Template talk:Harvard citation/archive 1

Citing a book without an author
How is this done with the Harvard parenthetical citation templates? I am a newbie to using reference templates, and it just so happens that the reference I need to make is one that does not seem to be covered. There appear to be several different reference template systems on Wikiepedia in different states of completion (in terms of referencing features). This (no author) situation could easily be handled with the system, but that won't produce the kind of notations I want in the text (it will make hyperlinked footnotes instead of parenthetical notes).

Conversion from qif to ParserFunctions
I've converted this template from using qif to ParserFunctions (PF). Due to a bug in PF, numbered template parameters do not work when PF is used. As a workaround, I'm using this template here as a front end converting from numbered parameters to named parameters. The logic of this template is implemented in Harvard citation 2 using PF. --Ligulem 18:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Omniplex found a simpler workaround for 5678: use empty defaults everywhere: →  and so on. Harvard citation 2 is no longer needed then. I've speedied it. --Ligulem 12:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Optional brackets?
For certain purposes - e.g. the very clever referencing system at Rabindranath Tagore - it would be useful to be able to drop the surrounding brackets. Could this be done with a parameter? Or would it be better just to copy and paste the code to a new template with a name like Harvnb? TheGrappler 17:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I would copy this template here and leave away the round brackets. This would be KISS. --Ligulem 18:14, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * There is now Harvard citation no brackets. A request: would editors who edit this template make parallel edits on that template too? TheGrappler 01:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Page numbers
I asked this question at the helpdesk, but now think this is the correct page. If not, please pardon my error:

The Harvard citation page uses a colon:
 * When you can (or should) provide a page number, the convention is (Smith 2005: 73).

BTW this is the method I prefer. However the citation examples in the Harvard Reference Templates section on Template_messages/Sources_of_articles show that templates use "p." or "pp.":
 * (Smith 1879, p. 289).

The format in the guideline differs from the format produced by the template. Why? Which is authoritative? If the guideline/template is authoritative, would someone please change the template/guideline? Does someone have the last word on this kind of issue? (Full disclosure: I would prefer that the template be changed, because of my preference stated above).

Using   leaves the page numbers as part of the link, which is both counterintuitive and esthetically unappealing, IMHO. [PS: I just tried it out, and the link doesn't work if formatted that way. So the "counterintuitive and esthetically unappealing" comment is irrelevant anyhow.]

Thanks, Ling.Nut 04:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be a pest. I copied & trivially modified the Harvard citation template, new template named Template:Harvcol, to serve the purpose I was requesting. Thanks!

Ling.Nut 23:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Made over 9000!!! new Harvard templates
I made three new Harvard citation templates. Not sure if there is some group overseeing these kinds of things. If I've gone beyond bold into reckless, please let me know.


 * Template:Harvcol. Harvard citation with colons for page numbers.
 * Template:Harvcolnb. Same as above, no brackets.
 * Template:Harvcoltxt. Same as above, can use for cites like "according to Smith (1999), the..." Links to Auth name & year. Looks a bit funny when page numbers are included.

Examples are at: Austronesian languages, Homeland section.

Thanks Ling.Nut 03:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Many different authors and different books in one footnote?
Hello, I'm putting these templates to Finnish Civil War but I've come to one problem. For example, the strenghts have one fote but three authors and three different books. Then the link below doesn't work.

I tried this: ref name="Strength"> </ref

but when I click the finished link it finds nothing. Hyperlinking between note and references, that's what I'm trying. --Pudeo (Talk) 12:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah well, now that I've tried many things I guess I need to split them to different notes and then put for example [1] [2] [4] in Strenghts for example? That's not better than to have them in one but no can do? Or hmm, could it be possible that at the notes to click the other name to get other reference that are still in the same note? And well, this explanation is quite confusing as it seems, check Finnish Civil War first note to see what I mean. --Pudeo (Talk) 13:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


 * To cite multiple works, you would need to use multiple templates. Also, you'd probably want to use Template:Harvnb. For example, I'd use, which would produce.

Template is confused by five or more authors
This template gets confused by many authors. If you have five or more authors, then your use of this template today can only list the first four otherwise, the fifth author is taken to be the year. I feel this is a bug. This template should be documented to only take four or fewer authors and give some kind of error or skip to the last argument for the year in the case that five or more authors are given. Thanks. WilliamKF 21:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Using Template:Harvard_citation without using Template:Harvard_reference?
I'm editing a page, Eicosanoid, which is currently referenced in Harvard reference style, but not using the Harvard templates. I'm considering doing a mass edit in order to get links from the inline cites down to the reference section, using the the Harvard templates.

Is it possible to use the Template:Harvard_citation without using the Template:Harvard_reference? I've got a lot of references using Template:Cite. Inline in the body of the article, there's unlinked text in Harvard style that calls them out. I want to hyperlink the body text to the references, but converting all those Cite templates into Harvard_reference seems daunting. Plus, since Harvard_reference lacks a DOI field, conversion would be lossy. David.Throop 15:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the Cite journal and Cite web templates do not have any kind of a linking functionality. Somebody should add that functionality to the other templates.  CO GD EN  19:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

FULLPAGENAME
Why does this template use ? This causes the template to produce links as article and as a consequence, the links do not work during edit preview. I think that if we remove FULLPAGENAME, we get links like  which do work during edit preview. However, I don't know the full details about how templates work and I'm probably missing an important detail. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * My first attempt was disastrous; apologies to anybody who suffered the consequences. However, after a bit of testing (what I should have done immediately), I found a version does what I want. The links now also work during edit preview. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No longer true. Most "Cite" family templates now have linking capability. CharlesGillingham (talk) 23:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

template
editprotected

Please replace with  in noinclude tag. Currently, it is confusing whether the documentation is subpaged. --219.165.188.51 (talk) 10:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Please add french interwiki
fr:Template:Référence Harvard 220.135.4.212 (talk) 13:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Getting the Template
Sorry, but where is it possible to get this template to install it in a MediaWiki system? I have been looking everywhere (WikiMedia, google) and was not able to get an answer. I looked in particular at WikiMedia extensions, but I am not even sure now that templates are extensions!. I apologize in the case I posted in the wrong place (in this let me know, and I will post this in the right place). Thanks. Nabeth (talk) 13:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, looking a little bit more, I found some information about templates at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates . I am still a little bit confused, althought I start to understand a little bit better. Templates do not seem to be extensions. And you may be able to get the code in a page such as Template:Harv. Things how however not cristal clear for me, and I did not manage to figure out how to proceed the last time I looked at this page. I will try again. Nabeth (talk) 13:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It seem that indeed this section should be posted in MediaWiki (I will therefore stop to post here). To answer my previous question, there is indeed a kindof answer in: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates Copying from one wiki to another. However the explation is unclear. Nabeth (talk) 13:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My mistake for all this. After looking more I have noticed that I totally missed the concept of the template, that is much more sophisticated (complicated?) than what I thought. I was able to import (copy and past) the many template pages. Now it works more or less, althought now I realise the setup of a mediawiki is more complicated than what I thought originally Nabeth (talk) 16:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Bug 8Jul2009
There may be a bug since the value of the date appears to affect whether or not the link works. In the following example, the link from the citation in the Footnotes section, to the reference in the References section, will work for 1960, 1990 and 1999 but not for 1950, 1980, and 2000:

banana peach mango kumquat apple orange

 References 

 Footnotes 

--Bob K31416 (talk) 20:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a bug in harv, it does not properly strip out spaces around the parameters, hence

is not the same as or, but that's not the cause of your problem. You had swapped the 1950 and 1980 in your example. I've revised it.LeadSongDog come howl  21:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much! I think the problem was having "date" instead of "year", which you had corrected and that clued me into the cause of the problem! To demonstrate, I changed "year" back to "date" for Chiquita. Also, in the article that I was trying to debug, Fermi-Dirac statistics, I only changed "date" to "year" in the Blakemore reference in the References section and it now works. I very much appreciate your help. --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's an excerpt from Template:Citation regarding use of the year parameter.
 *  year: Year of authorship or publication. (Mandatory for use with links from Template:Harvard citation. In some situations, the template may be able to derive a year from the full date.)

This may explain why using date instead of year was working sometimes, and sometimes not working. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:37, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

bug
There is a slight bug, namely sometimes the template produces an erroneous space between the author and the year. For example

yields

note the two spaces (one too much) between Quine and the year. Can somebody with admin rights (or whatever is needed) fix this, please? It looks pretty odd. Thanks. Actually, also between 1960 and 1967 there is too much space. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure it's not your browser? Looks fine to me (single space between author and (year), and single space between (year1, year2).  Aside from that, this template is harvard citation, and you're using harvard citations (plural).  Might be quicker and better to take the comment over there, if it's still a problem.  Carre (talk) 13:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I will go there. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 09:06, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Allow to use template cite paper
If this is not the case, it would be really usefull if the Template:Cite paper could also be used! EtudiantEco (talk) 15:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

New icon as link rather than using the name as link?
I just discovered this template and find it really good! However, I wonder why the link to the reference is made on the name of the author (which lets think you will be redirect to his wiki page) and the year? Would it be possible rather to add an extra icon redirecting to the reference, and let the name and year free, so that they can be used as direct links? This would be more wikipedia like. Thanks! EtudiantEco (talk) 15:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

More than one reference in a single year
If an author has published more than one reference in a year, the standard approach is to add "a, b, c" to the year to differentiate them. The template handles that fine but we should include some instructions to editors who may not know how to handle the situation. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 17:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

CITEREF?
Why is "CITEREF" a mandatory thing to have as part of the citation id? Would it not be more wiki/KISS to simply have id=Smith2006 as an id vs CITEREFSmith2006? "CITEREF" is not at all needed AFAIK. I copied Template:Harvard citation no brackets to Template:Harvardnb and used this template at Geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area to show that "CITEREF" is not needed. --mav (talk) 05:48, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

More than one author with the same last name
I have two authors, both with the last name Bushman, and both published their work in 2006. How do I differentiate between the two? --Descartes1979 (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The standard way is to use lowercase letters after the date. For example, the first-published citation would be called 2006a, and the second would be 2006b.  In the Citation template, you can set year=2006a and year=2006b, respectively. CO GDEN  23:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. For future reference, you could have done it yourself by editing Template:Harvard citation/doc or pressing the edit link after the text "This documentation is transcluded from Template:Harvard citation/doc". This should work on a lot of protected template pages. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Remove &lt;cite>
editprotected Please sync with the sandbox. This removes the  element, which doesn't do anything useful. (It's also questionable if its use here is even allowed by HTML standards.) TIA. —Ms2ger (talk) 18:55, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ — Jake   Wartenberg  19:25, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates: Use "year=" rather than "date=" with
We currently say in Template:Harvard_citation that citation templates can have either the "year=" or the "date=" parameter set.

However, as mentioned previously above under, Harvard references when clicked on often fail to find the CITEREF anchor generated by a reference using "date=" rather than "year=". If the reference uses "year=" rather than "date=", it works fine.

Two examples:


 * 1) See the before and after versions of Peterborough Chronicle included in this diff: . In the older version, "Ward & Trent 1907–21" and "Clark 1958" don't work when clicked on; after replacing "date=" with "year=" in the corresponding cite book references, they work fine.
 * 2) Before and after versions of Postman's Park: . In the "before" version, Arnold 2006 and Price 2008 for example do not jump to their relevant entries in the Bibliography; after the substitution of year for date in the cite book templates, everything works.

I propose we mention this in Template:Harvard_citation and recommend that people use year rather than date. Alternatively, if whatever causes the error could be looked into and fixed, that would be even better. Whichever way the problem is solved, it will make sense to perform the corresponding changes in the other Harvard templates derived from this one (harvnb etc.). -- JN 466  17:20, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

✅ -- JN  466  21:04, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be so tardy about this, but Jayen's examples were both cases of misapplying the date parameter for partial dates (that in most cases, were simply years mislabled as dates). This is a fairly common error that bots should be able to check for and correct. There is, however, no reason we should discourage proper dates, particularly for periodical sources. We should prefer full dates, but also ensure that the date parameter is used for dates and the year parameter is used when the full date is not available. Revised the doc accordingly.LeadSongDog come howl  16:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Better yet, give origyear precedence over year. This way, when you cite a work written in 1881, with a reedition of 2002, you don't have to put 2002, which looks odd, especially for centuries-old documents. --Jerome Potts (talk) 07:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No, that falls afoul of wp:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Cite the one you read.LeadSongDog come howl!  17:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I read in Parenthetical referencing : "A reference to a republished work is cited with the original publication date either in square brackets (Marx [1867] 1967, p. 90) or separated with a virgule (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 90). The inclusion of the original publication year qualifies the suggestion otherwise that the publication originally occurred in 1967." This would be nice if implemented here. --Jerome Potts (talk) 22:04, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, we do: but slightly differently. In the shortened footnote you give the year of publication of the edition which you consulted; in the full citation you put that same year in year, and if the work concerned is not a first edition, you put the actual edition into edition and the year of the first edition in origyear. So, in this case you would use
 * which shows as:
 * Some statement.
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe that I may have found why the linking sometimes fails when the or  uses date, and that parameter contains only a year. In brief, the template parser treats 2002 as the time 20:02. Further information at Template talk:Citation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe that I may have found why the linking sometimes fails when the or  uses date, and that parameter contains only a year. In brief, the template parser treats 2002 as the time 20:02. Further information at Template talk:Citation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe that I may have found why the linking sometimes fails when the or  uses date, and that parameter contains only a year. In brief, the template parser treats 2002 as the time 20:02. Further information at Template talk:Citation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

We should never render invalid HTML
A change to the -family templates is being discussed at Template talk:Citation/core . This change would affect pages that use Harvard templates to refer to citations generated by -family templates. Further comments there are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 19:37, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

n.d.
I'm not sure how this could be done, but can some admin with template skills allow references with no date? When you try to use |date=n.d. it does not work. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:05, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * If there is no date, leave it out of the citation template entirely, and don't put the year into the either. Something like this:
 * This produces:
 * Some statements
 * Click the "Doe" bluelink - in Firefox or Chrome, you'll see the full citation highlight in blue. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Some statements
 * Click the "Doe" bluelink - in Firefox or Chrome, you'll see the full citation highlight in blue. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Click the "Doe" bluelink - in Firefox or Chrome, you'll see the full citation highlight in blue. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Authors who have published more than one work in the same year
Hello,

The Help page says : ''For authors who have published more than one work in the same year, the standard way to differentiate such works is to put a lowercase letter after the year (e.g. year=2006a and year=2006b). ''

However, I am afraid this is not workable. I am afraid that if I write |year=2006a in template:cite book, some readers will read something like (Smith, Booktitle, London, London University Press, 2006a), interpret this as a typing mistake and remove the "a". After that "a" has been removed, the link in my citation will become a dead link.

Couldn't we have a really safe way to make such citations for authors having two books or articles published within the same year ? Teofilo talk  07:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * But that is actually the standard; see Parenthetical referencing and Parenthetical referencing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I after some thought, I think it is probably workable with Template:Harvard citations, using |year=2006a|ref=CITEREFSmith2006a together with template:Cite book with |year=2006|ref=CITEREFSmith2006a . Teofilo talk  16:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please note that you don't need to construct your own CITEREFSmith2006a - it's done automatically by if ref is omitted, and by  when harv is provided.
 * If you don't want the suffix letter to show in the full citation, but are prepared for it to show in the shortened footnote, and you are able to obtain the month (or better still, day and month) of publication, you can do this:
 * which shows as:
 * First statement. Second statement.
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * which shows as:
 * First statement. Second statement.
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * You do realize that this relies entirely on the HTML link between the in-text citation and the reference list citation? It looses the visual link, especially when printed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 04:38, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes I do realise that, that is why I put "If you don't want the suffix letter to show in the full citation, but are prepared for it to show in the shortened footnote". -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The use of letter suffixes on dates is so standard that removing them (does this happen often?) would be the mark of a really inexperienced editor. For which problem the necessary corrective is to educate the editor. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Print version
When printed in books, this template pollutes the index of books. This is because there is a section link somewhere in that template (aka Foobar ), and the index is generated using the links of articles. Would it be possible to create a version of this template without the section link? Aka, one that displays Smith 2006, p.25, rather than Smith 2006, p.25?

I can upload the code at Harvard citation/Print once it's written (or anyone else with user account creation rights, as these pages are blacklisted for the moment). Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Why does it mess up the index? Maybe there's something we can do with CSS, rather than using a separate template. CO GDEN  17:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I explained it above: "This is because there is a section link somewhere in that template (aka Foobar ), and the index is generated using the links of articles." Anyway, it's been fixed now (see the /Print template). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:34, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * However, I've not yet figured how to fix this in Harvard citations (see the talk page over there). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Help
These references don't seem to be working on this article Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Coach of the Year (see references 3 and 8) and they are holding up a FL nomination (see Featured list candidates/Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Coach of the Year/archive1. Does anyone know how to fix this? Remember (talk) 20:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

How to cite a newspaper
In the Harvard Reference template, the page gives an example of a newspaper reference, so here we need an example of citing such a reference. I feel just doing author (the byline) year is not accurate and think that a cite using the name of the newspaper is more valuable. WilliamKF 20:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think if there is a named author of a newspaper article, or the author is the paper's editor, they probably should be cited as the author. For example, if you cite to an analysis by Lou Dobbs, it's more important to the reader to know that Dobbs wrote it, rather than what paper it's in. In other cases, however, where the article lists the author as merely "Associated Press" or "United Press International", I guess we have two options, either to treat it as a corporate author, or modify the Harvard reference template to allow linking by the name of the periodical. I'm not sure how best to implement that, however. There has to be some "signal" in the parameters of the Harvard reference template telling it that it will be cited by newspaper title rather than author.  CO GD EN  23:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This issue is partially documented, at least. See Template:Harvard citation documentation. Not really resolved until Wikipedia develops guidelines for these. Could use a section "newspapers" under "Possible issues", and describe how to use the name of the paper. CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

includeonly
Please surround the template code with " " to remove the ugly "  " which appears when reading the template's documentation. BernardM 11:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Spaces in examples
The examples have blank spaces surrounding the parameter. However, entering this info so spaced creates links that duplicate the spaces, like #CITEREF_Asimov_2005, breaking the link to the Citation. Would it be okay to remove these in the examples? I can see the value of italics in the parameter descriptions, but the spaces introduce problems for editors. / edg ☺ ★ 02:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * . CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

different caption
Is it possible to have a Harvtxt or similar template showing a caption which is different from the author's name and year? I want something like


 * This was shown in EGA IV

the latter redlink pointing to the reference


 * Jakob.scholbach (talk) 10:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Use  with   in the template. Like so:
 * CharlesGillingham (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * CharlesGillingham (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * CharlesGillingham (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

From the reference to the text?
Is there a way, using this template, to go from the reference list to the point or points in the text where a particular text is cited? Goochelaar (talk) 00:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * If you use the harv template(s) inside tags, then you end up with regular inline citations, with the harvard citation where ever you put the
 * which display as:
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * which display as:
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * which display as:
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Click them and see where they link (Firefox & Chrome will highlight in pale blue; IE7 won't). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I no longer fully recall the details, but I did have problems using citation.  I see you are using cite, and perhaps that makes a difference.  Part of the problem might have been with coauthors – and I do have sources with a dozen or more authors.  - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:21, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Non-ASCII characters in CITEREF
I am finding a problem with how non-ASCII characters (e.g., &Ouml;, etc., which require insertion of a Unicode name) are handled in CITEREF. Both 'Harv' and 'citation' go to heroic extents to handle these, but unfortunately to somewhat different ends, as seen in the following excerpts from the presented html:

(Example is from The Evolution of Cooperation.)
 * href="#CITEREFG.C3.BCrekIrienbushRockenback2006" title="">Gürek, Irienbush...
 * xx id="CITEREFG.26uuml.3BrekIrienbushRockenbach2006">Gürek, Özgür; Irienbush...

The work-around is to use 'ref=CITEFEF' in citation to force a strict ascii id, and use only ascii characters in Harv. Not entirely satisfactory, as I would prefer to  properly spell names, but it works. And I wonder if that ought be documented. J. Johnson (talk) 22:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It's because Citation uses anchorencode magic word but Harv doesn't. And also uses of character references such as &amp;uuml; are problematic. --fryed-peach (talk) 03:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Adding a quote parameter?
I left a message at Template talk:Harvard citations. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 14:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

=

MediaWiki extension that supports "Harvard" references
There is extension Extension:HarvardReferences that supports simple syntax of Harvard references. Jimbo Wales supports it. User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 51 Discussion is on the Village pump (proposals) now (oldid-link). X-romix (talk) 03:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * That's fantastic. Thanks for pointing this out. That would be a much better solution than this template. I've got a question, though. Does this system provide for multiple authors? For example, if you have a (Smith & Jones 2010) and a (Smith & Brown 2010), how do you handle that? CO GDEN  19:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Use with citation templates
Expanded at User:Gadget850/Citation templates— anchors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:00, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've incorporated this information into the documentation, with appropriate links your page at the point the documentation just becomes too detailed. CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

More comprehensive set of examples
I've developed a more comprehensive set of examples for sfn. Would anyone object if I adopted them for this template and added them to the documentation? CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Merging the documentation for harv, harvnb, harvtxt
Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to merge the documentation for these three templates? This way, we can help new editors to choose the right template by showing the circumstances where each one is most appropriate. CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That certainly makes sense to me. Getting a common /doc should lead to more consistent (i.e. less surprising) behaviour.LeadSongDog come howl!  22:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. These are really three forms of one template, using (as far as I can tell) the same parameters, in the smae way, differing only in their output form.  Each form needs a little explanation of how it differs and where to use it, but everything else doesn't need to be repeated.  And new editors would be less intimidated seeing there is really only one Harv template, not three or four. Go for it.  - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I have started this process. It may take a while to merge all the relevant material and tighten this up. CharlesGillingham (talk) 00:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Still working on this Done
Still working on this doc. May be another day or two. CharlesGillingham (talk) 18:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

✅ I think this documentation contains every scrap of information wikipedia has on using these templates. CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Ref parameter
On another subject: can anyone tell me a circumstance when Ref is useful?

I find it difficult to imagine that is better than (Smith 2007). Or that

Reference


Perhaps I'm overlooking some case where the Ref parameter is actually needed. CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I generally use citation rather than cite, so my apologies if I don't have this exactly right. But in general, I have found that 1) Harv and citation don't always concur on what the citeref should be, 2) don't always conform to what I think it should be, and 3) have problems with special characters.  Plus, 4) there are some instances where I prefer a different link name (such as where a report has a well-known name).  All of these cases are easily accommodated using 'ref'.  Is that an adequate answer? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Could you show me an example? I'm a little concerned that we're not talking about the same thing. I agree that parameter ref makes a lot of sense in the citation template, but ref in harv doesn't make sense to me. The question is do we need ref on both ends?.


 * On the harv end, it seems to me it's always easier to just use . Right?  CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * My apologies for being so laggard on this. I am not acquainted with your last example of Harv, but on reviewing my work I see that in dealing with the issues I have with Harv/citation it seems I have never used 'ref=' in Harv.  If I want to use something other than the author(s) in the reference I just substitute that in place of the author(s).  So my use of the 'ref' parameter is entirely in citation and cite, not in Harv. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, at long last I have come up with a case where 'ref=' might be handy: where (for various reasons) I want to refer to a reference (in the citation template) by Harv templates using two different names. But 'ref=' wasn't absolutely necessary as I was able to do this using harvid as demonstrated below. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Open issues
After looking through the talk pages, I think these are the open issues on this these templates.

(I rewrote this today with better titles and organization. I realize this is a talk page, and that we don't generally edit talk pages like this, but I think we can make an exception for a todo-list like this. This is now a comprehensive list of the open issues for all these templates on this date.) CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Spaces between arguments
This was discussed here:
 * Template talk:Harvard citation
 * Template talk:Harvard citation
 * Template talk:Harvard citation no brackets
 * Template talk:Harvard citation text

Fixed in the major templates. Not fixed in the three "col" variations. When this gets fixed, all these links will work: {| class="wikitable" ! width=400 | Markup !! width = 300 | Result ==Notes== present or absent? If absent, then OK: if present, then (ii) is it numeric? If numeric, it's OK; if not, throw error. Testing for something being numeric might be a simple as trying to involve it in an arithmetic expression. Something like this:
 * Article text.
 * Article text.
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Is necessary?
This issue is discussed here:
 * Template talk:Harvard citation
 * Template talk:Sfn
 * Template talk:Sfn (these are convoluted discussions, but the upshot was that we decided not to add ref to sfn.

All the templates have a ref parameter except sfn. Should we remove ref from the rest?


 * I believe it should be removed from the other templates as well. It is an unnecessary complication which leads to confusion. CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Special characters
This was discussed here:
 * Template talk:Harvard citation


 * (I think), as these cases demonstrate.  CharlesGillingham (talk) 08:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

{| class="wikitable" ! width=400 | Markup !! width = 300 | Result ==Notes== Solution: remove the spaces.". -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Article text.
 * Article text.
 * We could use Template:Trim to achieve the same result. If it saves editors time, then why not? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This is fixed in sfn, which has almost the same code as this template. See these test cases above at . It would be nice if the fix above was applied to all six templates. CharlesGillingham (talk) 23:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So is the consensus that we should apply trim to all 5 parameters? This creates quite a precedent because we don't do this to parameters of 99% of templates we use. Perhaps this needs to be considered further? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think this is what we want to do. The difference is that each of the arguments to this template have semantics. In the template call, Smith is a name, not a text-string consisting of  . So it makes sense we would trim leading and trailing blanks.


 * I have a technical question: at the moment, harv is performance critical (because it tends to be used in large articles with hundreds of template calls which have slow load times). For this reason, we have avoided using any template calls in the code (e.g. everything is "substed."). Should we use trim? Or should we use the if method mentioned above? CharlesGillingham (talk) 20:11, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think we should just use the "if" method, it will reduce the transclusion depth, and not that more complex to view. I will go ahead and boldly make the change. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  04:33, 12 February 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅ Everywhere. CharlesGillingham (talk) 21:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Confused
Is this even required? Greg  Heffley   19:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Is what even required? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Deletion discussion
See Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_24. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Closed as a WP:SNOW keep. BencherliteTalk 22:31, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Core
---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)