Wikipedia talk:Citation templates/Archive 03

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Reference templates, GOOD. Citation templates BAD.

After monkeying around with citations, lately, I have come to the conclusion that what the WP project needs are Reference templates, and not Citation templates. I'll say how it is I reckon this, and I invite the comment of others -- as I'm sure you've guessed that I do, dear reader, else why would I have typed this here? ;-) Here goes:

The main trouble I see with citation templates is that, when seen in editing mode, they interfere with the text of the article proper, in which they are embedded. This is awkward for editors. If templates are left in tabular form, running vertically down the page, they break the article-text horribly. If they're strung out horizontally, linewise, they still break the surrounding article-text badly -- not as badly as they do in tabular form, but still badly -- and they become most awkward to use, themselves, because it is largely the tabular form that makes them so clear and handy to use.

For ease of editing, what in-text "...<ref>citations</ref>..." need most of all is to be as short as possible. Of course named references -- "...<ref name=Foo>Foo-citation</ref>..." for the first use, and thereafter "...<ref name=Foo/>..." -- help much with keeping these citations short, but those first citations remain troublesome because of the way that they break the article-text, as said. This is so in any case where some fairly thorough citation is given, not just when a template is used, but it is even more so when a template is used, because the template's fields (or whatever you call them: "| first = Joe | last = Blogs" etc.) take up so much further space, even when strung horizontally. (I know that they can be condensed by taking out the extra spaces, but this only partially solves the problem, and makes the template itself a good deal harder to read and to work with.)

So, on the one hand, long in-text citations are undesirable, and using templates makes them even worse that way. But, on the other hand, templates are handy for constructing references in a standard, semi-mechanical way -- at least some folk think so, myself among them. It is a dilemma.

But LW has a solution! (Stop me if you've heard this one.):

  1. Articles should have both a "Notes" section and a separate "References" section.
  2. Under the "Notes" section goes "<references/>" (which perhaps would better be re-named or alternatively named as "<notes/>", but with the exact same function, if these ideas are generally adopted).
  3. Under "References" go the reference templates -- like citation templates, but not quite. Each reference template produces a full, standard-form reference to the cited item, based on the information put into its "fields". But it does so in situ (instead producing the reference elsewhere, in response to "<references/>", the way a citation template does). The beauty is that, actually, the existing templates do exactly that if they are just put in by themselves, without <ref>...</ref> surrounding them! It's my guess that most of my readers, here, already realised this, but it is my impression that most WP editors are quite unaware that the "citation" templates can work in that way.
    The "References" are listed alphabetically under their section-heading, by author (with anonymous or corporate works treated in the usual ways as regards where they fall in that list).
  4. The entries under "References" detail only each work (book, journal-article, etc.) consulted, without getting into the nitty-gritty of page-number and such-like, as sometimes are needed to specify just where in the cited work the particular information may be found.
  5. The in-text citations then become short, sweet, and simple: Each first-one is given a name, which generally would be the surname of the source-author, as listed in "References", followed if need be by a page-number or such-like, and likewise each actual citation consists of the author's surname and, if need be, the page-number or such-like, thus: "...<ref name=Blogs>Blogs</ref>...", or "...<ref name=Blogs6>Blogs, p.6</ref>, with the book (let's say) by Blogs being fully detailed in the References section. Where needed, both the "name" and the citation would include an initial or first name (if more than one fellow surnamed Blogs is used as a source), a date (if more than one work by the same Blogs is cited), and perhaps a letter ("a", "b", etc., if more than one work published by the same Blogs in the same year is cited), thus: "...<ref name=BlogsJ>Blogs, Joe</ref>...", "...<ref name=Blogs1886>Blogs (1886)</ref>...", "...<ref name=Blogs1886a>Blogs (1886)a</ref>...", and so forth.
    Note that the same work need only appear once in "References", but any number of different citations of that work -- for different page numbers, typically -- may be made to appear under "Notes".
    Any subsequent, identical, citations can simply use the "...<ref name=Blogs/>..." form.

And that's it!

It turns out that the tools to do this already are available, and that all that would be needed to implement this idea would be to make it well known within WP. I think that this potential is not gotten across well in the various "WP:" pages related to citations. Certainly it was not obvious to me, as I began to teach myself about doing citations in WP, and puzzling it out took me some doing. If this idea seems good to other folk, I suggest that those various pages be amended to make clear how this (as it seems to me) easy and trouble-free way of citing sources can be accomplished.

(Incidentally, the quotation marks generally shown around the "names" of named references seem to be altogether redundant: <ref name=Foo>...</ref> works just as well as <ref name="Foo">...</ref>. Does anyone know what the story is with that?)

-- Lonewolf BC 10:33, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

  1. Citation templates are good. They link the text to the the reference. They are not distracting to anyone who reads academic literature. They provide crucial information.
  2. All that time you spent typing the above, you could've been writing/improving an article. No offense, seriously. Just an observation.
--Ling.Nut 12:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
It really isn't your place to say what another editor should or should not be doing with their time, Ling. That aside, I personally love the current citation templates. I'm borderline fanatic about them. What I would like to see changed, however, is a way to write the actual citations in the references section once, and only use a <ref name="foo" /> tag in the body where needed. This would clean up the body of the article considerably, and still retain the usefulness of the templates. Is this even feasible?
Also, regarding the quotation marks in the ref tags...this is just standard HTML formatting. No, it isn't necessary, but as I understand it, it is proper format. It just ensures that there is no question as to what the data is. -- Huntster T • @ • C 18:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes. If my remarks seemed rude, then I apologize. I didn't think they sounded that way when I typed them, but words on a screen can be interpreted with any tone of voice in the reader's mind. So, sorry. --Ling.Nut 18:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
No worries, Ling. Apology accepted, if you wish, but I'm really not as sensitive as that, so the apology, although much appreciated by me on principle, was not really needed. Please read my next bit, below, though, because I think you've overlooked the real substance and value of my proposal.
-- Lonewolf BC 00:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Jeez, Hunster! No offence meant, but didn't you read my proposal? It says how to "...write the actual citations in the references section once, and only use a <ref name="foo" /> tag in the body...". That can be done using the existing "citation" templates, but in a different way. Please read over my proposal, especially its third point, wherein I've now underlined the part you should be gladdest to see -- and rejoice, for your sourcing-salvation is at hand! ;-)
Your reply tends to confirm my suspicion that this potential use of the existing templates as "reference templates" in a "References" section, instead of as "citation templates" embedded in the body of the article, is generally not realised among WP editors, and would be widely welcomed if it were just made widely known.
Really, folks, I don't get the impression that either of you looked beyond, "Citation templates, BAD", before answering me with, "No, citation templates GOOD!". I agree that they are good, potentially. They just are not being used in the best way, because of which they are, on the balance, bad (in my opinion). However, there's a simple solution to that, which is to publicise their potential for use as "reference templates"! And then they will become an unmixed blessing to the WP project, and almost everyone should be well pleased.
-- Lonewolf BC 00:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I really do not believe we're talking about the same thing. As I said above, i don't want to have to wrap Ref tags around *anything* in the body, and instead use only <ref name="foo" />. Similarly to what you seem to be proposing, the main citation would be at the bottom, except there would be nothing in the body except the unique reference tag referring to the full bit below. I'm interpreting your idea as creating a base reference at the bottom, and using ref tags to surround a simple cite in the body. Either way, I'd like to see a working example of what you propose. Care to make one up? -- Huntster T • @ • C 02:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I understand you now. My mistake in not looking closely enough at what you wanted all the tags to be like, and my apologies if I seemed a little impatient. I believe you have altogether understood me, also. I like your idea, too. In fact, when I started investigating citation methods, I had the impression that there already was one like it on WP, and expected that if I just looked around a bit I would discover out how to use it -- but of course I found none, to my disappointment. We are thinking along much the same lines, at least. I'm not sure which way I'd prefer, "mine" or "yours", if both were available. Under the present circumstances, though, I still think my proposal makes good sense.
I'll make an example page in my user space (just as soon as I can puzzle out how to create user-space pages), to illustrate my proposal, and then put a link to it in this discussion. Thanks for the suggestion, although I was already fixing to do that.
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Citation templates aren't the problem. Cite.php is the problem. We shouldn't limit the amount of information in citation templates just to prevent the wiki markup from being cluttered. The whole referencing paradigm in Wikipedia is dreadful. It will be replaced by something better someday. In the meantime, just use unsubsted citation templates that take up many lines vertically and include as much information as relevant and ignore anyone who says you're cluttering things. — Omegatron 01:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
While existing templates are limited (really, that's half the usefulness of them, to keep things like infoboxes from overflowing with useless junk), you can certainly add additional information after the template but before the closing Ref tag. I've done this many times to include additional data outside the template parameters. -- Huntster T • @ • C 02:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Omegatron, you seem to be overlooking the fact that my proposal would satisfy the objections of folk who dislike the cluttering effect of the templates, by moving the templates out of the body of an article. There, they could be used in full, vertical form, without that form, or the templates as such, bothering anybody. To me, this seems a more collegial approach than does "...ignore anyone who says you're cluttering things."
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I've heard this one. I wrote much of Wikipedia:Footnotes#Disadvantages and future improvements and Wikipedia:Footnotes#See also. (SEWilco 05:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC))
It's nice to know others have been thinking along similar lines. I think that this more worked-out presentation of this particular idea, outside of a more general consideration of how footnoting in WP might be bettered, is of some worth, though. Don't you agree?
-- Lonewolf BC 07:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
In computer programming terminology, it's called a "forward reference" and was discussed in m:Talk:Cite.[1] The above links also include a link to a Bugzilla request for a References window to make it easier to edit References at the same time as another section. (SEWilco 15:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC))
Okay, so it's "such a good idea that it's been discussed already" -- but what has anyone done about it? It seems that similar ideas have been mentioned before, although I've not seen anything as fleshed out as what I've proposed. These prior mentions are good, insofar as they point away from such ideas being merely idiosyncratic. But if all that has happened is that a few people have made proposals, and perhaps a few more have tossed the idea around a little -- and so far as I can find, that is all that has happened -- what's the use of it been? I don't mean to denigrate anyone else's prior ideas, much less to blow my own horn, but this seems like a right fine idea that would be well worth the while of taking forward. I'm disappointed by what seems to be a response of "So what? That's been thought of already." Thinking it up is all very fine, but what good does it do, by itself? Not bloody much, is what! I was hoping for a bit more enthusiasm, and some thoughts on how to pubicise the system, if people think it is worthy of that. -- Lonewolf BC 12:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
It has interesting points. Can you summarize what is different from Cite.pm, WikiTextrose, Wikicite, and Biblio? (SEWilco 05:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC))
That would be difficult, given that I've never heard of any of those before. They sound like tools of the technical illuminati. I am not one, and my interest is in helping the rest of the uninitiated. If that aim does not interest you, just say so, or just say nought more. Your irony is unhelpful.
-- Lonewolf BC 12:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
You say "I've not seen anything as fleshed out as what I've proposed." but apparently haven't looked at the suggested links to previous work, so how relevant is your not having seen anything? Often such a proposal would be placed on a WP or Wikiproject page (although I don't know if that can be called publicity), but in order for people to learn of it they have to follow links to it from existing related pages when they are trying to learn about a Wikipedia subject. If you'll look at the already provided links to related work you'll learn more about what has already been fleshed out. (SEWilco 18:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC))


Demonstration Page

It is ready, here. -- Lonewolf BC 02:33, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

This system has been in use for a long time, and is used on a large number of articles already, as have similar systems, e.g. author-date ones. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I believe that you are mistaken as to the system being proposed, whereas I have not seen it used in any article I have come across, aside from the ones for which I have used it. Its components are already in widespread use, and it uses familiar forms of citation. The only innovation (assuming it to be an innovation) is to use the templates outside of the body of the text, rather than inside. This is not the way they are generally used, unless the sample of articles which I have seen is somehow altogether unrepresentative of WP articles. If you know of other articles using this system, please point them out to me. I very much wish to make contact with anyone else using the same system, with an eye toward making it better known and put into general use.
-- Lonewolf BC 07:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
More or less equivalent systems are used (at least intermittently) in Blaise Pascal, Point Park Civic Center, and Federalist No. 10, Pericles, Alcibiades, and many other articles that use author-page type citations. Whether they use the citation templates at all I am not sure, but this is not of great importance. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for giving those examples. No, I'm sorry to say that those are not using the system proposed. They are using a similar style of citing references, but the proposed system does not seek to innovate so far as that goes, so of course it uses familar forms. Rather, the proposed system is essentially a way of getting citation templates, on the one hand, and the <ref>...</ref> and <references/> programming ("cite.php", I believe it is called), on the other hand, to work together, each to full advantage, without the unwanted side-effect of cluttering up the bodies of articles with long citations. So the proposal is not so much formal as ... I guess meta-technical is the word for it. That is, the idea is to put the existing technical tools to better use.
-- Lonewolf BC 08:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Whether a formal harvard citation with date system or the article title (which can be used for similar content according to Chicago, IIRC) is not very relevant to saying it is the "same system". Look at Vijayanagara Empire. It is pretty much the same (the only difference is that is a few cases, I couldn't tell the exact meaning of the original citation, so they are not pure Harvard.) Circeus 13:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
(reducing indent) I do a whole lot of citation fixing, and I must say, I looked at your Demo page and it looks like a damn fine idea. Only took a quick look, but I'd say, go for it. A suggestion: if you want widespread adoption, it would be best to develop some kind of tool that converts existing pages. Also, maybe it would be a good idea to try it out on some popular pages, and see what kind of reaction it gets. Just my 2...or 3...cents...-Pete 08:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Court cases

Well, which shoe would come closest to fitting the foot? Any ideas? —freak(talk) 07:45, Nov. 18, 2006 (UTC)

I agree what should be done for citation of court cases?Hackajar 03:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Bump. —freak(talk) 08:22, Dec. 30, 2006 (UTC)

Well, if nothing fits, then create a new template. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what all is relevant, but certainly a set of fields could be developed to address legal situations ranging from court cases to legal documents to anything else that needs to be included. Ahem, any lawyers around? -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Consider Case citation and Roe_v._Wade#_note-0 (sometimes a link will exist). Also: Kelo v. City of New London, UofMn Case Citation (as in "Case citation", it mentions The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation), Legal Research and Citation Style in USA. (SEWilco 01:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC))
Sadly this is entirely US POV. In England and Wales we use a slightly different form (with date first) and other jurisdictions use even more distinctive forms of citation. It might be a good idea to qualify this template as US specific. If you like, I can do one for my jurisdiction, but we'd have to agree how to name the templates and I might need a little help on this. Francis Davey 23:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Saying it is POV implies a skewing to intentionally push one side or the other. This is just a basic template which clearly says it is experimental. In any case, it might be better suited to take this problem to Template talk:Cite court. It should be easy to create regionalised editions within the same template by using a field like "system=US" "UK" etc, which would call the proper set. First, however, different potential layouts need to be presented. I must ask, though, is there no national system that could be used instead of dozens of local ones? If not, then it may be best to not use templates for these at all. Surely a generic system can be established per-country. Eh? -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Cite court

Try Template:Cite court as a starting point. I am aware that it inserts a comma ahead of pinpoint citations, while the proposed AALL Universal Citation Guide uses a paragraph symbol. The first version is based on what is in Case citation. Fix it up and remove the EXPERIMENTAL header. (SEWilco 20:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC))

  • Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Case text courtesy of Cornell Law School.
  • Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Test without case URL.
  • Geary v. Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish School, 7 F.3d 324 (3d Cir. 1993).
  • Fuqua Homes, Inc. v. Beattie, No. 03-3587, 2004 WL 2495842 (8th Cir. November 8, 2004). Stretching it with Westlaw format.

Legislation

Hey, I've been looking for a template to cite a legislation with. I don't need anything very specific or fancy, just maybe a template that can be used for any general piece of legislation, including the legislating body that passed it, the bill number, the year, yada yada.

I noticed a {{cite law}} template discussed in the last archives of this page, but I didn't see that it went anywhere and the template is still non-existent. Considering that we have a citation template for as much as video games, it seems like we should have some appropriate template.

My current problem should prove to be a common set of parameters:

I'm citing information from [2], which is North Carolina legislation. It's hosted on some state run site, presumably official.

So there are my thoughts on what it seems to me like we should be able to do. I would like to know if this exists, or if it doesn't exist due to lack of effort (so we could just make it right?), or if I should be using something else entirely. Thanks! -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 04:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Nothing like this exists that I know of, and to be honest, I've never even considered such a template (never saw a need for it before). Would be quite simple to put together, however, do you know of any prescribed format for citing such legislation? Having such a format defined somewhere is always the first step to building a template. -- Huntster T • @ • C 04:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Comment will be left aligned due to complexity.

Indeed, this is a difficult question, I was never one for using all the correct styles. But here's one mention of citing a government document addressed in MLA format: [3]

So I guess here's where things get complicated... someone could be citing a hearing or an entire host of public government activities, which I'm sure could be valid issues that come up in Wikipedia. But I don't want to touch it.

Here's another example: [4] - see the part about Legislation accessed from electronic sources But once again, this complicates the issue beyond what my simplified case called for. There is much legislation out there that is a living, changing body of work, in which case you do have to be very accurate as to which amendment you're referring to. Some legislation, on the other hand is passed once and isn't worth a legislators time of day to challenge later on. The case I was describing above is one of these, the state designated a Tartan as a state symbol, that's about as simple (and unchallengeable) of legislation as you can get.

I understand your question is about the format of such a cite, and two links I gave above are intended as an "official" example of such cases, but they don't particularly match. Putting some together, what I think it would look is this:

(Governing organization). (underlined title of legislation with external link to state site). (Bill/section indexing number). (optional amendment information, possibilities are endless). (year, date optional).

Which would make my example compress to something like this:
North Carolina General Assembly. An Act to Adopt the Carolina Tartan as the Official Scottish Tartan of the State of North Carolina. Bill 932 Chapter 85. Passed in 1991.

As far as I understand, it's still mostly our free will as Wikipedia as to how we format citations, so MLA, APA, or whatever can be more a guideline than anything else. Tell me what you think. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 05:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of either of those formats to be honest. My first thought is to simply go with the general {{Cite book}} format, though as you'll see that causes some significant problems:
[Last, First OR Author] (Date). "Title", Work, pages. Location, Publisher. Accessdate.
Now, if the legislation is written or sponsored by a single individual, then the Last, First fields should be used (and I'll try to incorporate coauthors to account for primary coauthors or cosigners), but if the work is better attributed to the entire congressional body, then Author can be used, for example, your North Carolina General Assembly. Where it gets tricky is with Title and Work. Title is best used to describe subsections of an overall work, and Work of course describes the publication itself. However, if an entire bill is being referenced, then I'm not certain how that should be handled. I'm going to reapproach this tomorrow with fresh eyes and see how it looks. Hopefully we can get some independent comments in the meantime. -- Huntster T • @ • C 19:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Shilpa Shetty

I would also like to request your assistance if its not too much trouble? Please take a look at Shilpa_Shetty#Obscene_Pictures; why are the references for that section pointing to earlier references listed for other sections of the article? Quoting the same reference several times seems to work fine in the Romanov Vodka section, so why not elsewhere? I've tried verifying the syntax and it is correct, maybe it is an issue with the template itself? Thanks in advance. Ekantik talk 03:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the problem has been solved, or at least, I cannot find anything wrong. Can you elaborate? -- Huntster T • @ • C 06:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The ref doesn't become a footnote??

Hey, I'm not sure if this has been discussed, but I have made a reference from a magazine using the journal citation (wrong, I know, but it seemed the most correct). Now the citation will not go to the footnotes, it just sits in the body text - it is not even superscript or anything. What am I doing wrong? The article in question is Peter Canavan - the section is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Canavan#Under_Age. The third paragraph of this subheading (under-age) the last few words.--Macca7174 01:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey there. You had left out the <ref></ref> tags. Everything should be fixed up. -- Huntster T • @ • C 01:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, cheers. I would have thought that was already included in the template. Thanks anyway.--Macca7174 18:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The citation is the description of the source. A reference (footnote) to the citation is what connects the text to the citation. The citation is the rose, and the reference is your pointing at the rose. (SEWilco 06:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC))

wayback machine

why doesn't any of the templates at Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine appear here? and would you answer my questions on the talk page's newest discussion? trespassers william 21:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Tool to format citations

I'd appreciate some comments at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Tool to format citations. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Can someone add this one to the list?

I just made Template:cite BDE (Brooklyn Daily Eagle); see it in action on Long Island Rail Road. (Also, if anyone can find a better page URL to link to that will pop up the articles properly, please fix it.) --NE2 06:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I hate to say this, but your template is rather unnecessary. One would just use {{cite news}} or {{cite web}} to link to those resources. Both provide the functionality to link to a website, so I don't see the immediate purpose of having a dedicated template for that single newspaper. What does yours do that the available templates here don't? -- Huntster T • @ • C 11:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Due to the long URL, this makes the text a lot smaller and easier to edit. --NE2 12:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
That newspaper's archives use URLs with the year and date, so the BDE template assembles the URL when given the date. It's a shame there isn't a standard URL format for such archives. The BDE template requires the date be in a certain format; would Wikipedia's date formatting maintain the original format of the date, or might the template end up being given a reformatted date? (SEWilco 17:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC))
Given that it's a U.S. newspaper, I don't think it's a problem to use U.S. date format. But I see what you mean - I would doubt that the date preferences are applied until after everything is processed. I changed my preferences and it works exactly as expected: "Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1851 July 5, page 4" By the way, if anyone wants to make this use one of the other templates for a consistent "look and feel", feel free. --NE2 23:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Access date usage

I've left comments at Template talk:Cite web, and Template talk:Cite journal, and would like to also make the suggestion here. Template:Cite web currently allows the user to either use accessdate (with the date required to be in ISO form) or accessmonthday and accessyear (with the date in the form "Month DD" and "YYYY", which produces an unwikilinked "Month DD, YYYY"). I would like it to allow a new date format, perhaps by adding a new parameter accessdaymonth, which would allow the date to show up as an unwikilinked "DD Month YYYY", which some people find is the best date format in "serious" writing. Template:Cite journal currently has only the accessdate parameter with no allowance for other date forms, and would require all three parameters to be added. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 20:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

keyword name

For "website" citation templates using the "Citation" template type. there appears to be two different names for the "access date" keyword. One name is accessdate and the other is access-date. Question: Which is correct? Or are both acceptable (which appears to be the case)? -Lastingwar 03:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Both will work, but "accessdate" seems to be the standard in all of the citation templates. I'd advise simply using accessdate, to avoid confusing those that aren't as familiar, but it really doesn't matter. -- Huntster T • @ • C 04:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
If accessdate is the prefered keyword, maybe the article should be changed to reflect that by changing occrrences of access-date to the prefered keyword name. In a separate matter, I guess that a robot could fix up occurrences of access-date in the whole of the encyclopedia if ever that was needed. Thanks for the reply. -Lastingwar 15:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I've removed the hyphen from the table. –Pomte 16:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks very much to all of you who clarified this matter and fixed the page to reflect a uniform usage. -Lastingwar 01:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Cite archives

What would be best to cite archives of historical facts published by a government, such as past leaders of the opposition in Canada? So far I've been using Cite web like this:

But I'm not sure if that it the best way. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That's fine. You don't have to contrive to add an "author" in {{cite web}}, though. I would do it like this:

cite newsgroup change

I thought that VPR was the right place, so I started the discussion there. (go)

Anyone have anything else to add? --Random832(tc) 14:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

language field in cite book

Do you think it would be reasonable to have "language" field in cite book template? Several BibTeX styles do have such a field. --Kompik 09:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. Such a field should exist for citing sources in languages other than English. I'll see if I can change the template myself. Galanskov 19:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Hold on. I just took a look at Template:Cite book. It appears to already have such a field, but this page dosen't mention it. Galanskov 19:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

{{citation}} template: Pages doesn't work

I haven't a clue how to fix a template, so maybe someone else can. Or, tell me what I'm doing wrong.

<ref>{{Citation | last = Boraas | first = Alan S. | author-link = Alan Boraas | editor-last = Kalifornsky | editor-first = Peter | editor2-last = Kari | editor2-first = James | editor3-last = Boraas | editor3-first = Alan | contribution = Peter Kalifornsky: A Biography | title = A Dena’ina Legacy — K’tl’egh’i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky | year = 1991 | pages = 470–481 | place = Fairbanks, AK | publisher = [[Alaska Native Language Center]], [[University of Alaska Fairbanks]] }}</ref>

produces this:

Boraas, Alan S. (1991), "Peter Kalifornsky: A Biography", in Kalifornsky, Peter; James Kari & Alan Boraas, A Dena’ina Legacy — K’tl’egh’i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky, Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Note the page numbers aren't showing up. Which is bad news if you're referring to a large work, & actually want to help readers who might go to it to find the page(s).

A lot of the examples given on the templates page show the same problem of page #s not showing.

Oh, & while we're at it -- some of these templates (including this one) don't provide a period to close the citation out. Call me picky, but I'm a publication specialist... things like this bug me.

-- Yksin 17:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

{{citation}} is not nearly as develloped as {{cite book}}, and certainly not nearly as used. Your problem is thatthe template currently does not implement any "pages parameter". it is not an accurate fork of {{cite book}}.
Your best bet is probably to use the Wikipedia:Footnote3 system combined with the usual cite_X templates. Circeus 00:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Circeus. I ended up rather giving up on most of the citation templates in favor of something I've got a bit better control over -- & is also a lot easier on me while taking notes than the templates. Results so far can be seen on the article I've been working to improve on Peter Kalifornsky. Not much there so far, but now I've discovered how I want to do it, it's making it lots simpler to continue work on this article. Best wishes. == Yksin 07:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Citing academic anthologies?

Hi, I would like to cite an academic paper that is published as an academic anthology by Oxford University Press i.e.: "This author" in "This paper" published in "This book" edited by "these professors" scenario. Which of the citation templates would best assist me in doing this? Could/Should a new template be designed to accomodate this type of scholarly reference? Ekantik talk 03:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

{{cite book}} with "chapter" and using "editor" for... well... the editors. If the book (assuming it's a ISBN-tagged monography) is part of a series (especially if said series itself has an ISSN), you can use the "series" variable (e.g. |series=Devellopments in foobarium research, 14). Circeus 04:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Citing brochures

Is there a template or model suitable for citing a brochure? I have in mine in particular brochures released by CERN about an experiment there. -- SCZenz 14:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Style of citation markup

Are the any styles for the citation templates —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fnielsen (talk • contribs) 10:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

Style of citation markup

Are there any styles for the citation templates. Here are two versions. The first is by another user,

...to endocytose JCV.<ref name=Elphick_2004>{{cite journal |author=Elphick G, Querbes W, Jordan J, Gee G, Eash S, Manley K, Dugan A, Stanifer M, Bhatnagar A, Kroeze W, Roth B, Atwood W |title=The human polyomavirus, JCV, uses serotonin receptors to infect cells |journal=Science |volume=306 |issue=5700 |pages=1380-3 |year=2004 |doi = 10.1126/science.1103492 |pmid=15550673}}</ref>

while the second is by me:

...to endocytose JCV.<ref name="ElphickG2004Human">{{cite journal 
 | author = [[Gwendolyn F. Elphick]], William Querbes, Joslynn A. Jordan, Gretchen V. Gee, Sylvia Eash, Kate Manley, Aisling Dugan, Megan Stanifer, Anushree Bhatnagar, Wesley K. Kroeze, Bryan L. Roth, and [[Walter J. Atwood]]
 | title = The human polyomavirus, JCV, uses serotonin receptors to infect cells 
 | journal = [[Science (journal)|Science]] 
 | volume = 306 
 | issue = 5700 
 | pages = 1380–1383 
 | year = 2004 
 | doi = 10.1126/science.1103492 
 | pmid = 15550673
}}</ref>

The differences are:

  • Wikipedia links for authors even if they do not exist.
  • Authors written with full name and in 'ordinary' firstname-surname order.
  • Wikipedia links for the journal – also full names (such as 'Journal of Neuroschemistry') rather than abbreviated (such as 'J. Neurochem.').
  • The citation formatted on several lines.

These are my preferences (I find it more readable/editable and 'linked'), but I guess that others may have a different oppinion? -- fnielsen 10:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no preferences for the last part, but I'm with you with full journal and author names, where I disagree is that:
  • Links should ONLY be made in references if the article exists. (otherwise they are useless AMND distracting, see also WP:CONTEXT)
  • The first/main author should still be in Last, First to make possible later references to "Elphick et al" more easy to locate. This can and does occur when the referenced item is a book.
Overall, the editors are split on these issues (except that most will want to keep links to a minimum and names in Last, First format.)Circeus 19:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

cite audio

I see that a cite video template has been added - but does anyone have any idea how i should cite some mp3 audio files? I want to use this on Bristol Riots to cite an mp3 of a lecture which was delivered on the subject by Mike Manson. I will cite the web page for now bu the actual items of interest such as the exact date, number killed etc comes from the audio files.— Rod talk 14:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Use the "format" parameter and link directly to the MP3?Circeus 22:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Cite map?

Would anyone object to my creating a {{cite map}} template? Maps have special requirements, such as the map publisher/branding, the company who did the actual cartography, and (possibly) the map coordinate of the data referenced (e.g. A6), that other templates don't cover.—Scott5114↗ 17:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds good, just don't know how much immediately use it will find :) -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I know WP:USRD will put it to use :) I've created it - would anyone like to check the syntax to make sure it's consistent with the other citation templates? —Scott5114↗ 01:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Cite episode

Could someone possibly add this template into the list? I had a hard time finding it (i needed it for radio recordings) and I am afraid I may mess up this article if i try to add it in myself (:O) -Nima Baghaei talk · cont · email 15:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll take care of it. I'm probably going to do a code update of the article while I'm at it. -- Huntster T • @ • C 19:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Publisher and location parameters desired

The "cite" family of templates, as well as "citation", are variable in providing "publisher" and "location" parameters, yet these are very important, especially for references published outside of the USA and Canada.

My suggestion is to uniformly provide "publisher" and "location" parameters in all citation templates.

Randwolf 16:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Seconding (glad I saw Randwolf's note, thank you). Template:Cite journal had a publisher field according to WP:CITET. I removed it for now to maybe help others avoid a trip to the Village Pump. -Susanlesch 18:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Naming references

I will use whatever format is preferred by editors. I have noticed that some people name the references. I have tried to do this without much success so I just repeat the same citation. How should the citations be named? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cherylyoung (talk • contribs) 00:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

When naming references, you have to use <ref name="whatever">{{cite... for the first instance, where whatever is any unique name you want to give it. Each following instance, you need to use just <ref name="whatever"/>. Note the trailing slash mark, this is important. -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Need Help with Citing Court Papers

I would like to cite original source documents from court cases like this one:

http://wtvf.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/SmithsIndict.pdf

I am unsure of the proper way to do so. Could I get some help?Efkeathley 12:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

While {{Cite court}} could potentially be used, it is so highly experimental right now that I would not recommend it. It is highly focused only on court decisions, and doesn't work well for general legal papers. This is the best I could come up with for usage with that template:
  • {{cite court |litigants=Georgia v. Sonya and Joseph Smith |court=Cobb County Superior Court |date=[[2006-06-15]] |url=http://wtvf.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/SmithsIndict.pdf}}
  • Georgia v. Sonya and Joseph Smith, [5] (Cobb County Superior Court 2006-06-15).
It would be highly useful, unfortunately, it appears its creator has abandoned it, and I simply don't possess the necessary level of legal knowledge to flesh it out more. Either way, take your pick of which format appears better to you. -- Huntster T • @ • C 05:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Next week I plan to start citing original government issued papers where I can.Efkeathley 13:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Not a problem, however, be very conscious of what the end result looks like. If it appears mangled or doesn't include all the information you would like, please use {{Cite web}} or simply write it out without using a template. Cite court simply doesn't work in a wide variety of applications yet. -- Huntster T • @ • C 14:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Cite court was requested for citing court cases. It cites court cases. What wide variety of applications does it need to work for? (SEWilco 16:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC))

Template:Harvard reference obsolete?

This page gives links to Template:Harvard reference which now begins "THIS TEMPLATE IS DEPRECATED. USE Template:Citation INSTEAD, WHICH HAS THE SAME FUNCTIONALITY." Should this page not be updated? Also, both this page and Wikipedia:Citing sources begin by suggesting Template:Cite book etc. which appear to lack that functionality, with the result that pages such as Alfred Russel Wallace are produced using that template in a Harvard system without the links down to the references. It seems desirable to encourage standardising on Template:Citation unless there's a good reason otherwise, and this would suggest showing that template at the outset. ...... dave souza, talk 21:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the Harvard reference section is redundant. I just removed it. COGDEN 08:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Good start. However, the "cite book" type versions are still shown as the first option in each case, implying first preference. I've added a couple of notes to make it clear that the "citation" template works better with Harvard referencing. Certainly the linking function did not work with "cite book" when I tried it out. Altering the sequence in the table would be helpful. .. dave souza, talk 12:05, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Magazine Citation

Which template should be used for magazine citation, for example, a video game review magazine? Thanks. – ARC GrittTALK 11:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest either {{Cite journal}} or {{Cite news}}, depending upon the type of article in question. In general, "journal" should work, but I personally like "news" for any kind of news-type article, irregardless of the type of publication it is in. -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Alternatively, see Template:Citation#Citing journals, newspapers, magazines, or other periodicals which has advantages if you might use the citation in a Harvard type References section at some stage. .. dave souza, talk 17:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

putting EndNote references into a wikipedia citation?

Has anyone set up a quick method for putting EndNote references into a wikipedia citation? alteripse 17:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Patent - How do I cite

Can somebody do a template or link for citing a patent. Thanks.--Joewski 09:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

There's the {{US Patent}} template which produces just a link like this: U.S. Patent 123,456,789 . Not a proper citation though. -- intgr #%@! 16:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Bibtex citation templates?

I frequently cite sources from NASA's ADS, which conveniently gives a bibtex entry for every source at a single click (e.g. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1998A%26A...340..117L&data_type=BIBTEX&db_key=AST%26amp;nocookieset=1). Is there any simple way to integrate this into a wikipedia article? i.e. is there a template that I could just paste such an entry into? I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with template creation to do this myself just yet. Thanks, Keflavich 17:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

There is no template that I know of that can do this, nor do I believe it would be possible to construct a template for this purpose. There's just too much extraneous data. However, these templates are extremely easy to use... In this situation, either {{cite journal}} or simply {{cite web}} could be used, and each template page gives instructions on how to use them. However, I would suggest that the "adsurl" link provided on the page you linked to would provide somewhat more complete and useful data, especially author names. If you need specific assistance, don't hesitate to ask. -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
What's extraneous? Did you mean that simply linking to the ADS page would be enough in lieu of putting in the full journal cite? Maybe it's easiest to write a script to convert the ADS Natbib template into a wiki template (can this be done within wikipedia at all?), but I firmly believe citing things should be made as simple as possible - if there's already a prewritten citation out there, everyone's more likely to use it if it's a simple two-click process rather than having to reenter everything by hand. --Keflavich 16:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
No no, by extraneous I meant that Wikipedia scripting simply isn't designed and is incapable of independently parsing code like that page uses. Unfortunately, entering by hand really is the only option, but I don't understand why it is so difficult. For the above, this is all you have to do:
  • {{cite journal |url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998A%26A...340..117L |title=An improved classification of B[e]-type stars |journal=Astronomy and Astrophysics |volume=340 |issue=12 |pages=pp. 117-128 |first=Henny |last=Lamers |coauthors=Franz-Josef Zickgraf; Dolf de Winter; Leo Houziaux; Janez Zorec |month=December |year=1998 |id=1998A&A...340..117L |accessdate=2007-06-19}}
  • Lamers, Henny; Franz-Josef Zickgraf; Dolf de Winter; Leo Houziaux; Janez Zorec (December 1998). "An improved classification of B[e]-type stars". Astronomy and Astrophysics 340 (12): pp. 117-128. 1998A&A...340..117L. 
Sure, it takes a couple of minutes, but considering all the needed information is right in front of you and no real research is needed to compile the data, it is extremely straightforward. -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I see. The problem is that those few minutes are a lot more than the few seconds to cite an article when writing a paper, and if I write wikipedia articles in a similar fashion to research paper introductions (which I believe is close to correct - include a cite for each fact, essentially, unless citing a review paper), it would take much longer to add the cites than to write the article. Take a look at some astronomy article introductions, they have a lot of citations - the two I currently have open have 5 and 11 cites in their opening sections. Anyway, I'll just deal with it, but perhaps I'll look into some way to automate the process a little more - it's a personal flaw in terms of actually getting stuff done, but I don't like doing anything twice if a computer can do it for me, even something as simple as this. Thanks for the replies, though. --Keflavich 18:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, I understand the frustration, even though I'm somewhat anti-automation. If you have any skill with programming, its always possible to build something that can auto-convert. However, going off of the example you first provided probably isn't the best idea, considering that it doesn't provide full author names and doesn't necessarily express all the data in best form for our use. Either way you turn it, human control must be exerted to render the best results. Else it's just sub-par. Good luck in any case. -- Huntster T • @ • C 18:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

One of the best things about BibTeX is (ahem) natbib! These wikipedia citation templates are re-inventing the wheel and BibTex and natbib (among other systems) have gone before. Eg, there is no template yet for a chapter in an edited book. The kind where the chapters are written by people other than the book editor(s). So maybe steal more ideas from them? --66.167.135.226 04:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

show preview

The templates are nice but it seems we should be able to paste one of them into an article under edit and verify it works using "show preview". This does not appear to be the case. Rtdrury 23:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, given that I do just that all the time. Can you give me an example of where this happened, or precisely what happened? -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
You might not be able to if you just edit a section, and you may have to click on edit for the entire page. Then everything should come up properly in the preview. Tyrenius 19:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Aha, in this context the question does make more sense. I suppose it is also worth pointing out that if you are just editing a section, you can temporarily use the {{reflist}} template tag to see the results of your citation work. Just remember to remove it before clicking save. -- Huntster T • @ • C 20:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

CD notes

Please take a look at a template I created for citing booklet notes for CDs etc. I couldn't find a way to create these references using the pre-existing citation templates. I'm no template wizard, but if anyone wants to improve it please go ahead. The template is here: Template:Cite cd notes. Thanks! Grover cleveland 04:19, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally I just improved {{Cite album-notes}}. –Pomte 05:54, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, if a citation already exists, then the new one should probably be speedied. -- Huntster T • @ • C 06:21, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Ahh -- I didn't know about {{Cite album-notes}}. Would you mind if I requested a couple of extra features before we delete my template?
  • optional param for title of the notes themselves, as opposed the the overall album. Sometimes the notes have a different title from the album, especially in classical/jazz releases.
  • optional params for first,last of author of the notes, where this is given.
  • optional URL, where the notes are available online.
Here's an example: Last, First (Year). "NotesTitle." CD liner notes for Title by Bandname. Place: Publisher. PublisherID.
Sorry I don't have the skillz for intricate templates yet. Grover cleveland 06:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I have completely re-written the {{Cite album-notes}} template code and documentation to implement the suggested changes. That was surprisingly one of the more difficult template rewrites I've done, lol. In any case, give it a try (maybe on the Victor de Sabata album, like you did with yours?), see if anything breaks (nothing should, as I've fairly thoroughly tested it out). If it works for you, I'd suggest placing {{db-author}} at the top of the template you created, so it will be properly deleted. Cheers! -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I just found this template today, works great, thanks. Can it be added to project page? Cricket02 17:08, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Sure, I'll work on adding it when I get the time. Thanks for the reminder. -- Huntster T • @ • C 17:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

location vs. place

There seems to be some inconsistency between location and place parameters. Neither of these currently seems to work, but some examples use place while the template documentation uses location. --Ott2 20:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming you are referring to {{Citation}}. Can you give an example of where this doesn't work? I've never noticed a problem with it before, though I'm not a big fan of that template. I am confused as to why there are two terms which do the same thing, though. -- Huntster T • @ • C 22:13, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
As faras I know, {{Citation}} has been all but abandoned as an actual alternative to all templates. Circeus 22:57, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
See Clique problem#References for an example where location does not work in {{cite conference}}. This also seems to illustrate a valid use of {{Citation}}. Circeus, what should one use instead of {{Citation}} if one wants to provide authorlinks for multiple authors of a book? --Ott2 23:06, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, you aren't using the {{Cite conference}} template properly when using "location" in that way. Location doesn't refer to where the conference took place, but the location of the publisher who compiled the conference notes (or something like that). Because no publisher was specified, the publisher's location won't be included either. That is a curious absence, though...not having the location of the conference itself. Anyway, there's technically no problem. If I have spare time at some point, I may rewrite it to provide for such capability.
As far as authorlinks go, I simply write:
first=Sam | last=Walters | authorlink=Sam Walters | coauthors=[[Joe Smith]] and [[Billy Joe]]
No need for an actual field to provide a link (and really, no need to even use "authorlink"...just place a wikilinked name in the "author" field and drop both "first" and "last"). -- Huntster T • @ • C 07:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, will use this form. --Ott2 08:02, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

ASIN references

Is it possible and acceptable to make or use a reference which uses ASIN Amazon Standard Identification Numbers?

I am editing a topic which could be called "ethnic" , that is regarding an organisation based in a developing nation

There are numerous books published and available to purchase both new and especially vintage from a variety of publisher which are available and listed with an ASIN number but not with a ISBN number due to age or ethnicity

This would be very helpful , I think that ASIN has become an alternative index by default.........If anyone could help me make or propose such a citation template, I would appreciate it. Green108 12:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

While it would not be a good idea to have ASIN as an integral part of the citation template, as it would be seen as showing favour to an individual retailer, it would be possible to use the ID field in some templates to serve your purpose. Just type "id=ASIN B000FTWM48", and of course there is even the option to link to the site (just remember to use the basic links, a la http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTWB7G, to keep links and code clean and simple), and do not over-use. Also, remember to go to Worldcat.org and see if they have the book you are looking for...I believe they index more than just books with ISBNs, and this would be highly preferable to linking or using proprietary Amazon material. -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:15, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Have you tried looking up those titles in WorldCat (WorldCat), the OCLC's international catalog? The OCLC number can be used in cite_book with the "oclc" parameter. That's what I use for old and isbn-less books
Thanks. Much appreciatedGreen108 20:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Make it easier to find the right one

Perhaps you can put a quick list of in the lead that land you at the right template for a selection of common source types, like a newspaper, a broadcast, an encyclopaedia, a novel, etc. And perhaps for a few often used sources too, like e.g. The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, etc. These link would then land you at partially filled in templates, making citing them less work. Shinobu 17:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless there's some Wikicode I'm unaware of, this may not be the easiest task without resorting to HTML code for internal linking. This suggestion does warrant some research. -- Huntster T • @ • C 19:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, ==headings== generate an id to link to, so you can e.g. link to the previous post. Come to think of it, using headings would result in a table of contents, which, if we structure this correctly, might go a long way in solving the problem. Shinobu 21:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
What also makes it hard to use the templates is that for some sources several different templates exist and it is not clear at all which one should be used. Have one template per source, and ideally implement the other in terms of the one listed. There is no reason at all to have multiple different templates that should do the same thing. Shinobu 21:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One-name authors

I ran into a problem trying to cite an article by a person who uses a first name but no last name as a byline. The "first" parameter in the template was ignored. I tried putting the name in "last" instead and it seemed to work better.--Larrybob 18:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The better option would be to simply use the "author" field, though "last" works fine as a stopgap. -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

ISBN

I know it is probably me doing something wrong. But I have looked and looked, and I have used this template hundreds of times before, but for some reason the ISBN won't link using the Cite Book Template in Ref 5 of East Gosford, New South Wales. Could somebody have a check please and tell me what I've done wrong. .....Todd#661 11:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Y Fixed; you forgot the leading zero. The ISBN field must be either 10 or 13 numbers in length or it won't be recognised. Remember that if possible, it is stylistically preferred to include dashes as part of the ISBN. -- Huntster T • @ • C 12:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Cite an email?

Is there a way to cite an email? BlueAg09 (Talk) 21:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Typically, there should be no reason to cite an email, because there is no verifiability involved in email (aka, no one can independently verify the contents besides the email holder). -- Huntster T • @ • C 21:46, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Annual reports template

I find myself citing more and more annual reports in various topics and it would be good to have a template specifically for this purpose. Fields in such a cite template would be:

  • Company name
  • Year ending
  • URL
  • Page no.
  • Audited by
  • Format (as in .html, .pdf, etc),
  • File size (as most annual reports are .pdf these days some can be up to 15mb in size, just a courtesy thing)

Would such a template be possible? -- Russavia 11:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I am surprised that a template is needed for this. Annual reports are not secondary sources, and if you are using them in an article about the company, they are not an independent source. I would suggest finding better sources. UnitedStatesian 12:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Whilst they are not secondary sources, neither are press releases, and there is a cite template for those. The addition of an 'audited by' field would be for the third party which has verified that information contained in the report is true and accurate. There is some information contained in such reports which is extremely difficult in obtaining via standard methods, and they can be used when the situation is warranted, right? --Russavia 12:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Primary sources such as these documents are permissible, just not preferred. See WP:PSTS for more. So long as you are not using these as the only references in a document, you should probably be okay. Basically, don't over-use them. -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:17, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Edited books

There is a mthod of referencing chapters in edited books but it is currently under the heading of "Encyclopedia" where it is not immediately obvious. Could someone looking after this page add this to the "Book" section. The problem is that the chapter and its title need to be credited with the author of that chapter and then the book and title need to be credited with the editors. --CloudSurfer 21:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Are there no scientists here? ~:-| It is very strange that the citation method for chapters of edited books is hidden under "encyclopedia contribution". It is also very strange that the editors are not marked as such but treated like authors, and it is furthermore very strange that the page numbers are moved to the end as "at 15–98". That looks weird. I've never seen that before. I'd be very grateful if someone would fix these oddities. Biologists contribute to edited books all the time; this is a common method to get monographic treatises published. Just right now I am trying to cite such a chapter at Phylogenetic nomenclature. David Marjanović 13:48, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, {{cite book}} does that. It has the "chaptertitle" and "editor" variables thatserve that exact purpose. Circeus 15:12, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

ISSN punctuation

What is the difference between "id = ISSN: 0343-6993" and "id = ISSN 0343-6993"? Both are used on the project page - perhaps one is in error. Nurg 23:52, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

There really should not have been a colon there, as none of the other ID types use them. I've removed it from the example. -- Huntster T • @ • C 03:22, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Patents, IETF RFCs, and Other Documents known more by Number than Author

Is there a template intended for such use? For example, when I refer to RFC 4098 in an article on the Border Gateway Protocol, there's apparently some formatting mechanism that recognizes the number and makes an external RFC reference, rather than quoting Berkowitz et al. as authors. Is there a way to use a Harvard Reference type to refer to pages in such a document?

Patents, government reports where there's no individual author, etc., have the same sort of problem.

Suggestions? Is there a template that I've missed? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Podcasts?

Should there be a template for Podcasts? Norm Donovan 15:16, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

See {{cite podcast}}. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Hanging indent proposal

I would like to propose the addition of an optional formatting parameter, which when used would make the cited reference in a bibliographical listing appear as a hanging indent if it wraps over multiple lines. Thus, the following listing:

would appear formatted as:

Some more tests and examples using longer lists for formatting comparision may be viewed here.

Formatting in this way has the advantage of making it far easier to pick out the keyword (ie, the authors' names) when scanning down a bibliographical listing, when they would be undifferentiated otherwise. If you look around, most reference lists provide some sort of visual cue to make the keyword stand out, and I find this particularly useful and convenient with a lengthy listing.

The optional formatting parameter, let's call it hi, would be specified with a postive integer value that would determine the size (in em) of the indent's offset. The coding can be achieved thus (there may be some more efficient way):

{{#if: {{{hi|}}} |<div style="text-indent: -{{{hi|0}}}em; margin-left: {{{hi|0}}}em;">}}
...rest of template code...
{{#if: {{{hi|}}} |</div>}}

AFAIK this would be browser-agnostic. The only minor drawback I've identified in testing is that if anything appears on the same line after the templated citation (typically language icons, or perhaps some annotative text), then that gets bumped to a new line:

However, this is readily fixed by also adding a |freetext= parameter, to include the text inside the <div></div> tags:

For consistency, the |hi= parameter should be added to all of the "cite X" templates ({{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, etc).

I would like to implement this shortly, unless there are strenuous objections or someone can identify incompatibilities I haven't considered. Any comments, thoughts?--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

H-I-P arbitrary editing sub-section1

Wow, contrary to my initial expectations, that works really well. At least here. I checked various window widths and font sizes as well as inserting an image to see if the flow would break. It worked every time. With and without Javascript. Neat. -- Fullstop 10:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that this is more of an issue with citation lists than with citations. In fact, I think it would look horrible if applied to only some of the citations, or in an irregular fashion. We already have several styles of citation lists, including <references/>, {{reflist}}, {{reflist|2}}, {{reflist|3}}, {{reflist|colwidth=''width''}}, {{Regbegin}}, {{Refend}}, and (shudder) <div class="references-small">. It seems to me that this would be best addressed with a new variation on the theme, or with additional options on the existing {{reflist}}and/or {{Refbegin}} templates. I note that there doesn't seem to be a class of bibliography lists - do we need one?
As a separate issue, it seems like a bad idea to have explicit formatting instructions as parameters to templates that today keep their formatting rules entirely inside themselves. If this proposal goes forward, I would much rather see something like {{cite web|...|hi=yes|...}} than {{cite web|...|hi=3|...}}. At least then the decision of exactly how to format the citation remains the province of the template, with the editor describing the result but not the technique.
And lest I come off too negative, I really do like the look. I'm just concerned about the execution. RossPatterson 02:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Fullstop and Ross for the feedback. I should've clarified what I meant by citation/bibliographical lists.
This proposed feature would not be useful for lists generated by {{reflist}} and its variants. All these basically do is just tweak the presentation of the output produced by the underlying <references/> tag (m:Cite/Cite.php), which generates a numbered list of the inline cites and footnotes captured between <ref></ref> tags. In fact, if you try to use it on citation templates that appear between <ref></ref> tags it causes the text to be offset on a line below where the corresponding auto-generated number appears.
Instead, this feature is intended to be available for use at those articles that contain a listing of reference works, alpha-sorted by author bibliography-style (ie, the listing is separate from the output generated by <references/>). Some examples of articles whose cited references are set out this way are Mayan languages, Taiwanese aborigines, Chunchucmil, and others which adopt the 'Notes and References' approach.
In such cases, this formatting proposal is a method intended to make it easier for the reader to pick out a specific reference in the citation/bibliographical list. I agree, that within any given article the formatting style of references ought to be consistent, and so if this particular hanging indent formatting is used in an article it should be applied to each of the entries in the list. Consistency of formatting between different articles is another matter, and when applied, it would be better to format all of the entries in the biblio list with the same hanging indent format.
As for whether or not it should be up to the editor or the template to decide on the offset value for the indent, I take your point. It could easily be done that way, and have a default value (say 5em, which is used in the examples above) if |hi=yes is specified. It would also be possible to code for that default to be overridden to some other value, if some specific layout circumstances require it. It might be a handy flexibility to have, but I concede not a necessary one. --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Think this is a great idea. Submit just changing your default code to:
{{<div style="text-indent: -{{{hi|5}}}em; margin-left: {{{hi|5}}}em;">}}
...rest of template code...
</div>}}
would be a better generic implementation, and since could be rapidly incorporated into all the cite templates, would quicky create uniform appearance in article space and affect the desired formatting effect.

(No need of the #if, since is implicit in the parameter evaluation in wikimarkup, and since all are default indented, the trailing div becomes an automatic no brainer. It also preserves the (rare I would think) option of defining 'hi' to a different value at need, and obviates the need to go back and define hi to get the effect... all of which means there is no editor or server loading outside of changing the templates code themselves.)

Good idea! Just act boldly, and add the freetext= parameter as well. This shouldn't hurt anything, and will make many things look much more professional. You go dude! // FrankB 16:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
regarding such as...

re: the above, your closing }} pair follows the template expanded contents, so is correctly rendered as it's outside the div block you added, whereas your fix: 'freetext=' defines a new field within said block. GIGO principle! Ooops! (At least causality isn't being violated! That's some small comfort, I'm sure!) Cheers! // FrankB 16:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

H-I-P arbitrary editing sub-section2

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions, FrankB. I did consider proposing to make the hanging indent layout as the default for these template calls, which your more economical coding would achieve. However, and unfortunately, there are two reasons I think it is preferable to make it available as an option to be deliberately selected.
The first is that it is quite conceivable that someone somewhere would object to a compulsory formatting change of this nature. Given that reference lists are also frequently a mix of templated and manually coded cites, there could be some untidy results.
The second reason is due to a glitch in how the citation template would display if it is used inline between <ref></ref> tags, and this hanging indent feature is turned 'on'. As I alluded to earlier, the output generated by the <references/> tag results in the reference citation appearing on a new line below the associated number. It would display like this:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The scene depicated on the western wall is evocative of the world trees illustrated on folio 1 of the Codex Fejevary-Mayer.[1]
==Notes==
  1. ^
    Saturno, William A.; David Stuart and Karl Taube (2005). "La identificación de las figuras del Muro Oeste de Pinturas Sub-1, San Bartolo, Petén", in Juan Pedro LaPorte, Bárbara Arroyo and Héctor E. Mejía (Eds.): XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2004 (PDF), (FAMSI online reproduction), Guatemala City: Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Report 60. Retrieved on 2007-09-19.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

H-I-P arbitrary editing sub-section3

There may be some clever way around this, but I don't see how to fix. It was intended to be applied to alphasorted-by-author-name biblio listings in articles, and it does work confidently well in those circumstances. So at this stage, I would still be looking to implement it as a selectable option, which would be non-intrusive and not alter the default presentation of references that are already formatted by citation templates. It would then be a matter of adding the parameter call to the template instance as desired, either manually of using a semi-automated helper like AWB. --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
OIC! Think I've run into this line drop issue before in wikimarkup HTML rendering, and it's a function of the div block, iirc. Span may work out. I'll run it past CBDunkerson (I'm in mid-post to him on other technical issues anyway), who keeps up with the developers and technical interactions better than anyone else I know of, and see what he suggests given the interactions you report.

On the defaulting, suggest you reverse the logic, and if someone has an issue with mixed mode cites, have the switch disable the indenting (if they care to edit to add it, or let them edit to fix the non-conformal results, instead.) While I'm usually the first to avoid decisions/actions/changes causing more work for editors around here, the indentation makes for much better readability and I think benefits the whole projects "professional look, see and feel", so to speak. Such impressions are important.

As another alternative, instead of changing the one, duplicate it, assuffix a '2', then change the original. Fixes by dissenting adults then merely require using the older "depreciated" form now implimented as the '2' version. (No matter what, more articles will likely be "Great" and need no updating than need fiddled with for mixed issues, and further, imho, it's more than a 'little' likely, those ought to be made consistent with <ref>{{cite...}}</ref> formatting in any case. (Uniformity is much easier on all editors, though especially newer editors, who have enough on their learning-curve-plates to deal with as always...) Cheers all! // FrankB 15:49, 5 October 2007 (supplied missing <nowiki> -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC))
The blank line at the top of the reference IS caused by the 'div' block, and using 'span' would remove it. Unfortunately, the logic of the reference section then interferes with the negative text-indent and results in the first line of text being indented as well. --CBD 06:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments and investigations, FrankB, Huntster and CBD.
However, I have had a minor revelation of the didn't-see-the-woods-for-the-trees variety, and have hit upon a much simpler way to achieve the same effect. Instead of making each citation template call do the work, the "div style" can be pulled out and applied once to the entire list of references, with the same results. It even doesn't matter whether the references are formatted via citation templates, or manually, or a combination of both.
To novice-proof the implementation, I've created the template {{ref indent}} which should do the job nicely, and there'd be no need to make any changes to the citation templates themselves. I've tested this under a variety of circumstances, and it appears to work as intended without any undesirable side-effects. It also seems to work on footnotes/inline cites generated by a <references/> tag, although its usefulness in formatting this output may be a little redundant. In principle it could be used on any bulleted list with long items, or indeed any general block(s) of text, if there were to be some reason to do so. But it does satisfy the purpose I originally had in mind, and so I'd propose using this method, and leaving the citation templates themselves unmolested.
I can't at this stage guarantee this produces a pleasing result in all possible configurations and personal settings, but I suppose any oddities can be looked into if and when they come up. If anyone can see any shortfalls in this new approach, pls speak out at the new template's talk page.
Thanks again to all who reviewed/commented, and cheers --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Just to note, on my Firefox 2.0.0.7: In the {{ref indent}} page examples, the actual indent bullet that should be at the front of the line gets set as if it were being indented itself to the level of the second line, even though the first line text it is supposed to lead is properly set. So I'm left with a bullet floating in the middle of the author names. -- Huntster T • @ • C 20:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I'd advise removing the "or alternatively simply use an explicit </div> tag" comment in the doc. It may be correct today, but the implementation inside {{ref indent}} and {{ref indent-end}} might be completely different a year from now and a closing div tag may not be the same as a {{ref indent-end}}. RossPatterson 22:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Huntster for picking that up, it seems that was attributable to a difference in how Firefox and MSIE treat the "attachment" of bullets to lists. I've now implemented a fix, so the problem in Firefox (& I presume other Gecko-based browsers) no longer occurs. In MSIE however the bullet now appears right up against the text, which may be sub-optimal. The whole issue can be avoided by using a non-bulleted list, which can readily be achieved by using a colon ( : ) instead of an asterisk ( * ) as the list item delimiter.

And thanks Ross, I've taken your suggestion on board and have amended the template doco to that effect. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 00:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Special versus general templates categorization

I'd like to see a concerted effort to clean up the Category:citation templates in two respects:

  1. uniformity of style and clear consistent usage, patricularly with regard to a careful definition of what a parameter is meant to define and cover. (There are so many parameters ending with 'date' in some templates, my head is spinning!)
  2. movement to a sub-cat of same of the greater majority of specialized templates currently cluttering up the collection of general (and commonly used) templates. Basically, if the template isn't one listed in the two guideline "articles", it's a specialized typing aid or special case template of some sort, and should not be listed together with the commonly used templates. It's both confusing, and counter productive. for example:: Cite web APA , CitePiHKAL , CiteTiHKAL , and Citeref patent just to point out a few.

    Most cites should be handled as uniformly as possible. Where the harvard templates (there seem to be several varieties) fit in that schema, I can't say, but simplifying the choices in the main category can only lead to good things for newer and citation inexperienced editors. Thus I propose a sub-category: category:Special uses citation templates, and assert that three quarters or more of the citation templates listed in the current category should be relocated therein.

    Ditto the simplified usage. For example several common templates (cite books, cite web etc.) present the idea that the empty parameters should be deleted. Nonsense. The pre-processing stage evaluates any pipe-term-equals-sign as a null value, and so no logic acts on such terms, as it does not when they are deleted. I guarantee you the processor 'deletes' those bytes far faster and more effectively than we inefficient humans, and page rendering is done but once, when the page is cached for retrieval. OTOH, having a few blank fields in cites actually makes them stand out and become more readable imho within a text paragraph, and furthermore, suggests further information to editors that could be added, and generally, educates the reader of what capabilities are within the particular flavor of cite template. In short, leaving the empty parameters retrieved in a cut and paste actually adds to reability and so to edit-ability of a paragraph, section or page... it helps the eye pick up the reference block from the prose of the article proper. Compacting unprovided optional parameters that are not filled in, really costs little in terms of overall storage space considering the way we waste space by keeping historical pages of every saved edit, ad infinitum.

My problem with documentation is more minor, and generally one of a missing definition of parameter use and meaning. What, for example, is the accessdate field in {{cite book}} or {{cite visual}}. The day I'm looking up a particular phrase/viewed a particular documentary? What possible use is that going forward to anyone? Aren't the copyright dates and edition (where applicable) and page, et. al. sufficient? Best regards // FrankB 16:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've started making this change, by making a sub-category for single source citations (called Category:Citations) and moving the first few I could find. ---- CharlesGillingham 18:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Y Done. I've moved 99% of templates that are used to reference a single book or website into the subcategory Category:Citations. ---- CharlesGillingham 03:32, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I think the new category Cat:Citations is named too generically for its intended purpose, and may lead to some confusion. It should also probably have the word 'templates' in its name, the suggestion by FrankB earlier or something similar may be better.--cjllw ʘ TALK 06:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, something like Category:Focused citation templates or similar would be far more appropriate. The current name doesn't differentiate between templates and, say, articles about citation types/formats. Far too vague for Wikipedia's purposes. -- Huntster T • @ • C 07:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. I was a little too bold. I'll clean this up tomorrow. What should I do about the merge request? I can't just move out from under it. What should I do? ---- CharlesGillingham 07:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
No cause for concern, Charles. Now that there's a CfD merge/rename request in play, no need to do anything further. Allow the CfD to run its course, once it's decided then an admin or bot will come along and put everything back into the appropriate categories.--cjllw ʘ TALK 09:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Assuming I understand what you are specifically referring to, "accessdate" should always be used when referencing something that comes from a URL or other source which may vary over time. It simply establishes when the information was last known to be valid. If no URL/etc is used, accessdate needn't be applied. Of course, for these reasons, I cannot fathom why "accessmonth" or "accessyear" would be useful.... -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Huntster, did you mean to place this comment here? Doesn't seem to follow...?--cjllw ʘ TALK 09:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it was in reply to FrankB's ending paragraph above. I should have clarified that. -- Huntster T • @ • C 17:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Huntster (Two 'thanks' from me in one day, you lucky dog! <G>), that was as I surmised a bit later. I've been out of schools for a long while, and getting a handle on cites was a bit daunting as I ramp up to wiki-time again. (It's the old if you don't use it, you loose it, again! Alas! And the shear numbers there were certainly an impediment.)

A new idea wrinkle

Last night it occured to me that a Wikipedia page sucking in the primary citation templates '/doc' pages would be a good idea... since it allows a comparison between selections from one place. The difference from the two current wikipedia pages would be that it would be a One-stop-shopping-plaza, as it were, for cutting and pasting a template one needs but doesn't normally need, so one needs to cut (N paste), etc.! Since t'would update automatically when the '/doc' page changes, would hardly ever need any maintenance editing. Just section title, followed by /doc pages invocations.

The result would be a page with a TOC by template name, allowing a jump-to and set up a shortcut to get there in a hurry when need to 'consult' with and select such a template. My suggestion would further be to place it in template space {{Allcites}}, perhaps, and include that page into (or not) any Wikipedia: page (Keeps the template categorizations fenced off). Substing such a shopping mall would be contraindicated as then requires overt maintenance edits to update and should be avoided. Cheers! // FrankB 18:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

So you just mean setting a page where all the major citation doc pages are transcribed onto one page? That is extremely easy to do, and I'd suggest (and will probably just be bold and create it) making such a page a subpage of this article, perhaps Wikipedia:Citation templates/Docs or WP:CITED. I would strongly suggest not placing it in the Template space, as a shortcut would make it easy to simply go to the page itself, and if someone really wanted to include that page elsewhere (in their own userspace, for example), it would be just as easy to set {{Wikipedia:Citation templates/Docs}}. Preserve the Template space for, well, actual templates. -- Huntster T • @ • C 22:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, nevermind, I forgot two key points: if the doc page is transcribed, the doc's full TOC will be transcribed too; and there is no way I know of to prevent the doc's categories from being transcribed as well. So the resulting page will have an enormous TOC (every section of the transcribed docs included, which is only partially helped by setting supersections with single equal signs, such as =Cite book=) and will contain every category used on those doc pages, which is entirely unhelpful and generally un-good. If anyone knows how to defeat these two problems, perhaps this can go ahead, but for now, best leave it alone. -- Huntster T • @ • C 22:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It would involve a bit of careful editing but the judicious use of if-then-else structures and ifeq: testing:


Prior Conditional tests and section
...


{{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}} <!--- This is a typical conditional block --->
 | this page's name 
 
 |<!--  case then == do nothing ---> OR code which only displays in compendium 
 ...
 
 | current stuff, headings to OMIT when doc page is aggregated in this page name
 ...
 
 }} 

Material common to both states follows (or precedes) the if block.
...
 
Next Conditional tests and section
For a concrete example of similar purpose, see {{catlst/doc}} which is used to display help for several variants. The global magic word _ NOTOC _ SHOULD, iirc, suppress even overt (e.g. {{TOCnestright}}) invocations of a TOC. Another, neater way (avoiding some of the clutter of catlst/doc) would to break the cites templates '/doc' pages into sub-doc pages (/doc1, /doc2, ... /docN}} which could be individually included or not (one method), or just conditionally displayed in the logic structure given above. There is also template capability to test for matching multiple pagenames for combined testing (I'll have to track 'that' (name) one down from places I know I used it--Ask if it will help you.). Thanks for the enthusiasm! // FrankB 16:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The thing is, I'd be all for something like this if it did not require a complete reorganisation of the existing formats. While it would be a good idea to standardise the docs (I may work on that at some future date), I don't really agree with the idea of splitting into conditional subpages and getting into if-then-else statements potentially in both the doc pages and the main templates, when the doc system was created to move any of that stuff out of the template. I'd be interested in see some other editors thoughts on this. -- Huntster T • @ • C 22:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Echoing here a response on Hunsters talk, on the above. The doc page technique had nothing to do with getting conditional logic out of templates documentation--but enabled direct template documentation to be displayed where before it had been hidden on a talk page. However, that benefit is a side effect. The primary reason underlying the /doc pages was to reduce server loading requirements in two ways:
   1) on widely used templates... someone would come in and make a trivial edit (Say add an interwiki) and if that template was widely used, the page caching had to re-render all the pages affected and renew the cache causing large surges in server processing demands, and great delays while the que was emptied again. In the /doc method, the documentation is walled off behind an noinclude block, so the only pages which need reprocessed if the /doc page changes are those linked directly to it--the template 'display' of help for the editor needing the information on how to apply the template.
   2) At the same time (about 13 months back, iirc) the developers imposed a cap on the preprocessing memory allowed for expansion of all templates on a page. The /doc page with the same fence off, shrinks that need significantly, and eliminated a lot of problems on pages with a lot of template use (numbers count too).

It follows then, that complexity inside the doc page is irrelevant to those reasons, and is pretty trivial matter in any event. Most of our notice templates have far more complex structures (see below). // FrankB

Discussion dying

applying CPR...

Subsequent to the above and a couple of talk exchanges with Huntster, I stubbed up a working solution using four citation templates and essentially three methods trials. All involve creating a second smaller sub-page of the material to display on the compendium page as the best "Technical means" of keeping the same material on the usage pages as is to be displayed on the compendium page. The fourth implementation here is the simplest and easiest.

  1. Bottom line, is such a page can be created fairly easily
  2. The biggest hurdle is what to call it, and my recommendation would be Wikipedia:Citation templates II, with similar (Suffix a '2') to shortcuts for Wikipedia:Citation templates.
  3. The technique is straight forward:
    1. Refactor the current usage page (/doc) so the material for the compendium is grouped together.
    2. Link to a new /doc2 page as if is template call
    3. Cut the material into that page.
    4. Install If-then-else parser logic to bypass those materials (e.g. a section title wanted in the template help, but not in the compendium; certain small auxillary tables.
    5. Add a transcluded message edit section (modified technique of the WP:DOC transclusion notice), but If-block around that so it only manifests on inclusions to the directly viewed primary /doc page. This provides an edit link into the second (/doc2) page for maintanence needs. It does not manifest and ruin the display of either the {{BASEPAGENAME}} (Template page viewed) or on the compendium page.
    6. Should some mix of "wanted" and "don't want" parts of an "display this when" condition—an if-then-else block which contains a wikitable (that needs displayed or not) then that table needs be implemented using {{!}} and {{!-}} instead of a hardcoded '|' combinations (the pipes mess up the if block parsing otherwise). Thus table ends become "{{{!}}", and "{{!}}}", and so forth. These are generally minimal changes and the technique is common to a huge number of templates (Virtually all xFD, merge, and cleanup "notice types" of templates use the pipe-template method to get around the overuse of the pipe character as an operator/delimiter in wikimarkup and parser function logic.
  4. I should note, that these methods all leave categories and interwikis and such other matters inside the primary /doc pages totally unmolested and unaffected.
  5. The most important remaining question (I've settled out the feasibility matter, I'd say) is what "style" to display when reworking the Citation templates into a compendium. I used the tall versions in my Mock up trial mainly because they are generally located adjacent to the parameters definitions section whereas contrarily (of course it couldn't be easy! <g>) the short wide versions that most people probably prefer to cut and paste from are located well above the definitions sections.
    1. The easiest fix would be to reverse the order of presentation for the tall versus the wide varieties in the usage pages as well, make some people unhappy, but having the virtue of putting the wide versions next to the definitions.
    2. A second method would be to split parts of the /doc into two sub-pages (/doc2 and /doc3) allowing the usage display and the compendium to be displayed in any order desired— assume the definitions are in /doc3, the compendium parts in /doc2.
    3. Alternatively, the tall ones can be deleted, or the order of the three page elements can be rearranged with the definitions above the wide versions. (My own inclination and preference—I generally define a term before giving an example. Others have a legitimate need to cut and paste more often than to read the definitions again, so I've got sympathies with that aspect... but the proposed page is a means to accomplish exactly that resource.
  • Go/No Go discussion by the community would be helpful at this point.
  • Citation templates content still needs some clean up before it can act as a source list, but suggestions as to the most useful templates most often used are needed. // FrankB 15:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • As I just noted on user talk:Omegatron, it would be quite feasible to crosslink WP:CITET and the proposed page, provided sections are added to break that large table into subtable elements. If the wide form is used, the user has the longform and examples on one aid, whilst the long form is already on the CITET page, and the proposed [[WP:CITE2]] would have the wide form for cutting and pasting plus the detailed definitions—both crosslinked for one click access. (One click access for the /doc page already exists on CITET. Kudos to whomever did that!)
  • Lastly, extending the auxillary sub-page concept (/doc1, /doc2, /doc3) would allow both help aids to be low maintenance--all the edit changes happen on the relevant subpage which is displayed on each page as desired by transcluding the template subpage of interest.
  • A modified form of {{doc page pattern transcluded}} can be developed for such cascaded aux-subpages [featuring the edit link to only the primary /doc page—"change things from here Central", as it were]. It would likely need subst'd, but it could also automatically include the guts of {{template doc page viewed directly}} making preparing the auxillary sub-pages a cut and paste plus the template described. The only other changes needed would be if-blocking around any unwanted titles limiting their scope. //FrankB 16:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Correct syntax for a review of a film in a journal

I would like to know the correct template and syntax to create a citation to a review of a film published in a journal. (That is, the review is published in the journal).

I know the following information about the review:

  • Author
  • Journal name, date, volume, issue, pages

and I know the following about the film that was reviewed:

  • Title
  • Names of the people who made the film (it's a scientific documentary, so 'director' is not quite right)
  • Release date
  • Distributor of the film

I cannot figure out how to use citation templates to create a reference to the review of the film. Any help will be appreciated—G716 <T·C> 05:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that you use something like:
{{cite journal |author=author's name |date=date of review |title=Name of film (review) |journal=journal name |volume=vol |issue=num |pages=pp}}
If the film review in the journal has a title, you could use that in the title field, otherwise as above should do. Presuming the info you are citing appears in the review's text, that would be your source and there'd be no need to have extraneous info like the film's distributor and so on.--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks!—G716 <T·C> 06:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Full Version or Common Usage?

For templates, should the full version be used or the commonly used versions? Noahcs 00:27, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

You pick what you want to use. Whichever version you might choose, just delete the fields that your particular citation does not require. -- Huntster T • @ • C 02:35, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Addition Sources?

I was wondering whether we should include the templates for CD notes, DVD notes, Executive Orders, Hansards, Interviews, Patents, Podcasts, Speeches, US Bills, Video games, or the Wayback Machine on this page? Noahcs 01:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

These are certainly worth mentioning on the page, though I don't think they need to be fleshed out as the current ones are. Thanks for compiling them...I'll be taking a look and seeing what can be done. -- Huntster T • @ • C 02:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Obliviously they don't ALL have to be included, they were just some suggestions that I thought might need to be included. Now that I think about it, maybe just the more popular ones like Interviews and Speeches? Noahcs 00:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't mean list them all in the same full format as those currently on the main page, but they may all be deserving of a mention and explanation somewhere on there. -- Huntster T • @ • C 01:18, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Dont forget to add Cite Blog and Cite e-mail to your list.--Hokeman (talk) 01:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on whether to propose a rewrite on cite templates

On Template talk:Cite book the question of whether an overhaul of these templates is in order has been raised on several occasions, for example to simplify AND allow differing styles (phrases). A technique for determining where and when a particular field (param) has been suggested, suggesting BOT organized mass edits make any style overhaul feasible. See this, and the linked discussion from the top of that about one vexing problem (editor and or translator). // FrankB 20:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Edited book

Why isn't there a template listed for citing an article from an edited book? This happens frequently in book science and literary publications, that a book will consist of a collection of articles by various authors, but published under a single title and edited. --EncycloPetey 18:38, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but {{Cite book}} has an "editor" field that should work fine for your purposes (just write something along the lines of "First Last (ed.)" in the field), along with the "first" and "last" fields for the actual article author. Try just putting the compilation title in "title" and the article under "chapter". -- Huntster T • @ • C 21:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
No, that doesn't help at all. That places the editor in entirely the wrong place and doesn't allow me to identify the book title. I need to cite an article found within an edited book. Here are two specific examples:
  • Crandall-Stotler, Barbara. & Raymond E. Stotler. (2000). "Morphology and classification of the Marchantiophyta". Pages 21-70 in A. Jonathan Shaw & Bernard Goffinet (eds.), Bryophyte Biology. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). ISBN 0-521-66097-1.
  • Nehira, Kunito. (1983). "Spore Germination, Protonemata Development and Sporeling Development". Pages 358-374 in Rudolf M. Schuster (ed.), New Manual of Bryology, volume I. (Nichinan, Miyazaki, Japan: The Hattori Botanical Laboratory). ISBN 4-938163-3045.
This is the standard way such citations are given in journals and books. I can't get the current template to acommodate the appropriate fields or position them correctly in the citation. This sort of citation is very common, as I said, so having to use some kind of a workaround to coax the template into a semblance of a proper format reveals a weakness in the templates themselves. --EncycloPetey 00:39, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
You have to remember that the templates themselves aren't necessarily based on any one citation format, but follow a generic style that presents a wide array of data. This isn't necessarily a weakness, just the way they were intentionally designed. If you want to use a specific format (APA or whatever), it would be best to not use a template at all, and type in as you have above. From what I can see, the only significant difference between what I gave you and your examples is that the "page" field comes before the section title, a format I don't think I've come across seen before. Using "Cite book", this is what I come up with:
  • Crandall-Stotler, Barbara; & Raymond E Stotler (2000). "Morphology and classification of the Marchantiophyta", in A. Jonathan Shaw & Bernard Goffinet (eds.): Bryophyte Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21-70. ISBN 0-521-66097-1. 
  • Nehira, Kunito (1983). "Spore Germination, Protonemata Development and Sporeling Development", in Rudolf M. Schuster (ed.): New Manual of Bryology Volume I. Nichinan, Miyazaki, Japan: The Hattori Botanical Laboratory, pp. 358-374. ISBN 4-938163-3045. OCLC 10792214. 
  • This sort of need gives added weight to having alternatively named fields here and there in a template so that editors can format their own without the 'boilerplate' assumptions such as the "in" imposed by the editor field. See link given just above for that discussion about an overhaul. Where such normally inoperative fields are located is certainly one thing we can encompass in the discussion. // FrankB 23:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Cite newsletter?

How would I cite a newsletter? Noahcs 01:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

What kind of newsletter, electronic or paper? We have a {{cite mailing list}} that may work for you. -- Huntster T • @ • C 03:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No, its not a mailing list. Its a free, paper newsletter from a business. How would cite this? Noahcs 20:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone found a citation template that can work like this?

Has anyone found a citation that could work like this? (for example)

  • (Pgs. 10-11),
  • (Pgs. 11-12),
  • (Pgs. 12-13),
  • (Pgs. 13-14),
  • (Pgs. 14-15), Author. 2000. Book Title. Publisher, Publisher Address. ISBN #? —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaribDigita (talk • contribs) 15:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever seen a citation format of that nature, and cannot quite fathom its use. Do you know of any instance of its use elsewhere online, or can you say what citation guideline it comes from? -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Could you explain why pp 10-15 is unacceptable? - X201 16:52, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
If you want to use a single named reference with a citation template, but have a different page range for each reference, then {{rp}} is currently the only method. This places the page number as an in-line superscript. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 12:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it will work, but given that less than a hundred pages actually use it, I'd worry that people would be clueless as to what it actually means when they see it in an article. I also don't see why pp. 10-15 would not work. -- Huntster T • @ • C 16:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Realistically, either method sets off the page numbers visually: pp. 10-15 or :pp. 10-15 The only problem I see is that if a developer comes up with a better cite method, then a bot or tool could update templates fairly readily. {{rp}} is a hack, but so is the rest of the reference system. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't mean to actually use "code" for the page number, merely that "pp. 10-15" in an existing citation template should work fine...for such small numbers of pages (even for larger numbers), using the single citation for all pages works fine. Until the developers design a more robust, integrated reference system (which I cannot understand why it wouldn't be a priority given the demand for verifiable references), we just have to make do with what we have. -- Huntster T • @ • C 19:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)