Help talk:Cite errors/Archive 2

Archive 1

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Archive 5

not enough backlink labels

For the article List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War are not enough backlinks avaible. For the article might be found a other solution. --Boris 20:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Borianium (talk • contribs)

I recommend you use {{scref}} and {{scnote}} as noted on the help page. Or split the page— it is taking a very long time to load. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Two questions

The Talk page for {{Template reference list}} is a REDIRECT to this Talk page, and I wonder why? Also, I note that there is a notation on that template in italics that reads: This reference list does not appear in the article. But the reference list does appear in articles, e.g., Hydrogen, and it seems that this is the desirable situation. So why would there be such an italicized notation if the refs do appear in articles? What am I missing?
 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  07:13, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• As noted above, this is a centralized talk page for a number of related categories, templates and system pages. Editors do not have to try to keep a couple of dozen talk pages on their watchlist, especially where there is little discussion on those pages.
• Articles use {{reflist}}. Some templates include references— if the template page does not include the markup to show the reference list, an error message will show. {{Template reference list}} is designed to show the references, but dose not transclude to the article, which should have its own markup. There is a similar template for talk pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:16, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Gadget850 (Ed) !  —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  10:31, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Extend the list at MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels

The list at MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels isn't long enough. On the page List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War, that entire list is gone through and there is a large series of error messages for Footnote #1. The list needs to be continued like this: aaa aab aac aad aae aaf aag aah aai aaj aak aal aam aan aao aap aaq aar aas aat aau aav aaw aax aay aaz aba abb abc abd abe abf abg abh abi abj abk abl abm abo abp abq abr abs abt abu abv abw abx aby abz aca acb acc acd ace acf acg ach aci acj ack acl acm acn aco acp acq acr acs act acu acv acw acx acy acz ada adb adc add ade adf adg adh adi adj adk adl adm adn ado adp adq adr ads adt adu adv adw adx ady adz aea aeb aec aed aee aef aeg aeh aei aej aek ael aem aen aeo aep aeq aer aes aet aeu aev aew aex aey aez

I think that's probably far enough. Thanks! --Oxguy3 16:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

So— 831 backlinks will fix the $deity awful load time? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Numbered list inside a reference

I've been told that the following problem might be something to do with the Cite.php extension, so I'm adding a note on it here. Please direct me somewhere else if it is not.
A previous version of the Newton's laws of motion article, had a numbered list (#) in the first reference. This broke the remaining references, turning them into a simple bullet list. I changed the first reference to use a bullet list (*) instead and the problem has gone away.
The obvious solution to this problem is "don't do that", but it would be nice if it worked, or if not, caught and flagged. The edit that broke the Newton page was made by an experienced editor and wasn't then noticed for a couple of months.
All the best and many thanks. –Syncategoremata (talk) 01:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting— the rest of the reference list gets wrapped in <ul>...</ul>. Cite does not use the unordered list tag— see Help:Cite messages. Why do I think this is HTML Tidy at work yet again? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:25, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've just spent a confused hour or two wandering around the MediaWiki documentation. The main result? This system is much, much more complex than I had ever considered it might be (or than the simple installation was that I used to run locally) but it does seem entirely likely that this is HTML Tidy at work.

Would it be worth me re-raising this issue somewhere like Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)? Or are you intending to have a look at it?

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

T22050. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for digging that out of Bugzilla (and yet again I've learnt something new: that's where MediaWiki bug reports go). Knowing that the bug can be avoided with an extra newline is worth knowing.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

See Help:Cite errors/Ordered lists in references.

Error message improvement

Per questions on the Help Desk and elsewhere, I am convinced that editors are missing that the Cite error part of the message is a link to the help page. I propose to delink the Cite error part and make the help page link more obvious. Example:

From

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a <references/> tag.

To

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a <references/> tag; please see the help page.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it never occurred to me to check a help page for that (self-explanatory) error message, but it would not have occurred to me that the 'Cite error' link would give me that help.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Be bold, just do it. Fences&Windows 22:40, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done

Make the page functional not just informative

This page explains an error message. Knowing what it is that makes something incorrect is potentially nice to know, but knowing how to do it correctly is essential. Note that this comment isn't helpful either, without the next sentence: Adding to this page, examples that show how to add a Reference correctly would address this. --Kernel.package (talk) 16:17, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you referring to Help:Cite errors in general or to a specific message? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:48, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for the previous user, but for me I will say "for this specific message." I got it when attempting to improve the article for Sentinel (FBI). I couldn't figure it out, so I left it how I found it. Shooter tx (talk) 21:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you are referring to this version. That is pretty mangled markup,but it does reproduce the error documented at Help:Cite errors/Cite error references missing group. I will update that soon. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Now that I look at the help page, it refers you to another page that should have explained the problem. Is it not explanatory? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:30, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I just got this error message for the first time. Having read this page, I still do not have a clue how to fix things. I have to edit the reference list? But how? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brrrtje (talk • contribs) 13:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Replied at Talk:Pima. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{Reflist}} template or a <references/> tag January 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fog00al (talk • contribs)

Presuming you refer to Aether theories. The ref name was unclosed. I fixed it but commented out the ref as it was unused. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Namespace control

Per Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Cite error messages not shown in IE8 – CSS "error" class, we should enable error messages in Wikipedia namespace.

I am going to look at adding a class to {{broken ref}}, so that error messages are generated for talk pages, but not displayed. This way users can add CSS to display those messages if they so desire. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:57, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Found a sneaky reference error in Copt

The page was listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting but there was no visible error message. I finally looked at User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer log and the bot had tried to fix the page but had to skip.

• Copt: Revision 381212314 is too b0rken to fix (Ref contains <ref>), skipping

Then I looked at the page and the issue was that one of the edits had started to make a nested ref. So I tried WP:REFNEST and it worked [1]. 24.34.148.49 (talk) 09:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The reference is formatted using {{lower}}. A cite error does show if the template is removed. I will have to pick it apart and see which chunk suppresses the error. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:58, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The reference contains a URL with an =, causing the {{lower}} template to fail, although this could happen with any template and with any of the error messages. Running the refTools error check would have caught this particular problem. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)