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Fields needed

There is no provision for naming a translator (using "editor" or "author" doesn't work).

Also, in mathematics we often cite Springer-Verlag's notorious series of "yellow books", the Graduate Texts in Mathematics. To do this (and other such) properly, we need a series and number capability.

An example of an attempt to do both of these is

  • Remmert, Reinhold (1991), Theory of Complex Functions, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 122 of Graduate Texts in Mathematics (Readings in Mathematics), translated by Robert B. Burckel (trans.), New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-97195-7, translated by Robert B. Burckel from Remmert, Reinhold (1989), Funktionentheorie I (2nd ed.), Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-51238-7 {{citation}}: Text "Grundwissen Mathematik 5" ignored (help)

The idea of a universal citation template is appealing, but in terms of results the only major advantage today over the competition is link compatibility with Harvard style. --KSmrqT 14:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I had thought of including a translator function, but I wasn't sure the best way to cite the translator. Your example seems a bit redundant, because the author is repeated twice. I'm not sure how valuable it is to incorporate full bibliographical information on the source of the translation into the template. If the full info about the original book is important, it would probably be better to just use two templates, as in your example. In normal cases, I think the important information would likely be the translator's name (e.g., new parameters called translator-last, translator-first, etc.), the original language (original-language), the date of the original work (probably re-use year and date) and the date of publication in translated form (probably re-use publication-date).
As to the other issue, I think series and volume would be the best parameter names to use for this. Adding a new series parameter along the lines of your example would be easy. COGDEN 20:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt response.
Yes, normally a full citation of the original work is excessive. I did it here for two reasons: (1) I did not know how to include the name of the translator in the main citation, and (1) many international Wikipedia readers may find it more convenient to consult the German-language original.
I wonder if you have tracked developments of {{cite book}} and friends; those support two dates, one of which is the original. Also, it would be nice if we could have universal agreement on (or parameters for) the formatting.
The syntax for templates is baroque; how do you recommend experimenting without breaking thousands of pages? Or would you prefer to do all the edits yourself? --KSmrqT 22:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree about the template syntax being baroque. It might have been okay a couple of years ago when templates were small, but it scales very poorly. As far as I'm aware, the {{citation}} set of templates are the most complicated on Wikipedia. I've tried to make it as easy as possible for other editors to change and experiment, however. For each of the templates, there is a "/testing" subpage for testing, and that's how I've been testing things. I then have a subpage on my userpage that references the testing templates.
I haven't been following {{cite book}} for a while. I was involved in the basic design a long time ago, but it has been vastly changed. I've tried to make things as compatible as possible with the other templates, but the {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite chapter}} and all the other myriad templates aren't always consistent with each other. I've been fairly conservative about adding parameters, because once a parameter is added, we're pretty much stuck with it, because removing it from the template would cause problems with lots of pages. COGDEN 22:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Upper case or lower case of parameters

I don't know if there is any consensus, but I personally prefer to have the parameter names in lowercase →AzaToth 17:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia naming standards prefer lowercase except where necessary. Readers do not see parameter names so grammatical rules do not need to be followed. Using only lowercase also eliminates trying to memorize whether a parameter is publishyear, Publishyear, PublishYear, or publishYear. (SEWilco 17:51, 5 December 2005 (UTC))
I hope I do not disturb here (as this is still experimental), but I would prefer lowercase too. It's just simpler and faster to write. Less likely to get written wrong. BTW: Good idea to make the year parameter required! – Adrian | Talk 22:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Another way to do it

Just an idea, just using a wrapper template for all different types of references

(table demonstrates User:AzaToth/X7&oldid=30245175)

→AzaToth 19:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

This would be incompatible to {{Citation}}. And if meant to replace existing templates: no, wouldn't do that. More difficult to count usages by type. More load for servers. But the technical idea is interesting. – Adrian | Talk 10:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It should not be necessary to maintain numerous differences between different kinds of citations merely because the sources are in different types of media. Books, journals, and newspapers can be handled in the same way. We don't have to precisely follow existing standards of when to use quotation marks or italicize a title or name. The fact that web sites are used to convey information which is also in other form (such as a web version of a newspaper story) means that any kind of citation has to also support a URL. By using the title as the text for a URL link, for a citation to material which is only on a web site we can simply omit the unused fields such as page number. (SEWilco 16:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC))

Logic templates on WP:AUM

See the discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_using_meta-templates#Logic_templates. – Adrian | Talk 15:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

qif instead of if?

Would you agree if I convert this to template:qif (instead of template:if)? – Adrian | Talk 14:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

That's a good idea. You may want to check recent changes to WP:CITET templates. (SEWilco 16:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC))
Just converted to qif. Nothing more. Hope I made no botches. Kept formatting as it was. (diff). – Adrian | Talk 19:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Why not a media parameter?

Shouldn't there be an easy way to distinguish whether the reference is a book, paper, journal or news article etc? Eg. with a media field? ··gracefool |☺ 23:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I mean like #Another way to do it above, but have the "type" field not actually do anything. Or perhaps just a note in brackets about what the reference is (a book, journal article, newspaper article, etc). ··gracefool |☺ 22:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Why is Title optional?

In all the other reference/citation templates, Title is compulsary. How can cite a book without a title? ··gracefool |☺ 08:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Let's move this

This gets transcluded occasionally by mistake for {{Citation needed}}. This is not a good thing. Can we move this to {{citation-test}} or some such until finished? Septentrionalis 21:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Note: just don't forget to delete the remaining redirect, which will be an alias for the new template name (which defeats your intention, if not deleted). Otherwise, I don't care. --Ligulem 11:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

conflict

Hi, I've created a template for adding to the tops of pages where rumor may regularly be posted without any citation. My Template is designed to politely caution editors to provide citations, and offers links to Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability.I'd like help finding a regular page to place it on, since Template: Citation is taken. my work can be seen here: User talk:ThuranX/CitationTemplate. I believe there is a need for a simple reminder on certain types of pages, such as Future Films (one of which inspired the template). Thank you for your help in finding a location. ThuranX 18:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. the other person working with me on this idea suggested Template:Cite your edits and it was available. all the same ,suggestions are welcome. However, I reiterate my intent with the page, which was a simple one line template offering helpful links in a passive, polite manner.ThuranX 18:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

What relationship with other template?

"These examples of citation within the text are based on related citation template Template:Harvard citation, which automatically creates a one-directional link to the first matching Harvard reference on the same page:"

Are you certain that it's perfectly obvious that one jumps to an anchor and the other creates the anchor, or should a little more description be provided? (SEWilco 04:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC))

I tried to clarify this on the /doc page. COGDEN 08:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Question I have

after quickly reading the article.

1. Can you still use harvnb when using citation?
2. Is this suitable for citing a documentary? If so, I would love a full example of citing a film or documentary.

Thanks. StudyAndBeWise 05:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I just verified that you can. Now the next question:

Also, should this be called reference? Isn't the citation the [1], and the reference the book? Thanks. StudyAndBeWise 06:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Citation is the description of the source material, while references are the way the sources are referred to. If citing an entire book (with no specific page numbers) there often is a single citation in the article, while there may be many references to that source. (SEWilco 06:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC))
Thanks for the clarification, I have been doing this backwards. StudyAndBeWise 03:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Tool to convert harvard references to "citations"

Is there a tool to automate this process?

THanks. StudyAndBeWise 06:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I doubt there are tools yet for this new template. Mine are still a week away from using it. But the documentation hints that this citation can be used with Harvard references. (SEWilco 06:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC))
A tool would be useful to convert harvard references to citations if the harvard reference is really depreciated. StudyAndBeWise 03:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
A tool would be great. Personally, I have done manual find-and-replace. It would be nice to have a tool, for example, for use with AWB browser. There are about 800 or so articles using the Harvard reference template, and the process could be automated. Until all usages of the Harvard reference template are converted, however, the old template should continue to function. It's all a matter of renaming parameter values. COGDEN 08:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Page numbers are omitted when citing a contribution

You can see this in the "Joseph Knight" example in the main template page. The page number is given as "35", but this does not appear anywhere in the output. Is this deliberate or a mistake? Thanks. Grover cleveland 17:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem fixed. page has been added as a synonym for pages, which I think is reasonable, but I'm changing the example to read pages. COGDEN 06:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. However I'm still seeing the same problem when citing a contribution to a book (rather than a journal). The two "Bernard Lewis" examples on the main page both give the pages as "719-720", but this doesn't appear in the output. Thanks again for your help! Grover cleveland 16:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
If I understand the template code correctly, {{Citation/core}} displays parameter Pages only for periodicals; otherwise if there is an editor, it displays IncludedWorkPages (provided it is not equal to Pages). But {{Citation}} never sets IncludedWorkPages. Worse yet, for a non-periodical without an editor there is no try at displaying page numbers. In other words page numbers are omitted except when citing a periodical. --teb728 21:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
You're right. That's an error, and I fixed it by getting rid of the unused IncludeWorkPages parameter and just using the Pages parameter. COGDEN 02:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Should page numbers be shown for a book without an editor? Currently they are not. --teb728 21:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Citing web sites

According to the first line of the documentation this template is supposed to be useful for citing web sites. The parameter names, however, are specialized for books and journals. And even if I force a web site reference into one of those models by faking the parameter names, I don’t get the right results:

  • {{Citation|author=Author name|title=Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia|chapter=Template:Citation|publisher=Wikimedia Foundation|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation}} gives
Author name, "Template:Citation", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
with the link to the site rather than the page. (I would think that even for a book the link should go on the chapter rather than the title.)
  • And {{Citation|author=Author name|journal=Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia|title=Template:Citation|publisher=Wikimedia Foundation|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation}} gives
Author name, "Template:Citation", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
This is almost what I want, but the publisher is suppressed. (I would think that even with a periodical it might sometimes be desireable to show a publisher.)

Also the access-date and ref parameters are undocumented. --teb728 01:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

An article on Wikipedia would be cited roughly like this:
{{Citation
 |author=Author name
 |title=Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
 |chapter=Template:Citation
 |publisher=Wikimedia Foundation
 |contribution-url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation
}}
I agree there are a few features that need documentation, and others that need clarification. COGDEN 17:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Microformat for citations

Please be aware of the proposal for a microformat for marking citations in (X)HTML. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats. Andy Mabbett 13:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Zotero support

I recently added some COinS metadata to this template. I think it works as none of my articles using this template seem to have broken and Zotero seems to import the references. But I could be wrong: they could be incomplete, incorrect, or somehow subtly broken. So review is appreciated. --Gwern (contribs) 16:14 18 April 2007 (GMT)

The one you added is only appropriate for books. I started a centralized discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Microformats#COinS_work. I think we should figure out the appropriate format for each type of document individually first, and then merge them into this template with the correct "switch" statements. — Omegatron 16:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

A Good Template Is Needed

Hi guys, I'd like to use a citation template that does inline anchors. Problem is, I can't. The present template does not pass what I call the Ivory-billed Woodpecker test... scroll down to the references and you'll see why when you come to "F"... I have posted a list of what could (and needs to) be in a semi-unified template format at Template_talk:Harvard_reference#Revamped_template. Dysmorodrepanis 13:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Videos and Asian format needed

I did not know Template:Citation exist so that I made User:Shoons/Cite. Now I found that this Template:Citation does not cover videos or Asian format. I would like you to make this Template:Citation unified for all the resources if possible. Would you consider it? Asian format is not so important for you guys but it video would be importat. Now some of the problem of Asian format is that we do not use italic or '" '. No need ',' between first name and last name, and so on. Would help me to make unified version of all the citation, please?--Shoons 21:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Lack of a trailing period

The examples encourage putting the last full stop after the }}. This is bad practice and there is a space between the end of the reference and the period. –Pomte 03:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean with "this is bad practice"? Do you mean that we (Wikipedians) should not have to full stop, or that the list of references as displayed in the articles should not have a final full stop?
I agree that the space before the final full stop should be removed. This may not be so easy though. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:39, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I mean bad practice to force content (".") outside the actual template, not that we shouldn't have a full stop. –Pomte 02:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
The space was introduced by the recent inclusion of COinS tags. I'm attempting a fix. COGDEN 10:18, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Problem fixed (by removing COinS tag part of the template, see below). COGDEN 10:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

COinS tags

COinS tags were recently added to the template. I'm not sure what value these have, and they add a huge amount of markup overhead, so I'm removing them until we have a discussion here on whether or not they should be included. COGDEN 10:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

"I'm not sure what value these have" Please don't make such significant changes, thereby removing functionality, until you at least understand what's involved; and preferably discuss them first. I've reverted, You can read more about COinS at COinS! (See also COinS in Wikipedia) Andy Mabbett 10:45, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
The span with the COinS contains a   (non-breakable space); see the last line in the wikicode for the template. I'm guessing that this causes the offending space. Can we just remove it? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
No, because Mediawiki strips empty span tags. — Omegatron 17:48, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I think these major features should be discussed before they are added to the template, especially when they add ugly extraneous spaces. I'm not necessarily opposed to adding the feature, but if we keep it, we need to find a way to get rid of the non-breaking space. Moreover, this coding should be done at template:Citation/core, rather than here, so that you can include the synonyms. I'd perhaps suggest putting the HTML attributes in the <cite> element. In the meantime, I'm reverting back. COGDEN 00:21, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
They were announced, discussed, and implemented in the more specific templates months ago with no complaints that I recall.
If you're only concerned about a space before the period, as in the above section, put the span tag after the period, where it's supposed to be.
Also, who wrote this COinS tag? Is it really going to work correctly in each instance of this template? — Omegatron 01:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Unlike Template:Cite book, the period is not included in this template, so we cannot put it after the period. Perhaps this was a mistake (I think so), but to fix it requires us to go to all the articles using the template, look whether they add a period after the template, and if yes, remove it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
the period is not included in this template because there are many instances where you might want to include more information at the end of the citation than the template provides, such as alternate web addresses, etc. The best practice, anyway, would be to put these attributes in the <cite> element. That's where it would should go based on standard xhtml coding practices. Do any of the CoInS tools look in the cite element, or are they blind everywhere other than spans? Alternatively, we could put one giant span element outside of the cite element. That's very inelegant, but it would workCOGDEN 23:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I made an attempt to put the tags in a giant span element surrounding the whole citation at template:Citation/core. The "class" element works, but somehow the "title" element doesn't. Can somebody take a look and see what I'm doing wrong? It's probably something obvious. I'm leaving it in its present state because it doesn't break anything, and I've commented out the code. COGDEN 02:03, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Update: Seems to be working now. COGDEN 05:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Journal year without author

The formatting for a journal paper with a year but no author looks kind of ugly to me. E.g.

  • 1984, "The publications and writings of Jack Kiefer", Annals of Statistics 12 (2): 424–430.

If formatting it by hand, I'd probably put the year at the end, e.g.

  • "The publications and writings of Jack Kiefer", Annals of Statistics 12 (2): 424–430, 1984.

Alternatively maybe one should use some sort of standin for an author here... Is there a stylesheet somewhere that describes what the right thing to do in this case is? David Eppstein 22:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I changed it as you suggested, moving the date later. I think that's better, and more standard. I think these citations usually start with the title when there is no author. COGDEN 23:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Still has an odd comma, though:
While I'm asking about this template: {{cite journal}} allows a doi= field, while for this one it seemingly has to be handled via id={{doi}}. Any chance of handling doi directly, while still allowing other info such as {{MathSciNet}} in the id field? —David Eppstein 23:38, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
It actually does handle DOI directly, but it hasn't been put in the documentation yet. COGDEN 00:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I see. I was confused into thinking it didn't handle doi at all, because the article I was using as a test case also had an id. What it still doesn't handle is mixing id and doi in the same citation. Both doi and id, supplied, but as of now the template only shows the id:

Supplying a doi without an id does work:

what I would like the first example to look like:

David Eppstein 00:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I hopefully made the change. COGDEN 01:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Looks good. —David Eppstein 01:13, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

url/contribution/title

One more suggestion: when a citation has all three of url=, contribution=, and title=, the url link is currently placed on the title; I think in that case it would be better placed on the contribution. I am thinking here e.g. of conference proceedings papers, copies of which are often linked from the authors' websites. —David Eppstein 16:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a separate tag for urls for the contribution/chapter, called contribution-url or chapter-url. So you can have two separate urls. I was thinking, though, that it might be helpful to have the default behavior be to link url with the contribution/chapter when url is given but contribution-url isn't. COGDEN 17:36, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I made this change. This is now the default behavior when there is a contribution but no contribution-url. The link will be on the title of the contribution, not the title of the collective work. Otherwise, everything stays the same. COGDEN 18:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

When there is more than one author

{{Citation | last = Bloggs | first = Fred | last2 = Doe | first2 = John | last3 = Smith | first3 = John | title = Which way around? | publisher = Wikipedia}} gives the following.

Bloggs, Fred; Doe, John; Smith, John, Which way around?, Wikipedia

I would expect to see "Bloggs, Fred; Doe, John & Smith, John, Which way around?, Wikipedia" The same happens with the Harvard template. Is there an agreed style that makes the co-authors appear with their surname last? MortimerCat 07:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Co-authors are always cited that way. The only reason we do last name, first name is for alphabetization purposes. That's a moot point for co-authors after the first, so their names are rendered normally. Powers T 12:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I have to disagree with this. It's certainly not always done that way, and in fact almost all of the journals in my field use a "Surname, Initials" format for every author. My personal opinion is that it's better (easier to read) if the ordering is consistent. Since you need the surname first for the leading author, you put up with having it first for all the authors. -- Rjw62 13:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
From a look at some random files on my hard drive, I have to disagree as well. I saw the following:
  • All names are cited as Surname, Initials by: Journal of Physics A, Nonlinearity and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
  • All names are cited as Initials Surname …
    • and references are put in alphabetical order by: Acta Numerica, American Mathematical Monthly, SIAM Review and SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis.
    • and references are not put in alphabetical order by: Journal of Mathematical Physics and Journal of Chemical Physics.
    • and references are put in footnotes by: Zeitschift für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik.
As you can guess from the list of journals, my fields is applied mathematics (more specifically, numerical analysis). In fact, I thought that Rjw62's field is the same, given User:Rjw62 reports an Erdős number, so I'm surprised by the statement that almost all journals in his/her field use "Surname, Initials" for every author. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
It's truly mixed (and confusing), but for the sake of consistency, I do it the way Rjw62 discussed (family name always first). This is especially important if you have East Asian or Hungarian names which have it the other way around in everyday use. For example PubMed will fail you when you search for papers by somebody called, say, Akira Watanabe, and happen to think "Akira" is the proper search term because it would be Watanabe Akira in Japanese style. Western style would be Watanabe, Akira, and in PubMed it would be Watanabe A. For this reason, I also try to give full names, not just initials, whenever possible. Dysmorodrepanis 16:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
My field is fluid dynamics, and I was only looking at Journals that use Harvard (author-year) style citations. (In any case Journals that consistently use "Initials, Surname" are surely irrelevant to this discussion.) In the pile of papers I've got in front of me, the only one that did "Surname, Initials" for the first author and then "Initials, Surname" for the others is the JGR. The others using Harvard references: JFM, PEPI, GpApFD, GJI, J. Biomech., and MMB all have "Surname, Initials" throughout. -- Rjw62 13:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

et al

When there are four or more authors, only the first three are shown. What are we trying to save by this abbreviation? Is there any way to force a longer author list to be visible? Also, how are we supposed to format a name like "Harry B. Hunt, III"? using "last = Hunt, III" works but then you have to do the same hack in the {{harv}} reference templates in order to get the correct link made, which makes the reference look wrong there. —David Eppstein 17:33, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

In scientific journals, et al is used inline and in the References, the full list is almost always given. In some (rare) cases, even full-ref author names lists are abbreviated, but even then, only after more than 3 names. See for example here (Fitzpatrick et al. 2005). But usually, even such very long author lists get cited in full, as is only proper to do. Science allows a very brief format (first author et al.) but this is unusual and only because that journal has generally very short articles, with references often moved to the electronic appendix where they are then given in full.
The "first/last" format in the templates is not able to (and never will be) to handle all eventualities of author names correctly; besides, it creates considerable obfuscation and bloat. Dysmorodrepanis 07:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Would it be so hard to add a "suffix" field? first=Harry B.|last=Hunt|suffix=III. BibTeX has one. As for "et al", I am not talking about what goes into the Harvard cite, but what goes into the formatted reference itself. We do not have the same conciseness constraints that paper journals do. —David Eppstein 14:56, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
It wouldn't be too hard to add a suffix field, nor would it in my opinion create "considerable obfuscation and bloat". Mentioning authors beyond the third in the References section also seems a good idea and in line with general practice. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, to add 7 characters to express 3-4 (Jr. to III.) is bloat, overhead, cruft, kipple, shland, call it what you like. And the template is already afoul of "you can edit this page now" IMHO. Think of the inexperienced Wikipedia users. Not everyone is markup-savy. A page that uses the template exclusively for referencing can not be "edited now" with proper results by the novel user, in my personal experience, whereas simply writing down the ref in markupped plaintext is a) shorter and b) far more easily understandable.
As regards obfuscation - try a look at the source code of any page that makes extensive use of the cite template and the ref tag. It looks like it's written by Microsoft programmers.
The template's a vintage from those days when WP was mainly unreferenced and most of the refs were textbooks with few authors/editors, and not scientific papers with perhaps 10 or more authors, online abstracts and fulltexts, DOIs, PMIDs, internal links, external links, etc. "We do not have the same conciseness constraints that paper journals do" is precisely the point: there is just no way to build a template that does what the present one does, covers all (or even 95%) of the possibilities, and is both sleek, and intuitive for novice users - we do have a conciseness (or maybe "cleanness") constraint as regards the code produced: it's called "you can edit this page now". Dysmorodrepanis 16:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how that argues against my suggestion of another field for proper formatting of some names. Editors would only have to know about it on the rare occasion that they run into one of those names, so it wouldn't impede editability. If you're arguing against the existence of this whole template, then (1) you're doing it in the wrong place, and (2) you need to address the serious formatting inconsistencies that arise whenever people try to format citations manually. —David Eppstein 18:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

DOI as URL?

When there's a DOI for a journal article, it typically resolves to a web page corresponding to that article. In the event of no specific URL being provided, would it be sensible to use the dx.doi.org resolver as the URL and provide an inline link on the article title (and then not add the separate DOI link at the end). Accessibility and usability-wise it's surely much better to have the main web link on the title rather than on an obscure number. -- Rjw62 19:36, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

You raise a good point and one of the comments left on my talk page shows that it does indeed confuse some people. The disadvantage is that the DOI is no longer visible, though it can still be found in the URL. I'm not sure that the number by itself is very useful, so I'm inclined to agree with Rjw62. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
This would match the behavior of, e.g., MathSciNet, which links to articles by doi but doesn't show the doi itself when it does. It seems reasonable enough to me. —David Eppstein 05:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I now implemented this. For example,
  • {{citation | author = Diakonis | title = Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss | journal = SIAM Review | doi = 10.1137/S0036144504446436 }}.
used to give
but now gives
-- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:11, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
The former is more useful, especially for people viewing printed copies of pages. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:15, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
That's a good point, and we should edit the css styles so that the DOI shows up when the article is printed. That's a little tricky, so I'm looking into that. Another issue is that probably, the DOI should correspond to the URL, but probably not the IncludedWorkURL. In other words, if there is a DOI, it will probably correspond to the entire work, rather than any included part. That might not always be the case, but I think it's the best default behavior for this template. COGDEN 19:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
In my experience, a DOI for a contribution within a conference proceedings is almost always for the contribution itself and not for the whole proceedings. Is that what you mean re "included part"? —David Eppstein 20:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I guess you're right. I reverted my recent edits, and I'll take a look again taking this into account. COGDEN 22:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Problem with accessdate?

I use {{citation}} a lot. I've noticed that many of my citations now don't have the accessdate automatically wikilinked. Before, I could put in accessdate-2007-08-03 and it would appear as 2007-08-03. Does anyone know why this was changed? Is it going to be fixed or do I have to manually make those links now? Karanacs 19:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I have also noticed that this template doesn't handle the accessdate parameter in exactly the same way as the other citation templates I've tried handle them. It doesn't link them to the year and month. Below, I have tried the same citation with the Template:Citation and Template:cite journal templates, using exactly the same parameter list.

Should accessdate be handled the same by Citation as by other templates, or should it be handled differently?

  • Here's the citation using "{{Citation" ...": Proctor, R. A. (October, 1873), "Finding the Way At Sea", The Popular Science Monthly, III, New York: D. Appleton and Company: 722, retrieved 2007-08-02 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  • Here's the same citation using "{{cite journal ...": Proctor, R. A. (October, 1873). "Finding the Way At Sea". The Popular Science Monthly. III. New York: D. Appleton and Company: 722. Retrieved 2007-08-02. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

Here's the parameter list I used in both cases: 

| journal=The Popular Science Monthly | title=Finding the Way At Sea
| volume = III | year=1873 | date=October, 1873 | pages=722
| last = Proctor | first = R. A.
| publisher=D. Appleton and Company | location=New York
| url=http://books.google.com/books?id=TXsKAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPA721
| accessdate=2007-08-02
}}

--SV Resolution(Talk) 23:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The cause seems to be this edit by COGDEN with edit summary "Fix potential problem with AccessDate". I assume COGDEN had a reason for it and asked him to explain. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I didn't think it was a good idea to assume that the parameter of access-date was formatted in a way that could be wikilinked. That seems less robust and user friendly. But if people are comfortable with it, I'm fine with changing it back. It's not that big a deal, especially if other templates do it that way. COGDEN 22:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Most, if not all, of the other templates do wikilink the accessdate. I hadn't noticed that this had changed until an FA reviewer complained that half of my citations had wikilinks and the other half (the ones that used this template) didn't. If you could change it back, that would be very appreciated. Karanacs 20:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Thinking about this further, I'm not sure this is a good idea, and maybe we need to change it in the other templates, but the date parameter isn't automatically wikified, and I think there ought to be some consistency among the various date parameters. COGDEN 01:39, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Don't know if this is related or not, but there seems to be a space missing between URL and access date when citing a web page. For example:
*{{citation
| last = Jackson
| first = Andrew
| publication-date = 2001
| date = 2001
| year = 2001
| title = The Battle of Barrosa, 5th March 1811
| publisher = www.peninsularwar.org
| url = http://www.peninsularwar.org/barrosa.htm
| accessdate = [[3 September]], [[2007]]
}};

produces:

I had a look at the template code, but frankly it didn't mean a lot to me - any chance of getting it fixed by someone who knows how such things work? Cheers. Carre 08:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to reopen this topic. We clearly have a lack of consistency among the different citation templates that should be rectified. As SV Resolution pointed out, use of the accessdate parameter in most of the templates produces:
Retrieved on 2007-08-02.
while the same parameter in {{citation}} produces:
(retrieved on 2007-08-02)
I agree with COGDEN that there's not much utility in having the retrieval date linked. (Does anyone really care what else was going on coincident with SV Revolution reading about the Battle of Barrosa? If not, why else have the link?) And linking the date adds an extra level of complexity (i.e. potential problems) in the coding of the templates, for no particular gain. Therefore I'd pull the linking off of the other templates.
But the problem isn't just in the linking, but in the capitalization and punctuation as well. Can we adjust the cap/punct in {{citation}} right away, and then proceed to push the linking discussion to a conclusion? -Ipoellet 00:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
What the use of accessdate=2007-08-02 displays on most other citation templates depends on the user's preference settings. In your case, it's apparently "[[2007]]-[[August 2|08-02]]". In mine, it's "[[2 August]] [[2007]]". That's the reason these dates are wikilinked - for the prefered rendering, not for the links themselves. RossPatterson 12:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it makes no sense to wikilink the access date. Changing the date format to match user preferences does make sense. ---- CharlesGillingham 23:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to be draconian, but this must be consistent across all the citation templates. Since all of the other citation templates wikilink the accessdate (so that user date preferences take effect), I have changed this template to do the same. If you would like accessdates to not be wikilinked, please seek concensus across all the citation templates before changing it back. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

No draconian measures necessary. :) As you note, the templates wikilink accessdate so that user date preferences take effect. This will no longer be necessary when bug #4582 has been resolved. I'm working on it, but the required server-side modifications have low priority vis-a-vis the new pre-processor. -- Fullstop (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Issue where chapter (or contribution) is present, but author is absent

It’s rather common, especially in the case of web pages—this one might be an example—to want to include both work and section, but to leave out the author(s).

Using the form suggested above, but missing out the author field, gives us a leading comma. I guess this is by accident rather than design. Could/should it be fixed? 

{{Citation
 |title=Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
 |chapter=Template:Citation
 |publisher=Wikimedia Foundation
 |contribution-url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation
}}

Result at 10:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC) (template substed):

Result now:

Ian Spackman 10:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Your suggestion makes sense and nobody protested, so I implemented it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:06, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! —Ian Spackman 14:16, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

PubMed citations

I have searched trying to find support for medical references using the PubMed ID number. At present the articles I have seen all use the ref system which is now deprecated. Any ideas?--CloudSurfer 19:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Answer found in the cite template. Ignore the above. --CloudSurfer 11:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

ISSN

Can or should one use the ISBN field for publications with ISSN identifiers? I've been citing an academic online publication [1] which has an ISSN, but no ISBN. {{Cite journal}} has an ISSN field, but I'm trying to transition to this more versatile template. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

This template also has an ISSN field, but it was not documented. So you can use something like
{{ citation | author = Karim CHABANI | title = Double Trajectories: Crossing Lines in Fun Home | journal = GRAAT | issn = 1954-3220 }}
which produces
Karim CHABANI, "Double Trajectories: Crossing Lines in Fun Home", GRAAT, ISSN 1954-3220
As you probably guessed, using the ISBN field is not a good idea. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Problem with longer DOI

I found that when using longer DOI (example shown below), resulted URL link is wrong and displayed doi also not proper

Hockberger, Philip E. (2002), "A History of Ultraviolet Photobiology for Humans, Animals and Microorganisms" (PDF), Photochemisty and Photobiology, 76 (6): 561–569, doi:10.1562/0031-8655(2002)076<0561:AHOUPF>2.0.CO;2

the true doi for above example is 10.1562/0031-8655(2002)076<0561:AHOUPF>2.0.CO;2 pruthvi 22:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

This is caused by the < symbol in the DOI. I don't know how to fix it. However, as a workaround, you can do
  • {{citation | ... | id = {{doi | id=10.1562/0031-8655(2002)076%3C0561:AHOUPF%3E2.0.CO;2 | label=10.1562/0031-8655(2002)076<0561:AHOUPF>2.0.CO;2 }} }}
So you have to write the DOI twice, the first time you replace < with %3C and > with %3E, the second time you leave < and > as normal. This produces
Technical details: The first problem is that URLs cannot contain characters like < (see Help:URL). The urlencode magic word is implemented for this reason, so I wrapped the DOI inside an urlencode. Unfortunately, there is a bug in the implementation and {{urlencode:<}} does not yield %3C as it should (bugzilla:9031). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Languages

I would find it useful if this template had a {{{language}}} parameter like that in {{cite book}}. This adds a note regarding the language of the work cited. Is there any possibility of someone adding this? — Gareth Hughes 15:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Another ditto. __meco 09:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Certainly agree: especially when it’s used in place of {{cite web}}—Ian Spackman 19:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Bump and agree. --Wizard191 (talk) 20:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Pages numbers in contributions within books

I'm not entirely happy with the "at xx–yy" formatting of pages in book contributions. It's not obvious that it refers to page numbers, and I think it should go before rather than after any doi, id, etc that refers to the contribution. Here's an example:

Markup: *{{citation|last=Elkies|first=N. D.|authorlink=Noam Elkies|contribution=Shimura curve computations|title=Algorithmic Number Theory: Third International Symposium, ANTS-III|publisher=Springer-Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1423|year=1998|doi=10.1007/BFb0054849|id={{arxiv|math.NT|0005160}}|pages=1–47}}.

As formatted by the current version of the template:

As formatted 20 Aug 2007:

What I'd like to see:

—David Eppstein 17:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not happy with either, but the problem (or so I deduced) is that the template is also linked directly from within <ref></ref> tags, the page number then referring to a specific page for which that ref applies. Hence the need for the "at xx-yy" at the end.
Perhaps the authors of the nifty code could (hint!, hint!) find a way to let editor tell the template "hey, this is a bibliographic cit, not an inline one," so allowing it to modify its behaviour accordingly.
-- Fullstop 22:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the difference is that there's a contribution title in this example, but not in the other kind of use you describe? —David Eppstein 22:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
I made the change. Probably a good suggestion. The only issue that might arise is "pp." implies that there are more pages than one. Might have to implement a separate "page" parameter in addition to "pages". COGDEN 01:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! —David Eppstein 01:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Month/Season

How do you cite quarterly magazines? For example, the Winter 2005 issue of AI Magazine. Same question for bi-monthly magazines, e.g.: January-February. Should I use the "date" field? Will this mess up Harvard Citations? ---- CharlesGillingham 05:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The volume/issue number is usually provided too. Using your example, a citation for an article from the Winter 2005 issue would look like this:
  • Nilsson, Nils J. (2005), "Human-Level Artificial Intelligence? Be Serious!", AI Magazine, 26 (4): 68–75
Should AI Magazine not have had issue numbers, the citation would have read:
  • Nilsson, Nils J. (2005), "Human-Level Artificial Intelligence? Be Serious!", AI Magazine, 26 (Winter): 68–75
-- Fullstop 22:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Citation broken?

It looks like something has changed with the {{citation}} template, breaking existing uses. And some well-meaning admin has protected it so I can't fix it. (I have steadfastly refused to involve myself in admin distractions.) The issue involves "location", "place", and "publication-place". Usage was inconsistent between the {{cite}} family and this, and apparently someone didn't notice. Help?! --KSmrqT 14:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is broken? If you can give my an example, I'll try to fix it. COGDEN 19:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what all is broken, nor everything to expect. What I do expect is that "place" should be used to give the city where something was printed, not a location in the text, because that is what the documentation says. At the very least, I expect consistency. Compare:
  • Doe, John (2001), My Life in Obscurity, Paris: Gauthier
    {{citation | last=Doe | first=John | title=My Life in Obscurity | year=2001 | place=Paris | publisher=Gauthier-Villars }}
  • Yvon Villarceau, Antoine Joseph François (1848), "Théorème sur le tore", Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques, Série 1, 7, Paris: Gauthier-Villars: 345–347, OCLC 2449182
  • {{citation | last = Yvon Villarceau | first = Antoine Joseph François | author-link = Yvon Villarceau | title = Théorème sur le tore | journal = Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques | volume = 7 | series = Série 1 | pages = 345–347 | publisher = Gauthier-Villars | place = Paris | date = 1848 | oclc = 2449182 }}
Notice that the "place" field is interpreted in two completely different ways, which is surely wrong. --KSmrqT 00:22, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I think I've fixed this. COGDEN 00:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks much. If we could also get support for the "series" field, currently ignored, that would also be appreciated. --KSmrqT 16:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I added a "series" provision for both books and periodicals. Take a look and see if this is how you'd format it in theh above citation. COGDEN 17:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Citing patents

I see that this template supports citing patents. Would it be possible to add a section on Citing patents to the documentation? -- Boracay Bill 00:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I took a stab at this after needing it myself. —David Eppstein 01:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Recent changes

What's with the extra url in brackets, like "<http://www.google.com/>"? They seem to have shown up in the last day or so, without any discussion here. Should they be there? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

They should only show up when there is no title, and in printed versions of the citations (except in IE, which is too buggy). Angle brackets around urls is a fairly standard citation convention. Usually, though, the url is hidden in a link. If there is consensus, we could change this, but I think the idea is to make sure that any trailing punctuation in the url is clearly designated as being part of the url. Since angle brackets can't be part of an url, they are used. COGDEN 07:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Citing non-print media

Is there a separate template for citing non-print media such as audio- and videotapes, CDs and DVDs? Cheers, Jacklee 09:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

You could probably use this one. There are tags for title, place, publication-place, author, publisher, etc., which could all be used. If there are any specific tags that might be helpful for citing non-print media, I'd like to incorporate them. COGDEN 07:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I've given this some thought, and think I've identified the issues that will need to be addressed:
  • issue #1 are the fields that would be required for lastname/firstname splitting for compatibility with harvard citation.
i.e. director-first/-last, producer-first/-last, speaker-first/-last (for audio).
This I assume is not a major issue since these variables can alias to existing ones (which aren't needed for A/V: "Writer" is not relevant to non-print media; a (film) script is again "print").
  • issue #2 (and the only potential stumbling block I can think of) is pages=, and this is only because it inserts "pp.".
In A/V material, it would be just a <timecode>. This isn't just a non-print issue. For example, some government publications have only column number(s). Maps may only have grid numbers. Perhaps a generic "at=" is the way to go.
  • issue #3 is *one* really new field, medium=.
The value of this field would need to appear just before location: publisher. e.g. Foot in Mouth [DVD]. Hollywood: Paramount
Medium= unfortunately can't be mapped to the existing series= (because series= would be needed for serials), but it could perhaps be recycled for print publications too (e.g. [map], [liner notes] etc)
  • issue #4 is that - for the average 'pedian - there are no examples that demonstrate how {{citation}} could be used for a lot more than print.
There are a number of gotchas that the average 'pedian wouldn't be aware of. For example, that for a TV news broadcast the producer is the one that appears in the first field (and not, for example, "MacNeil, Robert & Jim Lehrer"). But for film (irrespective of length or medium), director comes first.
That said, if its ok with you and the other savvy people who maintain this template, and if someone helps with collecting (formatted) examples with which to work with, I'm willing to write the documentation that would make non-print (and "special" print) media supportable too. Determining how to support these formats could then be based on that.
-- Fullstop 04:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds great. That's probably the best way to do it: create the documentation and examples, then edit the code to match. COGDEN 19:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
how about a Citation/doc/sandbox in which we can scribble in? Or do you have a better idea? -- Fullstop 19:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Template:Citation/doc/draft is up. Comments/advice/edits are welcome. -- Fullstop 07:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Hanging indent proposal

For a proposal to add an optional formatting parameter to this and related citation templates, which would allow display as a hanging indent, see this discussion. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This is easy to do in Common.css. No need to change the templates. COGDEN 07:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

"Retrieved on..."

{{Editprotected}} Could we standardize this template with the other "Cite" templates wrt "Retrieved on"? This template produces:

The Advocate, (retrieved on 2007-08-18)

Whereas Cite news and the others produce:

The Advocate. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.

-- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


Done, for consistency. Should now appear as:
"A Story", The Advocate. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 02:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Urgh - wish you hadn't stuck the trailing full-stop on there... it's made Battle of Barrosa#Bibliography look yucky, with the period followed by semi-colon. Hey ho - can't please all of the people all of the time, although the template documentation implies that the trailing punctuation isn't provided by the template, and it's only the new incarnation of accessdate that does it. Carre 13:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I removed the trailing period. —David Eppstein 15:33, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much - I'm sure my article wasn't the only one affected, and that was a nice speedy response! Carre 15:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I hate to be a whiner, but that trailing period is part of the issue of consistency with other templates. With it removed, reference list items that use {{citation}} and {{cite news}} (among others) alongside each other will look out of synch. I've started to go back and add periods outside the template, i.e.:
<ref>{{citation|etc}}.</ref>
And that does work fine - but it makes {{citation}} and oddball when doing a bunch of references. Ipoellet 00:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

But it means that one can use {{citation}} in a context where one doesn't want to finish the sentence, unlike the other citation templates. It's not so hard to add the period manually, is it? In any case, changing the template now would mean going through and removing all the periods following the template in its current usage, a painful task. It's more important for this template to be consistent with itself than with the other templates it replaces. —David Eppstein 01:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd still think that it would've been desirable to have consistency between these templates, as I gather this one is supposed to be a kind of 'one-stop shop' to emulate those other, more specialised, ones. Still, take your point that it would be a pain to retrofit if others have already manually added the trailing punctuation themselves. Am not going to press the point (no pun intended)....
I'm curious though- what's the intent behind having a semi-colon at the end of each reference in that Battle of Barrosa article? It would seem to be a bit unusual...--cjllw ʘ TALK 02:35, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I can deal either way, so it's not a huge deal as far as I'm concerned. I'm just sayin'... Ipoellet 06:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
This is the reason I thought my readdition of the editprotected template was inappropriate (see edit history), as I figured there may be some discussion of it. Why have the semi-colons at the end of the references in B-of-B article? Because it's grammatical to end entries in a list with a ';', until the last entry which ends in a '.'. Just my opinion, not a policy or anything. Carre 07:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Why no quotation

When adding data subborned<g> from media (broadcasts, documentaries, videos) or for writing about fiction, or reference in a book, the template is useless as it has no quotation capability. A trailing free notes feature (that displays--see the discussion ongoing at: Citation templates link for where that came from) is another valuable feature. Multiple sub-notes, comments as it were by the hanging editor might be useful (n1=, n2=, n3=, n4=) For example: n1=a second quotation (than quote=), n2=context of 1st privy council meetings and quote from there is unclear as to whether the letter was recieved in between two meetings, or whether the second quote was in the same meeting.

Best regards, // FrankB 16:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

a bibliography section is distinct from a notes section and both are distinct from quotations.
  1. Notes belong in "==Notes=="
  2. Sources (which is what {{citation}} formats) belong in "==Bibliography==" or "==References=="
  3. Quotations belong in the article proper. They are your most valuable resource.
The H-I-P discussion you refer to is about formating bibliographic lists. (#2 here)
-- Fullstop 19:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Commenting from the sidelines, I agree with points #1 and #2, though actual practice in WP articles seem to only rarely follow this. #3 is a good illustration of one article with inline quotes having supporting sources cited so that the part of the source supporting particular quotes is easy to locate.
I've also seen situations where a source was briefly paraphrased inline and quoted at some length in a sourced footnote to support the paraphrase. The sourcing info in the footnote containing the quote might be a page-numbered reference to a work fully cited in a Bibliography section. (something like: Smith accused Jones of being the culprit.<ref>{{harvnb|Smith|2004|p=123}}, "A long quote from page 123 of a year 2004 book by Smith where he accused Jones of being the culprit."</ref>) Alternatively, and especially in articles not having a Bibliography section, instead of tagging a quote onto {{harvnb}}, the footnote might contain one of the citation templates which supports quotes (e.g., {{Cite web}}, {{Cite journal}}, or (egads!!) {{Cite book}}).
Taking this line further, {{Citation}} can be used in place of all three of those just-mentioned citation templates and, like {{Cite book}} can be used to specify page number information directly in the full citation. However, unlike those three citation templates (and, probably, others), {{Citation}} does not support an optional quote= parameter. I think that adding an optional quote= parameter to {{Citation}} (to Template:Citation/core, actually) would be a good thing just in the interests of compatibility with other citation templates often seen used interchangeably with it (interchangeably except for the sometimes-encountered parameter incompatibilities, that is).
Taking that thought a bit further yet, {{harvnb}} and other citation templates which don't currently support an optional quote= parameter could usefully support that as well -- which would allow the quote in my earlier point involving {{harvnb}} to be encapsulated into the template rather than passed outside of that, arguably at greater risk thereby of becoming separated in subsequent edits. The whole area of parameter compatibility between citation templates often used in place of one another (e.g., {{Citation}} and several alternatives, {{Cite web}} and several alternatives, etc.) deserves a close look. -- Boracay Bill 00:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
It's easy enough to put the bibliographic data inside {{citation}} and the quote outside it as part of the same reference. All that putting it inside would accomplish would be to save you from typing some quote marks at the expense of typing |quote= instead. How would this be helpful? As for harv, I could imagine it helping in harv since you probably want the quote inside the parens, but can't you do the same thing easily enough by putting the quote outside the template again and using harvnb? —David Eppstein 01:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
  1. True, <ref>s are way too often misused for shoving things off to the side. Not just for quotations, even for explanations! But just because a practice is popular or fashionable, does not mean that that practice is also a good idea.
  2. For material that can't be placed inline (long-ish quotations or otherwise), its far more elegant to put these sentences in notes (as in notes, not ref-like notes) instead of mucking up the references (in your example that would be a {{harvnb}} list) or the bibliography (works cited) sections. Examples:
    • this quotation which though not too long, is rather too convoluted;
    • this long quotation which is off-to-the-side because (in the lead!) a paraphrase is sufficient, but the statement needs to well documented because syncretic influence is a hot potato.
  3. While it is sometimes necessary to prepend or append something to a {{harvnb}} tag - for example a leading cf. or even {{harvnb|...}} citing {{harvnb|...}} - having harvnb do one thing and do it well is far more important (and flexible) than trying to construct a 21-legged creature that can do every other chore as well. Next thing someone will want it to do the dishes. :) One tool, one task. Give me the Lego bricks, I'll build the house.
  4. Even if the old {{Cite ...}} templates did support quote=, I don't think its a good idea to carry that practice forward.
    • For one, during a conversion to {{Citation}} its not a whole lot extra effort to move the quotation out of the {{ }} brackets.
    • For another, even the longest quotations can be reframed so that they "work" inline. This one even changes word order around.
    • And finally, its a practice that should not to be encouraged. People ought to treat their sources with dignity (and pride!) instead of treating them like stepchildren to be retained only in order to fulfill wikipedia policy.
-- Fullstop 03:22, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
not to be argumentative here (really. no kidding.) — just commenting on your points.
0. what I had in mind there was maintainability. I spend a lot of time WP:Wikignomeing citation problems, and one common problem I see is orphan <ref name=whatever/> instances where some past editor has deleted a block of text containing the matching <ref name=whatever> ... </ref> instance. Separating related items often leads to problems, and putting the quote inside the template with an optional quote= parameter instead of alongside the template but separate from it would, I think, reduce problems.
  1. good vs. bad idea hinges on WP:MOS guidelines. I don't recall one on this.
  2. both of those examples need source citations, though, because they are quotes. Also, (1) articles with separate Notes and References sections are rare (articles with guideline-compliant content in Notes and References sections even rarer). (2) setting up separate Notes and References sections is messy, since cite.php-style <ref>... notation can (currently) be used with either one of them but not concurrently with the other. Also, I don't often see articles with Bibliography sections, though I've installed a few in articles where the raw material to populate such a section was present.
  3. point taken. I recall with some nostalgia the early unix tools, each of which did one thing well and worked well in combination with other tools. A decade or so ago when I stopped doing active software work, though, those tools had largely gone out of fashion. Heck, even I used vi in preference to ed, but most of my co-workers by that time used emacs or some monolithic swiss army knife tool which combined editor, revision control system, compiler, linker, make-alike builder, debugger, configuration management system, coffee-maker, and microwave oven — all through a single point&click interface. (but I digress)
  4. the {{Cite ...}} templates templates aren't old in the sense of being outdated and no longer used. they're not past-tense material. I see them used all the time. {{Citation}} could supplant some/many/most/all of them, but it has not.
-- Boracay Bill 06:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
0. Supporting quote= wouldn't help. If the ref that holds the first citation (with or without quote=) vanishes, then the next ref is busted (irrespective of whether the first ref had quote= or not).
By way of example,... If <ref name="Gone">In the book ({{citation|last=Mitchell|first=Margaret|...}}), Brett does not say "Frankly."</ref> vanishes, any subsequent <ref name="Gone" /> is dead in the water, no matter where the quotation within that first <ref> was, or if at all the template supported quote= or not.
  1. erm, I meant "good" as in putting quotations/explanations inline, "bad" idea to treat them as distractions.
  2. Indeed, supporting notes is a proverbial PITA. I've frequently wished there was a <note ...> equivalent of <ref ...> (or a <ref group="2" ...>) to make life easier.
  3. Rare thing anymore to find anyone who recognizes the "one tool, one task" paradigm. *phew* I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one being laughed at. I wish I had a penny for every time I heard "What, you're still using vi?" In my case it was nvi though, so nyah, I'm 'leeter than you. :) But I digress...
  4. I didn't mean "old" in the sense of archaic, but rather in the context of your previous comment in which you referred to quote= support for (backwards-?) compatibility.
    On the other hand, is there a specific form of {{Cite ...}} that you've found that {{citation}} cannot substitute for? (examples please).
-- Fullstop 06:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Request: p. for single page

Can someone please change this so that use of the singular "page=" gives a "p." instead of a "pp."? At the moment, it doesn't matter whether you use "pages=" or "page=", you always get "pp.", and "pp. 443." looks rather silly. Hesperian 00:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I was under the impression that this template did not use the abbreviations "p." or "pp." when the "page/pages" parameter was used – in other words, only the page numbers show up. The situation is the same for {{Cite book}}. On the other hand, the abbreviations are used in {{Cite news}}. I've suggested that there should be some consistency across all citation templates: either all the templates should use the abbreviations, or they should be omitted for all of them. See the discussion taking place at "Template talk:Cite book#"Pages" parameter". Cheers, Jacklee 12:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Well it does. So can someone please fix it so that I don't get pp. before a single page? Hesperian 04:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
From Template:Citation/core
<!--============ Page within included work ============-->
  #if: {{{Periodical|}}}
  |
  |{{
     #if: {{{Pages|}}}
     |, pp. {{{Pages}}}
   }}
-- Boracay Bill 00:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
The problem is more subtle than that. Only one variable named "Pages" (holding either pages= or page=) is being passed from {{Citation}} to {{Citation/core}}:
|Pages = {{{pages|{{{page|}}}}}}
As a result, at the {{Citation/core}} level there is no longer any way to differentiate between pages= and page=.
To be able to fix the p./pp. issue, it would be necessary to...
  1. Either pass both Page= and Pages= downwards
  2. Or determine 'p.'/'pp.' at {{Citation}} level and pass that as a separate variable, say PagesTag=
  3. Or prefix the Pages= argument as appropriate, and pass an unprefixed variant as COinSPages= downwards.
  4. Or prefix the Pages= argument as appropriate and use #regexpr in {{Citation/core}} to break off the p./pp. when it isn't wanted.
Given that {{Citation/core}} is complicated enough already, #2 or #3 is probably the better solution. Of the two, #2 is the less klutzy and would also enable support for a generic at= variable (for non-print media).
My suggestion (using #2, and adding support for at= while I'm at it):
1. In {{Citation/core}}:
1.1. Replace |, pp. {{{Pages}}} with |, {{{PagesTag}}} {{{Pages}}}
2. In {{Citation}}:
2.1. Add a new variable 'PagesTag=' to pass onwards:
| PagesTag = {{#if: {{{pages|}}}|pp.|{{#if: {{{page|}}}|p.}}<!-- -->}}
2.2. Replace | Pages = {{{pages|{{{page|}}}}}} with
| Pages = {{#if: {{{pages|{{{page|}}}}}}
| {{{pages|{{{page|}}}}}}{{#if: {{{at|}}}|, {{{at|}}}<!-- -->}}
| {{{at|}}}
}}
All other code (including COinS and Periodical handling) remains unaffected.
-- Fullstop 17:11, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I've implemented my suggestion at {{Citation/testing}} and {{Citation/core/testing}}. It works. -- Fullstop 18:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I made the change here. It's the same strategy as the example above by Fullstop, but with one less parameter. I just created an "At" parameter which is passed to Citation/core. The Citation side determines whether or not to add a "p.", a "pp.", or nothing, and then adds it. COGDEN 00:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

accessdate problems?

I just noticed this:

  • {{Cite web |url=http://abc.def.com |title=test |accessdate=2007-10-12}} produces: "test". Retrieved 2007-10-12.
  • {{Citation |url=http://abc.def.com |title=test |accessdate=2007-10-12}} produces: test, retrieved 2007-10-12

The accessdate from {{Cite web}} is formatted acording to my user preferences. The accessdate from {{Citation}} is not. -- Boracay Bill 07:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

wikilink it. :) -- Fullstop 23:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but shouldn't there be some consistency between citation templates on matters like this? It is not easy to remember that accessdates in {{Cite web}} don't require Wikilinking but those in {{Citation}} do! Cheers, Jacklee 00:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I personally dislike "link overloading" (as in, does anyone care what the article for an accessdate says?), but that is nonetheless probably the right way to go. Otherwise, people would begin making their own wikilinks, rendering the template powerless to act if it ever becomes necessary to change functionality.
I wonder if there is a way to detect if accessdate= is properly formatted. OTOH, it could default to the current date too. -- Fullstop 07:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
See #Problem with accessdate? -- Fullstop 07:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

COinS

Does this template generate COinS? I note that it is in Category:Templates generating COinS. Is this right? ---- CharlesGillingham 16:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, it generates COinS. See {{Citation/core}} source and remarks here at #Zotero support. -- Fullstop 17:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the code is there to generate COinS, but I turned it off a while ago, since it was causing some template limit problems for a couple of pages that have a very large number of citations. We might want to try re-enabling it, because I found a work-around for those particular pages. I'm not sure what the best long-term solution is, though. Templates can be a challenge to the servers in some situations. COGDEN 18:38, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I see. COinS for Template:Citation is currently under construction. No problem. ---- CharlesGillingham 23:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I just reactivated it. COGDEN 23:49, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

{{citation}}: Empty citation (help) with author= value in quotation marks causes <cite> tag to not have an id=

For some reason, a {{citation}} for an author="pseudonym" causes the html output to have no <cite id="..."> (the <cite> is there, the id= isn't). Example:

{{citation|author="Bat Granny"|year=2007}}

generates

<cite>"Bat Granny" (2007)</cite>

instead of

<cite id="CITEREF.22Bat_Granny.222007">"Bat Granny" (2007)</cite>

as it should. Strangely enough, {{harvnb}} is correctly generating the href just fine. This appears to be a new bug because it worked before, so perhaps something in wiki software broke (but then why only in id= and not in href=?).

Although the workaround here is to use ref=, but perhaps this issue is symptomatic of a greater one? -- Fullstop 03:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Try dropping the quotes: {{citation|author=Bat Granny|year=2007}}, not {{citation|author="Bat Granny"|year=2007}} -- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
naaah. though inelegant, works fine with &quot; -- Fullstop (talk) 17:04, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
“curly quotes” are elegant—Do they work? Ian Spackman (talk) 00:54, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Yep. As do any of the other quotation mark glyphs except the literal ". On the back-end, this causes Tidy to strip the id= because the quotation mark inside the id="..." attribute (i.e. id=""foo"1900") would be illegal.
As I have since found out, the reason why it doesn't bite {{harvnb}} is because {{harvnb}}'s href= is being generated with wikicode linkage while {{citation}}'s id= is being generating as raw html:
  • {{harvnb|"foo"|1900}}
emits: [[#CITEREF"foo"1900|"foo" 1900]]
tidy sees: <a href="#CITEREF.22foo.221900">"foo" 1900</a>
which is valid, and so no repairs necessary.
  • {{citation|author="foo"|year=1900}}
emits: <cite id="#CITEREF"foo"1900">"foo" (1900)</cite>
tidy sees that and strips to: <cite>"foo" (1900)</cite>
what tidy should see is: <cite id="#CITEREF.22foo.221900">"foo" (1900)</cite>
Ergo, what {{citation/core}} needs to be doing is #urlencode the id= attribute, just as it #urlencode's the COInS data (which is emitted just fine).
  • So, instead of...
id="{{{Ref|}}}"
and
id="CITEREF{{#if:{{{Surname1|}}} (...snipped for brevity...) {{{Year|{{{Date|}}}}}}"
id="{{#urlencode:{{{Ref|}}}}}"
and
id="CITEREF{{#urlencode:{{#if:{{{Surname1|}}} (...snipped for brevity...) {{{Year|{{{Date|}}}}}}}}"
Just to be on the safe side (in case wikilinkage's internal workings change), I'd use #urlencode for {{harvnb}} too.
-- Fullstop (talk) 23:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) scratch that #urlencode stuff. It's not compatible with what is output by wikicode parser, which converts %NN values to .NN values. #Replace does not appear to be enabled on .en, otherwise that would potentially have been a workaround too. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the anchorencode function does what you want? It's almost undocumented; the only mention I could find is at Help:Magic words. But {{anchorencode:"foo"1900}} yields "foo"1900, which looks promising (if I understood what you want). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Jitse, you rock! :) {{anchorencode}} it is. -- Fullstop (talk) 16:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

In {{citation/core}} please replace...

id="{{{Ref|}}}"
and
id="CITEREF{{#if:{{{Surname1|}}} (...snipped for brevity...) {{{Year|{{{Date|}}}}}}"

with...

id="{{anchorencode:{{{Ref|}}}}}"
and
id="{{anchorencode:CITEREF{{#if:{{{Surname1|}}} (...snipped for brevity...) {{{Year|{{{Date|}}}}}}}}"

This is necessary to make the value of the id="..." attribute match what is generated by {{harvnb}}'s [[#wikilinking]].
-- Fullstop (talk) 16:22, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Edited as requested. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:34, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
many thanks. -- Fullstop (talk) 18:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

An extra "notes" argument

Would it be possible to add an argument called "notes" or something similar in the template? For example, I'm citing a book that was published in the US under titleX. It was originally published under a different name (titleY) in the UK. So it would be nice to be able to note this in the citation. -- panda (talk) 18:25, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Citations are always for the source that you are using. Its not necessary or desirable to know the name of the work as it exists in another country, language, format, edition, publisher, ISBN etc.
In your case, if the change of title has some bearing on the article itself, then add a sentence to say so in the article's text. For example: "... the work, which was first published in the UK as xyz, ..."
While there are some good reasons for a "note", these can be added in parentheses after the {{citation}}. For example: {{citation|...|year=1998}} (''fasc.'' 1724).
-- Fullstop (talk) 17:29, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I ended up adding the info in parentheses after the citation template. Thanks! –panda (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

modify generated cite id

Is there any way to change the automatically generated cite id without hard coding a new one? For example, sometimes I only want the author's last name as the cite id, i.e., id="CITEREFName" and not id="CITEREFNameYear". Right now I've created my own <cite id="CITEREFName"> around the {{Citation}}, but it would be nicer if there was an argument for this. –panda (talk) 15:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Use {{citation|...|ref=''whateveryouwant''}} -- Fullstop (talk) 16:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! Thanks! Is there a documentation page somewhere that lists all of the supported arguments? The {{Citation}} docs don't seem to contain a single complete list, only several special cases (e.g., citing books, citing journals, etc). –panda (talk) 16:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Not yet, unfortunately. I'm gathering examples of usage (see Template:Citation/doc/draft) though, originally with the intent of having one list of all arguments. However, I've found listing all arguments with a suitable vague explanation of each (so as to make the variable names applicable in any context) really difficult to do. -- Fullstop (talk) 18:37, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Have patents taken over this template?

Examine my reference here. I have everything cited correctly as a book, but it's treating it like it should be a patent, asking for inventor name, country code and patent number. Help! Thanos6 (talk) 19:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Year of authorship vs publication

I'm trying to cite a book that was published in year XXXb but authored in year XXXa. It is the 3rd printing of the 2nd edition of the book. Which year should I use? Is it possible to somehow note that this is the 3rd printing or does it not matter if it is still the 2nd edition of the book? I don't know if the 3rd printing is paginated in the same way as the 1st and 2nd printings, but they're all the 2nd edition of the book. –panda 20:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I would specify parameters publication-date=(the publication date), date=(the authorship date), and edition=2nd edition. If the printing matters for some reason, that info can be added after the closing curly-braces. -- Boracay Bill 03:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I ended up adding the printing number to the publication-date param since it was possible and didn't look weird doing so. –panda 03:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
the year=, publisher=, isbn= etc field is always for the copy you hold, not for the original. A singular exception is for a facsimile reprint of an authoritative edition (i.e. page numbers match, and revisions - if any - are clearly marked as such). -- Fullstop (talk) 01:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

US postal abbreviations

These are generally deprecated in WP, yet here we say "States in the U.S. are denoted by a two-letter code; for example: place=Paris, TX" ... Comments? Rich Farmbrough, 12:23 6 December 2007 (GMT).

Just mentioning Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations), where the Special considerations section says, "Current and former postal codes and abbreviations – such as TX for Texas, Calif. for California, Yorks for Yorkshire – should not be used to stand in for the full names in normal text.". However, that speaks of normal text. A citation in a footnote is probably a special case. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't use a country/state code unless its really necessary, i.e. to distinguish "Paris, TX" from, well, Paris. :) But now that I think of it, I haven't yet actually needed that kind of precision. -- Fullstop (talk) 01:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Request: please add archivedate and archiveurl parameters as in {{Cite web}}

Please add archivedate and archiveurl parameters as in {{Cite web}}. In order to preserve the consistency of the inconsistency between these two templates, though, wikilinking of the specified archivedate should probably be required here. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 01:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Having seen no response, I ask if anyone can point me to documentation on template internals. I've previously seen a page on editing templates, but can't recall its name and find it at the moment. I've done a bit of template coding and I can take a whack at this in my userspace, but Template:Citation/core has some stuff in it which looks unfamiliar. What has me puzzled at the moment is &rft.whatever. If I ever knew what is magical about the "&" or about "&rft", I've forgotten it. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm working on it, but the holidays are slowing me down. I have a coded-but-barely-tested prototype at User:RossPatterson/Citation, you can try it out if you want to help test. RossPatterson (talk) 02:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'm done. The prototype at User:RossPatterson/Citation and User:RossPatterson/Citation/core looks good to me and passes all the examples from {{Citation}} plus a few new ones (see User:RossPatterson/Citation/tests for the full set including results). I'm not asking for an {{editprotected}} yet, but I will after others have had a few days to look it over. RossPatterson (talk) 02:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The two options are uneccessary: Since an archive-date= and archive-url= are available, these -- rather than the original -- are the ones that ought to be used.
Further, what do you intend to do when it is the chapter-url= that is the one that you have an archive for?
The "solution" for backwards compatibility with {{Cite web}} is a trivial one:
In {{Citation}} (not core) replace:
|URL={{{url|}}}
|AccessDate={{{access-date|{{{accessdate|}}}}}}
with
|URL={{{archive-url|{{{archiveurl|{{{url|}}}}}}}}}
|AccessDate={{{archive-date|{{{archivedate|{{{access-date|{{{accessdate|}}}}}}}}}}}}
With that you have functional compatibility, but don't have to carry the feature creep legacy with it. Cite web has no chapter= facility, so no need to bother supporting archive-xxx for chapters.
-- Fullstop (talk) 01:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I disagree that functional compatibility with {{cite web}} fills the need. I think that the need is for support of online-archival links as an alternative to dead-link urls -- similarly to the way that {{cite web}} does that where it is supported there. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
{{cite web}} is not actually filling any need. What {{cite web}} is doing with archive-xxx is gratuitously satisfying some editor's lack of understanding of who citations are there for,... which is NOT the editor.
Citations are NOT there to serve the writer, but to serve the *reader*. It is the reader who accesses the source, ideally the source that will not have changed since the writer referred to it. With a stable version you give the *reader* precisely what he needs. The rest is doo-wah.
If you have two sources, and you know one is not going to change, while the other may, then you are obliged to provide the link to the one that does not change. The one that might change is entirely superfluous because (at the time of writing) it is identical to the stable version anyway.
An ideal source is *stable*!!! *This* is the one you ought to be using, not the one that might change on a whim (and for reasons out of your control).
An archive is not the "alternative". IT IS THE PRINCIPAL!!! It is a *priceless* resource!
I am absolutely baffled ... *shocked* ... that anyone would even think about taking an unstable source into consideration when he/she has a stable source as well.
-- Fullstop (talk) 03:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Following that to its logical consequence, I infer that you would favor a bot which replaced all existing links with archived versions of those links, making WP massively vulnerable if the archive should become unavailable for whatever unforseen reason. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 11:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The first two clauses of that sentence are both specious and illogical (in case you didn't know, a bot cannot infer context). And the third clause is is not only based on a faulty premise, but also fails to consider that WP would be no more "massively vulnerable" than if the principle pages were to vanish, or - heaven forbid - change so as to no longer support what they are being cited for.
Food for thought:
a) No style sheet (APA, UC, MLA et al) standard has any such thing as an "archive" option (or even more ridiculously, archive-date).
b) Where does a citation end, and where does the "archive" gunk appear?
c) Why do only electronic sources need an access-date? And what purpose does this have?
-- Fullstop (talk) 16:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
After a diatribe like that, I hesitate to add fuel to the fire, but I will answer your "c)". An "access date" is the electronic equivalent of an "edition" - in fact, you could reasonably replace {{Citation ... |url=http://www.example.org/banana.html |accessdate=2008- 01-01}} with {{Citation ... |url=http://www.example.org/banana.html |edition=as of 2008-01-01}} and you would be completely correct. I assume it is obvious that there is value in differentiating between the version of a source that was used and other versions that were not. If not, there would be no need for edition= either. RossPatterson (talk) 00:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Diatribe? Where? With respect to 'c)': Quite right. It is functionally equivalent to an 'edition', likewise denoting the 'version' of the source when it was used.
Which is why there is no need for an archive-date field; the "stable" and "unstable" versions have the same 'edition' at the time the source was cited.
As I said to Avi below: the point of any citation is to lead the *reader* to the source, as close and dependably as possible. Which is why -- when one has a stable resource -- one uses the stable resource.
-- Fullstop (talk) 01:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)To allow one to actually pull the specific page out of the Internet Archive. Since the possibility of recalling the actual page as of that date exists, it is a valid field. Books have date of publication and edition name as part of the citation in any major stylesheet (APA, MLA, Harvard, Turabian, etc.) That, with the page number, is sufficient to go to an archive such as the Library of Congress and find the exact source. Magazines have version and issue numbers, which together with the page numbers allows for exact specification. In general, the internet - being fluid -- cannot be pinpointed with such accuracy, but the existence of the Wayback archive does allow for many pages to be captured given original url and access date. -- Avi (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your statement is in response to. I know what an archive is, and why it exists. ;) :The "questions" above are rhetorical, to get Boracay Bill to think about the purpose of citations in general and the superfluity of his request.
And yes, the point of any citation is to lead the *reader* to the source, as close and dependably as possible. Which is why -- when one has a stable resource -- one uses the stable resource, and not the "fluid" one.
-- Fullstop (talk) 22:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Fullstop, I've thought about it. (1) Citations provide sources which (hopefully) support assertions. Cited sources often also provide additional detail. (2) I don't believe this request to be superfluous. Actually, I thought the need would be obvious, once mentioned.
You ask rhetorically above: "Where does a citation end, and where does the "archive" gunk appear?" {{Cite web}} does it like this:
{{Citation}} has url and chapter-url (or contribution-url) parameters, with both potentially needing to be retrieved from archives. Reporting both archive and original urls for both of these introduces possibly-distracting clutter to the citation, and perhaps that is an issue worthy of discussion.
You ask rhetorically above: "Why do only electronic sources need an access-date? And what purpose does this have?" Some online sources are not dated. Also, online sources may change and may have an indication of when they were last updated (this varies from one online source to another). An accessdate can provide an indication that the source content might have changed since it was cited. A source may be archived on a number of different dates, and these archival copies may differ from one another bacause of change over time in the source content. An archive date indicates which archival copy was used, and the archive probably supports access to copies archived on earlier and/or later dates. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

However, when the resource is in and of itself a web page, such as citing on-line periodicals where there is no paper equivalent, the access date is needed to create that stability. -- Avi (talk) 05:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

yes, of course. But I still don't understand what your point is. :) -- Fullstop (talk) 06:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

As this template can be used for online periodicals, I think it should have the "access-date" field. That's all 8-) -- Avi (talk) 15:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, naturally. Which of course {{citation}} already has. But what the initiator of this section wants is something else. ;) -- Fullstop (talk) 18:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

So allow me to feel really stupid and thank you for your patience :) -- Avi (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Lowercase DOI

{{editprotected}} 

[[Digital object identifier|DOI]]

to 

[[Digital object identifier|doi]]

Lowercase is correct usage, according to Digital object identifier#Structure. {{doi}} template also displays lowercase. GregorB (talk) 13:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Changed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! GregorB (talk) 23:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
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