Template talk:Citation/core/Archive 5

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are congratulations already in order?

Guys, if what I see under development and testing here is what I think it is—plain, unlinked dates that editors can easily force to the format used in the article—you should all be congratulated. This would be a very beneficial outcome for the project. Tony (talk) 10:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Problem...

Can anyone tell me why all of a sudden this * {{cite book |url=http://british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=34422 |author=Barrow, J. S. |title= Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: volume 8: Hereford: Bishops|year=2002 |publisher=Institute of Historical Research}} Retrieved on 26 October 2007 is suddenly putting the "Retrieved on..." bits on its own line? It's never done this before, suddenly it's doing it in the last day or so. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC) And it's not just {{cite book}}, it's {{cite web}} or {{cite encyclopedia}} whenever there is data after the template, whether or not there is an url in the template. It's also creating extra spacing between lines, which is quite annoying for very long reference lists. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:00, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. That extra spacing between lines, in particular, is making long bibliographies unreadable. Please, someone fix this. – iridescent 17:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• Here it is again, for reference:

• Barrow, J. S. (2002). Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: volume 8: Hereford: Bishops. Institute of Historical Research.. Retrieved on 26 October 2007. Ling.Nut (talk) 17:23, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please revert the most recent change to {{Citation/core}}, which is causing the severe formatting problem noted above. Here's what the above example currently renders:

---

• Barrow, J. S. (2002). Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: volume 8: Hereford: Bishops. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved on 26 October 2007.

---

Note that the "Retrieved on" is incorrectly put at the start of a new line, with a blank line intervening. Here's what the example currently renders in the sandbox, where I've reverted that change:

---

• Barrow, J. S. (2002). Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: volume 8: Hereford: Bishops. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved on 26 October 2007.

---

The edit message for that change notes that it's for forward compatibility, so it's OK to revert it for now, until it gets corrected. I note that the documentation for {{COinS}} says " The citation itself, and the template, should be placed within a <cite></cite> tag", but currently {{Citation/core}} violates that rule; perhaps that's related to the problem? Anyway, a revert for now is the simplest. Eubulides (talk) 17:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Reverted

Per the above and this discussion, I've undone this edit. Please, don't restore it without fixing the bugs; this was screwing up reference sections across the entire project. – iridescent 17:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 18:33, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed?

Sorry guys - I copied an additional </span> tag into the code, which I didn't spot in my testing. It looks like the sandbox is working now - I'd be grateful if people usign different browsers/plugins could double-check before I commit the edits. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Translation

I have added a new parameter, TransTitle, to enable translation of foreign titles. This adds HTML square brackets around the translated title and includes it within the main quotes. I plan to add documentation after some testing. Please revert if any problem is encountered with it. Crum375 (talk) 05:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

what happens if only the translated title is known? like this: [1]   —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 06:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

For the time being, in that situation you can use the main title parameter (only) and include the square brackets: ...|title=[The protective effects of total flavonoids from Lycium Barbarum L. on lipid peroxidation of liver mitochondria and red blood cell in rats]|... Crum375 (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it should work now. Here is your example, using the {{cite web}} template. I can try to get other wrappers updated if needed ({{cite news}} should already be OK).

It seems there is some problem displaying the footnotes on this page; you can just copy-paste the example elsewhere in the meanwhile (or try your own test). Crum375 (talk) 01:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Using span to display the footnote locally:
{{cite journal |author=Huang Y, Lu J, Shen Y, Lu J |trans_title=The protective effects of total flavonoids from Lycium Barbarum L. on lipid peroxidation of liver mitochondria and red blood cell in rats |language=Chinese |journal=Wei Sheng Yan Jiu |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=115–6 |year=1999 |month=March |pmid=11938998}}
→ Huang Y, Lu J, Shen Y, Lu J (1999). Wei Sheng Yan Jiu (in Chinese). 28 (2): 115–6. PMID 11938998. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Crum375 (talk) 02:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

thanks. it works great. i tried it out in my sandbox. hopefully diberri will be updating his tool to take advantage of this new feature.  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 06:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, as well as pointing out the need for the 'unavailable original title' mode. I have copied your {{cite journal}} example from your sandbox to this thread above. The trans_title parameter is now supported for cite web, news, and journal. I may add others soon. Crum375 (talk) 12:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

---

I have made changes to support translated titles for two additional "client" templates, so the list is: {{cite news}}, {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite book}} and {{cite press release}}. For {{cite book}}, there is support for two simultaneous translations, of the main title as well as chapter title. See (future) docs for details. Crum375 (talk) 19:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

URL link inside quotes

There was a complaint made that there is a difference in the behavior of the URL link relating to the quotes of a title. In {{cite journal}}, which was presumably correct, the link was inside the quotes, whereas in {{cite web}} it was outside. I put in a fix for that, so that now the title rendering of both cite web and cite journal is identical. If there are any problems with it, the change can be reverted. Thanks, Crum375 (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

ISBN is not linked

In the following example:

• {{Citation/core |Title= Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology |IncludedWorkTitle= The evolution of brain mechanisms for social behavior |Surname1= Baron-Cohen S |At=pp. 415–32 |EditorSurname1= Crawford C, Krebs D (eds.) |Publisher= Lawrence Erlbaum |Date=2008 |ISBN=0‑8058‑5957‑8}}
• Baron-Cohen S (2008), "The evolution of brain mechanisms for social behavior", in Crawford C, Krebs D (eds.), Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 415–32, ISBN 0‑8058‑5957‑8 

the ISBN is not a link; it's just plain text. Why is that? I originally ran into this with {{cite book}} and added some test cases in Template:Cite book/testcases #ISBN test cases. Eubulides (talk) 07:24, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• It seems you need to use plain hyphens. If you use those strange characters, the ISBN link doesn't work. Crum375 (talk) 13:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Any thoughts on stripping the hyphens entirely, leaving just the numeric string? It would give a more consistent result.LeadSongDog come howl 14:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

absolutely a bad idea. separating the digits with hyphens or spaces is actually required by the isbn standard whenever people are reading the number (see section 4).  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 15:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Yes it says that the separators are required for human readable forms, but we have been routinely ignoring that. If we're going to be serious about following the 2005 standard, we should consider proactively converting isbn-10 numbers to 978-prefixed isbn-13 (see p.48), but we seldom do. Please note that the position of the separators (per Table 6 on p.15) varies on a basis that (afaik) we have no mechanism in place to check and correct (or does citation bot fix this?) LeadSongDog come howl 17:00, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining it. I got the ISBN off a publisher's website, if I recall correctly, and I guess they used a non-breaking hyphen (U+2011). This is arguably just as much of a hyphen as a regular hyphen is, and I can see why someone might not want an ISBN to be broken across line boundaries, but this bug (if it is a bug) belongs to the underlying Mediawiki software, not to this template. Eubulides (talk) 16:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

fix for URL= issues

{{editprotected}}

In {{citation/core}}, would someone with the bits please replace all instances of "{{Link" with "{{citation/make_link" ? The change (i.e. the invocation of {{citation/make_link}}) implements the following:

• It makes it possible to use url= or chapter-url= to pass the name of a wp article to link to. It is then possible to specify {{citation|title=A Title|url=wp_article|...}} instead of {{citation|title=[[wp_article|A Title]]|...}} as has been so far necessary. (kudos to Martin for this idea)
• It provides a workaround for the problem described in this section, viz. that url= functions as chapter-url= when the latter is undefined. This in turn implies that there is no way to provide a url for the title without also having a url for the chapter. The workaround works by allowing an editor to specify chapter-url=none, which then stops url= from replacing it.
• Additionally, by naming the "subroutine" {{citation/make_link}}, the sub-template is "under" citation space, and thus less likely to be confused for a general-purpose template. It also ensures that related discussion is seen by those who are familiar with {{citation[/core]}}.

I've also made the "{{Link" => "{{citation/make_link" replacements in the sandbox, so just copying that over should do the trick. Thanks. -- Fullstop (talk) 20:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Not done. titleparts should not be abused like this. I reverted a similar change at Template:Link about a month ago. --- RockMFR 21:19, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

There is a related and recent discussion at Template talk:Link#Internal URLs. Eubulides (talk) 21:46, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

And RockMFR did not in fact revert "a similar change". What is it with you guys anyhow? You sit in the dark and then say there is no need to turn on the light because you can't see. WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT? -- Fullstop (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a valid objection to this change. RockMFR, please explain the problems with using titleparts: in this rather ingenious fashion. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Further testing has found that this change mishandles URLs containing "%"; please see Template talk:Link #URLs with % mishandled. Eubulides (talk) 15:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

(cc) :Good catch! This fix did the trick. Cost is two {lcfirst}s. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

< Maybe I don't understand the issue here, but wouldn't it be more consistent to add a parameter "titlelink" for internal links? Similar to authorlink? And a related question: what happens to the metadata if you use something like title=[[Bugs (book)|Bugs: Entymology as a way of life]]? Does the metadata just use the whole mess as the title? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 12:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It might make more sense to have a separate option, yes. The MediaWiki tradition seems to be that an editor must know whether a link is internal or external; that's why there is [ ] versus [[ ]] notation. To some extent the main part of the current proposal undermines this tradition, and having titlelink= would keep to it. Eubulides (talk) 20:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It just seems kind of kludgey to me to overload the "url" parameter. ---CharlesGillingham (talk) 11:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

May I ask at this point whether any of these proposed changes will link any items that are not currently linked? Tony (talk) 12:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

No, they wouldn't. Eubulides (talk) 20:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

• To summarize the above discussion: There is consensus that {{Citation/core}} should not depend on publicly-visible templates like {{link}} and {{para}}, but should instead stick with the {{Citation}} name space; the easiest way to do this is to move or copy {{link}} to {{Citation/make link}} and to have {{Citation/core}} use {{Citation/make link}}; also, it should simply inline the tt elements rather than invoke {{para}}. There is also consensus that the current method of supporting italic links with {{link}} and {{italiclink}} is not as good as the <nowiki> method described above, because it bloats the HTML with <span>s. There does not seem to be consensus to have url= parameters link to Wikipedia articles if they don't look like URLs.
• To implement the consensus, please install this sandbox change to {{Citation/core}}, and please protect {{Citation/make link}}.
• We can discuss later how better to link titles to Wikipedia articles.

Eubulides (talk) 03:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the {{editprotected}} for now, as this change seems to be affected by the cite element change discussed below. Eubulides (talk) 17:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I missed the comment on (in)consistency. So, the response here:

This is citation/core, which editors do not invoke. In this template, it does not matter whether we continue to call the parameter IncludedWorkURL=/URL=, or we rename it IncludedWorkLink=/Link= (or whatever). There is no practical difference.

As far as {citation} is concerned, i.e. the template that editors actually use, titlelink=/chapterlink= would be synonyms of url=/chapter-url= respectively. After all, a title cannot have two links.

Thus, the value being passed to (and held in) /core's IncludedWorkURL= is simply

{{{chapter-url|{{{chapterurl|{{{chapter-link|{{{chapterlink|}}}}}}}}}}}}.

What that construct is called is not important. Its currently called "IncludedWorkURL", which is ok. Rename it to "IncludedWorkLink" (or whatever) if it makes someone's day. Just don't sweat the small stuff. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

In {{Citation}} I do not see any documentation for any titlelink or chapterlink parameters. In the absence of documentation, editors will have to figure out the meaning through analogy with the author-link parameter. Thus titlelink is the title of a Wikipedia article about the work (for example, Newcomb's Tables of the Sun). Similarly, chapterlink is the title of a Wikipedia article about the chapter (although this would be rare). --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Right, there isn't any documentation in {citation} because it isn't useful to document functionality that doesn't yet exist. Otherwise we'd have editors crying that the parameter doesn't work.

Incidentally, citations describe sources. Wikipedia articles can't be used as sources, so a link to 'Newcomb's Tables of the Sun' wouldn't be appropriate. I understand what you mean though. -- Fullstop (talk) 21:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A link to an article about the work is perfectly legitimate. There is no reason not to make the person reading the citation that Wikipedia has an article about a particular work. Such an article could inform the reader about the reaction of critics to the work, describe the different editions available, or provide information about how to obtain copies of older works. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Erm, no. Citations are not prose. Citations exist for a writer to indicate where he/she got the sourced statement from, to give due credit to a source, to demonstrate that the sourced statement are not one's own thoughts, to demonstrate reliability, and to indicate where more discussion/information on the cited context is available. This is true for citations everywhere, and always has been.

In any case, links to an article about a work are not at all^[a][b][c]... "perfectly" legitimate.

But this is is really way off-topic, so if you would like to discuss this, let's do it somewhere else (e.g. WT:CITE). -- Fullstop (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of cite element

Currently, this template uses a cite element to wrap the whole citation. However, this is incompatible with its definition in HTML 5. This also creates the need to add silly code like style="font-style:normal" to all citations. I propose to use a plain span instead, which I implemented in the sandbox. (This also happens to reduce the markup by 17 bytes.) Note that we'll have to add some code to MediaWiki:Common.css before deploying this, though. Any comments? —Ms2ger (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this is a Bad Thing. (also)Happy‑melon 17:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Agree that this sort of fix is needed. What would go into Common.css? Eubulides (talk) 19:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Agree too. But what are class="citation" and "some code" (?) in Common.css needed for? -- Fullstop (talk) 20:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Basically, everything that applies to cite right now, should also apply to span.citation. That's the :target magic (the blue background if you click a link to a citation), the word-wrap (to break URLs when necessary) and the printonly rule (used for URLs). —Ms2ger (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I see you applied a change to the sandbox along those lines. Is that's all that's needed here? Should it be installed now? If not, what else needs to be done first? Eubulides (talk) 03:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As I said, this needs some edits to MediaWiki:Common.css first. —Ms2ger (talk) 08:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've added an {editprotected} at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css#reference:target -- Fullstop (talk) 16:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See also changes to ./core, and to ./make_link -- Fullstop (talk) 16:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd just wait until the new CSS is decached, i.e., 30 days after the edit to Common.css. —Ms2ger (talk) 10:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That would be after 11 September. —Ms2ger (talk) 12:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Date formatting test

A discussion regarding date formatting has been started at Talk:Ares I#Date formatting test
— V = I * R (talk) 19:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Change "Retrieved on" to "Accessed"

{{editprotected}} We seem to have consensus here that "on" should be removed. It's located in the "<!--============ URL and AccessDate ============-->" area, near the bottom of the code. change:

| <span class="reference-accessdate">{{#ifeq:{{{Sep|,}}}|,|, r|. R}}etrieved on {{{AccessDate}}}</span> to:

| <span class="reference-accessdate">{{#ifeq:{{{Sep|,}}}|,|, r|. R}}etrieved {{{AccessDate}}}</span>

thanks!
— V = I * R (talk) 02:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:17, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

---

Currently, a citation like this:

• {{cite web |url=http://google.com |title= Google |accessdate= 13 February 2009}}

displays like this:

• Google. Retrieved on 13 February 2009.

Let's make this a bit shorter, and closer to the what the parameter name says, by replacing "Retrieved on" with "Accessed", so that it looks like this instead.

• Google. Accessed 13 February 2009.

Subtracting a word (and a syllable) will make our citations slightly easier to read. Also, many style guides seem to prefer "Accessed", at least if I judge by examples, e.g., the AMA style guide,[2] Turabian[3], and the ACS style guide.[4]

The implementation of this change is straightforward. In the template, replace this line:

| <span class="reference-accessdate">{{#ifeq:{{{Sep|,}}}|,|,&#32;r|.&#32;R}}etrieved on {{{AccessDate}}}</span>

with this line:

| <span class="reference-accessdate">{{#ifeq:{{{Sep|,}}}|,|,&#32;a|.&#32;A}}ccessed {{{AccessDate}}}</span>

Eubulides (talk) 21:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Just for some background reading—according to Template talk:Cite web/Archive 1, the phrase "URL accessed on..." was changed to "Retrieved on..." in May 2006, although not everyone seemed happy about it. At Template talk:Cite web/Archive 3#Redundant word "on" before the date and Template talk:Cite web/Archive 4#AGAIN: Redundant word "on" before the date, Tony tried to push to get "on" removed, but it didn't seem to happen. Personally, I think we could remove "on", but we need to make sure that we do it simultaneously in the cite templates that aren't based on Citation/core. As for Retrieved/Accessed, I guess I'm indifferent. Pagrashtak 21:59, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I read through that old discussion. Among style guides I saw only the APA style guide mentioned; this has been changed since that old discussion. According to [5] the current APA style guide uses a format like this:

"Retrieved May 2, 2006, from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving"

That is, there is no "on" after "Retrieved". The "on" is my biggest beef with the current Wikipedia template. Clearly the word "on" should be removed. I don't think we need to wait for universal agreement among all the templates here; the other templates are inconsistent with this one in other ways, this wouldn't be that big a deal by comparison with the other issues, and we can update the other templates later. Eubulides (talk) 22:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

No—we need to get agreement and remove it everywhere. If you pull it out of only some of the templates you're going to get a lot of complaints from FA writers that you've created inconsistencies in their articles that they can't fix without manually formatting their references. It has a good chance of getting reverted. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but trust me—it is a big deal to a lot of other editors. Pagrashtak 14:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Most other templates now generate their 'retrieved on' text using {Citation/core}. (There may be a couple of templates where discussion regarding the change is ongoing; feel free to hurry things along there if it accelerates your reaching a resolution here). Therefore one change made here would affect all cite templates at once. [Consequently it should be at least mentioned on all the talk pages of affected templates!] Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to throw my support behind the removal of the word "on". I don't have a real opinion about use of "Retrieved" vs. "Accessed", though.
— V = I * R (talk) 09:09, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(← indent) I support either "Accessed" or "Retrieved" (without the "on"). Plastikspork (talk) 19:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Foreign language source citations

Are there any plans to make this template include {{lang|Language tag|Text}} on Titles and author names that are foreign language sources? If not, are there some alternative citation templates that specifies foreign language citations? This is to mainly use on other language wikipedias that translate english articles, but like to use {{lang|Language tag|Text}} on foreign text (to prevent transliteration etc.)--Pepsi Lite (talk) 05:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)