Template talk:Cite web/Archive 2

message: I was going through and updating some articles I work on with this template and discovered a question which prompts a suggestion.  Now that waybackref has been merged, would it be possible to add something to the template to handle dead links that have not been archived?  Something along the lines of deaddate= that returns 'Link found inactive <date>'. Thanks! --Bobblehead 16:43, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question.  There's a school of thought that says that a dead link should be removed from the article altogether.  When Stuyvesant High School went through its last-but-one FAC campaign, it got red-flagged for several citations to what I described as "offline" web pages.  Converting them to s helped in the most recent (and successful) campaign, and motivated me to do the merger support. RossPatterson 18:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, according to WP:Cite if the link is a reference link and no archive is available "do not remove the inactive reference, but rather record the date that the original link was found to be inactive". --Bobblehead 19:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good point.  And I see that Wikipedia:Dead external links has some procedures and templates to facilitate that usage.  RossPatterson 21:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link question

message: The last =, first = parameters don't seem to be working. When I use them I get no author name. author = works, however. --KarlBunker 20:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give an example of the wikicode you use? Circeus 21:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Aaand fixed. Add "?action=purge" at the end of the URL for pages that still show the buggy output (purges the cached page of the Wikipedia server) --Ligulem 11:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent; thank you! KarlBunker 14:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  last, first 

message: I'm not sure the publisher field should be italicized "as per Template:Cite news". Not all website names should be italicized, as far as I can tell. (Certainly Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles) doesn't put them on the list.) –Unint 01:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italicizing publisher field 

message: We're discussing what a more integrated template could look like: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced GA#New template proposed. Please comment if you wish. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New template proposed: distinguishing news vs. abstract vs. full text 

message: I've copied the documentation back to the talk page. Please remove it from the template page. I don't want do ask an admin for every tweak to the docu. If you disagree, update the template page docu yourself accordingly whenever needed. Thanks. --Ligulem 11:49, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done by Circeus . Thanks. --Ligulem 14:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Documentation back on talk page 

message: When working on the Valerie_Plame#Plame_affair section, I came accross a cite and a author in which  she had a URL to her bio. Never even relizing that authorlink was for Wikipedia, I put in the full URL. I found out afterwards it was just for internal. So I made it authorurllink on the page so if someone were to edit the template to allow external links, that would be great. -- Shane (talk/contrib) 08:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had the same annoying problem. I tried to fix the docs a bit. On your request for a authorurllink (maybe authorlinkurl or authorlinkwww is better) let's hope some developers are reading us... // Duccio (write me) 18:54, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your doc edit is good. Um, everybody is a template developer here. So, everybody can provide a proposal for a new version of the template wiki-code. To the problem with an authorurl: I'm not so sure if this is such a good idea to provide support for an additional external link for the author on the template. Cite web is about referencing a site on the internet (an url). I fear an additional external link could be a bit confusing. This might also be the reason why nobody responded here. Also, I'm generally reluctant to add new params (I hate parameter piling). But as always, if it's really wanted and needed, we can do it. In anycase, if this new param should make it into the template I would propose "authorurl" as its name. --Ligulem 22:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are probably right, the template filling is already enough complicated without an additional authorurl parameter, so let's keep it simple :-) I just wonder if it is technically feasable to return an error in case a URL is given in the authorlink parameter, although it shouldn't be necessary with proper documentation. // Duccio (write me) 09:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  authorurllink field 

message: Can someone remove the extra period that started showing up today.

Becomes:  -- Thx in adv --Trödel 19:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Pagrashtak 21:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thx --Trödel 21:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extra period 

message: It's great that this template italicizes the "publisher's" name.  But where both the work and publisher are given, there's no need to have the publisher's name italicized; only the work should be, as though it were a book.
Example (from Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts of America)):

produces
And come to think of it, why is there a colon after the publisher?  --zenohockey 00:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The colon after the publisher qualifies as a bug. But I can't fix it. I lack the access rights to edit the template page. --Ligulem 08:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have them, but can't tell what's the problem. Circeus 20:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This would remove the colon. This would remove the italics on publisher. Some testcases showing the effect of both are here. --Ligulem 22:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks fixed now.  Thanks, all.  --zenohockey 23:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excess italicization 

message: There seems to be a problem with dates - they're auto-formatted to 22 July 2006, which is of course a red link. Can it be changed to format 22 July 2006, please? - MPF 20:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: is it the "date"or "accessdate" parameter? Inputting a non-iso date in "accessdate" will result in improper formatting. Inputting 22 July 2006 instead of 2006-07-22 or 22 July 2006 in date will also result in improper formatting. I doubt the template is to blame. What's the problematic page? Circeus 20:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: List of long-living organisms. I'd tried (with limited success) to link the dates directly in the page itself, see  for what it looked like before - MPF 22:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed the calls. --Ligulem 22:36, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It hasn't been fixed, it has been made U.S. centric, and now breaches the policy of treating varieties of English with equal respect. Wimstead 15:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The documented syntax of  (and the other citation templates) requires the accessdate parameter to be in ISO form, which is specific to no region. When displayed, it is formatted according to your date format settings. —xyzzyn 16:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Date formatting problem

message: Should we include those variables? If not, can you propose an alternate format for "Perseus project" refs about Odyssey, History and The Birds (refs 2,3,4) in Macedonia (terminology)... Thanks. :NikoSilver: 15:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: does not have parameters for volumes and lines, but you can put the information for the former into the chapter parameter and give the latter separately or even using the quote parameter, if that’s appropriate. Also note that it has separate url and chapterurl parameters. —xyzzyn 15:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Books/Chapters/Lines

message: Could the publisher field become italicized (as is done in Template:Cite_news)?
(--16:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This was discussed earlier (#Excess italicization).  The problem is that when a work is given, there's no need to have the publisher italicized as well.  --zenohockey 21:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

text: ...and when the work is not given? (--Coolhandscot 01:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Beats me.  If there's a way to do it, I agree it should be done.  --zenohockey 03:12, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe something simple like  would work. (Warning: I have no experience with templates.) Is there a set of regression tests for this template? —xyzzyn 03:38, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Publisher italicization 

message: Hi, I've been editing the Heysel Stadium disaster article, but have become confused by a bug in the referencing system. I was wondering whether someone more knowledgable could have a look at it and see where it has gone wrong? Cheers, aLii 03:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The same thing just happened to the article I was working on.  I believe the most recent change to this template inadvertantly caused the bug.  Actually, looks like notes not even using this template have been affected, so I don't know what to say. VegaDark 03:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After discussing it on the Wikipedia IRC channel, and assuming your issue is the same as mine (all the refs are doubled), apparently it works fine for most editors but there are some for unknown reasons that this is happening to.  Might be a javascript issue. VegaDark 04:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've run into what sounds like the same problem after editing the Visiting Forces Agreement page.  When I "Show Preview"ed the page it looked OK, but when I "Save Page"ed it the saved page had all the references doubled. The first occurrance of each doubled-section did not hook up with a cite in the body of the text. I didn't know what to do about this, so I've put an html-commented note about it in the References section of the page and left it that way. -- Boracay Bill 07:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a known bug bugzilla:7162. Was also reported numerous times at WP:VPT (see the red box on top). It has nothing to do with the citation templates. WikiMedia CTO Brion Vibber is aware if this bug. --Ligulem 08:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Brion fixed bugzilla:7162. Do a null edit to any broken page you see or add "?action=purge" to the end of the web address (URL) of the page. --Ligulem 11:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Um, oops. If I messed something up, I appologize. I saw that no other admin has reverted my changes, so I'm wondering if that was the cause. Is anyone still having trouble? -Mysekurity 14:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, your edit didn't mess anything. But be careful fiddling with this template. Normally, changes should be proposed on talk first. Even for admins. But your's is ok (Besides that it eats up from pre-expand size limit). The bug reported by aLii doesn't have anything to do with cite web (as I wrote above here). --Ligulem 15:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Confused by bug

message: Can someone please add spaces after all of the equal signs or remove all such spaces in the usage template?  It's inconsistent and it's driving me crazy. :)  --ElKevbo 17:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I assume you mean the documentation. If yes, you can do it yourself: just click here (no admin needed!). And hack away. You cannot make any damage to the transclusions (see Wikipedia:template doc page pattern for the technical details). There is also an edit link on the top of the template page (in case you overlooked that). So be bold! :) --Ligulem 17:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's protected.  I'm not an admin.  --ElKevbo 17:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Strange. You can't edit Template:Cite web/doc? --Ligulem 18:28, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I can edit that.  I was looking at Template:Cite web.  Why are the instructions for use of this template in two different places, one protected and the other not?  And why is it inconsistent between different templates with some having the usage info on the Talk page and this one not?  It's all very frustrating.  --ElKevbo 18:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Uhh. Calm down ;-). There is a whole story behind this stuff! The documentation is transcluded into the template page. If you look at  (scroll down) you will see a line reading . This has the effect that the documentation is transcluded into the template page. Separation of template documentation (template:cite web/doc) and template code (template:cite web) is a relatively new idea and it has not yet been applied everywhere where applicable. You really should read  Wikipedia:template doc page pattern for the technical details. You can ask me on my talk if you do not understand it. The template doc page pattern has the benefit that non-admins (like you and me) can edit the documentation of protected templates and changes to the documentation don't invalidate the caches of the articles that transclude the template. Sorry if this all a bit confusing :-). Just ask me on my talk if you have any questions left. --Ligulem 19:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  I think I get it all now.  I wasn't really in the mood to delve into templates and other esoterica earlier - I was in the midst of cleaning up the references in an article.  I'm done with it for now so I'm in a better position to really look at all of this.  Apologies for any frustration *I* may have caused!  --ElKevbo 19:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No frustrations on my side. Your are welcome to tickle the template oldies ;-). --Ligulem 19:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Cite book may be the only template without the usage docs transcluded.  Of course, it was the second template I looked at after this one...  --ElKevbo 19:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (after two edit conlicts ;-) I made an edit request today exactly to change that. See template talk:cite book. --Ligulem 19:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  I was just about to do the same - you beat me to it!  --ElKevbo 19:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consistent spaces

message: :::Which starts me thinking if we should make a template that already contains the <ref> thingy (duh!). So the above examples could be written like this:
bla bla bla blubber bla bla blubber bla, bla bla bla bla
blubber bla bla bla bla.
:::and
bla bla bla blubber bla bla blubber bla, bla bla bla bla
blubber bla bla bla bla.
:::which would be easier to type. --Ligulem 00:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Including ref tags in template 

message: I agree with the removal of the somewhat outdated "See also" section by 70.182.190.203. Stuff like that can go to the :category:citation templates. However, an editsummary would have been nice ;-) --Ligulem 13:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of "See also" section 

message: Someone put a lot of "citations needed" in the Pete Waterman article, so I decided to try putting one in. In the opening paragraph of this version. I put  , and I put a references section near the bottom of the article. However, this simply produces "Shane Danielsen (1999-10-09). The diamond geezer. The Australian." inline in the article. What's going on? -- Arwel (talk) 22:49, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. --Ligulem 23:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Template not working?

message: From the template page:
      → Joliet, François (30 April 2005). Honnit soit qui mal y pense (French). Retrieved on 6 July 2005.
Could someone please add the language parameter? It seems to have gone missing, and proper examples are always welcome. Thank you. - Chsf 15:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language 

message: The authorlink parameter seems to be broken - see the last example at Template:Cite web/doc. ··gracefool |☺ 04:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. This is by design. Section "Optional parameters" states: "authorlink: ....to link to the appropriate wikipedia article. Does not work with URLs". I've removed the  --Ligulem 08:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authorlink bug 

message: This template recommends the use of "surname, givenname" for the author citation. This style was already archaic when I was in school, and that was more than a few decades ago. Trying to revive this style comes off as a lame attempt to be pseudo-Victorian steam-punk hip.  Please correct it.  Thanks linas 14:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Really?  APA uses lastname, firstinitial and that's not too different.  Who cares as long as it's consistent and enables readers to locate the proper reference?  --ElKevbo 14:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

text: (In reply to linas) This is incorrect anyway. There are parameters "first" and "last" and if you dislike them, you can simply use "author" instead. If you want to change templates like cite web, you'll have to be much more specific anyway. I've thus removed the editproteced. first / last is now in use on thousands of calls and can't be removed without tremendous work and a detailed plan how to do that. Furthermore, first/last comes from , where "last" together with a year is used to address citations. We introduced that here to be compatible with cite book. --Ligulem 14:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Surname, given name is the way I've ALWAYS seen it, on all papers I've written for school that's the way teachers want it, and that's the way I've seen almost all references written.  See APA style, Turabian style, MLA style, Chicago style, and AMA style among many others. —Mets501 (talk) 19:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are citation styles for old, existing journals. New publications are not bound to those rules. American high schools and universities have been teaching "firstname lastname" citation style for at least several decades, including the University of Chicago. Is it possible that the Long Island University found an old copy of the Chicago manual of style? See, for example, the actual Chicago style, as given by Chicago and not Long Island: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html linas 23:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And that example shows that the current style employed by this template is the preferred (required) style for bibliographic entries, in-text citations and reference-list entries.  The current version of APA employs the same style except that given names/first names are always shortened to the first initial (don't know why; it's odd but that's the way it is).  Those are the only two styles in which I write for publication so I can't speak about others but we're in sync with APA and Chicago.  --ElKevbo 23:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For inline citations/footnotes, Chicago uses "first last" (for full citation) or simply "last" (for author-date). Bibliographic entries are the opposite way. Unfortunately, this template is used for both. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Yup, those are "FirstInitial, LastName."  That's a pretty common style, too.  Still not "FirstName LastName," though.  Again, this really doesn't matter.  We've got a consistent, established style for Wikipedia.  Journals are free to (and do) establish their own styles and so is Wikipedia.  If it ain't broke then why fix it?  --ElKevbo 00:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been editing WP for a few years with a "constant established style", and you seem to have instituted a new style, and are claiming superiority. Despite the evidence of the style guides, its quite clear that the rest of the world is ignoring the style guides. When I went to school, it was stated that the last,first style was considered to be archaic.  Its clear that just by looking at books on the shelf, or papers on the web, no one actually uses last,first any more in "real life". linas 00:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well now you're just being unreasonable.  Your assertion that no one uses the style is completely wrong.  I assure you that the papers I have written and had published followed the APA style guide as do all of the other authors in those publications.  But if you want to ignore that and all of the other evidence we've presented than you're welcome to do so.  --ElKevbo 00:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Another very simple reason bibliographic info is usuallygiven in a last, first format is that it makes alhabetical ordering far more proficient. Circeus 00:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  givenname surname 

message: I think that there should be an entry for the website's name. Websites frequently shutdown and the name of the website cannot always be determined by the information in this template, including the URL, especially when the website is hosted on a subdomain or directory (examplesite.hostingcompany.com or hostingcompany.com/examplesite). Even whois might not help, as the name listed on the registration often does not always match the website and I do not know if they keep the information indefinitely after the registration expires and I would guess that it is replaced when someone else registers the domain. Knowing the name of the website can be very useful in tracking down the reference when they go offline, or when they move to a new website with no forwarding or notice at the old site. -- Kjkolb 14:16, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a reasonable use for the existing publisher= parameter. If the URL is http://example.org/bloompicayune and the website is the Bloom County Picayune, then an article from there should include url=http://example.org/bloompicayune|publisher=Bloom County Picayune. RossPatterson 02:04, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Does such a thing as a website name exist?  If such a thing does exist in any sense, what  permanence or significance does the website name have?  As discussed above by Kjkolb, what we're calling a website here may or may not have any close relationship to the domain name where it is found.  This website may be located in a subdomain or in a subdirectory, and may have a very loose relationship or no relationship at all to other collections of one or more pages also located on that domain. Such collections of pages are usually (not always) organized as a tree growing from one main root page informally called the home page and are called websites in the discussion in this section.  Website home pages may or may not have a <TITLE> tag, and other pages on the site may or may not have <TITLE> tags.  <TITLE> tags of the various pages on a site may or may not have any relationship to one another, and may or may not have any relationship to the website name (whatever that term might mean). Having said that, I'll note that most web pages do have some sort of attribute which, though not formally defined in any sense, might be thought of as the web page name (similar in concept to to but not the same as the website name) by persons viewing the site; the pages for which I have used this template have had such an attribute, and that is what I have been putting in the Cite_web title= parameter. So, having recognized that a cited page might have some attribute which, though fuzzily defined, could be thought of as the web page name, and having recognized that a cited web page would probably (not always) be associated with a collection of somehow-related pages which appear in a tree structure of what might be thought of as a web site (though that web site might not have a domain name of its own, as discussed by Kjkolb above), and that collection of web pages might be thought of as having a fuzzily-defined attribute which could be thought of as website name, I guess I don't see any harm in having an optional parameter where an attribute of a cited web page called website name might be recorded if that attribute exists for the particular cited page. -- Boracay Bill 00:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe you just answered your own question with a "yes". RossPatterson 02:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Kjkolb, I don't understand what you mean by "website name". We have parameter "title" which is chosen by wiki-editors and is thus descriptive — in contrast to a book title, which is identifying. The URL is identifying. Maybe some specific examples could shed some more light on what problem you are trying to solve. --Ligulem 11:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  How about WikiPedia to create own internet archive to store webpages referenced in articles ? Something like Archive-It. Slashdot has did this for websites they cite. But in general - I think it does not make sense to link to page one can disappear next day. --TAG 15:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's exactly what the Internet Archive is, and this template has two parameters designed to make transition to archived copies of pages easy: archiveurl= and archivedate=. Thanks to them and other similar sites, nothing ever really vanishes from the web. RossPatterson 23:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

text: or a book which may have become rare? or an article in an obscure journal which may be available only at horrendous subscription cost? or ...? Though I do use it a lot, my guess is that Cite_web often leads to flakey cites.  If today's cites disappear tomorrow or are later found to be flakey, they will be removed by later editors. Perpetuating a flakey cite is not a good thing, IMHO. -- Boracay Bill 22:15, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This template isn't the place to discuss turning Wikipedia into a storage medium for non-article data.  Wikipedia made that decision a long time ago, when Wikisource was created and the verbatim copies of things like historical documents were moved there.  Between Wikisource, the Internet Archive, arχiv, and others, most everything that's every been on the web is still online someplace, and Google Books Library is trying to solve the book problem. RossPatterson 23:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Website name entry 

message: I recently updated several references at Dalek using this template, and one of them displayed somewhat oddly.  See Dalek#Footnotes, #4: instead of the link being displayed with the page's title, the URL is displaying next to the title:
*like this: Countdown/TV Action Strips and Stories featuring the Third Doctor
*instead of this: Countdown/TV Action Strips and Stories featuring the Third Doctor.
Does anyone know why this is happening, and what can be done to fix it? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There was an extraneous hard return in the Title parameter.  I don't quite understand why it caused the template to behave as it did but removing the hard return fixed it.  --ElKevbo 01:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Kevbo.  That's what I get for copying the title directly from the webpage — I didn't realize that I'd brought the hard return over as well. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference displaying oddly