Template talk:Cite news/Archive 2

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Date conversions

 Done

Just curious—is there a reason the date and accessdate fields work differently? The latter automatically converts ISO 8601 dates to the end-user's preferred format, but with the former you have to wrap it in [[brackets]]. Thanks. — Muffuletta 16:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the reason was explained on the news reference talk page. --Muchness 16:30, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

D'oh! That explanation makes sense. Thanks. — Muffuletta 18:42, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm copying the relevant question and answer from {{news reference}}:

Why is the {{{date}}} parameter not wikilinked? Doing so would format it, just like the {{{urldate}}} is formatted. — jdorje (talk) 02:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

This would be because it is not always possible to know the precise date when something was published: it might be sometime within a given month with no day listed, or even just a year, and auto-linking partial dates would be disastrous. You should always know when you checked the URL, however, or else your clock is broken . HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

urldate is the old name for accessdate. --Ligulem 19:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

{{News reference}} no longer exists. Where is this explanation now? Others will surely want to see it (I would myself). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Can someone format this in such a way that you don't have to enter everything in the ISO format date. I come from a country where we would never link to dates in such a way, and I find myself forgetting to do it every time. Particularly for the accessdate field, this would be enormously helpful. JRG 05:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm from the same country and I see no problems with the ISO format. In fact it's a lot easier to use 2005-10-26 than it is to type "[[26 October]] [[2007]]". And of course there are the incorrect (for Australia) variations that people use such as "[[26 October]], [[2007]]", "[[October 26]] [[2007]]" and "[[October 26]], [[2007]]". The ISO format seems far more logical, especially since it autoconverts to the correct display format anyway. --AussieLegend 06:22, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

My request still stands, despite what he says. JRG 06:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The current arrangement works quite well. Accessdate=, an administrative detail of little interest to most readers is efficiently summarized using ISO format, and date= can be spelled out using [[month date]] [[year]] or some other default format of the editor's own choosing that gets rearranged according to user preferences. Please don't change them. --HailFire 10:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Location

 Done I have been using this lately – and it seems to me that a location should be added since that is commonly part of the dateline of news articles. --Trödel 15:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

We have a location param in other cite templates too, so that seems reasonable to me. At least I can't think of any reason why not. --Ligulem 22:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Those are two radically different usages. The dateline usage is part of the news item's content, to give context to readers of that news item in its original publication(s) as to what locale the story is about; it is not part of the metadata about the news item, which is what this template provides as source details for Wikipedia articles. The location field should be present – especially since multiple publications in different locations often have the same name – but it should be for the location of the publisher, just as it is in {{Cite book}}. And the docs should explain this, so people do not misuse it for dateline location. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Could we have a "Location" field? Seems to make sense for newspapers that don't have the city in the name, like The Times. I think it should appear in parentheses after "work".—Chowbok ☠ 22:15, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

• Not opposed to the field necessarily, but if you link in the publisher field to which The Times you mean, it should clear it up. e.g. The Times of India or The Times (Shreveport). I'm not sure I've ever seen a location given in off-wikipedia newspaper citations before. But I'm no expert. --W.marsh 22:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

That falsely presumes that all reliable sources that could use this template have Wikipedia articles! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:51, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

If consensus develops to do this I'll edit the template. But first it needs to be discussed, implemented, and tested. Then add an editprotected tag. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

No opposition since June 2006, and implemented in other templates of this sort equates to plenty of consensus. Its implementation in other templates can simply be copied here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:51, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

So we need to simply add the code from {{cite book}} that would enable this parameter in {{cite news}}, along with various other code changes proposed on this page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:17, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I have a suggested implementation at User:RossPatterson/cite news. The changed code adds a location= parameter to the template and displays it in parentheses after the publisher= value, but only if publisher= is specified. The {{cite book}} template does this differently, placing the location before the publisher and separated by a colon, but it seems to me that "The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania)" and "The Times (London)" look better than "Hobart, Tasmania: The Mercury" and "London: The Times" and put the emphasis more on the publisher that its location. The implementation passes all the examples in Template:cite news/doc plus this one:

• {{cite news | first=John | last=Doe | title=News | url=http://www.example.org/ | work=Encyclopedia of Things | publisher=News co. | pages= 37–39 | date=[[2005-11-21]] | id={{ISSN|0028–0836}} | accessdate=2005-12-11 |location=[[Hobart]], [[Tasmania]] }}
• Doe, John. "News", Encyclopedia of Things, News co. (Hobart, Tasmania), 2005-11-21, pp. 37–39. ISSN 0028–0836. Retrieved on 2005-12-11.

RossPatterson (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

{{tl|editprotected}}

Please add the location= parameter to this template by replacing:

 | , {{{publisher}}}

with:

 | , {{{publisher}}}{{#if: {{{location|}}} |  ({{{location}}})}}

RossPatterson (talk) 02:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Hangon, please – Not sure about this proposed solution. Location= may be helpful, but publisher= is an existing field already in use for a long time. At Barack Obama, for example, I routinely use publisher= to indicate the print or web source of work=Associated Press articles. For most sources using this template, the useful location information will be inside the url= itself, linked via the Uniform Resource Locator. Changing the name of the field would impose a lot of cleanup for articles using publisher=, unnecessary in my view. --HailFire (talk) 06:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm also confused on what this change is supposed to do. Why do we need a new parameter for the publisher's location? Can't we just put that info in the publisher field if it's ambiguous? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 07:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

This was already explained: "The location field should be present – especially since multiple publications in different locations often have the same name". Same field as {{Cite book}}, which is frequently misused to cite things which should be cited with {{Cite news}} because they are periodicals not books; this field being missing makes it harder to clean up such instances. Basically, don't worry about it. It doesn't need to be used in every single case of citing a news story, so it does not add any burden to you or anyone else. But it should be present for when it does need to be used. The "For most sources using this template, the useful location information will be inside the url=" point is not valid; many, many, many things cited with this template have no URL at all; the Web has only existed since the early 1990s, remember, and Wikipedia is not only about "sexy" new topics that are covered in new articles in current publications that have online versions.

I'm restoring the {{editprotected}}, but in a format consistent with {{Cite book}}; the last thing we need to do is implement something inconsistent in the process of trying to implement something consistent! Heh. The colon format comes from MLA style I think.

{{editprotected}}

Please add the location= parameter to this template by replacing:

 | , {{{publisher}}}

with:

 | , {{#if: {{{location|}}} |{{{location}}}: }}{{{publisher}}}

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 Done Neil ☎ 11:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Associated Press?

I've found, especially recently for some reason, a lot of stories that while they are found on, say, Yahoo News or Rocky Mountain News or what-have-you, are actually from Associated Press. It's unclear to me how these are to be formatted; is the work "Yahoo News" or "Associated Press"? Is the publisher "Yahoo.com" or "Associated Press"? Also, different venues may edit the story as it comes to them from Associated Press, so one may know that a particular detail existed in the full story (for instance, if you find it in a Google cached version) but may be unable to find it in the story as run by anyone who still has it online. How does one handle this? -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Good question – I usually use just the published newspaper name – or try to find the wire article. to attribute it to AP – the problem with just using AP is that the newspaper you read it in could make editorial additions/deletions for space/interest/etc. so it may not match the AP wire content. Anyone else have suggestions...--Trödel 16:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

In this example I used the work parameter to specify the newspaper (published online in this case), and the publisher parameter to specify that the source was the Associated Press. Probably not technically correct, but I thought it was the best way to cite the original source, since I didn't have a link to the AP archived article. --KeithB 21:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

That's the approach I've been using, since it seems to me to be the one suggested by the template documentation. I haven't been including format = reprint, though. Perhaps it's best not to specify "reprint" if it's common practice for the final publisher to edit the AP release before publishing it, as stated later in this discussion. Wdfarmer (talk) 23:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• I have this same question and I would like to hear some more thoughts on this. In my case, I am talking about events that happened in Austin, Texas, but I'm reading an Associated Press article that ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune. I think the problem with citing the San Diego Union Tribune as the work/publisher is that (a) this gives no credit to the Associated Press when it seems they are due some credit (b) it might convey an erroneous impression – namely, that the San Diego city paper actually assigned a reporter to cover this event.

It has been suggested to me that I use work=San Diego Union Tribune | publisher=Copley Press | author=Associated Press. However, that does not feel right to me since that leaves no room to credit the actual human author. What would be the preferred way to handle this? Johntex\^talk 03:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I simply don't specify an author in such cases. Usually such material is edited to a point anyway. Not to mention that "publisher" has always been intended for the publication, despite its less than ideal name. Circeus 04:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

If the author and first/last fields are not mutually exclusive in the actual code, use first/last for human author and the author field for AP. Otherwise, use author=Lastname, Firstname ([[Associated press|AP]]) or something to that effect. I concur with the above about citing the specific publication; AP newswires as republished and sometimes modified by news outlets are effectively reported speech (that is, very long and sometimes modified quotations), so in the absence of the original, they must be attributed to the source from which the citing editor got them, per WP:V. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The author= parameter is ignored by the code if the last= parameter is specified, so they are mutually exclusive. RossPatterson 21:29, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

• My work-around is to specfiy the work as the journal the item was printed / published in, and to list "(Associated Press)" as a co-author. This makes is abundantly clear where the citation / source was located, and that the AP was the underlying source, whom the author worked for.
  Example:

Kellman, Laurie (October 31, 2007). "Mukasey Prospects Dim Over Waterboarding". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-11-01. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
-- Yellowdesk 04:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

• Here's an alternate approach, using "work =Associated Press" combined with "publisher=CBS News":

H. Josef, Hebert (January 29 2007). "Congress Begins Tackling Climate Issues". Associated Press. CBS News. Retrieved 2007-09-30. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
--HailFire 11:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

• I've used yet another approach, combining the two in the publisher field, i.e. |publisher=Associated Press for CBS News. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Quote parameter

 Done

Is there a reason this template doesn't have a quote parameter? Kaldari 11:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I would also like this added. The template would be much more useful then. I've been using "cite web" instead just so I can include a quote. I'm going to add the editprotected template and hopefully an admin will add "quote". — coelacan talk — 21:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm 99% sure I added such a parameter correctly (the template is a bit more esoteric than I'm used to working with). I also made the change to the documentation page. If I've inadvertently broken the template somehow, drop me a line on my talk page and I'll revert it post-haste. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, using coelacan's code, I've added the quote tag again. It appears to be working now... EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The current coding uses smart quotes namely “ and ”. These are not standard in wikipedia – can they be replaced please with normal plain quotes ". Secondly, if a quote is very long, then it can be hard to identify as such, therefore can it be italicised. Hence the elements required are (NB with added spaces to identify the elements): ' ' " {{{quote}}} " ' '

The coding (without talk-page typesetting spaces) thus would be: ''"{{{quote}}}"'' David Ruben ^Talk 13:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Then the same problem exists on {{cite book}}, which is where the quote system was copied from. — coelacan talk — 21:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

{{Editprotected}} Per WP:MOS#Quotations this does in fact need to be fixed as requested above, and at {{Cite book}} and any other such template that has a quote field ({{Cite web}} does, last I looked); no further consensus discussion is required on this one, since WP:MOS trumps template formatting quirks. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

You need to either write / update the code or find someone to write / update the code. The code is too esoteric for a quick admin fix. When the new code is ready, re-enable the editprotected request. Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Very well: {{editprotected}} Please change

|  “{{{quote}}}”

to

|  "{{{quote}}}"

Thanks! RossPatterson (talk) 02:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 Done Neil ☎ 11:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Author attribute

When using the author= attribute, I've filled it out first name last name, e.g., "John Doe". However, I've seen articles using the Cite news template where the name is placed in the attribute as "Doe, John". I'm not sure which is proper, but I think I assumed that author= would be a straightforward "John Doe" format, because first= and last= set up a "Doe, John" format. What is the general consensus? —Erik (talk • contrib) – 19:22, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly why I always use first=John|last=Doe – the decision about how to render the citation becomes part of the template, not part of the citation. It's always a Good Thing to separate data from its presentation. RossPatterson 22:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

And what about coauthors=? Which way should it be? If I set it up as last, first, then it will show up as "Doe, John, Doe, Jane", and the commas seem to make it confusing. If it was first last, it would show up as "Doe, John, Jane Doe," which also appears inconsistent. —Erik (talk • contrib) – 22:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Use last, first for consistency. The "author=" attribute (borrowed from {{Cite book}}) exists to handle cases in which this formatting won't work or the author is notable and has an author here ("author=unspecified", "author=Doe, Jane", "author=Doe, Jane (Associated Press)", etc.), not to invert the name order. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Semi colon between first and susequent authors desirable

 Done
Shouldn't the template distingish between the first author and second authors, when there is one, with a semi colon? At present, the result in the footnote is:

Last, First, First_2nd Author Last_2nd Author.

This can be quite needlessly confusing, especially with ambiguous first/last names. For example:

James, Robin, Chris William.

-- Yellowdesk 18:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I just came here to say this. cite book template uses semicolon, and semicolon should be preferred to avoid confusions like the ones mentioned above. Let's use editprotected, if no admin notices this soon. The line

| {{#if: {{{coauthors|}}} | , {{{coauthors}}} }}.

should be changed to

| {{#if: {{{coauthors|}}} | <removethisnowiki>;</removethisnowiki> {{{coauthors}}} }}.

As far as I can see, this won't cause any problems, and solve this semicolon issue (I added removethis to be able to use nowiki twice, please remove "removethis") Deniz^T_C 10:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

---

{{editprotected}} Please change the template so that the initial author is separated from additional "co-authors" by a semi colon.
There appears to be no objection to this change.
-- Yellowdesk 04:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I made the change. Now {{cite news|title=foo|author=james|coauthors=bob}} appears as

james. "foo". {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

— Carl (CBM · talk) 17:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Error category should only be applied in article namespace

 Done
{{editprotected}} After policing Category:Articles with broken citations for a few months, I've come to the conclusion that only articles should be placed in that category. I think it's still a good idea to display the error messages ("You must specify ...") any time the template is used incorrectly, but there's no need to flag things like user-page examples or talk-page samples for repair. I've made the necessary modifications and put the result in User:RossPatterson/cite news, could an admin please replace this template with that copy? RossPatterson 17:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Template talk:Cite web also mentions a very similar request; discussion should probably be centralized on one or the other page. – Luna Santin (talk) 04:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Centralizing discussion would be good. As I pointed out on the other template, the code would also need to be written and tested before it can be made live. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:10, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The code has already been written and tested. It's at User:RossPatterson/cite news as noted above, and it passes all the examples in Template:cite news/doc including an error-generation test case that I added and temporarily disabled until the editprotected is done. It's ready to go. If you prefer to see the code change, it is simply replacing [[Category:Articles with broken citations]] with {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}}|| [[Category:Articles with broken citations]]}}. RossPatterson 02:22, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

This change was made to {{cite web}} several days ago, can it please be made here too? Thanks. RossPatterson 23:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if I missed the code the first time. I made the change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Automatic date wikilinking

 Done

{{editprotected}}

I would like it if this template automatically wikilinked the date parameter if it is in ISO format (for example, 2007-11-27). This has already been done on Template:cite web and Template:cite press release without any complaints (see the discussions at Template talk:Cite web#Automatic date wikilinking and Template talk:Cite press release#Automatic date wikilinking), so I think it's safe to go ahead and tweak this template too.

Please change

    | , {{{date}}}

to

    | , {{#ifeq:{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{date}}}}}|{{{date}}}|[[{{{date}}}]]|{{{date}}}}}

Thanks in advance! —Remember the dot ^(talk) 02:45, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I second this request! -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 09:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Umm – is that going to cause some problems? Some dates are already linked, so this change would double-wikilink it, wouldn't it? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

No, it is designed to not break existing wikilinked dates. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 18:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I also support his request. Regan123 03:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This code is working very well with {{cite web}}, Remember the dot's change links dates that are specified as YYYY-MM-DD and leaves everything else as it is written. Please, let's make the change. RossPatterson 01:41, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that there is a limit on the number of #time: calls allowed on a page. Is this change likely to cause the limit to be reached? --ais523 09:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

 Done, seems fine. Neil ☎ 11:43, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I doubt that this will exceed the limit on #time: calls for any given page. If it does I would guess that the dates would just not be wikilinked. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 15:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a limit, but it isn't on the number of #time: calls. It's on the total size of the all format strings, and it is 6000 characters. This change (and similar changes on other {{cite whatever}} templates) costs 5 characters, so there's a maximum of 1200, minus any more-mundane usages. And the usage here would fall back to the value of the date= parameter. I don't think there's anything to worry about. RossPatterson 00:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

archiveurl

Hey, I'm trying to cite a New York Times article that's from 1903, and archived here. But I don't really understand the archivurl function of the template. How do I get that? Murderbike (talk) 05:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Just use the url parameter in this case. archiveurl is almost always used for web pages that have been taken down, but can still be accessed through the Internet Archive. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 06:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! Murderbike (talk) 08:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Typo fix

{{Editprotected}} There is a missing space character (plain, not nbsp) between the ":" at the end of the location field, and the publisher field. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

You're right, but I'm not sure immediately how to fix it; there's already a space at the relevant point in the source, which is being ignored for some reason (probably because it's at the end of a #if:), so more experimentation and testing will be needed to figure out what the fix is (most likely moving spaces around inside/outside templates). --ais523 20:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

 Done. I believe I have fixed it by replacing the space with   as is used elsewhere in this and similar templates.—Random832 20:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a great tip, I'll have to remember that! --ais523 12:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Changes to publisher, article name quotes

I've received a second request to 'fix' references in Interstate 355 (in Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Interstate_355 by removing the quotes around the article name, and to italicize the publisher. I'd rather those changes be done here, in the template, than on the article. Is it a concern? (Ignore the date – technically I used {{cite web}} accidentally, so I'll convert it to cite news soon).

Old: (from cite news) Presecky, William. "Tollbooth to nowhere put to the test: vacant Lemont tract a proving ground for new I-PASS technology", Chicago Tribune, August 13, 1997.

New: (from {{cite web}}) Hilkevitch, Jon (October 22, 2007). New superhighway opening soon in Will. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on October 23, 2007.

Thanks! —Rob (talk) 18:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Doc and comments

Could we standardize the documentation page by using {{Documentation, template}}? This involves changing:

{{/doc}}
</noinclude>

To:

{{Documentation, template}}</noinclude>

I also noticed that this template has a lot of embedded comments. I know we are not supposed to include the documentation in the template for performance reasons, and I would think this applies to comments as well. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk – 21:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

archiveurl without original url

The archiveurl parameter's documentation makes it sound like it should be possible to use it without having a url, but the way it's set up right now, it's actually dependent on url being filled in. I sometimes need to link to news articles that have been transcribed or posted by their authors on personal sites, but that AFAIK have never been made available on the original newspaper's site, or aren't directly linkable.

Can someone at the very least update the documentation to point out that archiveurl requires url? And can some consideration be given to severing that dependency? Thanks. —mjb (talk) 03:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Doc has updated. RossPatterson (talk) 00:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Extra space

 Done

{{editprotected}} Can somebody please remove the extra space in the language parameter of the template: | {{languageicon||{{{language}}} }}. The one that is after {{{language}}}. It makes the extra space appear in the refs if language is specified.  ARTYOM  07:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Some one did it already – Nabla (talk) 17:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC)