Template talk:Cite journal/Archive 5

Resolution of problems
Hi, I'm spending a sunny afternoon sorting out problems with the new version of the template. Please list any other problems you have found, with an example, at Template:Cite journal/test cases, matching the existing format and providing an example of the "correct" output if necessary. Then I'll amend the sandbox template to resolve the problem. Please take the time now to test the sandbox template, Template:cite journal/sandbox, and find any bugs you can. When outstanding bugs are fixed, the template will be deemed ready for use on WP and will go live. Apparently this wasn't made clear enough last time I asked for input. Please speak now or forever hold your silence. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:35, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ok, thanks Martin, and noted. Will need a couple of days or thereabouts to give it a go. Will try to get back to you in that timeframe. Regards--cjllw ʘ  TALK 06:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation
Thanks to Martin for the test page and the improvements to the proposed code. The biggest open question seems to be what to do about punctuation. uses commas to separate fields and has no terminal punctuation. , like other templates, uses periods to separate fields and also closes with a full stop. Martin has added parameters to control both field separators and terminal punctuation. Now the question remains what to do with them: 1.1 elicited complaints; 1.2 is a big job; I don't know the feasibility of 1.3 & we might want to try getting most pages converted before implementing the template change if we go that route. 2.1 is essentially what we have now. 2.2 hasn't garnered much support on Citation's talk page. Citation has 25,805 links; Cite journal has 86,051. Cite book and cite web trump them both (over 100K and 300K, respectively). Strictly because of these numbers, I'm leaning to one of the two options under '2.' But numbers aren't the full story, so please raise pros and cons or propose an option that I am missing. --Karnesky (talk) 06:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Default to using 's punctuation.
 * 2) Let match  and not match  by default.
 * 3) Convert the other templates over simultaneously with
 * 4) Have a bot update pre-existing uses of so that old references will look the same (matching , but not.
 * 5) Default to using 's punctuation.
 * 6) Leave  unchanged, meaning that all old uses of the templates will look the same, but  and  could be used in the same articles if appropriate parameters were passed (though without other  ).
 * 7) Change  's default to also match.
 * cite book and cite web would be the major ones, but there are also others like cite conference, cite press release, cite news, etc etc that are either all or mostly formatted like the original cite journal, ie with periods instead of commas as element separators. To me this would argue for bringing citation's formatting into line with the cite XXX's, instead of the other way around. If a new template core used for both is being proposed here, with a |separator= parameter to switch between periods or commas, I'd suggest that "period" ought to be the default value.--cjllw ʘ  TALK 06:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * As the "cite xxx" and variants thereof are far more popular and used than citation, going for #2 or props along those lines seems the only feasible way to do anything. And please, let's not add a  field and allow people to screw up visual uniformity.  Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 11:53, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's obvious that Cite journal should continue to match the family. I see no reason to convert to the Citation style. If editors are interested in converting Citation over to this format, that's another discussion for another day. David's right that we should not have a "destroy uniform appearance" parameter. If editors don't like the Cite xxx style or the Citation style, they may use free text.  Pagra  shtak  13:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Please let's not take numbers into consideration. Programming a bot to perform a task such as the above would be relatively simple. And if uniformity between templates is our goal, the best way to achieve this is for all "cite xxx" to use the same core template. I'm sure some mug can be duped into doing that... Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If a bot is used, I have a criterion to suggest. If the cite is inside tags, use comma as a separator, because that is the standard outside of Wikipedia for footnotes. Otherwise, use periods, because, outside of Wikipedia, that is the standard for bibliographies and lists of works cited. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The WP style is not consistent with any particular style manual. tags are often used as endnotes, not foot notes (though both happen).  However, what style are you referring to?  AMA, APSA, MLA, and NLM use full stops as separators exclusively.  APA, ASA, Chicago, MHRA use both full stops and commas (often using the latter for "related" fields, such as between parent publication and date).  There are multiple versions of Harvard in common usage, but most use full stops as a separator.  The most popular style I can think of that uses commas exclusively is IEEE.  I will further note that all above styles use a terminal full stop in reference lists.  --Karnesky (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Kartensky: Since every Wikipedia article is one page long, endnotes and footnotes are the same thing. I'm familar with two style manuals, APA and Chicago. APA only uses Harvard referencing, so does not apply to footnotes/endnotes. Chicago lets the writer choose between Harvard referencing, which again does not apply to footnotes/endnotes, or footnote/endnote references, which do use commas as the separator. Chicago allows, but does not require, the footnotes/endnotes to be supplemented by a bibliography or list of works cited, which uses full stops as the separator. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There are some articles that have several reference sections (e.g. one per section), which I would consider "footnote-like." In contrast, the majority of articles that have a single reference section are "endnote-like."  Regardless of author-date ("Harvard") vs. numeric citations of the styles listed, my descriptions were how reference lists (as opposed to footnotes) are generated.  Because we typically list each reference only once and have a single reference section ordered by first appearance in the article (reusing references by passing the 'name' parameter to ), I think we are generating endnote-like reference lists & should therefore use full stops, as is common practice. --Karnesky (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * As I stated, numbers aren't the only important thing, but I do think they are of practical importance. The only reasons to ignore them entirely would be if one preferred a less popular style or if that less popular style had some compelling logic behind it.  I agree that the other "cite xxx" templates can be migrated over to use the same core (particularly if the "cite journal" migration is successful), but I do not see why the default style of that core should be the one that is used on fewer and less utilized templates.  Why change half a million plus uses of templates with a bot, when you can change 26K?  I've read no real arguments as to the choice of inter-field commas vs. periods.  Unless some are generated, it'd be more expedient to continue using full stops on all Cite XXX templates (WP:SNOW).  There are reasonable arguments on both sides as to whether to end with a trailing full stop or not.  This latter issue might have the greatest chance of building consensus to depart from the current style of "Cite XXX."  Even this seems like it might be a "hard sell," though. --Karnesky (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Harvard referencing is an acronym for "Author date" referencing (Example et al 2008) is confusingly not the same as the the Harvard style for formatting references. CiteULike has a reference formatting tool which makes it easy to explore the differences. Anyhow, how about we use a period in "Cite journal" by default for the time being, so we can get the changes in use; if there is a convincing case to switch to commas by default at a later date we can discuss the role of a bot at that juncture. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Final call for grumbles
No-one's commented in over a week; I'm assuming that if the "period" parameter defaults to the current value, we'll be ready to go. I'll re-issue the "speak now or forever hold your silence" ultimatum; if no-one responds in the next day or two we'll make the following edits: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Replace Template:Cite journal with Template:Cite journal/sandbox
 * Replace Template:Citation/core with Template:Citation/core/sandbox (this is the core template used by Citation which the new Cite Journal calls)
 * Replace Template:Citation with Template:Citation/sandbox - as advertised at template talk:citation; this is necessary to maintain compatibility with the "internal separator" and "trailing punctuation" fixes implemented.
 * Can we axe the separator and ending punctuation parameters? Reference templates are designed to create a uniform reference style, and allowing the editor to override consistency on one call seems like a bad idea.  Pagra shtak  14:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately the overriding view above is that overriding consistency is sometimes a good thing - see the arguments refuted above. I suspect that this debate may drag out; it would be very easy to discontinue the parameters if they did prove to be detrimental, but I suspect that a consensus will only emerge after they have been in use for some time. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * So what is the effect of these code changes? Is Citation matching the cite XX templates including cite journal, or the other way around? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 14:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Punctuation would continue not to match by default, but it could be tweaked to match on a page-by-page basis (assuming the punctuation parameters are kept.
 * I think the punctuation parameters are good because of this, but I'd want to eventually deprecate them. Proposal:
 * Switch to new templates that still default to current punctuation behavior for "cite journal."
 * Make a new proposal on "Citation" (pointing out the volume of references already formatted with full stops & also the massive number of formal citation styles that prefer full stops over commas) to change the punctuation to match all of the "Cite XXX" templates.
 * -Karnesky (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry for coming in so late, but I've noticed something else I think should be fixed. No citation templates put "page" / "pages" before page numbers in their output - brought to my attention in the GA review of Mollusc, where the reviewer complained that a page num was missing but it was there, just not labelled as such (this case was cite book, but cite journal is the same). -- Philcha (talk) 14:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is an editorial decision; the use of the word "page" is not the norm, and should an editor require it, he can set the parameter to "pages = pages 12-20" or "pages = pp. 12-20". If the template used the word by default then editors would be unable to choose the standard format Volume(issue):12-20. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, another one (or maybe two):
 * The template should always present output that can be built into prose. I've come across situations like multi-part articles, news releases that summarise academic papers in accessible terms and are available for free, etc.
 * A specific case of this - the "Retrieved on" output of the "accessdate" param should appear in parentheses, not as a separate "mini-sentence". -- Philcha (talk) 14:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * "retrieved on" put into brackets. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Wait, why was this done? None of the other Cite xxx templates do that, as far as I'm aware.  Pagra shtak  16:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The template should always present output that can be built into prose Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I read that. It doesn't answer my question of why it was implemented, since it breaks consistency with all other Cite xxx templates. Philcha, if you want that changed you'll need to bring it up at a higher level and get it changed consistently across all Cite xxx templates that use it.  Pagra shtak  00:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Undone until consensus reached. (Position should default to "no change"). Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Good to go
So it looks like all the bugs have finally been ironed out. Would an admin be kind enough to: Thanks, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Replace Template:Cite journal with Template:Cite journal/sandbox
 * Replace Template:Citation/core with Template:Citation/core/sandbox (this is the core template used by Citation which the new Cite Journal calls)
 * Replace Template:Citation with Template:Citation/sandbox - as advertised at template talk:citation; this is necessary to maintain compatibility with the "internal separator" and "trailing punctuation" fixes implemented.
 * ✅ previous edit was reverted as a bug was found, sandbox is now live again. --Salix (talk): 02:41, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ❌ reverted Template:Cite journal kept Template:Citation, Template:Citation/core per comments below. --Salix (talk): 07:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * ❌ reverted Template:Cite journal kept Template:Citation, Template:Citation/core per comments below. --Salix (talk): 07:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Problems
New version not that well tested:
 * fails to include doi_broken parameter handling
 * fails display PMC value when a url is given (title is correctly linked to url in preference to pmc if both are given, but where links to the url, then the pmc should be shown after the PMID value - needed in case journal's access changes when the PMC will still be freely accessible). David Ruben Talk 03:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't there be a space between the volume and issue? right now it prints X(y) instead of X (Y). Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 03:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Now reverted, could folks add suitable testcases to Template:Cite journal/testcases. --Salix (talk): 08:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Please revert. A lot of monkeying with the core template has meant that the cite journal sanboxed code was not tested.  Punctuation runs entirely counter to what we had previously agreed to.  --Karnesky (talk) 07:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Above bugs now seem to be fixed. --Salix (talk): 11:25, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The approved version originally had a terminal full stop. The current version does not. --Karnesky (talk) 16:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed.--Salix (talk): 17:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Might have been present in the past sandbox, but I just noticed that the current version does not use 'rft_id=info:doi' in COinS. --Karnesky (talk) 19:26, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Well spotted. Fixed. --Salix (talk): 19:48, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm removing the edit request, since it seems to have been handled. If I missed something, please accept my apologies and go ahead and re-activate it. --Elonka 03:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Salix has fixed all the bugs (thank you Salix!), so I can't see why the sandbox isn't live. Can we get this up and running now, sooner rather than later? Lots of little changes keep being requested to the old template which are gradually both driving Citation and Cite journal further apart for no cause, and making it more work for us to keep up to speed with the new template. Let's activate the new template, and if there are still bugs with it, let's fix them while it's live - people have had several months to spot them; if they can't be bothered to test the template then in my opinion they don't have much ground to moan if it doesn't work. The more we keep reverting back to the old template the longer this frustrating process drags out. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As one of those who called for reverting to the original after last minute changes to citation/core failed to address several key points, I agree with Martin. It is time to migrate to the sandboxed code. --Karnesky (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Just checking, are we talking about Template:Cite journal/sandbox? It appears to be substantially different from Template:Cite journal, so I want to be sure. --Elonka 04:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. It will be very different as the sandbox now uses the the Citation/Core backend. The output from the two should however be the same, or improved. Template:Cite journal/testcases contains a number of testcases. More would be good.--Salix (talk): 10:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The first line of the sandbox page starts off "{{mono| {{Citation/core/sandbox }}". So again, I just want to make sure, should the entire thing from the sandbox page be copied into the live template, verbatim?  Or should the "sandbox" word be omitted? I'm not familiar enough with the code to tell if the word "sandbox" is related to the page name, or if it's something different.  --Elonka 20:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes you need to copy Template:Citation/core/sandbox to Template:Citation/core, copy Template:cite journal/sandbox to Template:cite journal, and fix the link in to point to Template:Citation/core. --Salix (talk): 23:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I checked the talkpage for Citation/core, but I'm not seeing any request for an update. I've posted a note there to see if anyone objects to the change.  If everyone's okay on it, I'll proceed. --Elonka 00:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I admit I have not been following all the details, but the copying procedure described by Salix does not mention copying the documentation. Does this mean that there is no change in function and thus no need to change the documentation? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Just thought I'd better note that a couple of very minor changes (essentially correcting typos) to the sandbox template have been made since the editrequest was first enabled. The current diff is here. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Declining request, since per the thread below, there does not seem to be a solid consensus for one of the preliminary changes. It sounds like first there needs to be a request at citation/core, and then once that's squared away, a request at cite journal. --Elonka 22:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

{{t1|editprotected}} (unindented)) The objections below are to changes that have already been made in {{t1|citation/core}}. Martin addressed these objections.  There have been no objections raised to the code changes that elicited this change request in the first place. Merging in this version will lead to no new objections.  Merging in the current version may actually address old objections. --Karnesky (talk) 22:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's where I"m confused: It sounds like you are asking that Template:Citation/core should be updated from Template:Citation/core/sandbox, correct?  In which case, why is the request being made here at Template:Cite journal? That request would normally be made at Template talk:Citation.  As for the journal template, normally what would be done here would be to put all necessary changes in Template:Cite journal/sandbox first, and then just request that the code be copied to the live template from there. If I'm not understanding the complexities here, I apologize, but I guess that's part of my job, is to challenge edits to protected pages.  :)  So if necessary, lay things out in a step by step "cookbook" fashion?  Thanks, --Elonka 22:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The proposed changes can be applied independently. I've moved the change request for {{t1|citation/core}} to that talk page.  The proposed {{t1|cite journal/sandbox}} would seem to work with either the current {{t1|citation/core}} or with {{t1|citation/core/sandbox}} (better with the latter, but not horrendous with the former).  I have not reactivated the edit request on this page in case people disagree with this assessment.  --Karnesky (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

{{tl|editprotected}} Please merge {{t1|cite journal/sandbox}} to {{t1|cite journal}}. This uses the {t1|citation/core}} backend & all of the look fine. This deprecates the recent edit request to allow curly quotes, above--curly quotes aren't currently allowed by either the current template or the sandboxed code. --Karnesky (talk) 00:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done --Elonka 23:11, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Summary and effects on Citation template
So I've been directed here from Template_talk:Citation. This discussion has had various effects on citation, though there's been little to no attempt to involve editors there. Meanwhile, have I got this right: Tell me I'm wrong, please. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There was a proposal to reformat "cite x" to it conformed to "citation."
 * After some discussion, the decision was instead to reformat "citation."
 * But without even notifying the people who use "citation."
 * I wouldn't characterize it that way. Several have agreed that the  and  should use the same backend.  There was no consensus for citations to resembles the less-used {t1|Citation}} template, though.  Furthermore, multiple notices about the changes and links to the sandboxed code are on the talk page for . --Karnesky (talk) 21:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * (Discussion about where changes should be discussed moved to new section below as it's a separate issue and may get missed up here. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk) )

Meanwhile, I think I've figured out what the problem is. Again, correct me if I'm wrong... Per the discussion above, however, the use of the "author=" field is one of the biggest weaknesses of the "cite x" templates. Indeed, it's one of the main reasons why I, at least, use citation instead. Why should the latter template have to be messed around with on account of the weaknesses of the former? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:40, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "cite x" users tend to employ "author=" and "coauthor=" fields; the latter adds "and" to the output
 * hence when hacking around with "citation," which automatically adds "and" (in fact, and amperand) to references where there are multiple authors, the "cite x" coders had to get rid of this functionality
 * So that we eliminate the weaknesses of the former. How will this solution deal with people specifying "et al" as the final author? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:09, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is to me? Um, my understanding is that citation automatically formats "et. al.s" after a certain number of authors.  Don't tell me you've got rid of that, too?  (People who manually format "et. al." as though it were an author should be taken out and shot, of course.)  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Once again, I ask you guys: please change things back. I'm happy for you to be improving "cite x". But please, not at the expense of "citation." The sheer multitude of {cite xyz} templates (and, within them, the practice of willy-nilly adding "features") is a perfect reflection how different the paradigms are. {citation} demands discipline and a basic respect for citations and what citations are for. {cite xyz} is a veritable madhouse (well ... a madhouse at least has a sane director), made by/for editors who think citations are for their own benefit or to fulfill (token) WP:RS/WP:V requirements. {cite xyz} users are led to think that there is a difference between a journal article, a a journal article on the web, "news" [on/off the web] or "paper" [on/off the web]. More often than not they will cite everything using cite web anyway. This sort of nonsense is by no means limited to periodicals: An an encyclopedia, a chapter in any other book, and conference proceedings are (allegedly) cited differently. And a manual is apparently something altogether different. This sort of absurd inconsistency within the {cite xyz}s needs to be hashed out first. Similarly, peculiarities in/with {cite xyz} need to be resolved as cite peculiarities. Forwarding those peculiarities to {citation/core} is to disregard the needs of users of {citation}, and the craziness of sticking a bazillion options into citation is also overboard. Instead, any and all peculiarities need to handled as cite peculiarities, which means telling /core that -- when called from cite -- it needs to change its behavior to suit cite. The question then begging to be asked is: why on earth doesn't {cite} call its own /core (first)? Which brings me back to the first point: Consolidate the {{cite xyz}s first.
 * And yes, "citation" accepts "author=", but it's not part of the documentation; as such, people who use that template tend to use last=. Vice versa with "cite x".  This is, again, one of the major weaknesses of "cite x."  It's problematic that such weaknesses now be exported to "citation."  Please change things back.  Thanks.
 * Meanwhile, if you could point to one positive change here for citation, I'd be interested to know what you see it as being. I see none.  Perhaps there's something I'm missing, however. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This change can be enacted without any change to the output from Citation. (See below)
 * A message was posted on citation which generated no response.
 * The main benefit, as posted above, is that template developers can make any changes once, rather than having to write them multiple times; in the past changes have not been made to both templates, causing drift. Benefits include:
 * Easier maintenance and improvement of COinS functionality
 * Easier for bot operators to automate maintenance and reference improvement tasks (e.g. User:Citation bot)
 * Ability to use {citation} in articles where {cite x} already exists without introducing inconsistent reference styles
 * Up-to-date display of citation information such as DOIs
 * Standard terminology so editors don't need to learn two sets of parameter names
 * The Template:Cite journal/testcases page has been up and running for people to post any instances where output changes undesirably; all testcases that people have provided so far appear to be working; I've added a couple that address your concerns. If you have any more, then please consider this an invitation to post them there so a developer can address them. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  00:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You say that "This change can be enacted without any change to the output from Citation." But this was not how it was enacted.  (Why not, then?)
 * What benefit there is, it seems, is a future one for developers. Again, I see no advantage, and if anything a step backwards, for those using citation.
 * Again, I do agree with the notion that ideally these various templates should be coordinated. It's a great disadvantage of the "cite xxx" family that it should have proliferated so ("cite journal," "cite book," "cite web," etc. etc.).  This is simply one more reason why I used citation.  But please, let's not be dragged down to the lowest common denominator here!
 * Meanwhile, I have indeed posted where you asked me to. There's been no responde.  Please change things back.  Thank you.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If both templates accept either form of author parameter, I fail to see any technical deficiency in {{cite xxx} that keeps you from using it. You are not being forced to use the singe 'author=' parameter in  now, so I see no technical deficiency there either.  This diff shows only improvements to  (summarized by Martin, above: better metadata, and ability to use  on the same page as any  template (including those that don't use the same backend yet).  --Karnesky (talk) 01:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Two minor points: (one moved to separate area Martin  (Smith609 – Talk) )
 * I hope there isn't any move to remove the (hidden) "author" parameter from Citation. I've been advised during FA reviews that footnotes should state authors' names in the ordinary order (necessitating the use of "author"), and that the surname-first format (which uses the "last" and "first" parameters) should only be used in the "References" and "Further reading" sections at the end of the article.
 * — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 03:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a good plan to me. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If FA is calling for "firstname lastname" for all but the first author, then something (either the templates or FA) needs to be fixed. Alhough there are legitimate uses of author= (e.g. when last/first splitting is inappropriate, as for "Bede"), working around FA restrictions is not what the author= field is for. And it also breaks COinS. -- Fullstop (talk) 04:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed here, too. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Fullstop has raised a good point. There are many naming systems in the world that do not use last names, in which case the use of the "author" parameter is also appropriate. Anyway, if there is a move to somehow eliminate this parameter the good reviewers at FA should be asked about it so accommodation can be worked out. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 05:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not unusual to list an organization as an author. For the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Incorporated, which is the first name and which is the last name? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 06:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My four-and-a-half cents: The basic idea to have a common code base for all citation formats is a good one. However,...
 * the plethora of {cite xyz} templates are inconsistent among themselves, and its (IMO) back-assward to try to 'redirect' one {cite} at a time to {citation}. The various cites (most of which might as well be straight-up redirects to other {cite}s) need to be brought in line with one another first. Then, when the problems that can be expected have been identified, we can try merging the cite/core with citation/core.
 * further, squeezing things into citation/core to deal with cite's "issues" is an inacceptable modus operandi. Its not socially acceptable to visit your neighbors house and take your furniture and baggage with you just so that you feel comfortable there. Either lose the baggage, or redesign your house to look more like your neighbors'.
 * I'm not fundamentally opposed to consistency, but anything that requires a change of syntax to citation/core (e.g. &amp; to "and", comma to period, 'retrieved' to 'Retrieved') is a strong indication that the two are fundamentally incompatible. If not by design, then in practice. The notion that {citation} needs to follow {cite xyz} is pure arrogance; neither of the templates adheres completely to any known standard, and there is no technical reason why one has to follow the other.
 * There is at present also no technical reason why the two need to be merged. All those points raised by Martin above are just as easily taken care of in a fork off of citation/core. When that fork works to everyone's satisfaction ("everyone" meaning all {cite xyz}), then we can discuss what needs changing to _both_ to bring the two in line with one another.
 * There would still need to be good arguments to do such a thing: {cite xyz} and {citation} address different audiences, and -- given the screwed-up notions that come about from using {cite} -- the two groups are practically incapable of communication. From craziness posted at Talk:Citation it would seem that {cite xyz} users seem to think that {citation} is, or should be, like {cite xyz}. What they fail to realize is that {citation} users are quite content in the knowledge that it isn't. They have the better deal and they know it. -- Fullstop (talk) 04:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hear, hear. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 04:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I am trying to reach the essence of your problem with this proposal. Maybe you have misunderstood what is being proposed. This change should not affect the function of the Citation template.  If you spot any cases where the output of the citation template is changed, please list them in the test cases page linked to above so that they can be resolved.  The main technical reason for the two to use the same core template, as detailed above, is to simplify maintenance.  If the output of Template:Citation is unchanged, then I don't see that any of your concerns have substance.  If they do, please give a concrete example so that they can be addressed.  Also, I think I must have misunderstood you (unless you have contradicted yourself) - if you believe that the purpose of a citation is to convey information about how to find a source (my personal opinion), and that style should be a secondary issue, I find it strange that you should make such a large point about e.g. the capitalisaion of retrieved. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  04:30, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like the ampersand issue is solved. The ". Retreived" verses ", retrieved" is actually a new problem as Citation has in the past always had ". Retreived". As far as I'm aware the sandbox version of Citation displays the same as Citation, the sandbox version of cite journal displays as cite journal. Unifying the backend has resulting in some improvements to both, CoiNS results output is better and a few undiscovered bug have identified and resolved. --Salix (talk): 08:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the "Retrieved" issue; if a comma separator is used the r will be lowercase; if a period is used it will be uppercase. Again; examples of any more "steps backward" should be listed at Template:Cite journal/testcases, because it makes it much easier to fix a bug if it can be seen in action. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * @Martin (up) to clarify:
 * Don't work on Citation/core directly. There are too many cogs and wheels that you need to keep track of, and the more mistakes that happen the less enthusiastic everyone will become. And the number of mistakes is probably not going to get less; the inconsistencies between the various {cite xyz}s are a virtual guarantee that there will be lots of future "issues" too.
 * So, instead....
 * first fork Citation/core to (say) Cite/core.
 * then integrate the various {cite xyz}s into Cite/core (optionally try to consolidate "bunches" of {cite xyz}s first).
 * then try to merge functionality between Cite/core and Citation/core.
 * And if step #3 doesn't pan out then at least each suite will still be coherent in itself. -- Fullstop (talk) 18:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * He isn't working on directly—he is working on .  This seems reasonable, and issues can be tested for both  and  using this approach. --Karnesky (talk) 18:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Um. As I understand it, even though a sandbox is being used now during testing, the next step (when testing is complete) is to fold the sandbox back as citation/core, and to call citation/core from cite journal. As such citation/core is still directly the "target" for each individual {cite xyz} merge-in. -- Fullstop (talk) 18:23, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That's correct. But I see no downsides in this approach if both  and  are being tested with the sandboxed code. --Karnesky (talk) 19:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we are talking past each other. With "directly on /core" I didn't mean "live". And I mean forking in the sense of version control forking; you know, like "trunk" and "branch". Testing happens on the "branch", which is eventually (and a long time maybe) merged back into "trunk". Whether or not there are sandbox phases (I sure would hope so!) while testing is irrelevant to the point of using a fork.
 * On the "branch" *all* the various {cite}s would be integrated, and doing whatever was necessary to deal with cite xyzs and only with cite xyzs. At this stage {citation} is to be ignored. On the "branch" Martin will have enough on his hands getting the cites to work; he does not have to have additional hassle of trying to keep citation working too. Then (after a long time maybe), when all the cite xyzs are running off of a cite/core, then we try to consolidate the two cores.
 * Is that clearer now? -- Fullstop (talk) 19:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I know what you are saying, but is a branch of !  Given the minor complaints about the change, I think that slightly better testing and commenting by impacted templates is all that is needed.  In short, there seems to be little reason to complicate matters by having MULTIPLE branches (a cite/core and citation/core) when the single branch approach is so close to working. --Karnesky (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * So what if sandbox is a branch of core? 'Sandbox' is also just a name like any other. Copy-paste to "foo" and voila! new branch of core and "core/sandbox" remains merely a sandbox as it always was.
 * Ok, if cite journal is close to done, then it makes perfect sense to finish that first. :::::::::Also: don't work with multiple branches. And "freeze" the trunk (except for minor bug fixes that can be independently added to the working branch).
 * But the other cite xyzs should really all integrated/aggregated on a branch (unicite?) Think of it this way: there are some {cite}s (like cite media) that are currently unsupported by citation/core. When all the cites are integrated in a new cite/core, citation/core will become functionally superfluous. And then citation can potentially be rewired to use the "new" evolved core too. -- Fullstop (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that the name of code that is being tested is not the issue. I just think we are capable of testing the impact on two templates at once (making for one merge, instead of two).
 * I agree that the would benefit from having the same backend, but I see no reason why {t1|citation}} and  shouldn't have the same backend immediately.
 * In any case, please discuss the current proposed changes to fix gripes with the last set of changes & could be applied regardless of what is done with  .  Please comment on these fixes that talk page; it sounds like there is consensus for some sort of "fix" soon. --Karnesky (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about how changes to the Cite xxx and Citation templates should be publicised
I've moved these comments from above where they were out of place. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk) 
 * Um, was there any consensus at "talk: citation" for that template to resemble this one? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:40, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right, it does suck that there are two different places to discuss changes to reference formatting, and that the same discussion has to be repeated at both. When both use the same core template, this will be less of an issue.
 * In response to your concern, nobody at the Template:Citation talk page raised any issues after requested feedback. They were given the best part of a fortnight; I'd assumed that anybody who is that bothered about the output of the template would watchlist the talk page nd so come across it. Perhaps I should have sought a site-wide announcement? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:09, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, the chappie who came up with unicite managed to get the word out pretty well. (Perhaps too well!)  I'm rather surprised that the discussion here didn't feed into that one, and vice versa.  See here and here.  I note that you did comment there once, in a comment in which you said the discussion had been "done to death."  Clearly not!  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

We should move this discussion to if our remarks are confined to that template (as they are now) or to another common page. does not resemble directly, nor was that the immediate goal of the recent changes. Both and  have accepted 'authors' and 'author#' for a while. I would not say that either "tends to employ" one over the other & I see no reason not to keep both. Until somewhat recently, had a cap of four authors, so it was necessary to enter multiple authors in one parameter and/or to invoke 'et al.' manually. I think the changes are mostly positive & see no reason we can't address the minor gripes on the appropriate talk page. --Karnesky (talk) 19:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I only came over here because it turned out that discussion on what had happened to citation had almost all taken place over here. I was told that it had been discussed for months etc. etc.  However, there was no real attempt to gain consensus over at the talk page for citation.   --jbmurray (talk • contribs)
 * Let's address your first concern: please stop asking for changes to on 's talk page, as users of  might not comment on the request. --Karnesky (talk) 01:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I started by asking for changes on talk page for citation, only to be told there'd been "months" of discussion. I asked where, and was directed here.  That's when I came, tried to summarize what had been going on (and I still welcome other summaries), and asked (once more, and repeatedly) for things to be put back.  I've asked for things to be put back just about anywhere I can.  No action as yet...  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I suggest that discussions that involve both families of citation templates should take place on a subpage of either Citation or Cite book (can that be regarded as the "main" template?), e.g., at "Template talk:Citation/discussion 1" or "Template talk:Cite book/discussion: Oct 2008", and be transcluded on to the other template's talk page, the way Good Article reviews now take place on a subpage and are transcluded on to the article's talk page.
 * — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 03:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a good plan to me. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Existing problems
JBMurray, this is your final call. You have not provided any instances at Template:Cite journal/testcases of how the new format should be different, although you have been invited to. The new sandbox is about to go live, and unless you provide an example of how you want things to appear, the developers have no way of granting your wishes. Whether or not you recognise the long term advantages of the change for template:citation, you have not provided a concrete example of a disadvantage; if an edit provides huge advantages for Wikipedia without any disadvantages, then it is irrational not to make it. If you must continue to shout about a "step backwards", please substantiate your claims. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm finding this "discussion" rather disheartening, as in fact I receive little to no response to what I'm saying. But (once more!) in answer to your specific question: as I have repeatedly pointed out, in fact I have provided an instance right here on the page you're asking me to contribute to: i.e. in the very first section.  How can you say I have "not provided a concrete example of a disadvantage"?!
 * Again, I understand completely your problem: people using "cite xxx" used the "author=" and "coauthors=" field; this leads to a "double and." So it is hard for you to upgrade the functionality of those templates by adding and automatic ampersand.  Fair and fine enough.
 * Let me add that separating authors with semi-colons is likewise bizarred; but go ahead with that in "cite journal"; no problem.
 * But the point is more that you're pointing me to what you're doing to "cite journal." How many times do I have to repeat that the problem is the collateral damage that you're doing to "citation."  Why downgrade the functionality of "citation."  I don't understand it at all.
 * And I should note that I have no problems with improving the templates. Both the "cite xxx" family and "citation" could undoubtedly be improved.  See for instance my contributions to the long discussion at MOS.  But again, I'm surprised that these changes are going on without any attempt to coordinate with that discussion.
 * Is this clear enough for you? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can see exactly where jb is coming from, and I agree. "Fixing" citation is back-asswards. Its the {cite xyz}s that need to be brought under an umbrella under their own terms *FIRST*.
 * Then, when all are integrated there, then try to merge two "umbrellas" together. By then Martin will know exactly what conflicts are going to arise, and will be able to plan ahead for them. Right now this merge process is ad-hoc, which is causing grief that could easily be avoided.
 * I'm telling you now that -- unless the process changes -- there will come a point when I will say I told you so. ;) But by then the merge project will be dead, dead, dead, and with so many fingers burned that it will never be resuscitated. If Martin keeps going the citation patch-in route, I predict that the project will die before the year is out. Nobody at citation feels any real need to merge. The citation folks are doing cite journal a favor; don't abuse their patience. -- Fullstop (talk) 20:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * While some fans are vocal about maintaining the status quo & are derogatory to  templates, we should keep things in perspective.  Commenters are few in number, perhaps because  is less used (by more than an order of magnitude) than  and I don't think there is a consensus (some on citation's talk page are calling for some of the changes made by this process to be maintained.  --Karnesky (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If this is a reference to me, let me be clear that I have no particular interest in "maintaining the status quo." I could think of plenty of ways in which citation (and for that matter, cite journal and others) could be improved.  What concerns me, as I've said repeatedly, is that in an effort to repeat the latter, the former in fact goes backward, as some kind of collateral damage.
 * Commenters are few in number because this discussion hasn't been widely advertised. As you're aware, if a discussion is advertised it can draw lots of response, probably too much.
 * Regarding, I see two main problems: 1) the proliferation of this family of templates.  I believe that the changes here are an attempt to fix that, and to make them consistent with each other, which is undoubtedly a good thing.  If I have not applauded that, or applauded it enough, let me do so here.  But 2), given that they favor the author= and co-authors= fields, not only do they make templates such as harvnb impossible, but they encourage a whole series of kludges and stop-gap fixes, which makes the much more sophisticated syntax of citation impossible.  Part of that syntax is automatically adding an ampersand.  (For what it's worth, personally I'd prefer an "and" to an "ampersand".)  As a result,  dumbs down the display of multiple authors' names, using the bizarre (if understandable) semi-colon as a separator.  OK, this is fair enough as a fix to the problems of  ; but let's not degrade citation at the same time.
 * Again, is this clear enough? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you think wider advertising would generate beneficial comments on this process, I don't think anybody would object to you soliciting feedback in the appropriate places.
 * I thought I had debunked the anti-'author=' nonsense that you have spewed . Both  and  have support specifying individual contributors and groups of contributors since before this change.  'coauthors=' is actually necessary for good markup of references.  An example of a massively multi-author paper is  (it is an ISI highly cited paper to boot, so is not a trivial example like the 2512 author paper that earned an Ig Nobel Prize).  It is not possible to represent this accurately without having some way of manually adding either 'et al.' or (preferably, as the metadata would still be clean) multiple authors in a single field.
 * The ampersand issue has been addressed fairly easily, but again: I see no consensus for keeping it. A semicolon is not my preferred separator either, but I don't know why you say it is 'bizarre;' why should the separator preceding the last author necessarily be different from the separator used throughout the author list? Most popular referencing styles outside of Wikipedia do not use ';' and most do not have a 'special' separator before the last author.
 * Even if you think there is consensus to retain an ampersand, this is hardly a "major" degradation, is easily fixable, and could have been caught with more careful testing prior to the merge. Perhaps the process should be tweaked, but it is working fairly well & Martin is doing a great job (and I have hardly been uncritical of him).  The ire voiced in many comments is just not called for. --Karnesky (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, talking about "ire," can we have less of this talk of "nonsense [. . .] spewed." Please remain civil.  Thanks.  As for me, if I have allowed frustration to affect the tone of my comments, it is because I find myself having to repeat myself, apparently to little avail.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry--I don't think either of us are being completely civil due to mutual frustration. I have stricken the comment out above, as I did not intend to be incivil.
 * You seem to be frustrated that the issue you see isn't fixed immediately. I can empathize, but I do see that people are taking the time to read, consider, and respond to most of your comments.  I acknowledge that this may not feel like enough.
 * I am frustrated because I don't feel that you have always treated responses to your comments in the same regard. I have replied to many of your claims about this 'authors=' business, yet you repeat yourself with little refinements on multiple pages.  You prefaced the first message with "correct me if I'm wrong."  When I read that & read no statement that agrees with your assessment, I would expect you to actually address my disagreements.  I made the poor choice of words because of the acknowledged vitriolic repetition.  Once again, I apologize. --Karnesky (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Relax folks. NOW! :) The world is not about to end right this second.
 * To return to the issue at hand: like I made plain before, and that really needs to be taken into consideration (and this is completely independent of how many citation folks go along with it), there is no reason to be merging back into citation/core all the time (or at this time).
 * Move the sandbox to somewhere other than citation/core and continue to accumulate the fixes there. Then move on to the next and so on. Or -- as I only just discovered -- integrate the imminently clever unicite.
 * When all the s are done we'll get together again and tackle citation/core (perhaps even rewire citation to use the new core). In the meanwhile, don't touch citation[/core]. First complete the aggregation of  in one /core template. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:42, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What problems exist in currently?  The punctuation issues raised by the last migration have been addressed.  It seems like we can make both  and  users as happy as they were before the last migration immediately. --Karnesky (talk) 22:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Fullstop, I appreciate that in an ideal world we would get all the "cite x" templates using one central core. However, I'm sure you appreciate the enormity of the task.  It's taken since July to get just "cite journal" integrated, and we're still thrashing that out.  Getting the cite journal to use the existing "citation" core would be a small step in the right direction, and while it might not be the best way of doing it, it is at least within reach.  We are one just edit away from getting it done, and once it's done it will make my bug-fixing at User:Citation bot much easier.  I don't see that the edit will be detrimental; indeed updating to the sandbox version will "fix back" the concerns that JBMurray had.  I agree that there's a lot of work to do, but this small step will make my life a lot easier. As Karnesky says, making this edit will return the output to how it was before the editing began (with the exception of better metadata for both templates), and will simplify the lives of bot maintainers and maintainers of the two templates.  It will also pave the way for other templates to use the same core without modification.  Finally, having gone through this process, it will be much easier to avoid changes to citation/core in the future, and easier to avoid bugs.   Let's make the edit, then think about whether it's worth fiddling with other {cite x} templates. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

JBM, I think we're misunderstanding one another. You state: Um, yes! The author= and coauthor= fields are far inferior to the last= first= fields. The insertion of an ampersand is much better than this use of semi-colons. Please fix back. Many thanks. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC) What I was looking for was an instance where the sandbox does not support the last= and first= fields (which are, as you state, far superior), and an instance where an ampersand is not inserted. As far as I can see both issues are fine in the sandbox version. As soon as the sandbox is copied into {Citation}, {citation} will function as it did "in the old days". Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * @Martin earlier: it is precisely because "it's taken since July to get just 'cite journal' integrated, and we're still thrashing that out" that I'm suggesting cite x templates go to one "meta cite" first (whether you call it cite/core or not, the idea is that they share a back end).
 * People are getting edgy (even if they don't all say it) and -- because there is no pressing need to do it to begin with -- wondering if the trouble is proportional to the payoff.
 * In contrast to the difference between cite journal and citation, the cite templates are not very different from one another. Many could in fact be redirected with no/minimal changes to the redirect target (e.g. encyclopedia & conference -> book; paper & news & online journal -> journal)
 * Then, instead of taking 4 months apiece to unify them with citation/core, you'd only have one unification to make.
 * You are doing a great job, but please be a little more circumspect. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Usage of "language="
The Usage section does not include details of the language= parameter. This is simple, but includes the non-obvious instruction that English is assumed and need not be specified. The page is locked so I cannot add this. HairyWombat (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The documentation is not locked.  Pagra shtak  19:18, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. HairyWombat (talk) 19:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC) Done again. Maybe this time it will not disappear. HairyWombat (talk) 06:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

laysource= is broken
Somehow with all the recent patches the laysource= parameter, which is documented, got broken. Here is the obvious patch; can you please install it? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 06:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 08:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Replacement for quotes=no for reprints, errata, etc.?
The deprecation of quotes=no has broken a use of cite journal when describing a source, such as an erratum or a reprint, which needs something that is like a title even though there is no title. What is the workaround for this? Here is an example taken from Autism: This currently formats as follows: But the word "Reprint" should not be quoted: it's not a source whose title is "Reprint", it's merely a reprint. Here's another example, also from Autism: This currently formats as: but the word "Erratum" should not be quoted. If "quotes=no" is no longer the right way to format these examples, then what is the right way? Eubulides (talk) 07:47, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This seems a bit of a hack in the first place. I'd advise repeating the full information.  After all, shouldn't what's enclosed within the template be the full details?  Here's how I did something similar (using citation, but the principle's the same) in María Ruiz de Burton:
 * . Republished as.
 * . Republished as.
 * So in the example you give, you'd put something like:
 * Reprinted as
 * Would that be a problem?
 * On the other hand, I guess there are times when such an option would be nice. Say for instance with:
 * This last example, by the way, is taken straight from the MLA Handbook (sixth edition, section 5.6.9). At least in MLA style, "Introduction" should not be in quotation marks.  (Ugh, and the "others=" field doesn't seem to work.  Grr Grr.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This last example, by the way, is taken straight from the MLA Handbook (sixth edition, section 5.6.9). At least in MLA style, "Introduction" should not be in quotation marks.  (Ugh, and the "others=" field doesn't seem to work.  Grr Grr.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This last example, by the way, is taken straight from the MLA Handbook (sixth edition, section 5.6.9). At least in MLA style, "Introduction" should not be in quotation marks.  (Ugh, and the "others=" field doesn't seem to work.  Grr Grr.) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have proposed a fix for this problem in Template talk:Citation, in its section 'Restoring support for "quotes=no" to Cite journal'. Comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 00:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Reprints and errata should not subvert the title field: one should either
 * Use the real title of the work
 * Omit it for brevity, but add explanatory text outside of the template.
 * Further, the template does not follow MLA & there is no reason to treat some chapters differently from others. I see no benefit of having a quotes parameter, as the reasons for it have mostly been that people want to put poor metadata into the template. --Karnesky (talk) 16:53, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explaining; as can be seen in Citation, I was convinced by the argument that we should not subvert the title= field. However, please see that discussion for a remaining problem: the reprint year (1968 in the Kanner example above) is formatted too confusingly in the current version. Eubulides (talk) 18:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Reprinted as

 * Slightly divergent topic, but the "Reprinted as" usage introduces some ambiguity. Is the reference the reprint or the original? Better usage would be "As reprinted in" or "Also reprinted in" (or reissued) as applicable. This may only matter in cases of inaccurate or incomplete reprints, but they do happen.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:29, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree - Citing sources clearly says "It is improper to obtain a citation from an intermediate source without making clear that you saw only that intermediate source. For example, you might find some information on a Web page that is attributed to a certain book. Unless you look at the book yourself to check that the information is there, your source is really the Web page, which is what you must cite. The credibility of your article rests on the credibility of the Web page, as well as the book, and your article must make that clear." Based on that, if the reference used was the reprint, then the correct citation is to the reprint in its full form - the fact that it is a reprint from 25 years later is immaterial. For example:
 * RossPatterson (talk) 17:38, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, CITE doesn't say or imply that one cannot mention reprints. All it says is that one must say where you got it. It does not prohibit you from saying where else to get it from. It would be bizarre for Wikipedia to prohibit the common practice of listing multiple places where one can get the article from. Eubulides (talk) 09:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like we're all agreeing. The citation should make it clear which version the article was based on, but additional citation of another version is of incremental value. The other versions cited should not appear to have been checked unless they actually were checked. My 12 November post was about how to express which version was consulted and which was incremental.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, well, I'm not sure I agree that a citation should say which version was consulted. Please see the Posey et al. example in Template talk:Citation, a citation that points to four versions. This sort of thing is standard in medical articles. There's no real need for the citation to say which version was actually consulted, unless the versions differ significantly with respect to the claims being sourced.
 * For more on this subject, please see Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles), where the consensus was that it's OK to also cite PubMed Central manuscripts, even though they often have minor editorial differences from the final versions.
 * Eubulides (talk) 21:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, that sounds slapdash to me. It would certainly be unacceptable in my discipline.  You don't cite a work you haven't consulted: that's dishonest.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd agree it's sloppy, though perhaps not demonstrably dishonest. Still, the idea that we might base content on one version and cite another is something we should strive to avoid, just in case the divergences between versions pertain to the basis of statements in our articles. At Template talk:Citation, it is clear that the differences are sometimes significant. We should not ignore this fact.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, that sounds slapdash to me. It would certainly be unacceptable in my discipline.  You don't cite a work you haven't consulted: that's dishonest.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd agree it's sloppy, though perhaps not demonstrably dishonest. Still, the idea that we might base content on one version and cite another is something we should strive to avoid, just in case the divergences between versions pertain to the basis of statements in our articles. At Template talk:Citation, it is clear that the differences are sometimes significant. We should not ignore this fact.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Can we add archiveurl= before Werdnabot archives the discussion for the fourth time?
Support for archiveurl and archivedate parameters a la cite web has been requested several times in the last year, but hasn't been implemented, and then of course the discussion gets archived and forgotten. Can some administrator please insert the following lines after " |amp = ": |OriginalURL = |ArchiveDate= RossPatterson (talk) 21:49, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It sounds reasonable. Could we leave it a day in case anyone has any comments or suggestions. I have one comment, based on a quick skim of the code. In cite web the parameter IncludedWorkURL will equal archiveurl if defined. However your code doesn't do that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That code's not going to work properly - the archive URL won't be displayed. If I recall correctly, you'll also need to change the URL parameter - check Cite Journal to see how that template handles it. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll take another stab at it tomorrow evening. RossPatterson (talk) 03:24, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I give up. The Citation/core parameters are too obtuse, I don't know what they mean (despite having documented some of them!). RossPatterson (talk) 04:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Still needed. I am currently adding the "archived from the original" manually when using the template. It would be great to have it in the template. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 14:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I've set up the sandbox so that it ought to support the parameter. Please test it; if it works, I'll update the template.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I tested it on User:¢Spender1983. There are a couple of problems. It adds carriage returns between successive authors and too much text is now bold. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 13:21, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Still needed. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 02:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks better now - I didn't clean the sandbox before making my edits. Another request to ensure that it's fully tested in all situations; if it works, prod me until I activate the edits. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The sandbox version appears to work to me. Can you activate the edits? - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 03:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I would really appreciate having this functionality. Skomorokh  16:05, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ - apologies for the delay. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:57, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

PMC to embargoed article?
In User:Citation bot/bugs  I complained about the Citation bot's adding 2677584 in the following citation: on the grounds that this generates a citation whose title links to a publication that doesn't yet exist. If you try clicking on the article title, it'll send you to a web page that says "This article is currently under embargo and will be available in PMC on May 27, 2010." My feeling is that this is a disservice to the reader amd that the link shouldn't be added until after May 27, to avoid sending the reader off on wild goose chases. In reply the bot's maintainer said "It could be argued that the PMC parameter should state the PMC wherever it is available." and suggested I ask here for more opinions. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? Eubulides (talk) 10:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * PMC should be added whenever possible, yes. The problem is that it shouldn't title-link. It should really only be one of the other identifiers listed. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I remember that there was a lengthy discussion resulting in a consensus that the PMC should title-link (although embargos did not feature in that discussion). To moot a possible solution for consideration, one could create a 'pmc-embargo-date' parameter, and only link the title to the PMC if the embargo date has passed. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  00:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, that would be fine. And I also recall with (and agree with) that lengthy discussion: if there's a PMC but no URL, just link the title to the PMC, as that produces output that's more useful to the reader. Eubulides (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That makes perfect sense to me too. Can the archive-date parameter be used rather than creating another or does that conflate the date entered into the archive with the date available from it? LeadSongDog come howl  17:58, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll set about this, then (when I have time). Any better suggestions for the parameter name? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  06:26, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * How about pmcdate? It would be the date that the PMC ref started to work (or is predicted to start working, if the date in the future). I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format for dates like this, though no doubt other editors will differ. Perhaps you can infer the date style by looking for other dates in this reference, or failing that, by taking a vote from the other dates in article references. (Amusingly enough, the embargo notice from PubMed Central contains dates in both "YYYY/MM/DD" and "Month DD, YYYY" styles.) Eubulides (talk) 06:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I've implemented the parameter ( I think I went for pmc-embargo-date in the end) and it accepts any date format that the #time: parser function recognises. It's not rendered in the output at the moment - it just stops the link from linking until after the embargo date.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:00, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. However, pmc-embargo-date is pretty long; could you please shorten that? It's no different from the ordinary date parameter: in both cases, it's the date of publication, and often publication is embargoed before the date. The only difference is that date is only rarely in the future, and pmcdate (or whatever) could be in the future, or could be in the past. Eubulides (talk) 21:44, 17 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure this is a big deal as normally you have PMID too so the worst that happens is you click on one dead link. I just updated my tools to even include PMC since I just use the PMID link and click on full text once on the abstract. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 19:45, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Spacing in template?
Is the proper format for  or  ? Does it matter? - Samwb123 (talk) 03:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't matter. I prefer to put the optional spaces before the "|" (but nowhere else) so that the edit buffer doesn't contain very long "words" and become hard to read. This is particularly an issue when looking at differences between versions. But this is just one style. Eubulides (talk) 03:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * By placing spaces at the points suggested by Eubulides, you will find that not only is it easier to spot where each parameter ends/begins, but when word-wrapping occurs, it's more likely to occur between parameters, than between a parameter name and its value. Of course, should there be spaces within the value (as in ) then the wrapping might well occur there. But I do prefer that to either   or   - which are both just as legal. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:29, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreeing with both above. wins. KellenT 16:03, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. - Samwb123 (talk) 17:09, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Capitalised documentation page
See Template_talk:Cite_web. Debresser (talk) 06:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Target linking for harv
The harv series of templates expect citations to include html code of the form ..., as produced by the citation template. This template, on the other hand, does not produce these spans; it just produces ... without the id. And cite book is even worse in this respect: it produces ... . If we are serious about making these templates interchangeable, this should be fixed: otherwise the links produced by harv will not work in articles formatted with cite journal. Compare, for instance, the citation links in the cirrent version of the Grötzsch graph article (edited to use citation) vs the links in an older version using cite journal. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:18, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The default id was recently removed from the cite template series; see Template talk:Citation/core. You can add an id with ref. I don't understand why the Harvard and cite templates should be interchangeable. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 03:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The easiest way is to use harv, as I did with to the article in question. Please feel free to revert the edit if you prefer switching to citation. Eubulides (talk) 03:54, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, so when would I ever not want to use ref=harv? What is the point of this sort of obfuscation? Because as far as I can see its only effect is to make the templates more difficult to learn and use. Why can't they just work out of the box? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:45, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * In an article like Autism harv would be counterproductive, as it would merely bloat the article and make its HTML invalid. The vast majority of articles that use cite journal citations do not use Harvard references for the citations, and for these articles the hassles of working around problems due to a feature they don't need outweigh the advantages of that feature. Things would be different if the feature could be fixed so that it didn't cause these problems in articles that do not use Harvard references. Eubulides (talk) 07:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * "Cause these problems" means that it didn't pass an HTML verifier, not that there was ever an actual problem for an actual human reader, right? And now there is an actual problem for readers of some 2100 articles that broke because of this change. Wouldn't it have made more sense to leave the default the way it was and use the ref=whatever workaround only for those specific articles where an actual person noticed the failure to verify and cared about it? This discussion is making me lean much more strongly to preferring citation to cite journal, when previously I thought they were mostly equivalent, mostly because citation doesn't seem to have yet been taken over by people who prefer something pure and broken to something impure that works; was that your intent? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * One cannot separate the HTML-verifier from the human-reader problems so easily. The HTML verifier catches problems with invalid HTML, many of which are also visible to human readers. It is useful to check Wikipedia pages with an HTML verifier to make sure that these visible-to-human-reader errors are absent. But if we get lots of false alarms, we won't do the check. And when these false alarms are generated by a feature that almost nobody is using, it's better to turn off that feature. It is not true that 2100 articles are broken, by the way; the number is far smaller than that. We had to balance this breakage against the breakage of a much, much larger number (likely in the tens of thousands) of articles broken the other way. Please feel free to use Citation; it is the one recommended for Harvard citations anyway. Eubulides (talk) 07:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * When we have User:Citation bot automatically switching citation and cite to make things more consistent in appearance, we shouldn't need "extra" parameters that are easily forgotten to make them consistent in other ways. What is the justification for cite journal and harv not cooperating out-of-the-box? And what is the justification for discussing changes to such essential functionality only in an obscure talk subpage? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's news to me that the Citation bot was switching. I expect that it shouldn't be switching, not only for this reason, but also for others. The justification was that if cite journal by default generates IDs that almost nobody needs, and if these IDs cause Wikipedia to generate invalid HTML, then that was a harm that was most-easily repaired by not generating the IDs unless the caller asked for them. It was not a perfect solution, but it beat fixing tens of thousands of invalid pages. The change was discussed not only in Template talk:Citation/core: it was also discussed in Template talk:Harvard citation and Template talk:Harvard citation no brackets; these are the only templates affected by the change in functionality. Eubulides (talk) 05:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that citation bot will switch individual references from one style to the other to make the overall style of the references consistent: that it will change citation to cite journal if cite journal is the majority, and vice versa. But if that breaks some harv templates...—David Eppstein (talk) 06:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Quotes=no
So, I take it from the earlier discussion that "quotes=no" is gone. I had been using this parameter, but for a different reason. I'm using this to cite interviews, but the publication (Cadence Magazine) doesn't really use an actual title for its interviews. It has the name of the interview subject, perhaps that should be the title, but then it seems more like an article about the subject e.g. "Jane Smith". I had been putting e.g. Interview with Jane Smith, New York, 1990 using quotes=no. If MOS suggests that I should, indeed, be using double-quotes for something like this, then I guess I don't have a problem. Otherwise, is it possible to restore "quotes=no"? Thanx, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Italics in title not recursive
It doesn't seem to be possible to supply a title that was partially italicized in the original and have it display correctly. Case in point is this citation: (cite used in USS Constellation (1854)).

Ship names are italicized, and in the actual paper the title is printed as: Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered. When italicizing the title for the citation, it is my understanding that any previously italicized portion should become unitalicized to retain its distinction from the rest of the title. If you look at the wikisource for the citation above, you will see that the word Constellation is provided with the wiki italic markup, so I would expect the citation title to be formatted as Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered. However, somewhere in the template process this distinction is lost. --J Clear (talk) 15:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree that's what I've seen done elsewhere. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is a fault directly with the template. It looks like either the MediaWiki parser or HTML Tidy does not allow markup that starts outside the link to be terminated by markup inside the link:

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That makes sense in general. So, it sounds like the template needs to work within the limits of those and do the formatting entirely inside the link.  --J Clear (talk) 17:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec)That makes sense, because it'd have to produce HTML like this: Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered
 * which is overlapping HTML tags, which are not allowed. A permitted method would be: Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered
 * but I suspect that far too much MediaWiki work would be needed. However, try this: Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered
 * Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered
 * --Redrose64 (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

This is clearly a bug in cite paper, and it is due to a bug in Citation/core. I have fixed the bug in the sandbox and expect the fix to be installed shortly. Please see Template talk:Citation/core . Eubulides (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * And it is now over at MediaWiki talk:Common.css where we have discovered that HTML Tidy is at fault. I was rather pessimistic that this was going to be a simple template fix. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This bug should be fixed now; see Template talk:Citation/core . The fix doesn't address the deeper problems with HTML Tidy, but it should work around this particular instance of them. Eubulides (talk) 02:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation of Journals with named issues
I've come across a number of Featured article candidates where authors have entered Named seasonal issues under the |month= tag. Could we improve documentation about where named seasonal issues go? Fifelfoo (talk) 01:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I use the 'month' field that way myself. If that's wrong I'd like to know. --RL0919 (talk) 01:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Should be " |issue= n: Name " in my opinion. " Foo (Spring 1981). " appears perverse for someone from the Southern hemisphere, as Spring isn't a date. Similarly " Foo (Special Edition in Memory of Great Academic 1987). " is perverse, I'd expect " Foo (1987). "Ti" Jo Vol (3-4: Special Edition in Memory of Great Academic). " Fifelfoo (talk) 01:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The issue field should really be for the issue number; some journals use both month and issue number. A number of journals now have four-weekly publication, ie 13 per year. One example that fits all three is Model Rail - the current issue states on the cover "No. 137 November 2009". To my mind that would be
 * Earlier this year we had, in succession:
 * If I were to omit the true issue number, and put the 13th issue name in the issue field, it would look rather odd:
 * There are other cases too, with different journals placing the 13th issue either between December and January, or between June and July. The name of that extra issue seems to be up to the publisher. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * In my field its rare that a Journal will issue under a month date line; and almost unthinkable that Volume and Issue numbers aren't used. Seasonal journals aren't month dated, its clearly an issue name. "Summer," or any other season, isn't a date identifier due to that pesky other bit of the world on the bottom. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've looked at your user page and taken with the above, I'm guessing that your field is academic; such things are perfectly true for the majority of learned journals. However, please remember that cite magazine is a redirect to cite journal, so newsstand media will attract the use of this template, so we need to accomodate those too. I am aware that Summer can cause problems for COinS, but Model Rail Summer 2009 isn't a seasonal issue, it's a regular 4-weekly issue just like June, July, August, September. Yes the seasons vary by south/north, but that's surely an issue [pun] for the magazine's publisher? It's irrelevant to us - our task is to provide sufficient information for the reader to locate the original article.
 * Borrower: I'd like "Madeupname Magazine", Summer 2009 please.
 * Librarian: Is that summer in the northern hemisphere or the southern?
 * Borrower: It's issue 123, if that helps.
 * I have found another magazine as a case in point:
 * Again, no. 357 is a regular issue, not a seasonal special. If the issue number were omitted, it would be unclear whether "Christmas 2008" succeeds December 2008, or precedes January 2008. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Issue numbers are _always_ better than relying on dates, unless the periodical is issued on a Day Month Year dateline (such as a newspaper). Perhaps we can work towards a style recommendation either by reference to the APA, which is the style model for wikipedia Cite styles, or by drawing out of this conversation (Where a journal names Months, and then names an issue in sequence Seasonally, treat the Season as a date identifier and use |month= ; Where a journal simply names seasons, and doesn't issue on a monthly basis, treat it as a special issue name and use |issue=) ? Fifelfoo (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Give me a day or so and I'll find something quarterly, with issues both numbered and given seasonal names. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Literary journals are notorious for issuing two a year either Spring / Autumn or Summer / Winter, and the date of issue doesn't correspond to the formal issue name. Similarly, three seasonals are common due to the structure of US academic employment (Fall, Winter, Spring). Fifelfoo (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And here's a psych cite using Season as issue number/name: ^ Goldsmith DF, Oppenheim D, Wanlass J (2004). "Separation and Reunification: Using Attachment Theory and Research to Inform Decisions Affecting the Placements of Children in Foster Care". Juvenile and Family Court Journal Spring: 1–14. Retrieved 2009–06–19.
 * You've not used the template for that, so I'm unsure what you've put into which fields. Alternatively, which WP article is that taken from? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Its from Attachment theory and its probably dodgy because the user used |volume= instead of |issue= for Spring, paste:
 * This whole thing seems to be about documentation and use, rather than automated rendering. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * With academic journals, the standard practice is to give the name of the journal, the year of publication, volume number, issue number, and page numbers. Hence I'd simply write the reference like this:
 * There is seldom any need to give any extra information (like "Spring" or "January") that only leads to confusion and inconsistencies. Journal name + volume number + issue number + page number are (almost always) enough to locate the article in a library. The year of publication is nice to know even if you aren't interested in finding the article. — Miym (talk) 11:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Again - this is fine if you are only referring to Academic journals - however, if you are using news-stand media, then you may not have an issue number, and even if you do it may not be obvious - I've seen some magazines where when although there is an issue number, it isn't on the front page - People will look for the August 2009 issue of Aeroplane magazine, not Vol 37 No 8 Issue 436.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Issue numbers are _always_ better than relying on dates, unless the periodical is issued on a Day Month Year dateline (such as a newspaper). Perhaps we can work towards a style recommendation either by reference to the APA, which is the style model for wikipedia Cite styles, or by drawing out of this conversation (Where a journal names Months, and then names an issue in sequence Seasonally, treat the Season as a date identifier and use |month= ; Where a journal simply names seasons, and doesn't issue on a monthly basis, treat it as a special issue name and use |issue=) ? Fifelfoo (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Give me a day or so and I'll find something quarterly, with issues both numbered and given seasonal names. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Literary journals are notorious for issuing two a year either Spring / Autumn or Summer / Winter, and the date of issue doesn't correspond to the formal issue name. Similarly, three seasonals are common due to the structure of US academic employment (Fall, Winter, Spring). Fifelfoo (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And here's a psych cite using Season as issue number/name: ^ Goldsmith DF, Oppenheim D, Wanlass J (2004). "Separation and Reunification: Using Attachment Theory and Research to Inform Decisions Affecting the Placements of Children in Foster Care". Juvenile and Family Court Journal Spring: 1–14. Retrieved 2009–06–19.
 * You've not used the template for that, so I'm unsure what you've put into which fields. Alternatively, which WP article is that taken from? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Its from Attachment theory and its probably dodgy because the user used |volume= instead of |issue= for Spring, paste:
 * This whole thing seems to be about documentation and use, rather than automated rendering. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * With academic journals, the standard practice is to give the name of the journal, the year of publication, volume number, issue number, and page numbers. Hence I'd simply write the reference like this:
 * There is seldom any need to give any extra information (like "Spring" or "January") that only leads to confusion and inconsistencies. Journal name + volume number + issue number + page number are (almost always) enough to locate the article in a library. The year of publication is nice to know even if you aren't interested in finding the article. — Miym (talk) 11:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Again - this is fine if you are only referring to Academic journals - however, if you are using news-stand media, then you may not have an issue number, and even if you do it may not be obvious - I've seen some magazines where when although there is an issue number, it isn't on the front page - People will look for the August 2009 issue of Aeroplane magazine, not Vol 37 No 8 Issue 436.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is seldom any need to give any extra information (like "Spring" or "January") that only leads to confusion and inconsistencies. Journal name + volume number + issue number + page number are (almost always) enough to locate the article in a library. The year of publication is nice to know even if you aren't interested in finding the article. — Miym (talk) 11:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Again - this is fine if you are only referring to Academic journals - however, if you are using news-stand media, then you may not have an issue number, and even if you do it may not be obvious - I've seen some magazines where when although there is an issue number, it isn't on the front page - People will look for the August 2009 issue of Aeroplane magazine, not Vol 37 No 8 Issue 436.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Render inconsistent over authored and non authored works with dates
Compare ^ Arnold, Denis (April 1982). "Monteverdi:L'incoronazione di Poppea ed. Curtis". Gramophone (London: Haymarket): p. 88. Retrieved 8 November 2009. ^ "Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea". Gramophone (London: Haymarket): p. 123. May 1990. Retrieved 19 November 2009.

Generated from:

Why does the title appear after the page reference without an author, when it appears behind the first major identifier of provenance (the title for authorless works) when there's an author present?


 * Arnold, Denis (April 1982). "Mont..." and
 * "Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea" (May 1990). Grama...

Makes much more stylistic sense. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's the initial example output above, but this time expanded from the actual templates given as examples:
 * (i) It doesn't appear to be anything to do with page references, nor with the position of the title. It's the position of the date, which comes after author (if there is one), after editor (if there is one, but there is no author) or before all the numeric info (DOI, ISSN, etc.) if there is neither author nor editor.
 * (ii) It's not a problem with per se, but a feature of.
 * (iii) [unrelated] the accessdate field is meaningless unless the url field is also specified. Printed journals don't change their meaning with time (or even disappear entirely), the way that web pages do: the date when you read the article in the printed magazine is immaterial.
 * Two ideas:
 * (i) if the article has no credited author, examine the contents page to see who the editor is, and fill in at least editor1-last and editor1-first.
 * (ii) if the editor is unobtainable, and you really want the order of output changed, you need to put your question at Template talk:Citation/core. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:37, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * (i) if the article has no credited author, examine the contents page to see who the editor is, and fill in at least editor1-last and editor1-first.
 * (ii) if the editor is unobtainable, and you really want the order of output changed, you need to put your question at Template talk:Citation/core. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:37, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Normally I suggest "Staff" or "[Staff]" or "[Editorial]" or possibly "[Anonymous]". In this case though, its worth bringing forward as an escalated item.  The accessdates were present because I stripped the (four line) url fields.  I'll reduce to minimal problem when escalating to Template talk:Citation/core Fifelfoo (talk) 01:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

AWB gone wild, and screwed up template
editprotected Please revert, which incorrectly changed " " to " ". The edit appears to have been installed by a semiautomated process that capitalizes template names, but it broke the ref parameter of cite journal. I will follow up on the talk page of the user who's running the process. Eubulides (talk) 18:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 19:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC).
 * That was so fast I didn't even get to your talk page. Thanks! Eubulides (talk) 19:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Separators in parameter names
Posted here, for want of a specific most-relevant template: Why is it that we can't have a single separator in compound parameter names? We have archivedate (with no separator), editor-last (with a hyphen, or is it a minus or an endash), trans_title (with an underscore), and cit journal seems to use part title (with a space). Can we pick one that will work in all cases and migrate to it, so new editors won't have to play the guessing game? LeadSongDog come howl  19:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree. I've searched Help:Template and Help:Advanced templates, and can't find a guide. I would prefer not to use a space (readability); and a hyphen is quicker to type than underscore. Unicode minus and en-dash should both be avoided - they're not normal keyboard characters. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * And let's not forget the space in the name "cite journal". Unless we want to change the name of the template, or to use a different convention in parameter names than in template names, space would seem to be the way to go. On the other hand the space makes the editing window a bit more confusing, as it can cause the parameter name to straddle lines. If we ignore the template name, the most common convention seems to be to not have a separator at all. How about if I changed cit journal to use no separator for its new parameters? I don't really care about the separator, but would prefer not to have to support lots of different spellings, as that slows things down. Eubulides (talk)
 * I notice there's a redirect from Template:Citejournal to Template:Cite journal, so that's only a server load and performance issue, at "Save page" time. Errors in misremembered parameter names in most cases will result in information that is silently omitted from the displayed result. (Exception: yields, but that's rather OTT. I tend to think it would be simplest to use no separator, but really have no strong preference amongst the other choices. LeadSongDog  come howl  20:20, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for the feedback. I got rid of the spaces in the new parameter names in cit book and cit journal. For the existing parameter doi_brokendate I left the underscore alone, even though I don't like it; it's not worth the hassle of changing. Eubulides (talk) 21:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

PubMed identifier/PMID redirect
Hi,

Currently the template produces PMID ######### when the PMID = parameter is filled out, but PubMed Identifier is a redirect to PMID. It's a pretty innocuous redirect, but potentially has wide-ranging implications for anyone seeking information on the what PMID means in a citation. Seems like it'd be a pretty simple correction to make - would anyone with edit acces like to change it? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 20:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems better to have the link to the fully spelled out name since you can just hover the link rather than go to the page to see what PMID means. It's done the same way for ISSN, for example. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm...it creates problems for my popups (but someone with popups probably wouldn't have an issue either way), but is PubMed Identifier any more meaningful than PMID? If you know what PubMed is, you probably know what a PMID is.  Is it worth moving the page?  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 21:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Page=/Pages=
The documentation for page and pages says, "Manually prepend with p. or pp. if necessary." Other cite-family templates provide the prefix based on which of the two parameters the editor uses. Why is this template different?

If the template is different for backwards compatibility, i.e., because prior versions did not add the prefix and so changing would introduce duplicate prefixes, should we consider changing  to use the Page numbers template? The template inspects a page number value and adds the "p." or "pp." prefix if necessary. Using, we could change this template to add a prefix if necessary without breaking existing uses that provide the prefix manually. We could also update the documentation to remove the note about manually prepending the prefix, and then would be more consistent with the other templates. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 21:47, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is follow-up to Template talk:Cite web. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Update - I updated the sandbox version to use the Page numbers template. It is working as I would expect, but I am not sure if it is doing the right thing: in all cases, it includes the "p." or "pp." prefix if the user does not specify it. Is that the proper output, or are the prefixes not part of the citation style in certain circumstances? &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 18:33, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * In the past, it has never been prepended to journal page ranges. Nor should it be, if WP is going to follow any conventional citation style.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * No. That would break all the cite journals, and p. or pp. is also undesirable for journals regardless of the technical issues. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't agree it would break anything but I am sure I am in the minority. I think the prevailing WP style is to include the "p." or "pp." prefix and it's better to have consistency across source types than it is to follow a small portion from other standards with other audiences and purposes. As I said, I am sure I am in the minority and so I know this won't change. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 21:49, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree - it would be better to include p. and pp. to be consistant with the other cite templates. The current situation gives a strange mess of formats if cite templates are used. In addition, using p. and pp. will make it clearer to readers (who may not be familiar with the cittion style) what the page range of the article is.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The standard styles for citing journal articles in scientific papers do not include p. and pp., in contrast to citations for book chapters and conference proceedings papers which do include them. I don't see why we should take it upon ourselves to vary from that. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Given the amount of variance that Wikipedia cite templates display from the claimed origin manual of style, arguments need to proceed from something other than "my favourite style manual declares that." Fifelfoo (talk) 00:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The argument here is not "my favorite style manual declares that" but rather "to my knowledge every style manual declares that". In any case, I think we would be better off making our citations vary less and conform to some specific style manual more rather than working to make them even more varied and idiosyncratic. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * To be fair, there are some house styles that use p./pp. with journals; the IEEE style comes to mind. Anyway, I agree that this is rare. And yes, it would be great if we could have templates that conform to some (commonly used) style guide. — Miym (talk) 00:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Someone needs to decide whether Wikipedia should force references to blindly conform to one particular academic citation style, no matter how unsuitable it is for many of the sources that editors want to cite, or encourage use of styles that actually present the source that as many people as possible can actually understand, and not consisting of a long string of numbers and brackets without explanation.Nigel Ish (talk) 00:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * What we need to do is to make the cite series of templates conform to an argued style that we document fully separately to the implementation, and declare that "Cite Templates implement the Wikipedia in-house "Cite" type style. Other citation styles may be used, if used consistently throughout an article, and used correctly".  Given the variance within cite style from the original APA-alike, we've already started to establish an "in house" style.  We ought to complete this process, standardise, and document.  The problem isn't editors using Turabian incorrectly, its editors using cite web for objects which should be cite book or cite journal and these three styles lacking an argued internal consistency. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally, I use citation in place of all three (partly because of a kerfuffle a few weeks back when cite journal was broken changed so that it no longer interoperated with harv out-of-the-box). But it formats these three types of citation in a way that is mostly very similar to the cite templates so your point remains valid. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Can both sides agree that WP:AWB should change |pages=pp. 41–43| to |pages= 41–43|? Anyone coding pages=pp. is either unaware that pages= will usually produce an extra "pp." (with an obscure exception only at cite journal), or else they are evading this template's attempt to avoid saying "pp." in that case. Art LaPella (talk) 03:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Observation: there is a journal, which when cited in academic papers, may appear to have page numbers preceded with "p.". This is Journal of the Textile Institute; from 1923 to 1966, there were two main divisions, sharing common volume numbers but each with its own series of page numbers. Citations from Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings are given page numbers beginning "P" (nb capital letter, see here), whilst those from Journal of the Textile Institute Transactions'' are given page numbers beginning "T" (see here). For a given volume of JTI, page P123 is unlikely to be related to page T123. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I am in favor of defining a Wikipedia in-house style and making the cite templates conform to it. Where should that proposal be made and discussed? &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 18:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be even more in favor if the house style were defined to be reasonably close to what the templates already do, rather than defining something different and changing all the templates. The reason is not so much that I think the current style is the best style, and more for two other reasons: (1) many articles have manually formatted citations that, to some extent, probably cluster around the de facto template style, so moving away from that would lead to even greater inconsistency of formatting than we now have, and (2) the fewer changes we make to the templates the less likely it is that we'll screw up the formatting in some unexpected cases that were not included in the definition and testing of the changes, but that are used in actual articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that starting from the style defined by the current cite templates is a good idea. If editors agree that the areas where those templates are consistent was the style, and then deal with the (relatively few, I think) inconsistencies, there wouldn't be much work involved in terms of editing templates or existing articles. The work would be to reach agreement and then to document the result. Of those two, reaching agreement will be the hard part. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 22:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * What if we did the following instead: create a brand-new citation template that implements a well-known citation style? Then we wouldn't need to touch cite journal, citation, etc., and hence this wouldn't introduce any inconsistencies. Naturally we could try to make the parameters compatible with the existing templates so that switching from, e.g., citation to the new format would be relatively simple. We could just give it a try and see what happens: if people like it, we might in future recommend the new style and new templates in MOS; if people don't like it, no harm done. (By the way, a new template would also allow us to re-think issues like harv-linking.) I don't really care which citation style we choose, as long as it is well-known and documented somewhere (in detail!). — Miym (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I tried that with unicite and people freaked out over it. I doubt anything will be different this time around. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Which citation style is implemented by unicite? The documentation does not seem to make it explicit. — Miym (talk) 23:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Without knowing about this conversation, I just now tried it with cit journal (which also implements the equivalent of cite web and others) and cit book. This was mostly born out of frustration with the extremely poor performance of the existing citation templates, but while I was at it I switched to the Vancouver system format. I don't expect everybody to like the Vancouver system's aesthetics, but the system does have the advantage of already being very well documented, and the Vancouver system is already used in some high-quality Wikipedia articles (even without this template). Of course the vast majority of readers don't care about the differences between the Vancouver style and the cite journal style. Eubulides (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * At the risk of contradicting myself, I have to say that I don't think that Vancouver system is particularly appropriate for Wikipedia. I like the fact that it is well-documented. However, Vancouver system is extremely compact; in particular, it requires that author names and journal titles are abbreviated. This seems to be against the consensus here. — Miym (talk) 10:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that the Vancouver system seems inappropriate for Wikipedia. It seems designed for paper, where space is expensive. Our style should err on the side of explicitness and readability rather than brevity. Kaldari (talk) 17:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: Miym's "What if we did the following instead:". I would not be in favor of that. I don't think any existing style is 100% appropriate for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, the cite family of templates are already pretty consistent and represent a de facto style that should be documented. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 23:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Coming back to the Art Lapella's point, surely we would do no harm in ensuring that wikitext pages=pp.123-4 doesn't create the output pp.pp.123-4 (which I believe nobody intends to get). That could be addressed by changing the template if there is no agreement to standardise on templates always prepending, or else by AWB changing the wikitext if there is such an agreement. Do we have any statistics on how many articles use (or don't use) the prepended pp? LeadSongDog come howl  17:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * AWB already has this feature. I recently fixed about a thousand articles that had this problem with (it added automatic p./pp. about four months ago and nobody apparently fixed it since then). If you think this problem still exists with other citation templates, or that I missed some articles, I can try to locate and fix them. Svick (talk) 01:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Excluding the first 3 Google hits, this is the problem I'm talking about; is it what you're talking about? The same problem can presumably happen with page instead of pages, but I haven't found a way to make Google locate those examples. Art LaPella (talk) 03:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The examples I looked at were all Cite Book, AF Cite Book, Cite Journal, and Cite Conference. Art LaPella (talk) 04:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's exactly it. I'll look into it. Also the problem with (but not the other templates) is that it usually doesn't prepend p./pp, so just having something like   doesn't mean it will produce “p. p. 125”. Svick (talk) 09:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * My scan revealed 9710 such pages. I'll start fixing them, but it's going to take some time. Svick (talk) 15:12, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify what you are going to change? The back-and-forth above is a little confusing.
 * For most (all?) of the other cite templates (not cite journal), the page and pages parameter should not include a prefix. So, 17 is correct while p. 17 is not. The latter case will display as "p. p. 17". Is that what you are going to fix via a bot?
 * For cite journal, the template does not provide a prefix, so if an editor wanted a prefix, they'd have to supply it, and the documentation for cite journal explicitly says to supply a prefix if needed. For that reason, it seems like a bad idea for a bot to edit the page or pages parameter of cite journal.
 * &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 15:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm going to fix all templates transclusions on pages except  that have p./pp. prefixes in their   parameter.  does automatically add the prefix, but only when the   parameter (or one of its alternatives) is not present. So I'm going to fix those pages too. I'm not going to use bot, but AWB. It does many of the changes by itself, but I have to check every change I make. I think no change of the templates is necessary. Svick (talk) 17:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Summarising what's happening here it doesn't seem that any changes to the templates are required: for citing books/news/websites a "p." or "pp." is always wanted, so is done by the template. For citing scientific journals "pp." is never wanted, so is not added by cite journal. When cite journal is used for some other periodical, where "pp." may be wanted, so the user adds it manually. The cleanup operation is (1) to remove any "pp." from cites of books/news/websites, which AWB already does, and (2) to remove "pp." from scientific journal cites, which AWB doesn't do (not sure if it could?). Rjwilmsi 15:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Breaking ISSNs
The template appears to be occasionaly breaking ISSN numbers - turning them into a twelve digit number by adding the last four digits to the start of the number - thus: Any idea what's going on, and can someone fix it?Nigel Ish (talk) 17:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not expecting the space (which is used to separate the URL from linkable text). Either leave that out, or use a hyphen (nb not an en-dash, because it's not recognised by WorldCat) instead. The template documentation states:
 * The eight-figure ISSN may be split into two groups of four using a hyphen; but neither an N-dash or a space are valid for use as separator between the groups.
 * --Redrose64 (talk) 18:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Technical explanation: when the template has fully expanded, what you get is this:

ISSN 5450 0143 5450
 * which shows as ISSN 5450 0143 5450. However, use a hyphen instead, and you get:

ISSN 0143-5450
 * which shows as ISSN 0143-5450. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that - of course it doen't help when the source magazine separates the two groups of four with a space! Nigel Ish (talk) 18:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The cite journal documentation says that only a hyphen is allowed as a separator, and that a space is not allowed. The ISSN article also says that hyphens must be used. It appears that the source magazine is in error, and that you'll have to fix this by hand (I know of no easy way to fix it in the template). Eubulides (talk) 21:37, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Due to the vagaries of the template environment I don;t think it is possible, however it would be possible too suppress and warn - Check ISSN will do this for you. Rich Farmbrough, 19:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC). 19:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I wonder if that isn't something DOIbot could tidy up en passant? LeadSongDog come howl  21:22, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Bug with quotes in URL
Something's wrong with the way this is displayed:

Which displays:

Some how the quoted bit of the URL is getting inserted into the title and removed from the actual HREF. --J Clear (talk) 22:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. That's because to create valid HTML, the whole of the URL must be enclosed in double quotes. There are now four double quotes; and a HTML parser takes the first double quote as the opening double quote, and the second as the closing double quote. The HTML that is yielded is effectively:
 * What you need to do is substitute the quotes that are actually part of the URL: use the construct  (22 is the ASCII code for a double quote, in hexadecimal) thus:
 * Which displays:
 * --Redrose64 (talk) 23:04, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Which displays:
 * --Redrose64 (talk) 23:04, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Makes sense. I added a note to the template documentation, since it's a "feature".  --J Clear (talk) 15:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Recent change made template include size too large
Please revert, which was just installed without discussion. The change causes cite journal to sometimes invoke Page numbers, an expensive template, and this causes cite paper to become so expensive that one cannot have 100 such citations in an article (in my sandbox experiments): the Wikimedia servers report an error with "Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem." with pages containing more citations than that. I have reproduced this result in, which currently contains 50 citations: if I double this to 100 citations the page doesn't render when I try to preview it (I get "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.") and I get the "technical problem" error when I try to save it.

There was no such problem before the change was installed.

I suggest fixing the problem of parameter misuses (such as "pp. 100–200") with a bot rather than trying to work around these misuses with calls to expensive templates. Eubulides (talk) 22:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Relevant discussion
There is a discussion occurring at Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style. Your participation would be appreciated. — V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 23:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Supplementary material
Is there a way to add supplementary material (and a link) to this template? An example can be found on the online journal Madagascar Conservation & Development, where the article "The Madagascar rosewood massacre" includes both the article and the supplementary material. –  VisionHolder  « talk »  10:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Create two references, one for each source. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Online vs print ISSN
Some publications have two ISSNs, one for print, the other for online content. Could someone adapt the template to handle both (perhaps simply adding a parameter such as online_issn) so that we may refer to both in citations? As an example, see this journal, which I have used as a reference in this edit. Thanks. Mind matrix  21:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Please see WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT and previous discussion at Template talk:Cite book. In a nutshell: give the ISSN of whichever edition that you obtained the material from. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, the ISSN should be omitted unless there's no other ID available. If a citation has a DOI or PMID or stable URL, the ISSN takes up valuable screen real estate that should be used for something more important. I can't think of a citation that would benefit from having both print and electronic ISSNs. Eubulides (talk) 01:47, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Not vote. Hypothetically, if every editor wrote complete citations and vandals never mangled them, WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT would pertain, but in this universe, we too often do not have complete, correct cites. We wind up having to flesh out incomplete citations in order to enable editors to verify the cited work. The DOI or PMID normally refer to a specific article, not a serial or issue. If neither are known (or perhaps are incorrect or are not extant), either one or the other of a p-ISSN or e-ISSN can be helpful in verifying the journal when it is not spelled correctly and in finding its publication history so that volume, issue, date can be verified to all agree. Omitting useful information to save WP:NOTPAPER makes little if any sense. It doesn't have to be rendered as html to be worth having. LeadSongDog come howl  04:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Link to update
Note: The citation maker has moved → http://clinical.uthscsa.edu/cite/ -- &#65293; Cy21 ➜ discuss 20:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Coauthors
Please see Template talk:Citation for a discussion which, to some extent, concerns this template as well. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I have sandboxed proposed changes to this template similar to recent changes to Citation. The intent of these changes is to remove the use of info specified in the coauthors parameter in constructing the target anchor which is produced when the ref parameter is set to "harv". Barring objection, I plan to go live with the sandboxed version in a few days. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:02, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've published the changes. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 05:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:Vcite journal
Just a note for those interested that a new template has been created to handle Vancouver style citations. It seemed to me that it might be beneficial to discuss the creation of a new template so that it can be easily optimized before its use is widespread. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Reference to Template:ID
I think there is a reference to Template:ID (which has been deleted) in the current version of this template: |ID= It probably ought to be removed. Nephron T|C 14:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Three braces mean that it's a parameter, not template call, so there's no reason to remove it. Svick (talk) 17:50, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

PMID Not Indexed
Sometimes efforts are made to boost pseudoscientific and/or quack medical WP articles, arguments or theories using references from journals of dubious quality. One mark of quality for a medical journal or article is to be indexed in PubMed. Readers viewing a Cite journal reference could gain additional information about the quality of that reference from knowing it was not indexed. Right now, leaving the PMID parameter blank forces a reader to guess either that the no one had checked, or that the article was not indexed. Including a parameter value — perhaps something like "notindex" in the PMID field giving an output format of something like "PMID Not indexed in PubMed" — would show that an editor had checked, leaving no ambiguity. Is this useful information for readers? Could such a parameter value and output be instituted in the Cite journal template? --papageno (talk) 22:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If the purpose is simply to save editors effort, then |pmid= would suffice. If the point is to let readers assess the journal, it may be better to link to the journal's article and note there whether PubMed indexes it. LeadSongDog come howl  03:49, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good points. The idea would be for both editors and readers. The comment would be useful for the former, and could be implemented if a combined solution for editors and readers is not found. The link to the journal article is interesting, but I suspect most dubious journals don't have a page. And simple linking to the journal's article would not highlight the lack of PubMed indexing, still leaving that point somewhat buried. I would prefer a solution with that information more in the open.--papageno (talk) 08:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How about reflecting the uncertainty in the article text? Perhaps by writing something along the lines of "Research published in the journal Medical hypotheses claims that HIV does not cause AIDS (ref 1), but the link has been confirmed by many independent studies (refs 2-10) and the reliability of Medical hypotheses has been called into question (refs 11-12)."
 * That way the reader does not have to spend time digging in the references to determine that a fact in the article may not be reliable. If a fact is only supported by an unreliable source, then a discussion of the reliability might be better carried out on the article's talk page. If a reader is clued up enough to recognize that a PMID is a proxy for reliability, and going to the lengths of checking for its presence in Wikipedia citations, I'd imagine that they would have some loose familiarity with journals of ill repute, and they are perhaps not going to be using Wikipedia as their only source of information.  If uncertainty exists, it should be obvious to the lay person as well as the academically-informed. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm with Martin that the article text needs to guide the reader as to the content/merit/value/consensus of the references if there is any doubt. Rjwilmsi  17:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * While I agree, I doubt that there's much point in discussing in-text attribution on this template's talkpage. I'm sure we can all understand when it is called for by existing policy at WP:SOURCES. If it needs changing, it can be addressed there. PubMed indexing doesn't always speak to reliability so much as scope: fine journals in topics such as archeology, cosmology, topology or geology are not indexed by PubMed sui generis. Still, flagging void pmids dois, explicity would speed up citation bot.LeadSongDog come howl  03:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

last/first vs last1/first1
It has long been the case that last is a synonym for last1, and that first is a synonym for first1. However I have found a curious situation if both forms are used. Let's say that an editor has used

presumably by forgetting to put in the crucial "2" on the second pair. This produces: I find that this is down to the order in which the parameters are passed on to : |Surname1 = |Given1 = Not at all sure which way around they should actually be. I noticed the undesirable effect with. The same situation applies with and  but not. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that having both last= and (separately) last1=, or first= and separately first1=, is always a mistake, and maybe the template should display some kind of warning message in that case. In my own usage, I use last= first= when there is only a single author, and last1= first1= when there are others. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So do I: my point is, the precedence is inconsistent. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the error message is needed when input has both last and last1. LeadSongDog come howl!  06:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Archive parameters
This is probably a dumb question, but why doesn't cite journal use archive parameters similar to cite web? (|archiveurl= |archivedate=)--Rockfang (talk) 19:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It does... they were added over a year ago, with . -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * My apologies. I didn't see them mentioned on the template's page, so I just assumed that they weren't supported.  Thank you for replying.--Rockfang (talk) 19:39, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ I've copied the relevant chunks of documentation from Template:cite web/doc into Template:cite journal/doc. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:53, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Page prefix (p. or pp.)
Should this template not be altered so that page numbers are preceded by either "p." or "pp."? I'm afraid I don't quite understand the various different types of referencing system, so if this is not the custom when citing journals, I apologise; but it is a little confusing to look at a journal reference and not have any indication which numbers refer to issue number and which refer to page number. – PeeJay 22:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This template is based on APA style, which does not use those abbreviations. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 23:38, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Nevertheless, it's still very confusing. – PeeJay 00:12, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, online sources show with and without. I need to consult the APA guide at my library. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 03:42, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The format is volume (issue): page. Aka 22 (32): 21 means "volume 22, issue 32, page 21", while 25: 23 means "volume 25, page 23". Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:20, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The APA website shows examples like:


 * Kensinger, E. A., Brierley, B., Medford, N., Growdon, J. H., & Corkin, S. (2002). Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease on emotional memory. Emotion, 2, 118–134.


 * Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1997). Motivated attention: Affect, activation, and action. In P. J. Lang, R. F. Simons, & M. Balaban (Eds.), Attention and orienting: Sensory and motivational processes (pp. 97–135). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.


 * ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The second example appears to be a chapter in an edited volume rather than a paper in a journal. Those are formatted differently. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:38, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Magazines using cite journal
To quote User:AnmaFinotera: "There is a disagreement at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates regarding the use of the cite journal template or the cite news template when citing a magazine source in an article. Additional views would be useful." --Karnesky (talk) 21:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, the cite news documentation page tells the editor "For citing journals/magazines and websites, see and, respectively." The cite news page also does not have a field for issue number which is needed for some magazines. Strangely the template does handle issue, only it is not documented. Here are examples using each:
 * Using cite news
 * Using cite journal
 * If the documentation was updated or corrected and gave an example for citing a magazine that shows the issue number I would not care which I use. -84user (talk) 02:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Per WP:MULTI, please add your comments to the existing discussion, Wikipedia talk:Citation templates. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:17, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If the documentation was updated or corrected and gave an example for citing a magazine that shows the issue number I would not care which I use. -84user (talk) 02:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Per WP:MULTI, please add your comments to the existing discussion, Wikipedia talk:Citation templates. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:17, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Content within an article - different author(s)
Could an option be added to cite content within an article that has a different set of authors. For example, I have the following citation in one of my articles:

I would like to be able to cite "Box 5. Extinction in Madagascar: The Anatomy of a Catastrophe" by D.A. Burney on page 261 with a separate ref using this template. –  VisionHolder  «  talk  »  16:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Cite is as a separate source. The author has it listed as a short article. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmmm..


 * Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Now that I have read the actual article, then yes, it could be considered a child. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:24, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

JSTOR ids
I note that the template generates links for PMID reference numbers, but doesn't handle JSTOR references. Is there any particular reason why not? We have a seperate auto-linking template at JSTOR, which seems about as robust at the one for - it seems a bit odd not to incorporate the functionality in here given the widespread use of JSTOR articles. We do have a DOI field, but my understanding is that not all JSTOR items have corresponding DOIs.

If there's no objections, I'll look into adding this to the template in a week or so. Thoughts? Shimgray | talk | 17:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good idea. If you do this please also look into adding matching functionality to citation, especially as is now adding jstor= fields to citations automatically (I think only for the ones where the url already goes somewhere else). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree good idea, and yes please make it work with citation bot. I already spend too much time reverting citation bot edits that add a JSTOR link to citations that already have a link with the template. Sasata (talk) 18:31, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Why not add it to citation/core so that the feature is available to all templates? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 20:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW, a significant portion of JSTOR ids are also end portions of DOIs in the form 12.2307/[JSTOR_ID]. Thats how I link to them over at Wikispecies. Circéus (talk) 20:41, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Even when a paper has a JSTOR doi, it's not always the doi that we want to use. I've encountered papers that have two dois, one at JSTOR and one elsewhere, with the one elsewhere being a more freely available copy (no subscription required). So the ability to link to JSTOR papers by doi does not eliminate the need to link to them some other way. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:08, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. If a paper has an ID from the journal and a JSTOR id, than the journal has priority for the doi template (and I still use JSTOR only for these links on Wikipedia). I was just pointing out the fact. Circéus (talk) 21:48, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

ampersand for last author
This template has |amp = which is not documented. Its function/effect is identical to lastauthoramp in. It seems to have originated and, which looks like experimental code. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:11, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Help with template when chemical names are included in the title
I recently used the following reference shown below. Note that the compound name is bicyclo[5.1.0]octa-2,5-diene which includes square brackets. When the template tries to make the article title a clickable link to the abstract at the journal's webpage the presence of the square bracket is causing issues. I noticed that this is happen with other cases where compound names are included in the titles of journal articles. Is there some fix for this? EdChem (talk) 18:51, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that's a tricky thing I've noticed before with another sort of titles and I don't know a code solution from scratch. But a workaround would be using a DOI or PMID so you don't need to link the title. Or you just place a plain link [http://...] without a label behind the template. De728631 (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I suggest that you look at a similar discussion which occurred a few weeks ago at Template talk:Cite web. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks! So   does the job, you just have to wrap it around your title:
 * De728631 (talk) 20:11, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * De728631 (talk) 20:11, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Type
Propose adding type to indicate the specific type for a thesis or dissertation. Example: PhD thesis. Appears in parentheses immediately after Title (or TransTitle). Markup is in sandbox. Example:

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Cite journal is for journals & so this parameter is not needed. Why not use Cite thesis, which has the 'degree' parameter? --Karnesky (talk) 16:10, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * "Cite journal is for formatting references to articles in magazines and academic journals and for academic papers." Which was added after cite paper was merged here. I was actually considering a merge of cite report, but the same would apply to cite thesis, as both of those templates lack the doi, oclc and other fields, and the only field that cite journal lacks is a type. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I would assert that "academic paper" does not encompass theses, that we do not encourage the use of this template for theses, and that few currently use it for theses. I strongly oppose the addition of that field unless consensus is to merge the two templates & I suspect that consensus is unlikely. --Karnesky (talk) 17:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Then I am confused as to the difference in the output. We don't have an overall specification for this series of templates, but it appears common that standalone publications are formatted in italics and sections or chapters are formatted in quotes, whereas cite report, cite techreport and cite thesis use no formatting. See User:Gadget850/Citation template comparisons. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:26, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

On the talk page for, I see no consensus to merge it to. You participated in discussions there back in January. was changed to permit citing theses. I see no reason why this particular template would need to support that too. --Karnesky (talk) 19:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I knew I had discussed this before. So— cite book does have a type field, and it uses the same formatting as the others in this series. Thanks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Article free, URL awful
I'm wondering what the panel thought about the following. Some journal websites provide free access to some papers, but the URLs are highly convoluted and give the impression of being unstable. We currently have a PMC parameter that automatically links the PMC entry to the article title unless another URL is provided, because that means the article is free. There is no such functionality for the DOI and PMID identifiers, because there is no guarantee that the article is free. Now what about a switch (doifree=true or pmidfree=false) that will indicate whether clicking the DOI will lead to a free article? That way, we can avoid huge URLs (ScienceDirect and Karger come to mind) and yet offer the reader free content where possible. JFW | T@lk  20:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no requirement that sources be available online or for free— see WP:PAYWALL, subscription required and registration required. I don't see the URL as a problem, since that is transparent to the reader; many URLs can be reduced by removing search terms. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:09, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, we auto-link the DOI and PMID already. I think the marginal benefit of linking the title (with a redundant link) does not outweigh making the template more complicated. --Karnesky (talk) 22:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I love the fact that IDs like DOIs and JSTOR ids make no assumption regarding availability of the paper, however, a direct link has to me the clear implication of direct availability. I'll normally still use a direct link mostly were said availability is not accompanied by a DOI or is from a different source (e.g. personal/institutional deposit). Circéus (talk) 23:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's try again and see if y'all understand me this time. I currently provide direct URLs if the source is free (I agree it doesn't need to be), but this is actually a waste of time if the DOI is also offered. What I wanted to do was the creation of a flag by which we could give DOI the same functionality as PMCID, provided the article is free, to make it clearer to the reader that the article free but without cumbersome URLs? JFW | T@lk  00:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess I don't see why defining a flag would be any less work or take any less time for an editor than pasting a URI. This might have some marginal benefit to future editors reading the citation, but I see no benefit for readers or for editors who are the first to use the citation template. --Karnesky (talk) 01:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Archiveurl required
Missing in action. If you can have a url parameter then you can archive it. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:28, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Already supported and documented. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:25, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Doh! Somehow I missed that. Thank you. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Paper codes
Does anyone know what the code represents on top of the first paper here? Is there a field in this template that uses those codes? I am plaining to recreate an article that will have papers with these codes so I just want to know if there is some way to use these without a link being used (e.g. ISBN is used for books). I am no expert when it comes to referencing.  Volcano guy  10:00, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks like it is a file number. Plug 31M04NE2003 into the AFRI File Number on the search page. You could add it using AFRI 31M04NE2003. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The code doesn't look like any original attribute of the document; I would say that it, and the number 2.18123, had been added upon receipt - these numbers (and the associated barcode) appear on several other pages, in any blank space, usually a corner. Evidence for the document being a scan, not an original, is also suggested on page 94, where somebody has doodled additional lines on a diagram to make it look like a cat. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:09, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * All of the papers are scaned; look on the left side of the papers and you should see black dots that most likely represent punch holes. After the id (|id=AFRI 31M04NE2003) is added should there still be a link to the papers to prove it is a real document? The reason I do not want to add a link to the papers is because I do not know if all of them exist on the internet and the links will likely become broken, worn, etc over time. There is clearly not an AFRI page like there is for ISBN, ISSN, PMID, etc. Perhaps it should be a new field.  Volcano guy  12:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You don't need a new parameter. Just use
 * http://www.geologyontario.mndm.gov.on.ca/mndmfiles/afri/data/imaging/31M04NE2003//31M04NE2003.Pdf
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:48, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You do not understand. I can not seem to find all of the papers I am looking for on the internet. Therefore I can not add a url for all of them. http://www.geologyontario.mndm.gov.on.ca/mndmfiles/afri/data/imaging/31M04NE2003//31M04NE2003.Pdf is only one of the documents that appears to be online. For there to be a url with the references the papers have to exist on the internet. It is the same for books and other stuff; if something is not online the best thing to do is add the ISBN, ISSN, PMID or whatever that is necessary. But there appears to be nothing similar on Wikipedia for the papers I want to add. And like I said, WP does not have the AFRI field if that is what is needed for these kinds of papers. If there is no field for these papers the papers can not be used as references.  Volcano guy  13:54, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Huh? There is no requirement that the publication have an ISBN or the like; many books were published before the advent of ISBN. The template has specific field for ISBN, ISSN and PMID because they link. The id field is for any other id, such as the file numbers in question. Is there a reason you cannot use id as illustrated above? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:28, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I do not have a problem using id, I was just wondering if the references would be alright without a url or something similar because there isn't a page for ARFI numbers.  Volcano guy  16:54, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no requirement that a document be available online. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 20:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No, but this document is available online, and it is the online version that is being cited. Given the size and quality of the AFRI resource, it might be worth facilitating references to it. LeadSongDog come howl!  16:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've bashed out a primitive template at . Feel free to improve on it. LeadSongDog come howl!  17:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * At p.98 of the pdf it is clear that 2.18123 is simply the "Submission number" (ministry file number) for the claim.LeadSongDog come howl!  21:24, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Having a problem with URL
I'm having a spot of bother over at Michael Fasham. I tried to add a URL to the first cited source there, but the full URL now appears in the references section rather than just hyperlinking the title of the journal source cited. I think I'm using the template correctly, but can't for the life of me work out why this is happening. Any ideas? Cheers, --P LUMBAGO 16:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * This happens when you have newline characters in the title. Changing them to spaces fixes it. I've fixed your example in exactly this way. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah-ha. Brilliant - thanks for sorting that for me.  I'll look out for that in the future.  Cheers, --P LUMBAGO  21:03, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Annotation field
There should be an annotation field. -- Tomdo08 (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 05:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) What is the purpose of an annotation field?
 * 2) What style guide calls for an annotation field?
 * 3) Where should the field display?
 * 4) This would need to be added to citation/core

Multiple issue numbers
I have encountered a few examples of issues of magazines having two separate issue numbers - i.e. an issue number within a volume and a separate "total" issue number - an example is this issue of Flight (i.e. Vol XXII No 50), no. 1146 - any sensible way of capturing this in the template while remaining readable? Nigel Ish (talk) 10:57, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No general bibliographic system that I know allows for such cases to be handled. They ALWAYS force you to pick only one. If you absolutely must put both, then putting the second one in the "id" field is your best guess. Circéus (talk) 18:25, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In which case I'd put the volume-specific one in issue and the "total" one in the id. That is, XXII50No. 1146. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

New additional parameters: "E-ISSN" and "P-ISSN" wanted.
When periodical publications appears in both print and electronic form then they allways[citation needed] have two separate ISSN numbers where the electronic ISSN, although not compulsory, often is refered to as: "e-ISSN" (or "eISSN"), while the print ISSN is called p-ISSN.

The template: does not yet handle it well if one tries to put something like: "nnnn-nnnn(Web);nnnn-nnnn(Print)" into the ISSN parameter. (The resulting ISSN-link to WorldCat.org becomes useless). I have also encountered instances where the "cite journal"-template rendered the print-ISSN twice. (Strikeout added on superfluous information --User:Seren-dipper 01:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)).

I propose that the template:Cite journal be expanded to include two separate parameters: E-ISSN and P-ISSN in addition to the current, plain: ISSN parameter. The latter should be used only when one is unsure which type it is.

Unfortunately I do not know how to fix templates, myself, so would you (someone) please give it a try? --Seren-dipper (talk) 21:57, 24 July 2010 (UTC) --Seren-dipper (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Your example where the "cite journal"-template rendered the print-ISSN twice is easily explained: in order to be processed correctly, and thus become linkable, the issn parameter expects a valid ISSN, and nothing else. A valid ISSN is either eight digits, or two groups of four digits separated by a hyphen. The presence of any other characters - including spaces within the parameter value - will cause trouble. The subject has been brought up before, see the archives.
 * You should give the ISSN for the edition which you obtained the information from: if you consulted a print edition, give the print ISSN, etc. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW I only ever use ISSNs at for a) offline-only, mildly obscure publications or b) publication with homonyms. The only situation where I,d use both would be on the article about the periodical! Circéus (talk) 23:34, 24 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree. Cite only the version that you actually read. For most uses, ISSNs are needed only when referring to the periodical as a whole. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 23:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

What the E-ISSN and P-ISSN tags will be used for
I disagree with the above claims that: "one ISSN is more than enough". The ISSNs will be used for quickly looking up whether, or not, one has easy access to an article. It will then, most likely, be completely irrelevant which of the e- or the p-edition was used by the author of the Wikipedia article.Besides the above: The bibliographies, where appears, may be used in more ways than one: For example when one is trying to get a grip on a somewhat vague concept that may be beyond the scope of a single Wikipedia article, then one will probably want to look closer at quite a few of the references given in articles slightly related to the vague topic. Then, clearly, the time-saving feature of having the ISSN-type(s) specified (see below), would be especially nice.
 * If you think of "a bibliography" only the way the word is defined in Cambridge Dictionary Online, namely: "a list of the books and articles that have been used by someone when writing a particular book or article" (and thus use bibliographies for little more than eventually checking up on whether a Wikipedia-editor has done a good (truthful) job or not), then one ISSN may be sufficient.
 * But: An equally legitimate way to think of "a bibliography", is more in line with the second meaning given in Wiktionary, namely: "A list of books or documents relevant to a particular subject or author". This latter perspective may see the references not just as a list of evidence about validity, but also as a valuable feature providing ample opportunities for serendipity. (That is: The references are being used as means to find information that you did not know you wanted)..

Well, for these reasons, both (print) p-ISSN and (electronic) e-ISSN are clearly useful, and sometimes very valuable. The fact that many wikipedia users never use reference lists this way, is not an argument against having the additional parameters: E-ISSN and P-ISSN — is it?

Hence both p-ISSN and e-ISSN should have an easy opportunity to be provided. Even in cases where a  provides only one ISSN, it still may be very useful to have the type specified, to make the reader see, at a glance, whether or not it is an electronic E-ISSN, because some libraries and university campuses have a lot of online periodicals available only a few mouse clicks away (while peaking at a print version may require too much activity for you to bother go looking for it — and then of course, for print journals, you would like to avoid any unproductive mouse clicking at all). This would be elegantly provided for by having both E-ISSN and P-ISSN in. --Seren-dipper (talk) 01:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I have now (above) slightly rewritten and clarified both my proposal and argument. --Seren-dipper (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Several templates in this series support ISSN, such as cite web. All are based on citation/core, which is where this request should be made. Please indicate where and how these fields should show in the citation.---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 02:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no mention of ISSN in Template:Cite_web !What do you mean? --Seren-dipper (talk) 21:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll bite: Why would you use to cite a journal? LeadSongDog  come howl!  05:00, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * @Gadget850 - does not support issn, not even as an undocumented parameter.  does, as do  and  (poss others, but I've not checked apart from  and ). They are passed to  via its ISSN parameter, and passed on to  to be processed there.
 * @all: To support two different ISSNs, then at the very least, changes would need to be made to both and  plus those outer templates which do recognise issn. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:55, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Above, Gadget850 asks me to "Please indicate where and how these fields should show in the citation". I do not even know where and how, exactly, the plain ISSN is shown today, so I am afraid that I am unable to give any educated instructions about the various potential combinations. Therefore:Could someone else please make required suggestions (/instructions) about how ISSN, p-ISSN and e-ISSN should be shown in the citation? --Seren-dipper (talk) 05:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The purpose of providing an ISSN (either type) is to more readily link to (and verify) the serial title. It is more or less the same as providing an NLMID, OCLC or CODEN number. Any of these will unambiguously identify the serial, but neither the volume, issue, nor article. If a unique identifier for the article is available (such as a DOI, PMID, Bibcode, JSTOR, etc) and verified, then that would be preferred to and should supplant the need for an ISSN. Until a unique article identifier is known, I would propose that the provided ISSN or OCLC be shown the same way the DOI otherwise would have.LeadSongDog come howl!  06:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * One surely gets a unique identification by a id-number from any of: NLMID, OCLC, CODEN, DOI, PMID, Bibcode, JSTOR, etc. But that is not the issue here!. The point of having both electronic and print ISSNs always shown, in a cite journal, is to facilitate quickly finding out the status (print and/or electronic) of the journal, in your own organization's library, which maybe not uses any of the aforementioned unique identifiers in its local "quick look-up system". --Seren-dipper (talk) 06:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I "oppose this" (for lack of better words). ISSN rarely amount to more than clutter in citation templates, and the utility of having the "added functionality" of finding the status of a journal in your library is not worth that clutter IMO. The only instances I can fathom using are in journal articles, like Journal of Physics G, but then the ISSN/eISSN are listed in the infobox, and when a publication share the same name as with another publication (in which case, only one ISSN is needed to resolve the ambiguity). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Seren-dipper may not quite have understood my meaning: there are two classes of identifiers. One class identifies the specific article, while the second only identifies the journal. My intent was that we should only list the second-class identifier until we find a first-class identifier. After that, the second-class identifier is somewhat redundant. Regarding Headbomb's comment I would point out that there is utility in knowing which library to go to for a specific journal. The second class identifiers are helpful for this, as a query at WorldCat.org can provide a list of libraries sorted by proximity to a given zipcode/postal code. LeadSongDog come howl!  13:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * To LeadSongDog: No! I did not misunderstand you.<BR>My point is that sometimes it is much quicker to look up the availability of a journal, at your own library, by using the ISSN rather than by a unique article identifier (such as: DOI or the others mentioned above)!<BR>To Headbomb: If you never will use ISSNs this way, then I admit ISSNs may be a bit "cluttering". But the utility and time saved for people who do use ISSNs this way, I think, will by far outweigh the relatively small inconvenience to you.<BR>It would not have mattered if it was only one reference to look up, but when one would like to check the status of 40 or more in a single study session, then having the ISSNs at hand will surely make quite a positive difference. --Seren-dipper (talk) 23:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ISSNs are clutter. No citation styles allows for them for exactly that reason. Typing "J. Phys. G" in your library's search engine (or "Journal of Physics G") will give you the same results, unless your library's search engine is well below average. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:26, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ISSNs are valuable! <BR>If one wants: "J. Phys. G" but searches for: "Jour Phys G" then one often will not find it!<BR>1. A journal title or abbreviated title will often be misspelled! (Either due to plain typographic error, nonstandard abbreviaton or differences in US/Brittish orthography). 2. When your library subscribes to only one of several different magazines with identical titles, then it easily does happen that you do not notice this before you are actually browsing through the wrong journal trying to find the article you wanted to read. 3. Besides, sometimes it does matter, to the user, whether the journal (s)he has access to is in print or electronic form. (Not everyone are able to read print on paper while they may still be able to access electronic texts). With all ISSNs at hand, the only search engine one will need is a simple list of ISSNs with the date ranges available from one's library. Another matter is that it would be of interest to have a choice, in Special:Preferences, to elect:"Do show ISSNs from cite journal, even when an unique article identifier is availabe". Then there would be no "clutter" at all – for anyone. :-) But I don't think that should be regarded as any prerequisite for adding p-ISSN and e-ISSN to cite journal. --Seren-dipper (talk) 01:52, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

So how are we to handle these?
I've got a journal ref with an E-ISSN and a print ISSN, but the template only seems to support "issn" according to the documentation. What to do? Skomorokh  15:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If you obtained your information from a printed edition, use the ISSN for the print version. If your info was from a web edition, use the E-ISSN. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup. wp:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT in action. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Bug: URL contains spurious characters
The JSTOR URL that is generated here is "http://www.jstor.org/stable/2268810.&#32". The ".&#32" is spurious, and should not be there. The "url" parameter to the template ends after "2268810":



The complete generated HTML is:



<a href="/wiki/Alonzo_Church" title="Alonzo Church">Church, Alonzo</a> (1937). <a href="/wiki/Journal_of_Symbolic_Logic" title="Journal of Symbolic Logic">Journal of Symbolic Logic</a> 2 (1): 42–43. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2268810.&amp;#32" class="external free" rel="nofollow">http://www.jstor.org/stable/2268810.&amp;#32</a>;"…a human calculator, provided with pencil and paper and explicit instructions, can be regarded as a kind of Turing machine." <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;rft.genre=article&amp;rft.atitle=&amp;rft.jtitle=%5B%5BJournal+of+Symbolic+Logic%5D%5D&amp;rft.aulast=Church&amp;rft.aufirst=Alonzo&amp;rft.au=Church%2C%26%2332%3BAlonzo&amp;rft.date=1937&amp;rft.volume=2&amp;rft.issue=1&amp;rft.pages=42%E2%80%9343&amp;rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fstable%2F2268810&amp;rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Template_talk:Cite_journal"> &#160;

Did I do something wrong? —Mark Dominus (talk) 05:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a bug with quote:

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 07:42, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your attention to this matter. —Mark Dominus (talk) 15:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As I suspected, this is a problem in citation/core
 * Taking this to that talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't show as a problem if you provide either title or accessdate:
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In this case I omitted the title because the article is untitled. Is this not correct?  I was wondering if there should be a parameter for a non-title description.  In this case it would be something like "Untitled review of 1936 Turing paper".  —Mark Dominus (talk) 00:27, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If it's untitled (which it does appear to be, although that is unusual), leave the title off. But you should still be able to add 26 January 2011 which will be a tested workaround. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:13, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In this case I omitted the title because the article is untitled. Is this not correct?  I was wondering if there should be a parameter for a non-title description.  In this case it would be something like "Untitled review of 1936 Turing paper".  —Mark Dominus (talk) 00:27, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If it's untitled (which it does appear to be, although that is unusual), leave the title off. But you should still be able to add 26 January 2011 which will be a tested workaround. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:13, 27 January 2011 (UTC)