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Recently a discussion at Talk:Jane Austen has revolved around the linchpin issue of template formatting. The original version of the article from 10 years had initially been started in MLA Handbook format (without templates, see below) by the late Wadewitz, and it was clearly her strong desire (as evidenced by her comment in the references section) that that MLA format be retained. However, a regrettable situation arose: since Wadewitz passed away, 5-6 editors have edited the article in different cite formats (or even "freestyle format", perhaps). Manual editing resulted in a massively inconsistent references section that I described as a "steaming mess of wrongness".

I strongly support the use of reference templates to create consistency in formatting within any given article, and to provide the many benefits of COinS.

However, neither of these advantages is available to any editors who wish to edit in MLA (or APA, or Chicago/Turabian, or Bluebook) as expressly supported under WP:CITEVAR.

WP:CITEVAR does not by extension mean that such template options must be created, but I suggest that the proper way to show courtesy and respect to all editors working within those extremely common (outside of Wikipedia) formats would be to create them. The reason these formats are rare in Wikipedia is precisely because template options for them are completely unavailable. If these template options had existed before, the "steaming mess of wrongness" at Jane Austen would never have come to be.

If possible, I propose (perhaps using |mode=) the creation of |style-guide=mla, |style-guide=apa, |style-guide=chicago and |style-guide=bluebook as alternate parameters that reformat displayed template text.   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 09:33, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

The reason why MLA style is not suited to use in Wikipedia has been explained at length, by user:RexxS, in the discussion at Talk:Jane Austen; not least - in great detail - in Talk:Jane_Austen#MLA. Attempting to bypass that discussion here, and framing it in such a way as to imply that anyone opposing your proposal is both disrespecting other editors and disrespecting the memory of a much missed former colleague, is facile, and in the latter case is an abuse of her memory. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:44, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

@Lingzhi: Rather than wade through that lengthy talk page, I'd rather refer anyone to the essay presently at User:RexxS/NoCiteBar, where I've tried to collect my thoughts and explore the issues related to MLA-type and similar referencing schemes. That does rather damn MLA-type short cites as inadequate for our needs. If it's any consolation, I have been in the process of working through Module:Citation/CS1, with a view to creating a version that allowed a parameter to act as a switch for the displayed output. That, of course, would only affect the long citations, and would do nothing to fix the fundamental problems with MLA-type short citations. When I can get an uninterrupted stretch of time to do some programming (hint, hint), I'd hope to have something sandboxed that might go some way to meeting your request. Any pointers to definitive on-line references for the different styles, MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. would be appreciated. --RexxS (talk) 12:05, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I think that having an MLA style option for the CS1 ((cite xxx)) templates is a good idea. It would allow editors to make use of the error checking that is available in CS1 templates but still format full citations in their discipline's preferred format. (As Andy says above, MLA style, e.g. "Smith, 101", is unsuitable for Wikipedia, where anyone can edit an article and easily introduce ambiguity. We would have to adopt a modified MLA style for short footnotes, e.g. "Smith 2005a, 101", linked to the full citation.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:23, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I think a |mod=MLA wouldn't be a bad idea for full citations, but the existing ((harvnb)) templates should be be used for any short even though MLA itself doesn't call for the inclusion of the year there. Other mode options could be added in the future for other styles. Imzadi 1979 → 20:02, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

• We need short form MLA templates (and APA, and Chicago, and...) similar to sfn etc. Why oh why oh why do I have to come here and beg? Why do I have to kiss the ring of a small group of editors? Give me permission to edit templates, show me how you've implemented things in the years since I last edited a template, and I'll do it. This is nothing but flat WP:OWNership, and that's a fact.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:19, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  A good way to get me to abandon this mla project is for you to continue to make unsupported accusations of WP:OWNership and the like:

  • Cite Book is a wikipedia-only standard that is in practice shoved down everyone's throats because the template maintainers flatly refuse to make MLA and APA templates. (you wrote that here)
  • I DO think that the template maintainers of cite book are massively remiss for flatly refusing to produce MLA, APA and Chicago flavors of cite book; they have an untouchable cast-iron WP:OWN on the issue, in flagrant violation of policy at WP:OWN. (you wrote that here)

  Show me where template maintainers or the maintainers of ((cite book)) have refused to make MLA and APA templates.

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:18, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  @Trappist the monk: I admit to having become consistently embittered against those who maintain templates... I've been around Wikipedia off and on (with a nearly three year "off" period) for ten years. I have come to various template-related forums asking for various things, and have always been shown the door... even when I asked nicely (I ceased being so nice after a while). I don't recall when I asked last (either as User:Ling.Nut or User:Ling.Nut3) for these particular APA/MLA/Chicago template alterations, or what specific template-related forum I asked on, but I do recall asking for them, and I do recall being treated like an intruding idiot, to put it nicely. So my attitude is embittered, but it is a response to past arrogance. I do not recall the usernames of all of those who were rude in the past, but I am quite certain that you were not one of them. I do recall one user (still quite active) who treated me rudely in the dim past, but I will not repeat that username in this particular moment. So. Is this a non-apology apology? I'm not sure. But it is perhaps true that nicer people are around now than I have dealt with in the past, and if I have unfairly tossed you and others here into the bucket with the relatively unreasonable ones, then I do apologize for that. But having said that, I still feel bitter. So it's a bit of a dilemma. :/  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  Perhaps you are mis-remembering. I can find no discussions on template-related talk pages (the Template:, Module:, and Help: namespaces) where any of User:Lingzhi, User:Ling.Nut, or User:Ling.Nut3 asked for templates to write references in a style other than cs1|2. I did not look at user talk pages because those are not generally public venues and did not look into article or other namespace talk pages because those are clearly not template-related fora so perhaps you asked in one of those places. I am interested in knowing the reasons that were given when requests for alternate styles were denied.

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

(←) I also spent 10 or 15 minutes looking for that incident and have not found it yet either. I will continue looking. Meanwhile, I am in the present case obviously in the wrong, though (in my opinion) somewhat humanly so. But still in the wrong.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:35, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• You don't need any special permission to create a new template or to edit a template's sandbox code. Go for it! And all template code is available via the Edit or View Source links at the top of the page. You might start at Module:Footnotes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  @Lingzhi: Let's assume that you have a ref like <ref>Smith, 101</ref> and you want that linking to a long-form cite template. There are two things to do here, and neither of them is restricted by the edit protection on the templates.

  The first thing to do is to make a link inside that ref, this could be as simple as <ref>[[#Smith|Smith]], 101</ref> but as there may be a section in the article titled "Smith" it's a good idea to add something distinguishing, such as the letters "ref" - so you might use <ref>[[#refSmith|Smith]], 101</ref>.

  The second thing to do is to create an anchor on the long-form citation template, this might be ((citation)), ((cite book)) or one of the others. Use the |ref= parameter for that, i.e. |ref=refSmith.

  You can see it in action at Wikipedia:Sandbox. You could make a template for the [[#refSmith|Smith]] part, but it's not essential. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:12, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  @Lingzhi: Further to the above: I've found that you can in fact do it using existing templates, see Wikipedia:Sandbox. Here, we have <ref>((harvnb|Smith|loc=101))</ref> in the text, and |ref=((harvid|Smith)) in the cite template. The two templates used here are ((harvnb)) and ((harvid)); notice that I didn't use the year parameter on either one, and with ((harvnb)) I used |loc= instead of |p= in order to suppress the "p." that would otherwise have been included. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:29, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  @Redrose64: I think the short MLA can be finessed using existing |loc= in sfn, plus text for the year (since sfn treats everything as a string), plus and ref=((harvid)) except for the hard-coded comma in Module:Footnotes (in the args.location). See the very first cite in my sandbox for a fake example.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

For a long time I have wanted to restructure the code that assembles the miscellaneous constituent parts into a recognizable whole. Perhaps this is the burr under the saddle.

To help me understand what kind of changes are needed, I have hacked the sandbox so that |mode=mla controls a couple of the most obvious differences between cs1 and mla, date and editor placement and style, for ((cite book)):

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016). "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title. Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016). "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title. Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

And last author / editor separator. —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this is currently feasible in practice, but if you're looking at switches to control citation style, please consider the possibility of the displayed citation format being controlled by a user preference. At least half the clamour for, e.g., MLA is due to dissonance when reading a cite in an unfamiliar format; as opposed to that caused when having to enter a cite in an unfamiliar format (for which, those with MLA bred in their bones will dislike any template-based solution). Letting them choose to see all cites in MLA format would help a lot (and the right gizmo in VisualEditor might eventually help with the other issue). --Xover (talk) 14:46, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Aye, that would be the thing. But, I think that for such a thing, we would need to compel all editors to write citations with templates. I think that it is a bit much to expect some bit of code at MediaWiki to read free-form contents of <ref>...</ref> tags and then correctly render that reference according to a user's Special:Preferences. It would also require the server to render the citations at the time they are served or to cache multiple versions of the rendered page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

We might not be able to "compel all editors to write citations with templates". It would be progress to stop editors from blocking the conversion of (for want of a better description) "plain-text" references to use citation templates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@Lingzhi: The changes that Trappist the monk has made to Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox are producing something very close to what you want for long citations:

• ((cite book/new |last=Southam |first=Brian C |chapter=Grandison |editor-last=Grey |editor-first=J David |title=The Jane Austen companion |year=1986 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=0025455400 |mode=mla))

produces:

• Southam, Brian C (1986). "Grandison". In Grey, J David (ed.). The Jane Austen companion. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0025455400. ((cite book)): Invalid |mode=mla (help)

and

• ((cite book/new |last=Tomalin |first=Claire |author-link=Claire Tomalin |title= Jane Austen: A Life |location=New York |publisher= Alfred A. Knopf |date=1997 |isbn=0-679-44628-1 |mode=mla))

produces:

• Tomalin, Claire (1997). Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44628-1. ((cite book)): Invalid |mode=mla (help)

Surely that is appreciable progress. Thank you very much, Trappist.

Before anybody starts thinking about "faking" MLA-style short citations, I'd like to hear your refutation of my arguments in User:RexxS/NoCiteBar against using <<Author Page>> or sometimes <<Author "made-up Short title">> short citations in Wikipedia articles. It is clear that authors regularly produce multiple works on the same topic, which require disambiguating via a user-constructed "short title" in MLA-style (e.g. about 70 times out of 146 short references in Jane Austen 18 February 2016), whereas it is equally clear that authors rarely produce multiple works on the same topic in the same year (none in Jane Austen today). For Wikipedia use, MLA-style short citations are a non-starter: different editors make different short titles, and adding another work by the same author requires all the previous <<Author page>> cites to be found and disambiguated. No, no, no, no (sounds familiar?). Harvard-style short cites (as already implemented in sfn) have the same format throughout, so any editor new to the page can copy the same style without effort by using the template ((sfn)), and Ucucha's script can catch any errors that creep in. There's really no case for using anything else. --RexxS (talk) 21:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

First/last name order:

Last1, First1; Last2, First2; Last3, First3 (2016). "Chapter". In EditorLast1, EditorFirst1; EditorLast2, EditorFirst2 (eds.). Title. Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34.((cite book)): CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Last1, First1; Last2, First2; Last3, First3 (2016). "Chapter". In EditorLast1, EditorFirst1; EditorLast2, EditorFirst2 (eds.). Title. Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:36, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I have a few quick thoughts about MLA, and maybe these are items yet to come as this effort proceeds. If so, I apologize for jumping the gun.

• At least the more recent versions, the style specifically omits URLs and assumes that anyone can search for the source online. Of course we can link to a source within our citations because our formatting explicitly includes hyperlinks while MLA is designed for print. I assume we'd want to continue the practice of actually linking items, and probably continue to insert the file type as we do now.
• Also, MLA would append a medium designation, something like "Print" or "Web" to the end of the citation. For online sources, the "Web" would be followed by the access date. If it were a source reprinted online, that would be "Web. <republisher>. <access date>." Perhaps a little coding to assume that this would be "Print" unless a link is supplied when it would be "Web", but we'd need to either use |type= or another new parameter to allow editors to override this for DVDs and other media.

Imzadi 1979 → 01:42, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I would have thought that the addition of a hyperlink when a source is available online is such a convenience for the reader that there's no case for failing to do that in our citations. MLA is indeed designed for printed work (including instructions on margins, double line spacing and the name of the Works Cited section), so we have to adapt to some extent. The whole point of offering an MLA-style long citation is so that readers accustomed to that style don't find it jarring when they see the citations in CS1 default style, not to precisely mimic a print format within an online encyclopedia. I can therefore see little point in appending "Web" or "Print" - that tells readers of the printed article that it's worth searching for online or not. In a Wikipedia article, it is surely obvious that if there's a hyperlink, it's available online, and if there's not, it isn't. --RexxS (talk) 02:11, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that it would be a bit disingenuous to add the capability to code a citation with |mode=mla and not actually output what MLA says is their citation format. That said, I've seen something that makes it seem as though they've dropped the medium indicator from the 8th edition published this year, so that might be something unique to the 7th edition that's now superseded. Imzadi 1979 → 15:22, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Original year and edition:

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016) [1920]. "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016) [1920]. "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Translators:

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016) [1920]. "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title. Translated by Translator; Translator2 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016) [1920]. "Chapter". In Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Title. Translated by Translator; Translator2 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Contributors:

Contributor (2016) [1920]. Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3. Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Translated by Translator; Translator2 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016) [1920]. Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3. Editor; Editor2 (eds.). Translated by Translator; Translator2 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016) [1920]. Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3. Editor; Editor2 (eds.). (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016) [1920]. Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3. Translated by Translator; Translator2 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016) [1920]. Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016). Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3 (2nd ed.). Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Contributor (2016). Introduction. Title. By Author; Author2; Author3. Location: Publisher. pp. 12–34. ((cite book)): |author= has generic name (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:07, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Break

@Trappist the monk, RexxS, and Lingzhi: I know nothing about templates and haven't read the above, so perhaps this isn't feasible, but I would love to see those templates converted so that we could simply place the punctuation where we needed it. At the moment, I write manually:

• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 1.
• and thereafter: Rawls 1971, 2.
• Chantal Zabus, "The Excised Body in African Texts and Contexts," in Merete Falck Borch (ed.), Bodies and Voices: The Force-field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, New York: Rodopi, 2008, 1.
• and thereafter: Zabus 2008, 2.
• Nicky Woolf, "Stingray documents offer rare insight into police and FBI surveillance", The Guardian, 26 August 2016.

When I'm editing with people who use templates, I can copy their style manually, even though it leads to internal inconsistency with newspapers (date after name if there's a byline, and date at the end if not; it's frustrating to add an inconsistency deliberately just to copy the template style). But if people edit an article where I've added manual cites in the style above, they can't copy my style (or any other) using templates; they have to do it manually because the templates are so limiting.

Is it not possible to create a set of templates where the punctuation is more flexible? SarahSV ^(talk) 00:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Is it really punctuation that you're talking about or is it element placement or a combination of both? Your apparently preferred style looks to be a combination of cs2 (comma separated elements) and mla (publication date moves to the end):

• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 1. – your original
• John Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1. ((cite book)): Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help) – ((cite book)) with |mode=cs2
• John Rawls (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1. ((cite book)): Invalid |mode=mla (help); Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link) – ((cite book)) (sandbox) with |mode=mla

A primary purpose of the templates is to take on the burden of punctuation so that editors don't have to worry about it – punctuation just happens and it is the same, citation-to-citation, editor-to-editor. One could, I suppose, create punctuation-specific parameters:

|title= – normal or standard title parameter follows the cs1|2 rules according to the rules of the enclosing template

|title,= – override the normal cs1 element separator, full stop, with a comma

|qtitle= – force a normally italic title to be quoted

|ititle= – force a normally quoted title to be italic

|ptitle= – force a normally italic or quote title to be plain text

One could extend this idea and enumerate the parameters so that they would render in order specified in the template:

((cite book |1author,=John Rawls |2title,=A Theory of Justice |3location=Cambridge |4publisher,=Harvard University Press |5date,=1971 |6page.=1 |nopp=yes))

I don't think that either of these ideas should be pursued. Better, I think is to support a handful of commonly used and well documented styles – mla, apa, cms.

The above discussion that you didn't read is mostly about implementing mla in the cs1|2 templates. I have adapted ((cite book)) so that it can render basic mla style. I intend to similarly adapt ((cite journal)), ((cite news)), and ((cite web)) and then when real life gets out of the way, take what I've learned from this experiment and rewrite a large chunk of Module:Citation/CS1 so that other similarly documented styles can be supported.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, thank you for the detailed response. The style I use is close to Chicago, but I've pared it down to all commas, no brackets, to keep it simple. I usually use the long cite on first reference in the text and the short thereafter, and usually no separate bibliography section.

Can cite news at least be changed so that the dates don't move? We had an RfC that supported the change, but it was never implemented. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:16, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Above I mentioned a rewrite of a large chunk of Module:Citation/CS1. The difficulty that Editor Dragons flight mentioned in the RfC still exists. I would expect that at the end of the rewrite, it will be easier to position the publication date as the second element in the rendered citation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I strongly disagree with both creating punctuation-specific and enumerating parameters as this would make total mess over months/years and references would be not unified/uniform but – mess. I'm even surprised that you proposed this as goal of CS1 was to standardize – not to allow "citeshakes"?

Moreover, I thought you would simply ignore SarahSV's comment as this user is not using CS1 and says ... they can't copy my style (or any other) using templates; they have to do it manually because the templates are so limiting. – I can't even comment on this one.

@SlimVirgin: Templates and CS1 are not "so limiting" but a perfect solution not to disable people from "copying each other styles" but to introduce one style for all references that can be altered in future if there is need to, because citation style and Wikipedia style generally should be uniform and consistent with guidelines; if every editor would cite in a different way – "chaos mode" would be turned on in references section.--Obsuser (talk) 23:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

You must have missed this line in that post: I don't think that either of these ideas should be pursued. It is the prerogative and the responsibility of the cs1|2 templates to handle formatting details. I do not think that we should be changing that. What I wrote was merely a thought experiment.

When an editor specifically asks a question of me, as was done here, common courtesy requires me to respond. No one benefits if questions that can be answered are left unanswered.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, I also "strongly disagree with both creating punctuation-specific and enumerating parameters" for similar reasons. We already have a frequent problem with people abusing the |publisher= parameter to "get their way or else" in their WP:GREATWRONGS campaign against ever italicizing the name of a cited website, for example. This nonsense battlegrounding has to stop, not be given a whole new navy of battleships with which to engage in style-micromanagement editwarring. I also agree with the points above about the benefits of a consistent citation style. I don't think we should be doing any work at all to integrate MLA, ALA, AMA, etc. citation styles into CS1 or any template system; it's a non-productive waste of editorial time to do it, and an much worse waste of many editors' combined editorial time to deal with the mess it creates, and, worst of all, all the "don't you dare touch my precious citation formatting" drama festivals it generates. If we just ignore these off-WP citation styles, at some point the sheer pressure of more and more articles being done in default CS1 style, and more and more articles converted to it without objection, will result (finally) in consensus that WP should have a consistent citation style, not permit every imaginable, inconsistent one. That may take 5 years, or 10. Even if it never happened, what has to go – no doubt – is the nonsense WP:LOCALCONSENSUS over at WP:CITE that any made-up on the spot out of your own imagination citation "style", not found in any source anywhere, can be ruthlessly enforced at an article as long as you made it the consistent "style" at the article at some point, no matter how irrational and confusing the "style" is. WP:CITEVAR was intended to permit people professionally steeped in a particular, real-world citation style, like AMA or MHRA or Vancouver, to use it here without hissy-fits erupting about it (and this has proven to be a mistake). Whether or not that was a good idea, it's since then been totally hijacked to permit idiosyncratic WP:OWN chaos that has to go. This will probably require a WP:VPPOL RfC, since prior attempts to deal with it at WT:CITE itself have met with tagteam stonewalling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:10, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

mla in cite journal

Adapting ((cite journal)) to use mla:

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016). "Title". Journal. Volume (Issue): 12–34. ((cite journal)): |author= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Author; Author2; Author3 (2016). "Title". Journal. Volume (Issue): 12–34. ((cite journal)): |author= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:12, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

If I make a tangential comment, but seeing how this is formatted above MLA style, reminds me of a minor request related to ((cite magazine)). That template is capitalizing "Vol." when I think it really should be lowercasing it as your MLA example does. Maybe a minor change for a future module update? Imzadi 1979 → 14:01, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Compare these; one is ((cite magazine)) (cs1) and the other is ((citation)) (cs2):

"Title". Magazine. Vol. 23, no. 4. Archived from the original on 2016-08-29. Retrieved 2016-08-29.

"Title", Magazine, vol. 23, no. 4, archived from the original on 2016-08-29, retrieved 2016-08-29

The 'style' defined for cs1 is to use full stops between citation elements compared to commas for cs2. Because each citation element in cs1 is essentially a new sentence, the element's static text is capitalized. Because cs2 is a single sentence, the static text is not capitalized.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:04, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Except that "p." and "pp." aren't capitalized when used, so I don't buy the "separate" sentence argument. Why isn't the volume ended by a period when issue and page number are?

"Title". Magazine. Vol. 23, no. 4. p. 6. Archived from the original on 2016-08-29. Retrieved 2016-08-29.

I think it would be better to be a bit more consistent here, and oddly MLA shows a bit of a better way forward. Imzadi 1979 → 15:36, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Are p. and pp. ever capitalized outside of Wikipedia? I don't think that those two have ever been capitalized in cs1|2. 'Vol.' has only recently been made available. The thing that I notice about your example is the separator character following the issue number. If there isn't a separator character between volume and issue, should there be a separator character between issue and page?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

mla in cite news

Adapting ((cite news)) to use mla:

Author; Author2; Author3 (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |author= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) – cs1 live

Author; Author2; Author3 (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |author= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) – cs1 sandbox

Author; Author2; Author3 (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |author= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:33, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I didn't get it quite right. When the mla version of ((cite news)) (and ((cite journal)) and ((cite web))) did not have |author=, the title would not display. That has been remedied.

without author; with editor

Editor; Editor2; Editor3, eds. (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |editor= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link) – cs1 live

Editor; Editor2; Editor3, eds. (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |editor= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link) – cs1 sandbox

Editor; Editor2; Editor3, eds. (3 September 2016). "Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |editor= has generic name (help); |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link)

without author or editor

"Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. 3 September 2016. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help) – cs1 live

"Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. 3 September 2016. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help) – cs1 sandbox

"Title". Newspaper. Vol. Volume, no. Issue. 3 September 2016. pp. D12+. ((cite news)): |issue= has extra text (help); |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |mode=mla (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:02, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

bioRxiv, similarly to arxiv, is a preprint repository for biology. They don't quite have a dedicated identifier, but they do make use of a DOI system, which is not the same as the published version's DOI. I propose we add support for Biorxiv as an identifier

Option 1

• |biorxiv=047720 → bioRxiv 047720
• |biorxiv=10.1001/047720 → bioRxiv 047720

e.g. Luallen, Robert J.; et al. (30 June 2016). "Discovery of a Natural Microsporidian Pathogen with a Broad Tissue Tropism in Caenorhabditis elegans". PLOS Pathogens. 12 (6): e1005724. bioRxiv 047720 . doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1005724.

Option 2

• |biorxiv=047720 → bioRxiv 10.1101/047720
• |biorxiv=10.1001/047720 → bioRxiv 10.1101/047720

e.g. Luallen, Robert J.; et al. (30 June 2016). "Discovery of a Natural Microsporidian Pathogen with a Broad Tissue Tropism in Caenorhabditis elegans". PLOS Pathogens. 12 (6): e1005724. bioRxiv 10.1101/047720 . doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1005724.

Option 1 has the merit of being in line with how bioRxiv presents their pseudoidentifier (click citation tools on the right of that website), but option 2 makes the doi nature of the link clearer, and would be more useful in print. Personally I lean towards option 1, but I'd rather let people more experienced with bioRxiv than me decide. I'll advertise the discussion at relevant wikiprojects. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics /books} 21:49, September 7, 2016 (UTC)

• I'm fine with Option 1. I don't think it's important to draw attention to the DOI resemblance. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

These citations are confusing (to me). You are citing a pre-print and the published, peer-reviewed version in the same citation. Those are two different articles. Just as DOI is not allowed in ((cite arxiv)), we should not allow a DOI and biorxiv value in the same citation. Help us understand what you are trying to achieve here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:24, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

The journal is cited, the bioRxiv copy is linked as convenience, just like we do with arXiv (e.g. W.-M. Yao; et al. (Particle Data Group) (2006). "Review of Particle Physics: Pentaquark Update" (PDF). Journal of Physics G. 33 (1): 1–1232. arXiv:astro-ph/0601168. Bibcode:2006JPhG...33....1Y. doi:10.1088/0954-3899/33/1/001. ((cite journal)): Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:41, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree these could be two different articles, depending on the peer-review process. What might be useful is the linked biorxiv copy where the final version is non-OA. In my experience of mostly compbio papers, this isn't usually the case, but it could be different for other biology subfields? Amkilpatrick (talk) 00:16, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The identifier 10.1101/047720 is a doi simply because of its structure. Put that number in |doi= and it works:

((cite journal |title=Discovery ... |doi=10.1101/047720))

"Discovery ...". doi:10.1101/047720. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

This is just a proposal for a biorxiv identifier, right? We aren't contemplating a ((cite biorxiv)) here are we? If just an identifier, is the identifier anything but digits? Because it is and can (does) use the doi mechanism, anything after the first virgule can be any printable character.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Here it's for adding the identifier support. We might develop a ((cite biorxiv)) template in parallel to this, but that's not what this proposal is about specifically. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:06, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

• option 1 seems preferable--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:03, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
• Thanks for the heads up at WP:COMPBIO. It would definitely be good to have bioRxiv supported similarly to arXiv. I think Option 1 is fine here, in line with their own style. Amkilpatrick (talk) 00:13, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 seems good to me. It is more useful than using the |doi= field because this field might be used for the published version (and adding a custom |biorxiv= parameter enables us to add the free-to-read lock silently). I am happy to implement that in the sandbox if it helps. − Pintoch (talk) 07:46, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Here is the exemplar citation rendered by the sandbox. This rendering uses |biorxiv=047720 which is the simplest form and should work for all as long as the prefix is and remains 10.1101/. If ever that changes, then this scheme will stop working.

Luallen, Robert J.; et al. (30 June 2016). "Discovery of a Natural Microsporidian Pathogen with a Broad Tissue Tropism in Caenorhabditis elegans". PLOS Pathogens. 12 (6): e1005724. bioRxiv 047720. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1005724. ((cite journal)): Check |biorxiv= value (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:20, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Should/does it support both 047720 and 10.1101/047720 as inputs? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:27, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

As I wrote in my post, the sandbox does not support the doi form. Should it? I think not. If editors want to use the doi form there is |doi=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Just throwing it out there as an idea. The output would be the same (truncated) in all cases though. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:50, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I've made ((Cite Polish law)) a wrapper for ((Cite web)), but it has |volume= and |number= parameters, which I've temporarily shoe-horned into the |website= parameter. Is there a better solution? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:58, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I've solved that by making it wrap ((Citation)), instead. Please let me know if my edits can be improved further. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:09, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

A technicality, but AFAIK, ((citation)) is Citation Style 2, not CS1, so your wrapper template is not quite accurate. Keep up the bold work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Why not use cite journal instead of cite web? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:01, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Someone has reverted your changes but left the documentation inconsistent. Before I realised that I created a sandbox and testcases to experiment with using the mode parameter, but so far that has not worked as I expected. I've not touched the live template. --Mirokado (talk) 22:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, all. I've made it wrap ((Cite journal)), instead. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:31, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I've been reverted, again, apparently because the template did not match "the legal Polish format". I wasn't aware that we were subject to Polish law. It would be interesting to review the internal consistency of citations in articles using the template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:03, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Language template

A side issue: I understand now why this revert of part of my edit was made, but how else can we show the language of a non-English title? (As opposed to the |language= of the target page.) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:11, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

We've discussed a |title-lang=es/|title-es= in the past, derived from discussion at the feature request for it. Aside: I doubt there would be support for displaying the language of the title, as that's really just fluff for a citation. --Izno (talk) 12:32, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

It's not about displaying the language of the title (my use of "show" was imprecise, sorry), but marking it up correctly. For instance, ((lang|pl|Twoje zdrowie!)) displays as Twoje zdrowie! and emits the HTML: <span xml:lang="pl" lang="pl">Twoje zdrowie!</span> . Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:10, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Then you may want to review the archive discussion; contributors do desire this function, but were a) split on the parameter set and b) per the Html 5 specification, specifying only the lang and not the xml:lang e.g. <span lang="pl">Twoje zdrowie!</span>. --Izno (talk) 19:50, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Cite

Given the following wiki markup as example:

((Cite web |url=https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944 |title=TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products |date=2014-11-08 |website=Apple Support |publication-date=2016-02-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160913023842/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944 |archive-date=2016-09-13 |dead-url=no |access-date=2016-09-13))

produces output similar to this:

<cite class="citation web"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944">"TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products"</a>. <i>Apple Support</i> (published 2016-02-05). 2014-11-08. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160913023842/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944">Archived</a> from the original on 2016-09-13<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">2016-09-13</span></span>.</cite>

My concern is that the HTML citation element (<cite>) is wrapped around the whole template. The WHATWG HTML Standard says in section 4.5.6 that A person's name is not the title of a work and and the element must therefore not be used to mark up people's names. Further examples are given in that section for correct usage according to that specification. HTML5 specification published by W3C (which was developed by WHATWG, but later diverged by W3C) allows using a name as a citation, but I believe the examples given mostly point at the direction of giving a very specific citation based on work name (in our case, |title=).

The correct output should look something like this (untested, I mind you):

<p class="citation web"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944">"<cite>TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products</cite>"</a>. <i>Apple Support</i> (published 2016-02-05). 2014-11-08. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160913023842/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944">Archived</a> from the original on 2016-09-13<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">2016-09-13</span></p>.

Time

It may be a good idea to change the <span> for dates to <time> element as well, for further improving the semantics. I also question if the quotation marks " need to be around the <cite> element, as if they are only for visual appearance then they should be added in CSS.

My view is biased towards WHATWG as the current status of HTML as the right thing to do, because updating to the WHATWG specification would satisfy requirements of both W3C's HTML5 and WHATWG's HTML standard. The current template does not allow satisfying HTML standard requirements.

References

80.221.159.67 (talk) 11:50, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

We changed cite deliberately to use cite per Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_8#HTML5 bait-and-switch: The cite element again. Please review that discussion. --Izno (talk) 12:40, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

And the discussion linked therein at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css/Archive_17#The_cite_element_needs_to_not_auto-italicize_any_longer. --Izno (talk) 12:43, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

And finally, the actual implementation discussion at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_9#<cite> has been fixed, so we can now use it for entire citation. --Izno (talk) 12:46, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the styling (issue with quotation marks), we have already defaulted the use of cite to not-italicize based on the issue that sometimes the citation provides only work vice work and sub-section title. Long works use italics while sub-work-level usually use quotation marks. So I believe there would not be consensus (even if it made sense to change our use of cite, which it doesn't) to change those points of styling in CSS. No comment regarding the use of the time element. --Izno (talk) 12:57, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Time discussion

The point about <time> seems well made. Can we do that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:44, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Reading up on the spec for the time element, we would need to be careful with this, such that the datetime= attribute is both supplied and valid (it expects all-numeric dates), for example <time datetime=2016-09-16>16 September 2016</time>. If we don't validate that attribute, it would need to be omitted, and the enclosed date would then need to be all-numeric, i.e. <time>2016-09-16</time> would be valid, but <time>16 September 2016</time> would not. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:19, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I would be concerned about adding a such tag for a non-Gregorian date given that the input is ISO8601-like and thus does not provide for calendar model. But any date after 1923 should certainly get it. The dates aren't technically all-numeric, for sub-date information, but that's mostly a non-issue.

I would apply this to all dates in the citation templates. --Izno (talk) 20:29, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

According to https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/infrastructure.html#dates-and-times "To unambiguously identify a moment in time prior to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar (insofar as moments in time before the formation of UTC can be unambiguously identified), the date has to be first converted to the Gregorian calendar from the calendar in use at the time (e.g. from the Julian calendar). The date of Nero's birth is the 15th of December 37, in the Julian Calendar, which is the 13th of December 37 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar." Wikipedia uses the date that appears on the publication itself, which may very well be non-Gregorian. So either we forget about this <time> thing altogether, or we have to examine the date to see if it is a plausible Gregorian date (rather than, say, an Islamic calendar) and then make sure it is no earlier than 1923. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:37, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I think we can start with a limited rollout for all dates after 1923 since this will be the vast majority of dates anyway, unless there's some calendar in use presently which had years greater than 1923 in the Gregorian year 1923. --Izno (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I would think the first test is to see if the entire date string can be successfully parsed as a machine readable date. I imagine "Summer 2015" would fail this, even though it is a valid Wikipedia publication date. This should also screen out dates that have some notation of a non-Gregorian calendar, something like "Japanese year 2015". Then check if the year is greater than 1923 and not ridiculously far in the future. If you try too hard to extract a date from a bunch of junk, you are likely to find out that what you treated as junk was actually a warning that the date doesn't mean what you think it means. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:27, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

phab:T34545 is still open, but its parent task phab:T25932 says the tag is implemented. Looks like Danny B noticed that on the child task and asked the question awhile ago without answer. My browser seems to think that the tags emitted above are supported in the wikitext, so I'll probably go close the child. --Izno (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Back in 2015, the decision was made to deprecate |version= for ((cite arxiv)). This should not have been done. The main reason against deprecation is that the majority of arxiv links with v1/v2 etc. are more or less mindlessly copy-pasted, and the person giving the link didn't mean to link to a specific version. |version= gave us the means to distinguish between the intentional linking to a specific version of a preprint, vs the accidental linking which really should just be the most up to date version of the preprint. So please restore |version= in ((cite arxiv)). Additionally, the v1/v2 of the arxiv identifier should be hidden when people write ((cite xxx|arxiv=1001.1002v2)). Headbomb (talk) 00:40, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Why does that distinguishing need to happen? The deliberate user will still use the version of interest, while the ignorant user will use the version which provided him the information (which will presumably be the latest version, as you note). WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT protects us regardless. --Izno (talk) 02:54, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT says that you should cite the version where you found the information in question, so mindless copying and pasting of the version that the editor has actually read is exactly what we want. If an editor cites version 2 and then version 3 (the latest version) changes radically to stop supporting the statement in question, omitting the version number is the wrong thing to do. |version= is redundant to |arxiv= (or its alias, |eprint=), since "v2" or whatever can easily be included in the identifier. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:07, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but a statement should always be backed by the latest version, and if it isn't then we should tag it with ((fails verification)) / remove the statement. That's why an explicit |version=2 means you really DID mean the second version, because the 3rd version (or later) no longer supports that fact. Likewise, the v2 of the arxiv identifier of a ((cite journal)) should be stripped because in that case the arxiv link is a convenience link, and should always link to the most up to date version. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 10:44, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

When a book or article has more than one article or editor, with Template:Cite book a semicolon is placed between the first and second author, or between the first and second editor. For example "Dominic Baker-Smith; Cedric Charles Barfoot". I think this should be a comma. In the ISBD, a semicolon is used when contributors to a publication have different roles, which are mentioned in the description, for examples an editor, author, illustrator or translator. A comma or the word 'and' are usually used however between contributors with the same role (like two authors). In most referencing styles I see elsewhere, like APA style, the same applies. Bever (talk) 21:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

CS1 follows the "Last, First" convention for most names. Comma separators between contributors would not work well with the current scheme. There is also some facility for indicating roles in CS1 already. Is there any specific reason for CS1 to comply with ISBD? 65.88.88.127 (talk) 21:33, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@Bever: you can include |last-author-amp=yes which inserts an ampersand between the last two authors (or editors) in a list. In your example, you'd get "Dominic Baker-Smith & Cedric Charles Barfoot". If you used |first=Dominic |last=Baker-Smith |first2=Cedric Charles |last2=Barfoot, you'd get "Baker-Smith, Dominic; Barefoot, Cedric Charles", which makes clear why we use the semicolon without the optional parameter to use an ampersand between the last two entries in an author list. Imzadi 1979 → 01:55, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I can the point you both make about confusing commas. In scientific publications, often only initials are used for first names, so they are easily recognizable, making the extra commas less problematic. Sometimes the comma between last name and initials is even omitted. Personally I think the reversed name order is only useful when you want to sort the publications alphabetically (on last name), which is typically not the case when using footnotes... Bever (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2016 (UTC) PS Thank you for the ampersand advice.

Alterations in separators based on whether the first name is an initial or not seem like a non-starter to me. As for the sorting comment, list of full citations are (correctly) sorted by Last where WP:SFN and WP:GENREF is employed. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 18:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

Would anyone care to make ((NewMusicBox)) a wrapper for a suitable CS1 template? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:56, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't this question first belong on that template's talk page? Or, in lieu of that, a notice to the template's author about the conversation here?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:59, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

No. It needs someone with an understanding (better than mine, or I would do it) of CS1. This is the place where such people congregate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:41, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I've made ((NewMusicBox/sandbox)), which is a wrapper for ((Cite interview)). Note that if this sandbox version is used, someone should go through the articles using this template and change the parameter |composer=[[Composer article|Composer]] (or |composer=[[Composer]]) to |composer=Composer|composer-link=Composer article - Evad37 [talk] 06:07, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

@Evad37: Thank you. I've asked for an AWB operator to assist. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:43, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

All done, now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:40, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Do we truncate long old-timey headlines (called titles in the template) down to the first sentence? "title= Vernon Castle Dies In Airplane Fall. Killed at Fort Worth Avoiding Collision That Threatened Lives of Three. Won Captaincy At Front. Numerous Deaths In Training Call Attention to the Need of Skilled Inspectors. Castle's Spectacular Feats. Skilled Inspectors Needed. Vernon Castle's Career. Starred on the Stage" --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

That kinda seems like a inline TOC. Do you have the original copy of that article somewhere so we can review it? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:13, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

After searching, it really does look like that's the full title. I'd quote it in full personally, but if someone only kept it to 'Vernon Castle Dies In Airplane Fall' I wouldn't revert either. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:20, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

We've run into something similar citing specific older laws in California that made changes to the state's highway system. In those cases, we used only the first X words/Y characters and truncated the titles. Another example comes from citing social media postings. Since they lack a separate headline, most style guides use the text of the posting or tweet as the title, and they advise truncating overly long items, usually to a 40-word incipit. Imzadi 1979 → 23:29, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed., p. 15.115) agrees with shortening titles of old works with excessively long titles. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like the titles of Papal Bulls - typically truncated to the first two or three words. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:30, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

For English literature from about the 16th century (e.g. Shakespeare) up until somewhere in the 18th century (e.g. Johnson) the style was to use big ponderous titles that double as a sales pitch. This looks really awkward to modern readers who are used the sales pitch being rendered devoit of actual meaning and condensed down into three to five words (in big ponderous fonts and high-contrast colours, usually accompanied by an overproduced cover design). However, these are actually the titles of the works, and any shortening edges into WP:OR territory (mostly won't matter at all, but it demands care). I think the guidance in the context of citation templates should be to use the full title (however awkward it may look to modern readers), and that any abbreviation needs careful consideration. If the resulting issues (which, again, mainly boil down to dissonance for readers unused to the long titles) are considered severe enough, the place to try to address it would be at the MoS, where additional guidance (such as: abbreviations should be supported by reliable sources, and explained in text; or whatever) can be included that would be somewhat out of scope for the CS1 context. And personally, I would advocate weak guidance to use full titles but to leave room for individual editors' judgement and local consensus for an article (and, where applicable, WikiProject).

But to give a counter-example: Shakespeare's plays have short to medium length titles (e.g. A most pleasant and excellent conceited comedy, of Sir John Falstaffe, and the merry wiues of Windsor.) which have effectively universally agreed shortened titles that our reliable sources use (and often also discuss directly); to wit: The Merry Wives of Windsor. For these there is very little sense in using the ponderous title in the citations (in the text it needs to be discussed, but for different reasons). Shakespeare also provides the counter-counter-example: since the modern short names are later abbreviations, there is some times actual scholarly discussion over which part of the long title should form the short title (to construct an example on the fly: should it be Merry Wives or Sir John Falstaff? There are actual examples of this that I can't be arsed to dig up right now, incidentally.) Picking a particular short title can (and I stress, can, not will) end up privileging the position of The Oxford Shakespeare over the Arden Shakespeare in violation of WP:NPOV (WP:DUE). --Xover (talk) 09:48, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

• You can almost write a whole biography from just the article title. I suppose you can use the first sentence in the title and the rest add to the quote= section. That way you do not end up with a sea of blue. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:24, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

There exists a "time" parameter for this template, but it is used only to denote the start time. Is there nothing to denote the end time? Kailash29792 (talk) 12:14, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Not specifically. The time parameters are |minutes=, |time= and |time-caption=. The output rendering for |minutes= is fixed:

Title. 4:30 minutes in.

as is the plain |time=:

Title. Event occurs at 4:30.

but the |time= rendering can be overridden with |time-caption=:

((cite av media |title=Title |time=4:30 and 4:45 |time-caption=Between))

Title. Between 4:30 and 4:45.

or:

((cite av media |title=Title |time=4:45 |time-caption=Ends at))

Title. Ends at 4:45.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

For segments of a longer video; would not |start-time= combined with either |duration= xor |end-time= make sense? It appears intuitively so to me, but I hadn't really thought about it. --Xover (talk) 09:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I want to reference a YouTube video (yes I've checked notability copyright etc). This is surely a common if not one of the primary online references today? Anyway, to do this I have to take an UG course in wiki editing. The HowTo text here is a technical manual and the examples are really fragmented. Is there not a simple way to demonstrate the FULL basic use of the template and then go into detail rather than the taxonomic tree hierarchy approach that seems to be being adopted. Demonstrating the elementary use of the template is not so helpful as it only serves to encourage the poor use of the template. It's a balance. IMO this time it's way out of kilter. I'd rewrite it myself but .... maybe when I have your expertise? ;) LookingGlass (talk) 11:07, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

{frustrated} well I was shocked .. answer is that I was helpfully redirected from Template talk:Cite AV media. More chaos and dumb machineness from the redirect and merge junkies. Grrr! Help pages? The clue's in the name! LookingGlass (talk) 11:11, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

No, the clue is in the big banner at the top of this page, which says "To help centralise discussions and keep related topics together, the talk pages for all Citation Style 1 templates and modules redirect here.". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

@LookingGlass: I concur; it is quite helpful to discuss things that impact the various templates in a single place, and it gives us one page to watch to help instead of following a few dozen talk pages.

Now, to try to help answer your question, if you want to cite a video uploaded to YouTube, use the ((cite AV media)) template. Ignore for a moment that the video is on that website. Cite the author(s)/creator(s) of the video, the publication date, the title of the video, the original publisher, etc. Add |type=Video so that readers know it is a video. Include the URL to the video, and then at the very end, I would add |access-date=September 19, 2016 and |via=YouTube. This lets people where and when you accessed the video file without crediting YouTube as the original publisher, just as we wouldn't credit Google Books as the original publisher of a scanned copy of a book they merely host online. Imzadi 1979 → 13:17, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

@Imzadi1979: Thanks for your reply, though my experience is that that a central page is not very helpful. See Staggeringly unhelpful, below. I solved the issue of the citation. As with all wikipedia editing it is very easy - once you find the code needed - doing that though takes a great deal of time. The question then arises "why am I doing this?" - why spend all this time on editing when the cognoscenti don't try to make things simple?

Bottom line: there is a line of text in the template documentation that sets out the parameters of the "template" (this label ie unhelpful I find - what we are addressing is actually a line of code) but this template description is incomplete (e.g the Via parameter is omited). The primary problem though is that descriptions of the parameters are sometimes provided in curly quotes sometimes not sometimes with sub-parameters sometimes not sometimes describing sub-parameters but not as such sometimes with curly quotes etc etc you get the point I hope. The curly quotes are a red herring. They do not form part of the "template". I would have edited the template/doumentation to clarify but .... And I would have had this discussion on that template there is the chance had been afforded. As it is anyone befuddle by similar issues is sent here and the conversation grows exponentially.

The mistake being made with the template documentation is one in my experience typically found in text written by technical experts to serve as documentation for their own subject. There is a natural tendency to assume those not familiar with our own area of expertise are simple minded. Perhaps consequently we fail to recognize fundamental semantic errors in our text, let alone more complex ones. Simply put this issue, pandemic in wiki, is driven by succumbing to the sweet temnptation of hubris - a flaw I have in abundance! Thanks again.

LookingGlass (talk) 13:35, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Your comments regarding poor documentation would not be the first. WP:BOLD applies. :D --Izno (talk) 13:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I searched in the CS1 archives regarding ((cite interview)) and couldn't find a reason for why cite interview italicizes its title.

I couldn't find anything in our Manual regarding the title of an interview. MLA and Chicago recommend (not official links!) to place the title of a published interview in quotation marks, while APA doesn't seem to have a recommendation (presumably because they consider published interviews to take the format of the publication type in question--official blog from 2009--APA then seemed to have the practice of italicizing their titles regardless, so maybe it's not worth considering).

Would there be support for changing how interview titles are cited to use quotation marks instead of italics? (I did note Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 5#The "title" parameter in the Cite interview, which seems to work around a local issue and which happens to use the italics as a feature, not a bug, but as cite interview is only used about 3k times, I doubt that we couldn't fix them locally as necessary.) --Izno (talk) 22:46, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, should be quotation marks. The major work in which the interview is published gets the italics.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:14, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

((cite interview)) is one of those templates that needs a rewrite. To make it work with ((citation/core)), |program=, |callsign=, and |city= are all concatenated into the meta-parameter ID. For some reason, |type=, which is media descriptor, is used to modify |interviewer(s)= (an alias of |others=). When I converted the template to use Module:Citation/CS1, I retained these peculiarities because the task at the time was to faithfully reproduce ((citation/core)).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy to have a discussion actually about remapping/rewriting for cite interview, but I suspect the change needed for |title= would be simple.

Regarding the other stuff in your comment, the template talk page's history may be an interesting view into template's history and may explain some of the peculiarities.

• Type looks to be explained: it looks like the name just overlaps and so cleanup is needed for it. We might want to do a survey (add a category) of the pages using type in cite interview.
• Program should probably alias |work=; usage seems to indicate that the field might need some cleanup.

City should probably map to |location= or |publication-place=. |callsign= mapping to ID doesn't seem like a bad choice, but it shouldn't override ID in case another is identified. In our current example at Template:Cite interview, the call sign seems to be an alias for the |publisher= or possibly the republisher, as in the second example (which would go in |via=). NPR for some reason is the program, which doesn't make sense to me. Maybe call-sign should wait for another day. :D

Another personal peculiarity: I find the mapping of interviewee to author peculiar, but not interviewer to author--ostensibly, they should share credit, because the interviewer thought of and published the questions asked. Of course, now we have |contributor=, if we don't think the interviewer should share credit... just some thoughts.

To get around the issue in the H:CS1 archive, I might suggest the following order regarding the URL: title, work/program, and if neither are available (unlikely--the interview may as well be unpublished at that point!) the text "interview with interviewer" should probably get the url. Of course, |work= can usually take a wikilink, so I'm not sure about that suggestion... So many cut out linking work, and simply: if title is missing, then link the text "interview with" or possibly "interview". --Izno (talk) 11:41, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

This search suggests that there aren't too many ((cite interview)) templates that use |type=.

In looking through that list, I notice stuff like this ('video' and the 'Interview' static text in separate parentheses – because there is no |interviewer=):

((cite interview |subject= Sia|subjectlink= Sia Furler|type= video|title= Sia—Interview|url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/artists/sia/|program= ''[[Later... with Jools Holland]]''|callsign= BBC Two|city= London|date= October 2008 |accessdate=14 November 2008 ))

Sia (October 2008). "Sia—Interview" (video). Retrieved 14 November 2008. ((cite interview)): Unknown parameter |callsign= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |subjectlink= ignored (|subject-link= suggested) (help)

So that needs fixing.

Remapping |program= → |work= seems obvious as does |city= → |location=. |callsign= → |publisher=?

I wonder if we shouldn't treat interviewers the same way we treat translators: create enumerated |interviewern=, etc; have dedicated static text so instead of Translated by $1 we use Interviewed by $1; |type= if set overrides the predefined meta-parameter TitleType value (just like all of the other cs1 templates that use predefined TitleType).

Titles are required for all cs1|2 templates. I'm not sure we should break that rule here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

The template currently supports |interviewer= and |interviewers=. I don't see a problem with adding the enumerated case, and perhaps interviewer-first/last; would the intent be to add that to the metadata as I suggested? Otherwise, doesn't seem worth it.

I'm wondering if we can't just remove the non-standard parameters; namely, |call-?sign= (179 articles), |city= (465 articles), and |program= (563 articles).

Should we choose not to remove them:

• For callsign, it looks like it's subject to the standard work/publisher confusion, but indicating perhaps a higher-level work. I don't think capturing the higher-level work is necessary or desirable, so setting it to publisher would be okay in the majority of cases.
• I think we're agreed re city and program.

Regarding titles, don't we have a keyword lying around when the title is unknown or is not present for the lesser work in question? It's not documented in the generic documentation, if so. --Izno (talk) 16:08, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

For the sake of consistency, interviewer names would have the same parameter variants ans other namelists.

The only names in the metadata are author names. Translators, editors, interviewers, others, coauthors; none of these get into the metadata. When the metadata standard changes or we adopt another standard, then those names can be included.

We should deprecate before we remove, but I am in favor of removing those three parameters.

Only ((cite journal)) allows |title=none because there is an abbreviated 'style' used in some scientific disciplines that omits article titles in journal citations.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:04, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The only point in response, because I'm fine with the rest: the handful of links above for the other styles each noted the case of the untitled interview. I'm personally fine with an interview being untitled and having an error, but it seems to me like the other information present would be sufficient (namely, the combination of interviewer, interviewee, and work). Maybe it should be questionable from our point of view whether the interview is legitimately published if it contains no title. *shrug* I think the other changes clearly have my agreement. :D --Izno (talk) 23:12, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I've marked the parameters callsign, program, and city as deprecated in the sandbox and provided replacement documentation in the errors page. The below should provide at least one error:

I'm boggled on where to go in the module to correct the use of italics versus quotation. I'd like a pointer and then to see if I can implement it myself. --Izno (talk) 04:37, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've figured out the title change. I made a decision to 'prefer' some values; I'm not hung up on a change in that regard. I will look at the type next. --Izno (talk) 05:38, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I tweaked the remapping of parameters a bit. When a variable is set, no need to re-set it. Carry on.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:01, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I went to implement a "fix", but maybe we should discuss how we want the citation to appear instead in the following cases:

1. |type= is set and |interviewer= (or variant) is set.
2. |type= is set and |interviewer= is not set.
3. |type= is not set and |interviewer= is set.
4. |type= is not set and |interviewer= is not set.

--Izno (talk) 16:19, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I think that I would like to see |type= default to |type=Interview regardless of the presence or absence of |interviewer=. That way is consistent with other cs1 templates that have default |type= values. If an editor chooses, |type= may be set to something other than the default value.

Along with that, perhaps |interviewer= is treated the same way we treat |translator=; fixed text as prefix: 'Interviewed by <interviewer-name-list>' (or some such).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:11, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Should interviewers come before or after translators? --Izno (talk) 15:07, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I've started implementing interviewers and it looks like i broke something with title type = interview; I will be back later. --Izno (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I took care of some stray punctuation. In doing so, I made two assumptions: interviewers should be available to every citationClass/mode, and they should come before translators. These can be changed if someone wants. --Izno (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Type and language

When |type= and |language= are both specified where a title appears (and perhaps without a title?) (as with any of the citation templates that default a type), we get output that looks like

Subject. "Title" (Interview) (in French). Publisher.

We should also clean this up after. --Izno (talk) 15:46, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

This also occurs with |type= and |format=:

Subject. "Title" (Format) (in French). Publisher.

And all three:

Subject. "Title" (Format) (Interview) (in French). Publisher.

With work included, these become:

• Subject. "Title". Work (Interview) (in French). Publisher.
• Subject. "Title" (Format). Work (in French). Publisher.
• Subject. "Title" (Format). Work (Interview) (in French). Publisher.

--Izno (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

When we updated ((cite map)) last year to put it on the Lua module, we gave it a little bit of "intelligence" that I think should be put into play in other situations. For example:

• "Map" (Format) (Map). Atlas. Scale (in French). Publisher.

In this case, the map title is followed by the type indication instead of listing it after the title of the encompassing work, which itself isn't a map. In the future, I'd do something like:

• "Map" (Map, Format). Atlas (in French). Scale. Publisher.

which would merge the adjacent parenthetical statements together and shift the language away from the scale so as not to imply that the scale itself was in another language. Imzadi 1979 → 00:13, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

local tcommon

to

else	-- all other CS1 templates
	tcommon = safe_join( {Title, TitleNote, Conference, Periodical, Format, TitleType, Series, Language, 
		Volume, Others, Edition, Publisher, Agency}, sepc );
end

we have a whole bunch of "stuff these together" while for e.g. Language regarding styling we have:

if is_set (Language) then
	Language = language_parameter (Language);	-- format, categories, name from ISO639-1, etc
else
	Language="";					-- language not specified so make sure this is an empty string;
end

Language is getting stuff done to it that doesn't care about the other things that might be parenthetically placed in that location. TitleType is similar. For these two, which are referenced only rarely elsewhere in the module, fixing this issue may be trivial, I think. Format on the other hand seems to be referenced in multiple different locations and will likely require a bit more hacking. Mostly this is research on my part. :D --Izno (talk) 04:09, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Type expectations

To return to a previously (as in years ago) requested modification/clarification, what exactly is |type= supposed to be? Is it:

1. Type of medium ("video" "print" "audio" "digital" "plaque" "photograph" etc.)
2. Type of source ("interview" "media notes" "thesis" "press release" etc.)
3. Type of binding/packaging ("paperback" "CD" "VHS" or in digital bindings, "file-format"/"platform and file-format" etc.)
4. Whatever

Please do not repeat here what type: states in the various template docs, it's painful. Assuming that no. 4 above does not apply, can a less confusing |type= be had? 65.88.88.127 (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Citation/"source" type is what the phrase is used for those citation classes which use the type by default, and this is echoed by the documentation in Help:CS1. It seems to me that the medium/source/packaging question is something of a false trichotomy--all of those may be source types; while I might prefer to see something like "video interview" when someone uses |type=, I wouldn't be bothered by just seeing |type=[Vv]ideo. --Izno (talk) 13:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

By the same logic, all ((cite xxx)) templates are unneeded specializations of ((citation)). For citation purposes, i.e. to expeditiously direct people to proof of claims in an article, "medium" is not a "source", and neither of the two is "binding". 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)