Template talk:Citation

Posters

There was not a template:cite poster so I am not sure what category it would fall under. In the last (lower-right) image in https://twitter.com/DaPatMac/status/701554145707356161 for example is a poster titled "Fast-Paced Animation" which announces that season 2 of Sonic Boom (TV series) is scheduled to debut Fall 2016 on Cartoon Network. How would you cite said poster?

In this specific case it's not needed since a news site wrote an article citing the poster/tweet (and this news article was in turn tweeted by a show producer, affirming it) but if that hadn't happened, how would one go about citing the poster as an official document from the company? What would it be classified as? 184.145.18.50 (talk) 17:54, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

How about {{cite sign}}? H:CS1 says that it is used for "signs, plaques and other visual sources". Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Given that this is the talk page for {{Citation}}, why not use {{Citation}}? Give it as much information as you have and it sorts out a sensible format. The only reason I can see for the cite xyz templates is conformance with pre-existing usage. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:15, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Accessdate

It is not clear from the documentation whether the access date for an archived source refers to the original or the archived version. I've assumed the latter but can anyone confirm this is the correct interpretation? If so I'll update the documentation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:28, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

The original, surely? There's no need for an access date to an archived version since the text will not change, whereas a non-archived version may change after it was accessed. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

This came about because I was checking the work of a bot. I assumed that the date was confirming the accessibility of the text, but you make a good point about changes. Would not the archive date indicate this though? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:18, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

|access-date= applies to |url= and is used to indicate the date on which that url supported the article's text. It is important that follow-on editors be able to identify that date if, for whatever reason, the current content of the page that |url= points to no longer supports the article text. Knowing that date, editors may more easily locate an appropriate archived copy of the page. |archive-date= identifies the date on which the archive was created.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:49, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Precisely. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:32, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Vertical bars in titles

When there is a vertical bar ( | ) in the title of a citation, is there a preference to use {{!}} or |? If there is a preference for one over the other, is it sufficient enough to include in, for example, the general fixes of WP:AWB? Thanks -crh23 (talk) 17:05, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I would say that the best way to include a pipe in |title= is the {{!}} magic word because it produces the cleanest metadata. Compare:

&rft.btitle=Title+%7C+with+pipe+magic+word

&rft.btitle=Title+%26%23124%3B+with+html+entity

&rft.btitle=Title+%26%23124%3B+with+pipe+template

I have no opinion about such inclusion in AWB's general fixes because I never run AWB with that enabled.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:24, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Why should there be vertical bars in titles? Any real-world examples? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:24, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

I see this on some cites, where an article has a multilevel title or when an author is included as part of a title. Things like "Local News|Smithtown" and "John Smith|Software Roundup". The former is analogous to an em-dash or colon (or else the first part is a section or chapter that could be omitted), the latter could just leave the author in its own specific field. DMacks (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Copying and pasting of titles and other parameter values from web pages is one of the sources of Category:Pages with citations using unnamed parameters. Sometimes removing the text after the pipe makes sense (e.g. |title=Man lands on Moon | Washington Post) and sometimes it is part of a legitimate parameter value (e.g. |publisher=C|Net). – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:23, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Who, this CNET? The pipe is in their logo, not the publisher's name. It's just a stylistic gewgaw. The publisher of CNET is CBS Interactive. Perhaps there's a better example, but that one isn't it. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:32, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Seems to me like a very dubious practice. "Multilevel" titles would be those with one or more subtitles, and long established practice is to use colons, semicolons, or dashes. I suspect current instances of other characters are just people trying out new characters they have found on their keyboard. Where an author is included in the title, there is the question of who included it. If the publisher, then the name is part of the title, and a vertical bar is neither needed nor appropriate. (E.g.: "John Smith: My Life".) If a WP editor includes it, then its an error, pure and simple. Where someone uses it to (or any other symbol) make a sexier name use, well that could lead to problems, and I wonder just where they are to be found in the phone directory. More likely editors are just sucking up too much text without regard to just what that text is. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:44, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Catching this kind of stuff seems like an excellent reason for not having any real unnamed parameters in any of the citation templates. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:46, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

In a web page's <title>...</title> element, a pipe is often used to separate the true page title from the website name - they might be in either order. Some websites use a hyphen, dash or similar for the same purpose - for example, this page has <title>Template talk:Citation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title> and <h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" lang="en">Template talk:Citation</h1>; the first of these might be given on some websites in the form <title>Template talk:Citation | Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title> or as <title>Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Template talk:Citation</title>. On some websites, there might be two or more pipes, separating three or more steps along a breadcrumb trail.

The true page name should also be given in the first <h1>...</h1> element, and it is this which we should put in the |title= parameter - if there is only one pipe, the rest can go in |website= as it stands, but if there are two or more pipes, some care is needed to set |website=. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:41, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I think we can agree that the "true" title of a piece is exactly what should go into |title=, no less and no more. Where a source is aggregated in a larger work, or website, those elements should be named in their proper parameters. If someone feels a need to indcate some kind of nesting they can use the conventional colons, semicolons, angle brackets (">"), cheverons (), or slashes. (Or even backward slashes if that's where they're at.) I am feeling stronger that when there is a vertical bar (however expressed) in a title the preference should be to tag it as an unspecified error requiring further investigation. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I think we should remember that titles are often filled in from software (for instance using the citation tool in the Visual Editor) rather than by humans who are familiar with (or want to learn to be familiar with) the intricacies of our citation templates. And as the discussion above makes clear, parsing the title to figure out what the proper treatment of the vertical bars should be requires human-level intelligence rather than being something a software system could be expected to do automatically. So we should certainly allow vertical bars – presumably, encoded as {{!}} – as a way of allowing the software to work and avoiding biting inexperienced users. They can be put in a cleanup category for someone more expert in citation titling to clean up, but should not immediately be flagged as an error. It is also even more important to avoid flagging vertical bars inside math markup as being any level of problem, since that's something that could happen legitimately. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:48, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

The title is whatever the title is in the source. If that title has a vertical bar in it, we should present that character to the reader. I admit that I am at a loss to find a good example on the web at the moment, but I believe that they are out there. That said, the vast majority of vertical bars in title parameters on WP will have non-title text after them, so they might be a fun thing to search for with AWB or in a database dump. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Here's one with pipes in the title element, forming a reverse breadcrumb trail: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/07/crossrail-hertfordshire-london-euston-tring-hemel-hempstead - the page source has these two elements: <source lang=html><title>New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London | UK news | The Guardian</title>

New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London

</source> so I would cite this as either of <source lang=moin>Topham, Gwyn (7 August 2014), "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London", UK news, The Guardian 

Topham, Gwyn (7 August 2014). "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London". UK news. The Guardian. </source> giving:

• Topham, Gwyn (7 August 2014), "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London", UK news, The Guardian 
• Topham, Gwyn (7 August 2014). "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London". UK news. The Guardian. 

I really don't see why the name of the website (in this case The Guardian) needs to go into the |title= parameter. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:22, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree, but this is difficult or impossible to automate, since the order of the trail varies and many sites don't use <title>...</title> and <h1>...</h1> correctly (if it at all – a site I often use, the World Spider Catalog, has <h5>...</h5> as the highest level on many pages, and then for a generic phrase). So even if only an interim measure until a more experienced editor can clean up, we have to be able to cope with whatever gets put in tags which plausibly mark titles. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I just can't see the issue. When displayed in my browser there is the simple title without any pipes. If there is a clear displayed title why go looking for hidden markup? I'd just cut-and-paste from the displayed title (as here: "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London") because that is what Topham or the Guardian wanted to be the title. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:40, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

@Martin of Sheffield: It's not displaying pipes in any browser, for the simple reason that the only pipes that I added were properly used - as parameter separators. That is, I used three different parameters |title=New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London |department=UK news |newspaper=The Guardian each preceded by a single pipe as required by the MediaWiki template parser. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:04, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

You did, but look at the previous posing by Jonsey who appeared to be. The whole section is about pipes as part of the title, not as you showed with pipes as parameter separators. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:41, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

From what I've seen (here, and around), the vertical bar generally separates non-title elements, which some genuis thought ought to be displayed along with the title, and our editors don't quite understand its role as a separator. E.g., "Washington Post" is not an alternative to "the Moon" as a landing site.

Any citation tool responsible for putting vertical bars into title ought to be seriously bitten, and its developers as well. But regardless of why or how a vertical bar ends up in a title, the preference ought to be: no vertical bars. And informing inexperienced editors of that it is not necessarily "biting" them. To make that clearer perhaps we should have some kind of message like "your edit is provisionally accepted pending cleanup of a small problem or two". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:32, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘There are other items in the html/js of that Guardian article besides the <title>. In this instance the "headline" and the "webTitle" are both given as: "New Crossrail route mooted from Hertfordshire into London", just as it is displayed in the browser. I'd also suggest, for what it is worth, that both "UK News" and "The Guardian" can be found (nearly literally) in the url filepath and second-level domain, separated from the date and title parts of the filepath. This is a very common formulation on news websites. Similar construction crops up on Bloomberg here, but using a spaced dash instead of a pipechar to separate the "Bloomberg" following the headline, so: <base href='http://www.bloomberg.com/'> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>U.S., China Seek to Prod Nations by Signing Climate Accord Early - Bloomberg</title> is composited from <meta property="og:title" content="U.S., China Seek to Prod Nations by Signing Climate Accord Early" data-ephemeral="true"> or from <meta name="parsely-title" content="U.S., China Seek to Prod Nations by Signing Climate Accord Early" data-ephemeral="true"> It seems this sort of thing is not so difficult as to be infeasible to automate, though my coding skills are long out of use. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:34, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

20 minutes ago when I followed the link there were 14 entries in the category. There are now 5. All the others were trivial mistakes: missing "title", missing "=" or cut-and-paste into the title. Of the remaining five, one has a lot of errors, three look to be straight forward and one is possible tricky. Aren't we guilty of straining at gnats here? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC) Done All cleared in another 15 minutes work. It doesn't need automating, just the odd lunchtime. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:42, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Does Template:Citation have all the same output parameters as Cite news and Cite web ?

I'd like to exclusively use Template:Citation in an article, similar to model at WP:FA quality The General in His Labyrinth, but I was reverted by another editor.

Documentation on the template page says: "The Citation template generates a citation for a book, periodical, contribution in a collective work, patent, or a web page. It determines the citation type by examining which parameters are used."

Does this mean we can use it instead of multiple different cite templates on a page, like {{Cite news}} and {{Cite web}} ?

I ask because I'd like to increase standardization and uniformity on the article.

Would that be okay ?

Thank you for your expertise,

— Cirt (talk) 23:48, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Please read this: "If the correct parameters are used, this template produces output identical to that of the Cite templates, such as Cite book and Cite web". I believe this is the definitive answer here. Let me know below if there is any more expertise or explanation anyone can provide. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 23:59, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

As the article is now, it's not at all inconsistent. It might be argued that The Edinburgh Reporter cites should be {{cite news}} but that could go either way. All of the templates are cs1 and there is nothing wrong with that. Converting all to cs2 is considered by some to be a 'style' change and therefore a violation of WP:CITEVAR. In your revert of the other editor's revert, your edit summary claims:

If the correct parameters are used, this template produces output identical to that of the Cite templates, such as {{Cite book}} and {{Cite web}}

Sort of. Compare these:

"Women's League Cup final: Glasgow City 2 Hibs Ladies 1", The Herald, 3 June 2015, retrieved 29 March 2016 

"Women's League Cup final: Glasgow City 2 Hibs Ladies 1". The Herald. 3 June 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2016. 

They are not exactly the same (inter-element punctuation, terminal punctuation, capitalization of static text, and automatic |ref=harv) To make all of the cs2 templates render like cs1 templates, set |mode=cs1. That seems rather a waste of effort to my mind.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk:Right, but what are the differences? Punctuation only? Commas and periods only ? — Cirt (talk) 00:24, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk:Did you see that my edit summary was merely quoting verbatim from the text at the top of Template:Citation ? — Cirt (talk) 00:26, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Yep, just as I wrote. Full stop (cs1) vs commas (cs2), terminal full stop (cs1) vs. no terminal punctuation (cs2), 'Retrieved' (cs1) vs 'retrieved' (cs2), |ref= (cs1) vs. |ref=harv (cs2). Those are the primary differences. Because there are 23ish cs1 templates, {{citation}} cannot hope to support all of those output capabilities merely by looking at which parameters are provided (and without making the already very large code larger and more unwieldy).

Yep, saw that quote. The rest of that paragraph says pretty much what I've just written except that it leaves out the bit about capitalization.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:40, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk:So, just to confirm, as opposed to the concerns at Talk:Jenna Fife about {{Citation}}, the same fields give the same outputs ? There is no cause for concern about a missing field, for example? — Cirt (talk) 00:43, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Are you not reading what I have written? The complete rendering of {{citation}} vs {{cite web}} or {{cite news}} is not identical. Other cs1 templates produce output that {{citation}} cannot produce so in these cases {{citation}} may well omit information. It is not wrong nor bad nor inconsistent to have all of the references in an article use cs1 templates. This same is true for cs2 when it can accommodate the citation needs of the article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:01, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

(e/c [many]) Hey Cirt. I *think* what the user who reverted you is getting at (with the edit summary "obscures detail about citations") is that, even though there's little difference in output – to the rendered article text – the use of cite web/book/journal, etc. provides some guidance in edit mode as to the type of source, which I guess they think is useful to editors. If I've captured what the user intended, I don't really see it. At best, it's a truly marginal benefit. On the other hand, I see no benefit (including "standardization and uniformity") to warrant changing the use of web/book/journal etc. to use of {{citation}} instead and see arguments on the other side—but all of its boils down to matters of marginal benefit. Nor do I know of any preference of, or common criticism by, FA reviewers to switch to use of this template over all others. (I actually dislike one difference in this template's output, the commas in place of periods, but once again, we're talking about trivial stuff. It is superior in one respect though: you don't need to add ref=harv, as you do with the others). In sum, I see it as a complete wash on a cost/benefit analysis. That being said, I do think there was a valid basis for a revert: WP:CITEVAR. So my advice would be to walk away.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit:As part of a quality improvement project, I want to switch to model used at WP:FA page, The General in His Labyrinth. Wouldn't that be easier if everything is just {{Citation}} ? — Cirt (talk) 00:47, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

You want to switch, but that appears to contravene WP:CITEVAR. You would need to gain consensus for switching the citation style on the article's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:29, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95:We're already using {{Citation}} for all cites. Is there a compelling reason to switch? — Cirt (talk) 01:35, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

You lost me. At the top, you said "I'd like to exclusively use Template:Citation in an article,", and three indents above the one I am writing in, you said "Wouldn't that be easier if everything is just {{Citation}} ?". And now you say that "We're already using {{Citation}} for all cites." Sorry for being dense, but I can't make sense of that sequence.

Regardless of the current state of an article, if you want to change the citation style for an article, you need to comply with CITEVAR, which may mean that you would need to gain consensus for switching the citation style on the article's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:54, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but that was not our dispute on the article, but rather another user thought the output was not the same, but I see now it is the same. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 11:16, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

The other user was correct. The output is not the same. Presumably, that is why you made the choice to leave {{cite press release}} in the article:

"Anna names 21-player squad for August Training Camp" (Press release). Scottish Football Association. 28 July 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2016. 

Anna names 21-player squad for August Training Camp, Scottish Football Association, 28 July 2015, retrieved 29 March 2016 

But, that does not explain this edit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:01, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Citation styles

Reading the documentation about {{citation}}, I'm getting increasingly confused. It is openly referred to as CS2 and is in the "Citation Style 2 templates" category (see the foot of the page). Why then does it boast {{csdoc|lua}} which ultimately leads to {{lua|Module:Citation/CS1}} at the top of the page? Furthermore, when I view the source it ends up as #invoke:citation/CS1|citation|CitationClass=citation. So which is it? If you know which it is, or can explain the split terminology please post an explanation within the documentation. Thanks, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

In the beginning, there was no cs1 and no cs2. There was a collection of vaguely similar and independent templates. In an attempt to make them more consistent with each other {{citation/core}} was invented. It was the driving engine behind all of cs1 and cs2. In the early days of Lua, Module:Citation was started. Module:Citation/CS1 came soon after. Presumably, the intention was to keep the different styles separate and perhaps share those things that were common. But, that intention, if it was the intention, did not happen. All work soon stopped on Module:Citation, so now {{citation}} and the cs1 templates all use Module:Citation/CS1.

All of what I have just written is mere speculation since I was not there at the time.

I have thought, from time to time, about untangling cs2 support from the Module suite but other, more pressing matters have intervened. Perhaps one day I will venture down that rabbit hole.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:35, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. If I understand you correctly function set_style and its three children (get_settings_from_cite_class, set_cs2_style and set_cs1_style) are the only distinguishing features between CS1 and CS2. Is Module:Citation used anywhere? I note that its revision history stops 3 years ago. Likewise is {{citation/core}} in use anywhere? I had a quick look at {{cite book}} and it just calls Module:Citation/CS1 with no reference to /core. Many thanks, and kind regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Almost. There are five things that distinguish cs2 from cs1: the separator character: comma for cs2, period for cs1; postscript character: none for cs2, period for cs1; automatic |ref=harv for cs2; certain static text: 'retrived' for cs2, 'Retrived' for cs1; only the one template for cs2, twenty+ templates for cs1. How static text is rendered is determined in multiple places in the code and uses the separator character to make the determination (comma = lower case, period = sentence case). That could possibly be made part of set_style() but that seems like a major pain to do.

I don't know of anything that uses Module:Citation. {{citation/core}} is used by several non-cs1|2 templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I've added a sentence to alert other readers to the CS1/2 issue. Please have a look and feel free to hack it about. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:37, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Translation to a non-English language

How to explain using this template that the book referenced is a translation from one to another non-English language? Doyoon1995 (talk) 05:57, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Use {{citation}} to identify your source. If the language used in your source is not English then include |language=. It is not necessary to identify the original source language.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Then is there any citation style in WP like: (Translated from A to B (both not English) by ...) with or without a citation template? Doyoon1995 (talk) 03:27, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

It is not necessary to identify the original language of a source that you are consulting and neither cs1 not cs2 support such. There is a set of translator parameters:

|translator=

|translator-last=

|translator-first=

|translator-mask=

|translator-link=

So, if translator Bob translated author Mary's book Title from Arabic to Breton and you are consulting the Breton translation, then write:

{{citation |author=Mary |title=Title |translator=Bob |language=br}}

Mary, Title (in brezhoneg), Translated by Bob 

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:04, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Doyoon1995 (talk) 13:28, 29 April 2016 (UTC)