Module talk:Citation/CS1/Archive 11

http/ftp etc
Maybe there should be included some check in url, if it starts with http/ftp etc.? Because if there is url or url, the link won't be clickable. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 18:01, 25 September 2014 (UTC)


 * There is. See Help:CS1_errors.  This error message isn't hidden so you should see it.  Here is a very simple :


 * Do you not see the error messages? (there are two, one for the malformed url and the other for a missing title)


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry. Didn't though to test it :) -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 21:08, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

COinS safe
I updated COinS safe to add Category:Templates not safe for use in citation templates. Is it worth doing a check for any of these templates? --  Gadget850talk 20:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand what it is that you're asking. By the time the module gets to the content of a citation's various parameters, any templates will have already been expanded.  So, all the module sees is all of the template cruft intermingled with the important stuff that CS1 wants.


 * If you mean should someone run an AWB script of some-such that would strip citations of these particular templates, then, yeah, someone should. I have it in mind to do that for  and  after the initial implementation of script-title so that editors who work on Asian topics can see the results, and we'll get cleaner COinS.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:22, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That is what I meant. --  Gadget850talk 22:37, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. Some questions/comments:
 * Should the category documentation state that COinS safe should be added to the template documentation to add the category?
 * Should redirects such as aut and sm (both redirect to smallcaps) also be included in the category?
 * Members of WikiProject Mesoamerica commonly use aut in citations (see WikiProject Mesoamerica/Citations). You might want to talk with them before mass-removing aut.
 * Should documentation pages such as Template:Abbr/doc be excluded from the category?
 * Should sandbox pages such as Template:Abbr/sandbox be excluded from the category?
 * I just added  to date and dts.
 * BattyBot aready removes date, dts, nowrap and start date from citation date fields to remove articles from Category:CS1 errors: dates. If there are variations that BattyBot isn't removing or additional templates it could remove, please let me know.
 * Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:48, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Re, you can find quite a few of them in the remaining articles in the deprecated parameters category, since Monkbot is not programmed to fix coauthors when templates are present in citations, as far as I know.


 * Re and its ilk, the following appear to be redirects to those four templates:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Closer inspection of the code showed that BattyBot already removed Nobreak and Startdate as well. It now also removes Nobr, No break, No wrap, and Start Date (although there weren't any CS1 date errors due to these templates).  If anyone has examples of the other templates in use in CS1 citations, I'll add them too.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 23:54, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * nbsp is another redirect that could be in the category too. BattyBot is now removing it from templates.  GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I found an instance of causing a citation error in Krkonose / Karkonosze and another in Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. I used catscan to search the date category for all of the above templates, and that's all I found. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:28, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * BattyBot didn't fix those articles because nobreak was also being used in an earlier parameter, so I fixed them manually. Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 21:04, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * , was left in Compiz after Battybot visited. I don't see other templates in the citations in question. There is another one in PCSX-Reloaded – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:20, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:04, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

 Where does this break come from?
A few months ago, cite doi was deprecated. Today, it looks like some edit enforced that deprecation by breaking the connection from sfn using an individual {cite doi} template. But without article cleanup (by a bot, I expect), {sfn} now produces an error (see helium). I do not know which page was edited into this break. Anyone an idea? (With that knowledge, I'll ask a revert on the right talkpage). -DePiep (talk) 09:26, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean this?

If so, the error is because the last name fields are missing. --  Gadget850talk 10:31, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, these names are missing, producing error texts (helium now has four such references). The point is, a week ago they were not. The names were not deleted, but somehow a connection was removed ( noted [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements&curid=3380&diff=629365365&oldid=629240015 this]). I don't know if the breaking edit was done in citation/CS1 or elsewhere. If a "bug removal" in /CS1 is the cause, I'd say that removal failed and should be revisited. But it could also be caused by another edit, someone enforcing the cite doi deprecation . -DePiep (talk) 12:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Helium doesn't use -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:26, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * So we can rule out sfn then. See below for the gadget850 explanation. -DePiep (talk) 13:20, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I was trying to figure that out as well.
 * Author detection was fixed in the last update. The citation listed above has first without last which is certainly not proper. As I see it, this error is proper.
 * Elsewhere has been discussed the breaking of the "citation trick". See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements. --  Gadget850talk 12:44, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The template is correct to flag these errors in Helium. I've just fixed a couple. Aa77zz (talk) 12:49, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * re Aa77zz: nice, but they were mass-created, and I don't want to be forced to manually edit this way. Problem is so far nobody knows where the bad edit was made. -DePiep (talk) 13:05, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * re Gadget850 "... the error is proper": Could be, but I'd like to know where the mass-creating stems from. -DePiep (talk) 13:08, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If, by "mass-creating", you mean that many citations have lists of first names with no corresponding last names, Citation Bot created many citations like that; it was a bug that was eventually fixed. Running Citation Bot on the page again may add the last names. You will want to inspect the resulting edit, however; Citation Bot is a useful tool, but it is never free of bugs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:41, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The bot action you propose still involves manual editing. I think all 17000 {cite doi} transclusions are suspected, and that would be too much for manual check.
 * I meant to say it was "mass-created" by one single recent edit (exposing old edits at once being 'wrong'; likely and edit in /CS1 as we know by now). When I asked for a bot cleanup, I was thinking of a new bot task, running once, that cleans this up. However, I don't know whether this is feasible, I have lost the topic after the code discussion below. Also, the code discussion below could produce another solution, making a bot action unneeded. So bots can wait till that option is fleshed out. -DePiep (talk) 07:24, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

(copied useful Gadget850 post from WT:ELEMENTS):
 * The citation hack consists of stuffing cite doi into the title parameter of citation and adding markup to undo the italic markup. Currently the apostrophes are added to the title in the COinS metadata.
 * Module:Citation/CS1 was updated to prevent apostrophe markup from being passed into the COinS metadata. A bug was found and this update was reverted.
 * And the change to Fluorine is a real hack. Lets come up with a better solution before proliferatiing this. --  Gadget850talk 12:36, 13 October 2014 (UTC) (copy/pasted here -DePiep (talk) 13:15, 13 October 2014 (UTC))
 * If this explains it, I think we better ask a bot to get author names from {cite doi/xxx} into the straight {cite} parameters (in article page that is). cite doi has 17000+ transclusions. -DePiep (talk) 13:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Those first names without last names were added by our old friend CitationBot. --  Gadget850talk 13:29, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The "real hack" used by in  was the right idea but the wrong method. The old code was e.g.   and this was altered to   but by using  it could have been simpler:   It is never a good idea to misuse templates, but this is the primary purpose of . -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:26, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

It is wrongheaded to think that the citation hack ever worked as this citation from Fluorine shows: There are two copies of the citation's metadata in that mass of stuff.

This form from Editor Mirokado is better because it produces only one copy of the metadata, but is more difficult to type:
 * 
 * 
 * 

This form from Editor Redrose64 is similar but adds an extra :

If this sort of hacking is necessary, choose either of the latter two. Don't use the first.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:39, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * My suggestion adds an extra, yes; but only compared to the original. When compared to Mirokado's technique, it's the same number of spans. The only technical difference is that one has the  class, the other doesn't. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:20, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Titles in CoinS data for books
For books, the template places the book title in  and the chapter title in , which seems the wrong way round.  Kanguole 14:20, 5 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I think you're right, it has been wrong forever. Thanks for that. Fixed in the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

non-italic titles
Books published in Chinese have titles in Chinese characters, romanized titles in pinyin, and translated titles in English, e.g. While the romanized title should be italicized, it is recommended at WP:MOS-ZH that characters not be italicized. However is not allowed within citation templates. A common expedient is an extra set of italic quotes, e.g. Hànyǔ Yǔyīn Shǐ 汉语语音史 in the above, but this seems brittle. So could these templates have an additional parameter, say noitalic_title or something, for a title in a non-roman script that should not be italicized? This would be in addition to title, which could be used for the romanized form (which would be italicized), and trans-title, for the English translation. Kanguole 10:57, 10 July 2014 (UTC)


 * But the  workaround you suggested seems to work. For instance, it doesn't break things like url:
 * So why not just stick to using that?  It Is Me Here  t /  c  10:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So why not just stick to using that?  It Is Me Here  t /  c  10:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Since the title is italicized, the nested italics are affecting the rendered markup. The span is not properly closed: This is probably HTML Tidy at work. This can cause issues if the span connects to another.
 * Without nested italics: Hànyǔ Yǔyīn Shǐ 汉语语音史.
 * With nested italics: Hànyǔ Yǔyīn Shǐ 汉语语音史 

And the CoiNs metdata now includes the encoded apostrophes (%27):

We should resolve this in the module. Thoughts? --  Gadget850talk 11:15, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * This appears to be related to Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6 which also seeks a mechanism to disable italics. It would be best if we could have one conversation in one place?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The two are semantically different: that discussion is about works with no title but a description, while this one is about works with two titles, one of which is in a non-roman script. Kanguole 11:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * They are related because they both impact how Module:Citation/CS1 renders the value in title; clearly this is an under-the-hood relationship, but for those of us who might attempt a workable solution, keeping the two conversations separate is no benefit.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:14, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * We already have a way to remove italics from titles of articles using, so it would be best to stay with a similar parameter name for consistency. How hard would it be to implement an optional italic-title (using the dash, as recently specified for multi-word parameters) with a default value of "yes" and an optional value of "no"? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:47, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * But in Editor Kanguole's example, half of the title is italicized while the other half is not. Therein lies the problem.  Which leads me to the question, why are both Chinese logograms and pinyin used in title?  Are both required?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Some library catalogues will use the original title (in Chinese characters), while others will use the pinyin rendering of the title. The latter is more convenient for some purposes, but loses information.  Kanguole 15:35, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think in that case, I would put the "lossy" rendering(s), in this case both Pinyin and English, in trans-title, something like this:
 * no could be used to straighten the original Chinese title. I think that is clear enough to show a reader what's going on. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It would be pretty weird to put the Chinese pinyin in the English translation. Publications I've seen put it before the characters, formatted approximately as above.  Kanguole 16:41, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It would be pretty weird to put the Chinese pinyin in the English translation. Publications I've seen put it before the characters, formatted approximately as above.  Kanguole 16:41, 11 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The template also renders the logogram title first followed by a transliteration in parentheses.   should not be used in CS1 citation because of the COinS metadata problem that Editor Gadget850 describes above and addresses at Template talk:Asiantitle.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

At the moment, I'm not sure how to solve this problem. Likely it will involve some sort of new parameter which value would be concatenated to the value in title after italics have been applied. So the process for a title with both pinyin and logograms and would be:
 * 1) COinS title =  -- create COinS metadata before formatting
 * 2) Title =
 * 3) Title =   -- italics applied: pinyin title
 * 4) Title =   -- concatenate logogram title:  logogram title pinyin title
 * 5) Title = [  ]  -- add external link (wikilink is similar)

Do we have a list of all languages that must not be italicized? Presumably Japanese and Korean are on that list. What others? Do these languages have transcribed equivalents as pinyin is to Chinese?

If we invent a new parameter, what do we call it? What restrictions apply to its use?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:56, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think, that to be safe, it's better to specify the languages where italicisation is sensible, rather than those where it isn't. Any language which uses a Latin, Greek or Cyrillic script should be OK, anything else should be treated with caution. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:13, 11 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Point. I've tweaked my pseudo-process outline above to make more sense – it was actually completely wrong in its original state.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:59, 11 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Perhaps for a parameter name we could use translit-title or xlit-title. I think I prefer the latter because translit-title is a bit close to trans-title.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I was thinking of putting the romanized title (to be italicized, e.g. pinyin) in title and the original non-roman, not-to-be italicized title in a new field. Are you proposing to do it the other way round?  I guess that would follow, though that doesn't seem to be widely used.  I also think it's a bit more complicated: it would have the font of title varying depending on whether this other field was given a value.  Kanguole 14:01, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, you're right. And now I wonder if this ought not also apply to Hebrew and Arabic scripts as well  With them we also have the right to left issue.  Argh!  But let's set those aside and just think about the Asian titles.  Clearly we could create a parameter asian-title but then when we do get round to Hebrew or Arabic asian-title is not quite right.  So something more generic: logogram-title, logo-title lg-title or some such?  title would be assigned the romanized title.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:49, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Logogram is probably the simplest. Do we need this for chapter and author? As to directionality, we should be able to wrap it in  to isolate it from the title text-direction settings; by default sets  . --   Gadget850talk 15:37, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * If, according to MOS, chapter titles are supposed to be rendered in quotes, not italics, then no, we don't need to do this for chapter. But, there is a peculiarity in the module such that when all three of work, title, and chapter are used, the formatting for chapter and title swap. This to me seems wrong and is properly the topic of another conversation.  I see no need to add this functionality to author because that is not rendered in italics, right?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:15, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The common practice with author names is WangLi 王力, which seems adequate. "logogram" is a bit narrow: hangul and kana don't fit, and nor do the non-Latin alphabets of Southeast and South Asia, which presumably also shouldn't be italicized.  Kanguole 16:49, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Have you got a better name for the parameter?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

So the initial hack was easier than I thought it would be:

produces:

without title:

without title and without trans-title:

I wonder if we should follow the example set by and wrap the transliterated title in parentheses?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:09, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Couple more for completeness: without trans-title:

without script-title:

withoutscript-title and without trans-title:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:17, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The formatting of is a bit idiosyncratic.  I just checked four English-languge books I have to hand that include both titles in their bibliographies, and they all put the pinyin title before the character title.  As for the name, nonlatin-title or nonitalic-title?  Kanguole 17:43, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * logogram looks reasonable for some Asian languages. I am not a linguist, so all I know about logograms, graphemes, and phonograms comes from the WP articles about them. If there is demand after implementation, it should be straightforward to create aliases to logogram that respect and align with the linguistic and cultural differences between Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, and other languages that do not use variations on Roman alphabet letters for their written language. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 'nonlatin' doesn't work either, since Greek, Cyrillic and some others have italic variants. 'nonitalic' would be abused by some who want some oddball formatting or just misunderstand the parameter because they don't read the documentation. --  Gadget850talk 17:55, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The name of the parameter should have "title" in it, since this is only for titles. As for the rest, "nonitalic" is at least fairly straightforward about what is meant, as "scripts-that-lack-italics" is a bit long.  Kanguole 10:35, 13 September 2014 (UTC)


 * non-italic-script-title with an alias nis-title?


 * Should this functionality apply to the periodical parameters journal, encyclopedia, work, etc?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:28, 13 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I expect so – I've seen it with journal titles. Kanguole 15:18, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

According to the logic and context of citations which include Mandarin, Japanese, Korean titles: —and the equivalents for titles of journals, encyclopaedias, works, series, conferences, newspapers, etc..
 * title
 * not_italic_title (alias: no_i_title) —yes/no flag value only
 * En_cover_title —optional extra but also better combined into a general other_title with free formatting, in other words non–essential and of much less priority for coding, because these English–'spin' type subtitles most commonly get published only on the covers for marketing purposes, not in the colophon (page) nor the official citation such as with the ISBN registering authority and often do not accurately translate fully and properly the actual primary title that is published in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc..
 * title_transliteration (alias: title_xlit)
 * title_trans (title translation) —currently exists as the trans-title parameter.

The key point to remember please: the proper title of the document, eg. a book, has been set by the author and publisher and authoritatively published in the book’s colophon (page) and authoritatively registered with the ISBN granting authority. In proper terms, in reality, for books, we WP editors do not have to decide which is the title, the choice was already made in the event of publishing; we have to read the colophon (page) of the book or document, and cross-check with the front cover and the ISBN granting library or authority. Hacking the title (mostly only us geeks doing so) for superficial purposes of rendering appearance is an entirely separate topic and direction to go in.

For example, most books published in Mandarin, Japanese or Korean have their actual proper titles in Hanzi, Kanji–Hiragana–Katakana and Hangul respectively. These books may or may not have been published with secondary English translation subtitles on the cover, usually only for marketing purposes, such as appeal to some Chinese, Japanese and Korean particular people who’ve adopted westernisation sensibilities. Etcetera. For more information of a professional standard refer for example to Extended Citation Style Language and its implementation in Multilingual Zotero, etc. --Macropneuma 04:42, 14 September 2014 (UTC) —correct parameter names, small revision edit—--Macropneuma 02:23, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I did not find any Wikipedia style rules or advice regarding the use of italics for titles in any non-Latin alphabets and script other than Chinese. For example, I didn't find any rules or advice on how to render a book title in Greek or Cyrillic letters. The Chicago Manual of Style 14th Edition has little to say on this either. About all the advice found there is for Russian, where it says (9.113, p. 347): "In the Cyrillic originals of these citations the author's name and the title are both set in ordinary type (called in Russian pryamoy, "upright"); the author's name, however, is letterspaced. The Cyrillic kursiv is used more sparingly than our italic—never for book titles." This leads me to two ideas: In any event, I encourage this discussion to consider non-Latin-alphabet languages in general. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:05, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Somewhere under WP:MOS there should be advice on the use of italics with non-Latin alphabets and scripts, in titles and perhaps elsewhere.
 * 2) I think the policy should probably be to avoid italics for titles in any non-Latin alphabet and script; however, both the translations and transliterations of titles should be italicized whenever an English title would be italicized, e.g. names of books, magazines, films, long poems, etc.


 * With your evidence check based reasoning and point of considering all "non–Latin–alphabet languages in general" i agree. My previous message was coming from my experience and long consideration with those east Asian languages, not at all to exclude the more general point you put forward. --Macropneuma 07:07, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia talk:Citing sources


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:02, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree that Japanese characters (kanji and kana) should not italicized. But if they aren't, don't we need another way to indicate that it's a title? Asiantitle has parameters for this. You can specify "j" for double corner brackets around a book title, or "jsgl" for single corner brackets around a chapter title. That is normal way this is done in Japan and agrees with the MOS at Japanese Wikipedia (著作物名). --Margin1522 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, i agree, those are the proper ways in those languages, thus adding another level of consideration here. Once decided upon coding implementation of each of these language specific types of brackets per se is simpler than the more complex interactions of italics and non–italics with the titles, title_translations, title_transliterations and so on. Thanks Margin1522 for reminding us of these language specific types of brackets, i was on one step at a time here with my previous talk post. Instead of not_italic_title (—yes/no flag value only), we can use for example non_italic_title (alias: non_i_title) with the code flags for each different language or yes for simple non italics or no for explicitly specifying plain italics (if necessary for some reason, whatever). That’s a start for this next step here. No worries, many ways we can do this. --Macropneuma 22:53, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I just checked the way the Japanese cite templates handle this. They have a  (washo, meaning "Japanese book") parameter that takes no value. For example   will put the single brackets around the article title and the double brackets around the journal name. If the parameter is absent, then it is handled just like the English template. --Margin1522 (talk) 23:08, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Are you-all not describing what amounts to a style parameter? If we have a parameter (logogram but perhaps script-title is better because that can encompass a variety of non-Latin languages) we might have another parameter script-title-style that takes an ISO639-1 language code as its value.  The language codes are unique and already defined so for each script we can have a 'style' that the module applies for the citation's title.
 * title – Usually Latin font title or a transcription
 * script-title – non-Latin title could be Hebrew, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Malay, whatever
 * script-title-style – ISO639-1 language code that selects a predefined style for script-title; if empty or omitted no special style applied; if invalid value throws an error
 * Editor Margin1522 asked: don't we need another way to indicate that it's a title? Perhaps an initial way to do that might be to underscore script-title – you know, the way we did titles with typewriters before word processors: 汉语语音史 → 汉语语音史


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:38, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * We shouldn't base our styling on the conventions of Japanese-language (or Chinese-language) publications. The convention in the four English-language books I checked was to write titles of Chinese books and journals in the form Hànyǔ yǔyīn shǐ 汉语语音史 [History of Chinese phonetics]. Indeed the style sheet in Chinese History: A New Manual specifies this form.  The italicized pinyin serves to mark the following characters as the title.  Also, underlining can make the characters harder to read.  Kanguole 01:42, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. We should check the Monumenta Nipponica style guide to see what they recommend for Japanese titles in English publications.
 * Initially the idea of an ISO language code was the first thing that occurred to me. From a quick check at the Chinese Wikipedia, it seems (maybe) that they just write the title straight up, no text decoration and no extra characters. And of course no pinyin. The template has no field for that (or for a translation), and in footnotes we're supposed to be able to simply quote the original language. Under current policy anyway. But about ISO, other scripts might have have preferred styles. I have no idea what titles look like in Hebrew or Thai. The Japanese tend to avoid all kinds of text decoration for any purpose and use extra characters instead. The one exception is underlines. But I can't recall seeing underlines to indicate titles, so I'm not sure if readers would understand it.  --Margin1522 (talk) 02:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I take that back about the translation field. We do have the  field. --Margin1522 (talk) 02:15, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I checked the Monumenta Nipponica style guide, and they reommend the following, which is similar to the Chinese style sheet quoted above. They give the romanized title, italicized, and add no-italic kanji after it. If we did this for titles, it would essentially be Kanguole's suggestion for an "asiantitle" field. Or whatever the field is named. One question: would it be possible to write a function to detect whether the title string contains any Asian characters? If so, then we could just not italicize that title and the immediate problem (italicized kanji) is solved without adding an extra parameter. Too much processing just for Asian characters? --Margin1522 (talk) 04:09, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Murasaki shikibu nikki. 紫式部日記. In NKBT 19.

Italicized transliteration may identify the following characters as the title, but we may not always have a transliteration to use as a delimiter. To those of us who do not read Arabic or Thai or whatever, an author name, which in CS1 precedes the title, is essentially indistinguishable from the title when they are in the same script. I think that it is fairly common for English-only readers to understand that an underscore indicates title. That is somewhat reinforced here at enwiki by the way wikilinks work – hover the mouse pointer over a wikilink and you get underscored text, often the title of an article. True, non-English languages may eschew text decoration, but our purpose here is to serve the readers of enwiki.

I thought about auto-detecting characters and then acting accordingly. The immediate problem that my thought experiment couldn't easily overcome was: what happens when there is a mix of Latin and non-Latin script? Probably better to leave it to editors who (presumably) know what they are doing rather than rely on code to make the right determination for every case.

Because this is not just for Asian-language-only titles but for all non-Latin script titles, I think that we should place the script title (presumably the original title) ahead of transliterated and translated titles because the latter two derive from the original language title.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:06, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The author name is separated from the title by the year and a period. I would also argue that a romanized title should be very strongly recommended, because of the opacity of the non-Latin title to most readers.  (Of course they may not know what the pinyin or romaji title means either, but at least they'll have an idea of its pronunciation, and may recognize some words.)  Regarding the ordering, you propose to ignore the common treatment of Chinese and Japanese titles in English-language publications – are there any publications that use your preferred ordering?  Kanguole 12:52, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Since dates aren't required, they aren't always present so the normal terminal punctuation may not be sufficient especially when titles heretofore have been distinctly styled either by italics or quotes. Yep, strong recommendation for transcribed titles is a must; that part goes in the template documentation.


 * CS1 is a general purpose tool and this feature, if it is ever implemented, must apply to more than just Asian-script titles. So, yeah, I am ignoring the common treatment you describe in favor of what I perceive to be a treatment that, while not perfect in all cases, is acceptable. It is entirely possible that as time progresses and we gain experience with the feature we can provide more nuanced language specific treatment.  We aren't there yet.


 * I would like to define a minimal implementation solution that can be taken live. We can then gauge how editors react to it. There are too few who watch this page to make any assessment regarding this feature's use or acceptance in the broader community.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Chinese and Japanese titles are the principal use cases for this extension. Because titles in alphabetic scripts can usually be deduced from their standard romanization, style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style recommend that non-specialist works use just the romanized title for titles in non-Latin scripts.  But they make an exception for these two scripts (CMOS, 16th ed, 11.110): "Chinese and Japanese characters, immediately following the romanized version of the item they represent, are sometimes necessary to help readers identify references cited or terms used."  We already place the characters after the romanization for authors' names; it would be consistent to do that for titles too.  Kanguole 23:30, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * So it looks like the simplest way to go is to provide a field where people can write a non-roman title and not italicise it. That is, everything above "Latin Ext-B" in UTF-8 is straightup? As far as CJK goes that would be better than italics.
 * About the order of Romanization/Kanji, most of the Japanese on En Wikipedia uses nihongo, which has 2 main options: order (A) "English (Kanji Romanization)" and order (B) "Romanization (Kanji)". There is no option (C) for "Kanji (Romanization)". A typical real-life example on Wikipedia might be Eiichiro Oda. It has both (A) and (B) in the titles in the Works section, but not (C). So it looks like romanization should come first.
 * That said, I wonder whether editors will actually provide the romanization. We can certainly encourage it, but it is extra work. And sometimes you don't know. If a Japanese title contains a proper name it can take up to 1/2 hour of research on the Internet to discover how it's pronounced. Editors aren't going to do that. They'll just write the kanji, and I think that's OK too. --Margin1522 (talk) 06:44, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Here is a comparison of the four versions of and :
 * → Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) – translation, original language, transliteration
 * → 東京タワー – only original language so not applicable
 * → Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) – transliteration, original language, translation
 * → – translation, original language, transliteration
 * → – original language, transliteration, translation


 * In CS1, translation (trans-title) always follows the title. Ignoring the translations in the above templates, except for  original language precedes transliteration in the rendering.


 * Here's another interesting data point. Transclusion counts of the templates might be taken as an indication of preference by editors who use the templates. Yeah, I know they weren't created simultaneously so  from 2006 has a big advantage over the others:
 * (2006) → 70515
 * (2008) → 718
 * (2012) → 186
 * (2010) → 157


 * I have no idea if editors will provide romanization. Agreed that we should encourage it in the documentation; MOS:ROMANIZATION and the like.


 * So it appears that there is something of a conflict. Chicago Manual of Style vs. common usage on Wikipedia. CS1 is loosely based on CMOS and other published style guides but is ultimately driven by its users.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:MOSCHINA says to use pinyin (汉字) in running text and pinyin 汉字 for titles in citations, both of which are in line with CMOS. WP:MOSJAPAN has no guidance on citations.  The usage of  gives little information about citations, as most are used for the bolded title of articles (e.g. the above example in Tokyo Tower – Chinese articles use the  template for a similar purpose).  Most of the other uses of the template don't use all three parameters and few are in citations.  I also noticed a lot of cases where people are putting romaji in the first parameter instead of the third.  For example in Fist of the North Star we find
 * to obtain something similar to the style recommended by CMOS:
 * So I don't think there's evidence of a widely-used Wikipedia style that conflicts with CMOS. Kanguole 17:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So I don't think there's evidence of a widely-used Wikipedia style that conflicts with CMOS. Kanguole 17:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So I don't think there's evidence of a widely-used Wikipedia style that conflicts with CMOS. Kanguole 17:28, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Very well. I've changed logogram to script-title and Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that the rendered order is transliteration, original language translation. This change can be seen in the six citations above.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:13, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The six citations look good to me (except for the underline, I'm still a bit dubious about that). My version of CMOS is older and doesn't have that passage. Do they give any long examples? Maybe we need to consult a bibiliography with Chinese titles in a book edited by the U. of Chicago Press. That should settle it any questions about how they handle it.--Margin1522 (talk) 01:48, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * They include an example journal article citation in each language. That section of CMOS is reproduced here, wrapped in some commentary by the library.  Elsewhere CMOS has examples of Arabic (11.100) and Russian (11.120), but for those languages they recommend using the transliterated title only.  I'm also dubious about adding underlining, and when the title itself is a link, as in the above examples, one gets two underlines on mouseover.  Kanguole 09:18, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that looks good. If citations could be made to look like that I would be happy. --Margin1522 (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

At Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6 I describe a proposed change to Module:Citation/CS1 that strips the common apostrophe markup from title so that it doesn't corrupt the COinS metadata. The change will allow editors to add this basic styling to titles or to 'undo' the default italic style of some CS1 templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:54, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * So then could just ask editors to write this?
 * Tōkyō tawā would be italicized in the normal way and 東京タワー would be straightup. This looks like the simplest solution yet, and the result would just as good as the extra field. If this happens I volunteer to add an explanation to WP:MOS-JP to encourage it, and discourage putting in citations.
 * The question is whether editors will actually do it. Many of them don't read the MOS, e.g. the editors coming over from the Japanese wiki to add information about current events. Perhaps we could lobby the author of AWB to add this to the list of things it checks. There are a lot of editors who use AWB to patrol new posts. We could ask them to fix any kanji in (new or existing) title strings that lack the double apostrophes. AWB already checks citations for invalid parameters. --Margin1522 (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The question is whether editors will actually do it. Many of them don't read the MOS, e.g. the editors coming over from the Japanese wiki to add information about current events. Perhaps we could lobby the author of AWB to add this to the list of things it checks. There are a lot of editors who use AWB to patrol new posts. We could ask them to fix any kanji in (new or existing) title strings that lack the double apostrophes. AWB already checks citations for invalid parameters. --Margin1522 (talk) 19:30, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Not a complete solution, I think. Simply allowing the use of wikimarkup in title values, doesn't address right-to-left language scripts nor does it enforce consistent transcription-script-translation order.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I was just going to make the same comment on language isolation. This could be resolved by having the editor wrapp the Asian text in and having the template strip it out, but that puts more on the editor and continues the slippery slope of using HTML inside the templates. --   Gadget850talk 12:41, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

This is unrelated to Asian, but is this the policy? cite web cite book According to CMOS14 (15.118), the translated title of a book should be upright. – Margin1522 (talk) 18:32, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Policy? I don't know about that but it has been ever thus:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I see. If possible, could we consider no italics for translated titles, when the original title is given? That's what CMOS recommends, and I prefer it that way, also outside of Wikipedia. It also goes for capitalization. According to CMOS the translated title is just for information, so only the first word gets capitalized. (Although most editors seem to show a strong preference for treating the translated title as a real title, with title caps. So maybe they would prefer the italics too.) – Margin1522 (talk) 23:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)


 * If it is important to you, I think that you should raise the issue at some other venue than this backwater talk page; there are 51 others watching us. Some of what I think you are asking for is beyond the abilities of Module:Citation/CS1.  In your examples, for instance, CS1 would have to know that Hong Kong should be capitalized so the choice of title case or sentence case will need to be left to the editor.  Rendering trans-title as undecorated text can be done.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 13 October 2014
Please revert the recent changes to the above 4 modules (to the pre-October 11 version), as it's causing a malfunction on a large number of pages, such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Hinduism, and Language deprivation experiments.

Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:04, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Attention . Malformed title parameter values, including those with italic markup in citations, are causing Lua errors. Examples:




 * (Lua error, and a few subsequent citations hidden, because this citation template was not closed)
 * (Lua error, and a few subsequent citations hidden, because this citation template was not closed)




 * In case you can't see the error, it is "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 741: invalid capture index." One might argue that these citations are malformed, but presumably they were displaying more or less correctly before the updates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I have disabled two functions:  and   which uses it.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:49, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I think I have fixed the problem. Once again, patterns in string.gsub have bitten me, though more accurately, this time it is Lua magic characters in the original string when that string is used as a replacement. gets all text between matching italic or bold wikimarkup. It then replaces the original string (which includes the markup) with the text found inside the markup:
 * original string:  – an italicized string; the   is a space character used in urls
 * the found string:
 * now, look in the original string for this pattern:  and replace it with this:

In the originally released code, the pattern was not modified to escape the Lua magic characters:. These characters have properties similar to those used in regular expressions. I fixed part of the problem after the 11 October 2014 update to prevent these magic characters from inappropriate action that was causing similar problems to those that caused the protected edit request. I didn't go far enough. I failed to realize that the replacement is also treated as a Lua pattern and not as a literal string. In my little example above, the substring  is treated as a capture identifier in the replacement. There isn't a capture 2, hence the big red error message.

I have created a function  that causes   to treat the magic characters in these pattern and replacement strings as literal characters so now, the example broken citations work as intended:
 * {{Citation/new|last= Walker|first=Benjamin|year=1968|title=The Hindu world: an encyclopedic survey of Hinduism
 * {{cite book/new |last=Beller |first=Anne-Marie|title='Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction'|location=Jefferson, NC |publisher=McFarland |year=2012 |page=100, 102–105}}
 * {{code|{{cite book/new |last=Beller |first=Anne-Marie|title='Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction'|location=Jefferson, NC |publisher=McFarland |year=2012 |page=100, 102–105}}}}

To the Beller cite I added a linked {{para|page}} parameter because  now uses.

This is a crude test that includes all of the Lua magic characters:
 * ^Bold$ (italic). [title] and%20italic*, +bold, bold-again, last italic? → {{cite news/new |title=^Bold$ (italic). [title] and%20italic*, +bold, bold-again, last italic?}}:
 * {{code|{{cite news/new |title=^Bold$ (italic). [title] and%20italic*, +bold, bold-again, last italic?}}}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

{{ping|Trappist the monk}} The following still causes errors:  yields {{cite web|url=https://example.com|title=FooBar}}. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Fixed I think; and the slightly different version:   → {{cite web|url=https://example.com|title=FooBar}}


 * Hate it when I miss obvious stuff like that. Glad that you and others are out there keeping an eye on things.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 03:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

{{ping|Trappist the monk}} Another bug:  causes an infinite loop and uses up all of the page's allowed Lua time. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:36, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. A completely revised, much, much, much simpler version is now in the sandbox.  Tested against the problematic cites in this thread and the test cites at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6.


 * Unless there comes a flood of similarly broken cites this change will be made with the next update to the live module. I've fixed the one instance you found.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:51, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * {{ping|Trappist the monk}} I found another case in the wild at Sankowskya. It wasn't recently edited, so I expect that we'll keep finding more as the job queue catches up. I think we should deploy the fix now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:09, 24 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. It is done.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:37, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Utm detection
A question from non-professional (in terms of all the utm thing) - shouldn't all the Google Analytics things (like in the example) be tracked in some category so it later can be fixed? I think nobody knows, that it should be removed when used in citation. Or it is completely not needed? You gonna ask - how to track? I would say, that check could be added for strings like ?utm_source, &utm_medium, &utm_campaign etc. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 18:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I remember reading somewhere that this kind of tracking information should be stripped from url values. Just where that was, I no longer recall, nor can I find in the places that I looked.  Still, detecting and categorizing pages with these kinds of urls shouldn't be too difficult if we decide that we should do it.  Are there other tracking strings from sites other than Google (Amazon, etc) – large on-line vendors would seem to be the prime candidates?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:04, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I think WP:VPT would be a good place to gather some opinions about this and to get answer about other tracking strings. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 19:20, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * From Template:Cite journal: "Remove spurious tracking parameters from URLs, e.g.  or   from URLs.  GoingBatty (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Category:CS1 maint: Date and year
I was looking at Michael Foot and spotted Category:CS1 maint: Date and year on the article but no red error message to show which reference was in error. There are other red errors for accessdate & chapter problems. Keith D (talk) 15:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I opened the article in edit mode and searched for "year", and found reference #25 has the error. GoingBatty (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * is not an error category so pages that land in it are not flagged with error messages. This is because use of both was a requirement under to create correctly disambiguated   anchors for authors who published multiple works in the same year.  Because separate year and date parameters are no longer required to support   anchor disambiguation, year, while still supported, can be removed when the value in year is the same as the year portion of date (January 2008 2008).  The year portions being the same, if the disambiguation character is moved to date, then too, year may be removed.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:20, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explanation. Though without some sort of flag then you have to search through each of the refs to find which one is causing the problem. Keith D (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * True, but this is the sort of problem that can be easily attacked by an AWB script (which I have in the works) so that editors need not worry over much about 'fixing'.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:58, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * We have had complaints about the red error messages, especially when they highlight a condition that may or may not be an actual error. I wonder if could work up a javascript similar to User:Frietjes/findargdups to help editors find the redundant year/date parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:00, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

JSTOR parameter encoding
I have come across this paper which is cited here and here on en-wp. The jstor value of 10.1086/515973 looks like a DOI but fails to resolve as such, so I set 10.1086/515973. This gets URL-encoded, turning / into %2F, which then means the link doesn't work (seems it would work if that encoding were not applied). So two questions please: is URL encoding of jstor deliberate/somehow required by other logic? I suppose it could be that JSTOR have failed to register a set of DOIs (other articles in same issue of journal don't resolve either), anybody know anything about these 10.1086 values? Thanks Rjwilmsi  19:17, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Can't say that I know anything about those identifiers. There is a flag set in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration that for JSTOR is : .  I don't know why it is that way.  Documented code?  What's that?  Most JSTOR identifiers are simply a string of digits so uri encoding would seem to be unnecessary.  As a test, I have changed the flag to false:
 * This does what it should do. Will it always work?  Don't know.  So here's the question: Do I revert this little change or do we leave it and see if anything breaks when I update the live module at week's end?
 * This does what it should do. Will it always work?  Don't know.  So here's the question: Do I revert this little change or do we leave it and see if anything breaks when I update the live module at week's end?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:06, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * There are a couple of references at Serial Item and Contribution Identifier that might explain JSTOR identifiers, but irritatingly both are dead links. Browsing in JSTOR suggested to me that a high proportion of identifiers (for books at least a third) have the form "publisher_id/item_id" ("10.1086" in the example appears to be a publisher id) rather than just "item_id". The only non-alphanumeric characters in either part of the JSTOR id that I found were "." and "_". So (a) it's essential not to encode "/" (b) it's probably ok not to encode any part of a JSTOR id. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:58, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I found the first dead link at archive.today here. It doesn't say much, only that JSTOR uses SICI. But about the JSTOR implementation, I did find this. See page 4 "SICIs in Active Use" for an explanation of how JSTOR URLs use SICI. – Margin1522 (talk) 08:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. I hope the formatting error in, where the article title is in italics not roman+quote marks, will be fixed this weekend. It's been around far too long in my view. Otherwise I'll join other editors in changing title to contribution when using Citation for journal articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes. See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 6. In particular note the item: revised |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= handling.  Those who have lost faith and succumbed to the Siren-songs of any of the contribution siblings are going to awaken to find their citations dashed upon the rocks:
 * But the faithful, who stuffed their ears with wax or bound themselves to the mast will escape that dread lee shore
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:16, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's always good to know there's a reward (of sorts) for remaining faithful... Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:16, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's always good to know there's a reward (of sorts) for remaining faithful... Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 29–30 November 2014
Over the weekend of 29–30 November 2014 I propose to update the live versions of:
 * Module:Citation/CS1 from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:
 * restore |work= and its aliases format when used in ; see discussion
 * make |interviewer= and |interviewers= aliases of |others=; adapt cite interview accordingly; |day= no longer supported;
 * add language codes for script-title categorization ('bs', 'dv', 'el', 'fa', 'hy', 'ku', 'ps', 'ru', 'sd', 'sr', 'th', 'uk', 'ug', 'yi');
 * added asin length and composition test; see discussion
 * separate presentation tagging from static text insertion; Bug fix; see discussion
 * fixed COinS chapter/title keyword swapped error; see discussion
 * migrate cite newsgroup; see discussion
 * retire |display-authors error message; shift categorization to ; see discussion
 * revised |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= handling; see discussion
 * Add unrecognized language categorization when |language= is not ISO 639-1;
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox:
 * change trans-title and trans-chapter error messages to use hyphens instead of underscores;
 * these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: albumlink, artist, cointerviewers, day, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear;
 * interviewer and interviewers are now aliases of others;
 * added asin error message; see discussion
 * create ; move most presentation  tagging there;
 * retire display-authors error message; shift categorization to ; see discussion
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist from Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox:
 * these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: albumlink, albumtype, artist, cointerviewers, day, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear;
 * added interviewers;
 * deprecated chapterlink and chapter-link;
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation from Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox:
 * closed a small hole through which 2nd could wriggle; see discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:40, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * In the interest of having a discussion in one place, please post any discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1, where this notice has also been posted. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:00, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Cite web section parameter
The cite web template used to accept the section parameter, although I noticed in some articles that it now returns and error message for the chapter parameter. It would be useful if functionality for this is restored, because many databases and online textbooks have sections, some of which may be linked to directly. E.g., pubchem has direct section links, like this one: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/3007?from=summary#section=Identification It may be better to just uncouple the chapter and section alias in general, since some textbook chapters include sections with headers. From searching the page code, I think the issues are coming from the lines that follow (this is the first time I've ever looked at CS1). ['Chapter'] = {'chapter', 'contribution', 'entry', 'article', 'section'}, chapter_ignored = { message = ' ignored', anchor = 'chapter_ignored', category = 'CS1 errors: Chapter ignored', hidden = false },  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 03:03, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Looking at Cite web/old I do not see that it supported section or chapter. These would have fed into the meta-parameter IncludedWorkTitle but that is used for title. --  Gadget850talk 03:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It used to be the hyperlinked parameter, with the title appearing after.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 08:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Look at Cite book/old. chapter, contribution and section are aliases that feed IncludedWorkTitle. Cite web has never supported those parameters. --  Gadget850talk 13:39, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Er... I probably should have specified this earlier: when I said "used to" I meant mid-2014-ish, so the issue would have been in this module, not that template, assuming the template was deprecated by the date in the revision history. If it wasn't intended in this module, then it was probably just a misspecified line of code somewhere. An earlier version of this module was passing that parameter through to articles between the retrieval dates in the web citations with errors in this article permalink (Sept 2013-May 2014). If the functionality isn't restored, then I have to collapse many those cite webs into general links to 2 ginormous databases, which is a little bit of a pain in the ass for WP:V.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 21:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Edit: I just remembered I posted this thread in November 2013: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_27; I know for certain it displayed the section and title parameters at that time.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 21:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you want to link to a section within the Pubchem entry for a drug, why not use something like:
 * It seems to me that you can always use TITLE: SECTION with the url pointing to the section. A citation with more than two "levels" is always difficult to format so that the levels are distinguished. If you have Toxicity Amphetamine Pubchem Compound, how can they be formatted so the three levels are distinguished? Almost all citation styles provide for two levels: the lower being set in roman in quotes, the higher being set in italics. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that you can always use TITLE: SECTION with the url pointing to the section. A citation with more than two "levels" is always difficult to format so that the levels are distinguished. If you have Toxicity Amphetamine Pubchem Compound, how can they be formatted so the three levels are distinguished? Almost all citation styles provide for two levels: the lower being set in roman in quotes, the higher being set in italics. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that you can always use TITLE: SECTION with the url pointing to the section. A citation with more than two "levels" is always difficult to format so that the levels are distinguished. If you have Toxicity Amphetamine Pubchem Compound, how can they be formatted so the three levels are distinguished? Almost all citation styles provide for two levels: the lower being set in roman in quotes, the higher being set in italics. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Since DrugBank is essentially encyclopedic in scope, cite it as such:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:39, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The encyclopedia format seems like it works well for database refs, so I'll use that alternative. Thanks for the suggestion.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 04:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * how can this format be used with ? Three levels don't seem to be allowed any longer. See also the second example at Template:Citation, which now throws an error. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:29, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The encyclopedia format seems like it works well for database refs, so I'll use that alternative. Thanks for the suggestion.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 04:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * how can this format be used with ? Three levels don't seem to be allowed any longer. See also the second example at Template:Citation, which now throws an error. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:29, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * With a somewhat significant rethink about what 'encyclopedia' means to CS1 and CS2 in the module? At present, encyclopedia is lumped together with work, journal, newspaper, and other similar 'periodical' aliases.  The module uses CitationClass from the template's   to identify.


 * I'm not sure that an encyclopedia should necessarily be considered a periodical in the same sense as newspapers or journals. Perhaps we split off encyclopedia and encyclopaedia from the meta variable   so that we can use that as a marker instead of or in addition to CitationClass.  I'll think about this and propose a solution at Help talk:Citation Style 1.


 * As for Template:Citation, that is a somewhat flawed example. The citation isn't to an affidavit but to a newspaper article that contains the affidavit. There is no 'Affidavit' heading.  The 5 September date is not the date of the affidavit but the date that a justice certified that the affidavit had been copied it faithfully.  The date should be 10 April 1871.  Toohy is identified on the masthead as publisher not editor. Newspaper editors are generally not credited nor are publishers.  And of course, in the article, the author of the affidavit is identified as Philip Klingon Smith.  Too bad there isn't a Klingensmith article.


 * So, the example citation might be rewritten like this:
 * which gives:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced that "encyclopedia" is a good descriptor for citations with three "levels", which is the issue at hand. A good book citation can require section, chapter and (book) title without the book being an encyclopedia. A good web citation can require section, (page) title and website without treating the website as an encyclopedia. I suspect the deep problem is the extreme context sensitivity of title which makes it hard to error-check without additional information as provided by the "mode" of the cite templates.


 * I wonder if adding an parameter mode to  might be one solution. It would then be possible to guarantee that   always behaved the same as   other than the three standard differences. It wouldn't interfere with existing uses of . Peter coxhead (talk) 21:10, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I have moved your post out of my post. Except for position, it is unmolested.


 * I think that has three levels because that was a way out of a never-resolved quandary that still exists in the  version where title from  feeds  parameters Title and IncludedWorkTitle.  Is 'encyclopedia' the best descriptor? Perhaps not.  But it is the one we have so if we move to make  mimic  then similar terminology is in order, isn't it?


 * It's possible that mode could perhaps have some benefit but for every place where Module:Citation/CS1 currently uses CitationClass it would be necessary to determine if it is appropriate to evaluate mode at that same place.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

PDF page links
contributed a tip about linking to a specific page inside a PDF using. Perhaps this module could be modified to automatically include that named anchor: if  contains "PDF" and   (or   or  ) doesn't contain a named anchor, parse   or   for the first page to link to and append it to the URL. – Minh Nguyễn &#x1f4ac; 23:14, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Been a while since this came up. I believe we determined that this is very dependent on the server and not reliable. --  Gadget850talk 01:45, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Do you remember where that was? According to this, which is a link from the above thread, the client strips the hash string before sending the URI to the server. So if there are problems, would they be in processing of the hash string on the client side? It occurs to me now that another issue is that the displayed page may not seem to match the requested page number. This happens in Adobe Reader when the 123rd page (counting separately numbered TOC, etc.) is not same as page 123 (not counting front matter). – Margin1522 (talk) 07:05, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Oh, that's a good point: most sources in PDF form would have front matter that would throw off the page numbering. So it's up to editors to put in the anchor. – Minh Nguyễn &#x1f4ac; 08:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't it be preferred that the value of page parameter (or template, by the way using pages wouldn't work) contains the page numeration as it's used in the actual PDF file?  That way it could be used for generating anchors automatically.  However, we can't rely on editors to use PDF numeration over the actual page numbers. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:29, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, no. We should not alter the pagination of the original source to match the pagination of a courtesy copy hosted online in our citations. Because readers may have to consult a printed copy or a different online copy because the linked file is inaccessible to them, we cannot rely on the PDF's pagination of the source. You may want to note something at the end of the citation as a supplement, but not as a replacement.  Imzadi 1979  →   09:27, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification. However, please allow me to provide an example, just to make sure we're on the same page (no pun intended, hehe): a PDF file numbers pages as 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, etc., and doesn't respond well to page numbers such as 1, 2 or 3 when entered into the page number input field in Adobe Reader.  Should we specify   or   as the page value? &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:48, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * For the reasons I outlined in my last comments, page 1-1, the page number as assigned by the original publishers of the source. If you wish, you could add an optional manually typed note as to what page number it is in the file, but the citation itself should be based upon what the publisher assigned, or in the case of unpaginated works, didn't assign. (Other style guides would say if the publisher didn't include page numbers to use "n.p." so that readers know the page number wasn't just omitted by accident.)  Imzadi 1979  →   00:12, 8 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Makes sense, thanks, that's also what I usually do with PDF references. Perhaps I didn't explain it well in my initial description above. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 02:17, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Three notes. 1. The page number "2-1" as printed shall be mentioned in the parameter: 2-1. Using a different  would apply to the url only. 2. If the source is published in pdf only without print-only page numbers, then teh pdf-numbering is the page number right? 3. Is there a general rule on using an anchor in external source links? -DePiep (talk) 13:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * 1. Correct.  2. // .pdf#page= page 3. I don't know of any such proscription.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This sounds like it is acceptable to add this #page to the url (provided cite quality). But from this thread I got the impression (as in: "taste") that it was ill-advised to do so. For straightforward cases, can we use it in a cite? -DePiep (talk) 13:43, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The thing that is ill-advised is automatically forming  from page when // .pdf which was the question stated in the initial post of this discussion.  It seems to me that editors are free to add the   to the content of url just as they are free to provide links in this form: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_talk:Citation/CS1#PDF_page_links.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:43, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK. Thx. -DePiep (talk) 16:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello! Well, it surely isn't "dependent on the server", as web servers generally have nothing to do with the URLs they're requested to serve.  Of course, if a PDF file isn't served statically that's another story, but the majority of PDF files are served that way.  It is browser-dependent, but specifying the page number through   shouldn't cause any harm. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:00, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * If you want to include the PDF page number in url, then do so. If the server fails to deliver the PDF in the proper manner it should fallback to opening at the front page, as would opening a saved PDF. page should always be the page number printed on the page. You can also specify a PDF destination if the PDF has destinations configured, usually to chapter headings. --  Gadget850talk 16:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * But, it pretty much isn't up to the server to preserve the  anchor –  it could be lost only if the server performs a HTTP redirect, which is highly unlikely to happen while retrieving PDF files.  And, that anchor is what the web browser relies on to display (scroll down to) the proper page, while the web server has nothing to do with the displaying/scrolling. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:13, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This trick doesn't work when the url looks like this: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B02E2DA103DE533A2575AC2A9619C946195D6CF


 * One thing that I have been thinking about is to add code that would change the external link icon to the pdf version when url does not have the .pdf file extension and when pdf. Essentially, wrap the external link with :
 * "Won't let Public see Resolute"
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * For the example above, it doesn't work because it isn't a link to a PDF file. Instead, it's a web page that embeds an iframe that actually contains the PDF file.  The actual URL of the PDF file is http://article.archive.nytimes.com/1920/07/29/103465577.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJBTN455PTTBQQNRQ&Expires=1417975997&Signature=D%2FqurvTpbbIDS1o5aw9IaY1TtbE%3D, and it works with the   anchor trick (try it).  However, query.nytimes.com seems to be doing this to prevent PDF files to be linked directly, as they also include some kind of an expiration timestamp within the PDF file URL; thus, the above provided direct link won't work for too long. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the direct URL already expired. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:19, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Handling the parameter list when calling citation from another lua module
This may be more of a lua question, but I thought I'd ask it here first.

Here's my lua script (at Module:User:Lesser Cartographies/lua):

-- Taking lua for a spin. local p = {} local citation = require( "Module:Citation/CS1" ) function p.lc_cite_journal(frame) frame.args.CitationClass='journal' return citation.citation( frame.args ) end return p

This throws and error "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 2523: attempt to call method 'getParent' (a nil value)."

I suspect what's happening is that in trying to pass in frame.args as a parameter, I'm actually passing in a single parameter that is a table and things are going south from there. What's the approved way of writing a wrapper script so that I'm able to munge a few parameters and then pass the parameter list along to citation?

Many thanks,

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 04:31, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You might want to look at Module:ParseVauthors that modifies several parameters before passing on the parameter list to Module:Citation/CS1. This module in turn is called by Vcite2 journal. Boghog (talk) 06:01, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Interesting that the template is being access through templateexpand rather than the function call, but yes, that does exactly what I want. Thanks!  Lesser Cartographies (talk) 10:19, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Dates
I recently created an article citing a journal with a publication date of "July/August 2000", which appears to cause this module to complain about the format. Does CS1 handle such date formats, and if so, how should it be specified in the citation template? (I've also tried "Jul/Aug 2000" with no success. Perhaps "July and August 2000"?) If the module cannot currently handle this format, could I request its addition, as I imagine its a common (or at least, not rare) journal date format. Example use at The Brownies' Book, specifically the reference "Jesse Fauset: Midwife to the Harlem Renaissance". Mind matrix  16:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:DATERANGE does not allow the virgule as a separator in dates. That being so, Module:Citation/CS1 does not support the virgule as a separator.  WP:DATERANGE specifies the use of the endash (spaced or unspaced depending on application) as the only allowed separator in date ranges.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For example,  generates
 * GoingBatty (talk) 17:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty (talk) 17:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep. Made the change as you were typing that... Mind  matrix  17:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * OK. Note that "July–August 2000" works, but "July&amp;ndash;August 2000" causes the module to complain. Feature, or bug? Mind  matrix  17:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I think of it as a bug. But then I'm not exactly normal; I was typing in IBM Generalized Markup Language, a predecessor of HTML, since the 1980s. I much prefer to type a standard HTML entity that is useful in many computing environments, rather than a template, since there is no assurance that the template will work anywhere other than the English Wikipedia. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The date is encoded into the COinS metadata. When using the HTML entity ndash, the entity is injected into the metadata:

With the HTML entity, the date is.

With the Unicode dash, the date is  as expected.

I don't know if the HTML entity can be converted, but the current implementation properly generates an error. We should expand the help to explain this. --  Gadget850talk 18:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 14 February 2015
Per this discussion, directly after line 1110: insert:

The purpose of this function is to convert the name in firstn to initials so that it conforms to the Vancouver system formatted author list. If the first and middle names are already initials, the  will strip the middle initial returning only the first initial. The above proposed addition will check for this special case (a string two characters long and containing only upper case letters) and if it finds it, return the parameter value unchanged. Boghog (talk) 15:29, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Use of aut template
The removal of scap may cause those who really like small caps for authors in citations to switch to using aut, which is worse as it contaminates the metadata. Should the occurrence of this template inside a CS1/CS2 citation template also cause a visible error message? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Per previous discussion, I don't think the module can detect included templates. --  Gadget850talk 21:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Possible to use or simulate within CS1 templates?
(Pasted from Teahouse/Questions, thanks to 's welcome suggestion. The actual request is below the line in green; the rest is silence context. also created an English page for the author, so I'm faking the redlinks here with a couple of character substitutions.*)

I'm copyediting an article for the current GOCE Blitz. Part of the work involves converting long citations that are currently in the text of the article to references. The citation templates have an argument for the author's article. But this source is in German, and English WP has no article about the author, although German WP does.

If this were an ordinary inline interlanguage link I'd use to get

But when I put that into I get this:

Any suggestions? Thnidu (talk) 07:21, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

[proposals and discussions of workarounds omitted here]


 * So, my helpful fellow editors, you have solved the problem for now, but not for the next time such a situation arises. I think we need an additional couple of parameters that, like "template-doc-demo", can be added to any citation template (at least!) to do the work that does: "There's a page for this on another wiki." E.g.,
 * ... and then, Gott mit uns, ..., for additional authors, editors, and who knows what else. Where should such a suggestion go? (Other than "where the sun don't shine", please!)  --Thnidu (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * ... and then, Gott mit uns, ..., for additional authors, editors, and who knows what else. Where should such a suggestion go? (Other than "where the sun don't shine", please!)  --Thnidu (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

--Thnidu (talk) 07:00, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I tweaked the authorlink code in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox to get this using de:Wılhelm Pape:

No error messages, but readers won't necessarily intuit what (de) actually means because it looks like it might be, perhaps, part of his name. We might leave the colon so that the linked author name looks like this: Papɛ W. (de:) but that isn't much better.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:04, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the OP might want something like this (rendered manually to show the desired effect):
 * Papɛ, W. (de); Benseler, G. E. (1875). [//archive.org/details/drwpapeswrterbu00bensgoog Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen [Dictionary of Greek Proper Names]] (in German). F. Vieweg und sohn.


 * The tricky part about is this, from the documentation: "When the English article is created, the other language link won't be shown". That might be a challenge to program. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll take your word for that. As it is, I intend to give up (for now, at least) on using any tweak of author-link. Instead, I'll add a link after the and before , so the ref will display like this:
 * (Third Edition) (Author's article in German)
 * Thanks, all! --Thnidu (talk) 02:31, 22 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Very well. I have struck the interwiki test from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 22 January 2015
The behaviour of the  parameter has been changed, (in a recent edit), from plain un-formatted text, to wrapping it with   tags, which wrongly changes the text to all-italics. Quotations often contain italics of their own for Latin phrases, titles of works, translator added words in Bible quotes, etc. All-italics ruins everything. Old code line 2074: Quote = sepc .." " .. wrap( 'quoted-text', Quote ); New code line 2120: Quote = sepc .." " .. wrap_style ('quoted-text', Quote ); -- wrap in ... tags

There may be other code needing fixing as well. Thanks for your help. —Telpardec TALK  21:22, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * , can you please provide an example? Here's a template that uses quote, and it does not show the quotation in italics (in my web browser):
 * Here's another one with italicized text within the quotation.
 * Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Answering as yes for now, since this needs discussion.
 * Do you see this text in italics? If so, then something is changing your CSS to show quoted text as italics. --  Gadget850talk 22:51, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You could also try logging out of Wikipedia and then refreshing one of the pages that does not display correctly for you. If it looks fine, then something in your common.css file or a similar file may be causing italics for you (and not for others). – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:47, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Both the cite book and &lt;q> examples above are all italics, with no difference for the word verbatim. According to w3schools: "The &lt;q> tag defines a short quotation. Browsers normally insert quotation marks around the quotation." I made a test page on my local hard drive with the result that the &lt;q> tag is normally ignored by my browser. It does not add quote marks or italics. I don't have any local CSS set. It is only here on Wikipedia that the &lt;q> tag is producing all italics. It is the same logged out and purged. It is the same for Vector or MonoBook skin. Thanks for your help. —Telpardec TALK  07:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Try logging out and see how it looks. What browser are you using? --  Gadget850talk 09:29, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I already "logged out and purged" the page above. I'm using IE6 on winXP. —Telpardec TALK  10:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Aha. Looks like IE6 does not support . The MediaWiki software has been stripping support for IE6, but we should be able to resolve this. My XP VM has IE8, so I can't test this immediately but this should work. Add this to :
 * I already "logged out and purged" the page above. I'm using IE6 on winXP. —Telpardec TALK  10:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Aha. Looks like IE6 does not support . The MediaWiki software has been stripping support for IE6, but we should be able to resolve this. My XP VM has IE8, so I can't test this immediately but this should work. Add this to :


 * --  Gadget850talk 11:15, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Good detective work by both of you., I'm sure this has been suggested before, but a browser upgrade would probably serve you well. If there is a reason you need to keep IE at version 6, maybe Chrome or Firefox can become your dedicated browser for Wikipedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. This machine cannot be upgraded further. The CSS fix above did not work because it did not have the q selector, like this:
 * That fix cancels the all italics for me while logged in, but there is still a problem for others. There is some rogue CSS somewhere that is wrongly changing &lt;q> to italics. The correct behaviour for, according to Help:Citation Style 1, is that the text should be "enclosed in quotes". Anyway. Thanks again. —Telpardec  TALK  18:35, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I updated the CSS rules above. I usually test this stuff, but I need to install a new XP VM to do so (and actually I just found a VM I can download instead of having to create it from scratch). Per, MSIE 6 accounts for 0.22% of all requests. A number of fixes for MSIE 6 have been removed from core MediaWiki and more are scheduled for removal.
 * Unlike others, I'm not going to tell you that IE sucks and you should switch. As a support professional, I understand that many users do not have a choice, either by limitations of their system, corporate policy or compatibility with other software. But MSIE 6 just does not support the modern web. Wikipedia is rapidly implementing CSS3 and HTML5 which is leaving older browsers unable to render a page as the editors intend; more at Internet Explorer 6. XP can upgrade to MSIE 8 and it will support Firefox, Chrome and others.
 * I think the best we can do is start a Help page outlining the issue and giving what support we can. --  Gadget850talk 18:56, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * IE6 and IE7 don't support the  and   pseudo-elements nor do they support the   property. The best we can do is change the style from italics to normal. I started Help:Internet Explorer. --   Gadget850talk 15:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "the  property"? There is no property of that name in CSS - there are no single-letter properties, the shortest property names are ,   and   with three letters. The way that you've used   above is as a type selector matching the  element. Whether a browsers supports that element isn't to do with CSS, but HTML - the browser must be older than HTML 4.01. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:43, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thought I changed that before I saved. --  Gadget850talk 15:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thought I changed that before I saved. --  Gadget850talk 15:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

, that Help:Internet Explorer looks useful. Do you mind if I mention it on VPT? I suspect that it may be useful as a FAQ-type page for answering Help Desk and VPT questions for people with IE6 and IE7 browsers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:01, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. My third help page in the week or two. --  Gadget850talk 23:34, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Found the problem
The rogue CSS was found in one of the ResourceLoader modules, (introduced with MediaWiki 1.23,) that has CSS shared by both Vector and Monobook skins, called: "mediawiki.skinning.interface" which includes this: The asterisk is known as a "star hack", which causes all browswers to ignore that style, except Internet Explorer versions below IE8. The illegal CSS in this MediaWiki module is not limited in its affects to this template or Wikipedia alone, but undermines the integrity of all projects and languages where the  element is used; and therefore needs to be removed from the module ASAP. Thanks. —Telpardec TALK  10:22, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Good detective work! Setting  makes it more readable. Which lets us see:


 * So a developer deliberately introduced this rule. Is this wrong? --  Gadget850talk 13:07, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * It is wrong now. That was part of the early interface CSS that was copied out of Vector and Monobook CSS into a separate "skins/common/commonInterface.css" file, which was later converted to the present ResourceLoader module. I don't see where (if anywhere) in the early interface the  tag was used. It needs to be removed from the interface module. Thanks . —Telpardec  TALK  12:45, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * That's right: was whitelisted only a year or so ago. I filed a task to remove the style:  --   Gadget850talk 12:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks. —Telpardec TALK  13:38, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The CSS rule will be removed from with MediaWiki_1.25/wmf19. You can then clear that out of your CSS. --   Gadget850talk 18:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

kern_quotes results in broken link underline
As visible in ref 4 of Justin_Hayward-Young, a title beginning with a single quote triggers this kerning function so that the inserted double quote and the title's single quote don't blend together, which is fine, except that it also introduces a weird break in the link underline. The code calls out to, which as a relative newcomer to this codebase I don't know where to find. Does anyone know why this kerning breaks the link underline, and if it can be fixed? I'd also be happy to take a stab at it myself if someone points me to the code actually doing the kerning. Personman (talk) 13:36, 25 February 2015 (UTC)


 * and  are both defined in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration.  But, I don't think that the underscore gap is the fault of the module as this (clearly contrived) example shows:
 * → Abe' Lincoln
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:48, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I have to set the preference for underlined links to see this. The leading single quote is in a separate span, which causes the issue:



--  Gadget850talk 20:39, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

2015 arxiv errors
The format of arxiv identifiers has changed, with the sequence number being padded to five digits from 2015 onward. This change doesn't seem to be implemented in the check, with valid arxiv IDs resulting in "Check |arxiv= value" warnings, for example here. Huon (talk) 13:22, 10 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Fixed in sandbox. See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7. --  Gadget850talk 14:19, 10 January 2015 (UTC)


 * So is there a timeline for implementing the fix? I've asked about that Help_desk -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 05:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)


 * FWIW, is delivering error notices based on the CS1 error message to editors who add arXiv id's in citation templates that use the new id# format; so there may be users who don't understand what's going on with messages they are receiving and therefore leaving enquiries at the various help outlets. -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 07:55, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. as follows: Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:A930913/RBpreload&editintro=User:A930913/RBeditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:A930913&preloadtitle=ReferenceBot%20–%20&section=new report it to my operator]. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:20, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Reference Errors on 4 February
 * On the Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) page, [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=645673155 your edit] caused an arXiv error (help) . ([ Fix] | [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&preload=User:ReferenceBot/helpform&preloadtitle=Referencing%20errors%20on%20%5B%5BSpecial%3ADiff%2F645673155%7CWikipedia:Village pump (technical)%5D%5D Ask for help])

ReferenceBot is still producing error messages, even though this is a valid arXiv ID, so the module is giving editors invalid user talk page messages. -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 11:40, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Several languages
Some suggestion for such errors: language in Holy Archangel Mikhail Church, Riga? -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 10:34, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Can you elaborate? It isn't clear to me what you are suggesting / asking.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:21, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the problem here is recording multiple languages for one work (four languages for the cited book). Simon Burchell (talk) 11:30, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, Simon Burchell is right. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 11:43, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Ok, what should we do about that? Apparently, there are books out there in the wild world that are in multiple languages.  I still don't know what it is that you're looking for.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:59, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I just read what category says :) Anyway, maybe it would be worth adding parameters language2, languag3, etc. for such cases? -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 12:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Here is the citation in question:

I don't see any errors. Am I correct that this work is in the four different languages? --  Gadget850talk 14:13, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see any errors either. Someone looking at this page in the future and who has the hidden messages shown may see a maintenance message. See this discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT, should the editor only list the language of the book they consulted? GoingBatty (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Some books are written in multiple languages. The WorldCat entry for the book listed above says that it is written in Latvian, but the entry also contains the following note: "Summary and captions in German, English, and Russian."


 * As another example, I have a book in my own house (See ) that contains the same story in both English and Spanish. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Date checking
Something has gone awry in date checking:

Where the bad date here is showing variables. --  Gadget850talk 15:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Fixed in the sandbox, I think:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I saw one of these in the wild yesterday but forgot to report it here. The error message was correct, but the display was wrong, as reported above. Thanks for fixing it in the sandbox. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

transclusion of sandbox
and others: The last update of Module:Citation* transcludes the sandboxes ( (Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox (and two more sandboxes) I cant edit it, so I cant fix it... Christian75 (talk) 11:16, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. It was  that was  ing Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.  Mea culpa.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:44, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Et Al
Please see the comment re this module in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jos%C3%A9_Rizal&diff=653545713&oldid=653106787 this edit]. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:43, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Who are these "et al" authors? further, who is the second Valdez? When I follow [//books.google.com/books?id=ixcoCv2o2NoC the link], it says "Maria Stella S. Valdez"; and when I look up various library category entries via ISBN 978-971-23-4868-6, they mostly say the same or a small variant on that, e.g. "Valdez, Maria Stella S." - just one author. Open Library says "Maria Stella Sibal Valdez ; Angelita Geronimo Gonzales, coordinator." - the second of these sounds like an editor, but certainly isn't another Valdez. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:48, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I looked up the book as well, thus I agree with Redrose64.
 * The anchor created by cite book is  which ignores "et al." (which is the proper capitalization and abbreviation), thus  would create the proper link. --  Gadget850talk 12:21, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It sure would be nice to have a maintenance category for sfn/harvnb links that go nowhere. I have the javascript installed, so I fix them when I see them, but there are thousands of articles with broken links and (as far as I know) no systematic way to track them down. I have asked at VPT, but I was told that it wasn't possible. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no way to do that via personal CSS/JS. This would have to be added either to the site JS. Let me think on it a bit. --  Gadget850talk 13:30, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * If a category is not possible, I would settle for a report, like WikiProject Check Wikipedia/ISBN errors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

name-list-format=scap now producing error
The authorformat=scap/name-list-format=scap, producing smallcaps, is now producing an " Invalid |name-list-format=scap" error across a large number of articles. Anyone have any idea why? Simon Burchell (talk) 15:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * authorformat has been deprecated and the  value has been removed altogether. See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7. Discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7  which references MOS:ALLCAPS. --   Gadget850talk 15:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Sigh. That's it, I'm done with CS1 citing. It was good while it lasted. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * MOS:SMALLCAPS has long deprecated the use of small caps. Although I'm unhappy about some of the changes made to the citation templates, this one seems well justified. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:08, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * MOS smallcaps guidance seems more geared towards the body text of an article, and smallcaps in references helps author names stand out from the mass of text when looking up a reference. I find it ironic that supposedly there is no "house style" of referencing, yet widespread styles such as smallcaps are stamped out via citation templates. At any rate, I'm done with it. The citation template parameters are constantly changing, and I've reached my patience threshold with running to catch up. All the best, Simon Burchell (talk) 21:13, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * See also: All caps. --  Gadget850talk 21:22, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's all very well for reading sentences or paragraphs of text, but when one is merely scanning for an author name I find that having smallcaps help pick out the author names for rapid identification of a cited source (which I admit becomes irrelevant if is used). Simon Burchell (talk) 21:27, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * We're not going to come to a consensus, so have a nice day. --  Gadget850talk 21:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I think it is absolutely ridiculous to prohibit the use of small caps in references. What exactly is the rationale? What problems does it cause? And yes I agree with Simon that if supposedly we are free to choose our own citation style then we should also be free to use small caps for author names. The all caps readability argument is irrelevant since this is not about running prose but about making it easier to pick out author names in reference lists - something which is often done with small caps in professional publications. I will also, like Simon, consider to stop using citation templates all together.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:52, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The templates implement the MOS. Per MOS:ALLCAPS: "Avoid writing with all capitals, including small caps." Have an issue with that, then get it changed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters.
 * You can certainly stop using templates, but that means you are not going to be adding citations to articles already using templates unless you have consensus to change per WP:CITEVAR. --  Gadget850talk 19:13, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That is about the text not about references. I will bloody well decide where and when I will add citations thank you very much.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:25, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. Unwatching page. --  Gadget850talk 19:26, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Well isn't that great. Driving off one of the most knowledgeable and helpful contributors to this page. Way to go, . -- Red rose64 (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Wtf? How on earth is Gadget805s decision to unwatch this page my fault? As for being helpful that doesnt exactly seem like a fitting description of their interactions with Simon Burchell above or with myself.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Maunus / Simon, I have no strong opinion about the scap option. However, it seems to me that if you object to the result of the previous discussion, the best course of action is to express that objection at a broader forum.  I would suggest Village Pump (policy) since this does seem to touch on how broadly the MOSCAPS guideline should be applied.  This is a wiki, and the change to CS1 can be reverted if that is the consensus.  Dragons flight (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that such a broader discussion should have been started before implementing these changes though. Nonetheless I have now initiated a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters and I have made a bold edit to the MOS. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:53, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Here is the RfC about the issue: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters You input will be valued. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:16, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * This RFC has been resolved in favor of leaving the citation module as it currently exists. Capitals and small caps are allowed only when the meaning of the words or letters is changed when caps are used. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:50, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Language parameter
user:Trappist_the_monk, and others :)

Hi! See this task. We are wondering if there's a way to tell Cite templates in VE that they don't need to add the language parameter if the source language is the same than the wiki one. Do you think this is feasible, and most importantly, that it makes sense to do so? (AWB removes that parameter anyway.) Thanks a lot for your input! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't use VE so I don't know anything about how it works. But is that really your question?  The phabricator task doesn't mention VE.


 * If the question is should VE populate English (or the ISO 639-1 code ) then I would say no, don't do it.  Editors here complain about citation template clutter whether it's in the rendering (access dates or English language annotation) or in the wikitext.  The exception – isn't there always an exception? – is when the source is in multiple languages: fr, de, en, then you should include English in the language parameter.


 * Did I answer your question?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:22, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I oversimplified :) mw:Citoid is a tool in VE which auto-generates references. It relies on Cite templates and TemplateData, so we're looking for a way to change the former or the latter to tell it to not populate that field, precisely for the reason you provided. Maybe now the Phabricator task makes more sense? Thank you! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't use Citoid or VE either, but those would be the places to focus. In one of them, you may be able to have some sort of explanatory note for editors that they should not populate language with the language of the WP that they are editing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:45, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for weighing in. While it's certainly possible to improve such messaging in case of need, we aren't talking about editors adding that parameter manually. See a brief description of how Citoid works. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Doesn't Citoid create the cite template? If so, how could the template, which hasn't yet been created, tell citoid how it is to be populated?  Why am I so confused?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the confusion, possibly my fault for not explaining my suggestion clearly enough near the bottom of that phab task.
 * Briefly, the aim (of my suggestion) is to make our Module work the same way as the French Modules do - to not render the language if it's set to the local default (English) - for example, in this revision, the 1st and 2nd citations both include, but that info isn't rendered in the reflist below. That fixes the issue of having a useless string of text shown to readers (I assume that's the main reason we automatically remove it, when someone includes it in a citation).
 * This would:
 * make the citation's language (meta-info) programatically available for researchers (rather than them having to just assume a missing )
 * let Citoid freely add any detected language (without having to worry about exceptions)
 * Remove one task from the Checkwiki cleanup list at enwiki (thereby leading to fewer bot-edits like (half of the changes in) this diff)
 * (Seems to be #21 at WikiProject Check Wikipedia/List of errors)
 * See Zebulon84's explanation in this comment, for links to the French module (with line numbers) and a few details on the nuances.


 * I hope that's a bit clearer, and seems like a sensible course of action. [I tried searching for past discussions about this, but it could've been in dozens of locations, and the topic keywords are very common which makes it even harder! If you know of any details/discussions/edge-cases that need to be considered, please point them out. I'm not a developer, so am not sure what else needs to be considered. Thanks for your thoughts, and your previous work on this complex code. :) ] Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The more-or-less equivalent code in en:WP's Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (sandbox because it is slightly different from the current live module and til now was the intended update) is at line 1762. There, we look to see how many languages are listed in language. If only one language is listed and if that language is   or   then we add the page to  and then go on to render the (in English) annotation text.  We could, instead of or in addition to categorizing, simply return an empty string when English is the only language in the parameter value.  That more-or-less mimics fr:WP.


 * As far as past conversations about the language parameter, those, if they exist, would most likely be in this page's archive or in the archives of Help talk:Citation Style 1. Or not.  When I wrote Monkbot task 6 I adopted the philosophy stated in the box at .  If I remember correctly, that's the only place that I found that addressed the issue of English language annotation in en:WP.


 * There has been little to no reaction from CS1|2 template users with regard to the changes I've made to language support. Still, if your proposal is to procede, it might be best to, at the least, notice Help talk:Citation Style 1 with its 160 watchers since only 60 watch this page (and who probably are also watching H:CS1).


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Pinging people there. Thank you. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:28, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I also apologize for the confusion: my point instead was a bit different. I'm taking for granted that not having the language parameter at in the template (not just not having a redundant language code in the reflist) is what the community here currently desires and the reason why it gets deleted by bots. I'm not challenging the reasoning behind this, I'm asking if there's a way to achieve this by changing the template behaviour, if possible and, as I stated in my first post, if it really makes sense for everybody. If it doesn't, and Quiddity's suggestion makes more sense, or if you have a different one, great! We'd just like to understand what's everybody's preference, here. HTH. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand what you mean by changing the template behaviour. An editor (or Citoid) creates a CS1|2 template and Module:Citation/CS1 renders it.  Here, we can't do anything about what editors or Citoid create.  We can, though, decide how we render the citation that the reader sees.  The fr:WP solution is to not display language annotation when the specified language is an acceptable form of  .  The English parameter is still in the wikitext.  Is this what you mean by changing behavior?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * What the French are doing is a partial solution - you wouldn't provide a redundant information, but you'd still need cleanup; if an empty string (when English is the only language in the parameter value) was returned, wouldn't editors here still instruct the bot to go and delete "language=en" from wikitext anyway? I think they would, unless they decided this is not an error which needs to be corrected anymore. Since bots at enwiki currently get rid of "language=en" entirely, I'm just wondering if there is a way to prevent that that parameter is added in the first place (if this is a desirable outcome, obviously, and only when the source language matches the wiki one). Again, we're just flagging this to understand whether something needs to be done, and by whom :) Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:28, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The only way to keep bots from deleting something is to deny them access to the wikitext. Automated tools that create CS1|2 templates place those templates into the wikitext.  The template processing tool (here, Module:Citation/CS1) has no power to rewrite the template in wikitext; it can only read and act upon what it reads where that act is to translate the data contained in the template into a correctly rendered HTML citation for display in a reader's browser.


 * The only place to prevent language parameter insertion is at the inserter: Citoid or Visual Editor. The French solution handles the cases where the inserter is a human editor constructing CS1|2 citations and where the community have decided that language annotation for sources in the local WP language need not be displayed.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:06, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Trappist the monk, thanks a lot for the explanation. Let me know if anything changes at some point as a result of this conversation. best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 06:01, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Elitre (WMF): I have changed the en:WP Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that citations at en:WP with en or English will not display the language annotation:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:16, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * You know, thinking about how often WPMED folks (especially the translation task force) copy citations to other Wikipedias, it might be a good idea to keep the en information. Maybe we should hide it, rather than removing it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That is a good point. Paging, who does a lot of this copying, I believe. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:25, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it is good information to provide. Yes we are adding En references to nearly 100 other Wikipedias. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 19:34, 5 May 2015 (UTC)