Template talk:Cquote

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Template:Cquote is permanently protected from editing, as it is a heavily used or visible template.

Substantial changes should be proposed here, and made by administrators if the proposal is uncontroversial, or has been discussed and is supported by consensus. Use {{editprotected}} to attract the attention of an administrator in such cases.
Any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes, categories or interwiki links.
Templates for deletion This template was considered for deletion on 2006 December 12. The result of the discussion was keep.
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[edit] Please restore template

This is a request to please restore the template. Please use the WP:TfD Template for Deletion procedure if you want to remove this option. I personally don't entirely disagree that it has been abused in some cases but this is not the way to go about it. -- Stbalbach 21:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Templates for quote formatting already exist. People using this template in place of them are the ones "style warring". Articles should all be consistent in style with each other. You can't create a POV fork of an article because you dislike the consensus viewpoint. You shouldn't be able to fork a style template because you dislike the consensus viewpoint, either.
{{Rquote}} should get the same treatment, by the way. — Omegatron 21:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
That's a great argument you can make at WP:TfD. Put it up for deletion if you want, and see what the consensus says. In the mean time, please restore the template. -- Stbalbach 21:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This is not a deletion, either technically or effectively. Discussion about changes to templates occurs on the template talk page. There is discussion agreeing to do this. Please explain why you disagree with the change, in light of that discussion. —Centrx→talk • 21:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Your playing games and not operating in good faith. You removed the graphic quotes which is the sole reason for this templates existence effectively deleting it. To say you didn't delete it is true only in a very literal and technical sense, it's like something a 2 year old would say. I would ask that you please restore the template and follow the proper TfD procedures. The kind of discussion your asking for is a stylistic one (color or placement of the graphic quotes) - a discussion about the templates existence or not would be handled on the TfD page. -- Stbalbach 22:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, please restore the template to its original form. Seriously, this is an attempt to decide dictatorially what quotes should look like in all articles. Why not just let the editors in the relevant articles decide? If you don't like how this template is being used in an article, post on that article's talk page and have it changed to blockquote - why force everyone to follow your tastes?? Besides, Stbalbach has a point: if you don't like it, take it to TfD, don't just in effect delete it. Mikker (...) 22:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

This change merely removes the cartoon quotes. This is an encyclopedia; please explain how this template has a use with regard to that and with regard to the discussion above. It is much more effective to deal with an issue centrally, rather than making thousands of minute changes, and anyone is welcome to discuss the matter. I have reverted the change, on thy request, but countervailing reasons or new options are necessary in order to override the previous consensus, which you can read above. —Centrx→talk • 22:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Merely? It is the only reason for the templates existence. As for "previous consensus", you might want to consider the thousands of Wikipedia editors who have chosen to use this template because they happen to like it. Wikipedia operates according to procedure, and the procedure for templates is the WP:TfD process. You've already acknowledged your intention was to effectively delete the template in a central location. So, follow the TfD procedure. Everyone else does. A little tag is added so everyone can see its up for vote and weigh in. Certainly a lot more democratic, don't you think? -- Stbalbach 22:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The other templates have boxes and backgrounds and other formatting, they are different. Regarding its usage, there appear to be about 5,000 uses of this template; many of them are added by the same people, and others are added simply because it was the "best pick" out of the quotation templates, or because the user does not know about other templates. Anyone who wants can come here and discuss the matter. WP:TFD is the process for template deletion; this is not a deletion, and if this change were brought up there it would likely be quickly closed as not related to the WP:TFD process. If you think this template should be deleted, you can nominate it for that but I don't think that is necessary; this template serves a particular function, but there might be good reasons for making quotation uniform with one template. (Separate note: Wikipedia is not a democracy. Deletion discussions are for deciding whether something is appropriate for the encyclopedia with reference to policy and fundamental principles. Votes without reasoning or authority behind them are discounted.) —Centrx→talk • 23:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the rv Centrx. I realise your change simply removed the "cartoon quotes" but I happen to like them. De gustibus non est disputandum most certainly applies here methinks. I also realise deciding things centrally is more efficient but that doesn't mean it is necessarily better. I mean, isn't that the glory of Wikipedia? That we're not centralised? If all the editors on a particular article want to use cquote in its original form, surely they ought to be allowed to do so? (Wouldn't WP:CONSENSUS require that?) Additionally, cquote serves a function no other quote template does. Take, for example, United States Constitution: on the one hand, you want to set the quotes apart from the text but, on the other, you want to preserve the flow. A simple blockquote doesn't do the former, Template:Quotation, Template:Quote box, and Template:Epigraph fail to do the latter. And Template:Rquote makes the quote too elongated and is more appropriate for a "side note" of sorts. Furthermore, cquote allows the use of footnote refs - check out how I've used it in Richard Dawkins. Mikker (...) 23:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia article editing is decentralized, but there are central policies and guidelines, and once you start using a template you are using a centralized system that propagates a certain style or method. The nature of such a system is that many people are using this quote system because they see it is common and there is no other option besides using boxes and backgrounds, which are substantially different. That is, the system makes it so that these people are not necessarily choosing the blue quote marks, but they keep multiplying anyway. One could quite effectively go through each article individually and change its formatting to remove the images—and random article editors would think it better and be thankful, but it would be tedious and would, in contrast, be ignoring the wisdom of a consensus decision that can be reached centrally, which could also come up with better options for distinguishing the quote. —Centrx→talk • 23:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
While I see what you are saying, I think my point stands. If well informed editors want to use cquote why can't they? Ultimately, this is a matter of taste. You don't like the cartoon quotes, I do - there's no use in arguing about it. Besides, there is a very good reason why we make a distinction between policies (like NPOV) and guidelines (like MOS): the former are mostly (in Jimbo's words) "non-negotiable" while the latter "are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception" (see WP:RULES). Moreover, guidelines like MOS allow a fairly wide scope to decide things in particular cases simply because (1) uniformity is not all that important and (2) there is usually no consensus on certain rules (like American vs. British date notations etc.). Questions like whether quotes should have "cartoon quotes" around them are purely aesthetic and consensus on something like that is simply never gonna happen. Besides, what harm does this template do? Also, please read: WP:MOS#Disputes_over_style_issues. Mikker (...) 00:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It unduly emphasizes the quote. It is no more a matter of taste than requiring that editors not select favorite sentences in an article and bold them randomly strewn throughout AN ARTICLE. —Centrx→talk • 00:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that removing the cartoon quotes is not sensible. If the template is required to do anything else, it may be better to start a new template, or introduce tweak parameters, keeping the traditional behaviour as default if no parameters are given. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This isn't a cartoon; it's an encyclopedia. Forking templates because editors don't agree on what they should look like is not the way things are done here. Same as forking other content because some people don't like the way it's written. This template should be merged with the other quote templates or deleted. — Omegatron 15:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


"It unduly emphasizes the quote" from your point of view. I happen to disagree. When (a) the quote isn't a "side note" that should be read seperately (e.g. Mount Tambora), (b) it is desirable to preserve flow but (c) the quote is important enough to be emphasised, cquote is entirely appropriate. Again, consensus on this will never be achieved so I fail to see the point of arguing further. We might as well discuss the merits and demerits of British vs. American spelling or argue over whether pink is the new black. Mikker (...) 18:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
There are cases where it is appropriate and looks good, just as in bold. And there are cases where it doesn't look good. We need some style guidelines to help the thousands of editors who use this template. -- Stbalbach 13:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
No, there are not. There are no cases where it is appropriate to make sentences randomly bold, or randomly change font size because it looks better to the editor making that change. In fact, it's against our style guidelines to do so. This isn't a graphic design site where people show off their skills on each article; it's an encyclopedia. Styles should be used to make the content look good and more readable, but should be used consistently for the whole site. Setting a different style for only some articles is bad. — Omegatron 15:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
There are arguably cases where cquote is stylistically appropriate to the article and looks good. You may disagree but I suspect because you want to delete it on grounds of "consistency" - which has never been the case on Wikipedia, nor probably never will be. We have multiple ways of quoting, that is a good thing, not bad. What is needed is a guideline on when to use cquote - obviously it adds extra attention to the quote, above the norm, so it needs to be justified by the user. This can be done if we create a set of guidelines based on cases where it looks good. If you or others are unwilling to even acknowledge its aesthetic merits and compromise in certain cases, then this who thing is dead center and going no where. -- Stbalbach 15:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Omegatron, Wikipedia is not (and should not be) centralised. Indeed, your argument that style has to be "consisten[t] for the whole site" [emphasis removed] is manifestly false. That is why we have style guidelines not style policies (see WP:RULES for the difference}. It is also why in several cases MOS and other guidelines leave it up to particular editors to decide. BC vs BCE, American vs British spelling, the style of the date notation, and numerous other stylistic issues are simply left optional in guidelines and a purely aesthetic matter like whether "cartoon quotes" should be used or not is exactly the same. Mikker (...) 18:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Wrong. Style is very much centralized, and it should be. It should not be changed from article to article or from paragraph to paragraph.
The articles are shared by everyone. Just because anyone can edit a page doesn't mean that they have free reign to do whatever they want with them. Wikipedia is not your personal website. — Omegatron 18:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
All of the examples you gave are writing style, which doesn't apply to changing the presentation style of the website from article to article. Not the same concept.
This is the same concept:Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.
How far do you think I would get if I started putting whole articles into a large cartoon font because I particularly liked it? — Omegatron 19:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

That's clearly a straw man. My point is not that there are no rules whatsoever (i.e. anyone can change the presentation of articles to anything they like) my point is that some stylistic issues are optional. Like, say, BC vs. BCE. And the reason it's optional to pick one or the other is because (1) uniformity in these cases is not that important, (2) no consensus exists and (3) there is no harm done by one or the other. The WP:POINT you are making with your colour coded posts is completely different - it's not merely an aesthetic issue. Colour-blind people, for example, would not be able to access articles that had coloured text.

Besides, what actual harm does the cquote template do? Why should you get to decide for everyone whether it can be used? In some cases blockquote is appropriate, in other cases quote box is appropriate, in yet others rquote and in some cquote. Your preference for blockquote to the exclusion of all the others is quite simply your arbitrary taste and I see no reason why your preferences in this regard should be allowed to over-ride article-level consensus. When something is merely a matter of taste (as opposed to questions around accessibility, readability, neutrality etc.) it is simply not appropriate to make a centralised decision.

If you can give me a sound argument why cquote vs blockquote is not merely a matter of taste, I'll gladly change my mind. Mikker (...) 20:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As I already said, your arguments about BC vs BCE and British vs American spelling are not relevant. You're arguing that because writing style is allowed to vary from article to article, the presentation style of the articles should be allowed to vary, too. But this is obviously not the case. If it were, each article would have a different background color, be written in a different font, use a different layout, have different borders and frames around images with different float and caption styles, be broken up into different types of sections with different methods of linking to other articles. But that's simply, obviously, not how we do it here. All of the articles have a common structure defined by Wikipedia:Guide to layout. They all have a common TOC style, image formatting style, and page presentation style defined by the site-wide CSS. Presentation style is decided by consensus for the entire site at once. We don't allow "style forking" to make one article look different from another.
You're exactly right; it is a matter of taste. This template enforces the aesthetic tastes of a small number of users on the entire encyclopedia. Your preference for cquote to the exclusion of all the others is quite simply your arbitrary taste and there is no reason why your preferences in this regard should be allowed to over-ride encyclopedia-wide consensus.
(And yes, it's poor HTML, too. We shouldn't sacrifice accessibility and adherence to web standards for the sake of a visual style that most people don't even like.) — Omegatron 14:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Cquote breaks accessibility and laughs in the face of good HTML authoring practices after eating a sardine sandwich. It replaces a normal semantic text element, <blockquote>, with an ignorant layout table containing three cells and lacking a table summary or headers. Two of the table cells each contain a span with a misleading title attribute, in turn containing a meaningless image with misleading alt text, enclosed in a link to an irrelevant image page. For a screen-reader user, this yields a signal-to-noise ratio of about 500%, in my estimation.
While reducing utility for disadvantaged readers, this template also adds over a kilobyte of unnecessary source code to the page. Can you imagine the frustration of a user who's already saddled with having to use a screen reader encountering this crap half a dozen times while trying to read an article?
All that so you can see your cutesie purple cartoon quotes in the free encyclopedia. —Michael Z. 2006-12-12 02:47 Z
Hmmm... I hadn't thought about that. Two questions: can the bad HTML authoring be fixed whilst keeping the basic point of cquote (i.e. in my view, to place more emphasis on the quote than blockquote and less than quote box)? Secondly, as I am unfamiliar with screen readers, what exactly is the problem here? Won't it just read "cquote" or will it read the actual code contained at Template:Cquote? If the latter, is there a way around this? Furthermore, what are the accessibility impacts of the other quotation styles (quotation; rquote; epigraph; quote box)? If these are indeed serious problems I suggest it be discussed over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability as well as here. Mikker (...) 03:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I can't tell you exactly what a screen reader will make of it: the most common one, JAWS, is very expensive. The cquote HTML output also has a totally kludgey wikitext/HTML/CSS hack to make the quotation marks unclickable in visual browsers, and its impossible to predict how a screen reader will interpret it. I bet each one will make something different out of it, but I'm sure they won't hide it, because that depends on visual elements overlapping in the z-axis.
In the Lynx text-only browser, the quotation marks appear as links above and below the quotation, with the title of the current page as link text, but linking to the quotation marks' image pages! Whoever built the code didn't care about users of alternate browsing devices, and screwed it right up for them. Shamefully lame for an "open" encyclopedia.
The source code of a block quotation should be
 <blockquote>
 quote text
 </blockquote>
But instead, cquote makes it the following (this is without anything in cquote's optional citation parameter, which will add another table row containing a properly-formatted paragraph and cite element)
 <table cellpadding="10" align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; background-color:transparent; border-style:none;" class="cquote">
 <tr>
 <td width="20" valign="top">
 <div style="position:relative; width:20px; height:20px; overflow:hidden;">
 <div style="position:absolute; font-size:20px; overflow:hidden; line-height:20px; letter-spacing:20px;"><strong class="selflink"><span title="Template talk:Cquote" style="text-decoration:none;">   </span></strong></div>
 <a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" class="image" title="Template talk:Cquote"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png" alt="Template talk:Cquote" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" /></a></div>
 </td>
 <td>quote text</td>
 <td width="20" valign="bottom">
 <div style="position:relative; width:20px; height:20px; overflow:hidden;">
 <div style="position:absolute; font-size:20px; overflow:hidden; line-height:20px; letter-spacing:20px;"><strong class="selflink"><span title="Template talk:Cquote" style="text-decoration:none;">   </span></strong></div>
 <a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" class="image" title="Template talk:Cquote"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Cquote2.png/20px-Cquote2.png" alt="Template talk:Cquote" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" /></a></div>
 </td>
 </tr>
 </table>
An accessible version which looked the same could be built, but I suspect it would take a lot of work and debugging in different browsers to make sure it works right. I think it would require a blockquote with a div element nested inside it. One of these block elements would have a left margin and background image aligned left applied with CSS, the other would have them on the right. Because wikitext breaks CSS URL declarations required for background images, the CSS would have to be applied in one of Wikipedia's style sheets. As far as the web browser/screen reader is concerned, it would be identical to just a plain blockquote, but could look exactly like the current cquote. The source HTML code would look like the following, and all of the good bits would be in the style sheet:
 <blockquote class="cquote"><span>
 quote text
 </span></blockquote>
It could be done a couple of other ways using simple HTML and complicated CSS, too.
Actual quotation mark characters could be floated in the left and right margins and formatted to be big and pink. The problem with this is that in professional typography, block quotations don't have quotation marks.
Another way would be to add the quotation marks using the CSS before: and after: properties, but MSIE doesn't support them.
For a different approach altogether, see template:Epigraph, which I created and used in T-26. —Michael Z. 2006-12-12 05:18 Z
We have editors who use screen readers. Just ask them. I have a feeling it's not the end of the world, but if we formatted it correctly, it would be easier for them to read.
Regardless of whether it really bothers them, we should use semantically-correct markup. It's necessary for viewing properly on non-computers, like cell phones or PDAs, for instance. (Currently, they'll display the images alongside the quote, making it very difficult to read on a narrow screen. If we used proper syntax, the images wouldn't be displayed at all on screens that couldn't handle them.)
Regardless of markup problems, we still shouldn't be using this template, because it's a "visual style fork" and gives the encyclopedia an unprofessional, unorganized appearance, enforcing a disliked visual style on many articles and encouraging edit wars over differences in taste. — Omegatron 15:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I just noticed it uses the kludgy, accessibility-breaking {{click}} template for the images. This template is a total mess of garbage code and should not be used anywhere. We should change it to a plain blockquote version during this discussion just for the sake of the site's markup. — Omegatron 15:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I didn't realise this template was the source of the images with the misleading descriptions; I'd learnt to mentally filter them out while reading. No-one should have to do that. {{Click}} should not be used because its output is ugly with a screen reader and the graphics are distracting anyway; there's no point in having a layout table for a single quote; and blockquote should be used so a screen reader user can get feedback when they've entered a quote and also move between quotes with quick navigation keys. You can't guarantee what a screen reader will do to CSS; certain versions of JAWS, for example, only take into account a site's top-level CSS for performance reasons. Therefore Wikipedia should be easy-to-use without CSS support. Graham87 05:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please change this to a proper CSS classed blockquote

There has been a long debate about the (ab)use of this template on talk:MOS; since this template itself states that it's only intended to be used for pullquotes, I won't go into the abuse issue, since we all should be on the same line regarding that.

As for the template itself, pullquotes should be formatted using CSS (and perhaps JS). A quotation, pullquote or not, should be in an HTML blockquote element with a suitable class, say "pullquote". That will enable the look of the pullquote to be dependent on the skin, user styling, display medium, etc., which is difficult to do with the current table layout. Also the W3C discourages the use of layout tables, mainly because they are bad for accessibility.

Apart from that, the desirability of having weblog-like quote graphics in an encyclopaedia has been drawn into question. People on talk:MOS seem to dislike the the quote graphics, so it is questionable if the blockquote.pullquote CSS selector (and/or JS code working on pullquote nodes) should provide them. However, it should be noted that when a blockquote tag with a CSS class is used, it is easy for users to change their user CSS, enabling everyone to get what he/she wants, so fans of the graphics could include them in their use CSS and/or JS, depending on what implentation works best. Shinobu 03:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

See WT:MOS#Quotation_marks_using_Cquote_tag. —Centrx→talk •

What exactly would this entail? Using <blockquote> and defining its properties in CSS? —Centrx→talk • 00:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes. This template is bad both because it's ugly and because it uses a table to display non-tabular data. It should use a blockquote tag. It is, after all, a blockquote. — Omegatron 15:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Seconded. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines clearly state that tables are meant for data and not design. It also states that one should use the <q> and <blockquote> tags to represent short and long quotes, respectively. 213.100.72.86 (talk) 22:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Text color

The text in the quote template shows up as black on black, overriding my preferences set in my monobook.css. Is there a way to correct this? -Ste|vertigo 01:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Possibly. I'm not an expert in CSS, but I think that emending your CSS from <tagname> {<property>: <attribute>;} to <tagname> {<property>: <attribute>!important;} will override any local css styling that isn't denoted as important. Karl Dickman talk 17:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Im not sure what you mean precisely. What on here would I change? -Ste|vertigo 06:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Add !important to the tag whose value now becomes overridden. Said: Rursus ☻ 07:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

If other text looks right with your own style sheet, then this template is the problem, perhaps because it defines a background-color without defining a corresponding color for text. Is there a reason this template's style has "background-color: transparent"? Either that should be removed, or "color:inherit" should be added. —Michael Z. 2006-12-12 07:31 Z

I should state that by other text looking "right", it means other text is light-colored on a dark background: (screenshots). An unusual case, but one which is perfectly useful with all other templates. -Ste|vertigo 18:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Handle attribution line

I was looking at how this template works, and noticed that it doesnt handle the attribution line. This template should handle the formatting of who the quote is by, as a second element. -Ste|vertigo 18:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Cquote

Template:Cquote has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Omegatron 15:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Added {{editprotected}} to request addition of TFD tag. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:13, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I added it, and the defenders flooded in, as expected. — Omegatron 19:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Most of whom appeared to think it should be kept because the TFD tag made the template look ugly! Oddly also, when I made changes to this, the major argument against it was that TFD was the proper place to discuss it; as expected, since sheer deletion is what TFD is good for, and I don't think anyone was advocating sheer deletion, the deletion was opposed, while other options were generally ignored. —Centrx→talk • 19:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
The close was definitely premature, and most voters just said it should be kept becuase they personally thought it looked good, completely disregarding other editors' opinions and the inherent problems with the template. — Omegatron 20:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, that went down in flames. Let's fix it. As far as I understand, the main technical issue is the use of the {{click}} template? I see {{cquotetxt}} doesn't use it. Then there's the "cartoony" style criticisms, but that's POV. Let's not throw out the good with the bad. What would be the remaining objections if we redid this in the style of {{cquotetxt}}, just using blue as the color, and the height and width params as far as possible? AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not happy that the vote was closed prematurely, before most readers of Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability and Wikipedia:Accessibility had a chance to participate. On the other hand, I am quite encouraged that 21 of 33 voters, including half of the editors voting to keep this template, expressed the desire to fix the accessibility issues. I see it as a clear mandate to do what it takes to transform this template's code. —Michael Z. 2006-12-13 20:00 Z

[edit] Alt text

Subjectivness notwthstanding, I understand that one of the issues at tfd was the lack of an alternate text for the quote drawing (for accessibility/screen readers). If I read the source right, {{Click}} uses such a parameter, called "title", but it is not invoked in {{Cquote}}. Wouldn't this issue be solved by inluding |title=start quotation and |title=end quotation in the template code, at cquote parameters? As in:

"{{Click|image = cquote1.png | title = start quote | link = {{FULLPAGENAME}}| width = {{{size|{{{2|{{{quotewidth|{{{width|20px}}}}}}}}}}}}"

and "{{Click|image = cquote2.png | title = end quote | link = {{FULLPAGENAME}}| width = {{{size|{{{2|{{{quotewidth|{{{width|20px}}}}}}}}}}}}" --Qyd 20:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I just added title=“ and title=” to the template (adding the words "start quote" and "end quote" before and after a quotation doesn't make sense). This yields the following in a text-only browser (Lynx):
“
[quoted text]
”
The two quotation marks are linked to the current page. Low-vision users of screen readers will probably have the quotation mark read out to them, and the existence of a link noted. In Safari, the graphical quotation marks now have a tooltip which contains the quotation mark character. —Michael Z. 2006-12-13 20:21 Z
RE "start quote" and "end quote", I was thinking screen readers, I supposed (wrong?) that they read the actual alt text, but I can't test one right now. --Qyd 20:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Any screen reader reads words, letters, numbers, and punctuation marks whatever way it reads them. There's no point in us second-guessing how they all work, when we don't use any of them, and there's no reason to believe they all work the same way. The text is not
start quote This text is quoted end quote.
It is
“This text is quoted”.
We should let our code represent this, and let screen readers do their thing. If an image represents an opening quotation mark, then suitable alt text would be an opening quotation mark. —Michael Z. 2006-12-13 21:37 Z
Most screen readers read the alt text of an image by default. When JAWS encounters a graphic, it separates it from the text when it virtualises the webpage. Therefore when I encounter the quotes on this page I get 'graphic "', which, because the quote isn't normally read in the punctuation mode I use, becomes "graphic?" In the default punctuation mode, it's read as "graphic quote". However, I'd prefer a change of this template to the version below. Graham87 02:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Text version

Is there any objection to switching this template to the technique used in template:cquotetxt? The visual results are identical (the quotation marks can be made blue with "color:#B2B7F2;"), and at least it doesn't have image links to deal with.

In a text-only browser, that template appears as a three-cell table with quotation mark characters:

“ [quoted text] ”

Not ideal, but an improvement. —Michael Z. 2006-12-13 20:27 Z

Surely there this can be done with CSS positioning/floats rather than resorting to an unncessary table. I'd do it except I suck at CSS positioning. Koweja 20:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
What a great idea! Support. :-). I'm playing with just that idea at User:AnonEMouse/Test. Note that the size measurements need tweaking. 40px for Cquotetxt seems to make much smaller quotes than for Cquote. AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know whether that's the best option (I'm not a web developer), but I also believe this template should be fixed: it presents very serious accessibility problems. I tried to participate in the proposal for deletion, but it was too late because the discussion was closed prematurely. Best regards --surueña 22:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Is it worth putting the premature closure on Deletion review? — Omegatron 14:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
CSS would fix the accessibility problems, because for non-visual browsers (screen readers, lynx, and the like) it would just be interpreted as quoted text. This is one of the reasons we shouldn't use images (though you can use alt tags which sort of helps). Using a table would make it even less accessible because of how alternative browsers interpret tables. Koweja 23:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
There was a table in the original template so the removal of the graphics is an improvement. The rows of the table are read separately by JAWS, and because of the use of extended ASCII characters, they are read in a non-standard way. The opening quote is read as "quote" because it is defined in the dictionary manager (the pronunciation dictionary); however, the character for the closing quote is not defined in the JAWS dictionary manager and is therefore read as silence. I still think this is an improvement on using {{click}} because there are no unnecessary links. Graham87 02:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amy Tan example

If I undestand the intended use of this template, the Amy Tan example is extremely misleading. In fact, it encourages precisely the wrong use of this template. The template how-to implies that you shouldn't use this for article text, but when would you ever preface the quote with, "As Amy Tan once said," except as part of the article? - PhilipR 10:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Quite right. I also question the editorial judgment which chooses to put a long mathematical equation in a pithy epigraph. —Michael Z. 2006-12-18 17:34 Z
Agreed. I have yet to see a legitimate use of this template in article space. In fact, the only legitimate use I have ever seen is an example of a pull quote in the Project namespace. — Omegatron 14:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please restore cquote

Once again, the cartoon quote functionality has been deleted from Wikipedia, despite a recent TfD which showed wide support to keep it. I searched on "bquote" in this talk page, and could find no match - where is the discussion to replace this template with Bquote? Can someone please outline why the cartoon quote functionality has been made unavailable, despite the recent TfD vote, and thousands of users who have chosen to use Cquote? -- Stbalbach 02:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The TfD voted to keep the template page rather than send it to delete land; that's not a referendum on its content and the discussion was centered on Bquote and other alternatives. See also the above discussions about accessibility and the outcome of the TfD, which you should read. The style preferences of a minority of users does not over-ride the education purpose of Wikipedia. Template:Cquotetxt may be a better alternative. —Centrx→talk • 02:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
“ The style preferences of a minority of users does not over-ride the education purpose of Wikipedia. „

—Centrx (via Cquotetxt)
Well, since we have Cquotetxt, I'm willing to switch the few cases where I think it's appropriate. But I think it's presumptuous to think that the majority of users don't like or want Cquote or something like it, when you consider the results of the TfD, and that thousands of people who use it - pull out quotes are commonly used in educational resources. It seems like the minority who want to delete it. -- Stbalbach 04:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
No. Most people are using them for blockquotes in article text, which it is not meant for. — Omegatron 04:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
TfD is misleading because it is clearly apparent that most of the voters who showed up after the TfD tag was added into the template did not even read the reasons given in the nomination for deletion, or recognize that there were alternative templates (which is a good reason to think they did not choose Cquote over the alternatives). Regardless of any other problems with Cquote, no one gets to decide that blind users can't read Wikipedia just because they prefer tear-drop quotation marks. Textbooks have braille editions, and no textbook used pull out quotes (or mascots, or technicolor diagrams,...) before they tried to popularize and funnify education. —Centrx→talk • 04:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I object to this unilateral overriding of the clear results of an afd. --Striver 10:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
The consensus of the TfD was to fix it. We could do the same thing just by copying the current temporary text at Template:Bquote here, instead of a redirect, but this is not a deletion of the template. —Centrx→talk • 10:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] WP:BRD time

Looks like it's Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss time. We're all administrators here, let's set a good example. User:Omegatron has been BOLD, by making this a redirect. I'm Reverting. Let's Discuss. AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll start. The objections from the Deletion nomination were
  1. Breaks web standards and accessibility.
  2. Not helpful, or encyclopedic, cartoonish.
  3. Redundant.
The accessibility issue, the most important, can fixed by removing the {{click}}. As to whether it breaks web standards by using tables for layout, I disagree - the web is full of pages using tables for layout. Cartoonish is a matter of taste. Since it is widely used, and passionately defended, I would argue that the community has shown that it is helpful. In the TfD, Omegatron tried to argue that most people don't like it, and was immediately met by many, many people explicitly writing that they do -- "I happen to love the way this template makes quotes look.", for example. Redundant is clearly untrue, since it has an effect not achieved in any other way.
Your turn. AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Please don't revert war. — Omegatron 15:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
copying comment from my talk page, since it seems to be more explanatory than the one above AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Please revert yourself so that cquote redirects to bquote. It cannot be used in articles until it has been fixed. The template uses the click template and a table in place of a blockquote, which is unacceptable. Please discuss changes in the future instead of revert warring. — Omegatron 16:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for replying in more detail. I'm not sure what you mean by "cannot be used", since, as far as I know, it is being used regularly, and still works. Do you mean "should not"? Well, that was basically the proposal at the TfD which was roundly shot down.
I entirely agree the {{click}} template should be removed - barring any better ideas, I propose to do so the way the {{Cquotetxt}} template does it, using text instead of graphical images. I'm not great at template hacking, so if it's left to me, it will take me a few days, but I will do it if no one else does it.
I addressed the table above - "unacceptable" is a rather strong word for a style issue. We are not the W3C.
Discussing changes is what we are doing here. A revert war would be repeated reversions, which does not seem to be happening. One revert does not a revert war make. Thanks for discussing instead. AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

AnonEMouse, I appreciate your rational and mature approach to solving this problem and summarizing the debate. I believe Omegatron has made some good points above, that people are using Cquote not as a pull quote as it was designed, but as a standard replacement for blockquote. Since the majority of cases of Cquote should actually just be blockquote, it makes sense to start over by redirecting Cquote to Bquote, and then making available alternative pull quote options such as {{Cquotetxt}} for those who really need and want a pull quote. In a way, Cquote was poorly designed from the start, it's more than a blockquote but less than a pull quote. So long as the alternative pull quote templates are available, it solves most of the problems both sides have expressed. My only concern is that there may still be some who want to rid Wikipedia of all tear-drop quotes, including the alternatives, and this is just the first step in that direction. Can anyone provide assurance that is not the case?-- Stbalbach 19:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I believe the TfD comments indicated that people who used Cquote as a replacement for blockquote did so intentionally, to make the quote stand out more than Bquote did. I don't know if just a few of us can tell them they shouldn't do that - there are clearly many of them, including some very experienced users. AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Most of the discussion is "fix it", and some people who obviously didn't read the nomination saying "don't delete it, it's real!". There are only a couple of people saying "I like it", and subjective preferences are irrelevant; this is an encyclopedia, and the people who "like" it do not own the articles they like it in. If they personally like it, they can use a skin that shows it with the blockquote tag, something which is not currently possible for the many people who do not "like" it. —Centrx→talk • 10:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Once someone used Cquote in an article, other quotes are then "upgraded" by well-meaning users to keep it consistent throughout (or to get equal attention) -- if articles have more Cquotes then block quotes, then there is a problem, and that is the case the majority of time with Cquote. Users have other options for pull quotes - that are real pull quotes like {{Cquotetxt}} - and not a hybrid block+pull Frankenstein like Cquote that is being mis-used. -- Stbalbach 15:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed replacement

OK, putting money where mouth is. I've hacked around a bit, and have a proposed replacement. It keeps the cartoon quotes, but makes them text, rather than images, and removes the dreaded {{click}} template.

The actual quotes are slightly different in shape, but fairly similar. I've done my best to make the spacing and sizing as close to the original {{cquote}} as possible, but, unfortunately, can't get all possible varieties, since the sizes don't map exactly, and I can't do real math on them since string parsing in templates is apparently disabled here. I put in switches for what I hope are the most common sizes, and a reasonable default. Also only one font-size measurement is relevant for text, so I can't use different width and heights like you can with images.

Please take a look, and say whether this is:

  1. an improvement over the previous cquote
  2. worse then the previous cquote
  3. irrelevant, since what you really hate are the cartoon quotes. AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
There's already a template for this; {{cquotetxt}}. Don't duplicate templates. — Omegatron 19:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Not quite, cquotetxt is narrower, and has very different appearing defaults. I did try just redirecting to cquotetxt, but that lost too much in the translation. AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The templates perform the same function. They should be combined. We can't have 500 different templates performing the same function just because people can't agree on a style. — Omegatron 19:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I have no objection in principle. How do you suggest going about it? AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
This approach seem to overcome the technical complaints of the previous version, while keeping the overall appearance. Too bad that string parsing doesn't work, a transclusion of {{cquotetxt}} with modified parameter names would have pleased everyone. As far as I can see though, this version works. --Qyd 20:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the technical problem. Do we need to update the instructions at all? -- Stbalbach 15:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

A bit, mainly about the font-size issues. I was waiting for the fallout, but it looks like this went reasonably smoothly, so if no one else does it before then, I'll update them in a few days. AnonEMouse (squeak) 16:10, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
“

The current version looks terrible to me, because my browser (Firefox, Windows) is rendering it in my default font (Verdana) instead of with something of the recommended serif style. Can we add a default font of Times New Roman, with a fallback to serif? (e.g. font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;, demo implementation on right) ~ Booya Bazooka 23:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Feature request - bigger margins

Since this is a pull-quote, and not meant to replace {{quote}} (blockquote), would it be possible to modify the default margins so they are more indented on the sides, like the default of {{cquotetxt}}? This would make the template like a real pull-quote, and not a hybrid between a pull-quote and blockquote. Indeed, per the instructions, this template is meant to be used with short quotes, to help them stand or "pull" form the page, short quotes benefit from bigger margins on the sides. Long quotes benefit from smaller margins, and this template is not meant to be used with long quotes. -- Stbalbach 13:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we have consensus over how this is supposed to be used. Many of the people most intent on emphasizing that it is for pull-quotes are also the ones who want to get rid of it altogether, and I'm not convinced that was the intent of the original creators of the template. It is used as a simple, if emphasized, quote in all the Wikipedia:Featured articles that it appears in, and there are a lot of them: Apollo 8; AK-47; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Byzantine Empire ... -- AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I think we do have consensus. By definition the large cartoon quotes are pull quotes. The template instructions say so, just about everyone on this page has said so - if it's *not* a pull quote, what is it? As for "the original authors intention", the original author is no longer around, he left a long time ago because he made this template on a whim for his own personal use and didn't like all the controversy around it. Being in a FA doesn't give it special powers. Finally, I'm not one who wants to delete it, just correct the mis-use of it and conform to the MoS. -- Stbalbach 14:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The template instructions say so because no one has cared enough to fight over them, and were only changed to say that relatively recently. They didn't say so when the template was created. There are fewer than ten people who say these should not be used for quotes, there are a hundred people who actually use them for quotes; and they do care enough to fight for that, just look at the TfD landslide. The featured articles are supposed to be the finest work we have on this encyclopedia, and are gone over by expert reviewers; while I didn't count, the fact that I found 4 starting with just the first two letters of the alphabet implies to me there are tens of our finest articles that use this template as such. AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not just use {{cquotetxt}} when larger margins are wanted?--Qyd 17:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Practically speaking yes, but it doesn't address the problem with this template being mis-used as a blockquote. The MoS is clear that normal long quotes should be blockquotes. -- Stbalbach 14:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protected? Why?

Why on earth is this template protected? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 17:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Why does this template even exist?

Template:Cquotetxt seems to do a better job. Proposing merge. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 18:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

A better job of a job that shouldn't be done. Cartoon quotes are beginning to infest the whole encyclopedia. If anyone actually has a legitimate need for such a thing, and there are a few rare such cases, they ought to just insert them directly. I object to anything being changed on this template other than a change to a simple blockquote tag insertion, i.e. a merge with Template:Blockquote Derex 20:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Deja Vu. See extensive previous discussions above (and elsewhere). This is very controversial. I am of the opinion that cartoon quotes (pull quotes) are fine, but the text should have its margins severely indented to enforce its use on short quotes only. Basically, there should be no lengthy pull-quotes, it overly dominates the article. The way to do that is make the margins indented more than a normal blockquote. -- Stbalbach 14:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I would support that. Derex 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Your opinions seem to be outweighed by the sheer number of people using them, including in recent Wikipedia:Featured articles, which are, by consensus, our best work (for example, Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster, displayed on the front page just two days ago, Battle of Cannae displayed eight days ago, and so forth). And are purple cartoon curly quotes that much different from yellow background quotes in History_of_saffron (featured on the front page four days ago)? Style is a matter of opinion and consensus, and consensus seems to be clearly that it does not diminish an article to use them when needed. -- AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
AnonEMouse, I think you misunderstand. I'm not advocating the deletion of the template, rather a modification so it doesn't directly compete with blockquote. While you have pointed out the best-case use of the template in its current form, you have not recognized that this template is very often being mis-used (abused) by editors instead of using blockquote as the default action. The sentiments expressed by the many editors above are not going away and it will continue to get worse with time as cquote "takes over" and becomes even more common than blockquotes (which is the case in most articles where cquote is employed). There is a simple solution: create a MoS policy that pull quotes (such as cquote) are only for short quotes and that the margins be heavily indented to make them "stand out from the crowd". This is easily supportable in any number of style guidelines external to Wikipedia and is more than just a matter of opinion. I have watched this template grow from the day it was created - the creator has left long ago in fear of the monster he created and wants nothing to do with it, this is not some kind of consensus created template, it was made without much thought or design skill. -- Stbalbach 16:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess I do misunderstand. To clarify, can you point out examples of what you consider correct usage, preferably in FAs (becausee that would show that consensus agrees that this is correct usage)? AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that is what we would need to do, create guidance (probably in the MoS) on where it's appropriate to use pull-quotes. Right now there is no MoS guidance on pull quotes. Do you think it is appropriate that we have guidance on quoting? -- Stbalbach 15:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I am afraid I will continue to misunderstand then. My misunderstanding is that it still seems to me you think that everyone who wrote or reviewed all those featured articles - maybe ten editors per article, approving it as the best example of Wikipedia article writing, and dozens, if not a hundred featured articles using Cquote - was wrong in this usage being acceptable. See, if that is actually your contention, you will need to get an awful lot of people to agree before you can issue authoritative guidance. I'm not saying that you can't, I'm just saying you can't do it from just the five-six people who participate on this talk page. Probably a good start would be going in to some featured article reviews for articles using Cquote, and saying that Cquote should not be used this way, and getting the FA reviewers to consistently agree to this for ten or twenty articles. Yes, I think it is very appropriate that we have guidance on quoting, I just don't think we can issue it without taking actual usage - either by the community as a whole, or at least on what are generally considered to be our finest articles - into account. -- AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Obviously Cquote can be used well in some places and you can point to those and say "see, it works", but that ignores that majority of cases where it is used poorly, which is the problem people have with Cquote. There are simple technical solutions that will help mitigate the problem that doesn't involve deleting the template or changing its use in FAs. I have suggested some solutions and am trying to start dialog about those solutions. Your position seems to be nothing is broke because it works in FAs and therefore there is nothing to discuss, which I think totally ignores the reality that Cquote is being employed too often in places where a normal blockquote is more appropriate, such as long quotes or articles that have many quotes.-- Stbalbach 17:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That's the whole point of my question, which, (no offense, as I am probably misunderstanding again) but you seem to keep avoiding actually answering. Please list some specific cases - preferably on FAs - where you do believe it is used well, and explain why. Then contrast some (hopefully not on FAs) where it is used poorly. Otherwise I will keep misunderstanding. AnonEMouse (squeak) 21:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, your asking for my personal style opinion on specific articles which is always going to be open for debate so the question is rhetorical. Look at this way: there a number of variables: margin size; length of quote; number of other pull quotes in section. By setting Cquote's default margin size shorter (tighter), it will encourage users to use shorter length quotes with Cquote (and blockquote on longer quotes), which everyone agrees is how it should be (see the docs Cquote and the MoS). Pull-quotes are designed for shorter quotes ("short" and "long" being a matter of opinion decided on a per-article basis). The problem with Cquote by default it is set up to handle long quotes, it is no different from blockquote in that regard, which contradicts the documents and consensus which say pull quotes are for short quotes. -- Stbalbach 15:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
See, there is no consensus that this template is for pull quotes - that's something made up after the fact by someone who later proposed that it be deleted, and I doubt 1% of users use them this way. If it were call PullQuote, that would be more straight forward, but it's not, it's call Cquote, which may well mean "Cartoon quote" or "Clever quote", or even "Cuahl quote", after the creator, User:Cuahl. Let's see what he used it for - yes, here, the same day it was created: [1] - would you consider that was a use as a "pull quote"? Doesn't look that way to me, looks to me like a prime example of the thing you say it was not intended for. By the way, your contention above that he fled is inaccurate, his last edit was last week, see Contributions/Cuahl. Let's ask him what he intended the template for. AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
there is no consensus this template is for pull quotes - That is incorrect. The template instructions make it very clear this is a pull quote. But more so, it is obviously a pull quote, anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about. Large cartoon quotes are pull-quotes. Going back to the original author is irrelevant, he doesn't own the template or have any special authority over it. -- Stbalbach 17:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
10 times more people have used the template for ordinary quotes than have argued it is for pull quotes. 100 times more people have used if for ordinary quotes than for pull quotes. That may or may not make it correct, but it certainly means there is no consensus for the reverse! Consensus is precisely group opinion. If you want, you can say the group has no idea what they are talking about, but you certainly can't say you have consensus on your side. Meanwhile, the instructions say that they are for pull-quotes because someone edited them to say that, and that instruction has been roundly ignored by most people who used the template, and by most others who reviewed such usage for FA articles. If you think the person who wrote the actual template, which is used, irrelevant, why do you think the person who wrote the instructions, which are ignored, relevant? I must be in a whole mire of misunderstandings, because these words you keep using -- "consensus" and "relevant" -- I don't think they mean what you think they mean. AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You are right, people are ignoring the template instructions (and also the MoS instructions) and using the template any way they want. I see three choices:
  • 1) Ignore and continue with business as usual (ie. upset people stay upset and MoS and instructions should be ignored)
  • 2) Change the instructions and MoS to reflect how people use the template (ie. Cquote may be used as a direct replacement for blockquote)
  • 3) Change the template so it encourages following the instructions and MoS (ie. reduce and tighten the margins so only short quotes are practical).
Which option do you think is best? Or do you have another idea? -- Stbalbach 20:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Either 2 or 3, whichever finds real consensus. But you have to discuss with people actually using the template, not just here on its talk page, which most users never visit. That's why I suggested FA discussions, since they tend to draw people strongly interested in article style, as opposed to template talk page discussions, which tend to draw people interested in implementation techicalities. Go find some FAs, and convince a lot of people that this is wrong - or, instead, let them convince you that this is, instead, OK. Not here. This should be the page for technicalities - "please fix this typo", and "don't use this subtemplate", and "can we merge this with this other template"? Not style issues - it just doesn't have the audience of actual users. And we certainly shouldn't change the template so it screws up tens of featured articles until we get real consensus to do so - consensus from actual article writers, not tech implementors. AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Either 2 or 3 -- well that narrows it down then :) I'm glad you recognize something needs to be done. This is the right place to discuss for now. Going into individual articles to try and implement site-wide changes is generally frowned on (WP:POINT) - RfC is a possible next step but at this point I just wanted to hear what people are thinking and articulate positions and establish a record of discussion about it. -- Stbalbach 20:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Almost ... I recognize you think something needs to be done. :-). I personally am fine with the way it is currently used, to me it appropriately draws attention to an important part of an article. I showed up here when someone tried to delete a template used on an article on the main page, saw a flame war yea long, and though - "hey, they made you an admin to be able to do something about things like this." So I did it - I rewrote the template so it still worked, but no longer used the sub-template that people complained about for purposes of usability. It was an effort, and took me a while, but hey, that comes with the mop. All I want to avoid is similar disruption to the Wikipedia. If you can go get consensus to change something, that's fine, but I'm not going to work for one; as far as I'm concerned, inaction is fine too. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 21:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
it appropriately draws attention to an important part of an article. That is in practice incorrect. All Cquote does is set the quote out from the rest of the text, so it appears to the reader as a quote, and not part of the main text. This is often needed for short 1 or 2 line quotes that are otherwise hard to see as quotes. *If* the material in the Cquote'd text was a repeat of something already in the main text of the article, and not original material, then you are right, it would be highlighting an important part of the article. But that is not how Cquote is normally used. As for making one quote more important than other quotes in an article, that leads to a situation where once someone uses Cquote once in an article, everyone uses it for every quote in the article, diluting its intended value and cluttering up the article. -- Stbalbach 16:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I just went over to the FAC page to register my objections. I looked at half a dozen and saw some proper blockquotes, but no cartoon quotes. What FA's use these? I'd like to go fix them. Derex 19:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Half a dozen are listed above on this very talk page, but they weren't hard to find, I just looked at "what links here" for Cquote, many many uses were Wikipedia:Featured articles. Boston, Massachusetts, Blaise Pascal, Bahai Faith, ... AnonEMouse (squeak) 21:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, that's handy. Didn't realize that worked for templates. Thanks. Derex 22:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Broken link

I can't find the relevant code at either Template:Cquote or Template:Cquote/doc, but at Template:Cquote, the Mergefrom note's link to Template:Cquotetxt is broken; it links to Template:Template:Cquotetxt instead. (The same problem also exists, in reverse, at Template:Cquotetxt.) --zenohockey 22:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. --CBD 22:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of usage

This section is for documenting examples of Cquote and other pull-quotes on Wikipeda, noting good and poor implementations. It is a work in progress. -- Stbalbach 16:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Frankenstein#Genesis. The short length of the quote (shorter than a normal blockquote) and its relevance to the section title make this an excellent use of Cquote.

[edit] Requested change

The marks are a hair too big. Can we slim them down by a few (5-10) pixels? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 22:33, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree - making the quotation marks smaller would improve the template. -Will Beback · † · 22:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Please? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree they should be smaller --Astrokey44 07:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

What exactly do you request? You can set the size of the marks whenever you want when using the template. That is {{cquote|You have the right to ask for this request, but the obligation to show what you intend to change.|10px|10px}} which produces:

“ You have the right to ask for this request, but the obligation to show what you intend to change. ”

Cbrown1023 talk 02:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the size from 40px to 36 px. Harryboyles 08:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Over-use of this template

There is currently a rampant over-use of this template that breaks WP:MOS. There should be a project to go through the transclusions of this template to correct them to either {{quote}} or simply <blockquote> formatting. Killa Kitty 14:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] style issues & full-size blockquotes

I'm not married to the cartoon quotation marks but this template & its relatives are the only ones I can find that don't render the quote & attribution in a tiny font. This is kind of annoying, & seems counterproductive, since a quote often contains the crux of the section's info. Even the bare "<blockquote>" command seems to do this. So far I've been fudging using leading colons or bullet lists & italics, but it doesn't look particularly great.

Also, in bio articles, doesn't it seem reasonable to have a difference in style between quotes about the subject and quotes spoken or written by the subject?

Finally, should someone maybe archive part of this talk page? say, the tech stuff that predates the revision? It's kinda huge. thx --Turangalila (talk) 23:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Be bold. In fact, the archive pages were already created, but the relevant text had not been deleted from this page. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 15:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notice of Imminent CSS-ification

Nothing big: I certainly won't be converting the entire kaboodle to a blockquote with cquote styling (although that certainly would be nice). I'll be cleaning up some of the duplicated, non-semantic, style declarations inside the table, attaching them to the currently non-utilized cquote.

This will cause some initial problems due to the fact that CSS is cached, so the changes will not show up immediately, but things should smooth out pretty quickly. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 12:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm the main CSS guy over at the Transformers Wikia, where we have a {{quote}} template based on {{Cquote}}
Since the imminent CSS-ification hasn't happened yet, I thought I'd share this bit about cell padding;
The original cquote designer created a typographic treatment wherein the “”s were made the size of capital letters- and then treated as such in that they rest on the same baseline as the quoted text.
Unfortunately, that only 'works' if the quote is short, if the quote is long enought o occupy two lines the table expands vertically and the “”s smush generically around the sides- that nifty relationship to the baseline lost.
I decided to fix this. There's a fairly complicated interplay of line-height and padding dependencies that affect table layout, so it took awhile to find the right combination (which hinged on balancing the vertical padding of all 4 table cells.)
  • R1C1 - 9px 10px 0 10px
  • R1C2 - 4px 10px 5px 10px
  • R1C3 - 10px 10px 0px 10px
  • R2C1 - padding-top: 8px   <--Needed to reduce from 10px because the other padding changes add 2 pixels of whitespace to the bottom on the first row (In our case I set it to 0, we wanted the template to be more vertically compact.)
The change is a purely cosmetic one, but I think it makes the template look nicer damnit. Works w/ Geko browsers, when tested in IE 7.0.5 the “”s were mysteriously two pixels higher, but otherwise functioned the same, creating a typographical relationship to the baseline otherwise missing.
(Our version lacks the variable-size-quotes of this version. They seems fundamentally incompatible with baseline-alignment without #switch'ing the padding, which seems rather a lot to ask for an aesthetic consideration.)
At any rate, I spent time on it and thought I'd give you an opportunity to recapture the effort if you be inclined. The suggested alterations to the already-existing padding declarations certainly in no way hurt the template (indeed, in many circumstances it should display identically.) -Deriksmith 20:11, 11 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Remove blank lines at end of template?

The placement of the reference [1] in the use of Cquote at Stanley K Hornbeck looks anomalous. Should not the [1] immediately follow the quote, rather than be placed a line feed or two below the quote? Would I be right in thinking this is a) not good and b) caused by blank lines at the bottom of the template? Could someone have a look at this, please. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Yes, I'm here to report the same problem. The example that caught my eye is in Pierce Brosnan#James Bond (1995 - 2004). There's one or two extra lines after the quote and before the reference. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change to allow configurable background colours

{{editprotected}}

Would like the template with the contents found in User:AA/Sandbox.

The change is to the first line of the current template:

{| align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; background-color:transparent;" class="cquote"

I have changed it to allow a configurable background colour to be added using the parameter bgcolor:

{| align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; background-color:{{{bgcolor|transparent}}}; {{
#if: {{{bgcolor|}}}
  | border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
}}" class="cquote"

This allows usage of the following form:

{User:AA/Sandbox|bgcolor=#F0FFF0}

Primary reason for doing so is to be able to merge {{QuoteScholar}} which wraps this template but hides the configurable options and hardcodes the background colour. This change gives the template the flexibility of both with configurable background colours.

Also, request the following be added to top of page:

<noinclude>{{mergefrom|QuoteScholar}}</noinclude>
done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge QuoteScholar

With the above change added, I propose a merge of {{QuoteScholar}} with this. → AA (talk) — 06:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}
Please remove merge proposal with {{QuoteScholar}} as articles have been updated to use {{cquote}} directly and QuoteScholar sent to TfD. → AA (talk) — 15:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Done. --- RockMFR 23:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bug

I tried to do this:

{{cquote|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.{{cn}}}}

And this is what happened:

“ Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks. ”

Is this a bug in MediaWiki, or can it be fixed here somehow? - ∅ (∅), 17:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] align=center

{{editprotected}} Can this be removed. If someone wishes to center it they can put the template between <center></center> alternatively add an optional parameter: {{{align|center}}} -- Cat chi? 22:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I may be mistaken, but I believe that the "c" in "cquote" is for centered. If you want to adjust the normal behavior of the template, I'd suggest wrapping it in a div tag. If anyone else cares to weigh in, please do so. If I'm wrong, feel free to re-enable the editprotected request. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Display within tables

Looks good in a regular table:

heading
“ Blah. ”

...but does not render correctly within a wikitable; table borders are visible:

heading
“ Blah. ”

An example can be seen in Wikipedia in culture. GregorB 20:30, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems using = in cite urls in cquote

Please could someone look at 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America#Praise?

Regardless of whether the quotes should be blockquoted, when you move the external link used to refer to the source of the quote *into* the cquote, it breaks on the use of the character/symbol '='. Links that don't use an equal sign in them work, but many, many pages have them in them these days. Is there something that can be done to fix that? I know too little about formatting templates at this time to know, though I know infoboxes deal with those urls correctly.--Thespian 10:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

edit to add = ok, I just used an '=' in a url in another cquote, so it's apparently just that page that's breaking when I move the link in. BTW, I did test it (I'm occasionally a web developer, and I did it by readding the link until it worked. It worked fine until the = was added, but adding that broke it. So something is wrong, but it might be more complex than I thought. --Thespian 12:03, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is the Cquote template the norm in Wikipedia?

I personally think this Cquote format is clunky and unattractive on the page. I'd prefer using the colon to indent a quote. Is the Cquote template the norm in Wikipedia or can editors choose a different format instead? Kingturtle (talk) 12:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a list of categories that the Cquote template page is a member of. You can easily go up the category tree (I am quite sure that this is only one step) and find several other templates to use for quoting. -- carol 10:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Cquote is not the norm but is commonly misused. As indicated in the instructions, cquote should very rarely be used in articles. For quoting blocks of text use the HTML <blockquote> element, or the {{quote}} template. These produce a much less clunky format. Cquote is intended for pull quotes, which are more suited to a magazine article than an encyclopedia.--Srleffler (talk) 03:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] About the merge with Cquotetxt

What good is a quotation without a citation? -- carol 10:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Both use different forms of quotation. One is graphical and one textual. From an accessibility point of view, the textual should be preferred. Nicholas Perkins (T•C) 12:44, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A little help needed :)

Can someone explain why I couldn't get it to work in this version of an article?

Thanks very much, Drum guy (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Answered on user talk. Algebraist 21:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Y Done Perfect, thanks! Drum guy (talk) 21:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Minor formatting modification

{{editprotected}}

I have made a minor formatting change in response to a request at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) (See topic "Placement of source by {{cquote}}") to change where the author/source fields display, but since I'm not an admin I can't implement it myself. It's just cosmetic, but should keep them from bumping up against the right margin anymore. The modified version is at User:erachima/test. --erachima formerly tjstrf 17:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Please check. - Nabla (talk) 03:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Yep, that'll do it. Thank you. --erachima formerly tjstrf 04:01, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Fine. Enjoy! - Nabla (talk) 04:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)