Help talk:Citation Style 1

Should Cite journal allow both "pages=" and "page="?

Inclusion of both "pages=" and "page=" is considered to be an error, but it makes sense to allow both, giving the start and end page numbers in an article, and also the specific page on which some content appears. An example is <ref name= "Abrahamson1976">{{cite journal | last = Abrahamson | first = James L | year = 1976 | title = David Starr Jordan and American Antimilitarism | jstor = 40489774 | journal = [[The Pacific Northwest Quarterly]] | volume = 67 | issue = 2|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40489774| pages = 76–87|page=79}}</ref>, used in the article David Starr Jordan, where the content supported by the article is on page 79 of a 12-page article. Or is it better just to cite the page supporting the text? I have dealt with this in the article by appending "P. 79" to the citation giving the page range. But allowing both parameters is problematical if several pages in the article are required to support the text; maybe we don't need to cite the range, or to append the relevant pages after the template, so no change to the template required, maybe a note in the documentation. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 14:48, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I would say it's almost always unneeded information, e.g. to specify both the page range of a chapter in a book or an article in a journal issue, as well as the pages being cited. What is allowed is both |page(s)= and |quote-page(s)=, where you can specify both the whole range being cited and the specific location of the direct quote you've also included in the citation. Remsense ‥ 论 15:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

That's nice theory. What is done in practice? What is done in the citation autofill?

Parameter names do matter. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:29, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

beg your pardon? Remsense ‥ 论 15:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I think the comment by SamuelRiv means that the difference between "page" and "pages", while sometimes ignored, is important. Pol098 (talk) 21:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorta, but not exactly. I am saying that particularly when editors use {{cite journal}}, they will fill |pages= with the article's full page range, as is done in typical print journal citations. The autofill template tends to do this too, last time I checked. That this behavior is not correct is not obvious from the parameter names -- in fact one would assume the template could easily automatically distinguish between a single page and multiple pages (and adjust "p." vs "pp." output accordingly), as CS1 is typically sophisticated in this regard.

Editors respond instinctively to parameter names, and the learn by existing examples on articles, so seeing both |page= and |pages=, what is a typical editor going to do? Ideally, we'd have statistics of 'improper' usage from citation correction bots.

But from experience, this is what happens in practice, and it's easy enough to address: replace the |pages= parameter with some other name, or else remove it, and have CS1 auto-detect plurals (as it already does in a passthru for detecting page range syntax). To address editors who really want to put in a bibliographic page range somewhere, have page-start (or plus page-end) parameters, and decide not to display them if you really want. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

In a nutshell, no. If you need to specify both, the format is |pages=76–87 [79]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:55, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I've also done / seen |pages=1–85 at p. 59, |pages=39–71 (esp. pp. 41–42) etc. People overload the parameter a lot due to the inability to provide both a full page span and specific supporting information location (unless as noted a quote is also included in the template).

I know Citation bot used to overwrite specific page numbers with the full page span of the article / chapter being cited, but I think that may have been fixed last year. Automated tools might sometimes still do this if not programmed to avoid overwriting existing parameter values, but I don't keep up with all of them or use any of them.

It would probably be safer to be able to specify both a full page span and specific supporting page(s) so we don't have to rely on future coders realising that the |page= parameter their tools are modifying might be intentionally specific rather than an "error" since it doesn't match their database.

I would imagine the easiest implementation would be some alias for |quote-page= that doesn't depend on the presence of |quote=. No strong feelings really, since overloading the parameter works fine for our purposes. Folly Mox (talk) 18:18, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Page numbers for journal cites should be the page range of the whole journal article, period. Any other information that specifies the location of the reference within the article should be specified elsewhere, either via a quote or outside the citation template. Be aware that the pagination of journal articles frequently differs from the pagination of their preprints and the pagination of their reprints (in collected works books and the like), and pagination may not be visible at all to readers of html online versions of journal articles. So when possible more specific locations should be described in other ways, for instance by section numbers and titles rather than pages. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:41, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't considered those cases, thanks for cluing me in to why it can be clearly desirable. Remsense ‥ 论 21:10, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

What I find endlessly fascinating is how this is completely counter to the CS1 documentation.

(I know we've been told to edit the documentation, but as we see here, there is fundamental disagreement as to what actually the parameters do, disagreement in theory vs practice, and from some disagreement about whether practice should be considered.) SamuelRiv (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Pol098, you can also use {{rp}} following the closing <ref> tag, like {{rp|79}}. {{rp}} is widely used and nearly as widely disliked. The WMF's future subreferencing extension may address situations like this. Folly Mox (talk) 19:14, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

{{rp}} is excellent, I strongly recommend it. DuncanHill (talk) 20:27, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

{{rp}} is a fucking plague of awfulness. Any other alternative is better. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree. It is an abomination. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting points in response to my suggestion. While I do use {{rp}} (sorry) I don't think it's ideal in this case. What I take away is that "pages=" can be overloaded without error; and that a specific page number can become incorrect with republication, etc. (as can a reference to a book not tied to a particular edition and publisher). Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 21:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Original title for a translated work

Given that there are dedicated parameters to note translators, is there also a way (apart from workarounds like the one I just used at Serbo-Croatian phonology) to note the original title of a translated work, and also the original language of the work? All the other translation-related parameters are about translations that Wikipedia editors themselves provide for works in languages other than (Standard) English, but I'm talking about works that are already present in translation (usually to English). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I would usually provide complete citations for both the original work and the translation. Kanguole 22:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Special:Diff/1250687271

I'll provide a complete citation for the work in original as well, if it feels important to note the original work in full.

Often I'll just swap the parameters |title= and |trans-title=, such that the original title appears in the square brackets following the English title chosen by the translators and their publisher. In these cases, I'll leave out the original language of the work, which usually doesn't matter. Folly Mox (talk) 16:54, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that using a parameter against its documented purpose is a good idea. The documentation for |trans-title= in {{cite book}} is here. If the English-language-titled source is the source that was consulted, putting the original-language title in |trans-title= just creates confusion and pointless work for later editors. If you consulted both the original and the translation, cite them both but cite them separately; don't attempt to mash two sources with (likely) wholly different bibliographic details into one template. The cs1|2 templates are not designed for that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, Trappist. I'll discontinue the practice. Do you have a suggestion for how best to include this information if the original language version was not consulted (as appears to be the case here)? Folly Mox (talk) 20:06, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

§Further reading? But why? This is the English Wikipedia; listing a source that most of our readers won't be able to read and that wasn't consulted in the writing of the article strikes me as something akin to: omg!-there-is-an-empty-box!-I-must-fill-it! If the article is about the author or about this particular source then, sure, include the original language version. For articles on other topics? I don't see the need.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:20, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

The field "others" is not accepting the specified content

Greetings and felicitations. In Lore_Segal#Work there are nine citations for books which use "others = Illustrated by ___" as specified by the {{Cite book}} instructions, but the citations are still generating errors. Is there something wrong with the how the information was entered or with the instructions, or is there actually a bug? —DocWatson42 (talk) 23:28, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Maintenance messages are not errors. |others=, by its very name, implies that there are 'other' contributors. cs1|2 templates are expected to be complete. This one, for example, is missing an author:

{{cite book|title = Tell Me a Mitzi|date = 1970|others = Illustrated by Harriet Pincus|lccn = 69014980|publisher = [[Farrar, Strauss and Giroux]]}}

Tell Me a Mitzi. Illustrated by Harriet Pincus. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 1970. LCCN 69014980.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Presumably Segal is the author, but anyone reading that template in isolation wouldn't know that. If Segal is the author then write the template like this to include all of the necessary bibliograph information and still render as the broken template does (sans message):

{{cite book |last=Segal |first=Lore |display-authors=0 |title=Tell Me a Mitzi |date=1970 |others=Illustrated by Harriet Pincus |lccn=69014980 |publisher=[[Farrar, Strauss and Giroux]]}}

Tell Me a Mitzi. Illustrated by Harriet Pincus. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 1970. LCCN 69014980.

The above ensures that all of the necessary metadata are present:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000031-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFSegal1970" class="citation book cs1">''Tell Me a Mitzi''. Illustrated by Harriet Pincus. [[Farrar, Strauss and Giroux]]. 1970. [[LCCN (identifier)|LCCN]]&nbsp;[https://lccn.loc.gov/69014980 69014980].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Tell+Me+a+Mitzi&rft.pub=Farrar%2C+Strauss+and+Giroux&rft.date=1970&rft_id=info%3Alccn%2F69014980&rft.aulast=Segal&rft.aufirst=Lore&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah—that's what I was missing. Thank you. ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 08:09, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Citing something jointly published by a work and a non-work

For {{Infobox US university ranking}}, this citation is to a publication that was made jointly by The Wall Street Journal (which should be italicized as a work) and College Pulse (which shouldn't take italics). Is there any way to use the |work= and |publisher= parameters to get The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse to display in the citation somehow? Sdkb ^talk 16:01, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable solution to me, or |publisher=College Pulse |via=Wall Street Journal Folly Mox (talk) 16:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable solution to me I didn't present a solution, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. The display I want to generate is the one in green quote text above. I don't think a standard |work= and |publisher= combo (or |publisher= and |via=) would be appropriate, since it would falsely imply that College Pulse is the publisher of the WSJ (and the via combo would imply that WSJ republishes content from College Pulse rather than jointly authoring it). Sdkb ^talk 16:43, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I misunderstood. I erroneously thought you were suggesting |work=Wall Street Journal |publisher=College Pulse. True this would garbage up the metadata a bit, but seems like it would make sense visually. Seems like there are better ideas below. Folly Mox (talk) 18:01, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Which one did you consult? Cite that one (WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT). If you consulted both, cite both but cite them separately. cs1|2 is not designed to cite multiple sources with a single template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems from the cited website that "WSJ/College Pulse Rankings" is the title of a published series (often also published in other media, similar to the US News rankings and others), so would be good for a |work= field, with |title=2025 Best Colleges in the U.S., while WSJ in this case, because it's officially host on this medium, is probably the |publisher=. I'd try to use |via= only for a tertiary host. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Using the publisher field would leave WSJ without italics. Sdkb ^talk 18:01, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

PMID value update

Currently getting an error trying to cite the following paper due to the PMID being out of range: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39401844/

This help page says to report the issue here? Void if removed (talk) 13:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Cite thesis

It might be good if this populated a hidden category hierarchy, with leaf nodes such as "Category:Pages including masters degree citations" populated by degree=masters|MSC|MBA etc. There should be a bucket for unrecognised types, and the system should be easy to extend.

The motivation is that in general we should not be using masters as citations (or indeed doctoral theses, though these are less of a red flag) instead using published works.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 12:57, 18 October 2024 (UTC).

There's also Bacchelors' thesis / undergrad class thesis that we should keep track of if we start keeping track of those.

While we're on the topic, I'd like an error emitted if the degree type isn't specified. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:09, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, I repeated this search for |degree= and the first letter of the assigned value. Except for K, N, O, Q, and V–Z, every initial letter search returned results. There does not seem to be much consistency. I did not repeat these searches for |type=.

{{cite thesis}} is used in approximately 36,500 articles. Of those, ~11,000 use |degree= and ~15,200 use |type=. |type= and |degree= are partial aliases; |degree= causes Module:Citation/CS1 to append 'Thesis' to the value assigned to |degree=.

If we were to do do this we should probably have two properties categories; one for |degree= and one for |type=. Articles in the categories should be sorted by first character in the assigned value.

But should we? Is anyone going to actively do something with the data that are collected? Past experience says that nothing will will be done with these data.

Requiring {{cite thesis}} to have either |degree= (preferred) or |type= seems reasonable.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Baccalaureate and undergrad theses should probably at least be tagged {{bsn}}, but maintenance categories for all the degree types sounds pretty unnecessary. Folly Mox (talk) 14:18, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Adding {{bsn}} (or any other template) is outside Module:Citation/CS1's remit. Editors have not chosen to be even passably consistent with the value that they assign to |degree= so it is not possible for cs1|2 to categorize only baccalaureate and undergraduate theses; that is why I suggested sorting the categories by initial letter of the parameter's assigned value. And, no one here has suggested maintenance categories (yet).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:38, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

If you want an explicit category suggestion, I suppose it would be Category:CS1 error: degree missing or some such. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, for sure, I didn't mean to suggest the module should add inline citation templates automatically. I was responding to the question about whether anyone going to actively do something with the data that are collected. Apologies for the miscommunication. Folly Mox (talk) 16:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

In all of this, let's remember that {{cite thesis}} and other cite templates are not always used to support claims in article text. Cite templates are often used in lists of works authored by a person, in which case a tag like {{bsn}} would not be applicable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Best template to cite a webpage that is derived from a book

I noticed recently another editor citing one of my favorite webpages Flora of North America using the cite encyclopedia template rather than cite web as I have been doing. Would it be more correct to use cite book or cite encyclopedia instead of cite web for this source because it is first published in book form? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 16:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

In this particular case, I think citing it as a website is better, calling it e.g. "Flora of North America Online", because, as noted here, some of the webpages have been changed from the earlier print versions. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Peter. I thought so, but better to ask than to guess. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Title=none in newspaper and magazine citations

In {{cite journal}} (and {{citation}} with journal=), when there is no title url or link, it is acceptable to use title=none to suppress the title. This is useful in instances where there is no title or the title would be redundant, such as for book reviews where no real title exists (the review is just headed by a few lines of metadata about the item under review) or where several reviews are grouped together and would otherwise be given the same repeated and redundant title.

Less frequently, this would be useful to do on {{cite news}} and {{cite magazine}} as well. An example of this is Freshman's dream, where (to demonstrate the wide spread of the topic idea at the time of its original publication in 1938), one reference lists the original newspaper publication with its title and then four subsequent publications of the same piece, with the title deliberately stripped. In this case, the source code for Freshman's dream includes some very hacky code to hide the visible CS1 error messages that would be generated by omitting the titles, but it fails to suppress the error category that is also generated. It would be much cleaner if these could be formatted with title=none, but that doesn't work: for news or magazine citations (in this case as generated by {{citation}} and the newspaper= or magazine= parameter), this produces an actual visible "none" in the title position in the citation.

One alternative for Freshman's dream would be to pretend that these are all journals and use the journal citation ability to set title=none. A second alternative would be to give up on the citation templates as unable to handle anything non-formulaic and format the citations manually. A third alternative would be to modify the template code to be less inflexible and allow title=none for those citations. Or maybe there is a fourth alternative that I have missed. I don't think it's acceptable to force these citations to have titles, nor to try to extend the hacky code already there to also suppress the category. Are the third or fourth alternatives possible, or do we have to give up on using citation templates? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:11, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

David Eppstein, withholding comment on the substance of this matter, but I did suppress the error category using a non-hacky method (in addition to implementing a possibly dubious format change). Please feel free to revert if desired. Folly Mox (talk) 16:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! So fourth alternative: no-tracking =y. We do still have the hacky error message removal code that it would be nice to avoid, but that's less urgent. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:40, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

DOI limit should be bumped

doi:10.70163/0036-0252.1157 is valid. The limit should be bumped to 10.80000 Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:05, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Why is Slovene not recognized?

Re Template:Citation Style documentation/language. Why is |lang=Slovene, as in Slovene language, not recognized for sl? (See Template:Citation Style documentation/language/doc for list.) —  AjaxSmack  23:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

AjaxSmack, have you tried |language=sl? Category:CS1 Slovenian-language sources (sl) (5,404) seems to be populated. Folly Mox (talk) 23:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Because MediaWiki does not recognize 'Slovene' as an alias of 'Slovenian' which is the language name that MediaWiki assigns to the language tag sl:

{{#language:sl|en}} → Slovenian

cs1|2 uses MediaWiki's list of languages when rendering citations.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Where did MediaWiki learn English? —  AjaxSmack  02:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the ISO? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

author-link without author

Hello, there appears to be no trap for using |author-link= when there is no corresponding |author=.

• {{cite book|author=|author-link=[[Edward Heath]] |title=Book example }}
• Book example.

May be an error message should be output. Keith D (talk) 21:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I have wondered about that and also |author-mask= (and the similar |contributor=, |editor=, |interviewer=, |translator= parameters). We do catch |display-authors= when matching author-name parameters are missing and we catch |firstn= when matching |lastn= is omitted so it seems to me that for completeness, we should also be catching |author-linkn= and |author-maskn= when matching author-name parameters are missing.

I don't think that it is possible to search for something (|author-link=) and the absence of another thing (|author= or alias) so I have no idea how many articles have the one without the other. We could categorize into maint or properties cats to gauge whether or not to turn on error messaging for these parameter issues.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

A maintenance cat would give us the scope of the problem. Keith D (talk) 11:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

cite thesis first=aaa bbb, Jr.

|first=James Thomas, Jr.

causes

Script warning: One or more {{cite thesis}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help).

69.181.17.113 (talk) 15:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course. See MOS:JR.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Way to link the encyclopedia with {{cite encyclopedia}}

When you're citing a book with the cite book template, you can use title-link= to link to the book's wikipedia article, but since on cite encyclopedia the title parameter is for the chapter and not the work title, it doesn't let you link to the encyclopedia. Is there any fix for this, because I find it very annoying. Generally this template just seems to be a slightly worse version of {{Cite book}}, which fulfills its purpose the same way. Maybe they should be merged? PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

PARAKANYAA, use |entry= and |title= instead of |title= and |encyclopaedia=. This will alias correctly and allow for usage of |title-link=. Your assessment of a slightly worse version of {{Cite book}} is shared. Folly Mox (talk) 10:41, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

See also Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 92 § cite encyclopedia (January 2024). Folly Mox (talk) 12:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

strange capitalization

Why was {{cite web}} unilaterally capitalized in the documentation just recently? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 18:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Editor MtBotany made that edit. Best to ask them. So far as I know, there was no discussion here mandating that change.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Fourthords I thought it was the correct style based on what I have seen used in other templates. If I am wrong I apologize and feel free to correct what I did. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)