Template talk:Cite episode/Archive 3

Another bug
Template is no longer showing seriesno/seasonno and episode no in the citation. See Meerkat Manor starting at cite 15, and List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters to see it not working. Please fix. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 20:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's specifically the seriesno field that doesn't function. If seriesno is changed to season, the cite works fine, subject to the bugs reported above. For example:


 * Using seriesno gives
 * Using season gives
 * --AussieLegend (talk) 23:37, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, season doesn't appear to be working on List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters either, unless it was fixed since my last post. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 00:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * In that particular case season is reliant on the  field also being present. So here
 * which gives
 * But if the season field is present e.g.  this now gives
 * I agree this is not how it should operate, as season shouldn't be required for single season series. Additionally, as the thread above, the episodelinks are still broken. I think we need someone much better than me at code who has time to see if they can fix things. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  00:48, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that needs to be fixed. Many anime series have no defined season (except maybe just default all to season 1), so season should not be required. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 00:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If the code isn't fixed quickly we should revert to the stable code until somebody can sort this out. It's been buggy for a month now. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Programme episodes with no "title"
This is a common scenario that the template does not deal with. Top Gear Series XX Episode Y. The appropriate markup would appear to be: but the series and episode numbers don't appear, and it complains about the lack of title. I had to resort to Halsteadk (talk) 13:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * This situation is typically (at least in my experience) handled with the phrase "Episode dated 2 November 2008" at title. This is especially prevalent for citing news programs. However, I agree that there is likely a better way to handle these situations. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 00:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that the  parameter should be optional, given their is an airdate provided.  There should be a standard for news programs and other regularly occurring programming that does not have episode titles. – Dream out loud  (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that it should be possible to use this template without the "title" field. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about template syntax to SOFIXIT myself. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 11:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

After over 7 months there has been no objection to the idea of making title optional. I would suggest that the way to do this is allow notitle (a special value) or yes (a new parameter - see yes in cite book) to bypass the template's title check, rather than removing the check, since in most cases leaving the title out will be a mistake or laziness, not a correct situation. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 02:25, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's see what others think about your two suggested solutions. Deactivating the template for now as slightly premature. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Cite element
Please sync with the sandbox, to use a  instead of a    element. (See Template talk:Citation/core for more information.) —Ms2ger (talk) 13:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. — RockMFR 15:45, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Parameter for quotations
Why doesn't this template have a quote parameter like Template:Cite book or Template:Cite video game? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Messy formatting
Two issues: — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 02:21, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) The minutes parameter needs to have "At " before the numerical output. Otherwise it is beginning a sentence with a numeral, which is ungrammatical.
 * 2) The season/seriesno and number output needs to be reversed, so that it gives the season/series first. Virtually all discussion of TV shows uses season/series-first format, and this will also match the analogous output order of cite journal (volume and issue), etc.

Quotation marks
Please change  to   per WP:PUNCT.  X  eworlebi (t•c) 14:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:41, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Video clip url?
Does adding videourl= to the template make sense? Or should transcripturl be used? If the publisher has a page with a video clip (of an episode of a series) which is cited in an article, I'd like an "official" field in the template for that. This is the case for all Comedy Central video clips: they don't have episode pages, but plenty of permalinkable video clips. --Lexein (talk) 23:41, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If the episode does not have an article, the docs suggest using the the url parameter. Does this not work? -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 00:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Meh - the clip is not the episode. In this case, I did this. --Lexein (talk) 00:43, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If it is just a clip, it doesn't need linking at all. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 01:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That wasn't my question. The link is there because it's a stable online source for the quote, and for the reference in the article, since no transcript is available. --Lexein (talk) 01:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither a transcript nor online source is necessary to cite an episode. A clip, unless it is clear that it is a full section containing the quote, does not have the necessary context. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 01:11, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a quote, so WP:Verifiability. Beyond that, I want an answer to my original question, perhaps from someone else. --Lexein (talk) 01:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Anma, the url parameter is all that is necessary. It is rather multifunctional in its uses. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Done. --Lexein (talk) 15:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

template needs a 'ref' field added
This template is lacking a "ref" field, the presence of which aids the use of shortened notes. Perhaps someone with access to this locked template can fix that. For background, see the Cite web or Cite book templates for examples. Those simply have a line in the template  although I'm not enough of a Wikicode guru to know if that can simply be added to this template to make it work. To test, see note 28 [Shaker Village Work Group (episode) 1966.] of Shaker Village Work Group and click on it to see if it jumps to the complete reference as it should, and the other notes do. I've double checked for typos, and confirmed in the HTML that the problem seems to be that this template doesn't have the ref field function. -- MouseRancher (talk) 06:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Date linking
This template is still erroneously linking the archivedate parameter. Date linking was deprecated some time ago. —Sladen (talk) 12:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅, . Best, Rambo's Revenge (talk)  13:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Series number bug
It's been over a year since the last discussion of season/seriesno not working as it should, with no resolution as far as I can tell. As someone working on an article which cites a number of British television show episodes, having this variable is vital for the references in question to be usable. Can anyone spot where the fly has landed in the ointment? Best regards, Countdown Crispy  ☎ ✎ 13:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm in Blighty too and cited a episode recently at Ben Collins (racing driver). Please could you state what it should be displaying which it isn't?  —Sladen (talk) 13:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much - by seeing how the template output looked on the Ben Collins article I realised the error of my ways. I had only been specifying series numbers, and not episode numbers; as I now realise, without the latter being present, the former doesn't display. (In my defence, the titles of the episodes in question are effectively their episode numbers – "Heat B/C/K/etc." – but I still should have thought of it!) Thanks again, and sorry for querying the template - I saw the discussion a little higher up this page and guessed I was suffering the same issue. Best wishes, Countdown Crispy  ☎ ✎ 14:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Various issues
I should like to declare my interest in the lack of ref and quote parameters in this template, and my agreement with the colleagues who have noted this lack above (here and here respectively); no reply has been given on either issue, and I am keen to bring them back to the attention of anyone who may be watching this page. I also note the irregular order of season/series and episode numbers, a matter raised by SMcCandlish above (see also here), as well as the mysterious move of this information in the resulting citation from after the series name to after the network, location and date—the former placement makes much more sense. Is anyone in favour or against the proposed modifications? Waltham, The Duke of 15:14, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * A quote parameter appears to be present in the current version of the template and a ref parameter should become available soon (see below).  Good raise  08:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, that's excellent. What about the season and episode numbers? Any opinions? I'd like to see what people think about this. Waltham, The Duke of 12:35, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Goodraise, 26 October 2010
This revision of the sandbox implements a basic ref parameter as requested by His Grace in the section above.

 Good raise  08:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you link to an example of your proposed code in use? I'm trying to work out what it does. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * All it does is to make the citation linkable.  Good raise  20:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see. ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see. ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Formatting consistency requests
Two request to make the reference formatting consistent with other cite templates, namely Cite web and Cite press release.  X  eworlebi (talk) 13:25, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Make the title quotes part the link.
 * Place the credit and the date in front of the title when both are given making "Last, first (date) [http:en.wikipedia.org "Title"]…"

hCalendar microformat
I've made a version of this template, in its sandbox, which emits the hCalendar microformat (conditional; only when "airdate" is entered). Any issues? At present, this requires the use of Start date (see the example I've just used in /testcases), which does not allow for YYYY-MM-DD format. Is there any reason why that format is preferred; and are we sure its always used? If so I'll use an alternative method of including the date. Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from A Thousand Doors, 27 July 2011
| &#32;Archived from [ the original] on. Should really be: | &#32;Archived from [ the original] on.

A Thousand Doors (talk &#124; contribs) 01:06, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Dabomb87 (talk) 15:23, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Formatting request
| "[ ]" Should be | [ ""]

So that "this link" becomes "this link", consistent with other citation templates, as Xeworlebi mentioned above over a year ago. Thanks. —  Andrew s talk  05:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Update to citation/core
Propose to update this template to comply with.

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Support: The most consistent the output of these templates the better. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 02:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)


 * ✅ Updating doc. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)