Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 10

Comments or opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I have revised the metadata code in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox. The date handling part of that revision is illustrated here. In the table below are the standard date formats and the expected translation to the metadata requirements. I'm clear about how most of these date formats should be translated but I'm not so sure about how we should handle season ranges (the yellow boxes in the table). For now, the code includes the yellow-box stuff in the metadata. Should it? Have I got all of the date formats?

Examples showing the new metata date handling are in the collapsed area. I'll address the other metadata changes in another discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:40, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Trappist the monk's statement "When a date falls in the Julian calendar, ISO 8601 only supports those dates as the parties sharing the date information among themselves agree" is not strictly correct. First, ISO 8601 requires the use of the proleptic Gregorian calendar or Gregorian calendar; the data exchange partners cannot vary this requirement. If they do, their statements that they are using ISO 8601 are falsehoods. Second, ISO 8601 states "Values in the range [0000] through [1582] shall only be used by mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange." Thus there are a few months in which the Gregorian calendar is valid but nevertheless agreement among data exchange partners is required to use those months in ISO 8601.

In addition, the templates have no means to designate the calendar (Julian or Gregorian) so any date before Thursday 1 March 1923 has the potential to be Julian. Since the primary language of this encyclopedia is English, it is probable that sources with a date earlier than Thursday, 14 September 1752, are dated in the Julian calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:41, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

That's a curious problem. Questions of which calendar are usually noted in the text. But as metadata?? Does COinS have any provision for specifying calendar? Perhaps other systems, like MARC? While I wonder if there enough cases where someone cites a book published in (say) 1750 that someone else has an expectation of finding at a local library (distinct from a modern edition of such a book) to make this something COinS would trouble with. Are there potential sources published with non-Western dates? A curious problem. But do we need to worry about it? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

How do you cite the author of a foreword? Thx! !!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lfstevens (talk • contribs) 23:30, 29 October 2015‎

My best guess would be

{{cite book|others=author of foreword|page=page the foreword appears on|chapter=foreword|the other usual parameters go here}}

or something similar. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:26, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I needed to do this, and what I did as a workaround was:

• Phipps, Makena Elizabeth (2004). "Foreword". In Phipps, Terry W (ed.). Seasons of Sleeping Bear. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 5.
  ISBN 0-472-11445-X
  .
  • {{cite book |last= Phipps |first= Makena Elizabeth |year= 2004 |chapter= Foreword |editor1-last= Phipps |editor1-first= Terry W |title= Seasons of Sleeping Bear |location= Ann Arbor |publisher= University of Michigan Press |page=5 |isbn= 0-472-11445-X}}

It's not the best solution, but it worked. When we have something better, that can be changed out.

Another option would be to list the foreword's author ahead of the citation template:

• Phipps, Makena Elizabeth. Foreword. In Phipps, Terry W. (2004). Seasons of Sleeping Bear. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. p. 5.
  ISBN 0-472-11445-X
  .
  • Phipps, Makena Elizabeth. Foreword. In {{cite book |last= Phipps |first= Terry W. |year= 2004 |title= Seasons of Sleeping Bear |location= Ann Arbor, MI |publisher= University of Michigan Press |page=5 |isbn= 0-472-11445-X}}

Imzadi 1979 → 22:58, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

The first form should be avoided (the foreword not being a chapter, nor the author an editor), but second form looks good in all respects. It doesn't need to – indeed, should not – generate COinS metadata because the item that COinS is identifying is the book. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:15, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually the first form is closer to what one would want if using short references, and the foreword is a contribution, if not a chapter. Not distinguishing book authors from editors is an issue, though. Kanguole 11:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

No, the first form is not acceptable, esp. as it makes Mekena Elizabeth the author of the book. But you do raise a good point: if the last names are different (let's say the foreword was by Makena Elizabeth Smith) you might want to use a short cite of "Smith 2004", and have that link to the full citation. One way is to use {{

harvid}}. Or create the link yourself. I believe something like [[#CITEREFPhipps20004|Smith 2004]] would work. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk

) 22:55, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

It makes Makena Phipps the author of the foreword, which is correct; the error is in characterizing Terry Phipps as the editor rather than the author of the book. If it had been an invited foreword in an edited work, that would be an appropriate way to cite the foreword, as in:

• Isaacson, Michael (2007). "Foreword". In de Silva, Clarence W. (ed.). Mechatronic Systems. CRC Press. p. xiii.
  ISBN 978-0-8493-0776-8
  .
  • {{cite book |contribution=Foreword |first=Michael |last=Isaacson |page=xiii |title=Mechatronic Systems |editor-first=Clarence W. |editor-last=de Silva |publisher=CRC Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8493-0776-8}}

On the other hand, there is a similar problem with citing an invited chapter in an authored book, as in:

• Handel, Zev J. (2003). "A Concise Introduction to Old Chinese Phonology". In Matisoff, James (ed.). Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 543–576.
  ISBN 978-0-520-09843-5
  .
  • {{cite book |first=Zev J. |last=Handel |chapter=A Concise Introduction to Old Chinese Phonology |pages=543–576 |title=Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction |editor-first=James |editor-last=Matisoff |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-520-09843-5 |url=http://escholarship.org/uc/item/19d79619 }}

Here I want to cite Handel, the author of a contributed chapter, but Matisoff is the author of the book as a whole. Kanguole 00:58, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The problem you point out arises from an implicit assumption built into the template that the attribution (responsibility) for works containing work of others is of the nature of an editor, not an author. E.g., the template works on the assumption that inviting Handel to write an introduction puts Matisoff in the role of an editor. What is displayed is fine, the only problem is in the metadata characterization of Matiswoff as an editor. I suppose we could have a |cont-author= parameter that would, in effect, tell the template that this should be displayed as the author of the contribution, with |author= displayed like an editor, but reported to COinS as the author of the work. I think Imzadi's second form (above) is a better way, along with use of harvid for the short cites. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:24, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

We agree that characterizing authors of books that include contributions by others as editors is a problem, but I'm arguing that it is the only problem here. Handel's contributed chapter is properly described as a bookitem (separately authored part of a book), just as if it were in an edited collection, and for bookitems OpenURL records only the author(s) of the part. Similarly, a contributed foreword, whether in an edited collection (Isaacson) or an authored book (Makena Phipps), is also properly described as a bookitem. There might be an argument that wherever we emit COinS data for a bookitem we should also emit a record for the containing book, but that would apply to all separately cited parts of books. Kanguole 11:15, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

[a] contributed chapter is properly described as a bookitem (separately authored part of a book) Do you have a source for that? The two definitions that I'm aware of define bookitem:

a defined section of a book, usually with a separate title or number (ocoins.info and oclc.org)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:52, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

No, your quotation is accurate. I don't think this error affects my argument, though. Kanguole 11:59, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I am not familiar with "book item" (and Book Item and Component Identifier is largely a dead-end), but I can see some ambiguity whether these "defined sections" can have independent author attribution. That our templates can't handle such distinctions intrinsically, well, is that really a problem? We do have a work around. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:53, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

OpenURL uses rft.genre=bookitem to indicate (as Trappist quotes) "a defined section of a book, usually with a separate title or number". Handel's chapter in Matisoff's book is such, but so are invited forewords in both edited and authored books. The citation templates include that key-value pair in the COinS metadata when |chapter= (or its alias |contribution=) is used. So the above markup is appropriate for citing Handel's chapter (and, I would argue, the contributed forewords). The only issue is that I have maligned Matisoff by placing his name in |editor=, but that does not show in the page formatting or the COinS metadata. Kanguole 00:46, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Although I am averse to such mis-use of parameter attributes, I am fine with how it is currently displayed. If there is no problem with COinS, do we really care? Is someone likely to write a bot to "fix" such "errors"? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:36, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Second form

• I am uncomfortable with the second form,

Phipps, Makena Elizabeth. Foreword. In {{cite book |last= Phipps |first= Terry W. |year= 2004 |title= Seasons of Sleeping Bear |location= Ann Arbor, MI |publisher= University of Michigan Press |page=5 |isbn= 0-472-11445-X}}

First, it does not work properly with {{sfn}}, unless we somehow wrap the citation in an <a> element, which seems a bit too technical for most editors. Second, it does not give COinS for the author being cited but for the author of the book, so the academic brownie points go to the wrong person. As a minor quibble, most style guides would say the book author is also formatted incorrectly in this case. "Last, first" format is for the person(s) being cited. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:43, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Then don't use sfn. Nor html elements, since (as I have previously pointed out) a short cite can be created using either {{

harvid

}}, or something like [[#CITEREFPhipps2004|Smith 2004]], which displays as "Smith 2004" (our putative "forwarder"), and links to the full citation (see the example above).

You have a subtle misunderstanding that needs correcting. The author parameters (including "last=" and "first=") are not necessarily "for the person(s) being cited". They apply to the item or work (book, article, etc.) described in the citation. That you are citing (say) the author of the foreword rather than the author of the book is of no significance to COinS because it is the book, not the foreword in the book, that is going be indexed and shelved in the library. There are no "academic brownie points" involved, as COinS doesn't do that, and I don't believe any "academics" are being scored for being cited on Wikipedia. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• @
  harvid}} and {{sfn}}. These are not alternative templates, but complementary ones. You may want to review the documentation and then experiment in your Sandbox to see how they work together – and to see why the "second form" does not work from a web page navigation viewpoint. Aymatth2 (talk
  ) 01:22, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Your "[i]f a solution does not work with {{

Harv}} I suggest you go play in your own sandbox. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk

) 00:48, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

In every other case, the author parameters are used from the author(s) being cited. There is no reason not to be consistent here, and indeed everything is much simpler if we are.

Regarding COinS/OpenURL, you seem to be overlooking that it can describe different kinds of sources, namely whole books (genre book) and parts of books (genre bookitem). It is the latter we are concerned with here, and the author of the part in question is Makena Phipps. Kanguole 00:34, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

We are being consistent. The |last=, |first=, |title=, |year=, |url=, and any other pertinent parameters should all apply to the same item. So if you want to do {{citation [because we have no "cite foreword" template] |last= Phipps |first= Makena Elizabeth |year= 2004 |title= Foreword ...}} that's fine. But as no library (and I suspect no one at all) indexes forewords (and thus nothing for COinS to point to), you need to point to the book with something like: In Phipps, Terry W. (2004), Seasons of Sleeping Bear, .... (Suitably templated, of course.) So you can have an author-foreword, distinct from author-book. Just not in the same template. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:56, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Who is this "we"? This seems to be a rule that you have invented. In fact it is very common for |last= and |first= not to be the author of the subject of |title= and |url=, but rather a part of that work. What is normal in other citations is that |last= and |first= refer to the writer of the words we are citing. Kanguole 23:43, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

A point you have missed is that citation is not to authors ("writers of words"), but to the works ("words") by those authors. You have also blithely missed that last=/first= normally impute authorship to the work (e.g., a book) named in title=. The exception is when an editor is specified. Then the working of the templates assumes that authorship applies not to ithe whole work specified in title=, but only to part of the work, such as a chapter. This is not suitable in the case at hand, where "we" have separate authorship but no editor. But no problem, Imzadi showed how to do such a citation. If for some really pendantic reason you just absolutely must have "the writer of the words we are citing" put into last= and first=, I just showed you how. And will do so again, below.

The original question here is answered. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:55, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

We cite works, which are written by authors. In this case, a foreword, by Makena Phipps, that is part of a book. The "exception" to your rule that you wish to discount (citations using |contribution=/|chapter=) is actually extremely common, and is the closest to the current situation. The difference is that the book has an author rather than an editor, but we discussed that issue at length regarding the Handel/Matisoff example above, and I thought you ended up agreeing that this was an appropriate way to handle that case.

The argument for putting the author of what we are citing into |first= and |last= is simplicity and consistency. Your method A below is an awkward workaround for the problem you insist on creating, but it links to the book, rather than the foreword. Method B is invalid, because the first {{citation}} is incomplete. Kanguole 11:24, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I have not "insist[ed] on creating" any problem, and perhaps you would be so kind as to avoid making such misstatements. The problem presented by the OP (Lfstevens) is how to cite something (e.g., a forward) written by one author that is prefaced to something written by another author. The problem with using the chapter=/contribution= parameters is that it is designed for a similiar but different problem, which attributes the containing work to an editor. In the problem presented here such a characterization of the main author (e.g., Terry W. Phipps) as an editor is false. I have previously stated that though I am averse to such mis-use of the parameters I am fine with resulting display.

You (and also Aymatth2) seem hung up on insisting that "the author of what we are citing" must go into a last=/first= pair of parameters, on a supposed basis of simplicity and consistency. Perhaps you should make up your mind on what you really want. The "A" form, of prefixing suitable text to a citation template, is most simple. Your objection that short cites link to the citation of the book seems to be channeling Aymathh2's objection that "[r]eaders look forward, not back.", which I find quite trivial, even silly. But if that is a problem for you, fine, use the "B" form. It is a consistent use of the citation templates, simple enough and not at all invalid. If this specific example is incomplete please describe in what respect. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:27, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

The |contribution=/|chapter= parameters are used where we want to cite a part of a book, as situation with a direct counterpart in COinS (the bookitem genre). And that is what we want to do here, and in the Handel/Matisoff example. The template is not a perfect fit, because it has paramers only for editors rather than book authors, but it is the closest we have.

Imzadi's first solution above is simple, because it uses the template with no special formatting, and uses |first= and |last= for the author of the cited item, like every other citation. It works with {{sfn}} with no special treatment (because of the consistent use of |first= and |last=). It generates the correct formatting and the correct metadata. As with the Handel/Matisoff example, the only issue is that the book author's name have been put in parameters called "editor".

Your form B is invalid because the first citation has incomplete metadata. This issue was beaten to death in this thread and I don't wish to repeat it here. Kanguole 01:57, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

You should make up your mind re what you want, as your requirements are inconsistent. E.g., you object that my form A does not parameterize the "author of the cited item", and that form B (that does parameterize the author) has incomplete metadata (how?). Yet you would give the "first form" (using contribution=) a pass even though it misstates the metadata. You have not demonstrated any incompleteness of the metadata, and your sweeping assertion of invalidity is itself invalid. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:57, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Two ways of citing a foreword. Substituting "Smith" to distinguish between Phipps. Numerous variations are possible.

• A: Smith, Makena Elizabeth. Foreword to Phipps, Terry W. (2004a). Seasons of Sleeping Bear. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. p. 5.
  ISBN 0-472-11445-X
  . [Harvid used to create "Smith" anchor aliased to Phipps.]
• B: Smith, Makena Elizabeth (2004b), Foreword, in Phipps, Terry W. (2004b). Seasons of Sleeping Bear. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. p. 5.
  ISBN 0-472-11445-X. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help
  ) [Separate templates for Smith and Phipps; each getting their own last=/first=.]

• Smith 2004a.
• Smith 2004b.
• Smith 2004a. Harvid used to link to Phipps.

More than one way to do these things. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:03, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

–––––

• The "A." example illustrates one of the problems with the "second form". The
  harvnb}} or placed in the {{reflist}} by {{sfn}}, should not jump the reader to text that starts with ""Phipps, Terry W..." and does not mention Smith. Readers look forward, not back. A website designer who insisted that was acceptable would not last long. The "B." example is bizarrely complex. Neither example addresses the COinS and author name format problems. Aymatth2 (talk
  ) 01:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

If you don't like the simplicity of the "A" form, fine, use the "B" form. The latter satisfies your objections re navigability, parameterizing the forward's author, and jumping to the very front of the citation. As to addressing any COinS or formatting problems, you have not shown any. The only likely COinS problem I see is that no library has indexed the forward of this book, so there is nothing for a COinS record to point to. As to being "bizarrely complex", that's absurd. This example is a straight forward and quite ordinary use of the standard templates. But if you are not comfortable with that, please feel free to contribute your own example. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:29, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

• @
  harvnb
  }} citations to the introduction by Magnusson & Palsson of a book by Sturluson. They hear something like,

  Hardrada landed near York in mid-September. Bracket link Magnusson and Palsson two thousand and five pea ex eye eye eye [pause] end-bracket. Godwinson gathered an army and marched north. Bracket link Magnusson and Palsson two thousand and five pea ex eye vee [pause] end-bracket.

The user selects the second link and hears,

Sturluson Snorri two thousand and five King Haralds Saga Aylesbury Penguin you kay eye ess bee en zero one four one nine one five zero seven two.

There is no mention of Magnusson & Palsson, They click back and replay the link, and it does indeed say Magnusson & Palsson. They click forward, and again get what appears to be a completely different book. This is not an acceptable solution. You are surely not advocating that we recommend it? Aymatth2 (talk) 01:29, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

• The "B" form is, of course, ludicrous. I assume it is a joke. Very funny. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:29, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Your contrived example is ludicrous. But not funny. If you are done with your little joke perhaps you might contribute an example of how you would cite a forward. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:01, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Moving forward

The Magnusson & Palsson example illustrates that the "second form" does not work with screen readers, so cannot be treated as a solution. The "B" form, using two cite templates, one for the foreword and one for the book, is clumsy to say the least and generates some strange COinS. An issue with both is that the book author is not being cited, but their name is in last-first format. Only the cited author should be in this format; some say only the first cited author, for obvious reasons. So far no workable solution has been identified for citing an introduction using the current templates, so we have to consider enhancing the templates.

Two MLA-style examples from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources:

• Pynchon, Thomas. Foreword. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By George Orwell. New York: Plume-Penguin, 2003. vii-xxvi. Print.
• Gillan, Jennifer. Introduction. Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American. Ed. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan. New York: Penguin, 1999. xii-xxi. Print.

Two APA-style examples from the same source:

• Pynchon, T. (2003). Foreword. In G. Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four (pp. vii-xxvi). New York, NY: Penguin.
• Gillan, J. (1999). Introduction. In M. M. Gillan & J. Gillan, (Eds.), Identity lessons: Contemporary writing about learning to be American (pp. xii-xxi). New York, NY: Penguin.

We obviously do not have to conform exactly to either style, but should observe the common principles in these and other standard citation styles. The discussion that immediately follows this one, #contribution= rather than others=, was an attempt to start thinking about how that could be done with minimal impact on the template and existing pages. The most obvious drawback, to me, is that it does not identify the person who is being cited. The WP editor should be able to easily specify that they want one or other of:

• Pynchon, Thomas. Foreword. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By George Orwell. New York: Plume-Penguin, 2003. vii-xxvi. Print.
• Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Thomas Pynchon, foreword. New York: Plume-Penguin, 2003. vii-xxvi. Print.

@Trappist the monk: @Davidwr: @J. Johnson: @Kanguole: Is anyone interested in a calm and constructive discussion on how to enhance the templates to better support citation of introductions, prefaces, chapters etc.? That is, a discussion where the need for some change to the templates is accepted and the word "you" is banned? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

The person being cited is identified in the short cite: either 'Pynchon 2003' for the foreword, or 'Orwell 2003' for the book. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:47, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• Given your last sentence, and especially the part where you define "calm and constructive" to mean that everyone agrees to change the template, I'm a little surprised that you don't don't go farther with that thought and define it to mean that everyone agrees with you and immediately changes the template to work exactly the way you think t should work. It's a cheap rhetorical trick to dismiss the people who disagree with you as unconstructive; have more
  good faith in their intentions. —David Eppstein (talk
  ) 03:59, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• @David Eppstein: I am starting from the premise that since no satisfactory solution using the existing template has been identified after all this discussion, there is none. We should look for ways to enhance the template that will solve the problem. I have no strong views about what the changes should be. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:40, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

There have been a number of unnecessary personal remarks in the above back-and-forth, which is why I have stayed away so far, but I appreciate Aymatth2's succinct request above.

An apparent problem with the CS1 templates has been identified. It does not appear to be possible, using the existing template, to cite Thomas Pynchon's foreword to a book authored by George Orwell in a way that accurately characterizes the metadata. Specifically, it does not appear to be possible to create the following citation:

• Pynchon, T. (2003). "Foreword". In G. Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four (pp. vii-xxvi). New York, NY: Penguin.

I believe that our current citation templates have no trouble with the second example given by Aymatth2 above, specifically:

• Gillan, J. (1999). "Introduction". In M. M. Gillan & J. Gillan, (eds.), Identity lessons: Contemporary writing about learning to be American (pp. xii-xxi). New York, NY: Penguin.

This second example can be handled using |last=, |first=, |editor=, etc., all existing parameters. We shouldn't use |editor=Orwell for the first example, however, since Orwell is the author of the larger work, not the editor.

I welcome suggestions with specific examples of citation templates, or changes to the existing template parameters, that address the Pynchon/Orwell citation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:00, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the existing templates satisfactorily handle an introduction or foreword to an edited book, as in the Gillan (1999) example (though one might quibble about the quotation marks around a generic name). On the other hand, the original issue also arises with contributed chapters to authored works, such as

• Handel, Zev J. (2003). "A Concise Introduction to Old Chinese Phonology". In Matisoff, James. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 543–576.
  ISBN 978-0-520-09843-5
  .

so I would characterize the issue as separately-authored contributions to authored books. The nearest approximation offered by the current templates is:

• {{cite book |last=Pynchon |first=T. |contribution=Foreword |editor-first=G. |editor-last=Orwell |title=Nineteen eighty-four |pages=vii–xxvi |location=New York, NY |publisher=Penguin |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-452-28423-4 |ref=harv}}
• Pynchon, T. (2003). "Foreword". In Orwell, G. (ed.). Nineteen eighty-four. New York, NY: Penguin. pp. vii–xxvi.
  ISBN 978-0-452-28423-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help
  )

For this version,

• The formatting is fine (because it does not distinguish authors from editors).
• The COinS metadata is correct (because for the bookitem genre it does not record authors/editors of books – in fact even the book genre does not distinguish editors from authors).
• Harvard references like Pynchon 2003:x harvcolnb error: multiple targets (5×): CITEREFPynchon2003 (help) work as expected.

But although it does not show in any of the output formats, the markup is problematic, because we have put Orwell's name in a |editor= field.

What to do? We could just declare that |editor= can also be used for book authors when we're citing a separately-authored part of a book. We could add aliases. But some future output format might distinguish editors from book authors. We could add a flag that says whether these fields refer to editors or book authors. Or we could add new parameters for book authors, distinct from those for authors (used for the part) and editors. Kanguole 11:34, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

How about aliasing a |book-author-first= to |editor-first=, mutandis mutatis? Then in the future if an update to COinS/etc ever does necessitate the distinction between editors and authors of the overall book, we already have the infrastructure in place to make that distinction?

→

13:08, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

|contribution= is an alias of |chapter=. There is no |contributor=. We could create a contributor suite of parameters so that we might write:

{{cite book |contributor-last=Pynchon |contributor-first=Thomas |contribution=Foreword |title=Nineteen Eighty-Four |author-first=George |author-last=Orwell |location=New York |publisher=Plume-Penguin |date=2003 |pages=vii-xxvi}}

The combination of |contributor= and |contribution= would require |author= (or alias) and follow the MLA style and render like this for cs1:

Pynchon, Thomas (2003). Foreword. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By George Orwell. New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii–xxvi.

and this for cs2:

Pynchon, Thomas (2003), Foreword, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii–xxvi

If there are editors, where do those names go and, especially for cs2, how are they separated from the author name list? Semicolon as in this mock-up?

Pynchon, Thomas (2003), Foreword, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell; Sam Smith (ed.), New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii–xxvi

For the metadata, do we include Pynchon and exclude Orwell? If we don't, that is similar to how cs1|2 includes a chapter-author but does not include the editors.

Is the combination of |contributor= and |contribution= restricted to {{cite book}} and to {{citation}} when |work= is not set?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:43, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• I like the concept of |contributor= and |contribution=, which can be used for Introduction, Preface, Forword, Afterword. I would include contributors like this in the metadata, since they have written part of the cited book edition. It could also be used for other types of contribution like Translation and Illustration. In theory, and we would need to think very carefully about this, it could replace |others=, |editor= and even |author=. That is a distant future concern. I would limit it to {{cite book}} and {{citation}} for now. The Harvard Guide section on non-authors shows a possible problem though. It shows two MLA examples for scholarly or critical editions:

• Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958. Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomall: Chelsea House, 2003. Print.
• Bloom, Harold, ed. Things Fall Apart. By Chinua Achebe. 1958. Broomall: Chelsea House, 2003. Print.

The first is to be used when the book is mostly being cited for the author's contribution, and the second when it is mainly being cited for the editor's contributions. We maybe have the same problem with an introduction. If it is being cited, the person who contributes the introduction goes at the front, last name first.

• Pynchon, Thomas (2003). Foreword. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By George Orwell; Sam Smith (ed.), New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii–xxvi.

If the presence of the introduction is being noted as information about the edition, but the introduction is not being cited, it belongs after the editor, if present:

• Orwell, George (2003) Nineteen Eighty-Four, Sam Smith (ed.); Thomas Pynchon (foreword), New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii–xxvi

I am mostly thinking of cases when the template is being used in a list of works by the person who wrote the introduction. Maybe it is not a serious issue. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:20, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

The metadata issue is problematic. In the normal case we provide author name and book title. For edited works, we provide author name, chapter, and book title; the editor is omitted because there isn't a key/value pair defined for editors. The same might be true for this case. We provide contributor name, contribution title (in rft.atitle), and book title. We could provide the book author name as a second name in rft.au. Should we?

This proposal is not intended to be used for anything other than forewords and the like. It is not a replacement for |others= or for |translator=.

There are, it seems, two basic uses of the cs1|2 templates: citation and bibliography. I have wondered about using |mode= in some way to instruct Module:Citation/CS1 in the rendering of bibliographic items. This is a topic for another time and place.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:02, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• I would buy that. I was maybe trying to be too ambitious, folding all the contributor roles (authors, editors, others) into a generic parameter set, then worrying about how to say which is being cited. So if the introduction is being cited, we use something like

• |contributor-last=Pynchon|contributor-first=Thomas|contributor-link=Thomas Pynchon|contribution=Introduction

but if the introduction is just being noted in a bibliography, we use

• |others=[[Thomas Pynchon]], introduction

The |contributor= name(s) go at the front, first, last, if present, followed by the |contribution= or |chapter= value if present, followed by "In" and the standard book definition. I don't know if there should be a warning when there is no |contribution= or |chapter=. Maybe not?

That also works for a case I found lately where three people were listed as authors in the front matter, but each had written different chapters. There was no editor. So we could have

• |contributor=Baker|chapter=Fourth Republic|author1=Abel|author2=Baker|author3=Cane|title=Suffrage in France

I would be inclined to just write metadata for the main authors. It is unfortunate that at present the COinS syntax does not let us supply data for other types of contributor, even when we have it, but that is a different subject, as is |mode=bibliography. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

@Aymatth2: In your example of three people sharing the authorship of (say) the Introduction, but not for individual chapters, what are you citing? These are different "items", with different authorship; they get cited separately. Don't try to mush everything into one package. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:46, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• This would be citing the chapter by Baker in the book by Able, Baker and Cane. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

You have not specified to whom the writing (or editing) of the book is to be attributed. If Able, Baker, and Cain wrote (edited?) the book, then sure, the citation for Baker's words in chapter 2 is "Baker, in Able, Baker, & Cain". (With all the other bits and pieces, of course; I'm just showing the essence of the citation.) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:30, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Sort of. I think we should take 'by' from the MLA example that you posted in the first message under this heading and reserve 'in' to edited works. Contributor names are listed last, first when provided by |<name-list>-last= and |<name-list>-first= in keeping with standard cs1|2 name-list formatting. So:

{{cite book |contributor-last=Pynchon|contributor-first=Thomas|contributor-link=Thomas Pynchon|contribution=Introduction |last=Orwell |first=George |title=1984 |location=New York |publisher=Plume-Penguin |date=2003 |pages=vii-xxvi}}

would produce:

Pynchon, Thomas (2003). Introduction. Nineteen Eighty-Four. By Orwell, George. New York: Plume-Penguin. pp. vii-xxvi. (cs1)

Pynchon, Thomas (2003), Introduction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by Orwell, George, New York: Plume-Penguin, pp. vii-xxvi (cs2)

In one of these conversations someone wondered about quoting generic contribution titles. We might have a list of such generic contributions: afterword, foreword, introduction, preface, (are there others?) that we recognize and do not render in quotes; any other contribution title we render in quotes.

If |contributor= is set then |contribution= is required else we generate an error message. The opposite case |contribution= without |contributor= is allowed for backward compatibility. When |contributor= is set, |contribution= is not an alias of |chapter= but if both |contribution= and |chapter= are both set, we emit a redundant parameter error message.

Some thought will be necessary to make sure that CITEREF anchors are correctly generated for the contributor(s) and not the author(s) so that {{sfn|Pinchon|2003|p=xiv}} works properly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:55, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• The Harvard style examples all give only the name(s) at the start of the citation in "last, first" format, useful for alphabetical sorting, then all the other names in "first last" format. I would prefer that we comply with this convention. Some say that when there are two authors only the first should be in "last, first" format. I have no opinion on that. I do not see much difference between |chapter= and |contribution=. They both identify a part of the book. I agree the chapter is "in" the book and the intro etc. precede or follow the book "by" the author or editor. |chapter= without |contributor= is reasonable. I often cite an entry in a biographical dictionary where the author is not given. Sometimes the editor is not given either. There may sometimes be cases where |contributor= without |contribution= would be useful:

• |contributor=Wilde, Oscar|title=Victorian quips|editor=Fred Smith

No point generating error messages for situations that cause no problems. I agree that if both |contribution= and |chapter= are present there should be an error message. A list of common generic types of contribution could also be used to give common abbreviations. Smith, intro., pref., forewd., aftwd., maybe? It should be easy to tweak. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Name lists that use |<list-name>-last= and |<list-name>-first= in cs1|2 are rendered in last-first order. Without we change that fundamental property throughout, name lists shall continue to be rendered in that same way.

Let us solve one problem at a time. This proposal is to answer the how-to-cite-a-foreword question. We shall use the contributor/contribution pair to determine when to rearrange the final output into the <name> <date> <foreword> <title> by <author> ... format. When we actually get to the code it may be that this restriction is not necessary. We'll see. Until then |contributor= requires |contribution=. Let us not disturb the normal method of identifying an author in an edited work:

|author=Wilde, Oscar|title=Victorian quips|editor=Fred Smith

We could do abbreviations but should expand them. But, editors are endlessly inventive. I don't think that cs1|2 should be in the business of figuring out just what some editor thinks is the proper abbreviation for some contribution title. Editors can type a few more characters to get it right.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:09, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• Fair enough. It is contributor(s)/contribution pair, right? There could be co-authors to an introduction, as in:

• Magnusson, Magnus, Pálsson, Hermann (2005). Introduction. King Harald's Saga. By Sturluson, Snorri. Aylesbury: Penguin UK.
  ISBN 0141915072
  .

I prefer to follow the Harvard conventions for first/last names, but agree it is a separate question. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, as many names as are necessary as well as the -linkn and -maskn modifiers. I'll start a separate discussion referencing this one for discussion of actual implementation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:24, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I would expect that the COinS author fields for a bookitem would contain the author(s) of that item, and not include other people named as author(s) of the enclosing book. So for this foreword, Pynchon but not Orwell. Kanguole 22:51, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

[ec] The following is implemented per form B (above) with the existing templates:

• ISBN 978-0-452-28423-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help
  )

and can be cited as Pynchon 2003c. Key differences with the previous example:

• Page range of the Introduction follows the Intro. specific data
• Book author preceeds title, rather than following (and with "by)".
• Book author name is inverted, rather than "normal" order.

Having the page range of the Introduction (or any such portion) seems like a good feature to retain, as having it follow the book data suggests that the book is "pp. vii-xxvi".

It seems to me that the other two differences can be conceived as a single alternative of formatting. E.g.:

• <last, first>, <Title>
• <Title> by <first last>

Could this not be handled as simple option? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:57, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

No. Arguing for Form B is merely a variant of the discussion we've already had at the "Missing or empty |title=" error message discussion. In this case its a {{cite book}} template, some connective text, and another {{cite book}} template. The first {{cite book}} template attempts to cite a 'book' titled Introduction and renders that title in italics and not quoted as it should be. The metadata then is for a 'book' written by Pynchon titled 'Introduction'. Because of this malformed metadata, Form B should not be used. Also, because we have had this discussion before, I don't think I have anything more to say about it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:04, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Are you paying attention? My question was whether the location and inversion (or not) of the author's name could be a simple option. Not discussed previously. And as I recall, your concluding comment on that other discussion was that you just didn't want to do it.

If using 'cite book' for only part of a book offends you, one could use {{citation}}. Of course, that's jiggered to assume a book. And we can't use 'chapter=' without a 'title=' because you screwed it up. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

J. Johnson, your personal attacks and mean-spirited comments are not welcome here, not to mention your continuing muddying of discussions by introducing tangential issues and responding with comments unrelated to the main question in the thread. Many of your comments are on point, but the noise is drowning out the signal, to the detriment of any constructive progress you would like to make.

I've been doing my best to ignore your direct and indirect attacks on other editors, but this last one ("you screwed it up") pushed me over the edge. If you feel that an editor has broken something, please address it in a neutral way in a separate section. If you feel that your concerns are not being addressed effectively, there are multiple venues available on WP for dispute resolution.

If other editors feel that I am out of line with this comment, I will stand down. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:49, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• I fully support the above comments by User:Jonesey95. None of us needs the aggravation. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• While I don't entirely agree with your comment, neither would I say it is out of line. Discussion of this might be useful.

I allow that "screwed it up" may seem overly sharp, but perhaps you would accept that the tone of my comments (in this case, and generally) arises not from mean-spiritedness, but from exasperation. E.g., just above Trappist criticises my example because it "renders that title in italics and not quoted". Well, the example could be set up to quote the title (using 'chapter='), but that runs into the "missing title=" error - which Trappist brought about, and has obstinately refused to permit an exception. He criticises a lack of quotes where he has disabled that option. I find that exasperating.

As to "muddying of discussions by introducing tangential issues" - what do you mean? I think non-navigability and screen readers are tangential isues, but those were raised by Aymatth2. My intent is always to clarify issues. If on any particular point I have failed I would appreciate a comment. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:02, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for being willing to engage in good faith. The particular example of "muddying" that I was thinking of was this response, in which you wrote a long section with multiple points/questions, some of which were about using the existing template, at the bottom of a focused conversation about how the templates could be modified to support an authored chapter in an authored (not edited) book. I found that post frustrating, since we were converging on a solution to an identified problem after realizing that the OP's request could not be met for that sort of citation need; the post has since been placed in its own section, called "Using the existing framework", which makes more sense to me.

I understand that you are exasperated. We can't all get everything that we want from these templates or from WP. Sometimes we have to live with something that is non-optimal, at least for a period of time. When I find myself in a situation that I do not like and have been unable to change on WP, I try to focus my energy on something that I can do something about. I also try to spend some time thinking about a new way of framing my dissatisfaction, or a new way to resolve a problem that might gain a broader consensus. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome, and I appreciate your comments. Even where I am not as nice as some editors might want, even where I am sharp with someone (usually to get their attention, but sometimes out of exasperation), I feel I am honest about my motives (ask if not clear). For that reason, and because in the end I do prefer civility, there is no reason for anyone to impugn my good faith. Where other editors get most frustrated with me seems to be in critical analysis of arguments, where for inadequacy of explanation (possibly my fault), insufficiency of patience (which I don't like to push), or various other reaons, there is incomplete understanding. E.g., my five points (below, after the section break) you deem "muddying" I see as clarifying: I was summarizing previous points. (Note especially point #2, on the distinction between using the existing templates as they are versus improving them, which drastically affects the basis for assessing the examples and arguments raised above.)

Hopefully that provides some clarification. Are there any other points I should address? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:27, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• "Form B" cites a book called "Introduction" by Thomas Pynchon and another book called "Nineteen eighty-four" by George Orwell. It gets part way towards acceptable visual format, but is cumbersome to code and creates odd COinS. It may have value as an interim solution. I think the discussion belongs in the next section, on #Using the existing framework. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• I confess to being unclear about what we expect to achieve with COinS. A serious bibliographic database would not be interested in our data, and I cannot see it being used to determine citation impact. Perhaps it would be useful to someone assembling Wikipedia articles into an e-Book? Whatever the purpose, we should fill out the parameters as they are intended. They do not include editors or other secondary contributors. We should also work towards getting COinS to support more complete bibliographic data, and when that is done modify our template to generate it. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with your second sentence. The primary intention of the parameters is get the information necessary to display the citation in some form deemed acceptable. Providing COinS data is secondary. If you want COinS to support more bibliographic data I think you have to talk to the people in charge of COinS – and hasn't this already been discussed? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:38, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Using the existing framework

Fine. Now show us how (in response to the OP's question) you would use the existing templates to implement these cases. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Several points need noting:

1) The issue here is not about citing contributions to a) an edited work, where an editor is identified (which the existing templates handle just fine), but to contributions (typically forewords and introductions) to b) an authored work, where the containing work is primarily one of original authorship.

2) The original discussion was how to cite a foreword with the existing templates. The context is implicitly pragmatic, looking for the best way possible. Perfection is not required.

3) In assessing either the current alternatives, or how the templates might be modified, the assessment criteria should be selected or defined first, then applied to all alternatives.

4) There is no rule or requirement that a cited author must be in last=/first= parameters, nor (as Aymatth2 claims) that only the specifically cited author may be in last=/first= parameters. Such a requirement is purely an idiosyncratic interpretation. (Probably results from not understanding that we cite works, not authors.) A logical consequence of such a rule would be that Orwell cannot be the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four if Pynchon is cited as the author of the Foreword.

5) Aymatth2 has not provided any actual "Magnusson & Palsson example", only a supposed result from some imagined citation that is no where demonstrated. His conclusion of "no workable solution has been identified" is unsuppored, and overlooks the context of the original questions, which was to identify the best – i.e., most workable – solution possible with the existing templates.

~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:58, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• @J. Johnson: This discussion seems to have forked, as they often do, While some WP editors have shown interest in exploring possible changes to the templates, others see the problem as the best way to find a solution with existing tools. Both tracks of discussion can be pursued independently. There is no reason to suppress discussion along either line. A solution, even if imperfect, that uses the existing templates would be valuable, since any non-trivial change to the templates is likely to take time. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not so much that the discussion forked as you criticised a pragmatic discussion from an idealistic viewpoint. Note that I have no objection with an idealistic viewpoint in the context of what should be, and of possible improvements to the templates. But non-perfection is not suitable for assessing work-arounds. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• I do not know of any real-world examples of the "second form" of citation, but would be very interested in a workable mock-up screen-reader example with {{
  harv}} or {{sfn
  }} of,

* Smith, Makena Elizabeth. Foreword to {{cite book |last= Phipps |first= Terry W. |year= 2004a |title= Seasons of Sleeping Bear |location= Ann Arbor, MI |publisher= University of Michigan Press |page=5 |isbn= 0-472-11445-X|ref={{harvid|Smith|2004a}}}}

That is, a mock-up where the blind user learns that Smith wrote the foreword. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

As to a mockup of the "second form", isn't that what I provided? (Above, at "#Two ways".) (Which you mocked.) How well any of that works with a screen-reader, well, you were not clear on what the problem is. If you can offer a better work-around, please do so. Otherwise that is perfectibility question. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:05, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• My fault for not spelling out the Magnusson & Palsson example in detail. I assumed most people were familiar with the concept of a screen reader. It is a software tool for blind people that uses speech synthesis to let the user listen to web pages, and lets them navigate within and between pages using the keypad. The example, which I only outlined, is coded as,

  Hardrada landed near York in mid-September.{{harv|Magnusson & Palsson 2005|p=xiii}} Godwinson gathered an army and marched north.{{harv|Magnusson & Palsson 2005|p=xiv}}
  ...
  * Magnusson, Magnus & Pálsson, Hermann. Introduction to {{cite book|ref={{harvid|Magnusson & Palsson 2005}}|last=Sturluson|first=Snorri|year=2005|title=King Harald's Saga|location=Aylesbury|publisher=Penguin UK|ISBN=0141915072}}

This would display as,

Hardrada landed near York in mid-September.(Magnusson & Palsson 2005, p. xiii) Godwinson gathered an army and marched north.(Magnusson & Palsson 2005, p. xiv)

...

• Magnusson, Magnus & Pálsson, Hermann. Introduction to Sturluson, Snorri (2005). King Harald's Saga. Aylesbury: Penguin UK.
  ISBN 0141915072
  .

The blind user will hear something like,

Hardrada landed near York in mid-September. Bracket link Magnusson and Palsson two thousand and five [pause] pea ex eye eye eye end-bracket. Godwinson gathered an army and marched north. Bracket link Magnusson and Palsson two thousand and five [pause] pea ex eye vee end-bracket.

They select the second link and hear,

Sturluson Snorri bracket two thousand and five end-bracket King Haralds Saga Aylesbury Penguin you kay link eye ess bee en [pause] link zero one four one nine one five zero seven two.

There is no mention of Magnusson & Palsson, They click back and replay the link, and it does indeed say Magnusson & Palsson. They click forward, and again get what appears to be a completely different book. This is typical of the kind of screen reader problems created when we ignore the

principle of least surprise

. It is not an acceptable solution.

According to the National Federation of the Blind, there are more than 8 million blind people in the USA, in the sense that even with corrective lenses they must use alternative methods to engage in any activity that persons with normal vision would do using their eyes. The internet is an incredibly valuable tool to them, but often web pages are designed with total insensitivity to their needs. You will also see why I dislike cluttering the text with {{

harv}} details. Aymatth2 (talk

) 14:53, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I know quite well what a screen reader is, and if you're going to be snotty we can just end this discussion now. Your fault was in complaining about garbage out without showing us your garbage in. You are also being ridculous. Your complaint here seems to be (you really should state what you mean, not just throw out broad hints) that Harv cites are not suitable for screen readers. Which point arose only because when you complained (17:43, 6 Nov.) that the "Second form" does not work properly with Sfn I suggested you use Harv. I assumed that you knew how to pack Harv templates in <ref>...</ref> tags (just as Sfn does) to get the standard note links, but possibly I was wrong. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:11, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

• The issue is that the blind user follows the link for "Magnusson & Palsson" and finds a citation that makes no mention of "Magnusson & Palsson". The link does not work. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

So use the other form. Of course, when I suggest "A", and you complain it isn't "b". So I suggest "B", and you complain it isn't "a". As I have said before, if you can suggest a better way using the existing templates please show us. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• A separate, perhaps subtle, point is that in my view we are citing an author who has recorded their views in a work, rather citing than a work that happens to be written by an author. We are saying "according to J.J. Higgins, in his introduction to the 1976 book Tropical Penguins" ... rather than "according Tropical Penguins (1976), with introduction by J.J. Higgins...". Professor Higgins is the authority, not the book – although both should be identified. On the other hand, when we generate metadata for the book we should generate as much information as possible. The less complete the metadata the less value it has. Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 00:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

You are essentially questioning the "we cite works, not authors". Note the subtle point that tends to confuse this: in all styles of "author-date" referencing we identify the work by the author (or authors) and date (usually just year). E.g., if Smith and Jones write a book in 2004, they, as authors, are the parties responsible for it and the presumptive authority for what we might quote. However, the source is not Smith, nor Jones, nor a Siamese twin Smith-Jones, but their work (a book), which is cited as "Smith and Jones 2004". In your example, yes, Higgins is the authority, but the source where we find his immortal words is the Introduction he wrote. In quoting Higgins, we cite the Introduction. We also cite the book because that is where the Introduction is to be found. Okay? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:07, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

On a similar note to the above section, our remaining deprecated parameters are |coauthors=/|coauthor= and |Ref= (with an upper-case "R"). Given the difficulty of finding |Ref= with an insource search, I propose that we change it to unsupported to remove the last mixed-capitalization parameter from our templates (we have already removed support for the rest, like |Editor=). I'll be happy to lower-case any instances that remain after support is removed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:08, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I support that. Given that only |coauthor= and |coauthors= would then remain on the deprecated list, can we now show its error messages? Earlier this year, I spent much too much time and energy whittling the category down from somewhere around 25000 pages to just more than 10000. That was a mind numbing, arduous exercise that I don't care to repeat. I know that 10k pages is a lot of pages but perhaps if more people can see the error messages, more of these will get fixed. One can always hope...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I haven't formulated an opinion on the coauthor thing but I also support removing upper-case Ref. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:04, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I will make a separate discussion section for the issue of |coauthor= and |coauthors= to avoid the forking that sometimes arises on this page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:14, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

No longer supported. I have removed |Ref= from the whitelist and from the aliases list.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:24, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

In a section above, Trappist the monk suggests unhiding the deprecated parameter error, since only |coauthors=/|coauthor= would remain on our deprecated parameter list. We said that we would unhide the error message when all reasonable bot fixes had been made. I think that we have reached that point. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:13, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

There having been no opposition, I have set the hidden flag to false.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

We have a special error message and category for when a cs1|2 template contains a combination of |page=, |pages=, and |at=. Are the separate error message and category necessary? Isn't this condition merely a variant of redundant parameters like |author= and |last=? Is there any reason we shouldn't treat the extra in-source locator parameter the same as we treat any redundant parameter?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:14, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

After reading through the error descriptions (and fixing hundreds of these errors), I think Trappist is right. We should merge these errors into the redundant parameter error category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree, one error message and one cleanup category seems better than duplication. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that it emits a redundant parameter error message (and category) when a template has more than one of |page=, |pages=, and |at=. I added |sheet= and |sheets= to the test because there is a similar test that includes all five parameters when {{cite map}} is the template. This change detects all of the redundant parameters in a single test.

For {{cite map}}, the new error message is more precise:

This change also fixes a minor bug where the |sheet= or |sheets= value is included in a non-{{cite map}} template. See the title portion of the live version of the {{cite book}} comparison.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

This change is also an improvement in another way than discussed above: it produces an error message that's easier to understand. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:03, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Might it make sense to allow |at= together with |page= or |pages=? Some references involve both a page number and a location, e.g. "p. 15, footnote 46", and it would be handy to be able to put the page number in |page= while also giving the extra location information. Kanguole 15:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Not quite. The full citation created by cs1/2 that gives a full description of the source is distinct from the specific reference to a location within the source. In the common practice where, having only a single reference to a source, editors combine both it is better that the specific part be appended to the template rather then included in it. Inclusion implies that the specific page (or, heaven forbid, the footnote) is the entirety of the source.

Re 'cite map': in geology it is standard to describe "maps" as having a certain number of sheets (or plates, which should be an alias, which lack page numbers), AND a certain number of pages (understood to be of text). This might be confusing in regard of atlases, which are collections of maps, and might warrant a separate template. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:45, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm having trouble finding a decisive previous discussion on how websites are treated in citation templates.

Request for Comments: Italics or Non-Italics in "website" field. First section. --Izno (talk) 21:38, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

*facepalm* Thanks

Adabow (talk

) 22:02, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Yup. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:55, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It will be very useful to have ability to (re-)generate access-date automatically instead of requiring to type it manually.

Yurikoles (talk) 04:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that's outside the scope of what a template can do. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

cf.

Consistency, please? 208.87.234.201 (talk) 15:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I do not understand what the request is here. The names look consistent to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Fixed with a new redirect to {{cite AV media notes}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:48, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Because of this discussion, I have revisited the code that does the error checking. Part of that was to consolidate the actual validation so that this test and the test that validates urls in the url-holding parameters use as much of the same code as possible.

The other part is to detect and flag bare urls in |title=, |chapter=, and |work= parameters. I've done this because the 'fix' described in that other conversation is to change |website=[http://www.example.com Example] to |website=http://www.example.com Example which doesn't actually fix the problem. This fix also improves the error messaging.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

|nopp=, when set to any of yes, true, or y, inhibits the display of the usual p. or pp. page prefixes.

The extra-text-in-|page(s)= test is disabled when |nopp= is properly set (see this archived discussion). I now don't think that the test should be skipped. If it is because editors may have included a prefix in the value for |page(s)= then that will corrupt the citation's metadata so that is not a good reason to skip the test.

It is the job of the module to provide static text. The values assigned to |page(s)= must not contain text that is not page numbers so that the metadata are not corrupted. When it is desirable to prefix page numbers with something other than p. or pp., the non-standard prefixes might be added to |at=. Alternately, we can resurrect and document |p-prefix= and |pp-prefix= (which I just removed). The extra-text-in-|page(s)= test should emit an error message rather than its current maintenance message. In either case, to preserve the metadata, |at= should not be used as a source for the metadata rft.pages because it is a free-form parameter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

After poking through that maintenance category, I came to the conclusion that some editors were creating parameter values like |page=p. 45 because our template can be needlessly obscure, displaying page numbers with no indication of what the number represents in many circumstances (cf the discussion above about vol/issue/pp).

If we modify the page numbering display such that |page=45 displays "p. 45" and |page=p. 45 displays "p. p. 45", then a red error message should definitely be displayed for the latter case. But if |page=p. 45 displays "p. 45", I think you'll encounter objections from reasonable editors if you show a red error message.

Am I responding to the question that you raised, Trappist? Or am I going in a different direction? – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:34, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Because it is the module's job to display static text, editors shouldn't, and shouldn't feel a need to, include non-page number text in |page(s)=. We don't accept extraneous text in dates; we don't require editors to provide quotation marks, brackets, and other formatting details. All we want is the data. Give us a page number and we'll add the p. . By providing {{cite magazine}} we remove the 'need' to add extraneous text, do we not?

This does suggest to me that we should, as a part of tightening the definition of {{cite journal}}, emit an error message for journal cites that lack both |volume= and |issue=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:17, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

What definition of 'journal' requires them to have either a volume number or issue number? Certainly it is a characteristic, and the lack of same might warrant a warning (as possibly incomplete), but why these be required? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:25, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

There are plenty of citation style guidelines out there that have text about what to do when citing a journal that has no volume or issue numbers, so I think this is a common enough case that we need to handle it without errors and without making editors jump through complicated hoops to avoid an error. For instance from this copy of APA: "If an on-line journal gives neither volume nor issue number, simply put the journal's title and descriptor, and end with a period." This book gives an explicit example, although the journal in question seems to have acquired issue numbers at some later point. (Also, there are plenty of instances of {{cite journal}} on Wikipedia for things that are not journal papers, but it's harder to argue against emitting error messages for those cases.) —David Eppstein (talk) 00:35, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I have changed the extra-text-in-|page(s)= so that the test is not disabled when |nopp= is properly set.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Can something be done to pick-up publishers which have an external link to plus.google.com that seems to be getting entered in several recent cites. It is usually accompanied by invalid |language=en-GB or |language=en-US. Keith D (talk) 01:39, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Links to example edits? I think en-GB and en-US are being added by a Visual Editor tool. If we can track it down, we may be able to file a bug. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

insource:/plus\.google\.com/ finds about 2200 instances of the 'plus.google.com' string. I looked through the first 20 search results. It appears that the Google+ links are being added by Visual Editor somehow. Very often, the link in |publisher= does not match the link in |url= except that it is the publisher's or the work's 'home' at Google+ which is not directly related to the resource being cited. These links then amount to nothing much more than advertising for the work or publisher and, presumably, income for Google. Wikipedia should not be in the business of helping publishers and Google make money.

From Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher, this:

If the publisher is notable and has an article independent of the "work", the "publisher" parameter can include a wiki-link to that article, but should never externally link to the publisher's website.

Because of this, at the least, we should add |publisher= to the list of parameters that we inspect for improper external links which will get these errors categorized for repair. This I have done in the sandbox

"FCC Opens Bureau of Public Safety and Homeland Security". PCMAG. https://plus.google.com/109293916965448553143. Retrieved 19 November 2015. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:19, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I have been removing the links manually as spam, but would be really good to have the tool fixed so that it stops adding these links. Keith D (talk) 13:29, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I have asked for participation in this discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:45, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I have been fixing several pages this week for "month=" and one user noted using the ProveIt user-script (see

The addition of |month= by ProveIt is a

bug that was reported in July 2015. That bug has been filed

on GitHub.

I also fix unsupported parameter errors, and after the initial flush of a few hundred of them when we changed |month= to unsupported, I have seen only a few per week. They are easy to fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

When there are more than one of a parameter alias in a cs1|2 template, Module:Citation/CS1 emits a redundant parameter error that lists all of the matching aliases in the error message. The first bug squashed is revealed when there are multiple calls to function select_one(). This function reads the list of aliases for a particular parameter and selects the first one that is set. If more than one is set, the function emits a redundant parameter error. Because the function is handy for other things – it is called for example, to see if any of the |contributor= parameters are set for cs1|2 templates that don't support the |contributor=/|contribution= pair – those other calls can cause duplicate reports of redundant parameters.

The second bug squashed is a flaw in how the error message itself is rendered. Enumerated parameters with the enumerator of '1' are treated the same as an non-enumerated parameter: |author= and |author1= are the same. During the test, an enumerated parameter from the numbered parameter list in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration (written there as, for example, |translator-last#=) is modified to be {{|translator-last= and this modified value is used in the error message. Similarly, |translator#-last=) also becomes {{|translator-last= to be used in the error message. The error message reports all of the matching aliases which, because the '#' has been replaced, makes the message look odd:

While these have been 'fixed', listing two enumerated parameters when none are actually used seems improper. I've added a note to the code to remind me to think about a better fix.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Better fix I think. Here is a rather extreme case where all of the possible |editor= aliases are included in the template:

Same but testing |editor2= aliases just to make sure I haven't broken anything:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:58, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps show 'author' or 'last' instead of 'author1' or 'last1': Ideally, the error message should show the actual parameter names in use, but at least default to list parameters "author" or "last" rather than the rare "author1" or "last1" which are typically not in the bad cites I have been fixing. Of course, many of these author errors could be wp:autofixed but are among the most difficult to match invalid numbered firstn/lastn pairs. The autofix tactic is to tally all firstn/lastn and when first2 is missing use duplicate first1 as first2, preferably in a Bot fix which sees all duplicate parameter names. However, the general autofixing of unexpected parameter "xname=Doe" is to show literal "xname: Doe" with a colon inserted, at the end of the formatted cite. Meanwhile when the message says, "author1" and there is no author1, anywhere in the page, it is no wonder these various cite errors remain in pages for 2 weeks to 5 months or longer. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

{{cite book|author=Author|title=Title|url=http://www.dummy-url.com/originalPDF.pdf|archive-url=http://www.dummy-archive.com/archivedPDF.pdf|archive-date={{#time:Y-m-d}}|dead-url=no}}

{{cite book|author=Author|title=Title|url=http://www.dummy-url.com/originalPDF.pdf|archive-url=http://www.dummy-archive.com/archivedPDF.pdf|archive-date={{#time:Y-m-d}}}}

It would look better if the archive icon/format-info appeared when specific to the archived item. If they are both pdfs, do they both have to appear? 72.43.99.130 (talk) 18:56, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The pdf icon is added to external links by

alt text. When Module:Citation/CS1

detects pdf external links, it applies automatic |format=, |chapter-format=, |archive-format=, etc. as an aid to those who use screen readers.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:20, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Fine, but for example, Internet Archive makes available archived documents in their original format, a practice I have encountered in other archive services. The extra icon and format-info are therefore redundant. It would make sense to include them if the archived format was different from the original format. Otherwise, and regardless of whether one is using a screen reader, it should be understood that a pdf document has been archived as a pdf document. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:43, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: An unusual citation problem showed up with the article on Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir. It is related to #citing contributed forewords, prefaces etc. An article in a journal had an introduction by Robert Darnton followed by an annotated excerpt of Lenoir's unpublished memoirs. The journal gives both Darnton and Lenoir as authors, but the WP article cites only the introduction. The approach taken in the article was to cite like:

Darnton 1970, p. 534 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFDarnton1970 (help)

• Darnton, Robert (July 1970). "The Memoirs of Lenoir, Lieutenant de Police of Paris, 1774-1785". The English Historical Review. 85 (336). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 26 November 2015. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

This does not give formal credit to Lenoir as uncited co-author, but the situation seems quite unusual, so it is presumably good enough.

The memoirs were eventually published as a book that included a lengthy discussion of Lenoir by Vincent Milliot, Un policier des Lumières. This was shown in the list of works by Lenoir as:

• Milliot, Vincent; Lenoir, Jean-Charles-Pierre (2011). Un policier des Lumières followed by Mémoires de J. C. P. Lenoir, ancien lieutenant général de police de Paris, écrits en pays étrangers dans les années 1790 et suivantes. Seyssel: Champ vallon, impr. p. 1141.
  ISBN 978-2-87673-553-8
  .

In this case, the article did not cite Milliot, but only because his intro was not visible online. This is a reasonably common situation: an old book with a modern introduction that we want to cite. This is where |contributor= will be really useful (hint :~). Aymatth2 (talk) 17:20, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

For citations, we cite what we read. If a Wikipedia editor read an online source that did not include some material by Milliot, then Milliot shouldn't be mentioned by the Wikipedia editor. If a Wikipedia editor lists the works of an author, the Wikipedia editor should use reliable sources to compile the list, not other Wikipedia articles, because Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• The publication list in the Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir article is taken from the BnF entry in the {{authority control}} list at the foot of the page. The entry for the Milliot book also has an ISBN, which links to a Worldcat entry. Explicitly citing one or more of these indexes seems overkill, but I would not object if anyone cares to do so. This is tangential to the question of citing a contributor other than the primary author. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:34, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

If the English Historical Review article contains annotated [excerpts] of Lenoir's unpublished memoirs and we are to assume that Darnton is the author of the annotations throughout, then I think the {{cite journal}} template as you've used it here is correct. Lenoir might be listed as |last2=. Because the excerpts are just that, excerpts, then Darnton isn't really making a contribution to Lenoir's work; rather, he is using Lenoir's work to support his own. The article is Darnton's. |access-date = not required for archived material; use |jstor=563194:

{{cite journal |ref=harv |title=The Memoirs of Lenoir, Lieutenant de Police of Paris, 1774-1785 |last1=Darnton |first1=Robert |journal=The English Historical Review |volume=85 |issue=336 |date=July 1970 |publisher=Oxford University Press |jstor=563194}}

Darnton, Robert (July 1970). "The Memoirs of Lenoir, Lieutenant de Police of Paris, 1774-1785". The English Historical Review. 85 (336). Oxford University Press.

JSTOR 563194. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help

)

I must not be clever enough to figure out what it is that you are hinting at. The |contributor= / |contribution= support currently in the sandbox will give you what I think I understand you to want:

{{cite book/new |contributor=Milliot, Vincent |author=Lenoir, Jean-Charles-Pierre |contribution=Un policier des Lumières |title=Mémoires de J. C. P. Lenoir, ancien lieutenant général de police de Paris, écrits en pays étrangers dans les années 1790 et suivantes |location=Seyssel |publisher=Champ Vallon |year=2011 |isbn=978-2-87673-553-8}}

Milliot, Vincent (2011). "Un policier des Lumières". Mémoires de J. C. P. Lenoir, ancien lieutenant général de police de Paris, écrits en pays étrangers dans les années 1790 et suivantes. By Lenoir, Jean-Charles-Pierre. Seyssel: Champ Vallon.

ISBN 978-2-87673-553-8

.

I think that |publisher=Champ vallon, impr. is incorrect and should be |publisher=Champ Vallon or |publisher=Éditions Champ Vallon or |publisher=Les Éditions Champ Vallon (I don't have French so I can't say for sure; see website); I suspect that 'impr.' means print or printed. At worldcat, 'Champ vallon, impr.' is followed by a 2011 date.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:20, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• Darnton introduces and annotates the Lenoir excerpt, but the bulk of the text is Lenoir's, which is why the journal credits both of them. Still, the article is citing Darnton, so I think the citation format works. It is an oddball example. I do not see a need to support |contributor= in {{cite journal}} unless it is trivial to do so.
• I add |accessdate= for anything I find on the web. I have no confidence that any website or archive will survive more than a few years.
• Not a subtle hint – just wondering whether there are plans to make the sandbox version live. I keep coming across examples where I wish I could use the |contributor= parameter.
• Worldcat, BnF etc. use "Seyssel : Champ vallon, impr.", meaning location=Seyssel; publisher=Champ Vallon; printed by the publisher. I like to show who printed it, since that could possibly affect pagination. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:34, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Re making the sandbox version live: See the section above. That's what is meant by updating the module. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:52, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• I did not see that post. That is great! Aymatth2 (talk) 14:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I just ran across what must be the grossest DOI yet constructed: 10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0262:osapct]2.3.co;2

Shoving this into {{cite journal}}'s |doi=… parameter looks, remarkably enough, to have worked just fine. However, for some journal articles, JSTOR uses the DOI as the "JSTOR number"; the stable address for a given article on JSTOR. And shoving that DOI into the |jstor=… parameter… did not go as well.

• Wagner, Frederic (2000). "OBJECTIVE SCIENCE AND POLITICS: CAN THEY COEXIST?".
  JSTOR [0262:osapct2.3.co;2 10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0262:osapct]2.3.co;2] – via JSTOR. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |registration= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help
  )

{{cite book
|title=Title
|
|     <!-- 5 space characters and a newline; this comment not visible to the module -->
}}

{{cite book|title=Title|quote={{interp|this is}} ... a brief quote}}

{{cite book|title=Title|quote=a brief quote}}

{{cite book|title=Title|id={{hdl|00000/0000}}}}

{{cite book/new|title=Title|quote={{interp|this is}} ... a brief quote}}

{{cite book/new|title=Title|id={{hdl|00000/0000}}}}