User talk:Gerry Ashton/collaborate

This is a test of a new version of {{Cite web}}, edited by David Ruben and located at User:davidruben/sandbox4. The new feature is the datestyle parameter, which allows an article editor to force the conversion of date, accessdate, or archivedate to one of three styles. This essay focuses on the case of old documents that have been made available on the web.

Warning

Wikipedia implies, and the {{Cite web}} documentation states (in the description of the accessdate parameter), that dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format are ISO 8601 format dates. ISO 8601 requires that all dates in that format be in the Gregorian calendar, or if before the introduction of that calendar, in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. In the case of an old document (by Pope Gregory XIII, for example) which had been scanned and the images posted on the Internet, one might be tempted to write the bibliography thus:

• Gregory XIII (1582-02-14). "Inter Gravissimas". Retrieved on 2008-08-19.

Alternatively, one might specify the output format with the datestyle parameter set to "dmy", thus:

• Gregory XIII (14 February 1582). "Inter Gravissimas". Retrieved on 19 August 2008.

A major problem with this approach is that the original was signed on 24 February 1582 in the Julian calendar. If the Cite web template were to operate as the documentation indicates, and the datestyle parameter was not given, it would give the publication date according to the reader's preference setting, or 1582-02-14 if there were no preference. A reader well-informed reader who saw 1582-02-14 would correctly interpret this as being in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, and understand that the Julian date of the publication was 1582-02-24. A reader who saw 14 February 1582 would naturally, but incorrectly, assume it was in the calendar in effect in the city of Rome on that date, that is, the Julian calendar.

A further problem is that the date would not be displayed as the documentation requires, because the developers of the Cite XXX templates made the serious error of using the metawiki parser function #time to process general-purpose dates, when clearly the function was only intended to deal with the time of events that occur within a computer that was placed in service after 1 January 1970. Rather than trying to explain what will happen with dates before then, I'll just say it's broken.

Workaround

A way to avoid the problem described in the Warning section, and which applies only to {{Cite web}} (not other members of that family) is to warn the editors, in the template documentation, that the date parameter represents the date the document was published on the web, not any date of any earlier publication in paper form. Since the world wide web was not created until long after 1970, this interpretation of the date parameter will avoid the problems discussed above. Since types of sources other than web sites did exist before 1970, this workaround does not apply to other members of the Cite xxx family.

Limitation

The APA style guide does not exactly address the question of how to show the dates when an early paper work is republished on the web. The most nearly applicable advice ins on pages 271-2, where electronic versions of documents that are downloaded from the same publisher as the paper version, where it is unlikely there is any difference between the print and electronic forms, the date of the paper version is cited, and "[Electronic version]" is appended to the article title. If there is a greater chance of changes, the date of the paper version is cited, but the retrieval statement includes both the date and source of the electronic version. Page 254 discusses paper reprinting or republishing of earlier works, and indicates that the newer work is cited but details of the earlier work should be given in parenthesis at the end of the citation.

Thus, if one wishes to follow the APA's guidance, {{Cite web}} does not fully accommodate the need, and one would have to misuse certain parameters (such as the title) or add extra information after the template.