Template talk:London Gazette/Archive 1

Using Special:linksearch it appears that there are over 150 articles linking to the London Gazette in the old format url (all now broken of course), see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=www.gazette-online.co.uk&namespace=&limit=250&offset=0 Some others are using the new format, but not the template, and others just link to the Gazette Online homepage and probably could be fixed to point to a specific issue. I'll try and work through some of these from time to time, but it will take a while. David Underdown 13:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I've been giving this issue some thought, it looks like the linksearch is picking up only a fraction of the references which are out there for some reason. This search [1] suggests that there are 2351 pages in the English Wikipedia which contain the text "London Gazette", and this one [2] returns 1620 hits for "gazettes-online. Some of these probably don't actually contain broken references of course, but it gives us some idea of the likely size of the task. A little experimentation with http://www.gazettes-online shows that it is only the pdf (i.e. issue number) and &geotype (i.e. city) parameters which are essential. If this template were amended to make only these mandatory, it would probably be possible for someone to create a bot task to find old-style links and convert them to using the template, it appears that - slightly confusingly - supplements are actually given tehre own issue number, so we don't lose much information, and dropping this info altogether would solve the "problem" above with "archived" supplements and issues. David Underdown 16:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, it might be better to create a second template for a bot to use with less mandatory information requirements, and maybe also put the articles into a category so they can then be manually worked to add the additional info. David Underdown 10:02, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I've just been updating the London Gazette links on John Capper to use the template (since the existing ones were the old style urls), and the third use of the template doesn't seem to be rendering correctly for no reason that I can work out - the url and the link title are both visible on the page, along with the square brackets. Any ideas? David Underdown 12:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

This seems to have gone away as I can't see a problem with the templated links. I've just added a few more.--DavidCane 01:26, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it was somethign to do with the way the dates used to be then. Doesn't really matter now it's fixed anyway. David Underdown 09:09, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi - I think it would be useful if one could quote from the gazette in the reference. Could we have an optional parameter as per {{Cite web}} which allows for

{{#if: {{{quote|}}} 
  |  “{{{quote}}}”
}}

Any objections? --Matilda ^talk 22:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This is possible, but as the template is almost invariably used inside <ref> tags. This could just be added as plain text ahead of the template. e.g.

<ref>"A Railway commencing in the City of London at a point in King William-street 20 yards or thereabouts measured in a north-westerly direction from the junction of Clements-lane..." – {{LondonGazette|linkeddate=1890-11-25|issue=26109|startpage=6519|endpage=6520|accessdate=2008-03-19}}</ref>

which would come out in the references section as:

"A Railway commencing in the City of London at a point in King William-street 20 yards or thereabouts measured in a north-westerly direction from the junction of Clements-lane..." – You must specify date= when using {{London Gazette}}.

--DavidCane (talk) 00:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The same argument could be used against having it in {[tl|cite web}}, some people seem to prefer putting a small quote in teh notes, rather than in the body text - though in that case it could equally be added as plain text after the template I suppose. David Underdown (talk) 08:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a bit of thread necromancy, but I've been playing with the sandbox, and think I've managed to get a quote parameter working - not being able to have a quote in the style of cite web or cite news has been driving me crazy. Anyone care to have a look? --tronvillain (talk) 22:51, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Is it possible to use ref name with the template? I'm getting "Cite error: Invalid ref tag; name cannot be a simple integer. Use a descriptive title" when I try to. Any suggestions? Craigy (talk) 09:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions? Anyone? Also, the start pages were only assigned around about 1785, so what parameters are meant to be used when referencing gazette pages before that time? Craigy (talk) 19:36, 22 June 2008 (UTC) I've sorted the second issue but still have problems with the first... Craigy (talk) 21:01, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that when you use the naming function in a reference the name has to be text rather than a number. You also cannot use spaces so it should look like this: <ref name=text>citation</ref> rather than <ref name=1>citation</ref>. This is a restriction of the ref tag rather than this template. Have a look at the formatting in

City & South London Railway for fully formatted examples using the LondonGazette Template.--DavidCane (talk

) 21:40, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I was doing that in the first place, but I'll get there in the end. Craigy (talk) 11:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

For those who have searched the LG for the past few years and found that 1985 hasn't been searchable since (like I have), I have just received a reply from someone at the LG who has said that 1985 has recently been transcribed and should be available by December 2008 at the latest. Craigy (talk) 11:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

An issue arising from the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Neil Hamilton Fairley/archive1:

Shouldn't all of the London Gazette references have the PDF symbol as they must be viewed in PDF format?

My understanding is that it does not appear because what you actually get is a page of which a frame is a PDF. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:23, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the wikipedia software adds the PDF icon to the link if the URL contains ".pdf". The London Gazette URL does not link directly to the PDF but a container page so the icon is absent. I didn't consider this to be an issue when I created the template, but I will see if it is possible to suppress the usual link icon and use the PDF icon instead. --DavidCane (talk) 11:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Done.--DavidCane (talk) 11:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It may be good to also add "(PDF)" as the |format=PDF parameter does in citation templates. —PC-XT+ 17:20, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

As an experiment, I started to proofread issue 19345 and 19346 (both from January 1836) on Wikisource. If this effort turns out to make any sense, we could have many years of work ahead. Is there any favorite issue or date to try next? --LA2 (talk) 05:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

If both the linkeddate and date parameters are missing, the template displays both a comma and a period as the closing punctuation. This is easy enough to fix, but should it just be shortened to a period, or should I add a check to the error box for the date parameters? Based on the template documentation, I'm thinking adding it to the error box is probably the way to go. – RobinHood70 ^talk 18:08, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Note that a recent change has altered this to leaving two periods instead of a comma and a period, which leaves us essentially in the same position. – RobinHood70 ^talk 07:59, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've added date/linkeddate as a required parameter to this template. Please note that this will produce errors where none showed before, however I believe the template documentation makes it fairly clear that date should always be included. If this behaviour is significantly disruptive, it can be removed if there's a pressing demand, but the better option is probably to fix those articles where the errors occur so that dates are included. – RobinHood70 ^talk 21:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Can someone with the know-how please introduce a parameter to allow users to delink

Done. Just use nolink=1 and it will not be linked. – RobinHood70 ^talk 21:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Apterygial ^talk 00:43, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I created an index to the London Gazette, some time ago (which allows you to find the issue number from the date). I linked to it from the /doc page, but thought I might mention it here too. Wikipedia:London Gazette Index. Rich Farmbrough, 22:59, 25 June 2011 (UTC).

There is a type of London Gazette entry called a "notice", for example http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/55222/notices/4SI - would it be worth adding capability for these? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The notices are just extracts from the main gazette. The equivalent entry in the gazette for the above is at http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/55222/pages/8731, which can be templated as:
"No. 55222". The London Gazette. 11 August 1998. --DavidCane (talk) 21:46, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

You're quite right: the thing is, normally when I search the LG, on the search results page there will be two links: a blue "See PDF" and a green "Buy Gazette" - the "See PDF" has all the required info except the date, and I can click it to get that. However, when searching for the two words "Melvyn Bragg", all it came back with was a blue "See full notice" link to the URL I gave first off - issue number yes, but page number no. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:08, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

It's quite common to need to open the search results to check the contents, as the snippets of text displayed often do not display words that were searched for. An exact phrase search for "Melvyn Bragg" would show two search results - one for the notice with the search term shown and one for the gazette page with it not shown.--DavidCane (talk) 21:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

In all of Wikipedia there is a consistent style that holds true for all links. Except, apparently, for the links produced by this template.

1. "No. 29169". The London Gazette. 21 May 1915.
2. "29169 p. 4894".
   London Gazette
   . 21 May 1915. Retrieved 16 November 2009.

These two cites give roughly the same information. The first is produced by {{London Gazette}} and the second by a misused {{cite news}} template. The order of output is a bit different but the important part is what is missing from the {{London Gazette}} template output. What is missing is external link icon. Because every external link in WP has that icon, I was surprised at the unexpected output of the {{London Gazette}} template.

Thought you should know in case you'd like to fix it.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 03:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I've removed the "plainlinks" class, which is what causes the behaviour you're describing. Since it is nominally a PDF file you're looking at (even if fairly customized), I've left that icon in place (since it was already there, just hidden) rather than the normal external link icon. Thanks! – RobinHood70 ^talk 09:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not the same as a normal link to a PDF file. The latter will download the whole PDF file, and launch the PDF viewer of either your computer or your browser. A London Gazette link on the other hand will use the LG's own file viewer to show you a page; this allows you to create a PDF doc based on what you are viewing. PDF files do exist on the LG servers, which may be downloaded if you know the URL, but these are huge compared to the views that {{

LondonGazette

}} offers.

Therefore I don't think that this was a good change: the presence of the PDF icon implies behaviour different from the actual behaviour. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:21, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure? I just tried both links from my initial post in this thread with a pair of old browsers (IE7 and really old Opera 6). Opera displayed an html page and then spawned Adobe Acrobat—my Opera browser is configured to open pdf files in Acrobat rather than the Adobe reader. IE7 displayed the same html page and the embedded version of Adobe reader. Both of those browsers and the Chrome browser downloaded and displayed only the single page (4894). All three browsers acted exactly the same regardless of which of the two links were used.

The presence of the PDF icon implies exactly behavior that actually occurs. Before the change, the invocation of a PDF viewer was the unexpected action.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 14:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I originally suppressed the PDF icon following a discussion above, because the PDF was embedded. I have noticed recently that the container window does not work in quite the same way as it used to and now spawns a separate Acrobat window rather than displaying the Gazette page embedded. Whether this is because of something changing on the London Gazette site or something else I don't know.--DavidCane (talk) 20:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't get an Acrobat window, separate or otherwise. I still get the Gazette page embedded. Firefox 3.6.28, Windows XP. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

If you look at the page source you will see that the page is served in frames. The top frame is Gazette page navigation and the bottom frame is the pdf of the selected page. How that pdf is displayed is browser dependent: Chrome displays pdf's in its own way, IE7 uses the Adobe plug in, and my old Opera 6 spawns an external viewer. I suspect that Firefox is similar to Chrome in how it displays pdfs.

In the page source for the examples above, there is this line near the bottom:

<frame name="pdf" onload="trackView();" src="/issues/29169/pages/4894/page.pdf" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="1" />

/issues/29169/pages/4894/page.pdf

If you add that to the Gazette's domain name you get this:

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29169/pages/4894/page.pdf

Click on that and you get a pdf document of only no. 29169 p. 4894—displayed however it is that your browser is configured to display pdfs.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 22:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

(←) Just so it's clear, the "change" wasn't something I actively did, it was more of a passive choice. By removing the "plainlinks" class, that left only the older "PDFlink" class, which is what's showing the PDF icon. It'll take all of about two seconds to remove that as well if desired, but I really have no opinion on whether the link is appropriate for a PDF in a frame or not. I'll be watching this page, though, so if the decision is to remove it, once I notice, I'll make the change if another template-savvy person doesn't beat me to it. Edit: Oops, looks like David already said something similar above—I missed it at first. – RobinHood70 ^talk 02:50, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

No! Do not remove the pdf icon. Do not. The icon serves to notify readers that when they click that link, they will be leaving the normal Wikipedia space. Because of this, readers know what to expect. The standard expectation when a reader clicks a "plain link" is that they will be served a Wikipedia page. This was why I started this thread—the reality did not meet my expectations.

Unless and until the Gazette changes file format, do not remove the pdf icon.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 03:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean removing it altogether, I just meant that it would be replaced by the standard external link icon. – RobinHood70 ^talk 04:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Would it be possible to display supplement numbers where supplied? At present, filling in the supp field just displays supplement - this is fine where there is only one supplement (in which case the LG usually doesn't number it), but in numbers of cases there are multiple supplements which are numbered. Proper text citation should include this detail. My suggestion would be to modify the template so that if a number X is included in this field, it generates (Supplement X), with the behaviour remaining otherwise unchanged from the status quo.

Additionally, would it be possible to add a flag that allows the citation to display in an abbreviated format, eg: LG 31086(S3):15151–15162icon. 27 Dec 1918. Access 23 Jun 2012. Dates formatting would still be derived from what was input by the editor. Allowing a condensed format will be useful for a resource index that I am starting to compile (in a sortable table) for Mil History and Orders/Decorations/Medals editors and will allow editors flexibility in citation style in other appropriate contexts. The suggested format includes moving the supplement number to after the issue number - this prevents sorting issues when using in a sortable table. AusTerrapin (talk) 18:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Setting the |supp= parameter doesn't just alter the display, it also alters the URL. Taking the example of the previous section, compare these:

• {{London Gazette|issue=29169|startpage=4894|date=21 May 1915|accessdate=16 November 2009}} → "No. 29169". The London Gazette. 21 May 1915.
• {{London Gazette|issue=29169|startpage=4894|date=21 May 1915|accessdate=16 November 2009|supp=yes}} → "No. 29169". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). 21 May 1915.

Only the URL in the first one works; the other is broken. Therefore, the |supp= parameter formats the URL. Do different supplements have different forms of URL?

Another problem that we have as things stand is that any value in |supp= is treated the same as |supp=yes, even |supp=no. I think that we should get all this cleaned up before we look at altering the effect of |supp=. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:38, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

All of the London Gazette pages in supplements have a different url where /pages/ is replaced with /supplements/. The rest of the url is otherwise the same for both, although the page numbering in supplements starts at 1 each time and does not run in sequence with the normal gazettes which continue from edition to edition and only restart at the beginning of a year. If a supplement number is required to be shown, this would be simplest to implement using an additional parameter (say |suppnum).--DavidCane (talk) 20:56, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Supplement page numbers as far as I can see are sequential across an entire year, so other than the first for the year, page numbers will start at something much later than 1 (whether this is significant for coding is another matter that I leave to the experts). From a template user perspective, adding another field to fill out would be a pain. Using the existing field would be preferred and avoids any deprecation issues (if editors have already entered the supplement number in this field, and quite a few of us have, it will automatically take advantage of the change). I acknowledge it will be slightly more complex for coding (instead of checking for N/No/Blank = not a supplement vs anything else = is a supplement, it would become check for N/No/Blank = not a supplement vs 'is a number' = display '(Supplement X)' vs anything else = display '(Supplement)'), never the less it shouldn't be unworkably more complicated and will provide a better outcome for editors. AusTerrapin (talk) 07:42, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

The present test is very simple: if |supp= is blank or absent, it's not a supplement; if it's filled in with anything, even |supp=no, it is assumed to be a supplement.

If we are going to change the behaviour of this parameter, we need to (i) document what is allowed; (ii) clean up existing uses to fall within those allowed values; (iii) fix the parameter coding in the template so that it behaves per documentation. Ideally it would throw an error if a non-allowed value is used: for example, use of the |notarchive= parameter puts the page into Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters. I fixed up a lot of |supp=n last year (example), but by no means all. Only when all uses of |supp= are "clean" can we start using the parameter for a variant purpose. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:25, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I've added a "ps" parameter to allow suppression of the trailing period, for compatibility with the {{

That is what I have been doing, and you have been changing my edits. What is wrong with the logical and simple {{#if: {{{ps|}}} | {{{ps}}} | . }}? Or if you don't want the period, use {{#if: {{{ps|}}} | {{{ps}}} }}. Debresser (talk) 06:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I reverted your edits (which restored a work in progress of my own) because that version simply didn't work correctly. The "logical and simple" way it's done now has the additional advantage of compatibility with the way that other citation templates such as {{

Fatuorum

12:50, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have too little time for that, and I am willing to take your word for it. The {{Sfn}} template uses an even simpler code: {{{ps|.}}}. Debresser (talk) 17:13, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

That does indeed seem to do the same job more simply, so I've refactored the code accordingly.

Fatuorum

18:01, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Always good to have an old template editor around. :) Debresser (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

We now have a double full stop showing at the end of the citation if no retrieval date is used.--DavidCane (talk) 22:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I think I fixed this now. I checked it, and it seems fixed. Please see if no other issues arose as a result. Debresser (talk) 00:25, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems fixed to me too, thanks for saving me a job.

Fatuorum

00:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

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

Please edit the template to ensure that the output of the gazettes' names is rendered in line with the wiki/official names, that is to say, with the "The" as part of the title viz: 'The London Gazette', 'The Edinburgh Gazette', 'The Belfast Gazette'. Thank you. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:46, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Not done: This page is no longer protected. Subject to consensus, you should be able to

have a chat

) 05:20, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Ohconfucius, I've reverted your edit, not because I wholly disagree with the principle although after years of staring at London Gazette, seeing The London Gazette does seem strange but because of inconsistent behaviour. If the parameter |nolink= is set to yes and therefore the link to The London Gazette isn't made then the display in the citation is just London Gazette still. As long as the display name is the same regardless of the setting of |nolink= then I have no objection. NtheP (talk) 17:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I confess I don't know enough about the coding of templates so I produced this error. Frankly I'm only bothered with the fact that we have inconsistencies in that the article is at 'The [London/Belfast/Edinburgh] Gazette', whilst the template-generated reference omits the 'The'. And I agree that we ought to have them all the same. Perhaps you can help? -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the issue is here: the correct name of the gazette is The London Gazette. Nthep, could you please self-revert back to the correct title? Surely displaying the proper title of the publication is something to be applauded? If there are other coding issues with the para|nolink, they could be corrected at the same time, I'm sure. Many thanks -

talk

) 07:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Here's how, you need to put the definite article in twice - once for the linked form, the other for the unlinked form. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

That's great - many thanks RR. -

talk

) 14:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The London Gazette has recently launched a new beta website, using the new url http://www.thegazette.co.uk/ - this will also incorporate the Belfast and Edinburgh publications. The end of the url will remain the same (ie issue/nnnnnnn/[pages/supplements]/mmmm) but the London Gazette urls will begin http://www.thegazette.co.uk/london (and so on for Belfast and Edinburgh - I haven't checked the earliest editions to see if Oxford is used). The existing urls will work for now but will eventually be replaced by ones in this form. David Underdown (talk) 16:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The changes to the template needed to follow the new url format have been made. Fortunately these were fairly minimal.--DavidCane (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Hoorah! This is exactly why the template's such a good thing. Nice one. DBD 16:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

This template is utterly user-unfriendly. As a fairly experienced editor, I have no idea how to fix this, and hope someone can or will. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I did it (the final insult was a typo). Point remains-- most unfriendly template, too hard to figure out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Should we move to Template:The Gazette (UK) following the website rebrand? DBD 16:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The template has now completely stopped working, presumably because of the tinkering with the Gazette's website. I don't have the technical expertise to fix this. Anyone who does, please feel free. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

The new url format for one of the example templates appears to be: http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/33000/pages/8957. Presumably, Edinburgh and Belfast gazettes are similarly structured.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

There was an article in The Independent last week stating that the London Gazette had gone online. Since it's been online for years, I assumed that this meant that the printed version would no longer be produced.

Anyway, I've tried the three LG links in Alexander Henderson, 1st Baron Faringdon (one of which is a supplement), and they still work; although the site has changed its appearance, you get to the right pages. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:12, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to be working again now. -- Necrothesp (talk) 19:36, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

The Gazette appears to have changed their website and the way in which issues appear, [3], so this template will need to change to adjust to it.--Tærkast (Discuss) 10:35, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

All of the examples in the template's doc page work, so what changes do you think are required?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:16, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Mmm.. You're right. It was just a one-off change in the citation. --Tærkast (Discuss) 11:51, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi. What is the link between the parameters called "Notice ID" and "Notice code" on the Gazette website, and the ones specified in the WP template (|issue= and the like)? Specifically, if I want to link to [4] using {{London Gazette}}, what should I enter in the template fields? Thanks! It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

There is no connection. This template is used to link directly to a pdf view of an original page from the gazette. The notices pages operate on a different basis and come out in between printed versions of the gazette. The notices pages cannot be linked to using this template, but the notices generally end up in the gazette itself on its next publication date. The last one (issue 61157) was published on 2 March and covered the period 27 February - 1 March, so the next one will probably be published on Wednesday. When it is, you will be able to link to the page with the notice on using this template.--DavidCane (talk) 23:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The template currently provides a link to one page only of a LG issue (the endpage value only affects the link text). To see further pages, one has to click forward or back and wait for the site to respond. But the site permits a URL such as http://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/55710, without a page number. This produces a PDF of all pages of the issue, so that one can scroll up and down without having to wait for the site. Would it be useful to make this feature available via the template, if only for use in the many honours list pages (

Yes it certainly would. I'll look at it tomorrow. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC).

I have set up {{

London Gazette/test cases}} will need cases with various combinations of startpage and endpage, supplement specified (correctly and incorrectly) and not specified (correctly and incorrectly). Note that this makes "startpage" no longer mandatory. All the best: Rich Farmbrough

, 15:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC).

Needs to be synced with other changes. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC).

 Done Please let me know of any problems. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:00, 11 July 2015 (UTC).

Would just like to know which date should be used if linked to a supplement of an issue: the date the supplement was published or the date when the issue itself was published? Thanks. --

The date that the supplement was published. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I suppose I could just start using cite news or cite web instead, but the lack of a quote parameter for this template was driving me crazy. I have been playing around in the sandbox, and I think that I've managed to get it working. Would anyone care to have a look? --tronvillain (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a problem in the template language with nested constructs like {{#if:{{{startpage|{{{page|{{{pages|{{{2| which used to bite people when coding the old {{cite book}} templates before LUA was implemented. If someone writes a wapper around a template in this case lets call it {{son of LG}} the code will typically have within it:

{{son of LG
|startpage={{{startpage|}}}
....
}}

This means that as above the if statement will fail because startpage exists but is empty and so page is never tested. Here is an example to show it.

{{London Gazette/sandbox |issue=31222 |date=7 March 1919 |page=3279 |supp=5}} -- displays 3279 and the link is to supp5 p. 3279

• "No. 31222". The London Gazette (5th supplement). 7 March 1919. p. 3279.

{{London Gazette/sandbox |issue=31222 |date=7 March 1919 |page=3279 |supp=5 |startpage=}} -- displays 3279 but the link fails at supp5 because the if never gets to the page parameter

• "No. 31222". The London Gazette (5th supplement). 7 March 1919. p. 3279.

It is to avoid this possible scripting problem with an if statement that usually works for direct calls to a template, but usually fails when called from a wrapper template that I usually write in wrapper templates a construct like this:

|{{#if:{{{startpage|}}}  |startpage  |HIDE_PARAMETER}}={{{startpage|}}}

and why I want LUA module for citations to support a null parameter/sink (similar to a null device on a Unix system), as it would allow the dummy HIDE_PARAMETER to be replaced with null). -- PBS (talk) 12:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Before the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 took effect in 1752, the year in Great Britain officially started on Lady Day, 25 March. This is reflected in the Gazette dates, so issue no. 9042, 19–23 March 1750, is followed by issue no. 9043, 23–26 March 1751. The convention when giving dates between 1 January and 24 March for years before 1752 is to note that they are Old Style, or to give the year as 1750/1. Since the recent changes the template now doesn't like this, and gives a red error message to Check date values e.g. here. In that list of references is a Gazette with a date range spanning more than one month, which the template doesn't seem to like either. Opera hat (talk) 18:36, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

British dates before the implementation of the

MOS:OSNS). So the usual way to deal with this would be to to footnote the first instance, to show if you are using anything else. The alternative is to ask at Help talk:Citation Style 1 about this issue as under the bonnet that is what is being used. -- PBS (talk

) 19:05, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Date ranges, as

MOS:DATERANGE

. The fix is to insert spaces around the en dash:

{{London Gazette|nolink=y|issue=9359|startpage=2|date=30 March – 2 April 1754}}

"No. 9359". The London Gazette. 30 March – 2 April 1754.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:12, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

The problem is not with years after 1752. The problem exists for the year before 1752. The date in the Gazette will follow that start of year of March 25. For example take they year 1724 the dates from the last two issues in December 1723 followed by the issues of 1724 are dated 1723 (because the Gazette uses 25 March as the start of year

1. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6229/page/1 28 December 1723
2. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6230/page/1 31 December 1723
3. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6253/page/1/page/1 4 January 1723
4. ...
5. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6253/page/1 21 March 1723
6. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6254/page/1 22 March [to 28 March 1734]

The modern publication dates on the top if the page are wrong, because the publication date would appear after the last date rather than on the first day of the period covered (one can check it by using the year of printing on the last page). This normally would not matter too much, but it does for isssue 6254 because if the publication date is 22 March then the year was 1723, if the publication date is 28 March then the year was 1724.

In Wikipedia articles we usually set the start of year to 1 January so this would mean that issue 6253 would be dated 4 January 1624 (

MOS:DATERANGE

"The slash notation (2005/2006) may be used to signify a fiscal year or other special period, if that convention is used in reliable sources". So

• {{{London Gazette |issue=6253|page=1 |date=4 January 1723/1724}}

should be acceptable (although traditionally the second year is abbreviated to 2 digest "1723/24"), But it give an error warning:

• "No. 6253". The London Gazette. 4 January 1723/1724. p. 1. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

As an example of the dual year dating is the famous/infamous document from the Parliamentary archive the death-warrant for Charles I it is dated by the website as "29 Jan 1648/9". Another example less famous but more comprehensive is

• "Table of acts: 1649," in Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, ed. C H Firth and R S Rait (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1911), lxvi-lxxvi. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/lxvi-lxxvi

in that book the individual acts for the first 3 months of each year are dated 1648/9. Taking a specific one related to the execution:

• 17 March, 1648/9 Act for abolishing the kingly office in England, Ireland and the Dominions thereunto belonging. (C.J., vi. 166; Scobell, ii., 7–8.]

-- PBS (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

All but one of your examples can be written into |date= without error. Here, dates quoted from each of your examples and rewritten using the template:

1. From Saturday December 28. to Tuesday December 31. 1723.

   "No. 6229". The London Gazette. December 28–31, 1723.

2. From Tuesday December 31. to Saturday January 4. 1723.

   "No. 6230". The London Gazette. December 31 – January 4, 1723. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

3. From Saturday March 21. to Tuesday March 24. 1723.

   "No. 6253". The London Gazette. March 21–24, 1723.

4. From Tuesday March 24. to Saturday March 28. 1724.

   "No. 6254". The London Gazette. March 24–28, 1724.

Throughout the whole of the Gazette canon between 1665 and 1753, there will likely be fewer than 100 issues bearing dates that cross the December–January boundary. Since cs1|2 are general purpose tools, they will not be perfect for every possible situation. For the relatively few instances where an old style date crosses the December–January boundary, possible workarounds are:

1. don't use this template and instead write the citation by hand
2. do as the Gazette does and use only the first date in the range

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:34, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I think we are taking past each other on this issue. the problem is not Dec. 31 to Jan. 4 that is simple it is "31 December 1723". The problem is the next issue starting on 4 Jan. because it has two years 4 January 1723/1724. Have a look at the http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/04/ for another example. -- PBS (talk) 14:58, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Pepys may have used that date format but this template is not about Pepys; it's about London Gazette.

The issue starting on 4 January is issue 6231. On the first page of that issue is this:

From Saturday January 4. to Tuesday January 7. 1723.

The Gazette itself is not using a doubled-year date.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:25, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I have now presented 3 links to 3 different primary sources. All of them use this sort of dual year dating. The Gazette is presenting the dates using the Julian calendar with the start of the year on 25 March, and so it is confusing because anyone who does not know about this will assume

MOS:DATERANGE

(that CS1 is supposed to support) "The slash notation (2005/2006) may be used to signify a fiscal year or other special period, if that convention is used in reliable sources".

As Opera hat pointed out this did not show up in this template before I turned it into a wrapper, because the date parameter did not validate the input. -- PBS (talk) 19:19, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

You did, and I have looked at all of them. None of them are Gazettes; all of them are someone else writing about historical events. With this template, we are not writing about historical events; we are citing a document which itself writes its own issue dates in single-year form. At the Gazette's website, we can view facsimiles of these documents; the website uses a single-year issue-date. Were I searching through the paper originals, I would not be looking for double-year form issue dates because that form of issue date does not occur in the sources.

If we were, on the other hand, writing specifically about, for example, the compilation and printing of a particular Gazette issue, we would be writing about [an] historical [event] so it would be proper to use OSNS date forms in our writing. But that is not the purpose or function of this template. Dates in this template should reflect as closely as possible, within the constraints of cs1|2, the issue date that we get from the issue.

Surely the proper venue to discuss the perceived shortcomings of cs1|2 is Help talk:Citation Style 1, is it not?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

See my first posting to this section. -- PBS (talk) 18:33, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

This template collects pages that use deprecated parameters in Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with deprecated parameters. Currently only |ps= is declared as deprecated. I would suggest that there are a few other parameters that should also be deprecated:

1. |separator= – in cs1|2 the functionality of this parameter is handled by |mode= which is supported by this template
2. |startpage= and |endpage= – the sandbox version of the template has support for the standard cs1|2 parameters |page= and |pages= making |startpage= and |endpage= superfluous
3. |accessdate= and |access-date= – this template links to archived facsimiles of Gazette pages. Those pages will not change; the wrapping html page may change, but the facsimile will not. |accessdate= and |access-date= are intended to mark a point in time when the content of an ephemeral web page supported text in a Wikipedia article. The archived Gazette facsimile is not ephemeral even though the wrapping html page may be. If an editor at Wikipedia is citing the content of the wrapping html page, then this template is not the correct template and the editor would be better served by using {{cite web}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that all those should be deprecated, however you will need bots to fix that lot. -- PBS (talk) 18:29, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

In the sandbox I've added the above to the deprecated parameter categorizer and removed support for |access-date= and |accessdate=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:49, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Any reason to not update the live template from the sandbox?

I've got an AWB script that will fix the deprecated parameters which can go to

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:59, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Will anything be broken, or error messages displayed when the new script is put in place?

I have no objections providing this is done in two steps. The first is to update the script so that everything still works as before, but the updates can be put in place using the bot as suggested. Then when the bot has finished, put in another script that removes the support for unsupported parameters. -- PBS (talk) 13:31, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I have (in the last 24 hours) run an AWB script to do a similar update to the 77 articles that use {{Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae}} where I removed the use of startpage and endpage (replacing them with page or pages), and then altered the script so only page or pages can be used. The regular expression logic was quite easy: Look for every instance where there was startpage ... endpage pair, or endpaage ... startpage pair, and replace with pages, replace the remaining startpage with page. -- PBS (talk)

Will anything be broken? I don't think so, but I've been surprised before. If there is a serious failure, revert is our friend. Template:London Gazette/testcases and the various examples of the sandbox version of the template on this page would suggest that serious failure is unlikely.

I expect that there may be some page number and invalid |supp= error messages. These are easily discovered with an appropriate search string like "(invalid |supp= (help)".

I had thought to:

1. update the template
2. update the documentation
3. file
   WP:BRFA (the bot script is here
   )

   test and modify bot script while BRFA is pending

4. fix errors as they are discovered
5. run the bot
6. revise
   Module:Gazette util and Template:London Gazette
   to remove parameters and parameter values that are no longer supported
7. revise documentation

Bit more than two steps.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:11, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate that it is more complicated that just two steps , however fundamentally it is current state, transition state and new state. I wanted to make sure that we agree on the need for a transition state that as yet is of undetermined length.

I have just found a minor problem: this Template:MPs elected in UK election/gazette] will have to be modified as will all the instances of it.

--PBS (talk) 16:14, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that template will need to be modified sometime between steps 1 and 7 in my list. I think that it is only the template that needs to be modified to change |startpage = {{{page|}}} to |page={{{page|}}}.

So are we in agreement?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:39, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I am happy for you to proceed. -- PBS (talk) 23:42, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

See

help:CS1

I have rewritten the template as a wrapper around {{cite news}}.

I have made sure that all the current parameters are supported and that the tests for issue and date are maintained.

Changes:

1. The format is somewhat different. It now corresponded to the parameter ordering of {{cite news}} — I see this as an advantage as it will be similar to other in-line cations within an article.
2. The separator parameter used to support any character will now only support comma and dot. This is inline with the current standard templates that no longer supports "separator" but set the separator character by the mode parameter (see below)
3. ps is still supported but so is standard named "postscript parameter. However the default depends on the mode setting and is not set in the template.
4. The bug in the unnamed parameter 1 if fixed. Prior to the changes the value was not trimmed of any trailing spaces. This used to break the url by putting terminating spaces in it. This caused the url to link to the start of the issue and display the remainder of the url as part of the identifier on the page.

I have added some new parameters:

1. mode — can be set to "cs1" or "cs2" see
   help:CS1
   for more details.
2. title — if set then the url blue links under that. If not set then like before, the url blue links to the issue number.
3. ref — by default ref is set to "ref=Gazette number" so that if used with sfn for example it would be {{sfn|Gazette|18903|p=259}} or something similar.
   1. ref can be set to none to deactivate it (ref=none).
   2. ref can be set to any other value eg ref={{harvid|London Gazette|2017}} to set it to the current year.

Higher up this page there is a section #Unfriendly template where there is a complain that the code. I think that my changes simplify it, or at least it moves the complicated code into discrete sections. There is also several requests for a quotation parameter the last being in the section #Quote personally I do not think it is needed (as I always put the quote first and then add the citation), but it is now trivial to add the parameter to the code (if someone wants to do it):

|quote={{{quote|}}}

-- PBS (talk) 20:36, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Amazing work. I added the quote parameter, and just need to update the documentation. --tronvillain (talk) 14:23, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've already added it, thanks. --tronvillain (talk) 19:59, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if {{cite magazine}} would be a better choice because of how that template handles |issue=. Also, I think that the parenthetical supplement annotation prefixed to issue is in the wrong place and it looks bad. When the issue number is used in lieu of a title I think that the 'no.' prefix should be 'No.' I've changed the sandbox to use {{cite magazine}} and to place the supplement annotation in |type=.

These use |supp=:

• "No. 31712". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1919.
• "No. 31712". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1919. – sandbox
• "Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). No. 31712. 30 December 1919.
• "Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). No. 31712. 30 December 1919. – sandbox

and these don't:

• "No. 34000". The London Gazette. 1 December 1933.
• "No. 34000". The London Gazette. 1 December 1933. – sandbox
• "Tenders for Treasury Bills". The London Gazette. No. 34000. 1 December 1933.
• "Tenders for Treasury Bills". The London Gazette. No. 34000. 1 December 1933. – sandbox

It also seems to me that the value assigned to |supp= should be changed so that it is meaningful. Instead of being used as a boolean operator, where any text simply forces the template to add the supplement annotation, we might change the template so that when |supp= has a value other than 'y', that value modifies the supplement annotation:

|supp=y → The London Gazette (Supplement).

|supp=Fourth → The London Gazette (Fourth Supplement).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:15, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

That last thought implemented in the sandbox. That change will require awb or sommat to change |supp=<whatever content> to |supp=y before implementation. Were the awb task clever, |supp=1 would be changed to |supp=First.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:44, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Do we have any evidence that the LG uses numbered supplements? AFAIK any single issue has a maximum of one supplement, and often has none. They tend to be used when there are long lists of names, such as the New Year's Honours List. At present, a non-blank |supp= will alter the URL from .../page/... to .../supplement/..., and I know of no other valid URL formats. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:50, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Follow the title link in this cite:

"Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). No. 31712. 30 December 1919.

Right there as the main title, just below the coat of arms:

FOURTH SUPPLEMENT TO The London Gazette Of TUESDAY, the 30th of DECEMBER, 1919

Yes, when set |supp=<anything> modifies the target url (and adds the supplement annotation as I have already described). This is why I suggested that it would be necessary to do an awb run through these templates to change |supp=<anything> to |supp=y so that we can then use the sandbox change to modify how the supplement annotation renders.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:08, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I chose to wrap this template around {{

cite newspaper

}}, not because I think it is the best choice, but because the Gazette is a newspaper and using a standard citation template was better that what came previously. So if you want to change it to another standard citation template I have no objection.

As to changing the supp= parameter to something more meaningful, I have no objections, but what sort of percentage of links are we talking about that are anything other than either standard or to a supplement that is unnumbered? Is it worth adding complicated code for so few?

An example of the Gazette's inconsistency. In 2014 I copied a Gazette supplement about the military campaigns of 1815 to Wikisource. Notice that although it has supplement in the name "Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday 11 of July" it does not use supplement in the link to the Gazette archive.

-- PBS (talk) 10:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know how many second, third, fourth, ... supplements there are at the Gazettes. Because the old version of this template did not contemplate more meaningful supplement rendering, editors here did not, perhaps, think to identify which supplement they were referencing. Some apparently did or, maybe they just set |supp=1 because 1 equates to yes, true. There are some 8k |supp=yes so I've tweaked the sandbox to allow that usage along with |supp=y.

The changes I propose are not really all that complex or complcated as a diff shows.

Your supplement example doesn't work with the current or past templates any better or worse than it will with the sandbox version of the template. The fix is not in our bailiwick but must be done at the gazette database.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:49, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

When I implemented this template as a wrapper, I spent some time going through errors in the monthly error report for this template, and fixing some of them, because it allowed me to check that after the fix, the page displayed correctly using the new template.

So did the same yesterday, but concentrating on supp errors. The most interesting article I fixed was "Wyndham Deedes" because it has half a dozen or so, numbered supplements. So I set supp=n in each case. I have now altered the sandbox to handle this. If supp is set for any number between 2 and 16, it displays as a number (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc), anything else it displays as "Supplement" (diff). This means that the new code is backwardly compatible with the current usage so there is no need to fix anything (with a bot run). If the sandbox is put into production, and the change to supp is documented then over time editors can fix the problem.

I have added the example from "Wyndham Deedes" to the test page (so that the changes are tested and seen). I think that the output looks better in the sandbox (due to the usage of {{cite magazine}}, than it does under current {{cite news}}, so I am in favour of making the change, even if it is decided not to go with numbered supp=.

-- PBS (talk) 11:01, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

There was a problem with the new code. As I mentioned above there is an inconsistency in the Gazette database. Sometimes the creators of that page hierarchy do not include supplement in the url to a supplement eg. "Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday 11 of July" does not use supplement in the link to the Gazette archive. This will be confusing for many editors who want to display something to indicate that it is a supplement, particularly if there are other numbered supplements in the same Wikipedia article (as those will be automatically display the nth supplement). So I have created a new parameter called display-supp. If it exists then it determines what is displayed (taking a numeric value just like supp), but it does not alter the URL, that is still determined by supp=some value (see the testcases for examples). -- PBS (talk) 11:14, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

The inconsistency is not necessarily a problem with the new code. The new code reveals a problem with the Gazette's database. Ideally, the problem should be fixed there. I suspect that getting them to fix it for us is unlikely.

It seems to me that when both |supp= and |display-supp= are set, this template should prefer |supp= so that there isn't a 'silly display'. Sandbox has changed to reflect this.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:28, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

That seems to be a better solution and like the last iteration it is backwardly compatible. I suggest that the new code is implemented within the next 24 hours, and whatever is used to generate the monthly error report is updated to reflect the new and re-purposed parameters. I have no idea how to update the test, so someone else will have to do that part. -- PBS (talk) 17:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I suppose that backward compatibility is all very well but I don't think that |supp=<any value> should be permissible; |supp=no and |supp=n exist in the wild and because 'no' and 'n' are members of the any value set, they modify the url accordingly. For this reason, I believe that |supp= accept only a limited set of values: y, yes, 1–16. Yes, to do so requires that we troll though transclusions of this template to set everything right.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I have put the code that has been developed in test into production. -- PBS (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I spent quite a long time going through the error report over the last few weeks and have fixed a lot of the errors like the one you highlight have been fixed. In the longer term I see no problem with fixing these things and then closing down the options, but in the short term it is far better to have backwards compatibility, as it allows fixes while allowing the new options for parameters. In my opinion breaking changes are implemented far too often on this project. In my opinion implementing breaking code unnecessarily is bad programming and goes against the spirit of the consensus policy. Sure if you want to spend the time and go through the instances of this template fixing the problems before implementing a breaking change, you are welcome to do so, however the other approach is to let the change happen organically, over time. BTW why keep "y" and "yes" why not just a numeric?

I think a more useful change to make would be to get rid of the non-standard startpage & endpage and replace them with the standard parameters page and pages. There is really no reason to use startpage & endpage when the same information can be extracted from pages parameter using {{Str number/trim}}. -- PBS (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

|supp=1 suggests that there may be |supp=2 ... which may or may not be true. |supp=y does not. In keeping with rendering ordinals, |supp=1 should be expected to render as '1st supplement'. I suspect that most editors neither care, nor know how to find out, if a particular unnumbered supplement stands alone or is the first of some number of supplements.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:06, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be becoming a discussion about angels on pinheads. Less than a month ago there was just a flag representing a binary on or off. Now we are discussing the finer points of display. There is a difference in style over time. Earlier multiple editions used to start with Supplement now there seems to be a trend to "1st Supplement" (have not looked to see if there are always another numbered 2nd etc or if it is now the norm to number all Supplements).

There are/where three supp=nz in the list you provided Bill Hamilton (engineer), Robin Cooke, Baron Cooke of Thorndon and Whina Cooper. In the latter there are several things of interest issue 6830, page 6829, Sat. 15 June 1974 includes a bracketed "(New Zealand)"; Also in the same article issue 52564 Second Supplement, Friday, 14th June 1991 includes "New Zealand" not bracketed, and (by looking at the article) seems to be a precursor of the announcement in the New Zealand Gazette dated 1 July 1991.

If this is true for one dominion it is probably true for others. Do we want to be able to handle finer distinctions "1st Supplement" v. "Supplement" (that may well change over time) and issues like factoring in dominion? -- PBS (talk) 16:26, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

To continue down this rabbit hole. Here is a Supplement titled The London Gazette of Monday 30 December 2002 Supplement No. 1 going to page 28, the last page of that supplement (conveniently provided by the Gazette website interface), presents a TOC and "Commonwealth Honour list" with an additional 9 supplements starting with Supplement No. 2 for

Saint Christopher and Nevis. -- PBS (talk

) 17:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I must be too thick to fit into the rabbit hole because I'm not understanding what you have written. I think that you are suggesting that the template, as currently written, is too restrictive. But wasn't it you who implemented the numerical test and rendering of the supplement annotation? Except for |supp=y and |supp=yes, my original included whatever |supp= value an editor chose into the supplement annotation: |supp=Blue Meanie → (Blue Meanie Supplement)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

supp= should be restricted and ought not to be used outside a range because its primary usage is as a binary switch for use in the url, and because the Gazette urls are inconsistently implemented we have situations where there can be a supplement, but the url does not include the word supplement. This is why we need a display-supp. Now that I have seen more combinations in the wild that include additions to a supplement over and above the numeric value, I propose that we keep the 1-16 for display-supp (because that is what most of them are), but have a wild card default (to allow for any string) and alter the code back to displaying display-supp before a value in supp=. thoughts? -- PBS (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

The supplement parameter obviously needs to exist, because of the (inconsistently applied) difference in urls on the Gazette archive website. But does it really need to be displayed that a link is to a supplement at all? The Gazette when referring to itself does not distinguish them. E.g. in no. 29570 p. 4524: "The date of appt. of temp. Lt.-Gen. J. C. Smuts is 8th Feb. 1916, and not as in the Gazette of 17th Feb. 1916." But the notice referred to (no. 29477 p. 1791) is actually in the second supplement of 17 February 1916 to the Gazette of 15 February 1916. It would seem simpler to keep the supplement parameter at yes/no just to ensure the link is correct, and have the resultant display as "London Gazette, issue, page, date" and no more, regardless of whether the reference is to a supplement or not. Opera hat (talk) 18:17, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

It could be excluded. Up to now it has been displayed in this wrapper because it was displayed in the old code, so presumably some found it useful or desirable. I personally quite like it in its new format. I would object to having "yes" "no" though. It is more elegant to just set it if it is needed, otherwise it tends to clutter the interface of the template with an unnecessary parameter.-- PBS (talk) 19:23, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, perhaps this table describes how |supp= and |display-supp= should interact according to their assigned values:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

table modified.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

If we are to display supplement, then I think you table of option sums up what I would display apart from the condition display-supp=text, supp= in which case the text should be displayed, this would be desirable for "3rd Supplement (New Zealand)". -- PBS (talk) 08:25, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I have numbered the rows in the table to make referring to them simpler. I was referring to row 10 in my last comment, but I think it true for row 11 as well.

row six and seven should display the display-supp

row eight and nine are the problem, because they are ambiguous, however to keep the code simple for the vast majority of case, I would allow those to display display-supp, but that is an expedient given the limitations of the scripting language.

-- PBS (talk)

For rows 10 & 11 then, editors will be responsible for the whole of the supplement annotation except for the bounding parentheses, right? Then for your example, an editor must set |display-supp=3rd supplement (New Zealand) which the template will then render as : (3rd Supplement (New Zealand)). Table modified.

Rows 6 & 7 modified to use {{{display-supp}}}

Only row 9 is ambiguous: which of |display-supp=10 with |supp=1 should the template use? It can't know which is the correct value so defaults to the unnumbered rendering. I included row 8 because the only way to get '1st supplement' is to use |display-supp=1 but I can imagine that editors will similarly set |supp=1 even though they do not need to do that. If they do, then the numerical values assigned to |display-supp= and |supp= must agree so that we avoid ambiguity.

Given the limitations of the scripting language, I've been thinking that this bit of the template should be passed off to a small Lua module.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:00, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

/sandbox modified to support the conditions specified in the table. Uses

Module:Gazette util

to get values for |type=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:00, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

/sandbox modified to select the url path component value specified in the table. Uses

Module:Gazette util

to set |url=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:12, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

/sandbox modified for better page number handling and error reporting.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I thought that we had moved on and that we were keeping supp=y for unnumbered supplements and supp=1 for "1st supplement". At the moment I see that the test follow the table and that of position 3. So I suggest it is changed so "one" behaves as any other number, and update the documentation to reflect that. -- PBS (talk) 12:40, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

More anomalies

I have been looking at supplement editions set to yes to start to build a list.

While most of them the display and supplement are the same, meaning the supplement in the url is also correctly displayed using just the supplement, there are anomalies. There are supplements that link as pages (something that has already been mentioned in this section) which are catered for using the display-supp parameter

• /Edinburgh/issue/13427/page/1350 — display-supp=y
• 30637/page/4701 4 1918-04-16 — display-supp=4

But I have also come across two that link as supplements but are not supplement issues:

• 27994/supplement/963 - 1907-02-12 — Not a supplement
• 28121/supplement/2149 - 1908-03-20 — Not a supplement

This is not something we have considered in our table. How do others think this is best handled? -- PBS (talk) 18:49, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

1. In the longer run I would drop "yes", and stick with just "y" for supp this can be done by documenting only "y" as an option it and let time do the work.
2. As the vast majority of supplements are just Supplements without an ordinal, it is probably worth adding a "y" to display-supp that displays "Supplement" without an ordinal (likewise for supp) so then we can distinguish between the traditional use of "Supplement" and the more modern "1st Supplement" when it is part of a series. (see 1916 Birthday Honours and 2016 Birthday Honours)

• https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29608/supplement/5553 1916 (supplement)
• https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29609/supplement/5605 1916 (second)
• https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/61608/supplement/B1 2016 (no. 1)
• https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/61609/supplement/B41 2016 (no.2)

--PBS (talk) 19:14, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Might it be that /page/-located-in-/supplement/-space is the use-case for |supp=n? In which case:

Using |supp=n in the sandbox, the two examples render:

{{London Gazette/sandbox |27994 |supp=n |963 |date=1907-02-12}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}. — Not a supplement

{{London Gazette/sandbox |28121 |supp=n |2149 |date=1908-03-20}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}. — Not a supplement

I concur with dropping 'yes' in favor of 'y'; I'll adjust the table. If we choose to do that should we also drop '1' in favor of 'y' (row 3 of the table)?

I'm not sure that I see any reason to support |display-supp=y. Rewriting the example urls using the sandbox:

{{London Gazette/sandbox |29608 |supp=y |5553 |date=1916}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}.[[Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y|]] (supplement)

{{London Gazette/sandbox |29609 |supp=2 |5605 |date=1916}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}. (second)

{{London Gazette/sandbox |61608 |display-supp=1 |supp=y |B1 |date=2016}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}.[[Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y|]] (no. 1)

{{London Gazette/sandbox |61609 |supp=2 |B41 |date=2016}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}. (no.2)

Are these not the correct renderings?

Have you seen any cases where a non-supplement page number uses alpha characters (as the supplements above do)?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:13, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

What is the purpose of Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y? If the goal is to change 'yes' to 'y', wouldn't it be better to test for value that is not 'y'? And why is the sort key {{{issue|}}}? Wouldn't it be better to sort by {{{supp|}}}?

{{#ifeq:{{{supp|}}}|y|<!-- -->|[[Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp not set to y|{{{supp|}}}]]}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:16, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

I have been distracted the last day or so working on {{Cite Newgenbio}}.

To answer your most recent question first. The purpose of it is/was to collect the issues that use supp. Ordering the category by issue makes it easier to analyse the list by issue. Eventually there will be a complete list, and from it we can extract another one eg:

• 30634/supplement/4627 s 1918-04-16
  • 30635/supplement/4643 2 1918-04-16
  • 30636/supplement/4649 3 1918-04-16
  • 30637/page/4701 4 1918-04-16 — display-supp=4
  • 30638/supplement/4715 5 1918-04-16

So searching on insource:/\| *issue=30637/i allows us to find all the articles (currently 2) with issue=30637 and add to them display-supp=4, or insource:/\| *issue=30635/i (8 articles) change the supp parameter from y or yes to supp=2.

It was analysis of the returns in that category that led me to identify the two case (I have found so far) where /supplement/ is embedded in the url (insead of /page/) but the link is to a none supplement issue.

I am not sure, but a link in the London Gazette website may make this superfluous, if I (or someone else) can work out how to access the database directly. See LG data. LG DevDocs, LG spakql and LG flint editor.

either which way when I have built up a fuller picture I will publish it as a talk page supplement below this talk page.

• I am not in favour of using supp=n the proof was how many templates had that already added (until I ran am AWB script to remove them), you will have people using it just because it is not a supp. Instead I think a better way to handle the very few cases is supp=y and display-supp=none as this is similar to the way the LUA module handles postscript and ref when they are to be unset.
• I think we should keep the distinction between supp=y and supp=1, because the LG has over time made that distinction. I do not yet know when they introduced "1st" but they did at some point, and before that they were just called supplement even if they were the first of half a dozen (see my 1918-04-16 list above).

-- PBS (talk) 14:55, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Ok, row 1a becomes row5a:

Using |supp=y and |display-supp=none in the sandbox, the two examples render:

{{London Gazette/sandbox |27994 |display-supp=none |supp=y |963 |date=1907-02-12}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}.[[Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y|]] — Not a supplement

{{London Gazette/sandbox |28121 |display-supp=none |supp=y |2149 |date=1908-03-20}}

You must specify issue= when using {{London Gazette}}.[[Category:Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y|]] — Not a supplement

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, The great thing about documentation is it doesn't even have to compile. I was expecting display-supp=y to behave the same way as supp=y ie display Supplement (with display-supp=number displaying as 1st 2nd etc) + and additional free text option, above I presented an example of:

• /Edinburgh/issue/13427/page/1350 — display-supp=y

I would appreciate it if you implement that. (it just came up with a new addition to the category :Naval artillery and 26359/page/1 a supplement, but accessed via a page so it needs a display-supp=). -- PBS (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

So now apparently the old supp=yes no longer works, thus rendering many links useless. What on earth was the thinking behind this? Also, links always seem to take us to the first page in an issue and not the actual page specified. Why? It always worked before. Taking something that worked and tinkering with it until it doesn't work properly seems to be a completely retrograde step. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

If you are talking about User:Necrothesp/List of people created baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom‎, then the reason that you link to page one is because those templates use the now-unsupported |startpage= and |endpage= parameters. See the discussions above about the why and wherefore. Similarly, see the above discussion about |supp=yes.

A robot task that I ran last week fixed all of the {{London Gazette}} templates in article space. I notice that you have some pages in your user space that use this template with the now-unsupported parameters. If you would like, I think that I can run the bot on your user space and fix all of those templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:03, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I would be grateful if you did, since I have many, many pages using this template. Sorry to appear awkward here, but surely the reason we use templates instead of hard links is to avoid these problems? If parts of the template become deprecated then this is obviously going to cause issues. I'm not technically minded; I rely on templates to keep working once I've used them! -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:14, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I was fixing reference errors in Category:CS1 errors: dates, and encountered Charles Moore, 2nd Marquess of Drogheda. It uses two Gazette refs:

• {{London Gazette|issue=13615|page=64|date=18—21 January 1794}}
  Output: "No. 13615". The London Gazette. 18—21 January 1794. p. 64. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• {{London Gazette|issue=13213|page=398|date=26—29 June 1790}}
  Output: "No. 13213". The London Gazette. 26—29 June 1790. p. 398. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

In both cases the date range is correct; changing it to a single date would misrepresent the source. (e.g here's the title page for the first of these examples, 18—21 January 1794: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/13615/page/64)

Help:CS1 errors#bad_date gives some examples of date ranges, but none which over this case.

Is there a workable format? If not, let's disable CS1 date checking on this template. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Here's another false error, on Michael O'Brien Dilkes: {{London Gazette|issue=11435|page=1|date=26 February–1 March 1774|nolink=y}}
Output: "No. 11435". The London Gazette. 26 February–1 March 1774. p. 1. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:22, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

{{London Gazette}} is not broken.

In the first two cases, you have used an emdash. London Gazette uses a cs1|2 template to render the final result. cs1|2 templates adhere to

MOS:Dates

which requires that the dash separator be an endash. Rewriting your first two examples to use an endash:

• {{London Gazette|issue=13615|page=64|date=18–21 January 1794}}
  Output: "No. 13615". The London Gazette. 18–21 January 1794. p. 64.
• {{London Gazette|issue=13213|page=398|date=26–29 June 1790}}
  Output: "No. 13213". The London Gazette. 26–29 June 1790. p. 398.

MOS also requires that items on either side of an endash separator that are themselves spaced, the the separator must be spaced. So rewriting your third example to include appropriate spacing:

• {{London Gazette|issue=11435|page=1|date=26 February – 1 March 1774|nolink=y}}
  Output: "No. 11435". The London Gazette. 26 February – 1 March 1774. p. 1.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

For much of its early history the Gazette used date ranges to indicate the period which an issue covered. I think issues started to bear a single date when the publication cycle changed to an almost daily basis in November 1813. For consistency with later single dated issues, the Gazette web site treats the first date of with ranges as the publication date (indicated above the PDF pane), though, clearly for the first of BrownHairedGirl's examples, it was actually the latter date that the issue was published because it contains a report headed "Westminster January 21, 1794 - THIS Day His Majesty came to the House of Peers...". This is the convention followed by the Wikipedia:London Gazette Index as well. Therefore, I think a single date will be fine.--DavidCane (talk) 21:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: thanks for the pointers. These weren't refs that I had created myself, and my eye had somehow missed the fact that there were emdashes. Articles now fixed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:12, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I have occasionally come across cases where military dispatches are published in a Gazette with a know author. I suppose the most famous is Wellington's Waterloo dispatch:

• "No. 17028". The London Gazette. 22 June 1815. pp. 1213–1215.

Occasional there are other articles with a named author:

• "No. 19426". The London Gazette. 7 October 1836. p. 1734.

So I think it is desirable to add the followin parameters to this template:

• last, first, author and display-authors (for etal).

Any thoughts? -- PBS (talk) 09:56, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Not clear to me why such an addition should be objectionable. Just support for a single author? If the Gazette article has multiple authors, the second through nth are acknowledged but not identified with |display-authors=etal?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. If in fact we find out that there are lots of articles with multiple authors then more can be added later. -- PBS (talk) 07:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

No whole Gazette issue that I've seen is authored by one person. Quite often Gazette items are signed (C.C. Greville in the 1936 example is of course Charles Greville, clerk of the Council). Even in the 1815 "Gazette Extraordinary", Wellington's text is topped with an introductory paragraph from Downing Street, and has an attached list (of officers killed and wounded) that's surely not written by him personally. So to cite an author one would need a similar style to magazine article citation. — Stanning (talk) 14:01, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I was not using it for anonymously authored article within a Gazette (or a whole edition) I was thinking more along the lines of using author in conjunction with a title parameter eg:

• "Waterloo dispatch". The London Gazette. No. 17028. 22 June 1815. pp. 1213–1215.

-- PBS (talk) 07:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

What exactly is the point of this maintenance category

I have asked that same question. The reply that I got wasn't, I think, wholly satisfactory, so I have no idea why we are maintaining this category.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:57, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

I get the fact that not all maintenance categories require actual maintenance, and are used for some sort of tracking purpose that may have some kind of value as a statistic (such as

YO

😜 12:10, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

This category is sorted by issue.

1. When the Gazette was put online there are were irregularities in how it was done not all the pages that are supplements are indeed supplements and vice versa, this category helps in that analysis. The reason why this is important is because the template has to have the parameter set correctly for false positives and false negatives. see for example 27743/supplement/8529 s 1904-12-13
2. The second and more important reason is this helps with the analysis of whether a supplement has a number or not. Ie whether it is first second third supplement. As the supplements numbered this can be reflected in the numbering of the parameter "supp=". Prior to the changes to the template this year the template could not display the number of the supplement so all "supp=" parameters were set to yes and did not display the name of the supplement correctly. This category helps with the finding and correctly numbering supplements.

To date one of the the largest set of supplements (in one issue) that I have found that of 1919-05-30, three of the supplements are false negatives so the parameter "display-supp=" is used.

• issue page supp-number date
• 31366/page/6754 s 1919-05-30 — display-supp=y
• 31367/supplement/6755 2 1919-05-30
• 31368/supplement/6757 3 1919-05-30
• 31369/supplement/6773 4 1919-05-30
• 31370/page/6789 5 1919-05-30 — display-supp=5
• 31371/supplement/6921 6 1919-05-30
• 31372/page/6937 7 1919-05-30 — display-supp=7
• 31373/supplement/6947 8 1919-05-30
• 31374/supplement/6959 9 1919-05-30
• 31375/supplement/6967 10 1919-05-30
• 31376/supplement/6973 11 1919-05-30
• 31377/supplement/6977 12 1919-05-30
• 31378/supplement/7025 13 1919-05-30
• 31379/supplement/7045 14 1919-05-30 — last

So the category helps with numbering supplementary issues and once numbered they are removed from this category. Without this category doing this analysis would be much more difficult. Once found then a regular expression search can be done and all the instances of the templates in articles can be fixed. This can either be done manually, with AWB or a bot. -- PBS (talk) 11:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

A another example of why the category is useful, I just looked at the first two entries (Wilf Hughes and George Macdonald (historian). Both point to the wrong Gazette issue. -- PBS (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

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

It appears Zackmann08's recent edit inadvertently added an extra }} to the end of the template. Would this be able to be removed? Thanks, 142.160.89.97 (talk) 06:19, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

@142.160.89.97:  Done thanks for catching that! My mistake. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 06:21, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Is there any chance a link=no field could be added so that second and subsequent uses of the template in a Reference section don't link to the London Gazette? Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

|nolink=y. Does this not work for you?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:07, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. Must be going blind. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:27, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedians. I feel that the instructions for the use of the date parameter are not clear enough. It says the "publication date of the Gazette". Several dates appear on the London Gazette. It shows a date on the first page of each issue above the texts (the plublication date of the issue) and then in most cases dates appearing on top of various pieces of text. For example, the citation of the London Gazette in the article John Nevill, 5th Marquess of Abergavenny uses the date on top of the first page, i.e. Thursday 4th, April 1974, as the argument of the date parameter. In this example the date on top of the piece of text reporting the appointment the Marquess differs from this date and reads 1st April 1974. There is also considerable variation of these uses of dates through the long history of the London Gazette, which probably need also to be taken into account. E.g. many older issues give a date range at the head of the issue instead of a single date. However, if the the argument of the date parameter is the date of the issue, why bother with it at all as the issue is uniquely identified by its number? Sometimes the publication date is less important than the date when the reported event happened and it might be useful to give an opportunity for that date to be recorded on the template. With many thanks. Johannes Schade (talk) 18:35, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Likely, including the publication date when citing a Gazette number is just as important as citing the publication date of an academic journal number even though the journal has volume and issue identifiers that more-or-less uniquely identify that number. I would not expect that citation practice to change anytime soon even though the Gazette's number is unique. And it should be the publication date; the date under the issue's title and at the top of every subsequent page.

Do you have an example of one of the many older issues give a date range at the head of the issue instead of a single date?

Because this template is based on cs1|2 it does not support the notion of multiple dates for a single publication (except as date ranges).

If the wording in the documentation is to be improved, do you have a suggestion about how the documentation should be reworded?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:24, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Dear Trappist the monk. Thank you for your quick reaction. I propose the following change as a first clarification for the instruction concerning the date parameter. It is probably not the final solution. Instead of The publication date of the referenced Gazette. This should be in the format day month year. you may want to say The publication date of the referenced Issue of the Gazette. This should be in the format day month year. I am working on the article Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Abercorn. This cites an issue of the London Gazette that has a date reading "From Monday August 10 to Thursday August 13, 1691". In the article I used the templates Sfn and Citation to cite the London Gazette, but I wonder whether this is acceptable according to Wikipedia's Manual of Style and was investigating the use of the London Gazette template. It seems to me that it is intended to be used as <ref>{{London Gazette...}}</ref> in the text with no entry in the list of references, however the article uses sfn and citation throughout. Can these be mixed? With many thanks Johannes Schade (talk) 09:24, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

It is ok for you to use {{citation}} instead of {{London Gazette}} just as it is ok for you to use {{London Gazette}} when all other citations are {{citation}}.

{{London Gazette}} works well with {{sfn}}. There are two options:

{{sfn|''London Gazette''|1691}}^[1] – year of issue; can be disambiguated with lowercase alpha (1691a, 1691b) to link to different Gazette issues from the same year

{{sfn|Gazette|2687}}^[2] – discouraged; uses default {{London Gazette}} CITEREF anchor but when issue number exceeds 4 digits {{sfn}} rendering fails; also, this form can't be styled to properly render italicized London Gazette

{{London Gazette|title=Rye, August 8|issue=2687|date=10–13 August 1691|ref={{sfnref|''London Gazette''|1691}}|mode=cs2}}

"Rye, August 8", The London Gazette, no. 2687, 10–13 August 1691

{{London Gazette|title=Rye, August 8|issue=2687|date=10–13 August 1691|mode=cs2}}

"Rye, August 8", The London Gazette, no. 2687, 10–13 August 1691

In the above, |mode=cs2 matches {{London Gazette}} rendering style to that of {{citation}}.

I'll tweak the template documentation to mention issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Dear Trappist the monk. Wow — thank you so much for your detailed and very understandable explanation. I am impressed by the effort you made. Perhaps these explanations should find their place somewhere in the Wikipedia documentation, guidelines or MOS (but where?). We seem to be here beyond the scope of the London Gazette template. I followed your recommendations in edits I made to the article James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, which cites the Gazette 11 times, but I am not entirely satisfied. With books, the two-tier short-footnote – full-description of the source results in an economy of space because books are typically cited more than once with only one full description. With the Gazette, each citation typically has its footnote and its full description: no economy. Also where should the full description appear in the list of references? Alphabetically, using the title, does not seem to make sense. I must think a bit more and search for examples and instructions in the MOS and other Wikipedia guidelines. Others must have encountered these problems as well. Thank you so much for your kind help. Johannes Schade (talk) 10:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

You will perhaps forgive me for pointing out the obvious but, including quotes from sources in short cites does not result in economy of space. I have always believed and said, I don't know how many times, that if quotations from sources are a necessary part of the article, those quotations should be included in the article text or in a separate footnotes section and cited accordingly. This keeps the references sections clean and concise. It is intended that short cites be just that: short.

This sfn, which appears typical, includes the redundant text 'Issue 4948, ':

{{sfn|''London Gazette''|1711a|loc=[https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/4948/page/1 Issue 4948, page 1]|ps=: "Whitehall, January 4. Her Majesty hath been graciously pleas'd to Constitute his Grace the Duke of Ormonde Commander of all Her Majesty's Land Forces in that part of the Kingdom of Great Britain call'd England, and Colonel of Her Majesty's First Regiment of Foot Guards. "}}

The disambiguated year (1711a) is sufficient to link to the long-form Gazette citation so the issue number in the sfn is not needed. As an aside, I would note that |date= in the matching Gazette template should also include the disambiguator because printed copies of the article cannot link from short-form cite to long-form cite.

With regard to where the full [descriptions] appear in the list of references, perhaps a subsection of § Notes and references: §§Sources with §§§Books and §§§London Gazette (these last two could be pseudo-headings: '''Books''', etc) where §Books is sorted by author-date and §London Gazette is sorted chronologically.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:25, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Dear Trappist the monk. Was not obvious to me. Thanks for pointing it out. I thought that by adding quotes to existing citations or including quotes in new citations, I contributed to the drive of making Wikipedia more verifiable (WP:V) and helped to carry the burden (WP:BURDEN). I felt that ideally the reader should be able to click through to the source and be able to unambiguously identify the passage in the source that is supposed to support the statement in text of the article. I found that many citations are too vague or lack text-source integrity (WP:INTEGRITY) as Wikipedia likes to call it. Most citations simply give a page in a source. The reader must then identify the intended passage. This is often not easy to do. Supplying a quote solves this problem. I have done this in about 40 articles, mainly Irish biographies. Was it a misguided effort? Should I revert these edits (about 800) ? I do not seem to find instructions in the MOS, the guidelines (e.g. WP:CS), or the help (e.g. H:FOOT) about adding quotes to citations, but perhaps I just did not find it. However, most citation templates provide a parameter for adding quotes. Thanks for talking to me. Johannes Schade (talk) 09:35, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I suppose that in the best of all possible worlds, we would be able to click a link and highlight the relevant passages in the source. I am not opposed to quoting sources in an article in the proper place which, to my mind, is in the article text itself or in a separate §Notes section. I think that cs1|2, as a 'citation style', is the only style that supports source quotations in a citation. A misguided decision, I think, but now water under the bridge. I do not think that I have ever seen sources quoted in, for example, any list of references at the end of scientific journal articles – which are usually rife with citations. Only here on Wikipedia.

Your complaint to me was about economy of space. One way to economize on the space occupied by an article's citations is to minimize the amount of text that citations emit.

If you believe that I have disparaged your efforts per

WP:V

, etc, then I think that you are mistaken. It is good that you are making sourcing improvements, carry on. Just because I think that a better way to include quotes from sources is to do it differently from how you are doing it does not magically make me right and you wrong.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:10, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

This template's documentation directs me to Wikipedia:London Gazette Index to convert dates into issue numbers, but the URLs for (at least old) issues of the Gazette are stale, because the schema has changed. See Wikipedia talk:London Gazette Index#Stale URLs. Hairy Dude (talk) 04:16, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Trappist the monk said above that the default CITEREF is discouraged for technical reasons. This would seem to be at least partially solved by changing the second CITEREF parameter from issue to date, as shown in the sandbox[5]. DrKay (talk) 14:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Not sure that it is as simple as you want it to be. Here is a comparison; live using |issue= and sandbox using |date=; note the ampersands in the short-form references:

• Gazette & 33000 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGazette33000 (help)
• Gazette & 9 December 1924 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGazette9_December_1924 (help)

• "No. 33000". The London Gazette. 9 December 1924. p. 8957. – CITEREFGazette33000
• "No. 33000". The London Gazette. 9 December 1924. p. 8957. – CITEREFGazette9_December_1924

It seems to me that what is wanted is something that is a {{

harvnb}} or {{sfn

}} wrapper template that accepts a single parameter (issue number) and from that creates a call to {{harvnb}} or {{sfn}}:

{{gazette_harvnb|33000}} creates →

{{harvnb|Gazette No. 33000|ref=CITEREFGazette33000}} which renders as →

Gazette No. 33000 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFGazette33000 (help)

While I haven't tried, this seems to be something for which Module:template wrapper is well suited.

Of course, maybe it does not matter because short-form referencing appears to be rarely used with this template:

the harv templates

the sfn templates

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:40, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

There are cases where the page number is not a number and this template does not seem to produce the link correctly.

• Sample: {{London Gazette|issue=6610|page=3.a.a|date=26 September 1727}}
• Expected link: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6610/page/3.a.a
• Actual link: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/6610/page/3

Any chance this can be fixed? I assume allowing non-numeric page number means some ability of error detection will be removed. ネイ (talk) 10:47, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• Looks like the publisher got the issue number wrong, with a second issue being numbered 6610 for 26 September - 30 September 1727 after the original was printed for 22 August - 26 August 1727. On the Gazette site, the original starts with Page 1 in that set of pages and the second one starts at 1.a. Looks like they continued this mistake throughout most of October 1727 to issue 6619. Which is why there appeared to be no issues between 26 September and 31 October in our index for 1727.
• Therefore, probably best to hand code the ref.--DavidCane (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I have modified Module:London Gazette util to notice when issues 1610–1619 are being linked so that the url for these issues can be either simple digits or digit+dot+alpha. At present, the alpha character is constrained to 'a' only. Are there other cases where this sort of oddball page numbering occurs?

{{London Gazette|issue=6610|page=3.a.a|date=26 September 1727}} → "No. 6610". The London Gazette. 26 September 1727. p. 3.a.a.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:39, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the fix! The Gazette site does not allow searching by page number, so I think we can only add fixes when similar issues pop up. ネイ (talk) 14:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Why does this use {{cite magazine}} and not {{cite news}}? It's always been a newspaper, it's never had pictures, colour, or glossy paper. Just the facts, in plain ordinary black text on flat white paper. The supplements are no different. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:12, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Here is a {{London Gazette}} template that uses |title=:

{{London Gazette |issue=34000 |date=1 December 1933 |pages=7765–7766 |title=Tenders for Treasury Bills}}

"Tenders for Treasury Bills". The London Gazette. No. 34000. 1 December 1933. pp. 7765–7766.

Note that the issue number is rendered as:

No. 34000.

If you edit {{London Gazette}} and change -->|{{cite magazine to -->|{{cite news and then preview this page with that you will see that the issue is rendered as:

(34000).

That is why this template uses {{cite magazine}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:57, 30 March 2021 (UTC)