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{{ cite web}} seems to be truncating ellipses in citation titles. Examples: 1 2. Opencooper ( talk) 15:44, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

It seems that a final full stop/period is always trimmed from the end of the title when rendering the title, which is also a problem when the title ends with an abbreviation such as "U.S.A.". So it would be interesting to understand whether such scenarios were considered when adding the trim logic. Rjwilmsi 16:36, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed in the sandbox I think:

• {{cite book/new |title=no dots |publisher=Publisher}} → no dots. Publisher.
• {{cite book/new |title=one dot. |publisher=Publisher}} → one dot. Publisher.
• {{cite book/new |title=two dots.. |publisher=Publisher}} → two dots. Publisher.
• {{cite book/new |title=three dots... |publisher=Publisher}} → three dots... Publisher.
• {{cite book/new |title=four dots.... |publisher=Publisher}} → four dots... Publisher.

and, for the Doubting Thomas's, this:

and take out the quote marks:

The module does the right thing I think; if it doesn't, no one has ever spoken up about it.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 23:46, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@ Trappist the monk: Doesn't seem to be working for cite journal, still getting final full stop truncation:

{{cite journal| author=Sheppard, P.A. |year= 1959| title= Title ending U.S.A. | journal= Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society| volume=85 }} → Sheppard, P.A. (1959). "Title ending U.S.A.". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 85.

{{cite journal/new| author=Sheppard, P.A. |year= 1959| title= Title ending U.S.A. | journal= Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society| volume=85 }} → Sheppard, P.A. (1959). "Title ending U.S.A.". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 85.

Which doesn't seem correct to me. Thanks Rjwilmsi 09:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Difficult to know what to do. This insource search timed out after finding nearly 24,000 articles where the last character in |title= is a dot (those may not all be cs1|2 parameters). For some reason, editors like to put dots at the end of titles. More so, I think, than any other parameter value. Refining the search to look for \.[a-z]\. (case insensitive) timed out at about 2k articles. In many (most?) of these the trailing dot appears to be part of an initialism. And once again to look for \.[0-9]\. found about 50 where the trailing dot appears (to me) to be terminal punctuation rather than a key component of the last character group.

I suppose that we can look for \.[a-z]\. as a special case for retaining the trailing dot. I have tweaked the sandbox to do that. Is that a correct solution? Renering is slightly different with and without |url=:

{{cite journal/new| author=Sheppard, P.A. |year= 1959| title= Title ending U.S.A. | journal= Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society| volume=85 }}

Sheppard, P.A. (1959). "Title ending U.S.A.". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 85.

{{cite journal/new| author=Sheppard, P.A. |url=http://www.example.com |year= 1959| title= Title ending U.S.A. | journal= Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society| volume=85 }}

Sheppard, P.A. (1959). "Title ending U.S.A." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 85.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I have an sqlite database generated from data dump, with all en wp mainspace cite journal and citation with journal param, here are my numbers for title ending in dot, and what the penultimate character of title is, and how many of those have 3rd last char is dot too (e.g. ends in ".A." of "U.S.A.") grouped by character type (data from Nov 2016 but somewhat updated):

Class	Count	3rd last is dot?
Lower alpha	80804	44
Num	5903	182
Other	6328	1332
Upper alpha	4386	1247

Does that help? I'm not sure what the right answer is, I think something needs to change to handle U.S.A. format better, but a simple rule to handle all scenarios is unlikely to be possible. Rjwilmsi 13:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

We might also have to look for "\. [a-z]\.", which would be proper spacing per MOS:INITIALS. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 14:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

\. +[a-z]\. Sandbox tweaked.

{{cite journal/new| author=Sheppard, P.A. |year= 1959| title= Title ending U. S. A. | journal= Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society| volume=85 }}

Sheppard, P.A. (1959). "Title ending U. S. A.". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 85.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 14:38, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I know that most of the editors who hang out here are gnomes that prefer to work quietly, but sometimes it's fun to take on a project as a team. This is an invitation to do just that. I'm planning to work on Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters, which has about 3,105 pages in it as of this writing.

I have found that most of the errors are straightforward line feeds and tab characters that should be replaced with spaces. Other characters should be replaced by a dash, apostrophe (single quote mark), space, ellipsis, quote mark, an accented character, or nothing. You can usually figure it out by context, or by checking the original source. I have some regexes that mostly work (each one needs to be checked manually) in the "invisible character" section of User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/unnamed.js, an AutoEd script. You are welcome to copy and refine those regexes, use manual searches, or adopt any other method you want.

I am planning to make a pass through the category to fix the easy errors, then see what's left. Feel free to join me, and post here with questions or comments. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 05:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Down to 2,800 at this writing. There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit in this category. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 16:40, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Now at 2773. I basically went after the first page in each alphabetical section (why not?). However, I stumbled across several pages with errors inside non-English text--mostly related to Sri Lanka--which I think will require some work by someone with language skills (example at Cadex 2009). I checked on one editor but he/she has not been here since 2011.-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 20:19, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for contributing! I've been skipping those zero-width joiner characters so far, as well as right-to-left text, which does not behave well in my editor. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 21:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

We recently fixed that issue for several Indic scripts. A bit of Googling seems to show that zwj is also required for Sinhalese so I've added detection for Sinh script to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox (and fixed a bug at the same time):

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 22:04, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there a validation process before this is implemented?-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 03:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Horizontal tab

Is there any use, anywhere, in Wikipedia for the horizontal tab, U+0009 (HT)? I've been editing for seven years plus and can't think of one. If there isn't one, I don't see why we can't ask the folks who work on bots to do a search and replace and substitute a <space> for every <HT>. In some cases, we might get strings of spaces but that would still be an improvement. I'm a big fan of letting computers do my work for me. Or am I over simplifying this?-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 23:58, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Tab can be seen on programming pages in and out of article space. You might also see it in <pre> and <poem> blocks, or even outside to provide the latter (since a space at the beginning of a line starts a block). -- Izno ( talk) 00:10, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh, well.<sigh>-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 00:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Update one month in

A little over one month in, we are down to 2,149. I am working backwards through the alphabet and have hit pages starting with S-Z so far. Steady progress. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 05:25, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

We need to get implementation on ignoring the zero-length characters in Indic(?). I think every page in the U's "suffers" from that condition.-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 15:17, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

It has been implemented in the sandbox. It will be useful to go through the rest of the category to see if there are any other bugs that need to be fixed. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 15:41, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

1,294. 0–9, A–I. Meet at N? :)

I'm seeing a lot of tabs and newlines, mainly in |title=, but also in other params. These should be possible to automate: in all params (except |quote=, see below; and with a caveat, ditto), all runs of whitespace can be safely collapsed to a single space character. Another big class is apostrophes, long dashes, and smart quotation marks copied from unlabelled Windows code page 1252 (and a few other charsets) that can probably be automated with an acceptable error rate. Then there's a bunch of completely garbled text, titles mostly, that suffers from the same problem but which can't really be fixed automatically or semi-automatically. There's also a few similarly garbled author names, but not a lot of them. And, of course, a lot of ZWJ warnings in various asian scripts (possibly only in Sinhalese, but there may have been some Malayalam and Hindic etc. too) that, I believe, are just false positives.

And then there's a ton of newlines in |quote= that can't really be fixed, neither automated nor manually. Truncating the quote or simply removing the newlines is likely to annoy the natives (local editors), and I don't know of a workaround. This needs to be resolved somewhere, somehow: drop support for |quote= entirely; set a hard limit on what it can contain; or permit newlines inside this specific parameter.

And then there is {{ cite tweet}}.

Which wraps {{ cite web}}, but for its |title= parameter documents: "Entire content of the tweet, including hashtags (#), at signs (@), and links". This, to me, is bogus in so many ways; but in any case, this module's check for newlines is in direct conflict with that template's documented behaviour. In other words, this can't be cleaned up by gnomes. -- Xover ( talk) 17:54, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I wonder if silently converting all white space to spaces without emitting error messages would bother editors. We currently collapse white space and emit an error message; it might be more fruitful to do so without an error message. Here's an example of how we do it now:

Perhaps someone here could remind us why we emit error messages for harmless white space. I forget, and I am too busy doing other stuff (lazy?) to dig through this page's archives right now. Maybe later. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 18:02, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

For |quote=, newlines can be replaced with <br /> tags:

{{cite book |title=Title |quote=Text followed by new line<br />Second line<br />Third line}}

Title. Text followed by new line
Second line
Third line

or, depending on context, <p>...</p> tags:

{{cite book |title=Title |quote=Paragraph followed by<p>Second paragraph</p><p>Third paragraph</p>}}

Title. Paragraph followed by

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

We find tabs, line feeds, carriage return characters because they generally don't belong in the metadata along with all of the other ascii characters with byte value less than 32 decimal (0x20 hex) – the space character.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 18:59, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't know why I was convinced <br /> and <p>...</p> wouldn't work here. Possibly I'd been doing battle with errors related to strip markers and such. In any case, most |quote= parameters now look like they can be fixed this way (some cases require too much tag soup so I'm leaving them alone). In view of that, what I'm leaving behind (not touching) are mainly ZWJ cases and {{ cite tweet}} (which would turn into tag soup if handled this way).

Incidentally, in going back over these articles I've found (in Fuk'anggan) that Manchu alphabet and Mongolian script (the former seems to be an extension/adaption of the latter) also require ZWJ. Otherwise the ZWJ cases so far are all Sinhalese. -- Xover ( talk) 11:51, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

(added) Oh, and I nearly forgot: based on Characters of Casualty, certain cases of Emoji also require ZWJs, which will be an increasing issue as we copy whole tweets into citations. See this link on emojipedia for details. Not sure what, if anything, can be done about this (detect and ignore them in Emoji sequences?). -- Xover ( talk) 11:58, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Additional case of legitimate use / false positive: Burmese script does not use spaces for word boundaries, so a Zero width space character is often used at phrase boundaries to facilitate line breaking. See UNICODE technical note 11 for details. Example in Ayeyarwady Region Government. -- Xover ( talk) 09:32, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I came across a "line feed in quote" in El Rancho Hotel and Casino last night that I could not find. I decided the error was from an included {{ collapsible list}}, which I remmed out. It worked but left a very long reference which I'm not sure is necessary.-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 19:25, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the source, but a quote that long is likely to be a copyright violation. I have found a couple of those while cleaning out this category, and my fix is to remove all but a sentence or two, preserving the relevant text that supports the statement in the article's prose. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 19:46, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I went back and "aggressively trimmed" the quote.-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 16:30, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Pretty much done

At this writing, we have reduced this category from 3,000+ pages to 193 pages. One more pass through the letters P, R, and S could probably fix a couple dozen more pages. I haven't done an exact count, but I think at least half of the remaining pages are false positives – Sinhalese and other scripts that use allowable zero width joiner characters. The CS1 sandbox has been partially updated to account for these; once it is moved to production, we can null-edit the whole category to find (and, ideally, fix) the remaining errors. Great work, everyone! – Jonesey95 ( talk) 05:19, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

144, after a manual pass through all the remaining pages. The vast majority are zero width joiners in Singhala script, with a single Manchu and a couple of Emoji cases in the mix. There's also a bunch of tweets quoted entire (some using cite web, some using cite tweet). And a few archives that I don't feel comfortable editing for various reasons (some shady "Trappist the monk" character demonstrating nested references on the technical village pump, for instance). And then there are these: NEC V60 and Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains...

In any case, when the script-related false positives are eliminated, the category will be essentially empty except for tweets and archives.

But working on this I've noticed new cases being added at an alarming rate (on the order of 5-10 per day). To keep this down we're going to need some way to prevent these from getting added in the first place. Perhaps it'd be worthwhile to explore some validation or other measure in Citoid (which is the backend for both reFill and Visual Editor)? The garbage data is mostly coming from the source website through indiscriminate cut&paste / import, and Citoid is in a position to prevent a significant portion of these from getting in. The remainder would probably need to be handled (if needed) by some more assertive warning from Module:Citation/CS1. -- Xover ( talk) 22:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

User:ReferenceBot used to post on editors' talk pages when they added a page to one of the "empty" CS1 categories. Its notices resulted in fixes from editors who could understand the error messages and how to fix them, which was maybe around half. That's considerably better than nothing. The bot has been inactive for nearly a year. Maybe a bot request would result in another editor taking on that bot task. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 22:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe the category count should be something like PAGESINCATEGORY <= 10. Sometimes, a lot can happen at once.-- Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 23:07, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

ReferenceBot did not pay attention to any category's population count. It had a list of categories (provided by me, as it happens) that were deemed "empty" at some point, and notified editors when they added an article to one of those categories. The reason you need to empty the category first is to prevent a revert or a false positive or other constructive action from adding to the category. As we have seen with the invisible character category, we found some false positives while emptying it. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 03:54, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I am seeing articles in Category:CS1 maint: Unrecognized language due to |language=Bengali (example: 1950 East Pakistan riots), but this apparently official link says that Bengali is the official language name. What am I missing? – Jonesey95 ( talk) 16:35, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Help talk:Citation Style 1#mediawiki and language names/code again. The sandbox accepts Bengali and bn even though MediaWiki thinks that bn = {{#language:bn|en}} → Bangla.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 01:39, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Currently, the quotes parameter can make the reference section hard to read, especially if quotes are long, or numerous (see example in this article). What do people think of having the quoted text be formatted with either a smaller font, or a dark grey colour so as to better delineate what is the reference and what is the quoted text? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo) ^talk 12:32, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The suggested styling can be mimicked by adding this line to your personal css:

cite q {color:gray; font-size:85%;}

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:55, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Broadly would not support this, as the text inside of the references group is already small text. Per WP:ACCESS we should not make it (much) smaller. The same goes for the text color, which would decrease contrast. As TTM notes, there is an alternative for yourself. -- Izno ( talk) 13:02, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Oppose for reasons stated by Inzo. Also, I oppose grey fonts in nearly all situations, and have unfriendly thoughts to all those stylists who have been making so much of the web text I encounter grey. There's a reason laser printer manufacturers give you a warning when your toner is running low. Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:59, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Evolution and evolvability: we should only be quoting the specific text necessary for verification purposes, and even then in many cases, we don't need a quotation at all. If a reference list is turning into a quotation farm, then perhaps the better solution is to audit the quotation usages to see if we really need all of that text. If it's really excessive, it could turn into a copyright-related issue as well. Imzadi 1979  → 14:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Long quotes like these should typically be trimmed, placed in a Notes section, or incorporated into the article's body. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 15:46, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I intend to update the live sc1|2 modules over the weekend of 17–18 February 2018. These changes are included:

to Module:Citation/CS1:

• test categorization for Julian/Gregorian date uncertainty; discussion
• fix title separator removal; discussion
• proper language name output for code bh; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

• date validation internationalization; discussion
• these parameters no longer supported: |doi_brokendate=, |doi_inactivedate=, |template doc demo=, |trans_chapter=, |trans_title=
• added script code mn;
• test categorization for Julian/Gregorian date uncertainty
• added Sinhala 0D80-0DFF characters to invisible character exclusion; discussion

to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist:

• these parameters no longer supported: |doi_brokendate=, |doi_inactivedate=, |template doc demo=, |trans_chapter=, |trans_title=

to Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation:

• internationalization support for non-Western digits in access-date timestamps; discussion
• COinS season and proper-name date index fix;
• test categorization for Julian/Gregorian date uncertainty

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:53, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Trappist: just dropping an extra mention here to make sure it didn't get lost in the noise: there are valid cases for ZWJ in Burmese and Emoji too (in addition to Sinhalese etc.). See the referenced thread above for details (such as they are). -- Xover ( talk) 14:06, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I have added the unicode blocks for Burmese: Myanmar, Myanmar extended A, Myanmar extended B. Emoji I've left for some other time because, if one is to believe the table here, they are spread unevenly across multiple code blocks and are sometimes isolated codes which makes for a mess.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 15:28, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Ugh! You're right. I see no sane way to detect this that doesn't involve importing and using the Unicode Emoji test table as a lookup table. Independently tracking all the code blocks and ranges that contain Emoji looks impractical, to the point that the Unicode consortium itself seems to have given up. -- Xover ( talk) 15:50, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@ Trappist the monk: Forgot about Manchu language, cf. Fuk'anggan. -- Xover ( talk) 17:57, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that support for the Manchu alphabet is something that will be added soon, if ever. In your example, the Manchu text requires the use of {{ MongolUnicode}} which emits a rather large amount of html & css to render that text. All of that html and css ends up in the metadata where it does not belong. Citing sources that have Manchu-alphabet titles is, I think, not something for which cs1|2 are the appropriate tools. Citing such sources should be hand-crafted or should use a custom citation template (if there is sufficient need).

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 20:19, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Trapppist, I don't see any link above to any discussion about the removal of "trans-title" and "trans-chapter", which is surprising, as I think they are useful parms to have. Could you provide a link, please? -- NSH001 ( talk) 00:02, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 38#yet more parameters to deprecate.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 00:58, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, |trans-chapter= and |trans-title= are remaining. All of our recommended multi-word parameters are separated by hyphens. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 01:32, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, good, that's fine, thanks. (Must get my eyesight tested...) -- NSH001 ( talk) 07:11, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

In some citations with italics in the title (if nowhere else), lint errors are being caused. (There is a similar issue reported by @ IKhitron: regarding bolding at phab:T140358, and I've left some comments there.) One example is at Geodesic convexity, the Rapcsák reference, which I believe to be legitimate. Currently, the HTML served (so, module + parser + Tidy) is (abbreviated for relevance):

<cite class="citation book">Rapcsák, Tamás (1997). <i>Smooth nonlinear optimization in <b>R</b></i><sup>n</sup>.</cite>

-> Rapcsák, Tamás. Smooth nonlinear optimization in Rⁿ.

Like a previous post of mine at Template talk:Lang, this is clearly wrong, as the italics should surround the entirety of the title.

However, in a world where Tidy is turned off, the same citation returns:

<cite class="citation book">Rapcsák, Tamás (1997). <i>Smooth nonlinear optimization in <b>R</b><sup></sup></i>n<i></i>.</cite>

Which causes the misplacement of the sup tag and a subsequent visual rendering difference (in that the "n" is no longer superpositioned). (Aside: This seems also to cause a number of the errors related to the cite tag and template:Reflist in the misnesting category.)

The correct fix would be for all of the italic tags to be included (by changing Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to add HTML italics rather than wikitext italics) and for the inner italics to be de-italicized. The HTML of that is the following:

<cite class="citation book">Rapcsák, Tamás (1997). <i>Smooth nonlinear optimization in <b>R</b><sup><i>n</i></sup></i>.</cite>

To de-italicize the inner italics, we would need to make a change to the CSS files of interest (at least on en.wp). However, making this particular fix would not preserve the italicization of the source currently: I have tested what happens when we have italics wrapping italics at this perma-link--in short, nothing! We could probably hack around this issue in this specific case at MediaWiki:Common.css by adding CSS to the tune of i sup i {font-style: normal;}, but this is sadly a not-so-general solution (I'll leave the exercise of futility to the reader). LESS could fix this according to StackOverflow, but we can't use LESS on-wiki.

So, the optimal solution to the problem is the following:

1. Change Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration to italicize using HTML. This removes the lint errors (which is categorically good because of problems like that reference, IK's reference) but does not preserve the sense of the italics.
2. Use LESS to style the <i> tag generally on Wikipedia (where its parent text is unitalicized, italicize; where its parent text is italizied, unitalicized). This would require a MediaWiki change.

I'm looking for thoughts, interim steps, and such agreement as can be found on Wikipedia (ping SSastry (WMF) for good measure) to a) making sure all of the italics render correctly, and b) the template is future-proof to the removal of Tidy. -- Izno ( talk) 02:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

All of your suggested formats are wrong. Math formulas in titles should not be italicized, because mathematics uses different font styles to encode different meanings, so changing the font style changes the meaning. Unfortunately, the {{ math}} templates don't do anything to avoid italicizing when they are used in an italic context, and it would be really really ugly to put in explicit un-italic coding in the title parameter. So the only option we're left with is <math>:

{{cite book|last=Rapcsák|first=Tamás|title=Smooth nonlinear optimization in <math>\mathbf{R}^n</math>}}

Rapcsák, Tamás. Smooth nonlinear optimization in ${\displaystyle \mathbf {R} ^{n}}$.

— David Eppstein ( talk) 04:03, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

That's not an unreasonable approach in the context of math, but my problem is clearly more general. :^) -- Izno ( talk) 04:13, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

PS if you look up a preview of the book itself, you'll find that it's printed on the front cover as "Smooth Nonlinear Optimization in ${\displaystyle R^{n}}$", with an italic (not bold) R. So it's a bad example of the issue for multiple reasons. — David Eppstein ( talk) 04:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I think quote parsing in MediaWiki is somewhat hacky because of unintended interactions between quotes in template args and quotes in the template source and this seems to be a common problem (I've seen this on many wikis including itwiki, svwiki, and others). But, I digress. In this case, what I have seen itwiki do is exactly what Izno proposes which is to change the template to use the HTML <i> tag instead of '' and <b> tag instead of '''. I recommended the same solution for svwiki. That said, given that some pages (like the Geodesic convexity example) "hack" their way to intended rendering by deliberately breaking quoting, with this fix by itself, rendering for those refs can change. I feel like using CSS to preserve it is another hack (which, we could add if it became necessary, but not sure what other unintended effects it could have). Ideally, the pages using this hack would be changed. One option is to use math as User:David Eppstein recommends. Another is to use a styled span tag around the text that needs de-italicising. But, that depends on how many pages are actually relying on this quote-hack. SSastry (WMF) ( talk) 05:15, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing. Something weird. The problem I described in the task was fixed a couple of months ago. I totally forgot about filing the task, closed it now. It was my understanding of situation - the cause was <span /> in the code of the module. It was fixed in enwiki, and I fixed it in our wiki when I been told about this. I believed there could not be something you're describing. Can you please give a simple nowiki example that can create a problem in enwiki now? IKhitron ( talk) 10:29, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm on wiki break right now so my participation in this conversation will be sporadic. The <math>...</math>-markup-in-cs1|2-titles-solution is problematic. It used to be that the module could extract the raw content of markup for use in its metadata, but MediaWiki was broken some time ago and never fixed. See this and linked discussions.

Presently, cs1|2 render an error message in the metadata in lieu of a stripmarker:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000051-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFRapcsák" class="citation book cs1">Rapcsák, Tamás. ''Smooth nonlinear optimization in '"`UNIQ--math-00000050-QINU`"'''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Smooth+nonlinear+optimization+in+MATH+RENDER+ERROR&rft.aulast=Rapcs%C3%A1k&rft.aufirst=Tam%C3%A1s&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1%2FArchive+40" class="Z3988"></span>

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I discovered during my work for the above that the current module processes LaySource by adding italics and then invoking safe_for_italics (and then closing the italics). Is there a reason we're not using wrap_style here (I think it's possible but I can be told I'm wrong :D)? -- Izno ( talk) 03:42, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

The more important question is: should cs1|2 support lay sourcing at all? If the lay source is important enough to cite, shouldn't it get its own cs1|2 template? Aren't cs1|2 templates intended to cite a single source per template? That is, after all the reason cs1|2 doesn't support multiple ISBNs; why should a layman's version of a source be any different?

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:07, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

What is a lay source? Also, "shouldn't it get its own cs1|2 template" is confusing. Of course we do not have separate cs1 or 2 templates for each source, such as the notional {{ cite-tale-of-two-cities}}.So it isn't clear what this phrase means. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I would guess a "lay source" (it's completely undocumented from what I can tell) is a source which explains a source only understandable by subject matter experts. There are only about 3k uses.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Izno ( talk • contribs) 17:27, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Cite journal#Lay summary.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 01:43, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I get date check errors for |date=December 2004–January 2005 (regardless of whether I space the en-dash or leave it unspaced) in Annalisa Crannell. This is the publication date of one of the references, as given to me by JSTOR. How am I supposed to write this date? As far as I can tell from MOS:DATERANGE this format (at least with the spaced dashes) is supposed to be valid. — David Eppstein ( talk) 22:23, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

{{Cite book |title=Title |date=December 2004 – January 2005}} → Title. December 2004 – January 2005.

This works correctly, right?

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 22:42, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

It does now. For some reason it wasn't before. I'm suspicious that my software (Chrome on OS X) is inserting invisible characters when I type an en-dash, as sometimes I see later edits that remove them. Maybe that's what it was? — David Eppstein ( talk) 22:49, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

( edit conflict) I have tried December 2004{{snd}}January 2005 and December 2004 – January 2005 with the same error being produced. Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 22:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

There is an ISO 639-2/-3 code for Montenegrin language: cnr. This code is not, at present, supported by MediaWiki:

{{#language:cnr|en}} → Montenegrin

the above should return the language name.

I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox so that cs1|2 do the right thing when |language=cnr and when |language=Montenegrin:

Because {{#language:bn|en}} → Bangla, the language endonym (should be the exonym: Bengali), an oversight on my part results in a mismatch between |language=bn and |script-title=bn in that the former categorizes into Category:CS1 Bengali-language sources (bn) but the latter categorizes into Category:CS1 uses Bangla-language script (bn). I have fixed that so that script-titles using Bengali script will categorize into Category:CS1 uses Bengali-language script (bn).

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 13:05, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

This edit request to Template:Cite news has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Can you add a parameter such as "trans-quote" so that I can add a translation of a quote from an article that is not in English? A145029 ( talk) 05:21, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{ edit protected}} template. —  JJMC89 ( T· C) 06:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 9#Proposal for trans-quote= parameter. -- Izno ( talk) 14:02, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

What is the policy or best practice on embedded templates eg:

|accessdate={{date|2018-01-23}}

The docs say Use of templates within the citation template is discouraged because many of these templates will add extraneous HTML or CSS that will be included raw in the metadata. Is this true for any embedded template? If it generally acceptable to convert things like {{ date}} to a plain string when needed? -- Green C 00:49, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think {{ date}} outputs anything extraneous, but it also says that This template should only be used internally in other templates... Galobtter ( pingó mió) 06:17, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

The proscription against using templates in cs1|2 parameters arises because everything that the template emits as its output will end up in the metadata for that parameter ( metadata-producing parameters). Consider {{ aut}}:

|last={{aut|Green}} → |last='"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000068-QINU`"'<span class="smallcaps">Green</span> → |last=Green

It is improper to mix presentation with data in the data value of a metadata key/value pair.

You can, if you want, write:

|access-date={{date|2018-01-23}} → |access-date=23 January 2018 → |access-date=23 January 2018

because there is no presentation in the data (|access-date= itself is not part of the metadata but, editors will use that as justification to use other templates in parameters that are made part of the metadata). Isn't it just as easy to write:

| |df=dmy-all

which allows the cs1|2 templates to handle date formatting and presentation?

Also, templates like {{date}} are problematic because, without {{{1}}}, it produces the current date:

{{date}} → 27 April 2024

and that would be wrong.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 11:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok that's good info. The reason I posted is embedded templates are very problematic for bots. They are difficult to parse, and difficult to expand. I've seen stuff like this:

|url=http://site.com/path/{{RockStarURL|id=34}}

(imaginary template {{RockStarURL}}). The curly bracket is a reserved character in templates, it should be urlencoded when in a URL, the RFC for urlencoding states there shouldn't be a mix of encoding styles in a URL (the whole purpose of urlcoding to have a unified predictable coding), and it's impossible to expand what the template means without looking at the HTML. So bots either end up breaking them (if they don't have detection first) or skip them. I've written some code to pull embedded templates out of CS1 templates and log them so I can see what's out there and decide what should be done on a template basis. The idea of using |df= instead of {{date}} is a good one for that case. I may post again in the future with questions about specific templates. -- Green C 15:00, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I ran a sample of 1000 articles and uncovered this list of embedded templates. Looking at the |url= examples: {{ BillboardURLbyName}} says "This template is normally used within citations" which contradicts COINS Metdata. {{ Allmusic}} same, but it has a |pure_url= option which may or may not resolve the COINS issue(?) I'm not sure how to proceed. The link rot bots (most bots) are unable to properly deal with templates in the |url= field. CS1 says not to use them. The templates themselves encourage using them in CS1. -- Green C 17:32, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I think that you are reading a prohibition into Use of templates within the citation template is discouraged ... and CS1 says not to use them that doesn't actually exist. There is no prohibition.

I know that two of the url templates in your list ({{ NHLS url}} and {{ NRHP url}}) plus a couple of others not on your list ({{ NVR url}}, {{ NHC TCR url}}) were written to combat another kind of link rot: wholesale website re-writes that break all existing incoming links. Why do they do that? (yeah, I know, rhetorical question ...). I would guess that {{ BillboardURLbyName}} and {{ Allmusic}} were written for a similar purpose.

I can imagine that a link-rot-bot might maintain a page in its own user space where it could write the value assigned to |url=, save that page which would cause MediaWiki to render the templates and then fetch the 'url' for doing whatever link-rot-bots do

a template in a page in article space:

{{cite web |title=USS Zumwalt |website=Naval Vessel Register |url={{NVR url|DDG-1000}} |accessdate=1 October 2016}}

extract |url= value

{{NVR url|DDG-1000}}

write that to the private user space page and save; that page now has

{{NVR url|DDG-1000}}, http://www.nvr.navy.mil/SHIPDETAILS/SHIPSDETAIL_DDG_1000.HTML

bot uses that url as for its normal link-rot processing

not pretty but it might work

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 12:28, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Ahh discouraged for one reason (COIN data), and would be encouraged for another (link rot) :) .. I guess this would spin wheels to make changes. For parsing, I've followed up here to see what the options might be. -- Green C 14:57, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Some arXiv's have DOI's too. AManWithNoPlan ( talk) 01:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

If it has a doi, use {{ cite journal}} or {{ cite paper}}. {{ cite arxiv}} is for citing the preprints/non-official version specifically. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:02, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

And just to clarify/build on what Headbomb said, arXiv preprints don't have dois. The dois you see on arXiv will direct you to the version of record which has been published. If it has been published you shoudn't use {{ cite arxiv}}. You can, however, use |arxiv= to provide a convenience arXiv link to the reader while using {{ cite journal}}. Umimmak ( talk) 06:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

This edit request to Template:Cite press release has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Hello.

The template {{ Cite press release}} is nominated for being merged into the {{ Cite news}} template.

Please add:

{{subst:tfm|type=tiny|Cite news}}

... to the top of Template:Cite press release, and ...

{{subst:tfm|type=tiny|Cite press release|heading=Template:Cite press release}}

... to the top of Template:Cite news.

Of course, because of situational syntax, I need to preview the edits to find out if the request above is aboslutely okay, but I cannot. So, please preview for me.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa ( talk) 09:11, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

In this case, it should probably be noincluded (atleast and definitely for cite news - seems like that generally happens after someone complains about it) Galobtter ( pingó mió) 09:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I've added the notices and noincluded them on "cite news" but not on "cite press release" with the understanding that while "cite news" is unlikely to change much people who used "cite press release" in articles may be interested in knowing that it's under discussion. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 10:03, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@ Jo-Jo Eumerus: the merge proposal has been withdrawn. Can you or another admin remove the notice? Thanks, Pi.1415926535 ( talk) 18:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Removed from both. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 19:19, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello, everyone

Hello, Headbomb

We all know that illegitimate removal of contents is vandalism. That includes unjustified deletion, deletion under false pretenses and deletion with ex post facto explanation. Headbomb has reverted my good-faith and technically accurate contributions to Template:Citation Style documentation/cs1 with false explanations, especially ones that I went an extra mile to prevent in advance of the reversion. More specifically:

• I added that {{ Cite news}} can be used for press releases as well. A HTML comment said that there is a special parameter in it. Headbomb reverted, claiming the opposite: "press releases are covered by cite press, not cite news", which is not true.
• I added {{ Citation}}, because its |mode=cs1 enables it to be used for CS1. Headbomb just reverted, claiming the opposite: "citation is CS2, not CS1".

Of course, if he had checked /doc pages, he'd find out that they are not true. (Or there is a possibility that he did check and went the WP:IDHT way?) It is however, customary not to call registered editors "vandals" without giving them a chance to justify themselves. But, in my communication with him in his talk page, he didn't insist on his previous denial and instead resorted to a more questionable approach: "That a template supports something does not mean it is the recommendation for that something." That beckons the question: How did non-recommended stuff that have no consensus made their way into fully protected templates? If they are indeed not recommended, where is the proof?

Alright, Headbomb, I am giving you one last chance to justify your reverts, which as of now, match the description of illegitimate removal of contents (vandalism). You had a lot of chances to justify yourself; but here is another one.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa ( talk) 12:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Gain support for your changes or go away. I explained my reverts above, I won't repeat myself because you can't listen. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 12:36, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Indeed? A diff please. By the way, if you do go to a fifth RFA, this might come up. — Codename Lisa ( talk) 12:37, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

[1] (edit: or [2]), amongst others. I'm now the third or fourth editor to explain this to you. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 12:39, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

This diff is about the original dispute that I have abandoned. Are you paying any attention? Please study my message carefully. — Codename Lisa ( talk) 12:41, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Ok, in simpler form, because apparently you can't distill the essence of how things work here: gain consensus for your changes. No one here and elsewhere has remotely supported any of the changes you've proposed yet. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 12:45, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I case you didn't notice, we are in the venue where people support or oppose. You yourself haven't opposed yet; you reverted, but not opposed.

So, do me a favor and oppose. With a reason of course.

— Codename Lisa ( talk) 13:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

As has been said before, {{ cite news}} and {{ cite press release}} are distinct templates; there is not consensus to merge them. Your proposal to merge them was withdrawn and within the discussion there was massive opposition for the merger. Editor Headbomb has opposed; see above; the template for press release is {{ cite press}}, not {{ cite news}}. [...] no consensus has been established that press releases should be cited through cite news. Restoring a page to the status quo when there is no consensus to make a change is not vandalism. Umimmak ( talk) 13:50, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

@ Umimmak: This discussion is not about merging anything. Please read the opening post before commenting and refrain from off-topic comments. — Codename Lisa ( talk) 14:21, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Some thoughts: I agree with what is stated above about the two templates. What I observe in these events so far is: massive opposition to a proposed merge; withdrawal of that merge; an attempt to implement the merge in a different way through documentation; a topic heading for this thread that is needlessly confrontational. I infer that there is frustration on the part of multiple editors here. When I am frustrated, I find it best to take a break from the thing that is frustrating me in order to gain perspective. I recommend that frustrated editors here do the same. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 14:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, thanks Jonesey95. There was much wisdom in that message. But also, there was tiny bit assumption of bad faith.

• I proposed a merger. That's done and over. Now, I am doing the complete opposite: All I want is a slightly more accurate explanation of what templates do. There is no need for that conspiracy theory. In fact, I want to know why you people insist on hushing it up. It seems all very suspicious to me. Also, if what you said was written as the edit summary, I would have never called it vandalism. The edit summary was blatantly false and overtly hostile.
• The topic is indeed confrontational. I demand to know why what matches the definition of vandalism has gone unpunished? I have very little interest in the contribution itself. I'll forfeit in a blink of an eye. But I have been here for years, serving this wiki faithfully; why I am treated so badly? Why is my right to make bold contributions being denied? Why all of a sudden, bylaws that belong to high-traffic templates are being invoked in a page that does not have more transclusions than an ordinary navbox?
• As for staying away from the topic for a while: I have seen what a great mistake it is. This is an advice that editors give eachother a lot. So, once, I recommended FleetCommand to do the same. He stayed away for three days. When he returned, he did something that totally resolved the objection of the editor with whom he was tangled, to the extent that said editor sent him a "Thanks!" Except something very funny happened in the interregnum: Not only things didn't calm down, during his absence, he was served an ArbCom Discretionary Sanction notice. Without violating it (he was absent), he was served a ban for violating it. If he was on the station and had ably defended himself, things might have gone a different direction.
• The addition of {{ Citation|mode=cs1}} has gone completely uncommented.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa ( talk) 14:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

You're clearly looking for drama, saying things like "I would have never called it vandalism" then immediately following it with "I demand to know why what matches the definition of vandalism has gone unpunished?", coupled with threats to take me to ANI, when it's you who's been consistently and constantly editing against consensus, trying to make this a WP:BATTLEGROUND against me while ignoring the fact that I'm hardly the only one to oppose your proposed changes. And I don't know who Fleetcommand is, nor do I care who they are, they've got nothing to do with this discussion. The arguments you put forward have been debunked, your proposed changes lack consensus. Now it's time to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 15:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh for Pete's sake, Codename Lisa. I am greatly sympathetic with your aversion to ANI and ArbCom; having been taken to ANI once and subjected to multiple editors who were unable to read or unwilling to read (by their own admission) WP policy, I am with you. But if you don't understand why you are being "treated so badly", you have only to look at your most recent undiscussed edits to the template we are discussing, after you were specifically asked to stop editing that template and discuss any proposed changes on this talk page. There is a difference between being bold and being disruptive. You are being disruptive with your most recent edits, and I urge you to undo them. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 15:19, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I concur. These templates are nuanced enough that changes without discussion are becoming increasingly problematic. E to the Pi times i ( talk | contribs) 15:41, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Also, just to inform everybody, I will not be participating in Wikipedia for the rest of the day, so if anything else arises, it will have to be handled without me. (Which is fine, since y'all are capable and competent editors, while I'm still relatively new to community participation.) E to the Pi times i ( talk | contribs) 16:02, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Jonesey95's phrasing an attempt to implement the merge in a different way through documentation is exactly what I meant. Edits which say {{ cite news}} should be used to cite news articles and press releases are advising editors to {{ cite news}} for press releases. While it might be technically possible to so do utilizing |type=, there is consensus to use only {{ cite press release}} when citing press releases and to use {{ cite news}} only to create citations for news articles in print, video, audio or web. (quoting Template:Cite news/doc). This distinction should continue to be reflected in the documentation unless there becomes a consensus to in fact use cite news for press releases as well and consensus to update the summary documentation accordingly.

Also with respect to the claim that The addition of {{ Citation|mode=cs1}} has gone completely uncommented. — there are comments on this. See Headbomb's comment above: I also object to citation being listed as a CS1 template, because its primary purpose is to be a CS2 template, and the template does not play nice with several types of citation. For instance, putting an arXiv preprint citation in citation will cause many bots to fill the template incorrectly. But if consensus is to list citation has a CS1 template, I won't throw a brick in the water. It just needs to be discussed first because the advice we give to editors matter. Umimmak ( talk) 21:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Annd... Codename Lisa's back at it, again making changes without discussion. I'll let others revert here, because I'm getting quite fed up with this nonsense. Those changes do not have consensus. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 05:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)