Template talk:Cite journal

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Template:Cite journal is permanently protected from editing, as it is a heavily used or visible template. Substantial changes should be proposed here, and made by administrators if the proposal is uncontroversial, or has been discussed and is supported by consensus. Use {{editprotected}} to attract the attention of an administrator in such cases. Any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes, categories or interwiki links.

Archives

Journal reference Archive 1: Feb 2006 Archive 2: Feb 2006 - Dec 2006 Archive 3: Dec 2006 - Nov 2007 Archive 4: Nov 2007 - Sept 2008

Contents 1 Discouragement of "authors" parameter 1.1 A possible way out of the mess 2 Formatting of punctuation 2.1 Proposal to change it back the way it was before 2.2 Examples of some problems 2.3 Resolution of problems 2.3.1 Punctuation 2.4 Final call for grumbles 2.5 Good to go 2.6 Problems 2.7 Summary and effects on Citation template 3 Discussion about how changes to the Cite xxx and Citation templates should be publicised 4 Existing problems 5 Citing papers from collections published as books 6 Absence of publisher suppresses output of location 7 Quotation marks for quotes 8 CoinS 9 Format 10 Parallel activity 11 Publisher Item Identifier 12 Need to unlink dates 13 Are quotation marks necessary? 14 Usage of "language=" 15 Requiring title 16 laysource= is broken 17 Replacement for quotes=no for reprints, errata, etc.? 17.1 Reprinted as 18 url is broken 19 Upper-case parameters are inconsitent with all others 20 "Issue" parameter 21 Accessdate parameter 22 Removing the trailing period if the quote field is used 23 archiveURL parameter? 24 Double language parameter 25 Add interwiki 26 accessdate now showing up

[edit] Discouragement of "authors" parameter

Hi, I'm currently developing an EndNote plugin for Wikipedia, and something that's causing me problems is that the software requires the first author to be separate. This is also helpful for many library and university plugins that use the citation data to provide users with links to electronic versions of articles at their libraries.

The use of the "author" parameter is, from this perspective, very undesirable. The use of the "first" and "last" parameters makes the COinS metadata much more useful. Another benefit of this is that it produces a consistent formatting between citations, and it allows the use of harvard style linking to citationswith the {{harvnb}} template family.

As such I propose that we discourage the use of the "author" parameter. This need not affect how authors interact with the template, but with a consensus that the first-last parameters are preferable, a bot could modify entries to the first-last system.

As a relevant appendix, I would mention that template:citation has used the last-first parameters for a long time, and the author parameter is undocumented and exists only for backwards compatability.

Would anybody disagree with this suggestion?

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:30, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I use Zotero and LibX, so appreciate detailed COinS entries. That being said: any referencing is better than no referencing & we should be careful to encourage citation in general. "Consistent formatting" means different things for different articles. Order of given/family names (or initials) do differ & so any template style will be subverted to display things a different way on some pages to match a pre-existing citation format. The more "free-form" author parameter may be useful for these cases. For the purposes of plugins that try to process the data, the coauthors field may prove just as problematic.

If you have issues dealing with the "author" parameter in your plugin, I don't know why you think bot transformation of templates is a good idea. Any bot should be manually run & I'd expect that the initial rate should be slow enough to double-check that the bot operator was not screwing things up; a lot of pages use this template and they use it in different ways to achieve the best human-readable results for a particular article.

I'd have no problems encouraging the use of first/last more (rewriting examples, etc.), but don't think that 'author' should be undocumented or deprecated at this time. --Karnesky (talk) 05:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

For biomedical topics, Dibberi's tool for generating markup from PubMed is so useful, I (and I expect most at WP:MED) will continue to insert references with the markup it generates (i.e. author=). Have as an equally valid alternative fine, but don't "discourage" 'cos that'll just get ignored. Of course if Diberri is persuaded to alter his coding to use author list (PubMed XML output shows that would would be possible) fine. But use of multiple first/last parameters seems would be harder on occasions I need to hand code the template. David Ruben ^Talk 22:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the original suggestion. Coding additional mark-up parameters is a burden on editors. If you want to replace 1 param with an indefinite number, you need to produce a form-driven tool to make the job easier, so that editors can just paste in the values. Such a form would need a "scratchpad" area so that editors can first paste the entire citation there and then continue without flipping between web pages. Such a form would be about 1 page of Javascript. I know Martin has provided a link to a citation-formatter for Google Scholar, but that only works for Google Scholar and therefore only for "academic" topics. The change to {{cite journal}} should also not be retrospective, as that would invalidate citations in thousands of articles. -- Philcha (talk) 07:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

PS I think I could write such a JS if the documentation for the templates is accurate and up-to-date. I'd also be inclined to make the JS for "cite journal" a wrapper for a JS that does the same for "citation", so the "cite journal" JS simply validates and then, if OK, calls the "citation" JS. That way we can easily extend it to other citation formats. -- Philcha (talk) 07:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that tools should impact this decision, but you could use zotero or another reference manager to generate your citation templates for you. --Karnesky (talk) 07:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

A decision that makes life more difficult for editors will discourage new editors, and Wikipedia will stagnate. I think that's more serious than not making optimal use of the COinS metadata, whatever that is. BTW what is it and how does it help Wikipedia readers?

If Wikipedia can get its act together, providing the tools should not be difficult.

I didn't realise there was a Firefox extension to generate citation templates. But I'd prefer not rely on FF extensions: a lot of editors don't use FF (e.g. K-meleon provides all the benefits of the Gecko engine); new FF releases often invalidate extensions, at least for a while and often forever - I used t have a few, but concluded it's not worth the hassle.

PS if, as Martin suggests, a bot could automate the first-last format, why are we discussing the "author" param rather than the implementation of the bot? BTW the same bot should also handle the "editor" param - Martin and I have cited a quite few collections in paleo articles. -- Philcha (talk) 08:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have also constructed a PubMed to Wikipedia cite journal template markup, see, e.g., [1]. In the tool I have made wikilinks for the authors and use firstname-lastname as the ordering. I suppose that it may not be appropriate to add formatting (i.e., wikilinks) in the template field values, and that some regard the many redlinks the tool generates as bad. I can change the script to use last, first and coauthors fields, but I like the firstname-lastname: In Wikipedia people are not generally referred to as, e.g., Andersen, Hans Christian. Also the links to authors provide some context for the reference I think. — fnielsen (talk) 12:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Does your tool check to see whether the author has a page under a differently formatted name (e.g. JRR Tolkien exists, J.R.R. Tolkien doesn't), or whether the page it links to is relevant, and not about an unrelated person of the same name or a disambiguation page? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Re reference construction, my Universal reference formatter will generate a reference from pretty much any information you care to throw at it. Re placing burden on editors; there is no need for editors to change their habits, and we should never pass a rule saying "Editors MUST do this or their referencing will be removed". Having a consensus on the "best way" to format a reference allows a bot to go round and format references that way, creating a better reader experience with no added burden on editors. But I don't want to set a bot loose making things appear "my way" if there are alternatives with different merits. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Martin, we gotta stop meeting like this.

Your Universal reference formatter isn't universal, as it only works for journals, not for e.g. books or web pages. fnielsen's formatter is even more specialised, as it accepts only one input, PMID. Both are also on separate sites, are not advertised in the Edit page layout and need to open in a separate tab / window. I'd find the last point a nuisance as I usually have 6-9 tabs open while editing. All of these are reasons why I suggested JS, but a prerequisite would be a commitment from "the management" that a functionally satisfactory JS would be loaded automatically and represented by a button in the Edit toolbar.

Now if the JS also remembered all ref names assigned in the article and offered a menu of already-defined refs, that would really be getting somewhere. -- Philcha (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Try popping an ISBN into the Univ Ref Formatter. It produces a full citation for a book. It's not as reliable the other way round but there've not been any requests for that feature; if there were any, I could implement it quite easily. You can pop a website's title, URL and author in to create a suitably parsed references, if web pages count as references these days. I agree that integrating them with the WP layout would be advantageous, and would be happy to put together some JS to do so - but I've no idea how this could get integrated with the user interface. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Re "how this could get integrated with the user interface", I've posted a query at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Reference_formatter. -- Philcha (talk) 05:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Answer to Martin: No, my tool (http://hendrix.imm.dtu.dk/cgi-bin/brede_bib_pmid2wpcitejournal.py) does not check to see if a page exists or if there is a collision. — fnielsen (talk) 07:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Opposed to this idea to the extent it will affect bio/med articles that use Diberri's PMID filling template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, SandyGeorgia. As a computer consultant I've seen many situations where an unsatisfactory system is propped up by a series of mostly-incompatible user-created bolt-ons. The only answer is to create a single system that does the job properly - otherwise more bolt-ons are added, the disincentive to change increases and the result is stagnation at the centre and chaos round the fringes. Solving the problems properly will require significant work, first to add a formatter that's easier to use than the alternatives and then to convert the old data, but it's the only way out of the mess. -- Philcha (talk) 05:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A possible way out of the mess

Forcing the biomedical articles to first/last inputs will be painful if it has to be done manually, but if automatic there might be less objection. As a first step, is there any reason that cite can't be made to turn arguments of the form:

{{cite journal |last1=Viollet |first1=B |last2=Andreelli |first2=F |last3=Jørgensen |first3=SB |last4= ''et al'' |title=The AMP-activated protein kinase alpha2 catalytic subunit controls whole-body insulin sensitivity |journal=J. Clin. Invest. |volume=111 |issue=1 |pages=91–8 |year=2003 |month=January |pmid=12511592 |pmc=151837 |doi=10.1172/JCI16567 |url=}}

into an NLM/URM-style display that looks like the

Viollet B, Andreelli F, Jørgensen SB, et al (January 2003). "The AMP-activated protein kinase alpha2 catalytic subunit controls whole-body insulin sensitivity". J. Clin. Invest. 111 (1): 91–8. doi:10.1172/JCI16567. PMID 12511592. 

generated by the existing

{{cite journal |author=Viollet B, Andreelli F, Jørgensen SB, ''et al'' |title=The AMP-activated protein kinase alpha2 catalytic subunit controls whole-body insulin sensitivity |journal=J. Clin. Invest. |volume=111 |issue=1 |pages=91–8 |year=2003 |month=January |pmid=12511592 |pmc=151837 |doi=10.1172/JCI16567 |url=}}

If this worked, then a (hypothetical?) bot to convert the author= style to the last/first style of wikitext could churn away fixing the wikitexts with no visible effect.

Just asking...LeadSongDog (talk) 21:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of this & I think that this template used to behave. (And it is still how the template is documented right now!) --Karnesky (talk) 23:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm flattered that the perhaps thick-headed way the template filler does its job has any influence on the discussion here. I wholeheartedly agree with Philcha's concerns above. If there's a problem with the way we're generating citation templates, then let's fix it. I'm happy to update my template filler if it will contribute to the solution. --David Iberri (talk) 02:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC) PS: Thanks LeadSongDog for the heads-up about this conversation.

Any change to David's template filler would be a later step anyhow, although it would be helpful to know if he forsees any major complications in implementing it. First off, we need to decide whether we really want template:cite journal to render URM/NLM style for the reader. For now, WP:MEDMOS#Citing medical sources is only suggestive on that, not even making a direct recommendation. It seems to me to boil down to a choice of APA or URM style in the rendered text. I would hope that that choice could be made independent of the choice of parameters passed to the template, but at the moment it isn't. Perhaps the presence of a pmid= parameter could be used as a surrogate for style=URM (although I'm loathe to encourage side effects and modal behaviours).LeadSongDog (talk) 15:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Please remember that any change you make will not be confined to medical sources. Please explain your suggestions in terms that non-medical people can understand. For example, wtf is URM or NLM? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Gerry, I forgot where I was posting. At WP:MEDMOS#Citing medical sources there is a ref to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, available as "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Sample References". U.S. National Library of Medicine (April 25, 2007). Retrieved on 2008-04-16.. The style in the Uniform Requirements is used in virtually all current biomedical journals and is reflected in teh bibligraphic tools used to administer the massive US National Library of Medicine (NLM), most notably the Pubmed facilities used by Diberri's and other tools here.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

May I just point out that there are swathes of people in the world who do not have surnames, only patronyms, in which case the "author" parameter remains relevant. The parameter is also useful for corporate authors. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:00, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting of punctuation

Am I going nuts? I use the various citeX templates regularly, and it seems that I'm getting different outputs at different pages (I have purged cache multiple times). The reference at Tastavinsaurus, which I just added, has an ampersand between the first and second authors, commas instead of periods between elements, no space between volume and issue, and no period at the end of the reference. Meanwhile, a months old ref using the same template at Calsoyasuchus has no ampersand, periods instead of commas, a space between volume and issue, and a period at the end. Is this a template change that has yet to universally take? (Personally, the only change I like is the removed space; I think it looked more professional without the changes, and the ampersand looks silly when you end up with a citation like "Howard & Fine; and Howard"). J. Spencer (talk) 22:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This template (but perhaps not all the cite xxx templates) has just been changed to produce the same output as the Citation template. I know that template does separate elements with commas rather than full stops. This has been discussed but never resolved. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

However it comes out, it needs to be tweaked to better represent references having more than two authors. J. Spencer (talk) 04:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

As the template is used by many pages, it takes a while for edits to it to propogate. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to change it back the way it was before

The recent change to make {{cite journal}}'s output mirror (actually use the code of) {{citation}} was ill-conceived, and I think we need to set it back the way it was before. This change is messing up who knows how many pre-existing uses of cite journal—probably thousands, I wouldn't be surprised—as others note above, and there are a few other reasons why the change is sub-optimal.

Firstly, if I'd wanted to achieve a citation output looking like {{citation}}'s, I'd be using that template and not {cite XXX} templates. There are good reasons why some folks decide to use cite XXX and not citation, and vice versa; the latter's output does not suit all comers and disciplines.

Secondly, the template's output now diverges considerably from the other main templates in the "cite XXX family", like {{cite book}}, so the punctuation, spacing, brackets vs. no brackets around location:publisher, etc is noticeably discordant when cite journals, cite books, etc are used in the same reference section/bibliography. Might seem minor, but I've seen that kind of inconsistency drive FA etc reviewers nuts before now, and not without some reason—the intermixing of punctuation & formatting styles just looks sloppy. Indeed WP:CITE guidelines here firmly discourage intermixing "cite xxx" and "citation" styles in the same article for this very reason.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, an untold number of previously coded references using {cite journal}, especially those citing papers with multiple authors, now look quite silly and confusing with a compulsorily inserted ampersand at some inappropriate place. Since all of those prior uses of {cite journal} were done knowing no & char was provided by the template, we now end up with many cases looking like the following:

• Campbell, Lyle & and Una Canger (1978), "Chicomuceltec's last throes", International Journal of American Linguistics 44: pp.228–230, doi:10.1086/465548, ISSN 0020-7071

or with 3 or more authors:

• Whorf, Benjamin Lee & Frances Karttunen and Lyle Campbell (1993), "Pitch Tone and the "Saltillo" in Modern and Ancient Nahuatl", International Journal of American Linguistics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 59(2): pp.165–223, doi:10.1086/466194, ISSN 0020-7071, OCLC 1753556

Even if the new {cite journal} is filled in knowing the linking ampersand is gonna be supplied by the template whether you like it or not, and its (now undocumented) fields are populated as intended, to my mind the output can still be confusing and ambiguous. For eg, are there 2 or 3 authors to this paper:

• Joyce, Rosemary & Kent Flannery (1996), "Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley", Mesoamerica 23(3): pp.100–122

(I realise this is using coauthors field instead of last2, first2, etc. But the issue with using last1, last2, last3 etc is that the output imposes a "lastname, firstname" order for all of the contributors, whereas in much of the humanities referencing style the preferred ordering for multiple authors goes "Lastname1, Firstname 1; Firstname2 Lastname2, Firstname3 Lastname3, and Firstname4 Lastname4". Don't see why we must all be using Last, First). I must have coded multiple hundreds of {cite journal} calls, many with more than 1 author; I doubt I'm alone in this and I really don't feel inclined to (a) find 'em all, and (b)re-edit them to take out the and's and do other changes so they don't look so silly. It's much the same situation as with the many many instances where "p." or "pp." has been manually prepended to page numbers in templates that did not supply them— if the template is changed to auto-insert these p's and pp's there'd be too many cases of doubling-up to fix.

Fourthly, although someone above asked for it to be done, it seems the template documentation here and elsewhere has not been updated to reflect the current changes. Perhaps just as well, since I propose undoing the recent change to this template. Anyone in disagreement? --cjllw ʘ TALK 01:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The issues you raise are important. Taking them one at a time:

• • Different templates. Having two different templates to fulfil the same purpose was fraught with errors. Because each did things in subtly different ways, editors had to learn twice the number of parameters if they wanted to interact with both templates. More majorly, when an update was required - and they are more frequent than you might think - it was almost always the case that one template was updated but not the other. This problem is now fixed - an update need only be written once. This brings me nicely to:
  • Consistency. A consensus was reached that the Cite Journal and Citation templates should produce the same output, so that they could be used in the same article as one another. I agree that it makes sense to make it the same as "Cite book" and friends; no-one threw up any major differences as the consultation stage, but if you can outline the differences here, these can be readily fixed in the code. That way it will also be possible to add a "citation" template to an article without checking the entire source to see if there's already a "cite book" tucked away somewhere.
  • Unusual "and" occurrence. There is no reason for the word "and" to appear in an author field; indeed this should be discouraged as it will break browser plugins that use COinS metadata. It would be easy for the Citation bot to go around and remove all unwanted occurrences of "and" if you can give me a list of cases where it might appear. Can you give examples of pages where this has been a problem?
  • Documentation. I'll make a start.

Although there may be a couple of niggles to smooth out, having a single format for all citations, and one place for the code to be updated, is a vastly superior situation to two independent templates. There's been a lot of discussion establishing this point in the past which reached as good as a unanimous decision to move to the point we're at now; please let's work forwards from here instead of going backwards. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree that having consistency is a progressive move. The problems noted may need to be fixed, but rolling back to the old template is a bad idea. The old template was not even producing formatting that was accepted as covering WP:MOS on the FACs. The visibility of problems is now high and that is a good incentive for work on this neglected template. Shyamal (talk) 01:56, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought that the only style issues with the original version of this template is that it couldn't be mixed-and-matched with the citation template? I think the current template has WORSE style problems & would encourage a temporary roll-back unless I'm missing some major deficiency in the old template. I don't think the Cite XXX templates should be converted one-by-one. I think that the Citation backend should first be improved so that any of the cite XXX templates will look fine & then ALL cite XXX templates should be converted at around the same time. --Karnesky (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could list the "WORSE style issues" so they can be addressed. Nobody seemed to notice them when the changes were proposed. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that Cite XXX templates have been freely mixed in articles, while Cite XXX and Citation have been rarely used together. To only adjust one Cite XXX template makes a lot of pages have mixed reference styles, which is exactly what we wanted to avoid. --Karnesky (talk) 03:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

While I would agree that there was consensus to make the Cite * templates look more like one another, I don't recall there being any comments that the way to do this would be to change ONE cite template at a time & to put up with breakage.

What is wrong with reverting the change for now? We can make the change when we're closer to being ready (documentation, support for all cite xxx templates, fixing all the bugs listed here, etc.)?

The main namespace should not be used for testing. --Karnesky (talk) 03:49, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The design was available for testing for well over a month. All problems and comments raised by people who took the time to test it were promptly addressed. Let's get a list of problems now; it should take a matter of minutes to fix them once they've been identified. Going round fussing about how terrible the whole thing is is not very productive, and I feel is a waste of everyone's time unless specific, fixable points are brought to the table. So far there are no bugs with the template; documentation is in place; and a bot cannot very well go round removing "and" from templates unless editors can see why the change was made. So there doesn't seem to be a strong case for reverting. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Making {{tl:cite journal}} based on {{citation}} was right - they should never have been allowed to diverge in the first place. {{cite journal}} and other variants should be just convenience wrappers,,plus checking that required params for these variants are present and correct. Then {{citation}} should do the actual formatting - it's the only long-term way to ensure that formatting is consistent - especially e.g. if we decide that DOIs should make the title a link unless there's also a URL.

Once the module structure of the templates is sorted out, there are enough citation bots around that can be adapted to clean up any inconsistencies.

Martin, next time you need help with testing, give me a call directly. I don't normally watch this type of page, but I'm a retired computer consultant and I know a bit about testing. It's only fair to warn you that the cost might be a lot of queries and requests to improve documentation :-) Philcha (talk) 07:49, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I first noticed the problems with this template when I was adding a reference and couldn't get the month to show up. Now I see there are multiple other technical problems as well as inconsistencies, such as journal references not ending with a full stop when other references do. This was obviously not ready to go live. I think the best solution would be to revert to the stable version, and not implement this new version until the bugs have been resolved in the sandbox and there is consensus that it is ready for implementation. Pagrashtak 13:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. We already reached consensus that it was ready to go live. Clearly not enough editors had been involved in its testing. But proposing the changes on a talk page which is not really read until something goes wrong doesn't seem to get us anywhere; it seems better to get the bugs fixed once and for all, and all at once, than to fix one set of bugs, go live again, have a different set of editors find another set of bugs, go back to the old version, go live again, and so forth. The bugs that have been listed below are minor and easily fixed, and I'll sort them out as soon as I get the time if no-one else is capable. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you point me to that discussion? I think I'm looking in the wrong place. Sorry, but I don't consider the complete removal of an in-use parameter a "minor" bug. Pagrashtak 14:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I support reversion for a different reason than stated by other editors. I believe the documentation and the code should be considered a unit. When code that changes function is put into production, the new documentation that describes the new function should be already written; the new code and new documentation should go into production within a few seconds of each other. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 13:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought I'd addressed the documentation issue. Once again, I'll repeat my plea to make any criticism specific so I can actually do something about it. What is undocumented? What is documented incorrectly? Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:09, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of some problems

1) backwards compatability issues. Until about two days ago, {cite journal} had only the |coauthors= field to cater for instances when there was more than one author. I doubt that I've been alone in manually inserting an "and" into the coauthors field (not the author field) at the appropriate juncture, to make it scan better since the template didn't do it, thus:

{{cite journal |author=Brown, Cecil H. |coauthors=and Søren Wichmann |year=...

which used to display as:

Brown, Cecil H.; and Søren Wichmann (1986). "Name of paper". Some Journal. etc...

but now shows as:

Brown, Cecil H. & and Søren Wichmann (1986), "Name of paper", Some Journal, etc...

I have no idea how many instances of this there are that now need fixing, or how they might be located. Other than to remark, prob. enough to be a painful exercise, the template's been used this way for a few years now. It's not just me, someone else gave another example above.

I also don't think it would be as simple as to have some bot trawl through to take out the extra ands. For more than one coauthor, the field could be populated as

{{cite journal |author=Campbell, Lyle |coauthors=Terrence Kaufman, J. Richard Andrews, and Thomas C. Smith-Stark |year=...

but now displays as

Campbell, Lyle & Terrence Kaufman, J. Richard Andrews, and Thomas C. Smith-Stark (1986), "Name of paper", Some Journal, etc...

In fact, unless you sunset the coauthors field altogether, it seems that this new cite journal version will not properly cope with there being more than one coauthor in that field (and remember the coauthor field was the only one {cite journal} had to contain them). Even if we didn't have the manually added "and" in there, the template now produces:

Campbell, Lyle & Terrence Kaufman, J. Richard Andrews, Thomas C. Smith-Stark (1986), "Name of paper", Some Journal

with the ampersand misplaced btw the 1st and 2nd authors. Either the & added in by the template needs to be suppressed if the coauthors field is present, or it should be removed altogether.

2) inconsistency with other cite XXX templates. If the objective was to impose greater uniformity in formatting among the various citation templates, then by changing {cite journal} but not {cite book}, {cite web}, {cite conference}, etc as well, it's having the opposite effect. With {cite journal} now a {citation}-clone, if you compare it now with say {cite book} there's a noticeable divergence:

cite journal:

• Campbell, Lyle; Canger, Una (1978). "Chicomuceltec's last throes" (PDF). International Journal of American Linguistics. American linguistics series (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) 44 (1): pp.228–230. doi:10.1086/465548. ISSN 0020-7071. http://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on 30 September 2008. 

cite book:

• Campbell, Lyle; Una Canger (1978). "Chicomuceltec's last throes" (PDF). International Journal of American Linguistics. American linguistics series. 44. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. pp.228–230. doi:10.1086/465548. ISBN 1234567890. 

cite journal (new version) using appropriate parameters (Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)):

• Campbell, Lyle; Canger, Una (1978). "Chicomuceltec's last throes" (PDF). International Journal of American Linguistics. American linguistics series. 44. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. pp.228–230. doi:10.1086/465548. ISSN 0020-7071. http://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on 30 September 2008. 

As noted, differences in element separators (period vs comma); location:publisher is bracketed in the new cite journal but not the others, some corresponding elements like format are placed differently. Before the changes to cite journal, the two outputs above would've looked pretty much identical, IIRC.

I've put forwards a fix for the misplaced format parameter; it appears where it does in "cite book" because it is designed to give the format for the url linking the book's title, not the chapter title. The other difference concerns the positioning of the publisher's name. I don't think there's a case for displaying the publisher's name at all, in fact. I've never seen a bibliography include the publisher of a journal, and besides, journals often switch publishers. I can't see how it would ever help to locate a journal. In books, the publisher affects the edition being cited, hence reference to pages; this isn't the case with journals, which are not reprinted. Can anyone present a case for citing the publisher or location of a journal article? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:07, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's desirable/useful/does no harm to have location, publisher fields for cite journal. Some reasons:

• It's been requested a few times previously, such as here, here and here.
• Comparison with how printed journals/books do things does not really relate. Printed works generally need to minimise the info/space taken up by references to save on the # of pages, this is not a concern on wiki. Nor does wikipedia necessarily follow any given "real world" bibliographical formatting style.
• Bibliographies/references given in journals or specialist books usually presume the reader is already familiar with the cited journal & don't need to spell out its particulars. On wikipedia we can't presume this knowledge of a general readership. Wikipedia has a different purpose, scope and readership.
• To distinguish between periodicals with the same or similar name. Some examples: compare Geowissenschaften, Weinheim:Verlag Chemie [a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft publication], with Geowissenschaften, Berlin:Ernst & Sohn [a publication of the Alfred-Wegener-Stiftung]. Or Géologie [a journal issued by the Université de Lyon], and Geologie [formerly published in East Germany by Akademie Verlag]. Or compare Mesoamérica, South Woodstock, VT:Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies and CIRMA, with Mesoamérica, San Pedro, Costa Rica:Institute for Central American Studies (the first is a journal on precolumbian research, the second more of a modern politics periodical).
• To provide a consistent level of information about the cited work, when (as commonly done) {cite journal}s are intermingled with {cite book}s in an article's references or bibliography section.
• Yes, often a journal can go through a number of publishers in its lifetime, and associate or disassociate with some sponsoring body. This can sometimes make a difference in where it can be tracked down, how it is indexed, or even the content/scope. For eg in the post-WWII period a number of German scientific institutions & societies were split or replicated between East and West. For eg the BRD and DDR each had a similarly named national geosciences society, each issuing similarly named geosciences zeitschriften. Following reunification the societies eventually remerged but for a time the journals coexisted, until the publisher's new owner hived off the former East German title and it's now issued by another entity altogether (but with the same name). Having the fields allows somewhere to distinguish between a title's various incarnations and sponsors.
• Publisher, or at least location, info can help to refine a catalogue search, if other unique identifiers are not known or supplied.
• The template itself may be used for other periodical-type publications (reports, proceedings, etc), not just journals. Location:publisher can be useful.
• The practice of providing location, publisher for journals as well as books may be infrequent but not unknown. I've seen it done in various works, eg here.
• The fields are optional anyway, so anyone who doesn't care to use them can safely ignore, no harm done.--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Well argued. So, where in the reference should the Location:Publisher be rendered? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:37, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest, pretty much where it does now in the live version of {cite journal}, ie:

• Author, A. (2008). "A paper", Some Journal 42 (3):pp.123–125. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. doi/issn/oclc/etc..

This deviates slightly from the current {cite book} presentation— in {cite journal} loc:publ follows the pages field, while in {cite book} it precedes it. But I don't see that as being much of an issue, and it would make sense not to separate volume (issue) from pages. Possibly {cite book} could be amended so that pages precedes loc:publ (in a bibliographical listing pages wld usually refer to the chapter being cited, ie it tells you where to find the contribution being cited within a larger body, analogous to a paper in a journal). --cjllw ʘ TALK 23:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this seems to be the best solution. Does anyone else feel that the loss of consistency between the two types of resource is more important than a common-sense layout as CJLLW proposed? If not, I'll ensure it's enacted. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:50, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

3) Handling of blank date parameter. IIRC previous version of cite journal could handle the presence of a blank |date= parameter, if |year= was used instead (say, when someone copies the template parm list from the doco pg and fills it out, leaving date empty):

{{cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Lyle |year=1986 |date= |title=A paper |journal=A Journal}}

instead of getting

Campbell, Lyle (1986), "A paper", A Journal

now the year is gone altogether:

• Campbell, Lyle (1986). "A paper". A Journal. 

Have found a few in this situation with the 'year' now disappeared because of this effect, & since I'd spose lots of folks copy the template's parms from the doco and neglect to trim out those not used, there's potential for many more out there.

Also, looks like the |month= parameter is now non-functional.

As for the "WORSE style issues", as mentioned there are perfectly valid reasons why some incl. myself have preferred cite XXX over citation. Such as, the awkward/unnecessary "Last, First" reversal for all of the authors' names in a multiauthored work, instead of the first only. While this may be usual for some disciplines in 'hard' sciences or mathematics, for others it ain't. But won't get into those stylistic issues ATM, before that wld like to see what's proposed to address those noted. --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

At last, something concrete to address! Thanks, CJLLW.

It seems the best way to fix (1) is to replace the & with a ;. Are there any disadvantages to that?

(3) ought to be easy to fix; hopefully someone will be willing to take a glance at the code and sort it (otherwise I will do so at the weekend)

(2) has two obvious solutions: (a) change "Cite journal" (and thus "citation") to resemble "Cite book"; (b) change "Cite book" to resemble "Cite journal". If Cite book should use the same citation format as "cite journal", then long term the only way to achieve this is for them to use the same central code to create their output. Shall I look into doing that and post up a sandbox version for testing? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Would be nice if it could also support a choice of styles [2] [3]. This perceived breakage of the code is kicking more interest than the deathly wait that this template has had with Waterfall model of having perfect requirements, code and documents ! Good luck. Shyamal (talk) 14:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd use a comma for (1) -- that is what is STILL documented as an author separation parameter. (2) should implement solution (a), as there are more Cite XXX templates than cite book and cite journal & they used to all match fairly well.

Consensus can change. Is there anyone besides Martin, Shyamal, and Philcha who think that we should put up with the new/broken system (rather than reverting, fixing the new system, and trying the change again)? There seems to be at least as many people who think that the change was premature. I still fail to see the downside in this. --Karnesky (talk) 15:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Now that we've got quite a few editors interested in this, we've got the support to test the new code if we revert in the mean time. Pagrashtak 15:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Karnesky, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not in favour of putting up with any broken system, I'm concerned that ad hoc changes will just leave us wandering from one mess to the next. I'd rather sort it out properly, from the foundations up.

Shyamal, while the Waterfall model has its frustrations it may be necessary in this case, where we're dealing with a lot of inter-related sub-systems and a lot of stake-holders. IMO the problem is that the Waterfall model has not started yet, because there's no commitment to produce a draft spec that covers all variations. -- Philcha (talk)

My suggestions- for issue (1), the unwanted ampersand, replacing it with a semicolon or comma may cause a further issue. I gather the code for {citation} is designed to use individual lastn, firstn fields for each of the authors' names, and it's able to correctly work out where to put the & (between the penultimate and ultimate names):

• Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence; Andrews, J. Richard; Smith-Stark, Thomas C. (2000), "a paper", a journal 

Otherwise it uses a semicolon to separate authors' names, and commas in btw last, first since it always reverses these. The placement of the & works OK if the individual last, first fields are used. However, as noted most of the {cite XXX} templates have/had only a single coauthors field for multiple authors, the placement of the ampersand doesn't work for these. Since all of the multi-author cite journals, cite books, etc entered to date use coauthors—which the {citation} template code treats as a single field/author—then to make it work for both the last-first and coauthors systems you'd need to include a conditional test so that if coauthors is used don't insert the &, while if last, first is used then you can.

For (2), I have no problem with there being a central code generating the various outputs. However, I would strongly recommend the output to be formatted as per the original cite journal, which corresponds with cite book, cite conference, cite web and (to a lesser extent) cite news. This would cause the minimal disruption.

For (3), I presume there'd be a ready enough fix to handle blank date parameters, and also to bring back the month parameter as it originally functioned. --cjllw ʘ TALK 10:00, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Anther issue I noticed (and which is why I reverted to the pre-change version) is that the formatting would be inconsistent on the same article, depending on whether a page number was called on a previous template. The change to the template was ill-advised as there was no broad solicitation for input; citation templates and {{citation}} operate in different spheres and should continue to do so; otherwise, seeing as the cite xx templates are much more widely used, citation should be changed to match them. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 23:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Resolution of problems

Hi,

I'm spending a sunny afternoon sorting out problems with the new version of the template. Please list any other problems you have found, with an example, at Template:Cite journal/test cases, matching the existing format and providing an example of the "correct" output if necessary. Then I'll amend the sandbox template to resolve the problem. Please take the time now to test the sandbox template, Template:cite journal/sandbox, and find any bugs you can. When outstanding bugs are fixed, the template will be deemed ready for use on WP and will go live. Apparently this wasn't made clear enough last time I asked for input. Please speak now or forever hold your silence. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:35, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

ok, thanks Martin, and noted. Will need a couple of days or thereabouts to give it a go. Will try to get back to you in that timeframe. Regards--cjllw ʘ TALK 06:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Punctuation

Thanks to Martin for the test page and the improvements to the proposed code. The biggest open question seems to be what to do about punctuation. {{Citation}} uses commas to separate fields and has no terminal punctuation. {{Cite journal}}, like other {{Cite XXX}} templates, uses periods to separate fields and also closes with a full stop. Martin has added parameters to control both field separators and terminal punctuation. Now the question remains what to do with them:

1. Default to using {{Citation}}'s punctuation.
   1. Let {{Cite journal}} match {{Citation}} and not match {{Cite XXX}} by default.
   2. Convert the other {{Cite XXX}} templates over simultaneously with {{Cite journal}}
   3. Have a bot update pre-existing uses of {{Cite journal}} so that old references will look the same (matching {{Cite XXX}}, but not {{Citation}}.
2. Default to using {{Cite XXX}}'s punctuation.
   1. Leave {{Citation}} unchanged, meaning that all old uses of the templates will look the same, but {{Citation}} and {{Cite journal}} could be used in the same articles if appropriate parameters were passed (though without other {{Cite XXX}}).
   2. Change {{Citation}}'s default to also match {{Cite XXX}}.

1.1 elicited complaints; 1.2 is a big job; I don't know the feasibility of 1.3 & we might want to try getting most pages converted before implementing the template change if we go that route. 2.1 is essentially what we have now. 2.2 hasn't garnered much support on Citation's talk page.

Citation has 25,805 links; Cite journal has 86,051. Cite book and cite web trump them both (over 100K and 300K, respectively). Strictly because of these numbers, I'm leaning to one of the two options under '2.' But numbers aren't the full story, so please raise pros and cons or propose an option that I am missing. --Karnesky (talk) 06:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

cite book and cite web would be the major ones, but there are also others like {{cite conference}}, {{cite press release}}, {{cite news}}, etc etc that are either all or mostly formatted like the original cite journal, ie with periods instead of commas as element separators. To me this would argue for bringing citation's formatting into line with the cite XXX's, instead of the other way around. If a new template core used for both is being proposed here, with a |separator= parameter to switch between periods or commas, I'd suggest that "period" ought to be the default value.--cjllw ʘ TALK 06:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

As the "cite xxx" and variants thereof are far more popular and used than citation, going for #2 or props along those lines seems the only feasible way to do anything. And please, let's not add a seperator field and allow people to screw up visual uniformity. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 11:53, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It's obvious that {{Cite journal}} should continue to match the {{Cite xxx}} family. I see no reason to convert to the {{Citation}} style. If editors are interested in converting Citation over to this format, that's another discussion for another day. David's right that we should not have a "destroy uniform appearance" parameter. If editors don't like the Cite xxx style or the Citation style, they may use free text. Pagrashtak 13:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Please let's not take numbers into consideration. Programming a bot to perform a task such as the above would be relatively simple. And if uniformity between templates is our goal, the best way to achieve this is for all "cite xxx" to use the same core template. I'm sure some mug^[1] can be duped into doing that... Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 12:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If a bot is used, I have a criterion to suggest. If the cite is inside <ref></ref> tags, use comma as a separator, because that is the standard outside of Wikipedia for footnotes. Otherwise, use periods, because, outside of Wikipedia, that is the standard for bibliographies and lists of works cited. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The WP style is not consistent with any particular style manual. <ref></ref> tags are often used as endnotes, not foot notes (though both happen). However, what style are you referring to? AMA, APSA, MLA, and NLM use full stops as separators exclusively. APA, ASA, Chicago, MHRA use both full stops and commas (often using the latter for "related" fields, such as between parent publication and date). There are multiple versions of Harvard in common usage, but most use full stops as a separator. The most popular style I can think of that uses commas exclusively is IEEE. I will further note that all above styles use a terminal full stop in reference lists. --Karnesky (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Kartensky: Since every Wikipedia article is one page long, endnotes and footnotes are the same thing. I'm familar with two style manuals, APA and Chicago. APA only uses Harvard referencing, so does not apply to footnotes/endnotes. Chicago lets the writer choose between Harvard referencing, which again does not apply to footnotes/endnotes, or footnote/endnote references, which do use commas as the separator. Chicago allows, but does not require, the footnotes/endnotes to be supplemented by a bibliography or list of works cited, which uses full stops as the separator. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

There are some articles that have several reference sections (e.g. one per section), which I would consider "footnote-like." In contrast, the majority of articles that have a single reference section are "endnote-like." Regardless of author-date ("Harvard") vs. numeric citations of the styles listed, my descriptions were how reference lists (as opposed to footnotes) are generated. Because we typically list each reference only once and have a single reference section ordered by first appearance in the article (reusing references by passing the 'name' parameter to <ref></ref>), I think we are generating endnote-like reference lists & should therefore use full stops, as is common practice. --Karnesky (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

As I stated, numbers aren't the only important thing, but I do think they are of practical importance. The only reasons to ignore them entirely would be if one preferred a less popular style or if that less popular style had some compelling logic behind it. I agree that the other "cite xxx" templates can be migrated over to use the same core (particularly if the "cite journal" migration is successful), but I do not see why the default style of that core should be the one that is used on fewer and less utilized templates. Why change half a million plus uses of templates with a bot, when you can change 26K? I've read no real arguments as to the choice of inter-field commas vs. periods. Unless some are generated, it'd be more expedient to continue using full stops on all Cite XXX templates (WP:SNOW). There are reasonable arguments on both sides as to whether to end with a trailing full stop or not. This latter issue might have the greatest chance of building consensus to depart from the current style of "Cite XXX." Even this seems like it might be a "hard sell," though. --Karnesky (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Harvard referencing is an acronym for "Author date" referencing (Example et al 2008) is confusingly not the same as the the Harvard style for formatting references. CiteULike has a reference formatting tool which makes it easy to explore the differences. Anyhow, how about we use a period in "Cite journal" by default for the time being, so we can get the changes in use; if there is a convincing case to switch to commas by default at a later date we can discuss the role of a bot at that juncture. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Final call for grumbles

No-one's commented in over a week; I'm assuming that if the "period" parameter defaults to the current value, we'll be ready to go. I'll re-issue the "speak now or forever hold your silence" ultimatum; if no-one responds in the next day or two we'll make the following edits:

• Replace Template:Cite journal with Template:Cite journal/sandbox
• Replace Template:Citation/core with Template:Citation/core/sandbox (this is the core template used by Citation which the new Cite Journal calls)
• Replace Template:Citation with Template:Citation/sandbox - as advertised at template talk:citation; this is necessary to maintain compatibility with the "internal separator" and "trailing punctuation" fixes implemented.

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Can we axe the separator and ending punctuation parameters? Reference templates are designed to create a uniform reference style, and allowing the editor to override consistency on one call seems like a bad idea. Pagrashtak 14:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately the overriding view above is that overriding consistency is sometimes a good thing - see the arguments refuted above. I suspect that this debate may drag out; it would be very easy to discontinue the parameters if they did prove to be detrimental, but I suspect that a consensus will only emerge after they have been in use for some time. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

So what is the effect of these code changes? Is {{Citation}} matching the cite XX templates including cite journal, or the other way around? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 14:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation would continue not to match by default, but it could be tweaked to match on a page-by-page basis (assuming the punctuation parameters are kept.

I think the punctuation parameters are good because of this, but I'd want to eventually deprecate them. Proposal:

1. Switch to new templates that still default to current punctuation behavior for "cite journal."
2. Make a new proposal on "Citation" (pointing out the volume of references already formatted with full stops & also the massive number of formal citation styles that prefer full stops over commas) to change the punctuation to match all of the "Cite XXX" templates.

-Karnesky (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for coming in so late, but I've noticed something else I think should be fixed. No citation templates put "page" / "pages" before page numbers in their output - brought to my attention in the GA review of Mollusc, where the reviewer complained that a page num was missing but it was there, just not labelled as such (this case was {{cite book}}, but {{cite journal}} is the same). -- Philcha (talk) 14:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

This is an editorial decision; the use of the word "page" is not the norm, and should an editor require it, he can set the parameter to "pages = pages 12-20" or "pages = pp. 12-20". If the template used the word by default then editors would be unable to choose the standard format Volume(issue):12-20. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Oops, another one (or maybe two):

• The template should always present output that can be built into prose. I've come across situations like multi-part articles, news releases that summarise academic papers in accessible terms and are available for free, etc.
• A specific case of this - the "Retrieved on" output of the "accessdate" param should appear in parentheses, not as a separate "mini-sentence". -- Philcha (talk) 14:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed "retrieved on" put into brackets. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Wait, why was this done? None of the other Cite xxx templates do that, as far as I'm aware. Pagrashtak 16:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

<Quote name=Philcha>The template should always present output that can be built into prose</quote> Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I read that. It doesn't answer my question of why it was implemented, since it breaks consistency with all other Cite xxx templates. Philcha, if you want that changed you'll need to bring it up at a higher level and get it changed consistently across all Cite xxx templates that use it. Pagrashtak 00:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Undone until consensus reached. (Position should default to "no change"). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good to go

{{editprotected}} So it looks like all the bugs have finally been ironed out. Would an admin be kind enough to:

• Replace Template:Cite journal with Template:Cite journal/sandbox
• Replace Template:Citation/core with Template:Citation/core/sandbox (this is the core template used by Citation which the new Cite Journal calls)
• Replace Template:Citation with Template:Citation/sandbox - as advertised at template talk:citation; this is necessary to maintain compatibility with the "internal separator" and "trailing punctuation" fixes implemented.

Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Done

Y Done previous edit was reverted as a bug was found, sandbox is now live again. --Salix (talk): 02:41, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

N Not done reverted Template:Cite journal kept Template:Citation, Template:Citation/core per comments below. --Salix (talk): 07:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

New version not that well tested:

• fails to include doi_broken parameter handling
• fails display PMC value when a url is given (title is correctly linked to url in preference to pmc if both are given, but where links to the url, then the pmc should be shown after the PMID value - needed in case journal's access changes when the PMC will still be freely accessible). David Ruben ^Talk 03:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a space between the volume and issue? right now it prints X(y) instead of X (Y). Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 03:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

• Please revert. A lot of monkeying with the core template has meant that the cite journal sanboxed code was not tested. Punctuation runs entirely counter to what we had previously agreed to. --Karnesky (talk) 07:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Now reverted, could folks add suitable testcases to Template:Cite journal/testcases. --Salix (talk): 08:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Above bugs now seem to be fixed. --Salix (talk): 11:25, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

The approved version originally had a terminal full stop. The current version does not. --Karnesky (talk) 16:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed.--Salix (talk): 17:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Might have been present in the past sandbox, but I just noticed that the current version does not use 'rft_id=info:doi' in COinS. --Karnesky (talk) 19:26, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Well spotted. Fixed. --Salix (talk): 19:48, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm removing the edit request, since it seems to have been handled. If I missed something, please accept my apologies and go ahead and re-activate it. --Elonka 03:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Salix has fixed all the bugs (thank you Salix!), so I can't see why the sandbox isn't live. Can we get this up and running now, sooner rather than later? Lots of little changes keep being requested to the old template which are gradually both driving Citation and Cite journal further apart for no cause, and making it more work for us to keep up to speed with the new template. Let's activate the new template, and if there are still bugs with it, let's fix them while it's live - people have had several months to spot them; if they can't be bothered to test the template then in my opinion they don't have much ground to moan if it doesn't work. The more we keep reverting back to the old template the longer this frustrating process drags out. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

As one of those who called for reverting to the original after last minute changes to citation/core failed to address several key points, I agree with Martin. It is time to migrate to the sandboxed code. --Karnesky (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Just checking, are we talking about Template:Cite journal/sandbox? It appears to be substantially different from Template:Cite journal, so I want to be sure. --Elonka 04:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. It will be very different as the sandbox now uses the the Citation/Core backend. The output from the two should however be the same, or improved. Template:Cite journal/testcases contains a number of testcases. More would be good.--Salix (talk): 10:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The first line of the sandbox page starts off "{{Citation/core/sandbox". So again, I just want to make sure, should the entire thing from the sandbox page be copied into the live template, verbatim? Or should the "sandbox" word be omitted? I'm not familiar enough with the code to tell if the word "sandbox" is related to the page name, or if it's something different. --Elonka 20:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes you need to copy Template:Citation/core/sandbox to Template:Citation/core, copy Template:cite journal/sandbox to Template:cite journal, and fix the link in to point to Template:Citation/core. --Salix (talk): 23:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I checked the talkpage for Citation/core, but I'm not seeing any request for an update. I've posted a note there to see if anyone objects to the change. If everyone's okay on it, I'll proceed. --Elonka 00:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I admit I have not been following all the details, but the copying procedure described by Salix does not mention copying the documentation. Does this mean that there is no change in function and thus no need to change the documentation? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Just thought I'd better note that a couple of very minor changes (essentially correcting typos) to the sandbox template have been made since the editrequest was first enabled. The current diff is here. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Declining request, since per the thread below, there does not seem to be a solid consensus for one of the preliminary changes. It sounds like first there needs to be a request at citation/core, and then once that's squared away, a request at cite journal. --Elonka 22:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} (unindented))

The objections below are to changes that have already been made in {{citation/core}}. Martin addressed these objections. There have been no objections raised to the code changes that elicited this change request in the first place.

Merging in this version will lead to no new objections. Merging in the current version may actually address old objections. --Karnesky (talk) 22:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's where I"m confused: It sounds like you are asking that