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A class has been added to {{ broken ref}} so that errors on talk and other pages will show if enabled in Special:MyPage/skin.css. This does not add the page to a maintenance category.

span.brokenref {
  display: inline;
}

For example, an error will show here if this is enabled.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).

---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 13:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

While fixing Category:Pages with broken reference names, I've found some of the references are broken since its add. Such as [1], which editor added <ref name="Gold Platin Datenbank"/>--the incorrect reference!

In other words, there's no history for these broken ref. They were not broken because someone deleted another ref like explained in the category:

This error usually occurs because someone deleted another ref with that same name that had text in it.

So, how to fix these broken refs? Delete them? Korrawit ( talk) 05:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

If they are broken from the start, then you have no way to fix them. Remove the broken ref and discuss it with the editor who added it. I suspect that they did a copy/paste from another article. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 10:36, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Korrawit ( talk) 13:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm just wondering who weighed the options and decided that a big unruly red message borking up an article is the means to justify the end - that being "descriptive ref names"? This is the case where if you name a ref with a number, an error message states that the ref name can't be an integer and should be more descriptive. There have been many cases were a year is far more appropriate to use as the name, but can't be because somebody has ensured that this template imposes their personal preferences. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 11:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The error is generated by the Cite software extension— you can look at the code versions to see the authors. When the extension generates an error, it calls a MediaWiki interface page that defines the displayed message.

I think your issue is that you can't use an integer as a reference name. Looking at the HTML output, the entries in the reference list are given HTML ids such as cite_ref-0 for an unnamed reference and cite_ref-name-0 for a named reference. By using an integer, there is some chance that the software may generate duplicate ids which would result in invalid HTML and ambiguous links. You can easily resolve this by prefixing the integer with a character like an asterisk or percent. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 13:43, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there a bot that takes care of this? I've been neglecting to add a ref section because I'm used to a bot cleaning up within a couple hours, but just got a complaint that people have been having to clean up manually. — kwami ( talk) 01:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is indeed fully automated by Xqbot. Extended details are available on kwami's talk user-talk page.  -- WikHead ( talk) 07:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused. I've found two articles with the error message "Cite error: <ref> tag with name "<whatever>" defined in <references> is not used in prior text; see the help page", yet the references with those names are used within the infobox. But the reference markers within the infoboxes have the wrong numbers and don't jump you down to the footnotes section.

At TERA, there is an error message about an unused footnote named "distributor", and the footnote marker next to the "Distributor" field in the infobox is broken. At The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings the infobox has references numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 1 which don't work, and then two references for the "Ratings" numbered 1, 2 which do jump to references 1 and 2 in the footnotes section.

I'm fairly sure that this problem is new since 19th April. On that date I fixed a cite error in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings by commenting out an unused reference, and, I hope, I would have noticed the other three error messages if they had been there on that date. Very little has happened to the article since then. -- John of Reading ( talk) 10:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

There is some odd interaction with {{ Video game release}}. I commented it out of TERA to fix the problem for now. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 11:32, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Removing the months and days makes the problem disappear too - {{Video game release|KOR|2011|NA|2012|EU|2012}}. The year-only case is handled specially by the first test in {{ Date sortable}}, so it must be the following block beginning "#iferror". This doesn't look good. Could this be a side-effect of the MediaWiki upgrade? -- John of Reading ( talk) 12:08, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Good question. Do we have a downlevel test wiki? See User:Gadget850/a10 for some testing on this issue.---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 12:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Here is a note that they are running 1.20wmf1. I've stripped away a few more levels of templates at User:John of Reading/X3, which might help. -- John of Reading ( talk) 14:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

By coincidence, I have been working on Error: Invalid time. The {{ dts}} series of templates stuff the sortable part inside display:none which suppresses the error message and makes troubleshooting a pain; see MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Parser function errors. I don't see Error: Invalid time in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings HTML. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 15:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

{{ Video game release}} calls down to {{ Date sortable}}. Is that one of the templates that you'd expect to populate the category? The documentation for {{ Video game release}} says that you can pass any text you like instead of a date, "such as a message indicating the game is still in development or was cancelled". It is relying on #time to spot whether the parameter is a date or not, and this mustn't put the article into any error categories. -- John of Reading ( talk) 15:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Named refs and #time errors ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 23:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)