Library are often able to read them, but I wish the general public was more easily able to do so.
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 22:45, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Having editors add the book reviews doesn't get round the UGC concerns, as the editors are choosing which book reviews to add. Concerns about the reliability of a citation should be discussed at the article talk page, or at WP:RSN. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:12, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I try to deal with that concern by adding all of the book reviews I can find to the "Further reading" page, and as I use the book reviews I move them up to the references section. Often I can find four, six, eight, ten or so book reviews for each book at a university library search engine (I typically use University of Houston Libraries). I would encourage people to list all of them so there can be the most holistic overview possible. I've also sometimes made notes in the talk page of the article in the book, like Talk:Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese, and often I flat out tell people to look at the book reviews. Any of the content can be then brought to WP:RSN for consideration. The article talk page may be a good place to discuss the reliability of specific information pertaining to the book in general, while the talk page of an article about the book can be used to document issues concerning the book as a whole (which can then be moved to RSN). WhisperToMe (talk) 13:24, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * while the talk page of an article about the book can be used to document issues concerning the book as a whole (which can then be moved to RSN). 100% against this. All discussions should be at RSN, as that is the place people will be watching for such discussions. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is I can't open an RSN thread every time I find content about a factual inaccuracy in an other-wise reliable book within an academic book review (authors are human, and they do make mistakes!). That would fill RSN with threads where there is no active sourcing issue, yet. For example: Talk:The Jew in American Cinema. I haven't yet seen somebidy actively cite the book in regards to the use of the words "anti-hero" and "semitism", so it would be pointless at this time to open an RSN thread. But it could come up in the future, and this is why I'm making notes of it now on the talk page, so another Wikipedian can check that, directly read the book review, and then cite the book review in RSN if the issue does arise. Another example is Talk:Dealing with Disaster in Japan, though instead of the book reviews (the reviews don't themselves tell about the usage of scientific information), it's about the Wikipedia aviation community choosing not to use the book for sourcing on scientific/technical info. It could come up at RSN if someone tries to use the book to source such when they shouldn't. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You only need to go to RSN when discussing it's usage in Wikipedia. If it's not been used yet, it doesn't need to be discussed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:14, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel though that it's important to get research done beforehand so people starting/doing RSNs dont have as much work to do. If a bunch of sources/notes are already listed, it'll take less time for them to get through a literature review on a book. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I personally would prefer that the templates be redesigned so that they can support a URL and a wikilink at the same time, with the URL becoming a "read online" link (like how FRwiki has "voir en ligne" links). While I'm not sure that the French Wikipedia model of placing links to sources right at the end of all citations (regardless of whether there is an internal link) is desirable, I think it's worth exploring how we could potentially accommodate both an internal and an external link. Do we have any ideas what this could look like? Graham (talk) 05:13, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is I can't open an RSN thread every time I find content about a factual inaccuracy in an other-wise reliable book within an academic book review (authors are human, and they do make mistakes!). That would fill RSN with threads where there is no active sourcing issue, yet. For example: Talk:The Jew in American Cinema. I haven't yet seen somebidy actively cite the book in regards to the use of the words "anti-hero" and "semitism", so it would be pointless at this time to open an RSN thread. But it could come up in the future, and this is why I'm making notes of it now on the talk page, so another Wikipedian can check that, directly read the book review, and then cite the book review in RSN if the issue does arise. Another example is Talk:Dealing with Disaster in Japan, though instead of the book reviews (the reviews don't themselves tell about the usage of scientific information), it's about the Wikipedia aviation community choosing not to use the book for sourcing on scientific/technical info. It could come up at RSN if someone tries to use the book to source such when they shouldn't. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You only need to go to RSN when discussing it's usage in Wikipedia. If it's not been used yet, it doesn't need to be discussed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:14, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel though that it's important to get research done beforehand so people starting/doing RSNs dont have as much work to do. If a bunch of sources/notes are already listed, it'll take less time for them to get through a literature review on a book. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:36, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I personally would prefer that the templates be redesigned so that they can support a URL and a wikilink at the same time, with the URL becoming a "read online" link (like how FRwiki has "voir en ligne" links). While I'm not sure that the French Wikipedia model of placing links to sources right at the end of all citations (regardless of whether there is an internal link) is desirable, I think it's worth exploring how we could potentially accommodate both an internal and an external link. Do we have any ideas what this could look like? Graham (talk) 05:13, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Template:Cite book

 * https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/GemuendenForeign
 * "Berghahn Books supports practical open access policies that help make scholarship available to a broader audience in a sustainable way"

Allowed Template:Cite_book keywords for Named-identifier access-indicator parameters: |bibcode-access=
 * doi-access=
 * hdl-access=
 * jstor-access=
 * ol-access=
 * osti-access=
 * s2cid-access= should include free and open
 * 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 23:28, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Open should not be added as an option. Free covers everything important, no need for needless duplication/forks. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:36, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at the details about Berghahn's open access, found here, it doesn't look like we need do anything. It's an option for the author to make the work freely available, so if the author posts it elsewhere "free" should suffice. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Specific parameter guidance for cite conference
The text in cite conference is mostly generic, and it is not clear which parameter to use for which datum, e.g., should the name of the paper be in section or in title. If there is a conference with published proceedings, what is an appropriate citation for a paper given at that conference, assuming that there is a URL for the paper and for the proceedings? Should there be parameters for the conference editors, or only for the authors of the cited paper? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * is peculiar and should be deprecated and replaced with a new design. Don't hold your breath for that to happen; when I've said that before, the response from the community has been indifference.
 * Proceedings title goes in book-title; paper title goes in title. url is the url of the paper; there is no url-holding parameter for book-title.  Free-form information about the conference can go in conference (which can be supported with conference-url) but why bother? we aren't citing the conference itself but rather a published paper in a proceedings.  Consider using  instead.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:39, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have a similar issues. See Grothendieck existence theorem (URL:https://indico.ictp.it/event/a0255/session/14/contribution/9). I don't understand which parameters to use for Organizer. Would you help me with this ? I understand that using cite book instead is a good idea, but it is not open access. --SilverMatsu (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like you are trying to cite the source using bibliographical bits and pieces from two separate publications of the source. The url points to a free-to-read copy of the paper at the seminar's website (Advanced School in Basic Algebraic Geometry) hosted by Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.  The other 'source' is a copy of the paper in Fundamental Algebraic Geometry: Grothendieck's FGA Explained, volume 123 of 'Mathematical surveys and monographs' published by American Mathematical Society.  This copy too is available on line but is behind a paywall.
 * Cite that you consulted.  If you consulted the version available at ICTP, cite that source (consider a simple  template).  If you consulted the version published by AMS, cite that source (consider a simple  template).
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:51, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for teaching me. I fixed it.--SilverMatsu (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:51, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for teaching me. I fixed it.--SilverMatsu (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Suffixes in names
How do you split a name in cite book when it contains an honorific or suffix, e.g., John Stuart Stutz, 3rd? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:31, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * MOS:JR
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. What about honorifics?
 * Shouldn't the documentation for, e.g., first, editor-first, link to WP:JR? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that honorifics (titles, ranks, degrees, etc) should be omitted from citations. You can add a link to MOS:JR (not  ) to the documentation if you think it important to do so.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Help requested with date range
I don't know how to format this date range correctly. I have used an ndash and capitalised the seasons correctly, by still getting a CS1 error:

Hawkeye7  (discuss)  06:14, 16 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Needs to be a spaced dash as a range with spaces on both sides. It is the 4th row in |%3Cparam1%3E=,_|%3Cparam2%3E=,_... Help:CS1 errors. Izno (talk) 06:23, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Needs to be a spaced dash as a range with spaces on both sides. It is the 4th row in |%3Cparam1%3E=,_|%3Cparam2%3E=,_... Help:CS1 errors. Izno (talk) 06:23, 16 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Uggh. Thanks for that. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  17:56, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

New maintenance category: Category:CS1 maint: bibcode
Just like Category:CS1 maint: Zbl tracks temporary Zbl assignments, so should Category:CS1 maint: bibcode track temporary bibcode assignments, e.g..

You can tell it's a temporary assignment when  is found in positions 11-13 (or more strictly,   in positions 10-14). &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:13, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This page doesn't describe  as a temporary assignment.  Is there 'official' documentation that does?
 * There are only a few articles with in positions 10-14
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:27, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No official documentation for that, but the practice is that some articles are published 'online first' and they get those temporary bibcodes. And once they are official published (i.e. in print, or in a finalized volume), then the bibcode gets updated to its finalized version. The temporary code is kept up for a while, but it's taken down after some time.
 * "There are only a few articles with .tmp. in positions 10-14" that's because I just ran citation bot against most of the existing cases (~40) . &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:44, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Cite ODNB
Template:Cite ODNB/doc says: "If date and year parameters are both set then date parameter value is displayed but year parameter value is used by templates such as harvnb."

But setting both adds the article to Category:CS1 maint: date and year. Is this still true, or should it be replaced with a note advising avoiding setting both? &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 02:13, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The text you quote is true. It reflects a holdover from the old wikitext versions of the cs1|2 templates to support   disambiguation.  Since the adoption of Module:Citation/CS1 as the engine that renders cs1|2 templates, use of both date and year for   disambiguation is not needed except when when the date in date is written using the YYYY-MM-DD format because disambiguation is not supported in that format.  When the year portion of date (in any allowed format  YYYY-MM-DD) is the same as the year in year (ignoring disambiguation), Module:Citation/CS1 adds the page to .  When the year portions of date and year are different, Module:Citation/CS1 emits an error message and adds the page to the appropriate error category.
 * Could the documentation be improved? No doubt.  If you think that you can improve the documentation, please do.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think I can improve it, but I might be wrong! I've had a go; please trout if necessary. &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 16:19, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think I can improve it, but I might be wrong! I've had a go; please trout if necessary. &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 16:19, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

date reformatting tweak
Editor حبيشان has tweaked function  in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox so that the code breaks out of the   when the date is reformated. This seems a sensible change that should cause no problems.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:08, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

module suite update 14–15 January 2023
I propose to update cs1|2 module suite over the weekend 14–15 January 2023. Here are the changes:

Module:Citation/CS1:
 * ~/Suggestions v. ~Suggestions/sandbox selection tweak; discussion
 * added support for article-number in journal and conference cites; discussion
 * moved list of single-letter second-level TLDs to ~/Configuration/sandbox; discussion
 * annotated namelist entries when interwikilinked; discussion
 * fixed unexpected 'preprint' parameter required error; discussion
 * inhibited leading punctuation when 0 / 0 and others has a value; discussion
 * kerned leading and trailing quotes in quote; discussion

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration


 * i18n change for uncategorized namespaces; discussion
 * add script tags pa, tt;
 * add 'allmusic' to 'generic_names' list; discussion
 * added support for article-number in journal and conference cites;
 * created list of single-letter second-level TLDs from main module; added 'foundation';
 * updated emoji list; discussion
 * added 'Reuters', 'Business', 'CNN', 'Inc' and 'Inc.' to 'generic_names' list; discussion
 * changed Valencian-language tag from 'ca' to 'ca-valencia';

Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist


 * added support for article-number in journal and conference cites;

Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation


 * limited CITEREF dab to date, year, publication-date; date=_and_|year=|discussion

Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist


 * catch 1 & 2 digit doi registrants with subcode; discussion

Module:Citation/CS1/COinS


 * added support for article-number in journal and conference cites;

Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Removed linear-gradient on icons, not necessary when serving SVGs
 * I support this update. It's been too long since the previous one (July 2022, if I am reading the notes correctly). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Talk: pages are now appearing in Category:CS1 errors, specifically Category:CS1 errors: unsupported parameter. Is this intentional? User-duck (talk) 02:02, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * At the time of this writing there are no Talk: namespace pages in . There is (was) Special:Permalink/1133695137 which has (had) this citation:
 * I copied that citation into Talk:List of people with narcolepsy and previewed. Previewing does not indicate that the page will be added to .  Can you provide evidence that Talk: pages are being added to cs1|2 error / maintenance categories?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 03:09, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, they are gone. the only evidence I have is a snapshot from a page I hadn't refreshed but it is not worth the effort to figure out how to include it here. One thing is constant on Wikipedia, thing change. It has been over 3 hours since I observed the situation. Thanks to whoever changed the code. User-duck (talk) 05:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: I edited the errant cite in List of people with narcolepsy. User-duck (talk) 05:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * updated emoji list - these 🐱‍👤🐱‍🚀 🐱‍🐉🐱‍💻🐱‍👓 🐱‍🏍 emoji are not included and will throw an error if used in citations:
 * Gonnym (talk) 12:52, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Not completely true. These two do not cause an error message to be emitted because the zero-width joined code points (those that follow 200D) are listed in https://unicode.org/Public/emoji/15.0/emoji-zwj-sequences.txt from which   was derived:
 * 🐱‍🚀 (1F431 200D 1F680 – CAT FACE, ZWJ, ROCKET); 1F680 is in
 * 🐱‍💻 (1F431 200D 1F4BB – CAT FACE, ZWJ, PERSONAL COMPUTER); 1F4BB is in
 * These four cause error messages because the zero-width joined code points are not listed in emoji-zwj-sequences.txt:
 * 🐱‍👤 (1F431 200D 1F464 – CAT FACE, ZWJ, BUST IN SILHOUETTE); 1F464 not in
 * 🐱‍🐉 (1F431 200D 1F409 – CAT FACE, ZWJ, DRAGON); 1F409 not in
 * 🐱‍👓 (1F431 200D 1F453 – CAT FACE, ZWJ, EYEGLASSES); 1F453 not in
 * 🐱‍🏍 (1F431 200D 1F3CD – CAT FACE, ZWJ, RACING MOTORCYCLE); 1F3CD not in
 * So far as I know, emoji-zwj-sequences.txt is still at version 15.0.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * These are emojis that Microsoft created and are not part of the official Unicode standard. That said, since they exist, they can still appear in titles and cause errors. Not sure how the two that are on the list got there, but I don't believe they appear in the document (I couldn't find them, but I might have missed). Gonnym (talk) 13:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 🐱‍🚀 (1F431 200D 1F680 – CAT FACE, ZWJ, ROCKET) and 🐱‍💻 (1F431 200D 1F4BB – CAT FACE, ZWJ, PERSONAL COMPUTER) don't exist in https://unicode.org/Public/emoji/15.0/emoji-zwj-sequences.txt. But, these two are recognized because   has entries for U+1F680 ROCKET (line 970) and U+1F4BB PERSONAL COMPUTER (line 969).
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, it looks like the user field in the cite tweet template is being checked, which is a little unexpected. This is probably more likely because of how cite tweet (mis)uses the parameter, more than anything else.
 * –Ich (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * is not a cs1|2 template so this talk page is not the correct place to discuss that template's problems.
 * is a wrapper template around . user is checked because  concatenates last/first or author with user which forms a value that is assigned to the  author parameter.  Seems to me that the user value and its attendant markup don't belong in author.  Instead, the  first, last, and author, should be passed to  unmolested.  Those same parameters plus author-link could be assembled into author-mask.  For example, rewriting your demonstration citation as a  template:
 * Perhaps you should raise this issue at Template talk:Cite tweet.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Which is a naive implementation demonstrating of course; some users don't provide their real name so there would need to be some support for that in the template. But that can be Over There. Izno (talk) 23:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, it looks like the user field in the cite tweet template is being checked, which is a little unexpected. This is probably more likely because of how cite tweet (mis)uses the parameter, more than anything else.
 * –Ich (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * is not a cs1|2 template so this talk page is not the correct place to discuss that template's problems.
 * is a wrapper template around . user is checked because  concatenates last/first or author with user which forms a value that is assigned to the  author parameter.  Seems to me that the user value and its attendant markup don't belong in author.  Instead, the  first, last, and author, should be passed to  unmolested.  Those same parameters plus author-link could be assembled into author-mask.  For example, rewriting your demonstration citation as a  template:
 * Perhaps you should raise this issue at Template talk:Cite tweet.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Which is a naive implementation demonstrating of course; some users don't provide their real name so there would need to be some support for that in the template. But that can be Over There. Izno (talk) 23:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you should raise this issue at Template talk:Cite tweet.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Which is a naive implementation demonstrating of course; some users don't provide their real name so there would need to be some support for that in the template. But that can be Over There. Izno (talk) 23:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Error or Maint message if archive date doesn't match url
Nearly every archive-url is from archive.org and all of these links always have the archive date built into the url. I'd imagine then it should be possible to compare the url with the entered archive-date and if they don't match, throw up either an error or maintenance flag. –  Mesi dast   (talk) 21:08, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * WP:WAYBACKMEDIC has been fixing date mismatches for years (Fix #3, #8, #13 in the preceding link) for all 20+ archive providers. It's gone through every article at some point so old problems are resolved. I have not processed the entire site in many years, it takes so long Medic is semi-automated. A tracking category for these errors would help target where to run Medic.  Green  C  21:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sandboxen hacked:
 * valid archive-date does not match timestamp in Wayback Machine urls:
 * One of the things I've been meaning to fix: we emit errors when archive-url does not have archive-date but we don't emit an error message when archive-date does not have archive-url. Fixed that:
 * Another thing: archive-date should only accept single-day dates (the same restriction applies to access-date) so I've fixed that:
 * And to make sure that previous error detection isn't broken, here is archive-date with valid archive-url:
 * and previous error detection of archive-url without archive-date:
 * All of these errors categorize to.
 * Keep? Discard?  Better error messages?  Different categorization?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:02, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk: Thank for creating these errors. Instead of using the word "timestamp mismatch" in the error (which is technically correct), I believe it would be more clear to use "date mismatch", since there is no time in the archive-date field.  Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:10, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * We already have a mismatch error message:
 * I wanted to avoid confusion... Is there a better way to note what is mismatched than the way I have done it and still avoid possible confusion with the year/date mismatch error?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Trappist the monk, that should help catch any mistakes at source when they're being made.
 * Not the most commonly used word but would "datestamp mismatch" work better?
 * I'm fine with it being one category although maybe splitting them into different subcategories would help WP:WAYBACKMEDIC, I'll support whatever @GreenC's call is in that case. –  Mesi dast   (talk) 18:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Single cat works as waybackmedic is general purpose for anything related to archives, if it can't fix something in the cat maybe it should. User:Mesidast, if you can remind me after the cat is populated to run the bot. --  Green  C  18:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Does this only apply to archive.org URLs? I did not see where it did, but I did not look closely. Theirs is one of the few services guaranteed to have a timestamp in the field; several that we use do not. Izno (talk) 19:02, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, only Wayback Machine urls – they are the most common, right? I suppose that we might think about other timestamped archive-snapshot urls if there is sufficient need...
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Recommend archive.today if possible, it has a large number. After that the numbers drop off sharply. Its about 94% Wayback, 5% archive.today and 1% everything else. --  Green  C  19:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding archive.today wasn't difficult:
 * Is that the only format that archive.today uses?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a short-form URL, with no date or date encoding. They are less common as IABot converts them to long form. --  Green  C  00:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed they are. I just wanted to make sure we would not have errors show up for non-archive.org URLs rather than suggesting to support other archivers (which I wouldn't hate either). There's an argument to be made (which I think has been made previously) that we should just support auto-archive dates for those archivers that have the date in their URL, but if a archiver should change how their URL structure, we could be left with a lot of archive URLs without dates. Which could feasibly be cleaned up easily either way at that time, I suppose, we'd just need to differentiate between pre- and post-change somehow, if it ever came to that. I don't think archive.org is likely to change like that either way, so definitely something to consider. Izno (talk) 19:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I wanted to avoid confusion... Is there a better way to note what is mismatched than the way I have done it and still avoid possible confusion with the year/date mismatch error?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:17, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Trappist the monk, that should help catch any mistakes at source when they're being made.
 * Not the most commonly used word but would "datestamp mismatch" work better?
 * I'm fine with it being one category although maybe splitting them into different subcategories would help WP:WAYBACKMEDIC, I'll support whatever @GreenC's call is in that case. –  Mesi dast   (talk) 18:31, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Single cat works as waybackmedic is general purpose for anything related to archives, if it can't fix something in the cat maybe it should. User:Mesidast, if you can remind me after the cat is populated to run the bot. --  Green  C  18:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Does this only apply to archive.org URLs? I did not see where it did, but I did not look closely. Theirs is one of the few services guaranteed to have a timestamp in the field; several that we use do not. Izno (talk) 19:02, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, only Wayback Machine urls – they are the most common, right? I suppose that we might think about other timestamped archive-snapshot urls if there is sufficient need...
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Recommend archive.today if possible, it has a large number. After that the numbers drop off sharply. Its about 94% Wayback, 5% archive.today and 1% everything else. --  Green  C  19:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding archive.today wasn't difficult:
 * Is that the only format that archive.today uses?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a short-form URL, with no date or date encoding. They are less common as IABot converts them to long form. --  Green  C  00:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed they are. I just wanted to make sure we would not have errors show up for non-archive.org URLs rather than suggesting to support other archivers (which I wouldn't hate either). There's an argument to be made (which I think has been made previously) that we should just support auto-archive dates for those archivers that have the date in their URL, but if a archiver should change how their URL structure, we could be left with a lot of archive URLs without dates. Which could feasibly be cleaned up easily either way at that time, I suppose, we'd just need to differentiate between pre- and post-change somehow, if it ever came to that. I don't think archive.org is likely to change like that either way, so definitely something to consider. Izno (talk) 19:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is that the only format that archive.today uses?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a short-form URL, with no date or date encoding. They are less common as IABot converts them to long form. --  Green  C  00:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed they are. I just wanted to make sure we would not have errors show up for non-archive.org URLs rather than suggesting to support other archivers (which I wouldn't hate either). There's an argument to be made (which I think has been made previously) that we should just support auto-archive dates for those archivers that have the date in their URL, but if a archiver should change how their URL structure, we could be left with a lot of archive URLs without dates. Which could feasibly be cleaned up easily either way at that time, I suppose, we'd just need to differentiate between pre- and post-change somehow, if it ever came to that. I don't think archive.org is likely to change like that either way, so definitely something to consider. Izno (talk) 19:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

SSRN limit excess report
A cited journal paper in Edward B. Foley has an identifier of, which is larger than the currently configured limit of 4300000 and leads to a bad SSRN error of Citation Style 1. Please update this limit. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 10:36, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Multiple volumes and issues in one binding
I am attempting to clean up the citation templates in talk:CDC 1604. I tried using and got

The error message for volume is legitimate but the issue and number values seems to be ignored. How do I prevent number from being ignored and how do I mark up the citation for a single document containing two issues straddling volumes? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You shouldn't include Volume in the |volume= field, you end up with "vol. Volume", and use magazine instead of series. If you use:


 * You get:

COMPUTER CHARACTERISTICS QUARTERLY FOURTH QUARTER 1967 FIRST QUARTER 1968 Volume 7, Number 4 - Volume 8, Number 1"
 * -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:50, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If you are going to assume that the 'title' is 'Fourth Quarter 1967 – First Quarter 1968' then surely 'Volume 7, Number 4 – Volume 8, Number 1' is a subtitle so:
 * DON"T SHOUT. Not at all clear to me where issues 1 and 2 come from...
 * Still, this is not a good cs1|2 citation. cs1|2 does not support quarterly date ranges; perhaps it should though there has been no call for that.  Nor does cs1|2 have a way to correctly handle volume and issue ranges; likely because doing so suggests citing multiple sources with a single template.  None of the example citations above specify the article/section/whatever in the periodical is being cited.  Perhaps it is best for you to abandon cs1|2 for this citation and manually construct a suitable citation.  cs1|2 is good for most citation needs but certainly not good for all citation needs.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The upper case is in the original, but I believe that it is legitimate to make it sentence case. The actual text on the title page, other than spacing, is
 * "adams associates
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The upper case is in the original, but I believe that it is legitimate to make it sentence case. The actual text on the title page, other than spacing, is
 * "adams associates
 * I don't know whether the dash is em or en. The is probably a typo. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:46, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure that there is a dash of some form or other between 'Fourth Quarter 1967' and 'First Quarter 1968' in both places in the source where those dates are mentioned.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is a dash; I'm just not sure what flavor. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is it still a magazine when it's hardbound? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 00:46, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure. Why wouldn't it be?  It is/was quite common for publishers to bind all of the monthly issues of a periodical into single volumes.  I've seen lots of those in the facsimiles available at google books.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It was common to do so after the fact, but how common was it to publish multiple issues initially under a single hardbound cover, much less issues straddling a year boundary? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:22, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

DOI and S2CID for
At Ape the second citation (Xia et al, "The genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes") is a bioRxiv preprint that also has a DOI and S2CID. Unfortunately doesn't support the doi and s2cid parameters. Attempting to use results in an error since there is no journal. So it doesn't currently seem possible to cite this paper wholly within CS1 without errors (I have resorted to adding and  on the end). Hairy Dude (talk) 13:20, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you cite the preprint, then you need neither DOI nor s2cid. Those are for fully published papers. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * ↑ that.  is a preprint template so it supports only a limited subset of cs1|2 parameters.  The other preprint templates are, , and.
 * And no templates in headings please.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * And no templates in headings please.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

"et al." in Cite web
The documentation for Template:Cite web says that if nine authors are entered then eight names will show, followed by "et al." This doesn't seem to have happened here. Does anyone know why? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:46, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * That documentation is apparently ancient. That limit has not existed for a long time. Izno (talk) 22:34, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Belated thanks, Izno, for clarifying that and removing the outdated guidance. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

ISBNs, plural
I have in front of me a copy of the sole (I believe) paperback edition of a book recently published by Stanford UP. On its copyright page (the verso of the title page), I read. Such a list is pretty normal these days. I infer that the hard- and paperback books are made up of the same pages, and differ only in their binding. If I specify the paperback's ISBN, somebody with easy access to a library that lacks it but does have the hardback may not find the latter. (True, in practice, good OPACs often provide all usable ISBNs for a given edition of a book.) The "Cite book" template doesn't have the fields "isbn1", "isbn2", etc. Suggestions? (And dead-tree issues aside, I don't know anything about the/any ebook edition: may -- or should -- I ignore it?)

A quick search took me to Help talk:Citation Style 1/Perennial. At first glance, this seems to provide the answer. However, it seems to be about efforts to, for example, cite this or that set of publication details (ISBN), and page number(s), for an editor's Penguin paperback of David Copperfield (or a similarly multiply-published work), plus a greater or lesser number of the same for some library's OUP hardback of the same novel. These are two different editions, very likely to have different pagination and possibly with other differences besides. I'm instead asking about what in reality are single editions that just have a variety of packaging. -- Hoary (talk) 08:16, 5 March 2023 (UTC)


 * ... we should use that perennial page more. Didn't even know it existed. :)
 * No, the answer is still the same, as the other versions can indeed be considered separate editions, even if they contain the same text. WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT still applies, and you should cite the one you read. The others can/should use id as indicated in /Perennial to indicate any other copies you believe are desirable. Izno (talk) 21:08, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "others can/should use |id=", no the others should be entirely ignored because they are not where you got the information. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:41, 5 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Izno and Headbomb, thank you for the responses, but perhaps I didn't make myself clear. It's not just "the same text". At the top of (randomly chosen) page 184 of the paperback that's on my table, I read "Appropriating Cool, Cultivating Disaffection". I've never seen a copy of the hardback whose ISBN also appears on the paperback's copyright page, but I'd bet €1000 that at the top of its page 184 we'd read "Appropriating Cool, Cultivating Disaffection". The pages will be the same. -- Hoary (talk) 03:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK and? What's wrong with using the paperback ISBN? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Headbomb, nothing is wrong with using the paperback's ISBN. I don't think that I have suggested otherwise. The question is about adding the hardback's ISBN to the paperback's ISBN if the former is also provided on the paperback's copyright page (with the publisher's implication that the two differ only in the way in which the publisher has bound identical sets of identical pages together). ¶ Alternative bindings of what are in all other ways (aside from price) identical books is something very often encountered in academic books but not limited to them. The copyright page of my paperback copy of Bill Lowenburg's photobook Crash Burn Love: Demolition Derby says on one line and  on the next. -- Hoary (talk) 05:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Removed parameters still listed in doc
Hi, was going through some stuff and noticed that (updated: was referring to the cite journal documentation, didn't specify this originally) the "subscription         =" parameter and "registration          =" parameters (easiest to search for if you include 10 spaces between subscription and =)  are still included in the vertical list of the parameters. Were they left there by accident and should they be removed? Jasonkwe (talk) (contribs) 23:06, 5 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, please remove them. Izno (talk) 23:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Cheers, will do. Jasonkwe (talk) (contribs) 08:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Untitled reviews
It's common for a single issue of a journal to have a collection of book reviews, each of them independently written. Template:Cite journal conveniently has both the fields "title" (for the title of the review) and "department" (for pointing out that it's a review, etc). But what's the best (or least bad) thing to do if the review is untitled? -- Hoary (talk) 03:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Identify the section, e.g. "Review of Foobar the Sequel: The Return of Barfoo II". &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Headbomb, (and no "department") would result in, with unwanted and misleading quotation marks;  (and no "title") would result in  (good!), but also a syntax error. I've a hunch that the syntax error can safely be ignored, but I'm not sure. -- Hoary (talk) 06:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What I do depends on how I'm using the review. If it's a standalone footnote I will often do something like Review of Euler's Gem. Often I put together a single footnote with multiple reviews and it would look stupid for them all to have the same meaningless title, so in this case when possible I set none (this only works when there is a doi but no url) or otherwise Review. What should be avoided is something like Reviews - Euler's gem, by David S. Richeson. Pp. 336. £16.95. 2008. ISBN 978 0 691 12677 7 (Princeton University Press). which is what you often get as the official publisher metadata for the review; this one is . It doesn't really make a difference in these conventions whether the journal lists it as a separate publication or bundles it as part of a bigger collection of reviews, because the title is made-up anyway. (And of course for reviews with real titles, different from the reviewed book title, you can just use their title.)—David Eppstein (talk) 07:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * David Eppstein, thank you; but if I specify none, I'm told (though in other, prettier colours, and with links). Though this is because I've enabled the doodad that displays such error messages. (Sorry, I forget what this doodad/option is called. Whatever, I'm sure that the huge majority of Wikipedia users don't bother with it.) If I view the same page when not logged in, no error is apparent. &para; If you're wondering, the particular reference I'm fiddling with now is to a review by Jean Aitchison that's currently the 17th in the article The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (an article that I do realize is a mess in other, more important ways). -- Hoary (talk) 08:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's just a maintenance message; it's not an actual error. It's there as a warning to be careful, not to tell you not to do that. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * 09:31, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

OCLC/Worldcat links as URLs
I've noticed a large number of citations use links to Worldcat in the URL field. These should, I believe, be subsumed under the OCLC tag, which generates the exact same link. These are deceiving to users who will expect a link to the actual book or article, rather than a listing of libraries that hold that title. I would love to see these treated as CS1 errors so we could clean these up. Thoughts? Straughn (talk) 20:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Citation bot used to remove URLs duplicating IDs. That was turned off based on an RFC for which you will need to dig. I think by that consensus making this an error would cause some consternation. Izno (talk) 20:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, but this is the wrong venue to discuss this. WP:VPROP is more suitable. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that a worldcat url in company with a matching oclc identifier parameter is pointless so I delete those worldcat urls on sight. Most of them, if I understand it, come from visual editor and citoid.  I seem to remember some discussion someplace where the ve/citoid authors rejected the idea of omitting worldcat urls because not all of the other-language wikis support oclc.  I don't know how reliable my memory is nor how valid that argument is.
 * I don't think that it would be all that difficult to have cs1|2 emit an error message when url matches oclc.
 * This search suggests that there are 31,000+ articles that use https://www.worldcat.org/... so dumping that many errors on the editing populous will likely result in torches and pitchforks...
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That was the argument in T232771, but it doesn't hold much water for me. I need to respond to the closure comment there... Izno (talk) 21:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In most cases, when a reference is used to source a claim made in a publication, it is useless to link WorldCat in the url field. In some unusual cases, though, such as when the reference is used to source a claim that someone published something (for instance: they published a doctoral thesis through X university in year Y), a WorldCat link can be the right thing to do. For this reason I would be opposed to deprecating these links, forbidding these links, or charging bots with removing these links. It might be ok to put them in a maintenance category for human editors to look at and clean up. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Simply having the OCLC number would accomplish this. I'll run with Headbomb's suggestion and bring this up at WP:VPROP Straughn (talk) 14:25, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That was the argument in T232771, but it doesn't hold much water for me. I need to respond to the closure comment there... Izno (talk) 21:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In most cases, when a reference is used to source a claim made in a publication, it is useless to link WorldCat in the url field. In some unusual cases, though, such as when the reference is used to source a claim that someone published something (for instance: they published a doctoral thesis through X university in year Y), a WorldCat link can be the right thing to do. For this reason I would be opposed to deprecating these links, forbidding these links, or charging bots with removing these links. It might be ok to put them in a maintenance category for human editors to look at and clean up. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Simply having the OCLC number would accomplish this. I'll run with Headbomb's suggestion and bring this up at WP:VPROP Straughn (talk) 14:25, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Indicating misspellings and information sources
Using VisualEditor I added the citation at 2021 Meron crowd crush (supporting the sentence I'd added) copying the title exactly as it appears in the English source: Interim recommendations in preparatio for the Hillula in 5782; it's clear from quotes in the source's text that preparatio should be preparation. I'd like to include a visible indication that the source has a spelling error so that anyone searching for the document in a library catalogue or elsewhere will know how it may appear. Adding [n] or [sic] to preparatio results in them appearing in same mauve as the rest of the title rather than black which is what I'd like to appear.

Since the exact date isn't in the English edition but is in the Hebrew at first I added the exact date in square brackets - [22] November 2021 - but when I checked to see how the citation would look it included : Check date values in:  (help)" so I deleted them and currently (22 November 2021) appears following the author. Can I do anything so that ([22] November 2021) appears? Is it possible to indicate the date's source? Mcljlm (talk) 15:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * MOS:SIC applies; to wit: "However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically)."
 * The source linked from the citation has the date November 2021; use that date.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Bot to notify users when they add CS1 errors
Hi everyone! Looking at the Help:CS1 errors shows a few categories that are quite large. Would it be reasonable to request a bot operator (not me) to write a bot that delivers user talk page messages similar to 's whenever a registered editor adds an article to one of the most common CS1 error categories? The bot could use the watchlist to see which user added which article to which category, and then add a new section detailing what the error means and how to fix it with text similar to what is posted at Help:CS1 errors. If so, we could work on fleshing out the idea (e.g. the exact categories and text for the user talk pages) before making a bot request. Or maybe someone following this page would be an interested bot op? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * User:ReferenceBot used to do this, many years ago. It worked well. Maybe a bot operator would be willing to adopt its source code and maintain it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95: Thanks for mentioning this. Maybe I had memories of this bot in my subconscious.
 * I noticed you recently posted on the bot op's talk page that you "archived the referencebot project". Does that archive include the source code for someone to adopt?
 * Thank you both! GoingBatty (talk) 05:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty: unfortunately when I looked at the source code I couldn't find an explicit license specified, which is partly why I archived it right away instead of waiting for a response from A930913. You could try emailing them? (I'm pretty sure the lack of license was oversight rather than intentional) Legoktm (talk) 06:23, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Legoktm: Thanks for checking. If we get consensus here, I'll leave emailing to someone who might want to be a new bot op. GoingBatty (talk) 06:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Legoktm: @GoingBatty: Hey, feel free to resurrect. The code was in Labs for that very reason. If you need a licence, I declare all my code on Labs as CC-BY-SA, unless you'd prefer a different one. A930913 (talk) 09:41, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Posted at Bot requests. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:12, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Bots/Requests for approval/Qwerfjkl (bot) 17
Page watchers may be interested in the above BRFA. Izno (talk) 08:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Question: How to note that an article in one newspaper originally appeared in another newspaper?
Regarding this source:

This article appears to have been printed in the Sun-Sentinel but under the title it states "By The Boston Globe". Should I ignore that or give credit to The Boston Globe? If so, where in all of the formatting do I note that? Thanks! -Location (talk) 17:34, 7 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I think it might be reasonable to say the BG is acting as an agency here. That isn't all that different of an attribution in the article than another would give the AP. Izno (talk) 20:06, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback! -Location (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Is agency for wire services like AP and Reuters? Another option is via (manually add italics). --
 * GreenC, typically yes. But I think that's how the BG is acting here. Izno (talk) 22:00, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Translated author?
Is there a parameter to have the author's name in the original non-Latin script (e.g., 王可心) and then a translated version (e.g., Wang Kexin)? If not, should there be? Or should you just try to do it best you can using some other method in the Basic editor? Why? I Ask (talk) 05:05, 8 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Pick one name to put in author. If you would rather have a different presentation (for example, including their name in one of the CJK scripts), you can use author-mask. For example: :  Izno (talk) 05:46, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Why? I Ask (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When I suggested a markedly similar solution to the user name problem, you described that solution as a naive implementation (permalink).  How is it that the proposed  use of author-mask is naive but the proposed translated-author-name use of author-mask is not?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk, in the (cite) Twitter context, some people do not provide their real name. So you have to account for plugging the display name into author without the @ rather than first/last (and why I used the word demonstrating, which I honestly couldn't tell you if that should have a [sic] next to it). It had nothing to do with your proposed use of author-mask to include the @ symbol. Izno (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Trappist the monk, in the (cite) Twitter context, some people do not provide their real name. So you have to account for plugging the display name into author without the @ rather than first/last (and why I used the word demonstrating, which I honestly couldn't tell you if that should have a [sic] next to it). It had nothing to do with your proposed use of author-mask to include the @ symbol. Izno (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Add parameter
I suggest adding a new parameter  to template:cite journal. Because eudml introduces the url to the full article, and if that url is open access it would be better to replace the parameter  with that url, and then, there is no place to enter the url of eudml. --SilverMatsu (talk) 16:34, 29 January 2023 (UTC)



It seems to refer to several different things. I assume you mean eduml and not eudml. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 18:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * My mistake. I believe you mean eudml after all. It seems to have a bit of a narrow scope at the moment. I would wait to see if the concept matures/expands. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 18:18, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * If it is adopted it would be better to use it as with the |jstor= field, so |eudml=143270 for the example above. That way it becomes another way that editors can look to gain access to the work. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:12, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments. I noticed that the European Digital Mathematics Library is a red link. So, would it be better to ask at the WP:WPM whether the EuDML meets WP:GNG ? --SilverMatsu (talk) 07:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is a good idea, just on the basis of prominent partners such as the European Mathematical Society. The identifier website is very well designed and the identifier itself thoroughly explained, with extensible development. The "Reference Lookup" screen is a clever idea and a big plus, imo. 104.247.55.106 (talk) 14:49, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I apologize for this late reply. I created a new template like Template:ProQuest as an alternative plan. --SilverMatsu (talk) 02:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * fix example. --SilverMatsu (talk) 15:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)



PMID limit excess report
A cited journal paper in Plasmapheresis has an identifier of, which excesses the currently configured limit of 36900000 and leads to a bad PMID error of Citation Style 1. Please update this limit. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 05:50, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect message
According to the documentation, "limited" access means "there are other constraints (such as a cap on daily views, a restriction to certain day or night times, or providing the contents only to certain IP ranges/locales on behalf of the provider of the source) to freely access this source as a whole". The most common reason is the last mentioned ie region locking. But the pop-up message says "Free access subject to limited trial, subscription normally required". That is the wrong message; if it were indeed the case, I would not be using "limited" but "subscription". Consider changing the message to match the documentation. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  23:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The most common reason is the last mentioned ie region locking. Citation needed.  My experience is entirely different – I don't often encounter region blocked sites.  For me, free access is most often limited to a certain number of views per time period.  No doubt, others have different experiences.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll actually go further than Ttm here: It is the documentation that has drifted. We have had several discussions on this page that geo-limiting is not under the purview of "limited". Izno (talk) 00:38, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * All I found was Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 47: That's what limited is for and the inconclusive discussion in Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 77 But by all means change the documentation to match the usage. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:25, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The particular case I am looking at is on the page Glynn Lunney. I note WP:ELNO: Sites that are inaccessible to a substantial number of users, such as sites that work only with a specific browser or in a specific country.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  04:36, 14 March 2023 (UTC)