Template talk:Cite web

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Template:Cite web has been protected indefinitely. Use {{editprotected}} on this page to request an edit. If you wish an edit to be made to something else, such as rewording the documentation or adding an interwiki link, you can edit Template:Cite web/doc.

This template is one of several templates used to provide or request sources for articles.

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Archive 01 Archive 02

Contents 1 Opt in for wikilinking accessdate, linkdate=yes should be opt in 2 General formatting issues 3 Interwiki 4 Retrieval dates 4.1 Workaround: How to disable linking dates/years with existing Template 4.2 Seeking consensus 5 New way to add refs 6 Date formatting problem part 2 7 Template used in tables? 8 Please reformat all of these so they are not U.S. centric 9 I repeat, please unblock these so I can mark them as unusable for UK articles. And please sort out the U.S. centrism as well 10 Interwiki 11 publisher or author? 12 Interwiki addition 13 Link rot date?

[edit] Opt in for wikilinking accessdate, linkdate=yes should be opt in

I guess I better add my two cents worth. I am trying to figure out when a year should be wikilinked, and when it shouldn't. I read Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context and my conclusion would be:

• That for historic events, places or people the year that a pages was accessed (eg 2006/2007) has little or no encyclopediac value (other then to certify a citation).
• For current events the date/year may be useful as a chronology of sorts.

So to have a flag with default linkdate=False (or linkdate=No) would seem to be best.

¢ NevilleDNZ 20:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC) ¢

[edit] General formatting issues

One of the biggest issue that I have with the use of these templates (cite web, cite news, etc) is that the formatting does not conform to any standard that is used with existing print publications. For example, the dates should use the format of 'December 7, 2006', instead of the less intuitive '07-12-2006'. If you look at references available in MOST academic print publications (most of which are now published on the web anyways), they do it this way. There are other minor punctuation issues as well. These issues NEED to be fixed if these templates are expected to be used by a wider group. Dr. Cash 04:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

If the full date is used and wikilinked (either manually or automatically via the template), the format in which the date is displayed is determined by your user preferences. --ElKevbo 05:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Date formatting is a somewhat frustrating perennial discussion (scroll up and look into the archives). Historic consensus is to have dates in a form that enables user date preferences working, a rather obscure MediaWiki software feature available only for readers that use a login, and which requires writing dates in specific ways to make it work (hard-bundled with having the dates linked, yet another frustrating perennial discussion on this wiki). On another note, Wikipedia is not printed - after all it's still a website and a bit of a deviation from "standards" for print (note the plural) should be ok (an interesting link might be [1]). Per the punctuation, it will most likely be impossible to please everybody with a single format. Of course, detailed proposals for changes are always welcome for discussion and will be enacted if they find consensus. And don't forget that use of the citation templates is not mandatory. They are an attempt to split off the "how to format a reference" decision into a single location, separating that from the data set used on each instantiation. With the possible benefit that Wikipedia could look a bit more professional by having consistent formatting of references. The Germans do it by manually following a pile of formatting instructions [2], with the effect that changing them is pointless, as already written references cannot be changed without tremendous work. --Ligulem 10:42, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

They may not be mandatory, but people are encouraged to use them, and they are spreading a systematic breach of the policy on varieties of English across Wikipedia. This systemic U.S. centrism is very offensive. Wimstead 15:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki

Please, add sl:Predloga:Navedi splet. Thanks a lot. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 11:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Done—Phil | Talk 12:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Retrieval dates

Linking retrieval dates is unnecessary and sloppy, you end up with numerous links to the same year in the footnotes section. The most important link in the footnotes is to the article itself, not more wikilinks.

• ^ "Beckham's tattoo sparks debate", BBC News, 22 May, 2004. Retrieved on 27 June, 2006.

Should just be:

• ^ "Beckham's tattoo sparks debate", BBC News, 22 May, 2004. Retrieved on 27 June, 2006.

--ElectricEye (talk) 18:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Not if you want the date to display as set in one's preferences. --ElKevbo 18:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

So retrieved dates showing up as one sets in preferences is only possible by making it a wikilink? This should be changed. Wikilinks in the footnotes are getting out of hand. Some have everything linked and this distracts from the important link: The link to the actual reference itself. --ElectricEye (talk) 19:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. As you can see by several of the other discussions on this page, however, it's (inexplicably) a heated issue with some editors. I completely agree that one should not have to wikilink a date to have it honor a user's preferences. It seems to me, however, that it is a discussion to be held over at WP:DATE and not here. --ElKevbo 20:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh I get it. The community has consented that the date format consensus forum (WP Talk:Date) also has an "authority" to require that ALL dates be wikilinked because they can't figure out how to format the date properly without wikilinking... Doesn't make sense. I'm going to see what they're up to at WP:DATE. ^_^ --ElectricEye (talk) 20:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

It's safer than to allow dates that shouldn't be changed (e.g. those in the titles of book) to be caught in the crossfire. Besides, by now it's some sort of legacy code that changing would be far more harmful. Circeus 03:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In a nutshell, having the dates auto-wikilinked is harmless, don't worry about it.--Wizardman 03:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case, I won't be using this template. I'd rather manually create the references with ONLY a link to the actual document being referred to. No linked dates. --ElectricEye (talk) 08:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Workaround: How to disable linking dates/years with existing Template

Change the template parameter from "accessdate=2006-10-16" to "accessmonthday=October 16 | accessyear=2006".

• Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kakahi&diff=109630777&oldid=105492793

[edit] Seeking consensus

I vote no default linkdate, with additional linkdate=yes flag IF possible, ¢ NevilleDNZ 20:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC) ¢

No, because linking dates is a manual of style guideline, and very important to allow date preferences to work. There should be no situation where they aren't. Trebor 21:09, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I just checked this out by changing my own date preferences

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#prefsection-4

I changed them to: "2007-02-04T11:48:51" (yuk), I then viewed the page to see if my preferences were now reflected in the page when accessdate parameter is used.

• Before and After:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kakahi&oldid=105492793#References
  1. ^ Tribunal, Waitangi. CHAPTER 7 CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF LAND ALIENATIONS FROM 1874 TO 1920 (pdf). www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz. Waitangi Tribunal. Retrieved on 2006-10-16.
  2. ^ Statute, New Zealand. Maori Purposes Act 1967 (html). Disposal of Tongariro Timber Company railway land. Retrieved on 2006-10-21.

Basically there was no change, and the "Cite_web" template got my preferences wrong anyhow.

Similarly where I used the accessyear=/accessmonthday= parameters there was no change:

• Before and After:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kakahi&direction=next&oldid=105492793#References
  1. ^ Tribunal, Waitangi. CHAPTER 7 CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF LAND ALIENATIONS FROM 1874 TO 1920 (pdf). www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz. Waitangi Tribunal. Retrieved on October 16, 2006.
  2. ^ Statute, New Zealand. Maori Purposes Act 1967 (html). Disposal of Tongariro Timber Company railway land. Retrieved on October 21, 2006.

I am thinking that the user date preferences mechanism does work on date formats like YYYY-MM-DD and that this "user date preference is a bit of a "red herring". Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

• I still vote: no default linkdate - having 2006 linked automatically multiple times in one paragraph makes no sense at all, and it doesn't appear to effect preferences. ¢ NevilleDNZ 21:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC) ¢

Um, well it shouldn't have done that. Perhaps you needed to bypass your cache. I just tried it (to make sure) and date preferences definitely do affect how you see it; see readers' date preferences for more info. This is nothing to do with context. Dates including a month and a day should be wikilinked whatever, so there would never be any need to turn it off. Trebor 00:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

My apologies... it was a cache problem for in one case. In the other case the format still didn't match the preferences. I will see if I can find a reason why, I am thinking that it shouldn't be necessary to link the year just to get preferences working. But I am willing to eat my hat. ¢ NevilleDNZ 08:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC) ¢

[edit] New way to add refs

I know that this would take a lot of work as all current articles would have to be changed (but I think that the bots could take care of the job) but I think that refs should be added to the bottom of the page. Something like this.

The world is round. <ref1> References <ref1>{{cite web web=www.world.com }}

Articles which have many references end up being very difficult to edit as you have to scroll through references and miss some text in the middle. If most of the reference code is found at the bottom it would be much easier to edit as there would just be ref1 (or something else similar) instead of the whole template info. Yonatanh 00:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

This has been discussed to no ends on Wikipedia talk:Footnotes.Circeus 01:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I recently struggled through this, and eventually found the templates described at Template_talk:Ref. The explanation there is not the easiest thing in the world to figure out, but the templates do provide a means for having an arbitrary number of arbitrarily-named target-areas within which references and notes can be arbitrarily arranged. Try going to Template:Ref, Template:Ref_label and the matching Template:Note, template:Note_label, and click on the What links here link in the navigation bar on the left of the page for real-world usage examples. Ditto Template:Ref_harvard.

[edit] Date formatting problem part 2

Continued from above...

Can the template be edited to allow someone to enter "01 January" instead of "January 01" in the accessmonthday field and have it output "01 January 2006" instead of "01 January, 2006". The former is technically the more correctly formated date. Perhaps another field can be added, labeled accessdaymonth? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 16:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, so now we have accessdaymonth and it works. However, the instructions really could do with being a lot clearer. As I understand it, an editor should provide one of the followin:

• accessdate in ISO 8601 and unlinked
• accessdaymonth and accessyear in dd mmmmmmmm and yyyy respectively and these may optionally be wiki linked.
• accessmonthday and accessyear in mmmmmmmmm dd and yyyy respectively and these may optionally be wikilinked.

Optional wikilinking of accessdaymonth, accessmonthday and accessyear are not currently mentioned, but it does work and is quite common.

Does the above enumerate all the possible access date options? Gaius Cornelius 17:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No, there is one more. The CBE style of YYYY mmmmmm dd. [3]. This one can be done using current parameters accessmonthday and accessyear, but will need some way of recognizing when to use it. Perhaps the template could be edited to show the date depending on which parameter is entered first? eg {{cite web |url= |title= |accessmonthday= January 1 | accessyear= 2006 |format= |work= }} for one way, and {{cite web |url= |title= | accessyear= 2006 |accessmonthday= January 1 |format= |work= }} for the other. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 21:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template used in tables?

This template doesn't seem to work well in tables. I'd like to be able to use this template (or one like it) in a reference section, as you can easily do when the template isn't in a table. When this template is in a table, it displays everything instead of a nice footnote number. Is there a way around this? Any ideas? Is there a similar template that can be used? Firsfron of Ronchester 03:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like you forgot your <ref> tags. Can you give us a specific example where this occurs? Circeus 22:16, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The complaint ... it displays everything instead of a nice footnote number describes the template's intended behavior. To display a nice footnote number which links to some other point in the article where the details are displayed, embed the template between <Ref> and </Ref> tags and make sure that the article has a ==References== section with a <References/> tag in it. Alternatively, embed this or other Cite_whatever templates in the {{ref}} or {{ref_label}} templates as described at Template_talk:Ref. -- Boracay Bill 23:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please reformat all of these so they are not U.S. centric

At present these templates impose U.S. formats, by only showing numerals, and by doing so in the American order ie month before day. This means that an article like Alton Towers appears to be written with the convenience of only American readers in mind. This is a breach of the policy of showing equal respect to different varieties of English. It gives a bad impression of Wikipedia and on a practical level will lead to huge numbers of people misreading dates. Can they please all be reformatted so that the month is shown in words? If possible it should also be left to the editor to decide whether the day or month goes first. Wimstead 15:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Eh? It should be entered in YYYY-MM-DD format (the international standard) and wikilinked to allow date preferences to work. That allows a logged-in user to see it in a variety of ways according to their personal preference. Trebor 00:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Gotta agree with Trebor here.. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but perhaps you have some examples of how this template is imposing US formats? The only date fields that are automatically formatted are accessdate and archive date and the rest are up to the editor to format in their preferred date format. --Bobblehead 01:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What a hopelessly inadequate response. It imposes U.S. formats 'every single time. Are you not aware of the issue at all? In the U.S you write month-day, but in the UK we write day-month. British people will interpret 11-02-2006 as 11 February 2006. Wikipedia has 170+ million readers a month and only 2% of them are registered. Do the other 98% not matter. Then what about the many of that 2% who will not be aware of the option to change their display settings. Wimstead 04:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wha-? The software does not display dates in a "11-02-2006" format! Circeus 17:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Please start by making your claims in a language that is actualy understandable. If you have a gripe with the use of numbers for the footnotes:^[1], then register your complains at m:Cite/Cite.php. Circeus 22:16, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It isn't my fault if you simply don't understand the issue. I did not appreciate that Americans do not even realise the difference exists! Wimstead 04:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am British and I cannot see what the problem is. All the possible date formats are given in the section "Date formatting problem part 2" above. I take it that Wimstead is objecting to the all-digits format. This format is favoured by some in the IT industry because it is easy to sort (an ASCII based sort will put the dates in chronological order). The YYYY-MM-DD format is both rational and international. If we must have an all numbers date format then it would be madness to have more than one standard. Gaius Cornelius 13:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The international standard seems to be the best way to do it. Trebor 15:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I repeat, please unblock these so I can mark them as unusable for UK articles. And please sort out the U.S. centrism as well

Saying that 2% of users can change their display preferences is a woefully inadequate response. Wimstead 04:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

perhaps a change can be made to the default. As I understand it, the current default is to display dates to unregistered users as the dates were entered by the wikieditor. Perhaps a best-guess about the date format desired by users who have not bothered to (1) register or (2) if they have bothered to register have not bothered to express a date format display preference would be to make a guess about their preference based on a guess about their location based on their IP address. Of course, such a change should not be made template-by-template; it should be made globally, wiki-wide. (No, I am not serious) -- Boracay Bill 11:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You understand correctly, Boracay Bill. I have my date preference set to default and whatever format is used by the editor that added the date is displayed. Wimstead, perhaps the problem is that the default date format on your account is set to the US standard instead of the UK standard. Select this link, choose the Date and Time tab, and make sure the radio button next to your preferred date format is selected. --Bobblehead 19:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, Wimstead believes that there is in a big problem in that 98% (Wimstead's figure) of wikipedia users do not have wikipedia accounts, and are therefore unable to use date preferences. Wimstead further believes that it is incumbent on wikieditors to use date formats in line with Wimstead's feeling as to what would be the date preferences of that presumed 98% of users who do not have accounts. In particular, Wimstead wishes date formats used by wikieditors in articles related to the UK to be European-style by default. Wimstead believes that it is necessary to warn wikieditors using templates with dates as parameters about this on a template-by-template basis - hence the raising of this issue here on this particular talk page. -- Boracay Bill 23:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki

An admin, please add the Romanian interwiki ro:Format:Citat web.--Roamataa 19:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• Done. —Phil | Talk 09:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] publisher or author?

Say if I want to site BBC News and there is no specific author, would I list BBC News as the author or leave author blank and put BBC News under publisher? ex. [4] W3stfa11/^{Talk to me} 08:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

* {{cite news
 | url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2375967.stm
 | title = Nintendo fined for price fixing
 | work = Business News
 | publisher = [[BBC News]]
 | date = [[2002-10-30]]
 | accessdate = 2007-03-12
 }}

• "Nintendo fined for price fixing", Business News, BBC News, 2002-10-30. Retrieved on March 12, 2007.

(Note the use of {{cite news}}; it's always best to be specific if you can.) HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I confirm. In the case of Websites (and web news), it is not seen as bad form to leave the author field blank if the author is unknown. Circeus 17:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

If the "title=" is the same as a referenced author "Surname, Firstname", it prevents you from using op. cit.. Is there a way to use nested <ref>s? -- Jeandré, 2007-04-07t23:56z

[edit] Interwiki addition

[[fi:Malline:Verkkoviite]] Thanks! —Ppntori 12:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link rot date?

Since the Internet Archive may not have an archive available yet when a link dies, can we have a new parameter "linkRotDate", e.g.:

List of psychotropic substances under international control (PDF) (2005-04-30). Original link unavailable at 2006-09-11.

-- Jeandré, 2007-04-01t19:08z