Template talk:Cite web/Archive 1

Author &rarr; Last, First
I think we ought to transplant the "author/first/last" processing from cite book and cite journal. Or is there any particular reason why authors of web references should be treated less nicely than others? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes. Can be transplanted. --Ligulem 08:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Done, also includes "authorlink/coauthors". HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I used this template with coauthors, where do they map to as they seemed invisible? Rex the first talk 21:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Scratching my head and feeling a bit not to understand completely :P. The docs here are a bit short (look at the template page). You could also take a look at cite book (talk page there). coauthors here should work like on cite book. See this:
 * --Ligulem 22:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * --Ligulem 22:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

When coauthors are used without authors: → Rex the first talk 16:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, ok. Think I got it. The thing is, the logic of the template is made in such a way that either (first and last) or author must be specified. This means the first author must be specfied in order to display what was given in coauthors. In other words: no coauthors without author. I hope I didn't increase the confusion... :-) --Ligulem 16:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you mind if I tried to change to so you could specify coauthors only (as some links have two authors and neither are the senior author). My attempt so far (I know this doesn't work but it my first attempt)

<--- I was trying to only get semicolon if 'last' was specified }} Rex the first talk 23:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't do that. If you feel compelled to put all authors into one param, put them all into "author". --Ligulem 09:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine, I don't really understand how it works so if its a bad idea I will leave it! Rex the first talk 12:31, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

accessdate
I assume that the accessdate is for when I, the editor, last accessed the URL, right? It's not actually stated. Also, if I happen to be editing the article and access the URL, and it's some times (months or whatever) past the last accessdate, should I update it if its convenient? Herostratus 16:48, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * You are right. That's also why the template spits it out like this: "URL accessed on xxxxx". The accessdate is the date when an editor checked the link works and points to the correct info. Per the updating, I'm not sure. At first sight I would say I can't see why it would hurt if you do update the accessdate (but only after having checked that the link works and points to the correct material). By the way, if you are changing accessdates, please enter them in the ISO format to the param accessdate (accessyear needs not be used in this case, just do not specify that param then). Some info may also be found on WP:CITE. --Ligulem 18:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Why is the accessdate wiki-linked? It's certainly an insignificant date (per WP:DATE, and is arguably completely unrelated to the reference itself. Can we please  remove the link?  RossPatterson 21:07, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Um. That's probably a controversial one. We have had it like that for a very long time already. And there are fans of having this linked. One argument for having it linked is that the user preferences (Special:Preferences → "Date and time" tab → "Date format") influence how that date is formatted, but only if that date is linked. If there is no link, user prefs have no effect. So I believe there are some fans of linking because of that effect alone. --Ligulem 22:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I can't see why it would be controversial in and of itself - the dates are meaningless, at least as far as the article goes. But I see your point about the date preferences, especially since I use a non-default setting myself.  It's a weakness in the MediaWiki software that date preferences are only applied inside wiki-links, but I guess we have to live with it.  Never mind! RossPatterson 23:19, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The wiki-link is also causing a dab problem. I'm working on dab of "unknown", and I've got a template usage of: * which automatically creates a link to unknown. How should I fix this. Can I delete the accessdate  parameter, or fix some othew way. Thanks. Simon12 16:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Your are using that template incorrectly. The accessdate is the date when the editor that created the reference checked that the link works and points to the material that serves as reference. Please specify the whole date for accessdate in the form YYYY-MM-DD (just ignore the accessyear parameter, it is optional in this case). See the examples on this page. Never specify a parameter as "unknown" on the citation templates. Just leave optional parameters away in the call. --Ligulem 16:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't create the templage usage in question, so it's not me who used it incorrectly, and I don't have the actual accessdate. (I'm just trying to remove links to the "unknown" dab page). I will remove the accessdate parameter, leaving just the accessyear parameter. Thanks for the quick response. Simon12 17:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that didn't quite work. Removing the accessdate paramater removed the "URL accessed..." phrase, and trying accessdate=2004 without the accessyear created "URL accessed on 2004". How should I do this when only the year of the access is available? Simon12 18:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * On which article is that problem? Might be easier if I can have a look. As I said, that usage of the template is wrong. If the link still works, then you could enter the accessdate of today. Otherwise convert the reference to not using this template (plain manual wikitext) and don't give the accessdate. The use of this template here for references is not mandatory. --Ligulem 18:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Cardiff_South_and_Penarth - See Refs section at the end. I just checked and link does still work, so I will update the information later today. But I'm curious as to what your recommended fix would have been, if the link no longer worked, in case I see this in other places. Thanks! Simon12 19:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well then. This problem is solved. If you have another one, just drop a note on my talk if you need a second opinion :P --Ligulem 21:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the wording to Retrieved from URL accessed as this is meant to be when the source was used and not when the URL was last checked to be online Citing sources, hope that doesn't ruin anything! Rex the first talk 07:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You've just retroactively redefined a parameter in a template that is used by over 9,500 articles. I think that's a significant event, especially since you have no way of knowing if your new meaning is correct for those articles.  How does Citing sources bear on this change?  I see an example there that includes a "retrieved on", but nothing that justfies re-interpreting the accessdate parameter this way.  RossPatterson 01:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell (I could be wrong) but I left the parameter accessdate but it appears as 'retrieved on'. I would strongly disagree with "URL accessed on xxx" as this is not updated everytime it is accessed and shouldn't be; it is meant to explain when the source was used so if changes occur or the page is taken offline there is a possibility of using an internet archive to find the original source the editor used. I agree that re-interpreting retrospectively is bad but I feel not as bad as leaving "URL accessed on xxx" to perpetuate. Maybe we could introduce a new 'retrieved' parameter and run them side by side and phase accessdate out? Rex the first talk 16:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that's your interpretation, sure. But up at the top if this section you'll see an exchange between Herostratus and Ligulem to the effect that accessdate is indeed a "URL was verified on" date, which would of course begin when it was first retrieved but can certainly be re-verified whenever someone undertakes a reference-check.  The other templates that have it (e.g., cite news, cite journal, cite book are vague about what "access" means, but I believe the average editor would read it to mean "someone looked at this reference".


 * Backing up, what problem are you trying to solve? Do you dislike the specific text "URL accessed on date"?  I don't care what the text is, I care about the meaning of the date.  We can always fix the text, after all, it's in the template.  But we can't easily fix 9,500 pages that mean one thing by that date if we decide it should mean another.  And I think there is genuine value in a "reference verified as of" date, much moreso than a "reference first examined on" date (which can always be ferreted out from the article history). RossPatterson 01:04, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

That seems fine, "reference verified as of" (or words to that effect) is better than "retrieved" and I think it might be worth changing it on Citing sources. I was trying to solve the problem that when I click on a link to see a reference I feel that I have 'accessed it' and I never update the reference last accessdate and neither do most editors/readers so saying that this accessdate is when the URL was last accessed seems wrong. (A few too many accesses in the last sentence!) Rex the first talk 07:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree with RossPatterson, what's the problem with "URL accessed on XXX"? It shows the last time a website was accessed as a source. Clear, factual. "Reference verified as of" is unnecessary as this template is not exclusively used for references, see i.e. counter-terrorism. &mdash; SHINING  EYES  03:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think that "URL accessed on XXX" looks very good. It looks a bit sloppy and unprofessional, particularly on pages where the 'cite web' template is used for lots of references. I think that the wording should be changed in the template to, "Retrieved XXX", which is in agreement with the APA Style: References for Electronic Source Materials. "Reference verified as of" seems a bit too wordy and awkward. Dr. Cash 21:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree with Herostratus and RossPatterson. The date should be the last time it was accessed and the information that is cited, is verified to be true.--Ccson 17:21, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Periods
This template. puts way too many. periods. in the listing, especially if. the author's first name. is. an. initial. Someone who understands "esoteric" templates should remove some of the periods and convert others to commas, at least in certain cases. e.g. if there is no year, but there is an author's name, use a comma between the author's name and the name of the page. There is no need for a period between the web link and the name of the complete work, etc.--Srleffler 03:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, here's a case of a missing period. Why doesn't Cite web put a period after the author when specified with last+first?  Compare




 * which produces




 * (no period) with




 * which produces




 * (correct, with period after the author). -- JimR 05:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Fixed. --Ligulem 07:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick fix! -- JimR 07:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Date/Year/Month
Should we also transplant the date processing from other cite templates? —Phil | Talk 13:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see a full date, a la Template:cite book's "date". The date of "publication" of a web reference is important enough to be fully qualified when it can be determined, rather than just using "year". I'd be willing to code something up if there's interest. RossPatterson 20:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * We could copy that part from cite book. I think we would have to replace:


 * with


 * I have no objections to do that. Anybody unhappy if I do that? --Ligulem 21:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Please do. It will make it much easier to switch between cite web and cite (anything else with an online reference).--Scott Davis Talk 23:30, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Done . --Ligulem 23:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured article candidates/AIDS/archive1
The article on AIDS has been nominated for FA status, yet the first comment in place is about the wikitext. It is called a perfect example of what best practice isn't. AIDS extensively uses this template along with the cite journal and cite book templates within the text. This makes for better reading and better referencing. Just thought people should know. --Bob 00:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

If no author?
I'm having trouble knowing how to cite a web source that has no author (see citation of Vetch scandal in Vicia). Thanks. --Singkong2005 05:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The parameter "author" is optional (see the explanations at template:cite web). Just don't specify it on the template call. Example:
 * --Ligulem 07:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * --Ligulem 07:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

year without author
It would be nice to be able to include the date of publication of documents that have no author. At present, this yields the year 'floating' at the start of the citation, which is unsatisfactory e.g.



A better renderingn would be


 * I Am A Search Engine. Google, 1066-01-01. URL accessed on 2006-11-04.

i.e. move the year to follow the publisher when there is no author. I don't speak metatemplate, so I don't want to boldly break everything... -Splash talk 17:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * You could start to get your feet wet on rocket science under your user space: user:Splash/cite web (could be used as for test inclusions, for example on user talk:Splash/cite web). BTW, qif doesn't bite :-) (just don't look at the code of qif..). --Ligulem 18:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Experimental implementation using ParserFunctions
Hi folks. I have done an experimental implementation of cite web using ParserFunctions at User:Ligulem/work/cite web 1 (first non-meta template implementation!). Test inclusions can be seen at User talk:Ligulem/work/cite web 1. Please keep in mind that ParserFunctions have been enabled on a trial basis. I would propose to put User:Ligulem/work/cite web 1 into template:cite web and see if it works. Thoughts? --Ligulem 15:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * My current version of User:Ligulem/work/cite web 1 doesn't work if any of the parameters is set to "0". See also . --Ligulem 22:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Fixed by Tim: --Ligulem 17:59, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I applied it on a trial basis. Please revert quickly if you see anything broken. Crossing fingers. --Ligulem 20:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Consistency
I've noticed that mixing some of the cite templates can make a References section look a bit jumbled. For example, cite news puts the full date after the publisher, but cite web puts the year in parentheses after the author. I'm not saying one format is better than another, but that there should be consistency between the two, if possible. For an example, see: Ex-gay. eaolson 00:11, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Style changes
I really like the cite web template, and think it makes web citation easy to do without having to worry about stylizing everything with wikicode. I do have some problems with its style, though:
 * Retrieval dates are links — the dates that are linked are the dates at which the author of the Wikipedia article went and looked up the document. How are links that lead to pages that tell what happened on those days relevant? They don't have anything to do with the cited material or the article, and thus, we should acknowledge the manual of style in this instance and not link.


 * Linking less than important dates is done frequently in wikipedia so the date will display according to user prefs. Unfortunately unlinked dates will not follow user preferences.  So while your points are very valid, complete dates are frequently input as a link in ISO format to support the user preferences.  "Fixing" this would require code changes, and possibly new wiki text syntax.--J Clear 13:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Year of work is shown in front of the title when the author is not known (e.g. (2005). Title of book. URL accessed on [...]) — this is awkward. The APA style guide suggests that the title of the work goes first when no author can be identified.
 * The place where the reference can be obtained states the word URL. Since this is a web citation, it's obvious that the resource must exist somewhere on the Internet, and as such, I would suggest omitting the word entirely.
 * Since the "publisher" is the name of the site that the document came from, it's best off being italicized. It might also be useful to name the parameter "website_name" or something of the sort to indicate that one can input the name of the site in this field, since "publisher" might not be entirely obvious. This conflicts with "work", which is italicized; which one to prioritize?


 * "publisher" isn't intended to be the name of the web site, although this may occur if the website and publishing organization name are similar.--J Clear 13:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Other than that, I find this an excellent template. I'm going to make an example of how I think the reference template should be in case no editor is willing to make any changes to this effect directly (and I really don't like editing high-use templates shamelessly). But it would be great if we could discuss changes like this. —Michiel Sikma, 19:04, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The best way to propose changes is to make a proposal for a new version of the template code under your user space. This is quite common. For example you could do it under User:Michiel Sikma/cite web and do some test inclusions at User talk:Michiel Sikma/cite web (using the syntax . Please also have a look at the other citation templates like cite book, cite journal, etc (including discussions there). We usually try to keep them consistent where possible. --Ligulem 20:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Referring URL
Has the inclusion of an optional parameter to hold referring URL information been considered? This information could be useful, displayed or not, for tracking URLs that have gone dead. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Considering merger with 'waybackref' template
There is a more specialized template, the Waybackref, which deals specifically with references to pages in the Internet Archive, but which has fewer parameters than cite web. I think that we could do away with Waybackref by making judicious additions to cite web. My suggestions for consideration: Thanks for considering this. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:11, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Add a parameter 'archive' with full name 'Archival Repository' with the usage description 'If the target URL points to a page in a page archive, such as Internet Archive, indicate the identity of the archive here.' This parameter could be used for Google Cache and other shorter or longer term archival stores if they exist.
 * Add a parameter 'oriurl' with full name 'Original URL' with the usage description 'If the target URL points to a page in a page archive, such as Internet Archive, indicate the original URL that was at one time live on the Internet here.' This parameter wouldn't necessarily be needed, particularly if the original URL is included in the archival URL, and because the mechanics of page location as instantiated in the URL should be independent of the content of the page for purposes of Wikipedia.


 * Hey! Just dropping by to say that I've seen this proposal and I think it is noteworthy to have a deeper look at this. I will try to put it on the list of my "things to ruminate". Quick first comment: may I suggest to use lowercase parameter names only, this fits better with the new lowercase param style used on cite web, cite book, cite journal, etc. Another note: If possible, it would be cool if you could provide a proposal for the new code of the template. I know I'm getting boring with this perennial proposal here, but you could for example put the proposed new template code into User:Ceyockey/cite web and use that as on a page with test inclusions at, for example, User talk:Ceyockey/cite web. Just ask me on my talk if you need help with doing that (take also a look at user:Ligulem/work/cite book 1 and user talk:Ligulem/work/cite book 1 for an example how that can be done). The conditionals are documented at ParserFunctions. As an alternative, you could put up a page with simulated calls inside &lt;pre>..&lt;/pre> (or &lt;nowiki>..&lt;/nowiki>) tags and manually created proposed template output (just provide the plain wanted wikisource that your simulated template calls should produce). --Ligulem 07:57, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I changed the 'OrigURL' parameter suggestion to 'oriurl' based on your lowercase suggestion. I'll look at doing a userspace version as you suggest.  Thanks. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 12:30, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've got a version of this that I'm playing with at User:RossPatterson/cite web, with examples of its use at User talk:RossPatterson. The difference from the suggestions above is that I've only added archiveurl= and archivedate=, leaving the original URL in url= for historical reasons.  The intent is to make it easy for someone to convert a cite web that has gone offline into an archive reference, simply by adding the URL of the archived copy and the date when it was archived.  I've made both parameters required if either is specified, since I believe the date when a copy was made is significant.  The end result is that if the archive parameters are specified, the link on the title= value points to the archive copy, and the text "archived from the original on archivedate" is added, with a link to the url= URL on the phrase "the original".  See the examples I mentioned above for some test cases and one full example (User_talk:RossPatterson).  Comments and criticism are very welcome.  RossPatterson 01:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Good job done. This is a cool proposal. I think we should apply it on the hot template. However, waiting a few days for additional comments by others cannot harm. --Ligulem 07:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good solution. Thank you.  What is the path toward consensus and a modification to the main template (the hot version)? The few of us agreeing doesn't exactly constitute a quorum for such a widely used template, I wouldn't think. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I would say if there appears no opposition within a week or so, we can do it. That's fair enough. Those that are interested in this template need to put it on their watchlists. --Ligulem 20:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've added a note about this discussion at Template talk:Waybackref in case there are folks that monitor the template. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I had no idea that template existed, but think adding the arhive parameters to this one is a good idea. --Scott Davis Talk 10:53, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

FYI, I'm still planning to make this change, but I'm holding off since the template is in such a high state of flux right now. RossPatterson 01:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for doing this. I look forward to the change. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I have updated the template with the new archiveurl= and archivedate= parameters, as discussed above in this section. The usage information has been updated and I have added a few example cases to the Examples section. RossPatterson 04:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Typos
There are a few typos currently in the template for these parameters. Here is the discussion example as it appears now (emphasis mine):

List of psychotropic substances under international control (in English). (PDF) '''(2005-04-30). archived from the original on 2005-09-11 Retrieved''' on 2005-07-06.

There should only be one period after the article title, the one after the actual article date (in this case 2005-04-30). The first mention of "Archived" needs a capital A, and there needs to be an extra period after the archive date, before Retrieved. Can someone fix this? --SevereTireDamage 10:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I added the --Ligulem 14:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Done (I think). —Ruud 15:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Testing:



}} →

Looks good to me. Thanks Ruud! (I start getting accustomed to having the citation templates protected ;) --Ligulem 15:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks fine now, thanks! --SevereTireDamage 12:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Usage documentation
The usage needs to be explained much better, such as for author, last, first, authorlink. - Centrx 18:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * author, last, first, authorlink should behave the same as in cite book (see ). We had some complaints that the docu there is too complicated :P. --Ligulem 21:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Quotes and MediaWiki
Hi guys,

please, take a look at the note section in the G. Napolitano article: any idea why the "double arrow" image which marks external links is put before, or on top of, the final quotation mark? BTW, article titles may already contain quotes. What we can do for this case? :-/ -- Gennaro Prota &thinsp;(talk) 00:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, that article titles may contain quotes in the first place is a non-issue. We're just following standard documentation procedure for nearly every citation format in existence.  I have several objections to changing from   to  /, most importantly that the distinction is meaningless in monobook.  I'll get back to you in a few hours on the Napolitano issue.  Ingoolemo talk 00:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Position of date/year/month if no author
The newest changes by Evil Saltine look interesting. I did some fixes. The new position for the date stuff when there is no author is handy (We have discussed something similar on cite book but haven't yet taken it into use over there, maybe we can learn form here). Some notes: Being bold is sometimes cool, but please don't forget that if this template is changed, 9'500 pages get their cache invalidated on the en wiki. So doing brain surgery in a sandbox might be a good idea (ok, I'm guilty on this myself, just as a reminder :-). --Ligulem 09:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Question: couldn't we keep using the enclosing braces on the date/year/month, even if it is at the "no author" position? What are the pros and cons? --Ligulem 09:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

'Format' parameter
I have used the 'format' parameter a bit more expansively recently than is noted in the usage guidelines. For instance, I've entered the values 'BLOG' and 'FAQ' in a couple of instances. The reason why I've done this is that source lifecycle and notability can significantly differ based on the type of web resource; I don't advocate a drastic atomization of 'types' of web sources, but I think that someone knowing that a source is a blog entry or an FAQ page is somewhat useful to the interpretation and utilization of that web resource. Perhaps rather than contaminating the 'format' parameter, a new parameter might be created, or would such 'type' information be better placed in the 'work' parameter field? Your thoughts would be appreciated on this. Regards, User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 13:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Uh. Please not into the "work" parameter. Using the "format" param for this fits much better. Or do we need a new param? (Oh noes! not another param :-). I'm thinking about a param with name "type". But I have no idea how that should be displayed... --Ligulem 16:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * This would be especially helpful with links to streaming video or youtube content as well. Paul C/T+ 03:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Removing links from dates
Hey all. What do you think about dropping the internal link brackets around the dates at the end of Cite web? I don't see why they're there, to be honest. They're used as reference to the date at which the author of the article grabbed the link and put it up there. If you think about it, you'll find that this has absolutely nothing to do with the article or the source and therefore seems a bit odd to be linking you to a page which is completely irrelevant. You're not likely to find "Author X adds source to Wikipedia article" in one of the date articles, afterall. I'm not exactly sure what the policy on linking is on Wikipedia, but isn't it so that one of the criteria is that links are to be relevant to the subject or something the author might want to also read about when he's reading that article? Or maybe there's some other reason why the links are there? —Michiel Sikma, 05:43, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Copying here what I wrote at (scroll up) in reply to RossPatterson:
 * "Um. That's probably a controversial one. We have had it like that for a very long time already. And there are fans of having this linked. One argument for having it linked is that the user preferences (Special:Preferences → "Date and time" tab → "Date format") influence how that date is formatted, but only if that date is linked. If there is no link, user prefs have no effect. So I believe there are some fans of linking because of that effect alone.--Ligulem 22:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)"
 * See also the controversy around the edits of user:Bobblewik . --Ligulem 07:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should rehold this discussion. It's true that dates may be changed to suit the needs this way, but that's essentially going against pretty much every style guide ever written, including WP:DATE. It's also true that the links should never have been made in the first place by whomever designed that aspect of this template, since it's true that they really don't hold any relevance to either the cited text or the article at all. Users may like to see dates in their format, which is perfectly understandable, but there's not really any reason for it. Unless the dates have some kind of other use, but I don't think so at the moment. —Michiel Sikma, 19:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * For myself, I do not have a problem if you want to remove the link. I just wanted to warn that this is a controversial topic and once the links are removed, date preferences won't work any longer. I also know that there are a whole lot of fans for that feature. You could be bold and remove the linking from the template, but I would expect that this will be reverted within less than 24 hours (not by me, I try to be neutral on this :-).--Ligulem 20:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't want to do something that might upset a lot of users. I just think it's too bad nobody's here to discuss it. Maybe I should remove it and then later immediately add it back in, in case people post here stating that they disagree with such an edit (or simply revert my edit). —Michiel Sikma, 05:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok. That's a valid reasoning. If you are prepared to recieve the potential flak, remove the link on a trial base. As I already said: I for myself do not care if there is a link or not. But maybe it would be good to wait until the "" issue (below) is settled. Sigh. --Ligulem 07:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think you were also taking part in that huge debate on reference sizes. Because of it, I know how annoying it is if someone makes an edit to something that's used a lot and then isn't around to change it back. So yeah, I'll wait until other discussions have settled so that things don't get too complicated. —Michiel Sikma, 10:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's a vote for keeping the links based on the format effect. WP:DATE says If a date includes both a month and a day, then the date should normally be linked in order to allow readers' date preferences to work, displaying the reader's chosen format. In particular, if you remove the linking, most uses will get the ISO style "2006-05-24" instead of 2006-05-24, which many readers will find quite odd. --Scott Davis Talk 10:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we should keep the links as well for the same date formatting reasoning. By extension, why is it that the "date" and "year" fields are not to be wikilinked?
 * date: Full date of publication, in ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD format, eg. 2006-02-17. Must not be wikilinked.
 * OR: year: Year of publication, and month: Name of the month of publication. If you also have the day, use date instead. Must not be wikilinked.
 * I think they should be linked as well, but I guess that is another debate. Paul C/T+ 03:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I at first thought that they shouldn't be wikilinked because they have nothing to do with the actual content. The links lead to places that are totally irrelevant. I only intend to remove the links if there isn't a day, though, so that shouldn't break dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format; just untie the "May 20, 2005"-type dates. —Michiel Sikma, 08:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * (the indentation was becoming a pain...) If there is no day then date formatting isn't an issue and it shouldn't be linked, because the formatting won't change... Paul C/T+ 19:22, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll just unlink them, then! :) —Michiel Sikma, 10:48, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm confused. Has this been done, or not? It is out of the question to simply do it without thought. It will break probably thousands of usages where dates are written is ISO form. It will also result in articles being inconsistenly dated for every user since their preferences will not knock them all into shape. Dates are not wikilinked for encyclopedic usefulness, but so that they render according to preferences set by users. Please do not alter the format now, without having a bot go around and change them all. It would be a disaster. -Splash talk 23:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, nothing has changed. But as of right now the "accessed on" date has brackets and the "article" date does not. I believe they both should be linked, but any change to the template would require a lot of cleanup... Paul C/T+ 02:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I certainly agree that the inconsistency of date linkage in all these cite_x templates is a chronic problem and one that makes me say polite little sweet things every time I use one. I imagine it can be fixed relatively easily by a bot. -Splash talk 13:40, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I imagine it can be fixed relatively easily by a bot. Oh dear. Good luck then! (I'm too tired to list all problems — or too dumb or paranoid, who knows...) --Ligulem 13:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok. I had thought it would be of a similar order of difficulty as the various other parsing tricks that have been conducted with these templates, given the assistance of the AWB developers who, upon a time, were working on a related thing. Anyway, we'll just have to live with it, I guess. -Splash talk 14:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I haven't done anything yet (I've been a little busy since I mentioned that I would) but I only intend to unlink dates that aren't in YYYY-MM-DD format. They're not affected by user preferences. When I do make the change, I'll be sure to report it here. I'm sure that nothing will be broken by unlinking the dates that are in Month 10, Year format. —Michiel Sikma, 08:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Removed links
I have removed the links for a new parameter (in order to avoid breaking old articles). Everything will continue to function as it used to, except I now propose using the accessmonthday and accessyear parameters when using the date in this format: May 10, 2005, etc. —Michiel Sikma, 08:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * (Just the accessdate parameter. Behavior unchanged.)


 * (accessdate and accessyear parameters. Lots of articles use this. Behavior unchanged.)


 * (accessmonthday and accessyear parameters. These are new. They're not linked.)

I feel that this is a fair compromise. There's no breaking of old articles, since only new code was added, and now we can also use this template without linking the dates when using the format that should not be linked. The only drawback is that there is yet another parameter, but I think that's not too much of a problem. —Michiel Sikma, 08:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Which format should not be linked? I was under the impression that ALL date formats should be linked so that date preferences work for everyone... Paul C/T+ 22:44, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

As someone who does a lot of work on dates, I would prefer one simple "accessed" field. The user can then format as an when appropriate. I come across a lot of "accessdate = " and have to treat them differently, similarly I see cases where the wrong format is used in the template with confusing results. The fact that there will be some thousands of dates that need wikifying is a drop in the ocean to the 30% plus of articles that already have date problems. Rich Farmbrough 20:25 14 June 2006 (GMT).

"Publisher" field just broke
Don't know if it's been noticed here or not, but I was just adding some cites to Civil Air Patrol and the publisher field isn't showing up in the output any more. Maybe considering the complexity and very wide usage of this template it should be reverted back a ways to a working version and then any changes should be tested out on a sandbox version before implementation. Bryan 07:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Bug confirmed. I'll have a look. Thanks for reporting. --Ligulem 08:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've reverted my last edit, which introduced a serious bug. This should be fixed now. My apologies. --Ligulem 08:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've reverted my last edit, which introduced a serious bug. This should be fixed now. My apologies. --Ligulem 08:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

About the ""
I noticed that removed them a few days ago  and I totally agree with him, they're irrelevant and ugly for citing sources. If nobody cares, I'll remove them. --Nkcs 03:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think they're unnecessary. It's simply style, and a style I happen to think it useful for references, which ought to clearly distinguish the different metadata it represents. —Michiel Sikma, 05:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * At least please do it correctly when removing. In this edit (which I reverted) you left two brain dead #if's behind (see PF for the syntax). Also removing the "" without prior discussion after they already have been reintroduced (even with a new "curly" param, which was added to the usage documentation right before your edit) is bad. Please keep in mind that this is a high use template. As per the matter, I don't care if there are "" or not. But obviously there are others who do. So bold removal is not a good idea. I'm glad you brought this issue to the talk page now. --Ligulem 07:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry but I agree with their removal, some sections look really disgusting with quotes. See, i.e., the Japan Coast Guard article:


 * ==External links==
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * I don't see any reason for quotes' inclusion, and also, don't you think that official website is quite better than "official website"? In templates like cite news or cite book they can be useful, but not here. &mdash; SHINING  EYES  18:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * In fairness to the pro-quotes crowd, I think those are badly written citations. They are specified as as: , and should probably be re-written as   (i.e., no author and title set to the website's actual title).  Then they would look more like:
 * which seems more reasonable. RossPatterson 23:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * which seems more reasonable. RossPatterson 23:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok. I'll try to summarise what happened so far:
 * The first version of this template had it without quotes. That was copied from the old web reference. So I assume we had it for a relatively long time without the quotes.
 * If I see it correctly, the first one that introduced quotes was Ingolemoo.
 * Gennaro Prota then wanted to have them curled.
 * As already noted above ShiningEyes removed the quotes.
 * Evil saltine added them again, this time with the "curly" param.
 * DLJessup documented that new curly param.
 * Nkcs removed the quotes, leaving two disfunct #if's (but the output was ok).
 * I reverted Nkcs with a request to discuss this.
 * So we have Ingolemoo, Gennaro Prota, Evil saltine and Michiel Sikma (per talk) pro quotes, and ShiningEyes and and Nkcs against (Correct me if I'm wrong). I for myself am neutral on this issue. So how should we proceed? Should we hold a straw poll on this? --Ligulem 07:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Idea for a compromise: could those that want to have the quotes agree to have an optional parameter, let's say "quotes"? We could do it like this: if "quotes" has the value "curly" then there are curly quotes, if it has the value "true" then it has straight quotes. If the param "quotes" is empty (or not defined) then there are no quotes. The new "curly" param could then be removed. Thoughts? --Ligulem 07:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I totally agree with you, excellent idea =) --Nkcs 19:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm neutral on the idea of quotes (I hate them for online viewing but I like them for printed form), but if it must be configurable, I like the quotes="curly"|"none"|"double"|"single"|"silly_french_style"|... way of expressing that preference.


 * But to be absolutely honest, I think the preference should not be expressed in the article text at all. I think it should be a user preference that has a default set by the WP instance (EN vs. FR vs. ...), perhaps with some CSS involvement.  Minor formatting issues like this should almost never be hard-coded in the article - it's just bad practice.  RossPatterson 23:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, but this cannot be solved with CSS. It is nice to specify what would be the best thing to do. But given the current limitations of the system, we should try to be realistic. What I can say though, that the more this template here is used, the more conflicting requirements are piling on here. If we cannot find consensus here what to do, this will end in a desaster. And there are enough people on this wiki which are against using templates like cite web, probably exactly due to this sort of problem. Thanks god Tim we at least now have PF. But I fear since we have that, we just jumped to the next level of complexity here. So the level of PITA on the citation templates seems to be constant or rising. --Ligulem 00:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I also agree with Ligulem's proposal. Thanks for solving this issue so quickly! =) &mdash; SHINING  EYES  02:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I actually don't agree with adding yet another parameter for yet more inconsistency, but I'll ignore it for the sake of compromise. So as far as I'm concerned: go ahead and do so. —Michiel Sikma, 08:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yea, verily. If we've got to include this in the article text, this proposal is the best answer I've seen.RossPatterson 23:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Aha. Seems like we have another wikipedian against quotes: . Would be interesting to hear what User:Coat of Arms thinks about our little compromise we were trying to build here. --Ligulem 17:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * IMO we can live without quotes. They're irrelevant, ugly (note ShiningEyes' example, they look like hell), and we don't really need them. Ligulem's original proposal is interesting, but as Michiel said, "I actually don't agree with adding yet another parameter for yet more inconsistency". A template without quotes is simpler and easier to change, helping both its editors and the general quality of Wikipedia's articles. &mdash; Coat of Arms (talk) 03:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh? It seems that quotes were removed. Who did this? All the references in the speedrun article which used curly quotes are now stripped of quotes. I don't see any consensus in this discussion. What's going on? —Michiel Sikma, 18:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Cough—you might want to consult the history tab of the template (or click on the diff link I provided a few lines above here)... --Ligulem 20:09, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry. I missed that. I thought it was the proposal to add the "curly" parameter, so I skipped over that. I guess I'll add a new parameter into that article, then... It's kind of too bad that this template is a source for so much inconsistency now, though. —Michiel Sikma, 21:43, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Wait, it seems that the "quotes" tag also does not work. Did it turn into a different attribute? Was it removed without consensus? You know, in case you do things like this, please update the explanation in the &lt;noinclude&gt; part of the template! —Michiel Sikma, 21:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll try to be more explicit: If you take a careful look at this diff, you will notice that User:Coat of Arms removed the "curly" param. As I wrote above "Seems like we have another wikipedian against quotes". Note: I did not remove the "curly" param. I made a proposal above here, which was overriden by Coat of Arms's edit. All I ask is to not go forth and back here every few days. This is bad. If we can't stop this, I will request edit protection for this template. After all it is used on more than 9000 pages. So please all: take care! --Ligulem 22:15, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Ugh. You know, I'm fine with dropping quotation marks from this template. It's not a huge deal. But please, please, don't change this template around without notifying the talk page AND updating the main page! I fully support protection of this template in case this happens again. —Michiel Sikma, 05:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Problem with square brackets in title
I am having a problem at the external links of Goldmoon. The title is Re: Jean Rabe and Goldmoon, a new perspective (I think and hope) was: Re: [DL] Populations in cities and towns? I want to keep the original title, but it is breaking the template.



I used to surround the title with nowiki, and worked fine, but somehow it broke lately (or maybe it was just something I thought that worked fine before.



I have shortened the link in the examples above, the real one is this. Is there any way to keep the original title, or will I have to modify it? Thanks for any advice you may have. -- ReyBrujo 18:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * nowiki is apparently no longer allowed inside .. (see ). You could use encoded characters: type  instead of "[" and   instead of "]" . This could be used like this:
 * Ugly, but works. --Ligulem 21:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Thanks for the suggestion! -- ReyBrujo 23:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Thanks for the suggestion! -- ReyBrujo 23:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Added linking to
I've added linking to the param, as this must be specified in ISO format anyway per the doc. This way, we have user date preferences enabled for that param. Per discussion at. --Ligulem 18:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe I've been doing it wrong, and I'm the only one, but I've been using the template like this (example from South Australia):
 * which now yields
 * This presently has an extra set of square brackets around the date. --Scott Davis Talk 05:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This presently has an extra set of square brackets around the date. --Scott Davis Talk 05:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This presently has an extra set of square brackets around the date. --Scott Davis Talk 05:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, you have been doing wrong, because the doc has always specified that should not be wikilinked (this was specified from the beginning, when the  param was introduced – which was not too long ago). Question is, can we tolerate this kind of temprory glitch and just go around fixing them or do we have to remove the links on the template again? This boils down to the question: is this kind of wrong usage of the template a common problem or not? Did you do that on a lot of articles? Could you just fix that by just removing the links on the calls, or is this too much to do? I will start-up my WP:AWB anyway and iterate through all calls (once again...) and fix this as I see it. So this would be fixed in a few days anyway. --Ligulem 07:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I fixed it on South Australia. If you have a list of articles that should be fixed with higher priority, drop me a note on my talk. I will then fix them with top prio. --Ligulem 07:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I gave up. I removed the link on again. This does not work. Wikipedians did not follow the doc of this template here. We have all wild sorts of date formats and or linking stuffed into parameter . See Ariel Sharon for just one of such a very bad example. Sigh. --Ligulem 08:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * CURSES! I just spent like 20 minutes converting like 100 refs in one my articles to do this :). If the articles are messed up perhaps the best thing would be to make a bot, if possible. RN 09:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * My deepest apologies. I shouldn't have done that in the first place (adding the linking on the template). I didn't realize how bad the situation really is until I started trying to fix with WP:AWB. And forget that thing with the bot. The mess is too big. --Ligulem 09:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Don't worry about it :) - it seemed like a technically good change to me :). RN 09:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * How about adding a new param "date-linked" that would override "date" and emit the date in double-brackets (means: linked)? "date-linked" would have to be specified in ISO format. This wouldn't break the existing mess on the articles. --Ligulem 10:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * YES!! Or "ISO-date" or "date-ISO" or "date-yyyy-mm-dd" or something that embeds the concept of "ISO date format" into the param? I consider this issue to be kind of a Wiki mini-disaster, because it currently bypasses the purpose of the user-prefs "date-format".  I have no desire to hard-code my dates in U.S. format, annoying the rest of the globe.  Note that this problem is common to other citation Templates, including "press release" and "news". --Notmicro 10:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Oops, I take that back: "cite news" specifically ALLOWS "date" to be Wikilinked, and its syntax-examples show that!  "cite press release" works the same way, but its examples show "date" in explicit U.S. format, not ISO.  Note that there are major inconsistencies in "date" operation among the various citation templates, which personally seems unacceptable.  --Notmicro 10:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've removed the requirement "must not be wikilinked" from the doc of the "date" param. Wikipedians have ignored that anyway. It's pointless to require that. --Ligulem 11:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that the 2nd line of the "date" instructions still states "Must not be wikilinked." --Notmicro 11:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. But that's meant for the month and year params, I believe. Which means "year" and "month" must not be wikilinked. But we could drop that requirement too, yes. --Ligulem 11:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Addendum: note that "year" for cite book should definitely not be wikilinked at the call side, because that param is used for an inside-page linking mechanism (using "id" attribute for cite tag, see template code). --Ligulem 12:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Alternate params for url and title
I've reverted the addition of alternate numbered params for url and title. This makes the maintenance of the calls needlessly harder. Please, please don't do this. --Ligulem 17:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * As a side note, if a value of a parameter should contain an equal sign, numbered params must be assigned using the syntax "1=", "2=" anyway . Equal signs in url's are not so seldom. Example:


 * --Ligulem 21:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Apologies. (i added the numbered params). it always struck me as unintuitive but the reasoning was clear. nevertheless i thought it would be worthwhile to have them as backup params. --  Alfakim  --  talk   22:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Migrating calls is much harder if we have all sorts of aliases for the very same parameter. Mixing named and unnamed params is even a much bigger pain, as we then would have to sort out the position. We have done a whole truckload of migrations of these kind of template calls with WP:AWB (example settings for such a migration: ). It would be very complicated to handle a mix of named/numbered params. --Ligulem 23:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Protection?
This template is included in thousands of pages. Since there was a a change in the way MediaWiki updates templates' cache, via the asynchronous job queue, means that a vandalistic change can affect pages for hours after the vandalism is reverted. Surely it is a good idea to have it permanently protected? Tito xd (?!?) 22:41, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well. If you are prepared to respond to change requests within reasonable time, then protection might be manageable. I've been doing a lot on the citation templates but can't edit protected pages. So I'm not exactly so happy with full protection. I do have a close eye on this template here (and cite book, cite journal) and that worked quite well so far. If we have to ask some admin for every change then this in fact will lock me out from helping here (sometimes, also admins make inadvertant failures here). So it's up to you. In fact the job queue makes editing this template here easier as we are doing less harm to the servers with an edit. --Ligulem 23:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a bad idea to me. This template (and the rest of the "cite something" family) are under active development.  There hasn't been a single case of vandalism to this template, or to any of the others that I checked.  There have been some reversions, but they were cases of an editor "being bold" and sparked a discussion on the talk page rather than an edit war on the template.  RossPatterson 23:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It appears to be only semi-protected now, which seems adequate, but I don't like this "oh no! it's in use!" approach to template protection. The corollary of the job queue is surely that any quickly-reverted vandalistic change would be quickly mopped up, and it would only even be a problem if it affected categorisation anyway. Other template updates continue to be essentially immediate. -Splash - tk 23:15, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I can live with that. As solutions to non-problems go, semi-protection is inoffensive.  To date, there hasn't been a single anonymous editor of any of the "cite *" templates I checked above, so nobody would be harmed by this.  RossPatterson 23:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Cough. Cite web has been semi-protected since short after we finished the mass migration from good old web reference (protection done thanks to Bluemoose per my request on IRC). That's why you haven't seen a lot of anons here ;). --Ligulem 23:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Doh! RossPatterson 01:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I too think that full protection is unnecessary. This is a difficult to edit template and thus full protection further limits the amount of people who can make changes to it. That doesn't seem like a good idea while it's still under development. I do think that we should probably reach a sort of consensus on how this template should end up (i.e. FINISH it at some point), at which point we can begin to consider full protection. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 09:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)