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So after the latest blowup over template changes, I think adopting the "vauthors=" mechanism from Template:Vcite2 journal is worth serious consideration. The current approach is very unambiguous, but having the first and last name of every author as a separate parameter makes for very bloated markup, and it's definitely a burden on those of us who are still hand-typing citations. I support the goal of making our references into something semantically meaningful, because I think that many useful tools for article curation could be built if we had a reliable way of identifying which articles were supported by which references, which journals, books, authors, etc. But the content has to come first: if the semantic markup scheme is deterring authors from editing, there is a serious problem. In the big picture, it's much more important to have people identify sources in medical articles as being WP:MEDRS (or not) than it is for those references to emit correct metadata. (I think the medical articles tend to be a bigger friction point because they often have very large author lists that bloat enormously.)

So, is it possible to graft the parsing code for "vauthors=" onto the "authors=" parameter here? I assume "authors=" already dumps its entire string as a single author into the COinS metadata, so it's unlikely to make things worse. And is it possible to parse "et al." or "''et al.''" at the end of that string without needing explicit markup? I have enough experience of HTML parsing to know that this kind of "do what I mean" parsing is risky, but given the debacle of the Visual Editor rollout, we're going to have to cope with hand-writing these templates for quite a while. Explicitly marking up every author may be less prone to error, but this isn't the first time there has been pushback about this, and I think this solution might make the process of structuring references a lot less objectionable. Choess (talk) 02:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I haven't given the question of how would |vauthors= parsing work within Module:Citation/CS1 a great deal of thought but I'm pretty sure that it could be done. And it would produce better metadata because a requirement of |vauthors= would be that author (and editor) name lists would be required to adhere to the Vancouver system. Because |authors= does not have that kind of requirement, a wide variety of formats can be found.

Module:Citation/CS1 already recognizes a variety of et al. forms. It is that recognition that causes the population of Category:CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. That same recognition strips the et al. from the author and editor lists before they are sent to metadata and causes the module to render the author and editor lists with the standardized form of et al. appended. The cs1|2 templates' remit includes handling and placement of static text but it is necessary to have a proper and consistent mechanism to inform the template when it should render certain static text. This is why we have |display-authors=etal.

When editors feel free to add non-author-name text et al. to author-name parameters, I think that they then feel free to add other non-author-name text to author-name parameters in spite of instruction to the contrary in all cs1|2 documentation. Et al. is relatively easy to detect and compensate for; other text, not so easy; if it were, I'd have a category full of pages that have such cs1|2 template parameters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Should we redirect this page to Help talk:Citation Style 1? That page is watched by 160 editors, while this one is watched by only 60, and they are essentially the same forum. I think we should have just one discussion location for issues relating to the CS1 templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I would support this.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:33, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Given the above discussion occurred, absolutely. --Izno (talk) 19:49, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

And see the proposals below. I support the redirect. Just merge the existing discussions into the talk over there, if still active, archive them otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:15, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Please see this thread at the Helpdesk. The author name Sheetal is being rendered as She et al. in {{citation}}. Something to do with the regex for et al., apparently. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

(ec) For details, compare:

• {{citation |first=Sheetal |last=Ranjan |chapter=Crimes Against Women in India |editor-first=N. Prabha |editor-last=Unnithan |title=Crime and Justice in India |year=2013 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-8-13210-977-8 |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k_6HAwAAQBAJ}}
• Ranjan, Sheetal (2013), "Crimes Against Women in India", in Unnithan, N. Prabha (ed.), Crime and Justice in India, SAGE Publications, ISBN 978-8-13210-977-8

This is evidently caused by the over-eager regexp in the following code line:

local pattern = ",? *'*[Ee][Tt] *[Aa][Ll][%.']*$"

which will recognize an "et al" mark even if it has neither a space between the two words nor a word boundary before it. Could we have a "\w" check or something of the sort built in to the beginning of that regexp to avoid this?

Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:34, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Specifically, I'd recommend replacing ",? *" with "(, *| +)" (i.e. either a comma plus optional space, or at least one space to separate the "et al" string from the preceding text). Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Lua doesn't support the regex alternation |operator. Fixed in the sandbox I think:

Citation comparison

Wikitext	{{citation|chapter-url=//books.google.co.uk/books?id=k_6HAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA249|chapter=Crimes Against Women in India|editor-first=N. Prabha|editor-last=Unnithan|first=Sheetal|isbn=978-8-13210-977-8|last=Ranjan|publisher=SAGE Publications|title=Crime and Justice in India|year=2013}}
Live	Ranjan, Sheetal (2013), "Crimes Against Women in India", in Unnithan, N. Prabha (ed.), Crime and Justice in India, SAGE Publications, ISBN 978-8-13210-977-8
Sandbox	Ranjan, Sheetal (2013), "Crimes Against Women in India", in Unnithan, N. Prabha (ed.), Crime and Justice in India, SAGE Publications, ISBN 978-8-13210-977-8

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Hm. Like practically everything else that happens here, you are talking in cryptic terms that simply fly over the head of most people. Does fixing in the sandbox mean that there is going to be a proper fix or am I supposed to work it out by deploying whatever hack you did there? Female infanticide in India stills shows the error. - Sitush (talk) 19:56, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

The sandbox is the development environment for the citation templates. Changes are introduced and tested there, typically after a discussion like this one. Once the changes have been tested, the changes are moved to the main module, which makes them active in the templates. Because the citation templates are used millions of times in articles, the main module code is changed only once every few months. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Your response makes sense, although I'd query the testing bit given the number of bug reports that seem to appear here ;) - Sitush (talk) 01:47, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

In English, abbreviations are set off with a comma, e.g. like this. This applies to "et al." equally, i.e. Smith, Jones, et al. When used with two or more names, the APA style expects it, viz. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/11/the-proper-use-of-et-al-in-apa-style.html. Similarly for Grammarist. As does ICMJE. Chicago says to use a comma unless there's only one name written in full. That's everybody except Trappist the monk, so I've restored my edit. Any third opinions? --RexxS (talk) 22:00, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

When I reverted your edit, in my edit summary I wrote: cs1|2 not bound by ICMJE; historically, cs1|2 has not used a comma before et al.

I've written this before: cs1|2 are not APA, are not Chicago, are not Bluebook, are not LSA, are not ICMJE, nor are they any other style. Certainly cs1|2 have been influenced by these styles but are not beholden to them.

Here is a simple {{cite book/old}} using {{citation/core}}. It has nine authors so it generates et al. in place of the ninth:

Author1; Author2; Author3; Author4; Author5; Author6; Author7; Author8 et al. Title. 

This form has been in place since this edit to {{citation/core}} on 7 October 2009. That style continues in use to the present day in Module:Citation/CS1.

In the edit summary of your revert of my revert you wrote: not bound by your preferences either - see talk. I have made no claim of personal preference with regards to a comma preceding et al.; if you can show where I have, please do so, otherwise, please do not put words into my mouth that I have not spoken.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:16, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

RexxS has made a bold edit, and that edit has been reverted. Now we discuss. That's how WP works. Let's not have an edit war in a sandbox.

One of the things that we typically do on this page, or on Help talk:Citation Style 1, which is watched by more editors and serves as a better place to discuss changes to the module, is suggest a change and show some examples of how the change would be implemented. Then the change, if it meets with approval (or at least tentative approval, or perhaps aggressive lack of interest, or outright ambivalence), can be implemented in the sandbox and examples of the before/after rendering can be shown.

A suggestion has been made to insert a comma before "et al." in author and editor lists. Shall we attempt to implement that change in the sandbox and then display some test cases here to see if it works as intended? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

One of the problems that besets Wikipedia is that it is being fossilised by editors who insist that "we have done it this way in the past" is an argument against any change. It isn't any argument at all. @Trappist the monk: Your revert summary made two points, neither of which provided any objective reason why it would be better to have no separator before " et al." Your argument is clearly then nothing more than your personal preference, and I make no apologies for pointing that out to you. I have provided multiple objective reasons: the use of commas before abbreviations is standard English grammar; all other style guides that I know of require a comma. I know we're not obliged to follow other style guides, but a lack of obligation to do something is poor excuse for not doing it, and I'd ask why you would not want to adopt a style that was consistent with what readers see in almost every other serious publication? --RexxS (talk) 11:58, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Do not presume to think that I am opposed to change; I am not. For evidence of that look at the history of this module; read Help talk:Citation Style 1 and its archives.

Lest you continue to put words into my mouth that I have not spoken, let me definitively state my position with regards to punctuation preceding et al.: I am neither in favor of nor opposed to punctuation preceding et al. in editor- and author-name-lists; in short, I do not care.

If the community are content to have et al. rendered without preceding punctuation, then I accept that. If the community determines though discussion that cs1|2 should render et al. with preceding punctuation, then I accept that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

• Support – The only argument presented above for not including a serial comma before "et al." is that it hasn't been since 7 October 2009 which is not a strong argument. Furthermore the removal of the comma was apparently made with no discussion. As journal style guides overwhelming support including a comma, the argument in favor is much stronger. Boghog (talk) 03:26, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
• Partial support: I think that "Smith, Alan; Brown, Jane; et al." makes sense. In the standard CS1 style, I support changing to use a semicolon before "et al.", not a comma, because other authors are separated from one another by semicolons. If the separator of choice is a comma (i.e. |mode=cs2|name-list-format=vanc), then use a comma before "et al." – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:39, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

  |mode= does not change the style of separators used in the author and editor name lists:

  |mode=cs1:

  Last1, First1; Last2, First2; Last3, First3; Last4, First4. Title.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

  |mode=cs2:

  Last1, First1; Last2, First2; Last3, First3; Last4, First4, Title{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

  but |name-list-format=vanc does:

  Last1 First1, Last2 First2, Last3 First3, Last4 First4. Title. {{cite book}}: Vancouver style error: non-Latin character in name 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) – the error here because the example uses enumerated names

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:28, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Good point. A semicolon should be used unless |name-list-format=vanc or |mode=cs2 in which case a comma should be used. Boghog (talk) 04:28, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I corrected myself above. I'm not used to these new formatting parameters, but I knew there was some way to have commas separating names. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:47, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

The new |vauthors= and |veditors= cause the module to rewrite their content as a last-first list and then render it in Vancouver system style without requiring |name-list-format=vanc.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

• Partial support per Joensey95 for consistency with the existing formatting and how this is done in other style guides. Imzadi 1979 → 04:07, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Serial comma is the norm here, and so far no real objections have been raised. "Standard English grammar" is of course a red herring, as these are citations rather than sentences. My only concern would be to clarify usage when combining individuals with corporate authors. LeadSongDog come howl! 12:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Where can I find the error message saying that if I provide an archive-url, I also need to provide an archive-date? Debresser (talk) 01:31, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

In Module:Citation/CS1 search for the string local Archived. A couple of lines below that is: ArchiveDate = set_error('archive_missing_date');. archive_missing_date is defined in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:12, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Or you can see it in action here:

"web page title". {{cite web}}: |archive-url= requires |archive-date= (help)

Is that what you wanted? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:02, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I was looking for the string "|archiveurl= requires |archivedate=" Or it doesn't work like that?

In any case, it should be "|archive-url= requires |archive-date=" Can somebody fix that? Debresser (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Fixed in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox. Also fixed |archive-url= requires |url=, Check |author-link= value, and |display-editors= suggested.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:21, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Also fixed access-date, archive-date, doi-broken-date, lay-date, and publication-date in the call to dates() in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi,

Just noticed, on Thomas Lodge, that I get a CS1 warning about "Extra text" for a Cite book with the param "|edition=reprinted". I imagine this is not the intended behaviour. :-)

• Tenney, Edward Andrews (1969) [1935]. Thomas Lodge. Cornell Studies in English. Vol. 26 (reprinted ed.). Ithaca, N.Y.: Russell & Russell. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Cheers, Xover (talk) 09:08, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Fixed in the sandbox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:42, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Large science projects will very often have massive list of authors. See for example, the 2012 Review of Particle Physics list of authors. The usual way of citing these massive collaboration is typically to have "J. Smith et al. (Collaboration name)" or similar (for an Wikipedia example, see [1].) This is usually achieve with the less-than-desirable a)

 |author1=W.-M. Yao ([[Particle Data Group]])
 |author2=...
 |display-authors=1
 |year=2012
 

which yields the broken/incorrect W.-M. Yao (Particle Data Group) et al. (2012), or sometimes with b)

 |last1=Yao |first1=W.-M.
 |last2=... |first2=...
 |coauthors=et al. ([[Particle Data Group]])
 |year=2012

which yields a correct Yao, W.-M et al. (Particle Data Group) (2012), and other similar hacks.

The real/best solution would to add a |collaboration= that would allow to write c)

 |last1=Yao |first1=W.-M.
 |last2=... |first2=...
 |display-authors=1
 |collaboration=[[Particle Data Group]]

or alternatively d)

 |last1=Yao |first1=W.-M.
 |last2=... |first2=...
 |display-authors=1
 |collaboration=Particle Data Group |collaboration-link=Particle Data Group

in order to generate the correct Yao, W.-M et al. (Particle Data Group) (2012).

This should apply across the board, in both {{citation}} and {{cite xxx}} styles. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

You can now do |last1 = Yao |first1=W.-M. |display-authors=etal rather than |last1=Yao |first1=W.-M. |last2=... |first2=... |display-authors=1. --Izno (talk) 16:47, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not really relevant to the collaboration parameter. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:50, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Which is why I marked it up with a small?... I suppose I could have done a <aside>...</aside> to be all Html 5-groovy... --Izno (talk) 03:02, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

• Discussions like this should be at Help talk:Citation Style 1. The Module talk:Citation/CS1 talk page is for discussion of how to code up the consensuses arrived at over there.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:11, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

I really, really doubt anyone would oppose this. The current options (A and B, above) cannot possibly be what consensus wants. The only thing tricky bit would be whether we want a |collaboration= + |collaboration-link=, but personally I would leave that to template coders to decide on.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:39, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Any updates on this? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The same sort of problem as for reprinted happens with edition=illustrated. Any word in edition= ending in ed can trigger the match. eg

• Salmon, John S. (2001). The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide (illustrated ed.). Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0-8117-2868-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

I hope you have already solved this as per above. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:12, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:20, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

When "|author=Y, X " is used we produce rft.au=Y%2C+X&rft.aulast=Y%2C+X which results in Zotero - duplicating the author. Shyamal (talk) 05:09, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Use |last= and |first= --Redrose64 (talk) 09:28, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Shyamal: Please do not experiment in the live module. At the beginning of your experiment a large number of articles (essentially everything that uses Module:Citation/CS1) was dumped on the job queue. In the two minute duration of your experiment, hundreds or thousands of articles were changed to reflect the changes caused by your experiment. It may be a while before these changed articles are restored.

|author= and |authors= are free-form parameters. Editors can and do write all kinds of name formats in them. |last= also suffers from this but usually to a much lesser extent. Human names being what they are, getting them right in the COinS must rely on editors getting them right in the cs1|2 templates.

Are you suggesting that the module should not duplicate the first author name in both &rft.aulast= and &rft.au=? That can be done. Does this apply when there is only one author? What about when there is more than one author?

Should &rft.aulast= always be filled even when there is no |first= in the template?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:01, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I do not see where I can check the COinS output from the sandbox version which was why I resorted to that foolishness. I have not evaluated all the situations but ideally Zotero import of COinS from Wikipedia articles should produce well-parsed output (whether there are issues in Zotero, I do not know). Users follow either the author= for one author and authorN= for multiple authors OR the alternative form of last= first= (single) and lastN= | firstN= (for multiple authors) - if the last+first/lastN+firstN versions both work fine with Zotero - the same should hold for the author/authorN - ideally. Currently using author results in two authors being listed after COinS parsing by Zotero. Shyamal (talk) 13:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

[Tangential question] - @Trappist the monk: - I am unable to find any contents on LUA being handled a job to be queued - my impression was that the idea of LUA was that the code would be executed when a page is requested and that the only things that would get queued would be the caching and cluster synchronization of the code. Shyamal (talk) 15:43, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

That is not how I understand it. I was once told that the server farm caches fully rendered copies of each article. Each time an article is edited, the cached copy is replaced with a newly rendered version. Change to template code takes a while to propagate to all affected pages. This is why it is sometimes necessary to purge or null edit pages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:40, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Changes to the the module sandbox can be evaluated by using the /new versions of the cs1|2 templates, for example:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |last=Last |first=First}}

Last, First. Title.

To see what the raw module output looks like, wrap the template in {{code}}:

{{code|{{cite book/new |title=Title |last=Last |first=First}}}}

which, for this example gives:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000002D-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFLast" class="citation book cs1">Last, First. ''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.aulast=Last&rft.aufirst=First&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AModule+talk%3ACitation%2FCS1%2FArchive+12" class="Z3988"></span>

I am not at all sure I understand what you wrote. So rather than attempt a reply based on a misunderstanding, can I ask you to restate and perhaps provide cs1|2 examples of what you mean?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

• Test 1 Y Last, First (2000). Title Test1.
• Test 2 Last, First (2000). Title Test2.
• Test 3 Last1, First1; Last2, First2 (2000). Title Test3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Test 4 Y Last1, First1; Last2, First2 (2000). Title Test4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

http://oi57.tinypic.com/zl3f3o.jpg - You are right it seems to be a problem with the author usage - notice that the first author alone gets duplicated in Test 3 Shyamal (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

What does the red rectangle mean? What does (first) mean? As a guess, these mean that Zotero found &rft.aulast= without &rft.aufirst= which may or may not be an error because cs1|2 does not have a parameter for corporate authors so they are usually placed in |last= or |author=.

I have extracted the author metadata from your examples:

• Test 1 Y {{cite book/new |title=Title Test1|last=Last |first=First|year=2000}}

  &rft.aufirst=First

  &rft.aulast=Last

  &rft.au=Last%2C+First

• Test 2 {{cite book/new | title=Title Test2|author=Last, First|year=2000}}

  &rft.aulast=Last%2C+First

  &rft.au=Last%2C+First

• Test 3 {{cite book/new |title=Title Test3| author1=Last1, First1|author2=Last2, First2| year=2000}}

  &rft.aulast=Last1%2C+First1

  &rft.au=Last1%2C+First1

  &rft.au=Last2%2C+First2

• Test 4 Y {{cite book/new |title=Title Test4| last1=Last1| first1=First1| last2=Last2| first2=First2| year=2000}}

  &rft.aufirst=First1

  &rft.aulast=Last1

  &rft.au=Last1%2C+First1

  &rft.au=Last2%2C+First2

It is not clear to me that the way Module:Citation/CS1 is doing things is correct. Why does the module concatenate the values from |first= and |last= into a value for &rft.au= when that author is already identified in &rft.aufirst= and &rft.aulast=? Is this duplication necessary?

Perhaps an experiment is in order. I have hacked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox so that &rft.aufirst= and &rft.aulast= are only filled when the first author is listed in the cs1|2 template with |first= and |last=.

I have extracted the author metadata from the hacked version of the module using your same examples:

• Test 1 {{cite book/new |title=Title Test1|last=Last |first=First|year=2000}}

  &rft.aufirst=First

  &rft.aulast=Last

• Test 2 {{cite book/new | title=Title Test2|author=Last, First|year=2000}}

  &rft.au=Last%2C+First

• Test 3 {{cite book/new |title=Title Test3| author1=Last1, First1|author2=Last2, First2| year=2000}}

  &rft.au=Last1%2C+First1

  &rft.au=Last2%2C+First2

• Test 4 {{cite book/new |title=Title Test4| last1=Last1| first1=First1| last2=Last2| first2=First2| year=2000}}

  &rft.aufirst=First1

  &rft.aulast=Last1

  &rft.au=Last2%2C+First2

So, do your test again using your examples and tell me if the hack makes a positive difference.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:40, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes! Definitely looks the way it ought to now. Thanks. Shyamal (talk) 02:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I'll leave the experiment in the code for now.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:55, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I missed you other query - the red rectangle shows that the first author is getting duplicated - I suspect that &rft.aulast= is used in cases where only one author in a long list is given and expanded automatically as et al. by Zotero. I hope your fix has no side-effects and that it will be incorporated into the main code at some point. Thanks. Shyamal (talk) 12:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I think the recent change you've made here seems to have changed cite news so that page numbers are simply given as a number, so that for example a citation will now read "14 December 1912. 3. Retrieved 26 August 2015." instead of the old "14 December 1912. p. 3. Retrieved 26 August 2015." (bolding mine). At least I think it was the edit you made here that changed this, but templates/modules at this level of intricacy are beyond my pay-grade. If it is here, can this please be reversed? Example using cite news template:

"Obituary". Footscray Independent. 14 December 1912. p. 3. Retrieved 26 August 2015.

Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 18:53, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. The function is_valid_parameter_value() is used to test the state of meta-parameter NoPP. If set to yes, true, or y then set the prefix meta-parameters PPrefix and PPPrefix to empty strings. But, is_valid_parameter_value() also considers |nopp= (empty or not present) to be a valid parameter value so the subsequent code dutifully set PPrefix and PPPrefix to empty strings. In all other uses of the function, the meta-parameter that is tested is the same meta-parameter that is set to an empty string when it does not have an acceptable value.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Looks good to me now. Thanks! Jenks24 (talk) 20:12, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Please implement these changes from the sandbox to restore the ability to use "#" in the "episode-link" parameter of {{cite episode}}, which was possible until these recent changes to the module. This problem was discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1. As explained there, linking to individual episode entries is valid, widely done and works, but now an error is displayed for no apparent reason. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:39, 6 December 2015 (UTC) AussieLegend (✉) 09:39, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

This module, given its wide usage, is usually changed about once a month. Also, the discussion there does not seem finished. I've disabled the edit-protected request for both reasons. --Izno (talk) 16:24, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Izno I'm not sure what the update frequency has to do with this problem. As it stands now, there are likely thousands of articles displaying warnings that will confuse editors. These errors shouldn't be displaying and weren't yesterday. When the fix is so simple, I don't see why it shouldn't be fixed. Since you're not somebody who can fix the problem, I'm reactivating the request. Best let an admin sort it out, since only admins can edit this module. As for being still under discussion, there are two parts to the thread at Help talk:Citation Style 1. The issue regarding {{!}} is still being discussed but there's no reason why this can't be fixed. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:03, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Please don't revert another editor's |answered=yes.

The technical "fix" may be trivial, but it is not sensible at this time without other people agreeing to implement it at this time. (And just because someone made the supposed fix in the sandbox does not mean they necessarily agree with it.) --Izno (talk) 18:00, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing stopping an edit request being reactivated. In fact there are specific instructions in the template that say Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. Only admins can satisfy the request since this template is fully protected and, since you are not an admin, nor do you even hold the Templateeditor permission, you can't adequately satisfy the request. This problem was not a problem before recent edits. Nor were many other problems that have cropped up since the changes. This indicates that the changes were not adequately tested before implementation. I've been writing code, both personally and professionally, for 40 years and would never have made such changes without adequate testing. Granted, much of my professional work was mission critical, dealing with issues of national security, but I can accept that there is not an urgent need to revert the changes fully because these errors are not affecting "the mission" too much. However, implementing a simple change that merely reverts the addition of an error is to be expected. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

consensus should be obtained before formally making the request. (from WP:Edit requests). The standing consensus in the context of these modules, as I have already pointed out, is that the main template is synced from the sandbox only once in every while. If you are willing to challenge that standing consensus, please do so. Reactivating an edit request is not how you are going to get a change made either to the template or the standing consensus.

Please do not add the {{edit protected}} template merely to attract attention to the change, as it clutters up the relevant edit request category with unactionable requests. also from WP:Edit requests. (Re)activating this edit request has the exact effect proscribed by this sentence.

Administrators/templateeditors may be the only editors able to respond to a fully-protected edit request in the affirmative (that is, may implement the changes). However, I see little reason why any editor responding in the negative could not do so, where that editor knows of a consensus against that change (whether because of evaluation of an RFC related to that change or because of standing consensus as in this case).

changes were not adequately tested I would tend to agree that the module does not have a robust set of test cases, but that's not relevant to this specific request; in fact, an editor on Help talk:CS1 has raised that concern in one or the other of the recent threads after this update. Aside: It is, however, a monumental task with a module of this size.

The rest of your commentary is ad hominem/argument to authority and thus irrelevant. --Izno (talk) 12:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Consensus isn't necessary to request that a change that effectively broke a template be reverted. Before the change there was no error. After the change there was an error when there shouldn't have been. You have to use a little common sense here. The whole point of adding {{edit fully-protected}} is to draw attention to an edit request. The particular section that you've quoted from is about the possibility of a request being controversial. It is meant to stop people saying things like "please add a parameter to display an image" and using a template drawing attention to a discussion that really needs to be fully discussed. A request to implement a simple change to remove an error introduced by an editor is hardly controversial.

I see little reason why any editor responding in the negative could not do so Of course any editor can respond, but the point that you are missing is that you are clearly not in a position to action the request so, while you can comment, you are not in a position to demand that the edit request not be reactivated, which is what you seem to be doing. It's really up to somebody who can action the request to make that demand. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:26, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@AussieLegend: as far as I can tell from the comments here, it's agreed that this will be fixed at the next round of updates. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:20, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to be the case but, in the meantime, editors are going to be confused when they see misleading warning messages about things that are actually perfectly OK. For me, that's a big headache in the TV project. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:30, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

There is a mistake for OL: "endode". Someone should replace it with "encode". --Obsuser (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks. That particular typo has been there since 8 April 2013.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:33, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It hasn’t been changed yet (it’s in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration)... --Obsuser (talk) 02:10, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

At en:wp, all changes are made first in the sandbox versions of the cs1|2 modules. Then, once a month or so, we update the live modules with all of the recent changes. So the fix is here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:06, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

OK. --Obsuser (talk) 03:22, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

There is a template called {{cite DNBIE}} that has been minding its own business for some years. It is a wrapper around {{cite encyclopedia}} until fairly recently it has not had any problems. However now it is reporting an error message in red:

•  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1903). "Required |title= missing". Index and Epitome. Dictionary of National Biography. Cambridge University Press.

The reason for this has nothing to do with the title line, but is because the encyclopedia parameter is:

• | encyclopedia =[[Dictionary of National Biography]] [http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati00leesuoft#page/n2/mode/1up Index and Epitome]
• | encyclopedia =Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome

Please fix the underlying code ASAP so that it does not report this error as linking in the encyclopedia link ought not to be discouraged in this way. -- PBS (talk) 23:29, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I have found a simple work around hack. If the lead string is a wiki link then the warning goes away (Simples!)

So while this

• | encyclopedia =[[Dictionary of National Biography]] [http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati00leesuoft#page/n2/mode/1up Index and Epitome]

gives an error. This does not:

• | encyclopedia =[[w:Dictionary of National Biography|Dictionary of National Biography]] [http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati00leesuoft#page/n2/mode/1up Index and Epitome]

-- PBS (talk) 23:47, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

See How to fix this external link error?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:16, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

{{cite encyclopedia}} is an odd duck. If there is no |title= then |encyclopedia=, if set, is promoted to |title= (this is why there is no missing title error message). It does this for the metadata. So the error message was correct in a sense. I'll see about improving that.

The test is intended to catch exactly the condition that you illustrated in your first post. Links to external cites do not belong in title-holding parameters because that corrupts the metadata. You should not rely on your work-around as a permanent fix. Even though there is no visible error message, the metadata are still corrupt.

{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=[[w:Dictionary of National Biography|Dictionary of National Biography]] [http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati00leesuoft#page/n2/mode/1up Index and Epitome]}}

Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome. {{cite encyclopedia}}: External link in |encyclopedia= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)

produces this metadata for title:

&rft.btitle=Dictionary+of+National+Biography+%5Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.archive.org%2Fstream%2Fdictionaryofnati00leesuoft%23page%2Fn2%2Fmode%2F1up+Index+and+Epitome%5D

Why does {{cite DNBIE}} not use |title=?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:10, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

|title= is an optional parameter, which is usually set. I have not given it a value in this example so that it is clear that the problem lies in the handling of |encyclopedia=.

But even if title is set it will not affect the outcome according to the documentation (as |title= gets mapped to |article= in the case of {{cite encyclopedia}}) so the alleged problem and the fault in the error message will remain the same. -- PBS (talk) 01:19, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I did say that I will work on fixing the error message.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

"The test is intended to catch exactly the condition that you illustrated in your first post. Links to external cites do not belong in title-holding parameters because that corrupts the metadata." Who claims it is a corruption to pass an external link into the encyclopedia parameter? -- PBS (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

You can see the corrupted data in Trappist's note above. I suggest putting the URL into one of the provided URL parameters, e.g. |url=, |chapter-url=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:27, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

A decision was taken long ago to keep |title= and |url= separate. There are separate keywords in the metadata for them. Because {{cite encyclopedia}} promotes |encyclopedia= to |title= when it can, a url in |encyclopedia= ends up in |title= in violation of that decision to keep |url= and |title= separate.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Here's a hack of {{cite encyclopedia}} that links to a wikisource article, links to the Internet archive image of the book, and links to the DNB article in wikipedia:

{{cite encyclopedia | editor-first = Sidney | editor-last = Lee | year = 1903 | article = [[s:Phayre, Robert (DNB00)|Phayre, Robert (DNB00)]] | title=Index and Epitome |encyclopedia=[[Dictionary of National Biography]] |url=http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofnati00leesuoft#page/n2/mode/1up |title-link= }}

which produces this; no errors and cleaner metadata:

Lee, Sidney, ed. (1903). "Phayre, Robert (DNB00)" . Index and Epitome. Dictionary of National Biography.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@I a aware that such a change can be made but in doing this you are altering the title which is "Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome" (hence the format in the template). I presume you have not looked at the template as the link is in the page parameter. The index only has a very short entry for a subject (usually about a couple of dozen entries a page). If it is acceptable to include a url in pages I fail to see why it is not acceptable to include it in the parameter encyclopedia.

@Jonesey95 Trappist the monk. Where there a consensus that a change would be made in {{cite encyclopedia}} the so that a URL could not be placed in the encyclopedia parameter? -- PBS (talk) 18:51, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

PBS, the discussion was here. I think we might be over-reaching a bit with our URL detection, given that we do not offer a |*-url= parameter that accompanies each parameter that would be useful to match with a URL. As the error category continues to populate, it has become clear that there is a desire among editors to provide useful links to match |journal= and |encyclopedia=, for example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:21, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know that you should make such a presumption about what I have or have not done. The point of my example was to show that |article=, |title=, |work= can all be used in {{cite encyclopedia}} without error and with cleaner metadata, not to explore the minutia of {{cite DNBIE}}. I know that the book title is Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome but I chose leave them separate as {{cite DNBIE}} does merely for the sake of example.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

This template is causing Template:Cite_episode to do the following:

• Appending %7CAudio: to URLs in links
• Show the error Check |episode-link= value (help); Check |series-link= value (help); even though the links are valid
• Render the series= with more than one word to show only the last word in the link

--Lantrix //Talk//Contrib// 17:02, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

It appears Lantrix is referring to reference #732 in Endorsements for the Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016:

• {{Cite episode |title=Audio: No Agenda Episode 741 - Bad Optics |episode-link=https://www.noagendaplayer.com/listen/741/1-28-18 |access-date=2016-01-30 |series=No Agenda |series-link=http://www.noagendashow.com/ |city=Austin |number=741 |time=88:18 |transcript=I Adam Curry am as of today officially, officially announcing my full support my endorsement, my coveted endorsement ... for Donald Trump for Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. |language=English}}
• "Audio: No Agenda Episode 741 - Bad Optics". No Agenda. Episode 741. Event occurs at 88:18. I Adam Curry am as of today officially, officially announcing my full support my endorsement, my coveted endorsement ... for Donald Trump for Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. {{cite episode}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check |episode-link= value (help); Check |series-link= value (help); External link in |episode-link= and |series-link= (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)

GoingBatty (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

@Lantrix: Per Template:Cite episode#Title, the parameters |episode-link= and |series-link= are for linking to a Wikipedia article, whereas |url= is for the URL. Therefore, I think this is what you want:

• {{Cite episode |title=Audio: No Agenda Episode 741 - Bad Optics |url=https://www.noagendaplayer.com/listen/741/1-28-18 |access-date=2016-01-30 |series=No Agenda |series-link=No Agenda |city=Austin |number=741 |time=88:18 |transcript="I Adam Curry am as of today officially, officially announcing my full support my endorsement, my coveted endorsement ... for Donald Trump for Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America."|language=English}}
• "Audio: No Agenda Episode 741 - Bad Optics". No Agenda. Episode 741. Event occurs at 88:18. "I Adam Curry am as of today officially, officially announcing my full support my endorsement, my coveted endorsement ... for Donald Trump for Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America". Retrieved 2016-01-30. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help).

Maybe someone else can figure out why there are two periods at the end of the citation. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:37, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Facepalm - sorry, my bad. GoingBatty (talk) 18:40, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me if this is the wrong forum, but I am trying to update the Haitian Creole Wikipedia’s version of this file and WhatamIdoing mentioned that Trappist the monk would probably be able to figure this out. When I copy from here and paste to there, then preview what that update would do, I keep seeing the same error appear where I would expect to see well‑formed citations. It says there is a Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 on line 2968 (a line that doesn’t exist, before or after the potential update): “attempt to call field 'set_selected_modules' (a nil value)”. Thank you. —LLarson (said & done) 21:24, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

You must copy the whole suite; it won't work if you don't. Copy these:

Module:Citation/CS1

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration

Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist

Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation

Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers

Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities

Module:Citation/CS1/COinS

Module:Citation/CS1/Suggestions

Probably best to copy them to sandbox versions so that you can test to make sure everything is right before you dump this whole very big change onto your unsuspecting editors. Then, once you are convinced that all is working right, and you have made whatever local changes you want to make, you can overwrite the live version from the sandbox (again, all of the modules).

If you need more help, shout.

And yes, line 2968 does exist in the English version of Module:Citation/CS1. The error message occurred because ht:Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation does not have the required function set_selected_modules().

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:17, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

and here's more to do:

copy Help:CS1 errors to ht:Help:CS1 errors

create ht:Category:CS1 and the subcategories that it holds so that all of the module's categorization works properly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Just so I’m sure I understand, you recommend that I copy the contents of en:Module:Citation/CS1/[suite files] into ht:Module:Citation/CS1/[suite files]/Sandbox and then once all of the subpage sandboxes are up‑to‑date, that I replace their parent pages with the sandboxed subpage version? (Background that may not be applicable: I’m not sure if the sandbox would in fact be necessary as long as I updated the suite all at once—there are just three files to go; it was our intention was to move the files and have them working there in English and only then to translate the localizable strings.) Thank you again, —LLarson (said & done) 20:39, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Yep, I do. But, I'm conditioned by the way things must be done here where the module suite is used by a couple million pages. At ht.wiki where the number of pages using the module suite is significantly fewer, not such a problem. There is an update to the modules scheduled for tomorrow 20 February 2016 so you might wait for that or just take copies from the en.wiki sandboxes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic. Thanks so much! —LLarson (said & done) 22:55, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I just saw that you helped update on ht:—thank you!! This is not urgent and it looks like you have a lot on your hands today, but I have two questions: 1. When I copy en:Category:CS1 and its subcategories to ht:Category:CS1, how deep do I need to go? (there might be over 200 including the sub-subcategories) and 2. I can’t figure out why some entire reference areas are now italicized there (incorrect) but not here (correct), when they’re using essentially the same references. Thoughts? Thank you again! —LLarson (said & done) 16:14, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

1. Most important are the error and maintenance cats; there are only 46 of them. The properties cats won't help fix malformed cites so aren't as important. Perhaps add a few whenever you have nothing better to do ...
2. cs1|2 citations are wrapped in <cite>...</cite> tags which browsers tend to style in italics. Find a local admin who can modify ht:MedyaWiki:Common.css to contain this:

/* Reset italic styling set by user agent */
cite, dfn {
    font-style: inherit;
}

/* Straight quote marks for <q> */
q {
    quotes: '"' '"' "'" "'";
}

I included the css for <q>...</q> because cs1|2 uses that tag as well. Both of those are at the top of en:MediaWiki:Common.css

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, thanks for this.

I'm hearing that we should have been using Special:Import for this, because it reportedly finds and copies all of the dependencies automagically. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

When I (of course incorrectly) add an {{sfn}} tag inside a citation, I'm getting the error message

ref stripmarker in |title= at position 1

I'm wondering if we can be a bit more helpful to less experienced editors who wouldn't understand the error message at all. How about:

Detected a <ref> stripmarker in |title=. Please use an inline citation inside another citation.

PanchoS (talk) 10:39, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Was the error message's help text not helpful? I would rather enhance that than create more verbose error messages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello, can someone help me? I want to localize {{Cite web}} from English Wikipedia but I am failing to localize "access-date". Is it possible to change the date format of "access-date" field to another in module configurations? (currently it is YYYY-MM-DD).--Zygimantus (talk) 08:00, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

This question answered at Help talk:CS1 errors/Archive 2#Access-date localization. One conversation in only one place please.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

This module fails with following formats:

• |date=1955/56 (some periodicals, see Serbo-Croatian for examples);
• |date=2014-06 (for dates without day in YYYY-MM-DD format);

— Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 19:56, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

See the documentation at Help:Citation_Style_1#Dates. The YYYY-YYYY format and MMM YYYY formats will each of these, respectively, so that they are less ambiguous and eliminate the error message. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:46, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

This flies in face of WP:DATERET, and is not forbidden or discouraged in MOS. In other words, it's a bug. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 21:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:DATERANGE#Other_date_ranges for guidance on the first item. The second item is indicated as "May be misinterpreted" in the acceptable date format table on that same page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:39, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

@Czarkoff: As Jonesey95 has pointed out, the first format you list is explicitly not permitted in the first sentence at WP:DATERANGE. The second is listed in the table at MOS:BADDATEFORMAT. Its inclusion there is primarily because it can be confused with a year range. Further, the templates, and Citation Style 1, implement a subset of MOS permitted dates. Information on what is implemented is given at Help:Citation Style 1#CS1 compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style. — Makyen (talk) 03:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

ISO 8601 says dates should be formatted as 2014-11-04 (with a leading zero on the day) but neither "04 November 2014" nor "November 04, 2014" are parsed as valid dates, while "4 November 2014" and "November 4, 2014" are. A discussion about whether otherwise non-ISO-8601 dates should allow a leading zero will be/is/was (depending on when you read this) at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#leading zeros should be allowed in days in dates. Banaticus (talk) 21:56, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Should the months corresponding to a season depend on whether one is in the northern or the southern hemisphere? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:48, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Seasons and months have different correspondences throughout the world. There is a concise explanation and style guidance at the Manual of Style. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

So this means that if y is the current year, dates in y+2 become valid on January 1, y+1 (and will remain permanently so). GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, because publishers sometimes make a work available before the printed date. By allowing the date to be current year + 2, the module accommodates these publishers while still catching some typos.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:07, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I’m using this Module on the Haitian Creole Wikipedia and in swapping out the English month names for those in Kreyòl, I have a problem. Some months have more than one acceptable format: August arguably has five different spellings—depending on context—and October has at least two. How should this be coded? —LLarson (said & done) 18:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

In function get_month_number ()? Do as you have done for the other months. long_months is a table of key/value pairs where each unique spelling of a month name is a key. For example if you wanted capitalized and uncapitalized month names you could write:

local long_months = {['janvye']=1, ['Janvye']=1, ['fevriye']=2, ['Fevriye']=2, ...};

I can see that you are going to have problems with oktòb because it contains a unicode character. Because unicode characters don't appear in English months the code is not setup to handle them. I'll tweak that for you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks so much! It’s finally working properly :D —LLarson (said & done) 21:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)