Template talk:Refbegin/Archive 1

Protection request
I feel this template should be protected from edits by non-registered or newly registered users. Does anyone else agree? --Anthony5429 22:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I see it has been. Thank you. --Anthony5429 (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Indentation when using multiple columns
When single columns are used, the indentation seems to work correctly and match Reflist (see Elephant). However, when multiple columns are used, the indentation seems to fail and no longer match Reflist (see Malaysia). --Anthony5429 14:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to work now assuming refbegin itself is used without multiple columns, which seems logical to me anyway as the general references are typically fewer than the specific. --Anthony5429 17:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Heading for Refbegin
How about having a heading before the references so that it is clearer that these are just general references. If you have a look at Elephant the general references start but it isn't too clear. How about having before the DIV starts just put in a line ;General references producing: so that it is clear (See Ganges and Indus River Dolphin). Of course the heading could just be put in before the template is used on the page, but this might be easier. Also how about changing the * for # so that it stays in line a bit better with the inline references. C hris_huh talk 10:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * General references

Second column starts badly
When is used for two columns, a reference can be split between the two columns. To see an example of this, visit Ambisonics. (This doesn't appear to happen with, but that may just be luck when I have used it.) It would be better, I would suggest, if the split between the columns always occurred between two references. Is this possible? HairyWombat (talk) 02:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

references-small class
Please replace this template with the contents of the sandbox. This re-adds the  class that's required to allow users to style references the way they want. TIA. —Ms2ger (talk) 13:20, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. — RockMFR 13:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

font size reduction
Could someone please add a parameter that will allow an editor to set this to the desired font reduction including 100 for no reduction. -- PBS (talk) 03:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Problems with WebKit
There have been some problems with WebKit-based browsers, so could please someone remove the parameters  and  ? --bender235 (talk) 20:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no objection. Anyone else ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:17, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Columns and text-indent
There is some odd interaction between   and   and. See Template:Refbegin/testcases. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It just struck me that you probably should not use columns and indent together anyway. I added another test that shows problems with FireFox. The outdented line in successive columns overlaps the previous column. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What is the purpose in indent anyway? Are there any working examples? — Edokter • Talk  • 15:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks like this is the APA style. Neither columns nor bullets would be valid for pure APA. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Is it even in use on Wikipedia? If it isn't used, we could remove that feature, or if it is, disable columns automatically in the template when indent=1 is used. — Edokter • Talk  • 16:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I think we should note that columns and indent should not be used together, due to both technical and style issues. We could disable columns when indent is enabled. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * In combination with &lt;dd> it seems to work. Applying the text-indent to the list instead of the div, the bugs seems to be gone. (We do get nested defenition items, but that is not a problem.) — Edokter •  Talk  • 16:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This should no longer be an issue. Indents and columns are happily working tohgether now. — Edokter • Talk  • 18:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

font reduction
Doesn't seem to font reduce as described in the documentation anymore (as of 21 Dec 2010)?Sf5xeplus (talk) 14:56, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe purging fixed it.. why was it 'un-fixed' in the first place? Sf5xeplus (talk) 14:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)


 * See WP:VPR. The style changes in Common.css need to catch up. Purging dod indeed fix it. — Edokter • Talk  — 15:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ok thanks..83.100.225.242 (talk) 16:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Indentation problems
I encounter some weird indentation behaviour. 1. Instead of using "" I need to use ":" (additional double colon) in order to have the start of every entry to align with the main content of the page. See what happens when you remove the double colon! Moreover, 2. while I'd like to have no space in between different sources, I need to separate the entries with a blank line in order not to have them as one paragraph. Please see: Right to food. All this behaviour is regardless of using one or two columns, as far as I could see. --Gulpen (talk) 00:18, 6 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see the problem: what browser/version are you using? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:22, 6 June 2012 (UTC)


 * There is no problem because I 'artificially' added a double colon in front of every reference entry. Please remove some and render a preview on the example page I gave. In that case the entries shift way too much to the left, becoming even partially invisible in Chromium, though still visible in Firefox. --Gulpen (talk) 11:21, 6 June 2012 (UTC)


 * There are no double colons in the References section. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks OK in Chrome 19. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:35, 6 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes there are double colons in the References section. I have removed them from the first five entries now, so please take another look to see what happens then.--Gulpen (talk) 12:24, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * By double colon, you mean two of these ? ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:59, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * My sincere apologies, wherever I said "double colon", I meant to say "colon" (just one).--Gulpen (talk) 14:17, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * OK. The colon should be before each citation; see Template:Refbegin. I don't see any issues with Firefox 12 or Chrome 19. What browser are you using? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:32, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah.. its not a bug, its a feature! :) If it was meant to require the colon in front of every entry, then there is not much of a problem. I'm using Firefox 12 and Chromium 18, please see here for a screenshot (the first five lacking a colon): http://www.webcitation.org/68DsmWkVR . I'd still like to get rid of the white space above/below every entry, though.. --Gulpen (talk) 17:05, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not seeing the left text being clipped. I removed the newlines between the citations— that should fix the whitespace. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 20:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, great! So just to be clear, you have now practically solved and answered both my questions. Thanks. My screenshot only showed wrong rendering of the first few characters of an entry (in Chrome) in case the colon was not used, so it's not really important. All the best. --Gulpen (talk) 20:46, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

On sorting
Currently the sorting of the literature should be done by editors.

There is a workaround that involves sort list:

Perhaps, this should be incorporated into Refbegin/Refend templates? Thoughts? 凰兰时罗 (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 6 June 2017
Would it be possible to reduce the spacing at the bottom of sections using the ref-templates, for instance here and here? Erdic (talk) 22:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * We could, but for what reason? The spacing looks fine. Izno (talk) 01:46, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for answering. Isn't the spacing larger than usual there?--Erdic (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Erdic I don't see anything unusual there. There is a 0.5em bottom margin, just as on paragraphs. Also, please do not use edit protected requests as 'attention beacons' tor opening discussions. As stated in the template itself: "This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, so that an editor unfamiliar with the subject matter could complete the requested edit immediately." —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * TBH, we don't really have a good "attention getter" without starting a fullblown standard process. An edit request is about as close as one can get. --Izno (talk) 02:30, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm very sorrry, I didn't mean to abuse this function. I just wanted to do everything right by following the instruction in the box on the right! There it says that one is supposed to set the parameter to "no" if one wants to reply, which I did. My specific request is: If you look at the spacing underneath the references and the bibliography in the article linked by me, you should realize that the spacing there is much larger than that of a regular paragraph. I hope it may become a bit clearer now what I've been trying to point out the whole time. Best regards--Erdic (talk) 13:53, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * If you examine the last few sections of Hobo, you see that both the References and the Further Reading sections have a bottom margin of 0.5em because they end with a div whose class has that property set (div.reflist, div.refbegin). Although normal paragraphs also have a bottom margin of 0.5em, most of Hobo is made up of unordered lists, which have a bottom margin of 0 (each list element has 0.1em, but that's not noticeable at the end of a list). The real fix would be to introduce a bottom margin of 0.4em for the  element. However, that may have repercussions elsewhere. Optionally, that article could be re-written in prose. --RexxS (talk) 17:00, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * (update:) Of course, if you replace reflist with, the bottom margin disappears, because there the two implementations have different bottom margins set. Now that is a problem. --RexxS (talk) 17:11, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Just to get things clear: By "there the two implementations have different bottom margins set" you're alluding to the differece between reflist and, right?--Erdic (talk) 21:46, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I'm saying. The bottom-margin for,  and   is set to 0.5em, while the bottom-margin for  and   is set to 0. But don't ask me why. --RexxS (talk) 21:57, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks again. Final question, would it be difficult to harmonize that? At least, it would make sense in any case, wouldn't it?--Erdic (talk) 01:39, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * My intention is to see  eventually incorporated inside reflist - see Template:Reflist/sandbox3 – which will harmonise the bottom margin to 0.5em for all references. However, I suspect that it would not be easy to achieve an equivalent bottom margin for  – it's used in so many places that it's near impossible to foresee what might break if we change it. --RexxS (talk) 02:24, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you once more. Well then, I guess there actually can't be done very much in the end to solve this problem, can there?--Erdic (talk) 21:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you once more. Well then, I guess there actually can't be done very much in the end to solve this problem, can there?--Erdic (talk) 21:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 28 January 2019
Please remove ; it's included in the documentation. Jay D. Easy (talk) 04:21, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 04:44, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Harv warning
Many articles and even this template's own documentation have the following warning: "Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation." Is there any way to suppress this? Doesn't seem useful considering that this template is mostly used for non-inline references and bibliographies.  Stepho  talk 22:42, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That warning is generated by a script that you have installed in User:Stepho-wrs/common.js. See User:Ucucha/HarvErrors for more information about how to make the messages go away, if you want to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:22, 23 April 2020 (UTC)