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This template does not work correctly in Google Chrome when next to an image. The text ignores the image. Why is the template made with a table? And not <blockquote>?

Moberg (talk) 06:56, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It also happens with infoboxes, was doing it at Scream (film) so I had to change it to regular quote. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 10:41, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Cquote above looked normal in my previous version (16.0.912.63 m) of Chrome. While looking at it, Chrome updated itself (I don't use it all that often), and the new version (19.0.1084.46 m) exhibits the faulty behaviour you describe. Clearly Chrome's fault. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:53, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I then installed the developers' version 20.0.1132.11 dev-m and that showed the Cquote and the image properly again. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Really starting to hate CHrome, can't find a way to stop it auto-updating and it almost always breaks something when it does update.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 11:19, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hah, I was just investigating this bug. I hadn't realized someone had already started a thread. Specifying display:block; on the table seems to fix this. Not sure what the other consequences of specifying display:block; on a table are, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's go ahead and try setting display:block; on the table as this is still a problem in Chrome. If anything breaks horribly, we can revert. People around here are never shy to complain about breakage, after all. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If this is just Chrome misbehaving then I would suggest we should not "fix" this template because it is not broken ... But I suppose if this has no effect for other users, then it could be harmless. Code is on Template:Cquote/sandbox. Anyone want to test it on some different browsers? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:26, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I created Template:Cquote/testcases. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot of the phenomenon in Google Chrome here: commons:File:Google Chrome cquote overlap.png.

I also tested with Safari. Both versions are fine in Safari/Mac OS X. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:54, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The sandbox and live versions look identical on Opera, Firefox and IE. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:01, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing as File:Wikimedia browser share pie chart 3.png suggests that Chrome is a major browser used by Wikipedia readers (actually the second most-used), it should be fairly important to make sure things behave correctly in that browser. As MSGJ and MZ have said that the addition of display:block doesn't harm other browsers, I've made the addition to the live template. Regards, Killiondude (talk) 07:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Raw numbers are at Wikimedia Analytics - User Agent Breakdown by Browser. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:33, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good to see some of you on the case - but can something be done? Surely the collective knowledge of Wikipedia is better than the autocratic behemoth of Google. :) Wikidea 11:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the June 2, 2012 edit by Killiondude that added "display:block;" should be undone as now all quotes that use this template in articles are showing up on the left side rather then the center. This doesn't look right and for that reason I think that edit should be undone.--Dom497 (talk) 14:15, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

 Reverted. Back to the drawing board — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:02, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've got to think that them not being centered is a bit less damaging than them being completely useless altogether.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 17:03, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above statement, especially given what I said about Chrome's usage above. Killiondude (talk) 20:53, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot would've been helpful. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK can we get display:block put back on? Dom497's complaint is minor, as it is described it basically means they're not centered. Meanwhile Chrome users get this. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Currently the talk page redirects to Centered pull quote, and cquote is indeed (historically) 'centered'. Can someone fix the actual current redirect template to Centered pull quote not Quote. Leng T'che (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See the discussion above. If you truly desire a pull quote, then use the new name. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But please be sure to read Block quotations under WP:MOSQUOTE, where one finds:

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes)

Very rarely is there actually a situation that would call for a pull quote in an encyclopedia article.  ^davidiad_.:τ 11:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• No opinion on how it should be, but the above consensus needs a better transitioning strategy: the two templates are not parameter compatible so the redirect broke all transclusions that used cquote specific parameters. At the very least it needs to correctly pipe through the parameters, possibly with a namespace switch.
  Personally I'm not convinced that indiscriminately changing the look of those 33k transclusions from centered-with-quotes to left-aligned-no-quotes doesn't cause more problems than it solves.
  Amalthea 18:26, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I now note that the above proposal didn't intend to actually indiscriminiately redirect the template right away, so this may have been a misunderstanding anyway. Amalthea 18:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Saw this issue yesterday and just updated {{Quote/sandbox}} to support author. I think this is everything but bgcolor and width. Anyone want to do some checks? I had a sandbox version of cquote that added the typographic quotes only in non-article space. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Another parameter of cquote is the quotation mark size, both of which are usually expressed.  ^davidiad_.:τ 00:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which is wildly misused in violation of the template documentation and MOS. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep.  ^davidiad_.:τ 13:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

needs Rcats (redirect categories) added. Please modify it as follows:

• from this...

#REDIRECT [[Template:Centered pull quote]]

• to this...

#REDIRECT [[Template:Centered pull quote]]
*WHEN YOU COPY & PASTE, PLEASE ERASE THE TEXT ON THIS LINE & LEAVE THIS LINE BLANK.
{{Redr|move|from template shortcut|protected}}

Template {{Redr}} is a shortcut for the {{This is a redirect}} template, which is itself a shortcut used to add categories to redirects. Thank you in advance! – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 20:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 22:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Thank you very much! – Redrose64 – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 02:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The following editors are invited to recollect their own involvement in a discussion regarding this template's misuse and to provide comments here:

The {{cquote}} template is not supposed to be used in article space. I remember a very divisive discussion about this fact, when a very good faith user opened a {{TfD}} because of its rampant misuse. I stumbled across an example today, and notice from this special page that the misuse is creeping back. Instead of saying "This template shouldn't be used ... use {{quotation}}", why not add syntax to the template code that defaults it to {{quotation}} whenever an #ifeq: switch matches it to article space? It seems like a best solution.--My76Strat (talk) 04:56, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Please do.  davidiad { t } 05:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Naturally I support this as proposer.--My76Strat (talk) 05:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Frankly, I don't understand what the actual legitimate use for this template is supposed to be. If there is one, can someone explain it in the template documentation. Kaldari (talk) 06:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  The main reason it is resilient at {{TfD}} is because so many want it available for ornamental use on user pages where quotes are often included. The misuse in article space never stands as a justified reason to delete but its misuse can be eliminated by the #ifeq: parser function; and I believe it should be.--My76Strat (talk) 07:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose. If this template really isn't supposed to be used in article space, it should say that in the documentation. Existing uses could be migrated with a bot. I don't see how you expect people to not use it in article space if it doesn't tell them that in the instructions. Having a template have 2 totally different behaviors, depending on the namespace is a poor solution, IMO, and would cause confusion. Never fix a temporary problem with a permanent hack. Kaldari (talk) 17:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Also, I don't really understand why using this template for quotes in articles is considered abuse. It's basically the same as {{quotation}}, just less ugly. If there is no clear rationale presented in the documentation about why this is 'abuse', why should we expect people to stop using it? The current instructions are confusing and arbitrary, so it's not surprising that thousands of people are 'abusing' it. It says that the Manual of style recommends {{quotation}} "for visually distinctive quotation", so why is there an exception for pull quotes? There's nothing inherently different about pull quotes. Why would they be styled differently? And why is this difference so important that it has to be rigorously enforced? Kaldari (talk) 17:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm inclined to agree with everything you've posted here. I don't really understand the alleged underlying problem. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Agreed as well. I understand why using this template for pull quotes (i.e. drawing attention to a passage already included elsewhere in the text) might be considered undesirable, but using this template as a less ugly way to format quotations sounds perfectly reasonable to me. --Waldir ^talk 13:40, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• support yet again. I had this in sandbox at one time. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:01, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now in Template:Centered pull quote/sandbox. Reworked from the current version as there were a few fixes. --  Gadget850 ^talk 15:12, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• An NS0 check is the most elegant solution yet. Great idea. Let's get it done. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm not sure about attempting to enforce (questionable) editorial decisions with technical means. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not at all uncommon for templates to generate error messages when they are misused, inadvertently or otherwise. These kinds of things should already have been done. I agree with Kaldari above that much of the woes surrounding this templates use is a byproduct of inadequate documentation; I suggest this is coupled with inadequate template coding as well.--My76Strat (talk) 06:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Yuck. Why is this an HTML table instead of a blockquote element? Cquote should have the same HTML as {{quotation}}. Use CSS to render the different appearances. Add class="decorative" to render the fancy, home-page-only version. —Michael Z. 2013-06-07 18:50 z

  I don't see why the two templates couldn't ultimately be merged.--My76Strat (talk) 06:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have been considering a meta-template that other quote templates could build on. --  Gadget850 ^talk 13:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Then rename to {{User page quote}}, get a bot to switch all instances, then delete the redirect. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:53, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is used in other places, such as the Signpost, so that is not appropriate. --  Gadget850 ^talk 23:28, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Then create a redirect called something like {{Signpost quote}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These are some objections and queries above, so let's discuss that here.

A pull quote "is a quotation or excerpt from an article that is typically placed in a larger or distinctive typeface on the same page, serving to entice readers into an article or to highlight a key topic."

Thus, the quote is already in the article content and is placed in the pull quote for highlighting. The template documentation states: "This template should not be used for quotations if they are not repeated elsewhere in the main text". In practice, this is never done. It is simply used as a quote block with the fat quote marks.

This is a layout technique used by journals and magazines. Along with bylines, kickers and decks. I really don't think it reflects the professionalism of Wikipedia. --  Gadget850 ^talk 19:45, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The documentation should clearly say "don't use this in article space". Wikipedia is not a magazine, and doesn't need giant redundant text to draw your attention to the page. — Omegatron (talk) 04:35, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why pull quotes should be styled differently than regular quotes. Nothing in the Manual of Style supports this distinction. Either this template should be allowed for both types of quotes or neither. Personally, I think this template looks more "professional" than {{quotation}}, which is just an ugly box and looks rather amateurish from a design perspective. So I guess my opinion would be to allow it for either type of quotation in article space. Kaldari (talk) 20:11, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Does that mean you are for or against the fat quotes? --  Gadget850 ^talk 21:25, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I quite like the fat quotes, but it is long past time that we stopped treating quotations in articles as some sacrosanct expression of editor individuality. That means that something has to give here, and the plainer quotation style has won out in terms of editor mindshare. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:58, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Applicable guidelines:

• MOS:QUOTE:
  • "Styling of apostrophes and quotation marks. These should all be straight, not curly or slanted."
  • "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes)."
• MOS:QUOTEMARKS: "... we use quotation marks or block quotes (not both) to distinguish long quotations from other text"
  • This template does not use <blockquote>, but it replicates the offset style and it really should be updated to use <blockquote>.

--  Gadget850 ^talk 13:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Stale

--  Gadget850 ^talk 14:26, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Add <includeonly> tags around "Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks." Apteva (talk) 23:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One of the reasons that this is used for quotes instead of for pull quotes is that our examples show it being used for quotes instead of showing it used for pull quotes. The way to fix that is to at least in the first two examples, show that the quote already exists in the text, like this.[1] Apteva (talk) 00:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The source parameter doesn't work if the author is unknown.

Stefan2 (talk) 22:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, that's intentional behaviour. A work-around is to specify the source in the parameter |author=: {{cquote|this is the quote|author=this is the source}} gives:

-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone add "line-height: 1;" to both of the quotation mark table cells so that the the line-height matches the font-size. This should make the formatting less broken-looking for single-line quotes. Kaldari (talk) 02:17, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done. It's not dead center, but a big improvement (see section above). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:12, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You could reduce it even further. 0.5 seems to work well. The cells have generous padding on them, so making the line-height less than 1 doesn't pose any text-overlap problems (until you get really tiny, like 0.1). Kaldari (talk) 22:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I get partly obscured quote marks below 1em with single line qoutes. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:10, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Still doesn't look right (in Firefox on Mac OS X, anyway). The quotation text is above the giant quotation marks, when the quote is short (as it should be - pull quotes are not block quotations).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:30, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also happening in the Chrome browser.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:31, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The documentation reads:

• NOTE: This template should not be used for quotations if they are not repeated elsewhere in the main text. The Manual of Style recommendation is:
  • For visually distinctive quotation, use {{Quotation}} template.
  • For long quotations, use the HTML <blockquote> element, such as through the use of the {{Quote}} or {{quote box}} template.

MOS:Blockquote actually discourages the use of this template, saying:

Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins. Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged. Block quotations can be enclosed between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags; or use {{quote}} or {{quote box}}.

Assuming the MOS is kept more up-to-date than this template documentation, shouldn't this be updated to say:

• NOTE: This template should not be used for quotations if they are not repeated elsewhere in the main text. The Manual of Style guidelines for block quotations recommend formatting block quotations using the HTML <blockquote> element or the {{Quote}} or {{quote box}} template.

I have also replaced the red colour with bold formatting, per MOS:COLOUR ("Do not use color alone to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with color blindness"). —sroc 💬 04:02, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this template's documentation should be kept in synch with the guideline (not vice versa - hardly anyone ever watchlists these templates, and tweaking them or their docs cannot be used to circumvent the broader consensus-building processes at major pages like MOS).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:19, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just a heads-up: In case you haven't seen it, Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 October 11 has several templates that may possibly be good candidates to merge with this one. Comments are welcome. :) —PC-XT+ 08:12, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've created a version of this template, in its sandbox, which uses the correct semantic markup, <blockquote>. This affects the padding, which needs to be adjusted. Or is there a better way to do this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ditch the table. Nesting a blockquote inside a table is bonkers. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:39, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; how would you then align the quote marks (my CSS is rusty)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:21, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Probably using :before and :after, as was done with the Typography refresh, but though out better this time. That should make any quote-formatting code redundant. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could you do that, please? I'll watch and learn. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start tomorrow. It requires some CSS in Common.css. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:11, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I find it disturbing that time and effort is being made to shore up a template we mostly do not need, and which is being abused on tens of thousands of mainspace pages, making concessions for it at Mediawiki:Common.css, when most legitimate requests for classes and other handling at that interface page get filibustered. We have better things to do that lend extra legitimacy to something that is only being used correctly about 0.1% of the time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:00, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone else find the closing giant quotation mark to be a bit too high? It's too high in Chrome/Chromium on Mac OS X. I haven't broken out my virtual machine collection to see if this is a consistent issue, but given that it's all done with CSS I'm pretty sure it will be.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:53, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Better check anyway. It was put in to accomodate single line quotes. Without the tweak, the quote would end up too low. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I know these templates are low priority, but editors might peek at the code for ideas. <cite><div>...</div></cite> isn't passing tidy — only phrasing/inline elements are allowed inside <cite>. I tweaked each template to use just <cite>, make tidy happy, and set a better example.

• Template:Pull quote/sandbox to Template:Pull quote
• Template:Reduced pull quote/sandbox to Template:Reduced pull quote
• Template:Quote frame/sandbox to Template:Quote frame
• Template:Quote box/sandbox to Template:Quote box

Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 11:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: Would you mind making it clear what the difference is between each of the sandboxes and main templates? You can use Special:ComparePages if you would like. Thanks! Izno (talk) 11:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno:

• Pull quote: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing table cell (diff)
• Reduced pull quote: sp "allign", deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing table cell (diff)
• Quote frame: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing cite, sets display:block on cite to make sure it stays on its own line and text-align works (diff)
• Quote box: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing cite, sets display:block on cite to make sure it stays on its own line and text-align works (diff)

No visual difference in any of the /testcases, but that's to be expected, since tidy is already modifying the live templates in a similar way. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 07:54, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Feel free to reactivate the edit request next time. I'll take care of these now. --Izno (talk) 11:02, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Done --Izno (talk) 11:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It undermines the style guideline that this formatting, especially the large quotation marks, is supposed to be reserved for pull quotes if the app uses the style for text in blockquote tags. I'm using the WP beta app on an Android phone. Sorry all I can do is point this out here! At least right now, I don't know how to notify the app team, & I likely won't be able to follow up on this. Thanks, Geekdiva (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC) Geekdiva (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK. This is complicated so bear with me (or just skip straight to the Proposal section). Let's fix this long-term bleeding wound. The documentation for this template says

This template is meant for pull quotes, the visually distinctive repetition of text that is already present on the same page.

But this is nonsense, and in fact nobody -- and I mean, literally, nobody -- uses this template for that reason.

"Pull quotes" are a technique used by by magazines to spiff up the layout. You "pull" a interesting section of text from the body of the article and highlight it by repeating in a box or whatever with a bigger font so so forth.

But an encyclopedia has no use -- literally no use -- for pull quotes in this sense. We are not a magazine. Repeating text in this way will only confuse the reader, and that is why it is never done. By "never done", I mean that in my 10+ fully active years here I have never seen it done even once. And I challenge the reader to look at n instances if "what links here" for {{Pull quote}}, and I expect you will find zero instances of {{Pull quote}} being used for actual "pull quotes" for any value of n. I know I have, expanding n until I was overcome with boredom. All instances -- all instances -- of {{Pull quote}} are used for normal quotes, in the same way {{Quote}} and {{Quotebox}} are used.

And if, by chance, you should find one instance of {{Pull quote}} being used for it's supposed use of actual pull quotes, I suggest you consider editing the article to remove this, since repeating material in this manner is only going to confuse the reader, probably. This is why the second sentence of the documentation is (properly) "In most cases, this is not appropriate for use in encyclopedia articles." which someone shoehorned into the text describing how to use it in articles, which makes quite a dog's breakfast of the documentation and BTW renders this useful and attractive template with essentially no earthly use.

(But look, I'm open minded: it's not impossible that some use for pull quotes could be found. I guess. I can't think of any, but I guess you never know. Anything's possible I suppose. If such an unlikely circumstance should arise someday, we could then either create a new template for this unique situation, or -- more likely -- just let the editor use one of the existing quote templates (cquote, rquote, quote, quotebox, or whatever else we have)).

OK? With me so far? There's no use for pull quotes in this encyclopedia, evidenced by the the fact that there are are no pull quotes, or practically none, and indeed the second sentence of the documentation says just that.

OK, so then why not just delete this template? Well, because it's attractive and useful. I use it all the time and recommend that you do also. To my mind it's far superior to {{quote}}, which highlights quotes just by indenting them, which (to my mind) is confusingly insufficient to separate them from the normal text (especially when there are lots of thumbnail pictures or other formatting geegaws, when you can substitute "insufficient" with "completely useless"). I don't like to use {{quote}} because in a lot of instances it's just not at all clear that we are shifting from normal article text to a quotation, and it's confusing to the reader IMO.

But then there is {{quotebox}}, which puts an ASCII-type box around the quote, which is fine -- if you are editing in 1986. I'm not. We used to put ASCII boxes around text in our MS-DOS programs and we thought we were the bee's knees. It was cool then. It's not now. If disco comes back we can talk about reviving {{quotebox}}. Until then, it's horribly ugly and archaic looking.

But hey. I'm OK with people using {{quote}} and {{quotebox}} if they want. Let a thousand flowers bloom. For my part, I've been using {{cquote}} and {{rquote}} for quotes, with their at least somewhat sporty large quotation marks, for like ten years now, with no objections and no problems. So have lots of other editors, according to the "what links here here" results.

So I changed the documentation to reflect this (a while back) and an editor objected, so here we are with this RfC which should, to my mind, be open-and-shut. Even if you don't agree with me, you ought to agree that rules should document actual practice, not what some editor thought should be actual practice ten years ago.

In one sense it doesn't matter. People are (sensibly) not going to put pull quotes in article, and (sensibly) are going to use to {{cquote}} and {{rquote}} for normal quotes. In another sense, it would make sense to have the documentation reflect this use; probably some editors have been dissuaded from using this functional and useful template because of the incorrect documentation.

• 1) Move "Template:Pull quote" to "Template:Cquote", and move "Template:Reduced pull quote" to "Template:Rquote". (These pages already exist as redirects).
• 2) Change the documentation for {{Cquote}}. Remove this material from the beginning of the documentation:

This template is meant for pull quotes, the visually distinctive repetition of text that is already present on the same page. In most cases, this is not appropriate for use in encyclopedia articles. The Manual of Style guidelines for block quotations recommend formatting block quotations using the {{Quote}} template or the HTML <blockquote> element, for which that template provides a wrapper. Pull quotes work best when used with short sentences, and at the start or end of a section, as a hint of or to help emphasize the section's content. For typical pull quotes, especially those longer than the rest of the paragraph in which they are quoted, {{Pull quote}} provides a borderless quote with decorative quotation marks, and {{Quote frame}} provided [sic] a bordered quote. Both span the article width. For very short pull quotes, {{Reduced pull quote}} (with decorative quotation marks) or {{Quote box}} (framed) can be used to set the quote off to either the right or left as in a magazine sidebar. This can be effective on essay pages and WikiProject homepages. -- Usage -- For actual pull quotes, this template provides a centered, borderless pull quote, with scalable decorative quotation marks, and optional attribution of the source of the quote. It can be used with or without the names of the parameters.

and replace it with this:

{{Cquote}} adds a block quotation to an article page. It is similar to {{Quote}}, but more decorative in that it adds a set of large (but scalable) quotation marks, at the beginning and end of the quoted text, around a centered, borderless quote, and optional attribution of the source of the quote. It can be used with or without the names of the parameters. In all other ways it is similar to {{Quote}}, and may be used in place of {{Quote}}, at the editor's discretion. See also {{Rquote}} for when it is desired to include a short quote which does not span the width of the paragraph.

• 3) And make similar changes to {{Rquote}} to match this.
• 4) And make the following changes to MOS:BLOCKQUOTE (which is the "Block quotations" section of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (MOS)). Change this sentence

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes).

to

{{Cquote}} and {{rquote}} are alternatives to {{quote}} which enclose the block quotation in large quotation marks.

Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as proposer. Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as a pretty good idea. I also looked at a number of uses of this template; all of them - even in GAs and FAs - are for regular quotes. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 21:46, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, as an invalid RfC, as well as a terrible idea. This directly conflicts with MOS:BQ. This RfC is invalid on it's face: You can't, as a matter of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, change a template and its documentation to defy a site-wide guideline. If this spurious RfC somehow did close with such a result, the templates themselves would be subject to speedy deletion per WP:CSD#T2! We already have a huge mess to clean up, and this proposal would make it an order of magnitude worse, if it were actually viable. The central problem here is that there there are inline quotations, block quotation2 (i.e. indented, long inline quotations that form their own paragraphs), and pull quotes, which are highlighted, decorative reiterations of quotes (or parts of quotes) that are already in the main document flow (and very, very rarely appropriate in an encyclopedia). What people keep abusing these templates for is a style that doesn't really exist in professional publications, just blogs and marketing materials, of decoratively highlighting, out of all context and proportionality, quotations that do not appear in the document's main prose at all. MOS has specifically said not to do this for years, and it violates at least two policies, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, yet people keep doing it, because other people abused the pull quote templates years ago to do this, and it hasn't been cleaned up fast enough for people to stop copy-catting this pseudo-convention. Memetically and as cleanup matter, it's basically exactly the same issue we had with people rampantly capitalizing the common (vernacular) names of all species of everything because one wikiproject was doing it for one biological order as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS matter, until big RfC finally put an end to that. It took nearly a decade to clean up the mess that resulted from from people seeing it in one topic, assuming it was "the Wikipedia way" and applying it everywhere else (I kid you not, only one day ago I ran across the text "The Cat (Felis silvestris catus), also known as the Domestic Cat or House Cat ..." in an article [2], so this cleanup still isn't 100% complete). It will take a long time, too, to clean up the quotation-related "I wanna decorate!" disaster we have going on with abuse of pull-quote templates. If fans of this visual festooning of articles with WP:NPOV violations really think they have a case to change MOS regarding them, they are welcome to have an RfC about doing so, at WT:MOS or WP:VPPOL, but the present "let's try to eke out a false consensus among fans of decorate, screaming quotation templates, against a site-wide guideline and NPoV policies" pseudo-RfC cannot fly. See also MOS:IMAGES, MOS:ICONS, and every other guideline we have about encyclopedic presentation: they consistently say to not decorate for the sake of decoration.

  PS: The fastest way to clean up this mess is to install a namespace switch in all the pull-quote templates so that if used in mainspace they only output the same normal blockquote markup as {{quote}}. Those that do not flow well in their inline context will be moved over time to flow better, and the less than 1% of uses of these template that are honest-to-goodness pull quotes, as defined at Pull quote, can either be removed as redundant, or manually formatted with CSS to remain as highlighted pull quotes, if there's a consensus that the specific article in question is improved by having a news-style pull quote in it for some reason, which is highly unlikely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, relax. There's a difference between "I don't agree with your proposal" and "I reject your right to even make this proposal". See the difference? It's a perfectly valid proposal, and I advertised it at WP:MOS; since the changes to this template and the MOS hang together, it's only sensible to have the discussion in one place. Right here is fine, since it's advertised at the MOS talk page.

We're on the same side here, User:SMcCandlish. We want to bring documentation in line with practice. That is how functional organizations operate.

As to deleting the template, that's been tried three times so far. It hasn't succeeded, probably because it is used in tens of thousands of articles, including FA's and GA's. it is used in tens of thousands of articles, including FA's and GA's either because it's useful, functional, and attractive tool of information design which helps the reader quickly comprehend what she is reading, or we have thousands of morons editing here. I guess we disagree about that. Herostratus (talk) 11:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (edit conflict × 2) Strong oppose per Stanton (SMcCandlish). The proposer has acknowledged that this is in violation of the MOS. Therefore, the appropriate thing for Herostratus to do would be to discontinue this RfC and take the discussion to WT:MOS where it belongs. As Stanton noted, should these changes be made without the prerequisite amendments to the MOS, the template could be subject to speedy deletion per WP:T2. Graham (talk) 07:10, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The necessary changes to the MOS are included in the RfC, and the RfC is prominently advertised at the MOS talk page. It'd be impossible to implement proposal points #1 - #3 without also implementing #4, so this objection is moot, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 11:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Template should be deleted as a MOS violation. Regards, James (^talk/_contribs) 07:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But it won't be an MOS violation if the proposal is accepted -- see point #4 of the proposal. If then proposal is not accepted, then the template should arguably be deleted. Problem is, that has been attempted three times. A fourth attempt would also likely fail, leaving us with the present non-optimal situation. Herostratus (talk) 11:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. The Manual of Style is a guideline that editors are at liberty to ignore when doing so benefits the encyclopaedia (although I've found that convincing MOS-focused editors of this fact is often a colossal bugbear and timesink).—S Marshall T/C 07:36, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:IAR means "make an exception in this case for this article, for good reason." It does not mean "pervert this template's documentation as an anti-MoS WP:BATTLEGROUNDING platform". For that sort of idea, see WP:POINT, and for the proper way to see if consensus will change, see WP:PROPOSAL and how to do one. A back-channel template talk page attempt to do an end-run around a guideline you don't like is not it. It also doesn't matter how many editors insert things into the encyclopedia that violate NPOV; they still have to come out, whether it's manipulative wording, cherry-picked sourcing, or grossly undue visual emphasis of specific parties' statements.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • What brought that on? It's not "perverting" or "battlegrounding" to see that Herostratus' clear and intelligent reasoning about the purpose and function of quotes in our encyclopaedia outweighs the Manual of Style. It's simple common sense.—S Marshall T/C 13:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as "a pretty good idea", per Enterprisey. I also am not convinced that the Manual of Style should prevail unless it gives adequate guidance - as it should - in situations such as the present problem, which is: making block quotes sufficiently distinct from body text, but without compromising usability or (preferably elegant) simplicity of presentation. yoyo (talk) 08:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Procedural Oppose. Honestly, if you can't write a neutral and brief RfC (per the WP:RfC guidlines) you have my oppose on that score alone. TL;DR. Softlavender (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Opppose at this stage, per Softlavender. Tony (talk) 10:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support measures to reduce/eliminate use of pull quotes in article space. Not interested in the details of implementation. Rhoark (talk) 14:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – I have used these on certain occasions without thinking too much about them, but now that I have thought about it in light of nom's arguments, I have to admit that their use makes no sense in the context of WP. My use was always to give emphasis, at seems to fall foul of WP:SOAP or even WP:ADVOCACY. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:42, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – This encylopaedia doesn't need pull quotes, but it doesn't need kitsch inverted commas either. I agree entirely with SMcCandlish. RGloucester — ☎ 15:14, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongly Support I've been thinking exactly the same thing for a long time. LK (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, if you think the template should be deleted, fine, but you should still Support these corrections to the documentation. Then send it to WP:MFD if you want, but if it doesn't get deleted, no one is served by having false documentation.

And I hope to not see "Oppose, new name should be Qmarkquote not Cquote" or whatever. I used those names because they are existing redirects of long-standing duration. You can do a WP:Requested move later. Let's fix one thing at a time here.

And if there's anything in the above which is wrong -- some technical point which I've failed to see, or something -- for goodness' sake please do not be like "Oppose, {{Pull quote}} and {{Quote}} differ in obscure technical sense X, so the proffered documentation is slightly wrong". If you're generally with me on this, make your point and we can be reasonable about changing the documentation in a reasonable way, either now or later. Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Changing template documentation does not cut it when MOS still has this to say (MOS:BLOCKQUOTE):

  Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins. Block quotations can be enclosed in the {{quote}} template, or between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags. The template also provides parameters for attribution. Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes).

  As such, this proposal is trying introduce a nasty inconsistency between MOS and template documentations that are supposed to be subordinate to it. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:00, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• @Herostratus: Is this not a discussion better suited to WT:MOS as the proposal appears to violate the MOS as it currently stands? Graham (talk) 04:44, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well these are good points. I think the best solution now is to point to this discussion from the WP:MOS talk page (and I have now done this), and to add the requisite change to the MOS here (and I have now done this), on the grounds that all these proposed changes work together and should be stated in one place. The actual place they're stated doesn't matter much, as long as the right pointers from other involved pages are in place, and since we've started here, let's stay here.

I will just remind people that to my mind are two, and only two, reasonable outcomes here:

1) change the documentation (and the MOS) to some variation of what I have proposed, or

2) delete this template.

Simply leaving the template hanging around as is is simply an invitation to misuse the template (according to its documentation) and violate the MOS. Herostratus (talk) 14:58, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Getting back to the merits, I'd like to drive home these three points:

1. {{Quote}} is confusing in some contexts -- particularly when there is a thumbnail image involved, which can alter the spacing such that the indent is lost. I've seen articles when the transition to a quote is completely lost because the indent is lost due to the presence of images, and it is confusing. That's just a fact. If we don't want to use cquote/rquote to address this we need some other method. (IMO even when the indent is clear that's usually insufficient to indicate that we are switching from body text to a quote (which is a very important thing for the reader to instantly realize) and cquote/rquote provides an improvement in information design here.
2. Even though we're not a magazine and don't want to use pull quotes, neither should we be willfully blind to current art of page design. You'll note that popular publications -- print and online -- do use methods often including large quote marks, simply to break up visually forbidding swaths of text and just make a better looking page. There's nothing wrong with a good looking page.
3. Even if you buy neither of those arguments: I hope editors are able to, in their own minds, separate "I, myself, don't like {{cquote}} and wouldn't use it" and "All persons should be forbidden from using {{cquote}}". See the difference? It's a big project, and we want to offer editors tools for various situations and preferences.

Herostratus (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anyone at all in this discussion or any of dozens of prior rounds of it has any trouble distinguishing these concepts. Rather, the cognitive dissonance is coming from the other side: "I, myself, like this template's style, therefore no rationales in the world are good enough to prevent me decorating and drawing undue attention with it." There are undeniable reasons (WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:ENC) that templates should not be used to scream quotations at our readers, as if to forcibly steer them into accepting what you think the important point in a page/section is, and there are less serious reasons (MOS:ICONS, WP:NOT#BLOG, etc.) that, in particular, cutesy giant quotation marks should not be used to indicate quoted material in an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here's something I didn't know: the mobile version of Wikipedia renders {{quote}} with decorative quote marks, black instead of the blueish of {{Pull quote}} but otherwise almost identical. You may make of that what you will. Herostratus (talk) 00:02, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Largely meaningless. The mobile version is in development and flux, with little done with it yet in the way of en.wiki MoS compliance. Because the stylization is applied uniformly in that skin, at the CSS level to every <blockquote>...</blockquote> element, it does not raise the NPOV, etc., concerns that abuse of pull quote templates do when used selectively to drill a "special" point into readers' heads. All the present mobile behavior is, really, is a MoS failure, not a WP:CCPOL problem. Fixing that has been on the to-do list for some time now. The central issue behind the #Alternative suggestion below is probably the only reason that mobile stylization has not been changed already. Aside from all the problems I already identified with this ersatz RfC, an obvious one is the fallacy that the solution in one's hand is the only solution (the inverse of the "all I have is a hammer so ever problem is a nail" fallacy). To wit: the fact that it is technically possible to misuse a pull-quote template to make a block quotation more clearly distinguished from the surrounding text does not mean it is the only way, much less the best way. We have a long-standing and repeatedly tested consensus against a) randomly stylizing quotations to editor whim, b) misusing pull-quote templates for non-pull-quotes, c) actually having real pull quotes in mainspace pages except with very rare exceptions, d) radically changing the default style of block quotes, and e) being inconsistent with blockquote presentation with a profusion of templates for them (they've almost all been deleted, and have been undergoing parameter normalization over time so they can all be merged away).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The legitimate concern (i.e., not "I wanna decorate!" or – much worse – "I can use this to browbeat readers with cherry-picked and politicized quoting to steer their interpretation") that leads some editors to favor there being some alternative to {{Quote}}, the standardized block quotation template, is that our present formatting of block quotations may not make them easy enough to distinguish from regular text (sometimes just on particular devices, or in particular layouts).

Seek consensus at WT:MOS to mildly stylize block quotations, consistently and site-wide. It's actually fairly common in off-WP style guides to recommend a font change (usually slightly smaller text), not just indentation alone, to set off a block quotation from regular prose, and we could take this approach here. I'd been thinking of proposing this myself for some time, probably applying a 90%-or-so font size and/or a very slight background tinting, barely noticeable and well within WP:ACCESS limits.

Please note that previous proposals for non-mild stylization, at MOS, Village Pump, and elsewhere (e.g. italic, colored vertical bar similar to how dispute/cleanup templates looks, giant quotation marks, splashy color, borders, etc.) have previously all failed. This is a very strong indicator that no proposal to alter site-wide appearance of block quotations will succeed unless it is subtle. Previous attempts to just let chaos reign and permit any random stylization people want to apply to quotations (i.e, sporadic "down with MoS!" activism) has also been shot down again and again, at multiple venues, and has led to the deletion of various instances of "my new quotation styling template" stuff.

I would support a reasonable proposal in the sort of direction I outline above, in the right venue, and I'm sure many others would, too, given how frequently "block quotes aren't distinct enough on Wikipedia" is offered as a complaint, or as a rationale for abusing pull quote templates.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:50, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support a reasonable proposal to more adequately - yet as subtly as possible! - distinguish quotes from body text. Which is one reason I've long longed for a much more universal implementation of demi-bold weights in common typefaces ... but perhaps that's not gonna happen this year, lustrum, decade, ... Without such a feature, I don't have any better suggestion than this rather ugly one: to use italics (and to flip its use back to upright for text already italicised). Please, editors, give some thought to better ways of distinguishing block quotes without creating visual vomit. And encourage others to do likewise! yoyo (talk) 08:24, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We'd never get consensus to italicize, since it's generally interpreted as fairly strong emphasis (i.e., it's very unsubtle, and we've already had years of problems with editors randomly italicizing things between quotations marks, largely because new editors get confused about the difference between "..." quotation and ''...'' wikimarkup, and inexperienced writers get confused about things like titles of major works in italics and or minor works/sub-works in quotation marks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]