User talk:Trappist the monk/Archive 3

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Task 6

When different language notification methods are mixed, the reference list becomes messy and harder to read. Please stop changing {{xx icon}} into |language=xx in such cases. – Editør (talk) 08:30, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

If the reference list is 'messy' after task 6 visits a page, the most likely reason is that the article does not have a consistent citation style. This is true of the three pages that you reverted.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
In the article Bert Koenders, the language icons were consistent, but you changed it to two types of icons twice now, for which I can see no reason. – Editør (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
You are both right. The language icon is consistently placed in front of the citations, but the citation style is not consistent. Access date formats vary, and some citations use commas to separate items while others use periods (full stops). Converting all of the references to use {{cite web}} or similar templates would probably be the easiest way to make the citations consistent. I'll be happy to do that for you if you ping me here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:58, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Sure, before task 6 edited the page, the icons were consistent. But, the underlying citation style is not. There are 14 citations in that article, of which seven use Citation Style 1. The other seven are whatever style it pleased individual editors to add so there is some stylistic disparity amongst them. The seven that are not CS1 are: 2, 3,9, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Please stop making the citation style even less consistent in articles that are not only using the cite web template. Also, I am not contesting your edits to the Vondelpark article because there all language notifications had the same form, although I still think the edits are pointless. Jonesey95, Trappist the monk should have done this in the first place or not have changed anything at all. – Editør (talk) 08:46, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't really know how to respond to this; I can't find anything of substance in your post to which I can reply. Still, I owe you the courtesy of a response of some sort. What I read here is that you want task 6 to not do what it is designed to do because you don't like it showing you that there is a discrepancy in citation style in an article that you care about. I understand that. You state that you think the edits are pointless but offer no evidence to support that position. Please do.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:43, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I do not see the purpose of removing the {{xx icon}} at all. Firstly emphasis that the article in reference is far more clearer when it is bolded and not embedded in the cite web template. It gives the English reader a clearer focus that the referenced article will need special attention in understanding. If I had time to write a bot revert your action on your edits, I definitely would. Take notice of other comments that other editors have passed on. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 05:56, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
Taking 2014–15 Ukrainian Premier League as an example, don't you think that the Cyrillic script used in citation titles will alert readers of the English Wikipedia that the source identified by the citation does not use the English language? There is no need to loudly state the obvious.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:32, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
No, I don't. In fact some editors place in the title the transliteration of the title which then makes for an interesting exercises. Also you have to seriously read and concentrate through the whole reference to see the title. If someone is kind enough to give a translation to the title then you can at least evaluate if its worth pursuing the link given. Also some readers may boycott references of other languages - but since you are masking the language with normal font somewhere down the line in the reference I see you plan is to bog down users who would of made up their decision much quicker if they had been alerted right up front, in bold what the language is. I don't think you should be forcing anyone to be using all parameters of the cite web template and they should be considered optional, especially language. Who are you to take this approach ??? Brudder Andrusha (talk) 15:54, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
I think that you are in the minority then. I don't need {{xx icon}} templates to tell me that the Arabic or Japanese or Hebrew or Thai script in |title= or |script-title= is meaningless to me, so I scan right over it until I find something that does have meaning. No serious reading required. I suspect that most readers of English react similarly. I know that when |title= contains Latin-based non-English text, French, Portuguese, Swedish, etc, I still don't need to be loudly told that the language is not English, though because of the alphabet, my brain will try to read it.
If readers are going to boycott references of other languages surely they will do it regardless of the presence of a {{xx icon}} template.
The order of parameters rendered by CS1 citations was established long ago. If you think that it should be changed, the proper forum is Help talk:Citation Style 1.
I have no plan[s] ... to bog down users nor am I forcing anyone to be using all parameters of the cite web template. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it so that I may refute it. With the obvious exception of |title= and |url=, all {{cite web}} parameters are optional, even |language=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:40, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
But you are only thing of yourself. You do not understand the differences in cyrillic scripts. One could start thinking that the article is in Ukrainian and it is in some other cyrillic language. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
What makes you so sure? I try to avoid Russian articles but sometimes there is only one reference. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
I'll think about it.... Brudder Andrusha (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
Then if that is the case you should not be forcing anyone to use it nor should you be inserting it you were not the original editor. 21:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
My solution will be easy. I just wont use {{cite web}} or {{cite news}} when the reference is in language other than English. A pity because the template has good intentions. I'll just use ⟨ref⟩ ⟨/ref⟩ and give as little info as necessary and give the reader reason that they better understand what language the article is before selecting that link. Also it will give me reason to reformat all those references your bot has maligned. And it will give you an opportunity which can make you start to thinking of writing some other regressive bot. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
I moved your posts out of my last post; fragmented conversations are more difficult to follow. They are above in the same order. For other readers of this conversation, the I'll think about it.... post refers to my suggestion about the proper place to discuss changes to rendered citation parameter order.
You're right, I can't distinguish between Cyrillic used for Russian and Cyrillic used for Ukrainian or Bosnian or Serbian. I can't distinguish between Arabic script used for Arabic or Persian or Uyghur. I can't distinguish between Chinese or Japanese. Most native English speakers are likely equally encumbered. Given that, there is no benefit to being loudly told what the language is; it is still just a bunch of squiggles on the screen.
I don't understand how your statement: I try to avoid Russian articles but sometimes there is only one reference, rebuts what I said about readers boycotting a reference regardless of the presence of a {{xx icon}} template.
I already said that I'm not forcing anyone to do anything yet still you write that I should not be forcing anyone to use it (I'm not clear here about what the 'it' is that I'm supposedly forcing on people). Your claim: nor should you be inserting it [if] you were not the original editor sounds remarkably like a claim to WP:OWN which you may not do. Except where the community has elected to limit access, anyone may edit any article at any time for any reason.
The choice to use or not to use CS1 is entirely yours, no one, not even I, is forcing CS1 on you. I think it regrettable that in future you have chosen to give readers only minimal information in your citations. I think that that does your readers a disservice.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:48, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 22 November

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that some edits performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. They are as follows:

Please check these pages and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:36, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 23 November

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that some edits performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. They are as follows:

Please check these pages and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

PDFlink removal

Why remove the PDFlink in edits like this one? I'm not objecting; I just don't understand the technical basis for your edit (not sure what CS1 citations are, or what it means to be COinS safe), and I'd like to understand. Nyttend (talk) 14:25, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

CS1 citations are those citations that use Citation Style 1 templates. The common CS1 templates are {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}}, etc., there are a bunch of them. Certain parameters used in CS1 templates provide their values to the COinS metadata which is used by people who read Wikipedia with specialized referencing software. A COinS safe template is one that when used within a CS1 template doesn't add extraneous text or formatting to the CS1 parameter's value. As an example:
CS1 templates have |date= parameters which are included in the COinS metadata. The date parameter can have date ranges which WP:DATESNO says should be separated with an endash: |date=September–November 2014. Editors may choose, for whatever reason, to write this: |date=September{{endash}}November 2014. {{endash}} is COinS safe because the output of that template is just an endash character.
{{PDFlink}} is not COinS safe because its output includes HTML markup, and external URL, and text that is not part of the cited work's title:
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000000D-QINU`"'<cite class="citation web cs1">[http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/66000606.pdf "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Beginning Point / Beginning Point of the U.S. Public Land Survey"] <span class="cs1-format">(PDF)</span>.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.btitle=National+Register+of+Historic+Places+Inventory-Nomination%3A+Beginning+Point+%2F+Beginning+Point+of+the+U.S.+Public+Land+Survey&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fpdfhost.focus.nps.gov%2Fdocs%2FNHLS%2FText%2F66000606.pdf&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AUser+talk%3ATrappist+the+monk%2FArchive+3" class="Z3988"></span>&nbsp;<span style="font-size:85%;">(511&nbsp;KB)</span>
Did I answer your questions?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Yes, quite well. I'm rather surprised that I've never heard of COinS before. Also, I've heard of "CS1 templates" plenty of times, but never figured out what they are, and I thought "CS1 citations" was some obscure citation style. Thanks! Nyttend (talk) 15:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

About a Wikidata property

Hi Trappist, I took the liberty of cut-and-pasting one of your strong comments as I requested the creation of new metadata property Definition - precisely the one which you indicated that you do not understand. Could you please have a look and

a) indicate if you see its purpose, and
b) indicate if you agree to leave your quote in my justification.

Thks - Laddo (talk) 23:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:06, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick feed-back - WD seldom gets input from WP guys and it is highly appreciated. More responses coming soon at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Laddo (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Slovene/Slovenian

Hi, your bot has been making changes from |language=Slovene to |language=Slovenian so that the text reads "in Slovenian" instead of "in Slovene". The language can be called Slovene, so why the change? Jared Preston (talk) 18:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

It's because Wikimedia doesn't recognize Slovene as a language name. To illustrate this:
{{#language:sl|en}} – language magic word with ISO 639-1 language code produces:
→Slovenian
So that Module:Citation/CS1 can properly categorize citations that identify foreign language sources, it tests the content of |language= against the list of languages that Wikimedia knows about. Because Slovene is not a language name that Wikimedia recognizes, pages with citations using |language=Slovene are categorized into Category:CS1 maint: Unrecognized language. The official keepers of ISO 639-1 are the Library of Congress and sil.org. The sil.org webiste for Slovenian language codes is here.
Did I answer your question?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:50, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes, and thank you for the fast answer with explanation! Now I'm just feeling confused as to why the name of the article on en.wiki is at Slovene language and that it isn't a redirect to Slovenian language with all mentions of "Slovene" changed to "Slovenian", when "Slovene" isn't technically recognised. I'm sure there are several other instances and examples of varying English names for foreign languages, but this is one of the mother tongues of the European Union and I have always referred to it as "Slovene". I would like to undo the changes, but that just defeats the point and doesn't get around the error-problem, which is why your bot changed it in the first place. Just strange that both names aren't accepted! Jared Preston (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Flooding

Someone with a userid extremely similar to yours is flooding my watchlist by removing redundant |year= parameters. But it is good to see that the year can be picked out of dates like "Autumn 1987", which I think used to cause problems. Keep up the good work! Aymatth2 (talk) 18:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Altering citation style

Could you please point me to the guideline page, change, or discussion that explains why MonkBot is altering established citation style on Venezuelan articles? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:02, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The changes that led to Monkbot task 6 were to Module:Citation/CS1. The discussions around those changes are here:
These are all small steps on the path to fulfilling a longstanding feature request:
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:49, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for those discussion links. They all appear to be on little-watched, technical discussions, rather than on guideline pages, and I don't see anything indicating citation style changes to established articles is warranted, so would you mind instructing your bot to cease altering citation style on Venezuelan articles? I prefer, when scanning articles for citation quality, to see the Spanish language sources right up front in the citation, rather than having to read through every citation to identify the Spanish-language sources. Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
Not really possible because, to a bot, a Venezuelan {{es icon}} looks just like an Ecuadoran or Spanish or Mexican {{es icon}}. You can do as I have done for the several articles that you reverted and add a {{bots|Monkbot 6}} template to articles so that task 6 skips them.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:55, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Chimay

So if you're a Trappist monk, does that mean you can get me some Chimay Beer? Best Beer there is! Also, thanks for your minor edit to Days of '47 Parade, I created that article 8 years ago, and just visited it again for the first time in years today....kinda sad how little it's grown over the years, given the size of the event...but I digress. Seriously though, about the beer, hard to get in California. :-) War wizard90 (talk) 05:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not so I don't have an in at the monastery brewery. Sorry.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:53, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
LOL, that's okay, I wasn't actually expecting anything. War wizard90 (talk) 05:08, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Multipurpose CS1 parameters

It seems the "year=" parameter is not duplicative of the "date=" parameter in the case ref=harv is used. Any ideas what can be done in regard fixing the links in this edit? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, there is nothing wrong with that edit. When |ref=harv, Module:Citation/CS1 creates a CITEREF anchor from the first four author surnames and the |year= or the year portion of |date= (if |year= and |date= are in MOS compliant format). When authors produce multiple works in the same year, a lowercase letter character is used for disambiguation. Because both were present in these templates, the module used the value from |year=. After my edit, the module used the year and disambiguator from |date=.
Restore my edit and test it. Cold fusion#CITEREFVoss1999b works now. Does it work after restoration?
All of the above applies to any citation that is processed by Module:Citation/CS1 except when |date= format is year initial numeric (YYYY-MM-DD) where use of a disambiguator is not allowed because it breaks the date format. There are currently five CS1 templates that still use {{citation/core}} so may require |year= when |ref=harv.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:35, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
I see what you mean. The display "May 21, 1999b" is odd, in a date field, though. It really should display as "May 21, 1999" in a date field, and "1999b" in a Harvard ID field, but I suppose it will do. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:41, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Valid cite web parameters?

Hi Trappist! I see that |chapter-format= is a new {{cite web}} parameter, so I'm submitting a request to the AWB developers to update their list of valid {{cite web}} parameters. Besides the addition of |chapter-format=, do you see anything else that needs to be added or removed in the list below?

access-?date|agency|archive-?date|archive-?url|article|arxiv|asin|asin-tld|at|[Aa]uthor\d*|author\d*-first|author\d*-last|author-?link\d*|author\d*-?link|authors?|author-mask|author-name-separator|author-separator|bibcode|chapter|chapterlink|chapter-?url|city|coauthors?|contribution|contribution-?url|date|dead-?url|dictionary|display-?authors|display-?editors|distributor|doi|doi-?broken|doi-broken-date|doi_brokendate|edition|editors?|editor\d*|editor\d*-first|editor\d*-given|editor\d*-last|editor\d*-?link|editor\d*-surname|editor-first\d*|editor-given\d*|editor-last\d*|editor-surname\d*|editorlink\d*|embargo|encyclopa?edia|entry|first\d*|format|id|institution|isbn|isbn13|ISBN|ISBN13|issue|issn|jfm|journal|jstor|language|last\d*|lastauthoramp|last-author-amp|lay-?date|lay-?source|lay-?summary|lay-?url|lccn|LCCN|location|magazine|month|mr|newspaper|no-?pp|oclc|OCLC|ol|orig-?year|others|osti|pp?|pages?|people|periodical|place|pmc|pmid|postscript|publication-?(?:place|date)|publisher|quotation|quote|ref|registration|rfc|section|section-?url|separator|series|script\-title|subscription|ssrn|surname\d*|title|trans[_-]title|type|url|URL|version|via|volume|website|work|year|zbl

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Not to {{cite web}} because {{cite web}} no longer supports |chapter= or its aliases. The entire list of the module supported parameters is at Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist. It contains all of the parameters in all of their allowed variations. Valid active parameters are assigned the value true and deprecated parameters are assigned the value false.
What I noticed right away about your list is that a lot of the named identifiers can be either upper-case or lower-case so you'll want to fix that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:52, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
I see that Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist includes |chapter=. How can I tell which of these parameters are supported by {{cite web}}? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
There isn't any simple way and hasn't been since the first version of Module:Citation/CS1. With that fundamental change, parameters that work with one template usually work with all of the others. There are limited cases where certain parameters (like |chapter= and its kin) are not universally applicable but those cases are in the minority.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:28, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
Could you please add comments in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist to indicate where those limited cases exist? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 06:31, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Also, you might want to move script-title to its correct place alphabetically. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:38, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I've moved |script-title=. Basic parameters runs from |accessdate= at line 33 to |ZBL= at line 276 – 244 parameters and aliases. I think that I will decline your request for comments in the whitelist because if we do it for {{cite web}} then there is precedence for doing it for {{cite journal}} and {{cite book}} and {{cite ...}}. I could imagine a large table with parameters down the side and CS1 and CS2 templates across the top and intersecting cells identifying what parameter works in a particular template (or perhaps more correctly what parameter doesn't work). But that isn't work I'm interested in pursuing (or maintaining).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:59, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
I had to look at your contributions to figure out that you moved |script-title= in Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox, which I presume will eventually be moved to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Why was |section= deprecated? It's a useful parameter in many instances, such as when working with old Google newspaper scans or physical microfiche. It helps an editor/reader/researcher locate the exact section of an article, which in older print sources, can be buried in the page. While this may duplicate the page number, sometimes page numbers aren't available or visible. For example, many Google book scans which contain old news articles often don't have a visible page number, even though one may be on record. All of these bad changes is precisely why I stopped using citation templates. Viriditas (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

|section= has not been deprecated. You can see this for yourself at Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist where you will find this:
['section'] = true,
The assignment of the value true indicates to the module that |section= is a valid parameter. When a parameter is deprecated, the assigned value is set to false.
Are you seeing CS1 or CS2 citations where the use of |section= produces the Cite uses deprecated parameters error message?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@Viriditas and Trappist the monk: I'm interpreting Help:CS1 errors to mean that |section= no longer works in several citation templates. To test this, when I try {{cite web|title=Title|section=Section|url=http://en.wikipedia.org|publisher=Publisher}} I get the following error:
"Title". Publisher. {{cite web}}: |section= ignored (help)
This is an example of why I would like the documentation at Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist to have more details. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 19:23, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
User:Trappist the monk/xref is a table of whitelist.basic_arguments parameters vs. templates. It lists all parameters except the identifiers, isbn, doi, zbl, etc and their support parameters asin-tld, embargo, etc. It does not list the enumerated parameters. I have marked all of what are probably the obvious parameter mappings and the deprecated parameters. It is not tested so everything in the table is suspect. This not being my idea of a fun time, I may or may not come back and work on it or finish it. But the structure is there so you and anyone else who would like to improve on it may do so with my blessing (for whatever that is worth).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
The row for "section" is wrong; "section" is (I think) an alias for "chapter", which only seems to work as listed there, i.e. for {{cite book}}, {{cite conference}} and {{cite encyclopedia}}. I can only repeat what I've said elsewhere, that I think this is wrong. It encourages editors to use semantically incorrect parameters to achieve the desired formatting. Thus the visual appearance of a section and a title for a web citation can be produced by:
{{cite web |website=Title|title=Section|url=http://en.wikipedia.org|publisher=Publisher}} → "Section". Title. Publisher.
but this is really a misuse of the parameters. I think that |section= and its aliases should be allowed everywhere there isn't already a title set in double quote marks. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:15, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Correct, |section= is an alias of |chapter= as are |article= and |entry=. I have fixed the table for those three and for |sectionurl= and for |section-url=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Hi again! There are several parameters that you don't have marked for {{cite web}} that still seem to work:
  • People. "Title". Version. Institution. Agency. At. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |dictionary= ignored (help)
  • People. "Title". Version. Institution. Agency. At. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |encyclopaedia= ignored (help)
Thanks for your work on this! GoingBatty (talk) 15:23, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
I did say that I had marked all of what are probably the obvious parameter mappings, that everything in the table is suspect, that this is not my idea of a fun time and that the structure is there so you [can] improve on it.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Updated the cite web column with the parameters in the examples above. GoingBatty (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Tennessee-class cruiser

This page has popped up on the ref broken error list, but I can't see any fault with it directly. Hasn't been edited for months. I note that you made a change to module:footnotes very recently, which is on its list. Since I don't speak lua, I've no way of knowing whether what you did had any effect. --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Thu 18:19, wikitime= 10:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, a dummy edit cleared it, so we'll never know! (as usual). --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Thu 18:32, wikitime= 10:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Unbuttered Parsnip, that article does have some broken references in it. It uses short footnotes to refer to "Brown", "Roberts", "Conroy's", "Ropp", and "Lambert", none of which I was able to find in the Sources. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:04, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

RegEx conditional parameter-insertion

Hi Trappist. I have a question over here at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#RegEx conditional parameter-insertion that I thought you'd be able to answer in your sleep. Can I WP:RfC you?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  15:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

You da man. Thanks! (Jonesey95 too)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  17:44, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Scott Card racist?

(Note: Per wp:CANVASSING I am "non-biasedly" advertising a topic for discussion by posting a notice on the ten most recent users who commented on the page in question's talkpage and also the ten most recent users who edited the article in question.)

Commentators continue to reference/allege Card's piece involving a fictional, future Obama's coup d'état by way of urban guirillas as racist (eg see here in Slate, 2013; here, HuffPo, 2013; here, Wired, 2014). Should our article mention this aspect of controversy with regard to the piece here: "Orson Scott Card#Politics"?

(Also see a 2013 blogpost by M Aspan citing this from Card in 2000 rgding allegedly non-racist use of nigga'.)

See discussion here: Talk:Orson Scott Card#RfC: Subject of blp racist?

--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

registration=yes

Hey, I never knew you could do that. Thanks! Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Did you mean to do this? (Cite doi/preload)

Did you mean to do this? The edit doesn't match the edit summary, and it doesn't make sense to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:05, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes and no. The script strips empty |lastn=, |firstn=, and |authorn= parameters. Then it finds |displayauthors=m. Once it has m it calculates x = m+1. The script then hunts for |lastx=, |firstx=, or |authorx= parameters. If any are found, the edit to that citation template is abandoned else, if none are found, the script removes |displayauthors=m. If it were to leave |lastn=, |firstn=, and |authorn= parameters in the template before the calculation and hunt, the empties might prevent the removal of |displayauthors=.
In a normal article, edits like that one to {{Cite_doi/preload}} are more-or-less meaningless. With this template, I don't know because I haven't a clue what this template does if it does anything. Another stellar example of documentation failure.
Reverted.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Template:IMDb country year

A Happy New Year to you Trappist! Thankyou for creating this. Can you tweak it though so when it displays the given language it will read as French films of xxx at the Internet Movie Database, and keep "at the Internet Movie Database out of the link itself? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:48, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Display authors

you removed the display-author=0 parameter from the citations in the publications section of Jane Duncan article, tagging them as unnecessary. In a publications section, by definition the subject of the article is the author (except when there are coauthors) so it is superfluous to display the authors and it adds clutter which makes it harder to read. In your view when is the display-authors=0 parameter necessary? Wayne Jayes (talk) 05:52, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The conventional way of handling an author's list of publications is to use |authormask=. This allows the display of coauthors and others while minimizing but still acknowledging the masked author's name. Were I to rewrite §Publications at Jane Duncan (academic) I might do it like this:
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:47, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Lafayette-class submarine

I disagree! Please take a look at the templates of the submarine classes listed here and you'll see that the majority of submarine class template do not include the pennant number/identification number of the subs in their title. Regards NicoScPo (talk) 09:06, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

One discussion in one place.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Chechens

I had to remove the changes made by a banned user (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Beh-nam/Archive 94.210.203.230). You can do your error fixes again if you want to. Oh and Happy New Year! Bladesmulti (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Odd reversion

Why this reversion? I've just encountered the problem myself and can vouch for its existence. Urhixidur (talk) 16:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Because, as I stated in the edit summary, this note at the top of the section:
This error message is incorrectly applied to {{cite conference}}. Module:Citation/CS1 has been fixed in the sandbox.
Changes that 'fix' the {{cite conference}} chapter-ignored-error are probably inappropriate because the error resolve itself at the next update to Module:Citation/CS1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:33, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
You confuse me. Changes to what? The Citation/CS1 module? The error help text? Clearly the error has not been fixed because I encountered it after the claim was made in the error help page that it was fixed. Urhixidur (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Changes to existing {{cite conference}} templates that are exhibiting the chapter-ignored-error. For example, suppose you see this citation:
{{cite conference |title=Article Title |booktitle=Booktitle}}
→"Article Title". Booktitle. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
You could change it to get rid of the error message, by substituting |conference= for |booktitle= as your edit suggests so that you get this:
{{cite conference |title=Article Title |conference=Booktitle}}
→Article Title. Booktitle.
That sort-of looks right, but isn't – the styling isn't correct and the COinS metadata have been corrupted. When Module:Citation/CS1 is next updated, the 'unfixed' citation will render like this:
→"Article Title". Booktitle. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help) – correct styling and correct metadata
while the 'fixed' citation will render like this:
→Article Title. Booktitle. – incorrect styling and corrupted metadata
|booktitle= and |conference= are not aliases of each other; the former is a book (sometimes journal) of the conference proceedings, while the latter is the name of the conference itself (which should not be cited on its own because of WP:V).
Have I answered your question?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:50, 3 January 2015 (UTC)


Cite conference comparison
Wikitext {{cite conference|booktitle=Booktitle|chapter=Chapter|conference=Conference|title=Title}}
Live "Title". Booktitle. Conference. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
Sandbox "Title". Booktitle. Conference. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

Removal of the language=en parameter from a reference's markup

Can you possibly explain why you removed the language=en parameter in this edit, please? I don't doubt you were right to do so, I'd just like to understand better for when I make citations in future. I think that field was filled out automatically by the WebRef‎‎ tool. Stroller (talk) 19:35, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Because, as the citation quote says, it's "supremely pointless"? This Monkbot task takes it's guidance regarding language identification from the box at {{en icon}} and from the definition of |language= at {{cite web}} among others.
I wonder if the author of WebRef shouldn't tweak the code or its documentation a bit. At User:V111P/js/webRef.js is this: "Using en as the language code for sites in English will hide the language parameter in the Cite web template." It isn't clear to me just what that means. If it means that {{cite web}} will ignore |language=en, then that is completely false; it doesn't and as far as I know, never has.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:05, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
"Because, as the citation quote says, it's supremely pointless?" - sorry, where does it say that, please? I asked because I couldn't see a reason. I couldn't interpret the reason given by the bot.
I'm afraid I was unfamiliar with the policy, but thank you.Stroller (talk) 21:05, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Majendie, Matt (10 January 2014). "Cricketers at sea: The world's most pointless sporting contest?". CNN. Retrieved 2015-01-04. It is quintessentially English, a land to have spawned more than its fair share of sporting eccentricities. On the surface of it, this match is supremely pointless -- and actually, that remains the same even if you dig below the surface. (emphasis mine)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:37, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Is Monkbot cleaning out Category:CS1 maint: English language specified on a regular basis? If not, I was considering filing my own RFBA to do so, unless you want to update the citation template so |language=en is ignored. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
Monkbot does.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:42, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
Monkbot or BattyBot might want to take a look at Category:CS1 maint: Unrecognized language, which probably has some bot-fixable articles in it. I'm seeing "Norwegain", "Germaan", "Portuguese (Brazil)", "arcs"(?), "UK English", "Bangla", "Castilan", "Belorussian", "Ukrainian", "[[Greek language|Greek]]", and others that should be fixable by a bot. Some of the articles list multiple languages; we may want to allow two valid languages, e.g. "in Spanish and English". – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Looks interesting. Wish there was a visible error (or at least hidden error where we could opt in to see it). I just updated Template:Citation Style documentation/language to indicate that wikilinks shouldn't be used in the language parameter. GoingBatty (talk) 06:05, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
Monkbot also periodically traverses Category:CS1 maint: Unrecognized language and fixes those cites with properly spelled languages that it recognizes (it doesn't yet support all ISO 639-1 languages, just the most common). I don't quite know what to do about multiple languages. Module:Citation/CS1 doesn't yet know how to extract languages from free-form text. I guess, were it up to me, I'd opt for a comma or semicolon separated list ...
I too, have wondered if we shouldn't create maintenance messages that would be opt-in-only and in some other color than the error message color. Doing it right is a bunch of work because it's essentially a clone of the error message system.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:06, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
And here is a custom module that is finding some incorrect language names and replacing them with correct names. The dictionary needs to be expanded and I should probably make the dictionary case insensitive (done), and ... a bunch of other things like making comma separated lists when there are multiple languages, etc.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:28, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Multi-year publication

Sometimes a journal does not give an exact publication date, but gives a date range. E.g.

  • "Past and future tense". The Economist. December 20, 2014 – January 2, 2015.

An extreme example is

For {{sfn}}-style citations I would use the first year in the range. It would be nice if it were automatically extracted. Thoughts? Aymatth2 (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Given your examples, because there are no authors listed, {{sfn}} and kin are compromised, right? You could do:
{{harvp||1999–2000}} → (1999–2000) ({{harvp}} because its similar to {{sfn}} without requiring {{reflist-talk}})
and
{{cite journal|journal=James Joyce Quarterly|volume=37|issue=1/2 |title=Dublin and the Dubliners|date=Fall 1999 – Winter 2000|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474112|ref=harv}}
→"Dublin and the Dubliners". James Joyce Quarterly. 37 (1/2). Fall 1999 – Winter 2000. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
but that parenthetical {{harvp}} link is pretty uninformative so you are probably better off to use something like:
{{harvp|James Joyce Quarterly|1999}} → James Joyce Quarterly (1999)
and set the citation reference with {{sfnref}}:
|ref={{sfnref|James Joyce Quarterly|1999}}
so your citation is:
{{cite journal|journal=James Joyce Quarterly|volume=37|issue=1/2 |title=Dublin and the Dubliners|date=Fall 1999 – Winter 2000|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474112|ref={{sfnref|James Joyce Quarterly|1999}}}}
→"Dublin and the Dubliners". James Joyce Quarterly. 37 (1/2). Fall 1999 – Winter 2000.
Does that answer the question?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Not exactly. I chose poor examples. If there were an author name, e.g.
{{cite journal|ref=harv|first=Fred|last=Smith|journal=The Economist|title=Past and future tense|date=December 20, 2014 – January 2, 2015}}
I would like to be able to use {{sfn|Smith|2014}} without having to add |year=2014 to the cite. But I don't know how easy it would be to extract the year from the date range, and whether the situation is common enough to make it worth doing. It is easy enough to get round it by adding |year= .
(If there is no author name, I would use the article title+year, e.g. {{sfn|Dublin and the Dubliners 1999}} ... {{cite journal|ref={{harvid|Dublin and the Dubliners 1999}}...}}. This gives a similar appearance to sfn links where there is an author name. I like to list the cited sources alphabetically at the end of an article, and title is displayed first if author name is missing. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Probably not hard to do, but you would still need to tell Module:Citation/CS1 that you want it's CITEREF anchor to use only the first year in the range of years. Since you're going to have to do that, using |year= as you've suggested seems the easiest solution.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks - that makes sense. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Template data; List gaps

Thank you for your comments at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#When does TemplateData get processed? and the work they describe. Most useful.

However, I note that you leave a bank line between your comments and sig. When these are indented, they cause an accessibility problem, best described at WP:LISTGAP. Please in future omit the blank line, as I did in this edit (and for the same reason, please don't lave gaps between comments either; see here). There should be no visual change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:01, 20 December 2014 (UTC) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:01, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I note that this is still the case. Did you perhaps miss the above message? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Verify credibility |reason= parameter now functional

Thanks, you caught me with only half a dozen left to do so I altered the code finished the run and then went back through (most?) of the other edits and amended them. -- PBS (talk) 14:27, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

OL book template

Template:OL book is broken now for some reason; the links just look like http://openlibrary.org/works/OL. I'm not sure if this is due to your edit or some other change to MediaWiki template code. Do you know how to fix this? --̣Morn (talk) 12:06, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure? Are you using a mixture of named and positional parameters? These work:
but this doesn't work because I mixed named and positional parameters:
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
I was looking e.g. at [1] which uses {{OL book|id=OL51187W}}. If I change the template to OL work instead of OL book the link works again. So I guess OL distinguishes between books and works (i.e., all different editions of a book) now and those pages were using the wrong template. Thanks for your help! --Morn (talk) 14:59, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Template needs updating

Hi Trappist, when you have time can you take a look at {{English Heritage List entry}} and make necessary changes for the deprecation of |separator= in the recent update of the {{cite web}} template. Many thanks. Keith D (talk) 00:07, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The same issue exists at {{IoE}}. For what it's worth, I did a quick insource: search looking for use of the separator parameter within both templates and didn't find any (that's not to say that none exists, just that I didn't find any), so a very simple solution would be to simply remove the parameter from both templates and their documentations. Stamptrader (talk) 15:53, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
I did update {{English Heritage List entry}} and have since been reverted. That discussion is at Template talk:English Heritage List entry#separator, ps, and mode.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:38, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Oops, I need to retract. After further searching, I could only find 4 uses of the separator parameter within the {{English Heritage List entry}} template. But {{NHLE}} is a redirect to the English Heritage List entry template and a search using insource:"NHLE" insource:"separator =" brings up almost 1900 hits. So, it is in common usage. Stamptrader (talk) 03:45, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott, the abolitionist and suffragette is directly descended from Tristram Coffin through his grandson James, son of Tristram Coffin, Jr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philipmb68 (talk • contribs) 23:11, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok. So what am I to do with this information?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Update Template:Cite mailing list?

Is updating {{Cite mailing list}} to Lua on your to-do list? I have updated the documentation, thinking that the module updates had taken care of it, but it looks like that template is still running the old code. I'll be happy to revert my edits to the documentation if the citation module is not ready to handle the template yet. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:56, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, done.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:25, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have time for some Monkbot runs?

The deprecated parameter category has recently increased in size due to the addition of {{cite report}}. It could be reduced in size substantially by Monkbot's various |month= and |coauthors= tasks. Do you have time to let Monkbot roam over the category for a while?

Once it is done, I would be happy to help find and characterize remaining unfixed cases within the category that Monkbot could fix with modifications to its code. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the change in size the deprecated parameter category is due more to the |author-separator=, |separator=, etc deprecation than to {{cite report}}.
Monkbot tasks 1–5 need to be rewritten to implement things I've learned since their initial approvals. When I have nothing more interesting to do ... and because they will be new, it's back to the bot approval process once again.
I've started task 1i.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the author-separator parameters have added to the category as well.
I have found a couple hundred instances of |month= in the category today, and there were none (according to WP's search results) before the transition; most of these are in {{cite report}} templates. It would be nice to clear out the Monkbot-fixable instances of the old parameters so that human editors can focus on articles that need human intervention. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Dragonmead‎

I don't know how to properly place the coordinates. They are in the article. Please help. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:10, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed Never mind. Sorry to disturb you. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Missouri Civil War Page

Some Wikipedia users seem to have started a war on this page. For the longest time, the article has stated that 40,000 Missourians joined the Confederate army. This data is well established. Some users have deigned to change it though. Would you be able to do anything about it?- Spradlagg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.50.30.161 (talk) 21:18, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Artistry of Janet Jackson

An article that you have been involved in editing, Artistry of Janet Jackson, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. wia (talk) 23:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Good work on the Natick-class large harbor tugs, another run?

Most of the articles still have a heading including an phantom "Commissioning" that needs removal. Looks as if "in service dates" has to be manual, but a bot for changing Construction and Commissioning to Construction? Stables and Hercules again comes to mind as I stumbled across huge lists, fortunately without many blue links, with "USS" attached to various yard and other craft never commissioned. Small Harbor Tugs (YTL)s for one example. Then we have imaginary commissionings added to DANFS text as in USS Mohawk (YT-17) (before I did an edit just now). Palmeira (talk) 17:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Fixed the headings in the Natick-class large harbor tug articles.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
Fast! There may be hope for clean stables Hercules. Some caution is needed with some of the pre WW I craft as some strange little things did get commissioned, but in general no yard types ("Y" anything) were commissioned. Palmeira (talk) 18:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

HMS Lutine (1779)

Hi Trappist the Monk, I made a mistake in the move, and then proceeded to screw the situation up trying to undo it. I now know there is a simple way to revert erroneous moves. Fortunately, a kind Admin has tidied everything up. Eventually I will try again, but this time I will know what not to do, and with reflection, a more sensible move.Acad Ronin (talk) 17:59, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I spoke too soon. Apparently my moves, reversions, cut-and-paste, etc. have not yet been undone. I won't do anything more on this until they are. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 18:09, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Acad Ronin: One conversation in one place please; here is as good as any.
I have restored the version of HMS Lutine (1779) that had the history and have deleted French frigate (1779) and Talk:French frigate (1779).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Many thanks. The problem is that the name should be either "French frigate Lutine (1779)", or "HMS Lutine (1793)", but the present title mixes the two. I had intended to move it to "French frigate Lutine (1779)", but a) that was impossible because there was a redirect page with that name, and b) as HMS Lutine was already the more famous name because of the wreck and the bell, HMS Lutine (1793) would have made more sense. I will do the move once the dust has settled a little. In the meantime, thanks again. Acad Ronin (talk) 21:16, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 24 March

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Reference errors on 29 March

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Reference Errors on 30 March

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Mass deletion of type=PDF

You did and are propably still doing a mass of changes (>400) regarding the type=PDF paramater of the Cite web template. It's correct that former authors used the wrong paramater, type is not intended for this information. Nevertheless why don't you just change the parameter type into format than just delete it!?! Thanks!! -- ZH8000 (talk) 17:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

All that |format= ever did in CS1 and CS2 templates was add a bit of annotation text to the rendered citation indicating the file format of the page pointed to by |url=. With the most recent change to Module:Citation/CS1, the engine that drives the CS1 and CS2 templates, the code there looks at the content of |url= and if the file extension is .pdf, .pdf?, .pdf#, .PDF, .PDF?, or .PDF# then it automatically adds the (PDF) annotation. These particular file extensions are the same extensions that are used by MediaWiki to display the pdf icon (see MediaWiki:Common.css).
Because the module automatically adds the annotation, |format=PDF is redundant.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
Sometimes redundancy is appreciated, or better, intended. There are situations where the link does not end with a pdf file extension, but nevertheless it refers to a pdf file (e.g. scripts for on the spot creation of pdf files). In other situations it makes sense to provide a link that itself does not refer to the pdf itself but only to the (download) web page of the respective pdf file. Thirdly, the link could later change but still refers to a pdf file (see the two cases just mentioned). Therefore the preservation of the format information can be crucial. – In other words, you cannot exclusively derive from the link itself, whether citations refer to a pdf file or not. Therefore, the eventual redundancy is/can be reasonable! Please condider this. -- ZH8000 (talk) 19:52, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

PDF type

You seem to be removing the |type=pdf parameter from a large number of articles. The documentation for e.g. {{cite journal}} clearly shows the |format= parameter with examples including PDF. The |type= parameter has been an alias for |format= for some time as far I know. Have you now decided to deprecate "type" as the parameter name? If so, you need to be replacing it with "format", because our content is re-used on other language wikis where there is no guarantee that the CS1 Lua module will exist to supply the missing format. The type/format of a source may be important in those other wikis and the data needs to be retained - this is particularly a concern for medical articles where a concerted effort is being made to translate our articles. --RexxS (talk) 18:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

|type= is not deprecated. |type= and |format= have never been aliases of each other. They are similar enough to be confusing, but are not the same thing. One, |type=, is used to identify the medium of the cited source (hardback, DVD booklet, etc) or to identify kind of citation (thesis, press release, etc); and the other, |format=, is used to identify the kind of electronic file (PDF, DOC, MrSID, etc) to which |url= links.
I'm sympathetic to your point about reuse of enwiki's content, but I don't agree that enwiki should be hobbled so that we advance at the speed of the least capable.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
When the documentation's only reference to |type= is "Additional information about the media type of the source; format in sentence case" without any examples, then you're going to have to expect editors to associate "media type" with "kind of electronic file" and misuse |type= for |format=. That's not your fault, but you're not going about correcting that problem in the proper way. You need to be changing |type=pdf to |format=pdf, for which there is no consensus to deprecate.
I simply don't agree that not throwing out |format=pdf is in any way "hobbling" enwiki. A parameter is already there and you are degrading the data by throwing it away. What happens when the url changes to one that isn't recognised by MediaWiki? - for example. Must the editor who updates the url be savvy enough to know that they also need to re-supply the |format=pdf parameter? I'm sorry but there's just no justification for the removal of parameters in those 400 articles when they could have just as easily been replaced without any cost. --RexxS (talk) 19:44, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
I – not surprisingly – strongly support RexxS' position! -- ZH8000 (talk) 19:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
I agree with you that the "correct" way to handle this, IMO, is not to just "throw out" the "type=pdf" parameters in refs, but to replace them all with "format=pdf" in their place. Can AWB not do this?... --IJBall (talk) 20:02, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi

I see you have corrected some citations for books, where the books were in 2 different languages. I wonder if you could take a look at this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine/Books ...as I often copy a biblio-ref from that page, Thanks, Huldra (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

None of the CS1/2 citations on that page are showing any errors so nothing for me to do.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:22, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for checking! Huldra (talk) 21:09, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos Torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it.


To give a Dobos Torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:51, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 23 April

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Monkbot date changes to Anya Camilleri and ProveIt tool

I just wanted to let you know that the "year=xxxx | month=xxxxxxxxx" date format that Monkbot is changing is still automatically generated by the ProveIt tool, when you select the "Cite Journal" option. If you could get the tool's maintainer/creator to fix that, it might save your bot a lot of work. Thanks. Carl Henderson (talk) 22:24, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This was reported at the ProveIt talk page almost a year ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:23, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Feature request for Monkbot task 1

Monkbot task 1 could be updated to look for month parameters in cite map, cite arxiv, cite episode, and other newly added Lua-module templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Did that yesterday for task 1 and will be working my way through the other tasks to do the same in the next days.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:28, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Bot task 6

Hi, could you modify your bot to also replace the language icons for {{cite encyclopedia}}? For example, the bot dealt with books in Puntukas, but left encyclopedia alone. Thanks, Renata (talk) 04:35, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that support for {{cite encyclopedia}} must wait for implementation of |script-title= support for {{cite encyclopedia}} in Module:Citation/CS1 which is on my to-do list.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:10, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I see. But is it possible to run the bot for cite encyclopedia for languages that don't need script-title? Or is that too much trouble? Renata (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
I have tweaked task 6 so that more of what it does includes {{cite encyclopedia}}. That won't address the {{cite encyclopedia}} in Puntukas because that template has an embedded template in |id={{LCC|86232954}}. The bot intentionally ignores all citation templates with internal templates other than {{xx icon}} templates.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:40, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Cool, thanks! And thank you for all the work you do on citations. It is appreciated. Renata (talk) 18:39, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Statistics on template parameter usage

Hi, I came across your template parameter usage statistics at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#deprecated_.7Cauthorsn_and_.7Ceditorsn. May I ask how you extracted that? – Danmichaelo (talk) 19:50, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Just simple insource: regex searches with the search strings listed in that conversation. Because the standard digits character class (\d) isn't supported I just repeated with a different digit at the end of the search string. Of course if I were smarter, I might have done this:
insource:/\| *author[0-9]{1,2}/ – this for |authorn= not |authorsn= finds 7311
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Wow, the addition of the insource option has completely passed me by – but that's very useful indeed – thanks! – Danmichaelo (talk) 21:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

= Question on WP page location for language codes ==l

Dear Trappist the Monk - you helped me out with the wrong script code for a Chinese article I referenced on the The Barberettes page for which I am forever grateful. I'm now looking to correct one I have wrong for Portuguese. Can you give me the URL for the WP page that has all the codes, please? I can't find it - I'm not good at this techno stuff! I'm slightly "edumacated" but finding something on WP is like a maze! Thank you!--Bonnielou2013 (talk) 20:10, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

List of ISO 639-1 codes. Portuguese is pt.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:21, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much, in many languages!--Bonnielou2013 (talk) 20:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Mr. Trappist the Monk (I always feel very reverent when I see or use your name - I'm bowing now) - I wanted to explain how I started using this Script=Title "thingy" that you have startingly labeled "Improper use of script-title;" on 2 pages - the last which I asked you how to do the Portuguese on for Sakiroo. I was previously only putting the regular reference note, with (language=Korean) but in November 2014 I received this correction https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Non-Summit&diff=634147979&oldid=634108039 on the page for Non-Summit when Mr. User:Monkbot changed all of my Korean references with this Script=Title thing - so I, henceforth, changed all the references I added with foreign language (non-enwiki) references to try to suit what Mr. Monkbot changed to. If I'm doing it wrong, can you please let me know? I do a lot of references from other language media, and want to get this right. btw - are you Monkbot, too, Mr. Trappist the Monk?--Bonnielou2013 (talk) 06:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Monkbot is my bot account.
Even though it is possible, some writing systems should not be styled in Citation Style 1 templates in the same way that Latin-based writing systems may be. Depending on the template, CS1 adds italic styling to the |title= parameter. For titles written with characters that are not part of the Latin alphabet, we have |script-title=. This parameter tells the underlying template code that it should not be styled.
Portuguese uses the Latin character set including characters that aren't used in English, may be styled. As such, Portuguese titles belong in |title=.
Korean does not use a Latin-based writing system, should not be italicized, so Korean titles belong in |script-title=.
Some languages, like Arabic and Hebrew, are written from right-to-left. These too, should not be italicized, but even more important is that they are written right-to-left. For technical reasons, titles in these languages need hidden markup to isolate them from the surrounding left-to-right of English. This isolation is provided by |script-title=
There are titles, especially in Japanese popular culture it seems, that mix Japanese and English. When this happens, use |script-title=. Where it is obvious that the English is a translation of the non-English, consider placing the English in |trans-title=. When you have a romanji or similar transcription, place that in |title=:
{{cite book |title=Rōmaji |script-title=ja:ローマ字 |trans-title=Roman letters |language=ja}}
→Rōmaji ローマ字 [Roman letters] (in Japanese).
There are currently 21 languages with writing systems that are appropriate for |script-title=. These languages are listed at Category:CS1 uses foreign language script.
Did I answer your questions?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for all the details. The page location for the 21 languages with writing systems that are appropriate for |script-title= is very helpful for my needs. Should I reference a nuanced language or style, I will depend on and look forward to Mr. Monkbot's attentive watch and expert corrections. Thanks again.--Bonnielou2013 (talk) 16:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Use of script-title

Hi, I just thought I'd check in with you as to this edit. I usually only manually fill in non-Latin refs and was unsure of whether German, Polish, etc. actually need script-title. Is there a list of Latin script languages that don't need this parameter, or should I assume that all Latin script languages are covered by unicode? Thanks for your time, in advance. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:37, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

No list per se but, Category:CS1 uses foreign language script contains subcategories of the languages that do make proper use of |script-title=. If in doubt, one possible way to make a determination is to look in the infobox of the language's article. There you should find a Writing system label. For example, Polish language lists Writing system as Latin (Polish alphabet); for German, Latin (German alphabet); for Thai, Thai script.
If that doesn't help, one other thing you can do is copy the title in question and then paste it into the green mixed input box at Unicode Code Converter. Then click the convert link. So, for an example I copied this from the Thai language infobox:
ภาษาไทย
I pasted it into the green mixed input box at the unicode converter tool and clicked the convert button. In the blue Unicode U+hex notation results box I got:
U+0E20 U+0E32 U+0E29 U+0E32 U+0E44 U+0E17 U+0E22
We know that the Latin unicode character set is U+0000–U+024F so the Thai characters are not Latin.
Too much information, right?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:24, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Not at all! I started out as a web developer back in the early 90's. There's no such thing as "too much information"... just boring those who don't share the excitement to death. Meh, it's their loss. Cheers for the help! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Family of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Hi trappist could you please check that my refs are all ok for the page - Family of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge Thanks so much Ed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.220.50.122 (talk) 10:39, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but there are enough other things on my plate at the moment that I will not be able to accommodate you.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:02, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Altering citation style AGAIN

Would you please stop monkbot from altering the Diberri format citation style on medical articles? To clean out the template cruft the bot has introduced in the last few hours will take me quite a few edits. Please stop the bot from performing this task, and I will try to add a bots deny parameter on all the articles it has affected. One of the (many) main points of the Diberri citation style used in medical articles is that it avoids template clutter that one has to unnecessarily edit around, and you are also altering citation style on FAs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:16, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Several Monkbot tasks have been run over the past few days. To which of them do you object?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:27, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The display-authors=etal parameter seems like overengineering to me. It requires arcane knowledge of the cite templates, takes more space, and has minimal benefit. The use of multiple parameters for the author list is unreadable in general. KateWishing (talk) 18:46, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

That. For the nth time, please recognize that most medical articles use the Diberri style (we have covered this many times). That style intentionally avoids unnecessary clutter. Medical articles are densely cited, and clunking up the parameter list is unhelpful and makes the articles difficult to edit. I have been attempting to revert this damage, but see that it has already been introduced to thousands of articles. Will you be able to revert this from all articles that have Wikiproject Medicine tagged on talk ? This is too much for me to fix. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
|display-authors=etal allows editors to list only some of a source's authors and have the template automatically append the standardized form of the et al. text regardless of which of the various author parameters are used in the template. |display-authors=etal was chosen as the parameter to use because it is commonly used (with a number value) to append the standardized et al. text to a subset of the names listed in the template.
Allowing the inclusion of some flavor of et al. (and there are several flavors in common use, often different within an article: italicized, not italicized, with a period and without, etc), which is not an author's name, in a parameter intended to hold only author names is a form of permission to add other non-author-name text to author-name parameters. While et al. is recognizable and pretty easy to filter out, other non-author name text is not so that text ends up in the citation's metadata. Those who would include such text in an author name parameter do a disservice to those who consume article citations via the metadata. It is hoped that |display-authors=etal will reduce the amount of poor practice that includes non-author-name text in author parameters.
As an experiment, I picked one of the task 7 modified citations from colorectal cancer and from it I took the PMID value which I put into the PMID cite tool which returned this, a {{vcite2 journal}} template which task 7 does not modify:
{{vcite2 journal |vauthors=Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, Cuatrecasas M, Nagasaka T, Boland CR, Goel A |title=Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis |journal=Cancer Res. |volume=70 |issue=16 |pages=6609–18 |year=2010 |pmid=20682795 |pmc=2922409 |doi=10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622 |url=}}
which renders as:
Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, Cuatrecasas M, Nagasaka T, Boland CR, Goel A (2010). "Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis". Cancer Res. 70 (16): 6609–18. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622. PMC 2922409. PMID 20682795.
The purpose of my experiment was an attempt to determine if the PMID cite tool was the source of the et al. text in the author lists. The experiment was inconclusive because the PMID cite tool produces {{vcite2 journal}} though I presume that at one time it did produce {{cite journal}}. It is unclear whether the et al. text in these citations was added by human editors (for example, Alzheimer's disease has both italicized and non-italicized versions of the et al. text; one of which has a leading comma while the other does not). Of course, it is certainly possible that various older incarnations of the PMID cite tool produced these and possibly other forms of the et al. text.
Regardless, one of the purposes of both {{vcite2 journal}} and of |display-authors=etal in {{cite journal}} is to ensure that Module:Citation/CS1 creates clean author metadata. The question then is: how best to create citations that are stylistically consistent and that produce correct metadata? My initial thought was to simply convert these {{cite journal}} citations to {{vcite2 journal}} but that doesn't properly solve the problem because, among other problems, {{vcite2 journal}} emits an error message when it encounters the terminal period. If you're interested, more detail is in the collapse box.
{{vcite2 journal}} with |vauthors=... et al.

Beginning with this citation from colorectal cancer as it was before task 7 edited that page:

{{cite journal |author=Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al. |title=Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis |journal=Cancer Res. |volume=70 |issue=16 |pages=6609–18 |date=August 2010 |pmid=20682795 |pmc=2922409 |doi=10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622 |url=}}
Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ; et al. (August 2010). "Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis". Cancer Res. 70 (16): 6609–18. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622. PMC 2922409. PMID 20682795. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Modify it to use {{vcite2 journal}} and |vauthors=. With that done, et al. with a terminal period causes format error:

{{vcite2 journal |vauthors=Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al. |title=Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis |journal=Cancer Res. |volume=70 |issue=16 |pages=6609–18 |date=August 2010 |pmid=20682795 |pmc=2922409 |doi=10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622 |url=}}
Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al. (August 2010). "Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis". Cancer Res. 70 (16): 6609–18. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622. PMC 2922409. PMID 20682795.

or the display goes wonky because of italics wiki markup:

|vauthors=Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, ''et al.''
Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al. (August 2010). "Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis". Cancer Res. 70 (16): 6609–18. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622. PMC 2922409. PMID 20682795.

and somewhere along the line, et al. (with or without the periods, italic or not) becomes et a:

|vauthors=Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al
Balaguer F, Link A, Lozano JJ, et al. (August 2010). "Epigenetic silencing of miR-137 is an early event in colorectal carcinogenesis". Cancer Res. 70 (16): 6609–18. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-0622. PMC 2922409. PMID 20682795.

But, all of this is irrelevant because the citation still all contain et al. and there is no mechanism currently available except |display-authors=etal to have the template automatically add it.

I don't think that reverting Monkbot task 7 edits is a viable solution. At the cost of one additional parameter, the metadata aren't corrupted by extraneous text and the rendered citation is stylistically the same citation-to-citation and page-to-page. I would like you to reconsider. I suspect that the solution that would suit you best is for someone, not me but perhaps the author of the PMID cite tool, to write another bot that will search for and update older {{cite journal}} citations that contain |display-authors=etal and perhaps a PMID or PMC to the current standard as {{vcite2 journal}}. I can assist in that task by modifying Module:Citation/CS1 to categorize {{cite journal}} citations according to criteria set by your bot developer. That done, you get stylistically uniform citations without the extra parameter and Wikipedia gets clean metadata.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
So, that is all very nice, and I understand your long-standing concern for Wikidata over my long-standing concern for ease of editing and CITEVAR. Still and again, you will need to find a way to avoid altering citation style on articles that use the Diberri format, sort out which articles are using that format before you alter citation style, and refrain from chunking up the citation templates with additional parameters that need to be edited around. @Boghog: to this discussion for further suggestions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify, the experiments with the template filling tool were inconclusive because the default behavior of the tool has changed. Previously the tool by default would only return the first three authors followed by et al. The tool now returns all of the authors by default.
  • One possible solution to the problem highlight at the beginning of this thread is to modify the {{vcite2 journal}} template so that if an et al. is detected in the |vauthors= list, the et al. is removed and the default |display-authors=6 changed to |display-authors=etal. This modified template will then fully support the original Diberri default style without the need to explicitly add |display-authors=etal. Then the bot could instead convert {{cite journal}} to {{vcite2 journal}} templates for citations that contain et al. within the |author= list.
  • On a somewhat related matter, when |display-authors=etal is included, why isn't "et al." output in the metadata as the "n+1" author? The "et al." is meaningful. It means the author list has been truncated. Just stripping the et al. from the metadata represents a loss of information and in fact is misleading. A better long term solution would be to replace the et al. with the missing authors making |display-authors=etal unnecessary. Boghog (talk) 18:14, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Boghog, historically, Diberri listed all authors if there were five or less, and truncated to three plus et al for six or more. That is how many FAs are written; that is their style. Most of what you two are typing is gibberish to me, but that is what should not be altered. When I use your new version of Diberri, I stick with the old scheme (meaning I have to alter the tool's output to make it agree with the long-standing Diberri standard in medical articles). I'd be thrilled if we could get back to that and not have to constantly mess with these changes. Many editors have expressed many times that they don't want to edit around long unnecessary parameters, and we don't want to edit around ridiculously long author lists-- truncating to three was long the norm.

A separate (and typical) issue is that somewhere along the way over the last ten years, MOS seems to have stopped calling for et al to be italicized. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, I can change the tool's default behavior back to the way it was. But then I need to first modify {{vcite2 journal}} to handle et al. Boghog (talk) 18:47, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! So, separately, how we can get Monkbot to stop operating on Diberri-style articles? I reverted the FAs and the articles I watch, but there were still hundreds (thousands ?) of edits before I pinged here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
I wasn't aware that the PMID cite tool returned fewer authors though perhaps I was and didn't realize it. I do know that {{vcite2 journal}} expanded its display to six authors in accordance with the Vancouver system. For further clarity, Monkbot task 7 operates on all of the CS1 templates, not just {{cite journal}}. It looks at all author- and editor-name parameters, |lastn=, |authorn=, |editorn-given=, etc.
I think that the solution that you have described should work for journal citations but what about the others? What about detecting et al. in |surname=, |firstn=, etc? And editors? And then there is the added complexity of {{vcite journal}} (242 instances in Alzheimer's disease – plus 16 of {{cite journal}}, 1 of {{vcite2 journal}}, and some 50 of other CS1 templates). Those {{vcite journal}} render rather differently from {{vcite2 journal}}:
the original {{vcite journal}}:
  • Bonin-Guillaume S, Zekry D, Giacobini E, Gold G, Michel JP. Impact économique de la démence (English: The Economical Impact of Dementia). Presse Médicale. 2005;34(1):35–41. French. PMID 15685097.
renamed to {{vcite2 journal}}:
  • Bonin-Guillaume S, Zekry D, Giacobini E, Gold G, Michel JP (2005). "Impact économique de la démence (English: The Economical Impact of Dementia)". Presse Médicale (in French). 34 (1): 35–41. ISSN 0755-4982. PMID 15685097. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Presumably, they could also be converted and so further unify the article citation style (or all of the CS1 templates and {{vcite2 journal}} could be converted to {{vcite ...}}) This solution doesn't address {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, etc.
And then there is the issue of knowing when it is appropriate to convert to {{vcite2 journal}} and when it is appropriate to remove the et al. text and add |display-authors=etal. Surely not all of the more than 20,000 articles in Category:CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. fall within the purview of WP:MED. How is a bot to make that determination? Is there a template that can be added, something akin to {{use dmy dates}} and which serves a similar purpose?
The documentation such as it is at Brief guide to Implementing OpenURL 1.0 ContextObject for Books contains this text about keyword rft.au:
This data element contains the full name of a single author, i. e. "Smith, Fred M", "Harry S. Truman". (au is repeatable)
The text is slightly different for Brief guide to Implementing OpenURL 1.0 Context Object for Journal Articles:
This data element contains the full name of a single author, i. e. "Smith, Fred M", "Harry S. Truman".
I think that we can presume that rft.au for journal articles is repeatable. Neither makes mention of anything but a single full author name. So, yes, I agree with your point that it is best to include all of the authors in the citation. That does make |display-authors=etal unnecessary in those cases, editors will likely wish to continue to truncate that long list so |display-authors=n will continue to be necessary and editors will cite other sources not supported by the PMID cite tool so |display-authors=etal will still have a purpose there.
With regard to changing the PMID cite tool output, perhaps a checkbox or radio button to choose AMA or URM since both seem to be permissible according to WP:MEDREF.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:28, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Again, most of that is gibberish to me, but the first place to begin sorting it might be ... I do not know why BogHog changed to vcite or to vcite2 after he took over maintaining the Diberri tool. Nor do I know what that means in every case. The case I know about is that autism used vcite instead of cite because of load time issues (Eubulides developed vcite for that purpose, but Eubulides is gone), and I remember at some point having a conversation with BogHog about the vcite vs vcite2 issues ... but the rest fades in memory. That may or may not mean BogHog explained it all to me once ... and I may or may not have understood at the time. When I use Boghog's new Diberri tool, I edit the output to use the old standard form, for consistency in citation style. And I continue to use the vcite format in the autism suite. That we now have a mix on FAs is because new editors may not always respect CITEVAR, and I may not catch them all. But there was once a clear standard across almost all medical content, which is being systematically deteriorated to an inconsistent style that creates bloat and is hard to edit around. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
I think that you did not finish the thought that begins: but the first place to begin sorting it might be ...
  1. PMID cite tool produces {{vcite2 journal}} templates that editors place into articles
  2. {{vcite2 journal}} cannot be directly rendered into a readable citation
  3. Module:ParseVauthors translates {{vcite2 journal}} into {{cite journal}} with instructions to display the author and editor name lists in Vancouver system style and to limit the number of authors displayed to 6
  4. the {{cite journal}} is then handed off to Module:Citation/CS1 where it is rendered into a readable citation
If editing around citation templates in article text is a problem, I do not understand why List-defined references are not the default standard to be used in WP:MED articles. Have a look at the referencing in Clitoris where all of the 141 CS1 templates are segregated into lists at §References with journals and books further segregated and listed in separate subsections §§Journals and §§Bibliography so that the article text only contains the necessary ref tags (<ref>...</ref> and <ref name="..." />).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:55, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

This conversation seems to have died. Recurring themes in your posts here are clutter and editing around citations. Because it seemed a way out of this muddle and because it posed an interesting problem, I have created an AWB tool that converts an article from in-line referencing to list-defined referencing. The tool is available at User:Trappist the monk/IL2LDR – In-line to list-defined referencing converter.

As an example test case with which I could demonstrate how the tool might be useful, I copied Alzheimer's disease to my sandbox. To fully convert from in-line to LDR require these steps

  1. The tool detected duplicate reference names which I manually fixed with these edits:
    1. removed duplicate reference definition <ref name="pmid9661992">
    2. misnamed but detected as a duplicate, changed the name of one reference definition
    3. misnamed but detected as a duplicate, changed the name of one reference definition
  2. The tool then ran to completion. Because some of the reference definitions in the article are bulleted lists of citations, for example 57, and because the tool flattens multi-line references for both technical and stylistic reasons, I 'un-flattened' the bulleted lists manually within AWB before saving the converted article. I made no other manual changes.

Looking at the finished result as raw wikitext, the article text is quite readable. Now that reference definitions are segregated into §References, changes made by Monkbot 7, or any other bots doing work on citations, do not impede an editor's ability to edit the article's text.

I would like to restart Monkbot task 7. Since there doesn't appear to be a viable way for task 7 to detect articles that use the Diberri format (if there is a list or category of such articles, that would be sufficient, got one?) the tool offers you a way minimize the visual impact that bot citation maintenance edits may have on your editing experience.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we need to belabor this any further, and the message should be clear by now (CITEVAR). IF you cannot run bots without altering citation style, you shouldn't be running them.

I would not recommend that you initiate a separate campaign to convert any more articles from their current citation style to LDRs, which as you know, many of us detest. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I looked through this whole conversation and was unable to find a link to a Monkbot Task 7 edit that changed a citation's rendered style (except for trivial matters like removing a comma before "et al." or removing italics on "et al." per MOS). Can you or one of the other editors here please provide such a link? I have looked at a handful Monkbot's Task 7 edits, and I am unable to find an example of a citation that looked materially different in the rendered article after Monkbot's edit. Thanks, and I apologize in advance if I simply missed the links to diffs somewhere in the conversation above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
No campaigns from me. While I would like to see the tool used and improved, my satisfaction comes from solving the problem and that is sufficient. I did not know that you or others dislike LDRs. Can you tell me why or point me to a conversation that explains why?
I'm going to restart Monkbot task 7. Task 7 operates on a list of articles taken from Category:CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. I have filtered that list with the list of articles I stumbled across at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Lists of pages/Articles.
You might want to correct the three citations in Alzheimer's disease that the tool found to be misnamed.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
There's something of a backstory here. First off, authors in general do find get used to using a particular set of templates, whether cite, vcite, harvnb, sfn, etc., and often find that it disrupts their workflow when someone switches around the set of templates on them; hence CITEVAR. I would be very cautious in deploying the convert-to-LDR script; I might find it useful, for instance, for some of my articles created pre-LDR, but it's not something to be run in bulk. More specifically, there was an episode several years ago where Jack Merridew (talk · contribs), now blocked for extensive sockpuppetry and disruption, was trying to promote several technical innovations at WP:FAC. He was a big promoter of LDR, and at times, as I recall, would use some small citation fixes as an excuse to convert entire articles to the LDR format while at FAC. The templates were relatively little-used at the time, and this was very disruptive to the authors of those FACs, who weren't used to working with them. Jack did a fair amount of social damage at FAC before being blocked, and since then, Sandy's shown a knee-jerk antipathy for them and other forms of data structure he promoted; in this recent diff, you can see Iridescent giving her a successful leg-pull by invoking both Jack and LDR. (Sandy, I think you missed the fact that Iridescent has used LDR for years.) That said, some people are happier using other citation formats, so converting to LDR should be avoided unless the people writing and maintaining the article are comfortable with it.
On a related note, I understand that the vcite templates are backed with logic that can reliably parse a list of authors into individual first and last names and generate correct metadata. I've probably missed a discussion of that, but is that something that can be imported into CS1? The huge amount of markup required at present to separate out author names is probably one of the main reasons article authors dislike getting the author list right. Easing that burden would, I think, go a long way to quelling objections to improving metadata. Choess (talk) 19:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Ex-fucking-cuse me, Choess, but would you care to provide a single diff to back up your claim that Iridescent has used LDR for years? I am, and always have been, fundamentally opposed to the LDR system, as I think it's a fundamental breach of Wikipedia's basic principles. My comment that I refuse as a point of principle to touch any article in LDR format is a straightforward statement of fact.
TLDR version: a new editor clicking the "edit" link on a section on a Wikipedia article formatted the standard way will see sections formatted either as a statement of fact <ref> where the fact came from </ref> or a statement of fact {{sfn|author and page number}} , and even if they don't get the formatting of citations they add quite right will generally grasp the concept of "put the source in ref tags after the fact", which makes it easy for other editors to either clean up their addition or explain why the source they've used isn't appropriate. A new editor trying to edit a section in an article in LDR format will see a bunch of <refname> templates invoking something which isn't even visible in the edit window, and chances are will either give up trying and leave, or not even attempt to add a reference as they can't see any way to make it work. I see LDRs as a de facto attack on the principle of "anyone can edit", since in practice they act as a way to lock non-insiders out of articles and enforce article ownership. (Because so few editors understand how they work, most edits to LDR articles have incorrect formatting even when they're from relatively experienced editors, giving a pretext to revert changes.) I will, very occasionally, use "defined on first appearance" named references when a reference is used twice in an article, but that is only because the human-bot hybrids at AWB will generally "fix" articles to use named references if you try to use the same reference in an article. (If I had my way, both LDR and named references would be deprecated.) – iridescent 23:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Well, fuck me, Iridescent: apparently I've been using a different definition of "LDR" than anyone else, or at least you. You're talking specifically about the variant where you make up an arbitrary reference name but put the definition in a list at the bottom rather than anywhere inline. I agree with you: separating the references from the text in that fragile way is a pretty bad idea, and Harvard referencing is. I've been using "LDR" to mean "any method that puts full bibliographic information in a list at the bottom rather than in running text/markup", which includes the harvnb/sfn methods. Your remarks about the three bridges confused the hell out of me, because I remembered Jack vigorously promoting "sfn"; I saw that in the edit histories, and I missed that he was also converting a bunch of inline references to the LDR, strictly speaking, format. Since I was thinking of all of these formats, collectively, as "LDR", I couldn't see the problem and thought it was some kind of deadpan sarcasm on your part.
Now that I understand what's going on, I'd be happy to put the references in the three bridge articles back inline as a small token of atonement for completely misinterpreting your actions in a somewhat uncharitable way, if you approve. (Clearly my judgment is not running very high right now, so I'd rather any conciliatory gesture I make actually conciliate the parties at hand.) Choess (talk) 01:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the history. I tend to stay away from FAC and the machinations that accompany it. I could not imagine running the IL2LDR tool as a bulk job. It was developed with the intent that editors working on a particular article might want to make their lives easier by segregating the vast majority of citation overhead into an LDR so that they don't have to sift the text out of the visual clutter citations by their nature impose. Perhaps I should add that 'not-for-bulk-use' caveat to the documentation. I have no ulterior motive here except to have cs1|2 citation templates render correctly and with clean metadata. Monkbot task 7 is intended to help in that regard.
Not {{vcite ...}} but {{vcite2 journal}} which uses a parameter |vauthors= that requires an author name list in Vancouver system style. There has been a small amount of discussion at various times about bringing the |vauthors= support into cs1|2.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sure you do, and it was nice of Choess to repeat that story, but we've had this discussion before. So, you set up something in the past that could be used to block Monkbot task 6 from articles, and I suggest setting up same for task 7. Adding ultralong parameters to citation templates is not helpful. Curiously, I see that many bots are on a list of bots that can be excluded, but yours is not. I suggest adding it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:09, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Monkbot task 7 has exactly the same block mechanism that is used in task 6; you added it to Brainsway, a page that is not in Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Lists of pages/Articles. When task 7 encountered it today, it went right on by; as it should do. Will you tell me where I can find this list of bots?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:07, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know the bots deny works, because I could find no documentation anywhere on it. After I added that bots template some days ago, I found a bots deny list on some obscure template page-- you would know better than I would where to re-find it, and I would have to go digging-- but I got the impression then that parameter wouldn't work because MonkBot was not on the list. Follow templates from there, I guess ... maybe you can find what I found days ago; it seems that transparency isn't crucial in bot operation.

So ... you've restarted the bot, in spite of this discussion, and my watchlist is going off already. That's nice. Would you like to allow time to install the bots deny template, which I only now know works? Or am I expected to follow you around again, fixing things? I asked earlier if you could avoid articles tagged with WP:MED; you referenced instead some list of articles you found. Why are you running a bot when it is causing problems? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 7 states that the bot is exclusion compliant. That page is linked directly from User:Monkbot. Exclusion compliance is a standard field in each bot approval request.
SandyGeorgia, can you please post a couple of links here to diffs from your watchlist that show edits to which you object? I would like to see how Monkbot is changing the rendered citations. Thanks in advance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
The exclusion list is merely an entirely voluntary category that lists bot pages: Category:Wikipedia bots which are exclusion compliant. I've added the category to User:Monkbot.
The some list of articles [I] found comes from WT:MED, first bullet point in the 'Recent changes in Medicine' box: 'In all Medicine articles'. The title of that watchlist-like page names the big list of article names that I exclude from the main list of article names taken from Category:CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. As of this writing and since its restart, I have not seen any task 7 edits appear on the recent changes list.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
That you just added it would explain why it didn't show up on the list I found days ago. That you are still editing significant medical content is apparent from Ehlers–Danlos syndrome. But come to think of it, my concern is not restricted to Diberri format or medical articles: why should you be doing this anywhere? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

AT WP:ANI ... please stop the bot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Stopped.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 6 May

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Template for discussion

Nomination for deletion of Template:Countdown-ymd

Template:Countdown-ymd has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:55, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

etal

Please point me to a guide, in regards to reference templates and etal., thanks. (Or explain below) prokaryotes (talk) 23:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Why did you delete §Nomination for deletion of Template:Countdown-ymd (I have restored it).
Can you be more specific about what it is that you are looking for with regards to et al.?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:34, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
Oops, didn't planned the delete, and i mean this edit. prokaryotes (talk) 00:11, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
And i just noticed there is a discussion above regarding it.-.prokaryotes (talk) 00:15, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
The conversation above has nothing really to do with your example edit. In the case of your example edit, I replaced instances of |coauthor=et al. with |display-authors=etal for three reasons: 1) |coauthors= is a deprecated parameter and is slowly being removed from cs1|2 templates; 2) et al. is not an author's name so doesn't belong in an author-name-holding parameter (a future parameter |vauthors= will be an exception to that rule); 3) |display-authors=etal adds the standardized form of et al. (not italicized, with terminal period, without leading punctuation (but see this discussion about that).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I use "authors=Name et al." prokaryotes (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
You shouldn't because et al. is not an author's name. The correct method is:
{{cite book |title=Title |author=Name |display-authors=etal}}
Name; et al. Title.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks that's what i wanted to know, will do. prokaryotes (talk) 01:17, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Imho, display-authors should be shorter, like "coauthors", and are you suggesting to use etal exclusively - do you suggest to use etal or list of all authors? prokaryotes (talk) 01:25, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
|display-authors=etal was chosen because that parameter already existed as a way to limit the displayed authors to some number of authors less than the template holds: if the template has nine authors and |display-authors=3 then Module:Citation/CS1 displays only the first three; the functionality is similar. I am making no recommendations beyond what I have already said. If you want to list only one or some or all names associated with your source, that is your decision. I will note, however, that there are those who believe that citations must at least list all authors regardless of the number that are actually displayed.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:17, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. prokaryotes (talk) 02:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Isn't working for journal cites. prokaryotes (talk) 00:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
If you are referring to this:
{{cite journal|author=Bond N. A.|display-authors=M. F. Cronin, H. Freeland and N. Mantua|journal=Geophysical Research Letters|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL063306/pdf|doi=10.1002/2015GL063306|title=Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific|date=6 April 2015|publisher=AGU}}
then, yeah, that doesn't work. You are attempting to use the parameter in a manner for which it is not designed. If you found something that suggests that method in any of the template documentation, can you point it out to me so I can fix it?
|display-authors= can take two kinds of values: a number as: |display-authors=3 to display a limited number of authors, in this case 3, from the authors listed in the template; and the special keyword |display-authors=etal to display as many authors as are listed in the template with the standardized form of et al. appended to the list. The number version does not work when more than one author is listed in a single parameter as was the case with this template. Individual authors need to be listed in individual |author= or |last= / |first= pairs. Rewriting the template with |display-authors=1:
{{cite journal |display-authors=1 |author=Bond N. A. |author2=M. F. Cronin |author3=H. Freeland |author4=N. Mantua|journal=Geophysical Research Letters|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL063306/pdf|doi=10.1002/2015GL063306|title=Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific|date=6 April 2015|publisher=AGU}}
→Bond N. A.; et al. (6 April 2015). "Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific". Geophysical Research Letters. AGU. doi:10.1002/2015GL063306. {{cite journal}}: line feed character in |title= at position 44 (help)
or with |display-authors=etal:
{{cite journal |display-authors=etal |author=Bond N. A. |author2=M. F. Cronin |author3=H. Freeland |author4=N. Mantua|journal=Geophysical Research Letters|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL063306/pdf|doi=10.1002/2015GL063306|title=Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific|date=6 April 2015|publisher=AGU}}
→Bond N. A.; M. F. Cronin; H. Freeland; N. Mantua; et al. (6 April 2015). "Causes and impacts of the 2014 warm anomaly in the NE Pacific". Geophysical Research Letters. AGU. doi:10.1002/2015GL063306. {{cite journal}}: line feed character in |title= at position 44 (help)
—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Well done! You are the one of the most active editors of all time! I have never seen you absent in the recent changes log at all! DSCrowned(talk) 11:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

AWB script error?

I swear I'm not stalking you; sometimes I look at your edits to see where I might be able to improve my own AutoEd scripts that work on citation errors.

That said, how did this happen? Did your script add |Author2=? Is there some larger plan at work, or was that just a slip of the finger? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I am building this script as I go. I started with a rule from Monkbot task 2 to find |coauthor=. I then started building rules to match and fix what that rule found. Those |coauthor= parameters that are found but not yet fixed get changed to |Authorn=. AWB has a search function that does regex searches of the wikitext after the automated edits are complete. When a search finds its target regex, the Find button turns a bright yellow. I use that to show me there was a |coauthor= parameter that couldn't be fixed by one of the current rules. AWB does not have the ability to undo individual edits but all edits in a single paragraph can be undone. When I see the yellow Find button, I undo the appropriate paragraph(s) or manually edit to |authorn=, |editor=, or |others= when appropriate and then save what's left, if anything. I generally don't restore the parameter to |coauthor= because there are so many of these |Authorn= parameters that it is more productive to simply undo the edit to that particular paragraph and move on.
It is entirely possible that I have and will miss a few of these |Authorn= because it's a manual operation. It occurs to me while writing this that changing these unfixed parameters to |Coauthor= might be a better flag because if I save it with |Coauthor= the page will be added to Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters rather than getting lost in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters. I could then periodically use this API link to list the most recent additions to the unsupported category:
Unsupported parameters by date API list
If this experiment has taught me anything, it is that free-form author-name-lists need to go away. Editors, despite their undoubtedly good intentions are inconsistent. I have fixed citations on more that 2200 pages using this script of 500+ rules. There are more than 18k pages left to look at and, as I add new rules, pages I've already looked at will need another look. Still to be done, probably in a separate script is fixes when |coauthor= has more than 10 names.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
Knowing you, I figured there was a plan.
I think |Author2= makes more sense than |Coauthor=, since the deprecated parameter messages are still hidden, while unsupported parameters show up in red. Also, the unsupported parameter category is essentially empty, except for a dozen or so new articles that are added each day, plus the new {{cite episode}} articles that the job queue is bringing in. I don't think it makes sense to add articles to that category intentionally, even on a temporary basis. Gnomes monitoring that category might fix the errors in a way that is non-optimal, after which the article will not be in any error categories. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
Since the point is to fix |coauthor= parameters, masking them with another deprecated parameter doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps if I change unfixed |coauthor= parameters to |coauthor<!--remove this-->= then AWB can still highlight the unfixed parameters, categories don't change, gnomes can just obey the explicit instruction, and for those that I allow to get saved because my attention wandered, a simple insource: search should find those few that escape me.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
That sounds eerily familiar and similar to what I'm doing and how my rule-list grew. Author/editor parsing has so many tiny exceptions. I'm up to 480 rules myself (in total, not just for author parsing). The goal for me is to sit back and hit save after looking through the changes. I'm actually pretty close to that goal (as long as I don't stray too far from astronomy articles, where my rules now catch most of the typical errors there). It's a good thing we enjoy it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  13:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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