Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 11

~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:24, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Right, that's what I actually did in the article where this came from. Using |id= was a later cleanup for here. But it would be nice if we could actually use the template to format the whole citation rather than having some of it spill over into freeform non-templated text. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:16, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree. But this kind of problem doesn't happen too often, and it's easier to just slap something on then try to fine tune the tool for every possibility. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Why would we need, on en.WP, to provide a URL (etc.) to the Russian version if the English one is available?

WP:NOT a document translation indexing service.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:38, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Editor ‎SMcCandlish added this to the |editor= documentation:

These parameters are for editors of collaborative printed works, such as multi-author anthologies. Wikipedia does not use them to indicate the managing editors of periodicals such as journals, newspapers, magazines, or news sites (this information is not needed in source citations). For editor-revisers of later editions of previously published unitary works, add any editors as authors, with an "(ed.)" annotation after their given names, e.g. |author2-last=Doe |author2-first=Jane (ed.); this will prevent formatting that implies the cited |chapter= in a |title= (for books), or the |title= in a |work= or |website=, is an isolated contribution contained within a multi-author work compiled by the named editor(s). None of these parameters should be used to add other, non-essential contributors who are not needed in citations, such as foreword authors or illustrators, only credited editors, revisers, and work-wide commentators.

I am on wikibreak and have no time to discuss right now so have reverted the addition and started this discussion. Please discuss.

My objection lies in the 'add any editors as authors, with an "(ed.)" annotation ...'. We should not be encouraging the improper practice of adding extraneous text to parameters that are part of the metadata nor should we misuse parameters in this way.

We can, and probably should disable |editor= when the template is {{cite journal}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite magazine}}. Foreword authors is supported in {{cite book}} with |contributor= and |others= serves for illustrators and other non-essential contributors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

That solution would work for some cases, but not for the main problem. I'm not trying to impose a permanent solution, just work around a problem that bites us really often. The number of misleading citations that imply that a chapter in a single-author book, in a revised edition with an author-posthumous editor, is just one author's minor contribution to an anthology, greatly outnumber the cases of metadata-extraneous "(ed.)" annotations. You've said before that any such editorial insertions can be used with square brackets, so just changing it to "[ed.]" is sufficient for my documentation to be correct. (And I already know that for some of these templates we have special parameters for other contributor types, and I still see editor parameters abused for this purpose frequently, so the documentation still needs to say not to use editors parameters for those.) I would prefer that this be fixed in some parameter-based way, that suppresses the "in" output when it's not wanted, but until that's implemented, what I documented (plus the square-brackets fix) is the most correct approach, because it's overwhelmingly more important that our citations be correct and be parsed properly by our own readers than that COinS metadata be perfect. That metadata is an afterthought, a convenience we provide for non-central purposes, and some of us are starting to think that directly implementing it in these templates is more trouble than its worth.

Almost every time I document a real, reader- or editor-affecting problem here and try to work around or fix it, I get shot down or ignored by the same one or two editors for whom COinS seems to be more important than

WP:CITE, but who effectively totally control these templates. I've been a vocal supporter of CS1 for years, and would like to see CS2 eliminated, but over the last year and half I get increasingly inspired to go create a CS3 that looks almost identical to CS1, and has one consistent set of parameters, and no extraneous fiddly stuff. CS1 has turned into an enormous pile of "feeping creaturism", and hardly anyone can figure out how to use it effectively any longer. I've been here a decade, and these template still screw up my sourcing attempts at least once a week. I spend more time reading these templates' documentation than any others. I've reported more problems with these templates than any others. Fewer of them have been resolved than with any others. Given that people are not required to use any of our templates at all to insert citations, it would be a entirely valid approach to simplicity-fork this. If the principal and rather my-way-only maintainers of these templates don't want to see that happen, they need to be more responsive to problem reports, including paying attention to the details they report, and not dismissing them "oh well, you can do this complicated hack no one will remember nor understand when they encounter it", much less "we can't fix this because our precious metadata won't be ideal". Faaaaaack...  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Where have I said that editorial insertions can be used with square brackets?

Yes, Wikipedia editors abuse |editor= and |author= to include names that are neither (sometimes with annotation; sometimes not). That will be a problem forever I'm afraid.

Yes, a parametric remedy is best. A couple of solutions occur to me off the top of my head: perhaps a modification of |mode= to accept additional keywords to control how the editor name list is rendered; perhaps alternate editor parameters that render in a certain way; perhaps some other parameter or parameter modification. Of these, I think that modifying |mode= is likely the better solution. Suggest other solutions.

Consumers of the metadata are also our own readers and though only a small minority of our own readers their right to quality information is the same as that of the majority.

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

We could also modify |display-editors= in some fashion; this would be my new favorite solution.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that we need to be careful not to allow the metadata aspect of citation templates to prevent reasonable use within Wikipedia, but recommending something like |author2-first=Jane (ed.) can't possibly be a sensible way forward – it's simply a misuse of the parameters regardless of whether it generates misleading metadata. (@SMcCandlish: it's like using '' instead of {{em}} or <tt> instead of <code>, both of which you have rightly deprecated in the past. Parameters, like markup, should be used semantically.)

The purpose of a citation is not to record every last minute detail of the contributions of different people to the work, but to enable readers to find a source. The templates are over-complex partly because editors have been allowed to keep adding "features" which have nothing to do with their primary purpose, which, I repeat, is to provide sufficient information (and no more) to allow readers to locate the source. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the purpose of citations. But I thought the topic here (CS1) is citation style. That is, after citation requirements have been agreed upon, how do we proceed with presentation?

Because there has been haphazard discussion on citation requirements elsewhere, discussion on requirements creeps into this forum. It shouldn't be so, imo. There should be a more organized discussion on citation design (discovering & implementing requirements) separately from the discussion on citation formatting (presentation).

72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• I Oppose any attempt to remove editor from {{cite magazine}}, {{cite news}} etc. Many articles have no credited author, for example this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:54, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Seconded. Oppose removal of editor from the templates mentioned. As an aside, most of the problems mentioned in the thread I believe could be resolved with better, clearer documentation. 72.43.99.130 (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

  It is not the usual practice to give the editor name in this situation. CMOS recommends using the magazine name in such a case.

  The reason we name the editors of collections of contributions by several authors, or of an author's work, is because it helps the reader find the book, as that is how they are typically catalogued. That doesn't apply in the case of magazines or newspapers. Kanguole 22:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose changing the templates to remove the possibility of setting an editor. Although the editor or editorial board of most journal publications should not be cited, editors are occasionally useful for journals, for instance when citing a special issue or special section of a journal that has its own separate editors. Making the templates more rigid in what they accept has the cost of making more special-case citations that cannot be properly handled by the templates (pushing people to not use the templates at all) for only a very small benefit of catching a few unusual cases where people are citing things the wrong way. It's the wrong tradeoff to take. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • PS I also agree with Trappist's reversion of the change to the documentation: adding "(ed.)" to values of other parameters is the wrong way to do it and should not be encouraged. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:15, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• I also oppose any disablement of |editor= in journal, etc. However, note that such disablement is only TM's secondary comment, that the main point is regarding Mac's documentation change that editors can be cited as authors. I also oppose that change (effectively supporting TM's reversion), though as a possible work-around it might merit discussion. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:46, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Fine. You can keep your precious author/editor distinction (which is often artificial or tenuous; I have books where the author went from author to "editor" between editions, simply because someone at the publisher decided to make it that way). I can concede that in most cases it's a distinction we want to preserve,
    WP:NOT#BIBLIOGRAPHY; it's exactly the same thing as giving the total page count, the address of the publisher, or hardback vs. paperback. This is not citation information. It looks superficially like attribution, but it's attribution for an organizational role, like adding a parameter for the owner of the newspaper, and its janitor. WP is not IMDb; we don't provide details on every single person associated with a "production" in any medium. That said, we s should not disable the parameter for any particular medium, since a particular piece may in fact have a direct, actual, credited-in-the-specific-piece editor who needs attribution (and whose editorial presence in the piece may considerably enhance its reliability, I might add). We don't need to kill the parameter, we need to clarify what not to do with it. That much of what I added to the docs should be restored.

    At any rate, it looks like me like neither of the issues I attempted to address in what I wrote in the doc page have been addressed. We do need to discourage the misuse of the editor field to identify corporate administrators, and we do need to distinguish between two different levels of revisers of an original author, especially when the intermediary one was a very significant contributor to the work. Many "editors" are actually posthumous co-authors, and may even be responsible for much more of the content than the original author, yet may themselves be retired from the project in question (or deceased) for some time, with some new editor (actually acting as an editor per se or a new layer of co-author). This sort of thing comes up very frequently in style guides, as just one topical example. What is presently called Fowler's Modern English has much less of H. W. Fowler's original content in it than people think (I know; I have the 1st ed., too). Same goes for the ones we call in short form Turabian and Hart's, and Gowers. Sometimes the editions with different editors are cumulative, sometimes they are not, and this can have actual RS implications – particular editors are more reputable than others, and even particular editions by the same editor may be (and this is not always chronological).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

     ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Just for clarification, the change that Editor SMcCandlish is discussing refers to how cs1|2 handles editors when |chapter= is set (1) and when it is not set (2):

1. Darwin, Charles (1909). "Laws of Variation". In Eliot, Charles W (ed.). The Origin of Species. New York: P F Collier and Son.
2. Darwin, Charles (1909). Eliot, Charles W (ed.). The Origin of Species. New York: P F Collier and Son.

When chapter is set (1) cs1|2 makes it appear that Darwin is one of possibly several authors of an anthology edited by Eliot when, in fact, Darwin is the only author.

The question then is: how should we instruct cs1|2 to render |editor= using the form in (2) when |chapter= and |editor= are set and when |authorn= is/are the author(s) of the whole work?

The answer to the implementation question will determine, I think, how the documentation should be changed so perhaps that topic should be tabled until the implementation decision is taken.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:43, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: editor, cite encyclopedia

1. Remove the text "in {{{editor}}}" from all templates except {{cite encyclopedia}}; keep the display of editor role (ed.) in all templates
2. Rename {{cite encyclopedia}} into {{cite compilation}} (or similar); keep {{cite encyclopedia}} as an alias
3. Activate {{{contributor}}} in proposed {{cite compilation}}

Thank you. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

On first glance, that might actually do it, as long as there's not some new "you're abusing the metadata" complaint about using |contributor to deal with multiple levels of editor–co-authors. Is there any sort of potential fallout from this? Besides the obvious one: Many collaborative books (e.g. scholarly volumes of journal-style papers by different authors, under an editor [or plural] who is actually an editor, not a corporate functionary, like this [1]) are already coded in {{cite book}} with the expectation of the "in {{{editor}}} (editor)" output, not just "{{{editor}}} (editor)". I have to ask if there any actual harm at all in that drop-the-"in" conversion? While the "in" format (in one exact stylization or another) is very common, it's not universal. In a quick comparison of American citation styles (from Cite Right, Charles Lipson, 2006, and "Purdue OWL Citation Chart" 2014), there's a clear split between how to style an editor of a book when just citing the book, or a chapter by someone else in an edited book. I've summarized these, splitting the former from the latter with a "/", and giving some indication whether the editor citation starts a new sentence or not, and how it ends (the quotation marks are bracketing what I'm quoting, not part of the citation style):

MLA: "Ed. Kathleen A. Hauke." or "Hauke, Kathleen A., ed.," depending on edition / "In. [title], ed. Kathleen A. Hauke." or "[chapter]. [title]. Ed. Kathleen A. Hauke." (emphasis added – note the lack of "[i|I]n", and that's from the 2014 source), depending on edition
APA: "K. A. Hauke (Ed.)." / "In K. A. Hauke (Ed.),"
CMS: "Edited by Kathleen A. Hauke." / "In [title], edited by Kathleen A. Hauke,"
Chicago/Turabian: "Kathleen A. Hauke, ed.," / "[I|i]n [title], edited by Kathleen A. Hauke,"
AAA: "Kathleen A. Hauke, ed." / In [title]. Kathleen A. Hauke, ed."
CSE & AMA: "Hauke KA, editor." / In: Hauke KA, editor. [title]."
ACS: "Hauke, K. A., Ed.;" / "In [title]; Hauke, K.A., Ed.;"
AIP: "K. A. Hauke, editor," / ", in [title], edited by K. A. Hauke (...)."
Astro. (no single standard, but fairly consistent): ", ed. K. A. Hauke (...)" / ", in [title], ed. K. A. Hauke (...)."
Maths. (not consistent): "K. A. Hauke (ed.)," or "K. A. Hauke (ed.):" or "In: K. A. Hauke (ed.)," / ", in [title], K. A. Hauke, ed.," or "In: K. A. Hauke (ed.), [title]."
Bluebook & ALWD: "(Kathleen A. Hauke ed, ...)." / ", in [title] (Kathleen A. Hauke ed, ...)." (Bluebook italicizes in, ALWD does not).

So, all of these use some form of "in" except some editions of MLA. But at least that's proof it's not effectively mandatory to treat it this way. I've not yet gone through MHRA and other non-American sources on this question. I'm pretty sure there are more that do not expect an "in". Anyway, I actually need to verify that the 2014 Purdue source is correct on MLA dropping the "in". I actually just got the latest MLA guide last month, and have not perused it yet, but my eyes hurt, so I'll look into it later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:51, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

There are differences in the roles of editors of single-author books and editors of works from multiple authors. In the latter case, the term editor often encompasses the work of a compiler (somebody who chooses who and why will be included in the work) and also somebody who often vets the contributions for relevance/topicality relative to the particular "compilation". Although a “compilation” editor (for lack of better term) may not be involved in fact-checking (esp. in science publications) s/he should have acquired a certain level of confidence regarding the veracity of the contributions. It seems that in many situations, a compilation editor does meaningful work, which affects the end-product. Less, or not at all so, with single-author books. So the text “in {{{editor}}}” would be justified in the former case. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 20:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I know there are differences; that's why I carefully showed how these citations styles specify the two distinct cases. [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

In order not to have recurring useless discussion about style, the doc should make clear why the editor may be presented differently in {{cite book}} vs. the proposed {{cite compilation}}. It's not enough that we know. Letting all Wikipedia users know (through the doc) that there is a valid rationale behind the difference in formatting, would perhaps rid this page of unnecessary debate. 65.88.88.127 (talk) 16:12, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

It seems the number of works with dual numbers (print & electronic ISBN) or just an eISBN (when published solely as

Apparently, there is no such thing.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:48, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Some publishers are using the term anyway (in edition notices of both print and digital books), but the acronym is not important. How to differentiate, if need be? It seems to me that digital versions of books increasingly differ from print versions, sometimes with "enhanced" features. If eISSN is justified, "eISBN" (or whatever) should be considered. 208.87.234.201 (talk) 01:29, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Not necessary per

WP:NOT#BIBLIOGRAPHY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:34, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The question was about specifying that there may be substantially different editions based on medium-type. Is it enough to add e.g. |type=e-book and |edition=digital (or similar) to a citation of an e-book that has additional features not in the print editions? Or is an additional signifier along the lines of eISSN to be considered? 65.88.88.127 (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi there. In this edit I overcame a date=/year= mismatch error but I do not feel this is a proper edit to really fix the error. What is the correct fix? The papers were re-released in 2010 and written in 1914. Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|

I don't think it was the correct fix. Your cite uses |date=28 January 1914 which appears to refer to the date of the lecture that is Chapter 12. Generally, |date= is the publication date. The template identifies Cambridge University Press as publisher but links to the Bartleby version. The Bartleby version is dated April 2000. According to WorldCat and GoogleBooks, the ISBN is for a 2008 Cambridge publication. Were I seeking the exact source that you are citing, I would be at a loss since I cannot extract the reality, the

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT

, from this collection of mismatched facts. Choose one source, and cite that. Since the Bartleby appears to support the article text, I would rewrite the cite this way:

{{cite book |last1=Quiller-Couch |first1=Sir Arthur |title=On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914 |edition=Online |url=http://www.bartleby.com/190/ |access-date=3 March 2012 |date=2000 |orig-year=1916 |publisher=Bartleby.com |chapter=XII. On Style |chapterurl=http://www.bartleby.com/190/12.html |at=¶6}}

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur (2000) [1916]. "XII. On Style". On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914 (Online ed.). Bartleby.com. ¶6. Retrieved 3 March 2012. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:15, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be helpful if |author[N]-link=y would auto-grab values from the author/first/last[N] parameters and use them. About 80% of the time, no disambiguation or other alteration is needed (unless you use one of those awful citations styles that force the use of initials, which should be banned on WP, but that's another matter).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:04, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

This would cover our article references in a sea of red links. Is that desirable? Most authors do not pass notability criteria. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:27, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

It's only if |author-link=y is coded. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:30, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

How about having the author-link not display if no target is found? Just a little more run-time overhead. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

But the same benefit would apply to other parameters that can accept wikilinks. So the first thing we'd see would be a thread saying, hey, if we have this cool autolinking feature for |author-link=, why not |work= and its aliases? And so on. Hard to justify saying yes to one and no to the rest, hard to justify the overhead to do all of them, in my opinion. Slippery slope, Unintended consequences. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

This proposal makes absolutely no sense. To reinforce what Jonesey said above, 99.9% of authors currently or will ever have a Wikipedia page devoted to them. Implementing this proposal would convert the reference section of many articles into a sea of red. Also the |author-link=y parameter makes no sense. If you are going to the trouble of using that, why not just use |author-link= as it was originally intended and only use it if and only if the corresponding page exists? (For the remaining 0.1% of authors that do have articles, it would be simple enough for a bot to create systematic redirects from the Vancouver style author name to the target article so that we can avoid that awful first1, last1, ... parameter bloat, but that's another matter ;-) Boghog (talk) 20:25, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

To link author names in |vauthors=, use |author-linkn= where n is that author's position in the |vauthors= list. Same is true for |veditors=. Bots to create redirects not needed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:37, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Completely agree that bots are not needed (see below). Boghog (talk) 21:07, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Implementing this proposal would convert the reference section of many articles into a sea of red - No reading of SMcCandlish's proposal suggests such an outcome. No reading of J. Johnson's proposal suggests such an outcome. Both mentions of "sea of red" have been unfounded. I assumed that Jonesey95 simply misread the proposal, but to continue saying that is puzzling to me.
I assume the point of SMcCandlish's proposal is that |last=Ishihara|first=Shintaro|author-link=Shintaro Ishihara is significantly more difficult and time-consuming for the average, non-techy user than |last=Ishihara|first=Shintaro|author-link=y, as well as being a case of data redundancy/duplication. It has a small upside and no downside that I can see, aside from the one-time developer effort, and a small bit of feature creep. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:50, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

OK, I misread the original proposal, but I still think it doesn't make any sense. Works "80% of the time" is a non starter. In addition, there are numerous ways that an the title of an author could be spelled and authors with the same name are a frequent occurrence. It is simpler and more reliable for an editor to locate and link the author's article than relying on an automatic procedure that will frequently be wrong. Boghog (talk) 21:09, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The proposal assumes that the editor would first check to see if the article's title is an exact match for first+last. The only difference would be what they code. They wouldn't use the feature in cases where it wouldn't work. The 80% number is the proposer's guesstimate of the proportion of cases where it would work. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:14, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Assumptions concerning editor behavior are dangerous. An editor would have made a conscious decision to use the |author-linkn= and is more likely to have checked the target of the link. An editor using |authorn-link=y may assume that it would work without checking. Boghog (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

A fair point. A competent editor would check for a redlink, but not all editors are that competent. At least we're now on the same page as to what the proposal means. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:38, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't like this idea. No automatic system will be able to determine if the linked-to article is the right one. Consider Diana Ross (author) - how is the system going to know that the disambiguator is necessary to distinguish from the Motown singer? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:23, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The system doesn't determine that, the editor does. As I've said, the editor would not code |author-link=y unless they have checked and determined that the correct article's title is a match for first+last. At least that's how the proposal intends for it to work. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:30, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Expectations of editorial care and thoroughness are nearly always disappointed. While there is no indication that an editor will exercise more care and checking if s/he has to type out the full name, yet we might hope that the few extra seconds required might allow for a tad more reflection on the matter. What would be really disappointing is if some editors started thinking that the s/w will handle all the details, and blame the s/w where all they did was to type "y". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:22, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I am thinking to create a simple template, {cite_page} to ignore "title=" & "publisher" and just show "Author (year). p. [url page]." as a short cite for optional link page+url. However, the template could also show "volume=" so the cite could link a page within different volumes of the same author/year book. The benefit would be to morph multiple refs to the same book, but different pages, to be {cite_page} with optional "url=" link to each page (rather than link to title). Recent timing tests show the simple markup cite templates (without Lua) now run over 800/second and use perhaps 300 bytes (rather than Lua's 1,000-1,600 per cite, as 4x title+url length) of the

What's wrong with using the existing {{sfn}} and its cousins?

Here's a short cite, linking to page 34 of an article, hosted on www.example.com.^[1]

The real source is a Time magazine article, fully cited using |ref=harv.^[2]